Chastny Korrespondent “Victory Thanks To and In Spite Of”
Boris Sokolov
Sunday, 9 May 2010

VICTORY THANKS TO AND IN SPITE OF

On 9 May 1945 at 00:43 Moscow time, the act of Germany’s unconditional surrender was signed in Berlin. RIA Novosti

Why did the Soviet Union defeat Germany in the Second World War? It would seem that all the answers to this question have already been given.

There was the Soviet side’s superiority in human and material resources; the resilience of the totalitarian system in the face of military defeat; and the traditional endurance and modest requirements of the Russian soldier and the Russian people.

There was also the aid of the Western Allies in the form of Lend-Lease supplies, without which some key branches of the Soviet war economy could not have functioned, and the opening of the second front in Europe, which sharply weakened German resistance.

Of course, both Victory and the Great Patriotic War itself have long since become myths, but it could hardly have been otherwise. The ordinary person—that is, any normal person who is not a historian—perceives history only in the form of myth. It has always been so and always will be.

TWO TRUTHS ABOUT THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR

All of this is true. Victory was achieved at the cost of enormous sacrifices. Our country simply did not know how to fight in any other way. Contrary to a widespread belief, in the Second World War the Red Army fought no worse than the Tsarist army had fought in the First World War.

For the Russian front of the First World War, the losses of the opposing sides have been calculated with reasonable accuracy only for the second half of 1916. Historian Sergei Nelipovich did this in his book The Brusilov Offensive: The Offensive of the Southwestern Front in the 1916 Campaign (Moscow, 2006, p. 45). From early June to the end of December 1916, the Russian Northern and Western Fronts, opposed almost exclusively by German troops, lost 54,000 men killed, while the German forces facing them lost 7,700. This gives a ratio of 7.0:1. On the Southwestern Front, Russian losses amounted to 202,800 killed. The Austrian troops fighting against them lost 55,100 killed, while the German troops lost 21,200.

If we assume that the ratio of Russian to German losses there was the same as on the other two fronts, then approximately 148,100 soldiers and officers of the Russian Southwestern Front were killed in fighting against the Germans and about 53,700 in fighting against Austro-Hungarian forces. Thus, against the Austrians the ratio of killed was even slightly in our favor—1.03:1—while the Austrians lost far more prisoners than the Russians: 377,800 missing compared with 152,700 Russians on the entire Southwestern Front, including those lost in fighting against German troops.

The overall ratio of losses in the First World War was considerably more favorable for the Russian army than in the Second World War only because in 1914-1918 the Russian front was fought mainly not by German troops but by the much less combat-effective Austro-Hungarian forces.

In the Great Patriotic War, according to our calculations, Red Army losses in killed and dead amounted to more than 26 million people, while Wehrmacht losses on the Eastern Front were about 2.6 million. Taking into account that Romanian, Italian, Hungarian, and Finnish troops, as well as some other allies, fought on Germany’s side there, the real ratio of irrecoverable losses (excluding prisoners who survived captivity) of Soviet and German forces in the places where they fought each other would be between 7:1 and 8:1—that is, practically the same as in the First World War (see: B. V. Sokolov, The Second World War: Facts and Versions, Moscow, 2005).

The overall scale of Soviet losses, however, was an order of magnitude higher than in the First World War because the main forces of the Wehrmacht were now deployed on the Eastern Front. Stalin, broadly speaking, did not make the Russian army worse. The problem lay in Russia’s general cultural backwardness, which could not be overcome by the draconian methods Stalin employed.

Victory in the Great Patriotic War was achieved, in addition to the factors already mentioned, because most Soviet soldiers and officers continued to fight to the end against an enemy superior not in numbers but in skill. They fought despite enormous losses, despite the incompetence and brutality of the command, and not only out of fear of repression but also because they believed in the rightness of the Soviet Union. Individuals displayed patriotism under the pressure of a rigid vertical system of power, finding their own place within an inhuman totalitarian system.

The diary of Lieutenant Vladimir Natanovich Gelfand, commander of a mortar platoon in the 5th Shock Army, demonstrates well how patriotism, devotion to communist ideals, fear, and hatred coexisted in the minds of the heroes of Victory—hatred directed not only at enemies but also at their own commanders. Victory was achieved both thanks to Stalin and the totalitarian system and in spite of them.

Consider the entries for 1945, when the 5th Shock Army was advancing on Berlin. They vividly portray relations between soldiers and officers and the customs prevailing among officers.

On 19 January Gelfand wrote in his diary: “When my orderly, Corporal Nakonechny, got hold of a gold watch, he gave it to the company commander and from then on became his hanger-on (always hovering around him). During the entire march he never once asked my permission to leave, and when I reprimanded him, he referred to the company commander’s permission, and the commander repeatedly took his side. As a result, he stopped taking any account of me at all and changed from a disciplined soldier into a malicious violator of discipline.”

The commander of another platoon, Lieutenant Kanonenko, was no better: “Once pots and jugs, thrown by a drunken Kanonenko, came flying at me. Another time Kanonenko drew his revolver and began waving it in front of my face. A third time Kanonenko started shooting indoors, to the left of where I was sitting. And whenever Kanonenko was drunk, I was the one and apparently favorite target of his attacks. To be fair, the company commander too, as everyone knows, repeatedly got his share from Kanonenko. But he did not dare use physical force.” Gelfand, however, received the full treatment from his company commander.

When he asked the company commander, Captain Rysev, “not to use obscene language toward me in front of the men, because my authority has already been undermined enough,” the indignant answer was:

“—Who undermined your authority? Who? —You did, Comrade Captain, I replied. —So!… You bastard!”—and he rushed at me with his fists. Everyone stepped aside, and Captain Rysev slapped me several times, shouting: “I’ll shoot you in the very first battle!”

I did not dare answer him and only repeated several times: “Comrade Captain, remember that I am an officer. Do not trample on my honor!”

But did the war really end with the signing of the surrender? The seriously wounded continued to die in overcrowded hospitals; in Poland, Western Ukraine, Belarus, and the Baltic countries there were fierce clashes with nationalists—the Home Army, Bandera supporters, and the “Forest Brothers.” More than sixty years have passed, yet some consequences of the wartime catastrophe still make themselves felt in broken human lives.

FROM AN OLD TEAPOT. MEMORIES AND THOUGHTS

In a report of 22 January, Gelfand particularly noted: “Until very recently I zealously supported the authority and prestige of the company commander. I categorically forbade, in my platoon and, as far as I could, in the company, the terms ‘kid,’ ‘boy,’ and ‘weak-willed,’ which were directed at Captain Rysev and uttered openly and shamelessly. More than any other platoon commander, from my first day in the company I unquestioningly carried out all the commander’s orders. Yet instead of taking up my initiative to uphold his authority, the captain, on the contrary, began obstructing me and interfering with my attempts to establish discipline and order, friendship, and culture, at least within my own platoon.” Clearly, culture was lacking not only among ordinary Red Army soldiers but also among officers, and relations within the small military collective were far removed from the idyllic picture of “brother soldiers” and “father commanders.”

Among his company commander’s shortcomings Gelfand lists “deceitfulness in giving orders and testimony.” “He does not take account of the soldiers’ labor; he makes obscene threats of shooting; he does not care about their everyday life and needs, their requests and demands”; “beatings in front of the men”; “having my orderly beat me”; “the company went a week without bread while he himself lacked nothing”; “although there are several pairs of boots, the tailor is making boots for him, and not his first pair”; and “there is no honesty in recommendations for decorations.”

Such customs would have been impossible to imagine in the Wehrmacht or in the armies of the Western Allies. There, no soldier or officer would have tolerated a superior striking him in the face. When the American general George Patton once slapped a soldier—even, as the author puts it, “for a reason”—it became a major scandal that affected the general’s career. Nevertheless, despite the truly leaden atmosphere, Soviet soldiers and officers, with rare exceptions, believed they were fighting for a just cause and contemptuously rejected calls to turn their bayonets against Stalin and the Bolsheviks. Here are Gelfand’s impressions of reading a Vlasov newspaper, recorded on 21 January: “What poverty of language all these dogs have. Can they really still consider themselves Russians?! They are worse than the Germans! What can be more disgusting than a traitor to the Motherland?!”

At the same time, moral disintegration increasingly affected the Red Army as it entered Germany, and excesses were encouraged by commanders at every level, with rare exceptions. Gelfand noted with satisfaction: “No one forbids anyone to take from the Germans and destroy what they previously looted from us. I am very satisfied. I dislike only the senseless rampaging of Captain Shitikov and especially Kanonenko. Yesterday, for example, Rysev smashed a bust of Schiller and would have destroyed Goethe too had I not torn it from the madman’s hands and hidden it, wrapped in rags… Geniuses cannot be equated with barbarians, and destroying their memory is a great sin and a disgrace for a cultured person.”

Stealing a bicycle or a watch was not a sin, but smashing a bust of Schiller was sacrilege. This combination of reverence for German culture and hatred of Germans as the people who had committed aggression was characteristic of most Soviet soldiers and officers. It produced senseless destruction of property and monstrous violence against civilians and prisoners, which was also reflected in Gelfand’s diary.

Red Army soldiers were winning while remaining within the framework of the totalitarian system, and the memory of the enormous sacrifices made in the war, together with the awareness that to the command they were merely cannon fodder, spilled over into senseless cruelty toward the civilian population of Germany and other European countries.

Gelfand himself was no coward in battle, although he often became timid before his superiors and even before more brazen and self-confident fellow servicemen. This is how he recalled the battle for the Oder bridgehead on 12 February:

“We have a new deputy battalion commander for political affairs, a lieutenant. No decorations. I like such men, provided he is a front-line soldier. That means he is a fair and modest fellow, and that is why they dislike him. I, for example, have been recommended three times for a decoration (as all officers were, by order of the higher command), and to this day there is not even a single order. Obviously I am the most undeserving person, despite my active participation in battles, especially on 12/II/45, when almost everyone, including Kanonenko, hid in cellars and from there, over the telephone, played the hero, while I remained above ground and directed all the forces of the defense: the mortar men, the riflemen, and even the wounded—anyone who could still speak and think. And how many people fell before my eyes, bleeding, losing legs, arms, their stomachs torn open so that fragments and intestines spilled out. A terrible sight! But I did not notice it; ahead of me, perhaps fifty meters away, I saw the advancing Germans and tanks, and to me that was the clearest thing of all. I was not afraid; I did not run from shells, and fate protected me, although I ran across a courtyard strewn with the corpses of people and animals, littered with splinters and bricks, pitted by shells and mines and their fragments, shrouded in smoke and burning.”

Regarding those who had sat out the fighting in the rear and received undeserved awards, Gelfand observed: “What is to be done? Where can one seek truth and justice? There is no God, and apart from Him no one can know anything about what I have lived through… Oh fate, why did I suffer so fruitlessly? Motherland, for which I endured so much and for which I risked my life so many times—will it not understand my thoughts and sufferings? Will it not help my grief? But Lord, it knows nothing about me; I have not risen a gram above ordinary life, and beyond the regiment and division no one knows anything about me. Woe to me, and merciless shame!”

Yet one cannot truly condemn those of whom Gelfand speaks in more than unflattering terms. On 17 April, Gelfand—who during the Berlin operation kept the division’s combat log and had therefore left the mortar company—learned that almost all his comrades had been killed or wounded:

“…On the road we overtook the transport of the 3rd Battalion. My heart skipped a beat: in the carts I saw several men from my mortar company. The road was rough, and we happened to stop not far from them. The mortar men said that the entire company had been put out of action. Kanonenko, his orderly, and several other men had been killed. Rysev, Shitikov, and all the rest, except for six men, were wounded.

Thus tragically ended the mortar company in which I had sought glory and which, having itself won glory with my help and participation, left me on the sidelines.”

A great many Red Army soldiers were both heroes and sinners, but death wrote off every sin.