Moscow 1941
By Rodric Braithwaite
Profile Books 2006
446 pages, £20
REVIEW BY ALEX MILLER
When did the tide turn against Hitler's armies in the Second World War? Many would point to the defeat the Nazis suffered at the Battle of Stalingrad in 1942-43 as the decisive turning point. In this excellent book Rodric Braithwaite makes a compelling case for locating the turning point earlier, when the advancing German armies were repelled from the outskirts of Moscow towards the end of 1941.
Hitler had launched Operation Barbarossa on June 22, 1941, and the German armies advanced deeply and rapidly into the interior of the Soviet Union, inflicting heavy losses on the Red Army and Air Force. Stalin infamously misjudged the situation, failing to take seriously the many reports from his military commanders and spies that a German offensive was imminent.
When Starshina, a Soviet agent embedded in the Luftwaffe headquarters in Berlin, reported to Moscow that the Germans were going to attack on June 22, Stalin hastily rejected the suggestion: "Starshina should be sent to his fucking mother. This is no source but a disinformer." When the Germans did attack on June 22, they found the Soviet military under-prepared and under-equipped, and they advanced as far as the outer suburbs of the Soviet capital by the end of the year.
Braithwaite points out that Stalin was not the only one to blame for the USSR's catastrophic start to the war. Generals and politicians still in power as late as the 1960s "failed in their professional duty to persuade the dictator to change his mind", and Braithwaite argues that this is responsible for the official tendency to downplay the Battle of Moscow in favour of the Battle of Stalingrad or the Siege of Leningrad. These cities were designated "Hero Cities" at the end of the war, while Moscow had to wait until 1965 before it attained that appellation.
By skillful use of both official sources and private memoirs, diaries and personal interviews, Braithwaite reconstructs the story of how the Germans were beaten back from the very gates of the city. He takes us through the great panic of October 16, 1941, Stalin's brave decision to personally remain in the city, and the inspirational parade held to mark the anniversary of the revolution on November 7, when Red Army units went straight from marching in Red Square back to fighting the Germans on the city limits.
There are some intriguing revelations. The standard view of the 1940s Soviet Union promulgated in the West has it that Stalin personally controlled almost everything that happened within the state. Yet when Stalin succumbed to nervous prostration and literally disappeared for days when it became clear how bad things looked immediately after the German invasion, the Soviet establishment didn't grind to a halt.
The story of how the Soviet people recovered the situation and eventually expelled the invaders is indeed a heroic one: Braithwaite reminds us that 9 million Soviet soldiers and 17 million Soviet civilians are estimated to have been killed in the course of the war: for every Briton or American who died, the Soviets lost 85.
Braithwaite served in the British foreign office from 1955 to 1992, and was British ambassador to Moscow between 1988 and 1992. So I was expecting this book to be the kind of crude hatchet job on Stalin and the Soviet Union that bookshops seem to be constantly full of. I'm glad to say I was wrong: this is a very serious study of the USSR at war, sensitive to the great complexity of the issue, and only occasionally overstepping the bounds of respectable anti-Stalinism. This volume deserves to be read by all serious students of Soviet history and culture.