Stalin's Other War: Soviet Grand Strategy, 1939-1941 by Weeks Albert L

Author:Weeks, Albert L.
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781461643494
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Published: 2013-06-26T16:00:00+00:00

NEGLECT OF RETREAT

The anathema of retreat afflicting Red Army war planning was the other side of the offensist coin. In spring 1941 no concerted preparations were made for tactical, let alone strategic, withdrawal (retreat) if the Red Army were taken by surprise or at some point were overwhelmed by the enemy. To Stalin’s way of thinking, inherited from Lenin, “retreating”—otstupleniye—was virtually a crime. The professional military thought twice about even using the words otstupleniye or otkhod (meaning “withdrawal,” a slightly more acceptable term).

The very wording of the definitions of offense and defense in the post–World War II Military Encyclopedic Dictionary differs significantly. Offense is defined as the “basic [osnovyi] form of [Soviet] military actions.” Defense is defined simply as a “form of military activities.”14 The extreme opprobrium attached by the Stalin regime to the idea of “retreating” was proved when some of the Soviet armies were forced to withdraw during the opening days and weeks of the German onslaughts of Barbarossa. Stalin had senior officers of such retreating units in some cases executed for ordering tactical withdrawals. Rank-and-file soldiers, or vanki (GIs), would themselves be shot as well (according to soldier eyewitnesses, in the back of the head) if and when political commissars or NKVD officers, both of whom were distributed within the ranks, caught them retreating, let alone defecting to the enemy. Hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians actually did defect in the opening days and weeks of hostilities when they regarded the invading Germans as “liberators.” The estimated number of Red Army deserters at that time has been put at 630,000.15

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