Hitler’s “cannibalistic” economic calculation remained the same, i.e., the number of German victims from an attack on Russia would not exceed the number occupied in the production of synthetic fuel. The German command was counting on Russia being finished by winter of 1941: Moscow would be captured, and a border would be reached running from Arkhangelsk to Astrakhan. A program for occupying seized Russian territories, the Generalplan Ost [“Master Plan East”] was developed at the same time as Operation Barbarossa. The resources of such territories, including petroleum, were to become property of the Reich. A special ministry, the Reichsministerium für die besetzten Ostgebiete [“Reich Ministry for the Occupied Eastern Territories”], was created to deal with the eastern territories. A number of regions would be colonized by Germans, while Russia itself was to be “thrown across the Urals.” The local population would be a source of cheap labor. Some inhabitants would be physically eliminated, including any and all Jews, Gypsies, and the physically and mentally handicapped, wherever they might be, as well as the “commissars” and communists, Hitler’s principal ideological enemies.
It should be noted that Germany’s attack on June 22, 1941 took the Party political and military leadership of the Soviet Union, headed by Joseph Stalin, by surprise. The initial period of the war was especially tragic. In the first three months, during the course of bloody battles, the superior enemy forced the Red Army to retreat to the distant approaches of Moscow. Concentrated aerial bombing strikes destroyed airfields, oil storage facilities, and tank farms of the Special Western Military District. At the beginning of the war, the Red Army’s Fuel Service had 247 stationary storage facilities and fuel bases with a total bulk capacity of 23 million cubic feet, and up to 2,000 rail cars for packaged products and goods. Ninety percent of all army storage facilities were distributed in military districts near the border. The People’s Commissariat for Defense held 1.34 million tons of petroleum products in reserve. In the first six months, the People’s Commissariat for Defense lost 176,000 tons of day-to-day fuel supplies and 330,000 tons of mobilization reserves. Only around 66,000 tons were evacuated.
Lacking fuel, most aircraft, tanks, and automobiles on the western borders of the USSR were destroyed. German tank wedges outflanked the Red Army on the territory of Belarus, inflicting crushing defeats. The lack of reliable communications between headquarters and units due to sudden strikes also played a role, as did the lack of fuel for military hardware.
Although the defeats were largely due to mistakes in Stalin’s leadership, the entire blame, as was customary, was placed on the command of the Special Western Military District, headed by Army General Dmitry Pavlov (1897–1941). The accusations made against him included disintegration of the rear echelon’s supply capability.
In those grave days, mass heroism on the part of privates and officers, who gave up their lives trying to do everything to protect their homeland under unbelievably difficult conditions, became a clear form of demonstrating patriotism. Soon, Red Army units were able to recover from the initial shock of Germany’s unexpected attack, and near Yelnya they made their first successful counterattack.
At the beginning of the war, the loss of important economic regions of the country had a serious effect on the Soviet economy. As a result of the enemy occupation of a large piece of Soviet territory, the country lost an area that was home to 80 million people (41.4% of the entire population) before the war and produced 46% of all the country’s industrial output, including 68% of its steel, 67.8% of its rolled products, 60% of its aluminum, and 62.5% of its mined coal. The damage caused to the oil industry was addressed in particular in the financial reports of the USSR People’s Commissariat for the Oil Industry, which stated the expenses and losses for 1941 as 19,647,000 rubles, and those for 1942 as 55,645,000 rubles.
From the first days of hostilities, the country undertook measures to put the economy on a war footing. On June 24, 1941, the USSR CPC created the Evacuation Council. Key figures in this emergency government agency were the talented leaders Aleksey Kosygin (1904–1980) and Mikhail Pervukhin (1904–1978). Three days later, the USSR CPC and the AUCP(b) adopted a resolution, “On the Procedure for Removing and Distributing Human Work Forces and Valuable Property.”
The State Committee for Defense went on to adopt resolutions “On Measures to Develop Oil Production and Refining in the Eastern Regions of the USSR and Turkmenistan” (July 30, 1941) and “On the Evacuation of Maykopneft and Grozneft to the Bashkir ASSR” (October 28, 1941).
In accordance with Soviet government decisions, around 1.5 million railroad cars carrying people and various cargo were sent into the eastern regions of the country from July through December 1941, and more than 1,360 major industrial enterprises were evacuated. By July 1941, the Odessa, Kherson, and Berdyansk cracking refineries had already been dismantled and relocated from Ukraine to the eastern regions of the country.
Massive Red Army conscription stripped the production labor force, and there was a catastrophic shortage of workers. Extreme measures were undertaken to provide personnel to defense-critical branches of production, including oil production and refining. Most workers were now teenagers and women, who were mobilized into production, industrial training schools, and trade schools. Mobilization measures were accompanied by increasingly frantic conditions at enterprises, especially where martial law or a state of siege had been imposed. In December 1941, an order was adopted holding blue-collar and white-collar workers of defense enterprises responsible for leaving work without authorization or arriving for work late. Everyone employed at such enterprises was considered to be mobilized on the labor front, and violators were considered “labor deserters” who could be tried under wartime laws.
Incidentally, the severe measures introduced by Soviet leaders at that time found support and understanding among the population, and it was a time of mass labor enthusiasm and heroism. For example, in August 1941, the Soviet Information Bureau reported that Soviet oil workers were steadily increasing the production of fuels and lubricants necessary for the front and rear. At industry enterprises there was a widespread patriotic movement of “200 percenters”—workers who fulfilled at least 200% of their quotas during their shifts. They gave their work all they had under the slogan: “Everything for the front! Everything for victory!”
Under the most difficult conditions of the initial wartime period in the USSR, the question of supplying sufficient volumes of fuel and lubricants became especially acute. Colonel General Vasily Nikitin, head of the USSR Armed Forces Fuel Service, estimated that in 1941 the Soviet oil industry was able to supply the People’s Commissariat for Defense with only 26.6% of its war year requirements for aviation gasoline; 67.5% of its requirements for diesel fuel; and 11.1% of its requirements for aviation oil.
On July 15, 1941, the State Committee for Defense adopted a resolution, “On Increasing the Aviation Gasoline Production Plan for the Third Quarter of 1941,” which confronted the USSR People’s Commissariat for the Oil Industry with complex challenges to supply fuel to aviation units.