What about his "comrades-in-arms," the other members of the Politburo? Zhukov states in his memoirs that Stalin briefly informed them of the situation and asked, "'What shall we do?' No answer was forthcoming."2 Finally, Timoshenko suggested that an order be issued immediately, placing all troops on full military alert. The draft of the order was read, but Stalin rejected it. He suggested that perhaps everything could still be settled peacefully.
Nevertheless the intelligence information received by the Soviet government and military proved to be correct: on June 22 at four in the morning,
Germany and its allies, Romania, Hungary, and Slovakia, went on the offensive along the entire German—Soviet border.
From the first hours of the invasion, the commanders of the border regions, disoriented by Moscow's orders, began to lose contact with their troops. It was not until the night of June 21, at 12:30 am, that they received Timoshenko's order warning them of a possible German offensive on June 22 or 23 along the southwestern and western borders. The order began with the following strange formulation: "The task of our troops is to resist any provocation which could lead to major complications."
This meant that the Kremlin at that point was still hoping for a miracle to avert the war. The commanders of the border regions were to place their troops on a state of full alert, ready to meet any possible offensive by the Germans or their allies, and for this purpose, were to occupy quietly the firing positions in the fortified areas along the borders, order a state of alert for the anti-aircraft defenses, camouflage and disperse aircraft and troops, put the air defense forces on a state of alert, and take measures to black out cities and other targets. The last point of the order said: "No other measures are to be taken without special orders."3
Marshal Malinovsky reported that when he asked whether to open fire on the enemy if he invaded Soviet territory, the answer was, "Do not give in to any provocations and do not open fire."4 Once the German offensive had started, Timoshenko warned General Boldin, the deputy commander of the Western Military District, "I am informing you and asking you to inform Pavlov [the district commander] that comrade Stalin has not authorized artillery fire against the Germans." Boldin started to shout into the telephone: "How can that be! Our troops are being forced to retreat. Cities are burning and people are dying." He insisted that mechanized units be called into action immediately, as well as artillery and anti-aircraft guns. Timoshenko answered: "Do not take any measures other than reconnaissance missions into enemy territory, to a depth of no more than sixty kilometers."5
It was not until the evening of June 22, when the situation became critical because of the deep penetration by German tanks, that the frontline commanders were issued orders to launch "heavy counterattacks to destroy the enemy's main forces and drive operations back onto enemy territory."6 This surrealistic order reflected a complete misunderstanding of the real situation and a total disregard, or ignorance, of the facts on the part of the Soviet military and political leadership.
The facts were as follows: The concentration of German forces and their allies numbered 190 divisions, or 4.6 million soldiers, including 17 tank divisions and 13 motorized divisions, 50,000 cannons and mortars, some 5,000 aircraft, and more than 3,700 tanks. Of these divisions, 153 were German, constituting more than 70 percent of the German army. Counting reinforcement units, the German troop strength alone amounted to 3.3 million.7
At the beginning of the war the Soviet armed forces numbered 5 million,8 and 170 divisions and 2 brigades were concentrated in the western border regions—that is, 54 percent of the entire Red Army, or about 2.9 million men. The first line of defense consisted of 56 divisions and 2 brigades, dispersed over a depth of up to 50 kilometers from the border. The second line of defense was positioned 50—100 kilometers inside Soviet territory, and the reserves 150—400 kilometers from the border.9
In the zones where the Germans concentrated their most devastating blows, their superiority in numbers was considerable, from 1.8 to 2.2 times the Soviet troop strength. Soviet forces had at their disposal 1,800 late model tanks, some 34,700 cannon, 1,540 late model airplanes, and a large number of obsolete aircraft and tanks.10
Thus, the German army enjoyed an absolute advantage both in number of troops and in armaments. It also had considerable experience in modern warfare and a well-trained officer corps.
At 4:15 am, when Germany launched its offensive, its air force made devastating bombing raids on all Soviet airfields near the border. On the first day of the war, 1,200 Soviet planes were destroyed,11 the vast majority of them not even having a chance to take off. Railroad terminals and lines of communication were put out of commission, arms and ammunition dumps seized or destroyed: for some unknown reasons, these depots were located too close to the border.
While isolating centers of resistance by Soviet troops, the German command developed its offensive toward the east. Toward the end of the first day, the German tanks had advanced as many as sixty kilometers toward Brest and had occupied Kobrin.12
On the evening of June 22 Timoshenko ordered the Northwestern, Western, and Southwestern fronts to go on the offensive in all main directions, to smash the enemy, and to drive operations back onto enemy territory. Besides not corresponding to the real situation at the front, this order was truly criminal because it forced the commanders to send their troops into certain encirclement, under murderous fire. Similar orders were issued to the troops in the Baltic Military District by their commanding general, F. F. Kuznetsov. Tens of thousands of casualties and hundreds of thousands of prisoners were the price the Soviet people paid for the disarray and incompetence of the military high command, the Politburo, and Stalin himself.
It was not until the fourth day that Soviet General Headquarters (Stavka Glavnogo Komandovaniya) understood the unrealistic nature of its orders to counterattack. At that point, German troops had already penetrated between 130 and 150 kilometers into Soviet territory. On June 28, one week after the war began, Minsk, the capital of Byelorussia, fell, and 319,000 prisoners and huge stocks of armaments fell into enemy hands.
On the Northwestern Front, scattered Red Army units, completely deprived of command, hastily withdrew toward the Western Dvina. But this natural border could not be held: the columns of German tanks crossed the Western Dvina, took Daugavpils, and on July 9 took Pskov without even stopping.
It was only in the Lutsk-Brody and Rovno region, at the junction of the Southwestern and Southern fronts, that Soviet troops inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans in a bloody tank battle; this delayed the German advance for a week, but Soviet forces soon had to pull back to the old border, to the Korosten, Novograd-Volynsky, and Proskurov regions.
On the Western Front, after bitter clashes, Soviet troops were forced to withdraw to the Dnepr. And on the Southwestern Front, in early July, the Germans had taken Berdichev and Zhitomir.
After three weeks of fighting, the German army had penetrated a distance of 300—600 kilometers into Soviet territory. It had occupied Latvia, Lithuania, Byelorussia, the Ukraine up to the right bank of the Dnepr, and almost the whole of Moldavia. Russia had not experienced such a disaster since the time of Napoleon. During World War I the Russian generals, whom Soviet historians accuse of incompetence, never suffered such devastating blows.
The German army's losses were heavy: from June 22 to July 13, they reached approximately 92,000, or 3.68 percent of the German troops on the Soviet front.13 But these losses were nothing compared to those of the Red Army.