‘I am sitting in a misshapen tank shot through with holes. The heat is unbearable and I am thirsty. There is not a single drop of water. Your picture is lying on my lap. As I look into your blue eyes I feel better – you are with me… I have thought of you since the first day of the war. When will I return to you and press your head to my breast? Perhaps never.’(6)
Krymov complained, ‘it is not so much the danger or the risk of losing one’s life, rather the absence of the most elementary things’. Everyday life was burdensome:
‘We go without water for days and eat badly and irregularly, having to sleep in defensive positions that one previously would have thought unthinkable. It was all down to filth, heat and the strain.’(7)
Soldiers completely unaware of the real situation had no option but to follow orders. German soldiers dismissed this as a ‘herd mentality’, which often led to mass suicide attacks against their positions. Confusion bred doubt feeding on fear. Russian officers offering a course of action, a solution, or order from chaos would appeal to soldiers faced with no visible alternatives. Survival drove men to attempt the bizarre. They were simply human beings worn out by tension and physical exertion. Konstantin Simonov, a Russian war correspondent, described the difficulties officers had to band men together into companies and battalions after they had first been disorientated by the shock of the German invasion and then under constant air attack since it began. ‘Nobody knew one another,’ he said, ‘and with the best will in the world, it was difficult for people either to give or take orders’. He had not eaten or drunk for two days. ‘My eyes were drooping from tiredness and hunger,’ and his face ‘was burned to a shining iridescence by the sun’.(8) Dimitrij Wolkogonow, a Soviet Lieutenant, described how:
‘On the radio it was given out that our army was resisting bitterly in some region, and then suddenly a day later we heard that the German Army had already penetrated 50–70km further eastward. And I must further say that it was not only the simple soldier who had no clear impression of what was going on in these pockets, characterising the war at this stage, because there was no clear picture in the STAVKA High Command. Stalin constantly demanded new situation reports, but nothing could be usefully reported.’(9)
The outcome was predictable. Soviet Engineer Colonel Il’ya Starinov believed early offensives taken against the German attack were counter-productive and ‘produced negligible results. But the losses inflicted on our troops were extraordinarily heavy’. He concluded, ‘the unjustifiable attempts to go over to the offensive at a time when we should have been organising our defences only exacerbated a situation that was already bad.’(10) All available news was negative. 17-year-old Sinauda Lischakowa was living in at Vitebsk when the Germans marched in. As a fledgling partisan she had access to a radio. The radio news from Moscow was most distressing at that time,’ she stated. ‘The Germans were already saying then, in 1941, repeatedly: “Moscow Kaputt. Stalin Kaputt. The war will soon be over,” but naturally we did not believe it.’(11)
Desperate measures were ordered by officers to try and escape encirclement, because they were acutely aware of the consequences of failure. Commissar ‘dual authority’ was restored to Red Army units on 16 July. On 27 July an order sentencing nine senior officers to death was read out to all officers and men. The condemned included the Signals Officer of the Western Front, blamed for the catastrophic breakdown of communications, and the commanders of the hapless Third and Fourth Armies as also the commanders of the 30th and 60th Rifle Divisions. Engineer Colonel Starinov himself was briefly placed under arrest while he was supervising a bridge demolition across the River Dnieper on the Minsk highway. He was not surprised. Mistakes were not tolerated. Despair and confusion reigned among Western Front staff as, he said, ‘the arrests took the ground right out from beneath people’s feet. No one could be sure of living to see the next day.’ The nihilistic ordeal of the 1937 state-conducted purges remained all-pervasive. ‘Even strong-willed experienced officers,’ Starinov explained, ‘who had never cracked in the toughest situations, completely lost their self-control, at the appearance of people in the green garrison caps of the NKVD (Secret Police).’(12) Men fought on in hopeless circumstances as a consequence. Alexander Golikow further wrote to his wife:
‘Our tank shook with the impact of enemy shots, but we were still alive. We have no more shells and are short of bullets. Pawel is shooting at the enemy with the turret machine gun while I “take a breather” and chat with you [ie to a photograph]. I know this will be the last time. I would like a long chat but time is too short… It is good to die when you know somewhere there is a person who will think “It is good to have been loved”.’(13)
It became quickly apparent to the Russian population, reeling from the surprise of the invasion, that the war was going badly. German correspondent Paul Kohl retraced the invasion route to Moscow 40 years after the attack. During his investigative historical tour in 1985 he was questioned by a 70-year-old woman in Gross Prussy, south-west of Minsk: ‘Why did the Germans do this? We had a non-aggression pact with you. Why did you invade us?’(14) Surprise characterised the responses of the Russian people he met who had experienced the war, along the former invasion route. Alevtina Michailowna Burdenko heard war had been declared in a radio broadcast. Thereafter she had enormous difficulties returning to her home town at Baranowa, some 210km east of Brest-Litovsk. Every train was attacked from the air, and any still running were reserved for military transport. She managed to board a train three days later but the locomotive and a number of carriages were destroyed during a strafing attack, and ‘many passengers were killed’. The only remaining option was to walk home to her village, which she did, ‘constantly shot at by low-flying aircraft’. The village, however, had been overrun by the Wehrmacht on 25 June.
‘When I arrived in Baranowa in the evening, the town was full of German soldiers – the jack-boots, the sentry posts – all over there were control points. My husband was no longer there when I got home! Taken away! I never saw him again!’(15)
The town of Sluzk, further east, was occupied the following day. Sonja Davidowna declared:
‘On the same day they marched in they announced strict laws. All Communists and Komsomol members were to report without delay in order to be registered. Whoever went in could naturally bid life “Adieu”. Anyone supplying provisions to Soviet soldiers or partisans was immediately shot. A curfew was imposed. Anyone found on the streets after 18.00 without an identity pass was immediately executed.’(16)
Minsk, the capital of Belorussia, was occupied on 28 June, seven days after the invasion. Its fall was preceded by savage air raids. When W. F. Romanowskij emerged from his cellar shelter he was confronted with a horrific scene.
‘What a sight! Burning houses, debris and ruins. Bodies lay in the streets all around. People tried to flee the town during the bombardment but were not able to get out quickly enough, because the streets had been blocked with debris. Those caught in the open were annihilated by low-flying German aircraft.’