Hitler

action. The Jewish-Bolshevik rulers in Moscow had sought for two decades to destroy not only Germany, but thewhole of Europe. Hitler had been forced, he claimed, through British encirclement policy to take the bitter step of entering the 1939 Pact. But since then the Soviet threat had magnified. At present there were 160 Russian divisions massed on the German borders. ‘The hour has now therefore arrived,’ Hitler declared, ‘to counter this conspiracy of the Jewish-Anglo-Saxon warmongers and the equally Jewish rulers of the Bolshevik headquarters in Moscow.’ A slightly amended proclamation went out to the soldiers swarming over the border and marching into Russia.
    On 21 June, Hitler had at last composed a letter to his chief ally, Benito Mussolini, belatedly explaining and justifying his reasons for attacking the Soviet Union. Hitler ended his letter with sentences which, as with his comments to Goebbels, give insight into his mentality on the eve of the titanic contest: ‘In conclusion, let me say one more thing, Duce. Since I struggled through to this decision, I again feel spiritually free. The partnership with the Soviet Union, in spite of the complete sincerity of the efforts to bring about a final conciliation, was nevertheless often very irksome to me, for in some way or other it seemed to me to be a break with my whole origin, my concepts, and my former obligations. I am happy now to be relieved of these mental agonies.’
    The most destructive and barbaric war in the history of mankind was beginning. It was the war that Hitler had wanted since the 1920s – the war against Bolshevism. It was the showdown. He had come to it by a roundabout route. But, finally, Hitler’s war was there: a reality.

20
Showdown
    I
    At dawn on 22 June over 3 million German troops advanced over the borders and into Soviet territory. By a quirk of history, as Goebbels noted somewhat uneasily, it was exactly the same date on which Napoleon’s Grand Army had marched on Russia 129 years earlier. The modern invaders deployed over 3,600 tanks, 600,000 motorized vehicles (including armoured cars), 7,000 artillery pieces, and 2,500 aircraft. Not all their transport was mechanized; as in Napoleon’s day, they also made use of horses – 625,000 of them. Facing the invading armies, arrayed on the western frontiers of the USSR, were nearly 3 million Soviet soldiers, backed by a number of tanks now estimated to have been as many as 14–15,000 (almost 2,000 of them the most modern designs), over 34,000 artillery pieces, and 8–9,000 fighter-planes. The scale of the titanic clash now beginning, which would chiefly determine the outcome of the Second World War and, beyond that, the shape of Europe for nearly half a century, almost defies the imagination.
    Despite the numerical advantage in weaponry of the defending Soviet armies, the early stages of the attack appeared to endorse all the optimism of Hitler and his General Staff about the inferiority of their Bolshevik enemies and the speed with which complete victory could be attained. The three-pronged attack led by Field-Marshals Wilhelm Ritter von Leeb in the north, Fedor von Bock in the centre, and Gerd von Rundstedt in the south initially made astonishing advances. By the end of the first week of July Lithuania and Latvia were in German hands. Leeb’s advance in the north, with Leningrad as the target, had reached as far as Ostrov. Army Group Centre had pushed even farther. Much of White Russia had been taken. Minsk was encircled. Bock’sadvancing armies already had the city of Smolensk in their sights. Further south, by mid-July Rundstedt’s troops had captured Zitomir and Berdicev.
    The Soviet calamity was immense – and avoidable. Even as the German tanks were rolling forwards, Stalin still thought Hitler was bluffing, that he would not dare attack the Soviet Union until he had finished with Britain. He had anticipated some German territorial demands but was confident that, if necessary, negotiations could stave off an attack in 1941 at least. Stalin’s bungling interference and military incompetence had combined with the fear and servility of his generals and the limitations of the inflexible Soviet strategic concept to rule out undertaking the necessary precautions to create defensive dispositions and fight a rearguard action. Instead, whole armies were left in exposed positions, easy prey for the pincer movements of the rapidly advancing panzer armies. In a whole