Stalingrad

even the most fanatic Kremlin optimist were crumbling. Confirmation was received at 3.15 a.m. from the commander of the Black Sea Fleet of a German bombing raid on the naval base of Sevastopol. Soviet naval officers could not help thinking of the surprise Japanese attack against Port Arthur in 1904. Georgy Malenkov, one of Stalin’s closest associates, refused to believe the word of Admiral Nikolay Kuznetsov, so he telephoned again himself in private to check that it was not a trick by senior officers to force the Leader’s hand. At half past five – two hours after the assault began on the western frontiers – Schulenburg had delivered Nazi Germany’s declaration of war to Molotov. According to one person present, the old ambassador had spoken with angry tears in his eyes, adding that personally he thought Hitler’s decision was madness. Molotov had then hurried to Stalin’s office, where the Politburo was assembled. Stalin, on hearing the news, apparently sank into his chair and said nothing. His succession of obsessive miscalculations offered much material for bitter reflection. The leader most famed for his ruthless trickery had fallen into a trap which was largely of his own making.
    The news from the front was so catastrophic over the next few days that Stalin, whose bullying nature contained a strong streak of cowardice, summoned Beria and Molotov for a secret discussion. Should they make peace with Hitler, whatever the price and humiliation, just like the Brest-Litovsk deal in 1918? They could give up most of the Ukraine, Belorussia and the Baltic States. The Bulgarian ambassador, Ivan Stamenov, was later summoned to the Kremlin. Molotov asked him if he would act as intermediary, but to their astonishment he refused. ‘Even if you retreat to the Urals,’ he replied, ‘you’ll still win in the end.’
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    The vast majority of the population in the hinterland of the Soviet Union knew nothing of the disaster which had befallen their country. As befitted a day of rest, the centre of Moscow was empty. Admiral Kuznetsov, the chief of naval staff, reflected on the peaceful scene in his car on the way to the Kremlin. The population of the capital ‘still did not know that a fire was blazing on the frontiers and that our advance units were engaged in heavy fighting’.
    Finally, at midday on 22 June, Molotov’s voice, not Stalin’s, emerged from the wireless. ‘Today at four o’clock in the morning, German troops attacked our country without making any claims on the Soviet Union and without any declaration of war.’ His statement gave little detail. ‘Our cause is just,’ he concluded woodenly. ‘The enemy will be beaten. We will be victorious.’
    Molotov’s choice of words was uninspired and his delivery awkward, but this announcement created a powerful reaction throughout the Soviet Union. The city of Stalingrad on the Volga may have been far from the fighting, but this did not diminish the effect. ‘It was as if a bomb had fallen out of the sky, it was such a shock,’ remembered a young female student. She promptly volunteered as a nurse. Her friends, especially Komsomol (Communist Youth) members, began collections for the war effort.
    Reservists did not wait for mobilization orders. They reported at once. Within half an hour of Molotov’s speech, the reservist Viktor Goncharov set out from home for the centre, accompanied by his old father, whom he assumed was coming to see him off. His wife, working out at the Stalingrad tram park, could not get back to say goodbye. He had no idea that his father, an eighty-one-year-old Cossack who had ‘fought in four wars’, was planning to come along to volunteer. But old Goncharov was furious when the staff at the centre rejected him.
    In Stalingrad Technical University, near the huge Stalingrad tractor factory, students put up a large map on the wall, ready to mark with flags the advance of the Red Army into Germany. ‘We thought’, said one, ‘that with a huge, decisive blow we’d smash the enemy.’ Countless newsreels of tank production and aviation achievements had convinced them of the Soviet Union’s immense industrial and military strength.
    The images had proved doubly impressive in a country which, until recently, had been technologically backward. In addition, the domestic omnipotence of the Stalinist system made it appear unshakeable to those inside it. ‘Propaganda fell on a well prepared soil,’ acknowledged another of the