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TIME: Almanac of the 20th Century
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1994-02-27
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<text>
<title>
(1940s) Germany Attacks Russia
</title>
<history>
TIME--The Weekly Newsmagazine--1940s Highlights
</history>
<link 08182>
<link 08183>
<link 00076><article>
<source>Time Magazine</source>
<hdr>
Germany Attacks Russia
</hdr>
<body>
<p> [The second spring of the war arrived, and with it another
German offensive, this time in the Balkans and North Africa,
taking over where the Italians had fumbled. In Yugoslavia, a
coup by a youthful anti-Nazi king against his pro-Nazi uncle the
regent, which sounded a little like a plot for a romance,
rallied his countrymen's courage. But courage was no match for
German tanks. Yugoslavia and Greece fell in three weeks. In
North America, the Germans promptly stopped the British romp
into Libya.
</p>
<p> The final subjugation of southern Europe paved the way for the
most amazing aboutface of the war: Hitler's attack on his
erstwhile ally Stalin. Germany and nearly everyone else thought
that because of the Soviet's lack of preparedness across such
a vast front, the German armies would have an easy conquest.]
</p>
<p>(June 30, 1941)
</p>
<p> The irony of the new attack was that smart Joseph Stalin had
out-smarted himself. Russia, whose pact with Germany enabled
Hitler to start the war, now felt the full fury of the war.
</p>
<p> In the charges of neither side was there even a tone of
surprise. They had never trusted each other. In the timetable
of German-Russian relations since the NonAggression Pact of
August 1939 could be read the progressive failure of Stalin's
political marriage of convenience. Now Hitler had turned on him.
</p>
<p> There were many reasons, many calculations, behind the
decision to attack Russia at this time. Some were clear, others
still obscure. In his proclamation Hitler said his General Staff
did not dare to reach a "radical conclusion of the war in the
West" with Russia at Germany's back. For a month Germany had
been pressing demands on Russia that Stalin had evidently
decided he could not meet and survive.
</p>
<p> The crisis came at a time chosen by Adolf Hitler. He
apparently recognized that U.S. entry into the war would make
the struggle a long one. For a long war he had to be sure of
Russian supplies. If Stalin could not be bluffed into letting
Germans take charge of Russia's economy, Germans would have to
take it by force.
</p>
<p> The clash, therefore, was bound to come.
</p>
<p> How long would the Russians last? Almost no one except the
Russians was convinced that they could trounce the Germans. But
if the Russians could put up a long and bitter fight on their
own soil, if they could make Hitler pay far more than he thought
he was going to have to pay, especially if they could prolong
the war into one more winter, then they might give the Battle
of Russia a glory commensurate with its size.
</p>
<p>(July 7, 1941)
</p>
<p> After seven days of fighting, the German High Command was
convinced its armies had defeated Russia's. The German High
Command has, to most of the world's misfortune, not yet been
wrong.
</p>
<p> The pathetic fallacy which gave the Russians--and most of the
world--continuing hope was the Napoleonic parallel. After so
many people had clung to the World War I parallel on the French
Front, until the Maginot Line was flanked and it was clear that
this would be no war of position, it was strange that so many
more clung to the even more antique Napoleonic parallel--the
belief that by drawing the Germans forward into huge Russia, the
defenders could let weather and distance defeat Adolf Hitler
just as it had Napoleon Bonaparte.
</p>
<p> Adolf Hitler's Army is as light on its feet as a ballerina.
Its supply system (airplane, truck, motorcycle sidecar) and its
communications (uncoded wireless, telephoning as simply as
calling up the girl friend) move like clockwork. While trying
to withdraw before this system, any Army, and especially the
sluggish, massive Red Army, would be bound to lose more than it
hurt and would probably be demolished before it retreated enough
hundreds of miles to tire out the attacker.
</p>
<p> [Churchill and the British persuaded the U.S. that in order
for Britain to stay in the war, the Soviet Union would have to
stay in too, which meant that the Russians would also have to
have Lend-Lease assistance. That summer, U.S. materiel began
moving to the Soviet Union via the Pacific port of Vladivostok
or by the extremely hazardous convoy route to Murmansk over the
northern bulge of Scandinavia. Meanwhile, in desperation, Stalin
cast aside Marxist ideology and appealed to the Russian people's
deep patriotism; and with the Germans deep in the Ukraine,
besieging desperate Leningrad, and only 100 or so miles from
Moscow, the Russian armies held.]
</p>
<p>(October 27, 1941)
</p>
<p> Adolf Hitler said last week that he had beaten Russia. He
meant that he was beating Russia. He may have had good reason
to be sure of the eventual outcome, but he still had a heap of
winning to do before he could lay a bearskin on Germany's
livingroom floor.
</p>
<p> He still had to defeat the remaining Ukraine armies of the
whiskery horseman, Semion Budenny. He still had to crack Odessa,
with its cauterizing artillery. He still had to take the Crimea,
with its naval base. He still had to rush Leningrad, with its
16 divisions and millions of angry civilians. Above all, he
still had to wrench Moscow, at the center of Russia's web of
communications, from its defenders. Unquestionably, he still had
work to do.
</p>
<p> Why, since these things were so, did Adolf Hitler say he had
already beaten Russia?
</p>
<p> The clear influence was that he had to say it because his own
people were full of anxiety about the way the war with Russia
was dragging.
</p>
<p> In spite of the preparation, in spite of the effort, the
Germans seemed to creep closer all the time. The outer "Moscow
Circle" of more or less permanent defenses was breached in at
least three places. The inner circle--only 60 miles from the
city--was hard pressed. The entire city was in danger of
encirclement.
</p>
<p> Because of this catastrophe, Joseph Stalin rushed everything
he could into the reach. On the Moscow approaches he was
reported to have sent Russian cavalry against German tanks. He
heard that in defense of one 300-yard stretch of railroad track
1,600 citizens, including women and boys as young as twelve,
dashed suicidally into Nazi gunfire. He heard about the death
march of 15 rows of infantrymen in closed ranks.</p>
</body>
</article>
</text>