The Soviets accomplished a great deal while reconquering the territories occupied by the
Nazis in Operation Barbarossa and ultimately driving them back to Berlin, where they finally
planted the Soviet flag over the Reichstag. However, many myths exist surrounding the
Soviet Union and the Red Army, downplaying their involvement in the Second World War.
The vast majority of these myths try to portray the Soviet Union in a bad light or,
while acknowledging some of its accomplishments, try to diminish its contribution toward Allied
victory and the hard-earned glory its soldiers paid for in blood.
In spite of their immense contribution, it is not untrue that Russians, and Soviets in general, are
portrayed as caricaturesque and rough-edged -- if not outright demonized -- by most western media,
and although anti-Soviet sentiment would not be
openly expressed during World War II, it *would* resume right afterwards.
Obviously, there was the ideological rivalry between the liberal democracies of the West
and the Soviet Union, which was trying to institutionalize and export its socialist ideals.
But this rivalry ran far deeper, to the point of open antagonism as the western powers, including
the United States and even Australia and Canada, had fought the Red Army in the past, namely in
the Russian Civil War, after the new Bolshevik government of Russia withdrew from World War I.
That is why analyzing the interwar period is important when trying to
understand the events which unfolded in World War II. In this video,
we will shed some light on some of the myths of the Soviet Union by doing just that.
The first myth we will analyse is that all Soviet officers
shot their own soldiers in the back if they retreated or tried to flee.
Although the Red Army did have a history of using barrier troops, or blocking units,
to prevent soldiers from deserting or retreating without authorization,
the practice of shooting their own soldier hardly ever happened.
In 1918, Leon Trotsky, who was People’s Commissar of Military and Naval Affairs at the time,
allegedly ordered Mikhail Tukhachevsky, commander of the 1st Army, to station barrier troops behind
unreliable Red Army infantry regiments with orders to shoot them if they tried to desert or retreat.
In the same year, Trotsky commissioned additional
barrier troops for attachment to each infantry formation in the Red Army,
saying: “It is absolutely essential that we have at least an embryonic network of blocking units
and that we work out a procedure for bringing them up to strength and deploying them."
However, this was during the Russian Civil War, and the practice of shooting their
own men in the back did not become even remotely common. The concept of
barrier troops was reintroduced on a large scale again in World War
II as a countermeasure to reports of units disintegrating in battle and high desertion rates.
The People’s Commissariat of Defense issued a directive establishing mobile barrier troops
composed of People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs’ personnel tasked with guarding roads,
rail stations, and forests and catching deserters and suspicious people. Later,
with the deterioration of the situation during the German offensive of 1941,
the barrier troops were used once again, tasked with preventing the
unauthorized withdrawal of Red Army troops from the front line.
According to a letter sent to Stalin’s Commissar for Internal Affairs, Lavrentiy Beria,
from the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in June 1941 to December of the same year,
only 1.5% of the soldiers that were detained by the barrier troops were sentenced to death.
Barrier troops had detained 657,364 servicemen during this time. Of the detainees,
632,486 were reformed into units and sent back to the front,
while 25,878 were arrested. Ultimately, only 10,201 were sentenced to death and shot.
In July 1942, with Order No. 227, Stalin introduced a harsh "no retreat" policy with the
slogan “Not one step back!”, which was popularized in the war. Order No. 227 explicitly stipulated
that barrier troops were to shoot panic-mongers and cowards to avoid unauthorized withdrawals.
Again, the practice of shooting their own men in the back was not as widespread as many believe,
as many officers would rather send the soldiers back into the front
that shoot then down. After all, they *were* in need of men.
According to an internal list of the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs
dated October 1942, 15,649 soldiers were detained by barrier troops while fleeing
the front line on the Stalingrad front from August 1, 1942 to October, 15 1942.
Of these, 14,833 were returned to their units, 244 were imprisoned, 218 were sent to penal companies,
and 42 to penal battalions, while 278 were finally shot.
By October 1942, barrier troops were used less
and less as the balance of the war slowly turned in the USSR's favour.
Finally, by October 1944, barrier troops were officially disbanded by Stalin’s Order No. 349.
The next myth that we are going to analyse is that the Red Army was quantity over quality.
Nazi generals and propaganda started the myth that German soldiers fought against
hordes of Soviet troops which came in red waves. This, however, was not true.
By the beginning of Operation Barbarossa in 1941, the Soviets had 2,680,000 soldiers stationed on
its provinces west of the Urals, while the Germans attacked with a force of 3,767,000.
The rest of the Soviet forces were stationed in its Far East provinces.
The balance of forces started to shift in the Soviets favour from December 1941 onwards,
with the arrival of Soviet reinforcements and heavy German losses.
With the arrival of reinforcements, the Soviet army managed to maintain its size,
while the Germans could not replace their lost soldiers and started to lose ground.
It is true that, by 1940, the Soviet Union fielded the largest land and air force in the world.
Nevertheless, this alone would not deter Hitler’s publicly announced
plan to invade and colonize Eastern Europe.
Although the Soviet Union boasted the largest air force, it was completely unprepared for the war.
The Soviets had invested most of their money on long-range bomber planes, and
their fighters were obsolete and unable to engage the much more modern *Luftwaffe* aircraft.
This allowed for the *Luftwaffe* to virtually annihilate the Soviet air force during the first
few days of Operation Barbarossa. According to the *Luftwaffe’s* reports, over 2,000 Soviet aircraft
were destroyed in the first day, while over 3,100 were destroyed in the first three days. On the
other hand, a Soviet document recorded the loss of 3,922 Soviet aircraft in the first three days.
This secured the Third Reich’s air superiority over the whole European Theatre. It also allowed
the *Luftwaffe* to uncontestedly support the *Wehrmacht’s* advance with air raids
on artillery positions, communication centres, and supply and weapon depots.
Another reason why Operation Barbarossa was so devastating for the Soviet Union
was the fact that the Soviet Union and its military had just gone through
a purge. Of the five original Marshals of the USSR, only two remained in service.
This can give you an idea of the state the Red Army was in when Operation Barbarossa
was launched in June 1941. Almost all of the Red Army’s command lines had been replaced.
Not only this, but valuable veteran officers were also purged from the military in favour
of inexperienced ones, chosen for political reasons rather than experience or qualifications.
This completely crippled the Red Army’s decision-making abilities and
ability to pass on orders and carry out commands.
However, the more-than-capable Soviet soldiers fought with tooth and nail to hold on to
their homelands for as long as they could while awaiting reinforcements from the Russian Far East.
Unlike many western armies, the Red Army did not train elite units.
The Soviet government had abolished elite units from their army, namely the Imperial Guard,
as they were reminiscent of the aristocratic ways of Imperial Russia.
The Red Army had also abolished all officer and general ranks and replaced them with a system of
positional ranks during the revolution. However, they started to readopt officer and general ranks
in 1935. Similarly, Guard units reemerged in 1941, in the wake of Operation Barbarossa.
Named after the Imperial Guard, Guard units did not receive any special training,
although they did get better equipment. Instead, Guard status was an honorific title
bestowed upon units that had proven their bravery and ferocity in previous battles.
Their name was the only thing that the Red Army’s Guard units and Imperial
Russia’s Imperial Guard had in common. Guard units were like any other units,
and their status was due to their merit, not their social class.
In the end, it would be Soviet soldiers’ bravery and determination in defending their homes,
coupled with good logistics, that finally gave the USSR the upper hand.
By December 1941, the Soviet Union had mustered an army of around 1,100,000 men, giving them a slight
numerical advantage over the Nazis. Then a war of attrition started, and the Soviets took advantage
of the harsh winter conditions. The Soviet counterattack finally ended the Third Reich’s
hopes of conquering Moscow and gaining a rapid victory, just like they had against the French.
As usual, we saved what we consider to be one of the biggest myths about the Soviet Union for last:
that the Soviet Union had an early alliance with the Third Reich.
And, though there is some truth to the foundations on which this myth is based,
there was never an actual alliance between these two states.
Their relations were always rather tense, and they viewed themselves as competing economies
at best and as each other’s ideological, if not actual, nemesis at the very worst.
Actually, even before the Soviet Union entered World War II, the two countries
had already been not only ideologically opposed but materially opposed as well,
as they both supported different parties in the Spanish Civil War.
The Soviets sided with the Second Spanish Republic forces, while the Third Reich sided with Francisco
Franco’s Nationalist forces. The Third Reich provided air support to the nationalist forces,
support that was instrumental in Franco’s eventual victory over republican forces.
This myth mainly revolves around the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, officially known
as the Treaty of Non-Aggression between Germany and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.
This is what the treaty actually was -- a non-aggression treaty. It stipulated that
no signatory party would attack the other nor ally itself with or aid an enemy of the other.
However, as it would be revealed during the Nuremberg trials, the pact contained a
secret clause through which Germany and the Soviet Union divided Eastern Europe between
German and Soviet spheres of influence. What this means is that they drew a map detailing
in which direction each state could expand without harming the other’s declared interests.
The Soviet Union is indeed guilty of both appeasing the Nazi’s expansionist ambitions
and benefiting from them by annexing parts of Poland;
however, the rest of the European Powers, and even Poland itself, are guilty of the same sin.
Actually, Poland had similarly signed a non-aggression pact with Germany back in 1935.
And, in the aftermath of the signing of the Munich Agreement, otherwise known as the Munich Betrayal,
when Hitler decided that Sudetenland was not enough and took control of the whole country,
the Polish decided to have their piece of the pie and grab Zaolzie for themselves.
So, after fact-checking these widely diffused myths about the Soviet Union during World War II,
do you regard the Soviets differently? Do you see them in a different light?
If you want to share your thoughts on the topic or
any other myths about the Soviet Union, please do so in the comments.