ABSTRACT
The German invasion, launched at dawn on Sunday 22 June 1941, caught the Red Army almost fatally unprepared and the Soviet Union suffered catastrophic defeats. This disastrous start can be traced to Stalin's firm conviction that Hitler would respect the terms of the Nazi-Soviet Pact at least until 1942. In part because of his exaggerated notion of the wealth and power of Britain, for so long the centre of the capitalist world, he could not believe Hitler would dare to move eastwards while the western war was still in the balance. Indeed, during 1940 Stalin and Molotov were so confident that they increased their demands on Germany: the USSR occupied Northern Bukovina in Romania, although this had not been agreed in the secret protocol, and pressed Hitler to accept that the Soviet sphere of influence should be extended to include Bulgaria and that traditional Tsarist dream, the Straits. Nor was this complacency and the strategic risks which it led the Soviet Union to take challenged by military leaders, so cowed were they by the Terror. Far from preparing for in-depth defence, Soviet strategy was based upon the rash assumption that, in the event of war, the Red Army would be in a position to move rapidly onto the offensive. No preparations were made for the evacuation of population or plant from the industrially developed western regions. Moreover, when the Germans attacked, the newly incorporated western territories - where anti-Soviet feeling ran deep - had still to be fully fortified, yet the defences of the 1939 frontier had already been weakened. Even in the last weeks and days before the invasion, despite repeated warnings, Stalin remained adamant that rumours of an impending attack were unfounded: at worst Hitler was manoeuvring to strengthen his hand for peaceful bargaining. Accurate Soviet intelligence reports were dismissed as unreliable, and clear warnings from the US and British governments were treated as deliberate ploys to embroil the Soviet Union in war. The growing alarm of frontline command-
ers was met by firm orders to avoid reacting to any 'provocation' from the Germans. When at last it was borne in upon Moscow that war had begun, the front was in utter disarray and the order to go on to full-scale offensive merely compounded the confusion. Confidence in the regime was rocked by the lack of warning and there was widespread panic. Stalin himself appears to have been so stunned by his monumental miscalculation that momentarily he expected to be ousted. The battle-hardened German Army smashed through Soviet lines, cut their communications, destroyed the bulk of the Soviet Air Force on the ground, and swept into the interior.
