Grand Delusion / Stalingrad

...As he is quoted in Zhukov's memoir: "We have a non-aggression pact with Germany...

...Beyond Pat's Imaginings Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German invasion of Russia Gabriel Gorodetsky Yale University Press 408 pages / $29.95 Stalingrad: The Fateful Siege: 1942-1943 Antony Beevor Penguin Books 494 pages / $16.95 (paper) REVIEWED BY Victorino Matus I t was easy for Pat Buchanan to turn heads with his recent book, A Republic, Not an Empire, especially when he argued that Hitler and Stalin should have been allowed to destroy each other without our participation...

...Under Baron von Richthofen, the inventor of carpet bombing —Guernica was his handiwork—the Luftwaffe leveled the city, killing 40,000 in the first week...

...Suvorov," who published an assessment of the German invasion, insist that Stalin had been preparing to move against Germany for quite some time and was simply preempted by Hitler's Operation Barbarossa...

...In November 1942, Soviet forces to the northwest and southeast of Stalingrad, well-concealed in camouflage, broke through Axis lines and in a few days encircled the entire Sixth Army, roughly 250,000 men...

...And the Germans soon realized that despite their successes on the ground, the Red Army soldier was not the Untermensch they had been told about...

...The rest of the city, surrounded by the Nazis, was left to starve...

...Essays of ,5,000 words or less may be submitted by students or faculty members 35 years of age or younger...

...put an end to Italian-Soviet negotiations, making clear that any such interaction must first be approved by Berlin...

...They continued into Greece, and by April 25 the swastika was flying over the Acropolis...

...Most historians view this as the turning point in Stalin's view of the German threat...

...The Reich was at its peak: France had collapsed under the Nazi war machine...

...Contrary to Buchanan and other naysayers, the Soviets and the Germans would not have found themselves (to America's benefit) in a bloody stalemate...

...The Austrian historian Ernst Topitsch, author of Stalin's War, claims that World War II was "essentially a Soviet attack on the Western democracies" and Germany merely served as a "military surrogate...

...During the battle of Stalingrad alone, the Soviets killed 13,500 of their own men for attempted desertion, cowardice, complicity, and self-inflicted wounds...

...Curiously, as Grand Delusion shows, both the Japanese and the Italians tried hard to incorporate the Soviets into the Axis, creating a continental bloc...

...This obsession would ultimately cost him the war—blinding him to the forces gathering steam in the Russian hinterlands...

...American vehicles were ill-equipped for the muddied, and later, ice-encrusted plains of Russia and the Ukraine...

...SARKES TARZIAN INC Sarkes Tarzian Television Sarkes Tarzian Radio Broadcasters Making a Difference 64 April zoo° The American Spectator In Stalin's view, the massive buildup along the border was a ploy to disguise German plans to invade Great Britain...

...As Gorodetsky plainly states, he "simply refused to come to grips with the reports, challenging as they did the wisdom of his politics in the preceding two years...

...Box 7031, Alexandria, Virginia 22307, USA or www.montpelerin.org Made possible by a grant from the Aequus Institute...

...But Gorodetsky offers new insights, showing that Stalin remained doubtful of Churchill's sincerity and feared that mobilization of the Red Army along the border would be reason enough for Hitler to launch a preemptive strike...

...And though he hesitated at first to inform Stalin—so as to keep him from learning about Britain's codebreaking system—Churchill finally sent over the transmissions showing invasion was imminent...

...Growing rumors of a looming invasion were seen as a British ploy to embroil them in war...

...F. A. Hayek, "Why I am not a Conservative," The Constitution of Liberty (1960) The President of the Mont Pelerin Society, Dr...

...So much for the idea that Stalin was ready to invade Germany...

...They trained dogs, as Stalingrad chillingly reveals, to look for scraps of food underneath tanks and jeeps...

...It was as if, in negotiating the Sudetenland, Britain, France, and Germany refused to recognize the USSR as a major European power...

...As for the invasion itself, discussion has generally focused on Joseph Stalin and how he could have found himself so unprepared...

...That could not be further from the truth...

...An 18-year-old platoon leader was executed because two of his men escaped in the middle of the night...

...Hitler had deluded himself into thinking the Soviets were short on reserves and nearly exhausted in weapon strength...

...Also necessary were The American Spectator • April 2000 65 flame-throwers, which none of the Germans wanted to use since it proved an easy target for instant incineration...

...Free Catalog 800-677-3483 Edward R. Hamilton, Bookseller 6193 Oak, Falls Village, CT 06031-5005 . www.erhbooks.com/bbf The Board of Directors of the Mont Pelerin Society Announces the Friedrich A. Hayek Fellowships for the 2000 GENERAL MEETING OF THE MONT PELERIN SOCIETY (Santiago, Chile—November 12-18, 2000) "The more I learn about the evolution of ideas, the more I have become aware that I am simply an unrepentant Old Whig — with the stress on the `old...

...It didn't help that Stalin viewed the British with as much suspicion as he did the Germans...

...By the following summer, German casualties totaled more than 1.5 million...

...German officers would try to entice men to use it by increasing their pay—to no avail...

...Prize information and additional details are available from The Mont Pelerin Society, PO...

...The Hayek Fellowships will be awarded for the three best essays on the above topic...

...On the other hand, ex-intelligence officers like V. Rezun, a.k.a...

...intervention, simply by outnumbering and outfighting it...

...Are you proposing to carry out mobilization in the country, alert the troops now and move them to the western border...

...Winter came and the temperature plunged to 40 below...

...pletely outwitted bunglers of the Second World War...

...H itler's own delusions and obsessions soon reached critical mass...

...Hitler expected Barbarossa to be a six-week campaign and he refused to listen to concerns over winter clothing...

...When the smoke cleared, the Soviets took over 90,000 prisoners—and 22 generals...

...Or it was an effort to intimidate him...

...By the time the Wehrmacht actually began shelling the Soviet frontier in the early morning hours of Sunday, June 22, 1941, Stalin was beyond the capacity of reasoning...

...Stalingrad turned into a house-byhouse street fighting campaign, in which German tanks were rendered useless...

...Add to the mix Pat Buchanan's view that Germany and the USSR would have destroyed each other to our strategic advantage, and the truth behind the entire Eastern campaign becomes muddled...

...Ivan Maisky, the Soviet ambassador to the United Kingdom, knew better...

...So when an agent like GRU head General Filip Golikov prepared intelligence briefings, he made sure to underemphasize the military buildup and stress the numerous rumors stemming from British disinformation, or point to a rumored split in the Chancellery that pitted Hitler and the foreign ministry against a pro-invasion military...

...Hitler is not such an idiot and understands that the Soviet Union is not Poland, not France, not even England...

...For the German soldier, as Beevor puts it, "this macabre tactic had an unnerving effect...

...It no longer was an issue of strategic importance— Hitler needed to take Stalingrad for its sheer symbolism...

...But they also feared Stalin...

...To believe that the USSR was preparing to invade the Reich, as Gorodetsky explains, is to believe that "in executing his foreign policy Stalin, like Hitler, was pursuing a master plan which sought world domination by transforming the Second World War into a revolutionary war...

...When Count Wemer von Schulenberg, German ambassador in Moscow and Nazi foe, intimated that an invasion would in fact occur, Stalin flew into a rage, saying that German disinformation had reached the level of ambassador...

...The weapons of choice were submachine guns, grenades, and knives...

...Foreign Minister Matsuoka even went so far as to tell Stalin that "the Japanese system of government, though ruled by an emperor in a capitalist environment," was "morally" Communist...

...Over a million conscripts were set to be discharged...

...Is there any alternative definition more accessible to the general public...

...For Hitler, frustration over Soviet neutrality began in the Balkans, where Stalin insisted on securing access to the Black Sea, or what the Russians thought of as "our sea...

...Stalin issued orders to kill deserters on sight...

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...But in Grand Delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia—an excellent new history that makes full use of newly unearthed files and the uncensored documents of key participants—Israeli historian Gabriel Gorodetsky clears the air to show that Stalin was, indeed, a victim of his own delusions...

...Our tanks were no match for the better-armored and more mobile Soviet T-34s...

...Stalin was willing to believe anything short of an outright invasion without provocation...

...The essays will be judged by an international panel of three senior members of the Society The deadline for submission of essays is May 31, 2000...

...It was indeed the darkest of hours...

...But by October 7, snow had begun to fall...

...In the first month alone, Panzers advanced as much as 5o miles a day, the Soviet air force lost over 6,000 planes, the Red Army lost over 3,000 tanks, and casualty estimates numbered 2 million...

...Churchill expected Egypt to fall, and with it, the Suez and Palestine...

...For their part, the Italians did not want to be embroiled in a war against an enormous enemy...

...The most riveting and graphic account of the infamous turning point, Stalingrad makes clear not only Hitler's folly but the atrocities committed by both sides that resulted from it: When the Germans captured Kiev, for instance, they took over 600,000 prisoners and executed over 30,000 Jews...

...That means war...

...But Stalin remained adamant about a Balkan buffer zone, though his efforts were mostly futile...

...All agencies of Soviet intelligence, from NKVD to NKGB to GRU (military intelligence), were well aware that Hitler was planning an attack...

...By this time, the Reich had assembled approximately 170 divisions along the Soviet border—over three million men, 3,35o tanks, and 2,000 aircraft...

...With the arrival of the Americans in North Africa, Hitler would find his forces spread too thin...

...So had Denmark, Norway, Finland, Belgium, and the Netherlands...

...Beevor's account, drawing on soldiers' diaries, is most harrowing here...

...When the Soviets offered support to Yugoslavia,during a coup that overthrew its pro-German king, Hitler concluded there was only one alternative to Soviet meddling— invasion...

...When the Red Army's top commanders, Marshals Zhukov and Timoshenko, pleaded with him to permit defensive operations, Stalin staunchly refused...

...The Russians possessed an unparalleled tenacity for fighting, sometimes with missing limbs, using their teeth to pull grenade pins...

...Stalin felt negotiations could preclude any attackGorodetsky mentions he contemplated such bargaining chips as leasing the Ukraine to Germany for 99 years or allowing the Wehrmacht access through Soviet territory to get to the British possessions in the Middle East...

...It is easy to forget, almost sixty years later, how perilous a time the spring of 1941 was...

...Hitler surely does not know about it," he reassured himself...

...As close as the Germans came to taking Moscow, Hitler decided against it—partly because of his superstition that Napoleon's curse would be his to bear...

...He was the last one to accept that nothing could be done to stop Operation Barbarossa...

...And where Grand Delusion leaves off, Antony Beevor's Stalingrad picks up...

...He didn't know that after the fall of France in June 1940, Hitler had directed General Franz Halder to begin drawing plans for a full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union...

...When Leningrad was under siege, Stalin's priority was to make sure enough of the city's food supply was available for his Red Army...

...While Germany was turning out 500 tanks a month, the Russians produced more than 10,000 tanks in six months...

...Romania became an Axis puppet, as did Bulgaria...

...Alcoholism was also a huge problem...

...Rather, the Red Army would have still managed to overcome the Wehrmacht without U.S...

...What can we learn from Hayek's self-definition as an Old Whig...

...Yet Hitler was unmoved and pressed for the Wehrmacht to continue its pursuit of the Red Army...

...Richthofen's massive bombing raids had not only failed to destroy the enemy's will," Beevor writes, "their very force of destruction had turned the city into a perfect killing ground for the Russians to use against them...

...That same month, Rommel's Afrika Korps captured 2,000 British soldiers, including three generals, in Libya...

...The heavy artillery then pounded the meager Soviet defenses...

...Politics, Biography, History, Personal Finance—over 60 subject areas...

...Finally, the Panzers and the infantry entered Stalingrad to mop up...

...The inability to take Stalingrad only made the Ftihrer more intent to win...

...For who today remembers the causes and effects of the German invasion of Russia...

...Severe conditions on both sides inevitably led to desertion...

...Ramon Diaz, notes that students of Hayek cannot ignore the single definition of his political philosophy which Hayek bequeathed to us...

...In the Sixth Army, 50,000 Soviet POWs served alongside Germans...

...The daily ration of vodka was not enough for many Russians who then resorted to surgical alcohol and even carbon-filtered anti-freeze (which often led to blindness...

...Or so the Germans thought...

...Soon the tide would turn and the liberation of Europe would be underway...

...Since 1937, Stalin had brutally purged his military, killing 36,701 officers...

...This led it to a city on the Volga, Stalingrad, which if seized would cut off Moscow from its oil...

...The Fiihrer encouraged him to extend the Soviet sphere elsewhere—for instance, the subcontinent of India and the Indian Ocean...

...Cases of frostbite, lice, dysentery, and typhus skyrocketed...

...And still the Red Army fought on...

...He told Foreign Minister Vyecheslav Molotov that Hitler was not interested in attaining any economic resources or goods, "but in the destruction of our country itself and the annihilation of the Red Army...

...Panzer forces were then dragged hundreds of miles south to the Ukraine, losing fuel, and losing time...

...He'd tell Stalin that the Fahrer knew armed conflict would be suicidal, that aims could be best achieved through economic cooperation...

...Winston Churchill called the Soviet dictator and his cronies "the most comVICTORINO MATHS is associate editor of the Weekly Standard...

...He never forgot Britain's intervention in the Crimean War and the Civil War, and how his country was snubbed at Munich in 1938...

...Incidentally, the assistance the United States did provide was of relatively little help...

...England's only foothold on the continent was in Greece, where ioo,000 troops were stationed...

...The American Spectator April 2000 63 Gorodetsky notes how Stalin's suspicions were probably raised to new heights by a reported British plan to bomb Soviet oilfields in Baku to thwart the supply of fuel going to Germany (still its ally under the Non-Aggression Treaty...

...It had women fighting alongside men, flying planes, and firing anti-aircraft guns...

...Germany is busy up to her ears with the war in the West and I am certain that Hitler will not risk creating a second front by attacking the Soviet Union...

...When the Wehrmacht arrived, these dogs were unleashed with explosives strapped to their bodies, to blow themselves and the tanks to smithereens...

...When the British suffered further defeats in the Balkans and Africa, the Soviets suspected Churchill would negotiate for peace with Hitler to allow him to concentrate on the Ostfront...

...For the Fiihrer, taking the city was less important than the destruction of the Red Army itself...

...We know this because that's what happened, as two recent books well describe...

...The Japanese needed to secure the northern front in Manchuria in order to concentrate on taking British holdings in South Asia, especially Singapore...

...There could not have been a worse time for Stalin to live in denial...

...C hurchill knew all along that Hitler was going to invade the USSR...

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...Forgotten in the Buchanan ruckus is that Hitler and Stalin did for all intents go at it without our involvement, inflicting more damage on each other than any during the war...

...But in early April, the Germans attacked Yugoslavia, carpet-bombed Belgrade, killing 17,000 civilians, and occupied the capital on April 13...

...But Hitler44 It is easy to forget, almost sixty years later, how perilous a time the spring of 1941 was...

...On top of everything else, Stalin was certain that Britain was encouraging the Reich to expand eastward...

...Recently released files reveal that only months before the June 22 invasion did Stalin make "frantic attempts" to reform the Red Army...

...Other officers were killed for not shooting at deserters fast enough...

...With what values did he identify and reject by it...

...Although many Germans did cross over, the number of Red Army soldiers who ended up in the Wehrmacht is astounding...

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