Hitler’s Wehrmacht meanwhile continued to rampage deep into Soviet territory. The German strategic plan was to motor across the plains and marshes of the western borderlands of the USSR and, within a few weeks, occupy the main European regions. They seemed about to fulfil every expectation of the Führer. Experienced tank formations rolled over vast territory encountering brave but ineffective defensive operations. Minsk, Belorussia’s capital, fell on 29 June, Smolensk on 16 July. No great urban centre lay between Smolensk and Moscow. Despairing of the existing command on his Western Front, Stalin released Timoshenko and Zhukov to reorganise things on the spot and stiffen resistance. Some deceleration of the German advance was achieved against Army Group Centre. But Panzer formations were simultaneously smashing their way towards Leningrad in the north and Kiev further south. Already all Poland, Lithuania and Belorussia was subject to rule by the General Government appointed by Hitler. It seemed that nothing could save ‘Soviet power’. Operation Barbarossa was undertaken by armed forces which had conquered every country in Europe they had attacked. Over three million men had been amassed for the campaign against the USSR. At Hitler’s disposal were more than three thousand tanks and two thousand aircraft. Security forces followed in the path of their victories: Einsatz-kommandos extirpated all those thought hostile to the New Order. Everything had been planned and supplied to evident perfection.
Panic seized Moscow and Leningrad as thousands of inhabitants tried to leave before the Germans arrived. The refugees included party and government functionaries. Stalin was merciless. Beria, who had been given general oversight of security matters in the State Committee of Defence, was empowered to set up barrier detachments on the capital’s outskirts and mete out summary justice to those who sought to flee. Strategic dispositions were made as the State Committee established high commands for the North-Western, Western and South-Western Fronts. Stalin’s confidence in military professionalism had not matured. Although he appointed Timoshenko to the Western Front, he stipulated that Voroshilov should head the North-Western Front while Budënny took the South-Western Front.22 Voroshilov and Budënny, his comrades in the Civil War, had won no laurels in the Soviet–Finnish War and yet Stalin stood by them. Party committees and soviet executive committees in the provinces were brought directly under the State Committee’s leadership and ordered to stiffen the spirit of resistance. The conscription of men for the Red Army was to be intensively undertaken. Armaments production had to be boosted, labour discipline tightened and food supplies secured from the villages. How this was done was a matter of indifference to Stalin. He cared only for results.
An immense number of prisoners-of-war fell into German hands: more than 400,000 Red Army troops were seized in the battle for Minsk alone. The Soviet air force in the western borderlands had been destroyed, mainly on the ground, in the first two days of hostilities. The linkages of transport and communications had been shattered. When Smolensk was occupied, the party headquarters had no time to incinerate its documents. The USSR lost its Soviet republics in the western borderlands as Ukraine, Belorussia, Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia were subjected to German rule. The USSR had lost half its industrial and agricultural capacity and almost the same proportion of its population. Morale was low in the unoccupied zones. Civil administration was chaotic. German bombers continued to wreck places of habitation many miles beyond the lines of the Wehrmacht’s advance. In Moscow there was gathering panic. Many government officials tried to flee. Neither Molotov’s speech on 22 June nor Stalin’s eleven days later convinced most people that successful defence was possible.
