Page 164 - The Chief Culprit

Mobilization y 125

conditions, a mobilizing country must make a firm decision ahead of time to conduct war.
. . . In a general mobilization, it is understood that there can be no more return to peacetime
positions. . . . We maintain that only a general mobilization has value, the concentration of all
resources and forces necessary for achieving victory.” e book ends with a decisive declara-
tion: “Mobilization is war, and we cannot understand it in any other way.”
Stalin not only shared Shaposhnikov’s views, but he had the same beliefs. Stalin did not
make any distinctions between the process of taking power in his country or in the neighbor-
ing ones. He knew how to take power in his own country, and he planned to do the same in
the neighboring ones. Stalin did not keep his art a secret. On the contrary, he made it into a
display for the masses. In his book On the Foundations of Leninism, Stalin proved that games
are not permissible in the quest for power. We either take control or we do not. Once the task
is attempted, it must be carried out to the end. is goes along with the teachings of Niccolo
Machiavelli: either you deliver a lethal blow or you do not attack at all; no in-between deci-
sions can exist in politics or in strategy. is also goes along with Shaposhnikov’s ideas: we can
either not mobilize at all or we can conduct a full mobilization and enter the war—no partial,
in-between positions can be adopted.
ere was another problem: mobilization had to be concealed. Long before World War
II, Stalin and Shaposhnikov worked out a way to conceal mobilization. For this reason, there
was no universal military draft in the Soviet Union until 1939. e army was very selective
and did not take in just anybody. is was to show what a peace-loving people we were. e
age requirement for entering the armed services was twenty-one. is is strange. Why not
draft at eighteen or nineteen, right out of school—let the boy serve his term and be free? By
age twenty-one a man could have found a job and started a family, while his future remained
uncertain: would they draft him or not? Nobody could really explain why the army had to
take men at age twenty-one and not younger.
ere was, however, a lot of thought put into this system. It was like a dam on a river:
not everyone was let through (that is, drafted), only some, while the rest amassed on the other
side. At the necessary moment a universal draft could be instituted (only the pretext had to
be invented), and all those who did not earlier serve in the army could be called in. During
the intervening years, there were many of them saved up.
e moment came—September 1, 1939. On this day, a universal military draft was
instituted, and all those who had not served earlier began to be taken in. In every separate
case the calling of a mature man to the army did not raise suspicion that a big war was loom-
ing: every man must serve his country, so this or that Ivan had to do now what his friends
did before.
Stalin had another tactic in reserve: according to the new law, the draft age was reduced
from twenty-one to nineteen, and in some categories to eighteen. My own father was among
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this group—he had just turned eighteen at the time.
e simultaneous draft of three age groups (never seen before), and the draft of all those
who had not served earlier, placed a double burden on the shoulders of the nation. On the
one hand, the economy was deprived of all these workers; on the other hand, they all had to
be clothed, fed, equipped, and housed somewhere (try to find a place for at least one million
new soldiers!). is was an explosive development of military might.
After 173,000 reservists were drafted in the second half of July 1939 to support the
troops of the Trans-Baikal military district and the 1st Army Group in Mongolia, the Red