Page 170 - The Chief Culprit

Mobilization of the Economy y 131

ere was another question: what to do with all the ammunition that was produced?
All of us have had to solve math problems in school that began with something like: “Water
pours from a pipe into a certain container, and simultaneously pours out through another
pipe.” Such problems can be found in mathematics textbooks from centuries ago as well, even
in the famous math book written by Magnitsky that was used to teach children during the
reign of Catherine the Second. Stalin and all the military leaders, politicians, and economists
also were at some point schoolboys and solved problems that asked about the water running
in through one pipe and out the other. In 1939 that was precisely the case that came about:
the Red Army consumed a certain amount of ammunition for its military training, for the
“wars of liberation,” and for “international aid” to Mongolia and China. If the amounts of
ammunition coming in and being spent were equal, there would be no problem. But if the
supplies coming in were greater than the amount that was being used, then soon there would
be no more room to hold all the supplies.
e holding capacity of the artillery storages was known, as was the amount of am-
munition used by the army. rough a simple arithmetic calculation it would be easy to
determine when there would be no more space to hold all that was produced. What could be
done then? Should new storage facilities be created? at is not quite so simple. Imagine that
you have been given the task to build storage facilities that are to hold one million tons of
ammunition. If the humidity levels at the facility rise above the norm, the metals will be cor-
roded and the gunpowder will become wet. What would comrade Stalin and his loyal disciple
comrade Beria do to you in that case? And if the temperature rises slightly above the norm or
if the air is slightly too dry . . . . e storages cannot be close together or close to cities and
factories—they must be far away from everything that could be harmed by their explosion.
To make it short, additional storage facilities are not a valid solution. No matter how many
are built, they will become too full if more ammunition pours in than pours out—and more
and more was pouring in every day.
Aside from the undertakings of the Ammunition Narkomat, 235 factories under the
jurisdiction of other Narkomats were also used to produce various types of ammunition dur-
ing peacetime. And on top of all this, aside from the Ammunition Narkomat (which itself
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was huge) the chief directorate for construction of gunpowder, shell, cartridge, and missile
factories was created in January 1941. is monster united under its control twenty-three
construction areas. Note that all this was geared not toward building storage facilities but to-
ward building new factories. e new directorate put up new factories with astonishing speed
and gave them over to the Ammunition Narkomat. ey now had to think of how to put to
use all that they produced. In April 1941, an order came from the chief artillery directorate
of the Red Army to transport the output of the Ammunition Narkomat to the western state
borders and lay it on the ground. Ask anyone who has fought on the front what this means.

In the border regions of the Soviet Union the Red Army lost an unthinkable amount
of artillery shells that were laid out on the ground. An equally unthinkable amount of shells
was lost in railroad trains. In Byelorussia alone 4,216 railroad cars full of artillery shells were
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left at the border stations. Why were shells kept in railroad cars? Where were they going to
be taken? If defense was being prepared, the shells should have been issued to the troops. If
retreat was prepared, there would have been no need to concentrate the shells in the border
regions.