Page 201 - The Chief Culprit

162 y e Chief Culprit

anti-personnel mines per kilometer of front line. e concentration of anti-tank weapons
was brought to a mind-blowing level: forty-one cannons per kilometer, not counting field
and anti-aircraft artillery and dug-in tanks. In no time an empty field was transformed into
a truly impenetrable defense.
In 1939 conditions for defense were much more favorable: forests, rivers, swamps,
few roads, and lots of time. Soviet troops could have created a powerful barrier on the new
Soviet-German border, especially since the opening was not wide. But at that moment the
Soviet Union stopped producing anti-tank and anti-aircraft cannon. Instead of making the
area impassable, it was quickly made more penetrable. e Red Army built bridges and roads,
expanded and improved the railroads. Previously existing fortifications were torn down and
buried under mounds of ground. One participant of those events, professor and Colonel
I. G. Starinov of the GRU, candidly described what went on: “A stupid situation arose.
When we faced weak armies of small countries, our borders were truly locked. But when
Nazi Germany became our neighbor, the defense structures along the former border were
abandoned and even partly dismantled.” And: “Engineering command of the Red Army
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sent a request for 120,000 railroad mines of delayed action. In the event of an invasion, this
amount would have sufficed to paralyze the German army’s supply routes from the rear, on
which it entirely depended. But instead of the requested amount, they sent . . . 120 mines.” 2
By the way, a mine is the most simple, most inexpensive, and highly effective weapon. e
Soviet Union had huge land mine production, but after the new borders with Germany were
established this production was curbed.
What did Stalin do aside from dismantling his own defenses? He also tore to pieces the
barrier of neutral countries. For Hitler, one hole in the wall was enough. For Stalin, it was
not. Hitler (with Stalin’s help) demolished the leadership of only one country in the divid-
ing barrier—Poland. Stalin (without outside help) did the same in three countries (Estonia,
Latvia, and Lithuania), tried to do it in a fourth country (Finland), and actively prepared for
doing it in a fifth country (Romania), having first ripped from it a huge chunk of land. Hitler
strove to force only one opening in the wall, Stalin tried to demolish the entire wall. And
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Stalin accomplished his goal. Only ten months after the signing of the non-aggression pact
the dividing barrier was completely destroyed, from the Arctic Ocean to the Black Sea, by
Stalin’s efforts. ere remained no neutral countries between Stalin and Hitler, and thus the
conditions for attack were set.
During this short time all of Stalin’s neighbors to the west became his victims. Aside
from nations sharing borders with the Soviet Union, Lithuania, which did not have any
common borders with the USSR at all, also fell under Stalin’s domination. e appearance
of Soviet troops in Lithuania meant that they had truly reached Germany’s real borders:
from September 1939 the Soviet-German border passed through the conquered Polish ter-
ritories, and from the summer of 1940, Soviet troops came to the border of Eastern Prussia.
Here it cannot at all be said that the monstrous Hitler was hacking corridors to the east,
and the stupid Stalin was assisting him. No, Stalin hacked corridors to the west without any
outside help.
Did the Red Army plan to stop at the borders it attained? e answer was given by the
People’s Commissar of Defense of the USSR, Marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko:
“In Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia we destroyed a power of landowners and capitalists hateful to
the workers. e Soviet Union grew significantly and advanced its borders to the west. e