Page 215 - The Chief Culprit

176 y e Chief Culprit

same river. If one showed photos of the LFPs to an expert and asked him to distinguish the
German from the Soviet, he would be stumped. ey were identical twins: when building the
Molotov Line on the shores of the same river San, Soviet engineers also used relatively thin
armor plates of 100 mm.
While their neighbor was weak Poland, German troops erected on their borders pow-
erful fortifications; as soon as they crushed Poland and established a common border with
the Soviet Union, the Germans abandoned the old fortifications, and built along the new
borders, very slowly, only light defense structures. Just like the Red Army! at was because
both sides did not plan to defend their new borders for long.
Fortification can be both defensive and offensive. If you are planning to attack, then
you follow these rules during the construction of fortified regions:

n Gather attack groups of troops in the primary locations, leave secondary locations almost
without troops and protect them with real fortified regions.
n In the primary locations, do not try to camouflage your fortifications; let the enemy
think that you are preparing for defense.
Everything that can be located right on the shores of border rivers should be located
n
there: during your troops’ advance across the river, these fortifications, placed right on
the border, will support your advance with fire.
n Do not protect frontline fortifications with minefields and barbwire—they would hin-
der your own advancing troops.
n Do not waste a lot of cement and steel for frontline fortifications—you are not plan-
ning to sit in defensive positions for long.
n Do not build fortifications deep in your territory—they will be unnecessary.

ese rules governed the actions of the Soviet and German generals from 1939. In
August 1939, Zhukov brilliantly used these rules in Khalkhin-Gol: “With these actions, we
strove to make the enemy believe in the absence of any sort of preparations for advance from
our side, and to show that we [were] conducting widespread defensive works, and only for
19
defense.” e Japanese believed in Zhukov’s “defensive” works and paid dearly for their folly.
Later, on a much grander scale, Zhukov staged the same deception on the German border.
However, he did not fool the German generals. ey had their own identical experi-
ence with Poland. On August 22, 1939, during the negotiations of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact and preparations of the German army to invade Poland, General Guderian received an
order to command the “fortification team of Pomerania.” e goal was to calm the Poles by
showing them strictly defensive preparations, while raising, with minimal effort, light forti-
fications.
In the spring and summer of 1941, Guderian again was building defenses, this time
on the Soviet border. If Guderian built light concrete boxes near the border, it did not at all
follow that he intended to defend himself. It meant exactly the opposite. And if Zhukov built
identical boxes along the same borders, what did that mean?
e Stalin Line was universal: it could be used either for defense or for attack—the
wide passages between the fortified regions were left intact to let through masses of troops
advancing west. When the border was moved a few hundred kilometers west, the Stalin Line
completely lost its use as a fortified launching ground for attack, and Stalin did not need it