Page 226 - The Chief Culprit

Kremlin Games y 187

e game was called “Offensive Operation of the Front with Breaks through the
Fortified Regions.” e theme was not simply an attack, but an attack on Germany and more
precisely on Eastern Prussia, which was defended by a line of fortified regions. e attacker
was the Soviet troops on the northwestern front, under Pavlov’s leadership. Pavlov delivered
the blow to Eastern Prussia, to Koenigsberg, and Zhukov defended it.
e Communist leaders openly said that the war would be conducted only on enemy
territory, as the popular Soviet antebellum song said: “And on enemy land we will crush the
enemy, shedding little [of our] blood and by a powerful blow.” ey had in mind a “deep
penetration,” that is, a blitzkrieg. But this frankness always followed the condition that the
enemy would force us into war. e Field Statute clearly stated that if the enemy attacked, the
Red Army would transform itself into the most ferocious attacker of any aggressive armies.
It happened that Germany attacked precisely when the Red Army had everything ready
to invade it. In November 1939, Stalin concentrated five armies on the Finnish border, got
them ready, and then the Finns, as if on command, supposedly fired several cannon shells.
Soviet newspapers exploded with rage: “We will repel the Finnish invasion!” “We will re-
spond to the aggressor’s blow with a threefold one!” “We will destroy the band of pests!”
Preparations for attacking Germany followed the same rules. Stalin’s strategists, with a
mysterious smile on their lips, said that if the enemy forced them into war, they would have
to retaliate on enemy territory.
e tasks for the strategy game were designed according to that principle:

1. On July 15, 1941, Germany attacks the Soviet Union.
2. German troops force their way 70 to 120 km into Soviet territory, but . . .
3. . . . by August 1, 1941, they are thrown back to their original positions. 9

e scenarios of how the “Westerners” attacked, how the Soviet army managed to
throw them back and get them off Soviet territory, were not played in the game. It was just
mentioned that the Germans attacked and then the Red Army drove them back to the state
border. e strategic game began precisely then, when there were no enemy troops on the
Soviet soil. e “retaliatory actions” of the Red Army in Eastern Prussia began from that
point. e German invasion of Soviet territory and the repelling of aggression did not interest
Stalin, Zhukov, and the rest. ey were interested in the conduct of assault operations from
the border. e leadership concluded that “unfolding the main forces of the Red Army in the
West and grouping the main forces against Eastern Prussia and in the direction of Warsaw
brings about serious fears that the struggle on this front can turn into protracted fighting.” 10
Afterward, they played a second strategic game, but the main idea did not change: the
Red Army was still the advancing side. Actually, the game started when the “Easterners” were
one hundred kilometers inside the land of the “Westerners.”
e actions of German and Soviet generals were almost mirror images of each other.
One month earlier, the Germans played the same games. e gap in time between the ac-
tions of Soviet and German commanders was slowly decreasing. On November 29, 1940, a
large strategic game on maps began in Berlin. e supervisor of the game was Major General
Friedrich Paulus, the First Ober-Kvartirmeister of the General Staff of the Ground Forces. In
Moscow, there had been two games, in Berlin only one, but it was divided into three stages:
first, the invasion by German troops of Russian territory, and battles on the border; second,