Page 252 - The Chief Culprit

June 13, 1941 y 213

is list is endless. Overall, the First Strategic Echelon of the Red Army had 170 tank,
motorized, cavalry, and rifle divisions. Fifty-six of them were located right on the border.
ey could not move any farther ahead. But even of these, everything that could move was
moving forward and hiding in the border forests. General I. I. Feduninsky, commander of
the 15th Rifle Corps of the Fifth Army, testified that he led four regiments from the 45th and
62nd Rifle Divisions “into the woods, closer to the border.” e remaining 114 divisions of
35
the First Strategic Echelon stayed in the deeper territories of the western border districts, and
could be moved to the border.
How many of the 114 divisions began to move toward the border in the wake of the
reassuring TASS announcement from June 13, 1941? e answer is: all of them! “Between
June 12 and June 15, all the western military districts were issued an order to move all deeply
located divisions closer to the state borders.” 36
Now, let’s look at what was happening on June 13, 1941, in the inner military dis-
tricts of the Soviet Union, in the far inland Urals, and in the Siberian and Altay provinces.
Lieutenant General N. I. Birukov, commander of the 186th Rifle Division of the 62nd Rifle
Corps of the Ural military district, recounted: “On June 13, 1941, we received an order of
special importance from staff headquarters, which stated that the division had to move to a
‘new camp.’ e address of the new quarters was not given even to me, the division com-
mander. Only when passing through Moscow did I find out that our division was to concen-
trate in the forests west of Idritsa.” 37
In peacetime, a division receives “secret,” but very rarely “top secret,” documents. A
document of “special importance” can appear in a division only during wartime and only in
extreme cases, when an operation of great importance is prepared. Many Soviet divisions did
not receive a single document with this label of top secrecy during the four years of the war.
Yet, it was peacetime when the commander of the 186th Rifle Division received a document
of such an exceptionally high level of secrecy. e document’s contents were ostensibly trivial:
send the division to a new camp. General Birukov, however, placed the words “new camp”
in quotation marks. He and the superior officials who had sent the document knew perfectly
well that they were not talking of a “new camp,” but of something much more serious.
All divisions in the Ural military district received similar orders. Official records of the
district clearly fixed the date: “ e 112th Rifle Division was the first to begin loading. On the
morning of June 13, the train left the small railroad station. . . . Other trains followed. en
began the loading of units from the 98th, 153rd, and 186th Rifle Divisions.” e 170th and
38
the 174th Rifle Divisions, artillery, sapper, and anti-tank units followed. New administra-
tions were created for operating the Ural divisions, while the old ones were submitted to the
command of the staff of the new 22nd Army.
is mass of staffs and troops moved from the Urals toward the Belorussian forests un-
der the cover of the reassuring TASS announcement. e 22nd Army was not alone. General
S. M. Shtemenko wrote: “Right before the beginning of the war, under the strictest secrecy,
additional forces began to gather in the border forests. Five armies were transferred from
the depth of the country toward the borders.” General S. P. Ivanov, who in the early 1970s
39
headed a group of experts researching this issue, added: “At the same time, three more armies
were preparing for relocation.” All these armies would form the Second Strategic Echelon
40
of the Red Army.