Page 262 - The Chief Culprit

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noticed by historians: Soviet troops stopped caring about how they would spend the coming
winter. e troops of the First Strategic Echelon abandoned their dugouts and unfinished
barracks and entered the border zone. We are talking of all the troops. 7
Troops of the Second Strategic Echelon, moving from within the country, did not use
the unfinished barracks and camps abandoned by the First Strategic Echelon. e arriving
troops were not planning to spend the winter in these locations, and made no preparations
for winter. ey were not making dugouts or building training facilities and shooting ranges;
they were not even digging foxholes.
Many official documents and memoirs of Soviet generals and marshals attest to the
fact that now the armies were lodged in tents. In March 1941, the 118th Division of the
16th Rifle Corps of the 11th Army was formed in the Baltic region. In May, reserves arrived.
e division put up a temporary summer camp made of tents in the Kozlovo Ruda region
(45 to 50 km from the state border). Safe under the cover of the TASS announcement, the
division abandoned this camp and headed for the border. Any attempt to find even a hint
of preparations for winter is doomed to fail—the division was not preparing to spend the
winter here. Right next to it moved the 28th Tank Division, and the picture was the same.
In all tank divisions, all newly formed rifle divisions, the attitude toward winter changed—
nobody feared winter any longer. Marshal of the Soviet Union K. S. Moskalenko (at the time
Major General, commander of the 1st Motorized Artillery Anti-Tank Brigade of the Main
Command Reserve) received an assignment from the commander of the 5th Army, Major
General M. I. Potapov: “Your brigade began to form here. You will occupy that area of for-
est [and] set up a camp.” A powerful brigade of over six thousand men, with over a hundred
heavy guns up to 85 mm in caliber, set up camp in three days. After this, intense battle train-
ing began: eight to ten hours a day, not counting night training, homework, maintenance of
weapons, and weapon training.
8
Where were they planning to spend the winter? Staying in tents in the Russian winter?
Wasn’t Central and Western Europe more comfortable?
Major General A. Zaporozhchenko gives the following description: “ e final phase
of the strategic deployment was the secret movement of attack groups to staging grounds for
invasion. It was carried out during the course of several nights before the attack. e cover of
the movement was organized by reinforced battalions that had previously been moved to the
border and, before the arrival of the main forces, controlled the areas of the front pre-assigned
for the divisions. Transfer of aviation began in the last days of May and ended by June 18.
Fighter and ground-attack planes concentrated at air bases up to 40 km from the border, and
the bombers were no further than 180 km.” 9
In this description, we can be surprised only by the date of June 18. Soviet aviation did
not complete its relocation then; it only started it on June 13 under the cover of the TASS
announcement. Why is the general mentioning June 18? e thing is, he is talking not of
the Red Army, but of the German Wehrmacht, where the same exact thing was occurring—
troops were also moving toward the borders at night. Reinforced battalions were sent ahead.
Arriving divisions took predesignated areas for attack, or simply put, hid in the forests. e
actions of the two armies are mirror images of each other. e only difference is the dates.
At first, the Soviet troops were ahead, but then Hitler got two weeks ahead of them—he had
fewer troops, and they had less distance to cover. It is interesting that in the beginning of June
the German army was in a very unfavorable position: it had troops in railroad trains. Guns