Page 314 - The Chief Culprit

e War Has Begun y 259

General A. I. Lossev explained: “Storages of topographic maps, located unreasonably close to
the border, were either seized by the enemy, or destroyed by the enemy during the first bomb
raids. As a result, the troops lost 100 million maps.” 18
is is a modern-day evaluation, and the numbers are lowered. Lieutenant General
M. K. Kudryavtsev, who under Stalin was director of the topographic services of the Red
Army, said that during the first days of the war, and only in the Baltic, Western, and Kiev
military districts, the Soviet troops destroyed during retreat over two hundred railcars of their
19
own topographic maps. e smallest cargo railcar in the Soviet Union in 1941 could carry
twenty tons. Even if we supposed that the smallest cars were used to store the maps, four
thousand tons of maps were destroyed in the three districts. Kudryavtsev said that, on aver-
age, every railcar contained 1,033,000 maps. Two hundred cars equaled 200 million maps.
Which of the two generals is right? ey both are. One talked about what the German troops
destroyed, 100 million, and the other added that the Soviets themselves destroyed 200 mil-
lion maps, so they would not go to the enemy.
If the Soviet army planned to defend Moscow, Kursk, and Stalingrad, it needed maps
of those regions. ere was no reason to transport these maps to the state border. At the bor-
der, the army needed maps of border regions. And, if there was a plan to advance, the army
needed maps of the territories that lay ahead. If the Soviet Union planned to take over large
territories, it needed the corresponding number of maps to supply a multimillion-strong
army. e Red Army did not save its maps in the border regions, because they were useless for
defending the country. In 1941, the plans for the “liberation” of Europe crumbled, and the
value of the maps that were kept in railcars on the border became zero. Millions of Russian-
German and Russian-Romanian phrase books were burned along with the maps.
e Soviet population was expecting a war, but it didn’t anticipate a German invasion.
erefore, once the Germans attacked, everyone was shocked. Major General of the KGB
O. D. Gotsiridze remembered: “Before July 3, when Stalin made a public appearance, it was
completely unclear as to what we were to do. Everyone had thought that the war would be
quick and on foreign soil.” 20
“ e complete demoralization among our troops occurred because . . . the people had
planned to fight on the enemy’s territory, and our military commanders were dreaming of
a blitzkrieg no less than the Germans were. But everything turned out not quite so happily.
. . . e sudden need for defense turned into a total retreat on all fronts for the troops and
the people.” 21