The Road to Berlin (22 page)

Through printed propaganda the Soviet authorities made a widespread and systematic effort to blacken Vlasov as a traitor and as a tool of the Germans, in addition to attacking the
ROA
and exposing the fraudulence of the political programme, the ‘thirteen points.’ This open and official blast was accompanied by a more subtle ‘whispering campaign’ aimed at those who were ‘patriotic’ even if they were not ‘loyal to the regime’. ‘Collaborators’ were downright ‘anti-Soviet’, but there were other dispositions, inclinations open to persuasion. None of the lines of demarcation were exact, a condition produced partly by German policy itself; units collaborating with the Germans—like the Kaminsky Brigade in its anti-partisan operations or the
‘SS Druzhina’
, an extraordinary unit under Gill-Rodionov (ex-Major Gill of the Red Army, defector, using Rodionov as his
nom de guerre)
which changed sides in a highly complicated pattern—were scattered over wide areas and different regions, increasingly infiltrated after 1942 by Soviet intelligence agents and partisans or partisan sympathizers with orders to arrange the re-defection of the unit or to kill the renegade commanders (or both). German policy itself, with stiff Nazi resistance to the idea of using the
Untermensch
to fight in the line, added other peculiarities. German anti-partisan forces by 1943 nevertheless had a strong component of ‘defector–collaborationist units’ (the powerful Kaminsky Brigade being most prominent), usually organized along battalion lines. But much as there was a significant degree of Red Army ‘defection–collaboration’, what was equally distinctive was the incidence of ‘re-defection’. In July 1943, the Soviet campaign to induce ‘re-defection’, in order to discredit German propaganda and to penetrate the Vlasov movement, was in full swing; the convening of a trial at Krasnodar at this time to sentence to death Russians who had collaborated with
Gestapo
, an occasion attended by the dissemination of much appalling material on German atrocities, followed the next day by the announcement of
Freies Deutschland
, was evidently part of a systematic and sustained psychological and propaganda offensive. There was ‘defection’ too on the German side.

The Soviet Major Kapustin was assigned (presumably with others) a singular role in the
Anti-Wlassow Aktion
(the files of which contain his interrogation report): recruited by the
NKVD
from a Soviet penal institution, Kapustin could purchase his rehabilitation at the price of infiltrating the Vlasov movement. In May, Kapustin duly ‘deserted’ to the Germans in order to get into the Vlasov circle with the aim of encouraging re-defection and finally of killing Vlasov himself. To encourage this re-defection, Kapustin with Moscow’s special authorization was allowed to propagate a political programme shrewdly conceived to appeal to collaborator patriotism and self-interest:

–the German aim was the enslaving of Russia; the
ROA
was a German tool;

–the Soviet system had already conceded a number of popular demands (the recognition of the Church, the displacement of the commissars);

–Soviet leadership had now decided that only the Great Russians had passed the test of war; the post-war ‘Soviet Union’ would merge the separate republics under Great Russian rule;

–the post-war political system would be drastically modified, with the republics dismantled, with the Communist Party turned into a people’s party with a broad educational mission, with Stalin himself removed in favour of Andreyev and with the collective farms also disbanded. (See GMD, T-78/R491, 6477824–26/827–31.)

This had lavish patriotic appeal and a chauvinistic twist to Russian feelings—Russia for the Russians, minus Stalin and stripped of its collectivization. Of immediate interest in the ‘Kapustin programme’ was the offer of amnesty for men who turned away from collaboration, and finally a flourish at the end over Russians settling Russian problems without the Germans coming in as interlopers. This was shrewd stuff, with its broad patriotic appeal and its man-to-man admission that things were by no means perfect but that they would get better, plus the artful but very positive displacement of the Germans. Elsewhere throughout occupied Russia, and especially in partisan-controlled areas, the notion grew up and was widely spread that ‘the people’ were themselves under arms, that Stalin’s leadership, though very necessary to beat the Germans, was only ‘temporary’; once the war was won, who knows what the future would bring. This popular myth, if not actually cultivated by the Soviet authorities, was certainly exploited to the full and proved to have many positive benefits and attractions.

For the poor Soviet prisoners of war caught between two masters, sacrificed on the battlefield only to be hurled into a terrible hell of starvation, extermination or slave labour, all on an appalling scale, with both sides attracted by this pool of manpower, the struggle over ‘collaboration’ only made their situation worse. Gill-Rodionov’s record was a prime illustration. ‘I betrayed my country not from political motives, but to save my skin’: that was Gill-Rodionov’s own explanation. Chief of staff to the 29th Rifle Division, Gill-Rodionov was made prisoner in July 1941, taken to Berlin, trained in a
Gestapo
institution and then sent back to Suwalki PW (prisoner-of-war) camp to set up ‘national units’—the
druzhina
, which in October 1942 was moved up, 500 men strong, to Moghilev to operate against Nichiporovich’s Soviet partisans. Six months later Gill-Rodionov took another
druzhina
, formed by Blazhevich. into his command and formed under German auspices the ‘1st Russian
SS
National Regiment’, 1,200 men strong. In the summer of 1943, Gill-Rodionov set about organizing a brigade of the
ROA
, well equipped and operating with regular
SS
formations. The brigade was assigned to anti-partisan operations, though it was evidently penetrated by partisan agents who reported on the decline in morale among Gill’s men. The time for a ‘re-defection’ operation was ripe.

At the end of July the Belorussian Staff of the Partisan Movement authorized the Soviet partisan brigade
Zheleznyak
to open negotiations with the
ROA
brigade. Gill-Rodionov nominated Bogdanov, brigade counter-intelligence officer and a man with close
Gestapo
connections, as his representative. Bogdanov systematically sabotaged the talks, and with his own neck at stake he had little option. The second round of negotiations were conducted with Gill-Rodionov himself and the deal was done—Gill-Rodionov and his own men were to ‘wipe out their treason’ by fighting the Germans; the
ROA
brigade was to come over to the Soviet side fully armed; Bogdanov and
SS
commander Count Mirsky were to be handed over to the partisans; the rest of the Germans were to be dealt with as Gill-Rodionov saw fit. On 13 August 1943 the
ROA
brigade, already standing to, attacked the Germans in its midst, carried off Bogdanov and Mirsky and passed over to the Soviet side, where it was formally organized as the ‘1st Anti-Fascist Brigade’ under Gill-Rodionov, who finally carried out all the terms of the bargain—he was killed in action and his brigade was decimated. The ‘re-defection’ of this brigade was a signal success for the Russians, and passing back to the Soviet side became widespread; late in 1943 the Germans began pulling these PW para-military formations into the west, to France, the Low Countries and Italy, away from occupied Russia. There remained a collaborationist core of militia men and lowly officials which melted more slowly, but after Kursk the writing was on the wall for them. The main Soviet objective was attained, the paralysis of the
Wlassow-Aktion
to obtain military manpower and civilian allegiance, pitting Russians against Russians, though the Nazi leadership itself inflicted the heaviest blows by refusing to allow any concession that might have given the
Wlassow-Aktion
some political reality.

Military defeat, cracking the armour of German invincibility, coupled with hideous manias which mutilated any realistic policies, automatically doomed the collaborators. Vlasov himself during his Smolensk ‘tour’ strenuously resisted the idea that he was being used as a German ‘dupe’; his aim, by his own definition, was to school Russians in resistance to Stalin, to train a politically intelligent and discriminating group. The Germans came a good second in all this, they were even a means to an end. But it was a sadder, sombre Vlasov who went about his ‘tours’, conducted by courtesy of the Germans in the occupied districts. The Nazis meant to throttle him and Soviet counter-propaganda steadily cut the ground from under his feet.

At home, on both sides of the line, and also abroad, the nationalist line with its strong chauvinist overtones pursued by Stalin paid handsome dividends. At home, the vague, wafted promises of improvement linked with the stimulus to patriotic fervour, the recognition of the Patriarchate or the dissolution of the
Komintern
(which appeased his Western allies) were construed by Russians and foreigners alike as signs of real respectability now emerging through the deep murk of war. Yet, as his compatriots and allies were to discover (if they did not
already guess), for Stalin respectability and tractability had virtually no connection at all.

Having already postponed Operation
Citadel
once, on 18 June Hitler decided in his famous ‘irrevocable’ style to proceed with the attack, although he weighed a proposal by
OKW
to cancel
Citadel
in favour of building up a strong central reserve. On 1 July at his headquarters in East Prussia Hitler harangued his commanders about the need to demonstrate German superiority and the necessity to open the way to final victory; this would be done at Kursk, where the German offensive would open on July 5. In spite of the pleas of senior officers to change tactics, the plan prepared by Zeitzler, chief of the Army General Staff, was a repeat performance of methods used so often; the Kursk salient would be eliminated by a double envelopment, with Model’s Ninth Army (seven infantry, eight
Panzer
and
Panzer-Grenadier
divisions) concentrated west of Maloarkhangelsk on the northern face, and on the southern face in the Belgorod area
Armee-Abteilung Kempf
and Hoth’s Fourth
Panzer
Army (seven infantry, eleven
Panzer
divisions, three assault-gun brigades), with two air fleets
(Luftflotten
4 and
6)
in support. It was certainly a formidable demonstration of German strength—2,700 tanks and assault-guns (more than half fielded by Hoth and Kempf in the south), 1,800 aircraft, two-thirds of the infantry divisions brought up to a strength of 12,500 officers and men, the
Panzer
divisions with 16,000 men and up to 209 tanks and assault guns in each, the
SS Panzer
formations packed with tanks.

At this point ‘Lucy’ served Stalin superbly. Hitler held his battle conference on 1 July: the next day Stalin sent out an urgent signal to the commanders of the Central, Voronezh and Steppe Fronts:

According to information at our disposal, the Germans may go over to the offensive on our front between 3–6 July.

The
Stavka
of the Supreme Commander orders:

1.intensification of reconnaissance and observation of the enemy in order to ensure timely discovery of his intentions;

2.ground troops and aircraft to be at readiness to repel possible enemy blow.

Soviet troops were at once deployed in their defensive lines, though the Front commands were baffled by the totally unexpected stillness that descended in the German concentration areas west of Belgorod and south of Orel; even night-time movements of troops and equipment ceased. Heavy traffic was reported far to the south of Kharkov on roads into the Donbas—tanks, trucks and lorries, which suggested German movement away from the salient. The German radio gave much deliberate coverage to Field-Marshal von Manstein’s visit to Bucharest to award Antonescu his gold cross; on the evening of 3 July, however, Manstein was back in his
HQ
, while Model moved to his forward command centre. German air attacks delivered by day and night had intensified during late
June; one German bomb load in a night raid hit Rokossovskii’s
HQ
, and Rokossovskii escaped only because on a whim he had decided to set up his signals group in the officers’ mess. After that, Central Front
HQ
went underground in a bunker in the garden of a former monastery. While German bombers massed for their heavy raids and flew by day with heavy fighter protection, aiming for the rail links and airfields in the Kursk salient, Soviet aircraft—fulfilling Stalin’s order that ‘attacks on railway traffic, strikes at road transport columns are the prime assignments of our aviation’—hammered away at the German concentration areas. Both sides went for each other’s aerodromes: the dummy airfields in the salient—the brain-children of Major Lukyanov of the 2nd Air Army, who lavished infinite care on them—were heavily pounded. Soviet fighters were now ordered to keep German reconnaissance planes away from Soviet defences, while at the beginning of July Vatutin learned from the pilot of a shot-down He-111 that fresh squadrons were moving up to Kharkov from the Crimea.

All the signs indicated a German attack, and although the
Stavka
signal confirmed this, Rokossovskii and Vatutin were severely exercised to know just when and where. In the late afternoon of 4 July one hundred German planes coming out of the clouds bombed and strafed Soviet forward positions north-west of Belgorod; artillery fire and tank attacks followed the aerial bombardment, which was renewed for several hours. The evening when it came was clear and starlit, lit by occasional flares, with wisps of smoke drifting over the ground; in the Soviet lines the riflemen and machine-gunners stood to, while the food was brought up. There had been no action along the perimeter of the Central Front on 4 July; the fighting had died down on the Voronezh Front section but the sound of tank engines could be heard. On the Central Front, before which Model’s assault divisions were taking up their positions, there was nothing at all to be heard. At 2200 hours a Soviet patrol came across a group of seventeen German sappers clearing passages in the Soviet minefields south of Tagino; one German was taken prisoner, and from him Rokossovskii learned that a German attack was due at 0200 hours (European time) on the morning of 5 July. Aviation and tank commanders were called to Vatutin’s
HQ
at midnight, where the prisoners under interrogation had also indicated that an attack was imminent. Vatutin decided that the
Stavka
instructions were fully confirmed and issued orders to make operational ‘Variant No. 1’—a main German attack directed at Oboyan, with Chistyakov’s 6th Guards taking the brunt and Shumilov’s 7th Guards absorbing the supporting attack.