Conventional history doesn't always tell the full story as first time contributor Mike Flynn tells here. OPERATION BARBAROSSA, the German invasion of Russia, opened on June 22, 1941. The first four and a half months of the invasion were a total disaster for the Russians. Kiev fell, Leningrad was besieged, and Moscow threatened. Millions of Russian soldiers were captured, wounded, or killed. The attack had seemingly taken Russia totally by surprise. Or had it? Between the winter of 1940 and the invasion in June, Stalin disregarded more than 80 significant warnings that Hitler intended to invade. Couldn't the Russian dictator recognize a threat? BARBAROSSA rolled forward like an unstoppable juggernaut. Then the Russian winter came. Within a month after the first snowfall, the German drive was halted. Hitler blamed it on the cold. Didn't the German dictator realize winter came to Russia with seasonal regularity? BARBAROSSA's early success and ultimate failure was the end result of self-inflicted blindness by both men. Both men made pre-invasion assumptions that they were sure were correct and when faced with contrary evidence donned blinders that kept them from facing realties they did not want to contend with. Hitler and Stalin played dice with the lives of their men -- and their self-delusions. Stalin could not believe that Hitler would invade Russia without preparing the German army for winter warfare. Hitler, for his part, was equally adamant that Russia would be crushed before winter set in. They were both mistaken. For Hitler and untold Germans and Russians, the gamble was fatal. STALIN'S DELUSION Stalin dismissed the many warnings he received of a German invasion because he was paranoid. Khruschev relates an incident when Stalin, thinking himself alone, said, "I'm finished! I don't trust anyone, not even myself!" Not surprisingly, warnings from Churchill and Roosevelt fell on deaf ears. When documentary evidence of Germany's intentions was obtained, it was dismissed. After long years as a revolutionary and a dictator, Stalin knew, from personal experience, that any document could be forged. In 1937, Stalin reportedly paid 3 million gold rubles for evidence of a Red Army plot to overthrow him. The evidence was concocted by Himmler's German Secret Service allegedly at Stalin's request. The result was the Purge and the dismissal, imprisonment and execution of 43,000 Red Army Officers. In December 1940, 11 days after Hitler had approved the final invasion plan, Stalin was briefed on it by the chief of Soviet Military Intelligence (GRU). He dismissed it as misinformation. He also refused to give credence to GRU reports that indicated Hitler had decided to fight on two fronts. He preferred concrete evidence. STALIN & MUTTON PRICES Stalin instructed the GRU to devise a method of determining when Hitler was actually preparing for an attack, and not bluffing. GRU responded by identifying indicators that could not be faked. For the Germans to invade, the Russian dictator was told, they would require millions of sheepskin coats. The slaughtering of that many sheep would immediately affect the market. Therefore the GRU was tracking sheep and mutton prices in Europe. When the price began to plummet, as it had to, the Germans were preparing to invade. Stalin was also informed that ordinary German fuel and lubricating oils broke down in the extreme cold of the Russian winter -- congealing and making weapons inoperable. A special type of petrol was necessary if the Germans were to attack. GRU agents were smuggling German petroleum products out of the Reich and analyzing them. If the Germans switched to the cold weather modifications necessary to conduct operations in the Russian plains, then invasion was imminent. STALIN'S WINTER WAR Stalin found this system more to his liking. He was willing to place so much importance on warm clothing and special lubricants because of his own Army's recent experiences in the Russo-Finnish War. In that war (November 1939 to March 1940), Stalin learned the bitter lessons of what it took to operate a military campaign in winter. His generals had not issued winter clothing to their troops nor had they considered the effect of the cold on their armor. The result was an army crippled by frostbite and full of inoperable vehicles. The severity of the disaster can be seen in the battle of Suomussalmi in late December 1940. The Russians lost 27,000 soldiers to 900 Finns. The Finns accomplished this by cutting the Russian supply lines and letting 10 days of hunger and cold sap the Russians' strength. When the Finns finally attacked, many Russian troops were too weak to even stand. The war cost the Finns 78,500 killed and wounded while the Soviet Army lost an estimated one million casualties. Marshal Mannerheim commander of the Finnish Army gave two reasons for the high Russian losses, the severe winter and the poor Russian medical service. The continuous cold caused the deaths of thousands of Russian wounded while they awaited evacuation. Stalin and his Generals learned one cannot fight a war in the cold without warm clothes for troops, and special lubricants for vehicles. At the war's end in April 1940, Russia's Main Military Council was convened at the Kremlin. It's purpose was to review the Finnish campaign, identify short comings, and recommend improvements. Among their findings was that the infantry demonstrated it knew little about war material or how to use it under cold weather conditions. They also noted the need for horse-drawn medical and transportation sleigh detachments, better winter clothing, vehicles heaters, and bunker stoves. Stalin knew that the German General Staff had conducted a similar review. He also knew that they were no fools. Stalin assumed that Hitler and his Generals had learned the same lessons -- that one does not fight a war in the extreme north of Europe without warm clothes and special lubricants. Any German move to attack the USSR would be preceded by significant changes in Germany's war production patterns. Any other source of information was spurious at best. As it turned out, up to the day of the invasion the sheep market remained stable in Europe and the German Army was still using standard lubricants. Stalin had not considered the possibility that there might be another concept. that negated what to him was obvious. His blindness nearly cost him Russia. HITLER'S DELUSION Hitler, looking at the vastness of Russia, saw Lebensraum. He saw a military machine that was in disrepair, suffering from poor morale and unable to crush tiny Finland without a 10 to 1 ratio in casualties. Looking at the Wermacht he saw an army that had romped across Europe in a few short months, crushed France, overrun the Low Countries and brought Britain to the point of capitualtion. His generals were superb, the Russians inexperienced (Stalin had eliminated most of the good ones) and incompetent. In Hitler's opinion, Germany could crush Russia in a short, sharp campaign. Winter would be a period of occupying and garrrisoning the conquest, not fighting. The German General Staff agreed -- the Russian bear was a mere cub that could quickly be caged. His derision of Russia's dictator and its military establishment might have been well-founded. But his arrogance created a self-inflicted blindness among he and his generals that failed to take into account both Russia's vast size and the bitterness of its winter. No contingency plans that allowed for anything but the short campaign he was so sure of were developed. This blindness inadvertently helped his initial assault as Stalin's assumptions had never considered this possibility. But it ultimately proved his undoing as Hitler never prepared his army for a cold weather war. One month before the invasion, Hitler was advised that there was no winter clothing for the invasion. He disregarded this caution. Besides, securing all the sheepskins required for such an unlikely event would disrupt the civilian economy . Processing them would strain the textile industry. Since the war would be over by October it was unnecessary anyway. The Quartermaster General advised him that there were enough sheepskin coats for 1/5 of the invasion force. This was sufficient for those troops designated for occupation duty. The rest of his army would be back in Germany before winter set in. The need for special lubricants for operation in the cold including anti-freeze appears to have been totally ignored by the German planners or more likely overridden by Hitler. INVASION! On June 22, 1941 BARBAROSSA kicked off. Stalin's reliance on the mutton market meant that the assault was a total tactical and strategic surprise to the Russian army. It melted before the German Blitzkrieg. Germany's early conquests were vast, sharp and seemingy unstoppable in the early months. But Russia seemed endless. The October deadline came and still the country had not capitulated. WINTER COMES TO RUSSIA On October 6th Army Group Center Commander Heinz Guderian experienced his first Russian snowfall . It caused him to inquire OKW about winter clothing, boots, and woolen socks. There was no reply. In early November the temperature plunged to below freezing and kept going down. General Winter had taken over command of he defense of Russia as he had done in 1812 against Napoleon. The effect on the German Army was immediate. Alexander Stahlberg, a Battalion Adjutant with the 12th Panzer Division near Leningrad, recorded how the cold and lack of winter clothing effected the troops on the line, "In early November the 12th Division's orderly officer scoured the nearest town to assemble our winter wardrobe. Guards had to be relieved at shorter and shorter intervals especially at night. The temperature had already dropped to minus 6 degrees Centigrade. Drivers left their vehicles running continuously for heat." Frostbite was everywhere, "Frost-bitten limbs, hands, feet, ears, noses, mounted from day to day, but it was the wounded who were in the greatest danger. If frost penetrated an open wound it was unlikely that the man could be saved." Outside of Moscow a German Medical Officer, Heinrich Haape reported, "On November 13th we awoke and shivered. Instead of becoming warmer toward noon as on previous days, the thermometer kept falling and by sundown had reached minus 12 degrees Centigrade. One man who had been walking outside for a short distance without a hat came into the sick bay and both ears were white and frozen stiff. It was our first case of frost-bite. A couple day later our winter clothing arrived.: 16 great coats and 16 pairs of winter boots to be shared among a battalion of 800 men! And the meager issue coincided with a sudden drop in the temperature to minus 22 degrees Centigrade." The German soldiers spent their first Russian winter with nothing to wear but summer uniforms, overcoats and blankets. All the while they were engaged in heavy fighting with Russian soldiers who were well supplied with padded jackets, felt boots, and fur hats with ear flaps. OKW having failed to supply them with the needed supplies, one group of Germans took matters into their own hands. They carried 73 dead Russian soldiers back to their lines and stripped the bodies of their warm clothing. When the Germans found that the felt lined boots were frozen to the dead , they chopped off the legs then placed the severed feet into ovens until they thawed sufficiently to remove the invaluable boots. By December 4th, the temperature was minus 31 degrees Centigrade. On the 5th the German advance on Moscow stalled and the Russians counterattacked. The effect of the cold on the men was only one aspect of the unraveling of the German invasion. What the bitter cold did to the equipment was equally devastating. From late November the intense cold had made the optical tank sights virtually useless. Fuel froze in the tanks, oil became viscuous, machine guns could not fire, and water froze inside the boilers of the German train engines. If vehicle engines were switched off for any length of time they were almost impossible to start, unlessthey were warmed first -- by burning tins of diesel fuel underneath them.. On December 13th the German leadership acknowledged that they had been stopped -- the cause, they explained, was the Russian winter. "The Army," said Berlin, "does not expect to capture Moscow this year. Officers and men trying to take cover freeze to the ground, fighting under these conditions is practically impossible. We have no reason to expose our troops to the terrible rigors of the Russian winter." Carefully left out was the fact that Berlin had not supplied the men with anything but summer uniforms. On December 20th General Guderian met with Hitler and complained winter clothing had still not arrived for his troops. Hitler angrily denied it (whether from self-delusion or misinformation from his General Staff is not clear). It took the German Quartermaster General to convince Hitler it was true. Guderian also declared at this meeting he was losing twice as many casualties from the cold as from the fire of the Russians. His army had already taken 100,000 cases of frostbite. GERMANY'S RESPONSE Later that day Josef Goebbels, the German propaganda minister, issued an appeal to the German people to hand over their warm clothing so it could be sent to the freezing soldiers in Russia. Huge orders were placed for woolen hats, fur lined overcoats, and snow shoes. The occupied territories were scoured and stripped of what skis, sweaters, and blankets the Germans could find. It was too late. In a speech at Berlin's Sports Palace on January 30, 1942, Hitler publicly admitted that the offensive on the Eastern Front was stalled, and blamed it on the extreme cold with temperatures of minus -45 degrees. "I don't know if the war will end this year," he confessed. The German people responded to his call with an outpouring of the precious winter supplies, but it was too late. Logistical snafus and the sheer bulk of the material meant that the clothing donated by the German people finally arrived at the Russian Front -- in March. Stalin's self-delusion had nearly enslaved the Russian people under the thrall of the Nazis. Hitler's self-delusion cost him his Thousand Year Reich. For tens of millions, the blindered dictators avoidable misjudgments were fatal. Mike Flynn is an enthusiastic buried treasure hunter who often turns his detection skills to some of history's knottier mysteries. Back to Cry Havoc #3 Table of Contents Back to Cry Havoc List of Issues Back to MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1993 by David W. Tschanz. This article appears in MagWeb (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other military history articles and gaming articles are available at http://www.magweb.com