Tales from the Eastern Front

On June 22nd, 1941, during World War 2, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union. Which came as no surprise to everyone, well, everyone except Stalin, leaving the Soviets completely unprepared. They had the best intelligence service in the world at the time, they warned Stalin, but he refused to hear of it.

For months the Germans won battle after battle, and hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops surrendered or were captured. Stalin, being a lunatic, enacted new laws to ensure that every soldier in the Red Army would fight to the last man, to the last bullet. This order would become known as 'Not one step back.'

Anyone who tried to surrender would be shot or sent to prison. They're families would also be punished. When Stalin's own son was captured by The Wehrmacht, he had his daughter in law arrested, separated from her child, and sent to the Gulag for two years. Stalin once said,

'There are no prisoners of war, only traitors to their homeland’.

The Soviets would lay mines on front of their own trenches to stop people from running over to the other side. Machine gunners were placed behind their own lines with orders to shoot anyone trying to run away. If troops under your command attempted to flee or surrender, you were punished, often sent to labour camps or assigned to a penal unit whose operations involved charging the enemy machine gun positions.

The Germans were aware of this and employed specific tactics to take advantage of the situation. They would fire on the gunners behind the Soviet lines, trying to make it easier for the troops to get away, they would even send out tanks to cover the surrendering Soviet soldiers. When a soldier successfully made it to the German lines to surrender, they would give him or her warm clothes, a hot meal, and a microphone. They were then encouraged to call out to a comrade by name, 'Hey Dimitri, it's great over here, I have good food, and warm clothing, come and join me.'

It got to the point where the Soviet command structure punished insubordination so harshly, that everyone was terrified of not following any and all orders to the exact letter. It began to inhibit the commanders from making decisions on the ground. They were all so afraid, that they followed orders even when they made no sense at all. Leading to some truly exceptional situations.

The following is an account from a Red Army officer who operated on the Eastern Front in World War 2, it was published in 'Experience of War: An Anthology of Articles from MHQ: The Quarterly Journal of Military History', by Cowley Howard.

'The regimental commander has maps and orders from above, and you have nothing but a rifle and an entrenching tool. Somewhere up above, a general looks at a map and it seems reasonable to him to change the front line. He sends down an order: “At such and such a point, move five kilometres forward.” As luck would have it, there turns out to be a river just at that point. The Pyotr, it’s deep and swift, in open terrain. It would be convenient and relatively safe to sit in trenches behind this natural obstacle. But an order is an order, and you can’t say “it’s impossible to cross here”. Though from any normal man’s point of view it is indeed impossible to cross, because there are no boats, no planks, no trees, and the soldiers come from the steppe, and not only can’t swim, but many have never even seen a river.

So it starts. “Comrade lieutenant sir? I can’t go into the water! I don’t know how to swim!” But you won’t be moved to pity, it’s better to drown a soldier than to show irresoluteness or insubordination, even more so since you already reported to the battalion commander that there are no boats. Pull out your service revolver, cock it and yell, “Get into the river at once you son of a bitch! I’ll count to three, or else you’ll never go anywhere!”

The soldier goes into the water, the current seizes him, he drowns, as do all the rest that are forced in. Then you report to the battalion commander, “Comrade Major, there are only five men left in my company.”

The Major of course is furious. “What did you do to them? I didn’t hear a single shot!”

You reply, “They all drowned crossing the river Comrade Major.”

“What do you mean "drowned”?! I’ll shoot you right there like a dog!“ the Major replies.

"As you will Comrade Major, but I did report to you that there were no planks or logs to be found in the area, that the river is deep and swift and can’t be forded. You told me to stop arguing and obey orders.”

“You blockhead! What a stupid way to destroy a whole company!” The Major also feels at fault and calls the Colonel, his regimental commander.

“I gave you five hours to cross the river!” The latter shouts without listening to the Major. “Have you carried out the order?”

“No Comrade Colonel, we’ve sustained heavy losses.” The Major says.

“Losses? Well that’s fine. If there weren’t any losses our heads would roll. What happened? Everything’s quiet. Not a single shot, did they get knifed or what?”

“No, drowned.” The Major replies. “The company that was to cross over were all slant-eyes, never saw a river before, naturally they drowned since there was nothing to float on.”

The Colonel is incensed. “You son of a bitch! Why didn’t you take any pontoons? We’ve been dragging a whole transport of pontoons around, I can give you as many as you want!”

The Major replies, “I no longer need them Comrade Colonel. There are five cucumbers (Soviet soldiers) left in the first company, ten in the second, maybe twenty in the third. There’s no one left to cross.”

“You’ll have to cross anyway.” The Colonel says after pondering. “What counts is the fact that the order has been carried out, even if only one man makes it.”

Despite situations such as the above, fortunes would eventually change for the Soviet Union, and by the 29th of April, 1945, the Red Army was assaulting Berlin. The eastern front would become known as the largest military confrontation in the history of mankind. Of the 70 million deaths in World War 2, over 30 million were on the eastern front. The Soviet defeat of Germany would also be the primary reason for the collapse of The Third Reich. 

As for Stalin, there is an interesting and illuminating story from his life as a young man. He married his first wife, Ekaterina Svanidze in 1906, she was his great love. They were married sixteen months when she died of typhus at the age of 22 while their son was only 9 months old. Her death had a huge effect on the life of the future dictator. At Ekaterina's funeral, a grief-stricken Stalin told a friend,

‘This creature softened my heart of stone. She died and with her died my last warm feelings for humanity’.

His real surname was Dzhugashvili, 'Stalin' was his revolutionary nom de guerre, literally meaning 'Man of Steel.' He died after a stroke due to poor health (or possibly poisoning) in 1953, he was 74.
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