Russia Invaded: From Genghis Khan to Hitler

;-:-:'

RQ§

-=.

~ii!'

o~'!iJ:-~

© American Edition Copyright 1966 by The Lion Press, Inc.

New York, N. Y.

Publ ished simultaneously in Canada by George J. McLeod, Ltd. 73 Bathurst Street, Toronto 2B, Ontario

© Copyright 1965 by Vallecchi Editore, Florence Li brary of Congress Cata log Card No. AC 66-10867

This book was printed and bound in the Ullited States of America by American Book-Stratford Press, In c.

Contents

East and West Cast a Covetous Eye on the Cities of the Gilded Domes Emperor Napoleon's Grandiose Dream The Horror of Smolensk The Day of Borodino : Glory and Death for All Moscow: The Holy City in the Hands of the Anti-Christ Russia Annihilates the Grand Army Hitler Unleashes Operation Barbarossa The Russians Halt the Rapid Advance by Hitler at Leningrad and Moscow "Beyond the Volga There Is No More Territory" The Great Flight in World History

5 21 39 51

67 81 101 119 139 159

East and West Cast a Covetous Eye on the Cities of the Gilded Domes

5

. - - - -::::::-- - 1 1

2

6

The Golden Horde of Genghis Khan Begins the Series of Invasions

1. Genghis Khan, SOli 01 a Mongol blacksmith. H e succeeded ;11 uniting the Tartar tribes under one command Wid making them ill/o a formidable power. 2. The epic duel/ollKhl in f380 between Prince Dmitri DOliska; and th e Mongol chie/tajn ill the presence of their respective troops.

Genghis Khan, Charles XII, Napoleon , Hitler: from one century to another these names represent only a few of the attempts made by very powerful enemy nations to invade Russia and to subjugate its people permanently. Russia, situated between Europe and Asia, is an immense expanse of open territory which has always attracted the cupidity of would-be conquerors from both continents. Yet, no matter how disunited they were, or how unprepared at the moment of attack, the Russians - considered "easy" prey in the end always successfully hurled back the invaders and liberated their land. Tn the process they also wrote some of the most splendid pages in the history of mankind . . It is often said that Russia's invincibility is due to the vastness of the territory which "swallows" invaders, and to the terrible winters which destroy them. According to this view, the blizzards raging in the steppes equally halted the Mongol horsemen, Napoleon's Grand Army, and Hitler's panzer divisions. The truth, however, is that the invaders were always beaten in combat by the Russians before they were covered in the white shrouds of the snow. For the real strength of the Russians lies in their deep attachment to the land, in their love for national independence. Down the centuries this has raised a wall between the Russians and the invaders of their country more impregnable than the Chinese Wall, and a barrier more insurmountable than a thousand miles of frozen steppes. Contrary to general belief, the Russian people always preferred national regimes, no matter how despotic they were, to the dubious freedom blazoned on the banners of the foreigner. The serfs, for example, did not join Napoleon's armies against Czarist absolut-

7

]

ism; and in our time the resistance of Soviet peasants and workers to Hitler's armies was dogged, heroic, to the bitter end. The similarities that mark the different invasions of Russian territory a re numerous and consequently invite comparisons and parallels; the differences, however, are equally numerous and significant. What particularly stands out is the fact that on every occasion the behavior of the Russian people has always been the same : a desperate resistance, born of a genuine and profound love of country. Tn the end this resistance always triumphed over the invaders.

The first " invasion" of Russian territory was a peaceful one, by the Varangians - Baltic merchants who ventured to operate along the rivers that flowed endlessly through the Russian plain. The Varangians used these winter routes in order to transport their merchandise down to the Black Sea, to the Mediterranean, to the biggest market of the Middle East, Byzantium. They began their activities in the ninth century. Thi s led to the construction of a series of fortifications which were manned by small detachments of soldiers. Their mission was to protect the passage of merchant ships through a territory whose inhabitants were viewed as potentially unreliable. Therefore the arrival of the Varangians in Russia ca nnot be called a n invasion or even a military occupation. It was merely a kind of police service established over the stretches of the water routes at commercially strategic points, for example at the intersection of two rivers. Thus was born the principality of Kiev, the richest and the most powerful of the V arangian settlements. Tn Kiev the chieftains of the local tribe,

8

3. The M ongolian warriors learned from th e Chinese how to shoot arrows with deadly accuracy, how to besiege a city, alld how to exact taxes.

known as the Russ, immediately realized the importance which the locality had for the Varangians, situated as it was at the crossroads of routes pointing to a n immensely vast world beyond: the caravan trails originating in Asia, in the lands around the Caspian Sea, in the area around the Black Sea, in Byzantium and on the shores of the Sea of Azov. It was not long before the Russ tribe got the upper hand over the Swedish merchants, attacking them or cooperating with them according to the circumstances . By the tenth century this tribe was already a power to be reckoned with. The territory it controlled was actually called Russ, from which the name of the whole country was derived later. The first real invaders of Russia were the TatarsTartars - who came from the Far East. Nobody in Europe at that time knew anything about these barbarians, but soon their name everywhere was to become a synonym for terror and devastation. When the Tartars arrived in Russia , pouring in from the Caucasus and spreading as far as the Dalmatian coast, they were already on the decline as a people. They made only a fleeting appearance in Europe, but in Russia their rule lasted for a very long time and had notable consequences. The Russians had their first brush with these Mongols in 1224, when the "Golden Horde" - as the Mongol army was called - had wrested Tibet and much of central Asia from China. The Russians had been entreated to intervene by the Polovtsy, the tribes who lived between the Caspian and the lower Volga. The Polvotsy, in fact, sent one of their chieftains, Kotyan, to Kiev to ask for help . The Russian princes knew nothing whatsoever about these Tartars. But Kotyan eagerly explained that they were a savage and cruel people who had already conquered Samarkand,

4. The interior of a Mongol yurt, a tell I made of fell supported by a woodell framework.

4

Herat, and Bokhara, and had wholly devastated Georgia and Daghestan with fire and sword. Hence there was no doubt that once they wiped out the Polovtsy, the Mongols would fall upon the Russians like famished hawks. At Kiev the princes assembled an army of 80,000 men and marched southward in the direction of the Sea of Azov. After several skirmishes the Russians, at the decisive battle fought on the banks of the Kalka River, realized that tbey were dealing not with savage hordes, but with highly skilled warriors. Only a few of the 80,000 Russians managed to escape, and several of their leaders, among them the Grand Prince of Kiev, were forced to surrender after the Russian negotiators had obtained from the Mongols a promise to release them upon payment of a ransom. It was a cruel deception. Instead, the Tartars forced their prisoners to stretch out on the ground, then they built a wooden platform on top of them and riotously feasted upon it in celebration of their victory. The victors' shouts of joy drowned out the moans and cries, growing progressively weaker, of the poor wretches who had believed their promises. Then the Tartars broke camp and went back toward Asia, entranced by the boundless horizons. Nobody in Kiev, or in the rest of Russia , could ever find out where they went, and after a few years nobody ever gave them a thought. Who were these irresistible warriors who seemed to have emerged directly out of the jaws of hell ? They had come down from Mongolia, where up to a few years before they had led the wretched existence of nomads. Their destiny had been marked out for them from the moment that a certain bogatyr - the chief of a drLlzhina (the combat unit into which the tribes

were subdivided) - appeared on the scene. This bogatyr was called Temuchin, which means "good metal ," the name which had been given him by his father, a blacksmith. But this name was forgotten when, after a long string of victories, he assumed the title Genghis Khan, which meant "Great Chief." Temuchin was orphaned at the age of thirteen , after his father was killed by a rival belonging to another dru zhina. Temuchin grew up with an unquenchable thirst for vengeance. While presumably concerned only with forging the iron for making arrows and lances as his father had done before him, he certainly must have sensed that he would not always be a smith. As soon as he reached adulthood he achieved a moral ascendancy over the members of his druzhina. Temuchin then gathered together a group of venturesome young men and set out to avenge his father. He launched an attack against the encampment of the rival tribe, massacred all the men and boys, and let his followers divide the women of thc conquered foe among themselves. Now he was not only the commander of his drLl zhina, but also of the defeated unit. His road was clearly marked out for him now. Soon Temuchin was at the head of his people, who for the first time were united under a single command. He succeeded in carving out an enormous empire which stretched from Pek i ng to Persia "as far as horses' hoofs could reach ," in the words of the chronicler of the deeds of Genghis Khan. It is a suggestive expression, but it hardly gives an adequate idea of the successes of this military leader who now ruled a territory of 3720 square miles. It required twelve months to traverse this vast stretch of territory through almost impenetrable forests and endless steppes.

9

5

We owe whatever we know about the Tartars to an Italian friar, Giovanni dal Pian del Carpine. He was a Franciscan whom the Pope sent as ambassador to the cou rt of the successor of Genghis Khan , after the latter's death . In his "Historia Mongolorum ," this friar relates that the Tartars, although savages, had been able to exploit the state organization of the Chinese whom they subjected to their rule. From them they learned many things, including how to shoot arrows with deadly accuracy, how to besiege a city, and how to set up a workable system for exacting taxes. They had highly organized armies and precise rules of strategy from which they rarely deviated. They fought on horseback for maximum mobility and assailed their foes by an enveloping tactic aimed at cutting them up into smaller units so as to bottle them up each time more closely within the sector which they had cut off from the principal arena of action. After crushing the enemy they would resume their march, leaving behind a mountain of corpses ; few managed to escape alive from a defeat at the hands of the Mongols. When the Golden Horde set out on a military expedition it dragged everything and everybody along with it, even families. Each druzhina , in fact , moved from one end to the other of the boundless dominion, followed by endless caravans, characterized by the slow wave-like movement of the great yurts mounted on wagons which were dragged by two rows of oxen. The yurt was a tent made of white or black felt wrapped around a wooden framework in the form of a truncated cone. It had an opening at the top. The Mongols were cheats and deceivers, idolators, fiercely proud and quick to anger. They never washed their clothes and ate lice, rats, dogs, foxes "and also humans in case of necessity."

10

Giovanni dal Pian del Carpine has described one of their favorite recipes: they kept a piece of meat all day long between the saddle and the back of the horse, "cooking it" with the heat of the animal's body. At night, after a long day's journey, dinner was ready in the form of a sizzling steak! Tn 1215, when Peking fell, Genghis Khan's men razed the city after sacking it and conducting a frightful massacre of its inhabitants. After a month of systematic terror of all kinds, even the ruins were destroyed in a gigantic fire. The fate suffered by Peking was similar to that of all the other cities conquered by the Mongols of the Golden Horde. It provides the most substantial proof of the backwardness of these nomads, who simply had no comprehension of the social, administrative, and political function of a great city, and never hesitated to destroy the splendid riches of the peoples they had conquered. The subjugation of China was not an easy task for the Mongols. Even though the Chinese empire was at that time governed by an easy-going ruling class, more disposed to discuss abstruse philosophical problems than to fight , the resistance was bitter and the Great Wall held back the Golden Horde for a long time. However, the China against which Temuchin fought was divided into three kingdoms. For this reason its capacity to resist was very much weakened. Genghis Khan did not live to See the end of the great enterprise ; he died in 1227, a few days before the surrender of Ning-hia, the capital of the kingdom of Tangut, in the northwestern territory of the Chinese empire. His generals, however, brought the conquest to its conclusion in a manner that was in keeping with Tartar tradition. Indeed , in accordance with Genghis Khan's last will, the defenders of Ning-hia were all put to the sword. "The greatest happiness in

5 . Ti,e Great Wall did nOl save the Chinese (rom the Tartars: Peking fell in 1215 . Gel/ghis Kha" o rdered the maS.w cre of all the inhabitants before razing the city to the grolllld.

6

6. Map showing th e greater principalities of Russia befo re the Grand Prince of Mosco w united the immense territory. Tartar rule came to an end only after the unification was complete.

life," Temuchin once said , "consists in beating your enemies, in forcing them to flee, in plundering their belongings, in seeing the despair of their kinsmen , in riding their horses, in stealing their wives and their daughters. " He was succeeded by his third-born son , Ogdai , who led the Golden Horde to Europe. When the Mongols attacked Russia , in 1236, Genghis Khan had been dead for nine years. The army that marched towards the West was composed of 500,000 men under the command of Batu, a nephew of the great Khan. He was assisted by the two gencrals who had led Genghis Khan's vanguards against the Polovtsy in 1224 and had defeated the princes of Kiev, Gebe and Subutai. The Volga region absorbed the first shock: the Mongols had crossed the river and directly threatened the principality of Ryazan. The tribute exacted was enormou s. Batu demanded "a tenth of everything"that is to say. a tenth part of the nobles, a tenth part of the women, a tenth part of the territory, a tenth part of the harvests, a tenth part of the money. Ryazan's defenders replied with a proud "no," even though theirs was the only principality putting up any resistance to the advance of the Golden Horde. "After our death," the noble defenders replied to the Mongols, "you will be able to have everything, not just the tenth part of everything." It was a proud reply, but militarily worthless. The Mongols started their push on December 12, 1237 ; they conquered Ryazan, put it to the torch and made a desolation of the whole principality. The city held out for six days, which had infuriated the Mongols. Batu ordered that half of the surviving citizens be killed immediately, so the soldiers of the Golden Horde lopped off several hundred heads with their scimitars. The other half of the terrified citizens were herded into a square

and burned alive. "God VISits these punishments upon us through the incursions of pagans," explains the so-called Laurentius Chronicle, "since these are His scourge until we return to reason and we abandon our wicked ways. God therefore lets this misfortune break over us on our feast days, as the prophet has said: 'I will change your feast days into lamentations, your songs into sobs.' And they conquered the city already before noon .... " The other cities underwent the same fate: a few days later, Moscow, which was not yet considered a city of more than secondary importance, also fell to the Golden Horde. Two months later, galloping wildly over fields covered with ice, the Mongols reached Vladimir, which they surrounded and assaulted with their terrifying machines for besieging cities, reducing it to a pile of smoking ruins. Now the Golden Horde was only about 66 miles from magnificent Novgorod, Russia's most important commercial .center. At this point, however, Batu ordered his horsemen to turn back across the frozen steppes. The Mongol commander probably feared that the thaw would impede the movements of the cavalry and prevent the druzhinas mounted on the oxen-drawn wagons from fOllowing the army. Batu remained encamped between the Volga and the Don for two years. He bled white the occupied territory, as well as the adjoining territories which he threatened to invade, with his demands for tribute. Tn 1239 he resumed operations against the "Court of the Gilded Domes," Kiev, the "mother of Russian cities," the city which was to fa scinate the Tartars with the riches proclaimed by the golden cupolas of hcr churches. Leaving Kiev behind him, Batu continued the advance towards Poland, Bohemia, and Hungary.

\I

7. Olle of the most bellulijul and famous Russian icons. Russian artisls lor a lo ng time reflected the Byzantine influence and offen allai"ed th e lo/tiest artistic expression. Kiev and Novgorod are the cradles 61 Russiwl art. 8. A Mon gol yurt mounted 0 11 an enormous wagon drawn by two row~' 0/ oxen. These mobile tenls allowed the Golden Horde to drag the whole tribe along with it during its military expeditions.

7

Only two Russian CItIes remained standing: Great Novgorod and Pskov, while the territories occupied by the Tartars rem ained cut off from the rest of the world for a long time. All this notwi thsta ndin g, the Russians never gave up their resistance to the invader, although his rule now extended from the Urals to the Carpathians, from the Caucasus up to 250 miles north of Moscow. This, incidentally, explains the survival of many Mongol words in the Russian language of today, such as ko/pak (a cone-like cap made of animal skin) and many epithets of an insulting character. They called the city "Gospodin Velikii Novgorod ," "Sovereign Great Novgorod." It was the administrative center of the territories of SI. Sophia, the only strip of Russian earth - north of Polotsk, Smolensk, T ver, Moscow and Rostov - which the T artars had not conquered. Nevertheless, not even Novgorod , so proud of her independence, could escape the vexations of the great M ongol power which threatened her from close by. However, it is probable that the T artars preferred to leave Novgorod alone and to let the city conduct her brisk trade with the aim of extor·ting enormous ransoms from her later. The political situation of the city, to which the refugees from the mass exodus in Kiev had fl ed, remained very precarious, continuously threatened not only by the Mongols to the sou th , but by the Swedes from the north, and the Prussians from the west. Finally Novgorod preferred - as long as it was possible - to remain at peace with the Tartars at the price of a harsh vassalage so that she could defend herself on a single front , namely the northwestern. This was why "Gospodin Velikii Novgorod" was in a position to face the Swedes in 1240, the year in which the Mon-

12

gols reduced Kiev to a heap of ruins. The Swedes swooped down with the intention of fi ghting a kind of holy war - they were helped by the Crusaders, who wore the heavy suits of armor of the T eut onic Knights - but the army of Novgorod, under the command of Prince Alexander, destroyed them in a battle fought along the banks of the Neva. The clash had the significance of a victory of Greek Orthodox against Roman Catholics, and Alexander was given the name Nevsky ( Alexander of the Neva ), with which he was to pass into history and be inscribed in the golden book of Russia's national heroes. It was not long before the offensive against Novgorod was resumed , this time by the Prussians or, more specifically, by the Knights of the T eutonic Order. Even in this case the aggression was masked as a holy war, indeed as a crusade to bring the faith to the remote, desolate northern territories. The Teutonic Order of the Knights of the Sword had been founded in 1143, just before the Second Crusade. That period also saw the birth of two other monastic-knightly orders established for the defense of the feudal regimes that the Europeans had set up in the Middle East in the territories wrested from the infidels - namely , the Knights Templars, created in I 118 , and the Knights of Jerusalem. At the dawn of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III again . appealed to the Knights to redeem the Holy Sepulcher. The European sovereigns did not take part in this Crusade ( preceding ones had been joined by Louis IX, king of France, the emperor Frederick Barbarossa, and the king of England, Richard the Lion-Hearted) but only the major exponents of the feudal world, as the knights of the three orders could be properly considered. It was in Venice that the undertaking, which had

been brought into being by the Pope's exhortations, lost every religious purpose. Bereft of funds for the journey, the Crusaders, urged on by the Venetia ns, were forced to stri ke the enemy at his most vital point, Constantinople. The Pope was grievously di sappointed, but he did not withdraw his spiritual support from the Crusaders because of this. The launching of the Fourth Crusade .was only one of the apostolic tasks that Innocent III had set him self. The broad papal program also included the "reconquest" of Spain , then occupied by the Arabs (the Moorish dominion in the Iberian penninsula was greatly reduced after the great victory of Las Novas of Toloso, and was limited to the Kingdom of Granada), and the C rusade of the North . Thi s was the Crusade which was co nducted by the Kings of the Teutonic Order (d uring the very period when the war against Constantinople was being waged in the south ) in the Baltic countries. It was a holy war, at least in the beginning, the aim of which was to convert those frozen lands to Christianity. The Knights Teutonic were well eq uipped and well organized: they had won a good reputation as fighters on the great plains northeast of the Holy Roman Empire at the beginnin g of the thirtee nth century. The King of Hungary had assigned them the task of conquering for him Transylvania, the country which lay beyond the Ca rpathians, and they had carried out their task brilliantly, completely wiping out the pagan tribe of the C umans. The struggle against the populations of Prussia and the Baltic had taken longer, but not without successes. The Knights of the Sword used the same method as the Crusaders. Befo re going into battle in their ponderous brown suits of armor they would hea r Mass. Then, aft er making the sigh of the Cross, they would

lift themselves into their saddles, lower thei r vIsors over their eyes, and rush at the enemy. When the battle was over, the conquered were baptized o n a mass basis, after whi ch the constr uction of churches began in the conquered country. The Knights naturally exacted heavy tribute from the defeated foe, and these monies served to fina nce the undertakings themselves as well as the other ac ti vities for the propagation of the faith . The conquest of the te rrito ries, further, was accompanied by a mass emigration by German colonists to the new territories that had been opened to the new faith and to colonization. Gradually the Catholic peasants ga ined asce ndancy in wealth and even in numbers in the new territories and thus constituted a guarantee of the continuity of the conquests. In this way, Finland, Li vonia , Hungary, and Rum ani a were won for the fa ith. Tn the north the Knights of the Teutonic Order were given a helping hand by the Swedish princes. Novgorod had been saved by its prince, Alexander. on July 15 , 1240. The Knights, however. tried again shortly thereafter. They sta rted out from Livonia and conquered the Russian cities of Isborsk and Pskov. Never had the danger been greater, and Alexander Nevsky had to take up arms again to defend his land; this time the Teutonic Knights aimed directly at the capital. Alexander launched a crushing counter-offensive; the army of Novgorod liberated Pskov and immediately afterwards engaged the invaders on the thick layer of ice that covered Lake Peipus. The Knights of the Teutonic Order, weighed down by their heavy suits of armor, suffered a shattering defeat because the ice crust began to crack under them. The Russians managed to save themselves by retreating in time, but the Nordic crusaders were ingloriously swallowed up in

13

9

9. Two knights 0/ the Teutonic Order with their visors QI'er their faces. The Knights were Crusaders who

fo ught to bring the Christian faith to the lands 0/ flortllem Europe.

the icy waters of the lake. This event occurred on April 5, 1242. Alexander Nevsky, who had saved Novgorod in two wars, and who had defended the freedom of SI. Sophia against the demands of the Tartars, the Swedes, and the Teutonic Knights, was proclaimed a

t4

saint of the Russian Church, which decreed for him the honor reserved only for the greatest national heroes. But Tartar rule was to continue for a long time. It was not until 1380 that a military leader appeared who was capable of standing up to the Mongols of

10. The invasion of the Teutonic Knights came to a halt with the Russian ,,;crory all Lake Peipus; the Knights' heavy suits of armor caused the layer of ice that had formed on the lake's surface 10 break, and mosl of the Crusaders perished. These are scenes from the film "A lexander Nevsky" by the Russian director, Serge Eisenstein.

the Golden Horde. This leader, Dmitri , was not the Prince of Novgorod, but the Prince of Moscow. The capital of the territories of St. Sophia, in fact, was already in a period of decadence, whereas the principality of Rostov and Suzdal was increasing its power from year to year, due to the steady growth of Moscow. The first victory over the Horde was achieved after a fierce battle fou ght at Kulikovo, in the Don valley. Dmitri was honored with the name Donskoi (Demetrius of the Don ). It was not a definitive victory, but the news that the Tartars were no longer invincible created an enormous sensation in every corner of the Russia n land and made it clear to all that the country would be in a position to liberate itself from the foreigners' yoke, once it was united . The Great Principality of Moscow, indeed, had all the requisites to assume the role of the activating and organizing center of national life. However, it was against Moscow and its territory that henceforth the T artars or the Lithuanians unleashed their offensives, and Moscow ended by becoming the fortress that defended all Russia . Dmitri Donskoi extended the territories of the principality by also subjugating Novgorod. Ivan III made this occupation definite. At last, taking advantage of the struggles that for some time now had been weakening the Golden Horde, Ivan bluntly refused to pay the centuries-old tribute to the invader. In response, the Mongols did something most unusual: they entered into an alliance with the Lithuanians, with the intention of bringing the Grand Prince of Moscow to reason by placing him between two fires. But Ivan III triumphed; Russia was freed from the yoke of the invaders, and Moscow now beca me its capital. Moscow's position was further strengthened by Ivan's marriage to the niece of the

last emperor of Byzantium , Sophia Paleologus. Subsequently, the Russia n people considered Moscow the successor of Byzantium, a succession that was both political a nd religious. A few years later, a nephew of Ivan III assumed the title of Czar or "Caesar." Moscow was now the third R ome. At the beginning of the eighteenth century Russia was again engaged in another struggle, equally grave for the salvation of her territory and independence. Once more the danger came from the northwest, from Sweden, one of the great European powers of that time. Actually the Swedish action was a counteroffensive, since the war had been started by the Russians. But this in no way deprives this undertaking, ventured by one of the greatest military leaders of Europe, Charles XII, of its importance. At that time the Russia n throne was occup ied by Peter I. He was to pass into history as Peter the Great: a giant in stature, unconventional a nd exuberant, barbarous and impatient, and wholly bent upon making Russia into a modern European power. He had devoted the greater part of his time to preparing an army that could stand comparison with other Western armies, to building a navy for his country, to abolishing the outworn customs which were at the roots of Russia's backwardness. For this reason he undertook a long journey to Europe in order to check personally on how Westerners were living. He worked incognito as a carpenter in a Dutch shipyard , he went to lectures at a German university, and also attended several sessions of the British Parliament. Even though these experiences had little effect on his profoundly Russian temperament, and even though such exposures had done little to refine his manners, this journey and his contact with friend s abroad

15

11

11. Tamer/one a Mongol leader in cen tral Asia, who claimed descent from Genghis Khan. His warriors occupied most of Russia, destroying and pil/aging every where they went. 12. Peter the Great, aile 0/ the most singular figures of Russian history, and (he firsl architect of hi,~ coun try's power. /3 . A Cossack encampment. The defection 0/ th e Cossacks and Ihe failure 0/ Mazeppa's secession were amollg the principal causes lor th e deleat suffered by Charles XII.

strengthed Peter's resolve to make Russia a country abreast of the times. After defeating the Turks and conquering Azov, Peter the Great turned his attention to the northern borders, forging an alliance with Poland, Saxony, and Denmark against Sweden. There was a very simple reason for this war: namely to give Russia a port that would allow her to have not only a bastion but also a commerical outlet to the Baltic Sea. As regards Charles XII of Sweden, historians are in agreement as to his stubborn character, his physical stamina , and his military skill. He had ascended the throne at the age of fifteen , in 1697, and in the beginning he had deeply disappointed the great dignitaries of the realm because it seemed that he took no interest at all in the affairs of state. But the war against the Czar of Russia transformed him completely, inducing him to study military strategy seriously. Sweden had an excellent army, magnificently equipped with artillery pieces made of iron from her own mines. As soon as King August the Strong of Poland , aided by the Saxon army, tried to conquer Riga, and Denmark attacked Schleswig, a state allied with Sweden, Charles XII effected a landing in front of Copenhagen and after unleashing a real Blitzkrieg, he forced the Danes to surrender. At that very moment Peter ordered his army to march against Sweden: 30,000 Russians besieged the city of Narva, but the Swedes rushed to the help of the attacked city and met the Russians head-on in the open field. The battle was fought on November 19, 1700, in a raging blizzard. The foot soldiers and cavalrymen .fould hardly see each other. The Russians were defeated, and the Czar made himself ridiculous because he had left the encampment on the day before the battle "in order to seek reinforcements."

16

All Europe harshly criticized this sovereign who seemed to have been so cowardly as to abandon his luckless soldiers. The victory filled the Swedes and their king with enthusiasm. They held long meetings on the next step that should be taken. Some of the advisers argued that now was the time to face Poland resolutely since the fight with Denmark and Russia could be considered over - while others favored a full attack against Russia. According to them , revolution inevitably would break out in Moscow and in the other cities as a result of the severe defeat suffered by Peter 1. Thus the Swedes would be able to take advantage of the deep discontent that the Czar had provoked among the different social strata of his subjects. Charles XII listened to the two factions and made his decision ; he attacked Poland , putting off the encounter with Russia until the flow of his supplies and equipment was ensured. These supplies were to be taken from the Poles. Peter made good use of the precious time that had been granted to him by moving north , towards the Gulf of Finland, and Livonia, while the whole country was mobilized to reconstitute the army and to replace the artillery pieces that had been lost at Narva. These were unforgettable, heroi c years for the Czar and for Russia. Hundreds of church bells were melted down to be turned into cannon, while the army increased on the Baltic coasts. The Czar personally supervised the works for the construction of a new city at the mouth of the Neva - the longedfor port on the northern frontiers of the country, St. Petersburg, the modern-day Leningrad. Only a wooden fortress was built at first. Later, provisions were made to layout the port and soon the first buildings were constructed. Peter was a man who

13

12

never took "no" for an answer and who knew the best system for getting what he wanted. When the question arose of conveying large numbers of masons, carpenters, and craftsmen to the new city, he did not hesitate to issue an unusual edict: only wooden houses henceforth could be built in Russia! With this law he literally forced masons, smiths, and all artisans whom the edict had driven into unemployment to transfer to St. Petersburg. Thus Russia succeeded in opening for herself a window on Europe ; it was a city born of nothing, in a swampridden, malaria-infested zone, constantly under the threat of inundation. The Swedes vainly tried to destroy the city which was coming into being. Peter doggedly defended his child and even launched a counter-offensive, beating the enemy several times and occupying fortresses and cities, among them the ill-fated Narva, where he perpetrated a massacre in which not even children and women were spared. Finally, however, Charles XII, having gotten the upper hand over Saxony and Poland, turned his attention to Russia. Peter sounded the alarm to his whole empire and ordered cities to be fortifi ed, including Moscow. Further, he ordered the evacuation of Pskov and established his headquarters at Grodno. He was aware that he was on the eve of a duel to the death. The assault on Russia began with one of those strategic moves characteristic of the capricious and enterprising King of Sweden, who struck at the point where the Russians felt most secure. Charles XII swept past the frontier by crossing the Niemen , and attacked Grodno, taking possession not only of the city but also of its warehouses. The surprise action, however, turned out badly, since Charles XII did not

t7

14 . Mazeppa the Cossack leader who had promised the Swedish king that 30,000 Cos.fllch would lend a strong helping hand to his (lfmy (lRa;lIsl Peter the Great.lnstead, Ihe Cossacks remained loyal to Ille Czar. 15. Charles XII of Sweden, olle of history's great Kellerals. His attempt to conquer Russia failed 01 Pol/a va: the Swedish army was wiped Olit by the Russians under Peler ' he Greal.

16. Smoiellsk, a city which has always been/atoll), in th e path 0/ aff armies that haw! illraded Russia.

14

15

succeed in capturing the Czar as he had hoped. The Czar had left for SI. Petersburg only a short while before! The capture of Grodno, however, made Peter understand that the war would be long and terrible. So the Czar issued an order: retreat to the east leaving the enemy a scorched earth on which he would find nothing of use to him. At the same time Peter T made Charles XII know that he would agree to a peace whenever Sweden would agree that Russia could keep her port in SI. Petersburg. Charles XII was still convinced that it would not be difficult to beat the Russians, whose army had been hastily improvised and who did not have at their disposal all the artillery and equipment that formed the pride of the Swedish army. He replied that he would negotiate with the Czar, but only in Moscow. It soon dawned upon the Swedes, however, that they had plunged into a nasty adventure: Russia was terrifyingly vast; the country had no roads and offered neither provisions nor supplies for the men and the horses. Slowly the army of Charles XII opened a path for itself in the direction of Golovchin, through the forests of Minsk. It was necessary to build a road yard bY' yard, so that the wagons could get through. But this first required that the trees be cut down to force an opening. Then the thaw set in and the bridgeless rivers swelled, the plains became morasses, the horses died, the soldiers were exhausted and supplies began to run dangerously low. The Swedes crossed the Berezina and quartered in Mogilev . Hope for reinforcements from the homeland dwindled from day to day, since news had arrived that the Russian army was on the move to prevent a junction between the forces coming from Latvia and those of Charles XII. An extraordinary personage in Russian history then

18

/6·

came to the aid of the invaders. This was the "Hetman" Ivan Mazeppa, the chieftain of the Cossacks of the Ukraine. The Cossacks had always claimed their independence vis-ii-vis the central government, but up to that time they could not do much to achieve their freedom. Mazeppa reckoned that Peter I eventually would surrender to the invader, and hence thought that the hour of the Ukraine's independence had struck. It seems confirmed, however, that when the invasion began, Charles XII had already obtained a promise that the Ukraine would help the Swedes: Mazeppa assured him that 30,000 Cossacks would take up arms against Peter. The Czar went into action. While on the one hand he met head-on the auxiliary body of troops for which Charles was still waiting, on the other he openly accused Mazeppa of apostasy from the faith for having allied himself with Protestant invaders. The Hetman replied by accusing the Czar of tyranny, but when the chips were down Mazeppa delivered only 3,000 Cossacks to Charles XII : the Ukraine had not betrayed the faith , and the Russians took Mazeppa's city - Baturin - by storm, sacking it and impaling the traitor's partisans. By November 1708, the situation .of the Swedes was very precarious. The army of fresh troops, bringing badly needed supplies, had been destroyed, the Cossacks were no real help, and Peter I was drawing perilously near. Charles XII still seemed determined to bring the war to a conclusion and hoped that the Turks would take advantage of his expedition to brave their centuries-old enemy and that even the Tartars in the Crimea would take to the field on his side. On the hasis of such considerations he decided to lay siege to a Russian fortress, Poltava. He wanted to make it known that he was continuing to advance

and to win in the heart of Russia. Wearing an ordinary soldier's uniform, sleeping on the ground in a tent like those of his soldiers, contenting himself like his troops with a small daily ration of hardtack , refusing the coat that Mazeppa had offered him as a gift, Charles XII tried to infuse courage into his men , although the army was now stripped of artillery and munitions. According to some military experts the Swedish invasion failed only because of a series of mishaps. Peter I met the invaders under the walls of Poltava and defeated them after a long battle whose outcome was uncertain throughout. It seems that Charles XII dangerously divided and broke up his troops and that he could not efficiently command the battle because of a foot wound. The fact is that at Po!tava, when the Swedes were on the point of surrender, Peter I threw his reserves into the fray , and it was then that the Czar gave orders to his artillery to fire on the invaders at point-blank range. The battle had begun on the morning of June 27, 1709, and at noon 8,000 of the Swedes were in flight, while an equal number lay in heaps on the ground or were prisoners of the Russians. Peter I had put more than 42,000 men in the field and at the end of the battle the officers reported that the army had lost 1,435 soldiers, while another 3,290 were wounded. The Russian superiority in the matter of artillery had been overwhelming: 72 cannon to 4. The Czar realized that the victory had been won only because of this superiority, and in the evening he proposed a toast in honor of the Swedish officers and prisoners of war, hailing them as masters of the art of warfare. At that very moment Charles XII was desperately galloping towards Russia's southern frontiers with a handful of ioyal followers, in order to seek safety in Turkish territory.

19

17

17. A Russian floblemall. More dramatically than anywhere else. the gllff between a minority 0/ privileged persons and the great masses was a characteristic 0/ Russian 1Ii.~tory. Clrarles XIl, Napoleoll and H itler counted 011 a rebellion 0/ the Russian people agai/lst tlie regimes thaI dominated them. 18. Prince Potemkin's Russian troops attacking the jortress at Oehaka\'. Th e prince, a favorite 0/ Catherine 0/ Russia, slIcceeded in removing the Turkish threat (0 file Russiml f rontier.

18

--

~~1,.... -

-

_

20

..._-.

Emperor Napo/eon' s Grandiose Dream

21

"Are we not the soldiers of Austerlitz?"

19. In 1812. a "all-million soldiers from all pariS of Europe mOI"eel itl a constant flow towards the Russian fronti ers: Nap(>/ nl'm was ahoUl to fllZ/cash his ollslaught.

A boatload of sappers was the first element of the invasion army to cross the Russian border - the Niemen River. Their boat silently cut its way through the swift-moving current and soon pulled alongside the opposite bank. Cautiously, the soldiers landed on Russian soil and looked around. Strangely enough there was not a soul in sight. Some officers on horseback had remained on the other side of the river and behind them, waiting silently, were several crack units of skirmishers. The bulk of Napoleon's army was hidden from view, being well concealed behind the heights and in the thickness of the woods. The sapper patrol moved up for a few yards in the direction of the forest, from which a Russian cavalryman suddenly emerged, riding directly up to them. He was a Cossack officer. Some slipped their arms through the slings of their muskets but did not have time to load them. The Cossack, making his horse rear in front of the intruders, demanded: "Who are you?" "Frenchmen." "What do you want?" " We have come to wage war on you!" one of the soldiers snapped. "And to take Vilna and liberate Poland!" Tn reply the officer spurred his horse and galloped off wildly towards the woods. Some soldiers managed to fire their muskets at his retreating figure, but the Cossack quickly reached the forest and in seconds he was safe among the birch trees. The date was June 22 , 1812. Thus began the war between Emperor Napoleon and Czar Alexander's Russia. No diplomat had officially announced the start of hostilities, but it was no sec ret that a war between them was in the offing. At any rate as soon a s the Cossack officer reached his encampment a

23

20. Napoleoll crowned Em peror. A II Ihe monarchs

0/

21

Europe realized 11,01 the "little corporal," having come so far, would never set a limit to his ambitions. So they prepared ( 0 de/end their own crowns.

2 J. Josephine de Beauharnais, the Creole widow whom Napoleon had married in 1796, when he was at th e beginnillg 0/ his ca reer. The need lor Ofl heir to llis throlle induced Napoleoll to dinolve this marriage alld marry M arie Louise 0/ Austria. 22. Napoleoll's marriage was celebrated if! 1810.

10

Marie Louise

12

courier was despatched to Vilna with the news that the invasion had begun . The Czar was immediately informed ; at that moment he was a guest in the palace of the ci ty's most aristocratic famil y and was dancing with his beautiful hostess.

Nearly four months before, on March 2, the crack artillery unit of the Italian division of Napoleon's army had pulled out of Verona bound for the Brenner Pass. Nobody knew where the soldiers were going, not even their commanders. Besides, it was not the first time that Itali ans were being enlisted to follow the French Emperor in his undertakings. But this time there was a general and uneasy feeling that Napoleon was preparing something really big. Various signs justified the apprehension of the local populace: the severe conditions attached to the enlistments, the meticulousness of the preparations, the extraordinarily great agglomeration of men , munitions, and supplies. Among the troops rumors were rampant: some claimed that the army was bound for Austria and Prussia, while others assured their comrades that Poland was to be their destination. The one bare fact seemed to be that somewhere in Central Europe the Italian contingent would be attached to armies coming from the other countries of the empire in order to form that army which already had a name: the Grand Army. Filippo Pisani , a young officer, was one of these soldiers who bade his wife a sad farewell that morning in Verona. He was a native of the city and had spent his last night at home; at dawn he had reported to his barracks and now he was marchin g with his soldiers through the streets of the city in a northerly direction, towards the road leading to the Brenner

25

23. The King 0/ England views Napo/eon. in a caricature by Gillray. After the de/eat at Tralalgar, Napoleon gave up the idea of invading England. But he hoped to bend his irreducible enemy to his will throuch the continental blockade.

24. Napoleon taking his leave trom Czar A lexa"der of Russia, afler the meeting at Tilsi!. The friendship was 0/ brief duratioll. 25. The Spanish people also resisted Napoleon's attempt to dominate Europe: they bled the French arllly white in a desperate guerrilla war.

23

Pass. People were gathered along the streets and leaning out of windows to watch the parade, but the fanfare and the waving banners did not ease the tension that weighed upon the city. When the artillery unit passed under the windows of Pisani's house, a young women rushed headlong out of the doorway. The officer embraced his wife once more, not without a little embarrassment, but then he was forced to drop out of the ranks because the poor girl was about to faint. "Supporting her in my arms," wrote Filippo Pisani in his diary later, "I led her back to the house and I had doubly to inflict on her the pang of such a cruel separation." Similar scenes took place all over Europe during those days. From France, from Holland, from all the German states, from Italy, from the Kingdom of Naples, from Austria and from Spain, from all Europe, which was now under the imperial sway of the great Corsican military chieftain - endless columns of soldi ers were marching towards the east with gigantic convoys of horses, mules, herds of livestock, fodder, baggage, victuals, flour, munitions, artillery pieces. Nobody had ever seen such a spectacle before: a half-m illion men, with all their supplies, were getting ready to carry out a truly exceptional and breath-taking enterprise. Only at the apex of this colossal military organization was there a person who knew for sure just what the general staff in Paris was planning and perfecting to the last detail: Napoleon had decided to launch an attack against Russia that would bring her to her knees once and for all. The reasons for this new war were not clear to everybody, but so great was the confidence in Napoleon's invincibility that none of those who were aware of what was really afoot were unduly concerned. At the age of 43, Napoleon was

26

the most powerful, the most feared, and the most idolized man in the world. Had he not brought his armies to every corner of the continent, after overcoming all obstacles? For better or worse, Europe had been forced to recognize his authority; even proud Austria, ruled by the oldest dynasty in the world, the Hapsburgs, paid him obeisance. Only the Spaniards, stubbornly, were still waging a strange guerrilla war against the French; but it was a war without quarter and also, apparently without hope. Indeed Spain was hardly a foe worthy of Napoleon. The only real adversary was England, an irreducible and astute enemy, which was in a position to fight with a weaponry that matched his and to wreak considerable havoc on the structure of Napoleonic Europe. The ultimate aim of the war against Russia actually was to strike at England indirectly, and to blunt one of her major weapons, the economic one. Napoleon had ordered an "economic blockade" in order to bring about England's defeat ; it was the first real example of a "cold war" in modern history. No country in Europe was allowed to trade with the English. After having vainly dreamed of invading the island, Napoleon hoped to bend the country to hi s will by closing all the ports of the continent to English ships and thus ruin the English economy. The news from London was awaited with great trepidation in Paris: England was holding out by the skin of her teeth, but her warehouses were overflowing with unsold goods and the numbers of bankruptcies rose from day to day. In Paris it was still hoped that eventually England would come to terms. The economic blockade indeed turned out to be an effective weapon, but in order for it to achieve its full purpose it had to be strictly observed by every cou n-

24

25

27

26

o1

_ _ _ 1 1

tryon the continent. Russia, instead, had decided to open her ports to neutral shipping, and this meant that she would acquire a good measure of English goods. Napoleon could not permit a defection of this kind in the united economic front against England , especially since Ru ssia had now become a part of Napoleonic Europe in which she occupied an important place. The treaty of alliance between Napoleon and the Czar in fact went back to 1807, to the period immediately followin g the string of Napoleonic victories at Austerlitz, Eylau, and Friedland. Actually, at that time Ru ssia was faced with a poverty of available choices. The terms of the treaty had been agreed upon in a picturesque setting: the first talks between the Czar and Napoleon had taken place in frantic haste in the middle of the Niemen River, off the Prussian city of Tilsit. There, under a gaudy canopy, the Emperor had "convinced" the defeated Czar Alexander to enter into an alliance with France against England. The Czar was in no position to be fastidious, since Russia was no longer able to put up a fi ght against France. On the other hand Napoleon now offered defeated Russia a glimpse of the advantageous possibilities available to her : if the two powers pledged themselves to work jointly in an effort to break the stubborn English resistance, France would be able to gain politica l and economic dominion over Europe, and Russia would obtain hegemony over Asia, and particularly over India . After all, Napoleon had insi nuated, what comparable advantages could the English government offer Ru ssia? Napoleon invited the Czar to ponder the results of British policy: English diplomacy had cleverly succeeded in convi ncing Europeans to bleed themselves white in a long exhausting struggle against France, while the

28

English impassively looked on from afar. In the face of these arguments Alexander ended up by accepting the bid to enter into an alliance with Napoleon. Some highly placed personages at the Russian Court called the alliance shameful, but the Czar's rejoinder was that he had no choice but to accede to Napoleon's demands. No doubt Napoleon had shown great diplomatic skill and personal charm: he went so far as to invite Alexander to Tilsit, since the Czar could not enjoy the conveniences fittin g to his rank in the Russia n camp. Tn fact , Napoleon offered the Czar the hospitality of the palace in which he himself had his headquarters, and his magnanimity as victor included an invitation to the monarch to sit at his table inasmuch as Alexander had no cooks. What happened in Tilsit during those days scandalized the Russian aristocracy and the conservatives of all Europe; the Czar had always been considered the high priest of legitimism and here he seemed to be fascinated by the attentions and courtesies of this wily uSlirper, this common soldier, this spawn of the French Revolution, the man who had erected liberty trees in all the squares of Europe and ordered monarchs around with the air of an arrogant corporal. The Czar tried to convince his advisers that, after all, Napoleon was not as perfidious as he was painted; in the long run, all things considered , Russia would get the better of it, he assured them. For his part, Napoleon devoted much of his time to the Czar, engaging him day after day in conversations even at table. After their repasts he would stroll around the palace grounds with the Czar, and then talk to him with the utmost frankness , closeted for a long time in the privacy of a well-heated salon . Tn the end the Emperor explicitly told his confidants that he had really

26. Th e stages of Napoleon's march ;nlo th e heart of Russia. 27. Napoleon 's departure for Russia: the Grand Army was waiting for him alollg the Niemell River on the Prussiall frolltier.

done a good job in convincing the Czar to throw in his lot with France. No doubt he was right: in a relatively short time this common soldier, who seemed invincible on the field of battle and who seemed ill at ease in the fetters of the court ceremonial, had succeeded in winning over the sovereign who had been most hostile to him ; he had made a friend of the humiliated and disarmed foe. Tn the course of time, however, the Czar's friend ship had been noticeably cooling off, and Napoleon's attempts to kindle it again had been in vain. Isolated in his palace of St. Petersburg, Alexander finally had yielded to the internal opposition, which had never approved of the unnatural alliance with Napoleon. The Russian opponents of the alliance based their objections not only on political arguments, but on sound economic reasoning as well, and it was the latter which induced the Czar to review his relations with France. Actually, a great part of Russian imports came from markets which were very sensitive to English influence, and the continental blockade, de signed to effect England's ruin, threatened to produce an economic collapse in Russia too. Another reason for friction between the two allies, one which perhaps was more linked to the preceding one than appears at first sight, lay in Napoleon's second marriage. The Emperor had decided to contract a new marriage in order to ensure the birth of an heir to the throne, which his first wife - Josephine - had been unable to give him. Naturally Napoleon also hoped to mend some political fences through such a marriage. His Parisian advisers looked around and duly reported that there were only three princesses avai lable: one in England, the second in Austria, and the third in Russia. Since the first was automatically excluded from the competi-

tion, only two candidates seemed to be left: the daughter of the Austrian Emperor, Marie Louise of Hapsburg, and the younger sister of the Czar, Anna Pavlovna. The choice was dictated by political motives primarily, in that Napoleon did not know either of the young ladies concerned. Tn Paris, well-informed persons began to whisper that France would be at war against the power that lost the contest. Tn effect, at first, Napoleon's diplomats seemed to take fondly to the idea of forging a bond of kinship between the Czar and the Emperor of France with the aim of suffocating Austria and repressing her sundry aspirations. As a resu lt Russia found herself in the very embarrassing situation of having to turn Napoleon down: after all, objected the Czarina, Anna Pavlovna was only fourteen years old. The choice, therefore, fell on Marie Louise of Austria, and Napoleon found himself in a good position for an eventual war with Russia, at the very moment when the Czar, yielding to court opposition, decided to slacken the bond with France. Russia's aforementioned decision to open her ports to neutral shipping could be interpreted only as an obvious denunciation of the treaty of friendship. Throughout Europe all the pure, rare, and very expensive English products that the police could get their hands on only now and then were publicly burned. France could not run the risk of neu tral ships' bringing English goods to Russia inasmuch as Russia inevitably would allow such cargoes to filter beyond the frontiers. Therefore Paris indicated that Russia should refrain from making a dent in the economic blockade. But Russia made it known that she was forced to take unpleasant decisions because of the critical state of her economy as a direct result of the end of commercial relations with England. Further, Russia

29

28. Napoleon and Alexander at th e time 0/ the 1It/lio/ural al/iance be tween France and Russia.

The Czar presents 10 Napoleon his Cossacks, Bashkirs and Kalmuks. 29. The Tilsil meeting took place ill the middle 0/ the Nie men River, in a pavilion built 0 11 board a ra/I. /1 was probably the most picturesque "summit meeting" in all history .

28

announced an increase of customs duties on French exports to Russia, such as wines. All this took place around the year 1810. In the first months of 1811 Napoleon began to weigh the risks and the chances of success of a war against Russia, while the relations between the two countries became increasingly tense and unstable.

Probably Czar Alexander was not looking (or war, but merely wanted to loosen connections in order to free himself from the over-burdensome alliance with France. Napoleon was a very demanding master. The French ambassador to St. Petersburg - M arquis Louis de Cau laincourt - tried to apprise Paris of Alexander's real intentions, but the Emperor seemed adamant, so much so, in fact, that he brusquely told Caulaincourt that France had not the slightest reason to be concerned about a war with Russia: "A single battle will be enough to nullify all the magnificent decisions of your friend Alexander and all his fortifications made of sands." The plan, as elaborated , was of a disconcerting simplicity and was summarized in the three words " a single battle." The Ru ssian army, it was conjectured , would not be able to hold out against the onslaught of Napoleon's troops, and the Czar would be forced to yield , to sue for peace and to promise obedience. Napoleon ended up by convincing himself that the war would not be difficult to wage and that actually it would make it crystal clear to all Europe that France would not brook any autonomous decisions. When a dictator persuades himself that he can win a wa r, he always finds the way to demonstrate its inevitability and the opportunity to start it . Certainly it wou ld have been difficult to criticize Napoleon on this

30

point: he had already defeated Russia o n the fi eld of battle and was convinced that the Czar did not have a single general of any real stature. Moreover, Russia appeared as the open door leading to Asia, to the dream that he had pursued one time when he landed in Egypt, to the heart of the British Empire, along the route on which the armies of Alexander the Great had marched. At the beginning of 1812, a steady stream of supplies began to fill the warehouses in Prussia : hardtack, dried meat, oats, and flour , lots of flour. This was followed by an influx of horses and mules. The battalions came last and soon swelled into divisions and armies. War had not yet been declared, but it was inevitable. By dint of forced marches, a half-mi llion men traversed Europe on foot, while the general in charge of the commissariat, Count Pierre-An toin~ Daru , wore himself out wrestling with the job of getti ng all the supplies to converge on the Prussian front ier. Detailed plans had been worked out in Paris, a nd nothing was left to chance. Nopoleon had dispatched orders to the sovereigns who ruled Europe for him by proxy, and now he was waiting for these orders to be carried out to the letter. The army that would open the gates of the East to him would be composed of 300,000 French, Belgian and Dutch soldiers and 200,000 conscripts coming from lllyria, Westphalia , Bavaria, that part of the Kingdom of Italy of which Napoleon's stepson, E ugene de Beauharnais, was Viceroy, the Kingdom of Naples, the Grand Duchy of Warsaw, the Rh ineland , Baden, Sa~ony, Prussia, and Austria. No general anywhere cou ld have had at his disposal an army as powerful as the Grand Army. Hence Napoleon's belief that he could induce Russia to

30

31

yield before the war actually began is not surprising. Alexander's army was a third the size of Napoleon's. Moreover there were no advantages for him in risking the invasion: Napoleon's army would liberate Poland, which the Russians still kept under their rule, and perhaps he might grant freedom to the serfs, producing a real cataclysm in the backward Russian world.

The imperial coach left the palace of St. Cloud at six o'clock on a morning in May, bound for the Rhine border. After a week the coach arrived in Dresden, where the absolute master of Europe's destiny found the King of Saxony, the King of Prussia, various Grand Dukes, and even Marie Louise's father, the Emperor of Austria, waiting for him. Various talks were held which extended over several days, while Napoleon personally checked on the finishing touches that were being put on the preparations for the invasion. There was no news of any kind from the opposite bank of the Niemen. As far as the uni ts deployed along the frontier and the marshals (still detained in Dresden due to the presence of so many sovereigns) knew, the two armies which the Czar had placed in the field were waiting for the showdown. The Russian first army was led by the 70year-old Minister of War, Prince Michael Barclay de Tolly, a general in whom his soldiers did not place much confidence. Among other things, they thought that he was of German origin, though in reality his family was of Scottish descent. The commander of the second army, on the other hand, was an exceedingly popular general, the 47year-old Peter Bagration, who had been the favorite pupil of Russia's brilliant strategist, General Suva-

32

30. AI/other English caricature of Napoleon, whom British sailors familiarly called "Bail ey," the diminutive 0/ Bonaparte. 31. "Th e French man;n German y ," an anon ymous popula r drawing of the time. 32. Napoleoll had a bound less confidence ill his army: l or yea rs French troops had been ro l/;ng up a 101lg, impressh'e :,·trill g 0/ victo ries.

32

rov. A man of resolute character, he had often given proof of great courage. He was one of the few men who dared to assume responsibility, and this was no small thing in the Russia of that time. Bagration's army numbered half as many effectives as were entrusted to Barclay de Tolly. The Czar's best advisers hoped that the supreme command would be entrusted to Bagration. Alexander, however, did not have the courage to make this decision , because it would have displeased his Mini ster of War. Thu s, while the most formidable army that had ever been seen made haste to invade Russia, Alexander divided his forces , already considerably inferior, in two, entrusting them to the command of two generals who were practically independent of each other and who inevitably would be eyeing each other with growing mistrust. Everything was now in a state of readiness on both banks of the Niemen. Napoleon left hi s consort and his court at Dresden. On the morning of June 21 he arrived at the frontier, in the village of Vilkoviski , where he issued the invasion order, effective immediately. There was no time to lose and he signed the proclamation to the Grand Army in which he explained - or was believed to explain - the reasons for the war. "Russia has broken the pledge subscribed to at Tilsit: does she therefore consider us perfidious? Are we not the soldiers of Austerlitz? She places before us a dilemma: either honor or war. About our choice there is no doubt. Forward, then, let us cross the Niemen , let us bring the war to her territory. The peace that we shall conclude will be a permanent one and will put an end to the baleful influence that Russia has wielded over European affairs for the last fifty years." The movement of the various units began without

33

33

34

33. All Ellrope had become a hilCe arsenal, from which Napoleon coilid drain men and materiel ;11 abllndallce lor every new ventllre. 34. Talleyrand and the Viceroy of Italy, Ellgene, were al.ro present at the meeting of Napoleon ami Alexander. 35. The two emperors ill the French theater Erfurt, where it seemed tlrat their alliance was definitively cemented.

01

delay. The third regiment of light cavalry, ready to cross the river at the first order, was placed at the head of the army. Despite the precautions that had been taken, the first difficulties cropped up even before crossjng the Niemen. When it was time to distribute rations and munitions for the first days of the campaign, it was learned that several wagons had remained behind, so that only a few battalions could be supplied with rations for twenty-five days, as the Emperor had ordered. These mishaps, however, were considered temporary, but none could escape the feeling of foreboding that went along with them, inasmuch as the army was launching its undertaking under an unlucky sign. The intention indeed was to cross the frontier with the army at its peak effectiveness and surprise the Russian armies with an advance at lightning speed so as to sow confusion among them and force the Czar to surrender. The invaders were comforted by the thought that Vilna could be conquered after a swift advance and that there they would find excellent stocks of supplies of all kinds. Napoleon spent the last hours personally inspecting the different battalions. In front of each unit he would ask what officer positions in the table of organization were still vacant, then after inquiring about the merits of soldiers in the ranks he would appoint new officers on the spot. He would halt before veterans and flatteringly remind them of glorious past battles, accompanying his words with a friendly pat on the shoulder. He also knew how to imbue the younger, inexperienced soldiers with enthusiasm. But the truth was that no one would have been able to explain to one or the other the reasons or the necessity for this war that was about to start. The fact that English goods were breaking through

the "cotton curtain" of the continental blockade could hardly get anybody excited, much less convince them that it made war necessary. Shortly before giving the order to cross the frontier, Napoleon personally reconnoitered along the banks of the Niemen. The Emperor had arrived on horseback in the uncertain light that preceded the dawn of June 22 and had even ventured without protection on the beach. Had there been a sentry on the other side of the river, he would have been able to draw a bead on him, since the Emperor had appeared without any disguise. Indeed, he had even had an accident: the horse had slipped and Napoleon had been thrown on the sand on his back. As he picked himself up an officer in his retinue murmured that this was an evil omen and said in a loud voice: "A Roman would turn back! " Napoleon, pretending that he had not heard the remark, climbed back into the saddle and returned to his tent. The patrol of sappers silently crossed the river the moment the order was given. Shortly thereafter Napoleon heard some scattered shots and he looked troubled when he was told that the patrol had fired on a mounted Cossack: he feared that the Russian intention was to obstruct the movement of troops across the bridges that had been thrown hastily . across the river. For this reason he ordered that three hundred skirmishers were to establish the first bridgehead in order to protect the crossings over the three bridges. The skirmishers were specially picked troops assigned to every battalion, composed mainly of soldiers of short stature who carried lighter equipment than the rest and were trained to carry out special covering tasks and to effect swift maneuvers requiring a certain ease of movement.

The skirmishers had an easy task since there was no

35

one waiting for them on the other bank of the river. "Then," according to Count Philippe-Paul de Segur's thrilling account of the invasion , "all the French columns poured out of the valleys and from the forest and advanced in silence up to the river, hidden by a thick veil of darkness. One had to touch them to be aware of their presence. Fires, including the least spark, had been forbidden. The soldiers slept with their weapons at their side, as if in the presence of the enemy. The rye field , green and moist because of the abundant dew, served as a bed for the men and as fodder for the horses. " The crossing began at dawn. Before entering the icy waters of the Niemen the soldiers turned their gaze, expressive of their e nthusiasm and devotion, towards the top of the hill o n which the Emperor's tent was perched . The crossing lasted for three days without let-up, but the French did not catch sight of a single Russian as they poured across the fronti er of that enormous and unknown country. The first army corps, under the command of Marshal Davout, was the first to cross, followed by the . second army corps under Marshal Oudinot, the third under Marshal Ney, the fourth led by Prince Eugene Beau harnai s, the son of Napoleon's first wife, the fifth corps (formed of four Polish divisions convinced they were fightin g for their county's independence) under Prince Poniatowski, the sixth under General Saint-Cyr, the seventh under Jerome Bonaparte, King of Westphali a (Napoleon's brother), the ninth under Marshal Perrin , the tenth (which was formed of Prussians) under Ma rshal Macdonald , the eleventh under Marshal Bessieres; and the Austrian expeditionary corps under Prince Schwarzenberg. The four cavalry corps under the command of the King of Naples, Joachim Murat, also made their way across the river.

36

Napoleon was restless and impatient to cross the river quickly. The French officers seemed to be in a gay mood; never before had the Emperor led an army against the unknown and even the Emperor seemed excited. The haste with which he had ordered the crossing was proof of it. Probably for the first time since the Egyptian campaign he felt that he was close to the realization of a grandiose dream : to go even farther than Alexander the Great himself had done, and to open the road leadi ng to the outermost limits of the world. As soon as the Emperor crossed the river a terrible storm broke and the temperature dropped ; the torrid heat suddenly turned into bitler cold. Each of the different army corps continued its march, even though the paths had been flooded in the brief spa n of two hours, causing the wagons carrying provisions and munitions, tents and victuals, to get mired in the muck from which it was impossible to free them . In the buoyant feeling of that particular day, in the excitement of the beginning of such an incred ible and adventurous undertaking, nobody seemed to be very much worried about what was happening to the supply wagons. They were left there to hamper the movement of the multitude of soldiery ever pressing forward. As for the Russians, the French could not sight even one of them. In effect they were out of their reach; Barclay de Tolly's first army was spread out between the Vilna and Kovno, while the second army under Bagration's command was concentrated farther south. The 20,OOO-man army of Prince Louis of Wittgenstein - the 43-year-old field marshal and veteran of the battle of Austerlitz - was deployed in the north, assigned to defend St. Petersburg from possible thrusts against the capital.

36. The crossing of the Niemen: several units of "skirmishers" were the first to cross the river.

37

37. The march of the Grwld Army was hampered fro m the very {irst by dif]iculties in bringing up the supply wagons and by the lack of roads. 38. Wh en the French crossed the Niemell, the Czar and his general staO were ollly a few miles away, but 110 Russian unit tried to oppose Napo/eon's advance.

Napoleon's immediate plan called for a very swift march up to Vilna: the Russians thereby would have been forced to face the Grand Army immediately, with no way to escape. On other occasions the Emperor had learned by experience that similar strategic moves yielded good fruit: it was a question of facing

the enemy when he stil! did not expect a clash and when his forces were stil! divided. Two or three battles of this kind would have forced the Czar to beg for peace, and would have opened to the Grand Army the road to Moscow, the fabulous city. When the first army corps arrived in one dash at the

38

----- -

-- - ---

-

-.

'~---=-~----

--

Vilia river, a large stretch of water on the road to Kovno, they discovered that the retreating Cossacks had torn down the bridge. Napoleon, who was in Marshal Oudinot's vanguard, ordered a squadron of Poles to look for a fording place. Leo Tolstoy, in his masterpiece "War and Peace," tells how an old colonel who commanded the Polish Uhlans was excited by the opportunity that was being offered to him. " . . . the old whiskered officer, with happy face and sparkling eyes, brandished his sabre in the air, shouting, 'Vive I'Emperellr!' and commanding his men to follow him, he set spurs to his horse and galloped down to the river. He gave a vicious thrust to his horse that floundered under him and plunged into the water, making for the most rapid part of the current. Hundreds of Uhlans galloped in after him. It was cold and dangerous in the middle of the current. The Uhlans clung to one another, falling off their horses. Some of the horses were drowned, some of the men too. The others struggled to swim across, some in the saddle, others clinging to their horses' manes. They tried to swim straight across, and although there was a ford less than half a mile away they were proud to be swimming and drowning in the river. When the adjutant, on going back, chose a favorable moment and ventured to call the Emperor's attention to the devotion of the Poles to his person, the little man in the gray overcoat got up, and summoning Berthier, he began walking up and down with him, giving his instructions and casting now and then a glare of displeasure at the drowning Uhlans who had interrupted his thoughts." Tolstoy's account is very hard on Napoleon and even harder on the fanati cism of the Poles, but in its broad lines it coincides with that of Philippe de Segur, who was an eyewitness to the disaster.

38

It was decided not to run other senseless risks, and without wasting time, a bridge was thrown across the fatal river. The first army corps was finally able to cross and resume its swift advance. At the end of the second day of the march Oudinot's vanguard came within view of Vi Ina and halted to await the main body. While the various units were being arranged in battle order, some patrols were sent towards the city where the Czar and his general staff had stayed for one month. From the French lines some shots were heard in the distance , but the patrols returned with a piece of incredible news: Vilna was deserted. There was not a single Cossack in the city, and it would be possible to occupy the city without firing a shot. Napoleon asked himself whether the Grand Army might not have marched too slowly; the hard fact was that he had not succeeded in forcing the Russians to join battle and he had allowed them to retreat. The buoyant feelings of those first days vanished suddenly; the French officers exchanged worried glances and the marshals seemed to have lost their former good. humor. To make matters worse the warehouses in Vilna were empty: the Russians had been meticulous in their evacuation, in compliance with Barclay de Tolly's order that nothing was to be left to the invaders. This was the same order that Peter the Great had issued when the Russians had lured the Swedish army of Charles xn into their fatal trap.

39. The capture of Vi/flQ was arr all-too-easy victory: the Russians retreated without putting up a {icht. Napoleon began to fear that the conquest 0/ Russia would take much IOllger than he had originally pIal/lied.

The Horror of Smolensk

39

A Great Battle on the Threshold of Hell

40. Napoleon hoped to liquidate the Russian army at Smolellsk: actually tlie G rand A rmy ran into tough resis/once, bUI Barclay de Tolly pre/erred to abandon (he city before I"e arrival 0/ Russian rein/orceme.nls under Bagration's command.

There was not a great deal of choice in Vi Ina, so Napoleon's headquarters was set up in the same palace which two days earlier had been the headquarters of the Czar. When Balasov - the Czar's adjutant general- was ushered into the Emperor's presence he looked about him with a stupefied air: this was the very room to which the Czar had summoned him in order to entrust him with the delicate mission of delivering a message to Napoleon. Napoleon was in a bad humor and Balasov was quick to realize that his visit would not make him any happier. Alexander, upon handing his adjutant the personal message he had written for Napoleon, had authorized him to let Napoleon know that he could start peace negotiations whenever he pleased, even immediately, on the one condition that the Grand Army withdraw from Russian soil. Balasov was authorized to inform Napoleon that, if this offer was rejected, the Czar gave his word that there would be no further talk of peace so long as a single French soldier remained in Russia. Only now did Balasov become aware of how difficult his mission would be. Napoleon had hardly finished his breakfast and was brusquely issuing some orders. Through the open window came the noises of the street, the clamor made by the soldiery, the clatter of horses' hoofs, and, above all , the shouts of the enthusiastic Poles who were hailing what they considered to be the liberation of Poland. Napoleon read the Czar's message and in so far as he could understand it, he did not appreciate it. To Balasov he complained about Alexander's hostile attitude and declared that Russia had provoked the war: the Czar had betrayed his friendship and had not honored the pledges made at Tilsit. The Czar's messenger tried to say something in rebuttal, but it was not

4t

41

possible. Napoleon was beside himself. When a draft caused the shutters of the window to rattle, the Emperor, instead of closing the shutters, simply tore them off in a rage. This marked the end of the audience. Later Balasov was invited to dinner by Napoleon, and Caulaincourt, the former French ambassador to St. Petersburg, also took a seat at the table. But no progress was made and at the end of the dinner Napoleon ordered the Russian minister to be provided with his own horses so that he could reach the Czar as quickly as possible with his reply: if Russia did not come to terms, the Grand Army would force her to surrender. Balasov left and Napoleon remained alone to grapple with the problems of that war which though hardly begun was already in part compromised. His plan was based on the assumption that one or two battles would bring Russia to her knees, but what would happen if he did not succeed in persuading the Russians to fight right away? Meanwhile, the Grand Army continued its swift strides forward, conquering miles and miles of scorched earth, hundreds of deserted villages and empty warehouses, while losing hundreds of horses and weakening the troops every day.

The situation was also difficult for the Russians. Russia was not prepared for the war, and her generals did not have a plan; for the moment they managed to get out of their difficulties with flight. They avoided clashes with the enemy in order to avoid defeat, but this was not easy. Bagration had not been taken by surprise at Minsk only because he had disobeyed Barclay de Tolly's orders. Indeed, only because he had precipitately abandoned the

42

fortified camp in which he had deployed his troops was Barclay himself now in a position to make a relatively orderly retreat. The Russians, wondering from what direction Napoleon would strike next, tried to cover their retreat with a series of clashes fought by the rearguard, with the intention of reuniting the two armies at the most favorable moment. In order to prevent precisely this from happening, Napoleon dispatched Davout and Jerome Bonaparte (his brother, the King of Westphalia) to intercept Bagration. But the French had underestimated the Russian general, who managed to slip through the trap that had been laid for him. Indeed, Jerome, as a punishment for his failure , was forced to return to Westphalia by order of Napoleon, who was justifiably angry with him. Davout held out alone and he had to content himself with fighting against the Russian rearguard, the Cossacks under the command of Raevskii, a man about whom the French would be forced to talk often in the months to come. The only hope seemed to lie in a surprise onslaught on Yitebsk, and Napoleon planned a pinc~r maneuver against the city in order to encircle Barclay de Tolly's army and force it to give battle. At the dawn of July 27, the Grand Army arrived in sight of the city and the units spent the whole day arranging themselves in combat order. That night Napoleon remained awake for a long time in front of his tent, which had been pitched on the edge of a wood, in the center of the square formed by the "Old Guard"; he was watching the bonfires of the enemy encampment. In a few hours the desperately longed-for battle would begin. There was no doubt that the Russians would pay dearly for their temerity. Never had an enemy provoked such harshness in Napoleon.

4/. A Russia" floblemall Oil his sled. Contrary to Napoleoll's hopes, the Russian moujiks did lIot rebel {l[:!ainst their masters (lnd did 1I0t join Wilh the French "liberation" army.

42

42. The artillery of the Old Guard: the Guard was elite 1111;1 made up of troops specially c!lOse" for their skill (III(/ courage in combat and their loyallY /0 Napoleon. WI

But in the mo rning, when all were waiting for the signal to attack , Murat's patrols arrived with a shattering piece of news: the Russians had left, leaving Vitebsk undefended. Once more Barclay de Tolly had preferred to retreat towards the east rather than accept battle. This sensational happening dismayed Napoleon even more than that of Vilna. The tactic that the Russians had adopted was now crystal clear: they wanted to lure the invaders to penetrate ever more deeply into their territory. Why? The situation of the Grand Army was not at all favorable. The intolerable heat made rapid pursuit impossible, since the soldiers were hungry and the supply wagons were far behind. The warehouses in Vitebsk also turned out to be empty, and the horses were without forage. Napoleon remained in Vitebsk for a few days to ponder what he should now do. Russia was different from any other place in which he had ever been before and he could not fully grasp what was happening around him. Even in Ru ssia , as in Spain , a battle in the open field could decide the fate of a conquest. But he could not fight against a phantom army, either in Spain or in Russia. Before the invasio n began someone had assured Napoleon that the peasants - the serfs - certainly would welcomc joyfully the arrival of the liberating army, the army of the Revolution. Instead, the Grand Arm y was now marching day after day through an immense plain in flames , from which the peasants had fled after ca rting away everything that was transportable and after destroying what they could not take with them. The reports from the forward ele ments assured that nothin g useful could be fo und anywhere, since everything had been burned. Now and then there was some green wheat,

but at best this was only enough for the horses of the vanguard. Yet Napoleon felt that it was poss ible to bring this strange war to an end within the year. He could not shake off the fixed idea that it would be enough to face Barclay de Tolly and Bagration before they joined forces. The Emperor had no doubts on that score, despite his awareness of the fact that the Grand Army was in a difficult situation , that the soldiers were discontented to the point of preferring flight (but where could these wretched deserters flee?). Never before had the number of desertions been so high. But with just two battles of the kind in which Napoleon feared no rivals, Russia, this vast and un known. savage and incomprehensible country, would be at his feet. In such an event the Czar could not bu t surrender. Witnesses are agreed in affirming that these were painful days for the Emperor, tormented by indecisian: this Vitebsk that hed been conquered was only a name, a useless name in a boundless country, an agglomerat ion of houses and shacks, of buildings and cabins. for thousands of exhausted , famished , pillaging soldiers. an enormous hospital for 3,000 soldiers sick with dysentery, the absurd headquarters of an invasion army which lacked everything from meat to bread. It was pointed out to the Emperor that the enterprising Marshal Davout had made a brilliant discovery: the men could be made to eat rye that was roasted and cooked in water. Rye was not very nourishing - it cou ld best be used to make beer - but in this case it would se rve. The news was spread, to the general satisfaction: the Grand Army would not die of hungcr: it would be saved by the rye-pap. The Emperor's indecisio n lasted for a long time. He

43

43

43. The French cavalry was under the command 0/ one of the most colorful and exuberant 0/ Napoleon's marshals, Joachim Murat , the King of Naples. 44. Napoleon cOllfers the ribbon of the Legion 0/ Honor on a non-commissioned officer who has distinguished himself in combat.

spent those days in meditation, writing letters, issuing orders, and trying to restore order into the enormous army of which, in spite of everything, he was so proud. He allowed the Austrians to turn back , because they were untrustworthy. But many of hi s orders remained a dead issue. Here he was not at Austerlitz, nOr at Marengo nor even at Wagram: he was in a desolate and unknown country where death seemed to reign supreme, where the distances were immense and where the patrols did not carry out their missions with an easy mind. Some advisers tried to instill doubt in the Emperor's heart. Had the Russian campaign been a colossal mistake from all points of view, tactically, militarily, and politically? And Napoleon was gnawed by doubt. Then he asked himself what the reaction in Europe would be if he admitted that he had been mistaken, if he did not give Russia the lesson she deserved? A throne like his could not survive a defeat, not even the renunciation of a victory. On the other hand Moscow, the holy city, was no longer so far away. Once Moscow was occupied, the Czar could do nothing but surrender. Perhaps the Russians themselves would drive Alexander out of the city. This struck Napoleon suddenly as a possible solution. The Emperor convened his marshals once more in order to listen to their suggestions, although he was convinced that now they would no longer tell him the truth. He knew that they no longer were the intrepid revolutionaries whom he had raised to military heights, and that it was not possible to ask them to be sincere as had been the case before. The only thing they could do now was to obey; perhaps they had never been able to do anything else. J n the last analysis, Napoleon was demanding too much of

44

them: they could never give him objective advice, but would limit them selves to following his will. So all that Napoleon could get the marshals to say at this conference was that they would gladly do everything that he wished. The only one who spoke up frankly was Count Pierre Daru, the man to whom the Emperor had assigned the difficult task of organizing the supplies for the campaign. Daru was disheartened. He said that they could never win, because the effectiveness of the Grand Army was now reduced by one third. "Many have deserted ," he pointed out. "Many have died because of the lack of provisions, others have been killed by sicknesses; in this war soldi ers do not die under fire but for the lack of rations. And we are st ill only at the doors of Ru ssia. The real Russia begins only after Vitebsk ; to continue is sheer madness." Napoleon said nothing, stubbornly fi xi ng his gaze on the ground; in his heart perhaps he was convinced that Daru was telling the truth. But the decision had been taken: the Grand Army could not turn back, Napoleon could not admit that hc had been beaten by an army of beggars ; the veterans of a hundred battles had to look the encmy squarely in the face. This was why they were in Russia , not to chase shadows! The Grand Army therefore would resu me its march; it would cross the Dnieper with 200,000 men and would resolutely march towa rds the east. towards the heart of mysterious and incomprehensible Russ ia. Forward to Smolensk!

The Czar meanwhile had returned to St. Petcrsburg in order to inspi re the populace of the capi tal with enthusiasm for the war (in reality he had been compelled to return because he was hampcring military

45

45. Napoleo" himself promoted l'ell turesom e ,wldiers to the rank of officer. 46. Durin!: military rel'iews, Napoleon wetlt lip to the soldiers and praised them for individual acts of valor. The troops reacted to this persollal touch with all ol'ef'w!Jelmi"g, enthusiastic allachmenl to the Emperor, 47. Supplies cOl/stituted the most se rious problem facing the Grand A rmy: the Russians left only .tcorched earth behind them,

46

operations at the front with his incompetence and his retinue) . From th ere the Czar had given explicit orders to Barclay de Tolly and to Bagration to defend Smolensk at all costs. The Russian army was not to retreat beyond this point. Smolensk, the Czar had declared , was the key to Russia: it was well fortified and highly defensible. Napoleon at last would have to be attacked, for which purpose the two Russian armies must join together to brave the invader. But A lexander's orders were irreparably faced with the disputes, the misunderstandings, and the hatred that separated the two commanders-in-ch ief. Bagration did not re lish the idea of joining lip with Barclay de Tolly because he cou ld not endure the thought of placing himself under the orders of the Minister of War. For his part, Barclay de Tolly could not endure the thought of facing Napoleon in a battle in the open field since he feared that the Grand Army would come out on top - and mark the end of hi s career.

It is said that Barclay was heard to S;\y: "Let Napoleon push forward ; the hunger and the cold will beat him." Bagration did not share this view and maintained that the army should defend Russia and put an end to this ignominious flight from the inva,Jing army. H e was not the only one to think along these lines: many officers and all the soldiers of the first Russian army spoke of Barclay not only as a German , but as one who had "sold out," as a traitor. Bagration knew about these sentiments amon g the troops and felt exactly the same way. Everyone knew that on many occasions he had protested against this strange way of waging a war by retreating. Now, before reaching Smolensk , he did not hesitate to put in writing an appeal directly to the Czar: "Forgive me, my sovereign, but T can have nothing in common

46

with the Minister. For the love of God, send me to any post whatsoever, even to the command of a regiment, but I can not stay here. The whole headquarters is full of Germ a ns, hence it is impossible for a Russian to live there and nothing can be achieved. I believed that I was sincerely serving the Czar and the country, but in the last analysis I am serving Barclay. I confess to you that I do not want to." This was not the best state of mind in which to [ace a battle. But precisely in order to force Barclay to remain in Smolensk, at least until his arrival, Bagration sent ahead one of his best generals, Raevskii , with orders to deploy his troops for the defense of the city. According to Bagration , even if Barclay were not a traitor, he was certainly acting like one. Napoleon arrived at Smolensk on the night of August 15. This time too the French encampment was in sight of the fire s of the Russian encampment. The Emperor decided that Smolensk should be attacked front ally with the combined assault of three army corps - Davout's, Ney's, and Poniatowski's - in order to make sure that the enemy would not slip away again. Napoleon dispatched M arshal Jounot around the city with the aim of eventually cutting off the route of the retreating Russians.

In the dawn of August 16 the French artillery began to pound the city and the defense lines that Raevskii had prepared before Smolensk. The orders that Raevsk ii had received from Bagration were precise: resist if necessary to the last man in order to give the second army time to arrive at the right time to force Barclay de Tolly to accept battle. Raevskii had with him only 15 ,000 men, veterans of former clashes, and the remnants of the Nevieroski

division which Ney had pursued up to Krasnoe. Despite this, Raevskii and hi s men were firmly resolved to brave the onslaught of Napoleon's army: the general was not one to question orders and his soldiers, shari ng the sentiments of all Ru ssia ns at this time, anxiously waited for an end of the retreat and for orders to take the offensive and launch a counterattack. While the French artillery pounded away at Smolensk, the three army corps were thrown into the assault and Jounot began his encircling maneuver, but the whole day of August 16 passed without any appreciable changes in position: Raevskii's men had not fallen back even one inch although they had suffered such grave losses during the night that Barclay de Tolly was forced to add General Dokhturov's fresh troops to the remnants of Raevski i's division. The battle was resumed at dawn of August 17. When the sun went down that day the positions were still unchanged , but the suburbs of Smolensk were in flames. At nightfall the French artillery continued to hurl shells into the ci ty. Every time that the cannon were si lent the three a rm y corps moved into position for a new assault. But it seemed that nothing could remove the Russians from thei r trenches. Napoleon still hoped for the possibility of a battle in the open field and he certainly would have got his wish if Barclay de Tolly had waited just a few hours more for the imminent arrival of Bagration's army. Raevsk ii's heroic men, moreover, would have stood firm , inasmuch as when they were forced to fall back they began to fight from street to street and house to house. Barclay de T olly, however, had already made his decision: he had given orders that the civilian popUlation of Smolensk was to be evacuated and its warehouses emptied. In fact, the Cos-

47

"'_~~ _ _

49

48

O'- • .,.~=~ ~

48

48. The invasion deepened the Russian people's love for their COUll try and their haIred lor Napoleon, who was regarded by them as a kind of Anti-Christ. 49. Smolensk fe ll alter a tremendous pounding by the French artillery which reduced the city to a heap 01 ruins.

50. "We will bring civilization to Russia," Napoleon had declared. In stead the road 0/ 'h e invasion army led only to devastation and death.

sacks had already prepared the fuses to blow up the powder magazines and the munition dumps. By the time the defenders learned about this, it was already too late for the commander-in-chief to change his mind. Barclay would not have waited even one hour longer, and he was not in the least worried about what would happen in Smolensk when the powder magazines blew up, even though he certainly knew that thousands of wounded soldiers had been billeted in the ancient city. Tn the hasty fli ght (for fear that Bagration might arrive and through his presence make a battle unavoidable) nobody gave a thought to providing for the safety of these poor wretches, almost all of whom perished. That night the city looked to the French like· an immense pyre. They wondered how it was possible for anyone to resist for so long in such an inferno. At two o'clock in the morning the powder magazines blew up and along with them a great part of the city. Smolensk already had been abandoned and only the last remaining Cossacks galloped wildly through the streets setting fire to the fuses with their lighted torches. In the older part of the city the wounded were overtaken by the flames as they lay helplessly on their straw pallets, while in the more modern part of Smolensk the civilians who had managed to remain behind barricaded themselves in the Cathedral to invoke the help of God against the advancing AntiChrist. At dawn the Grand Army had conquered Smolensk. An officer - Cesare Loge - wrote the most dramatic page of his diary: "We had as the only witnesses of our entry into the devastated city of Smolensk the smoking ruins of the houses and the corpses of our soldiers and of the enemy which lay together helter-skelter and which were being buried in com-

mon graves. The inner part of this important city presented itself to us in a particularly lugubrious and horrifying aspect: we had never seen anything like this from the the beginning of the operations. We were deeply shaken by the sight. To the music of the military band, looking proud and gloomy at once, we marched amid these ruins where lay only the charred bodies of wretched Russians, covered with blood and mud. I saw wagons full of tortured human members of all kinds which were being carted away for burial. On the threshold of houses stil l intact groups of wounded stand waiting and imploring assistance. Only French and allied soldiers were met with on the streets. They were the only living and were rummaging everywhere in the hope of finding somethi ng that may have been spared by the fire. In the Cathedral, piled upon one another, lay the dead, the dying, the healthy, men, women , and children . . . whole families covered with rags . . . they trembled as we drew near them . Unfortunately, the greater part of these poor wretches refused even the aid that was offered to them. I still see in my mind's eye, on the one hand, a dying old man who had stretched himself out on the ground , turning his back to us, and on the other, starved infants clutching their mothers' breasts which no longer contained a drop of milk." Napoleon was afraid to let his soldiers witness such a gruesome spectacle and forbade the bulk of the Grand Army to enter Smolensk. He himself visited the city in absolute silence, but then said it was a great victory. But he was not really convinced of it. His own marshals did not balk at advising that a war of this kind be brought to an end; they were used to defying death on the open battlefield and could not grasp what was happening. Murat was the most outspoken of all: we must turn back , he said, before

49

51

something irreparable happens. Napoleon did not utter a word and remained wholly silent for several days. What remained of Smolensk became a n enormous hospital and the Emperor wanted personally to visit the wounded, without making a distinction between Frenchmen, Germans, Italians, or Russians. He ordered that it be explained to the terrorized survivors of the city that SmoJensk had been set to the torch by the Cossacks and not by the Grand Army, that the soldiers of the Napoleonic army were human beings and not demons unleashed from hell. To his great surprise he di scovered that such explanations fell on deaf ears.

Confusion reigned in the Russian camp: the two generals were now openly at loggerheads, which did not improve matters. Prince Bagration had been enraged to learn of the abandonment of Smolensk at the very moment when he was ready to hurl his 80,000-man army at Napoleon. Why, then , had things taken the course they had? There was only one answer in Bagration's mind : it was all part of a prearranged plan. Barclay was surrounded by inept a nd cowardly Germans, who perhaps had actually sold out to the French , and probably the Minister himself was a traitor. "A great suspicion ," wrote Bagration in those days, "was aroused in the army by the aide-de-camp Wolzogen. As is said , he is more on Napoleon's side than on ours, and nevertheless he continues to be the Minister's adviser." These were serious charges and Bagration's suspicion was unjust. What was still more serious, however, was the state of mind that provoked them. How would it be possible to expel the invader as long as

50

the army was comm anded by two generals who hated each other to this degree? On the day after the fall of Smolensk, in SI. Petersburg, the Czar convoked the crown council and asked what was to be done now. Unanimously the advisers replied that the first and foremost task was to unify the command of the two armies. Certainly even Alexander must have known since the start of the war that this decision would have to be take n; its implementation had been obstructed by the court intrigues and jealousies a nd above all by his own weakness. Placed with his back to the wall by the urgent character of the events, the Czar asked the crown councilors to propose a name, and again there was a unanimity of opinion. They all proposed the name of an old general whom Alexander cou ld not endure: Michael llarionovich Kutuzov-Golenishev.

51. At Smolellsk th e destruction wrought by the French bombardment was increased by the blowing up of the powder magazirles by the relreatinf, Russians.

The Day of Borodino: Glory and Death for All

51

· : : :' ~ : . ! ' I!

.. .!:: :

.... .. :. I

Kutuzov, the General Who Snored in the Presence of the Czar

52. Th e French finally succeeded ill getting the Russians to joill battle at Borodilio. But th ey did lIot achieve that defjnilil'e victory 011 which Napoleoll had scI all his hopes.

The first order issued to the army by the new commander-in-chief was: "Retreat!" Officers and soldiers were struck dumb with astonishment. Indeed many almost wept openly. So nothing had really changed? Nothing appeared to have, but this was not true. Kutuzov approved Barclay de Tolly's tactics, but he pointed out that they had to be improved. The retreat had to be planned, in a certain sense, so as to give it a concrete meaning. Who was this general in whom everybody seemed to have such confidence and who behaved in such an unpredictable way? At 67 , Michael Ilarionovitch Kutuzov-Golenishev had the rank of field marshal , and even though the St. Petersburg nobility a few days before had proclaimed him "chief of the capital's militia," he was somewhat unaffected by the confusion which had been generated by the war. Besides, when the invasion had begun someone had heard him mutter that Russia would be utterly beaten. Like Napoleon, he took a dim view of Russia's generals, but naturally, he did not include himself! In St. Petersburg they called him the "courtier fox" because of his ability to keep his balance adroitly amid the quicksands of the court. Some had also called him "the old satyr" because of his gallant ways with the ladies. He had first put on a uniform at the age of 16 and from the reign of Catherine the Great to that of Alexander there had been no war in which he had not taken part with honor and distinction. Now he was enjoying a well-deserved rest. According to the Czar, Kutuzov gave himself too many airs and took too sceptical a view of the world. But according to others the real reason why Alexander could not stand the sight of the old soldier was because he felt that Kutuzov judged him too severely. Perhaps he did not like the idea that Kutuzov dared

53

53. A Russian Cavalry Guard officer fights with a French cavalryman. 54. KU(II ZQv also followed (lie tactic of retreat, without commiuing hi.f army to battles ill the open field; nevertheless, the Russian pressure Ofl the French army gradually increased.

53 " ':',

.~~'~ . ~::::.~~··:':~.~i~~~:\,~.:·; .... .. .

~,

'.':

.'""

..:- .:.- .

.

54

--

.,... --.

'-

54

to fall asleep and snore in his presence during the meetings of the council of war. But the truth of the matter, perhaps, is that Alexander could not forgive Kutuzov for what had happened at Austerlitz. On the eve of that great battle, Kutuzov had advised the Czar to keep out of it because, in his opinion, the French army would be victorious. The Czar did not heed his advice, and at Austerlitz Napoleon had achieved one of his most brilliant victories. Alexander was very angry about this and concluded that the person really responsible for the disaster was Ku tuzov because "he had not opposed the idea enough."

-What was beyond all doubt, however, was that the old general enjoyed everybody's confidence and especially that of the soldiers and officers. On the other hand, nobody - except perhaps Bagration understood the psychology of the Russian soldier as thoroughly as did Kutuzov. A proof of the universal affection in which Kutuzov was held was provided by the public elation which foJlowed the news of his appointment. Now everything seemed possible, even beating Napoleon and hurling back the invaders. The news produced a great sensation even in French army headquarters. Napoleon asked himself what the new enemy commander-in-chief would do. On one point there seemed to be no doubt: he had been appointed to give battle, obviously. But when would he do this? And where and how? The Emperor tried to squeeze some information out of a Cossack captured by Marshal Berthier's men and even wanted to interrogate the prisoner himself. The poor wretch could not possibly have known very much about such matters, but he did say that if the battle were fought in three or four days the French would win; but if the Russ ians were given a few days' time to get orga-

nized, the war would drag on for a long time. In the last analysis the poor Cossack was an optimist. Kutuzov already knew that the battle would be lost by the Russians: in fact he had no iJlusions whatsoever on this score and actually was worried about the fact that his men might think he could work miracles. He fuJly realized that the tactics of utter retreat and the scorched-earth policy were the only ones possible : it was enough of a problem to decide with the utmost accuracy the point at which the army was to halt. This calculation depended on considerations regarding the situation of the Grand Army and on the time of the year. Kutuzov concluded that Napoleon could easily reach Moscow, but that it would be impossible for him to advance farther. So, when the invaders arrived in the capital, the Russian army would have waited for winter; the invading army would be compelled to retreat and then the Russians could easily force it to speed up its flight. Russia herself, according to the old general , would annihilate the Grand Army, if only the Russian army would lend her a helping hand. Yet before putting this pitiless but lucid plan into action Kutuzov knew, alas, that everybody was clamoring for a battle in the open field. He had been sent to the front precisely for this reason: the Czar, the nobles, St. Petersburg and Moscow, and the army itself were militantly advocating such a battle. Only an ignoramus in military matters, like the Czar, could hope that this battle would not be a defeat. The only thing to do, as Kutuzov knew all too weJl, was to find the best point at which to exchange blows with Napoleon, not in order to defeat him , but in order to emerge from the fray with an army that in some way would still be able to carry out the prearranged plan.

55

55

56

Therefore Kutuzov's main concern was to dampen overconfidence. One day, when he heard a Russian officer speak too lightly about Napoleon's capabilities the old field marshal stopped to administer a severe reprimand: "Young man, by what right do you make fun of one of the greatest men that has ever lived? Take back those words, which are highly out of place, immediately." As regards the battle, there was precious little he could do about it; he knew very well that Napoleon would win it just as he knew that he could not refuse to accept it. He had given the order to retreat with a heart that was weighed down with this knowledge, even though he was aware of the pained surprise such an order would produce among the troops and in Moscow, especially in Moscow, since it was clear to everyone that Napoleon was now aiming directly for the holy city. To anyone who pointed this out to him, Kutuzov would reply with that tone that in turn permitted no reply: "My aim is to save Moscow, but after all Moscow is not yet Russia. Better to lose Moscow than the army and Russia herself." After a march of several days Kutuzov ordered the army to halt. He had reached the area around Borodino, where the Moskva River flowed placidly towards Moscow.

Napoleon was immediately informed that the Russians had called a halt and were readying their defenses, throwing up breastworks and digging trenches. Everything was clear now: the shuffle of the top army command meant that a big battle was in the offing. Then Napoleon wanted to learn something about Kutuzov personally, but accurate information was scarce. They told him that the Russian leader was famous because he was one-eyed. He asked for

56

55 . The most terrible battle of the Russian campaign began witll a "feint": an assault 011 the vjl/age of Borodino.

57. -Before the battle, Napoleon ordered all intelligence report on Kutuzov , lite general who dared to defy him. He personally interrogated a Cossack war prisoner.

56. The Borodino bridge was the scene of a violent battle; the French seized possession of it but only at the price of l'ery great losses.

57

57

58. T he slaughter at Borodillo lasted a whole day , laking the !i\'es 0/ 90,000 soldiers. Napoleon himself was deeply shaken at the sight o/the gruesome carnage. 59. Th e victo ry at BorodblO opened to the road 10 Moscow to the French. Th e ril'er on whose banks tile battle took place is th e same one that flows past Moscow, the Mosh·a. 60. In Napoleoll's time th e medical services 0/ all army were still badly organized; a great lIumber of wounded died because of the almost inevitable infection.s.

58

58

more information and what he heard made him conclude that he was facing an adversary of considerable stature. They told him that the great Suvarov had once said about Kutuzov: "Intelligent man, intelligent. No one will ever lead him by the nose." The Emperor quickly reached the demarcation line between the two armies, dismounted from his horse, and reconnoitered the area on foot, carefully scrutinizing everything. Then he outlined the following plan to his general staff: the major onslaught would be unleashed by the French right flank , made up of the army corps of Davout, Ney, and Murat, against the Russian left flank. This section would also be pounded by the bulk of the artillery, since it contained the enemy's most strengthened fortifications: a series of breastworks laid out in the form of a fleche , that is, a two-faced parapet forming a sharp angle in front and open at the rear. As soon as the infantry effected a breakthrough the cavalry was to leap into the fray, scale the hills and then try to encircle the enemy from the rear. Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, would be at the center of the army so as to constitute the pivot of the whole operation. The battle was to begin on the French right flank with a feint, consisting of an attempt to conquer the village of Borodino. Kutuzov had placed himself at the center of the two armies; he had entrusted his right flank to Bagration and his left to Barclay de Tolly. The relation between the forces was as follows: Napoleon (forced to leave garrisons along the whole route) had been left with 135,000 men and he had 587 cannon; the Russians had deployed 120,000 men and 640 artillery pieces into battle positions. Kutuzov had kept under his direct command 36,000 men, protected by an artillery unit under Raevskii ,

60

59

6/. Shortly be/ore he died 011 the island 0/ St. Helena, Napoleon said: "/Iough, the most terrible 0/ all my ballles around Moscow ."

62. The late of the battle 0/ Borodino was decided when the Russian general Bagratioll was killed. But the Russian defeat was caused by the capture 0/ Raevskii's redoubt, near which KII(uZOV himself was stationed with his troops. 63. At Borodino bOlh French alld Russians l oug/II wi,h the utmost courage and self·sacrifice: the form er wanted the battle to be the glorious conclusion to an undertaking that had brought th em to the edges 0/ th e world; the latter hoped 01lly to ,mve their country.

which was located on high ground around which he had ordered trenches to be dug, fortified with cannon whose mouths protruded from the loopholes. Night fell and hid a sky which was already black with clouds. The soldiers, who came from every part of Europe, remained silently in their positions awaiting the order to start the battle. In one way or another this battle would put an end to this war being fought on the edges of the world . Nobody slept that night, least of all Napoleon , who spent several hours in conversation with two of his general s. A feeling of anxiety weighed heavily on everyone's heart. From the Russian camp came the strains of strange dirges with an oriental fla vor, full of homesickness ("Down there, beyond the Smalgoi hill , is the land of peace serene, there are my loved ones, there stands my house" ) which brou ght tears to the eyes of thousands of men worn out with fatigue and hunger, forced to engage in an adventure the reason for which they could not at an fathom. Now and then Napoleon looked out from his tent and gazed in the direction of the Russian camp. Even though he knew that the Russians had erected many fortifications, even though he knew that Kutuzov's soldiers had been blessed during the day by the high clergy in ceremonial vestments with the most venerated icons of Holy Russia, he was afraid that the battle might again be postponed at the last moment. At five o'clock in the morning Marshal Ney dispatched a messenger to ask for permission to begin. Napoleon had his proclamation sent to the troops: ". . . so that of each one of you it can be said: He was at the great battle under the walls of Moscow." Following the proclamation thousands of soldiers numbed by the rain that had fallen during the night found the strength to shout: "Long live the Em-

60

peror! " in a medley of languages. Napoleon reached the heights of a hill over which units of the Old and the Young Guard were spread out. When the sun gilded the horizon behind the Russians and the battle began, he drew an immense sigh of relief. "At last we have them," he said. "Forward march! We will open the gates of Moscow!" The battle immediately assumed an extremely violent character. The Russian light infantrymen were driven out of Borodino but recaptured it a little later, while on the opposite flank a struggle raged on the outskirts of another village, Semyonovskoe, and later around the formidable and extremely solid Heche fortifications prepared by Bagration. By mid-morning the great battle had already produced thousands of dead without effecting any appreciable changes in the positions of the two armies. Napoleon dispatched orders to Eugene de Beauharnais to hurl his forces resolutely against the Russian troops marshaled in the center and commanded personally by Kutuzov and protected by Raevskii's artillery ; the Emperor's stepson obeyed instantly and his soldiers inflicted wholesale slaughter on the enemy detachments. Bagration also reckoned that the moment had come to do something to relieve the pressure of Davout's and Ney's continuous attacks against his fortifications , so he ordered an attack with drawn bayonets. Davout was the first to realize what was afoot and to organize a counterattack. Running towards each other without firing in order not to break their momentum, Russian and French soldiers fell upon each other in violent combat, but once again Bagration tricked the enemy by suddenly disengaging his men. The French were left in an exposed position and the Russian artillery literally mowed them down . But the French troops kept rush-

63

61

64. Murat's cavalry went into action at the end 0/ the day, when the Russians were already ill flight. 65. Napoleoll was the victor 0/ the day 0/ Borodino: neller/he/ess with this battle the Russians showed Europe that the French army could be resisted.

ing forward in the face of this murderous fire, winning even Bagration's admiration as from a distance he saw these poor wretches bravely rush into the jaws of death. Again it was the artillery's turn, while at the central point the Italians under Viceroy Eugene finally succeeded in storming the elevated redoubt after a series of futile assaults. Nevertheless the Russian lines, as they had been drawn for battle, seemed still to be pretty solid. A crucial event occurred at eleven in the morning: Bagration was struck by a flying splinter in the leg, tearing it apart just under the knee. The general tried to remain in the saddle at the head of his men; he was one who knew his calling well and he had a feeling that the French were undergoing a difficult moment. If the Russian lines could hold out just a little longer against these savage onslaug!l.ts, then perhaps all would not be lost. The French undoubtedly were at the end of their rope. Unfortunately, the blood was flowing profusely from his gaping wound. Suddenly Bagration's face - as begrimed as the faces of his soldiers by the smoke of battle - turned deathly white. The Soviet historian Eugene Tarle writes: "For a while he tried to hide the wound from his men in order not to demoralize them, but the blood poured out of the wound without let-up; slowly, stoically, without a murmur he slipped down from his horse. His aides managed to grab him just in time as he was about to keel over. They laid him gently on the ground and then carried him to a sheltered spot. What he feared, the thing for which he had endured seconds of an excruciating pain without batting an eyelash, happened." Here Tarle quotes the words of an eyewitness: "In a flash word spread of his death , and it was impossible to prevent the panic which

62

broke out among the troops . . . only one feeling gripped everyone: despair. Towards noon , when Bagration was removed from the field, the second army - that is to say, the left wing which was under his command - was in the grip of such a state of mind that several detachments could not be reorganized even beyond the range of fire."

The French took advantage of the foe's misfortune. Bagration had been right when he had surmised that the enemy was in great trouble. At that moment Napoleon had already heard several pleas from his generals that his Guard, lined up in elegant parade order behind Napoleon watching the carnage, be hurled into the fray. But the Emperor turned a deaf ear. Down below, at his feet , thousands of men had been vainly fighting for several hours without achieving any concrete results and his marshals had vainly dispatched messages to the Emperor asking for help; the intervention of the Guard would have been enough to decide the outcome of the battle. Napoleon had refused such a request even from Count Rapp, who had been brought before him, covered with blood. Rapp had led the faltering French in a bayonet attack when he saw General Com pans fall at the head of his division, but he himself was soon struck by a bullet. When they moved him back to the rear Rapp asked to be brought before the Emperor. "You've been wounded again!" Napoleon cried. "Always, Sire. You know that is my habit." It was the twenty-seventh time that he had been wounded in battle. Napoleon stood up. Rapp's body must have been completely covered with battle scars.

66

67

- . - --

........

'-- ' .

- .--::-.

- -- :....~... : ~- ~

64

•

"What's going on up there?" he asked. "They're performing miracles, Sire. But the Guard is needed to end it once and for all." Napoleon made a gesture of refusal. "No," he said, "I don' t want them cut to pieces' We must win without the Guard. " After Rapp was taken away the Emperor paced up 'and down for a while, nervou sly, the n he again sat down in the folding small easy chair which was part of his campaign equipment. He was not feeling well, feeling prostrated by a cold and other ailments, but he had preserved his lucidity of mind. Evidently he also knew that the Guard would have definitely settled the battle in favor of the French , but he did not want to run any risks. As long as he had the Young and the Old Guard he could tell himself and others that he still had an army with him, indeed the best one in the world. Without Bagration the Russia n left wing did not resist for long, Finally Murat's cavalry opcned a way lor itse lf toward the heights and the French immediately hauled their artillery to th e hillt op . Raevskii's redoubt was forced to surrender in the early afternoon , despite an attempt by General Pl atov to come to his rescue by bringing up Cossacks who attacked the Grand Army from the rear. As Eugene succeeded in smashing his way through the central sec tor and holding it , Davout, Ney, and Murat again asked Napoleon to send the Guard into action: the enemy was retreating and was trying to disengage him self in o rder to avoid a complete defeat. Fresh troops were needed to prevent the foe from crossing the Moskva Ri ver. But Napoleon continued to reply with a curt "No!" The rain which began to fall at twilight mercifull y put an end to the carnage: the Russians had left at

66. Th e o utcome of the day of Borodino remailled undecided for a long time.

68

67. Napoleoll was reluctan t to hurl tlie Old Guard, lEis last if/tact format ion, i1lto the fray. 68. At Borodillo, Napoleoll d id 1I0t seem to measure up to !tis fame and reputation. 69. The "medics" succor the wounded at Borodino.

least 58,000 men on the pla in of Borodino - that was about half thei r army. Tolstoy describes the scene as follows: "Some tens of th ousands of men lay sacrificed in various postures and uniforms on the field s a nd meadows belonging to the Davidov family and the C rown serfs, on the field s and meadows where for 69

hundreds of years the peasa nts of Borodino, Gorky, Shevard ino, and Semyonovskoe had harvested their crops and grazed their cattle. At the ambulance stations the grass and earth were soaked with blood for two acres around . Crowds of men, wou nded and un wo unded , of va rious arms, with fever-stricken

70

faces, dragged themselves, on one side back to Mozhaisk, on the other to Valuev." Napoleon decided to mount his horse for the first time that day. His tired face revealed signs of great strain and suffering. When it was reported to him that only 700 prisoners had been taken , the Emperor withdrew into a stubborn silence. Everybody quickly understood the significance of such a report: it was obviou s that these Russians preferred to die rather than fall into the hands of the invader and of the AntiChrist. Never before had Napoleon seen any people - except, perhaps, the Spaniards - fight so doggedly in defense of their country. That night Kutuzov was aware that he had suffered a cruel defeat, but Napoleon was equally aware of the fact that he had not obtained that definitive victory of which he had been dreaming so long. The 90,000 dead of Borodino had opened the road to Moscow to the French. But nothing had really changed. The old Russian field marshal listened to the reports and set the minds of his generals at ease, just as the Emperor hailed the great victory in exalted terms and ostentatiou sly paraded before his marshals his utter confidence in the way things were going. Both knew that the game was still open. And even Napoleon, although he was convinced that his had been a Pyrrhic victory, maintained that he still had something to say: one more battle like this and the Russian army would be no more. Finally, Moscow beckoned to the survivors of the battle of Borodino: the Czar would be overthrown if the city fell. Napoleon was deluding himself, because he was measuring the stability of Alexander's throne by his own standard : he knew that Europe and Paris would not have forgiven Napoleon , not only for the loss of Paris, but even for a single defeat. Kutuzov, on the

66

other hand , who had a profound knowledge of his own people, had no worries at all on this score. The Russians would have wept and gritted their teeth , but the fall of Moscow would only spur them to fight against the invader with redoubled fury. Napoleon . therefore, could even· conquer Moscow. Tt would serve as an alluring trap in which to wait for the coming of winter. The plan was too bold for it to be understood by everybody, and above all by the Muscovites. But Kutuzov was a stubborn old man who knew what he wanted, and nothing and nobody could have stopped him. 70. Moscow, the ancient capita l 0/ Ho ly I?lissia. Napo/e oll hoped tllal the cOl/quest o/the city would shake til e Czar's throne. 71. Marshal Ney , olle 0/ the heroes 0/ the Russian campaign. 72. l oacllim Murat: his ca valry often sho wed it.~e l/ to be superior to [he more famous Co .\'sack em ·alry. 72

Moscow: The Holy City in the Hands of the Anti-Christ

67

An Ocean of Fire Around the Kremlin

73. Napoleon before Moscow. Despite the way the war was going, the Emperor experienced all the pride of a conqueror of a precious prize before the gates 0/ this fabulous city.

Kutuzov gathered the general staff around the table of a peasant's izba, or hut. Then he asked the generals to express their opinions on the situation: should they defend Moscow or abandon the city to its fate? Silently the old field marshal listened to the passionate utterances of his generals, all of which boiled down to the indignant question: "How could a Russian give up the holy city without a fight?" After the last general was heard, KutuZQv rose. Then, fixing his gaze stubbornly on the dirt floor, he slowly pronounced his verdict: "Gentlemen, by virtue of the authority invested in me by my Emperor and by my country, I order the army to retreat." A little later he said that the army would pass through Moscow without stopping there and that it would dig in farther to the east of the city. The first units set out on the march during the night and on the next morning the field marshal himself arrived before the gates of the ancient capital. The decision to abandon Moscow to the invader produced a panic in the city, and a feeling of great sorrow among the survivors of the battle of Borodino. The Muscovites poured in droves out of the eastern exits of the city in order to find a safe haven elsewhere. KutuZQv was not unaware of the state of mind of those around him, but he knew there was no other way out: Moscow simply had to be sacrificed because the "holy city" was the indispensable bait which Napoleon would find irresistible. He could not be denied this greatly coveted prize if he was to be made to fall into the trap that was about to close around him. The field marshal wheeled his horse on the outskirts of Moscow and turned to his entourage of officers. He asked whether anyone of them could guide him through the city, up to the Yautskii bridge, at a swift

69

74. Two Russians pray be/ore all icoll for the salvation oj Russia. 75. The Russians abandoned M oscow a fe w hours before the arrival 0/ the French. Th e latter up to the end had hoped that Kutuzov would again tempt fate O il the open battlefield. 76. Napoleon entered Moscow orle day later than the Grand Arm)'. He was deeply disappointed because no Russian delegation came forward to meet him.

74

gallop so that he could escape recognition. A very young officer, Prince Galitzin, stepped forward to volunteer his escort services. The ride through Moscow went well, but on the bridge, crowded with civilians and soldiers, Kutuzov was recognized by the Governor General of Moscow, Count Rostopchin. The latter was eager to talk, but KutuZQv brusquely interrupted him with the order to have the bridge cleared immediately so that the soldiers could pass over it.

At ten o'clock in the morning Napoleon rode to the top of Poklonny Hill, which in Russian means the " mount of greetings," and gazed with a rapt expression at Russia's fabulous holy city - the city that symbolized. for him the beginning of the long road to that mysterious Asia in which he aimed to follow in the tracks of Alexander the Great. Moscow was magnificent seen from that height "with her river, her gardens, and her churches . . . her cupolas twinkling like stars in the sunlight," as Tolstoy was to write. The Emperor drew a deep sigh and murmured. "At last!" He was sure that the capture of Moscow would cause the Czar to surrender: the most terrible and grueling campaign into which he had ever ventured was about to be crowned with a great victory . But he suffered his first disappointment when they told him that no deputation of Muscovites had been sent to greet the conqueror. Now he was even reluctant to enter the city and limited himself to appointing Marshal Edouard Adolphe Mortier, Duke of Treviso, its Governor General: "Defend Moscow against friend and foe alike," he told him. "Above all, no looting! You will answer for it with your head! " But the soldiers had already begun to loot this extraor-

70

dinary metropolis where magnificent and deserted mansions had been left intact and exposed to their cupidity, extreme poverty, and hunger. French citizens who had been residents of Moscow before the war were the first to spread the news about the preparations that had been made to set the city afire. The news seemed hard to believe, but that very night several fires broke out in various parts of the city: the wooden houses, enveloped in sudden huge searing flames , were razed to the ground in a matter of minutes. Just before dawn Napoleon went to visit the Kremlin. Lost in thought, he passed through the streets reddened in the glare of the flames. Inside the immense fortress , Napoleon wandered from one room to the other and stopped at length before the throne of Ivan the Great. Then he entered the apartments of the Czars where he sat down at a table and wrote a letter to Alexander. A senior Russian officer, who had been found convalescing in a hospital, was charged with the mission of delivering it to the Czar. Mortier had immediately realized that nothing could save Moscow from total destruction , but he continued day after day to struggle against the conflagration and to have incendiaries or suspected incendiaries summarily shot. For a long, long time this monstrous disaster in which inestimable treasures were lost forever was to be a favorite and intriguing' subject for discussion among historians. Everything seems to indicate that the .greatest responsibility for this rested upon Count Rostopchin , Moscow's Governor General. The retreating Russians burned mansions, houses, hovels, factories , entire neighborhoods, ammunition depots, and storehouses : a powder magazine blew up, adding to the din and destruction. Only the Kremlin seemed to be an island in the midst

75

76

71

(

/

,(-~

72

.-r=-' .

..... ~-

77. Th e Russian army leaving Moscow. Kutuzov, however, wanted his soldiers to remain ill .right of the holy city.

79

78. The conflagration if, Moscow lasted many days. The Frellch executed several Russians suspected 0/ IIm ring started the fire 0/ September 8. 79. Napoleon watched Moscow bum from a Kremlin window. The great Frel/ch writer Stem/hal wrote that ill those days he had seen Moscow illuminated "by the most beautiful conf/agratio1l in the world."

of a sea of flames , even though attempts were regularly made also to put this historic residence of the Czars to the torch. The most terrible night of all was that of September 16, when the wild flames licked at the Kremlin from all sides and threatened to reach the ammunition depot of a French artillery unit stationed under Napoleon's very window, along with the powder magazine that the Russians had left behind. When the arsenal tower was enveloped in flames, Mortier said that it was necessary to transport Napoleon to safer quarters. Napoleon refused to budge, but at dawn the situation became precarious. Viceroy Eugene appeared in the Emperor's apartments and on bended knee implored Napoleon to find a safer haven. Napoleon stopped being obstinate and decided to clear out of the enormous rooms, which were already filling with smoke, taking with him Murat, Berthier, and of course, Eugene. Segur was also present. This is how he described this episode in his memoirs: "Finally master of the palace of the Czars, Napoleon stubbornly refused to give up his conquest, even to the flames. Suddenly the cry, 'The Kremlin's on fire!' ran from mouth to mouth , rudely shaking us out of the contemplative stupor into which we had fallen. The Emperor went out to make a rapid survey of the danger. Fire had twice been detected in the building in which he was standing, and had been put out on both occasions. Our troops had found a Russian police officer in the building, and he was hauled before Napoleon for questioning. It turned out that this Russian was the incendiary and that he had carried out orders issued by his superior. Seemingly, everything had been earmarked for destruction, even the ancient and sacred Kremlin!

"The Emperor made a gesture at once expressing his rage and contempt, and the culprit was led to the courtyard where the angry grenadiers bayonnetted him to death. "This incident induced Napoleon to make up hi s mind on the spot. He hurried down the northern staircase, made famous by the slaughter of the Stt'eltsy, and ordered his aides to escort him out of the city to the imperial palace of Petrovskii , about a league away on the road to St. Petersburg. But we were besieged by an ocean of fire which blocked every exit from the citadel, and frustrated our first attempts to escape. After some searching, we discovered a sec ret door among the rocks on the side which opened on the Moskva River, and it was through this narrow passage that Napoleon, his officers, and his guard managed to escape from the Kremlin. But what had they gained thereby? Now they were actually closer than before to the fire , and they could neither retrace their steps nor remain where they were: How were they to go forward, how were they to make their way through that sea of fire? Even those who knew their way around the city, deafened by the din of the tempest and blinded by falling ashes, could no longer orient themselves since the smoke-filled and debrisridden streets had become unrecognizable. "Yet there was no time for delay and deliberation. The roaring of the flames around us became louder by the minute. Only one way was open' It was a narrow, winding street the length of which was already ablaze and it seemed more like an entrance to, rather than an exit from, that inferno. The Emperor resolutely rushed forward into the dangerous passage and kept going amid the roar and crackle of the flames, the din of collapsi ng floors and ceilings, faIling, blazing beam s, and fiery sheets of iron roofing.

73

81

74

80. Marshal Morrier, to whom Napoleon had entrusted Moscow, tried with all meatlS at his disposal 10 save the city from the flames.

82

8/ . According /0 Joseph de Maistre, "the flames of Moscow burned up Napoleon's fortune." 82. Ros/opchill , the Governor G eneral of Moscow, is beJiel'ed to have ordered that the city be put 10 the torch as soon as Ihe French sel foot if! it. The French were ullable ot put out the fires despite all their desperate allempts.

Heaps of rubble blocked the path: the flames which were noisily eating away at the buildings among which we were gi ngerly making our way rose above the rooftops where the lashing winds bent them backwards so that they curled over our heads. We were walking on a carpet of fire, under a sky of fire , and between two walls of fire. The heat burned our eyes which we had to keep open and alert to every danger. The all-consuming air, the smouldering ashes and the individual tongues of leaping flames turned our breathing into a series of short, dry, painful gasps. and we were almost suffocated by the smoke. Our hands were burned when we tried to shield our fa ces from the intolerable heat and tried to brush away the embers that settled on our clothing, burning it through. " In such a dangerous situation, when it seemed that the only way to safety lay in deliberate speed, our guide paused, uncertain and lost in thought. Probably our adventurous existence would have come to an end then and there, if some soldiers from the first corps, who chanced to be looting among the ruins, had not recognized the Emperor amid this vortex of flames. They ran to him and led him to the smoking rubble of a quarter that had been reduced to a pile of ashes that very morning. "It was here that we ran into Prince Eckmuehl, that marshal who, though wounded at the Moskva, had had himself carried back into the conflagration in order to rescue Napoleon or to perish with him amid the flames. He threw himself into his arms in a transport of joy. Napoleon received him with utmost kindness, but wholly preserved that composure which never forsook him in moments of peril." Peter the Great's palace stood in the open countryside, in the middle of a huge park. It was evening

when the Emperor arrived there; his heart was heavy . For what was happening meant only one thing: it was not at all about to end; on the contrary, it would be continued to the point of desperation. Segur gives us a measure of this state of mind when he reports that for the first time Napoleon was uncertain as to what to do. This man who had spent his whole life giving order after order, this man who had always had clear and distinct ideas, now began to confer with others, to ask advice. At first he expressed the intention to march on St. Petersburg: if the conquest of Moscow had not been enough to bring the Russians to their knees, he would force them to surrender by capturing the capital. But it was pointed out to him that the Grand Army was no longer in a condition to undertake an expedition of this kind. Someone proposed a withdrawal to Smolensk in order to spend the winter there while awaiting reinforcements and the return of spring, but Napoleon rejected the proposal. After all, was he not still waiting for an answer to the letter he had sent to Alexander? As soon as the Czar learned that he, Napoleon, was occupying Moscow and that Moscow had been reduced to a heap of ruins because the Russians themselves had lost their heads, he certainly would conclude that the war was lost. When Napoleon decided to return to the Kremlin , practically nothing of the holy city still remained . Strangely enough, that disastrous disarray resembled that of his own scattered, famished army, threatened by Russian deserters. The man who had intended to bring to this city the light of justice a nd the freedoms of the new France, the man who had ordered Mortier to prevent looting, now realized that the ca rds he held in his hands had cha nged in a few days. The various units were quarreling over their respective

75

83. This anti-Napo leon cartoon shows clearly that the psychological effects of th e gigan tic conflagration did not escape contemporaries: the burning was attributed to th e French and aroused universal indignation. 84. Kutuzov's soldiers could clearly see Moscow burning, and the awesome spectacle deepened th eir hatred of the invader.

prerogatives and priorities in the matter of looting the mansions and houses that had remained intact: even the Old Guard, the pride of his army, was now involved in this shameful conduct. He ordered that the moujiks be lured with money to bring their produce to Moscow, but they were killed or robbed by the soldiers and soon they could no longer be enticed to come to the city. As a result the patrols had to go farther and farther from Moscow, and even farther afield in the countryside, in order to find provisions for the men and fodder for the horses. But these sorties soon became very dangerous and useless: the men found nothing to confiscate and often they had to fight skirmishes with partisan hordes which had been formed by the m oujiks. Guerrilla warfare, which for years had been bleeding white the French armies in Spain, now loomed as a growing threat in Russia too. Napoleon received only scanty intelligence about the enemy army : Kutuzov had brought his armies to the old Kaluga road, and Murat's cavalry had vainly tried to provoke them into a fight. In fact, the aged field marshal had forced his men to halt. The camp was not far from Moscow. Kutuzov wanted every soldier to see the sky over the horizon which had been reddened by the monstrous funeral pyre which Moscow had become so that their hearts would seethe with a desire for revenge . Meanwhile, fresh troops were being recruited throughout Russia. As soon as the autumn arrived, the French would be fo rced to make a decision. In fact , September had come and gone. On October 3, in an attempt to ease the situation in some way, the Emperor announced that he had drawn up a plan for the capture of St. Petersburg. He was furious because he had received no reply from Alexander,

76

and wanted revenge. But the good sense of the marshals, who were deeply discouraged over the prospect of a march on the capital, prevailed. The Grand Army was in no position to accomplish an undertaking of this kind, even if it were buoyed by the hope of reinforcements sent by Macdonald. After a long parley, the Emperor was persuaded to give up the idea, and limited himself to sending an ambassador to the Czar to have arrangements made for peace talks: Napoleon was at the end of his rope, but he did not want to admit it either to himself or to others. All he did now was to express astonishment over the fact that the fall of Moscow had not shaken Alexander's throne and had not induced the Russians to seek peace. A Frenchman who knew the Ru ssians best, the former ambassador Marquis Louis de Caulaincourt, tried to explain the reasons for this seemingly strange behavior to him, but Napoleon rejected all his reasonings (Caulaincourt, incidentally was the man whom he had chosen for his peace mission to St. Petersburg). The ambassador then started all over again in an attempt to convince him of how things really stood: the Russians knew that the worst was over and that winter was on the way. They would never agree to make peace at this time. The Czar, even if nobody had informed him, must certainly know that the Grand Army was in a terrible predi cament. Napoleon was not used to listening to objections, so he abruptly broke off the conversation. If Caulaincourt did not feel like undertaking the mission, he had already found another man who was willing to leave for St. Petersburg, Jacques Law, the Marquis of Lauriston. He had been a classmate of Napoleon's and was a skillful diplomat and politician. So Napoleon commissioned him to take the message to the

83

77

85. Napoleon's sword commemorating Austerlitz; the hilt was 01 chased silver with medallions and lallrelleaves.

85

86. The blade 01 the sword thatl\'apoleorl used at Marengo is decorated with designs in enamel against a gold background; the sheath and tassels are 01 leather. 87. E)'e fl rhe Kremlin was;n danger of being destroyed by the conflag ration: al any rate, the Russians tried to blow il up.

86

Czar. As Lauriston was taking his leave of Napoleon just before setting out for the Russian lines to obtain a safe conduct from Kutuzov, Napoleon said to him: "I want peace, I must have peace! I want it absolutely. Only preserve our honor!" Caulaincourt was right: the mission was doomed to fail. Lauriston himself realized this the moment he reached the enemy lines on October 5. Before he could have a private audience with Kutuzov he had to cool his heels for a very long time and he was even forced to wait for the outcome of a preliminary meeting between the Russian chief of staff, Bennigsen, and Murat. And after all this long period of waiting, Kutuzov finally sent for him and told him that nobody could issue him a safe-conduct to SI. Petersburg because nobody, including himself, was empowered to do so! Lauriston was flabbergasted, but Kutuzov and his generals came up with a conciliatory proposal in order to soften the blow: why not deliver Napoleon's message to the Czar's aide-de-camp, Volkonsky, who would immediately gallop off with it to SI. Petersburg? Lauriston was told that Murat himself had approved the idea; indeed he had even favorably welcomed the proposal of an armistice pending recei pt of a reply from the Czar. When Napoleon was informed of this, he approved; yet something told him that there was much about the counter-overtures of the Russians that had a false ring. For example, the armistice that had been agreed upon was rather unusual: it applied only to the central section of the two deployed armies, namely, that sector in which the two armies faced each other. The armistice did not apply to the flanks, where the figh t would go on. But certainly Murat must have known what he was doing and his letters had a tranquilizing

78

",-~

'.-

\

'

.- . --.,

~

"("""--.

'-

----~-.

-~

/'

~. --

I

-...-:'-::_I

...

_-- - _... _ -_.--

87

---. ,.

87

effect. It would appear that nobody among the French entertained the least suspicion that the Russians were now reorganizing their ranks and needed several days of calm before the advent of winter. Philippe de Segur confirms this and admits that while on the one hand the guerrilla warfare continued to take deadly toll of the French cavalry, on the other the Russians were busily whipping their disorganized armies into shape: "All the recruits arrived at the collection centers despite the long treks that they were forced to make; there was no need, as in other years, to defer the call to arms until the snow, by obstructing all the roads except the main thoroughfares, made desertions impossible. All responded to the national call to arms, indeed all Russia rose to her feet. It was said that mothers had wept with joy

upon hearing that their sons had been enlisted and they themselves ran to announce the glorious news and they themselves led them to see them decorated with the sign of the crusaders and to hear them shout, 'God wills it!' " In Moscow, Napoleon was still waltmg for Czar Alexander's answer, the answer that would enable him to draw up a peace treaty and to abandon the holy city. A decision had to be taken now, in one way or another. For this reason he issued orders for the seizure of war booty. He had the churches of the Kremlin stripped of everything which could serve as a trophy for the Grand Army, and even had the huge cross that stood above the throne of [van the Great removed, that it might be placed atop the dome of the

79

lnvalides in Paris. But still there was no answer from Alexander. October was now drawing perilously near to its end, and the first cold wave had arrived. Napoleon whiled the time away by concerning himself with matters of trifling importance, such as discussing the by-laws of the ComMie Fram;aise, without coming to a decision which with each passing day became harder and harder to make. As of October 14, however, he had already given an order to Berthier: no unit moving towards Moscow was to go beyond Smolensk in the direction of Moscow. Also, the removal of the wounded began. Napoleon was getting ready to abandon the city, even if it still seemed as though he had not decided upon a course of action: whether he would wait until the end of winter in Smolensk, or whether he would march forthwith on SI. Petersburg, or whether he would return to Paris. The first initiative of an all-determining character came from the Russians: on October 18, they launched a full-scale attack on Murat's front line at Tarutino. The sudden attack had inflicted a catastrophic reverse on the flamboyant King of Naples, who had been taken in and lulled into a false sense of security by the charm and affability of the Russian commanders during the "armistice." The Russian chief of staff asked Kutuzov whether he should continue the attack further. The field marshal replied that this was hardly necessary: the French would get the message anyway. And Napoleon, in fact, immediately understood that this was a warning: the Russians had reorganized their army and were preparing a counter-offensive. A safe haven for the Grand Army had to be found before the arrival of winter. So the 110,000 survivors of the Grand Army received the order to vacate the holy city.

80

88. The Russians caught the French by surprise at TarUlino, 011 the outskirts of Moscow: it was the signal 'hat the mOlllellt had arrived /0 expel the invader. Napoleoll heard the gunfire while he was passing some cavalry units in review. 89. In Moscow, whatever had not been destroyed by the fire fell prey to the fury of the soldiery and went to

enrich the stores of booty collected in the course of the great sacking

0/ the city. 89

Russia Annihilates the Grand Army

81

_-=-c

-=-

.. --.-~ . -

.-'-='~~;~~~ -~.

.= ..:"~.,..-=-:

~~;:;~,~,o,,-,,s,,,,=- ~:.:.;.:: ~__ .~:~~=-_

-.- ~'. "" .:-.~. - -----

....... ..

..

~

.::~.:-:~~~='---~-=-~-

._..

_-_--=--~

-~.-=::;:;..~-=-...!:.~ -----

'.'

,-

.

-.-- ~ .~~---.-- ~

.. -.:..

The Last Victory, the Slaughter at the Berezina

90. Th e retreat of the Grand Army constituted tile most tragic page of the Russian campaign: th e Prench army was never to recover from the frightful losses suffered on the frozen steppes.

The Grand Army began its exodus from Moscow on October 19 during a bitter cold night. Tn the light of the moon, companies, regiments, divisions, whole

army corps marched through the city's streets, now unrecognizable, to the roll of drums, while the bands played the most martial music in the imperial repertoire. Nobody seemed to think that this was a retreat, and even Napoleon probably was trying to convince himself when, upon putting the spurs to his horse, he was heard to murmur: "Forward to Kaluga and woe to those who cross my path! " Tn general it was considered that the Grand Army was marching grimly against its foe, which, only the day before, at Tarutino, had inflicted a shattering defeat on the King of Naples. If there had been no battle, the French army would have moved to a position more suitable for spending the winter, where it would have been easier to rest and more convenient to wait for provisions and reinforcements for the new spring offensive. Officially the Emperor asserted that Russia already had been defeated and that only her oriental fata lism prevented her from accepting offers of peace. Napoleon by now must have been convi nced that the only thing to do was to escape the trap into which he had fallen. He was aware that he had lost too much time in Moscow, in the futile expectation that the Czar would answer his messages, which , in the last analysis, had actually produced a wholly opposite effect: the Russians had interpreted them as a sign that Napoleon's army was on the verge of surrender. In reality there was nothing more for the army to do in Moscow, and this had been the case for a long time. The Emperor must have considered for a long time the possibility of inciting the Russian populace against the Czar and the nobility by abolishing serf-

83

91. The Grand Army left Moscow to the blare of trumpets and the roll of drums, but ill truth the French army was ,IOwa defeated military body. 92. A cannoll of Naroleon's army. In their retreat rhe French left all their booty behind, and a great part of their war materiel, including their murderous artillery.

92

84

91

93. Napoleon himself ran a great risk during the war: a Cossack troop succeeded jn pushing within a lew yards of him but it was repulsed before the Emperor could be recognized.

93

dom. But he had been forced to thrust aside this temptation in order not to prejudice the possibility of negotiations with Alexa nder. Thus precious time had been frittered away, while the supplies inc reasi ngly dwindled, while it was no longer possible even to find forage for the horses in the countryside around Moscow. Everyt hing had been destroyed and the m oltjiks had organizcd themselves into partisan bands who massacred Frenchmen who ventured to leave the city. The reversal at Tarutino had not been irreparable. but it had definitely made clear why Field Marshal Kutuzov had not wanted to go too far away from Moscow: the Ru ssian s had c nlisted new conscripts; they had rcorganized and were read y to go on the offensive. As previously stated. the Emperor's decis ion to leave had been made a few days bcfore Tarutino. Hc had ordercd that the convoys from Smolensk to M oscow bc interrupted ; he had begun the removal of the wounded; he had dispatched commissariat personnel to prepare for the army's arrival in Smolen sk. ( Among these there was a Frenchman who was to inscribe his name on the histo ry of European cu lture, Hcnri Beyle, known under the pseud onym of Stendhal.) But there is no doubt th at the unforesee n clash at Tarutino had delivered the final blow to Napoleon's lingering hopes. As soon as news of the imminent departure sprcad, generals and soldi ers hastencd to load on the wagons the booty thcy had collected during the looting. And whcn thc army began its march , it was joined by all the foreign residents in Moscow who had remained behind to wait for the French when the Russians had evacuated the city, and who now were afraid of reprisa ls. Thu s a thron g of c ivilians, me n, women and

85

94. Napo leon was careful to see that news of th e ex /ellt of tile disaster did not trickle back 10 Europe: he was very much aware how insecure was the cro wII which Ire had ollly recently acquired.

95

95. Kutu zov lIever con tinued his attacks to the limit: he merely waited fo r tile ;n vader.~ to leave , without all excessive expenditure of human lives.

children, with their baggage also had to be taken along on that infinitely difficult journey. Only 8,000 men now remained in Moscow under the command of Marshal Mortier; their mission was to blow up the Kremlin and all other installations of any military importance. After the accomplishment of their mission they were supposed to catch up with the army in four days, on the ancient road to Kaluga.

That night the march was halted on the edge of the city in order to organize the formation of the endless, lumbering column. This was by no means an easy job, even though efficiency was still the strong point of the Napoleonic military machine. Nevertheless by noon it was possible to resume the march. Philippe de Segur described the scene in his memoirs as follows : "One could see in the three or four columns of interminable length, a jumble, a confusion of carriages, wagons, gaudy coaches, and every kind of cart imaginable. Here were trophies of Russian , Turkish, and Persian banners and the gigantic cross of Ivan the Great, there long-bearded Russia n peasants who were driving or carrying out booty, of which they formed a part. Others were wheeling barrows loaded with everything that they had been able to pile on them. These senseless creatures were blissfully unaware of the fact that they would not even be able to survive up to the end of the first day! Their cupidity blinded them to the eight thousand leagues and the many battles that loomed ahead. "Conspicuous in that mass trailing the army's rear were crowds of men of all nations, without uniforms or weapons, and lackeys swearing in a medley of tongues and urging on ponies, harnessed to fancy carriages with rope, by dint of threats and blows."

(These were carriages loaded with provIsIons and booty that had been rescued from the fire ; in them also rode French women with their children. Once upon a time they had been happy residents of Moscow, now they were fleeing the hatred of the Russians which had been unleashed against them by the invasion . The army was their only salvation.) "Russian girls, voluntary captives, also brought up the rear. It seemed as though one were watching a caravan, a nomadic people, even one of those armies of ancient times ret urning from some great exploit of destruction laden with spoils a nd slaves . It was hard to understand how the head of that column could drag along and sustain such a mass of vehicles and "baggage over such an infinitely long stretch of road. "

The Emperor - " according to the Soviet historian Tarle - was certainly not happy over this state of affairs. But he could not make up his mind to order his generals and his soldiers to give up their booty which , after all, he had promised them. On the other hand , Napoleon fully realized that very soon his army would have to face even more serious difficulties. In the last analysis only two persons had clear ideas: Napoleon and Kutuzov. Not only did each know what he had to do, but also what the other would do. Napoleon had no other alternative save retreat, and everything depended on the way it would be brought to a conclusion. In practice, it boiled down to a question of avoiding ambushes, entrapment in a field battle, and a nything else that would now have meant only a useless squandering of energy and materials. For Kutuzov, who was quite aware of Napoleon's state of mind , a battle was equally useless. It might destroy the invader, but it would also cost the

87

Russians an exorbitant price. In the field marshal's view the Russians should be content with the fact that the invaders were leaving without any delay. The most important thing was to prevent Napoleon from retreating in good order; the Grand Army was to be weakened by a consta nt harassment which would make it impossible to realize the possible project of a new offensive in the spring or summer. Those who did not understand the grand plans of their respective commanders were the sowers of the same discontent in both general staffs. Kutuzov especially had to face some grueling days under the pressure of the Czar's appeals and the insinuations of hostile generals. He was even accused of cowardice, as had happened on the day of Tarutino, when he opposed pushing the attack against Murat further , and as was to happen in the days immediately following, for example, at Malo-Yaroslavets. On the afternoon of October 19, while the domes of the Kremlin were etched against the now distant horizon, the men of the Grand Army heard the noise of the first explosions set by Mortier's mines. The destruction of Moscow had been prepared with meticulous precision and it continued for four days amid tremendous blasts and horrifying ruins. When the last units of the rear guard had left the holy city the Cossacks discovered that, fortunately, not all the charges had exploded , because the rain wh ich had fallen during those days had extinguished the fuses.

Napoleon had spent a good deal of his last days in the Kremlin in front of the map of Russia, looking for the best road to take for the way back. Now Kutuzov's plan was clear and it was absolutely necessary to ward off its dangers. If Napoleon was to

88

insure the possibility of saving his army, the enemy had to lose the tracks of the retreat. This could be done only if his army was swallowed up by the steppes. And he hoped to effect the disappearing act by ordering the Grand Army to take the road to Kaluga. At a certain point, in fact, the army was to make a right turn and then proceed in a northwesterly direction, taking the road to Smolensk. The Russians, according to this plan, would be losing precious time in an effort to pick up traces of the retreating invaders, which would give the Grand Army time to arrive at Smolensk, where it would find rest, reinforcements, provisions, and shelter against the cold. One fact, however, had escaped the Emperor: the Russian army had its storehouses on the Kaluga road. Hence it was inevitable that the march of the French would alert the enemy: Napoleon had a need of food for his troops that could no longer be put off. Kutuzov received intelligence reports confirming the fact that Napoleon was marching towards his supply center at eleven o'clock on the evening of October 12 ; immediately he ordered General Dokhturov to intercept the French. The clash took place at MaloYaroslavets, barely seventeen miles from the bulk of the Russian army. The Italians who made up the fourth army corps, commanded by Viceroy Eugene, distinguished themselves in the action . The battle was fiercely fought: during the day the city passed eight times from the Russians to the Italians in a bloody duel to the death. Napoleon's orders to Eugene called for the position to be held at any cost, in order to enable the Grand Army to pass behind Malo-Yaroslavets and thus effect the turn in a northwesterly direction towards Smolensk. A good deal of the French plan had been

96. 011 the way back, the Gralld A rmy crossed the plaill of Borodblo ill .~i1ellce; traces of the frightful carnage were sIilI visible.

97

97. SOOIl the snow was johled to fhe Russiall atlacks, making the Frellch relreat evell more difficult. 98. Th e m ost terrible dallger, alollg wit" the cold. was presented by the Russian partisans. rhe moujiks alld the stragglers, after impeding the flow of French supplies, Irallsformed 'he march of the Gralld Army ill'o all agoni,illR retreat.

89

99

frustrated by the Russian intervention, but Napoleon was still sure that he could cover up his tracks from the enemy. Eugene found no difficulty in getting his men to fight in top form, given the circumstances: up to then the Italians had not had an opportunity to distinguish themselves in the Russian campaign, save for interventions by some units at Borodino. The battle of Malo-Yaroslavets made the Russians understand that Napoleon's men still had lots of drive and firing power. Dokhturov was forced to ask for help. Kutuzov, who was encamped behind the fighting units, rushed Raevskii's men to the scene, but their intervention had no effect on the course of the battle. The Italians amazed everybody on that day. On the following day the English General Robert Wilson , the British Military Commissioner attached to the Russian headquarters, wrote the following in his report: "The Italian army corps at MaloYaroslavets surprised me with its heroism. Sixteen thousand of these valiant men defeated 80,000 Russian troops." 'The fourth army corps, in effect, fought with a courage born of desperation. General Domenico Pino - the commander of an Italian division - was wounded alongside his brother, who had been riddled with bullets, while he was exhorting his men to resist. Another Italian, Colonel Peralda, was seen running to the head of his regiment of light infantrymen, shouting: "Don't fire your muskets, men, don't fire! The bayonet is the weapon of the guard! Fix bayonets, Italians!" When the Russians mounted their final assault the same Peralda, who had also assumed command of the second "Pino column," managed to drag his exhausted men once more into action against the enemy: "Remember that this is the battle of the Italians. Win or die!"

90

Many indeed did die. The losses of the fourth army corps that day were 4,000 dead and wounded. After eighteen hours of exhausting combat, the Italians were still at their post, while the army continued its march, in expectation that the Russians might again try to bar the way. However, Kutuzov had given orders that the invaders were to be unmolested for the moment. An eyewitness, the Italian officer Filippo Pisani, described the final phase of that battle as follows: "Napoleon arrived on the field of battle at ten o'clock in the morning on October 25, followed by a company of Mamelukes, or which at least dressed in that manner, with curved swords, Turkish-style. Upon meeting Viceroy Eugene he embraced him, saying, 'The honor of this wonderful day of October 24 belongs to you and your brave Italians.' " Pisani adds that the Emperor "promised rewards and promotions which were later not given to us to reap because of the subsequent disasters of the retreat." The fourth army corps also resumed its march. The signal was given by a cannon shot. "While crossing the city," writes Filippo Pisani, "we made our way with difficulty because of the obstruction presented by the bodies of the dead and the wounded. The former were flattened out under the wheels of our wagons and we tried to dodge the latter; these wounded soldiers, in the name of what is most holy, implored us take them along with us, but with great sorrow we were forced to leave many of them behind." There was no time to lose since the long march was only at its beginning and the Cossacks gave no respite. Napoleon himself almost fell into the hands of General Platov's Cossacks, in the vicinity of MaloYaroslavets. He was saved by Count Rapp, who

99. November 8, 1812: Napoleon warmin g himself at a bivouac {ire . The Emperor lelt the Grand Army only in the last days in order to arrive in Paris before the news of the disaster. 100. A corpse in the snow serves as a meal fo r ravens: thus did an illustrator of the late nineteenth century symbolize the Napoleonic venture in Russia .

100

placed his horse between Napoleon and the Cossack chieftain. who killed the beast with a sword thrust. Fortunately none of those shouting Cossacks realized that the Emperor of the French was only a few feet away. Immediately a platoon of the cavalry of the Guard rushed to the scene and put the Cossacks to flight. The episode is very indicative of the state of affairs from the very first days. But the situation changed increasingly for the worse because of the grueling march, the growing hunger, and the bitter cold; because of the ever-increasing ambushes set by the partisans, the constant assaults of the Cossacks; and because of the awareness that the strategic march to Kaluga had been followed by a real march of withdrawal to Smolensk, while Marshal Davout's third army corps in the rear tried to keep the Russians at bay. The endless column crossed swamp after swamp and was swallowed by forest after forest and climbed hill after hill in an increasing state of disorder and confusion. Only Davout managed to keep his men in closest ranks, but such a tactic in the end turned out to be dangerous because the Cossacks picked off too many victims each time they attacked the flanks. Soon the rear guard remained all too far back and Napoleon was forced to invite Davout to step up the march. Meanwhile the Grand Army crossed the plain of the battle of Borodino, where the dead, in a state of putrefaction, were still piled in heaps everywhere and the mute witnesses to that terrible day were horrifying to behold. The men crossed those hills in utter silence, until they arrived at the Abbey of Kolotskoi, where many wounded survivors of the great battle were still sheltered, worn out by the cold and pros-

9t

IOJ

101. The table, the chair, and the lamp that Napoleon used during his military campaigns.

trate with hunger. Those who could took positions along the road and stretched their arms imploringly towards their comrades who were leaving Russia: Napoleon ordered that every carriage and wagon was to take a wounded soldier on board, leaving behind only the very weak who in any case would not be able to survive.

92

On the evening of that very day the news ran up and down the column that several sutler units, whose carts were piled high with booty looted in Moscow, had freed themselves of excess weight, so as not to burden the horses beyond the point of endurance, by shoving the wounded off their carts. This crime came to light only because one of the poor wretches - he

102. The soldiers 01 th e engineer corps building a bridge ill order to enable the remnallts 01 the Grand Army 10 cross a river. / 1 was owing 10 the sell-sacrifice 01 POlltOOIl engineers Ihat a part 01 Ihe French army reach Prussia.

happened to be a general - managed to survive on the road so that he could be picked up once more. This story sent a shiver of horror and disgust through the column. If the troops were capable of perpetrating such atrocities it meant they were in a desperate plight and a desperate state of mind. Indeed many symptoms pointed to this. Other atrocities came to light more or less at the same time. In the environs of Ciaz the Grand Army found the corpses of several Russians strewn on the ground, with their heads bashed in. It did not take much imagination to infer what had happened: about 2,000 Russian prisoners, escorted by Polish, Spanish , and Portuguese units, were marching in the vanguard of the retreating army. There was no food for them, the prisoners were in no condition to drag themselves another inch , so somebody had decided to put an end to their suffering by bashing their heads in with the butt of a rifle. The crime horrified everybody. The Marquis de Caulaincourt - the former French ambassador to St. Petersburg - turned to the Emperor with an expression of revulsion on his face and said: "This is a frightful atrocity. Is this, then, the civilization that we are bringing to Russia? What will be the effect of such barbarities on the enemy? Do we not also leave our wounded and large numbers of prisoners to hi s mercies? Would not the Russians be justified in making our men suffer terrible reprisals for this?" The Emperor was silent, according to Segur, but coldblooded murder was halted next day: the Poles, Spaniards, and Portuguese limited themselves to letting the Russians in their charge die of hunger. After all, it would not have been prudent to let them go scot-free, since they would have quickly informed Kutuzov's army corps that Napoleon's army was

fighting a losing battle against hunger and was in desperate straits. The killings continued nonetheless. At Vyazma, where the Russians tried to break the column in two and where the army corps under Eugene and Davout had to fight doggedly against General Miloradovich's attacks, Marshal Ney took up the position of rear guard. The Russian general staff exerted enormous pressure on Kutuzov to force the French into battle on the open field in order to destroy them. Indeed, Czar Alexander himself repeatedly and explicitly demanded this battIe. The wily old field marshal always avoided making a reply and refused to engage in a definitive clash which to him seemed useless: Russia would defend herself by herself, with the strength of her measureless distances. As Tolstoy was to describe it so magnificently in "War and Peace," "The Russian army had to cut like a whip applied to a running animal." For the moment the Russians could be satisfied with scenting out the fleeing enemy, forcing him to leave thousands of men along the way. The Grand Army was continuing its march towards Smolensk, which now appeared like a mirage beyond reach. The men, and Napoleon himself, had by now idealized it, with its storehouses overflowing with provisions, its hot food, and its shelters against the bitter cold. What was left of the Grand Army found the strength to go on by daydreaming about what it would find in Smolensk. And this called for lots of courage. Segur reports that on the day following the clash with Miloradovich, it was discovered that the army corps under Prince Eugene and Davout were more than halved. "We had saved our honor," writes Segur, who was always at Napoleon's side, "but there were enormous gaps in our ranks. Everything had to be reduced in order to

93

103. D espite everythillg, Napoleon's army put up a desperate resistance to the attacks of the Russians. 104. The crossing of the BeTel-ina, in a popular French engraving: the veterans of the greate.<;t army that had ever been bear visible marks of a fright!ul defeat.

give a form of unity to what remained: every regiment had shrunk to a battalion, every battalion to a platoon; the soldiers no longer had their old positions, comrades, or commanders. When on the following day, they reformed their ranks they were astonished at the smallness of their numbers." It was the sixth day of November and the snow fell. After a brief tempest of icy wind, "it seemed," wrote Segur, "as if the sky had come down to join the earth and our enemies in order to complete our defeat. Everything around us became confused and unrecognizable; things changed shape, we walked without knowing where we were nor where we were going." The soldiers were swallowed up in huge pits which opened under them without warning, and in which they were buried alive. "Those who came behind them moved off to the side, but the tempest whipped their faces as though deliberately opposing their march. Winter, in that new form, assailed them from all sides, cutting through their uniforms and their wornout shoes. Their wet clothing froze on them, and this icy vestment held their bodies as in a vise, stiffening all their members. The cruel, violent wind made them gasp for breath, instantly freezing the drippings from their mouths and noses into icicles that hung from their beards. "Yet the poor wretches continued to drag themselves forward, trembling, until the snow which stuck to their feet like a hard stone, or some debris, a branch or even the body of a fallen comrade tripped them up and they fell to the ground. Then they vainly implored help: the snow soon covered them up and little white elevations in the terrain were all that remained to indicate where they lay : this was their sepulchre! The road was sown with these mounds like a cemetery . The bravest and the most callous

94

soldiers even were moved, passing by hurriedly, averting their glances. But all they saw around them was the snow . ... "

The Grand Army was only at the beginning of its long agony. Up to then the winter had been relatively mild but it was just then that the thermometer dropped to 20 degrees below zero (centigrade). Nobody among Napoleon's soldiers had ever experienced such severe temperatures. It was then that a courier from Paris brought news of an attempt at revolt that had been put down by the police. It was not a matter of great importance, according to the message, but Napoleon sensed that his throne was in danger: he would not be able to weather the shock of a definitive defeat. Every morniNg up to then it had been the aide-decamp's job to give the Emperor a report on the number of casualties suffered during the day and the night before. At this point this formality was dropped: nobody kept a record of casualties any more. Besides, it was enough to take a look at that column of desperate men which grew thinner after every assault by the Cossacks or an enemy ambush by the partisans, to get a vivid idea of how things were with respect to casualties and losses. A terrible disappointment lay in wait for all of them in Smolensk: no provisions about which they had so ardently dreamed were to be found in the city, so the army could not bivouac there even for a few days of rest. The disintegration was complete. Platov's Cossacks had surrounded the Army of Italy, and Prince Eugene had managed to save a part of the survivors only at a frightful price after having abandoned their baggage and supplies in order to be able to cross the river Vop as fast as possible. Many had drowned because the ice . was too thin. The

106. Tile endless retreating column mmlDged to cross tile Berezina before the Russians were in a position 10 allack i/.

105

stragglers who had remained behind suffered a gruesome end: the Cossacks stripped them bare and forced them to march thus on the snow, in the polar cold. The disaster at the Yop induced the survivors of the Army of Italy to march at a faster pace in order to link up with Napoleon's army. Thus they arrived at Smolensk which was now a city of the dead. What had been the largest army in the annals of history was now reduced to 50,000 men, a tenth of the forces that had crossed the frontier several months before. The march continued, terrifyingly and without end, in a struggle without quarter against all and everybody, against the partisans, Platov's Cossacks, and Miloradovich's infantrymen. At Krasnoe the remnant members of the Grand Army were engaged in a new battle for survival against Russian units who had been emboldened to take more aggressive action as a result of the desperate straits in which the invaders found themselves. The more or less "patriotic" accounts of such clashes are agreed on the fact that there was glory aplenty for all in those days, but facts of a more gruesome character are concealed behind such derring-do accounts: the thousands of men in agony who fell on the sides of the road to lie there and die, who threw away their weapons because they could no longer hold them in their frozen hands; the anguish of those who desperately tried not to fall too far behind , like that poor wretch who for several days , every night, cut off pieces of putrefied flesh from his feet so that he could keep going, until only his heels were left and he had to resign himself to his grim fate. These "patriotic" accounts, for example, say nothing about the episodes of cannibalism. Not a few soldiers managed to survive by eating their comrades' flesh before it was petrified by the cold. And there were

96

many who survived by tearing chunks of flesh from live horses, whose wounds were quickly healed by the cold. The long march continued for days and days, in temperatures 20 and 30 degrees below zero centigrade, towards the west and the Prussian frontier, under the continuous attacks of partisans and of Cossacks, while Kutuzov's army executed a parallel march which Robert Wilson (the English observer attached to Kutuzov's headquarters) and the Czar condemned but which nevertheless had an extraordinary military effect. At long last in mid-month the survivors of Napoleon's army neared the Berezina River, a point of crossing which they approached with the greatest trepidation: it was a narrow river spanned by a single bridge which led to the city of Borissov.

Even the strategists in St. Petersburg, influenced by the self-interested counsels of the English, busied themselves with preparing an infallible plan which would encircle Napoleon as soon as the French army tried to cross the Berezina. Kutuzov now could not oppose the clear evidence: the enemy would himself fall into the bag that the Russians were preparing for him. The plan was simple: the Grand Army, or what was left of the invasion army, at the moment of its forced crossing over the bridge, was to be simultaneously assaulted by Kutuzov, by the St. Petersburg army corps, and by the corps under the command of Admiral Chichakov. The latter was to come up from the south, where there was no threat to Russia's security since the day Prince Metternich, the Austrian foreign minister, had let the Russians know that

/05. The crossing oj the Berezina was a brilliant military operation: the Russians were skillfully tricked. By the time they realized that they had lost a great opportunity to wipe out the French with ease, it was already 100 late.

,- ,

106

the army of Napoleon's father-in-law would never engage in a "real" war against Russia. The plan was was perfect, and yet when it was shown to Kutuzov it made no impression on him. He continued to ask why Russian moujiks should still die to free Europe and England from the Napoleonic nightmare. Moreover, Kutuzov knew very well that the army which he had led across Russia in this strange pursuit at a distance, although tested in the crucible of combat, was nevertheless tired and far from being in a condition to face a decisive battle, even against the remnants of Napoleon's army: of the 97,000 men that he had at Tarutino only 27,000 remained to Kutuzov! But the old field marshal was alone and in certain cases he actually now preferred to see the most restless among his opponents leave, like Barclay de Tolly. Others, like Bennigsen, he had removed from positions of command. Kutuzov was very much aware of the web of intrigue that was being woven about him. Perhaps it is in this taciturn resistance that the old courtier appears in his truest light: one man alone against the court of St. Petersburg, against the general staff, against the Czar's foreign advisers! Indeed the Czar no longer concealed the antipathy he had always felt for him, but also it was obvious that he could not do without Kutuzov's intelligence, because in the matter of Russian generals, Napoleon was right: there was not a really good one in all Russia. Wittgenstein and Chichakov were the rising stars. The field marshal knew them weIl enough to know that a plan in which they had a determining role could not work. Paul Vasilievich Chichakov was an admiral whom the Czar held in great esteem. In 1796 he had commanded the Russo-English fleet which had forced the French to evacuate HoIland. Subsequently, the Czar had appointed him Minister of the Navy. At the start

of the French invasion he had been the commanderin-chief of the Black Sea fleet and of the Danubian provinces, Moldavia and Walachia. Now, at 45, this admiral had 25,000 soldiers under his command with orders to stop Napoleon. His task at the Berezina was of primary importance, but relatively easy: he was to wait until the moment Napoleon was crossing the river; the Grand Army would think that it had reached safety on the right bank of the Berezina when, instead , Chichakov would be waiting for it. Count Louis of Wittgenstein was two years Chichakov's junior; in fact he was the same age as Napoleon. During the Russian campaign his mission had been to guard St. Petersburg; he was a veteran of Austerlitz. It was said that boldness was not exactly his strong point, but this did not prevent him in 1813 from succeeding the great Kutuzov. However, later, he was summarily removed from his post. The decision to remove him was taken by Miloradovich - the general who was called the "Russian Murat": after the battle of Bautzen he presented himself before Louis and said, "For the good of the country I am compeIled to remove you from your command." At the Berezina Wittgenstein was to come down from the north and herd Napoleon towards the pitfall of the crossing. Nevertheless, it is highly probable that Kutuzov would not have behaved otherwise, even if he had had generals at his side whom he felt he could trust. In the last analysis, the generals had little to do with it. He had always believed that in order to beat Napoleon there was only one way: to let him advance in such a way that Russia would be able to swallow him ; he had known this from the moment he took command, he knew it on the eve and on the morrow of Borodino and also in Moscow. When

97

107. Many French /ell prisoners to the Russians on the bank o/the Berezina, or were blowlI up with the two hridges which were destroyed in order to preventlhe enemy from pursuing th e Grand Army beyond lhe river. 108. Napoleon's brave warriors are now an army of ghosts: wounded, their uniforms in latters, th ey stagger ill the snow, dragging th eir weapons. 109. Many of the pontoon engineers who endured the icy waters of the river while building the bridge at Studianko were dragged under by the swift-moving current.

108

;';".-

'~~~

98

Napoleon left the holy city Kutuzov had rejoiced in the jubilant shouts of his soldiers, above all because that departure confirmed the correctness of his prediction. There was no reason now to act differently. And he told this bluntly to Robert Wilson, who tried to convince him that now was the opportune time to give battle, at least at the Berezina, where victory seemed to be available on a silver platter. Kutuzov in substance replied: "Russia is interested only in having Napoleon leave her soil: why should Russians die to capture or kill Napoleon? He wiIl no longer bother us. You wiIl be the only ones to gain. And what do we have to do with you? AIl too many Russians have already died."

Robert Wilson's last hope lay with Chichakov. On November 16 Admiral Chichakov's troops reached Minsk and from here, after a rapid push eastward, they moved into a position to face Napoleon by occupying Borissov. The first step of the Russian plan had been carried out: General Palen, with the vanguard of 27,000 of Chickakov's men, waited for the remains of the Grand Army for whom the bridge spanning the Berezina at Borissov signified the last hope of salvation. On November 18, Napoleon knew that the bridge was solidly in Russian hands and he drew up a plan which had not been foreseen by the strategists in SI. Petersburg. While Marshal Oudinot reoccupied the city and the bridge, at the price of a severe battle, and established a bridgehead on the western bank, the rest of the Grand Army would proceed laboriously and in all secrecy in a southerly direction in order to look for another crossing point and there build two other bridges on which to cross the Berezina. It

was naturaIly a desperate project, but any other plan would have been equally hazardous. One week later the Russians were still waiting for the Grand Army at Borissov and hoping to take it by surprise, while Murat and Oudinot had long before already reached the new crossing point - at Studianka - and were waiting for the pontoon engineers to finish in record time the two bridges that were required for a swift crossing to safety. The pontoon engineers had to grapple with incredible difficulties. The men had to work in the water at a temperature that ranged between 30 and 35 degrees below zero (centigrade) and many died of cold or were overwhelmed in the icy whirlpools. But when the Old Guard arrived with Napoleon ·at Studianka the bridges were almost finished, ready to carry this army of desperate men to safety. On the morning of November 26 Napoleon ordered the crossing to begin. It was just in the nick of time, since the Russians of the Chaplits division liad finally discovered the secret crossing and had already begun to attack. At any rate the Grand Army had a great advantage. On the other side of the bank there was not even one Russian waiting for the French. The first to cross over were Marshal Ney's men; they were followed by the Young Guard on the night of November 26. The Old Guard crossed the Berezina towards two . o'clock in the afternoon of the next day, together with the Emperor, who found the army deployed on the other side of the river. During the rest of the day the crossing continued without interruption, while a crowd of refugees gathered around the entrance to the two bridges. Napoleon had given explicit orders: the soldiers were to be the first to cross, then the unarmed, then the wounded, followed by the women and children. The bridges

99

J10. News 0/ the defeat had already spread to Prussia, and the people sang: "The French are done for! Th e Germans fattened them, and the Russians slaughtered them!"

were not to fall into the hands of the Russians. Now Chickakov and Wittgenstein were arriving and the French were already exchanging fire with their vanguards, but they waited until the largest number of refugees had crossed the river. Fighting continued throughout the night of November 29 while the crossing of the stragglers over the two bridges, pounded by the Russian artillery, continued. At dawn thousands of poor wretches, mostly wounded or civilians, women and children, were still on the east bank of the Berezina. But now time was pressing: at 9 o'clock the bridges were blown up. Those who were not blown up along with the bridges were in great part wiped out by the Cossacks. Napoleon had obtained a brilliant strategic victory, when already everything seemed lost, if we bear in mind its specific purpose. An army of 50,000 men - this was the number of Russians at 5tudianka - could not defeat the remains of an army of 19,000 half-frozen beggars, utterly exhausted from hunger. But the agony was not over: the temperature dropped even lower; while in the end Napoleon's army had to face Chichakov's forces: it was the most frightful massacre since the beginning of the retreat and no less than 10,000 Russian and French dead remained on the ground under a blinding blizzard. When the battle was over the Grand Army resumed its march to the west and the Russians lit their campfires and tried to warm themselves. Slowly the scattered French began to emerge from the surrounding woods, silent and dazed. In the morning the Russians discovered about fifty Frenchmen around every campfire. The rest is history. Eugene Tarle states that "none of those who lived through it ever succeeded in describing what the retreat from the Berezina up to Vilna

100

and from Vilna to Kovno was like. Most of them interrupt their narrative, saying that it is not possible to translate into words everything which they saw and experienced." On December 6, Napoleon, together with Caulaincourt, left in a sled, bound for Paris. He wanted to be there when the news of the defeat arrived, for he knew that the reactions would be catastrophic: All Europe would weep for that army swallowed by the frozen steppes of a country which even more than before seemed to be at the outermost edges of the world.

The retreat came to an end on December 4, after Marshal Ney, still fighting his pursuers, succeeded in crossing the Niemen and passing into Prussia. Ney and his entourage were the last to cross the bridge . Those who made the tabulations discovered that of the 600,000 men Napoleon had brought with him in that insane enterprise, only 30,000 had returned. Kutuzov waited for the Czar at Vilna to receive from his hands the decoration of 51. George, first degree, and from his lips the last reproaches for having refused to pursue Napoleon into Prussia and annihilate him there. The irreducible old man managed to resist this pressure to the end . One day before he died - a year later - he received a visit from the Czar, who seemed to be asking his forgiveness for having treated him so shabbily. Eugene Tarle reports that Kutuzov replied to Alexander as follows: "I forgive you, sovereign, but Russia will never forgive you!" As for Napoleon, the Russian disaster sealed his fate . Now it was only a question of time. Very little time indeed.

101

lJSSOJlJqJlJEl UO!llJJodO

H

SolfSlJolUf1 Jom

From the Eagle's Nest to the Wolf's Lair

III . On the Russian /rmllier, He;nz Guderian , known as "'he magiciall 0/ arm o red war/are" observes one 0/ the [irst actions carried out by Cern/all tanks 011 the steppes. Tile RII.u ion plains were an ideal terrain lor the use 0/ great IIUlsses 0/ armored vehicles.

German planes had been flying over the Russian frontier for several days. From the ground, the border units followed their movements through binoculars and then sent their reports to the higher commands. When these reports reached Moscow and were placed on the desk of the Minister of Foreign Affairs, the experts prepared a note of protest. The Soviet Union and Hitler's Germany were officially allied by a non-aggression pact. They exchanged goods of strategic importance and maintained relations that could be described as cordial. But the violations of Soviet air space were inadmissible: diplomatic protocol required the filing of official protests. On June 20, 1941 , the Soviet ambassador to Berlin - Vladimir Dekanozov - requested an audience with Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop to present the protest note which had been forwarded to him by Molotov, the Foreign Mini ster of the Soviet Union. For various reasons the audience was not granted immediately. Dekanozov waited to be summoned. In the late afternoon of June 21 he was told to present himself at the German Foreign Office at three o'clock in the morning. The Soviet ambassador did not seem to be greatly surprised at the unusual hour. After all, Germany was fighting a very tough war and Ribbentrop, no doubt, was being kept very busy. As soon as he was ushered into the presence of the German minister, Dekanozov began to talk about the illegal flights in connection with which he had to present his remonstrance. Herr von Ribbentrop, however, interrupted him brusquely. "That is not the question now." Dekanozov was taken aback, but he did not even have time to make von Ribbentrop aware of his astonishment, because in the next breath the German minister announced that Germany had decided to invade Russia.

103

112

112. Hi tler with Field Marshal VOll Keitel, chief of staD of the Germall Wehrmacht, and General Jodi.

113. The German attack caught the Sodel Union by surprise and Guderian's armored divisions overran lite steppes before iI was possible to organize serious resistance. German bombers destroyed a large proportioll 0/ the Russian planes ill the first three hours 0/ the war.

It was 3:20 A.M. on June 22; on that same day, at the same hour, 129 years before, Napoleon's Grand Army had crossed the Niemen. Now, on June 22, 1941 , three army groups- 104 infantry divisions, 19 armored ( panzer) divisions, 17 motorized divisions were again racing madly across the Russian frontier. While Dekanozov was listening to von Ribbentrop, the Luftwaffe, the German air force, was flying over Russian cities and villages, destroying them. Some of the planes unloaded their bombs over Russian air fields, and because of the surprise nature of the attack caught the bulk of Soviet planes on the ground. Two hours after the invasion had begun, almost all the planes belonging to the Soviet air force lay strewn as wreckage on the ground. The Russian campaign had begun. The documents of the German general staff, which had been preparing this war for several months, referred to this campaign under the code name, "Operation Barbarossa," after the Germanic Emperor who one day set out for the East and never came back. Directive 21 was the first document to make mention of this plan and to use this name. It is dated December 18, 1940, bearing Hitler's signature at the bottom and stamped "top secret" at the top. But it was in 1939 that the Nazi dictator meditated aloud, surrounded by his advisers, on the great undertaking, even though Germany was officially allied with the Soviet Union. There was only one consideration of a strategic character that made the campaign a bit premature : Hitler had always asserted that Germany was never to repeat the colossal blunder which the Kaiser and his generals had made during the First World War, namely, to fight a war on two fronts at the same time. For the moment, therefore, it seemed that Germany should limit herself to Winding up

104

operations in the west by forcing Great Britain to surrender, even if it became necessary to invade England. But the plan to invade England could not be brought to a conclusion, so Hitler had ended up by thinking about the Russian campaign as an operation which in a certain way would be a diversional action. The English, in fact, would continue to resist as long as they entertained the hope that Russia would come to their aid by attacking Germany from the east. Hitler knew well that Russia planned to do nothing of the sort, but he could not run the risk that the English in the end might persuade Russia to enter the war. Therefore, he proposed to bring Russia to her knees and at the same time strip England of her last illusion. Hitler had confided these plans to Alfred JodI, the chief of his special general staff, in the summer of 1940. Shortly after speaking with Hitler, JodI went to his special train, which stood on a dead track in the railway station of Reichenhall, not far from the Chancellor's Bavarian residence, the "Eagle's Nest." One of the generals, Warlimont, who heard JodI talk about the war against Russia later reported that the announcement stunned everybody. JodI had said that inasmuch as a war between the USSR and the Third Reich was inevitable, it was preferable to launch it when the Russians could be caught by surprise. According to Warlimont, the officers were visibly taken aback by the announcement. Actually there was no reason to register such surprise, since the idea of the inevitability of a war between Germany and Soviet Russia had always been explicitly expounded by Hitler himself. This could be confirmed by anyone who had even cursorily read "Mein Kampf," in which Hitler had set forth his doctrine. In that book, in fact , the Nazi

114

1/4. German grenadiers waited for the orde r to attack while hiding in the forests and ill the fields near the frontier. 115. T he German plan called fora penetration in depth with motorized troops: in a second phase the injantry was /0 be used to liquidate the core of resisting Russian units that had been encircled.

115

dictator had written: "We National Socialists want to start out from where we called a halt centuries ago. We want to stop the endless German movement to the south and west of Europe and we turn our gaze toward the lands of the East." And further: "When today we talk of a new living space in Europe, we must in the first place think of Russia and her border vassal states. Destiny itself seems to point these regions out to .us."

There is no doubt that Hitler was giving evidence of his consistency. Yet his logic was based on purely abstract conjectures. The first presupposed that the England of Winston Churchill would yield as soon as its hopes for an agreement with Russ ia were dashed ; the second was dictated by the conviction that the Russ ian potential was merely a bluff. On December 5, 1940, while he was putting the finishing touches on the "Barbarossa" plan, Hitler stated these concepts: "As regards warfare, the Ru ssians are as inferior to us as the French. They have very little modern artillery, and moreover they are adaptations of ancient models. . . . The Russian man is an Untermensch, a sub-human being. The Soviet army is without leaders . . . . Tn the spring, therefore , the scales will tip in our favor , and there will be a very clear superiority of material , men, and officers. The Russian adva ntage will lie in the vastness of the territory, but once the Soviet army is beaten , the USSR inevitably faces disaster." The German general staff gave its support to Hitler's assertion. The motorized means at the German army's disposal would nullify distances wi th speed. The German generals had projected a li ghtning war, a Blitzkrieg, which was to begin in the spri ng and would be over by winter. The Russia n army would be annihilated even before it could begin to organize

106

J16. Stalin and Von Ribbentrop on the occasion of the signing 0/ the non~aggression pac k between G ermany and the USSR: Hitler was to vio late it after two years.

1/ 6

any defense. Hitler argued that he was in a position to do what Napoleon could not do; he would not permit the Russians to escape him, he would immobilize them. Directive 21 clearly laid down the strategic concepts of the assault on Russia. The German Wehrmacht must be prepared to inflict a mortal blow on Soviet Russia in the course of a rapid campaign, before the end of the war against England. In this operation the army was to employ all the available units limited only by the necessity of guaranteeing against possible surprises in the occupied territories. The bulk of the Soviet army stationed in western Russia must be destroyed through skillful operations based on the penetration in depth of armored spearheads in such a way as to impede the retreat of units of the Soviet army, still in a condition to fight, into the wide spaces of Russian territory. The enemy must then be pursued swiftly, the ultimate objective being to strike Asiatic Russia from the Volga River to Archangel with the air force. This was the ultimate reason for the war: to conquer for the Germany of tomorrow, for the Germany destined to command the world , for the Germany inhabited by an elect race, all the territory of European Russia up to the region of the Urals, with its riches of raw materials (coal, petroleum, electric power), of agricultural produce (Ukraine: the huge bread basket of the "Black Lands"), with its inexhaustible reservoir of human beings (100,000,000 people to be divided into three categories: those to be eliminated, those to be deported, and those to be used as slaves). On the basis of Hitler's instructions, issued through Directive 21 , the German general staff elaborated the details of the strategic plan, giving it the highest priority. The attack on Russia was to be conducted

107

J J 7 "Operation Barbarossa ".. the attack routes as for;seen and in part followed by the German General StaD.

117

J BERUND o

MRIGI o

PllAGA o

VIENNA o

8[LGRADO o

108

11 8. VOII Bock, com mander 0/ the group 01 armies de.signaled 10 carry oul operations in th e cell iral sector o/Ihe Russian / ronl. He was Guderian's immediale superior.

1/8

11 9. G oeb bels, the Minister 01 Propaganda, reading the declaratio" 0/ war against Russia over Radio Berlin.

I/V

along three routes supported by the armored forces, which were then to spread in a fanlike direction as the German army penetrated deeper and deeper into the interior of Russia. The central wedge would be able to aim directly for Moscow or be divided in two in order to increase the strength of the two lateral wedges. These were to aim directly for Leningrad in the north and for Kharkov in the south. It was an ambitious plan which seemed almost unbeatable when the German high command placed at the head of the army corps which were designated to realize it the three "champions" who had conquered France in a Blitz campaign : Marshals von Leeb (north) , von Bock (center) , and von Rundstedt (south) . Despite some initial misgivings, few generals doubted the possibility of victory when they learned what a gigantic machine Hitler had organized for the assault on Russia : three and a half million men divided into three army groups: the best soldiers in the world, the most perfect weapons that existed , the most efficient generals on earth. It is quite possible that the judgment of many may have been clouded by the grandiose character of the plan . What was about to begin would be a war without precedent, which would have a chessboard of thousands of miles as its theatre of action , and several million men as its protagonists, and as a unit of measure armored vehicles in place of the obsolete infantry. Moreover, the Germans possessed the secret of modern warfare. The best theorists, the best strategists of tank warfare were Germans: Heinz Guderian and Heinrich von Kleist.

The preparations for this gigantic war were made in absolute secrecy. Nobody knew anything, save the

109

110. Protected by a smokescreen, General Budienny's Cossack cavalry brave German tarlks. The Russians paid a high price for their military unpreparedness and their obsolete strategic principles.

110

110

121. Marshal Budiellny: he sported the most lamolls mllstache in Russia aller Stalin's. He was removed Irom his command alter the Russian disasters in the Ukraine, lor which he was responsible only in an indirect way.

generals at the apex of the German general staff. Nobody, that is, except the very persons who were not supposed to know: Churchill and Roosevelt and Stalin himself. The English and American espionage services had done a good job. They even were able to pass on the information to Stalin. His reply was that Washington and London were fishing in troubled waters in order to drag Russia into the war, whereas the USSR had entered into an unnatural alliance with Nazi Germany precisely in order to keep out of the "imperialist" conflict. But Stalin was mistaken and knew that he was mistaken . In fact, very soon he knew even more than Roosevelt and Churchill when similar information was passed on to Moscow from Richard Sorge in Tokyo. Sorge was the ablest secret service agent in the service of the Russians. He was a German and the nephew of a friend of Marx and Engels, and he had succeeded in becoming a press attache in the German Embassy in Tokyo. The intelligence that Sorge passed on to Moscow included the number of German divisions which were already prepared to launch the attack and even the precise date of the aggression. Stalin preferred to ignore the warning. The reasons for this will probably remain cloaked in mystery forever. In Russia on September 3, 1964twenty-three years later - Pravda, the country's most authoritative newspaper, decided to break the silence and officially review this strange story, which for that matter was already known in the West. The newspaper called Sorge "one of the heroes who sacrificed his own life in the struggle against the war" (in fact, he was shot by the Japanese in 1944) and a true Communist. "Because of various circumstances," Pravda stated, "it was not possible until now to tell the truth about the heroic undertakings of

/2/

the secret agent Richard Sorge. This is why we now speak about this man , destined. to become an example for future generations." The newspaper also added a postscript which was a severe judgment of Stalin: "How many thousands and perhaps millions of human lives could have been saved if Sorge's reports had not lain unused at the bottom of a safe!" The only statesman who knew almost nothing until the eve of the attack was Mussolini , Hitler's best friend and ally. The Nazi dictator had issued precise orders that Mussolini was to be kept wholly in the dark about Germany's immediate plans. But the very lack of trust in their ally cost the Germans dearly. In all secrecy Mussolini in turn had prepared an attack on Greece, and when the German secret service informed Hitler of what was afoot, it was already too late. The German Chancellor personally rushed to Mussolini in order to dissuade him and explain to him the reason why it was better to postpone the attack on Greece: the war with Russia was about to begin. But when Hitler got off his special train at the Florence railway station, Mussolini rushed up to him and announced the irreparable : the Italians had crossed the Greek-Albanian frontier that very night. The consequences were disasterous: Hitler had the Wehrmacht intervene in order to liquidate the unforeseen Balkan campaign as quickly as possible, so that he could start the campaign against Russia on time. In an overwhelming action , German armies crossed Yugoslavia and invaded Greece. It was an exceptional operation on a military and strategic plane, and Hitler could have been satisfied with it if he had not been forced by it to postpone "Operation Barbarossa" from May to June. It reoresented the loss of a month, a month which would have been precious to him.

III

122

While millions of soldiers, thousands of tanks and howitzers, hundreds of planes, hidden in the forest, were being progressively amassed on the GermanPolish frontier, Russia tried to keep her dangerous ally at bay by sending her agricultural products and sundry supplies, as had been stipulated in the pact signed between them in 1939. The Russians had placed their army on the frontier, naturally, but they had not taken any particular precautions. It was only around midnight of June 21 that the general staff were advised that something unusual might be in the offing and a state of general combat alertness was ordered. Nevertheless, the order reached the commands who, without knowing it, were facing the strongest army the world had ever seen, only three hours before the attack. Moreover, that night the Moscow-Berlin express crossed the frontier as usual, at the very moment in which Guderian was issuing his final instructions before Brest Litovsk. The Germans were calm: aerial reconnaissance had revealed that in the last days the Russians were behaving as if nothing unusual was afoot. In Moscow, that dawn of June 22 - at the hour when an ashenfaced Dekanozov was listening to von Ribbentrop in Berlin - Molotov learned from the lips of the German ambassador Count Friedrich von der Schulenberg that the war had begun. The first report on the aerial bombings arrived while the two were still talking. The border garrisons, in the clear light of that historic dawn, felt as though submerged by a hurricane of projectiles and fire. An officer asked for instructions from the rear areas: "We are being fired upon. What are we to do?" The reply from the other end of the line was surprising; it was a severe reprimand: "Have you all gone crazy? And why is your signal

112

not in code?" The Russian commanders already had lost their heads. The initiative had now passed to the armored units: in the north the Germans overran Kovno and pushed on straight toward Lake Peipus and Riga; in the center they overcame Brest Litovsk and marched on Minsk ; in the south they raced toward Kiev, into the heart of the Ukraine. At the beginning of the operations Hitler had left the "Eagle's Nest" and had transferred his headquarters to the "Wolfs Lair," at Rastenburg in East Prussia, nearer the new front. From there he orchestrated the most terrifying music that was ever heard. Without let-up he issued directives, sent out regulations, summoned generals, drew up strategic plans. He was the man who was about to make himself the master of Europe and who had now enlarged Germany in terms of territory as no one before him had ever succeeded in doing. He was the man who in a few months had conquered Poland, Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, France, Yugoslavia, and Greece; the man whose armies were enforcing a new order on all Europe, and threatening England's empire by striking in the direction of its heart, Egypt. This man had ordered his generals to suspend all humanitarian rules in Russia and to destroy and kill without pity. And he incited them to wage the war with the utmost swiftness. The motorized columns of the German armies dug deep into the living flesh of Russia , swallowing miles and dust, so much dust indeed that at times the various units feared that in the end they would be submerged under mountains of it. This was the dust of the steppes that arose under the caterpillar tracks and darkened the torrid sky of those summer days. But nothing seemd to be able to stop the Germans.

122. A group of Russians surrendering to a German patrol.

/23

123. Marshal Timoshenko , Commissar of War. At th e beginning of the German attack, he tried to re-create the officer cadres of the Red Army, which had been decimated by the Stalinist purges. 124. The German advance was very rapid, and Hitler

hoped that R ussia would sllrrender before winter. The German soldiers were gramed no rest: often even rations were eale,1 standing up.

/14

113

125 . Terror·stricken Uhanian women. No men were left in the villages. Those who were no t in uniform had fled, but within a few momhs they were to reappear in the partisan bands. 126. rhe camera caught th e wh o le horror of war 011 the face of tltis young Russian surrendering to rhe Germans.

126

At the end of June the three army groups reached the "Stalin Line," a kind of Maginot line which had been built four or five years earlier and which consisted of a series of fortifications laid out as a kind of bastion of the Soviet Union ; the line started out from Odessa and went as far north as the Gulf of Finland, exploiting the opportunities for defense offered by the terrain. It followed the course of the two rivers - the Dniester and the Dnieper - and touched Kiev, Orsha , Vitebsk , Idritsa, and reached as far as Pskov and Narva, on the Baltic Sea. In accordance with the plan of the high command, the German divisions were deploying in a fanlike movement and spreading themselves out in the Ukraine and in the direction of Leningrad. The disorganized Russian forces were not in a position to halt them and did not even have the time to prepare a resistance before they found themselves encircled in a pocket, or as the Germans said, in a "cauldron." At Minsk the Russians left almost 300,000 prisoners and 2,500 armored vehicles in the hands of the enemy; at Smolensk the figure was 180,000 prisoners and 2,000 armored vehicles. The first order that Stalin had issued from Moscow had been the following: "Not a kilo of wheat, not a liter of petrol , must be abandoned to the enemy." It was one of the few things to be done. Another was to make an appeal to the patriotic spirit and Stalin did this too, arousing in every Russian a love for his land. Then he ordered that nuclei of resistance be organized behind the lines, in order to re-form and in some way utilize the stragglers who had been cut off by the invaders' rapid advances. The mad race of the German soldiers over the scorched earth and in the ocean of dust continued through July. In the north, Von Leeb was irrevo-

cably cutting off Leningrad, and in the south Von Rundstedt was overwhelming the valiant resistance of the armies of Marshal Budienny. In the central sector, after the fall of Vitebsk, only Moscow stood before Von Bock and Guderian's irresistible panzers. The road that had been taken by Napoleon seemed to be marked by destiny, but Hitler opposed all advisers and stuck firmly to the original plan. He said that Moscow was only a secondary objective, and repeated that the routes along which all armies were to advance should be only two, one in the north toward Leningrad, the other in the south toward Kiev and Kharkov, on the Donetz. Only Guderian, the magician of armored warfare, was bold enough to protest, in the "Wolfs Lair" itself, but he got nowhere. The army groups under Von Bock's command were compelled to divide themselves in two at Smolensk and Guderian had to order his tanks to aim southward, in the direction of Von Kleist's panzers which were driving toward him in a northerly direction. It was a brilliant maneuver because when the two armored groups met, they bottled up the four Russian armies behind the defenses at Urn an in a vise of steel. The greater part of Budienny's forces was eliminated. Only Kiev continued to resist. The battle raged in the city, street by street, but the desperate heroism of the defenders was of no avail against the momentum of General Reichenhaus' seventh army. Simeon Budienny rushed to Moscow with tears in his eyes: his name was almost legendary, linked to the toughest battles against the White armies of counterrevolutionaries Denikin and Wrangel. A hero of the Revolution, he had enjoyed such prestige - partly because he was a friend of Lenin and Stalin - that in 1925 he had been absolved by a court of law even

11 5

J 27. Kiev was captured: an amused German soldier rings the bells 01 the ancient Ukranian city.

128. General Mes.fe, commander 01 rhe Italian Expeditionary Corps in Russia: Germany's ally did 1I0r want to playa spectator's role if! the war against tlte "red danger," 129. A Russian prisoner quenches his thirst/rom a puddle 0/ stagnanl water. Hiller had ordered his generals to lorget every standard 01 humanity in Russia in their dealillgs with the civilian population.

/17

116

128

130. An Italian artillery unit in the Ukraine. Poorly armed, inadequately equipped, th e Italians fought well, even winning tile esteem alld respect a/the enemy because of th e profound humanity they showed ;11 their treatment of prisollers and civilians. J3 I . This pole, covered wilh markers, gives an idea of the gigantic organization crea ted by Hitler for the invasion of Russia.

129

though he had killed his wife with one blow because she had prepared an unsavory soup for him. When the October Revolution broke out, he was a noncommissioned officer in the Czarist cavalry in charge of biIlets. Soon, however, he succeeded in winning a reputation for himself and rose to the hi ghest ranks of the Red Army. The reverse he suffered in the C rimea was fatal to his career: before winter, in fact, Budienny was removed from his command and sent to train conscript troops in the Urals. He was criticized for not having adopted a tactic imposed by the invaders' mode of fighting, but perhaps they were asking too much from the old non-com whose medals hung on his chest like a clothesline and who had the most famous mustache ir. all Russia, after Staliil's. The fact is that the situation was so desperate that the Russians could not permit themselves to split hairs. In the south, in accordance with Hitler's plan, the Germans had arrived at about 186 miles from their final objective; in the north, Leningrad was now completely cut off from the rest of Russia by land because Finnish anny troops were also pressing down upon the city. Marshal Klimentii Voroshilov, the commander of the Leningrad sector, was also relieved and assigned to a "non-operational" post. Like Budienny, whose senior he was by two years, he too was a hero of the Revolution and had even been commander-in-chief of the Red Army. These drastic dismissals should not surprise us: the Russian general staff had to adapt itself to the new type of warfare imposed by the Germans, and it could not afford to be weak or sentimental. Indeed, some generals were summarily shot. It looked as though Russia were on the verge of surrender in October 1941, barely four months after the beginning of "Operation Barbarossa." In the northern sector the Germans had

11 7

130

131

effected an advance of 496 miles, in the southern sector they had victoriously raced forward for about 930 miles, while in the central sector they had advanced for 620 miles before Hitler ordered them to halt. The front was almost 840 miles long. It had been a prodigious march, but the German general staff did not have many reasons for satisfaction. Winter was approaching, Russia was not yet conquered, and England had not yet thrown in the sponge. On the evening of the first day of the war against Russia, Hitler had confided to the Prince of Wiirttemberg: "Within two or three weeks I will be in Moscow and I will conquer the Ukraine and the Caucasus." Many more weeks than that had passed and the Germans still had a long way to go. Despite all this, there was no doubt that the scales were still tilted in favor of Germany and her allies. In fact, when Hitler had proclaimed that the war against the USSR was a "holy war" in order to rid the world of the menace of communism, many countries wanted to help him in this crusade. In addition to the Finns, French, Rumanian, Dutch, and Hungarian units also fought against Russia. Mussolini, naturally, could not remain behind. After the reorganization of several Alpine units which had returned from Greece, he dispatched them to the USSR, although Hitler had tried to make him understand that they would be much more useful in North Africa. Mussolini replied to Hitler that "Italy could not remain absent in a war that assumes these characteristics (an anti-bolshevik crusade)." Thus the Italian expeditionary corps to Russia (CSIR) was organized, under the command of General Messe. The "Alpini" of the Pasubic division were the first Italian soldiers to fight on the eastern front. As specialists in mountain warfare, they were sent to fight on the steppes.

118

The Russians Halt the Rapid Advance By Hitler at Leningrad and Moscow

11 9

"YOli will not prevent me from taking Moscow!"

/32 . A Russia" boy kisses his mother good-bye be/ore jo;ning t'h e partisans. This pho tograph was taken in Leningrad, the city which resisted the German siege lor months.

"The Soviet Union can be regarded as a colossus that has been smashed to pieces!" With these words, shouted before a delirious crowd packed like sardines in the huge Sports Palace in Munich, Hitler tried to convince Germany - and perhaps also himselfthat the war on the eastern front was not a dark adventure, the end of which nobody could foresee, but the most glorious and fortunate campaign ever undertaken by the German army. The balance sheet that Hitler presented on that occasion - November 9, 1941 - was certainly impressive. "The Russians," he boasted, "have lost seven million men between dead, wounded, and prisoners; they have left 27,000 cannon, 22,000 armored vehicles in our hands; 15,000 planes have been destroyed or have been captured." Naturally Hitler was exaggerating, but even so, the situation the Russians were in was surely not a happy or a promising one. Two days before, Stalin also had made a proclamation to the people. He had done this on the occasion of the annual military parade to celebrate the anniversary of the Revolution. Red Square was filled with a crowd whose state of mind could certainly not be described as tranqUil. Only Stalin stood on the immense reviewing stand, and Lenin's tomb was empty, because the embalmed body of the Father of Russian communism had been taken elsewhere for safety. Stalin spoke in a vibrant voice, but from his words and from his pauses - the Muscovites understood that the situation was particularly grave. Stalin too offered some figures: the Germans, he said, had already lost 350,000 dead , one million and twenty thousand wounded, and 400 ,000 missing. Stalin also was exaggerating, as Hitler was to do, only two days later. On that day the units that marched in front of the reviewing stand, on which stood the lone figure of

12 1

133. The citizens of Leningrad received only a daily ration of "special bread," made mostly of cellulose and tree bark. Y et, despite the hunger and the terrifying German bombardments the city resisted until the Russian counter-attack. 134. After the dust of the summer mo nths, a new ullpleasant surprise was in store for the Germans: the mud of the Russian roads, the terrible "rasputitsa" in which both men and vehicles were submerged.

133

Stalin, did not return to the comfortable warmth of their barracks bu t proceeded directly to the front. The Germans had already been trying for one month to capture Moscow. Hitler decided to change his plan in the middle of September, when he realized that it would be impossible to terminate "Operation Barbarossa" before winter, as had been planned. The offensive against Moscow was to make possible the last attempt to bring the Soviet Union to its knees within the prescribed time. Like Napoleon, Hitler too - now - was succumbing to the spell of the holy city. If Russia could not be overcome even after the occupation of thousands of miles of her territory, surely the country would collapse if Moscow fell. The German Chancellor did not doubt that the Communist government itself would fall apart at the seams, perhaps be overthrown, if Moscow were lost to the Germans. This was why Marshal von Bock received the order to reconstitute his army groups in the central sector. Hitler, thereby, hoped to deliver a surprise blow that would also be shatteringly decisive. New units were placed under Von Bock's command. Guderian was ordered to veer northward , and his panzers accomplished the return journey with a swiftness that "las truly exceptional, since for several days the momentum of all the units had been greatly slowed down because of the mud. On October 2, the day for which the offensive had been fixed , Von Bock hurled 15 armored divisions, 8 motorized divisions, a cavalry division, and 46 infantry divisions in the direction of Moscow. Four wedges aimed simultaneously at the capital: Reinhardt's column came down on Mytish from the northwest; Hoepner's column tried to smash through the Russian defense line at Svernigorod, on the

122

135

J35. Only olle man 0/ the entire Soviet bureaucratic apparatus remaincd in Moscow, threatened by the German armies, Stalin: he was the true inspirer 0/ the resistance, the most dogged fighter of the patriotic war.

136. The Germans were forced to hall in front of the capital: tile troops were not equipped for the rigors 0/ willler, and Soviet resistance had s(iOclied.

136

Moskva River; in the southwest General von Kluge moved toward Naro-Fominsk. The most delicate mission had been assigned to Guderian, who, moving up from the south in an attempt to encircle Moscow, launched an assault against the city of Tula. The Russian troups manning the defense perimeter of the capital were subjected to a murderous hail of projectiles and fire. For several days they put up fierce resistance but then began to give ground. Suddenly the Germans were forced to slow down their pace even more. Although at first few paid attention to what was happening, the general staff began to worry: the reports pouring into headquarters from the fighting units with increasing frequency, began to refer to the "Schlammperiode" (the mud season). Then they began to use a Russian word that up to now nobody in Germany had ever heard pronounced - "rasputitsa." No other word seemed to describe with such accuracy the immense quagmire in which the most modern, the most perfect war machines designed and manufactured by German industry were hopelessly bogged down. Nobody had foreseen that with the advent of the rainy season the sea of dust would have become an ocean of mud into which the caterpillar treads of the panzers and the tires on the trucks would be inextricably mired. It was a mud that clutched everything in its grip; it clogged weapons, prevented the flow of supplies to the front line, forced the soldiers to remain without provisions and even without munitions. Even the tank that up to now had accomplished miracles, the "P-24," was stuck in the mud precisely at the time when it should have moved more swiftly than ever. These were the most frightful and also the most magnificent days for Marshal Simon Timoshenko,

124

137. "A Leller from the From" is the title of this picture by the Russian painter, A. Laktionov . Nazi aggressioll came up against the people's love of country, just as had happened ill Napoleon's time.

/37

138. AS;/I Leningrad, also ill M oscow, wom en and children fought alongside the soldiers against the German inl'ader. T he popular resistance to the Germans began from the firsl days of tile war.

13X

125

139

whose mission it was to slow down the German advance until the arrival of the armies that Marshal Zhukov was preparing for the defense of Moscow. If Zhukov's task was a delicate one, Timoshenko's was altogether desperate. A little more than twenty years before, the Revolution had found him in the Czarist cavalry where he held a non-commissioned rank. At Tsaritsyn, the future Stalingrad, Timoshenko had fought against thc White armies together with Stalin and Voroshilov. Those who knew him at that time have described him as a 'violent character; it was said that in his youth his fellow soldiers more than once had to drag him outside the barracks in order to prevent him from smashing to pieces whatever was within reach. But at Tsaritsyn no one had rivaled this coarse fellow when it came to imbuing the troops with courage and drive at the most critical moments of the battle. It was precisely for these talents that Stalin had summoned rum to Moscow. Conscious of his own limitations, Timoshenko had not been afraid to start from scratch: he studied the classic Marxist texts and took private lessons in various subjects. One of the most famous Russian scholars of that time had even succeeded in making him a passionate lover of classical philosophy. His friendship with Stalin had naturally helped him along in his career, but Timoshenko had done everything to match his progress by acquiring the necessary qualifications. In 1939, he was called upon to replace Voroshilov as the Commissioner of War. The bloody purges of those years had thinned out the officer cadres of the Russian army, and Timoshenko realized that he had to prepare the new officer candidates in a big hurry. For this reason he dared to lighten the curriculum at the military college by

126

abolishing some secondary subjects; one of the first subjects eliminated was the teaching of Marxism. This required courage, especially in those times, but several years later Timoshenko was to explain that Marxism is useless in war because "only good strategy is required to make a good general staff officer."

Now, at 46, Stalin again chose him for a mission of great trust: the last defense before the gates of Moscow.

Timoshenko called a council of his generals and explained what the country expected of them , in the face of the foe's crushing superiority. "Comrades," he said, "the enemy marches confidently on Moscow. The mother city of the Slavs, lhe cradle of communism , was violated only once before. Only Napoleon succeeded in entering the city and at what a price you all know. Today the enemy is once more on our soil. He wants to establish his winter quarters in Moscow and make the Kremlin his headquarters. Must we once again burn our capital in order to spare her this shame? Napoleon was beaten and humiliated here at Smolensk. Shall we do less than our fathers? Will we not succeed in humiliating this ugly copy of Napoleon, whose similarity to him is limited to the ridiculous lock of hair that hangs over his forehead?" The resistance put up by Timoshenko's men made the Germans lose much precious lime - time that Zhukov needed to prepare for the defense of the capital, to elaborate a plan for the counter-offensive , to hasten the flow of long and very slow convoys of fresh troops from the garrisons in the Far East on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Thus in those days, while the Germans decided to aim for Moscow, the Russians resolved that the inva-

139. A Russiall mother stallds up with fierce pride before a Nazi soldier. The painling is the work of the artist S. V. Gherassimov. /40. The sea 0/ mud which blocked the German armies 011 the frin ges 0/ Moscow made the commanders hope lor the cold which would harden the roads. Th e cold came, mId il was the beginning 0/ the end.

/4()

127

141

141. Anti·tank obstacles in a Moscow square. Hitler waited from day to day for news 0/ the capture of the capital, which he hoped would lead to the col/apse 0/ the Communist regime in Russia. 142. The snow and the cold were the most powerful allies of the Soviets. Meanwhile, in the rear areas, Zhukov, the ablest 0/ the Russian generals, prepared the counter-offensive. 143. The Germans mobilized Russia" civilians also in order to extricate mired army vehicles.

sion was to be halted in its tracks in front of Moscow. This was how the gigantic battle of Moscow developed. While Stalin ordered his soldiers not to retreat, not even an inch, Hitler told his armies that the battle for Moscow would be "the last battle of the year." On October 21, Hoepner's armies, which occupied the center of Von Bock's deployment, unleashed a furious attack along the Vyazma-Moscow highway with the intention of making a clean sweep of General Pavleev's tenth army and thereby opening the road to the Soviet capital. Even if the Russians' desperate resistance succeeded in slowing down the panzers of the two motorized corps which had been hurled into the attack, the enemy was drawing terrifyingly close to his objective. The grandiose German offensive now unfolded in all its violence, but the winter - the terrible Russian winter - was drawing dangerously near, and Moscow was ready for a last-ditch defense. It was already transformed into "an un takable city," as it had been described in a proclamation of the authorities to the citizenry. When now along the roads the Germans began to read markers indicating that Moscow was very near, within arm's reach, they found themselves before an invisible but insurmountable wall. Despite all of Hitler's hysterical orders, the motorized armies were forced to grind to a halt. First the mud, then the freezing cold. Suddenly the temperature dropped to 40 degrees below zero (centigrade). The German soldiers, who in the main were still wearing their summer uniforms, were defenseless against the bitter cold. Only Guderian's panzer units continued to advance northward, but with an exhausting slowness and after having given up the idea of capturing Tula, where a desperate defense had frustrated every German onslaught.

128

In Moscow 120,000 citizens had voluntarily reported to the army recruiting offices: Zhukov had been able to form eleven divisions out of them which he sent to the front line, a few miles outside the city. While the German soldiers anxiously awaited reinforcements, provisions, and warm winter uniforms, the snowstorms transformed the landscape into an infinite expanse of white in which everything seemed treacherous, from the distorted perspectives to the deceptive hopes. But they still confidently waited the order for the last lunge forward. The maps on the walls of general staff headquarters designated this as the "Herbst Offensive 1941," that is, the autumn offensive 1941. But those who were able to evaluate the situation objectively understood that this designation had been chosen hypocritically only because it was not considered politic to mention winter. However, it was useless to try to hide certain things from the soldiers at the front. They had already become well acquainted with the Russian winter and had discovered that it was worse than their most pessimistic expectations.

The moment when the Soviets would make their comeback was drawing close, but the Germans continued to wait, numbed by the grip of the cold; only the !TIore fortunate among them had managed to find some blankets. Those reduced to the sorriest straits were the soldiers of some motorized units, surprised by the cold when all they had with them were their linen blouses. On November 12 Guderian carried out a rapid inspection of the front line and he was never to forget what he saw: his men were utterly worn out and could endure no longer. The units had been terribly

142

. '- --

\

/43

129

144. Guderian making an inspection of the Briansk zone, at tlte end 0/ which he communicated to Hitler that the situation was grave: many regiments had not received their ration for several days, and the number 0/ cases o//rostbite was very high.

144

thinned out and the survivors risked being frostbitten at any moment. He was told that one army corps had been without bread for almost a month; the men dr~amed about a hot meal, and if they were waiting to take Moscow the only incentive that drove them forward was the hope that there they would find a warm room in which they could sleep stretched out on the floor. The long wait finally came to an end, and the order for the "Autumn Offensive 1941" was issued. It was November 17 and the Germans were several days behind the last timetable that had been worked out by the general staff. But Hitler, who had hoped for a lightning thrust, suffered a new disappointment. The news that arrived in those days at the "Wolf's Lair" was all of a discouraging nature: the armies had been nailed down by the terrible cold of the Russian winter; the oil in the motors congealed and the gas in the tanks of the vehicles was transformed into blocks of ice; thousands of miles away from their sources of supply, half-frozen in a white hell at the middle of a poverty-stricken and arid land, the once splendid armored divisions seemed to have lost the buoyant spirits and the drive which had enabled them to conquer Warsaw, Paris, Athens, Minsk, and Kiev. For three weeks the Germans furiously tried to open a road to Moscow for themselves, but the Russians resisted, contrary to all the predictions that had been made in general staff headquarters. One day the division commanders received a crushing report: Siberian units were fighting in various sectors of the front. They were fresh troops, well-trained, ready for anything. The Russians therefore still had reserves. From his command post in Tolstoy'S villa at Yasnaya Polyana, Guderian was the first to grasp the significance of what was afoot, and he ordered his

130

145. Leningrad remained for a long time without electricity and water; th e photograph shows some citizens getting water Irom under the ice crust 01 a puddle 01 stagnant water.

/45

146. The trolley that brought soldiers Irom the cellter 01 Leningrad 10 the Irollt, all the outskirts 01 the besieged metropolis.

/46

,

,

13 1

/47

147. Marshal Zhukov: the three stars on his chest indicate that he was thrice decorated with the title "Hero 0/ the Soviet Union," 148. On November 7,1941, the occasion 0/ the traditional parade be/ore Lenin's tomb on Red Square, the troops did not return to their barracks but proceeded direclfy to the blazing front lines in the suburbs 01 the city. /49. This was how the Oliler wall 0/ the Kremlin , iiI up by anti-aircraft /ire, looked 10 the German vanguard.

/48

132

149

men to effect a gradual withdrawal before the pressure of General Popov's troops. The pressure of the divisions that Zhukov was gradually placing on the front lines made itself felt with ever-increasing power, hand in hand with the declining momentum of the German offensive. Faced with the danger of the sudden counter-offensive, Marshal von Bock asked for permission to pull his units back to a more defensible line. The answer from the supreme command was "no." General von Kluge's ninth army, which according to the German plan was to be the first to enter the Russian capital, did get within 28 miles of Moscow, but it could not advance another step beyond that point. Two days later Marshal von Bock handed in his resignation and Hitler had him replaced by Von Rundstedt. The official communique on Von Bock's resignation spoke of his dangerously bad health, but few believed this. At any rate it was not by changing marshals that the situation could be reversed, inasmuch as many new factors had come into play to upset the relation between the opposing forces. For example, one of the very important factors in the new picture was represented by Russian weapons and Russian motors which had been manufactured in such a way as to resist polar temperatures. But an equally determining factor that deserves emphasis was the arrival of reserves, of whose existence the Germans knew nothing. These reserves actually constituted the decisive element of the defense of Moscow as planned by Marshal Zhukov and of the "winter counter-offensive of liberation," unleashed by the Russians in mid-January. Moreover, the Soviet high command now understood that in order to put up an effective resistance to the Germans tpey would have to operate in keeping with the latter's

own strategic principles, that is, synchronized cooperation between the various military specialties and bold thrusts aiming at the encirclement of the enemy. At the beginning of December, the supreme commander of the Wehrmacht, General Walter von Brauchtitsch, called at the "Wolf's Lair" to explain to Hitler what the real situation was in front of Moscow and to ask him for permission to pull back to positions that were more easily defensible. But the general did not get a chance to utter even a single word: Hitler immediately interrupted him and drowned him under a deluge of insults and heavy-handed expressions meant to be ironical. At the end the German dictator exploded in a rage, screaming: "A withdrawal is out of the question! The offensive continues. I want Moscow! I will have Moscow! You will not prevent me from taking Moscow!" Von Brauchitsch left his audience with Hitler in a very painful state of mind: the German high command began to understand how dangerous it had been to have left in the hands of the invincible Fuehrer all power of decision even for the conduct of military operations. Hitler was in no position to evaluate the difficulties which the armies had to face . And he was not alone: the day before, the minister of Propaganda and Information, Goebbels, had ordered all German newspapers to reserve their first pages on December 2 for a sensational announcement. There is no doubt that he wanted to announce the conquest of Moscow. That very night, in the German rear areas, all the trains were forced to stop running because the locomotives were frozen by the cold. The English scholar, John Erikson , in his excellent study "The Soviet High Command 191 8- 1941 ," has drawn a vivid picture of the situation that prevailed

133

J50. Russian trucks carrying supplies on the icy surface 0/ Lake Ladoga, alollg the "road 0/ Ii/e ."

/0

Leningrad

151 . A German officer requisitions the Ih'es/ock 0/ a Russian farm.

150

at the beginning of December of that year: "In the first few days of December the issue before Moscow hung in a last balance before it tipped decisively. With troops wholly without means of protection against an agonizing cold, in conditions where the temperatures sealed the moving parts of machine guns and burst engines, lacking replacements in any strength for the mounting casualties, the German army made its final lunge at Moscow. Guderian to the south could persist with his attack only so long as the 4th army at the center continued its aggressive operations. Although a German reconnaissance battalion had penetrated to the southwest fringe of Moscow by the 3rd or 4th, Von Kluge decided to abandon an attack which had no chance of success. On the night of the 5th-6th December, Guderian resolved to break off his attack at a juncture when Reinhardt's and Hoepner's armored forces to the north of Moscow were at the end of their resources. By battle, continuous exertion, and extreme cold the German drive had been burned out." For the Russians the moment to seize the initiative had at last arrived. On December 5, Zhukov ordered General Konev to pass to the offensive in the direction of Kalinin, and the whole front sprang into action simultaneously. The Germans were terrified to discover that the Russian units were composed of fresh troops, well trained, excellently equipped, eager for combat. Lelyusenko's third army, Kuznetsov's first assault army, Rokossovsky's sixteenth army, Vlasov's twenty-first army and Govorov's fifth army hurled themselves at General Reinhardt's armored group which had tried to come down from the northwest in the direction of Mytish. The Germans were forced to flee for safety, leaving behind whatever could not be carted off

134

quickly. Rokossovsky liberated Istra and continued in a westerly direction, and in a few days Moscow was liberated from the nightmare that had hung over the city's head. The front was brought back to Mozhaisk and Volokolamsk: the Moscow-Volga canal was liberated . The same thing happened on the southwestern front where the tank-cavalry-infantry group that Zhukov had placed under the command of General Popov made a deep thrust into the German rear areas in the direction of Kaluga, placing Guderian's armored group in great jeopardy. The 496-mile-long front , on which the German troops were deployed, was broken at three points, as the result of which Kalinin and Klin were liberated, as was Kaluga . The end of autumn. saw the Germans engaged in a desperate search for a new line that could be held and then again compelled to retreat as a result of the counteroffensive unleashed by Zhukov for the complete liberation of the zone that weighed down on Moscow. By mid-February the Germans had been thrown back to the Smolensk line from which they had started out on September 30. The Russians began to advance for the first time towards the west on December 7, at the very moment when Hitler was having a crisis of nerves in front of Von Brauchtitsch. It was a Sunday. The world was not paying much heed to what was happening around Moscow, because news from there was scarce and because its attention had been captured by a shattering announcement: the Japanese had destroyed the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbor with a treacherous surprise aerial attack. In consequence the United States entered the world conflict. Pearl Harbor too - although indirectly - was

152. A Russian peasant looks in horror upon all that remains 01 her house. 153. A group 01 Italian "bersaglieri" launching an attack the steppes. Soon Mllssolilli thought that the Ita/iall Expeditiona ry Corps was too modest a contribution to th e "crusade against Bolshevism",· o th er Italians left for the Italian Army Corps in Russia. 01/

linked to the Russian counter-offensive. The Japanese had decided to unleash their attack in the south, and this had enabled the Russians to draw on the reserves from the garrisons on the Siberian coast. While Moscow risked being overwhelmed by the attacks of the armies of the central sector, Leningard - strangled by the siege - risked surrendering to the foe. Most witnesses agree that in Moscow the war always seemed far away, up to the last. In Leningrad, however, the war was very close: up to the last days of September even women and children had to be sent to the blazing front lines or assigned to preparing the city's defenses. In September, the already scarce food rations had been reduced to the indispensable minimum. At the price of terrible sacrifices, however, Leningrad was becoming the first thorn in Hitler's side: the besieged metropolis succeeded in keeping immobilized no less than 700,000 soldiers even though they were supported by 121,000 pieces of artillery and by 1,200 tanks. The Nazi dictator was beside himself with fury, for he could not find an explanation for what was happening. In the official German documents, Leningrad was always indicated by its old name. St. Petersburg. The ci ty was considered a precious catch: by itself it furnished almost 12 % of the whole industrial production of the Soviet Union and constituted a bulwark of fundamental strategic importance. Moreover, it was the city of Lenin, the metropolis from which the October Revolution had spread to the whole country, and this conferred a particular prestige on the city. The Germans had some extremely simple ideas as to what they would do with the city once it fell into their hands. A circular of the German Navy issued in September of that year stated : "The Fuehrer has

136

decided to remove the city of St. Petersburg from the fa ce of the earth," since "after the defeat of the Soviet Union there is no reason why this great inhabited center should continue to exist." On September 8, 1941 , Leningrad was bombed for the first time by German planes: this was the beginning of an indescribably exhausting and tragic ordeal. The city - which had more than three million inhabitants - was practically surrounded, and its only link to the rest of Russia was by way of a stretch of territory which connected it with Lake Ladoga and which was always defended with extreme doggedness because the last hopes of salvation for the city passed along this narrow corridor of Russian earth. On November 1, the defenders of Leningrad realized that the stocks of food supplies had diminished frighteningly and they decided on a further reduction of individual rations. It seemed impossible to survive, and yet on November 12 a new drastic measure had to be taken: it was decided to distribute minimum rations (250 grams for workers, and 125 grams for women, old people, and infants) of a "bread substitute" which was an unpalatable combination obtained by mixing a little flour with lots of tree bark and processed cellulose. Every morning there were people in Leningrad whose job was to go from street to street to remove the dead, while others took the trolley to the front. The factories continued to produce, but soon raw materials began to be as scarce as food supplies. Certainly the city would not be able to resist for long if some plan was not devised to bring in a flow of supplies. This was not an easy job, since the metropolis in addition to everything else was overpopulated because it had received refugees pouring in from the invaded zones. An air lift was started on November

/52

/53

137

154. The "Army 01 Ice" formed by the troops who were brought in from Siberia and the Far East. Zhukov unleashed the willter offensive with them, saving Moscow from the Nazi threat. 155. A Russian column wiped out by the murderous German artillery fire.

/54

16 for bringing supplies, arms, and raw material to the city, but very soon the military authorities had to acknowledge its inadequacy. Fortunately the surface of Lake Ladoga froze early and an attempt was made to open a path on the surface to be used as a supply route. According to the judgment of all the experts the surface in midNovember would not be thick enough to support great weights like that of a tank. Measurements in fact confirmed that in some points the thickness of the ice was not more than 5 V2 inches. The nightmare of hunger, however, hovered over the city which continued to fight with a desperate stubbornness. On November 20, the Chief of the Rear Services of the Leningrad front, F. M. Lagunov, sat at the wheel of an M-l truck and ventured onto the immense sheet of ice to try to make the crossing. The trip lasted two days, but when the news of the successful outcome was flashed to Leningrad, a load was lifted from the minds of the heroic defenders of the city. A highway of hope had been opened. Immediately the relief shipments were organized, and after two days a convoy of seventy trucks left Kobona bound for Konkorev, crossing in reverse the path which had been opened by General Lagunov. The convoy travelers advanced at a maddeningly slow pace; the doors of all the trucks were kept open so that the drivers could get out as soon as the ice should begin to crack under the wheels. From that time on, every day, every night, an endless column of provisions and supplies reached the city in this way, often under the attacks of German planes, at times under those of the artillery that fired on it from the southern bank of the lake. On the trip over, the trucks carried supplies and weapons, and they evacuated the wounded on the way back. That path on the lake was called the "Road of Life." No less 138

than a thousand trucks ended up at the bottom of Lake Ladoga, but by the middle of April, when the lake's surface was no longer reliable (it was to be crossed again in the subsequent winter) , more than a half-million persons had been brought out of Leningrad. The city was never to be conquered by the Nazi invaders. 155

"Beyond the Volga There Is No More Territory"

139

•

f'

• •

• •

Stalin grad Is a Fortress and One Immense Cemetery

156, I" a Sta/iflcrad factory a Russian soldier hurls

a hand grenade against the Germans. The lale o/the Germall ;lIvasiofl alld 0/ the Second World War was decided at Stalillgrad.

Stalingrad is a city that is not found on the more upto-date maps because its name was changed several years ago, during the period of de-Stalinization ushered in by Khrushchev and by the 20th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union. Today it is called Volgograd, but in schoolbooks nobody will ever be able to change the name "Battle of Stalingrad," as that epic encounter is called: Stalingrad was the longest battle of the Second World War, the most desperate and bloody, the most heroic. When the German strategy invented the war of movement, unleashed simultaneously by tanks, planes, and motorized units, it seemed as though the era of battles in the open field had come to an end. Instead the greatest field battle of all time took place during the Second World War and was the first step in the liberation of Russian soil from the invader. The battle began on July 6, 1942, and ended 210 days later on February 2, 1943. When it began the Germans still had solid hopes of victory ; when it was over, the Germans had already lost the war: After Stalingrad other battles were to be fought in every part of the world: the battle for Normandy, the battle of Bastogne, the battle for the Philippines, and the battle for Berlin, but the Second World War was practically at its last bloody gasp. In fact, the only certain element at the beginning of the great battle on the Volga was that the Germans had been forced to admit that the Blitzkrieg , was a hope that had gone up in smoke. At the start of the battle of Moscow, the Germans were forced to dig in along the front which from Rostov meandered up to Leningrad and skirted the centers of Kharkov, Kursk, Orel, Vyazma, Rzhev, Smolensk, and Vitebsk. The war on two fronts , which Hitler persistently had sought to avoid, was

141

157. Stalingrad in flames: the city Ofl the Volga became a heap 0/ fuitlS, O f! which th e armies 0/ Von Paulus and Clwikov fought a desperate battle. 158. The Russians were well trained lor fighting in the snow; very SOOIl SOlljel industries were in a position also to produce weapons and motors that functioned in the lowest tempera tures.

/ 57

now inevitable, since the entry of the United States into the conflict and the revival of Great Britain were already committing Germany to much more than she was in a position to endure. The mentor of the German strategists, Karl von Clausewitz (who had followed Napoleon's campaign in Russia from Kutuzov's headquarters), had once written that "the greatest boldness is often the expression of the greatest wisdom." But this certainly was not the case with Hitler. Despite everything, the Germans still seemed to have lots of cards to play. The Soviet Union began its great offensive with the return of summer, while in North Africa the Italian armies and the "Afrika Korps" were decisively aiming at Alexandria and seemed on the verge of conquering Egypt. The original strategic directives had now changed radically: the Germans - at least for the moment - had given up the idea of capturing Leningrad, while at the same time they were convinced that Moscow could not be taken with a frontal attack. Thus a new plan had been drawn up according to which the war of invasion would be developed in the south toward the Caucasus (site of the Russian oil wells) in the direction of which Von Kleist's armies would move. At the same time the seventh army would march on Stalingrad, from where, if need be, it could move toward the south in order to reinforce the thrust in the direction of the Caucasus, or it could even veer in a northerly direction in order to constitute the first nucleus of a gigantic maneuver destined finally to strangle Moscow. The plan assumed altogether fantastic dimensions when it called for a fabulous advance in North Africa on Rommel's part, including the crossing of the Red Sea and the conquest of Palestine. From there

14 2

he was to push on to Persia, while the German armies, whlch by that time would have conquered the Caucasus, would come to meet him by marching south. Now the German generals no longer doubted that Hitler was a hysterical and an insane visionary, but they were no longer in a position to raise any kind of objection. As a result, the fate of millions of soldiers was now at the mercy of a delirious strategist, while all Europe choked under the grip of the "Apostles" of the new order. In three weeks, from July 3 to 25, the German offensive seemed to have found the drive and punch of the year before: the Russians were forced to retreat beyond the Don. At this point, however, while the German pressure was mounting in violence in the direction of Baku and on the fringes of Stalingrad, the Russian resistance progressively stiffened. Another summer of fire had passed: in Russia German troops were in sight of the mountains of the Caucasus, and in Africa they were reorganizing themselves in El Alamein, a few miles from Alexandria in Egypt. But their adversaries too were poised for an offensive. The Americans, who in May and June had halted the Japanese advance in the Coral Sea and in the sky over the Midway Islands, got ready for the first action which would allow the opening of a second front in Europe, namely the landing in North Africa. The English were reinforcing the line in Egypt and were on the point of unleashing a decisive attack. The Russia ns were throwing their reserves and all the materiel at their disposal into the southern sector of their front. Once more the Russians had adopted their centuriesold strategy of retreating for miles and miles within their territory in order to lure the enemy into the trap farthest from his points of supply. They retreated until

--------

.. - .~

_ .........,...'11

•

_ _... _L

,-

/59. Marshal VOII Manstcj" was ordered Von Paulus from the Stalingrad trap, but he did not succeed.

159

10

liberate

160. A dramatic battle scene in a Stalingrad street.

160

at the end of July Stalin issued order no. 227, which ended with the words: "It is time to end the retreat. Not another step backward. Our slogan of the moment is this: defend every strip of land to the last drop of blood." A few days later the commander of the seventh German army entered the following reflection in his diary: "The hope of conquering Stalingrad in one blow has vanished." The Germans stormed the city with an impressive mass onslaught, as the result of which on August 23 a vanguard, reinforced by a hundred tanks, succeeded in occupying a position overlooking the Volga, in the northern outskirts of Stalingrad. On that day several squadrons of "Stukas" flew over the city picking out and destroying the most interesting objectives with daring dive-bombings. Now Stalingrad was within arm's reach and the seventh army could hope for rapid success. But within the city, which was already partially in flames , the defenders had decided otherwise: Stalingrad was not to fall , and while children and oldsters were being evacuated beyond Lhe Volga, every able-bodied man, every available woman, every adolescent was assigned a particular task. The state of siege was ordered on August 25. The order circulated among the defenders read: "Beyond the Volga there is no more territory." Altogether more than 2,000,000 men , 2,000 tanks, 25,000 guns and 2,300 planes faced each olher from September to February in a duel without precedent in history. The general situation had changed notably since the summer and winter of the year before. The 1,300 factories which the Russians had feverishly dismantled before the invading armies were now newly set up in the territories of Siberia and the Urals and were already producing at full speed: Sundays had been ignored in the USSR, and everybody

144

/6/ . After Stalingrad, il became clear even to o rdinary German soldiers that the days of easy advan ces were over forever .

161

162. The Russians at Stalingrad trapped the whole German sixth army, which was completely cUI 00 and deprived of supp lies: even Von Mar/stein's a/tempt to liberate it failed because of dogged Russian resistance and lack of fuel for the tanks.

162

145

/63 /64

163. A unit 0/ Russian partisans in a painting by N. Neprintsev: the o rganization 0/ these partisan bands working behind the German lines was one 0/ the principal concerns 0/ th e Soviet High Command.

165

164. So viet canks elltering liberated Mill sk (pa inting by V. Vo lko v). 165. A group 0/ Russian children in /rollt 0/ the ruins 0/ their hOllse . .

worked without rest periods. Only by constantly taking these facts into account is it possible to explain the energy with which the Russians resisted at Stalingrad without surrendering another foot of territory. On September 3, the seventh army under General von Paulus unleashed a final offensive against the outskirts of Stalingrad: from Rinok - in the northern outskirts - the Germans tried to occupy the "Tractor Factory" where production continued, only now the factory was producing tanks; from Orlovka they tried to creep into the squalid industrial outskirts, toward the "Barrikady" works and the "Red October" factory , and from Gumrak and Peshanka they advanced toward the central station of Kotluban. The Russian resistance was formidable, though the Germans did manage to make some progress. Every street was a trench, every house a fortress, every quarter was defended with a dogged spirit. One platoon under the command of Ruben Ruis Ibarruri - who was a son of "La Pasionaria," one of the world-famous legendary figures of the Spanish Civil War - managed to hold out for three days in the building of the station against which the Germans had hurled an entire brigade. After nine days of fierce fighting, the Germans managed to reach the Volga at the southern outskirts of Kuporosnoe: Stalingrad was caught in a steel trap. The Germans were now herding the city's defenders - General Chuikov's army - into a narrow strip of land beyond which lay only the Volga. When the news of the new bridgehead on the river arrived at the supreme German headquarters, Hitler sent a message to General von Paulus aimed to make wings sprout on the feet of his soldiers: "The Russians are at the end of their resources. Stalin grad

must be taken immediately." But those nine days had created a new situation: the incessant aerial bombings and the continuous pounding of the artillery had reduced the outskirts of Stalin grad into a ghostlike heap of ruins which soon turned out to be an insurmountable barrier for the German tanks while at the same time serving as an excellent defensive system for the Russians, who could hide their machine-gun nests almost everywhere. The seventy-second army under General Vasili Chuikov bore the greater brunt of the onslaught inside the city; it numbered only 50,000 men and with only 10 tanks at its disposal it had to face an army of 170,000 men (13 divisions) under the command of Von Paulus. Chuikov, before being assigned to the Stalingrad front, had been a military attache in China. He was a man of big build, with full lips and tiny, clear eyes. He had a reputation for being a man of great determination. At 18 he had run away from home to enlist in the Red Army and after only one year he was already commanding a regiment fighting Kolchak's White armies. Now, at 42, Chuikov was one of the youngest Soviet commanders, and the responsibility for the most crucial and dangerous front rested upon his shoulders. It was his army which for two long months stood up against the onslaughts of Von Paulus' soldiers who fought with the blind fury of caged beasts. In the flaming city, the assaults followed one upon the other without let-up, but Chuikov's army clung doggedly to the sliver of land on the bank of the Volga, contesting the enemy for every inch, every wall, every window. The centers of that battle, which no longer had anything modern about it, were the same almost every day: factories, silos, the parks on Mamai Hill, and the station. Work continued at

147

/66

166. General Vasili Chuikov, commander of the Russian army wllich resisted at Stalingrad, with the Volga at it.s back. "There is no land beyond the Volga!" was the order 10 the IrOOps. /67. Afl episode

0/ the bloody

battle

among the ruins 0/ Stalillgrad.

/67

148

168. Sergeant Jak ov Pavlov with his wile and child, photographed after the war in front of the house where he and a halldlul 01 soldiers were barricaded for filty days.

168

the "Tractor Factory" under the fire of the German artillery as long as it was possible, while special teams of workers put out the fires and removed the debris. By using the pieces of iron wreckage piled in the courtyards of the factory, the workmen still managed to produce some tanks. Every time a tank was finished, it was sent directly to the front lines, just beyond the factory's gates. They were monstrous contraptions, devoid of aiming sights or instruments, without finishing touches, without a single coat of paint: the soldiers who locked themselves inside them to face the Germans were also those who had tested them. But they served their purpose. When the supply of junk iron ran out, the factory almost ceased to exist as such, and then the workers grabbed rifles, hand grenades, and knives and remained there, hidden among the piles of ruins, waiting for the Germans. The whole city was visible from Mamai Hill , and the Germans tried unceasingly to seize the hill as a site for their artillery. From this height, moreover, they would also have the Volga within their range of fire and in that way they could prevent the Russians from sending supplies by night to Chuikov's embattled army. On one day alone, September 15 , Mamai Hill changed hands thirteen times. But at this point it is not possible to give a comprehensive picture of a battle like that of Stalingrad, which every day broke up into a series of individual heroic and desperate actions. In his memoirs Chuikov pays homage to several fighters who enabled him to save the city. It is possible, however, to recall several of the most outstanding individual combatants. Jakov Pavlov was a young sergeant at the head of a squad of men: his name has remained linked to the

149

169

170

•

150

169. Vasifi Zaitloev was a crack marksman and. before being wounded in an eye, personally shol more than 240 Germans. 170. Mamai Hill, the site of Stalingrad's park: it was conquered and lost sel'erai times by the Germans. It was a key position, from which the course of the Volga and its traffic could be dominated. 17 / . Th e ltaliall cQ\'airy fought bravely at lllsbuchensky. Th e Russian attack On the DOli smashed the sector of the frollt held by Italian and Rumanian troops.

17/

epic of those days because he and his men held out for almost two months in a large building in the center of the city, at an important intersection where the survivors of Rodimtsev's division were fighting. "The Germans," writes Chuikov, "hurled an avalanche of bombs, grenades, howitzers on that house but they could not break the resistance of its heroic garrison." That building has passed into history as "the house of Pavlov" and General Chuikov observes that in the fighting for this house, in the vain attempt to capture it, the Germans lost more soldiers "than those who fell during the capture of Paris." Another simple soldier, the protagonist of what was certainly the most baffling event of the whole Second World War, Zaitsev, the sniper, also deserves a special mention. A day did not go by without Zaitsev's drawing a deadly bead on some German from the most improbable places, without anybody being able to flush him out. During the most critical phase of the fighting, when the Russians and Germans were contesting for Stalin grad house by house, and indeed even floor by floor , Zaitsev's name became famous among all the men of Chuikov's army and even among the soldiers and officers of the army of General von Paulus. The Germans organized platoons of crack marksmen and assigned to them the task of eliminating Zaitsev from the Stalingrad scene, but every search for him was fruitless; when one least expected it, a single shot from an undetermined point would ring out and a German soldier would drop among the rubble. Vasili Zaitsev had killed 242 Germans in this way. General von Paulus finally was forced to concern himself with the matter and he did so by requesting Berlin to send him the top-flight instructor of the German army's crack marksmen, Major Konings.

151

172. Th e Nazi flag waves over tile ruins of StaUngrad; it was hauled down 011 'he day of tile surrellder o f the sixth army. 173. VOII Paulus, com mander 01 the Germall army besieged at Stolingrad: the Russians captured him ill a bunker where he had established his command post. Hitler removed him from his command alter the surrender, calling him a traitor.

/ 73

For a whole week Konings and Zaitsev hunted each other among the ruins of the destroyed city, while the two armies followed that strange, incongruous duel with bated breath. One day Zaitsev saw a ray of sun reflected from the telescopic sight of a precision rifle and immediately realized that he was near Konings. He froze on the spot and wai ted for the other to expose himself, and the instant Konings made a move to look about cautiously, a blast from the Russian's rifle finished him off. Zaitzev could now return behind the lines, satisfied .

The Russians were now ready to pass over to the counter-attack, while the temperature dropped day by day and the soldiers of Von Paulus shuddered at the thought of the imminent winter. On the morning of November 19, the Germans were alerted by intense artillery fire , and the counter-attack began at ten minutes before nine. From the south General Vatutin's troops lunged at the flank of the seventh army, while Yeremenko's men moved out of Stalingrad and Rokossovsky's from the Don front. The objective of the maneuver soon became crystal clear : the Russians were trying to cut off the seventh army from its sources of supply, by encircling it within a "pocket" which would change it from a besieging force into one besieged. Within a few hours an avalanche of men emerged out of the low-hanging fog: no less than seven armies, with several motorized brigades, unleashed a hellish onslaught against the flank s of the German lines and after only five days the two prongs of the pincers were able to join at Kalats, behind the seventh army. The 300,000 survivors of Von Paulus' army - 22 divisions in a space 24 miles wide and less than 31 miles long -

153

174. A bat/Ie in a Stalingrad factory. The workers in a plant producing war materiel worked up to the last minute be/ore the arrival of the Germans. As soon as they were finished, the tanks lumbered towards the frollt lilies outside the factory gates, ready to fight. 175. A \'iew 0/ Stalingrad under the during the epic battle.

SIIOW

176. A German tank abandoned in the vicinity of Stalillgrad. Th e losses 0/ materiel suffered by the Germans in Russia were el/ormous alld much higher than th e capacity o f the German war industry to replace th em.

174

154

175

realized they were doomed. Von Paulus asked Berlin for permission to make a lunge with all the strength of his army against one of the prongs of the pincers before the Russians succeeded in consolidating the positions which they had just conquered. But this would have meant giving up a direct assault against Stalingrad, so the German high command ordered the general not to move: the seventh army would be rescued from the outside, by the group of armies commanded by Manstein (at any rate by the part of the group that was under Manstein's direct command, since half of these contingents had been shifted by Von Kleist to the Caucasus) , which would break through the Russian encirclement. As for supplies, the seventh army was to hold out with the supplies that would be dropped by air lift. This phase of the operations began on December 12 and after a week the armored vanguards of the German spearhead had arrived about 29 miles from the encircled troops. Von Paulus' men could distinctly hear the roar of the artillery of the troops trying to rescue them. But the Russians already had resumed their initiative three days before, unleashing a tremendous attack against the troops deployed along the Don, where the third Rumanian army and the eighth Italian army of the ARMIR were dug in. For several days the latter put up a desperate resistance, but their rout was inevitable. As soon as one of the units yielded, the whole front was overrun. Italians of the Julia regiment fought a desperate rearguard action to cover the retreat of their comrades, and the Germans were the first to take advantage of the motorized means of taking them back to the safety of the rear areas. Now one of the most agonizing chapters of the whole history of the war began for the 125,000 Alpine

176

155

177. The j'el/~propelled Russian artillery fires point blank against German pmitiolls bl a Stalblgrad street. The scene took place during the last days 0/ the bait Ie. 178. Italian Alpille troops, trailled lor moulltaill fighting and without proper supplies and equipment, were used all the steppes IIear the DOli. During the retreat, they were lelt holdillg the bag by the Germans alld had to figh t their way ou t. 179. JOllmey's end ill Stalblgrad: the Germall survivors carry the wounded towards Russian cOllcelltratioll camps.

/77

troops of the ARMIR ( the Italian army which had replaced the CSIR ): at a temperature of 35 degrees below zero (centigrade ) the Alpini retreated on foot, fighting without let-up along the entire way. Only a few returned home. All the enemy troops deployed along the Don were swept away, while the pincers closed ever more tightly around the army of Von Paulus! The supplies which were dropped by air lift turned out to be so insufficient that the seventh army was not even in a position to go out and join up with Manstein's vanguard , because their tanks had fuel only for about six miles. Thus the attempt to punch an opening in the "pocket" failed . To the very end the German army hoped that something of a miracle might happen, but Hitler once more precluded any new possibilities of escape by repeating the order to resist to the last man. On the morning of January 8, three young officers brought an ultimatum to the German lines, in which the commander of the Don front, Rokossovsky, proposed a surrender under conditions that Von Paulus himself found honorable. The German commander, to whom the Russians had given twenty-four hours to make up his mind, requested Berlin for permission to surrender, but Hitler, via radio, ordered him to reject every enemy proposal and even to fire at sight against "the Soviet emissaries who presented themselves to propose a cease-fire." The Russian ultimatum ended with these words: "If you refuse, we shall be forced to liquidate you." At the end of the twenty-four hour period of grace, the Russians carried out their threat : five thousand cannon simultaneously opened their fire against the narrow space in which the survivors of the seventh army were floundering. Now the Germans no longer had

156

~.#

,

-. .-

..

178

179

157

180. Italian Alpine troops of the Eagle battalion during the retreat. About 90,000 Italian soldiers died in Russia, and more than 40,000 were missing or victims of severe frostbite.

180

an escape route and had only an air field at their disposal. When the last plane was about to take off from the runway, the soldiers were invited to write their last farewell letters home. Those sacks of mail were never delivered: the German censorship was afraid of the possible consequences, inasmuch as the unfortunate heroes of Stalingrad had written a collective and frightening indictment of the authorities responsible for condemning them to a fate that was now so useless. On January 20, Hitler was heard from once more. "The German people," he said in a message, "entrust to the sixth army the historic task of resisting to the last man." From his command post in a cellar of the Stalin grad railway station, Von Paulus tried once more to make the mad dictator understand the futility and folly of that slaughter: "The troops have no munitions and no food supplies. . . . It is no longer possible to maintain an efficient line of command . . . . We have 18,000 wounded without supplies, without clothes,... without medicines. . . . There is no sense in continuing to resist. . . . The army asks immediate authorization to surrender in order to save the lives of the survivors." But Hitler would not listen to reason. "I forbid surrender," he replied. Divided into three "pockets," the sixth army continued to fire its guns. The soldiers were faint from hunger and worn out by the cold: the outskirts of the city were nothing but an immense cemetery. On January 30, Von Paulus flashed a message to the Reich general headquarters in which he announced that "the final collapse can be postponed only for another twenty-four hours." On the following day Hitler, again by radio, announced the promotion of the general, who was on the verge of collapse, to field marshal, as well as the promotion of

158

I 17 other officers of the sixth army to the next higher rank. It was the last attempt to avoid the unavoidable: Hitler confided to JodI that, after all, a German field marshal had never been captured alive by the enemy up to now . . . . That evening Marshal von Paulus announced to the Reich general headquarters that the sixth army had done its duty "up to the end." Fifteen minutes before ten o'clock the operator on duty at the radio managed to get a last message through just in the nick of time: "The Russians are at the door of our bunker. We are destroying the equipment."

The great battle came to an end on February 2. A group of emaciated German soldiers, waving a white flag, presented themselves before a Russian tank: the Russians replied with a shout of joy. Von Paulus and his general staff were taken prisoners; the 108 ,000 survivors of the sixth army were sent to Siberia; only 5,000 are supposed to have returned home, long after the end of the war. On February 3, the Berlin radio confirmed the news already proclaimed to the world by Moscow: the regular broadcasts were interrupted, and a solemn roll of drums was heard , followed by the second movement of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony. At the end an announcer read this extraordinary communication: "The battle of Stalin grad is over. Faithful to its oath to fight to the last breath the sixth army, exemplarily commanded by Field Marshal von Paulus, has been overcome. . . ." For four days all the cinemas and all German places of entertainment remained closed. Hitler had ordered a period of national mourning. It was fitting: the German surrender at Stalingrad had marked the decisive turn of the war. The Germans were retreating and were never again to stop.

The Greatest Flight in World History

159

18 ,

The Russian Offensive Halts at Berlin

J8/. The Red Army, aller expelling th e invader beyond 'he border, advances Of! Germany.

The weary troops of Chuikov's army could not yet know it but their desperate resistance amid the ruins of Stalingrad was to have incalculable consequences. By fighting to the extreme limit of endurance on a tiny strip of land bordered by the ruins of the center of the city and by the right bank of the Volga, they had enabled Generals Vatutin, Golikov, Yeremenko, Malinovsky, Rokossovsky, and Zhukov to prepare the giant counter-offensive that in a few weeks would completely reverse the military situation, and not only in the southern sector of the Russian front. The most momentous consequence of the German collapse at Stalingrad, in fact , was that the Russians assumed the initiative which they were never again to yield to the enemy. I n the cou rse of the two and a half years of war which still lay ahead, and which were to be fought with dramatic alternating phases of success and failure, the Red Army succeeded in forcing the Germans to withdraw toward the West. It was the greatest flight in the history of the world: the offensive that the Russians had unleashed at Stalingrad was to come to a halt two years later in the very heart of Berlin. Naturally, it is no longer possible to isolate the military operations in Russia from those on the other fronts: Germany was' fighting the English, and very soon she would also have to take on the Americans, but this does not diminish the importance of the Soviet victory. The greatest defeat suffered by the Germans during the entire war - Stalingrad - had been preceded shortly before by the defeat the English had inflicted on the Italians and Germans at EI Alamein in Egypt, and it was followed by the defeat in Tunisia, as a result of which the war in North Africa was brought to an end and the English and Americans could pass on to the next phase, the re-

16 1

182

182. The Russians trained dogs, equipped with explosive charges, to hurl themselves against tanks. 183. The Soviet rockel-gull called the Katyusha was olle 01 'he most murderous weapons devised in the course 0/ Ihe war. The Katyushas wiped out whole sectors 0/ Ihe German front.

183

162

•

184. A German bomber has {low" over the steppe to !U! l its prey: a shepherd alld his Roats. The painting is by A . Plastov.

184

opening of a second European front in the western sector. This was accomplished by the landing in Italy, and , subsequently, by the land ing in Normandy. The immediate consequence of the counter-offensive of the Don front army groups, under Rokossovsky's command, was an irresistible advance which sent the Germans reeling beyond Rostov and Kharkov. Surprised by the Red Army avalanche, Von Kleist's troops now risked being caught in a " pocket" between the colum n that was aiming for Rostov and the one Zhukov was maneuvering against their southern flank.

Never, before now, had anything liked this occurred. Even the defense of Moscow, the preceding win ter, after all had been a counter-offensive of limited range: the German general staff at that time had quickly understood that the Russians certainly were not trying to drive the invading army to the west but simply to remove the threat it posed to the capital. This time, instead, the Russia ns had clear and resolute ideas. They had well-trained and excellently equipped divisions at their disposal. Even those who were most reluctant to consider things in their proper light realized that the war had taken a crucial turn: Stalingrad had demonstrated, much more clearly than Moscow, that the Germans were not invincible and this had vastly improved Russian morale. But above all the Russians had learned a lesson. In record time they had revolutionized all their strategic theories, and they had learned to maneuver tanks, particularly the tactical maneuvers of armored units. A further consideration must be added to this: at the very moment in which the situation of the Germans

was less than brilliant, the Russians began to feel the first concrete benefits of the entry of the United States into the conflict. The convoys from North America that reached the port of Murmansk and the supply columns which, setting out from the Persian Gulf, reached Russia's southern ports, enabled Stalin to funnel beyond the Volga that mass of materiel and supplies which was to astound and overwhelm the Germans. The German navy and air force tried in every way to impede the passage of allied convoys along the sea routes of the Far North. But after the first enormous and successful attacks, the allied losses became increasingly less serious to the point where they were negligible. At the end of 1943 the allied convoys were to suffer only I % losses : this enabled the Russians to maintain an uninterrupted gigantic flow of supplies. Between October, 1941, and January, 1944, the Soviet Union received from the United States approximately 8,000 planes, 5,000 tanks, 170,000 trucks, and in addition 740,000 tons of special aviation fuel for planes, 177 ,000 tons of explosives, 1,350,000 tons of steel, and 2,250,000 tons of food stuffs. Even if Stalin's persistent demands that the western allies open a second front in France in order to engage German troops from the rear and force them to reduce their pressure on Russia were continually sidestepped with the justification that preparations of this kind necessarily took a long time, there is no doubt that in terms of supplies Russia was no longer alone in its struggle against Germany. The Germans, therefore, were soon exchanging blows with an army which in a certain sense was new, which had now learned to fight in accordance with the terms imposed by the German general staff

163

185. Th e German retreal began at Stalingrad and ended in Berlin: it was th e longest and most tragic fligh t in history.

185

164

186

186. T he G ermans often tried to regain the initiative. but ll Ow the Russian arm y was superior ill men and means. 187. The G erman sign on the steppes reads: "Truck liril'eTs, sto p and pick up the wo unded!"

187

itself, and which was supported by an abundance of materiel such as the Soviet Union never before had possessed .

Rostov, therefore, was the Red Army's tirst objective: the city was assaulted from four directions by troops under the command of Rokossovsky, Vatutin , Yeremenko, and Malinovsky. Now every advancing column of the Russians acted in accordance with a precise, long-range strategic plan , the constant aim of which was to try to effect a broad encircling maneuver which would make it possible not only to liberate a certain stret ch of territory, but also to destroy the troops occupying it. Thi s was the "pocket" tactic which the Ru ssians had learned at the Germans' expense . All that Hitler succeeded in doing at the beginning was to bring about a change at the apex of the military orga nization. Halder, the chief of the general staff, was replaced by General Kurt Zeitzler, and Marsha l von We ichs stepped into Von Bock's position. But the rotation in the high command cou ld not alter a situation that was so deeply compromised by events. Rostov had to be abandoned. The Germans tried to resist at Kh a rkov, o nly a few days later, but once more the momentum that marked the Russian surge forward got the upper ha nd : nine German divi sions - all composed of crack troops - were literally cut to bit s by Golikov, Vatu tin , and Vas ilievsky. This was only an ep isode in a war of gigantic dimensions,

but it was a very grave symptom: for the tirst time the Germans failed to halt the enemy whom they had been accustomed to seeing retreat. Now the Red Army was attacking Kursk from the

165

188

189

166

188. The bunker in which Hiller sought refuge and then killed himself is visible ill the garden 0/ the Chancellery in Berlin.

190

189. A Russian reconstructiOIl of Hitler's hallucinatory end in the bunker of the Chancellery of Berlin. 190. Russian tanks advance towards the center of conquered Berlin .

north and east, while from Moscow several columns were advancing along the Smolensk road in order to remove every residual threat to the capital. The German high command could no longer postpone a decision, also for the reason that the army of the Caucasus was now yielding in the face of Zhukov's pressure. The German counter-attack was launched on February 23: twenty-five divisions unleashed an offensive of unusual violence on Kharkov, striking at the city from the south and north. The Russians, who had captured the city only a few days before and who had not yet had time to consolidate the new line, were forced to fall back and even surrendered Bielgorod. The Germans hoped that fortune was once more on their side and persevered in the counter-attack, but they could not advance a single yard farther. The Russians had halted their retreat. The winter was now over, and the Germans had had time to cancel only a small part of the advantage won by the Red Army: the oil of the Caucasus would never be theirs and the army which had tried to seize it had been saved only by a kind of miracle. The front was no longer on the Don, but on the Donetz. Now even the conquest of Leningrad seemed to be unrealizable: an offensive unleashed along the line of the Volkov River, south of Lake Ladoga, tried to break the encirclement. Now the snow was melting and the terrain along the immense battle front grew soggy; the spring rain did the rest and the two armies were entrapped in the "rasputitsa," the fearsome mud of the steppes. Nobody could move, except the Russian partisans, who continued their harassing activity in the German rear areas with an impressive crescendo of blown-up bridges, trains, and munition depots.

As soon as the sun hardened the mud, the Germans tried an attack in the grand style in the Orel zone, in order to prevent the Russians from reactivating the Moscow-Rostov rail line: it was the last German attempt to wrest back the initiative. German industry had been placed under a severe strain preparing for the offensive which the high command counted upon for decisive results before the general situation of the German armies should be completely compromised: Hitler was acutely aware that time was becoming terribly precious: the Anglo-American forces had already effected a landing in Sicily and they were poised to strike at Europe by coming up through Italy. Hans Guenther von Kluge - a field marshal who within a year was to commit suicide because of his part in the plo~ against Hitler - had devoted two months of a forced halt to prepare forty-five divisions and to reinforce them with tanks of the most recent manufacture, the "Tigers." Nobody had ever seen such a tank before. The Tiger tank was the last miracle of the German war industry. It looked like a mountain of steel and could travel non-stop for 86 miles at a speed of 25 miles an hour : it carried a sixman crew inside its carcass, which weighed 56 tons and could be considered invulnerable, protected as it was by an armor-plating which at its weakest points measured 110 millimeters. This monster was armed with a cannon that could penetrate an II-inch steel plate a half mile away. Von Kluge had 3,000 of these tanks and considered that the attack at Orel would be fatal for the Russians. Actually, nothing of the sort occurred, since Red Army units allowed the Tigers to storm ahead so that they could reconquer the lost terrain as soon as the infantry replaced the panzers. Von Kluge and Von

167

191. Tile Germans were in retreat everywhere: the Swastika has been hauled down to prevent the flag from falling into tlte hands of tlte enemy.

/9/

168

Manstein did not hesitate to hurl their enormous Tigers into the fray and this led to what was probably the most gigantic tank battle ever fought in the world. The Russians had lighter tanks than those of the Germans - the 52-ton "Kutuzov" and the 50ton "Voroshilov" - but they had learned to maneuver them as skillfully as the enemy. The battles of 1941 were now only an ugly memory: time had not passed in vain. The losses on both sides were horrendous and Von Manstein probably considered that the Russians were in no position to resist further: on this basis, therefore, he obtained two more armored divisions from Von Kluge, which enabled him to hurl back Valutin and to lunge beyond the Donetz. The battle lasted ten days without a single respite, but no matter how many attacks the German units mounted, not even the Tiger tanks could make the Russians yield further ground. In those ten days the two adversaries had left no less than 3,000 panzers on the field. Two thousand planes were destroyed , and the Germans lost three infantry divisions and two armored divisions. Von Kluge decided to slacken the pressure in an attempt to devote the remaining energies of his troops to the consolidation of the bastion that had been conquered beyond the Donetz. But there was no time for this: in support of Vatutin's army, another Russian army, Rokossovsky's, hurled itself with all its strength at Orel, forcing Von Manstein to make a cautious retreat. Thereupon the armies of Konev, Popov, Vatutin, and Sokolovsky simultaneously sprang into action, in support of Rokossovsky's units. Now the Russian plan was being clearly outlined in all its dramatic sweep and import. Von Manstein risked encirclement, since the Red Army was trying to smash its way through in the

192. A Russian patrol fights house to house in the outskirts of Berlin. A few fanatical Germans still refused to admit defeat.

/92

193. A Russian soldier raises the Soviet flag over Kiev: the Ukraine was also liberated.

direction of Kharkov, to spread out up to Poltava and then to descend southward along the Dnieper: a fearsome threat hung over the 800,000 men who might be trapped. Hitler gave orders that no ground was to be yielded and Von Manstein had to . fight for a long time - until the first days of October - in order to ward off this danger. Precious energies were sq uandered in these battles in which Tolbukhin, Konev, Malinovsky, and Yeremenko repeatedly tried to close the jaws of the pincers. The stages of the sweep of the armies of the southern group across the Ukraine are marked by names that evoke awesome battles and thousands of dead: Kremenchug, Dnepropetrovsk, Zhitomir, Gomel, Korosten, Krivoi Rog. Winter had returned once more, and the mercury in the thermometers again dropped to 20 , 30 degrees below zero (centrigrade) , unleashing snowstorms and freezing the lubricants in the vehicles. But the Russians did not stop. On Christmas Eve they hurled nine army groups against Kiev and tried once more, with stubborn determination, to encircle Von Manstein's army group. This time the mud came to the aid of the Germans: the Red Army was compelled to halt at Vinnitsa .

/93

At the end of that terrible year of 1943 even the other sectors of the front had shifted. When the Russians had liberated Smolensk they discovered to their horror that of the original 32,000 inhabitants, only 7,500 remained. Most of them had been killed by the Germans. The front line was about to reach Vitebsk. The Germans had been forced to fall back in the north also. Taken by surprise by the army of Leningrad, they did not immediately grasp that the

169

194

194. Endless columns of German prisoners on tlte long trek to cOllcentration camps in Siberia: only a few were able to return home several years later.

195. A German plane shot down by Soviet fighter craft crashes into a house in Budapest. 196. The people of the liberated Russian cities extend enthusiastic welcomes to the troops.

Russians engaged on the Ukrainian front were not limiting themselves to a harassing action. When the alarm was sounded it was now too late, and the twenty-one divisions of General Govorov swept away the entire defensive system which had taken the Germans two years to erect. The epic of Leningrad, the city that had withstood the longest siege in modern history, was crowned by this battle, which took place in a zone sacred to the memory of Alexander Nevsky. On January 20, 1944, the city which once had been "Sovereign Great Novgorod" was also liberated; on January 27 the siege of Leningrad was definitely lifted: the Germans had been driven back to a position nine miles from the Estonian frontier. The struggle continued bitterly only south of Kiev, where the Germans continued to resist with a strength born of desperation. But now the Red Army was about to overcome them. On February 3, Vatutin and Konev encircled ten divisions in the zone around Korsun; the resistance lasted for sixteen days, while the Viking armored division was hastened to the assistance of the besieged; Konev, however, got the upper hand and Stalin promoted him to the rank of marshal. Irredeemably cut in two, the southern group of armies, in part under the command of Von Manstein and in part under that of Von Kleist - tried to take advantage of the respite in order to reorganize the ranks. A drop in the temperature again sent the mercury in the thermometer down to between 20 and 30 degrees below zero (centigrade) and the "rasputitsa" hardened. Von Manstein deployed the divisions that were still left to him along the 372-mile front which, starting from the Black Sea, stretched north up to Lvov. Berlin had promised him supplies and rein-

195

170

/96

forcements , and despite the increasing actIVIty of the partisan army, several convoys had already arrived. The return of the cold retarded the coming of the thaw only for a short time; this time, however, the "rasputitsa" did not worry the German command too much; indeed, the mud was to grant it a few more precious days to consolidate the defense lines. On the Russian front that respite had been utilized for the purpose of improving connections with the rear areas and for supplying units on the line. Almost nobody seemed to give any special attention to an announcement that General Vatutin had fallen ill and that Stalin had sent General Zhukov, the defender of Moscow, to replace him. There was to be much talk about this general in the next few months. Indeed, the talk about him began right away. A few days after his arrival, around the first of March, Zhukov attacked along the whole of Von Manstein's front with a half-million men, and cut off every route toward Poland open to him, driving him backward to the Carpathians. The Russian offensive had caught the Germans by surprise, because it seemed impossible to them that an attack could be launched in the middle of a "Schlammperiode," when mud was king. Zhukov's armies, however, were equipped with motorized means which made it possible for them to brave the "rasputitsa," and the effect of the powerful lunge forward was like lightning. The Germans were forced to leave behind a great part of the materiel which they could not cart away, and seek an escape over the Carpathians in the direction of Rumania. The bulk of Manstein's motorized army fell into Konev's hands. The Ukraine was now liberated: the Red Army had forced the Germans to retrace their steps for more

than 930 miles. In spite of this, Manstein succeeded in organizing a last line of resistance on the slopes of the Carpathians, digging in between Tarnopol and Hotin. The last act of the frightful German tragedy on Russian soil was played out precisely here: when Zhukov tried once more to encircle Manstein's forces , which consisted of 15 divisions, among which were seven armored and one motorized division. The Germans fought back by barricading themselves within the bastion and fighting off the attack with a murderous fire. It was a desperate undertaking and Zhukov occupied Hotin and sealed the "pocket" at Skala, about a mile farther south. Once more Manstein tried to liberate the besieged units by attacking a flank of Zhukov's units with the help of the desperate efforts of the surrounded divisions. The Germans managed to liberate themselves again, after a long agony, toward the end of April. But meanwhile Tolbukhin and Malinovsky had thrust forward into the Balkan peninsula with a sweeping maneuver which in a single bound would bring them to the Ploesti oil fields (those which up to now had been fueling the German armored divisions) and then to Bucharest, Sofia, Belgrade, and Budapest. It was the end. With the return of summer even the southernmost fronts were stormed by Soviet troops and all the Russian territory was liberated, even though often at a high price. Vitebsk was abandoned on June 26 after a three-day siege; on the 29th the Red Army was on the banks of the Berezina. On July 3, Minsk, the capital of Bielorussia, was liberated, and the Russians crossed the Niemen for an encounter with the panzer army which the Germans had deployed in front of Warsaw. But all German effort was useless now. The fate of Hitler's Germany seemed irrevocably sealed. On June

171

197

198

172

197. The routes of the crushing Soviet offensive against 'he heart of Germany.

199

198. Soviet sailors and soldiers enter reconquered Odessa. 199. Germans surrendering 10 Soviet partisans.

6 the English and the Americans finally opened the second front for which the Russians had been so eagerly waiting. In the largest naval landing in all history, 4,000 invasion craft, protected by the whole British fleet and a good part of the American navy, had destroyed five divisions on about 37 miles of beach in Normandy. Now they had brought on French soil an invincible army against which the Germans could only undertake a desperate defense. A gigantic pincers was steadily closing its two claws arou nd Germany. A Wagnerian finale was being prepared for the Third Reich, which only five years before had dreamed of bringing all Europe, and indeed the world, to its knees. Yet, contrary to all predictions Germany continued to resist and even to believe in final victory. Despite all the defeats she had suffered, despite all the evidence of the facts, notwithstanding all the changes of the guard at the head of the army and, above all, notwithstanding the pyramids of dead, Hitler and his staunchest followers still ruled Germany with the hysterical certainty of ultimate victory and above all with sheer naked terror. For years millions of persons coming from all corners of Europe had been working in the German factories, under the constant pounding of allied planes, in a feverish attempt to keep industrial production at a high level. In recent times the deportations had increased, just as the executions in the concentration camps had increased. The sun of Nazism was about to sink below the horizon in a twilight vivid with blood. The conscience of Europe was now fully aroused , galvanized by the AngloAmerican adva nce in the west and that of the Russia ns in the east; hence the hope for freedom was reborn everywhere. The year 1945 - which was to be the last year of the war - found Germany in a

dramatic situation . In the course of the last twelve months the Germans had lost at least 2,000,000 men on the two principal fronts and another 300,000 men on the Ttalian front. Italy had been out of the war since September, 1943 , after signi ng a separate armistice. Bitter fighting had continued in the peninsula by the British, the Americans, and also the "corps of liberation" organized by the new Italian government. Tn the rear areas in northern italy, units of patriots harassed German troops, braving ferocious acts of reprisal. Hitler now had only 290 divisions at his disposal, and among these quite a few were in no position to fight. The "Volksturm" was established; this was a territorial militia, in which youngsters of 16 and men of 60 were enrolled, which was assigned the task of guarding the rear areas against possible attacks by parachutists or saboteurs. War production also had dropped because of the shortage of raw materials and because of the allied poundings from the air. The preparation for the la nding in Normandy had begun in January, 1944: from the night of January II up to June 6, the English and American air forces had mounted an unprecedented aerial offensive. At every hour of the day and night, squad rons of planes pounded military, industrial, and strategic objectives: factories, railroad junctions, bridges, roads , ai r fields , troop concentrations, supply depots. The bombing attacks were intensified after the landing. Now the surviving divisions no longer had even traditional arms in sufficient measure, although the war industries continued to produce excellent weapons like the "Royal Tiger" tank (69 tons, with a 128millimeter cannon and armored casing up to 155 millimeters thick) , which was notably superior to the best allied tank of the "Sherman" type. The 48 ar-

173

200. The la.tf defellders of Nazism: youngsters hastily enrolled ill the Wehrmacht.

mored divisions which were left to the Germans had only about a hundred tanks each. The Germans seemed to rest all their hopes in the new weapons in connection with which their scientists had been doing extensive research for years . The "V-I " ("buzz bomb" ) offensive on London , however, did not achieve the results anticipated, since the English soon learned how to shoot the contraptions out of the skies. And even if it was impossible to defend oneself against the "V-2" (which fell to the earth vertically, at a speed greater than sound) the offensive was in no sense decisive, nor did it induce the Allies to cut down the bombing raids over German cities.

The last attack against Germany began in January 1945, with a series of combined operations on the part of the Anglo-American and Soviet high commands. The Allies had now clarified all the questions pending between them, and at their last meeting the American President, Franklin D. Roosevelt, the British Prime Minister, Winston S. Churchill, and Marshal Joseph Stalin had come to an agreement not only on the occupation zones into which Germany was to be divided after the war, but also on the lines where all their armies would meet, on the banks of the Elbe. Stalin had asked that the task of conquering Berlin be left to the Red Army and the two western statesmen thought it was only right to grant this longed-for prize to the Russians. This was the crowning disappointment for the Germans, who up to the last had hoped that the western powers in the last phase of the battle would trick the Russians and, with the help of the last German divisions, push them back within their own borders. This was the reason why

174

200

201. The men who had conquered Europe and dreamed

01 imposing German rule on the world were now a swarm 01 specters, irremediably marked in body and mind by the defeat. 202. A disarmed German soldier sits among the ruins

01 the Reiells/ag: the days of glory are lar away; all that remains is to meditate despairingly on the luture.

201

the German high command massed the greater part of its forces on the eastern front, limiting itself to a relatively weak resistance to the Anglo-American armies. This was Hitler's final blunder. On January 12, while the English and Americans were fighting back the German counter-attacks in the Bastogne area, the Soviet marshal smashed at the line traced by the course of the Vistula and overwhelmed the Germans on the Polish plain, forcing them to retreat beyond the Oder and Neisse rivers. On February 23 the Russians arrived about 50 miles from Berlin and were already broadening the invasion by pressing north on Prussia and on Pomerania and in the south by liquidating the last pockets of resistance in Hungary and driving for Bratislava and, finally, Vienna. Hitler hurriedly abandoned his "Wolf's Lair" and established his general headquarters in the Reich Chancellery, in the center of Berlin. On the day after the Russians reached the OderNeisse line, English and American troops fortunately succeeded in crossing the Rhine at Remagen on the only bridge that had been left standing, and set foot on German soil. On April 11 General Eisenhower's troops received the order to halt their swift advance and wait for the Russians to arrive at the banks of the Elbe. Two days later the Red Army occupied Vienna.

202

The Russian offensive against Berlin began on April 16. It was the last great battle on European soil and the whole world watched it. It was an unequal struggle between a Germany that no longer existed except in Hitler's mind and in those of his most fanatical followers and the Red Army, which was wreak-

175

203. Stalin and Roosevelt 01 Yalta: Ihere always seemed to be a perfect understanding belweetl tile two statesmen.

203

ing vengeance for an invasion that had cost the lives of six million Russian soldiers and nearly twelve million Russian civilians. They were the most desperate seventeen days in all the war, the two weeks in which Europe impassively watched the agony of the Nazi monster in its final throes and that of a city which, despite all, managed to find in this extreme hour hundreds of thousands of fanatics ready to fight and even to die in the vain effort to postpone its fall. Berlin could have become the German version of Stalingrad only if behind her there had been a hinterland able to produce arms, munitions, and supplies, and if the Russians had not had such a large number of cannon and tanks at their disposal. In the end the Germans found themselves without planes, without fuel , even without water. In mid-April, from Stettin to Gorlitz, the Russians unleashed a veritable inferno, with 22,000 cannon of large caliber vomiting steel and fire, which smashed the fortified lines erected by the Germans as a bulwark of their capital. At 3:45 in the morning of April 16 Zh\lkov and Konev ordered their six armies to complete their thrust forward toward Berlin. A Polish army, commanded by General Swerczewsky, went along with them. The whole front moved forward simultaneously from the North Sea to the Adriatic in an overwhelming advance that had no precedent in the centuries-old history of Europe. While Konev in only four days was about 15 miles from Dresden and Zhukov reached Oranienburg, in Germany's far north, Rokossovsky conquered Rostock and the Bay of LUbeck. Tolbukhin and Malinovsky approached Vienna; and at Graz, and at the southern edge of the front, Tito's partisan troops aimed for Trieste and Klagenfurt. The most exalted task had been assigned to Ivan

176

Stepanovich Konev and to Georgii Konstantinovich Zhukov: both were commissioned to effect Berlin's surrender. Konev's group of armies was to spread their columns out fanwi se on the one hand in order to reach the right bank of the Elbe and, on the other, to move northward. Zhukov's group of armies was to launch a frontal assault on the city, and together they were to set out to meet Konev's columns in order to enclose Berlin and her defenders in a "pocket," the last one. All in all they were 140 divisions on whose feet the victories of the last weeks and the awareness that they were now at the last act of the great tragedy put wings. On April 21 Zhukov was already approaching the outskirts of the German capital. This was the day on which Goebbels notified Berliners that Hitler had decided to remain with them and had ordered a lastditch resistance. The day before, the Nazi dictator had celebrated his fifty-sixth birthday in the underground bunkers under the Reich Chancellery, together with a few intimates. Barricaded in the bunker, Hitler, Goering (the head of the air force), Himmler (the commandant of the SS), Eva Braun, and Goebbels were linked to the rest of the world only by means of a radio apparatus. That night Himmler and Goering escaped from the bunker. Although both by now were certain of the imminent end of everything, they still deluded themselves with the idea of being able to gather up the wretched legacy of command! On April 22 Berlin was almost completely encircled and Hitler continued to wait for an unrealizable counter-offensive, moving non-existent divisions on the map in a delirious fit of madness. Zhukov had smashed his way into another suburb of the capital, Pankow, and the defenders of Berlin continued to

204. Slalin and Churchill, 011 the otller hand, never got along 100 well: The Marshal could not forgive the English Prim e Millisl er for his arlli-communism, and Churchill feared that Russia would get the Iiol/'s share 01 the peace table. 205. The cigare/fe of friendship: the historic meeting

Of! Ill e Elbe between all American palrol alld a Cossack IIl1il. II look place around 5 P.M., April 25,1945.

204 205

177

-41 •

---'

••

~

-

206. Americans and Russians dan ce with Russian women auxiliaries under portraits of Stalin atld Roo.{e I1e /t . Roosel1elt's portrait is bordered ill black; the grea t AmeriC(1II President had died ollly a fe w days before . 207. Marshal Chuikov: his bal/le scarred divisions had the hOllor to be the first to elller Berlitl .

resist, even though nobody could keep an account of desertions. Goebbels dispatched an order that anyone who turned away his arms was to be killed on the spot, and the army of desperate defenders armed on ly with small anti-tank weapons remained to brave the "Super Stalin" tanks which weighed more than 60 tons. The armies of Konev and Zhukov joined south of the capital, and Hitler hysterically ordered a counterattack from the outside of the city and an attempt from within to break through the trap. Truth to tell, the Germans fought furiou sly and well, but without success. It was April 25. At 4:40 P.M . of that day a Russian patrol commanded by Lieutenant Selvasko ventured as far as the Elbe. The Cossacks halted their horses near the destroyed Torgau bridge and looked around ; there was nobody around preparing to fire at them a nd the fields were gay with the colors of spring. Suddenly some men in uniform began to leap on the ruins of the bridge, running toward them. They were American soldiers under the command of Lieutenant Robertson and they were laughing and waving their arms in friendly greeting. The jaws of the pincers closed tighter and tighter around Berlin, without let-up. The Germans had only one air field at their disposal, Tempelhof, and the Russians captured it along with the city's gas, electricity, and water installations. The only thing which still seemed to function in the city was a stretch of the subway system, and the Germans took advantage of it in an attempt to escape behind the Russia ns' back. These were' heroic attempts, but absolutely useless. Zhukov's troops had now occupied the whole city except for the quarter containing the ministries, and the end could be only a matter of hours. Eleven thousand

107

179

208. The war in Europe is over. The victors pose for pictures, smilingly: from left to right, Montgomery, Eisenhower, Zhukov, arid De Lattre de Tassigny. 209. Nazi flags bile the dust during a parade ill Moscow's Red Square.

209

180

cannon and thousands of Katyushas were fired without let-up against those few square miles. Not a single house was left standing, there was not a street that was not devastated, and the air was unbreathable because of the smoke and red hot because of the flames. The men of General Chuikov's fifty-seventh division advanced inexorably in that immense ruin and devastation: they had wept over the martyrdom of Stalingrad and now they had no tears for the agony of Berlin. On April 29 the Russians pushed on to the triumphal Brandenburg Gate. They occupied Berlinstrasse, and the Hohenzollerndamm. In the bunker under the Chancellery, Hitler spent about an hour writing his testament: he now had no legacy to pass on to his heirs, but he deluded himself that he could pass on a message to them which might serve as a guide for future German generations; then he expressed the wish to marry Eva Braun and sent someone to find a city councilor. Soon after drinking the melancholy toast to his marriage, Hitler learned that Mussolini had been killed by Italian partisans. It was one of the last bits of news that the radio brought him and must have convinced him not to let himself be captured alive. Above ground the Russians occupied the ruins of the Reichstag and Potsdammerstrasse. Now Unter den Linden, Wilhelmstrasse, and the Tiergarten were all that remained to the Germans. The Russian tanks undertook their last action at the very moment that Hitler and Eva Braun were committing suicide. The Russian tanks had not yet arrived when Goebbels and his wife followed the example of the Fuehrer. On May 1, Russian patrols finished their occupation of the last stretch of Unter den Linden and they entered the walks of the Tiergarten. There was no

further need for haste and they advanced with caution. The Tiergarten had once been a magnificent park in the heart of Berlin and now it was only a mined field, a lunar landscape, full of craters made by the bombs, with not a single tree left standing. That evening the Hamburg radio station interrupted a performance of Bruckner's Seventh Symphony to announce that Hitler was dead. The whole world

held its breath. The Nazi dictator was replaced by Admiral Doenitz, but the Berliners were not in the least interested in that nomination. At three o'clock General Weidling walked toward the Russian tanks in the heart of the Tiergarten and asked to surrender. Berlin had capitulated. In his last order of the day Stalin announced the capitulation to the world.

18 1