Warlords
Under scrutiny
Military leadership
Stalin |
**** |
A tireless and methodical planner, Stalin's – and the Soviet Union's – great strength lay in the country's vast territory and resources, not least of the workforce. Stalin used the period of the non-aggression pact with the Nazis to shift Soviet industry east beyond the Urals, where it could operate freely beyond the reach of the Luftwaffe. However, his suspicion of Churchill led him to ignore warnings of the pending Nazi invasion in 1941, and his purges of leading officers seriously weakened the army. His order no. 227 of July 1942 – according to which all those who retreated were to be summarily shot – reveals the ruthlessness with which he ruled the military. In addition, forces were set up as barriers behind advancing troops to machine-gun anyone who retreated, and the families of those who surrendered to the enemy were terrorised by the secret police. However, in the Red Army's defence of the USSR and then its relentless drive across eastern Europe, Stalin showed a strategic grasp that was to extend Soviet rule over virtually the whole of eastern and central Europe for four decades after the war.
