Abstract
Germany’s swift victory over France in 1940 was directly linked to its surprise tank advance through the Ardennes forest. These armoured forces were seen as a key component in the German Blitzkrieg. Likewise, when planning for war against the USSR, the German leaders calculated that independent mechanised army groups could strike a decisive blow against the Russians in a campaign lasting only one summer.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
For an unsurpassed history of the Eastern Front in World War II, see Alexander Werth, Russia at War, 1941–1945, (London: Barrie & Rockliff 1964 and later). Werth, whose Russian parents had migrated to the United Kingdom after 1917, wrote several books on France’s political crisis in the 1930s and Germany’s victory over France in 1940. In 1941, after the Nazi German alliance attacked the Soviet Union, Werth travelled on a convoy steamer across the North Sea to Murmansk. His first newspaper articles from wartime Moscow were published as Moscow ’41, (London: H. Hamilton 1942). He was better able than most correspondents to feel the atmosphere among Soviet soldiers and ordinary Russians. This forms the bulk of his later book, which was limited in extent by the sources available in the late 1960s. His son is the French historian, Nicolas Werth, who, together with Stephan Courtois and others, compiled The Black Book of Communism, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press 1999. (French edition 1997).
Among other scholarly works on the German-Russian war should be mentioned David M. Glantz, Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War, Lawrence, KS: Universit y of Kansas Press 1998;
Mikhail Meltiukhov, Upushchennyi shans Stalina: Sovetskii Soiuz i bor’ba za Evropu, 1939–1941 (Moscow: Veche 2000). Meltiukhov does not categorically deny that the Soviet leadership in 1941 might have planned for a pre-emptive counterstrike against the mobilising German army. This interpretation, which originally goes back to Hitler’s own arguments for starting the invasion in 1941, has been rejected by most Russian and Western scholars.
See, e.g., Gabriel Gorodetsky Grand delusion: Stalin and the German Invasion of Russia, (New Haven, CT, & London: Yale University Press 1999).
An update on why the Kremlin — that is, mostly Stalin himself — was surprised by the German attack has been written by the CIA intelligence officer in Berlin during the Cold War David E. Murphy, What Stalin Knew: The Enigma of Barbarossa (New Haven, CT, & London: Yale University Press 2005).
This is not the proper forum for a survey of the research regarding what led to the fatal decision on the ‘Jewish question’ at the Wannsee conference in Berlin in February 1942. One hypothesis is that the decisions on ‘the final solution’ to exterminate the Jews in Europe were made after the failure of Operation Barbarossa in the autumn-winter of 1941–1942, as the German armies had failed to conquer Moscow and Leningrad. The leading German generals had understood that the war against the USSR could not be won in a single campaign but would be yet another extended war of attrition. Contrary to this hypothesis is the evidence that the mass executions of Jews, as well as of communists and army political commissars, took place in the summer of 1941 as the German armies made deep advances into Ukraine and Russia. See Pavel Polian, ‘First Victims of Holocaust: Soviet-Jewish Prisoners of War in German Captivity’, Kritika. Explorations in Russian and Eurasian History, New Series, vol. 6, No. 4, 2005, pp. 763–788.
This controversial theme has received relatively little attention in the scholarly literature. Nazi conceptions of ‘Jewish Bolshevism’ are discussed by Johannes Rogalla von Bieberstein, ‘Jüdischer Boschewismus’. Mythos und Realität, Schnellroda: Antaios 2003.
For a general review of the representation and images of the Soviet Union in various social groups, parties, churches and institutions in Nazi Germany, see Hans-Erich Volkmann (ed.), Das Russlandbild im Dritten Reich, Cologne: Böhlau 1994.
D.V. Gavrilov, ‘Ural’skii tyl v Velikoi Otechestvennoi voine: Geopoliticheskii aspekt’, in Ural v Velikoi Otetjetsvennoj voine, 1941–1945 gg. Ekaterinburg 1995, pp. 55–62.
From the literature on Hitler as warlord and the role of the German Generalität, see, e.g., John Strawson, Hitler as Military Commander, New York: Barnes & Noble 1971, chapter: ‘Barbarossa — The irretrievable Blunder’.
For a long-term perspective on the German planning for a war against the Soviet Union, compare Carl Dirks & Karl-Heinz Janßen, Der Krieg der Generäle. Hitler als Werkzeug der Wehrmacht, Berlin: Ullstein 1999.
Nikolai A. Voznesenskii, Voennaia ekonomika SSSR v period Otechestvennoi voiny [1947], Moscow: Ekonomicheskaia gazeta 2003, pp. 101–113, especially p. 110.
There is only one solid biography of this important personality in the Soviet military-industrial complex: see Viktor Andreevich Chalmaev, Malyshev, Moscow: Molodaia Gvardiia 1978. This book, part of the Zhizn’ zamechatel’nykh liudei series, was more reticent than usual about disclosing any precise data about the Soviet defence industry. Malyshev later entered the Atomic Project of the Soviet Union and supervised the construction of the plutonium works in the Urals. He died at an early age from radioactive over-exposure.
See also Vladimir Nikolaevich Novosëlov, ‘V.A. Malyshev i N. P. Dukhov — vydaiushchiesia organizatory oboronnoi promyshlennosti’, Industrializatsiia v SSSR: Uroki istorii (K 70-letiiu puska Cheliabinskogo traktor-nogo zavoda), Cheliabinsk 2003, pp. 147–150.
See, e.g., Aleksei Toptygin, Lavrentij Berija. Neizvestnyj marsjal gosbezopasnosti. Moscow: Jauza/Eksmo 2005, p. 160f. After the declassification of Beria’s role in the Soviet atomic project from 1944–1949, a slightly different picture of the people’s commissar for internal affairs evolved. The myths spread earlier by Khrushchev and others after Beria’s arrest and execution in 1953 not only ascribed the Great Terror in 1937 to Beria, but also included tales of his maniac behaviour, deviant sexual tastes and even murders of young girls who were presumably picked up by his aides-decamp on Moscow’s streets.
On Uralvagonzavod in the 1930s and the reconstruction of the factory for production of the T-34 tank, see Sergei V. Ustiantsev, Alla V. Pislegina & Al’fiia Kh. Fakhretdennova, Uralvagonzavod, Elita rossiiskoi industrii / Ural Car-Making Works: An Elite of the Russian Industry, Ekaterinburg: Start 2001.
See Jacques Sapir, L’Économie mobilisée: Essai sur les économies de type soviétique, Paris: La Découverte 1989; idem, Logik der sowjetischen Ökonomie oder die permanente Kriegswirtschaft, Berlin: Lit 1992.
At Stalingrad and along the Volga River, from November 1942 until February 1943, 160 Soviet divisions with over 1.1 million soldiers and 3500 tanks were engaged to destroy five Axis armies, two of which were German armies with over 50 divisions. They captured or killed over 600,000 men. By way of comparison, at the approximately simultaneous Battle of El Alamein, ten British divisions with 480 tanks destroyed nine German and Italian divisions, which lost approximately 60,000 men. The great differences in Germany’s losses in the Soviet Union and their significance for the outcome of the war in the European theatre is emphasised by David Glantz, Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War, 1941–1943, Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas 2005, pp. xv–xvii, 37. Glantz (pp. 3–62) also highlights a series of less successful Red Army operations in 1942. The official Soviet historiography gave no mention of this or did so in a very distorted form.
see also Robin Cross, Citadel. The Battle of Kursk, New York: Barnes & Noble 1993.
Eduard Sobolev, Konstruktorskoe biuro: Sudby liudei i mashin, Cheliabinsk, ‘Vsem!’, 1997, p. 86.
P.V. Ustiantsev, A.V. Pislegina & A.Ch. Fakhretdennova, Uralvagonzavod, Elita rossiiskoi industrii / Ural Car-Making Works: The Elite of the Russian Industry, Ekateringburg: Start 2001.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2011 Lennart Samuelson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Samuelson, L. (2011). Production Conditions for Heavy Tanks in the Urals. In: Tankograd. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230316669_7
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230316669_7
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-30264-2
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-31666-9
eBook Packages: Palgrave History CollectionHistory (R0)