Stalin Joseph - Stalins wars: from World War to Cold War, 1939-1953

STALIN'S WARS

Geoffrey Roberts is Professor of History, University College Cork. He is a fellow of the Royal Historical Society and has been awarded numerous awards over his academic career, including a Fulbright Scholarship to Harvard and a Government of Ireland Senior Research Fellowship. He is a frequent contributor to British, Irish and American newspapers and to popular history journals, and he has acted as a consultant for a number of television and radio documentaries. His previous books include the acclaimed The Unholy Alliance: Stalin's Pact with Hitler (1989), The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War (1995) and Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle that Changed History (2002).

Also by Geoffrey Roberts

The Unholy Alliance: Stalin's Pact with Hitler

The Soviet Union and the Origins of the Second World War

The Soviet Union in World Politics, 19451991

Ireland and the Second World War (co-edited with Brian Girvin)

The History and Narrative Reader (editor)

Victory at Stalingrad: The Battle That Changed History

Stalin His Times and Ours (editor)

STALIN'S WARS
FROM WORLD WAR TO COLD WAR, 19391953

GEOFFREY ROBERTS

YALE UNIVERSITY PRESS
NEW HAVEN AND LONDON

Copyright 2006 Geoffrey Roberts

First printed in paperback 2008

All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in any part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted in Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers.

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Set in Minion by J&L Composition, Filey, North Yorkshire

Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Roberts, Geoffrey, 1952

Stalin's wars: from World War to Cold War: 19391953/Geoffrey Roberts.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 0300112041 (alk. paper)

1. Stalin, Joseph, 18791953Influence. 2. Stalin, Joseph, 18791953Military leadership. 3. World War, 19391945Diplomatic history. 4. Soviet UnionHistory, Military. 5. World politics1945 I. Title.

DK268.S8R574 2006

947.084'2092dc22

[B]

2006023395

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

ISBN 9780300136227 (pbk)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

In Memory of Dennis Ogden (19272004)

Ribbentrop, the German Foreign Minister, signing the NaziSoviet pact on 23 August 1939. Stalin and Molotov stand in the background. Interfoto.

Stalin and members of the Politburo on their way to a parade in Red Square. AKG Images.

Hitler and his generals. AKG Images.

Text of Stalin's radio broadcast of 3 July 1941, published in Pravda. David King Collection.

Stalin giving his speech to the troops in Red Square, 7 November 1941. David King Collection.

Molotov and Eden in Moscow. David King Collection.

Churchill, Averell Harriman, Stalin and Molotov at the Kremlin during Churchill's visit in August 1942. Corbis.

Victorious Soviet soldiers marching through the ruins of Stalingrad. Interfoto.

Ruins of the factory district in besieged Stalingrad. Interfoto.

President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull. Getty Images.

Insurgents of the Warsaw uprising surrender to the Germans. David King Collection.

Notes from the ChurchillStalin percentages agreement. David King Collection.

Soviet soldiers with former prisoners of Auschwitz after the camp's liberation, January 1945. AKG Images.

Churchill, Roosevelt and Stalin at the Yalta conference, February 1945. AKG Images.

Red Army soldiers hoisting the Soviet flag on top of the Reichstag building in Berlin, May 1945. AKG Images.

Soviet troops display captured Nazi banners at the victory parade in Red Square, 24 June 1945. AKG Images.

Stalin and President Harry Truman at the Potsdam conference, July 1945. AKG Images.

Atomic bomb damage in Hiroshima, Japan, following the explosion on 6 August 1945. Corbis.

Berlin children greet the arrival of a Raisin Bomber during the Berlin blockade. AKG Images.

Lavrentii Beria. David King Collection.

Marshal I.S. Konev. AKG Images.

Marshal Zhukov and Marshal Rokossovskii. AKG Images.

Georgi Dimitrov with Stalin on his left and Voroshilov, Kaganovich and Molotov on his right. AKG Images.

Floral tributes to Stalin piled up against the Kremlin wall at the time of his funeral. AKG Images.

Stalin's funeral in March 1953. Malenkov, Molotov and Bulganin carry Stalin's coffin as it leaves the union building. AKG Images.

The NaziSoviet Pact, AugustSeptember 1939

The SovietFinnish War, 19391940

Soviet Plans for Offensive War Against Germany, 1941

Operation Barbarossa, JuneDecember 1941

German Encirclement of Soviet Troops, 1941

The Soviet Counter-Offensive at Moscow, December 1941

The Plan for Operation Blau, April 1942

The German Advance in the South, Summer 1942

The Battle for Stalingrad, SeptemberNovember 1942

Operation Uranus, November 1942

Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and Uranus

The Battle of Kursk, July 1943

Soviet Military Operations, 1944

Operation Bagration

The Soviet Advance on Warsaw, Summer 1944

The VistulaOder Operation, JanuaryFebruary 1945

The Berlin Operation, April 1945

The Manchurian Campaign, August 1945

The Postwar Division of Germany

The Korean War, 19501953

The structure of Soviet military and political decision-making during the Great Patriotic War

This study of Stalin as warlord and peacemaker began life as an investigation of the Soviet role in the Grand Alliance of the Second World War. The aim was to explore how the Grand Alliance emerged and developed, the way Stalin, Churchill, Roosevelt and Truman fought their diplomatic and political battles, and why the coalition collapsed after the Second World War. That aim remains a central strand of this book but in 20012002 I conducted a study of the battle of Stalingrad that made me grapple more extensively with the military dimensions of Stalin's war leadership. I also became more interested in Soviet domestic politics and in the social history of the Stalin regime in the 1940s. The result is the present book a detailed and sustained study of Stalin's military and political leadership in the final and most important phase of his life and career.

Baldly stated, my conclusions are threefold. First, that Stalin was a very effective and highly successful war leader. He made many mistakes and pursued brutal policies that resulted in the deaths of millions of people but without his leadership the war against Nazi Germany would probably have been lost. Churchill, Hitler, Mussolini, Roosevelt they were all replaceable as warlords, but not Stalin. In the context of the horrific war on the Eastern Front, Stalin was indispensable to the Soviet victory over Nazi Germany. Second, that Stalin worked hard to make the Grand Alliance a success and wanted to see it continue after the war. While his policies and actions undoubtedly contributed to the outbreak of the cold war, his intentions were otherwise, and he strove in the late 1940s and early 1950s to revive dtente with the west. Third, that Stalin's postwar domestic regime was very different to the Soviet system of the prewar years. It was less repressive, more nationalistic, and not so dependent on Stalin's will and whimsy for its everyday functioning. It was a system in transition to the relatively more relaxed social and political order of post-Stalin times. The process of destalinisation began while Stalin was still alive, although the cult of his personality reigned supreme in the Soviet Union until the day he died.