Inferno - Max Hastings [100]
Stalin could justly claim that his enforced industrialisation of the Soviet Union in the 1930s, at the cost of imposing misery and death on millions of dispossessed peasants, alone made it possible for the country now to build the tanks and planes needed to resist Hitler. His prioritisation of heavy industries capable of undertaking weapons manufacture reflected his acceptance of Frunze’s total war concept. An American diplomat evacuated to Kuibyshev on the Volga was one day astonished to find himself in the midst of a vast, unidentified industrial area a few miles from the city, which the Russians had ironically christened Bezymyanny—“Nameless.” On a nearby airfield stood hundreds of newly completed aircraft, produced in its plants. The 1941 industrial evacuation proved one of the crucial achievements of Russia’s war. Every Soviet citizen over fourteen was declared eligible for mobilisation for industrial labour. With civilian rations cut to starvation levels, only the produce of private vegetable gardens enabled millions to survive. The nation was officially informed that squirrel meat contained more calories than pork, and those who could catch such prey ate it.
Though astonishing industrial output was achieved amid chronic hunger, it would be mistaken to idealise this: production of a Soviet aero engine required five times as many man hours as its U.S. counterpart. Yet the evacuation represented part of what a British intelligence officer once called “the Russian genius for piecemeal improvisation.” Another feature of total war was the wholesale deportation of minorities whose loyalty was deemed suspect. Stalin accepted the drain on vital transport resources needed to remove—for instance—74,225 “Volga Germans” from their own little republic to remote Kazakhstan. Later, they would be followed by many more such outcasts, notably Chechens and Crimean Tatars.
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In western Russia, the invaders’ juggernaut still rolled forward, sustaining complacency in Berlin. Hitler busied himself with detailed planning for his new empire. He decreed the permanence of occupation, guided by three principles: “first to rule, second to administer, third to exploit”; all dissent was to be rewarded by death. As early as 31 July, Göring ordered preparations for a “total solution to the Jewish question in the German sphere of influence in Europe.” Tens of thousands of Russian Jews were slaughtered where they were found by the Einsatzgruppen killing squads which followed the Wehrmacht’s spearheads. Nazi officials began drafting plans for a transfer east of 30 million Germanic colonists. Hundreds of thousands of young women were shipped to the Reich from Ukraine and the Baltic states to become domestic servants and farm labourers. Some went not unwillingly: amid the ruin of their own shattered homes and communities, they faced destitution. On 19 August, in his diary Goebbels expressed surprise that Hitler thought the war might end soon and suddenly: “The Führer believes a moment may come when Stalin will sue for peace … I asked him what he would do if that happened. The Führer replied that he would agree to peace. What then happened to Bolshevism would not matter to us. Bolshevism without the Red Army does not represent a threat.”
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