“Stalin Almost Caused Fall Of Moscow”

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31178, 30 September 1966, Page 18

“Stalin Almost Caused Fall Of Moscow”

(N.Z. Press Association—Copyright) MOSCOW, September 28. Stalin’s arbitrariness in the critical battle of Moscow 25 years ago almost cost the loss of the Soviet capital, it has been disclosed in the memoirs of a former Defence Minister, Marshal Georgi Zhukov.

Superior German forces had drawn a double pincer at the approaches of the city and were preparing their final onslaught in early November, 1941. On November 13, Stalin telephoned the front commander and ordered him to counterattack, Zhukov said in the second instalment of his memoirs published this week. The marshal, who was the commander on the Moscow front, objected on the grounds that his forces were too small and spread over a 400-mile fropt. Moreover, he wanted to save his troops for the German attack. “You can consider the question settled,” Stalin said—and demanded a number of Soviet counter-blows designed to break up the anticipated German offensive. Zhukov, compelled to obey his commander-in-chief, ordered counter-attacks on a small scale with almost disastrous results. The Germans pierced the Soviet defences at a few points and advanced towards Moscow. Meantime, the man who is generally credited with having saved the capital, said that part of Moscow had been

evacuated and hundreds of thousands of citizens were mobilised or volunteered for a last-ditch effort to stop the German advance. Almost 100,000 women constructed 1428 artillery emplacements, 165 miles of antitank ditches and 90 miles of barbed-wire barriers. Stalin remained in full control of the situation, and, although part of the Government, led by the first vicepremier, Mr Molotov, and the diplomatic corps had been evacuated to Kuibyshev, Stalin stayed on. The workers of the defence plants in the Moscow area worked 12-18 hours daily and maintained a steady flow of arms to the front, which in some places was less than 50 miles from the Kremlin. “Are you sure we can hold Moscow?” Stalin asked Zhukov by telephone, adding “I am speaking with pain in my heart. Tell me honestly like a Communist.” “We shall certainly hold Moscow,” Zhukov replied, “but we need at least two fresh armies and 200 tanks.” “Decisive Battle”

Zhukov managed to stop the Germans almost at the gates of Moscow. Stalin rushed in reserves from Siberia, and on December 5 the Red Army counter-attacked, knocked out and pushed back one of Hit-

ler’s crack armies in what Soviet historians call the most decisive battle of the SovietGerman war. In spite of Stalin’s stubbornness and imperiousness in the battle cited by Zhukov, the image that emerges from his memoirs is that Stalin was a competent, courageous and imaginative commander-in-chief who made important contributions to victory. By and large, Zhukov has not minimised Stalin’s major war role, in spite of the fact that Stalin demoted him after the war to a minor provincial command and claimed all the credit for victory for himself. Zhukov contemptuously dismissed the claims of some German and other Western military historians that .the Germans in the Battle of Moscow were partly defeated by “General Mud” and “General Winter.” “Too bad for German planning,” Zhukov said, “if they had not counted on mud and winter.” He then asked whether Russians are immune from such. “I saw with my own eyes,” Zhukov said, “thousands and

thousands of Moscow’s women citizens —housewives entirely unaccustomed to heavy labour —who left their warm apartments, and in the same mud dug anti-tank ditches, trenches, and built barricades.”