Simon Montefiore - Stalin

Zhukov and Vasilevsky retreated from the green baize table, talking to one another in low voices. There might be “some other solution.”

“And what does ‘another solution’ mean?” asked Stalin, suddenly raising his head. “I never thought he had such a keen ear,” noted Zhukov. Before the generals could answer, Stalin added: “Go over to the General Staff and think over carefully what must be done… We’ll meet here at nine tomorrow night.” Victory has many fathers and many claimed paternity for Stalingrad but it was really the child of the unique collaboration between Stalin, Vasilevsky and Zhukov, all gifted in their own ways.

At 10 p.m. on 13 September, Stalin welcomed Zhukov and Vasilevsky to his study with an unusual gesture—a handshake: “Well, what are your views? What have you come up with? Who’s making the report?”

“Either of us,” Vasilevsky replied. They handed over their map which showed their basic plan to launch a massive offensive against the German flanks, held by the weaker Romanian forces, smashing into their rear and linking up to encircle them: Operation Uranus. Just at this moment, the German attack, ordered by Hitler at Vinnitsa earlier that day, descended on the embattled 62nd Army. Poskrebyshev entered the room—Yeremenko was on the line from Stalingrad. Chuikov was just maintaining his bare-knuckle grip on the west bank of the Volga while Stavka prepared the operation. Sending both generals straight back to Stalingrad to reconnoitre Uranus, Stalin said portentously: “No one else knows what we three have discussed here. No one beyond the three of us is to know about it for the time being.”

On 9 October, Stalin restored the unitary command of the armies to the generals. He again celebrated by shaking hands with Zhukov and Vasilevsky, whom he used as special representatives at the fronts: he did not like them “sitting around” in Moscow. Chief of Staff since May, Alexander Vasilevsky, aged forty-seven, was the third of the extraordinary Stalingrad team. In many ways, he was closer to Stalin even than Zhukov.

Broad-shouldered and barrel-chested but with a sensitive expression and a gentle, courtly charm, Vasilevsky had been groomed by Shaposhnikov. This outstanding staff officer was his successor not only professionally but also as the sole gentleman among cut-throats, and as Stalin’s special confidant. His decency puzzled, impressed and amused Stalin who so lacked it himself: “You command so many armies,” he reflected, “yet you wouldn’t hurt a fly.”

Vasilevsky also hailed from a vanished world that fascinated Stalin: his father had been a prosperous village priest on the Volga and he was educated for the priesthood but became a captain in the Tsar’s army. When he joined the Red Army, he had had to forsake his priest-father and cut off relations. After meetings, Stalin frequently asked Vasilevsky to stay behind to discuss whether he was tempted by the priesthood: “Well, well, I didn’t want you to be,” laughed Stalin. “That’s clear. But Mikoyan and I wanted to be priests but were rejected. Until now, I can’t understand why!” Then: “Did your religious education do anything for you?”

“No knowledge is entirely wasted,” Vasilevsky replied cautiously: “Some of it turned out to be useful in military life.”

“The thing priests teach best is how to understand people,” mused Stalin, who once said his father was a priest. Perhaps he sometimes thought about his own paternity, for around this time, he told Vasilevsky: “One shouldn’t forget one’s parents.” On a later occasion he asked him: “When did you last see your parents?”

“I’ve forsaken them,” replied the General, worried that this was a test. “My father’s a priest, Comrade Stalin.”

“But is he a counter-revolutionary?”

“No, Comrade Stalin, he believes in God as a priest but he’s not a counter-revolutionary.”

“When the war’s quieter, I think you should take a plane, visit your parents and ask for their forgiveness.” Stalin did not forget Vasilevsky’s father: “Did you ever fly and see your parents and ask their blessing?” he asked later.

“Yes, Comrade Stalin,” replied Vasilevsky.

“It’ll be a long time before you pay off your debt to me.” Stalin then opened his safe and showed him some papers. They were money orders in Stalin’s own name that had been sent to Vasilevsky’s father throughout the war. The son, amazed and somewhat moved, thanked Stalin profusely. Now, Vasilevsky’s special responsibility was Stalingrad. 5

The two messianic tyrants almost simultaneously prepared their peoples for victory. “There will be a holiday on our street too,” Stalin hinted in his 7 November speech.

The next day, Hitler boasted to his people: “I wanted to reach the Volga… at a particular city. By chance it bore the name of Stalin himself… I wanted to capture it and… we have as good as got it!”

The Little Corner was now a-quiver with tension. Stalin agonized that the Germans would guess what was afoot. On the 11th he was worrying that he did not have enough aircraft. On the 13th, as Paulus launched a last attempt to dislodge Chuikov, now holding a ruined splinter of territory only fifty yards deep, Zhukov and Vasilevsky flew into Moscow for a final briefing. “By the way Stalin smoked his pipe, smoothed his moustache and never interrupted once, we could see he was pleased,” wrote Zhukov. Afterwards, Vasilevsky returned to Stalingrad.

On the 18th, Stalin, accompanied by Beria, Molotov, Malenkov, and Zhukov, who remained to command Operation Mars [209] Simultaneously with Stalingrad’s Operation Uranus, Zhukov launched the forgotten Operation Mars against the Rzhev salient facing Moscow, probably his greatest defeat: hundreds of thousands of men were lost in just two days of an operation that illustrated his bold but crude style. before Moscow, worked in the Little Corner until 11:50 p.m. Three hours before the attack, the three fronts facing Stalingrad, under Generals Yeremenko, Rokossovsky and Vatutin, were informed they were to attack imminently. Presumably Stalin and his comrades then went to dinner or watched a movie to pass the time. Stalin rarely slept before 4 a.m.—“the need just passed,” he later told Churchill—so he surely stayed up to hear that the troops had gone in. At 7:20 on the misty morning of 19 November, the 3,500 guns on the northern sector opened up. When this Jupiterian thunderclap was unleashed, the earth shook thirty miles away. A million men, 13,541 guns, 1,400 tanks and 1,115 planes smashed into Hitler’s forces. 6

During Stalingrad, the Supremo usually fell asleep wearing all his clothes on the metal camp bed that stood under the stairs that led to the second floor at Kuntsevo. If there was an emergency, the “bald philanthropist” Poskrebyshev, who slept in his office, would call. He awoke around eleven when Shtemenko called from the Operations Department to give him his first report of the day. The Politburo and Staff had already been working for hours since they not only had to share Stalin’s insomnia but also had their own onerous empires to run: Mikoyan worked from 10 a.m. until almost 5 a.m., napping in his office.

At noon, Stalin ate a light breakfast, served by Valechka, often remaining at home, whether at Kuntsevo or the Kremlin, to work in the early afternoon. But wherever he was, the Supremo, now sixty-three, would spend the next sixteen hours running the war. He now received bulletins from all his roving Stavka plenipotentiaries, who had to report twice a day, noon and 9 p.m.: Vasilevsky in Stalingrad was the most eagerly awaited that day. Stalin turned very nasty if his envoys neglected to report. When Vasilevsky once failed to do so, Stalin wrote: