lost. Stalin, expecting the Germans to renew their
main drive on Moscow, concentrated Russian
reserves on the central front. Instead the main
German blow was delivered in the south. The
Crimea, including Sevastopol, was taken. The
Germans drove forward to the city of Stalingrad
on the Volga, intending to cut off the whole of
Russia south of that city including the oil-rich
Caucasus, which formed the gateway to Persia.
In the ruins of Stalingrad the Russians, fight-
ing from house to house, made their stand. The
battle lasted from mid-August to mid-November
- Stalin and Hitler were locked in a titanic
proxy struggle for supremacy. Hitler decided that
Stalingrad would be taken come what may and
that Germany would not withdraw. Stalin sent
Zhukov to mastermind the defence of the city
regardless of casualties. Most of the city was taken
by the Germans in October, and the Russian
defenders’ reinforcements were limited as fresh
divisions were being husbanded in preparation for
a great counter-offensive. On 19 November 1942
the Russians launched their attack and encircled
the 250,000 men of Germany’s Sixth Army fight-
ing in Stalingrad. Hitler ordered the Sixth Army
to stand fast. Losing the opportunity to link up
with the German armies to the rear, it was
doomed. Fierce fighting continued until 2
February 1943. A total of 91,000 survivors sur-
rendered, including Field Marshal von Paulus
who capitulated earlier, on 31 January. The
Wehrmacht had been decisively defeated, and,
more than that, the myth of Hitler’s infallible mil-
itary genius had been exploded. The world knew
Stalingrad marked a turning point in the war.
Soviet strength would increase as Germany’s
diminished. By the summer of 1943 the Russians
had also won superiority in the air, with thou-
sands of planes engaged on each side.
Had there been wholesale defections from
the forced union of Soviet socialist republics the
whole prospect of the war might have changed.
The almost unbelievable number of prisoners that
the Germans took in 1941 suggests not only mil-
itary defeat but also large-scale desertions. But
Hitler resisted those of his advisers who wished
to utilise this anti-communist and anti-Russian
sentiment. The peasants hungered for land and
for release from the collective farms. A captured
Russian general, Andrei Vlasov, offered to raise an
army from prisoners of war to fight Stalin’s
Russia. But Hitler’s racist fanaticism stood in the
way of winning the war by these means. European
Russia was designated as colonial territory, even-
tually to be depopulated as necessary to provide
room for the new German settlers. The Slavs were
‘subhumans’; nearly 3 million were sent to
Germany to work as slave labour. With the
Germans ransacking the Russian territories they
occupied, the early welcome that they received
turned to hatred. Partisan resistance increased
behind German lines and was met by ruthless
terror. Only too late in 1943 and 1944 did
Himmler try to change a German policy bound
to alienate the local population and to recruit for
the German army from among the minorities.
Meanwhile Stalin skilfully appealed to Russian
patriotism and encouraged all the peoples of the
Soviet republics to turn out the invaders.
Hitler tenaciously clung to one hope even when
surrounded in his bunker in burning Berlin in
April 1945, that the ‘unholy’ and unnatural
alliance between Britain, the US and the Soviet
Union would fall apart and that the Western
powers would recognise that he was fighting the
common Bolshevik enemy. Though Churchill,
more so than Roosevelt, foresaw that there would
be post-war conflict with the Soviet Union, his
conviction of the need to destroy the evils of
Nazism was unshakeable. The holding together of
the grand alliance was a precondition of victory.
Was this also Stalin’s perception of British
policy? Did Stalin, pathologically suspicious of the
motives of all possible enemies, have any faith in
Britain’s determination to fight Hitler’s Germany
to the finish? Despite Churchill’s immediate and
unqualified promise of support the moment the
Germans invaded Russia, suspicion of any antag-
onist past, present or future was second nature to
Stalin. The continuing delays in the opening of a
second front in France through 1942, then 1943,
must have confirmed his fears that the reason for
delay was mainly political not military. He bitterly
complained to Churchill, charging him with
breaches of faith. He may well have concluded
1
THE VICTORY OF THE ALLIES, 1941–5 283
