Stalin's role in WWII

I agree with what Stephen Samut-Tagliaferro (May 2) wrote on this subject. Stalin was a feared but not a respected leader. He may have been determined to beat off the German invasion but his contribution to the war effort was abysmal. The Russians won in spite of and not because of him.

During the purges of the late 1930s, Stalin murdered or sent to labour camps thousands of high and low rank army officers on trumped up charges. It was an unprecedented destruction of the officer corps that inflicted enormous damage on Soviet defence. It is reckoned that it takes 10 years to train a staff officer and Stalin managed in one sweeping purge to deprive the army of its best officers.

During the critical periods that followed the German invasion, army personnel had to be recalled from the labour camps to help beat the invader.

Stalin's paranoia, however frequent, did not extend to the German threat of invasion. Repeated warnings from British intelligence and other sources were ignored and, in July 1941 when the German attack came, the Russian army was taken by surprise. To add to the difficulties, the ongoing modernisation and supply of new equipment to the army was still at an early stage.

Instead of allowing a tactical retreat, as suggested by his generals, Stalin prohibited any withdrawal. As a result, entire Soviet armies were encircled and destroyed with millions of prisoners taken by the Germans.

It is well known that German troops were at first welcomed by most Russian people since it was assumed that the Germans would free them from a hated, tyrannical system of government.

When the sinister and criminal intentions of the Nazis became known, a tragic choice between a foreign evil or a home-grown one presented itself to the Russian people. They naturally opted to back the latter and fight to the end.

By 1942, Stalin admitted that he understood very little about war tactics and left it to his generals to fight the war. Stalingrad in 1942 and Kursk in 1943 were the two outstanding victories that ended German superiority in the battlefield. They were masterminded by Marshall Zhukov, the only general who never lost a battle in the World War II. The battle of Kursk was the greatest ever fought in history. It lasted several weeks and involved thousands of tanks. Participants in the battle compared it to a volcanic eruption. In one sector there was literally a traffic jam of Russian and German tanks firing at point blank range and crashing into each other.

Stalin could not keep himself for too long from interfering with military plans. In the final assault on Berlin, he ordered that two separate Russian armies should compete for the capture of Berlin. In the absence of a unified plan, huge Russian losses were incurred and it is recorded that some Russian units attacked each other in the mistaken belief that the opponent was German.

In the view of historians, the German army was the most professional and awesome war machine of WWII. Three quarters of it faced the Russians. Even though it enjoyed numerical superiority, it is to the credit of the Red Army that it managed to smash the teeth of the German army. The Russians were responsible for wiping out more than 80 per cent of all German divisions and in one campaign alone in 1944, killed or captured more German soldiers than fought on the entire western front.

If there was an architect of this victory, it was certainly not Stalin. The real hero was Marshall Zhukov. Fearful that Zhukov might steal the limelight and threaten his aura as the "Invincible Leader", Stalin, after the war, sidelined Zhukov and appointed him to a minor role away from Moscow.

The claim by Prof. Oleg Rzheshevsky that Stalin was a respected leader sounds preposterous. Stalin's only exploits were to kill and imprison millions of people and, through terror, paralyse every attempt by his opponents to remove him from power.