Photo: Still from video
British Anthony Beevor , who specializes in the history of the Great Patriotic War, gave an interview for the Polish edition of Gazeta Wyborcza, in which he explained the behavior of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin after the German attack on June 22, 1941. According to him, Stalin considered himself omnipotent but was a pragmatist.
“At first he was convinced that Hitler's attack on the USSR would be insane, because especially the Germans would lose supplies of key raw materials,” Beevor said. At the same time, Stalin was a very distrustful man and did not seriously consider intelligence reports about the empire's preparation for war.
After the attack, Stalin did not believe for some time that Hitler had betrayed him. “It wasn't until he arrived at headquarters that Zhukov and the other generals showed him on maps what the situation was at the front.” Stalin realized the extent of the catastrophe, he was morally broken, “said Beevor. Stalin began to consider the possibility that the USSR could be seriously defeated. As a result, he switched to the strategy previously demonstrated by Chiang Kai-shek, who retreated inland in an ode to war with Japan. Neither the Germans nor the Japanese could take control of large areas of the USSR and China, and repression became guerrilla warfare.
In addition, over time, Stalin began to become an increasingly agile commander than Hitler, who made mistake after mistake. Unlike the Fuhrer, he also listened to his generals. However, Stalin is still responsible for the failure of the beginning of the war and for the consequences of the “no step back” order, which was very “pathetic.” The war continued. From a moral point of view, however, the Battle of Stalingrad proved to be crucial. “The price the Third Reich paid in Stalingrad was huge: from November 1942 to the end of January 1943, the Germans and their allies lost half a million people there,” Beevor said.