Alexander Hill

The Icebreaker Controversy and Soviet Intentions in 1941: The Plan for the Strategic Deployment of Soviet Forces of 15 May and Other Key Documents 1

This article provides readers with key documents, and in particular the plan for the strategic deployment of Soviet forces on 15 May 1941, which are central to the debate on Soviet intentions in the spring and summer of 1941, and in particular whether the Soviet Union was preparing to launch an attack on Germany and its allies during this period, be this as a spoiling attack or as the first phase in the pursuit of broader aims.

British “Lend-Lease” Tanks and the Battle for Moscow, November–December 1941—A Research Note

This research note suggests that those British tanks supplied to the Soviet Union during the first months of the Great Patriotic War were, despite their shortcomings, of considerably more significance to the Soviet war effort than is generally accepted in the literature, highlighting the critical resource situation faced by Soviet forces in the early winter of 1941.

The Allocation of Allied “Lend-Lease” Aid to the Soviet Union Arriving with Convoy PQ-12, March 1942 — a State Defense Committee Decree

State Defence Committee Decree Number 1497 of 26 March 1942, around extracts from which this short article is based, gives details of Soviet distribution of ‘Lend-lease’ equipment and supplies delivered by the Arctic convoy PQ-12 in March 1942. The extracts, with supporting notes, provide a rare glimpse of the use to which the Soviet Union put such aid during the spring and summer of 1942.

The birth of the soviet northern fleet 1937–42

Having been created only in May 1937, and despite being the smallest of the Soviet fleets in June 1941, the Northern Fleet was the most active during the Great Patriotic War, being to a considerable extent concerned with the defense of Allied convoys to Murmansk and Archangelsk. This article examines the circumstances in which the Northern Fleet was born and developed, its preparation for war and its performance during the first months of the war. The author concludes that while Allied criticism of the capabilities of the Fleet was justified, with Allied assistance and despite the low priority of the Fleet for the Soviet leadership, considerable progress was made in transforming the Northern Fleet into a useful tool in the Allied armory in a very short space of time.

Territorial Revisionism and the Allies of Germany in the Second World War: Goals, Expectations, Practices, by Cattaruzza, Marina, Dyroff, Stefan, and Langewiesche, Dieter, eds.: Austrian and Habsburg Studies series. New York, NY/Oxford, UK: Berghann Books, 2013. ISBN: 978-0-8574-5738-7.

Relatively little has been written in English—and certainly little of high quality—on Germany’s relations with her Eastern European allies during the Second World War. Even less has been written on the relations between these allies of Germany, and in both cases little that has been written engages with military dimensions to these relationships. Focusing on Romania, for example, readers of this journal may be familiar with Mark Axworthy’s Third Axis, Fourth Ally. Richard DiNardo’s Germany and the Axis Powers is perhaps the most useful of the broader military-diplomatic works, and there is much of value within the many volumes of the well-known Germany and the Second World War series produced by the Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt, for example. Valuable work being carried out in other historical sub-fields— such as that being carried out by many of the authors in the volume under review—does not always find its way into the work of military and diplomatic historians, although in recent years the influence of the ‘new military history’ has broadened the range of materials that an increasing number of military and diplomatic historians consult. Many military and diplomatic historians of Eastern Europe have benefitted from being trained within an area studies context, and this has undoubtedly in many instances increased their exposure to more diverse literature than at least some of their colleagues focusing on the military and diplomatic history of Anglo-Saxon powers. Unfortunately, the incorporation of the work of other sub-fields into at least some military-diplomatic history is not as widely reciprocated as it might be and even within an area studies context where military and diplomatic history are often of obvious relevance. The work under review is a case in

Voroshilov’s ‘Lightning’ War–The Soviet Invasion of Poland, September 1939

The Soviet invasion of Poland of 17 September 1939 may not have met widespread Polish resistance, but a number of significant engagements saw the Red Army take far from insignificant losses in a rushed operation characterized by overconfidence, poor planning, and cooperation between arms and inadequate logistical support. Materials published in Russian and English since the collapse of the Soviet Union and Soviet academic hegemony over Eastern Europe now allow us to examine the Soviet conduct of the invasion in much more detail than had previously been the case. Much of the material presented here on the topic is to be included in a chapter of a monograph concerned with Soviet military effectiveness during the period of the Second World War, and comments are welcome.

The Bear's New Wheels (and Tracks): US-Armored and Other Vehicles and Soviet Military Effectiveness during the Great Patriotic War in Words and Photographs

Using a range of Soviet archival sources and memoirs this article examines the contribution made by US-supplied tanks and other armored and unarmored vehicles to the Soviet war effort, focusing on examples in Soviet archival photographs reproduced alongside the text.

Crucible of Combat: Germany's Defensive Battles in the Ukraine 1943–1944, by Hinze, Rolf

Rolf Hinze wrote a number of works on the German defensive battles on the Eastern Front during the latter half of the Second World War, many of which has been translated in to English. Crucible of Combat is a piece of this jigsaw puzzle of works describing German operational and tactical combat on the Eastern Front segment by segment. In this volume Hinze describes fighting in the Ukraine during the period from the summer 1943 ‘race for the Dnepr’ to the early summer of 1944 and the fall of Sevastopol. In doing so Hinze provides much potentially valuable material apparently drawn primarily from German divisional histories—especially useful given the still relatively limited literature covering the period of German retreat and defensive battles on the Eastern Front. Particularly interesting in this volume are details of the defense of feste Plätze—those fortified towns with a single commander for the locale, situated on key lines of communication, that were supposed to slow the Soviet advance down and hamper Soviet logistics, holding out even when encircled. Detailed maps, a useful glossary, a short ‘photo essay’ and orders of battle as an appendix all add to the value of the book as a source of information. The absence of an index however inhibits use of the book as a reference tool even before other factors are considered. Hinze noted in the foreword to this work that at the time this book was written in German, that is 1991, historians were ‘exclusively dependant on German sources for presentation of the events on the Eastern Front’. Even then that was nonsense—even those Soviet memoirs and literature translated in to German at the time would have at least helped Hinze ‘provide a [more] complete representation of the course of events’ from more than just the German side, but Hinze seems to have ignored everything but German divisional histories if the bibliography is any indicator. Even ignoring the fact that Hinze makes no attempt to consider Soviet sources, the fact that Hinze does not use footnotes or endnotes severely limits the value of this work for the serious historian, limiting its utility to being a pointer for further research or as a supplementary source for

British Lend-Lease Tanks and the Battle of Moscow, November–December 1941 — Revisited

This short article returns to the issue of the value of British Lend-Lease tanks for the Soviet war effort during late 1941 from a research note in Volume 19, Number 2 of this journal.

Russian and Soviet Naval Power and the Arctic from the XVI Century to the Beginning of the Great Patriotic War

After having been Russias sole outlet for maritime trade with Western Europe in the 17th century, the founding of St Petersburg on the Baltic in 1703 led to a rapid decline in the importance of northern waters and the port and shipbuilding center of Arkhangelsk in particular. Only after the outbreak of the First World War did the north once more see significant investment in maritime infrastructure and the presence of substantial naval forces associated with the delivery of supplies for Russias war effort from her allies. After the Civil War the fledgling Soviet regime all but removed Soviet naval power from the region on economic grounds, returning to the issue following the construction of the Baltic-White Sea Canal in 1933, after which the exploitation of Northern Sea Route to the Far East also received increased attention. Soviet naval power in the north saw significant investment as the Great Patriotic War loomed on the horizon, even if by June 1941 ambitious plans had been far from fulfilled.