28. Stalin’s Mistake in Ignoring Warnings Leads to Disaster
Stalin compounded his mistakes in the years leading up to the German invasion, with more mistakes in ignoring warnings of the impending German attack in the months before it took place. Those who raised the alarm were punished, as Stalin insisted such alarms were part of a sinister plot engineered by the British to instigate a war between the USSR and Germany. Soviet commanders were forbidden to take precautionary measures, lest they provoke the Germans. Indeed, hours after the invasion had actually begun, Stalin disbelieved Soviet commanders reporting that they were being overrun, insisting that they were experiencing border incidents, not war.
Stalin also fancied himself a talented military man, and meddled too much. Among his poor decisions were ordering to counterattack, issued to units that were in no position to do so. Later, he insisted that units stay put in untenable positions and fight to the last man. That led to a series of massive encirclements, in which the Germans captured up to 700,000 Soviets per encirclement. By the end of 1941, the Germans had captured 3.4 million Soviet POWs, most of whom died in captivity.
