This demeaning procession of German prisoners symbolized the impending collapse of Nazism. On 6 June 1944, British, American, and other Allied troops landed on the beaches of Normandy. Overwhelmed by the Red Army in 1944, Germany’s allies Romania and Finland laid down their arms. Red Army troops liberated all Soviet territory, expelled Hitler’s forces from a significant portion of Eastern Europe and the Balkans, and moved toward the borders of Germany itself.
These decisive victories were primarily the result of the Soviet Union’s military and economic superiority, attained through the entire country’s sacrifices and exertion. By June 1944 the Soviet armed forces exceeded 11 million people. Red Army assets included field forces numbering 6.6 million, approximately 100,000 mortars and artillery, 8,000 tanks and self-propelled artillery, and 13,000 combat aircraft. In terms of personnel, the ratio of forces along the Soviet-German Front was 1.5:1 in favor of the Red Army; for mortars and artillery, 1.7:1; and for combat aircraft, 4.2:1. The two sides were approximately equally matched in tanks.109 Furthermore, the Soviet side had significant reserves, while the capacity of the Reich and its allies was shrinking by the day. The Red Army and its commanders, led by Stalin, were growing increasingly confident, bolstered by the wealth of their resources and the experience acquired through years of catastrophe and, finally, victory.
For Stalin, managing the army and continuing to increase its might remained a high priority. Furthermore, liberated areas of the country lay in ruins and desperately needed to be rebuilt. The Nazis had exterminated millions of Soviet civilians, especially Jews. Many towns and villages were completely depopulated.110 A 1 July 1944 letter to Stalin from the head of Belarus offers a glimpse of the state of territories that had been under German occupation: “There are 800 people left in Vitebsk; before the war there were 211,000.… Zhlobin has been completely destroyed. There is a small number of wooden buildings and the frames of three stone ones. There is no population in the city.”111
In addition to repairing physical destruction, the liberation of Soviet territories confronted the leadership with new political problems. For varying durations—from a few weeks to three years—tens of millions of people had lived under Nazi occupation. Many had either been forced to collaborate or had done so out of conviction. Many others had fled to serve with pro-Soviet partisans or had done what they could to help them. Most had simply tried to survive in the new order. Stalin felt no responsibility for the suffering of Soviet citizens who, in Soviet bureaucratic language, “resided in occupied territory.” Like soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans, anyone who lived in captured territory was classified as “suspicious.” As part of their reintegration into the USSR, liberated areas had to be cleansed of the taint of occupation, and the means of accomplishing this was mass repression. The crime being prosecuted now was abetting the enemy. Stalin was adamant: no mercy could be shown. On 28 December 1943, Beria submitted a memorandum to him about the discovery in Ukraine of so-called “Volksdeutsche”—people with German roots. This population, Beria claimed, were privileged supporters of the Nazis during the occupation. Stalin gave the order: “Arrest them all and keep them in a special camp under special observation and use them for work.”112
As the war wound down, a new principle shaped Stalinist repression: collective responsibility for collaboration with the occupiers. This principle was expressed in the wholesale internal deportation of a number of Soviet ethnic groups. During late 1943 and the first half of 1944, several peoples were forcibly relocated: Kalmyks, certain North Caucasian ethnic groups (Chechens, Ingush, Karachai, Balkars), and Crimean Tatars, as well as all the Bulgarians, Greeks, and Armenians living in Crimea. Stalin’s decision to exile these groups was partially motivated by real evidence of collaboration and noncompliance with government mobilization efforts during the war, mainly evasion of recruitment into the army.113 But the principle of collective responsibility and punishment had a broader significance. Even before the war, the government had had difficulty integrating many of these peoples into Soviet society. The war only confirmed that this task had never been completed. Moving them to remote areas of the USSR, in Stalin’s mind, was a way of solving this problem once and for all. But the job had to be done right. Entire peoples, bound by common ancestry and heritage, had to be relocated. If anyone was left behind to keep the ancestral hearth burning, many others would try to escape exile and return home. In the case of Crimean Tatars, Stalin was probably also worried about their proximity to Turkey, which he regarded as a potentially hostile force. As the ethnic deportations continued in mid-1944, the border regions of Georgia were also targeted. They were purged of Turks, Kurds, and a few other ethnic minorities viewed by the Soviet authorities as fertile ground for Turkish influence and espionage. These expulsions were essentially a continuation of Stalin’s long-standing prewar policy of preventative ethnic purging. But the war drove the sweeping nature of the deportations and the decisiveness with which they were carried out. Much of the inhumanity of war stems from the inhuman acts it is used to justify.
The ethnic deportations of 1943–1944 swept up more than a million people. Such a massive endeavor required large numbers of troops and state security personnel. Stalin had the final word in deciding the fates of entire peoples. He was kept constantly informed on the progress of the deportations, and these reports are now available to historians in what is known as “Stalin’s special file” among NKVD materials.114 Because of the number of deportees involved (approximately one-half million), the relocation of Chechens and Ingush was particularly complicated and difficult. Beria went personally to the North Caucasus to oversee the effort. On 17 February 1944 he wired Stalin to report that the preliminary stage of the operation had been completed.115 His telegram made it clear that what the Soviet leadership feared most was “incidents”—resistance by the deportees. For this reason, the authorities relied on the element of surprise. Troops assembled under the pretext of training exercises arrested the most active members of the community as a precaution. Stalin, who followed the operation closely, apparently advised Beria not to rely solely on the “chekist and troop operations” but to also try to undermine solidarity among the deportees. In a 22 February telegram, Beria reported to Stalin that he had carried out his “instructions.” He had summoned top Chechen and Ingush officials and demanded that they help assure that the deportation was carried out without “excesses.” To promote calm, Beria informed Stalin, he solicited the help of religious leaders and other local authorities. In exchange, these officials and elders were promised certain privileges in their place of exile, including increased rations and the right to bring property with them. “I believe that the operation to evict the Chechens and Ingush will be carried out successfully,” he reported.116 The following day, 23 February, he proudly described the beginning of the operation, adding: “There were six attempts to resist by individuals that were suppressed through arrest or use of arms.”117 Stalin could rest assured that the task was in good hands.