24–28 Jul 1942 — With the loss of Rostov-on-Don, the road to the Caucasus lay open. Four days later Stalin issued Order No. 227, “Not one step back!” The order created penal battalions and blocking detachments behind the front.
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28 JULY 1942 · THE SOVIET UNION UNDER STALIN, 1924–1953
The moment in context
The German invasion of 22 June 1941 exposed a grave misjudgment. Stalin trusted the Nazi–Soviet Pact, the 1939 non-aggression treaty with Hitler, and dismissed intelligence warnings as British provocations. He forbade actions that might provoke Germany. The Red Army, the Soviet armed forces, was consequently unprepared along a new and unfortified border. German troops took Minsk in the first week.
From Stalin in World War II, chapter 10 of The Soviet Union under Stalin, 1924–1953 (1942).
Why it happened — Stalin misjudged Hitler’s intentions. Stalin expected Germany to avoid a war with the Soviet Union while still fighting Britain. He treated warnings from spies, Churchill and his own…
The turn — Kuibyshev and Moscow, October 1941. As German forces approached Moscow, the GKO ordered the government, foreign embassies and much of the bureaucracy to Kuibyshev on the Volga on 15…
What it changed — Victory as the regime’s new legitimacy. Victory gave the regime an answer to criticism of the 1930s. Collectivisation, the plans and even the purges could be presented as harsh but…
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