Tartars, Tsars and Scars

Russia is a classic battleground. As Adolf Hitler's drive passed its initial phase last week, the new conqueror showed by the routes he chose and the techniques he used that he had studied hard the hard lessons of previous incursions:

The Tartars started well. Like the Nazis, they had some fancy techniques of war, some streamlined theories of slavery. The tough soldiers could live for months on a porridge made from mare's milk. If without food they would draw blood from their horses' veins. They could stay on horseback for two days on end, dozing while the horses grazed. Each man took 18 horses with him, rode them in turns. In battle they executed their cavalry maneuvers in concert with extraordinary speed. They were organized in units of ten; if any of the ten were captured, the rest, after the battle, were executed.

Like the Nazis, their equipment was enormous, their numbers endless, their attack irresistible, their cruelty studied. When they invaded a city, the rattle of wagons and the neighing of horses was deafening. In battle endless relays of fresh men leaped into action until the enemy was overcome with exhaustion. When they stormed a citadel, battering rams pounded day & night. After winning a fight, they built a wooden platform on top of the prisoners, caroused on it until all were crushed to death.

But Russia was too big. And the Tartars were too cruel. They spent their whole time in expensive punitive expeditions. The Russians learned Tartar devices, eventually beat them off.

Charles XII of Sweden invaded Russia in 1707 to punish Tsar Peter for raids on his Baltic provinces. Peter drew him beyond his depth.

The Russians retreated fast, devastating the country as they went, harassing the Swedes only at the river crossings. The country people were forced to bury their grain in pits and drive their cattle into the trackless swamp. By the time Charles had crossed the Dnieper, his force had begun to suffer from want of bread and fodder. The endless horizon of charred fields and burning villages strained his troops' morale. The final straw was the coldest winter in centuries--so cold that vodka froze and it was said wood would not burn in the open air. By spring, Charles's Army had dwindled from 44,000 to 20,000 men. In June it was overwhelmed by Peter's well-fed men at Poltava.

Napoleon recalled his Ambassador to Moscow, General de Caulaincourt, in 1811. and explained to him his plan of crushing England by crushing Russia--the only continental power still vigorous enough to join forces with England against him.

During the night of June 24, 1812 (Hitler started in the night of June 21), Napoleon crossed the Niemen with 363,000 men, the "army of 20 nations," many of them German. Just as the Nazis have a large proportion of mechanized troops, Napoleon had 80.000 cavalry.

Bad luck struck early. On the very first day, Napoleon fell off his horse--a bad omen. The horses got colic from eating green crops, and in ten days one third of the cavalry was lost. By the time they reached Vilna, 50.000 men were lost from sickness alone. The Russians fought sharp rearguard actions almost to Moscow, stood at Borodino, killed 25,000 Frenchmen. Having entered most of the first cities of Europe except Moscow, the soldiers were eager to sweep into Moscow. But the Russians burned the town as they entered.

For five weeks Napoleon tried to negotiate with the Tsar. In October the weary remains of the Grand Army, 80,000 men, started their fateful march home. Thousands died of hunger, thousands more were trapped by the Russians as Napoleon tried to get back across the Berezina River, where the Germans also had heavy losses last week (see p. 17). On Dec. 20, his troops recrossed the Niemen. They had left 300,000 dead or prisoners in Russia.

Hindenburg. When World War I broke out in 1914, Russia was completely unready. Recruits had no rifles, ammunition was short, even such necessities as shoes for soldiers were lacking. But the Russians were persuaded to attack the German rear, and for two years an army that was scarcely an army served to divert German attention from the real job, the Western Front.

The Russians snowed that they knew how to run. But they also showed, to German consternation, that they could make up for appalling want of weapons by an appalling disdain for death. At Lemberg (Lwow), where they captured 100,000 Austrians, at Lodz, where they routed the Germans, they fought like demons, and paid for victory in good red blood. In ten months they lost 3,800,000 men.

In 1916 the Russians took the offensive, sweeping the Austrians back in Galicia. Great masses of Slavonic troops, especially Czechs, deserted and went over to the Russians. All this time General von Hindenburg had been obliged to keep over 100 divisions--which might have done the trick in France--on the Eastern Front. And it was not so much German arms, but Russian conspiracy against Russian authority, which in 1917 turned the tide in the East.

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