Spetsnaz: The Inside Story of the Soviet Special Forces Read online

  Soviet Union in June 1940 did evoke particular nervousness in the German

  high command. Germany had thrown all her forces against France at that time,

  and the Soviet Union rushed troops into the Baltic states and Bessarabia.

  The airborne troops especially distinguished themselves. In June 1940 the

  214th Soviet airborne brigade was dropped with the idea of seizing a group

  of aerodromes in the region of Shaulyai in Lithuania, under a hundred

  kilometres from the East Prussian border. In the same month the 201st and

  204th airborne brigades were dropped in Bessarabia to capture the towns of

  Ismail and Belgrad-Dnestrovsky. This was close by the Ploesti oilfields.

  What would Stalin do if the German Army advanced further into North Africa

  and the British Isles?

  It is easy to understand why Hitler took the decision in that next

  month, July 1940, to prepare for war against the USSR. It was quite

  impossible for him to move off the continent of Europe and into the British

  Isles or Africa, leaving Stalin with his huge army and terrifying airborne

  forces which were of no use to him for anything but a large-scale offensive.

  Hitler guessed rightly what Stalin's plans were, as is apparent from

  his letter to Mussolini of 21 June 1941. Can we believe Hitler? In this

  case we probably can. The letter was not intended for publication and was

  never published in Hitler's lifetime. It is interesting in that it repeats

  the thought that Stalin had voiced at a secret meeting of the Central

  Committee. Moreover, in his speech at the 18th Congress of the Soviet

  Communist Party Stalin had had this to say about Britain and France; In

  their policy of nonintervention can be detected an attempt and a desire not

  to prevent the aggressors from doing their dirty work... not to prevent, let

  us say, Germany getting bogged down in European affairs and involved in a

  war... to let all the participants in the war get stuck deep in the mud of

  battle, to encourage them to do this on the quiet, to let them weaken and

  exhaust each other, and then, when they are sufficiently weakened, to enter

  the arena with fresh forces, acting of course "in the interests of peace",

  and to dictate their own conditions to the crippled participants in the

  war. Once again, he was attributing to others motives which impelled him

  in his ambitions. Stalin wanted Europe to exhaust itself. And Hitler

  understood that. But he understood too late. He should have understood

  before the Pact was signed.

  However, Hitler still managed to upset Stalin's plans by starting the

  war first. The huge Soviet forces intended for the `liberation' of Russia's

  neighbours were quite unnecessary in the war of defence against Germany. The

  airborne corps were used as ordinary infantry against the advancing German

  tanks. The many units and groups of airborne troops and commandos were

  forced to retreat or to dig trenches to halt the advancing German troops.

  The airborne troops trained for operations in the territory of foreign

  countries were able to be used in the enemy's rear, but not in his territory

  so much as in Soviet territory occupied by the German army.

  The reshaping of the whole philosophy of the Red Army, which had been

  taught to conduct an offensive war on other people's territory, was very

  painful but relatively short. Six months later the Red Army had learnt to

  defend itself and in another year it had gone over to offensive operations.

  From that moment everything fell into place and the Red Army, created only

  for offensive operations, became once again victorious.

  The process of reorganising the armed forces for operations on its own

  territory affected all branches of the services, including the special

  forces. At the beginning of 1942 thirteen guards battalions of spetsnaz

  were organised in the Red Army for operations in the enemy's rear, as well

  as one guards engineering brigade of spetsnaz, consisting of five

  battalions. The number of separate battalions corresponded exactly to the

  number of fighting fronts. Each front received one such battalion under its

  command. A guards brigade of spetsnaz remained at the disposal of the

  Supreme Commander-in-Chief, to be used only with Stalin's personal

  permission in the most crucial locations.

  So as not to reveal the real name of spetsnaz, the independent guards

  battalion and the brigade were given the code name of `guards minelayers'.

  Only a very limited circle of people knew what the name concealed.

  A special razvedka department was set up in the Intelligence

  directorate of each front to direct the work of the `guards minelayers'.

  Each department had at its disposal a battalion of spetsnaz. Later the

  special razvedka departments began recruiting spetsnaz agents in territories

  occupied by the enemy. These agents were intended for providing support for

  the `minelayers' when they appeared in the enemy rear. Subsequently each

  special razvedka department was provided with a reconaissance point of

  spetsnaz to recruit agents.

  The guards brigade of spetsnaz was headed by one of the outstanding

  Soviet practitioners of fighting in the rear of the enemy -- Colonel (later

  Lieutenant-General) Moshe Ioffe.

  The number of spetsnaz increased very quickly. In unclassified Soviet

  writings we come across references to the 16th and the 33rd engineering

  brigade of spetsnaz. Apart from detachments operating behind the enemy's

  lines, other spetsnaz units were formed for different purposes: for example,

  radio battalions for destroying the enemy's radio links, spreading

  disinformation and tracing the whereabouts of enemy headquarters and

  communication centres so as to facilitate the work of the spetsnaz terrorist

  formations. It is known that from 1942 there existed the 130th, 131st, 132nd

  and 226th independent radio battalions of spetsnaz.

  The operations carried out by the `minelayers' were distinguished by

  their daring character and their effectiveness. They usually turned up

  behind the enemy's lines in small groups. Sometimes they operated

  independently, at others they combined their operations with the partisans.

  These joint operations always benefited both the partisans and spetsnaz. The

  minelayers taught the partisans the most difficult aspects of minelaying,

  the most complicated technology and the most advanced tactics. When they

  were with the partisans they had a reliable hiding place, protection while

  they carried out their operation, and medical and other aid in case of need.

  The partisans knew the area well and could serve as guides. It was an

  excellent combination: the local partisans who knew every tree in the

  forest, and the first-class technical equipment for the use of explosives

  demonstrated by real experts.

  The `guards minelayers' usually came on the scene for a short while,

  did their work swiftly and well and then returned whence they had come. The

  principal way of transporting them behind the enemy's lines was to drop them

  by parachute. Their return was carried out by aircraft using secret partisan

  airfields, or they made their way by foot across the enemy's front line.

  The hig
h point in the partisan war against Germany consisted of two

  operations carried out in 1943. By that time, as a result of action by

  osnaz, order had been introduced into the partisan movement; it had been

  `purged' and brought under rigid central control. As a result of spetsnaz

  work the partisan movement had been taught the latest methods of warfare and

  the most advanced techniques of sabotage.

  The operation known as the `War of the Rails' was carried out over six

  weeks from August to September 1943. It was a very fortunate time to have

  chosen. It was at that moment when the Soviet forces, having exhausted the

  German army in defensive battles at Kursk, themselves suddenly went over to

  the offensive. To support the advance a huge operation was undertaken in the

  rear of the enemy with the object of paralysing his supply routes,

  preventing him from bringing up ammunition and fuel for the troops, and

  making it impossible for him to move his reserves around. The operation

  involved the participation of 167 partisan units with a total strength of

  100,000 men. All the units of spetsnaz were sent behind the enemy lines to

  help the partisans. More than 150 tons of explosives, more than 150

  kilometres of wire and over half a million detonators were transported to

  the partisan units by air. The spetsnaz units were instructed to maintain a

  strict watch over the fulfilment of their tasks. Most of them operated

  independently in the most dangerous and important places, and they also

  appointed men from their units to instruct the partisan units in the use of

  explosives.

  Operation `War of the Rails' was carried out simultaneously in a

  territory with a front more than 1000 kilometres wide and more than 500

  kilometres in depth. On the first night of the operation 42,000 explosions

  took place on the railway lines, and the partisan activity increased with

  every night that passed. The German high command threw in tremendous forces

  to defend their lines of communication, so that every night could be heard

  not only the sound of bridges and railway lines being blown up but also the

  sounds of battle with the German forces as the partisans fought their way

  through to whatever they had to destroy. Altogether, in the course of the

  operation 215,000 rails, 836 complete trains, 184 rail and 556 road bridges

  were blown up. A vast quantity of enemy equipment and ammunition was also

  destroyed.

  Having won the enormous battle at Kursk, the Red Army sped towards the

  river Dnieper and crossed it in several places. A second large-scale

  operation in support of the advancing troops was carried out in the enemy's

  rear under the name of `Concert', which was in concept and spirit a

  continuation of the `War of the Rails'. In the final stage of that operation

  all the spetsnaz units were taken off to new areas and were enabled to rest

  along with the partisan formations which had not taken part in it. Now their

  time had come. Operation `Concert' began on 19 September 1943. That night in

  Belorussia alone 19,903 rails were blown up. On the night of 25 September

  15,809 rails were destroyed. All the spetsnaz units and 193 partisan units

  took part in the operation `Concert'. The total number of participants in

  the operation exceeded 120,000. In the course of the whole operation, which

  went on until the end of October, 148,557 rails were destroyed, several

  hundred trains with troops, weapons and ammunition were derailed, and

  hundreds of bridges were blown up. Despite a shortage of explosives and

  other material needed for such work, on the eve of the operation only eighty

  tons of explosives could be sent to the partisan. Nevertheless `Concert' was

  a tremendous success.

  After the Red Army moved into the territory of neighbouring states

  spetsnaz went through a radical reorganisation. The independent

  reconnaissance units, the reconnaissance posts which recruited agents for

  terrorist actions, and the independent radio battalions for conducting

  disinformation, were all retained in their entirety. There are plenty of

  references in the Soviet military press to operations by special

  intelligence units in the final stages of the war. For example, in the

  course of an operation in the Vistula-Oder area special groups from the

  Intelligence directorate of the headquarters of the 1st Ukrainian Front

  established the scope of the network of aerodromes and the exact position of

  the enemy's air bases, found the headquarters of the 4th Tank Army and the

  17th Army, the 48th Tank Corps and the 42nd Army Corps, and also gathered a

  great deal of other very necessary information.

  The detachments of `guards minelayers' of spetsnaz were reformed,

  however, into regular guards sapper detachments and were used in that form

  until the end of the war. Only a relatively small number of `guards

  minelayers' were kept in being and used behind the enemy lines in

  Czechoslovakia, Bulgaria and Yugoslavia. Such a decision was absolutely

  right for the times. The maintargets for spetsnaz operations had been the

  enemy's lines of communication. But that had been before the Red Army had

  started to advance at great speed. When that happened, there was no longer

  any need to blow up bridges. They needed to be captured and preserved, not

  destroyed. For this work the Red Army had separate shock brigades of

  motorised guards engineering troops which, operating jointly with the

  forward units, would capture especially important buildings and other

  objects, clear them of mines and defend them until the main force arrived.

  The guards formations of spetsnaz were used mainly for strengthening these

  special engineering brigades. Some of the surviving guards battalions of

  spetsnaz were transferred to the Far East where, in August 1945, they were

  used against the Japanese Army.

  The use of spetsnaz in the Manchurian offensive of 1945 is of special

  interest, because it provides the best illustration of what was supposed to

  happen to Germany if she had not attacked the USSR.

  Japan had a peace treaty with the Soviet Union. But Japan had gone to

  war with other states and had exhausted her military, economic and other

  resources. Japan had seized vast territories inhabited by hundreds of

  millions of people who wanted to be liberated and were ready to welcome and

  support any liberator who came along. Japan was in exactly the situation in

  which Stalin had wanted to see Germany: exhausted by war with other

  countries, and with troops scattered over expansive territories the

  populations of which hated the sight of them.

  Thus, in the interests naturally of peace and humanity Stalin struck a

  sudden crushing blow at the armed forces of Japan in Manchuria and China,

  violating the treaty signed four years earlier. The operation took place

  over vast areas. In terms of the distances covered and the speed at which it

  moved, this operation has no equal in world history. Soviet troops operated

  over territories 5000 kilometres in width and 600-800 kilometres in depth.

  More than a million and a half soldiers took part in the operation, with

  over 5000 tanks and nearly 4000 aircraft. It r
eally was a lightning

  operation, in the course of which 84,000 Japanese officers and men were

  killed and 593,000 taken prisoner. A tremendous quantity of arms, ammunition

  and other equipment was seized.

  It may be objected that Japan was already on the brink of catastrophe.

  That is true. But therein lies Soviet strategy: to remain neutral until such

  time as the enemy exhausts himself in battle against someone else, and then

  to strike a sudden blow. That is precisely how the war against Germany was

  planned and that was why the partisan units, the barriers and defensive

  installations were all dispensed with, and why the ten airborne corps were

  created in 1941.

  In the Manchurian offensive the spetsnaz detachments put up their best

  performance. Twenty airborne landings were made not by airborne troops, but

  by special reconnaissance troops. Spetsnaz units of the Pacific Fleet were

  landed from submarines and surface boats. Some spetsnaz units crossed the

  frontier by foot, captured Japanese cars and used them for their operations.

  Worried about the railway tunnels on a strip of the 1st Far Eastern front,

  the Soviet high command created special units for capturing the tunnels. The

  groups crossed the frontier secretly, cut the throats of the guards, severed

  the wires connected to the explosive charges, and put the detonators out of

  action. They then held the tunnels until their own forces arrived.

  In the course of the offensive a new and very risky type of operation

  was employed by spetsnaz. Senior GRU officers, with the rank of colonel or

  even major-general, were put in charge of small groups. Such a group would

  suddenly land on an airfield close to an important Japanese headquarters.

  The appearance of a Soviet colonel or general deep in the Japanese rear

  never failed to provoke astonished reactions from both the Japanese high

  command and the Japanese troops, as well as from the local population. The

  transport planes carrying these were escorted by Soviet fighter aircraft,

  but the fighters were soon obliged to return to their bases, leaving the

  Soviet transport undefended until it landed. Even after it landed it had at

  best only one high-ranking officer, the crew and no more than a platoon of

  soldiers to guard over the plane. The Soviet officer would demand and

  usually obtain a meeting with a Japanese general, at which he would demand