Barbarossa - Part 2
Given that you could supervise an invasion and battles hundreds of miles behind the front line, Wolfsschanze - Wolf's Lair - was built so far off the beaten track it is difficult to see why Hitler did not remain in Berlin. At least there he could be contacted quickly, and receive the latest intelligence which would enable him to form some sort of up-to-date assessment of the battle front. But this lair was built in the middle of low-lying swampy ground, plagued by mosquitoes, and only easily accessible by a special spur built from the nearest railway line. It was about 150 miles due north of Warsaw, and his three main Army groups were respectively some 75 miles east, and 175 miles and 250miles south east of him. It is somehow symptomatic of the running of the war in general that something so completely amateurish should be thought capable of entering the professional world of the soldier.
Nevertheless, Hitler continued to use this as his headquarters as long as his troops were in positions that gave him cover. They did, for about two and a half years by some sort of super-human feat of will, fighting battles and partisans and the weather and the countryside with every step they took. On 22nd June 1941, the earth along a front of some 800 miles blew up as artillery, tanks and bombers went into action. Apart from Hitler actually telephoning Stalin and giving him the date, the Russian leader had known all about Germany's preparations for weeks, but had dismissed every intelligence report, every source of information, as being impossible to believe. By this time, Stalin had become almost completely paranoiac, trusting no one apart from a very few of the remaining politicians around him. He, also, did not want to provoke Hitler into action, especially while he was assimilating the territories that his pact with Hitler had made available to him. His orders, which were obeyed implicitly by every one of his armed forces, were to carry on as normal. Planes were not to fly more than necessary for training, troops were to occupy their barracks and exercise only to normal patterns. Army commanders who could see troop concentrations over the border in front of them were told to ignore them. Just exactly what Stalin thought he was buying by such behaviour is impossible to tell, he was a dictator not given to confiding in any one. Perhaps he thought that by making a wrong decision, he would lay himself open to charges of treachery, much as he had himself charged and killed so many in the Politburo and all areas of Russian life, and so he made no decisions; even, at one stage, retiring to his dacha and refusing to come back to carry on his normal duties until Molotov was able to persuade him that he was needed.
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