After they attacked, it was "Ni shagu nazad!" ("Not one step back!") enforced by NKVD units ordered to summarily execute anyone trying to retreat, which meant units didn't have ability to act in a situation, which led to disaster. Hitler had the same policy after the Russian counter-offensives began, with similar disastrous results for the Wehrmacht.
On reading We Were There, by Basil Liddell Hart on German generals about WW II, I got the impression that Hitler "revenged" his generals for, as a corporal in WW I, receiving orders to stay on taken ground "to the last drop of blood". The generals meant they could have won the war if they had been allowed to arrange for orderly defence battles with a retreat on time.
Because he was convinced the Germans were not going to attack and he did not want to be seen as "threatening."
I meant after they attacked
After they attacked, it was "Ni shagu nazad!" ("Not one step back!") enforced by NKVD units ordered to summarily execute anyone trying to retreat, which meant units didn't have ability to act in a situation, which led to disaster. Hitler had the same policy after the Russian counter-offensives began, with similar disastrous results for the Wehrmacht.
On reading We Were There, by Basil Liddell Hart on German generals about WW II, I got the impression that Hitler "revenged" his generals for, as a corporal in WW I, receiving orders to stay on taken ground "to the last drop of blood". The generals meant they could have won the war if they had been allowed to arrange for orderly defence battles with a retreat on time.