Reasons for the Defeat of the Red Army in 1941 on the Pages of Newspaper Periodicals in the Occupied Ukrainian Territories

Abstract

The article highlights materials from newspaper periodicals of the occupied Ukrainian territories, which referred to the reasons for the defeats of the Red Army during the military operations in 1941. Various relevant materials were published on the pages of Ukrainian-language newspapers at different times of the Nazi occupation, and especially shortly after the battles during the initial period of the war, immediately in 1941.

The reasons for the defeats of the Soviet army listed in the newspaper periodicals include the outdated strategy and tactics of the top command staff of the Red Army; its inability to repel the enemy’s attacks with the necessary speed and efficiency; the offensive nature of the war on the part of Germany and its allies; higher level of the German command and of the German army personnel in general; better organization of supplies of the German troops; undivided dominance of German aviation in the first months of the war; Stalin’s purges of the command staff of the WPRA; mistakes in the Soviet state personnel policy at its various levels; low morale and level of discipline in the Red Army on the eve and during the initial period of the war, etc.

The materials on the above topics published in the press should be considered as those that passed the appropriate ideological control, did not go beyond the established censorship prohibitions, and were used by the occupying power for propaganda purposes, primarily for ideological, political, and morale influence on the population of the occupied Ukrainian territories. In the meantime, some publications of the time included a high praise of the Red Army soldiers as worthy opponents who remained faithful to their military duty to the end.

Certain facts, estimates, and analytical judgments mentioned in the press are confirmed in the works of modern researchers and may be of some scientific interest in the context of the interpretation of the defensive battles of the Soviet army in 1941 by one of the opposing sides in the German-Soviet war.