Eighty years ago, in June 1941, Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union, igniting the greatest slaughter in the history of warfare. On this anniversary, the deeds of the Soviet Red Army will be honored, and properly so. But in the midst of these celebrations, the Red Navy’s role in the eventual triumph of Soviet arms should not be forgotten. Too often, its contributions have been downplayed by former enemies, allies, and historians.
Vice Admiral Hellmuth Heye, who commanded German naval forces in the Black Sea in 1942, stated that “the initiative of the Russian fleet and its ability were estimated as slight.”1 A British officer who served with the liaison mission to the Red Northern Fleet wrote that its officers and men “seemed to be happier in harbour than at sea.”2 Naval historian H. P. Willmott asserted, “In terms of Soviet survival and victory in the Second World War the Soviet Navy was largely irrelevant.”3
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1. G. H. Bennett and R. Bennett, Hitler’s Admirals (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2004), 127.
2. Albert Seaton, The Russo-German War, 1941–1945 (New York: Praeger, 1971), 505.
3. H. P. Willmott, The Last Century of Sea Power (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2009), 2:224.
4. Stephen McLaughlin, “The Soviet Union: Voenno-morskoi Flot SSSR,” in Vincent P. O’Hara, W. David Dickson, and Richard Worth, eds., On Seas Contested: The Seven Great Navies of the Second World War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2010), 253–88, tables 7.2, 7.3, 7.5, 7.12.
5. Seaton, Russo-German War, 509.
6. I. C. B. Dear and M. R. D. Foot, The Oxford Companion to World War II (New York: Oxford, 1995), 135.
7. Paul Carell, Hitler Moves East, 1941–1943 (New York: Bantam, 1967), 304.
8. Edward J. Marolda, “The Failure of German World War II Strategy in the Black Sea,” Naval War College Review 28, no. 1 (Summer 1975): 39–54, 47.
9. Friedrich Ruge, The Soviets as Naval Opponents, 1941–1945 (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 1979), 21
10. V. D. Dotsenko, Flot—Voina—Pobeda (St. Petersburg: Sudostroenie, 1995), 182.
11. Lester W. Grau, “River Flotillas in Support of Defensive Ground Operations: The Soviet Experience,” Journal of Slavic Military Studies 29, no. 1 (February 2016): 73–98, 78.
12. Grau, “River Flotillas,” 89.
13. Grau, “River Flotillas,” 83.
14. Dotsenko, Flot—Voina—Pobeda, 31.
15. A. G. Golovko, With the Fleet (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1988), 171.
16. See Rolf Erikson, “Soviet Submarine Operations in World War II,” in James J. Sadkovich, ed., Reevaluating Major Naval Combatants of World War II (New York: Greenwood Press, 1990), 155–79, 157–58.
17. For more information see Erikson, “Soviet Submarine Operations.”
