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  • Military History Visualized recently made a video on the impact that Stalin’s Purge

  • had on the Red Army in WW2, very good video, much shorter than this one, highly recommend

  • it as an introduction to this topic.

  • Today, were going to go more in-depth and take it to the next step.

  • It’s time to talk about the historiography - what different historians think about the

  • Purge.

  • Because, since the opening of the Soviet archives in the early 1990’s, historians have been

  • able to get a hold of new primary sources that challenge the old views of the impact

  • of the Purges.

  • The question we need to ask is this - did the Purge have a massive impact on the Red

  • Army’s ability to fight World War 2? Or not? And why?

  • In this video, were going to look at the Purge itself, see what the traditional view

  • of the Purge was, see what the post-opening of the Soviet archive view of the Purge is,

  • and then take a look at another factor you may not have considered.

  • Yes, the Red Army during Stalin’s Purge.

  • This is their story.

  • The Soviet Union had fought and won the Russian Civil War.

  • This impacted their policies going forwards, as their army at the time had been a peasant

  • and cavalry force, with commissars ensuring everyone remained loyal to the revolution.

  • The Civil War ends in 1922, with victory for the Soviets.

  • In the 1920’s and early 1930’s though, there wereScaresabout a possible breakout

  • of war with the capitalist powers.

  • We have fallen behind the advanced countries by fifty to a hundred years. We must close

  • that gap in ten years. Either we do this or well be crushed.” Stalin 1931.

  • Stalin and the Bolshevik party were dragging the Soviet Union into the modern age.

  • The Five Year Plans see a rapid expansion of Soviet industry and agriculture, at the

  • expense of millions of lives.

  • It was during this time that Tukhachevsky takes command of the Red Army.

  • Tukhachevsky creates a modern warfare doctrine, a concept calledDeep Battle”, which

  • was quite similar to the GermanBlitzkrieg” (and I use that term reluctantly because it

  • wasn’t called that).

  • As a result, Tukhachevsky envisions mass numbers of tanks and aircraft that would maneuver

  • around the battlefield, and therefore starts building up the army’s numbers of tanks

  • and aircraft.

  • He’s trying to turn the Red Army from the peasant and cavalry force it was during the

  • Civil War into a modern military machine.

  • In this process, Red Army’s commissars are removed, and in a lot of ways Tukhachevsky

  • succeeds in his reforms - building the largest tank force, and air force, in the world.

  • In 1941, the Soviets actually have more tanks than the rest of the world combined, and the

  • same could be said about the number of aircraft.

  • It’s worth noting though that the Red Army was still mainly a peasant-army even

  • in the 1930’s, and the other equipment besides tanks and aircraft, were seriously lacking.

  • For example, in 1941 at the Battle of Dubno, Soviet motorized infantry marched into battle

  • on foot, because they had no trucks.

  • In fact, the regular Rifle Divisions had more mobility because they were at least supplied

  • with horses and wagons to move their artillery and equipment.

  • But still, with the amount of tanks and aircraft, the Red Army wasn’t quite the same it had

  • been during the Civil War.

  • And the Red Army wasn’t just gathering equipment, it was also growing in riflemen - it was mobilizing

  • for war.

  • In fact, it was the speed of German rearmament, the creation of the Luftwaffe, Italian aggression

  • in Abyssinia, inaction by the League of Nations, the Spanish Civil War, and Hitler’s known

  • desire to expand eastward, that gave the Soviet Union reason to worry about the pace of German

  • rearmament and the unwillingness of the Western powers to react to that.

  • With the threat of attack, and in the midst of rearmament and a rapid expansion of the

  • size of the Red Army - that is when the Purges struck.

  • What made Stalin’s terror different was not merely the scale of arrests and executions

  • - by 1939 there were, in recent estimates, approximately 3.5 million prisoners in the

  • various categories of camps - but the fact that this fearful and vindictive man turned

  • the terror on the very heart of the Soviet system, the Party and the armed forces, even

  • on the NKVD, itself the apparatus of terror.” Overy, Russia’s War P24

  • According to Robert Service, Stalin was definitely the man responsible for the Purge of the Red

  • Army.

  • He was concerned about a ‘fifth columnemerging in the Soviet Union to support a

  • foreign power in the event of war.

  • This had happened in the Spanish Civil War when Franco gained followers in July of 1936,

  • and Stalin wanted to prevent this from happening in the USSR.

  • And he might have been concerned about the view that the rest of the world had on the

  • Red Army.

  • Stalin’s suspicious mind may have been sufficiently aroused by the flimsy rumours

  • of army unreliability currently circulating abroad to take the story of the conspiracy

  • seriously.” Overy. Russia’s War. P26

  • Rumours of the army being unreliable may have been one of the reasons for the Purge, although

  • Tukhachevsky had clashed with Voroshilov, and had crossed Stalin over the issue of political

  • propaganda in the armed forces, which Tukhachevsky wanted to reduce.

  • Kliment Voroshilov the current People’s Commissar for Defence and the guy the KV tanks

  • were named after, played an active role in the Purges.

  • He had a personal grudge against Tukhachevsky, who favoured tanks over Voroshilov’s cavalry.

  • Voroshilov had been in 1st Cavalry Army in the Civil War, and in Poland in 1920.

  • Tukhachevsky’s days were numbered.

  • The Soviet armed forces appeared to be the only major area of state to avoid the

  • terror, until on the morning of 11 June 1937 Voroshilov announced the sudden arrest of

  • the country’s top generals and the unearthing of a treacherous plot whose tentacles reached

  • out to Germany.” Overy. Russia’s War. P25-26

  • Tukhachevsky was accused of leading a plot to overthrow the state at the head of a German

  • invasion - which was completely false.

  • He was arrested, tortured until he revealed the names of other conspirators, his family

  • sent to the Gulags or died in captivity, and he was subsequently shot.

  • And once Tukhachevsky was Purged, the dominoes started falling.

  • Each victim dragged in friends and colleagues to try to end their own maltreatment, and

  • the list of names grew with every beating. (Overy. Russia’s War. P28)

  • Two Marshals are shot, and one died in captivity, out of a grand total of five Marshals in 1936.

  • The other two Marshals were Voroshilov himself and Budennii, which is no surprise as to why

  • they survived, after all, both were cavalrymen from the civil war days, and friends with

  • Stalin at this time.

  • But it only got worse the further down the ranks the purge went.

  • “A week later, on June 1 [1937], Stalin staged a remarkable two-week long conference

  • in which he sat with Voroshilov and Yezhov listening to soldiers who had been invited

  • to the Kremlin profess loyalty to Stalin and a forceful rejection of the conspirators.

  • Each of them was searched at the door for arms and then given a blue folder containing

  • details of the charges, drawn up by Vyshinsky as news of each fresh crime was rushed hot

  • from the interrogation room. As they read, some of them found their own names on the

  • list of accomplices. At intervals NKVD men would make their way through the crowd, taking

  • officers away with them. The following day another group of conspirators was detailed

  • on the testimony of the hapless victims of the day before.” Overy. Russia’s War.

  • P28

  • Of 474 brigade-level command positions in 1936 there had been 201 executions, fifteen

  • deaths in captivity and a single suicide.

  • Overall, 45 per cent of the senior officers and political officials of the army and navy

  • were executed or sacked

  • This included 720 out of the 837 commanders, from colonel to marshal, appointed under the

  • new table of ranks established in 1935.

  • Of eighty-five senior officers on the Military Council, seventy-one were dead by 1941 - and

  • seven of the nine that avoided the purges had served in the 1st Cavalry Army - coincidence?

  • Many were killed, imprisoned or forced to flee the country.

  • But not all.

  • Some would survive and be reinstated later.

  • And, in addition to the executions and sackings, the Purges also gave the politicians the chance

  • to send their cronies into the ranks of the army.

  • Political Commissars were reintroduced, and a dual-command was established, which meant,

  • in a climate of suspicion of the Great Purges, the commander of each unit now had to get

  • permission to issue orders.

  • Dual command would once more be introduced at regimental level and above on the 10th

  • of May 1937.

  • As supporting materials noted, the military commissar, as equal to the commander, now

  • shared responsibility for not onlythe political-moral state of a unit’, but also

  • for ensuring military discipline and forcombat, operational and mobilisational preparedness’,

  • the condition of weaponsand day-[to-]day management of units.” Hill. The Red Army

  • and the Second World War.

  • “...[every] order [had] to be signed by the military commander, head of the headquarters

  • and one of the members of the military Soviet, even if orders were still given in the name

  • of the military commander.” Hill. The Red Army and the Second World War.

  • And this, amongst other things, has caused a historical debate.

  • The debate revolves around the impact that the Purges had on the Officer Corps’s experience

  • and talent, and it’s overall ability to fight when war broke out with Germany in 1941.

  • So let’s take a look at the historical debate and the impact that the Purges had, first

  • from the traditional point of view.

  • There is certainly widespread acknowledgement in both memoirs and the secondary literature

  • that the Great Purges had a negative impact on Red Army capabilities and performance.”

  • Hill. The Red Army and the Second World War.

  • Historians, especially those before the opening of the Soviet archives in the early 1990’s,

  • believed that the Purges had a detrimental impact on the Red Army’s Officer Corps,

  • which was one of the reasons the Red Army performed so poorly in the first years of

  • the Second World War.

  • There were two main aspects to this -

  • The first being the loss of experience of the Officer Corps, and the second being the

  • loss of morale that accompanied it.

  • Both meant that the Red Army entered the Great Patriotic War with an officer corps that was

  • incapable of dealing with a modern war.

  • Let’s look at both of these aspects in detail. First, the loss of experience.

  • Perhaps the most obvious impact to start with is the significance of the loss of those

  • killed from the point of view of losing their skills and knowledge, and particularly where

  • replacements were often not as capable or experienced.” Hill. The Red Army and the

  • Second World War.

  • It stands to reason that with so many experienced officers killed or imprisoned, that this was

  • the most significant impact of the purges on the Red Army.

  • Worse, Red Army educational institutions struggled to keep pace with the educational requirements

  • of a growing army, even before the purges.

  • In March 1938 the Frunze Military Academy had only 106 teaching staff out 167 positions.

  • 15 of these had already been stated for removal.

  • 61 were under investigation.

  • And 18 more were being considered for removal.

  • By May 1939, there were only 358 teaching staff out of 544 positions at the Frunze Military

  • Academy.

  • And there was only 2 professors out of 40 potential positions.

  • There were 19 associate professors out of 105 positions.

  • And 9 assistant staff out of 75 positions.

  • This dire lack of teaching staff, notably affected the new officers coming in to replace

  • the old, with many only getting 2 years of education where the older generations had

  • previously got 3 to 4 years worth of education.

  • In addition to experience and skill loss, the Red Armyofficer corpsduring the

  • purges had suffered a major blow to its collective prestige and authority, as well as its morale.

  • It perhaps also seems intuitive that fear amongst command cadres looking not to draw

  • negative attention on themselves in a climate where many failures would be interpreted as

  • wreckingwould limit the extent to which they would have been willing to show initiative.”

  • Hill. The Red Army and the Second World War.

  • And, not only were the officers reluctant to show initiative, they were also hamstrung

  • by commissars, who would question their motives, their orders, and limit their actions.

  • Obviously it’s hard to measure the morale impact of the Purges had on the Red Army,

  • but the traditional narrative makes it clear that it was severe.

  • So from the traditional narrative then, it does seem like there’s a good case that

  • says the Purges had a massive detrimental impact on the effectiveness of the Officer

  • Corps, in terms of Morale, Skill and Experience.

  • However, with the opening of the Soviet archives in the early 1990’s, a different story soon

  • emerged - quite literally the same year or the year after, once historians got their

  • hands on the actual numbers and statistics.

  • This new narrative calls into doubt the impact the Purges had on the Red Army officer corps.

  • Before the publication of the new figures, historians guessed that between 25% and 50%

  • of the Red Army officer corps was purged. Reese. P199

  • But as this table shows, that was not the case.

  • From 1936 to 1938 a total of 41,218 were purged.

  • Of the 34,301 officers sacked, 11,596 were reinstated by May of 1940.

  • And we know that those discharged were not all killed because officers continued to be

  • reinstated after May of 1940.

  • In reality, 30% of army officers arrested or discharged between 1937 and 1939 were reinstated.

  • (Reese. P210)

  • The reason for the earlier high estimates was because of low estimates of the size of

  • the officer corps.

  • Now we have the numbers, the picture is a bit different, and those purged were actually

  • a lot less than previously thought.

  • As the traditional view states, there was a loss of experience and skill as a result

  • of the Red Army Purge.

  • But what type of experience was lost?

  • Civil War experience?

  • Leading armies of peasants and cavalry isn’t the type of experience needed in modern war.

  • What was needed now was people who could operate radios, respond quickly to the changing tactical

  • environment, and co-ordinate tank, artillery and air attacks.

  • Basically, the type of officers being removed were people who couldn’t do that.

  • Many of those purged after 1937 were men who had little military education and had

  • achieved office on the grounds of their civil war experience. By the late 1930s there were

  • thousands of younger officers, some of them trained in the military academies, ready to

  • take their place. By 1941 over 100,000 officers were entering the Soviet armed forces each

  • year. The purges certainly removed some men of talent at the top of the military establishment,

  • but it is questionable whether the aggregate effect was to make the average performance

  • of the officer corps much worse than it had been beforehand, or to make the tank and air

  • war any less capable of realization.” Overy. Russia’s War. P32

  • It is doubtful then whether the Purge actually reduced the experience and skill of the officer

  • corps.

  • In fact, it may have actually helped increase it.

  • The officers coming into the Red Army were better educated than those removed, and were

  • better suited to fighting a modern war.

  • We mentioned Budennii before - ex-Civil War officer.

  • He was in charge of two fronts in the Ukraine in 1941, and got beat hard.

  • He lost several battles during Operation Barbarossa, losing hundreds of thousands of men in some

  • of the largest encirclements in history, and got himself dismissed from his post.

  • Again, the officers coming into the Red Army were better educated than those removed, and

  • were better suited to fighting a modern war.

  • Of course, there is another aspect to this - the rapid expansion of the Red Army.

  • In 1935-6 the strength of the Red Army was 930,000.

  • On the 29th of November 1937 the mobilisation plan for 1938-9 set the peacetime strength

  • of the Red Army at 1,495,310 men -

  • A dramatic increase!

  • The Red Army would grow to 1,565,020 in February 1939.

  • And there was a longer range aim for 1940 of a mobilised strength of a staggering 7,068,900.

  • Rapid expansion meant that, as mentioned earlier, new officers were only receiving two years

  • of education where they had previously received 3-4 years.

  • Bearing in mind they couldn't receive 3-4 years because that would put them in the war - but never mind!

  • If there was an impact on the officer corpsskill and experience, then the rapid increase

  • of the Red Army was probably a bigger factor in this than the execution of officers.

  • The army had severe weaknesses both before and after the purges. What made the situation

  • difficult for the army authorities after 1938 was the vast expansion of the Red Army - 161

  • new divisions were activated between January 1939 and May 1941 - which required more officers

  • than the training establishments could hope to supply, despite vastly expanded training

  • schemes. In 1941 75 per cent of all officers had been in office for less than a year, not

  • because of the purges but because of the creation of many new military units. By then 80 per

  • cent of those officers purged in 1938 had been reinstated.” Overy. Russia’s War.

  • P30

  • Just to point out that 161 divisions is actually larger than the entire German army on the

  • Eastern Front at the beginning of the war, which had 151 divisions.

  • Red Army divisions may have been smaller than their German equivalent, but this was still

  • a huge expansion.

  • But it is doubtful that the expansion actually impacted the quality of the new officers coming

  • into the army.

  • “... attempts were made to fill vacant positions with promotees fromNCOranks.” Hill.

  • The Red Army and the Second World War.

  • These long service junior commanders (NCOs) were encouraged to take short courses lasting

  • from the 15th of September 1937 to 15 January 1938 that could make them junior lieutenants

  • (officers).

  • It is implied that the quality of the officer at the end of such a short course would be

  • bad.

  • However, according to the current British Army website, under the sectionHow long

  • is officer training?” there is a section that states -

  • The course takes place at the Royal Military Academy Sandhurst and lasts 44 weeks [3.6

  • years] for Regular officers, or three weeks for Reservists. People with certain experience

  • or qualifications may be eligible for the fast-track Professionally Qualified Officers

  • (PQO) course, which lasts ten weeks. “After this initial training, you will go

  • on a second course to learn specific skills related to your first appointment. The length

  • of this course varies depending on the type of role you will be doing.”

  • A similar recruitment process is detailed on the current United States website -

  • It depends on which path you choose. If you choose to become an Officer through the

  • Army Reserve OfficersTraining Corps (ROTC) or the U.S. Military Academy at West Point,

  • you will become an Officer after completing four years of college. Through Officer Candidate

  • School (OCS), you are commissioned as an Army Second Lieutenant upon completion of the 12-week

  • course, but you still must have earned a four-year degree from an accredited university.”

  • Now, both of these say you must have other qualifications or experience to enter the

  • 10 or 12 week courses, but if these modern armies can potentially train officers in a

  • matter of weeks, it stands to reason that the Red Army in the late 1930’s and early

  • 40’s could train its officers in two years.

  • And the training the Red Army officer received wasn’t all propaganda, as you’d think

  • during or after the Purges.

  • According to the respondent, during the first half of the first year mornings were

  • spent doing physical training, and the afternoons mathematics, Russian and German - the former

  • geared to artillery computation and the latter tomilitary terms, German commands and

  • tactics’. During the second half of the first year he began to receive instruction

  • on artillery. After two hours of free time in the early evening and then supper, there

  • wasan hour and a half which was devoted to study, theory, languages, but most of all

  • to the political questions’... After summer manoeuvres, the second year was spent onpractice

  • to insure that all we had learned could be done automatically and we learned how to command’.”

  • Hill. The Red Army and the Second World War.

  • An hour and a half ofpolitical questionsout of almost a full day of training - That

  • doesn’t sound too bad.

  • So the new Red Army officers were getting the training they needed.

  • As Richard Overy points out -

  • The destruction of the cadres of young officers around the reformer Tukhachevsky

  • is usually taken as evidence that the Soviet Union took a giant leap backward in military

  • effectiveness and levels of military preparedness. This is a superficial conclusion. Plausible

  • though it seems, the strengths and weaknesses of the Soviet military position in the late

  • 1930s were not simply the result of the purges.” Overy. Russia’s War. P32

  • Perhaps then, there was another reason for the ineffectiveness of the Red Army officer

  • corps during the early years of the Great Patriotic War that, while related to the Purges,

  • wasn’t because of the arrests and executions.

  • The most debilitating effect of the purges was the sharp change they signalled in the

  • balance of power between the military and the politicians. After a decade of attempts

  • by the military to win greater independence from political control, the purges brought

  • back close political supervision and intervention.” Overy. Russia’s War. P32

  • It wasn’t so much the loss of experience and skill that had the greatest impact on

  • the Soviet Red Army, it was, perhaps, the stifling of independence, constraint of action,

  • and collapse of unity of command that lead to the poor performance of the officer corps.

  • In August of 1937 the Main Political Directorate of the Red Army was placed under the care

  • of Lev Mekhlis, the editor of Pravda.

  • He was not a soldier, he was an idiot, who thought he knew more about war than the soldiers.

  • He made sure that political officers played a substantial military role, just as they

  • had done in during the civil war.

  • Imagine if the United States put Alex Jones in charge of the military.

  • It wouldn’t go down well.

  • That is effectively what the Soviet Union did in 1937, except instead of a far-right

  • lunatic, they put a far-left lunatic in charge instead.

  • The result was the triumph of military illiteracy over military science, of political

  • conformity over military initiative. It has been estimated that 73 per cent of the political

  • officers had had no military training, yet they were placed even in small military units,

  • down to the level of platoon and company. This stifling of military independence left

  • commanders demoralized and excessively cautious, since anything judged by the political officers

  • to be an infringement of the Party line carried the risk of the Lubyanka, not just for the

  • commander concerned but for his wife and family. Officers were inclined to stick by the rule

  • book. Any talk ofdeep operations’, or massed tank attack, with its echoes of Tukhachevsky,

  • was by association deemed to be counter-revolutionary.” Overy. Russia’s War. P32-33

  • This was perhaps the most striking element of the Purge, and did more than anything else

  • to hurt the officer corps.

  • And, while the constraint place on the officer corps was bad, the morale impact could have

  • gone either way.

  • The lower ranks actually accepted the purges, believing them justified in rooting out the

  • Fascist-Trotskyist group in the army”, and actually called for the death penalty

  • for the guilty. Reese. P204-205

  • It also didn’t put people off from joining the party, in fact party membership increased

  • dramatically.

  • So, according to this view, Commissars had a greater impact on the Red Army than the

  • execution or dismissal of Red Army officers during the Purge.

  • Either way though, the Purge did leave an impression on foreign powers that the Red

  • Army didn’t shake off.

  • The purges profoundly affected the perception of Soviet strength abroad, and contributed

  • to the judgement of most German commanders that the Red Army could be beaten.” Overy.

  • Russia’s War. Overy. Russia’s War. P30

  • The Purges may have lead to overconfidence in the German army.

  • This may have been one of the reasons why the German generals were eager to go to war

  • in 1941, and why they thought they could knock the Red Army out of the war in a matter of

  • weeks.

  • If this is the case, then the Purge of the Red Army, may have actually contributed to

  • the defeat of the Wehrmacht during the Great Patriotic War - the complete opposite to what

  • the traditional narrative says the Purges did.

  • But, there is something else that needs to be considered, that perhaps some haven’t

  • considered - the Purges in other countries.

  • Weve looked at both the traditional view of the Purges, and the modern view of the

  • Purges.

  • But one thing not normally mentioned, that really should be, is the Purges related to

  • what was going on in other armies at the time.

  • The Purge in the Red Army has parallels with other similarpurgesin other armies

  • at the time.

  • While no where near as bloody as the Stalinist Purge, other nations, including the United

  • States had their own version of the purges.

  • In addition, the expansion of the Red Army cannot be solely used as an excuse for Red

  • Army ineffectiveness - as other armies were also rapidly expanding.

  • Let’s start with Germany.

  • In 1935, the German Wehrmacht had 100,000 men.

  • Of this, there were only 4,000 officers, with 450 of them being veterinary or medical personnel,

  • and another 500 would be transferred to the Luftwaffe.

  • On the 16th of March 1936, Hitler announced the expansion of the Wehrmacht to 36 divisions,

  • which would require 19,224 officers for the 350,000 men.

  • These included the immediate granting of commissions to 1,500 non-commissioned officers....”

  • Enduring the Whirlwind P53

  • This was the same as what was happening in the Red Army.

  • On the 1st of September 1939, the German Army grew to 3,706,104 men, with 105,394 officers.

  • Enduring the Whirlwind P62

  • By 1941, it grew to 7,309,000 men, and while I don’t have the precise number of officers,

  • it stands to reason that the officer corps must have been approaching 200,000 officers

  • by this point. Enduring the Whirlwind P99

  • The German officer corps in 1941 had grown by a factor of 50 in six years from 1935.

  • Surely, if the Red Army officer corps had suffered from its expansion, the Wehrmacht

  • would have suffered from its expansion too.

  • And it wasn’t about inexperience either.

  • While the Germans had fought in Poland, France, the Low Countries, Scandinavia and the Balkans,

  • the Red Army had battle experience as well.

  • Poland 1939. Finland 1939-40. Baltic Republics 1940.

  • But even further back.

  • Khalkhin Gol 1939. Lake Khasan 1938

  • The Spanish Civil War 1936-1939.

  • The Chinese Eastern Railway 1929.

  • And of course, the Russian Civil War.

  • And let’s not forget, both Germany and Russia had fought in WW1, and many of their men and

  • officers had experienced from that war.

  • So, in reality, the Red Army should have had similar amounts of experience, even with the

  • expansion.

  • And Hitler often sacked or executed his commanders throughout the war - again, just like the

  • Red Army.

  • Yet for some reason Hitler and Stalin are often called mad for doing this.

  • However, the people calling Hitler mad were the generals getting sacked - and in reality,

  • they often needed to be.

  • Let’s quickly take a quick look at one German general complaining about being sacked.

  • Guderian had wanted to advance on Moscow in 1941, leaving a million Soviet Red Army troops

  • on Army Group Centre’s southern flank in the Ukraine. P200

  • When Hitler disagrees with Guderian, saying the economic necessity of gaining the Ukraine

  • was more important than Moscow, Guderian then saysall those present nodded in agreement

  • with every sentence that Hitler uttered, while I was left alone with my point of view.”

  • In view of the OKW’s unanimous opposition to my remarks, I avoided all further arguments

  • on that occasion”. P200

  • He was alone in his viewpoint, and as subsequent historians like David Glantz have pointed

  • out, it would have been a disaster to have left the Red Army on the flank of Army Group

  • Centre. P200

  • And yet, according to these passages, Guderian was right, and Hitler was definitely in the

  • wrong, and even had a cult following where no one could disagree with him.

  • No, the generals were in agreement, and Guderian was in the wrong.

  • And this is just one example.

  • As Manstein admits in his book, the war by 1944 had changed and he was no longer needed,

  • and was replaced by a newer general more suited to the type of combat being fought in the

  • East: Model.

  • But he doesn’t say Hitler was wrong to do it.

  • Sackings were, in fact, part and parcel of the process of military command during this

  • era, for all nations, not just the Red Army.

  • Now, you could argue that sackings during the war is a bit different to sackings prior

  • to the war, when youre building up a nation’s army.

  • But again, the Soviet Union wasn’t the only one.

  • The United States was brutal in its sacking policies during its mobilization process.

  • It is not mentioned much nowadays that for the United States, World War II began

  • with a series of dismissals across the top ranks of the military. Less than two weeks

  • after the attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Adm. Husband Kinnel and Army Lt. Gen.

  • Walter Short were jettisoned from their posts atop the American military establishment in

  • the Pacific, along with Maj. Gen. Frederick Martin, Short’s air commander.” Ricks,

  • T. The Generals

  • One-third of the Navy’s submarine captains were relieved during the first year of the

  • war.” Ricks, T. The Generals

  • The officer presiding over this dynamic and ruthless system of personnel management

  • was Gen. George C. Marshall, who back in Washington was winnowing the ranks of the Army, forcing

  • dozens of generals into retirement because he believed they were too old and lacking

  • in energy to lead soldiers in combat.” Ricks, T. The Generals

  • The United States had 175,000 regulars in September of 1939.

  • 175,000.

  • And it wasn’t as though they had the facility to turn it into the 8.3 million it would become

  • in 1945.

  • Quite clearly, the officer corps would need to expand rapidly, just like the German army

  • and just like the Soviet Red Army.

  • Testifying before the Senate Military Affairs Committee on July 12, 1940, Marshall warned

  • the senators thatwe do not have the trained officers and men - the instructors to spare;

  • also we do not have the necessary matériel.” ” Unger. George Marshall : A Biography.

  • Marshal was scathing of the current officer corps.

  • The present general officers of the line are for the most part too old to command troops

  • in battle under the terrific pressure of modern war,” - Marshall, October 1939, to a journalist.

  • Most of them have their minds set in outmoded patterns, and can’t change to meet the new

  • conditions they may face if we become involved in the war that’s started in Europe.”

  • - Marshall, October 1939, to a journalist.

  • This was the same problem the Red Army faced at the time.

  • For the United States, in the summer and fall of 1941, 31 colonels, 117 lieutenant colonels,

  • 31 majors, and 16 captains were forced into retirement or discharged.

  • 269 National Guard and Army Reserve officers were also let go.

  • Marshall estimated that he forced out at least 600 officers before the United States entered

  • World War II.

  • But this, in combination of the rapid expansion of the army, didn’t have a detrimental impact

  • on the performance of the United States officer corps during the war.

  • Again, similar circumstances to what the Red Army went through.

  • What Marshall wanted - just like the Red Army - was new officers who could cope with modern

  • war.

  • He wanted people who were able to adapt and who weren’t set in their ways.

  • “I was accused right away by the service papers of getting rid of all the brains of

  • the army,” he said. “... most of our senior officers on such duty are deadwood and should

  • be eliminated from the service as rapidly as possible.” Marshal.

  • Just 11 of the 42 generals who commanded a division, a corps, or an army at the Louisiana

  • Maneuvers in August and September 1941 would go on to command in combat.

  • Only one of the prewar Army’s senior generals would be given top command in World War II

  • - Walter Krueger.

  • Well after the war, Eisenhower said that those removals had been key steps to victory in

  • World War II.

  • He got them out of the war, and I think as a whole he was right.” Eisenhower.

  • “I was the youngest of the people that he pushed up into very high places,” - Eisenhower

  • And other similar parallels with the Red Army occurred.

  • There’s an example that’s given of a Red Army officer who’s fresh out of training

  • who reports to his new unit to find that every other officer has been sacked and he’s in

  • charge of the unit - a position that’s three ranks higher than what he should have led.

  • Yet, the United States had done similar things.

  • At one point Marshall, irked by the erratic quality of staff work in the Army Air Force

  • and wanting to reward talent and maturity when he saw it, promoted a major directly

  • to brigadier general, skipping altogether the ranks of lieutenant colonel and colonel.”

  • Ricks, T. The Generals

  • What Marshall wanted was younger officers who could lead the United States military

  • through a modern war, and the nature of the force changed rapidly - just like the Red

  • Army.

  • “... while sometimes mistaken and occasionally brutal to individual officers, the Marshall

  • system generally achieved its goal of producing military effectiveness. To understand how,

  • the best place to begin is with Dwight D, Eisenhower, who just a year before the start

  • of World War II was still a lieutenant colonel, not even in command of a regiment, let alone

  • the armies of millions he could oversee a few years later.” Ricks, T. The Generals

  • The point is this, if other countries can do it, why can’t the Soviet Union?

  • Granted, the Soviet Purge was substantially more bloody, and larger, but it’s doubtful

  • that the Purge lead to the loss of talent and experience.

  • If anything, it got rid of the old out-of-date officers, brought in the young fresh officers,

  • and prepared the Red Army Officer Corps more than anything else for the modern war it was

  • about to fight.

  • What was more important was that the new officers coming into command, didn’t really have

  • command.

  • Commissars - those not actually trained in war - took the stage and undermined the efforts

  • of the Red Army officers.

  • Every order, had to be counter-signed by them, every move, questioned.

  • There was no unity of command, and politics dictated war policy.

  • And it is perhaps no coincidence that just weeks after the commissars themselves saw

  • a limitation in power, unshackling the officer corps, that the Red Army won its first major

  • offensive victory of the war - Operation Uranus and the encirclement and destruction of the

  • Sixth Army at Stalingrad.

  • According to the traditional view, the Purge

  • had a substantial negative impact on the Red Army.

  • But according to more recent historians, the purge of officers during 1937 and 1938 may

  • not have had as negative an impact as scholars previously assumed.

  • The debate still rages.

  • But what do you think? Let us know in the comments below.

  • A big thank you goes to my Patreons for making this video possible!

  • All the sources I used are in the description, and without your support, there’s no way

  • I could have done the research for this video.

  • So thank you, guys. As always, youre awesome.

  • For anyone interested in George C Marshall’s policies on sacking United States generals

  • prior to and during the war, I highly recommend this video by Thomas Ricks, entitledWhy

  • our Generals Were More Successful in World War II

  • He’s also the author ofThe Generals: American Military Command From World War II

  • to Todayso definitely give it a watch.

  • Go, click!

  • And don’t forget to watch my other videos.

  • Thanks for watching, bye for now.

Military History Visualized recently made a video on the impact that Stalin’s Purge

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Stalin’s Purge of the Red Army and Its Effects on the WW2 Eastern Front(Stalin’s Purge of the Red Army and Its Effects on the WW2 Eastern Front)

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    香蕉先生 發佈於 2022 年 06 月 27 日
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