Date: Fri, 20 Mar 1998 16:20:42 -0500
From: Louis Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu>
Subject: M-G: Stalin-Hitler


Former General Grigorenko, who served at the time as a lecturer in the
central Soviet military academy, recalls the disastrous effects of the
Purges on the quality of military training:

"No sooner had the academy taken its first halting steps than the
trumped-up trial of Tukhachevsky, Uborevich, Yakir, and others cast
suspicion on all things planned by Tukhachevsky. Stalin saw the academy as
an 'anti-Stalinist military centre,' and the pogroms commenced. Arrests
began in winter 1936 and intensified in 1937. The highly qualified teaching
staff assembled by Tukhachevsky was almost totally annihilated.

"Positions were taken by untalented or inexperienced people. In turn, some
of the new teachers were arrested, which frightened the rest and left them
with little enthusiasm for their new jobs. Texts that had been written by
'enemies of the people,' the first teachers, now could not be used. The new
teachers wrote a hasty conspectus of each of their lectures, but fearful of
being accused of proffering views hostile to Stalin, they filled their
lectures with faddish dogmas." And he adds: "The theory of battle in depth
worked out by Tukhachevsky, Yegorov, Uborevich and Yakir was cast aside."
(Grigorenko, op. cit., pp. 91-2.)

All this was admitted by Khrushchev in 1956:

"Very grievous consequences, especially in reference to the beginning of
the war, followed Stalin's annihilation of many military commanders and
political workers during 1937-1941 because of his suspiciousness and
through slanderous accusations. During these years repressions were
instituted against certain parts of military cadres, beginning literally at
the company and battalion commander level and extending to the higher
military centres; during this time the cadre of leaders who had gained
military experience in Spain and in the Far East was almost completely
liquidated.

"The policy of large-scale repression against the military cadres led also
to undermined military discipline, because for several years officers of
all ranks and even soldiers in the party and Komsomol cells were taught to
'unmask' their superiors as hidden enemies. (Movement in the hall.) It is
natural that this caused a negative influence on the state of military
discipline in the first war period.

"And, as you know, we had before the war excellent military cadres which
were unquestionably loyal to the party and to the Fatherland. Suffice it to
say that those of them who managed to survive, despite severe tortures to
which they were subjected in the prisons, have from the first war days
shown themselves real patriots and heroically fought for the glory of the
Fatherland; I have here in mind such comrades as Rokossovsky (who, as you
know, had been jailed), Gorbatov, Maretskov (who is a delegate at the
present Congress), Podlas (he was an excellent commander who perished at
the front), and many, many others. However, many such commanders perished
in camps and jails and the army saw them no more. All this brought about
the situation which existed at the beginning of the war and which was the
great threat to our Fatherland." (Special Report on the 20th Congress of
the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.) 

There are still many misconceptions about the second world war, especially
concerning the role of Stalin. According to Alec Nove (normally quite an
astute commentator on Russia): "Germany's colossal power was greater than
Russia's and she had at her disposal the industries of occupied Europe. Her
armies were well equipped, and the equipment had been tested in the
battlefield. Despite the very greatest efforts and sacrifices in the
preceding decade, the Soviet Union found itself economically as well as
militarily at a disadvantage." (A. Nove, An Economic History of the USSR,
p. 273.)

As a matter of fact, at the time of the Nazi attack on the Soviet Union,
the combined firepower of the Red Army was greater than that of the
Wehrmacht. Yet the Soviet forces were rapidly encircled and decimated. This
unprecedented catastrophe was not the result of objective weakness, but of
bad leadership. Having destroyed the best cadres of the Red Army, Stalin
placed such blind confidence in his "clever" manoeuvre with Hitler, that he
ignored numerous reports that the Germans were preparing to attack. The
Minsk fortified area, a mighty defensive line which had been built on the
western border of the USSR in anticipation of a German attack was actually
demolished on Stalin's orders, presumably as a gesture of good faith to
Berlin. Grigorenko, who had worked before the war on the building of these
fortifications, describes his feelings of indignation when they were
demolished:

"[These] fortifications were to have reliably shielded the deployment of
assault groups and repelled any attempts by the enemy to break up the
deployment. When the army attacked, the fortified areas were to have
supported the troops with firepower. Instead, our western fortified areas
did not fulfil any of these tasks. They were blown up without having fired
once at the enemy.

"I do not know how future historians will explain this crime against our
people. Contemporary historians ignore it. I cannot offer an explanation
myself. The Soviet government squeezed billions of roubles (by my
calculations not less than 120 billion) out of the people to construct
impregnable fortifications along the entire western boundary from the
Baltic Sea to the Black Sea. Then, right before the war in the spring of
1941, powerful explosions thundered along the entire 1,200-kilometre length
of these fortifications. On Stalin's personal orders reinforced concrete
caponiers and semicaponiers, fortifications with one, two, or three
embrasures, command and observation posts--tens of thousands of permanent
fortifications--were blown into the air. No better gift could have been
given to Hitler's Barbarossa plan." (Grigorenko, op. cit., pp. 46-7,
emphasis in original.)

Had it not been for the criminal actions of Stalin, the USSR would have not
been caught unawares by the German onslaught, as Khrushchev explained:

"Did we have time and the capabilities for such preparations? Yes, we had
the time and the capabilities. Our industry was already so developed that
it was capable of supplying fully the Soviet army with everything that it
needed. This is proven by the fact that, although during the war we lost
almost half of our industry and important industrial and food-production
areas as the result of enemy occupation of the Ukraine, Northern Caucasus
and other western parts of the country, the Soviet nation was still able to
organise the production of military equipment in the eastern parts of the
country, install there equipment taken from the western industrial areas,
and to supply our armed forces with everything which was necessary to
destroy the enemy.

"Had our industry been mobilised properly and in time to supply the army
with the necessary material, our wartime losses would have been decidedly
smaller. Such mobilisation had not been, however, stated in time. And
already in the first days of the war it became evident that our army was
badly armed, that we did not have enough artillery, tanks and planes to
throw the enemy back.

"Soviet science and technology produced excellent models of tanks and
artillery pieces before the war. But mass production of all this was not
organised, and, as a matter of fact, we started to modernise our military
equipment only on the eve of the war. As a result, at the time of the
enemy's invasion of the Soviet land we did not have sufficient quantities
either of old machinery which was no longer used for armament production or
of new machinery which we had planned to introduce into armament production.

"The situation with anti-aircraft artillery was especially bad; we did not
organise the production of anti-tank ammunition. Many fortified regions had
proven to be indefensible as soon as they were attacked, because the old
arms had been withdrawn and new ones were not yet available there. This
pertained, alas, not only to tanks, artillery and planes. At the outbreak
of the war we did not have sufficient numbers of rifles to arm the
mobilised manpower. I recall that in those days I telephoned to Comrade
Malenkov from Kiev and told him, 'People have volunteered for the new army
and demand arms. You must send us arms.'

"Malenkov answered me. 'We cannot send you arms. We are sending all our
rifles to Leningrad and you have to arm yourselves.' (Movement in the hall.)

"Such was the armament situation." (Special Report on the 20th Congress of
the CPSU by N.S. Khrushchev, 24-25 February 1956.) 

Despite the fact that the combined fire power of the Red Army was greater
than that of the Germans, the Purges had effectively crippled it. This was
the decisive element which persuaded Hitler to attack in 1941. At the
Nuremberg trial, Marshal Keitel testified that many German generals had
warned Hitler not to attack Russia, arguing that the Red Army was a
formidable opponent. Rejecting these Hitler gave Keitel his main
reason--"The first-class high-ranking officers were wiped out by Stalin in
1937, and the new generation cannot yet provide the brains they need." On
the 9th January 1941, Hitler told a meeting of generals planning the attack
on Russia: "They do not have good generals." (Medvedev, Let History Judge,
p. 214.)

"Our initial defeat," writes Grigorenko, "was caused by those in the very
highest positions. Thousands of capable army commanders had been purged,
our border airdromes were poorly developed, we had inadequate anti-aircraft
defence, our tank units and anti-tank defence had been sharply reduced (at
Stalin's whim) immediately before the war, our fortified areas had been
blown up, and our troops had been trained on a peacetime basis. We were not
prepared. We paid for this criminal unpreparedness both during and after
the war. I pointed to Stalin as the chief culprit, but I also mentioned
Voroshilov, Timoshenko, Golokov, and Zhukov. Our failures could not be
blamed on the fascists but on ourselves." (Grigorenko, op. cit., p. 332.)


(From Ted Grant's Militant Tendency home page)




     --- from list marxism-general-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---