File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1997/marxism-international.9706, message 158


Date: Mon, 09 Jun 1997 23:45:01 -0700
From: "Workers' Voice" <WorkersVoice-AT-EarthLink.NET>
Subject: Re: M-I: Stalin as political-military leader


Adam Trent Phillips wrote:
> 
> Reply to message from WorkersVoice-AT-EarthLink.NET of Mon, 09 Jun
>
> Adam;
>
> Thought you might find this interesting.
>
> Martin
>
========== forwarded message =========
Louis N Proyect <lnp3-AT-columbia.edu> wrote:
>
> Nazi and Soviet Armament Strength at the time of the Nonaggression Pact
>
>                 USSR            Germany         Ratio
>                 ----            -------         -----
> Divisions       170             190             1:1.1
> Tanks           14,000-15,000   3,712           4:1
> Airplanes       8,000-9,000     3,000-3,500     2.6:1
>
> (A.A. Grechko "Journal of Military History, no. 6, 1966)
>
> Since the USSR had such an overwhelming advantage and since it was
> defending its own territory, what explains the ease with which Hitler's
> troops advanced deep into the heart of a socialist nation?
>
> Part of the problem is that Stalin viewed many of the top commanders with
> experience in the civil war as suspect. In the Great Purge, many of them
> were either cashiered from the military or sent to prison camps. Generals
> M.N. Tukhachevsky, V.K. Blyukher, A.I. Egorov, I.P. Uborevich, I.E. Yakir
> were all accused of being "enemies of the people" and "agents of foreign
> intelligence". So were Naval Commanders V.M. Orlov and M.V. Viktorov.
> Stalin rushed to replace them with political loyalists, but--as was so
> often the case in the USSR in the 1930s--placed technical expertise last.
> In an inspection of the official qualifications of 225 regimental
> commanders on the eve of WWII, it was discovered that only 25 had
> completed military school training. These officers and the troops beneath
> them simply lacked the ability to function as a modern military machine.
> To behead the Soviet army as Stalin did in the face of looming Nazi
> invasion was criminal.

        Another factor in this, that one is missing is that Allied
countries that where "ready" for the war (France & the UK) also got
their
asses kicked pretty bad. There where a LOT of millitary people who did
not
understand the lessons of WWI. In the west a number of writers
understood
the potential of mobile warfare, the problem was that they where drummed
out of the service in most cases. It is not the first time the victors
rested on their laurels. A very ironic example of this is when Gen.
Guderian toasted Hobart's name after a successful pre-war tank exersize.
(Hobart was an early thinker in mobile warfare).

        Heck, in _Achtung Panzer_, I am certain that Guderian cites more
Allied sources than Cental Powers !

        Although, I will qualify these remarks in saying that the
situation
for Russia/ the USSR was very different in WWI since they where not the
victors. The more important factors for the "Eastern Front" are what the
writer cited.

>
> As the storm clouds of a Nazi invasion darkened the horizon, Stalin
> proceeded complacently as if there was no danger. This affected the
> military preparedness of Soviet troops who were simply not combat ready.
> The late Soviet Minister of Defence, R. Malinovsky wrote in the Journal of
> Military History, no. 6, 1961:
>
> "The troops continued to train as if it were peacetime: the artillery of
> the rifle divisions were in artillery camps and on the firing ranges, the
> anti-aircraft facilities were on the anti-aircraft firing ranges, the
> combat engineer units were in the engineer camps, and the 'naked' rifle
> regiments were in their separate camps. In view of the impending threat of
> war, these flagrant blunders were tantamount to a crime."

        Ok, pretty good so far.

>
> What explains the lack of preparation? As Jon Flanders has pointed out,
> there was a political miscalculation. Stalin simply took the Nazi dictator
> at his word. The most overwhelming indictment of his failure as a
> political/military leader is that the USSR a defense plan based on the
> possibility of a surprise enemy attack was never put into operation.
>
> Only 32% of the Soviet army was positioned on the front lines, while
> Germany had about 65% of its troops on the Eastern front at the time of
> the invasion. As a result Hitler was able to deliver punishing blows.

        In my view, this is not such a bad thing. On the "Western
Front",
the B.E.F. (Brit. Expiditionary Force) and the French Army threw
everything
they had right into the _expected_ positions along the front. With
everything in the front, the Panzer Divitions that broke through at
Sedan
where able to run free in the Allied rear. It is easy to bend the stick
too
far in the direction the auther is going. While he is not saying that
"everything should be up front", it would be easy to get that
impression.
Being on the alert/ being ready is more general than having everything
up
front. If I may site a text....

        <General Hadler cited in his diary that the Allied rear was
        devoid of Allied forces>

        No force worth mentioning _behind_ this front, which, the next
        day, was broken ?

        On May 16 Prime Minister Churchill flew to Paris to find out
        . By the afternoon, when he drove to Quai d'Orsay to see Pre-
        Mier Reynaud and General Gamelin, German spearheads where sixty
        miles west of Sedan (the breakthrough point ATP), rolling along
        the _undefended open country_ (emphasis mine). Nothing very much
        stood between them and Paris, or between them and the Channel,
        but Churchill did not know this. "Where is the reserve ?" he
        asked Gamlin and, breaking into French, "Ou est masse de manoe-
        uvre ?" The Commender In Chief of the Allied armies turned to
him
        with a shake of the head and a shrug answered "Aucune- there is
        none."

        "I was dumbfounded," Churchill later related. It was unheard of
        that a great army, when attacked, held no troops in reserve.
        "I admit," says Churchill, "that this was one of the greatest
        surprises I have had in my life."

        _The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich_ W. L. Shirer
        Simon and Schuster, 1960, 21st printing

I feel that if Soviet forces where concentrated all along the line, that
German forces would have done even more damage. This is very far from
saying that Stalin was simply leaving himself a generous reserve (as
some
Stalinists have claimed), but that to simply "move all of your forces to
the front", as so many people tend to think of, would have been a big
mistake too. Blitzkreig is _ideal_ for cutting up the ememies front line
forces and smashing into his rear. Whiel fighting in the front looks
better, fighting in the rear is much more deadly. Just imagine the
battle
of Moscow without the Siberian reverves. The Red Army would have to have
fallen back in _any_ scenerio that would have them winning, _but_, if
Red
Armed Forces would have been to a proper level of alert, they could have
done a LOT more damage to German forces with a lot less casualties. As
it
was, as frontier forces where attaked at the start of Barbarossa, they
where ordered _not_ to shoot back !

> Huge
> amounts of arms, ammunition and other equipment were left foolishly at the
> Western front and the thinly staffed Red Army detachments could not defend
> the stores. The Nazis simply added them to its arsenal. The  Nazi air
> force also took a terrible toll. Bombing raids along the Western front
> resulted in the loss of 90% of the Soviet air force. In the first three
> weeks of the war, the Soviet Union lost up to 90% of its tanks and more
> than half of its soldiers as unprepared units were overrun by the German
> army. It was Stalin's lack of vigilance that explains this rout.

        Ah yes, while on a specific tactical question or two I mightt
differ from the writer slightly, it all comes back to the political
question. I guess Von Clauswitz (sp?) and Sun Tzu where right the first
time.

> 
> There is something extremely odd about Mark Jones's stubborn hero worship
> of Joseph Stalin. He has returned to our mailing list with an opportunity
> to write about a million different topics relevant to the class struggle.
> Instead, he tries to turn Stalin into one of the great political-military
> leaders of the 20th century. Chris Burford's involvement with the Stalin
> rehabilitation project is old news by now, so I won't comment on it except
> to say that it is depressing to see him continue to believe such
> disgusting lies.

        At best, Stalin had an average layman's understanding of war. If
he
even could have learned a lesson or two from history (as a good Marxist
should) then he would have known better. It was his politics that kept
him
from doing that.

> 
> Louis Proyect
>
> (citations from General Peter Grigorenko's article "The Concealment of
> Historical Truth - a Public Crime: The Real Fate of the Soviet Armed
> Forces when Hitler Invaded", contained in "The Grigorenko Papers",
> Westview Press, 1973)
>
>      --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---

        All in all, a very nice reply to the habitual re-working of
history
by Stalinists.

        What do you think of my points, I do not intend to be
hyper-ciritical.

--
"All our times have come. Here but now they're gone. Seasons don't fear
the
reaper / Nor do the wind, the sun or the rain. And we can be like they
are.
(Come on baby) Don't fear the reaper."
                              --Blue Oyster Cult  "(DON'T FEAR) THE
REAPER"

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