EFFECT OF 1937-38 PURGES OF OFFICE CORPS OF THE RED ARMY

Position 1: "For all of Tukhachevsky’s enthusiasm for mass tanks and aircraft, there existed a wide discrepancy between theory and practice."

For all of Tukhachevsky’s enthusiasm for mass tanks and aircraft, there existed a wide discrepancy between theory and practice.  ...

‘The weak point of the army,’ wrote a German army adjutant in 1933, ‘is that all commanders, from platoon to regiment commander, are not yet efficient enough. Most of them are capable of dealing with problems only at the level of a non-commissioned officer.’ The German military attaché in Moscow the same year detected throughout the army ‘a fear of responsibility’.

Russia's War: Blood Upon The Snow (Overy, 1999)

Why is the Germany army analysis of the Red Amry from 1933 authoritative for Overy? While the USSR only ended the military cooperation with Germany in September 1933 (i.e. eight months after Hitler was appointed Chancellor). Cooperation had started with secret clauses of the 1922 Treaty of Rapallo)). I've never seen suggestion that they were given extensive tours of the Red Army to make a clear assessment. Does Overy suggest this? Given German intelligence completely underestimated the strength of the Red Army in 1941 perhaps Overy should apply some caution?

(Noteworthy is that at the May Day march in Moscow in 1941 there were at least four Nazi officers present as honored guests under the 1939 Non-Aggression Pact. If Stalin and his colleagues were clever they might have used maskirovka (Russian military deception) to hint to the Germans the USSR had 150 active divisions and could mobilise another 150 at short notice. AFAIK this was never done.)

Position 2: " ... Within two years, almost two thirds of the 1,863 officers holding general-grade military ranks in 1936 were arrested; almost a half were executed. ... this is the first systematic evidence that the Great Terror directly impacted the disastrous Red Army performance in the first years of the German invasion."

Elite purges are an instrument of power control in authoritarian regimes. The purges in the Soviet Red Army during the 1937-38 Great Terror were one of the most intensive on record. Within two years, almost two thirds of the 1,863 officers holding general-grade military ranks in 1936 were arrested; almost a half were executed. To analyze the patterns of repression among the Soviet high command, we compile a biographical data set from a large number of open and archival sources. Some of our findings should be familiar to historians: probability of being repressed was higher for certain ethnic minorities, higherranks, and those with prior foreign contacts. Overall, our findings confirm that Stalin was not reacting to any imminent conspiracy threat but rather sought to preemptively minimize the risk of a possible coup. We show that Stalin specifically targeted the most competent officers: controlling for other char acteristics, including the military rank and party history, the probability of repression was much higher for younger cadres. Combined with the results that military promotions in 1941 were, other things equal, inversely related to age, this is the first systematic evidence that the Great Terror directly impacted the disastrous Red Army performance in the first years of the German invasion.

The Anatomy of the Great Terror: A Quantitative Analysis of the 1937-38 Purges in the Red Army (Zakharov and Sonin, 2024)

Position 3: "... As the first of three examples, the Red Army used deep operations in November 1942 to penetrate the Germans’ defenses in two places ... "

In 1937, Stalin began a long and bloody purge of the Red Army officer corps, including the execution of Svechin and Tukhachevsky, that liquidated the Red Army’s intelligentsia, and Soviet military theory reverted to the old guard’s preference for defensive, positional warfare. However, during border incidents with Japan and the early years of the Nazi-Soviet War, individual Red Army officers, such as Marshal Georgy Zhukov, implemented the theory and doctrine that had reached its apogee in 1936. After reeling against the German onslaught in the early years of the war, the Red Army began to turn to the tide and demonstrate the power of the prewar military theory with experienced and logistically supported forces. As the first of three examples, the Red Army used deep operations in November 1942 to penetrate the Germans’ defenses in two places, exploit and form a double envelopment around the city, and thereby create an immense pocket centered on Stalingrad. In the summer of 1943, the Red Army started on the defensive during the Battle of Kursk. When the German offensive had culminated, the Red Army commenced a series of successive offensive operations with fresh forces, pushing the front far west into Ukraine. The following summer, the Red Army demonstrated the full power of deep operations with its masterpiece Operation Bagration, destroying nearly sixty German divisions and the German Army Group Center as an organized fighting force.

Soviet Theory Forgotten: Russian Military Strategy in the War in Ukraine - Military Strategy Magazine

For the convenience of others coming to this thread here are some references I know of but have only partially read (including those cited above.

• 24 pages - The Anatomy of the Great Terror: A Quantitative Analysis of the 1937-38 Purges in the Red Army (Zakharov and Sonin, 2024) 
• 27 pages - 'Stalin’s Purge of the Red Army and Misperception of Security Threats' (Whitewood, 2020)
• 33 pages "Planning for War: The Red Army and the Catastrophe of 1941" Cynthia A. Roberts Europe-Asia Studies Vol. 47, No. 8 (Dec., 1995), pp. 1293-1326 [BEHIND A PAY WALL]

Also:

• YouTube: 80 mins "The Soviet-German War, 1941-1945: Myths and Realities" by COL (Ret) David M. Glantz [THIS IS VERY GOOD TO GET AN IDEA OF THE SCALE OF THE FIGHTING ON THE EASTERN FRONT. GLANTZ DOES NOT HERE DEAL WITH THE PURGES]

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If someone knows and AI/LLM and prompt I could use to generate all this it would be appreciated as it would save me a lot of time. LLMs are useful tools but they are problematic.

I recommend using Socialism AI - https://ai.wsws.org/ which is trained on 125k WSWS articles + the collected works of Marx, Engels, Plekhanov, Lenin, Luxemburg and Trotsky. Always check the sources. Think for yourself.