What about Tukachevsky? The man all but invented Soviet tank doctrine. And as a counter-example, Kulik or Budyony? Unless I'm getting confused here, you are saying that Stalin weeded out the stick-in-the-mud cavalry generals, who preferred horses to tanks, but not only to Kulik and Budyony fit that description very well (In fact, both of the two Marshals who survived the purge better fit that description than the three who were killed), they survived their failures and retained Stalin's favor. Tukachevsky, meanwhile, was the Russian equivalent of Fuller or Liddell-Hart, and while he might not have been quite as good a general as Soviet propaganda made him out to be (he got his ass kicked by the Poles and was frequently outfought by the Whites), he was probably the best they had near the top until Zhukov came along. And Stalin purged him. I think I read somewhere that the original copy of his signed "confession" has visible bloodstains.
No, I'm not quite saying that. Tukhachevsky wrote manuals on military theory that were, quite simply, incomprehensible. He was the modern academic par excellence, using terms that were so attenuated no one could figure out what he was saying, and he hid behind that "theory". He may have been good, or he may have been bad, but no one really knew. Others, like Dybenko, were just abysmal. Budenny was someone Stalin couldn't get rid of due to his status as a hero of the Revolution, but he was very well sidelined, along with Voroshilov. Tukhachevsky and the others that were repressed still had ambitions.
How would that work? It might make a good excuse for the general incompetence demonstrated by Soviet forces as a whole in the war, but I don't see how claiming that Stalin had killed your best generals clears you of the charge of plotting world conquest.
The idea is that there were two ways the Soviets could spin everything to conceal their true motives of world conquest: (1) we were planning on hitting the Nazis the way they hit us, but we don't plan first strikes anymore because we gave up on world revolution, or (2) Stalin and the Soviet army were totally incompetent - they killed all the "good" generals in 1939 and inexplicably made the Soviet Union vulernable to Nazi invasion - they were just that stupid and reckless. Obviously, the first explanation doesn't inspire much confidence, and because the Soviets were still trying to achieve world revolution, they didn't want to have that aspect highlighted in the history of the war.
Why would they have anti-tank guns to fight an opponent who had not even invented tanks? They might have had field guns of that particular caliber, but the guns I was referring to were interwar designs, that were used as both anti-tank artillery and a variant as the main armament for the T-34 & the KV series. Kulik or Budyony was the one who quelled their production, I am pretty sure. I can't think of any other Russian generals with whom I would have been so familiar.
An anti-tank gun is essentially artillery pointed directly at a target rather than fired in a projectile arc. Hell, most of the later German tanks and tank destroyers were just 88mm Flak guns with armor, a motor and tracks (including the King Tiger).
But Stalin had little or nothing to do with that, and what they did have was rendered less effective by the context in which it was produced and deployed, said context being a prison-camp of a country that made Carroll's Wonderland look rational. Stalin directly contributed to the suspicion of modern tactics, the inefficiencies of supply and production and the degradation of the armed force's capabilities. People like to give the communists credit for industrializing Russia, but Niall Ferguson said Czarist Russia was industrializing rapidly (which was one of Germany's rationales for giving Austria the "blank check" - they wanted to put down Russia before they got too strong), and it actually slowed down with the Soviet takeover. And Stalin's "four legs good; tank treads bad" cronies at the top of the Red Army certainly didn't help matters.
That isn't an entirely accurate picture, and in any event the fact remains that the entire Soviet Union was just one giant military factory under Stalin. Everything was diverted to military purposes.
View original postThe entire reason that I discussed Stalin's military buildup was not to allow you to start a pissing match over the minutiae of World War II, which I understand is a hobby for a wide range of people from ex-military types to 300-pound retired mechanical engineers, inclusively.
View original postFuck off. I'm pretty sure NO ONE posts things to allow
you to start pissing matches over minutiae of foreign languages, and yet...
HAHAHA. I wasn't implying you were a 300-pound retired mechanical engineer. My point is that even on an obscure side thread of a message board, the guy who has a copy of Tanks of the World 1915-1945 is almost certain to chime in at some point, and that's not the focus of this discussion - it's really about perceptions of Lenin and Stalin.
To sum it up, I suppose that Lenin was more well-read and intellectual in the academic sense, and Stalin was far more practical and ruthless even to his closest friends. Perhaps the analogy is that Stalin is closer to Hillary and Lenin is closer to Obama. Both are pernicious, but one leaves a longer trail of bodies behind.
Political correctness is the pettiest form of casuistry.
ἡ δὲ κἀκ τριῶν τρυπημάτων ἐργαζομένη ἐνεκάλει τῇ φύσει, δυσφορουμένη, ὅτι δὴ μὴ καὶ τοὺς τιτθοὺς αὐτῇ εὐρύτερον ἢ νῦν εἰσι τρυπώη, ὅπως καὶ ἄλλην ἐνταῦθα μίξιν ἐπιτεχνᾶσθαι δυνατὴ εἴη. – Procopius
Ummaka qinnassa nīk!
*MySmiley*
*NM*
- 14/03/2017 11:54:45 PM
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