- 21 Jul 2003 18:20
#212814
Tov. Spetsnaz,
What have you to say on the following?
As a staff member of the Calvalry Inspectorate, I had the good fortune to become more closely acquainted with Mikhail Tukhachevsky. As I mentioned earlier, I first met him during the suppression of the Antonov kulak revolt in 1921. He was a handsome man of athletic proportions and a most impressive appearance. We had noted then that he was no coward. At the head of but a small force, he often visited areas infested with bandits.
As First Deputy to the People's Commissar for Defence, Tukhachevsky did intensive organisational, creative, and theoratical work. What I admired in Tukhachevsky was his versatile command of various aspects of military science. A clever, knowledgable professional, he was splendidly conversant with tactical and strategic problems.
In all his fundamental deductions and arguments concerning strategy and tactics, Tukhachevsky emphasized that the rapid scientific and technical development that was going on in our country and abroad would exercise a decisive influence on the organisationa of the armed forces and the conduct of any future war.
Already in the thirties, Tukhachevsky warned that our No. 1 enemy was Germany, which was intensively preparing for a big war, and that this would doubtless be against the USSR. In writing published later, he repeatedly stressed that Germany was establishing a powerful invasion army consisting of strong air and airborne forces and highly mobile troops, mostly mechanized infantry and armour. He noted Germany's rapidly mounting industrial potential and its fascilities for mass producing combat aircraft and tanks.
In the summer of 1931, out in the field camps of the 1st Cavalry Corps, I drafted the first and second parts of Service Regulations for the Red Army Cavalry, assisted by Gusev, commanding officer of a cavalry regiment, and other comrades from the 1st Cavalry Devision. In autum, having been discussed by the Inspectorate staff, they were put before Tukhachevsky for his consideration.
With I.D. Kosogov, Deputy Chief Inspector, I more then once defended one or another point in the service regulations. But I must admit that we were often disarmed by Tukhachevsky's logical and well-grounded arguments. We were also grateful to him for his brilliant suggestions which greatly improved our draft.
After Tukhachevsky's amendments the service regulations were adopted, providing the cavalry with fine combat training manual.
The last time I saw Tukhachevsky was in 1931 at a Party meeting where he delivered a report on the international situation. He spoke conclusively of our country's growing might, the broad vistas ahead of our socialist economy, science, enineering, and culture. Dwelling on the role of our Communist Party in building the new state and army, he had worm words for Lenin, whom he had met many time and with whom he had often worked.
At this meeting, Tukhachevsky aired views he had set out in a monograph he was then writing on novel problem of warfare. We were less conversant with these problems and avidly drank in his every word. Tukhachevsky was an ace of military thinking, a star of the first magnitude among the great soldiers of the Red Army.
Addressing the Second Session of the Central Executive Committee of the USSR in 1936, Tukhachevsky again called attention to the grave and immanent danger presented by Nazi Germany. He backed up his stirring patriotic speech with a serious factual analysis of the Germ military potential and its aggressiveness.
G. Zhukov; Reminiscences and Reflections, Vol. I, page 137-139
In 1936 Heydrich, chief of Intelligence in Germany, received a visit from a former officer in the Czarist army, General Skoblin. This general without an army was consoling himself for his inactivity by playing double agent on a grand scale. For many years he had been working for Soviet Intelligence on the side.
The news he brought Heydrich was momentous: he had it on good authority that Marshal Tukhachevsky was plotting an armed insurrection against Stalin. Heydrich passed this on to the Nazi high command, who discussed what course to follow. There were only two options: allow the head of the Soviet Army to go ahead with the plan, or warn Stalin and, as a bonus, give him proof of the marshal's collusion with the Wehrmacht. The second solution was chosen.
Leopold Trepper; The Great Game , 1977
The most sophisticated apparatus for conveying top-secret orders was at the service of Nazi propaganda and terror. Heydrich had made a study of the Russian OGPU, the Soviet secret security service. He then engineered the Red Army purges carried out by Stalin. The Russian dictator believed his own armed forces were infiltrated by German agents as a consequence of a secret treaty by which the two countries helped each other rearm. Secrecy bred suspicion, which bred more secrecy, until the Soviet Union was so paranoid it became vulnerable to every hint of conspiracy.
Late in 1936, Heydrich had thirty-two documents forged to play on Stalin's sick suspicions and make him decapitate his own armed forces. The Nazi forgeries were incredibly successful. More than half the Russian officer corps, some 35,000 experienced men, were executed or banished.
The Soviet chief of Staff, Marshal Tukhachevsky, was depicted as having been in regular correspondence with German military commanders. All the letters were Nazi forgeries. But Stalin took them as proof that even Tukhachevsky was spying for Germany. It was a most devastating and clever end to the Russo-German military agreement, and it left the Soviet Union in absolutely no condition to fight a major war with Hitler.
William Stephenson; report on Reinhard Heydrich
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