Similarly, in his labor camp, Gorbatov
wondered how the officers newly appointed to high rank, with no battle experience, would deal with operations in a real war. Honest, brave men, devoted to their country they might be, but yesterday’s battalion commander would be head of a division, yesterday’s regimental commander of a corps; in charge of an army, or a whole front, there would be at best a former divisional commander or his deputy. How many futile losses and failures would there be? What would our country suffer just because of this?19
As is confirmed by Russian military writers, the Purge had indeed led to “inexperienced commanders” being promoted. As early as 1937, 60 percent of the commanding cadres in rifle units, 45 percent in tank units, and 25 percent in air units were given as in this category.20 Moreover, “the cadre of leaders who had gained military experience in Spain and in the Far East was almost completely liquidated.”21
Nor could the atmosphere fail to affect the discipline of the Army:
The policy of large-scale repression against the military cadres led also to undermine 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. It is natural that this caused a negative influence on the state of military discipline in the first war period.22
Mekhlis, in his report to the 1939 XVIIIth Congress, expressed horror and sorrow at “incorrect expulsions” from the Party which had taken place in the Army in 1935, 1936, and 1937, on the basis of “slander,” instead of the correct method of “documents and facts.”23
And over the next few years, a handful of generals were released—Rokossovsky and Gorbatov, for example. But still, as with the civilian purge (and the similar crocodile tears of Zhdanov), the arrests did not actually cease and cases continued to be processed. Herling mentions a number of Soviet generals with whom he shared a cell in 1940. Most of them had been badly beaten, and showed the marks of ill-mended broken bones.
Even now, the Red Army had considerable striking power in the right hands. This was shown over the summer of 1939. After a very shaky start, a build-up of superior forces (itself a feat), luckily entrusted to the one superlative soldier of the old First Cavalry Army, Zhukov, threw back the Japanese invaders of Mongolia in model fashion at Khalkhin-Gol. But even as this was being done, the armored tactics he had used, sponsored under Tukhachevsky (who with his group had by 1937 been beginning to create an “elite army emerging from the mass”),24 were being condemned and abandoned, and within two months the tactical doctrine of the Red Army was back to old-fashioned “mass,” and the tanks were distributed in packets to lesser unit commands.
The post-Purge promotions placed men totally unsuited or untrained for high command in key positions. None of them showed any capacity for strategic thinking, and even the tactical dispositions on the frontier were proof of “a dull or listless mind.”25 The rigidity of the military–political machine meant that failure at the top produced certain dislocation. The “mass” on which post-Tukhachevsky doctrine relied became too large and sluggish to be manipulated in such circumstances.
In the Finnish War of 1939 to 1940, the “initial incompetence of the Voroshilov–Mekhlis clique literally plunged the Red Army into disaster,” says John Erickson.26 He adds that apart from this high-level failure there was a fatal lack of the “nerve” that Tukhachevsky had insisted on in junior commanders: independence of spirit had been destroyed by the Purges.
The German General Staff’s secret rating of the Red Army at the end of 1939 spoke of it as a “gigantic military instrument.” Although finding the “principles of leadership good,” it added “the leadership itself is, however, too young and inexperienced.”27 In 1940, German intelligence, warning against an underestimation of the Red Army, felt that nevertheless it would take four years before that Army was back to its 1937 level of efficiency.28
There were two positive ingredients in the gloomy post-Purge scene. First, Army Commander Shaposhnikov, the Tsarist colonel, had never lost Stalin’s trust. Through the debacle, he contrived to seek out and promote talent. As Chief of Staff his powers were limited, but he brought into the senior command posts a number of efficient officers, even though not enough to make up for those rising through the whims of Stalin, Mekhlis, and Voroshilov.
Second, by great good luck, two of the old First Cavalry Army officers were fair, or good, soldiers. After Voroshilov’s Finnish effort, Timoshenko, who had picked up the pieces and was now (7 May 1940) a Marshal, was made Defense Commissar. At the same time, Zhukov took the newly revived rank of full General, and then various key commands, culminating in his appointment as Chief of Staff in January 1941.
The reforms which took place between 1940 and the German attack on Russia in 1941 were inadequate, but without them the Red Army would probably have been completely ruined in the first weeks of Hitler’s assault. Timoshenko, in effect, attempted to restore the position as it had existed under Tukhachevsky. But three years of degeneration could not be recouped in a few months.
Moreover, with Timoshenko, the grotesque Kulik, also from Stalin’s Tsaritsyn entourage of the Civil War, and commonly described in the Soviet literature as a bullying incompetent,29 was made Marshal and put in charge of the artillery arm; and another ineffective First Cavalry veteran, Tyulenev, became full General, together with Zhukov and Meretskov (the latter arrested early in the war and confessing under torture to being a terrorist plotter, but released in September 1941).
In fact, as a result of the 1940 promotions, four out of the five Marshals, two out of the three full Generals, and two of the new Colonel-Generals were from Stalin’s Civil War group. Of the eight, two were to prove useful appointments. The others ranged from mediocre to disastrous. Stalin’s concessions to military reality were not yet whole-hearted. We can be reasonably certain that but for the sharp jolt of the Finnish War, Timoshenko would not have been allowed to carry out his partial program of revitalization.
The task was tremendous—indeed, given the circumstances, impossible. But some improvement could be effected. The dual-command system was, after all, abandoned on 12 August 1940. In September, Mekhlis was removed from the Political Administration of the Army. A partial reversion to Tukhachevsky’s training methods set in. To create a new leadership and a new spirit could nevertheless not be done in the time remaining. Timoshenko was a vast improvement on Voroshilov, but the latter, and a large number of Stalinist arrivistes, remained in positions of power. And Stalin himself, with his long refusal to face the possibility of a German attack, was in final control.
When the German invasion was on the point of being launched, a leading commentator was doubtful “whether any consistent plan for the defense of the Soviet Union existed, even at this late hour….”30
Stalin’s attitude towards the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 is one of the most peculiar things about his entire career. The man who had never attached the slightest value to verbal assurances or paper promises does really seem to have thought, or hoped, that Hitler would not attack Russia. Even when overwhelming evidence was sent to him, by Soviet intelligence, by the British, by German deserters, that the Nazis were massing for attack, he gave strict orders that such reports should be treated as provocations. As far as can be seen, it was in the genuine hope of persuasion that he remarked to Schulenberg, “We must remain friends,” and told Colonel Krebs, “We will remain friends with you in any event.”31