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loki100 -> RE: Micheal T (Ger) vs Kamil (Sov) (6/20/2013 8:06:40 AM)
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quote:
ORIGINAL: Pelton
The facts are:
2. Russian units only trained to do offensive tactics. None of the 4 fronts had a single plan to do defensive operations, NONE. All the plans were for offensive operations.
3. All the divisions were in positions to conduct a counter attack or and out right offensive on the western borders with Germany.
Stalin would not and shot anyone who disagreed with his strategy.
You really are a bundle of charm aren't you.
Ok, lets take #2. PPs 64-72, of John Erickson's Road to Stalingrad covers a command conference of the Red Army in December 1940 - Jan 1941.
I go down to the list of major presentations, p. 65 - "General IV Tyulenev - The nature of modern defensive operations". Now forgive me, but that sounds like planning for the defense (and Stalin was present at the time).
It goes on to discuss a debate between Romannenko and Zhukov about the lessons from Khalkhin Gol. Zhukov put forward the view favoured by Stalin, Budenny et al. Romanenko survived. Same source p. 79, significant debate, with Stalin (& Mekhlis et al) present about the lessons from the conference and the resulting wargames.
This is not to argue that the USSR was some democratic paradise or that the Red Army was open house for anyone's ideas. But then, unless I've missed the examples, not many armed forces are. Equally, yes of course the purges did a lot of damage, and one problem the Red Army had in early 1941 was how to smuggle Tukhachevski's ideas back in but not mention him by name.
Now Erickson was, by no stretch of the imagination, a communist. He could though read Russian and unusually in the Cold War had wide access to the Stavka archives (as well as able to interview people like Koniev). In part as the Soviet general staff recognised he could tell them things about the conduct of the Great Patriotic War - in particular without needing to fit any 'lessons' into whatever was the current orthodoxy.
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