Page 125 - The Chief Culprit

86 y e Chief Culprit

Yet for decades this was published not only in the Selected Works of Tukhachevski, but
in compilations that demonstrate the best accomplishments of strategic thought.
In 1927, Chief of Staff of the Red Army Tukhachevski wrote a letter to Stalin and pro-
posed a military reform. Marshal of the Soviet Union S. S. Biruzov in his praising essay, as if
by the way, notes that: “ e addressing of these questions by M. N. Tukhachevski was correct
and timely, but as to concrete data, they needed to be made more specific.”
2
Instead of fulfilling his direct duties Tukhachevski, the genius strategist, plunged into
the development of some pipe-dream project. And everything he did was correct, timely, and
extremely necessary. Only his numbers needed to be more exact. Does one need to pay atten-
tion to such minor details?
I think, yes. e General Staff is the brain of the army. A country cannot have a man
more cautious than the Chief of General Staff. His accuracy first and foremost needs to be ap-
plied to his work with numbers. ousands of the most highly qualified officers are under the
command of the Chief of General Staff. e General Staff exists to think everything through,
count and calculate everything, and then, having weighed all the information and taken into
account the thousands of contradictory circumstances, report to the head of the country.
What numbers are we talking about? What exactly did Tukhachevski propose to Stalin?
For decades, scholars have praised Tukhachevski the innovator, who proposed something very
interesting, but for some reason nobody says what exactly it was that he proposed. We shall
think about this: could a person who did not understand the significance of numbers have
proposed anything of value?
Lieutenant General of the Air Force V. V. Serebrianikov described what sort of reform
Tukhachevski proposed to Stalin. It turns out that in December 1927 Tukhachevski, on top
of everything else, suggested to Stalin to produce during the course of 1928 alone 50,000 to
100,000 tanks. 3
Let us compare and evaluate this number.
In 1928, Hitler was not in power in Germany. Nobody could even imagine that he
would ever come to power. Germany at that time did not have one single tank. e entire
German army consisted of 100,000 soldiers, officers, and generals—all of them infantry and
cavalry. Tukhachevski proposed to have one Soviet tank for every German general, officer,
and infantry soldier in the ranks, as well as for every German messenger and cook in the
field kitchen.
On September 1, 1939, Hitler entered World War II with 2,980 tanks, among which
there were no amphibious tanks and no medium or heavy tanks. We are told that it is clear: if
Hitler had such a huge number of tanks, it must have meant they were not for defense, they
were not for Europe alone. If Hitler had built such a number of tanks, it obviously meant that
he planned to conquer the world.
I fully agree with this. But in that case, what did Tukhachevski plan to do with armadas
of 50,000 to 100,000 tanks?
e 2,980 German tanks were built not during one year, but during all the prewar
years. Tukhachevski, on the other hand, proposed to build 50,000 to 100,000 tanks in just
one year.
It is interesting to compare Tukhachevski’s plans for 1928 with real production of
tanks (not including self-propelled guns—see below) in Germany during the course of World
War II: