Page 126 - The Chief Culprit

About the Brilliant Military Leader Tukhachevski y 87

Y T
1939 743
1940 1,515
1941 3,113
1942 4,276
1943 5,663
1944 7,975
1945 956

In total, during the prewar months of 1939 and all the subsequent years of the war,
Germany produced 24,241 tanks. Japan built 5,085 tanks, most of them light.
We have been taught a formulaic phrase: “the German fascists and Japanese militarists.”
Indeed, if they produced such a large number of tanks, 24,241 and 5,085 respectively, it
is clear to everybody that this is fascism and militarism. But the question arises: Who was
Tukhachevski, in the context of these fascists and militarists striving for world domination?
After the war the Soviet Union, already a much more powerful industrial giant, had
50,000 tanks, or even slightly more. But these tanks were not produced in one year; they had
accumulated for decades.
But even this careful gradual accumulation of tanks did not save the Soviet Union. e
great industrial giant crumbled. Its legs folded under its weight. ose very same thousands
of tanks played far from a minor role in the crumbling of the Soviet Union.
Meanwhile, the brilliant Tukhachevski proposed that Stalin not gradually, for decades,
amass such a might, but that he produce all at once, in one year, 50,000 to 100,000 tanks.
e result of such an action is easy to predict: the legs of the Soviet Union would have folded
immediately.
e USSR had no tank factories at that time. Even if they had existed, it would still
first of all have been necessary to stop production of all heavy machinery—automobiles,
ships, locomotives, railroad cars, tractors, and all others—and to remodel these factories to
produce tanks.
If one had accepted Tukhachevski’s proposal, it would have been necessary to stop all
the industry of a gigantic country for a minimum of one year and fully remodel it for produc-
ing tanks.
By the standards of any army, two hundred to three hundred tanks are a tank division.
In the 1970s, during the peak of the Cold War, the American army, the army of the most
powerful nation in the world, had sixteen divisions, among them four tank divisions.
Hitler went after world domination in September 1939 with just six tank divisions. In
1927 neither Germany, nor the United States, nor France, nor Japan had any tank divisions.
If Stalin had listened to Tukhachevski and produced 50,000 to 100,000 tanks, the Soviet
Union within one year would have had 166 to 500 tank divisions.
At that time the crew of one tank consisted of three men. Crews for 50,000 to 100,000
tanks would have meant that the tank troops would need to number 150,000 to 300,000
soldiers, correct? No, incorrect.
Tank crews make up an insignificant minority of men in a tank division. First of all,
tanks must constantly and at the right time be supplied with liquid fuel and lubricants. Tanks
also need shells and cartridges. is adds another column of automobiles with ammunition.