Page 136 - The Chief Culprit

e Cleansing y 97

We have been taught to think that Stalin executed all the intelligent people and left
only idiots in command of the army. But here is the opinion of German Major General F. W.
von Mellentin, who fought against the Red Army: “ e Russian high command knows its
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job better than the command of any other army.” So it seems that Stalin did not execute all
the geniuses before the war; some of them were left.
e enemy’s opinion cannot always be trusted, so let us see what the Russian historians
say about the effect that the purges of 1937–38 had on the Red Army. G. Gerasimov had
studied the hard data and compared the characteristics of the commanders on the eve of
German invasion in 1941 and in 1936, before the purges started:

In 1941, 7.1 percent of all commanders had higher education, while in 1936 that figure
was only 6.6 percent;
In 1941, 52 percent of the generals had higher education, in 1936 only 29 percent;
In 1941, 29.5 percent of all commanders had combat experience, while in 1934–38 that
figure was 23 percent. 5

Gerasimov had also found that many of the purged commanders were heroes of the
Civil War. Treated as such, they were quickly promoted to the political leadership and, though
retaining their high ranks, they in fact left active military service. On the other hand, their
less illustrious comrades had to plod through the ranks and thus acquired the experience that
the political leaders clearly lacked.
With all that said, Gerasimov hints that the purges might have brought fear and uncer-
tainty among the commanders of the Red Army. But he admits that this criterion can hardly
be measured, and his final conclusion is that the purges did not weaken the Red Army.
A surprising fact: Stalin’s marshals—Rokossovskii, Malinovsky, Govorov, Meretskov,
and Vassilevsky—during the course of the war performed true miracles. Goebbels wrote the
following about them in his diary on March 15, 1945: “Stalin has all the reasons to honor the
Soviet marshals like movie stars, they showed remarkable military talents.” But in the sum-
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mer of 1941 all these men, to put it subtly, did not show remarkable talents. So what hap-
pened? ey were idiots in the beginning of the war, and then got smarter by the end? at
does not happen. A man acquires experience in the war, but an idiot always stays an idiot. e
idiots of 1941 could not have turned into outstanding troop leaders.
Only one conclusion follows from all this: Stalin’s commanders were not idiots in 1941.
e reasons for the defeat of the Red Army in 1941 should be searched for, but not in the
stupidity of Stalin’s generals.