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Kremlin Games y 185

not yet prepared for decisive action. . . . e mechanized forces will have to be used indepen-
dently, and they will solve the tasks of invasion into enemy territory.” 1
e title of the second (and very important) lecture was “ e Air Force in an Offensive
Operation and the Struggle for Air Superiority.” e lecturer was Lieutenant General P. V.
Rychagov, Chief of the Air Force Main Directorate of the Red Army. Zhukov described the
2
lecture as “very informative.” We had to wait another half a century, until the demise of the
Soviet Union, for the publication of the conference records. e essence of the “very informa-
tive lecture” boiled down to this: “ e best means of defeating [an] air force on the ground
is a simultaneous strike at a large number of air bases where the enemy’s aviation is possibly
located.” 3
Colonel General of Tank Troops D. G. Pavlov, commander of the Western special mili-
tary district, delivered the lecture titled “ e use of mechanized units in contemporary of-
fensive operations and breakthrough by mechanized corps.” Pavlov said: “Poland has ceased
to exist after seventeen days. e operation in Belgium and Holland ended after fifteen days.
e operation in France, before France’s capitulation, lasted seventeen days. ese are three
very characteristic numbers, which cannot but force me to accept them as a possible number
for our calculations of our offensive operation.”
4
At that time, according to the Soviet Field Statute, the line of defense for a division
was eight to twelve kilometers wide. e lecturers at the conference unanimously advocated
a widening of that line. at regulation meant a very high density of troops for defense lines.
Why put so many troops on the defensive, confining them to sitting without use, when those
troops were needed on the offensive? Other possibilities were examined as well, including
concentrating all the forces in those locations where the Soviet Union would carry out sudden
strikes against Germany, leaving secondary locations defenseless with a completely bare bor-
der in those places. is theory was supported by the Chief of Staff of the Leningrad military
district, Major General P. G. Ponedelin. When, a month after the conference, Zhukov be-
came the Chief of General Staff of the Red Army he did not forget Ponedelin, who advocated
the baring of the front. Zhukov offered Ponedelin a post in a primary location: Ponedelin
became commander of the 12th Army in the Lvov-Chernovitsi bulge. Ponedelin acted in the
interests of an offensive: all force was concentrated in the “hitting fist” and the border was left
bare. In the summer of 1941, Ponedelin’s 12th Army, as well as all Soviet troops of the 1st
Strategic Echelon, was crushed. Ponedelin himself was taken prisoner. After the war, he was
brought to Moscow under guard, tried, and executed.
e lecture titled “ e Character of Contemporary Defensive Operations” was given
by General of the Army I. V. Tulenev, commander of the Moscow military district. So, the
questions dealing with defense were examined after all! Here is what Tulenev had to say
in his lecture: “We have no established contemporary defense theory.” is was the truth.
5
Until December 1940, Soviet military theory did not work on questions of defense. After
December, it did not work on them either. Tulenev said that such a theory was unnecessary.
e Soviet Union would defend itself, but only in separate secondary locations. e goal was
to conduct grandiose sudden offensive operations on enemy territory, and therefore to amass
huge forces in narrow areas. e Soviet Union had to take almost all forces out of second-
ary locations; it would defend itself in the bare areas. Tulenev expressed the thought that