Page 331 - The Chief Culprit

276 y e Chief Culprit

was first appointed chief of staff of the 38th Army, then chief of staff of the 1st Tank Army,
and then of the 1st Guards Army. He successfully fulfilled all these roles. He planned the
army operations in the most strategically important locations. In 1942, he became chief of
staff of the Southwestern Front, which included the Stalingrad region. Here once again he
performed brilliantly. S. P. Ivanov directed a number of staffs on various fronts, and always
in the most important locations of the war. In the summer of 1945, he was already a colonel
general. Stalin appointed him to be chief of staff of the High Command of Soviet troops in
the Far East. Marshal Vasilevsky was the high commander and S. P. Ivanov was the head of
the brain center. e lightning-speed defeat of Japanese troops was not only Vasilevsky’s ac-
complishment, but also Ivanov’s. S. P. Ivanov was a brilliant staff officer. He never made any
mistakes in planning. On the contrary, his plans were examples to be followed by staff officers
for many generations. How could it be that in 1941 everything in his plans was completely
incorrect?
Until February 1941, General K. A. Meretskov was the chief of general staff of the Red
Army. He was personally responsible for all war plans. From February until June 1941, the
plans could not have radically changed. Consequently, Meretskov carried the responsibility
for the defeat of the Red Army by the Germans in June 1941. But in 1945 Meretskov carried
the title of Marshal of the Soviet Union. Stalin entrusted him with the command of the 1st
Far Eastern Front.
Lieutenant General M. A. Purkaev in 1941 was the chief of staff of the Kiev special
military district, the most powerful of Soviet districts. e district was transformed into the
Southwestern Front, which was surrounded and decimated east of Kiev. In 1945, Stalin en-
trusted General Purkaev with the command of the 2nd Far Eastern Front.
In 1941, Major General R. Ya. Malinovsky commanded the 48th Rifle Corps. e
corps was stationed on the Romanian border where there were no German troops. It was
preparing for invasion, but it had to retreat. In 1945, Malinovsky was a Marshal of the Soviet
Union. Stalin trusted him with the most powerful Trans-Baikal Front and once again placed
him where the enemy was most vulnerable.
Generally, Stalin entrusted all the men who had planned the war against Germany with
planning and conducting the war against Japan.
I have been taught to search for rules in the actions of enemy troop leaders, to note
all moments that repeat themselves. If a general has a propensity to use the same maneuver
several times, his conduct in the future can be predicted and his plans can be resisted. I
used this method to analyze the battle habits of Soviet generals. I discovered that they had
constantly repeated the same preparations: before carrying out the surprise attack against
the Japanese 6th Army at Khalkhin-Gol in 1939; before invading Finland in 1939; before
the operation to take Bessarabia in 1940; before sending Soviet troops into Iran in August
1941. ey did it in all the aggressive operations of World War II, and, finally, before the
sudden defeat of Japanese troops in August 1945. In the summer of 1941, they followed the
same program.
Understandably, Japanese intelligence was unable to determine the true scope of the
Soviet troop transfer, the date of the beginning of the invasion, or the locations chosen for the
primary attacks. But still, it saw something, and in the Japanese staffs it was understood that
such a troop transfer meant that sooner or later the Red Army would attack. e Japanese had
only one way out: to carry out a preemptive strike against the Soviet troops. If the Japanese