Page 352 - The Chief Culprit

Notes to Pages 76–97 y 297

designer Walter Christie. Back in the early 1930s he designed a draft of this concept. In the late 1930s
Oleg Antonov borrowed the American idea and made it a reality. However, Antonov was too late by the
time the war began. Besides, the war did not start the way Stalin had planned. A winged tank was flying
in 1942, but nobody needed it in a defensive war.
16. e Year 1941, 2: 366–67. In 1941: land-based 5-seater gliders: 500; land-based 11-seater gliders:
1,000; 11-seater hydroplanes: 200; land-based 20-seater gliders: 300. Total for 1941: 2,000 units. Total
for 1942: 5,500 units.
17. Index mark PS-84—passenger aircraft, factory #84. From September 17, 1942, the aircraft was named
the Li-2 in honor of the engineer-in-chief of the factory, B. P. Lisunov.
18. Aircraft Engineering in the USSR, 1917–1945 (Moscow: 1994), 2: 237.
19. Aircraft Engineering in the USSR, 1917–1945, 2: 236; Aviatsia i Vremia (Aviation and Time), no. 1 (1998),
16. Decree of the Central Committee of the VKP(b) and the Council of the People’s Commissars from
April 23, 1941, Paragraph 4 says: “for the purpose of transportation of the airborne and air-landing
troops, the heavy aircraft TB-7 and TB-3 shall be used, as well as the middle-size aircraft DB-3 and
Douglas.” With appropriate arrangements, the bombers DB-3 and DB-3F could be used to tow A-7
and G-11 gliders and to airdrop up to seven men. In 1939–41, 2,822 bombers of these types were built.
By June 22, 1941, in the western regions of the USSR and under long-distance bombing command,
1,332 aircraft were deployed, 1,122 of them DB-3 and DB-3F.
20. Documents of the Red Army High Command, Officers’ Conference, December 23–31, 1940.
21. Airborne Operations, ed. Philip, St. Croix, (London: Salamander, 1978), 30.
22. Rodimtzev, Motherland, ese Are Your Sons, 29.
23. Zhadov, Four Years of War, 16.
24. e “Guards” designation of military units appeared in the Red Army in September of 1941 as a part
of Stalin’s overall change from internationalist ideology and rhetoric toward nationalist Russian patrio-
tism, as a means of rallying people towards the defense of their Russian motherland and not the interna-
tional Communist expansionist movement. “Guards” units in tsarist Russia were the select, privileged,
best-trained, and most reliable units prior to 1917.
25. Krasnaya Zvezda, September 25, 2002.
26. Yury Nenakhov, Airborne Troops in the Second World War (Minsk: Harvest, 1998), 194. e “Guards”
designation was awarded to all newly formed air assault rifle divisions in recognition of the feats of their
predecessors in the 1941–42 campaigns and as an advance for their future military contribution.

Chapter 14
Epigraph: V. Rapoport, Yu. Alexeyev, Betrayal of the Motherland: Essays on the History of the Red Army [in
Russian] (London: Overseas Publications Interchange Ltd., 1988).
1. Questions of Strategy and Operational Art in Soviet Military Works, 1917–1940 (Moscow: Voyenizdat,
1965), 117.
2. M. Tukhachevski, Selected Works in 2 Volumes (Moscow: Voyenizdat, 1964).
3. Central Archive of the National Economy of the USSR, Fund 7297, Index 41, Case 9, Sheet 155.
4. VIZh, no. 3 (1999).

Chapter 15
1. Walther Schellenberg, e Labyrinth: Memoirs of a German Intelligence Man (Moscow: Dom Biruni,
1991).
2. VIZh, no. 1 (1993): 60–63.
3. O. F. Suvenirov, e Tragedy of the RKKA (Moscow: Terra, 1998).
4. F. W. von Mellentin, Tank Battles, 1939–1941 (St.Petersburg: Poligon, 1998), 244.
5. G. I. Gerasimov, “ e Effective Impact of the 1937–1938 Purges on the Commanding Personnel of the
RKKA [Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army],” Russian Historical Journal, no. 1 (1999).
6. J. Goebbels, Diaries of 1945, Smolensk: Rusich, 1998,

Chapter 16
Epigraph: Joseph Stalin, speech at a meeting of the Politburo of the Party Central Committee, August
19, 1939. (HAVAS News Agency, November 28, 1939).