No Red Army Purge 1940: Consequences

No Red Army Purge 1940 by Stalin: Consequences

  • A. Stalin leader, better Defence than OTL

    Votes: 23 79.3%
  • B. Stalin leader, worse Defence than OTL

    Votes: 1 3.4%
  • C. Stalin replaced, better Defence than OTL

    Votes: 1 3.4%
  • D. Stalin replaced, worse Defence than OTL

    Votes: 4 13.8%

  • Total voters
    29

hammo1j

Donor
Roughly speaking each of the options translates into

A. Stalin Leader and Better defensive Performance

It was Stalin's paranoia that led him to purge the Red Army. Once the threat was identified the Officer Corps rallied around their country's survival and delivered a superior performance that the 'Yes' men they were replaced with OTL lacked the mental flexibility to provide.

B. Stalin Leader and Worse Defensive Performance

The intelligentsia of educated military personnel kept their powder dry to see if an opportunity would arise to dispose of this despot and still retain control of their country. Stalin, wise to this, began his purge while the invasion took place.

C. Stalin Deposed and Better Defensive Performance

Following Stalin's failure to acknowledge the invasion of the Soviet Union, the officer corps took swift action to replace him with a figure that was capable of repelling the German threat. The early encirclements were greatly reduced and a better led military meant that the Wermacht were more easily repulsed than OTL.

D. Stalin Deposed and Worse Defensive Performance

Stalin executed in a coup, opposing factions fought in a civil war that meant the Germans were able to quickly move to their objectives, possibly favouring one faction above the other as a temporary means to victory.
 
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If non-purged Red Army does better in Finland, they might not learn the asymmetric winter warfare tactics they subsequently employed against the Germans...
 
If non-purged Red Army does better in Finland, they might not learn the asymmetric winter warfare tactics they subsequently employed against the Germans...

Those were known, but the use of hastily mobilized and undertrained resrvist formations in the opening months rendered the question of tactics moot. The commanders and staff from battalion to division HQ were stale in the basics. Ie: the Finns captured a number of columns in administrative march forward, because of a lack of route reconissance, road guides, or advance parties to inspect assembly and lagguer areas.
 
Didn't Hitler and Goebbels provide phony evidence that got the purges started?

Whatever caused Stalin to decide on the destruction of the generals, it was not German disinformation.

Stalin had already decided on his own to get rid of Tukhachevsky and the others. The alleged forged dossier compiled by the Germans does not seem to have been used in the secret trial of the generals (which was simply based on confessions extorted by torture). https://books.google.com/books?id=fLpnCgAAQBAJ&pg=PA147 Moreover, if as alleged, Skoblin provided the Germans with false "evidence" of anti-Stalin plotting, he very likely did so on Stalin's behalf as an NKVD agent. https://books.google.com/books?id=7HPp4JRiZqEC&pg=PA95 (If the dossier was not used against the generals, you might ask, what would be Stalin's point in helping the Germans to compile it? A possible answer is that the dossier could help convince western statesmen like Benes--to whom the dossier was leaked and who in turn conveyed it to Stalin--that Stalin was acting in good faith against a real menace.)

Indeed, "Stalin had been contemplating the destruction of Bukharin and Tukhachevsky in the precise scenario deployed in 1937 for years. “Is it possible?” he had written to Orjonikidze about interrogation protocols implicating Tukhachevsky in a coup plot with Bukharin, Rykov, and Tomsky. “Of course it is possible.” Stalin had answered his own question: “It seems the rightists are prepared to take the path of military dictatorship if only to escape from the Central Committee, collective and state farms, Bolshevik tempos of industrialization.” Here was the nub of 1937—but the letter had been sent September 24, 1930..." http://www.e-reading.club/bookreader.php/1059356/Kotkin_Stephen_-_Stalin_Volume_2.html
 
I don't get the subject. The Red Army purge was in 1937-8, not 1940. (Indeed, a substantial number of officers who had been purged but not executed were reinstated by mid-1940. [1]) If what is meant is "what would be the consequences of 'no Red Army purge in 1937-8' by 1940?" it should have been put more clearly.

[1] "By mid-1940 nearly one-third of all officers who had been expelled from the party and discharged from the army had successfully appealed both their expulsions and discharges and had been reinstated in the party and in their jobs." http://www.historynet.com/stalin-attacks-red-army.htm
 
While Stalin wasn't the friendliest comrade, I find the military purge difficult to contextualise as simply a case of "Koba, why must I die?" as opposed to Stalin's other option "Dance Khrushchev, dance."

Something closer to Djilas' claim that the new class had to purge itself to maintain purity of line in oppressing worker and peasant come a to my mind.

Which means apart from his personal kill list, the more extensive military purge must be based in hysteric self-preservation for the nomenklatura. Not part your versus military, but nomenklatura versus itself.

Not that there's much love here, but what if other than the "personal" list we moved half the executed into normal GuLag, and the other half into "without rights of correspondence." You could get up to 60% trickle back depending on who gets beaten to death in open camps / pulled out of closed camps before they're liquidated.

Yours,
Sam R.
 
Soviet victory inevitable after successful operation Uranus. (15 months after war started). So better officers might have accelerated this pivot - by avoiding some of the early casualties - especially the capture of 5 million or so soldiers in 1941. But a lot of those due to Stalin's no retreat policy. I doubt they'd have tried to get rid of Stalin. The politburo wanted him to come out of his shell in the week after Barbarossa, not replace him. So its really a question of would he have been able to delegate better in the first months...
 

nbcman

Donor
I don't get the subject. The Red Army purge was in 1937-8, not 1940. (Indeed, a substantial number of officers who had been purged but not executed were reinstated by mid-1940. [1]) If what is meant is "what would be the consequences of 'no Red Army purge in 1937-8' by 1940?" it should have been put more clearly.

[1] "By mid-1940 nearly one-third of all officers who had been expelled from the party and discharged from the army had successfully appealed both their expulsions and discharges and had been reinstated in the party and in their jobs." http://www.historynet.com/stalin-attacks-red-army.htm
There was an additional purge that started in late 1940 through 1941. Quite a few of those charged had been involved in the Spanish Civil War. Quite a few of these leaders were arrested immediately before and after the start of Barbarossa.
 

nbcman

Donor
But the later purge was mostly in 1941, was on a much lesser scale than that of 1937-8, and was clearly not what the original post was about.
The OP does indicate under item B "Stalin, wise to this, began his purge while the invasion took place." which would imply that the OP is talking about the 1940-41 purge, not the Great Purge.
 
The OP does indicate under item B "Stalin, wise to this, began his purge while the invasion took place." which would imply that the OP is talking about the 1940-41 purge, not the Great Purge.

But then why "1940" if we are talking about a purge that started during the invasion?
 
One answer might be is possible efficiency in inflicting losses on the German army. OTL the Wehrmacht lost 790,000 men by 30 Oct 1941. If the purge not continuing into 1940-41 makes the Red Army 15 pct more effcient at inflicting losses, then the Germans losses would be 908,000 ?
 

hammo1j

Donor
I don't get the subject. The Red Army purge was in 1937-8, not 1940. (Indeed, a substantial number of officers who had been purged but not executed were reinstated by mid-1940. [1]) If what is meant is "what would be the consequences of 'no Red Army purge in 1937-8' by 1940?" it should have been put more clearly.

[1] "By mid-1940 nearly one-third of all officers who had been expelled from the party and discharged from the army had successfully appealed both their expulsions and discharges and had been reinstated in the party and in their jobs." http://www.historynet.com/stalin-attacks-red-army.htm
 

hammo1j

Donor
Apologies David you are right my lack of history shows here.

It looks like to some degree purges were occurring all of the time from the 1920s up to 1953 to some degree or other.

Perhaps pre-war purges would be a better term than 1940 purges.

The question that I meant to ask was did having brute unity as a result of the purges counteract the effect of removing capable free thinking people.
 
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