![]() One commissar noted after the debacle against Finland that they needed to train the men to take cover under fire (page 79).Īdd to that the expansion of the Red Army and you get an Army in flux with inadequate training and leadership going into 1941. There are accounts from Catherine Merridale’s “Ivan’s War” of far too much political training for soldiers and not enough battlefield training. It also increased the political intervention of the commissars in Red Army affairs, meaning that operational or tactical prowess was not always the determining factor of who was in command. What isn’t debatable is that the fear instilled by the purges hurt Soviet innovation and made officers reluctant to be bold and fight away from textbook tactics. While Richard Overy debates the number of officers actually having been purged in 1937-1938, the fact is that Stalin did kill, detain, or arrest a significant portion of the officer corps. Going into 1941, the Red Army had serious issues.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |