Mikhail Tukhachevsky: Difference between revisions
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Deep battle, in Tukhachevsky's thinking, organized the forces into four echelons of | Deep battle, in Tukhachevsky's thinking, organized the forces into four echelons of corps or [[army]] sized units, or equivalent air forces. | ||
#Aircraft with the mission of destroying enemy formations and gaining local air supremacy | #Aircraft with the mission of destroying enemy formations and gaining local air supremacy | ||
#infantry and mechanized mix would engage the enemy front-line forces and develop a penetration | #infantry and mechanized mix would engage the enemy front-line forces and develop a penetration |
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![]() Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky (1893-1937), sometimes called the "Red Bonaparte", was a Marshal of the Soviet Union when he was purged and shot. At the time, he was Commander of the Volga Military District, a senior post but a demotion from First Deputy Defense Minister and Head of Military Training, 1936. From 1934 onwards, he had been a member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party. His relationship with Joseph Stalin had been stormy, going back to the civil war in 1920-1921, and especially when Stalin was a political commissar while Tukhachevsky commanded the invasion of Poland. Early lifeHis early life and professional career gave him both significant advantages, and also grounds to be distrusted in the Soviet system. Born into an aristocratic family of polish origin in 1893, Tukhachevsky graduated from Aleksandrovskye Military School in 1914, joining the Semyenovsky guards regiment. Captured by the Germans as a lieutenant, he was held, as a prisoner of war in Ingolstadt fortress along with Charles De Gaulle. [1] After five attempts, he escaped back to Russia. Joining the Red Army and Bolshevik Party in 1918, he advanced by military ability, caring little for party ideology. In two years, he was to go from lieutenant to army commander. Civil WarHe commanded the main attack, in 1920-1921, into Poland.[2] A Soviet theoretician, V.K. Triandafillov, analyzed the campaign, and concluded that due to inadequate mobilizationd and logistics, the “Red Army suffered an attrition of combat power so that at the culmination of the campaign its divisions had exhausted their combat power and were vulnerable to the Polish counteroffensive." This was to become the basis of Soviet deep maneuver thinking, along with Tukhachevsky's own reflections, which resulted in the concept of gluboky boi – deep battle. Combined, they “developed a strategic theory of successive operations based on the Soviet military failure against Poland in 1920 and the failed German offensives against France in 1918. as would later be seen in WWII, after the Soviets faced disaster and introduced the Operational Maneuver Group at the Battle of Kursk [3] Deep battle, in Tukhachevsky's thinking, organized the forces into four echelons of corps or army sized units, or equivalent air forces.
Senior careerAfter the civil war, his posts included:
In his work with armaments, he was especially interested in rockets, which would become a major Soviet strength, and mechanized warfare. He sponsored Sergei Korolev, who would become a major aerospace designer, in establishing a research bureau in 1931. By 1933, they had tested a five-ton liquid propellant rocket engine, but this was not followed into long-range missile development. [4] PurgeThere are a dizzying range of explanations of the involvement of Stalin, and of Germans up to and including Adolf Hitler himself. The Marshal had a prisoner of war Germany before the Russian Revolution, which was enough to draw suspicion under Stalin. He was talented, but and, from a surprising source, we have testimony about his personality, a personality apt to provoke Stalin's jealousy and a desire to take revenge. Tukhachevsky made violins as a hobby, and had become close friends with the composer, Dmitri Shostakovitch. Shostakovitch described him as a "very ambitious and imperious person," who seemed to be the Red Army's favorite. [5] Among the possibilities, not mutually exclusive, were:
Walter Schellenberg suggests that Hitler eventually had to decide if he wanted to deal with Russia under Stalin or Tukhachevsky.[6] Pavel Sudoplatov says that Lavrenti Beria received a dossier and sent it to Stalin. [7] Stalin, however, did not use the documents, but, was his want, "rounded up the usual suspects" in the General Staff and forced them to confess what he wanted. A huge purge of the Soviet leadership resulted, which may well have crippled the Soviet response to the German 1941 invasion, including:
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