Comments by "David Himmelsbach" (@davidhimmelsbach557) on "Stalin’s Purge of the Red Army and Its Effects on the WW2 Eastern Front" video.

Trotsky was running for his life -- and told everybody so. Your thesis stinks. Stalin had everybody cowed, terrified, kissing his azz.
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@Denying History It's tough for you to comprehend, but hostile governments don't waste their time and assets trying to play at (personal) back-stabbing politics in the Other Guy's military. I've never seen it attempted in history. It's an impossible feat to pull off, of course. From the German point of view, it's entirely irrelevant WHICH fella makes it to the top of the heap. The ONLY thing that Berlin would ever want would be military intelligence -- not making or breaking senior generals who are fighting over spoils inside the Kremlin. Of course, if the Reds ever figure out that Germany has penetrated far enough to even be in the same room with a ranking officer -- they'll throw a fit. Which is exactly what the linked video asserts did happen. As for myself, I am very sceptical of any of Stalin's assertions. The man was totally untrustworthy in every dimension. He betrayed EVERY fella that threw in his lot with him -- going all the way back. Stalin started his career as a double agent for the Tsar. No wonder he was paranoid. He kept projecting on to others his OWN motivations and gambits. HE was the king rat.
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@Denying History Tukhachevski was caught in a tryst with one of Goering's female sex-agents. ( Stalin was so impressed that he launched his own version: Yellow Swallows IIRC. ) Stalin used that as the trigger event. It turned out, at the end, that the Marshall never divulged ANYTHING to the spy. But that came out all too late. The Russians recently aired an hour-long expose of their sex-spies based entirely upon Stalin's initiative. The gals were all knock-outs, trained to murder at the drop of a hair pin and to screw like a porn queen. To graduate, they had to engage in an hours long orgy with top ranked NKVD officers -- engaging in every perversion known to prostitutes. ( Yes, they were cross-trained by pros. )
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@The Normandy goofs -- there were plenty -- lie directly at the feet of Bradley. Patton would've NEVER ph uc ked up that badly, never did. 1) The DD tanks had virtually no free-board. Meaning that they required the calm waters of a river or mill pond. That was OBVIOUS to all of the DD operators. The problem was that the operators were sgts. They were deployed in TOTALLY unsuitable waters. D-Day was one day after a storm had passed through. That's why Rommel was not even at his HQ -- few were. The heart of the German command was off war-gaming D-Day! Rommel was off on his only vacation in ages. 2) Bradley turned down FLAT Monty's offer of Hobart's flail tanks. He laughed at them. We lost A LOT of guys because there were no flail tanks at Omaha. 3) I'll stop. The gaffs are so many that I could write a book. Suffice it to say that Bradley was bailed out by the USN. Yes, USN destroyers took out the critical German pill boxes. They were NOT destroyed by ground troops at all. Bradley had the wrong idea about how to use the USN straight across the board. Close-in destroyers should've been leading the charge. Bradley attacked a fortified position that had received no prep fires. When Collins offered to provide his expertise (from the Pacific) he was turned down FLAT. And Collins commanded VII Corps -- landing at Utah! (!!!) It's not for nothing that Utah was a walk over. IIRC, they suffered some paper cuts.
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The REAL impact was HUGE because Stalin was liquidating officers based upon DOCTRINE. Anyone that he deemed in Tukhachevksy's camp was shot. The doctrine that Stalin hated was Deep Operations, which, of course, was exactly how victory was to be had. Zhukov survived because he was such a total prick. Stalin knew, without any doubt, that Zhukov's peers wanted to shoot him. He often shot them. ( Compel them to lead the next attack, personally, from the very front, with a machine gun at his back. ) Like Hitler, Stalin loved to put two tomcats in a bag -- and then shake. Zhukov brought back Deep Operations -- and had to anoint a slew of new generals -- making him the George Marshall of the Red Army. Eventually, as the war progressed, Stalin was forced by events to fire virtually all of his pre-war favorites. They were duds. Guderian was placed under 4th Army (Nominally, that's what the organization chart showed. It's commander hated Heinz, but of course. ) Rommel famously disdained Italians, hence he was sent to North Africa -- and so forth.
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@Evgeniy If it's news to you, Zhukov's peers HATED him. Stalin knew this. It the reason he was spared during the purges. Stalin's concern was always about his personal well being -- as in staying alive. He moved against threats, and Zhukov was no threat to him. No-one would EVER join with Zhukov in a plot against Stalin. He was THAT unpopular. He didn't change his stripes during the war, either. His high point in history was when he shot Beria in the head... to universal applause... well, at least the Politburo.
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The Tukhachevski tryst was revealed during this Russian broadcast. It was the first time anyone, anywhere heard such an allegation. But, the Russians stated that it was the trigger event that created the female spy squad.
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I first heard of this from an official ( Putin era ) video originally broadcast from Moscow in the last four years. It was up on YouTube, overdubbed in English. Hollywood has taken the Putin-era film as the basis for their film "Yellow Sparrows." ( Hollywood is merely juicing up what Moscow broadcast as a documentary. ) Found it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-0SMryFWpc It's wickedly fun viewing. I don't fabricate history. That's what CNN is for. But, I get 'it' with your nic. Perfect!
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@Denying History So, you lose.
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@Greg... You then must know that Stalin had HATED Tuch for almost twenty-years before he liquidated him. See: the Russo-Polish war.(1919-1920) Stalin was universally seen as the fool that lost that campaign. Heydrich's gambits were a joke to Stalin. They didn't fool him. The USSR out-spied Nazi Germany -- pretty much at every turn. (Yes, Stalin had agents inside the SD.) Russia's reverses during the war turned on Stalin not believing his own agents. In this, he repeated his stupidities of 1920, in Poland.
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His immediate boss was none other than Stalin, himself. It was Stalin who kept over-ruling Tukhachevski. Then things blew up. It was a bitter sequence of events for Stalin. He was not top dog.
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@Marko ALL of Zhukov's professional buddies -- to the extent anyone could be a buddy of Zhukov -- there are no known that fit that description -- were being purged. Their sin: Deep Operations. Stalin HATED the concept. He didn't invent it. And he sure wished that he had. EVERY purged officer in the first, go-rounds, were Deep Operations boys. Later events got totally out of hand. The NKVD just went crazy -- since the could get a banana peel to confess.
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@Marko Parabucki You're corn fusing cliques within the Red Army with grand tactics. Stalin hated, resented, the Deep Operations CREW. The fellas that had coalesced around it. They were of Tukhachevksy's camp... and Stalin was a VERY paranoid tyrant. You might note that old-line cavalry officers were kept in the saddle. These guys were on the outs with the Deep Operations crowd. Naturally, Stalin trusted them. When it quickly turned out that the Germans were whipping Soviet azz with Deep Operations, Stalin turned to Zhukov, the only savvy survivor of the purges. Zhukov gradually brought back the old crew from the gulag -- one by one. They didn't come back 'at the top' but had to work their azzes off... They also had to survive the German army.
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@Marko Buddy, tell that to STALIN. He was convinced that's exactly what was going on. So he killed them off. They were, as far as Stalin was concerned, Tukhachevksy's 'crew' // sympathizers, etc. So he whacked them all. Stalin was a politician--despot and had no time or interest in far-sighted military theory. The ins and outs of who did what, who deserves credit, when each stage happened is irrelevant WRT the purges. All that mattered was that Stalin was paranoid -- and hated Deep Operations Theory and all the thinkers behind it. Like Adolf, he was more of a 'morale-is-the-key-to-everything' guy. Stalin, Hitler and Churchill never came up to speed WRT tank warfare. This becomes obvious when you review their insane orders. Only their generals had a clue. I'm a huge fan of Winnie, but as a military man, he lacked judgment. We can all thank the Lord that Monty showed up in the nick of time. You're going off about arcana that has nothing to do with the purges. That story is one of enemies lists... of Thems and Us's. Period. The delusions of one tyrant. BTW, I don't see any difference between German blitzing and Soviet deep operations. Both punched through and sent their massed tank formations thither and yon raising Hell and breaking things. Everything else is semantics.
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@Mike Do you write for the Onion? I had to ask.
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@Mike Fay Hard Work = BORING work. To all politicals, boring work is that which is hardest. Yes, paper shuffling is ALWAYS deemed the hardest work in the world, to politicals. Keep that in mind whenever you read such accounts.
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@ Mike Fay It's a parody website. It's where the world is always turned upside down, inside out.
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@Marko Hitler gained ALL of his political support by running against the Bolsheviks, not the Jews. The latter was a vote loser, big time. Consequently all modern observers consider your view to be totally deranged. If there was ONE thing that every German agreed: Bolsheviks have to be stopped at all costs. Naturally, the Nazis beat the crap out of them in the streets. Not a tear was shed. The cops simply looked the other way. Without Bolshevism, Adolf Hitler would've gone absolutely nowhere. Thanks a lot, fellas.
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@Peter The DUD RATE for new and innovative technology was through the roof. ONLY a minor fraction of the new aircraft designs really 'cut it.' Modern viewers assume that it was idiot obvious that the P-47 and P-51 were Winners. Such was not the case until they proved out. In the beginning they were just more fighters in the running for more contracts. Unlike recent history, during WWII, the USAAF threw money at EVERY possible aircraft design -- just about. That's also why the technology grew by leaps and bounds. Entirely new firms were created that were based upon a hope and a designer. This was just as true for every other high tech weapon or gadget. Your pet idea about 40 years old as a cut-off is cute but a total non-starter.
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@Mike Fay Against DAK: 15p,21p, and German light infantry Plus a mine-field that was set for months... multiple belts. It took days and days and days to work through. So was not a trivial affair at all. 8th Army HAD to go straight at an entrenched enemy. Since there was absolutely no covering ground, such a battle is simply the worst of the worst. Even Kursk, Stalingrad and Normandy had more cover. All of the above explains why Monty needed such firepower dominance.
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@ Marshall was picked by FDR for ONE over-riding reason: Congress LOVED him. Marshall could get Congress to authorize essentially unlimited funding based on his say-so. Congress didn't trust FDR further than they could spit in a hurricane. EVERY senior American officer believed in going straight at Germany ASAP. The British idea of indirection had no takers in the Pentagon. If the US Army actually had attacked Germany in late 42// early 43 she would've had the best tanks in the world -- and in quantity -- while Hitler's legions were still stuck deep in Russia. Unoccupied France just begged to be invaded. French-Canadians + Americans would've been entirely too much for the Nazis. Keep in mind, there are absolutely NO German troops in unoccupied France. The Canadian-American landing could've occurred right in the port! There would've been absolutely no need for landing craft. By the time the Germans reacted, the Americans could've landed a Canadian army, a British army and an army for themselves. The Germans stationed in France at this time were busted formations that had to take in new blood. Many were down to the nub, 5% of original strength. The moment a unit was back to full strength, Hitler sent it back east to fight and bleed. The great mobilization of the German war machine was still off in the future. It took Speer to pull it off. So much for 'insanity.'
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