6. Prelude to Catastrophe
The Soviets suffered extremely lopsided losses at the start of the German invasion in 1941. The seeds were planted years earlier, in Stalin’s Military Purge, which began in 1937. It removed the Soviet military’s most experienced commanders, and plunged it into chaos. 13 of 15 army commanders, 8 of 9 admirals, 50 of 57 corps commanders, all 16 army commissars, and 25 of 28 army corps commissars were executed or imprisoned or fired. The purge also decimated the best middle rank officers. Until 1937, the Soviet military had been known for its innovation. Intellectual ferment within the Red Army, such as the Theory of Deep Operations, was as creative as what Germany’s wehrmacht was doing at the time. The Soviets had their equivalents of Guderians and Mannsteins, bright officers who brimmed with new ideas and were confident that they would revolutionize warfare. They suffered the most.
The purge fell heaviest on the most creative officers, who stood out and were thus prime suspects of harboring the deviationist tendencies Stalin wanted stamped out. Thus, when the Nazis attacked, the Soviet military was poorly officered and poorly led. Stalin also failed to heed warnings that the Germans were about to invade. Those who raised the alarm were punished, as Stalin insisted the warnings were part of a plot engineered by the British to instigate a war between the USSR and Germany. Soviet commanders were not even allowed take precautionary measures, lest they provoke the Germans. Indeed, hours after the invasion began, Stalin disbelieved commanders who reported that they were being overrun. He insisted that they were experiencing isolated border incidents, not a full-blown war.
