162-968: The Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization , also known as the Military Case or the Tukhachevsky Case , was a 1937 secret trial of the high command of the Red Army , a part of the Great Purge . The Case was a secret trial , unlike the Moscow Show Trials . It is traditionally considered one of the key trials of the Great Purge . Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky and the senior military officers Iona Yakir , Ieronim Uborevich , Robert Eideman , August Kork , Vitovt Putna , Boris Feldman , and Vitaly Primakov (as well as Yakov Gamarnik , who committed suicide before
324-500: A German radio station in Gleiwitz . The SD took concentration-camp inmates condemned to die, and fitted them with Polish Army uniforms which Heinz Jost had acquired from Admiral Wilhelm Canaris ' Abwehr (military intelligence). Leading this mission and personally selected by Heydrich was SS veteran Alfred Naujocks , who later reported during a War Criminal proceeding that he brought a Polish-speaking German along so he could broadcast
486-728: A blow at both the Soviet Union and his archenemy Wilhelm Canaris of the German Abwehr, Heydrich immediately acted on the information and undertook to improve on it, forging a series of documents implicating Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders; these were later passed to the Soviets via Edvard Beneš and other neutral parties. While the Germans believed they had successfully deluded Stalin into executing his best generals, in reality, they had merely served as useful and unwitting pawns of Stalin. It
648-494: A career in the party when he suppressed the Tambov rebellion . Suvorov compared the change of leadership in the Army to the teeth of a shark: each new row is sharper than the previous one. Vadim Rogovin 's book 1937: Stalin's Year of Terror contains a lengthy discussion of another unexplained mystery: that it took only about two weeks to force admissions of guilt from the accused despite
810-536: A collective committee of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko , Pavel Dybenko , and Nikolai Krylenko . At the same time, Nikolay Dukhonin was acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after Alexander Kerensky fled from Russia. On 12 November 1917 the Soviet government appointed Krylenko as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and because of an "accident" during the forceful displacement of the commander-in-chief, Dukhonin
972-550: A common border between Japanese controlled areas and the Soviet Far East and Mongolia . The Soviets and Japanese, including their respective client states of the Mongolian People's Republic and Manchukuo , disputed the boundaries and accused the other side of border violations. This resulted in a series of escalating border skirmishes and punitive expeditions , including the 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan , and culminated in
1134-401: A critical role in consolidating political-police powers into the hands of Himmler and Heydrich. Once Hitler was appointed Chancellor by German President Paul von Hindenburg , he quickly made efforts to manipulate the aging president. On 28 February 1933, Hitler convinced Hindenburg to declare a state of emergency which suspended all civil liberties throughout Germany, due at least in part to
1296-544: A decree on 1 July 1937, clearly defining the SD's areas of responsibility as those dealing with "learning ( Wissenschaft ), art, party and state, constitution and administration, foreign lands, Freemasonry and associations" whereas the "Gestapo's jurisdiction was Marxism, treason, and emigrants". Additionally, the SD was responsible for matters related to "churches and sects, pacifism, the Jews, right-wing movements", as well as "the economy, and
1458-418: A further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million prisoners of war (POW) dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. Officials at
1620-498: A hundred times as many tanks . The Red Army, however, had been hindered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge of 1937, reducing the army's morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of the fighting. With over 30,000 of its army officers executed or imprisoned, most of whom were from the highest ranks, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers. Because of these factors, and high commitment and morale in
1782-450: A major reshuffling took place in the Soviet military administration. On 13 March 1918, the Soviet government accepted the official resignation of Krylenko and the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was liquidated. On 14 March 1918, Leon Trotsky replaced Podvoisky as the Narkom of War Affairs. On 16 March 1918, Pavel Dybenko was relieved from the office of Narkom of Marine Affairs. On 8 May 1918,
SECTION 10
#17330848661851944-498: A message in Polish from the German radio station "under siege" to the effect that it was time for an all out confrontation between Germans and Poles. To add documented proof of this attack, the SD operatives placed the fictitious Polish troops (killed by lethal injection, then shot for appearance) around the "attacked" radio station with the intention of taking members of the press to the site of
2106-407: A mixture of fear and foreboding," and people wanted as little to do with them as possible. Belonging to the security apparatus of Nazi Germany obviously had its advantages but it was also fraught with occupationally related social disadvantages as well, and if post-war descriptions of the SD by historians are any indication, membership therein implied being a part of a "ubiquitous secret society" which
2268-584: A myriad of cameras and photographic equipment, focusing efforts on important strategic locations like government buildings, police stations, postal services, public utilities, logistical routes, and above all, airfields. Hitler worked out a sophisticated plan to acquire the Sudetenland, including manipulating Slovak nationalists to vie for independence and the suppression of this movement by the Czech government. Under directions from Heydrich, SD operative Alfred Naujocks
2430-630: A parent front . Sicherheitsdienst Sicherheitsdienst ( German: [ˈzɪçɐhaɪtsˌdiːnst] , "Security Service"), full title Sicherheitsdienst des Reichsführers-SS ("Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS "), or SD , was the intelligence agency of the SS and the Nazi Party in Nazi Germany . Established in 1931, the SD was the first Nazi intelligence organization and
2592-728: A plot from Ernst Röhm 's SA using subversive means. On 20 April 1934 Hermann Göring handed over control of the Geheime Staatspolizei ( Gestapo ) to Himmler. Heydrich, named chief of the Gestapo by Himmler on 22 April 1934, also continued as head of the SD. These events further extended Himmler's control of the security mechanism of the Reich, which by proxy also strengthened the surveillance power of Heydrich's SD, as both entities methodically infiltrated every police agency in Germany. Subsequently,
2754-612: A potential rival and source of opposition to their planned purge of the nomenklatura . The fall of the first eight generals was swiftly followed by the arrest of most of the People's Commissars, nearly all regional party secretaries, hundreds of Central Committee members and candidates and thousands of lesser CPSU officials. At the end, three of five Soviet Marshals, 90% of all Red Army generals, 80% of Red Army colonels and 30,000 officers of lesser rank had been purged, although some were allowed to return to service during World War II. At first, it
2916-573: A single Kreis , and, in turn, to be composed of wards ( Revier ), but such an ambitious network never emerged. Eventually, the SD-sub-districts acquired the simple designation of 'outposts' ( Aussenstellen ) as the lowest level-office in the field structure. The SD was mainly an information-gathering agency, while the Gestapo—and to a degree the Criminal Police ( Kriminalpolizei or Kripo)—was
3078-540: A stable nucleus. By 1925, this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–1938. The Soviet military received ample funding and was innovative in its technology. An American journalist wrote in 1941: Even in American terms
3240-460: A surrender the following day although some Japanese units continued to fight for several more days. A proposed Soviet invasion of Hokkaido , the second largest Japanese island, was originally planned to be part of the territory to be taken but it was cancelled. Military administration after the October Revolution was taken over by the People's Commissariat of War and Marine affairs headed by
3402-418: A tank regiment, a motorized infantry regiment, as well as reconnaissance and artillery battalions. From this humble beginning, the Soviets would go on to create the first operational-level armored formations in history, the 11th and 45th Mechanized Corps , in 1932. These were tank-heavy formations with combat support forces included so they could survive while operating in enemy rear areas without support from
SECTION 20
#17330848661853564-598: A unit of Verfügungstruppe or Totenkopf [Death Head] formations. Correspondingly, SD affiliated units, including the Einsatzgruppen followed German troops into Austria, the Sudetenland, Bohemia, Moravia, Poland, Lithuania, as well as Russia. Since their task included cooperating with military leadership and vice versa, suppression of opposition in the occupied territories was a joint venture. There were territorial disputes and disagreement about how some of these policies were to be implemented. Nonetheless, by June 1941,
3726-618: A while, the SS competed with the Sturmabteilung (SA) for influence within Germany. Himmler distrusted the SA and came to deplore the "rabble-rousing" brownshirts (despite once having been a member) and what he saw as indecent sexual deviants amid its leadership. At least one pretext to secure additional influence for Himmler's SS and Heydrich's SD in "protecting" Hitler and securing his absolute trust in their intelligence collection abilities, involved thwarting
3888-567: Is notable that the forged documents were not even used by Soviet military prosecutors against the generals in their secret trial but instead relied on false confessions extorted or beaten out of the defendants. Afraid of the consequences of trying popular generals and war heroes in a public forum, Stalin ordered the trial also be kept secret and for the defendants to be executed immediately following their court-martial. Tukhachevsky and his fellow defendants were probably tortured into confessions. All convicts were rehabilitated on January 31, 1957 for
4050-473: Is now no credible evidence that any of them ever conspired to eliminate him. Victor Suvorov has claimed that the purge was intended to replace Red Army officers with more competent generals for his future conquests. For example, he claims that the ultimate reason why Tukhachevsky was killed is because he failed to conquer Poland during the Polish-Soviet War; despite this failure, Tukhachevsky had made
4212-609: The Einsatzgruppen . In fact, all members of the Einsatzgruppen wore the SD sleeve diamond on their uniforms. The SD-SiPo was the primary agency, in conjunction with the Ordnungspolizei , assigned to maintain order and security in the Nazi ghettos established by the Germans throughout occupied Eastern Europe. On 7 December 1941, the same day as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor ,
4374-715: The Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU), where Vyacheslav Molotov called for more thorough exposure of " wreckers " within the Red Army since they "had already been found in all segments of the Soviet economy ". General Mikhail Tukhachevsky was arrested on May 22, 1937 and charged, along with seven other Red Army commanders, with the creation of a "right-wing- Trotskyist " military conspiracy and espionage for Nazi Germany , based on confessions obtained from other arrested officers. Before 1990, it
4536-481: The German capital, Berlin . Up to 34 million soldiers served in the Red Army during World War II, 8 million of which were non-Slavic minorities. Officially, the Red Army lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) ( mostly captured ). The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). Of
4698-529: The Gestapo (formed in 1933) was considered its sister organization through the integration of SS members and operational procedures. The SD was administered as an independent SS office between 1933 and 1939. That year, the SD was transferred over to the Reich Security Main Office ( Reichssicherheitshauptamt ; RSHA), as one of its seven departments. Its first director, Reinhard Heydrich , intended for
4860-530: The Gulag . During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) (most captured). Of the 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and
5022-718: The Nuremberg Laws were passed in 1935, the SD reported that the measures against the Jews were well received by the German populace. In 1936, the police were divided into the Ordnungspolizei (Orpo or Order Police) and the Sicherheitspolizei (SiPo or Security Police). The Orpo consisted mainly of the Schutzpolizei (urban police), the Gendarmerie (rural police) and the Gemeindepolizei (municipal police). The SiPo
Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization - Misplaced Pages Continue
5184-569: The Reichstag fire on the previous night. Hitler assured Hindenburg throughout that he was attempting to stabilize the tumultuous political scene in Germany by taking a "defensive measure against Communist acts of violence endangering the state". Wasting no time, Himmler set the SD in motion as they began creating an extensive card-index of the Nazi regime's political opponents, arresting labor organizers, socialists, Jewish leaders, journalists, and communists in
5346-697: The Russian Constituent Assembly (5–6 January 1918) and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), removing Russia from the First World War. Freed from international obligations, the Red Army confronted an internecine war against a variety of opposing anti-Bolshevik forces, including the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno , the anti-White and anti-Red Green armies , efforts to restore
5508-602: The Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August 1945 (three days after the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the same day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki , while also being exact three months after the surrender of Germany). It was the largest campaign of the Soviet–Japanese War , which resumed hostilities between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace following
5670-948: The United States . In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $ 11 billion in materials ($ 180 billion in the 2020 money value): over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans ); 14,015 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras , 2,908 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,400 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras ) and 1.75 million tons of food. Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially in Germany . The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence. According to historian Antony Beevor , whose books were banned in 2015 from some Russian schools and colleges, NKVD (Soviet secret police) files have revealed that
5832-609: The Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis's numeric superiority rendered the combatants' divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably Georgy Zhukov ) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow , at Stalingrad , Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive. In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army's esprit de corps with propaganda stressing
5994-502: The Wehrmacht was especially harsh. Per a 1941 Stalin directive , Red Army officers and soldiers were to "fight to the last" rather than surrender; Stalin stated: "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors". During and after World War II freed POWs went to special " filtration camps ". Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions . In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by
6156-578: The brigade and regimental levels. The commissars also had the task of spying on commanders for political incorrectness . In August 1918, Trotsky authorized General Mikhail Tukhachevsky to place blocking units behind politically unreliable Red Army units, to shoot anyone who retreated without permission. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) Joseph Stalin reintroduced the blocking policy and penal battalions with Order 227 . The Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919 occurred at
6318-532: The death penalty . Simultaneously, Trotsky carried out a mass recruitment of officers from the old Imperial Russian Army , who were employed as military advisors ( voenspetsy ). The Bolsheviks occasionally enforced the loyalty of such recruits by holding their families as hostages. As a result of this initiative, in 1918 75% of the officers were former tsarists . By mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former tsarist personnel included 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 non-commissioned officers . When
6480-422: The purges that followed. The trial triggered a massive subsequent purge of the Red Army . In September 1938, the People's Commissar for Defense, Kliment Voroshilov , reported that a total of 37,761 officers and commissars were dismissed from the army, 10,868 were arrested and 7,211 were condemned for anti-Soviet crimes. The trial was preceded by several purges of the Red Army. In the mid-1920s, Leon Trotsky
6642-407: The triumphantly advancing enemy. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies. We have no power to stay the enemy; only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction." The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) can be divided into three periods: At the start of the civil war, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments . The civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved
Case of the Trotskyist Anti-Soviet Military Organization - Misplaced Pages Continue
6804-627: The "Second Soviet-Finnish War") which was a conflict fought by Finland and Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944. In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939. On 30 November, the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the Winter War of 1939–1940. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, Nazi Germany shared an extensive border with
6966-481: The "absence of essence of an offence". It was concluded that arrests, investigations and trials were performed in violation of procedural norms and based on forced confessions , in many cases obtained with the aid of physical violence. “To the Red army, Stalin has dealt a fearful blow. As a result of the latest judicial frameup, it has fallen several cubits in stature. The interests of the Soviet defense have been sacrificed in
7128-535: The "life domain" or Lebensgebiet of the German population. Gathered information was then distributed by the SD through secret internal political reports entitled Meldungen aus dem Reich (reports from the Reich) to the upper echelons of the Nazi Party, enabling Hitler's régime to evaluate the general morale and attitude of the German people so they could be manipulated by the Nazi propaganda machine in timely fashion. When
7290-476: The 1932–1939 Soviet–Japanese border conflicts . The Red Army, with support from Mongolian forces, overwhelmed the Japanese Kwantung Army and local Chinese forces supporting them. The Soviets advanced on the continent into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo , Mengjiang (the northeast section of present-day Inner Mongolia which was part of another puppet state) and via an amphibious operation
7452-521: The 1936 Provisional Field Regulations (PU-36). The Great Purge of 1937–1939 and the 1941 Red Army Purge removed many leading officers from the Red Army, including Tukhachevsky himself and many of his followers, and the doctrine was abandoned. Thus, at the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 and in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 ( major border conflicts with the Imperial Japanese Army ), the doctrine
7614-499: The 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. The official grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million. Officials at the Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists
7776-614: The All-Russian Chief Headquarters was created, headed by Nikolai Stogov and later Alexander Svechin . On 2 September 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) was established as the main military administration under Leon Trotsky, the Narkom of War Affairs. On 6 September 1918 alongside the chief headquarters, the Field Headquarters of RMC was created, initially headed by Nikolai Rattel . On
7938-555: The Army. The Council of People's Commissars appointed itself the supreme head of the Red Army, delegating command and administration of the army to the Commissariat for Military Affairs and the Special All-Russian College within this commissariat. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy. Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko , commissar for
8100-618: The Bolshevik Revolution took place there were few machines in Russia. Marx said Communism must come in a highly industrialized society. The Bolsheviks identified their dreams of socialist happiness with machines which would multiply production and reduce hours of labour until everyone would have everything he needed and would work only as much as he wished. Somehow this has not come about, but the Russians still worship machines, and this helped make
8262-721: The Dungan Cavalry Regiment commanded by the Dungan Magaza Masanchi . It also co-operated with armed Bolshevik Party-oriented volunteer units, the Forces of Special Purpose from 1919 to 1925. The slogan "exhortation, organization, and reprisals" expressed the discipline and motivation which helped ensure the Red Army's tactical and strategic success. On campaign, the attached Cheka special punitive brigades conducted summary field court-martial and executions of deserters and slackers. Under Commissar Yan Karlovich Berzin ,
SECTION 50
#17330848661858424-507: The Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245,
8586-567: The Finnish forces, Finland was able to resist the Soviet invasion for much longer than the Soviets expected. Finnish forces inflicted stunning losses on the Red Army for the first three months of the war while suffering very few losses themselves. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty . Finland ceded 9% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its economic assets to
8748-518: The German ethnic body" and once any symptoms of "disease and germs" appeared, it was their job to "remove them by every appropriate means". Regular reports—including opinion polls, press dispatches, and information bulletins were established. These were monitored and reviewed by the head of the Inland-SD, Otto Ohlendorf (responsible for intelligence and security within Germany) and by the former Heidelberg professor and SD member Reinhard Höhn [ de ] . This activity aimed to control and assess
8910-405: The Imperial Russian Army was being taken apart, "it became apparent that the rag-tag Red Guard units and elements of the imperial army who had gone over the side of the Bolsheviks were quite inadequate to the task of defending the new government against external foes." Therefore, the Council of People's Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918. They envisioned a body "formed from
9072-659: The Italian Duce had expressed great concern previously in the wake of an Austrian SS unit's attempt to stage a coup not more than three weeks after the Röhm affair , an episode that embarrassed the SS, enraged Hitler, and ended in the assassination of Austrian Chancellor Engelbert Dollfuss on 25 July 1934. Nonetheless, to facilitate the incorporation of Austria into the greater Reich, the SD and Gestapo went to work arresting people immediately, using lists compiled by Heydrich. Heydrich's SD and Austrian SS members received financing from Berlin to harass Austrian Chancellor von Schuschnigg 's government all throughout 1937. One section of
9234-472: The Jewish Affairs department within the SD) was at first to remove any semblance of "Jewish influence from all spheres of public life", which included the encouragement of wholesale Jewish emigration. Official bureaucratization increased apace with numerous specialized offices formed, aiding towards the overall persecution of the Jews. Because the Gestapo and the SD had parallel duties, Heydrich tried to reduce any confusion or related territorial disputes through
9396-399: The Manchurian Chinese Eastern Railway , and successfully installed a pro-Soviet regime in Xinjiang . The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts , also known as the "Soviet–Japanese Border War" or the first "Soviet–Japanese War", was a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan from 1932 to 1939. Japan's expansion into Northeast China created
9558-418: The NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated POWs, and other displaced persons , which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to
9720-420: The Nazi hierarchy, making the SS and its intelligence organ, the SD, responsible only to the Führer. The purge became known as the Night of the Long Knives , with up to 200 people killed in the action. Moreover, the brutal crushing of the SA and its leadership sent a clear message to everyone that opposition to Hitler's regime could be fatal. It struck fear across the Nazi leadership as to the tangible concern of
9882-401: The Nazi revolution in general, membership in the SS and the SD appealed more to the impressionable youth. Most SD members were Protestant by faith, had served in the military, and generally had a significant amount of education, representing "an educated elite" in the general sense – with about 14 percent of them earning doctorate degrees. Heydrich viewed the SD as spiritual-elite leaders within
SECTION 60
#173308486618510044-411: The Press", but the SD was instructed to "avoid all matters which touched the 'state police executive powers' ( staatspolizeiliche Vollzugsmaßnahmen ) since these belonged to the Gestapo, as did all individual cases." In 1938, the SD was made the intelligence organization for the State as well as for the Nazi Party, supporting the Gestapo and working with the General and Interior Administration. As such,
10206-460: The Red Army finally achieving a Soviet-Mongolian victory over Japan and Manchukuo at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in September 1939. The Soviet Union and Japan agreed to a ceasefire. Later the two sides signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941, which resolved the dispute and returned the borders to status quo ante bellum . The Winter War ( Finnish : talvisota , Swedish : finska vinterkriget , Russian: Зи́мняя война́ )
10368-481: The Red Army numbered some 6.5 million men, many of whom the Army had difficulty supporting, around 581,000 in the two operational fronts, western and southwestern. Around 2.5 million men and women were mobilized in the interior as part of reserve armies. The XI Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP (b)) adopted a resolution on the strengthening of the Red Army. It decided to establish strictly organized military, educational and economic conditions in
10530-464: The Red Army the most highly mechanized in the world, except perhaps the German Army now. Like Americans, the Russians admire size, bigness, large numbers. They took pride in building a vast army of tanks, some of them the largest in the world, armored cars, airplanes, motorized guns, and every variety of mechanical weapons. Under Stalin's campaign for mechanization, the army formed its first mechanized unit in 1930. The 1st Mechanized Brigade consisted of
10692-404: The Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations and assistance with farm work. Some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army; men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away, they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages. In some cases, the money they earned would go towards tanks for
10854-474: The Red Army with an initial Red Guard organization and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and the Cheka secret police. Conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed. To control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the Cheka operated special punitive brigades which suppressed anti-communists , deserters , and " enemies of the state ". The Red Army used special regiments for ethnic minorities, such as
11016-483: The Red Army's defeat of Pyotr Wrangel in the south in 1920 allowed the foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. Historian John Erickson sees 1 February 1924, when Mikhail Frunze became head of the Red Army staff, as marking the ascent of the general staff , which came to dominate Soviet military planning and operations. By 1 October 1924 the Red Army's strength had diminished to 530,000. The list of Soviet divisions 1917–1945 details
11178-411: The Red Army's strength was 401 divisions. The Soviet forces were apparently unprepared despite numerous warnings from a variety of sources. They suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored
11340-407: The Reich , the SD was infiltrated in 1944 by a former Russian national who was working for the Americans. The agent's parents had fled the Russian Revolution , and he had been raised in Berlin, and then moved to Paris. He was recruited by Albert Jolis of the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) Seventh Army detachment. The mission was codenamed RUPPERT. How extensive the SD's knowledge was about
11502-473: The Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). As many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943. The German losses on
11664-501: The SD and SS were ultimately created to identify and eradicate internal enemies of the State, as well as to pacify, subjugate, and exploit conquered territories and peoples. The SS Security Service, known as the SS SD-Amt , became the official security organization of the Nazi Party in 1934. Consisting at first of paid agents and a few hundred unpaid informants scattered across Germany, the SD
11826-451: The SD came into immediate, fierce competition with German military intelligence, the Abwehr, which was headed by Admiral Canaris. The competition stemmed from Heydrich and Himmler's intention to absorb the Abwehr and Admiral Canaris' view of the SD as an amateur upstart. Canaris refused to give up the autonomy that his military intelligence organ possessed. Additional problems also existed, like
11988-404: The SD carefully tracked foreign opinion and criticism of Nazi policies, censoring when necessary and likewise publishing hostile political cartoons in the SS weekly magazine, Das Schwarze Korps . An additional task assigned to the SD and the Gestapo involved keeping tabs on the morale of the German population at large, which meant they were charged to "carefully supervise the political health of
12150-624: The SD developed an organization of agents and informants throughout the Reich and later throughout the occupied territories , all part of the development of an extensive SS state and a totalitarian regime without parallel. The organization consisted of a few hundred full-time agents and several thousand informants. Historian George C. Browder writes that SD regiments were comparable to SS regiments, in that: SD districts ( Bezirke ) emerged covering several Party circuits ( Kreis ) or an entire district ( Gau ). Below this level, SD sub-districts ( Unterbezirke ) slowly developed. They were originally to cover
12312-607: The SD provided fictitious information that there was an assassination plot on Hitler's life and that an SA putsch to assume power was imminent since the SA were allegedly amassing weapons. Additionally, reports were coming into the SD and Gestapo that the vulgarity of the SA's behavior was damaging the party and was even making antisemitism less palatable. On 30 June 1934 the SS and Gestapo acted in coordinated mass arrests that continued for two days. The SS took one of its most decisive steps in eliminating its competition for command of security within Germany and established itself firmly in
12474-584: The SD that was nothing more than a front for subversive activities against Austria ironically promoted "German-Austrian peace". Throughout the events leading to the Anschluß and even after the Nazis marched into Austria on 12 March 1938, Heydrich – convinced that only his SD could pull off a peaceful union between the two German-speaking nations – organized demonstrations, conducted clandestine operations, ordered terror attacks, distributed propaganda materials, encouraged
12636-662: The SD to bring every single individual within the Third Reich's reach under "continuous supervision". Following Germany's defeat in World War II , the tribunal at the Nuremberg trials officially declared that the SD was a criminal organisation, along with the rest of Heydrich's RSHA (including the Gestapo) both individually and as branches of the SS in the collective. Heydrich was assassinated in 1942 ; his successor, Ernst Kaltenbrunner ,
12798-494: The SD was divided into two departments, the interior department ( Inland-SD ) and the foreign department ( Ausland-SD ), and placed under the authority of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA). The Interior Security Service ( Inland-SD ), responsible for intelligence and security within Germany, was known earlier as Department II and later, when placed under the Reich Security Main Office, as its Department III. It
12960-491: The SD was made the sole "party information service" on 9 June 1934. Under pressure from the Reichswehr (German armed forces) leadership (whose members viewed the enormous armed forces of the SA as an existential threat) and with the collusion of Göring, Joseph Goebbels , the Gestapo and SD, Hitler was led to believe that Röhm's SA posed a serious conspiratorial threat requiring a drastic and immediate solution. For its part,
13122-552: The SD, Gestapo, Kripo, Orpo, and Waffen-SS. On 31 July 1941, Göring gave written authorisation to SD Chief Heydrich to ensure a government-wide cooperative effort in the implementation of the so-called Final Solution to the Jewish question in territories under German control. An SD headquarter's memorandum indicated that the SD was tasked to accompany military invasions and assist in pacification efforts. The memo explicitly stated: The SD will, where possible, follow up immediately behind
13284-468: The SS and Gestapo. Machinations by the SD, the Gestapo, and the SS helped to bring Austria fully into Hitler's grasp and on 13 March 1938, he signed into law the union with Austria as tears streamed down his face. Concomitant to its machinations against Austria, the SD also became involved in subversive activities throughout Czechoslovakia. Focusing on the Sudetenland with its 3 million ethnic Germans and
13446-477: The SS and the "cream of the cream of the NSDAP." According to historian George C. Browder, "SD men represented no pathological or psychically susceptible group. Few were wild or extreme Nazi fanatics. In those respects they were 'ordinary men'. Yet in most other respects, they were an extraordinary mix of men, drawn together by a unique mix of missions." Along with members of the Gestapo, SD personnel were "regarded with
13608-463: The SS and the SD task forces were systematically shooting Jewish men of military age, which soon turned to "gunning down" old people, women, and children in the occupied areas. On 20 January 1942, Heydrich chaired a meeting, now called the Wannsee Conference , to discuss the implementation of the plan. Facilities such as Chelmno, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, and Auschwitz have their origins in
13770-631: The Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult because many depots (and most of the USSR's industrial manufacturing base) lay in the country's invaded western areas, obliging their re-establishment east of the Ural Mountains. Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps from the United States began appearing in large numbers in 1942. Until then, the Red Army was often required to improvise or go without weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. The 1941 decision to physically move their manufacturing capacity east of
13932-522: The Soviet Union. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. The Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland but did receive territory in Karelia , Petsamo , and Salla . The Finns retained their sovereignty and improved their international reputation, which bolstered their morale in the Continuation War (also known as
14094-436: The Soviet defence budget was large. In 1940 it was the equivalent of $ 11,000,000,000, and represented one-third of the national expenditure. Measure this against the fact that the infinitely richer United States will approximate the expenditure of that much yearly only in 1942 after two years of its greatest defence effort. Most of the money spent on the Red Army and Air Force went for machines of war. Twenty-three years ago when
14256-486: The Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. Regarding POWs, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity – one recent British figure says 3.6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands. In 1941, the rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into
14418-654: The USSR, with whom it remained neutrally bound by their non-aggression pact and trade agreements . Another consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina , carried out by the Southern Front in June–July 1940 and Soviet occupation of the Baltic states . These conquests also added to the border the Soviet Union shared with Nazi-controlled areas. For Adolf Hitler ,
14580-422: The Ural Mountains kept the main Soviet support system out of German reach. In the later stages of the war, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army's heavy KV-1 and medium T-34 tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor, but in 1941 most Soviet tank units used older and inferior models. The Red Army was financially and materially assisted in its wartime effort by
14742-535: The agency remained active in foreign operations to such a degree that the head of the Reich Foreign Ministry office, Joachim von Ribbentrop , complained of their meddling, since Hitler would apparently make decisions based on SD reports without consulting him. According to historian Richard Breitman , there was animosity between the SS leadership and Ribbentrop's Foreign Office atop their "jurisdictional disputes". Aside from its participation in diminishing
14904-621: The army. However, it was recognized that an army of 1,600,000 would be burdensome. By the end of 1922, after the Congress, the Party Central Committee decided to reduce the Red Army to 800,000. This reduction necessitated the reorganization of the Red Army's structure. The supreme military unit became corps of two or three divisions. Divisions consisted of three regiments. Brigades as independent units were abolished. The formation of departments' rifle corps began. After four years of warfare,
15066-570: The beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree on 29 May 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats ( voyennyy komissariat , abbr. voyenkomat ), which as of 2023 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats, however, should not be confused with
15228-472: The brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters to compel their surrender; one in ten of those returning was executed. The same tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in areas controlled by the Red Army, the biggest of these being the Tambov Rebellion . The Soviets enforced the loyalty of the various political, ethnic, and national groups in the Red Army through political commissars attached at
15390-712: The circumstance was no dilemma, because the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa , approved on 3 February 1941, and scheduled for mid-May 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (5.5 million soldiers) including 166 divisions and brigades (2.6 million) garrisoned in
15552-420: The civil war ended in 1922, ex-tsarists constituted 83% of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders. In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's draconian measures. According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of
15714-525: The class-conscious and best elements of the working classes." All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible. Its role being the defense "of the Soviet authority, the creation of a basis for the transformation of the standing army into a force deriving its strength from a nation in arms, and, furthermore, the creation of a basis for the support of the coming Socialist Revolution in Europe." Enlistment
15876-721: The defeated Provisional Government, monarchists, but mainly the White Movement of several different anti-socialist military confederations. "Red Army Day", 23 February 1918, has a two-fold historical significance: it was the first day of conscription (in Petrograd and Moscow), and the first day of combat against the occupying Imperial German Army . The Red Army controlled by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic also against independence movements, invading and annexing newly independent states of
16038-532: The defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic exemplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon , and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevsky and Mikhail Kutuzov , appeared. Repression of the Russian Orthodox Church temporarily ceased, and priests revived
16200-499: The depth of the enemy's ground forces, inducing catastrophic defensive failure. The deep-battle doctrine relies upon aviation and armor advances with the expectation that maneuver warfare offers quick, efficient, and decisive victory. Marshal Tukhachevsky said that aerial warfare must be "employed against targets beyond the range of infantry , artillery , and other arms. For maximum tactical effect aircraft should be employed en masse , concentrated in time and space, against targets of
16362-400: The disharmony there which the Czech government could not seem to remedy, Hitler set Heydrich's SD in motion in what came to be known as "Case Green" . Passed off as a mission to liberate Sudeten Germans from alleged Czech persecution, Case Green was in fact a contingency plan to outright invade and destroy the country, as Hitler intended to "wipe Czechoslovakia off the map." This operation
16524-622: The dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II , and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan . During its operations on the Eastern Front , it accounted for 75–80% of the casualties that the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered during the war, and ultimately captured
16686-437: The early plots to kill Hitler by key members of the military remains a contested subject and a veritable unknown. According to British historian John Wheeler-Bennett , "in view of the wholesale destruction of Gestapo archives it is improbable that this knowledge will ever be forthcoming. That the authorities were aware of serious 'defeatism' is certain, but it is doubtful whether they suspected anyone of outright treason." Given
16848-598: The eight generals, combined with the 1941 Red Army Purge , enabled the early rapid successes of the German Wehrmacht in the 1941 Invasion of Russia , leading to severe loss of life and the devastation of most of the European section of the USSR . There are no conclusive facts about the real rationale behind the forged trial. Over the years, researchers and historians put forth the following hypotheses: The central hypothesis and
17010-421: The executive agency of the political-police system. The SD and Gestapo did have integration through SS members holding dual positions in each branch. Nevertheless, there was some jurisdictional overlap and operational conflict between the SD and Gestapo. In addition, the Criminal Police kept a level of independence since its structure had been longer-established. As part and parcel of its intelligence operations,
17172-608: The fact that all of them were relatively young, able-bodied military trained people. Rogovin contrasts it with the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee , where the inquest lasted about four years, despite brutal tortures. Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army , often shortened to the Red Army , was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union . The army
17334-411: The first extermination camp was opened at Chelmno near Lodz by Ernst Damzog , the SD and SiPo commander in occupied Poznań (Posen). Damzog had personally selected the staff for the killing centre and later supervised the daily operation of the camp, which was under the command of Herbert Lange . Over a span of approximately 15 months, 150,000 people were killed there. According to the book Piercing
17496-512: The fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as people's commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars. At a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked: "We have no army. The demoralized soldiers are fleeing, panic-stricken, as soon as they see a German helmet appear on the horizon, abandoning their artillery, convoys and all war material to
17658-561: The formations of the Red Army in that time. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Soviet military theoreticians – led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky – developed the deep operation doctrine, a direct consequence of their experiences in the Polish–Soviet War and in the Russian Civil War. To achieve victory, deep operations envisage simultaneous corps - and army-size unit maneuvers of simultaneous parallel attacks throughout
17820-566: The former Russian Empire. This included three military campaigns against the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic , in January–February 1918, January–February 1919, and May–October 1920. Conquered nations were subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union. In June 1918, Leon Trotsky abolished workers' control over the Red Army, replacing the election of officers with traditional army hierarchies and criminalizing dissent with
17982-540: The governments of Czechoslovakia, Great Britain, and France, whose tepid reaction to the Austrian Anschluss had precipitated this crisis to some degree, ensued. The Sudetenland Crisis came to an end when Neville Chamberlain and Hitler signed the Munich Agreement on 29 September 1938, effectively ceding the Sudetenland to Nazi Germany. Involvement in international affairs by the SD certainly did not end there and
18144-410: The highest tactical importance." "To the Red army, Stalin has dealt a fearful blow. As a result of the latest judicial frameup, it has fallen several cubits in stature. The interests of the Soviet defense have been sacrificed in the interests of the self-preservation of the ruling clique." Red Army deep operations found their first formal expression in the 1929 Field Regulations and became codified in
18306-593: The hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million. While the Soviets considered the surrender of Germany to be the end of the "Great Patriotic War", at the earlier Yalta Conference the Soviet Union agreed to enter the Pacific Theater portion of World War II within three months of the end of the war in Europe . This promise was reaffirmed at the Potsdam Conference held in July 1945. The Red Army began
18468-572: The incident. Immediately in the wake of the staged incidents on 1 September 1939, Hitler proclaimed from the Reichstag in a famous radio address that German soldiers had been "returning" fire since 5:45 in the morning, setting the Second World War in Europe into motion. The SD was tasked with the detection of actual or potential enemies of the Nazi leadership and the neutralization of such opposition, whether internal or external. To fulfill this task,
18630-426: The institution of military political commissars . In the mid-1920s, the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region, able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which constituted about half the army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided
18792-465: The interests of the self-preservation of the ruling clique.” The execution of General Tukhachevsky and the other seven generals severely weakened the Soviet military. This was first seen in the Red Army's disastrous performance in the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939-1940, in which the Soviet military suffered more than 100,000 dead or missing against a smaller and poorly-armed Finnish military. The loss of
18954-706: The intimidation of opponents, and had his SS and SD personnel round up prominent anti-Nazis, most of whom ended up in Mauthausen concentration camp The coordinated efforts of the SiPo and Heydrich's SD during the first days of the Anschluß effectively eliminated all forms of possible political, military and economic resistance within Austria. Once the annexation became official, the Austrian police were immediately subordinated to Heydrich's SD,
19116-679: The investigations began) were accused of anti-Soviet conspiracy and sentenced to death; they were executed on the night of June 11 to 12, 1937, immediately after the verdict delivered by a Special Session (специальное судебное присутствие) of the Supreme Court of the Soviet Union . The Tribunal was presided over by Vasili Ulrikh and included marshals Vasily Blyukher , Semyon Budyonny , Alexander Yegorov ; Army Commanders Yakov Alksnis , Boris Shaposhnikov , Ivan Belov , Pavel Dybenko , and Nikolai Kashirin ; and Corps Commander Yelisey Goryachev . Only Ulrikh, Budyonny and Shaposhnikov would survive
19278-417: The leadership knew what was happening, but did little to stop it. It was often rear echelon units who committed the rapes. According to professor Oleg Rzheshevsky, "4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were punished for committing atrocities". The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in
19440-423: The life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by
19602-507: The male population of the Russian Empire were mobilized; however, most of them were not equipped with any weapons and had support roles such as maintaining the lines of communication and the base areas. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters, 1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners. He estimated the remaining troops as numbering 10 million. While
19764-528: The most famous and important of his Soviet generals in order to get rid of them in a believable manner. At Stalin's order, the NKVD instructed one of its agents, Nikolai Skoblin , to concoct information suggesting a plot by Tukhachevsky and the other Soviet generals against Stalin and pass it to Reinhard Heydrich , chief of the German Sicherheitsdienst intelligence arm. Seeing an opportunity to strike
19926-500: The names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people's militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people)." At the time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. Approximately 23% (about 19 million) of
20088-466: The nature of the intelligence operations assigned to the SD, there were clear delineations between what constituted a full member ( Mitglied ) of the SD and those who were considered "associates" ( Mitarbeiter ) with a further subset for clerical support personnel (typists, file clerks, etc.) who were connoted as V-persons ( Vertrauensleute ). All SD personnel, whether simply associates or full members were required to swear an oath of secrecy, had to meet all
20250-628: The northern portion of Korea . Other Red Army operations included the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin , which was the Japanese portion of Sakhalin Island (and Russia had lost to Japan in 1905 in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War ), and the invasion of the Kuril Islands . Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 15 August. The commanding general of the Kwantung Army ordered
20412-483: The one with the widest support is that Stalin had simply decided to consolidate his power by eliminating any and all potential political or military rivals. Viewed from the broader context of the Great Terror which followed, the execution of the most popular and well-regarded generals in the Red Army command can be seen as a preemptive move by Stalin and Nikolai Yezhov , People's Commissar of State Security, to eliminate
20574-601: The overarching agency under which the Einsatzgruppen der Sicherheitspolizei und des SD , also known as the Einsatzgruppen , was subordinated; this was one of the principal reasons for the later war-crimes indictment against the organization by the Allies. The Einsatzgruppen's part in the Holocaust has been well documented. Its mobile killing units were active in the implementation of the Final Solution (the plan for genocide ) in
20736-544: The planning actions undertaken by Heydrich. Heydrich remained chief of the Security Police (SiPo) and the SD (through the RSHA) until his assassination in 1942, after which Ernst Kaltenbrunner was named chief by Himmler on 30 January 1943, and remained there until the end of the war. The SD was declared a criminal organization after the war and its members were tried as war criminals at Nuremberg . Whatever their original purpose,
20898-471: The power of the SA and its scheme to kill Röhm, the SD took part in international intrigue, first by activities in Austria, again in Czechoslovakia, and then by helping provoke the "reactive" war against Poland. Code-named " Operation Himmler " and part of Hitler's plan to justify an attack upon Poland, the SD's clandestine activity for this mission included faking a Polish attack against "innocent Germans" at
21060-432: The process, sending them to the newly established prison facility near Munich, Dachau . Himmler's SS and SD made their presence felt at once by helping rid the regime of its known political enemies and its perceived ones, as well. As far as Heydrich and Himmler were concerned, the SD left their mission somewhat vaguely defined so as to "remain an instrument for all eventualities". One such eventuality would soon arise. For
21222-509: The racial exemption for members of the Abwehr from the Nazi Aryan-screening process, and then there was competition for resources which occurred throughout Nazi Germany's existence. On 27 September 1939, the SiPo became a part of the Reich Security Main Office (RSHA) under Heydrich: From February 1944 forward, the sections of the Abwehr were incorporated into Amt VI. The SD was
21384-424: The reach and influence of Himmler's intelligence collection and policing powers. During the autumn of 1937, Hitler secured Mussolini 's support to annex Austria (Mussolini was originally apprehensive of the Nazi takeover of Austria) and informed his generals of his intentions to invade both Austria and Czechoslovakia . Getting Mussolini to approve political intrigue against Austria was a major accomplishment, as
21546-477: The rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000–132,000 deserters to the army. In September 1918, the Bolshevik militias consolidated under
21708-418: The requirements for SS membership, were assigned SD code numbers ( Chiffre Nummer ) and if they were "above the level of V-person" they had to carry "an SD identification card." The vast majority of early SD members were relatively young, but the officers were typically older by comparison; nevertheless, the average age of an SD member was approximately 2 years older than the average Nazi Party member. Much like
21870-668: The same day the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was created, and initially assigned to Jukums Vācietis (and from July 1919 to Sergey Kamenev ). The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces existed until April 1924, the end of Russian Civil War . In November 1923, after the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Narkom of War Affairs was transformed into the Soviet Narkom of War and Marine Affairs. At
22032-569: The same time as the general Soviet move into the areas abandoned by the Ober Ost garrisons that were being withdrawn to Germany in the aftermath of World War I . This merged into the 1919–1921 Polish–Soviet War , in which the Red Army invaded Poland, reaching the central part of the country in 1920, but then suffered a resounding defeat in Warsaw , which put an end to the war. During the Polish Campaign
22194-464: The small agency. The office was renamed Sicherheitsdienst (SD) in the summer of 1932. The SD became more powerful after the Nazi Party took control of Germany in 1933 and the SS started infiltrating all leading positions of the security apparatus of the Reich. Even before Hitler became Chancellor in January 1933, the SD was a veritable "watchdog" over the SS and over members of the Nazi Party and played
22356-520: The stakes and claimed that the Czechs were slaughtering Sudeten Germans. He demanded the unconditional and prompt cession of the Sudetenland to Germany in order to secure the safety of endangered ethnic Germans. Around this time, early plots by select members of the German General Staff emerged, plans which included ridding themselves of Hitler. Eventually a diplomatic showdown pitting Hitler against
22518-670: The supreme command of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic ( Russian : Революционный Военный Совет , romanized : Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet (Revvoyensoviet) ). The first chairman was Trotsky, and the first commander-in-chief was Jukums Vācietis of the Latvian Riflemen ; in July 1919 he was replaced by Sergey Kamenev . Soon afterwards Trotsky established the GRU (military intelligence) to provide political and military intelligence to Red Army commanders. Trotsky founded
22680-418: The territories overrun by the Nazi war machine. This SD subsidiary worked closely with the Wehrmacht in persecuting Jews, communists, partisans, and other groups, as well. Starting with the invasion of Poland throughout the campaign in the East, the Einsatzgruppen ruthlessly killed anyone suspected of being an opponent of the regime, either real or imagined. The men of the Einsatzgruppen were recruited from
22842-475: The tradition of blessing arms before battle. To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished political commissars , reintroduced formal military ranks and decorations, and introduced the Guards unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the Guards title (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps , 6th Guards Tank Army ), an elite designation denoting superior training, materiel, and pay. Punishment also
23004-419: The troops as they move in and, as in the Reich, will assume responsibility for the security of political life. Within the Reich, security measures are the responsibility of the Gestapo with SD cooperation. In occupied territory, measures will be under the direction of a senior SD commander; Gestapo officials will be allotted to individual Einsatzstäbe . It will be necessary to make available for special deployment
23166-568: The western military districts. The Axis forces deployed on the Eastern Front consisted of 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern , Western , and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War (as it is known in Russia), the Wehrmacht defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat,
23328-418: Was "sinister" and a "messenger of terror" not just for the German population, but within the "ranks of the Nazi Party itself." The SD used SS-ranks . When in uniform they wore the grey Waffen-SS uniform with army and Ordnungspolizei rank insignia on the shoulder straps, and SS rank insignia on the left collar patch. The right collar patch was black without the [REDACTED] runes. The branch color of
23490-434: Was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland . It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland . The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939. The Soviet forces led by Semyon Timoshenko had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and
23652-400: Was akin to earlier SD efforts in Austria; however, unlike Austria, the Czechs fielded their own Secret Service, against which Heydrich had to contend. Once "Case Green" began, Heydrich's SD spies began covertly gathering intelligence, even going so far as having SD agents use their spouses and children in the cover scheme. The operation covered every conceivable type of intelligence data, using
23814-533: Was composed of the Kripo and the Gestapo. Heydrich became Chief of the SiPo and continued as Chief of the SD. Continued escalation of antisemitic policies in the spring of 1937 from the SD's Department of Jewish Affairs ( German : Abteilung II/112: Juden ) – staffed by members like Adolf Eichmann , Herbert Hagen , and Theodor Dannecker – led to the eventual removal ( Entfernung ) of Jews from Germany ; regardless of concerns about where they were headed. Adolf Eichmann's original task (in his capacity as deputy for
23976-412: Was conditional upon "guarantees being given by a military or civil committee functioning within the territory of the Soviet Power, or by party or trade union committees or, in extreme cases, by two persons belonging to one of the above organizations." In the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a "collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary." Because
24138-418: Was convicted of war crimes and crimes against humanity at the Nuremberg trials, sentenced to death and hanged in 1946. The SD, one of the oldest security organizations of the SS, was first formed in 1931 as the Ic-Dienst (Intelligence Service ) operating out of a single apartment and reporting directly to Heinrich Himmler . Himmler appointed a former junior naval officer, Reinhard Heydrich , to organise
24300-427: Was divided into the following sections: The SD and the SiPo were the main sources of officers for the security forces in occupied territories. SD-SiPo led battalions were typically placed under the command of the SS and Police Leaders , reporting directly to the RSHA in Berlin. The SD also maintained a presence at all concentration camps and supplied personnel, on an as-needed basis, to such special action troops as
24462-438: Was established in January 1918 by Leon Trotsky to oppose the military forces of the new nation's adversaries during the Russian Civil War , especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army . In February 1946, the Red Army (which embodied the main component of the Soviet Armed Forces alongside the Soviet Navy ) was renamed the " Soviet Army " – which in turn became the Russian Army on 7 May 1992, following
24624-419: Was frequently argued that the case against the eight generals was based on forged documents created by the Abwehr , documents that deluded Stalin into believing that a plot was being fomented by Tukhachevsky and other Red Army commanders to depose him. However, once Soviet archives were opened to researchers after the fall of the Soviet Union, it became clear that Stalin actually concocted the fictitious plot by
24786-481: Was impossible to speak conclusively about the plot, he saw indications in Stalin's mania for involvement in every detail of Red Army organization and logistics that the military had real reasons for dissent, which may have eventually led to a plot. However, the revelations of Stalin's actions following the release of Soviet archival information have now largely discredited this theory. While the military may well have had many secret reasons for their dislike of Stalin, there
24948-419: Was killed on 20 November 1917. Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed as the Narkom of War Affairs, leaving Dybenko in charge of the Narkom of Marine Affairs and Ovseyenko – the expeditionary forces to the Southern Russia on 28 November 1917. The Bolsheviks also sent out their own representatives to replace front commanders of the Russian Imperial Army . After the signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918,
25110-433: Was known earlier as Department III and later, after September 1939, as Department VI of the Reich Security Main Office. It was nominally commanded by Heydrich, but run by his chief of staff Heinz Jost . In March 1942 Jost was fired and replaced by Walter Schellenberg , a deputy of Heydrich. After the 20 July plot in 1944, Department VI took over the functions of the Military Intelligence Service ( Abwehr ). Department VI
25272-429: Was not used. Only in the Second World War did deep operations come into play. The Red Army was involved in armed conflicts in the Republic of China during the Sino-Soviet conflict (1929) , the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang (1934), when it was assisted by White Russian forces, and the Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang (1937) in Northwestern China . The Red Army achieved its objectives; it maintained effective control over
25434-399: Was originally headed by Hermann Behrends and from September 1939 by Otto Ohlendorf. It was within this organization that Adolf Eichmann began working out the details for the Final Solution to the Jewish Question . Department III was divided into the following sections: The Foreign Security Service ( Ausland-SD ), responsible for intelligence activities beyond the boundaries of Germany,
25596-417: Was quickly professionalized under Heydrich, who commissioned National Socialist academics and lawyers to ensure that the SS and its Security Service in particular, operated "within the framework of National Socialist ideology." Heydrich was given the power to select men for the SS Security Service from among any SS subdivisions since Himmler considered the organization of the SD as important. In September 1939,
25758-405: Was re-activated to engage in sabotage activities designed to incite a response from the Slovaks and the Czechs, a mission that ultimately failed. In June 1938 a directive from the SD head office indicated that Hitler issued an order at Jueterbog to his generals to prepare for the invasion of Czechoslovakia. To hasten a presumed heavy response from the French, British, and Czechs, Hitler then upped
25920-432: Was removed as Commissar of War, and his known supporters were expunged from the military. Former tsarist officers had been purged in the late 1920s and early 1930s. The latter purge was accompanied by the "exposure" of the "Former Officers Plot" codenamed Operation Vesna . The next wave of arrests of military commanders started in the second half of 1936 and increased in scope after the February–March 1937 Plenary Meeting of
26082-468: Was thought 25-50% of Red Army officers were purged, but it is now known to be 3.7-7.7%. Previously, the size of the Red Army officer corps was underestimated, and it was overlooked that most of those purged were merely expelled from the Party. Thirty percent of officers purged during 1937 to 1939 were allowed back. Another suggestion is that Tukhachevsky and others indeed tried to conspire against Stalin. Leon Trotsky , in his later works, argued that while it
26244-402: Was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments. At the same time, the osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare
#184815