Mikhail Tukhachevsky

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 life

His 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. Tukhachevsky joined the Red Army in 1918 and rapidly advanced in rank due to his great ability. He also joined the bolshevik party in 1918, but showed little interest in ideology - he joined for career advancement.==Civil War===

Purge

There are a dizzying range of explanations of the involvement of Stalin, and of Germans up to and including Adolf Hitler himself. The Marshal had gone to a military school in 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.

Among the possibilities, not mutually exclusive, were:

1. The Marshal may, in fact, have been conspiring against Hitler, and with or without the cooperation of the German General Staff.
2. The Marshal may, in fact, have been conspiring against Hitler
3. Stalin, on general personality ground may have decided that he was sufficiently a potential rival that it was in Stalin's interest to remove him preemptively.
4. Soviet Organs of State Security (i.e., the NKVD) had manufactured a dossier, possibly based on some actual correspondence and possibly not, that indicated Tukhachevsky was conspiring; Stalin may have directly participated
5. The German SD intelligence service, under Schellenberg and Heydrich, may have found the Russian dossier, believing it to be an authentic NKVD document, and gave it to Himmler and Hitler, who decided to feed it back, through deniable channels, to Stalin, in order to discredit the Soviet General Staff and perhaps have it purged before Germany had to fight its more competent officers. The information is believed to have been leaked to Rusisia and France via the Czech President, Evard Benes, using contacts between the SS and NKVD.

Walter Schellenberg suggests that Hitler eventually had to decide if he wanted to deal with Russia under Stalin or Tukhachevsky. Pavel Sudoplatov says that Lavrenti Beria received a dossier and sent it to Stalin. 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:

• 3 of the 5 Marshals
• 13 of the 15 army commanders (full generals) and 8 of the 9 equivalent admirals
• 50 of the 57 corps commanders
• 154 of the 186 division commanders