Recently, I've been enjoying the detailed historical videos of YouTuber TIK, particularly about World War 2. I found the following video in particular of great interest. TIK suggests that Stalin's purges of officers in the Red Army in the 1930s were not as one dimensional as previously thought (except for the terrible human and moral cost). Although the purges got rid of many talented commanders, many were soon returned to their posts. Many of those gone for good were backwards looking to an army of "peasants and cavalry", replaced by young officers schooled in artillery, tanks and a future war of manoeuvre; the quality of officer actually increased in some cases.
This reminded me of an excellent memoir of Hamazasp Babadzhanian, who began the war as a Major in the infantry, rose to the rank of General in the armoured forces by VE day and finally became Chief Marshal of the Armoured Forces. In itself, though necessarily biased by Soviet-era censorship and rose-tinted by virtue of being based on human memories, the book is a good case-study of the wartime career of a post-Russian Civil War era commander.
Firstly, the title: unlike the Wikipedia article, one can see from the cover of my original 1972 version (and stressed throughout the book) that rather than a generic slogan like "The Road to Victory", the correct translation should be "Roads of Victory". Quite literally, a road as an axis of advance for tanks or supply route and roads plural as armoured pincers effecting a double envelopment.
Babadzhanian joined the army as a form of social mobility in the interwar years and finished the Transcaucasus Infantry School to become an officer in 1929. He then graduated from the Frunze military academy in 1937 around the peak of Stalin's purges of the Red Army. The following extract (my translation), though likely embellished in his own memory, gives an insight of the clash of military ideas between his peers and the old guard thinking left over from the days of the Revolution:
I had a cold relationship with the divisional commander, former cavalryman, Colonel I. V. Zaharevich during our service together. God knows, there was no disrespect from my side towards the leadership. But it happens in the army, that one has differing opinions with one's leadership. On the other hand, this must not get in the way of discipline...He then goes on to say how glad his commander was to be rid of him and his gloomy view of an inevitable war. He was transferred to none other than I. S. Konev's staff in the newly formed 19th Army.
Colonel Zaharevich found many of my ideas, and by the way, those of other commanders, to be "academic" and in his understanding "absurd". We especially differed in our estimates of cavalry in a future war.
He was right when he said that cavalry had played a great part in the Civil War, when it was the strike force of the Red Army in the years of the battle against the White Army and foreign volunteers. And he stubbornly said:
"I would personally never swap one of your machines for a live horse! And even if you make the switch, you won't manage to survive without the tactics, operational manoeuvres which we, the Red Cavalrymen, worked out with our blood"
I would reply:
"I beg to differ, comrade divisional commander. We are not against using the tactics and operational manoeuvres of cavalry, but with new more mobile types of forces. It's you who doesn't want to notice the new mobile forces. And anyhow, Fuller, Douhet..."
Through this and other recollections, he gives the idea that among the young cadre of officers were acutely aware of tanks as being central to the upcoming war, that they had debates about tactics and technologies such as aircraft, and that they saw a war with Germany as a very real possibility. He gives examples (as above) of foreign military theorists which his fellow young officers avidly read: John Fuller, Giulio Douhet, Heinz Guderian (the first chapter is named after the latter's most famous book, "Achtung, Panzer!") etc. I believe that this is very much in line with the "modern view" of young officers in the Red Army during WW2 presented in TIK's video above.
The book contains a lot of action, both personally by Babadzhanian and by his subordinates. As regimental and divisional commander, he would have had to document and give medals for extraordinary courage, such as when tanks rammed the enemy at Prokhorovka at the battle of Kursk. The book also paints a strategic picture of many of the battles mentioned.
He explains the title of one of the chapters, "Forward, Eastwards" in terms of Soviet deep battle doctrine. Throughout the war, he explains, Soviet troops used the battlecry "Forward, Westwards!" to admonish themselves to liberate their country and take the battle to Germany. However, at one point, he found himself having to double back: shock infantry had broken through the frontline and his armoured units poured into the breach. They then executed an envelopment manoeuvre and were attacking the enemy in the rear, thereby advancing East.
There is a school of thought which says that very few tanks were actually taken out by air attacks during WW2. Babadzhanian recalls a story which adds a datapoint in favour of this theory. While observing his brigade from an elevation, he came under air attack; he and his driver took cover in his tank. The bombing was the most ferocious he encountered during the war. All the boxes and fuel tanks usually found on late models of T-34 were ripped off his tank and he recalls counting over 40 impact craters. Another commander told him he'd counted 33 Ju-87 "Stuka" dive bombers, which were nominally very accurate for the time, but the tank survived intact.
The book clearly has a political edge, likely more so than the minimum necessary to be approved by censorship at the time. He notes an incident where he witnessed German aircraft bombing civilians at a busy train station, which he likens to the Americans' contemporaneous napalm bombing in Vietnam. He briefly notes that Soviet military theory (in particular for armour) has advanced far beyond the last war, now ready for a future nuclear engagement.
