Historical Picture of the Day- Marshal Tukhachevski

        The "Red Napoleon," as many historians point out, would have casted a much different, albeit much swifter victory for the Soviet Union against the Nazis, had Stalin not executed Mikhail Tukhachevski for espionage during the great purges of 1937. We can only speculate as to the real outcome, if he was given command of Soviet Red forces against Hitler's Wehrmacht. Tukhachevski was the brain behind the strategy of "deep operations," whereby continuous forces would attack and sabotage enemy lines in swiftly maneuvering counter-attacks. He was able to observe what the German Blitzkrieg war-machine planned to do if it attacked the Soviet Union first; and, that was the art of war through blitzkrieg by using panzer division forces to outflank and penetrate deep into enemy territory. He then applied his theory to the Red Army military forces. Therefore, we can conclude that if his theory's were applied in 1937 onward, the Soviet Union would have been not only prepared for Operation Barbarossa, but able to defend against the first wave of German troops, which would have allowed Soviet forces to counter-attack behind German lines, and quite possibly ending the war much sooner.