Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky

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Mikhail Tukhachevsky at the height of his power as Marshal of the Soviet Union, probably inducted in 1936

Mikhail Tukhachevsky ( Russian Михаил Николаевич Тухачевский , scientific. Transliteration Mikhail Nikolaevich Tuchačevskij * 4 . Jul / 16th February  1893 greg. On Aleksandrovskoe (now Slednewo ) at safonovo , Smolensk , Russian empire ; † 12. June 1937 in Moscow ) was one of the first five Soviet Union Marshals of the Red Army in the USSR . Tukhachevsky was nicknamed "The Red Napoleon ". He was one of the first military commanders to fall victim to the purges under the dictatorship of Stalin .

Life

Youth (1893–1912)

Mikhail Tukhachevsky (photo from the 1920s)

Tukhachevsky came from an old but impoverished aristocratic family from the Smolensk governorate . According to research by a distant relative of the Russian poet Leo Tolstoy , his family is said to be related to the Tukhachevsky; its origin is said to be in the dynasty of the Counts of Flanders , who came through the Crusades via Palestine and Cyprus to the north coast of the Black Sea and joined the aristocracy ruling there. One of his ancestors, Artemi Tukhachevsky, was temporarily deputy commandant of Berlin when it was occupied by Russian troops in 1762 . Another ancestor was involved in the Battle of Borodino against Napoleon in 1812.

Tukhachevsky's grandfather was married to a French nobleman .; he had considerably reduced the family fortune of the Tukhachevskis through their addiction to games and entertainment in Paris , as happened to many Russian aristocrats at the time. Tukhachevsky grew up bilingually with his three brothers and five sisters. His father is said to have turned to atheism during this time .

The early death of his sister Maria, to whom he was very attached, was formative for the young Mikhail, so that he became a loner interested in military history in his area and at the high school in Penza . In his school days, on the other hand, he was more noticeable for bad behavior and poor performance than for school aspirations. He only had good grades in history and sports; riding was his sporting passion at the time.

Early years in the military and World War I (1912–1918)

After a year in the Moscow Cadet Corps , which he graduated as the best of his year and also received top marks in fencing , shooting and gymnastics , he attended the Smolensk Military College for six months. After its successful completion, the following prophetic saying has come down to us:

"If I'm not a general at thirty, I'll commit suicide!"

From there he was transferred directly to the Russian Western Front with the rank of lieutenant at the beginning of the First World War in August 1914 . In the same year his father Nikolai died in Moscow.

He was promoted to first lieutenant for his achievements on various front lines and was awarded eight orders in a very short time, including the Order of St. Vladimir , the Order of St. Anne and the Order of St. Stanislaus . Such a quick award with this medal in such a short time shows that Tukhachevsky must have been very brave and prudent at the front.

German prisoner of war (1915-1917)

As early as February 1915, Tukhachevsky came near the village Wysokij Duschi in Lomza in German captivity . In an initially successful escape attempt, he reached the Baltic coast , but was picked up again by a military patrol . Then he was brought to Stuer in Mecklenburg , from where he also fled. He was then transferred to Beeskow in Brandenburg , from where he quickly managed to escape again. However, on the way to the Dutch border , he was captured again by a military patrol.

In response, his transfer took place after Kuestrin the local Fort anger village . Here he was lying in the same room with a French and a British officer, and he met his fellow prisoner Roland Garros , who was already known as a flying ace at the time. With his French comrade, General Gardeaux, he dug an escape tunnel, which was betrayed shortly before the planned breakout. According to the German investigation report on this illegal tunnel construction at the time, Tukhachevsky was 175 cm long.

POW in Ingolstadt (1916–1917)
Ingolstadt fortress

Thereupon it was moved to the fortress of Ingolstadt in 1916 , whose Fort IX had been specially converted for prisoners of war officers who were considered to be multiple escapes. Among other things, he was imprisoned there together with the future French President Charles de Gaulle and is said to have even shared the room with him for a short time. De Gaulle and the later French generals Georges Catroux and Louis de Goÿs de Mézeyrac he was on friendly terms from that time. Due to his upbringing by a French governess and his French grandmother, he spoke fluent French and, according to the German sources of the time, could also speak a little German . Here he was given the nickname Tuka by his fellow French prisoners , which was later also used by his compatriots.

During the time of his imprisonment in Ingolstadt, he learned incomplete information about the Russian Revolution and was therefore anxious to return to his homeland as quickly as possible in order to help shape his fatherland and at the same time to continue his own military career. During this time he placed great hopes in Bolshevism and the leadership of Lenin , whom he trusted as the only one to keep Russia in its unity, because in his opinion that required a hard hand. Up to this point he had not read the writings of Karl Marx , Friedrich Engels or Lenins, so that he had not even come to grips with the ideology of the Bolshevik Party.

On August 16, 1917, he also managed to escape from here when he was able to move away from his guards on his word of honor during a guarded clearance. He planned this escape with his Russian officer colleague Chernivetsky, but only Tukhachevsky succeeded. Both had signed each other's declaration of honor, so that in fact they had never given this word of honor and did not break their word with their guards. He returned to Russia in October 1917 after traveling more than 1,500 kilometers from Switzerland via Paris , London , Bergen in Norway , Sweden and Finland via Schaffhausen and Bern in Switzerland , where he had received papers from the Russian embassy and was demobilized in Petrograd with the rank of captain (Russian: Капитан ) . In the now classless Soviet republic he was finally able to marry his childhood sweetheart Marussja.

From 1917 Tukhachevsky suffered from Graves' disease , at times he was supervised by Professor Feodorow, the head of the Medical Academy of Petrograd.

Soviet general and marshal (1918-1937)

Russian Civil War (1918-1920)

War Commissioner of the Moscow Section (1918)

After the October Revolution , he joined the Russian Social Democratic Workers' Party ( Bolsheviks ) and the Red Army in April 1918 . At an early age he met Grigory Zinoviev , who issued him a letter of recommendation, and Jakow Sverdlov . This brought him into contact with Leon Trotsky , who was then People's Commissar for the Military and Navy . In 1918 he was given command of the 5th Army (ranks or ranks did not yet exist in the Red Army at that time) at the age of just twenty-five and was thus War Commissioner of the Moscow Section.

On the Volga Front (1918-1919)

During the Russian Civil War he was first deployed in the city of his youth, Penza, and from there he led an offensive to successfully conquer Sysran . He was then transferred to the Volga Front . There he was briefly arrested by the coup general Mikhail A. Muravyov , who made him an offer of dual power, which he turned down out of loyalty to Lenin . Tukhachevsky was freed by Latvian soldiers and then lured Muravyov into a trap. After Muravyov's forcible removal, he was reinstated in his command as commander of the 1st Army. As a result of the failed putsch, the Volga front collapsed in the meantime, so that Lenin sent Trotsky there from Moscow to support Tukhachevsky. Tukhachevsky then succeeded in overthrowing the white armies with a bold circumvention plan that led to the conquest of the cities of Bolgar , Simbirsk , Stavropol and Samara . His strongest force was the Iron Division under the command of Gaik Bschischkjan , who accompanied his further campaigns with his division; in 1937 he was also executed.

The Red Marne (1919)

Shortly afterwards, Tukhachevsky led Red Army troops against the Kolchak Army, which was marching on central Russia. Mikhail Frunze , Trotsky's successor, gave him far-reaching powers to be able to destroy the enemy armies. Near the city of Ufa , he managed to almost completely encircle the far superior enemy. This battle was then called the "Red Marne Battle " in Soviet Russia . As a result, the Kolchak army was completely wiped out in further, smaller battles by Tukhachevsky. In doing so, he pursued the white troops across the Urals and Chelyabinsk to Omsk . From that time on he had a close friendship with Frunze, which came to an abrupt end with Frunze's early and sudden death in 1925.

Ukraine and Crimea (1919–1920)

In 1919 Tukhachevsky took part in the campaign against the Denikin army. Tukhachevsky successfully repulsed the enemy and quickly captured the cities of Oryol , Kursk , Sochi and Rostov . By April 1920 he drove the remnants of the white troops under the leadership of General Wrangel back to the Crimea , conquered the cities of Yalta and Sevastopol and finally drove the last white troops from Russian soil.

At that time he told his wife Marussia in the saloon car of his special train that he intended to part with her. Immediately after this conversation, she killed herself with a head shot. His private villa in the prominent settlement of Pokrovka near Moscow, the land of which had once belonged to Count Shuvalov , was later named Marussia .

Soviet-Polish War (1920–1921)

Tukhachevsky had been a member of the General Staff since 1920 and commanded the Soviet Western Front during the Soviet-Polish War . The war Soviet had unanimously elected him commander in chief in the Polish campaign. He set up his headquarters in Minsk and began with superior armed forces initially very successfully to inflict heavy defeats on the Polish army , so that Kiev and Vilnius could be taken by the Red Army and the Polish armed forces had to withdraw into the Polish heartland. At that time, the designated new Polish ruler and founder of the Cheka , Felix Dscherschinski , belonged to his staff. Ultimately, Tuchatschewski had to surrender to the Polish Marshal Józef Piłsudski in the Battle of Warsaw . His encircling attack on Warsaw failed because its southern flank was crushed by Polish troops and he received contradicting messages from the front, so that he had only incomplete information about the real situation at the front. He was then forced to withdraw his troops from central Poland in order to forestall a encirclement.

Tukhachevsky was no longer on friendly terms with Stalin since the Battle of Warsaw, as he blamed him and his future Marshal colleague Budjonny for his defeat. Contrary to Lenin's orders from Moscow, both had envisaged the conquest of Lemberg and had not sent Tukhachevsky any urgently needed reinforcements.

"If Stalin and the illiterate Budyonny had not waged their own war in Galicia, the Red Army would not have suffered the defeat that forced us to sign the Peace of Riga."

- Leon Trotsky

Stalin was then released from his military duties by Lenin and never turned to this shame. In his circle of friends, Stalin used to denote Tukhachevsky as "Napoleonchik" from then on.

Stalin's close friend and colleague Lasar Kaganowitsch , who was also a thorn in the side of Tukhachevsky, assessed Tukhachevsky as follows:

“This cultured, good-looking, clever and capable nobleman. [...] Tukhachevsky carries the staff of Napoleon in his knapsack. "

A member of the French officers' division headed by General Maxime Weygand , which was supposed to support the Polish generals , was his friend Charles de Gaulle , who was then decorated with the then highest Polish medal, the Virtuti Militari . Maxime Weygand is said to have suggested to the Polish generals the tactic of waiting, which had led to success before Warsaw.

Kronstadt Sailors Uprising (1921)

In 1921 Tukhachevsky was dispatched to suppress the Kronstadt sailors' revolt on the orders of Lenin and Trotsky , whose support he could be sure despite the defeat in Poland . His former patron Zinoviev, as commissioner of the Petrograd region, could no longer defend himself against the revolt against the Bolshevik system and was now assigned to Tukhachevsky as military leader. Lenin's attempt to end the insurrection by appeasing it by sending Kalinin to the sailors failed. Tukhachevsky received his command on March 5, 1921. In a pincer attack across the frozen Gulf of Finland on the island of Kotlin , on which Kronstadt lies, the uprising was successfully put down, sometimes only in tough and bitter house-to-house fighting. The fighting lasted from March 7th to 17th, 1921, with several thousand fatalities on both sides.

Tambov peasant uprising (1921)

Alexander Antonov led a movement since August 1920, which was composed mainly of impoverished and disappointed peasants and which he led in the peasant uprising of Tambov . In the Tambov Oblast his troops deposed the Soviet power, so that Lenin took military action against them. Tukhachevsky was chosen here again by Lenin as military commander. He set up his headquarters in Tambov and finally destroyed the peasant army after several skirmishes in the summer of 1921, although his technical superiority ( tanks , aircraft , artillery and chemical weapons ) had a relatively easy game, although the rebellious peasants sometimes opposed each other bravely or fanatically Tukhachevsky's superior troops resisted. This campaign lasted over seven months due to the peasant guerrilla tactics.

Army organizer (1921–1937)

After the civil war, Tukhachevsky was instrumental in building the technical structure of the Red Army. The Soviet air and naval forces were expanded under his leadership, the order to develop the Soviet standard tank T-34 and the successful attack aircraft Il-2 fell during this time. In 1930 he drafted the attack method of the Blitzkrieg in a memorandum , which was to be directed first against Poland and then against Central Europe, especially towards Germany, and which was planned as a war of annihilation. He campaigned for new weapon designs as well as for further research into rocket technology. Here he was also a sponsor of the later designer of the Soviet space rockets , Sergei Koroljow . At the same time, under his auspices, Russia and the Reichswehr secretly researched new weapon systems and attack methods until the Red Army discontinued its cooperation with the Reichswehr in May 1933. In 1933, at a reception in the German embassy in Moscow, he toasted a toast to the friendship between the Reichswehr and the Red Army in the ballroom.

The first five marshals of the Soviet Union: Mikhail N. Tukhachevsky, Semyon M. Budjonny , Kliment J. Voroshilov , Vasili K. Blücher and Alexander I. Yegorow (from left to right)

The Provisional Field Regulations of the Red Army were drawn up by a commission chaired by Tukhachevsky from 1924 to 1925. His ideas were largely incorporated into this order. An interim dismissal of Tukhachevsky from the commission caused the latter to protest his return to Stalin, which took place immediately afterwards. Tukhachevsky actively campaigned for an army and decided against a militia army, as Trotsky had demanded, for example, because he wanted to keep the revolutionary element in the force. At the same time, general conscription was enshrined in the Soviet constitution.

Tukhachevsky was the first general in the world to discover the parachutist's ability to use the latest methods of combat. In 1931 he created the world's first parachute force. In 1936 he set up these parachute troops for the first time during a maneuver , but met with rejection and skepticism from many domestic military personnel and foreign maneuver observers. He already dealt with the theories during his time in Ingolstadt imprisonment, when he was enlightened by French pilots about aviation and its benefits. He was mockingly called paratrooper marshal by friends and enemies .

During the Spanish Civil War , he received reports on the battles there very often. On the side of the Republican armed forces, many Soviet armaments were used, such as the T-26 tank . On the side of the fascist general Francisco Franco , mainly German and Italian war material was used. Tukhachevsky personally evaluated the data from the battles and with every day of this civil war he was more certain that a modern war could only be decided by the most modern tanks and airplanes. He called the new warfare operation in depth .

The armed uprising (1928–1929)

In the years 1928 to 1929 had Tukhachevsky as co-author of the book The armed uprising of the Comintern with. This book was intended to be a guide for future revolutionaries on their way to violent seizure of power. He took over Chapters X and XI of this work, which deal with the field service regulations of an armed uprising. In this pamphlet he advocates the creation of an international, communist general staff to coordinate the uprisings worldwide, as he had already done in vain between 1921 and 1922.

He dealt specifically in this pamphlet with the development of tactical procedures during the armed uprising. So he pleaded for the start of insurrection activities in the large industrial cities. According to his idea, the revolution was to be carried from the city to the countryside, with the early main aim of fighting for the armed forces of the ruling elite. Therefore, the revolutionary troops should prepare for the struggle without a fixed front, which would then be directed against the armed state forces (military and police).

He saw the success of this armed uprising in the rapid and well-coordinated action of the proletarian forces, which ought to be superior to the regular army through local advantages in street fighting. He called these coordinated actions the principle of partial victories , in which the top of the state, the administration, but also the most important tactical goals, such as train stations, airfields or telegraph stations, are to be occupied in one stroke. Their success is to be secured through continuous, external weapons supply.

An important area was the reconnaissance of opposing forces by spies inside and / or outside the opposing power. The overall coordination of actions by the party was intrinsically important to him, because he saw the death of the armed uprising in halting action and defensive battles. Therefore, he also pleaded for the use of modern communication systems and the establishment of an intelligence service for the insurgent party. This intelligence service should also rely on women and minors who, in his opinion, would attract considerably less attention with the enemy.

In the defense of the rebels he saw only a temporary area of ​​the uprising, which should primarily serve to weaken the enemy in order to give the uprising new attacking power from this situation. Tukhachevsky added a theoretical drawing of an intersection blockade in a city to the chapter.

Tukhachevsky wrote over 120 other articles or writings on topics such as tactics, army building or field strategy in his life.

Commander in Turkestan and Belarus (1922–1925)

From 1922 to 1925 Tukhachevsky was briefly commander in chief in Turkestan and then the Belarusian military district with its headquarters in Minsk. This military district was the most important in the Soviet Union at that time, as it was right on the border with enemy Poland . Here he first rebuilt the officer corps by replacing division commanders, who, as a result of the revolution, had been catapulted directly from the working class into high military leadership positions and who stood out for their ignorance and incompetence, with capable and well-trained junior officers, some of whom were like him had been trained in the tsarist army.

Commander of the Red Guard in the German October (1923)

At the end of 1923, Tukhachevsky was briefly transferred to Berlin during the “ German October ” and lived there in the Soviet embassy on Unter den Linden 7. His six-person delegation of officers was supposed to lead the Red Guard in a communist uprising in Germany ; he was the commander-in-chief of this force been chosen. When no communist revolution was successfully realized in Germany in November 1923, the delegation was detached except for Tukhachevsky, and in the following weeks he made direct contact with the Reichswehr leadership as a liaison for the Red Army in order to further deepen the existing military cooperation.

Diadoch fights in the Politburo (1924–1929)

"Father Stalin" in communist propaganda

In the power struggle in the Politburo between Trotsky and Stalin after Lenin's death, he initially sided with Trotsky as a supporter of Trotsky. However, he sought contact with Stalin at an early stage, so that he continued to be accepted and promoted by the top leadership, after Stalin had successfully prevailed in the diadoch fight against Trotsky and Zinoviev.

Chief of Staff and Vice Minister of Defense (1925–1937)

From 1925 to 1928 he served as Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army. In 1930, however, Stalin was on the verge of publicly accusing Tukhachevsky of conspiracy. The confessions extorted from prisoners by torture were already ready, but Stalin and his co-conspirators Molotov , Ordzhonikidze and Kirov decided that the time was not yet ripe for a settlement with Tukhachevsky, as he was too popular in the army and at the same time the totalitarian rule of Stalin was not yet firm enough. As one of Stalin's few confidants, Bukharin stood up for him.

In 1931 Tukhachevsky then took over the deputy leadership of the Revolutionary War Council ( Реввоенсовет ). He became Deputy People's Commissar (Minister) for Defense of the Soviet Union in 1934 and First Deputy in 1936 . As People's Commissar for Defense, Kliment Voroshilov was then his direct superior. He received the Order of Lenin , the highest Soviet medal, in 1933. Voroshilov was far inferior to him intellectually and in military-tactical matters, so that there were frequent differences of opinion between the marshals. These culminated in a dispute in May 1936, in the course of which Voroshilov, furiously, presented him with the Götz quote . Although they were reconciled again, the atmosphere between them was never free of tension.

At the same time, Tukhachevsky rose in the party hierarchy. In 1935 he became a candidate for the Central Committee of the CPSU , in the same year he was appointed Marshal of the Soviet Union with four other commanders . He remained the youngest marshal ever appointed until the end of the Soviet Union.

Tukhachevsky was a guest at the Reichswehr maneuver in Frankfurt (Oder) in 1932 and was personally welcomed there by Reich President General Field Marshal Paul von Hindenburg . He stayed in Germany for a total of four weeks with his eleven-member delegation , where he had intensive contacts with the top German military, including the later General Field Marshal and Reich Minister of War Werner von Blomberg and General and later Reich Chancellor Kurt von Schleicher . He also had earlier contacts with the later general of the infantry and resistance fighter against Hitler, Carl-Heinrich von Stülpnagel . Tukhachevsky also visited some German armaments companies in the Ruhr area. These visits were also closely watched by Western intelligence services.

On November 7, 1933, he took the parade on a horse for the first time as a leader on the occasion of the October Revolution on Moscow's Red Square .

Tukhachevsky was one of the first military officers in Soviet Russia to warn of the danger posed by Germany under Adolf Hitler's dictatorship . On March 31, 1935, an article, signed by him, appeared in Pravda with the title “War Plans for Today's Germany” , which Stalin - including the headline - edited and signed off. The corresponding simultaneous economic negotiations, which were always accompanied by the question of the improvement of the political situation between the German Reich and the Soviet Union, should probably be promoted with this propaganda pressure from the Soviet side.

At the side of the then Soviet Foreign Minister Litvinov , he took part in 1936 as the official representative of Soviet Russia at the funeral ceremony of King George V in Great Britain . This was the first Soviet delegation to be invited to a monarch's funeral ceremony. He also made a short flying visit to Germany with meetings at the Reich Ministry of War in Berlin , including meeting with the Commander-in-Chief of the Army , Colonel General Werner von Fritsch . He then expressed his admiration for the German and Prussian military at a reception at the Soviet embassy in London . He also visited the British War Minister Alfred Duff Cooper in Great Britain and on the return trip in Paris Marshal Philippe Pétain , the French Foreign Minister Pierre-Étienne Flandin and the then French Chief of Staff Maurice Gamelin .

He spent a few days off in Paris, visiting the Louvre and the Rodin Museum . He also met with his former French fellow prisoners and friends from his time in Ingolstadt, including General Charles de Gaulle, General de Goÿs de Mézeyrac and Remy Roure, who had already written a book about Tukhachevsky at that time. In a local wine test of French wines, he recognized all wines and thus showed himself to be a wine connoisseur.

Since he was successful on the international stage, it cannot be ruled out that Tukhachevsky was seen in Berlin as the “coming man” in the Soviet Union. Foreign Minister von Neurath, for example, quoted a statement by Hitler on February 11, 1937 about the halting negotiations with the Soviet Union: “It would be different if things in Russia were to develop further in the direction of absolute despotism based on the military. In this case, however, we shouldn't miss the point in time to get involved again in Russia. "

Arrest (1937)

On April 28, 1937 Tukhachevsky came the last time in public at a reception in the US - Embassy in Moscow and the traditional parade on May 1, on the Red Square . His planned visit to the coronation ceremonies of King George VI. from Great Britain he officially had to cancel for health reasons, in fact he was forbidden to travel on Stalin's orders.

On May 10, 1937, political commissars were reinstated in the Red Army on Stalin's orders , and their chief was Stalin's favorite Lev Sakharovich Mechlis . The political commissioners had to agree to every order of a commander in chief, which in fact meant a partial disempowerment of the military commanders. Tukhachevsky had successfully campaigned for the abolition of political commissars for many years.

On the same day, Tukhachevsky was personally notified of his transfer to the Volga region by Stalin by telephone . At this point, Stalin's friendly manner made Tukhachevsky believe that this transfer would not be a diminution or repulsion on the part of the dictator. Lev Mechlis was succeeded as Deputy People's Commissar for Defense.

Between May 10 and 24, 1937, Stalin called Marshal Voroshilov several times to his study in the Kremlin to get the People's Commissar against Tukhachevsky to his side. Only under the threat of personal sanctions against Voroshilov did the latter drop Tukhachevsky, who at that time was spending a few days off with his family in the country. The relationship with Voroshilov was never free of tension, but Voroshilov never doubted Tukhachevski's loyalty.

Tukhachevsky pursued his hobbies of fishing and tennis in his last days off . On the way to the Volga, his train was stopped by the NKVD on May 24th and he was kept under formal arrest in his saloon car. All he had to do was hand in his two revolvers and the secret documents for the time being. The saloon car was brought back to Moscow on May 25th. During this time, Stalin himself was so fascinated by the Tukhachevsky case that he even had himself represented by Lavrenti Beria , the later NKVD chief, at the funeral of his mother Ketewan Geladze .

On May 26, 1937, Tukhachevsky was arrested in Moscow on the direct orders of Stalin and the NKVD boss Nikolai Yezhov without a judicial or public prosecutor's basis and was the "management of anti-Soviet and Trotskyist organizations within the Red Army" and "espionage for a foreign power" (German Reich) charged. Until the start of the trial planned against him, he was tortured by the NKVD on Stalin's personal orders in the direct presence of Yezhov . Tukhachevski's confession paper is covered with blood splatters.

Show Trial (1937)

In historical research, the thesis was widespread for a long time that Tukhachevsky had fallen victim to a German intrigue: the security service of the Reichsführer SS (SD) had forged incriminating material against him and, at the instigation of Obergruppenführer Reinhard Heydrich, via the double agent Nikolai Skoblin, the unsuspecting Czechoslovak President Edvard Beneš leaked it, who passed it on to the Soviet ambassador Alexandrowski. Tukhachevsky was listed in the forged documents as an agent of the SD under the official number SG-UA-6-22. This was the highest priority level of an agent of this secret service. Recent research has shown that behind this falsified evidence was the Soviet secret service NKVD , which caused the Germans to produce further incriminating material against Tukhachevsky in order to be able to bring him down. Beneš only forwarded the disinformation leaked to him to Moscow after Tukhachevski's death; The news channel worked better through the French Prime Minister Édouard Daladier , who on March 16, 1937 warned the Soviet ambassador in Paris Vladimir Potemkin of an allegedly imminent coup d'état by the Red Army leadership.

The coup allegations were not explicitly mentioned in the secret military court proceedings. Tukhachevsky was rather accused of having cooperated with the Reichswehr as early as the 1920s . In fact, in 1926, as part of the secret support of the Red Army in its illegal rearmament, he was in Berlin with a military delegation. Actual reasons were rather his strategic ideas deviating from the line of Stalin, which were interpreted as "pest work", and his rivalry with Voroshilov. Under the torture , Tukhachevsky admitted all allegations. Tukhachevsky is also said to have been accused of defeat of the Red Army he led in the war against Poland , which ultimately led to the signing of the Riga Peace Treaty in 1921. However, there are no documents to prove this version.

The Lubyanka in Moscow

On June 11, during the secret Moscow military trial under the prosecutor Andrei Vyshinsky, a military tribunal including Marshals Blücher , Jegorow and Budyonny , chaired by the notorious show trial judge Vasily Ulrich , stripped him of his military ranks and titles. Together with seven other generals

he was sentenced to death . The only judge who took an offensive against him in the trial was Budjonny of the same rank, when it came up that Tukhachevsky had significantly motorized the Red Army and thus the horse became increasingly unimportant, which Budjonny, a passionate horse lover and breeder, resented.

The following quote from him from the trial against Tukhachevsky is documented:

"It all seems like a bad dream to me"

-

Execution (1937)

The firing squad in the inner courtyard of the Lubyanka was personally headed by Marshal Blücher on June 12, 1937; the chief of the firing department was Ivan Serov , who later became the first chief of the KGB . The engines of several trucks in the courtyard were revved up so that the shots could not be heard. After the execution with a shot in the neck , Tukhachevski's body was cremated and anonymously buried in the Donskoy cemetery . Almost all of his family were arrested or sentenced to camp . Three of his sisters lived through 1957, when Tukhachevsky was officially rehabilitated. However, his two brothers Alexander, a mathematician, and Nikolai and his sister Sophia were also executed.

The trial against Tukhachevsky was the prelude to the bloody purges within the Red Army, in the course of which three marshals (apart from Tukhachevsky, Blücher and Jegorow), 13 generals and around 5000 other officers (around 45 percent of the entire officer corps of the Red Army) were executed. . This bloodletting was devastating for the Red Army when the German-Soviet War broke out on June 22, 1941. Six of Tukhachevski's eight judges were also executed on Stalin's orders by 1940.

While in prison, Tukhachevsky is said to have written a three-hundred-page treatise on the Red Army, at the end of which he is said to have predicted a possible attack by the German Reich in June 1941.

On January 31, 1957, he and his co-defendants were found innocent and rehabilitated.

Private

family

Tukhachevsky was married three times. The first marriage remained childless, his second marriage he concluded with his wife Tanja, in the third marriage with Nina Grintschewitsch he had at least one daughter, Swetlana (1922–1982). His wife was sentenced to eight years in prison, then exiled and executed in 1941, as was his ex-wife Tanja, who was divorced from him.

His daughter Swetlana was in poor health from her youth, so Tukhachevsky took her out of school and took care of her school education personally.

In addition to his three marriages, Tukhachevsky is said to have had various love relationships with other women, a fact that put a considerable strain on his first marriage. His sex life and sexual debauchery were the subject of many rumors during his lifetime and also the envy of other Soviet greats, especially Stalin, who led a rather puritanical life after the suicide of his wife Nadezhda Alliluyeva in 1932. Molotov later even saw this as a reason for Tukhachevsky's liquidation.

circle of friends

Tukhachevsky repeatedly referred to his former superior in the Russian Civil War, Frunze, as his best friend. After Frunse's death, no other person received so much friendship from him.

In his private life, the very educated and popular marshal was friends with the composer Dmitrij Shostakovich , played the violin himself and loved the music of Ludwig van Beethoven . While he was a prisoner of war in Germany, he is said to have made violin making his hobby, to which he later devoted his attention. Both became friends when Shostakovich was only 19 and Tukhachevsky 30 years old. From then on, Tukhachevsky promoted the career of his young protégé. Shostakovich wrote about Tukhachevsky in his autobiography:

"He was one of the most interesting people I have met."

“His shooting was a terrible blow to me. When I read the news in the newspaper, my eyes went black. It seemed to me as if he had killed me too. At least that's how I felt. I don't want to paint this. [...]
Apparently Tukhachevsky actually liked my music. "

He was also a friend and sponsor of Boris Leonidowitsch Pasternak, who later won the Nobel Prize for Literature .

Tukhachevsky is said to have been a Freemason like many of his ancestors , he was active in the Polarstern lodge , to which many tsarist officers belonged, and was supposedly active there in the 23rd degree.

rating

Postage stamp in honor of Tukhachevsky in 1963

Tukhachevski's career was already felt by his contemporaries as meteoric during his lifetime . Without the Russian Revolution he would certainly not have become a general at such a young age. He owed his rise in the Soviet military hierarchy to good relations with Zinoviev, Sverdlov, Frunze, Lenin and Trotsky, but also to his good education and training. He proved his military skills and bravery not only in direct combat at the front or in the leadership of an army group in battle, but especially in the training and restructuring of the Red Army from a wildly mixed militia army to a real army with the most modern Weapons was equipped. His marshal colleagues Budjonny or Jegorow could do little to oppose their younger and more mentally active colleagues with their low level of education (3 or 4 years of elementary school). His long-time superior, Marshal Voroshilov , was also intellectually inferior to his deputy as People's Commissar for Defense and therefore left Tukhachevsky to reorganize the Red Army, as well as often holding official speeches.

On the one hand, Tukhachevsky was a partly unscrupulous, ruthless and consistent career soldier ; on the other hand, he was an aesthetician interested in art and culture who recognized and promoted young, artistic talents, such as Shostakovich; he was devoted to life and love, but also moved safely on the social and diplomatic floor .

Why he fell victim to the purges of Stalin as the first great military commander of the Red Army has not yet been clarified beyond doubt. Incontrovertible evidence for the allegations made against him has never become known, but the Russian sources are also thin, since he became a non-person after his liquidation and the Stalinist historiography consistently overlooked him. The problems between Stalin and Tukhachevsky on the Polish front in 1921 are often cited as the reason that the Soviet dictator wanted to get rid of Tukhachevskis early on. In addition, Stalin and Tukhachevsky were completely alien to each other, so that Stalin certainly saw in him the most talented commander of the army, but also the associated power potential of Tukhachevsky, which the dictator absolutely had to eliminate if he wanted to be sure of the unconditional loyalty of the armed forces. Whether the National Socialist falsifications of his alleged agent activities for the SD Heydrichs were the main reason here cannot be conclusively clarified either, but they served as the final reason for his complete liquidation.

The forged documents of the SD also show that the National Socialist German Reich also saw in the person of Tukhachevsky a threat to its expansionist plans; on the one hand the ingenious and forward-looking reorganizer of the Red Army, on the other hand the potential conqueror of Central Europe. As a result of his liquidation, generals such as the later Marshal Kulik got into high military posts , who through their army policy made the war of aggression on Soviet Russia much easier for the German armed forces , because Tukhachevski's military plans for the operation in depth were banned. Only marshals like Tymoshenko or Zhukov openly recognized Tukhachevsky's right strategic path and addressed it in 1940, but at that time the Red Army was still on the defensive. Again, it is Zhukov who, through his later successes in the war, which Tukhachevsky's tactical concepts adopted, is portrayed in today's Russian historiography as the best-known, most talented and most successful Marshal of the Soviet Union.

Fonts (selection)

  • The Red Army and the Militia (Красная армия и милиция) , 1921.
  • The campaign against the Vistula (Поход за Вислу) , 1924.
  • The war plans of today's Germany (Военные планы нынешней Германии) , In: Pravda , March 31, 1935.
  • The Defense of the USSR (Задачи обороны СССР) , 1936.

Movie and TV

literature

  • Rudolf Ströbinger: Stalin beheads the Red Army. The Tukhachevsky case. Stuttgart 1990, ISBN 3-421-06563-2 .
  • Viktor Alexandrow: The marshal was in the way - Tukhachevsky between Stalin and Hitler. Berto, Bonn 1962, DNB 450047059 .
  • Robert Conquest: The Great Terror. Soviet Union 1934–1938. 2nd Edition. Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7844-2415-5 .
  • Robert Conquest: In the beginning, Comrade Kirov died. Droste, Düsseldorf 1970, ISBN 3-7700-0225-3 .
  • Simon Sebag-Montefiore : Stalin. At the court of the red tsar. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2005, ISBN 3-10-050607-3 ; Fischer-Taschenbuch-Verlag, Frankfurt 2006, ISBN 3-596-17251-9 .
  • Bogdan Musial : Battleground Germany. Stalin's plans for war against the West. Propylaea, Berlin 2008, ISBN 978-3-549-07335-3 .
  • Vladimir F. Nekrassov: Beria. Bechtermünz Verlag, Augsburg 1996, ISBN 3-86047-167-8 .
  • Hasso G. Stachow: The tragedy on the Neva. FA Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-7766-2045-5 .
  • (A. Neuberg) Hans Kippenberger, MN Tuchatschewski Ho Chi Minh: The armed uprising. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1971, ISBN 3-434-45006-8 .
  • Gerd Hit: The Tukhachevsky saga. Rolf Kaufmann Druck und Verlag, Eichstätt 1990, ISBN 3-927728-04-7 .
  • Charles Messenger: Blitzkrieg. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching 1989, ISBN 3-88199-635-4 .

Web links

Commons : Mikhail Nikolajewitsch Tukhachevsky  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Knerger.de: Leon Trotsky
  2. ↑ a b Kommunisten-online.de: Depiction of the anti-communist struggle 1919–1945: Tukhachevsky ( Memento of the original from January 6, 2016 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / kommunisten-online.de
  3. ^ Current Russia: History of Russia: Kim Jon Il and Tukhachevsky , February 16, 2009
  4. ↑ Virtual Library Museums Germany: Exhibition review
  5. ↑ Deutschlandradio Kultur: Bernd Ulrich: Line under cruel murders , March 18, 2006
  6. ↑ a b c d e Deutschlandradio Kultur: Klaus Kuntze: Stalins Rache , June 11, 2007
  7. ^ Klaus Gietinger: Fire from all pipes
  8. ↑ Orlando Figes: The Tragedy of a People. Berlin, 1998, p. 811.
  9. ^ University of Hildesheim: Kampfplatz Deutschland - Stalin's German policy in World War II
  10. ^ Der Tagesspiegel: Bernhard Schulz: Inevitable Collision , April 28, 2008
  11. ^ Perlentaucher.de: Press review: Die Welt , March 15, 2008
  12. ↑ Thomas Euskirchen  ( page no longer available , search in web archives )  Info: The link was automatically marked as defective. Please check the link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.thomas-euskirchen.de  
  13. ↑ terranischer-club-eden.com: Sergej Pawlowitsch Koroljow, the chief designer
  14. ^ Lev Besymensky: Secret mission on Stalin's behalf? (PDF; 7.1 MB) p. 347.
  15. ↑ Besymenski, p. 354.
  16. ↑ Der Spiegel , December 21, 1981
  17. ↑ Dimitri Volkogonow , Stalin. Triumph and tragedy. A political portrait. Claassen, Düsseldorf 1989, pp. 411-414.
  18. ↑ Walter Laqueur , Stalin. The Glasnost Revelations , New York 1990, pp. 105-110.
  19. ^ Igor Lukes, Stalin, Benesch and the Tukhachevsky case. In: Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte 44 (1996), pp. 527-548 ( online (PDF; 7.1 MB), accessed on November 27, 2010).
  20. ↑ Dimitri Volkogonow, Stalin. Triumph and tragedy. A political portrait. Claassen, Düsseldorf 1989, p. 421.
  21. ^ La Wallonie , June 26, 1937
  22. ↑ Berliner Philharmoniker ( Memento of the original from January 5, 2011 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.berliner-philharmoniker.de
  23. ^ Socialism.info
  24. ↑ You should cheer! In: Der Spiegel . No. 38 , 1979 ( online - 17 September 1979 ).
  • ( VA ) Viktor Alexandrow: The marshal was in the way. Ullstein-Verlag, Berlin 1962.
  1. ↑ a b p. 60.
  2. ↑ p. 114.
  3. ↑ p. 20.
  4. ↑ a b p. 65.
  5. ↑ p. 55.
  6. ↑ a b p. 56.
  7. ↑ pp. 116 and 130.
  8. ↑ p. 161.
  9. ↑ pp. 22, 25 and 26.
  10. ↑ p. 9.
  11. ↑ p. 108.
  12. ↑ p. 113.
  13. ↑ p. 117.
  14. ↑ p. 235.
  15. ↑ a b p. 236.
  16. ↑ pp. 250 and 251.
  17. ↑ pp. 12, 123, 149, 159 and 163
  18. ↑ pp. 133–149 and p. 181.
  19. ↑ p. 145.
  20. ↑ p. 252.
  21. ↑ pp. 154, 182.
  • ( RS ) Rudolf Ströbinger: Stalin beheads the Red Army. Deutsche Verlags-Anstalt, Stuttgart 1990.
  1. ↑ pp. 54 and 55.
  2. ↑ p. 56.
  3. ↑ a b p. 57.
  4. ↑ p. 58.
  5. ↑ p. 59.
  6. ↑ p. 62.
  7. ↑ p. 63.
  8. ↑ p. 67.
  9. ↑ pp. 70 and 71.
  10. ↑ p. 74.
  11. ↑ pp. 79 and 80.
  12. ↑ pp. 80-84.
  13. ↑ pp. 89-94.
  14. ↑ p. 94.
  15. ↑ a b p. 216.
  16. ↑ p. 110.
  17. ↑ p. 108.
  18. ↑ pp. 110-111.
  19. ↑ pp. 173-174.
  20. ↑ p. 228.
  21. ↑ p. 230.
  22. ↑ p. 237.
  23. ↑ p. 236.
  24. ↑ p. 234.
  25. ↑ p. 247.
  26. ↑ p. 249.
  27. ↑ p. 256.
  28. ↑ pp. 150-156 and 200-204.
  29. ↑ p. 276.
  30. ↑ p. 9.
  31. ↑ a b p. 281.
  32. ↑ p. 283.
  33. ↑ p. 270.
  34. ↑ p. 302.
  • ( SM ) Simon Sebag-Montefiore: Stalin. At the court of the red tsar. S. Fischer, Frankfurt 2005.
  1. ↑ a b c p. 45.
  2. ↑ a b c p. 253.
  3. ↑ p. 388.
  4. ↑ pp. 72-73.
  5. ↑ p. 110.
  6. ↑ p. 205.
  7. ↑ p. 260.
  8. ↑ a b p. 254.
  9. ↑ p. 257.
  10. ↑ p. 276.
  11. ↑ p. 388.
  • ( VN ) Vladimir F. Nekrassov: Beria. Bechtermünz Verlag, Augsburg 1996.
  1. ↑ p. 266.
  2. ↑ p. 91.
  • ( HS ) Hasso G. Stachow: The tragedy on the Neva. FA Herbig Verlagbuchhandlung, Munich 2001.
  1. ↑ p. 33.
  2. ↑ p. 88.
  • ( AN ) A. Neuberg: The armed uprising. European Publishing House, Frankfurt am Main 1971.
  1. ↑ pp. XIII-XV.
  2. ↑ p. 192.
  3. ↑ p. 197.
  4. ↑ p. 193.
  5. ↑ p. 192.
  6. ↑ p. 220.
  7. ↑ p. 206.
  8. ↑ p. 213.
  9. ↑ p. 210.
  10. ↑ p. 220.
  11. ↑ p. 234.
  12. ↑ p. 234.
  13. ↑ p. 245.
  14. ↑ p. 248.
  15. ↑ p. 255.
  16. ↑ pp. 265-274.
  17. ↑ S. XIV.
  • ( GT ) Gerd Hit: The Tukhachevsky saga. Rolf Kaufmann Printing and Publishing, Eichstätt 1990.
  1. ↑ p. 21.
  2. ↑ p. 21.
  3. ↑ p. 27.
  4. ↑ p. 24.
  5. ↑ p. 25.
  6. ↑ P. 28 + 29.
  7. ↑ p. 59.
  8. ↑ p. 29.
  9. ↑ p. 22.
  10. ↑ p. 29.
  11. ↑ p. 33.
  12. ↑ p. 35.
  13. ↑ p. 31.
  14. ↑ p. 8.
  15. ↑ p. 42.
  16. ↑ p. 48.
  17. ↑ p. 46.
  18. ↑ p. 46.
  19. ↑ P. 69 + 70.
  20. ↑ p. 71.
  21. ↑ p. 72.
  22. ↑ p. 73.
  23. ↑ p. 74.
  24. ↑ p. 93.
  25. ↑ p. 97.
  26. ↑ pp. 101-103.
  27. ↑ p. 105.
  28. ↑ p. 97.
  29. ↑ p. 106.
  30. ↑ pp. 107-109.
  31. ↑ p. 116.
  32. ↑ P. 117 + 118.
  33. ↑ P. 123 + 124.
  34. ↑ p. 239.
  35. ↑ p. 240.
  36. ↑ p. 130.
  37. ↑ P. 138 + 139.
  38. ↑ p. 127.
  39. ↑ p. 81.
  40. ↑ p. 139.
  41. ↑ p. 152.
  42. ↑ p. 153.
  43. ↑ p. 153.
  44. ↑ p. 153.
  45. ↑ pp. 162 + 163.
  46. ↑ p. 176.
  47. ↑ p. 185.
  48. ↑ p. 219.
  49. ↑ p. 189.
  50. ↑ p. 184.
  51. ↑ p. 167.
  52. ↑ p. 172.
  53. ↑ p. 200.
  54. ↑ p. 218.
  55. ↑ p. 178.
  56. ↑ pp. 206-210.
  57. ↑ p. 217.
  58. ↑ p. 219.
  59. ↑ p. 247.
  60. ↑ p. 251.
  61. ↑ p. 252.
  62. ↑ p. 252.
  63. ↑ pp. 253-256.
  64. ↑ pp. 270-272.
  65. ↑ p. 274.
  66. ↑ p. 275.
  67. ↑ p. 269.
  68. ↑ p. 250.
  69. ↑ pp. 281-287.
  70. ↑ p. 145.
  71. ↑ p. 278.
  72. ↑ p. 23.
  73. ↑ p. 240.
  74. ↑ p. 230.
  75. ↑ pp. 20 + 58
  76. ↑ p. 59.
  77. ↑ p. 24.
  78. ↑ pp. 24, 58.
  79. ↑ p. 145.
  • ( CM ) Charles Messenger: Blitzkrieg. Manfred Pawlak Verlagsgesellschaft, Herrsching 1989.
  1. ↑ p. 74.
  2. ↑ p. 74.
  3. ↑ p. 76.
  4. ↑ p. 118.
  5. ↑ p. 143.
  6. ↑ p. 119.
personal data
SURNAME Tukhachevsky, Mikhail Nikolajewitsch
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Тухачевский, Михаил Николаевич (Russian)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Russian Marshal of the Red Army in the Soviet Union
DATE OF BIRTH February 16, 1893
PLACE OF BIRTH Alexandrovskoye, Smolensk Governorate
DATE OF DEATH June 12, 1937
Place of death Moscow