Warlords
Under scrutiny
Delusion and error
Stalin |
*** |
Stalin saw conspiracy and plotting wherever he looked. Indeed, he had virtually the entire original Bolshevik leadership executed because of it, while his purge of the Red Army before the war removed almost 40,000 officers, including about half of those with the rank of brigade commander or higher. In addition, he had three of the army's five marshals and 15 of its top 16 commanders executed. However, it is unlikely that more than a tiny number of his victims were actively conspiring against him. There was more substance to his belief that Churchill was trying to engineer war between Germany and the Soviet Union. But this led to catastrophic consequences when he refused to act on warnings from British intelligence that Germany was planning to invade the Soviet Union in 1941.
