The Two Uncle Joes

American Thinker.com ^ | May 23, 2021 | John Simpson

[Kaslin]

In 1937, Adolf Hitler and his intelligence staff devised one of the most brilliant disinformation operations in history. Diplomatic cables were sent from Berlin to Moscow, using a code the Nazis knew Stalin had broken. The Red Army, which had already lost many trained officers and men to Stalin's sweeping nationwide Terror, would soon be targeted for mass liquidation. The cables Hitler ordered sent to the German embassy in Moscow detailed a widespread conspiracy in the Red Army to overthrow Stalin. Top Red Army commanders were mentioned by name. All Hitler had to do was trigger Uncle Joe’s insane paranoia so that Stalin himself would smash his own armies and save Hitler’s Wehrmacht the task.

The rest is history. The first disastrous result of the Great Purge of Russian armed forces in 1937-38 was the Red Army’s humiliation at the hands of the scrappy Finns during Stalin's invasion of Finland in 1940. When Hitler received word of what was happening in Finland, he famously told his top military planners that Russia was a rotten house that would fall with one kick.

Hitler then directed his military commanders to begin planning Operation Barbarossa, which began on June 22, 1941. It was the largest military invasion in history, involving over three million Axis troops across a front over fifteen hundred miles wide. The Axis invasion force included divisions composed entirely of Finnish troops, who were eager to return the favor of ruthless invasion to Stalin.

Yet there were other factors at play in the jaw-dropping deterioration of Soviet battle readiness. Stalin had completely politicized the Red Army, installing political commissars at the company level to ensure ideological purity under pain of death. Many of Stalin's most capable and battle-tested officers and soldiers were purged for purely ideological reasons.

[Smellin Salt]

“ Not only did foreign correspondents from the West fail to report on the purges, but in many Western nations (especially France), attempts were made to silence or discredit these witnesses”

From The Great Purge wikipedia page. Some things never change.

[Jacquerie]

The great fear of our Framing generation was the turning US military forces inward to subject Americans rather than keep their weapons trained outward toward foreign threats. They had the examples of France and Spain to guide them.

[Herakles]

The enemy of my enemy!