IceBreakChron III: PREPARING THE WAR

[JasonPratt]

November 11, 1938: Beria, the chief of the People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs (the NKVD), and Muller, the chief of the Nazi Gestapo, sign a document today pledging cooperation with each other in...? Suvorov doesn't specifically say, only "in their main specialty -- suppressing freedom and engaging in the mass elimination of people." Considering that the Great Purge had finished up a month ago, the agreement might have been about extradition of Soviets seeking asylum? Hard to say, but plausible. It's odd that Suvorov doesn't specify the gist of the agreement; but his point of course is that these two mortal enemies are working together for evil, with the formal agreement of their governments (not as a sideline of their own).


November 1938, Trotsky, in his "Bulleten Oppozitsii" [Bulletin of the Opposition] #71, p.7, declares "Stalin has irrevocably given Hitler free rein [or 'finally untied his hands', depending on the translation], done the same for his enemies, and pushed Europe toward war."

This is less than a month after British Premier Chamberlain has returned from Munch joyfully waving around a piece of paper declaring he had brought home "peace in our time". Mussolini still considers himself a peacemaker, and Hitler has issued no directive about preparing for the invasion of Poland. So what has changed?

Trotsky has learned from his own contacts back in Russia that Stalin is giving up on using General Franco to draw Europe into a second world war. (More about this soon.)

Even more simply, Trotsky can see that Stalin from this time has ordered all anti-Hitler propaganda to be brought abruptly to a stop.

Trotsky knows from long (and bitter personal) experience that Stalin routinely finds some villain to do his dirty work, so that he can remove the villain publicly and be the hero. Stalin is no longer threatening Hitler, thus finally untying Hitler's hands, freeing him to act -- and freeing everyone else to act against Hitler.

[JasonPratt]

1938: this year in tanks, the Soviet designers for the BT-28 and its variants have decided that it's time to get ahead of the Nazis on tank guns again!

Starting this year, BT-28 tanks are being produced with a longer barrel, now L-10 or ten times the muzzle diameter in length, twice as long as the previous "KT-28" weapon. Its muzzle velocity is now 555 m/s. The Germans will not catch up with this innovation until 1942. (Suvorov is a little unclear whether the model of the gun is named "L-10" but usually in tank specifications "L" for a gun refers to its proportional length compared to muzzle diameter. Suvorov elsewhere sometimes calls that the caliber length.) As Bariatinsky and Pavolv will write in "Middle Tank T-28", 1993 (page uncited), "In terms of arms, the T-28 absolutely surpassed all German tanks. The L-10 gun [as well as the KT-28, by the way], could effectively destroy the tanks of the Wehrmacht Heer at distances out of range for their weapons."

The Nazis will install the HL-120TR 300hp engines on the later models of the PzIV, but they still won't catch up to the 500hp BT-28 engines (or even the 400hp engines on the original BT-2 models).

PzIV armor is thickened to 30mm; the Soviet response is the T-28E, with a maximum thickness of 80mm (perhaps no longer to be regarded as a "speed" tank exactly). The T-28 has sufficient potential in its design to permit the mounting of the 85mm F-39 artillery rifle! (per Shirokorad's "The Genius of the Soviet Artillery: the Triumph and Tragedy of V. Grabin", 2002, p.141-142.) The T-28 successfully passes all tests with this artillery piece strapped into place.

But the Soviet tank industry will make another design breakthrough next year: the T-34!  <:-) 

From then on, the T-28 will be unnecessary -- except as a speed tank intended to shed its tracks as soon as it reaches contemporary superhighways.

In 1938, the Soviets also upgrade the number of machine guns on their heavy tank, the T-35, from five to seven; and upgrade the armor from 30mm to 50mm.

Lastly in innovations this year, BT model tanks start being produced with diesel engines, 10 to 20 years ahead of other nations. Range will increase to about 440 miles. Diesel engines will very soon be standard on all Soviet tanks.

[JasonPratt]

Late 1938, date unclear: winding up the Great Purge within the Soviet Union, Stalin authors (or authorizes) the "History of the All-Union Communist Party (of Bolsheviks) -- A Short Course".

This book becomes the bible for all Marxist-Leninist communists of the Soviet system, Russian and worldwide. In its concluding chapter, Stalin proclaims the paramount goal of the Soviet Union is to break their encirclement by capitalists; encircle the capitalists instead; and then to keep on going until every last country on earth has become a component "republic" of the USSR.

A Red Army song inspired by this publication includes a stanza about how the war of liberation will start by a command from Stalin: "Like breathing fire, resplendent, never stalling / will roll our armor, join the fierce crusade; once into battle sends us Comrade Stalin / and our First Marshal signals 'Draw your blade!'"

hmmm... sounds like 1939 might be an eventful year...  ^-^


[Next up: IGNITING THE WAR]