I dont know about Tukachevsky himself. He did represent a Soviet Army that was fairly well trained. That is before the purge. Postulating Tukachevsky as being in command in 1941 suggests the Soviet Army still has capable officers leading its formations. It also suggests the better doctrine & tactics of the mid 1930s would still be the standard, rather than the sorry doctrine that actually existed in 1941. Finally it is possible that the various improvements contemplated by Tukachevsky & others would have been implemented. Assuming all that occured the Soviet army might not need a genius to lead it. Properly led and trained it would have likely shot the Wehrmacht to pieces in a few weeks with or with out Tukachevsky.

Let me recast that remark. It come off a little hypervetalated. Probably a competent Soviet army in 1941 could have inflicted the same losses the Wehrmacht suffered between June & early November 1941 (five months worth) in two or three months. While not disentigrating as in the summer of 1941. It would be a interesting thing to try on the gameboard.

One other critical variable of 1941 was the ammount of tactical suprise the Germans had.  Specific orders were sent to the army commanders during the preceding week and especially on 20 June, which kept them from taking any positive action in the face of German preperations.  Were Tugachevsky & a bettertrained Soviet army subjected to the same orders the result would not have been much different.

I think the problem with the Russian pre-war preparation was strategic, not merely tactical, in nature.  Even if they were given more advanced warnings of the impending German invasion, they would have been brought down by their own logistical shortcomings.  (Even their supposedly better-manned and equipped mechanized units lacked adequate transports to move infantry and artillery, let alone move supplies.  Just about every units had dismal logistics.)

For the Russians to have had better chance, they would have had to sort out their own kinks starting in the late '30s at the latest as proper strategy implies many years to implement.  A list of historically flawed preparations:

1.  The locations of supply dumps:  Historically, too many of them were located too close to the front, which were easily captured or destroyed by the initial German onslaught.

2.  The locations of airfields:  Historically, the bulk of pre-war Red Air Force got shredded in the first day, as they were poorly-camouflaged and they had too many aircraft relative to available airfields.

3.  The deployment patterns of the Red Army facing the west:  Many of their higher-level formations found their subordinate units too scattered; coupled with poor logistics, their subordinate units had to face the Germans piecemeal.  Not to mention that they have been neglecting their pre-1939 fortified regions along their borders.  To add insult to injury, the overall strategic deployment was wrong -- they deployed their western forces under the assumption that the main German onslaught would take place south of the Pripet Marshes, but the majority of German combat power was concentrated north of the marshes!

4.  The lack of coordination within the high-command and the lack of independence of the high-command:  The political leadership had tight-control over both NKVD and GRU at the expense of the military.  Meanwhile, both organizations were more interested in second-guessing their political leadership, and the military was not doing any better.

5.  The lack of staff and field exercises for wartime deployment:  For the Reds to have faced the Germans on a better term, they would have to conduct numerous large-scale deployment exercises and sort out kinks.  (Obviously, this would have gone counter to Stalin's desire to not provoke Hitler ... LOL.)  But you cannot just order your subordinate leaders to move their units from X to Y on a short notice.  You have to make allowance to train them; in return, they train their soldiers.

Photon.  You are decribing the differences between the pre purge army of 1930-1937  and the post purge army of 1938-1940.

Going back to this thread after several months.  Now that I am at it, I think within the inter-war discussions on the Russian strategy, Tukhachevsky has been overrepresented.  His underrepresented counterpart was Svechin.  (He wrote a book titled Strategy, in which he emphasized 'strategic defense'.)

Overview of Svechin's thoughts:  Soviet Union, compared to more industrialized Western powers, is underdeveloped with a huge 'peasant rear'.  It is unlikely for the Russians to gain superiority during the initial period of war, because the likely opponents would have mobilized earlier and have industrial superiority.  It will require trading space and time for the Soviet Union to mobilize.  Avoid catastrophic initial defeat during the initial phase; wage 'war of attrition' instead of 'war of annihilation'.

Unfortunately for Svechin, he was not only ostracized by the Communist Party (because his 'defensive' ideas go against the Party's 'revolutionary [hence offensive]' ideas), but also ostracized by the majority of Red Army top-brass, including Tukhachevsky.  As a matter of fact, Tukhachevsky accused Svechin of his conservatism and not seeing the potentials of mechanized 'war of annihilation'.  Svechin was even skeptical about the Soviet 5-year industrial plans -- one cannot change a heavily agarian society like the Soviet Union into an industrialized society in a short period of time.  (It is not for lack of trying, but one can only achieve so much in such a little time.)  Compared to Tukhachevky, Svechin showed greater concerns over logistics at the strategic level.  At the end, it did not matter much, as both of them were wiped out in the 1937 purge.

The Russians had transformed themselves from an agrarian society in 1918 to an industrial one of sorts by 1958.

Remark that it took them TWICE as long as it did the United States 1870-1890

But it was quite possible for it to be done rapidly from nothing as Japan demonstrated 1868-1898 when it did.

Industrialization was not the Russian problem, incompetence at the top was.

Herald.