Captain Fritz Wiedemann, personal political aide to Hitler –appointed subsequently to the post of Consul-General at San Francisco –was asked if there was any truth in Staliin’s charges of espionage against the Red Army generals. My agent’s report reproduced Wiedemann’s boastful reply: “...
Volume II of Stephen Kotkin’s STALIN: Waiting for Hitler, 1929-1941 picks up where the scholar left off, cataloging the 20th century’s most successful and ruthless dictator’s consolidation of power. In urban areas this meant building factories and marginalizing enemies. In rural areas it incl...
Convinced they were plotting a coup, Stalin had 30,000 members of the Red Army executed. Historians estimate that 81 of the 103 generals and admirals were executed. Stalin also signed a decree that made families liable for the crimes committed by a husband or father. This meant that children...
Various marshals, generals, and senior officers, who in the past had been supporters of Trotsky, Bukharin, or Zinoviev, or who later had come to regard Stalin’s policy as dangerous, came together in a fourth group, planning a military rising. Basseches, Nikolaus. Stalin. London, New Yor...
When Beria reported on a number of generals who had been condemned and then released, Stalin wanted to know who had petitioned on Malyshkin’s behalf. He begrudged the time wasted on having to hear about all the traitors he had overlooked in the 1930s. Volkogonov, Dmitri. Stalin: ...
“Sytin! One of the Czar’s generals–and one of the shiftiest of them, too! I’m not taking any orders from him! I’m going to tell the Old Man [Lenin] what I think about that!” How right my uncle’s instinct was history was to demonstrate later, when Sytin was discovered ...
destruction and corruption he inflicted upon those he presumed to rule. However, the generals, cronies and family members who carried out his orders via massacre, torture and theft must not get off so easily. Those who murdered and pillaged on behalf of Suharto and his “New Order” regime...
the US tried to persuade him to make political reforms. He refused, so they persuaded him to make military reforms. But when Diem was finally overthrown and assassinated in 1963, none of his generals rose to defend him. Nor did the US, which, after 8 years, had finally realized that Die...