The history of the Red Army (1/2) | DW Documentary

In 1918, Leon Trotsky founded the Red Army. Before long, the army would be used not only against the outside world, but also against the Soviet people. Worried about the great power of the army, Stalin initiated purges in 1937 and 1938.

By 1918, Soviet Russia was waging all-out war — against both foreign enemies and its own people. Soon, the Red Army, founded by Trotsky, had to abandon its noble ideals of equality and democracy. When food rationing was ordered during the civil war, the rural population revolted against the fledgling communist state. To put down the peasant uprising in Tambov, former tsarist officer Mikhail Tukhachevsky used poison gas against the villagers on Lenin's orders in 1920.
The Red Army emerged stronger and more confident as a result of its victory in the civil war against the "Whites" and Tsarist Russia. However, Stalin, who came to power after Lenin's death in 1924, feared the increasing influence of the army as well as the popularity of commander Marshal Mikhail Nikolayevich Tukhachevsky. He had him executed on June 12, 1937, and ordered purges. Those years, 1937 and 1938, went down in history as the time of the "Great Terror".

When the German Wehrmacht invaded Russia, the Red Army was only a shadow of its former self. In addition to Tukhachevsky, another three marshals, 13 generals and some 5,000 officers had been executed as part of Stalin’s purges. Nearly half of the leadership of the Red Army were dead, murdered by their own leader.

To counter the German attack, Stalin ordered general mobilization. In November 1941, the Germans were at the gates of Moscow. General Zhukov managed to force them to retreat at the last moment. The Red Army received help from the partisan movement, which had grown as a result of the genocide of the Jews, and succeeded in weakening German fighting morale through targeted attacks.

At Stalingrad, Zhukov was able to wear down the enemy. Thanks to the anti-Hitler coalition the USSR had formed with the US and Britain, the Red Army was able to launch a counteroffensive. On its triumphal march to Berlin, the Red Army discovered the concentration and extermination camps, which ignited the soldiers' desire for revenge. Widespread looting and rape ensued. Stalin's main men, Generals Zhukov and Konev, captured the German capital. Nazi Germany surrendered on May 8, 1945, and the surrender document was signed in Karlshorst on the night of May 9, 1945.

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