You hear in a lot of histories of the effect of Stalin's pre-war purges of the Soviet military, so just how bad were the purges.
Stalin purged some 67% of the generals in the Red Army: 3 of the 5 marshals, all 11 vice commissars of war; 75 of the 80 members of the Supreme War Council, 13 of the 15 army commanders, 51 of the 85 corps commanders and 110 of the 195 division and brigade commanders. The result of this was the dismal performance of the Red Army in the opening months of World War Two. Fortunately for Russia, Stalin did not actually kill all of the purged officers, but many had ben sent to the gulags in Siberia. As a result, after the debacle of the summer of 1941, many of the survivors were relased from the gulags and back to their former commands.
"Dirty Little Secrets of WWII"
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The reason that the American Army does so well in wartime, is that war is chaos, and the American Army practices chaos on a daily basis.
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