re: #329 Targetpractice

Yeah, when Stalin purged the generals from the ranks, it wasn’t by giving them a big retirement ceremony with pomp and circumstance, followed by a comfortable life with a fat pension and federal health care. No, he had a more…direct method of removing those he felt “incompetent” or “insufficiently dedicated” from the ranks.

One of my favorite “motivational messages,” Stalin’s note to a couple of aircraft production managers he thought were slacking on the job:

You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government’s patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning. (emphasis added, perhaps redundantly)

Production tripled almost literally overnight.