World Battlefronts: Soviet Immortal

In the spring of their victory, came a moment of deep sadness for Russian military men. In the great Hall of Columns at Moscow lay the body of Marshal Boris Mikhailovich Shaposhnikov, the Tsarist colonel who had turned to the Soviets in 1918, served as one of the few professional midwives at the birth of the Red Army.

Shaposhnikov had helped steady the amateur soldiers of the civil war. As chief of the Frunze Red Banner Military Academy, he had created a Red officers corps. He planned the 1939 move into Poland and the winter war with Finland. He was Chief of...

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