...Hitler is lulling France to sleep, for he does not wish to give cause for the growth of French armaments.

It goes without saying that Hitler's imperialist plans have not only an anti-Soviet edge. This edge serves as a convenient screen for covering up revisionist plans in the west (Belgium, France) and in the south (Poznan, Czechoslovakia, Anschluss). Apart from everything else, one cannot deny that Germany needs French ore. It also needs an expansion of its naval base. The experience of the war of 1914–1918 demonstrated with all clarity that without firm possession of the ports of Belgium and the northern ports of France, it is impossible to build up Germany's naval power. Thus, for the realization of its revisionist and expansionist plans, Germany will have by the summer of this year an army of at minimum 849,000 men, that is, an army 40 percent larger than France's and nearly equal in size to the USSR's (the USSR has 940,000 men, counting all service branches). And this despite the fact that the USSR has 2.5 times the population and tens of times the territory of Germany. This is what so-called equality in armaments looks like in practice.

Izvestiya TsK KPSS. 1990. No. 1. Pp. 161–169.

Note: This insertion replaced the following passage in Tukhachevsky's original text, which contained extended analogies with the Franco-Prussian War and discussion of Moltke's strategic plans, arguments about Germany's primary direction of attack being eastward against the USSR, and concluded with rhetorical passages about the invincibility of the Soviet socialist state and "the great leader Comrade STALIN." The comparison of the old (author's) and new (editorial) texts provides insight into Stalin's position in a complex time fraught with the coming world war. First, the assertion that the USSR was the primary target of German fascism was removed from the article, and the center of gravity was shifted to the "not only anti-Soviet" edge of Hitler's plans. Second, comparative data on the armies of key European powers appeared, whose participation in the coming conflict was inevitable. Considering that the article being edited was written by the Deputy People's Commissar of Defense, one of the first Marshals of the Soviet Union, whose name was well known abroad as well, these changes were evidently signals both for France and Great Britain and for Hitler himself.