What really happened to the Russians in 1941

[Tero]

Originally posted by Glider:

So, Jason, if I interpret you correctly, you are saying this:

Before the war, under ideal peacetime conditions, favourable weather, months of preparations, no enemy, all tanks checked and rechecked before the event - the Russians were capable of conducting a large-scale armoured exercise. But only barely and with probable occasional embarrassing failures.

When conditions started stretching their command&control capabilities beyond that point (far beyond, in fact), under Luftwaffe attacks, with higher HQs in total confusion, rear areas sliced to ribbons by German motorized columns and with orders to make that attack yesterday things started to fall apart, and so badly that in many cases corps commanders lost 90% of their 1,000 tanks in 48 hours, most of them to non-combat causes.

Some comparative figures on operational tank losses the Red Army sustained during Winter War (105 days of combat)

http://www.winterwar.com/Tactics/FINatTactics.htm

While the Finnish Army didn't have a very strong AT-arm, the tanks of the Red Army suffered huge losses in the Winter War.

Probably the largest number of kills, that a platoon scored in one day, was made in the morning of 13 March 1940, when the two 25 mm AT-guns of the 164th AT-gun platoon knocked out over 10 tanks (the exact number is not known, but it's probably between 13 - 17). The second largest score in one day was credited to the 37th AT-gun platoon, which on 5 February knocked out 9 tanks in Summa.

As the largest unofficial score for a gun team, achieved during the war, was 57 kills. It was scored by a gun team of the II platoon of 4.Er.Pst.K, led by 2nd Lt. Toivo Kausto, equipped with a 37 K/36 -gun. Most of the kills were made when the gun team took part in the destruction of the "Motti of East-Lemetti". Of course, since the figure can't be verified it isn't necessarily 100 % reliable, but it can be close to the truth as that particular Motti had 105 tanks, from which 34 were destroyed and 22 damaged. In addition to the tanks, the team destroyed a couple of infantry guns and some mg's.

While the Red Army had some 2 000 tanks against Finland at the start of the war, on 13 March 1940, when the war ended, the Red Army had 2 998 operational tanks against Finland. Thus in all the total number of tanks employed in the Winter War is around 6 000 !

In 1990, a Russian study was published in Finland (made by Professor M.Semirjaga), and according to it, the total tank losses of the Red Army was 3 543 tanks (this figure is the same, as in the memo that was after the war handed over to the Chief of General Staff, Army Commander 1st Class, Boris Shaposhnikov). The figure includes losses of all reasons, which in case of the Karelian Isthmus mounts up to 1 275 tanks.

Note also, that it wasn't only the light tanks that suffered heavy losses, also the T-28 medium tanks were prey for the Finnish AT-guns. E.g. the 20th Tank Brigade (with 90th, 91st, 95th Tank Battalions and 301st Armored Car Bn) under the command of Brigade Commander S.V.Borzilov, which was transported on October 8th 1939 to the Karelian Isthmus, started the war with 105 medium T-28 tanks. The brigade saw action in the Summa area and received during the war, as replacements, 67 tanks, but when the war ended it had only 71 tanks left.

(105+67-71=101 tanks lost. Of course most of the losses were repairable, but still some 100 tanks is a very large figure).

(The Finnish intelligence department of the General HQ, had estimated that some 1 500 tanks had been destroyed, underestimating the sheer size of the Red Army's armored force. E.g. the Finnish General HQ had estimated that the Red Army had had 3 300 tanks against Finland, and so near the war's end, the most optimistic officers were sure that the Red Army was running out of tanks.)

The below table by M.Kolomiets shows by detail the Red Army tank losses in the Karelian Isthmus (not including tank losses in other fronts).

.....

[JasonC]

BigDuke - fair enough on different ways of trying to make the same point. Mine was that the upper level line commanders knew where to order their units to go. There is such a thing as just failing to think operationally, being reactive and myopic and tactical instead. And leaders can just be lost as to what the right move is, on that scale.

That wasn't the problem. The army and front commanders knew how to play "big chess". The pieces fell apart on them, and the high command overreacted to it by making dumb moves that plenty of the advisors knew where dumb the moment they were made.

On the rear area views, I wasn't talking about perceptions. All commanders have tendency to become excuse factories in any large failure. I meant that objectively, the Russian economy was working much better than anything else in the picture - they were mobilizing, the Germans weren't; they got massive quantities of war material; they fielded new armies reliably and got them where they were needed, strategically speaking. Not the source of failure. But there undoubtedly was chaos and confusion in what I called the "near rear" - roughly, railhead to front line in the active sectors.

Glider - yes that is basically my thesis. Friction complicates CSS and the C3 needed to deal with it. You need much more robust systems to deal with the massive management and coordination problems involved in moving large modern formations around, under friction, than the move anything around in peacetime or than to move simpler infantry formations around under wartime friction.

On an exercise, the focus is on the line commanders and their decisions, as well as simply testing whether everyone more or less knows their job. The higher ups want to see their units respond to commands. It is not typical to deliberately "stress" CSS in a peacetime exercise. More of them are conducted in open plain regions than in swampy forests with limited road nets. Commanders know about them months in advance. Objectives are laid down with cartoon clarity. Reactions to real moves by the enemy are typically restricted to the front line forces themselves. Even today, we send brigades through the NTC (far more realistic training than anything anybody did in the past), not army groups, and they prepare for months. It is the only relevant thing happening. Nobody is getting killed (unless they tell Stalin jokes).

Now, the CSS, C3, and supply tasks involved under wartime friction are a much tougher problem. The whole economy is stressed. There are occasional shortages of everything. Everything wanted is desperately needed someplace else, too. Everything is urgent, a scramble. People are dying en masse, and not standing on ceremony about trying to avoid it. Every time the situation changes, plans fracture - by which I mean, parts do not make sense, parts adapt to the new information and change, while others need to but do not. Throwing them out of coordination with each other. When they were meant to be interlocking parts.

Too abstract. The fuel resupply point for 3rd battalion is Heresk. Tanks will laager there from 6 PM on. Maintenance workshops set up at the south end of the town. Night security is the responsibility of the tank rider company commander. 456th truck company to pick up fuel at Howsaboutoe on the rail line by 4 PM, deliver and unload before 6. 60,000 gal. In peacetime, a walk in the park.

But 3rd battalion was in combat today. It is needed at the front 15 miles from Heresk. The likely next threatened point is 10 miles to the right, but the only road to that threatened point that hasn't been cut yet is the Cowsapop trail, through the village of Saywhatski. The south end of Heresk is a smoking crater because a Stuka visited this morning. There are German infantry in the woods 3 miles west of Heresk. The SMG company took heavy casualties in today's fighting. The 456th truck company was grabbed for another urgent task at 1 PM, will be free by 5 if all goes well, but 30 miles from Howaboutoe. The train is waiting on the siding.

It is now 3 PM. What new orders do you give to correct the situation? What happens when a third of the units involve get the new orders, a third don't and stick to the plan, and a third think its is all a stuff up and nonsense and stand around shouting at each other and proposing disconnected expedients to deal with their own little corner of the problem? And what is Yvgeny going to be able to do about all of it with the 4 pens and the pack of index cards and less than 3 hours? When something is cobbled together anyway, how much harder will the next two days park walks be because of things that went wrong today?

That is the solvable problem. Now try it with the same command resources, but a 1000 AFV tank corps spread over 40 miles with 10-30 of those problems happening simultaneously. You can have help - 10 different cooks proposing their solutions in parallel without consulting each other, and line subordinates implimenting half those proposals by the time you hear of them. When these things are tackled brilliantly nobody much notices. When they fail badly enough, they can have much bigger consequences than we might have thought. That's the theory.

[ March 10, 2005, 07:50 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Tero:

http://www.winterwar.com/Tactics/FINatTactics.htm

What's the reason for the falling off of Red Army tank losses from "technical failures" after the period Nov 30th - Feb 1st against 7th Army? The numbers in the table at the foot of that page are almost equal for that first period against combat losses, but halve against them thereafter. Are the Soviets improving their supply situation, are the unreliable models leaving the picture, or is there some other cause?

[Krautman]

Tero,

a "Motti" is thé finnish equivalent of a german "Kesselschlacht"/cauldron/pocket, right?

[jtcm]

Fascinating series of posts. I remember a similar post by JasonC re melting away of Grande Armee in 1812-- again looking at bigger, "men in war" rather than "men in combat" problems. Very striking also that the Soviet "upper line" commanders already very good at operational thinking, but the actual instrument found lacking-- rather similar to what many had predicted the Warsaw pact army would have been like in case of a shooting war in Central Europe. Notable also how a command economy, based on central planning, could not confront the task of combat logistics. The question asked by an earlier poster remains: how did the Soviets crack this problem ? Dissolving Mech armies is one thing; but what was the situation like e.g. in spring 1942, or summer 1944 ?

Vaguely relevant: a recent article in the NY Times re. slowness of supply of body armor to US troops in Iraq. NB how ceramic plates and socks were all classified as "priority: urgent", which in effect meant that nothing was. War as managerial exercise, war for management consultants.

NYT 7 March 2005

[Glider]

That is fascinating stuff... you take mediocre officer corps, weed out all those showing any initiative, arrange public trials to cow the remainder, provide surviving officers with non-professional NCOs and largely uneducated staff.

The result - they are capable of handling infantry divisions but when you give them a 1000-tanks unit they will manage to lose 900 of them in a few days practically even if Germans are firing duds.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by jtcm:

Notable also how a command economy, based on central planning, could not confront the task of combat logistics. The question asked by an earlier poster remains: how did the Soviets crack this problem ? Dissolving Mech armies is one thing; but what was the situation like e.g. in spring 1942, or summer 1944 ?

I think that is the wrong conclusion. I agree with Jason's analysis - it makes a lot of sense, but to link it to Communist economics is not correct, I think. No more so than blaming the western allies supply crisis of autumn 1944 on capitalism.

The problem may have been one of attention (that appears to have been the case for the western allies, anyway), and skills at the higher level as well. Once it was understood that logistics were an issue, Communism handled it well - e.g. by the end of the war, they fielded pipeline battalions capable of laying 30km of fuel pipeline per day, according to Duffy. They also managed to sustain six tank armies and a number of Cavalry-Mech Corps in combat logistically at this stage (albeit not all of them at the same time), over ranges that the 1941 commanders would not even have dreamt about. Based on lessons learnt from their previous operations.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Krautman:

a "Motti" is thé finnish equivalent of a german "Kesselschlacht"/cauldron/pocket, right?

For all intents and purposes, yes.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Sirocco:

What's the reason for the falling off of Red Army tank losses from "technical failures" after the period Nov 30th - Feb 1st against 7th Army?

I think the 7th Army referred to is the Red Army 7th Army.

The numbers in the table at the foot of that page are almost equal for that first period against combat losses, but halve against them thereafter. Are the Soviets improving their supply situation, are the unreliable models leaving the picture, or is there some other cause?

I would imagine that is due to the fact that from Nov. 30th until early January they had to advance in very (even extermely) difficult conditions from the border to the Mannerheim line, IIRC ~40-50 kilometers, before the battles started in earnest. There was a lull in the fighting during January and the attacks started again in Feb. 1st.

[jtcm]

I'm not attributing the crisis of 1941, as analysed by JasonC, to planned economy--JasonC points out effectiveness of Sov war economy from start. In fact I woukld have thought a planned economy would have been particularly adept, because of the hypertrophy of the state's capacity for requisition, at war footing operations. I think that was the argument of "Sodorov" in "Inside the Red Army".

So my point is that even a planned economy found it hard to cope with supply at the sharp end. So in turn, I'm wondering if a planned economy had particular factors that might have contributed to the mess ? Just a thought.

[Sirocco]

Originally posted by Tero:

Originally posted by Sirocco:

What's the reason for the falling off of Red Army tank losses from "technical failures" after the period Nov 30th - Feb 1st against 7th Army?

I think the 7th Army referred to is the Red Army 7th Army.

The numbers in the table at the foot of that page are almost equal for that first period against combat losses, but halve against them thereafter. Are the Soviets improving their supply situation, are the unreliable models leaving the picture, or is there some other cause?

I would imagine that is due to the fact that from Nov. 30th until early January they had to advance in very (even extermely) difficult conditions from the border to the Mannerheim line, IIRC ~40-50 kilometers, before the battles started in earnest. There was a lull in the fighting during January and the attacks started again in Feb. 1st.

That would explain it. Without knowing the designations involved the table is unclear.

It would be interesting to compare Soviet supply on the offensive in the Winter War with their performance on the defensive in 1941.

[JasonC]

I'd imagine that command economy training was something of a drawback, yes. It teaches coordination via a plan, rather than via decentralized incentives reacted to intelligently by independent actors at all levels. Managerially, it rewards control centralization. It is possible to plan things thoroughly that way, but it is work, and it can be too rigid when friction is high.

From my reading of later successes in operational handling of tank and mech brigades and corps, I think the Russians learned individual initiative well enough, whatever background they had, when faced with the empirical problems themselves. Men learn when they have to do something. But in 1941, they hadn't had time to yet. A few lessons from Manchuria, Finland, the Poland occupation. But the Germans were something different, in scale, logistic stress, coordination problems.

Obviously it does not help to be losing catastrophically. That's a feedback, but something was wrong (deeply) with the mech portion of the army from the start, that played a major part in the early losing. (Dubno e.g.)

Eventually the Russians improved their mech arm. They broke through axis minor lines when they hit them, by late 1942. They broke through German lines in mid 43, and kept whole army groups backpeddling furiously in crisis management mode, on both occasions. Those are not signs of perennial incapacity.

But there are other cases where the Russians clearly expected their units to perform on par with German counterparts, and were stunned when they didn't. Kharkov in early 1942 looks fine on a map, but was a disaster. Breakthrough forces lost to thin infantry division defenses. The German armor was available to counterattack on the flanks because it wasn't stressed (or often, needed) to blunt Russian mech forces at their points of attack. Mars featured massive failures of mech forces in wooded terrain, with mobile German reserves playing a larger role. The exploitation after Stalingrad was in many cases pushed to the point of logistic failure, with tank brigades stalled beyond range of support. There is a reason Manstein's counter was so effective, in the late winter.

Overall, I think they were getting a lot better at it, but gradually. Their formation sizes move, too. (Brigades occasionally work in front of Moscow, regularly work in late 42 and on. Corps work late 42 some of the time, reliably in 43). The mech officers are clearly maturing. It probably helps to have a lot more trucks, not to be retreating all the time.

The Russians still had very high armor losses throughout the war. Some of that is undoubtedly just effective German weapons and tactics. Some of it pretty much has to be less than brilliant Russian armor tactics. And I don't doubt that a portion is also less effective CSS than the Germans had or than the US had. I've read military economists who noted that Russian planners considered tanks more like ammo and designed them for short operational lives - certainly compared to the Germans, who kept them around like luggage. (Pz III shorts in Normandy, French tanks...)

I suspect the biggest hold up in 1941 was simply a shortage of competent technical personnel. I don't put that down to purges, though they can't have helped. The whole Russian social structure had this hold up. It was a distinctly less advanced society in many ways. Which is not a comment on their system of government, just an historical reality.

Half the population was engaged in agriculture. Large portions of it could not read. An educated specialist in the west means a man with a university education and years of formal military schooling. An educated specialist, anywhere but the peaks of command or economic control or political bodies, in Russia in 1941, meant somebody who had graduated from high school and had a couple of years on the job training. The average educational standard was more like "finished 8th grade and can read".

Nothing dumb about the average, do not misunderstand. In the west we associate poor levels of formal education with failure to have passed various selective screens. It had no such connotation in Russia in 1941. It was a poorer society, and smart men might live out their lives as farmers or truck drivers. Opportunity was rare.

Among the officer corps, I suspect the selection of war produced most of the improvement. Higher ups who failed rapidly lost their places. Often the Germans just took them out along with their units as the price of their failures. Others were relieved. Formations were turning over rapidly, and the whole army was expanding. So anyone doing anything sensible and still alive, must have gone up the ranks like a rocket. Everyone is learning more about how it works, and those who've figured it out are reaching the positions from which they can make their knowledge effective. But like any institutional learning process, that takes time and proceeds unevenly.

That at any rate is my assessment of the trajectory of the Russian mech arm, on the human "managerial" side.

[A.E.B]

Wasn't USSR military doctrine at that time predicated on the idea that the Red Army should always fight on the offensive?

If the forward Corps of the Red Army in Poland and the Ukraine were deployed to facilitate an offensive, this in part could explain the poor showing on the defense.

Getting attacked when you are forming for your own attack is often disasterous.

If Red Army logistics were deployed forward, then the inital German breakthroughs may well have overrun a large % of materials in the first few days.

Being deployed forward without defenses in depth also made it difficult for the Red Army to stage a controlled withdrawal as they were withdrawing onto nothing (most retreating armies gain an advantage by shortening their line of supply as they fall back).

As a result German supply problems caused by the speed of advance coupled with an inadequate logistical system from day 1 were initially balanced out by equal or greater supply problems befalling the Red Army. Only once the Red Army fell back on major supply hubs like Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev did Red Army supply problems ease, which in turn highlighted the growing German supply problems at that time.

Regards

A.E.B

[ March 10, 2005, 11:01 PM: Message edited by: A.E.B ]

[annihilate_this_week]

"Half the population was engaged in agriculture. Large portions of it could not read. An educated specialist in the west means a man with a university education and years of formal military schooling. An educated specialist, anywhere but the peaks of command or economic control or political bodies, in Russia in 1941, meant somebody who had graduated from high school and had a couple of years on the job training. The average educational standard was more like "finished 8th grade and can read".

- I don't know, the Soviet State made education, well at least literacy, for those unable to go onto higher eduaction, if anything, a rather high priority from after the end of the civil war on. I think by the late 1920's or 1930's something like 70%++ of the peasant (or previously illiterate) population was literate - this drive to education was hand in hand with the rapid-industrialization. I remember learning all of this in class at college but I forget the actual figures.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Sirocco:

It would be interesting to compare Soviet supply on the offensive in the Winter War with their performance on the defensive in 1941.

I think the early war Red Army performance relied very heavily on prestocked supplies close to or in the units area of operations. Mind you, even as late as 1945 the Red Army performance suffered if they had to deviate from the play book plan.

[JasonC]

AEB - old canard, based on German wartime propaganda defending the attack as pre-emptive. Thoroughly exploded. The Russians weren't in offensive posture, they were in a deeply unprepared state.

On literacy, I did say the norm was 8th grade education and able to read. Large portions of the population could not - that doesn't mean majorities, it means levels you and I would consider scandalous today, but that were utterly normal for a society still dominated by its agricultural sector. The point was simply, this was not Germany - the most educated country on the planet at the time (for all the good it did them), nor the US - the most economically advanced. It is not surprising they had shortages of technical personnel.

[Tero]

Originally posted by jtcm:

I'm not attributing the crisis of 1941, as analysed by JasonC, to planned economy--JasonC points out effectiveness of Sov war economy from start. In fact I woukld have thought a planned economy would have been particularly adept, because of the hypertrophy of the state's capacity for requisition, at war footing operations. I think that was the argument of "Sodorov" in "Inside the Red Army".

So my point is that even a planned economy found it hard to cope with supply at the sharp end. So in turn, I'm wondering if a planned economy had particular factors that might have contributed to the mess ? Just a thought.

It must be remembered the Soviet economy was de facto on war footing ever since it got up to gear after the civil war.

What IMO hurt them the most was the doctrinal upheaval which had left the entire army in disarray. They had progressed from Civil War tactics and doctrine to quite modern Blitzkrieg style tactics and doctrine. Only to be pushed back again to the Civil War era thinking just when the war was behind the corner.

The fact that the politrucks had the last say in any and all orders given was also IMO more detrimental to the tactical performance of the units in all levels than the overall supply situation was.

[JasonC]

"the Soviet economy was de facto on war footing".

Balony. T-34 production soars 8 fold in 12 months after the war breaks out. That is full economic mobilization. There was tons of slack. The overall economy contracts up to 40% as they lose territory, but armaments output still soars. That is full economic mobilization.

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

T-34 production soars 8 fold in 12 months after the war breaks out.

So what ?

They had already produced ~20 000 tanks (not to mention other pieces of military hardware) between 1920's and 1939.

Where did that production capacity go ?

That is full economic mobilization. There was tons of slack. The overall economy contracts up to 40% as they lose territory, but armaments output still soars. That is full economic mobilization.

True. But only up to a point. The entire economical structure was based on the assumption that at some point USSR WILL come under attack. The armaments industry was extensive and all the major production plans and trends had been established to support the armaments industry.

Hence to them full economic mobilization did not entail altering any productional structures, just taking in use the slack and I suspect it happened according to a premade contingency plan.

[JasonC]

Of course it altered their production schedules. Drastically.

Long term investment went out the window, industrial investment waited until after the war (aside from a small number of key bottlenecks), consumption fell drastically. Steel goes from making rails and construction beams for railroads and buildings to making tank bodies. Copper goes from wiring the country to brass for shell casings. Nitrates go from fertilizer to explosives. Ten million men leave the farms for the army. As many more are dead. A comparable number of women become industrial workers. 50 million of the population are under foreign control, as does the Donbas, half the coal, etc. 18 million workers are evacuated to entirely new regions.

You don't lose half your country and keep your old industrial plans. They made up for it by sacrificing everything to immediate armaments output and by working very hard. Factories that ran 8 hour shifts in 1940 run 24 hours a day with multiple sets of workers.

The statement is more of a political declaration than a thought.

Yes they had 23k tanks at the outbreak of the war. They had accumulated them since about 1933. They represented 8 years production. By 1942, that is one year's production in number of tanks, and the mix has gone from 10 ton T-26s to 30 ton T-34s

[ March 11, 2005, 02:03 AM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[Tero]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Of course it altered their production schedules. Drastically.

Of course. But if they could do it in such a short time which do you think is more believeable explanation:

a) the production process was already geared for said production (ie in war footing) and they simply increased the volume to fill capacity

or

they had to mobilize both the army and the production (also relocating a substantial percentage of the production facilities) from scratch while under attack and they managed that Herculanean task in the timeframe indicated

Long term investment went out the window, industrial investment waited until after the war (aside from a small number of key bottlenecks), consumption fell drastically.

AFAIK consumption of "luxury items" had not been that great in the first place. At leats amongst the remote areas and the plebs in general.

Steel goes from making rails and construction beams for railroads and buildings to making tank bodies.

How many rolling stock factories did they convert to producing tanks ?

Copper goes from wiring the country to brass for shell casings.

Nitrates go from fertilizer to explosives.

Yes. But was that what actually happened ?

Ten million men leave the farms for the army.

Before much of the arable lands in the west is over run.

A comparable number of women become industrial workers.

So who is doing the farming then ? Pixies ?

50 million of the population are under foreign control, as does the Donbas, half the coal, etc. 18 million workers are evacuated to entirely new regions.

Yes.

You don't lose half your country and keep your old industrial plans. They made up for it by sacrificing everything to immediate armaments output and by working very hard. Factories that ran 8 hour shifts in 1940 run 24 hours a day with multiple sets of workers.

So where did they get the time to retool all those factories to make munitions ?

The statement is more of a political declaration than a thought.

Yes they had 23k tanks at the outbreak of the war. They had accumulated them since about 1933. They represented 8 years production. By 1942, that is one year's production in number of tanks, and the mix has gone from 10 ton T-26s to 30 ton T-34s

Yes. But you have yet to show the Soviet economy was NOT on war footing prior to 1941.

[Bigduke6]

Tero,

I think the disconnect is over what is a "war footing". You can make a pretty good arguement that the Soviet economy by the late 1930s was on more of a war footing than any western economy, including definately the German.

But that's nothing compared to what the Soviet economy managed, when that command economy mobilized for all-out war. Suddenly planners have no priority costs, no gun/butter decisions, no politics, no civilian needs, zip. The only limitations are labour, resources, and wartime priorities. Money is not only not an object, it isn't even a factor in production decisions.

[Tero]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

I think the disconnect is over what is a "war footing".

Seems so.

If a country has more tanks than the rest of the world combined then I think that has to account for something when the stance of its economy is determined.

You can make a pretty good arguement that the Soviet economy by the late 1930s was on more of a war footing than any western economy, including definately the German.

The Communists had survived the civil war which was fought all over the country against multinational forces. I think they did openly state that they would not be caught off guard.

But that's nothing compared to what the Soviet economy managed, when that command economy mobilized for all-out war. Suddenly planners have no priority costs, no gun/butter decisions, no politics, no civilian needs, zip. The only limitations are labour, resources, and wartime priorities. Money is not only not an object, it isn't even a factor in production decisions.

Very true. But if they switch from producing T-26/BT-5/7 and other assorted models to T-34 and KV's then I must maintain that that does not require much from the planners since the time to retool the production is far less than it would be if they were retooling from, say, civilian automobile or farming equipment production.

Take the fate of the T-34M. A, by all accounts, relatively huge improvement over the original model. Yet it was not allowed to go into production because the retooling of the production lines would have disrupted the supply of the vanilla model to the front.

[Leopard_2]

I would be interested in hearing JasonC's take on how the Soviet situation in 1941 - "stand and fight" orders, reserves withheld by the rear instead of tapped into by the front, officers cashiered for perceived cowardness, etc. etc. - compares to the German situation from 1943 onward.

My perception is that Hitler and his staff overextended their not-fully-mobilized war economy in 1942, and when the tide swung against them, lost their daring, flexible strategy / tactics, and started the very same follies (giving stupid, unrealistic orders like "stand and fight", and chashiering smart officers because they were unable to make them into successes) that enabled their early successes - with the same disastrous results.

[Leopard_2]

Originally posted by Tero:

Take the fate of the T-34M. A, by all accounts, relatively huge improvement over the original model. Yet it was not allowed to go into production because the retooling of the production lines would have disrupted the supply of the vanilla model to the front.

Similar could be said for the British 2-pounder or, to a lesser extend, the US Sherman tank (or the Bf-109). They remained in production despite being much inferior to available alternatives, because you could produce so many of them.