What really happened to the Russians in 1941

[Bigduke6]

Tero,

On the T-34M, I personally wouldn't call it a huge improvement over T-34/76m40 standard. Remember this is pre-war 1941.

From what I have read T-34M wasn't a world beater - it was a bit shorter, had a new engine (rotated 90 degrees), had christie not vickers suspension, could carry more ammo, and there were plans for thicker turret armor.

Retooling to get T-34M that would have cut into early t-34 production, and this at a time when the Germans are massing against the Soviet border.

In retrospect it's clear that any t-34 manufactured in 1941 was almost worth gold, as the vanilla t-34 was a right fine tank as it was. Great engine, good armor, decent gun.

At the time I suspect the Soviets figured t-34 already was superior to anything it would come up against, production was just beginning, why shut down production for several months in exchange for marginal improvements in suspension and automotive.

And that's assuming the new engine and suspension on t-34m would be as robust as the ones on the actual t-34/41 tank at the time.

Was the Soviet policy correct? Well, I would say roughly 10,000 garden-variety T-34s for every year of the war is a pretty good argument in favor.

[annihilate_this_week]

"Germany - the most educated country on the planet at the time"

- Really? I've never heard this stated anywhere else. Where did you read/hear this and what is this based on? The average citizen finishing some kind of "gymnasium" ? Most college educated people in the world? Highest literacy rate? Highly doubt it.

I'd say the average "soldat" was no better educated then any other soldier anywhere else.

I would really attribute the supposed apsense of "professionals" or highly trained individuals or what-not to the purges more so then the Soviet educational system (which boomed in the 1920's with colleges and universities being filled with flocking country-folk and others who did not have the chance to go there in the past) or lack of opportunity.

I'd even go as far to say that there was more oppurtunity to attend a FREE University in Soviet Russia then there was for a peasant in Germany - where I assume education cost money.

Was an averge german worker more educated (as in more years of schooling had) then a Soviet one? Possibly, but only because the USSR had a much bigger population. I'd say if you comapred Moscow (esp. pre-1937) and Berlin, it would be about the same (education wise).

[ March 11, 2005, 12:19 PM: Message edited by: Talk'scheap ]

[JasonC]

b.

Tractor factories that made tractors up to 1941 were making T-34s by 1942. The entire run of Russian lights, T-60s, T-70s, and SUs, all came from converted automobile factories. They didn't dispense with luxuries they dispensed with necessities. The standard ration for those not in the army or working in a war plant came to 1200 calories a day. The old and the weak starved to death - civilian deaths above trend in unoccupied areas came to 7 million. Who was doing the farming? Nobody. Agricultural output collapsed by 40%. The Russian army ran on LL food.

Some other countries managed to finance their war programs out of economic expansion. There wasn't any in Russia. Total output by value fell over 20%, even with vastly increased work hours by everyone left. Economies are flexible. You can take the hit where you choose to take it, and substitute more of A for less of B. They put a much higher proportion of total output into armaments. They didn't have a lot of choice in the matter, the Germans made it quite clear right away that this was to the death.

They weren't mobilized already, it wasn't a plot, Hitler's ravings about Barbarossa being purely defensive were conscious lies for public consumption (as we know to a certainty because his private letters say exactly the opposite), and you aren't fooling anybody.

[JasonC]

The German university system had no rival anywhere. The scholarship they possessed is well known, even legendary. Much of the leading intellectual work elsewhere during and just before the war came from exiles. A ypical modern Harvard undergraduate could not pass a German gynasium examination c. 1880 or 1930. If ever a proof were needed that education and barbarity are completely compatible, it was Nazi Germany.

[Krautman]

Just a few days ago, there was an interesting newspaper report, announcing a newly-written book about the Nazis' "social-political seduction" of the german people. While germany had always been a society strictly divided into different social classes since 1871, and even the Weimar republic could not soften those class borders, the Nazis actually managed to do so. They did e.g. not demand a war tax from the lower classes in the early days (as you know, the living standard in germany was comparably high throughout the war) and introduced several social welfare programs, among them improved schooling especially for working-class and peasant children (presumably to educate them "in the right way"...). Their (official) ideology was that it was your skill that mattered, not your social class ("Volksgemeinschaft").

[ March 12, 2005, 03:32 AM: Message edited by: Krautman ]

[Krautman]

BTW, if you study medieval history in germany nowadays, you will sooner or later come across a certain work about long-distance trade and medieval marketplaces ("Der mittelalterliche Stapelplatz", iirc), written in 1938/39. Somehow it is - after maybe 100s of comparable publications - still regarded as the best work treating this certain topic (It is free from any kind of ideology-pure historical science).

[JasonC]

Oh Christ, spare us the paeans to Nazi Germany as a classless society, will you? They wrecked everything they touched. My point was that the country (or civilization, including Austria and its former dependents etc) they were wrecking, before they thoroughly lobotomized and trashed it, was the leading light of scholarship in the world. They exiled or killed half its most brilliant minds, and their idiotic war in favor of blonds smashed what was left.

No, I am not talking about that lot of mountebanks and worse, but of Jacobi, Gauss, Riemann, Weierstrauss, Hausdorf, Klein, Hilbert, Weyl, Kronecker, Godel, Heisenberg, Schrodinger, Born, Minkowski, Schwarzchild, Planck, Hertz, Helmholtz, Einstein, Menger, Bohm-Bawerk, Mises, Hayek, Popper, Goldhizer, Lowith, Buber, Dollinger, Husserl, Voeglin, Jaspers, Arendt, Wittgenstein, Weber, Boas, Heine, Ranke, Lukacs, Polyani, Mommsen, etc.

To say nothing of the endless monographs by people nobody has ever heard of in history, archeology, linguistics, classics, etc that have been flattered in silence by thousands of later PhDs lifted bodily from their uncited works.

The raving madmen of 19th and early 20th century Germany are more educated than others' genuises - Nietzsche, Heidegger, Adorno&Horkheimer, Muller, etc. Their charlatans are more original than others' genuine articles - Freud, Marx, Treitzsche, Spengler. Leading lights elsewhere are merely translators copying selected bits of them - Satre from Heidegger, Merleau-Ponty from Husserl, Kojeve from Hegel, Foucault from Nietzsche, etc.

No serious scholar is ignorant of German academic and intellectual accomplishment in the 19th and early 20th century. All of which ceased, or scattered into the work of exiles, with the calamity of the Nazis and the war. What they wrecked is unforgivable; it was half of mankind's brain.

But this isn't the general forum and we should stick to talking about Combat Mission.

[annihilate_this_week]

"Who was doing the farming? Nobody. Agricultural output collapsed by 40%. The Russian army ran on LL food."

-women-farmers, using horse-drawn plows, thats who.

[John D Salt]

Originally posted by JasonC:

[snips] ...and their idiotic war in favor of blonds smashed what was left.

An excellent point, exceedingly well made, and I think the above snippet is .sig material.

All the best,

John.

[Krautman]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Oh Christ, spare us the paeans to Nazi Germany as a classless society, will you?

Maybe i missed the point in my post. I just wanted to say there's a book saying that the Nazis did something to offer "better" schooling to the poor and "seduced" the lower classes by improved social care. I did not want to idealise anything nor do i believe germany was IN FACT a classless society. I think just as well as everyone else around here that the Nazis ruined everything, please don't mistake me for a Hitler-Fan.

[jtcm]

It's not just the Gymnasium and University systems which should be considered here, but also, I suggest, the apprenticeship system: I assume that it was up and running already by the beginning of the C20th, in fairly recognizable, modern form (Wilhelmine institution ?), and would ensure widespread skills and literacy among the militarizable population.

[Andreas]

It depends which part of the system you talk about. The basic apprenticeship system was not a 19th century invention, it dates back to high medieval times, and was pretty unchanged in the 19th century. The codification into law, extension to 'new' skill areas (e.g. machinery) and the combination with schooling, may well date to the Wilhelmine empire. Germany abolished the collection and dissemination of stats on analphabetism in 1903 I read recently, because there was nothing to collect.

[Sirocco]

I'm just wondering how the Soviet supply experience during the Winter War corresponds to that during 1941. The table quoted above indicates a dropping off of non-combat losses after the initial period. Does that indicate that supply is improved, or is it a reflection of the offensive nature of operations? How well supplied were Soviet mechanised operations during the Winter War?

[blue division]

First point - Russian in summer 1941 were in complete disarray. This point cannot be emphasised strongly enough.

The Red Army was simply not prepared to give battle with the Germans in 1941 (largely because Stalin refused to contemplate it). Stalin for example completely lost his nerve for several weeks in the autumn and the early summer - and the whole Soviet war effort was directionless as a result.

The Red Army, even with good equipment, still lacked the ability to operate properly over the large areas presented to it. Command and control and logistics were simply not up to the job of fighting the Germans over such a huge front. And that is why so much of the 'old' army dissapeared in 1941.

A tank is not a super car - you need a logistical train behind it to keep it fueled, armed and on the road.

In the midst of the chaos of summer 1941 - the Soviets lost the abiltiy to keep ALL of their tank fleet under C&C and operational. OK, some armies when they were still fresh had tanks - but they were quickly chewed up. But the majority of their tank fleet ended up being abandoned by the crews. German propaganda portayed Russian tanks as being destroyed by stukas, artillery etc. but the reality most of the time was the tank breaking down or running out of fuel and the crews fleeing.

At the end of the year the Soviets were pushing tanks straight from the factory to the front. Luckily for them, the Germans had reached the end of their tether too. (I believe some 33% of the original german force were casualties, and their supply train had bogged down in the mud).

So to go on about tactics etc. in 1941 is to miss the point - the Russians were a sitting target for Germany, and luckily for them they had a lot of land to trade for time. The Red Army was seveerely hamstrung in every way by the Soviet leadership before the war, and the events of summer 1941 were the logical outcome of this. It was not until late 1942 that the Russian war effort was to be professionally managed.

[ April 01, 2005, 07:45 AM: Message edited by: blue division ]

[blue division]

Originally posted by Bigduke6:

From what I have managed to glean from the Soviet accounts the early stages of the war, from the Red Army side obviously the early war experience could be lumped into a great big "every unit for itself."

The Red Army was still modernizing in 1941. It could have sone better in this regard, but most of the promising officers had been shot three years previously.

So you have basically an army that is still stuck in the pre-mechanized era to a large extent (they still didn't appreciate just how violent the coming conflict would be - unlike Hitler who had a very clear idea).

It is perhaps unfair to criticise the Soviets - the Germans were ahead of everyone else in this regard until 1942, when the rest of the worlds resources for warmaking were brfought into play.

[Soddball]

Originally posted by blue division:

</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />Originally posted by Bigduke6:

From what I have managed to glean from the Soviet accounts the early stages of the war, from the Red Army side obviously the early war experience could be lumped into a great big "every unit for itself."

The Red Army was still modernizing in 1941. It could have sone better in this regard, but most of the promising officers had been shot three years previously.

So you have basically an army that is still stuck in the pre-mechanized era to a large extent (they still didn't appreciate just how violent the coming conflict would be - unlike Hitler who had a very clear idea).

It is perhaps unfair to criticise the Soviets - the Germans were ahead of everyone else in this regard until 1942, when the rest of the worlds resources for warmaking were brfought into play. </font>

[Joachim]

Originally posted by blue division:

So you have basically an army that is still stuck in the pre-mechanized era to a large extent (they still didn't appreciate just how violent the coming conflict would be - unlike Hitler who had a very clear idea).

I doubt Hitler had that clear idea. If he had had that idea, German production would have been fully mobilized for war in 1940. The peak of German production was in 1944. It should have been possible to reach those numbers in 1941.

If you have a clear brain and want to go to a full-scale war, you first win the war and then let racism take over (if racism ain't a proof for an insane mind anyway).

Gruß

Joachim

[jacobs_ladder2]

Remember also, German intelligence and Russian deception produced two effects. One, the number of Russian infantry divisions was badly underestimated (but overestimated in the border zones). Two, the number of Russian armoured formations was badly underestimated.

German high command believed the Russians were all bunched up at the border and were supported by a few cavalry and new tank divisions. In many cases, the new armoured formations were formed from cavalry divisions. German intelligence missed this fact and erred quite badly in its assessment.

Nobody had any idea the Russians had several armies sitting in second echelon and the capability to mobilize several more should the need arise.

Hitler's thinking, no matter how muddled or clear, was based on the intelligence provided to him. Barbarossa, based on what was known of the RKKA, should have worked. Only, German intelligence was disastrously wrong and, of course, the plan ended a little on the bad side.

Cheers

Paul

[jacobs_ladder2]

Not sure if anyone has mentioned the books "Stumbling Colossus" and "Colossus Reborn" by David Glantz. I have been going over them in detail for about 2 months now. If you want to know what happened in 1941 and beyond these books are unbelievably good reads.

The destruction of the mechanized corps is well documented and Glantz leaves little doubt as to what happened and why. In fact, I would say that the first book "Stumbling Colossus" would pretty much answer the majority of questions raised in this thread.

Apart from Suvorov and perhaps Zaloga, Glantz is the only historian I know of producing this kind of work. And of the three, he is far and away the best read.

Cheers

Paul

[JasonC]

Of course I've read Glantz. The first post was basically a reaction to his more recent Barbarossa book, mistitled "Before Stalingrad". Which is 15 years after the earlier ones. He leaves plenty of doubt about -why- it happened (commanders make excuses, it is natural); everyone already knows -that- it happened.

[LongLeftFlank]

Great thread here. I've enjoyed reading it. In RL, I work in supply chain management for heavy manufacturing and what you're describing about key logistical breakdowns occurring in the "last mile" rings very true to me. As does the issue of out-of-touch upper management issuing irrelevant, dogmatic and sometimes draconian instructions to line managers who are too busy fighting fires and can't/don't know how to address the problems up the chain.

[jacobs_ladder2]

duplicate post

[ April 03, 2005, 11:28 AM: Message edited by: jacobs_ladder2 ]

[jacobs_ladder2]

Originally posted by JasonC:

Of course I've read Glantz. The first post was basically a reaction to his more recent Barbarossa book, mistitled "Before Stalingrad". Which is 15 years after the earlier ones. He leaves plenty of doubt about -why- it happened (commanders make excuses, it is natural);...

"Stumbling Colossus" was published in 1998 and "Colossus Reborn" about two months ago. "Before Stalingrad" was published 2003. Their bibliographies essentially quote the same sources.

"Before Stalingrad", while an excellent read, is a more general discussion of Barbarossa and its failings. "Stumbling Colossus" specifically targets the Red Army, its prewar state of readiness and the resulting disaster in 1941. "Colossus Reborn", as you can probably guess from the title, covers the later period of the war.

My suggestion was that anyone who has questions regarding the early part of Barbarossa would benefit greatly from reading Stumbling Colossus. The book was written to directly refute Victor Suvorov's assertion that Stalin was planning a preemptive attack against Germany. It dedicates a section to each part of the air and ground forces, details their prewar readiness and then shows how that lead to disaster in 1941.

...everyone already knows -that- it happened.

May I ask why you included this?

Cheers

Paul

[JasonC]

I don't think Stumbling shows us more than that it happened. Glantz gave us his first views on the period as editor of "The initial period of war on the eastern front", which was largely from German sources and a pretty poor account, in which his own stood out as showing the Russians did indeed have entire Mech corps that delivered actual counterattacks in the prescribed doctrinal manner a staffer would ask for on a map (at Dubno, in particular). Which was news. That was quite some time ago - the conference it was based on was in 1987 and the book appeared in 1993.

By the second of those, we already had accounts of more successful periods for the Russians from Glantz. In 1995, ten years ago, he gave us When Titans Clashed, which covered the whole war and gave us his early account of the performance of the Russian army. Which was a substantial upward revision from the conventional wisdom and long overdue. His characteristic mix of praising the professionalism and skill of the army while damning aspects of the regime was already apparent.

Stumbling then told us that the army was not ready for the war. Which we could have guessed from its performance, but needed to be spelled out given tendentious propaganda by others etc. This reads like the output of an excuse factory. The army is supposed to be advanced professional and competent after all, with only the regime idiotic. But the army is in lousy shape. The easy synthesis is oh the purges put the army in lousy shape, a conventional explanation but hardly a satisfying one. It lacks specificity and amounts to little more than a buck passing, blame game tactic. The army says "he did it, it wasn't me". Yawn.

Others had traced the doctrinal developments in the Russian army and its approach to mobile doctrine in particular. The conventional view on that score is that the Russians were highly advanced, as least since Zhukov's reforms after Manchuria. It is generally considered doctrinally correct that they already had corps scale formations of all arms with an independent operational role etc. The standard being what everyone takes to be the proper German formula of 1939-1941. And the conventional mistakes supposedly being, limited scale deployment (battalions, regiments, brigades) aka penny packeting, tying to infantry - on the one hand - and lack of combined arms, still inadequate scale (brigade or division only), etc.

On paper, the Russians avoided both of these "errors" conventionally ascribed to the allies generally, as opposed to the Germans. They also had excellent tanks technically. Glantz showed already that they were playing "big chess" with their armor right after the invasion e.g. Dubno.

The conventional explanations of clearly inferior Russian performance therefore seemed to have failed. They weren't idiots, they weren't unprofessional, they didn't penny packet, they had large operational scale, they moved independently, the vector of the thrusts makes perfect sense on a large scale map etc.

We were left with 2 explanations - surprise and lack of preparedness, and "obsolete tanks". Stumbling makes both claims at points, and shows that many of the tanks on strength weren't operational, ever. But the scale of this trimming is still far too small to account for the performance discrepancy. Cut the Russian armor force in half in a month, and it is still three times the size of the German force.

Moreover, the surprise and not really operational claim can apply to a period as early as Dubno, but fails when one is talking about Smolensk or the fall. One is no longer talking about tanks that simply can't start. When 5th Mech and 7th Mech evaporate in days, we are well past the period of mobilization. The obsolete tank explanation does not make a lot of sense, as detailed above (though there is a sense to it, in that they strain the CSS systems etc).

When an commander blames his failure on German air superiority it can be discounted as an excuse. When he blames swamps, one has to be puzzled. When he blames a shortage of trucks, one should take notice. When Glantz wants to blame purges, one should pay attention but not accept it at face value. Moreover, the Russian economy was clearly capable of producing massive quantities of war material, and the rail system was able to deploy them. The Russians pull 3 million men out of their hip pocket and drop them sensibly right in front of the rampaging Germans.

A shortage on the day of the invasion can be put down to lack of strategic preparedness and to surprise. But shortages sufficient to cause mech corps to evaporate in days, well after mobilization, and at the same time the economy is clearly delivering massive military material, requires a real and additional explanation.

You've heard mine. I don't think Glantz has another one to offer, that differs from it. I am willing to be corrected, though, if you can think of the passage where he explained why 1000 tank mech corps evaporate in days with alarming regularity throughout the 1941 campaign, and are then ordered abolished completely by Stavka. Something previous conventional wisdom about "proper" employment of armor in large combined arms formations, has viewed as a decline and a mistake. While I think it was necessary and correct, to deal with unsolved CSS problems in the Russian mech arm.

[ April 03, 2005, 10:11 PM: Message edited by: JasonC ]

[jacobs_ladder2]

Well, we definitely drew different conclusions. In fact, I find it hard to believe that we are talking about the same book.

While Glantz does offer some of the arguments you have stated he does not wield them independantly of each other. Taken separately they are indeed trite and ridiculous. Glantz, however, being one of the world's foremost authorities on the subject, has quite a bit more to say. And, while I did not agree with him completely, I found little suspect in his method of presenting his case. What I find suspect is your reduction of his work to the status of "not differing from the views which I have already stated". It does not differ greatly, but that is not surprising considering that the predominent school of thought on the subject came from his work.

Stumbling Colossus left few doubts in my mind as to why it all went down the way it did, but I guess others will have to read it and form their own conclusions. The book tells you how poorly prepared the RKKA was for war, why it was so poorly prepared and the main result of that lack of preparedness (i.e. staggering losses of men and material). Decidedly, many could have guessed that, but before Glantz, guessing was all they were doing.

I fail to see how the dozens of cited documents from almost every major player in the game could be perceived as an excuse factory. Certainly, it would be natural to try to wriggle out from under certain death. The mass executions of the purges would probably have had that effect on any army. Mix them and the enormity of the loss and it is easy to see why so many lost their heads, but what is striking is that they are all so similar in their choice of excuses.

Essentially, inadequate signals equipment at all levels (down to tank platoons using flags to coordinate their movements), horrendous logistics, no air and little ground recon, enormous technical problems and pitiful logistics. Taken individually they explain nothing. Combined, in multiple instances, they explain everything.

Add on the drastic shortages in men, tractors, trucks, equipment and ammunition and you can see just how bad the Red Army looked. In fact, the enormity of the disaster is equal to the enormity of the distance between Stalin's illusory world and the number of serviceable vehicles in a tank park in Minsk. Put simply, the boys at the top had no idea what their new toys could do. As a result they asked far too much of them. Remember, the man who knew what to do, Zhukov, was "riding the pine" while Timoshenko struggled to organize a counterattack with divisions down to 3000-4000 men apiece. His last mobile reserve squandered needlessly at Lepelem.

Yes, there were a few well-aimed counterblows, but the reality is that most of the tanks were gone within weeks. Why? Because of botched pre-war planning. The infantry was meant to soak up initial losses while the mechanized corps gathered for the counterattack. Unfortunately, this rather good idea was lost to the rather bad idea that the Germans were not to be antagonized. Accordingly, the mech corps were broken up into pieces so as not to invite the attention of German intelligence. Once the dust settled, there were only a few armoured formations remaining and these, despite being in much better condition, were destroyed at nearly the same pace.

In the case of the counterattack of 20th army in the Senno/Lepelem region, the Russians simply went blindly into battle and were chopped up by an opponent holding all the cards. The Germans, mainly due to air reconnaissance and near absolute air superiority, were able to follow the Russians' every move, while the aforementioned found themselves constantly bombed and sending out recon parties which either did not return at all or lacked the training to form a meaningful picture of German positions.

Predictably, the Germans were ready. They chose the best ground, dug themselves in and, according to sources from both sides, decimated both corps to the tune of 40-50% losses in 2 days of fighting.

Even worse, this "well-aimed" counterblow actually missed the mark rather badly. The main German thrust fell to the north. While the 5th and 7th were counterattacking into the expertly prepared anti-tank defenses of one and a half panzer divisions (of Panzer Group 3 and not of Panzer Group 2 as Timoshenko had intended), the Germans were crossing the Dvina and seizing Vitebsk against a few understrength rifle divisions.

When the Stavka learned of this they ordered the beaten mech corps to turn 180 degrees and rush to the defense of the fallen city. Needless to say the Germans were not accomodating enough to let them go quietly. Some two weeks later the remnants of the two corps ended up mixed in with the rest of 20th army encircled hopelessly in front of Smolensk.

This story is not typical. It is actually blessed with a few glimpses of operational success. With a few minor exceptions, the other corps did not fare so "well".

In fact, the fate of the mech corps can be summed up rather succinctly. Barbarossa caught the Red Army in the midst of a massive transition. The blow expected to be aimed at the Ukraine instead went straight through Minsk. Chaos ensued. Stavka screamed for counterattacks but no one, for a number of reasons, was listening. When someone finally did start to listen the border divisions had already been swallowed. In desperation, the few remaining mechanized corps were forced to move hundreds of kilometres in a matter of days to counterattack without proper support or intelligence. The counterattacks failed badly. All of this before July had ended.

I will never find the passage where Glantz explains the loss of 1000s of tanks because that passage does not exist. I can, and already have, named the books where the story is told. If you require an abbreviated version, the previous paragraph will have to suffice.

Cheers

Paul

[ April 04, 2005, 03:48 AM: Message edited by: jacobs_ladder2 ]