Der Alte Fritz

Why the Russo-German War 1941-1945? Well that was where the action was, 6 million Soviets fighting 3 million Germans over a continent 4,000km wide, hundreds of battles, dozens of campaigns lasting 4 years. Huge cities such as Leningrad under siege for 900 days, street fighting in Stalingrad lasting 4 months, everything is on an epic scale. 4 out of 5 German casualties happen on the Eastern Front, this is where the German Army was fought, beaten and destroyed. In the time period of CMRT the Ostheer loses 2 Army Groups destroyed. In the West you have a 6 week campaign in France in 1940, a small campaign in the Desert, a slightly larger campaign in Tunisia and Italy but the German never commit more than 15 Divisions to these at a time when they have 150+ Divisions in Russia. The only campaign that comes anywhere close to the Great Patriotic War is the Normandy Campaign with its 2 million Allied troops against 1 million Germans but this only lasts June 1944 till April 1945 - 9 months and the German Army had already been gutted and its best troops dead. From a historiography perspective, there is a lot still to be discovered, the Germans were anything but candid about their experiences in the East - their occupation policies saw to that and the Soviets wanted to hide their own appalling casualty lists, so modern researchers can still discover many new facts and accounts of events. You have to strip away years of Cold War rhetoric as well with propaganda being taken as received wisdom for many things that we read. Some are now hotly debated and some are not, but there is still a great deal to discover.

Some of the Soviet artillery silhouettes do not look correct either especially the 203mm which looks like a US Long Tom

JasonC is absolutely correct in his description of Soviet artillery usage. You can find more descriptions here: http://militera.lib.ru/science/peredelsky_ge/index.html with a table that gives dozens of fire plans. I would just make one point about the Front level artillery units, they did plan to fire off ALL the shells in the dumps before an offensive as this amounted to 1-3 'combat loads' (60 shells for a 122mm combat load) and planned for this. In some cases, when the infantry was using their 'battalion sized recce attacks' before the offensive, they did so well that the offensive set off early before the fire plan was finished leaving about a third of the dumps still full. This happened to Antipenko (Commander of Logistics for the 1st Belorussian Front) on 23rd June 1944 and he was then ordered to send his men and limited number of trucks off into the marshes and swamps to look for all these heavily camouflaged and return them to the railhead for transportation forward. STAVKA insisted that he do this rather than abandon them. He did this a bit later on as the first few days of the offensive (which had by far the greatest ammunition expenditure for all units) the logistics units and their lorries made huge efforts to catch up with forward units and re-supply them before they advanced out of range. This took place over the first 1-200 km so that at least the units started the pursuit phase with replenished stocks. The Front level artillery units having completed their fire mission would then re-locate to set up for another fire mission in support of another offensive (1st Belorssian Front attacked with its right wing and the artillery moved to set up for the attack by the left wing) with the move made by railway or in some cases road if time was an issue. Often the next mission would be the reduction of a Festung Platz some distance along the line of advance. This would have been isolated during the advance and screened by a number of units, the railway would be restored and then the Front artillery would arrive with reserves and accomplish the reduction of the fortress. The main thing to take away from the Soviet artillery method is that it applied maximum force against a static defence to breach it, after which the Soviet method of Deep Battle unhinged the entire defence and the pursuit phase began in which ammunition usage was very low. Typically a unit might have 2-3 combat loads for the breach operation but only 0.25 for the pursuit operation. So the reason that they were 'topped off' before setting out on the pursuit was to ensure that when the pursuit ended 300-600km further on, the units had sufficient reserves to fight a battle to consolidate their gains until the railway and the logistics forces could catch up. This is a key element of Soviet thinking in that the end of an offensive should set up the jumping off position for the next offensive, which meant fighting to retain it against stiffening German reserves. In the Vistula-Oder Operation, this meant fighting a bridgehead battle at 650 km from their start line - and winning it. To put this is a Western perspective it is as if the British had broken out of Caen and then pursued the Germans all the way to Arnhem with an Armoured Division sitting on the far side of the river defending the bridge while the rest of the army trudged through Belgium and captured the near bank of the Rhine. The next offensive would have been a breakout of the Arnhem bridgehead onwards. Or the US Army under Patton when it runs out of fuel in Lorraine, sending an armoured force forward with the last of the fuel to capture the Rhine bridges while the rest waited for re-supply. That is the difference with the Soviet method.

One slight caviat, you have Nazi symbols on both the Army and Waffen SS versions. Not everyone likes Nazi symbols and in some countries they are illegal (eg Germany) so it might be as well to think of any alternative for the Heer such as the black, white and red shield from the helmet or the Iron Cross or Balkan Cross? Just a thought otherwise it looks great.

John Yes there are some real insights there and a fair comparison between the German - Soviet and British/US artillery capability. I think that most of the items you cannot see are in that post. If in any doubt PM me.

If you think about it Red Thunder is slightly different from the usual CMx2 releases. In the Normandy series and Italy series each release was a set of New German uniforms, vehicles and unit stats and a similar new set of Allies be it British, Polish whatever. But RT is different, most of the German set already exists for 1944 and the Red Army set is very simple. It has a limited range of vehicles and a limited range of units, for instance the main infantry Shtat was established towards the end of 1942 and did not change until the end of the war. There are few national differences, the 1st Polish Division looks almost identical to the main RKKA units. Yes they have Partisans to add in and Airborne and NKVD but there is not much else. Similarly the vehicle set is pretty comprehensive the T34 covers from Early 1942 right through to Late 1944, IS1 to IS2 Late. There are odd vehicles to add in such as T-60, SU-100 and IS3 but have a look at CMBB and this list pretty much covers from Stalingrad to Berlin. There is a pretty comprehensive list here for the Soviets so I think that they are taking their time to get it correct for 1944. Then to add in say an earlier module such as Kursk would require minimal Soviet work but of course a fair amount of work on the German side. So it may be a while yet and there is still the manual to be published, then the Pre-release people get their couple of day early downloads, so the main release is not going to be until April as it is now the 29th March.......

Vasily Grossman is quite a good read but then he was 'officially approved' so there are limits to his horizons. But none the less he is quite readable and paints a good picture of the war in general. Probably a better bet for your interests is Alexander Werth who was a war correspondent for the Daily Mail who spent most of the war in Russia, an undoubted Soviet apologist, none the less he had the British journalists keen eye for detail and none of theSoviet restrictions on reporting. As far as David Glantz is concerned try his Siege of Leningrad book for human detail. A good free source that needs a translating browser such as Chrome is http://militera.lib.ru/ which has a huge amount of Soviet and post Soviet memoirs. Similarly the "I remember" site is a good one for Soviet side personal accounts. Loza "Commanding the Red Army's Sherman tanks" is readable and quite informative. Jack Kagan's "Fighting with the Soviet Jewish Partisans" is good albeit concerned with the partizan war. A cheap way to study the RKKA is either to buy the Xenephon edition of TM-30-130 for $20 or read any of Walter S Dunn's books. They are getting dated now and often have mistakes but the Stackpole editions are very cheap and accessible for the price. There are two articles you read though both by David Glantz which you can get here: http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/rzhev/rzhev2.html The Failures of Historiography: Forgotten Battles of the German-Soviet War (1941-1945) http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/rzhev/rzhev1.html How were Soviet blocking detachmanets used http://mr-home.staff.shef.ac.uk/hobbies/e-front.html American Perspectives on Eastern Front Operations in World War II which will help point out some of the difficulties even today of studying this war. But one should not take the idea that this is a particularly Soviet problem, many German accounst are as ideological and flawed as the Soviet ones.

John As someone who has given so much to the community over the years, I think you deserve to get a little back. And if Bagration is it, then so be it. These maps are of the Orscha area and are taken from 1925 maps from several sheets, although being on the state border there seems to be a short section which is missing which I have filled in with a 1981 map. https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TIwZr3Mmx8V2VxSnlOeUctalU/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TIwZr3Mmx8QWlVazdqYkh1Qzg/edit?usp=sharing Yes you are right the red spotty thing shows the density of counter battery fire on a position for various periods of the war. From the previous mentioned Armchair General Forum is this diagram which shows the number of shells fire per mortar/gun per 5 minute time period/fire type for the Vistula Oder Operation. Bagration was pretty similar rate of fire for each period so from this you could work out what they were firing. So a 5 minute Fire Attack is going to be 20 rounds per 82mm mortar, 12 76mm rounds, 8 122mm rounds and that steady aimed fire is going to be roughly 1/4 of this rate. So 3 rounds a minute for a 76mm gun crew for the aimed sustained fire would be fairly typical. The actual details of the attack for each Rifle Corps for 11 Guards Army are given here to download: https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TIwZr3Mmx8QUlpWjdyQnV1TVU/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TIwZr3Mmx8VE9yM3hsMWJwU0E/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TIwZr3Mmx8bHFqWm5NNm1KbFU/edit?usp=sharing https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B_TIwZr3Mmx8TXZwVFRCUjZmOEU/edit?usp=sharing

It strikes me that the original CMx2 user interface looks too modern with its inset grey 'grills' so that to really get the flavour of WW2 and if we are looking at a more muted UI, perhaps you could make it look more like an old fashioned radio set with the various 'boxes & windows' being the dials buttons and small illuminated panels, One item to address, is what the UI looks like when it is doing/showing nothing. Currently it is a series of empty grey boxes but could it actually look like a radio when not showing buttons or any activity?

John In fact we do know the artillery fire plan of the 11 Guards Army, it is shown on this diagram: http://militera.lib.ru/science/peredelsky_ge/s34.gif and the counter battery programme is given on this diagram: http://militera.lib.ru/science/peredelsky_ge/s35.gif in short it ran roughly like this: 5 min fire raid 105 min steady aimed fire on defensive structures 20 min destructive fire by direct fire guns on front line 40 minutes suppression of forward edge 15 min before start of barrage attack by 18 IL-2 on 78.Sturm HQ and 160 Pe-2 bomb rear areas 5 min before start of barrage attack on front line attack by IL-2 on artillery and mortar positions and on personnel start of lifting barrage (by regimental and divisional guns) (heavier pieces target reinforcement routes) Troops move up to within 200m of barrage and then assault forward

John There is a good comparison of Soviet, British and German artillery methods complete with fire plans, overlays, etc at this site: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/forums/showthread.php?t=135327 The Soviet one we looked at was the Vistula Oder Operation but it is not too far off the methodology of the Belorussia Operation.

Translated version of the image: Have a look at the article given in the link http://militera.lib.ru/science/peredelsky_ge/index.html it gives details of the artillery part of both attack and defence and has details of both Bagration and Lvov-Sandomir

Quite true but as you know and have written before, Soviet attacks stress the importance of the joins between formations and so attacks are always made across the join of two armies. The 71 RC was the right hand side of the 31st Army (which made lesser attacks to the south on the other side of the river) and the left hand side of the main attack (ie south of the road) while the other half of the attack made by 11 Guards Army in the following order: 5 ARMY 16 Guards Rifle Corps - 11 GRD - 3KM (This unit makes the breakthrough through 256.ID) 16 Guards Rifle Corps - 1 GRD - 3KM 16 Guards Rifle Corps - 31 GRD - 3KM 8 Guards Rifle Corps - 26 GRD - 5 GRD - 18 GRD - 2.5KM 36 Guards Rifle Corps - 84 GRD - 83 GRD - 2.5KM HIGHWAY 36 Guards Rifle Corps - 16 GRD - 2.5KM 71 RIFLE CORPS/31 ARMY RIVER 31 ARMY attacks along to the south against 25.PzGrD http://militera.lib.ru/science/peredelsky_ge/s32.gif The 36 GRC are the main attack on either side of the highway, the 8 GRC & 71 RC are the supporting attacks and the 16 GRC and 31 Army provide the holding attacks on either side. So the unit that finds the path through the bog was a supporting unit that then becomes the lead for the main part of the attack while the main attack stalls.

Great Google Map JasonC. You can actually transpose the Soviet Operational Map that I posted onto the Google map. Look at the big town at the bottom of the Soviet map marked м. дубровка this is shown on the Google map as "Dubrouna" and it is clearly on the river on both maps. Follow the river eastwards towards the state border and you see that it curves northwards and then eastwards. The front of the German line is just beside the red box marked M1 on the Soviet map marked as кмривеа or on Google maps as the big green area just beyond the river bend. Just to the north west of it you can see a big brown area - this is peat cuttings and represents the boggy area through which the flank forces made their penetration of the German lines.

Quite good descriptions from everyone. Personal accounts are another good way of getting an idea of terrain. Jack Kagan's "Surviving the Holocaust with the Russian Jewish Partisans" which formed the basis of the film "Deliverance"with Daniel Craig gives a good description of Belorussia. I think the German experience is best illustrated by their defence at Orscha by 78.Sturm and 25.PzGr against 11 Guards Army. The plan of attack by the 71 Rifle Corps is shown here between the river and the railway line: http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/maps/1944W/3BF/71SC_31A_Byelorussia_tactik_39_June23_25_44.jpg This is a narrow area of dry land running between the river to the south and an area of peat bogs to the north (the railway line shown on the map runs in the middle of the dry part.) The peat cuttings were surrounded by forest and very wet and boggy, even in summer. The German defence is long established and based on a series of trench lines and some trenches go north through the peat bogs. Most of the defenders were concentrated here with a battalion holding the line through the bogs. The Soviet attack this area with massive force led by large tank formations but are held within the German defence zone. But they also attack through the peat bogs and here in the forests they overwhelm the defenders and breakthrough. Then they find a forest light railway and use the track bed to bring up armour and guns. The German position is outflanked and the Soviets are able to build up their forces despite a counter attack by 14.ID and ultimately surround the main German position trapping 78.Sturm in Orscha. The Tank Army was originally planned to go through here at Orscha, down the main Minsk highway but as the main attack failed it was switched to the breakthrough position further north. I think that is the experience of the Germans in Belorussia, good defence along constrained axes of advance with dry land and roads and railways which are then outflanked by Soviet Infantry going through the bogs, marshes and forests. Think of a similar situation to the British in Malaya being outflanked by the Japanese. But lets not forget that in the same period to the south, you have the Lvov-Sandomir Operation which is through rolling open and wooded hills in the foothills of the Carpathian mountains and further north the flat open plains of Poland. So Red Thunder has it all reall.

You mean like the Panzerwurfmine: http://www.lonesentry.com/manuals/german-grenades/panzerwurfmine.html

While we are waiting shall we have the "what shade of green is 4BO" discussion that should kill a few days

I listed all the CMBB scenarios from the period here: http://www.battlefront.com/community/showpost.php?p=1509597&postcount=20

To get an idea of the type of forest in White Russia have a look at the news coverage of the Russians who go around the forest recovering bodies 65 years on. http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b03nt864/Crossing_Continents_Russia_Digging_up_the_Dead/

MikeyD That is great news! My favourite CMBB unit was the 2 man Soviet SMG armed Tank Hunter squad armed with the RPG-43. Virtually invisible until you ran over them, they could be deadly - lets hope they can be as invisible in CMRT. The Soviet Infantry Regulations from Nov 1942 NKO Order Nr. 347 stated that the 45m AT guns should engage the enemy tanks, the ATR should aim for the vision slits, fuel tanks engine vents and side armour of the tanks. The infantry sections should hide and engage any accompanying infantry when they got within 100m while designated soldiers would attack the tanks if they rolled forward. They should fire upon vision slits with their personal weapons and attack the tanks with grenade bundles (referred to in Soviet writings as "ball charges") fire bottles, AT grenades and throw/drag mines in front of the enemy tanks. If the tanks attacked an MG position, the soldiers should put the MG at the bottom of the trench and then attack the tank with AT grenades. A German Panther training video shows the Soviet infantry techniques very well.

Hi Michael You are right it is not a 'parachute' as such just acting in the same way as a drogue chute. The ribbons were held in the handle see here for a cut away diagram: Your picture looks like a RPG-43 as the RPG-6 had a rounded cap to ensure that the grenade detonated at te right distance from the target. One note I found says that it could penetrate 100mm or armour.

Fully translated version including details of the DUKW equipped special battalion http://forum.axishistory.com/download/file.php?id=321560&mode=view

IN CMBB the RPG-43 was deadly and you got a nice little icon showing the parachute.

Russian Anti-tank defence can be read about here: www.dtic.mil/cgi-bin/GetTRDoc?AD=ADA494835 It was based around a layered defence 1) Physical obstacles such as mines, terrain and abattis 2) Battalion level AT guns - 45mm - place right up front with the troops, deployed in pairs and placed behind cover so that they cannot be attacked from the front. They fire off to the side and cover the front of the next position along - with side armour shots - so more deadly than you might think 3) Close assault by infantry in defence of their own trenches using RPG-43 or RPG-6 ( see http://www.militaryfactory.com/imageviewer/sa/pic-detail.asp?smallarms_id=454&sCurrentPic=pic1) the advantage of these grenades was that they weighed 1.1kg (as opposed to a satchel charge which weighed 4 kg) so closer to the German stick grenade which weighed 0.6kg. They were thrown high into the air and then a parachute made sure that the shaped HEAT charge landed at 90' on top of the tank. Able to punch through top armour they could destroy a turret or engine compartment. Being lobbed high into the air meant that they could be thrown from within a trench. The shaped charge was 0.6kg which is pretty close to the 0.8kg of a Panzerfaust. 4) Heavier AT guns drove into positions on the flanks and engaged the enemy tanks from prepared concealed positions at close range ambush. 5) Artillery would fire on attacking forces to make the infantry take cover. 6) Tanks with over watch from SU and further heavy AT guns would counter attack enemy armour once they were embroiled in the infantry position. 7) Sapper mine detachments would deploy minefields in the probable path of the attack behind the first line defences The aim was a steady attrition of vehicles with a high proportion of non lethal kills. The introduction of four wheel trucks as as the Dodge Weapon Carrier, Chevrolet, Jeep etc (Studebakers were usually deployed with artillery units) meant that AT guns could be kept right behind the advancing infantry and deployed extremely quickly. This fact coupled with the extensive use of mines deployed in front of the advance, meant that most late war German armour attacks against Soviet infantry bogged down after a few kilometers

See here for Glantz "Belorussia 1944" pdf version http://www.e-reading.ws/bookreader.php/135741/Glantz_-_Belorussia_1944._The_Soviet_general_staff_study.pdf