In Deadly Combat--How'd the Germans do what they did?

[Londoner]

Pelican Pal and the others wanting to nerf Russian infantry - I think you need to read some of the Russian lessons learned reports on tactical methods that the Russians circulated to their officers during the war. And to follow the practices of the Russian infantry recon (predecessors of the modern Spetnaz), battle pathfinders, storm companies, and their tank riders and combat pioneers, come to that. They were not rigid. Not remotely.

Infantry recon, storm company tommy gunners, tank riders, and pioneers were a third of the Russian infantry arm, between them. Sure the line rifle companies *did* rely on numbers and persistence on an assigned frontage, but they were not remotely the whole story of Russian infantry tactics. And the later you get in the war, the more those line rifle companies are relying on infiltration tactics, or firepower support arms to shoot them in.

Don't try to write stupidity into the game system and push that on the Russian infantry.

Can't disagree with any of that but don't think wanting to nerf Soviet infantry is the driver. Am just a humble CMer trying to establish what a (as ambiguous as that may be) typical Soviet rifle unit/company should look like - in game terms - for both designers and quick battle picks.

That's not to say I don't appreciate yours and others narrative, on the contrary - it makes this forum a fascinating virtual place.

[JasonC]

Londoner - fair enough. A real answer is that a typical Russian rifle company during most of the war and in most units and places would be well under TOE strength, and would have a more ad hoc organization to match that reduced strength, its specialists, and its available energetic junior officers and senior NCOs. How understrength? Only 80 to 100 men would be perfectly typical. The company commander might lead one of the platoons or might lead a small group of specialists. If he does lead one it could be larger or smaller than the other two. They'd keep 3 platoons for maneuver and tasking; a company specialist group might be a small 4th, in effect, or might not.

What do I mean by specialists? Well the platoon would have 1 or 2 ATRs, for example. It might have a sharpshooter team. It might have a ad hoc MG team with 2 DP LMGs, assistant gunners, and extra ammo bearers armed with carbines. It might have a recon / pathfinder squad, below strength so 6 to 10 men, with more than their share of SMGs. It would have a company command group, half squad to full squad size, with the company commander, a senior NCO, aides and runners to carry messages, and perhaps comms men (field phone and a line spool, if they are lucky, not a radio). All told this group might be just 10 men total or it might be 30-40 and count as one of the platoons.

The line platoons would average only 25 to 30 men and would be organized into 3 squads of 8 to 10 men each. They would be organized around a DP LMG, and have 1-3 SMGs typically. The rest of the men would have rifles and could act with the LMG as a base of ranged fire when that was the squad's tactical role, or as grenade men working with the tommy gunners when close in fighting and assault was the squad's role. They would not normally split each squad; instead they would normally stick together to let the squad perform either role as needed, with the other men under cover when their role wasn't uppermost.

The whole company would have one mission and one axis of advance or sector to defend. It uses two of its platoons like right and left arms to accomplish that one task, not to split and try to accomplish three. The remaining platoon is depth and reserve and backs up one of the others. If losses or disorder reduce the company to single platoon strength, it abandons whatever mission it had and just defends it frontage, trying to provide shelter for the rest to reform, or for relief to replace along the line etc.

A Russian rifle company is not a mass formation and doesn't try to accomplish anything by superior numbers. It is also not a big command span affair with lots of roles or internal razzle dazzle. It tries to do just one thing, with some internal redundancy in immediate direction and in time, but always in earshot of the CO's voice or his runners. The platoons are not expected to exercise any great initiative on their own. They do what the CO tells them to do, and hear a new adjustment to that every ten to twenty minutes. Short leash, nearby, etc.

Clear enough?

[LukeFF]

To supplement the terms used in the manuals, this is how I view the various skill levels:

Conscript: zero combat experience, practically nonexistent or barebones training. Real-world examples would be the Volkssturm, Soviet formations in 41-42, Kriegsmarine troops, etc.

Green: troops with somewhat adequate training, no combat experience. Or, formations that are largely comprised of inexperienced troops with a handful of combat veterans. Also, troops being used out of their normal military occupation (Luftwaffe infantry, maintenance/supply/transportation personnel, etc. - like a good number of American formations around Elsenborn Ridge).

Regular: troops with combat experience, units with a large number of veterans but also a substantial number of green replacements, or new units that have been trained above and beyond a "normal" infantry unit (e.g., airborne, recon, engineers, etc.).

[JasonC]

On training of Russian forces in 1941-1942, I find the assumptions people have here rather dubious. Non existent or bare bones training? Some militias called to defend some of the cities as they were attacked, perhaps. The bulk of the Russian mass mobilization, no, a myth, not even close.

Russia had compulsory military service throughout the 1930s and large reserve classes. These were the men who had been 18 some years prior - they had all gone through their peacetime military training and mustered out of active duty and into the reserves.

The Russians mobilized 790,000 of those reserves in early June 1941, before the fight broke out, to bring active divisions up to strength. The active duty guys were younger men doing their current service, not long standing veterans - the classes of 1919 to 1922, specifically.

The mobilization of reservists became essentially total when the war broke out, for men up to age 36 (the class of 1905). This brought 5.3 million men to the colors.

Continued drafts pulled the young classes as they reached age, lowered that age, and extended the call up to older men as well. By December 1, those measures recruited about 3.5 million men.

Thus, more than half of the 8.8 million men mobilized during most of 1941 (December is additional) were reservists who had already completed their term of service.

The wave of armies that formed the second line in July and August, immediately after the regulars lost the battle of the frontiers, were recalled reservists with minimal new training since recalled, but not untrained civilians who had never been in the army.

The wave of armies reaching the front in the second half of 1941 were already called back in the summer. They spent the intervening time forming as divisions and getting new training; then those divisions would be assigned to a newly formed army that was sent to the front or into Stavka reserve.

Dunn gives a typical example - 10th Army, formed in October 1941. It had 9 component divisions. Only 2 of them formed in the same month as the army, 2 more in September, 3 back in August, and 2 in July. Most of the divisions had 6 weeks of individual training; they all continued training after being assigned to the army.

So at worst, 2 in 9 of those divisions would have had some men from the youngest classes who had only rudimentary training. Most of them had been through "basic", and a quarter or so would be prewar reservists (the July call up divisions). In the other formations, about 15% were cadre from previously active formations, units being rebuilt etc.

This army only entered combat at the beginning of December, in the battle of Moscow.

It had existed as an army for a month and a half, and as divisions for anything from 2 to 5 months, before going into action. It had cadres, it had reservists, the men had weeks of individual training, and they had worked under their current officers for over a month - before they ever saw a German.

And that was in the hardest scramble period of 1941, trying to get a formation ready to intervene in front of Moscow to save the government.

In LukeFF's typology, those are green but they are not "conscripts" - even though, of course, they were conscripted not long before they saw action. Not long just doesn't mean "days", it means "months".

The Germans did not understand the extent of the Russian mobilization. They did not understand that forming units were actually training in the rear. When they hit waves of fresh divisions in front of Moscow in December, they thought they must have been regulars brought from the far east. But they weren't. They had been called up as long ago as July and they had been training ever since.