About Soviet supply

[sonar]

HI, I was wondering. how did the russians actually feed themselves when on the offensive. I have read many times about their soldiers having to "live off the land" but how would the divisions actually provide for their men on these op's. I assume that local villages and such in an area would be slim pickings after suffering the attentions of both the Germans and any partisans that had been active. So how do thousands of men survive for weeks on end, or am I missing something?

[Der Alte Fritz]

Ah the science of logistics, a very overlooked subject by historians. Several things to understand, firstly the amount of 'stuff' carried by a Russian Rifle Division was very small compared to a Western ones and the requirements of the average Russian soldier was very small similarly compared. So their mobility was good despite low levels of motorbility due to their low movement weight, to put it in modern jargon. Supply was done by rail and then by horse drawn wagon, in some cases American trucks from the railheads to the units. Units carried about 5 days supply with them with further 'dumps' behind and the rail following on when it could (remember the German and Russian railway gauges were different so they had to convert one to the other every time they advanced or retreated.) So what happens is, at the start of the offensive, you carry your own supplies, then you get some supplies from the dumps behind you (and start to go hungry)then you have to rely on rail supply, (so get more hungry)but after 15 days the offensive has run its course and we have walked the 200km we are going to advance, so we stop and the normal supply builds up again based on rail. A Russian offensive requires a movement lift about a third that of an equivalent Western force but it does it over a transport infrastructure that is similarly poor ( in the West a German Army would need 3 railway lines, in the East they had to make do with just one.)

Yes troops lived off the land as much as they were able but the reality was offensives needed thousands of tonnes of ammunition, POL (petrol, oil and lubricants,) spares, etc so logistics was THE limiting factor as to how far you could advance in one bound. The Germans aimed for 500km advances, the Russians achieved 250km ones. Both sides used air resupply to keep forward units supplied with ammo but there is a definite distance that you can advance from your supply dumps before the weight of troops overwhelmed the means to bring forward items that they need.

Another point to bear in mind is that the German 'scorched earth' policy was far from effective simply because it was carried out in a hurry, so there would be more left than you would think.

cheers

[sonar]

(Manteuffel further developed this method of penetrating raids that cut in between the russian colums and struck at them from the rear."It was handicapped by the russian's lack of dependence on a normal system of supply - I never met any supply columns on these 'interior' raids") from The Other Side Of The Hill.Liddle Hart. I don't know if your explanation covers this?

[sudowudo]

I've often wondered about this too.Reading Evgeni Bessanovs book Tank Rider gives some insight as to supply being almost non existant.He makes reference during the fighting for Kamenets Podolsk that ammunition actually ran out for PPSH and his men had to use German weapons.Also they lived on flour and water for an extended period.This was at a time when his battalion was down to 30 men with no heavy weapons.Perhaps this unit was so reduced as to be written off therefore intentionally not supplied ?

Bessanov also writes that food was'nt too much a problem in the Eastern Ukraine,where they were treated as liberators but once they advanced further west resentment towards Moscow,by the local population,meant that threats had to be used in order to gain food.

[Der Alte Fritz]

I think Manteuffel was expecting a German style supply column like the Germans used - lorries, horse drawn heavy wagons, prime movers, etc. What he would have seen were small wagons with ponies or railway trucks. American lorries were so valuable that they were reserve for special strategic missions.

Most of the comments above relate to Combined Arms Armies who moved slowly. With regard to Tank Armies and their tank riders, especially lead battalions like Bessanov's, they lived what they carried with them during an offensive. The moved so far and so fast that they would outstrip any supply line but their numbers were not huge so this was possible.

[Bigduke6]

Soviet supply was extremly self-contained. For practical purposes, it was what the units carried with them.

Take a T-34. It carried three fuel drums on the back. Two of the drums were filled with diesel. One with motor oil. That and what was in the vehicle, was enough to travel 250 - 300 kilometers. I forget what the motor-life of a T-34 was, but it was in the 100s not 1,000s of hours, at 5 - 10 kph at best after idling was taken into account. No biggie. If the tank has 300 - 500 motor hours left on the clock, that was enough for a 250 - 300 km. of offensive ops. If not, the tank goes to the rear for major overhaul, write off, or installation on the Chinese border as a pillbox.

This approach is rather wasteful when you figure all the fuel and motor oil, and indeed engine hours lost, on tanks trashed at the beginning of the campaign. Of course, if the drums were in good shape and the advance was going ok, the supply columns would police them up, adding to ready fuel on hand.

But what you do not have is any thing close to the Western approach where an entire supply system attempts to keep every vehicle as topped off as possible, and keeping fuel tanks close to topped off is important in figuring out what is and is not operationally possible. Rather, the planners just tracked how far the T-34 unit had travelled, and after about 300 km. they assumed it would not be able to go much further, and that marked the outer limit of how far an offensive leap would go.

Food and ammunition, roughly speaking, were supplied the same way. Units got a ration at the beginning of the campaign. For instance, I have read of triple basic loads of shells travelling with T-34 Brigades. This was maybe half a basic load - perhaps 30 shells - squirreled away somewhere on the vehicle, and another 100 shells on a truck somewhere following the tank column. If there is combat, the T-34 crew first busts the boxes aboard the vehicle. If there is major combat, the truck drives to the T-34 in a lull, or less often the T-34 to the truck. So after about 2-3 serious engagements, the T-34 brigade had real ammo problems. Of course, after 2-3 major engagements, probably the T-34 brigade was at 1/3 strength, so it evened out.

Food was simpler, two weeks of iron rations, field kitchens with maybe another month and a half of food following the column, and an expectation that units would have to do without, and find their own food, was enough so that the "system" allowed combat units to feed themselves for about two months. Which was, in no coincidence, pretty much how long it took the Red Army to advance 250 - 300 kilometers.

If you have unlimited terrain and patience, and plenty of mobility of your own, it is easy enough to beat up an an army using this supply technique. You retire 300 kilometers, fighting, and then hit them when they run out of steam. Of course, 300 kilometers is not chicken feed, you're not giving up useless desert but population, usable land, and resources. And of course the moment the Reds stop being attacking Reds they immediately started digging in, and leave them alone even for a bit and you're hitting not a mobile column at the end of its tether, but Soviets in holes with express orders to die in place and not retreat - and retreating often isn't even an option, the tanks are out of fuel.

Thus the Germans would be forced to take a more pro-active approach to a Soviet offensive, and try and interrupt it not at its end, but at its inception. The problem with that was, of course, is that if they failed then they have shot their bolt with all these pretty much self-contained Red T-34 brigades zooming into the German rear area, meaning encirclements and disrupted supply, and of course German units for all their fighting quality were more dependant on continuous supply, than the Reds.

The supply approach for the combined arms (i.e., non-mech/move at foot speed) armies was pretty much the same, but the difference was that as long as the way forward was clear they never got too far from the railheads, as the railheads were moving forwards as well. The problem for the Soviets always was launching an offensive, using mech forces to grab terrain and encircle enemy units, and then holding what they had grabbed unil the combined arms armies could come up.

The upshot of this supply system was that, though it was primitive, it had alot of inherent strength, and for the war that it was used in it was extremely hard to counter. During the 1941-42 period the Soviets had trouble figuring out the safe limits of an offensive "leap", but the latter half of 1943 they knew.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Good to hear from you again BigDuke6.

I think that the important question to ask is how did the Russians amass the material to launch their offensives in the first place given the poor level of transport infrastructure and especially when recovering German occupied territory that had been subjected to systematic destruction? From what I gather these are the pertinent points:

1) They used the timing of offensives to 'buy' time to build up for the next offensive in another area. For example, the central fronts captured Smolensk in early 44, then the southern fronts launched their offensives to capture Kiev while the central fronts paused to build up supplies for their next offensive - Bagration to capture Minsk in summer 44.

2) They used existing units in place and only moved strategic units such as Tank Armies. But these existing units received replacements which brought their strength up from 60% to more normal levels about 90% of establishment.

3) Likewise they did not move artillery guns but rather ammo. Guns in quiet sectors relied on tiny ammo allocations and would only get 5 -6 loads of ammo in time for an offensive.

4) Mobile units moved into position just before the offensive often travelling several hundred km just before the start date. But Tank Armies did not move strategically. The TA, TC and MC who fought in the south to capture Kiev did not shift north for Bagration, instead local ones were used and in some cases new ones raised in the central fronts area.

5) Quality of horses - the native ponies were much more able to graze locally than the highly bred German horses which required imported oats and fodder. The Russian army was very reliant on horses, most of the artillery was horse drawn. I think most of the food came by rail and was then horse drawn from there. Replacements of course marched on foot after their rail journey

6) Cross country trucks were a strategic asset and used for moving high value items from railheads to forward positions such as POL, ammo, etc.

Supply and therefore the offensive power was limited by railway capacity. The Stalingrad offensive in 1942 was delayed by days because they could not move 'stuff' into the area quickly enough over the limited number of railway tracks. Later in the war the increasing number of trucks helped alter this balance by increasing the viable distance from the railheads and so bringing more distant railway lines into use.

Can you add other ideas, comments to this?

cheers

[Bigduke6]

Since you asked -

1) They used the timing of offensives to 'buy' time to build up for the next offensive in another area. For example, the central fronts captured Smolensk in early 44, then the southern fronts launched their offensives to capture Kiev while the central fronts paused to build up supplies for their next offensive - Bagration to capture Minsk in summer 44.

In my view, the Soviets did not look that far ahead. Rather, the focus was a build-up to launch an operation with specific, er, operational goals, and usually the goal was smashing some part of the Wehrmacht and capturing a chunk of territory in the process. As the war went on when there was the ability to launch a series of operations, for instance Bagratian, then Lvov-Sandomirz, then Iassy-Kishenev, the supply pretty much was there for all three operations, but there was a conscious effort to ripple the starts, so as to flatfoot the German response.

The planning really was very systematic. As a very rough guide,the rule was 1 or maybe 2 Fronts would conduct a single operation. The supply stockpiling, therefore, really didn't look much further than what those Fronts needed.

As an example, the decision is take in March 1944 to break into Hungary, Poland, and Czechoslovakia, with the operational target Armee Gruppe Ukraine Nord. 1st Ukrainian Front gets the job and is told to figure out how they would go about the operation, and after some give and take 3 Tank Armies are assigned to the Front, and based on how the railheads and the other Fronts are doing, a tentative launch date of early to mid July 1944 is set. This is really looking forward operationally, as at that particular moment 1st Ukrainian Front was reaching the end of its operational tether, and of course demolishing Germans at Korsun-Shevchenkovsky (Cherkassy Pocket.)

The Germans are beaten, 1st Ukrainian Front halts forward movement and begins shuffling troops, and there is more give and take on how the next op will go forward, among other things with the Front commander pitching his plan to Stalin personally. Meanwhile the gutted combat units in 1st Ukrainian Front are filling up, training takes place, equipment gets replaced, and since the Germans have been really beat up, things are pretty static.

Meanwhile a bigger operation - Bagratian - is aimed at Belorussia, and set for mid-June, so as to hit the Germans shortly after planned Allied landings in Normandy. 1st Ukrainian Front's slightly smaller operation is set to go at the same time, but Stavka decides to wait a week or two for Bagratian really to get rolling, before launching 1st Ukrainian Front. This is because the main German armored reserves are, suprise, right in the path of 1st Ukrainian Front, and it would help if they got sucked north vs. Bagratian, where the terrain is worse for armor. (Bad roads, lots of pine forests and swamps.) Meanwhile the supply line is still working, units are filled out and in excess of 100 per cent.

And so when 1st Ukrainian launched the operation - now known as the Lvov-Sandomirz campaign, they went from western Ukraine to the middle of Poland in the space of about 60 days, and even managed to form and detatch a Front on a new operational direction, Czechoslovakia roughly, while 1st Ukrainian carried on into Poland.

I've gone on and on about how operationally skillful the Soviets were so I won't beat that horse much here, but it is worth pointing out I think how the entire process would have functioned a good deal worse, had the Soviets attempted to supply their troops using Western techniques. The conclusion is almost inescapable: had the Soviets done so they would have fielded a good deal less actual combat power, and the combat power they did manage to put into the field, would have been far less flexible and dangerous to the Wehrmacht.

Given the amount of territory they captured, and the opponent they fought doing it, the case is almost irrefutable that Soviet, rather than Western, supply techniques were effective in mid-20th century Europe. Even if the Red troops had to eat what they looted, when they could.

3) Likewise they did not move artillery guns but rather ammo. Guns in quiet sectors relied on tiny ammo allocations and would only get 5 -6 loads of ammo in time for an offensive.

Quite so, Jason has written on "cheap Soviet gun tubes" at length. I would add that supposedly one of the reasons the Soviets would "ripple" offensives when they could was because that the guns that they had that were limited - the heavy cannon of the RGVK reserve - needed to be moved from one sector to another.

4) Mobile units moved into position just before the offensive often travelling several hundred km just before the start date. But Tank Armies did not move strategically. The TA, TC and MC who fought in the south to capture Kiev did not shift north for Bagration, instead local ones were used and in some cases new ones raised in the central fronts area.

I don't know about 100s, except maybe in Manchuria where the distances were Asian not European. My impression is that a Tank Army would regularly shift from one Front to another, but in general the Soviets avoided moving them around too much, 1st and 3rd Guards Tank Armies stayed with 1st Ukrainian Front for pretty much the duration of the war, for instance. Of course, there were plenty of cases where 1st Ukrainian Front was in action, and one of the Tank Armies was not assigned but maybe 100 km. to the rear doing refit stuff. But being mobile, it could catch up easily.

There was plenty of shuffling within the Front of course.

5) Quality of horses - the native ponies were much more able to graze locally than the highly bred German horses which required imported oats and fodder. The Russian army was very reliant on horses, most of the artillery was horse drawn. I think most of the food came by rail and was then horse drawn from there. Replacements of course marched on foot after their rail journey/