So are German forces "better" on average?

[RogCBrand]

The Russians were almost entirely a rural nation until Stalin implemented industrial programs to bridge the gap between them and the west.

So why didn't they do better than the Germans?

As has been said above they weren't trained as well, they were not equipped as well and were not lead well (at the start).

People are people no matter where they are from.

Not to say being rural people made them better at combat, but those rural Russians sure seemed very good at persevering through the very harshest of conditions!

Most of my family have been farmers, loggers, etc. Some however are total city people. I've seen how my urbanized family members are almost totally helpless without modern conveniences and actually panic when the power goes out! Of course, in World War 2, even urban dwellers had lived through the Great Depression and on average most people in any country back then were rather hardier than the average person of today!

The thing is, you could randomly pick a group of people and try to train them to be doctors, or aerospace engineers, but no amount of training is going to transform all of those people, because some just aren't cut out for certain professions. If you have grown up very comfortable with the outdoors, you're far more likely to adapt than someone who's only experience with nature has been in a city park. Not to say that urban dweller can't adapt- as many soldiers on all sides of any war in modern times come from cities. It's not a question of whether rural people make some sort of uber-soldiers- they don't. We're just talking of certain aptitudes and abilities that rural people would have that would help them to adapt more easily and perhaps, on average, put them ahead in certain ways.

[Peregrine]

So which side eventually raised its flag in the heart of the other's shattered capital again?

However, you do raise a valid point: even as Stalin was systematically starving, shooting and exiling a significant minority of the credentialled people who actually made his country function, and terrorizing the remainder into inaction, on the other hand the Soviet system was training up a gigantic cohort of young technologists and technocrats to replace them. This was the generation whose efforts saved the country and defeated the Germans, both on the battlefield and in the factories.

The one virtue of Communism that allowed it to persist even as long as it did was this fanatical focus on mass vocational and technical education, particularly for youngsters of proletarian and peasant stock. It shows just how powerful a meritocracy can be in unlocking the potential of a group, in spite of the fundamental futility of socialism as an economic and societal model. The Russians had long recognized the need to industrialize ASAP and, using German and French models, had already set up a good technical education system that the Communists inherited and expanded.

So as a result, for every Tukhachevsky or Tupolev who was shot or disgraced, there was a middle manager ready to replace him, often making up in energy what he lacked in experience. For example, if you look at the biographies of the famous Russian aircraft bureau chiefs (Mikoyan, Lavochkin, Ilyushin, Yakovlev, Petlyakov, Polikarpov, etc.), you see nearly all rising to prominence in the mid-1930s after being in entry level roles as late as 1930.

I'm not saying that was the only thing that accounts for the Russian miracle in WWII -- be curious to brainstorm some others with you lot -- but it was certainly a significant contributor.

I think you may have missed my point or I didn't make it clearly. No country was more rural than Soviet Russia. In the end they won because they gained experienced and their production outstripped the Germans.

Therefore for the rural over urban myth to hold true the Soviets should have been the better performing army right from the outset. Yet at the start no army fared worse. No army had more casualties across the entire war.

[RogCBrand]

I think you may have missed my point or I didn't make it clearly. No country was more rural than Soviet Russia. Therefore for the rural/urban myth to hold true the Soviets should have been the better performing army. Yet at the start no army fared worse. No army had more casualties across the entire war.

They won when they gained experienced and their production outstripped the Germans.

Though, rural Russians didn't quite compare to rural Americans, or other Western Nations, of the time. America had a great tradition of gun ownership and hunting by common citizens, not to mention, the average American farm was family owned and had a tractor and a pickup truck, which the family maintained. The peasant farmers of the Soviet Union lived in rather primitive conditions in most cases.

[vincere]

I think you are all making it up. And that actual training and previous combat experience, not demographic anything, mattered, if anything did.

And it is quite likely none of it did matter very much. The average rifleman, let it not be forgotten, never shot anybody. A man facing an entire enemy army with nothing but a rifle was a pipsqueak with a pea shooter. A few snipers with scopes and special doctrines on their use were effective, though on a tiny scale. But three quarters of losses were inflicted by artillery and mortars, and machineguns accounted for most of the remainder. Individual riflemen were mostly just targets.

Not what the recruiting posters say, no doubt, but the reality of war in that era. Which was large scale industrial murder by a gigantic machinery of destruction, not a medieval joust between individual knights errant.

Infantry were and remain more than just targets- they take and hold ground.

RogCBrand puts a possibility well:

It's not a question of whether rural people make some sort of uber-soldiers- they don't. We're just talking of certain aptitudes and abilities that rural people would have that would help them to adapt more easily and perhaps, on average, put them ahead in certain ways.

There's a whole lot more to front line soldiering than the flashes of combat, and maybe there's something to it. It's going to go against most of our sensibilities because most of us are from cities, and we like to feel we all could be equal.

[Battlefront.com]

Why? Well, if you grew up in rural America in the early 20th century, you were much more likely to have experience working with internal combustion engines, and especially agricultural trucks and tractors, which had large engines.

...

The Army considered experience with I.C.Es a valuable commodity, so they were shunted into areas where they could use these skills, like Armored formations, and also to a lesser extent into the Air Corps.

Plus, who has ever heard of a rifleman yelling "They got Skeeter!!! The bastards!!!" or "Smitty, get me that 3/4 wrench, I need to get at this head gasket"? Nope, the US Army is nothing but logical. Smitty goes to the front to be hit by a sniper, Skeeter goes to the rear to be covered in grease. It's the American way

Steve

[RogCBrand]

There's a whole lot more to front line soldiering than the flashes of combat, and maybe there's something to it. It's going to go against most of our sensibilities because most of us are from cities, and we like to feel we all could be equal.

I'd imagine there were a whole lot of city guys who grew up in bad parts of the city, who had seen some stuff that made combat look a bit tame!

I'd have to imagine that the diversity of experience among American soldiers was a strength in many ways!

[Battlefront.com]

I'll repeat what I said earlier. The first few instances of combat sort out the lucky from the unlucky, the skilled from the unskilled. The more a soldier has going for him in those first few encounters with the enemy, the more likely he will survive. Applicable prewar experiences should matter at this early stage because one has to survive the first few firefights to become a true combat soldier.

If that first instance of combat is out in the countryside, the rural guy who has been hunting various things his whole life is going to have a higher chance of coming out alive compared to an urbanite whose prewar experience with nature amounted to a couple of trips to the local park or zoo. Likewise, if the first instance is urban I'd bet the urbanite will have the edge over the country guy.

BUT... (and here is the critical point)

After a few scrapes with the enemy I think the odds are about even. The guy from the country that wasn't all that skilled at being a soldier will probably be just as dead as the urbanite that struggled to learn the basic skills of warfare. Regardless of terrain. The guys who survive their first scrapes, regardless of where they took place, likely "have what it takes" irrespective of where they started out in their first battle.

It's kinda like on-the-job training. If you are hiring for a mechanic's position, hiring some kid out of highschool that tinkered with his own car is going to be a better bet than a 22 year old out of college. At least on the first day. But, if you mentor each one equally in your auto shop, it could very well be that the college kid is the better mechanic long term.

Steve

[RogCBrand]

Plus, who has ever heard of a rifleman yelling "They got Skeeter!!! The bastards!!!" or "Smitty, get me that 3/4 wrench, I need to get at this head gasket"? Nope, the US Army is nothing but logical. Smitty goes to the front to be hit by a sniper, Skeeter goes to the rear to be covered in grease. It's the American way

Steve

LOL!!!

Makes me think of Kelly's Heroes with Cowboy, Willard and Crapgame after the outhouse exploded- it wasn't grease they were covered in, but still...

And very true about guys just managing to survive- whatever reason, if you could manage to live long enough to become a true veteran, your "luck" would improve a whole lot!

[Peregrine]

The thing is, you could randomly pick a group of people and try to train them to be doctors, or aerospace engineers, but no amount of training is going to transform all of those people, because some just aren't cut out for certain professions. If you have grown up very comfortable with the outdoors, you're far more likely to adapt than someone who's only experience with nature has been in a city park. Not to say that urban dweller can't adapt- as many soldiers on all sides of any war in modern times come from cities. It's not a question of whether rural people make some sort of uber-soldiers- they don't. We're just talking of certain aptitudes and abilities that rural people would have that would help them to adapt more easily and perhaps, on average, put them ahead in certain ways.

I think you are putting too much stock in how a person maybe on day 1 compared to the completion of training.

For sure someone that has used weapons and regularly camps would be less put out at the start of training but in the end the army doing the training should be sorting them all out.

[Magpie_Oz]

Unless you are fighting squirrels I cannot see how working on a farm is going to prepare you for combat. Sure someone who is familiar with the great outdoors will have a more comfortable time of it if living in the open but that is a small part of combat and also is not the sole preserve of country folk.

Hunting deer is a long way from battle. At a real pinch there MIGHT be a slight advantage to the person who has killed an animal previously but even that does not compare to shooting a person or being shot at by same.

And as has been said, after the first engagement everyone is pretty much on a par.

There are only two things which you cannot be taught to do and you must rely on your background to be able to achieve:

1. The ability to place yourself voluntarily in a situation of mortal danger where there is a very real prospect of serious injury or death.

2. Just as hard, some would say harder, you have to be able to reconcile within yourself the horror of killing another person,

Being able to continuously do 2. while in the position of 1. is what makes a good soldier.

Training and disciple helps but at the bottom line how you deal with these things comes from within and whether you are from the country or the city doesn't matter a toss.

[RogCBrand]

Unless you are fighting squirrels I cannot see how working on a farm is going to prepare you for combat. Sure someone who is familiar with the great outdoors will have a more comfortable time of it if living in the open but that is a small part of combat and also is not the sole preserve of country folk.

Hunting deer is a long way from battle. At a real pinch there MIGHT be a slight advantage to the person who has killed an animal previously but even that does not compare to shooting a person or being shot at by same.

And as has been said, after the first engagement everyone is pretty much on a par.

There are only two things which you cannot be taught to do and you must rely on your background to be able to achieve:

1. The ability to place yourself voluntarily in a situation of mortal danger where there is a very real prospect of serious injury or death.

2. Just as hard, some would say harder, you have to be able to reconcile within yourself the horror of killing another person,

Being able to continuously do 2. while in the position of 1. is what makes a good soldier.

Training and disciple helps but at the bottom line how you deal with these things comes from within and whether you are from the country or the city doesn't matter a toss.

But being in war, from all I've read, tends to be a lot of waiting, a lot of living in miserable conditions, interspersed with relatively brief moments of the horror of combat. Being able to take care of yourself during all that time between combat is the part I've been concerned with- not so much that a rural person would be prepared for the actual fighting part of being in war.

[Magpie_Oz]

But being in war, from all I've read, tends to be a lot of waiting, a lot of living in miserable conditions, interspersed with relatively brief moments of the horror of combat. Being able to take care of yourself during all that time between combat is the part I've been concerned with- not so much that a rural person would be prepared for the actual fighting part of being in war.

Why ? Don't they have houses in the country? Rural folk are no better adapted to living in the field than city folk.

[Praetori]

Having some experience as an instructor for basic training and specialists I'd say that it depends on what the goal is.

If you're training reservists for a few months it's good if they have previous experience as it's not as important to do stuff "right" since we're talking about limited service anyhow. Specialists that aren't intended for infantry duties can do really well just by civilian knowledge in that field (experience from camping or the boy-scouts usually makes the rest of the training easier, but then that training is more about their special equipment than basic soldiery).

For true front-liners on the other hand one could argue that the less they know to begin with the better. Unlearning erroneous behavior is a b***h. Hunters for example.

Many (though I'm generalizing) with hunting experience tend to wait too long with the shot and stay in one spot rather than get down and move, unlearning this is hard and when pressure and stress builds up it's very easy to fall back to the old ways.

A MG isn't a hunting-rifle and the techniques used are quite different.

Their skills in camouflage on the other hand are often excellent. Even though it's hard to remember that avoiding suspicious spots and thinking about air coverage is as important as direct cover.

Snipers are a wholly different affair and I've never trained any, they're special and do strange stuff and woodsman experience I can imagine would come in handy.

Now I'm not saying that it's all bad with previous experience but it shouldn't be overestimated either.

[Peregrine]

But being in war, from all I've read, tends to be a lot of waiting, a lot of living in miserable conditions, interspersed with relatively brief moments of the horror of combat. Being able to take care of yourself during all that time between combat is the part I've been concerned with- not so much that a rural person would be prepared for the actual fighting part of being in war.

But again if living in some sort of "hardhship" is important why were the Russians so bad at the start. They had centuries of practice living in miserable conditions.

[Michael Emrys]

Therefore for the rural over urban myth to hold true the Soviets should have been the better performing army right from the outset. Yet at the start no army fared worse. No army had more casualties across the entire war.

No, that's not applying logic properly. It is not claimed that being from a rural background turned anybody into an übersoldier, in fact that was explicitly denied in the post immediately above yours. What is being claimed is that among all the factors that lead a recruit to become an effective infantryman, being from a rural or semi-rural background is statistically more apt to be a positive contributor than a negative one. What is so hard to understand about that?

Michael

[Michael Emrys]

And as has been said, after the first engagement everyone is pretty much on a par.

I more or less agree with that. But getting through that first engagement is the biggie. That's when a lot of the green guys got killed or seriously wounded. Anything that gives one an edge during that first shootout, even if it is just a willingness to dig one's foxhole a foot deeper, can make a huge difference in outcome.

Michael

[Battlefront.com]

Let's remember the American Civil War. Man for man the Confederates did much, much better than the Union for the first part of the war. The biggest factor in this difference, which has been stated in countless historical examinations, is that just about every Southerner was rural and hunted since they were big enough to hold a gun. They knew how to work the weapon, they knew how to stay quiet while moving through the woods, they knew how to be patient as they're quarry came to them, etc. Union soldiers had a higher portion of urban soldiers and a lower level of proficiency with hunting.

But this didn't matter as much as the war went on. The Confederates lost more and more battles because the tactical environment wasn't just about moving around in the woods without being heard. That was a skill that the Union forces could learn. The other factors, then, became more important. Especially fire discipline, which isn't something a nervous 16 year old kid from the country is going to have going for him.

Similarly, in the American Revolutionary War the various forces fighting against the British were all very, very familiar with hunting and weapons proficiency. The British forces were not because back in Britain much of the population was urban (in relative terms) and weapons, hunting, and even forests were not part of the common experience for the average male of military age. However, the British did not lose because of this difference as the Brits largely equalized that advantage with modified tactics, better discipline of the ranks, etc. They lost because of other factors.

Steve

[umlaut]

But again if living in some sort of "hardhship" is important why were the Russians so bad at the start. They had centuries of practice living in miserable conditions.

I think the major problem for the soviet forces at the start of Operation Barbarossa wasn´t related to the quality of the enlisted men but to their leaders.

I have the impression that the soviet system in many cases caused some sort of paralysis in decision making: Leaders didn´t dare take any initiatives without clearance from above, as even the smallest of mistakes were punished severely. This lead to very slow reacting in the soviet army as all reports had to filter from the bottom up - and then all orders had to move from the top down.

And of course it didn´t help that Stalin in one of his paranoid fits had purged the majority of the office corps four or five years earlier.

[Praetori]

I think the major problem for the soviet forces at the start of Operation Barbarossa wasn´t related to the quality of the enlisted men but to their leaders.

I have the impression that the soviet system in many cases caused some sort of paralysis in decision making: Leaders didn´t dare take any initiatives without clearance from above, as even the smallest of mistakes were punished severely. This lead to very slow reacting in the soviet army as all reports had to filter from the bottom up - and then all orders had to move from the top down.

And of course it didn´t help that Stalin in one of his paranoid fits had purged the majority of the office corps four or five years earlier.

Well the "auftragstaktik" employed by the Germans were a major contributor to their early successes just because of this.

Delegating the actual tactical and operational decisions down to the lowest possible level against a more cumbersome opponent will lead to your forces acting while your opponent are still issuing orders as a reaction to what you did a couple of hours ago.

Once the opponent is acting upon their orders you're already doing something completely different and chaos ensues in the opponents organization. To make this work without it becoming chaos in your own lines instead you have to have well trained forces, from soldier on up. Germany was kinda forced in this direction by the limitation of the Versailles treaty and their long history of delegated decision-making in their armed forces really paid off on the "modern" battlefield.

The soviets took the sledgehammer and nuked the Corps level and concentrated armored firepower on a brigade level as they realized that with the unexperienced officer material they had there was no way they would be able to keep up with the Germans if orders were to mitigate from Army->Corps->Division->Brigade.

As the war progressed the Soviets learned a lot of how to fight the war on the operational level and on the Strategic level they really surpassed the Germans from late 42 and onwards IMO.

But during the first two years they were constantly hampered by their lack of speed in analysis->orders->action on the operational level.

[Michael Emrys]

Delegating the actual tactical and operational decisions down to the lowest possible level against a more cumbersome opponent will lead to your forces acting while your opponent are still issuing orders as a reaction to what you did a couple of hours ago.

A couple hours of lag might not have been so bad, but in the first year of the war, they were a couple of days behind, weren't they? I know that in the West in 1940 the Allies seem to have been behind the Germans by about a day all during the critical first two weeks of the campaign.

Michael

[dan/california]

A couple hours of lag might not have been so bad, but in the first year of the war, they were a couple of days behind, weren't they? I know that in the West in 1940 the Allies seem to have been behind the Germans by about a day all during the critical first two weeks of the campaign.

Michael

The German General Staff was about a day behind Guderian and Co. They just figured there would be plenty of time for there own side to berate them with a nice Atlantic view.

[Praetori]

A couple hours of lag might not have been so bad, but in the first year of the war, they were a couple of days behind, weren't they? I know that in the West in 1940 the Allies seem to have been behind the Germans by about a day all during the critical first two weeks of the campaign.

Michael

Very true. I was commenting more in regard to the scale of the CMx2 engine though.

Imagine a CM scenario where your orders, intel and force goals doesn't add up to anything near the real picture. You're to take and defend a junction against armored forces approaching only to find that the enemy armor is behind you and that a battalion of hostile engineers and FlaK have just consolidated their positions where you planned to stage your precious towed AT assets.

[Praetori]

The German General Staff was about a day behind Guderian and Co. They just figured there would be plenty of time for there own side to berate them with a nice Atlantic view.

Yeah it's quite funny that some of the armored division commanders and even some of the corps commanders lied about their position and current actions and even faked bad radio so that they could ignore the orders from higher up and keep advancing.

Then the general staff and Adolf took all the credit for the success.

[sburke]

Why ? Don't they have houses in the country? Rural folk are no better adapted to living in the field than city folk.

Yes they do, but in those days, not so much on indoor plumbing. Digging latrines would have been a common activity for soldiers. For country dwellers it would be something they would be more familiar with. It is a little (very little) known fact that the German defeat before Moscow was due to their inability to find public restrooms. Barbarossa was planned on reaching Moscow before the soldiers had need of restrooms. The offensive collapsed when the soldiers had to wander off looking for acceptable public facilities.

This is also the root cause of the failure of French strategy in 1940, the French assumed the Germans would not be able to transit the Ardennes fast enough and would be denied proper rest room access. A major failing of German planning through 1940-1944 was in not preparing hidden rest rooms in the Ardennes to support the Bulge offensive.

On the other hand city dwellers were far more familiar with indoor plumbing and tended to get picked up by the engineering units as the demands after D Day for proper rest rooms exceeded allied planning.

Plumbers would continue to show their critical role in history during Watergate and later during the 2008 US presidential campaign.

[Michael Emrys]

And it's not even a full moon yet!

:eek:

Michael