The Red Army and its rise from the Ashes

Having been inspired by the Forum here I am back reading a fair amount of Eastern Front material again and the same thing keeps cropping up as I read it, that the Russians produced 3 versions of an army over the course of the Great Patriotic War. The first version is the pre-war version that was obliterated by the wehrmacht from June - Dec 1941. By the end of the Year the Red Army had undergone a massive transformation. The second version was the one that "bled the Germans White" and was put through the mincer at places like Stalingrad, Leningrad and Kursk. The final version was the Army that threw the Germans out in June 1944 and subesquently overran Eatern Europe and stormed Berlin. I know the timelines are fluid on this but would you guys agree or do you see it as just one army?

 

I think you only have to long at any long protracted conflict to see this sort of thing happening; and logically, something similar must have been happening on the German side. The troops who stormed Russia, and nearly made Moscow, must have been a world away from the young conscripts who tried to shield the Reich from being overrun in 1945.

 

Gentleman.....

German expertise in the practical application of infantry tactics was an edge that peaked early on, and gradually lost it's edge as their losses began to mount....when graphicly illustrating a topic like this, you would find the trend to be a gradual decline in their superiority, as their opponents, too, learnt from the German 'style', as well as battle field shocks delt out by the Russians themselves. Stalingrad is the classic tactical turning point of the Eastern Front, and therefore of the War itself.

Soviet affairs in this matter are interesting for the very number of times that the Red Army had to be completely revamped, in organisation, equipment, and tactics. This process had began virtually from the birth of the Red Army under Leon Trotsky...it's dreadful baptism of fire in the Russian Civil War....the degredations of the purges that reached a fanatical peak in 1937. The Great Purge and it's aftermath was probably the defining moment for the modern Red Army, at least in the pattern that it went to war with Finland with in the Winter War. Performance in Finland was woeful to say the least, but it may have done the entire course of WW2 a favor, for German strategists and Hitler examined the results of the fiasco that the Red Army was in Finland.....and came to the conclusion that their military capabilities might have been still stuck with the same old "Steamroller"....

Early Barbarossa seemed to vindicate German strategists, but , as you are all aware, a combination of waffling before the Vinnitsa "fuhrer conference", disobedience from Army Group North, the weather and a complete breakdown of their own logistical train, combined to sink Barbarossa, and leave 1942 to be the year of decision.....

Stalingrad represented a tactical problem that the German Army was niether equipped,nor trained to deal with....STREETFIGHTING...and not just any streetfighting, but engagements that ebbed and flowed over the city itself, with Operation Hubertus like a last big swipe, with some of the most highly trained Infantry in the German Army, flown in, and exchanged virtually man for man with Russian plow boys. Chuikov was fed troops into the city center in the least amount possible to sustain resistence, the majority going to the double flank build-up for the "Uranus" encirclement...this took time, and Chuikov was forced to throw troops into the teeeth of German assaults of sheer necessity, counterattacking with the few resouces he could pull together on the night...which was when the Russians operated best...and their weapons, when the range was only across the street, proved reliable and able to operate in sub-zero temperatures....I understand if you could capture a PPSH-41 you were a very lucky German!.... German theorists had not applied themselves to the problem of Urban warfare and it's implications for equipment and tactics. The German Army lost enough material to equip a QUARTER OF THE GERMAN ARMY of 1942. The morale boost to Soviet soldiers was reflected by an order for 150 TONS of officers gold braid for uniforms. The Red Army recovered it's sence of itself at Stalingrad...a morale boost that would only get bigger with every German setback....

Once again....as they did in WW One, German military strategists and tacticians had gone from one victory after another to defeat........After Kursk, the German Army and it's offensive days were at an end.....And those gutsy Soviet soldiers, sailors and airmen played a major part in the Great Crusade of WW2...their decendants, and historians alike still admire the courage, and are appalled by the sacrifice..

 

One of the great achievements of the Soviet State was its ability to "soak up" the German Attack in 1941. The fact that they were able to trade space and men for time is a uniquely Russian phenomenon. No other country could have taken as much suffering and come back the way that they did. To be honest the campaign was already decided in 1941. The germans had one shot at the Soviet Empire and they failed. By the time 1942 arrived they had strength only to attack on one front and the only reason that Operation Blue got so far was that Stalin had committed his reserves to the Central Front as they thought that the German Offensive would be located there.

 

Gentleman.....

Stalingrad is the classic tactical turning point of the Eastern Front, and therefore of the War itself.

You do like to make these big sweeping statements... do mean turning point of the war on the Eastern Front, or the war as a whole? If the latter, then there are many who would disagree with you.

 

It was a significant battle on the Eastern Front but the turning point in the East had already taken place and that was Operation Typhoon in 1941. Stalingrad buried once and for all the notion that Germany could win the war in the East, whilst Kursk dispelled the notion that Germany could achieve any sort of settlement in the East. But to destroy Russia, Germany had one shot and that was a year before Stalingrad.

 

I suppose it may be argued that the German failure to take Moscow in late 1941 was a turning point in terms of morale and military prestige but you have to wonder about the actual German military objectives: did they seriously consider removing the Soviet military threat in one blitzkrieg campaign of a few months? The political objective appears to have been to destabilise the Soviet state (regime change anyone?) and to render it incapable of further threat to the Third Reich, including newly-won territories in the east. Both the military and political objectives were complimentary but I think the military objective was far less achievable than the political. Surely somebody at OKW must have looked at a map of the Soviet Union and measured the distance from the Polish border to the foothills of the Urals?

H

 

It may actually be possible to pin the 'shape' of the red army by date to it's major revisions to structure.
Taking just the Infantry battalion there were major adjustments in March '42 that seem to reflect the suggested shift to 'meat-grinder' mode and then again in November '43 that moved the balance to a more offensive & flexible set-up (stage 3 in your hypothesis).

Trouble is it's very hard to see what revisions were truly significant across the board. I've never found it so hard to understand any other armies structure as I do the Reds, they seem to have constantly adjusted & revised things with a never ending succession of TO&E changes (not that I've ever found any armies structure easily understandable... but they're more confusing than most to me).
A very flexible army indeed, but they had little choice I suppose.

Interesting chart in Zaloga's Red Army Handbook that shows the stratospheric rise in the number of SMGs per Rifle division beginning to climb between 10/12/42 & 15/07/43 and then tripling up to 18/12/44, trouble is the personnel numbers also rise so percentages would have to be worked out for the figures to have meaning.

Is it really that revolutionary to suggest the Red Army was '3 phase' anyway? The retreat-Recovery-Advance view of 'em is pretty accepted isn't it?

A
I wouldnt say its revolutionary as it seems to creep in to a lot of what I have been reading. Ericksons book "The road to Stalingrad" alludes to this. They did an awful lot of re-organisation during the conflict with various fronts being re-named, dropped or created depending on the situation.

I cant help but feel sorry for the Men of the Red Army in 1941 who ended up dead or (even worse) in Nazi Captivity. I've seen footage of parades in the late 30's through Red Square and wondered what fate befell them.
Mind you I've seen footage of the German volksturm marching through the Brandenburg gate towards the Russians also and their fate can only be guessed at too!

 

I would say that Stalingrad was the turning point of the war.At this point the military leadership in the German High Command realised that the invincability of the German soldier was crushed by an opponent which previously they had little regard for.Propaganda to the German people, however, was a vision of final victory come what may.Hitler thought his Blitzkreig strategy of Northern Europe would give him the advantage over the Russians. When Hitler's blitzkrieg failed on the Eastern Front, Hitler's health took a definite turn for the worse. After Stalingrad,Hitler depended on Doctor Morell's stimulating injections every other day as he fell into depression.He required the continual attention of Doctor Morell until his fateful end and was rarely seen from his bunker,indeed the German people never saw him for the last two years of his life.

Moreover,the Eastern front was a war of attrition which Germany could not win.Germany had to rob its war economy of labour to make up the losses on the battlefield.The result being that it required 7 million forced labourers to be recruited from its "empire".Germany was desparately short of labour for the home front.Also for the first time Russian POWs were used in the war economy.

Russia meanwhile aided by Lend Lease had its war economy tucked behind the Ural Mountains where it was safe from the Luffewaffe.As regards manpower,from the huge losses up to the end of 1941, Russia was able to call to arms, 2 million fresh faces from each year class to the end of the war.Something the Germans could not match in addition to the burden of the Hitler's error of electing to wage war on two fronts.

The Battle of Kurst was the last time that the German Army were able to mount an offensive against Russia and the motivation was Hitler's who was of the opinion that victory would once more put him on the road to Moscow.This battle did decide the outcome of the war although few people recognised it.It proved to be the start of a German withdrawal back to Berlin with German forces unable to stem the tide of the Red Army.German dreams of settled land in Russia,wheat, coal and ore from the Ukraine and oil from Baku would never be fullfilled.

Kursk also demonstarted that no matter what armour the Germans put into the field,they could not match the T 34.

 

It was a significant battle on the Eastern Front but the turning point in the East had already taken place and that was Operation Typhoon in 1941. Stalingrad buried once and for all the notion that Germany could win the war in the East, whilst Kursk dispelled the notion that Germany could achieve any sort of settlement in the East. But to destroy Russia, Germany had one shot and that was a year before Stalingrad.


Spot on GH, I think your 100% correct. I dont think Hitler helped, Stalingrad was plain stupidity and played right into the meat grinders hands. If Tyhpoon was a success and somehow Von Bock wintered in Moscow, Uncle Joe went East, looking at a differnet ending to WW2, at least in 1945 that is.

Kev

 

Now then Gott, would I be correct in assuming this is all really part of the process of rehabilitating the Red Army's 'traditional' historical image among many in the West as nothing more than a crudely wielded lump-hammer, and actually trying to get to the truth of the matter?
Despite their political leader's shenanigans and disgraces they, like the other Allies, had quite a mountain to climb militarily, and they seem to have climbed it well, becoming a pretty focused & finessed 'modern' force by war's end (despite some failures in supply and other not directly combat related military affairs).

The turning point between first and second period is quite straightforward to me, being the end of '41, but when the 'meat-grinding' ended is a little bit more open to debate, Stalingrad could be said to be the mid-point of that process rather than a cusp, I'd go with your initial suggestion that Bagration onwards was when the final evolution of the WW2 Red Army was most fully in place.

Two and a half years...
That's some Meat-Grinder.

Cheers,
Adam.
I suppose you could say that VP!! For too long the Red Army has been perceived as a mass of human waves who had no Tactical Awareness and relied on sheer weight of numbers to overwhelm the Germans. Its just not that simple.
As regards the timelines well they are very fluid but I suppose the Battles around Moscow finished off the last of the pre-war army, and I would agree that the Red Army that launched its attack on 22nd june 1944 was a million miles away from its predecessor. It was a very capable army and well able to perform large scale strategic offensives as well as smaller actions. It still had many flaws but strategically in terms of equipment, fighting ability and leadership its 1944 version was better than anything the Heer could put up against it.

 

it took 3 yrs for the british army to learn newtactics to beat jerry at alamein imo.it seems the soviet union took approx the same.yours,lee.

 

Whilst it took the Russians 4 years to emerge victorious over the Germans it took them 9 months to learn how to stop them and 1 year more to learn how to inflict a massive defeat upon them!

 

ah,the year of ten victories.yours,lee.

 

ah,the year of ten victories.yours,lee.
10 victories?? which ones were they then??

 

I suppose you could say that VP!! For too long the Red Army has been perceived as a mass of human waves who had no Tactical Awareness and relied on sheer weight of numbers to overwhelm the Germans. Its just not that simple.
As regards the timelines well they are very fluid but I suppose the Battles around Moscow finished off the last of the pre-war army, and I would agree that the Red Army that launched its attack on 22nd june 1944 was a million miles away from its predecessor. It was a very capable army and well able to perform large scale strategic offensives as well as smaller actions. It still had many flaws but strategically in terms of equipment, fighting ability and leadership its 1944 version was better than anything the Heer could put up against it.

No, it is not that simple, but nearly so. The fact is, in a war of attrition the Russians were able to put more people and more equipment into the field than the Germans. Nearly until the war's end the Soviets continued to have greater losses than the Germans, yet the Red Army continued to expand and the German army continued to dwindle. I was reading Lost Victories, the war memoirs of Erich von Manstein, several weeks ago and the thing that I found completely surprising was that Manstein consistently eluded to the fact that the quality of the Russian infantry steadily declined from 1942-1944. The meat-grinder mentality of the Russian leaders never really stopped; the Russian losses were horrendous, although their leadership did gain experience and adapt its stategic policies as the war progressed. From 1942 to the war's end, however, the Red Army's ever-increasing advantage over the Germans in equipment and men (in terms of numbers) helped them to appear more capable than they really were.

 

funny you should bring up Von Manstein as a source on this.

I have posted a link to an interesting article about Von Manstein. Note that the author does not give a whole lot of credence to Von Manstein's biography

Axis History Factbook: Erich von Manstein: His Life, Character and Operations – A Reappraisal

 

it must be remembered even after stslingrad,that the germans were still very capable of kicking the russians in the face,so to speak.the recapture of kharkov springs to mind.lee.