History of the Modern Red Army - Soviet Union Total War AAR

There are bollockloads of them. It does seem like the first troops I've knocked outta Kowel were the first one's there - if the AI knew how to synchronize their arrival, they'd easily have taken the place.

Doesn't mean I can't afflict horrendous casualities on them though. That's what this summer's all about!

Fall of Rom...ania.

As the highest ranking officer, Lt. General Simoniak was in charge of negotiating the surrender of Romania, although the term more fitting would be "dictating". As the Red Army had arrested Ion Antonescu, the young king Mihai I and the foreign minister, Mihail Sturdza, one could think there was little more to be done than set up a puppet regime in Bukarest. However, to ensure that Romania would truly be disarmed and no longer a threat to the Soviet Union, Simoniak first had to make sure that Antonescu would convince the Chief Of Staff, Florea Tenescu, to send out an order to all Romanian formations demanding instant surrender. While Antonescu was more than willing to work with the Soviets after the shock of the rapid defeat of his troops, Tenescu had a little more patriotic fiber. Simoniak now had to wait for Antonescu's diplomatic skills to do the work before he could start retreating from Bukarest.

In the meanwhile, a Constantin Parhon approached Simoniak, claiming to speak for an organization called the "Romanian Communist Union". Parhon offered his assistance in pacifying the occupied Romania, claiming he had great support amongst the leftists and could run an efficient administration. Simoniak knew that any rule in Romania would last for weeks at best, and agreed to Parhon's offer, while communicating back to the Kreml that a suitable candidate to lead a government in exile had been found. Parhon rushed off to organize a cabinet to lead a People's Republic of Romania, while Simoniak began organizing a clandestine retreat back to the Soviet Union.

Antonescu had convinced the Chief of Staff by midnight, most likely thanks to the fatigue and weariness of the latter. As the Soviet thrust had effectively severed all communications between the west and east sides of the country, they were in complete control. Reaction to the signal was mixed - most men just chose to lay down their arms and travel homewards, some gave themselves prisoner to the Soviets if they could find any, and some continued to fight the Soviets alongside Bulgarian formations already inside the country.

Antonescu, sensing his position deteriorating rapidly after the appearance of Parhon, eventually agreed to step down as the Prime Minister in exchange for his life, but not before signing a document declaring a national emergency which handed all power over to Parhon's half-complete administration. Not before the ink on the signature had dried Antonescu found himself on a train towards Russia, together with his fellow cabinet members and the king himself. Romania was officially out of the war soon enough, as Parhon immediately made peace with the USSR. Still, he didn't have complete power and the country was still under Soviet occupation. Romania's future would be uncertain.

I promised I'd update more often and I didn't... so here's one now, better late than never.

Although it's not stricly a military update, I feel this will be the last diplomatic triumph for a year and worthy of mentioning in more than just a screenshot.

14th-15th June

In accordance with the Soviet-Finnish peace treaty, finnish military hardware as well as ammunition and other supplies was relinquished to the Red Army. Although the finns did not have much remaining, it was still helpful to the Red Army that was spending humongous amounts of ammunition daily fighting the Wehrmacht. The surrendered two finnish coastal defence ships, now renamed Primorsky and Potemkin, were still undergoing heavy repairs, and the most optimistic predictions would put them as ready for operations before the end of the summer.


As time went forward, the battles around Kowel once more escalated, as the Wehrmacht brought more and more men and tanks over the Bug in a desperate attempt to establish a proper beachead. Despite the pounding recieved from the Third CAS Fleet, the German Panzergruppe was slowly pushing the Red Army back, but the intensity of the fighting resulted in casualities that the Soviets could afford, but the Wehrmacht couldn't. Even better for the Red Army, the 4th Army was organizedly retreating from Lvov to Tarnopol, where they could eventually join in on the massive battle around Kowel, forcing the Germans to commit more and more men into the slaughter.

Northwards in the Baltics, Feldmarschall von Reichenau renewed his offensive to Jelgava in an attempt to reach the Daugava river soon. General Boldin's defending 12th Army was in rather poor shape and resisted only in hopes that the arrival Leningrad Front was not too far away. Indeed, the first divisions from the Leningrad Front were under a week away from arriving in full battle readiness in Riga. Perhaps Boldin also wished to not have the dubious honour of being the first commander to be forced back to the Stalin line. Even then his resistance was important to more sectors than Riga, as a strong Soviet presence in Jelgava stopped the Germans from committing more troops to fighting off Konev's counterattack at Siauliau, where romanian troops, not yet informed of their country's surrender, were fighting a losing battle against the tanks of the 1st Mechanized Army.

On the 15th, Air General Novikov presented to the Stavka his analysis on Soviet fighter tactics during the past weeks and suggestions as to how improvements could be made. His main suggestion was to set in place a perimeter-based fighter defence system, using forward radars to allow air controllers to pinpoint enemy raids with more efficiency, advocating a decentralized fighter system in which each unit was to be given an area to control and fight off any enemy air units that attempt to cross the airspace. This was a large step away from the classic, rather chaotic aerial defence system that had dominated the Soviet Air Force until then, and opened up a whole new array of possibilities as well as giving the young and eager pilots more autonomy to prove themselves in combat.


By dawn of the 15th, the 1st Mechanized was in full control of Siauliau. What followed was an immediate counterattack by the Germans. Konev noticed that the scale of the counterattack was smaller than it had been in the earlier days of the war, suggesting that the Wehrmacht was more and more stretched in trying to fight off Soviet counterattacks as well as pursuing their own plans. Siauliau would not be held - it was positioned so that holding Siauliau would contribute little in the defence of Jelgava to the north or Kaunas to the southeast, but it would be yet another opportunity to inflict more losses to the Germans.

Casuality report

The weekly summing up of combat activities presented the figures at the dawn of the 15th as such: Soviet losses in the German-Soviet war are as follows -
Soviet losses on all fronts from 22nd 06 to 15th 07 - 105 237 men, 291 fighters, 123 bombers, 766 trucks, 587 tanks.
Soviet INFLICTED losses on all fronts from 22nd 06 to 15th 07 - 114 442 men, 538 fighters, 152 bombers, 803 trucks, 763 tanks.
Soviet losses on all fronts from 8th 07 to 15th 07 - 25 831 men, 84 fighters, 15 bombers, 226 trucks, 137 tanks.
Soviet INFLICTED losses on all fronts from 8th 07 to 15th 07 - 36 462 men, 220 fighters, 0 bombers, 308 trucks, 274 tanks.

Perhaps the best fact to illustrate the fierce fighting between the two armoured armadas at Kowel would be the amount of tanks lost and destroyed in the previous week - 137 and 274, respectively.

They do. The german portion I'd assume is about half of all inflicted casualites (since there are also hungarians, slovaks and bulgarians involved in the battles). Still, neither the romanians or the finns have any tanks, so that says something too.

16th of June

Stavka was definetly not planning to fight the war with only the troops it had. In addition to replacing the hundred thousand lost in the first three weeks of the fighting, men were formed into new divisions as well. The first of these war-time additions to the Red Army was the 123rd Rifle Division, that was instantly deployed to Tarnopol to join the 1st Ukranian Front's 4th Army, where it'd be placed under the overall command of Lt. General Lyudnikov of the 38th Corps, while the division itself was to be led by Mj. General Filippovsky, a rather inexperienced, while still competent enough man.


East of Tarnopol, the Battle of Kowel raged on without any sign of calming down. While Zhukov could just as well forget about his earlier plan to crush the German bridgeheads, he did notice how undermanned and underequipped the Wehrmacht divisions had become. Zhukov was no fool, and he knew that material losses hurt just as bad as territorial losses. The most badly hurt were the panzer divisions, with most operating at barely 80 percent strength. Yet still Falkenhausen hurried his troops to conquer Kowel, as the individual quality of the german was still enough to balance out the Soviet numerical advantage. Zhukov knew though, that individual quality was useless when you had no troops at all.

Turzysk, which had been witness to a colossal struggle three days after the start of the war, was once again the centre of attention in the struggle around Kowel. In an effort to reach Kowel itself, a Panzerkorps was sent to secure the southern flank so that the main tank force could strike the city unmolested. The Panzerkorps, consisting of the 1st and 2nd Panzer and the 13th Motorized Division, was already heavily battered from the earlier fights, but to the German's luck it was pitted against the Soviet 6th Mechanized Corps, which fielded old BT-5 tanks. The 6th Mech Corps spent the night of the 16th of June trying to fight off the attacking Germans around Turzysk but were fighting a losing battle, while the 13th Motorized Division held back the whole Soviet 40th Corps a bit to the north. Indeed it seemed like the Wehrmacht would, even though barely, take Turzysk and attempt to conquer Kowel itself.

However, at dawn, the Soviet 20th Tank Division, led by Lt. General Katkov and equipped with T-34s, suddenly unleashed all its might on the German 8th Panzer it had been fighting during the night. This attack completely demolished the 8th Panzer and sent it on a retreat westwards. Instead of pursuing the fairly organized German retreat, Katkov was ordered to instantly swing southwards to Turzysk to strike the German Panzergruppe in the rear. The move was brilliantly coordinated with the 40th Corps, which began an all-out attack on the 13th Motorized Division opposing it. The 13th was caught off guard by the sheer amount of troops attacking it and embarked on a slow retreat, where it was hit hard on the flank by the 20th Tank Division. The retreat quickly turned into a rout.

In another show of suprisingly well-timed cooperation, the Third CAS Fleet began striking the 1st and 2nd Panzer Divisions just as the 20th clashed into their rear guard. Following a brutal battle, the German Pz IIs were sent retreating as well, securing Turzysk and inflicting horrendous material losses on the Germans. And as luck would have it, just as the Soviets began pursuing the retreating troops, three more German Panzer divisions plugged the gap left by the Panzerkorps, with the 3rd SS Totenkopf completely blunting the 20th's progress, gaining revenge for an earlier defeat at Turzysk. The fate of Kowel was not yet decided.

17-18th of July

As the battle at Kowel raged, other formations took up positions on the secondary defensive line just behind the pre-war borders. The 4th Army had completed its retreat from Lvov to Tarnopol, and was now resupplying, reorganizing and reinforcing, in preparation for larger future operations. While Kowel itself was temporarily secured, much of the outlying countryside was still german, and there was little hope of forcing Falkenhausen back over the Bug. But still, it was obvious that some sort of progress was made, as was visible at the dawn of the 17th, when a full Hungarian division broke when under attack by Soviet armour, routing back to the river.

Southwards, Operation Impaler was being wrapped up. The mobile elements of the 2nd Ukrainian Front were arriving back at Jassy, while the First CAS Fleet kept bombarding Bulgarian formations at Tulcea to prevent them from intervening in the retreat. Meretskov could finally start diverting his attention elsewhere now that the first large offensive operation would soon end as an inspiring success. The Black Sea Fleet was given the orders to sail back to Sevastopol to repair the slightly damaged Krasni Kavkaz.

Back at Kowel, Zhukov, sensing the weakness and weariness of the defending Panzergruppe, organized his 2nd Mechanized Army together for a massive assault to try to eliminate the threat at Kowel. The scale of armoured warfare at Kowel was unprecedented, as eleven Soviet tank divisions, supported by many brigades of BA-10 armoured cars and SU-76 self-propelled guns, struggled with eleven opposing Panzer divisions. Zhukov's edge, however, was that his hardware was relatively intact compared to the Germans, who were mostly at three quarters of their pre-battle strength. This, together with the few but valuable T-34 tanks, was deemed enough to give the push the necessary power to give a decisive defeat here and now.


This massive push finally seemed to crack the German defenders and perhaps give enough momentum to a Soviet offensive to reach the Bug once more. Zhukov was proven correct at nightfall, when he was finally informed of a large-scale German retreat, leaving only a small rear-guard to ensure the retreating units aren't caught between the Bug and the Red Army and squashed. At midnight of the 18th of July, Stavka could finally start boasting about the first string of victories for the Red Army, as with the arrival of the 81st Motorized Division at Jassy officialy ended Operation Impaler, which had been a stunning victory. Better still, the first division of the 7th Army, the 235th Rifle Division, was deemed ready for operations in Riga, hopefully signalling the turn of the tide in the Baltics where the Red army had been on a slow, although dignified, retreat.

Progress was not limited to just the Red Army however, as the Soviet economy began flexing its muscles as well. On the 18th, the first tank division to be formed during the war was fully equipped with T-34 tanks, and deemed ready for deployement. This new division, the 22nd Tank Division (leaving some officers sniggering at the name), was given under the command of Mj. General Solomatin, and placed under the overall leadership of Marshal Konev's 1st Mechanized Army, more specifically the 2nd Mechanized Corps of Lt. General Volskiy.


Not a moment too soon. At Siauliau, the 1st Mechanized Army was put under pressure by von Brauchitsch, who used thirteen divisions to probe and harass the reorganizing mechanized force. Konev knew that Siauliau was not of utmost importance, and that his men were too tired to fight tooth and nail for it anyway. Still, he offered some resistance.

At Kowel, Zhukov was once again to be dissappointed, as the gaps left by the retreating Germans were filled up with Hungarian infantry. This would have bothered him little if it wasn't for the supporting Soviet 8th Army's partial collapse during the offensive. The 8th Army needed rest quickly, but luckily the recently-retreated Soviet 4th Army was more than eager to take its place. Victory, if it could be reached at all, was once more delayed.