This is not true. USSR Technically lagged behind Germany, so he had to compensate for his backwardness by increasing the volume of tanks in peacetime. During the war there is no guarantee that a large amount of production will continue, so it is best to prepare an army in peacetime. Higher quality of Soviet tanks? T-34 and KV were good models, but they lagged behind Germany: communication quality, quality of projectiles (subcaliber, cumulative), quality of armored steel, quality of surveillance devices, overall technical quality. Germany carried out industrialization by 1890, and the USSR - only by 1940. The difference was not less than 50 years. This was explicitly stated by Stalin during his speech on February 4, 1931: "We have lagged behind the advanced powers for 50-100 years, if we can not reduce this gap in 10 years - we will be destroyed."
WEW LAD. I encourage you to pick up a modern text on Operation Barbarossa, like Robert Forczyk's two volume on Tank Warfare on the eastern front. The modern soviet tanks were numerous and barely penetrable by German tanks. Where they failed was in tactical employment, with piecemeal unsupported attacks into prepared German positions.
And you're quoting Stalin from 31. You know what the difference was between 31 and 41? An enormous burst of industrialization and militarization in the USSR.
The number of Soviet aircraft in the European part of the USSR is about 8500. Of these, modern - about 700. The enemy - 4,900 aircraft, 90% of which are modern. Try on the I-16 shoot down the Junkers-88. You will not even catch up with him. Thus, the Soviet Aviation at the beginning of the war had some superiority In the number, but lagged behind in technical perfection from the enemy, which predetermined its defeat.
I'm more of a ground forces person, so I'll abandon the air portion. That said, air power is hardly a decisive factor and the soviets managed several brutally effective offensives despite being under enemy air superiority, as did the Germans later in the war.
Because you consider artillery + mortars. The Soviet Union lagged behind Germany in artillery, but outnumbered mortars, which are relatively cheap in production. This is a consequence of technical backwardness.
I'll get to this later.
Cavalry is a good weapon against an opponent who does not have heavy weapons. If it is available (artillery, automatic weapons, tanks, aviation) - it is very vulnerable. This causes its limited use. The most effective in these conditions were the actions of tank and mechanized troops, which received significant development. In this connection, in early 1943, the Stavka decided to conduct a serious reorganization of the cavalry.
This entire section represents a thorough misunderstanding of the tactical and operational use of cavalry in the Polish and Soviet armies during the "interwar" and Second World War periods.
For example, Soviet forces lacked an indigenous infantry halftrack and did not consider it a priority. "mechanized" meant that a formation had tanks. The infantry associated was either truck, horse, or tank transported.
Horses could be and were used numerous times for cavalry charges - in a good number of cases with great success - but in most cases horse mounted troopers fought dismounted. They were very capable of bringing heavy weapons along with them, and were often more heavily armed than comparable infantry formations.
Again, they were more mobile in the sort of rough terrain and poor weather conditions they fought in than mechanized or motorized formations.
In theory. The Soviet army did not have the combat experience of a major modern war. There was an experience of local conflicts against: Japan, Finland, the war in Spain. The last major war for the USSR was a civil war. Germany, on the contrary, has a rich experience of modern war in Europe (1939-1941). After each campaign, the Germans improve their strategy. The only chance for the USSR to get such experience is practice. Which happened. (Barbarossa).
This entirely misrepresents Soviet combat experience in the Polish Soviet War, the Civil War, the war with Finland, involvement in the Spanish Civil War and the numerous heavily mechanized clashes with Japan.
It also betrays total ignorance of soviet operational thought. I encourage you to pick up something like Richard Harrison's book on doctrinal developments in Russia from 1904 to 1941.
The soviets had every understanding of mechanized warfare, they simply lacked competent commanders at basically every tier of command after a decade of ineptitude, incompetence and outright violence in personnel management by Stalin and his cronies. Had the soviet command echelons not been denuded of damn near anyone with experience leading formations larger than a company or battalion they would have performed far more ably.
No. The German army had superiority in the following aspects: the quality of communications, the quality of artillery (and ammunition consumption), the number of anti-tank guns per division, the number of trucks and armored personnel carriers, the number of automatic weapons, the overall technical quality of the army. It would be wrong to exclude tanks and aviation from this equation, because this is a single mechanism of army functioning.
Soviet logistics was in far better shape than German at nearly every point in the conflict. I'm not sure how anyone could ever think otherwise given the mountain of evidence available.
Automatic weapons aren't particularly critical when your doctrine relies on artillery support. The soviets could call on 50,000 guns from sizes of 45mm to 305mm in 1941. This utterly dwarfed the artillery available to the Germans.
Germany maintained that communications advantage throughout the war despite enduring a crushing defeat at the hands of soviet tactics and operational art which neither assumed nor required competence on the part of ground forces.
German anti tank guns were more available. They were also largely useless except against the (admittedly numerous) T26 and BT7. Against the better soviet tanks - of which there were thousands, with more rolling off the production line every day - they were utterly useless. Meanwhile soviet AT guns - when they weren't being completely misused - were devastatingly effective against German tanks. They also had large numbers of 76.2mm universal guns that could and did function perfectly well in AT and AA roles.
The balance of power at the beginning of the Barbarossa campaign was more beneficial for Germany than you wrote. Germany had deployed and ready to fight:
Land forces - 3.3 million people.
The Luftwaffe - 1.2 million people.
Kriegsmarine - 100 thousand people.
Total - 4.6 million people. Plus, the forces of the Allied Axis - about 900 thousand people. Total - 5.5 million people. Against 3.2 million people from the Red Army (land forces, aviation, fleet), divided into three strategic echelons. Germany has the ability to create multiple local superiority and destroy the enemy in parts.
And if active soviet forces not in the immediate invasion area we're included, the soviets pre-mobilization had a gigantic advantage in manpower.
Tell us about the reasons for the defeat of the French army in 1940.
- There are no repressions.
- There is no political interference.
- The army is fully deployed. (Unlike the USSR).
- There is no terrible Stalin.
I recommend reading The Blitzkrieg Legend by Karl-Heinz Freiser. In short, the German army got very very lucky, and also managed to get inside the French OODA loop despite, again, Allied numerical and technical superiority. Had the French at literally any point simply attacked with reserves on hand rather than dawdling for at least two days beforehand, they'd have been able to either cut the Germans off or entirely prevent the crossing at Sedan. Hitler spent the entire invasion dead certain that his forces were walking into a trap and actually stopped the offensive just before Dunkirk so that the flanks could be reinforced to prevent a French attack from the south that never came (myths about the panzer forces needing a rest are not borne out by the documents or personal attestation of division commanders. If you're curious about the why, I have a book at home about French political failures from 1920 to 1940 that goes into exhaustive detail about the choices that went into their spectacular failure.
There are no grounds for such a conclusion:
- Germany has numerical superiority.
- Germany has technical superiority.
- Germany has superiority in the experience of modern warfare.
- The army of Germany is fully deployed and ready for battle.
That is why the main Western military analysts predicted the imminent collapse of the USSR. Hitler also believed so.
Most western analysts were almost as spectacularly misinformed about the soviet army as you appear to be.
And while Hitler believed the soviets were bound to collapse, his general staff absolutely did not as recorded in Adam Tooze's Wages of Destruction.
Heres a fun one from Tooze about the German army in the winter of 41.
Tooze said:
Army Group Centre was knocked to its knees. The war diary of Panzer Group Three reported a dramatic state of collapse: ‘Discipline is breaking down. More and more soldiers are heading west on foot without weapons, leading a calf on a rope or pulling a sled loaded with potatoes. The road is under constant air attack. Those killed by bombs are no longer being buried. All the hangers-on (cargo troops, Luftwaffe, supply train) are pouring back to the rear in full flight
And another on Whermact planning for the invasion.
Tooze said:
A massive central thrust towards Moscow, accompanied by flanking encirclements of the Soviet forces trapped in the north and south, would allow the Red Army to be broken on the Dnieper–Dvina river line within 500 kilometres of the Polish-German border. The Dnieper–Dvina river line was critical because beyond that point logistical constraints on the German army were binding.79 These limitations on Germany’s new style of ‘Blitzkrieg’ had not been obvious in 1940, because the depth of operations required by Manstein’s encircling blow (Sichelschnitt) had never exceeded a few hundred kilometres. The entire operation could therefore be supplied by trucks shuttling back and forth from the German border. On the basis of their experience in France, the Wehrmacht’s logistical staff calculated that the efficient total range for trucks was 600 kilometres, giving an operational depth of 300. Beyond that point the trucks themselves used up so much of the fuel they were carrying that they became inefficient as a means of transport. Given the vast distances encountered in the Soviet Union, an operational depth of 300 kilometres was absurdly restrictive. To extend the range of the logistical system, the Wehrmacht therefore split its motor pool into two segments. One set of trucks would move forward with the Panzer units and would ferry fuel and ammunition from intermediate dumps that would be resupplied by the main fleet operating from the borders of the General Government. By this expedient, it was hoped that the initial logistical range could be extended to 500 kilometres. By happy chance, this coincided exactly with the Dnieper–Dvina line. Halder, the army’s chief of staff, was clearly aware of the fundamental importance of this constraint. In his diary at the end of January 1941 he noted that the success of Barbarossa depended on speed. ‘Speed! No stops! Do not wait for railway! Do everything with motor vehicles.’ There must be ‘no hold ups’, ‘that alone guarantees victory’. If serious fighting were to extend beyond this initial phase of the assault, it was clear from the outset that the Wehrmacht’s problems would progressively multiply. If the Red Army escaped destruction on the Dnieper–Dvina river line, the Wehrmacht would not be able to engage in hot pursuit, because it would first need to replenish its supply bases closer to the front line. After that, all operations would ultimately depend on the capacity of the Soviet railway system and the speed with which the Wehrmacht could build up forward supply bases to support a second 500 kilometre advance.
...
Fundamentally, the Wehrmacht was a ‘poor army’.82 The fast-striking motorized element of the German army in 1941 consisted of only 33 divisions out of 130. Three-quarters of the German army continued to rely on more traditional means of traction: foot and horse. The German army in 1941 invaded the Soviet Union with somewhere between 600,000 and 750,000 horses.83 The horses were not for riding. They were for moving guns, ammunition and supplies. Weeks prior to the invasion, 15,000 Panje carts were issued to the infantry units that would trail behind the fast-moving Panzers. The vast majority of Germany’s soldiers marched into Russia, as they had into France, on foot.
...
As we have seen, the fuel shortage by the end of 1941 was expected to be so severe that the Wehrmacht was seriously considering demotorization as a way of reducing its dependence on scarce oil.84 Everything therefore depended on the assumption that the Red Army would crack under the impact of the first decisive blow. It was hoped that, like the French, the Soviet forces would disintegrate, allowing them to be finished off in a series of encirclement battles.
...
Beneath the thick layer of hubris and optimism that surrounded the planning for Barbarossa, there were those in Berlin who expressed severe misgivings from the start. The doubts, interestingly, were of two kinds. There were at least some officers who questioned the feasibility of the operation itself. Significantly these included Field Marshal Fedor von Bock, commander of Army Group Centre, to whom fell the awesome task of crushing the main body of the Red Army en route to Moscow. By the end of January 1941, Bock was so concerned about the scale of the mission assigned to his army group that he forced Halder, the chief of army staff, to concede that there was a distinct possibility that the Red Army might escape beyond the Dnieper–Dvina line.91 What would happen in this eventuality was the key question. One of the earliest war games done to test the Barbarossa plan concluded that unless both the destruction of the Red Army and the capture of Moscow could be accomplished within a matter of months, Germany would face a ‘long-drawn-out war, beyond the capacity of the German armed forces to wage’.
I think I've made my point, but if you need more references I can provide them. I'd love to see literally any of yours.
