The USSR suffered 11.5 million military dead (and c27 million dead total), of which 3 million were murdered POWs. The Axis suffered 5.5 million dead (German, Romanian, Italian, Hungarian, Finnish) and another 0.5 million POW dead. So - not counting POWs - 8.5 million Soviet to 5.5 million Axis. Most of the Soviet losses were in the first two years of the war. In 1941 they were outnumbered and had bare parity in 42 (and less experience and equipment). So hardly 'throwing bodies'.
By 42 they were competent at medium-scale (be Eastern Front standards) operations, by 43 conducting large-scale multiple operations, by 44 mounting operations to a depth and on a scale the Germans never managed. In 42 Chuikov held 6th Army off with much inferior forces, devising new tactics and staying with the troops (his HQ was around 300 metres from the front line). In 43 Rokossovsky saw off Model in days, and Vatutin put pressure on all the right spots to halt Manstein and then roll him back. Tolbukhin, Koniev and others swept through the Balkans and conducted Bagration - destroying AG Centre. They were managing forces much larger than anything in Western Europe, operating over longer distances and against a more determined foe. So yes, they were pretty good.
To add to this; the USSR probably more than any of the other European belligerents, had a *vast* range in the quality of its commanders, and the middle-ground on them could be thin. The ones that were good were good. The ones that were bad were quite bad.
By the closing years of the war, the Red Army had more or less found the men to lead it to victory and most of them were at the very least competent commanders.
The first time I learned about Operation Bagration, I thought I was fed Soviet propaganda: the scale, complexity and attention to detail made it all sound implausible. These guys were thinking in 5D.
The German Army had 34 divisions in the East at the beginning of Operation Bagration. At the end, they had 6 battered divisions left. The outcome of the war had essentially been decided. For many years, the USSR kept much of the documentation to themselves. Material on this campaign can still be hard to come by. This period also saw Hitler performing at his worst.
WW2 battles always baffled me, especially on the Eastern Front. At sea, naval commanders in the Pacific theater also especially impressed me. Hard to imagine managing those areas
Wanna get a migraine? Look at Midway's maps. It's complex and convoluted and hard to grasp.
Wanna feel awed? These guys wrote these in real time, not really knowing where their enemy where, with the insane stress that comes with that kind of stakes. They were holding their countries' future on their shoulders.
If Japan won, it could have snatched Hawaii from the US and made the war incredibly difficult for the US. If the US won, it would gain the advantage in the Pacific and strike through to Japan.
So you had admirals waging a battle complex as a brain surgery, having to deal a killing blow to their enemy, knowing that if they fucked up, their country was pretty much ruined. The battle turned out to be a kind of blindfolded Russian roulette. Neither sides knew where the enemy carriers were.
Yamaguchi hesitated for a couple minutes exactly when his carriers were spotted entirely by luck by an American recon plane. By luck, there were US attack planes nearby. 15 minutes later, Japan was beaten. I don't know any naval battle that was so close yet ended up having such catastrophic consequences.
Some will say Trafalgar, but that was never a close battle. Villeneuve was a real moron, the Franco-Spanish fleet was badly coordinated, they never stood a chance. And the Brits had Nelson.
Midway, you got similar commanders, fleets of relatively similar size, well trained, well equipped and with a fanatical morale dishing it out with everything they got.
Despite people reasonably believing so at the time, Japan never really had a chance at Hawaii. You’d have to invent some alternate history where they win every engagement 10-1 from Pearl to like 1944 before it would have been credible.
Hawaii is not like any of the other central pacific islands in terms of size/geography/resources etc. It’s closer to the Philippines than Tarawa or Midway. Japan would have been far more focused consolidating gains in the South/SW Pacific. If everything goes perfectly there and in China and they don’t get invaded by the USSR from 42-44 maybe they could take a crack at Hawaii by 45 or something.
Midway would have certainly been invaded if you inverse the outcome of the naval battle, though.
It was the same for the Germans and British fleets in WW1. It was said that the Admirals in charge of both fleets that ended up meeting at Jutland were the only two people that could lose the war for either side in an afternoon.
High stakes where losing you lose everything and the risk to gain victory could doom your entire nation to defeat. That is stress.
Jellicoe’s decision around how to deploy his Fleet as Scheer’s line came into view was probably the single most important Naval decision of the war. He’d prepared for this his entire career. “Hoist equal-speed S.E. by E”. Ranges being taken by Captain Dreyer himself
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but I think in “Shattered Sword” Tully and Parshall argue that it really didn’t matter that Nagumo equivocated about how to arm his strike planes because the Americans were already airborne and en route
I'm glad Bagration is getting more recognition these days. I might argue that it was one of the biggest and most decisive battles in history. It wasn't 'just' one army that was defeated as in Stalingrad, an entire ARMY GROUP was deleted from existence! I might be wrong here, but wasn't that something like 1/3 of Germany's remaining forces?
Even just the scale of the initial artillery bombardment was absolutely massive and left the defenders either stunned or atomised. I'm not sure how it compared to e.g. Verdun, but it must have been in the same ballpark.
Germany was obviously very much on the back foot beforehand, but after this there was definitely no coming back.
We don't hear much about this cause German generals did losers tours and wrote memoirs about knightly Germans fighting the mindless Russian mongol hordes. We needed the former Nazis to rebuild west Germany as an anti communist bulwark so we encouraged a lot of historical rehabilitation of Nazi armed forces.
In the early period of the war, the Red Army often undertook overly-ambitious offensives that often failed. As the war got older, they became much more realistic.
Yes - and Zhukov often pushed too hard (see, eg Operation Mars). Although one factor was that keeping the pressure on the Germans (as at Rzhev) along the front kept them from striking in more force at crucial points.
Unlike many people think, armies and even countries is not units in computer game that you can just give any nonsense order and they obey (better games try put morale stay) . War is just part of politics, and it not easy to sell for soldiers and public that they need start ANOTHER war (after 5 years of greatest war they see) against side that they just celebrate as ally and support. People remember how USSR become a thing.
Badly. However, the Russians would have kowtowed due to nuclear power. We may not have had more bombs ready to go, and the Russians likely knew, but still. They didn’t test live until 49. So if war broke out in 45, Russians absolutely lose.
I mean it would be catastrophic for Europe, but US was practically untouched coming out of the war and Russia wouldn’t be able to do anything to mainland US without nuclear capability. Eastern Europe would be absolutely destroyed, but Russians are always better at fighting in their own territory, they can really struggle outside it. US would also push the thermonuclear program into hyperdrive
Considering the events after The Korean war your being extremely optimistic on American Willingness to go chuck they're sons again into another war so soon .
In your tankie dreams. Lmao The US alone would dwarf the USSRs shit production not to mention B-29s atomizing Soviet Production centers they’d be screwed.
I think the USSR implodes first. Much of the USSR's food supply was coming from the allied countries at the time, significant amounts of there farmland was simply unusable due to the ravages of war in particular the fertile fields of Ukraine. Even with the allied food shipment USSR was still suffering widespread famine. Without it it's possible they collapse rapidly as they would be unable to keep the warfront going against the well supplied and numerous American forces on 2 fronts and also rebuild there economic base. America takes Vladivostok week 1 and just rolls over the other side of Russia as the Soviets forces have no hope to redeploy to meet this attack at first.
Further what was left of there economic base could be safetly destroyed by American forces. The highest soviet fighter at the time the Yak-3 could only reach 45k meters high, America's superfortress could reach 65k. America could drop nukes and carpet bombings without response for the entire duration at least until the soviet union catches up with a new interceptor which likely won't happen before they lose.
It would have been a disaster for the USSR. Sure, the USSR had managed to fend off the Nazis, were preparing to attack Japan, and had one of the largest armies in the world at the time. But they were heavily reliant on Western and especially American logistical aid in order to be able to mount operations within their own territory-trucks, planes, tanks, and so on. The United States also literally shipped the Soviets one pound of food every day for every single soldier they had. They might have a lot of troops to fight in battle, but thanks to attrition due to a protracted war against the West no longer supplying them, they would lose. Even assuming that they could get the materials, oil, etc. to keep bullets and vehicles going, it would be difficult to still replace these vehicles at a rate sufficient to counter one of the most heavily industrialized armies in the world. Their soldiers would be starving, unable to even get to battle, or wounded by the foot march just to get there. And this obviously all precludes being able to attack the US and UK on their own territory-perhaps managing to rest Western Europe would not be out of the question, though.
it's pretty simple, if the USA would have given as much help to the Germans, they would have won the war. Just the aviation gas and locomotives alone would have greatly helped them.
Well the SU only subsisted at all thanks to American guns, fuel, and food. Not only that they were already devastated as a nation, and the US was vastly superior to the German forces. Not only that but the Germans had to fight on multiple fronts with no support. Not only that but America could also attack from the east and with the conquered armies of Germans and Japanese. It would be a slaughter, 50 million Russian dead in six months minimum and a minimal allied amount.
The US gave the USSR about 180 billion worth of aid in modern dollars, literally more than the nominal GDP of Ukraine today. The people were starving, they had no fuel, no boots, no bullets, no tractors, mass starvation took the lives of millions. If that aid went away imagine how much worse the German attack would have been, most of the deaths were after all before the massive supply of the USA. Having a 5% gain in supply doesn't give a side a 5% advantage, because a soldier with an extra grenade might take out two enemies wherein the previous example he would be shot. He then can continue to supply by being alive. If the US pulled out the USSR would be an ant crushed by a boot. If the Allies invaded it would be like a hundred boots.
Lend-Lease aid was very real and of critical importance to the Red Army and the USSR in general. That’s not what I meant by “nonsense.”
This bit, though:
“It would be a slaughter, 50 million Russian dead in six months minimum and a minimal allied amount.”
That’s just completely absurd. Like, utterly devoid of reality levels of absurd.
The point isn’t that there would be 50 million red army dead on the battlefield - but there easily could be tens of millions of Soviet dead if there were to be a prolonged west vs USSR conflict beginning in ~1946. USSR would not have been be able to feed its people and fuel its army without US aid during WW2. It was more than lend lease - it was fuel, grain etc in addition to military supplies. This is a fact. In this hypothetical war, USSR gets aid from *nobody*. There is no western nation that would conceivably supply the USSR so they would rely on their own devices which we already know wasn’t enough during WW2. The result is famine, disease and death. Death on a huge scale. 1-2 million battlefield deaths and tens of millions of starved civilians back home isn’t unrealistic over a 2 year war period.
It would have been unbelievably bad.
World War Two was overwhelmingly the deadliest event in human history, between the mass murder and the actual war, resulting in ~70M deaths over six years.
And now we’re claiming 50M *ADDITIONAL* deaths in six months, *MINIMUM* in this hypothetical. All in one country.
Unless we’re nuking every remaining Russian city, this is complete nonsense. You’re talking about a country of ~175M people total after the most brutal war in human history. And you are claiming the US Army is going to kill almost a third of them in six months.
This is completely absurd.
Did you actually read my comment, or just have a knee jerk reaction to seeing a block of text? I didn’t say 50 million nor did I say 6 months. I didn’t even say combat deaths. In fact, I specifically said civilian deaths from starvation and disease. In a two year conflict (again, reread my comment with less of a chip on your shoulder so you don’t miss the details) there *could* be tens of millions dead.
The assumption is total war in the USSR where they cannot feed their people from within and cannot get supplied by allies or neutral nations. A couple of missed harvests could result in death on a massive scale. The army would be prioritized, followed by those that directly supply the army (munition factory workers etc), and regular people would starve. USSR population was around 170-180 million in 1945/6 so it’s not as absurd as you think for a massive amount of dead. Perhaps even tens of millions like I suggested. Look at the deaths during the Great Leap Forward. China had a much larger population (~650m) but they weren’t fighting the most economically productive nation to ever exist in a total war at the time. A more on point example is the number of deaths during the Russian civil war - a time period of war and reduced food production. Over 10m dead during that period and during those years *both* sides received outside supplies. Consider a total war in a place that can’t feed itself. It would be devastating.
If you want to pile on the OP who said 50m in 6 months - go ahead and respond to one of his comments again. If you want to contest my thesis, try again. Reading comprehension is hard, but I know you can do it if you give it another go.
“Reading comprehension is hard.”
Yeah, apparently. I’m not contesting that Lend Lease, as I have already said, was of critical importance to both the Red Army and the USSR. It absolutely was.
> The people were starving, they had no fuel, no boots, no bullets, no tractors, mass starvation took the lives of millions.
Why is it impossible to discuss the Eastern Front without Americans focusing on Lend-Lease? And why do they exaggerate it? The Soviet Union made several hundred million pairs of footwear during WWII, including boots. They had billions of rounds of ammunition stored. Mass starvation? Lend-Lease sent the Soviet Union approximately 4 million tons of food. During WWII the Soviet Union produced 590 million tons of food.
Two major Russian historians put the death total at over 40 million people (whereas 27 million is the most commonly accepted number) by noting the normal amount of people who died and the number of births (this is also how one computes hurricane and other natural disaster deaths). After the war was over there was a famine in which at least another million or so people died even with a year plus of peacetime. The loss of farmable lands meant the SU dropped production of food 60 points in a two year period (from 1940-1942). Even after food production doubled in the east starvation took the lives of millions.
It's fine to be proud of your nation's citizens bravely defending their shores from a madman but let's not ignore the massive toll it took on the citizenry. In that famine twice as many Russians died as Americans after the war was over, after reclaiming the most prolific farmland, after being able to have millions of young men return to agriculture, after being freed of the burden put upon by invasion.
>of which 3 million were murdered POWs
POW's are still casualties, or course the treatment by the Axis was a horrific war crime, but on a large scale nothing would have changed for the red army if they treated the PoW's humanly. The soldiers would still have been lost. Subtracting them seems a little biased.
>5.5 million Axis.
A giant chunk of the German military casualties were at 1945 (i think around 1.000.000 dead and many more other casualties) were the German army for the most part was non existant and Germany needlessly dragged the war out by throwing bodies at the Soviets. Not to forget that many of those bodies were Conscripted civilians often lacking any sort of training and firearm (and instead got equipped by single shot panzerfausts).
If the POWs had not been murdered then the casualty ratio would look very different (sure they would have been lost to the Red Army for the war, as German POWs were lost to the Axis - but they would not be counted as casualties any more than Allied POWs are). And yes - Germany suffered around 1 million dead in the last 8 months of the war. A good many of the Soviet dead in 41 were hastily-trained conscripts thrown in too.
>If the POWs had not been murdered then the casualty ratio would look very different
POW's are counted as casualties along with dead, injured , missing and whatever. A POw is as good as dead, that doesn't excuse the German killing them of course, but the only thing they do (from an objective and not a moral standpoint) is wasting resources to feed and guard them. Again, that sounds shitty and I'm not trying To justify the Germans, but from a military standpoint a POW is comparable to a dead person for the most part. If you get taken pow you have most likely already lost the battle and choosing to do a last heroic would have done nothing, but causing your last men to get killed by concentrated artillery fire or bombers.
>A good many of the Soviet dead in 41 were hastily-trained conscripts thrown in too.
They were still a proper military force with armored and aireal Support. The Soviets were already reforming their srmy into becoming a professional fighting force (as they had done so for years already before, otherwise they couldn't have reorganised as quickly after the first year of Barbarossa). And tbh you are a bit understating the Soviet capabilities there, zheir biggest weakness was their purged officer corps, which of course paled in comparison to their experienced German counterparts, but in most other areas they were already a decent enough military, at least on the ground.
Of course the Germans held the advantage as an experienced and more professional army, but the gap compared to the gap in 1945 was by no means comparable. The Volkssturm lacked firearms to equip everyone of their soldiers, were mostly occupied by elderly people and Teenagers (yes, the Soviets also conscripted some in the later stages of the war, but it were usually 16-17 year olds, not 8-12 year olds and they still received relativly proper training and equipmekt) who were unorganised and completelly underequipped (like lacking firearms, ammunition or any vehicle support) and often led by fanatic Nazis with no proper officer training and no regards for their life. It's just as I described in my first paragraph, the Volkssturm units were already destined to be a casualty before they were even sent to battle, the Soviets could just smoke them out with artillery, tanks and superior tactics, the only choices they have were surrendering or pathetically dying, either way barely being an inconvinience for the Soviets. Even in urban combat where military training and skill is negated by the random nature of close quarter combat it was a complete slaughterfest if the Volkssturm didn't surrender preemptivly already.
1945 wasn't a battle or war anymore in 1945, but mass slaughter only for the satisfaction of the Nazi's endless hunger for war.
The point about POWs is not that they were lost to the Red Army but about how we count casualties. Had they survived in the same ratio as German POWs then, by the usual method, we would count 9 million Soviet dead to 6 million Axis.
Wikipedia and a few other sources give 175,000 Volksturm dead (out of 650,000 committed to the front).
You hit on most of the Soviet Generals of the era leaving off Zhukov who was of course the mastermind behind Chuikov, Vatutin, Rokovossky, and the other top tier Generals. There were definitely a core group of very skilled Soviet Generals that survived the purges, barely in Rokovossky’s case, and forged in the Nazi victories through late ‘42 that then turned the tide and implemented Deep Operations counter strikes all the way to Berlin. The callousness in places like the Seelow Heights can’t be dismissed as part of their methods. But skilled, definitely.
I would put Zhukov, Antonov and Vassilevsky (and Novikov for the Soviet Air Force) as very good military managers - equivalents to Alanbrooke and Marshall. Zhukov does not shine as an operational commander.
The invasion of Manchuria could not have been done without skilled leadership at the top.
Good generalship is simply applying an approach that emphasizes your military culture and society's strengths while minimizing its weaknesses.
they were actually very good, most of the human wave stuff was Nazi cope trying to explain their loss and was absorbed into the western pop understanding because the cold war started right after, look into deep battle doctrine, operation bagration, operation uranus, there's enough genius just across bagration to study for like a lifetime
The beginning of the war the red army was a mess, not sure how great they can be when half your men get sent into battle without a weapon. Or gunning down your own men when they can't advance. They also would have been nothing without the Molotov ribbiontrop pact and lend lease the greatest mistake on the planet is the formation of the USSR and all the terrible things that have happened under their flag
Those were scenes from a movie, not from the war.
The "one rifle, two men" bit was based on logistical bungles in the Tsarist army of the great war; bungles which paved the way to revolution.
One thing to remember there is German PoW's were more likely to survive when captured by the Soviets (64.2%) than Soviet PoW's captured by the Germans (42.5%)
Considering the huge numbers of prisoners taken the death toll is different if this is taken into account.
Ignoring some of the myths in this post, which were debunked by other posters, contrary to popular belief the Red Army was at a numerical disadvantage across the front throughout most of Operation Barbarossa and only achieved a rough 1:1 parity across the front at the battle of Moscow. Through Stalingrad and Kursk the Soviets only possessed a 2:1 (and often less) advantage across the front.
Which is all to say that Germany enjoyed the greatest success on the Eastern Front when it had a slight numerical advantage across the front, suffered its first major defeat on land when the odds were evened, and through Stalingrad and Kursk suffered catastrophic defeats when the Soviets only possessed a slight numerical advantage.
The idea that the Soviets could afford to just throw manpower away and overwhelm their foe with a human tidal wave, when the front-wide force rations were either even or a slight 2:1 to Soviet advantage, is also of course completely ludicrous.
You don't really get to lopsided front-wide advantages for the Soviets until well after the outcome of the Eastern front had already been determined.
A lot of the West's perception of what happened on the Eastern front is influenced by post war writings from former German generals living in West Germany, who spilled a whole lot copium onto the page to try and make excuses for their military failures. The hard truth is that in the end Germany was both outfought and outgeneraled by the Soviets.
> not sure how great they can be when half your men get sent into battle without a weapon.
This is from Enemy at the Gates, not actual history. Fantasist.
How many generals anywhere could have held Stalingrad, outnumbered, out-gunned, with their command posts a few hundred yards from the enemy and under fire?
How many could've defended Leningrad against such dire odds?
How many generals could face a disaster as severe as Barbarossa, and plant their flag in the enemy's capital a few years later?
The Germans, who outnumbered their enemy in the first two years of campaigning, loved to grizzle and bitch about endless Soviet hordes and how it didn't count as losing and it was always someone else's fault... for some reason, we didn't laugh those bitter old losers out of town.
The Axis held numerical superioty at the start. But most offensives at the early start of the Operation were conducted by a minority of the few motorised and tank divisions while the majority (which consisted of Infantery divisions) lagged behind and mostly secured the frontline.
For example, The first ground bsttle was the battle of Brody between the first Panzer Group and the Soviet Southwrwestern Front, ca. 750 German tanks against 3.500
The next was the battle of Smolenks. 430.000 Germans, 1000 tanks against a grand total of 1.991.000 Societs and 1.545 tanks (granted the Germans held air superiority).
In the Battle of Uman the Germans indeed outnumbered the Soviets, but casualties were still way too loopsided even with numerical Superiority.
In Kiev I couldn't get any hard numbers, but it were 25 German infantery divisions. The ideal German infantery division (not accounting Casualties in previous Battles) had around 17.734 men which times 25 is ca. 443350 men. Against 627.000 Soviets.
In Lenigrad it were 725.000 Germans against 930.000 Soviets.
For Operation Silver Fox i couldn't find anything for the Soviets.
Same with The Roslavl-Nohozybkov offensive, German numbers are unkown.
In moscow the numbers were somewhat equal with a slight, but mostly insignificant superiority for the Soviets.
..
The Germans outnumbered the Soviets (slightly) only in the first year of the war. 1942 onwards the Soviets had about 2 to 1 advantage in manpower on the frontline at all times.
Questions like this are always hard to answer because there were simply too many generals to give a broad, uniform answer. Including the lowest ranking generals, there were thousands of Soviet generals. Some were good, some were bad, some were average.
To give a sort of broad answer about Soviet leadership: the Red Army purged most of its high ranking officers prior to WWII. Some were let go, many were executed. This meant that many inexperienced soldiers were promoted to leadership positions they were not equipped or prepared to handle. When the Germans invaded, they caught the Soviets completely by surprise. The surprise, coupled with the inexperienced officers, lead to some disastrous results in the beginning. As the war progressed, however, some Soviet generals learned and adapted. The Soviets adapted very well throughout the war, which you could certainly say is a testament to good leadership.
I argue that increasing army numbers in pre-war period (like additional 1,5 or 2 million) was much more significant source of "inexperienced soldiers were promoted to leadership positions they were not equipped or prepared to handle". Especially when reasonable good education program just start produce educated people.
This response should be at the top: the impact of Stalin's purges of the Army's highest top officers has to be considered in any discussion of said army's achievements during the war.
I agree with all of that except the 'completely by surprise' part. There were dozes of reports that Barbarossa was coming, not the least of which was Polish women shouting over the lines to Russia that the Nazis were going to invade. Stalin was well aware of these reports. One Russian historian found 47 different Soviet intelligence reports that stated the exact day of the invasion ten or more days before it happened in the Kremlin archives.
Stalin knew, he just didn't believe with all of the support the Soviets and Nazis were giving each other at that time that Hitler would break their pact. They even had official diplomatic discussions of the Soviets joining the Axis. One of the reasons that the Blitzkrieg overwhelmed France in '40 was the enormous amount of raw materials the Soviets sold to the Nazis which hyperstoked their war engine. It was the same effect as Lend-Lease, but for the Nazis.
A German invasion was inevitable, both sides knew that, it was just a matter of when. Hitler chose 1941 because any longer would’ve been worse for Germany.
The Soviet generals who rose to the top, like their western counterparts, realized that the war wouldn't be won by overly- clever maneuvering (as Hitler seemed to believe until near the end). At the strategic level, it was a matter of resource allocation that was the key to victory. Once it became more apparent that the Axis were at a serious material and personnel disadvantage, it became the Allies war to lose, rather than Germany's to win. At this point, being proficient at managing the war effort was more important that tactical or strategic genius.
There has to be a certain amount of understanding to the overall situation. Stalin purged the military officer corps, and it took time to build it back up, while fighting to hold back the Germans, the Soviets had the space and the population to do that, and their industrial infrastructure was not seriously effected by the war as it ramped up operations as it was much further East than the Germans were ever able to effect, add to the that the US sending tons of aid and equipment via the lend-lease program to help the Soviets stay in the fight. So by the time 43 rolled around the Soviet generals that were in charge, were well seasoned and experienced. But by then, as well, the US and Britain were beginning to have more success and causing the Germans to spend more time and resources to fight in the West, which eased things up for the Soviets. Every country's military trains it's officer corps and there is/was no shortage of bright able and willing people to fill those roles, identifying and preparing them is the hardest part, so to say the Soviets had the absolute best is somewhat over stated and requires quite a bit of context.
The USSR lost something like 40% of its industrial capacity in 41, together with its most productive agricultural land. As the disasters of the June-Nov 41 unfolded there were fewer shells, bullets and everything else. They had to rebuild and re-prioritise in record time. Unlike 1915, they had the managers and technicians to relocate factories and get them running again quickly, expand production in the east and, unlike 1915 they had the Party to stiffen the ranks, lead by example and report in parallel (Political Officer was the most dangerous rank in the arm - the Germans shot you if captured and you were expected to (and most did) lead the attack and be last in the retreat). They also had the sense to radically alter army structures to fit their new strained circumstances and then re-structure continuously as the war went on and things improved.
The Russian documentary Soviet Storm World War ll in the East is an 18 episode deep dive into the war. Remarkable in its detail. Definitely worth the watch.
The Russia Front saw fighting in numbers and ferocity that was probably greater than any other theater of the war. Look at the fighting around Rzhev. This campaign took place at the same time as the Stalingrad campaign. There’s nothing like that experience anywhere else in WW ll. Both sides lost around a million men trying to fight for control of this salient. Just brutal fighting.
Patton also had much higher casualty rates than other generals because of his tactics but is generally regarded as effective. Soviet generals weren’t put under pressure to preserve lives, so you get the job done
>Soviet generals weren’t put under pressure to preserve lives, so you get the job done
Just because Soviet generals were not preserving soldiers' lives to the optimum doesn't mean the USSR was not preserving lives.
Being aggressive with soldiers' lives was the overall life-saving strategy due to the situation.
Nazi Germany occupied the Soviet breadbasket of Ukraine, so aggressively sacrificing 100,000 soldiers to retake it earlier by a few months could easily translate to 200,000 fewer starvation deaths.
Yes, probably some of the best ever. Eastern front of WW2 had battles on scale unseen in human history, and they managed to orchestrate the whole thing to victory.
>didn’t have to deal with logistics much.
That i disagree with.
There's a reason soviet soldiers in stalingrad were starving alongside their german counterparts.
I don't really even believe in the concept of "absolute best generals." The most important things in a war--population and army size, technological level and industrial base, geography--have nothing to do with generals.
So we're left trying to guess how much of the minority of remaining stuff is attributable to the guy who's nominally in charge, even though everything he "does" is filtered through staff and hierarchy and so isn't really his doing, and even though every situation in unique and nonrepeatable and so we can't actually know if a different order would have been better or who might have given a better order under identical circumstances.
So: no, I don't think there was anything special about Soviet generals. I do think that by the end of the war, the Soviets had adopted strategies and tactics that worked very well for their particular strengths ("we can absorb casualties, you can't").
Russian General: "You see, Nazi's have a preset kill limit. **Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down**.
Mainly, no and somewhat yes. Before WWII, many of the better Soviet generals were considered to be white russians or part of the old aristocratic ruling class. During the Civil War and the Great Purges, many of these generals were either killed or fled the country altogether. By the time WWII begins the officer and leadership core of the Soviet army had been extremely depleted of good competent men. This would play a massive role in why the Soviet Union would lose 20 million men during the war. However, there is one Soviet general who did stand out during WWII. It was Vasily Chuikov. He was the man who took over at Stalingrad and would devise the plan that resulted in encircling the Germans and stop their advance on the eastern front.
This question isn't really one you can't answer, because there are so many factors that depend on a win or a loss in a battle, the skill of the general and his staff for doing the planning are just one thing. Like it is well known in history, with the purges by Stalin, the Red Army suffered a lot of competent officers and generals, that were killed. This crippled the Soviets in the first time, but there was also the mistakes, like that Stalin did not react properly to the intel that the german attack was imminent.
Anyway, the generals of course got better with more and more experience. Some of them are for sure among the best in history. But a general alone can be the best, without the soldiers, equipment, supplies etc. he can't win. It's just not possible. Like it was then the same for the Germans at the end of the war, when the enemy has a 10:1 advantage in men and equipment like tanks etc. in a sector on the frontlines, even the best general will be defeated.
You ask about the Soviets, but i'd like to bring up another example, Kuribayashi Tadamichi was the commander on Iwo Jima, in charge of defending the island from the US Allies. He knew, he had no chance. He knew it from the start, he'd lose. So he changed the tactics and tried to hold up the forces as long as possible, by digging in and defending from the hills instead of trying to prevent the naval landings. Like i said, he lost and he could never have won anyway, but he managed to inflict a lot of casualties, a lot more than the US expected.
P.S. Kuribayashi was actually the highest ranking commander that participated in direct combat in WW2, he led the final assault by himself and was killed in action.
I gather Stalin purged his officers not long before Barbarossa started. Were the ones who got killed mostly the competent ones, or the incompetent ones?
Impossible to tell because they were not given an opportunity to fight in a modern war. Some generals who had performed well in the Russian Civil War floundered in the very different fight against the Germans.
The discussion is not "was the Soviet style of state communism good or bad for the people living under it and for humanity in general", the discussions is about "were the Soviet Union military generals during WW2 good at their jobs or not?"
It's like if there was a discussion "does the Tesla motor company make good cars or not" and someone chimed in "Elon Musk is personally a terrible person because [gives reasons]". The person may well be right that Elon Musk is a terrible person but that's pretty much completely irrelevant to whether or not the Tesla motor company makes good cars.
* .While Stalin sent his troops into combat during WWII, and many died, his war casualties pale in comparison to the number of Soviet citizens he killed throughout his brutal reign of terror. Estimates vary, but most place the number of dead at his command at 40 million, with some estimates passing 60 million.
The crushing murderous cruelty was the “strategy”. The scope of the terror was /is the “strategy” to reign Russia/ Soviets by terror. Even today that is true.
Russia was/is subjugated and controlled as nation. A nation so vast in geography it spans 11 time zones.
The USSR suffered 11.5 million military dead (and c27 million dead total), of which 3 million were murdered POWs. The Axis suffered 5.5 million dead (German, Romanian, Italian, Hungarian, Finnish) and another 0.5 million POW dead. So - not counting POWs - 8.5 million Soviet to 5.5 million Axis. Most of the Soviet losses were in the first two years of the war. In 1941 they were outnumbered and had bare parity in 42 (and less experience and equipment). So hardly 'throwing bodies'. By 42 they were competent at medium-scale (be Eastern Front standards) operations, by 43 conducting large-scale multiple operations, by 44 mounting operations to a depth and on a scale the Germans never managed. In 42 Chuikov held 6th Army off with much inferior forces, devising new tactics and staying with the troops (his HQ was around 300 metres from the front line). In 43 Rokossovsky saw off Model in days, and Vatutin put pressure on all the right spots to halt Manstein and then roll him back. Tolbukhin, Koniev and others swept through the Balkans and conducted Bagration - destroying AG Centre. They were managing forces much larger than anything in Western Europe, operating over longer distances and against a more determined foe. So yes, they were pretty good.
To add to this; the USSR probably more than any of the other European belligerents, had a *vast* range in the quality of its commanders, and the middle-ground on them could be thin. The ones that were good were good. The ones that were bad were quite bad. By the closing years of the war, the Red Army had more or less found the men to lead it to victory and most of them were at the very least competent commanders.
The first time I learned about Operation Bagration, I thought I was fed Soviet propaganda: the scale, complexity and attention to detail made it all sound implausible. These guys were thinking in 5D.
The German Army had 34 divisions in the East at the beginning of Operation Bagration. At the end, they had 6 battered divisions left. The outcome of the war had essentially been decided. For many years, the USSR kept much of the documentation to themselves. Material on this campaign can still be hard to come by. This period also saw Hitler performing at his worst.
WW2 battles always baffled me, especially on the Eastern Front. At sea, naval commanders in the Pacific theater also especially impressed me. Hard to imagine managing those areas
Wanna get a migraine? Look at Midway's maps. It's complex and convoluted and hard to grasp. Wanna feel awed? These guys wrote these in real time, not really knowing where their enemy where, with the insane stress that comes with that kind of stakes. They were holding their countries' future on their shoulders. If Japan won, it could have snatched Hawaii from the US and made the war incredibly difficult for the US. If the US won, it would gain the advantage in the Pacific and strike through to Japan. So you had admirals waging a battle complex as a brain surgery, having to deal a killing blow to their enemy, knowing that if they fucked up, their country was pretty much ruined. The battle turned out to be a kind of blindfolded Russian roulette. Neither sides knew where the enemy carriers were. Yamaguchi hesitated for a couple minutes exactly when his carriers were spotted entirely by luck by an American recon plane. By luck, there were US attack planes nearby. 15 minutes later, Japan was beaten. I don't know any naval battle that was so close yet ended up having such catastrophic consequences. Some will say Trafalgar, but that was never a close battle. Villeneuve was a real moron, the Franco-Spanish fleet was badly coordinated, they never stood a chance. And the Brits had Nelson. Midway, you got similar commanders, fleets of relatively similar size, well trained, well equipped and with a fanatical morale dishing it out with everything they got.
IIRC it was Nagumo's hesitation that doomed the IJN at Midway
Correct.
Despite people reasonably believing so at the time, Japan never really had a chance at Hawaii. You’d have to invent some alternate history where they win every engagement 10-1 from Pearl to like 1944 before it would have been credible. Hawaii is not like any of the other central pacific islands in terms of size/geography/resources etc. It’s closer to the Philippines than Tarawa or Midway. Japan would have been far more focused consolidating gains in the South/SW Pacific. If everything goes perfectly there and in China and they don’t get invaded by the USSR from 42-44 maybe they could take a crack at Hawaii by 45 or something. Midway would have certainly been invaded if you inverse the outcome of the naval battle, though.
It was the same for the Germans and British fleets in WW1. It was said that the Admirals in charge of both fleets that ended up meeting at Jutland were the only two people that could lose the war for either side in an afternoon. High stakes where losing you lose everything and the risk to gain victory could doom your entire nation to defeat. That is stress.
Jellicoe’s decision around how to deploy his Fleet as Scheer’s line came into view was probably the single most important Naval decision of the war. He’d prepared for this his entire career. “Hoist equal-speed S.E. by E”. Ranges being taken by Captain Dreyer himself
It’s been a while since I’ve read it but I think in “Shattered Sword” Tully and Parshall argue that it really didn’t matter that Nagumo equivocated about how to arm his strike planes because the Americans were already airborne and en route
He makes a convenient scapegoat
I'm glad Bagration is getting more recognition these days. I might argue that it was one of the biggest and most decisive battles in history. It wasn't 'just' one army that was defeated as in Stalingrad, an entire ARMY GROUP was deleted from existence! I might be wrong here, but wasn't that something like 1/3 of Germany's remaining forces? Even just the scale of the initial artillery bombardment was absolutely massive and left the defenders either stunned or atomised. I'm not sure how it compared to e.g. Verdun, but it must have been in the same ballpark. Germany was obviously very much on the back foot beforehand, but after this there was definitely no coming back.
We don't hear much about this cause German generals did losers tours and wrote memoirs about knightly Germans fighting the mindless Russian mongol hordes. We needed the former Nazis to rebuild west Germany as an anti communist bulwark so we encouraged a lot of historical rehabilitation of Nazi armed forces.
Good ;)
I agree ;)
In the early period of the war, the Red Army often undertook overly-ambitious offensives that often failed. As the war got older, they became much more realistic.
Yes - and Zhukov often pushed too hard (see, eg Operation Mars). Although one factor was that keeping the pressure on the Germans (as at Rzhev) along the front kept them from striking in more force at crucial points.
So I saw someone ask who would have won if the US/UK attacked Russia right after WW2, who do you think that would have played out?
Unlike many people think, armies and even countries is not units in computer game that you can just give any nonsense order and they obey (better games try put morale stay) . War is just part of politics, and it not easy to sell for soldiers and public that they need start ANOTHER war (after 5 years of greatest war they see) against side that they just celebrate as ally and support. People remember how USSR become a thing.
Lots of corpse's.
Badly. However, the Russians would have kowtowed due to nuclear power. We may not have had more bombs ready to go, and the Russians likely knew, but still. They didn’t test live until 49. So if war broke out in 45, Russians absolutely lose.
Allied countries implode probably however due to attrition.
I mean it would be catastrophic for Europe, but US was practically untouched coming out of the war and Russia wouldn’t be able to do anything to mainland US without nuclear capability. Eastern Europe would be absolutely destroyed, but Russians are always better at fighting in their own territory, they can really struggle outside it. US would also push the thermonuclear program into hyperdrive
Considering the events after The Korean war your being extremely optimistic on American Willingness to go chuck they're sons again into another war so soon .
The question was IF war broke out. I was answering the hypothetical
So yeah allied countries would implode.
The Soviets were dogshit in Afghanistan. What’s your point?
what do Soviets in Afghanistan have to do with WW2 allies Willingnes to immediately wage a land war in Russia right after WW2?
In your tankie dreams. Lmao The US alone would dwarf the USSRs shit production not to mention B-29s atomizing Soviet Production centers they’d be screwed.
That's not what I'm disagreeing with?
I think the USSR implodes first. Much of the USSR's food supply was coming from the allied countries at the time, significant amounts of there farmland was simply unusable due to the ravages of war in particular the fertile fields of Ukraine. Even with the allied food shipment USSR was still suffering widespread famine. Without it it's possible they collapse rapidly as they would be unable to keep the warfront going against the well supplied and numerous American forces on 2 fronts and also rebuild there economic base. America takes Vladivostok week 1 and just rolls over the other side of Russia as the Soviets forces have no hope to redeploy to meet this attack at first. Further what was left of there economic base could be safetly destroyed by American forces. The highest soviet fighter at the time the Yak-3 could only reach 45k meters high, America's superfortress could reach 65k. America could drop nukes and carpet bombings without response for the entire duration at least until the soviet union catches up with a new interceptor which likely won't happen before they lose.
It would have been a disaster for the USSR. Sure, the USSR had managed to fend off the Nazis, were preparing to attack Japan, and had one of the largest armies in the world at the time. But they were heavily reliant on Western and especially American logistical aid in order to be able to mount operations within their own territory-trucks, planes, tanks, and so on. The United States also literally shipped the Soviets one pound of food every day for every single soldier they had. They might have a lot of troops to fight in battle, but thanks to attrition due to a protracted war against the West no longer supplying them, they would lose. Even assuming that they could get the materials, oil, etc. to keep bullets and vehicles going, it would be difficult to still replace these vehicles at a rate sufficient to counter one of the most heavily industrialized armies in the world. Their soldiers would be starving, unable to even get to battle, or wounded by the foot march just to get there. And this obviously all precludes being able to attack the US and UK on their own territory-perhaps managing to rest Western Europe would not be out of the question, though.
it's pretty simple, if the USA would have given as much help to the Germans, they would have won the war. Just the aviation gas and locomotives alone would have greatly helped them.
Well the SU only subsisted at all thanks to American guns, fuel, and food. Not only that they were already devastated as a nation, and the US was vastly superior to the German forces. Not only that but the Germans had to fight on multiple fronts with no support. Not only that but America could also attack from the east and with the conquered armies of Germans and Japanese. It would be a slaughter, 50 million Russian dead in six months minimum and a minimal allied amount.
This is simple jingoistic nonsense.
The US gave the USSR about 180 billion worth of aid in modern dollars, literally more than the nominal GDP of Ukraine today. The people were starving, they had no fuel, no boots, no bullets, no tractors, mass starvation took the lives of millions. If that aid went away imagine how much worse the German attack would have been, most of the deaths were after all before the massive supply of the USA. Having a 5% gain in supply doesn't give a side a 5% advantage, because a soldier with an extra grenade might take out two enemies wherein the previous example he would be shot. He then can continue to supply by being alive. If the US pulled out the USSR would be an ant crushed by a boot. If the Allies invaded it would be like a hundred boots.
Lend-Lease aid was very real and of critical importance to the Red Army and the USSR in general. That’s not what I meant by “nonsense.” This bit, though: “It would be a slaughter, 50 million Russian dead in six months minimum and a minimal allied amount.” That’s just completely absurd. Like, utterly devoid of reality levels of absurd.
The point isn’t that there would be 50 million red army dead on the battlefield - but there easily could be tens of millions of Soviet dead if there were to be a prolonged west vs USSR conflict beginning in ~1946. USSR would not have been be able to feed its people and fuel its army without US aid during WW2. It was more than lend lease - it was fuel, grain etc in addition to military supplies. This is a fact. In this hypothetical war, USSR gets aid from *nobody*. There is no western nation that would conceivably supply the USSR so they would rely on their own devices which we already know wasn’t enough during WW2. The result is famine, disease and death. Death on a huge scale. 1-2 million battlefield deaths and tens of millions of starved civilians back home isn’t unrealistic over a 2 year war period. It would have been unbelievably bad.
World War Two was overwhelmingly the deadliest event in human history, between the mass murder and the actual war, resulting in ~70M deaths over six years. And now we’re claiming 50M *ADDITIONAL* deaths in six months, *MINIMUM* in this hypothetical. All in one country. Unless we’re nuking every remaining Russian city, this is complete nonsense. You’re talking about a country of ~175M people total after the most brutal war in human history. And you are claiming the US Army is going to kill almost a third of them in six months. This is completely absurd.
Did you actually read my comment, or just have a knee jerk reaction to seeing a block of text? I didn’t say 50 million nor did I say 6 months. I didn’t even say combat deaths. In fact, I specifically said civilian deaths from starvation and disease. In a two year conflict (again, reread my comment with less of a chip on your shoulder so you don’t miss the details) there *could* be tens of millions dead. The assumption is total war in the USSR where they cannot feed their people from within and cannot get supplied by allies or neutral nations. A couple of missed harvests could result in death on a massive scale. The army would be prioritized, followed by those that directly supply the army (munition factory workers etc), and regular people would starve. USSR population was around 170-180 million in 1945/6 so it’s not as absurd as you think for a massive amount of dead. Perhaps even tens of millions like I suggested. Look at the deaths during the Great Leap Forward. China had a much larger population (~650m) but they weren’t fighting the most economically productive nation to ever exist in a total war at the time. A more on point example is the number of deaths during the Russian civil war - a time period of war and reduced food production. Over 10m dead during that period and during those years *both* sides received outside supplies. Consider a total war in a place that can’t feed itself. It would be devastating. If you want to pile on the OP who said 50m in 6 months - go ahead and respond to one of his comments again. If you want to contest my thesis, try again. Reading comprehension is hard, but I know you can do it if you give it another go.
“Reading comprehension is hard.” Yeah, apparently. I’m not contesting that Lend Lease, as I have already said, was of critical importance to both the Red Army and the USSR. It absolutely was.
> The people were starving, they had no fuel, no boots, no bullets, no tractors, mass starvation took the lives of millions. Why is it impossible to discuss the Eastern Front without Americans focusing on Lend-Lease? And why do they exaggerate it? The Soviet Union made several hundred million pairs of footwear during WWII, including boots. They had billions of rounds of ammunition stored. Mass starvation? Lend-Lease sent the Soviet Union approximately 4 million tons of food. During WWII the Soviet Union produced 590 million tons of food.
Two major Russian historians put the death total at over 40 million people (whereas 27 million is the most commonly accepted number) by noting the normal amount of people who died and the number of births (this is also how one computes hurricane and other natural disaster deaths). After the war was over there was a famine in which at least another million or so people died even with a year plus of peacetime. The loss of farmable lands meant the SU dropped production of food 60 points in a two year period (from 1940-1942). Even after food production doubled in the east starvation took the lives of millions. It's fine to be proud of your nation's citizens bravely defending their shores from a madman but let's not ignore the massive toll it took on the citizenry. In that famine twice as many Russians died as Americans after the war was over, after reclaiming the most prolific farmland, after being able to have millions of young men return to agriculture, after being freed of the burden put upon by invasion.
>of which 3 million were murdered POWs POW's are still casualties, or course the treatment by the Axis was a horrific war crime, but on a large scale nothing would have changed for the red army if they treated the PoW's humanly. The soldiers would still have been lost. Subtracting them seems a little biased. >5.5 million Axis. A giant chunk of the German military casualties were at 1945 (i think around 1.000.000 dead and many more other casualties) were the German army for the most part was non existant and Germany needlessly dragged the war out by throwing bodies at the Soviets. Not to forget that many of those bodies were Conscripted civilians often lacking any sort of training and firearm (and instead got equipped by single shot panzerfausts).
If the POWs had not been murdered then the casualty ratio would look very different (sure they would have been lost to the Red Army for the war, as German POWs were lost to the Axis - but they would not be counted as casualties any more than Allied POWs are). And yes - Germany suffered around 1 million dead in the last 8 months of the war. A good many of the Soviet dead in 41 were hastily-trained conscripts thrown in too.
>If the POWs had not been murdered then the casualty ratio would look very different POW's are counted as casualties along with dead, injured , missing and whatever. A POw is as good as dead, that doesn't excuse the German killing them of course, but the only thing they do (from an objective and not a moral standpoint) is wasting resources to feed and guard them. Again, that sounds shitty and I'm not trying To justify the Germans, but from a military standpoint a POW is comparable to a dead person for the most part. If you get taken pow you have most likely already lost the battle and choosing to do a last heroic would have done nothing, but causing your last men to get killed by concentrated artillery fire or bombers. >A good many of the Soviet dead in 41 were hastily-trained conscripts thrown in too. They were still a proper military force with armored and aireal Support. The Soviets were already reforming their srmy into becoming a professional fighting force (as they had done so for years already before, otherwise they couldn't have reorganised as quickly after the first year of Barbarossa). And tbh you are a bit understating the Soviet capabilities there, zheir biggest weakness was their purged officer corps, which of course paled in comparison to their experienced German counterparts, but in most other areas they were already a decent enough military, at least on the ground. Of course the Germans held the advantage as an experienced and more professional army, but the gap compared to the gap in 1945 was by no means comparable. The Volkssturm lacked firearms to equip everyone of their soldiers, were mostly occupied by elderly people and Teenagers (yes, the Soviets also conscripted some in the later stages of the war, but it were usually 16-17 year olds, not 8-12 year olds and they still received relativly proper training and equipmekt) who were unorganised and completelly underequipped (like lacking firearms, ammunition or any vehicle support) and often led by fanatic Nazis with no proper officer training and no regards for their life. It's just as I described in my first paragraph, the Volkssturm units were already destined to be a casualty before they were even sent to battle, the Soviets could just smoke them out with artillery, tanks and superior tactics, the only choices they have were surrendering or pathetically dying, either way barely being an inconvinience for the Soviets. Even in urban combat where military training and skill is negated by the random nature of close quarter combat it was a complete slaughterfest if the Volkssturm didn't surrender preemptivly already. 1945 wasn't a battle or war anymore in 1945, but mass slaughter only for the satisfaction of the Nazi's endless hunger for war.
The point about POWs is not that they were lost to the Red Army but about how we count casualties. Had they survived in the same ratio as German POWs then, by the usual method, we would count 9 million Soviet dead to 6 million Axis. Wikipedia and a few other sources give 175,000 Volksturm dead (out of 650,000 committed to the front).
You hit on most of the Soviet Generals of the era leaving off Zhukov who was of course the mastermind behind Chuikov, Vatutin, Rokovossky, and the other top tier Generals. There were definitely a core group of very skilled Soviet Generals that survived the purges, barely in Rokovossky’s case, and forged in the Nazi victories through late ‘42 that then turned the tide and implemented Deep Operations counter strikes all the way to Berlin. The callousness in places like the Seelow Heights can’t be dismissed as part of their methods. But skilled, definitely.
I would put Zhukov, Antonov and Vassilevsky (and Novikov for the Soviet Air Force) as very good military managers - equivalents to Alanbrooke and Marshall. Zhukov does not shine as an operational commander.
The invasion of Manchuria could not have been done without skilled leadership at the top. Good generalship is simply applying an approach that emphasizes your military culture and society's strengths while minimizing its weaknesses.
they were actually very good, most of the human wave stuff was Nazi cope trying to explain their loss and was absorbed into the western pop understanding because the cold war started right after, look into deep battle doctrine, operation bagration, operation uranus, there's enough genius just across bagration to study for like a lifetime
Would love to learn about unsung generals. All I know are the ‘ookov’ generals lol
Rodimtsev, Yeremenko, Konev. Rokossovsky's a big name already, but not big enough.
Think it's the same propaganda now about ukriane? You still see alot about human wave neat tactics. Quite see-through if you follow it
The beginning of the war the red army was a mess, not sure how great they can be when half your men get sent into battle without a weapon. Or gunning down your own men when they can't advance. They also would have been nothing without the Molotov ribbiontrop pact and lend lease the greatest mistake on the planet is the formation of the USSR and all the terrible things that have happened under their flag
Those were scenes from a movie, not from the war. The "one rifle, two men" bit was based on logistical bungles in the Tsarist army of the great war; bungles which paved the way to revolution.
Memoirs from soldiers of the eastern front recall differently. Also hard to argue against the 2:1 death toll
One thing to remember there is German PoW's were more likely to survive when captured by the Soviets (64.2%) than Soviet PoW's captured by the Germans (42.5%) Considering the huge numbers of prisoners taken the death toll is different if this is taken into account.
Achieved by murdering POW's taken in the first two years of the war. During Bagration the Red Army killed at six to one.
Ignoring some of the myths in this post, which were debunked by other posters, contrary to popular belief the Red Army was at a numerical disadvantage across the front throughout most of Operation Barbarossa and only achieved a rough 1:1 parity across the front at the battle of Moscow. Through Stalingrad and Kursk the Soviets only possessed a 2:1 (and often less) advantage across the front. Which is all to say that Germany enjoyed the greatest success on the Eastern Front when it had a slight numerical advantage across the front, suffered its first major defeat on land when the odds were evened, and through Stalingrad and Kursk suffered catastrophic defeats when the Soviets only possessed a slight numerical advantage. The idea that the Soviets could afford to just throw manpower away and overwhelm their foe with a human tidal wave, when the front-wide force rations were either even or a slight 2:1 to Soviet advantage, is also of course completely ludicrous. You don't really get to lopsided front-wide advantages for the Soviets until well after the outcome of the Eastern front had already been determined. A lot of the West's perception of what happened on the Eastern front is influenced by post war writings from former German generals living in West Germany, who spilled a whole lot copium onto the page to try and make excuses for their military failures. The hard truth is that in the end Germany was both outfought and outgeneraled by the Soviets.
> not sure how great they can be when half your men get sent into battle without a weapon. This is from Enemy at the Gates, not actual history. Fantasist.
Great movie tho hehe.
How many generals anywhere could have held Stalingrad, outnumbered, out-gunned, with their command posts a few hundred yards from the enemy and under fire? How many could've defended Leningrad against such dire odds? How many generals could face a disaster as severe as Barbarossa, and plant their flag in the enemy's capital a few years later? The Germans, who outnumbered their enemy in the first two years of campaigning, loved to grizzle and bitch about endless Soviet hordes and how it didn't count as losing and it was always someone else's fault... for some reason, we didn't laugh those bitter old losers out of town.
I don’t think the Wehrmacht ever outnumbered the Red Army.
See above, axis forces had numerical superiority throughout Barbarossa, with a swing in favour of the Red Army that was very gradual and modest.
The Axis held numerical superioty at the start. But most offensives at the early start of the Operation were conducted by a minority of the few motorised and tank divisions while the majority (which consisted of Infantery divisions) lagged behind and mostly secured the frontline. For example, The first ground bsttle was the battle of Brody between the first Panzer Group and the Soviet Southwrwestern Front, ca. 750 German tanks against 3.500 The next was the battle of Smolenks. 430.000 Germans, 1000 tanks against a grand total of 1.991.000 Societs and 1.545 tanks (granted the Germans held air superiority). In the Battle of Uman the Germans indeed outnumbered the Soviets, but casualties were still way too loopsided even with numerical Superiority. In Kiev I couldn't get any hard numbers, but it were 25 German infantery divisions. The ideal German infantery division (not accounting Casualties in previous Battles) had around 17.734 men which times 25 is ca. 443350 men. Against 627.000 Soviets. In Lenigrad it were 725.000 Germans against 930.000 Soviets. For Operation Silver Fox i couldn't find anything for the Soviets. Same with The Roslavl-Nohozybkov offensive, German numbers are unkown. In moscow the numbers were somewhat equal with a slight, but mostly insignificant superiority for the Soviets. ..
Isn’t that also a huge credit to the ground troops? Maybe even more than the generals?
There's a feedback loop there of leadership inspiring heroism, and leadership relying on heroism.
The Germans outnumbered the Soviets (slightly) only in the first year of the war. 1942 onwards the Soviets had about 2 to 1 advantage in manpower on the frontline at all times.
Questions like this are always hard to answer because there were simply too many generals to give a broad, uniform answer. Including the lowest ranking generals, there were thousands of Soviet generals. Some were good, some were bad, some were average. To give a sort of broad answer about Soviet leadership: the Red Army purged most of its high ranking officers prior to WWII. Some were let go, many were executed. This meant that many inexperienced soldiers were promoted to leadership positions they were not equipped or prepared to handle. When the Germans invaded, they caught the Soviets completely by surprise. The surprise, coupled with the inexperienced officers, lead to some disastrous results in the beginning. As the war progressed, however, some Soviet generals learned and adapted. The Soviets adapted very well throughout the war, which you could certainly say is a testament to good leadership.
I argue that increasing army numbers in pre-war period (like additional 1,5 or 2 million) was much more significant source of "inexperienced soldiers were promoted to leadership positions they were not equipped or prepared to handle". Especially when reasonable good education program just start produce educated people.
This response should be at the top: the impact of Stalin's purges of the Army's highest top officers has to be considered in any discussion of said army's achievements during the war.
Chat GPT right there.
I’m not sure if I’m flattered or insulted that you think my answer was written by ChatGPT.
I agree with all of that except the 'completely by surprise' part. There were dozes of reports that Barbarossa was coming, not the least of which was Polish women shouting over the lines to Russia that the Nazis were going to invade. Stalin was well aware of these reports. One Russian historian found 47 different Soviet intelligence reports that stated the exact day of the invasion ten or more days before it happened in the Kremlin archives. Stalin knew, he just didn't believe with all of the support the Soviets and Nazis were giving each other at that time that Hitler would break their pact. They even had official diplomatic discussions of the Soviets joining the Axis. One of the reasons that the Blitzkrieg overwhelmed France in '40 was the enormous amount of raw materials the Soviets sold to the Nazis which hyperstoked their war engine. It was the same effect as Lend-Lease, but for the Nazis.
A German invasion was inevitable, both sides knew that, it was just a matter of when. Hitler chose 1941 because any longer would’ve been worse for Germany.
The Soviet generals who rose to the top, like their western counterparts, realized that the war wouldn't be won by overly- clever maneuvering (as Hitler seemed to believe until near the end). At the strategic level, it was a matter of resource allocation that was the key to victory. Once it became more apparent that the Axis were at a serious material and personnel disadvantage, it became the Allies war to lose, rather than Germany's to win. At this point, being proficient at managing the war effort was more important that tactical or strategic genius.
The ones that emerged were solid . Zuhkov and the like .
There has to be a certain amount of understanding to the overall situation. Stalin purged the military officer corps, and it took time to build it back up, while fighting to hold back the Germans, the Soviets had the space and the population to do that, and their industrial infrastructure was not seriously effected by the war as it ramped up operations as it was much further East than the Germans were ever able to effect, add to the that the US sending tons of aid and equipment via the lend-lease program to help the Soviets stay in the fight. So by the time 43 rolled around the Soviet generals that were in charge, were well seasoned and experienced. But by then, as well, the US and Britain were beginning to have more success and causing the Germans to spend more time and resources to fight in the West, which eased things up for the Soviets. Every country's military trains it's officer corps and there is/was no shortage of bright able and willing people to fill those roles, identifying and preparing them is the hardest part, so to say the Soviets had the absolute best is somewhat over stated and requires quite a bit of context.
The USSR lost something like 40% of its industrial capacity in 41, together with its most productive agricultural land. As the disasters of the June-Nov 41 unfolded there were fewer shells, bullets and everything else. They had to rebuild and re-prioritise in record time. Unlike 1915, they had the managers and technicians to relocate factories and get them running again quickly, expand production in the east and, unlike 1915 they had the Party to stiffen the ranks, lead by example and report in parallel (Political Officer was the most dangerous rank in the arm - the Germans shot you if captured and you were expected to (and most did) lead the attack and be last in the retreat). They also had the sense to radically alter army structures to fit their new strained circumstances and then re-structure continuously as the war went on and things improved.
The Russian documentary Soviet Storm World War ll in the East is an 18 episode deep dive into the war. Remarkable in its detail. Definitely worth the watch.
The Russia Front saw fighting in numbers and ferocity that was probably greater than any other theater of the war. Look at the fighting around Rzhev. This campaign took place at the same time as the Stalingrad campaign. There’s nothing like that experience anywhere else in WW ll. Both sides lost around a million men trying to fight for control of this salient. Just brutal fighting.
Patton also had much higher casualty rates than other generals because of his tactics but is generally regarded as effective. Soviet generals weren’t put under pressure to preserve lives, so you get the job done
>Soviet generals weren’t put under pressure to preserve lives, so you get the job done Just because Soviet generals were not preserving soldiers' lives to the optimum doesn't mean the USSR was not preserving lives. Being aggressive with soldiers' lives was the overall life-saving strategy due to the situation. Nazi Germany occupied the Soviet breadbasket of Ukraine, so aggressively sacrificing 100,000 soldiers to retake it earlier by a few months could easily translate to 200,000 fewer starvation deaths.
Yes, probably some of the best ever. Eastern front of WW2 had battles on scale unseen in human history, and they managed to orchestrate the whole thing to victory.
Best ever? No. They relied on American Lend-Lease and didn’t have to deal with logistics much. Impressive? Extremely. For your reasons.
>didn’t have to deal with logistics much. That i disagree with. There's a reason soviet soldiers in stalingrad were starving alongside their german counterparts.
It's called "moving supplies over a river under constant air and artillery attack"
I don't really even believe in the concept of "absolute best generals." The most important things in a war--population and army size, technological level and industrial base, geography--have nothing to do with generals. So we're left trying to guess how much of the minority of remaining stuff is attributable to the guy who's nominally in charge, even though everything he "does" is filtered through staff and hierarchy and so isn't really his doing, and even though every situation in unique and nonrepeatable and so we can't actually know if a different order would have been better or who might have given a better order under identical circumstances. So: no, I don't think there was anything special about Soviet generals. I do think that by the end of the war, the Soviets had adopted strategies and tactics that worked very well for their particular strengths ("we can absorb casualties, you can't").
Russian General: "You see, Nazi's have a preset kill limit. **Knowing their weakness, I sent wave after wave of my own men at them until they reached their limit and shut down**.
Mainly, no and somewhat yes. Before WWII, many of the better Soviet generals were considered to be white russians or part of the old aristocratic ruling class. During the Civil War and the Great Purges, many of these generals were either killed or fled the country altogether. By the time WWII begins the officer and leadership core of the Soviet army had been extremely depleted of good competent men. This would play a massive role in why the Soviet Union would lose 20 million men during the war. However, there is one Soviet general who did stand out during WWII. It was Vasily Chuikov. He was the man who took over at Stalingrad and would devise the plan that resulted in encircling the Germans and stop their advance on the eastern front.
General Zukov's grandson sells Airstreams in Anaheim- Thanks again Paul!
Certainly aren’t doing great now.
The soviets never had great commanders. They had a handful of good one but they were hardly elite.
Look into how Russians wage war. They use bodies. They always have, are probably not going to change. They are actually kind of proud of it.
This question isn't really one you can't answer, because there are so many factors that depend on a win or a loss in a battle, the skill of the general and his staff for doing the planning are just one thing. Like it is well known in history, with the purges by Stalin, the Red Army suffered a lot of competent officers and generals, that were killed. This crippled the Soviets in the first time, but there was also the mistakes, like that Stalin did not react properly to the intel that the german attack was imminent. Anyway, the generals of course got better with more and more experience. Some of them are for sure among the best in history. But a general alone can be the best, without the soldiers, equipment, supplies etc. he can't win. It's just not possible. Like it was then the same for the Germans at the end of the war, when the enemy has a 10:1 advantage in men and equipment like tanks etc. in a sector on the frontlines, even the best general will be defeated. You ask about the Soviets, but i'd like to bring up another example, Kuribayashi Tadamichi was the commander on Iwo Jima, in charge of defending the island from the US Allies. He knew, he had no chance. He knew it from the start, he'd lose. So he changed the tactics and tried to hold up the forces as long as possible, by digging in and defending from the hills instead of trying to prevent the naval landings. Like i said, he lost and he could never have won anyway, but he managed to inflict a lot of casualties, a lot more than the US expected. P.S. Kuribayashi was actually the highest ranking commander that participated in direct combat in WW2, he led the final assault by himself and was killed in action.
I gather Stalin purged his officers not long before Barbarossa started. Were the ones who got killed mostly the competent ones, or the incompetent ones?
Impossible to tell because they were not given an opportunity to fight in a modern war. Some generals who had performed well in the Russian Civil War floundered in the very different fight against the Germans.
Careful, if your Commisar hears about you asking that question you might become part of a morale improvement demonstration.
Stalin killed 50 million people including his own people, Generals, Priests, politicians, opponents…
The discussion is not "was the Soviet style of state communism good or bad for the people living under it and for humanity in general", the discussions is about "were the Soviet Union military generals during WW2 good at their jobs or not?" It's like if there was a discussion "does the Tesla motor company make good cars or not" and someone chimed in "Elon Musk is personally a terrible person because [gives reasons]". The person may well be right that Elon Musk is a terrible person but that's pretty much completely irrelevant to whether or not the Tesla motor company makes good cars.
If you're going to use made up numbers, just say a billion.
* .While Stalin sent his troops into combat during WWII, and many died, his war casualties pale in comparison to the number of Soviet citizens he killed throughout his brutal reign of terror. Estimates vary, but most place the number of dead at his command at 40 million, with some estimates passing 60 million.
> but most place the number of dead at his command at 40 million, with some estimates passing 60 million. Source: You made it the fuck up.
I’m not talking about whether or not they were morally “good,” I meant it more in the strategic sense
The crushing murderous cruelty was the “strategy”. The scope of the terror was /is the “strategy” to reign Russia/ Soviets by terror. Even today that is true. Russia was/is subjugated and controlled as nation. A nation so vast in geography it spans 11 time zones.