Suvorov books, ww-2

If Stalin had planned the invasion in 1943, the Russian officers that your grandfather took prisoner wouldn't be hiding in the woods right near the border in June 1941.

People often forget that Romania was a key player on the eastern front. If the soviets really prepared an aggression in 1941, surely the Romanian intelligence services ( SSI ) must have reported this.
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In your answer to me, you are mentioning that "People often forget that Romania was a key player on the eastern front." That is correct.
I did not mention that those Russian officers taken prisoners were "hiding in the woods right near the border in June 1941". That was your statement. It could happen anywhere. The mountain division having my grandfather in it went as far as beyond Elbrus - Caucasus Mountains.
Also, if you would pay more attention to my short text, I mentioned that "Nazi Germany = horrible aggressor, Soviet Union = peaceful innocent victim" was the blah-blah provided by the Communist regime. What has my statement to do with your assumptions about Romanian Intelligence Services (SSI) and what they knew in 1941 ? : "...Let's see what the SSI has to say about the "peaceful" and "totally unprepared soviets " "
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Just as a note, maybe off topic: if there was an excellent opportunity to attack the Nazi Empire, it was after Germany started the invasion of Holland - Belgium - Luxembourg - France, and she was deep into this.
I am not sure if in the very long run that would be better for Europe, but I am saying this now, 72 years later.

This post has been edited by Florin on May 12, 2012 02:52 am

Florin, sure that you've be right in what yous say, but surely in this period of time (May-June 1940 compared to June-July 1941) the Red Army had time to concentrate his forces, to prepare his positions for attack, to acquire new amounts and types of weapons, which in May 1940 were not yet ready or available! So, a better moment could be april 1941 f.i.!

Florin, sure that you've be right in what yous say, but surely in this period of time (May-June 1940 compared to June-July 1941) the Red Army had time to concentrate his forces, to prepare his positions for attack, to acquire new amounts and types of weapons, which in May 1940 were not yet ready or available! So, a better moment could be april 1941 f.i.!

Barbarossa was delayed because the spring floods caused Polish and Ukrainian rivers to overflow and the airfields were full of mud. I fail to see how April is an appropriate month to launch an attack in Eastern Europe.

Secondly, in April there were no significant German forces in the East. That means the attack would fall on hollow ground, no massive encirclements and destruction of enemy's forces. While it's probably preferable to destroy the enemy's forces in massive border pincer movement, meeting the Wehrmacht head on in western Poland/Silesia wouldn't have made much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. An interesting what if ( assuming there is no Barbarossa planned in 1941 and the Red Army attacks ).

AFAIK, Operation Barbarossa was delayed by the unexpected Yugoslav and Greece campaigns. Otherwise, it would have started earlier than 22 June (in May, IIRC).

Gen. Dénes

@PaulC ....I meant a possible Soviet attack (if it was planned such thing) and not the German Barbarossa operation...
@Denes absolutely correct, this was the reason (I guess the main one) operation Barbarossa was delayed!

I'm talking about the same thing. Read again what I wrote...

No, it wasn't even close to that. Not only were the forces involved minimal ( land army POV ), but they major operations were finished well before June 1. Last echelons of the Wehrmacht started to move East on June 10.

To quote R. Kirchubel " Some historians falsely believe Germany Balkan's invasion fatally delayed the launching of Operation Barbarossa. Von Losberg said that Hitler always planned to invade Greece before Barbarossa. Invading the Balkans was discussed at Fuhrer conference on Dec. 5. The main causes for deferring Barbarossa's start from 15 May 15–22 June were incomplete logistical arrangements, and an unusually wet winter that kept rivers at full flood until late spring."
Page 16.

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 14, 2012 08:41 pm

It's not about the number of forces involved, but the risk of keeping a staging ground for UK/allied troops to perform operations in the close proximity while Wehrmacht was to advance in the East.

It's not about the number of forces involved, but the risk of keeping a staging ground for UK/allied troops to perform operations in the close proximity while Wehrmacht was to advance in the East.

What we are saying isn't mutual exclusive. I'm saying the number of forces used for Maritsa ( the campaign as a whole ) weren't a factor in delaying Barbarossa, the wet spring and logistical issues were behind it. You say they needed to eliminate the British threat in the Balkans. Equally true.
I've shown a quote before where Hitler discussed the Greek campaign even before any british forces landed in Greece.

But all of this is off topic to this thread.

If we were to get it back on topic while not leaving the Balkan campaign, how do you ( generally speaking ) explain the soviet involvement in the Yugolslav coup d'etat ? That flies in the face of soviet neutrality and war avoidance rhetoric.

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 15, 2012 07:03 am

PaulC, if it is as you say (I did not studied the way and the time of the concentration of German forces to the eastern border of the Reich) than it is an ideal scenario for any military action! If you, as a military commander, are happy that your enemy troops are concentrating on the border of your country than you are surely a masochist (you understand that I do not speak about you!). The ideal scenario is, after me, to not have opponents in front of you and occupy with your troops as much of the territory and the strategic objectives of the opponent's country. Germany isn't such a big country as we see it and without a large territory to allow it to build up a strong front line is doomed to destruction! Why do you think Stalin would be waited for July 1941 when all reports he received indicated a massive concentrating of German troops to USSR western borders? If he had plans of attack, he wouldn't wait for the Germans to complete their preparations... Please tell me how many Soviet tanks were operational of those concentrated on the Eastern Front in june 1941? But of course, all those tanks would have been operational in July 1941, isn't it?
Maybe you also want to discuss more seriously of the legendary Soviet 9th Army concentrated on Romanian border ... a giant in front of an army (our army) that had virtually no tanks ... according to Rezun/Suvorov!

This post has been edited by ANDREAS on May 15, 2012 08:52 pm

No it's not.

German forces concentrated as following :
April 1941 - 43 infantry and 3 tank divisions
May 15 1941 - another 23 infantry and 1 motorized arrived
The bulk came in june : the date of invasion (June 22, 1941) was set by Hitler on April 30; the same date it was decided to switch railroads into schedule of maximal defense transportation, starting from May 23. But even after this with clearly de-masking the whole plan of operation the redeployment of tank and motorized divisions was delayed, "to the last minute”. For instance, five tank divisions of “South” army group were loaded into echelons in the period of June 6 to 16 and arrived to unloading stations in South Poland (Lublin-Sandomierz-Rzeszow) just by June 14-20. Three divisions (13 td, 14 td and 11 td) moved directly to regions of concentration and deployment 25-40 km away from Soviet border just in last hours before invasion, while two others (16 td and 9 td) were still marching 100-150 km away from the border in the evening of June 21.

Perfect time for attack : june 15-june 21. The Wehrmacht would have collapsed having its forces concentrated on small areas, ripe for massive pincer movements and encirclement. The disaster would have been unimaginable : fuel, ammunition, supplies were already at the border ( they are delivered first so units can be battle ready as soon as they disembark from train echelons ); Luftwaffe units attacked in the early morning hours, airfields littered with destroyed planes. Troops and equipment caught in trains; while infantry can jump and fight, how do you unload the Panzer tanks and field artillery in the middle of the field ? All this happened east of the border after June 22. Just to give you an example : 35% of the fuel Wehrmacht used in June-July came from captured soviet stocks near the border. And most depots went out in flames. Only in one region, Bielostock, there were 264,000t of fuel. The Wehrmacht reached Moscow using Soviet supplies.

Such a strategy is absolutely useless. In modern wars the point is to destroy the enemy's forces, not to conquer large areas. It's like playing chess and your objective is to cover as much as possible from the chess board. Try doing it and see what happens. Failing to destroyed the enemy's army caused the destruction of Napoleon and also of the Wehrmacht in Russia. They both conquered land and failed to destroy the Russian army. The end result was the same. Despair was the same for both : the Russian/soviets avoided decisive battles in the critical moments. They retreated.

A Red Army attack without the German army in eastern Poland would mean a clash between an intact Wehrmacht, close to its supply and a Red Army which is moving away from its supply lines. The same happened in North Africa, both combatants conquered and gave back land.

He did wait, didn't he ? So your argument falls to pieces. The idea is to strike when the enemy is in the middle of its deployment. Unfortunately for Stalin, he received his own medicine.

You want to play the number game, no problem.

On June 1st, 1941 there were 12,782 tanks in the 5 western districts with 10,540 ( 82.5% ) suitable to use as intended per Red Army regulations, that means operational ( The last pre-war "Summary of condition and amount of combat vehicles as of June 1, 1941" (Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence, f.38, op.11353, 924, 135-138, 909, 2-18) by Mark Solonim ).

FYI, according to the Order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR N15 of January 10, 1940 armored vehicles were to be broken down into the following five categories:

1. New, never been in service, and suitable to be used as intended .

2. Been in service, quite operable and suitable to be used as intended.

3. Requiring repair in district workshops (intermediate overhaul).

4. Requiring repair in central workshops and in the factories (major overhaul).

5. Unserviceable (tanks belonging to this category were taken off the books and were not listed on summary spreadsheets).

Glantz, who is full of you know what, tell you there were 3800 operational tanks out of 22000. What he's actually counting are brand new tanks, 1st category. It's like saying : only cars in showroom are worthy, all those in the streets need repairs.


Let's look at a factual unit, an average division :

The southwestern front had 5,465 tanks out of which 4,788 ( 87,6%) suitable to use as intended, that is operational. Odessa military district had 797 IIRC. What "tanks" did the Romanian army have ?

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 16, 2012 09:10 am

The fact that you write "full of you know what" doesn't make it less inappropriate than the actual word.

Can you please point our where Glantz writes that there were only 3,800 tanks operational on the Soviet side? The only similar figure I found was 3,600 T-37, T-38 and T-40 tanks that were in fact equipped only with machine-guns. From what I see he mentions 11,000 tanks in the Mechanized Corps deployed in the Western Military Districts. Of these 1,406 were new tanks, which leaves 9594 older models. Of these, on 15 June, 29% required capital repairs and 44% lesser maintenance.

29% of 9594 is 2782, which leaves a total of 8,218 available for operations, provided there was personnel for maintenance or for clearing mines/building bridges. On 28 April, Rokossovsky's 9th Mechanized Corps had only 110 of the 489 support technicians it should have had and only 5 of the 165 engineers. The 32dn Tank Division from the 4th MC had on 22 June only 13% of its repair facilities and 50% of its engineers. All MCs had personnel problems. The average for the Western Military Districts was at around 75%. For example, the 15th, 16th, 19th and 22nd MCs lacked operational or intelligence staff sections. Those that had enough personnel, in many occasions did not have sufficiently trained personnel, especially on the new types. The CO of the 8th MC, maj. gen. Riabyshev, reported after the first weeks of fighting that the KV and T-34 drivers of his unit had only 3 to 5 hours of experience on the new machines and his units had not conducted any tactical exercises prior to the war.

Between 22 and 26 June, the 8th Mechanized Corps had forced marched 495 km and 40-50% of its combat vehicles had broken down and had been left behind. He concluded that the absence of corps evacuation means and the disorganization of front and army evacuation services led to extensive unnecessary equipment losses. Col. Ermolaev who held the temporary command of the 15th MC in July, also considered the long marches, general lack of march discipline and absence of any repair or evacuation capability and resupply one of the important causes for the tank losses of his corps. The corps' 10th Tank Division had 310 out of 355 tanks operational on 22 June. By 15 July it had lost 307 tanks, out of which 151 were lost due to maintenance problems or an inability to evacuate them properly.
Maj. gen. Morgunov, the chief of Southwestern's Front Armored Forces, also concluded in a report on 30 June that the absence of evacuation possibilities, the distance to stationary repair bases and the lack of means in the MCs' repair and reconstruction units led to huge numbers of equipment breakdowns for technical faults.

IMO an overall picture emerges. Those vehicles that required just lesser maintenance and were theoretically combat able on paper, quickly turned out not to be and broke down along side other vehicles. The inability to repair them is owed not only to the rapid German advance, but also to the lack of maintenance and logistic preparedness of the Soviet Mechanized Corps. Of course this adds to the lack of sufficient training, specialized personnel, experience, cohesion etc. etc.

Regarding your question regarding the Romanian tanks, the answer is easily available on the worldwar2.ro website. The 1st Armored Division had 103 R-2 tanks operational on 22 June and the rest of 23 were either in the repair shops on in Piata Victoriei, guarding the Council of Ministers Palace. The 2nd Tank Regiment had 75 R-35 tanks (of which ? operational) deployed in support of 4th Army's infantry. The old FT-17 were not used on the front.

The Soviet 9th Army, Rezun's boogie man, had indeed 799 tanks:
- 517 in the 2nd Mechanized Corps: the 11th TD with 10 KV-1, 50 T-34 and the rest T-26, the 16th TD and 15th MD only with BT-5 and 7s.
- 282 in the 18th Mechanized Corps: the 44th and 47th TD with only T-26s and the 218th MD with no tanks at all.

Striking while the enemy hasn't concentrated his main forces opposite your border is certainly not an absolutely useless strategy.

Striking while your enemy has the bulk of his forces far away in the West (Germany in France, 1940, for example) is even better.

Your supply lines get longer but with your units facing no strong resistence to their advance then this is not a big problem. By the time the enemy shifts strong forces from the West to meet you, you have gained space and time. The enemy may push you back, but you will attrition his forces even farther away from your actual border. This also disrupts his action in the West.

Striking while the enemy hasn't concentrated his main forces opposite your border is certainly not an absolutely useless strategy.

Striking while your enemy has the bulk of his forces far away in the West (Germany in France, 1940, for example) is even better.

Your supply lines get longer but with your units facing no strong resistence to their advance then this is not a big problem. By the time the enemy shifts strong forces from the West to meet you, you have gained space and time. The enemy may push you back, but you will attrition his forces even farther away from your actual border. This also disrupts his action in the West.

True. But two things need to be taken into account :
-transport capacity in western Europe vs. western SU and eastern Poland
-in hindsight, it's logical that with the Germany Army in France it would have been a good moment to strike. However, nobody at the time could have foreseen the sudden collapse of France and secondly you need several moments to be able to launch an attack. A permanent readiness is impossible to maintain. ( in other words, you can't keep the Red Army and its supplies in forests at the western frontier for more than a few weeks ).

We'll revise his "achievements" in 20-30 years time. Russia cannot go on forever buried under a mountain of lies. One day, they will clean the foundations of the state for a new start.

29+44%=73% of the tanks required repairs. That leaves 27% operational. 27% out of the ~14k west of the Urals makes 3800 operational tanks.

Marl Solonin provides the real situation and even he calls Glantz "infamous". Let me repeat it for you : On June 1st, 1941 there were 12,782 tanks in the 5 western districts with 10,540 ( 82.5% ) suitable to use as intended per Red Army regulations, that means operational.

Good that you mentioned them.
Only equipped with machineguns as if that's something bad. Somehow the Pz I and the Pz II equipped with machine guns and respectively a 20mm canon were much better, no ? Not to mention they were half of the German tanks..

Besides, T37 and T38 were infantry tanks. How many tanks were in the German infantry divisions ? 0. How many tanks were in the German motorized divisions ? 0. And not to forget a small detail, T37/38 were the only amphibious tanks in the world at the time.

"older models" What is that ? How can a BT7M manufactured in June 1941 be an older model on June 22 ? How can a T26 manufactured weeks before the invasion be old ?
The soviet Union manufactured over 4000 tanks in 1939-1940. Were those old too ?

If we're talking quality wise, we can make a small comparison :

Heavy tanks :
-Red Army 770 ( KV1, KV2, T35 )
-Wehrmacht 0
Medium tanks
-Red Army 1881 ( T34 and T28 )
-Wehrmacht 1654 ( P3, P4 Stug 3 )
Light tanks
-Red Army 21359 ( T26, BT, T37/38/40 )
-Wehrmacht 1698 ( P1, P2 , T35, T38)

Do you want to compare the technical specifications of the tanks ? Do you want to compare a BT7M with a Pz 1 ?

Those older models were superior to everything the Germans had. And there were so many of them, it wasn't even funny.

Actually a picture emerges, but completely different from what you envision. You make a grave logical error, you analyze readiness based on performance after june 22.

You completely ignore several facts :
-the Red Army was concentrated in border regions, with bulk of mechanized forces in protrusions inside Poland, surrounded from 3 sides by the enemy and in mortal danger if Germany attacks
-all the fuel, supplies, repair depos, spare parts were massed at the end of railway lines, hidden in forests or still in tens of thousands of railway carriages. All that was lost in the early days. In the hasty retreat, with conflicting orders, the massive soviet formations lost all bearing, abandoned equipment as fuel ran out, weapons, everything they couldn't carry and started to run eastward. Total ammunition losses according to Suvorov were 25000 ( 500k t ) rail carriages, about 3x the total stock of the Wehrmacht for Barbarossa.
-on the western front alone, there were 160 sapper battalions ( about the same number as the entire Romanian Army to answer your question about combat engineers). 5 days later there were only 3 left. Why ? Why were the sapper battalions lost ? What were they doing at the front end of the soviet spearhead ? The answer is simple : if you plan to attack, you need sapper to do mine clearance in front of your attacking forces, cut the barbed wire of the enemy, to erect temporary bridges, to clear debris, to repair communications, etc.
If you plan to defend yourself, the sapper battalions are in the back, preparing the next defense line to fall back to, mining area, preparing bridges for demolitions, railways, communication facilities, etc. The simple fact that on a single front, such a huge number ( 160!! battalions ) were lost in 5 days means the Red Army was prepared to attack.
-the Red Army had on June 22 around 47k artillery tractors and 273k motorcars. Another 31,5k tractors and 243k motorcars were passed over once the general mobilizations was announced.
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What I'm trying to say is, the mediocre display after June 22, isn't a sign of Red Army unpreparedness to conduct offensive operations, but is actually the direct consequence of an army that prepared and deployed only for offensive operations. All the things they did which were logical if you want to attack ( deploy the units as forward as possible, move the sappers in front of the units, bring forwards fuel, ammunition, supplies, spares, ). But the war didn't start as planned. And all the massive preparation backfired. Everything that was done for attack, turned into a disaster in defense. Fuel dumps, repair depos, ammunition warehouses were blown up by German artillery and aviation or by retreating soviet forces. Retreating under pressure, the Red Army units found themselves with no orders, no maps, no fuel, no spares, everything was left behind. The retreat turned into a complete rout with tanks, guns, heavy weapons, everything was abandoned in the general " scapa cine poate".

The boogie man, could obliterate the joke called Romanian tank regiments with impunity. You say only T26 and BTs as if those were donkey carts and we had Leopard 2s. Care to compare their main characteristics ?

Secondly, the 9th army did not receive all its reinforcements. Most were on the way at June 22. Your snapshot isn't only incomplete , but is misleading. Had there been no German attack, rest assure, the 178 Romanian tanks wouldn't have faced "only" 799 soviet tanks, but many more.

Let's see what Suvorov ( Icebreaker ) says about it :

Deploying units forward, bringing sappers, fuel, ammunition, supplies and spares is something normal if you want to conduct defensive operations too.