Suvorov books, ww-2

Regarding the alliance thing, you refuse to accept that friendship and cooperation are one thing, and alliance is something else. Casus foederis makes the difference between an alliance and all the other types of cooperation agreements. Trying to blur the line like you do can only lead to confusion.

And the question was how many airfields should there have been in a strip 250 km x 1,800 km? I believe you said there is no correct answer. Yet before I presented this question you threw that number around and expected people to immediately take it as indubitable proof of offensive intent.

No, for defense you deploy strong covering forces. Those strong covering forces need supplies.

You look at this issue upside-down. Namely, you look at them being destroyed instead of looking at the fact that they had to serve friendly units.

Also, you use "so far forward" again but instead of looking at the Soviet logistical system and where dumps were supposed to be located in relation to Soviet units, you gauge it by looking at how much the Germans advanced and at the fact that they captured 1/3 of the fuel they used in June-July. And you conclude they were too far forward.

That's faulty logic. The Germans advanced what, some 300 kilometers by early July in North and Center? That was enough to overrun the Soviet rear-area dumps too, let alone the forward dumps. In view of that advance maybe the Soviets should have placed their dumps closer to Moscow? Such a conclusion from your part wouldn't surprise me considering you said almost the same about where the Soviet planes and divisions should have been.

Says who ?

Logic.

Sorry, dumps are not kept on mobile trucks. Not even forward dumps. Here's a fragment:

http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/topics/b...rine_supply.htm

Had they been on mobile trucks there wouldn't be a need to displace them to keep up with advancing troops.

Do you have clear figures/sources to back this claim?

Glantz doesn't say they ceased to exist, he says they were no longer functional. The same can be said about the Soviet units that ran east and abandoned everything.

I read and I explained why I thought it is preferable to destroy the German army in frontier battles, not meet it intact in western Poland.

Very true. The soviet operational plans meant exactly this : " “The main strike of the Southwestern Front forces should be targeted towards Krakow and Katowice, cutting Germany off from its southern allies; the auxiliary strike of the left wing of the Western Front should be applied towards Siedlec and Deblin for the purpose of paralyzing the Warsaw grouping and assisting the Southwestern Front in defeating the enemy’s Lublin grouping…”

I fully agree. But I need to mention that it would have been real bloody since without the Luftwaffe destroyed on the ground, the soviet air force would have had a very rough time. Their pilots had only basic ground attack skills, trained to fly in formation and support the ground units. Air battle experience was limited to veterans from Spain, Finland and Japan. The whole concept envisioned gaining air supremacy after destroying the Luftwaffe on the ground.

There were fortifications in East Prussia and also on the Oder, but minimal. That's the reason why KV2 units were deployed on the northern front.

Totally wrong. The entire premise is flawed. Stalin did not know about the concentration of German forces. Secondly, the Red Army deployed according to its own schedule irrespective of the German movements. The deployment planned envisioned to finish deployment by July 10. Let me quote Solonin, who's book is now available from Polirom.

Going back to your hypothesis : why didn't the Red Army attack prior to June 22 ? First of all, because Stalin and the soviet high command didn't believe Germany will attack. Secondly, because they were in the middle of their deployment for attack which was meant to be completed by July 10.

I shown previously that only on June 13 did the 1st strategic echelon receive the order to move on the state frontier and the 2nd strategic echelon to move to the western districts from inside the Soviet Union. They simply weren't ready to attack in between 13 and 22 of June even if they had believe it.

I can only hope that the evidence presented regarding the offensive deployment of the Red Army, the planned dates, can convince you everything was moving inexorably to only one conclusion : a massive attack around July 5-10 1941.

To be ready to attack prior to June 22, the order for deployment needed to be given before April 26 ( Hitler decided on June 22 only on April 30 - more evidence regarding the disconnection between the Soviet and German deployment ). There are sequential measures, bottleneck steps in the process, you can't speed them up, you need to start earlier. But in March 1941, Barbarossa was only in the mind of Hitler and few of his top generals. There were less than 30 divisions on the entire Eastern Front.

He's not saying that. Why don't you actually quote him ? What he is saying is that :
-the Red Army was deployed offensively, in the worst possible places to confront an attack
-the training and indoctrination were unilateral, offensively minded ( pilots for example had basically no air combat training, only ground attack )

Based on this, the disaster was unavoidable.

Of course the Red Army could defend itself. It proved that 6 months later after it lost 90% of the power it had on June 22. If in May Stalin would have declared : we need to defend ourselves, declared full mobilization, Kursk like defenses would have been children's sand castles compared to what the Red Army would have prepared from the Baltic to the Black Sea.

But they DID NOT HAVE ANY INTENTION TO DEFEND THEMSELVES !! All they did was the exact opposite, strengthen their attacking position and weaken the defensive one.

Let's use some critical thinking, sorely missed sometimes.

The Soviet Union had 17000 tanks on sept 1. 1939. Assuming they all were manned only on August 1, they must have had almost 2 years of experience in using their tanks by June 22. In the meantime, thousands of soviet tanks were used for invasion of Poland, Finland and fought in Mongolia. If you want to sell us donuts ( gogosi ) about tankers who did not know what was the front and the back of their tanks, you're targeting the wrong audience.

Let's see what the Japanese say about soviet tankers ( from wiki ) :

Apparently, they knew their tanks in august 1939. Do you want to say that they somehow forgot their skills and got retarded between August 1939 and June 1941 ?

Just as a sidenote, the 9th army facing Romania was commanded by people hand picked from Khalkin-Gol campaign. Do you think those people didn't draw the appropriate lessons and became dumber in the meantime ?

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 18, 2012 08:27 am

Out of discution, two new Suvorov books are avaible, Vă vom ingropa (We will burry you), about Hruscheev era and nuclear problems. Another one, Spetznatz, about those troops in Soviet army.

Casus foederis is applicable; they attacked Poland together, based on a defined agreement. That makes them de facto allies. Allies in aggression, but allies nonetheless. It's you actually who's restricting the definition of allies. Please show me a document of alliance between US and Britain, or between Britain and France.

Wrong question again. Asking "how many should have been" is to put it politely, meaningless.

The RAF survived because its airfields were protected from surprise attacks.
Having your airfields close to the border = unprotected from surprise attack. Which, as history proved, was just what happened. By 1941 they had seen the scenario repeat itself in Poland, Low countries, France, Norway, Balkans. If they would have thought 1 minute about defense, the above sequence would have popped up : maybe we should put the airfields a further back so they can't be attacked by surprise ?

So what are you arguing actually ? That it was a good idea to have that many planes and airfields close to the border if they considered an enemy attack a real possibility ? That Red Air Force losses aren't real ? That the Luftwaffe didn't strike those airfields ?

Too bad nobody thought of defense. So your theoretical construction falls to pieces.

Reality : they served the enemy or were destroyed by the friendly units. It's beyond me how you can argue against REAL things that happened . You're building theories of why it wasn't bad for defense what they did, when we have the definitive proof, WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED.

I don't conclude that. The soviets discovered that the hard way. The Germans discovered that and opened champaign bottles.

The Germans wouldn't have advanced 300km in 1 week without the soviet supplies. Their own logistics failed to keep up with them. But fortunately for the Wehrmacht they maintained the tempo by using captured supplies.

Your logic.

http://www.koreanwar-educator.org/topics/b...rine_supply.htm

Had they been on mobile trucks there wouldn't be a need to displace them to keep up with advancing troops.

You do realize that the soviet equivalent weren't only forward dumps that got captured and destroyed, but massive ones, the kind it is mentioned for Inchon area. The problem was that Inchon like dumps were created near the border, dumps which were captured in the first 2-3 days or had to be destroyed since they couldn't be evacuated.

FYI, German stockpiles for Barbarossa were :
-91,000t of ammunition
-500,000t of fuel.

The soviets lost the equivalent of 25000 carriages of ammunition for the western front and 260,000t of fuel only in the Bielostock area. 2-3x is an understatement.

Good, we're down to word games now. They didn't cease to exist, they are no longer functional. Probably, they existed and were functional, just in a parallel universe.

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 18, 2012 10:41 am

Well, even if i said i would not bother to get here anymore, i want to make few considerations about this topic.

-sapper units near frontier might be related as well with the construction of "Molotov line", a fortified line supposed to be build by Soviets. They started dismantling the previous "Stalin line" to be moved further west, near the new border aquired after the alliance with Nazi Germany under Molotov-Ribentrop pact. The existance of that fortified line at such distance from the new borders was obsolete and useless. Elements of it was kept just near our eastern borders as far as i know. Sure, sappers can be used in ofensive operations too, making way thru enemy lines, blowing up things and so on

Stalin pushed hard to close the gap, the open teritory of stepes when an enemy can rush quicker and advance more easy toward Moscow, the Soviet industrial base and agriculture lands in Ukraine and South Russia. Thats why he wanted a border suported by Danube Delta (Basarabia), Carpathians (Bucovina) and Baltic Sea (half of Poland, Baltic countries, Finland teritories). This border was better suited geographicaly for defense, and let a smaller gap (Poland) to be reinforced and fortified (Molotov line). An attack from Romania was harder to be done, and one in north, from Finland, even much harder, both because Finns was already put in submission (they didn get much inside USSR after Axis attack) and the area was not proper for large concentration of forces.

Same for aircrafts, having a border streched from Black Sea to Baltic Sea needed quite many airfields. And an aircraft back then had an autonomy of just few hundred km, so is normal to be in a distance of tens to hundreds of km from border, to protect it.

The Axis attack caught the Soviets in the middle of this process. As that new to be done fortified line spread from Bukovina to Baltic Sea is not a wonder that such many sapper battalions was used there, to build it.

-my opinion is that Stalin, even if planned a massive attack in Europe, wasnt ready for it in 1941, maybe later in 1943-1944, especially after the hard victory over Finns. He was surprised by the quick German victory in west, the plan was probably to wait until all other European armies slaughter eachother and then attack.

As Germans finished too quickly (for Soviet likes) in west, and turned around to east, Stalin received probably (thru spies who worked for him, voluntarily or memmbers of Soviet services - see Lucy network, Sorge and Red Chapelle) the news that Germans see him as the next target.

So he tried to avoid the invasion by mounting himself a preemtive strike, exactly the other way around as Suvorov say. But it was done in a hurry, less prepared and especially with a less prepared Army.

I think Suvorov grossly exagerate the combat abilities of Red Army, and try to cover their inabilities by pretending it was caught by surprise as was prepared for offensive and not for defence.

The truth is that red army was rely mostly on their number, it was not very well trained, the morale was high at first because of their numbers, but many times dropped quickly when they faced resistance or harder hits, being needed those "death squadrons" behind to shot the ones who retreat.
The fact that some of their leaders was quite incompetent as well made them to be slaughtered en masse, or captured by milions.

This is not just at the begining of Barbarossa, but later too, like the onslaught at Kursk, when even if Soviets had all the possible trump cards they lost way much more troops and materials then Germans, who was diverted partialy by Allied invasion in Sicily and allowed so the Soviets to win at the end.

The only way they managed to win was using their numbers in open stepes, where they throw wave after wave of troops, tanks, artilery, aircraft etc in an attempt to overcome the enemy (especially if that enemy lacked very much such materials, as number of troops or tanks and artilery).

My opinion is that red army was caught unprepared, either for assault either for defense. They knew what will come (German/Axis invasion) but wasnt able to do something significant to avoid that.
Their training was rather low, the morale fluctuated, and was rather German mistakes and Allied help who avoided USSR to fall.
Their weaponry was good in some characteristics, but bad on others. I was surprised seeing Suvorov saying that I-16 was the most powerful fighter in the world for ex, i think he have no idea what he talking about. Or that it was first using missiles attached, which is hilarious, such missiles was used by aircrafts since WW 1 to shot down observation ballons.

Tactically Soviets was weak, their tanks lacked coordination and radio station (it was the commander of the tank poping out from the turret and making signs with some flags to command other tanks), training was rather low, and as i said they relied mostly on sending wave after wave of "cannon fodder", in a total contempt for the lives of common soldier, saw as expendable material, kinda WW 1, but with tanks too this time.

I think that Suvorov just tried to mask this Soviet weaknesses by assembling a scenario with devious and diabolic and inteligent Stalin, with his competent comanders and generals, with the huge (this is true) and well prepared (less true) Red Army who wanted to strike first but was caught unprepared for defense by a hastly German assault.
In other words, he tried to find excuses and in the same time to paint the red army and SU colossus in other colors, from the one who was badly beated and survived just with the help of others, in one who was so devious and strong and ready to take over the entire world, and just some hastly reaction from Hitler, who fight for his very near survival and some bad luck made Stalin to not accomplish his goals.

In other words, this is what Russians call "maskirova", a deception, an attempt to show themselves bigger or stronger and divert the attention from their weaknesess. And Russians was always good to propaganda

http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box1/a05uu01.html

http://docs.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/psf/box1/a05uu01.html

Just to take Imperial's position : that's not an alliance, that's a memorandum of collaboration. It certainly doesn't fall under casus foederis, doesn't it ?

How is it any different from the Soviet-German protocols ?

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 18, 2012 10:24 am

You asked about a document of alliance. This document stipulates clearly what military actions will be taken in cooperation to defeat the common enemy.

There were no such combined military actions planed in Soviet - German protocols directed towards a common enemy.

Considerations as in repeating myths and known falsehoods, than yes.

Molotov line in the Bialostock and Lvov bulges ? Surrounded from 3 sides by the enemy ?

Or like you leave yourself an escape option

So to reinforce his security, he enslaved a few million Romanians, Baltic People, 10 million poles and ucrainians, destroying a barrie 1000km wide of neutral states, just to allow Hitler the possibility to attack him by surprise ?

If he was so afraid, he should have backed Poland, send her reinforcement, tell Hitler, "If you attack Poland, you'll fight us too ".

This is so absurd, it's not even funny.

I don't think anyone is ignorant enough to buy this fairy tales. Do you think Romania would have joined Germany in the attack had there been no occupation of Basarabia ? If you can answer this, you've answered yourself.

What's so precious in the occupied territory of Poland that needs to be protected at the border ? Is Moscow situated in the middle of Poland ? Or Kiev ? or Donbass ? Maybe Leningrad ?

And yes it was "normal" to be near the border, just as it was absolutely normal to have them destroyed in the morning hours of June 22.

Have you heard of stories of resistance on the border ? Who ever heard of Molotov line being used in any way please raise his hand! Same can be said for the Stalin line, only 1 UR was defended, the Kiev one, but the Germans simply encircled it.
So those sappers apparently forgot to build anything and had a 2 year long vodka party.

What about the troops ? A few posts back we have direct quotes from the officers, troops were hiding in the forests, not occupying any defenses, not digging trenches or bunkers! Maybe they waited the sappers to do it...

I refuse to believe someone can say this with a straight face. Stalin wasn't ready for attack in 1941 when he had :
-an active army of 5 million
-reserves of another 5 in 1 week
-25000 tanks
-80000 guns
-15000 planes
-the country and the industry intact, weapons production outpacing the German one

His superiority, both in numbers and technical was colossal. The Red Army dwarfed all the armies of the world combined. Yet, he wasn't ready to attack.

Somehow, you say he would have been ready by 1943-1944. What happened in 1943-1944 ? The Red Army was back in Central Europe.
-fighting with reservists only
-having lost 3/4 of the war industry
-having lost tens of millions of people, tens of thousands of tanks, hundreds of thousands of guns in 1941-1942.

At least you didn't say he would have been ready in 1947-1948. It would have meant Berlin was conquered by an unprepared army.

How can the active Red Army be less prepared than the Red Army of 1943-1944 composed of reservists and forcefully conscripted men from liberated territories ?

It must have been Darth Vader that defeated Guderian's 2nd Panzer Group at Tula or pushed the army group center and south 100-200km back.
All that with maybe 10% of what was available in June 1941.

So with 10% of the forces , they could stop the Germans, but with 100% they could neither attack nor defend.
Splendid logic.

Put everyone to dig trenches ? If Stalin wanted they could have build a Baltic-Black Sea canal 1km wide. Let's see how the Germans would cross it.

By the time allied help arrived, the Germans were on the verge of collapsing on the Moscow front. Allied help was under 10% of what the crippled soviet industry produced during the war.

But with that industry intact, also intact army, they could neither defend or attack !

Why not show us the exact quote were he says that ? Maybe he's talking about the mid 30s, just saying..

Why would they lack coordination ? All the tank units had quite a few radios and at least 1 in every 3 tanks had a radio ( platoon commander ). At best you could say, the tank units could act with a granularity of 3 every action. Considering they had 4 x superiority in tanks, that's more than adequate.

So it doesn't appear to you strange that for 70 years, soviet and now russian propoganda portray themselves as frightened, stupid, untrained masses, with idiotic leaders who couldn't act, with tanks that were flammable and useless, planes that couldn't fly, etc, etc. On top of this, if you want to write a book about this, see Glantz, you're given a reception at the military academy and are allowed to get all the material needed to reinforce this view.

Why isn't Glantz going at Paris telling the French Military Academy : I want to write a book to prove how incompetent you were in ww2 and I need access to the archives. What do you think would happen ? In 2 hours he would be on a plane with permanent ban on visiting France.

But in Russia, they toast in your honor. Somehow, that doesn't make any clicks in the brain, it's perfectly normal.

And dividing Poland is what ?

Of course. On 21 September, the Soviets and Germans signed a formal agreement coordinating military movements in Poland. Does that fall under "combined military actions" ?

The question is not wrong because your theory/proof of imminent Soviet attack is based on quantity of forces and their distance from the border. You claim that the number of Soviet airfields (x) placed at the known or estimated distances (y) from the border is undisputable proof of offensive intent.

So my question was what should the x and y have been if the Soviets wanted to defend, not to attack. In other words, how do you establish the quantitative and spatial threshold between defense and offense? You haven't clarified this threshold but you talk of "too close", "too forward," "farther back" while lacking the point of refence. Your only answer regarding this - the one in which you say that if they wanted to defend the Soviets should have kept their forces 300-500 km back - is very unrealistic.

Maybe things are how you say regarding the RAF, but in my opinion the RAF survived because it had a top-notch early warning system that allowed its airfields not to be taken by surprise. The surprise was also gone because Britain knew it was at war with Germany.

I'm saying that the airfields had to be there to cover the covering forces and the border. You have to take into account the airplanes' combat range. Airfields couldn't be placed 400 kilometers back and be of any real use.

Another thing you seem to ignore is that even if you are on strategic defense your airplanes have to act offensively too - striking deep behind enemy lines, disrupting lines of communications and supplies. That's another reason why the airfields couldn't have been placed 100s of kilometers back. The Soviet airplanes' range had to be good enough not only to fight in the air over the Soviet territory but to strike deep behind the advancing Germans too.

Do you know how far behind the frontlines were the American forward supply dumps 2 months after the invasion of Europe? Less than 40 kilometers! The American units fought hard and the Germans didn't wipe the floor with them. As a consequence, the dumps survived and you don't hear anything about them. Had the Germans beaten the Americans to a pulp and consequently captured their dumps you'd probably have said the dumps were placed too close to the frontline!!! You don't judge where a dump should be based on whether it gets destroyed or captured, but on whether units need that dump there or not.

The point is the Soviet dumps were where they were supposed to be IMO but the units they served were defeated and the dumps were captured or destroyed. It happens.

Your logic.

I am waiting for you to refute it.

Yes, the Soviets had 170 divisions in the west, I imagine the logistical footprint was massive. And?

Thank you for those figures. I'll check them out and come back later.

And dividing Poland is what ?

Of course. On 21 September, the Soviets and Germans signed a formal agreement coordinating military movements in Poland. Does that fall under "combined military actions" ?

The difference is obivous but I won't bother continuing this nitpicking.

Can you post the a link to the document re 21 September? Does it stipulate coordinating joint actions or just separates the zones of action so they won't step on each other's foot?

I appreciate the fact that you use references for your posts, but the way you presents your opinions as being ultimate truth and Suvorov's writings as a Holy Bible regarding the subject is hardly constructive and discourage any serious debate on this. I'll leave it on others who have more time and patience on their hands.



This post has been edited by dragos on May 18, 2012 12:28 pm

And dividing Poland is what ?

Of course. On 21 September, the Soviets and Germans signed a formal agreement coordinating military movements in Poland. Does that fall under "combined military actions" ?

The difference is obivous but I won't bother continuing this nitpicking.

I appreciate the fact that you use references for your posts, but the way you presents your opinions as being ultimate truth and Suvorov's writings as a Holy Bible regarding the subject is hardly constructive and discourage any serious debate on this. I'll leave it on others who have more time and patience on their hands.

Sorry, but to accuse me of nitpicking means you haven't read the last pages. I'm the last one that draws the discussion in sinkholes about irrelevant nitpicks avoiding the main questions.

As for the alliance question, I just played imperial's position and you had enough after 30min. That says something...

Proof of offensive intent. Let's see what evidence we have :
-we have the operational plans - check
-we have the deployment plan which enables the operational plans - check
-we have a status on deployment on June 13, deployment according to plan - check
-we have the situation on June 22 - check

These are the indisputable proof of offensive intent :
-offensive plans
-offensive deployment
-total disregard of defense and ignoring the threat posed by the enemy
-offensive propaganda in the army and country

The only thing that is missing was interrupted by the German attack.

Did you miss again Glantz explicitly naming deploying too far forward as one of the reasons for defeat ? That is reality. They should have been further back. 100, 300, 500, 1000km is left to discussion. But nobody can deny they were in the wrong positions to defend themselves, however, excellent starting points for attack.

Well, the soviets lacked the top-notch early warning system. How do you protect yourself if you rely on eyes and ears ? Give yourself enough time from when the enemy planes are spotted crossing the border.
Stuka covers at cruise speed :
-25km in 5min
-50km in 10min
-300km in 1h

A Me109 does everything 50% faster leaving you with 150sec for 25km, 7min for 50km and 40min for 300km. How much time do you think you need to get an air regiment 30-60 planes in the air considering you have 30s in between successive takeoffs ?
Where would you place the airfields knowing all this ?

400km for all no; you could have 150-200km for fighters and 300-400km for bombers.

You do realize that soviet bombers bombed Berlin about a dozen time in 1941 from bases near Smolensk and even further away, same story for Konigsberg, Danzig,etc. Ploiesti too.

That's when no surprises were expected. And those forwards dumps were nothing more than thousands of barrels lay on the ground or heaps of ammunition crates. A surprise attack with the Wehrmacht in top form as in 1941, you need to take precautions.

As for the Ardennes, Peiper's group faillure to capture the massive fuel dump near Stavelot saved the allies from some nasty surprised. For the soviets, nothing saved them.

And that line explains all the anomalies on June 22, doesn't it ?

Reality did it and answered all your dilemmas in 1941, no need for me to go further than that.

If everything is as you claim and nothing is debatable or disputable then everything should be crystal clear and we should be reading about this in every serious book written on WWII. Why isn't that? And don't tell me it's a vast communist conspiracy.

The fact is many of your claims are actually disputable and there are Western authors that have dismissed Suvorov's claims. Maybe this will change in the future through a surprising discovery or new insight, but for the time being I'm afraid this is the situation.

Didn't you say the airfields were located on a stretch 250km deep?

Why were no surprises expected?

Reality did it and answered all your dilemmas in 1941, no need for me to go further than that.

That's a poor argument relying on hindsight.

Instead of resorting to that you could for example read some books written by army men in the 1930s and see for yourself what the military thinking was on this subject. Hint: the covering forces were supposed to be strong, well supplied, well covered by aviation and positioned close to the borders in order to properly do their defensive role. Their defensive role could also include offensive operations and counter-attacks. But I guess those army men and theorists were full of armchair nonsense.

Regarding the alliances thing, Dragos already pointed out the main thing. But I'll try to give a more detailed, "nitpicking" answer.

1. I'm not sure if France and Britain had a formal alliance, however they had a Supreme War Council that went far beyond what Germany and the Soviet Union had in regard to Poland.

2. Britain and the Soviet Union signed a formal alliance in July 1941.

3. All Allies signed a formal alliance on January 1, 1942 - the United Nations Declaration.

Things are pretty clear. What Germany and the Soviet Union had was less than these examples. If you want so much you can call the relation between Germany and the Soviet Union a loose coalition against Poland. However, that coalition ended with the end of Poland.

This post has been edited by Imperialist on May 18, 2012 02:37 pm