How did the Romanians deal with Soviet Armour?

I don't want to be rude but I remember that in Antony Beevors book Stalingrad he says something like "Romanian troops were left alone, no-one had seen their officers nor NCOs in front line; on the contrary, they were safe behind the own lines, enoying theirselves with wine and women..."

I agree that a common romanian soldier was brave, but according to mr. Beevor I think that their officers were mostly bad. Sorry to say.

-the FINN

This is another case of spreading a false image starting from individual cases.
I can give you similar examples occuring in the German army, but I will not generalise and I will not say that this was the case with the German army on average.

Considering individual cases, and as I see you signed "the Finn", there was a funny story with a womanizer Finn captain, who admired with his binoculars the Russian girls from Leningrad, who were soldiers in an encircled Soviet battalion of women, near Leningrad (previously, Petrograd; today, Saint Petersburg).
After he spotted few "better pieces" and started to dream about them, he asked a propaganda unit to ask through their loudspeakers: "Surrender and nothing will happen to you."
Unfortunately for him, he was not believed, and next day the girls started a suicidal counter-attack which ended with their deaths.

Mr. Antony Beevors did not fight on the Eastern Front. My grandfather did.
I think that any Romanian who has/had in his family an officer or NCO active in Russia in 1941-1944 may feel the words of Mr. Antony Beevors as a personal insult.

I could develop this, but what I wrote is enough.

Does "Lascar" ring a bell ?

This post has been edited by D13-th_Mytzu on May 29, 2006 06:10 am

And this means... what?

This was in reply to:

and it means that MANY high ranking officers fought untill the last bullet encircled at Stalingrad and were later killed or captured together with their soldiers. Gruparea Lascar is on such notorious case.

1) I understand your thougths. Two of my My grand-grandfathers did figth in Winter War AND in Continuation War, the other as a sergeant and the other as a captain. If somebody said me that finnish NCOs or officers were bad, I would propably beat him.

2a) I said (or I meant) ACCORDING TO MY INFO. I have no other sources but the book Stalingrad and the Internet. I'm sorry, but both of the main-sources are mainly anti-romanian.

2b) Antony Beevor has his own sources; mainly battlereports of the german comrades, soviet pow-examinations and memoirs and diaries of romanian soldiers.

3) I did not mean that your grandfather was an bad soldier. I believe that he was a hero, if you say so. But I have no delusions; there MUST have been bad NCOs and officers in ANY ARMY that particitipated WWII.



Please accept my humble apologies. Sorry.

-the FINN

I don't think Anthony Beevor really used any Romanian sources apart from 'Third Axis, Fourth Ally'. Likewise there are no Italian sources listed in his bibliography either.
This could easily mean that most of the comments on the Romanians and the Italians will derive from German sources.
The main problem with relying on what the Germans say about their allies is that they tended to blame them indiscriminately for their own mistakes, failures and misjudgements. Given the equipment available to the Romanian Army, it would have been miraculous if it could have resisted the Soviet attacks at Stalingrad.
The Germans themselves played a part in this; they would not allow the Romanians to buy the number of tanks and antitank guns necessary to fight effectively, probably because they feared that doing so would allow the Romanians too much independence.
Many problems with 'bad' Ncos and officers derive from the fact that lots of the smaller nations in the Second World War ended up fielding armies that were disproportionately large compared to their technical, industrial, educational etc. base. Sometimes, when fighting for things that seemed vital to the National interest, (eg. when the Romanians fought for Transylvania) these shortcomings could be overcome through moral determination alone, but the human cost was usually high.
Of all the nations in World War Two the one that seems to me to have really fought badly was France. Anyone think of a nation that squandered so many of it's assets so quickly and so completely?

I second you on that. But they redeemed themselves later in the war, when they contributed decisively on the Western Front.

I would question that. Based on what I've read, the Free French forces did not play a militarily significant role in the liberation of France.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on June 02, 2006 06:05 pm

I would question that. Based on what I've read, the Free French forces did not play a significant role in the liberation of France.

Gen. Dénes

You are right, but you must take also into consideration the Free French Forces and The Maquis. They indeed played a major role on the Western Front.

According to the in-depth accounts of the Romanian 3rd and 4th Armatas at Stalingrad, found at www.quikmaneuvers.com, the Romanians did better than most of you think. Their defense works were professional and they had some 75mm antitank guns along with their issued lihghter ATGs and captured Soviet atgs.

The 1st Romanian Panzer Division was in reserve and it did not run. It fought well.
"Melting away" by Romanian troops? No, it did not happen. Many fought and died as brave soldaten are expected to. Several german military medals were won during this period by valiant Romanian troops.

Romanian tank crews sought rear shots against heavier Soviet tanks, thats where they were most vulnerable.

The Romanians did overlook several possibilities that would have improved their antitank defenses:
- Minefields..captured Soviet mines were available but not emplaced
- The formation of German type antitank hunter teams. (Go to You Tube and view the 10 part Close Combat Against Russian Tanks and the three part Men Against Tanks, produced by the German Army.
-Some Romanian officers were already subverted by communism but that was not the major problem. Overall, the Romanians failed to take an aggressive antitank attitude in spite of weapons deficiencies, like the Finns. That is a problem of leadership.
-Fire and smoke tactics were not employed properly. Smoke to obscure Soviet observation then the use of fire against flammable tank hulls by infantry troops.
-Siting artillery weapons for both indirect fire support and direcxt fire antitank defense. This required a lot of work to fortify artillery positions. Yet the Romanians yhad the time and manpower for it.
-The formation of antitank fronts. The Rumanianis should have grouped antitank guns (mixed 75mm and 45mm also anny captured Soviet 76.2mm) in fortified fronts of ten to thirty atgs with infantry machine gun support . Such positions should have been sited along Soviet armor avenues of approach.
-Separate infantry from tanks. Slaughter Soviet infantry and stalk individual Soviet tanks. The Romanians needed a lot of narrow trenches for this tactiic.

I think this question highlights a problem that existed for all combatants in WW2, mainly the close co-operation required between tanks and their infantry support for attacks to be successful. Insufficient training was given to most infantry (mostly none to the majority!) with the best examples of support shown when the infantry had actually trained with or conducted manouevres with the tankers and knew what was required of them.
With such poor communication between Soviet tanks, due to the lack of fitted radios, it would be possible to isolate the tanks from their infantry support, leaving them more vulnerable to attack by determined infantry. It certainly took courage to allow a company of tanks to bypass or overrun your position for you to be told to concentrate your fire on the supporting infantry, particularly as you would know that in a position such as this it would make you more exposed to artillery fire from your own side. Although there are plenty of examples of infantry lying low whilst the tanks passed and then opening fire on the infantry support. 12th SS were particularly good at this tactic in the battles in Normandy.
Don't forget that antitank gunners had a reasonable idea regarding their ability to damage certain tanks and knew about aiming for vulnerable areas. Camouflage was a key area here making your position difficult to spot until the range was reduced enough for you to have a reasonable chance of damaging the tank. Obviously once you fired you would almost certainly have been spotted but again it was one of the roles of supporting infantry to target AT emplacements as generally in a tank you were on the lookout for other tanks first.
Also you need to take into account the view of tank crew. Having ridden in a WW2 panzer it is remarkable how little you can actually see. Smoke on the battlefield would further reduce vision hence explaining why so many tank commanders were killed by popping their head out of the turret during combat despite the repeated warnings regarding the dangers of this. You are also aware of the 'tomb-like' quality of the tank and the fear of fire in such an enclosed space is very real. This partly explains why many tank crew abandoned ship when the tank took any form of hit. First of all the noise and confusion brought about by the shell hit and also the feeling especially with Allied crews on the Western Front that one hit that may have not penetrated, would be followed very quickly by another that would penetrate, hence the overriding emotion to 'abandon ship'. Speaking to a tank driver who fought in Normandy who told me that a 75mm shell came through the front of his tank and passed between his legs without exploding! I then asked what did you do next? He said I got out of that tank as fast as I could - you cannot be that lucky twice!!
Hannover

The decision to allow the tanks and even the infantry to breach some of your lines depends on the organisation of your front line (if you have well prepared in-depth positions lying in ambush) and its success depends on the quality of your weapons, on the size of the forces attacking you and on what happens in other parts of your front line.

Even if you destroy the attack, if the enemy sends other waves to pressure the flanks of your now-discovered prepared positions or if the enemy units that penetrated other sections of your front line attack your positions from the rear then its all lost.

This post has been edited by Imperialist on December 14, 2008 07:39 pm

You should be aware af two things: it very seldom happened to plan in advance what to do AFTER the tanks have breached the line; and furthermore, the officers had to know what to do, which was not quite the case w/ romanians at Stalingrad.
Second: the attack of the remaining forces should take place immediately, as to prevent the counter-attack from the enemy fronces which passed them by. Anyway, when numeric and material superiority is overwhelming - as it was the case back then - no tactic could prevent the defeat. Also, the romanians might have not heard of Camerone

We're talking about different things. I'm not talking about tanks breaching your line but about them being allowed to breach a fake section of your line, in order to draw them in an ambush. That's the only way I see the utility of Hannover's description.

The in-depth units taking part in the ambush have to be prepared in advance and deployed in a manner similar to a horse-shoe. The front line section is fake, meant to draw in and then give way to the attacking force, allowing it to breach it. The attacking force thinks it has breached the main line when in fact it is heading for the horse-shoe ambush. The pocket can then be closed by other reserve units and by the remnants of the fake line while the enemy forces that entered the pocket are cut down.

The success of this maneuver depends on the effectiveness of your weapons, on the number of the attacking enemy and on what happens on other sections of the extended front line.