Suvorov books, ww-2

No it's not, the Soviet Union simply maintained peacetime relations with Germany, while Britain and France went at war with it. B&F being at war and imposing a blockade on Germany didn't obligate others to follow suit if they didn't want to. And reaching an agreement on spheres of influence is not an alliance either.

Your statement was: So in august 1939 he sets the date for the attack as summer 1941. Setting the date for an attack and just ordering a mobilization are two different things.

No, Germany was getting weaker and increasingly dependent on Soviet economic support that could have stopped at any point in the future. Even Hitler recognized this and pointed it out. That is the whole rationale behind Germany attacking the Soviet Union.

So attacking when 1) the element of suprise is gone and 2) the enemy is free to concentrate on a single front means starting the war on "your terms" according to you?

The 170 division you speak of were part of the 1st strategic echelon.
That echelon was itself organized in 3 operational echelons. Here is how they were deployed according to Glantz:

1st operational echelon - 57 divisions deployed 10-50km from the border.
2nd operational echelon - 52 divisions deployed 50-100km from border.
3rd operational echelon - 62 division deployed 100-400km from the border.

Then there was a 2nd strategic echelon consisting of 57 divisions deployed beyond 400km from the border.

Obviously there were "cushions".

The point was not how much power the Luftwaffe had, but how many Soviet airfields could have been there.

If 1,200 Soviet planes were destroyed in 66 airfields and the Soviets had a total of around 7,000-7,500 planes deployed in airfields in the west, on how many airfields could they have been deployed? I think it's called "regula de trei simpla" and the result is far from the 1,200 airfileds you said there were there.

No it's not, the Soviet Union simply maintained peacetime relations with Germany, while Britain and France went at war with it. B&F being at war and imposing a blockade on Germany didn't obligate others to follow suit if they didn't want to. And reaching an agreement on spheres of influence is not an alliance either.

LoL. They signed a PACT . What did England and France, the allies, sign ? Germany and the Soviet Union started to cooperate at the end of the first world war. The Germans had technology and know-how, the russians had the space needed far away from controlling eyes of the Allies.
Not only did they allowed Germany to overcome the British blockade, but they offered bases in the far north from which Norway was attacked. So neutral Soviet Union, offers harboring facilities to the belligerent Kriegsmarine and you say "the Soviet Union simply maintained peacetime relations with Germany". Is this a joke ?

It should be pretty obvious from the wording that date in this context doesn't mean the day and the hour, but the time frame.
Secondly, mobilization IS war. When an the Red Army started mobilization, no matter how had they tried to conceal it, the Germans noticed it. We're talking hear about the complete shift of the state from peace conditions to war-like state. The army is expanded drastically, the economy is put on a war footing. The whole country prepares itself.
But there is a problem. Once you start mobilization ( even if in secret, not open like the other belligerents ), the sheer scale of it raised alarms in neighboring countries. And they start to mobilize too. In the end, it becomes a contest between who is ready sooner and can deliver the first strike.

Soviet intentions and war preparations became apparent to Hitler on 2 occasions :
-summer 1940 when the SU annexed the Baltic countries, Basarabia and Bukovina.
-November 1940 when Molotov asked impossible demands : Bulgaria under soviet control, Finland in the soviet sphere, basis in the Baltic Sea and the Skagerak straits and the Dardaneles.

When Hitler heard of this, he lost his mind. The soviet demands were nothing short of blackmail. His reaction was simple : he signed Directive 21 code named Barbarossa.

Germany attacked the SU because of 2 reasons :
-They realized the SU was a direct threat whose interest lie in Europe ( Germany tried to divert them south )
-England could not defeat Germany ( no land army ) while Germany couldn't defeat England ( lack of navy and air force power ). So they were at an impasse. The logical outcome would have been peace. The simple fact that the British weren't considering his peace proposals, made Hitler realize that he British hope lie in the East. Hope as in the Soviet Union invading Germany and actively pushing the Russians for this.

How is the element of surprise gone ? How was Germany free to concentrate on a single front ?
Besides, once the Red Army steamroller started its push, the Werhmacht would have been cut in two. They simply lacked the reserves and the resources to recover.

All the divisions that Glantz mentions were moving towards the border. They weren't "deployed", that's where the war caught them. It is interesting to speculate what would have happened when the deployment ( in progress at june 22 ) would have been done.

Secondly, I've attached maps with the deployment of the opposing forces were, where one can clearly see that both armies deployed to punch through weaker sectors and encircle in huge pincer movements the main concentrations of the enemy. Nobody cared about defense.

I've already attache an US Air Force analysis of the situation which has all the details you need from the Luftwaffe guy in charge of preparing the assault.

http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...indpost&p=85631

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 07, 2012 12:06 pm

Yes, they signed a non-aggression pact with an attached agreement on spheres of influence. The USSR did the same with Japan in 1941. Those are not alliances, sorry. Maybe you are looking for a different term, like "benevolent neutrality" for example.

The blockade imposed by Britain was unilateral and not universal in character. The Soviet Union had no obligation to stop trading with Germany.

As for the bases in the Soviet Union, from what I've read Basis Nord was not used by the Kriegsmarine in its attack on Norway.

The problem is not the date but your contention that an order to mobilize is in effect an order to attack and can't be anything but that. Which is not necessarily true. Stalin could just as well have ordered partial or full demobilization in 1941.

I was talking about strategic surprise, and the element of strategic surprise disappeared since you yourself said:

As for Germany free to concentrate the bulk of its forces on a single front... well do you deny this was the case in 1941?

They were in process of being deployed according to that plan of deployment. 2 strategic echelons, the first consisting of 3 operational echelons with certain depths.

Why is that USAF analysis (which BTW is not in the link you offered) based solely on what a Luftwaffe guy said in 1941?

So the cooperation went as far as the SS and NKVD signing a agreement of assistance and exchange of jews/white russians and you compare it with Japan ?
Not only did the SU deliver strategic material to Germany, but it went to extra lengths and acquired in its name materials which were destined for Germany and they didn't had.

What happened between 1939-1941 went far beyond simple or benevolent neutrality. It was much more deeper and went from commercial to military and even in between the repression apparatus.

Unilateral ?When your empire covers 1/6th of the globe and the RN is the largest in the world it doesn't matter if it was unilateral or not. How much merchandise did the US sent to Germany ?

Secondly, the first paragraph destroys your entire premise : indeed, the SU had no obligation to stop trading with Germany. So why did they ? Why did they sent millions of tons on cereals, rubber, oil, zinc, chromium, manganese, and all kinds of other strategic materials ?

If Stalin was afraid of Germany and wanted peace, all had to do was not to enter into a commercial agreement with Germany. All of a sudden, the war material situation in Germany would have worsened significantly. No oil, no war materials, the German industry and the Army would suffer accordingly, rendering them incapable of continuing the war. There would have been no Battle of Britain without soviet oil.

How do you explain this paradox ? If you are afraid of someone, you don't feed him to gain strength over you. Plain and simple.
The only reasonable explanation is that you are feeding him to fight somebody else; nicely explained in Stalin's Aug 19 1939 speech : supply Germany, not enough to gain too much strength, not to little to impede its war in the west.
Up until summer 1941, this worked like a charm.

Always an order for mobilization = order for attack. France and England declared mobilization on Sept 1, on Sept 3rd they declared war.
Same was in 1st ww1. But the element of surprise is gone. Since from by simultaneous mobilization and war declaration, you lose the effect of surprise. So the Soviet Union started a secret mobilization on Sept 1 1939 but undeclared. The public mobilization was meant to be declared on Day M ( July 6th according to some ).

As for the second contention, that's absolutely ridiculous. You triple the army size, increase war production significantly, disrupt the entire economy with the draft and the transport network with the movement of troops and equipment only to send everybody home 2 years later ?

The Red Army WAS on the border on June 22 and millions more were heading in that direction. And all, starting with Stalin himself did not believe the Germans would attack. So why millions were on the border and millions more were heading towards it ? Why were tens of thousands of tanks, hundreds of thousands of rail carriages with ammunition, fuel and spares delivered in the border region ? Just to be captured by the Germans ? Stalin did not believe in the German attack up until 2-3 hours before it. The movement itself started on May 15 when the Germans were busy in Greece and Crete. It picked up pace and on June 13 it turned into an amazon of forces from all over the SU heading towards the border. BUT NOBODY EXPECTED THE GERMAN ATTACK. All were shocked when it happened.

You can either make a leap of faith ( because faith is necessary here in order to stick to the official history ) or simply allow critical thinking to play its part : Stalin laid out the vision on August 19, 1939.
-For the World Revolution to succeed we need war and destruction in Europe
-Germany will attack Poland if we sign a deal with it and divide Poland
-With its back secured and supplied by us, Germany will deal once and for all with the Versailles treaty
-Once the west is crushed and Europe is under the brown boots, everybody will ask for our liberation

All of Soviet Union actions in 1939-1941 are reflected in the speech. And conversely, the speech is proven true simply because what was said in it was followed to the letter by real life actions of the Soviet Union. Only the last one was foiled by the German attack. They were preempted by 2 weeks.

As for Germany free to concentrate the bulk of its forces on a single front... well do you deny this was the case in 1941?

Well the strategic surprise disappeared, true, the moment German Intelligence pieced together the massive Red Army deployments, the anti-German propaganda in the Red Army and Russia, the putting of the economy on a war footing, the Balkan involvement of the soviet intelligence and the Anglo-Soviet negotiations.

For Hitler, it was clear the soviets were up to something. And the threat was so massive, he had to abandon plans to subdue England. He realized if the massive colossus ( not stumbling ) would be allowed the first strike, they were dead. And he said it with his own words and we have the recording from the Finns.

I think the Glantz failled miserably here. He simply looked were the forces were and thought they must have 3 operational echelons in the first strategic echelon when instead he witnessed wawes of formation in their move towards the west.

And btw, there weren't 2 strategic echelons; there were 3. The 3rd one was comprised of NKVD troops.

The link directed you to an analysis done by a US Air Force officer on the SU attack. The Luftwaffe guy, happened to be the major in charge with intelligence gathering and planning the strikes for the Luftwaffe. He identified the no of airfields, the VVS order of battle, analyzed the losses and the success of the strikes.
Who exactly, for God's sake, is more reliable than this ?

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 07, 2012 03:33 pm

Cooperation =/= alliance. Not even close cooperation =/= alliance. Trade =/= alliance. Agreements on all kinds of issues =/= alliance. Maybe you should check what an alliance is.

I think you are confused. What does territorial extent has to do with the way a decision is taken? The decision was unilateral irrespective of how large the British empire was. Unilateral means the Soviet Union was not consulted and not obliged to establish its own blocked.

Because they were not at war with Germany and countries engage in trade.

I never said Stalin was afraid of Germany.
But I also have no doubt Germany wasn't a small country he could simply ignore. It was a strong, militaristic, anti-communist country and after 1940 it was the strongest country on the Soviet Union's borders.

This is nonsense. Mobilizing doesn't necessarily mean you absolutely have to go to war. Besides, if you put it this way, why on earth would the Soviet Union mobilization take almost 2 years!!! This must have been the longest mobilization for war in history. Again, maybe you confuse the terms. A military build-up is not the same with mobilization.

A lot of things can happen in 2 years. Situations could change and yes, in light of possible changes you can order partial or full demobilization. Besides, in a country like the Soviet Union Stalin wouldn't be held to account. Would somebody ask him to pay for a change of mind/orders? Nope.

And where exactly would you have liked for them to be? Mongolia? Kazakhstan? The Arctic? It was natural for them to be where the biggest potential threat was - in the West.

Like I pointed out, that alleged speech outlined several possible outcomes. You are picking only the parts that suit your theory. BTW, the Versailles Treaty had died long before 1940.

When was that clear for Hitler?

Those formations didn't move erratically towards the border, they were given certain deployments and those deployments were outlined above.

No, he estimated the number of airfields based on intelligence he received. Intelligence can be faulty, estimates can be wrong. A historian won't base something solely on one side's intelligence/data/estimate.

LoL. I'm doing a Phd on cooperative and competitive strategies. Do you think I need to be told by you what an alliance is ?

In our context I would define alliance as collaboration to further a common interest. The formal form represented is represented by the secret protocols of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact. They collaborated on the division of Eastern Europe and establishment of spheres of influence. The collaboration itself, like I've showed before, spanned at multiple levels : military ( joined invasion of Poland ) , commercial ( massive trade agreements ) and even between the secret police ( exchange of "undesirables " ) . Some authors like Richard Watt named the pact as "Nazi-Soviet alliance".

But keep playing semantic games, what can I say.

Unilateral as in Britain + Commonwealth + US ? Back then , the commonwealth actually meant something. And if you believe the blockade wasn't relevant because it was "unilateral" you're in a serious delusion.

One line you say he wasn't afraid, the other line you say he couldn't ignore Germany. What could Germany do ? Occupy the Soviet Union to the Urals with horses and on foot ?

By refusing to supply Germany, Stalin would have stopped the war. Easy as that. We're in 1940 when everything runs on oil and rubber, not 1805 when you need fodder and horses.

Maybe you need to become accustomed to Saphosnikov's work, you can find it on described on wikipedia. link

Saphosnikov was only man in the Soviet Union that Stalin called on his small name and not the official "comrade X " and he kept his book, "Brain of the Army" on his shelf.

Once you get inside Stalin's line of thought everything pieces together.

Imaginary scenarios are contradicted by the Red Army principal theorist. If you want to argue facts with "alternative what ifs" , we better drop it.

A threat that nobody believed in. LoL. How come Stalin did not believe it in possibility of the attack, yet the Red Army was moved at the border ?

The outcome was one and can be pieced together from well known facts. The conclusion is inevitable.

The moment the SU occupied Basarabia and Bucovina. In July 1940, Hitler decided to attack the SU.

And the point is that the position they were in at June 22 isn't reflecting their final destination.

Interesting. What other sources do you have for VVS airfields and losses except the German Luftwaffe personnel ? What other source did any historian have except the Luftwaffe analysis ?

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 07, 2012 07:01 pm

What does your PhD have to do with anything? But yes, judging by the things you said on this thread I felt the need to tell you have to look at what an alliance is.

That's a very loose definition that would turn most of the agreements signed by states into "alliances" and interstate relations would become unnecessarily unclear and difficult to comprehend. I prefer the definition that includes the "casus foederis" thingy. Much clearer and logical.

The USSR was not obliged to stop its own trade in raw materials with a belligerent in order to help the British blockade. We're not talking about international sanctions, we're talking about a unilateral blockade.

In my book "couldn't ignore" =/= "fear" but I guess you're going to complain about semantics again.
What could Germany do? Attack.

Not really, the moment the Germans attacked France they had plenty of oil in their stocks and the Soviet sales of oil represented a minimal share.

So you're saying once mobilization is ordered the only outcome can be war and demobilization is not possible?

I'm sorry, I didn't use any imaginary scenario in what you quoted, I have no idea what you're talking about.

Stalin refused to act based on the info of an imminent attack he received in June, but I don't think he ever dismissed the potential threat from Germany. And you haven't answered the question. Where would you have placed the Soviet Army? The Urals?

No, the speech clearly presents several outcomes.

Yes, that rules out the excuse that Germany preempted a Soviet attack.

The point is that your "all army right on the border" and "no cushion" claims are blatantly false.

I don't have sources on this at this point but that doesn't mean the laws of logic have been suspended. A 1983 article based on the 1941 estimate of a Luftwaffe guy may give a general idea about what the Luftwaffe knew and estimated at that time, but not an accurate idea about what was actually on the ground. I guess we would need a Soviet/Russian source to compare.

I hope you realize that you are artificially narrowing the definition just so it suits your argument.

Secondly, you fall in your own trap : the Soviet Union had to attack Poland in order to fulfill its obligations under the signed agreement with Germany. Just that they allied themselves for aggressive, not defensive purposes. But that's not a counter-argument irrespective.

That's besides the point ( and also you fail to miss that by the sheer scale, in 1940 a British blockade meant nothing less than a total cut of Germany from the rest of the world except the Soviet Union and the Balkans ) . Why don't you answer why the Soviet Union supplied Germany since that was contrary to the argument you put forward, that is the SU perceived Germany as a threat.

Are you joking ? The moment Germany attacked France, their fuel stock was totally committed for the advance. Even so, they covered only 5 months of mobility warfare. Only through capturing French oil and increased deliveries from Romania/USSR did they replenish the stocks by end of 1940. In other words, Germany's fuel situation and other strategic material was always measured in months. In every scenario, including catching the massive Red Army deploying for attack and taking their huge reserves, the German drive in the SU was suicidal. In the best possible scenario, being supplied by the SU and capturing huge quantities of strategic materials in western USSR - what actually happened, they've failed. Without Soviet supplies it would have failed a lot sooner.

I'm not saying that. The Bible of the Red Army says that : mobilization is the joint effort of the entire state , from industry to peasants to the army and the state apparatus. We're not talking about mobilizing a contingent here, a few divisions.
We're talking about an all out push of the entire country to deliver a deadly blow, all its forces and industries committed.
We're talking about Total War, which in the SU was enforced with the mobilization laws of 1939-1940. They were so comprehensive that they weren't modified throughout the war. The industry became militarized, you were late for work, you ended in the Gulag. Children before the age of 16 were drafted in the factories before the German attack. Goebbels Total War , jan 31 , 1943 call, was already 3 years old in the Soviet Union.

And no, you can't demobilize from that without wrecking the entire country, economically and socially. It's all or nothing. And like Shaposhnikov said, the neighbors see that. Germany saw the massive war preparations. And they started to prepare themselves. In the end it was a matter of who is faster.

LoL. He's dismissal of info regarding the German attack started at about the same time he was informed about Barbarossa; that is December 1940.

Stalin, thoroughly logical couldn't fathom an irrational attack by the Germans. All the reports he received showed how unprepared Germany was. He couldn't believe Germany would act suicidal. Yet, they did. Caught between Britain ( and US ) in the west, threatened directly by the Red Army , Germany had no other option but to strike, irrespective of their chances of winning.

This is getting boring : which outcome was implemented based on the now known facts ? Can't you look at it in reverse order ?

Yes, that rules out the excuse that Germany preempted a Soviet attack.

The decision was made in response to the Soviet threat and continuous demands. Hitler couldn't have known at the time the Soviets were mobilizing to strike decisively next year, but his intuition and the intelligence he received ( its enough to read the meetings in Halder's journal ) pointed out something isn't right.

I'll use Glantz ( Barbarossa, 2001, page 16 ) since he seems to be the only source you grasp :

LoL. So they were too far forward ( didn't I say just that a couple of posts back ? ) and secondly, they were in the move on June 22, the deployment not being completed. And one thing was sure : the deployment was towards the WEST, they weren't moving away from the border. The 3 echelons from the 1st echelon ( pun intended ) were nothing more than a reflection of reality on June 22. All the units were moving slowly west.

Besides, you can't get any closer to the border than they were at the time. Why ? because the formations are so huge, they would occupy all the roads. For example, the main German striking force in the France campaign, Panzer group Kleist, with 1200 tanks ( about the same as the Soviet 6th mechanized corp, just that there were 19 more in various conditions ) was spread on 4 columns (!!) each 400km long (!!) in Western Germany. Do you want to compare road density around Frankfurt with the one in 1941's Biellorussia or Western Ukraine ?

Thirdly, I like how Glantz says : " Soviet war planners had fundamentally misjudged the situation " by "concentrating their forces so far forward" and being "off-balance and concentrated in the southwest when the main German mechanized force advanced further north".

How does he explain this ? He doesn't. To him, they were simply stupid and misjudged the situation. But Soviet Intelligence provided them information about the German Army down to battalion size. How could they have been so grossly in error when they KNEW what the enemy was doing ?

The only reasonable explanation is that the Red Army prepared an attack of its own in accordance with its offensive doctrine and battle plans ( presented in an earlier post ), deployed in an offensive manner so it was able to cut the German front in two and then expand multiple thrusts from southern Poland, towards Hungary, Warsaw and forward to Silesia.

The Wehrmacht simply managed to outdo them by 2 weeks.

This is becoming ridiculous. The Luftwaffe flew multiple reconnaissance missions over the Soviet Union and through photographic analysis identified Soviet Airfields. An airfield isn't like a platoon hiding in the forest. It is VISIBLE, especially when packed with aircraft like the Soviet ones were. Once he pieced everything together, they attacked the 66 most important ones. He probably would have attacked more, but they didn't have enough planes.

Once the said airfields were overrun, they analysed the effects of their strikes. There weren't any Russians there to do the same; they were too busy running away. So there aren't any other sources, because there wasn't anybody else there to do post-battle analysis except the Germans. So yes, it seems the laws of logic have been suspended...

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 08, 2012 05:46 am

I hope you realize that the definition you use is so loose that it actually doesn't define anything. Your view that an alliance is "collaboration to further a common interest" would mean that the world is full of alliances!

No, it wasn't an offensive alliance it was an agreement over spheres of influence in Eastern Europe in order to avoid any potential clash over them, so that the non-aggression pact holds. Germany expressed no interest in the Polish territory inhabited mostly by Ukrainians and Belorussians. After Germany attacked Poland the USSR moved in and established its influence there.

You can see a similar agreement over spheres of influence in the non-aggression pact that the Soviet Union signed with Japan in 1941. Are you going to assert the Soviet Union had an alliance with Japan too!??

The USSR not being obliged to stop its own trade in raw materials with a belligerent in order to help the British blockade is beside the point? I don't think so.

First of all they had signed the pact. Which came with economic agreements too. Secondly, although they had declared war on Germany the Western Allies hadn't fought much for many months. Stopping trade with Germany could have drawn Germany's attention in the East in order to get resources by force not by trade. A Stalin suspicious of the West's deals with Hitler or with the danger of seeing the West using Hitler against him might have had something to do with this.

Germany had stocks of oil when it attacked France, so the Soviet Union stopping its sales wouldn't have stopped the blitzkrieg against France as you said earlier. Like I said before, the only way would have been for Stalin to launch an attack from the East.

I know what mobilization is, what mobilization is wasn't the issue.

Yeah, I call BS on that assertion. If you mobilize you can also demobilize if the situation allows it. At least partially.

It wasn't mobilization per se that started WWI, it was the context of the alliance systems and the fact that Germany's war plans called for a knock-out blow against France before Russia fully mobilized.

It was a specific context and a specific country's war plans that precipitated war once mobilization was ordered, not the inability to call off and demobilize!

And you say it took the Soviet Union 2 years to mobilize?

At the time of the speech they didn't know the future, did they?

You're saying that as if it's common knowledge nowadays but poor Hitler didn't know at the time.

Apparently you missed this fragment from Glantz, although you quote it:

However, by 22 June 1941 neither the forward military districts nor the five reserve armies had completed deploying in accordance with the official mobilization and deployment plans

They weren't moving "west" or "towards the border" or "to Berlin", they were deploying in accordance with the deplyment plans. Which I mentioned earlier.

Actually he does. Stalin thought that in case of conflict with Germany the Germans would go for the resource-rich Ukraine and towards the oil-rich Caucasus.

Intelligence is never perfect, that is why they say "estimates".

So if the Luftwaffe destroyed 1,200 soviet planes on the ground on 66 airfields, and there were a total of around 7,500 Soviet planes deployed in the west, on how many other airfields were the remaining 6,300 planes deployed? 1,134? If that's the case then the Soviets were deploying an average of 5 airplanes per airfield. Or maybe only a handful of those alleged 1,200 airfields were "important"? Maybe most of them were emtpy, under construction or not important?

Logic states that even if the Soviets were unable to do post-battle analysis surely they must have now how many airfields they built, right? So relying solely on a 1941 pre-war Luftwaffe intelligence estimate is kind of wrong. In the absence of other sources it may be fine, provided it is taken with a grain of salt and as what it is... an intelligence estimate of one of the belligerents. You however came here and said it as if it was the ultimate truth.

Can you mention a source for the 670 occupied airfields?
670 occupied airfields would increase the average number of aircraft per airfield to rougly 15, given a total of 9,910 airplanes the VVS had in this part of the SU. Still a very low figure if one takes into account that some airfields were home to more than one aviation regiment (129 IAP, which was in the process of switching from I-16 to MiG-3 had 52 of the former and 57 of the latter).

The distribution was as following:
- VVS Leningrad Military District, 1,270 aircraft, deployed between Murmansk and Kandaksha, Petrozavodsk, Karelian Isthmus, Siverskaya and Leningrad
- VVS Baltic Special Military District, 1,211 aircraft, deployed at Kaunas, Alytus, Vilnius, Daugavpils, Riga, Liepaya
- VVS Western Special Military District, 1,789 aircraft, deployed near Bialystok, Brest-Litovsk, Grodno-Lida, Vitebsk, Minsk, SMolensk, Bobruysk
- VVS Kiev Special Military District, 1,913 aircraft, deployed near Lutsk, Kiev, Lvov, Ternopol, Stryy, Stanislav, Proskurov, Biyala Tserkov, Vinnitsa
- VVS Odessa Military District, 950 aircraft, deployed near Balti, Tiraspol, Cetatea Alba, Vorms, Razdelnaya, Fedorovka

The long range Bomber Aviation comprised of 1,332 aircraft and was deployed near Soltsy, Krechvitsy, Yedrovo, Bryansk, Orel, Karachev, Kursk, Shchigry, Oboyan, Shatalovo, Seshcha, Smolensk, Borovskoye, Shaykovka, Zaporozhye, Saki, Rostov-on-Don, Novocherkassk, Skomorokhy, Borispol.

Finally there were the 1,445 aircraft of the Northern Fleet, Red Banner Baltic Fleet and Black Sea Fleet.

All these summed up give a grand total of 9,910 aircraft. The data is taken from vol. I of Bergstrom & Mikhailov Black Cross - Red Star. A closer look at the areas were these forces were stationed will show that they were not confined to 250 km from the border (the strategic bomber corps especially). Thus the total number of aircraft in the 250 km band was actually lower and so would be the average per airfield. Taking this into consideration and the fact that there were many airfields with high numbers of airplanes on them, the number of active airfields was definately lower than 670.

Regarding the cadre issue, I have already went into great lengths in the discussion with osutacincizecisidoi in this very same thread and lack the time repeat what was already said. Maybe in a couple of weeks I will be able to do it. In the meantime, I am still waiting to see the source that certifies that all the officers purged in the late 30s were idiots, as you claimed.

I would also appreciate a tone down in the sarcasm and the use of LOL, BS etc. in the posts. It gives a slightly aggressive tone to the posts, which isn't something to be encouraged.

I will address the aviation topic later when I have more time.

*Edit - while I couldn't find at a quick search were I took the 670 from ( I need to search my browsing history in more detail ) , I found the 613 airfields figure from Mark Solonim.

Other figure is from Meltyukhov : 612 airfields at 01.01.1941 with 143 being under construction in 1941 for a grand total of 755.

http://www.paradoxian.org/hoi2wiki/index.p..._on_Soviet_RKKA
Regarding the fact that you've discussed it at length in the past, I read the thread to present day. What is apparent is this :

-nobody that criticizes Suvorov, including you and imperialist, have actually read his books. And when I meant read, that is actually analyzing with a cold mind what the guy says. To discuss him, these books are a must read ( in this order ) : Icebreaker, Last Republic I, Day M, The purges, Last Republic 2 and 3. All are available in Romanian from Polirom, there's a new 2011 edition.
-You base your argument on Glantz who avoids two things : present the defensive plans and make comparisons with the German Army.
-Most of the new Russian historians agree with Suvorov on the grand points.
-Most of the points you two raise are answered by Suvorov in his books. He also goes to length to respond to his critics including Gorodetski whom he demolishes.

Going back to the purges, I would suggest you read his book , Epurarea, since this can be read as a stand alone book. If you don't have it, PM me your address and consider it a gift meant to improve the debate. Once you've read it 2x we can discuss on the purges. Until then, we're down to " Stalin killed most of the officers of the Red Army, leaderless army, only 6 months on the job, 40000 killed, great geniuses eliminated ,etc ,etc ".

There are 2 books by Suvorov that weren't attacked by his critics : Day M and the Purges. These books don't leave any space for interpretation.

The thesis is very simple : to get to power in a revolution you need a certain breed of people. To maintain the power and expand it, you need a different breed.
Who were the communists forces that crushed Russia in 1917-1922 ? The lowest scum of society. Depraved, sadistic lunatics who won power by terrorizing the masses and destroying any opposition, real or potential. The horrors of the russian civil war are second to none. Once they got in power, they've reserved ranks and privileges from them. Mass murderes, pure chekists ( commisars ) now held army ranks. Of course, they also did not fear Stalin and challenged his power.

The purges were a cleansing of the state apparatus and the army of the most corrupt, depraved and hated lunatics by the population. For the forthcoming struggle, Stalin needed absolute control and a new generation of army and party personnel. Nobody would fight for Tuhacevski, Iakir, Frinovski, Dibenko, Blucher, Stern. Tambov, Orenburg, Ukraine, Crimea were all to vivid in the memory of the population.

The best parallel would be Romania in the 1950's. Who were the communists ? The lowest and most degenerated members of society. They broke the back of the peasantry and destroyed the middle class and the intellectuals. The metal worker from Grivita was now Army or Securitate colonel.

Imagine a war having started : who would have fought for this maniacs ? Would be young peasants who saw their land taken away, maybe beaten if protested, who saw the neighbours being carried to the "Canal" in the middle of the night, would they fight for their butcherers ? Would they fight for those who destroyed their village, families and forced them in collective farms ?

And while Securitatea shot many in mass graves throughout the country or exterminated them in labour camps, this was a walk in the park compared to the Russian Civil war. In Tambov, Tuhacevski used chemical weapons on rebel villages. To convince them of the paradise he was bringing.

Remark taken.

This post has been edited by PaulC on May 14, 2012 01:00 pm

In the opening post of this topic and according to many discussions here, Soviet Union planned her invasion in 1941.
I think more common is the belief that they planned their invasion of German occupied land in 1943. Some historians are mentioning this as well. The reason is simple: after the lessons learned during the Winter War with Finland, Stalin and his clique decided that the Red Army is not ready.
My grandfather mentioned that Russians officers taken prisoners told them about the planned Soviet invasion to occur in 1943. This sounded so strange during the Communist era, when all I could read was Nazi Germany = horrible aggressor, Soviet Union = peaceful innocent victim.

This post has been edited by Florin on May 11, 2012 06:21 pm

Since we had a lot of discussions about deployment of the Red Army, I believe M. Solonin's description, book "june 23", to be a must read :

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.

Let's see what the SSI has to say about the "peaceful" and "totally unprepared soviets " ( interesting that in 1941 nobody perceived them as unprepared, neither did the Red Army try everything to avoid conflicts, on the contrary )

I scanned some pages from "Glorie si tragedii - Momente din istoria Serviciilor de Informatii si contrainformatii romane de pe frontul de Est 1941-1944" de Cristian Troncota. The question is how do I upload it ?



This post has been edited by PaulC on May 11, 2012 09:33 pm

This is getting ridiculous. If Stalin was not to attack in 1941, then the Soviets would have had only a few picket posts at the border with Germany and Romania?