Suvorov books, ww-2

It insults me. And you're not insulting me, simply because I happen to agree with Suvorov, you're insulting a whole new generation of Russian historians which also agree with Suvorov. Since Suvorov published he's main books in the '80s having to piece together what he could from public sources a lot has changed. Now we have detailled figures, deployment plans, memos, war games which only support Suvorov's view. No contrary view had been put forward just as if there's no official russian viewpoint on the second world war.
That still has to be written. I wonder why...

As always you're jumping ahead :
-in february 1941 the Red Army had 34000 tractors, 201000 trucks and 12600 automobiles
-on june 1941 they had 272600
-by July 1st ( 1 week after general mobilization was declared on June 23 ) another 31400 tractors and 234000 vehicles were transferred from the civilian industry

Grand total : 272,6+31,4+234 = 538,000 vehicles. ( p 202 in Solonin's book).

This post has been edited by PaulC on July 02, 2012 06:59 pm

This must be the joke of the century which flies in the face of all German complaints that started as soon as June 22 regarding the terrible condition of the Russian roads. Somebody who wants to argue about Barbarossa should at least have read a modicum of books written by Wehrmacht officers. The road less nature of Russia is mentioned everywhere.

As for Europe, as always you don't get the difference : while in Romania there weren't autobahns ( which we don't really have 70 years later ), but a combination of tarmac, concrete and most of the time gravel paved roads. Since Michel the Great the villagers had to transport gravel and pave the roads.

This did not exist in Russia, the roads were dirt roads. On a gravel paved road you can travel in any weather with trucks. On a dirt road, after a summer downpour you're stuck in mud up to the axles. As soon as June 23, the German blitzkrieg was stopped in some parts by torrential rains.

Say what you want, but in Europe, rains didn't stop it neither in Poland, France, Hungary or Romania. Germany tried with great efforts to pave some "highways" in Russia with gravel or with logs ( yes, you heard it right, search corduroy roads in Russia 1941 ). Find me something similar in Eastern Europe, I challenge you.

Fortunately for the soviets, they fought a war in Arctic winter 18 months before and were prepared for this. At the same time, the German army was doing field experiments to prove Hitler it wasn't possible to wage war in winter. In the France/Belgium winter with France/Belgium roads.

Yes, Russian road infrastructure was not very developed, and it certainly couldn't handle the massive demands of the largest offensive in history. But that doesn't mean Russia was roadless or that Russia had only dirt roads. These are baseless generalizations.

Roadless means it had no roads. That's false even if you talk strictly about not having paved roads. Russia in fact had paved roads. Just not that many and not as many as Barbarossa would have needed. That's different.

There were 3 categories of Russian roads: state roads (best quality, hard surface/paved), district roads (smaller width, average quality) and post roads (most numerous, poor quality, unpaved). I don't have the exact numbers for each yet, but in 1956 Russia had a total of 1.5 million kilometers of roads, of which 215,000 km were paved. And mind you, not much work had been done on those roads after the war, so what they had in 1956 was pretty much what they had in the 1940s too.

In the 1930s Romanian roads totaled approx. 101,000 km and were ordered in 3 categories: national roads (best quality, paved, 13,000 km), county roads (smaller width, average quality, 32,000 km) and comunal roads (unpaved, poor quality, 56,000 km). As you can see, both in Russia and Romania the percentage of paved roads in the total length is roughly similar.

Doesn't matter whether they thought they were prepared or not, the winter of 1941 would have hit them hard and stopped them in their tracks.

Figures ! We love figures !

European Russian 5.6 million km and let's assume for argument's sake all the 1.5 million km of roads and 215,000km of paved roads were west of the Urals. There was no single road in Siberia.

Density : 0,26 km of roads/ km^2 and 0.039 ( or 39 metres ) of paved road/km^2 .

Romania in the '30s : 295000km^2.

Density : 0,34 km of roads/ km^2 ( 31% more ) and 0.152 ( or 152m that is 300% ) of paved road/km^2.

More roads and 4x the density of paved roads in '30s Romania vs. the Soviet Union of 1956. Qed.

While 1941 winter didn't stop them to defeat the Germans around Moscow and Rostov and push the German army back 200km, it would have stopped them to do so in Central Europe. Probably the winter of 1941 was heavier in Budapest or Dresda than around Moscow and Tula. Who cares about small details like this ?

One that publish any kind of historical study must expect and accept criticism, especially if in the end he draws his own subjective and circumstantial conclusions instead of publishing just numbers and events. I did not called Suvorov names, I just appreciate his conclusions are on the domain of fictional.

According to Solonin:

"Almost each of the reports of Soviet corps and division commanders reads something like the following: "The materiel allowed in the mobilization plan did not arrive on mobilization"
...
And here's the report of the 10th td commander (15th Mechcorps):
"...cars assigned from the national economy by the mobilization plan to arrive by the end of M-2 (i.e. the second day on mobilization - M.S.): "GAZ-AA" – 188, "ZIS-5" – 194. The division did not receive any of these cars neither on M-2 nor on any of the next days..."
...
"The 2nd Anti-tank artillery brigade commander M.I.Nedelin reported to have not received tractors from the national economy, so he would be able to advance only one battalion to the frontier" – a quote from Marshal Bagramian's memoirs.
...
"…There were severe problems with the delivery of mechanized means of transport under mobilization… Thousands of motorcars and tractors requiring repair accumulated in delivery points. Some motorcars arrived to military commissariat delivery points without fuel or did not arrive at all due to the lack of fuel on-site...

So it seems that the requisition of civilian trucks did not work as intended.

Maybe it has something to do with a small unexpected event like a full blown German invasion ? And the the vehicles were pilling up , over 50k vehicles on 1320 rail echelons blocked in the chaos.

I for example believe that without the German attack, the mobilization would have worked much more smoothly ( and it was due to happen on July 6-13 ) and the railways were empty , the troop transfer having been completed. In the interval June 23-July 1st, the railways were packed with the 7 armies of the 2nd echelon that were arriving in the western districts. There simply was no capacity left for civilian mobilization and more importantly, the added strained turned everything into chaos. Units and divisions were disembarking in the wrong places, it happened that the army staff was in one place, the transmission battalion 200km away, or artillery in one place the ammunition was stopped 150km away.
The fact that a they attempted to evacuate the supplies, the ammunition and the fuel from western districts didn't help either. Nor the fact that the main soviet grouping was the Lvov one while the German attacked occurred 600km to the North and whole armies had to reembark and be transported under enemy fire to the Minsk-Moscow highway to defend the capital.

While 1941 winter didn't stop them to defeat the Germans around Moscow and Rostov and push the German army back 200km, it would have stopped them to do so in Central Europe. Probably the winter of 1941 was heavier in Budapest or Dresda than around Moscow and Tula. Who cares about small details like this ?

The QED is that Russia was not roadless and saying it was not roadless is certainly not "the joke of the century".

As for the figures, you can play with them as you want, that's beside the point. I just want to point out just for the sake of argument that I don't think European Russia is 5.6 million square kilometers and I doubt there were many roads east of Moscow towards the Urals, so the surface you should base your calculations on is even smaller than that of European Russia.

The only one not caring about small details like these is you. Earlier in the thread I posted some climate figures. And 1941 was a very harsh winter in Romania fyi.

PaulC, if you had carefully read one of my earliest posts (this year) like this one:
http://www.worldwar2.ro/forum/index.php?sh...indpost&p=85592
you would understand that I have read and even know in detail Rezun hypothesis, with which, in many ways, I agree -that the USSR was not unprepared for war (I include here all elements detailed by Rezun about the mobilization, the 1st, 2nd and even 3rd strategic echelons, the number of tank divisions, the 10 airborne corps, the howitzer artillery from the divisions, a.o.), that Stalin would be prepared to his turn an agression war against Germany, but at the same time, I separate myself from other assumptions -that Stalin supported Hitler in his work of destruction of the european security sistem post-Versailles, especially regarding Poland in 1939 (Molotov-Ribbentrop secret agreement), that USSR could have occupy Germany until autumn of 1941 (of course Romania too!), that most weapons produced in the USSR until 1941 were the best in world, a.o.
Regarding the link I posted, it is only an excerpt from the book Hitler's Panzers East -WWII reinterpreted by Russel H.S. Stolfi, author who also accept some of Rezun's reasonings... but which proved, like many others, the incredible collapse of the mighty Red Army in summer 1941, and Germany's great chance to win the war in East in summer-autumn 1941!

Well, maybe the millions of German reports about the poor or nonexistent roads in Russia were fabrications of the Germans; there were roads , but it seems the Germans didn't notice them.
As for no roads east of Moscow, in a similar manner there are no roads in the Carpathians or the Delta. I've just proven you that 30's Romania had 4x the paved road density of an artificially inflated Soviet Union of 1956 ( another 2 5-year plans of reconstruction and modernization ).
Do you want to check the same figure for Hungary or Poland ? Or maybe Germany ? To see whether the BTs could shed their tracks and travel with 80kmh ? How far is Frankfurt or Paris at that speed ?

That's besides the point. Your claim is false, the rebuttal is obvious : the Red Army had no problems fighting in the harsh winter of 1941 around Tver, Moscow, Tula and provide a stinging defeat to the Wehrmacht. Their weapons worked, they had fur coats, the fuel didn't freeze. The Germans couldn't claim any of these : they've lacked winter clothing, good weapons and adequate fuel. That means someone learned its lesson in Finland while others were ignorant imbeciles.

I suggest you read Suvorov's latest book, Suicide, it deals with German army preparation for war. And he's using only German sources. The conclusion is that the Wehrmacht was the luckiest army for 3 years, without serious fighting they managed to conquer Europe. When things got serious in Russia, they were caught with their pants down.

BTW, he's also pointing something I didn't knew before : in Poland there are some revisionist historians claiming the Blitzkrieg derailed by the 2nd week of war. The Luftwaffe ran out of bombs, the artillery was almost out of ammunition and tanks were having lots of breakdowns. Without the soviet attack in the back, they claim the Polish army was on the point of stopping the German advance.

That's even more a reason to read his last book which also mentions why German generals didn't raise the topic of Soviet war preparation. I'll give you a nitpick : they were told not to, otherwise they would be hanged. They got the message.

When I go to Ineu and have time, I'll stop in Arad and have a beer to chat about this topics if you wish.

Agree PaulC, but only if you can stay in the evening, because during the day I'm at work!

The fact that the Germans complained about Russian roads doesn't mean Russia was roadless!

The 1956 figure for the Soviet Union is not artificially inflated. The post-war construction of paved roads was minimal. Which means the Soviet Union had around 200,000 km of paved roads at the time of WW2. Which is certainly not nothing.

Your density calculations are off because European Russia is approximately 25% of Russia's total surface, namely some 4.2 million square kilometers, not the 5.6 million square kilometers you base your calculations on. This means Russian road density was 0.35 (Romania = 0.34), while paved road density was 0.05 (Romania = 0.1). Not a huge difference. Certainly not one to justify the claim you made ("Since Michel the Great the villagers had to transport gravel and pave the roads. This did not exist in Russia, the roads were dirt roads.")

The Russians suffered from the effects of the weather too, but defenders fighting on familiar soil have an upper hand in winter conditions. The Russians also benefitted from the fact that the Germans were overstretched and had most of the fight drained from them by that time.

The fact that the Germans complained about Russian roads doesn't mean Russia was roadless!

The 1956 figure for the Soviet Union is not artificially inflated. The post-war construction of paved roads was minimal. Which means the Soviet Union had around 200,000 km of paved roads at the time of WW2. Which is certainly not nothing.

Your density calculations are off because European Russia is approximately 25% of Russia's total surface, namely some 4.2 million square kilometers, not the 5.6 million square kilometers you base your calculations on. This means Russian road density was 0.35 (Romania = 0.34), while paved road density was 0.05 (Romania = 0.1). Not a huge difference. Certainly not one to justify the claim you made ("Since Michel the Great the villagers had to transport gravel and pave the roads. This did not exist in Russia, the roads were dirt roads.")

The Russians suffered from the effects of the weather too, but defenders fighting on familiar soil have an upper hand in winter conditions. The Russians also benefitted from the fact that the Germans were overstretched and had most of the fight drained from them by that time.

FYI, we're talking about the Soviet Union, not Russia. 25% of the Soviet Union was west of the Urals. 25% of 22 million = 5,6 million km^2. Last but not least, you're forgetting that we assumed all the roads are in European side. It's like for the 60 million people of Siberia there are no roads whatsoever.
Thirdly, between 1945 and 1956 there was a massive reconstruction program in the soviet union and I'm willing to bet lots of roads got paved. After all, they were trying to match the US economy.

The best I could find on road netwrokd in the SU was from Global Security:

What is certain is that your figure of 215000 paved roads comes after 10 years of hard work by million of forced laborers and POWs. Obviously there were far less than 150000km of paved roads in all of Soviet Union in 1941, maybe around 100000km. Road density in Romania during the '30s must have been 4-7x as great. Which only reinforced my point. Roads in the Soviet Union were not comparable with Eastern Europe. Once the massive soviet mechanized groups broke through the defense and got freedom of maneuver in the operational space it was all over. They couldn't be stopped.

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/wor.../rosavtodor.htm

This post has been edited by PaulC on July 03, 2012 05:35 am

I stand corrected about Russia vs. Soviet Union. So to the 4.2 million sq km that is today's European Russia we should add the surfaces of Belarus and Ukraine. The result is 5 million square km. This changes the road density to 0.30 (Romania = 0.34) and the paved road density to 0.04 (Romania = 0.1). Not a big difference. And like I said, these calculations are besides the point.

As for the 1956 figure, no, it didn't come after a decade of hard work on the road network. Russia didn't go out of its way to improve the road network prior to the war and that didn't change immediately after the war either. The 1946-1950 five year plan for example stipulated the construction of just 10,000 km of paved roads. Not a whopping figure. Even if that figure were to be repeated in the next five year plan, it would bring the total of paved roads down to 195,000 km at the time of WWII. That was not good enough for Barbarossa, but it wasn't nothing either!

As for Romania, the density of roads was almost identical to that of the Soviet Union. Less than 10% of them were paved, just like in the Soviet Union's case, and over half were comunal dirt roads. As for the density of paved roads, yes, Romania's density seems to have been 2-4 times higher, but when you put it in the context of a territory almost 20 times smaller and a much higher population density it doesn't look so impressive anymore.

First of all : my calculations are valid and they are heavily biased in favor of the Soviet Union ( taking all the roads and assuming they were done only west of the Urals, leaving the 60 million + of Siberia with no roads whatsoever. Probably everyone had a helicopter )
Secondly, the claim that "density is almost identical" is false. Romania had 30% more roads per surface area and 4x the amount of paved roads for the same surface area. That is NOT almost identical.
Thirdly, density ALREADY TAKES INTO ACCOUNT territory SIZE ( that's the definition of the term ) so your last claim is totally off.
Fourthly, percentage of roads from total is a meaningless figure. Density is what matters. By your own figures, Romania had 13000km best quality ( tarmac and concrete ) and 32000 medium quality county roads ( gravel or stone ). That's 45000km out of 101000 km on which you could travel regardless of weather conditions. Definitely not the same situation in the Soviet Union.
Fifth and last : I challenge you to name a single German author which doesn't start his description of Barbarossa without mentioning the horrible or nonexistent roads of the Soviet Union. Name one.

Some of the maps used by Germans in the opening stage of Barbarossa were obsolete, WW1 era. In places, roads from the maps were actually dirt roads that became impracticable after a summer rain while what was marked on maps as secondary roads were found to be paved roads or motorways.

Red Army soldiers were not immune to winter, and their weapons were not made of miracle materials which withstand cold better than their German counterparts. The notable exception were the wide tracks of T-34 and KV tanks which provided a clear advantage of traveling in deep snow.

From here: http://www.allworldwars.com/Effects-of-Cli...ean-Russia.html

Cold reduces the efficiency of men and weapons. [...] Machine guns became encrusted with ice, recoil liquid froze in guns, ammunition supply failed. Mortar shells detonated in deep snow with a hollow, harmless thud, and mines were no longer reliable.
...
A normal infantry attack cannot be made in deep snow. Advancing by bounds is out of the question, because every movement must bo made in the open, exposed to enemy fire.
...
The effectiveness of artillery projectiles, particularly those of small caliber, and of mortar ammunition, was seriously hampered by deep snow. Snow dampened and reduced lateral fragmentation of artillery shells, and almost completely smothered mortar fire and hand grenades. Heavy artillery weapons, such as the German 210-mm. mortar, remained highly effective. Because of the cushioning effect of snow, mines often failed to detonate when stepped on or even when driven over by tanks. To keep detonators effective in extremely cold weather, gun crews often carried them in their pockets.
...
The Russians, too, suffered from the extreme cold when forced to remain out in the open. Their supplies did not keep up with them, and they became weak and exhausted. Consequently, they always made a great effort to capture villages for overnight shelter. For example, in the winter of 1941-42, north of Rzhev, the Russians unsuccessfully attempted to drive German forces out of a village and were forced to spend the night in the open. Cut off from supplies and stiff with cold, the Russians were so weakened by their ordeal that they were unable to hinder a withdrawal of German troops, including two batteries, from north of the village, even though the Germans passed within 100 yards of the Russian forces.