Could the USSR won WWII without the western allies

[LeoTanker]

I'm really not sure what you mean?

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The military thinking in the Red Army in the 1930s (prior to the 1937 purge) was very inovative and futuristic. Its main arcitect was marsal Tutjievski (spelling) who advocated the use of "mechanized manouver groups" and large independent armored units, and "fighting in the deep" ie. using the land for tactical manouvers, and retreats when necessary, to gain the over all objective. Mouch like the later Blitzkrieg tactic. (A lot of famous german staff officers were trained in the SU during the 1930s)

 

But this doctrine gave the Red Army a mouch to independent role vis a ví the Comunist Party, so Stalin banned this way of new military thinking and had its main "creators" executed (including Tutjievski) in the 1937 show trials. After the purge no officers dared to callenge Stalins own view of military thinking: Static defence (no manouvers or tactical retreats) strictely controlled by the Party (in the form of political officers). Thus, all creative thinking stopped after 1937, and the army became paralyzed.

 

After the first disaustrious years of the war, Stalin suddenly admitted that Tutjievski had been right a decade ago, and finally approved new tactics to be developed for the Red Army in the winter of 1942. (In the midst of the Stalingradbattle).

 

If Marshal Tutjievski and his supporters had had their way in the 1930s, WWII may well have ended in 1942-1943.

 

It is no secret that The Red Army allways (even until the 1990s) have felt a deep hate towards NKVD/KGB for what they did to them in 1937.

[BillB]

I'm really not sure what you mean?

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Have a look at Richard Simpkin, Deep Battle:The Brainchild of Marshal Tukhachevskii, London:Brassey's, 1987). It is a while since I looked at it in detail, but unless there have been some groundbreaking revelations in the meantime you could make a very good case for saying that "blitzkrieg" was a Soviet rather than German invention with ref to armoured and airborne operations.

 

As for how well Deep Battle would have worked without radios, well it worked just fine at the Khalkin Gol/Nomonhan in 1939.

 

OTOH I recall a lecture by the late Professor John Erickson who did a lot of groundbreaking work on the Red Army in the inter-war period and WW2 where he said that he still didn't think Tukhy and his acolytes would have been a match for Guderian et al, so I suppose you pays your money and takes your choice.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[KingSargent]

As for how well Deep Battle would have worked without radios, well it worked just fine at the Khalkin Gol/Nomonhan in 1939.

 

all the best

 

BillB

219313[/snapback]

True Bill, but the Japanese were not exactly dripping with radios either.

 

Two years later the Japanese 1st Tank Regiment performed a brilliant "Deep Battle" against CW forces in Malaya. Of course control was easier in their case, because they only had one road to worry about. Hard to get lost that way.

[LeoTanker]

If the ideas of Thutievski had been adopted in the early 1930s, there is a good chanse that there would have been no shortage on radios and comunication equipement in 1941.

 

After all, this doctrine rely on the ability to coordinate independent units, and why delope the tactics if you aren´t gonna buy the proper equipement to make it work?

[KingSargent]

If the ideas of Thutievski had been adopted in the early 1930s, there is a good chanse that there would have been no shortage on radios and comunication equipement in 1941.

 

After all, this doctrine rely on the ability to coordinate independent units, and why delope the tactics if you aren´t gonna buy the proper equipement to make it work?

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The question is, could the Soviets develop an electronics industry in time to make thousands of military radios? They did some amazing catch-up work, but electronics was not one of their high points. Of course they were starting virtually from scratch.

 

Judging by radio and radar output in WW2, nobody could catch up to the US. Even the British relied on US parts that they were unable to manufacture. In the 1940s if you didn't have access to US electrical output, you were SOL. We have so many things we take for granted these days. Hell, I'm older than transistors are. I remember everybody being astounded by little tiny radios that you could power with a flashlight battery.

[BillB]

True Bill, but the Japanese were not exactly dripping with radios either.

 

Two years later the Japanese 1st Tank Regiment performed a brilliant "Deep Battle" against CW forces in Malaya. Of course control was easier in their case, because they only had one road to worry about. Hard to get lost that way.

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But the Mongolian steppes were/are not dripping with roads either, which must have exacerbated the lack of radios for everybody...

 

all the best

 

BillB

[KingSargent]

But the Mongolian steppes were/are not dripping with roads either, which must have exacerbated the lack of radios for everybody...

 

all the best

 

BillB

219352[/snapback]

Have you seen the Leavenworth study of Nomonhon from the Japanese side? It was based on captured unit diaries and reports captured on Guadalcanal. The IJA 38th Division which we trounced in the Solomons was the same 38th Division that Zhukov trounced in Mongolia. Poor bastards, they had no luck at all. First Zhukov and Red armor and then the USMC. They just couldn't seem to pick their fights.

[Fritz]

Thanks BillB, but I have actually read Tukhachevskiy and Triandafilov's own writings in Russian and by far there isn't anything saying "most advanced in the world". Furthermore there's no way you can say blitzkrieg and deep operations are the same thing and if you read more on the origins of both doctrines you'll see that blitzkrieg is as german as it gets and deep operations are as russian as it gets.

 

That reminds me that now that I have a stable job I can afford all those $50 and up books that I always wanted and I should be off to amazon right this moment

[arctic fox]

Soviets dropped the Tukhachevsky's and other's doctrines only for the period between 1937-1939. Soviets got the old doctrine back already in 1940, after the failures in Poland and Finland, and the success against the Japanese. By June 1941 they did not have enough resources to apply the doctrine fully and were caught in the middle of transition. In 1942 they begun to have enough resources to be able to use the doctrine, and by 1944 they mastered it better than their German opponents. While originally a brainchild of Tukhachevsky's, it was people like Fedorenko who refined the theory into practice.

 

Why the Soviet doctrine was so advanced? I recommend comparing it to what other nations had at the time. Most of the Western Allies, with their passive defensive WW1 doctrines, believed that tanks should be used alone, and for example the British used naval tactics with tanks. There's worlds of difference to refined concepts of combined arms operational warfare and deep battle. I also recommend studying the Soviet application of the doctrines in 1944-1945.

 

I agree Germans were better tactically, it was the strategical and operational level that the Soviets mastered.

[BillB]

Soviets dropped the Tukhachevsky's and other's doctrines only for the period between 1937-1939. Soviets got the old doctrine back already in 1940, after the failures in Poland and Finland, [snip]

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If that is the case, AF, then how did Zhukov manage to carry out a text-book demonstration of Deep Battle against the Japanese at the Khalkin Gol/Nomonhan at the begining of *September 1939*?

 

all the best,

 

BillB

[BillB]

Thanks BillB, but I have actually read Tukhachevskiy and Triandafilov's own writings in Russian and by far there isn't anything saying "most advanced in the world". Furthermore there's no way you can say blitzkrieg and deep operations are the same thing and if you read more on the origins of both doctrines you'll see that blitzkrieg is as german as it gets and deep operations are as russian as it gets.

 

That reminds me that now that I have a stable job I can afford all those $50 and up books that I always wanted and I should be off to amazon right this moment

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You've got me on the reading it in Russian, Fritz, but I've read everything I could lay hands on in English by Triandfilov, Tukhachevsky, Lapchinsky and Tatarchenko, as well as getting folk to translate excerpts, Russian language journal articles and the Red Army's 1936 Field Service Regulations. It also helped having mates doing doctoral theses on Tukhachevsky, and on the VVS...

 

Ref the bit about Soviet thought being the most advanced in the world, leaving aside the Khalkin Gol, who else was not just theorising but actually testing and forming units and carrying out execises operationally as early as 1931-32? I'd also be interested to see the *practical* differences that you claim differentiate German and Soviet practises, rather than just the terminology. The only ones I can see are the German concentration on the tactical/operational as opposed to the Soviet on the operational/strategic (as noted by Arctic Fox), which was rooted largely in geography, the German obsession with carrying out bigger and better Cannaes, and their parallel but often disproved assumption that the encirclement and annihilation of enemy field forces automatically equated to victory...

 

Good hunting on Amazon!

 

all the best

 

BillB

 

edited for fat finger syndrome...

[BillB]

Have you seen the Leavenworth study of Nomonhon from the Japanese side? It was based on captured unit diaries and reports captured on Guadalcanal. The IJA 38th Division which we trounced in the Solomons was the same 38th Division that Zhukov trounced in Mongolia. Poor bastards, they had no luck at all. First Zhukov and Red armor and then the USMC. They just couldn't seem to pick their fights.

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No mate, not seen that and didn't know about it either. Thanks for the heads up. Do you have a reference for future use?

 

all the best

 

BillB

[arctic fox]

If that is the case, AF, then how did Zhukov manage to carry out a text-book demonstration of Deep Battle against the Japanese at the Khalkin Gol/Nomonhan at the begining of *September 1939*? 

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Because of his own excellent initiative (yes, Soviet generals did take initiative already before and during 1941), for which he did get a lot of praise. It was one of the reasons why Soviets begun the transition back to the old doctrine in 1940. It's also a good case of the great potential of the Red Army, as Kahlkin Gol was a "blitzkrieg" operation that took place even before the German invasion of Poland.

 

Still, Khalkin Gol was, after all, quite a small battle, and while it perhaps was Deep Battle on a small scale, it wasn't the kind of large Deep Battle the Soviets envisioned.

 

Soviets really did scrap the old doctrine. Before they did it in 1937, the Red Army was the only force in the world, as far as I know, where concepts like Deep Battle and Combined Arms held official key position. Even Germans didn't emphasize "blitzkrieg" to such point. Not only did Soviets scrap the doctrine, they also scrapped the backbone of Deep Battle: the Mechanized Corps. I think only two Mechanized Corps (each equivalent of one German division) were left when the transition back begun in 1940. In 1941 they had to adapt, and what was left of Mechanized Corps were mostly just Mechanized Brigades. It wasn't until 1942 that they could begin to have larger level mechanized units and fight real Deep Battle. Thanks, most of all, to people like Fedorenko, who worked further with the theories created by Tukhachevsky.

[KingSargent]

No mate, not seen that and didn't know about it either. Thanks for the heads up. Do you have a reference for future use?

 

all the best

 

BillB

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A friend of mine has a copy, I'll see if I can hijack it from him.

[Fritz]

No mate, not seen that and didn't know about it either. Thanks for the heads up. Do you have a reference for future use?

 

all the best

 

BillB

219494[/snapback]

 

 

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp

 

[BillB]

http://www-cgsc.army.mil/carl/resources/csi/csi.asp

 

219565[/snapback]

Thank you muchly, Fritz. Excellent stuff. There's enough there to keep me going for a fair old while!

 

all the best,

 

BillB

[MiloMorai]

When did the Soviets know they would be getting L/L goods?

 

Lend lease has been pooh-poohed by the Soviets as having been of little use, but I remeber seeing (this forum?) that some 10% of the total Soviet tank park during the war was lend lease. Plus the bulk of their wheeled transport was provided by the west freeing up their factories to produce AFVs.

 

The Soviets produced 77% of their trucks.

 

Soviet production - 2,136,400

Imported - 525,500 (19%)

Captured - 115,300 (4%)

 

Total - 2,777.200

 

from: V.F. Vorsin from the Sept. 1994 issue of the "Journal of Slavic Military

Studies"

 

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmaarticlelendlease.htm

 

...................

 

Lend Lease to Russia

From Major Jordan' Diaries

(NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1952)

 

http://www.geocities.com/mark_willey/lend.html

Edited September 9, 2005 by MiloMorai

[JOE BRENNAN]

A friend of mine has a copy, I'll see if I can hijack it from him.

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I don't think he was right about the 38th Division, though. The 23rd Division was the one smashed at Nomonhan, rebuilt and remained in Kwantung Army, in 1941-2 OOB's for example. It was in 1939 new and poorly equipped even by Japanese standards. The 7th Division was involved in the later Nomonhan fighting and had serious casualties but was left intact. I don't know its later history. The 38th Division captured Hong Kong and participated in the East Indies campaign, so had seen success before Guadalcanal. At least one unit fought at Nomonhan and then early Pac War, the 4th Tank Regiment which fought early on at Nomonhan (the IJA withdrew all their armor before the Soviet August offensive), still had Type 89 mediums in first Philippines campaign.

 

I think Nomonhan tends to be used too formulaically in assessing the IJA and Soviets. In the highly successful Soviet offensive in August there was a very skewed correlation of forces, and in a situation highly weighted against the type of forces the Japanese deployed. In the July fighting with more equal forces the results were also more equal. This is a sort of a miniature of the Russo-German war, or really any war, analysis of doctrinal effectiveness in the face of heavy material superiority is really difficult. The Japanese, FWIW (they did have a tendency to kid themselves more than most) had a generally low opinion of Soviet fighting ability man for man based on the campaign, esp infantry/infantry ealier on. Another parallel might be many later battles of Pac War. Though a much differnt theater still IJA units were rendered essentially static and ground down to nothing by much superior forces while they fought to the death. Did this make US tactical doctrine of island capturing advanced and effective? well OTOH it certainly didn't prove it wasn't. Also for making predictions about what ifs of Japanese cooperation with the Germans after 1941, the fact that much Manchurian border geography is very different from Nomonhan, also tends to be left out.

 

Joe

[Detonable]

When did the Soviets know they would be getting L/L goods?

The Soviets produced 77% of their trucks.

 

Soviet production - 2,136,400

Imported - 525,500 (19%)

Captured - 115,300 (4%)

 

Total - 2,777.200

 

from: V.F. Vorsin from the Sept. 1994 issue of the "Journal of Slavic Military

Studies"

 

http://www.1jma.dk/articles/1jmaarticlelendlease.htm

 

...................

 

Lend Lease to Russia

From Major Jordan' Diaries

(NY: Harcourt, Brace, 1952)

 

http://www.geocities.com/mark_willey/lend.html

219642[/snapback]

 

 

Where does this 2,136,400 trucks produced number come from? If I Google I get Russian production numbers as low as 282,000.

[BillB]

Because of his own excellent initiative (yes, Soviet generals did take initiative already before and during 1941), for which he did get a lot of praise. It was one of the reasons why Soviets begun the transition back to the old doctrine in 1940. It's also a good case of the great potential of the Red Army, as Kahlkin Gol was a "blitzkrieg" operation that took place even before the German invasion of Poland.

 

Still, Khalkin Gol was, after all, quite a small battle, and while it perhaps was Deep Battle on a small scale, it wasn't the kind of large Deep Battle the Soviets envisioned.

 

Soviets really did scrap the old doctrine. Before they did it in 1937, the Red Army was the only force in the world, as far as I know, where concepts like Deep Battle and Combined Arms held official key position. Even Germans didn't emphasize "blitzkrieg" to such point. Not only did Soviets scrap the doctrine, they also scrapped the backbone of Deep Battle: the Mechanized Corps. I think only two Mechanized Corps (each equivalent of one German division) were left when the transition back begun in 1940. In 1941 they had to adapt, and what was left of Mechanized Corps were mostly just Mechanized Brigades. It wasn't until 1942 that they could begin to have larger level mechanized units and fight real Deep Battle. Thanks, most of all, to people like Fedorenko, who worked further with the theories created by Tukhachevsky.

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AF, we are in danger of talking at cross purposes, I think, as I actually agree with just about all your points, especially the one about the Soviets doing it first. Only a couple of minor reservations. First, with regard to the degree to which Zhukov and others were permitted or were courageous enough to exercise initiative. IIRC Blyukher (sp?) was allowed to use his initiative against the Japanese at Lake Khasan in 1938, but he still got purged, just later than anyone else.

 

IIRC Zhukov blows his own trumpet a bit in his memoirs but from other stuff I've read (possibly Erickson or Glantz, it's been a while and I'm going from memory) suggests that nothing was done without Stalin's personal approval, and that Zhukov's neck was squarely on the block if things had gone awry in Mongolia. I think this is the case because they gathered stuff up for the Khalkin Gol from all over the place, and I don't think Stalin's paranoia would have allowed him to let the Red Army start shuffling units about unsupervised, especially in the wake of the big purges. OTOH, I believe the folk controlling the Kiev Military District in June 1941 took a great risk by using their initiative to counter Stalin's orders and thus gave the Germans the only serious pause in the opening stages of Barbarossa. But a direct and full-scale invasion of the Soviet Union was a bit different to arguing about the border of a client state in the middle of nowhere.

 

Ref the Khalkin Gol being a relatively small battle, agreed, but it was also the first time the Deep Battle theory was tested in earnest, and I think I'm correct in saying that it was also the first time anything like it had been tried since the 100 Days in 1918. Personally I think it was a live, scaled down and limited test configured to include all the elements advocated by Tukhy et al in the 1936 FSR. I also think this has something to do with the Soviet groping back toward Deep Battle from 1942 - that kind of thing takes a lot of co-ordination at the best of times, and the Soviets had only a small scale model to extrapolate from. But they got their in the end, of course!

 

Finally, I also thought that the switch of emphasis away from Deep Battle had a lot to do with misreading of lessons from Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War and political manouevering by those around Stalin. Wasn't Voroshilov involved?

 

all the best

 

BillB

[BillB]

I don't think he was right about the 38th Division, though. The 23rd Division was the one smashed at Nomonhan, rebuilt and remained in Kwantung Army, in 1941-2 OOB's for example. It was in 1939 new and poorly equipped even by Japanese standards. The 7th Division was involved in the later Nomonhan fighting and had serious casualties but was left intact. I don't know its later history. The 38th Division captured Hong Kong and participated in the East Indies campaign, so had seen success before Guadalcanal. At least one unit fought at Nomonhan and then early Pac War, the 4th Tank Regiment which fought early on at Nomonhan (the IJA withdrew all their armor before the Soviet August offensive), still had Type 89 mediums in first Philippines campaign.

 

Good catch, Joe. I just dragged my copy of Coox's Nomonhan off the shelf, and the IJA 38th Inf Division doesn't appear in the Kwantung Army OOB. King, was that a senior moment?

 

I think Nomonhan tends to be used too formulaically in assessing the IJA and Soviets. In the highly successful Soviet offensive in August there was a very skewed correlation of forces, and in a situation highly weighted against the type of forces the Japanese deployed. In the July fighting with more equal forces the results were also more equal. This is a sort of a miniature of the Russo-German war, or really any war, analysis of doctrinal effectiveness in the face of heavy material superiority is really difficult.  The Japanese, FWIW (they did have a tendency to kid themselves more than most) had a generally low opinion of Soviet fighting ability man for man based on the campaign, esp infantry/infantry ealier on. Another parallel might be many later battles of Pac War. Though a much differnt theater still IJA units were rendered essentially static and ground down to nothing by much superior forces while they fought to the death. Did this make US tactical doctrine of island capturing advanced and effective? well OTOH it certainly didn't prove it wasn't. Also for making predictions about what ifs of Japanese cooperation with the Germans after 1941, the fact that much Manchurian border geography is very different from Nomonhan, also tends to be left out.

 

Joe

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Fair point ref the formulaic bit and the pitfalls of carrying things too far, altho in my experience most folk haven't even heard of Nomonhan/Khalkin Gol. Personally I was only talking about the Soviet August counter-offensive as that was the only bit involving all the components of Deep Battle theory - disinformation, masking, overwhelming artillery preparation, fixing, outflanking, isolating and then destroying the Japanese in detail. They even had a parachute brigade to hand, altho it turned out to be overkill and they fought as infantry.

 

all the best

 

BillB

[Fritz]

Glantz was mentioned, I would like to pimp up a bit his latest works on this period:

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846

 

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detai...=books&n=507846

[KingSargent]

Good catch, Joe. I just dragged my copy of Coox's Nomonhan off the shelf, and the IJA 38th Inf Division doesn't appear in the Kwantung Army OOB. King, was that a senior moment?     

all the best

 

BillB

219729[/snapback]

Possibly, it's been years. Brad's out of town and I think the book is in storage anyway. Thinking back, I am pretty sure the captured documents came from 38th division, but they could have been a regimental war diary. Do you TOE experts know if there was a regiment at Nomonhon and at Guadalcanal? The IJA did tend to swap units around, much like the Brits seemed to consider bns (regiments) to be interchangeable playing pieces during the Desert War.

[JOE BRENNAN]

if there was a regiment at Nomonhon and at Guadalcanal?

219906[/snapback]

From the book Bill mentioned "Nomohan" by Coox, v. Frank's "Guadalcanal" there is a regimental overlap. The 28th Regiment fought at Nomonhan as part of the 7th Division and independently on Guadalcanal; the Ichiki Detachment 1st echelon (virtually anihilated in the first IJA counterattack on G'canal) was formed around 2/28; Ichiki the Regt'al CO. It had suffered around 50% casualties at Nomonhan but acquired a good reputation there enhanced by earlier Pac War successes, per Frank (again the Japanese thought their units fought well v. the Russians and strategy/planning screwed things up).

 

Infantry regiments in each campaign from those two plus reprint "Handbook Japanese Mil Forces" (not laid out in one table, could have missed something)

Nomonhan:

23rd Div organic regts:64, 71, 72. IJA had regional recruiting generally, 23rd was from Kyushu.

7th Div: 25, 26, 27, 28, from Hokkaido (some IJA's divs were square even early Pac War).

 

Guadalcanal:

2nd Div: 4, 16, 29; from Sendai area northern Honshu

38th Div: 228, 229, 230; from Nagoya area

Other: 124 independent from Hiroshima, 28

 

Joe

Edited September 9, 2005 by JOE BRENNAN

[swerve]

The IJA did tend to swap units around, much like the Brits seemed to consider bns (regiments) to be interchangeable playing pieces during the Desert War.

 

The regiment is the basic unit of the British army. A batallion is a unit within a regiment - but a regiment may have only one of them (it will add more if wartime necessity requires expansion of the army). Brigades & divisions are containers: their contents are not fixed, but vary according to operational requirements.