Was western support crucial to the Soviet Union during WW2 Eastern front? [Archive]

Kitsune

04-29-2008, 07:12 PM

I don't think Hitler ever had a realistic chance of completely conquering the USSR, and Operation Barbarossa was doomed from the beginning[...]

Although this opinion is quite prevalent these days (even in Germany), I think that it is wrong. Had Hitler set the German economy on a war footing in summer 1941 instead as late as from spring 1943 on, the German arms industry would have achieved the very high output of 1944 already in late 1942 - and in that case I do not see a reason why the war against the Sovietunion should not have been won. The mistake was quite simply that the NS leadership left the German arming a comparably low level, under the erroneous assumption that the Sovietunion would not be able to recover from the massive losses its army had sustained. This gave the the Soviets the time to rebuild their own arms industry. When the German leadership realized their mistake in 1943, it was too late. But if that mistake would not have been made, the war against Stalin could have been won, the Sovietunion was not unbeatable.

As far as the American support for the Soviets is concerned, that was certainly important. I am not entirely sure wether it was crucial, but I tend to think it was. However, wether it was very wise for the West to support the totalitarian and highly militarist Sovietunion in that way is another matter entirely - it may have actually have been a dire mistake made by the US. (It is even possible that the Holocaust was Hitler's intended revenge for the West supporting the Sovietunion which he attributed to the influence of Jews in the USA). Certainly, it would have been more clever for the US to stop the support for the Sovietunion before it became too powerful - at the end of the Soviet summer offensive, codenamed "Bagration" in late August 1944 it would have really been high time to reconsider this singleminded support for Stalin. However, with Roosevelt in charge in the USA, this did not happen. As a result, Soviet troops would reach Germany and parts of this country as well as everything east of it would soon vanish behind the iron certain, while the Sovietunion's gargantuan military apparatus would constitute a danger for the democratic west for decades, a development that was entirely foreseeable even in late WWII.

CPL Trevoga

04-29-2008, 09:50 PM

The Soviet's greatest strength was their audacity and refusal to give up. That and the famous General Winter!
I don't think Hitler ever had a realistic chance of completely conquering the USSR, and Operation Barbarossa was doomed from the beginning, despite its initial success. In the end the Soviets would have won for if nothing else, reasons of geography and logistics.
But, to answer your question, Western aid was undoubtedly crucial, and enabled the Soviets to drive the Germans out and capture Berlin in less time than they would have otherwise done.

Winter actually wasn't biggest enemy for the Germans. It was the fall, that turned Russian countryside into a swamp, crippling the communications.

Land Lease saved a lot of Russian boys. Eventhough it wasn't free, it was well worth it. It saved a lot of Russian, German, American and British boys in the end.

Mamont

04-29-2008, 10:07 PM

Winter actually wasn't biggest enemy for the Germans. It was the fall, that turned Russian countryside into a swamp, crippling the communications. Every time i read something like this or the winter i always wonder why only germans are the ones that always suffer from it. Like magically on the other side of the front everything was good and warm..

Kilgor

04-29-2008, 10:21 PM

Every time i read something like this or the winter i always wonder why only germans are the ones that always suffer from it. Like magically on the other side of the front everything was good and warm..

No one with any intelligence would claim that.

Of course the soviet soldiers suffered from the cold, but the Germans had no proper winter clothing and machines woefully designed for deep winter conditions.

Abolith

04-30-2008, 04:32 AM

Although this opinion is quite prevalent these days (even in Germany), I think that it is wrong. Had Hitler set the German economy on a war footing in summer 1941 instead as late as from spring 1943 on, the German arms industry would have achieved the very high output of 1944 already in late 1942 - and in that case I do not see a reason why the war against the Sovietunion should not have been won. The mistake was quite simply that the NS leadership left the German arming a comparably low level, under the erroneous assumption that the Sovietunion would not be able to recover from the massive losses its army had sustained. This gave the the Soviets the time to rebuild their own arms industry. When the German leadership realized their mistake in 1943, it was too late. But if that mistake would not have been made, the war against Stalin could have been won, the Sovietunion was not unbeatable..

if i remember right 60% of all the steel produced in Germany was used in the civvy sector until about late 42 - early 43

ThatHistoryDude

04-30-2008, 02:24 PM

if i remember right 60% of all the steel produced in Germany was used in the civvy sector until about late 42 - early 43

I dont know if that number is right but it would not suprise me all that much. Why do you think hitler was so popular in Germany during the early war? Because he had a bunch of quick military victories that did not effect most Germans' everyday lives that much.

GazB

05-01-2008, 03:33 AM

Lend lease was important, but much of it arrived too late to be considered crucial.

Equally those claiming Hitler stopped the Germans from defeating the Soviets should look at what Stalin did... the Soviets had enormous defence lines set up before the war that were dismantled before the war.
Most Soviet units were not properly manned and if they were fully armed they had an enormous shortage of ammo, especially armour piercing ammo.
Lessons learned from the Soviet intervention in the Spanish civil war were forgotten, ignored, or the wrong lessons learned.
Even as the Germans were making their initial advances Stalins decisions and commands were ambiguous and usually made too late.
How many pointless counter attacks that were wasteful front on attacks did Stalin order? How often did Stalins stubborn demands that Kiev or some other city be saved at all costs led to hundreds of thousands of Soviet troops be captured and their equipment lost to the enemy?

his has been a controversial topic in WW2, westerners claimed that the USSR would've fall to the German's hands if they hadn't receive any Western aid, however people claimed it was Stalin's industry that saved the USSR

The lend lease on its own could not have saved the Soviets... by the time it was agreed to send equipment and actually started transporting it to the Soviets how much did you think they had received before they stopped the Germans at the gates of Moscow? It was the freed up siberian troops from the far east that stopped the Germans at the gates of Moscow... not a dozen Hurricanes Soviet pilots were still learning to fly.

Having said that lend lease was important and things would have been much worse without lend lease. The greatest effect of lend lease was that it gave the soviets the mobility later in the war to cross europe more quickly... but it also tied the Soviets to the rest of the allies. If without lend lease the British and commonwealth and US forces captured Germany and eastern europe who is to say the Soviet troops and the allied troops would meet as friends of the polish border?

Lend lease provided a lot of material and a lot of trucks, but the Soviets already knew how to build trucks... they had licence built several US models before the war... the reason they built very few trucks was not because they couldn't, but because they got them via lend lease. As I think I have mentioned before... if you are preparing for a wedding and the brides father said he will organise the flowers, you as the father of the groom don't spend your money getting flowers for the wedding too... you pay for something else like food, or more drink...

Also radios and radars.

The Soviets rarely got what they asked for, and Stalin stubbornly rarely asked for what the Soviet forces needed.

Ironically it was the fact that the US knew so little about radar development in the soviet union that they assumed the radars they were using in the 60s were still basically US models supplied under lend lease and assumed that the soviets couldn't track US U-2 flights. They later found that they were using lots of types of radar, some based on US WWII sets that were fairly significantly upgraded and a few models based on German and Soviet designs as well.

The Soviet's greatest strength was their audacity and refusal to give up. That and the famous General Winter!

Both sides suffered from the winter. In the winter war against Finland the Soviet troops also suffered from the cold and the hierarchy adapted the equipment and clothing of the Soviet forces largely based on some Finnish ski units. The German forces were arrogant enough to assume they wouldn't need to fight during the winter and when they were faced with winter fighting they had big drives in Germany to collect up all warm clothing. They collected piles of warm clothing and blankets from Germans who could probably do with keeping such clothing. The lack of spare transport capacity to the Eastern front meant that very little actually made it there and most sat in warehouses in Germany and was eventually disposed of.

In the end the Soviets would have won for if nothing else, reasons of geography and logistics.

The Germans lost because they managed to treat the Soviet people worse than Stalin did. If they portrayed themselves as liberators and treated the locals with respect they would have 100 million new potential soldiers, huge natural resources, etc etc.

...it is probably just as well Hitler was a c*nt, but then if there were no drives at mechanising the Soviet Union there would have been no T-34s or Yak-1-9s, and the average peasant who was amazed by wooden floors in a house and tap water might have found war in the mid 20th century too much to be useful, so in a way Stalin was needed too... even though he was as big a c*nt as hitler... hitler was a c*nt to foreigners, whereas Stalin was a c*nt to his own people.

However, wether it was very wise for the West to support the totalitarian and highly militarist Sovietunion in that way is another matter entirely - it may have actually have been a dire mistake made by the US. (It is even possible that the Holocaust was Hitler's intended revenge for the West supporting the Sovietunion which he attributed to the influence of Jews in the USA).

Hitler described communism as a Jewish plot. I don't think he was ever going to let any chance slip to kill as many of them as he could... they did after all cause all of his problems... what a c*nt!

Of course the soviet soldiers suffered from the cold, but the Germans had no proper winter clothing and machines woefully designed for deep winter conditions.

So the winter wasn't the actual problem, it was the fact that one side prepared for it and the other didn't...

I dont know if that number is right but it would not suprise me all that much. Why do you think hitler was so popular in Germany during the early war?

Indeed. Decisions taken at the time were based on the information known and the personalities involved. You can't just change one factor and assume everything will be affected by the change but for everyone to continue to make the same choices they did (when what you changed wasn't changed).

For instance I have mentioned if Hitler had treated the Soviets well they might have been seen as liberators rather than exterminators... but such a change in policy might have gotten Hitler deposed from power... or even shot by a fanatic or whatever...

ThatHistoryDude

05-01-2008, 06:38 PM

For instance I have mentioned if Hitler had treated the Soviets well they might have been seen as liberators rather than exterminators... but such a change in policy might have gotten Hitler deposed from power... or even shot by a fanatic or whatever...

Exactly one of the problems in talking about could have beens. Many people ponder why the Germans burnt up so much man power on the holocaust or the poor treatment of the Slavs. The problem is the Nazis built much of their power base around these kind of acts. If hitler had tried to enlist slavic soldier enmass what would the Waffen-SS have done?

loganinkosovo

05-01-2008, 08:01 PM

The support of the West gave Stalin legitimacy.
Material support was much more substantial than jeeps.

Aircraft 14,795
Tanks 7,056
Jeeps 51,503
Trucks 375,883
Motorcycles 35,170
Tractors 8,071
Guns 8,218
Machine guns 131,633
Explosives 345,735 tons
Building equipment valued $10,910,000
Railroad freight cars 11,155
Locomotives 1,981
Cargo ships 90
Submarine hunters 105
Torpedo boats 197
Ship engines 7,784
Food supplies 4,478,000 tons
Machines and equipment $1,078,965,000
Non-ferrous metals 802,000 tons
Petroleum products 2,670,000 tons
Chemicals 842,000 tons
Cotton 106,893,000 tons
Leather 49,860 tons
Tires 3,786,000
Army boots 15,417,001 pairs

Source:^ (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#cite_ref-0) Leo T. Crowley, "Lend Lease" in Walter Yust, ed. 10 Eventful Years (1947) 2: 858-60; 1:520

I think a large indicator is how the Soviet Union went about destroying all the evidence of this support after the war. You would think this stuff would be laying around all over the place. It's rather hard to find soviet photos of this equipment. Very few pictures of Soviet Shermans in battle still exist. And they got the best ones...the two engine diesels!

GazB

05-01-2008, 09:28 PM

I think a large indicator is how the Soviet Union went about destroying all the evidence of this support after the war. You would think this stuff would be laying around all over the place. It's rather hard to find soviet photos of this equipment. Very few pictures of Soviet Shermans in battle still exist. And they got the best ones...the two engine diesels!

Actually based on the rules of lend lease they had to do it the way they did it.

The way lend lease basically worked was that any equipment you got via lend lease... if it was used up or destroyed fighting the Germans then the user owed the US or Britain nothing. All those Hurricanes and Shermans and other items were largely handed back to the allies or had to be paid for. I remember seeing a series of photos of allied aircraft carriers going to Soviet ports and being loaded up with planes and tanks and equipment... those vessels would sail out of port, get to international waters and dump it all over the side and then go back and get some more...

The reason you didn't see many photos of Shermans and Hurricanes in post war Soviet units is because they were already making better equipment that that delivered to them via lend lease... with the exception of strategic bombers of course. The more obsolete equipment... particularly because spare parts supply had dried up and they had little capacity to make more I would expect those items they didn't return were used till they could be used no more in rear area units and then used as targets. Even here in NZ there are plenty of stories about Spitfires and Hurricanes and other aircraft being sold for a few pounds and no one wanting them so they were buried or burned or whatever.
The old swords into ploughshares... anyone who has lived through a war generally wants to forget it and put it behind them... unfortunately the cold war made that impossible for most.

TR1

05-02-2008, 01:10 AM

CPL Trevoga

05-02-2008, 01:15 AM

Every time i read something like this or the winter i always wonder why only germans are the ones that always suffer from it. Like magically on the other side of the front everything was good and warm..

Some Russians like to blame winter for failures as well. Like during Finnish war. You know, Ukrainians from the south couldn't handle the cold, some bull**** like that.

TR1

05-02-2008, 01:18 AM

Some Russians like to blame winter for failures as well. Like during Finnish war. You know, Ukrainians from the south couldn't handle the cold, some bull**** like that.
Well, its somewhat true. In the initial attack the vanguard was a division from the Ukraine, with weather far milder than in Finland, which was experiencing an especially severe winter. Of course they did not fail in their task simply because of the weather.

foxtrot023

05-02-2008, 01:30 AM

Connaught Ranger

05-02-2008, 03:23 AM

The remains of a Soviet Lend-Lease Sherman M4 A2, at the Romanian Military Museum in Bucharest, March 2007 and March 2008.

Remains were rescued from a Gypsy scrap metal collecting crew, apparently they pulled it out of a river in IASI (where it has fallen through a bridge in 1944) and had been cutting it up before the authorities were alerted.
The Romanian Military Museum obtain the remains in 2000.

Connaught Ranger:)

Connaught Ranger

05-02-2008, 03:25 AM

The rest of the pictures:-

Sad to say the turret, engine compartment were removed before it was rescued:-(

Connaught Ranger:)

Billy No Mates

05-02-2008, 04:32 AM

Actually I recall reading Soviet reports that the American men who came with the supplies were most helpful, and responded rather quickly to Soviet requests in regards to the delivered equipment. The British recieved no such accolades, in general, there was very little hardware from the Brist that Soviet troops found usefull.

What a bloody cheek...how on earth would you have managed without the gold braid we sent you for your reformed officer corp....
There were morale implications and a moral imperative to do what we could,at times the aid we sent was in practical terms not worth the lives and ships lost but we had to try to do something .

Yosy

05-02-2008, 01:14 PM

Lend lease was crucial to end the war sooner. Before Lend Lease made an impact the soviet did stop the germans (1941). However where Lend Lease made the biggest impact was in the number of trucks, jeeps, locomotives, train cars and high octane fuel.

Without those items, the 1943 and 1944 victories, achieved in no small part due to the strategic mobility given by those lend lease items, the war in the East would have dragged on much longer.

I agree. Without western support, the USSR would take much more time to defeat Nazi Germany, but it would eventually happen. The strength of numbers was just too much, and the USSR had virtually an unlimited supply of men and material.

People like to see WW2 as a "good war", a fight between Good and Evil. In fact, it was a battle for survival between two versions of Evil. The main responsible for the defeat of Nazi Germany was the Soviet Union. The western front was a secondary theatre of war.

TR1

05-02-2008, 03:58 PM

What a bloody cheek...how on earth would you have managed without the gold braid we sent you for your reformed officer corp....
There were morale implications and a moral imperative to do what we could,at times the aid we sent was in practical terms not worth the lives and ships lost but we had to try to do something .
Ok thats great. Excuse soviet soldiers for being less that impressed with what you sent. Because in fact, it WAS less than impressive. :roll:Certainly it was a good moral boost for the Soviet people that they were not alone in their struggle, so in that sense I would never dismiss it.

gaijinsamurai

05-02-2008, 04:36 PM

Ok thats great. Excuse soviet soldiers for being less that impressed with what you sent. Because in fact, it WAS less than impressive. :roll:Certainly it was a good moral boost for the Soviet people that they were not alone in their struggle, so in that sense I would never dismiss it.

Did you get any help from the Chicoms? (wink!)

TR1

05-02-2008, 06:01 PM

1st.) I hate you
2nd) Even if they had sent half a million men, that would have been about as effective as 1 German platoon.

CPL Trevoga

05-02-2008, 09:23 PM

1st.) I hate you
2nd) Even if they had sent half a million men, that would have been about as effective as 1 German platoon.

1. I hate him too.
2. I don't know about Chinamen, but Koreans and Mongols fought with distinction during Great Patriotic War.

Chinese fought Americans to standstill in Korea, so Germanskis wouldn't be a problem for them. They would have been great help.

little icebear

05-02-2008, 10:23 PM

Chinese fought Americans to standstill in Korea, so Germanskis wouldn't be a problem for them.

Normally I´m not into nationalistic ranting, but since I´m drunk anyway I give it a try.

Germanskis turned out to be a quite a problem for everyone who had to face them on the battlefield.
Chinese Military History vs. German Military History? Hahahaha. Good one.

China can´t compete in this kind of ****-measuring contest.

TR1

05-03-2008, 12:06 AM

although China has massive armies in the field while Germany was in part Rome's bitch and in part overrun by hairy apes....if we want to go so far backp-)

little icebear

05-03-2008, 12:22 AM

if we want to go so far backp-)

Guess we´d have to go back so far, if we wanted to talk about a China, that could play in good ol´ Germany´s league. ;)

But first of all: The alcohol level in my blood fades away and so does my appetite for nationalistic Germania Strong!!! talk. p-)

And secondly: It´s OT.

GazB

05-03-2008, 03:44 AM

Without those items, the 1943 and 1944 victories, achieved in no small part due to the strategic mobility given by those lend lease items, the war in the East would have dragged on much longer.

I disagree... 42-43 there were Soviet victories but a lot of those victories were soured by Stalins poor judgement... demanding counter attacks when it made more sense to hold and resupply, or continuing follow up operations after a victory that stretched Soviet forces too far and let the Germans counter attack.
The real effect of Lend Lease was post 1944 when the Soviets benefitted from not only good supply but the content of that supply was modern capable equipment.

ctually I recall reading Soviet reports that the American men who came with the supplies were most helpful, and responded rather quickly to Soviet requests in regards to the delivered equipment. The British recieved no such accolades, in general, there was very little hardware from the Brist that Soviet troops found usefull.

I would say that a lot of this was because the Americans had pretty much missed out on the first part of the war, and knew they had much to learn. Why learn it on the battlefield from your own troops when you can send designers and engineers to the Soviet Union and ask them what changes they wanted. Some changes would be irrelevant to the American forces, but many lessons could be learnt all the same.

The British however tended to send stuff that was largely obsolete... though not worthless. They sent Valentine tanks which were appreciated for their armour... though the pitiful gun was lamented... British 2 pounder guns had no HE round and so were useless against troops. The Churchil were also appreciated for their armour, but again speed and armament let them down. In aircraft Hurricanes were delivered in their thousands but by then they were obsolete by the time they went to the SU so why would Britain send engineers to change the design? The Soviet engineers made field modifications of course, but the new models arriving all had to be changed... they weren't going to reengineer them in Britain for the Soviets.

What a bloody cheek...how on earth would you have managed without the gold braid we sent you for your reformed officer corp....

I am sure the Soviet soldier at the ports who opened the gold braid crates felt many of the same things the trapped Germans in Stalingrad felt when starving and critically low on ammo a german crate parachutes into their trench with condoms and barbed wire while the next batch that floats into Soviet territory is full of schnapps and christmas ham and 20,000 rounds of ammo and 10 MG-42s to fire it...

Connaught Ranger

05-03-2008, 04:38 AM

I disagree...

I am sure the Soviet soldier at the ports who opened the gold braid crates felt many of the same things the trapped Germans in Stalingrad felt when starving and critically low on ammo a german crate parachutes into their trench with condoms and barbed wire while the next batch that floats into Soviet territory is full of schnapps and christmas ham and 20,000 rounds of ammo and 10 MG-42s to fire it...

There must have been a similar feeling at the docks in Cairo, Egypt in WW2 when one Allied supply ship arrived with a load of sandbags for defensive structures. . . . all ready filled with sand from the UK!!!!!
Connaught Ranger.:)

Russian_dude

05-09-2008, 07:52 AM

Violet Fashion by Mindy

05-09-2008, 07:54 AM

The Aircobra performed quite well on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific theater.

It was a low altitude fighter. It's weakness was at high altitude.

Billy No Mates

05-09-2008, 08:31 AM

I am sure the Soviet soldier at the ports who opened the gold braid crates felt many of the same things the trapped Germans in Stalingrad felt when starving and critically low on ammo a german crate parachutes into their trench with condoms and barbed wire while the next batch that floats into Soviet territory is full of schnapps and christmas ham and 20,000 rounds of ammo and 10 MG-42s to fire it...

The gold braid was a special request from the Soviets one which puzzled the British,but which the Soviets obviously felt was important in reforming a professional officer corp .

foxtrot023

05-09-2008, 10:22 AM

As a proportion of total Soviet production, these numbers are not huge. Besides a lot of military equipement was not very good. The Aircobra was essentially rejected by the Americans and given to the Soviets and the Shermans... well... The trucks were nice... but Germans fought well with horse carriages and the Soviets on foot, skis etc. so nothing huge here.

Wow, just wow.......:cantbeli: you are utterly clueless.

Those nice trucks, which made up for the majority of your motor pool during WW2 allowed STAVKA strategic mobility, which in turn allowed those 43 and 44 offensives, by permitting soviet troops to be shifted from one front to another. Without those nice trucks, and locomotives, and flat cars, and hi octane grade fuel, etc etc, the war in the east would have lasted much longer

foxtrot023

05-09-2008, 10:29 AM

I disagree... 42-43 there were Soviet victories but a lot of those victories were soured by Stalins poor judgement... demanding counter attacks when it made more sense to hold and resupply, or continuing follow up operations after a victory that stretched Soviet forces too far and let the Germans counter attack.
The real effect of Lend Lease was post 1944 when the Soviets benefitted from not only good supply but the content of that supply was modern capable equipment.
...

1942 yes, Stalin tried for too much and got hammered in Spring 42, and yes, those victories in early 1942 where done without western aid, but 43 and 44, no. The mobility given by western materiel, gas, food, clothing, etc was used to great effect by STAVKA from 43 onwards (remember that 70% ofthe soviet motor pool was western in origin), including those summer offensives post Kursk

GazB

05-11-2008, 06:46 AM

The mobility given by western materiel, gas, food, clothing, etc was used to great effect by STAVKA from 43 onwards (remember that 70% ofthe soviet motor pool was western in origin), including those summer offensives post Kursk

By 44 their production was in full swing, there is no reason they couldn't have produced their own trucks if they weren't getting them via lend lease. They couldn't have been as shiny as US trucks but they would have done the job. 70% of the soviet motor pool was of western origin because that was pretty much all they sent that was worth asking for more. Without US trucks the Soviets would simply have built their own.

and hi octane grade fuel

Most of their ground vehicles used diesel. Winning air superiority late in the war was nice, but it was the army that won the war, not the navy and not the airforce.

foxtrot023

05-11-2008, 11:56 PM

By 44 their production was in full swing, there is no reason they couldn't have produced their own trucks if they weren't getting them via lend lease. They couldn't have been as shiny as US trucks but they would have done the job. 70% of the soviet motor pool was of western origin because that was pretty much all they sent that was worth asking for more. Without US trucks the Soviets would simply have built their own.

Most of their ground vehicles used diesel. Winning air superiority late in the war was nice, but it was the army that won the war, not the navy and not the airforce.

could have, might have..... The reality is that over 2/3 of the entire soviet motor pool was western. That does not could the thousands on rail cars, locomotives, the millions of tonnes of foodstuff, over 10 million boots, clothing, etc etc. All contributed to the victory over Germany, all helped shortened the war, and while many soviet sources accuse the West of dismissing their contribution, those same soviet sources belittle Western help and lend lease

GazB

05-12-2008, 07:17 AM

and while many soviet sources accuse the West of dismissing their contribution, those same soviet sources belittle Western help and lend lease

A can of spam means nothing with regards to winning or losing a war. To suggest to the 1.5 million people in leningrad that starved to death that lend lease food and and material won the war is a joke. The west claims because it supplied less than 10% of the material the Soviets used that somehow they won the war because of lend lease is an insult.

I guess all the money the Japanese spent on Desert Storm they could claim to have won that war... I mean afterall without that financial support it would have taken longer to build up the forces... :rolleyes:

You hear of Michael Angelo... the painter of the Cistene Chappel (spelling)... you don't hear about the priest that gave him a few bucks and some paint to actually do the job.
Anybodys paint would have done, as would anyones canvas... the Soviets could have asked to buy food and ammo and explosives from Brazil. They didn't really need aluminium... most of their aircraft could be made from wood. So many of them in the early stages weren't lasting long enough to warrant metal structures anyway, and it was largely the Soviet Army that won the war rather than the AF.

and while many soviet sources accuse the West of dismissing their contribution, those same soviet sources belittle Western help and lend lease

You want to compare the contribution of the Soviets in defeating the Germans with the contribution Lend Lease had toward the Soviet victory over Germany!

All it did was speed up the end... and if I was to be cynical I would suggest that the Germans didn't deserve a speedy end.

Lend Lease wasn't charity, it was the western allies providing the Soviets with wooden underpants so they were ready to feed into the fire.

domokun

05-12-2008, 10:24 AM

Hmm.... interesting discussion we are having here.

AFAIK lend-lease to Soviet-Union was partialy crusial for some reasons (most of witch have already been mentioned).

1. Logistics, without all those trucks and fuel Soviet war machine wouldn't have advanced as quickly as it did in late war. And most importantly this freed up Soviet industry to produce lot more tanks.

2. Aircraft, lend-lease planes made up quite large part of Soviet airforce.

3. Explosives, western allies supplied Soviets with lot of gunpowder and TNT. I remember reading (not having source at hand and my memory can be faulty, so I might be talking out of my ass. :) ) that allied deliveries made up something like 60% of Soviet full supply.

foxtrot023

05-12-2008, 10:29 AM

A can of spam means nothing with regards to winning or losing a war. To suggest to the 1.5 million people in leningrad that starved to death that lend lease food and and material won the war is a joke. The west claims because it supplied less than 10% of the material the Soviets used that somehow they won the war because of lend lease is an insult.

I guess all the money the Japanese spent on Desert Storm they could claim to have won that war... I mean afterall without that financial support it would have taken longer to build up the forces... :rolleyes:

You hear of Michael Angelo... the painter of the Cistene Chappel (spelling)... you don't hear about the priest that gave him a few bucks and some paint to actually do the job.
Anybodys paint would have done, as would anyones canvas... the Soviets could have asked to buy food and ammo and explosives from Brazil. They didn't really need aluminium... most of their aircraft could be made from wood. So many of them in the early stages weren't lasting long enough to warrant metal structures anyway, and it was largely the Soviet Army that won the war rather than the AF.

You want to compare the contribution of the Soviets in defeating the Germans with the contribution Lend Lease had toward the Soviet victory over Germany!

All it did was speed up the end... and if I was to be cynical I would suggest that the Germans didn't deserve a speedy end.

Lend Lease wasn't charity, it was the western allies providing the Soviets with wooden underpants so they were ready to feed into the fire.

Dude you are reading it all wrong. Lend lease help quite a bit into shortening the war, it did not win the war by itself. Lend lease helped the Soviet Union- without any doubt, and by quite a bit. But trust me that the priest gave more than just a few bucks, he provide wood for the scalfold, rope, some paints, a couple of brush, food and probably a horse cart too.

I am quite clear on the amount of german manpower the East Front tied up.

Alexandr

05-12-2008, 10:35 AM

Connaught Ranger

05-12-2008, 10:44 AM

So why did the Russians bother to award medals to British Merchant seamen for bring supplies to Russia in WW2?

It could be argued the Germans lost the war from the moment Hitler decided to attack in the East

The point is, the Allied effort was a team event, the Russians did not win it single handed, neither did the USA, UK, France, or any other country on their own.

To argue otherwise is an insult to the men and women who gave their lives in the struggle, and lowers the tone of the thread to the standard of a squabble amongst school kids over whose ball it is in the playground.

Connaught Ranger.

foxtrot023

05-12-2008, 10:48 AM

read Von Bokk diary - Wermaht collapse on East front began right after fail of Moscow siege - no Lend -Lease yet delivered.
Aid was important to defeat Germans,an wasnt crusial to winstand against them.

1. I recommend you read my posts above- specially the one I mention that the soviet winter offensive of Jan. 1942 was done without Western Aid.

2. German Collapse in the East did not begin in 1941, I would say 1944.

3. Once again read above, Lend Lease help the soviet offensives in 1943/44, making the war shorter, but the germans were stopped without aid in winter 41/42.

foxtrot023

05-12-2008, 10:51 AM

Indiana Jones

05-12-2008, 11:24 AM

read Von Bokk diary - Wermaht collapse on East front began right after fail of Moscow siege - no Lend -Lease yet delivered.
Aid was important to defeat Germans,an wasnt crusial to winstand against them.
That is funny- I am somewhat familar with von Bocks diary and I do not recall it indicating German "collapse" was imminent after the failure of Typhoon-there was no such thing as a siege of Moscow. Could you perhaps point me to the page(s) in question ?
In general though, your assessment strikes me as accurate, provided I have understood it correctly. Let me quote what I wrote a couple of weeks ago in another thread:

Quote:
Originally Posted by kongman http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/images/buttons/viewpost.gif (http://www.militaryphotos.net/forums/showthread.php?p=3165808#post3165808)
i just get sick of these plp sayin russia stoped the german army .....it was alot of factors which stopped the german army in russia one of the was supplies being cut of and slowed by the bombings of the allies and stupid mistakes like "kursk" being one .....................if it had of been 1v1 .russia v germany ....every1 in russia would be speaking german by now......

Yours truly:
The Soviet Union was by a considerable margin the largest contributor to the allied victory over the Greater German Empire. The impact of Allied support, lend-lease etc., while considerable, was ephemeral to the eventual outcome of the Eastern front campaign; by the time it came into full effect, Soviet victory was already irreversible. The battle of Kursk, in short, has been grievously misrepresented by both Soviet and Western mainstream historiography. For instance, it was not at all the "swansong" of the Panzerwaffe. If anything, it was the 5th GTA who suffered vastly disproportionate losses and was put hors de combat.
Roma locuta, causa finita. ;-)

Alexandr

05-12-2008, 11:33 AM

1. I recommend you read my posts above- specially the one I mention that the soviet winter offensive of Jan. 1942 was done without Western Aid.

2. German Collapse in the East did not begin in 1941, I would say 1944.

3. Once again read above, Lend Lease help the soviet offensives in 1943/44, making the war shorter, but the germans were stopped without aid in winter 41/42.

Im generally agry with you,but one thing clear for me - collapce begins in 1941,all German combat officers mention it in they diarys\rememberance,and the main reason was - more deeper they go to Soviet terretory,less supplyes they recived,no food,no fuel,no ammo for offencive troops deep it enemie terretory.
Key word is "Scorched Earth" Soviet tactics.
They fall into same trap as Napoleon in 1812,and only discipline and order of Wermatch makes them no to run backward,and made some desperate tryes to achiev at least somethin

foxtrot023

05-12-2008, 11:46 AM

Im generally agry with you,but one thing clear for me - collapce begins in 1941,all German combat officers mention it in they diarys\rememberance,and the main reason was - more deeper they go to Soviet terretory,less supplyes they recived,no food,no fuel,no ammo for offencive troops deep it enemie terretory.
Key word is "Scorched Earth" Soviet tactics.
They fall into same trap as Napoleon in 1812,and only discipline and order of Wermatch makes them no to run backward,and made some desperate tryes to achiev at least somethin

I would say that by the end of 1941, german divisions were depleted, never to be at 100% again (at least regular grenadier divs). It was a somewhat rude awakening, but the Germans did not see themselves defeated at that point, even if some generals did say that.

Overall, the worse mistake hitler did was Barbarossa

Kilgor

05-12-2008, 06:38 PM

A can of spam means nothing with regards to winning or losing a war. .

Armies march on their stomachs and that comment only shows your arrogance.

Kilgor

05-12-2008, 06:39 PM

The Aircobra performed quite well on the Eastern Front and in the Pacific theater.

It was a low altitude fighter. It's weakness was at high altitude.

The Soviet Unions second highest scoring ace would agree with that.

Mamont

05-12-2008, 06:47 PM

Armies march on their stomachs and that comment only shows your arrogance.
Please, provide estimation for what time all that food was sufficient for the marching troops?

The Soviet Unions second highest scoring ace would agree with that. That rather shows that it's more of a man, not the machine.

Kilgor

05-12-2008, 06:56 PM

Please, provide estimation for what time all that food was sufficient for the marching troops?

That rather shows that it's more of a man, not the machine.

"American Spam was very common, and it has been calculated that there was enough food sent lend-lease to Russia to feed a 12,000,000 man army 1/2 pound of food per day for the war"

Only a fool would argue this made no sizeable difference.

As for the P-39's, they obviously were not the inferior death-traps post war propaganda made them out to be. IF they grossly inferior then even the best pilot would not have stood much chance.

"Speaking about our readiness for war from the point of view of the economyandeconomics, one cannot be silent about such a factor as the subsequent help from the Allies. First of all, certainly, from the American side, because in that respect the English helped us minimally. In an analysis of all facets of the war, one must not leave this out of one's reckoning. We would have been in a serious condition without American gunpowder, and could not have turned out the quantity of ammunition which we needed. Without American `Studebekkers' [sic], we could have dragged our artillery nowhere. Yes, in general, to a considerable degree they provided ourfront transport. The output of special steel, necessary for the most diverse necessities of war, were also connected to a series of American deliveries."

"It is now said that the Allies never helped us . . . However, one cannot deny that the Americans gave us so much material, without which we could not have formed our reserves and could not have continued the war . . . we had no explosives and powder. There was none to equip rifle bullets. The Americans actually came to our assistance with powder and explosives. And how much sheet steel did they give us. We really could not have quickly put right our production of tanks if the Americans had not helped with steel. And today it seems as though we had all this ourselves in abundance."

quoted from Zukov

Mamont

05-12-2008, 08:51 PM

"American Spam was very common, and it has been calculated that there was enough food sent lend-lease to Russia to feed a 12,000,000 man army 1/2 pound of food per day for the war"You can do better than that simple ot of the air quote, Kilgor. We have clear numbers like 610k tons of sugar, 665k tons of meat etc.

Only a fool would argue this made no sizeable difference.Again, please, provide the data of actual number of cans delivered to the troops. Also, please provide the usual rations of soviet troops. Than we can talk farther, this is not rants section. For example in 1943 lend-lease food supplied up to 17% of all calories for a soldiers at the front.

As for the P-39's, they obviously were not the inferior death-traps post war propaganda made them out to be. A number of pilots were killed by rear cockpit glass armor plate, that was nor properly installed. Also there were issues with engines and guns. Also bailing pilots usualy hit the tail, wounding themselfs, on many occasions severily, breaking legs or spines. The usual number of inoperable planes from different issues(excluding battle damage) was around 17-18%. Also, at 1 may from 3395 foreign fighters 934 were at the frontlines, bombers - from 1461 943 were on the frontlines.

IF they grossly inferior then even the best pilot would not have stood much chance. It's like I-16, Yak-1 or MiG-3 - they were inferior, but in the hands of capable pilots they could hold their own. Not to mention the proper tactics and adequate numbers. Also, if not by accidential death of Pokryshkin's comrade Klubov - he'd gladly switched to La-7.

quoted from ZukovThat part was already discussed. He denied to have said that.

GazB

05-13-2008, 08:25 AM

1. Logistics, without all those trucks and fuel Soviet war machine wouldn't have advanced as quickly as it did in late war. And most importantly this freed up Soviet industry to produce lot more tanks.

The German army in the east was shattered at Kursk. They put everything they had into it and they got stopped and pushed back. Whether the Soviet Army had enough trucks to move fast enough was not critical to the result of the war... by the time they started needing them the war had already been decided.

2. Aircraft, lend-lease planes made up quite large part of Soviet airforce.

Rubbish. About 10%. And the Soviet airforce did very little to decide the outcome of the war in the east. Most of the war was fought without aircover.

that allied deliveries made up something like 60% of Soviet full supply.

Hahahahahahaha... really? Am wondering how it was possible considering it made little impact on the first two years of the war... I guess that means by 1945 all the ammo the Soviets were using was American...

But trust me that the priest gave more than just a few bucks, he provide wood for the scalfold, rope, some paints, a couple of brush, food and probably a horse cart too.

Lend Lease wasn't charity, it was the western allies providing the Soviets with wooden underpants so they were ready to feed into the fire.

Michael angelo left the cistine chappel with the clothes on his back and painful joints and complaints that he couldn't have done it without the horse and cart ringing in his ears... well if the Priest was that important why did the Priest do so little prep work on the ceiling... he could have scrubbed it down and put a primer coat on it...

So why did the Russians bother to award medals to British Merchant seamen for bring supplies to Russia in WW2?

They might as well reward the few allies that actually did come to help them instead of playing around north africa...

2. German Collapse in the East did not begin in 1941, I would say 1944.

Kursk... and thereafter they were on the backfoot.

Bingo! you are 100% correct

You agree it was a team effort yet in another breath you claim America supplied all the tools needed for the job... ignoring the fact that the best tools for the job were Soviet designs like the T-34 and JS-2, and the Yak-1-9 and La-5FN to La-11.

Armies march on their stomachs and that comment only shows your arrogance.

Except for isolated pockets like the siege of leningrad there was no starvation on the eastern front... and not because of lend lease either.

The Soviet Unions second highest scoring ace would agree with that.

Except it was designed as a high altitude fighter... that was the purpose behind the turbosupercharger on the engine. The US of course refused to export such a thing to the British or Soviets, so it was rather underpowered operationally.

Only a fool would argue this made no sizeable difference.

Only a fool would make such a claim.

There was no famine in the Soviet Union during the war period except those caused by siege... the only real example was Leningrad... where lend lease made very little difference too.

"American Spam was very common, and it has been calculated that there was enough food sent lend-lease to Russia to feed a 12,000,000 man army 1/2 pound of food per day for the war"

And what percentage was on the bottom of the sea?

The real question is when did it arrive and at what rate. The vast majority of aid arrived after things were critical.

foxtrot023

05-13-2008, 09:54 AM

The German army in the east was shattered at Kursk. They put everything they had into it and they got stopped and pushed back. Whether the Soviet Army had enough trucks to move fast enough was not critical to the result of the war... by the time they started needing them the war had already been decided.

Agreed to a point. What those vehicles allowed was for a rapid transition from the defensive of Kursk to the summer offensives in 43 in the Ukraine

You agree it was a team effort yet in another breath you claim America supplied all the tools needed for the job... ignoring the fact that the best tools for the job were Soviet designs like the T-34 and JS-2, and the Yak-1-9 and La-5FN to La-11.

Once again, the major part contribution was not in tanks or airplanes, but in foodstuff, cars, trucks, clothes, explosives, oil derivatives etc

The real question is when did it arrive and at what rate. The vast majority of aid arrived after things were critical.

I will place firmer figs. tonight, but the years with more heavy contribution were 44, 43, 42

To make my position clear, Lend Lease helped, a lot, but it was not the silver bullet. Without lend lease, the Soviets would still have defeated the Germans, it would have taken longer, and it would have been more bloody. Lend Lease did facilitate things for the Soviets, and in my opinion it shortened the war

California Joe

05-13-2008, 11:23 AM

Indiana Jones

05-13-2008, 06:28 PM

These threads always bring out the f*cking fanboys en masse.

If you're going to keep using that completely innapropriate half arsed Michelangelo Buonarroti/Sistene Chapel analogy at least google it so you spell it correctly once.
Funny that you should mention that, Knopfjäger. ;)
And yes, the analogy is utterly nonsensical.
Ciao,

johanness

05-13-2008, 06:58 PM

As I believe, the origin question of this thread is really interesting : How it was possible the Russians came back.

They lost more then 60% of their industrial production of the SU in the Ukraine,White Russia the Western part of Russia, and also millions of their first line troops in 1941.
In 1942 the German attack in the south also causes a lot of losses for the Red Army.

At this time, the western help was like zero.

foxtrot023

05-13-2008, 10:44 PM

The real question is when did it arrive and at what rate. The vast majority of aid arrived after things were critical.

Tonnes per year
1941- 360,778
1942- 2,453,097
1943- 4,794,545
1944- 6,217,622
1945- 3,673,819

A very large proportion of food for Red army formations came from the US and Canada (1lb a day per soldier)
plus 427,000 motor vehicles, 10,000 tanks (10% of Soviet tank production), 35,000 motorcycles, 19,000 aircraft, 1,900 locomotives, 11,000 railway flats, 98 ships, plus over 4,500,000 tonnes of foodstuff, plus oil derivatives, oil refineries, clothing, over 15 million boots, raw materiel, etc etc

sources- Deane, The Strange Alliance, pp.86-103, Werth, Russia at War, pp. 624-8, Stettinius, Lend Lease , Seaton, The Russo German War 1941-45, pp. 588-92

GazB

05-14-2008, 03:50 AM

Tonnes per year
1941- 360,778
1942- 2,453,097
1943- 4,794,545
1944- 6,217,622
1945- 3,673,819

That is a ridiculous amount of spam!!! ...and as I expected not only was the largest proportion in 44-45 you can actually see the "aid" dropping off... where else did production figures halve from 44 to 45 except for German produced victory medals?

10,000 tanks

The churchils and valentines and even to a degree M4s would have accounted for a lot of weight yet their performance would lead one to suggest their weight in raw materials used to make T-34s would have been much more valuable.

19,000 aircraft

Again... Hurricanes, P-40s and Aircobras were hardly earth shatteringly useful...

foxtrot023

05-14-2008, 09:47 AM

That is a ridiculous amount of spam!!! ...and as I expected not only was the largest proportion in 44-45 you can actually see the "aid" dropping off... where else did production figures halve from 44 to 45 except for German produced victory medals?

Or perhaps it is the fact that the war ended May 1945. Biggest Aid years are in 1944, and 1943, once again when it went to help the most in the Soviet offensives during those years, specially in 1944, were the Soviets broke the German Army.

The churchils and valentines and even to a degree M4s would have accounted for a lot of weight yet their performance would lead one to suggest their weight in raw materials used to make T-34s would have been much more valuable.

Those tanks went mostly to substitude light soviet tanks, which were usually inferior. Also notice that those models were still a match for the Mark III and Mark IV german tanks. They were inferior to medium and heavy soviet designs, I´ll give you that.

Again... Hurricanes, P-40s and Aircobras were hardly earth shatteringly useful...

Still, when they received them during the first 2 years of the war (41-42), they were superior to anything on the soviet arsenal

1234567890

TR1

05-14-2008, 01:14 PM

1234567890
Uhh, those planes were hardly superior to anything in the Soviet arsenal. Hurricane was easily inferior to Yaks and MiGs, even to LaGGs. Aircobra was a better match, but P-40 was inferior in low altitude maneuverability to many of the light soviet planes...the eastern front being what it was low altitude performance was critical, high altitude dives and such were much less relevant.

foxtrot023

05-14-2008, 02:51 PM

Uhh, those planes were hardly superior to anything in the Soviet arsenal. Hurricane was easily inferior to Yaks and MiGs, even to LaGGs. Aircobra was a better match, but P-40 was inferior in low altitude maneuverability to many of the light soviet planes...the eastern front being what it was low altitude performance was critical, high altitude dives and such were much less relevant.

1943 onwards yes

little icebear

05-14-2008, 03:50 PM

The churchils and valentines and even to a degree M4s would have accounted for a lot of weight yet their performance would lead one to suggest their weight in raw materials used to make T-34s would have been much more valuable.

[.......]

Again... Hurricanes, P-40s and Aircobras were hardly earth shatteringly useful...

So what? Is the fact that this stuff was not the absolute top-notch gear degrading its usefullness?
Was Soviet Russia so well of that it could be picky?

Nobody ever claimed, that it would have been the Doom of the Soviet Union if there hadn´t been lend lease.

But I find it somewhat odd, that some folks try to play down in which ways the Allies supported Soviet Russia.
The numbers speak for themselves. You may mention that the stuff was maybe not as good as other weapons and that a large part actually arrived rather late in the war, but doing so only to degrade the amount of help with an attitude like "we would have won anyway" seems pretty ungrateful to me...

jokuvaan

05-14-2008, 06:42 PM

ww2 was so complex, large and long event that its near impossible to answer question of the topic

Dodge

05-14-2008, 07:36 PM

There must have been a similar feeling at the docks in Cairo, Egypt in WW2 when one Allied supply ship arrived with a load of sandbags for defensive structures. . . . all ready filled with sand from the UK!!!!!
Connaught Ranger.:)

Best sand in the world though. ;)

GazB

05-16-2008, 04:59 AM

Or perhaps it is the fact that the war ended May 1945. Biggest Aid years are in 1944, and 1943, once again when it went to help the most in the Soviet offensives during those years, specially in 1944, were the Soviets broke the German Army.

The German army was broken at Kursk. Thereafter there would be no great counter attacks by the Germans. It was also that time that the Red Airforce had started to wrest air control from the Luftwaffe... not that the Red Airforce was ever a decisive factor during the war they played a part.

Those tanks went mostly to substitude light soviet tanks, which were usually inferior. Also notice that those models were still a match for the Mark III and Mark IV german tanks. They were inferior to medium and heavy soviet designs, I´ll give you that.

The Light Soviet tanks at least had decent guns... their 45mm guns had HE projectiles, unlike the 40mm guns on the british vehicles (which were not 40mm Bofors guns, which did have HE rounds). The light Soviet tanks could also move fast enough to keep up with the T-34s... the Churchils and Valentines couldn't even keep up with the KV-1s that were considered too slow. The Armour on the British tanks was good, but without speed and armament they were largely used for infantry support. When M4s were sent instead of the older British tanks the Soviets started making their own support vehicles, like the Su-76.

Still, when they received them during the first 2 years of the war (41-42), they were superior to anything on the soviet arsenal

Comparable to the Mig-1s and Lagg-3s, but inferior to the Yak-1s and later La-5s and Yak-3s and Yak-9s.

So what? Is the fact that this stuff was not the absolute top-notch gear degrading its usefullness?
Was Soviet Russia so well of that it could be picky?

It was used because it was better than nothing, but it annoys me to hear those in the west suggest that Lend lease "won the War" when it consisted of hand me downs and cast offs. The Brits were getting rid of their superflous Hurricanes and old tanks because they didn't want to junk them, and didn't want to risk their own people to fight in them.

The numbers speak for themselves. You may mention that the stuff was maybe not as good as other weapons and that a large part actually arrived rather late in the war, but doing so only to degrade the amount of help with an attitude like "we would have won anyway" seems pretty ungrateful to me...

I am sure the Soviets would have been happy to supply third rate equipment to the US and Britian if they had decided to start D-Day in 1940. It cost the Soviets 20 million people and most of their industrialised urbanised land, scorched earth policy applied to some areas 3-4 or even 5 times and the front line moved back and forth over some places... and the west wants the Soviets to thank them for saving them?

Billy No Mates

05-16-2008, 05:33 AM

It was used because it was better than nothing, but it annoys me to hear those in the west suggest that Lend lease "won the War" when it consisted of hand me downs and cast offs. The Brits were getting rid of their superflous Hurricanes and old tanks because they didn't want to junk them, and didn't want to risk their own people to fight in them.

The British continued to use the Hurricane in every theatre of war they were involved during the time it was supplying them to the USSR the fact its performance was deemed unsuitable for day light fighter ops on the channel front doesnt mean it didnt do vital service in North Africa,Burma,Europe and as SeaHurricanes at most points inbetween,so i dont think we can be accused of peddling aircraft to our allies that we were unwilling to use ourselves,the same goes for the tanks we didn't have anything superior that we were keeping back for ourselves did we now .

Violet Fashion by Mindy

05-16-2008, 05:55 AM

Fact the the UK despite suffering from what it was felt imminent invasion, getting thrown back across the desert, getting sent packing in Asia still saw a need to help the USSR.

That alone speaks for itself.

Connaught Ranger

05-16-2008, 06:00 AM

Some of the points being raised here miss the basic fact that the British were sending what they could at a time when their production facilities were under serious strain, if the Soviets were doing so well why were shiploads of T34 and KV1 and KV2 not being landed at British Docks for the British to use?

Up until the point the Soviet production was up and running at afar greater production capacity than the Germans, they happily took what ever was available (begger's cant be choosers springs to mind).

To suggest that out the only equipment being sent was junk is very far off the mark, many of the planes and tanks produced in the west were justifiably considered as stop gap items, but as there was a continual upgrading of equipment after reports on how it performed on the battlefield this was only to be expected, neither the U.K. or Russia for that matter had a choice or the facilities to iron out all the bugs in these systems prior to being dispatched to the front.

Connaught Ranger

GazB

05-16-2008, 06:35 AM

Fact the the UK despite suffering from what it was felt imminent invasion, getting thrown back across the desert, getting sent packing in Asia still saw a need to help the USSR.

Only because it knew a defeated USSR was no use to her.

The west talks about Axis forces and Allied forces, but there was no love between the western allies and the Soviets. If it was clear that there was no threat to the rest of Europe and Hitler decided he only wanted living space in the USSR the British might have even helped the Germans.

Some of the points being raised here miss the basic fact that the British were sending what they could at a time when their production facilities were under serious strain,

1942 was hardly a period of serious strain for UK industry. By then the US was in the war and the Battle of Britain was history.

Up until the point the Soviet production was up and running at afar greater production capacity than the Germans, they happily took what ever was available (begger's cant be choosers springs to mind).

Yeah... they treated them like Beggars.

You can't mention WWII on the eastern front without someone saying that lend lease was how they won... lend lease and of course the winter is what beat the Germans.
One wonders why 20 million Soviets had to die if it was the Lend Lease and Winter that won the war on the eastern front.

Connaught Ranger

05-16-2008, 06:42 AM

One wonders even more so, why you continually bleat on about the same thing, you have your opinion, and other people have theirs, it has been pointed out in many of the posts here, that there was no one underlying fact which helped end the war, it was a combination of things, like the combining of the various nations who took on and eventually defeated the Nazis.

With regards the millions of deaths you are counting in the Soviet Union I presume you count the Millions that Stalin was personally responsible for himself, the starvation of the Ukraine, springs to mind as well as the other atrocities committed upon the peoples of the Soviet Union by the Soviet Communist Apparatus.

Connaught Ranger

Billy No Mates

05-16-2008, 06:51 AM

Only because it knew a defeated USSR was no use to her.

The west talks about Axis forces and Allied forces, but there was no love between the western allies and the Soviets. If it was clear that there was no threat to the rest of Europe and Hitler decided he only wanted living space in the USSR the British might have even helped the Germans.

Yes we might have helped the Germans just as the USSR was actually helping them when we were fighting them,but what relevance does that really have to the situation after June 41? .

1942 was hardly a period of serious strain for UK industry. By then the US was in the war and the Battle of Britain was history.

Yes we were all having long tea breaks and listening to the comedic capers of Arthur Atkinson on the wireless while we waited for uncle Joe to beat that nasty Mr Hitler .

Yeah... they treated them like Beggars.

You can't mention WWII on the eastern front without someone saying that lend lease was how they won... lend lease and of course the winter is what beat the Germans.
One wonders why 20 million Soviets had to die if it was the Lend Lease and Winter that won the war on the eastern front.

I dont think they were treated like beggars anymore than i think acknowledging Lend Lease helped them in their effort somehow diminishes Soviet sacrifices .

Lokos

05-16-2008, 08:39 AM

With regards the millions of deaths you are counting in the Soviet Union I presume you count the Millions that Stalin was personally responsible for

Actually, no, he's not counting those.

Lokos

foxtrot023

05-16-2008, 09:26 AM

The German army was broken at Kursk. Thereafter there would be no great counter attacks by the Germans. It was also that time that the Red Airforce had started to wrest air control from the Luftwaffe... not that the Red Airforce was ever a decisive factor during the war they played a part.

Negative. The panzer arm was, but not the German Army. I do agree that Kursk gave the iniciative on the Eastern Front to the Soviets for the remainding of the conflict.

All your other points are debatable, in regards to airplanes, most of the ones you mention did not come into service in numbers in 43.

Indiana Jones

05-16-2008, 12:32 PM

The German army was broken at Kursk.

Negative. The panzer arm was, but not the German Army.

Gentlemen, those are but myths.
Neither the Panzerwaffe nor the Heer as a whole was "broken" at Kursk, not remotely in fact. The original Panzerlage files for July and August 1943 are available either in Freiburg at the BA-MA or at NARA in Washington. You will also find them in the more methodoligacally sound literature such as Müller-Hillebrand, Das Heer Vol III, Roman Töppels dissertation Die Offensive gegen Kursk, and elsewhere. If you compare them to the months preceding and following the operation vis à vis the Soviet figures you will notice that Kursk did not significantly upset the numerical balance on the Eastern front, or crippled the Germans in their operational ability.

TR1

05-16-2008, 01:31 PM

Negative. The panzer arm was, but not the German Army. I do agree that Kursk gave the iniciative on the Eastern Front to the Soviets for the remainding of the conflict.

All your other points are debatable, in regards to airplanes, most of the ones you mention did not come into service in numbers in 43.
For the last time, no, the planes are NOT debatable. MiG-1 and 3 was way superior in high altitude performance to Hurricanes and P-40s that were provided early in the war...while the LAGG planes (yes, even before they got the radial engine) were superior in terms of low altitude...not to even mention the Yak family. Fact is, during 1941 and most of 1942 the western aid in terms of aircraft had pretty much no effect. It was nice and all, but hardly war-winning or even significantly helping.

Lokos

05-16-2008, 01:45 PM

Kursk, indeed, was not particularly damaging for the Wehrmacht in a material sense. The cost paid by the 5th GTA, however, was well worth it. From July 1943, onwards, the Soviets retained total initiative - gaining the ability to strike more or less at will at enfeebled German formations (the combat capacities of the Wehrmacht, as a whole, began their final decline in 1943, prior to Kursk and accelerating after Belgorod-Kharkov and Orel). Consider: in 1941 the Wehrmacht could muster (I'm using numbers off the top of my head, so don't nitpick too much) ~150 offensive capable divisions. By Operation Blau, the offensive capacities had been reduced to a reinforced Army Group. By 1943 the decline was even more evident at Kursk, where barely 50 divisions were thrown into a battle deemed decisive for the war effort as a whole.

The Germans had lost their ability to sustain sweeping, broad offensives of the sort that characterized their impressive operations in 1941. Though Kursk was not as damaging to the German army (roughly 90,000 casualties during the Kursk operation, if I'm not mistaken), or the Panzerwaffe, one must note that the offensive failed to penetrate the Soviet defensive cordon, and, further, did not particularly even deplete the reserve arrayed around the defensive zone. After all, the Orel/Belgorod-Kharkov counter-offensives began on 12 July and 3 August, respectively. Considering that the German advance careened to a halt by the 17th, one should reflect upon the implications of this. Specifically, the reserves this entails, their force integrity and readiness, and the total confidence of STAVKA in the failure of Zitadelle.

Let us say Hitler had refused to call off the offensive. The depleted, and weakening German forces on the southern axis of attack - what were they to accomplish? They had barely breached two defensive belts... and had only five major and minor ones to go. This with ever lengthening flanks, and fresh Soviet reserves (utterly superior numerically and materially, by this point) available. The frontage was growing ever more narrow, and the northern axis forces were no longer conducting active offensive operations, having failed to breach the Soviet tactical zone. If anything, stopping the offensive when it was stopped (if not earlier) was one of Hitler's saner moments. Had they committed further, had their flanks buckled, had the Soviets altered their strategic counter-offensives into operational envelopments against rapidly weakening German forces... who knows? Though moot, this point should drive home the danger of perceiving this battle as anything but a complete strategic defeat. Some tactical successes (and, yes, the ruination of the 5th GTA for a month, in this sense, is a tactical affair) cannot change the dire state of affairs in this period for the Wehrmacht.

The balance, having been tipping over the previous year and a half, would thereafter simply collapse.

Lokos

California Joe

05-16-2008, 01:50 PM

So you're saying that the average Soviet infantryman probably appreciated the occassional ride or the supplies he recieved from a Lend Lease Studebaker truck?

p-)

foxtrot023

05-16-2008, 02:00 PM

For the last time, no, the planes are NOT debatable. MiG-1 and 3 was way superior in high altitude performance to Hurricanes and P-40s that were provided early in the war...while the LAGG planes (yes, even before they got the radial engine) were superior in terms of low altitude...not to even mention the Yak family. Fact is, during 1941 and most of 1942 the western aid in terms of aircraft had pretty much no effect. It was nice and all, but hardly war-winning or even significantly helping.

It is highly debatable. I will not go into it, but I suggest you read a bit more. In regards to effect, read a bit about the defense of Leningrad.

Createdeemcee

05-16-2008, 02:03 PM

Damn right it was Crucial, But It was also Crucial that the russians played thier part for us (allies) so that Hitler was defeated. We both earned that credit.

GazB

05-17-2008, 01:41 AM

It is highly debatable. I will not go into it, but I suggest you read a bit more. In regards to effect, read a bit about the defense of Leningrad.

Leningrad was a siege. Please tell us what effect anything the Allies did had on that siege? If there were no lend lease planes it still would have been a siege. If there had been no Lend lease spam then 1.5 million people in leningrad would still have starved to death.

If you compare them to the months preceding and following the operation vis à vis the Soviet figures you will notice that Kursk did not significantly upset the numerical balance on the Eastern front, or crippled the Germans in their operational ability.

How many major offensives did the Germans mount after Kursk?

Numbers are irrelevant... it was the best of the best of the german forces and they were stopped and then pushed back. 2 years before there would have been nothing the Soviets could have done to stop them and they would have rolled on through.
Kursk is not significant because the Germans lost an army like the did in Stalingrad.... because they didn't. It was the start of the end for them, where they lost air supremacy, where they lost the intiative, and didn't take it again on any significant scale.

All your other points are debatable, in regards to airplanes, most of the ones you mention did not come into service in numbers in 43.

But every single lend lease plane was available in july 1941? It was after October that they even decided to extend lend lease to include the Soviets, but lend lease was crucial to stopping the Germans at the gates of moscow. Don't believe these lies about siberian units freed up from the far east... it was the west that won WWII. NOT.

So you're saying that the average Soviet infantryman probably appreciated the occassional ride or the supplies he recieved from a Lend Lease Studebaker truck?

The Soviets already had American designed equipment in service before lend lease. They had licence produced studebaker trucks and DC-3s and quite a few other items already in service that had been made in factories in the Soviet Union.

All your other points are debatable, in regards to airplanes, most of the ones you mention did not come into service in numbers in 43.

Indeed all your points are just as debatable. The Mig-1 and Mig-3 and Yak-1 and LaGG-3 were all available in 1941 in the Soviet Union. All had heavier guns than the Hurricane models that only had 303s.

TR1

05-17-2008, 01:56 AM

Leningrad was a siege. Please tell us what effect anything the Allies did had on that siege? If there were no lend lease planes it still would have been a siege. If there had been no Lend lease spam then 1.5 million people in leningrad would still have starved to death.

How many major offensives did the Germans mount after Kursk?

Numbers are irrelevant... it was the best of the best of the german forces and they were stopped and then pushed back. 2 years before there would have been nothing the Soviets could have done to stop them and they would have rolled on through.
Kursk is not significant because the Germans lost an army like the did in Stalingrad.... because they didn't. It was the start of the end for them, where they lost air supremacy, where they lost the intiative, and didn't take it again on any significant scale.

But every single lend lease plane was available in july 1941? It was after October that they even decided to extend lend lease to include the Soviets, but lend lease was crucial to stopping the Germans at the gates of moscow. Don't believe these lies about siberian units freed up from the far east... it was the west that won WWII. NOT.

The Soviets already had American designed equipment in service before lend lease. They had licence produced studebaker trucks and DC-3s and quite a few other items already in service that had been made in factories in the Soviet Union.

Indeed all your points are just as debatable. The Mig-1 and Mig-3 and Yak-1 and LaGG-3 were all available in 1941 in the Soviet Union. All had heavier guns than the Hurricane models that only had 303s.

Not to mention had better performance in pretty much every parameter.

Billy No Mates

05-17-2008, 05:39 AM

[quote=GazB;3251843)Indeed all your points are just as debatable. The Mig-1 and Mig-3 and Yak-1 and LaGG-3 were all available in 1941 in the Soviet Union. All had heavier guns than the Hurricane models that only had 303s.[/quote]

The soviet models you mention were all available in 41 but in rather limited numbers especially the best of the bunch the Yak-1 in addition they were all had various problems with fit and finish,many of them would soon rectified after they had the sort of experience that saw the British fit the Hurricane with thick armour,armour glass and self sealing tanks to go with sights and radios already superior to what was available to the Soviets .
By 41 Hurricane production had changed to all metal wing enabling an all cannon armament if necessary in practice the Soviets tended to opt for a 50cal and a 20mm cannon in each wing(the 1st Hurricanes to arrive operated jointly by the RAF and Soviets operated with this weapon fit,not a lot of 303 in the USSR afterall)which would of easily confered a greater weight of shot than the aircraft you mention(or western aircraft with their native equivalents,given the superiority of Soviet aircraft guns but thats another matter).

Indiana Jones

05-17-2008, 03:28 PM

Kursk, indeed, was not particularly damaging for the Wehrmacht in a material sense. The cost paid by the 5th GTA, however, was well worth it.

I find that assertion quite flabbergasting. I can only presume you do not quite realize the extent of the Soviet defeat ? Prokhorovka must be described as a blunder of colossal proportions. On the 12th of July, the 5th GTA permanently lost at least 235 AFVs and 1500 men KIA/MIA (CAMO, Doc. 35, p.8) compared to a grand total of two Mark IVs, a Tiger and 97 German dead. (Geh. Kdo. Sache: Ausfälle, HG Süd... BA MA RH 10/64) As you can see, Prokhorovka did not even significantly dent or check the two involved German formations; On the 11th, Leibstandarte and Das Reich fielded operational 186 AFVs, whereas on the 13th (as the day after the battle), they had 190 vehicles on the frontline, which leads the Soviet post-war narrative of the 2.SS Panzerkorps' supposed destruction ad absurdum. Despite archieving initial surprise, the Soviet attack yielded no gain whatsoever and resulted in the destruction of a newly raised formation that had been husbanded for a major strategic role as part of STAVKAs reserve, the battle thereby attaining a significance somewhat exceeding its immediate tactical scope. Just because in the light of the strategic numerical disparity STAVKA could "afford" such a disaster (and numerous other costly failures) does not make it any less of a disaster, as it goes entirely without saying that the Red Armies' tankers who were unnecessarily killed or horribly maimed could hardly afford it.

[...]more evident at Kursk, where barely 50 divisions were thrown into a battle deemed decisive for the war effort as a whole.

I am not in disagreement with your general assessment, however, from the outset, neither Zitadelle nor the alternative operations Panther und Habicht were conceived as being strategically decisive maneuvers. As Hitler put it, instead of a "KO blow", he merely wanted to "dish out some light hooks".

roughly 90,000 casualties during the Kursk operation, if I'm not mistaken
HG Süd lost 54 000 men from July 5th to July 16th, or roughly 2,5 percent of all engaged forces.

Let us say Hitler had refused to call off the offensive. The depleted, and weakening German forces on the southern axis of attack - what were they to accomplish? [...] Though moot, this point should drive home the danger of perceiving this battle as anything but a complete strategic defeat. Some tactical successes[...] cannot change the dire state of affairs in this period for the Wehrmacht
I think thats a bit simplistic; although I certainly do not share the notion of a "lost victory", Nipe and Manstein (not in his memoirs) have both raised some very interesting points. The Wehrmacht would very well have been able to further disproportionally damage the RKKA via Roland etc, however, archieving the original aim of the operation by cutting off the Kursk salient was quite impossible and an exercise in futility from the very beginning.
Cheers,

Indiana Jones

05-17-2008, 03:41 PM

Nevermind.

GazB

05-18-2008, 12:55 AM

The soviet models you mention were all available in 41 but in rather limited numbers especially the best of the bunch the Yak-1 in addition they were all had various problems with fit and finish,

Fit and finish? It was war, not a fashion parade. And the Luftwaffe were superior in tactics at that time anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered even if the Soviet planes were initially fitted with radar.

many of them would soon rectified after they had the sort of experience that saw the British fit the Hurricane with thick armour,armour glass and self sealing tanks to go with sights and radios already superior to what was available to the Soviets .

No argument with the radios, but the rest was already part of the design. The Soviets weren't operating in a vaccuum. They had already had air combat in Spain, and the Far East and of course against the Finns. None of those opponents were second rate.

By 41 Hurricane production had changed to all metal wing enabling an all cannon armament if necessary in practice the Soviets tended to opt for a 50cal and a 20mm cannon in each wing(the 1st Hurricanes to arrive operated jointly by the RAF and Soviets operated with this weapon fit,not a lot of 303 in the USSR afterall)which would of easily confered a greater weight of shot than the aircraft you mention

The Russian fighters I mention did not have guns in the wings that flex during manouvering and had to be syncronised for range. They generally had a high rate of fire cannon firing through the propeller hub and one or two machineguns firing through the prop arc. Even the Soviet 30 cal MG had a rate of fire 3 times higher than a 303... and even the old Polikarpovs had 20mm cannon fitted to the later models.
BTW how many brand new Hurricanes do you think the Soviets got compared to older models?

There was a reason why only foreign imported aircraft were the only high performance fighters that had wing mounted guns in the Soviet Union...
Guns firing through the prop arc and the prop hub concentrated fire at all ranges. The design model the Soviet was that there was no point in putting lots of guns in a plane if it wasn't manouverable enough to get into a shooting position. This suited the ace... the expert. For the average pilot however lots of firepower would probably have been better.

Lokos

05-18-2008, 09:45 AM

I find that assertion quite flabbergasting. I can only presume you do not quite realize the extent of the Soviet defeat ? Prokhorovka must be described as a blunder of colossal proportions. On the 12th of July, the 5th GTA permanently lost at least 235 AFVs and 1500 men KIA/MIA (CAMO, Doc. 35, p.8) compared to a grand total of two Mark IVs, a Tiger and 97 German dead.

The loss of tanks and crews was quite unfortunate. But the 5th GTA slowed down the forces advancing along the southern axis. This was worth the destruction of an entire tank army (roughly two tank corps and a mechanized corps), however badly employed, tactically speaking. The intangibles, in this case, outweigh the tangibles. The successive engagements that largely nullified 5th GTA as a significant force garnered the Soviet reserves enough time to redeploy in successive defensive belts, and to echelon themselves across the projected axis of advance by the southern group of German forces. There was, as they say, no breakthrough. The Schwerpunkt had failed. The offensive had failed.

The 5th GTA was reconstituted rapidly following its engagements. The regrettable losses, as callous as this may be to state, were affordable.

does not make it any less of a disaster, as it goes entirely without saying that the Red Armies' tankers who were unnecessarily killed or horribly maimed could hardly afford it.

This is an argument appealing to emotion, which I generally don't tangle with in objective military analysis. How 'necessary' the losses were is a matter of circular reasoning. Could the 5th GTA been deployed in a way so as not to sustain catastrophic losses? Perhaps - maybe even likely so. But do the objectives of the historical deployment coincide with the developments entailed by an ahistorical deployment? How can we know, either way? We may speculate, surely, but this is not a point of significance, in reality. What happened is immutable. All we can extrapolate is context, course and result. STAVKA did not bemoan the losses of 5th GTA over an extended period of time. It was ground to a pulp, granted, but the high rate of loss was neither unprecedented, nor without peer in scale or significance.

What we do know is that the formation's reconstitution was simpler for the Soviets than the manifold failures of Zitadelle were for the Germans to cope with.

am not in disagreement with your general assessment, however, from the outset, neither Zitadelle nor the alternative operations Panther und Habicht were conceived as being strategically decisive maneuvers. As Hitler put it, instead of a "KO blow", he merely wanted to "dish out some light hooks".

These 'light hooks' were conceived as efforts to throw the Soviet summer offensives off course, yes? To disrupt timetables and deployments? To perhaps rip a gaping hole in Soviet deployments? To retain some measure of initiative? To regain some freedom of action? To me, these seem to be strategic concerns. The only way one can accept Kursk as anything but a decisive action, in this regard, is if we accept that the Germans expected to win the war defensively, and were satisfied with merely awaiting the onslaught. After Kursk, they were forced to do so, regardless. But, had Kursk succeeded, it seems highly unlikely that Hitler would have believed it to be anything else but a pivotal episode in the continued grapple on the Eastern Front.

When I speak of decisiveness, I of course do not mean that the war would have ended in German favor on the results of Kursk alone. But it is the sort of decisiveness some assign to the Battle of Stalingrad. A definitive remodulation of the strategic balance, opening up further opportunities, and altering the flow of the war. Kursk's strategic impact, I believe, followed on from Stalingrad's. It was the realization of Soviet offensive capability in the summer, and the - if you'll excuse the idealized language - death knell of odds-defying German offensive successes.

HG Süd lost 54 000 men from July 5th to July 16th, or roughly 2,5 percent of all engaged forces.

My mistake - the numbers were, as I said, off the top of my head.

The Wehrmacht would very well have been able to further disproportionally damage the RKKA via Roland etc, however, archieving the original aim of the operation by cutting off the Kursk salient was quite impossible and an exercise in futility from the very beginning.

How did Manstein and Nipe see the Kursk salient ending in a Kesselschlacht? What were they to link up with? What was supposed to protect their elongated flanks as they drove further into a prepared defensive cordon deeper than they believed existed? 3rd GTA and 4th GTA, which were used later for Operation Kutuzov, were available for commitment. So were a number of independent tank corps, 11th GA, 50th Army and other formations. These forces were available on 12 July, as the II SS PzK was winding down its operations against 5th GTA.

Certainly, the German forces arrayed could have done more damage to the Soviets, had the latter not forced the issue by beginning the counter-offensives at Belgorod-Kharkov and Orel. The aforementioned forces, however, had their opportunity to do that damage after all, as they were rapidly redeployed to deal with a looming threat posed by the commitment of available Soviet reserves in an offensive action that seemed ludicrous, given the extent of the damage the Germans had already believed they had inflicted on Soviet formations.

Regards,
Lokos

GazB

05-18-2008, 10:25 PM

Regarding Kursk the point was that they had all the time they needed to prepare, they had the best weapons available to them, Tigers, Panthers, Elephants...
They applied all their available resources to the job and they failed. It was not as if the Soviets were perfectly prepared either. They sent in their bombers to take out the Luftwaffe on the first morning but were detected by german radar so their initial attacks on german airfields were a failure... heavily loaded bombers are not able to compete well with fighters from the bases the bombers are attacking. Also the Soviets mistook the main thrust of the attack and assumed it would be from the north. Their forces thus were not well positioned for the attack.

As I said, the germans were in the best possible position to make the attack work and they failed. After that they were never in a position to mount such an attack in the East... they has lost the strategic initiative.

loganinkosovo

05-19-2008, 04:15 AM

Wow, just wow.......:cantbeli: you are utterly clueless.

Those nice trucks, which made up for the majority of your motor pool during WW2 allowed STAVKA strategic mobility, which in turn allowed those 43 and 44 offensives, by permitting soviet troops to be shifted from one front to another. Without those nice trucks, and locomotives, and flat cars, and hi octane grade fuel, etc etc, the war in the east would have lasted much longer

And every russian military truck after that was a copy of those same 1941 Studebakers..... LOL!

loganinkosovo

05-19-2008, 04:21 AM

Please, provide estimation for what time all that food was sufficient for the marching troops?

That rather shows that it's more of a man, not the machine.

Somehow I don't think he would have scored so high in a Brewster Buffalo.....

Billy No Mates

05-19-2008, 05:57 AM

Fit and finish? It was war, not a fashion parade. And the Luftwaffe were superior in tactics at that time anyway, so it wouldn't have mattered even if the Soviet planes were initially fitted with radar.

Fit and finish that affected the aerodynamic performance are rather more serious issues than fashion,VVS assesement on production LAGG 3 for instance was quite scathing in that regard(and many others),im not quite sure im following the 2nd part of that correctly on one hand youve been critical of the quality (or lack thereoff) of western equipment but on the other your saying the Luftwaffe was so superior it didnt really matter anyway? .

No argument with the radios, but the rest was already part of the design. The Soviets weren't operating in a vaccuum. They had already had air combat in Spain, and the Far East and of course against the Finns. None of those opponents were second rate.

The Soviets had learned some lessons in Spain and in common with others including the Luftwaffe they were often the wrong ones ie that lightly armed fast bombers could outpace fighter opposition,the Nomohan fighting against Japanese aircraft that themselves emphasised manouverability over all lead them to believe that biplane fighters should still form important part of their inventory .

The Russian fighters I mention did not have guns in the wings that flex during manouvering and had to be syncronised for range. They generally had a high rate of fire cannon firing through the propeller hub and one or two machineguns firing through the prop arc. Even the Soviet 30 cal MG had a rate of fire 3 times higher than a 303... and even the old Polikarpovs had 20mm cannon fitted to the later models.
BTW how many brand new Hurricanes do you think the Soviets got compared to older models?

The Hurricane was not an aircraft noted for wingflex and seems to have been regarded as a good gun platform by all that flew it(a fact born out by its ability to handle 40mm antitank guns in North Africa)their dont seem to have been many complaints about the P40 in that regard either,wing guns are simpler in many ways its harder to synchronise fire through the propeller arc than toe in the wing guns to converge at the desired range the Battle of Britain era Colt Browning had cyclic rate of 1200rpm so the Shkas were 25% to 50% faster rather than 200%(still a useful advantage Soviet aircraft guns were unarguably superior to their western equivalents),by late 41 i would of thought early mark Hurricanes would only of been used at OTUs and a few soldiering on the Middle and Far East .

There was a reason why only foreign imported aircraft were the only high performance fighters that had wing mounted guns in the Soviet Union...
Guns firing through the prop arc and the prop hub concentrated fire at all ranges. The design model the Soviet was that there was no point in putting lots of guns in a plane if it wasn't manouverable enough to get into a shooting position. This suited the ace... the expert. For the average pilot however lots of firepower would probably have been better.

Thats probably true though early LAGGs had them they were ommited to save weight,as did Polikarpovs preproduction sucessor to the I-16 which sadly never got beyond that despite glowing reports from those that got to use it .

GazB

05-19-2008, 07:55 AM

Somehow I don't think he would have scored so high in a Brewster Buffalo.....

I think the Finns proved that it was capable enough if handled well.

And every russian military truck after that was a copy of those same 1941 Studebakers..... LOL!

Rubbish. The Soviets licence produced a range of US truck models before and during and after the war. Obviously early on they paid for the licence to make them and perhaps may have neglected to pay after the war, but there were plenty of things they bought legally and had the right to produce. The DC-3 for example was licence produced and they changed several parts of the design to make it easier for them to make. Christies suspension for light tanks was bought and was used in the BT series of light fast tanks. As the tanks got heavier however the suspension needed modification, when it got to the suspension of the T-34 the christie design was barely recognisable, but its ancestry still showed, as it did through later British designs of the War period too.

Indiana Jones

05-20-2008, 07:53 PM

The loss of tanks and crews was quite unfortunate. But the 5th GTA slowed down the forces advancing along the southern axis. This was worth the destruction of an entire tank army (roughly two tank corps and a mechanized corps), however badly employed, tactically speaking. The intangibles, in this case, outweigh the tangibles. The successive engagements that largely nullified 5th GTA as a significant force garnered the Soviet reserves enough time to redeploy in successive defensive belts, and to echelon themselves across the projected axis of advance by the southern group of German forces. There was, as they say, no breakthrough. The Schwerpunkt had failed. The offensive had failed.

A fairly common misperception, if you do not mind me saying. Prokhorovka as an engagement does not even feature prominently in the German documentation, and there is no indication whatsoever that it did stall the Germans outside the timeframe of the battle itself. As a matter of fact, Leibstandarte pursued the remnants of 5th GTA beyond the Soviet jump-off positions immediately after the main clash. The flank attack by the 1th TA on the other hand did create a local crisis. Anyways, the sources clearly show that Soviet resistance played a lesser role in the eventual German decision to abandon the offensive than did the Allied invasion of Sicily.

The 5th GTA was reconstituted rapidly following its engagements. The regrettable losses, as callous as this may be to state, were affordable.

I am very much in agreement that under grand strategic premises they were affordable, even though they losses deprived STAVKA of a valuable manuever element, but this still does nothing to mitigate their lack of necessity. There was just no justifiable trade-off, so to speak.

This is an argument appealing to emotion, which I generally don't tangle with in objective military analysis.
Incidents like these which betray a complete disregard for all basics tenets of military science (and art, for those who prefer the German approach) possess a significance beyond their material impact, that while impossible to accurately gauge or quantify, is a very concrete factor and might in accumulation seriously decrease overall fighting effectiveness of any given army.

These 'light hooks' were conceived as efforts to throw the Soviet summer offensives off course, yes? To disrupt timetables and deployments? To perhaps rip a gaping hole in Soviet deployments? To retain some measure of initiative? To regain some freedom of action? To me, these seem to be strategic concerns. The only way one can accept Kursk as anything but a decisive action, in this regard, is if we accept that the Germans expected to win the war defensively, and were satisfied with merely awaiting the onslaught.When I speak of decisiveness, I of course do not mean that the war would have ended in German favor on the results of Kursk alone. But it is the sort of decisiveness some assign to the Battle of Stalingrad. A definitive remodulation of the strategic balance, opening up further opportunities, and altering the flow of the war. Kursk's strategic impact, I believe, followed on from Stalingrad's. It was the realization of Soviet offensive capability in the summer, and the - if you'll excuse the idealized language - death knell of odds-defying German offensive successes.
I agree to a degree. However, I do not consider Zitadelle the cause, but rather the symptom of the already irreversibly altered situation, as it had in hindsight little chance of decisive success in the first place. The basis of Hitlers comparison were of course Barbarossa, and Blau respectively. As we know from several surviving files of strategic meetings, Hitler, until late 1944, maintained the illusion that he (and the he is important, as he was running the show) would able to more or less consolidate the situation in the east until the development in the other theaters afforded him with an opportunity to resume large-scale, strategic offensive operations. However, in order to preserve that option of genuinely offensive action he adopted several policies that would prove infinitely damaging to the German war effort, such as the folly of defending Feste Plätze, defending Kurland etc. This attitude also becomes manifest elsewhere, as ie. in his insistence when confronted by von Manstein and others that "to operate means to take flight" and so on.
How did Manstein and Nipe see the Kursk salient ending in a Kesselschlacht? What were they to link up with? What was supposed to protect their elongated flanks as they drove further into a prepared defensive cordon deeper than they believed existed? 3rd GTA and 4th GTA, which were used later for Operation Kutuzov, were available for commitment. So were a number of independent tank corps, 11th GA, 50th Army and other formations. These forces were available on 12 July, as the II SS PzK was winding down its operations against 5th GTA.

It was not a Cannae he was after at all. Contrary to public perception Manstein expressis verbis did not believe he could, or even should, cut off the entire salient. Instead he proposed shifting the 2.SS-Panzerkorps' axis of advance from the North to the South- East, initially roughly along the Psel, and to deploy his reserves in the shape of the XXIV. Panzerkorps (consisting of Wiking and the 17. and 23. PzDivs.) to the South in order to counteract any Soviet attempt to disrupt the 2. SS-Panzerkorps' advance from the East. As a matter of fact, this plan was partially executed (sans the additional formations of course) against an explicit order by Hitler and succeeded in effectively destroying the Soviet 69th Army. Had the operation been fully realised, it is very likely that the German armoured spearhead would have immediately met the 4th GTC and the 1th MC in meeting engagement, with fairly predictable results.
Cheers,

Lokos

05-21-2008, 03:50 AM

A fairly common misperception, if you do not mind me saying. Anyways, the sources clearly show that Soviet resistance played a lesser role in the eventual German decision to abandon the offensive than did the Allied invasion of Sicily.

That's very interesting. I say that, because it's also obvious that they were utterly unprepared for Kharkov-Belgorod and Orel. They had not predicted the rapidity or the force of the Soviet response. We arrive at a logical circularity: was the offensive stopped because of the developments in Sicily, or was it stopped because the operation itself was deemed a failure, at this point, and Sicily seemed a good enough reason to call it off? Which was the chicken, and which the egg? Would it have been stopped had the operation brought about the desired Kesselschlacht? If the northern axis was not stopped inside the Soviet tactical zone? Why did Hitler cancel the operation on the 17th, when the SS PzK would take months to transfer to the Italian theater in their entirety (thereby not being able to affect the tactical outcome there, in any case)? Why did only 1st SS PzD LAH end up transferring? Why did Sicily take a sudden backseat?

Von Manstein countered Hitler's argument on the 12th at Wolfsschanze by stating that Zitadelle was on the verge of a German victory. I ask; how so? Barely into the third defensive belt (of five; six if we include the State Defense Belt), with lengthening flanks, how were the Germans to 'win' the Battle of Kursk, as they had conceived it? The axis of advance was aimed north-north-east. You say that cutting off the salient was not Manstein's intention at all, and that he proposed to shift the axis of attack south-south-east? But of course; he had no understanding of the reserves arrayed along that axis. It is telling that his vaunted armored fist was soon on the back foot, as the Soviets launched their counteroffensive.

I am not comfortable with a relegation of the Soviet defensive effort to a secondary importance in the ending of the German offensive. Though Sicily was invaded on the 9/10th, Hitler waited until the 12th to even announce his intention to call off Zitadelle. If we look at it from a common sensical perspective, we can derive one simple truth: he was waiting to see how the offensive developed. The writing on the wall was the halting of the northern group of forces barely out of their jump-off points. Tactical successes on the part of the southern group of forces did not a successful summer offensive make. That's why they were ordered back to the 4th July positions on the 15th.

Here's a quick and dirty summation of the military reality behind Manstein's assertions:

Finally, Nipe identifies the XXIV Panzer Corps as an "uncommitted reserve" that Manstein could have used to force the attack forward, at least on the south face. This is only technically true. The XXIV Panzer Corps, made up of the 17th, 23rd, and SS-Wiking Panzer divisions was theoretically available as a reserve, to be used once a breakthrough had been achieved. This force was not useable for two reasons. First, no operational breakthrough had actually been achieved. Due to the depth and flexibility of the Soviet defenses, the German attack never achieved anything close to operational maneuver, despite the fact that it steadily moved forward on the south flank. There simply was no space to commit the XXIV Panzer Corps. Second, the Soviet attacks to the south of the Kursk salient, along the Mius river, required the commitment of this reserve. As part of the overall Soviet operational plan for the Summer of 1943, the Red Army would absorb the (obvious) German attack while simultaneously launching its own attacks against the 2nd Army (to the left and behind the 9th Army on the north face) and to the south of Kharkov (to outflank the 4th Panzer Army and Army Group Kempf). Given that the German lines had been stripped to provide reinforcements for CITADEL, the XXIV Panzer Corps was committed to blunt these southern attacks. As armored units were pulled out of CITADEL, they too were committed in a defensive role along the Mius. Had CITADEL been continued with the commitment of the XXIV Panzer Corps, the German lines along the Mius would almost certainly have been decisively penetrated, leading to operational disaster for the Germans. As it was, the Soviet attacks still forced the Germans out of the Ukraine, even with the use of Panzer forces on the defensive.

From: Kursk: Myths and Reality, by Michael J. Licari

There was just no justifiable trade-off, so to speak.

As I've said, the opportunity to redeploy retreating forces and operational reserves is a trade-off in an of itself - though the employment of 5th GTA was poor.

Incidents like these which betray a complete disregard for all basics tenets of military science (and art, for those who prefer the German approach)

A complete disregard for all basic tenets of military science? That's quite harsh, considering the circumstances, the technical advantages enjoyed by the Germans, the fact that half of the armored corps of the 5th GTA was composed of light tanks and that the deployment was forced on them by the maturation of the German offensive effort. Though it was no feat of tactical brilliance, the employment of the 5th GTA was not what you describe above.

I agree to a degree. However, I do not consider Zitadelle the cause, but rather the symptom of the already irreversibly altered situation, as it had in hindsight little chance of decisive success in the first place.

Kursk was the officiating stamp on the passing of the initiative to the Soviets. I, of course, agree that it did not, in and of itself, alter an already lopsided balance.

However, in order to preserve that option of genuinely offensive action he adopted several policies that would prove infinitely damaging to the German war effort, such as the folly of defending Feste Plätze, defending Kurland etc. This attitude also becomes manifest elsewhere, as ie. in his insistence when confronted by von Manstein and others that "to operate means to take flight" and so on.

We are not in disagreement, in this sense at least.

Lokos

Indiana Jones

05-24-2008, 09:55 PM

That's very interesting. I say that, because it's also obvious that they were utterly unprepared for Kharkov-Belgorod and Orel. They had not predicted the rapidity or the force of the Soviet response. We arrive at a logical circularity: was the offensive stopped because of the developments in Sicily, or was it stopped because the operation itself was deemed a failure, at this point, and Sicily seemed a good enough reason to call it off?
On the basis of what we know about the considerations at both OKW, OKH and the Wolfsschanze we can actually say with a large degree of certainty that the Invasion of Sicily did constitute the primary reason for the untimely cessation of the offensive. Since you cannot acess the primary sources, perhaps you can get a hold of Warlimont: im Hauptquartier..., or Hitlers Lagebesprechungen, which, If I remember correctly, cover this topic in some detail.

I am not comfortable with a relegation of the Soviet defensive effort to a secondary importance in the ending of the German offensive. Though Sicily was invaded on the 9/10th, Hitler waited until the 12th to even announce his intention to call off Zitadelle. If we look at it from a common sensical perspective, we can derive one simple truth: he was waiting to see how the offensive developed.
We know that Hitler was on high alert earlier on, and had made it evidently clear that any successfull invasion of Sicily would mean the immediate end of the offensive. As Kielmansegg noted, everybody at OKH was fully aware of that fact, even though the frontline officers were not. However, after having been reassured by Kesselrings optimistic prognosis on the defence of Sicily (which of course, turned out to be fairly delusional in the light of the Italian collapse) Hitler abstained from calling off the operation at once, but the decision had been made nevertheless. Hitlers considerations were not merely dictated by the requirements of the military situation ( as you certainly know they often enough ran downright contrary to them, but that is a different discussion), but also by political thoughts, such as the alleged necessity of strenghtening Italian resolve by what should have been perceived as a definite commitment.

You say that cutting off the salient was not Manstein's intention at all, and that he proposed to shift the axis of attack south-south-east? But of course; he had no understanding of the reserves arrayed along that axis. It is telling that his vaunted armored fist was soon on the back foot, as the Soviets launched their counteroffensive.
Licari:
As armored units were pulled out of CITADEL, they too were committed in a defensive role along the Mius. Had CITADEL been continued with the commitment of the XXIV Panzer Corps, the German lines along the Mius would almost certainly have been decisively penetrated, leading to operational disaster for the Germans.

That Manstein might or might not have had an understanding of the magnitude of Soviet reserves arrayed against him is of no bearing to the question. However, whether justifiably so or not, Manstein and OKH were actually not too worried of Soviet armoured reserves; as a matter of fact they even intended to draw them into a head-on confrontation (where the superior competence, leadership and the partial technological advantage of the Panzerwaffe was most telling), in order to dictate the engagement. What Licari has failed to understand is that Roland actually was not merely conceived as an exploitation operation, but also as an attempt at prematurely blunting the RKKAs strategic offensive capabilities, that is, to "fight the battle of the Mius at Kursk", thus taking the steam out of the inevitable Soviet riposte.
As previously stated, OKH, despairing over Hitlers intransigence, even tried to present him with a fait accompli by initially mopping up the remnants of the Soviet formations in the East before they were called off on the 16th.

As I've said, the opportunity to redeploy retreating forces and operational reserves is a trade-off in an of itself - though the employment of 5th GTA was poor.

I do not see how Prokhorovka facilitated any such deployments ? It certainly did not significantly impede German movement.

A complete disregard for all basic tenets of military science? [...] Though it was no feat of tactical brilliance, the employment of the 5th GTA was not what you describe above
Then we will have to disagree. Regardless of semantics, it was a stark failure in virtually all respects, communication, reconnaissance , leadership, etc., and resulted in one of the most lopsided, if not the most lopsided large engagement in 20th century warfare. Abovementioned factors, such as the German technical advantages etc. (which pale in comparison to the Soviet numerical superiority) do not make the Soviet effort at Prokhorovka any less a sacrilege to military science-au contraire, in fact.
All the best,

Lokos

05-25-2008, 05:25 AM

On the basis of what we know about the considerations at both OKW, OKH and the Wolfsschanze we can actually say with a large degree of certainty that the Invasion of Sicily did constitute the primary reason for the untimely cessation of the offensive.

Then why did the offensive only end officially on the 17th? Why did he allow it an extra week, including the period of the 10-12 July that was thought decisive in the penetration operation, if Sicily was the primary concern? And why was only a materially depleted 1st SS PzD LAH eventually transferred? Why did Hitler call a halt to an offensive effort that used forces which could not reach the Sicilian theater until well after developments there had already culminated? Why did the bulk of the forces arrayed against the southern flank of the salient (ostensibly earmarked to reinforce defensive operations in Italy), remain, well before the 2 August jump-off for the Soviet Belgorod-Kharkov offensive?

However, after having been reassured by Kesselrings optimistic prognosis on the defence of Sicily (which of course, turned out to be fairly delusional in the light of the Italian collapse) Hitler abstained from calling off the operation at once, but the decision had been made nevertheless.

All good and well, but very little of the force earmarked for Italy was transferred, even after the offensive was ultimately called off. This seems to go against the alleged military immediacy of the Sicilian defensive effort. If the Kursk operation had proceeded more successfully, would Hitler have acted the same way? Though the question is academic, it raises a valid objection to the notion that Zitadelle was doomed the moment the Sicilian operation began. What we know is that, on the 7th, the northern group of forces was no longer able to fight its way through the Soviet tactical zone. On the 12th, the southern group encountered a massive Soviet reserve, with serious uncertainty regarding the extent of remaining reserves, and concerns arising regarding the unsteady flanks of the southern group of forces. Look at that situation through the eyes of someone who didn't know the end result.

As previously stated, OKH, despairing over Hitlers intransigence, even tried to present him with a fait accompli by initially mopping up the remnants of the Soviet formations in the East before they were called off on the 16th.

A fait accompli was already developing in the north, where the Soviets had begun a highly damaging and potentially disastrous counter-offensive effort - tactical successes against the weakened 69th Army pale in comparison. Zitadelle was given an additional five days after Hitler announced the intention to 'temporarily' call it off to produce a decisive penetration of the Soviet defensive cordon. This did not occur. The offensive had failed, and was written off. It seems simple enough, prima facie.

What Licari has failed to understand is that Roland actually was not merely conceived as an exploitation operation, but also as an attempt at prematurely blunting the RKKAs strategic offensive capabilities, that is, to "fight the battle of the Mius at Kursk", thus taking the steam out of the inevitable Soviet riposte.

So, in effect, what you're saying is that Manstein's call to conduct a follow-on World War Two armored Verdun at Kursk made sense, despite the fact that he admittedly had no idea of the extent of Soviet reserves arrayed against him? It's an interesting point of view, if one that does not take into account operational realities. Not only would Manstein have an extraordinarily limited reserve to commit to such an attempt to eviscerate the Soviet offensive reserve, he would be 'swinging blindly' against formations of unknown strength, and would further have to reorient and remodulate his deployments; no mean feat given the centralized logistical lifeline of the southern group of forces. At the same time, he would be tasked with protecting the lengthening vulnerable flanks of the maneuver group itself and its support forces.

To me, that's unrealistic, even given the strengths of the Panzerwaffe.

I do not see how Prokhorovka facilitated any such deployments ? It certainly did not significantly impede German movement.

It bought redeploying forces a day? Did the German forces advance significantly in the aftermath of Prokhorovka?

Then we will have to disagree. Regardless of semantics, it was a stark failure in virtually all respects, communication, reconnaissance , leadership, etc., and resulted in one of the most lopsided, if not the most lopsided large engagement in 20th century warfare.

We will agree to disagree.

Lokos

Indiana Jones

05-26-2008, 08:46 PM

Then why did the offensive only end officially on the 17th?
The offensive officially ended on the 16th. The decision reached the 4. Panzerarmee on the morning of the 17th. I nitpick because the timeline is somewhat important here, as I will develop later.

Why did he allow it an extra week, including the period of the 10-12 July that was thought decisive in the penetration operation, if Sicily was the primary concern?
Because Manstein (and OKH) managed to wrest some concessions from Hitler; He successfully argued that the 2. SS-Panzerkorps would have to move to the South East in order to disentangle itself from the opposition in the first place.

And why was only a materially depleted 1st SS PzD LAH eventually transferred? Why did Hitler call a halt to an offensive effort that used forces which could not reach the Sicilian theater until well after developments there had already culminated? Why did the bulk of the forces arrayed against the southern flank of the salient (ostensibly earmarked to reinforce defensive operations in Italy), remain, well before the 2 August jump-off for the Soviet Belgorod-Kharkov offensive?

At the time the 2.SS-Panzerkorps were to be initially disengaged, (the 17th) the situation had already fundamentally changed with the Soviet counterstroke at the Mius. In general, it would be misleading to argue from an ex-post perspective that Hitlers decision to call of the offensive on the 12th was not primarily fueled by the unfolding situation in Italy because of his incosistent decisionmaking later on, or his erratic strategic rationale. What we know of the conferences is not particularly ambiguous.

Look at that situation through the eyes of someone who didn't know the end result.[...]So, in effect, what you're saying is that Manstein's call to conduct a follow-on World War Two armored Verdun at Kursk made sense, despite the fact that he admittedly had no idea of the extent of Soviet reserves arrayed against him?

To which I would retort that the historical profession should indeed consider what Manstein knew (or where he was misinformed) about the Soviet situation from FHO and elsewhere and judge the merits of his plan on the basis of these findings; See the conversation at the Führerhauptquartier.
And just as an aperitif: Hitler repeatedly remarked that if he would have had any idea of the extent of the RKKAs material strength, he would have never set the Ostheer in motion in the first place. Does that really stigmatize Barbarossa as a poorly conceived operation ? You will forgive me if I somewhat paraphrase another eminent military authority: You go to war with the intel you have, not with the intel you want. If we are to evaluate any given historical military enterprise on its feasibility as it presented itself to the persons in question, we have to do it with these restrictions in mind.

It bought redeploying forces a day? Did the German forces advance significantly in the aftermath of Prokhorovka?
I have to repeat: Prokhorovka did not stall the German advance at all. It should also be considered that the 5th GTA was not engaged in order to facilitate Soviet redeployment, but as part of a large scale attempt to pinch off and destroy the German attack corridor in combination with attacks by 1st TA from the West and 6th GA from the north.
If you have a map of the battle at hand you can see that the German forces still did make considerable territorial gains after the 12th, just not to the north, as this had been expressis verbis forbidden by Hitler.
Cheers

Lokos

05-27-2008, 09:57 AM

The offensive officially ended on the 16th. The decision reached the 4. Panzerarmee on the morning of the 17th. I nitpick because the timeline is somewhat important here, as I will develop later.

All good, my mistake.

At the time the 2.SS-Panzerkorps were to be initially disengaged, (the 17th) the situation had already fundamentally changed with the Soviet counterstroke at the Mius. In general, it would be misleading to argue from an ex-post perspective that Hitlers decision to call of the offensive on the 12th was not primarily fueled by the unfolding situation in Italy because of his incosistent decisionmaking later on, or his erratic strategic rationale. What we know of the conferences is not particularly ambiguous.

The failure of the northern axis group of forces - by the 10th - makes no difference, then? Had they continued to advance with the same rapidity and success as the southern pincer, Hitler would have still called off an offensive careening into success due to the Sicily invasion? That's just disingenuous. Had the offensive been going better, it would have been allowed to develop. Ergo, Soviet resistance did it in - not the Sicilian invasion. The pinching off of the salient was a concept done and dusted by the 10th - incidentally, roughly the same date of the Sicily invasion. Which was the major factor, then? Hitler called off the offensive on the same day that the southern group of forces met the better parts of two fresh tank corps that were hitherto unknowns, and by that time 9th Army was no longer operating to break out of the Soviet tactical zone.

What we are facing is an issue of causation, clearly. You seem to be completely concentrating on the 2. SS PzK's very real successes at Kursk and the Sicilian invasion, implying that there was no failure to speak of that could distance Hitler from the operation, aside from the developments in Italy. But that's not true. By the 12th, the northern pincer had already been stopped in its tracks. The German practice of developing cauldron battles required convergent pincer movements. The operation had already failed by the 12th.

and judge the merits of his plan on the basis of these findings

I'm not judging his plan on its theoretical qualities, or the basis of its conception. I'm saying that Kursk was no 'Lost Victory' - as you surely agree. His plan's potential for actual success was practically nil. Irrespective of what he knew of Soviet strengths. Which, likely, was not a great deal.

Does that really stigmatize Barbarossa as a poorly conceived operation ?

No, it doesn't. In the same way that Zitadelle looked a very promising, incisive strategic envelopment prior to its execution. But we know what was deployed and where. Manstein's planning was done with all the operational skill in the world; and it would still have failed. Therefore, pointing to Roland and saying 'Why, yes, look here, there was a plan that could have brought further disproportionate damage to the Soviets at little expense' is flabbergasting. He didn't know what he was facing when the plan was formulated. It's somewhat foolhardy to say 'it doesn't matter, the skill of the Panzerwaffe made them invincible to Soviet armor'. It's just not true.

If he had further engaged his forces, and had the opportunity to further still stretch the operational flanks of the southern group of forces, the Soviet breach, very likely, would have been far more severe than it was. Whichever way we slice it, the vast, vast majority of the German concentration at Kursk was soon tactically redeployed to stop the RKKA's counter-offensives from the 12th in the north, and from 3rd August in the south. These counter-offensives were, for the most part, successful. This should say everything that needs to be said about the potential for the decisive attrition of Soviet armor by Roland.

I have to repeat: Prokhorovka did not stall the German advance at all. It should also be considered that the 5th GTA was not engaged in order to facilitate Soviet redeployment,

The battle started at 9:30am and finished in the evening. That's at least nine hours spent either not advancing, advancing tactically or regaining lost ground. And since tanks and men do not work around the clock (if they are to keep running), the time open for advances - especially by armor - is a very well defined window. Refer to the memoirs of tank commanders about how much they enjoy rapid night advances on no sleep from the previous day.

But that's not really the point. The 5th GTA stalled the German advance.

Regardless of what it was engaged to do at Prokhorovka, it did just that. It is not as if the 5th GTA simply walked into German armor that had already halted its advance. If anything, this was an operational meeting engagement. After that engagement, II SS PzK halted its advance. If Manstein was hoping to make an argument to charge headlong with his paltry reserve based on a lack of resistance into an unknown force concentration (and totally ignorant of the extensive Soviet defensive network), it seems that his credibility would take a steep dive after an engagement with two full strength tank corps, no matter how successful. Especially as the Soviet counteroffensive had just begun, and its scale seemed indefinite.

If you have a map of the battle at hand you can see that the German forces still did make considerable territorial gains after the 12th,

When you say 'considerable', I can only suppose you mean 'tactical'.

Lokos

Indiana Jones

06-03-2008, 07:38 PM

Sorry, I could not adress this any earlier.

The failure of the northern axis group of forces - by the 10th - makes no difference, then?[...]What we are facing is an issue of causation, clearly.
I think we are not so much facing an issue of causation, but rather one of severity. We are not in disagreement at all that the offensive might have been continued had it been a spectacular success, however this is besides the point. As we know, Hitler stated his concerns over the situation in Sicily and its eventual ramifications before, during, and after the operation, and repeatedly and very eplicitly made clear what ultimately compelled him to end Zitadelle. This is distinctly supported by contextual evidence from OKH. I am under the impression that you, having the contemporary "bird-eye" perspective, are attributing Hitler with a degree of strategic military foresight and sobriety that is not only not correlated by his very statements on the matter, but was in contrast also markedly absent in what some have called the "greatest concentration of military talent" of the 20th century, alias the German general staff in the guise of OKH, who were almost to a man convinced that Hitler prematurely called off a most promising opportunity to deplete the Soviet reserves. This is in the light of what is known today about the disparity in forces no doubt an initially most counterintuitive standpoint, but we should resist the "Delbrückian temptation" of ignoring what the sources tell us about historical perceptions for the sake of "common sense", whatever that may be. The question, in the end, revolves about Hitlers perceptions. "A picture is a fact."

'Why, yes, look here, there was a plan that could have brought further disproportionate damage to the Soviets at little expense' is flabbergasting. He didn't know what he was facing when the plan was formulated.
At the very least, the 4th GTC/1th MC with their 400 vehicles would have very likely been quickly engaged without the benefit of considerable fortifications had the plan been realised, and I think there is little reason to see them fare much better than their comrades at Prokhorovka.

The battle started at 9:30am and finished in the evening
As far as I know, the attack was initiated at 7:30 local/8:30 Moscow time ? Are you using German time as a reference ?

That's at least nine hours spent either not advancing, advancing tactically or regaining lost ground.[...] It is not as if the 5th GTA simply walked into German armor that had already halted its advance. If anything, this was an operational meeting engagement.
As I pointed out earlier the Germans did gain ground during the course of the battle. In addition, the German tankers were for the most part soundly asleep when the battle started on Hill 252. The general point is technically valid though. However, I still see the trade-off hardly justified. As you have remarked on yourself, the Soviet defence was still arrayed in considerable depth. The destruction of the 5thGTA did not bring about any gain that might not have been accomplished at a vastly lesser cost. Stalin was apparently aware of that, which might be one prominent reason why Rotmistrov embellished his units' alleged exploits to the degree he did.

These counter-offensives were, for the most part, successful.
Not to nitpick, but a fairly mixed bag, by all accounts. I recall Glantz referring to Kutuzov as "spectacularly unsuccessfull", and when considering the disparity in forces, the Soviet losses, and the lack of much operational success in comparison to the capture of Orel, I tend to concur.

When you say 'considerable', I can only suppose you mean 'tactical'.

Quite right. However, my remark was made in reference to- and in the context of the earlier territorial gains during Zitadelle which were quite "tactical" themselves.

All the best,

Lokos

06-04-2008, 08:40 AM

We are at an impasse. Our debate has boiled down to one of us making an assertion, the other retorting, the former reasserting the same assertion, and then the latter reciprocating. It's circular and time-wasting. If you see it fit to believe that the operational failure of Zitadelle by the 10th (including a very slow contested advance on the southern axis) had nothing to do with Hitler's decision to call off the offensive so as to transfer an SS PzK to Sicily even though the units were not even out of the tactical zone before that plan was scrapped, so be it. I have little interest in changing your mind. You've come to a conclusion based on certain evidence, and I've come to another based on the same. As far as I'm concerned, there's not much else to discuss.

At the very least, the 4th GTC/1th MC with their 400 vehicles would have very likely been quickly engaged without the benefit of considerable fortifications had the plan been realised, and I think there is little reason to see them fare much better than their comrades at Prokhorovka.

Since Prokhorovka was possibly the most lopsided armored engagement of the war outside of the early days of Barbarossa, I don't see why you're removing it from its context and applying the exception as a rule. Soviet armored units did not fare nearly as badly when they faced the very same German formations present on the 12th elsewhere in subsequent weeks. But, as I said, this has all been covered before in previous posts.

and when considering the disparity in forces, the Soviet losses, and the lack of much operational success in comparison to the capture of Orel, I tend to concur.

For a spectacularly unsuccessful pair of counteroffensives, they gained a great deal of territory, and caused significant damage to German units present. This, even though many of the formations involved were in active combat only days previous to the jump-off. Though I do not hold 1943 as a year of great Soviet successes, the marked improvement of the Soviet military institution was obvious to all involved. The fruits of the 1943 campaign would ripen in the summer of 1944.

But, yes, I have no great wish to continue this any further. Many thousands of words written, for very little benefit, yes? Always great debating with you, though.

Lokos

Indiana Jones

06-04-2008, 03:06 PM

I concur that this controversy has exhausted itself; we shall agree to disagree. I look forward to another debate.
Cheers

johanness

06-04-2008, 04:21 PM

Thanks a lot for both of you, Gentlemen.

This was a very intersting and fair dispute, I really enjoyed to read.

Loke-Gao-Zhu

06-05-2008, 02:19 AM

Thanks a lot for both of you, Gentlemen.

This was a very intersting and fair dispute, I really enjoyed to read.

I agree, the debates and informations in this thread are a gold mine of knowledge.

Posting this thread seems to be a good investment overall

gaijinsamurai

06-05-2008, 06:51 AM

One of your better contributions, Loke!

StalinOrgel

10-06-2008, 12:58 PM

On the basis of what we know about the considerations at both OKW, OKH and the Wolfsschanze we can actually say with a large degree of certainty that the Invasion of Sicily did constitute the primary reason for the untimely cessation of the offensive....

....and redeployment of troops....where? To the other sectors of Eastern Front! For example GD was transfered from southern face to the North to hold Soviet offensive on Orel. SS Panzer-corps was to fight on the south on Mius.

Connaught Ranger

12-14-2009, 12:20 PM

Examples of exported Western items in Soviet Military use.

Pictures of Soviet Troops in Bucharest, Romania 1944.

Lurv the U.S Harley dudski in Photo #C015 rofl

British Bren Gun Carrier, Photo #C063

U.S. Amphibious Jeeps, Photo #C083

U.S. G M C Truck (?) Photo #C074

British Bedford TruckPhoto #C061

Connaught Ranger.:)

L J

12-16-2009, 04:42 AM

I have not followed the whole thread,but I should want to return to the original question :was the western help crucial ? (I think it is referring to Lend-Lease)
my answer :no (if crucial means decisive),but it was important .
why not crucial:because,I think most people are underrating the scale of fighting in the east and the enormous supply it required .Most people have also a wrong picture of the fighting :it was a war between two mainly not motorised armies and the importance od mobile operations was very limited .Some 7 % of the Russian strength in 1944 (operational forces and Stavka reserve) belonged to the mobile forces and I don't think it was much different for the Germans .
Thus the importance of the Studebakers is much overrated .
The war in the East was mainly a war of attrition .

MZKT

12-19-2009, 02:31 PM

The main point LL can't be regarded as decisive is the fact that the vast majority of it arrived only after the decisive battles at Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk. While 1945 30% of red armies trucks were of LL-origin, in 1941-43 those amounts were in single digit percentage. During the battle of Moscow LL wasn't a factor at all.

However LL significantly shortended the war since without it the soviet advance in the years 44-45 would be much slower. Without the Studebakers the Red army would reach Berlin maybe only end of 1945 (and germans would have more forces available for the western front), so the war would last longer and create more casualties on all sides (maybe till the A-bomb dropped on Berlin instead of Hiroshima)

L J

12-20-2009, 03:28 AM

Freddys

12-20-2009, 01:24 PM

CaptMorgan68

12-20-2009, 01:31 PM

Connaught Ranger

12-20-2009, 01:57 PM

what is the joke ?

If you have to ask. . . . . :roll:

Violet Fashion by Mindy

12-20-2009, 04:08 PM

without those the only thing that would have changed would be the pace of Red Army's march towards Berlin.. epic fail

Without the transport the Germans may have had time to complete the Panther-Wotan Line and to turn the Eastern Front mobile warfare to static trench warfare.

Sada

12-20-2009, 04:45 PM

CaptMorgan68

12-20-2009, 05:41 PM

This kind of threads are always enterteining and illustrative, lots of datas and comparative figures but only a stupid man could ignore the fact that without the will of soviet peoples it would have been impossible defeating the nazis, yes as always they had 2000km to ran backwards and the winter and so...but sustaining such horrendous casualties and the hunger that the rearguard had to suffer it´s unimaginable for some of the western allied, because it´s a decission that civil people take: to fight with all consequences or giving up, as simply as that, history shows us lot of examples in this and other conflicts of peoples that undertake the fight and others that prefer giving up and suffering the boot of the winner but having their cities preserved. So lot of Hurricanes and american trucks to the russians but it was only after Ivan accepted the fight and smashed the nose of Hitler in Moscow and stopped him in Leningrad with their own weapons.

precisely.. all the throwing numbers and pictures around is just silly.. the machinery means nothing without the heroic effort by men and women who made the victory over Nazi Germany possible.. it was the decision of the soviet people to hold through and keep on fighting despite their bloodthirsty leaders, despite all the hardships they had to endure prior to and during the WW2... and any denial of that is as disgusting as the fact that communist leaders of Soviet Union hijacked the heroic effort of its people for purposes of propaganda after the war ended... strip the propaganda away and it was the Russians, Ukrainians, Belorussians, Jews, Georgians, Armenians, among others that broke the Nazi's back... they were the first to break the Germans psychologically.. until Moscow and Stalingrad the German army was considered invincible.. And that's a fact.. Read the allied press from the period and you will learn that the attitudes towards the Red Army were very different back then... No one is denying the contribution of the allies top the war effort but give the Red Army soldier and those who supported him in the rear the due respect

CaptMorgan68

12-20-2009, 05:52 PM

Without the transport the Germans may have had time to complete the Panther-Wotan Line and to turn the Eastern Front mobile warfare to static trench warfare.

Red Army proved on many occasions to be capable of breaking through the German's defenses.. Not having the mobility with lend lease trucks would have slowed them down.. But you have to recognize that after the Stalingrad the Red Army was driven to throw the Nazis all the way back to Berlin and there was no stopping that... As long as the rear was producing shells tanks planes in sufficient numbers there was no way Germans could regain any initiative at that point in the game... Barbarossa was a blunder... There were subjective factors that helped the Soviet Union but Hitler should have done some homework on risk analysis before attempting the invasion....

Now throw some more numbers at me to prove me wrong.. I wonder though about the true motives behind people's desire to take away from Red Army's contribution to the allied victory in WW2...

CaptMorgan68

12-20-2009, 05:55 PM

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wTtHcqXjQrA

anyways that's the only way to go when it comes to nazis

sepheronx

12-20-2009, 06:00 PM

Just as much as west involvement in aiding Russia from Napoleon's army? No, I don't think it was that crucial.

Snoshi

12-20-2009, 06:02 PM

Just as much as west involvement in aiding Russia from Napoleon's army? No, I don't think it was that crucial.

LOL wut? :roll::roll:

But what about Mongols? No western aid led to the Mongolian conquest of Russia!!!11

CaptMorgan68

12-20-2009, 06:11 PM

LOL wut? :roll::roll:

But what about Mongols? No western aid led to the Mongolian conquest of Russia!!!11

Who cares about Napoleon and the Mongols.. We are talking about WW2 here

Xaito

12-20-2009, 06:18 PM

LOL wut? :roll::roll:

But what about Mongols? No western aid led to the Mongolian conquest of Russia!!!11

do you want a discussion about who's country was more dependent on western aid throughout history? :)

Finnfighter

12-23-2009, 07:36 AM

zad

12-23-2009, 07:44 AM

Man, what have you been drinking? Nevermind, bartender! I will have the same! ^.

Finnfighter

12-23-2009, 07:56 AM

Actually I am totally sober ( and more or less sane ), beeing interested in history myself I truly believe that the isolationists in the US should have won and the US should have stayed out of the clash between the Germans and the Soviets. The fruit could have been picked just afterwards....by no means do I think that nazism is something to cherish, actually any extremism is objectionable, communist, nazism and islamism.

But of course, beeing a Finn and having listened to my grandmothers stories from the wartime...
Knowing that she lost her first husband in the winter war plus her two brothers and then later on her new found love in the continuation war it is hard for me to appreciate US-supplied Aircobras roaming the Finnish countryside doing strafing runs against Finnish farmers working on the fields or firemen putting out fires...but hey, thats just me.
Just not my concept of "Freedom".

Merry Christmas everyone. God Bless.

Connaught Ranger

12-23-2009, 08:30 AM

Thank You Mister President for supplying the commies so they could murder Finnish civilians and soldiers defending their country and furthermore help Stalin to enslave Eastern Europe for half a century. Should have stayed out of it altogether, those supplies handed over to the commies should have been stockpiled in Great Britain to defend the islands and later used to liberate Europe from the west when Germany would have defeated the Soviets getting weak in the process...problem solved.

Pretty pointless in thanking a man who has been dead for years, and the decision was not made solely by him, ever heard of the U.S. Congress

Come back when you have matured a little instead of posting senseless rants about things that happened over 60 years ago, Finland was allied with Nazi Germany, probably not by the choice of the people but the choice of their political masters.

The U.S.A. aid to the Soviet Union was calculated to help keep a Second Front going against Germany, and relieve the pressure against the Allies and anyway at the time of the first Russian attacks against Finland, little or none of the U.S.A. aid would have been available to the Soviets.

Its sad that you lost relatives in a war, most of Europe can sympathize with you, but there was a far bigger picture than just any single nation.

Connaught Ranger.

Robert.V

12-23-2009, 09:39 AM

Pretty pointless in thanking a man who has been dead for years, and the decision was not made solely by him, ever heard of the U.S. Congress

Come back when you have matured a little instead of posting senseless rants about things that happened over 60 years ago, Finland was allied with Nazi Germany, probably not by the choice of the people but the choice of their political masters.

The U.S.A. aid to the Soviet Union was calculated to help keep a Second Front going against Germany, and relieve the pressure against the Allies and anyway at the time of the first Russian attacks against Finland, little or none of the U.S.A. aid would have been available to the Soviets.

Its sad that you lost relatives in a war, most of Europe can sympathize with you, but there was a far bigger picture than just any single nation.

Connaught Ranger.

Good post Coconut, good post.

F16

12-23-2009, 10:13 AM

The west indeed sent supplies and materials to the USSR, but was it crucial to the Red army's production line?

After the initial German huge and devastating success, the SU
has lost a lot of factories and other industrial capacities, the most important industrial cities of western SU were under full German control (like Minsk, Kiev, Odessa, etc), encircled (like the second megapolis Leningrad) or leveled like Stalingrad, all those capacities weren't of any use for the SU anymore.

However, the SU Higher Command decided to evacuate factories to the East, to Siberia, but you need time to set up in a new place, and it will take much more time to begin producing war materials, so there was a gap, this gap name was 1942, old capacities were taken by the advancing Germans, the evacuated ones couldn't immediately begin full-scale production.

This gap was fulled by the allied support, lend lease program, the materials were flowing in through three different routes, by sea from Murmansk, by land from Iran, and the third supply route was through Vladivostok, in the Far East. Without those materials - it would be much more harder to stop the Germans somehow and to defeat them in Stalingrad.

Even with all those allied supply, with all new aircrafts, tanks, trucks, ammunition, food, fuel, etc, the situation during the whole 1942 was very bad for the SU. So we can easily assume, that without allied help, Germans could have penetrated much deeper into the SU, and would gain some more success in Stalingrad, in this way cutting the whole country in two and disabling oil and other raw materials flowing in from the south of the SU.

I would like to say, that the big boys in London and Washington began to supply the SU not because they liked the SU, not because they wanted the Red Army to succeed, not because they were terrified by German actions against the civil population, no, they really feared that the Germans could take control over the whole SU, opening huge amount of resources for German war industry.

It isn't only raw materials, the SU possessed a lot of scientific resources, a lot of research institutions, including scientists researching in nuclear issues, Germans were smart enough to use all those material and intellectual resources for their benefit and the fate of the England would have been sealed. That's why Mr. Churchill began so quickly saving the life of the country, which only two years ago was involving supplying Germans when they were bombing hell out of London.

Recap: without allied material support and air war against Germany (which by the way made busy a lot of German powerful 88mm guns and prevented them from being redeployed in the SU) the whole situation would be really very bad, much more bader than it was in reality, and in reality the situation was horrible for the SU. Whether the absense of allied supply would make the SU fall completely in 1942 I don't know. It's difficult issue. Whether it was crucial, I think yes, it was.

Eye

12-23-2009, 11:16 AM

Its sad that you lost relatives in a war, most of Europe can sympathize with you, but there was a far bigger picture than just any single nation.

I don't think that rule applies to every nation.

L J

12-23-2009, 12:22 PM

After the initial German huge and devastating success, the SU
has lost a lot of factories and other industrial capacities, the most important industrial cities of western SU were under full German control (like Minsk, Kiev, Odessa, etc), encircled (like the second megapolis Leningrad) or leveled like Stalingrad, all those capacities weren't of any use for the SU anymore.

However, the SU Higher Command decided to evacuate factories to the East, to Siberia, but you need time to set up in a new place, and it will take much more time to begin producing war materials, so there was a gap, this gap name was 1942, old capacities were taken by the advancing Germans, the evacuated ones couldn't immediately begin full-scale production.

This gap was fulled by the allied support, lend lease program, the materials were flowing in through three different routes, by sea from Murmansk, by land from Iran, and the third supply route was through Vladivostok, in the Far East. Without those materials - it would be much more harder to stop the Germans somehow and to defeat them in Stalingrad.

Even with all those allied supply, with all new aircrafts, tanks, trucks, ammunition, food, fuel, etc, the situation during the whole 1942 was very bad for the SU. So we can easily assume, that without allied help, Germans could have penetrated much deeper into the SU, and would gain some more success in Stalingrad, in this way cutting the whole country in two and disabling oil and other raw materials flowing in from the south of the SU.

I would like to say, that the big boys in London and Washington began to supply the SU not because they liked the SU, not because they wanted the Red Army to succeed, not because they were terrified by German actions against the civil population, no, they really feared that the Germans could take control over the whole SU, opening huge amount of resources for German war industry.

It isn't only raw materials, the SU possessed a lot of scientific resources, a lot of research institutions, including scientists researching in nuclear issues, Germans were smart enough to use all those material and intellectual resources for their benefit and the fate of the England would have been sealed. That's why Mr. Churchill began so quickly saving the life of the country, which only two years ago was involving supplying Germans when they were bombing hell out of London.

Recap: without allied material support and air war against Germany (which by the way made busy a lot of German powerful 88mm guns and prevented them from being redeployed in the SU) the whole situation would be really very bad, much more bader than it was in reality, and in reality the situation was horrible for the SU. Whether the absense of allied supply would make the SU fall completely in 1942 I don't know. It's difficult issue. Whether it was crucial, I think yes, it was.
I should like to see some proof for the assumptions,that,without the LL trucks,the Red Army had no mobility
1)not all LL trucks that were send,arrived
2)not all LL trucks were used for the military
3) not all LL trucks had as destination the operational forces
4)not all LL trucks were operational (mechanical failures)
In june 1944 the operational forces had 212000 trucks (how many LL ?) and 636000 horses.
In june 1944 the Red army had the following mobile forces :24 tank corps (=panzer divisions) and 12 mechanised corps (=motorised divisions) with a total strength of 500000 men (=7 % of the operational forces + Stavka reserve )
LL was much less important than the virtual second front that already existed before Overlord and that was tying a lot of German soldiers and weapons.

F16

12-23-2009, 12:28 PM

LL was much less important than the virtual second front that already existed before Overlord and that was tying a lot of German soldiers and weapons.
Sorry, my language skills are not sufficient to explain more precisely what I've already said, in short, it isn't about trucks, it's about everything, lend-lease shipments in 1942 were crucial to sustain the first and deadliest blow of the Wehrmacht.

L J

12-23-2009, 02:40 PM

Sorry, my language skills are not sufficient to explain more precisely what I've already said, in short, it isn't about trucks, it's about everything, lend-lease shipments in 1942 were crucial to sustain the first and deadliest blow of the Wehrmacht.
the first and deadliest blow of the wehrmacht in 1942 ??????
Probably a typo :):roll:

Ritual

12-23-2009, 02:54 PM

Pretty funny how the reds here get all bent out of shape when it's suggested LL might have even been a 1% factor in their victory.

I doubt any westerners are discounting the massive amount of work the Soviet Union put towards defeating the Axis powers.

Nationalism much?

F16

12-23-2009, 03:30 PM

the first and deadliest blow of the wehrmacht in 1942 ??????
Probably a typo :):roll:

It would be very nice to make oneself familiar with mainstream books and memories on the topic, by the way, you said the Soviets possessed 24 corps (=divisions). That make up about 6000 tanks, and that's completely wrong picture.

Only T-34 of various modifications were produced about 60 thousand, and that's only T-34, and there were a lot more other models in the Red Army stocks. Only T-34-76 numbered about 35,000, and there were another models of T-34, with more powerful guns, etc. Click here (http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_t-34_production.html)to get more info about production of T-34.

SniperLane

12-23-2009, 03:34 PM

12 mechanised corps (=motorised divisions)

mechanised and motorised divisions are not the same thing in military terms.

nor is corps and division.

L J

12-23-2009, 03:57 PM

mechanised and motorised divisions are not the same thing in military terms.

nor is corps and division.
it is in Russian military terms :a division had a maximum manpower of 7000 and most divisions some 3000 ;the Russian mechanised and tank corps had a manpower of some 14000
My Source is 'The Dupuy Institute ' (considered as one of the best)

L J

12-23-2009, 04:09 PM

It would be very nice to make oneself familiar with mainstream books and memories on the topic, by the way, you said the Soviets possessed 24 corps (=divisions). That make up about 6000 tanks, and that's completely wrong picture.

Only T-34 of various modifications were produced about 60 thousand, and that's only T-34, and there were a lot more other models in the Red Army stocks. Only T-34-76 numbered about 35,000, and there were another models of T-34, with more powerful guns, etc. Click here (http://www.historyofwar.org/articles/weapons_t-34_production.html)to get more info about production of T-34.
my source is the dupuy institute
The Russian tank strength on 1 june 1944 was :6500 +2600 Assault Guns ( for the operational forces and the Stavka reserve ) :Source :Axis History Forum
Those 24 corps does not make 6OOO tanks :the mechanised corps had much less tanks
I know the T 34 production

F16

12-24-2009, 03:24 PM

Kilgor

12-24-2009, 05:34 PM

Anyone who immediately brings up vehicle and arms shipped in lend lease is already way of course and disingenuous.

The real benefit of lend lease was the raw materials and food which allowed the SU to produce their own arms and feed their own troops.

On lend lease.

1/3 of soviet explosives,
4/5 of copper
328k tons of aluminum vs (283k) was produced in the SU mostly between 44/45
409k vehicles vs 265k produced by the SU
43% of tires
56% of rails for railway
1900 locomotives vs 92 produced by the SU
And enough canned food to provide a soviet soldier a meal a day.
35089 radio stations
380,000 telephones
5,900 radio receivers
approx million miles of telephone wire.

Robert.V

12-24-2009, 06:11 PM

L J

12-25-2009, 01:15 AM

LJ, your numbers about Soviet divisions also need some good clean up, fully staffed soviet infantry division numbered some 10 000+ soldiers and officers. Soviet had huge amounts of armour, industrial output reached its peak in 1943-1944.
From 'the russian Front' (edited by James Dunnigan) P 98:
Tank Corps :11900 men (paper strength) 240 AFV
Mechanised Corps :17400 men (paper strength) 232 AFV
Rifle division (12 /1942 )(paper strength) :9400 men
Russian strength in june 1943 (same source P 97) without naval and air forces: 5.5 million
Riffle divisions :494
Riffle brigades :234
Fortified Zones :27
Mobile divisions:35
Tank Brigades :31
Artillery divisions:41
Artillery brigades :97
Strength of a fortified zone :10000
Strength of a rifle brigade :4000
Strength of a tank brigade :1300
Strength of an artillery division :9700 men
The average strength of a rifle division was 6OOO men

F16

12-25-2009, 02:07 AM

Rifle division (12 /1942 )(paper strength) :9400 men

The average strength of a rifle division was 6OOO men

First point is correct, the second impossible. Dear JL, a rifle division is made up of different units, combat units, support units, artillery units, anti-tank units, AA units, signal units, supply units and so on. Even if you want, you can't construct a potent rifle division with only 6000 man.
German rifle divisions at some point during the war numbered some 17700 man, just type in the Google "Deutsche Infanterie divisionen 3. Welle" and you would be surprised a little bit.

L J

12-25-2009, 07:07 AM

First point is correct, the second impossible. Dear JL, a rifle division is made up of different units, combat units, support units, artillery units, anti-tank units, AA units, signal units, supply units and so on. Even if you want, you can't construct a potent rifle division with only 6000 man.
German rifle divisions at some point during the war numbered some 17700 man, just type in the Google "Deutsche Infanterie divisionen 3. Welle" and you would be surprised a little bit.
this is a western point of view :) ;Russian rifle divisions had very little other units,those were reserved to the armies ,if you are looking at my former post,you will see that it was mathematically impossible for the rifle divisions to have their full strength ;and of course,a lot of these divisions were not potent,with as result very high losses .
An other exemple from The Russian front :composition of a soviet rifle division (december 1942 ):theoretical strength :9619
3 infantry regiments of 2474 men
1 artillery regiment of 998 men
1 transport unit of 550 men
1 rcn cy of 74 (!) men
1 anti-tank batallion :233
1 engineer batallion: 164
1 signal cy :130
I made one fault :oops::the transport unit has to be supply unit
You see that some 75 % belonged to the infantry and 10% to the artillery
The artillery had 24 76 mm Guns,12 122 mm Howitzers ,48 mortars and 99 HD .The divisional artillery was insufficient and frequently the division had to ask the aid of the artilery assigned to the army or the front .

Lokos

12-25-2009, 08:20 AM

Dear JL, a rifle division is made up of different units, combat units, support units, artillery units, anti-tank units, AA units, signal units, supply units and so on. Even if you want, you can't construct a potent rifle division with only 6000 man.

Then prepare to be staggered, because the average Soviet Rifle Division in 1945 numbered less than 6,000 men. On the order of 3,500-5,000.

Minimal manpower, maximal firepower.

fully staffed soviet infantry division numbered some 10 000+ soldiers and officers.

The Soviets preferred to constitute new formations instead of reinforcing existing ones. Obviously, that's a blanket statement - but, generally speaking, it's true. During the period of 1942-1945 one can notice the steady trend of an increase in the number of Soviet divisions and a decrease in their average strength.

and of course,a lot of these divisions were not potent

The firepower they disposed of and the attached support elements made them very potent, indeed. Most Soviet Rifle Divisions conducting offensive action were backed by a tank brigade (sixty odd vehicles) and ample artillery support, including SPGs. Since there were roughly ~500 such divisions, their frontage share was very small. The Vistula-Oder operation, I believe, had a division committed per kilometer of front in the breakthrough zone.

L.

L J

12-25-2009, 10:23 AM

from 'the Russian front' :Despite the abundance of support weapons (heavy mortats and artillery),the Soviet rifle division always remained just that-a rifle division .All of the competent artillery men were placed in artillery divisions and brigades.The divisional artillery weapons were invariably used for direct fire (on targets seen directly by the weapons cew).In fact,nearly all men in the division were actually infantry,only 4.2 % of the division's strength were rear area troops (headquarters,supply,transportation,etc.) With so many men in the line,the Soviet division took naturally greater and more critical casualties than the German infantry units .To compensate for this,the Russians equipped their infantry with more efficient weapons.Their rifle units contained a higher proportion of automatic weapons than did comparable German units .
My point :without the support of non divisional artillery and tanks,a lot of the Soviet rifle divisions were not very potent (and this is an understatement :)),the number of men is not that important :5000 men (you can cal it a division,a brigade,a brigade group )with artillery and tank support,can be very potent .
Some will ask:why did the Soviets not have more mobile units (nor did the Germans )?
The Soviets could not produce,nor supply a million trucks,there was no fuel enough,the more motorised your army is the more motorised supply forces you need (and where would they get these men ).
I also like to see a motorised army operate succesfully in Eastern Europe with no decent roads and two raspu****a's a year . In september 1944 the advance of the motorised allied armies in Western Europe was stopped because the supply forces could no more supply .

F16

12-25-2009, 11:14 AM

Some will ask:why did the Soviets not have more mobile units (nor did the Germans)?

Germans have had enough mobile units (I mean mobile infantry divisions).
Those german motorized infantry units were primarily designed to catch up with Panzer groups (those guys were driving some 150 kilometers per day in the beginning of the campaign against the SU) and provide them with essential infantry support during combat and intel operations.

Unfortunately, computer my mouse has been broken and I'm currently a little bit limited to keyboard, when I have everything in place, I would post some interesting facts about german mobile infantry units, what were they driving in and so on. Two prominent and famous examples are Infantry Regiment "GrossDeutschland" and SS Division Wiking.

Both were driving East as part of Army Group Center in summer 1941 and both were very useful for Panzer groups.

L J

12-25-2009, 12:03 PM

Germans have had enough mobile units (I mean mobile infantry divisions).
Those german motorized infantry units were primarily designed to catch up with Panzer groups (those guys were driving some 150 kilometers per day in the beginning of the campaign against the SU) and provide them with essential infantry support during combat and intel operations.

Unfortunately, computer my mouse has been broken and I'm currently a little bit limited to keyboard, when I have everything in place, I would post some interesting facts about german mobile infantry units, what were they driving in and so on. Two prominent and famous examples are Infantry Regiment "GrossDeutschland" and SS Division Wiking.

Both were driving East as part of Army Group Center in summer 1941 and both were very useful for Panzer groups.
Are you sure that the Germans had enough mobile units ?
22 june 1941 :AG South :41 divisions + 1 mot.Brigade (LSSAH ):
24 ID ,4 LD (light divisions ),1 MD (mountain )5 PD 3 MD 3 SD (security)
AG Centre:5O divisions:
31 ID ,9 PD,6MD,1 CD (cavallery),3 SD + 1 motorised regiment (GD)
AG North :26 divisions:
20 ID,3 PD ,3 MD
Finland :1 ID,2 MD ,1 MD
OKH reserve :28 divisions + 1 motorised brigade
21 ID,1 MD,2 PD,1MD, 1 SS Polizei division + 2 ID of the 15th welle (only partially suitable for combat )
There was aan enormous shortage on trucks :88 ID,3 MD and 1 PD had mostly French captured trucks .
For Finland there was 1 motorised division :)

Lokos

12-25-2009, 12:55 PM

without the support of non divisional artillery and tanks,a lot of the Soviet rifle divisions were not very potent (and this is an understatement )

Your point would make more sense if the above statement wasn't true of every belligerent power's infantry formations. Unsupported infantry on the offensive was generally 'not very potent'. The whole point of an abbreviated Rifle Division with maximized organic firepower was to create a flexible tactical formation with plenty of support in mind.

Breakthrough RDs almost invariably had a host of attachments from Corps/Army HQ. Artillery brigades/regiments, engineer regiments, SPG batteries and - most importantly - independent tank brigades. This set-up, advocated by the Field Manual '44, was formulated so as to economize the manpower wastage of the final period of the war.

All of the competent artillery men were placed in artillery divisions and brigades.

... Which were attached to Rifle Divisions and Rifle Corps, depending on the operation...

The divisional artillery weapons were invariably used for direct fire (on targets seen directly by the weapons cew)

Invariably? One could say 'mostly' (especially in terms of the 76mm guns) and do so with a straight face, maybe. But invariably? Plainly wrong.

With so many men in the line,the Soviet division took naturally greater and more critical casualties than the German infantry units .

There were numerous institutional reasons for the greater casualties of the Soviets during the 1941-1943 period (1944-1945 the permanent losses more or less level out). What you describe above is the least of them. The nature of the Soviet cadre system was a primary culprit (that is to say, rebuilding shattered formations, rather than reinforcing existing ones, as they degrade). As was the conscious decision to make the infantry the primary instrument of breakthrough. Tank Corps and Mechanized Corps were generally only committed once an operational breach was made, in order to begin the exploitation phase of operations. This meant that the infantry was absorbing casualties that might have been alleviated had armored forces been committed (they were not, at that stage, so as to maintain their combat effectiveness during exploitation).

Germans have had enough mobile units (I mean mobile infantry divisions).

Not even remotely correct. The Germans had some 'mobile units'. Enough? Not by any stretch.

L.

F16

12-25-2009, 02:09 PM

Not even remotely correct.
The Germans had some 'mobile units'. Enough? Not by any stretch.
L.

Germans have had 20th, 14th and 18th motorized infantry division operating in conjunction with 7th, 20th, 12th and 19th panzer divisions. Those guys were outflanking soviet armies from the north. Three infantry divisions, 36th, 6th (very famous) and 35th, were also supporting the above mentioned divisions. They were deployed a little bit behind, but still involved in S&D missions and encirclement operations.

In the south, Germans possessed SS MotD "Das Reich", 10th motorized, 29th motorized and Regiment "GrossDeutschland". They were operating in support of the Guderian's armoured units - 3th, 4th, 17th, 18th panzer divisions. About 8 infantry divisions were supporting them both from behind.

Recap: For the proposed and well thought out encirclement operations in the beginning of the russian campaign, germans have amassed enough motorized divisions.

L J

12-25-2009, 02:11 PM

The last quote was from F 16,to which I replied :)
For the other points,I was quoting from 'the Russian front'
Btw ,Dunnigan is also making a comparison of the Rifle division of may 1941 and december 1942
In 1941:manpower:14400 (infantry 68OO );motorized transport:685 (against 182 in december 1942 );thus the 1942 division was stripped of most non infantry elements and of most of motorized transport

F16

12-25-2009, 02:20 PM

AG Centre:5O divisions:
31 ID ,9 PD,6MD,1 CD (cavallery),3 SD + 1 motorised regiment (GD)

Not so quickly. Germans have had 22 IDs, 6 MD + 1 Motorized Brigade -Lehr 900 Motorized Brigade and of course Regiment GD. As for SD, if you mean Security divisions (Sicherungsdivisionen), they have had in AG Centre only one - the 221 th SD. This data applies to the beginning of the campaign, June-July 1941. To my mind, they have had enough motorized divisions to succeed in their business, and they actually did it very well.

P.S.
By the way, what were doing people from the SD divisions? Were they policing army units, or something else?

F16

12-25-2009, 02:34 PM

Some interesting data about german motorized division:

People - 16445

Cars - 4029 (1687 LKVs, 989 PKVs, 30 IFV (Sd.Kfz 251/251) the rest is motorcycles)

Weapons - 4142 pistols, 11931 rifles (7.92 mm Mauser 98K(kurz-short)), 31 submachine guns, 374 light MGs, 130 heavy MGs (but it's the same weapon MG42 or MG34(rare)) a lot of Granaterwerferm, PAK 37mm (almost useless against Soviet medium tanks) and some 80 artillery guns of various calibers.

Modest casualties during the Polish campaign - 84 KIA, 226 WIA, 121 MIA

JCR

12-25-2009, 02:38 PM

Not so quickly. Germans have had 22 IDs, 6 MD + 1 Motorized Brigade -Lehr 900 Motorized Brigade and of course Regiment GD. As for SD, if you mean Security divisions (Sicherungsdivisionen), they have had in AG Centre only one - the 221 th SD. This data applies to the beginning of the campaign, June-July 1941. To my mind, they have had enough motorized divisions to succeed in their business, and they actually did it very well.

P.S.
By the way, what were doing people from the SD divisions? Were they policing army units, or something else?

Who raised this thread from the dead?
Sicherungsdivisionen were raised for the east front for rear area security.
So basically anti-partisan units.
Btw, LKV and PKW should be LKW and PKW
LKW = Lastrkraftwafen - Truck (Lorry for Tommies ;))
PKW = Personenkraftwagen - car, could be anything from staff car to Kübelwagen to Einheits-PKW

F16

12-25-2009, 03:35 PM

Who raised this thread from the dead?
Sicherungsdivisionen were raised for the east front for rear area security.
So basically anti-partisan units.
Btw, LKV and PKW should be LKW and PKW
LKW = Lastrkraftwafen - Truck (Lorry for Tommies ;))
PKW = Personenkraftwagen - car, could be anything from staff car to Kübelwagen to Einheits-PKW
Sorry my fault, would you be so kind to help translate some german words, as I know, krad- is motorcycle, what is Beiwagen-Krad,
Anhänger (2 Achsen)?

T.S.C.Plage

12-25-2009, 03:58 PM

Beiwagen-Krad = motorclye with sidecar
Anhänger (2 Achsen) = trailer (2 axles)

F16

12-25-2009, 04:07 PM

Thanks a lot!

L J

12-25-2009, 04:32 PM

My reply disappeared two times ,will start again :
9 Army:14 ID :5,35,6,26,8,28,161,162,256,87,1O2,129,106,110 (both still in transit) +SS MotBgd RFSS +ID 293 (Army Reserve)
3PG:4 PD:7,20,12,19 ;3 MotD:14?20?18
4 Army :12 ID :7,23,258,268,137,263,292,17,78,131,134,252
2 PG:6 ID :255 (Army Reserve),31,34,45,267,167
5 PD:3,4,10,17,18
3 MotD:10,Das Reich,29
1 CD
GD (Mot Reg )

L J

12-26-2009, 12:13 AM

To have an idea of the strength ratio in the east,it is better not to count the number of divisions:for the SU :operatinal forces + Stavka reserve :
june 1941 (in western USSR ) :2.7 million (17O divisions )
december 1941 :4.6 million
may 1942 :5.9 million(442 divisions + 35 T + M corps)
november 1942 :6.8 million (436 + 39)
july 1943 :7.8 million (471 +43 )
january 1944 :6.9 million
june 1944 :7.4 million
january 1945 :7.2 million (529 +41 )

F16

12-26-2009, 01:54 AM

My reply disappeared two times, will start again:
9 Army:14 ID:5,35,6,26,8,28,161,162,256,87,1O2,129,106,110 (both still in transit) +SS MotBgd RFSS +ID 293 (Army Reserve)

The 87 ID. and 129 ID. - Army Reserve.

102. ID was in AG Centre Reserve under command of Befehlshaber der ruckwaertigen Heeres Gebiete. They were conducting some sort of rear area clean-up missions. Before that were were part of the XXXII AK, this AK was the reserve of the 9th Army. 106 ID. and 110 ID were never part of the 9th Army. They were in AG Centre Reserve from the beginning on.

I've no idea where was operating SS MotBgd RFSS.

And the last, the 293 ID. was never part of the 9th Army, they were in the AG Centre Reserve (before that they were temporarily under command of the 4th Army, exactly under 43. AK command).

So - 9th Army possessed 9 IDs, 3 motorized IDs, and 4 Panzer divisions.

Order of Battle:

162. ID and 256. ID (by the way, this ID took heavy casualties while Boldin counter-offensive was in progress, they were despairately defending themselfs against the whole soviet mechanized corps about two days, but still managed to survive until germans deployed new reinforcements to relief them somehow) as part of XX. AK.

8. ID, 161 ID., 28 ID. as part of VII. AK.

12.Pz., 19Pz., and 18.ID(mot.) as part of LVII. AK(mot.) (Panzer gruppe 3)

5.ID and 35.ID as part of V.AK. (also under command of Panzer gruppe 3)

7.Pz., 20 Pz., 20.ID (mot.), 14.ID(mot.) as part of XXXIX.AK (mot.)
(under command of Panzer gruppe 3)

VI.AK consisted from 6.ID(quite glorious) and 26.ID. (Panzer gruppe 3)

Recap:

Panzer groups were under command of the 9th Army (PG 3) and the 4.th Army(PG 2). But after they gained such a success, they were granted authority to operate on their own. So if we exclude PG 3 from the 9th Army, the 9th Army would possess only two AKs - XX. and VII and only four IDs - 162 ID., 256 ID., 8.ID., and 28. ID. And XXXXII AK (87.ID and 129 ID.) as reserve.

Source: "Kriegsgliederung Barbarossa" (B-Tag) OKH GenStdH./Op.Abt.(III) Prüf-Nr.15801

L J

12-26-2009, 10:46 AM

The 87 ID. and 129 ID. - Army Reserve.

102. ID was in AG Centre Reserve under command of Befehlshaber der ruckwaertigen Heeres Gebiete. They were conducting some sort of rear area clean-up missions. Before that were were part of the XXXII AK, this AK was the reserve of the 9th Army. 106 ID. and 110 ID were never part of the 9th Army. They were in AG Centre Reserve from the beginning on.

I've no idea where was operating SS MotBgd RFSS.

And the last, the 293 ID. was never part of the 9th Army, they were in the AG Centre Reserve (before that they were temporarily under command of the 4th Army, exactly under 43. AK command).

So - 9th Army possessed 9 IDs, 3 motorized IDs, and 4 Panzer divisions.

Order of Battle:

162. ID and 256. ID (by the way, this ID took heavy casualties while Boldin counter-offensive was in progress, they were despairately defending themselfs against the whole soviet mechanized corps about two days, but still managed to survive until germans deployed new reinforcements to relief them somehow) as part of XX. AK.

8. ID, 161 ID., 28 ID. as part of VII. AK.

12.Pz., 19Pz., and 18.ID(mot.) as part of LVII. AK(mot.) (Panzer gruppe 3)

5.ID and 35.ID as part of V.AK. (also under command of Panzer gruppe 3)

7.Pz., 20 Pz., 20.ID (mot.), 14.ID(mot.) as part of XXXIX.AK (mot.)
(under command of Panzer gruppe 3)

VI.AK consisted from 6.ID(quite glorious) and 26.ID. (Panzer gruppe 3)

Recap:

Panzer groups were under command of the 9th Army (PG 3) and the 4.th Army(PG 2). But after they gained such a success, they were granted authority to operate on their own. So if we exclude PG 3 from the 9th Army, the 9th Army would possess only two AKs - XX. and VII and only four IDs - 162 ID., 256 ID., 8.ID., and 28. ID. And XXXXII AK (87.ID and 129 ID.) as reserve.

Source: "Kriegsgliederung Barbarossa" (B-Tag) OKH GenStdH./Op.Abt.(III) Prüf-Nr.15801
293 ID :my mistake (after posting three times the same :-( )
John Mulholland gives :42 AK :used for initial assault only,then returned to Reserve status again .
composition :87,1O2,129,RFSS (I am doubting that the RFSS was used for the assault ,maybe something as a SD )1O6 (arriving from Wkr 6 )and 110 (from Wkr X )
XX AK :OK (2 ID)
VIII AK :OK (3 ID )
Mulholland is giving 5 AK and 6 AK as belonging to 9 A ;the reason is that the relation between tha army and the PG was fluid :was the PG subordinate to the army ? Practically,some PG (Guderian ) acted independently and were ignoring the orders of the Army commander (von Kluge );result:heavy quarrel between the two .To remedy this,the PG recieved army status (I am forgotting when,but presume in september ).When von Kluge became AG commander,he was looking at the first opportunity to fire Guderian .
PS :it is VIII AK :)(CO :Heitz),VII AK (Fahrenbacher )belonged to 4 A.
Cheers

Lokos

12-26-2009, 12:12 PM

Recap: For the proposed and well thought out encirclement operations in the beginning of the russian campaign, germans have amassed enough motorized divisions.

Yes, pity the German field commanders themselves spent most of Barbarossa complaining about their lack of mobile units.

But now that you've listed them, it's apparent that they clearly didn't know what they were talking about.

L.

F16

12-26-2009, 12:46 PM

John Mulholland gives:
42 AK :used for initial assault only,then returned to Reserve status again.
composition :87,1O2,129,RFSS (I am doubting that the RFSS was used for the assault ,maybe something as a SD )1O6 (arriving from Wkr 6 )and 110 (from Wkr X )

Let make clear one crucial issue, we are talking about 22.07.1941 and the positions of units according to this date.

XXXXII AK consisted of 106. ID, 110. ID and elite Lehr Brigade 900. The 87. ID and the 129. ID were in the 9th Army's Reserve, they were being held out of combat to engage them when something wrong goes somewhere and you need free troops and immediate action.

Was the PG subordinate to the army?

Yes, both Panzer groups were under army command from the beginning on, that's clear and without any doubt, 3 PG was under the 9th Army command and the Guderian was under the 4th Army command.

But those two PG, especially the PG 3 were very successful and they were very far away from the infantry troops of the 9th and 4th army respectively. In such a situation Berlin granted them authority to operate independently and make tactical decisions on their own.

Practically,some PG (Guderian ) acted independently and were ignoring the orders of the Army commander (von Kluge );result:heavy quarrel between the two.

Never heard of any problems between Kluge and Guderian, they both were pretty busy exactly at that time and have had a lot to do, Kluge was trying to eliminate Bilastok encirclement and Guderian faced unexpected troops somewhere on the way to Minsk.

With AG Centre chief Guderian had full understanding. When Hitler stopped them about 374 kilometers from Moscow, and ordered them to stop assault on Moscow, and help the AG South the to get the job done with Kiev pocket, they both were heavy protesting against that decisions.

It's the same as to let British troops go away in Dunkirck, at that time Guderian was commanding Panzer Corps, he lost the ability to speak for some time when he received radio from OKH to stop attack and let the 350 000 allied troops to get away.

To remedy this,the PG recieved army status (I am forgotting when,but presume in september ).When von Kluge became AG commander,he was looking at the first opportunity to fire Guderian .

Yes, they received army status, but I don't think it has something to do with bad relationships between Guderian and von Kluge.

F16

12-26-2009, 12:49 PM

PS :it is VIII AK :)(CO :Heitz),VII AK (Fahrenbacher )belonged to 4 A.
Cheers

I see you are very interested in this issue, I would recommend this resource:

1. http://www.wwiidaybyday.com/ (http://www.wwiidaybyday.com/)
2. Gliederungen (http://www.wwiidaybyday.com/gliederungen/okhmain.htm) (on the left panel)
3. 2.) Divisionen, Operationen, Kampfgruppen etc.. (http://www.wwiidaybyday.com/gliederungen/okhmain2.htm)
4. Under 1941 click Barbarossa, you will find the most exact and reliable order of battle.

Recce1

12-26-2009, 01:03 PM

This has been a controversial topic in WW2, westerners claimed that the USSR would've fall to the German's hands if they hadn't receive any Western aid, however people claimed it was Stalin's industry that saved the USSR

The west indeed sent supplies and materials to the USSR, but was it crucial to the Red army's production line?

Only thing i know was that the Americans supplied the Soviets with jeeps so the Soviets can focus on weapon production...

I have discussed this many times with many historians, and we came to this conclusion.

As we all know the Russians were in dire need of food, medicine, Ammo, Fuel or Oil, and many other supplies. If not for the Allies contributions Russia
would of starved and Fallen, make no mistake about that.

You can't fight a war with sticks and rocks and expect to win because of the determined and the willingness to endeavor to persevere
of your people. And without their determination to fight and win you could of supplied them, and still they would of lost.

Now you have to consider that Mother Nature, also played a Key Role in their success.

Therefore You can conclude that it was 3 factors. Western support the Russian production industry, and Mother Nature. The Russian Winter was
a curse for the Germans, and a big blessing to the Russians.

Mordoror

12-26-2009, 01:14 PM

The Russian Winter was
a curse for the Germans, and a big blessing to the Russians. just by that quote you disqualify yourself of any serious analysis
the winter was not more or less painful to German armies than Spring/Summer and Autumn

Spring and Autumn because the so called roads (in fact simples not stabilized paths) were transformed into deep mud that impered speed either for the units on offensive or for the supply units
Summer because the same roads were transformed into dust that cloathed a lot of engines, made the men thirsty and the weapon jamming

everybody is focusing on the terrible russian winter because the german forces were not prepared for a winter war especially againts siberian elements who were appropriately equiped and trained just forgotting that all russian forces were not so well equiped for a war in winter conditions

If Winter was so efficient, a lot of hedgehog axis and german positions after 1942 would have flet more quickly
in fact the lack of infrastructures in Belarus/Ukraine/Russia at that time was a scourge during offensive or defensive moves even during the other parts of the year

Recce1

12-26-2009, 01:50 PM

just by that quote you disqualify yourself of any serious analysis
the winter was not more or less painful to German armies than Spring/Summer and Autumn

Spring and Autumn because the so called roads (in fact simples not stabilized paths) were transformed into deep mud that impered speed either for the units on offensive or for the supply units
Summer because the same roads were transformed into dust that cloathed a lot of engines, made the men thirsty and the weapon jamming

everybody is focusing on the terrible russian winter because the german forces were not prepared for a winter war especially againts siberian elements who were appropriately equiped and trained just forgotting that all russian forces were not so well equiped for a war in winter conditions

If Winter was so efficient, a lot of hedgehog axis and german positions after 1942 would have flet more quickly
in fact the lack of infrastructures in Belarus/Ukraine/Russia at that time was a scourge during offensive or defensive moves even during the other parts of the year

everybody is focusing on the terrible russian winter because the german forces were not prepared for a winter war especially againts siberian elements who were appropriately equiped and trained just forgotting that all russian forces were not so well equiped for a war in winter conditions

Yes but the Russians were better prepared and knew the hart ships that Russian Winters could inflict. That's what many Historians have stated. And what I read by many.

http://www.theeasternfront.co.uk/Battles/winteroffensive41.htm

http://www.123helpme.com/view.asp?id=23633

http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=37

The weather also significantly harmed the German ability to supply the Moscow contingent by rail, despite Minister Dorpmüller and the German Reich Railways dramatically expanding its operations during the campaign. The water tanks of the locomotives regularly froze under sub-zero conditions, pushing the number of broken-down locomotives at any given time to the hundreds. Additionally, the Russian railways were of a different gauge, forcing the German engineers to re-bed all the railways before the German locomotives could use them. In Dec 1941, with the transport situation so desperate that a special motor transport organization was formed to alleviate some of the pressure. Despite the superhuman results the Germans had achieved in the arena of logistics, it was just not enough. The German frontlines troops, including the air force, required the equivalent of 120 train loads of supplies daily for normal operations (ie. not counting supplies needed to mount major operations); only about 100 train loads worth of supplies were delivered on a regular day. To make matters even worse, Russian partisans regularly sabotaged railway tracks to slow things further.

I have 100 more Links that claim the same thing.

And yes your Right I don't take myself Seriously and I do make Mistakes.

And your Wrong the Russian Winters where very Painful. I have pictures of Germans Frozen stone cold dead in their Trenches.

Have you ever been in -40C?? for days or weeks, I assure you would be singing a different tune. Not as bad as Autumn or spring, Utter nonsense.

When I was in Petawawa In Jan US Forces came to train for Winter Warfare. They brought some Apache attack helicopters with then for demonstration. The Choppers left the Hanger landed 10k away to the demo site. after an hour they could not get them started all 3 of them. They had to call transport flat beds and a crane to carry them back to the hanger.

Millions of dollars of US High Tech Equipment rendered useless by Canadian Winter.

As this Link States.http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Why_did_Hitler's_invasion_of_Russia_fail_and_what_effect_did_the_Russian_victory_have_on_the_Allies

Why did Hitler's invasion of Russia fail and what effect did the Russian victory have on the Allies?

Hitlers invasion to Russia fail because Germany wasn't prepared for the climate condition of Russia. When the winter arose the Germans couldn't continue because they didn't have food or anything to cover against the low temperature of Russia. The Germans start to died and they decided to give up on trying to conquer Russia so they sign a treaty on non aggression were Germany said they woudn't try to take over Russia again.

Mordoror

12-26-2009, 02:06 PM

Not as bad as Autumn or spring, Utter nonsense.

just take a look at the word "rasputisa" and what was the operationnal effect on an army on campaign of that kind of element and we will be able discuss again on a better basis

Recce1

12-26-2009, 02:28 PM

just take a look at the word "rasputisa" and what was the operationnal effect on an army on campaign of that kind of element and we will be able discuss again on a better basis

Then the spring thaw, "rasputisa" made the runways soggy and useless for weeks starting mid April 1942.

You won't get a argument on that, like walking in quick sand! Very hard to move in those conditions.

But Winter is a complete different factor, of survival. Forget about the War or being killed by bullets.

I had a Chart but I can't fined it, that showed how many Germans died just because of the Freezing weather! I can assure you shocking.

Ok I'll go half way the weather played some factor I did state that. Plus the Allies contribution, and the Russian War Machine.:)

Soldat_Américain

12-26-2009, 02:35 PM

Lend Lease was key, they needed that equipment badly. To say otherwise is BS.

Mordoror

12-26-2009, 02:41 PM

Ok I'll go half way

then i'll go the other half way and agree with you that any unprepared army (like late 1941 but also the soviet during the winter war) or sourrounded army whithout or with insufficient supply possibilities (like at Stalingrad in 1942 but you can for example also ad the US forces in the Bulge in late 44) will suffer higher attrition due to cold

but you need the combination of both things : hard winter + unpreparation (lack of winter dress and winterized equipment) or hard winter + lack of supply (especially food as the Kcal needs rises in cold environment)

however may be it will surprise you to see that sometimes winter time was usefull for either the axis or soviet forces in their offensives (by frozing the mud and the rivers and allowing then at least in early winter to operate mechanized unit where they were bogged some days or weeks before)

Recce1

12-26-2009, 03:02 PM

then i'll go the other half way and agree with you that any unprepared army (like late 1941 but also the soviet during the winter war) or sourrounded army whithout or with insufficient supply possibilities (like at Stalingrad in 1942 but you can for example also ad the US forces in the Bulge in late 44) will suffer higher attrition due to cold

but you need the combination of both things : hard winter + unpreparation (lack of winter dress and winterized equipment) or hard winter + lack of supply (especially food as the Kcal needs rises in cold environment)

however may be it will surprise you to see that sometimes winter time was usefull for either the axis or soviet forces in their offensives (by frozing the mud and the rivers and allowing then at least in early winter to operate mechanized unit where they were bogged some days or weeks before)

Well thanks for your Insight I believe that your better informed in these matters then I am. You make valid points, that I won't disagree with. All did play a vital factor in the outcome. I just know a little more than the basics of these Matters in hand! And still Learning, and know from Personal experience that winter is hard and very long and shows no merci. We can conclude "Hard Times Indeed".

Thank you for the civil Chat, in discussing these points! Found it quite interesting. There's always many sides or factors to consider an outcome.

Spañiard over and out,,,,........

Mordoror

12-26-2009, 03:17 PM

Thank you for the civil Chat, in discussing these points!

you are welcome it was also a pleasure for me

And know from Personal experience that winter is hard and very long and shows no merci. We can conclude "Hard Times Indeed".

i do too (18 days of field training in eastern France during winter time by -15 to -20 °C will always remembered as one of my worst moment of my military service : had first hand experience of lack of enough food during very cold weather and how fridge like could be an armored vehicle during wintertime)

L J

12-26-2009, 05:09 PM

Then the spring thaw, "rasputisa" made the runways soggy and useless for weeks starting mid April 1942.

You won't get a argument on that, like walking in quick sand! Very hard to move in those conditions.

But Winter is a complete different factor, of survival. Forget about the War or being killed by bullets.

I had a Chart but I can't fined it, that showed how many Germans died just because of the Freezing weather! I can assure you shocking.

Ok I'll go half way the weather played some factor I did state that. Plus the Allies contribution, and the Russian War Machine.:)
It's a myth that the Germans were defeated by the winter (but old myths never die :roll: ):they were in defensive at the end of november (and the winter in European Russia does not begin in november ),btw :the Winter of 1941-1942 was not exceptional .
About the German losses during the winter(december -april) :the Combat losses were very low :20000 a week,from june to september :40000,from september to december :27000.Total for the winter was :350000
About the non combat losses :for june to september :10000 a week,from september to december:15000 a week,from december to april:21000 a week(the frostbite cases were 33 %:some 120000,of wich 14 % of the worst degree ,with amputations :some 14000) I am curious how much of those 14000 died :)

Recce1

12-26-2009, 08:11 PM

It's a myth that the Germans were defeated by the winter (but old myths never die :roll: ):they were in defensive at the end of november (and the winter in European Russia does not begin in november ),btw :the Winter of 1941-1942 was not exceptional .
About the German losses during the winter(december -april) :the Combat losses were very low :20000 a week,from june to september :40000,from september to december :27000.Total for the winter was :350000
About the non combat losses :for june to september :10000 a week,from september to december:15000 a week,from december to april:21000 a week(the frostbite cases were 33 %:some 120000,of wich 14 % of the worst degree ,with amputations :some 14000) I am curious how much of those 14000 died :)

OK lets clarify this, First I concluded 3 factors from the beginning that not only Winter but was a factor, and Spring due to the thaw. As Mordoror stated, and was right. I remember 16 days of rain, that mud stuck on the boots, Like 20 lbs on each leg and just walking on it, Very discouraging. APC's that you couldn't see the tracks.:cantbeli:

Lets see you state loses by the Germans, Hey can I say Naziess:) for Winter in WWII standers of military tactics more advanced then The Great War. Which was a Slaughter House.

We did establish

Ok lets do Math, a Must know.

winter(december -april) :the Combat losses were very low :20000 a week
and you got 3 months so about 12 weeks 240,000 Dead.

from june to september :40000, this is every week. 12 weeks= 480,000

from september to december27000. """"""""""""""'''''' ====324,000

Now my question to you is this is for 9 moths Ok 1,044,000 Dead Naziesss!:-*$ and that's not allot to you. Your Army just Lost over a Million Soldiers in 9 months. Sounds Like a Massacre to me.

Still would be nice to fined out how many died because of the Winter Months, Stone Cold Dead. For that year Alone. And I think the Total is Much Higher

This has nothing to do with Soldiers Casualties for the Germans.
About the non combat losses :for june to september :10000 a week,from september to december:15000 a week,from december to april:21000 a week(the frostbite cases were 33 %:some 120000,of wich 14 % of the worst degree ,with amputations :some 14000) I am curious how much of those 14000 died

Recce1

12-26-2009, 08:22 PM

Sada

12-26-2009, 10:58 PM

I´ve the casualties of 250ID(spanish) wehrmacht division from october 1941 to october 1943, that is two complete winters in the russian front(northern sector): 4,954 deads, 2.137 mutilated, 8.700 wounded, 7.800 sick, 1.600 frosbite cases not included the deads, among 45.500 people that served there, this is a 3,5% of people affected, not a small number, and I suppose is not risky to think many cases of sickness were caused by the winter cold. One division is a little segment of the whole front but since it´s an infantry one with standard equipment can be representative of that war.
I read many years ago a general history about IIWW by Raymond Cartier telling some interesting situations about winter war, I forgot many details and don´t have the books here but remember about a panzer division which had most of the tanks out of service at the beginning of the spring because rats had eaten the electric circuits in the winter!

Robert.V

12-26-2009, 11:08 PM

Ok I did a Recce:) and I found the numbers for all the Winters Months from 41-45.

German VS Russia. Winter Wars.

http://www.great-victory1945.ru/winter.htm

Ok I found this But it claimes the winter months decemated the Germans!
From 41-45. LOL

http://www.zum.de/whkmla/region/russia/gerinv.html

What a load of horse****, especially the Napoleon part.

The Russian winter contributed a lot though, it was partially what stopped the German advance.

Edit

On another hand, it perhaps would have been better if the Germans tried to take Moscow.

Mastermind

12-26-2009, 11:35 PM

375,000 Trucks...

Logistics, Logistics, Logistics, I think Germany might not have been able to destroy the USSR, however, it is unlikely without the vehicles to provide them with the logistical strength to advance, and quickly as they did, there might not have been an East and West Germany.
With this, I fully agree.

However, that being said, Hitler was the greatest ally against the Germans. It is very difficult to say if the Germans would have brought the Soviets to their knees even without Allied support. One way or another, with Russia or without, Hitler and the Germans were not ever going to win that nasty little war...all that would have happened is the carnage would have been even worse...if that can even be imagined. 1945 or 1955...Hitler's Germany was going down.

My argument "Ace in the hole" is in two words...."Manhattan Project"

L J

12-27-2009, 02:52 AM

OK lets clarify this, First I concluded 3 factors from the beginning that not only Winter but was a factor, and Spring due to the thaw. As Mordoror stated, and was right. I remember 16 days of rain, that mud stuck on the boots, Like 20 lbs on each leg and just walking on it, Very discouraging. APC's that you couldn't see the tracks.:cantbeli:

Lets see you state loses by the Germans, Hey can I say Naziess:) for Winter in WWII standers of military tactics more advanced then The Great War. Which was a Slaughter House.

We did establish

Ok lets do Math, a Must know.

winter(december -april) :the Combat losses were very low :20000 a week
and you got 3 months so about 12 weeks 240,000 Dead.

from june to september :40000, this is every week. 12 weeks= 480,000

from september to december27000. """"""""""""""'''''' ====324,000

Now my question to you is this is for 9 moths Ok 1,044,000 Dead Naziesss!:-*$ and that's not allot to you. Your Army just Lost over a Million Soldiers in 9 months. Sounds Like a Massacre to me.

Still would be nice to fined out how many died because of the Winter Months, Stone Cold Dead. For that year Alone. And I think the Total is Much Higher

This has nothing to do with Soldiers Casualties for the Germans.
About the non combat losses :for june to september :10000 a week,from september to december:15000 a week,from december to april:21000 a week(the frostbite cases were 33 %:some 120000,of wich 14 % of the worst degree ,with amputations :some 14000) I am curious how much of those 14000 died
Combat losses are not deaths !,but KIA,MIA and WIA
for the 4 winter months:
december:KIA :14752 WIA 57747 MIA 4594 Total 9O9O7
january :KIA :17544 WIA 59928 MIA 7875
february :KIA :19319 WIA 49398 MIA 4229
march :only a total :1O5O42
Total CL till 31 december 1941 :KIA 173015 WIA :616076 MIA 34519

F16

12-27-2009, 02:53 AM

Guys, where can I get information about food supplies provided by allies to the SU during the 1941 and 1942 as a part of lend-lease program, I need detailed information.

I wonder where did the Soviets get enough food to support the essential calory rations of the Red Army soldiers, if the main food suppliers - Ukraine and South Russia were under Germans.

L J

12-27-2009, 08:40 AM

Recce 1 :it is not my army :roll:

L J

12-27-2009, 08:47 AM

German combat losses in the East in 1941 (source :War without Garlands from Robert Kershaw :appendice 1 ) rough figures
june :41OOO
july :181000
august:197000
september :141000
october :115000
november :87000
december :78000

F16

12-27-2009, 09:57 AM

You will also find them in the more methodoligacally sound literature such as Müller-Hillebrand, Das Heer Vol III, Roman Töppels dissertation Die Offensive gegen Kursk, and elsewhere. If you compare them to the months preceding and following the operation vis à vis the Soviet figures you will notice that Kursk did not significantly upset the numerical balance on the Eastern front, or crippled the Germans in their operational ability.
First of all, that's the best book on the topic ever written. Second, true, Kursk didn't eliminated german tank armies, but it turned the situation upside down, now and till the end the Red Army was always in offesive while Germans were in defensive.

Manstein invented some new strategy, his idea was to build strong defensive positions some 100-150 miles behind the frontline and let the Soviets attack these positions a lot of times, this would weaken the Red Army in so manner, that it would never be in state to take any big offensive operations in the future.

It's like setting up a lot of Rsews along the frontline. But Hitler forbid to build any strong positions and bunkers behind the frontline, because he thought that it will lower the moral of german troops on the frontline, and if they knew there are some strong positions behind them, they wouldn't try to resist much, but to retreat to these positions.

Recce1

12-27-2009, 12:45 PM

Recce 1 :it is not my army :roll:

I know Its not your Army.:) I was just doing the math by the numbers you posted. Nor did I mean anything Personal.

Recce1

12-27-2009, 12:55 PM

Combat losses are not deaths !,but KIA,MIA and WIA
for the 4 winter months:
december:KIA :14752 WIA 57747 MIA 4594 Total 9O9O7
january :KIA :17544 WIA 59928 MIA 7875
february :KIA :19319 WIA 49398 MIA 4229
march :only a total :1O5O42
Total CL till 31 december 1941 :KIA 173015 WIA :616076 MIA 34519

OK thats more clear. I thought Combat Losses you meant KIA. I C You meant MIA and WIA combined.

The MIA in WWI they called it as or classified as "unknown grave".
And the term MIA was not used in WWII. Just M I think but correct me if I'm Wrong.

L J

12-27-2009, 01:32 PM

Well,a MIA can be
1)a POW (in the east,neither party was passing on lists of POW )
2)death
3)returning to his unit (it happened rarely )
Advancing armies had of course few MIA,but retreating armies could have enormous MIA:in 1941 the Germans claimed 3.5 million Russian POW,but this figure is questionable .
In june ,july and august 1944 ,the Germans lost 503564 MIA on a total loss of 90063O .What happened to these MIA ? Were they KIA or POW ? Nobody knows .
Normally,the ratio of KIA to total CL is 1 to 5,but if there are a lot of MIA,the ratio is changing :for the same periode in 1944 the number of KIA was 71685 and WIA 325381 .
Another point :a lot of WIA died afterwards due to their wounds and became DOW (died of wounds ).
The figures I have give for the German losses in 1941 do not include AOK 20 (20 th Army in finland ),nor the losses of the Luftwaffe .
If you are interested in that subject :a good source is Axis History Forum :German Casualties in Barbarossa in 1941 .
The Germans engaged in 1941 some 3.7 million and lost 1.25 million (cl and ncl ),thus 33 %,the cl were 5% KIA,1 % MIA and 17 % WIA .

Recce1

12-27-2009, 01:53 PM