No Soviet military reorganization in 1940-1

I was watching this video which makes a case that the major reason for poor Soviet performance in 1941, was its reorganization in the face of blitzkrieg 1939-1940. And so the Red Army was in a major state of flux and disorganization when the Nazis hit them.


Now in theory it made sense to reorganize towards more mechanized tank armies after the success of blitzkrieg. But given that it was not carried out in time, it probably ended up doing much more harm than good. So what if the USSR had kept their mixed infantry armor divisions instead? Do you think cohesive organization would have made up for the benefits of organized armored corps and the Red Army would have performed better?
 

Deleted member 1487

Not really. They'd fight more cohesively, but the reorg was probably the least of the 3 big problems (including expansion and modernization at the same time).
 
Trying to increase the number of units by 300%+ created a severe shortage of trained & skilled leaders and staff, particularly at the division/corps/army levels. Even without the purges that would cripple any military for several years. Would not matter what doctrine was on the books the leaders & staff did not have time to learn it.
 
I guess my main question is whether the better cohesion of not being in the middle of a reorganization, would have made up for the tactical deficiency of having pennypack armor scattered with the infantry?

>Would not matter what doctrine was on the books the leaders & staff did not have time to learn it.

Mixed infantry, armor, was already the status quo in 1940, so all it would mean is doing nothing.

>(including expansion and modernization at the same time).

But the German army went through an even more massive expansion from the Weimar limited army of only 100,000 and no tanks
 

Deleted member 1487

I guess my main question is whether the better cohesion of not being in the middle of a reorganization, would have made up for the tactical deficiency of having pennypack armor scattered with the infantry?
Given that that was the way they ended up fighting after their concentrated units of armor/mechanized infantry were destroyed earlier in 1941, it probably enhances the survivability of their armor, as the mechanized corps and even tank divisions created in 1941 were unwieldy and nice concentrated targets for the Luftwaffe and German Panzer divisions.
 
Some of that 'reorganization' was another purge, this time on the VVS, that was ongoing as the Panzers rolled over the border
 
I've certainly wondered before if the Red Army would have put up more or less resistance if it had been smaller - say only 2 million.

fasquardon
 
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But the German army went through an even more massive expansion from the Weimar limited army of only 100,000 and no tanks

That was conducted over roughly a minimum five years, vs two or two & a half for the Red Army. Some would argue the German army had longer. It also had the advantage of fighting peer armies or inferior armies 1939-1941. The Red Army in 1941 had the problem of fighting a veteran & doctrinally refined army in 1941. The US Army, which started with barely 500,000 in its standing army, reserves, and State Guards in 1940 still had four years of preparation before it committed its mass of ground and air forces to battle. The Red Army had some 22 months to triple its strength and train the new units before their test came.
 
I've certainly wondered before if the Red Army would have put up more or less resistance if it had been smaller - say only 2 million.

fasquardon

That thickens the trained cadre per unit, and reduces over promotion. I've never modeled or gamed that one, tho it sounds interesting. The trade off is reduced strategic reserve and depth. Six months does not sound like enough time to create the reserves from scratch, who won the winter battles around Moscow & elsewhere.
 
Honestly in terms of their ground forces. It was nothing to do with reorganizng per se. Some Soviet tank divisions were ironically matching German divisions in terms of number of tanks, trucks etc. Thry still got beat down.

The Soviets were just really bad at defense. Even at Kursk. In terms of their inability to properly coordinate their forces in a coherent form. They threw their forces away peicemeal even at Kursk.

If they had propery coordinated in the Ukraine that was the first step in stabilizing the front closer to the start point instead of at the gates of Moscow.

However apparently in the prewar Soviet war games. They did not go well for the Soviet side.

Not suprising either.

Thr Soviets on the border were outnumbered in terms of infantry. Which is very important detail that may made any coherent defense meaningless in the end?

In any case, they didnt have the economy or logistics for the inane number of tank divisions that the Soviet decision makers thougjt would be a good number.

Sure enough some tank divisions had an abysmally low number of trucks. Some divisions. The infantry was walking because there was no trucks.
 

Deleted member 1487

I've certainly wondered before if the Red Army would have put up more or less resistance if it had been smaller - say only 2 million.

fasquardon
They'd be pretty handily outnumbered then...probably do even worse all things considered.

That was conducted over roughly a minimum five years, vs two or two & a half for the Red Army. Some would argue the German army had longer. It also had the advantage of fighting peer armies or inferior armies 1939-1941. The Red Army in 1941 had the problem of fighting a veteran & doctrinally refined army in 1941. The US Army, which started with barely 500,000 in its standing army, reserves, and State Guards in 1940 still had four years of preparation before it committed its mass of ground and air forces to battle. The Red Army had some 22 months to triple its strength and train the new units before their test came.
Plus the shadow elements of the military meant it was probably 2-3x as large as the 'official' 100k men. The Hitler Youth provided large numbers of boys already with basic training, the 'glider clubs' men with basic flight training (same with Lufthansa), and the same with sailing clubs for naval manpower. Beyond that in 1939 the standing army was only some 600,000 men and still had any number of major issues during Poland, which were addressed in intensive retraining in 1939-40 after Poland.
 
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That thickens the trained cadre per unit, and reduces over promotion. I've never modeled or gamed that one, tho it sounds interesting. The trade off is reduced strategic reserve and depth. Six months does not sound like enough time to create the reserves from scratch, who won the winter battles around Moscow & elsewhere.

Right. That's a question that has occurred to me. Even if expansion of the Red Army before Barbarossa was "wasted", getting the mobilization machinery running at full speed to make fighting forces as fast as the Germans could kill and capture Red Army soldiers, thus allowing the Soviets to continue fighting tooth and nail at every point... Maybe that was worth the cost.

They'd be pretty handily outnumbered then...probably do even worse all things considered.

Likely you're right. But even so... I wonder what half as many Soviet tanks could do if they had enough trucks, officers, training, artillery and infantry all together in one place to give the Germans a more really tough battles.

fasquardon
 
One way I look at the question is in how many Germans are casualties in the opening months. As it was 790,000 total losses were recorded by the Wehrmacht from 22 June to 30 October. If changes in Red Army mobilization & training make it 25% more efficient at killing Germans then the loss would be 988,000. How far up do the losses climb before the attacker runs out of steam a month earlier? Or before the counter attacks collapse the attacker.

The converse is lower losses for the defense. Increase attackers loss by 25% & defenders loss by 15% & where does that leave the Germans in October, or September? What if the defense loses 30% less?

A complete analysis of this aspect accounts for material losses as well. Obviously there are trade offs in other areas. If worse losses are occurring then does the attacker choose to deliberately halt and regroup & make a new plan. A earlier halt in the offensive reduces the Germans transportation problem and leaves the forward units better supplied. The defender then loses less as well.
 
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Likely you're right. But even so... I wonder what half as many Soviet tanks could do if they had enough trucks, officers, training, artillery and infantry all together in one place to give the Germans a more really tough battles. ...

On my shelf is a old magazine article focusing on the Red Army artillery 1941-42. From after action reports and a comprehensive report from a senior artillery officer in the autumn of 1941, the author describes a ineffective arm. Staff officers from battalion up were untrained & had negligible theoretical or practical knowledge of their duties. A typical division level artillery group or regiment had 3-4 officers capable of their tasks. Most lacked any effective knowledge of their assigned position or of the position a level below them. Indirect fire was beyond the ability of most regiments, battalions, or batteries. A British artillery commander described how during the battle of Belgium it took 20 minutes for his regiment to mass its 24 cannon on a target, which he admitted was slow. The Red Army reports describe hours or even more than a day to accomplish a similar task. Camouflage was not understood, neither was entrenchment & pioneer tools were often not carried with the batteries or HQ companies. Communications were ineffective leading to over concentration of the batteries as desperate commanders tried to gain some sort of control over the guns.

This is reflected on the German sides accounts. Werner Adams a gunner in the 5th Motorized Divisions artillery recalled exactly one counter battery attack by the enemy in 1941, a few rounds of 20cm projectiles hitting near his battery. Siegfried Knappe of the 84th Inf Div similarly commented on the lack of effective artillery attacks during the summer of 41.
 

Deleted member 1487

Likely you're right. But even so... I wonder what half as many Soviet tanks could do if they had enough trucks, officers, training, artillery and infantry all together in one place to give the Germans a more really tough battles.

fasquardon
Be concentrated targets for the Luftwaffe. That and the Red Army would likely at best have been less effective than the average German new infantry division due to the purges that had happened and were ongoing. So they wouldn't likely even have parity, plus be outnumbered and outgunned, plus surprised and unprepared. The pocket battles then go even more heavily toward the Germans with fewer Soviet troops able to make it into the woods to form an insurgency. I hate the say it, but going big and unwieldy was probably the least bad option given the circumstances.
 
Be concentrated targets for the Luftwaffe

True. A smaller Soviet military could really suffer from losing air superiority like they did in OTL. (Which is pretty likely if they put the bulk of their planes so far forward as they did in OTL.)

On my shelf is a old magazine article focusing on the Red Army artillery 1941-42. From after action reports and a comprehensive report from a senior artillery officer in the autumn of 1941, the author describes a ineffective arm. Staff officers from battalion up were untrained & had negligible theoretical or practical knowledge of their duties. A typical division level artillery group or regiment had 3-4 officers capable of their tasks. Most lacked any effective knowledge of their assigned position or of the position a level below them. Indirect fire was beyond the ability of most regiments, battalions, or batteries. A British artillery commander described how during the battle of Belgium it took 20 minutes for his regiment to mass its 24 cannon on a target, which he admitted was slow. The Red Army reports describe hours or even more than a day to accomplish a similar task. Camouflage was not understood, neither was entrenchment & pioneer tools were often not carried with the batteries or HQ companies. Communications were ineffective leading to over concentration of the batteries as desperate commanders tried to gain some sort of control over the guns.

This is reflected on the German sides accounts. Werner Adams a gunner in the 5th Motorized Divisions artillery recalled exactly one counter battery attack by the enemy in 1941, a few rounds of 20cm projectiles hitting near his battery. Siegfried Knappe of the 84th Inf Div similarly commented on the lack of effective artillery attacks during the summer of 41.

If the Soviet Army is half as large but the officer corps is the same size, does 6-8 officers capable of their tasks in each artillery group make a big difference?

fasquardon
 
It helps. Less over promotion, more capability to train the untrained. The article I drew from went on the explain how the reorganization of the autumn and winter of 1941 stripped the officers with any skill from the division artillery and dissolved the corps artillery groups, so that the capable leaders could be concentrated in the army artillery brigades, allowing those at least to function in the usual role of long range fires from masked or defilade positions. that proved the first step in restoring the Red Army artillery. In the interim the doctrine for many or most division artillery, now reduced to the light 76.2mm caliber cannon (& a few 122mm howitzers) was to prohibit firing at targets more than 1200 meters range. That was the effective range of the direct fire telescopic sight on the cannon. The cannon were dispersed singly or in pairs like machine guns, with interlocking fields of fire, and orders emphasized digging in the guns and camouflage. These were things the gun crews could understand and learn without extended classroom training and complex drill on the firing range. In 1942 the artillery leaders were running emergency schools at the army & Front levels and expanded the established formal schools. The officers and NCOs were rotated through the lower level schools and those who showed promise were sent on to higher level schooling. Special command groups or HQ sent to prepare the artillery for major attacks had a training function as well. As 1941 segued into 1943 the artillery regiments gradually recovered their 1939 pre expansion abilities & the division artillery moved back into the 20th Century in tactics.

One of the other penalties of expansion was the dilution of communications equipment. For whatever reason the industrial plans did not provide telephone, insulated wire, or radios for the artillery of 300+ divisions. Massing cannon battalions hub to hub for indirect fire was often necessary as to little telephone wire existed for properly dispersing the batteries. For the communications section salvaging telephone wire was a important skill. I read one account of the wiremen improvising links using wire fences.
 
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