When did the Red Army become the qualitative equal of the Heer?

Deleted member 1487

If we are comparing armies intelligence should only be evaluated at army level. The soviets had a much better intelligence service, but that was run by the NKVD. The German Army intelligence service (at OKW and OKH level and even at Army Group level) was usually very bad at evaluating soviet strength and intentions, and remained so all through the war. They regarded the Soviets as basically finished before the winter 41 and winter 42 counteroffensives and totally missed the preparation for Bagration.
Intel, and specifically at army level, was arguably the area were the Soviets were most consistently better than the Germans.
In large part that was due to Soviet counter intel, which was by far the most brutal and uninhibited of the war. If they thought a German spy was in a given area they had little compunction about 'liquidating' any and all suspect civilians. It was so bad that a 90% loss rate for agents was considered a success by Abwehr/FHO standards. When you can't get agents into enemy territory you can't get good intel, especially when SigInt only provides a limited picture. The Soviets had much great success because the war was on their territory and they had a lot of friendly civilians behind the lines to get info from, plus over 1 million Russian 'volunteers' working for the German Army by 1942. Soviet intel ability fell off when they got out of territory with friendlies, but by that point they had basically defeated all but the remnants of the German military in the East. Soviet intel ability was largely a function of where the war was fought.
 
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In large part that was due to Soviet counter intel, which was by far the most brutal and uninhibited of the war. If they thought a German spy was in a given area they had little compunction about 'liquidating' any and all suspect civilians. It was so bad that a 90% loss rate for agents was considered a success by Abwehr/FHO standards. When you can't get agents into enemy territory you can't get good intel, especially when SigInt only provides a limited picture. The Soviets had much great success because the war was on their territory and they had a lot of friendly civilians behind the lines to get info from, plus over 1 million Russian 'volunteers' working for the German Army by 1942. Soviet intel ability fell off when they got out of territory with friendlies, but by that point they had basically defeated all but the remnants of the German military in the East. Soviet intel ability was largely a function of where the war was fought.
Well, German agents operating in Britain didn't fare much better.
And the Soviets could rely on the communist parties everywhere to provide support for intel ops. They were more limited at countries without an active communist faction, but that was a rare case in the 30s/40s.
 
In large part that was due to Soviet counter intel, which was by far the most brutal and uninhibited of the war. If they thought a German spy was in a given area they had little compunction about 'liquidating' any and all suspect civilians. It was so bad that a 90% loss rate for agents was considered a success by Abwehr/FHO standards. When you can't get agents into enemy territory you can't get good intel, especially when SigInt only provides a limited picture. The Soviets had much great success because the war was on their territory and they had a lot of friendly civilians behind the lines to get info from, plus over 1 million Russian 'volunteers' working for the German Army by 1942. Soviet intel ability fell off when they got out of territory with friendlies, but by that point they had basically defeated all but the remnants of the German military in the East. Soviet intel ability was largely a function of where the war was fought.
Regarding Sigint, the more centralized Soviet planning cycle, which required more detailed directives (paper) but less radio flow, together with less reliance on radio and a naturally paranoid attitude regarding security made them very hard targets for Sigint.
The Germans, whose flexible command practices required a fast and intensive communication between echelons were natural targets for Sigint.
 

Deleted member 1487

Well, German agents operating in Britain didn't fare much better.
Neither did British agents in Germany. Turns out operating in the heart of enemy territory is tough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venlo_Incident#Aftermath

And the Soviets could rely on the communist parties everywhere to provide support for intel ops. They were more limited at countries without an active communist faction, but that was a rare case in the 30s/40s.
Sure, which was a function of the ideological fanaticism of international communists who were willing to give the USSR whatever they could. That doesn't mean the USSR was great at intel ops, it means they had a lot of traitors to work with.

Regarding Sigint, the more centralized Soviet planning cycle, which required more detailed directives (paper) but less radio flow, together with less reliance on radio and a naturally paranoid attitude regarding security made them very hard targets for Sigint.
The Germans, whose flexible command practices required a fast and intensive communication between echelons were natural targets for Sigint.
The Soviet signals did actually yield a lot of intel, but after capturing an army level German SigInt unit around Stalingrad in late 1942 they figured out the majority of their vulnerabilities and German methods, so shut down a lot of that to German SigInt units.
This blog has a lot of excellent info about the SigInt war and this link is to the Soviet codes section; the Germans did better than expected:
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/search/label/Soviet Codes
 
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Neither did British agents in Germany. Turns out operating in the heart of enemy territory is tough.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venlo_Incident#Aftermath

Sure. Even in occupied territories with local help it was very dangerous work.

Sure, which was a function of the ideological fanaticism of international communists who were willing to give the USSR whatever they could. That doesn't mean the USSR was great at intel ops, it means they had a lot of traitors to work with.

Well, if it works...

The Soviet signals did actually yield a lot of intel, but after capturing an army level German SigInt unit around Stalingrad in late 1942 they figured out the majority of their vulnerabilities and German methods, so shut down a lot of that to German SigInt units.
This blog has a lot of excellent info about the SigInt war and this link is to the Soviet codes section; the Germans did better than expected:
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/search/label/Soviet Codes
Thanks. I'll look it up. The improvised nature of soviet defensive ops in 1941/42 would require more radio flow. For something like Bagration, they could pass down orders mostly at briefings. Their telephone lines were also less likely to get cut or bugged by partisans.
 

Redbeard

Banned
In general I think it is much more difficult to conduct offensive operation than defensive. IOW a defensive victory as at Kursk does not earn you as many points in the quality contest as an offensive one as at Bagration. Likewise the huge losses and occasional victories which the Wehrmacht still inflicted on the Red Army in late war IMHO were far from as impressive as the deep penetrating operations of the Wehrmacht in 1940-42.

The tactical and operational skills of the Wehrmacht probably were superior to almost the end (Volkssturm etc. would have to pull down the average considerably in the last months of the war) but it is not fair to blame the Red Army for not being as proficient in tactics and operations. When the Red Army could begin to think beyond survival it would be absolutely nonsens trying to copy German thinking - no matter how impressive it was. The Soviet/Russian way would be counting on mass, firepower and resilience rather than flexibility, maneuvre and daring. They really had no choice and by 1941 that was close to costing them existence, but by 1944 mass, firepower and resilience served them very well and the Germans could do little with flexibility, maneuvre and daring.
 
This is an interesting question posed by the OP. It made me go look up the tank type allotments for the on-set of Barbarossa. I could only find the German by type, the Soviets was very general.

But according to this source here was the breakdown by type on June 22nd:
  • Pz. Kfz-I - 152
  • Pz. Kfz-II - 743
  • Pz. Kfz 35 - 155
  • Pz. Kfz 38 - 625
  • Pz. Kfz-III (3.7cm) - 265
  • Pz. Kfz-III (5cm) - 707
  • Pz. Kfz-IV - 417
Now the 155 Pz 35's were all in the 6th Panzer Division. Everything else was sort of spread out, but not equally among the 17 panzer divisions. The majority of the tanks they ran into during the 1st month were T-26, T-28, BT-5 and BT-7's. But once the KV's and the T-34 started showing up only the Pz IV's with the long barrel had any chance of killing them.

Now for the start of Barbarossa can you imagine if the 155 Pz 35 had been Pz IV's and the 152 Pz I's had been Pz V D's? I know the D's had a lot of problems but they would have matched up against the KV's and T-34's. The production output would be 50 tanks per month of both the IV's and the V's going forward with the normal amount of III's coming off the lines as well.

Do you think this would have tipped the balance and defeated the SU?
 

Redbeard

Banned
This is an interesting question posed by the OP. It made me go look up the tank type allotments for the on-set of Barbarossa. I could only find the German by type, the Soviets was very general.

But according to this source here was the breakdown by type on June 22nd:
  • Pz. Kfz-I - 152
  • Pz. Kfz-II - 743
  • Pz. Kfz 35 - 155
  • Pz. Kfz 38 - 625
  • Pz. Kfz-III (3.7cm) - 265
  • Pz. Kfz-III (5cm) - 707
  • Pz. Kfz-IV - 417
Now the 155 Pz 35's were all in the 6th Panzer Division. Everything else was sort of spread out, but not equally among the 17 panzer divisions. The majority of the tanks they ran into during the 1st month were T-26, T-28, BT-5 and BT-7's. But once the KV's and the T-34 started showing up only the Pz IV's with the long barrel had any chance of killing them.

Now for the start of Barbarossa can you imagine if the 155 Pz 35 had been Pz IV's and the 152 Pz I's had been Pz V D's? I know the D's had a lot of problems but they would have matched up against the KV's and T-34's. The production output would be 50 tanks per month of both the IV's and the V's going forward with the normal amount of III's coming off the lines as well.

Do you think this would have tipped the balance and defeated the SU?
Having Panthers for Barbarossa is IMHO into ASB country, but having the most of the German tanks being PzIII with a long 50mm would not be entirely impossible.

I don't think that would change much in most of 1941 though - the OTL mediocre tanks did overwhelmingly well already. But I could imagine the morale effect would be significant. A 50 mm L/60 has a decent chance vs. a T34 and the KVs rarely acted beyond the annoying but static pillbox function which you could bring 88s or 105mm how to bear on.
 
Having Panthers for Barbarossa is IMHO into ASB country, but having the most of the German tanks being PzIII with a long 50mm would not be entirely impossible.

I don't think that would change much in most of 1941 though - the OTL mediocre tanks did overwhelmingly well already. But I could imagine the morale effect would be significant. A 50 mm L/60 has a decent chance vs. a T34 and the KVs rarely acted beyond the annoying but static pillbox function which you could bring 88s or 105mm how to bear on.

I think this was one of Hitlers biggest failures and it is weird because he was such a numbers guy! The fact that the tank production lagged so far behind need from 1938 on is bazar. It amazed me how he didn't blow a gasket about why the Panzer divisions weren't getting the tanks they needed.
 
I think this was one of Hitlers biggest failures and it is weird because he was such a numbers guy! The fact that the tank production lagged so far behind need from 1938 on is bazar. It amazed me how he didn't blow a gasket about why the Panzer divisions weren't getting the tanks they needed.

Tooze goes into that in Wages of Destruction. The short version is Nazi efficiency in production is a self-contradictory term as there was a lot of political patronage, pleasing powerful industrialists, plain and simple resource limitations and the fact that German industry still mostly used the craft-based system which is a whole lot less efficient at mass production than Soviet or American mass-based layouts. They simply did not have modes of organizing production that could scale or had sufficient resources to keep up.

They also weren't helped by the fact that tank developers had this lovely tendency of tinkering with the designs on the line and putting in the latest adjustments into effect on current models in production meaning keeping tanks supplied with necessary parts was a special sort of Hell for the Wehrmacht's quartermasters. The Soviets didn't bother with that sort of nonsense, mostly focusing on simple, uniform upgrades or pumping out new models and the WAllies mostly did the same thing.
 
When did the Red Army become the qualitative equal (in terms of skill and equipment) of the Heer during WW2?
Around Stalingrad? Kursk?

Do you mean at the strategic level skill or at the tactical level skill?

Strategically, I think the Red Army reached parity at Stalingrad. Stalingrad "Little Uranus" as big as it was only a small part of Big Uranus- the mega encirclement that Stavka planned of the entire Army Group South. In pursuit of this goal, Stavka not only encircled Stalingrad, but collapsed the Italian eight army- then sent balanced armored task forces deep into the German rear.

As perfectly strategically Blitzkreigish as Big Uranus was, the Soviets did not have the tactical skills to pull it off. German task forces, though outnumbered, systematically out fought and stopped their Soviet opposites. Even the main Soviet advance though the Italians began to falter as German battalions, regiments and divisions continued to outperform their Soviet opposites.

Soviet Strategic parity and German tactical advantage was again evident at the Kharkov counter offensive (highly skilled Soviet strategic planning was not matched at the tactical level). This led to a devastating German tactical counter attack that played on the tactical skills of Waffen divisions. Ditto for Kursk. The Germans were not beaten tactically, but stopped by Strategic insight.

In the end, I don't think the Soviets nor the western allies ever managed to match German tactical skills on a broad average (of course, individual exceptions exist)
 

Redbeard

Banned
Do you mean at the strategic level skill or at the tactical level skill?

Strategically, I think the Red Army reached parity at Stalingrad. Stalingrad "Little Uranus" as big as it was only a small part of Big Uranus- the mega encirclement that Stavka planned of the entire Army Group South. In pursuit of this goal, Stavka not only encircled Stalingrad, but collapsed the Italian eight army- then sent balanced armored task forces deep into the German rear.

As perfectly strategically Blitzkreigish as Big Uranus was, the Soviets did not have the tactical skills to pull it off. German task forces, though outnumbered, systematically out fought and stopped their Soviet opposites. Even the main Soviet advance though the Italians began to falter as German battalions, regiments and divisions continued to outperform their Soviet opposites.

Soviet Strategic parity and German tactical advantage was again evident at the Kharkov counter offensive (highly skilled Soviet strategic planning was not matched at the tactical level). This led to a devastating German tactical counter attack that played on the tactical skills of Waffen divisions. Ditto for Kursk. The Germans were not beaten tactically, but stopped by Strategic insight.

In the end, I don't think the Soviets nor the western allies ever managed to match German tactical skills on a broad average (of course, individual exceptions exist)

Strategically I think both were at the absolute bottom in mid 1941. Germany for not preparing or planning into the winter of 1941/42 and the Soviets for relying on the Germans not attacking until the Soviets would be ready to attack themselves.

Tactically I don't think they were as far apart as we often image. If given the chance, and often without having a chance, a Red Army unit at tactical level (roughly squad-battalion level) would fight with extreme tenacity and often showing good use of terrain, firepower, movement etc.

The "Auftragstaktik/mission tactics" philosophy of the German army usually gave the German units the upper hand though, but usually at cost, as the "Reds" could be tough nuts to crack.

IMHO the huge difference came at the operational level - ie. the intermediate level between the front (tactics) and the overall allocation of resources and goals of the warfare (Strategy). This is the level where units capable of independent combat (from Brigade/Division and up) and deployed and lead into combat, and that includes TOEs and logistics. By 1940-41 the Wehrmacht was way ahead of any other army on the planet and in contrast the Red Army hardly had any operational level at all! The General officers had been shot, materiel dispersed to a degree where most units were critically short (de facto being static units) and the TOEs so extremely biased towards frontline strength that even the fully equipped units usually vapourised on the first combat contact. I guess this was a product of the Soviet system, where a career was made by reporting back to have fulfilled the quantitative goals in the plan. And here it was much easier to understand that a unit with 200 tanks in the inventory would be much better than one with 100 and in this context resources spent on mechanics and recovery vehicles could easily be seen as a waste of resources as would training the tank crews in locating the 100s of lubrication nipples and knowing which ones to used daily and which ones after 100 miles etc.

On top of that the overall tactical and operational doctrine was in chaos. Before WWII "deep operations" was the "way we fight" in the Red Army. Developed by Marshall Tuchachevsky and probably a much more deliberate take on "Blitzkrieg" than Blitzkrieg ever was, it had the Soviets produce more tanks in the 1930 than the rest of the planet combined. But then Tuchachevsky and his disciples were shot in the purges and the "doctrinal school" for a moment became more French inspired (ie. 1000 armoured units each of three tanks supporting the infantry rather than three units of 1000 tanks each supported by the infantry). Then came the German success in France 1940 and the pendulum swung back towards armour heavy manouvre units. This meant reinstitution of the Mechanised Corps - usually two armoured and a motorised Division - on paper the most powerful military units on the planet. To speed up the process most Rifle Divisions had to hand over most of their motor vehicles over to the Mechanised Corps and if anything was left it had to be shared with the numerous new units being formed in these years to achieve the goal of 500 Divisions by mid 1942.

The machine spitting out new units gave the SU an unmatched strategic perseverance when the army lost in 1941 had to be replaced, but the Soviets also had to realise that they at the operational level really couldn't handle units greater than a very simple Brigade.

IMHO this is the really critical time of the East Front. The Soviets won due to strategic perseverance and the Germans lost due to lack of the same - ie. the old stuff about not planning Barbarossa into 1942. With a foresighted planning, the Germans could have utilised their operational superiority to neutralise the Soviet perseverance into 1942. But they didn't - the operational superiority got blunted in the winter of 1941/42, and when it got temporarily sharpened again in mid 1942 and mid 1943 it was up against not only the Soviet perseverance but also against a Red army starting to get the grip of operations (and a Hitler replacing operational sense with a ditto neurosis).

NB: The lack of authoritative and sharp definitions of tactics/operations/strategy is remarkable, and the above definition is my own amateur version - so please don't blame any one else - but I think it is valuable to have this intermediate level "operation" - especially when discussing WWII.
 

Deleted member 1487

And a weak industry unable to fully supply the Eastern Front due to other fronts and the demands of the Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.
I meant greater Soviet numbers, but that is a matter of perspective; German numerical/material weakness was a major factor in 'Soviet Strategic Insight'.
 

Anchises

Banned
I meant greater Soviet numbers, but that is a matter of perspective; German numerical/material weakness was a major factor in 'Soviet Strategic Insight'.

I wouldn't call the German material weakness a factor in the "Soviet Strategic Insight".

But I guess that is really a matter of perspective.
 

Deleted member 1487

I wouldn't call the German material weakness a factor in the "Soviet Strategic Insight".

But I guess that is really a matter of perspective.
It was meant sarcastically. Their 'strategic insight' has a way of tracking with the Soviets just grossing outnumbering the Germans and being able to mass where and when they wanted. They could form new units and keep them hidden by never using them until a major offensive, so their existence would be a surprise.
 
It was meant sarcastically. Their 'strategic insight' has a way of tracking with the Soviets just grossing outnumbering the Germans and being able to mass where and when they wanted. They could form new units and keep them hidden by never using them until a major offensive, so their existence would be a surprise.

All of which was a product of superior strategic insight, not a cause.
 

Deleted member 1487

All of which was a product of superior strategic insight, not a cause.
Material factors were a function of population, help from allies (material and by drawing forces off for other fronts), Hitler being a moron and starting a multi-front war against the strongest powers in the world, and pre-war mass heavy industry formation for reasons other than fighting WW2 specifically. Not really deep strategic insight, more like fortuitious circumstances with some good general planning.
 
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