Worst army in 1940

Which army in the year 1940 was worst?

  • Italian Army

    Votes: 351 83.4%
  • Soviet Army

    Votes: 22 5.2%
  • French Army

    Votes: 32 7.6%
  • Japanese Army

    Votes: 16 3.8%

  • Total voters
    421
Worst 1940 by elimination

Let's start with the historical head to head match-ups.
In Sept 1939... Soviet crush Japanese.
In 1940... France beat Italians while losing to the Germans.
So Soviets and France win over "worst" rivals and are eliminated from our choices.

Worst 1940 Army down to Japan's and Italy's.
Japan at least holding its own against China in 1940. Not anything to write home but compared to the Italians in 1940.

The COMPASS for worst in 1940 points only to the Italians.
 

Rubicon

Banned
Let's start with the historical head to head match-ups.
In Sept 1939... Soviet crush Japanese.
Yes let's

Lake Chasan July 29th - August 11th
KIA:
Soviet: 717
Japan: 526
WIA
Soviet: 2,752
Japan: 913

Battle of Khalkin Gol May 11th - September 16th
KIA:
Soviet: 7,974
Japan: 8,440
WIA
Soviet: 15,251
Japan: 8,766

Not much of a 'crush' if I say so, looks more like a draw to me, and that was with nummerical superiority and what is considered the best Red Army commander of the time, Georgy Konstantinovich Zhukov.
So your argument falls flat at that point already.





In 1940... France beat Italians while losing to the Germans.
So Soviets and France win over "worst" rivals and are eliminated from our choices.

Yes, 'beating' an enemy while defending the best defensive terrain possible: the alps. It doesn't really give any idea whatsoever of either armies respective capabilities, not to mention that fighting was to short to draw any kinds of conclusion other then: defend in mountains, it's good.

So again your argument falls flat


Worst 1940 Army down to Japan's and Italy's.
Japan at least holding its own against China in 1940. Not anything to write home but compared to the Italians in 1940.

Sino-Japanese War 1937-45
Losses:
KIA
Japan: 388,605
China: 1,320,000-2,000,000

WIA
Japan: 520,000
China: 1,797,000-2,200,000

'Held their own'? I'd say they were defeating the KMT and Communist armies most of the time. With a casualty ration of between 4:1 and 5:1. So again your argument falls flat.

The COMPASS for worst in 1940 points only to the Italians.

Operation Compass
36,000 Commonwealth forces vs. 150,000 Italians

500 vs. 3,000 KIA
115,000 Italian PoW

If one simply looks at compass for an estimation of the Italian army, yes it might be considered the worst.



But I'm a bit more interested in taking a much closer look at the Red Army,
so let's take a closer inspection of the Red Army's performance during the Winter War.

Tolvajärvi December 12th 1939
KIA
Soviet: ~5,000
Finns: 100+

WIA
Soviet: ~5,000
Finns: 250

Soumussalami December 7th 1939 - January 8th 1940
KIA
Soviet: 13-27,500 (including MIA)
Finns: 1,000+1,000 WIA

Kelja December 25th - 27th 1939

KIA
Soviet: ~2,000
Finns: 141

WIA
Finns: 375

Raate Road January 1st - 7th 1949
KIA
Soviet: 7-9,000
Finns: 402

Kollaa December 7th 1939 - Marh 13th 1940

KIA+WIA
Soviet: ~8,000
Finns: ~1,500

Total Winter War:
KIA+MIA
Soviet: 126,875
Finns: 25,904

WIA
Soviet: 188,671
Finns: 45,557

PoW
Soviet: 5,572
Finns: ~1,000

The Soviet had a casualty ratio of 1:5 against a peasant militia army.


So the Italian lost in a campaign an enormous amount of troops to a well-trained, well equipped, well-supplied enemy with surprise while themselves being badly led, wrongly trained, badly equipped and badly supplied.

On the other hand the soviets lost 5:1 while well supplied and well equipped against a enemy with hardly any equipment and woefully under supplied.


I find it enormously amusing that some people on this board gives an tremendous amount of excuses to the Red Army, while utterly condemning the Italian one for roughly the same factors.

While the Italian army did bad, the Red Army did worse, far, far worse.
 
But acknowledging that fact would go directly against the uncritical Red Army worship that is so unrepentantly practised by some members...:p
 
The Soviet had a casualty ratio of 1:5 against a peasant militia army.

[snip]

On the other hand the soviets lost 5:1 while well supplied and well equipped against a enemy with hardly any equipment and woefully under supplied.

Like I have tried to argue above in this thread, there is much more to the Winter War than the mechanized strength of the Red Army and the poorly armed "model Cajander" Finns. For the terrain and the conditions, the Soviets were more poorly prepared and trained than that "peasant militia army" they were facing.

Finns were trained for winter warfare (partly by default, often being hunters and outdoorsmen, often fighting near their own hometowns and villages), trained skiers with adequate equipment (tents with stoves, sleds, skis, good winter clothes), versed in suitable doctrine.

The Soviets had none of these advantages. Usually no winter clothes or tents that could be warmed, fighting in temperatures under -20 degrees Celsius. Only open fires for warmth. If they had skis, they almost always had just very basic training in using them - to the point of continually falling down if not on absolutely flat, clear terrain or road. This all often caused the morale and readiness of the Soviet units to fall abysmally low.

In all the battles you quoted, mobile Finnish ski troops could take on cumbersome Soviet columns only able to move along roads surrounded by deep snow. Even the armor had very limited cross-country capabilities under those circumstances. As a result, they could be beaten with much smaller formations.

Quite simply, in some very crucial ways, Finns were better trained and better equipped than the Soviets, especially north of the Ladoga and in those battles that saw the worst disasters for the Red Army, like Raate road.
 
Considering that much of the USSR experiences extremely long and hard winters each year, shouldn't the Red Army have had time to develop a fitting winter warfare doctrine before trying to subdue Finland?
 

Rubicon

Banned
Quite simply, in some very crucial ways, Finns were better trained and better equipped than the Soviets, especially north of the Ladoga and in those battles that saw the worst disasters for the Red Army, like Raate road.

What I have been trying to argue all along is that the Italian army was just as badly trained, led and equipped for desert warfare as the Red Army troops was badly trained, led and equipped for arctic warfare.
The Red Army did worse then the Italian army, and was better supplied in terms of ammunition and fire support then the Italian army.

And still this board say the Red Army was better and give it all kind of excuses while condemning the Italian army.
 
Rubicon said:
What I have been trying to argue all along is that the Italian army was just as badly trained, led and equipped for desert warfare as the Red Army troops was badly trained, led and equipped for arctic warfare.
The Red Army did worse then the Italian army, and was better supplied in terms of ammunition and fire support then the Italian army.

And still this board say the Red Army was better and give it all kind of excuses while condemning the Italian army.

I understand what you are saying, but there seems to be a tendency on the board to both downplay the difficulty of the Finnish front in the Winter War and the level of Finnish troops, just by saying that the Red Army forces were a) several times larger and b) much better armed than the Finns. This is, however, just one side of the conflict.

Like when you call the Finnish Army "peasant militia troops". In fact one might well argue that, on average, the Finnish soldiers in the war were better trained than the Red Army soldiers, not only for winter warfare but also in general.

Not only were these trained conscript troops, but the part that could be called "peasant militia" were even better than the average soldiers. They were members of the Civil Guard, Finland's "Freikorps", sometimes veterans of the Civil War, often from the countryside.

They spent their free time in military-style exercises in both summer and winter, and that could be compared to constant refresher exercises for "ordinary" reservists. The Civil Guards training made, under the conditions, for good troops that fighting in the same units with their neighbours and friends often had both very good knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the brothers in arms and an excellent esprit de corps.


Considering that much of the USSR experiences extremely long and hard winters each year, shouldn't the Red Army have had time to develop a fitting winter warfare doctrine before trying to subdue Finland?

It should have. In fact, IIRC there was an official and detailed Soviet military study written in the late 20s that analyzed the prospects of fighting a war in Finland in a sombre fashion and in fact warned about engaging in a war in Finland in the winter, basically predicting all the problems that the Red Army eventually met in 1939-40. The study had just been promptly forgotten after it was published.
 

Rubicon

Banned
I understand what you are saying, but there seems to be a tendency on the board to both downplay the difficulty of the Finnish front in the Winter War and the level of Finnish troops, just by saying that the Red Army forces were a) several times larger and b) much better armed than the Finns. This is, however, just one side of the conflict.

You are arguing to one of your friends. I am not downplaying the Finnish army, I am simply looking at it critically and comparing it to other nations.

Like when you call the Finnish Army "peasant militia troops". In fact one might well argue that, on average, the Finnish soldiers in the war were better trained than the Red Army soldiers, not only for winter warfare but also in general.

Not only were these trained conscript troops, but the part that could be called "peasant militia" were even better than the average soldiers. They were members of the Civil Guard, Finland's "Freikorps", sometimes veterans of the Civil War, often from the countryside.

They spent their free time in military-style exercises in both summer and winter, and that could be compared to constant refresher exercises for "ordinary" reservists. The Civil Guards training made, under the conditions, for good troops that fighting in the same units with their neighbours and friends often had both very good knowledge of the strengths and weaknesses of the brothers in arms and an excellent esprit de corps.
A) They were 80-90% peasants
B) What you described above is ... militia.

The Finnish army was well motivated and well trained with former veterans sprinkled into it, but composed of peasant militia non the less. I could stretch myself to calling the Finnish army composed of peasant home guard militia if that makes you feel better. But compared to non Nordic nations, it was a militia based army.
 
The Finnish army was well motivated and well trained with former veterans sprinkled into it, but composed of peasant militia non the less. I could stretch myself to calling the Finnish army composed of peasant home guard militia if that makes you feel better. But compared to non Nordic nations, it was a militia based army.

Under those qualifications you can say that, of course. But to many people saying "peasant militia" will conjure up an image of random, untrained farmers and agricultural workers rounded up, armed and sent to fight. And more often than not, that applies more to the Red Army than the Finnish Army during WWII.

I think it needs to be emphasized that almost all of the men had also received "official" military training as conscripted men and the Civil Guards training usually took place in lieu of other reserve exercises. The Civil Guards were far and above the largest "civilian" organization in Finland in the interwar, numbering up to 100 000 members in the late 30s. And at that time it had been already made a part of the official national defence organization, boosting the capabilities of the armed forces.

Per capita this left Finland in a better position than even many countries with big standing armies for fielding large forces in a time of war. Finland did during the Continuation War manage to mobilize its population and economy for war in a way that, size for size, left many large nations claiming to conduct a total war in shame. The Civil Guards and its female equivalent, the Lotta Svärd, were instrumental in this.
 
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Rubicon

Banned
But to many people saying "peasant militia" will conjure up an image of random, untrained farmers and agricultural workers rounded up, armed and sent to fight.
Since to me that image is associated with feudal levies, and considering that Finland was not, is not and have never been a feudal country I mistakenly believed that such associations were negated. I was actually literal in my description of the Finnish army and not figurative.
 
Since to me that image is associated with feudal levies, and considering that Finland was not, is not and have never been a feudal country I mistakenly believed that such associations were negated. I was actually literal in my description of the Finnish army and not figurative.

I think main objection would be that if the Finnish White Guards of 1918 (to me, absolutely "peasant militia" in the way I understand the term) and the Finnish Army of 1939 are described with that same term, it is easy to overlook the evolution of the Finnish system of defence in between. One of the shortcomings of the Soviet leadership in the Winter War was to do this very mistake, I believe, and think that the Finnish armed forces are nothing more than "White militia".

I believe that most soldiers taking part in WWII did it with the background of a limited military training, mostly less than a year in training before being sent to the front. Almost all Finnish soldiers had this, and a major part of them had continuous training with the Civil Guards, comparable to reserve exercises. If the Finnish Army was because of this "based on peasant militia", then one could call, say, the US Army "based on civilians": most soldiers in it had the official army training but not nearly as many had similar stints of additional refresher exercises.
 
But acknowledging that fact would go directly against the uncritical Red Army worship that is so unrepentantly practised by some members...:p

Oh, come on. Even *I* noted that this campaign is what happens when you've a complete dunderhead in charge of force that looks on paper overwhelming. Not to mention that I also picked the Red Army as the worst army of 1940.
 
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Considering that much of the USSR experiences extremely long and hard winters each year, shouldn't the Red Army have had time to develop a fitting winter warfare doctrine before trying to subdue Finland?

To be fair to the Soviets they had no more reason to suspect a debacle in Finland than the man in the moon. Where even Italian generals told Mussolini not to invade Greece when he wanted to do it as he wanted to do it.

What I have been trying to argue all along is that the Italian army was just as badly trained, led and equipped for desert warfare as the Red Army troops was badly trained, led and equipped for arctic warfare.
The Red Army did worse then the Italian army, and was better supplied in terms of ammunition and fire support then the Italian army.

And still this board say the Red Army was better and give it all kind of excuses while condemning the Italian army.

By the end of WWII the Red Army was the only Allied ground force to show capability at basic operational art. It's a harsh truth but the US Army of the WWII era was good at straight-out slugging and precious little else, though much of this had to do with inexperience in war, period, as opposed to much else. In 1940, OTOH, the Red Army had as much relationship to its successor of a few years later as the US Army of 1940 did to the superpower army of 1946.
 
Of the actual contenders, from best to worst:

French
Japanese
Soviet
Italian

That's undoubtedly going to be controversial, but the French army was very good at fighting the war it was designed to fight--a war of attrition on the comparatively narrow western front. Unfortunately, a combination of Gamelin's blunders and Belgian incompetence forced it fight an encounter battle that pitted the best German troops against poorly equipped and trained French reservists, with essentially no French mobile reserves. The French active divisions and DCMs were quite good, but they were in absolutely the wrong place.

The Soviet/Japanese battle at Nomanham was interesting but meaningless in determining the quality of the two forces. Let's see. We have one inexperienced Japanese division, plus a few borrowed elements, against several picked Soviet divisions with absolute priority on logistics and equipment. The Japanese government forbids its very good air force from intervening after the first few days and assures the Soviets that they won't escalate anywhere outside the already involved area, which frees the Soviets to escalate as much as they want to locally. And the casualty ratio still wasn't particularly lopsided. I would be interested in seeing how many tanks the Soviets lost versus Japanese tank losses. I suspect the Soviets lost lopsidedly more tanks. Of course they had them to lose, which the Japanese didn't.

Between the Italians and Soviets, I would pick the Soviets by a small margin. In 1940, both armies had individual good divisions, but most of their divisions were poorly trained and equipped. The big Soviet advantages were firepower and the ability to keep pouring men and material at an opponent until they crumbled under the weight. The Italians may well have been as good as the Soviets man-for-man and bullet-for-bullet, and did reasonably well against the Soviets in the early Barbarosa fighting, but the Soviets could produce a lot more bullets and more effective ones.

The difference between Finland and Greece is instructive. The Finns probably did more damage to the Soviets in the aftermath of a failed offensive than the Greeks did to the Italians, but the Soviets could rally and swamp the Finns, while the Italians could only rally and stalemate the Greeks.

The Italians were much better than they looked in Greece and the initial stages of North Africa. In Greece they started an offensive at the start of the rainy season, with two weeks to get ready, and the Greeks actually had more divisions on the front once they mobilized. It was crazy leadership. It's sort of like Hitler going to the German high command in October 1940 and telling them to attack the Soviets in two weeks, just as the fall mud got nice and gooey. No army in the world would look good trying to carry out that kind of order.

In North Africa, the Italians sent a mostly foot-marching army out into the desert with no solid defensive positions to anchor a line and with essentially no weapon that could penetrate the front armor of a Matilda tank, other than maybe the guns of the M13/40 tanks once they got there.

The Italian artillery guys were not surrender monkeys. A lot of times they kept bouncing shells off Matildas until they became red splotches under the tracks. Italian infantry did surrender readily, but what were they supposed to do when they had nothing that could knock out the British tanks and no way to get water once they were cut off? Many of them had recently shipped over from Italy with little or no desert training, which added to their problems.

As to the best army in the world in 1940, the Finns were awfully good in their own environment and looked at the Germans with a considerable amount of contempt. In Crete, the Germans ran into Maori units in the New Zealand part of the Commonwealth forces and while as good Nazis they couldn't say "Holy cr@p!" too loudly, it's kind of written between the lines.
 
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We're comparing armies, not a jumped-up highway patrol ;)

True, though if the Belgian army was a jumped-up highway patrol, what does that make the BEF, which had roughly half the number of divisions on the continent that Belgium did (10 versus around 20)?
 
Please don't quote the Kaiser the Hamburg Police could not arrest the BEF in 1940 any more than it could in 1914. You'd need the Berlin Police as well, and if you could get hold of the NYPD that'd be a big help.

(Just joking my Grandfather was in the BEF. Apparently he had lots of really nice things to say about the French and Belgian armies. Honest)
 

Wolfpaw

Banned
True, though if the Belgian army was a jumped-up highway patrol, what does that make the BEF, which had roughly half the number of divisions on the continent that Belgium did (10 versus around 20)?
I'd call it offal for the grinder.
 
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