"Why did the USSR defeat Germany in WW2?" Topic

The Allies also supplied most of the radios the Russian used in their tanks and elsewhere. Without these the Russians would have had only the companies commander with a radio as at the start of the war. More radios, more effective tactics.

OH MY >>>> WHAT HAVE I UNLEASHED! Over 50 posts in 12 hours

THANK YOU ALL … ITS BRILLENT

To answer one point only. Why did I use USSR rather than allies? The unit of study is The Eastern Front or Great Patriotic War. The focus is on the fighting between Germany and the USSR.
They are great kids that I teach but world and historical awareness is varaiable to say the least. So the question was to keep the focus tightly on the Eastern Front rather than risk confusing and losing them, hence the use of USSR rather than allies.

I am not trying to say the western allies did not do anything. Far from it (and although I recognise France surrended in 1940, they did re enter the war in 1942 although admittedly in a more limited way).

If you are interested, the reason I chose the Eastern Front is because we study a unit on Nazi Germany and this forms a nice bridge to the next unit which is the Cold War.

We spent two hours researching and discussing this question last Tuesday. One class at the end were firmly of the view that Germany lost the war on the Eastern Front rather than Russia won it. The Germans made too many mistakes. The second class was more even. As one girl said, "the Russians lost 650,000 here, 350,000 there, 5 million by 1942 and yet the Russians still kept on coming back for more."

Next Tuesday, I will let the two classes have a look at this post. I may have to do a lot of copying and pasting on Monday night as I am not sure TMP will get through the schools security filters. The word game is mentioned too many times! It will give them some more food for thought before I make them write the essay!

THANK YOU ALL AGAIN

Well…it's a bit difficult to add something of value to the discussion, but I'll try.
- Russians were ready to fight&die for the country.
During the bloody autumn of battle for Moscow, the city volunteers often had one rifle for two, and still they went for the defense of the city. The same determination was on military factories where women and children were sleeping right near the machines, constantly working 3 shifts.
The relocation of industry from the western part to Urals and Siberia was extremely important and efficiently executed.
USSR did have many good commanders, but it took more than a year and millions of dead/imprisoned to get rid of many generals&marshals who still dreamed of cavalry attacks, but were loyal to Stalin.
The losses of first war months were huge indeed. I didn't know that when I was at school, only in 90s we got a whole picture. Hundreds of thousands were lost just bcs. they were forbidden to retreat – at the threat of been executed.
For some reason, the people in the West, and quite a number of people here beleive that Stalin was better in making strategic decisions and making his generals do the job. In fact he made quite a number of bad decisions that led to huge losses and defeats – for instance, after Stalingrad, he was obsessed with offensive actions and that led to painful defeat in Kharkov. He was always thinking in terms that military operations should be executed at any costs, that was sitting in minds of our marshals and generals. Sometimes stupid offensives took part just bcs. it was an anniversary of Great October Socialist Revolution or Stalin's birthday.

Soviet industry was aimed for creating easy-to-use and easy-to-make weapons. That was extremely important, as most of pre-war army was lost in 1941-1942.

As for lend-lease, I guess metals, lorries and food stuff were most important. Everybody, who returned from war remembered "second front" – canned beaf from US, and studebekkers were extremely important. Generally, most of the tanks that USSR was getting before Shermans were disliked in army, however the presence of radios, uniforms for the crews and instruments was important.
With airplanes, the situation was different, as there were plenty of pilots that liked Aircobras. The only surviving brother of my granny was serving near Murmansk, for several months he was piloting refurbished Hurricane, and was really glad to exchange it for Yak…
However the metals and rubber were important in making Russian planes.

Losses were terrible in all 4 years of war. One of my grandfathers lost three brothers, out of 5 brothers of my grandmother only one returned from war. All 4 perished in 1941 – one killed, 2 lost in action, one dead from typhosys.
When I think of it, probably one of the main reason that my grandfather survived the war, was the fact that he was already a sergeant with 3 years of training in 1941.
He told me a lot when I was a teenager – I think the most striking things he told me were their retreat in 1941, the battle of Dnepr in 1943 and German counter-offensive near Balathon lake.

22/06/1941 he was in mortar battery located near the eastern border of Byelorussia. The very day they saw the fight, they lost 50% of men, as Germans very quickly spotted their position and suppressed them with artillery. Their battery was combined of two who lost even more, saw another battle, lost 80% of men, in exactly the same way. His opinion was that nobody ever thought, how these short-ranged mortars could be used effectively.
Then they were reformed as train guards for red cross trains, but on their second run they were bombed to pieces by squad of Yunkers. Got reformed into infantry batallion, retreated up to Vyazma, when he was reformed again into artillery…

In 1943 he was a already a senior lietenant, commander of ZIS-3 battery. They were attacked from all sides, night and day, with no replacements and no ammo.Holding a position on enemy side of Dnepr, he was heavily wounded in stomach. They were attacked from all sides, night and day, with no replacements and no ammo but somehow survived the transportation to friendly shore, even that their raft was peppered by Messerschmidt fire…

If forced to summarise briefly:

a) the Russians mobilised their much smaller industrial base (much, much smaller after Germany overran western Russia) far more efficently for the requirements of Total War than the Germans did and outproduced the Germans in many major categories of military equipment.

b) the Russians had larger manpower reserves (not that much larger though) and used what they had with more ruthlessness than the Germans.

c) the Russians demonstrated superior skill at both the strategic (and later on, 43+, the operational) level than the Germans to maximise the effectiveness of their forces at a Front level.

d) the Germans did not plan for a long war, they didn't really plan at all, and didn't know how to respond when Russia didn't simply collapse in 1941. Wavro, Showalther et al might observe that this has been a failing of Prussian militarism since 1866…

e) rather than trying to win hearts and minds amongst oppressed minorities in the USSR, the German conducted an war of enslavement and genocide against the Slavic untermensch, which unsurprisingly rather ed the Russians off and strengthened their will to resist.

Whilst the Western Allies like to flatter themselves about their contribution to the Eastern Front, at the end of the day modern industrial warfare is won by attrition. In WW1 that attrition took place at Verdun, the Somme and Third Ypres. In WW2 it happened at Rzhev, Stalingrad, Kursk, Kharkov, Minsk, Leningrad and innumerable other places in the east where the Wehrmacht and their fascist allies were bled white.

Hitler didn't come to terms with Great Britain first. With them out of the war the US concentrates on the Pacific (and no aid to the USSR). North Africa never happens and all of Germany and Italy's attention can be focused on Russia.

Mobius--

I believe the tape you are referring to was actually made in Norway or Finland (or at least in that area). But yes, AH admits that he underestimated the production capacity of the Soviet Union.

8th US Air Force impacted German production, transportation, and oil.

Funny I could have sworn the RAF had something to do with that as well! :-)

"d) the Germans did not plan for a long war, they didn't really plan at all, and didn't know how to respond when Russia didn't simply collapse in 1941. Wavro, Showalther et al might observe that this has been a failing of Prussian militarism since 1866…"

I heartily second this. The German plan was to invade the Soviet Union, and then just kind of wing it. There was no coherent plan for what to do after defeating the Soviet armies on the border.

No doubt this was due at least in part to Hitler's view that the Communist state was like a rotted out building – all one has to do is kick in the door and the entire edifice will collapse. Or, in other words, they planned the campaign based on wishful thinking rather than solid military planning.

Look what happened in July 1941. The Germans had, as planned, defeated the Soviet armies on the border. Then they basically had to take several weeks off to rationalize their supply lines, do maintain vehicles, etc. During this period Hitler and the generals argued about what to do next. If they'd had a plan, they would have known what came next.

Hubris is often the father of military disasters.

"the Russians demonstrated superior skill at both the strategic (and later on, 43+, the operational) level than the Germans to maximise the effectiveness of their forces at a Front level."

It certainly didn't hurt that Allied Lend-Lease had provided the Soviets with the mobility (300,000+ trucks) and communications gear (radios, radios, radios) needed to master modern mobile warfare. Plus, by 1943 Stalin had finally rehabilitated Tukachevsky's "Deep Battle" concept (for which he'd been executed by Stalin) to provide the Red Army with the right doctrine.

I suppose that brings up a macro-level point. Stalin was able to learn from his mistakes, Hitler was not.

To be precise, Tukhachevsky was executed bcs. Stalin considered him to be Red Napoleon, planning a coup. Tukhachevsky was very popular in army, and that alone was extremely dangerous for him. So, when Germans fabricated some documents, "proving" that marshal was their spy, Stalin was just glad to find much needed base for the accusation and trial….

Let's also remember that the Red Army didn't exactly consist of a peasant mob, to dumb to know when they were defeated by the 'superior' race. It was the Russians that developed the 'Deep Battle' doctrine during twenties and thirties. In 1941, Red Army was weakened by the purges, burdened by the dual command structure and in the middle of reorganisation of large parts of their armed forces. The officer corps of the 1941-42 consisted mainly of the politically reliable, but badly trained personel. It was those officers that took the brunt of Barbarossa and subsequent Caucasus adventure. They were succesively replaced by 'real' officers of Thukachevsky era who came back into party's favour AND soldiers with hard won combat experience, that proved themselves as competent leaders and were lucky enough to survive during these disastrous first years of war. This 'new' officer corps was able both to plan and implement operations based on the 'Deep Battle' doctrine, which time and again managed to suprise and overwhealm German army from 1943 and onward.

IMHO, almost the opposite process must have taken place in German armed forces. The veteran officer corps from 1941 was basically gone by 1943. These were of course replaced by German equivalency of the Soviet 'competent, battle-proven and lucky', but Soviet continous successes meant that even those men melted away at much greater rate than on the opponent's side.

In other words one could say that from 1942, Red Army became qualitativly better, while German quality slowly degraded with each passing month.

Also a word on effectivness of Allied bombing offensive of Germany. I always liked an opinion expressed by a person on a WWII forum that has gone offline long time ago. According to him, it was incorrect to ask how effective Allied bombings really were and one should rather ask how effective German war industry would become during 1943-44, if these bombings DIDN'T take place.

The Russians got there the fastest with the mostest

>wjsmithson2003 13 Mar 2008 6:19 p.m. PST
>'The United States, Great Britain and the Empire, France >and the other allies needn't have bothered then?'
>
>Kawasaki, I'm intrigued. What did France do in the Second >World War other than surrender as soon as possible?

At least France tried standing up to the Germans, some two years before the USA decided to bother…….

On a purely personal level their holding back the Germans around Dunkirk meant I had at least one more Uncle around when growing up than I may otherwise have done.

In short Stalin made it possible for Germany to win through his bloodthorsty paranoia, and Hitler made it possible for Germany to lose for largely the same reason.
Had Hitler not been obsessed with invading Russia he could have pored the troops he wasted on Barbossa into Africa and cut Britain off rom the middle east and India.
If he has done that it would not be beyond belief Stalin would no have tried to bite a chunk off the British empire. Britain may have been forced to come to terms and if that happened, or if Britains position became untenable, then America would have come o a peace with Germany or, if Britain had been defeated before Pearl, Germany would have been too busy digesting its conquests to declare war on America and America would likely have turfed Roosevelt out in favour os someone who would deal with the Nazis peacefullly.

Ben

>wjsmithson2003 13 Mar 2008 6:19 p.m. PST
>'The United States, Great Britain and the Empire, France >and the other allies needn't have bothered then?'
>
>Kawasaki, I'm intrigued. What did France do in the Second >World War other than surrender as soon as possible?

At least France tried standing up to the Germans, some two years before the USA decided to bother…….

On a purely personal level their holding back the Germans around Dunkirk meant I had at least one more Uncle around when growing up than I may otherwise have done.

RJT,

While I certainly am happy that your uncle survived the retreat at Dunkirk, and the war itself, I don't think that saying the French "stood up to the Germans some two years before the USA decided to bother", as if both the French and USA had equal choices, is accurate. France did nothing to stop the invasion of Poland, so that's 1939 out the window, and then in 1940 they were invaded – so its not like they had a lot of choice, yes?

I'm not saying that the French weren't brave, determined, fighters. I don't think, however, you can put the French on the same category for contributors to the war as the UK, the USA, or the Russians.

As for the Russians winning the war, do I believe the West played no part in that? Of course not. The West had their part to play, not the least of which was providing the equipment listed previously in this thread.

I believe, however, that the death knell of the German military would still have been sounded in places far from their home in east – regardless of whether or not the Allies intervened. Would it have taken longer? Yes. Would it have been even more costly for the Russians? Yes.

Unfortunately (or fortunately depending on how you look at it) whether or not that is true will never be known.

What I believe is irrefutable, however, is the fact that the Soviets took the most casualties, rendered more of the Wehrmacht and SS combat ineffective, used up more German resources than the rest of the Allies combined.

So did the USSR win the war single handed? No. But they sure as heck played the starring role in the play.

"Why did the USSR defeat Germany in WW2?"

Was it so that the Russian linesman could award Hurst's second goal in the 1966 final?

Everyone always forgets the Free French that fought on after 1940 (smile). Thousands died and they get no credit.

Both inside France as resistance fighters, armed troops in North Africa, Italy, France, Germany and Austria, as well as in the air and on the sea, Free French forces fought through out the war.

Odd how the 10s of thousands of troops that fought on after escaping from their overrun countries get short shift.

Dan

Everyone keeps harping on the the aid the US and the UK gave the Soviets.

Yes they did, but when and then again, when did it have an impact? There was little to no aid in 1941 when the Germans came closest to destroying the Soviet Union.

How much aid made an impact in 1942 when the Soviets threw back the Axis powers at Stalingrad?

I'd like to see a list of aid and when it arrived before one starts giving the Western Allies credit for the Soviets fighting and holding out in 1941-43.

No one disputes that aid made the difference in 1944-45 when the Soviets were driving west. There may be some agrument about 1943 and its impact. To me, the question is 1941-42 when the Soviets could have been defeated and the Western Allies, particularly the US were either not in the war, or until November of 1942, not involved in land combat in North Africa.

Dan

Steve Zalogas book on Soviet Armour has a breakdown of tank shipments to the USSR. His analysis is that from '42 onwards Allied shipments had a significant impact on Soviet operations. In '42 they prevented Russian tank stocks falling to critical levels and although a lot were used for training this enabled the Russians to use idigenous tanks for combat. In '44/45 the reliabilty of the US Shermans was a major assitance in the deep penetration operations. It is no coincidence that many of the pictures of Russians liberating various cities shos a significant proportion of M4's. But the biggest contribution of Allied aid was the trucks. Zaloga's analysis concludes that many of the major offensives of '44/45 would have stalled without the reliability of supply that the those US trucks gave. Again it is no coincidence that post war Russian trucks are virtually direct copies of the US trucks.

I reckon the only thing this thread proves is how some of the contributors display a pitifully narrow-minded, myth-ridden, inaccurate, and essentially US-centric interpretation of the Great Patriotic War.

I used to work in a factory in the Chicago area with a bunch of Germans who had fought in WWII. I asked them the same question. It came down to this; "There were too damn many of them and it was too damn cold."

"Everyone always forgets the Free French that fought on after 1940 (smile). Thousands died and they get no credit."

Dan,

I don't think anyone is forgetting the French – I certainly feel that, as you say, thousands of brave men and women put their lives on the line and paid the ultimate price.

That being said, so did thousands of Poles, Yugoslavs, and Greeks, but none of them are mentioned in this. Why? Because although their sacrifice was great, they just don't rate as one of the major contributors to the downfall of Nazi Germany – the UK, the US, and the USSR do.

"It came down to this; "There were too damn many of them and it was too damn cold."

Years ago I was on a bus in Berlin with a group of American wargamers. We were involved in an animated discussion (read load and obnoxious) on why the Germans didn't defeat the Russians when the elderly German in the seat in front of us turned around and, fixing us with a steely eye, said:

It's too big

It's too cold

And there's too many Russians

Hi folks,

so far many members have only listed the long term reasons for a german defeat in the eastern campaign. The old and long "known" facts like general winter, bad supplies, lacking preparations for a long war etc. are all correct in one way, but lack the basic reason.

A theory, which is backed by Dr. Rolf Hinze, Andreas Hillgruber and Christian Zentner, is, that the german defeat resulted from the delay in the initial offensive starting due to the Balkans campaign.

Without that delay, the german Wehrmacht wouldnīt have run into the winter season with all its negative results and Moscow would have surely fallen. And in a gigantic empire, where literally hundreds of of different nationalities and believes had to live together under a dictatoric regime, this would have surely been a sign of defeat of the sovjet terror regime and ptobably resulted in a breakdown of the sovjet system in the form of uprisings and revolts. Besides that Moscow functioned a s a substantial traffic knot for directing troop movements and not to mention the indutrial capaity of that city.

Also keep in mind, that while Taifun was running and german troops grinded their way towards Moscow, several anti-sovjet/pro-german actions were taking place (like increased desertations among the troops, minor demonstartions in the streets etc) . a fact even today not officially recognized and acknowledged by the officials. At this point of the war, the german troops seemed unbeatable to the world. And psychology is always a great factor in every conflict.

The importance of Moscow as the capital of the sovjet union can also be estimated by the fact, that Stalin in 1942 didnīt believe the captured german offensive plans for the Caucasus operation and insisted on a german new drive towards the capital. He was well aware of the political impottance of the city for his empire. Without it, he knew the union would break up into the multiple of different states we have nowadays in the east.

Now some my personal points of view for some mentioned arguments

Too many Russians: Itīs true, that the USSR has and had a greater population than Germany. Although it is hard to say, how many sovjet citizens were under german occupation, but it can be safe to say, that in the summer of 1943 even the Russians had a problem replacing their losses. They made up that deficincy only by advancing west after their "victory" at Kursk and incorporating people from the freed teritories. And the number of citizens a state has is not directly an indicator, how many soldiers can be recruited. This is especially true for the more remote parts of the USSR like the Caucasus regions, were many of the locals simply escaped the officials due to the unaccessable mountain regions.

Lacking supplies: A fact not well known is, that large stocks of winter clothing and other winter supplies. like special lubricants for machines and weapons, was stored in Poland and waited to be sshipped to the troops on the front. The reason fornot taking place, and the bad overall german supply situation during the whole eastern campaign, is based upon the fact of different railway gauges in western Europe and the USSR. German construction units had to resize the captured railways, which took up a great deal of time. And the constant lack of german motorized transport, combined with the bad eastern road street situaion, added to the constant lack of proper supplies for the front troops. This problem was furthered by the increasing partisan activity during 1943 and 1944 (Bagration was closely coordinated with local partisan groups in the proposed areas of attack).

Lacking german oil reserves/industrial capacity – Already in 1940 Hitler put the Caucasus oil fields as one of the major goals into the focus of Barbarossa. He was well aware, that if the war, may it be against the British alone, against the Russians or Americans or all of them, iis lost, if Germany didnīt have enough oil for running the war machine. Another substantial point, when you take the plannings and misconceptions for the 1942 summer offensive into account. Besides that it is safe to say, that the german heavy industry was not prepared for a long war. And this was the fact already for 1939!

Allied Lend-Lease: certainly a decisive factor. especially the thousands of american built trucks enabled the sovjets to motorise their troops and free industrial capacity for builöding other war goods, especially tanks (remember, that about 53000 T-34 īs in contrast to about 14500 PIII/PIV and 6500 PV/PVI were built). And during the war the USSR heavily relied upon allied food deliveries and not to mention clothing etc. Many people forget about the LL program, that not only weapons but also large amounts of "soft" goods were delivered, without whom the sovjet war/industrial machine would have been not so effective.

Greetings

Panzerwolf, do you know, that the highest % of heroes of the Soviet Union to the population was among Chechens and some other northern caucausian republics? You see, at that time the people were not aware that they were living under dictatorship, most of the population worshipped Stalin.
I'm afraid you're still making the same mistakes of taking wishes for reality.
Desertion had its place, that's why Stalin had to issue his famous order and incorporate machine guns squads to shoot our own people. Minor riots and significant panic indeed took place in autumn Moscow, for several days the authorities didn't act brutally enough to stop it. It was the time, when Stalin considered leaving for Samara bunker.
Stalin prepared all structures for Central Command there, so he was ready even to lose Moscow and still fight a war of attrition.
Still, panic wasn't such a decisive issue. Funny, that most of the panickers were middle-ranged clerks and officials, who had more information on the situation, and had something to loose. The sistem was still working – recently I read archive papers on NKVD agents, describing "the treason" of several communist officials, who were ordered to evacuate CPSU docs, but just left them in the buildings. They were caught on the road, leaving Moscow, and executed several days
Unlike Stalingrad, Moscow was prepared for defense – you can probably find the info on hundreds km of anti-tank trenches, mine fields, concrete fortification. The whole regions of the city were mined, and plans were ready for a prolonged city fight. What could happen is having Stalingrad earlier in the war, so I doubt it would be a walkthrough anyway…

"I reckon the only thing this thread proves is how some of the contributors display a pitifully narrow-minded, myth-ridden, inaccurate, and essentially US-centric interpretation of the Great Patriotic War."

This statement is kind of ironic considering how hard Stalin worked to minimize the Western Allies' contribution to the Great Patriotic War.

Simple answer. Sear weight of numbers and the ability to run their manufacturing facilities 24 hrs a day without the threat of bombing. Members of my family served on the Eastern Front.

Forgot to mention the renewal of the non aggression treaty with Japan that pumped 1,000,000 odd fresh Russian troops into the meat grinder.

Hitler

@ Barin1

Hi,

I agree on certain points with you:

The number of "Heroes of the Sovjet Union" is a very neglected part of USSR history when it comes to non-russian persons. IIRC the most successful sniper was not Zaitsev, but a (mongolian?) soldier. But on the other side didnīt Chechnia also suffer during the 20īs Caucasus uprisings? I might be wrong though.

I agree also, that for Taifun Moscow was prepared, but if Barbarossa would have been started earlier, the Balkans campaign never happening, the situation would have been different: no delay due to bad weather, better fighting conditions for the attackers, less time to prepare for the defenders.

I agree, that dtalin was willing to wage a war of attrition. But it would have been a problem morale wise, since the fall of Moscow would have surely been a significant set back since the city was and is not only a prime traffic/industry focal point, but political center. Just remember, that during communism in verbal conversations the party and its orders were often refered to just as "itīs the command of Moscow". Therefore itīs and was not just a capitol of a nation, but more a synonym for the "all mighty" government of that nation. And the myth of the unfailable perfect leader Stalin built for his person during the previous years would have been considerably damaged if not destroyed. So the willingness to keep on fighting against a seemingly unstoppable enemy would have been most likely reduced.

I know itīs a bit academic, but the usual chewed out theories/explanations are just symptoms and not reasons. Although on the long term production capabilities, numbers etc. were the decisive factors, why the USSR won that conflict.

@JTFM Enterprises

I agree with your statement, but would evaluate this point more as a long term effect, if you follow my arguments. Historically spoken, itīs a decisive factor for the outcome of Barbarossa/Taifun.

Greetings

Nazi racial policy. Slavs welcomed the Germans only to find (in majority of cases) they were going to be treated like slaves or even animals. If not for the lunatic racial superiority Stalin would have been treed because there were millions in the East who would have loved every minute of being 2nd or even 3rd class citizens of a German empire.

But of course, if they weren't racial superiority loons they wouldn't have invaded the East in the frst place anyway!

Big FO Tanks, plus taking on the boxheads game and beating them at it, getting by with a little help from their friends.

Bit like proper football…