"About The Soviet Union Army 2" Topic
10 Posts
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Tango01 | 22 Jun 2016 2:46 p.m. PST |
"The Cold War Soviet Army was both the Soviet Union's most important military tool and the Communist Party's main guarantor of power. The Red Army emerged from World War II as the most powerful land force in the world. The Soviets' navy and air force, however, paled in comparison to those of their Western counterparts. The Soviet Red Army occupied the majority of Eastern Europe in 1945, making Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, and Bulgaria unwilling satellites of the Soviet Union. Throughout the Cold War, the Red Army was the key factor in guaranteeing control of local communist governments there. From 1948 to 1949, the Red Army subsequently cut off Berlin from the West, precipitating the Berlin Airlift. After Soviet leader Josef Stalin's death, Nikita Khrushchev, his successor, shifted Soviet military emphasis from land forces to nuclear weaponry. Khrushchev also began training and supporting proxy forces against the West. Meanwhile, the Soviet Army ensured continued communist rule over Hungary in 1956, helped build the Berlin Wall in 1961, crushed the infant Czechoslovakian revolution in 1968, and clashed with the People's Republic of China (PRC) along the Soviet-PRC border in 1969. By the early 1970s, the Soviet nuclear arsenal also reached rough parity with the West. The Soviet Army, however, faced its greatest challenge in fighting the Afghanistan War (1979–1989). At the end of World War II, the Soviet Red Army, immense and battle-hardened, was the most powerful land military force in the world. The force that took Berlin alone consisted of 110 infantry divisions, 11 tank and mechanized corps, and 11 artillery divisions, making it larger than all the World War II American land forces in Europe and Asia combined. The Red Army had also learned valuable lessons in fighting the German Army from 1941 to 1945. This experience paid off in the form of great operational skill, experienced leaders, and a cadre of elite, battle-tested units. In 1946 Stalin renamed the Red Army the Soviet Army and supervised its continued mechanization. He envisioned an army capable of conducting deep penetrations with ground support aircraft, mimicking the Germans' strategy during the early part of World War II. Stalin planned to use his army as a counterbalance to the Americans' atomic monopoly. He believed that the threat of this massive force invading Western Europe would prevent American atomic blackmail. This approach remained in place until Stalin's death in 1953…" Full article here link Amicalement Armand |
PHGamer | 23 Jun 2016 10:24 a.m. PST |
I take umbrage with the premise. "The force that took Berlin alone consisted of 110 infantry divisions, 11 tank and mechanized corps, and 11 artillery divisions, making it larger than all the World War II American land forces in Europe and Asia combined." I agree the Soviet Military was larger, Men under arms in 1945 by one estimate was 11 million, as opposed to 8 million for the USA. However Russia was engaged in a campaign of disinformation to look bigger than it was. 110 infantry divisions? While the official TOE of an Guards Infantry division was 10,500, rarely would it have more than 6,000 men, and that only just before a major offensive. The average rifle division ran around 2000 men And 110 depleted rifle regiments doesn't sound bad. I have a reference to this in my article about the 112th Rifle Division. link 11 Tank and Mechanized Corps. This sounds like 22- 33 divisions, but it is closer to 16, if they were fresh, which they almost never were. I have an article on the 1st Guards Mechanized Corps link I can't speak to the artillery divisions much without going to my sources, but most of the 152mm cannons were old and worn out as they stopped making that caliber in 1941. Soviet artillery doctrine was mostly direct fire, with guns having a range of 7,000 meters of the 7.6 and 12.2 cm calibers. The Americans fielded about 98 divisions. Each with a TOE of about 11,000 men. The division size was actually designed around the ability to ship it and not its combat worthiness. Still the Infantry Division came with 54 artillery pieces and the standard 3 regiments. And, was kept very close to 100% strength at all times. 16 of the American divisions were armored. And a match for Soviet Mechanized Corps on any day. But the dirty secret of the American Army was there were available, just over 1,000 independent battalions. Tank Destroyers, Armored, AA, Engineering, Artillery. These were to be interchangeable parts for the Division and assigned depending on the mission requirements. This did not work well as it takes time to integrate parts. So in practice, once a division got one of these parts they tended to keep them. So when an American Division was committed to fight, the enemy didn't know what it was facing. The 101st went into Bastogne with it arrived with 2 additional Engineer Battalions, 4 Army Corps Artillery Battalions, and a Tank Destroyer Battalion. Plus the 9th CCR and the 10th CCB. The 1st Infantry ended the war with 4 Tank and Tank Destroyer Battalions attached to it. By 1945 almost every division had a private Sherman Tank Battalion of 65 tanks. The end result was that the independent battalions matched, almost 1-1 the divisional assets. To keep their numbers up, the Soviet Union was desperate. As soon as they retook territory, they would send out teams of recruiters to draft any and all military age men. They even flipped half the Romanian army to join the cause. The fight for East Germany cost them 2,000,000 men alone. They were totally tapped, and did not want the world to know it. If we had gone to war with the Soviet Union, I have little doubt we would have won. We wouldn't have been happy about it though. Against the Soviet Air force, that would be a problem for a while. While we had about double the aircraft, all the planes in Britain would have to be deployed forward, so the Soviets would have a superior Sortie rate, at least for a while. Most of our AA was dismantled for infantry replacements and our troops were not used to being attacked from the air. 3000 Sturmaviks was going to raise holy hell for a while. But cut off from the octane additives we were shipping them the Soviets would soon have very poorly performing aircraft. |
Tango01 | 23 Jun 2016 10:56 a.m. PST |
Good thread my friend… thanks!. Amicalement Armand |
twawaddell | 23 Jun 2016 11:00 a.m. PST |
To underscore the comment above so eloquently made by PHGamer, there was an article in Strategy & Tactics many, many years ago (decades really) where the author counted up the number of independent regimental combat teams, tank battalions, engineer battalions, etc. and came to the conclusion that the U.S. Army in Europe actually totaled the equivalent of 136 standard divisions and not the 87 or so that were actually assigned there. In addition to the depleted state of most Soviet formations it should be noted that the profligate use of infantry earlier in the war left the U.S.S.R. in about the same state as Germany manpower-wise. Many of the soldiers that fought in Berlin were in their early to mid-teens. PHGamer his this right on the nose as well. |
PHGamer | 23 Jun 2016 11:31 a.m. PST |
My entry was duplicated, so I deleted it. The East Front is a favorite topic of mine. I published a computer game about it in 1985, and tried again in 1995-2000. I built the TOE of the entire German, Soviet, Romanian, Finnish, Hungarian and the Italian 8th army down to the company level. Eventually, crunching all those numbers, the numbers started telling me stories. Both validating and invalidating what was considered well known. |
PHGamer | 23 Jun 2016 11:51 a.m. PST |
To further underscore Twawaddell's observation, The US only had about 60 divisions in the ETO. More than 20 were either in the Pacific or in the Continental US awaiting deployment. |
GarrisonMiniatures | 23 Jun 2016 12:35 p.m. PST |
The reality of 1945 is that the Russians would not just be facing Americans. They would also be facing considerable numbers of British, Canadian and other Allied troops as well… |
Gennorm | 23 Jun 2016 2:42 p.m. PST |
Very true GarrisonMiniatures, plus nearly all of the RAF was in the UK and Europe. |
PHGamer | 24 Jun 2016 7:33 a.m. PST |
The British and Canadians were also bled white. They started cannibalizing divisions in mid 1944 for replacements. NZ only had two divisions, and their PM gave instructions to their field generals to keep the casualties down. I don't know the status of Australian manpower. The French had 5 divisions operating. But most of their support personal were Americans. I think if it came down to a East-West war it was going to be USA with some support vs the Soviet Union. |
Begemot | 24 Jun 2016 11:50 p.m. PST |
In this hypothetical war would the US have insisted on unconditional surrender by the Soviets? Would the US and its allies have needed to occupy most of the defeated Soviet Union? Would the political, economic and military costs have been acceptable to the US population (and the conscript US soldiers) to make such a war conceivable? |
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