"Was Soviet And Now Russian Military Doctrine Based..." Topic

… only on The Use Of Overwhelming Force?

"Joseph Stalin supposedly claimed that "quantity has a quality all its own," justifying a cannon-fodder mentality and immense casualties. The problem is, Stalin never actually said that, but it fits our stereotype about the Russian military so neatly that everyone believes he did.

When it comes to war, Russia is commonly perceived as favoring quantity over quality and winning mainly by overwhelming its opponents with hordes of poorly trained soldiers. You can hardly find any account of Russia's wars that does not use terms like "hordes," "masses," and even "Neolithic swarms." Quantity, it is believed, made quality almost irrelevant.

German generals propagated the myth of a Red Army comprised of faceless masses of troops, motivated only by NKVD rifles at their backs and winning only through sheer force of numbers. Many Western histories accept this view, and it is standard fare in Hollywood, notably in the 2001 Enemy at the Gates. The story was also standard fare during the Cold War, when the intelligence community frequently overestimated the quantitative side of Soviet capabilities while belittling its quality…"
Full article here
link

Amicalement
Armand

Soviets not just a steamroller? – no!!!!!, it cant be so – the Germans had such cool uniforms and tanks how can they have been beaten except by massively overwhelming numbers.

Interesting view – it goes against of course the conventional narrative. I, as someone who has studied Russian and visited several times, have always thought that an element of the said narrative along with every German soldier was 'worth' X Soviet or whatever was a rather unseemly admiration on the part of some for the Nazi war machine. In this viewpoint yes they lost, but only cos the 'Reds' were unfair by massing troops and throwing their men away (therefore confirming that they were not quite human anyway) – as if it was football match where they put 20 players on the pitch and cheated Germany as opposed to a war where concentration and massing of forces are military skills too.

Not all such folk of course with such views have portraits of Hitler above their beds, but I have a suspicion a number do. I recently challenged someone (not here but on Quora – from the US but with at least a non German sign in name) who was waffling on about how Luftwaffe loss and kill claims were so much more accurate then the Allies with the implication that there was some sort of moral virtue in this. Clearly he thought there was as after the usual look at the Boer War etc bit, it came down how there had been a massive campaign unequalled in world history against National Socialism and only a few 100,000 Jews died and that was due to allied bombing disrupting supplies and after all these people were a security risk so of course like the Axis nationals in allied countries had to be interned. Felt a bit like realising one had been speaking to a paedophile (which Holocaust deniers are on a par morally with, to me).

David Glantz has of course previously written about esp the relatively sophisticated nature of late war Soviet breakthrough doctrine (much more than just a big steamroller) where they essentially turned Blitzkrieg back on the Germans and given his credentials its hard to accuse him of being some sort of Stalin lover (I detest the regime too). Its interesting too as an aside that for all the stuff re German capability in earlier wars too you can still read in 1918 of Germans being mown down en masse during the Spring Offensive so that the whole stormtroop thing was very much confined to a minority

Ehhh….no.

The Soviets did wage much of WWII with large numbers of under-trained troops but that's not because they wanted to – a huge chunk of the Red Army was captured or killed in 1941 and 1942 was a bit of a meat grinder to

By 1943/early 1944 the Red Army actually had some pretty good troops who were very operationally capable – by 1945 combat losses were being replaced again by fairly raw recruits so the quality of Soviet units was quite variable

And as noted the memoirs of German generals post-war were in more than a few cases a bit self-serving

Well, concentration of forces at determined places was an important part of both offensive and defensive campaigns of Red Army. This is especially true for firepower concentration at given places and times. In order to achieve it, Soviet commanders have to rely on stripping other locations, creating diversions, maskirovka, false threats etc to ensure that Germans were expecting them elsewhere. I can imagine that on spearpoints of the offensive 10:1 superiority in certain numbers can be acheived – but it is a combination of your resources and opponent mistakes.
Of course, there were places and battles where the resources were not used wisely, but Soviet Army learned in progress of the war.

I always saw the Soviet Army trying to juggle what they'd LIKE to do, what they CAN do and what they HAVE to do.

But from my 1970s-1980s perspective as an Army intelligence officer, the Soviet tactical doctrine tended to be fairly rigid and somewhat predictable. Their operational art doctrine was more fluid but also somewhat predictable.

The challenge to a defender against a Soviet offensive was the mass of tanks and artillery with which one had to contend.

Dr. Pennington's article is very well thought out. Plus her credentials make her a writer to whom one should pay attention.

Jim

First having met with Dr Pennington while in the Air Force (intelligence as well) I concur with Col Campbell's comment.

Secondly, as with many things, there is a tinge of truth even in misconceptions and myths. The Soviets did favor a wide front approach with the idea they would succeed somewhere and with the flexibility to reinforce only those successes to build on them.

An interesting lecture on some of those myths and realities, along with more on the wide front approach, which I recommend is this presentation by Col Glantz given at the U S Army Heritage and Education Center in 2010:

YouTube link

They don't have overwhelming numbers everywhere, just in YOUR sector.

From a few years on now, I pretty much think they wanted us to think them predictable and dumb. It worked quite well with the Germans who thought of themselves as Übermenschen.

In ww2 they had several pb:
A lot of ignorant, I mean really, chaps who never saw a truck, coukd not read a watch! Lost in 38-41 many of the good clever chaps esp. In the cadres.

Contrary to Sven Hassel continuing myth, most of the time there were 1.3 soviets to the total axis manpower strength along the front.
By their clever maskirovka and strategy, they managed from 43 on to get 0.7-0.9 to one in many places to cram 5-10 to one where they wanted to strike.

Last year I went to Voronezh and nearby to a place where there were several fights with the Hungarians.

The soviets beat them in early 43; while being shown and explained the whole local shebam and funny stories, shown the positions ( many still visible) I was srprised that the troops who did the attack were the same who just stopped there on the other side of the Don when the Germans did their stupid and fatal focus to Stalingrad.
The Soviets just left a screen in front of most of the routinely tranquil Hungarians and very adroitly but cautiously stroke with massed elements gathered all along this sector.
There were possibly overall less of them than Hungarians.

Fortunately we did not fight them in a cold war turned hot, and we have really only assumptions but no hard experience of how they would have fought.
Underestimating the " enemy" tst tst…

I think the tactics suited the Russian logistical capacity. Load the unit up, send it forward, when it is exhausted, replace it with a fresh unit.

Its not such a bad idea.

Soviets/Russians did use and probably will use quantity to overwhelm the enemies of Russia. So did the Western Allies of WWII in Africa, NW Europe and the Pacific. By the end of 1942 the abilty of any nation including Axis ones to successfully wage a maneuver-based 'blitzkrieg' style of warfare on land or by sea had passed. All nations had learned the lessons of the early war German land and Japanese naval blitzes and had adopted new doctrines to defeat such strategies. Attackers still had the objective of getting to a maneuver battle stage in war but generally could not get there. They were stuck in the breakthrough battle stage for far longer periods and had to pay far higher prices to achieve strategic breakthroughs rather than cheaper operational breakthroughs. When breakthroughs did finally occur it was often because of the complete collapse of the losing side's military ability at a strategic level to respond effectively rather than at a tactical or operational level. Thus the breakthroughs of the later war were huge strategic breakthroughs caused by the collapse of the enemy to mount an effective defence/offence in an entire theatre rather than the tactical and operational breakthroughs like those of Poland, Norway, the Low Countries, France, the Balkans and Barbarossa. Likewise the Japanese naval blitzkrieg lasted only 6-8 months before Allied naval strategy and land force build up made such operational victories a thing of the past.

Even though the Soviets repudiated their deep-battle principles in 1942 they still strove to achieve local and operational breakthroughs. Too often however the Germans/Axis were able to eventually manage the situation at great cost and turn the sought after Soviet operational breakthrough into a sporadic ballet of local but truncated maneuver and heavy attrition. Only when the Soviets could so completely overwhelm the Germans strategically did the German military collapse and vast strategic breakthroughs occurred until the Germans could cobble together a coherent resistance once again.

While the Battle of Stalingrad was fought and won around the city the massive pressure put on the Axis forces all over the Eastern front was what stopped the Germans from quickly containing the local situation and counter attacking to mitigate the disaster. So while Stalingrad may look like an operational victory for the Soviets and Zhukov it was actually a strategic victory for the Red Army's ability to so tie down the German High Command that they could not effectively respond to the operation until it had snowballed into a massive strategic victory. This was the template for the victories of 1943 ,1944 and 1945 which drove the Germans/Axis from Soviet lands, the Balkans, much of Poland and into Germany itself.

The Soviets learned this lesson well and their Cold War planning for a hot war reflected this. They envisioned a massive and comprehensive breakthrough battle across the entire zone of operations to trigger a rapid collapse of the enemy's ability to respond effectively to the Soviet attacks. This would transition into a deep-battle of progressively less intensive fighting and more maneuver until the enemy would either capitulate or opt for the widespread use of strategic nuclear weapons. Victory or Ragnarok. I am also convinced that the Soviets had no real intention of using such a strategy unless they had no other options available to them so this was a worst-case plan rather than one which they would willingly initiate.

Cheers and good gaming.
Rod Robertson.

There tends to be this strange idea that "local superiority" is something only "barbarians" use.

I assure you that when we rolled into Iraq, we didn't count out so each Iraqi soldier only faced a single coalition soldier.

You mean , no equal points, no fair game?