"Was the Russian Military a Streamroller?...." Topic

….FROM WORLD WAR II TO TODAY

"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…"
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Armand

When I was in service in the 1970 and 1980s, I never thought their logistics or maintain everything could keep putting more and more tanks on the front line. The numbers would get smaller with interdicted major supply routes delaying reinforcements.

A rather healthy dose of opinion and pc'ness in the article. Many factors not examined or included in the analysis.
Strickly going by body count gives a skewed representation of the reality.

However, I notice she has a book to sell, so go figure.

Depends upon the period, quantity, and quality.

In the 1950s, from what I've read, steam-rolling Europe would have been relatively easy, since the USA had unilaterally disarmed after WWII, and the armies of Europe were a joke.

The USSR still had numerous divisions and hundreds of thousands, if not more, in their armies.

The USA would have had to resort to using nukes on NATO soil to stem the tide. Same applies in the 1960s and later as well, though the USA and NATO started significantly increasing their military forces.

That continued to the end of the first Cold War, as the USA and NATO attempted to match the Soviet buildup.

Stalin is right that quantity does have a quality all its own, especially when the opposition runs out of ordnance and vehicles, and there is nothing to oppose even archaic units, aircraft, and armor.

Interestingly, as the Cold War progressed, the Soviet Union also seemed to try to adopt some of the Western ways, especially in the arena of improving on their weapons tech, while still fielding these in large numbers.

Likewise, the USA and NATO worked to increase their numbers by coming up with high-low mixes of aircraft (F-15/F-16, and the F-14/F-18), vessels, and other weaponry too, having seen what happened to Germany in WWII.

IMHO the Russians are always short changed in this regard. I think they built the best quality THEY COULD MANAGE while cranking out the greatest quantity they could. It wasn't either or. They didn't say let's build crap just so we can have lots of it. Take the T34, in certain aspects it may have not been as refined as Western tanks, but it was a very good tank. They also built some good fighters and bombers. A trend which continued through the Cold War. Don't shortchange Russian kit too much or you could have some nasty surprises.

Cheers!

When you look at the German army the first thing you hear being mentioned is "the Art of War", Soviet texts almost always talk about the "Science of War"

The German approach was from the bottom up, training talented junior officers in making quick snap decisions and lead by example.

Soviet doctrine is very different, they train officers to be the perfect cog in the machine, they are taught a specific combat doctrine and are expected to execute it every single time and keep an eye and an ear on the superior officers and follow their lead and instructions.

More importantly where every German general dreams of being the perfect battlefield commander giving broad instructions to talented underlings and gaining everlasting glory in battle or die a suitably tragic death. German commanders despise their enemies.

Soviet commanders are part of a war-winning team, they have a talented staff, and almost all are survivors, failure is rarely rewarded in the Red Army. They make plans to utterly crush the enemy in battle and Soviet commanders hate their enemies.

When it comes to the strategic and operational level, German commanders make the plans, but they always have to pass through Hitler because he distrusts his commanders and wants to avoid creating more popular Hindenburgs who might challenge him after the war. That is why the distinction between OKW and OKH and the resulting rivalry is something Hitler approves as a break on the ambition of his generals. Increasingly Hitler begins to make tactical decisions over the heads of commanders in the field. Ironically the inventors of the General Staff never really see a dramatic need to expand it beyond the system that carried them through since the Napoleonic Wars. Instead they create parallel structures who hardly even talk to each other.

Stalin is an ice cold pragmatist, he knows to rein in his gut reflex to eliminate anyone who might become a threat. He gives his commanders enough leeway to win the war, keeping scores and ready to pounce as soon as the war is over. STAVKA is a huge singular organisation compared to the fragmented German general staffs.

The Soviets are masters of large scale operations. Compare Operation Zitadelle versus Operation Bagration. The former is one last half-hearted attempt at a preemptive strike to head off the inevitable summer offensive and a pipedream that the enemy might break enough teeth the German army might even regain the initiative and keep the Soviets on their toes for a change. The latter is a massive series of operational battles (20+ according to some) designed to wipe an entire army group from the map.

To a German commander this is mind-boggling. How can an enemy they were pretty much exterminating only three years earlier achieve this ? It cannot be any kind of skill as they are mindless sub-humans, fanatical followers of a doomed ideology. The answer can only be that they have unlimited resources and simply hurl them into battle without any talent or finesse.

And from the perspective of a commander in the field, this seems to be the case. The Soviets are tough soldiers, they fight hard and they are well-equipped with lavish artillery and tank support. Again we see the idea of overwhelming numbers. German commanders still excel on the tactical level and are often much more flexible, leading to all those small tactical victories so often used to prove German superiority though they have been losing the strategic battle ever since Barbarossa.

German commanders don't necessarily lie when they talk of a Soviet Steamroller but it is a gross simplification which hides a superior ability to concentrate forces on the weakest points of a defensive force and break through, leaving a German army with reduced mobility in dire straits. Rather than regroup and counter-attack all efforts are wasted in trying to save as many men as possible. The resulting retreat helps to postpone the inevitable, but the Germans lose all initiative and can only react to the Soviet onslaught.

Because the Soviets are able to raise the decisive battle to the Operational level, tactical wins, no matter how spectacular, have little impact overall. Stories of massive Red Army losses become the norm though in general Soviet ratios were never greater than Germany's ratios during Barbarossa and casualty levels were similar. The vast majority of Soviet losses are occurred during Barbarossa and the Stalingrad campaign, but the loss ratios drop month after month until the end of the war.

The Red Army reforged itself into a powerful war-winning machine, quite similar to French post-WWI ambitions to create an army that would be capable of engaging the Germans in one major ongoing campaign and grind it up until it achieved victory. It may not have been pretty, but the Soviets were never going to have the luxury to train officers to act on their own initiative all the way up to the very top. No other army tried this approach for good reasons. The Red Army had a working doctrine and won the war, proof in the pudding …

I personally don't know if that is a Russian/Soviet concept or just an early 20th Century concept. Back around the turn of the century all of the great powers, except for the UK and the US (for obvious reasons), had huge conscript driven armies. I guess that is an outgrowth of the Napoleonic Wars. Anyway, most armies in Europe conscripted huge masses of troops and threw them into titanic conflicts that boggle the modern mind. After WWII the West moved away from that sort of thinking but the Soviets (and other Communist nations) stuck with it, but changed it into a mechanized conscript hoard built around simple but effective tactics with simple but effective weapons. After all, conscripts only have so much training time so you HAVE to cut corners to get them on the battlefield and you have to accept the fact that these greenhorns will take it on the chin in actual battle.

On the other hand, the West moved away from mass conscript armies as time went on and moved toward the professional armies of today. Part of that comes from an unwillingness of modern nations to take the bitter casualty pill that comes from conscription. Instead they have more toward the "German" concept of "more guns, less men" with technology and firepower replacing sheer bodies. The US victory during the Persian Gulf War seemed to show that this was the path to go and most nations have moved that way. Even Russia and China have been reducing their conscripts and have been moving toward "contract" professionals and professional armies.

I would point out one thing, though. That was the model the UK used in WWI and it worked fine, for a VERY short while. Once the BEF's "old Contemptibles" were used up it had to rely on volunteers (Kitchener's Army) and draftees. A professional army is great for short, intense wars, or long wars with low casualties, but that changes if the war isn't won quickly. At some point there just won't be enough volunteers to feed the machine and conscription will be necessary.

A 2:1 advantage is significant, but falls short of the 3:1 force ratio that is generally regarded as necessary for attacking forces, and it's a long way from the double-digit advantage that is often claimed. Both sides were able to temporarily achieve greater numerical advantages in certain times and places by concentrating forces.

A true statement but it's ignorant of a basic fact. When you in general outnumber your enemy, and you have good logistics, then you the ability to concentrate in certain sectors and gain the double digit advantage at the point of contact. When Bagration kicked off in summer of '44 the Soviets had a general 2:1 advantage across the front. That allowed them, with the proper logistics, to mass significant forces in the area where they wished to attack and that allowed them to gain the so called "3:1" advantage (not in sheer numbers but in combat power) or much better odds at the point of contact. I wouldn't be too surprised if the Soviets were able to achieve a 20:1 advantage in certain situations. After all, they had lots of help with their logistics (tons of trucks being sent to them via Lend Lease) and they had unfettered access to their own oil fields, factories, and sources of supply. This gave the Soviets a strategic mobility and logistic advantage that the Germans could only dream of. So the German "myth" of being seriously outnumbered isn't all that "mythic" after all.

Some good posts here Gents !

While on Active Duty, '79-'90, we knew the USSR & WP had massive amounts of AFVs, aircraft, etc. We believed that at that time they had the capabilities to "flood" across the IGB. And probably a few other places. We created such TTP as the JAAT. Which include combining Gunships & A-10s working together to help stem the "Red Tide".

We priority targeted their SPAAA/ADA AFVs. So as to give our air assets an "easier" taking out their MBTs, APCs, etc.

We knew we may not always have Air Superiority. But stive for Air Parity. And would try to get local Air Superiority to again take on the massive amounts of AFVs, etc.

We did know that they may have had resupply problems as they crossed deeper into Western Europe. So as always Supply and C3 were also priority targets for Air, FA, etc.

Sometimes I think the WWII Soviet Army gets short-changed by some. The Stalingrad and Bagration Offensives were stunning successes, but did they simply steamroll over the opposition?

Maybe, but did the Russian Army seem like a steamroller in such battles just because they recognized the need to mass their forces where needed, and use misdirection when possible?

I'm not ignoring the large number of troops available to the Soviets, but it's my understanding that by late '44 they too were running low on manpower.

My two cents.