Originally posted by Reschke:
The Russians were far from ready for any offensive operations in 1941. This is known by two things.
1) The way the German Army punched through and was headed right at Moscow and would have reached it if Hitler would not have interferred. Just the opposite - the army preparing for the attack is the least ready for defence.
Reasons:
- Multi-million russian army with 25,000 tanks was concentrated in the areas convenient for attack (protruding into the enemy territory but not those crucial to defence. When germans attacked, russian armies became automatically surrounded. The same would have happened to german armies if russians hit first.
The russian armies were concentrated on the wrong banks of the rivers - usually you want a river between yourself and advancoing enemy.
As it happened, bombing the briges prevented the armies from getting suppilies for advance or
orderly retreating back to friendly territory - most machinery, suppies and equipment was abandoned outright and troops were getting back without suppies through enemy harassment.
- Russian army did not have topographic maps of the territory it had to fight in after german attack. The amount of maps required is several dosens of railway cars, so obviously no army stacks all available maps. Russians were fighting blind with no coordination between troops, no indirect artillery support, no supply, no air support - all things impossible to do without maps.
(While german troops coordinated by air-reconnecaince could be directed around russian strongholds and concentrations directly towards the chokepoints - briges, railroad junctions, ets.).
- A lot of ordnance and all the aviation was right at the border - destroyed or captured immediately.
- With 2 more weeks to strike some were still corps on the railroad cars throughout the european part of russia. BTW it is impossible to unload tanks from the railroad - so bombing it not only prevented the tanks from being moved for counterstrike, but prevented them from being used at all.
Also many of the command structures of troops on the western border were still not there.
- Obviously, the troops prepared for attack did not have defencive positions prepared.
About that Hitler interference. Good half of russian industry was beyong Ural mountains - outside the rande of strategic bombers even if Germany had any. Capture of Moskow would have had no effect on military, economic or political situation. At the same time having 3-4 million russian army around Kiev in his rear would have been disasterous to germans - especially if those troops were given few more weeks to reorganise after their retreat.
Hitler never had enough troops. He did everything exactly right to prolong the struggle - starting with his attack on June 22nd to strike for Kiev to abandoning the 6th army. He never had a chance to begin with.
2) Stalin was still eliminating all the "politically unreliable" members from the military and research and development areas. That process never stopped from 1917 till 1953. As you can see, most of the prominent russian generals were in places by 1941.
Also the Russians were fearful that the Japanese might attempt to attack into what they (the Japanese) called the "Northern Resource Area" (Siberia) to have easier access to strategic materials.
This effectively held several divisions that had played border tag with the Japanese in place until 1942 when Stalin finally realized that the Japanese were never going to come across the border. Japain did not need any more resources - it needed a few more years to make use of the resources it already got on the continent.
Several divisions left in the far east are not much compared to around 300 divisions total that russians prepared.
The fact that after losing few millions of the most-prepared army, industry of the european part and around tens of mil population in weeks Russia still managed to outproduce germans easily (by 1942) and kick them despite obvious
general superiority of german tactics showhs how over-prepared Russia was.
Regards,
miko
[ 11-05-2001: Message edited by: miko2d ]
