They Were Also Soldiers Once . . . .
One of the benefits of a 2500-mile road trip is you have some time to reflect. It’s also a time you can reconnect with music you haven’t really thought much about in 30 years or more. When that’s done with new knowledge and the insight of age and experience, well . . . you sometimes end up with a new perspective.
I did that over the last 2 days. Fifteen hours on the road is long enough for some serious listening and thinking.
After reading this, some of you might say it’s also long enough for confusion or hallucination. Perhaps you’re right.
. . .
We Americans are justifiably proud of our contributions to World War II. Without the USA, it’s entirely possible World War II would have ended up quite differently, at least in Europe.
But we hardly “won the war” for the Allies without their help. Indeed, we often forget the enormous contributions of one of our allies – an ally who suffered far worse than any other nation.
Russia – at the time, the Soviet Union.
The music above caused me to think about the war, and to wonder about the war from the Soviet perspective. I’d always heard they suffered horribly. So when I finally got of the road, I looked a few things up.
The data – and the numbers it contained – stunned me. And I’m not easily surprised by either data or numbers, much less stunned.
During its 3 1/2 years of World War II, the US suffered approximately 418,500 total (military plus civilian) killed, and another nearly 701,000 wounded and missing worldwide. These casualties were predominantly in the European and Pacific theaters.
The US suffered, yes. We were attacked at Pearl, and had to fight for our lives – something we’d only had to do once or twice previously during our history.
Yet during World War II, US war dead amounted to roughly 0.32% of the US prewar population, or about 1 in 300 people. Total casualties (killed and wounded, military and civilian) were less than 1% (only 0.81%, to be precise) of the US pre-war population. That’s well under 1 in 100.
In contrast, what the Soviets suffered during World War II is . . . virtually unbelievable. I’m still not sure I fully comprehend what I’m about to relate.
Fighting primarily a single enemy (Nazi Germany), the most widely accepted figures indicate that during its nearly 4 years of World War II the Soviet Union suffered 8,668,400 killed or missing/not recovered and over 22,326,905 wounded and sick – in its military forces alone. Best sources also indicate the occurrence of an additional 13,684,692 civilian deaths attributable to the war (by military action, famine, forced labor, atrocity, etc . . . . ). (Reliable figures on sick/wounded civilians attributable to the war alone are not readily available.)
The Soviet Union’s prewar population is estimated at 168,524,000. This means that 13.26% of the prewar population of the Soviet Union was killed – more than a literal decimation – and another 13.24% was wounded or sickened (another reduction of greater than a literal decimation) as the direct result of the war.
Think about that. Combined, that’s more than 1 out of every 4 people in the nation killed, wounded, or sickened.
I flatly don’t know how to describe my reaction to that. I’d known the Soviets suffered greatly during World War II. But until I examined the details, I never realized the magnitude. To call it “mind-boggling” seems utterly inadequate. So does “catastrophe”, or any other term I can image.
These figures do not appear to be an example of Soviet propaganda. Rather, they resulted from studies conducted after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1993 (for military casualties) and 1995 (civilian deaths). If anything, they’re criticized today as being an overly conservative estimate – one that if anything understates the magnitude of Soviet losses.
. . .
My point here? It’s certainly not to glorify the former Soviet Union. The Soviet Union was a truly monumental evil. (For the record: the Nazi regime was IMO as evil, if not more so, than was Stalin’s Soviet Union.) It was the primary enemy for much if not most of my professional life. Its primary successor state, Russia, is still a major concern. They well may again one day be an enemy. They’re a foreign nation; there’s no guarantee our interests and theirs won’t again be at loggerheads in the future.
Further, my heritage includes Polish ancestors. Let’s just say there’s no love lost there, either.
Yet for 30+ years I was a soldier. I know full well who formed the bulk of those Soviets killed and wounded and sickened, at least as it comes to the over 30,000,000 military casualties. And I understand the conditions under which they bled and died.
By and large, those casualties weren’t members of the Soviet Politburo. Other than a few assigned as Political Commissars to the Red Army, they weren’t party apparatchiks. Many if not most were not even Party members.
The vast majority were simply common people. They were common Russians, Ukrainians, Belarusians, Kazhaks, Tatars, Armenians, Uzbeks, Georgians, Armenians, and others from throughout the Soviet Union. (Even Russia’s Jews – abused as at best second-class citizens in the Soviet Union – fought for their country; 125,000 Jewish personnel died while serving in the Red Army.) They were the muzhiks and their elder brothers up to about age 40 who were conscripted into the Army to fight a desperate struggle for the very existence of their country.
These were the vast majority of the 8.68 million military war dead, and the 22.3+ million military wounded and sickened. They were draftees, called by their nation in time of need.
Their country called them. They answered. And in doing so, they died – literally by the millions.
Yes, the US supplied much of what they used to fight – food, materials, the trucks that brought food and supplies to them, and much of their other equipment. They probably couldn’t have carried on without that.
But without their effort – and without their blood – could the Western Allies have defeated the Axis? Frankly, I doubt it. Much like Grant, in spite of horrible casualties and losses the Red Army kept striking relentlessly at the Nazi forces on the Eastern Front. They did so incessantly, and with increasing strength over time. As our ally, they wore the Nazi military down to the point that the post-Normandy German collapse was virtually unavoidable.
As a soldier, I can understand that. And I can damn well respect it – even while I detest the government under whose flag they fought.
A soldier doesn’t get to choose the wars in which he fights.
So if you or your loved ones have any ancestors who fought in Europe during World War II, when you raise a toast to the New Year tonight, perhaps consider a second, small toast afterwards – perhaps even with a bit of vodka. And if you’re so inclined, thank those unknown millions of muzhiks who helped your relatives come home safely.
Yes, in later decades fate decreed they (or their descendants or relatives) would be our enemies. But though their leaders might have been monsters perpetuating evil, they themselves were merely ordinary men. And they were once essential allies during one of the few truly existential struggles our nation has ever fought.
They were also soldiers once, and young.
Author’s note: the 1973 tune that prompted me to write this – linked above – was reportedly based on the postwar treatment of Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn served in World War II in the Red Army and ended up in a labor camp after returning.
But Solzhenitsyn was hardly alone. Over 225,000 Soviet former-POWs were sent to the Gulag after being repatriated from Nazi POW camps.
Special thanks to blogger and frequent TAH commenter Nicki for her thoughts and insights regarding a pre-publication draft of this article.
Category: Historical
Outstanding post, Hondo. Like you, I knew that the Soviets had taken heavy casualties, but I had no idea of the magnitude.
“Past, Present and Future” was one of my favorite albums. I still have it on LP; I’m going to have to dig it out and listen to it all the way through.
Frankly it seems to me that the Red Army was indifferent to casualties and that only a totalitarian monstrosity like the late Soviet Union could have suffered such high casualties given their twisted ideology. Two anecdotes-a western observer described Soviet doctrine during the war as attacking in three waves, the first wave consisted of armor and artillery who would isolate the Germans into pockets, then the mass of the infantry would fall on them and finally the MPs would come along and push the infantry forward, shooting the worst looters out of hand. The second anecdote-a western General was showing his Soviet counterpart a “flail tank” for clearing minefields, the Soviet said that that was all very well, but the best method he knew of clearing mines was to march infantry through them. It’s true that they suffered horribly, but a great deal of it was self-inflicted.
I have always been intrigued by the Eastern Front. It was a totally different conflict then that we waged in the west. The Nazis and Communist Armies had little regard for the humanity of the other side.
The Russians basically lost their entire standing army that existed at the start of operation Barbarossa. Their Military and Civilian Population suffered horribly at the hands of the Nazis, and they extracted a horrible vengeance on the Germans and any Nazi supporters they encountered as they steamrolled Eastern Europe on the way to Germany.
I am also of the opinion that the Communists themselves were at fault for many of the deaths of their soldiers and civilians. How many officers and men were given the option of making a suicidal attack or getting a bullet in the head from the NKVD? How many were executed or worked to death because they didn’t fight hard enough to please the unit Kommisars? How many civilians starved because of the burnt earth policy?
Every time the losses of the Soviets in WW2 are bought up by Commie sympathizers I always feel the need to point out that many of them were needless and bought about by the incompetence and cruelty of their own leaders.
“Ivan”( The Soviet soldier himself) was a hardy, luckless man caught between two assholes who did the best he could. Man for man he fell way short of the “Landser” but in overwhelming numbers, he was able to get the job done. For that he deserves our respect as a fighting man, but mostly I just feel sorry for them.
68W58: all possibly true (though some is arguable). Three observations, though.
a. I believe “lead with tanks, follow with infantry, and follow those with MPs to maintain security/prevent stragglers” is essentially our own doctrine for armored warfare also. I could be wrong.
b. A general fights with the tools he has. If he has no mine flails, for example, and his political leadership won’t allow their development and use – he has little choice but to use whatever means his leadership permits him to clear minefields.
c. Even if 1/4 of Soviet casualties were self-inflicted, that still leaves about 6,450,000 KIA/DOW and 17,500,000 WIA/sick – plus the 16,384,000+ civilian casualties that were not. That’s still a huge percentage of the prewar Soviet population of 168,000,000+ (over 24%, or almost 1 in 4). And remember: the figures I quoted above are held by many to be lower than actual.
In any case, soldiers – even generals – don’t make policy. That was true in the US, and in both Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.
Soldiers also don’t choose the wars in which they fight. They merely fight – and sometimes, they die.
Without the US supply, USSR could have produced tanks or trucks, but not enough of both to do them any offensive good.
The USSR focused production on armored fighting vehicles, with designs provided by Christy, and the only reason they had the log train to keep a front fed, watered and oiled was due to the massive numbers of transport (GMC) trucks we provided.
Russia wouldn’t have won shit but an even larger death toll before capitulation.
On the Pacific side, once the ANZAC AO was secured, our allies had little or nothing to do with the offensive war against Japan. The UK’s effort was spent in securing their own colonial needs on the mainland of Asia.
As to us telling our own story on that, damned right we do, and damned right we should. Other peoples in other places can talk their own damned shit up if they feel the need. Do we have to do that for them too?
@2—Penal battalions to clear minefields aren’t a new invention, and the Soviets weren’t the first to use them. There do appear to be some historical references to the Nazis using them (or, more commonly, chain gangs of conscripted civilians) to do the same duty. It was brutal and an unquestionable atrocity. But on the flip side, I’ll bet they make a nice way to deal with posers and other such oxygen thieves.
Seems like a good bit of this was discussed in military history classes along the way. The numbers were astronomical, but I had forgotten details.
Thanks for the reminder, Hondo.
Homdo-I think our doctrine is a little more sophisticated than using the infantry as an expendable mass, which was what I was driving at. Also remember that the flail tank and similar devices were often a product of Joe’s ingenuity because we weren’t content to suffer virtually limitless casualties (IOW we had to come up with alternatives).
HS Sophomore-line the posers up and let’s get to it.
@6 & @8 Best idea I have heard for the use of SV posers, protestors, democrat ass wipes, most members of Congress and a lot of senior officers at DoD! With Obama in the lead and Kerry and Biden right beside him. Now that is government of the people, by the people and for the people.
God bless the Soviets for their sacrifices, though. Evil or not, their average citizens did the heavy lifting of freeing the world of Nazism.
An interesting question for me, though, is whether or not the US’s equipment really did play a decisive role. Much of the equipment we gave them didn’t work too well under the Russian conditions (the M8 Shermans esp.). And what people don’t appreciate often is that Hitler literally was never even close to beating the Soviets, even when the Nazis were at the gates of Moscow. The Russians, throughout history, have basically relied on scorched earth and overextended supply lines to do in anybody who tries to invade them. When Napoleon invaded, for example, they burned Moscow and retreated back to the Urals. One thing the Russians managed to do pretty well was get key industrial infrastructure back into a safezone. After the first year of the war, pretty much the entire Russian industrial heartland had been shifted to beyond the Urals, in Kazakhstan and Siberia (matter of fact, Leonid Brezhnev’s star first began to rise because he had quite a flair for logistical organizing; he managed to evacuate the factories in several municipalities to . Hitler’s plan throughout Barbarossa was to advance to the continent’s edge and let the Luftwaffe take care of the Soviets’ last industrial area. It was sheer fantasy. He never came within two thousand miles of the Urals, and there are no ways he could have conceivably done so. No matter what happened, the Soviets were always going to kick the Nazi’s asses. The US and Britain contributed, sure, but even if we had been overwhelmed, and Hitler had focused his entire military on conquering the Soviet Union, I still wouldn’t have bet on his horse.
@8/9—Ballduster McSoulpatch, as ranking officer poser, gets to command it
Frankly I don’t think the Germans could have beaten any one of the three main allies, much less all three. HS Sophomore lays out the case for Soviet victory, but I think the Brits would have used their own time tested strategy of cutting a continental power off from the sea and waited for them to collapse. We would have mimicked that strategy and done long range bombing from Iceland supported by carrier fighters until the bomb was developed and then nuked the kraut city of our choice. Herr Hitler was in way over his head by 1942 and his delusion prevented him from understanding it.
@12 I agree with your analysis. You said it better than I.
My high school history teachers, both of them, hinted at the Soviet losses, but without actual statistics they said that the losses were a guess.
What they emphasized was the stubborn resistance of the Soviet troops to the invading Nazi army, and did do comparisons to Napoleon’s disastrous attempt to take Moscow, disastrous because he underestimated both the stubborn will of the Russians and the bitterness of the Russian winter.
IMO, the Western Front was basically a side show, and I mean no disrespect to any who served there; the Eastern Front, a choice foretaste of Hell.
The US was fighting a two front war, with major commitments of men and materiel to both. If I had to guess, because it was spread out over the Pacific ocean, I’d say it was the greatest drain on our Logistics capacity. Choosing who got what, and in what amounts, could not have been easy. I’m glad it wasn’t me doing the choosing, but perhaps the European Theater would have benefited with more beans and bullets, and accelerated the Nazi collapse, if the Pacific Theater wasn’t such a drain on resources. I don’t know.
In any case, and whatever the causes, loosing a quarter of your population, the majority of which would have been military aged males, would be pretty bad. I knew it was bad, but not 1 in 4 bad.
Good post, Hondo.
@12—This is where I would tend towards disagreement. I believe Hitler couldn’t have beaten the Soviet Union, but I would say he could have beaten Britain. The thing is, Britain’s navy was excellent for home defense, probably to the point where the home islands were impervious to German amphibious assault (unless the Germans gained total air control, in which case all bets are off operating so close to enemy land territory). However, Britain couldn’t strangle Germany with a blockade like it had other countries. With its newly acquired neighbors’ territory, Nazi Germany was pretty much self-suficient. It could get iron and coal (in addition to its own massive reserves of the latter) from Norway, and the Baltic shipping that transported it to Germany was pretty much impervious to British air and surface interdiction because the Luftwaffe in Denmark would have prevented it, and the only sea routes that can be navigated are often narrow and shallow, so they could be mined easily. Britain never seriously attempted to get at that shipping because it was so impregnable. So Germany’s industrial needs were pretty much met (we only got around this and attacked Germany’s ability to wage war directly by bombing factories and infrastructure, much less nebulous targets). Next, food. Germany could meet its own needs here. There was plenty enough arable land in France, Germany, the Low Countries, and Poland to meet its needs. The only thing the Nazis really needed to reach for was oil, and even that was met by the scientific process that they used to transform coal into crude, and their Eastern European fields (see Ploesti). So Germany was different; it could meet its own needs. If we had ultimately lost Britain, I don’t a long range bombing campaign from Iceland cutting the mustard. History tells us that it’s nigh on impossible to win a war against a major power solely from the air with no ground forces involved. With no near staging area to base out of, carrier support wouldn’t have been easy, either (we had this all throughout our Pacific Campaign, which was really the… Read more »
@15—Japan wasn’t exactly an industrial powerhouse. We handily beat them with about 30% of our military and industrial resources. The only reason it was as hard as it was was because they had such an overwhelming defensive advantage in their fortified islands, mountains, and jungles. It was a drain on our resources, but actually not that much of one. We had to devote a lot of our Navy to the Pacific Theater, but then again, the Atlantic Theater wasn’t exactly a naval combat intensive campaign, so it’s kind of a wash.
OldSoldier54: in terms of death, the Soviets only lost about 13 1/4% of their prewar population, or a bit more than 1 out of 8. The other 13 1/4% was wounded. The total of 27.5% was for both – e.g., the overall total killed/permanently missing plus the overall total wounded/sickened due to World War II.
I’m still trying to mentally get a handle on that. It’s so outside my experience in life, I’m not really sure I ever will.
— break —
68W58: actually, from what I’ve read manual probing was the way mines were cleared in Italy pretty much up until the end of the war. Don’t believe the flail was ever in widespread use there, and the mine detectors used were pretty worthless due to (1) climate, and (2) high metal content soil (both natural and due to millenia of civilized occupation). I could be wrong.
Yes, clearing mines manually – with infantry troops, or with other troops – is a bad method. But if it’s the best you have, well, it’s what the commander has to use.
The USSR was invaded. In contemplating relative losses, I would expect a resistant people to lose much against a well equipped, well trained, and hell-bent-for-leather invading army. Some number of Soviet home losses were due not to the German directly but to other causes, including the things Hondo mentioned, as well as Stalin’s little order to shoot Red Army troops who attempted to unilaterally advance rearward. I am grateful to the Soviets for killing Germans who otherwise would have been available to kill US troops. And that is all. As for the Soviet leadership’s disregard for the lives of its own people, I will defer to the Ukranians.
Between 1935 and 1939, Stalin and Beria killed another 1,000,000 (roughly) of their own people in The Great Purge.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge
As a consequence, there were almost no senior officers in the Soviet military. Part of the reason for the retreat before the Germans was amateur and / or virtually absent leadership. David Glanz translated materials from the Soviet General Staff and wrote several excellent histories about the war on the Eastern Front. I have copies of most of his work if anyone wants to borrow something.
If you find yourself in Remagen, Germany (just south of Bonn, where Patton’s 3rd Army made a bridgehead on the east side of the Rhine late in the war) visit the museum in one of the bridge supports on the west side of the river. Inside the museum there is a white board with black letters showing a list of the WW2 dead by country. More Russians died than Germans.
This extreme death toll in part gave rise to the iconic picture of a Russian babushka, scarf tied under her chin, sweeping snow off the street with a hand made broom. A large percentage of the dead were men so Russia had a problem recovering their population after the war — there were not enough husbands and not enough men to work the fields. Zhukov’s treatment of the German army and civilian population should not come as a surprise.
Sparks-thanks.
HS Sophomore-somewhere in my book collection there is a WWII text that lists all the resources necessary for warfighting (at least as it existed during WWII) and the text notes that only the U.S. had most of those resources in necessary abundance, so I think you’re wrong about the German’s need for resources from outside the continent (which is why they tried to get them from Russia and Africa) and the ability of the Brits to strangle them based on that.
Hondo-but the Soviet wasn’t talking about “probing” for mines, he specifically said that the best way to clear minefields was to “march infantry through” them. Again, that demonstrates an indifference to human suffering that would have been unthinkable to western officers or politicians. While their casualties were terrible, it’s not like they did a lot to minimize them.
HSSophomore: I’m not so certain that Nazi Germany didn’t possess the wherewithal to conquer the USSR – or at least dismember it. Indeed, the Nazi invasion of the USSR was an extremely close thing.
Napoleon’s invasion is not a particularly good parallel. Napoleon had no desire to permanently conquer Russia and rule parts of it, or to destroy it as a state. Nazi Germany intended both vis-à-vis the USSR.
The Nazi invasion of the USSR, Barbarossa, was originally scheduled for 15 May 1941. Other operations – specifically, Yugoslavia and Greece – resulted in that timetable being pushed back roughly 5 1/2 weeks to 22 June. These operations also produced substantial wear and tear on the units and equipment later used to invade Russia.
As it was, the Germans were nearly in Moscow by the time the Russian weather broke in October. Given 6 more weeks of good weather and better/fresher troops and equipment, well, . . . . Let’s just say we should all be glad Hitler was as much a military idiot with truly stupid and evil racial theories as he was a political genius.
Absent the German invasions of Yugoslavia and Greece, IMO Barbarossa would indeed have occupied Moscow – and most probably everything east of the Volga and Dvina Rivers – prior to the onset of winter in 1941. While the Soviet Union might have survived in truncated form, at least for a while, they’d have lost most of their industrial capacity; most of their productive agricultural areas; and much of their population.
In short, they’d have become effectively about 3 Canadas without Canada’s industrial areas near the US. Their ability to continue a war against Germany, even with US/British assistance, would have been severely curtailed. And even their survival would not have IMO been guaranteed.
Modern revisionist history, especially in Europe, forgets the massive amounts of lend lease that keep the USSR from perishing…
The USA supplied the USSR with 6,430 planes, 3,734 tanks, 104 ships and boats, 210,000 autos, 3,000 anti-aircraft guns, 245,000 field telephones, gasoline, aluminum, copper, zinc, steel and five million tons of food.
This was enough to feed an army of 12 million every day of the war.
In addition to military equipment, other commodities were sent which were essential to the war effort. These included 2.3 million tons of steel, 229,000 tons of aluminium, 2.6 million tons of petrol, 3.8 million tons of foodstuffs including tinned pork, sausages, butter, chocolate, egg powder and so on, 56,445 field telephones and 600,000 km of telephone wire. The Soviet Union also received 15 million pairs of army boots, enough leather for an additional 10 million pairs and enough cloth to produce 20 million uniforms.
So yeah…they fought and they suffered…using US steel, eating US food and wearing US cloth on their backs.
All in all it is my honest opinion that our involvement in Europe, in both world wars, was a mistake. And I think it was a grave decision to assist Stalin in any shape or fashion.
It was a European war, started by Europeans born out of a previous European war started by inbred European nobility. The fucking British like to ask “why did you show up so late?” Really? For YOUR f*cking war that YOU started by demanding crushing reparations then trying to appease Hitler?
And the fucks have the audacity to ask why we are still in Europe. I love to remind them that they have a historical tendency to be at each other’s throats without an overseer.
And if Staling hadn’t murdered his excellent corps of General Officers in the 20s and 30s the war would not have gone nearly as bad for them as it did in the beginning.
Sorry. i get all fired up about this stuff sometimes.
Happy New Year
0-4E-yeah I’m with you on some of the nonsense we get from the Brits. I lurk over on ARRSE and I can hardly believe some of the nonsense that gets posted over there. I recommend Barbara Tuchman’s “The Zimmerman Telegram” for good insight into how desperate the Brits were to get us into WWI and how they were the ones who uncovered the infamous telegram and had to figure out how to use it to their advantage (also, it shows Wilson for a fool and a knave, which is a nice bonus).
O-4E: I understand your frustration. The alternative, however, was to risk a Europe dominated by a truly talented but evil madman (Hitler) with no opposition and a demonstrated willingness to commit cold-blooded murder on an industrial scale.
Stalin was incredibly bad, as was Mao; we didn’t know just how bad either was at the time. But as bad as both were, IMO Hitler and his Nazi cronies were even worse. Even Stalin and Mao never had a Treblinka, Sobibor, or Belzec.
Yes, we fed and equipped (mostly) Soviet forces (though they produced most of their own tanks, guns, and small arms), and sent them essential raw materials and other assistance that allowed them to do that. It was in our interest at the time to do so.
Like politics, war also sometimes makes strange bedfellows.
@23—”And the fucks have the audacity to ask why we are still in Europe. I love to remind them that they have a historical tendency to be at each other’s throats without an overseer.”
That is literally the exact reason we keep so many troops in Europe. Those troops are, in essence, a peacekeeping force. After two wars started by Europeans that dragged us into both and how badly the Euros fucked up when they drafted the Treaty of Versailles and then appeased Hitler, the US said enough was enough. Basically, we’re keeping a massive garrison there as a subtle reminder that anybody over there—Germany, France, UK, or Russia—who tries to upset the geopolitical apple cart has to answer to us. Since, you know, that stuff kind of affects us… They will never leave. And frankly, Europe should be grateful. They can’t even go twenty years without getting into a huge war with their neighbors if we aren’t around to calm them. And they wonder why we Americans don’t put them in any important roles in joint commands or listen to their valuable strategic advice in situations like Bosnia.
I wonder what Americans would think at the prospect of having 80 million killed/wounded in a conflict on our soil.
It would make the American Civil War a mild temper tantrum by comparison.
@26—With you. Sometimes you have to go for that enemy of my enemy deal, even in the knowledge that it may not be the hottest decision down the line. Pretty hard to find people more evil than the Nazis. I have a feeling that if they had won, we would have been playing the same games we did with the Russians, too.
@22—The thing is, people get way too wrapped up in the knowledge that the Nazis came within a hair’s breadth of conquering the Soviet Union’s capital. For most countries, that would spell defeat. Not them. They simply had too much space to trade. The thing to remember here is that the Soviet Union was able to perform a MASSIVE feat in relocating their industrial heartland to Central Asia. Yekaterinburg, Novobirisk, and Omsk all became the new centers of manufacturing. You are right that the Soviet Union could have been badly dismembered and would have lost a tremendous amount of people. However, the grim truth is that the Soviets could afford to lose that. The Nazis couldn’t extend their supply lines far enough to get at the Russians.
A little known fact is that Stalin, in addition to being cruel and sociopathic, was also a huge coward. Three weeks after Barbarossa began (with the Russian army getting its ass handed to it), he called a meeting of his advisers and asked them if it wouldn’t be possible to appease Hitler by giving him all of Eastern Europe west of Russia’s present day border, plus a substantial amount of Mother Russia up to the Volga. In an incredible display of courage, his ministers said no, with the defense minister saying, “Even if we must retreat to beyond the Urals, we will still win.” The guy knew what he was talking about. The Soviet Union could have been beaten way worse than it was. Lost? I doubt it.
HSSophomore: your logic above re: US troops in Europe works – so long as two factors hold. One is we can afford the cost. The other is that it remains in our interest to do it.
The latter has been questionable for at least the last decade, if not two decades. I personally tend to say it’s in our interest, but I’m not terribly sure. And IMO, we have way more forces there than are needed from a US interests perspective. A few air bases, ports, POMCUS sites are all IMO we need in Europe on a permanent basis. The rest can rotate in for training periodically – and then rotate home in 30 days.
The latter has been questionable for even longer. Frankly, IMO the USG is flat-ass broke even longer. We simply can’t afford to foot the bill for being the world’s polizei any more.
Regarding German logistics, is it true that they had to move their supplies to different trains at the Russian border because the Russian railroad gauge was different than the rest of Europe? I swear I read that somewhere and that that explains much of the krauts trouble with maintaining supplies.
HSSophomore: you do know where those new facilities came from, right? Much of it was due to US lend-lease and/or technology transferred to the USSR during the war at FDR’s command.
Furhter: many of the relocations of existing facilities didn’t begin until well after Barbarossa had stalled in Sep/Oct 1941.
Bottom line: had the Germans had six additional weeks of good campaigning weather, there would have been little to relocate still under their control. Hitler’s pique at the March coup in Yugoslavia and his fixation on Greece caused him to order operations against both that delayed Barbarossa almost six weeks. And that was to prove fatal when Barbarossa was actually executed.
Like everything else, time is a resource. But unlike all other resources, it is literally irreplaceable. When it’s spent, it cannot be replaced. Ever.
68W58: correct. Continental Europe in 1940 used standard gauge (1.435M) tracks. The USSR used Russian gauge tracks (1.52M). Transloading of cargo was required where one gauge met the other.
@31—I know what you are saying. However, I would say it’s in our interest to do it. You are right that the USG needs to cut down on spending, but our European garrisons are nothing but an eye blink in the overall federal budget. Currently, roughly 1.5 out of every ten dollars in the Fed. budget are going to defense spending, and 6 out of 10 are going to entitlement spending. Given that, I would say that it’s worth our while to keep our troops in Europe stationed there because that inevitably costs way less than the amount of treasure (not to mention blood) we’d have to spend if (no, when) the Europeans go at each others’ throats and drag us into it when we leave. I think we should cut, but let’s direct that to the entitlements that drive the deficit, or, if defense must be cut, to programs that can either be grossly slimmed down or eliminated completely—USAF Space Command (has a budget bigger than UNOSSOCOM), the F-35, or the plan to upgrade all the M-1 Abrams in the army to M-1A2 configuration.
@18 Oops, my bad. Still, bad news.
Reminds me of the Brit losses in WWI. Napoleon era tactics in the face of machine gun fire.
And Happy New Year, peeps!
“Over 225,000 Soviet former-POWs were sent to the Gulag after being repatriated from Nazi POW camps.”
And we helped: Operation Keelhaul.
Ponder too the effect that the invasion of Crete played on the future Luftwaffe operations. Germany suffered serious losses in transport aircraft, paratroopers, and figured that future airborne operations would be futile. Imagine if all were available at Stalingrad.
@33—Perhaps you know more about it than me, but what technological help or lend-lease did FDR give that helped boost Soviet internal production? My understanding of lend-lease to the Russians was that it mainly took the form of direct military aid—tanks, guns, artillery, foodstuffs, and boots, as opposed to the materials, tooling, and skilled labor to make those things. Also, I wonder somewhat about your figures on when exactly the Soviets shifted their manufacturing infrastructure. Here’s a list of Soviet tank factories, for example, prior to, during, and slightly after WWII (I know it’s wikipedia, but I checked, and the citations seem pretty sound):http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Soviet_tank_factories. You’ll notice that most were in Ukraine or Western Russia. However, most were successfully evacuated before they could be taken, which means they must have been evacuated earlier than late 1941. Here’s another one of overall Soviet production movement:http://books.google.com/books?id=dcAgT_2uiYgC&pg=PA34#v=onepage&q&f=false. By the end of 1941, the Soviet program GOSPLAN moved 1,523 large factories to Central Asia and the Far East. This was a small portion of the 32,000 total factories that were behind enemy lines, but the Soviets were able to save most of their weaponry producing capabilities, the thing they needed most crucially. Although the majority of this did occur in the last months of 1941, it appears that this may have been because this was when Germany finally reached the industrial heartland. However,they were able to keep pace before that (when they evacuated the Ukrainian tank factories). I’ll bet they could have still saved most of it. Call it differing opinions.
@ HS Sophomore
Read Tim Tzouliadis: The Forsaken: An American Tragedy in Stalin’s Russia
Stalin detained (and later murdered) thousands of US citizens who had moved there in the 20s and 30 so help the USSR develop an automotive manufacturing capability. Many of the Americans desiring to return home were communists who had voluntarily moved to the Soviet Union, while others moved to Soviet Union as skilled auto workers to help produce cars at the recently constructed GAZ automobile factory built by the Ford Motor Company.
Once again…the result of Stalin’s purges of his intelligentsia in the 20s and 30s.
HS Sophomore: Read Richard Rhodes two works on the US and Soviet nuclear weapons programs: The Making of the Atomic Bomb and Dark Sun. As I recall, in one (or perhaps both) of them he devotes considerable ink to a description of lend-lease.
Along with weapons, we were shipping Russia the blueprints for US factories, raw materials, design documents, components, whatever. Hell, I think we even shipped them a few complete production plants (could be wrong about that, but I don’t think I am).
Essentially, if the Russians asked for it – they almost always got it. Rhodes touches on it because the Russians eventually started asking for items related to the Manhattan Project itself (high-purity graphite) to assist their own nascent nuclear study efforts which began before the end of World War II and were directed and assisted by data stolen by the Rosenberg spy ring (yeah, he really was a traitor).
Some small/critical lend-lease supplies were sent via air from bases in the NW USA (in Montana, as I recall) – with Russian pilots flying the planes. Because of this, Soviet espionage agents used this venue to ship massive quantities of documents/other sensitive material. It got so blatantly bad that one US officer got suspicious and nearly caused an international incident when he started asking questions and opening boxes/crates/cases.
The theory was apparently that we’d send whatever was requested to help Russia with their war effort, NQA. The end result was that we were sending them our intellectual capital – some of it willingly, and some of it via providing them a risk-free method of sending materials stolen by their spies.
Another good book:
Target: Patton: The Plot to Assassinate General George S. Patton
http://www.amazon.com/Target-Patton-Assassinate-General-George/dp/1596986069
The conspiracy theory aside…you will see that the FDR administration did everything short of FDR sucking Stalin’s cock
HSSophomore: you’re proving my point, youngster. Thanks. (smile)
Of the ten plants listed in the Wikipedia source you cite (which I’ll accept – sometimes Wikipedia does have decent info, and this looks OK), 7 of them are indeed in the eastern Ukraine, St. Petersburg, or Nizhny Novgorod (formerly Gorky). The relatively late start to Barbarossa both gave the Russians an extra 5 1/2 weeks for contingency planning as to what to do in the event of a German invasion as well as delayed the German invasion itself. (The extra operations prior to Barbarossa also probably slowed and marginally weakened the German advance through wear and tear on both troops and equipment.)
A faster advance and less time for contingency planning relating to relocation probably means that the Germans take St Petersburg vice nearly doing so and reach Kharkov more quickly. That means six of the 7 listed facilities likely are captured or destroyed vice being relocated. The facility at Nizhny Novgorod may or may not have fallen. Still, a 60% reduction is substantial, no matter how you slice it.
Loss of the port of Murmansk/Archangel would have also severely limited lend-lease assistance (about 1/4 of all US lend-lease supplies to Russia went by that route). Because of the German stall at Leningrad, Murmansk/Archangel never fell.
Comrades in Arms:
Have any of you seen the movie, “THE SOVIET STORY”?
I was so impressed by it, that I not only purchased my own copy of the DVD, but also additional copies for Christmas gifts.
Here is the URL for that movie:
http://www.sovietstory.com/
Also, I think you’ll be as pleasantly awestruck as I was, when you see this video of this lovely and unusually talented Ukrainian girl.
http://youtu.be/T1Zlt4iqaPU
I don’t speak the language, but the images tell us all we need to know.
Thank you.
John Robert Mallernee
Armed Forces Retirement Home
Gulfport, Mississippi 39507
@Hondo
The tractor plants at Stalingrad, Kharkov, and Chelyabinsk, erected with almost complete American assistance and equipment, and the Kirov plant in Leningrad, reconstructed by Ford, were used from the start to produce Soviet tanks, armored cars, and self-propelled guns. The enthusiasm with which this tank and armored-vehicle program was pursued, and the diversion of the best Russian engineers and material priorities to military purposes, were responsible for at least part of the Soviet problem of lagging tractor production and periodic famines from the 30s through the 50s
From 1931, up to a half of the productive capacity of those “tractor” plants had been used for tank and armored-car production.
The Stalingrad tractor plant was completely built in the United States, shipped to Stalingrad, and then installed in prefabricated steel buildings also purchased in the United States.
This unit, together with the Kharkov and Chelyabinsk plants and the rebuilt Kirov plant in Leningrad, comprised the Soviet tractor industry at that time, and a considerable part of the Soviet tank industry as well. During the war, equipment from Kharkov was evacuated and installed behind the Urals to form the Altai tractor plant, which opened in 1943.
Three postwar tractor plants were in operation by 1950: the Valdimir plant opened in 1944, the Lipetsk plant in 1947, the Minsk plant and the Kharkov assembly plant in I950. This was the basic structure of the Soviet tractor industry in the 1960s and 1970s
Thus, not only were all three of the new American-built tractor plants producing tanks throughout the 1930s, but they were by far the most important industrial units producing this type of weapon. Even today, these plants still can, and do, produce tanks.
O-4E: didn’t know that; thanks.
From a strategic perspective, the facilities at Chelyabinsk and Stalingrad probably wouldn’t have fallen in 1941 during Barbarossa – they were simply too far east. But six (and maybe seven) of the others that were more to the west likely IMO would have had Barbarossa been launched in mid-May (as originally scheduled) vice late June. Those losses – plus the loss of Murmansk/Archangel – would have put one helluva crimp in the USSR’s war effort the next year. IMO, the crimp would have been fatal.
We’ll never know. And it’s probably best that way. All of Europe east of the Urals conquered by and under long-term (or permanent) Nazi rule isn’t exactly a pleasant thing to contemplate.
You know something? Never mind. I think you guys are right. I suppose if you bumped it six weeks ahead, the industrial damage might have been enough. And thanks for those book—I’ll have to read those. They sound real interesting. I never knew about the non-direct aid we gave. Thanks.
But either way—yeah, I think I like the way things turned out.
Now, enough grim history. Let’s talk about the positive affects the Soviet Union had on the world. Namely, an excellent way of dealing with wannabes. I’d like to start a petition to get the White House to study the concept of creating “unarmed explosive ordinance disposal corrective support companies” in every ground combat unit of battalion size or larger. We can staff them with posers, teenagers who smear girls’ reputations on social media networks (I can contribute several of those), the California Legislature, the SPLC, and PETA, and any other forms of oxygen thieves we can name. Who should form the command structure? I’d like to nominate MSGT. Soup Sandwich as a company commander for the first one formed.
Some of the fighting on the Eastern front like Ypers in WWI is beyond my ability to understand.