The defeat of Germany in the Second World War has been a subject that has fascinated historians ever since the events occurred. The reasons behind this have been a hotly debated topic ever since, none more so than the balance between eastern and western theatres and the reasons behind the defeat in the Soviet Union.[1] However this picture has been obscured by two main issues, the extent of the involvement of the German Army (Heer) in atrocities in the USSR, the so called ‘clean Wehrmacht’ myth and Cold War politics.
Soviet tank armies used a form of logistics different from that of Western armies that specifically allowed them a high degree of mobility and the ability to operate deeply behind enemy lines without fear of interruption. The build-up for offensives was provided by railways, and the offensives themselves were time limited, awaiting the arrival of the field armies and restored railway connections.
This article sets out to examine the inner working of combined-arms armies logistics over the course of the war through the use of a series of seven reports contained within the ‘Collection of Materials on the Experience of War’ and comparing these assessments with statistics from archival documents on two actual operations, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev in August 1943 and the Vistula-Oder Operation in January 1945. These results show that combined-arms armies gained their operational mobility from rapid re-establishment of railways and a carefully choreographed use of a small motor vehicle fleet, coupled with strict adherence to weight limits and living off the land by combat troops and their horse-drawn transport. This achievement of high mobility using limited means was a unique approach particularly tailored to the Red Army’s force structure and the Soviet Union’s available economic support.
As part of the ‘History Goes On’ seminar series, they have featured my delayed, seminar presentation. This was originally designed to be presented at the Second World War Group Conference in 2021 and to accompany the release of my article in the Journal of Slavic Military Studies Vol. 33 No. 4 due March 2021.
In the previous post, I set you, the reader, the challenge of comparing both contemporary and current accounts of a single day of fighting at divisonal level during the Battle of Kursk. In this post I will give you some further information and lead you towards my conclusion. Of course you may have your own ideas.
One of the major issues with the historiography of the Soviet-German War is that German accounts of the war had an almost unchallenged run for over forty years between 1945 and 1991. Former German generals found a willing audience in American soldiers and historians who were struggling to counter the Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and the prospect of a Third World War.
The aim of this exercise is to demonstrate some of the problems with one-sided Germanicentric scholarship by examining one of those rare occurances, a divisional sized battle which has primary and secondary sources from both sides.
Motor vehicles have always been regarded as an indicator of modernity, technological advancement, and industrial progress, right from the time of the first motor car in 1885. The Soviet Union was no exception, and there is an extensive Soviet historiography of the development of motor transport and its use during the German-Soviet War. The aim of this article is to put the wartime military and economic use of Soviet vehicles into a wider context, highlighting how mechanization was not the only important variable in successful logistics. The case study here will be the role of transportation in the logistics of a Soviet combined arms army (общевойсковая армия) utilizing detailed primary source material from the pamyat-naroda.ru website.
In December 1941, the nature of the Second World War was changed irrevocably by the German defeat at the Battle of Moscow. Up to this point Germany had been able to win each of her individual wars in a single campaign, utilising the Heer's military expertise to overcome Germany's enemies one by one and using a fixed stock of military personnel and materiel. However the Soviet Union had managed to bend before the German storm and although her pre-war army had been destroyed, had created new armies and divisions in sufficient time to halt the German advance outside the capital, so forcing the need for a second campaign. This fact changed the nature of the war from one of single military operations to one of a series of campaigns utilising national economic output to equip and sustain multiple operations continuously over a period of years. From this point onwards, the level of mobilisation of a country's economy would be a significant factor in winning or losing the war.
Which poses the question what were the relative sizes of the German and Soviet economies? After all Germany could call on the resources of an occupied Europe while the USSR had lost large amounts of territory, around 60-80 million people and 40% of its economic base. By contrast one in every three 'German' soldiers fighting on the Eastern Front was not a German national.
Newly available archive material from Russia now makes possible a detailed breakdown of a late war Tank Army, showing both its combat and support units in great detail down to company level . This new information expands the current knowledge provided by existing English language sources.
