Originally posted by Matthew Buttsworth:
Point on odds.
Am suspicious and Glantz's work when titans clashed. Although saying he describes period before the war, almost all his quotes are from the time after the German attack when the Russians were totally out of position, lost their planes, and much of fuel etc.
Before the German attack the Russians had an enormous superiority in men, artillery, tanks and planes and industrial production.
that was why they were able to survive the tremendous losses and then outnumber the germans from Jan 1942 on.
1944 is much too late a date to say that was when the odds began to favour the Russians.
See Walter Post Barbarossa.
Please explain what you mean under "enormous superiority in men": is it 2-3:1 or 9-11:1 odds or more? Russians are masters of brute force etc.
Let us have a look at stats again. By 1941 population of the Soviet Union was about 190-195 millions, nearly twice as much as that of the Axis.
You may say that the Germany's satellites' troops were inferior to Germans - note that Soviets were far from homogeneous as well. Russians (half of the population) were the most motivated and determined to defend their homeland, this cannot be said of most of men from Ukrain, Baltic and Central Asia republics, especially in the early period, when atrocities of German Ostpolitik did not fully come out. The second: Hitler had to keep at least 25-30% of his forces at the West. But Soviet Union also had to defend its huge borders with dozens of divisions, the most against hostile Japan and Turkey. The third: during fast summer 1941 retreat the Soviets did not mobilize millions of men in the western regions and lost total of 80 mln population which remained under ccupation. The fourth: Soviets had no that many millions slaves Ostarbeiters which allowed Germany to perform total mobilizations, the Soviets had to keep considerable part of labor force at home factories. So by late 1942 the manpower pools were almost equal: approximately 6.0 mln Axis soldiers on battlefield at the East vs 6.2 mln Soviets. On arty, tanks and planes the sides also had some parity. It was just after Stalingrad when odds began to grow to Soviet favour again, so by March 1945 they had 6.5 mln men vs 3.1 mln Germans, 4:1 in tanks and 9:1 in planes at the Eastern front. Is this the "enormous odds in men"? I think this is a widely spread
western stereotype of the Russians - masters of brute force. The data may look doubtful, so estimate the manpower basing initial
population and losses charts, they are known more or less exactly. So you will see that the "enormous odds" is a kind of myth.
The same I would say about generals. Some of you mention O'Connor, who operated with just couple of divisions for very short period against poor Italian troops. Maybe he's great, but he'd better prove it against
Germans.
Montgomery at Alamein just ousted outnumbered, low on fuel and ammo a few German divisions mostly when Rommel was on leave from Africa. Later, in Europe he launched the Market Garden operation which ended with disaster. He sacrificed a whole British paratroop division lost with almost no effect and was shameless enough to call
the operation "90 percent success".
I think Patton was the best western general - he showed the classical Blitzkrieg in France, although in period when Germans were very far from their full force.
And about Soviet generals. I was amazed a bit since in this topic Zhukov was mentioned mostly for failing to trap German forces at Caucasus (any other commander would do it
easily) and clearing minefields with feet of his infantrymen.
So I must say that Zhukov's victories began near Leningrad (09.41) and later near Moscow, when he brilliantly organized defensive and counter-offensive operations in desperate situation. Of course, the principle of Stalingrad operation (11.42) was obvious, but the non-trivial point was
to find proper place and moment for breakthrough, estimate forces, resistance etc.
The funny story about Konev's Korsun (Cherkassy) pocket that trapped 56,000 Germans in 02.44. The exact outcome of the battle is not yet known for sure. So, Konev who indeed spent those days on the field of battle, wrote later of "no one German escaped". On the other hand, Manstein reported of 30-32,000 his soldiers released. Sure, Manstein's point was adopted by the
western historians and public. However they both are known to have been sometimes writing lies (which is quite normal for any memoirs), the same battle looks as a continuous chain of the author's victories. I better believe Zhukov who had no warm relations to both and may be more or less impartial. He wrote that "on the final blizzard night a few small columns of Germans managed to escape by foot". How many - who knows?
Then came Bagramian and Chernyakhovsky's operation in Belorussia (07-08.44) which
started with consecutive skillful strikes at Busch's defenses that distracted, trapped his reserves and broke a vast hole a few hundreds kilometers wide. This was a true Blitz, the reversed 1941 in 1944.
In August 1944 Malinovsky and Tolbukhin launched the Jassy-Kishinev operation, again encircled and destroyed a dozen of Axis divisions which resulted in that Friessner's South Ukrain Army Group ceased to exist and
Romania "switched sides". It was this moment when German HQ issued a special order to forbid use of the word "catastrophe" in the troops.
Seem to have written too much, yeah?
