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The exact tank strength of the Red Army and the actual TO&E for its armoured units at the start of the war with Germany is one of the most discussed eastern front topic ever.

I found this site: "Mekhanizirovannye Korpusa RKKA 1940-1941gg." (that is "Mechanized Corps of the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army - years 1940-41")
http://www.chat.ru/~mechcorps/

that is an amazing collection of data and facts about the early development of the Mechanized Corps. IMHO it couldbe a great source to improve WiR OOB. (OK it's in Russian but consider that if your goal is simply to read the tank strength tables you're not in a desperate situation)

Comments?

Amedeo

Originally posted by amatteucci:
(OK it's in Russian but consider that if your goal is simply to read the tank strength tables you're not in a desperate situation)

Well, babelfish helps, once you figure out where the tables are, but I can't help be tickled by the statement "It is no secret THE USSR seriously was prepared for war with Germany and its allies." Now either that was a horrible mistranslation by babelfish, or the creator of this site is not particularly objective about his country's combat effectiveness in June '41.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Well, babelfish helps, once you figure out where the tables are, but I can't help be tickled by the statement "It is no secret THE USSR seriously was prepared for war with Germany and its allies." Now either that was a horrible mistranslation by babelfish, or the creator of this site is not particularly objective about his country's combat effectiveness in June '41.

Well, we now have 10/10 hindsight but as Stalin said, after asking for a brief report of the forces available in the event of a German attack, "Isn't that enough? The Germans haven't so many troops..."
Or as Hitler supposedly said to Guderian: "If I knew the figures you published in your book (figures about Soviet tank strenght, the book is of course Achtung Panzer!) were true I hadn't attacked!"

Jokes apart... I presume you find the tables, however for anyone that experienced problems, after clicking on the BT picture at start, just select the button "Mekhkorpusa" on the left (it's the one with a KV-2 picture on it). A bar will appear on the top of the screen with clickable numbers. Just click on the Mechanized Corps number you want to examine.

Regards,


Amedeo
Amedeo

Originally posted by amatteucci:
Well, we now have 10/10 hindsight but as Stalin said, after asking for a brief report of the forces available in the event of a German attack, "Isn't that enough? The Germans haven't so many troops..."
Or as Hitler supposedly said to Guderian: "If I knew the figures you published in your book (figures about Soviet tank strenght, the book is of course Achtung Panzer!) were true I hadn't attacked!"

Very interesting quotes, but I don't understand your point. The creator of that web site has 50 *years* of hindsight and should know his statement is not accurate....

Don´t you think you can be prepared but not be ready?
The Soviets had lots of material on the borderline to German occupied Poland: Read the number of destroyed or captured material, guns, tanks, planes in offical German sourcses eg Tagebuch des OKH etc.
The Red Army was prepared to attack or to defend but they weren´t ready in their minds, they were surprised, they didn´t believe that Germany would really attack the powerfull army with high numbers of everything.
The same thing happened in France: They had the bigger Army, the better Tanks in higher numbers, much more artillery they were prepared for war, but they were not ready: "Who attacks will loose the war!" or "I´ll give the Germans 1 Billion Franc when they attack!" famous quotes of French Generals.
Readyness is not the possesion of lots of material it is the will to use it.

Originally posted by Ed Cogburn:
Very interesting quotes, but I don't understand your point. The creator of that web site has 50 *years* of hindsight and should know his statement is not accurate....

You're perfectly right, in fact i said "jokes apart" in my former post just to explain that my quotes were not to be seriously considered a confirmation of the preparadness of the RKKA in June 1941.
I do not think that the Red Army was actually prepared to meet the German onslaught. For what concernes the site's creator opinions, well, my Russian is not so good (still remember that time that it took me a whole hour to translate ten lines from a Aviation website...) and I didn't tried the on line translator. When I'll took a closer look I'll post my opinion (in fact I wonder what the author's views really are).
Regards,

Amedeo

[This message has been edited by amatteucci (edited September 19, 2000).]

I found the infamous sentencee that originally went unnoticed from me.
If I'm correct the words you were referring to are the first of the chapter "About mechanized corps".

The phrase reads as follows "Ne sekret, chto SSSR ser'ezno gotovilsia k voine s Germaniei i ee soiuznikami". As I previously said my Russian is very bad but IMHO the correct translation of this sentence should be "It's no secret that the USSR was seriously preparing itself for the war against Germany and her allies". And I can say that the correct translation is "was preparing" and not "was prepared" because of the imperfective (from the Latin imperfectus i.e. not complete) form of the verb. Russian verbs have two forms: one perfective one imperfective. OK I simplified the matter, but my post is not meant to be the ultimate words on Slavic philology

Anyway, it seems that the 50 year hindsight had an effect on the website's author.
...at least I hope so since I didn't go on with the translation

Regards,

Amedeo

P.S. I'll try to have someone that knows his Russian to check the sentence, just for a more authoritative opinion.

Hi all!

If you want detailed information of russian armour look at Valeriy Potapov's Side: http://history.vif2.ru/

Well, maybe a little slow, but worth the waiting.

Harry

Originally posted by amatteucci:
The phrase reads as follows "Ne sekret, chto SSSR ser'ezno gotovilsia k voine s Germaniei i ee soiuznikami". As I previously said my Russian is very bad but IMHO the correct translation of this sentence should be "It's no secret that the USSR was seriously preparing itself for the war against Germany and her allies". And I can say that the correct translation is "was preparing" and not "was prepared" because of

Ahh, "was preparing" makes much more sense, its just a translation problem then.