# Revisiting World War 2



## a_majoor (2 May 2010)

A different way of looking at the Russio- German war of 1941-45:

http://nextbigfuture.com/2010/05/revisiting-world-war-2.html



> *Revisiting World War 2*
> 
> One of the big secrets of World War 2 is why Nazi Germany succeeded in surprising Soviet Russia in June 1941. The usual reasons were that Stalin trusted a non-aggression pact with Hitler or Stalin was afraid of Nazi Germany. Viktor Sukorov analyzes some recently released Soviet documents and comes to a different conclusion which is makes more sense. All of Stalin's actions and what happened with the Soviets was the result of Stalin planning to sweep across all of Europe. Stalin was planning to let the Nazis fight Europe and weaken themselves and weaken those they attacked and then the Soviets would attack and defeat the Nazis and what remained. The Soviets were prepared and positioned to launch an attack on the Germans and were out of position for defense when the Nazis attacked. This left planes too close to the front and in position to be overrun. Why did the Soviets not think that the Nazis were going to attack ? The Soviets spies detected no build up of winter gear by the Nazi units. How could an army unit attack the Soviets and Russia without winter gear ? They did not think the Germans would be so foolish as to think that they could attack and defeat the Soviets in three months before winter.
> 
> ...


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## vonGarvin (2 May 2010)

I should very well say that this is a very different way to look at the war.  I've never really liked Suvurov that much.  His assertions in his book "Inside the Red Army" (I think that's the title: I read it long ago) had such nonsense as "100 tanks per kilometre in the breakthrough zone.  Only a nuke can stop them."  P-shah!  How about a complex obstacle?  How about hitting their logistical trail?  Anyway, I digress

As for "no winter kit" means "no invasion", how then would the Soviet Intelligence agencies, along with their many informers, miss the massing of over a million troops from the Baltic to the Black sea?  They saw no parkas?  But did they not happen to see all those pieces of artillery, the tanks, the men?

Anyway, though the Soviets relied doctrinally on the offensive, even up to the USSR's dissolution, this does not mean that they were planning an attack.  Instead, their plans were that once the war started, they would quickly go over to the offensive.  Just as the Germans grossly underestimated the capability of the USSR to rebound from the initial blows, the Soviets grossly underestimated the ability of the Luftwaffe and Wehrmacht to conduct its style of war.  It wasn't until late 1942 or eary 1943 that the USSR was able to surpass the Germans in its ability to plan and conduct operations on a grand scale.  And by this I don't mean with masses of men and tanks hurled West.  They tried that in 1941 and throughout 1942, and failed miserably.   Instead, the forces of the USSR were led by increasingly more experienced Generals who were able to conduct such grand operations as Bagration.  Never heard of it?  All it did was result in the almost complete destruction of the German Army Group Centre and three of its component armies: Fourth Army, Third Panzer Army and Ninth Army.  It happened a few weeks after D Day, so most of us in the West usually fail to remember this little tidbit.


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## murray b (14 Aug 2010)

The historian Bryan Fugate demonstrated fairly conclusively that the Soviets were not surprised.  They could not have possibly started building their medium and heavy tank infrastructure upon the invasion and then deliver a couple or three thousand T-34s and KV-1s to Smolensk a few weeks later.

Viktor Sukorov appears to be making some strange statements though.  He seems to think that because the Soviets had 22k or so tanks that they must have been planning to take over Europe.  Fine idea but not believable if you zoom in a little.  Of the 22k tanks about 18k were light recon tanks and only 3k or so were modern medium and heavy tanks.  BT-5s and the like are not going to crush anybody's army.  Even little Skodas would have little trouble destroying those tanks.

Almost everything written about the Eastern Front since '85 has been crap because some idiot historians have been trying to revise history using only Soviet archival materials.  The Soviets had excellent security and would never have recorded classified material in clear text for spies, or historians, to read.  That is one of the reasons the Germans had no idea they would be running into T-34s and KV-1s at Smolensk.  They were a nasty surprise for an army equipped with Pz IIIs and Skodas (the Pz IV was an infantry support vehicle with L20 gun at that time).  Had the German intel been any good than they surely would have fitted the long 50 to the PZ III and long 75 to the Pz IV before the invasion.  They might even have made the Skodas into AT gun carriers since the 37mm was probably as big as the turret ring would allow.  

After a few more years of revision I expect we will soon read how the Axis won the war.  [The way I heard it was that Canada, with the help of others, actually won the war.]


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## Retired AF Guy (14 Aug 2010)

I, like Technoviking, never had much faith in the writings of Mr. Viktor Sukorov. I read his books when they came out in the late-80's/early 90's because they were one of the few out there that purportedly gave an insiders look at the inner workings of the Soviet military/intelligence services. Personally I found a lot of his statements to be pretty outrageous and hard to take seriously. 

My one comment is if, as Sukorov says, Stalin was planning on attacking the west, why then did he have his whole military high command liquidated a few years earlier??   

Another author who also attempts to re-write World War Two is John Mosier in his book " The Blitzkrieg Myth: How Hitler and Allies Misread the Strategic Realities of War."  According to Mosier, "_The military myths of World War II were based on the assumption that the new technology of the airplane and the tank would cause rapid and massive breakthroughs on the battlefield, or demoralization of the enemy by intensive bombing resulting in destruction, or surrender in a matter of weeks. The two apostles for these new theories were the Englishman J.C.F. Fuller for armoured warfare, and the Italian Emilio Drouhet for airpower. Hitler, Rommel, von Manstein, Montgomery and Patton were all seduced by the breakthrough myth or blitzkrieg as the decisive way to victory._" (From the book cover).

Mosier takes shots at some of the facts about WWII that many people/historians have taken for Gospel, with his main goal is to discredit Fuller's writings on armoured warfare and Drouhet's writings on airpower, especially his idea that the "bomber will always get through.". I'm about halfway through the book and while I find it interesting. For example, the idea that the Polish, Dutch and Belgium forces more or less caved in after being attacked by the Germans. According to Mosier, they actually put up a pretty good fight.  

Some of his stuff is old news. For example, the fact that the German wasn't as mechanized as people think it was or the fact that in 1940 the French actually more and better tanks than the Germans. According to Mosier the Germans had fewer tanks because most the armour plate needed to make them were used in fortifications instead. However, other historians I've read say the reason was because the plate was needed in building more warships. 

One glaring omission was in his write-up on the North Africa campaign. Mosier praises Rommel to no end and how a great strategist he was, but makes no mention of the fact that the Germans were reading the Brits message traffic! It was only after El Alamein that the Brits found out about this when they overran one of the German intercept post and realized what was going on. After El Alamein the Brits changed their codes and it was all downhill for Rommel.

If you want some good reads on WWII get Len Deighton's, " Fighter," " Blitzkreig " and " Blood, Tears and Folly."


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## vonGarvin (14 Aug 2010)

Retired AF Guy said:
			
		

> If you want some good reads on WWII get Len Deighton's, " Fighter," " Blitzkreig " and " Blood, Tears and Folly."


I've read both Fighter and Blitzkrieg, and I enjoyed them thoroughly.  I highly recommend them to anyone interested in WW2 history.  Mr Deighton blows the lid off of some of the "myths" of the Battle of Britain, for example.  If I recall correctly, he asserts that the Germans didn't really put their heart into the campaign and blundered their way across Britain; however, on occassion they had some smashing successes.  I think it was Kampfgeschwader 100 (KG 100) that used radio direction to do some precision bombing in western England.  The English wrote off the night time raid that hit a factory as blind luck, when it fact it wasn't.  
Anyway, read the books, they are both very enlightening.


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## pbi (14 Aug 2010)

I share in the skepticism here. 

Some of the "examples" used are a bit questionable. For one thing, by 1941 the T-28 was no longer a state of the art tank: it was more reminiscent of late 1920's design, and IIRC like many of its peers from that era was not very mechanically reliable.

There are also some statements that are a bit difficult to follow. For example, what does this passage actually mean?:


> Historians treat the Soviet Union as a regular country. Viktor considers the Soviet Union a criminal conglomerate. Therefore, he uses the methods of criminology and intelligence rather than classical scientific research.



Which historians treat the USSR as a "regular country"? Ones that don't know anything about it? (And, anyway, what is a "regular country" in terms of late 1930's geopolitics?) And, really, what are the significant differences between good scientific method and good criminology/intelligence work? This reads like a bunch of pseudo-academic mumbo-jumbo to me.

or...



> The Soviets in 1920s helped train German Panzer corps and helped them to make tanks and prepare for the second world war.



IMHO this is an exaggeration. I believe that the activities at Kazan in Russia were mostly about tank prototype development and crew training, not collective training. And, anyway, the Germans ended this agreement before Germany had any armoured formations of any significant size. What the author misses is that in the 1920's, and right up until the Nazis took power in 33, the German military regarded  Russia as a natural ally against Poland. The Russians, having suffered a rather embarrassing thrashing at the hands of the Poles in the Russo-Polish War of 1920, were probably only too happy to help Germany create a credible military threat on Poland's Western frontier. I doubt it had much to do with Russian plans to conquer Europe.




> Superior soviet tank designs and greater troop mobilization capabilities and the large terrain which allowed factories for tanks, weapons and planes to remain beyond the reach of the Nazis meant that a Nazi loss was inevitable.



OK, some of this is quite true, but how does it really prove:



> All of Stalin's actions and what happened with the Soviets was the result of Stalin planning to sweep across all of Europe. Stalin was planning to let the Nazis fight Europe and weaken themselves and weaken those they attacked and then the Soviets would attack and defeat the Nazis and what remained.



If you read the excellent book _Defence of the Realm_, which tells the history of Britain's MI-5, it deals with this issue. The conclusion that MI-5 came to for the Russian's failure to react was not really poor deployment or bad intelligence work. In fact, MI-5 believed the Russian intelligence system was actually well aware of exactly what was going on (how could they miss it when they had operatives all over Europe?). 

Instead, they believed that the problem was the poisonous climate of fear surrounding Stalin: he didn't believe Hitler would attack him, so nobody at the top was willing to push the issue, even though they were accumulating very good warning indicators.

Cheers


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## Retired AF Guy (14 Aug 2010)

pbi said:
			
		

> If you read the excellent book _Defence of the Realm_, which tells the history of Britain's MI-5, it deals with this issue. The conclusion that MI-5 came to for the Russian's failure to react was not really poor deployment or bad intelligence work. In fact, MI-5 believed the Russian intelligence system was actually well aware of exactly what was going on (how could they miss it when they had operatives all over Europe?).
> 
> Instead, they believed that the problem was the poisonous climate of fear surrounding Stalin: he didn't believe Hitler would attack him, so nobody at the top was willing to push the issue, even though they were accumulating very good warning indicators.



In fact, Stalin locked himself away for eleven days and refused to do anything about the invasion. That was eleven days where the Russian military was floundering around with no direction from the top and no one was willing to face Stalin.


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## vonGarvin (14 Aug 2010)

Suvorov's books do have merit, however.  The example is the organisation of Soviet Forces in the former German Democractic Republic, and the Czechoslovakian Soviet Socialist Republic.  Taking the example of the Group of Soviet Forces in Germany, "we" identified (correctly) five armies there:
1st Guards Tank
2nd Guards Tank
3rd Shock
8th Guards
20th Guards.

The problem was that the number of divisions there, including those of the NVA (East German Army), equalled six armies across two fronts.  Suvorov put forth that the sixth army of the GSFG, obstensibly back in Byelorussia ("White Russia") was the 28th Army.  This would make the forces of the GDR as such:
1st West Front:
20th Guards Army
2nd Guards Tank Army (in reality, a combined arms army)
3rd Shock Army (in reality, a tank army)
2nd West Front:
1st Guards Tank Army
8th Guards Army
28th Army

Each Combined Arms Army (less 28th and 20th Guards) had identical organisations:
1 x Tank Division
4 x Motor Rifle Divisions

Each Tank Army also had identical organisations:
4 x Tank Divisions
1 x Airmobile Brigade.

Also, each Front had an Airmobile brigade.

Now, Suvorov's alleged organisation made perfect sense in that it reflected Soviet tactics up to Front level.
In the echeloned system that the Soviets used, each level had 3 "waves".  Thinking back, there was the initial objective, secondary (or subsequent) objective and then final objective.  The final objective for one "level" was the initial objective for the senior formation.  For example, take the example of a front ->Army ->Division.

A front would initially attack with its combined arms armies, which ironically had more tanks than a tank army.  This was due in part to the Tank Regiments in Motor Rifle Divisions having 41 tanks in each of its battalions, vice 31 in tank battalions of Tank divisions.  These combined arms' armies would have three echelons, with its final objective to be achieved by its integral tank division.  So, that would coincide with its higher front's Initial Objective.  Once it was achieved by either of the two combined armies, the Tank Army would be released to bypass and carry on the advance from the combined arms army that achieved the greater success.    Once the front achieved its line, the second echelon front (the Polish Front, in the case of the GDR), would then bypass and so on.  

Anyway, in the end, Suvorov may have known about the current state of affairs to some degree; however, I doubt his authenticity when talking of 1930s and 1940s USSR.


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## MarkOttawa (15 Aug 2010)

I've read Mosier's book; he really doesn't know much on lots that he's writing about.  For example, he is completely unaware the Germans were able swiftly to move forces from the eastern to other fronts--e.g. July 1943 
http://ww2db.com/battle_spec.php?battle_id=40



> ...
> As casualties mounted high for both sides [Kursk], Hitler made a surprising announcement to withdraw part of the German forces to reinforce Italy, a response to the successful western Allies' landing in Sicily...



It's important to remember also that when Hitler invaded the USSR both British and American intelligence gave the Soviets only about three months max before complete defeat, likely six weeks.  Just about the German appreciation so one can hardly say, as so many do, that Hitler's was an irrational decision.

Mark
Ottawa


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