Soviet Military Deception

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archiveruk
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Soviet Military Deception

#1

Post by archiveruk » 24 Sep 2013, 21:59

[Split from "Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun"]

A good book in English is Soviet Military Deception in the Second World War (Soviet (Russian) Military Theory and Practice) by David M Glantz. It describes how the Soviets were able to deceive the FHO before important offensives. Glantz has included many maps showing Soviet positions as seen by the FHO and actual positions from his researches from Russian language sources. An excellent book.

German Military Intelligence 1939-45 published by University Publications of America in 1984 is also invaluable on the subject of the work of the intelligence services . It is a reprint of a US Army report and if you can find a cheap copy, well worth adding to your library.

Lee

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#2

Post by paspartoo » 25 Sep 2013, 08:21

I’m very skeptical of anything written by Glantz. Has he done the same for the Soviet side or would that show that the Great Soviet intelligence apparatus had completely miscalculated German strengths, positions, plans etc?
Some people only see what they want to see…
A simple economist with an unhealthy interest in military and intelligence history.....
http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.com/


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John Hilly
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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#3

Post by John Hilly » 25 Sep 2013, 16:55

Sometimes Glanz makes historian's worst mistake; goes with sources forgetting source-criticism.
Comparisions with German sources could still improve his studies.

Here's the link to his Maskirova study anyhow:
http://www.google.fi/url?sa=t&rct=j&q=& ... 7864,d.bGE

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J-P :milwink:
"Die Blechtrommel trommelt noch!"

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#4

Post by Michate » 26 Sep 2013, 16:16

I’m very skeptical of anything written by Glantz. Has he done the same for the Soviet side or would that show that the Great Soviet intelligence apparatus had completely miscalculated German strengths, positions, plans etc?
Some time ago I stumbled over some assessment of Soviet intelligence capabilities by the Germans from roughly the time of the Kursk battle (maybe in a Korps or army level Ic report).
It pointed out that the Soviets had correctly identified more or less all German units in the respective sector. Unfortunately I do no longer remember the detail, nor where I read it.
I guess the Soviets had an easier time than the Germans to identifiy enemy units. Most German divisions had hundreds of Soviet Hiwis, and I imagine some of them could always tell someone contact person in the population of their unit and its whereabouts. The contact peron then could tell the partisans, or Soviet army spies, and so on.
this would allow the Soviets beter tracking of German units and the locations of the armored units were a good indicator of German intentions, or at least their anticipated point of effort.
Other means, like air recon, could then be focused to further refine the picture thus gained. Hinze in his history of the 19th Pz.Div. mentions that Soviet aircrafts covered their nightly march to the asembly areas for Zitadelle with flares.

As to the German intelligence capacity, one might consider it as shades of grey (no pun intended). The Germans did not have any good source to tell them of Soviet strategic-operational intentions, so they were left with guesswork in this regard, soleley from the Soviet order of battle.

Using a variety of means, like artillery intelligence and radio traffic monitoring they could identify, with some regularity, the sectors where the Soviets would attack and also roughly the attack dates, or at least the dates when the Soviets would be ready.

They had substantial problems in fully identifying the locations of Soviet units, routinely missing part of the armies, corps or divisions in the attack sectors, while assuming them in the wrong places or just labelling them with "location unknown" (it seems that when the location of a unit was unknown, it was assumed to have remained in the sector of its last appearance until indicators of its transfer to another place where found). It is this weakness, which Glantz documents with his comparisons of German intelligence maps with the Soviet battle orders. The Germans could thus only, again, guess which of the many impending attacks (the Soviets always followed a "broad front" strategy, attacking in several sectors, either in parrallel or in short timely succession) was the main threat.

Walter S. Dunn, who has compared the German (FHO) database of Soviet units with Soviet data, has concluded that the Germans in general had good, at times even excellent, knowledge of the Soviet order of battle at large, i.e. the total number of units of the various types in the Red Army.

As to Glantz, his earlier works clearly suffer from lack of knowledge/consideration of German sources (though still very useful on the Soviet side), but he has become much better in this regard. Still, I would advise to read his boks in conjunction with a good source on the German source.

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#5

Post by paspartoo » 26 Sep 2013, 16:34

I guess the answer depends on what is being discussed. Would the Soviets have good data on German frontline units? Difficult to see why they wouldn’t.
Would they have good data on units in the rear areas?

Did they have a good grasp of German overall strength and losses? Using Krivosheev’s ‘Soviet casualties’ book and assuming his data are indicative of what the Soviet leadership saw they completely miscalculated German strength in every category and losses of men and equipment by a very wide margin.

As for strategic intentions:
1941: SU doesn not expect a total war or the main attack to come at Bellorussia.
1942: SU does not expect the main attack to come in the South.
1943: SU expects Kursk attack to focus on the northern part of the salient.

Where is the crafty Soviet intelligence apparatus? Glantz can talk about maskirovka all he likes but I don’t see it…
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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#6

Post by Panzermahn » 28 Oct 2013, 06:20

Hello folks,

I had Robert Stephan's book Stalin's Secret War: Soviet Counterintelligence against the Nazis 1941-45 and the author did delved into subject of Gehlen and the FHO. Stephan mentioned that the performance of FHO as compared with FHW (Fremde Heeres West) was slightly better though if compared with the performance of the Soviet intelligence the FHO lost substantially.

The author also correctly stated that the Germans lost the intelligence war in the Eastern Front though the performance of German counterintelligence at the tactical level were much better than at operational and strategic level.

Gehlen is an energetic officer but probably overrated in intelligence capabilities. It is not uncommon for intelligence analysts to typically mask their intelligence assessment to be ambiguous at most so that in the even of their predictions went wrong, they could have the possibly of stating that they had already mentioned it before.

One of the most important point that Stephan made in his book was that the German Intelligence at the Eastern Front (FHO) did not believed that the Soviets were capable of truly high level strategic deception and this was one of the primary reasons of the German intelligence lost the front behind the front. Gehlen believed that the Soviets are capable of at most operational-level deception but certainly not in the scale of strategic-level deception and this is one of the reasons for his downfall. The biggest example would be Zhukov's Mars offensive (Rzhev meat grinder 1942) which was intended to be a strategic deception for the Red Army to enveloped the southern front (Stalingrad). Initially, Gehlen did suspect that the Soviets were planning a major offensive and he believed it was aimed at the Heeresgruppe Mitte at Rzhev though he did not discount the possibility of Stalingrad/Southern front as well because it just plain to see that while the German 6th Army was being grind down at there, the flanks of 6th Army was held mostly by the Axis coalitions (Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovakia) and it doesn't take a genius to see that if there are any major Soviet offensive against the flanks of 6th Army, it would certainly crumble.

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#7

Post by Panzermahn » 28 Oct 2013, 06:27

paspartoo wrote:I’m very skeptical of anything written by Glantz. Has he done the same for the Soviet side or would that show that the Great Soviet intelligence apparatus had completely miscalculated German strengths, positions, plans etc?
Some people only see what they want to see…
I agreed with you on this point just that I would put it that it was Glantz himself who theorized that the historiography of the Eastern front in WW2 over-relied on German primary & secondary sources so he took it upon to balance his research with over-reliance on Soviet primary sources as his foundation on his studies on the Eastern front.

I concurred with Michate's recommendations that when reading Glantz's works on eastern front, it is good to have additional works on Eastern Front primarily with German source (probably Rolf Hinze's/Heinz Magenheimer/Rolf-Dieter Mueller works, the multi-volume Germany and the Second World War Oxford Translations)

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#8

Post by paspartoo » 28 Oct 2013, 18:07

Panzermahn wrote:Hello folks,

I had Robert Stephan's book Stalin's Secret War: Soviet Counterintelligence against the Nazis 1941-45 and the author did delved into subject of Gehlen and the FHO. Stephan mentioned that the performance of FHO as compared with FHW (Fremde Heeres West) was slightly better though if compared with the performance of the Soviet intelligence the FHO lost substantially.

The author also correctly stated that the Germans lost the intelligence war in the Eastern Front though the performance of German counterintelligence at the tactical level were much better than at operational and strategic level.

Gehlen is an energetic officer but probably overrated in intelligence capabilities. It is not uncommon for intelligence analysts to typically mask their intelligence assessment to be ambiguous at most so that in the even of their predictions went wrong, they could have the possibly of stating that they had already mentioned it before.

One of the most important point that Stephan made in his book was that the German Intelligence at the Eastern Front (FHO) did not believed that the Soviets were capable of truly high level strategic deception and this was one of the primary reasons of the German intelligence lost the front behind the front. Gehlen believed that the Soviets are capable of at most operational-level deception but certainly not in the scale of strategic-level deception and this is one of the reasons for his downfall. The biggest example would be Zhukov's Mars offensive (Rzhev meat grinder 1942) which was intended to be a strategic deception for the Red Army to enveloped the southern front (Stalingrad). Initially, Gehlen did suspect that the Soviets were planning a major offensive and he believed it was aimed at the Heeresgruppe Mitte at Rzhev though he did not discount the possibility of Stalingrad/Southern front as well because it just plain to see that while the German 6th Army was being grind down at there, the flanks of 6th Army was held mostly by the Axis coalitions (Italians, Romanians, Hungarians, Slovakia) and it doesn't take a genius to see that if there are any major Soviet offensive against the flanks of 6th Army, it would certainly crumble.
You know I’ve been badmouthing Glantz but this author seems to be even worse. You’re telling me he wrote that operation Mars was a deception?
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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#9

Post by John Hilly » 28 Oct 2013, 18:34

paspartoo wrote:You know I’ve been badmouthing Glantz but this author seems to be even worse. You’re telling me he wrote that operation Mars was a deception?
That's what the Soviets have been claiming for. Their story includes also a double-agent, a NKVD liutenant reporting to the FHO of the attack.
Believe it or not...

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#10

Post by paspartoo » 28 Oct 2013, 18:40

John Hilly wrote:
paspartoo wrote:You know I’ve been badmouthing Glantz but this author seems to be even worse. You’re telling me he wrote that operation Mars was a deception?
That's what the Soviets have been claiming for. Their story includes also a double-agent, a NKVD liutenant reporting to the FHO of the attack.
Believe it or not...

With best,
J-P :milwink:
Well the part about the double agent could be true as it turns up in the reports of Gehlen:

http://chris-intel-corner.blogspot.gr/2 ... oviet.html

However was it a deception? This is what Glantz has to say:

Within the galaxy of operations that the Stavka launched in late 1942, those few who have mentioned it have dismissed Operation Mars as a skillful diversionary operation. The official line, as argued by Zhukov and most lower level Soviet commanders, is that Operation Mars was launched in late November or early December to prevent German reserves in the center from reinforcing German forces in the southern Soviet Union. Therefore, they argue, Operation Mars contributed to Soviet success in the Stalingrad victory and, thus, was justified. These arguments are at best disingenuous and at worst blatant lies. In terms of its timing, scale, scope, expectations, and consequences, the Stavka intended Operation Mars to be as significant, if not more so, than Operation Uranus.’

‘Given these facts, in the unlikely event Zhukov was correct and Mars was really a diversion, there has never been one so ambitious, so large, so clumsily executed, or so costly.’
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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#11

Post by Michate » 06 Nov 2013, 16:41

As I have said elsewhere, if Mars was a deception, than pobably the most realistic one ever conducted. If it was a diversion, it was perhaps the largest ever conducted.
IMHO the term diversion becomes meaningless, when the efforts spent (and consumed) for the deception approach in size those spent for the "real thing".

IMHO the whole debate over "what was the real thing - Mars/Uranus" misses the point. I'd argue that Soviet operational strategy was, in most simplistic terms, a "broad front" approach, meaning the Soviets always staged attacks/operations at several different sectors of the front. If one of those proved much more successful than the others, follow-on operations would be staged in quick succession in its wake to exploit the opportunities provided by its success.

Glantz has written an interesting article "Prelude to Kursk", where he describes how Soviet operational planning developed in the winter 1942/43, being repeatedly adapted to the successes achieved at the southern parts of the Eastern front.

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#12

Post by steverodgers801 » 07 Nov 2013, 05:22

Glantz wrote a book that operation Mars was not a deception as claimed, but Zhukov's biggest failure of the war. The amount of troops committed was at least equal to the Stalingrad operation and was intended to break open the east front as happened in 1944.

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#13

Post by Michate » 07 Nov 2013, 13:38

This fits into my mental picture - related to what I wrote in my last message - that Soviet operational axes followed along lines predetermined by the channeling nature of terrain.

Several authors have shown continuities in this:

Glantz in one of his "Forgotten Battles" volumes (I have to rely on second hand knowledge for this, not having seen the book itself) makes the point that already in winter 43/44 the Soviets had operational plans for a pincer operation to destroy army group Centre (which could not be realized because the attacks against Witebsk and Orsha failed, while those north of the Pripyat were much more successful);

K.-H. Frieser in vol. 8 of the DRZW series claims that the Soviet attacks against Warsaw, and further into Northwestern direction, in July/August 1944 were similar in operational conception to those envisaged in the Soviet 1940/41 contigency plans for an attack against Germany.

K. Nevenkin in his "Take Budapest" claims that Soviet operations against Hungary in autumn 1944 were also similar in conception to those in the contigency plans, as played out by Zhukov in the well-known, but still somewhat mysterious January 1941 Soviet war games.

One might add among the Germans as well, for much of 1943/44 there was a continuity in their operational threat assessment on the Eastern front - namely Soviet intentions of "sickle cuts" to either the Black Sea or the Baltic.

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#14

Post by Art » 08 Nov 2013, 23:09

paspartoo wrote: The official line, as argued by Zhukov and most lower level Soviet commanders, is that Operation Mars was launched in late November or early December to prevent German reserves in the center from reinforcing German forces in the southern Soviet Union. Therefore, they argue, Operation Mars contributed to Soviet success in the Stalingrad victory and, thus, was justified.
;
I believe, Zhukov himself had quite a different opinion:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5&t=193657
Neither did he use such word as "deception" or like.

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Re: Performance of Fremde Heere Ost during Barbarossa/Taifun

#15

Post by paspartoo » 09 Nov 2013, 18:27

Art wrote:
paspartoo wrote: The official line, as argued by Zhukov and most lower level Soviet commanders, is that Operation Mars was launched in late November or early December to prevent German reserves in the center from reinforcing German forces in the southern Soviet Union. Therefore, they argue, Operation Mars contributed to Soviet success in the Stalingrad victory and, thus, was justified.
;
I believe, Zhukov himself had quite a different opinion:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 5&t=193657
Neither did he use such word as "deception" or like.

Are you sure that Soviet histories have not attributed other statements to Zhukov? It seems difficult to accept that Glantz would make such a mistake considering his knowledge of Soviet sources (German sources are another matter...)
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