StaHit wrote:ALL Red Army was on the move to the Western border...
I think our impressions of this map differ somewhat. I see armies moving into second echelon defensive positions along the Dnepr which was in fact what they were doing.
20th Army was definitely not deploying to the Western Military District. 20th Army was in the process of deploying by rail to the Vitebsk-Orsha-Smolensk triangle where it was to build defenses along the Dnepr River. Most of the army was still in the Moscow Military District. It's deployment was never completed as the Germans arrived in the first week of July.
22nd Army was forming up along the Dnepr River. It was to form 20th Army's right flank from Vitebsk to Velikie Luki.
44th Rifle Corps was deploying to the Minsk area. It had barely started to form up when it was overrun.
19th Army was already positioned south of Kiev west of the southern Dnepr. 16th Army was right next to it. When the Germans invaded 19th Army was rushed north to support 20th Army, but was deployed piecemeal due to limited availability of rail cars. Needless to say, it did not fare well. Some of 16th Army (not even a full rifle corps and no heavy equipment) was moved to Smolensk itself, but barely had time to breath before Guderian's 29th Motorized Corps hit it in the second week of July. Any support that 19th and 16th Armies received most likely arrived from the Moscow area. The mechanized corps earmarked to support them were far beyond the reach of Soviet rail capacity and were forced to remain in the south. As a replacement, Moscow shipped down elements of the 5th and 7th Mechanized Corps (with very little support) to the Vitebsk area. These corps, never having seen a moment of combat, except for Luftwaffe harrassment, counterattacked and were torn to pieces in two days of fighting near Lepel. Reportedly, the corps KVs went into combat without AP ammunition and many of the T-34s had not been boresighted and so were unable to fire their main guns.
27th Army was concentrated about halfway between Riga and Luga coincidentally about the same distance from the front as 22nd, 21st, 16th and 19th Armies. All of them were arranged in clear defensive posture along major natural obstacles (like the Dnepr) which, also coincidentally, was exactly what pre-war Soviet defensive thinking called for.
Still stronger is the evidence provided by 13th Army deployed around Minsk which included a single understength rifle corps and two of the weakest mechanized corps in the Red Army OoB (20th MC was virtually bereft of vehicles of any type and marched into combat as an infantry formation). Given the importance of the Moscow axis I find it strange that the reserve army for Western Front was virtually being ignored.
Note, there was no full Soviet mobilization contrary to the German situation, but they already had 4 mil men IN PEACE TIME (while Germans in their turn were waging declared war with Britain) which were supposed to be deployed near the Western border in July.
I'm not sure where these numbers come from, but they are wrong. I already posted accurate figures for Red Army deployment in June of 1941. There were 57 divisions deployed in first echelon along the border, 52 understrength and relatively new divisions deployed in a distant second echelon (mostly along the Dnepr River and around Kiev) and 62 divisions in reserve. But note that reserve divisions were very much undertrength and short of equipment. Even at an accelerated pace most of them were not able to enter combat until August and even then were only able to do so with minimal support. Most of them were slashed to pieces.
The Red Army had succeeded in training around 11 million men in at least basic military practices. This was their saving grace.
I demonstrated that Soviets were not acting according to their defensive theory...
I don't see your arguments. Could you please post a quick link to them? IMO, the Red Army was clearly in defensive posture and was further preparing more defenses along the border and Dnepr River.
Oleg Grigoryev in page 12 wrote:MC is an exploitation formation; if anything it would have is ammo supply brought up later than the RC that were actually suppose to create breakthrough in which MC was suppose to go, and whose ammo expenditure would significantly exceed that of MC due to the very nature of the job they were suppose to do.
This person does not understand how a 1941 MC was supposed to function or the reality of their state of readiness. I have already posted detailed information showing the very real results of the poor state of the MCs.
Having said this, the state of the MCs, by itself, I only raise as evidence against an invasion in 1941. I also posit that they would have only been marginally better in 1942 unless a Soviet Industry could be quickly retooled to produce vast numbers of trucks and tractors. I also believe that the RKKA's performance in Poland and Finland could have left little doubt about the state of the MCs and the need for better logistics and organization.
And somehow traditionalists are very surprised that MCs were lacking ammo or not were brought to full strength and didn’t have enough fuel on June 22…
I find it difficult to find the words to express just how silly this statement is.
Soviets were acting exactly according to their offensive theory at the time. I think it was wrong theory and it seems later Soviets changed their mind during the course of war, but that doesn’t matter at all, when we’re talking about that what they were doing in summer 1941 – they were deploying according to their offensive theory.
This statement requires evidence which you have not provided despite several specific requests. My suggestion is to give an explanation of Soviet offensive theory and then to show how Soviet deployment in the Summer of 1941 matched it.
Kunikov said there were “few” airfields. I recommend counting all the Soviet airfields near the border in the map and comparing the number with German airfields
And I suggest you compare the number of aircraft in the VVS vs. the Luftwaffe and the comparative capabilities of those aircraft. I think you will find two very different beasts.
About the lack of ammo and fuel and transport – everything was on the way in the trains and was lost when Germans attacked first
I'm sorry, but this is simply not true. If it were true, that ammo and fuel would have shown up immediately on the battlefield once hostilities started. Even if they were loaded on trains, those supplies would still need to be moved from railheads to the troops and vehicles that needed them. Given the size of the forces and the distances involved, you are talking about a massive number of trucks which the Red Army simply did not have. The ultimate proof is the fate of Red Army mechanized and motorized forces. There is no other explanation for their demise.
I'm not sure if you are implying it or not, but the Luftwaffe was simply not responsible for the kind of destruction you are describing. No WWII air force ever accomplished anything even remotely similar to what you are describing.
Marshall of the SU, S.K Kurotkin said that "at the beggining of june,the soviet government(aka Stalin) agreed to sent 100000t of fuel from inside the country acording to the proposal of the general staff(aka Zhukov)"
(The rear of the Red Army during ww2,p 59)
The Red Army had over 20,000 tanks and hundreds of thousands of armoured cars, trucks and tractors. How much fuel do you suppose a force that large uses just in the run of its normal function? How much ammo?
So there was ammo.There was fuel.And the everything was lost in the first hours.How can this be defensive preparations?? Only if the Red Army was in the final stage of preparing an offensive ,you can explain the stupidity of such actions.Stupidity for a defensive war.Because for attack they were excellent.
I don't see how any of this proves anything.
Why did the shortages continue weeks after the start of the invasion? Why were the MCs leaving their tanks along the sides of the road even before they ever reached the battlefield? Why were Soviet formations going into battle weeks and months after the fact without ammo and weapons? Why did the Germans not report destroying or capturing these immense stockpiles that you claim existed?
And not to forget the Red Army was in trains when the germans attacked. Many units had to fight as soon as they disembarked,or worse were attacked while travelling towards the border. Heavy equipment such as tanks,guns were lost.It is impossible to disembark such equipment in the middle of the field.You need special sations for that.
That's a lot of trains.
gen A.S. Klemin says that "There were 47000 carriages carying military stuff on the railways at the beggining of july" (Vij,1985,Nr 3, p 67)
Let's analyze.We can assume that all this were loaded after june 22 and sent to the front.Wrong.After june 22 all fronts were asking empty carriages to carry the huge amounts of hardware and suplies already stored near the border.
Does this count the tens of thousands of trains you've already mentioned? What about the trains required to move 1 million men?
Paul, can you tell me now what was wrong with Soviet railroad capacity?
I didn't say there was anything wrong with it. What I implied was that it was too low to accomplish anywhere near the kind of mass deployment of men and materiel that you are describing. Even under drastic circumstances, Soviet rail struggled to move only the rifle elements of 19th Army. It took over two weeks to move one incomplete rifle corps, with little or no heavy equipment, from Kiev to Vitebsk.
Btw, do you know what happened on June 14-17? Soviets started mass forced deportations of population to Siberia...
I didn't know that. It is a topic I know little about. What do historians have to say about it?
Btw, do you know what happened on June 14 simultaneously with the mass deportations, ah? The whole second echelon - one million soldiers and equipment with material supplies for the Red Army STARTED TO MOVE by trains to the Western borders in order to join 3 mil in the first echelon, but you are talking something about the lack of railroad capabilities. There was nothing wrong with railroad capabilities; just Soviets were doing GIANT deployment and deportations simultaneously in both opposite directions. Did our great specialist of Eastern front David M.Glantz mention that?
He didn't mention it. Neither did Clark, Erickson, Seaton or any other author I have ever read.
The Red Army did not have 3 million men in first echelon, but that is beside the point. Moving 1 million men by train is not an easy thing to do and even more difficult to hide. How many rail cars do you suppose would be needed to make it happen? Added to the massive amount of rail cars that you claim were already loaded with ammo, fuel and trucks I am stunned into silence by Russian rail capacity. I am even more mystified by the disappearance of said rail force once hostilities commenced. The Germans didn't make any claims to having destroyed it and the Russians certainly didn't sabotage it. So, where did it go?
Oddly enough, all of those second echelon troops were still digging in along the Stalin Line in July when the Germans reached them. Is it your argument that they all turned around in the same rail cars and went back to the Dnepr? What happened to those 1 million men? Where did they unload?
I'm curious. Where do you suppose the men who fought in the Battle of Smolensk came from?
Cheers
Paul
p.s. BTW, are you aware that Glantz has done more to raise awareness of the true valour and suffering of Red Army troops than all other authors combined? In fact, I am constantly impressed by his tireless devotion to making Westerners more aware of what really happened on the Eastern Front. Still more, he has been every bit as tireless in his efforts to put a human face to the Russian soldier we so cruelly forgot about after 1945. The vast majority of his books are written from the Soviet point of view. I can count the number of western authors who have tried to reverse the effects of Cold War propaganda on one hand. Only two of them have gone out of their way in an effort to ensure we do not forget the accomplishments of the Red Army.
Rundstedt didn't think so and I think map confirms his words. 
