Combined Arms Armies in the Vistula-Oder Operation

[Der Alte Fritz]

8th Guards Army Unit List from 10th January 1945 (D-4)

https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=133371725

[Der Alte Fritz]

https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=133352658

Troop number for the 8 Guard Army on 15th January 1945 (D+1)
Rifle Corps:
Men: 52,347
Horses: 8,597
Motor Vehicles: 1,245
Tanks: 0

This report is quite revealing in that it shows the 9 Guards Rifle Divisions of the 8th Guards Army with an average of 55% of the establishment for men 51% for horses but 94% for vehicles and about 98% for all the artillery weapons. There is no sign of a Reduced Establishment and they are clearly set up on 04/500 of September 1942. So the Divisions have a complete set of artillery and other weapons but are low on men and the horses. With 676 horses to a Rifle Division Artillery Regt, there would only have been around 280 for other tasks.

[Der Alte Fritz]

comparing this Establishment Report of the 15th January with the Artillery Report of the 11th January reveals a number of discrepancies:

---------------------artillery ------------------ establishment
120 mm mortar-- 240 -------------------------315
45 mm AT gun ---- 0 --------------------------- 48
76 Divisional gun-- 460 ----------------------- 475
Vehicles ------------ 2671 -------------------- 3161

The 45 mm AT guns are explained by the writer using the column for any AT gun and so we could replace 3 units of 76 mm guns with 3 units of 45 mm ones. This is borne out by the fact that 57 mm AT guns appear in the Artillery report and not in the Establishment report.

Similarly the artillery report only lists 18 SU-85 but the establishment report has these plus 37 others plus 94 SU-76 for a total of 162 SP guns. Likewise 32 tanks are listed on the establishment report.

But other than these items, most other totals agree and the discrepancies can be assigned to different staffs counting different things for various reasons.

[Art]

comparing this Establishment Report of the 15th January with the Artillery Report of the 11th January reveals a number of discrepancies:

Here "artillery" stands for non-divisional units. Organic guns in mortars in divisions are shown with respective divisions. Whereas the doc from 11.1 lists both divisional and non-divisional units together.

Similarly the artillery report only lists 18 SU-85

16 85-mm anti-aircraft guns from the 3 Guards AA Division and 21 SU-85 in the 38 AT Brigade, if I read it correctly.

[Art]

These figures relate to the Front Line units only as there seems to be no listing for support units such as hospitals which were also under Army command.

Here is a complete listing, all-inclusive, but 3 months later (1 May 1945):
https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=133352779
What is remarkable here is that 3 rifle corps combined account for 45% of all personnel, but at the same time for 90% of all horses and only 22% of all automobiles. A very striking demonstration that Soviet infantry was a Cinderella arm as far as motor transport is concerned.

[Der Alte Fritz]

For ease of comparison, I have put both tables onto a spreadsheet and integrated them together

The two tables are pretty much in agreement but there are some minor additional items in each one.

I have not bothered to put the complete Army level Artillery table as it is a simple copying of the original and the sub total for the Army Artillery and Total Artillery are given in the deeper red colour.

The main purpose of the table was to combine the vehicle numbers ie. Overall vehicles compared to "artillery vehicles" to give a wider picture of where the vehicles were used in the Army as a whole. As Art points out, the Artillery got 69% of the available vehicles (3161 out of 4583) and of the stock of 1,245 with the Guards Rifle Divisions 461 were artillery vehicles (37%). We know from the Shtat description that the balance were medical (10%), signals, transport (46%) and chemical companies.

A large questions for me, was to see if the increased number of vehicles with the Red Army as a whole by 1945 had started to trickle through to the Infantry units, especially given the new 05/40 shtat that was issued in December and appears in the files of the 8th Guards Army. This more than doubled the number of vehicles with a Rifle Division. But as the table above shows this was not the case, even with a Guards Army on the key axis of advance.

But this is not surprising given the overall net number of vehicles in the Soviet economy over the wartime period:

1941 stock..................................... 1,100,000 motor vehicles
1941-1945 losses.............................. <351,800>
domestic production............................150,400
imports from abroad............................312,600
captured enemy vehicles........................60,620
1945 stock .....................................1,271,820
net/loss gain.....................................171,820 (+15%)

these are Soviet figures taken from Russian Archive Volume 25 "Summary of the Rear during the War" and you can substitute your own (Alexander Werth quotes a starting figure of 800,000 vehicles in 1941 but this may have been the 'runners') but the results are of the same order of magnitude.
That the Red Army vehicle stock went from 200,000 in 1941 to 660,000 by May 1945 with only a net increase of 171,800 meant that the Soviet economy had to give up 288,200 vehicles or 32% of the entire civilian stock. This understates the sacrifice of the Soviet civilians since losses were mainly in 1941 (220,000) and imports from abroad and captured enemy vehicles are weighted towards the end of the period and so for 1942-4 the civilian economy had to bear an even heavier burden which was gradually alleviated as the imports increased.

[Der Alte Fritz]

Here is a complete listing, all-inclusive, but 3 months later (1 May 1945):
https://pamyat-naroda.ru/documents/view/?id=133352779

Art
please could you give me the row titles below the sub-title as I am struggling with the handwritten Russian other than the blindingly obvious!

[Art]

Uhm , sorry.
4 Guards Rifle Corps
28 Guards Rifle Corps
29 Guards Rifle Corps
Total in rifle units
Penal units
Tank and mechanized units
Artillery
Rocket artillery
Anti-aircraft units
Flame units
Total in combat units
Total in support units