Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

Discussions on alternate history, including events up to 20 years before today. Hosted by Terry Duncan.
historygeek2021
Member
Posts: 641
Joined: 17 Dec 2020, 07:23
Location: Australia

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#61

Post by historygeek2021 » 12 Jun 2022, 23:14

Huszar666 wrote:
12 Jun 2022, 19:39

That would be interesting to know, which ones those were.
Molotov Plant No. 172 at Perm produced thirty 76mm guns per day in April 1943.
Plant No. 235 at Votkinsk produced thirty 76mm guns per day in February 1943.
Kunzevo Plant No. 46 made thirty 76mm guns per day in December 1943.

On an annualized basis, that's 10,950 from each plant. And these weren't the only plants making 76 mm guns.
Since the total of 76mm field guns NEVER went above 16.000 and change/year during the whole war.
Your own website says that 22,994 76mm guns were made in 1942:

http://www.armchairgeneral.com/rkkaww2/ ... uction.htm

20k total or each? Makes no difference, since 122+152mm NEVER went above 4200 and change/year during the whole war.
It shows what they were capable of. They made what they needed.
armcharigeneral gives around 8.500, which is a much more believable number. Even IF we add mountain and regimental guns (6400 or so), we would STILL be around 15k, less than the half of the qouted number.
15,000 is still 5,000 more than they needed to equip all of their 1941 divisions (even those in internal military districts). Even armchair general shows they had the capacity to triple production at will (see the change from 1941 to 1942).

Probably more accurate than any "Westerner" source.
Armchairgeneral is a "westerner" source. I'll take the author of 15 books who has been published by Stackpole Military History Series (the publishers of AHF's very own Richard Anderson) over an unattributed geocities website that hasn't been updated since 2009.

History Learner
Member
Posts: 433
Joined: 19 Jan 2019, 10:39
Location: United States

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#62

Post by History Learner » 13 Jun 2022, 06:48

historygeek2021 wrote:
09 Jun 2022, 00:27
May 25, 1940 - While the British war cabinet quarrels over whether to seek Italian mediation, Stalin receives news that the BEF and French 1st Army are now completely cut off with little chance of escape. His gamble on the capitalist powers bleeding each other dry has failed. Germany has won a quick victory over France and Britain. Stalin has read Mein Kampf. He knows that Hitler's goal has always been to conquer Lebensraum in the USSR. Stalin knows that the USSR is next on Germany's chopping block, and soon.

He calls a meeting of the Politburo. "Germany is going to invade us," he tells them. "We must begin immediate preparations for total war. Our Red Army is the laughing stock of the world after what the Finns did to us. Hitler will think he can conquer us easily."

"When will the Germans invade?" Asks Molotov.

"Spring of next year," replies Stalin. "Hitler would love to strike this year, but he won't have time to redeploy his army before the autumn rasputitsa. In any event, we must bring the economy to a total war footing now so that the Red Army is ready whenever Hitler comes."

"But won't that that trigger a German invasion?" Asks Beria. "That's what happened in 1914."

Stalin glares at this veiled reference to the fate of the Czar. "Hitler is going to invade anyway. We will do our best to keep it secret. Life in Moscow will carry on as normal. Foreign diplomats will continue to have their movements strictly limited to areas of the city that are not affected by mobilization. Everywhere else will convert to a wartime footing."

"What about our trade agreement with the Nazis?" Asks Malenkov. "Should we terminate it now?"

"No, we'll keep it going until August or September. Then we will demand strict fulfillment of German obligations before we send them anymore raw materials. By then it will be too late. We will have the entire autumn and winter to get ready for war."

"Our army is a long way from war readiness," interjects Timoshenko. "It will take a tremendous effort to have it ready for war within a year."

"Then there is no time to waste!" bellows Stalin. "Begin total mobilization immediately!"

All across the Soviet Union, economic activity is converted to wartime production. The Third Five Year Plan is cancelled so that industry can focus exclusively on munitions production. Millions of peasants are called up for military service and begin training. Trucks and tractors are confiscated by the army to give its forces mobility. Strict rationing is imposed to make up for the decline in food production.

In October, Soviet deliveries of raw materials to Germany cease. Hitler is incensed, but Molotov insists that Germany must fulfill its outstanding obligations under the terms of the trade agreement. Hitler resolves to go to war as soon as the mud dries in May. Ernst Köstring, the German military attaché in Moscow, wires ominous reports of total mobilization. Hitler gets serious and orders all military production to focus on the upcoming war with the Soviet Union. He accepts Greek requests to mediate and forces Mussolini to accept a truce so that Germany can focus everything on the Soviet Union.

By May 1941, the Soviet Union has deployed 6 million men at the front. Aircraft are scattered and camouflaged so they cannot be taken out by the Luftwaffe on the ground. German reconnaissance planes have been shot down every time they crossed the border. Each Red Army division has a full complement of 14,000 men and a full supply of trucks and tractors to move artillery and ammunition. 3,000 fully operational T-34s and 1,000 KV-1s are deployed in mechanized corps behind the front. 20 armies man the front, double that in the OTL. Another 20 are deployed in depth - over 500 divisions.

When Germany invades, they run into a wall of artillery and anti-tank guns. The puny Panzer IIIs and IVs are no match for the KV-1s and T-34s. The four panzer groups are destroyed within 100 kilometers of the border. Germany's infantry armies go on the defensive but are buried under an avalanche of fire from 50,000 Soviet artillery pieces. The Red Army pours into Poland and Romania. The Wehrmacht cannot stop the Red tide. Berlin falls in August. The Red Army reaches the French border in September. The Nazis have been defeated. Europe is saved.

Edit: Typos
Total mobilization before Barbarossa would've been a disaster. Soviet border armies already had a motorization pool comparable to World War I armies, while everything such as munitions and even small arms were in short supply. The rapid expansion of the army and still needing to recover from the purges meant the rate of enlisted to officers had massively ballooned, meaning a total mobilization would utterly break down the chain of command at all levels. The end result of this isn't the Soviets overwhelming the Germans but instead said Germans destroying the Red Army in the first 400 km as they planned to do historically.

There are extremely valid reasons why the Soviets didn't do anything beyond a partial mobilization starting in April and none of them were because Stalin was caught by surprise.


Huszar666
Member
Posts: 255
Joined: 18 Dec 2021, 15:02
Location: Budakeszi

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#63

Post by Huszar666 » 13 Jun 2022, 09:01

Molotov Plant No. 172 at Perm produced thirty 76mm guns per day in April 1943.
Plant No. 235 at Votkinsk produced thirty 76mm guns per day in February 1943.
Kunzevo Plant No. 46 made thirty 76mm guns per day in December 1943.
Strangely, the sum total of 76mm field guns for that year was 13.924 pieces, not 33.000 or so.

Oh, and No. 172 did not produce a single 76mm field gun, what they built were 76mm infantry guns, namely 2.555 pieces in 1943
No. 235 was responsible for 4,5cm ATGs, ZIS-3 production started only in 1943, with a total of 1.655 pieces built that year.
I haven't even heard about No. 46.
The main (and basically ONLY) plant that built ZIS-3 was No. 92 in Gorkij.
Your own website says that 22,994 76mm guns were made in 1942:
No, it does NOT say, that 22.994 76mm field guns were built in 1942. It says, that 16.185 were built.
15,000 is still 5,000 more than they needed to equip all of their 1941 divisions (even those in internal military districts). Even armchair general shows they had the capacity to triple production at will (see the change from 1941 to 1942).
First, do you know the difference between a FIELD gun and an INFANTRY gun?
Secondly, you calculated a need for at least 10.000 field guns (exluding corps-, army- Stavka-level stuff, plus coastal defence, plus this and that), while there were only 8.688 pieces, so there was a hole of about 1.300 pieces as it was.
Since an inf.division needed 18 infantry guns (and those are NOT field guns!) plus tank, mot, mech, etc divisions, the 4708 pieces that were there were barely enough to cover the need.

Since the soviets already had a nice hole in their organisation, and you want to DOUBLE the army, guess what.

Art
Forum Staff
Posts: 7028
Joined: 04 Jun 2004, 20:49
Location: Moscow, Russia

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#64

Post by Art » 13 Jun 2022, 10:27

historygeek2021 wrote:
12 Jun 2022, 15:51
What is soldat.ru? Who publishes it?
The site and the man who maintains it are known to many having interest in WW2 Soviet Army. Anyway, you can find the text of the law in many other sources. For example, an official digest of Soviet laws from 1945:
http://docs.historyrussia.org/ru/nodes/ ... e/1/zoom/6
Sure the text of the law matters more than its description in secondary sources. I don't know if Glantz had some editing error which omitted the words "NCOs" or it was some other reason.
And these reservists somehow went immediately to the units at the front? Got a source on that?
Why necessarily at the front? Reservists went to units they were assigned to according to the mobilization plan. Mobilization meant a transition of the military to wartime organization and establishment. The difference between the peace-time strength and wartime establishment was covered by call up of the requisite number of reservists. Accordingly each units calculated how many men it needed for mobilization, these personnel requirements were distributed to recruiting districts, each district planned allocation of its resources of reservists. In the final run each men participating in mobilization received an order stipulating where he had to arrive after declaration of mobilization. Either he went directly to his unit or he went to an assembly point where reservists were mustered in groups under command of officers and then proceeded to their destination (on foot or by train, depending on the distance). Technically the procedure was the same in the border zone or somewhere in the middle of Siberia, there was no difference.
They either (1) go to their internal military districts to form new units, (2) join the field replacement battalions, or (3) are "received" by existing formations. I have seen references to the first 2, but not the 3rd until Art's post. I'm asking for sources and information on (3). I have a hard time seeing how the formations in the western USSR received reservists the third way.
Why there is a problem? New units could be formed by any military district, no matter border or internal. For example, a signal regiment of the Kiev Special Military Districts after mobilization started formed a number of signal battalions and companies for construction and operation of wire lines. I don't quite understand what is meant by field replacement battalions. There were replacement regiments at the field army level. Again, technically mobilization of these regiments wasn't different from mobilization of other units - they received their allocation of reservists to bring them to full authorized strength.

Art
Forum Staff
Posts: 7028
Joined: 04 Jun 2004, 20:49
Location: Moscow, Russia

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#65

Post by Art » 13 Jun 2022, 13:08

History Learner wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 06:48
Soviet border armies already had a motorization pool comparable to World War I armies, while everything such as munitions and even small arms were in short supply.
See the table below:
Type of weapons/Needed for mobilization/Available as of 22.06.1941
Rifles and carbines/7,073,000/7,703,000
Revolvers and pistols/1,691,000/1,289,000
Machine pistols/424,000/91,000
Light machine guns/195,000/170,000
Medium machine guns/79,000/76,000
Quad machine guns/16,000/7,000
Heavy machine guns/8,000/2,000

So availability of small arms (except anti-aircraft weapons) was generally satisfactory. Lacking machine pistols could be substituted with surplus rifles. That is not counting a large stock of captured and nonstandard weapons which were later used to arm militia and paramilitaries. In general small arms and artillery were the least problematic area of all. It might seem surprising but during the mobilization of 1939 uniforms and footwear happened to be the most lacking. The deficit was still felt in 1941.
The rapid expansion of the army and still needing to recover from the purges meant the rate of enlisted to officers had massively ballooned, meaning a total mobilization would utterly break down the chain of command at all levels.
The previous comment:
viewtopic.php?p=2414076#p2414076
There were about 580,000 army and navy officers by the start of 1941 - enough to mobilize a multimillion army.

historygeek2021
Member
Posts: 641
Joined: 17 Dec 2020, 07:23
Location: Australia

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#66

Post by historygeek2021 » 13 Jun 2022, 16:00

Huszar666 wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 09:01

Strangely, the sum total of 76mm field guns for that year was 13.924 pieces, not 33.000 or so.

Oh, and No. 172 did not produce a single 76mm field gun, what they built were 76mm infantry guns, namely 2.555 pieces in 1943
No. 235 was responsible for 4,5cm ATGs, ZIS-3 production started only in 1943, with a total of 1.655 pieces built that year.
I haven't even heard about No. 46.
The main (and basically ONLY) plant that built ZIS-3 was No. 92 in Gorkij.
Sources please.

you calculated a need for at least 10.000 field guns (exluding corps-, army- Stavka-level stuff, plus coastal defence, plus this and that), while there were only 8.688 pieces, so there was a hole of about 1.300 pieces as it was.
Since an inf.division needed 18 infantry guns (and those are NOT field guns!) plus tank, mot, mech, etc divisions, the 4708 pieces that were there were barely enough to cover the need.
I aggregated regimental and divisional guns for the sake of simplicity. We can analyze at each level, but we'll get to the same result as every scholar who has studied the Red Army in WW2: The Soviets had an abundance of artillery and could churn it out like butter. Please cite scholars who claim the Soviets had a shortage of artillery and inadequate facilities to rapidly expand production on an as needed basis.

historygeek2021
Member
Posts: 641
Joined: 17 Dec 2020, 07:23
Location: Australia

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#67

Post by historygeek2021 » 13 Jun 2022, 16:01

Art wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 13:08

See the table below:
Type of weapons/Needed for mobilization/Available as of 22.06.1941
Rifles and carbines/7,073,000/7,703,000
Revolvers and pistols/1,691,000/1,289,000
Machine pistols/424,000/91,000
Light machine guns/195,000/170,000
Medium machine guns/79,000/76,000
Quad machine guns/16,000/7,000
Heavy machine guns/8,000/2,000

Sources please.

historygeek2021
Member
Posts: 641
Joined: 17 Dec 2020, 07:23
Location: Australia

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#68

Post by historygeek2021 » 13 Jun 2022, 16:03

Art wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 10:27
historygeek2021 wrote:
12 Jun 2022, 15:51
What is soldat.ru? Who publishes it?
The site and the man who maintains it are known to many having interest in WW2 Soviet Army.
Does this man have a name? Is he cited in any reputable publication?
And these reservists somehow went immediately to the units at the front? Got a source on that?
Why necessarily at the front?
Because we're discussing the extent of losses to the Soviet Union's pre-war regular soldiers, i.e., those at the front.
Reservists went to units they were assigned to according to the mobilization plan. Mobilization meant a transition of the military to wartime organization and establishment. The difference between the peace-time strength and wartime establishment was covered by call up of the requisite number of reservists. Accordingly each units calculated how many men it needed for mobilization, these personnel requirements were distributed to recruiting districts, each district planned allocation of its resources of reservists. In the final run each men participating in mobilization received an order stipulating where he had to arrive after declaration of mobilization. Either he went directly to his unit or he went to an assembly point where reservists were mustered in groups under command of officers and then proceeded to their destination (on foot or by train, depending on the distance). Technically the procedure was the same in the border zone or somewhere in the middle of Siberia, there was no difference.

Why there is a problem? New units could be formed by any military district, no matter border or internal. For example, a signal regiment of the Kiev Special Military Districts after mobilization started formed a number of signal battalions and companies for construction and operation of wire lines. I don't quite understand what is meant by field replacement battalions. There were replacement regiments at the field army level. Again, technically mobilization of these regiments wasn't different from mobilization of other units - they received their allocation of reservists to bring them to full authorized strength.
If you have sources describing the men who were mobilized directly into pre-existing units, that would be great. How many were received by the border armies or the 6 Stavka reserve armies in the process of deploying to the west, and when?

Art
Forum Staff
Posts: 7028
Joined: 04 Jun 2004, 20:49
Location: Moscow, Russia

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#69

Post by Art » 14 Jun 2022, 18:05

historygeek2021 wrote:
13 Jun 2022, 16:01
Sources please.
"Artillery supply in the Great Patriotic War 1941-45", see the link
viewtopic.php?p=2363852#p2363852
Does this man have a name? Is he cited in any reputable publication?
That's a redundant discussion. I provided a link to the scanned pages of an official Soviet publication of the law on military service. That looks more than a sufficient authentication to me.
If you have sources describing the men who were mobilized directly into pre-existing units, that would be great.
For example, called in the Monchegorsk district on 24-25.06.41 and sent with the party No.4529 to the 7th Machine Gun Battalion near Murmansk:
- Pavel Anotonovich Vasilyev
- Yakov Pavlovich Vasyun'kov, b.1912
- Pavel Ivanovoch Vinogradov, b.1907
- Evgeniy Aleskandrovich Gerasimov, b.1912
- Mikhail Andreyevich Grigoriev
etc etc
From https://mig.org.ru/wp-content/uploads/2 ... 2_2019.pdf
How many were received by the border armies or the 6 Stavka reserve armies in the process of deploying to the west, and when?
I'm not sure that such numbers existed given a chaotic state of mobilization and reporting. The planned numbers were probably close to 3 million.

KDF33
Member
Posts: 1282
Joined: 17 Nov 2012, 02:16

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#70

Post by KDF33 » 05 Feb 2023, 05:31

Peter89 wrote:
09 Jun 2022, 09:01
And even though the Soviet general staff reached a competitive level with the Germans by 1942, the lower level commanders and the cadre got there only in 1943.
What is the evidence that 'lower level commanders' and 'cadre' attained parity in proficiency with their German counterparts by 1943?

KDF33
Member
Posts: 1282
Joined: 17 Nov 2012, 02:16

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#71

Post by KDF33 » 05 Feb 2023, 05:38

historygeek2021 wrote:
10 Jun 2022, 05:48
But they actually did it. In 1942. Despite losing basically their entire pre-war army.
Yes. And the combat proficiency of this reconstituted and expanded Red Army was comparatively low, as seen, for instance, in the casualty ratio between the Wehrmacht and the RKKA for most of the war.
historygeek2021 wrote:
10 Jun 2022, 05:48
The Soviet Union had been preparing for total war for at least a decade. They had 14 million trained reservists, including 600,000 officers and 885,000 NCOs (Glantz, Stumbling Colossus, p. 101).
The USSR had 14 million 'trained' reservists in the same way that Russia has 2 million of them today.

Princess Perfume
Member
Posts: 240
Joined: 27 Mar 2014, 11:11
Location: BBC Television Centre, London, England

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#72

Post by Princess Perfume » 07 Apr 2023, 11:20

to the tankie in this thread: socialism only survived because of the most ruthless use of repression and force. Once that was removed in 1990-91, belief in socialism collapsed.

gebhk
Member
Posts: 2623
Joined: 25 Feb 2013, 21:23

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#73

Post by gebhk » 07 Apr 2023, 22:26

Hi Princess Perfume

I'm not sure that belief in Socialism collapsed, per se. I am beating myself about the bonce now because I didn't note where I saw this, but in the last 5 years or so a survey was carried out in the former Soviet Bloc countries asking whether folk (a) thought movement away from one-party rule was a good thing and (b) whether a market economy was a good thing (I am simplifying mercilessly, but you get the drift). In countries like Poland and Czechoslovakia well over 80% thought these things were a good thing. Enthusiasm waned the further east one went so that in Ukraina, Byelarus and, most of all, Russia less than half thought they were a good thing. Broadly, I suspect, the longer a particular country lived with the joys of Soviet Socialism the more difficult it was to break with the habit, with the later additions to the Soviet Empire (like the Baltic countries) being less enthusiastic about socialism than Russians but more than Poles. A comparison with how well various countries have done economically after leaving the Soviet Bloc may also, I suspect, have a significant impact on their faith in Soviet Socialism.

I guess the point I am painfully getting to is that it is not necessarily that the 'toiling masses' lost their faith in Socialism in the former Soviet Union, as that their lords and masters (or at least enough of them) concluded that continuing the 'socialist experiment' was not longer in their personal best interest.

Or is that too cynical?

ljadw
Member
Posts: 15585
Joined: 13 Jul 2009, 18:50

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#74

Post by ljadw » 08 Apr 2023, 07:55

Princess Perfume wrote:
07 Apr 2023, 11:20
to the tankie in this thread: socialism only survived because of the most ruthless use of repression and force. Once that was removed in 1990-91, belief in socialism collapsed.
Repression and force were beginning to be removed very quickly in 1953 after the death of Stalin .And the population of the USSR had lost its belief in socialism already 20 years before 1991 .If they ever had any belief in socialism .
As in most dictatorships a minority supported the regime, a minority opposed the regime and the majority accepted the regime .But this majority was not willing to fight for socialism in 1990.
In last resort the survival of the regime did not depend on repression, but on economic realizations,on economic successes .

Peter89
Member
Posts: 2369
Joined: 28 Aug 2018, 06:52
Location: Europe

Re: Stalin orders total mobilization before Barbarossa

#75

Post by Peter89 » 08 Apr 2023, 11:28

I think we talk too much about modern-day politics on the forum these days, and I am also partially responsible for that. Maybe we should skip the topic altogether, or keep it to the minimal. It seems to destroy threads everywhere, and like porn, gains too much attention and entertains different part of the brain than history.
"Everything remained theory and hypothesis. On paper, in his plans, in his head, he juggled with Geschwaders and Divisions, while in reality there were really only makeshift squadrons at his disposal."

Post Reply

Return to “What if”