Did Hitler & The 3rd Reich Save Western Europe?

[Stuart]

I see you're back after your little friends on the climate anomaly told you what to say.

Stalin once ordered one of his plane designers to create a new plane in three months. When the designer objected that the Americans spend two years on that, Stalin merely asked "are you an American"?

Bullshit. Pezook comprehensievly destroys this argument so I won't repeat his comments (except to indicate that he understates the problems in question. Even your comment was true (which it is not) it's completely irrelevent to the point at issue.

The decisions are the ones that seem to take a lot of time, and Stalin isn't widely known to have wasted years on that. It certainly didn't take "many years" for the Soviet army to reorganize enough to kick the German asses from Moscow.

Yes, it did. It took two years. The Army that fought in 1942 was fundamentally the same as the one in 1941 with some of the dead wood cleared out. It was 1943 before the reorganization was completed.

Now, Suvorov never stated that the reorganization was to be complete. He stated that the first attack wave was to be complete - the rest were to be organized and mobilized under the cover of its attack. Judging by this page, you don't need 100% equipped units in order to attack, either.

Meaningless nonsense. The situation with the forward echelon in 1941 was that it was incapable of any kind of strategic offensive, The units simply were not structured that way. And, by the way, attacking while not 100 percent prepared is an old-established military maneuver called "losing"

You completely missed the point. I wasn't talking about the bunkers. I was talking about defense in depth. Minefields. Bridges and infrastructure set to blow. Mobile units harassing your forces. This is what Meretskov saw in Finland. This is what the Red Army saw in Poland. This was Stalin's Line. In both the Stalin Line and the Mannerheim Line the bunkers were largely behind that area (in Poland, I'm not sure there were bunkers at all). But bunkers were built point blank to the border in August 1940. And later. The greatest efforts were concentrated in the Baltic District (a secondary direction). The bunkers didn't cover the important bridges. And a few days before the German attack, the Soviets started cutting down their own barbed wire. Defense?

So, you finally admit that the Soviet Army in 1941 was shifting between two defensive concepts. Well done, you've just destroyed your entire case. Yet again. Look, you are trying to argue with military and historian professionals here. At least try and get some basic understanding of the subject matter before making an even bigger fool of yourself.

His opponents say exactly the same - first chapters in 1985. The book was written well before the more speculative ones. Yes, he has a non-academical style there, but that's how he writes. His supporters are writing academically. Oh, and I wasn't using Wikipedia for the interviews - I had a book in front of me.

Then why did you quote Wikipedia as a source? As to Rezun's writing style, he is proposing a major historical thesis that is a radical revision of the existing narrative. To do this he is required to write in an academic style. That means sources and references and research, all of which being areas in which he is sadly deficient. His "style" is designed to cover the fact that he's talking bullshit and he knows it. He's simply interested in tricking the credulous into buying his books. As to supporters, he doesn't have any academic ones.

Are you talking about the Aquarium? Well, first of all, it cannot be used as a source for details (this is a semi autobiographical book which distorts them deliberately). Second, I read it and I don't see why his behavior there must be considered foolish. Is it idiocy - hesitating to harm a friend?

Oh, I see, so you think that Rezun's books can be used as unimpeachable sources when it suits you and dismissed when they do not. One way or the other laddie. If you write off Aquarium, then you do the same for all his other purportedly "factual" books. If you admit that one of his books contain deliberate distortions to serve his own personal interests then all of his books are rpesumed to do the same unless proven otherwise. So which is it? Do his books contain deliberate distortions to serve his interests or dont they. Either way, you have just conceded the argument

The order stated to move units closer to the border (along with all the fuel and ammo). And to leave the units already near the border there. You said that forces were withdrawn - what forces? Yes, Suvorov does mention such forces. Most of the border guard moved deeper into the country, leaving the border to the Red Army.

Factually incorrect; the NKVD border defense forces were being stregthened and thickened - an overtly defensive measure. or are you trying to suggest that the Soviet strategic plan was to send the police and arrest the German Army?

This included special bunker equipment. Why remove it if it's of no use anywhere else?

How do you know its of no use elsewhere. There is very little military equipment that is absolutely specific to time and place.

I don't know about the West, but the Soviet field manual at the time stated the parachute forces are used to disorganize the communications and rear, and aid the advancing forces in encircling the enemy. Certainly, there was no attempt to use them as you said when Hitler attacked - they were merely converted into infantry.

Which is what happened to most paratroop units; they ended up being used as elite infantry. However, that's irrelevent. The fact that the Soviet Army had paratroop units only proves they were trying to create a modern army. Nothing more and nothing less. You might also note that the Soviet operational rationale for paratroopers includes supporting partisan forces formed from encircled units that had gone partisan to avoid surrender - and they were in fact used that way.

For use of a 50 meter long ship which can't even turn around in the narrower streams? Looks as appropriate there as a heavy tank in guerrilla forest warfare.

Acting as a firebase for other units perhaps. Not everything has to go everywhere you know. In Vietnam, we used destroyer escorts and LSTs the same way.

I looked in Beevor's book (the Russian translation). He makes no mention of either of the June 22nd offensive directives. The guy says that even 12 hours after the attack, Stalin didn't order action in return - while the first of those directives (limited offense) has the time of 7:15 am. Both he and Erickson seem to admire a bloodthirsty moron who insisted on converting tractors and trucks into tanks by putting armor and machine guns on them (neither vehicle could move after that) and building 50,000 tanks over the course of 1928 (the very beginning of the industrialization). Some sources you have...

Which one of Beevor's books? Anyway, at least you are reading reputable histories now. The rest of your tirade here is uttterly irrelevent.

Once again, you missed the point completely. You said that historians simply don't bother with Suvorov. Well, here is the proof - they do. They publish books and articles against him, too (Suvorov absolutely loves finding mistakes and outright lies in those books). But it never leads anywhere.

No, you have missed the point here. Third hand accounts of television programs prove nothing. By the way, Rezun's have no serious academic support.

Or they would have put a better offense. The 28th rifle corps, for example, in June 21st just finished a tactical exercise of an offensive operation and had another planned for the next week.

So what?

Why? Stalin wanted to attack - without being afraid that Hitler will. The forces were deployed for attack - pure and simple.

As we have already shown and you have repeatedly admitted, that cannot be supported. You have already conceded this.

First of all, even what was put in writing, doesn't always survive - in 1991, over the course of just two days, 12 tons of 1941 papers were destroyed, and in 1941, when the Germans were near Moscow, the burning of documents caused panic among the general population.

So you admit that your claims about lack of documentation are specious.

Second, Mikoyan, Marshal Ustinov, Alexander Yakovlev - all state that the narrow circle conferences in Stalin's time had no stenographers present - nothing was put on paper (don't forget, many of the senior government members back then had a long experience of underground conspiracy). There is no document saying "Comrade Yezhov has become too influential and is dangerous, he must be removed" - there is simply evidence that his people are slowly replaced by Beria's men, until one day Yezhov disappears.

As already pointed out, the removal of Yezhov is thoroughly documented.

Same with what Suvorov says - there are documents on the lower levels (historians still argue about whether the combat plans even reached district and army level), which merely say - move division here, produce such and such tech, put your forces through such and such drills, organize border defense until the main forces arrive... And there is naturally no order to attack until the day of attack.

You obviously have no idea what is involved in launching a strategic level attack. The scenario above could only be conceived by somebody without any realistic knowledge of such considerations.

During the war in Japan, those tanks were around five years old - not much for a tank. They were in the second line, behind the T-34 - so they didn't even use the full potential of their speed on tracks. Yet still, their non-combat losses on rough terrain seem rather high. Definitely not their terrain, even more so for using their full speed. Building over seven thousands of them for use on Russian territory at the very least seems irrational.

Once again your basic ignorance of the situation prevailing at the time is showing. Five years is not much for a tank today. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, five years was a very long time. It is, for example, the elapsed time between a Panzer II and a Panzer V. Tanks are also somewhat unreliable beasts and moving them around always leaves a lot of non-combat losses that require an engineer crew to fix. What "seems" to you doesn't seem unusual to anybody who has any actual knowledge of military operations.

[Elfdart]

Yak 1 (sorry, it was 8 months, according to the designer himself, but he finished even sooner, despite a month long mission in Germany). Good enough to make 8,700 of them.

This is complete and utter bullshit. The formal specifications for that fighter were released on 29 July 1939, it was order into production in 19 February 1940 and then underwent nearly 20 000 design changes on the production line until it finaly became a worthwhile fighter in 1942. Its performance in 1941 was pretty poor because of the myriad technical issues plaguing it. In fact, it was such a crappy plane that parts were often non-interchangeable between aircraft because of loose tolerances during manufacturing, which massively complicated logistics. It was, so to speak, a production-run prototype, only pressed into manufacture because of time concerns.

Speaking of Soviet fighters, why were they so under gunned? One 20mm and a pair of .50 cal guns seems rather puny compared with German and British planes with two or more 20 mm (and some 30mm), or American fighters with a minimum of 4 .50 cals (double that for Thunderbolts).

[PeZook]

Speaking of Soviet fighters, why were they so under gunned? One 20mm and a pair of .50 cal guns seems rather puny compared with German and British planes with two or more 20 mm (and some 30mm), or American fighters with a minimum of 4 .50 cals (double that for Thunderbolts).

It seriously depended on the fighter: there were many types with wildly varying armaments in service with the VVS (though most of the variation was in short experimental production lines, most frontline fighters had a similar set)

I'm not sure you could call the Yak-1 undergunned ; compared with the BF-109's (its closest counterpart) 4x 7.92 machine guns, it's actually a decent heavyweight. And, of course, the Soviets operated fighters with pairs of 20mm guns too, like the La-7. Some Yak-9s were upgunned with up to a 37mm gun firing through the propeller shaft and a pair of 20mm, though this configuration was rather unstable due to recoil. You also have to take into account things like rate of fire, expected accuracy, etc.

And consider the fact that even though most production Yak-9s had the same armament as the Yak-1, they could outfight pretty much every German fighter, to the point that many German pilots preferred to disengage than fight the Yak-9. This was a combination of factors , from its performance all the way to sheer numbers Germans could expect to meet.

It's not really a good comparison to pit the Yak-9 against the P-47, since one was a pure fighter, the other was a heavyweight fighter-bomber with no real equivalent on the Soviet side.

[Ilya Muromets]

Speaking of Soviet fighters, why were they so under gunned? One 20mm and a pair of .50 cal guns seems rather puny compared with German and British planes with two or more 20 mm (and some 30mm), or American fighters with a minimum of 4 .50 cals (double that for Thunderbolts).

The later Lavochkin fighter craft such as the La-5 and La-7 did pack a pair of cannon. The La-9 design had 4 23 mm cannons, but those came too late and only went to production in 1946. So, yeah, for the most part the Soviet planes didn't have that much firepower compared to other contemporaries, at least in the early years.

Then again, what was the priority for fighter production in the Soviet Union? I vaguely recall something I read that Soviet aircraft development was undercut in favor of upping production for ground army equipment. Since it's a vague memory, though, I don't know if that's accurate or not.

[Stuart]

Speaking of Soviet fighters, why were they so under gunned? One 20mm and a pair of .50 cal guns seems rather puny compared with German and British planes with two or more 20 mm (and some 30mm), or American fighters with a minimum of 4 .50 cals (double that for Thunderbolts).

Russian doctrine was to concentrate the guns in the nose to get maximum firepower out of the weapons available. By leaving the wings weapons-free they also improved the agility of their aircraft as well as simplifying production. This doctrine was so deeply ingrained in the Russians that they usually stripped the wing guns out of their P-39s. There was another reason for their dislike of wing guns; most air forces arrange for the fire from wing guns to concentrate (converge) at a specific distance in front of the aircraft. Above or below that distance, the pattern of fire from said wing guns was dispersed and even with the best will in the world, most of the bullets would miss (the early Spitfire with eight machine guns was notorious for this. The guns were not only in the wings but dispersed out along the wings. This made concentrating fire very difficult). In contrast, grouping the guns in the nose provided a heavy concentration of fire almost regardless of distance. So, it can be argued that the apparently light weight of fire is misleading in that the actual concentration of fire is proportionally greater than it appears to be. It should be noted that the Me-109F followed this example; its armament was a 20mm cannon fired through the engine hub and two 7.92 machine guns. This was much too light to deal with a B-17 of course, hence the adoption of guns in underwing gondolas.

A final factor was the guns themselves. The Russian aircraft guns were very good indeed; they all had high rates of fire and effective projectiles. This also tended to make the Russian fighters more effective than the paper description of their armament would suggest.

[Omeganian]

It certainly didn't take "many years" for the Soviet army to reorganize enough to kick the German asses from Moscow.

It took two years to reorganize the mechanized units of 1941-type to Tank Armies of 1943 type. The battle of Moscow was fought by the RKKA not yet reogranized (and it was fought with far heavier losses than following battles w/ the reorganized Red Army, e.g. in 1943-1944). You only betray your ignorance here.

If the Red Army drove the Germans 100-250 km away while not being reorganized, then that only proves you don't need full reorganization to fight. As for heavier losses - well, that wasn't exactly of primary importance in the Soviet Army.

The units right near the border lacked supply motorization and fuel.

The cars are delivered at the last moment, since they have to be taken from somewhere where they are needed (Suvorov does give a source about trains with cars). As for fuel:

- The tank fuel is running out.

- As far as I know, Comrade Golubev, your army [the 10th] had enough fuel. Where did it go?

- Enemy agents seem to have been at work. In the first hours of the attack the enemy aircraft has attacked our fuel storages. They are still burning. On the railroads the fuel cisterns are likewise destroyed.(Ivan Boldin, The Pages of Life)

The question is not that of 100% equipment as well, but also that of the TOE of a Soviet mechanized corps. It was woefully inadequate for an offensive mission, especially in artillery and artillery transports (trucks and tractors) - all in all, a unit quite unfit for long-distance offensives.

Miscalculations say little about the intent anyway. Yes, there were miscalculations, and I think Suvorov is even preparing a book about the mechcorps' inefficiency (especially in defense). But then, the Germans had some miscalculations, too, yet they still advanced - after adding Soviet resources to their own.

Yes, he has a non-academical style there, but that's how he writes.

He misquotes and openly lies. That's not "non-academical style", idiot.

Mind giving some examples which are radically important to his theory?

His supporters are writing academically.

Outside of Meltukhov, who is hardly pushing forward the same thesis as Rezun, he has no "academic" supporters to speak of.

I have three books of articles at home. Some articles are academic. Some are about how even a simple man can find confirmations to Suvorov's theory.

The order stated to move units closer to the border (along with all the fuel and ammo). And to leave the units already near the border there. You said that forces were withdrawn - what forces? Yes, Suvorov does mention such forces. Most of the border guard moved deeper into the country, leaving the border to the Red Army.

This is strange, because a lot of the NKVD border guards were also moved to new posts along the border. It happened for the reason that the USSR massively increased the density of the border defences and lacked men to properly equip the entirety of proposed posts. Or that's what I recall. Please, do provide sources.

Suvorov quotes liberally from the memoirs of one commander, how the division he served in replaced the border guard. From my side, I found that V.A. Khomenko, the commander of the Ukraine and Moldova border guard, was officially transferred into the rear - one day before that order to move the armies forward. Yes, plenty remained - it's even one of Suvorov's argument, that at the start of the war they were very competent when it came to capturing the enemy side of the bridge, but not when it came to defending their own. But most went to the rear. Suvorov claims that they later resurfaced as armies 29-31 (or at least a large part of these armies), all lead by former Border Guard officers, including said Khomenko (He also says that all the unit commanders were from there, at least one division commander certainly was).

I don't know about the West, but the Soviet field manual at the time stated the parachute forces are used to disorganize the communications and rear, and aid the advancing forces in encircling the enemy. Certainly, there was no attempt to use them as you said when Hitler attacked - they were merely converted into infantry.

Really? So paratroopers were not dropped in the German rear?

A few hundred were dropped in - out of tens of thousands which were prepared. Larger drops were attempted during major counteroffensives, but not successfully - insufficient air superiority. Most were remade into infantry - Suvorov gives a long list.

They publish books and articles against him, too

Like D.M. Glantz?

Yes. There is a list on Suvorov's site.

(Suvorov absolutely loves finding mistakes and outright lies in those books). But it never leads anywhere.

So, did Suvorov find outright lies and mistakes in D.M. Glantz' books?

He mainly concerns himself with books in Russian language. But the Russian translation has an interesting footnote at one point (when he talks about the effects of the purges) which says that Glantz obviously had no access to the archives during his research, since he really messed the figures up.

Why? Stalin wanted to attack - without being afraiseed that Hitler will. The forces were deployed for attack - pure and simple.

Why? You can deploy forces and then attack or defend. Stalin didn't have to make a decision on either before the forces were deployed.

Some deployment is better for defense that for offense. When your forces are deployed near the border with a channel a few km behind them - it's not a good position for defense. If the airfields are 7-12 km away from the border - likewise.

There is no document saying "Comrade Yezhov has become too influential and is dangerous, he must be removed" - there is simply evidence that his people are slowly replaced by Beria's men, until one day Yezhov disappears.

There's a report on Yezhov and there are reports of arrests of his appointed men. If that's not a paper trail, what is one?

And what kind of a paper trail would you expect in the case of a preparing attack? Suvorov gives - movement of divisions, negotiations with England, order of the Narcom of defense that the Red Army shouldn't grow idle because of their achievements...

Suvorov says - there are documents on the lower levels (historians still argue about whether the combat plans even reached district and army level), which merely say - move division here, produce such and such tech, put your forces through such and such drills, organize border defense until the main forces arrive... And there is naturally no order to attack until the day of attack.

Well you see, Omeganian, once you deploy forces you can either attack or defend. But not before that. However, if you have a grand plan to attack, you'll leave a huge paper trail. How? Let's look at Barbarossa. It was decided in 1940, a year prior to the attack. Not just the plan itself, but all the OKH diaries, Halder's diary and many, many other documents show the point of decision for an attack. So basically, you're saying that while Hitler decided firmly to attack in 1940, Stalin COULD have decided to attack in 1941 if he so wanted (and would've actually possibly saved many millions of people from extinction, if he pre-empted Hitler's attack with a sufficiently ready force). That's not the argument made by Rezun. That's the argument which can be technically defended. But not Rezun's argument, sorry.

And why should the deployment and preparation be complete before the hour comes for an attack?

During the war in Japan, those tanks were around five years old - not much for a tank. They were in the second line, behind the T-34 - so they didn't even use the full potential of their speed on tracks. Yet still, their non-combat losses on rough terrain seem rather high. Definitely not their terrain, even more so for using their full speed. Building over seven thousands of them for use on Russian territory at the very least seems irrational.

And yet, the USSR continously used them on Soviet territory or territory which was even worse developed, infrastructure wise, than the Soviet territory (you continously ignore the 500 km march at Khalkin-Gol, right?). Moreover, so what if they didn't use the full potential of their speed? Weapons don't always have to be used at full potentials.

Mongolia is a smooth, dry terrain there. Zhukov remarked that there's absolutely no cover where he fought. Of course, during 1941 everything was used (times were kind of desperate).

The decisions are the ones that seem to take a lot of time, and Stalin isn't widely known to have wasted years on that. It certainly didn't take "many years" for the Soviet army to reorganize enough to kick the German asses from Moscow.

Yes, it did. It took two years. The Army that fought in 1942 was fundamentally the same as the one in 1941 with some of the dead wood cleared out. It was 1943 before the reorganization was completed.

And there were constant attempts in offense with that incomplete army.

The situation with the forward echelon in 1941 was that it was incapable of any kind of strategic offensive,

In what ways, exactly?

The units simply were not structured that way. And, by the way, attacking while not 100 percent prepared is an old-established military maneuver called "losing"

Well, look at the piece those "losers" cut off the Soviet Union. Except that for the Reich, a wound of similar size would have been much more serious.

You completely missed the point. I wasn't talking about the bunkers. I was talking about defense in depth. Minefields. Bridges and infrastructure set to blow. Mobile units harassing your forces. This is what Meretskov saw in Finland. This is what the Red Army saw in Poland. This was Stalin's Line. In both the Stalin Line and the Mannerheim Line the bunkers were largely behind that area (in Poland, I'm not sure there were bunkers at all). But bunkers were built point blank to the border in August 1940. And later. The greatest efforts were concentrated in the Baltic District (a secondary direction). The bunkers didn't cover the important bridges. And a few days before the German attack, the Soviets started cutting down their own barbed wire. Defense?

So, you finally admit that the Soviet Army in 1941 was shifting between two defensive concepts. Well done, you've just destroyed your entire case. Yet again. Look, you are trying to argue with military and historian professionals here. At least try and get some basic understanding of the subject matter before making an even bigger fool of yourself.

There was never any shifting. Neither the Red Army Field Manual, nor the December 1940 conference saw any alternative to defense in depth as the obligatory scenario of a defensive operation.

His opponents say exactly the same - first chapters in 1985. The book was written well before the more speculative ones. Yes, he has a non-academical style there, but that's how he writes. His supporters are writing academically. Oh, and I wasn't using Wikipedia for the interviews - I had a book in front of me.

Then why did you quote Wikipedia as a source?

Didn't think you were of a type which rejects sources without checking.

As to Rezun's writing style, he is proposing a major historical thesis that is a radical revision of the existing narrative. To do this he is required to write in an academic style. That means sources and references and research, all of which being areas in which he is sadly deficient. His "style" is designed to cover the fact that he's talking bullshit and he knows it. He's simply interested in tricking the credulous into buying his books. As to supporters, he doesn't have any academic ones.

Why would you need academic style? As for sources - well, the books often give where the quotes came from.

Are you talking about the Aquarium? Well, first of all, it cannot be used as a source for details (this is a semi autobiographical book which distorts them deliberately). Second, I read it and I don't see why his behavior there must be considered foolish. Is it idiocy - hesitating to harm a friend?

Oh, I see, so you think that Rezun's books can be used as unimpeachable sources when it suits you and dismissed when they do not. One way or the other laddie. If you write off Aquarium, then you do the same for all his other purportedly "factual" books. If you admit that one of his books contain deliberate distortions to serve his own personal interests then all of his books are rpesumed to do the same unless proven otherwise. So which is it? Do his books contain deliberate distortions to serve his interests or dont they. Either way, you have just conceded the argument

Aquarium is a semi autobiographic novel. It has the purpose of showing the life of a GRU officer. It never made any pretense that the facts are accurate. It's a completely different style from the Icebreaker, and any attempt to compare their accuracy is not unlike this well known urban legend. It proves absolutely nothing - except for your less that passing familiarity with Suvorov's works.

I don't know about the West, but the Soviet field manual at the time stated the parachute forces are used to disorganize the communications and rear, and aid the advancing forces in encircling the enemy. Certainly, there was no attempt to use them as you said when Hitler attacked - they were merely converted into infantry.

Which is what happened to most paratroop units; they ended up being used as elite infantry. However, that's irrelevent. The fact that the Soviet Army had paratroop units only proves they were trying to create a modern army.

The Field Manual saw no use for paratroopers except in an offensive operation. Nor did the 1940 conference.

Nothing more and nothing less. You might also note that the Soviet operational rationale for paratroopers includes supporting partisan forces formed from encircled units that had gone partisan to avoid surrender - and they were in fact used that way.

The 1943 paratrooper manual (notice - only published when the army was clearly on the offensive) stated that the partisans are to assist the paratroopers when possible. But the other way around? Sources, please.

For use of a 50 meter long ship which can't even turn around in the narrower streams? Looks as appropriate there as a heavy tank in guerrilla forest warfare.

Acting as a firebase for other units perhaps. Not everything has to go everywhere you know. In Vietnam, we used destroyer escorts and LSTs the same way.

Or to support an offensive and a marine drop on enemy territory. At least, that's the use those ships saw once the war started.

I looked in Beevor's book (the Russian translation). He makes no mention of either of the June 22nd offensive directives. The guy says that even 12 hours after the attack, Stalin didn't order action in return - while the first of those directives (limited offense) has the time of 7:15 am. Both he and Erickson seem to admire a bloodthirsty moron who insisted on converting tractors and trucks into tanks by putting armor and machine guns on them (neither vehicle could move after that) and building 50,000 tanks over the course of 1928 (the very beginning of the industrialization). Some sources you have...

Which one of Beevor's books?

Stalingrad.

The rest of your tirade here is uttterly irrelevent.

So, when a man who doesn't write in an academical style distorts some facts it's a proof that all he says is a lie, and when Beevor does the same, it's irrelevant? Some standards you have.

First of all, even what was put in writing, doesn't always survive - in 1991, over the course of just two days, 12 tons of 1941 papers were destroyed, and in 1941, when the Germans were near Moscow, the burning of documents caused panic among the general population.

So you admit that your claims about lack of documentation are specious.

No. I'm saying the reasons are numerous.

Second, Mikoyan, Marshal Ustinov, Alexander Yakovlev - all state that the narrow circle conferences in Stalin's time had no stenographers present - nothing was put on paper (don't forget, many of the senior government members back then had a long experience of underground conspiracy). There is no document saying "Comrade Yezhov has become too influential and is dangerous, he must be removed" - there is simply evidence that his people are slowly replaced by Beria's men, until one day Yezhov disappears.

As already pointed out, the removal of Yezhov is thoroughly documented.

What do the documents say? What are the dates upon them?

Same with what Suvorov says - there are documents on the lower levels (historians still argue about whether the combat plans even reached district and army level), which merely say - move division here, produce such and such tech, put your forces through such and such drills, organize border defense until the main forces arrive... And there is naturally no order to attack until the day of attack.

You obviously have no idea what is involved in launching a strategic level attack. The scenario above could only be conceived by somebody without any realistic knowledge of such considerations.

What kind of scenario do you mean?

Five years is not much for a tank today. Back in the 1930s and 1940s, five years was a very long time. It is, for example, the elapsed time between a Panzer II and a Panzer V.

7-8 years, more like it. Besides, I'm talking about the time a tank can stay mothballed - there was little fighting in the Far East during those years - that is hardly subject to radical change.

Tanks are also somewhat unreliable beasts and moving them around always leaves a lot of non-combat losses that require an engineer crew to fix. What "seems" to you doesn't seem unusual to anybody who has any actual knowledge of military operations.

What kind of losses are considered acceptable?

[Omeganian]

Sorry for mixing up Stalingrad and The Road to Stalingrad.

[PeZook]

I'd like to throw two cents into the point about paratroopers: by 1939, the Polish Military Parachute Centre had trained over 2500 paratroopers (many, many more civilians and scouts were trained throughout the country at civilian sites), though due to financial issues, they were lacking proper equipment like transport planes, weapons and the parachutes themselves necessary to form an actual combat unit, so the trainees too were used as elite infantry, like most Soviet paratroopers ended up.

That is quite a large number compared to the overall size of Poland and the Polish Army in 1939. Does this mean Poland was preparing to attack somebody?

France had paratrooper units, too. Were they preparing to invade a neighbor?

Existence of paratrooper units in the Red Army isn't even circumstantial evidence for their agressive intent: they are an essential, if very narrowly specialized, part of any modern army.

[Samuel]

And what kind of a paper trail would you expect in the case of a preparing attack? Suvorov gives - movement of divisions, negotiations with England, order of the Narcom of defense that the Red Army shouldn't grow idle because of their achievements...

Movement orders, objectives, preparations for storming or cutting off urban areas, money printed so that the soldiers can buy local goods, stockpiling of ammunition and fuel, etc.

And why should the deployment and preparation be complete before the hour comes for an attack?

Because you fight better when you are wholy prepared than when you are missing half of your unit?

[K. A. Pital]

If the Red Army drove the Germans 100-250 km away while not being reorganized, then that only proves you don't need full reorganization to fight.

A march into Germany is 3000 km, not "100-250" and after that grinding to a full halt against the Germans, like at Moscow. The Germans, who don't even have any fixed defences in the region and in 1941-1942 relied exclusively on active defence, by the way - and only through active defence halted the Soviet forces and even held out under operation Mars. So yes, 100-250 km is about the depth of advance the RKKA could achieve if it attacked in 1941 against fully deployed German forces. It's quite obvious that the Germans deployed faster IRL (it was a function of their peak railway capacity, which the USSR underestimated), so the scenario of the RKKA striking a semi-deployed Wehrmacht is simply impossible - the best case would be striking a deployed Wehrmacht with a deployed RKKA. Certainly it would've been a different fight, but the RKKA lacked necessary equipment for a strategic offensive of such depth. In fact, it's doctrine emphasized crushing the enemy right near your border, which obviously resulted in few support cars for mechanized units (and I'm not speaking few cars de facto, but few cars by official TOE). And if a TOE envisions little mobility and short-range strikes, that quite certainly undermines the whole "long-range assault" idea.

The cars are delivered at the last moment, since they have to be taken from somewhere where they are needed (Suvorov does give a source about trains with cars).

You don't understand. Let me explain it better:

2) What good are hordes of tanks if the army is a poor fighter itself, and when Soviet supply and organisation sucks as hell? Remember, a strategic offensive is only possible when you can supply it, not when you have a lot of tanks. The comparison of structure of the German and Soviet mechanised force shows that the latter lacked the supply machinery so badly that couldn’t even think of a large strategic offensive a-la Reich.

The “official" complement of a Soviet mechanised corps in 1941 was 1031 tank (546 KV and T-34), 36080 men, 172 artillery, 186 mortars, 5161 automobiles, 352 tractors, 1679 motorcycles. A regular German MC would have 37000 men, 360 tanks, 264 mortars, 335 artillery, 6500 automobiles, 4100 motorcycles. A Soviet Tank Army of 1944 would have on paper 55-56 thousand men, 900-950 tanks and SPA, 650-700 artillery and mortars, 7600 automobiles. The real complement of such an army would be something like 48,000 men, 450-620 tanks and 98-147 SPA, 650-750 artillery and mortars, 4830-5000 trucks, 465-740 special automobiles, 163-236 cars.

It’s easy to see that the Soviet Mechanized Corps of 1941, even by regular requirements, had over-inflated number of tanks with absolutely inadequate support in all other parts – manpower, artillery, automobiles and bikes. It’s crucial to understand that without adequate automobile and artillery support these “tank hordes" could not adequately NEITHER defend nor attack. This explains WHY they could do nothing in 1941 against better organised and well-supported Wehrmacht forces.

Poor organisation in the Soviet Mech Corps was also so evident that the “tank hordes" lost all meaning. The Wehrmacht forces had experience and built the quantative structure of their forces on the principles of “golden rule", adequate balance between tanks, artillery, support machines, etc. The RKKA on the other side was the “paper monster" whose military structures did not allow effective warfare. This was learned the hard way, and this is how the structure changed to the “golden rule" in the years of Soviet success. But if we look to the REAL situation in the MechCorps, we can see even worse situation abound.
[Table 1. MechCorps complement in RKKA. Cited from "10 Myths of WWII" by Isaev A. Head: MK #, Tanks (KV and T-34 out of them), personnel, artillery, mortars, automobiles, tractors, motorcycles. The first line in the official requirement (shtat)]


Only ONE mechnized corps met the officially required number of tanks, but failed miserably to meet the required number of new tanks (T-34 and KV) – the 1st MK had 1039 tanks (15 KV and T-34). The 6th MK came close: 1021 (352). The rest did not even go over a thousand, most of the MKs having around a third or even LESS the required complement.

Not a single MK met the requirements for manpower, a substantial number of the corps lacked around 30% men! Only ONE MK met the RIDICULOUSLY small artillery requirements which were already inferior to the Germans in artillery ~1-2… Two corps met the mortar numbers in reality, the rest failed, most of them by a large margin (30-40 lacking). Finally, NONE at all met the AUTOMOBILE, tractor and bike numbers, none absolutely. For most the lack of cars and tractors was absolutely horrendous…

This was even worsened by disparity between units inside the corps themselves. Due to poor organisations, some of the Divisions could receive not just under-supported numbers, but simply 0 support cars and tractors. Others would receive some, but only a handful – the required complement. Thus we see that the force structure in RKKA was not only inadequate in theory, but even MORESO in reality. “Tanks" were as much important as were cars. Anyone, who read WWII documents, would understand that:

Every 10th person in the Army is a driver. For 4,2 million people (army overall manpower) – 420 thousand automobiles.

As for fuel, likewise - the problem was a short supply for a strategic offensive. Therefore, you can't say the USSR planned a 3000 km strategic offensive that was so poorly prepared.

Miscalculations say little about the intent anyway. Yes, there were miscalculations, and I think Suvorov is even preparing a book about the mechcorps' inefficiency (especially in defense). But then, the Germans had some miscalculations, too, yet they still advanced - after adding Soviet resources to their own.

The Germans retained strategic mobility, whereas the USSR failed to expose the directions of German attack and had little strategic mobility (which itself proves just how unprepared was the RKKA for a grand strategic offensive). I'm not sure you can say the mechanized corps were "miscalculated" - the USSR did not have as much war experience in 1939-1940 as Germany did. Therefore, it had a harder time forming a "golden rule" army which would have proportional amounts of tanks, support automobiles, artillery and tight integration between manpower, airpower and mechanized forces. Sorry, but you miss the point again - the USSR didn't intend it's units to make a grand strategic offensive. All there is are plans of cross-border attacks, flanking attacks, plans of "covering the border". There's no plan to reach the Oder, there's nothing like an Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan target which was set for Barbarossa. If the USSR prepared a strategic offensive, it did nothing to do it. That's the main problem. That's why professionals who study Soviet archives, like Mark Harrison, Glantz, etc. consider that there's no evidence of any offensive - because there is none. It's not something I pull out of my ass, it's somewhat a consensus among historians who do archival research. On the other hand, Rezun did no archival research - that alone gives me the full right to consider him a non-entity for historical science, but then, there's more. All his theory is based on misquoting and leaps of logic.

Mind giving some examples which are radically important to his theory?

I've already given you "autobahn tanks" - he openly bullshits here; any tank engineer at that time knew that the "A" index was simply an index for experimental machines with no relation to roads whatsoever, and thus he couldn't have heard it anywhere. That's sucked out of his ass. He claims the Soviet 76-mm was the best AT gun ever (however, it was roughly equal in performance to PaK-40). Rezun claims that floating tanks like the T-38 are "a weapon of agression" and "only useful for agression". However, Britain built such tanks in 1929 - did it prepare for a grand agression or something? Germany's field engineers were much more useful for river crossing than most Soviet floating tanks, anyway - the USSR used it's floating tanks in advance rarely (in 1944, on the river Svir'). If they were so useful for assault operations, why didn't they get used? The answer's simple, these tanks are good stuff for recon duties, but they utterly fail to protect even against a heavy MG or small cannon.

Et cetera, et cetera. Rezun's whole books are built on such statements. I can start from the very beginning and expose every paragraph, almost every word as a falsehood or something.

The misquoting is egregious. For example, how would you like a quote "The Red Army shall be the most attacking of all attacking armies"? Pretty good, right? Except it's misquoted, and the sentence goes "If the enemy shall force us to war, the Red Army shall be the most attacking...". And such misquotes are likewise common. For example - the "second strategic echelon" of Soviet forces.

Rezun misquotes Sandalov to get the picture he wants:
"...When internal military district forces arrive from the rear, - Pavlov looked at Tulenev, - when in your army's line there shall be a density of seven and a half kilometers per division, then you can move forward without doubt in success"
However, that's what was really said:
"At first, perhaps, maybe we'll have to retreat, - Pavlov noted. - The Germans no longer have a 100 000 men army they had in 1932, but a three million one. It has more than three hundred units, many planes. If the enemy concentrates at least two thirds of his forces on our border, it may be so that at first we'll have to defend and even retreat... But when When internal military district forces arrive from the rear, - Pavlov looked at Tulenev, - when in your army's line there shall be a density of seven and a half kilometers per division, then you can move forward without doubt in success. Isn't it so?"
Sandalov L.M. "Memories", 1966, P.65. I'm not sure after such egregious misquoting there's any point in further discussion. And that misquote alone proves the second strategic echelon of Soviet forces was some sort of tool of agression. Pure idiocy and one false quote.

Same for BT - Rezun claims that the BT tanks were completely worthless for fighting in the Soviet territory, however, that was wrong as I've already demonstrated. They were effectively utilized in fights; hardly "absolutely worthless". The concept of fast tank as a weapon of agression is especially funny in light of the logistic problems a lone advancing tank creates. A unit advances as fast as it's slowest element. Soviet units were armed with a hodgepodge of BTs and T-26s. Their speed of advance was limited by the T-26, unless they were willing to abandon most of their tanks. And so, Rezun's claims are exposed as idiocy once again.

Any academics supporting this buffoon discredit themselves. And the wisdom of "simple men" is idiocy.

Suvorov quotes liberally from the memoirs of one commander

Like above? Too bad.

A paper train like that of Barbarossa is what you should provide if you want to prove your thesis. Barbarossa's intent to attack Russia was fixed in 1940, a year before the attack. It was not just "a plan", it was fixed as an active plan currently executed; Halder's KTB, et cetera all contain this information. As do OKW documents.

It's pretty stupid if you say the USSR didn't have any documents from 1940 to 1941 which would prove preparations of a strategic offensive of a similar magnitude. The problem is simple, there are no documents and there were no preparations for a strategic offensive neither in the top echelons of command, nor in teh lower echelons.

[Omeganian]

And what kind of a paper trail would you expect in the case of a preparing attack? Suvorov gives - movement of divisions, negotiations with England, order of the Narcom of defense that the Red Army shouldn't grow idle because of their achievements...

Movement orders, objectives, preparations for storming or cutting off urban areas, money printed so that the soldiers can buy local goods, stockpiling of ammunition and fuel, etc.

Well, Suvorov gives movement orders. As for money - well, there is a Russian-German dictionary saying "Bring here so many horses, we'll pay". Socialism takes more than pays anyway, especially the army. As for fuel and ammo - oh, there is no shortage of those documents.

And why should the deployment and preparation be complete before the hour comes for an attack?

Because you fight better when you are wholy prepared than when you are missing half of your unit?

Exactly. But the attack was still weeks away, why should all the unit be there now?

If the Red Army drove the Germans 100-250 km away while not being reorganized, then that only proves you don't need full reorganization to fight.

A march into Germany is 3000 km, not "100-250" and after that grinding to a full halt against the Germans, like at Moscow.

You don't need to go all that distance - no more than Hitler had to go 10, 000 to defeat USSR. 100-250... That's enough to destroy the Romanian petroleum - which would have caused some very nasty problems for Germany within months (with the heavy damage the oil fields suffered from the Soviets in 1941, they already had some shortage by fall). And there was the Baltic fleet, which could have cut Germany off their wood, nickel and iron. It is somewhat unreasonable to discuss a single campaign - you can either discuss the intent, or the general course of a war. Now, the Soviets, at the beginning of a war, lost strategic initiative, lost their best soldiers, lost fuel and ammo, lost much of their industry, a lot of their territory... and still ended up in Berlin. Now, if they have lost none of these things at the beginning of a war, isn't it logical to assume that by the end of the war they would have went somewhat further? Perhaps, at least as much as they went from Moscow, which would have put them well into France. After that - who would have resisted them?

The Germans, who don't even have any fixed defences in the region

Actually, they did build some emplacements - to support their attack.

and in 1941-1942 relied exclusively on active defence, by the way - and only through active defence halted the Soviet forces and even held out under operation Mars.

And didn't in Stalingrad.

It's quite obvious that the Germans deployed faster IRL (it was a function of their peak railway capacity, which the USSR underestimated), so the scenario of the RKKA striking a semi-deployed Wehrmacht is simply impossible - the best case would be striking a deployed Wehrmacht with a deployed RKKA. Certainly it would've been a different fight, but the RKKA lacked necessary equipment for a strategic offensive of such depth. In fact, it's doctrine emphasized crushing the enemy right near your border

Just what portion of the Wehrmacht forces were "near the border"? If they were in France, or even Britain (which is what Stalin's plan originally called for, according to Suvorov), would they have been able to redeploy in a sufficiently reorganized manner to stop the Soviets?

The cars are delivered at the last moment, since they have to be taken from somewhere where they are needed (Suvorov does give a source about trains with cars).

You don't understand. Let me explain it better:

2) What good are hordes of tanks if the army is a poor fighter itself, and when Soviet supply and organisation sucks as hell? Remember, a strategic offensive is only possible when you can supply it, not when you have a lot of tanks. The comparison of structure of the German and Soviet mechanised force shows that the latter lacked the supply machinery so badly that couldn’t even think of a large strategic offensive a-la Reich.

The “official" complement of a Soviet mechanised corps in 1941 was 1031 tank (546 KV and T-34), 36080 men, 172 artillery, 186 mortars, 5161 automobiles, 352 tractors, 1679 motorcycles. A regular German MC would have 37000 men, 360 tanks, 264 mortars, 335 artillery, 6500 automobiles, 4100 motorcycles. A Soviet Tank Army of 1944 would have on paper 55-56 thousand men, 900-950 tanks and SPA, 650-700 artillery and mortars, 7600 automobiles. The real complement of such an army would be something like 48,000 men, 450-620 tanks and 98-147 SPA, 650-750 artillery and mortars, 4830-5000 trucks, 465-740 special automobiles, 163-236 cars.

It’s easy to see that the Soviet Mechanized Corps of 1941, even by regular requirements, had over-inflated number of tanks with absolutely inadequate support in all other parts – manpower, artillery, automobiles and bikes. It’s crucial to understand that without adequate automobile and artillery support these “tank hordes" could not adequately NEITHER defend nor attack. This explains WHY they could do nothing in 1941 against better organised and well-supported Wehrmacht forces.

And the order they were given was an order to attack.

Poor organisation in the Soviet Mech Corps was also so evident that the “tank hordes" lost all meaning. The Wehrmacht forces had experience and built the quantative structure of their forces on the principles of “golden rule", adequate balance between tanks, artillery, support machines, etc. The RKKA on the other side was the “paper monster" whose military structures did not allow effective warfare. This was learned the hard way, and this is how the structure changed to the “golden rule" in the years of Soviet success.

Actually, the corps were abolished within a few months - apparently, they didn't fit defense that well either. Yet they were made for something, right?

But if we look to the REAL situation in the MechCorps, we can see even worse situation abound.
[Table 1. MechCorps complement in RKKA. Cited from "10 Myths of WWII" by Isaev A. Head: MK #, Tanks (KV and T-34 out of them), personnel, artillery, mortars, automobiles, tractors, motorcycles. The first line in the official requirement (shtat)]

Only ONE mechnized corps met the officially required number of tanks, but failed miserably to meet the required number of new tanks (T-34 and KV) – the 1st MK had 1039 tanks (15 KV and T-34). The 6th MK came close: 1021 (352). The rest did not even go over a thousand, most of the MKs having around a third or even LESS the required complement. Not a single MK met the requirements for manpower, a substantial number of the corps lacked around 30% men! Only ONE MK met the RIDICULOUSLY small artillery requirements which were already inferior to the Germans in artillery ~1-2… Two corps met the mortar numbers in reality, the rest failed, most of them by a large margin (30-40 lacking). Finally, NONE at all met the AUTOMOBILE, tractor and bike numbers, none absolutely. For most the lack of cars and tractors was absolutely horrendous…

I told you, look at the first attack wave - which I take to mean the first eight corps - they look quite up to strength in tanks, and quite a few cars could be brought in over a few weeks - as I said, since they have to be taken from the industry and agriculture, a lack of complement weeks before the attack is quite logical. Now, if they were preparing for defense, where you don't determine the time of attack, then lack of complement in cars would have been important... Are you saying those eight corps less tanks than Hitler had? Yes, some are not 100%, but what do you need 100% for? You yourself just stated that it was common for a Soviet tank army later to have around 65%-80% of its tanks.The Panzer Division page certainly doesn't show 100%. As for new tanks - well, there simply weren't enough produced yet. So what? Are the older tanks worse than the German?

Every 10th person in the Army is a driver. For 4,2 million people (army overall manpower) – 420 thousand automobiles.

Suvorov does say something about recruiting 200 000 tractor drivers, and preparing to recruit more.

As for fuel, likewise - the problem was a short supply for a strategic offensive.

Suvorov gives quotes about the army having enough fuel for the first battles - more would have been brought in later. Railroad brigades for widening the railroads to Soviet standards, trains for the narrow road captured in Poland and the Baltic countries - they would have supplied it.

Miscalculations say little about the intent anyway. Yes, there were miscalculations, and I think Suvorov is even preparing a book about the mechcorps' inefficiency (especially in defense). But then, the Germans had some miscalculations, too, yet they still advanced - after adding Soviet resources to their own.

The Germans retained strategic mobility, whereas the USSR failed to expose the directions of German attack and had little strategic mobility (which itself proves just how unprepared was the RKKA for a grand strategic offensive).

No maps made for Soviet territory - of course it affects mobility.

I'm not sure you can say the mechanized corps were "miscalculated" - the USSR did not have as much war experience in 1939-1940 as Germany did.

Soviets - two weeks in Mongolia, half a month in Poland, three months in Finland. Germany - one month in Poland, one month in France, no more battles worth mentioning. I see little difference in experience.

Therefore, it had a harder time forming a "golden rule" army which would have proportional amounts of tanks, support automobiles, artillery and tight integration between manpower, airpower and mechanized forces. Sorry, but you miss the point again - the USSR didn't intend it's units to make a grand strategic offensive. All there is are plans of cross-border attacks, flanking attacks, plans of "covering the border".

And here we have to ask a question- what did the army intend to do? Why were all the millions gathered near the border? Covering the border is but a temporary action till the main forces gather. What would they have done after gathering?

There's no plan to reach the Oder, there's nothing like an Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan target which was set for Barbarossa.

There is a plan to reach Vistula. I can just see them stopping there and saying "Yeah, now that we went that far, the war is over".

If the USSR prepared a strategic offensive, it did nothing to do it.

Then what was the USSR preparing for? Are you familiar with the figures of its military spending?

That's the main problem. That's why professionals who study Soviet archives, like Mark Harrison, Glantz, etc. consider that there's no evidence of any offensive - because there is none. It's not something I pull out of my ass, it's somewhat a consensus among historians who do archival research.

Well, Glantz doesn't seem to include a lot of his "archival research" in the bibliography - mainly the published sources, so I see little difference between him and Suvorov.

On the other hand, Rezun did no archival research - that alone gives me the full right to consider him a non-entity for historical science, but then, there's more. All his theory is based on misquoting and leaps of logic.

Of what relevance is archival research? What does it matter in what way the evidence is obtained?

He claims the Soviet 76-mm was the best AT gun ever (however, it was roughly equal in performance to PaK-40).

Where does he say that? The most I can remember him saying something to that effect is saying that the Soviet artillery was quite efficient against any German tank. And... was PaK-40 present at the start of Barbarossa?

Rezun claims that floating tanks like the T-38 are "a weapon of agression" and "only useful for agression". However, Britain built such tanks in 1929 - did it prepare for a grand agression or something?

Britain didn't mass produce such tanks. The Soviets made 4,000.

Germany's field engineers were much more useful for river crossing than most Soviet floating tanks, anyway - the USSR used it's floating tanks in advance rarely (in 1944, on the river Svir'). If they were so useful for assault operations, why didn't they get used? The answer's simple, these tanks are good stuff for recon duties, but they utterly fail to protect even against a heavy MG or small cannon.

Then they are certainly not fit for defense.

Et cetera, et cetera. Rezun's whole books are built on such statements. I can start from the very beginning and expose every paragraph, almost every word as a falsehood or something.

Did you read his later books? Where he answers to his opponents? Oh, the falsehoods he finds there...

The misquoting is egregious. For example, how would you like a quote "The Red Army shall be the most attacking of all attacking armies"? Pretty good, right? Except it's misquoted, and the sentence goes "If the enemy shall force us to war, the Red Army shall be the most attacking...". And such misquotes are likewise common. For example - the "second strategic echelon" of Soviet forces.

Suvorov usually quotes the full text. And gives the Winter War as an example of "being forced into a war". Soviet Newspeak, you know.

Rezun misquotes Sandalov to get the picture he wants:
"...When internal military district forces arrive from the rear, - Pavlov looked at Tulenev, - when in your army's line there shall be a density of seven and a half kilometers per division, then you can move forward without doubt in success"
However, that's what was really said:
"At first, perhaps, maybe we'll have to retreat, - Pavlov noted. - The Germans no longer have a 100 000 men army they had in 1932, but a three million one. It has more than three hundred units, many planes. If the enemy concentrates at least two thirds of his forces on our border, it may be so that at first we'll have to defend and even retreat... But when When internal military district forces arrive from the rear, - Pavlov looked at Tulenev, - when in your army's line there shall be a density of seven and a half kilometers per division, then you can move forward without doubt in success. Isn't it so?"
Sandalov L.M. "Memories", 1966, P.65. I'm not sure after such egregious misquoting there's any point in further discussion. And that misquote alone proves the second strategic echelon of Soviet forces was some sort of tool of agression. Pure idiocy and one false quote.

Yeah, and look at the war games carried out just before the war by his army's forces At first, they retreat, then they counterattack. The counterattack is the only part given any attention. Look at the "attention" given to defense as described in that chapter you are quoting from. The bunkers are built against the official doctrine of defensive operations as stated in the FM-39. The words that "we may have to defend" are the ones that look ripped out of context - they don't fit into reality. It says nowhere the enemy will attack. "When internal military district forces arrive from the rear" - well, border cover is needed until they concentrate. And when it's over? Well, it says here - they attack. Of course, there is a slight possibility they would have had to defend in case of a Soviet attack - the 4th Army is a secondary direction, and the 1940 conference did allow the possibility of temporary defense in such cases.

Suvorov quotes liberally from the memoirs of one commander

Like above? Too bad.

Well, look at the quotes and tell me how they сan be ripped out of context.

A paper train like that of Barbarossa is what you should provide if you want to prove your thesis. Barbarossa's intent to attack Russia was fixed in 1940, a year before the attack. It was not just "a plan", it was fixed as an active plan currently executed; Halder's KTB, et cetera all contain this information. As do OKW documents.

It's pretty stupid if you say the USSR didn't have any documents from 1940 to 1941 which would prove preparations of a strategic offensive of a similar magnitude. The problem is simple, there are no documents and there were no preparations for a strategic offensive neither in the top echelons of command, nor in teh lower echelons.

The General Staff officers worked some 16 hours a day in the first half of 1941. That's enough of a paper trail. What do all those historians with access to the archives say about its content?

[Serafina]

You don't need to go all that distance - no more than Hitler had to go 10, 000 to defeat USSR. 100-250... That's enough to destroy the Romanian petroleum - which would have caused some very nasty problems for Germany within months (with the heavy damage the oil fields suffered from the Soviets in 1941, they already had some shortage by fall).

Launching an invasion that can't even reach Berlin and has no chance of taking out the Ruhrgebiet is...well, not suicide, but certainly one of the most stupid strategies i ever saw.
Modern war is decided by taking out the enemies industry. The USSR fully realized that. They would not have launched such an attack.

And there was the Baltic fleet, which could have cut Germany off their wood, nickel and iron.

No, just...no. The Baltic fleet was totally incabale to take on the german fleet, especially not in hostile waters.

Now, the Soviets, at the beginning of a war, lost strategic initiative, lost their best soldiers, lost fuel and ammo, lost much of their industry, a lot of their territory... and still ended up in Berlin.

Which proves your arguments how?
Just because they were capable to buy enough time to transform their army into an offensive one while destroying the best german units, that means jack shit about their offensive capabilities three to four years earlier.

Oh, and they lost the frigging strategic initiative because they didn't have the necessary strategic mobility. Which they would have had if they had been capable and deployed for an attack.

Actually, they did build some emplacements - to support their attack.

Those are not fixed defenses. Sure, they make a nice make-shift tactical defense, but they are practically useless as a strategic defense.

No maps made for Soviet territory - of course it affects mobility.

Wait, are you claiming that the soviet army did not have maps of their own territory?
That would be so stupid even if they would have planned for an all-out attack that...well, it would be incredibly stupid.

Soviets - two weeks in Mongolia, half a month in Poland, three months in Finland. Germany - one month in Poland, one month in France, no more battles worth mentioning. I see little difference in experience.

Because they are totally comparable
The soviets had relatively isolated engagements against weak enemies and/or using very poor tactics on their own (see Finland).
The germans had heavy fighting against equally equipped enemies during large-scale operations.

If you do not see any difference in that, you are an even bigger dumbass than i tought.

And here we have to ask a question- what did the army intend to do? Why were all the millions gathered near the border? Covering the border is but a temporary action till the main forces gather. What would they have done after gathering?

Are you reading what Stas wrote?
The soviet doctrine, at that time, called for stopping the enemy at/near the border. Now tell me - if you want to do that, what's the most logical place to put your own troops?

To make an analogy - substantial amounts of west-german troops were posted on the west/east german border during the cold war. Does that mean they were planning to attack east germany?

There is a plan to reach Vistula. I can just see them stopping there and saying "Yeah, now that we went that far, the war is over".

So the war is over even tough they did not take out any substantial german industry or population center. Are you nuts?
No one would have counted on a cease-fire or peace treaty at that point. Planning only so far without knowing what to do next IS tantamount to suicide.

Then what was the USSR preparing for? Are you familiar with the figures of its military spending?

Defense, as has been pointed here numerous times.
Or do you think that "high military spending=preparing for offense"?
Again, by your logic, i can proove that west germany planned to invade east germany. Or that Isreal is planning to invade Egypt. Or that South Korea plans to counqer North Korea. And so on.

Of what relevance is archival research? What does it matter in what way the evidence is obtained?

Look, i even I can grasp that - so here it is.
If you want to do research, you need data.
The best data is always gathered at the source itself.
In history, we KNOW that all non-original records, especially on the other side of a border, will be falsified - not necessarily due to malintent, but simply due to a lack of data. Therefore, the most reliable sources are the original ones.

A scientist who doesn't even bother to look at the original data hardly deserves that name.

Then they are certainly not fit for defense.

Because we all know that defensive forces need no recon

Besides, what's so odd about a military which has not yet settled for a proven doctrine building things that do not work out the way they were supposed to be? It happens all the time.


Look, if someone like me can pick your arguments apart, you should really reconsider your arguments (i am by no means the most skilled or knowledgable debater here).
So far, you have only spouted unproven assumptions based on the book of a single non-accredited man who has been shown to publish lies and whose "theories" are contrary to all politcal, military, logistial and other evidence.

[K. A. Pital]

You don't need to go all that distance - no more than Hitler had to go 10, 000 to defeat USSR.

Hitler had to go thousands of kilometers, not hundreds - to Moscow and beyond. That was the stated target. Did you read the German plans, or you're speaking out of your fucking ass again? And of course, failing to go these thousands resulted in in Germany's utter defeat. Anything else?

100-250... That's enough to destroy the Romanian petroleum - which would have caused some very nasty problems for Germany within months (with the heavy damage the oil fields suffered from the Soviets in 1941, they already had some shortage by fall).

Yes, it would've caused a shortfall in German oil imports; however, nothing too drastic if we're speaking about total war - besides, the logistic train of the nation attacked would be shortening, which means Germans would need less oil to defend than they'd need to attack the USSR in a several thousand km-long strategic offensive. Worse yet, the documents on "plans of covering the state border of the USSR" do not mention Romania as a priority target. Rezun pulled it out of his ass.

It is somewhat unreasonable to discuss a single campaign

It's not. Barbarossa was a single plan, with goals and targets to defeat the enemy.

Now, the Soviets, at the beginning of a war, lost strategic initiative, lost their best soldiers, lost fuel and ammo, lost much of their industry, a lot of their territory... and still ended up in Berlin. Now, if they have lost none of these things at the beginning of a war, isn't it logical to assume that by the end of the war they would have went somewhat further? Perhaps, at least as much as they went from Moscow, which would have put them well into France. After that - who would have resisted them?

The USSR lost "it's best soldiers"? I'd put it otherwise - through immense losses, the RKKA finally received necessary combat experience to regain the strategic initiative. There were other considerations as well, but primarily this. The RKKA of 1941 was not the same as the one in 1943-1945. The tactics of tank fights, the tactics of tank crew training were changed completely (for example, pre-war RKKA did not train tank crews to repair their tanks in the field, resulting in tanks being abandoned when breaking down; only by late 1941 the training scheme was changed to training-crew-on-factory, where the crew would watch their tank assembly and understand every intimate detail of how to repair their tank). The Army itself was re-organized - tank brigades were smaller units which were used more efficiently than unwieldy 1000-tank MKs, where obsolete and new tanks were joined (resulting in all the problems such a mix entails - slow speed, greater non-combat losses).

If your question is "could the RKKA, after several years of war, defeat Germany if it pre-emtively attacked in 1941", the answer is obviously "yes", because all the organizational changes would still be taking place. However, that assumes the German Wehrmacht is not showing the same efficiency in combat. There is little to suggest it wouldn't show tactical efficiency - in 1942, when the Germans no longer had strategic surprise, they still managed to conduct extremely deep operations and surroundings of Soviet forces. The key lie in the strategic mobility of Wehrmacht units - the Germans could move a tank group here or there (and do so covertly, like they did for the Vyazma cauldron, resulting in arguably one of the greatest catastrophes for the RKKA in 1941, in the same line as the Kiev cauldron). The Soviet intelligence failed to discover these movements in 1941-1942.

Another problem for the theory of "sudden mid-1941 attack" is that the USSR did not conduct aerial recon of nearby German territories, like Germany did before the attack - this indicates that the USSR, even if it were willing to do a preventive attack on the Germans, had placed it for an unknown term in the future - not anywhere close to 1941. The re-organization that was taking place required another few month of peace.

Actually, they did build some emplacements - to support their attack.

How does this detract from my point? The RKKA could not cope with active defences of a deployed Wehrmacht. In summer 1941, fighting would be not easy likewise. The Wehrmacht would be at peak strength, fully prepared for mobile operations, it's units were very closely concentrated which resulted in a numerical superiority over the Soviet units on the border (with a roughly 1,5-2 times an advantage in division strength, and considering Soviet divisions were often undermanned, unlike German ones...). If the USSR attacked such tight packed, ready forces with inferior numbers, that would only result in a debacle. It would at least foil the German attack, though; the merits of such operation could be discussed separately.

And didn't in Stalingrad.

Yes, Stalingrad, where the RKKA started to learn from the German playbook and covertly (!) relocated units for counteroffensive so that the German intel wouldn't notice. Stalingrad - 2 years after the onset of the war, when the RKKA's mechanized units were reformed from unwieldy, mix-tank MKs to small, agile tank brigades that had better training, new tactics, and new tanks of course.

Don't you find it strange that the RKKA started fulfilling combat objectives only when the necessary changes in tactics, unit composition and TOE took place? Nothing strange, really - the changes that the RKKA passed through in 1941-1942 greatly increased it's combat capabilities.

Just what portion of the Wehrmacht forces were "near the border"? If they were in France, or even Britain (which is what Stalin's plan originally called for, according to Suvorov), would they have been able to redeploy in a sufficiently reorganized manner to stop the Soviets?

Problem is; there's no Stalin's plan. Like I said, there are no documents. No "Order N.X" equivalent to the Barbarossa orders which permeate the German documentation. Anyhow, like I said, Germany concentrated forces in greater numbers for OP Barbarossa RIGHT ON THE BORDER than the USSR had in it's first echelon (the border military districts on the entirety of their length), with a 1,5-2 times superiority in divisional strength and manpower numbers (and often in artillery, critical for a massed assault). Imagine a tight fist pushing through several sheets of paper. That's how the Germans penetrated Soviet defence - the Soviet forces were not concentrated.

And the order they were given was an order to attack.

To counter-attack, right. The 6th MK, for example, went to attack the Germans on Soviet territory instead of "attacking" into the German rear. However, regardless of that, it lost most of it's tanks for non-combat reasons. A sad tale, don't you think? To make a several dozen km march and never utilize the most fully complect of Soviet MKs? If the 6th MK failed so badly despite having necessary equipment (by TOE), other MKs had no chance at all.

Actually, the corps were abolished within a few months - apparently, they didn't fit defense that well either. Yet they were made for something, right?

Quite obviously the USSR understood the pre-war corps were unwieldy for any mobile operations - such was the price of poor experience and a lag in understanding the lessons of 1939-1940 fights. The units that came after them were much more all-around suitable for large offensive operations (I'm speaking of tank brigs and tank armies). I'm not sure what you're insinuating? A good, well-supported mechanized unit allows you to attack and defend all the same. The Germans defended and attacked with the same Tank Divisions, the USSR defended and attacked with the same Tank Armies. These were proven, well-composed units.

I told you, look at the first attack wave - which I take to mean the first eight corps - they look quite up to strength in tanks, and quite a few cars could be brought in over a few weeks

There's a 1,5-2 times inferiority in unit number and probably a 2-3 times inferiority in unit density in June 1941 on the Soviet-German border. Attacking is unthinkable - if only to prevent the German strategic surprise (but that requires uncovering their plans in full). "Up to strength"? In what, T-26s? Cars were not to be taken from "industry and agriculture" - you continue to miss the point, there was not enough cars by TOE - i.e. the official requirement. You're too dumb to understand what official TOE means? The proportion of cars to tanks in well-wielded mechanized units (TAs 1943, German TDs) was generally tanks = 5% of cars. In an MK, the proportion was tanks = 20% of cars.

Now, if they were preparing for defense, where you don't determine the time of attack, then lack of complement in cars would have been important...

The lack of cars is important for attack, because they are your logistic train. The longer you wish to advance, the more cars you need. For a short-range attack or defence you need fewer cars because your supply train is short, you are supplied by the domestic cities close to your unit.

Germany attacked with numerical superiority in the immediate line of attack. The USSR's forces were dispersed. Is that too hard of a concept to grasp for you? PribOVO, ZapOVO, etc. were huge military districts. Germany attained a superiority over the entire districts, and on the immediate attack line the superiority was doctrinaire or more than doctrinaire (3,4:1, etc.).

The case for ZapOVO is so bad that in the first echelon of divisions the German attack reached a 3:1 or greater advantage in almost all fields (yes, that inlcudes tanks). You can look up the relevant table here:
http://d-prospero.livejournal.com/72094 ... ad=1613214

You yourself just stated that it was common for a Soviet tank army later to have around 65%-80% of its tanks.

Except these tanks were well-supported. Germany attacked at peak wartime strength.

As for new tanks - well, there simply weren't enough produced yet. So what? Are the older tanks worse than the German?

Quite certainly the T-26 was a bad tank all-around, and it made up the bulk of Soviet tank force. Worse yet, many tanks had exhausted their motorhour resource and thus were nothing but stationary gunpoints. German tanks on the other hand had over 200 hrs of motorhours, on the average. Even newer Soviet tanks like KV and T-34 had about 50 hours at first - construction deficiencies.

Suvorov does say something about recruiting 200 000 tractor drivers, and preparing to recruit more.

Quite certainly - in Spring 1941, the USSR's elite started to catch the wind of a planning German offensive. What's so surprising?

Suvorov gives quotes about the army having enough fuel for the first battles - more would have been brought in later.

Germany planned for stocks of fuel for their advance until winter 1941 when the USSR was supposed to be crushed. Where are such plans for the USSR? Clearly, such plans would have seen the light of day - if the USSR established a target of defeating Germany (else why attack?), there would be a plan of use of oil and fuel materials in the advance, like the Germans did. You've provided no such plans or notes in commanders' diaries, or anything (unlike

No maps made for Soviet territory - of course it affects mobility.

Hardly. The Soviet forces had maps for both Soviet territory and foreign territory. I'm not sure where you picked that urban myth at.

Soviets - two weeks in Mongolia, half a month in Poland, three months in Finland. Germany - one month in Poland, one month in France, no more battles worth mentioning. I see little difference in experience.

Which of the USSR's operations was a blitzkrieg with massive encirclements? Both of Germany's operations included marches for encirclement for many hundreds of kilometers. Which of Soviet operations had such experience? The Polish "non-war" or the Finnish debacle?

And here we have to ask a question- what did the army intend to do? Why were all the millions gathered near the border? Covering the border is but a temporary action till the main forces gather. What would they have done after gathering?

Covering the border is when you defend your border from an attacking enemy. There were no "millions" gathered near the border, as I've pointed time and again - right near the border Germans had a 3:1 or greater advantage. Begs the question, why most of Soviet forces, even in bordering military districts, were deployed farther off from the border. After you defend your border, you attack the enemy. However, that's normal for a war. Where is the evidence for anything abnormal? You're defending your border, you defend it and then attack the enemy and defeat him on his own territory.

There is a plan to reach Vistula. I can just see them stopping there and saying "Yeah, now that we went that far, the war is over".

There's no plan to reach Vistula, unless I'm badly mistaken. I have the plan of cover for ZapOVO right in front of my eyes. It mentions Vistula (more precisely, Vistula bridges) only as a target for air raids and diversions.

Then what was the USSR preparing for? Are you familiar with the figures of its military spending?

They were on the order of modern Israel or say DPRK. Is modern DPRK preparing for a strategic offensive? Is Israel preparing for a strategic offensive? No? On the other hand, Hitler's plans are actual plans. There are OKW plans, OKH plans, diaries of commanders which meticulously document every phase, every step of preparations for a strategic assault and attack on Russia which was decided in 1940 already.

Well, Glantz doesn't seem to include a lot of his "archival research" in the bibliography - mainly the published sources, so I see little difference between him and Suvorov.

I'm not sure - his book on Leningrad had quite a lot of research. Harrison, Isaev do a lot of archival research. Neither considers there's any evidence for Rezun's hype. Besides, did Glantz misquote his sources or state a falsehood?

Of what relevance is archival research? What does it matter in what way the evidence is obtained?

It does. If archival documents contradict your statements (like, for example, actual plans of covering the border ignoring Romania as a "minor objective"), or the "autobahn tanks", or the concentration of forces (Rezun's biggest failure - the actual concentration of forces on Soviet border was much, much less than he implies), then your research is discredited.

The most I can remember him saying something to that effect is saying that the Soviet artillery was quite efficient against any German tank.

That was in "Suicide", I believe, but I'll look it up. Your claim here is egregious - was the Soviet 45-mm (the most common AT gun) "quite efficient" against German tanks?

Britain didn't mass produce such tanks. The Soviets made 4,000. ... Then they are certainly not fit for defense.

Why? There's a lot of rivers you have to cross in Russia (in fact, the crossing of Svir' was on Russian territory), especially when conducting recon operations. A weapon like a floating tank is potentially useful in Russian river-crossed heartlands. Problem was, the Soviet floating tanks were poorly built machines (floating tanks in WWII were poor in general). But if they were a tad better, they'd be utilized better. A weapon can be utilized in any territory. All Soviet wargames were ran in Soviet territory and utilized Soviet hardware. Where's the problem? There's no "defence" and "offence" - there are military battles in course of a defensive or offensive on a large scale. If your weapon is good, it's good for both. If it's bad, it's bad for both.

Did you read his later books? Where he answers to his opponents? Oh, the falsehoods he finds there...

Yeah, his "opponents", from which Glantz, Harrison and Isaev, for example, are consciously excluded. Maybe because they do more sort of research on Soviet wartime actions instead of trying to "oppose" a buffoon.

Suvorov usually quotes the full text.

False. The misquote of Sandalov proves he consciously omits joined parts of texts. That is misquoting.

Yeah, and look at the war games carried out just before the war by his army's forces At first, they retreat, then they counterattack.

Yeah. That's what is said. Misquoting is not excusable. The Sandalov quote is ripped out of context, and I'm not sure what's so bad about defending the border and then counter-attacking with full strength. That sounds like a good strategy to me, especially as the USSR at the time had forces very dispersed and obviously had to take time before it could concentrate them (that was another error of the Soviet command - they presumed any attacker would get stuck in border battles while Soveit reinforcements from the rear will arrive and with new strength crush the attacker in a counter-attack and into his territory - the German advance tempoes mixed their cards, all too evident in the counterattack of the 6th MK which counterattacked near the Soviet border, presuming the Germans are still there. They were not).

Well, look at the quotes and tell me how they сan be ripped out of context.

The Sandalov misquote was not enough for you? I'll give you more - just give me some time. Lots of work.

The General Staff officers worked some 16 hours a day in the first half of 1941. That's enough of a paper trail. What do all those historians with access to the archives say about its content?

That's not a paper trail - where are the documents? General Staff officers sure worked a lot - the Red Army was re-organizing, new TOEs were made, new plans - including the "plans for covering the state border of the USSR" which, by the way, are an excellent example of the Soviet pre-war doctrine. Where's the Soviet Barbarossa though?

To quote Mark Harrison:

It is true that in 1941 Nazi propagandists tried to justify the German attack on the Soviet Union as a defensive reaction to Soviet preparations for an attack on Germany. This explanation, built on speculation at a time when all the Soviet documents were secret, continues to find traction today in some quarters, but the opening of the Soviet archives has found no more hard evidence for it than there was before.

All there is in the archives are plans of covering the state border. There's no document, or documents, that would indicate any agression. On the other hand, all OKW, OKH diaries - even if the original document, the order on UN Barbarossa was destroyed - and subsequent lower-level orders provide enough information to fully reconstruct intent.

For example, Halder's KTB says in 1940 "Hitler will attack Russia. The time is spring next year" or something like that. Even if the Barbarossa orders were destroyed, Halder's KTB would be enough to evidence the fact of their existence - as would the orders issued to tank groups, which spoke of direct destruction of the USSR as a state through agression (not of "defence of the Reich via covering the reich border" or something).

Where are the documents?

[Omeganian]

You don't need to go all that distance - no more than Hitler had to go 10, 000 to defeat USSR.

Hitler had to go thousands of kilometers, not hundreds - to Moscow and beyond. That was the stated target. Did you read the German plans, or you're speaking out of your fucking ass again? And of course, failing to go these thousands resulted in in Germany's utter defeat. Anything else?

The goal was Volga (and destruction of Ural from there). Not quite 10,000 km.

100-250... That's enough to destroy the Romanian petroleum - which would have caused some very nasty problems for Germany within months (with the heavy damage the oil fields suffered from the Soviets in 1941, they already had some shortage by fall).

Yes, it would've caused a shortfall in German oil imports; however, nothing too drastic if we're speaking about total war - besides, the logistic train of the nation attacked would be shortening, which means Germans would need less oil to defend than they'd need to attack the USSR in a several thousand km-long strategic offensive.

a High Command study in May of 1941 noted that with monthly military requirements for 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German stocks would be exhausted by August 1941

Worse yet, the documents on "plans of covering the state border of the USSR" do not mention Romania as a priority target. Rezun pulled it out of his ass.

The main attack was to cut Romania off. Direct attack on the relatively weak Romania was a job for the Odessa District. Its covering plan says to systematically destroy the oil storages and refineries.

Now, the Soviets, at the beginning of a war, lost strategic initiative, lost their best soldiers, lost fuel and ammo, lost much of their industry, a lot of their territory... and still ended up in Berlin. Now, if they have lost none of these things at the beginning of a war, isn't it logical to assume that by the end of the war they would have went somewhat further? Perhaps, at least as much as they went from Moscow, which would have put them well into France. After that - who would have resisted them?

The USSR lost "it's best soldiers"? I'd put it otherwise - through immense losses, the RKKA finally received necessary combat experience to regain the strategic initiative.There were other considerations as well, but primarily this. The RKKA of 1941 was not the same as the one in 1943-1945. The tactics of tank fights, the tactics of tank crew training were changed completely (for example, pre-war RKKA did not train tank crews to repair their tanks in the field, resulting in tanks being abandoned when breaking down; only by late 1941 the training scheme was changed to training-crew-on-factory, where the crew would watch their tank assembly and understand every intimate detail of how to repair their tank). The Army itself was re-organized - tank brigades were smaller units which were used more efficiently than unwieldy 1000-tank MKs, where obsolete and new tanks were joined (resulting in all the problems such a mix entails - slow speed, greater non-combat losses).

And attacking, they would have learned it while actually dealing some damage to the enemy.

If your question is "could the RKKA, after several years of war, defeat Germany if it pre-emtively attacked in 1941", the answer is obviously "yes", because all the organizational changes would still be taking place. However, that assumes the German Wehrmacht is not showing the same efficiency in combat.

Under a powerful enough attack it takes time to reorganize. By then, the Soviets could have got the edge.

Another problem for the theory of "sudden mid-1941 attack" is that the USSR did not conduct aerial recon of nearby German territories, like Germany did before the attack - this indicates that the USSR, even if it were willing to do a preventive attack on the Germans, had placed it for an unknown term in the future - not anywhere close to 1941. The re-organization that was taking place required another few month of peace.

No recon?

And didn't in Stalingrad.

Yes, Stalingrad, where the RKKA started to learn from the German playbook and covertly (!) relocated units for counteroffensive so that the German intel wouldn't notice. Stalingrad - 2 years after the onset of the war, when the RKKA's mechanized units were reformed from unwieldy, mix-tank MKs to small, agile tank brigades that had better training, new tactics, and new tanks of course.

Operation Mars was at the same time.

Just what portion of the Wehrmacht forces were "near the border"? If they were in France, or even Britain (which is what Stalin's plan originally called for, according to Suvorov), would they have been able to redeploy in a sufficiently reorganized manner to stop the Soviets?

Problem is; there's no Stalin's plan. Like I said, there are no documents. No "Order N.X" equivalent to the Barbarossa orders which permeate the German documentation. Anyhow, like I said, Germany concentrated forces in greater numbers for OP Barbarossa RIGHT ON THE BORDER than the USSR had in it's first echelon (the border military districts on the entirety of their length), with a 1,5-2 times superiority in divisional strength and manpower numbers (and often in artillery, critical for a massed assault). Imagine a tight fist pushing through several sheets of paper. That's how the Germans penetrated Soviet defence - the Soviet forces were not concentrated.

Not concentrated yet.

And the order they were given was an order to attack.

To counter-attack, right. The 6th MK, for example, went to attack the Germans on Soviet territory instead of "attacking" into the German rear. However, regardless of that, it lost most of it's tanks for non-combat reasons. A sad tale, don't you think? To make a several dozen km march and never utilize the most fully complect of Soviet MKs? If the 6th MK failed so badly despite having necessary equipment (by TOE), other MKs had no chance at all.

I am talking about the June 22nd Directive 3.

Actually, the corps were abolished within a few months - apparently, they didn't fit defense that well either. Yet they were made for something, right?

Quite obviously the USSR understood the pre-war corps were unwieldy for any mobile operations - such was the price of poor experience and a lag in understanding the lessons of 1939-1940 fights.

But did they understand it before the war?

The units that came after them were much more all-around suitable for large offensive operations (I'm speaking of tank brigs and tank armies).

Definitely. Still, the 8th MK did manage to go some 500 km in five days, on Soviet territory (with high non combat losses, admittedly). They had enough capability to advance.

I told you, look at the first attack wave - which I take to mean the first eight corps - they look quite up to strength in tanks, and quite a few cars could be brought in over a few weeks

There's a 1,5-2 times inferiority in unit number and probably a 2-3 times inferiority in unit density in June 1941 on the Soviet-German border. Attacking is unthinkable - if only to prevent the German strategic surprise (but that requires uncovering their plans in full).

And given a few weeks to concentrate? Besides, if the units are concentrating for offense, there can be large weak areas.

"Up to strength"? In what, T-26s?

I don't see what's funny. T-26 served in Spain until 1956 and in Finland until 1961. A good, reliable tank. Not very fast, but then, it was intended for infantry support. Certainly, not all German tanks could match its weaponry.

Cars were not to be taken from "industry and agriculture" - you continue to miss the point, there was not enough cars by TOE - i.e. the official requirement. You're too dumb to understand what official TOE means? The proportion of cars to tanks in well-wielded mechanized units (TAs 1943, German TDs) was generally tanks = 5% of cars. In an MK, the proportion was tanks = 20% of cars.

The mistakes in the estimates for the needed number of cars can say that the operations wouldn't have been as successful. But little about the intent.

Germany attacked with numerical superiority in the immediate line of attack. The USSR's forces were dispersed. Is that too hard of a concept to grasp for you? PribOVO, ZapOVO, etc. were huge military districts. Germany attained a superiority over the entire districts, and on the immediate attack line the superiority was doctrinaire or more than doctrinaire (3,4:1, etc.).

Weaker flanks. Germans concentrated in strength against Soviet weakness. That weakness largely existed because the Soviets were concentrating in strength against German weakness.

many tanks had exhausted their motorhour resource.

With what kind of actions?

German tanks on the other hand had over 200 hrs of motorhours, on the average.

By August the 4th they already had to replace many engines - and the distance they passed hardly corresponds to 200 hours.

Even newer Soviet tanks like KV and T-34 had about 50 hours at first - construction deficiencies.

Now, translate it to distance please.

Suvorov gives quotes about the army having enough fuel for the first battles - more would have been brought in later.

Germany planned for stocks of fuel for their advance until winter 1941 when the USSR was supposed to be crushed. Where are such plans for the USSR? Clearly, such plans would have seen the light of day - if the USSR established a target of defeating Germany (else why attack?), there would be a plan of use of oil and fuel materials in the advance, like the Germans did. You've provided no such plans or notes in commanders' diaries, or anything

Suvorov does give a quote about 8500 fuel cisterns on the roads during the first days - a sourced one.

No maps made for Soviet territory - of course it affects mobility.

Hardly. The Soviet forces had maps for both Soviet territory and foreign territory. I'm not sure where you picked that urban myth at.

Since Suvorov has a whole chapter on the subject, your uncertainty seems strange to me.

And here we have to ask a question- what did the army intend to do? Why were all the millions gathered near the border? Covering the border is but a temporary action till the main forces gather. What would they have done after gathering?

Covering the border is when you defend your border from an attacking enemy. There were no "millions" gathered near the border, as I've pointed time and again - right near the border Germans had a 3:1 or greater advantage. Begs the question, why most of Soviet forces, even in bordering military districts, were deployed farther off from the border. After you defend your border, you attack the enemy. However, that's normal for a war. Where is the evidence for anything abnormal? You're defending your border, you defend it and then attack the enemy and defeat him on his own territory.

The purpose of the covering is to cover the mobilization, concentration, and deployment of the main forces (as stated in all 4 plans). Then what?

Then what was the USSR preparing for? Are you familiar with the figures of its military spending?

They were on the order of modern Israel or say DPRK. Is modern DPRK preparing for a strategic offensive? Is Israel preparing for a strategic offensive? No? On the other hand, Hitler's plans are actual plans. There are OKW plans, OKH plans, diaries of commanders which meticulously document every phase, every step of preparations for a strategic assault and attack on Russia which was decided in 1940 already.

Yuri Felshtinsky states that in 1938-1940 the percent was 26.4%, with 32.6% in 1940, while Germany in 1938-9 had 15%. The plan for 1941 was 43.4%. Israel, with its rather problematic security status, has a figure which is 15% out of the overall budget, and 20% of the ordinary budget.

Well, Glantz doesn't seem to include a lot of his "archival research" in the bibliography - mainly the published sources, so I see little difference between him and Suvorov.

I'm not sure - his book on Leningrad had quite a lot of research. Harrison, Isaev do a lot of archival research. Neither considers there's any evidence for Rezun's hype.

And do they actually publish what they found?

And Suvorov in his later books quotes some documents. What does Leningrad has to do with the Stumbling Colossus?

Besides, did Glantz misquote his sources or state a falsehood?

Well, for starters, let's look at what he says about Suvorov in the introduction:

Viktor Rezun. Writing under the pseudonym "Viktor Suvorov"...

So, he can't even get his opponent's real name right.

claiming to have had access to classified materials while serving as a captain and a major in the Soviet Army over twenty years ago... one can validly question how an officer of his lowly rank could have had access to such material in the first place.

Glantz seems to have a problem grasping a very simple fact about the Soviet Army - seniority is determined by position, not rank. Suvorov studied for several years to be an officer of the GRU - a position for a colonel - a colonel of the General Staff. Then, he worked for a year in Moscow. Both positions imply certain access to the archives.

if he had access, how could he recall the minute details of such an extensive collection after so long a period.

First of all, he says he worked "briefly". Second, he was in Britain within five years of that work. Third, an intelligence officer must have a very good memory. Fourth, he doesn't use the material much, and I have some trouble recalling him giving any "minute" details

imposing "black shirted" NKVD formations.

Now, where does Suvorov mentions "black shirted NKVD formations"? Oh, that's right. Nowhere. Black shirted divisions and NKVD divisions are mentioned quite independently of each other.

Next, the Russian edition of his books points out several mistakes in the footnotes. And when he quotes Grigorenko... Well, I'm not sure where the error is, but the parts he gives and what I see in front of me in the actual memoirs give a decidedly different impression. For example, he writes (I believe so, I don't have the original) that during the mobilization on the Far East there were no people, no transport, no equipment... The text of the memoirs in front of me says that this was the opinion of Moscow, and in reality, the Front Commander found everything needed.

Of what relevance is archival research? What does it matter in what way the evidence is obtained?

It does. If archival documents contradict your statements (like, for example, actual plans of covering the border ignoring Romania as a "minor objective"), or the "autobahn tanks", or the concentration of forces (Rezun's biggest failure - the actual concentration of forces on Soviet border was much, much less than he implies), then your research is discredited.

And in what way do they contradict it?

The most I can remember him saying something to that effect is saying that the Soviet artillery was quite efficient against any German tank.

That was in "Suicide", I believe, but I'll look it up.

In "Suicide", Suvorov gives a quote by Halder that they should use the soviet 76 mm in Africa as heavy AT's

Your claim here is egregious - was the Soviet 45-mm (the most common AT gun) "quite efficient" against German tanks?

Well, the 57 mm was not mass produced in 1941-2, so, apparently, the 45 mm was considered quite adequate at the time.

Britain didn't mass produce such tanks. The Soviets made 4,000. ... Then they are certainly not fit for defense.

Why? There's a lot of rivers you have to cross in Russia (in fact, the crossing of Svir' was on Russian territory), especially when conducting recon operations. A weapon like a floating tank is potentially useful in Russian river-crossed heartlands. Problem was, the Soviet floating tanks were poorly built machines (floating tanks in WWII were poor in general). But if they were a tad better, they'd be utilized better.

T-40 didn't seem to have a lot of drawbacks. Yet it's production was dropped.

Did you read his later books? Where he answers to his opponents? Oh, the falsehoods he finds there...

Yeah, his "opponents", from which Glantz, Harrison and Isaev, for example, are consciously excluded. Maybe because they do more sort of research on Soviet wartime actions instead of trying to "oppose" a buffoon.

I gave you some examples about Glantz. Here is an example about Isaev. Why should Suvorov personally concern himself with every buffoon?

Suvorov usually quotes the full text.

False. The misquote of Sandalov proves he consciously omits joined parts of texts. That is misquoting.

I was talking about the Field Manual.

Yeah, and look at the war games carried out just before the war by his army's forces At first, they retreat, then they counterattack.

My point was that the emphasis was on the offensive part. Yet you ripped it out of context...

Yeah. That's what is said. Misquoting is not excusable. The Sandalov quote is ripped out of context, and I'm not sure what's so bad about defending the border and then counter-attacking with full strength

And where was that "defending" after the Germans attacked?

The General Staff officers worked some 16 hours a day in the first half of 1941. That's enough of a paper trail. What do all those historians with access to the archives say about its content?

That's not a paper trail - where are the documents?

That's the exact question.

All there is in the archives are plans of covering the state border. There's no document, or documents, that would indicate any agression. On the other hand, all OKW, OKH diaries - even if the original document, the order on UN Barbarossa was destroyed - and subsequent lower-level orders provide enough information to fully reconstruct intent.

Imagine yourself that you are a leader of a powerful international organization, or a country, and you hear a rumour that the instructions to the tank crews of a certain country contain parts which go against the international conventions (shooting surrendering people, for example). You demand that they give you the manual. They give you the instructions to the crew on getting into a tank, and state they have nothing else. Will you believe it? Well, you do.

For example, Halder's KTB says in 1940 "Hitler will attack Russia. The time is spring next year" or something like that.

Are there diaries of the Soviet generals from that time?

Even if the Barbarossa orders were destroyed, Halder's KTB would be enough to evidence the fact of their existence - as would the orders issued to tank groups, which spoke of direct destruction of the USSR as a state through agression (not of "defence of the Reich via covering the reich border" or something).

Where are the documents?

That's Suvorov's point - that despite everything that happened, there's enough.

[K. A. Pital]

The goal was Volga (and destruction of Ural from there). Not quite 10,000 km.

Are you knocking down your own strawmen? I was talking about several thousands of kilometers - like the 2-3 thousand km it takes to go from Germany to the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, and obviously vice-versa. Germany had to make a 2000+ km deep assault. The USSR would have to execute a similar very deep assault. However, it did not plan for such. This can mean two things - either the USSR assumed a deep assault is not necessary to destroy the enemy (and then it's faulty logic even if all the intent was there; the USSR could do nothing), or the USSR did not plan for a deep assault on Germany on it's own. *shrugs* Make your choice.

a High Command study in May of 1941 noted that with monthly military requirements for 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German stocks would be exhausted by August 1941

However, this did not happen, because Germany mobilized and basically took more oil from the civilian sector, doing what all sensible nations participating in the war should've done from the get go - fully mobilizing to war. So this study is only valid if Germany basically is so fucking dumb as not to take over civilian oil consumption. Germany was not that fucking dumb in reality; ergo, the claim loses all meaning.

The main attack was to cut Romania off. Direct attack on the relatively weak Romania was a job for the Odessa District. Its covering plan says to systematically destroy the oil storages and refineries.

Um... why exactly the densities of units defending the Soviet border were many times less not only of those demanded by the command for any offensive operation, but even less than those demanded for a defensive one? Why the forces positioned against Romania were so weak that they could not even pose a solid defence line, much less an offensive formation? Why the plans of covering the border do not specify an attack on Ploeshti, which would've clearly negated Hitler the access to Romanian oil?

And attacking, they would have learned it while actually dealing some damage to the enemy.

Indeed; this is why I'd even consider it beneficial for the RKKA to execute an attack. However, the RKKA could not do it - it's units were so dispersed that they were not even concentrated enough for a defence, much less so for any offensive (see above). The RKKA's density in border districts was 50 to 150 km per division. That is not only absolutely inadequate for offensives, it's also incredibly hard to defend. And even a concentration a-la Kursk would've possibly prevented so much damage, that wouldn't mean the Germans would be totally unable to conduct a counteroffensive - the density of German formations were extremely high.

Under a powerful enough attack it takes time to reorganize. By then, the Soviets could have got the edge.

That would've been a most welcoming scenario, but the USSR made a faulty assumption that German attack dates would occur later into the year. By mid-June, when they started figuring out the real situation, it was too late.

No recon?

Yes - the Soviet planes did not breach deeply into German territories (if at all) and only started "lazy reconaissance" (that is, when you fly along your own border and take shots at the enemy without deeply crossing into his territory) in mid-summer; the Germans, however, received an order of Sep 1940 to penetrate the Soviet territory for aerial reconaissance as deeply as 300 KILOMETERS. And breached the border many times.

Your explanation as to why the USSR did not conduct similar preparations, if it were preparing for a similar-scaled offensive?

Operation Mars was at the same time.

Exactly. Your point being...?

Not concentrated yet.

Not concentrated, and often faultily deployed with very wide dispersal; no deep aerial recon; no orders. Hmm, seems like no evidence

I am talking about the June 22nd Directive 3.

Which posited a typical counterstrike to try and surround the attacking forces with a shallow offensive up to Liublin (in essence, the peak of Soviet mechanized forces' capabilities, by the way). What's wrong with the directive, anyway?

But did they understand it before the war?

The massive amount of talks in the HQ and the effort to reorganize the units after the experience of 1939-1940 clearly indicated the USSR understood something is wrong. There were various proposals drawn up; I'm sure you know about the work of the HQ in pre-war year of 1941, right?

Definitely. Still, the 8th MK did manage to go some 500 km in five days, on Soviet territory (with high non combat losses, admittedly). They had enough capability to advance.

Hardly - they failed to inflict enough casualties even in offensive against German infantry formations, suffered colossal non-combat losses that rendered them incapable of fighting, and 500 km was basically their limit (that's why a lot of the tanks started breaking down; 500 km was close to motorhour limit, and for old tanks this distance was TOO MUCH).

You're proving my point for me - one of the best-equipped Soviet mechanized corps was incapable of meeting the goals you try to ascribe it. You can say again it speaks little about intent. But really, 50-150 km density per division is too bad for anything, and continous deployment of forces deep into ZapOVO, PribOVO etc. indicated a very serious flaw in Soviet decisions.

And given a few weeks to concentrate? Besides, if the units are concentrating for offense, there can be large weak areas.

Yes; but groups should be concentrated heavily on fronts. The densities were unsuitable for either defence or offence, and Soviet command kept erroneously deploying units in-depth instead of pushing them all to the border. Why?

I don't see what's funny. T-26 served in Spain until 1956 and in Finland until 1961. A good, reliable tank. Not very fast, but then, it was intended for infantry support. Certainly, not all German tanks could match its weaponry.

German anti-tank weapons easily destroyed the T-26, unlike more modern Soviet tanks, and the motorhours of the T-26 park were exhausted; so many tanks were simply left to lie - the reality was they could not even go because their engines were exhausted. This situation happened because the Soviet command favoured large, inflated paper numbers of tanks without considering their resource. The T-26 was a very poor fighter - when confronted with German tanks or anti-tank guns, it was usually lost inflicting zero to few losses on the Germans. Alack. It also held down the Soviet mobile units that could otherwise attack with a top speed of 50-60 km, to a low speed of 20 km per hour (unless they were willing to just dump all T-26s... and be left with so few tanks that it became impossible to win). Nice asset there.

The mistakes in the estimates for the needed number of cars can say that the operations wouldn't have been as successful. But little about the intent.

See above. Yes, the USSR could've had an intent to pre-empt a German attack, but the problem is it discovered the German attack TOO LATE (mid-June) and thus no matter what it were willing to do, it could not do it.

Weaker flanks. Germans concentrated in strength against Soviet weakness. That weakness largely existed because thу Soviets were concentrating in strength against German weakness.

Wrong - the USSR simply had 50-150 km per division density, too weak for anything. No attacking; hard defending. There were no "Soviet strengths" to speak of - the German concentration on the border was all-around superior.

With what kind of actions?

Marches and training. The commanders kept them listed for reasons described above.

By August the 4th they already had to replace many engines - and the distance they passed hardly corresponds to 200 hours.

Why? The tanks were constantly on-march during 1941; they left settlements very soon after taking to avoid Soviet counterstrikes (another useful German tactic, the USSR could not mimic first). By August, the German tanks were advancing for 1,5 months and passed close to a thousand KMs, right? That's even more than 200 hours; I'd say 300 on the average.

Now, translate it to distance please.

Depends on how swiftly you advance, but it's half a thousand km tops I'd say.

You see, until 1943 (read what others wrote!) the motorhour resoruce of the V-2 diesel for T-34 had only 100 hours (on stand!), on tank - 40 to 70 hours of work. You can imagine how 'deeply' a tank with such scant resource can advance. On the other hand, since 1943 the resource of engines was much improved; which of course impacted Soviet successes as well.

By contrast - German tank engines, especially for modern tanks, had a resource of 300-400 hours PRACTICALLY, i.e. on-tank.

Suvorov does give a quote about 8500 fuel cisterns on the roads during the first days - a sourced one.

8500 cisterns deployed to where? To troops situated in-land? How many tons of fuel? What were the destinations? See, you can't just handwave it. How much oil did the USSR concentrate for the units which, according to Rezun, had to do the deep offensive? How much oil was directed to rear-deployed units? (A terrible mistake, but onу that clearly betrays intent, a lack of will for deep offensives).

Since Suvorov has a whole chapter on the subject, your uncertainty seems strange to me.

Rezun is not an authority; the general chaos in Soviet units described in memoirs is hardly evidence of particular facts. On the other hands, it's a given fact the Soviet units had maps of the USSR, and the zones they were deployed to. These maps were present on both wargames and were issued to units deployed. Not to mention routine officers' atlas.

The purpose of the covering is to cover the mobilization, concentration, and deployment of the main forces (as stated in all 4 plans). Then what?

Attack and destroy the invader, of course. *shrugs* The problem was of course inadequate concentration even for defence. Most of the Soviet plans "covering the border" correspond to French plans of the war with Germany in pre-war times How would you explain that? France was preparing to attack Germany?

Yuri Felshtinsky states that in 1938-1940 the percent was 26.4%, with 32.6% in 1940, while Germany in 1938-9 had 15%. The plan for 1941 was 43.4%. Israel, with its rather problematic security status, has a figure which is 15% out of the overall budget, and 20% of the ordinary budget.

I assume Felshtinsky, like, say, Allen, Harrison or Gregory, bases his figures on archival data? *shrugs* I'm not sure what's that's supposed to prove either.

But then, the archival data on Soviet military spending, German military spending, etc. is no big secret. Here it is:

R. W. Davies, "Soviet Military Expenditure and the Armaments Industry, 1929-33: A Reconsideration," Europe-Asia Studies 45, no. 4 (1993): 577-608, R. W. Davies and Mark Harrison. "The Soviet Military-Economic Effort under the Second Five-Year Plan, 1933-1937," Europe-Asia Studies 49, no. 3 (1997): 369-406).

There can be fluctuations from the archival numbers, but the order is set. For a smaller economy like the USSR versus Reich, spending seems to be more than validated. In fact, what is more interesting, the USSR continued to spend a large fraction of 1940-1941 budgets on the construction of 4 Soviet Union class battleships, neither of which could be completed before 1943, and poured money into the Molotov line. It seems useless if you're aiming for a land war in the nearest future. Each Sovietsky Soyuz battleship cost a very large fraction of the Soviet budget, and combined, they ate a whopping 1/3rd of the annual state budget of the USSR. Think about it. Why?

And do they actually publish what they found? And Suvorov in his later books quotes some documents. What does Leningrad has to do with the Stumbling Colossus?

Yes, obviously they do (see above, for example - your points on Soviet "spending" are utterly false). That aside, Stumbling Colossus is not the best work on 1941 available. I'd recommend "The Cauldrons of 1941", but then, perhaps you've already read it. If you did, there shouldn't be any large questions left.

Glantz seems to have a problem grasping a very simple fact about the Soviet Army - seniority is determined by position, not rank. Suvorov studied for several years to be an officer of the GRU - a position for a colonel - a colonel of the General Staff. Then, he worked for a year in Moscow. Both positions imply certain access to the archives.

However, Rezun utilizes no archival data (even without a reference), resorting to misquotes of open sources instead. Why?

Fourth, he doesn't use the material much, and I have some trouble recalling him giving any "minute" details

Exactly. Which is all the more strange. If there were smoking guns, where are they?

Now, where does Suvorov mentions "black shirted NKVD formations"? Oh, that's right. Nowhere. Black shirted divisions and NKVD divisions are mentioned quite independently of each other.

Black-shirted divisions are a figment of Rezun's imagination. He also assumes them to be NKVD-formed and led (like some penal units were, for example). So perhaps that's why Glantz refers to them as such. That doesn't change the problem - where are the "black divisions"?

Next, the Russian edition of his books points out several mistakes in the footnotes. And when he quotes Grigorenko... Well, I'm not sure where the error is, but the parts he gives and what I see in front of me in the actual memoirs give a decidedly different impression. For example, he writes (I believe so, I don't have the original) that during the mobilization on the Far East there were no people, no transport, no equipment... The text of the memoirs in front of me says that this was the opinion of Moscow, and in reality, the Front Commander found everything needed.

I'll see to it. Like I said, let's leave the quote angle until I have some time to dig through Rezun's books for misquoting.

And in what way do they contradict it?

In more ways than one. Density of divisions and their deployment targets and plans are one of the most obvious facts. Other mistakes (like Germany having no means to force rivers, or not thinking about how tanks should cross either floating or submerged) are just icing on the cake.

In "Suicide", Suvorov gives a quote by Halder that they should use the soviet 76 mm in Africa as heavy AT's

I'll look up all the quotes, thanks.

...the 45 mm was considered quite adequate at the time.

You said it WAS adequate, not "was considered".

T-40 didn't seem to have a lot of drawbacks. Yet it's production was dropped.

The tank industry had to concentrate resources in wartime.

Why should Suvorov personally concern himself with every buffoon?

You seemed to quote P. Ton - he's not even a historian Rezun himself writes nothing; there's a strong suspicion he's now a collective of amateurs writing the same rubbish.

I was talking about the Field Manual.

Okay, let me put it straight - WHY did Rezun misquote Sandalov?

My point was that the emphasis was on the offensive part. Yet you ripped it out of context...

What "emphasis"? Surely you can't just rip parts of a quote off, right? I re-iterate - why did Rezun misquote Sandalov without any reasons for such cut-offs?

And where was that "defending" after the Germans attacked?

Defending what? Give me questions (maybe you need some info about battles on the Stalin line?), I'll give you answers.

That's the exact question.

Yeah; problem is, you failed to provide any. *shrugs* Even the Germans, who were being defeated utterly and tried to destroy as many documents as they could, failed to clean out Barbarossa documents. The USSR was not defeated and had no need to destroy anything. Where are the documents? The archives on pre-war preparations were well-examined, with many useful documents coming to light (e.g. orders from June 1941 on preparing for a German attack!). I ask where are the documents?

Are there diaries of the Soviet generals from that time?

I'm not sure, diaries' are more of a German thing. But there's enough papers from the time. See above. Where are the ones your thesis needs, though?

[Omeganian]

The goal was Volga (and destruction of Ural from there). Not quite 10,000 km.

Are you knocking down your own strawmen? I was talking about several thousands of kilometers - like the 2-3 thousand km it takes to go from Germany to the Arkhangelsk-Astrakhan line, and obviously vice-versa. Germany had to make a 2000+ km deep assault. The USSR would have to execute a similar very deep assault. However, it did not plan for such. This can mean two things - either the USSR assumed a deep assault is not necessary to destroy the enemy (and then it's faulty logic even if all the intent was there; the USSR could do nothing), or the USSR did not plan for a deep assault on Germany on it's own. *shrugs* Make your choice.

So, Hitler considered 20-30% of the Soviet Union sufficient to crush it. Are you saying that the Soviet Union could only defeat the Reich by advancing more than its entire length?

a High Command study in May of 1941 noted that with monthly military requirements for 7.25 million barrels and imports and home production of only 5.35 million barrels, German stocks would be exhausted by August 1941

However, this did not happen, because Germany mobilized and basically took more oil from the civilian sector, doing what all sensible nations participating in the war should've done from the get go - fully mobilizing to war. So this study is only valid if Germany basically is so fucking dumb as not to take over civilian oil consumption. Germany was not that fucking dumb in reality; ergo, the claim loses all meaning.

Well, lets look at the Halder diaries, August 7th 1941 (translation from Russian, sorry for possible inaccuracies).

After 1.10 we shall have the following amount of fuel: 380 thousand tons a month (our own production) plus 320 thousand tons a month (from importing). Allover, 700 thousand tons per month.

We need for the armed forces and the industry: 570 thousand tons a month (not counting the fuel needed for the operations) and 125 thousand tons a month - for countries dependent upon us, as well as 130 thousand tons a month - for Italy. This will be 825 thousand tons of fuel per month. this means a shortage of over 120 thousand tons a month.

Then, there are proposed measures of lowering the fuel consumption (cutting off the civilian consumption is the one which gives the least), ending with:

With the current fuel status, large operations are impossible.

Now, cut off some 80% of the import, and we get a 125 thousand ton a month shortage for the German armed forces and the industry alone - without major operations. Sounds like quite a problem.

The main attack was to cut Romania off. Direct attack on the relatively weak Romania was a job for the Odessa District. Its covering plan says to systematically destroy the oil storages and refineries.

Um... why exactly the densities of units defending the Soviet border were many times less not only of those demanded by the command for any offensive operation, but even less than those demanded for a defensive one? Why the forces positioned against Romania were so weak that they could not even pose a solid defence line, much less an offensive formation?

Why are you so stuck on the situation for June 22nd? Where do I (or Suvorov, for that matter) say that the attack was supposed to be on June 22nd? You intend to prove that incomplete concentration is insufficient concentration? That requires no proof.

Why the plans of covering the border do not specify an attack on Ploeshti, which would've clearly negated Hitler the access to Romanian oil?

a) With consecutive strikes of the combat air forces to destroy the air forces of the enemy on his airfields and bases in the areas:
...
3) Brasov, Ploesti, Bucharest.

...

c) To systematically destroy the petroleum depots and the refineries.

Now, where else would they find such targets?

Under a powerful enough attack it takes time to reorganize. By then, the Soviets could have got the edge.

That would've been a most welcoming scenario, but the USSR made a faulty assumption that German attack dates would occur later into the year. By mid-June, when they started figuring out the real situation, it was too late.

And if you determine the time of the attack yourself?

No recon?

Yes - the Soviet planes did not breach deeply into German territories (if at all) and only started "lazy reconaissance" (that is, when you fly along your own border and take shots at the enemy without deeply crossing into his territory) in mid-summer; the Germans, however, received an order of Sep 1940 to penetrate the Soviet territory for aerial reconaissance as deeply as 300 KILOMETERS. And breached the border many times.

http://militera.lib.ru/bio/karpov/18.html Well, there is a claim that the German positions were known down to a battalion level. By what means?

I am talking about the June 22nd Directive 3.

Which posited a typical counterstrike to try and surround the attacking forces with a shallow offensive up to Liublin (in essence, the peak of Soviet mechanized forces' capabilities, by the way). What's wrong with the directive, anyway?

First, you claim that there were insufficient forces even for defense. Then, you say that under these conditions it was "typical" to attack, surround and destroy large groups of the German forces within a couple of days. I'm not following the logic.

Definitely. Still, the 8th MK did manage to go some 500 km in five days, on Soviet territory (with high non combat losses, admittedly). They had enough capability to advance.

Hardly - they failed to inflict enough casualties even in offensive against German infantry formations, suffered colossal non-combat losses that rendered them incapable of fighting, and 500 km was basically their limit (that's why a lot of the tanks started breaking down; 500 km was close to motorhour limit,

20 hours?

You're proving my point for me - one of the best-equipped Soviet mechanized corps was incapable of meeting the goals you try to ascribe it.

Many of the problems were due to the lack of air support and recon. And that was because the Germans attacked first and achieved air superiority. And if the situation was reversed?

You can say again it speaks little about intent. But really, 50-150 km density per division is too bad for anything, and continous deployment of forces deep into ZapOVO, PribOVO etc. indicated a very serious flaw in Soviet decisions.

Now, how do you prove it was deep deployment, and not advancement towards the border by forces deployed over a large territory?

And given a few weeks to concentrate? Besides, if the units are concentrating for offense, there can be large weak areas.

Yes; but groups should be concentrated heavily on fronts. The densities were unsuitable for either defence or offence, and Soviet command kept erroneously deploying units in-depth instead of pushing them all to the border. Why?

Because the time to attack didn't come yet.

I don't see what's funny. T-26 served in Spain until 1956 and in Finland until 1961. A good, reliable tank. Not very fast, but then, it was intended for infantry support. Certainly, not all German tanks could match its weaponry.

German anti-tank weapons easily destroyed the T-26, unlike more modern Soviet tanks, and the motorhours of the T-26 park were exhausted; so many tanks were simply left to lie - the reality was they could not even go because their engines were exhausted. This situation happened because the Soviet command favoured large, inflated paper numbers of tanks without considering their resource. The T-26 was a very poor fighter - when confronted with German tanks or anti-tank guns, it was usually lost inflicting zero to few losses on the Germans. Alack.

And yet for some reason, the Germans kept them until the end of the war. And the Soviets used them in 1945 against Japan.

It also held down the Soviet mobile units that could otherwise attack with a top speed of 50-60 km, to a low speed of 20 km per hour (unless they were willing to just dump all T-26s... and be left with so few tanks that it became impossible to win). Nice asset there.

The speed was 30 kph.

With what kind of actions?

Marches and training. The commanders kept them listed for reasons described above.

And these were sufficient to exhaust the motorhours of all those thousands of tanks?

By August the 4th they already had to replace many engines - and the distance they passed hardly corresponds to 200 hours.

Why? The tanks were constantly on-march during 1941; they left settlements very soon after taking to avoid Soviet counterstrikes (another useful German tactic, the USSR could not mimic first). By August, the German tanks were advancing for 1,5 months and passed close to a thousand KMs, right? That's even more than 200 hours; I'd say 300 on the average.

3-5 kph average advancement speed? What did they waste they time upon?

Now, translate it to distance please.

Depends on how swiftly you advance, but it's half a thousand km tops I'd say.

In 50 hours of continuous driving?

Suvorov does give a quote about 8500 fuel cisterns on the roads during the first days - a sourced one.

8500 cisterns deployed to where? To troops situated in-land? How many tons of fuel? What were the destinations? See, you can't just handwave it. How much oil did the USSR concentrate for the units which, according to Rezun, had to do the deep offensive? How much oil was directed to rear-deployed units? (A terrible mistake, but onу that clearly betrays intent, a lack of will for deep offensives).

And how do you interpret the words that the 10th army had enough fuel?

Since Suvorov has a whole chapter on the subject, your uncertainty seems strange to me.

Rezun is not an authority; the general chaos in Soviet units described in memoirs is hardly evidence of particular facts. On the other hands, it's a given fact the Soviet units had maps of the USSR, and the zones they were deployed to. These maps were present on both wargames and were issued to units deployed. Not to mention routine officers' atlas.

Well, the fact is that many commanders complained about lack of maps. Suvorov gives four examples. These are facts. (he says he has 300 more, but the margin is to narrow to contain them all)

The purpose of the covering is to cover the mobilization, concentration, and deployment of the main forces (as stated in all 4 plans). Then what?

Attack and destroy the invader, of course. *shrugs* The problem was of course inadequate concentration even for defence. Most of the Soviet plans "covering the border" correspond to French plans of the war with Germany in pre-war times How would you explain that? France was preparing to attack Germany?

It's an integral part of any deployment plan. It proves nothing about the intent of the general war. The question is, what were the plans of the actual war?

Yuri Felshtinsky states that in 1938-1940 the percent was 26.4%, with 32.6% in 1940, while Germany in 1938-9 had 15%. The plan for 1941 was 43.4%. Israel, with its rather problematic security status, has a figure which is 15% out of the overall budget, and 20% of the ordinary budget.

I assume Felshtinsky, like, say, Allen, Harrison or Gregory, bases his figures on archival data? *shrugs* I'm not sure what's that's supposed to prove either.

But then, the archival data on Soviet military spending, German military spending, etc. is no big secret. Here it is:

An interesting document you give. Ends right before the part which interests us.

There can be fluctuations from the archival numbers, but the order is set. For a smaller economy like the USSR versus Reich, spending seems to be more than validated. In fact, what is more interesting, the USSR continued to spend a large fraction of 1940-1941 budgets on the construction of 4 Soviet Union class battleships,

Yeah, such a large spending none were more than 20% complete.

It seems useless if you're aiming for a land war in the nearest future. Each Sovietsky Soyuz battleship cost a very large fraction of the Soviet budget, and combined, they ate a whopping 1/3rd of the annual state budget of the USSR. Think about it. Why?

By the time they would have been completed, Germany would have been defeated. Then - Japan, Britain, perhaps. And I believe the figures are for a one year budget. Spread across 4-5 years it doesn't look that bad. Besides, judging from the degree of completion, their priority was somewhat reduced.

Glantz seems to have a problem grasping a very simple fact about the Soviet Army - seniority is determined by position, not rank. Suvorov studied for several years to be an officer of the GRU - a position for a colonel - a colonel of the General Staff. Then, he worked for a year in Moscow. Both positions imply certain access to the archives.

However, Rezun utilizes no archival data (even without a reference), resorting to misquotes of open sources instead. Why?

The reason he gives - an archive cannot be checked by the reader. Definitely couldn't be when he worked on the Icebreaker.

Now, where does Suvorov mentions "black shirted NKVD formations"? Oh, that's right. Nowhere. Black shirted divisions and NKVD divisions are mentioned quite independently of each other.

Black-shirted divisions are a figment of Rezun's imagination. He also assumes them to be NKVD-formed and led (like some penal units were, for example). So perhaps that's why Glantz refers to them as such. That doesn't change the problem - where are the "black divisions"?

He says at least some of the divisions were supplied with food by NKVD. But commanded and led? Well, he does say one of the armies got an NKVD commander after the Germans attacked, but a lot of NKVD forces and commanders were transferred to the army at the time.

And in what way do they contradict it?

In more ways than one. Density of divisions and their deployment targets and plans are one of the most obvious facts. Other mistakes (like Germany having no means to force rivers, or not thinking about how tanks should cross either floating or submerged) are just icing on the cake.

And where does Suvorov say the Germans had no means to cross rivers? He does mention (in a later book) 150+ tanks which could cross submerged. He merely says that it's better to have direct fire support among the crossing forces.

...the 45 mm was considered quite adequate at the time.

You said it WAS adequate, not "was considered".

During a war, there is little difference. The results are in front of you.

T-40 didn't seem to have a lot of drawbacks. Yet it's production was dropped.

The tank industry had to concentrate resources in wartime.

And the type of the war they fought forced them to concentrate away from amphibious tanks.

Why should Suvorov personally concern himself with every buffoon?

You seemed to quote P. Ton - he's not even a historian

And why does he have to be? Either there is a misquote or there isn't, you don't need to be a scientist to check that.

Rezun himself writes nothing; there's a strong suspicion he's now a collective of amateurs writing the same rubbish.

Don't mix up suspicions and urban legends.

I was talking about the Field Manual.

Okay, let me put it straight - WHY did Rezun misquote Sandalov?

Perhaps he considered that part to reflect best the content of the chapter. Perhaps he considered the other parts to simply be Soviet Newspeak - like in the FM-39.

And where was that "defending" after the Germans attacked?

Defending what? Give me questions (maybe you need some info about battles on the Stalin line?), I'll give you answers.

Where was the "planned" "defense" of these forces after the Germans attacked?

That's the exact question.

Yeah; problem is, you failed to provide any. *shrugs* Even the Germans, who were being defeated utterly and tried to destroy as many documents as they could, failed to clean out Barbarossa documents. The USSR was not defeated and had no need to destroy anything.

1941 - Moscow in danger - documents are burned. 1991 - Soviet Union falls - documents are burned.

Where are the documents? The archives on pre-war preparations were well-examined, with many useful documents coming to light (e.g. orders from June 1941 on preparing for a German attack!).

There are plans for covering - which both sides had. They prove very little. Aside from that - well, what documents?

Are there diaries of the Soviet generals from that time?

I'm not sure, diaries' are more of a German thing. But there's enough papers from the time. See above. Where are the ones your thesis needs, though?

Well, there is the December 1940 conference, which didn't see the defensive operations as anything more than an integral part of the offense. Also, it stated that in such operations the defense must be deep - which does lead to certain thoughts about the purpose of the Molotov Line, which was built against the principle.

[K. A. Pital]

So, Hitler considered 20-30% of the Soviet Union sufficient to crush it. Are you saying that the Soviet Union could only defeat the Reich by advancing more than its entire length?

Quite the contrary - the USSR merely had to advance to a similar objective where the enemy would be denied all industrial potential and military power - and of course at the very least take the capital, Berlin. But that alone is a very deep strategic operation - the Soviet forces would have to make a 1000 km offensive to merely enter the eastern territories of Germany proper and take Berlin. To decisively end the capacity of Germany for resistance, however, the Soviet Union had to capture or destroy industries in the Ruhr, which means the depths is further enhanced by another thousand kilometers. So, all in all, the shortest strategic operation the USSR could be looking at was around two thousand kilometers on-road.

Now, cut off some 80% of the import, and we get a 125 thousand ton a month shortage for the German armed forces and the industry alone - without major operations. Sounds like quite a problem.

Germany operated with shortages during the war, commonly so (almost perpetually so in fact).

In spite of shortages and other difficulties, production and supply, although never reaching the amounts contemplated by Göring, presented no serious problems until the spring of 1944.28 This was accomplished by giving no claimant, including the armed forces, all of the fuel that he needed. A good example is the ruthless reduction in the allocation for civilian passenger cars. The only people permitted to operate a motor vehicle were doctors, midwives, policemen, and high government and party officials. Their total allocation was only 450,000 barrels per year.

Why are you so stuck on the situation for June 22nd? Where do I (or Suvorov, for that matter) say that the attack was supposed to be on June 22nd?

Rezun says it was supposed to occur very shortly thereafter, a mere few weeks or so. The reality is such that the Soviet Union started the deployment of forces too late even for that, and misdeployed many forces in such a manner that prohibited their use (unless only in deep defence, because they were deployed to inland regions). If you don't agree with Rezun here, that's fine. Then why would you defend his outlandish statements, anyway?

Now, where else would they find such targets?

Air raids are quite understandable (and in fact are obviously needed; the Allies planned some raids against Baku despite not planning a war with the USSR), but why had the Soviet Union concentrated almost no forces capable of a deep land offensive (and failed to provide necessary plans for a deep attack against oil fields) on the Romanian border?

And if you determine the time of the attack yourself?

Then you deploy all your forces to the border, like Germany did. *shrugs* You don't deploy any forces in-depth except reserve formations. You also bring all your units to wartime TOE strength (like Germany did), as opposed to some still operating under peacetime TOEs (USSR).

http://militera.lib.ru/bio/karpov/18.html Well, there is a claim that the German positions were known down to a battalion level. By what means?

The link you've provided makes no such claim *wonders* Karpov says that IF Zhukov's plan were accepted ... and then describes a "coulda-woulda" scenario of a preventive strike. The reality is such the Soviet intelligence did not know "German positions down to a battalion level". Sorry, but you need to improve your Russian, and rely on documents instead of memoirs. I said - there was no deep aerial recon, whereas Germans had an order from Sep 1940 to penetrate for 300 km deep. Prove your point or concede it.

First, you claim that there were insufficient forces even for defense. Then, you say that under these conditions it was "typical" to attack, surround and destroy large groups of the German forces within a couple of days. I'm not following the logic.

Of course there were insufficient forces even for defence. I'm not sure you even understand the point. The Soviet doctrine considered counterattacks as the best way to stop an enemy advance.

20 hours? ... Many of the problems were due to the lack of air support and recon. And that was because the Germans attacked first and achieved air superiority. And if the situation was reversed?

First of all, motorhours are wasted all the time a tank runs it's engine, regardless of speed, regardless of whether it's driving or not. On-march, or in battle, where speeds are very low, or keeping the engines running to warm them up - in all these cases the resource is wasted. Second, lack of air support can't adequately explain a failure of mechanized attack - mechanized forces are resilient to aerial attacks and can still accomplish objectives even when support is lacking. I'm not sure there was a "lack of recon" - they simply failed to discern where the enemy is now and chose a false attack point. That was a common error for Soviet forces in the first part of the war (1941-1942).

Now, how do you prove it was deep deployment, and not advancement towards the border by forces deployed over a large territory?

Quite easily - out of 114 divisions in the First Strategic Echelon, only 32 were moved towards the border (not "all 114!" like Rezun writes, by the way - another falsehood in his books, exposed by looking at factual orders). Other divisions either did not move or were re-dislocated in-depth. If you don't subscribe to Rezun's idea that "attack was imminent", then of course this objection is not against you, but once again, it's against Rezun's bullshit.

And yet for some reason, the Germans kept them until the end of the war. And the Soviets used them in 1945 against Japan.

In what numbers and in what positions? The Germans also utilized Renault FT-17s and the USSR used obsolete tanks as well. Does that mean they were good tanks? Let's not play words here - how many trophy T-26s Germany used? How many T-26s the USSR used in Manchuria, and in what roles? *shrugs* Answer that, and it will be self-explanatory.

The speed was 30 kph.

Top speed on-road, yeah. In reality, many tanks didn't make even that. The T-34 which was to replace the T-26 as the medium tank had a twice greater top speed.

And these were sufficient to exhaust the motorhours of all those thousands of tanks?

Not all, no, but a significant fraction. For the 15th MC, for example, as well as for many other units. You'll have to look up the loss statistics. Motorhour exaustion was a major factor in non-combat losses. You didn't know that?

3-5 kph average advancement speed? What did they waste they time upon?

See above. Newer V-2s often had 40 to 70 hours of resource, and tanks with exhausted resource had about that much fuel left. It also pays to see just how many thousands of tanks were battle ready and in what condition, in Western regions.
http://www.tuad.nsk.ru/~history/Author/ ... N/boe.html

And how do you interpret the words that the 10th army had enough fuel?

Enough fuel for what? Acting according to the plan of covering the border (which was the only plan, and it included this army for the Bialostok cover region)? *hums* And so what? It had stacked up enough fuel for a leap to Berlin or something?

Well, the fact is that many commanders complained about lack of maps. Suvorov gives four examples. These are facts. (he says he has 300 more, but the margin is to narrow to contain them all)

Long story told short - the Soviet commanders had maps from the new Soviet border up to the Dnieper. The command considered the Dnieper an absolute worst case. Beyond that, maps of adequate scale were lacking because no one thought the enemy could ever invade that far.

It's an integral part of any deployment plan. It proves nothing about the intent of the general war. The question is, what were the plans of the actual war?

Strange question. The plans of war are to defeat the enemy. All war plans as like that, as you yourself just said. Having a contingency plan in case of war with nation X is common. Unless you mean something else - what, then?

An interesting document you give. Ends right before the part which interests us.

Yes, because it's pre-war spending displayed. In 1940, the last year of "peacetime" (not really peacetime, the USSR engaged in a war with Finland, but anyhow...) Soviet defence burden was 17% of GDP. The defence burden only rose to the figures you cite (40-50%) in wartime years, with a peak defence burden of 61% in 1943.
Economics of World War II: http://books.google.ru/books?id=ZgFu2p5uogwC

You're welcome to read and discuss.

Yeah, such a large spending none were more than 20% complete. ... By the time they would have been completed, Germany would have been defeated. Then - Japan, Britain, perhaps. And I believe the figures are for a one year budget. Spread across 4-5 years it doesn't look that bad. Besides, judging from the degree of completion, their priority was somewhat reduced.

The technical issues plaguing them were the main culprit; the order to stop the work came only in July 1941; the USSR did not expect such a catastrophe and since it continued to distract resources on such a project indicates that it was pretty important. "Japan, Britain perhaps"? USA and Britain built dozens of capital warships in the interwar period. Did they plan a war against each other? *laughs*

The reason he gives - an archive cannot be checked by the reader. Definitely couldn't be when he worked on the Icebreaker.

And the archives proved him false - for example, he writes that all 114 divisions of the FSE moved to the border, when in fact only 32 did. That is simply false. So he'd either not seen the archival orders on divisional movement, or he's bullshitting. I think the former's right - he's never seen a shit, but the latter is also true.

And where does Suvorov say the Germans had no means to cross rivers? He does mention (in a later book) 150+ tanks which could cross submerged. He merely says that it's better to have direct fire support among the crossing forces.

150+? You should learn your math better (as should Rezun) - the Germans had fitted out with underwater snorkeling equipment about a third of all Pz.IIIs they had, for example (not sure, though - I'll have to check). Snorkeling was more efficient than light, badly armored and badly armed floating tanks (although the Germans also had floating Pz.IIs designed). Rezun, however, states an outright falsehood in one of his books, where he says Halder's original note in the KTB does not mention floating tanks, and it has been falsified by Soviet translators (sic !) *laughs* Take the German edition of the KTB and you'll have it right there - Rezun flat out lied. He even couldn't understand which tanks Halder was talking about - he assumed those were uWe-equipped PzKpfw.III-s, when in fact those were floating Pz.Kpfw IIs.

And the type of the war they fought forced them to concentrate away from amphibious tanks.

False. The Soviet Union from 1943 onwards executed a massive long offensive (series of offensives), often crossed rivers, Germans often blew up bridges. However, floating tanks were sparsely used if at all, despite their apparent "usefulness". The real situation is far more simple - light floating tanks were poor fighters, and other means to cross rivers (like crossing with real heavy and medium tanks) were simply more efficient.

Perhaps he considered that part to reflect best the content of the chapter. Perhaps he considered the other parts to simply be Soviet Newspeak - like in the FM-39.

So you admit he misquoted? Next questions - why did he claim 114 divisions of the FSE moved to the border, when in fact only 32 did? Why did he claim Konev secretly left his office for a new dislocation on June 22nd (he did not)? Why did he claim Soviet translators inserted a sentence on floating tanks in Halder's KTB, when in fact it was there?

Where was the "planned" "defense" of these forces after the Germans attacked?

Which forces?

There are plans for covering - which both sides had. They prove very little. Aside from that - well, [url=http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30]what documents? ... Well, there is the December 1940 conference, which didn't see the defensive operations as anything more than an integral part of the offense. Also, it stated that in such operations the defense must be deep - which does lead to certain thoughts about the purpose of the Molotov Line, which was built against the principle.

So why did the USSR build the Molotov Line, then? A worthless and harming investment if you need to concentrate funds for a war of agression. Germany built nothing in the East when preparing for Barbarossa.

[Thanas]

So, Hitler considered 20-30% of the Soviet Union sufficient to crush it. Are you saying that the Soviet Union could only defeat the Reich by advancing more than its entire length?

Quite the contrary - the USSR merely had to advance to a similar objective where the enemy would be denied all industrial potential and military power - and of course at the very least take the capital, Berlin. But that alone is a very deep strategic operation - the Soviet forces would have to make a 1000 km offensive to merely enter the eastern territories of Germany proper and take Berlin. To decisively end the capacity of Germany for resistance, however, the Soviet Union had to capture or destroy industries in the Ruhr, which means the depths is further enhanced by another thousand kilometers. So, all in all, the shortest strategic operation the USSR could be looking at was around two thousand kilometers on-road.

To follow up on that - the Nazis also had the advantage that a lot of the Soviet Union was not easily and quickly resupplied simply due to the comparatively thinner rail network. In comparison, this is the German rail system. The Nazis have the advantage of supplying and relocating troops at will, whereas the soviets have to ship everything over longer distances.

So why did the USSR build the Molotov Line, then? A worthless and harming investment if you need to concentrate funds for a war of agression. Germany built nothing in the East when preparing for Barbarossa.

Except forward airbases, but these are not an indication of a defensive deployment.

[Omeganian]

So, Hitler considered 20-30% of the Soviet Union sufficient to crush it. Are you saying that the Soviet Union could only defeat the Reich by advancing more than its entire length?

Quite the contrary - the USSR merely had to advance to a similar objective where the enemy would be denied all industrial potential and military power - and of course at the very least take the capital, Berlin. But that alone is a very deep strategic operation - the Soviet forces would have to make a 1000 km offensive to merely enter the eastern territories of Germany proper and take Berlin. To decisively end the capacity of Germany for resistance, however, the Soviet Union had to capture or destroy industries in the Ruhr, which means the depths is further enhanced by another thousand kilometers. So, all in all, the shortest strategic operation the USSR could be looking at was around two thousand kilometers on-road.

The straight line distance to Germany is 600 km, to Ruhr, a bit over 1000 km. Suvorov stated that you need to multiply it by 1.3 at the most for a blitzkrieg type operation... not quite your figures. Of course, it would have been a bit more from the south, but there would have been less resistance, too. Tell me, how far did Germans expect to advance actually fighting, until resistance is crushed?

Now, cut off some 80% of the import, and we get a 125 thousand ton a month shortage for the German armed forces and the industry alone - without major operations. Sounds like quite a problem.

Germany operated with shortages during the war, commonly so (almost perpetually so in fact).

Ever heard of Nasreddin's attempt to train his donkey to survive without food?

In spite of shortages and other difficulties, production and supply, although never reaching the amounts contemplated by Göring, presented no serious problems until the spring of 1944.28 This was accomplished by giving no claimant, including the armed forces, all of the fuel that he needed. A good example is the ruthless reduction in the allocation for civilian passenger cars. The only people permitted to operate a motor vehicle were doctors, midwives, policemen, and high government and party officials. Their total allocation was only 450,000 barrels per year.

So, fuel synthesizing plants are bombed (likely bringing them down close to 1941 production levels), and the Soviets are starting serious attempts to retake Romania (likely causing some minor production problems). That's when the fuel shortage starts causing serious problems. How does it prove that losing Romania in 1941 wouldn't have caused similar serious problems?

Why are you so stuck on the situation for June 22nd? Where do I (or Suvorov, for that matter) say that the attack was supposed to be on June 22nd?

Rezun says it was supposed to occur very shortly thereafter, a mere few weeks or so. The reality is such that the Soviet Union started the deployment of forces too late even for that, and misdeployed many forces in such a manner that prohibited their use (unless only in deep defence, because they were deployed to inland regions). If you don't agree with Rezun here, that's fine. Then why would you defend his outlandish statements, anyway?

A lot can be done in a few weeks. If it's not enough - you reschedule, like Hitler did. Hofstadter's law is eternal, I won't argue with that.

Now, where else would they find such targets?

Air raids are quite understandable (and in fact are obviously needed; the Allies planned some raids against Baku despite not planning a war with the USSR), but why had the Soviet Union concentrated almost no forces capable of a deep land offensive (and failed to provide necessary plans for a deep attack against oil fields) on the Romanian border?

The 2nd MC (500 tanks, 3800 cars) was stationed against Romania. Two thirds of the tanks were BT's. No forces capable of deep land offensive, eh? Not fully equipped yet, but there does seem to be a certain tendency.

And if you determine the time of the attack yourself?

Then you deploy all your forces to the border, like Germany did. *shrugs* You don't deploy any forces in-depth except reserve formations.

Which, for Germans, amounted to over 40 divisions by June.

over the second half of May, Germans have started creating operative depth, concentrating west of the line Łódź, Kraków - 6 - 8 divisions.

Now, Suvorov's description of the forces of either side can be described in the following short manner; Germany - a few million soldiers with small reserves behind them. USSR - a few million soldiers with large reserves and immense mobilization potential behind them.

First, you claim that there were insufficient forces even for defense. Then, you say that under these conditions it was "typical" to attack, surround and destroy large groups of the German forces within a couple of days. I'm not following the logic.

Of course there were insufficient forces even for defence. I'm not sure you even understand the point. The Soviet doctrine considered counterattacks as the best way to stop an enemy advance.

The December 1940 conference mainly mentions counterattacks after the enemy is exhausted. By a powerful, deep defense. This is not what we see here.

20 hours? ... Many of the problems were due to the lack of air support and recon. And that was because the Germans attacked first and achieved air superiority. And if the situation was reversed?

First of all, motorhours are wasted all the time a tank runs it's engine, regardless of speed, regardless of whether it's driving or not. On-march, or in battle, where speeds are very low, or keeping the engines running to warm them up - in all these cases the resource is wasted. Second, lack of air support can't adequately explain a failure of mechanized attack - mechanized forces are resilient to aerial attacks and can still accomplish objectives even when support is lacking. I'm not sure there was a "lack of recon" - they simply failed to discern where the enemy is now and chose a false attack point. That was a common error for Soviet forces in the first part of the war (1941-1942).

Yeah, there was a lot of confusion. And hurry. And lack of coordination. And lack of air support and recon. The question is, how much of that could have been avoided if the corps prepared for a few weeks and launched an attack.

http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... ew&id=2638

And yet for some reason, the Germans kept them until the end of the war. And the Soviets used them in 1945 against Japan.

In what numbers and in what positions? The Germans also utilized Renault FT-17s and the USSR used obsolete tanks as well. Does that mean they were good tanks? Let's not play words here - how many trophy T-26s Germany used? How many T-26s the USSR used in Manchuria, and in what roles? *shrugs* Answer that, and it will be self-explanatory.

Used when speed wasn't a factor. Border fighting in Manchuria, fighting in Finland. Yes, putting them in the mechcorps might not have been the best choice, at least not for the deep advance units - it's better for tying up the enemy near the border. For its own class and purpose - a good tank. As for numbers - well, the Finns have captured enough to make T-26 the main tank of their army, and they did. The Germans have captured a few dozens, and these lasted at least to the Battle of Warsaw, and were good enough for SS divisions - at least on the level of Germany's own tech, it seems.

The speed was 30 kph.

Top speed on-road, yeah. In reality, many tanks didn't make even that.

Soviet road. The British prototype was 22 mph.

The T-34 which was to replace the T-26 as the medium tank had a twice greater top speed.

T-26 was a light tank of infantry support. It was to be replaced as such by T-50.

3-5 kph average advancement speed? What did they waste they time upon?

See above. Newer V-2s often had 40 to 70 hours of resource, and tanks with exhausted resource had about that much fuel left. It also pays to see just how many thousands of tanks were battle ready and in what condition, in Western regions.
http://www.tuad.nsk.ru/~history/Author/ ... N/boe.html

Doesn't look bad.

Well, the fact is that many commanders complained about lack of maps. Suvorov gives four examples. These are facts. (he says he has 300 more, but the margin is to narrow to contain them all)

Long story told short - the Soviet commanders had maps from the new Soviet border up to the Dnieper. The command considered the Dnieper an absolute worst case. Beyond that, maps of adequate scale were lacking because no one thought the enemy could ever invade that far.

And those existing maps - were they issued to the armies? The long range air forces, for example, were to be issued maps only by July. Not all the examples Suvorov gives are east of Dnieper. What kind of maps were issued? What kind of maps were being burned?

An interesting document you give. Ends right before the part which interests us.

Yes, because it's pre-war spending displayed. In 1940, the last year of "peacetime" (not really peacetime, the USSR engaged in a war with Finland, but anyhow...) Soviet defence burden was 17% of GDP. The defence burden only rose to the figures you cite (40-50%) in wartime years, with a peak defence burden of 61% in 1943.
Economics of World War II: http://books.google.ru/books?id=ZgFu2p5uogwC
You're welcome to read and discuss.

Seems like there is some disagreement. Might be based on the fact that calculating costs where socialistic economics are concerned is a rather problematic task, which, according to Suvorov, can often be quite meaningless. Better look at the actual production of military tech.

Yeah, such a large spending none were more than 20% complete. ... By the time they would have been completed, Germany would have been defeated. Then - Japan, Britain, perhaps. And I believe the figures are for a one year budget. Spread across 4-5 years it doesn't look that bad. Besides, judging from the degree of completion, their priority was somewhat reduced.

The technical issues plaguing them were the main culprit; the order to stop the work came only in July 1941; the USSR did not expect such a catastrophe and since it continued to distract resources on such a project indicates that it was pretty important.

One ship's building ceased in 1940. One was 5% complete. Two were 20% complete.

The reason he gives - an archive cannot be checked by the reader. Definitely couldn't be when he worked on the Icebreaker.

And the archives proved him false - for example, he writes that all 114 divisions of the FSE moved to the border, when in fact only 32 did.

First, he says that there were 170 divisions, and 114 was the number which had some space to move until they hit the border. Second, he gives a quote that the districts were given the order to move the divisions closer - but until the order comes down to the divisions, until you prepare for the travel, until transport is available (until that happens, there is no point to issue the order to the division due to secrecy reasons)... some of the divisions, naturally, haven't started physically moving yet in the 7-10 days since the order, and didn't even receive the orders (except, in some cases, for an order to be at the ready).

So he'd either not seen the archival orders on divisional movement, or he's bullshitting. I think the former's right - he's never seen a shit, but the latter is also true.

Oh, the first part is definitely true. He had a high security clearance, but he officially stated in the TV series that even the data about precise division locations for June 1941 was too classified for him to access. I don't remember whether the opponents denied it.

And where does Suvorov say the Germans had no means to cross rivers? He does mention (in a later book) 150+ tanks which could cross submerged. He merely says that it's better to have direct fire support among the crossing forces.

150+? You should learn your math better (as should Rezun) - the Germans had fitted out with underwater snorkeling equipment about a third of all Pz.IIIs they had, for example (not sure, though - I'll have to check).

He says they were mainly Pz III's. He gives the whole number as 168.

Snorkeling was more efficient than light, badly armored and badly armed floating tanks

And if you need to fight immediately after crossing the river? Or cross several rivers?

(although the Germans also had floating Pz.IIs designed). Rezun, however, states an outright falsehood in one of his books, where he says Halder's original note in the KTB does not mention floating tanks, and it has been falsified by Soviet translators (sic !) *laughs* Take the German edition of the KTB and you'll have it right there - Rezun flat out lied. He even couldn't understand which tanks Halder was talking about - he assumed those were uWe-equipped PzKpfw.III-s, when in fact those were floating Pz.Kpfw IIs.

I have some trouble finding any editions other than Russian. However, I do see that the Russian translation constantly calls tanks capable of deep fording "amphibious", which is indeed a term which should only be used for tanks which can travel above water. Among all the cases of this incorrectly applied terminology, it's quite possible to miss a few mentions of tanks which were indeed capable of floating - especially since they had about as much of that ability as T-26 did.

There are plans for covering - which both sides had. They prove very little. Aside from that - well, [url=http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30]what documents? ... Well, there is the December 1940 conference, which didn't see the defensive operations as anything more than an integral part of the offense. Also, it stated that in such operations the defense must be deep - which does lead to certain thoughts about the purpose of the Molotov Line, which was built against the principle.

So why did the USSR build the Molotov Line, then? A worthless and harming investment if you need to concentrate funds for a war of agression.

If you'll point out to me which parts of Suvorov's explanations on the subject seem lacking to you, I'll do my best to answer that.

Germany built nothing in the East when preparing for Barbarossa.

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[K. A. Pital]

The straight line distance to Germany is 600 km, to Ruhr, a bit over 1000 km. Suvorov stated that you need to multiply it by 1.3 at the most for a blitzkrieg type operation...

Even with these laughable "estimates" (straight lines for marches? seriously?), it's 1300 km on-march. More if you meet opposition on the way.

Ever heard of Nasreddin's attempt to train his donkey to survive without food?

You are an idiot, right? I've explained to you how Germany solved it's shortage problem by reducing civilian consumption and raising the the production of synthetics; as well as how the German oil requirements will be growing LESS as they will be defending, and thus their logistical track would have an advantage. You just ignored it. Hey, how about I ignore you, moron?

So, fuel synthesizing plants are bombed (likely bringing them down close to 1941 production levels)

Who can bomb them in 1941? *shrugs* The Germans started experiencing serious issued only by 1943, when the Allies seriously initiated a strategic bombing campaign that was beyond the Soviet air capabilities. You're running in circles. The German logistics will be simplified if the USSR is attacking. That is what allowed Germany to hold out so long in 1943-1945 - despite a two-front offensive, really.

A lot can be done in a few weeks. If it's not enough - you reschedule, like Hitler did. Hofstadter's law is eternal, I won't argue with that.

So you support Rezun or you just assume the USSR could have attacked at some point in the future? *scratches head* Clarify your position. I have no intent to argue against the latter, because I'm of the same opinion, but that's not Rezun's pathetic theory sewn with white ropes.

The 2nd MC (500 tanks, 3800 cars) was stationed against Romania. Two thirds of the tanks were BT's. No forces capable of deep land offensive, eh? Not fully equipped yet, but there does seem to be a certain tendency.

*nods* Correct, a MC which was undermanned and undergunned (about 500 tanks, of which only 50 were T-34s and KVs, and only 3000 cars (and only 250 tractors) - not enough to support the MC's movement even by Soviet TOE); all equipment not even up to the Soviet TOE. The 2nd MC was placed in the reserve of the Chief Command (Stavka) and excluded from Plans of Covering the border; in fact, it was prohibited to use without a special order from the Stavka. In operations against Romania planned by the "Plans of covering the Border", the 2nd MC is nowhere to be found. The plan of action of 20th June 1941 excluded the 2nd MC - the Soviet command considered it inadequate. To refit it with T-34s and KVs, it would take more time than two weeks. And they had to change the plans.

So that's perfectly in-line with my prior point - the 2nd MC was incapable of a deep offensive; neither figured anywhere in the Soviet plans. Like I said, the USSR did not plan a deep offensive against Romania, and placed a reserve unit in that region, which was not even to be a part of the plans in case of attack, but to be a reserve. My point is fully proven.

Which, for Germans, amounted to over 40 divisions by June.

Really? By 22 June 1941 the Germans concentrated 181 divisions, if my memory doesn't fail me. By early June the situation was different, but the Germans were masters of deception. They rapidly deployed forces using the high capacity of their railway; and they basically kept their tank units behind until the very last few days, thus greatly increasing their strength just before the attack. Basically, the German pattern was much different from the Soviet one. What you write about reserves partly correct. The situation was more like "Germany and satellites - 4 million soldiers concentrated for a single super-strike", "USSR - 3 million soldiers spread out in 3 strategic echelons, and even inside said echelons". There was immense mobilization potential for both the Reich and the USSR. In fact, the USSR during the war had 34 million pass through the AF when the Reich about 21 million (excluding satellites, of course) - roughly comparable figures. Certainly nothing too extreme, not a 10:1 advantage.

The December 1940 conference mainly mentions counterattacks after the enemy is exhausted. By a powerful, deep defense. This is not what we see here.

The command has quite certainly changed it's doctrine to active defence in echelons on the December 1940 conference:

Учитывая опыт войны на Западе, нам наряду с подготовкой к активным наступательным действиям необходимо иметь представление и готовить войска к современной обороне. Современная оборона должна противостоять мощному огню артиллерии, массовой атаке танков, пехоты и воздушному противнику. Поэтому она должна быть глубоко противотанковой и противовоздушной и во всяком случае — активной. Наступающий будет стремиться сосредоточить подавляющее превосходство сил и средств в направлении своего главного удара для того, чтобы согласованным ударом пехоты, танков, артиллерии, авиации прорвать оборону фронта, окружить и уничтожить войска обороны.

Главная задача обороны состоит в том, чтобы дезорганизовать взаимодействие наступающего противника, расколоть боевые порядки его пехоты и танков, лишить их поддержки артиллерией и авиацией и, уничтожая противника по частям, нанести ему окончательное поражение. Этого можно достичь эшелонированием оборонительных позиций и особенно активным и правильным применением авиации.

http://militera.lib.ru/docs/da/sov-new-1940/02.html
Welcome, you are. So no, the Soviet command did not consider passive defence viable on the conference. The exact opposite in fact.

Yeah, there was a lot of confusion. And hurry. And lack of coordination. And lack of air support and recon. The question is, how much of that could have been avoided if the corps prepared for a few weeks and launched an attack.

And brought to strength. And received the first ll-2s. And upgraded to have more KVs and T-34s... in essence, a few months of work. *nods* I'm sure the USSR could mount a credible preventive attack, if it spent some time for concentration. Problem is, that wouldn't happen in June 1941. Don't give me the MC records - I've read them all

Used when speed wasn't a factor. ... Yes, putting them in the mechcorps might not have been the best choice, at least not for the deep advance units - it's better for tying up the enemy near the border. ... As for numbers - well, the Finns have captured enough to make T-26 the main tank of their army, and they did.

Here's your answer. Rezun's theory, at least, assumes that speed is of critical importance. That excludes the T-26s armed units from the picture straightaway. You obviously have explained the issue - T-26s in MCs are better for active defence. Isn't that what the December conference envisioned, anyhow? And please, the Finns? They used Tsarist era monitors and BBOs, and made no deep offensives. Of course, the T-26 would've been cool for them - Finns had no good tanks at all.

The Germans have captured a few dozens

Really? They captured many more; what you meant to say is they USED a few dozens. *shrugs*

Soviet road. The British prototype was 22 mph.

Tanks march on road, but they don't fight on-road. Such a poor fighter was unsuitable for the theory, as you yourself admitted, and was better for active defence.

T-26 was a light tank of infantry support. It was to be replaced as such by T-50.

In the pre-war theory, yes. That pre-war theory which created inefficient, mix-tank units like the MCs. *shrugs* Sure, but in reality, the war soon changed the production to a more efficient scheme of medium+heavy tanks. Which persisted until the 1950s.

Doesn't look bad.

40-70 motorhours for a new tank is "not bad"? *shrugs* The Germans had tanks with 300-400 hour engines.

And those existing maps - were they issued to the armies? The long range air forces, for example, were to be issued maps only by July. Not all the examples Suvorov gives are east of Dnieper. What kind of maps were issued? What kind of maps were being burned?

Which maps were "burned"? Rezun doesn't answer; neither even provides a source for that claim. And indeed, which? Burning maps of foreign territory is a useless waste; burning maps of your own territory (namely, the maps of the newly acquired Soviet territories from the 1939 to the 1940 Soviet border!) to deny them to the enemy makes shitloads of sense. Indeed, even Rezun himself acknowledges that the USSR had provided lots of maps for newly acquired territories - that's a 350 km wide territory from the new to the old Soviet border. But like I said, other maps (up to the Dnieper) were present as well. Beyond that, the problem was not a lack of maps, but bad resolution - few maps of proper scale for military operations. Once you go beyond the Dnieper, the scale rose beyond 1:50000. Long range air forces are of little interest - they are not supposed to operate on Soviet territory (do you think the US SAC had precise maps of the USA?), and indeed, if they were only to be given the bulk of maps in July, that further shows the unpreparedness of the Soviet Union for either offensive or defensive action.

Seems like there is some disagreement. ... Better look at the actual production of military tech.

There's no disagreement on the order of scale; the disagreement is about whether X or Y is to be included, but that can offset the order of spending insignificantly. Also, yes, do look at the production of military tech - how much did the USSR produce in 1940 and 1941?

One ship's building ceased in 1940. One was 5% complete. Two were 20% complete.

Building was ceased without order, for tech delays and engineering complexity, lack of major elements (such as armour), etc. Still, it was a tremendously bad idea for a land war, no?

First, he says that there were 170 divisions, and 114 was the number which had some space to move until they hit the border. Second, he gives a quote that the districts were given the order to move the divisions closer

No, false - he flat out states all divisions not just received an order to move, but actually started moving! Sorry, you can't rewrite Rezun's statements.

Нас интересует вопрос: сколько же из этих 114 дивизий начали движение к границам под прикрытием успокаивающего Сообщения ТАСС? Ответ: ВСЕ!

http://www.suvorov.com/books/ledokol/22.htm

He says they were mainly Pz III's. He gives the whole number as 168.

Like I said - why should I do your homework?

And if you need to fight immediately after crossing the river? Or cross several rivers?

The USSR didn't use floating tanks to cross the Dnieper or what. They're just too weak. Better to cross with infantry, establish beachheads and then use real tanks.

However, I do see that the Russian translation constantly calls tanks capable of deep fording "amphibious"

That is irrelevant; Halder was talking about floating Pz.IIs. Rezun lied. End of story.

If you'll point out to me which parts of Suvorov's explanations on the subject seem lacking to you, I'll do my best to answer that.

I've already did. Explain which fortifications Germany built in 1941, anyway. Forward airbases do not constitue a defence line, as I'm sure you know.

[Spoonist]

-Stas Bush
I'm sorry I started this whole mess by trying to get Omegian to admit his position. It is totally pointless, Omegian has not conceded anything even given contradictory evidence. But what is more damning is that he has not clarified his position nor his argument.
So this will only go in circles. I would therefore suggest that it be demanded that he clarify his position. Is it really that the USSR planned an attack on Germany in 41 or early 42? To me he is still weaseling out by saying "Rezun is not perfect" and in the next sentence defend Rezun's theory as if perfect.
Also there should be some kind of numbering for the "evidence", since he skips a lot of counters where he does not adress the implications to the overall theory. Instead he just provides yet another "evidence". With at least 5 books of asspulling and unknown number of friends he can easily continue this for another 20 pages. Instead there needs to be more "is your argument ## that: XX gives YY, if so then ZZ disproves that". Then he will be at least conceding implicitly by not responding.

[Omeganian]

The straight line distance to Germany is 600 km, to Ruhr, a bit over 1000 km. Suvorov stated that you need to multiply it by 1.3 at the most for a blitzkrieg type operation...

Even with these laughable "estimates" (straight lines for marches? seriously?), it's 1300 km on-march. More if you meet opposition on the way.

Well, Hitler expected all opposition to run out by Dnieper, because that's when he expected the Soviet will have to fight or die. Then it would have been an easy fight. Maybe the Soviets expected that the Germans will, likewise, make a last stand somewhere near. Or they intended to regroup after a couple of months - The Germans had to do the same from time to time.

Ever heard of Nasreddin's attempt to train his donkey to survive without food?

You are an idiot, right? I've explained to you how Germany solved it's shortage problem by reducing civilian consumption and raising the the production of synthetics; as well as how the German oil requirements will be growing LESS as they will be defending, and thus their logistical track would have an advantage. You just ignored it. Hey, how about I ignore you, moron?

And iron? And wood? And nickel?

So, fuel synthesizing plants are bombed (likely bringing them down close to 1941 production levels)

Who can bomb them in 1941? *shrugs* The Germans started experiencing serious issued only by 1943, when the Allies seriously initiated a strategic bombing campaign that was beyond the Soviet air capabilities. You're running in circles. The German logistics will be simplified if the USSR is attacking. That is what allowed Germany to hold out so long in 1943-1945 - despite a two-front offensive, really.

In case you didn't notice, I was talking about the situation in 1944. That's where the situation became similar to what would have been had the Soviets attacked in 1941. And that's where your source admits the problems became serious, showing the Germans can only deal with a reduction so far. Add to that the Soviet Baltic fleet cutting them off Finland and Sweden... Doesn't look good.

A lot can be done in a few weeks. If it's not enough - you reschedule, like Hitler did. Hofstadter's law is eternal, I won't argue with that.

So you support Rezun or you just assume the USSR could have attacked at some point in the future? *scratches head* Clarify your position. I have no intent to argue against the latter, because I'm of the same opinion, but that's not Rezun's pathetic theory sewn with white ropes.

I am saying the exact thing Suvorov's saying - if it'll turn out the attack was scheduled not for the beginning of July, but for the end of July or for August, it'll change absolutely nothing for his theory.

The 2nd MC (500 tanks, 3800 cars) was stationed against Romania. Two thirds of the tanks were BT's. No forces capable of deep land offensive, eh? Not fully equipped yet, but there does seem to be a certain tendency.

*nods* Correct, a MC which was undermanned and undergunned (about 500 tanks, of which only 50 were T-34s and KVs, and only 3000 cars (and only 250 tractors) - not enough to support the MC's movement even by Soviet TOE); all equipment not even up to the Soviet TOE.

3800 cars. That is, about 7.5 cars per tank, while the soviet TOE was 5. It had two tanks per tractor, while the TOE was three. 7.5<5? 1/2<1/3? That's some interesting math. Perhaps you mean the situation after the corps would have been brought up to strength with more tanks? It would have received more cars and tractors as well.

The 2nd MC was placed in the reserve of the Chief Command (Stavka) and excluded from Plans of Covering the border; in fact, it was prohibited to use without a special order from the Stavka.

Naturally. According to the Soviet doctrine, the tank unit which enters the breach (for deep operations) does not create it. It keeps away, without engaging in breaching the defense (which is done by artillery and infantry), and enters the breach fresh. Therefore, the 2nd MC was given orders appropriate for such a unit, so, it seems likely this was just such a unit.

Which, for Germans, amounted to over 40 divisions by June.

Really? By 22 June 1941 the Germans concentrated 181 divisions, if my memory doesn't fail me. By early June the situation was different, but the Germans were masters of deception.

40 divisions of reserves. At least, according to the Soviet intel reports in the beginning of June. Of course, the situation could have changed a bit in a few weeks, but this applies to both sides.

The December 1940 conference mainly mentions counterattacks after the enemy is exhausted. By a powerful, deep defense. This is not what we see here.

The command has quite certainly changed it's doctrine to active defence in echelons on the December 1940 conference:

Учитывая опыт войны на Западе, нам наряду с подготовкой к активным наступательным действиям необходимо иметь представление и готовить войска к современной обороне. Современная оборона должна противостоять мощному огню артиллерии, массовой атаке танков, пехоты и воздушному противнику. Поэтому она должна быть глубоко противотанковой и противовоздушной и во всяком случае — активной. Наступающий будет стремиться сосредоточить подавляющее превосходство сил и средств в направлении своего главного удара для того, чтобы согласованным ударом пехоты, танков, артиллерии, авиации прорвать оборону фронта, окружить и уничтожить войска обороны.

Главная задача обороны состоит в том, чтобы дезорганизовать взаимодействие наступающего противника, расколоть боевые порядки его пехоты и танков, лишить их поддержки артиллерией и авиацией и, уничтожая противника по частям, нанести ему окончательное поражение. Этого можно достичь эшелонированием оборонительных позиций и особенно активным и правильным применением авиации.

http://militera.lib.ru/docs/da/sov-new-1940/02.html
Welcome, you are. So no, the Soviet command did not consider passive defence viable on the conference. The exact opposite in fact.

Товарищи, чтобы противопоставить современному мощному наступлению, эшелонированному на большую глубину, стремящемуся одновременно парализовать сильной авиацией, мотомехсоединениями всю оборону, необходимо так организовать оборону, чтобы она была бы способна не только дать одновременный мощный огневой отпор на всей глубине возможного проникновения танковых, моторизованных, авиационных и пехотных соединений, но и сломить наступающего морально и физически частными контрударами, а также общим контрнаступлением оперативных резервов, в полном взаимодействии с войсками фронта нанести противнику сокрушительный удар.

Такой обороной может быть только оборона, построенная на оперативных началах, оборона глубокая, оборона, вытекающая из оперативного плана и опирающаяся на всевозможные инженерные преграды глубоких [оборонительных] полос, оперативно между собой связанных, опирающаяся на мощь новых или, вернее, всех родов войск и в первую очередь на артиллерию, авиацию и танки...

Бой внутри оборонительной полосы основывается на контрударе, отсечении любых зарвавшихся сил просочившегося противника в глубину обороны и уничтожении его.

http://militera.lib.ru/docs/da/sov-new-1940/52.html

So, the defense must be deep. And the counterattack means cutting off the enemy without going beyond your outer line of defense (the text you quote says the same thing exactly). But the situation in June 22nd is not deep defense, and the forces certainly went beyond the Soviet border.

Yeah, there was a lot of confusion. And hurry. And lack of coordination. And lack of air support and recon. The question is, how much of that could have been avoided if the corps prepared for a few weeks and launched an attack.

And brought to strength. And received the first ll-2s. And upgraded to have more KVs and T-34s... in essence, a few months of work. *nods* I'm sure the USSR could mount a credible preventive attack, if it spent some time for concentration. Problem is, that wouldn't happen in June 1941. Don't give me the MC records - I've read them all

Then you might want to explain the exact difference between an obsolete and a modern tank.

Used when speed wasn't a factor. ... Yes, putting them in the mechcorps might not have been the best choice, at least not for the deep advance units - it's better for tying up the enemy near the border. ... As for numbers - well, the Finns have captured enough to make T-26 the main tank of their army, and they did.

Here's your answer. Rezun's theory, at least, assumes that speed is of critical importance. That excludes the T-26s armed units from the picture straightaway.

The speed was limited more by the tugs, they were even slower that T-26. And you yourself said that the German average speed was not high. BT-7 advances - T-26 takes care of the rear.

The Germans have captured a few dozens

Really? They captured many more; what you meant to say is they USED a few dozens. *shrugs*

The Soviets destroyed whatever they could. And the Germans could barely repair their own tanks.

Soviet road. The British prototype was 22 mph.

Tanks march on road, but they don't fight on-road. Such a poor fighter was unsuitable for the theory, as you yourself admitted, and was better for active defence

And for the actual fight, you don't always need top speed. You said so yourself.

T-26 was a light tank of infantry support. It was to be replaced as such by T-50.

In the pre-war theory, yes. That pre-war theory which created inefficient, mix-tank units like the MCs. *shrugs* Sure, but in reality, the war soon changed the production to a more efficient scheme of medium+heavy tanks. Which persisted until the 1950s.

Yes. Because the war turned out to be a defensive one, for awhile, and then a relatively slow advancement. And before the war, as was said on the conference

мы не имеем современной обоснованной теории обороны

There was no defense theory. Different war scenario - different tanks. The important thing is, T-26 was never a medium tank, and it was never to be replaced by T-34.

Doesn't look bad.

40-70 motorhours for a new tank is "not bad"? *shrugs* The Germans had tanks with 300-400 hour engines.

And the Soviet older tanks had 300-800. At least, until major repairs, probably something like the engine replacement the German tanks required 500 km from the border. BTW, after these 50-70 hours, did the T-34 engines have to be replaced, or would some major overhaul have been enough?

And those existing maps - were they issued to the armies? The long range air forces, for example, were to be issued maps only by July. Not all the examples Suvorov gives are east of Dnieper. What kind of maps were issued? What kind of maps were being burned?

Which maps were "burned"? Rezun doesn't answer; neither even provides a source for that claim. And indeed, which? Burning maps of foreign territory is a useless waste

As Suvorov stated, the maps could be used to the enemy either for their own territory, or as high quality paper.

burning maps of your own territory (namely, the maps of the newly acquired Soviet territories from the 1939 to the 1940 Soviet border!) to deny them to the enemy makes shitloads of sense.

And it makes even more sense to take them with you and use them to fight the enemy.

Long range air forces are of little interest - they are not supposed to operate on Soviet territory (do you think the US SAC had precise maps of the USA?), and indeed, if they were only to be given the bulk of maps in July, that further shows the unpreparedness of the Soviet Union for either offensive or defensive action.

Well, Suvorov did talk a bit about the neglection of said forces before the war, so it could mean nothing more than that.

Seems like there is some disagreement. ... Better look at the actual production of military tech.

There's no disagreement on the order of scale; the disagreement is about whether X or Y is to be included, but that can offset the order of spending insignificantly. Also, yes, do look at the production of military tech - how much did the USSR produce in 1940 and 1941?

Well, Zhukov's memoirs stated that from 1/1/1939 to 22/6/1941 the Soviet army received over 7,000 tanks. It is known that 1400 T-34 and 711 KV were produced. That is, enough was produced of just these two models to outweigh all the tanks Hitler threw against the USSR.

One ship's building ceased in 1940. One was 5% complete. Two were 20% complete.

Building was ceased without order.

In Stalin's times? In any event, a ceased building is hardly a drain on the budget.

First, he says that there were 170 divisions, and 114 was the number which had some space to move until they hit the border. Second, he gives a quote that the districts were given the order to move the divisions closer

No, false - he flat out states all divisions not just received an order to move, but actually started moving! Sorry, you can't rewrite Rezun's statements.

Exactly. The movement of all these divisions has started. It just didn't involve all the divisions yet. Of course, if you have no better argument than talking about semantics... What does it change about the theory? All the divisions were to go to the border. The words "Suvorov lies" are meaningless. Only arguments against the theory can be significant - for example, documents stating the divisions were not to move.

And if you need to fight immediately after crossing the river? Or cross several rivers?

The USSR didn't use floating tanks to cross the Dnieper or what. They're just too weak. Better to cross with infantry, establish beachheads and then use real tanks.

And isn't that better if said infantry is aided by tanks, weak as they are - which is the exact scenario Suvorov gives.

However, I do see that the Russian translation constantly calls tanks capable of deep fording "amphibious"

That is irrelevant; Halder was talking about floating Pz.IIs. Rezun lied. End of story.

Those Pz.IIs weren't floating. They were just refitted so that a couple of pontoons could be fitted on them (as Suvorov writes in his latest book, and as anyone can check). The Soviets tried a similar modification to T-26, but discarded it as useless.

If you'll point out to me which parts of Suvorov's explanations on the subject seem lacking to you, I'll do my best to answer that.

I've already did. Explain which fortifications Germany built in 1941, anyway. Forward airbases do not constitue a defence line, as I'm sure you know.

I gave you in my last post 24 Soviet intel reports from December 1940 to June 1941 (so, you demand documents, but you are ignoring the documents presented... moderator). All the reports are talking about the Germans building fortifications along the Soviet borders. Many reports are mentioning bunkers. The reports are giving the locations. In case you are too busy to scroll up, here they are again. Now, if you'll be so kind as to present 24 or more documents that the Germans were not building fortifications...

http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30
http://bdsa.ru/index.php?option=com_con ... &Itemid=30

[Isolder74]

Your documents are useless as is your demand. Showing that the Germans were building bunkers only weakens your position as the Soviets were as well. Besides it's very hard to comment on documents in Russian unless you can fully read Russian isn't it.

Oh, and one more thing. Posting a bunch of documents about German preparations without showing similar preparations on the side of the Soviets does not bolster your position that Stalin intended to attack while ignoring the evidence to the contrary. If the Germans were building bunkers to be part of their attack only justifies the increased Soviet deployment more.

It also doesn't prove anything in the case of a Naziless Germany that Stalin would be invading Europe.

[Serafina]

It also doesn't prove anything in the case of a Naziless Germany that Stalin would be invading Europe.

This.

Even if you can show that the Soviet Union prepared for an attack on Germany (which you have uttlery failed to do, despite your lies and misinformations), that doesn't proove that they would have done so if there had been no Nazi Germany.

Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union were pretty much antagonists towards each other. Bot ideologies were heavily conflicting, portraying each other as the worst foe around
Furthermore, Nazi Germany was quite know to be agressive at that point.
This would not have been the case without Nazi Germany. There would have been even less reason for a soviet attack than historically.

So, even if you manage to show that the Soviet Union prepared for an attack, you would have to show that this was due to some wish for expansion.

[K. A. Pital]

Hey, Omeganian, how about actually answering the points?

1) The armed forces were in a process of reorganization. Low experience led the Soviet command to join up slow and weak tanks with modern tanks in single units (which obviously prohibits their separate use - so the situation of "T-26s staying in the rear while T-34s advance" would mean the mechanized corps would basically break in parts very quickly and thus lose controllability, which what often happened). Motorhour depletion plagued older tanks, while newer tanks had poor motorhour resource (40-70 motorhours), which made them so far unsuitable for long-term and long-range advances. By 1943, T-34 had a motorhour resource brought up to the 300-400 hour standard, which is a 6-7fold difference from the original V-2 resource. To ignore that this great increase in tank resource helped the Red Army in it's long-range offensive into Germany would be foolish.

If you need proof, well - go read the reports from, say, the 15th Mechanized Corps. Pick the 10th tank division, for example - it's T-28s had 75 hours left on the average, BT-7s - 40 to 100 hours, and only 30 tanks had new engines installed. And that depletion happened from multiple trials as well as hundred-km marches through Poland. The 15th MC was incapable of a deep offensive.

2) The process of reorganization was still continuing in mid-1941. Units were deployed in a haphazard fashion. The 114 divisions of the First Strategic Echelon did not receive orders to move to the border, neither started moving towards the border. Some were re-deployed in-depth.

3) The USSR erected defensive lines, which were quite costly and quite large, including major construction of fortifications. The Germans conducted no real fortification work on the same scale (stop nitpicking with individual examples!); individual reports on the construction of bunkers from the Soviet intelligence don't disprove this general fact (besides, the Germans engaged in strategic deception as well). How many tons of concrete did Germany allocate to the border in the East? How many bunkers did it built? Was the construction comparable to the Soviet effort on the Molotov Line? And if no, the answer is self-explanatory. We have German documents now. How many bunkers did Germany construct in the East?

4) Rezun misquoted Sandalov, lied about "Soviet translators" misinterpreting Halder (they did not, Halder used the term "Schwimmpanzer" when referring to the Pz.II with pontoons, which is "floating tank"), and said all 114 divisions started moving - these are a few examples which are false.

U.K.Wagen [Unterwasserpanzer]: Vorfuehrung befriedigend
Schwimmpanzer: sehr guter Eindruck
.... besprochen wird die Frage des Termins: Wirtschaft wehrt sich gegen
Herausgabe von 1400 Binnenschiffen. Termin bleibt!
Schwimmpanzer: Klaerung notwaendig, wo er verladen werden kann auf kleine
Fahrzeuge in unserem Rahmen [im ganzen Aufbau der Uebersetzbewegung]

d) Vorhanden am 22.08:
42 UPz. IV
168 UPz. III, darunter 8 mit 5 cm Geschuetzen
e) Schwimmpanzer (II) lauft weiter an.

Halder speaks about both "Tauschpanzer" (underwater fording tanks) and "Schwimmpanzer" (floating tanks). The translation was correct. Besides, the Germans were not the only ones whose floating tanks had pontoons which could be taken off. The Japanese floating tanks likewise had drop-off pontoons. I'm sure you woudln't disagree they were floating tanks, right?

Rezun says literally the following - Halder never wrote the above, these lines were inserted by P.A Zhilin, the Soviet translator. Rezun is an idiot for making such a simple glaring mistake (he had access to Halder in original, were he so willing to buy a German edition or take on in the library), but his dreck is aimed at pop-history lovers, so that's no wonder.

The movement of all these divisions has started.

It did not. Go on, prove it - "movement has started". You lie, much like Suvorov did. I only have contempt.

5) The T-37A and T-38 were not utilized much by the USSR because they were more than often nothing but floating deathtraps, while they hardly offered enough protection even from an MG-42. In essense, they were poor machines. They could not transport infantry afloat (putting infantry on-board led to the tank sinking). This is why the USSR did not use them much, despite having opportunities to do so. Like Germany and other nations, the USSR chose the common way of erecting pontoon bridges and then putting real tanks into combat, rather than utilizing the floating deathtraps.

That is, enough was produced of just these two models to outweigh all the tanks Hitler threw against the USSR.

Really? 1400 Soviet tanks with 40-70 hours of resource, but excellent armour, outweigh 4000+ tanks and SPA of the Reich+satellites? *eyes with suspicion* You're even more delusional than I've thought.

Well, Suvorov did talk a bit about the neglection of said forces before the war, so it could mean nothing more than that.

In Rezun's theory, the Soviet aviation, including long-range aviation, was to play a critical role in striking against Germany. Tell me now, by the way, why Rezun spends so much time describing the excellent characteristics of Il-2, when on 22.06.1941 the forces had about... zero ll-2s in service?

BTW, after these 50-70 hours, did the T-34 engines have to be replaced, or would some major overhaul have been enough?

Replaced. By the way, which Soviet tank in 1941 had 700 motorhours of resource? You said "300-700" - go on, prove it.

How about you start proving your statements? All 114 divisions started moving to the border? Prove it. Maps were burned - not by forces that were to be surrounded, but in ordinary fashion? Prove it. With archival sources. You either r statements, or you don't. Volume of German fortifications in 1941 in the East - go on, prove your point. I'm not doing your homework for you. Did the Germans construct as much fortifications as the USSR did?