Timestamps for related Videos: 00:03 - Invasion of Poland - th-cam.com/video/OMJc43wUPLM/w-d-xo.html 00:25 - Why the high Soviet Losses? th-cam.com/video/nU8VcEw3Zno/w-d-xo.html 02:48 - Spanish Civil War influence on Soviet Tank Design th-cam.com/video/936vpkCNKSk/w-d-xo.html 03:44 - Japanese Tank Arm th-cam.com/video/Ig9UBF2X5TU/w-d-xo.html 08:44 - NATO Counters th-cam.com/video/YgLU5ncAE9M/w-d-xo.html 11:07 - Great Purge effect on the Red Army th-cam.com/video/AiA8dKNcjjk/w-d-xo.html 11:44 - Why France fell in 6 Weeks th-cam.com/video/CI29hh5qBug/w-d-xo.html
If you put these timestamps (without links) into the description, TH-cam will show the progress bar in segments and show names of chapters while playback (you need to begin with a 0:00 timestamp and they have to be in order tho).
Reguarding unit size because this always confuses me whenever people mention soviet units; are we talking about soviet corps in terms of being equivalient of western divisions? Your diagram of unit hierarchy gives off them impression of a 1 to 1 comparison.
@@TheLastSterling1304 I posted an infodump on another comment just now. The Soviet "Tank corps" and "Mechanised corps" were called "corps" because they had the HQ and support units elements of an army corps, but they weren't usually made out of divisions but of brigades directly. For example, a 1942 Soviet tank corps included 4 brigades of which 1 was a breaktrough tank brigade (heavy tanks), 2 were tank brigades and the last one was a mechanised brigade (motorised infantry with tanks), plus the corps HQ and the support elements of a Soviet corps (motor-drawn artillery, recon units, a supply stash unit, a field hospital...).
7:00 That was seem, also, as a victory of the French doctrine, followed both by Japan and Brazil. Brazilian Army Lt-Colonel Lima Figueiredo, military observer for a year in Japan and China, wrote in 1940: "The tanks of the people of the Soviets almost always found themselves alone, without the protective infantry. At point-blank range, they were shot by the anti-tank cannons operated by the Japanese who brought them very far ahead, when they were not caught in flames, caused by the bursting of a benzine bottle, thrown up-close by a Japanese soldier. In addition to this defect, of employing tanks without support, they used to throw large numbers of tanks in very tight compartments. Thus, in Chankufeng, on a battlefront (800 meters) they employed three tank companies, resulting in a large number of them being destroyed, stranded or imprisoned. In 10 days, 96 Russian tanks were put out of action. From the sketch below we can see how the Soviets attack. [The sketch shows the tanks advancing far away and crossing the enemy lines very deeply, with the tanks of "diret protection" being 100-200 apart from the Soviet infantry.] Against Russia the Japanese used its tank always protected by infantry and in diluted formation." - Tenente-Coronel Lima Figueirêdo , Um Ano de Observação no Extremo Oriente, pg. 250-251. The sketch: i.postimg.cc/bwcvYTMj/img790.jpg The Colonel, the towers in his collars indicate the Engineering Arm: i.postimg.cc/BbRnKcnH/img631.jpg He does start the description with: "Although the Soviet material is very good, as we will show later, the Japanese knew how to take advantage of the meager apparatus they had." (Pg. 250)
Soviet armoured unit types in 1939-1945 (note: I'm not adding the support and headquarters units): Basic units: Tank battalion ("breaktrough tank battalion" if using heavy tanks), Mechanised battalion (motorised infantry with a few tanks attached), Guards Artillery battalion (motorised rocket artillery). Tank brigade: 4 battalions of which 3 were tank battalions and 1 was a mechanised battalion. If the tanks were heavy tanks (KV series), it was called "breaktrough tank brigade". Mechanised brigade: 4 battalions of which 3 were mechanised battalions and 1 was a tank battalion. These two kind of brigades were the most prominent kind of armoured units within the Red Army, and could be arranged either as "independent" (acting directly under army or army group command) or attached to an army corps. For these, they were three kinds of corps they were attached to organically: Tank corps: 4 brigades of which one was a breaktrough tank brigade, two were "normal" tank brigades and the last one was a mechanised brigade. This unit was very tank heavy for its size (around 20000 men and 1000 tanks) and thus was the kind of unit which was to be abolished. They were later reformed with better comunication systems to act as a sparhead. Mechanised corps: 4 brigades of which one was a tank brigade and the three others were mechanised brigades. It was similar in size to the tank corps, yet less tank-heavy and more manageable from a combined arms perspective. Cavalry-Mechanised group (introduced in 1942): 2 cavalry divisions (note: the Soviet cavalry divisions were actually mounted infantry with some light armor and motorised elements, and would better be called "demi-motorised divisions"), plus at least one tank and one mechanised brigades. An example of a Cavalry-Mechanised group is the 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps, also called 'Dovator Group' after its first commander. Said group fought as part of the 16th Army (Rokkossovski) during the battle of Moscow, and together with the 316th Riflemen division of Panfilov they were able to stop the German armored thrust in the Volokolamsk-Moscow highway, albeit at great cost. Special corps: 3 riflemen divisions and 2 tank brigades. The forces that fought under then Komkor (Corps Comander) Zhukov in the battle of Khalkhin Gol were one of such corps. Another one fought in Borodino under the command of general Lelushenko. I think that something to be noted in this aspect was the fact that the Soviet armoured units were operationally organised in brigades, and whenever a division was made, it was usually by merging two or three already existing brigades. Also important is the fact that the estructure of the higher levels (divisions, corps, armies...) to which those brigades were attached was changing due to the necesities at the time. Although there is this view of Tukhachevsky and some other officers as being "mostly alone" thinkers against a stagnant Soviet "old guard" staff the thruth is that almost everyone in the STAVKA were proponents of using tanks in a large scale, arbeit with differences as to how and why. From the first experiments at Kazan up until the end of the Soviet Union, the tank forces were not only a valuable branch of the Red Army, but also a great propaganda of the Soviet might. In 1939 and 1940 songs praising the tanks were officially published and used in propaganda montages as one of the many ways to increase enlistment in the officer corps, for example the song "Three tankmen" (Tri Tankista) made in 1939 as a propaganda celebrating the success at the border war with Japan, or the "March of the Soviet Tankmen" (Marsch Sovietskiye Tankistvi) which praised the skills of the tank crews and the power of the armoured units.
9:11 Genie: What is your wish? Hooman: I wish for our tank corps to become tank brigades. Genie: It is done. Hooman: Nothing's changed. Genie: That is correct.
Very good analysis of information regarding reasons surrounding the abolishment of the corps. But, a lot to unpack. I’ve gone through this video four times and it gets better and clearer each time. In a college setting, at least two or three days would be devoted to discussion and study of your points. You precisely encapsulated it all a 15 minute video, that is not easy. Great job.
Well, the KV-1 and the early versions of the T-34 were still being tested and started being produced by the end of that year, so yeah. Most of their tanks were T-26s and BTs
@Charles McCarron The "Russian bias" is a World of Tanks meme about how Soviet tanks in that game are overpowered, mostly refering to the T-34 and KV variants.
The argument that Purges in general and abolishment of tank corps specifically marked some sort of departure from Deep Battle/Operations doctrine never actually made any sense and I do not know why Glantz of all people supports (or at least supported back then) this idea. Actual battle manuals or training programs weren't changed a bit in between 1938 and 1941. There was literally no change in that department other than mentioning some people by name became politically incorrect. Doctrine never actually changed.
@@podemosurss8316 Tank Corps circa 1938 were already combined arms units full and proper. Not optimal ones (but nobody, including Germans, had optimal structure at that time) but still combined arms. The thing that happened in November 1939 was just another chaotic mess that plagued USSR at that time, people were throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks and it was kinda the reason why that particular decision was cancelled just seven months later.
@@podemosurss8316 decision to scrap Tank Corps in November, 1939 had nothing to do with the evolution of mechanized forces organization or anything like that. It was literally - 'we cannot make them work now, let's scrap the concept and try something entirely new' and 'new' was 'let's go to the purely tank brigades which would be attached to other units for operations' which is entirely backwards step in terms of organizing combined arms. When Germans crushed France and Soviet intelligence provided rather garbled information on German force structure, the decision was immediately reversed and monstrosity of Mechanized Corps model 1940 was born out of it.
@@CruelDwarf The concept of independent tank brigades was not a new concept, and actually was being used alongside with the concept of armored corps at the time. In fact Zhukov's encirclement at Khalkhin Gol was made using two independent tank brigades.
Operation Barbarossa A wild T-14 Armata appears: FOR YOU AS WE ARE A TANK HORDE! Nazi Germany, Fascist, Imperial Japan, Italy, Pro-life Romania and Muslim Collaborating Bulgaria are crushed by superior quality and quantity of Armata tanks!
@@sadknife Oh yeah, for sure. That's partially down to not having to produce more mundane things like trucks (they got hundreds of thousands from the Yanks) but they sure did xD
Great video, as always. Just one little nitpick: 11:32 - When used as a statement, prefix increment is preferable to postfix increment, because it avoids a temporary copy, especially with custom types and overloaded operators (although modern compilers will usually inline and optimize it away when the return value is not used). SCNR.
Excellent video. @Bernhard Kast, you should make one video of the visualized series to compare and explain the differences in between Germany´s bewegung taktisches and the USSR deep battle concept.
I read somewhere that the Soviets screwing with the corps level of command cost them at the beginning of the war because it put more stress on the army commanders. Is that true, and if so, is it related to this?
Yeah the Soviets got rid of the corp level command. So instead of it being 3-4ish divisions in a corp and 3 or 4ish corp in an army the Soviets had 6+ divisions all in one army. So the army commander instead of having to deal with 3 or 4 (in theory) more experienced corp commanders on the phone had to deal with 6+ less experienced division commanders instead. Greatly increasing his workload. Edit:also worth pointing out that Soviet divisions were much smaller than German ones. Between 50-66% the size of a German one.
Soviets get rid of the corps at the beginning of the war specifically because they simply did not have enough experienced generals to lead them. It was much easier to find a lesser number of relatively experienced men to command armies and then skip a step and put anything up to freshly-promoted colonels on divisions. And it definitely increased the workload of the army commanders, but there was no way for the Soviets to support more complex command structures with the officer cadre that they had at hand.
What I think would be interesting is a comparison of the reorganisation done by Marshall and the purges. If any of you could shed some light on this I will be thankful!
Thanks..interesting and I don't really know anything about this happening in the S.U. But wouldn't surprise me as an interim situation prior to the war. The Republican Army was badly led at the top .Most of the professional officers were in the Nationalists Army .The Republic seems to me to be led more by idealists than competent and experienced professionals . The German trained Spanish crews did well ..The Germans there rarely ,if ever ,went into battle. The Soviet advisers were so exasperated with the Spanish crew training that it was eventually decided to train crews in Russia.This seemed to help some. Large tank forces couldn't be used in Spain..so even the U.S. was careful about drawing any future conclusions on European use of Armor.. But the Political climate in the Soviet Union was touchy for veterans of Spain. They were often seen as wreckers and contaminated with western ideas. So I would expect many to keep their head down when they came back home.
Spanish tank crews were not traind in the Soviet Union. Aircraft pilots were. Also, don't overestimate the training of nationalist crews, the germans complained a lot about them and if you check operational records you can find lots of problems with reliability due to poor handling of the tanks, and ocasional tactical blunders. The difference between the effectiveness of one side or the other lies on the planification of operations and ability to coordinate the different arms. The republicans achieved this capability in 1938, too late to have an impact on the outcome of the war.
Great video as always! I would like to ask another question: Were there bigger tank battles between the germans and the russians in the spanish civil war? And if yes, did the germans/russians draw any conclusions from them?
I disagree with the statement that a corps is always two levels above a brigade. This is usual true in western armies but not in soviet. Brigade and Corps were often used to indicate "new" or "experimental" formations. Later world war 2 soviet tank and mechanized corps consisted of brigades not divisions. Only after world war 2 tank corps became tank divisions and brigades regiments. There were now "proven" formations. The soviet naming conventions are confusing. For infantry there have been corps commanding rifle (infantry) divisions like in the west. However a world war 2 tank or mechanized corps was roughly similar in size to a German Panzer division and significant small er than a German Panzer Corps. A soviet tank army was roughly at the same level as a German Panzer Corps. Even later during the cold war the usual soviet hierarchy was regiment, division, army, front while the west (NATO) used brigade, division, corps, army and army group.
first, thanks for your insights! > I disagree with the statement that a corps is always two levels above a brigade. I am rather sure I did not say "always", since I am EXTREMELY hesitant to use such or similar words and a short look at my script confirms this: > Now, for those who don’t know, a corps is two levels above a brigade in terms of size, > so a division usually in between. Do you have a source for this? (Ideally with page indicator) > Brigade and Corps were often used to indicate "new" or "experimental" formations.
Ist es möglich, das Sie /Du evtl. auch einen zweiten Kanal in dt. Sprache eröffnest? Das wäre sehr schön (Abo garantiert, auch wenn es dann nur einer wäre..).
zeitlich und finanziell einfach nicht machbar, dieses Video zB hat 9 Stunden Gesamtproduktionszeit und nein, auf Deutsch wäre es keinesfalls schneller, in dem Fall sogar länger wegen der vielen englischen Zitate. Mehr infos hier: th-cam.com/video/x3p4dUFB_vU/w-d-xo.html
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Oh - O.O Wie bestimmt schon vermute habe ich so etwas nicht geahnt, bedacht. Das ist sehr verständlich, wenn auch irgendwie sehr schade. Als Laie habe ich schlicht ignorant verdrängt wie viel Arbeit dahinter steckt. Nichts desto trotz ein toller Kanal! Und ein Abo ist selbstverständlich auch dabei. Danke für den Link (schaue ich gerade an). Hoffe, das Kommentare auf dt. unter den Kanalvideos erlaubt und in Ordnung sind. Viele Grüße und Danke für die schnelle Antwort (hätte mal suchen sollen, ist sicher nervend, trotz Video permanent gefragt zu werden warum es keinen dt. sprachigen Kanal gibt, ich bitte um Verzeihung).
@@pelruu danke! Ja, ich hab das Video gemacht, weil es öfter aufkam. Wirklich nervend sind die Leute, die es trotzdem nicht einsehen wollen, meinen mir dann erklären zu müssen, dass es trotzdem ginge und/oder gar beleidigend werden.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Oh weih, das muss ja nun wirklich nicht sein. Sehr unhöflich und ignorant. Wenn man nicht selbst mit und auf TH-cam arbeitet und "nur Videos genießt", verfällt man zwar schnell in ein Anspruchsdenken (so wie bei mir ebenfalls, leider), dieses ist jedoch in keinster Weise angebracht oder gar berechtigt! Schließlich handelt es sich um ein für den Nutzer kostenfreies Angebot. Für die Videos zahlt man nichts, selbst wenn man sich ein TH-cam Abo gönnt, denn dann werden lediglich die Werbeeinblendungen /Sendungen ausgesetzt und stören nicht mehr. Der Inhalt auf dieser Plattform selbst ist weiterhin kostenfrei. Das wird schnell vergessen und nicht mehr wertgeschätzt. Da oftmals auch noch die Vorstellung im Kopf herum geistert, das alle TH-camr "leicht" zu Millionären werden.. ..mit kaum Aufwand. Was nun wirklich nicht der Fall ist. Außerdem hat es noch nie Jemandem geschadet ein klein wenig Höflichkeit an den Tag zu legen; nachzudenken, bevor man etwas sagt respektive schreibt sowieso.. (mich da auch mal an meine eigene Nase packe). Jedenfalls werden auch wieder Zeiten kommen, in denen wir alle erkennen und lernen werden, das wir ein unverhältnismäßiges Anspruchsdenken /verhalten an den Tag legen und auf die harte Tour lernen werden die Realitäten zu erkennen. Aber genug davon, schweife ab.
jo, TH-cam ist Arbeit, sowas übersehen viele. Ansonsten gibt es halt starke Unterschiede bei den Werbeeinnahmen, besonders alles um Krieg rum, hat um einiges niedrige Werberaten (weil manche Firmen halt keine Werbung vor sowas schalten wollen, auch verständlich manchmal). Hätte ich einen Schmink oder Life-Style Kanal mit diesen Zahlen wäre die Situation auch vermutlich etwas anders.
One problem with the video above is that it says BOTH that the purges suppressed discussion of “Deep Battle” and “Deep Operations” AND that the basic offensive doctrine of the Red Army developed by Tuckachevsky was soon restored. (I would be interested if you could do a video on the differences between Tuchachevsky and Isserson on soviet military theory) MHV has another good video about Kursk and discusses in detail how the defence in depth was planned. If defence in depth was possible in June 1943 at Kursk when an offensive doctrine dominated, why wasn’t it possible in June 1941 when Barbarossa was launched? What to Glantz and others say about this? I have seen or read elsewhere (sorry, no ref) that the Stalinists did not want to structure their forces on the borders with the Nazi empire that might be “interpreted” that they were preparing for war. Effectively Stalin thought he had made an enduring deal with Hitler in the non-aggression pact. Ignoring the intelligence reports (up to 39 reports confirmed warnings of an invasion) was not incompetence but was bound up with the political pathology of Stalinism.
Let's be fair to Stalin. He wasn't the only one who purged his High Command. Marshall did the same thing to the US Army and the Nazis purged their own officer corps. The main difference is that, as far as I know, Marshall didn't shoot any American generals.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized In the summer and fall of 1941, Marshall forced 31 colonels, 117 lieutenant colonels, 31 majors, and 16 captains into early retirement or just discharged them. Another 269 National Guard and Reserve officers were fired. By the time the US Army entered World War 2, Marshall estimated he had forced at least 600 officers out of the Army. The Service papers accused him of draining the brains of the army. To put it in perspective, 42 generals command a division, corps, or army in the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941. Only 11 of them would have a combat command in World War 2. Of the prewar senior generals, only Walter Krueger would be given a senior position in the wartime army. Marshall relieved generals and other officers for a variety of reasons. One example is Brigadier General Bundel, who was Commandant of Fort Leavenworth until Marshall asked him to update the army training manuals in 3 months. General Bundel insisted it would take 18 months, even after Marshall gave him 4 months. When General Bundel insisted it could not be done in less than 18 months, he was relieved. He retired another general who was a personal friend of his because that general declined to leave for France immediately due to domestic issues. Another example is Major General James Chaney, Eisenhower's predecessor in England. Marshall replaced him with Eisenhower after Eisenhower found Chaney at a complete loss as to what to do, working peacetime office hours, and leaving the British in total confusion as to what Chaney was supposed to be doing. Chaney was relieved and stuck overseeing a training camp in Texas. Most of the information I found about the generals Marshall relieved is from the book "The Generals" by Thomas E. Ricks if you would like to check it out.
In the case of Marshall's purges of the US Army's command structure, it freed up positions for the generals and officers who would win the war, such as Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, McNair, Gavin, and hundreds of other senior officers. And the reliefs didn't stop when the war started. Marshall relieved officers right through to the end of the war.
@@nicholaswalsh4462 and what about the Germans? The main difference is also, from what I know Marshall considered them unfit for war, whereas Stalin considered them traitors.
Upon further research I couldn't find anything that indicated any mass reliefs of German officers in the lead-up to the war. As such, I am inclined to believe that I inferred a thing that didn't actually occur.
"Cumbersomeness" doesn't refer as much to the number of tanks, as it refers to the whole organisation (that included different units, not just tanks), lack of mobile communication equipment and overall lack of experience of the commanders in commanding such force. Tank corps that were reintroduced in 1940 were then quickly disbanded again in 1941 -for exactly the same reason -cumbersomeness. It took Soviets some time to figure out proper structure, composition (balance between tanks and supporting units) and gaining experience in effectively commanding such units. this btw wan't problem exclusive to Soviets, everybody, including Germans had problems figuring out proper composition and organisation of mechanized units.
It's a common myth that Polish rode into battle against German tanks on horses. In reality, of course, Polish horses rode their tanks into battle against the Germans.
According to The Art of War (V.1) ". . .The control of a large force is the same in principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers. " Is it best to have one LMG per squad? Or 2? Or should you organize all the machine guns into a platoon? Or company? Or battalion? Should you organize tanks into squads and assign those to infantry companies? Or maybe the other way around? Or should you just have one tank per platoon? Or should you mass tanks into brigades? Whoever answers the question best wins.
8:45 soviets got rid of divisions for mechanized units so there was no intermediate level between brigades and corps. A soviet mechanized "corps" was really a division. Your quoting the number of brigades vs. corps earlier shows this with a ratio of 2-2.5:1. After the war corps were abolished for infantry units and replaced by Armies, Armies by Army Groups Groups by Fronts and Fronts by Directions. It was all done in an effort to inflate the apparent size of soviet military formations and confuse adversaries. "Sir, our Corps is up against the the soviet 5th guards shock army, but don't worry, their over-all troop count is actually lower than ours. General: wait? what?!"
I have been harboring the following suspicion regarding the rather confused beginning of the Soviet tank and mechanized forces for quite some time: could this abandonment have something to do with the less than stellar Soviet logistics and technology? That is, tank and mechanized units impose far greater logistical and technological burdens. Regarding the technological burden, the Soviets did not make advances in tactical radios the way the British and the Germans did. And, of course, there is also the issue of keeping up with training soldiers and officers for the tank and mechanized forces which has not been helped by the double whammy of the purges and the rapid expansion of the Red Army in the latter half of the 1930s. Fast forward to 1941 in which the logistical technological burdens became even greater thanks to the German invasion: the Soviets abandoned their second attempt at building operational-level tank and mechanized units (i.e., mechanized corps, version 1941) and had to be content with tactical-level units instead (i.e., tank brigades). This rough beginning of the Soviet tank and mechanized forces reminds me of an old saying: "In theory ... but in practice ...".
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized said in jest I just thought you were a bit louder than usual, in truth I've never been on one of your videos this early and I just wanted to comment something but I couldn't think of anything else to say :(
The "shouty" quality, that I also noted, could be an echo problem. I assume the room you used for the sound recording is not acoustically ideal. Something to consider. Anyway, keep up the good work! I've been listening your channels 4 years already!
concentrating so many tanks into a corps is overkill for confined spaces of central/western Europe. It would only be useful in areas having expansive wide open spaces ... dooh!
Thank You. My guess the reduction was due to a lack of resources and support staff, kinda like the Germans de-mechaniuzation that happened before and during WW2. That 5 year plan was probably not producing the results they were hoping for.
In addition, was there a conclusion that command and control was simply not technologically advanced enough in the USSR to be able to control such large formations? In a previous video on the channel one of the interesting points raised was that the USA shipped a large amount of radios which were until then difficult to manufacture in the USSR in the quantities required. The Wehrmacht could draw on the German electrical industry which was quite advanced and this in my mind had a large impact on the success of German command on control when radios became widespread in military vehicles.
Also, even though Bernard has made a focus on tank corps (which on themselves weren't the main operational unit of the Soviet armored forces, tank and mechanised brigades were), brigades and smaller units had their own estructural changes as well. Between 1939 and 1942 the number of tanks per each tank brigade dropped from around 100 to 65 (21 in the case of breaktrough tank brigades), with these tanks being of newer models. There is also the technical change which was the introduction of new tank models with radios: the T-26 and BT series mostly lacked radios (except some command variants), but the new KV-1 and T-34 had radios as part of the design.
Furthemore, although tank batallions, regiment, brigades and even a division existed in Spain, these were just administrative units. Soviet anks were almost always used in company or platoon size in the battlefield. The only exception being the "Heavy tank regiment" of BT-5s, which was used as a tactical unit in Fuentes de Ebro and in the retreats of march 1938.
Said division only existed on paper, in fact. Usually tanks in the Republican side were used as companies theoretically attached to infantry units, though in practice coordination was minimal and several battles were lost due to said lack of coordination (Brunete being the biggest example)
In devolving the tank corps into proper manageable brigades, and not permanently parking the excess armored vehicles, you would have to significantly increase the number of new brigades into each army. That being the case, is it possible the reason they fouled it up was they just did not have enough officers after the purges to reconstitute armored brigades at the time, so the ones they could man with sufficient officers; they swelled them into the bloated unusable organizations they ended up being?
I think the prime reason for abandonment was survival strategy. I shall not mention who attempted to survive, lest the party ears find more names for their lists.
I think that the Japanese Army went into the Battle of Khalkin Gol expecting a walkover (because to the Japanese, fighting spirit was considered the deciding factor and would overcome any tactical difficulties), and the Soviet Army also went into the battle expecting a walkover (because of the vast Soviet superiority in tanks, artillery and motor transport, both numerical and qualitative.) Neither side got the walkover they expected, and both suffered far heavier losses than they expected. Many Soviet tanks were lost while trying to overrun Japanese infantry, as the Japanese wouldn't run away or surrender, and were prepared to employ suicidal tactics, like strapping explosives to their bodies, diving under an oncoming tank, and blowing themselves up.
@@timonsolus Exactly. Though the Soviets technically won, they suffered far heavier casualties than expected, so many in fact that the marshal who had led in that battle was executed for incompetence a bit later.
Also tanks on their own cannot hold ground. An organic Tank Corps with infantry & artillery who's Officers had a suspicion that they were about to be purged, might conclude that taking Moscow would represent their best chance of survival. So given Stalin's level of, in this case completely justified, paranoia breaking up any organisation that would present a serious threat makes logical sense. Particularly as, so far as they knew, Germany was their particular friend.
It was a devastating blow to disband their tank command. It had a terrible effect when they got invaded . The purges denied good commanders to be available and react accordingly to the attack
They did not have the fuel at the beginning of Barbarossa and the their armor broke down on a road march longer than a few miles. Russian armor units were "decimated" simply attempting to get anywhere near to where the Germans were, without the Germans lifting a finger.
Regarding that their tanks used diesel engines and even back then the USSR was a major exporter of oil, that one should not be a problem compared to the refinement of high octan fuel thats needed for planes. Regarding technical skills, I dont know.
In short: Soviet tank tactics were not working in Spain, mainly because Stalin killed his officers, so Stalin had to cut the tanks idea German tank tactics were working at his doorsteps, because Mr.H supports his officers in the Wehrmacht, so Stalin had to make the prominent prospect by building more tanks -------------------- If you want an extreamly short edition: Stalin
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Timestamps for related Videos:
00:03 - Invasion of Poland - th-cam.com/video/OMJc43wUPLM/w-d-xo.html
00:25 - Why the high Soviet Losses? th-cam.com/video/nU8VcEw3Zno/w-d-xo.html
02:48 - Spanish Civil War influence on Soviet Tank Design th-cam.com/video/936vpkCNKSk/w-d-xo.html
03:44 - Japanese Tank Arm th-cam.com/video/Ig9UBF2X5TU/w-d-xo.html
08:44 - NATO Counters th-cam.com/video/YgLU5ncAE9M/w-d-xo.html
11:07 - Great Purge effect on the Red Army th-cam.com/video/AiA8dKNcjjk/w-d-xo.html
11:44 - Why France fell in 6 Weeks th-cam.com/video/CI29hh5qBug/w-d-xo.html
Military History not Visualized oh Boy, another great video for me to sink my teeth in! :)
If you put these timestamps (without links) into the description, TH-cam will show the progress bar in segments and show names of chapters while playback (you need to begin with a 0:00 timestamp and they have to be in order tho).
Is the Panzer-Konferenz still goint to happen?
Reguarding unit size because this always confuses me whenever people mention soviet units; are we talking about soviet corps in terms of being equivalient of western divisions? Your diagram of unit hierarchy gives off them impression of a 1 to 1 comparison.
@@TheLastSterling1304 I posted an infodump on another comment just now. The Soviet "Tank corps" and "Mechanised corps" were called "corps" because they had the HQ and support units elements of an army corps, but they weren't usually made out of divisions but of brigades directly. For example, a 1942 Soviet tank corps included 4 brigades of which 1 was a breaktrough tank brigade (heavy tanks), 2 were tank brigades and the last one was a mechanised brigade (motorised infantry with tanks), plus the corps HQ and the support elements of a Soviet corps (motor-drawn artillery, recon units, a supply stash unit, a field hospital...).
7:00 That was seem, also, as a victory of the French doctrine, followed both by Japan and Brazil. Brazilian Army Lt-Colonel Lima Figueiredo, military observer for a year in Japan and China, wrote in 1940:
"The tanks of the people of the Soviets almost always found themselves alone, without the protective infantry. At point-blank range, they were shot by the anti-tank cannons operated by the Japanese who brought them very far ahead, when they were not caught in flames, caused by the bursting of a benzine bottle, thrown up-close by a Japanese soldier. In addition to this defect, of employing tanks without support, they used to throw large numbers of tanks in very tight compartments. Thus, in Chankufeng, on a battlefront (800 meters) they employed three tank companies, resulting in a large number of them being destroyed, stranded or imprisoned. In 10 days, 96 Russian tanks were put out of action.
From the sketch below we can see how the Soviets attack. [The sketch shows the tanks advancing far away and crossing the enemy lines very deeply, with the tanks of "diret protection" being 100-200 apart from the Soviet infantry.]
Against Russia the Japanese used its tank always protected by infantry and in diluted formation."
- Tenente-Coronel Lima Figueirêdo , Um Ano de Observação no Extremo Oriente, pg. 250-251.
The sketch:
i.postimg.cc/bwcvYTMj/img790.jpg
The Colonel, the towers in his collars indicate the Engineering Arm:
i.postimg.cc/BbRnKcnH/img631.jpg
He does start the description with:
"Although the Soviet material is very good, as we will show later, the Japanese knew how to take advantage of the meager apparatus they had." (Pg. 250)
Under rated comment
Thanks for this intriguing and largely unknown account. Brazil had some really insightful military observers in the war.
Thank You!
.
Soviet armoured unit types in 1939-1945 (note: I'm not adding the support and headquarters units):
Basic units: Tank battalion ("breaktrough tank battalion" if using heavy tanks), Mechanised battalion (motorised infantry with a few tanks attached), Guards Artillery battalion (motorised rocket artillery).
Tank brigade: 4 battalions of which 3 were tank battalions and 1 was a mechanised battalion. If the tanks were heavy tanks (KV series), it was called "breaktrough tank brigade".
Mechanised brigade: 4 battalions of which 3 were mechanised battalions and 1 was a tank battalion.
These two kind of brigades were the most prominent kind of armoured units within the Red Army, and could be arranged either as "independent" (acting directly under army or army group command) or attached to an army corps. For these, they were three kinds of corps they were attached to organically:
Tank corps: 4 brigades of which one was a breaktrough tank brigade, two were "normal" tank brigades and the last one was a mechanised brigade. This unit was very tank heavy for its size (around 20000 men and 1000 tanks) and thus was the kind of unit which was to be abolished. They were later reformed with better comunication systems to act as a sparhead.
Mechanised corps: 4 brigades of which one was a tank brigade and the three others were mechanised brigades. It was similar in size to the tank corps, yet less tank-heavy and more manageable from a combined arms perspective.
Cavalry-Mechanised group (introduced in 1942): 2 cavalry divisions (note: the Soviet cavalry divisions were actually mounted infantry with some light armor and motorised elements, and would better be called "demi-motorised divisions"), plus at least one tank and one mechanised brigades. An example of a Cavalry-Mechanised group is the 2nd Guards Cavalry Corps, also called 'Dovator Group' after its first commander. Said group fought as part of the 16th Army (Rokkossovski) during the battle of Moscow, and together with the 316th Riflemen division of Panfilov they were able to stop the German armored thrust in the Volokolamsk-Moscow highway, albeit at great cost.
Special corps: 3 riflemen divisions and 2 tank brigades. The forces that fought under then Komkor (Corps Comander) Zhukov in the battle of Khalkhin Gol were one of such corps. Another one fought in Borodino under the command of general Lelushenko.
I think that something to be noted in this aspect was the fact that the Soviet armoured units were operationally organised in brigades, and whenever a division was made, it was usually by merging two or three already existing brigades. Also important is the fact that the estructure of the higher levels (divisions, corps, armies...) to which those brigades were attached was changing due to the necesities at the time. Although there is this view of Tukhachevsky and some other officers as being "mostly alone" thinkers against a stagnant Soviet "old guard" staff the thruth is that almost everyone in the STAVKA were proponents of using tanks in a large scale, arbeit with differences as to how and why. From the first experiments at Kazan up until the end of the Soviet Union, the tank forces were not only a valuable branch of the Red Army, but also a great propaganda of the Soviet might. In 1939 and 1940 songs praising the tanks were officially published and used in propaganda montages as one of the many ways to increase enlistment in the officer corps, for example the song "Three tankmen" (Tri Tankista) made in 1939 as a propaganda celebrating the success at the border war with Japan, or the "March of the Soviet Tankmen" (Marsch Sovietskiye Tankistvi) which praised the skills of the tank crews and the power of the armoured units.
9:11
Genie: What is your wish?
Hooman: I wish for our tank corps to become tank brigades.
Genie: It is done.
Hooman: Nothing's changed.
Genie: That is correct.
Very good analysis of information regarding reasons surrounding the abolishment of the corps. But, a lot to unpack. I’ve gone through this video four times and it gets better and clearer each time. In a college setting, at least two or three days would be devoted to discussion and study of your points. You precisely encapsulated it all a 15 minute video, that is not easy. Great job.
So the Russian bias wasnt so strong back in ‘39
Well, the KV-1 and the early versions of the T-34 were still being tested and started being produced by the end of that year, so yeah. Most of their tanks were T-26s and BTs
@Charles McCarron The "Russian bias" is a World of Tanks meme about how Soviet tanks in that game are overpowered, mostly refering to the T-34 and KV variants.
@Mialisus You know, that's called overpenetration and is an actual thing...
@Mialisus lol "War Blunder" i will be calling it that name from now on
The argument that Purges in general and abolishment of tank corps specifically marked some sort of departure from Deep Battle/Operations doctrine never actually made any sense and I do not know why Glantz of all people supports (or at least supported back then) this idea. Actual battle manuals or training programs weren't changed a bit in between 1938 and 1941. There was literally no change in that department other than mentioning some people by name became politically incorrect. Doctrine never actually changed.
Yes. Actually the tank corps were abolished to be replaced into more reliable combined arms units.
@@podemosurss8316 Tank Corps circa 1938 were already combined arms units full and proper. Not optimal ones (but nobody, including Germans, had optimal structure at that time) but still combined arms. The thing that happened in November 1939 was just another chaotic mess that plagued USSR at that time, people were throwing shit at the wall to see what sticks and it was kinda the reason why that particular decision was cancelled just seven months later.
@@CruelDwarf In theory, the thing is, like the first Panzerdivisionen, that they were too tank-heavy, so they were envolving into a better structure.
@@podemosurss8316 decision to scrap Tank Corps in November, 1939 had nothing to do with the evolution of mechanized forces organization or anything like that. It was literally - 'we cannot make them work now, let's scrap the concept and try something entirely new' and 'new' was 'let's go to the purely tank brigades which would be attached to other units for operations' which is entirely backwards step in terms of organizing combined arms. When Germans crushed France and Soviet intelligence provided rather garbled information on German force structure, the decision was immediately reversed and monstrosity of Mechanized Corps model 1940 was born out of it.
@@CruelDwarf The concept of independent tank brigades was not a new concept, and actually was being used alongside with the concept of armored corps at the time. In fact Zhukov's encirclement at Khalkhin Gol was made using two independent tank brigades.
Russian: we don’t need tank corps
Panzer II and 38(t): so you have chosen...
Panzer III and IV: ...death.
Operation Barbarossa
A wild T-14 Armata appears: FOR YOU AS WE ARE A TANK HORDE!
Nazi Germany, Fascist, Imperial Japan, Italy, Pro-life Romania and Muslim Collaborating Bulgaria are crushed by superior quality and quantity of Armata tanks!
@@christiandauz3742 ...what?
@@Paveway-chan Not sure about the T-14 bit, but the Russians ended up producing more tanks than the Germans had.
ivan, start the t34 factory, will you?
@@sadknife Oh yeah, for sure. That's partially down to not having to produce more mundane things like trucks (they got hundreds of thousands from the Yanks) but they sure did xD
Thank you for making this useful history video!
Great video, as always. Just one little nitpick:
11:32 - When used as a statement, prefix increment is preferable to postfix increment, because it avoids a temporary copy, especially with custom types and overloaded operators (although modern compilers will usually inline and optimize it away when the return value is not used). SCNR.
I did enjoy this episode, and I did learn something, so thank you.
Excellent research and conclusions!
Excellent work.
Thank you!!
Excellent video. @Bernhard Kast, you should make one video of the visualized series to compare and explain the differences in between Germany´s bewegung taktisches and the USSR deep battle concept.
Because they already had Stalinium. Nothing else was needed.
Rebel Scum da comrade
Another informative video, thanks
I read somewhere that the Soviets screwing with the corps level of command cost them at the beginning of the war because it put more stress on the army commanders. Is that true, and if so, is it related to this?
That would be my thoughts also
Yeah the Soviets got rid of the corp level command. So instead of it being 3-4ish divisions in a corp and 3 or 4ish corp in an army the Soviets had 6+ divisions all in one army. So the army commander instead of having to deal with 3 or 4 (in theory) more experienced corp commanders on the phone had to deal with 6+ less experienced division commanders instead. Greatly increasing his workload.
Edit:also worth pointing out that Soviet divisions were much smaller than German ones. Between 50-66% the size of a German one.
Soviets get rid of the corps at the beginning of the war specifically because they simply did not have enough experienced generals to lead them. It was much easier to find a lesser number of relatively experienced men to command armies and then skip a step and put anything up to freshly-promoted colonels on divisions. And it definitely increased the workload of the army commanders, but there was no way for the Soviets to support more complex command structures with the officer cadre that they had at hand.
What I think would be interesting is a comparison of the reorganisation done by Marshall and the purges. If any of you could shed some light on this I will be thankful!
Thanks !!!
I enjoyed this video.
Thanks..interesting and I don't really know anything about this happening in the S.U. But wouldn't surprise me as an interim situation prior to the war. The Republican Army was badly led at the top .Most of the professional officers were in the Nationalists Army .The Republic seems to me to be led more by idealists than competent and experienced professionals . The German trained Spanish crews did well ..The Germans there rarely ,if ever ,went into battle. The Soviet advisers were so exasperated with the Spanish crew training that it was eventually decided to train crews in Russia.This seemed to help some. Large tank forces couldn't be used in Spain..so even the U.S. was careful about drawing any future conclusions on European use of Armor.. But the Political climate in the Soviet Union was touchy for veterans of Spain. They were often seen as wreckers and contaminated with western ideas. So I would expect many to keep their head down when they came back home.
Spanish tank crews were not traind in the Soviet Union. Aircraft pilots were. Also, don't overestimate the training of nationalist crews, the germans complained a lot about them and if you check operational records you can find lots of problems with reliability due to poor handling of the tanks, and ocasional tactical blunders. The difference between the effectiveness of one side or the other lies on the planification of operations and ability to coordinate the different arms. The republicans achieved this capability in 1938, too late to have an impact on the outcome of the war.
actually some were. @@carlistasycia
In a Nutshell ..
Q: Why?
A: Stalin.
Conclusion: Self-Preservation ..
Stalin wished he had T-14 Armata tanks during Barbarossa
Great video as always! I would like to ask another question: Were there bigger tank battles between the germans and the russians in the spanish civil war? And if yes, did the germans/russians draw any conclusions from them?
I disagree with the statement that a corps is always two levels above a brigade. This is usual true in western armies but not in soviet. Brigade and Corps were often used to indicate "new" or "experimental" formations. Later world war 2 soviet tank and mechanized corps consisted of brigades not divisions. Only after world war 2 tank corps became tank divisions and brigades regiments. There were now "proven" formations. The soviet naming conventions are confusing. For infantry there have been corps commanding rifle (infantry) divisions like in the west. However a world war 2 tank or mechanized corps was roughly similar in size to a German Panzer division and significant small er than a German Panzer Corps. A soviet tank army was roughly at the same level as a German Panzer Corps. Even later during the cold war the usual soviet hierarchy was regiment, division, army, front while the west (NATO) used brigade, division, corps, army and army group.
first, thanks for your insights!
> I disagree with the statement that a corps is always two levels above a brigade.
I am rather sure I did not say "always", since I am EXTREMELY hesitant to use such or similar words and a short look at my script confirms this:
> Now, for those who don’t know, a corps is two levels above a brigade in terms of size,
> so a division usually in between.
Do you have a source for this? (Ideally with page indicator)
> Brigade and Corps were often used to indicate "new" or "experimental" formations.
Ist es möglich, das Sie /Du evtl. auch einen zweiten Kanal in dt. Sprache eröffnest? Das wäre sehr schön (Abo garantiert, auch wenn es dann nur einer wäre..).
zeitlich und finanziell einfach nicht machbar, dieses Video zB hat 9 Stunden Gesamtproduktionszeit und nein, auf Deutsch wäre es keinesfalls schneller, in dem Fall sogar länger wegen der vielen englischen Zitate.
Mehr infos hier: th-cam.com/video/x3p4dUFB_vU/w-d-xo.html
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized
Oh - O.O Wie bestimmt schon vermute habe ich so etwas nicht geahnt, bedacht.
Das ist sehr verständlich, wenn auch irgendwie sehr schade. Als Laie habe ich schlicht ignorant verdrängt wie viel Arbeit dahinter steckt.
Nichts desto trotz ein toller Kanal! Und ein Abo ist selbstverständlich auch dabei.
Danke für den Link (schaue ich gerade an).
Hoffe, das Kommentare auf dt. unter den Kanalvideos erlaubt und in Ordnung sind.
Viele Grüße und Danke für die schnelle Antwort (hätte mal suchen sollen, ist sicher nervend, trotz Video permanent gefragt zu werden warum es keinen dt. sprachigen Kanal gibt, ich bitte um Verzeihung).
@@pelruu danke! Ja, ich hab das Video gemacht, weil es öfter aufkam. Wirklich nervend sind die Leute, die es trotzdem nicht einsehen wollen, meinen mir dann erklären zu müssen, dass es trotzdem ginge und/oder gar beleidigend werden.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized
Oh weih, das muss ja nun wirklich nicht sein. Sehr unhöflich und ignorant.
Wenn man nicht selbst mit und auf TH-cam arbeitet und "nur Videos genießt", verfällt man zwar schnell in ein Anspruchsdenken (so wie bei mir ebenfalls, leider), dieses ist jedoch in keinster Weise angebracht oder gar berechtigt!
Schließlich handelt es sich um ein für den Nutzer kostenfreies Angebot. Für die Videos zahlt man nichts, selbst wenn man sich ein TH-cam Abo gönnt, denn dann werden lediglich die Werbeeinblendungen /Sendungen ausgesetzt und stören nicht mehr. Der Inhalt auf dieser Plattform selbst ist weiterhin kostenfrei.
Das wird schnell vergessen und nicht mehr wertgeschätzt. Da oftmals auch noch die Vorstellung im Kopf herum geistert, das alle TH-camr "leicht" zu Millionären werden.. ..mit kaum Aufwand.
Was nun wirklich nicht der Fall ist.
Außerdem hat es noch nie Jemandem geschadet ein klein wenig Höflichkeit an den Tag zu legen; nachzudenken, bevor man etwas sagt respektive schreibt sowieso.. (mich da auch mal an meine eigene Nase packe).
Jedenfalls werden auch wieder Zeiten kommen, in denen wir alle erkennen und lernen werden, das wir ein unverhältnismäßiges Anspruchsdenken /verhalten an den Tag legen und auf die harte Tour lernen werden die Realitäten zu erkennen.
Aber genug davon, schweife ab.
jo, TH-cam ist Arbeit, sowas übersehen viele.
Ansonsten gibt es halt starke Unterschiede bei den Werbeeinnahmen, besonders alles um Krieg rum, hat um einiges niedrige Werberaten (weil manche Firmen halt keine Werbung vor sowas schalten wollen, auch verständlich manchmal). Hätte ich einen Schmink oder Life-Style Kanal mit diesen Zahlen wäre die Situation auch vermutlich etwas anders.
One problem with the video above is that it says BOTH that the purges suppressed discussion of “Deep Battle” and “Deep Operations” AND that the basic offensive doctrine of the Red Army developed by Tuckachevsky was soon restored. (I would be interested if you could do a video on the differences between Tuchachevsky and Isserson on soviet military theory)
MHV has another good video about Kursk and discusses in detail how the defence in depth was planned. If defence in depth was possible in June 1943 at Kursk when an offensive doctrine dominated, why wasn’t it possible in June 1941 when Barbarossa was launched?
What to Glantz and others say about this? I have seen or read elsewhere (sorry, no ref) that the Stalinists did not want to structure their forces on the borders with the Nazi empire that might be “interpreted” that they were preparing for war. Effectively Stalin thought he had made an enduring deal with Hitler in the non-aggression pact.
Ignoring the intelligence reports (up to 39 reports confirmed warnings of an invasion) was not incompetence but was bound up with the political pathology of Stalinism.
One problem with the cumbersomeness of Soviet tank formations was the lack of radios in tanks
Let's be fair to Stalin. He wasn't the only one who purged his High Command. Marshall did the same thing to the US Army and the Nazis purged their own officer corps. The main difference is that, as far as I know, Marshall didn't shoot any American generals.
Which "purges" are you referring to? And years.
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized In the summer and fall of 1941, Marshall forced 31 colonels, 117 lieutenant colonels, 31 majors, and 16 captains into early retirement or just discharged them. Another 269 National Guard and Reserve officers were fired. By the time the US Army entered World War 2, Marshall estimated he had forced at least 600 officers out of the Army. The Service papers accused him of draining the brains of the army.
To put it in perspective, 42 generals command a division, corps, or army in the Louisiana Maneuvers in 1941. Only 11 of them would have a combat command in World War 2. Of the prewar senior generals, only Walter Krueger would be given a senior position in the wartime army.
Marshall relieved generals and other officers for a variety of reasons. One example is Brigadier General Bundel, who was Commandant of Fort Leavenworth until Marshall asked him to update the army training manuals in 3 months. General Bundel insisted it would take 18 months, even after Marshall gave him 4 months. When General Bundel insisted it could not be done in less than 18 months, he was relieved. He retired another general who was a personal friend of his because that general declined to leave for France immediately due to domestic issues.
Another example is Major General James Chaney, Eisenhower's predecessor in England. Marshall replaced him with Eisenhower after Eisenhower found Chaney at a complete loss as to what to do, working peacetime office hours, and leaving the British in total confusion as to what Chaney was supposed to be doing. Chaney was relieved and stuck overseeing a training camp in Texas.
Most of the information I found about the generals Marshall relieved is from the book "The Generals" by Thomas E. Ricks if you would like to check it out.
In the case of Marshall's purges of the US Army's command structure, it freed up positions for the generals and officers who would win the war, such as Eisenhower, Patton, Bradley, McNair, Gavin, and hundreds of other senior officers. And the reliefs didn't stop when the war started. Marshall relieved officers right through to the end of the war.
@@nicholaswalsh4462 and what about the Germans?
The main difference is also, from what I know Marshall considered them unfit for war, whereas Stalin considered them traitors.
Upon further research I couldn't find anything that indicated any mass reliefs of German officers in the lead-up to the war. As such, I am inclined to believe that I inferred a thing that didn't actually occur.
"Cumbersomeness" doesn't refer as much to the number of tanks, as it refers to the whole organisation (that included different units, not just tanks), lack of mobile communication equipment and overall lack of experience of the commanders in commanding such force. Tank corps that were reintroduced in 1940 were then quickly disbanded again in 1941 -for exactly the same reason -cumbersomeness. It took Soviets some time to figure out proper structure, composition (balance between tanks and supporting units) and gaining experience in effectively commanding such units. this btw wan't problem exclusive to Soviets, everybody, including Germans had problems figuring out proper composition and organisation of mechanized units.
I know you said "Polish forces", but what I heard was "Polish horses".
It's a common myth that Polish rode into battle against German tanks on horses. In reality, of course, Polish horses rode their tanks into battle against the Germans.
Never underestimate Polish horses!
According to The Art of War (V.1) ". . .The control of a large force is the same in principle as the control of a few men: it is merely a question of dividing up their numbers.
"
Is it best to have one LMG per squad? Or 2? Or should you organize all the machine guns into a platoon? Or company? Or battalion?
Should you organize tanks into squads and assign those to infantry companies? Or maybe the other way around? Or should you just have one tank per platoon? Or should you mass tanks into brigades?
Whoever answers the question best wins.
Ah, good to see, that your sleeping rythm is also screwed up
8:45 soviets got rid of divisions for mechanized units so there was no intermediate level between brigades and corps. A soviet mechanized "corps" was really a division. Your quoting the number of brigades vs. corps earlier shows this with a ratio of 2-2.5:1. After the war corps were abolished for infantry units and replaced by Armies, Armies by Army Groups Groups by Fronts and Fronts by Directions. It was all done in an effort to inflate the apparent size of soviet military formations and confuse adversaries. "Sir, our Corps is up against the the soviet 5th guards shock army, but don't worry, their over-all troop count is actually lower than ours. General: wait? what?!"
MHV speaks here about pre-war developments in the red army. Divisions in mechanized formations were abolished only during the war.
I have been harboring the following suspicion regarding the rather confused beginning of the Soviet tank and mechanized forces for quite some time: could this abandonment have something to do with the less than stellar Soviet logistics and technology? That is, tank and mechanized units impose far greater logistical and technological burdens. Regarding the technological burden, the Soviets did not make advances in tactical radios the way the British and the Germans did. And, of course, there is also the issue of keeping up with training soldiers and officers for the tank and mechanized forces which has not been helped by the double whammy of the purges and the rapid expansion of the Red Army in the latter half of the 1930s.
Fast forward to 1941 in which the logistical technological burdens became even greater thanks to the German invasion: the Soviets abandoned their second attempt at building operational-level tank and mechanized units (i.e., mechanized corps, version 1941) and had to be content with tactical-level units instead (i.e., tank brigades).
This rough beginning of the Soviet tank and mechanized forces reminds me of an old saying: "In theory ... but in practice ...".
Bit shouty this episode
shouty?
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized said in jest I just thought you were a bit louder than usual, in truth I've never been on one of your videos this early and I just wanted to comment something but I couldn't think of anything else to say :(
@@MilitaryHistoryNotVisualized Der Akzent muss knallen!!!!1!
Spaß beiseite der Ton war gut
The "shouty" quality, that I also noted, could be an echo problem. I assume the room you used for the sound recording is not acoustically ideal. Something to consider. Anyway, keep up the good work! I've been listening your channels 4 years already!
concentrating so many tanks into a corps is overkill for confined spaces of central/western Europe. It would only be useful in areas having expansive wide open spaces ... dooh!
Thank You. My guess the reduction was due to a lack of resources and support staff, kinda like the Germans de-mechaniuzation that happened before and during WW2. That 5 year plan was probably not producing the results they were hoping for.
In addition, was there a conclusion that command and control was simply not technologically advanced enough in the USSR to be able to control such large formations?
In a previous video on the channel one of the interesting points raised was that the USA shipped a large amount of radios which were until then difficult to manufacture in the USSR in the quantities required. The Wehrmacht could draw on the German electrical industry which was quite advanced and this in my mind had a large impact on the success of German command on control when radios became widespread in military vehicles.
Also, even though Bernard has made a focus on tank corps (which on themselves weren't the main operational unit of the Soviet armored forces, tank and mechanised brigades were), brigades and smaller units had their own estructural changes as well. Between 1939 and 1942 the number of tanks per each tank brigade dropped from around 100 to 65 (21 in the case of breaktrough tank brigades), with these tanks being of newer models. There is also the technical change which was the introduction of new tank models with radios: the T-26 and BT series mostly lacked radios (except some command variants), but the new KV-1 and T-34 had radios as part of the design.
Furthemore, although tank batallions, regiment, brigades and even a division existed in Spain, these were just administrative units. Soviet anks were almost always used in company or platoon size in the battlefield. The only exception being the "Heavy tank regiment" of BT-5s, which was used as a tactical unit in Fuentes de Ebro and in the retreats of march 1938.
Said division only existed on paper, in fact. Usually tanks in the Republican side were used as companies theoretically attached to infantry units, though in practice coordination was minimal and several battles were lost due to said lack of coordination (Brunete being the biggest example)
In devolving the tank corps into proper manageable brigades, and not permanently parking the excess armored vehicles, you would have to significantly increase the number of new brigades into each army. That being the case, is it possible the reason they fouled it up was they just did not have enough officers after the purges to reconstitute armored brigades at the time, so the ones they could man with sufficient officers; they swelled them into the bloated unusable organizations they ended up being?
Looking good my austrian friend
Abolished? Or was its command executed?
Interesting.
I love how you pronounce Stalin
I think the prime reason for abandonment was survival strategy. I shall not mention who attempted to survive, lest the party ears find more names for their lists.
Interesting that the soviets were disapointed by their results in Khakin Gol. It is often presented as a japanese failure against soviet armor.
I think that the Japanese Army went into the Battle of Khalkin Gol expecting a walkover (because to the Japanese, fighting spirit was considered the deciding factor and would overcome any tactical difficulties), and the Soviet Army also went into the battle expecting a walkover (because of the vast Soviet superiority in tanks, artillery and motor transport, both numerical and qualitative.)
Neither side got the walkover they expected, and both suffered far heavier losses than they expected. Many Soviet tanks were lost while trying to overrun Japanese infantry, as the Japanese wouldn't run away or surrender, and were prepared to employ suicidal tactics, like strapping explosives to their bodies, diving under an oncoming tank, and blowing themselves up.
@@timonsolus Exactly. Though the Soviets technically won, they suffered far heavier casualties than expected, so many in fact that the marshal who had led in that battle was executed for incompetence a bit later.
@@podemosurss8316 didn't know that Zhukov was executed for his fookups...in 1939.
@@AKUJIVALDO The one executed for fookups was Blücher in 1938. I was talking about Lake Khasan.
Oh hell yeah.
Was Pavlov the same Pavlov that commanded the Western Front during Barbarossa?
I believe so.
Yes!
The Stukas were most instrumental in defeating the Polish Armed Forces. No ammunition, no food, no medical supplies, no fighting.
I like the cute stalin drawing
Oh hey, Pen and Sword! Based where i live ! may have to bother them!
The short version takeaway from this video: Red army doctrine and organization was in a state of chaos in the pre-war period.
In Soviet Russia, Lead changes your mind.
In Soviet Russia tank corps disband you!
Interesting the Germans took on 1 lesson and the Russians another
It was an Internal Matter.... best not ask.
Also tanks on their own cannot hold ground. An organic Tank Corps with infantry & artillery who's Officers had a suspicion that they were about to be purged, might conclude that taking Moscow would represent their best chance of survival.
So given Stalin's level of, in this case completely justified, paranoia breaking up any organisation that would present a serious threat makes logical sense. Particularly as, so far as they knew, Germany was their particular friend.
One of the good things Stalin ever did lol.
lol what you said was not true
Interesting. But would the SU have the technical skill and the refined fuel to maintain a tank force?
It was a devastating blow to disband their tank command. It had a terrible effect when they got invaded . The purges denied good commanders to be available and react accordingly to the attack
They did not have the fuel at the beginning of Barbarossa and the their armor broke down on a road march longer than a few miles. Russian armor units were "decimated" simply attempting to get anywhere near to where the Germans were, without the Germans lifting a finger.
Regarding that their tanks used diesel engines and even back then the USSR was a major exporter of oil, that one should not be a problem compared to the refinement of high octan fuel thats needed for planes. Regarding technical skills, I dont know.
the purges are the best thing stalin did as a leader
First comment? Cool video.
Jeffrey Huang. And??? What's Your Point!
The red army did so much shit in 1939
In short:
Soviet tank tactics were not working in Spain, mainly because Stalin killed his officers, so Stalin had to cut the tanks idea
German tank tactics were working at his doorsteps, because Mr.H supports his officers in the Wehrmacht, so Stalin had to make the prominent prospect by building more tanks
--------------------
If you want an extreamly short edition:
Stalin