Military History Visualized Ihr wahrt im MHM? Verdammt, dann muss ich euch verpasst haben, Schade. Ich mache dort gerade ein Praktikum im Rahmen meines Geschichtsstudiums und bin ein großer Fan deines Channels, die differenzierten Darstellungen und die ständige Nutzung wissenschaftlicher Literatur machen die Videos super hochwertig. Great work, keep it up!
Great video. You missed the food issue with lend lease. With the the Ukrine lost the Soviet Union was facing mass starvation. Hungrey people don't fight or work well. Lend lease prevented this negative outcome. After the war the Soviet Union had a famine with the end of US food aid. Around 5 million died(46-48) and that's with the Ukraine back in Russian hands. Would have been much, much worse during the war without aid.
@UCVERnj3HNiu-zfDYcS1w6Fg While it did "exist", it wasn't even past the early testing stage by the end of WW2. Only a few tanks (50 to 60 of them) were equipped and there were a few rifles being used for special operations. NVD's were equipped during the Korean war and became a standard thing in the Vietnam war. But the "good" ones (the way we think of them today) came in 1985 and was used in the gulf war to great effect. Before, that though NVD's were essentially invisible flashlights because that's the most you could do with them. They didn't do much for combat operations.
Wow, learned a lot from this. This kind of critical analysis of WW2 myths is more relevant than ever and the Battle of Berlin is an event that needs to be analyzed this way too. Also: Enemy at the Gates is a movie that aged like milk.
Still, "Enemy at the Gates" is not a documentary movie but a a fictional film ("Spielfilm"), just like Spielberg's "Medal of Honor" is a game for the PlayStation1 and not an accurate war simulator etc. This should be always made clear.
"critical analysis of WW2 myths is more relevant than ever" Like the myth that it was a good idea for Britain to get involved. A myth slowly eroding over time.
The Great War It also has the most awkward sex scene in cinema. Fun fact: I first saw the movie in Singapore, which censored out that scene entirely. Cue my surprise when I watched a home video of the movie with my folks years later and it wasn’t cut...
@@artificialintelligence8328 pretty sure Boris Yeltsin would disagree. the binding force of the USSR were the Communists, creators of the failed economy that existed in 1990. Anti-Soviet was Pro-Russia to him and his followers.
Fun fact: Russians DON’T have an accent when they’re supposedly speak in their mother tongue onscreen. So British accent, American accent is fine, as long as you live behind the atrocious “Russian” English accent. That makes everyone one screen look as an imbecile.
A book I read, first published in 1977 but still being reprinted in new editions as late as 2013, still contains the mythological 'Japanese knee mortar', that best I've been able to establish, was a short-lived hoax dating back to a small group of particularly dim-witten GI who were told to go test out captured Japanese equipment, resulting in one or two incorrect reports until the medics sent word that that was not how those weapons operated. It also repeated the myth of Stillwell as a good general and the myth of the incompetent Chinese being rescued by a handful of westerners.
I've always been confused by the "endless Russians" myth in general. Their population isn't exactly sky-high, it's their vast territory that's effectively endless.
Yeah, giant territory of Russia always was a case in most wars, since war with Sweden up to WW2, luring enemies deep, attacking from expose flanks and raiding supply lines, if needed using Scorched earth tactics (good examples are WW2 and Patriotic war of 1812 with Napoleonic France)
“Teeming horde of barbarian masses” has always been a strong rhetoric. A lot of our ideas about Russia come from Great Britain. Russia was technologically inferior to GB, so they needed another way to depict their enemy as being dangerous. The idea has continued into modernity because of the huge influence Churchill had over shaping US internationalist foreign policy.
@@MegaKaiser45 At least back then they gave some respect now it just making Micheal bay fast pace action also I think the next battlefield will let's you have a m1 grand with a laser, grip, and red dot 😂
as a russian, there is totally nothing such as bears on unicycles drinking vodka, i'm totally not trying to hide some classified information so that i don't die because solzhenitsyn said that ussr is literally 1984 but worse
Enemy at the Gates isn't even accurate to the non fiction Enemy At the Gates novel by William Craig. Not only is it Hollywood history it's only a few pages of the book. Good read by the way.
@Dr Disconect actually it was a short list of words to spot the spies from different countries, f.e. for Japanese spies the word was Leningrad. Spotting and sorting, very convenient
I know there's no other way to reach Russian archives for western historical researchers, as to find russian historian and try to collaborate. And the main couse of it - language - too many russian documents, which avalible for russian history is in "fog of language" for western history... BUT! I'm really surprised here and now, cause when i finish to watch this video I feel like a have a great conversation with my friend historian with nearly same opinion . Great thanks for your work, guys! And let's try to make our countries to live in peace. With best regargs, an ordinary russian guy.
@@HydratedBeans How about this. The Bolsheviks and the National Socialists were both socialist, and ran equivalently monstrous regimes that brutally repressed people. The war on the Eastern Front was not about Russians valiantly defending their Motherland from "fascist" invaders, but rather two groups of Left fascist gangsters in a vicious struggle over which criminal socialist gang would get to enslave Eastern Europe.
Saint Joan of Arc, heroine of France sorry to ruin your moment but the US could have wasted Berlin the same way they did with Japan. and the Soviets didn't fight to help the West they fought because they got invaded and they wanted revenge
True, about Soviet Union recruiting from the liberated- occupied territories. My grandfather has been recruited in octomber 44 afted Romania switched sides, till september heve been in 10th Romanian inf. Division, 38 inf. reg. then after the switching all Romanians from Bassarabia and Bucovina were send back home. Most were properly trained, that helped them to survive the war and many of them been awarded by Soviets with medals for courage and high valor in battle, like my Grandfather who been awarded with Order of Glory 3rd grade and some more, i remember only this one.
So: 1) The Soviets couldn't throw more soldiers than there were bullets at the Germans, but rather, faced heavy losses during the first half of the war, due to disorganization - an aftereffect of the purge. 2) It wasn't the failure of Operation "Citadel" that devastated the German tank forces - rather, it was the effect of consecutive, steady losses throughout the summer of 1943. 3) The commissars didn't just shoot any soldier they saw retreating - some did, but they were an exception. 4) The Soviets didn't use "Human wave attacks" - they fought with very simple tactics, while their operations and overall strategy was far more complex. 5) Operation "Barbarossa" was not a preemptive attack - the Soviets were in no shape for an offensive war, and even if they were, German military intelligence was far too lacking to determine it. 6) It wasn't "Genera Winter" who stopped the Wehrmacht - it was their heavy losses in 1941, that affected the army when it was in it's peak condition, that would eventually halt their advances. 7) Lend-Lease did't "Save" the Soviet Union, but it was still very important for its war effort.
No. 5: Soviets may not have been any shape for an offensives, but because of the arrogance of the Soviet officials that probably didn't matter. The Ploesti oil fields were very close by as well as the coal fields of Western Poland and the Eastern Germany. It wouldn't not have been that unthinkable that a sudden massive offensive by the Red army would have deprived the Germans of most of their fuel supply. No. 6: Maybe not, but not having been prepared for the winter had to play significant part. No. 7: The USSR may still have been on the winning side of that war, but they probably wouldn't have made it past Poland. Berlin? Forget it!
@@redfiend Depends. If they were the only people who knew anything about running an army, then possibly. But let's just say there was much going on, to which the organization was having trouble adapting.
I think one important aspect of lend-lease that often gets overlooked is the psychological impact that having foreign arms would have on local forces - it's a concrete, tangible demonstration that you are not alone in the fight, and that even if you cannot see your allies, they are there and you are supported by them. Much easier to fight on in a desperate situation if you feel are not isolated or abandoned.
bull lend-lease was not only useless but also harmful and the Russian people were definitely alone and the "allies" were on the side of Hitler and were almost worse than him
It was also a reminder that MAYBE the Soviet system wasn't the answer to all of life's problems, something that Stalin et al were not willing to admit nor permit discussion thereof.
I must point out that NKVD was not a 'predecessor' to KGB per se. KGB was intelligence service (both domestic and foreign) while NKVD was essentially a ministry of internal affairs.
Also, about the last point - Boris Sokolov is not well regarded in Russian historical community because of his unsavory practices like plagiarism and outright usage of fake sources.
Just because putinist nazis don't like what he writes, doesn't mean he's wrong. If you have an argument, make it with facts. But shut up with the vague "I don't like it so I hate it" moaning. All Russian historians who don't write what the putinists want them to write, face such criticism. So your criticism can be safely considered fake and political, unless you back it up.
@ he literally said *why* he's not well regarded. He didn't say Russian historians just hate him for no reason. And you just jumped to Putin and Nazis. That was one hell of a strawman, dude.
There are more of us than you might think. Not all here in Europe, or even the US (although it is debatable if it registers in any interest there.) have swallowed the post-war anti-USSR narrative. That after-war historical narrative was severely tainted with (anti USSR) propaganda and thus the Soviet efforts were ideologically minimized, ridiculed or adversely questioned and assessed. Not all were blinded by that. I thank the Soviet Union for the defeat of NAZI-Germany and I am (and many with me are) aware that without the USSR we would be speaking German, Italian or Japanese....or most likely not at all.
@@Centurion101B3C Then why don't you people live in Russia under Putin and his Third World conditions now? ^^ Your statement is ridiculous and has nothing to do with European culture. "Speaking German, Italian and Japanese" is exactly what so many Europeans do (in Germany, Austria, Swiss), and rightfully so, after all also the media and technology comes from Japan and not from Russian Kolhoz or your North Korea. Every civilized European would never want to behind the Iron Curtain like in Eastern Germany.
@@bringbackmy90s Never stated any preference for desiring to live anywhere else than where I am now. Also I do not see how current day FSG and North Korea find their place in this debate other than through YOUR (to me unclear) perspective, which is not mine and for YOU to deal with. And yes, I speak more languages (among which the mentioned, although I admit that Japanese is not my strongest suit) than my native one. I am glad that I have the option. And precisely that is exactly the crucial point: Under the 3rd Reich, there would be no option and anyone deviating from the state-cult of Nazism would be made to have no life and thus no voice. Fortunately the USSR defeated and destroyed the 3rd Reich and I am again stating that I am intensely thankful of that.
This is one of the best history channels out there. The constant presentation of sources, using them to draw conclusions that are never presented as the whole truth make every episode more a scientific essay than just entertainment. I love it when small, independently produced formats top everything available in TV. I reminds me how passion always beats profit-oriented bs.
Been recently in Belarus (Weißrussland) and visited the Great Patriotic War Museum there Was incredibly interesting and well worth the time Gave a totally different perspective on the war as one would usually find in a western museum This video really challenged some of my ideas about the Red Army, and in conjunction with the museum, gave me a new perspective on it Thank you MHV!
@CounterStrike211 I don't disagree with the Red Army being a powerful fighting force, but that claim you made is completely baseless. According to Wikipedia the Japanese claim they took about 60 000 losses, KIA, WIA and captured, in Manchuria, while the Soviets claimed they killed 80 000 Japanese. That's roughly the same number of casualties as they suffered on Okinawa. Over the many years of war, the Americans killed many times more Japanese than the Soviets did during their very brief campaign. In the Philippines campaign of 44-45 alone the Japanese suffered some 350 000 casualties
Lol at Japan surrendering because of the Soviets, they killing most of the IJA and somehow 'liberating' Korea and Manchuria (because communism is such a good ideology!).
Yes, 27 minutes of summarized glorious informative myth debunking. Am so glad to be a patron and see you have the same views on those "documentaries" as I do. I look forward to what you have in store for 16 Days in Berlin. I know my money in that will be well spent.
the myth about soviet unlimited manpower was one of two the biggest myths that came from german military commanders. another one was about winter that beat the germans.
It's kind of disheartening to think how much of the popular understanding of WWII comes directly from Nazi propaganda. But it makes sense given how closely the US aligned with the former Nazis for the Cold War
@@projectpitchfork860 He didnt, having manpower shortages after you conscript 30 million men is normal, and doesnt debunk common narrative of "endless manpower in Soviets"
@@yep9817 it… it does. They didn’t have endless reserves they were lucky they weren’t fighting the entire axis alone. The entire first part of the war they were the ones being outnumbered and the numbers are pretty similar after.
Useful video for both the western viewer and the Russian. I would even say that especially for the Russian one in view of certain internal reasons. It is a curious coincidence that today I watched a lecture by the Russian military historian Aleksei Valerievich Isaev. The topic of the lecture was Blau's operation. So the famous order number 227 was announced in view of the breakthrough of German troops in the south of the Soviet Union, to the Caucasian oil. This breakthrough was a complete surprise to the Soviet command, because it was assumed that the Germans would establish a bridgehead for an attack on Moscow. After the battle of Voronezh, German troops moved immediately south, and not further east, as the Soviet troops suggested. As a result, the German tank corps simply went without encountering resistance in view of the fact that there was no one to stop them. As a result, 62 and 63 armies were formed to stop the further advance of tank corps.
@@Pvt.Conscriptovich I absolutely don't trust a Marxist trying to justify and rationalize the Red Army system. You aren't interested in truth unless it can support your propaganda. Unsurprising that you worship Lenin then.
I think the manpower myth also has some roots in the figures of divisions. Some may see, say for example, 20 German Divisions vs 40 Soviet Divisions, as the Soviets having a 2-1 advantage. Well, Soviet organization actually had it where the Soviet Division was smaller than a Western Division, with the approximate Soviet equivalent to the latter being a Soviet Corps. So it is more likely that in my hypothetical example, the match up may actually be closer to a 1-1 ratio in numbers of men.
well, the issue is the Soviet divisions were less self-sufficient than German ones, so they had more troops somewhere else that were not in the divisions. Yet, I don't know exactly how that ratio translates. Also there are "Army Units" (Heerestruppen) for the Germans and I am rather sure the Soviets had plenty of their own, as always once one looks a bit deeper, it gets really complicated.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Good point, this may be worth more research and perhaps it's own video. Would those 'other troops' have been support troops or smaller independent brigades/regiments? I think that this myth also has roots in the Early Cold War from a few points. A) The arguments of the necessity/cost effectiveness of the Atomic Bomb as a counter to Soviet "Hordes". B) The experience of the Korean War, with the Chinese PLA having large numbers and using human waves. Some may have ignorantly equated the PLA and the Red Army due to both being Communist and using Soviet weaponry and equipment.
Just as an aside about the Lend Lease, my grandfather (the one who survived the war, despite being wounded once and receiving contusions twice) had always sworn by Lend Lease, and so did one of my grandmothers who was still a young girl during the war. My grandfather repeatedly said how without the Willis jeep he could not possibly do his job (he was an officer in self-propelled artillery towards the end of the war), or without the American trucks or American petrol the army couldn't have possibly advanced as fast as it did. My grandmother recalls the American spam (what the Russians call tushyonka - I still enjoy the stuff even now! It's very popular in Russia but was virtually unknown before the war) that reached the home front. Soldiers from the front lines got dibs on the good American canned goods but would send home packages - the soldiers in general were actually fairly well-fed, another common myth about the Red Army in WW2. That spam along with all the other food that Americans had sent (I don't remember for example just how many millions of bushels wheat and buckwheat were sent as well) was what saved millions of civilian lives and kept the Soviet home front going. Whatever I feel about the modern U.S.A., I cannot but feel a deep gratitude to the American people and administration and their help in WW2.
Hunter of Dreams ... YES, I could not agree more. The Americans with the Lend-Lease provided Soviets with the ability to conduct and wage war. Could Soviets win without Lend-Lease?? Hmmm, I don't think so personally. But, the Americans understood that helping the communist at the time was a better proposition than Nazi Germany defeating the Soviets. Agree, whatever I feel of the modern Russians...the Americans did the right thing at the time. Merci
@@biz4twobiz463 the right thing for the short term. Destroying the developed world was good for the USA for a long time. With our whole species hurtling towards extinction today maybe the Nazis in power wouldn't have been so bad after all? At least the Nazis had a sustainable plan.
@@1pcfred ... Hmmm, sustainable plan. Ok, but only IF you met all the criteria. Otherwise, you would never exist, because your parents, grandparents, etc didn't meet the necessary criteria either. Therefore, your comment does not exist today or tomorrow...or anytime. Merci
Pretty accurate, but one more thing with Winters - people who lived in USSR was not resistant to cold. They freezed the damn same way. And you forgot the myth of a weapon shortage AKA 'one rifle for 5 men'
With regard to the "General Winter" myth. A few years ago I took a look at the monthly distribution of German casualties using the data of Rüdiger Overmans. For the period June 1941 - May 1944. I chose this peridod to examine because Overmans has total figures that are not broken down by front. However, during this period German losses where overwhelmingly on the Eastern front. The only other place where there was action was Africa, but the German contingent there was never more than 7 1/2 divisions. The monthly distirbution of losses does not vary widely across the years. Summing casualties in these years for the months October - March (calling it winter), we get 1,237,000 and for April - September (calling it summer), we get 1,410,000. Another way of looking at this is by noting that while the month in which the highest casulties fall is January with 320,000, the second is June with 266,000. Another interesting statistic, given that you quoted July, 1941 casualties as being particularly high. Overmans has these as 67,000. But for June he cites 29,000. As the invasion began on the 22nd, this is for 9 days. Extrapolating to 30 days we get 97,000. No month in the perido examined exceeds this number except January 1943 (wtih 185,000), which is of course the final month of the battle of Stalingrad.
"General Winter" myth fisrt made by napoleon and after just repeated by the Germans to justify their defeat the Germans also came up with a fairy tale that Russia is a "northern country" and supposedly very cold
Casualties can mean wounded, many of which returned to duty. Just like how the number of tanks knocked out seems outrageous...until one realizes how readily both Soviet and American repair crews could fix their mounts...sometimes piecing together parts from several busted tanks, akin to how the comic book "Jeb" Stuart with his "Haunted Tank" built the "Jigsaw" version, based on a T-34 chassis and engine (on the WESTERN front?) with a M10 turret, somehow fitted with an armored roof and commander's cupola...with a "hoop" aerial that some earlier Soviet tanks used!
@@RouGeZH they're called tankies or simply just communists under different name. They're worse than wehraboos and Nazis combined. Thinking they won the war by their own and massacres committed by their government was totally justified
Blocking detachment and manpower crisis: actually, one of the rather important role of the blocking detachment (or NKVD security, your pick), in the later stage of the war when the Red Army started to recapture the land, was to go into liberated area and sweep up any able-bodied men they could find and chain-gang press them into services. They weren't completely untrained before being pressed into combat; each division has a training battalion that handle these types of training, but you can see the desperate situation that they had to throw people into formations without any regards to things like: loyalty, security risk, language barriers, etc ... One of the thing that may explain why the Red Army was for a period of time, could not have much more sophisticated tactics but instead had to focus on operational arts was because they lost many experienced officers, first to the Purge and second to the Germans in the first few months of the war. Some of the practices in the early days were disastrous: a division reduced to 300 mostly staff and officers were ordered to counterattack into oblivion; they really should not have done it that way and at least try to evacuate them. They had to very quickly, in a hurry, train a lot of lieutenants and promote the surviving ones into captains and majors. Any good commanders had to be quickly promoted upwards to serve in higher units. David Glantz noted, in When Titans Clashed, that around late 1941, early 1942, the STAVKA had to put out orders instructing unit commanders on very simple, rudimentary tasks like "have a plan for artillery fire before an infantry assault". This was evident that the low-level unit commanders were very inexperienced. Also, if you compare a German division with a Russian division, you can see that the Russian divisions generally had fewer men, and fewer artillery assets. The indirect fire assets were mostly mortars. Yet the impression of the war was that the Russian used a lot of artillery to batter the enemy. How and why? Coordinating indirect fire with infantry assaults were a tricky task so at lower levels, with lower-skilled officers, it was relegated to mortars and direct-fire 76.2mm guns, which are mostly an infantry weapon: close to the front and directly attached to the infantry units conducting the assault. The Red Army pooled their large caliber howitzers and Katyusha launchers (called Guards Mortar) at Corps (the Rifle Corps level of command was actually eliminated soon after the start of Barbarossa and was reintroduced around Kursk, 1943) and Front level in prepared fire plans against static positions for penetration assaults. Another effect that you can see in the Red Army hurried efforts to train new officers and promoting the good ones were how fast some of the commanders rose through the ranks. Ivan Chernyakhovsky was probably the best example: he commanded a Tank Corp in June 1942, a month later, he commanded an Army. By June 1944, he commanded a Front. At the same time, old or bad senior commanders were quickly "promoted" to desk positions and sent away from the front (examples included Budyonny and Timoshenko, both initally trusted by Stalin but after a few disastrous battles, they were quietly "promoted" into honorary positions and shoved aside). Rosmistrov, commander of 5th Guards Tank army; the guy whose Corps were battered in Prokhorovka, performed another ultimately successful but costly attack in Misnk and was removed from frontline command and promoted to "Marshall of Armoured troops". He did not command a Tank Army again. The "good" operation commanders definitely had an effect down to the tactical battles. One of the reason the Leningrad area campaign dragged on for so long and many offensives there just grind to a halt was two folds: first, it had lower priority for manpower and equipment; second, the senior commanders there weren't as good and as experienced as the better ones in the Central and Ukrainian sectors (people like Konev, Vatutin, and Rokossovsky). We all know the battle of Kursk was over the Kursk salient, but the reason why that salient existed was interesting. It was the result of a series general offensives a few months before that. The majority of fronts did badly, except for Rokossovsky's, which went quite well, but eventually also ran out of steam. His advance created the bulge. The maturation of Russian tactical and operational arts can be seen in the Manchurian offensive against Japan. There, the division received additional support unit tailored to the terrain the unit had to fight on and advance over. Fortification-busting divisions received heavy tanks and artillery, the ones going over plains get medium tanks, etc ... The theatre command went one step further and match the terrain with the units' experience fighting in Europe: armies with experience fighting in mountains are relegated to attacks across Manchurian mountains and armies with experience fighting in urban areas were tasked with assaulting fortifications.
@@lucaswatson1913 The majority of what I wrote about the adaptation of the Red Army command and the revival of it can be found scattered in "When Titans Clashed" by David Glantz. A more detailed book, probably, but I haven't read it cover to cover myself is probably "Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War" also by David Glantz. An interesting book on the use of sub-standard recruits is "Scraping the Barrel: The Military Use of Sub-Standard Manpower", edited by Sanders Marble. The practice of the NKVD security detachment in impressing "liberated" population into the Red Army is in Chapter 7, written by Glantz. By the end, according to this chapter, a Red Army Rifle Regiment is a surprisingly multi-ethnic, multi-national force: "One officer’s description of the composition of his rifle division typified the Red Army as a whole. Created at Stavropol’ in the North Caucasus in August 1941, the 343rd Rifle Division initially consisted of “40 years old, 38 years old, kolkhoz [collective farm] chairmen, raiispolkom [district executive committee] chairmen, raikom [district committee] secretaries, and so forth, but they were not young.” Thereafter, however, “Our regiment traveled through 7,500 kilometers of combat, and only 16 veterans who had joined up in Stavropol’ remained.” Most of those who remained “were guys 40 and 45 [years of age],” and “the composition varied . . . with all kinds- Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis.” In short, “There were up to 25 nationalities in the regiment,” but “no problems arose. It was one big friendly family-a regimental family,” and “there were always 10-15 women in the regiment.” In the same book, chapter 9 and 10 deals with the German counterparts in also scrapping their barrel for recruits; plus some frictions in working alongside "allies"; like this quote: This Axis quarrel climaxed in a heated exchange during a meeting in Podgornica on May 22, where Phleps [commander of 7th SS Freiwillige Gebirgs Division Prinz Eugen, a division consisted of nearly entirely Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans of non-Reich origin] (never hesitant to speak his mind) appalled his Wehrmacht interpreter, Lt. Kurt Waldheim, by calling his Italian counterpart General Roncaglia a “lazy macaroni” and nearly coming to blows with his ally. After the encounter, Phleps scolded young Waldheim, whose translations evidently were toning down Phleps’s vitriol: “Listen, Waldheim, I know some Italian and you are not translating what I am telling this so-and-so.” For the specific organisation of the Red Army at various points, decent source a Master thesis at the US Army CGSC: "Analysis of Deep Attack Operations: Operation Bagration Belorussia 22 June - 29 August 1944" by Lt. Col. William M. Connor. This is freely distributed and can be searched on Google. For the organisation and planning in the Manchurian Operation, there are 2 Leavenworth papers by Glantz, which are freely available: "August Storm: Soviet Tactical and Operational Combat in Manchuria, 1945" and "August Storm: The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria". The dates of the papers were a bit dated, 1987; Glantz already put out a more recent book. It is interesting when you consider the inception of these 2 papers: Glantz was commission by the Japanese Self-Defence Force to study the Manchurian campaign since back then, the Japanese had the wrong impression of the Red Army; no doubt because of the Cold War-era memoirs of German generals and their contacts with the Germans during the war, and they could not understand how such an "unskilled" opponent like the Red Army could so quickly swept aside the admittedly weak Kwantung Army and advanced over an area the size of central Europe in 11 days.
@@VT-mw2zb amazing! Thank you so much for taking the time out to give me such detail, seriously it's a lot of effort thank you. Will be heading to my uni library to take a look soon
@@lucaswatson1913 also, if you want to have an overview the development, changes and evolution of the Red Army from its inception to about 1980s, then there's really no better book than "Soviet Military Operational Art: in Pursuit of Deep Battle" also by David Glantz. If you just want a quick overview of the structure of the Rifle Division from 41-45, then here. It's very obvious from the structure that Soviet Rifle Division had mostly either direct fire guns (45 and 76mm) or mortars for fire support. It had at most, 12 x 122mm howitzers. blog.usejournal.com/the-red-army-in-ww-ii-496e8a56b6e
@@michaelwier1222 think of it again. You have massive loss of life, young unmarried men primarily, so you also have massive numbers of children who were unborn if this word even exists. Then you also lose those children who would be born by those 1st generation of unborn and this horrifying cycle is echoing every 20-25 years or so, only gradually fading away.
What really annoys me about the whole 'Barbarossa as a Preemptive Strike' argument is that it's plainly clear that Hitler had every intention of invading the USSR regardless of Soviet actions, thanks to the ideology and desire for Lebensraum. Besides, if Stalin had serious intentions for a Pre-emptive strike, he lost his one big opportunity in the Spring/Summer of 1940, when the Western Europe campaign was raging. Even with the major problems the Red Army was facing at the time (recovering from Purges and high losses in the Winter War), with the bulk of the best German forces in France and the Low Countries, a westward assault toward Germany would have been challenging to counter.
It's true soviet union was not planning to attack in 1940/1941 because of the sorry state of their army. But they eventually would, after building up their forces they certainly would have attacked perhaps in '43 or '44
NKVD was the predessor of MVD (Ministry Internal Affairs), not KGB. Predessors of KGB were NKGB (People's Commissariat of State Security) and later MGB (Ministry of State Security), which was somewhat downgraded from a ministry of their own to mere Commitee of State Security under the Council of Ministers (e.g. soviet goverment).
@@ВячеславСкопюк not really, NKGB was separated from NKVD before the German invasion, but at the time of blocking detachment they there entirely separate entities. That's not what is called a 'predecessor'. By late 1941 and onwards NKVD was a police force, that's why it was responsible for blocking detachments. Preventing an unauthorised tresspassing is a thing any police force is supposed to do in order of a crisis.
@@ФедяКрюков-в6ь > but at the time of blocking detachment they there entirely separate entities Nope. NKGB and NKVD were united in July 1941 and separated again in 1943 >That's not what is called a 'predecessor' NKGB was formed from GUGB NKVD. It's called 'predecessor' in my book >By late 1941 and onwards NKVD was a police force it was only part of their duties. For example, they also trained saboteurs
I studied in a Russian officer school. As my specialization was as a military lawyer, we only studied the basic ("classic") combat tactics, from the late Cold war (1980s) combat manuals. The Soviet soldiers (and Russian soldiers up to this day) are still taught that in case of a large scale war (read: "war to conquer West Europe through Germany"), our infantry would attack the enemy trenches in a "riflemen chain". Essentially, the infantry dismounts from their APC/IFVs a few hundred meters before the enemy line, deploy into a straight line, 6-8 meters between soldiers, march forward at a fast pace (5-6 km/h), shooting their AKs forward, without aiming, then within 30-40 meters of the trench throw grenades, shout "Hooray!" and run into the damned enemy trench. Only the light-machinegunner of the section is supposed to run&shoot, covering the section's advance. Of course, a chain of infantry is usually preceded by tanks, but the tank/infantry coordination is usually the task of the company/battalion level. The lightly armoured APC/IFVs follow in zigzags behind the infantry line. All Russian soldiers still practice forming into such a "chain of death" during their basic training. Of course, such an unsophisticated tactic would cause us huge casualties, but we were told that this is still the fastest and the most efficient way to achieve a breakthrough in a modern large-scale war. In the modern assymetrical conflict (Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, etc.) the more "subtle" and less wasteful tactics were used, like advancing under the cover of a tank, and so on, but the frontal "chain" assault is still considered the main doctrine for a war against NATO.
the same stupid tactic is taught in the infantry here in Greece. well, not just running. "leapfrog" with covering fire, get close enough for grenades, shout "like the wind!" and charge with bayonetts. i thought they were joking, but sadly they were not.
@@jurisprudens like the wind, or usually just wind! is the national military motto since ww2, possibly even earlier. the worst piece of training i had was learning to use an antiair gun as part of the job of military musician was to defend the HQ. in a bunker. with an antiair gun. underground. against airplanes. i wanted to slap them.
@@apokos8871 A musician with an anti-air gun? Wow, that' inventive! I guess, it was inspired by the "blast of horn that scares vultures" symbolism, or something.)
@@apokos8871 That's the basics of infantry combat for the Israeli army too. Only the infantry are taught anything more complicated than that. For everyone else who might in some way end up fighting dismounted with light arms, this is pretty much it.
No because he completely missed the point. Lend-lease provided critically needed materials in the first place - explosives, gunpowder, aluminium etc. This was it's main positive effect, and not trucks or tanks or planes.
@@AlexanderSeven I'd say that food and non-combat supplies like uniform, boots etc. were in fact crucial. An army can still fight for months with fewer than optimal rifles, tanks, planes etc. but an army, or the country for that matter, cannot last long without food. All of Soviet Union food producing regions were lost by summer 1942, and how large were food reserves of a country that less than a decade prior to it suffered one of the worst famines in history? From what I gathered about the Lend-Lease, the non-combat supplies were the majority of goods sent and were in fact crucial in keeping USSR afloat. Otherwise, by 1943 you have Soviet Union that cannot even feed it's soldiers, let alone provide them with weapons of war. Not that many edible things grow in Siberia and central Asian wastes - most certainly not enough to provide food for the entire country. It is usually animal husbandry at those areas, but even that - you have to be able to substitute at once the loss of half of the European part of USSR with food production from central Asia - that is NOT something you could do even with a few years to prepare, let alone within a year. And since food production is the most labor intensive of all branches (takes up the most manpower), just to keep the country from starving, huge portion of manpower would have to be diverted from factories, and those that remained in the factories would have to produce both weapons AND non-combat supplies. Without Lend Lease, from what I have gathered up, it seems to me that Axis might have actually won - not by some masterful plan and tactics but by simply denying the Soviets crucial areas and grinding them down to the point where they could not sustain the army anymore. Without a rifle or a tank, a soldier can retreat and wait for it to be available and keep fighting. Without food, soldier cannot last more than a week. At least not in a combat capable condition. And I highly doubt that Soviet Union had several years worth of food reserves, as that is how long it took to first recover food producing regions, then actually get anything from them.
@@Wustenfuchs109 I don't think that food lend-lease was critical. It definitely improved quality of rations, but not more. For example, if we compare food produced by Soviet economy during the war and shipped by lend-lease: flour: 61,5 millions of tons vs 510656 tons. grain: 3,9 millions of tons vs 86236 tons. pasta: 949,5 thousands of tons vs 157 tons. Not really impressive.
@@Wustenfuchs109 Excellent post, though I wouldn't go past strategic standstill as a result. From what I read the Soviets had carte-blanche in what they could request and we're only ever denied some stuff deemed related to nuclear research. Since they could dictate what they got, they requested the things they lacked the most. I would highlight the precision machinist equipment (essentially whole factories) without which their military production would have a hard time recovering.
The United States furnished tens of thousands of cargo trucks, jeeps, water trailers. Thousands of miles of railroad rail, some 3800 steam locomotives and tenders, immense quantities of railroad rolling stock, literally shiploads of canned high density foodstuffs such as Spam, besides shiploads of field gear, tents, sleeping bags, etc. The material needed to keep their logistical system functioning besides specialized capital equipment machine tools needed for weapons manufacture. This besides other war material, alongside of material exported by the British Empire. We were desperately trying to keep them in the fight (the Soviets securing the supplies with the gold bullion on physical deposit in New York City with more shipped) so we would not have to face the forces of the European Axis powers as only an Anglo American effort. Otherwise the war was projected to last into the mid 1950's. You must also remember the Japanese Army component holding Manchuria, a garrison needed to prevent Soviet intrusion and so not available for elsewhere.
Well - that is close to what our top modern WW2 historians ( Alexey Isaev and Valeriy Zamulin to name some) say. I was pleasantly surprised to see such a quality video from the Western authors who do care to make research and understand the real picture ( after watching other western stuff like "oversimplified" series etc - where they say that Soviet losses in WW2 were mainly inflicted by Stalin himself ). Thank you very much, gentlemen!
He is not the first Western UA-cam historian to make a video like this, or to assert that the winter weather was not the sole/main reason the Germans were stopped just outside Moscow and that the Red Army played a decisive role. Also, I seriously doubt Russian historians are immune from this bias and historical revisionism you complained of Western ones exhibiting. Also, Stalin absolutely was a critical factor in the staggering losses the Red Army suffered. They got their asses kicked by FINLAND ALONE in 1939, Stalin had so neutered his own army via the Great Purges. His decisions and responses just before and after the invasion consigned many more troops to death. Yes, he ultimately realized he was catastrophically fucking up the situation and started relying on/deferring to his generals (and brought back some of them and other officers who were still alive after being purged), and ultimately proved to be a far more adaptable and pragmatic supreme commander than Hitler after getting his ass kicked a few times, but he was the Germans' best officer during Barbarossa.
@@Roketsune I wouldn't go as far as to say that Stalin was either "best German general" or main factor in initial losses during 1941-1942. There were still lots of commanders who weren't touched by purges of 1937-1938 including Army's brains such as Shaposhnikov, Karbyshev, Antonov, Timoshenko etc. I'd say that in general Army wasn't ready for great jump of it's size in 1939 - that's where the quality of command lowered dramatically in all branches of Armed Forces - our military schooling system couldn't deliver a needed amount of well-taught commanders instantly. While laying blame on Stalin may seem obvious since he was leader of Party and State and therefore was responsible for everything in country, but there's also a logical "trap" - 'cause by doing it you automatically mean that once there were some persons who knew how to deal with newest German tactics and what instruments to contrapose against Panzer Divisions and Panzer Gruppen, but Stalin has moved them away or executed them and that's why he couldn't do well against Germans. Also this means that there must be some example of a country or Armed Forces that showed everybody how to successfully counter German Armed Forces organisational superiority and their full-scale involvement with straight supply lines, which example we cannot actually find in known history. The only force capable to withstand full-scale German strikes without total loosing of a state souverenity turned up !surprise! a Red Army :-) Although it's very tempting to lay the blame for our losses on one person or to find one main cause - a disaster is always a combination of factors and in case of 1941 main of those were: deployment in advance on German side, wrong structure of Soviet tank forces, incomplete re-arming and incomplete training on our side especially in aviation and tank forces hence incapability to effectively counter Luftwaffe in their full strength ( it would be quite safe to say that in 1941 our Red Army had success in those sectors of front only where there were no Luftwaffe). I could also name other causes such as unreadiness of fortifications on the new border, airfields being in state of building of concrete runways etc etc
@@rihc3584 You adress to so-called "Mainila incident" ? In history science this still is a discussional question. Personally I am not very familiar with docs and evidences to support either version that artillery barrage was from Finland's side or version that it was our command's simulation or version that there was no barrage at all. Casus belli was not the fact of artillery barrage itself but the reaction of Finnish side which declined Soviet note with proposition of withdrawal of Finnish troops up to 20-25 km and instead proposed mutual withdrawal - wich meant leaving Leningrad without defence and was therefore inacceptable. In sum with overall flow of negotiations about Karelian Isthmus during which Finland rejected Soviet propositions of exchanges of land this last decision of Finnish side finally gave way to military solution of conflict.
Lend Lease also provided with such basic things such as field ration for every Soviet soldier for one year, tons of boots. Also the Trucks proofed to be decisive.
Trucks, sure. Everything else - never heard anything about American rations and especially boots. Highly doubt foreign boots would last long in our climate.
@@AceVentura94 yes, food, especially canned beef. That I remember vividly, it was called "a second front" as a grim joke. We ran out of it by the spring of 1942,but OK, it was much needed at the start of the war. I still call bullshit on foreign boots,double bullshit on them being brittish boots and triple bullshit on woping 15 millions (!!!) of them
These "myths" largely came from the memoirs of German generals who fought in the eastern front. When the western people (especially during cold war) read about these many just took it as facts without more researched. Also, Hollywood and video games largely contributed to these myths as well.
Those generals were inclined to blame Hitler and his cronies (and he/they DID deserve some of it!) and over-state the Soviet strengths of manpower and how good their T-34 tank was. The US Army got one to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1942, along with a Soviet mechanic, and it proved to be a piece of SHIT. The German assessment of the first examples they captured in mid-1941 was essentially the same, that this tank was JUNK.
Coh2 has a lot of issues. The criticism goes as far as it attributing nazi warcrimes to the soviets (not random people saying this, but Ukranian gamedevs and so on).
You telling me a game which shows king tigers being war winning super weapons and soldiers being able to take bullets to the face isn't an accurate depiction of ww2?
@@alyssinclair8598 Don't forget how machine gunners will let themselves be slowly shot to death when there's someone out of the firing arc, and everyone is shit at aiming except snipers and vehicle crews.
I feel like the whole "human wave tactic" thing is just a buzzword with no real meaning. Any attack in human history can be described as this. Same goes for the "frontal assault" thing. You call any attack that you don't like (because you don't like those who were attacking or because it was not successful) a human wave attack or a frontal assault and that's it, you seemingly explained why the attackers were stupid and failed. Just say it since almost no one knows that all attacks need groups of people, usually consist of "waves" (reserve can be called a second wave if you want to play with words) and is kinda frontal anyway after enemy soldiers turn to your direction. Look, it even worked on Bernhard - he did not think of the real point behind these figures of speech and just assumed that soviet tactic IRL was bad. I have finished reading soviet guide to squad leaders and soldiers of airborne forces published in 1942 and it was pretty boring because it is insanely similar to modern Russian field manuals (I've read the one published in 2005). When attacking run from no longer than 5 seconds, jump on the ground 20 meters away from cover, crawl to it, observe the battlefield shooting spotted enemies and digging in, some time later run again and repeat until you are close, then attack. The same procedure is explained in Russian "Sergeant's manual" of 2005. I bet there were a lot of completely incompetent commanders and soldiers but attacking flanks, using cover and shooting with your rifle is so obvious that it was prioritised in the middle of 19th century. The hard thing that people fail at is everything else - planning, coordinating simultaneous frontal attack (or else the enemy won'e let you flank him) and flanking manoeuvre, controlling dispersed troops using cover (if you don't they will probably stay in cover instead of charging) and choosing the right position and battle formation to fire at the enemy effectively. The "oh they attacked the front instead of just teleporting behind their backs they are so stupid" is insanely lazy and primitive way of explaining military failures (but only in hindsight) and sometimes it's just a way to say that you don't like someone. People should either go deeper than this or stop using these terms entirely and just say that they don't like someone or that someone was defeated.
Interesting observation, thanks for sharing! Though i guess the s in "human waves" - which i feel is more often uttered when trying to make this argument - is crucial in its meaning. The whole argument is just shy of the "the germans only lost because they had fewer bullets than the russians had men" one. Maybe he should have mentioned that, though then he could not have talked about operations, which was interesting, as much i suppose.
@Claptrap Jesus No I just read things like: Osprey - Elite 105 - World War II Infantry Tactics Osprey - Elite 136 - World War II Airborne Warfare Tactics Osprey - Elite 160 - World War II Infantry Assault Tactics Osprey - Elite 168 - World War II Street-Fighting Tactics
@@RouGeZH I think Claptrap is unkind to you because you basically commented saying "I know better than you" without really explaining anything about what you mean. OP gave a long and detailed explanation with (from what I can tell) convincing arguments, and you gave a single line. If you know better, then please elaborate. Based on what little I know of maneuver warfare, I agree with OP: in order to fully wreck your enemy, you need to break through their front lines and hit their rear areas (hit officers, capture/destroy fuel and ammo dumps, flank their defenses, encircle their forces, etc). You do this by probing their lines with attacks and recce. From the perspective of a particular defender that's trying to hold their ground against your attacks, you're throwing a human wave at them. If your breakthrough succeeds, then you can start to exploit it. This is when a human wave attack turns into a truly successful maneuver. But if the attack fails, then (from the defender's perspective) the attack was only ever a human wave attack. And in maneuver warfare, you can only possibly achieve a breakthrough by massing forces against the localized defenders. For example, my friends in the infantry of my country's armed forces say that, as a rule of thumb, you need a 3-to-1 advantage in manpower to be able to capture a defended position. That sounds a lot like a human wave attack to me. But I've never heard of anyone accusing my country of using human wave attacks, because people tend to respect my country. In the words of OP, people only tend to accuse countries of using human wave attacks in order to belittle them. I think the truth is that every country that uses infantry uses human wave attacks. For example, I could argue that the US Marines fighting in Fallujah was a human wave attack. But I wouldn't do that, because (as OP says) "human wave attack" is a meaningless buzzword.
0:57 Komsomol was (and is) the name for the Communist Party Youth in Russia, they were very loyal to the party though were not part of the military. They were eager to be drafted, though. 1:27 Data: During 1941 the Soviets lost around 2-3 million soldiers (and a lot of equipment) during the encirclements of Barbarrossa and later on the battles of Smolensk, Vyazma, Kiev and Moscow. In 1942 they suffered lesser but still really big losses on the battles of Rzhev and Stalingrad (around 2 million). This is not counting POWs taken by the Germans, if counting POWs the figure gets even bigger. As general data: The USSR in 1940 had a population of around 150 millions. The US had -more than 200 millions- around 130 millions (corrected, thanks to the comment below). 2:01 Women in the Soviet army were everywhere (yes, infantry too), though the biggest numbers of women were in support units. Around 1 million women joined the Red Army (partly from conscription and partly volunteers) during WW2, with a bigger number joining the armament industries. 2:22 Some Polish formations were already under training in 1941, and saw action during the whole war, but since Operation Bagration, the Soviet-trained Polish units raised considerably. 2:32 It could be said that everybody had issues with manpower: industrial war requires a lot of manpower and is like two guys pushing each other until one of them collapses. 10:17 In the USSR it wasn't rare to have a death sentence later conmuted into a prision sentence. Zemskov noted that around half of those people sentenced to death were later conmuted into 10 years hard labour (second maximum penalty on the Soviet system). List of penalties in the Soviet Union during WW2 (from lesser to bigger): -Fine (usually as penalty on the salary for those working on state-owned enterprises). -5 years prision [penal colony]. -5 years hard labor [GULag]. -5 years hard labor + 5 years prision. -10 years hard labor. -Death penalty. (Only for the following crimes: Murder, espionage, treason and terrorism [treason includes desertion and incompetence]) 11:06 This myth deserves its own video or post by itself, so yes, it's complicated since the Soviets used the "deep operation doctrine" and this included both having a lot of soldiers and knowing how to use them. 11:45 So, what's basically called "atrittional warfare"... 12:01 They were simple but effective. And not *so* simple, I mean, they were more organised than one would think, basically it was that "fire and maneuvre" you explained for the German tanks, but for squads instead of tanks. Also, the first think every soldier learned in the Soviet army was how to take cover, even prior to learning how to shoot. 12:40 Yeah, they were like totally basic on the tactical level, but knowing what they need to archieve on the grand scheme of things. 12:50 Only one breakthrough? At least several, their main goal was to completely collapse the enemy front. They though of battle as two phases: Breaking and encirclement. On the breaking phase, the heavy armor units and the infantry are to break the line so the mobile units and the lighter tanks can penetrate through there dividing the enemy. On the encirclement phase, the reserves fill all those breakthroughs encircling and destroying the enemy. And during all of that, artillery makes its dirty job.
@@derrickthewhite1 Well, it was even more complicated... Espionage, terrorism, treason, desertion and incompetence were all labeled as "counterrevolutionary activities" (article 58), the thing is that even more different kinds of crime were also labeled as such, and with different penalties. Still, all those I mentioned were those who could receive death sentence (though, as I also mentioned, around half the times those death sentences got conmuted for 10 years hard labor).
it's not just Russia, the americans are fond of making everyone think they single-handedly won the war, they like to portray even their fellow western allies as incompetent. Never mind all the British, Australian, Free French, Czech, Indian, Chinese, Canadians (and many more) who also sacrificed, they don't count
@@AeneasGemini Not sure if you read history to brand every American that way.. that makes you just as dense I may add... On topic: it was a World War. Every Allied Nation played their part..do you think the Merchant Marines or Normandy would have been successful without British intelligence and American industry? Or maybe Lend Lease saving Russia from Army Group Center...or maybe the Flying Tigers never happened either..I can say without a doubt the war would have been lost without American muscle.. but a muscle is useless without Russian blood or British brains.. -signed American dude
@@uegvdczuVF It surely looked like the Russians had to throw everything the Allies sent overseas including everything that wasn't tied down to stop the Germans... It's like saying the Chinese weren't doing the same thing in the Pacific
In general, I like this video. However, there is a couple of points I'd like to clarify. 1. Human resources. By June 1941 USSR had 194 million of population against 104 million of Germany and Austria (we should also add Germany's allies) - roughly speaking 2:1. A good advantage, but definitely not enough to speak about "endless resources" and "human waves". Moreover, by the end of 1942 more than 70 million of Soviet citizens remained under Germans occupation. Thus, before the territory of the USSR was liberated, the Red Army had LESS human resources, than Wehrmacht. 2. Rezun (Suvorov) and Sokolov are not historians. They are journalists, writes, who seek hype and profit by making scandals around painful themes. They have been caught many times on direct and deliberate lies and complete ignorance in their books. They should not be mrntioned in any serious review or article.
Дмитрий Шешин Nazi-apologists doing bad videos isn’t western propaganda. There’s other informative channels out there as well. Also Russia not fully opening its archives doesn’t really help.
Дмитрий Шешин as a amateur historian i can say, you can barely find propaganda free history content, western propaganda, russian propaganda, chinese propaganda, but it must be said that that western propaganda is the most minor amongst these 3. хорошего вам дня ))
0:15 Unlimited Manpower 2:50 Kursk Graveyard of Panzer 4:48 Blocking Detachments 10:55 Human Wave Tactics 15:30 Preemptive War Thesis 20:22 Winter Stopped the Germans 22:50 The Lend-Lease was Negligible/Won the War
1) The Bolsheviks did boost their manpower reserves by using women and children for front line combat. 2) The battle of Kursk did cripple the Wehrmacht capacity for taking the offensive in the East. 3) Per the video, Red Army deserters were ten times more likely to be shot that Wehrmacht deserters. 4) Per Glantz and the video, the Red Army did use human wave assaults to the end of the war. 5) Stalin actually was keen to join the Axis directly, and tried at least twice to do so formally. 6) Hitler expected the war in the East to be over in months, well before the winter. 7) The most important part of Lend-Lease were the Ford trucks. They motorized the Red Army.
You did actually validate the idea of Soviets shooting their own soldiers at unhinged levels. 175 000 condemned to be shot is ten times higher than the Nazis and astronomically higher than the allies. Even if they weren't all shot, it's he same with the other armies, so it's obvious the Soviets were outliers and murdered the troops at unbelievable levels.
You could’ve add to it myth that great purge did destroyed most of officer staff . And instead point out that number of red army significantly increased after war with Finland dew to start of army conscription system (before soviet army were professional one) , and with it increasing slightly , there was not enough of well trained low rank officers which decreased battle capability of units
Another myth I usually hear that being purged automatically means being assassinated or executed although in reality, it could also mean being sent in the gulags instead of being killed off. Executions do still occured but the majority of those that were purged were sent to the gulag; making the purge sort of easy to recover from since the Soviets can simply pardon experienced officers that were imprisoned and assign them to their units by the time the Germans invaded
Those purges may have also gotten rid of political hacks and "deadwood", though, initially, officers were promoted on political reliability rather than military; with predictably terrible result, as shown in Finland. That awful showing did a lot to convince Hitler that the Soviet Army was a "paper tiger". He found out DIFFERENT.
I read the "Victor Suvarov" book in the 1980s. I read another book about the same subject and came to the conclusion the Suvarov book was disinformation or conservative propaganda.
Speaking about human resources you may just look into statistics. In 1941 USSR had population around 200 million, but Germany with its satellites who took part in the invasion all together had 190 million. More of that, the territory occupied by Wehrmacht by 1942 was populated by around 70 million of Soviet people. This means that during the Stalingrad the actual population of USSR was LESS than population of the axis countries involved in the war! It was really a crucial point in the war! And the subsequent recruitment on recently liberated territory was just a necessity.
You just forgot 500 millions people in the British Empire and 140 millions US citizens. And 190 for the European axis power is far too high. Germany + Italy + axis minors = 80+40+37 = 157 millions.
We in Russia say that if General Frost had a rank in the Russian army he should have been shot for fire on his own. And this saying did not go from the Second World War, but from the Napoleonic War of 1812. General Frost indiscriminately uses his weapons and the troops of the Soviet Union suffered from it just like the German. Regarding lendlize. I will not delve into the numbers, but the veterans greatly appreciated the canned American stew. It was even called the "second front", which already characterizes the attitude of the soldiers towards it. Comrade Stalin highly valued Lend-Lease and never denied its importance for the defense of the USSR, as Soviet historians did not deny later. While the supply of tanks, planes, etc. as a percentage did not have a significant impact, the supply of materials for the production of gunpowder, fuel, canned food, equipment can hardly be overestimated. Would the Soviet Union win a war without lendlize? I think yes, but at the cost of heavy losses and even more difficult work of the civilian population. In any case, in spite of the political games of Stalin, Churchill, etc., in Russia we greatly appreciate the feat of those American, English sailors who provided this landlise in the cold waters of the Atlantic under the fire of German submarines.
Евгений, я прошу прощения, но simlpe в последнем предложении - лишнее. Это "простой", но скорее в смысле "простак, глуповатый человек". Насколько я понимаю, Вы совсем не это имели в виду? :)
@@Evgeny_Khmel По-моему, тут не за что извиняться :) Простите Вы мою непрошеную редактуру, я просто чуть лучше язык знаю, вот глаз и резануло. Там справа три точки левой кнопкой, "Изменить" и слово simple долой ;) А то выходит - похвалить хотели, а вышла двусмысленность. Думаю, все и так поймут правильно, просто получилось, что Вы сказали не совсем то, что хотели. Кстати, отличный канал = отличный ролик = масса адекватных и любопытных комментов.
17:58 They were actually in the middle of a reequipment plan that was to end in early 1942 replacing the older BTs with the newer T-34/76 and KV-1, but by June 1941 only a fraction of those tanks had been introduced.
Thanks for all the great content! You and other history UA-camrs inspired me to start my own channel! I visited the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna this summer, it's now one of my favourite military museums!
I've asked my grandpa if he has killed any Germans in the war. He has said to me - I don't know, but for sure I've killed a soviet political officer. His answer made my eyebrows rise so he told me that he and his friend were pinned down by German machine gun fire. As they were hiding behind a pile of rubble suddenly someone started to shoot from the behind. They were either lucky, the shooter was rubbish or this were only a "warning shots" to make them stand up and charge German pillbox. They never figure out what was the reason because they turned around and shot that bastard dead and then retreated.
I remember being told that after Kursk, the German army was never able to take the strategic initiative. But that was due to the greater growth in quality and quantity of the Red Army
German generals painted the battle of Kursk as the death knell of the Panzerwaffe when they stalled against layers of Soviet infantry defence. The reality was on the day the Southern pincer stalled and stopped attacking, Operation Kutuzov, which was a counterattack planned before the battle of Kursk kicked off and swept into Model's Northern pincer's rear. As for the Southern pincer, since it was a bit more successful and the Vatutin's Voronezh Front was battered a bit worse than Rokossovsky's Central Front, the planned counteroffensive, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev kicked off about 2 weeks later. Those operations and the endless almost non-stop offensives after that killed the Panzerwaffe.
@@VT-mw2zb this is true and the main reason of Kursk as well as another point of this video, often simplified as "human wave tactics" Kursk was a denial of German offensive initiative and the need for an immediate breakthrough "human wave" of battles after that only continued that need.
The reason why Kursk represents a turning point in the war is that up until this point the Russians had been able to make massive gains and get victories during the winter and fall (wonder why German generals complained about those seasons specifically) but the Germans had often been able to gain the initiative during the summer and were always at their strongest during the summer (hence why the Russians talked about the "summer German"). But at Kursk the Russians had stopped the German advance dead during summer and had thrown them back even as the Germans had deployed new weapons and spent significant time rebuilding their strength, that meant that now there was no escape for the Germans and for the rest of the war they'd be constantly on the retreat. Kursk wasn't itself what was responsible for this but it represents this greater change in the war from one where the Germans held the initiative and were free to do what they wanted to one where they'd be in a constant retreat all the way back to Berlin and often not a very orderly one. It was the last chance for the Germans to halt the inevitable and they failed to do so and that probably lead to the war ending when it did.
Basically think of Kursk as symbolic of greater developments but don't get lost in the symbolism and think that the war was decided through a few decisive battles like this one.
>They were both planning to backstab each other why? USSR didn't need to 'backstab' Germany, if France holds out, as happened in WWI. And nothing indicated that France couldn't hold against Germany
um, what? the Soviet Union was too busy fighting internal instability to even consider a foreign war. It had barely beaten Finland the year before. (no offense to the Finns, but you know you did a lot with very little).
Yep. Barbarosso 41 was Not preemtive. Barbarossa 44 could be another beast...but then again we are speculating. Stalin is Not Hitler. He thinka twice before gambling...attacking a non exhausted Wehrmacht even when Red Army is Superior (say: 44 Invasion) IS an non-stalin-typical avoidable risk. In war Things can Go wrong. Stalin wanted france to bleed German Dr,. IT did Not Happen = No riskless Attack viable in Stalins Logic.
Nice video! In a few places I thought it would have been nice to get the actual number of military losses, or the amount of equipment provided in lend-lease. That would help put things into perspective a bit better. I really enjoy these videos and have learned a lot from them, keep up the great work!
Not only did Lend/Lease happen, but due to the level of Soviet penetration in various departments, but especially the Roosevelt WH, it became lucrative. The man placed in charge of sourcing/distributing L/L material was very keen to please Stalin, who benefited greatly from this.
Als deutscher und italienischer Militärspezialist hat mir dieses Kurzdokumentar die strategische Sicht des Krieges verändert: es has auch sehr persönliche Konsequenzen. Vielen, vielen Dank
3 роки тому+3
manpower shortage was after the war which was really visual in some region even in the 70s/80s that woman were working in positions intended for men , my grandfather told me this when he was travelling through the soviet union
It wasn't that they had an unlimited manpower pool, it was that they were WILLING to use the manpower they had without limits. Most other countries weren't willing to go as far as the Soviets did. Some of the rest of your discussion is well grounded. That said, the Germans, in the winter of 1941 were stymied by poor logistics and strategic infighting about objectives than either the Red Army or the winter. Logistics and intelligence were looked down on by the Prussian aristocracy that generally ran the army at that time as being low class billets and they paid dearly for that snobbery.
"yet as so many Guderian' statements in his memoirs, this is wrong." I'm so agree with this! I think Guderian wrote memoirs to fool and trick allies. The similar cases also include Manstein and Manteuffel.
They had to make themselves look good after they had lost the conflict they agreed to start and in the process functionally burned germany to the ground.
@@pantherace1000 Zhukov (in 1953, at least in a docudrama:) " That fucker thinks he can take on the Red Army? I fucked Germany, I think I can take a flesh lump in a fucking waistcoat."
23:26 Quoting or trusting Sokolov is generally a bad idea. When I studied history, our professors insisted several times to not cite Sokolov unless using him for direct criticism
What you've stated sounds like institutionalized bias to me. A professor literally instructing students not to use someone as a source unless to say that person is compeltely wrong? With no reasons given? That's... yeah... that's what bias is. The reason so many Russians hate Sokolov is because he has gone against many of the main 'Party' dogmatic lines of thought, especically historical, that were promulgated during the post world 2 Soviet era and which are still extremely powerful and entrenched in Russian thinking about historical topics today. I wish russian historians would actually specifically say WHY Sokolov is so horrible, other than him discussing how Russia recieved tremendous help from the United States and, to a lesser extent, Great Britian, and that that aid was a very large factor in Russia being able to effecively fight Germany by preventing the collapse of the Soviet economy/manufacturing sector as well as supplying a tremendous amount of the food Russians ate during World War Two, all of which is pretty straightfrowrad based on national records of every country involved - including Russia. Hell, even Stalin himself as well as General Zhukov stated, multiple times and in writing, how much worse it would have been fighting Germany had the US not sent food, bullets, radios, trucks, meat, grain, aluminum, fighter planes, (which the majority of Russian Aces flew), as well as tanks, transport planes, and numerous other resources.
All of my grandpas fought in WW2. Like almost anyone else in post-soviet states. Because of the well mentioned high casualties and shortage of manpower. I just wanted to point out two things: 1) About 'Blocking Detachments' - not to all extend but during the human force shortage period Soviets did allow to conscript convicted criminals (not all of them but with a certain crimes history), so that they could earn they freedom by blood in combat instead of sitting in prison. So there was specific officers assigned to this type of units. In order to control convicts as sort of a mix - probation officer + blocking detachment shooter. Main objective of which was to look out for them so they would not commit crimes or run. 2) Lend-Lease has another effect on all post-soviet states vocabulary and brand recognition, as we still call all of the all-terrain passenger cars - Jeep. And I remember my grandpa's warm memoires about Willys. It just carved into hearts of our people so that Jeep become a word for a vehicle class.
It's interesting that Kursk and The Somme have almost the exact inverse problem. Kursk is seen as "the great turning point" when, it wasn't. Neither side took losses that were terminal. The Somme meanwhile, is seen as "Oh it was pointless, the British soldiers walked towards the enemy and were wiped out, nothing was gained" when that is a completely incorrect assessment of the battle, and the German Army ultimately took losses from which they could not recover. It was, despite popular opinion, a victory for the British and French.
Point number seven commonly overlooks one thing. Food. An army, especially as large as the Soviet one, needs a lot of food. The Soviet union would have seen major issues had it not received the huge amounts of SPAM. They depleted their manpower pool and had to conscript people from their collectivized farms which reduced their ability to feed their population and more critically, their army.
Wrong. Compare 4 mln tons of Lend-Lease food with Soviet production of some items in 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945 (mln tons): Grain: 96, 56, 30, 29, 49, 47 Potatoes: 76, 26, 24, 35, 55, 58 Milk: 34, 26, 16, 16, 22, 26 Meat: 4.7, 4.1, 1.8, 1.8, 2.0, 2.6 Sugarbeet: 18, 1.9, 2.1, 1.3, 4.1 Sunflower: 2.6, 0.91, 0.26, 0.78, 1.0 Eggs (billion items): 12, 9.3, 4.5, 3.5, 3.6, 4.9 Source: The national economy of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Statistical compilation (Moscow : Goskomstat, 1990, in Russian) "Average annual imports of grain, cereals, flour (in terms of grain) made 2.8% of average annual grain stocks in the USSR. The need of the army for bread and grain forage at that time, not to mention potatoes and vegetables, was mainly satisfied by local funds. And for all other domestic food, centralized supply continued to keep a leading position, accounting for 90% or more of total deliveries" Citation (authors: an academician and a former Soviet "prime-minister"): histrf.ru/uploads/media/default/0001/12/df78d3da0fe55d965333035cd9d4ee2770550653.pdf
From what I see "human wave tactics" is just a derogatory term used in the modern times to dehumanize the opponent and reassure your own troops that the enemy's strength in numbers is nothing to be afraid of. Likely popularized with the disastrous charges and breakthrough attempts of WW1 but with other past battles already laying the groundwork. Like how the popular depiction of the Zulu War is that waves of tribal warriors charge a comparatively tiny military force. Meanwhile the reality wasn't anywhere this dramatic even if numerical superiority was usually the case. As I said in the beginning it seems to be a mechanism to dehumanize the enemy, to pretend we are still better than them while being overrun or constantly face superior numbers. Sometimes it can have a smidgen of truth to these, better translated as "they throw more bodies at the war than we do" either telling the war goes badly for the enemy yet they persist or alternatively that they have numerical superiority. In either case "human wave tactics" seems to be just what militaries use when they want to twist what is normally perceived as bravery, political power and superior resources into something negative. Once you see that it's pretty transparent what this would cover.
I think that's a rather good point to make, on the topic of how "human-wave tactics" are perceived. I've yet to come across an American who said that Omaha Beach on D-Day was a "barbaric human wave tactic that wasted thousands of lives in a single battle."
Thank you, interesting video. About the manpower shortage - my grandfather was 15 when he started to work in military plant in blockaded Leningrad. That means, that the workers 17+ years old went to army. So unlimited manpower is just a myth. The girls were doing the men jobs in Soviet Union.
Before winter arrived in '41, the Germans had already taken 400,000 casualties. Their supply lines were threadbare, stretching along appalling Russian roads that had turned to mud in the autumn rains and like Napoleon a hundred years before, the majority of their supplies were carried on horse-drawn wagons and the majority of the infantry marched on foot. The USSR used a different railway gauge to Germany, so they had rebuild the tracks or rely on captured Soviet locomotives which were few in number as the Soviets blew them up as they retreated. Meanwhile, partisans were blowing up the tracks all over the place. The situation for the Germans before the cold arrived was appalling. But it makes for a good visual, the notion of them being defeated by the winter. Just as it did with Napoleon, except Napoleon lost more men during the advance on Moscow than the retreat from it. He lost a sixth of his army just crossing Lithuania, nearly a hundred thousand men dying from heatstroke and disease. But that doesn't make for a good story whereas French infantry sleeping on their knees in huddles in a white wasteland, eating horses that had frozen to death and swathed in every blanket and rag they can get hold of... Well, it's the same as the visual of German vehicles bogged down in the snow, the engines frozen solid, German infantry huddled around pools of burning petrol and once again eating horse meat. Except the German vehicles had already bogged down in the mud from the autumn rains. Tanks, lorries, infantrymen, horses and wagons all stuck in the quagmire. When the ground froze, they were grateful because it meant they could get moving again. Except it kept getting colder and colder. Winter took its toll but it only exacerbated an already bad situation. The Wehrmacht was overstretched and exhausted from travelling the seven hundred miles from Poland to Moscow and even if the winter had been mild, it wouldn't have changed the fact that the front was not getting adequate supplies, that those front line units had suffered appalling attrition on the campaign so far and that the Soviets had brought up fresh divisions from Siberia, experienced and well-supplied and motivated to defend the capital.
Я не буду писать на английском языке, чтобы выглядеть более убедительно, чем на самом деле. К тому же это скажется на искажении смысла, так как придется делать несколько реверс переводов, лучше вы переведете целостный по смыслу текст, чем я буду стараться передать особенности строения русского построения предложений в рамки английской грамматики. Итак. В общем по смыслу мне не к чему придраться. Тем более я понял наверняка не все, так как смотрел с субтитрами. Но откровенной чепухи в ролике нет, спасибо. Но это на мой взгляд, реальность может быть сурова и возможно, там опять грубые ошибки. Я не эксперт. 1) По поводу заградительных отрядов НКВД. Для меня это очевидно и легко. В вашей схеме разделения на обычную армию и подразделения НКВД всё верно. Армия отдельно, НКВД отдельно. Никто не гнал обычных солдат под дулами пулеметов на врага. Такое было "допустимо" "возможно" "может быть" только в НКВД подразделениях сформированных из преступников. Это было до этого "знаменитого" приказа №227 "Ни шагу назад" введенного во время Сталинградской битвы (да прямо как в кино "Враг у ворот" и серии игр Call of Duty). Приказ №227. Я не буду цитировать. В кратком изложении сути и тезисно (я не эксперт и могу быть не прав). Приказ распространялся на все войска. Отряды НКВД отвечали за его исполнение. Обычных солдат, которые дезертировали с фронта возвращали обратно или чаще формировали из них отдельные батальоны которые выполняли второстепенные войсковые задачи. Обычных солдат никто не расстреливал. А вот преступников... Возможно такие случаи были, это зависит от конкретных командиров. Кто-то из НКВД командиров, отвечающих за военные группы, сформированные из преступников, перегруппировывал хаотично отступающих людей и снова посылал их в атаку. Возможно кто-то угрожал открыть огонь если будет еще одно незапланированное отступление без веской причины и очевидной невозможности выполнения поставленной задачи. Возможно кто-то действительно расстреливал повторно отступающих дезертиров-преступников. Отряды из преступных элементов не формировались из политических заключенных, это были грабители, бандиты и прочие криминальные элементы. Сами отряды НКВД почти всегда параллельно сражались, одновременно выполняя возложенную на них задачу по контролю за порядком в регулярных частях и так называемых "заградительных" отрядах. 2) Преступников было очень много, нет не политических, эти люди не смыслили ничего в идеологии или политике, либо это были обычные криминальные элементы, либо бывшие "кулаки" "средняки" (представители зажиточного крестьянства недовольные итогами коллективизации) которые решили, что их собственное благополучие важнее всего остального + реваншизм и надежда на возвращение старых порядков + надежда на сотрудничество с немецкими войсками. Про план "Ост" они не знали, да и вряд ли бы поверили. Кроме того были и откровенные сочувствующие нацизму из коренного населения в Прибалтике и на финской границе, а так же редкие случаи в других республиках СССР. 3) Политических преступников было тоже очень много. Это отдельная тема репрессий 1937го года. Я не буду её раскрывать, она еще более сложная и комплексная и трудная для восприятия для иностранцев. 4) Ленд-Лиз. Помощь союзников ощутима. Главное верно, поставки высокотехнологичной, а главное УНИВЕРСАЛЬНОЙ техники и оборудования, НЕ СПЕЦИАЛИЗИРОВАННОЙ (грузовых машин, раций, тушонки и так далее) позволило сконцентрироваться на более специфически сложных задачах по разработке уже СПЕЦИАЛИЗИРОВАННОГО оборудования. Так например поставки самолетов "аэрокобра" это мелочь на самом деле, потому что они не оказали глобального влияния, а вот поставка грузовых автомобилей "Виллис" это критически важный момент, так как автомобили универсальны и не используются непосредственно на фронте, а только в снабжении и вспомогательных работах, их потерь практически не было, что вызывает эффект "снежного шара" (snowball effect) ведь они хорошо вписались в военную логистику с первого применения и до конца войны. А самолеты и тушенка (консервы) это быстро расходуемый ресурс не оказавший большого эффекта. Если бы союзники поставляли танки это было бы плохо-неправильно-неэффективно, если бы они поставляли металлопрокатные станки с возможностью индивидуальной настройки для производства танковой брони это супер-мега-эффективно. Опять не буду подводить какой-то общий итог, так как история должна быть вне политических убеждений с холодным и отрешенным взглядом со стороны, одновременно с комплексным пониманием исторического контекста. Хоть и очень хочется сделать наоборот и покричать про буржуазно-капиталистический перекос трактовки истории в нынешнее время. Но я не буду, вы же вроде не стали так делать, вот и я не стал так делать.)))
По поводу пункта третьего, ввиду закрытых архивов репрессии 37го года до сих пор комплексная тема внутри русского исторического дискурса, конечно реабилитация была поэтапной, выборочной, но полноты мы до сих пор не имеем. Надеюсь лет через 30-40 что-нибудь в этом направлении изменится.
@@777CHEKIST777 Два разных исторических периода, некую схожесть я бы нашел в идеях отторжения социализма, как провалившейся идеи после войны, но как вы поняли слишком политизировано и существует плеяда точек зрения на вероятность такого события. Моя мысль в том, что социальные реформы были неотвратимы в 90х, а 37м о социальных реформам речи не шло.
One other thing that I find interesting. The Nazis, in desperate straits, were very often cowards who tried the hardest to save their own skin. NKVD soldiers were scary because they would shoot you for running away, but would not run themselves. They participated as frontline soldiers in some of the best known stands of Soviet arms in Stalingrad, including the battle for the grain elevator.
My only critique is that you spoke quite explicitly on why the German army had been crippled in 1941 before Winter even set in, then went on to give an inconclusive answer on whether the Soviets could have won without Lend-Lease. Barbarossa had already failed and the German Army crippled before the US had even entered the war in December. Higher losses? Yes. Taken longer? Absolutely. But was it possible for Germany to win after Barbarossa had failed so completely? I think not. The moment the USSR refused to surrender at the Battle of Moscow, the war was decided. It was just a matter of time and lives while everyone waited for it to play out.
Throughout the 1942 Soviet Union was on the verge of an economical collapse as indicated in the video, and the Red Army was in an extremely dire condition. Had the Germans captured, or even bombed Baku, the oil production would have stopped and the Red Army would be almost instantly paralyzed. Barbarossa failed in its goal of inducing a collapse of the Soviet state in 1941, but losses suffered, the loss of vast territories and the population living there by the Soviets still made it a miracle that they could recover.
@@Grondorn Allied Lend-Lease made a large impact in 1944, a noticeable impact in '43, a minimal impact in '42, and no impact at all in '41. Any look at the tonnage sent over by the allies will confirm that their supplies, much like the bombing campaign, didn't really take off until 1943. By then the danger to Baku had already passed. But, still, that's with at least *some* amount of Lend-Lease, which is why I limited my point to 1941 when it was literally impossible for there to have been any lend-lease support and the USSR had *already* won the most important battle of the war by stopping the Germans without collapsing. The idea that the USSR could not have won without allied supplies is, at the end of the day, just a means of posthumously justifying the enormous effort the allies put into the final years of the war. People want to believe that wasn't a waste of time and "shortened the war by a few months" simply isn't good enough for them.
@@gnetkuji I'm not talking about Lend-Lease, I personally think it wasn't the most crucial factor for the Soviet victory. I'm stating that there was a distinct chance for a German victory after 1941.
@@Grondorn The Nazis already had more men at the battle of Moscow than the Soviets did and still lost. I see no reason why 1942 should be radically better for them than 1941 was. And when you look at the historical record... it wasn't. They had a big push, grinding up all of their men, equipment, and supplies in reckless desperate advances, then got punished hard for their overreach when the Soviets turned around and bit back. The attack into the Caucasus mountains was such an enormous waste of men and material for so little gain that even if the Germans had put more men into it instead of going to Stalingrad, they just would have had higher losses among the excess of troops not trained for mountain warfare before being cut off by a Soviet attack *from* Stalingrad. The Germans weren't stupid. They already did what were, for the most part, the smartest moves they had available and still got their ass handed to them. The minute they attacked and the Soviets didn't collapse, there was no "right answer for victory" anymore. From there on it was just making the smartest plays they had left while waiting for the end..
@@gnetkuji The situation regarding manpower at Moscow was that of a numerical parity only if you count the fighting strength of the opposing forces, with Germans achieving numerical superiority after swift and grand encirclements like that at Vyazma and Briansk where they captured more than a half of million men. However, when you combined the overall numbers from the start of the German offensive and the end of the Moscow offensive, the Soviets still invested almost as twice as many men. Secondly, the thrust into the Caucasus produced relatively low casualties for the Army group A, especially when you compare it with the carnage at Stalingrad. The advance eventually had bog down, but that was mostly due to the logistical strain, and not of the lack of experienced troops specialized for mountain warfare. Still, they were pretty close and had they bomb Baku like they did Grozny at that time, most likely there wouldn't be a risk of getting cut off from Stalingrad, as the Red Army wouldn't have enough fuel a concentrated armor thrust, as their supplies were low as it is. There lies the essence why 1942 was radically worse for the Soviets than 1941. They lost approximately half of their industrial output, somewhere between 2/3 of their agricultural input. On top on that the loss of Baku where they produced 90% of their oil, would have been catastrophic. Having all that in mind and still claiming that the war was permanently decided in 1941 is hideously overstated.
@@nimdaqa Yeah 4 million folks to fight, you can bet if they didnt have them the fight would have been VERY different. not to mention all the fuel ammunition and war supplies. they were not shown on propaganda videos for obvious reasons.
@@nimdaqa Well if thats true then we fed all of them with 4.5 million tons of food... by your own figures 4 million tons feeds 1 million people so the unaccounted for 1/2 million tons feeds the remaining 200,000 with extra left over...
#6 isn't just wrong, it's more a 50/50. It is true after all, that Hitler and German High Command didn't equip the Wehrmacht with Winter Equipment, since this would've taken additional time to do and would've delayed the start of Operation Barbarossa. They were alrdy delayed because they had to help out the Italians in Greece, they didn't want to delay anymore, since they saw the Summer of 1941 as THE point of time to attack, later on, the weather would proof to be a much harder obstacle and they feared, that the USSR would be far better prepared in 1942 than in 1941. And on the other hand, they believed, that the Soviet Union was an instable country just stopping short of collapse, so they had to attack and the USSR would collapse on itself, making this a Blitzkrieg victory just like in France in 1940 or in Poland in 1939. So although it cannot be denied, that the Wehrmacht suffered heavy casualties before the Winter of 1941/1942, the Winter did have it's heavy toll on the Wehrmacht, causing it to get stuck and eventually beaten back by seasoned, trained Soviet Troops, since the Russians in general are more accustomed to cold winters and especially these reinforcements troops, that helped to beat back the Wehrmacht west of Moscow, were trained in Siberia, so basically under maybe even harsher, colder climate conditions and they were appropriately equipped with winter equipment. After all, even the Russians are not magical super humans, they also can die of the cold.
Azrael mmh... You are right about the lack of winter equipment and German equipment didn’t work well in the winter but despite myths saying otherwise that was also true for the Russians. What really first stopped the German advance was the season of mud which made roads almost unusable and after it was over the Russians had a large amount of men around Moscow.
I have watched several of your high-quality videos now, and I enjoy your refreshing objectivity. Additionally, your German perspective presents a point of view and information that my English-speaking sources lack. Too many war videos and books repeat the same stories and myths. Glad to see you are on a better path. Keep up the great work.
I don't know how accurate some of this information truly is. During and after WW2, it wasn't uncommon for Soviet leaders to exaggerate successes and embellish their losses.
@@Glebasik148 True, to varying degrees most sides did embellish the truth. However, in the USSR, failure or incompetence (even perceived incompetence) could easily be treated with harsh punishment in the form of gulags, work camps, firing squads or front line service. Whereas in the US or Britain, failure was not always punished so harshly. On the contrary, failure was often seen by the US at least as an opportunity to learn and incompetent leadership was either demoted, sent home or relegated to support roles. Simply put, in the US military, soldiers were more afraid of the enemy than their leadership. In the USSR, it was often the other way around.
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»» TIMESTAMPS ««
03:00 - Battle of Kursk - Tactics: ua-cam.com/video/IxGKhGLUpNI/v-deo.html
03:24 - Guderian - Myth & Reality: ua-cam.com/video/UTgf3UHMBjY/v-deo.html
05:32 - Winter War Tactics: ua-cam.com/video/yHrndb0oZEc/v-deo.html
07:16 - Stalingrad Tactics: ua-cam.com/video/BEhkkzIenr0/v-deo.html
12:31 - Tactics - Operations - Strategy: ua-cam.com/video/4yk0gROTHnI/v-deo.html
22:39 - Why Barbarossa failed - German Blunders: ua-cam.com/video/A_3R-Rkn_98/v-deo.html
23:44 - Why Lend-Lease is so complicated: ua-cam.com/video/IJ9PiDvI4pY/v-deo.html
Military History Visualized Ihr wahrt im MHM? Verdammt, dann muss ich euch verpasst haben, Schade. Ich mache dort gerade ein Praktikum im Rahmen meines Geschichtsstudiums und bin ein großer Fan deines Channels, die differenzierten Darstellungen und die ständige Nutzung wissenschaftlicher Literatur machen die Videos super hochwertig. Great work, keep it up!
unlike Palpatine the Red Army didn't have UNLIMITED MANPOWA!!!
Great video. You missed the food issue with lend lease. With the the Ukrine lost the Soviet Union was facing mass starvation. Hungrey people don't fight or work well. Lend lease prevented this negative outcome. After the war the Soviet Union had a famine with the end of US food aid. Around 5 million died(46-48) and that's with the Ukraine back in Russian hands. Would have been much, much worse during the war without aid.
I would support 16 days in 45. Soviet side.
Winter, lend lease, you are way better use way more evidence than oversimplified Love your channel!
The Red Army was not actually red. It was usually either brown or green and occasionally white depending on the time of year. The more you know
They were viewed in infrared. Green in night vision
@@RaferJeffersonIII night vision din't exist during ww2. only prototypes in 1944-45. And the red part comes from their Red-star symbol.
@UCVERnj3HNiu-zfDYcS1w6Fg While it did "exist", it wasn't even past the early testing stage by the end of WW2. Only a few tanks (50 to 60 of them) were equipped and there were a few rifles being used for special operations.
NVD's were equipped during the Korean war and became a standard thing in the Vietnam war.
But the "good" ones (the way we think of them today) came in 1985 and was used in the gulf war to great effect. Before, that though NVD's were essentially invisible flashlights because that's the most you could do with them. They didn't do much for combat operations.
also VERY multi-ethnic.
@@frederik7338 whooooosh!
Wow, learned a lot from this. This kind of critical analysis of WW2 myths is more relevant than ever and the Battle of Berlin is an event that needs to be analyzed this way too.
Also: Enemy at the Gates is a movie that aged like milk.
Still, "Enemy at the Gates" is not a documentary movie but a a fictional film ("Spielfilm"), just like Spielberg's "Medal of Honor" is a game for the PlayStation1 and not an accurate war simulator etc. This should be always made clear.
"critical analysis of WW2 myths is more relevant than ever"
Like the myth that it was a good idea for Britain to get involved. A myth slowly eroding over time.
I disagree.Milk is good when fresh and that movie was garbage.
Rachel Weisz's butt was good tho.
The Great War It also has the most awkward sex scene in cinema.
Fun fact: I first saw the movie in Singapore, which censored out that scene entirely. Cue my surprise when I watched a home video of the movie with my folks years later and it wasn’t cut...
@Rabbi Shekel Goy MIGA Trumpstein Bugger off.
As a Russian, seeing a German guy destorying anti-Russian myths is such a pleasure for my soul. Thank you! Subscribed
Он вроде как австриец.
Yet Russia formed the largest part of the USSR, both in terms of land and population. If you're anti-USSR, there's a good chance you're anti-Russia.
And by the way the narrator(creator) is Austria.😁
@@jorgschimmer8213 - Austria eh? ua-cam.com/video/XYZ6_n7Mpb0/v-deo.html
@@artificialintelligence8328 pretty sure Boris Yeltsin would disagree. the binding force of the USSR were the Communists, creators of the failed economy that existed in 1990. Anti-Soviet was Pro-Russia to him and his followers.
Just found out Russian soldiers do not in fact have British accents. Enemy at the gates lied to me!
best comment in here
this is not a Russian accent
Fun fact: Russians DON’T have an accent when they’re supposedly speak in their mother tongue onscreen. So British accent, American accent is fine, as long as you live behind the atrocious “Russian” English accent. That makes everyone one screen look as an imbecile.
@@valkyrie9553 I wish I could understand what you said ((
@@valkyrie9553 It was only a joke.
Next you'll be telling me the Japanese infantry didn't charge into battle surfing on tankettes and cutting machine gun barrels with katanas.))
"Drive me closer! I want to hit them with my sword."
@@Joe125g20 Katana*
@@nobleman9393 gunto
A book I read, first published in 1977 but still being reprinted in new editions as late as 2013, still contains the mythological 'Japanese knee mortar', that best I've been able to establish, was a short-lived hoax dating back to a small group of particularly dim-witten GI who were told to go test out captured Japanese equipment, resulting in one or two incorrect reports until the medics sent word that that was not how those weapons operated.
It also repeated the myth of Stillwell as a good general and the myth of the incompetent Chinese being rescued by a handful of westerners.
Bonzai? :)
I've always been confused by the "endless Russians" myth in general. Their population isn't exactly sky-high, it's their vast territory that's effectively endless.
Siberia comes to mind.
Population in 2017 according to Wikipedia: over 33 million.
''The vastness of Russia devours us.'' - Gerd Von Runstedt 1942
Yeah, giant territory of Russia always was a case in most wars, since war with Sweden up to WW2, luring enemies deep, attacking from expose flanks and raiding supply lines, if needed using Scorched earth tactics (good examples are WW2 and Patriotic war of 1812 with Napoleonic France)
“Teeming horde of barbarian masses” has always been a strong rhetoric. A lot of our ideas about Russia come from Great Britain. Russia was technologically inferior to GB, so they needed another way to depict their enemy as being dangerous. The idea has continued into modernity because of the huge influence Churchill had over shaping US internationalist foreign policy.
@@Whatsuppbuddies Maybe it all started with the Crimean War?
What do you mean Enemy at The Gates & Company of Heroes 2 are not documentaries?
Don Serpiente Also Call Of Duty
NOOO WAAAAY!
@@MegaKaiser45 At least back then they gave some respect now it just making Micheal bay fast pace action also I think the next battlefield will let's you have a m1 grand with a laser, grip, and red dot 😂
my gosh CoH2 is such a propaganda bullshit it is pathetic
@@MegaKaiser45 gladly only on CoD1. On the other hand, CoD2 and WaW Soviet campaign are not Enemy at The Gates copypasta
You mean the entire soviet army wasn’t bears on unicycles?
Not gonna lie, that's kinda awesome.
*drinking vodka
Only the 1st Railroad paratrooper division. But it's mostly for boosting morale of friendly troops.
*Playing balalaikas
as a russian, there is totally nothing such as bears on unicycles drinking vodka, i'm totally not trying to hide some classified information so that i don't die because solzhenitsyn said that ussr is literally 1984 but worse
You mean to tell me Enemy at the gates isn't accurate?
Despite the title, the movie is based on "War of the Rats" by Tim Robbins.
Jajajajajaja
Enemy at the Gates isn't even accurate to the non fiction Enemy At the Gates novel by William Craig. Not only is it Hollywood history it's only a few pages of the book. Good read by the way.
SERIOUSLY?
You mean to say that Jude Law never banged Rachel Weisz?! She was sooo hot!
Thanks for video!
From Russia with great respect
привет таганай
Таганай, моё почтение!
О, Таганай! Спасибо за твои видео!
@@shanimchulani6988 Вам спасибо, что смотрите )
Опа Таганай, не ожидал тебя тут увидеть. =В
Но не удивлен тому что ты хвалишь сего человека, действительно правильные вещи затирает.
You know the guy is German when he says **SCHTALIN**
or SCHTALINGRAD. That`s how the Russians actually spotted spies.
@@t.on.y Wait, you're telling me that spies could speak perfect Russian but not pronounce Stalingrad?
@Dr Disconect actually it was a short list of words to spot the spies from different countries, f.e. for Japanese spies the word was Leningrad. Spotting and sorting, very convenient
@@alexandrvasilev2865 hehe
@@alexandrvasilev2865 Wasn't there a better way of spotting a Japanese in USSR than listening to his accent? :D :D :D
I know there's no other way to reach Russian archives for western historical researchers, as to find russian historian and try to collaborate. And the main couse of it - language - too many russian documents, which avalible for russian history is in "fog of language" for western history... BUT! I'm really surprised here and now, cause when i finish to watch this video I feel like a have a great conversation with my friend historian with nearly same opinion . Great thanks for your work, guys! And let's try to make our countries to live in peace.
With best regargs, an ordinary russian guy.
There is a documentary by Sankt- Peterburg historians: WWII day by day (Вторая мировая день за днем). Highly recommend it.
This taught me something
@Vadik Ah yes Stalin is a great guy lol
@@cyclone8974 yeah that’s totally what he said. You’re not strawmanning at all 🙄
@@HydratedBeans How about this. The Bolsheviks and the National Socialists were both socialist, and ran equivalently monstrous regimes that brutally repressed people. The war on the Eastern Front was not about Russians valiantly defending their Motherland from "fascist" invaders, but rather two groups of Left fascist gangsters in a vicious struggle over which criminal socialist gang would get to enslave Eastern Europe.
Almost 27 minutes?! Christmas came early this year!
Saint Joan of Arc, heroine of France
sorry to ruin your moment but the US could have wasted Berlin the same way they did with Japan.
and the Soviets didn't fight to help the West they fought because they got invaded and they wanted revenge
Saint Joan of Arc, heroine of France , not soviets but all East European nations including mine. Americans and English were late for the party.
Saint Joan of Arc, heroine of France , there you go Polish people know what mean to die for freedom. I'm Serbian, South Slavic.
True, about Soviet Union recruiting from the liberated- occupied territories. My grandfather has been recruited in octomber 44 afted Romania switched sides, till september heve been in 10th Romanian inf. Division, 38 inf. reg. then after the switching all Romanians from Bassarabia and Bucovina were send back home. Most were properly trained, that helped them to survive the war and many of them been awarded by Soviets with medals for courage and high valor in battle, like my Grandfather who been awarded with Order of Glory 3rd grade and some more, i remember only this one.
Cool grandpa
nah, soviets were bloody monsters and rapists.
everyone knows that...
Gregory Johnson you are a joke
My grandfather experienced the same, Romania switched sides and so did he, we have a photo of him with a Soviet officer in Budapest.
Also, about 5-10% of the soldier of the Red Army who fought in the battle of Berlin were Polish.
So:
1) The Soviets couldn't throw more soldiers than there were bullets at the Germans, but rather, faced heavy losses during the first half of the war, due to disorganization - an aftereffect of the purge.
2) It wasn't the failure of Operation "Citadel" that devastated the German tank forces - rather, it was the effect of consecutive, steady losses throughout the summer of 1943.
3) The commissars didn't just shoot any soldier they saw retreating - some did, but they were an exception.
4) The Soviets didn't use "Human wave attacks" - they fought with very simple tactics, while their operations and overall strategy was far more complex.
5) Operation "Barbarossa" was not a preemptive attack - the Soviets were in no shape for an offensive war, and even if they were, German military intelligence was far too lacking to determine it.
6) It wasn't "Genera Winter" who stopped the Wehrmacht - it was their heavy losses in 1941, that affected the army when it was in it's peak condition, that would eventually halt their advances.
7) Lend-Lease did't "Save" the Soviet Union, but it was still very important for its war effort.
No. 5: Soviets may not have been any shape for an offensives, but because of the arrogance of the Soviet officials that probably didn't matter. The Ploesti oil fields were very close by as well as the coal fields of Western Poland and the Eastern Germany. It wouldn't not have been that unthinkable that a sudden massive offensive by the Red army would have deprived the Germans of most of their fuel supply.
No. 6: Maybe not, but not having been prepared for the winter had to play significant part.
No. 7: The USSR may still have been on the winning side of that war, but they probably wouldn't have made it past Poland. Berlin? Forget it!
>due to disorganization - an aftereffect of the purge.
aftereffect of the rapid army growth
That too. But getting rid of a bunch of generals probably didn't help, either.
@@redfiend Depends. If they were the only people who knew anything about running an army, then possibly.
But let's just say there was much going on, to which the organization was having trouble adapting.
Not all of them were traitors. A number of them got removed from their position due to the political maneuverings of government officials.
I think one important aspect of lend-lease that often gets overlooked is the psychological impact that having foreign arms would have on local forces - it's a concrete, tangible demonstration that you are not alone in the fight, and that even if you cannot see your allies, they are there and you are supported by them. Much easier to fight on in a desperate situation if you feel are not isolated or abandoned.
bull lend-lease was not only useless but also harmful and the Russian people were definitely alone and the "allies" were on the side of Hitler and were almost worse than him
And if it actually nourishes you and the Allied effort keeps you fed and alive
It was also a reminder that MAYBE the Soviet system wasn't the answer to all of life's problems, something that Stalin et al were not willing to admit nor permit discussion thereof.
I must point out that NKVD was not a 'predecessor' to KGB per se. KGB was intelligence service (both domestic and foreign) while NKVD was essentially a ministry of internal affairs.
Who killed Trotsky then =)?
@@ОлегКозлов-ю9т If you asked Beria it was the Easter Bunny.
exactly
Irredeemable Deplorable Covfefe MAGA yes since Putin was alive when the NKVD existed
NKVD run internal AND external affairs until 1943, when it was split to NKVD and NKGB
We can all agree, T34s speeding at full throttle on the battlefield and ramming Tigers sounds badass asf
Nope. Sounds absolutely moronic.
The T-34 was so loud the Soviets couldn't mask it which helped the Germans counter them!
A1pha Ch3rnovak well, not really.
@@grenzer45 there was a female tanker that got 3 tanks by ramming into them, i'd say even if not the most logically sound, it is a badass achievement
@@JagdWehrwolf Found the Wehraboo
Also, about the last point - Boris Sokolov is not well regarded in Russian historical community because of his unsavory practices like plagiarism and outright usage of fake sources.
Yep, you beat me to it. Опередил)
Thank you. I will avoid his books.
Nobody cares. He's gonna vote Sokolov regardless
Just because putinist nazis don't like what he writes, doesn't mean he's wrong. If you have an argument, make it with facts. But shut up with the vague "I don't like it so I hate it" moaning.
All Russian historians who don't write what the putinists want them to write, face such criticism. So your criticism can be safely considered fake and political, unless you back it up.
@ he literally said *why* he's not well regarded. He didn't say Russian historians just hate him for no reason.
And you just jumped to Putin and Nazis. That was one hell of a strawman, dude.
I am really surprised, that someone out from Russia decided to speak about myths about Soviet Union
Thanks for such a video)
Even in Russia such people who decided to speak about myths about Soviet Union are pretty rare.....
There is nothing "mythological" about the Soviet Union. People should stop overusing the term "myths".
There are more of us than you might think. Not all here in Europe, or even the US (although it is debatable if it registers in any interest there.) have swallowed the post-war anti-USSR narrative. That after-war historical narrative was severely tainted with (anti USSR) propaganda and thus the Soviet efforts were ideologically minimized, ridiculed or adversely questioned and assessed. Not all were blinded by that. I thank the Soviet Union for the defeat of NAZI-Germany and I am (and many with me are) aware that without the USSR we would be speaking German, Italian or Japanese....or most likely not at all.
@@Centurion101B3C Then why don't you people live in Russia under Putin and his Third World conditions now? ^^ Your statement is ridiculous and has nothing to do with European culture. "Speaking German, Italian and Japanese" is exactly what so many Europeans do (in Germany, Austria, Swiss), and rightfully so, after all also the media and technology comes from Japan and not from Russian Kolhoz or your North Korea. Every civilized European would never want to behind the Iron Curtain like in Eastern Germany.
@@bringbackmy90s Never stated any preference for desiring to live anywhere else than where I am now. Also I do not see how current day FSG and North Korea find their place in this debate other than through YOUR (to me unclear) perspective, which is not mine and for YOU to deal with.
And yes, I speak more languages (among which the mentioned, although I admit that Japanese is not my strongest suit) than my native one.
I am glad that I have the option.
And precisely that is exactly the crucial point: Under the 3rd Reich, there would be no option and anyone deviating from the state-cult of Nazism would be made to have no life and thus no voice. Fortunately the USSR defeated and destroyed the 3rd Reich and I am again stating that I am intensely thankful of that.
This is one of the best history channels out there. The constant presentation of sources, using them to draw conclusions that are never presented as the whole truth make every episode more a scientific essay than just entertainment. I love it when small, independently produced formats top everything available in TV. I reminds me how passion always beats profit-oriented bs.
Been recently in Belarus (Weißrussland) and visited the Great Patriotic War Museum there
Was incredibly interesting and well worth the time
Gave a totally different perspective on the war as one would usually find in a western museum
This video really challenged some of my ideas about the Red Army, and in conjunction with the museum, gave me a new perspective on it
Thank you MHV!
@CounterStrike211 I don't disagree with the Red Army being a powerful fighting force, but that claim you made is completely baseless. According to Wikipedia the Japanese claim they took about 60 000 losses, KIA, WIA and captured, in Manchuria, while the Soviets claimed they killed 80 000 Japanese. That's roughly the same number of casualties as they suffered on Okinawa. Over the many years of war, the Americans killed many times more Japanese than the Soviets did during their very brief campaign. In the Philippines campaign of 44-45 alone the Japanese suffered some 350 000 casualties
Oxtocoatl killed was the wrong word, the Soviets destroyed the main Japanese army but many of these forces surrendered rather than fight to the death.
@CounterStrike211 manchurian army=most of the japanese army, ok buddy
Lol at Japan surrendering because of the Soviets, they killing most of the IJA and somehow 'liberating' Korea and Manchuria (because communism is such a good ideology!).
Have you been to Brest?
Yes, 27 minutes of summarized glorious informative myth debunking. Am so glad to be a patron and see you have the same views on those "documentaries" as I do.
I look forward to what you have in store for 16 Days in Berlin. I know my money in that will be well spent.
the myth about soviet unlimited manpower was one of two the biggest myths that came from german military commanders. another one was about winter that beat the germans.
It's kind of disheartening to think how much of the popular understanding of WWII comes directly from Nazi propaganda. But it makes sense given how closely the US aligned with the former Nazis for the Cold War
Its not a myth tho, guy in the video didnt even debunk it
@@yep9817 Did you even watch the video? He did.
@@projectpitchfork860 He didnt, having manpower shortages after you conscript 30 million men is normal, and doesnt debunk common narrative of "endless manpower in Soviets"
@@yep9817 it… it does. They didn’t have endless reserves they were lucky they weren’t fighting the entire axis alone. The entire first part of the war they were the ones being outnumbered and the numbers are pretty similar after.
Useful video for both the western viewer and the Russian. I would even say that especially for the Russian one in view of certain internal reasons. It is a curious coincidence that today I watched a lecture by the Russian military historian Aleksei Valerievich Isaev. The topic of the lecture was Blau's operation. So the famous order number 227 was announced in view of the breakthrough of German troops in the south of the Soviet Union, to the Caucasian oil. This breakthrough was a complete surprise to the Soviet command, because it was assumed that the Germans would establish a bridgehead for an attack on Moscow. After the battle of Voronezh, German troops moved immediately south, and not further east, as the Soviet troops suggested. As a result, the German tank corps simply went without encountering resistance in view of the fact that there was no one to stop them. As a result, 62 and 63 armies were formed to stop the further advance of tank corps.
Isaev is just such a great historian, if you haven’t watched his lectures yet, go do it
Yeah coming from the guy with the Lenin picture I'm sure you're a trust worthy guy.
@@uhlan1035 you do or do not trust. Anyway, myths about Eastern front is still strong. So MHV do right thing to discover truth.
@@Pvt.Conscriptovich I absolutely don't trust a Marxist trying to justify and rationalize the Red Army system. You aren't interested in truth unless it can support your propaganda. Unsurprising that you worship Lenin then.
@@uhlan1035 so MHV is marxist now, eh?
I think the manpower myth also has some roots in the figures of divisions. Some may see, say for example, 20 German Divisions vs 40 Soviet Divisions, as the Soviets having a 2-1 advantage. Well, Soviet organization actually had it where the Soviet Division was smaller than a Western Division, with the approximate Soviet equivalent to the latter being a Soviet Corps. So it is more likely that in my hypothetical example, the match up may actually be closer to a 1-1 ratio in numbers of men.
well, the issue is the Soviet divisions were less self-sufficient than German ones, so they had more troops somewhere else that were not in the divisions. Yet, I don't know exactly how that ratio translates. Also there are "Army Units" (Heerestruppen) for the Germans and I am rather sure the Soviets had plenty of their own, as always once one looks a bit deeper, it gets really complicated.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Good point, this may be worth more research and perhaps it's own video. Would those 'other troops' have been support troops or smaller independent brigades/regiments? I think that this myth also has roots in the Early Cold War from a few points. A) The arguments of the necessity/cost effectiveness of the Atomic Bomb as a counter to Soviet "Hordes". B) The experience of the Korean War, with the Chinese PLA having large numbers and using human waves. Some may have ignorantly equated the PLA and the Red Army due to both being Communist and using Soviet weaponry and equipment.
HalfLifeExpert1.....TIK goes into good detail about Soviet Army organization
The facts: the Soviet mobilized 34,4 million men vs Germany, Germany 18,3 million men vs the USSR, USA and British Empire.
@@RouGeZH those arent facts those are assumptions, also its not as simple as that
Just as an aside about the Lend Lease, my grandfather (the one who survived the war, despite being wounded once and receiving contusions twice) had always sworn by Lend Lease, and so did one of my grandmothers who was still a young girl during the war. My grandfather repeatedly said how without the Willis jeep he could not possibly do his job (he was an officer in self-propelled artillery towards the end of the war), or without the American trucks or American petrol the army couldn't have possibly advanced as fast as it did. My grandmother recalls the American spam (what the Russians call tushyonka - I still enjoy the stuff even now! It's very popular in Russia but was virtually unknown before the war) that reached the home front. Soldiers from the front lines got dibs on the good American canned goods but would send home packages - the soldiers in general were actually fairly well-fed, another common myth about the Red Army in WW2. That spam along with all the other food that Americans had sent (I don't remember for example just how many millions of bushels wheat and buckwheat were sent as well) was what saved millions of civilian lives and kept the Soviet home front going. Whatever I feel about the modern U.S.A., I cannot but feel a deep gratitude to the American people and administration and their help in WW2.
Hunter of Dreams ... YES, I could not agree more. The Americans with the Lend-Lease provided Soviets with the ability to conduct and wage war. Could Soviets win without Lend-Lease?? Hmmm, I don't think so personally. But, the Americans understood that helping the communist at the time was a better proposition than Nazi Germany defeating the Soviets. Agree, whatever I feel of the modern Russians...the Americans did the right thing at the time. Merci
@@biz4twobiz463 the right thing for the short term. Destroying the developed world was good for the USA for a long time. With our whole species hurtling towards extinction today maybe the Nazis in power wouldn't have been so bad after all? At least the Nazis had a sustainable plan.
@@1pcfred ... Hmmm, sustainable plan. Ok, but only IF you met all the criteria. Otherwise, you would never exist, because your parents, grandparents, etc didn't meet the necessary criteria either. Therefore, your comment does not exist today or tomorrow...or anytime. Merci
@@biz4twobiz463 well, being of German descent and cast in the classical Aryan mold meeting Nazi criteria was never a concern of mine.
Can I say a stupid thing that's nice to an American? You did it. Get a pie.
Pretty accurate, but one more thing with Winters - people who lived in USSR was not resistant to cold. They freezed the damn same way. And you forgot the myth of a weapon shortage AKA 'one rifle for 5 men'
There to many myths for one video, i never heard of that myth.
With regard to the "General Winter" myth. A few years ago I took a look at the monthly distribution of German casualties using the data of Rüdiger Overmans. For the period June 1941 - May 1944. I chose this peridod to examine because Overmans has total figures that are not broken down by front. However, during this period German losses where overwhelmingly on the Eastern front. The only other place where there was action was Africa, but the German contingent there was never more than 7 1/2 divisions. The monthly distirbution of losses does not vary widely across the years. Summing casualties in these years for the months October - March (calling it winter), we get 1,237,000 and for April - September (calling it summer), we get 1,410,000. Another way of looking at this is by noting that while the month in which the highest casulties fall is January with 320,000, the second is June with 266,000.
Another interesting statistic, given that you quoted July, 1941 casualties as being particularly high. Overmans has these as 67,000. But for June he cites 29,000. As the invasion began on the 22nd, this is for 9 days. Extrapolating to 30 days we get 97,000. No month in the perido examined exceeds this number except January 1943 (wtih 185,000), which is of course the final month of the battle of Stalingrad.
"General Winter" myth fisrt made by napoleon and after just repeated by the Germans to justify their defeat
the Germans also came up with a fairy tale that Russia is a "northern country" and supposedly very cold
Casualties can mean wounded, many of which returned to duty. Just like how the number of tanks knocked out seems outrageous...until one realizes how readily both Soviet and American repair crews could fix their mounts...sometimes piecing together parts from several busted tanks, akin to how the comic book "Jeb" Stuart with his "Haunted Tank" built the "Jigsaw" version, based on a T-34 chassis and engine (on the WESTERN front?) with a M10 turret, somehow fitted with an armored roof and commander's cupola...with a "hoop" aerial that some earlier Soviet tanks used!
Wehraboos about to launch their summer offensive on this channel
I am so tired of this Something-aboo bullshit. From both sides.
"Soviet manpower was unlimited"
"Lend lease was irrevelant"
"The panzerwaffe died at Kursk"
Is typical soviet fanboy b.s.
@@RouGeZH soviet fanboy? Do they really exist?
@@ОлегКозлов-ю9т yes
They're usually called tankies
@@RouGeZH they're called tankies or simply just communists under different name. They're worse than wehraboos and Nazis combined. Thinking they won the war by their own and massacres committed by their government was totally justified
Great video! Your German accent becomes even more charming when you misspronounce Russian names.
Not sure when I last heard Russo German interaction described as charming
Schtalingrag))))
@@konstantinriumin2657
Well that's how its pronounced in german. Schtalingrad.... Honestly I think it's funny how its pronounced in english.
@@thatoneguynextdoor8794 The English pronunciation is closer to the original Сталинград.
Шталин. :3
I am Russian, and I wnat to say Thank You for help in busting those ugly myths across the border. Do svidanya.
He didn't dispute #4 or #7.
Не ты один такой!
@@drcornelius8275 The contemporary view of Soviet citizens at the time would suggest that view is wrong.
Blocking detachment and manpower crisis: actually, one of the rather important role of the blocking detachment (or NKVD security, your pick), in the later stage of the war when the Red Army started to recapture the land, was to go into liberated area and sweep up any able-bodied men they could find and chain-gang press them into services. They weren't completely untrained before being pressed into combat; each division has a training battalion that handle these types of training, but you can see the desperate situation that they had to throw people into formations without any regards to things like: loyalty, security risk, language barriers, etc ...
One of the thing that may explain why the Red Army was for a period of time, could not have much more sophisticated tactics but instead had to focus on operational arts was because they lost many experienced officers, first to the Purge and second to the Germans in the first few months of the war. Some of the practices in the early days were disastrous: a division reduced to 300 mostly staff and officers were ordered to counterattack into oblivion; they really should not have done it that way and at least try to evacuate them. They had to very quickly, in a hurry, train a lot of lieutenants and promote the surviving ones into captains and majors. Any good commanders had to be quickly promoted upwards to serve in higher units. David Glantz noted, in When Titans Clashed, that around late 1941, early 1942, the STAVKA had to put out orders instructing unit commanders on very simple, rudimentary tasks like "have a plan for artillery fire before an infantry assault". This was evident that the low-level unit commanders were very inexperienced. Also, if you compare a German division with a Russian division, you can see that the Russian divisions generally had fewer men, and fewer artillery assets. The indirect fire assets were mostly mortars. Yet the impression of the war was that the Russian used a lot of artillery to batter the enemy. How and why? Coordinating indirect fire with infantry assaults were a tricky task so at lower levels, with lower-skilled officers, it was relegated to mortars and direct-fire 76.2mm guns, which are mostly an infantry weapon: close to the front and directly attached to the infantry units conducting the assault. The Red Army pooled their large caliber howitzers and Katyusha launchers (called Guards Mortar) at Corps (the Rifle Corps level of command was actually eliminated soon after the start of Barbarossa and was reintroduced around Kursk, 1943) and Front level in prepared fire plans against static positions for penetration assaults.
Another effect that you can see in the Red Army hurried efforts to train new officers and promoting the good ones were how fast some of the commanders rose through the ranks. Ivan Chernyakhovsky was probably the best example: he commanded a Tank Corp in June 1942, a month later, he commanded an Army. By June 1944, he commanded a Front. At the same time, old or bad senior commanders were quickly "promoted" to desk positions and sent away from the front (examples included Budyonny and Timoshenko, both initally trusted by Stalin but after a few disastrous battles, they were quietly "promoted" into honorary positions and shoved aside). Rosmistrov, commander of 5th Guards Tank army; the guy whose Corps were battered in Prokhorovka, performed another ultimately successful but costly attack in Misnk and was removed from frontline command and promoted to "Marshall of Armoured troops". He did not command a Tank Army again.
The "good" operation commanders definitely had an effect down to the tactical battles. One of the reason the Leningrad area campaign dragged on for so long and many offensives there just grind to a halt was two folds: first, it had lower priority for manpower and equipment; second, the senior commanders there weren't as good and as experienced as the better ones in the Central and Ukrainian sectors (people like Konev, Vatutin, and Rokossovsky). We all know the battle of Kursk was over the Kursk salient, but the reason why that salient existed was interesting. It was the result of a series general offensives a few months before that. The majority of fronts did badly, except for Rokossovsky's, which went quite well, but eventually also ran out of steam. His advance created the bulge.
The maturation of Russian tactical and operational arts can be seen in the Manchurian offensive against Japan. There, the division received additional support unit tailored to the terrain the unit had to fight on and advance over. Fortification-busting divisions received heavy tanks and artillery, the ones going over plains get medium tanks, etc ... The theatre command went one step further and match the terrain with the units' experience fighting in Europe: armies with experience fighting in mountains are relegated to attacks across Manchurian mountains and armies with experience fighting in urban areas were tasked with assaulting fortifications.
Great comment, got your sources so I can find this stuff without having to remember what video this was a comment on?
@@lucaswatson1913 The majority of what I wrote about the adaptation of the Red Army command and the revival of it can be found scattered in "When Titans Clashed" by David Glantz. A more detailed book, probably, but I haven't read it cover to cover myself is probably "Colossus Reborn: The Red Army at War" also by David Glantz.
An interesting book on the use of sub-standard recruits is "Scraping the Barrel: The Military Use of Sub-Standard Manpower", edited by Sanders Marble. The practice of the NKVD security detachment in impressing "liberated" population into the Red Army is in Chapter 7, written by Glantz. By the end, according to this chapter, a Red Army Rifle Regiment is a surprisingly multi-ethnic, multi-national force:
"One officer’s description of the composition of his rifle division typified the Red Army as a whole. Created at Stavropol’ in the North Caucasus in August 1941, the 343rd Rifle Division initially consisted of “40 years old, 38 years old, kolkhoz [collective farm] chairmen, raiispolkom [district executive committee] chairmen, raikom [district committee] secretaries, and so forth, but they were not young.” Thereafter, however, “Our regiment traveled through 7,500 kilometers of combat, and only 16 veterans who had joined up in Stavropol’ remained.” Most of those who remained “were guys 40 and 45 [years of age],” and “the composition varied . . . with all kinds- Kazakhs, Uzbeks, Tatars, Armenians, Georgians, and Azerbaijanis.” In short, “There were up to 25 nationalities in the regiment,” but “no problems arose. It was one big friendly family-a regimental family,” and “there were always 10-15 women in the regiment.”
In the same book, chapter 9 and 10 deals with the German counterparts in also scrapping their barrel for recruits; plus some frictions in working alongside "allies"; like this quote:
This Axis quarrel climaxed in a heated exchange during a meeting in Podgornica on May 22, where Phleps [commander of 7th SS Freiwillige Gebirgs Division Prinz Eugen, a division consisted of nearly entirely Volksdeutsche, ethnic Germans of non-Reich origin] (never hesitant to speak his mind) appalled his Wehrmacht interpreter, Lt. Kurt Waldheim, by calling his Italian counterpart General Roncaglia a “lazy macaroni” and nearly coming to blows with his ally. After the encounter, Phleps scolded young Waldheim, whose translations evidently were toning down Phleps’s vitriol: “Listen, Waldheim, I know some Italian and you are not translating what I am telling this so-and-so.”
For the specific organisation of the Red Army at various points, decent source a Master thesis at the US Army CGSC: "Analysis of Deep Attack Operations: Operation Bagration Belorussia 22 June - 29 August 1944" by Lt. Col. William M. Connor. This is freely distributed and can be searched on Google.
For the organisation and planning in the Manchurian Operation, there are 2 Leavenworth papers by Glantz, which are freely available: "August Storm: Soviet Tactical and Operational Combat in Manchuria, 1945" and "August Storm: The Soviet 1945 Strategic Offensive in Manchuria". The dates of the papers were a bit dated, 1987; Glantz already put out a more recent book. It is interesting when you consider the inception of these 2 papers: Glantz was commission by the Japanese Self-Defence Force to study the Manchurian campaign since back then, the Japanese had the wrong impression of the Red Army; no doubt because of the Cold War-era memoirs of German generals and their contacts with the Germans during the war, and they could not understand how such an "unskilled" opponent like the Red Army could so quickly swept aside the admittedly weak Kwantung Army and advanced over an area the size of central Europe in 11 days.
@@VT-mw2zb amazing! Thank you so much for taking the time out to give me such detail, seriously it's a lot of effort thank you. Will be heading to my uni library to take a look soon
@@lucaswatson1913 also, if you want to have an overview the development, changes and evolution of the Red Army from its inception to about 1980s, then there's really no better book than "Soviet Military Operational Art: in Pursuit of Deep Battle" also by David Glantz.
If you just want a quick overview of the structure of the Rifle Division from 41-45, then here. It's very obvious from the structure that Soviet Rifle Division had mostly either direct fire guns (45 and 76mm) or mortars for fire support. It had at most, 12 x 122mm howitzers.
blog.usejournal.com/the-red-army-in-ww-ii-496e8a56b6e
The comments section does have its usefulness from time to time.
You explained certain complexities of events very plainly spoken. Thank you...
I have read analyses that suggest that the Soviet Union never really recovered from the loss of manpower from the war.
yup, even today there are significantly more women in Russia then men. But this is also because of the men dying earlier.
I live in this country for 30 years almost and every person here would agree we have never recovered. You don't need an analysis for it.
I would think that after nearly 80 years the population would have recovered.
@@michaelwier1222 think of it again. You have massive loss of life, young unmarried men primarily, so you also have massive numbers of children who were unborn if this word even exists. Then you also lose those children who would be born by those 1st generation of unborn and this horrifying cycle is echoing every 20-25 years or so, only gradually fading away.
I guess you are right. It takes more than a few generations.
What really annoys me about the whole 'Barbarossa as a Preemptive Strike' argument is that it's plainly clear that Hitler had every intention of invading the USSR regardless of Soviet actions, thanks to the ideology and desire for Lebensraum. Besides, if Stalin had serious intentions for a Pre-emptive strike, he lost his one big opportunity in the Spring/Summer of 1940, when the Western Europe campaign was raging. Even with the major problems the Red Army was facing at the time (recovering from Purges and high losses in the Winter War), with the bulk of the best German forces in France and the Low Countries, a westward assault toward Germany would have been challenging to counter.
It's true soviet union was not planning to attack in 1940/1941 because of the sorry state of their army. But they eventually would, after building up their forces they certainly would have attacked perhaps in '43 or '44
They couldn’t even invade Finland, and the only weapons the Fins had were wood sticks sharpened to a point.
@CounterStrike211 10%. Let's not exaggerate.
@CounterStrike211 The % is easily available if you had bothered to google it. No need to eyeball it.
CounterStrike211 didn’t Finland capture Moscow, well that’s what we were taught in school
If you were Russian, male and born in 1923 you had a 20% chance of reaching your 20th birthday
My great grandad was born in 1923....
Lucky you
@@gnas1897 lucky him
What is your math grade in primary school?
@@knightnight1894 tf does that have to do with anything
Soviet union lost 1.4 million second lieutenants in WWII, according to Glantz.
NKVD was the predessor of MVD (Ministry Internal Affairs), not KGB. Predessors of KGB were NKGB (People's Commissariat of State Security) and later MGB (Ministry of State Security), which was somewhat downgraded from a ministry of their own to mere Commitee of State Security under the Council of Ministers (e.g. soviet goverment).
Another 20 years will pass, and western historians will realise that evil GULAG was just an administrative building in Moscow :-)
They were part of the NKVD until 1943, so yes the NKVD can be described as a predecessor to the KGB.
And predecessor of NKGB was NKVD
@@ВячеславСкопюк not really, NKGB was separated from NKVD before the German invasion, but at the time of blocking detachment they there entirely separate entities. That's not what is called a 'predecessor'. By late 1941 and onwards NKVD was a police force, that's why it was responsible for blocking detachments. Preventing an unauthorised tresspassing is a thing any police force is supposed to do in order of a crisis.
@@ФедяКрюков-в6ь
> but at the time of blocking detachment they there entirely separate entities
Nope. NKGB and NKVD were united in July 1941 and separated again in 1943
>That's not what is called a 'predecessor'
NKGB was formed from GUGB NKVD. It's called 'predecessor' in my book
>By late 1941 and onwards NKVD was a police force
it was only part of their duties. For example, they also trained saboteurs
I studied in a Russian officer school. As my specialization was as a military lawyer, we only studied the basic ("classic") combat tactics, from the late Cold war (1980s) combat manuals. The Soviet soldiers (and Russian soldiers up to this day) are still taught that in case of a large scale war (read: "war to conquer West Europe through Germany"), our infantry would attack the enemy trenches in a "riflemen chain". Essentially, the infantry dismounts from their APC/IFVs a few hundred meters before the enemy line, deploy into a straight line, 6-8 meters between soldiers, march forward at a fast pace (5-6 km/h), shooting their AKs forward, without aiming, then within 30-40 meters of the trench throw grenades, shout "Hooray!" and run into the damned enemy trench. Only the light-machinegunner of the section is supposed to run&shoot, covering the section's advance. Of course, a chain of infantry is usually preceded by tanks, but the tank/infantry coordination is usually the task of the company/battalion level. The lightly armoured APC/IFVs follow in zigzags behind the infantry line. All Russian soldiers still practice forming into such a "chain of death" during their basic training. Of course, such an unsophisticated tactic would cause us huge casualties, but we were told that this is still the fastest and the most efficient way to achieve a breakthrough in a modern large-scale war. In the modern assymetrical conflict (Afghanistan, Chechnya, Georgia, etc.) the more "subtle" and less wasteful tactics were used, like advancing under the cover of a tank, and so on, but the frontal "chain" assault is still considered the main doctrine for a war against NATO.
the same stupid tactic is taught in the infantry here in Greece. well, not just running. "leapfrog" with covering fire, get close enough for grenades, shout "like the wind!" and charge with bayonetts. i thought they were joking, but sadly they were not.
@@apokos8871 "Like the wind"? I like it! PS. We were also taught, in the real battle, noone shouts "Hooray!" Everyone just swears. ;)
@@jurisprudens like the wind, or usually just wind! is the national military motto since ww2, possibly even earlier. the worst piece of training i had was learning to use an antiair gun as part of the job of military musician was to defend the HQ. in a bunker. with an antiair gun. underground. against airplanes. i wanted to slap them.
@@apokos8871 A musician with an anti-air gun? Wow, that' inventive! I guess, it was inspired by the "blast of horn that scares vultures" symbolism, or something.)
@@apokos8871 That's the basics of infantry combat for the Israeli army too. Only the infantry are taught anything more complicated than that. For everyone else who might in some way end up fighting dismounted with light arms, this is pretty much it.
This was the best and unaligned explanation of the Lend Lease I have ever heard.
Thanks!
No because he completely missed the point. Lend-lease provided critically needed materials in the first place - explosives, gunpowder, aluminium etc. This was it's main positive effect, and not trucks or tanks or planes.
@@AlexanderSeven I'd say that food and non-combat supplies like uniform, boots etc. were in fact crucial. An army can still fight for months with fewer than optimal rifles, tanks, planes etc. but an army, or the country for that matter, cannot last long without food. All of Soviet Union food producing regions were lost by summer 1942, and how large were food reserves of a country that less than a decade prior to it suffered one of the worst famines in history?
From what I gathered about the Lend-Lease, the non-combat supplies were the majority of goods sent and were in fact crucial in keeping USSR afloat. Otherwise, by 1943 you have Soviet Union that cannot even feed it's soldiers, let alone provide them with weapons of war. Not that many edible things grow in Siberia and central Asian wastes - most certainly not enough to provide food for the entire country. It is usually animal husbandry at those areas, but even that - you have to be able to substitute at once the loss of half of the European part of USSR with food production from central Asia - that is NOT something you could do even with a few years to prepare, let alone within a year. And since food production is the most labor intensive of all branches (takes up the most manpower), just to keep the country from starving, huge portion of manpower would have to be diverted from factories, and those that remained in the factories would have to produce both weapons AND non-combat supplies.
Without Lend Lease, from what I have gathered up, it seems to me that Axis might have actually won - not by some masterful plan and tactics but by simply denying the Soviets crucial areas and grinding them down to the point where they could not sustain the army anymore.
Without a rifle or a tank, a soldier can retreat and wait for it to be available and keep fighting. Without food, soldier cannot last more than a week. At least not in a combat capable condition. And I highly doubt that Soviet Union had several years worth of food reserves, as that is how long it took to first recover food producing regions, then actually get anything from them.
@@Wustenfuchs109 I don't think that food lend-lease was critical. It definitely improved quality of rations, but not more.
For example, if we compare food produced by Soviet economy during the war and shipped by lend-lease:
flour: 61,5 millions of tons vs 510656 tons.
grain: 3,9 millions of tons vs 86236 tons.
pasta: 949,5 thousands of tons vs 157 tons.
Not really impressive.
@@Wustenfuchs109 Excellent post, though I wouldn't go past strategic standstill as a result.
From what I read the Soviets had carte-blanche in what they could request and we're only ever denied some stuff deemed related to nuclear research.
Since they could dictate what they got, they requested the things they lacked the most. I would highlight the precision machinist equipment (essentially whole factories) without which their military production would have a hard time recovering.
The United States furnished tens of thousands of cargo trucks, jeeps, water trailers. Thousands of miles of railroad rail,
some 3800 steam locomotives and tenders, immense quantities of railroad rolling stock, literally shiploads of canned high density foodstuffs such as Spam, besides shiploads of field gear, tents, sleeping bags, etc. The material needed to keep their logistical system functioning besides specialized capital equipment machine tools needed for weapons manufacture.
This besides other war material, alongside of material exported by the British Empire.
We were desperately trying to keep them in the fight (the Soviets securing the supplies with the gold bullion on physical deposit in New York City with more shipped) so we would not have to face the forces of the European Axis powers as only an Anglo American effort. Otherwise the war was projected to last into the mid 1950's.
You must also remember the Japanese Army component holding Manchuria, a garrison needed to prevent Soviet intrusion and so not available for elsewhere.
Well - that is close to what our top modern WW2 historians ( Alexey Isaev and Valeriy Zamulin to name some) say. I was pleasantly surprised to see such a quality video from the Western authors who do care to make research and understand the real picture ( after watching other western stuff like "oversimplified" series etc - where they say that Soviet losses in WW2 were mainly inflicted by Stalin himself ). Thank you very much, gentlemen!
thank you!
He is not the first Western UA-cam historian to make a video like this, or to assert that the winter weather was not the sole/main reason the Germans were stopped just outside Moscow and that the Red Army played a decisive role. Also, I seriously doubt Russian historians are immune from this bias and historical revisionism you complained of Western ones exhibiting.
Also, Stalin absolutely was a critical factor in the staggering losses the Red Army suffered. They got their asses kicked by FINLAND ALONE in 1939, Stalin had so neutered his own army via the Great Purges. His decisions and responses just before and after the invasion consigned many more troops to death. Yes, he ultimately realized he was catastrophically fucking up the situation and started relying on/deferring to his generals (and brought back some of them and other officers who were still alive after being purged), and ultimately proved to be a far more adaptable and pragmatic supreme commander than Hitler after getting his ass kicked a few times, but he was the Germans' best officer during Barbarossa.
@@Roketsune I wouldn't go as far as to say that Stalin was either "best German general" or main factor in initial losses during 1941-1942.
There were still lots of commanders who weren't touched by purges of 1937-1938 including Army's brains such as Shaposhnikov, Karbyshev, Antonov, Timoshenko etc.
I'd say that in general Army wasn't ready for great jump of it's size in 1939 - that's where the quality of command lowered dramatically in all branches of Armed Forces - our military schooling system couldn't deliver a needed amount of well-taught commanders instantly.
While laying blame on Stalin may seem obvious since he was leader of Party and State and therefore was responsible for everything in country, but there's also a logical "trap" -
'cause by doing it you automatically mean that once there were some persons who knew how to deal with newest German tactics and what instruments to contrapose against Panzer Divisions and Panzer Gruppen, but Stalin has moved them away or executed them and that's why he couldn't do well against Germans.
Also this means that there must be some example of a country or Armed Forces that showed everybody how to successfully counter German Armed Forces organisational superiority and their full-scale involvement with straight supply lines, which example we cannot actually find in known history.
The only force capable to withstand full-scale German strikes without total loosing of a state souverenity turned up !surprise! a Red Army :-)
Although it's very tempting to lay the blame for our losses on one person or to find one main cause - a disaster is always a combination of factors and in case of 1941 main of those were: deployment in advance on German side, wrong structure of Soviet tank forces, incomplete re-arming and incomplete training on our side especially in aviation and tank forces hence incapability to effectively counter Luftwaffe in their full strength ( it would be quite safe to say that in 1941 our Red Army had success in those sectors of front only where there were no Luftwaffe). I could also name other causes such as unreadiness of fortifications on the new border, airfields being in state of building of concrete runways etc etc
@@ДмитрийМарков-х6и2щ What about the winter war in 1939? Do you really think, that Finland attacked USSR?
@@rihc3584 You adress to so-called "Mainila incident" ? In history science this still is a discussional question. Personally I am not very familiar with docs and evidences to support either version that artillery barrage was from Finland's side or version that it was our command's simulation or version that there was no barrage at all. Casus belli was not the fact of artillery barrage itself but the reaction of Finnish side which declined Soviet note with proposition of withdrawal of Finnish troops up to 20-25 km and instead proposed mutual withdrawal - wich meant leaving Leningrad without defence and was therefore inacceptable. In sum with overall flow of negotiations about Karelian Isthmus during which Finland rejected Soviet propositions of exchanges of land this last decision of Finnish side finally gave way to military solution of conflict.
Lend Lease also provided with such basic things such as field ration for every Soviet soldier for one year, tons of boots. Also the Trucks proofed to be decisive.
Trucks, sure. Everything else - never heard anything about American rations and especially boots. Highly doubt foreign boots would last long in our climate.
@@ОлегКозлов-ю9т The UK delivered 15 Million boots, the USA delivered food.
@@AceVentura94 yes, food, especially canned beef. That I remember vividly, it was called "a second front" as a grim joke. We ran out of it by the spring of 1942,but OK, it was much needed at the start of the war. I still call bullshit on foreign boots,double bullshit on them being brittish boots and triple bullshit on woping 15 millions (!!!) of them
@@ОлегКозлов-ю9т Google it
Those Studebaker trucks are definitely a big deal in Steel Division 2 :D Soviet-made trucks are practically in slow-motion.
These "myths" largely came from the memoirs of German generals who fought in the eastern front. When the western people (especially during cold war) read about these many just took it as facts without more researched. Also, Hollywood and video games largely contributed to these myths as well.
Those generals were inclined to blame Hitler and his cronies (and he/they DID deserve some of it!) and over-state the Soviet strengths of manpower and how good their T-34 tank was. The US Army got one to the Aberdeen Proving Grounds in 1942, along with a Soviet mechanic, and it proved to be a piece of SHIT. The German assessment of the first examples they captured in mid-1941 was essentially the same, that this tank was JUNK.
>TFW when Coh2 wasn’t a documentary
**Wehraboos & Neo-nazis screeching in a distance**
Coh2 has a lot of issues. The criticism goes as far as it attributing nazi warcrimes to the soviets (not random people saying this, but Ukranian gamedevs and so on).
@joseaca They weren't too successful in this regard either, IMO.
You telling me a game which shows king tigers being war winning super weapons and soldiers being able to take bullets to the face isn't an accurate depiction of ww2?
@@alyssinclair8598
Don't forget how machine gunners will let themselves be slowly shot to death when there's someone out of the firing arc, and everyone is shit at aiming except snipers and vehicle crews.
I feel like the whole "human wave tactic" thing is just a buzzword with no real meaning. Any attack in human history can be described as this. Same goes for the "frontal assault" thing. You call any attack that you don't like (because you don't like those who were attacking or because it was not successful) a human wave attack or a frontal assault and that's it, you seemingly explained why the attackers were stupid and failed. Just say it since almost no one knows that all attacks need groups of people, usually consist of "waves" (reserve can be called a second wave if you want to play with words) and is kinda frontal anyway after enemy soldiers turn to your direction. Look, it even worked on Bernhard - he did not think of the real point behind these figures of speech and just assumed that soviet tactic IRL was bad.
I have finished reading soviet guide to squad leaders and soldiers of airborne forces published in 1942 and it was pretty boring because it is insanely similar to modern Russian field manuals (I've read the one published in 2005). When attacking run from no longer than 5 seconds, jump on the ground 20 meters away from cover, crawl to it, observe the battlefield shooting spotted enemies and digging in, some time later run again and repeat until you are close, then attack. The same procedure is explained in Russian "Sergeant's manual" of 2005.
I bet there were a lot of completely incompetent commanders and soldiers but attacking flanks, using cover and shooting with your rifle is so obvious that it was prioritised in the middle of 19th century. The hard thing that people fail at is everything else - planning, coordinating simultaneous frontal attack (or else the enemy won'e let you flank him) and flanking manoeuvre, controlling dispersed troops using cover (if you don't they will probably stay in cover instead of charging) and choosing the right position and battle formation to fire at the enemy effectively. The "oh they attacked the front instead of just teleporting behind their backs they are so stupid" is insanely lazy and primitive way of explaining military failures (but only in hindsight) and sometimes it's just a way to say that you don't like someone. People should either go deeper than this or stop using these terms entirely and just say that they don't like someone or that someone was defeated.
Interesting observation, thanks for sharing! Though i guess the s in "human waves" - which i feel is more often uttered when trying to make this argument - is crucial in its meaning. The whole argument is just shy of the "the germans only lost because they had fewer bullets than the russians had men" one. Maybe he should have mentioned that, though then he could not have talked about operations, which was interesting, as much i suppose.
It's a buzzword with no real meaning only if you have ZERO knowledge in infantry tactics.
Great comment mate!
@Claptrap Jesus No I just read things like:
Osprey - Elite 105 - World War II Infantry Tactics
Osprey - Elite 136 - World War II Airborne Warfare Tactics
Osprey - Elite 160 - World War II Infantry Assault Tactics
Osprey - Elite 168 - World War II Street-Fighting Tactics
@@RouGeZH I think Claptrap is unkind to you because you basically commented saying "I know better than you" without really explaining anything about what you mean. OP gave a long and detailed explanation with (from what I can tell) convincing arguments, and you gave a single line. If you know better, then please elaborate.
Based on what little I know of maneuver warfare, I agree with OP: in order to fully wreck your enemy, you need to break through their front lines and hit their rear areas (hit officers, capture/destroy fuel and ammo dumps, flank their defenses, encircle their forces, etc). You do this by probing their lines with attacks and recce. From the perspective of a particular defender that's trying to hold their ground against your attacks, you're throwing a human wave at them.
If your breakthrough succeeds, then you can start to exploit it. This is when a human wave attack turns into a truly successful maneuver. But if the attack fails, then (from the defender's perspective) the attack was only ever a human wave attack.
And in maneuver warfare, you can only possibly achieve a breakthrough by massing forces against the localized defenders. For example, my friends in the infantry of my country's armed forces say that, as a rule of thumb, you need a 3-to-1 advantage in manpower to be able to capture a defended position. That sounds a lot like a human wave attack to me. But I've never heard of anyone accusing my country of using human wave attacks, because people tend to respect my country.
In the words of OP, people only tend to accuse countries of using human wave attacks in order to belittle them. I think the truth is that every country that uses infantry uses human wave attacks. For example, I could argue that the US Marines fighting in Fallujah was a human wave attack. But I wouldn't do that, because (as OP says) "human wave attack" is a meaningless buzzword.
0:57 Komsomol was (and is) the name for the Communist Party Youth in Russia, they were very loyal to the party though were not part of the military. They were eager to be drafted, though.
1:27 Data: During 1941 the Soviets lost around 2-3 million soldiers (and a lot of equipment) during the encirclements of Barbarrossa and later on the battles of Smolensk, Vyazma, Kiev and Moscow. In 1942 they suffered lesser but still really big losses on the battles of Rzhev and Stalingrad (around 2 million). This is not counting POWs taken by the Germans, if counting POWs the figure gets even bigger.
As general data: The USSR in 1940 had a population of around 150 millions. The US had -more than 200 millions- around 130 millions (corrected, thanks to the comment below).
2:01 Women in the Soviet army were everywhere (yes, infantry too), though the biggest numbers of women were in support units. Around 1 million women joined the Red Army (partly from conscription and partly volunteers) during WW2, with a bigger number joining the armament industries.
2:22 Some Polish formations were already under training in 1941, and saw action during the whole war, but since Operation Bagration, the Soviet-trained Polish units raised considerably.
2:32 It could be said that everybody had issues with manpower: industrial war requires a lot of manpower and is like two guys pushing each other until one of them collapses.
10:17 In the USSR it wasn't rare to have a death sentence later conmuted into a prision sentence. Zemskov noted that around half of those people sentenced to death were later conmuted into 10 years hard labour (second maximum penalty on the Soviet system).
List of penalties in the Soviet Union during WW2 (from lesser to bigger):
-Fine (usually as penalty on the salary for those working on state-owned enterprises).
-5 years prision [penal colony].
-5 years hard labor [GULag].
-5 years hard labor + 5 years prision.
-10 years hard labor.
-Death penalty. (Only for the following crimes: Murder, espionage, treason and terrorism [treason includes desertion and incompetence])
11:06 This myth deserves its own video or post by itself, so yes, it's complicated since the Soviets used the "deep operation doctrine" and this included both having a lot of soldiers and knowing how to use them.
11:45 So, what's basically called "atrittional warfare"...
12:01 They were simple but effective. And not *so* simple, I mean, they were more organised than one would think, basically it was that "fire and maneuvre" you explained for the German tanks, but for squads instead of tanks. Also, the first think every soldier learned in the Soviet army was how to take cover, even prior to learning how to shoot.
12:40 Yeah, they were like totally basic on the tactical level, but knowing what they need to archieve on the grand scheme of things.
12:50 Only one breakthrough? At least several, their main goal was to completely collapse the enemy front. They though of battle as two phases: Breaking and encirclement. On the breaking phase, the heavy armor units and the infantry are to break the line so the mobile units and the lighter tanks can penetrate through there dividing the enemy. On the encirclement phase, the reserves fill all those breakthroughs encircling and destroying the enemy. And during all of that, artillery makes its dirty job.
you got one part that wrong, america never had more population than the soviet union by any decade
@@alpbartuakdemir1600 i think it does have now
"treason includes desertion and incompetence". And that's why you've got to read things with a grain of salt.
@@derrickthewhite1 Well, it was even more complicated... Espionage, terrorism, treason, desertion and incompetence were all labeled as "counterrevolutionary activities" (article 58), the thing is that even more different kinds of crime were also labeled as such, and with different penalties. Still, all those I mentioned were those who could receive death sentence (though, as I also mentioned, around half the times those death sentences got conmuted for 10 years hard labor).
Raul, he said the Soviet Union. When the USSR broke up the it became Russia and the population of the US became larger than Russia’s.
"Practically aaaaarrrrrggggggggg" is one of my favorite pop-up captions to date.
Thanks for debunking the "cranberry" (клюква) [hollywoodlike stereotypes about Russia/Soviet Union] flavored myths! Much respect from Russia!
it's not just Russia, the americans are fond of making everyone think they single-handedly won the war, they like to portray even their fellow western allies as incompetent. Never mind all the British, Australian, Free French, Czech, Indian, Chinese, Canadians (and many more) who also sacrificed, they don't count
@@AeneasGemini Not sure if you read history to brand every American that way.. that makes you just as dense I may add...
On topic: it was a World War. Every Allied Nation played their part..do you think the Merchant Marines or Normandy would have been successful without British intelligence and American industry? Or maybe Lend Lease saving Russia from Army Group Center...or maybe the Flying Tigers never happened either..I can say without a doubt the war would have been lost without American muscle.. but a muscle is useless without Russian blood or British brains..
-signed American dude
@@landongrace1264 Land lease saving Russia is one of the myths in the video. And you repeat it?
@@uegvdczuVF It surely looked like the Russians had to throw everything the Allies sent overseas including everything that wasn't tied down to stop the Germans...
It's like saying the Chinese weren't doing the same thing in the Pacific
AeneasGemini eh, the US generally likes to paint the Brits as their “trustworthy cousins” in the war.
In general, I like this video. However, there is a couple of points I'd like to clarify.
1. Human resources. By June 1941 USSR had 194 million of population against 104 million of Germany and Austria (we should also add Germany's allies) - roughly speaking 2:1. A good advantage, but definitely not enough to speak about "endless resources" and "human waves". Moreover, by the end of 1942 more than 70 million of Soviet citizens remained under Germans occupation. Thus, before the territory of the USSR was liberated, the Red Army had LESS human resources, than Wehrmacht.
2. Rezun (Suvorov) and Sokolov are not historians. They are journalists, writes, who seek hype and profit by making scandals around painful themes. They have been caught many times on direct and deliberate lies and complete ignorance in their books. They should not be mrntioned in any serious review or article.
Didn't really expect anything different than Western propaganda. But you really surprised me. Thank you for bringing the truth
Дмитрий Шешин Nazi-apologists doing bad videos isn’t western propaganda. There’s other informative channels out there as well. Also Russia not fully opening its archives doesn’t really help.
Дмитрий Шешин as a amateur historian i can say, you can barely find propaganda free history content, western propaganda, russian propaganda, chinese propaganda, but it must be said that that western propaganda is the most minor amongst these 3.
хорошего вам дня ))
Germany is playing Men of War Assault Squad 2, while Soviet is playing Hearts of Iron III, yes HOI3 not HOI4
Yes, Germany wins at tactical level all the time, and still loses the war.
MoW:AS2 < Men of War: Red Tide and tzhe Original Men of War. Sorry, that is just a fact.
And then Americans came with Cod in Normandy...
Why not hoi4
@@owenburns5698 Cause hoi4 is more streamlined maybe?
I got a subtitled Asian ad for a menstrual pain tea watching this video about “the red army”.... I laughed.
0:15 Unlimited Manpower
2:50 Kursk Graveyard of Panzer
4:48 Blocking Detachments
10:55 Human Wave Tactics
15:30 Preemptive War Thesis
20:22 Winter Stopped the Germans
22:50 The Lend-Lease was Negligible/Won the War
1) The Bolsheviks did boost their manpower reserves by using women and children for front line combat.
2) The battle of Kursk did cripple the Wehrmacht capacity for taking the offensive in the East.
3) Per the video, Red Army deserters were ten times more likely to be shot that Wehrmacht deserters.
4) Per Glantz and the video, the Red Army did use human wave assaults to the end of the war.
5) Stalin actually was keen to join the Axis directly, and tried at least twice to do so formally.
6) Hitler expected the war in the East to be over in months, well before the winter.
7) The most important part of Lend-Lease were the Ford trucks. They motorized the Red Army.
26:13 that burn towards edgy teenagers though
I'm almost in my 40s, yet for some reason I feel called out on this one :D
So Enemy at Gates is not a documentary?
/s
Historical Fantasy
WAIT, Call of Duty WW2 isn't an academic source?
Well , how to put it mate , not really :)
@@punishedvenomsnake716 CoD WW2 is more of a American & British fantasy of WW2. That's why there's no Soviet campaign in the game.
@@nobleman9393 its a sovietpunk sci fi novel
You did actually validate the idea of Soviets shooting their own soldiers at unhinged levels. 175 000 condemned to be shot is ten times higher than the Nazis and astronomically higher than the allies. Even if they weren't all shot, it's he same with the other armies, so it's obvious the Soviets were outliers and murdered the troops at unbelievable levels.
You could’ve add to it myth that great purge did destroyed most of officer staff . And instead point out that number of red army significantly increased after war with Finland dew to start of army conscription system (before soviet army were professional one) , and with it increasing slightly , there was not enough of well trained low rank officers which decreased battle capability of units
Another myth I usually hear that being purged automatically means being assassinated or executed although in reality, it could also mean being sent in the gulags instead of being killed off.
Executions do still occured but the majority of those that were purged were sent to the gulag; making the purge sort of easy to recover from since the Soviets can simply pardon experienced officers that were imprisoned and assign them to their units by the time the Germans invaded
Those purges may have also gotten rid of political hacks and "deadwood", though, initially, officers were promoted on political reliability rather than military; with predictably terrible result, as shown in Finland. That awful showing did a lot to convince Hitler that the Soviet Army was a "paper tiger". He found out DIFFERENT.
I read the "Victor Suvarov" book in the 1980s. I read another book about the same subject and came to the conclusion the Suvarov book was disinformation or conservative propaganda.
So did John Rambo push the Soviets out of Afghanistan?
I thought friends of Uganda bin Laden did
Not sure about Johnny, but we definitely had issues with American "stingers".
Who iз Дjohn Яambo ?
Idk, but Snake kinda made work of the Soviets
The Mujahaideen kicked the Soviets out by the time the movie hit theaters.
Speaking about human resources you may just look into statistics. In 1941 USSR had population around 200 million, but Germany with its satellites who took part in the invasion all together had 190 million. More of that, the territory occupied by Wehrmacht by 1942 was populated by around 70 million of Soviet people. This means that during the Stalingrad the actual population of USSR was LESS than population of the axis countries involved in the war!
It was really a crucial point in the war!
And the subsequent recruitment on recently liberated territory was just a necessity.
You just forgot 500 millions people in the British Empire and 140 millions US citizens.
And 190 for the European axis power is far too high. Germany + Italy + axis minors = 80+40+37 = 157 millions.
We in Russia say that if General Frost had a rank in the Russian army he should have been shot for fire on his own. And this saying did not go from the Second World War, but from the Napoleonic War of 1812. General Frost indiscriminately uses his weapons and the troops of the Soviet Union suffered from it just like the German.
Regarding lendlize. I will not delve into the numbers, but the veterans greatly appreciated the canned American stew. It was even called the "second front", which already characterizes the attitude of the soldiers towards it.
Comrade Stalin highly valued Lend-Lease and never denied its importance for the defense of the USSR, as Soviet historians did not deny later. While the supply of tanks, planes, etc. as a percentage did not have a significant impact, the supply of materials for the production of gunpowder, fuel, canned food, equipment can hardly be overestimated.
Would the Soviet Union win a war without lendlize? I think yes, but at the cost of heavy losses and even more difficult work of the civilian population.
In any case, in spite of the political games of Stalin, Churchill, etc., in Russia we greatly appreciate the feat of those American, English sailors who provided this landlise in the cold waters of the Atlantic under the fire of German submarines.
Евгений, я прошу прощения, но simlpe в последнем предложении - лишнее. Это "простой", но скорее в смысле "простак, глуповатый человек". Насколько я понимаю, Вы совсем не это имели в виду? :)
@@schwinn1922 Нет,я не имел в виду простака.)) Скорее будет верно сказать сказать обычный, т.е. ordinary. Извините, за возможные ошибки на английском.
@@Evgeny_Khmel По-моему, тут не за что извиняться :) Простите Вы мою непрошеную редактуру, я просто чуть лучше язык знаю, вот глаз и резануло. Там справа три точки левой кнопкой, "Изменить" и слово simple долой ;) А то выходит - похвалить хотели, а вышла двусмысленность. Думаю, все и так поймут правильно, просто получилось, что Вы сказали не совсем то, что хотели.
Кстати, отличный канал = отличный ролик = масса адекватных и любопытных комментов.
Raw steel, locomotives, trucks, communications equipment, food, uniforms and so on...
17:58 They were actually in the middle of a reequipment plan that was to end in early 1942 replacing the older BTs with the newer T-34/76 and KV-1, but by June 1941 only a fraction of those tanks had been introduced.
Thanks for all the great content! You and other history UA-camrs inspired me to start my own channel!
I visited the Heeresgeschichtliches Museum in Vienna this summer, it's now one of my favourite military museums!
That looks great, you earned à New sub ! History and death is really interesting x)
69th sub
@@huge7800 oooh matron
Mask Man nice
I've asked my grandpa if he has killed any Germans in the war. He has said to me - I don't know, but for sure I've killed a soviet political officer.
His answer made my eyebrows rise so he told me that he and his friend were pinned down by German machine gun fire. As they were hiding behind a pile of rubble suddenly someone started to shoot from the behind. They were either lucky, the shooter was rubbish or this were only a "warning shots" to make them stand up and charge German pillbox. They never figure out what was the reason because they turned around and shot that bastard dead and then retreated.
I remember being told that after Kursk, the German army was never able to take the strategic initiative. But that was due to the greater growth in quality and quantity of the Red Army
German generals painted the battle of Kursk as the death knell of the Panzerwaffe when they stalled against layers of Soviet infantry defence.
The reality was on the day the Southern pincer stalled and stopped attacking, Operation Kutuzov, which was a counterattack planned before the battle of Kursk kicked off and swept into Model's Northern pincer's rear.
As for the Southern pincer, since it was a bit more successful and the Vatutin's Voronezh Front was battered a bit worse than Rokossovsky's Central Front, the planned counteroffensive, Operation Polkovodets Rumyantsev kicked off about 2 weeks later.
Those operations and the endless almost non-stop offensives after that killed the Panzerwaffe.
@@VT-mw2zb this is true and the main reason of Kursk as well as another point of this video, often simplified as "human wave tactics" Kursk was a denial of German offensive initiative and the need for an immediate breakthrough "human wave" of battles after that only continued that need.
The reason why Kursk represents a turning point in the war is that up until this point the Russians had been able to make massive gains and get victories during the winter and fall (wonder why German generals complained about those seasons specifically) but the Germans had often been able to gain the initiative during the summer and were always at their strongest during the summer (hence why the Russians talked about the "summer German"). But at Kursk the Russians had stopped the German advance dead during summer and had thrown them back even as the Germans had deployed new weapons and spent significant time rebuilding their strength, that meant that now there was no escape for the Germans and for the rest of the war they'd be constantly on the retreat. Kursk wasn't itself what was responsible for this but it represents this greater change in the war from one where the Germans held the initiative and were free to do what they wanted to one where they'd be in a constant retreat all the way back to Berlin and often not a very orderly one. It was the last chance for the Germans to halt the inevitable and they failed to do so and that probably lead to the war ending when it did.
Basically think of Kursk as symbolic of greater developments but don't get lost in the symbolism and think that the war was decided through a few decisive battles like this one.
They were both planning to backstab each other, though I don't think Stalin was nearly ready enough for the attack to be considered "Imminent"
>They were both planning to backstab each other
why? USSR didn't need to 'backstab' Germany, if France holds out, as happened in WWI. And nothing indicated that France couldn't hold against Germany
um, what?
the Soviet Union was too busy fighting internal instability to even consider a foreign war. It had barely beaten Finland the year before. (no offense to the Finns, but you know you did a lot with very little).
Yep. Barbarosso 41 was Not preemtive. Barbarossa 44 could be another beast...but then again we are speculating. Stalin is Not Hitler. He thinka twice before gambling...attacking a non exhausted Wehrmacht even when Red Army is Superior (say: 44 Invasion) IS an non-stalin-typical avoidable risk. In war Things can Go wrong. Stalin wanted france to bleed German Dr,. IT did Not Happen = No riskless Attack viable in Stalins Logic.
An interesting fact is that the Red Army started the 2nd World War together with the Wehrmacht.
Although in Asia it started in 1937.
Winter existed in WWI. Didn‘t stop Ludendorff from crushing the Russian Imperial Army so badly that it basically dissolved by Summer of 1917.
0:07 Hey that’s me
That’s still an insane number of soldiers shot for refusing to fight
Nice video! In a few places I thought it would have been nice to get the actual number of military losses, or the amount of equipment provided in lend-lease. That would help put things into perspective a bit better. I really enjoy these videos and have learned a lot from them, keep up the great work!
Not only did Lend/Lease happen, but due to the level of Soviet penetration in various departments, but especially the Roosevelt WH, it became lucrative.
The man placed in charge of sourcing/distributing L/L material was very keen to please Stalin, who benefited greatly from this.
Als deutscher und italienischer Militärspezialist hat mir dieses Kurzdokumentar die strategische Sicht des Krieges verändert: es has auch sehr persönliche Konsequenzen. Vielen, vielen Dank
manpower shortage was after the war which was really visual in some region even in the 70s/80s that woman were working in positions intended for men , my grandfather told me this when he was travelling through the soviet union
It wasn't that they had an unlimited manpower pool, it was that they were WILLING to use the manpower they had without limits. Most other countries weren't willing to go as far as the Soviets did. Some of the rest of your discussion is well grounded. That said, the Germans, in the winter of 1941 were stymied by poor logistics and strategic infighting about objectives than either the Red Army or the winter. Logistics and intelligence were looked down on by the Prussian aristocracy that generally ran the army at that time as being low class billets and they paid dearly for that snobbery.
@Ironuniverse 1230 What does that have to do with Red Army myths?
"yet as so many Guderian' statements in his memoirs, this is wrong." I'm so agree with this! I think Guderian wrote memoirs to fool and trick allies. The similar cases also include Manstein and Manteuffel.
They had to make themselves look good after they had lost the conflict they agreed to start and in the process functionally burned germany to the ground.
Like Reinhard Gehlen, they were at times bucking for a job in the new Bundeswehr.
@@pantherace1000 Zhukov (in 1953, at least in a docudrama:) " That fucker thinks he can take on the Red Army? I fucked Germany, I think I can take a flesh lump in a fucking waistcoat."
23:26 Quoting or trusting Sokolov is generally a bad idea. When I studied history, our professors insisted several times to not cite Sokolov unless using him for direct criticism
What you've stated sounds like institutionalized bias to me. A professor literally instructing students not to use someone as a source unless to say that person is compeltely wrong? With no reasons given? That's... yeah... that's what bias is. The reason so many Russians hate Sokolov is because he has gone against many of the main 'Party' dogmatic lines of thought, especically historical, that were promulgated during the post world 2 Soviet era and which are still extremely powerful and entrenched in Russian thinking about historical topics today.
I wish russian historians would actually specifically say WHY Sokolov is so horrible, other than him discussing how Russia recieved tremendous help from the United States and, to a lesser extent, Great Britian, and that that aid was a very large factor in Russia being able to effecively fight Germany by preventing the collapse of the Soviet economy/manufacturing sector as well as supplying a tremendous amount of the food Russians ate during World War Two, all of which is pretty straightfrowrad based on national records of every country involved - including Russia. Hell, even Stalin himself as well as General Zhukov stated, multiple times and in writing, how much worse it would have been fighting Germany had the US not sent food, bullets, radios, trucks, meat, grain, aluminum, fighter planes, (which the majority of Russian Aces flew), as well as tanks, transport planes, and numerous other resources.
"Fun" fact - sometimes blocking detachments recruited from the same people they detained
In Soviet Russia blocking detachments blocks itself xD
@@sirchieftain7609 Blocking detachments = military police.
@@dashanben you must be fun at parties
All of my grandpas fought in WW2. Like almost anyone else in post-soviet states. Because of the well mentioned high casualties and shortage of manpower.
I just wanted to point out two things:
1) About 'Blocking Detachments' - not to all extend but during the human force shortage period Soviets did allow to conscript convicted criminals (not all of them but with a certain crimes history), so that they could earn they freedom by blood in combat instead of sitting in prison. So there was specific officers assigned to this type of units. In order to control convicts as sort of a mix - probation officer + blocking detachment shooter. Main objective of which was to look out for them so they would not commit crimes or run.
2) Lend-Lease has another effect on all post-soviet states vocabulary and brand recognition, as we still call all of the all-terrain passenger cars - Jeep. And I remember my grandpa's warm memoires about Willys. It just carved into hearts of our people so that Jeep become a word for a vehicle class.
This is a great channel. Not only did i get some of my own questions answered, but i got some good book recommendations out of it. Thank you, sir.
I love how much effort i can tell you put into these videos
dude your channel is great, I really appreciate the constant citing of sources. keep up the great work!
It's interesting that Kursk and The Somme have almost the exact inverse problem.
Kursk is seen as "the great turning point" when, it wasn't. Neither side took losses that were terminal.
The Somme meanwhile, is seen as "Oh it was pointless, the British soldiers walked towards the enemy and were wiped out, nothing was gained" when that is a completely incorrect assessment of the battle, and the German Army ultimately took losses from which they could not recover. It was, despite popular opinion, a victory for the British and French.
Point number seven commonly overlooks one thing. Food. An army, especially as large as the Soviet one, needs a lot of food. The Soviet union would have seen major issues had it not received the huge amounts of SPAM. They depleted their manpower pool and had to conscript people from their collectivized farms which reduced their ability to feed their population and more critically, their army.
Wrong. Compare 4 mln tons of Lend-Lease food with Soviet production of some items in 1940, 1941, 1942, 1943, 1944, 1945 (mln tons):
Grain: 96, 56, 30, 29, 49, 47
Potatoes: 76, 26, 24, 35, 55, 58
Milk: 34, 26, 16, 16, 22, 26
Meat: 4.7, 4.1, 1.8, 1.8, 2.0, 2.6
Sugarbeet: 18, 1.9, 2.1, 1.3, 4.1
Sunflower: 2.6, 0.91, 0.26, 0.78, 1.0
Eggs (billion items): 12, 9.3, 4.5, 3.5, 3.6, 4.9
Source: The national economy of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. Statistical compilation (Moscow : Goskomstat, 1990, in Russian)
"Average annual imports of grain, cereals, flour (in terms of grain) made 2.8% of average annual grain stocks in the USSR. The need of the army for bread and grain forage at that time, not to mention potatoes and vegetables, was mainly satisfied by local funds. And for all other domestic food, centralized supply continued to keep a leading position, accounting for 90% or more of total deliveries"
Citation (authors: an academician and a former Soviet "prime-minister"):
histrf.ru/uploads/media/default/0001/12/df78d3da0fe55d965333035cd9d4ee2770550653.pdf
From what I see "human wave tactics" is just a derogatory term used in the modern times to dehumanize the opponent and reassure your own troops that the enemy's strength in numbers is nothing to be afraid of. Likely popularized with the disastrous charges and breakthrough attempts of WW1 but with other past battles already laying the groundwork. Like how the popular depiction of the Zulu War is that waves of tribal warriors charge a comparatively tiny military force. Meanwhile the reality wasn't anywhere this dramatic even if numerical superiority was usually the case. As I said in the beginning it seems to be a mechanism to dehumanize the enemy, to pretend we are still better than them while being overrun or constantly face superior numbers.
Sometimes it can have a smidgen of truth to these, better translated as "they throw more bodies at the war than we do" either telling the war goes badly for the enemy yet they persist or alternatively that they have numerical superiority. In either case "human wave tactics" seems to be just what militaries use when they want to twist what is normally perceived as bravery, political power and superior resources into something negative. Once you see that it's pretty transparent what this would cover.
I think that's a rather good point to make, on the topic of how "human-wave tactics" are perceived. I've yet to come across an American who said that Omaha Beach on D-Day was a "barbaric human wave tactic that wasted thousands of lives in a single battle."
Lots of copium here.
Thank you, interesting video.
About the manpower shortage - my grandfather was 15 when he started to work in military plant in blockaded Leningrad. That means, that the workers 17+ years old went to army. So unlimited manpower is just a myth. The girls were doing the men jobs in Soviet Union.
Just like the american women, and those of other nationalities at war, in the factories over there. Just in different magnitudes, of course.
Before winter arrived in '41, the Germans had already taken 400,000 casualties. Their supply lines were threadbare, stretching along appalling Russian roads that had turned to mud in the autumn rains and like Napoleon a hundred years before, the majority of their supplies were carried on horse-drawn wagons and the majority of the infantry marched on foot. The USSR used a different railway gauge to Germany, so they had rebuild the tracks or rely on captured Soviet locomotives which were few in number as the Soviets blew them up as they retreated. Meanwhile, partisans were blowing up the tracks all over the place. The situation for the Germans before the cold arrived was appalling.
But it makes for a good visual, the notion of them being defeated by the winter. Just as it did with Napoleon, except Napoleon lost more men during the advance on Moscow than the retreat from it. He lost a sixth of his army just crossing Lithuania, nearly a hundred thousand men dying from heatstroke and disease. But that doesn't make for a good story whereas French infantry sleeping on their knees in huddles in a white wasteland, eating horses that had frozen to death and swathed in every blanket and rag they can get hold of... Well, it's the same as the visual of German vehicles bogged down in the snow, the engines frozen solid, German infantry huddled around pools of burning petrol and once again eating horse meat.
Except the German vehicles had already bogged down in the mud from the autumn rains. Tanks, lorries, infantrymen, horses and wagons all stuck in the quagmire. When the ground froze, they were grateful because it meant they could get moving again. Except it kept getting colder and colder.
Winter took its toll but it only exacerbated an already bad situation. The Wehrmacht was overstretched and exhausted from travelling the seven hundred miles from Poland to Moscow and even if the winter had been mild, it wouldn't have changed the fact that the front was not getting adequate supplies, that those front line units had suffered appalling attrition on the campaign so far and that the Soviets had brought up fresh divisions from Siberia, experienced and well-supplied and motivated to defend the capital.
Я не буду писать на английском языке, чтобы выглядеть более убедительно, чем на самом деле. К тому же это скажется на искажении смысла, так как придется делать несколько реверс переводов, лучше вы переведете целостный по смыслу текст, чем я буду стараться передать особенности строения русского построения предложений в рамки английской грамматики.
Итак.
В общем по смыслу мне не к чему придраться. Тем более я понял наверняка не все, так как смотрел с субтитрами. Но откровенной чепухи в ролике нет, спасибо. Но это на мой взгляд, реальность может быть сурова и возможно, там опять грубые ошибки. Я не эксперт.
1) По поводу заградительных отрядов НКВД. Для меня это очевидно и легко. В вашей схеме разделения на обычную армию и подразделения НКВД всё верно. Армия отдельно, НКВД отдельно. Никто не гнал обычных солдат под дулами пулеметов на врага. Такое было "допустимо" "возможно" "может быть" только в НКВД подразделениях сформированных из преступников. Это было до этого "знаменитого" приказа №227 "Ни шагу назад" введенного во время Сталинградской битвы (да прямо как в кино "Враг у ворот" и серии игр Call of Duty).
Приказ №227. Я не буду цитировать. В кратком изложении сути и тезисно (я не эксперт и могу быть не прав). Приказ распространялся на все войска. Отряды НКВД отвечали за его исполнение. Обычных солдат, которые дезертировали с фронта возвращали обратно или чаще формировали из них отдельные батальоны которые выполняли второстепенные войсковые задачи. Обычных солдат никто не расстреливал. А вот преступников... Возможно такие случаи были, это зависит от конкретных командиров. Кто-то из НКВД командиров, отвечающих за военные группы, сформированные из преступников, перегруппировывал хаотично отступающих людей и снова посылал их в атаку. Возможно кто-то угрожал открыть огонь если будет еще одно незапланированное отступление без веской причины и очевидной невозможности выполнения поставленной задачи. Возможно кто-то действительно расстреливал повторно отступающих дезертиров-преступников.
Отряды из преступных элементов не формировались из политических заключенных, это были грабители, бандиты и прочие криминальные элементы.
Сами отряды НКВД почти всегда параллельно сражались, одновременно выполняя возложенную на них задачу по контролю за порядком в регулярных частях и так называемых "заградительных" отрядах.
2) Преступников было очень много, нет не политических, эти люди не смыслили ничего в идеологии или политике, либо это были обычные криминальные элементы, либо бывшие "кулаки" "средняки" (представители зажиточного крестьянства недовольные итогами коллективизации) которые решили, что их собственное благополучие важнее всего остального + реваншизм и надежда на возвращение старых порядков + надежда на сотрудничество с немецкими войсками. Про план "Ост" они не знали, да и вряд ли бы поверили.
Кроме того были и откровенные сочувствующие нацизму из коренного населения в Прибалтике и на финской границе, а так же редкие случаи в других республиках СССР.
3) Политических преступников было тоже очень много. Это отдельная тема репрессий 1937го года. Я не буду её раскрывать, она еще более сложная и комплексная и трудная для восприятия для иностранцев.
4) Ленд-Лиз. Помощь союзников ощутима. Главное верно, поставки высокотехнологичной, а главное УНИВЕРСАЛЬНОЙ техники и оборудования, НЕ СПЕЦИАЛИЗИРОВАННОЙ (грузовых машин, раций, тушонки и так далее) позволило сконцентрироваться на более специфически сложных задачах по разработке уже СПЕЦИАЛИЗИРОВАННОГО оборудования.
Так например поставки самолетов "аэрокобра" это мелочь на самом деле, потому что они не оказали глобального влияния, а вот поставка грузовых автомобилей "Виллис" это критически важный момент, так как автомобили универсальны и не используются непосредственно на фронте, а только в снабжении и вспомогательных работах, их потерь практически не было, что вызывает эффект "снежного шара" (snowball effect) ведь они хорошо вписались в военную логистику с первого применения и до конца войны. А самолеты и тушенка (консервы) это быстро расходуемый ресурс не оказавший большого эффекта.
Если бы союзники поставляли танки это было бы плохо-неправильно-неэффективно, если бы они поставляли металлопрокатные станки с возможностью индивидуальной настройки для производства танковой брони это супер-мега-эффективно.
Опять не буду подводить какой-то общий итог, так как история должна быть вне политических убеждений с холодным и отрешенным взглядом со стороны, одновременно с комплексным пониманием исторического контекста. Хоть и очень хочется сделать наоборот и покричать про буржуазно-капиталистический перекос трактовки истории в нынешнее время.
Но я не буду, вы же вроде не стали так делать, вот и я не стал так делать.)))
Гласки болеть: так я так и не понял ты обсераеш СССР или нет? я не смог дочитать у меня глязки болеть!
Кек-пук, клиповомыслящего школотрона звук.
По поводу пункта третьего, ввиду закрытых архивов репрессии 37го года до сих пор комплексная тема внутри русского исторического дискурса, конечно реабилитация была поэтапной, выборочной, но полноты мы до сих пор не имеем. Надеюсь лет через 30-40 что-нибудь в этом направлении изменится.
@@Eridelm Если упрощать до предела, 1937й год это предотвращенный 1991й год.
@@777CHEKIST777 Два разных исторических периода, некую схожесть я бы нашел в идеях отторжения социализма, как провалившейся идеи после войны, но как вы поняли слишком политизировано и существует плеяда точек зрения на вероятность такого события.
Моя мысль в том, что социальные реформы были неотвратимы в 90х, а 37м о социальных реформам речи не шло.
You sound like if Schwarzenegger wore an Einheitsmütze and only ever powerlifted 88mm rounds.
lol
Wtf
Outstanding episode. Made me realize that historical accuracy is always more complicated than oversimplified "documentary" history.
One other thing that I find interesting. The Nazis, in desperate straits, were very often cowards who tried the hardest to save their own skin. NKVD soldiers were scary because they would shoot you for running away, but would not run themselves. They participated as frontline soldiers in some of the best known stands of Soviet arms in Stalingrad, including the battle for the grain elevator.
My only critique is that you spoke quite explicitly on why the German army had been crippled in 1941 before Winter even set in, then went on to give an inconclusive answer on whether the Soviets could have won without Lend-Lease. Barbarossa had already failed and the German Army crippled before the US had even entered the war in December. Higher losses? Yes. Taken longer? Absolutely. But was it possible for Germany to win after Barbarossa had failed so completely? I think not. The moment the USSR refused to surrender at the Battle of Moscow, the war was decided. It was just a matter of time and lives while everyone waited for it to play out.
Throughout the 1942 Soviet Union was on the verge of an economical collapse as indicated in the video, and the Red Army was in an extremely dire condition. Had the Germans captured, or even bombed Baku, the oil production would have stopped and the Red Army would be almost instantly paralyzed.
Barbarossa failed in its goal of inducing a collapse of the Soviet state in 1941, but losses suffered, the loss of vast territories and the population living there by the Soviets still made it a miracle that they could recover.
@@Grondorn Allied Lend-Lease made a large impact in 1944, a noticeable impact in '43, a minimal impact in '42, and no impact at all in '41. Any look at the tonnage sent over by the allies will confirm that their supplies, much like the bombing campaign, didn't really take off until 1943. By then the danger to Baku had already passed. But, still, that's with at least *some* amount of Lend-Lease, which is why I limited my point to 1941 when it was literally impossible for there to have been any lend-lease support and the USSR had *already* won the most important battle of the war by stopping the Germans without collapsing. The idea that the USSR could not have won without allied supplies is, at the end of the day, just a means of posthumously justifying the enormous effort the allies put into the final years of the war. People want to believe that wasn't a waste of time and "shortened the war by a few months" simply isn't good enough for them.
@@gnetkuji I'm not talking about Lend-Lease, I personally think it wasn't the most crucial factor for the Soviet victory.
I'm stating that there was a distinct chance for a German victory after 1941.
@@Grondorn The Nazis already had more men at the battle of Moscow than the Soviets did and still lost. I see no reason why 1942 should be radically better for them than 1941 was. And when you look at the historical record... it wasn't. They had a big push, grinding up all of their men, equipment, and supplies in reckless desperate advances, then got punished hard for their overreach when the Soviets turned around and bit back. The attack into the Caucasus mountains was such an enormous waste of men and material for so little gain that even if the Germans had put more men into it instead of going to Stalingrad, they just would have had higher losses among the excess of troops not trained for mountain warfare before being cut off by a Soviet attack *from* Stalingrad.
The Germans weren't stupid. They already did what were, for the most part, the smartest moves they had available and still got their ass handed to them. The minute they attacked and the Soviets didn't collapse, there was no "right answer for victory" anymore. From there on it was just making the smartest plays they had left while waiting for the end..
@@gnetkuji The situation regarding manpower at Moscow was that of a numerical parity only if you count the fighting strength of the opposing forces, with Germans achieving numerical superiority after swift and grand encirclements like that at Vyazma and Briansk where they captured more than a half of million men. However, when you combined the overall numbers from the start of the German offensive and the end of the Moscow offensive, the Soviets still invested almost as twice as many men.
Secondly, the thrust into the Caucasus produced relatively low casualties for the Army group A, especially when you compare it with the carnage at Stalingrad. The advance eventually had bog down, but that was mostly due to the logistical strain, and not of the lack of experienced troops specialized for mountain warfare. Still, they were pretty close and had they bomb Baku like they did Grozny at that time, most likely there wouldn't be a risk of getting cut off from Stalingrad, as the Red Army wouldn't have enough fuel a concentrated armor thrust, as their supplies were low as it is.
There lies the essence why 1942 was radically worse for the Soviets than 1941. They lost approximately half of their industrial output, somewhere between 2/3 of their agricultural input. On top on that the loss of Baku where they produced 90% of their oil, would have been catastrophic.
Having all that in mind and still claiming that the war was permanently decided in 1941 is hideously overstated.
My both Great grandfathers fought in the Red Army, thank you a lot for effort.
Let's not forget that "Lend Lease" Included an estimated amount of 4.5 million tons of food. No food no army.....
@@nimdaqa Yeah 4 million folks to fight, you can bet if they didnt have them the fight would have been VERY different. not to mention all the fuel ammunition and war supplies. they were not shown on propaganda videos for obvious reasons.
@@nimdaqa We can agree to disagree. The sheer amount of ships running the gauntlet to Archangel says otherwise.
@@nimdaqa Well if thats true then we fed all of them with 4.5 million tons of food... by your own figures 4 million tons feeds 1 million people so the unaccounted for 1/2 million tons feeds the remaining 200,000 with extra left over...
Fantastic video. Always learn a lot here. TY and keep up the great work.
Thank you - Thank you ❤
Finally someone debunks some of all the myths.
I've been looking forward to this
#6 isn't just wrong, it's more a 50/50.
It is true after all, that Hitler and German High Command didn't equip the Wehrmacht with Winter Equipment, since this would've taken additional time to do and would've delayed the start of Operation Barbarossa. They were alrdy delayed because they had to help out the Italians in Greece, they didn't want to delay anymore, since they saw the Summer of 1941 as THE point of time to attack, later on, the weather would proof to be a much harder obstacle and they feared, that the USSR would be far better prepared in 1942 than in 1941.
And on the other hand, they believed, that the Soviet Union was an instable country just stopping short of collapse, so they had to attack and the USSR would collapse on itself, making this a Blitzkrieg victory just like in France in 1940 or in Poland in 1939.
So although it cannot be denied, that the Wehrmacht suffered heavy casualties before the Winter of 1941/1942, the Winter did have it's heavy toll on the Wehrmacht, causing it to get stuck and eventually beaten back by seasoned, trained Soviet Troops, since the Russians in general are more accustomed to cold winters and especially these reinforcements troops, that helped to beat back the Wehrmacht west of Moscow, were trained in Siberia, so basically under maybe even harsher, colder climate conditions and they were appropriately equipped with winter equipment.
After all, even the Russians are not magical super humans, they also can die of the cold.
Azrael mmh... You are right about the lack of winter equipment and German equipment didn’t work well in the winter but despite myths saying otherwise that was also true for the Russians.
What really first stopped the German advance was the season of mud which made roads almost unusable and after it was over the Russians had a large amount of men around Moscow.
Yeah you're right, only Russian winter became the factor for Soviet victory and nothing else
I have watched several of your high-quality videos now, and I enjoy your refreshing objectivity.
Additionally, your German perspective presents a point of view and information that my English-speaking sources lack.
Too many war videos and books repeat the same stories and myths.
Glad to see you are on a better path. Keep up the great work.
Fwiw I believe he is Austrian.
I don't know how accurate some of this information truly is. During and after WW2, it wasn't uncommon for Soviet leaders to exaggerate successes and embellish their losses.
as well as everyone else...
@@Glebasik148 True, to varying degrees most sides did embellish the truth. However, in the USSR, failure or incompetence (even perceived incompetence) could easily be treated with harsh punishment in the form of gulags, work camps, firing squads or front line service. Whereas in the US or Britain, failure was not always punished so harshly. On the contrary, failure was often seen by the US at least as an opportunity to learn and incompetent leadership was either demoted, sent home or relegated to support roles. Simply put, in the US military, soldiers were more afraid of the enemy than their leadership. In the USSR, it was often the other way around.