At the beginning of World War II, the Soviet army was hit hard by Nazi Germany, but in fact, such losses were avoidable, why? Because one person once made a key observation: "Once you start a war with Nazi Germany, you must first retreat." Zhukov wrote in his memoirs: "Before the war, military strategy was mainly based on the assertion that only the offensive could crush the aggressor, that the defense could only play an auxiliary role, and that the offensive could achieve the established objectives. "At the beginning of the war, the Soviet offensive was only a shockwave attack on the front, and there was no depth at all."
The Code of Great Depth Combat writes that under modern conditions, defenders should be prepared to attack an attacking enemy that, together with a large number of tanks, is attacking the defense at full depth. Due to changes in the combat situation, line operations such as the First World War will no longer exist, and in the case of online combat, the main forces of the enemy when carrying out the attack are infantry and artillery, so as long as the linear defense is configured, it is enough.
However, the situation before World War II is different from that in World War I, the armies of various countries have a strong tank force, and this force is still developing rapidly, so the defense problem can no longer be a simple linear defense, and the mobility of war has increased, and the problem of defense in depth must be taken into account.
At the beginning of the war, soviet commanders at all levels did not carry out arduous defenses to prepare sufficiently for the strong enemy. On June 25, 1941, the Soviet General Staff could not withstand the pressure of the disastrous defeat of the Northwest and Western Fronts, and issued the order to abandon the attack and retreat, before June 29, the Southwest Front had tried to organize a counterattack, but was unsuccessful, and in early July, Zhukov had strictly ordered the commander of the Southern Front to stay in Bessarabia, but also failed to do so.
After "pushing the border line westward" before the war, the Soviet Union decided in the autumn of 1940 to dismantle the fortifications on the 1939 border and build new fortifications on the new border. The old fortifications were demolished quickly, while the new fortifications were not completed as scheduled. "At the beginning of the war, the Soviet defense generally adopted linear defense, the troops were too dispersed, the density of weapons was not high, the depth of defense was not large, and the tanks used by the armies were few. The first echelon is configured in a linear manner, and there is no second echelon, that is, if the enemy breaks through the defense line, it can directly attack deep without encountering the second echelon, let alone the resistance of the third echelon.
In fact, for the Red Army, which was comparatively weaker in fascist Germany, the most suitable mode of military action was defensive, not offensive. This was the opposite of Stalin's sworn enemy, Trotsky, who also had the foresight to warn in the 1920s that in the early stages of the war the Red Army should do not attack, but defend, and even retreat to the depths of the territory in order to buy time to mobilize all forces and resources. "If he had taken his advice, the Soviets could have lost millions fewer troops."
But on June 22, 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union 25-50 kilometers. "In the above circumstances, the General Military Council of the USSR issued Directive No. 3 to the army: The military committees of all armies must organize a resolute counter-assault and smash the wedge-in German fascist invading army." Under such circumstances, such orders were also issued out of touch with reality, which shows that there was a serious deviation in the military thinking of the Soviet army at the beginning of the war. It was not until the Battle of Moscow that this erroneous military mentality was corrected, the depth of defense was increased, the fortifications and obstacles of field positions and urban areas were strengthened, and so on.
At the beginning of the Soviet-German war, the Soviet army was repeatedly surrounded by the German army and could not retreat. In fact, the encirclement of the Soviet army was directly related to the soviet union's improper defense in the early stages of the war, and the Soviet army's troops were deployed along the national border, even the salient. "When the Germans carried out their first assault, the Soviet defensive line was quickly breached, the defensive front was quickly split, and the troops deployed in front of them were immediately threatened by encirclement. Especially the heavy army groups in the salient, the war was quickly surrounded by German troops at the beginning. ”
Resources
[1] Wang Zhende: A New History of the Second World War, 1937-1945