What is history: it is the echo of the past to the future, the reflection of the future on the past. - Hugo
In World War II, the Red Army was undoubtedly the mainstay of anti-fascism. The heroic Soviet generals angered Germany on the western front and abused Japan on the eastern front. However, under the illumination of the aura of victory, it was difficult to hide the heavy losses suffered by the Soviet army in the war. In particular, in the Soviet-German War, in almost every major war (before 1945), the Losses of the Soviet Army were greater than or even far greater than those of their opponents, the Nazi Germans.
Therefore, many people will have such a deep-rooted impression that the victory of the Soviet army is bought by a river of blood and corpses; the Soviet army has no tactics, just a pile of people. Even many experts in war history held this view, believing that the Soviet Union had won with barbarism and ignorance, and that the Red Army was nothing more than an immature replica of the German army. Without the Allies opening up a second battlefield, the final outcome of World War II is difficult to say.
So, is this really the case? Was the Soviet victory in World War II really bought by piling up people?
Above_ Soviet soldiers
Tactical Brutal ignorance – Soviet General: Who are you listening to?
First of all, we have to admit that in war, human resources are indeed an important strategic resource. If you do not have a strong manpower advantage, even if your army's technical and tactical level is high and your strategic planning is meticulous, it will not be able to withstand war, especially the manpower consumption caused by long-term, high-intensity wars, and will eventually be dragged down. The Soviet Union had more abundant human resources than Germany, which was an important reason for its final victory in the Great Patriotic War.
But we should also understand that no country can send troops to the front line without restrictions. Especially after the outbreak of the Soviet-German War, due to the huge losses suffered in the early stage, the Soviet army faced a serious problem of exhaustion on all fronts. As early as 1942, before the Soviet summer offensive, General Antonov of the General Staff reminded Stalin of the shortage of manpower on the front line.
Even though the war situation was reversed in 1944 and the Soviet army began to stride towards Berlin, due to long-term attrition, the strength of the Soviet front-line troops was very weak, and the infantry division generally had only 5,000-6,000 men per division, less than half of the full strength (the full strength of the Soviet infantry division in 1941 was 13,000 people). The worst were the 37th Guards Infantry Division, the 195th Infantry Division, and the 308th Infantry Division, with only more than 2,700 men.
Because of this, the Soviet army actually did not have the conditions to implement the "man-piling tactics".
Joseph Vissarinovich Stalin (18 December 1878 – 5 March 1953)
The harsh war environment also led the Soviet high command to "achieve the objectives of the campaign at the lowest possible cost and to strike the enemy as much as possible" as the standard. Stalin also told his generals more than once: "Be good at learning from our enemies and win victory with less bloodshed." Marshal Zhukov later recalled that Stalin had planned to take Berlin by May 1, 1945, in order to hold a victory parade on Labor Day.
But by April 30, fighting was still raging in parts of Berlin. When Zhukov, who was troubled, told Stalin about this situation, Stalin said unusually calmly: "Don't worry, love the officers and soldiers and the people, and make unnecessary sacrifices." ”
Above_ Soviet forces invading Berlin, Germany
Thus, the view that Soviet generals would only drive officers and men to victory "at all costs" is unreliable. The reason why many people saw that the Soviet army was always able to gather several times more troops than the German army to launch an offensive should be attributed to the soviet army's careful campaign deployment and the concentrated use of troops, especially the tank mechanized units (tank corps, mechanized corps and "cavalry-mechanized" clusters), and the ability to carry out armored breakthroughs on a large scale in specific areas of the front line according to changes in the situation, thus severely damaging the German army.
More importantly, we cannot ignore the Soviet Union's research on the organization and operational theory of mechanized tank troops since the 1920s. These studies have had an important impact on the Soviet Army's deep understanding of the style of future wars, and have played a positive role in the meticulous and meticulous planning of the Soviet High Command. And these are valuable experiences that cannot be exchanged for many manpower advantages. It can be said that the style of play of the Soviet army in World War II is completely different from the armies of Britain, the United States, Germany and other Western countries, it is not an imitation of anyone, but on the contrary, it is a bold innovation.
Above_ Soviet infantry tanks attacking in concert
The casualties of the war are huge - officers and men of the Red Army: we are also slowly learning
It is an undeniable fact that the Soviets did suffer heavy manpower and equipment losses in World War II. Throughout all the wars in human history, no army has ever made such a sacrifice as the Soviet army to win the victory. But at the same time, we should also see that the lessons of the war in turn made the Soviet army continue to learn and grow, and eventually transformed it into an elite division.
In the early stages of the war, due to the influence of many factors such as insufficient preparation, hasty battle, tactical rigidity and improper adjustment, coupled with the all-out offensive of the Victorious German Army, the Soviet Army lost 3.3 million soldiers in the first half of the war, of which 1.9 million were captured alone.
Above_ Battle of Stalingrad
To make up for the losses, the Soviet Union had to implement a general mobilization of the whole country, sending a large number of men of the right age to the front. Due to the urgency of the war situation, these recruits could only carry out 20 days of basic training and 15 days of gun training, and even before they could reload and change bullets, they had to go into battle and fight with the battle-hardened German army, which greatly aggravated the casualties of officers and soldiers. So much so that in the Battle of Stalingrad, the average survival time of Soviet officers and soldiers who joined the battle was only 9 minutes. The lack of high-level training coupled with the low level of education was undoubtedly an important reason for the huge casualties of the Soviet army.
But it was also this bloody lesson that made the Soviet army slowly grow up, the generals became capable, and the commanders and combatants became full of combat skills. After the summer of 1943, the operational effectiveness of the Soviet Army was greatly improved. In particular, its armored tactics, air artillery firepower and the coordination of ground forces have reached a new height.
From the beginning of Operation Bagration, the total number of Soviet casualties in large-scale battles had begun to be lower than that of the Germans, and the Germans no longer had a high quality advantage and retreated all the way to the west. Marshal Zhukov later said to Stalin: "We learned and learned about war in the course of the war, so we began to strike at the German army, but at the beginning of the war we were not very good at fighting." ”
Above_ German tank columns advancing on the Polish battlefield
No army was king from the beginning, and the invincibility of the German blitzkrieg was also known for its many bloody battles in Poland, Norway, Belgium, France, etc., coupled with the efficient operation of the propaganda machine. In the Battle of Prague in 1945, the Soviets took six days and less than 12,000 casualties to crush 65 divisions of the German Army Group Center and the minions, capturing more than 450,000 prisoners alone. Although the Soviets had invested three fronts and a total of 1.7 million troops, they could only form a 1.21:1 advantage over the Germans in the offensive area.
Let's look at the Okinawa campaign between the United States and Japan, the US army gathered 580,000 troops, while the Japanese troops stationed in Okinawa were only 120,000, but who said that the US army won the Japanese army by piling people? Therefore, it is said that it is not easy to start being confused by the sudden attack, temporarily use the quantity to make up for the quality gap, and then fight back when the quality goes up, if this is not possible, it is unreasonable.
Above_ Battle of Okinawa
Victory is not costless — a correct understanding of war losses is a prerequisite for the study of war
During the Cold War, out of the need for ideological confrontation, Western countries, on the one hand, vigorously publicized the role and contribution of the Allied forces after the opening of the second battlefield, and on the other hand, constantly emphasized the importance of the strategic and material support provided by Britain and the United States to the Soviet Union, so as to "discount" the contribution made by the Soviet Red Army to the victory of the anti-fascist war, and to take advantage of the opportunity to reduce the influence of the Soviet Union and depreciate its international image.
On the other hand, in the Soviet Union, after World War II, out of the consideration of maintaining Stalin's position, the real losses of the Soviet army in the war have not been announced. After Khrushchev came to power, he also promoted "de-Stalinization", coupled with the impetus of Gorbachev's "new thinking" reform, the Soviet army's various losses, ills, and bad deeds in World War II were all exposed, and the propaganda of the Soviet army's war losses suddenly went from one extreme to the other, so it is not surprising that soviet generals did not spare the lives of officers and soldiers, Stalin only "squandered people's lives" in fighting, and the Soviet Union won Germany by piling up people.
Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev (17 April 1894 – 11 September 1971) was the supreme party and state leader of the SOVIET Union
In recent years, as Russia has gradually declassified the historical archives of the former Soviet Union, we have a more objective understanding of the soviet army's war losses. However, due to the fact that the Western countries led by the United States still firmly occupy the commanding heights of public opinion, many people, including some historians, still cannot fairly view the huge sacrifices made by the Soviet army for the victory in World War II.
It is true that the victory of military operations is the pursuit of maximum operational benefits at less cost. But the pursuit of the optimization of the ratio of cost to benefit is not the absolute purpose of war, let alone the only purpose. If the cost is high and the war is abandoned, then the flag of fascism will have been planted on seven continents and four oceans long ago.
The exchange of stars shifts a few degrees in autumn. Whatever our purpose and desire to look back on World War II, we should not be content with simply remembering and recalling the outcomes and losses of the campaign. The undercurrents that preceded the Paris Peace Conference, the arms of the Atlantic Charter, the decision-making in the Kremlin and the "Wolf's Den", and the fierce battles in the ruins and trench fortresses all need to be tasted. Only in this way can we comprehensively and objectively restore the war and get the answers we want in today's "rumors and legends flying in the sky".