Author: Crazy Li / Editor: Leng Xiaojun
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In the impression of many military fans, the ranks of marshal and general of the Soviet Red Army are a bit rampant. Since the founding of the army, there have only been ten marshals and ten generals in our country. In the more than 70 years of its existence, the Soviet Union awarded a total of 1 "Grand Marshal of the Soviet Union", 40 "Marshals of the Soviet Union", 3 "Admirals of the Usser Union", 13 "Heads of The Armed Forces", and 60 "Marshals of the Services". The number of marshals is very impressive, and the number of generals is even greater.
But that's not the most shocking! What struck me most was another phenomenon.
In 1935, three of the five marshals of the Soviet Union when they first conferred the rank: Budyonny, Yegorov, and Voroshilov. In 1940, he received the rank of marshal, Timoshenko and Kulik. Zhukov, who received the rank of field marshal in the Great Patriotic War. After the war, He received the rank of Field Marshal, Grechko, Yelemenko, and Moskalenko. Marshals of the ranks, Rybarko, Fedorenko, Zhigalev, Leonov.
Five marshals of the Soviet Army in 1935
There were also Anapaschenko (who could not escape the rank of Marshal of the Soviet Union if he was not killed), Khurev, Tyulenev, Lelyshenko, Zadov and other major generals, as well as a number of admirals and lieutenant generals, and even cultural celebrities such as Babel and Nikolai Ostrovsky.
The above generals or marshals all had a common origin- the First Cavalry Army. It should be known that the Red Army at the end of the civil war had a strength of 5.5 million, and the scale of the Great Patriotic War reached tens of millions. The total strength of the First Cavalry Group was only 16,000 men, and even if the supplementary strength in the two-year civil war was included, the number was still insignificant compared to the whole army! So it is truly shocking that the marshals from the First Cavalry Corps account for such a large proportion.
Marshal Budyonny's uniform standard phase
After the October Revolution, the Soviet regime did not favor the cavalry as a kind of army. The cavalry was extremely depleted and belonged to the typical aristocratic service, which was somewhat inconsistent with the pursuit of the Bolsheviks. But the battlefield reality of the civil war forced Soviet Russia to form cavalry belonging to the Red Army.
Unlike the western front of World War I, the territory of the former Russian Empire was very vast, providing a broad stage for cavalry to gallop. The Russian cavalry and Cossacks who joined the White Guard, with their strong mobility, ran amok and posed a great threat to the Red Army.
Thanks to the strong support of the Allies after the war, the material support conditions of the White Guard cavalry were much better than in the Tsarist era. Instead of relying solely on horses and sabre, backward troops developed into semi-mechanized, heavily armored units. Machine guns were loaded into carriages, light artillery became widely used weapons, and with a certain number of light tanks and armored vehicles, the White Guard's cavalry suffered the new Red Army in the vast battlefield.
The Red Army during the Soviet Civil War, the machine gun carriage that was very popular at that time
In August 1919, Kolchak's White Guard general Mamontov, with only 8,000 Cossack cavalry, tore open the Red Army's tight defensive line, swept through many places in a month's time, and even "liberated" more than 20,000 less determined "Soviet Red Army".
This greatly stimulated the upper echelons of the Red Army, and in order to deal with the arrogant cavalry of the White Guards, the Red Army also formed its own cavalry unit, the First Cavalry Army, and the commander was the aforementioned Budyonny. Because it was born with an important mission, this unit also received the attention of the red army's top brass: well-equipped with weapons, logistics were responsible for special units, and soldiers could go light and go all out.
In later battles, the team proved its worth. Soon after its formation, the Red Cavalry defeated the White Guards in southern Russia, greatly improving the strategic situation of the Red Army. In the battle to defend Tsaritsyn, the excellent performance of the first cavalry group impressed Stalin, who commanded the battle. The Battle of Tsaritsyn was the starting point of Stalin's rise in the political and military circles of Soviet Russia.
In later years, Stalin, who became the supreme leader of the Soviet Union, took good care of officers from the First Cavalry Army. Even in the great purge that later affected the entire Red Army, the officers of the First Cavalry Army were much less affected.
What really established the position of the army was the breaking of the situation on the southern front of the Soviet-Polish War. In early 1920, in order to contain the Polish offensive in the direction of Ukraine, the First Cavalry Army leapt thousands of miles from the Caucasus region of southern Russia to Uman in Ukraine. On 5 June, the First Cavalry Regiment broke through the polish lines.
Father of Steel
Although the breakthrough was quickly re-blocked by the Polish army, the First Cavalry Army broke through the rear of the Polish front, focusing on the key nodes and supply lines of the Polish army, creating favorable conditions for the Red Army's counterattack on the frontal front, and finally turning the tide of the war. On 10 June, the Polish forces on the Southern Front withdrew in full force, abandoning Kiev on 13 June. The novel "How Steel is Made" has a large portrayal of this action.
After the end of the civil war, the Red Army was disarmed on a large scale and the formation of the group army was abolished. But several cavalry divisions remained. Because of its many efforts to turn the tide in the civil war, the merits of the First Cavalry Army were recognized by the Red Army. The award of the title in 1935 amply illustrates this point.
In 1941, the Great Patriotic War broke out, and the commanders and fighters from the First Cavalry Army once again came to the fore and became the stars of the battlefield. However, the protagonist this time is no longer budyonny's generation of veterans, but the new generation represented by Zhukov. Although they were born in cavalry, they were also very skilled and sophisticated in commanding a multi-service composite group with armored troops as the core.
Zhukov
This is not surprising. Because the principles of warfare of cavalry are extremely similar to those of armored soldiers. The combat mode of cavalry is not to directly impact the enemy's strict infantry phalanx like the film and television drama, but to use high mobility to continuously intersperse and detour, and mobile combat consumes the enemy's physical strength and materials, and looks for the opponent's weak points.
The same is true of the armored troops, the reason why the German armored forces in the early days of World War II were able to sweep through most of Europe with the momentum of destruction and decay was to take advantage of the extremely high mobility of the armored troops, constantly maneuvering and interspersing, hitting the opponent's weak points, not letting the opponent have the opportunity to repair and breathe, and could not form an effective defensive line. This approach has proved effective.
Of course, the change of cavalry generals to command armored units is not a patent of the Soviet Union, and the famous General Patton was also born in the cavalry unit at the earliest, and similar situations in other countries are not in the minority.
Barton
The combination of multiple arms was not new to the First Cavalry Army, because the unit was not a simple cavalry unit when it was formed, and the carriage carrying machine guns was a pattern often seen in the Soviet Civil War at that time. The multi-service combination of White Guard cavalry had an astonishing impact on the Red Army, so the Red Army was very attentive to the development of tanks and armored vehicles, and even in the extremely difficult situation during the civil war, the Red Army did its best to develop its own tanks.
The use of artillery and other technical equipment is not a problem for them, so officers from the First Cavalry Army are not exclusive of new technologies, and it is very easy to stand out in the era of rapid technological development.
But the real ability of these officers to leave their names militarily is more for their own reasons.
Budyonny fought in the Russo-Japanese War, World War I, and civil war, but the marshal was not an old stubborn. Although he had little knowledge before enlisting in the army, he always paid attention to improving himself after becoming a soldier, and once attended the cavalry school in Tsarist Russia. After becoming a senior general in the Red Army, he did not relax his requirements for himself.
He had gone to the Soviet military academies for further study, and he was not exclusive of new weapons. His strategic vision was also good, and in the Battle of Kiev in the Great Patriotic War, as a member of the Supreme Command, he discovered the potential dangers of the Southwestern Front, and was not inferior to Zhukov and other juniors.
Zhukov of the younger generation grew from a company commander to a supreme deputy commander by his own efforts. His military career has always been at the forefront of the development of military theory, which has provided a reliable basis for his achievements. Similarly, there was Grečko, an important figure who influenced the military development of the Soviet Union after the war.
Grečko
The growth of these generals of the First Cavalry Army can be explained by a very old lyric: three points are destined for heaven, and seven points depend on hard work. The changes of the times bring opportunities for development, but how to seize them still depends on the individual.