<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="164" > fighting spirit</h1>
In terms of the will to fight, the Soviet army in 1945 was a very, very heroic army, whether it was to break through the steel fortress defense line of East Prussia, or to eat at Zhukov in the Selo Heights, it could not hide the heroism and tenacity of the Soviet army, with a strong hatred for the fascist invaders and the opportunity for revenge, this spirit is afraid that it is difficult to find a second case in the world.
Ironically, the Soviets at this time did not need any "overseers" and political commissars (cancelled long before Operation Uranus on October 9, 1942), but the Germans needed Ayrna, a brutal commander of the subordinates, to provoke the Germans to fight with hangings and humiliating signs.
And Schörner's actions, in Hitler's touting and goebbels' diaries, have "positive praise":
"Deserters did not receive his mercy," Dr. Goebbels wrote in his diary of 11 March 1945, "a deserter was hanged from a nearest tree with a placard around his neck that read, 'I am a deserter, and I refuse to protect women and children in Germany, so I was hanged.'" Goebbels went on to comment: "This method worked, and every officer and soldier under Schörna knew that he might die on the front line, but that fleeing to the rear would inevitably result in execution." ”
The Germans even created the post of National Socialist Supervisor Officer and began to supervise the battle at the German headquarters.
At the last moments of the Battle of the Vistula-Oder, Germany even needed the Burgundy chicken farmers as commander of the Vistula Army, and in February launched a "friendly send-off" from Pomerania, which was easily repelled by the second echelon of the Ukrainian 1st Front (the 61st, 47th and Polish 1st Armies) of Konev.
Correspondingly, although the Soviet army has abolished the post of political commissar, on the contrary, the Bolshevik party members and regiment members have played a positive role, according to Hayashi Saburo, former head of the Russian section of the old Imperial Japanese General Staff Headquarters:
And the battle in which party members and regiment members rushed ahead was everywhere in the Soviet army:
There are many similar examples of this, and I have summarized three articles, which will be gradually published in the future.
The source of this spirit may have been the provocation of the political commissars in the early rout, but more often from the brutal atrocities of fascism:
I think that anyone with a little conscience will be sad about this, at least when I read this paragraph, my heart is very sad.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="20" > Stalin's command and trust:</h1>
The 1945 opener took place at the Battle of the Vistula-Oder from 12 January to 3 February. Before that, it was important to note that from October to November 1944, Zhukov and Rokossovsky had a fierce dispute in Moscow with Stalin, Molotov, Malenkov, and Beria.
At the heart of the dispute is whether to continue to march on Germany.
As a result of the dispute between the two sides, the good old man Malenkov sided with Zhu and Luo, and Stalin, although unhappy, allowed the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts to rest first.
After 3 and a half years of war experience, Stalin, although he was very unhappy about the military influence on the political trend, finally trusted Zhukov and Rokossovsky, the handsome men:
Stalin eventually abolished the post of "representative of the Supreme Command" and delegated direct command of the Front to the commanders of the various armies, leaving Timoshenko to continue to serve as the representative of the Supreme Command of the 2nd and 4th Ukrainian Fronts.
Stalin's self-proclaimed position as supreme field commander was in fact a hands-off.
The rumored defeat of Zhukov in the Celo Heights triggered Stalin's anger, but in fact the correct situation was that Zhukov took the initiative to report the situation to Stalin at 15:00 on April 16 and at a certain hour in the evening, respectively, and Stalin's dissatisfaction with Zhukov was also "sharp" at night.
Zhukov's own misuse of Katukov's 1st Guards Tank Army and Bogdanov's 2nd Guards Tank Army was a mistake.
Of the 431 tanks lost in the last episode of Tan, nearly 300 were damaged in the Celo Heights and only 104 were damaged in the street battles in Berlin, and this responsibility was entirely Zhukov's, and had nothing to do with Stalin.
< h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="34" > general troops</h1>
Some of the battles influenced by Stalin's practical influence did not have much impact in 1945, and there was no comparison at all with Hitler.
For example, at the Battle of Lake Balaton in March 1945, Tolbukhin's 3rd Ukrainian Front was attacked by the German 6th Army, the 2nd Panzer Army, and Dietrich's 3rd Panzer Army, including a large number of Tiger tanks, the 2nd SS Panzer Army, and the 1st Cavalry Corps, but was attacked by the Soviet 26th, 27th, and 57th Armies without the title of "Guard", using muddy terrain and anti-tank obstacles, barbed wire with high-voltage electricity. and a small number of tactical reserves (5th Guards Cavalry Corps) mobile dispatch blockade.
Tolbukhin requested the use of reserves, but Stalin refused, and without using reserves, Tolbukhin won, and the Soviet losses were lower than those of the Germans. According to German statistics, in the "Spring Awakening Operation", the Loss of German tanks and self-propelled guns was not less than 256, while the Losses of the Soviet Army were only 165, including 84 T-34 and 48 SU-100 tank destroyers.
In addition, although the Soviets had predicted that the Germans would not speak of Wude in the Lake Balaton area, Stalin still forbade Tolbukhin to use the troops that had been dedicated to the front of the Battle of Vienna for defense.
In addition to Stalin's "micro-exercises", the Soviet army itself played very well, Tolbukhin is not well-known in the Non-military fandom, and the 3rd Ukrainian Front army is not the main T0 force of the Soviet army.
This battle was also a German attack on a Soviet front from the north and south flanks, but it was completely counterattacked, and finally the courier operation to Vienna was meaningless except to waste the reserves of Army Group South.
The elite German SS panzer units faced the average level of Soviet Front and Soviet generals, and were completely overwhelmed in attack.
Even more ironically, Dietrich's 6th SS Panzer Corps, which was violently beaten by the Soviets at Lake Balaton, was the same one who had violently beaten the American army in the Ardennes two and a half months earlier.
It was also the Soviets who launched the Vistula-Oder Offensive in advance, which alleviated the great crisis for the Allies on the Western Front:
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="48" > Guards</h1>
Tactically, although some elite Soviet units have also suffered from it, considering some objective reasons, they cannot completely depreciate the combat effectiveness of the Soviet army.
Zhukov was politically frustrated after the war and was stepped on by the new Defense Minister Trikov, who in the mid-1960s believed that "the Soviet army could capture Berlin in February":
This conclusion is obviously nonsense, trikov's 8th Guards Army besieged Poznan on 12 January and did not capture Poznan until 23 February.
Of course, there was a reason why Trikov's troops were slow to fight, and Trikov thought that there were only 20,000 German troops in the city, but in fact 60,000 people, and Poznan was also a fortified city, a proper urban battle.
Conquering fortifications is a very, very troublesome thing to do.
For example, the 2nd and 3rd Fronts of Belarus, in order to capture East Prussia, had a stockpile of 13.3 million shells and mortar shells, 620 million rounds of ammunition, and 2.2 million grenades;
The 3rd Belorussian Front consumed more than 1,000 wagons of major ammunition in just two days on 13 and 14 January, while the 2nd Belorussian Front consumed more than 950 wagons of major ammunition on January 14 alone.
In total, the two fronts consumed more than 15,000 wagons of ammunition. Nearly 100,000 vehicles (equivalent to 2.5 tons of trucks) were used to unload the ammunition from the wagons and transport them to the troops.
The Hellsberg fortification area has more than 900 reinforced concrete fortifications and many civil fortifications, as well as anti-tank and infantry barriers.
By 8 April, the Guards 11th and 43rd Armies had broken into the city of Königsberg, and soviet artillery, fearing that they might be hitting their own men, had to stop firing.
So, although Trikov thought it was nonsense to be able to capture Berlin in February, It took a long time for Trikov's 8th Guards Army to fight Poznan and could not prove that Trikov was a waste, and the example of the siege of fortified cities in East Prussia was enough to illustrate the difficulty of the fortified city offensive.
The Soviets suffered 126,464 irreparable losses to conquer East Prussia, while the Soviets lost only 8,1116 in Berlin.
However, Trikov's Guards 8th Army, also a professional player in urban warfare, in the winter of 1942 they were the 62nd Army in Stalingrad, and now they have conquered Poznan and shared a manual of street fighting experience for friendly forces, Trikov's Guards 8th Army is still the king of the Soviet army.
The six Guards tank armies of the USSR, without exception, were all elite, and in 1945 the six tank army commanders were:
1st Guards Tank Army, Admiral Mikhail Yefimovich Katukov;
2nd Guards Tank Army, Admiral Semyon Ilyich Bogdanov;
3rd Guards Tank Army, Admiral Pavel Semyonovich Rebarko;
4th Guards Tank Army, Admiral Dmitry Danilovich Lelyuschenko;
Guards Tank 5th Army, Major General Maxim Dimitrievich Seenko;
6th Guards Tank Army, General Andrei Grigorievich Kravchenko;
Among them, Stalin's favorite was the 2nd Guards Tank Army.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="77" > force reconnaissance</h1>
The Soviet army's "force reconnaissance" is a very powerful "reconnaissance", and unlike most of us imagining, the Soviet army's "reconnaissance" is not simply taking advantage of the night to grab the tongue and dress up like the Viet Cong to ambush.
The Soviet army's armed reconnaissance is a kind of offensive, and its firepower and scale are very powerful.
Several typical examples of warfare can be illustrated.
The start of Operation Bagration is actually very interesting, generally speaking, June 22, 1944, which happens to be the third anniversary of the outbreak of war, but according to Grants, the start time of Operation Bagration is counted as June 23:
The reason is simple, because from the night of June 21 to the early morning of June 22, the battles waged by the Soviet army were counted as "armed reconnaissance". The German front-line positions were subjected to unprecedented shelling, and the Soviet reconnaissance battalion took advantage of the night to directly seize a layer of positions.
Throughout the day on the 22nd, the soviet army's continuous offensive was actually all "armed reconnaissance."
In the Battle of the Vistula-Oder, the reconnaissance units of the 1st Ukrainian Front in Konev raided the Sandomierz landing field at 5 a.m. and successfully captured the first German positions, and some even led the second.
It was not until 10 o'clock that the Front conducted another "armed reconnaissance" and carried out shelling that lasted 107 minutes. The Germans, believing it to be the main attack, rushed out of the shelter and entered the first line of positions, only to be hit by 15 minutes of real damage.
At the same time, Zhukov's "armed reconnaissance" of the 1st Belorussian Front was even more terrifying in scale, with Zhukov throwing 22 reinforced infantry battalions and another 25 infantry companies into the 100 km front to remove specific support points.
Each division sent at least two reinforced infantry battalions with tanks and self-propelled artillery to the German front. In addition to artillery support, combat reconnaissance is also supported by aviation assaults.
The Germans could not withstand the onslaught of the Soviet reconnaissance battalion and may have mistaken it for the main force of the Front, so they began to retreat from the front to depth.
In the end, Zhukov even canceled the 70-minute artillery bombardment prepared, and the "armed reconnaissance" saved a lot of ammunition for the Soviet artillery.
Even in the Celo Heights, where Zhukov was playing extremely poorly, when the Soviets used 143 searchlights totaling more than 100 billion degrees to punch themselves in the sun, 32 reconnaissance detachments with 1 infantry battalion each successfully broke through the first line of defense of the German army, and in fact the Soviet breakthrough reached the Haupt Canal 1.5 kilometers away, only to be blocked by the steep embankment.
Soviet force reconnaissance was characterized by its sheer size, even with massive support from the air force and artillery, so much so that the Germans were completely confused as to whether this was a general offensive or a mere tentative one.
The German army chose to retreat under the attack of armed reconnaissance, which could only abandon the first layer of positions, and it was bound to be unable to hold;
If the German army chooses to be tough, the Soviet army will directly strengthen into a general attack, and the German army will better kill and injure the German army's living forces in the first position, and finally it will not be able to hold the position
In either case, the Soviets were the dominant side.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="102" > logistics and long-distance raids</h1>
In fact, as early as september 1944, during the campaign to conquer Budapest, Grants believed that what limited the level of Soviet attack was not how well the Germans defended, but how well the Soviet logistics could be followed:
The logistical level of the Soviet Army, in the Battle of Nomonkan in 1939, taught the Kwantung Army a lesson. The Kwantung Army used its own logistical level (200 to 250 km) to refer to the logistics of the Soviet Army, believing that the Soviet Army "only had that little bit of strength", and as a result, it did not think that the Soviet Army transported supplies across a length of 650 km, and beat the Kwantung Army fiercely:
The idea of the Kwantung Army was:
The Kwantung Army complained about its own logistics:
It has to be said that Staff Officer Showa has always "anticipated the enemy as himself."
In terms of preparation time for the campaign, the Soviet army was also getting shorter and shorter, the preparation time for the Vistula-Oder Campaign was 22-48 days, while the larger Battle of Berlin only took 15 days (in fact, it only took 13 days), and the battle was more exciting.
In contrast, in the Third Battle of Kharkov in 1943, Rokossovsky's Central Front only had a mere 6 days to dispatch troops + 5 days to prepare for the battle, and the Soviet army, in terms of the maturity of the command, not only got rid of the blind hasty fast-forward, but also boldly gave up the longer campaign preparation time.
In the Battle of Berlin, the preparation for such a campaign was to the point of pure fire.
Similarly, this is also a great examination of soviet logistics, although 400,000 Soviet trucks were aided by Britain and the United States, but the only one who can use these trucks to play a really powerful assault force is the Soviet army.
The Soviet army's terrible logistics and long-distance attack capabilities were once again vividly reflected in the "August Storm".
In order to increase the number of troops in the Far East, the Soviets mobilized 90 divisions, including The 6th Guards Tank Army of Kravchenko, some of which were by train, but for the sake of secrecy, more often by car from Berlin to the Far East, during which there was a 6-hour time difference.
The 6th Guards Tank Army spent 3 days crossing the Daxing'an Mountains, reaching a depth of 450 kilometers, liberating 600,000 square kilometers of land in 7 days, and the area of Germany was only 357,000 square kilometers.
In the defense of the Kwantung Army in Hailar, the Soviets only used an ordinary infantry army to complete the breakthrough.
Regarding the Long-distance Attack and Breakthrough Ability of the Soviet Army, I think the Japanese's own evaluation is more convincing, even in Southeast Asia, the Japanese Army, which ran wildly with its legs, had to submit to defeat in front of the Soviet Army:
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="122" > compilation innovation</h1>
The Great Patriotic War not only brought about new tactical innovations in the Soviet Army, but also produced continuous evolution in its organization.
Before the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army adopted two types of armored corps.
At the Battle of Nomonkan in 1939, Zhukov's 1st Army, reorganized from the 57th Special Army, had five armored brigades: the 6th and 11th Tank Brigades, and the 7th, 8th, and 9th Armored Vehicle Brigades;
In 1940, the Soviet Army reorganized the "Mechanized Army, Tank Division and Motorized Division", but in the Barbarossa Plan, it suffered heavy losses. Typical units are the mechanized 6th and 11th Armies under the command of General Borgin, deputy commander of the Southwestern Front.
During the battle for Moscow, the mechanized army was completely lost, and the Soviets immediately restarted smaller but also more effective tank brigades, such as the 4th Tank Brigade of Colonel Mikhail Yefimovich Katukov; the 4th and 11th Tank Brigades of the 1st Guards Infantry Corps of Major General Dmitry Danilovich Lelyshenko.
As I mentioned above, Katukov and Lelyshenko will be the commanders of the future six Guards Tank Armies (1 episode of Katukov and 4 episodes of Leryushenko).
However, the smaller formation of the tank brigade, although it could assist the infantry in the defense of Moscow, was still not competent for large-scale offensive operations, so the Soviet army had to reorganize the tank unit.
Here must be mentioned the name of a hero behind the scenes: General Yakov Nikolaevich Fedolenko, head of the Soviet Army's Automobile Armored Tank Department.
Although Admiral Fedorenko was not a commander on the front line and is unknown in Western warfare history, he was highly regarded in the memoirs of the major marshals, and he was one of the brains of the Red Army.
Beginning in March 1942, he reorganized the Tank Corps and the Mechanized Corps, which were effectively equivalent to German divisions.
Both the tank army and the mechanized army are theoretically used as rapid clusters of infantry army groups, implementing small-scale and limited breakthroughs to form an encirclement circle at a depth of 100 kilometers.
But in order to cause more destruction and form a greater encirclement, the Red Army needed a larger formation, a truly synthetic mechanized force of various arms comparable to the Panzer Army and the Panzer Army.
At the end of 1942, a completely new unit, the Tank Army, was born.
The 1943 version of the Tank Army consisted of 2 tank corps and 1 mechanized corps, such as the 5th Guards Tank Army, which consisted of the 18th and 29th Tank Corps and the 5th Guards Mechanized Corps.
It has to be said that General Yakov Nikolaevich Fedolenko was the "Xiao He" of Stalin, the "Liu Bang" of the Soviet-German War.
During the August storm, the Soviets once again revolutionized their tactics.
Generally speaking, the Soviet infantry divisions in World War II were actually relatively weak, and they were even inferior to the Japanese divisions in terms of organization.
A Japanese division had between 9,000 and 18,000 men. The Soviets averaged about 5,000 men per division, some at just 3,000 men, slightly larger than a U.S. Marine Corps infantry regiment.
Soviet infantry divisions became more powerful after 1946, with an infantry division reinforced by an independent tank brigade, a self-propelled artillery regiment, and one or more additional artillery regiments, all tactics that were innovative in the August storm.
The most elite Guards Tank Army was also strengthened, with one of the two tank armies under the Kintan 6 set being replaced by a second mechanized corps, and two motorized infantry divisions transferred to the army group, in addition to two self-propelled artillery brigades, two light artillery brigades, a motorcycle infantry regiment, and various support units.
With 25 armored battalions and 44 motorized infantry battalions, the army had a total of 1,019 tanks and self-propelled guns, and was the original appearance of the Soviet mechanized army group in the early Cold War.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" data-track="150" > summary</h1>
At the end of World War II, the Soviet Red Army was the world's first army, and its scale and technical and tactical level were at the peak level in human history, and no one had been able to surpass the Soviet Red Army in 1945 in both aspects.
After the red army commanders conquered Berlin, they were first awarded various medals by the United States, Britain, France and other countries, and Stalin was the favor of them.
It was Eisenhower who offered to see Zhukov, it was Bradley who took the initiative to visit Konev, it was Churchill who took the initiative to toast Zhukov at the Potsdam Conference, it was Montgomery who took the initiative to choose brandenburg, the place where the Soviet army launched a surprise attack on Berlin, to pay tribute to the Soldiers of the Red Army.
Eisenhower awarded Zhukov the Order
Montgomery awarded the order to the Soviet generals and was specially chosen in Brandenburg
Churchill toasted Zhukov
In the declaration of the general offensive of the 1st Belorussian Front to Berlin, it is enough to show the majesty of the soldiers of the Soviet Red Army:
Even if the Soviet Union had collapsed, the Russians would have a place in this world with this picture.
As the father of the veteran who lost his arm in the movie "The Destruction of the Empire" said:
"When the Russians launch a pincer attack from both flanks, you can live up to 5 minutes."