In the decade between the end of the Russian Civil War and the outbreak of World War II, the Soviet Red Army experienced an evolution from backwardness and lack of regular armament to a large, well-equipped and powerful regular army. Behind all this is inseparable from the strong industrial base of the Soviet Union, the development achievements of the Soviet army have been widely recognized, and Britain and France have both coincidentally admitted that the Soviet Union at that time was fully qualified to become the world's largest power in terms of military strength. However, in the initial period of the Soviet-German war, the performance of the Soviet Red Army turned out to be a great surprise, and the complex reasons for this situation were associated with a number of political problems within the Soviet Red Army before the war. The quality of the Soviet officer corps was greatly weakened, and many officers who were originally suitable only for the posts of company commanders and regiment commanders appeared in the posts of commanders of group armies and front armies. As a result, the command skills of Soviet generals in World War II as a whole were questioned. Although there are some famous generals who are good at using tactics flexibly and winning more with less, in general, the Soviet Red Army often needs to invest more equipment and troops in battles that achieve key victories, and bear heavier losses. In the winter of late 1941 to early 1942, for example, the Soviet Red Army outnumbered the Germans in every battle, and the total losses far exceeded those of its opponents.
However, the Soviet Red Army, with its terrible war potential, finally defeated the German ** team. In this process, even the great Marshal Zhukov was no exception. In the Battle of the Selo Heights before the capture of Berlin, when there were originally other options, Zhukov insisted on leading 1 million Soviet Red Army to storm this area that was heavily defended by the German ** team, and the result was a heavier price. This approach may seem unreasonable, but for the Soviet Red Army at that time, there was no alternative. They took this method of combat to the extreme, and achieved quite amazing results. Let's look at two simple examples. The Soviet army has always pursued the power of artillery. During the winter operation, there was a battle of confrontation between the Soviet Union and Germany. The Germans and Soviets fought fiercely in their respective positions, and the two sides were evenly matched, and the battle continued until dark. At this time, the Germans decided to suspend the offensive and switch to a defensive posture in anticipation of the next battle. In contrast, the Soviets did not stop, but mobilized more artillery, especially a large number of Katyusha rocket launchers, to continuously cover the German positions.
The next day, when the Soviets ran out of ammunition, they found the German positions unusually quiet. What was shocking was that the German soldiers on the entire position were frozen to death in the bitter cold and could not move. The Soviet army also liked to pursue the caliber of artillery. In the Soviet-German war, even in the extremely unfavorable situation in the Soviet Union, once the German army learned that the other side was equipped with T-34 tanks, it would show fear and a negative combat attitude. This was due to the fact that the T-34 tank was equipped with an artillery caliber of 76 mm, while the Stalin tank was 122 mm, which could easily penetrate the armor of German tanks. In contrast, the Germans, in pursuit of speed, made compromises in artillery and armor thickness. The Soviet army had a surprising number of large-caliber artillery. In the fifth Stalin assault in June 1944, the Soviets launched a fierce offensive, but the Germans showed excellent fighting qualities and stubbornly resisted the pressure of the Soviet troops. Despite the repeated charges of the Soviet troops, the strong fortifications of the Germans were not breached. As a result, the Soviets mobilized heavy artillery and launched a fierce bombardment of German positions. However, due to the solidity of the German fortifications, the Soviets were not able to break through the enemy's lines. The Germans stopped resisting, and the Soviet soldiers rushed over to check the situation.
They found that many of the German soldiers were lying on the ground in order to avoid the shrapnel flying from the bombs** in the fortifications. However, the huge ** shock directly shattered their internal organs, and the death was quite terrifying. Soviet charge tactics are often misunderstood as "crowd charges" as mindless charges, but they are not. As early as the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian army stipulated that when the infantry launched a charge, the individual soldiers should keep a distance of about one step from each other and attack the opponent in a dense formation. In order to avoid becoming a "live target", the Russian army also stipulates that combat units should be separated by 300 400 paces from each other. This tactic was retained and escalated during the Soviet era, and in order to reduce **, the Soviet army expanded the individual distance to 5 paces and derived a variety of formations to flexibly respond to different combat situations. In the movie "Soldiers in the City", the scene of Soviet soldiers rushing up and soldiers in the rear picking up the guns of fallen soldiers in front is shown. While this is not non-existent, it is not common on the actual battlefield. However, when the charging tactics are used to the extreme, they can almost achieve the effect of "surrendering the army without a fight". In the Ukrainian campaign, the Soviet army launched a massive crowd charge against the German army.
The Soviets invested 4 fronts in this battle, and they were well manned, so they were also generous when charging. In the early days of the confrontation between the two armies, many German units collapsed almost at the touch of a button, which was very different from the average combat level of the German army. Some prisoners of war recalled that when Soviet soldiers rushed at them shouting slogans, the entire horizon was filled with black people from a distance, and the ground trembled under their feet, as if a million people were rushing towards them at the same time. Under these circumstances, many German soldiers could not help but be devastated, and they had to be captured. Whether it is the suppression of artillery or the charge of the sea of people, appearing on the battlefield, although it cannot show the command ability of a general, it is not like the desperate situation of the Japanese army every charge. On the contrary, the answer to the question has long been revealed by the Chinese soldier saint Sun Wu in "The Art of War": "Those who are good at fighting have no outstanding achievements." Marshal Zhukov is exactly like this, he always tries his best to fight for the best and the troops, in order to increase the chances of victory, and not to fight uncertain battles, just as "the heavy sword has no edge, and the great ingenuity does not work".
As the saying goes, "once you become famous, your bones will wither", but Soviet soldiers are more like cannon fodder on the battlefield, which is not the case;On the contrary, a large number of Soviet generals, represented by Marshal Zhukov, were born at the grassroots level, cared very much about the soldiers, and often visited the front line in person. On the title page of his combat diary, Zhukov solemnly wrote the following sentence: "I dedicate this book to the great Soviet soldiers. ”