The feat of the Russian infantry in World War II
The USSR accounted for almost half of all casualties during the Second World War. In addition, the country suffered the greatest material damage: 1710 cities and towns were partially or completely destroyed, more than 70 000 villages and villages with a social and industrial infrastructure. In total, the country lost about 30% of its total national wealth. In the total volume of the destroyed national wealth of the warring European countries, the share of the Soviet Union was at least 50%. Not one, in any case, a European power, having suffered such material and human losses, having experienced such a moral shock, could stand against the power of Nazi Germany. And the USSR was able and in many respects to this is the merit of ordinary Soviet people at the front and rear.
Almost of the military potential of Germany and its allies were directed against the USSR, and the losses of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front reached 75% of personnel and military equipment. The USSR was able to resist and achieve a triumphant victory, making a decisive contribution to the defeat of the aggressor and, in fact, destroying fascism. In contrast to all previous wars, World War II was notable for a new level of technology and technology for killing people, which in many ways led to such large losses.
The Second World War was a war of engines that were thrown at the extermination of people. In combat, and often punitive operations, tens of thousands of aircraft, mortars and powerful artillery systems, armored vehicles were used, massively used automatic weapon. In Germany alone, over the 3 years of the war (1942-1944), it produced about 80 combat aircraft, 000 tanks and 69 guns, most of which were used on the Soviet-German front. But the use of such an arsenal could not break the will of the Soviet people to resist, although it led to enormous losses both among military personnel and among the civilian population.
By 1941, the Wehrmacht was armed with the most high-tech and the latest weapons in the world. In fact, it even included high-precision artillery weapons. The case in point is the instrumental artillery reconnaissance, which was part of the German artillery units. The availability of high-quality radio communications, relevant professionals, meteorological support, mechanical computers, and unique optical and sound measuring devices made it possible to conduct virtually sniper fire (for those times) to kill. At the same time, the posts of visual optical observation were out of range of the response fire at a distance of 7-10 km. from our positions. Under standard meteorological conditions, the sound measuring service with high accuracy (even higher than from a spotter plane) determined the locations of powerful Soviet artillery at a distance of 6 km.
At the beginning of the war, the suppression of Soviet artillery and scattered hotbeds of resistance did not present any special problems for the Wehrmacht. It all came down to performing template operations. For example, 180 shells for 150 mm guns and 240 shells for 105 mm were allocated to destroy one Soviet battery. German gunners almost never went beyond this limit. The German command, even before the attack on the USSR, experimentally calculated that the use of precision artillery was more efficient and economical than the use of aviation.
Excellent radio communications allowed the Wehrmacht to coordinate the routes of motorized infantry and tanks, high-speed aircraft and accurate firepower, implementing in practice lightning-fast strategic operations. Everything was done quickly and according to plan. The result of the strategic advantage was the endless "boilers" into which entire Soviet armies sometimes fell. In addition to the technical advantages, the Wehrmacht used the miscalculations of the highest Soviet command. One of the causes of the 1941 disaster was the weak analytical work of Soviet military experts who could not learn from the Polish or French German company.
At the same time, the first months of the war on the Eastern Front also showed the weaknesses of the Nazis. So, the German infantry without the support of artillery, tanks and aircraft, which the Germans, by the way, still did not have enough, left alone with the Russian infantry, could not solve the tasks assigned to it. The Nazis lost the battle in the woods, night battles, sniper duels. Specialists today are aware of the casualties of the German infantry. The average German company (about 100 people) lost around 3 thousands of people killed and wounded in the first 1,5 year of the war. The average life of a German infantry soldier at the front was 75 days. Germany simply did not have the strength to compensate for these losses.
Already decades after the end of the war, the German commander Eike Middeldorf, being in the rank of lieutenant colonel of the army of the Federal Republic of Germany, published the book Tactics in the Russian Campaign, which, according to Western historians and our military experts, is considered a fairly objective source. In this book, Middeldorf paid great attention to Russian soldiers: "Russian soldier - master of battle in the forest. Russian troops have the ability to move on any terrain, off-road. They fight for every meter of territory and can go without supplies for days. If in the summer and autumn of 1941, we surrounded and destroyed Russian units that were tactically poorly prepared and did not have combat experience, then at the beginning of winter 1941, the Russians were able to master the skills of defense". For example, by the end of 1941, Soviet troops began to use defensive tactics using backward slopes of hills, equipping positions out of sight of German observers.
In many ways, the failure of the Blitzkrieg was due precisely to the courage and resilience of the infantry units of the Red Army, which, in fact, with small arms and hand grenades opposed the latest German developments in the field of armaments. According to Middeldorf, the role played by the national character of the Russians is the ability of the soldier to endure, endure and die in his rifle cell. All this was very important for the organization of a fierce and stubborn defense.
There is a lot of evidence about how the Russian infantry fought. For example, many people know the feat of 28 Panfilov heroes or defenders of the Brest Fortress, Stalingrad and Sevastopol. This is how he recalls how Russian infantry Lev Maydanyk, who was a participant in the fighting in the vicinity of Kharkov in 1942, fought. "They walk in silence, in quick steps. They are coming closer, and we are also pouring into this stream of people. It’s hard to determine how many of us are in this crowd, maybe 500, maybe 1000 or even more. It is clear that people will go right through, as has already happened in our front-line practice, but in simpler cases of the environment. Even tanks retreated from the path of an angry mob. German tankers knew that there would be a fighter in the crowd with an anti-tank grenade or an incendiary bottle. The crowd destroyed on their way the German machine-gunners and machine gunners, while suffering heavy losses. German soldiers knew about it and were justifiably afraid of the troops making their way out of encirclement, as they were afraid of frost, night battles and dense forests.". The Soviet infantry suffered enormous losses, killing tens of thousands in the "cauldrons" while restraining the pace of the German offensive, winning valuable time for the country.
Soviet soldiers fought bravely and were capable of self-sacrifice. The feat of Private Alexander Matrosov, who with his body closed the embrasure of the German DotA, became a textbook, becoming a stable expression in the Russian language. In total, during the Great Patriotic War, more than 400 people made such a feat. The difference between the Soviet and German soldiers was how they reacted to the airstrikes. The Soviet fighters at the appearance of dive-bombers Ju-87, often met them with fire from all types of small arms. Even if they did not shoot down the plane, they could cause him damage or beat him, after which it could take weeks to fix all the faults. There are also cases when storming German aircraft were shot down by anti-tank guns. In turn, the German soldiers during the attacks of the Soviet Il-2 attack aircraft simply lay down at the bottom of the trenches and prayed.
Over time, the skill and ability of Soviet soldiers only increased, but the Wehrmacht fighters became hostages of their bureaucratic system. The Germans were fighting strictly according to the regulations. As a result, the Red Army soldiers in the second half of the war could easily determine how the enemy would fight and where his strongholds would be located. The most important thing was that every German soldier literally with his mother's milk absorbed the strict observance of command orders. As soon as the commanders disappeared, the German soldiers became hopeless. At the same time, behind some Soviet soldiers, there were battles in the environment, which required non-standard actions and independence of decisions made from them.
According to Eike Middeldorf, the Russian soldiers extremely quickly learned a lesson from the first stage of the war and fully adapted to the German plan of warfare. The Russian soldiers in the 1944-1945 of the year acted and followed the same methods that the German army used in the 1941-1942 years. At this time, the German "teachers" could not oppose anything to their capable "student."
Sources used:
www.svpressa.ru/society/article/55058/
www.perspektivy.info/history/ludskije_poteri_sssr_v_velikoj_otechestvennoj_vojne_2009-05-04.htm
Materials free online encyclopedia "Wikipedia"
Almost of the military potential of Germany and its allies were directed against the USSR, and the losses of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front reached 75% of personnel and military equipment. The USSR was able to resist and achieve a triumphant victory, making a decisive contribution to the defeat of the aggressor and, in fact, destroying fascism. In contrast to all previous wars, World War II was notable for a new level of technology and technology for killing people, which in many ways led to such large losses.
The Second World War was a war of engines that were thrown at the extermination of people. In combat, and often punitive operations, tens of thousands of aircraft, mortars and powerful artillery systems, armored vehicles were used, massively used automatic weapon. In Germany alone, over the 3 years of the war (1942-1944), it produced about 80 combat aircraft, 000 tanks and 69 guns, most of which were used on the Soviet-German front. But the use of such an arsenal could not break the will of the Soviet people to resist, although it led to enormous losses both among military personnel and among the civilian population.
By 1941, the Wehrmacht was armed with the most high-tech and the latest weapons in the world. In fact, it even included high-precision artillery weapons. The case in point is the instrumental artillery reconnaissance, which was part of the German artillery units. The availability of high-quality radio communications, relevant professionals, meteorological support, mechanical computers, and unique optical and sound measuring devices made it possible to conduct virtually sniper fire (for those times) to kill. At the same time, the posts of visual optical observation were out of range of the response fire at a distance of 7-10 km. from our positions. Under standard meteorological conditions, the sound measuring service with high accuracy (even higher than from a spotter plane) determined the locations of powerful Soviet artillery at a distance of 6 km.
At the beginning of the war, the suppression of Soviet artillery and scattered hotbeds of resistance did not present any special problems for the Wehrmacht. It all came down to performing template operations. For example, 180 shells for 150 mm guns and 240 shells for 105 mm were allocated to destroy one Soviet battery. German gunners almost never went beyond this limit. The German command, even before the attack on the USSR, experimentally calculated that the use of precision artillery was more efficient and economical than the use of aviation.
Excellent radio communications allowed the Wehrmacht to coordinate the routes of motorized infantry and tanks, high-speed aircraft and accurate firepower, implementing in practice lightning-fast strategic operations. Everything was done quickly and according to plan. The result of the strategic advantage was the endless "boilers" into which entire Soviet armies sometimes fell. In addition to the technical advantages, the Wehrmacht used the miscalculations of the highest Soviet command. One of the causes of the 1941 disaster was the weak analytical work of Soviet military experts who could not learn from the Polish or French German company.
At the same time, the first months of the war on the Eastern Front also showed the weaknesses of the Nazis. So, the German infantry without the support of artillery, tanks and aircraft, which the Germans, by the way, still did not have enough, left alone with the Russian infantry, could not solve the tasks assigned to it. The Nazis lost the battle in the woods, night battles, sniper duels. Specialists today are aware of the casualties of the German infantry. The average German company (about 100 people) lost around 3 thousands of people killed and wounded in the first 1,5 year of the war. The average life of a German infantry soldier at the front was 75 days. Germany simply did not have the strength to compensate for these losses.
Already decades after the end of the war, the German commander Eike Middeldorf, being in the rank of lieutenant colonel of the army of the Federal Republic of Germany, published the book Tactics in the Russian Campaign, which, according to Western historians and our military experts, is considered a fairly objective source. In this book, Middeldorf paid great attention to Russian soldiers: "Russian soldier - master of battle in the forest. Russian troops have the ability to move on any terrain, off-road. They fight for every meter of territory and can go without supplies for days. If in the summer and autumn of 1941, we surrounded and destroyed Russian units that were tactically poorly prepared and did not have combat experience, then at the beginning of winter 1941, the Russians were able to master the skills of defense". For example, by the end of 1941, Soviet troops began to use defensive tactics using backward slopes of hills, equipping positions out of sight of German observers.
In many ways, the failure of the Blitzkrieg was due precisely to the courage and resilience of the infantry units of the Red Army, which, in fact, with small arms and hand grenades opposed the latest German developments in the field of armaments. According to Middeldorf, the role played by the national character of the Russians is the ability of the soldier to endure, endure and die in his rifle cell. All this was very important for the organization of a fierce and stubborn defense.
There is a lot of evidence about how the Russian infantry fought. For example, many people know the feat of 28 Panfilov heroes or defenders of the Brest Fortress, Stalingrad and Sevastopol. This is how he recalls how Russian infantry Lev Maydanyk, who was a participant in the fighting in the vicinity of Kharkov in 1942, fought. "They walk in silence, in quick steps. They are coming closer, and we are also pouring into this stream of people. It’s hard to determine how many of us are in this crowd, maybe 500, maybe 1000 or even more. It is clear that people will go right through, as has already happened in our front-line practice, but in simpler cases of the environment. Even tanks retreated from the path of an angry mob. German tankers knew that there would be a fighter in the crowd with an anti-tank grenade or an incendiary bottle. The crowd destroyed on their way the German machine-gunners and machine gunners, while suffering heavy losses. German soldiers knew about it and were justifiably afraid of the troops making their way out of encirclement, as they were afraid of frost, night battles and dense forests.". The Soviet infantry suffered enormous losses, killing tens of thousands in the "cauldrons" while restraining the pace of the German offensive, winning valuable time for the country.
Soviet soldiers fought bravely and were capable of self-sacrifice. The feat of Private Alexander Matrosov, who with his body closed the embrasure of the German DotA, became a textbook, becoming a stable expression in the Russian language. In total, during the Great Patriotic War, more than 400 people made such a feat. The difference between the Soviet and German soldiers was how they reacted to the airstrikes. The Soviet fighters at the appearance of dive-bombers Ju-87, often met them with fire from all types of small arms. Even if they did not shoot down the plane, they could cause him damage or beat him, after which it could take weeks to fix all the faults. There are also cases when storming German aircraft were shot down by anti-tank guns. In turn, the German soldiers during the attacks of the Soviet Il-2 attack aircraft simply lay down at the bottom of the trenches and prayed.
Over time, the skill and ability of Soviet soldiers only increased, but the Wehrmacht fighters became hostages of their bureaucratic system. The Germans were fighting strictly according to the regulations. As a result, the Red Army soldiers in the second half of the war could easily determine how the enemy would fight and where his strongholds would be located. The most important thing was that every German soldier literally with his mother's milk absorbed the strict observance of command orders. As soon as the commanders disappeared, the German soldiers became hopeless. At the same time, behind some Soviet soldiers, there were battles in the environment, which required non-standard actions and independence of decisions made from them.
According to Eike Middeldorf, the Russian soldiers extremely quickly learned a lesson from the first stage of the war and fully adapted to the German plan of warfare. The Russian soldiers in the 1944-1945 of the year acted and followed the same methods that the German army used in the 1941-1942 years. At this time, the German "teachers" could not oppose anything to their capable "student."
Sources used:
www.svpressa.ru/society/article/55058/
www.perspektivy.info/history/ludskije_poteri_sssr_v_velikoj_otechestvennoj_vojne_2009-05-04.htm
Materials free online encyclopedia "Wikipedia"
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