The State of the Red Army on June 22, 1941

The Red Army in June of 1941 was very much a product of several distinct eras and experiences. In many ways it represented the fourth iteration of the Red Army in less than fifteen years. First, came the Red Army of the late 1920s - a very basic and stripped down organization that had emerged from the Russian Civil War and was reflective of the fact that the first five-year plan for Soviet industry was just beginning. In comparsion we have the seemingly powerful 1936 edition of the Red Army. By 1936 the Soviet economy had made huge strides in terms of industrializing, Soviet military thinkers had been on the forefront of the most innovative and revolutionary ideas then in existence regarding the application and use of an army's combat potential and in terms of equipment the Red Army had been built into perhaps the strongest army in the world at that time. Unfortunately, much of that which gave the 1936 era Red Army its strength was quickly lost via the self-destructive purges of the late 1930's. From there, another problem existed. Namely, by the mid-1930s the Red Army had armed itself with a generation of weapons that though among the world's best at that time would be obsolete within a very short period. Moreover, the Red Army was slow to develop and put into production the next generation of weapons being fielded by other great powers in the final years of the decade. Weapons the Red Army very much needed to match if it were to compete effectively in the early part of the Second World War.

Worse yet, in the dark years following the worst of the purges the Red Army struggled to fully implement the modernization and reformation process required to stand up against the world's foremost army in 1941: the German army. Moreover, the 1940-1941 edition of the Red Army was attempting to do a number of ambitious things at once, not least of which was its ongoing attempts to recapture the Deep Operational roots laid down in the early to mid 1930s and lost in the years prior to the German invasion. However, if that wasn't a significant enough task it also was reorganizing, training, and re-equipping in response to recent combat experiences both in which it participated (most importantly being the Spanish Civil War and 1939-1940 War with Finland) and observed (Germany's blitz across Poland and Western Europe). Therefore, as we assess the state of the otherwise massive Red Army in June of 1941 we need to first revisit the long gestational process that produced it, analyzing the key factors in shaping the form the Red Army took on the eve of Barbarossa (the German code name for the June 1941 invasion of the Soviet Union). As part of this analysis my hope is that readers will see how the Second World War era's Red Army strengths and weaknesses actually had long-standing underpinnings in the culture of the interwar Red Army. I hope it was also become clear as to how much those years contributed to the shape and form taken by, in particular, Soviet ground forces as the German onslaught began. As such, let's first go back to the 1920s, picking up the narrative late in the decade and at a time when both the Soviet military and economy was very much being forcefully reimagined.

By 1927 there is no question that the Soviet Union was actively striving to reach great power status. Stalin was putting in place the first of his Five-Year Plans designed to industrialize the Soviet economy. The Soviet Union of the late 1920s was still a predominately agrarian economy and it is perhaps no surprise that the Red Army was nothing like the mechanized colossus it would become. However, it was not lacking in manpower. With a standing strength of 607,125 men (outside of the nascent Soviet air force) and another nearly three million part-timers the Soviet ground forces could quickly be mobilized into a very large army. But, as is usually true, this great size (larger than almost all of the world's other armies at that time) was deceiving. That's because the Red Army was very much reflective of the larger state of the Soviet Union at that time. In particular, it was staffed with a cadre of men and officers alike that were poorly educated plus contained a large number of territorial units of a part-time nature. These territorial units offered a relatively cheap method of creating a somewhat trained cadre to draw upon in time of war (with 41 of the 63 rifle divisions in existence during 1928 being territorial). However, they presented numerous problems in terms of being integrated with the smaller professional core of the army - not least of which being linguistic as the majority of the territorial personnel did not speak Russian.

Beyond that, the Red Army of the late 1920s was inadequately equipped in every sense of the word. In particular it lacked communications equipment, while cavalry still played a larger role than motorized transport and fighting vehicles. In particular the cavalry would well into the 1930s be championed by some of the Red Army's highest ranking leaders (including Voroshilov and Budennii) who had cut their teeth in combat during the Russian Civil War. At that time horse mounted soldiers had a degree of mobility out of all proportion to their effectiveness on more industrialized battlefields such as those found in Western Europe during the First World War and where weapons like tanks, machine guns, and concentrated artillery could destroy a cavalry unit in a shockingly brief period of time. It would not be until late in the 1930s when Voroshilov finally began to advocate for a more prominent role for the machine powered weapons systems of the era. But by then, and with war looming, the cavarly would have an outsized role in the Red Army (in comparison to say the Wehrmacht) well into the winter of 1941-1942.

Perhaps it is no surprise then that Mikhail Tukhachevskii (one of the groundbreaking reformers that would transorm the Red Army during the 1930s) regarded the 1926 summer maneuvers as distressing at best in terms of what they showed about the Red Army's readiness for war. Of all of the problems observed (including a lack or realism) perhaps the most serious was the enormous command and control issues issues exacerbated by inadequate communications equipment. In addition, the officer corps reacted far too slowly to events, thus communicating orders often out of touch with what was happening. Oftentimes these orders also reflected a lack of creativity and intiative that boded poorly not only for successful battlefield outcomes but further undermined attempts at getting the different combat arms to work together effectively. Of course this shouldn't be surprising given the part-time nature of the territorial divisions participating in the summer exercises. In many cases territorial units trained together for at most one month out of the year. Nevertheless, the core cadre divisions, though performing better, were not attaining a level of proficiency even remotely close to what was needed.

Even a decade later, much of the same issues plagued the Red Army. For instance, perhaps to assist the participants in the manuevers taking place in 1936 within the Belorussian Military District a lack of realism proved the norm. There, the first day was actually cancelled due to rainfall. Once the manuevers finally got under way they were further restricted to not only good weather but daylight hours. In addition, featured frequent breaks were allowed so units could reposition at certain preordained transitional points. For example, once contact with a defensive position has been initiated it was not uncommon for the umpires to call a halt to field exercises. At that time the participating units were allowed to reset and conduct the next phase of actually attempting to penetrate the defensive position. Field exercises such as these remained so tighly scripted that it is no wonder Soviet officers would struggle with initiative, creativity, and other basic command skills in the years to come. Needless to say, training such as this did little toward moving Deep Operational concepts (which we will discuss momentarily) from theory to practice.

Inadequate education levels within the ranks and officer corps also hindered the Red Army's ability to modernize itself. Illiteracy proved to be a huge problem. In 1927 fully 40-45 percent of all recruits accepted into the Red Army were illiterate or were defined as having "poor literacy". As such, the Red Army was forced to establish reading and other such academic programs just to get recruits to a level where they could actually learn how to use more sophisticated military equipment beyond the standard rifle. These training efforts did pay off enough that by 1932 the numbers of illiterate soldiers in the Red Army had been cut in half. Similarly, better educational attainment in larger Soviet society meant that the younger cohorts of the Red Army recruits in the latter half of the decade came from a better educated background. However, this also meant that a signficant portion of the Red Army's veteran members remained decidedly undereducated in comparison to their peers well into the Second World War. And this remained true in the officer corps as well.

Regarding the Red Army's officer corps, the Central Committe of the Party issued a damning decree on June 5, 1931. This decree found that the officer corps suffered from an insufficent level of training and demanding that educational level of officers be raised. Of course, recognizing a problem was one thing - rectifying it quite another. The Soviet Union's system of primary education in the late 1920s was still very much in a rudimentary state of reform and development. Though ongoing reforms improved matters by the early 1930s the general educational level of Soviet officer trainees remained low. For instance, by 1932 the number of first-year students in military schools with at least seven years of general education had climbed a full twenty five percent over 1928 levels. Considering where they were starting from however, this meant that in 1932 roughly 24 percent of all incoming first year students had attained that mark versus 18 percent four years prior. The trend was moving in the right direction, but it wouldn't be until 1936 that the first-year military school student body could claim universal rates of seven or eight year general schooling prior to entry. But solving educational issues required trained faculty as well and in that regard the Red Army had equally severe problems.

Part of the issue involving shortages of adequate faculty proved self-inflicted. Repeated political purges thinned the stock of able instructors. That said, the Red Army had access to a number of world-class lecturers. G.S. Isserson at the Frunce and then General Staff Academy was in many ways one of the most notable. An accomplished military theorist and proponent of combined arms mobile warfare as well as Deep Operational thought Isserson ended up teaching such Second World luminaries as Vasilevskii, Rotmistrov, and Bagramian. But Isserson was unique. There simply were not enough capable instructors to handle the Red Army's exponential growth in the mid to latter part of the 1930s.

The growing size of the Red Army put increasing pressure on military schools to churn out officers. Finding bodies to flesh out organizational charts became more important than the actual quality of the education. To help matters training programs were consistently cut in length; reduced by as much as half by the mid-1930s. Remember, this was a huge issue for a number of reasons. Not least of which being the low educational levels held by many officer candidates. In October of 1936 as many as 70 percent of the junior officer corps had only a primary education, with a full 10 percent of battalion and regimental commanders marked as poorly educated. Those that survived the purges that began in 1937 would end up being brigade, divisional, and corps commanders early in the Second World War and thus facing the German onslaught. Another problem stemmed from the lack of trained non-commissioned officers (NCO). Sergeant's were reintroduced to the Red Army only in November of 1940 and the near non-existence of a core of NCO's meant underprepared Soviet officers held an outsized importance within the Red Army. This stood in poor comparsion to say the Wehrmacht's deep bench of well-educated, highly trained, and veteran NCO ranks that could help buttress its junior officer cadre.

For a number of reasons the Red Army's early war massive size would fail to produce consistent battlefield success while most often only narrowly avoiding complete catastrophe. But few ranked as significant as the lack of adequately trained personnel. It is one of many reasons why the Soviet leadership's belated post-purge attempts to rehabilitate Deep Operational thought floundered in 1940-41. It wasn't just that many of the leading proponents of Deep Operations had been killed or marginalized during the purges. The raw human material best suited to bringing to life Deep Operational concepts was largely still very much the same poorly educated and trained individuals struggling to master more basic theories of military operations. That's because, and at its core Deep Operations was really two intertwined concepts targeted toward leveraging technically challenging combined arms usage during offensive operations.

The first, known as Deep Battle, was aimed at solving the problem of breaking through an enemy's defenses in depth. The concept emphasized employing combined arms, surprise, speed, and firepower to shock the defensive framework set up in opposition and penetrating through the entirety of its depth before the defender could bring up reserves and bog the attacker down. Momentum and mobile firepower meant everything, and that meant mechanized warfare. The work of Mkhail Tukhachevskii and Vladimir Triandafillov proved particularly important in developing these concepts. They also drew upon the work of other modern theorists from around the world and in particular Germany with whom many such ideas were tested out during the German-Soviet thaw in relations and military cooperation of the 1920s.

From there, Deep Battle (more of a tactical concept) merged with Deep Operations - the latter being the operatinoal/strategic goals coupled with the concepts used to describe the exploitation and pursuit phase of the offensive. This Soviet style art of offensive operations was very much dependent upon the tank and aircraft. The problem was, and would remain, the inability to develop adequate communications fostering the kind of command and control to really bring Deep Battle/Operations to life. Again and again command and control would be the Red Army's achilles heel during the Second World War. These failings went back to the Red Army's struggles regarding developing the appropriate communications equipment, bringing in educated talent and properly training that talent to lead complicated combined arms operations.

Nevertheless, the Red Army's 1936 Field Regulations were truly innovative (as developed in particular out of Tukhachevskii's practical work to bring Deep Operations to life). Only the Wehrmacht's Truppenfuhrung manual was better; and again that was partially for leadership reasons. The Red Army played lip support to fostering initative in their officer corps. The regulations would mention it but the Red Army was an organization where was never a strong enough push toward creating the innovative and flexible culture within say the German officer and NCO corps. In written regulations, training, and practice the Germans emphasized concepts such as Auftragstaktik (the freedom German officers had to interpret orders in the manner they best saw fit to accomplish a goal on an ever changing and mobile battlefield).

The failure to inculcate asomething like a Soviet version of Auftragstaktik within the Red Army was something Tukhachevskii and his more forward-thinking peers knew would be problematic for the Red Army. Instead, and as we shall discuss in detail in a moment, the Soviet leadership concentrated on building tanks and aircraft, doing so largely at the expense of everything else needed to make Deep Operations viable. Very little was accomplished toward increasing the artillery or infantry's mobility to keep pace with the tanks. Nothing like the half-track development then going on in the U.S. and Germany was pursued with any seriousness within the Red Army. Moreover, the Red Army failed to produce a flexible utility vehicle like the German kubelwagen, American Jeep, or British Bren Carrier. For that matter, the Red Army also failed to develop larger vehicles with good cross-country mobility needed for sustaining offensives. Though armored cars were developed they were not of the quality found in the Red Army's peer competitors nor was their use as part of coordinated reconnaissance team really put in practice.

Beyond technical issues were more fundamental problems. Even after the reforms of the late 1920s to mid-1930s the Red Army of 1936 still struggled to recruit and train the talent needed to direct large mechanized units on the battlefield. Foreign observers of the Red Army's September 1936 maneuvours gave mixed reviews. They found the Red Army's large tank fleet and use of paratroopers, to help penetrate and go over enemy defensive fronts respectively, to be impressive. More problematically however the training was overly scripted and set up in as favorable terms as possible to create success - rather than being refereed in a realistic manner. Communications and leadership were a problem, as was a lack of reconnaissance and a failure to coordinate well across units.

The Red Army was showing it could go toe-to-toe with any foe. But it was also clear that if confronted with a mobile enemy capable of maintaining a high tempo of operations the Red Army would be in trouble. Even Kliment Voroshilov recognized that the Red Army's ability to combine arms effectively remained a problem. Furthermore, Soviet airpower, though ostensibly powerful, was unable to really impact events on the ground in the way desired and the artillery could not keep up with the tanks. The armor and infantry did not coordinate well, and a lack of communications equipment hindered the ability of armored formations to react to changing circumstances. Voroshilov went on to criticize (in his November 1936 report) the staff work of the field commands and higher. A General Staff had been formed just the year before, as was a new training Academy of the General Staff but both were getting up to speed. Moreover, the Academy's capacity was far too low. There were only 138 officers in the 1936 class (and even as late as 1941 only 1,700 officers graduating from the Frunze Academy) for an army growing by hundreds of thousands of men each year in the late 1930s. Moreover, developing initiative in officers was not only far from encouraged but about to be crippled by the purges which would hit the Red Army in strength in 1937.

That said, the Red Army of 1936 was a much improved military organization over its late 1920's incarnation if for no other reason than its huge and well-equipped tank and combat aircraft parks.By the Second Five-Year-Plan of the mid-1930s one could argue that no other army in the world was taking delivery of more or better tanks and aircraft. This is a credit to Stalin and his ruthless vision. He not only forcefully (and bloodily) industrialized the Soviet Union, but was also pragmative enough to seek the kind of foreign investment, parts, and licensing to bridge the domestic gaps in creating modern military equipment until Soviet industry could take over.

What many people forget is that on the eve of the First Five-Year-Plan the Red Army was almost entirely reliant on about 80 British and French tank models (organized into a single tank regiment) that had been captured during the Russian Civil War. However, in November of 1928 the Soviet Union began to manufacture its first mass produced tank - a copy of the French Renault FT-17 that would be designated as the T-18. Around 900 would be produced and though thoroughly obsolete by 1941 several were reported to have fought in the early stages of Barbarossa. From there Soviet tank development really took off as T-18 production wound down in 1931. That's because in 1930 the Red Army had acquired 50 British tanks (Carden-Lloyd Mk-IV tankettes, 15 Vickers 6-ton and 15 Vickers 12-ton) and two models of Walter Christie's unique M1940 tank featuring high speed (especially on roads where they were designed to run on their road wheels without tracks if need be). As with the T-18 being based on the French FT-17, the Carden-Lloyd became the basis for the Soviet T-27, the Vickers 6-ton the Soviet T-26 and the Vickers 12-ton the Soviet BT-2. Other British tank designs were being adopted to create the T-28 medium and T-35 heavy tanks as well as the T-37A amphibious tank. By the end of 1933 the T-26, T-27, BT-2 and T-35 were all in mass production, and the Red Army had taken delivery of 3,532 tanks. On paper this only got better as in 1936 alone the Red Army produced nearly 4,000 tanks (or more tanks than in the entire German tank park when it invaded Poland in 1939) including 1,049 BT-7 medium tanks and 15 T-35 heavy tanks. All of these tanks were ranked among the world leaders in armored protection and firepower -which along with speed (at least for light and medium tanks) would be the calling cards of Soviet tank design throughout much of the Second World War.

Nevertheless the quickly ramped up production levels came with a price. Soviet tank designs were robust and generally reliable. However, this also meant development stopped short of fully addressing important features such as communications equipment, crew comfort, main gun optics, cupolas and the like. Moreover, in a quest to increase the absolute numbers of tanks produced and with a myriad of designs in production - spare parts shortages became an issue that would reach crippling levels during Barbarossa.

Unlike Soviet tank development, which was dormant throughout much of the 1920s, Soviet military aircraft research and development had continued to move along. As a result and when the First Five-Year-Plan began the Red Army Air Force already could field 900 planes - albeit mostly reconnaissance aircraft with only a third being fighters or attack aircraft. The Soviet economy then produced 5,109 aircraft between 1930 and 1932 but these were not nearly as capable as their global competitors. Just as is true today engine development proved the hardest part in modifying foreign designs to create a fully self-supporting domestic aircraft industry. Nevertheless, and much like with Soviet tanks, by 1936 the Red Army was taking delivery of modern Polikarpov I-16 monoplane fighters with vastly improved engines that performed just as well as German Heinkel He-51 and Italian Fiat CR-32 biplanes. On the other hand, and the though the Red Army's airforce had thousands of aircraft they were one-step behind. Europe's other major military powers were in 1936 nearing production of next generation aircraft like the German Bf 109 and British Hurricane and Spitfire. Aircraft were not only the place the Red Army lagged in terms of its technical quality.

As late as 1936 the Red Army's artillery was nowhere near the dominant combat arm it would become during the Second World War. Moreover, anti-aircraft and anti-tank weapons had not been given nearly enough research attention. As for indirect firepower, obsolete gun designs had remained in production well into the 1930s. Only in 1936 did more modern weapons finally begin emerging from development. These included 76.2mm Divisional Gun Obr. 1936 F-22 of which the first 400 had been manufactured by the end of 1937. With a much improved gun carriage over the 1927 model the F-22 had better mobility (older versions like the 1927 edition had carriages that allowed the weapons to be towed at only six or seven kilometers per hour). One year later the 122mm Howitzer Obr. 1938 (M-30) went into production with likewise an improved carriage over its predecessor allowing it to be towed at speeds that would keep up with the tanks. Problematically however, many obsolete weapons remained in service and would face the Germans during Barbarossa. Meanwhile, the development of useful heavier weapons such as the 152mm ML-20 Howitzer continued to lag. Though the Red Army experimented with self-propelled artillery this was done in only a desultory fashion hardly conducive to making Deep Operations a reality. It would not be until the middle of the Second World War that the Red Army would begin to acquire this badly needed capability.

In the meantime the Red Army failed to demand adequate numbers of tractors and other such prime movers as well as not nearly enough trucks. The capable GAZ-AA (a copy of a Ford model truck) was being produced as were tractors but not nearly enough trucks coupled with the fact that tractor production was bifurcated for agricultural and military reasons alike to handicap not only the Red Army but also the economy. In times of war food production would become a problem as tractors were shunted to the military. Thus food security became a much larger issue for the Soviet Union during the Second World War than one would expect for such an otherwise agriculturally blessed nation. And as with food production (where Stalin's forced collectivization and resulting famine would kill millions during the 1930s) self-inflicted errors would nearly kill the Red Army well before a single German tank crosed the border in June of 1941. That's because Stalin and his security apparatus virtually decapitated the Red Army. They did so through a series of destructive purges directed at the Soviet officer corps. These purges set back modern war-fighting ideas like Deep Operations to such an extant as to nearly lead to the Soviet Union's destruction.

Though political arrests had long been a feature of Stalin's Soviet Union, as applied to the military these were primarily non-criminal exercises. Most of the thousands of Soviet officers purged in the early part of the 1930s merely lost their jobs. But late in 1936 the military purges began taking on a lethal tone. From there events picked up steam, with the February-March 1937 Plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party being the final step in unleashing the Soviet police state on the Red Army's officer corps. The impact was catastrophic.

In 1936 the Red Army had five Marshals. Tukhachevskii and A.I. Egorov were executed, V.K. Bliuker was arrested and died while being held and only Stalin's old buddies Voroshilov and S.M. Budennii survived. From the Main Military Council's ranks (the body playing a key role in the Red Army's development in the 1930s) only ten of eighty original members remained following the purges. And the purges didn't stop at the highest levels. In 1936 the Red Army had fifteen army level commanders. Between 1936 and 1942 nineteen men who held those commands were arrested and executed. Further down the chain of command 474 officers commanded army brigades in 1936. Of those men 216 were executed or died in captivity (another killed himself). The loss of Tukhachevskii and I.P. Uborevich (men who according to their peers were every bit the equal of the Red Army's best operational level Second World War commanders like G. Zhukov, N.F. Vatutin, or K.K. Rokossovskii) meant backward thinking political hacks ill suited to command no less for planning purpose, men like Budennii and Lev Mekhlis, either remained in or were elevated to positions far beyond their limited talents. Arrests and executions only told and part of the story. Roughly 3,000 of the Red Army's officers found themselves removed from command level positions in 1937 and 1938 alone.

The problems arising from the vast losses incurred by the Red Army's senior and mid-level officer corps crippled the Red Army for years to come. For instance, during the purges the Red Army was still growing by hundreds of thousands of men. In 1936 the regular Red Army had around 930,000 men. By February of 1939 the Red Army's regular ranks numbered 1,565,020 men. With a falling supply of officers and increased demand the Soviet leadership cut short officer training cycles by as much as half. In turn they elevated men to command positions that they were nowhere near ready to assume. The loss of instructors further crippled the education of the officer corps. Early in 1938 the Frunze Military Academy could only muster 106 teachers from a planned number of more than 300. What's more 61 of the 106 instructors were under active investigation. Among the most notable instructors either killed or arrested from Frunze or the Academy of the General Staff included G.S. Isserson, A. A. Svechin, and I.I. Trutko. In turn, many of the officer cadets or surviving graduates not only lacked adequate instruction but also by dint of premature promotion had little practical field experience in comaprison to many of those purged. Only time and training could rectify such a situation and as war engulfed continental Europe the Red Army had neither luxury.

Those officers that survived the purges all too frequently led from a position of terror, fear, and distrust rather than confidence in their own decision-making. Initiative and any sense of thinking in a creative manner was quickly abandoned. After all independent thinkers, like Tukhachevskii, had been more likely to be arrested and murdered. Poor discipline, burnout, alcoholism, self-injuries, and suicides skyrocked in the Red Army's demoralized ranks. As early as April of 1938 the Main Military Council of the Red Army found that accident rates had soared 80 percent from 1936 to 1937. Drunkeness and destruction of property resulted in thousands of officers being kicked out of the Red Army in 1937-1938 alone. Suicide rates soared. For instance in the Special Red Banner Far Eastern Army suicide rates and attempted suicides in the officer corps went from five in May of 1937 to twenty-six in January 1938.

One can only imagine a Wehrmacht without Manstein, Guderian, or Rommel to get a sense of the damage the purges did to the Red Army at the higher levels. In the lower ranks, and whereas in the German army NCO's and junior officers served for years before being promoted (accuring invaluable experience and training) in the Red Army of 1937-1938 NCO equivalents were being pushed into four month training programs to replenish the depleted junior officer corps. The Purges gutted the Red Army's officer corps at just about the worst possible time, and brought the Red Army much closer to collapse than otherwise would have been likely following the German invasion in 1941.

That said, there were opportunities for combat experience in the 1930s Red Army and thus time to recover from the purges (which were at their worst in 1937-1938) in part if not in full. During the decade of the 1930s and into 1940 the Red Army was in fact involved in eight major operations, most of which involved combat. And though commanders with combat experience found themselves on the chopping block more often than not - thereby vitiating the lessons they could have inculcated in the ranks - lessons would be learned. Whether they were the right one's is what we will look at first in analyzing the results of the long Soviet involvement in the Spanish Civil War.

The actual numbers of Soviet military personnel sent to Spain was relatively small and did not see a tremendous amount of combat. Between 1936 and 1939 only 158 Soviet miliary personnel died in Spain from an initial force numbering only a few thousand men acting more often as advisors than participants in the fighting. The bigger Soviet contribution came via equipment; with 648 planes, 347 tanks, and 60 other armored vehicles along with much larger numbers of artillery, rifles, and machine-guns sent to aid the Republican cause. Perhaps the greatest takeaway from the Red Army's experience in Spain involved the use of armor. Unfortunately, the Soviet analysis of that usage proved hit and miss. Perhaps this is understandable, as Soviet involvement on the Republican side (much like German involvement on the Nationalist side) was really more about testing equipment.

In terms of armor the Soviet machines acquitted themselves well in traditional measures of firepower and armored protection - proving far superior to the German supplied Panzer I light tanks. However, key Soviet officers involved in reviewing the experience garnered in Spain seemed to play to their audience - in particular Budennii, Voroshilov, and G.I. Kulik. Given the purges and the atmosphere of terror pervading the Red Army officer corps during this same period perhaps this understandable if lamentable. Both D.G. Pavlov and Kulik's contributions would prove particularly problematic. Then an advisor to the Repblican forces, Kulik would go on to become a Marshal of Artillery. Together with Pavlov his reports emphasized the non-importance of massing tanks. This was part of a general army wide move away from Deep Operational thought. Not at all surprising considering the greatest advocates of Deep Operations were then being arrested, imprisoned, demoted, or even executed.

Another factor in such the move away from Deep Operations however, were reports influenced by the improper use of armor. For instance, one of the first large-scale uses of Soviet armor occured in the fall of 1936. This involved a company of T-26 tanks roughly handled by Nationalist infantry in the village of Sesena - losing three tanks in the process. The tanks had been deployed into the village in an unsupported fashion with virtually no reconnaissance ahead of time or infantry support during the battle. Thus the lesson should have been one of the dangers of operating in built up areas without effectively combining arms. Instead the major take away was the ineffectiveness of massed armor against infantry. In the years that followed the Soviet supplied armor was frequently used in small numbers, primarily in infantry support. Anti-tank weapons therefore could more easily knock out Republican armor when it appeared on the battlefield.

Kulik took all the wrong lessons from these engagements. He derided armor versus anti-tank guns as all too similar to unprotected infantry before machine-guns. To be fair, Kulik mentions that combining arms, particularly infantry and artillery, would help mitigate against losses to anti-tank guns. Regardless, he and many of his peers stop well short of going back to what Tukhachevskii had advocated prior to his arrest and execution. That being, employing massed armor and combined arms to break through and behind enemy defenses where they could wreak havoc deep in an opponent's operational rear.

Similarly, Pavlov derided the use of tank forces as the key element in offensive operations. Pavlov cited the Battle of the Jarama in February 1937. There the armor was parcelled out as usual. There wasn't even an attempt to test out Tukhachevskii's ideas. In another operation during October of 1937 a lack of recconnaissance led to heavy armor losses. But that was overlooked as well. Instead, the primary takeaway put forward by key Soviet analysts was that tanks needed to work under and in support of the infantry rather than as a source of mobile firepower employed en masse with other combat arms as part of a coordinated effort to bring Deep Operational theories to life.

On top of that, the readily apparent problems posed by using infantry mounted atop tanks did not result in a renewed attempt to provide the infantry with armored half-tracks and other such personnel carriers (as was ongoing at the time in the German and U.S. army's in particular). As a result Second World War era Soviet infantry would ride or walk into battle in an unprotected manner - making it difficult to foster tank-infantry cooperation on a mobile battlefield. With the tank being knocked down in stature a resultant organizational impact was inevitable.

In November 1939 the Red Army disbanded its Mechanized Corps and formed mechanized divisions in their place. Tank Corps were out, independent tank brigades were in. Tanks were still being concentrated. But this was happening within a context that would make it difficult for them to stand up to formations as balanced and hard-hitting as German panzer divisions were becoming. Meanwhile, the Red Army was also engaging with the Imperial Japanese Army in a number of overlooked battles. Battles that showed the opposite of the ill-considered lessons being taken from the Spanish invovlement.

The Red Army and Imperial Japanese Army repeatedly clashed during the 1930s. The latter part of the decade featured particularly sharp combat between the two powers, with the Red Army technically coming out on top in each of the two most important incidents. Of those two, first came a border battle at Lake Khasan during the summer of 1938. There, around 15,000 men from the Soviet 39th Rifle Corps ostensibly prevailed over a Japanese force of roughly 7,500 men from their 19th Division. However the Red Army's performance was far from impressive. In spite of outnumbering the Japense forces and possessing far more generous armor and artillery support (245 T-26, 79 BT-series, and 21 T-37 tanks for the Soviet forces versus zero Japanese tanks and 237 artillery pieces for the Soviets to 37 artillery pieces for the Japanese) the Soviet troops struggled. 

Though the Red Army did face fighting through hilly and marshy terrain against the dug-in Japanese troops, numerous problems bediviled the 39th Rifle Corps (the primary Soviet formation engaged in the fighting). These included inadequate logistical support, especially artillery ammunition shortages often caused by disorganized units arriving at the front with their guns but not their shells. Other issues were poor lines of communication, slow deployments that greatly hindered the ability to bring all of the available artillery to bear, poor planning, and a lack of organization. In addition spotty air support highlighted a general inability to effectively combine combat arms and poor teamwork proved the order of the day more often than not. From there, inadequate communications, a lack of reconnaissance, and the usual litany of problems that had been part and parcel of the Red Army's growing pains during the 1930s all proved endemic.

Given all of that it is perhaps no surprise that the only reason the Red Army succeeded in pushing back the Japenese troops was that the Japanese high command decided to retreat so as to avoid escalating the conflict. The 39th Rifle Corps suffered far greater casualties than the Japanese forces. The Red Army lost 717 killed, 75 missing, and 2,752 wounded against Japanese casualties of 526 dead and 913 wounded. In addition, the Japanese completely destroyed 24 Soviet tanks, damaged 56 more, and destroyed or damaged ten percent of the Soviet artillery. An internal Soviet report harshly criticized the leadership, planning, and deployment of the Soviet troops. The commander of the Far Eastern Red Banner Front was subsequently arrested and executed on November 9, 1938. Of course, given the impact the ongoing purges were having on the Red Army's officer corps (with 599 Soviet officers from the Far Eastern Red Banner Front arrested in July of 1938 alone) it should be no surprise that the Soviet troops were poorly led and performed so abjectly.

In contrast, and late in the summer of 1939 Soviet forces would perform much better against the Japanese at Khalkin Gol. In a battle that was a clear-cut Soviet victory the Japanese forces suffered heavy losses. Of the 60,000-75,000 men from the Kwantung Army who participated in the fighting some 8,000 died with another 10,000 wounded or falling ill. In turn however the Red Army, though victorious, suffered significant losses of its own. The Soviet 1st Army Group at that time numbered around 70,000 men. Yet it suffered 6,831 killed, 1,143 missing, and 15,251 wounded. The BT-series tanks proved quite vulnerable to anti-tank weaponry. All told the 1st Army Group's armored park lost as totally destroyed or needing to be sent back to the factory for major repair 157 BT-5 tanks, 59 BT-7 tanks, 12 flame tanks, 8 T-26 tanks, and 17 T-37 tanks. In addition, 133 Soviet armored cars were destroyed in the fighting (mostly BA-6 and BA-10 armored cars).

In fact, between May and July of 1939 the Soviet forces in the region hardly fought better than they had in 1938 against the Japanese - who largely held the initiative against Soviet commanders doing a deplorable job of combining arms. Soviet tank losses were quite high as they charged over open ground without adequate artillery or infantry support. However, at that point G.K. Zhukov, who took over the Soviet forces in the region during July of 1939, leveraged the greater available Soviet firepower and the fact he was in part facing second-rate Japanese defenders.

The Japanese 23rd Division participating in the initial attacks was hardly well equipped or trained, though it was joined by the arguably better 7th Division. The Japanese high command once more showed it had no great interest in maintaining a land war against the Red Army. The two regiments of Japanese tanks initially deployed to the battlefield were withdrawn by August, when after extensive preperation Zhukov launched his big offensive.

In the large set-piece attack he launched on August 20, 1939 Zhukov had taken his ample tank forces and indirect firepower, massed these assets, and pushed his commanders to move aggressively using the tanks and armored cars to flank the Japanese defenders. Helping Zhukov's push wasn't just the nature of the classic Deep Operational plan he executed, but also the Japanese propensity to largely fight in static defensive positions while being held in place by overwhelming amounts of Soviet artillery. The initial bombardment supporting Zhukov's offensive was supplemented by air strikes and lasted over two pulverizing hours. Only then had infantry attacks followed. Moreover, Zhukov had done a solid job of concealing the size, scope, and direction of the flanking nature of the August 20th counterstroke in an early demonstration of Soviet maskirovka (hiding offensive preparation and deceiving the enemy as to his intent). Though the Japanese fought hard (hence the high Soviet casualties), within four days they had been enveloped. Japanese counter-attacks from August 24-26th failed to break the Soviet encirclement.

Overall, Zhukov had put together a solid plan emphasizing Deep Operational theories otherwise in retreat within the purge wracked Red Army of 1939. Moreover, he proved well organized - overcoming poor logistical circumstances (railheads were at least 400 miles away) by leaning on the large numbers of trucks available to his 1st Army Group. That said, within his command the officer corps continued to struggle to direct combined arms mobile operations. Again, training, communications, teamwork, initiative, and staff work were hardly up to the task. Firepower and superior mobility carried the day against a static foe of a second-rate nature in comparison to what the Red Army would have faced against modern European armies. As such, Zhukov's experience at Khalkin Gol did not prompt nearly the level of changes that the Red Army's next major military action would - the disastrous Winter War against Finland. First, however came a very spotty Soviet deployment into Poland.

While the Soviet forces in the Far East remained quite busy in 1938-1939 against the Japanese, their European comrades were hardly sitting idle. In September of 1939, and as part of the new August 1939 treaty with Germany, Soviet forces marched into Poland just over two weeks after German forces had begun blitzing their way across the Polish countryside. Organized into a Belorussian and Ukrainian Front completely outclassing the shattered Polish army's remnants in firepower, the Soviet invasion of Eastern Poland should have been a smooth process. Instead, just getting across the border proved an adventure. Little had been done to prepare units for movement. Traffic jams quickly turned into hopelessly mingled units moving more as mobs than in mutually supporting combat formations. The provision of motorized transport was nowhere near what was required. It was not uncommon for even Soviet motorized units to mostly move on foot, as the allocation of motor vehicles in many units fell below half of what was required.

Once over the Polish border the Soviet fronts suffered more than 3,000 dead and wounded against what was spotty resistance at best. In one of the few large battles between Polish and Soviet forces the defenders of Grodno destroyed ten tanks from the Soviet 27th Tank Brigade. The Soviet tankers had once more entered a town without infantry support. The Poles knocked out 19 Soviet tanks and inflicted over 200 casualties in a running three day battle that ended when the various Polish militia and regular army forces withdrew.

Time and again Soviet command and control proved poor during the Polish campaign. The officer corps and the men were simply insufficiently trained and equipped. Soviet units frequently moved over the border and into ostensible enemy territory without conducting reconnaissance or maintaining communications or support with neighboring units. Moreover, because the Red Army was moving into Poland it could not rely upon telephone lines and thus the already inadequate use of radios only made the situation worse in terms of directing units to where they needed to go. This also made air-ground coordination limited at best. Even though the Belorussian Front has over 1,000 aircraft assigned to it in support, basic functions like navigation proved diffucult for under-trained pilots, and accidents were common. On the ground, Soviet officers maintained little appetite for showing initiative and frequently used the reconnaissance battalions with which they had provided as little more than another regular combat unit. Artillery usage was spotty at best and the Soviet artillery struggled to keep up with more mobile formations no less provide adequate fire support when needed. More often than not the artillery found itself wheeled up and used in a direct fire role for which it was ill-suited.

In some instances the failures of commanders to keep track of their units meant that they operated completely independently of each other. For instance, the Soviet 99th Rifle Divsision crossed the border without its artillery regiment or the batteries assigned to its rifle regiments, while also missing a supply train and its assigned tank and engineer battalion. The Belorussian Front's 21st Rifle Division deployed short of uniforms and boots for 400 of its men. Missing supply trains were only part of the enormous logistical failures hobbling the Soviet advance. The Soviet 29th Tank Brigade was forced to cannibalize fuel from one of its tank battalions for the other in order to keep up the advance while traffic jams delayed other armored units by hours. However, in spite of all of that the benefit here was that the Polish army had largely been destroyed by the time the Red Army made its appearance. It would not have the same luxury against the Finnish army two months thereafter.

Perhaps it is no surprise that in perhaps the most important of the pre-Barbarossa tune-ups, the Soviet invasion of Finland, the Red Army performed poorly. Following a contrived November 1939 border incident the Soviet Union invaded Finland. For those still enamored with brute force strength the results were anything but what would be expected. In spite of fielding over a half million men against 130,000 Finns (and on the Karelian Isthmus the numbers were even more skewed with 21,000 lightly armed Finns facing off against 120,000 Soviet soldiers equipped with 1,400 tanks and 900 field guns) the Red Army's attack initially went about as bad as one could imagine. Equipment shortages plagued the troops from day one. Logistics were a joke. Moreover, the Finns proved shockingly well-armed (Finnish sub-machine gunners in particular caused significant chaos in the Soviet ranks), trained, motivated, and had perfectly adapted their hit and run tactics to the snow blanketed forests.

The impact of the purges really showed up in Finland, having decimated the quality of the Soviet officer corps. Creativity and initiative were near non-existent on the battlefield. Human wave assaults proved the order of the day, and the motivated well-trained Finns cut down the Soviet troops by the tens of thousands. The leadership of the Soviet 44th Rifle Division proved a case study in what not to do. Though having deployed in Poland the arguably now experienced divsion would end up being nearly destroyed in the Finnish campaign. This stemmed from a number of factors outside the divisional commander's control, as well as because of his inept leadership. Having been promoted far too rapidly in the officer starved post-purge Red Army he was out of his element commanding an entire rifle division. Moreover, he was constantly pressured from above to move forward no matter the cost and without proper preperation he split his division into two columns while deploying his reconnaissance and engineer elements alongside the foot marching infanbtry heavy second column (with most of his firepower and more mobile units in the other). With perhaps the two most important units delegated to standard infantry roles his forces were time and again surprised by Finnish attacks or stopped cold by roadblocks, bunkers, and the like while the engineers were laboriously brought forward. Perhaps it is no surpise that mines thus took a heavy toll of Soviet men and machines alike.

The 44th Rifle Division's experience was hardly the only instance where the Finns completely outmaneuvoured poorly deployed Soviet troops. The fact the Red Army was largely confined to the few narrow tracks through the dense forests and deep snow was indicative of the poor training and lack of specialized equipment endemic in an army that should have been one of the world's premier practitioners of winter warfare. The Soviet columns were repeatedly cut to pieces by fast moving Finnish counterattacks buttressed by superb tactics fully adapted to the bad weather conditions and terrain. Well concealed Finnish snipers acquired a well deserved reputation for their lethal proficiency. One Finnish corporal, Simo Hayha, claimed over 500 confirmed kills in just one hundred days of fighting - a record unmatched by anyone else during the Second World War. Soviet losses climbed ever higher as 1939 drew to a close. At the Battle of Tolvajarvi the Finns completely destroyed the aforementioned Soviet 44th and 163rd Rifle Divisions.

Reconnaissance failings proved crucial toward explaining the massive losses taken by the Red Army. The forces deployed in Finland either ignored or misused reconnaissance assets at virtually every level, from the tactical to the strategic. It didn't help that, much as in the inept Polish deployment, the entire campaign had been rushed and put together on the fly. Even when appropriate and accurate intelligence was gleaned as to Finnish units, that information often failed to get to the field commanders. The murderous Soviet security state and purges had created a level of paranoia and fear of handling no less sharing intelligence in the Red Army's officer corps virtually unmatched in any other major army of the era. 

Intelligence gathered was often analyzed in a faulty manner. Though evidence was present that the Finns would be no pushover the Soviet commanders involved in the initial stages of the offensive denigrated Finnish capabilties. At the tactical level, poorly trained and rapidly promoted officers failed to appreciate, employ, or understand the importance of reconnaissance and active intelligence gathering. Though there were intelligence officers in the staffs of Soviet commands they were frequently under resourced, over worked, or lacked the training to give weight to their analysis - all too often then ignored. With bad weather limiting the VVS' ability to provide timely observation and intel gleaned from reconnaissance sorties the reconnaissance battalions of rifle and motorized units acquired an outsized importance. Regardless, much as in the case of the 44th Rifle Division the reconnaissance battalion was often buried deep in a march column and was almost never deployed ahead as called for by regulations. Now, regardless of poor training this is also partially understandable given the inadequate communications equipment assigned to Soviet officers terrified of losing contact with an entire battalion operating in vulnerable circumstances. In turn, reconnaissance frequently became an exercise in costly mass assaults whereby Soviet troops blindly attacked in an attempt to ascertain the location and size of Finnish defensive positions - a costly tactic to say the least. 

Perhaps not unsurprisingly, given the lack of appropriate reconnaissance the Soviet use of artillery left much to be desired. It was not uncommon for even heavy bombardments to leave well dug-in Finnish defensive emplacements largely intact. Countless artillery battery's were sited improperly, targeted in a very general rather than specific fashion (with not nearly enough use of forward observers to correct artillery fire called in by map coordinate alone nor enough radios to coordinate fire between artillery regiments), and on top of that, ammunition expenditures, though prodigious, were often misplaced. Much like in the fields of intelligence, reconnaissance, combat engineering, communications, and general staff work at the command level - the purges and a general lack of training and education resulted in an overall poor usage of the otherwise massive amounts of available Soviet artillery. When Soviet artillery proved successful, it was often a result of sheer firepower over anything else. What was all the more frustrating here is that by 1940 the Red Army was receiving modern artillery pieces from Soviet factories. The training and education just wasn't there to make use of the better weaponry. That said, the usage of simple mortars was becoming more prevalent even over the resistance of key players in the Soviet military establishment (most notably from Kulik, the head of the Main Artillery Directorate of the Red Army at that time). Because of bureacratic interference it would only be in 1940 that the production of 50mm, 82mm, and 120mm mortars began to reach acceptable levels - albeit at the cost of ammunition production which failed to keep up.

Given the failure to properly marry reconnaissance and intelligence assets to proper usage of artillery we also cannot be suprised by the failure of the tanks, infantry, and engineers to coordinate effectively in reducing Finnish bunkers and fixed defensive positions. It didn't help in this regard that the pressure to keep moving forward was immense. When a commander dared to take the initiative and put together a combined arms attack featuring flanking movements, as did the commander of the 139th Rifle Division early in December 1939, he was immediately reprimaded and ordered to attack in a more time expedient direct frontal assault that would expose his men to much higher casualties.

In addition, command and control remained deplorable for a number of reasons already discussed as well as use of obsolete equipment. The 6-PK radio sets (to name one such radio then in use) were unreliable, lacked the needed range, and easily jammed. Anytime land lines were unavailable it opened up Soviet commanders to the temporary loss of knowledge as to the location of their subordinate units. It was not uncommon for Soviet field commanders to take to the road, radio in hand, trying to track down their units - as was the case in once incident involving the 20th Tank Brigade and 10th Tank Corps. Here again, secrecy issues posed further problems. Radio operators were often terrified of transmitting for fear of the punishment that would result if improperly using the radio. Considering the communications problems amongst the ground forces it is understandable that trying to get effective close air support was often a non-starter. Though Soviet doctrine emphasized the use of aircraft to support the ground forces, poor staff work and communications, shoddy equipment, and the winter weather all contributed to making effective close air support the exception rather than the rule. Moreover, if poor training and education hurt the ground based specialist forces it was doubly costly to the VVS. The Red Army Air Force lost 269 aircraft in combat but nearly equalled those losses, 200 additional aircraft, in accidents.

In spite of the litany of Soviet failings outside help for the Finns was slow in coming. The Red Army gradually wore down their much smaller foe. More importantly, in January of 1940 Stalin replaced the campaign's commander, the incompetent Marshal Kliment Voroshilov, with Marshal Semyon Timoshenko (who would go on to be one of the Red Army's better operational level commanders during the first months of the German invasion). Timoshenko, unlike Voroshilov, recognized the Karelian Isthmus as the decisive front and concentrated his immense firepower there. In a massive offensive beginning on February 1, 1940 he threw 600,000 men at the Finnish defenders. In spite of possessing overwhelming manpower and material advantages (including ordering up the largest artillery barrage to date in the fighting) it took his men ten days to overcome the Finnish defenses. On March 12, 1940 the Finns signed the Treaty of Moscow and the fighting ended.

The short but sharp war with Finland had been both a disastrous embarassment but also a god-send for the Red army. In many ways it may have played a key role in forestalling the complete collapse of the Red Army during the German invasion of 1941. That's because Soviet military reform did not end with Timoshenko's efforts during the Finnish war or the experimentation that made the Red Army of February and March 1940 a much better one than that of the previous four months. Infantry training notably improved early in 1940, with entire companies pulled from the line and retrained in attacking fortifications. Though artillery usage had been spotty, well concealed heavy 152mm artillery pieces proved their worth in a direct fire role while assisting in the clearing of Finnish bunkers. The Soviet teams tasked with breaking Finnish defenses also worked at better integrating not just heavy artillery into the mix but engineers, anti-tank weapons, and direct fire field guns as well as flamethrower tanks. In addition, heavy tanks such as the T-35 proved their worth in working with the infantry to crack Finland's deadly Mannerheim line. It is was in these final months of the Winter War that the first KV series tank received its combat baptism. The thick armor of the KV series allowed it to penetrate deep into the Finnish defenses while shrugging off direct fire hits from Finnish artillery.

In addition, the Red Army had acquired a new appreciation of automatic weapons. Though the submachine gun had been in development with the Red Army for some time, it was only in 1934 that the 7.62mm PPD (pistol-pulemet Degtiareva) with its 25-round magazine was put into service. However, the weapon very much remained second fiddle to the rifle, with only 4,000 submachine guns produced between 1934 and 1939. That is until the Winter War when the destructive impact of Finnish submachine gunners spurred further development (including a new 71-round drum magazine) and production skyrocketing to 81,100 such weapons in 1940 alone. This also led to the PPSh (Shpagin machine pistol) in 1941. Not only was the PPSh cheaper to produce, by all accounts it was a superior firearm (coveted by many German soldiers in the 1941-1945 war) and would become the signature weapon of the Red Army's infantry during the Second World War.

Speaking of the infantry, the determination and bravery of the individual Soviet soldier cannot be forgotten. Time and again the average Soviet rifleman showed an astounding ability to fight hard, even in otherwise dire circumstances such as being encircled. This tenacity and stubborn strength would be something most foreign observers, including the Germans, would overlook when regarding the Red Army's poor performance against the Finns; whom it must be remembered the Red Army ultimately bested - albeit at a horrific cost. Total Soviet casualties numbered 333,084 men, including 126,875 dead or missing. This represented five times the casualties suffered by the Finns (43,557 wounded and 24,923 killed or missing).

As a result of such embarassing results the intense effort engineered by the Red Army toward learning from its inadequate performance against the Finns continued after the war. Throughout 1940 the Red Army doubled down on fostering unitary command (letting military commanders lead their troops free of needing to coordinate with political officers assigned to units), improving education and trainining and generally conducting a bottom-up focus on inculcating in the ranks and junior field officers an appreciation of and better skill set for the use of combined arms. This kind of grass-roots rebuild made sense. Though often lacking the educational levels and familiarity with modern machinery (like cars) of their peers in Europe and the U.S. - the average Russian soldier was a tough, hard-working, and determined man (or woman) not easily pushed over. Moreover, there were many key figures in the Red Army who even during the purges (men like Zhukov) who were determined to continue the project of modernizing the Red Army.

This process received an immeasurable boost when on May 7, 1940 Timoshenko replaced Voroshilov as People's Commissar for Defense. Though Meretskov temporarily replaced Shaposhnikov as Chief of the General Staff (a decided step back) while Kulik was made a Marshal (another big step back) the fact that high level changes were not only being considered but brought about indicated Stalin was not above shaking up the Red Army's command. Timoshenko was determined to modernize the Red Army and for him this began with instituting a program of more intensive and realistic training. In particular tactical level command and combined arms combat were targeted for improvement. Higher level officers were expected to make much better use of communications, specialist units (like reconnaissance and engineers) and coordinating with their peers and headquarters staff. To improve morale, and the prestige of officers and men alike, old ranks were brought back as were means of distinguishing raw recruits from enlisted men with at least two years service (efreitor which was similar to the rank of corporal in the U.S. Army).

That said, the Red Army of 1940 was not on a linear path to greater combat efficiency. It was taking steps foward and back, with a constant tension between reformers and reactionaries. A general summary of the Red Army in the 1930s is a story of immense improvement up to 1936. This was followed by the self-inflicted debacle of the Stalinist purges bringing the Red Army to its nadir late in 1939. With the year years 1940-1941 featuring a slow but steady rebuilding of the Red Army's competence and expertise. All of which left the Red Army of June of 1941 in a much better position than its 1939 iteration. The difference between those two years editions, though not rising to Wehrmacht standards, would prove enough to stave off total collapse in the face of the most destructive invasion in modern military history.

Considering where the Red Army was coming from, and the continued impact of the purges (which simmered along right up to the start of the German invasion), as well as the ongoing backward conservatism of key members in the Red Army's highest ranks it was somewhat remarkable that the Red Army was able to institute as many reforms as it would in 1940-1941. For a better example of this dynamic let's turn to the December 23, 1940 military conference where nearly 300 of the Red Army's senior officers (ranging from top ranking men like Chief of the General Staff Kirill Meretskov, Marshal Semyon Timoshenko and General Georgy Zhukov down to army, corps, and even some divisional commnaders) arrived in Moscow at the People's Commissariat for Defense located near Red Square. There, the subject of that year's annual militar conference was the Red Army's less than capable performance in recent military deployments and related attempts at reform. Stalin had taken a personal interest in focusing the conference's subject matter on reviewing and addressing Soviet military doctrine, organization, training, and equipment.

The conference was organized into six two-hour presentations. Each was followed by a discussion period meant to be unusually frank by Soviet standards (considering the fearful atmosphere lingering from the purges). Though Meretskov's presentation proved politically safe and tended to overlook the worst of the military problems, Zhukov did not pull any punches. Zhukov demanded the Red Army return to its Deep Operational roots (which had been largely cast aside during the purges). He wanted the Red Army to re-embrace combined-arms mobile operations of the sort that had proven so successfull as practiced by the Germans, and through his own experiences in crushing the Japanese at Khalkin-Gol in August of 1939. Unfortunately for the Red Army, the responses to Zhukov's suggestions were mixed at best.

Subsequent military exercises conducted during the first two weeks of 1941 saw an army led by Zhukov leverage the mobile combined-arms methods he favored to crush his opponent. In spite of this Deputy Defense Minister Grigory Kulik stubbornly argued against mechanized warfare (he favored the cavalry), anti-tank weaponry, and rockets (with the Katyusha then in development and much to his displeasure). Stalin sided with Zhukov's position that tanks and motorized infantry were the future. Thereafter, Zhukov was promoted to Chief of the General Staff. Reforms continued to move forward. Though the Red Army would still be far from ready to face the Germans in the summer of 1941 it could have been in much worse shape had Kulik's argument's carried the day.

As it was, throughout 1941 inspections and exercises alike found the same old problems cropping up across the Red Army: poor command and control, near non-existent cooperation between units, a lack of understanding as how to employ combined arms, inadequate reconnaissance and a failure to turn intelligence acquired into something actionable, sloppy staff work leading to woeful logistical problems, and an inability of officers to think for themselves, show initiative, and respond to events as they changed on the ground. The Red Army Air Force was in a particularly poor place. Many of its leading officers had been rapidly promoted beyond their expertise, and the VVS as a whole falling behind the ground forces in many significant measures. Part of this wasn't just because reforming an organization as large as the Red Army took time, but that it was a product of the larger culture from which it was created. Soviet culture and society were only recently transitioning to an industrialized knowledge based economy whose educational standards were only beginning to catch up with those found elsewhere in Europe. Stalin's paranoias also loomed over everything, as did the terrors of his police-state. The purges hadn't just gone away in 1938. They had simmered along, with arrests and executions continuining to decimate the officer corps even as reform continued - sometimes at a bewildering pace.

Perhaps no other part of the Red Army's ground forces faced a more dizzying pace of change in the years prior to the German invasion than did its armored formations. As mentioned earlier Deep Operational concepts that had been cultivated where crushed and cast aside during the height of the purges in 1937-1938. Voroshilov and Kulik had then played leading roles in abolishing the mechanized corps at the heart of the now executed Tukhachevskii's reforms. They replaced them with even more unbalanced tank brigades woefully deficient in artillery, infantry, and staying power. Though new mechanized divisions were created, they were still entirerely new formations. Meanwhile, in 1939-1940 the German carefully refined their combined arms panzer divisions playing the key role in ripping through large Polish and French/Allied military establishments in a pair of rapid fire campaigns.

In the summer of 1940 the Red Army responded to the obvious successes of the German way of war by bringing back the mechanized corps. In typical Soviet fashion the Red Army did this bigger than ever. Featuring a shtat (the Soviet term corresponding to table or organization and equipment) calling for two tank divisions and one motorized infantry division (with the divisions replacing the brigades in Tukhachevskii's 1936 version of the mechanized corps). Each tank division included 386 tanks; with over 1,000 tanks in total in the entire mechanized corps. Little initial thought was given as to how an army already struggling to build up effective communications and solve lingering command and control issues would deploy such a huge force.

As late as January of 1941 only half of the Red Army's formations that required regimental 5-AK radio sets had them. In addition, though the new Soviet tank divisions had motorized infantry of their own (a regiment) and other supporting arms these were brand-new formations introduced only in the summer of 1940. So, while by 1941 the Germans had been perfecting the balance and organization of their panzer division's for the better part of eight years the Red Army would have less than a single year to train its officers and get up to speed its new mechanized corps and the few independent tank divisions created outside those integral to the mechanized corps.

At the aforementioned December 1940 military conference, there was great concern expresed at in particular the inability of the artillery and infantry (due to a lack of transport) to keep up with the tanks. The lack of prime movers and failure to develop half-tracks continued to haunt the Red Army and would for years to come. Instead, it continued to largely focus on developing certain weapons systems, doing so to the exclusion of a comprehensive development program that would provide already overworked and under-trained commanders with the tools needed to integrate disparate combat arms and achieve battlefield mobility. For as much positives in critical analysis that came out of the December 1940 conference very few participants (General-Major Potapov being one notable exception) even discussed the immense logistical issues that still needed to be solved with the new mechanized corps.

Perhaps as a result it wasn't suprising that contemporary military thinkers of the day held the otherwise massive Red Army in poor regard. In March 1940 the British War Office issued a scathing publication analyzing the Red Army's recent performance. The British found fault with command and control, general leadership skills, a general clumsiness in the use of combined arms and overall lack of initiative. One year later the Red Army's larger reputation in the outside world had hardly changed. British General Alan Brooke didn't see the Red Army lasting longer than three of four months against the Germans. British Member of Parliament Harold Nicolson thought the Germans would do even better yet. In mid-June 1941 the British Chiefs of Staff issued a report finding the Red Army would likely quickly collapse in the face of a German invasion. The report cited not only the usual litany of problems regarding the quality of the Red Army's officer corps and command and control but also the Red Army's equipment. This in spite of the fact that the Red Army then had the world's largest army, with the biggest tank park, most artillery and one of the world's largest air forces. This points to another very big problem afflicting the Red Army. That's because the Red Army, by 1940, had, much like the Wehrmacht, armed in breadth but not depth. By the eve of Barbarossa this hadn't really changed in a significant way.

For instance, though the 1936 Red Army was huge by 1941 its even bigger yet version still had most of this equipment still in service. This is not to say that issues of modernizing the Red Army's equipment weren't being considered. Far from it. Experience in Spain and against the Japanese for instance showed that lightly armored tanks were vulnerable to anti-tank weapons. On August 7, 1938 a new plan was approved that directly led to the development of the T-34 and KV series tanks. The multitude of previous tank designs with multiple turrets, the ability to run on road wheels, and the like were largely abandoned or significantly winnowed down.

In terms of aircraft development it would take longer to adjust. During 1936 the Soviet supplied aircraft largely dominated the airspace over the battlefields of the Spanish Civil War. Nationalist forces and the German Condor Legion initially employed woefully obsolete aircraft like the Heinkel 51 biplane. The Soviet supplied I-15 and I-16 fighter aircraft were technically superior machines equipping the Republican air force. For much of this period the most serious threat to Republican aircrews stemmed from German 20mm and 88mm anti-aircraft guns. All of which created some measure of complacency in Soviet circles. However, in 1937 early marks of the German Bf 109 began showing up in Spain. By the time the much improved Bf 109E appeared it was largely game over. The German fighter enjoyed superior speed, firepower, and overall represented a far superior design to the Soviet aircraft. Meanwhile, the well trained Japanese pilots soon appeared with Ki-27 and A5M fighters also superior in most regards to the I-15 and I-16 fighters of the Red Army Air Force (VVS).

In spite of these developments, even as late of June of 1941 BT-series medium tanks and T-26 light tanks continued to comprise the bulk of the Soviet tank park. In addition, the I-15 and I-16 remained front-line fighters as the German Bf 109E was being supplanted by the even better Bf 109F, futher widening the qualitative gap in the skies. Moreover, development of next generation equipment capable of competing with the improved armor and aircraft equipping Western European armies further floundered as the purges ripped the heart out of the Red Army.

That said new tanks and aircraft were in development. For instance, the prototype of what would become the superb Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft first flew on October 2, 1939. The design slowly evolved over the following eighteen months. Though only 249 had been built between March of 1941 (when it finally went into mass production) and the German invasion, further modifications would result in the two seat design that would play the leading role in providing close air support for the Red Army's ground forces throughout the Second World War. In addition, by the summer of 1941 new aircraft capable of competing with the Bf 109 had gone into mass production. These included the MiG-3 (albeit a flawed aircraft in many regards as its low altitude performance was not in the same class as the German fighters), the LaGG-3 and the Yak-1 single engine fighers. All of these aircraft could not really match up technically with the Bf 109F, but they were far superior to the obsolete I-15 and I-16 fighters.

At the same time the Germans, though fielding much obsolete equipment of their own early in the Second World War, had spent far more time moving past the more simple indicators of effectiveness in evaluating military weaponry in terms of determinants like firepower and protection. The Germans had put significant effort into integrating advanced technologies, such as communications and optics, into their latest weapons. Thus, even though the 1941 era Panzer III, Germany's main battle tank of that time, was in many ways outgunned by the emegent Soviet designs; the German tank had superior gun optics and command features such as commander's cupulas. In addition, the Germans embraced near universal use of radios in aircraft and armored fighting vehicles alike.

In contrast, Soviet radios, when available, were often older models with limited ranges, bulky size, and inconsistent reliability. Though superior sets, such as the RAT, RAF, and RSB models, had been designed; they were slow to go into production. In 1940 the Red Army needed 1,500 powerful extended range RAF command radios per month, but only took delivery of fifteen such sets by September of that same year! And training remained an issue. Specialists, like radio operators, had not been given nearly the attention needed. As a result, even when radios were available they were often ineffective due to misuse. All too often peacetime officers simply relied on telephone lines instead - with what would become devestating consequences for command and control once highly fluid combat operations began. Moreover, lower level radio communication was almost non-existent. As has been commented upon elsewhere, Soviet tank companies or platoons could hardly communicate within their ranks no less with other units.

As we've seen, one of the lessons here is that modernization takes time. Therefore as the new year dawned in 1941 the modern, capable weapons systems that would power the Red Army through much of the Second World War were only just beginning to go into production. By the spring of 1941 Soviet armored units still lacked adequate numbers of modern tanks, as well as the logistical means and spare parts to support the vast stocks of obsolete and poorly maintained tanks. Nnearly a third of the BT-series (such as those pictured here) and other 1930's era tanks still in Soviet armored formations on the eve of the German invasion needed significant repairs to be fully operational. Though by June 22, 1941 the Red Army had created 29 mechanized corps, in terms of equipping what should have been powerful formations there had been notable shortfalls. A mere four of these mechanized corps possessed even three quarters of their establishment strength, no less adequate numbers of modern T-34 and KV-1 tanks.

On the other hand the fact that the Red Army was deploying a tank such as the T-34 has to be regarded as a huge achievement. The T-34, though not perfect, is to this day regarded as the premier tank in the world during 1941, and its development stemmed from a long and varied gestational history. To review and recap, remember that in the Soviet Union's early years the Red Army had leaned on British and French tanks captured from the White Russians during the Civil War that had followed World War I. Soviet industry sought to copy these western designs, like the Renault FT and British Vickers 6-ton light tank - with the Soviet copy of the latter being the T-26. Even in these early years the Soviet Union armed its tanks with larger caliber weapons than did other nations; such as the 45mm gun equipping several of the T-26's models. Then, in 1931, the Red Army acquired two Christie tanks. These led to the BT series (Bystry Tank or fast tank) that would dominate Soviet pre-war stocks. Soviet tank design also favored diesel over gasoline engines, but as we now know failed to adequately incorporate radios. Even early in the 1930s we can therefore see the key characteristics of Soviet tank design emerging in the form of big guns (relative to peer nations), reliable diesel engines, higher speed, but a lack of communications equipment.

All of the above is what then fed into the creation of the T-34. With a direct developmental history beginning in 1938, the T-34 arose from the BT series and had the same Christie style suspension and a powerful engine that when coupled with its 26 ton weight gave the T-34 superb off-road performance characteristics further enhanced by its wide tracks (22 inches on the C model compared to only 15.75 inches on early model Panzer IV's) the T-34. It is often commented as to how during Barbarossa lightly armed German tanks bounced shells off opposing T-34. But as German tank gunners often noted in reports from during 1941, hitting the fast moving T-34 could be equally problematic. Skilled T-34 drivers (of which there were relatively few in 1941) were able to manuevour their vehicles at times faster than German tank turrets could traverse and track them.

In addition the T-34 ranked as the hardest hitting medium tank in the world in 1941. Equipped with a 76.2mm cannon producing a muzzle velocity of 2,007 feet per second (or 612 meters per second) it could theoretically knock out any opponent at stand-off ranges. Moreover, with up to 60mm of sloped armor on its C model the tank was very well protected for its size. During the summer of 1940 the T-34 went into mass production at Factory Number 183 in Kharkov. A second production line opened in the fall of 1940 at the Stalingrad Tractor Factory. However, with a crew of only four the multi-tasking commander (who was also the gunner) did not have the freedom to direct his vehicle as did the commanders of German medium tanks - a fact that greatly inhibited target acquisition. Coordination between tanks was further inhibited by the fact only the company commander's tank had a radio.

In addition to the T-34's the Red Army had also experimented with heavy tanks far more than did the German army. The KV heavy tank (with KV standing for Klim Voroshilov, the Soviet Defense Commissar in 1941) weighed in at 43 tons and throughout 1941 and much of 1942 would be by far the largest commonly deployed tank on Eastern Europe's battlefields. Equipped with a 76.2mm gun and with armor 76mm thick the tank, when it worked as reliability was an issue, would prove a handful for the Germans. By February of 1941 some 273 of these heavy tanks had already been produced - a total numbers of heavy tanks manufactured that the Germans wouldn't match until 1943.

Moreover, the 76.2mm caliber weapons that equipped the T-34's and KV-series tanks also equipped the 1939 76.2mm divisional gun - an excellent field artillery piece that could do double duty as an anti-tank gun. By June of 1941 the Red Army had 1,170 of these weapons. In addition to solid field artillery pieces and modern tank designs the Red Army had also begun taking delivery of mortars in greater numbers such that by June of 1941 there were 34,622 light 50mm mortars and 13,569 of the more capable 82mm mortars delivered. Furthermore, in 1939 the M-13 ground-ground rocket had been developed. The BM-13 launch system mounted on a ZIS-6 truck would become the famous Katiusha rocket system, ordered into production on June 21, 1941.

Thus, by June of 1941 the iconic weapons systems that would define the Second World War era Red Army had entered or were entering mass production. However, because the Red Army tended to keep even obsolete models of all weapons, such as tanks, in service - serviceability was a nightmare. Spare parts were near non-existent for the myriad types and sizes of tanks in service in 1941. For example, the Kiev Special Military District's 4th Mechanized Corps suffered numerous breakdowns in a May 1941 training exercise. With the lack of spare parts that meant the broken down tanks effectively had to be cannibalized to keep other tanks in running condition. Even when the tanks could possibly be fixed this represented another issue as the Red Army of 1941 had not really created a viable field repair workship system as existed in the German army. As a result, even when tanks still in production (and thus having a supply of spare parts) broke down they all to often had to be sent back to the factory for repair - effectively removing them from their parent formation's order of battle for weeks at a time.

Another problem stemmed from the failure to fully equip tank units like the mechanized corps with the vast range of other vehicles needed to make them truly mobile and effective formations. For instance, in terms of supporting the maintenance heavy mechanized corps, no less the vast numbers of rifle corps forming the Red Army's bulk, the Red Army of June 1941 was supposed to have 836,000 motor vehicles and tractors/prime movers on hand. Instead, it could only marshal 314,200 such vehicles on its books. Worse yet, only 77% of those were even in running condition. Fuel shortages were also endemic in spite of the fact that the Soviet Union was one of the world's leading oil producers. Some units, such as the 33rd Tank Division, reported shortages in fuel, oil, and lubricants reaching well over 90 percent in the days prior to the onset of the German invasion. Among other things, this meant that the basis for supporting mobile operations was almost completely lacking - a huge problem given the comparative advantages enjoyed by the Wehrmacht in fighting a war of maneuvour. Again this shows where sheer numbers hardly tell the whole story. After all, the Red Army's tank park dwarfed the Wehrmacht's own tank strength. And, in the first five months of 1941 some 1,503 of the 1,684 tanks rolling from Soviet factories were T-34 and KV-1's .But how many of these tanks really could be used? Or for that matter, how well could the Red Army even fight, given shortages in trucks were far from the only problem.

For instance, of the Fronts facing off against the Axis forces amassed on the Western Soviet Union's borders few had more war material than did the Southwestern Front (Kiev Special Military District prior to the war as that was its peacetime designation. And yet the Southwestern Front was short of such basic weapons as rifles and sub-machine guns (lacking 119,633 such small arms) no less actual machine guns (short 9,278 MG's of all classes). In May of 1941 the entire Kiev Special Millitary District averaged under 50 percent of its authorized stock of radios. Ammunition was also in short supply. By the end of April 1941 the Kiev Special Military District's commander, General M.P. Kirponos, reported having on hand only 25 armor piercing rounds for each KV-series heavy tank on his books. The situation for T-34's was even worse, with only thirteen armor piercing rounds available for each tank. Moreover, the 76.2mm field guns were in even worse shape yet, with only six rounds available for each weapon.

Even when there were adequate ammunition stocks, such as for the 45mm anti-tank guns equipping most Soviet anti-armor units - manufacturing defects limited their effectiveness. Both a March 1939 German analysis and October 1940 Soviet report found that the Red Army's armor piercing rounds struggled to penetrate 40mm of armor plate at even exceedingly close ranges of 100 meters. This report referenced 45mm and 76.2mm weapons alike, and indicates that the otherwise much maligned 50mm thick frontal armor on German Panzer III and IV medium tanks would actually stand up quite well to Soviet anti-tank weapons during Barbarossa. These problems had not been rectified by the summer of 1941. Given shortages and quality control issues such as these, as well as comparable shortfalls in anti-tank guns, mortars, and anti-aircraft weapons, what we see in June of 1941 is a German war machine better equipped than it's ostensibly much larger foe. Thus, though the Red Army fielded 5.7 million men in 27 armies containing 29 mechanized corps, 62 rifle corps, four cavalry corps and five airborne corps further broken down into 303 divisions and countless smaller units - many of these units were not only partially equipped but still forming up. In addition, the majority had notable weaknesses in trained manpower and leadership, no less antiquated and inadequate command and control. 

As for Soviet airpower, the Red Army had 20,978 aircraft in its inventory. Of those 13,211 were combat ready in June of 1941. Of that total 7,133 aircraft were deployed in the Western Soviet Union. But only twenty percent of those were modern designs (such as the MiG-3, Yak-1, LaGG-5 fighters or Pe-2 light bomber and IL-2 attack aircraft). And this tells only part of the story. The Red Army's Air Force had severe leadership problems. Staffing for the VVS largely reliant on quickly promoted and under-trained personnel. Moreover, the summer of 1941 was one where the VVS was very much in flux. Of 626 airbases in the western regions of the Soviet Union some 141 were under construction with another 135 being rebuilt, expanded, or modernized when the Germans struck in June of 1941.

On the other hand, the Red Army could put 2.9 million into the field along it's long western border further backed by six armies, sixteen rifle corps, four mechanized corps, 83 divisions, and a plethora of smaller units from the internal military districts and Far East with hundreds of thousands of reservists being called up by the month (with 793,000 called up in May and June alone). What's more, as early as April of 1941 the Red Army's western most military districts had already started accumulating a secondary operational reserve near the Dvina and Dnepr Rivers. This reserve stood at nine divisions by June 22nd with nineteen more gathering in the weeks to come and forming a second defensive echelon. Nevertheless, even in considering the massive numbers of men and machines the Red Army could throw into the field quality appears to have had an impact of its own - as would be demonstrated in the initial months following the German invasion. Ongoing problems surrounding the shortages of trained officers greatly inhibited the efficiency of the otherwise massive Red Army. In 1940 the Red Army's own internal review process found that well over one third of the mid-ranked officers lacked appropriate training for their posts. As many as 70 percent of the regimental level commanders had held their commands for less than one year. Staff positions were actually being cut to spead existing manpower around and create new headquarters staffs for the huge influx of men and units. Not only was it in the midst of mobilizing mostly poorly trained conscripts, but rather than standing ready to repel an invasion it was an army on the move. Many officer and men were still arriving to flesh out units only partially equipped and nowhere near adequately stocked.

As a result, far too many of the Red Army's front-line rifle corps, mechanized corps, tank divisions, and the like were reorganizing, short-staffed, under-equipped, inadequately stocked in terms of munitions, poorly led, and otherwise hardly ready to face the world's best army. Given all of everything discussed, it is perhaps no surprise that when Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941 Hitler's minions confronted a Soviet military establishment that was hardly what it seemd to be on paper. On the one hand, the Red Army was huge - having added four million men to its ranks in the previous three years and with a tank park of 23,106 vehicles in June of 1941. On the other hand, only 12,782 such tanks were located in the Military Districts along the Soviet Union's western border with only 10,540 of those considered partly operational. And though this was still three times the number of tanks and self-propelled guns the Axis forces would throw at the Red Army, as seen above the organizational structure within which this mass of equipment deployed was nowhere near ready to take on the veteran, capably-led, and well-balanced German panzer divisions.

Even after years of reforms and modernization efforts the Red Army of June 1941 was a work in progress. In addition Stalin and the Soviet leadership were hardly prepared to accept the fact Germany was about to strike, further hobbling the Red Army's efforts at preparing for war. It would therefore be against this great mass of unorganized, undersupplied, ill-equipped, and poorly deployed combat potential that the Wehrmacht was set to strike. The results would not only be catastrophic for the Soviet Union, but would nearly lead to its destruction.