From Defeat to Victory

The Eastern Front, Summer 1944?Decisive and Indecisive Military Operations, Volume 2

Charles J. Dick

• Publisher: University Press of Kansas
• Year: 2016
• Print ISBN: 9780700622955
• eBook ISBN: 9780700622962
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: German History
• Index: History

Stone & Stone Editor’s Choice

By the summer of 1944, the war in Europe had reached a critical point. Both the western Allies and the Soviets possessed the initiative and forces capable of mounting strategic offensives against the German enemy. Writing a study of operations on first the Western then the Eastern Front, respected military analyst C. J. Dick provides a uniquely informative comparison of the different war-fighting doctrines brought to bear by the Allies and the Red Army in contemporaneous campaigns. His book offers rare insights into the strengths and weaknesses of generalship on both fronts.

In volume 2, From Defeat to Victory, Dick turns to the Eastern Front, where battle lines stretched from the Baltic to the Black Sea—nearly 1,500 miles to the Allies’ 600—and the Soviet armies and engagements dwarfed in scale those in the West. More importantly, they reflected a war-fighting philosophy significantly different than the Allies’, which in turn produced different military operations. The Soviets were masters of deception-and-surprise, a concept called maskirovka that was an essential part of every military operation. The Soviets were committed to highly mobile and high-tempo offensives. They massed troops in heavy concentrations to achieve a breakthrough that would quickly set conditions for decisive operational maneuvers; they were relentless in their will to destroy the enemy’s forces and, unlike their counterparts in the West, were willing to contend with an enormous amount of casualties. Dick’s analysis shows us how the Red Army, largely free of the political problems that constrained the Allies, was able to develop more radical operational ideas and implement them with a daring and ruthlessness impossible for the armies of democratic states.

From Defeat to Victory also offers a critical lesson in the enduring importance of finding, inculcating, and implementing operational and tactical doctrine that fits the conditions of contemporary war, as well as in the technology, politics, and psychology of the times.

CHAPTER ONE

Soviet Doctrine and Praxis Prior to 1944

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THE EVOLUTION OF PREWAR SOVIET DOCTRINE

Like British and American doctrine, the Red Army’s was profoundly influenced by the First World War.¹ However, the Russian experience of that war was somewhat dissimilar from that of the Western Allies. Because of the great length of the Russo-German and Austro-Hungarian front—more than twice that in the west—the ratio of forces to space was much lower; consequently, there was no stalemate. It was always possible to penetrate the enemy’s front and generate some operational maneuver, although the limited mobility of armies attempting to exploit on foot, with horse-drawn artillery and transport, meant that the defender, enjoying the superior operational-level mobility afforded by even Russia’s underdeveloped rail net, was always able to restore stability to his defense, albeit at some cost in ground. For the Russians, the war was followed immediately by a civil war. Spread over a huge arc from St. Petersburg through southern Ukraine to the Urals and beyond, the relatively small armies involved fought a war of movement (in which the mobility of cavalry proved important). This, and the subsequent war with Poland, was the most formative experience for the Red Army and, combined with its putative purpose of spreading revolution, accounts for its stress on offensive maneuver rather than positional warfare.

The 1920s and early 1930s saw an impressive flowering of military theory in the young Red Army. New concepts were propounded by such analysts as G. S. Isserson, A. K. Kolenkovskiy, B. M. Shaposhnikov, Ye. A. Shilovskiy, A. A. Svechin, V. K. Triandafillov, M. N. Tukhachevskiy, Ye. P. Uborevich, N. Ye. Varfolomeyev, and A. I. Yegorov.² Their start point was the new reality, born of the vastly increased spatial and temporal scale of warfare in the era of mass armies, that wars between major powers could no longer be won in one or two decisive battles or even in a single campaign. Nor was the mere accumulation of tactical victories sufficient to bring about strategic success at any sort of reasonable cost. Thus was born the theory of success through the conduct of a series of interrelated strategic offensive operations, each one of which represented a step toward the ultimate strategic goal. The execution of these would lie in the realm of operational art, a new concept in military theory expounded first by A. A. Svechin in the early 1920s. In essence, he saw it as the critical connecting link between strategy and tactics. Strategy pursues goals, and the achievement of its major objectives requires the solution of battlefield problems. Tactics is the business of solving these, but it is essential to solve them in the fastest and most economical way that builds cumulatively and inexorably toward the achievement of the strategic aim; in doing so, given that resources will always be limited, it is necessary to distinguish between the essential and the desirable and to eschew the irrelevant. This is the realm of operational art: the structuring of tactical actions—some simultaneous, most sequential—so that their sum is greater than the individual parts. The aggregate of tactical steps leads to operational successes by armies. And the aggregate of a number of both simultaneous and successive army operations executed within the framework of a front strategic offensive operation would be designed to destroy a significant enemy grouping and consequently seize a politically or economically important area. Such an operation would mark a decisive point on the way to the strategic goal. The unifying factor that would give coherence and purpose to the myriad tactical and operational actions was the strategic objective and the senior commander’s concept for its attainment.

Strategic aims can be achieved only through accumulated operational successes, bearing in mind that those aims may need prudent reassessment in the light of operational limitations. It is true that operational success depends in turn on tactical victories. There is a dialectical relationship between these two levels as well, but operational art is dominant: correct answers at the operational level create the conditions in which tactical successes can be achieved, and individual tactical battles are not crucial; an operation as a whole can succeed despite some tactical reverses, but the failure of an operation can imperil the strategic goal. And to insure against the consequences of tactical failure, the Red Army was to be a mass army as well as a mechanized one. This went against the grain of “progressive” theory in the West. Many visionaries of future war, such as J. F. C. Fuller, B. H. L. Hart, Charles de Gaulle, and, in the USSR, A. I. Verkhovskiy, favored the idea that the development of tanks made mass armies obsolete. This was a reaction against the attritional struggles between infantry hordes that had characterized the First World War. A small mechanized army would outmaneuver huge, lumbering, old-fashioned forces and deal them hard blows wherever weakness was found; “mobility,” wrote Fuller, “and not numbers, is the line [along which] the remodeling of the army should proceed.” Tukhachevskiy succinctly demolished this argument by pointing out that a competent but very large mechanized force would beat a small professional one any time.³

Field Regulations 1936 (Provisional)

The theoretical work of the 1920s and early 1930s culminated in Vremeniy Polevoy Ustav RKKA, 1936—Provisional Field Regulations of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, 1936 (hereafter, PU-36). In the 1920s, taking a realistic view of the weakness of the infant Soviet Union, especially its “peasant rear,” Svechin had been a proponent of the strategic defensive. This was no longer seen as appropriate. In a period of heightening threat, a cadre, or territorial, army was no longer an adequate basis for defense. To meet the growing capitalist threat, the whole of the economy and society had to be speedily and forcibly industrialized and militarized to provide the tools of modern warfare.⁴ These tools would be used to equip a large active army, grown from 562,000 in the early 1930s to over 1.5 million in 1938. With the access of confidence that growing strength brought in its train and a more or less synthetic ideological fervor, there was a commitment to implement an offensive strategy. It was possible that the USSR would be attacked first, but strong covering forces would absorb the blow and the fully mobilized Red Army would then swiftly carry the war into the enemy’s territory and accomplish the downfall of his capitalist regime. PU-36 provided the Red Army’s official doctrine for this offensive-counteroffensive. It was conceived as a guide for the conduct of operations in a period of revolution in military affairs (a Soviet concept later expropriated by the West). It was in many ways more conceptually advanced than the contemporaneous German Truppenführung, itself far more progressive than its British and American counterparts. While much of the content of PU-36 was tactical in nature, the key ideas lay in the realm of operational art. This was seen to be the critical level in war. Though too visionary or simplistic in places and found wanting in some of its details, the basic principles and concepts of the manual were to stand the test of war when properly applied. The Soviet military would, however, undergo terrible vicissitudes before so doing.

The new doctrine was uncompromising in asserting the aim in war. It made it clear that the Red Army, as befitted a force intended to spread revolution at the point of the bayonet, was to carry any war into the enemy’s territory from the outset. The second paragraph reads:

The combat actions of the Red Army will always be directed towards annihilation. The attainment of decisive victory and total destruction of the enemy is the fundamental purpose in Soviet warfare. The sole means to achieve this is battle with the object of (a) destroying enemy personnel and materiel, and (b) crushing his morale and ability to resist. Every battle—offensive or defensive—has the aim of inflicting damage . . . but only a decisive offensive on the main direction concluding with irresistible pursuit can achieve complete destruction of the enemy.

Thus, the primary aim of operational maneuver was the destruction of enemy forces rather than the conquest of territory. Maritime and, later, air forces always saw that the key to victory lay in the destruction of the enemy. As with the sea and the air, what mattered, in the Soviet view, was command of the environment. For the army too, capturing this or that area was much less important in the greater scheme of things than destroying the enemy’s ability to resist anywhere. Once his resistance was broken, strategically important objectives and whole regions would fall as a useful by-product of annihilating his major groupings.

Most of the basic principles outlined in chapter 1 of PU-36 were familiar to Western officers: concentration on the main effort and economy of force on secondary sectors, as the breakthrough is a challenging task requiring considerable superiority; the need for all-arms cooperation and synergistic actions on different sectors; the importance of morale and commanders’ responsibility for maintaining it; the need for (and difficulty of) continuous, effective command and control; the need for flexibility, based not least on the appropriate exercise of initiative by subordinates who understand the higher commander’s intent;⁵ and the importance of a sound logistic basis for plans. The importance of surprise would also be recognized by Westerners, though perhaps not the degree of stress placed on it and its corollary in paragraph 6: “Surprise paralyzes. Therefore all combat actions must be undertaken with maximum secrecy and speed.” In other words, surprise is not merely something to be worked for at the start of an operation; as paragraph 111 makes plain, it should be sought throughout the operation’s execution by exploiting the mobility of modern weapons systems. Surprising maneuver and momentum and unexpected weapons and methods are guarantees of success in battle, a prescient thought that the Red Army was soon going to relearn the hard way.

One key concept in PU-36 would, however, be unfamiliar to and indeed rejected by conventional thinking in the Anglo-American armies: deep battle at the tactical level—and even more so, deep operations.⁶ Paragraph 4 goes beyond the statement that tanks should be used en masse—itself a controversial idea:

Mechanized formations, comprising tanks, SP [self-propelled] artillery and infantry in transporters can perform independent missions separated from other arms of service as well as in cooperation with them. . . . Their maneuver and strikes must have air support. . . . Parachute-assault units are effective means for disrupting the enemy’s command and control and rear [logistics]. In cooperation with the forces attacking on the line of contact they can play a decisive role in the total defeat of the enemy on a given axis.

Paragraph 9 adds: “Modern combat materiel makes it possible simultaneously to destroy the enemy throughout his tactical depth. Capabilities are growing for rapid regrouping, surprise outflanking maneuvers and seizures of enemy rear areas and cutting his withdrawal routes. During the course of an attack the enemy must be encircled and utterly destroyed.” The theme is reiterated in paragraph 112 and is, indeed, a constant refrain throughout the manual. This concept of deep battle, and later of deep operations, was a rejection of the linear-attritional model that dominated military thinking elsewhere. It envisaged an absence of continuous fronts. Offensives would no longer consist of the forcing of each successive position but rather of fluid combat actions in which mobile troops would develop tactical success into operational success. Mobile and airborne units and formations would shift the centre of gravity of combat into the enemy’s rear areas and use maneuver to break up the enemy’s organization; destroy his cohesion, command and control, and logistic support systems; and encircle his formations in order to shatter them. The enemy’s destruction would be completed, according to paragraphs 197–205, by a vigorous exploitation and pursuit. This would be initiated at the lowest levels on individual sectors as soon as signs of enemy weakening were detected, whether or not he was holding firm elsewhere. Pursuit could be terminated only on the orders of the High Command.

One consequence of the Soviet stress on maneuver, deep battle and operations, and the eclipse of positional warfare was that front lines would be replaced by an area of battle in which forces would become intermingled, present open flanks, and lack safe rear areas. In this fluid environment where the situation was subject to rapid, unexpected, and possibly radical change, the typical forms of combat would become the meeting engagement and, at lower levels, the meeting battle, the subject of a whole chapter in PU-36. Paragraphs 140–143 describe this and explain the tactical consequences:

Meeting battles develop straight from the line of march against an [also] advancing enemy. . . . The meeting battle is characterized by rapid deployment from march order into battle formation and by immediate attack on the enemy wherever he is found. Preempting the enemy in deployment, opening fire and going into the attack is of decisive importance in a meeting encounter. Commanders at every level are therefore required to act with daring and determination to seize the initiative and through decisive action impose their will on the enemy. In embarking on a meeting battle no-one must wait for full clarification of the situation. Information from reconnaissance will never be complete and when the enemy is mobile will soon become outdated. In the meeting battle, inadequate information on enemy actions will be the norm. Thus whoever delays or waits for the situation to be clarified will himself be revealed to the enemy and will lose the initiative. In a meeting battle the decision on the choice of the main axis may be determined by the terrain that lends itself to the delivery of a shattering blow. The basic maneuver in a meeting battle must be aimed at disrupting enemy columns and decisive actions by all arms, coordinated in aim, time and place, to destroy him in detail . . . the aim in a meeting battle should be the encirclement and annihilation of the enemy.

All in all, this envisioned a very demanding operational environment. It was not one in which traditional, hidebound generals, used to coping with slowly evolving situations that could be dealt with “by the book,” would achieve success. Operational-level generalship, Soviet sources would repeatedly insist, demanded “creativity,” the ability to deal in abstractions and find original solutions to problems. Senior commanders required agile minds that allowed them to cope with rapid and confusing changes and the fog of war and still seize fleeting opportunities and assemble various tactical events and maneuvers into a coherent whole that would lead to the achievement of the strategic aim.

This Soviet perception of the nature of future operations had tactical consequences. PU-36 and other doctrinal writings emphasized the importance of achieving the optimal mix in all-arms groupings and arranging them in the correct order of march when entering the combat zone. There would be no time for regrouping when transitioning from the march into combat. Nor would there be time to make clever appreciations of the situation and issue detailed orders to implement a sophisticated plan. Only speedy reactions would result in preemption of the enemy’s deployment and seizure of the initiative. Hence the Soviet preference at the tactical level for simple, easily understood, and rapidly implemented battle drills. This approach (easily implemented even by tired and frightened officers and men) stood a good chance of surprising the enemy, preempting his reactions, and winning the battle for time.⁷ When Tukhachevskiy demanded that his officers display initiative, he was not suggesting that they act idiosyncratically, in ways that would confuse their superiors and comrades as much as the enemy; creativity was for the operational level. He wanted his officers to select the most appropriate battle drill, tailor it to the immediate situation without time-wasting reference to higher headquarters, and implement it quickly. Moreover, if doctrine were being fully implemented, the enemy would be entering battle at a disadvantage. Reconnaissance forces, forward detachments, or advance guards would have beaten the enemy to favorable ground (for instance, dominating features that provided observation and a pivot and concealment for maneuver). Air interdiction would have disrupted his columns. Airborne assaults and raids would have interfered with his command and control and logistic systems and delayed his reserves.

Airpower would play a key role in this Soviet conception of modern war, but only as a tactical adjunct to the ground forces. PU-36 contains no separate chapter or even sections on the subject. In the spirit of a combined-arms approach to battle, only 13.5 percent of air assets (mainly long-range aviation) were under the direct control of the High Command; 86.5 percent was divided, almost equally, between front and army commands, and the latter could attach elements to individual corps. At each level, PU-36 stresses the use of airpower en masse, concentrated on the most important missions. Most importantly, fighters would keep the enemy off the back of the Soviet ground forces; much space is devoted to the subject of air defense. A second priority was reconnaissance, also covered at length. Both bomber and ground attack aviation would support the advance mainly by striking targets beyond the effective reach of artillery. They would provide particularly critical support during the struggle in the enemy’s depth. They would disrupt enemy command and control by attacking headquarters. They would strike the enemy’s reserves and artillery, preventing the former from intervening in the battle in a timely fashion and silencing the latter and then preventing its extrication from combat as the advance gathered pace. They would harass the enemy when he started to withdraw. Transport aircraft would insert parachute assault troops to seize critical features and disrupt logistic support and command and control. There was, in other words, a clear recognition that the air arm provided a flexible source of firepower that could be quickly maneuvered from one area to another on the battlefield. It could also give substance to the demand for simultaneous attacks throughout the depth of the enemy’s deployment. What is missing from PU-36 is serious attention to the tasks that most concerned independent air forces in the West. There is no mention of strategic bombing, even as an aspiration. Offensive counter-air and interdiction missions are mentioned only in passing references. Thus, paragraph 7 states: “Air formations, apart from independent missions, act in close operational-tactical coordination with combined arms teams. They are used against columns, assembly areas, against bridges, against enemy aircraft on their bases as well as for the protection of friendly troops.”

The Red Army was organized in a coherent response to the demands of theory. Shock armies like those postulated by Triandafillov were to be formed in wartime to accomplish the breakthrough; these would comprise three to four rifle corps with twelve to fifteen rifle divisions and infantry close support tanks, one to two mechanized or cavalry corps, ten to twelve artillery regiments, and three to four air divisions. In 1931 the first mechanized corps was formed to conduct exploitation; this was a large formation with two mechanized brigades and one rifle brigade—in all, six tank and five infantry and machine gun battal...

Table of contents

• Front Cover
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Maps and Tables
• Foreword by David M. Glantz
• Acknowledgments
• Abbreviations, Acronyms, and Selected Foreign Words
• Introduction
• An Essential Guide to Soviet Military Terms and Organizations
• 1. Soviet Doctrine and Praxis Prior to 1944
• 2. Strategic Offensive Operations, Summer 1944
• 3. Operational Art in Maturity, Summer 1944
• 4. Some Conclusions
• 5. Some Reflections about the Future
• Notes
• Selected Bibliography
• Index
• Back Cover