The Bloody Triangle

by Victor Kamenir

  Recognizing the severity of the situation presented by a lack of trained cadres, first commander of the Red Army Leon Trotskiy instituted a wide-scale program of bringing the former czarist officers back into uniform under unobtrusively sounding title of “military specialists.” The purist communists howled at such pollution of proletarian ranks, but Trotsky dug in his heels, and eventually over two hundred thousand former officers were re-integrated into the military. Some went willingly, some not, and more rejoined out of a need to make a living. In many cases, these officers’ participation was obtained only by the Reds holding their families as hostages to ensure men’s cooperation.

  However, a majority of officers who rejoined the ranks were not the same men who led the Russian army at the start of World War I. The old, mostly aristocratic, officer corps of 1914 was largely wiped out during the first bloody years of the conflict. They were replaced overwhelmingly by men from the middle class and often from the working class. Many among this new generation of officers were more sympathetic, or simply nonhostile, to the Communist regime. Yet more men served out of sense of patriotic duty to Russia, regardless of political views of those at the helm. A prime example of such men was the Russian General Staff, almost to a man joining the Red Army out of sense of serving their country. Such “military specialists” provided the needed backbone, and some of them went on to distinguished careers in the Red Army. Some, like Zhukov, a former noncommissioned officer (NCO), and Tukhachevskiy and Boris M. Shaposhnikov, former aristocratic officers, went on to gain the highest ranks and top positions in the Soviet military.

  Attempting to alleviate shortfall of officer cadres before the war, the Red Army leadership increased the number of officer schools, shortened the course of study at the existing ones, and called up numbers of reservist officers. According to Colonel Bagramyan:

  From 1939 to 1940, 174,000 reserve officers were called to active duty. Numbers of students at military academies doubled. In 1940 alone, 42 new military schools were created. . . . Numbers of students at military schools rose from 36,000 to 168,000 men.7 All military schools switched from three-year curriculum to two years. At the same time, numerous courses for junior lieutenants were organized. . . .

  I recall that in our district alone by May 1941 there was a shortage of over thirty thousand command and technical personnel. We were placing great hopes in 1941 upon the May graduating class of military schools. However, the young lieutenants arrived at their units several days before the start of war and, of course, did not have an opportunity to get their bearings and become familiar with their subordinates.8

  A dearth of staff officers was felt at all command echelons. For example, the headquarters of a field army on peacetime footing was set at 268 personnel, 225 of them being officers. Switching to wartime footing, the numbers were to increase to 1,530 and 550, respectively.9 However, the wartime staffing could be achieved only with declaring full mobilization, which the Soviet government tried to avoid or delay at all costs. Calling up a number of reserve officers for short refresher training was not sufficient to alleviate staff officer shortages.

  The influx of called-up reservist officers somewhat improved the situation mainly at the junior officer level. Rapid expansion of the army, combined with purges of senior and experienced cadres, resulted in inexperienced officers promoted and assigned beyond their competence level. From company level to district command, the shortfall in experience and military education drastically reduced the Red Army’s war fighting capabilities.

  A prime example of this Peter Principle was Col. Gen. Mikhail P. Kirponos, who ascended to command the Kiev Special Military District in January of 1941. He had large shoes to fill, and he did not fill them well. This district, besides being the most powerful among Soviet border districts, was the most prestigious as well. Command of Kiev Special Military District was often a direct stepping stone to the highest strata of Soviet military establishment. Among the former commanders of this district were such distinguished Red Army personalities as I. E. Yakir, M. V. Frunze, A. I. Yegorov, S. K. Timoshenko and G. K. Zhukov. The first three did not live through Stalin’s purges; the last two went on to pinnacles of the Soviet military.

  Kirponos’ direct predecessor was none other than the irascible Georgiy K. Zhukov, promoted to become the chief of general staff. A veteran of World War I and the Russian Civil War, the war with Finland in November 1939 found Kirponos in command of the 70th Rifle Division. Competent division commander, Kirponos was one of the few Soviet senior commanders who achieved any distinction in the Winter War. He was awarded the medal of Hero of the Soviet Union, the highest Soviet military award, for successfully leading his division through a dismal campaign.

  When the deadly wave of purges decimated the Soviet military command establishment in 1937, General Kirponos rose up on the follow-up wave of promotions needed to fill the gaping vacancies. April of 1940 found him in command of a rifle corps; three months later, in a jump of two ranks, he headed the Leningrad Military District. In June 1941 came the fateful appointment to command the Kiev Special Military District, with rapid subsequent promotion to the rank of colonel general.

  Similar to the officer corps, the Red Army forces were short of everything: men, combat and utility vehicles, armaments, and equipment. Despite many changes in military science and technology since World War I, one commodity remained an almost constant—the Russian, now Soviet, soldier. Other than a general increase in basic literacy levels, the typical Red Army soldier closely resembled his predecessor that marched off to war in August 1914. The proletarian makeup of enlisted personnel was paralleled by the officer corps. “By 1937 workers and peasants made up over 70 percent of command cadre; more than half of commanders were communists and Komsomol members,” wrote Zhukov in his memoirs.10

  Removing millions of men from the civilian sector of the economy to sweep-ingly increase the military negatively reflected on productivity of the Soviet economy. Further call-up of men had to be balanced against the needs of the military without straining the economy. This resulted in a majority of Soviet military units operating even below their peacetime personnel requirements.

  In April of 1941, the People’s Commissariat for Defense established a new organization for a rifle division to include three rifle regiments, two artillery regiments, plus a number of separate specialist battalions, including a battalion of sixteen light tanks. On paper, the new organization of a Soviet rifle division amounted to 14,438 men. However, the vast majority of Soviet rifle divisions did not have time to upgrade to the new organization before the war started and were in transition. Even with the increased manpower of called-up reservists, a Soviet rifle division in June 1941 had over 2,300 fewer men than its counterpart German infantry division. What’s more significant, a German infantry division was much stronger in antitank weapon systems and was infinitely better equipped with wheeled vehicles.

  Simultaneous with reorganization, ninety-nine rifle divisions were ordered brought up to full wartime strength of 14,483 men from peacetime establishment of 8,000 to 10,000 men. However, when the Germans crossed the border on June 22, only twenty-two of these divisions were so beefed up.

  Two to three Soviet rifle divisions, plus supporting units, were organized into a rifle corps with paper strength of 51,061 men. The next higher formation in the Soviet ground forces was an army, composed of one to three rifle corps, one or two mechanized corps, and supporting units. The Fifth Army, for example, on June 1, 1941, was composed of two rifle and two mechanized corps and, including garrisons of its fortified regions, numbered 142,570 men. More were assigned in May, when reservists were called up for training.11

  Out of all the ground forces of the Red Army, its armored corps went through possibly the most severe upheaval during the prewar years. Initially, there was major opposition to the mechanized forces from the generation of senior Red Army officers, steeped in the long-standing tradition of the cavalry. Gradually, however, the cavalry fell into decline,
as dominance of armored forces became apparent.

  Unlike the meat-grinding trench warfare on the Western Front during World War I, operations conducted by the Russian Army during that conflict were of a more fluid nature. In the Civil War that came close on the heels of the world war, far-ranging cavalry played a major part in combat operations over the vastness of far-flung Russia. From the very start, there were sufficient numbers of influential and eloquent theoreticians that moved the Soviet armored forces forward in the face of traditionalist cavalry opposition.

  Like England and Germany, the new Soviet proponents of tank warfare had diverging ideas on the best use of tanks on the battlefield. Some, still clinging to World War I warfare concepts, believed that tanks should operate exclusively in support of, and be subordinate to, the infantry. Others boldly advocated sweeping, far-ranging independent operations by massed tank formations. The difficulty lay in the fact that virtually no Russian officer had any combat experience in tank warfare. The few World War I vintage tanks captured from the loyalist forces during the Civil War did not see much field service and, by the mid-1920s, were largely nonoperational.

  While efforts were made to begin developing Soviet tank designs and production, the Red Army cast about for a source of knowledge of tank operations. The opportunity, presented by Germans, came knocking in 1926. Germany’s top political and military leadership were actively taking steps in circumventing the Treaty of Versailles and rebuilding the German military machine. Article 171 of the Treaty of Versailles prohibited Germany from developing and producing an armored force. The Soviet Union eagerly provided a clandestine place where new ideas and secretly designed tanks could be tested and knowledge shared.

  By the end of 1926, Hermann von der Lieth-Thomsen, the German representative and strangely enough an air force officer, and Jan Berzin, chief of Soviet military intelligence, signed an agreement to establish a tank school in Kazan, Russia, in 1927. Germany was to pay for building and running the school and provide training and command cadre, while the Russians would see after the upkeep of the facilities. Due to various delays, political and logistical, the school actually commenced operations in mid-1929 with the arrival of the first three tank prototypes secretly built in Germany. A class of twenty officers, ten German and ten Russian, began their theoretical studies at approximately the same time.12

  Close cooperation continued until 1933, when the divergent military and political goals resulted in closing down of Kazan tank school, along with its sister school for aircraft at Lipetsk. All German personnel, along with now ten tanks, returned to Germany. Still, they left behind a significant amount of equipment worth over 1.2 million rubles,13 plus the physical facilities, used to great extent by the future generations of Russian tankers. Both sides benefited greatly from their joint venture, acquiring a great deal of theoretical and practical knowledge. Experience gained at Kazan allowed both countries to become world leaders in armored warfare.

  While Germany was tied hand and foot by the vengeful restrictions of Treaty of Versailles, the Soviet Union, unencumbered by any outside limitations, began serious design and development of armored vehicles, even though it did not yet have a cohesive doctrine on their use. Handicapped by the devastating Civil War, the Soviet Union initially lagged behind the western countries in tank design. However, the late start was partially made up by purchasing a limited number of armored vehicles in the West and producing them under license at home. The British Vickers six-ton tank became the cornerstone of the Soviet T-26 tank series, which underwent numerous modifications and upgrades. In a similar vein, American inventor Walter J. Christie’s M1931 tank and suspension system became the basis for Soviet BT series and the T-34 tank, arguably the most successful tank of World War II. Conversely, the Soviet Union copied, both legally and illegally, a number of other mechanical equipment, notably American Ford trucks and cars and Caterpillar tractors.

  At approximately the same time as the experimental tank school opened in Kazan in 1929, the Red Army formed its first experimental mechanized unit. By the end of the next year, the regiment was expanded to a brigade numbering sixty MS-1 tanks plus numerous other vehicles including tankettes and armored cars.14 Training and progress of the new experimental unit was closely monitored by such high-level observers as K. E. Voroshilov, B. M. Shaposhnikov, and V. K. Triandafilov. The armored force continued to expand steadily, and in 1932 a first mechanized corps was born, followed soon by several more. By 1936 the Soviet armored force already numbered four mechanized corps, each with over five hundred tanks, plus six tank regiments and six separate tank battalions.

  In 1936, as the Spanish Civil War flared up a scant three years after the productive cooperation at Kazan ended, Germany and the Soviet Union found themselves looking at each other over gun barrels. Both countries, backing opposing sides in a politically second-rate country, thought Spain useful as testing grounds for their armored doctrines in a live-fire environment.

  The disparity between German and Soviet armored formations in Spain favored the Soviets. Thin-skinned, machine-gun armed, German light Panzer I tanks were no match for Soviet T-26 machines armed with a 45mm cannon. Unfortunately for the Spanish Nationalist forces and their Soviet patrons, they usually employed their tanks in roles where their advantage was decreased or nullified. In many instances, the Soviet tanks were doled out in penny-packets among Nationalist infantry, who hadn’t had the slightest inkling of how to cooperate with the armored vehicles. On several occasions tanks were used in street fighting, where their advantage of mobility and armor was thrown away on narrow cobblestone streets of Spain. Fortunately for the Soviet Union and its Nationalist allies, the Germans with their allies employed their armored vehicles in a similarly ineffective manner.

  Germany and the Soviet Union reached different conclusions based on armored operations in Spain. German high command understood that no concrete decision could be made about the course of tank warfare based on circumstances in Spain. Germans realized that their armor was incorrectly used, subordinated to infantry, and the number of tanks was too small to have had significant effect on operations. In addition, the Spanish terrain was largely unsuitable for tank operations. One major offshoot of tank warfare in Spain was the emergence of antitank artillery as a primary factor in halting armor attacks. Germans took this lesson to heart, and the start of World War II found them significantly ahead of the Soviet Union in antitank weapon tactics and implementation.

  On the other hand, the Soviets regarded their experiences in Spain as a valid litmus test of armor warfare. Based on their experiences, the image of tanks as an infantry-support weapon began taking precedence over the “deep battle” independent operations.

  In 1938 and 1939, two conflicts were fought against the Japanese in the Soviet Far East at Lake Khasan and Khalkhin-Gol River. Even though emerging victorious in both instances, the Soviet military managed success only after bringing overwhelmingly superior manpower and firepower to bear on the Japanese. While the tank units that participated in both conflicts, especially at Khalkhin-Gol, played a significant role in the Soviet victories, armor was used unimaginatively and suffered far greater casualties than necessary.

  In September 1939, while Hitler was crushing Poland from the west, the Soviet Union delivered a crippling stab into the Polish back from the east. As a result of partitioning Poland between Hitler and Stalin, the Soviet Union came away with large portions of western Ukraine and western Byelorussia. The Soviet tank units that participated in this “liberation” presented a particularly poor showing, being slow, unwieldy, hard to maneuver, and prone to mechanical breakdowns. Lieutenant General Dmitriy Ryabyshev, later talking with his friend Commissar Nikolai Popel, a big tank enthusiast, teased him: “In 1939 your tanks fell behind my horsies.”

  Many German officers who had the opportunity to observe Soviet armor units in operation during this conflict came away with decidedly unflattering opinions about Soviet capabilities. Poor performance of the Red Army in
western Ukraine had a significant influence on German planning when preparing for invasion of the Soviet Union, misleading German planners into underestimating Soviet capabilities.

  In late fall of 1939, a blue-ribbon Soviet commission, evaluating the poor Soviet showing and the outstanding German one, recommended the disbandment of Soviet mechanized corps in favor of forming tank divisions on the German model. Combined with the devastating purges of mid- and late-1930s, the Soviet armored forces slid into a period of decline and stagnation. However, almost immediately after the original Soviet mechanized corps were disbanded, the senior Soviet leaders decided to re-form these corps, albeit on a more flexible basis. They studied very carefully the German experiences during the French and Polish campaigns and became more open to opportunities presented by armored and mechanized forces.

  Each reconstructed mechanized corps was composed on paper of two tank divisions and one motorized rifle division, a motorcycle regiment, one or two artillery regiments, plus supporting units. Tank divisions were largely formed around the existing tank brigades. In the wholesale expansion of the armed forces, smaller units were expanded on paper into larger ones, without full complement of equipment and personnel. For example, a signal company would be expanded into a signal battalion, receiving a majority of additional lower enlisted personnel, but without appropriate numbers of officers and NCOs, radio and telephone equipment, and transportation.

  In a similar vein, tank divisions of the mechanized corps resembled a skeleton to be fleshed out by muscle over time. The Russian Civil War, less than twenty years in the past, left the Soviet Union a devastated country. Only the draconian measures during the industrialization instituted by Josef Stalin and the Communist Party allowed the country to begin playing catch-up with the western nations. Starting with no tank industry in 1929, the Soviet Union produced almost four thousand of these vehicles during its first economic Five-Year Plan of 1929-1933. Still, by the start of war with Germany, Soviet industrial capacity in producing the required number of tanks fell far short of the desired goal. Combined with a Russian propensity to hoard their old equipment, the seemingly impressive number of almost twenty-four thousand at the start of the war was a mismatched collection of modern new tanks, decrepit older ones, and some in between.