Vasilevsky came to rely on one subordinate above all others: the chief of operations, General Aleksei Antonov. Between June and December 1942 Stalin appointed no fewer than seven different men to the post, one after the other. On December 11 the forty-six-year-old Antonov stepped into the role which was more directly exposed to Stalin's inquisitive leadership than any other. Antonov rose to the challenge. Instead of rushing off to report to Stalin when he arrived in Moscow, he spent the first week familiarizing himself thoroughly with the General Staff and the state of the front. Only when he was fully primed did he go to see his commander. The two men developed the most effective working relationship of the war. Antonov displayed a calm intelligence married to a massive energy and exceptional industry. According to his deputy, General Sergei Shtemenko, Antonov never lost his temper or allowed circumstances to get the better of him. He was firm, caustic, slow to praise and a tough taskmaster, but the rigorous regimen that he imposed on his staff won their respect. Above all he was adept at manipulating Stalin. He did not sugar-coat his reports. He was prepared to stand up to Stalin with what his deputy regarded as a ‘brave outspokenness’. So skilled was he at providing the evening situation reports concisely and accurately that even Zhukov bowed to his capability and allowed Antonov to present them in his place. The trust that Stalin came to place in Antonov was reflected in his survivability. He retained his office until February 1945, when he was made chief of staff in Vasilevsky's place.6
None of the new military stars survived long after the war's end. They became victims of Stalin's paranoiac jealousy. During the war, however, they created a central team of military managers and thinkers which radically altered Soviet fighting power. Their model was again the German one, as it had been in the 1920s. In the summer of 1941 Soviet air and tank forces, though numerically large, proved incapable of inflicting more than local damage on the concentrated tank and air forces of the enemy. Tanks were divided up to support infantry regiments in small numbers and as a result lost the advantages of striking power and mobility that they should have offered. In the spring of 1942, under the stress of war, Red Army leaders began a thorough overhaul of the organization and technical quality of both army and air force. The new army was built around the concept of the tank corps, a fast-moving unit armed with 168 tanks, anti-tank battalions, Katyusha rockets and anti-aircraft artillery. Two tank corps and an infantry division made up a tank army, the equivalent of a German Panzer division, a self-contained and highly mobile fighting instrument complete with vehicles, riflemen, defensive armament and military services. The infantry went into battle clinging dangerously to rails on the tank's sides, giving it considerable mobility. In September 1942 the army established the equivalent of the German motorized divisions. They called them mechanized corps, having more infantry and fewer tanks than the tank armies. They were more mobile and heavily armed than the regular divisions. From December 1942 they were joined by self-propelled heavy artillery, which gave the Soviet offensive added momentum. To increase the hitting power of the new divisions, infantry went into an attack side by side with tanks and guns. They took heavy losses, but they were able to overwhelm German positions before the enemy had time to regroup.
Between 1942 and the end of the war the Red Army activated forty-three tank corps and twenty-two mechanized corps. In 1943 and 1944 these armoured formations were greatly strengthened by the addition of larger quantities of tanks and guns. A tank corps now had 228 tanks, but fewer men, and was capable of concentrating 70 to 80 tanks and 250 guns on each kilometre of front. In late 1941 the density had been more like three tanks per kilometre. For the rest of the army, largely horse-drawn, the later war years saw a further change in the balance between weapons and manpower, between capital-intensive and labour-intensive warfare, as the former became more plentiful and the latter much scarcer. The firepower of a typical infantry division quadrupled over the war years: under 250 pounds per artillery salvo in 1941, over 900 pounds by 1944. As junior commanders became more familiar with the tactics of modern armoured warfare, and with significant improvements in logistical supply and radio-based communications, the Red Army began to approach German battlefield performance. In 1941, six or seven Soviet tanks were lost for every German one; by the autumn of 1944 the ratio was down to one to one.7
The Soviet air force also learned lessons from the enemy. In 1941 it was stretched out across the front, supporting each small army unit. Aircraft were not concentrated, nor were the principles of modern air combat well understood. Reform was begun in the spring of 1942 by a young Communist air officer, Aleksandr Novikov, who had won his spurs defending Leningrad in the autumn of 1941 and reaped his reward when Stalin appointed him commander-in-chief of the whole Soviet air force in April 1942. Novikov was another fortunate choice. He was a fanatical enthusiast for air power. He grasped that the deficiencies of Soviet aviation were organizational as much as technical. He insisted on concentrating air forces, like the air fleets of the enemy, so that they would be capable of carrying out wide-ranging and devastating air strikes rather than being frittered away in small front-line engagements. The new air armies were composed of fighters, bombers and ground-attack aircraft. They were to be closely controlled from the centre, where a large strategic reserve was built up to be used at critical junctures in the battle. Each air army was assigned to a front commander, but the air force retained considerable flexibility in the conduct of the air offensive. The aim was to smash enemy air power first, then support the army on the ground by closely co-ordinated attacks against enemy strongholds, using the redoubtable Ilyushin Il-2 fighter bomber, generally regarded as one of the finest battlefront aircraft of the war. 8
Novikov's emphasis on organization and striking power gave Soviet forces the air/tank punch they had lacked. But he also recognized that air power was only as effective as its large tail of supplies and services. He reorganized communications, introducing air-to-air and air-to-ground radio contact. Radar was gradually installed. The creaky maintenance system was overhauled so that damaged aircraft could be swiftly returned to combat. A vast programme of airfield construction was undertaken, including a good proportion of dummy fields to deceive the enemy. After the mauling in June 1941, Novikov insisted that airfield camouflage be given priority. Aircraft were concealed in woods and farm buildings. Their rugged design and construction allowed them to take off from rough grass fields close to the front line. Concealed supplies of fuel, brought forward laboriously from the rear, were stored at the front-line airfields. They provided enough petrol for each aircraft to mount twenty operations right in the heart of the battle. During 1943 the Soviet air force was at last brought to the point where it could contend for air supremacy on more equal terms.9
The organizational reforms came at just the time that Soviet military equipment was being significantly improved. The main Soviet battle tank, the robust T-34, which first appeared in small numbers in the battles of 1941, had better armour and a heavier gun (76 mm) than German tanks, but suffered from small, debilitating defects. They lacked radios, which left them to fight on their own, in ignorance of the battle around them. The turret was cramped, with room for only two crewmen, so that the tank commander had to load the gun and operate the machine-gun in addition to his command duties. Visibility was poor, through an unsatisfactory periscope. Because the tank hatch opened forward it was difficult to look out. By the battles of 1943 the T-34 had become a much more effective fighting vehicle. The redesigned cabin held a crew of three; a new cupola gave all-around vision; radios were installed to keep tanks in communication with their commanders. In 1943 Soviet factories turned out some 24,000 tanks, of which 15,812 were T-34s. In 1943 Germany produced 17,000 tanks.10
During 1943 the T-34 was joined by a new generation of mobile artillery. The SU-76 self-propelled gun was poorly armoured and gave scant protection to its crew when it first saw service in 1942. An upgraded model, the SU-76M, which rectified earlier deficiencies, appeared from May 1943. A heavier
model, the SU-122, went into mass production in January 1943, and a giant anti-tank gun, the SU-152, was rushed into production in just twenty-five days in February 1943. The SU-152 was nicknamed the ‘Animal Hunter’ because of its ability to destroy the new generation of German heavy tanks, the ‘Panther’ and the ‘Tiger’. In the pipeline were the huge IS-I and IS-2 ‘Josef Stalin’ tanks, which became in 1944 the most effective armoured vehicles of the war. With its thick, crudely machined hull, daubed in muddy green, and reinforced in places with concrete, and a gun so large that it looked as though the tank would topple forward, the IS-2 displayed an awesome, primitive power.11
The most serious gap in the Soviet armoury at the start of the war was in radio communication and intelligence. In the early months of war there were desperate shortages of radio equipment, which made effective command and control of large numbers of aircraft and tanks impossible and made it difficult to hold together a regular infantry division. And when radio was used German interceptors caught the messages and dispatched air or tank strikes against the unfortunate command post that had relayed them. Soviet commanders soon grew uncomfortable with using radio once they realized it could betray their whereabouts. The system was disrupted in the fast-moving defensive battles of 1941 and 1942, as one communications post after another was overrun by the enemy. The effort to provide effective communication in 1942 was central to the final successes of Soviet mass operations in 1943 and 1944.
It could not have been achieved without supplies from the United States and the British Commonwealth. Under the Lend-Lease agreements drawn up with America and Britain in 1941, the Soviet Union was supplied with 35,000 radio stations, 380,000 field telephones and 956,000 miles of telephone cable.12 The air force was able by 1943 to establish a network of radio control stations about one and a half miles behind the front, from which aircraft could be quickly directed to targets on the battlefield. Tank armies used the new radios to hold the tank units together, increasing their fighting effectiveness by the simplest of innovations. Finally, the Red Army began to organize its own radio interception service in 1942. By 1943 five specialized radio battalions had been raised; their function was to listen in on German radio, jam their frequencies and spread disinformation over the air waves. In the battles of summer 1943 the battalions claimed to have reduced the transmission of German operational radiograms by two-thirds. In the last years of the war Soviet signals-intelligence underwent an exceptional and necessary improvement. The systems for evaluating intelligence from radio interception, spies and air reconnaissance were overhauled by the spring of 1943, and a much clearer picture of German dispositions and intentions could be constructed.13 Moreover, radio came to play a major part in the evolution of sophisticated tactics of deception and disinformation, which on numerous occasions left the enemy quite unable even to guess the size, the whereabouts or the intentions of Soviet forces.14
Soviet reaction to Allied aid during the war was mixed. While sending out extravagant shopping lists to the Western powers, the Soviet authorities complained constantly about delays in supply and the quality of some of the weaponry they were sent. Offers by British and American engineers and officers to follow up the deliveries with advice on how to use and repair the equipment were met with a stony refusal.15 It was true that aid deliveries were slow to materialize in the fifteen months after the promise was made in August of 1941, due partly to the difficulties in establishing effective supply lines, partly to the demands of America's own rearmament. But neither Roosevelt nor Churchill were in any doubt that aid for the Soviet Union was vital to the anti-Axis coalition; they bore Soviet complaints without a serious rupture. When the first aid programme was finally settled in October 1941, Maxim Litvinov, by then the ambassador to Washington, leaped to his feet and shouted out, ‘Now we shall win the war!’16 Yet after 1945 Lend-Lease was treated in the official Soviet histories of the war as a minor factor in the revival of Soviet fortunes. The story of Lend-Lease became a victim of the Cold War. Even in the late 1980s it was still a subject of which the regime would not permit open discussion. The significance of Western supplies for the Soviet war effort was admitted by Khrushchev in the taped interviews used for his memoirs, but the following passage was published only in the 1990s: ‘Several times I heard Stalin acknowledge [Lend-Lease] within the small circle of people around him. He said that… if we had had to deal with Germany one-to-one we would not have been able to cope because we lost so much of our industry.’ Marshal Zhukov, in a bugged conversation in 1963 whose contents were released only thirty years later, endorsed the view that without aid the Soviet Union ‘could not have continued the war’. All this was a far cry from the official history of the Great Patriotic War, which concluded that Lend-Lease was ‘in no way meaningful’ and had ‘no decisive influence’ on the outcome of the war.17
Table 2 American Lend-Lease supplies to the USSR 194–45
* * *
A: BY MAIN PRODUCT TYPE 1941–45
1941 1942 1943 1944 1945
(Per cent of total supplies)
Aircraft —— 22.4 17.4 16.3 12.7
Guns and Ammo. —— 15.8 12.8 5.6 2.6
Tanks —— 13.1 2.6 4.9 4.0
Other Vehicles —— 11.0 14.1 14.7 19.3
Shipping —— 0.8 3.2 2.5 2.1
Total Military 20 63.2 49.9 43.8 40.7
Industrial goods 80 23.1 29.6 39.3 39.5
Agricultural goods —— 13.7 20.5 16.9 19.8
* * *
B: SELECTED STATISTICS ON THE SUPPLY OF EQUIPMENT 1941–45
Aircraft 14,203
Fighters
9,438
Bombers
3,771
Tanks 6,196
Trucks 363,080
Jeeps 43,728
Motorcycles 32,200
Explosives (tons) 325,784
Radio Stations 35,089
Field Telephones 380,135
Radio Receivers 5,899
Telephone Wire (miles) 956,688
Canned Meat (tons) 782,973
Boots (pairs) 14,793,000
Belts 2,577,000
Copper (tons) 339,599
Aluminium (tons) 261,311
Source: H. D. Hall, North American Supply (London, 1955), p. 430; M. Harrison, Soviet Planning in War and Peace 1938–1942 (Cambridge, 1985), pp. 258–9; H. van Tuyll, Feeding the Bear: American Aid to the Soviet Union 1941–1945 (New York, 1989), pp. 156–61.
* * *
It was true that the quantity of armaments sent was not great when compared with the remarkable revival of Soviet mass production. The raw statistics show that Western aid supplied only 4 per cent of Soviet munitions over the whole war period, but the aid that mattered did not come in the form of weapons. In addition to radio equipment the United States supplied more than half a million vehicles: 77,900 jeeps, 151,000 light trucks and over 200,000 Studebaker army trucks. One-third of all Soviet vehicles came from abroad and were generally of higher quality and durability, though most came in 1943 and 1944. At the time of Stalingrad only 5 per cent of the Soviet military vehicle park came from imported stocks. Imports, however, gave the Red Army supply system a vital mobility that was by 1944 better than the enemy's. The Studebaker became a favourite with the Soviet forces. The letters ‘USA’ stencilled on the side were translated as ‘Ubit sukina syna Adolfa’ – ‘to kill that son-of-a-bitch Adolf!’18 The list of other supplies, equally vital to the Soviet supply effort, is impressive – 57.8 per cent of aviation fuel requirements, 53 per cent of all explosives, almost half the wartime supply of copper, aluminium and rubber tyres. Arguably the most decisive contribution was supplies for the strained Soviet rail network, much of which was in the occupied areas in 1941. From America came not only 56.6 per cent of all the rails used during the war but 1,900 locomotives to supplement the meagre Soviet output of just 92, and 11,075 railway cars to add to the 1,087 produced domestically. Almost half the supplies, by weight, came in the form of food, enough to provide an estimated half-pound
of concentrated nourishment for every Soviet soldier, every day of the war. The shiny tins of Spam, stiff, pink compressed meat, were universally known as ‘second fronts’.19
The provision of Lend-Lease supplies was slow in the early stages of the war, but from late 1942 it became a steady flow through the Soviet eastern provinces via Vladivostok, by the overland route from the Persian Gulf and the more dangerous and inhospitable convoy journeys from British ports to Murmansk or Archangel. Foreign aid on such a scale permitted the Soviet Union to concentrate its own production on the supply of battlefront equipment rather than on machinery, materials or consumer goods. Without Western aid, the narrower post-invasion economy could not have produced the remarkable output of tanks, guns and aircraft, which exceeded anything the wealthier German economy achieved throughout the war. Without the railway equipment, vehicles and fuel the Soviet war effort would almost certainly have foundered on poor mobility and an anaemic transport system. Without the technical and scientific aid – during the war 15,000 Soviet officials and engineers visited American factories and military installations technological progress in the Soviet Union would have come much more slowly. This is not to denigrate the extraordinary performance of the Soviet economy during the war, which was made possible only by the use of crude mass-production techniques, by skilful improvisation in planning and through the greater independence and initiative allowed plant managers and engineers. As a result of the improvements in production, the Red Army faced the German enemy in 1943 on more equal terms than at any time since 1941. The modernization of Soviet fighting power was an essential element in the equation. The gap in organization and technology between the two sides was narrowed to the point where the Red Army was prepared to confront German forces during the summer campaigning season in the sort of pitched battle of manoeuvre and firepower at which German commanders had hitherto excelled.
Russia's War Page 24
