Soviet DOW

[archita]

URSS can DOW to Germany?

if German not put enough units to east URSS can attack into 1940-1941, like same rules of great "Third Reich" that give permission to soviet union if german units were under a certain number. I think that URSS must be the main nemesis of Germany. ( i have seen that URSS has not tanks in CEAW into 1939 year, there were more 10000 tanks... )

[joerock22]

The USSR is the main nemesis of Germany. This has been shown in game after game, and every player I talk to acknowledges that the game is usually decided in Russia. But the Soviets were woefully unprepared for war in 1941, as their terrible showing during the initial months of Barbarossa shows. I doubt there is any historical evidence to indicate that Stalin would have invaded Germany in 1940-41 if he thought it was underdefended.

Tanks were removed from GS because of the armour blob strategy, where the Allied player would purchase only tanks before Barbarossa. They could get maybe 12-16, and that would lead to ahistorical result of a perfectly good Barbarossa getting crushed. If the Allied player wants Soviet tanks, he must build them on his own. You are correct in saying that GS does not fully represent Soviet tanks in 1939, but it is necessary to prevent the armour blob strategy and preserve game balance. I would much rather have a well-balanced game than one that is 100% historical.

[Peter Stauffenberg]

GS do Soviet armor in 1939-1941 through the numerous mech corps. The Soviets actually organized their armor units in mech corps until they made a reorganization in 1942 when they formed tank corps based on the tank brigade core unit.

[JyriErik]

I doubt there is any historical evidence to indicate that Stalin would have invaded Germany in 1940-41 if he thought it was underdefended.

There is some evidence that the Red Army was preparing for an August or September 1941 attack on Germany. While not conclusive, it does explain why the Russian units on the border were in offensive, not defensive deployments when the war started on June 22nd. It would probably still have ended badly for the Russians (maybe even worse than historically, since a large part of what the Communists used to rally the Russian people wasn't the defense of communism but rather defending "Mother Russia" from the heinous surpise attack against it).

Jyri

[StevenCarleton]

The German eyewitiness accounts of the attack on the Soviet Union generally indicate that the Red Army was not deployed for defense or attack. Many units were still in their internal military districts at the time of the invasion. Stalin was definitely warned by British intelligence and his own spy services. He refused to mobilize because he didn't want to provoke the Germans the way Czar's mobilization did in WW1. Conspiricy theories claim Stalin wanted to be attacked and risk huge losses so he could fight a just war and lure the Germans deep into the USSR and crush them. This has not been confirmed in the Soviet archives opened up after the fall of Communism.

It seems unlikely Stalin would've attacked before mid 42. He needed time to upgrade the bulk of his units to a modern generation of weapons (T-34, Sturmovik, Katusha, etc). His paranoid purges wiped out huge numbers of officers and he needed time to retrain new, trusted ones. When Hitler attacked, Red Army divisions were commaned by Colonels since so many Generals had been executed. General Rokossovky (to become marshal) had to be pulled out of a gulag and put back into command.

Its interesting to consider what would've happened if Stalin had mobilized his forces and massed them on the western border. Russian historians claim Hitler would've suffered huge losses and never would've advanced past Smolensk and Kiev. Others claim the Germans would've been able to wipe out the bulk of the Red Army near the border, achieving a decisive victory. Carrel's account does describe that in places where local Red Army commanders ordered defensive preperations, like at Brest-Litovsk, they fought ferociously and inflicted huge losses.

[StevenCarleton]

GS do Soviet armor in 1939-1941 through the numerous mech corps. The Soviets actually organized their armor units in mech corps until they made a reorganization in 1942 when they formed tank corps based on the tank brigade core unit.

Yes the mod changes due a nice job of reflecting this. Clearly the Red Army had staggering numbers of tanks in 1941 (BT types and some strange heavy models, and a few hunderd T-34s), but the purges ended any attempt to institute modern western theories of tank warefare. The Red Army followed the classic French model of distributing tanks to the infantry units. In addition to Mech Corps, the Red Army had huge numbers of independant tank brigades which were distributed to infantry units. This practice was continued throughout the war, even after Tank Divisions/Corps/Armies were formed.

It should be noted that the secret of the Panzer divisions wasn't just concentrating huge numbers of tanks or close air support. It was that all supporting units could advance right along with the tanks (infantry, artillery, anti-tank, flak, engineers, recon, supply). A Panzer division could not only break through an enemy line but it could seize and hold vital objectives deep in enemy territory. Also, commanders led from the front and made decisions right on the spot without consulting a rear-area HQ. Early in the war, the Germans had the finest mobile radio network in the world. Every armoured vehicle had an excellent FM radio set allowing operations to be coordinated over a wide area. No other army in the world had anything like this 'til 43.

Another little known factor was the tiny Storch observation aircraft. It could take off and land in all kinds of terrain and was used for recon, and to control artillery and air strikes. Rommel loved his! The US Army would copy this with its own little Cessnas and the concept was continued in Korea and Vietnam.