stalins_organ wrote:Yes i've no doubt there wre tank and aircraft transfers from east of hte Urals too - I meant to say that "most" of the Siberians in the Dec counter attacks were possibly "normal" units....not that they all were.
AFAIK there were no tank factories in the "Far east" - there were 1 or 2 small ones at "Tankograd" before the war in the Urals, and a couple shifted there (eg Kharkov factory 183, and the KV-1 line from Leningrad). T-34 output by individual factory by month is listed at
http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weap ... on.htm#T34, and KV output at
http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weap ... ion.htm#KV
Omsk is officially in "South-west Siberia", but is a lot, lot closer to Moscow than it is to Vladivostok, and you can see that there were only 5-6 factories producing medium and heavy tanks at any one time.
Light tanks (T-60, t-70) were produced at a few more plants - see
http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weap ... #tspplants
It's really quite surprising how few tank factories there were IMO - see also
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_So ... _factories
According to that site there were no T34's or KV-1's assigned to any formations east of the Urals on 1 June 41.
Hi - thanks for all the links
First, I'm wondering what is the source that the Armchair General has used for its source for these tank figures? Who has put out that literature? How reliable is it?
Second, none of the historians I have read, have indicated that the Far East sent T-34s to the west. Remember, that according to Clark the tanks that were sent west from the Far East were indicated as
"Tank Brigades". Before the war, tank production (of various types) would have ensured that these Siberian tank brigades were at full strength.
I wonder what the figures for tank production before June/41 in the USSR would be? Many of the Siberian divisions had been formed in the Far East in 1938 and 1939. A great deal of tank production would have been sent there. Most of the tanks would have been of various types.
Since these Siberian tank brigades would have been at full strength, and since tanks were needed on the Moscow Front, then it follows that seventeen hundred tanks could easily have been sent from the Far East to the west. In addition, as you yourself have stated there were tank factories in the Urals that were no doubt pumping out tanks and sending them west.
So I see no conflict between the historical sources and those figures you have posted.
I don't know where the main aircraft factories were, but there's references on the net to factories at Saratov (about 13,000 Yak fighters), Voroneezh (bombers), Tashkent (Aircraft factory 84, evacuated from near moscow), GAZ-1 (State Aircraft Factory No 1 near Moscow)
Soviet airforce strengths on June 1 41 are given at
http://rkkaww2.armchairgeneral.com/weap ... rce_41.xls - the far east military districts certainly have thousands of aircraft, but they're mostly obsolete - of 3100 fighters 1500 are I-16's, 1200 are I-15's and I-153's, and only 150 are Mig-3's and Yak-1's.
bombers are a bit better - 930 are IL-4's, but there's still 1200 SB's, 900 DB-3's and 330 TB-3's out of 3400 total.
Using your figures, in the Far East districts there were about 11,000 aircraft. So even if many were not of the most modern type, the fact that 1500 were sent west from the Far East districts seems more than reasonable and accords well with the historical sources.
Even less modern planes can strafe troops and drop bombs. Look what the swordfish biplanes did to the battleship Bismarck.
The Siberian divisions would have been fully stocked with air squadrons before June/41 as part of their deployment to deal with the potential Japanese threat.
I've resurrected a thread about Siberians on the Battlefront board too - at
http://www.battlefront.com/discuss/ulti ... 4;t=001658, which is where someone lists 31 divisions sent to the west by mid-November 41, together with brief details of their combat by that stage where appropriate.
OK, someone in that link is quoting from Zhukov's memoirs.
Let's deal with Zhukov first:
I think we should be careful about everything that Zhukov writes about in his memoirs.
Zhukov wrote his book in 1964 and published it in 1969. This, at a time when the USSR was still under the heavy dictatorship of the Communist Party, of which Zhukov was a prominent member.
As such, Zhukov's book was heavily censored by Soviet authorities on numerous occasions during its 10 printings. It was last printed in 1990.
Due to this heavy censorship we may never truly know the exact extent of true or fabricated information in this book. No doubt Zhukov would want to make himself look good; no doubt the Communist Party would want certain facts and information to be told the way it would like them to be told; and it is highly probable that they would want to downplay the role of the Asiatic Siberians in "saving" Moscow".
It also seems odd that ALL historians of any repute would have been aware of, and read, Zhukov's book. And yet, we do not hear about any NEW revelations by historians from his memoirs; instead, we read about the errors and falsehoods in his book.
Here are just a few examples of why we should be more critical of Zhukov's book:
1)
Zhukov professes great faith in communism: "I have forgotten many things, but I will remember the day I joined the Party as long as I live. Since then I have tried to suit all my thoughts, aspirations and actions to the demands made of a Party member."
Here Zhukov is professing great love for communism and has no qualms in having his book and facts edited and altered. Yet surely someone who had witnessed Stalin's purges of the 1930s, to which many of Zhukov's colleagues fell victim, or who had himself been prey to the petty machinations of the Party leadership after the war, would have been far more critical of the Soviet political system?
2)
Until the 1990 edition was published, Zhukov's book was subject to myriad revisions by the Soviet censors, including one notorious passage where Zhukov was persuaded to write that he had "wanted to consult" with Leonid Brezhnev (who was the Soviet leader when the first edition of Zhukov's memoirs came out in 1969) during a visit to the North Caucasian Front in 1943, when Brezhnev was a lowly political officer.
3)
Zhukov Misrepresents Information and Operations: Operation Mars was a costly failure which in his memoirs Zhukov misrepresented as a diversion to prevent German Army Group Center from assisting their comrades at Stalingrad rather than a major offensive in its own right.
In his recent book,
Zhukov's Greatest Defeat, David Glantz exposes
Zhukov's falsification and recounts in detail the Mars disaster, which had long been covered up by official Soviet sources.
According to John Erickson, the leading historian of Stalingrad, "the full significance of Stalingrad…cannot be grasped without understanding the role of Operation Mars," which was "deliberately misrepresented by Zhukov himself" and is now the subject of "Glantz's indispensable account."
SOURCES:
http://context.themoscowtimes.com/stori ... 2/105.html
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/142
http://www.russiablog.org/2007/04/did_u ... he_war.php
http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-68952101.html
Edite: I'm also unsure of hte provence of the claims that the "siberians" were all veterans of the Japanese-Soviet border clashes of 1939. as someone pinted out on the Matrix boards, the war in Mongolia was over for almost 2 years prior to Barbarossa, so most troops in those divisions would have been conscripted after the end of it, and there were NOT on-going clashes - once the war was over there were no more conflicts in that theatre.
David Glantz is regarded by many as one of the best military historians of the Soviet role in World War II. He is perhaps most associated with the thesis that World War II Soviet military history has been prejudiced in the West by its over-reliance on German oral and printed sources, without being balanced by a similar examination of Soviet source material.
David M. Glantz says in "Stumbling Colossus: The Red Army on the Eve of World War" that there were 25 'original' Siberian divisions in June 41:
a) 5 were transferred before October/41
b) 8-10 were transferred during Nov/Dec/41
These units that were transferred were replaced by freshly raised troops, keeping the total facing Japan roughly the same.
It would make sense that those Siberian divisions that fought the Japanese in 1939 would have gained valuable experience. Since the Japanese (until late 1941) had the potential for attacking Siberia, then it follows that these divisions would have been fully equipped and continuously trained.
It also makes sense that after the Japanese threat had passed, that the most experienced Siberian divisions would have been sent west. In their place reserve units would have been established.
