As you know, in the USSR, the T-34 was unambiguously considered the best tank of the Second World War. However, later, with the collapse of the Land of the Soviets, this point of view was revised, and the debate about what place the famous "thirty-fours" actually occupied in the tank hierarchy of the world of those years do not subside to this day. And one can hardly expect that this discussion will end in the coming years, or even decades, unless future generations will completely lose interest in history.
The main reason for this, according to the author, lies in the paradox of the history of the T-34 tank: it suffered defeats during the period of its strength and won during the period of weakness. In the first period of the war, when our tank, according to its technical specifications, left far behind its German "peers", the T-34 did not seem to gain great fame on the battlefields: the Red Army in 1941-1942 suffered one defeat after another, and in 1943 Our tank units often suffered very heavy losses. With the appearance of the famous "Tigers" and "Panthers", our T-34 lost its superiority in performance characteristics, but at the same time, starting in 1943, our Soviet army finally seized the strategic initiative and did not release it until the very end of the war. Not that the Wehrmacht turned into whipping boys, the Germans remained a skillful and staunch enemy to the very end, but they could no longer resist the Soviet military machine, and, in particular, the tank corps of the USSR.
Of course, such a logical inconsistency boggles the imagination and makes them look for some kind of catch: at some point, the view became a classic for the revisionists that the T-34, despite its formally excellent characteristics, was a very mediocre tank due to a number of non-obvious shortcomings. which manifested itself in the battles of 1941-1942. Well, and then the Germans were allegedly simply overwhelmed with "the corpses of Soviet tankmen": quantity overcame quality, and so on.
In this series of articles, we will try to figure out what prevented the T-34 from gaining convincing victories in the initial period of the war, and what helped it to become a Victory tank later. Let's start with a simple question - why was the T-34 created at all?
At the time of the creation of this tank in the USSR, the so-called theory of deep operation was "in full swing", while the main operational formation of tank forces was considered a mechanized (for some time also called a tank) corps. Its main task was considered to be combat operations in the operational depth of the enemy's defense.
Let us clarify the meaning of this definition. When troops are on the defensive, they have a tactical and operational zone. The tactical zone begins with the line of contact with the enemy and ends with the rear border of the first echelon of the army - this is the same zone in which the defenders expect to bleed the attacking groups, stop them, and inflict defeat on them. The operational zone is located immediately behind the tactical zone - there are the second echelons and tactical reserves of the defenders, as well as all kinds of supplies, warehouses, airfields, headquarters and other objects extremely important for any army.
So, it was assumed that in the offensive, the Soviet mechanized corps (MK) would not participate in breaking through the enemy's tactical defense, and that the rifle divisions of the combined-arms armies would do it for them. MK were to be introduced into the breaches already made in the enemy's defense and act to the operational depth, destroying the enemy that did not have time to properly prepare for the defense. With this, according to the ideas then available, tanks like the BT-7 could easily cope, but later the depth of the "deep operation" was expanded from the initial 100 to 200-300 km, that is, it was assumed that the mechanized corps would operate at the front operational depth. Here it was to be expected that the MK, acting in isolation from the main forces of the army, could meet with more serious, organized resistance.
At the same time, it was believed that the main threat to the mechanized corps would be the enemy's tank formations, since, according to our military analysts, only they had sufficient mobility in order to be timely concentrated for a counterstrike. In addition, the saturation of infantry formations with a large number of small-caliber anti-tank artillery was taken into account, which could also lead to large losses of tank formations that escaped into the operational space if it became necessary to attack an enemy that was inferior in number, but managed to take up the enemy's defenses.
In order to fend off these threats, it was supposed, on the one hand, to create a tank with anti-cannon armor, which allowed him not to be too afraid of encounters with small-caliber anti-tank guns, and on the other hand, to provide such a concentration of tanks in the mechanized corps that the enemy simply would not have time to collect and throw into battle, units of sufficient strength to withstand them. Of course, it was also taken into account that most of the modern tanks were armed with the same small-caliber guns, which would not be effective against tanks with anti-cannon armor.
Of course, other forms of combat use were envisaged for mechanized corps, including participation in the encirclement and prevention of a breakthrough of encircled enemy forces (as one of the objectives of hostilities in the enemy's operational defense zone), counterstrikes against his tank groupings that broke through our defenses, etc.
From the height of today's experience, it can be stated that the concept of a deep operation described above, involving the actions of large motorized formations in the operational depth of enemy combat formations, was fundamentally correct, but contained a serious mistake that made it impossible to successfully implement it in practice. This mistake consisted in the well-known absolutization of the tank on the battlefield - in fact, our military experts believed that a purely tank formation would be self-sufficient and could operate effectively even in isolation, or with minimal support from motorized infantry, field artillery and anti-tank guns. In fact, even the most powerful and powerful tanks, being one of the most important weapons of the army, still reveal their potential only in joint actions with other types of ground forces.
Looking ahead, we note that this error does not give us grounds to suspect our military leaders of those years of inertness or inability to predict the features of future military conflicts. The fact is that absolutely all the leading countries of the world made a similar mistake: both in England and in the USA, and, of course, in Germany, initially tank formations contained an excessive number of tanks to the detriment of motorized infantry and artillery. Interestingly, even the experience of the Polish campaign did not open their eyes to the generals of the Wehrmacht. Only after the defeat of France, before Operation Barbarossa, did the Germans come to the optimal composition of their tank divisions, which demonstrated their highest efficiency in the Great Patriotic War.
We can say that the pre-war Soviet tank troops were destroyed in the Border Battle, which took place on June 22-30, 1941 (the end date is very conditional) and which the Red Army lost. In the course of this battle, a significant part of the mechanized corps concentrated on the western border either died or suffered heavy losses in materiel. And, of course, along with the T-26, BT-7, the newest T-34 and KV-1 were defeated on the battlefields. Why did this happen?
The reasons for the defeat of our armored vehicles are completely impossible to separate and consider from the general reasons that led to the failure of the Red Army in the initial period of the war, namely:
The strategic initiative belonged to our enemy. The Germans had a large espionage network in our border districts, their planes regularly violated the air borders of the USSR for the purpose of reconnaissance, the Wehrmacht concentrated its forces and struck where and when and where it saw fit. We can say that Germany took full advantage of the advantages that the unprovoked attack on the USSR gave her and from the first day of the war seized the strategic initiative in her own hands;
The lack of military plans in the USSR to repel such an invasion. The fact is that the pre-war plans of the Red Army largely copied similar plans from tsarist times, and were based on the understanding of the simple fact that the beginning of a war was not when the enemy crossed the border, but when he announced a general mobilization. At the same time, the USSR (like the Russian Empire earlier) is much larger than Germany in size with a much lower density of railways. Accordingly, with the simultaneous beginning of general mobilization, Germany was the first to deploy an army on the border with the USSR and was the first to attack, finding our armed forces only partially mobilized. To avoid this, the USSR (like the Russian Empire) created cover troops in the border military districts, distinguished by the fact that in peacetime their divisions had a number much closer to the standard. As a result, with the beginning of general mobilization, such troops were replenished to a full state in a matter of days, and then they had to launch an offensive into enemy territory. Such an offensive, of course, could not have a decisive character and had to be carried out in order to confuse the enemy's plans to deploy the army, force him to conduct defensive battles, frustrating his plans and thereby win several weeks before the completion of the mobilization of the Soviet (formerly Russian) army. I would like to note that it was this scenario that we tried to implement in 1914: we are, of course, talking about the East Prussian operation, that is, the offensive of the armies of Samsonov and Rennenkampf into East Prussia. And, of course, it should be said that the presence of this plan of a preventive offensive with limited goals subsequently gave rich soil to would-be historians and traitors to the Motherland for insinuations in the style of "Bloody Stalin was preparing to attack Hitler's darling first and conquer Europe."
However, the Great Patriotic War began in a completely different way. Since Germany has been fighting since 1939, its army, of course, was mobilized and remained so even after the defeat of France - this was due to the fact that Great Britain did not lay down its arms and continued the war. Accordingly, in 1941, a completely abnormal situation developed, not foreseen by any plans: Germany had a fully mobilized armed forces, but the USSR did not, and he could not start a general mobilization, because this would provoke Germany into war. As a result, we managed to carry out only partial mobilization under the pretext of military training in the border districts.
In order to put the pre-war plans into action, we should have attacked first at the moment when a massive transfer of German troops to the Soviet-German border was revealed, but, firstly, it is not known whether I. V. Stalin, and secondly, he did not even have such an opportunity, since intelligence could not reveal this movement. Intelligence first reported that there were almost no troops on the Soviet-German border, and then suddenly found a grouping of more than 80 divisions at our side. The troops of the border districts could no longer successfully advance against such forces, and therefore the pre-war plans could no longer be put into effect, and they did not have time to develop and bring new ones to the troops.
Unsuccessful disposition of our troops. When it turned out that the Germans had concentrated forces on the Soviet-German border that were quite equivalent to those at our disposal, and continued to rapidly build up them, the USSR, from a military point of view, found itself in a completely disastrous situation. The Wehrmacht was mobilized, but the Red Army was not, the Wehrmacht could be very quickly concentrated on our border, and the Red Army took much more time for this. Thus, the Germans strategically outplayed us, and we could not oppose anything. I. V. In this situation, Stalin made a political decision to refrain from any provocations or anything that could be taken for such and to try to delay the start of the war until the spring-summer of 1942, and this gave us the opportunity to prepare much better for the invasion.
Someone may say that Iosif Vissarionovich "grabbed at straws", but in fairness, we note that in that situation for the USSR there was no longer at least some obvious correct solution - such is extremely difficult to find even taking into account today's aftermath. As you know, history does not know the subjunctive mood, and I. V. Stalin decided what he decided, but the consequence of his decision was the extremely unfortunate disposition of our troops in the border districts. When Germany attacked the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941, it concentrated 152 divisions in the East with a staff strength of 2,432,000, including:
In the first echelon, that is, in the army groups "North", "Center", "South", as well as the forces stationed in Finland - 123 divisions, including 76 infantry, 14 motorized, 17 tank, 9 security, 1 cavalry, 4 light, 3 mountain rifle divisions with a staff strength of 1 954,1 thousand people;
The second echelon, located directly behind the front of the army groups - 14 divisions, including 12 infantry, 1 mountain rifle and 1 police. The number of staff is 226, 3 thousand people;
Third echelon: troops in the reserve of the main command - 14 divisions, including 11 infantry, 1 motorized and 2 tank with a staff of 233, 4 thousand people.
I would like to note that the figure indicated by us for the total number of the Wehrmacht and SS troops is over 2.4 million people. does not include numerous non-combat and support structures (builders, military doctors, etc.). Taking them into account, the total number of German servicemen on the Soviet-German border was over 3.3 million people.
It can be stated that the German formation clearly shows the desire to inflict as strong a blow as possible with the first echelon of its army, in fact, the second and third echelons are nothing more than means of reinforcement and a reserve. At the same time, Soviet troops in the border districts had 170 divisions, while their staffing was lower than that of the corresponding formations of German troops. Moreover, despite the "spring training" held, the overwhelming majority of Soviet divisions were never replenished to their full strength. Altogether, at the beginning of the war, there were (approximately) 1,841 thousand men in the indicated 170 divisions, which is 1, 3 times less than the number of divisions in Germany. In addition, one should not forget that not only Germany attacked the USSR - it was supported by Romania with forces equivalent to 7 divisions (4 divisions and 6 brigades), and in addition, already on June 25, Finland also took the side of Germany.
But the main problem was that our 1.8 million people. at the beginning of the war they were "smeared" with a thin layer up to 400 km deep from the state border. In general, the deployment of troops in the border districts looked like this:
The first echelon - (0-50 km from the border) - 53 rifle, 3 cavalry divisions and 2 brigades - approximately 684, 4 thousand people;
The second echelon - (50-100 km from the state border) - 13 rifle, 3 cavalry, 24 tank and 12 motorized divisions - about 491, 8 thousand people;
The third echelon - located at a distance of 100 to 400 km or more from the state border - 37 rifle, 1 cavalry, 16 tank, 8 motorized divisions - about 665 thousand people.
So, given that, according to the regulations, the rifle division could move no more than 20 km per day, and in fact, under German bombing, this speed was even lower, the Red Army in the border districts practically had no chance shoot down a united front of rifle divisions, fending off German breakthroughs with mechanized corps. The troops in the border districts were doomed to fight separately, in separate groups, against significantly superior enemy forces.
The best training and combat experience of the German Armed Forces. It must be said that the Germans, at least since 1933, have made titanic efforts to expand their land army, and in 1935, in violation of international treaties, they introduced universal military service. As a result of this, as well as the growth of industrial capabilities, they were able to achieve an explosive growth in the number of troops - if the mobilization plan of 1935/36. provided for the deployment of the army in 29 divisions and 2 brigades, then in 1939/40. - already 102 divisions and 1 brigade. Of course, it was not without natural growth diseases - for example, in 1938, during the Anschluss of Austria, the German divisions moving to Vienna simply crumbled on the roads, filling the roadside with broken equipment. But by September 1939, when World War II began, these difficulties were largely overcome, and by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Germany's ground forces consisted of 208 divisions, 56 of which were in different stages of formation and combat training, and 152 were concentrated to attack the Soviet Union. At the same time, by the beginning of the attack, the Germans had excellent combat experience, which they received in battles against the armies of Poland, France and England.
At the same time, in the USSR until 1939, it is generally difficult to talk about the presence of a combat-ready army. Numerically, things were not so bad, at that time the Red Army had armored troops (43 brigades and at least 20 separate regiments), about 25 cavalry divisions, and 99 rifle divisions, of which, however, 37 were yesterday's territorial divisions, that is formations, rather, of a militia type, the overwhelming majority of whose officers were not even regular military. But in fact, these formations experienced a categorical shortage of officers, with a very low quality of the available personnel (it got to the point that the ability to wield personal weapons and the ability to teach this to others had to be especially noted in the certifications) and had huge gaps in combat training (“in the troops before to this day, however, there are still some soldiers who served for a year, but never fired a live cartridge”, from the order of the NKO of the USSR N 113 of December 11, 1938). In other words, in 1939 Germany clearly surpassed us in the quality of training for soldiers and officers.
Of course, the Red Army also had some combat experience - you can remember Khalkhin Gol and the Soviet-Finnish war, but you need to understand the difference. While Germany by 1939 had created quite capable and powerful armed forces, which, during the Polish and French campaigns, became unequivocally the best in the world, the USSR, as a result of battles with the Finns, found out that the state of the Red Army requires a radical improvement, and improvement is had to be carried out against the background of the explosive growth of our armed forces!
Although this does not in any way relate to the topic of this article, but, so to speak, "taking this opportunity" I would like to bow to S. K. Timoshenko, who in May 1940 replaced K. E. Voroshilov.
The author of this article does not really understand how Semyon Konstantinovich succeeded in this, but in 1941. The Nazi troops were met by a completely different army - the contrast in comparison with the level of the Red Army in 1939 is striking. Just remember the entries in the "War Diary" by the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, Colonel-General Halder. This document is invaluable in that it is not a memoir, but personal notes that the author made for himself, not counting on any publications at all. And so, on the 8th day of the Great Patriotic War, there is such a record:
“The stubborn resistance of the Russians makes us fight according to all the rules of our military manuals. In Poland and in the West, we could afford certain liberties and deviations from statutory principles; now it is already unacceptable."
But, of course, the wizard S. K. Tymoshenko was not and could not eliminate our lag in the quality of training of privates and officers.
All of the above can be considered as strategic prerequisites for our defeat in the battles of 1941, but others were “successfully” added to them.
Weak work of the headquarters. On average, German staff officers, of course, surpassed their Soviet colleagues both in their experience and in the level of training, but the problem was not only, and maybe not even so much. Perhaps the key problems of our headquarters at the beginning of the war were intelligence and communications - two areas that the German army attached great importance to, but which were frankly poorly developed in our country. The Germans knew how to remarkably combine the actions of their reconnaissance groups and reconnaissance aircraft, and their formations were excellently equipped with radio communications.
Reading the memoirs of German military leaders, we see that the level of communication was such that the division or corps commander knew perfectly well what the troops entrusted to him were doing, and his headquarters promptly received information about all emergency situations that complicated or threatened to disrupt the plans. At the same time, in the Red Army in 1941-1942, or even later, in order for the division commander to understand what actually happened during the day of hostilities, he had to go around his units at night and personally receive reports from commanders subordinate to him.
So, the indicated shortcomings of the Red Army were manifested especially clearly in the Border Battle. The data on the movements of the enemy were fragmentary, but, much worse, they were received by the headquarters with a great delay. Then it took some time to work out a decision, after which the corresponding orders were sent (quite often - with the messengers) to the troops, which still had to find them somehow, which was not always easy. Thus, the delay in the transmission of orders could be 2 days or more.
As a result, we can say that the headquarters of the Red Army "lived yesterday," and even in those cases when our officers made the most correct decisions that were only possible given the information they had, they were still outdated by the time they arrived at troops.
An "excellent" illustration of the level of command of the Red Army in 1941 is the famous tank battle in the Dubno-Lutsk-Brody triangle - for this operation the command of the Southwestern Front had five mechanized corps, and another tank division came up later. Nevertheless, the key blow, on which, in essence, the fate of the operation depended, was inflicted by only a part of the forces of the 8th mechanized corps alone - they did not manage to concentrate it for the offensive in full force.
Suboptimal composition of mechanized corps. We have already spoken about this shortage of our troops. If we compare the Soviet tank division in terms of the states operating in 1941 with the German one, we will see that in the number of light howitzers the Soviet TD was twice inferior to the German one, in regimental guns - 5 times, and there was no anti-tank artillery in its composition at all. At the same time, there were only 3,000 people for 375 tanks of the Soviet TD. motorized infantry, and for 147-209 tanks of the German TD - 6,000 people. The Soviet mechanized corps consisted of 2 tank and one motorized division. At the same time, the staff of the latter is 273 tanks, 6,000 people.motorized infantry, the presence of anti-tank equipment, etc., in general, was quite close to the German tank division. But the fact is that the Germans in their "shock fists" included, as a rule, 2 tank and 1-2 motorized divisions, and the latter consisted only of motorized infantry, there were no tanks at all.
As practice has shown, the German states were much better suited to the tasks of modern mobile warfare than the Soviet ones, despite the fact that there were much more tanks in the Soviet formations. This once again underlines the fact that the tank is just one of the means of armed struggle and is effective only with appropriate support from other branches of the military. Those who measure the strength of armies by the number of tanks in their arsenal are making a huge mistake, unforgivable for a historian.
But the lack of artillery and motorized infantry is only one side of the coin. The second significant mistake in the structure of mechanized corps was that they managed to "cram" as many as five types of tanks into it, which, in principle, could not effectively interact as part of one unit. Heavy KV-1 tanks were a means of breaking through enemy defenses, light T-26 tanks were infantry escort tanks, and all of them would be quite appropriate in the form of separate battalions as part of rifle divisions, or in separate brigades / regiments supporting the latter. At the same time, the BT-7 and T-34 tanks were a means of mobile destruction of the enemy in the operational zone of his defense and were designed for deep and fast raids on enemy rear areas, which the slow KV-1 and T-26 could not do in any way. But in addition to the tanks of these brands, the mechanized corps also included their "flamethrower" modifications, and in fact, the MK contained the entire range of tanks produced in our country before the war. Naturally, an attempt to "tie a horse and a quivering doe in one harness" could not be successful - the T-26 and KV-1 often became a "weight" limiting the mobility of mechanized corps, or it was necessary to separate them into separate detachments, and leave them trailing behind the main forces.
Lack of vehicles and tractors. The problem of suboptimal staffing was aggravated by the fact that our mechanized corps in the bulk were not provided with vehicles and tractors across the state. That is, even if the MK were fully equipped, then even then one should speak of a tragic shortage of artillery and motorized infantry in them, but in fact the tanks could accompany on average about 50% of the artillery and motorized two”, alas, did not have time.
As a matter of fact, the above reasons doomed the Red Army in general and its tank forces in particular to lose in the summer of 1941, regardless of the performance characteristics of the equipment in its armament. With such initial data, we were doomed even if, at the behest of a pike, or there, with a wave of a magic wand, our mechanized corps were put into service instead of the T-26, BT-7, KV-1 and T-34, say, modern T-90.
Nevertheless, in the next article we will consider some of the features of the performance characteristics of the T-34 tanks and try to assess their impact on the failures in the battles of the initial period of the Great Patriotic War.
