I would like to say right away: starting this article, the author in no case set himself the task of somehow denigrating the Red Army and the Soviet armed forces. But the observation attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte and Montecuccoli is absolutely true (although it was most likely made by Marshal Gian-Jacopo Trivulzio):
"Three things are needed for a war: money, money and more money."
So, it is no less true that in 1938 the USSR still did not have enough money for the armed forces, and this, in fact, is the reason for the extremely deplorable state in which the army of the Land of Soviets was.
But first things first.
Recently, Oleg Kaptsov presented to the VO community an article entitled "Strike against Nazi Germany … in 1938", in which he stated the following:
“Just 18 months before the start of World War II, the main enemy was a militarily insignificant state. Based on the 100-fold ratio of forces, our invincible and legendary could smash the Wehrmacht like a crystal vase. There was no reason to be afraid of Hitler, to pursue a "policy of appeasement" and to conclude any pacts with him."
Let's not ask ourselves how the Red Army could defeat the Wehrmacht at a time when the USSR did not have land borders with Germany. We will not specify that in 1938 the USSR did not pursue any policy of appeasing Hitler, but on the contrary, tried with all its might to put together an anti-Hitler coalition on the model and likeness of the Entente, and did this until the Munich betrayal, when England and France doomed the Czechoslovak state to death … We will also not recall that in 1938 the USSR did not sign any pacts - the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was nevertheless signed on August 23, 1939.
We will only try to remember the state of our "Invincible and Legendary" in 1938.
So, at the beginning of the year, our ground forces included:
1. Tank troops - 37 brigades, including 32 tank, 2 armored and 3 motorized rifle brigades. Peacetime population - 90 880 people. or about 2, 5 thousand people per brigade;
2. Cavalry - 32 divisions, including 5 mountain and 3 territorial, additionally 8 reserve cavalry regiments and an insignificant, but unknown number of cavalry brigades. Peacetime population - 95 690 people. or less than 3,000 people in the division;
3. Rifle troops - 96 divisions, including 52 personnel and mixed, 10 mountain and 34 territorial. Peacetime strength - 616,000 people (6,416 people per division), but in addition to this, the rifle troops also included garrisons of fortified areas, which had peacetime strength of 20,940 people, respectively, the total number was 636,940 people;
4. Artillery RGK - 23 regiments, peacetime 34,160 people;
5. Air defense - 20 artillery regiments and 22 divisions, peacetime strength - 45,280 people;
6. Chemical troops RGK - 2 motorized chemical divisions, one armored chemical brigade, separate battalions and companies. Peacetime population - 9 370 people.;
7. Automobile units - 32 battalions and 10 companies, total strength - 11,120 people;
8. Communication units, engineering, railway, topographic troops - the number of formations is unknown to the author, but their peacetime strength was 50 420 people;
In general, at first glance, it is a terrible force. Even without the air defense troops, which the Germans had in the Luftwaffe, that is, they did not belong to the ground forces, we had about 165 division-type formations (counting 2 brigades or 3 regiments as divisions), not counting communications, engineers, etc.
And what did the Germans have? Oh, their Wehrmacht in 1938 was much more modest and included only:
Tank divisions - 3;
Motorized divisions - 4;
Infantry divisions - 32;
Reserve divisions - 8;
Landwehr divisions - 21;
Mountain rifle, cavalry and light motorized brigades - 3.
In other words, the Germans had 69.5 divisional type formations at their disposal. Here, however, an attentive reader may ask a malicious question - why are we adding the Landwehr to the regular troops? But you need to remember that 34 domestic rifle and 3 cavalry divisions were territorial, but what is it? Let us recall the memoirs of Marshal Zhukov:
“One of the most important reform measures was the introduction of the territorial principle of manning the Red Army in combination with personnel. The territorial principle extended to rifle and cavalry divisions. The essence of this principle was to provide the necessary military training to the maximum number of workers with minimal distraction from productive labor. In the divisions, about 16-20 percent of the states were personnel commanders, political workers and Red Army men, and the rest of the composition was temporary, annually called up (for five years) for training, first for three months, and then for one month. The rest of the time, the fighters worked in industry and agriculture. Such a system made it possible to quickly deploy, if necessary, a sufficiently trained combat personnel around the personnel core of the divisions. Moreover, the cost of training one soldier in the territorial unit for five years was much less than in the personnel unit for two years. Of course, it would have been better to have only a regular army, but in those conditions it was practically impossible …"
Let's pay attention to the fact that not only privates, but also junior commanders were called up for “three months five years”. With such a level of "training", they could not be considered as trained reserve ranks, but they were in command! In general, the combat effectiveness of our territorial divisions was at about zero, and certainly not higher than that of the German Landwehr. Even worse was the fact that out of 52 personnel Soviet rifle divisions, some (alas, unknown to the author) were recruited on a mixed basis, that is, partially on a territorial basis, and, accordingly, also had limited combat capability.
And yet we can diagnose more than double the superiority of the Red Army in the number of connections. But if we look at the size of the wartime armies, then the picture becomes much less optimistic.
In 1938, there was a transition to a new structure of the ground forces and a new mob-plan, according to which the number of the armed forces of the USSR after mobilization was to be 6,503,500 people. Before that, in 1937 and at the beginning of 1938, another mobilization plan was in force for 5,300,000 people. Strictly speaking, if in 1938 the USSR suddenly decided to go to war with someone, then it had the opportunity to do it exactly according to the old mobilization plan, but after the beginning of the reorganization of the units, it would be strictly contraindicated to get into a fight with someone - Anyone who knows even a little about the army will tell you how much the fighting efficiency of the reformed units that have not gone through combat coordination is dropping.
But we will still assume that the USSR, wishing to fight, deployed the Red Army according to a new mobilization plan. In this case, the composition of the ground forces, including the air defense forces, would have numbered 5,137,200 people, and excluding air defense - 4,859,800 people.
At the same time, Germany, according to its mobilization plan, had to deploy ground forces of 3,343,476 people. Again, the USSR seems to have an advantage. True, not at times, but by 45, 3%, but still. But even here, if you think about it, the picture is not at all as rosy as it might seem at first glance.
Suppose a geopolitical miracle happened in 1938. Poland magically moved to a parallel space, where it occupied the territory that befits its ambitions ("from can and can") and, in spite of the tearful requests of the League of Nations, categorically does not want to go back. The world has changed, Germany and the USSR found a common border in 1938, and the Dark Lord Sauron … that is, Stalin decided to attack the Light Elves of the West with all his accumulated power over the centuries … uh … white and fluffy Nazi Germany. What, in this case, will be the alignment of the political forces of the East and the West?
The first thing that can be said right away is that no Anglo-American-Soviet alliance, by analogy with World War II, can arise under such conditions. In our history, Britain and France arrogantly rejected the hand extended to them by the USSR, until the British themselves were on the verge of a catastrophe from which only a strong continental ally could pull them out. That's when they, of course, remembered about the USSR. In our case, when many in the West still had illusions about Hitler, the Soviet attack on Germany would be perceived as an unprovoked aggression and, at its best (for the USSR), would be angrily branded from the high tribunes of the League of Nations. Of course, it is extremely doubtful that England or France would move their troops to the aid of Gondor…. eghkm … Hitler (to fight for the Huns? Fi, this is bad manners!), Most likely, there would be all-round approval, assistance with the supply of weapons, and so on, perhaps - volunteers. In other words, Germany, most likely, could count on the support of the world community, no less than that which Finland received during the "winter war" with the USSR. Least.
But the most important thing that follows from such support is that the Germans in this case did not need to worry about protecting their borders with other Western countries, Germany could concentrate the bulk of its ground forces in the east, against the invading Soviet armies. But in the USSR, the geopolitical alignment turns out to be completely different.
The USSR becomes an outcast country, it, in fact, found itself outside the law - not only on someone's help, but even on the preservation of existing foreign trade relations with the same USA, we could no longer count. The Americans will tear them apart. And in the east we have an extremely exalted neighbor in the face of Japan, which has been sharpening its katanas for many years now, not knowing who to aim them at - either the United States or the USSR. In our reality, the sons of Yamato grappled with the Americans, but in the event of an attack by the USSR on Germany in 1938, the political alignment completely changes - Japan has the opportunity, by attacking a rogue country that no one supports (the USSR), to receive many buns from Germany, which of course, such support will be extremely important. And this is not just with non-interference, but with the approval of the English-speaking countries!
What could have deterred Japan from attacking the USSR? Only one thing - a powerful Soviet army in the Far East. And, I must say, we had one, because out of the total number of 5,137,200 people. ground forces of the Red Army in the Far East, we had to deploy 1,014,900 people. And we will not be able to transfer this army, as in 1941, to the western front - all this power, to the last man, will have to guarantee the safety of the eastern flank of the USSR from the invasion of Japan.
The author does not know exactly how many air defense forces should have been deployed on the Dalny, but if we assume that they were distributed in proportion to the total number of ground forces, it turns out that for an attack on Germany, exposing all borders except the eastern one, the USSR could deploy at best 3,899 703 people This still exceeds the capabilities of the Wehrmacht, but by no more than 17%.
Strictly speaking, any discussion of the superiority of the USSR over Germany could have ended there, but we will also recall such a factor as the timing of the mobilization and deployment of armies. After the First World War, absolutely all countries knew that the war does not start when the first shot is fired, but when the country announces mobilization. But Germany won at least three weeks in terms of the deployment of armies - the reason for this is easily recognized by anyone who looks at the map of Germany and the USSR and takes the trouble to estimate the areas and throughput of transport communications of both countries. In other words, in the event of mobilization, Germany will be the first to deploy an army, and therefore it turns out that less than a 20 percent Soviet numerical advantage is a purely imaginary thing, and in fact, in the event of a real war, it may well become clear that we will have to fight not even with equal, but with a superior enemy.
But what about the technique? Cannons, tanks, planes? “For all your questions we will give the following answer:“We have a lot of “maxims”, - you have no “maxims””?
Indeed, an army with a sufficient number of heavy weapons has a significant, downright overwhelming advantage over an army of the same size, which does not have such weapons at all, or is much inferior to the enemy in it.
So, our armed forces really had a lot of weapons. But heavy weapons provide tremendous advantages only on one condition - if the army knows how to use them. Alas, this could not be said about the 1938 model of the Red Army. We will not specifically quote the orders of S. K. Tymoshenko, who replaced K. E. Voroshilov May 7, 1940 - in the end, his devastating "comments" can always be attributed to "a new broom sweeps in a new way." But let us recall the orders of Kliment Efremovich Voroshilov himself, issued by him in 1938. Order of the NKO of the USSR N 113 of December 11, 1938 read:
… 1) A completely unacceptable situation with fire training was created. In the past year, the troops not only did not fulfill the requirements of Order No. 110 to increase the individual shooting training of fighters and commanders from all types of small arms by at least 15-20% against 1937, but reduced the results on fire, and especially in firing from light and heavy machine guns.
This most important matter, just like the possession of "pocket artillery" - grenade throwing, was not given due and daily attention from the military councils of districts, armies, groups and command of corps, divisions, brigades and regiments.
At the same time, the highest, senior and middle commanders, commissars and staff members themselves are not yet an example for troops in the ability to wield weapons. The junior commanders are also not taught this matter and therefore cannot properly teach the fighters.
The troops still have, however, individual fighters who have served for a year, but have never fired a live cartridge. It must be firmly grasped that without really learning how to shoot, you cannot expect success in close combat with the enemy. Therefore, everyone who opposes or tries to "ignore" this gaping breakthrough in the combat readiness of the troops cannot claim the title of real commanders of the Red Army, capable of teaching and educating the troops. Consider breakthroughs in firepower training as the main flaw in the work of all command links.
The ability of a commander, commissar of a unit and a subunit to direct fire training and teach a unit (subunit), to shoot accurately and to be good at using personal weapons should be noted when inspecting units, and also especially noted in certifications …"
In other words, the qualifications of the commanders of the Red Army were such that the ability to shoot from a pistol, rifle, machine gun, etc. were so infrequent among them that they should be specially noted in the certification! But how could such a situation have developed? The fact is that after the civil war, the army of the USSR was reduced below any reasonable minimum - so, in 1925, the total number of our armed forces was 562 thousand.people, and in 1932 - 604,300 people, including all types of troops, that is, not only the land army, but also the air force and the navy! Without a doubt, for the defense of a gigantic country such as the USSR, such forces were completely insufficient, but the problem was that the young country of the Soviets simply could not afford anything more. Again, after the civil war, the Red Army did not experience a shortage of officers - there were both old cadres who still served the sovereign-emperor, and "the civil war practitioners - the communists." Accordingly, for some time the armed forces did not feel the need for an influx of officers who graduated from military schools, and this, of course, greatly affected their work.
However, later the officers were needed, and urgently. In addition to the natural, and not entirely natural, attrition (it is no secret that in addition to the usual length of service, starting from some point they tried to get rid of the tsarist officers), the USSR got stronger economically so that it was able to maintain a much larger army - in 1938 its strength (peacetime) has already exceeded one and a half million. Accordingly, the need for officer personnel has sharply increased, but where was it to be found? The military schools that were downsized during the period of the "500-thousandth army", of course, could not provide the required number of "supplies" of officers to the troops.
A way out was found in accelerated courses for junior commanders (platoon-company level), and it looked like this - the most educated commanders (sergeants) were taken and sent to courses that lasted several months, and then returned to the troops as lieutenants. But such a system could only work effectively with a highly qualified NCO staff. For us, it turned out like this - the squad leader, whom no one taught the basics of military science (remember the ability to shoot!), Got into courses where no one taught him this either (since it was assumed that he already knew how to do all this), on the other hand, they provided the basics of tactics, topography, etc. and released into the troops. In general, the problem was that refresher courses, if properly organized, can work very well, but under one very important condition - if the trainees have something to improve. In our case, these people had to be taught from scratch, which, of course, accelerated courses could not cope with. As a result, a significant part of their graduates remained untenable both as squad leader and platoon commander. And therefore it is not surprising that devices such as a revolver, rifle, grenade, machine gun turned out to be too complicated for a significant part of the commanders of the Red Army, and they simply did not know how to effectively use the weapons entrusted to them.
I ask dear readers to understand the author correctly. The USSR was not at all a "country of fools" incapable of understanding elementary truths. There were many experienced, smart commanders in the Red Army, but they were simply not enough. The key problem of the Red Army was not at all in some kind of innate stupidity or inability of our ancestors, but in the fact that the country's army for almost a decade was reduced to a scanty size, for which there was no money for full maintenance and training. And then, when the funds were found, the international situation demanded an explosive increase in the number of the Red Army, which would be a huge problem even if our 500,000-strong armed forces consisted entirely of super-trained professionals, which, of course, was not the case.
And besides, a gigantic disproportion arose between the ability of industry to produce military equipment and the ability of the armed forces to effectively exploit it. The USSR invested in the military industry and this gave the country a lot - a huge number of jobs appeared that required skilled labor, military enterprises required high-quality raw materials for weapons, armor, etc., and all this had the most beneficial effect on the development of Soviet industry, and besides that - laid the foundation that later allowed us to break the back of Nazi Germany. But with all this, thousands of tanks, aircraft and guns going to the troops simply could not be properly mastered by them.
Formally, the tank forces of the Red Army in 1938 possessed truly overwhelming power - in 1938 the mobilized Red Army was supposed to have 15,613 tanks. But of them in the tank brigades as of 1938-01-01 there were 4,950 vehicles, while the rest were "torn apart" by rifle divisions. What did this mean in practice?
The Soviet planned economy in those years was just making its first steps. The USSR established the production of tanks, but with the maintenance of technical combat readiness, the situation was much worse - the plans for the production of spare parts and components did not correspond to the actual need, moreover, these plans, as a rule, were regularly disrupted by the industry. It is not easy to blame production for this - in those years it also experienced diseases of explosive growth, including, of course, personnel shortage. Of course, one could only dream of equipping the army with a sufficient number of technical specialists trained in servicing military equipment. Of course, in tank brigades, which were specialized tank units, it was easier with this, nevertheless, graduates of tank schools in the USSR were trained quite well, but in rifle divisions, as a rule, there was neither a repair base nor people capable of serving a tracked military equipment, which is why the latter quickly fell into disrepair. From this, again, there was a desire to use equipment to the very minimum, and it is not surprising that even by the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, having a tank fleet that outnumbered all other armies in the world put together, a fair number of driver mechanics had experience in driving a tank of everything. 5-8 hours. And one of the reasons for the formation of the monstrous tank corps of the Red Army, each of which according to the state had to include over 1000 tanks, was the desire to collect equipment in one place, in which, at least, it could be provided with proper maintenance.
In addition, one should take into account the not the best structure of our armored forces. The experience of World War II irrefutably showed that the greatest successes were achieved by division-level formations, in which, in addition to the tanks themselves, there were motorized infantry and artillery capable of acting in conjunction with tanks. At the same time, the Soviet brigades were, in essence, purely tank formations, and the Red Army did not have either artillery or motorized infantry capable of supporting the tanks. Perhaps the only more or less reasonable way of forming mobile units would be to attach tank brigades to cavalry divisions, but in this case, of course, the tanks would act at the speed of a horse.
In other words, there were a lot of tanks, but, alas, there were no combat-ready tank troops capable of waging a mobile war in the Red Army in 1938.
In addition, I would like to note that the measurement of the power of armies is proportional to the number of military equipment in its composition, which is the sin of many publicists and even authors claiming to be historians, has absolutely no right to life. Let's take a simple example - artillery, which is known to be the god of war. At the beginning of 1938, the Red Army was armed with as many as 35,530 different artillery systems.
It seems to be a very significant value, but … is it necessary to explain that a cannon has a combat value only when it is provided with a sufficient number of shells? At the same time, on 1938-01-01, the stocks of ammunition for medium-caliber guns were provided by 56%, large-caliber - by 28%, small-caliber - by only 10%! On average, the artillery was provided with shells by 28%, and how do you order to fight this?
But maybe we just had inflated standards? Let's try to calculate it differently: on 1938-01-01, the Red Army had reserves in the amount of 29,799 thousand shells of all calibers. As we have already said, there were 35 530 artillery systems in the Red Army, that is, on average, 839 shells fell on one gun. Is it a lot or a little? The Russian imperial army before the First World War had an average stock of almost 1000 rounds per gun. The author believes that all readers of this article perfectly remember the consequences of the "shell famine" that the Russian armed forces faced in that war?
But maybe in 1938 we already had such a powerful industry that we could easily meet the needs of the army, working "on wheels"? Without a doubt, the USSR made great efforts to provide artillery with shells, and here we were accompanied by some success - so, for the entire 1938, the Red Army received 12 434 thousand artillery rounds from the industry, which amounted to almost 42% of all accumulated on 1938-01-01. reserves, but alas, this was still absolutely not enough.
In 1938, the USSR got the opportunity to test its armed forces in a small conflict with Japan near Lake Khasan.
There, the Japanese concentrated somewhat superior troops (about 20 thousand soldiers, against about 15 thousand Red Army men), and the artillery forces were approximately comparable (200 guns from the Japanese, 237 from the Red Army). But the Soviet troops were supported by aircraft and tanks, and the Japanese did not use either one or the other. The result of the clashes is excellently stated in the order of the NCO "On the results of the consideration by the main military council of the issue of the events on Lake Khasan and measures for the defense training of the Far Eastern theater of military operations" No. 0040 dated September 4, 1938. Here are some of its sections:
“The events of these few days revealed huge flaws in the state of the CD Front. The combat training of troops, headquarters and commanding personnel of the front turned out to be at an unacceptably low level. The military units were torn apart and incapable of combat; the supply of military units is not organized. It was found that the Far Eastern theater was poorly prepared for the war (roads, bridges, communications).
The storage, conservation and accounting of mobilization and emergency supplies, both in front-line warehouses and in military units, turned out to be in a chaotic state.
In addition to all this, it was revealed that the most important directives of the Main Military Council and the People's Commissar of Defense were criminally not carried out by the front command for a long time. As a result of such an unacceptable state of the front troops, in this relatively small clash, we suffered significant losses - 408 people were killed and 2,807 people were wounded. These losses cannot be justified either by the extreme difficulty of the terrain on which our troops had to operate, nor by the three times large losses of the Japanese.
The number of our troops, participation in the operations of our aviation and tanks gave us such advantages that our losses in battles could be much smaller …
… a) the troops set out to the border on a combat alert completely unprepared. The emergency stock of weapons and other military equipment was not planned in advance and prepared for handing over to the units, which caused a number of egregious outrages during the entire period of hostilities. The head of the front department and the commanders of the units did not know what, where and in what condition weapons, ammunition and other combat supplies were available. In many cases, whole artillery batteries ended up at the front without shells, spare barrels for machine guns were not fitted in advance, rifles were given out without shooting, and many fighters and even one of the rifle units of the 32nd division arrived at the front without rifles and gas masks at all. Despite the huge reserves of clothing, many soldiers were sent into battle in completely worn-out shoes, half-bare feet, a large number of Red Army men were without greatcoats. The commanders and staffs lacked maps of the combat area;
c) all branches of the armed forces, especially the infantry, discovered the inability to act on the battlefield, maneuver, combine movement and fire, apply to the terrain, which in this situation, as well as in general in the conditions of the Far East, abounding in mountains and hills, is the alphabet of battle and tactical training of troops.
Tank units were used ineptly, as a result of which they suffered heavy losses in materiel."
In the second half of the 30s, the Red Army experienced numerous growing pains, and, alas, was not yet a truly formidable fighting force. People's Commissar of Defense K. M. Voroshilov had to solve many difficult tasks of transforming and expanding the Soviet armed forces, but, in all honesty, it must be admitted that he was not a man who could handle such tasks. The biggest shortcomings of our combat training were revealed at Lake Khasan, on Khalkhin Gol, and later, during the "Winter War" with Finland. And therefore it is impossible to express in words the merits of Marshal S. K. Tymoshenko, who replaced K. M. Voroshilov at the beginning of 1940 - a little more than a year remained before the war, but on June 22, 1941, the fascist invaders were met by a completely different army. The one about which the chief of the general staff of the German ground forces F. Halder, who led the invasion, wrote in his diary on June 29 (reaction to the battles near Grodno):
“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."
And what about Germany and its Wehrmacht? Without a doubt, in 1938 it was not even close to being an invincible army capable of breaking the resistance of the French armed forces in a month. Let's remember the Anschluss of Austria, which took place just in 1938. The German divisions could not reach Vienna in time, literally "scattered" along the road - all the sides were littered with faulty military equipment. At the same time, the Wehrmacht also experienced a severe shortage of trained conscripts: we have already said that the mobilization plan provided for the deployment of more than 3.3 million people, but the Germans had only 1 million trained soldiers and conscripts available.
Nevertheless, the Wehrmacht had this million trained according to all the rules of the German soldiers, but the Red Army could hardly boast of such.
What is the conclusion? It is very simple: it is difficult to say whether the ratio of the military potentials of Germany and the USSR in 1938 was better for us than it actually happened in 1941, but we could not for sure smash the Wehrmacht "like a crystal vase" in 1938.
Thank you for the attention!
