The question of why the Red Army outright lost the border battles in Belarus, in Ukraine (although it was not so clear in the KOVO defense zone) and in the Baltics has long occupied the minds of both military historians and just people interested in the history of the USSR and Russia. The main reasons are named:
1. The overall superiority of the forces and means of the invading army over the grouping of Soviet troops in the western military districts (which became overwhelming in the directions of the main strikes);
2. The Red Army met the beginning of the war in an unmobilized and undeveloped form;
3. Achievement of tactical surprise by the enemy;
4. Extremely unsuccessful deployment of troops in the western military districts;
5. Reorganization and rearmament of the Red Army.
This is all true. But in addition to these reasons, considered many times from different angles and with varying degrees of detail, there are a number of reasons that often fall outside the discussion of the reasons for the defeat of the Red Army in June-July 1941. Let's try to analyze them, because they actually played a big role in the tragic beginning of the Great Patriotic War for our people. And you, dear readers, decide for yourself how important these reasons were.
Usually, when assessing the troops of Germany and the USSR on the eve of the war, first of all, attention is paid to their number, the number of formations and material provision with the main types of weapons and equipment. However, a purely quantitative comparison, divorced from the qualitative indicators of troops, does not provide an objective picture of the balance of forces and leads to incorrect conclusions. Moreover, they usually compare formations and units in their regular strength, sometimes "forgetting" that the German troops had long been mobilized and deployed, and ours entered the war from a peacetime situation.
But the gaps in understanding the problems of the pre-war Red Army give rise to various stunning theories. But this article is not for fans of the youthful game of conspiracy theories according to the method of Rezun-Suvorov and his last ones, this is an attempt to look in and figure out if everything was so good in the Red Army on the eve of the Great War.
PERSONAL COMPOSITION
The development of military technology and methods of warfare in the middle of the twentieth century led to a sharp increase in the requirements for literacy of personnel of the armed forces of any state. Moreover, this applied to both a regular serviceman and a military-liable reserve. The skill of handling technology was especially important. Germany by the end of the nineteenth century had become the first country in the world with universal literacy. In this case, Bismarck was absolutely right, saying that the war with France was won by an ordinary Prussian school teacher, and not by Krupp's cannons. And in the USSR, according to the 1937 census, there were almost 30 million (!) Illiterate citizens over the age of 15, or 18.5% of the total population. In 1939, only 7, 7% of the population of the USSR had an education of 7 classes or more, and only 0.7% had a higher education. For men aged 16 - 59 years, these indicators were noticeably higher - 15% and 1.7%, respectively, but were still unacceptably low.
According to German data, at the end of 1939 only in Germany there were 1,416,000 passenger cars, and this is without taking into account the fleet of annexed Austria, the Sudetenland, and Poland, that is, within the 1937 borders. And on June 1, 1941, there were only about 120,000 passenger cars in the USSR. Accordingly, in terms of population, there were 30 times more cars per 1000 citizens in Germany than in the USSR. In addition, more than half a million motorcycles were privately owned in Germany.
Two-thirds of the population of the USSR lived in rural areas before the Second World War, and the level of education and skills in handling equipment for recruits from villages and villages in the overwhelming number of cases was depressingly low. Most of them had never even used a bicycle before joining the army, and some had never even heard of it! So there was no need to talk about the experience of driving a motorcycle or a car at all.
Thus, initially, only due to a more competent and technically trained soldier, the Wehrmacht had a significant advantage over the Red Army. The Soviet leadership was well aware of these problems, and before the war, educational programs were organized, and the soldiers, along with the military, were taught to read and write elementary. By the way, this was partly due to the extraordinary popularity of the Red Army among young people, who not only did not seek to "roll away" from military service, but was eager to serve! And the officers, and just the Red Army men, were treated with great respect.
Despite the titanic efforts to eliminate the illiteracy of the Red Army soldiers, the average literacy in the German army was still very far away. German superiority also grew due to higher discipline, individual training and a well-thought-out training system, which originated in the "army of professionals" - the Reichswehr.
This was aggravated by the fact that at first there were no junior commanders in the Red Army as a class. In other armies, they were called non-commissioned officers, or sergeants (the Russian tsarist army was no exception). They were like the "backbone" of the army, the most disciplined, stable and combat-ready part of it. In the Red Army, they did not differ at all from ordinary soldiers either in their education, or in training, or in experience. It was necessary to attract officers to carry out their functions. That is why in the management of the Soviet rifle division before the war there were three times more officers than in the German infantry division, and the latter had 16% more personnel in the state.
As a result, in the pre-war year, a paradoxical situation developed in the Red Army: despite the large number of commanders (in June 1941 - 659 thousand people), the Red Army constantly experienced a large shortage of command personnel relative to the state. For example, in 1939, there were 6 privates per commander in our army, in the Wehrmacht - 29, in the English army - 15, in the French - 22, and in the Japanese - 19.
In 1929, 81.6% of the cadets admitted to military schools came there only with primary education in grades 2-4. In infantry schools, this percentage was even higher - 90.8%. Over time, the situation began to improve, but very slowly. In 1933, the share of cadets with primary education dropped to 68.5%, but in armored schools it was still 85%.
And this was explained not only by the low average level of education in the USSR, which, albeit slowly, but thanks to a consistent state program, continued to rise. A negative role was played by the practice of granting benefits for admission "by descent". The lower the social status (and, therefore, the level of education) the parents had, the more willingly their offspring were taken to the officers' courses of the Red Army. As a result, illiterate cadets had to be taught elementary things (reading, writing, addition-subtraction, etc.), spending on this the same time that the German cadet spent directly on military affairs.
The situation in the troops was no better. On the eve of the beginning of the Second World War, only 7, 1% of the command and command staff of the Red Army could boast of a higher military education, 55.9% had secondary education, 24.6% had accelerated courses, and the remaining 12.4% did not receive any military education at all. In the "Act on the acceptance of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense" comrade Timoshenko from ComradeVoroshilov said:
"The quality of the training of command personnel is low, especially at the company-platoon level, where up to 68% have only a short 6-month training course for junior lieutenant."
And of the 915,951 registered army and navy reserve commanders, 89.9% had only short-term courses or had no military education at all. Even among 1,076 Soviet generals and admirals, only 566 received higher military education. Moreover, their average age was 43, which means that they did not have much practical experience. The situation was especially sad in aviation, where out of 117 generals, only 14 had a higher military education. None of the commanders of the air corps and divisions had it.
The first bell rang during the "Winter War": during the Soviet-Finnish war, the mighty Red Army encountered unexpectedly stubborn resistance from the Finnish army, which could in no way be considered strong, neither in quantity, nor in equipment, nor in level of training. It was like a tub of cold water. Substantial flaws in the organization of the training of our army personnel immediately surfaced. The scourge of the pre-war Red Army remained mediocre discipline, constant separation of personnel from military training for economic and construction work, frequent regrouping of troops over great distances, sometimes to unprepared and unsettled deployment areas, weak training and material base and inexperience of the command staff. Simplification and formalism of teaching flourished, and even banal deception (as they called "eyewash" at that time) during inspections, exercises and live firing. But the worst thing is that all this flooded out already in the conditions of the outbreak of World War II, when the Wehrmacht, in front of the eyes of the whole world, including the leadership of the USSR, defeated much stronger opponents than the Finns. Against the background of these victories, the results of the Finnish campaign, let's face it, looked very pale.
It seems that it was precisely as a result of the Soviet-Finnish war that great changes took place in the People's Commissariat of Defense. On May 14, 1940, the new People's Commissar S. Timoshenko issued Order No. 120 "On the Combat and Political Training of Troops in the Summer Period of the 1940 Academic Year." This order clearly stated the identified shortcomings in the Red Army:
“The experience of the war at the Korelo-Finnish theater revealed the biggest shortcomings in the military training and education of the army.
Military discipline was not up to the mark …
The training of command personnel did not meet modern combat requirements.
The commanders did not command their units, did not hold firmly in the hands of their subordinates, getting lost in the general mass of fighters.
The authority of the command staff in the middle and junior echelon is low. The exactingness of the command staff is low. The commanders sometimes criminally tolerant of violations of discipline, wrangling between subordinates, and sometimes even direct non-observance of orders.
The weakest link was the commanders of companies, platoons and squads, who, as a rule, did not have the necessary training, command skills and service experience."
Tymoshenko was well aware that a big war was not far off, and emphasized: "To bring the training of troops closer to the conditions of combat reality." In order No. 30 "On the combat and political training of troops for the 1941 academic year" of January 21, 1941, this wording becomes extremely harsh: "Teach the troops only what is needed in a war, and only as is done in a war." But there was not enough time for such studies. It was necessary to comprehend the basics of the military wisdom of our army already under the bombs, in the course of a fierce struggle against a strong, skillful and ruthless enemy who did not forgive the slightest mistake and severely punished for each of them.
COMBAT EXPERIENCE
Combat experience is the most important component of the combat capability of troops. Unfortunately, the only way to acquire, accumulate and consolidate it is through direct participation in hostilities. Not a single exercise, even the most large-scale and close to a combat situation, can replace a real war.
The fired soldiers know how to perform their tasks under enemy fire, and the fired commanders know exactly what to expect from their soldiers and what tasks to set their units, and most importantly, they are able to quickly make the right decisions. The more recent combat experience and the closer the conditions for obtaining it are to those in which combat operations will have to be conducted, the more valuable it is.
By the way, there is a very well-established myth about "outdated combat experience" and its harmfulness. Its essence lies in the fact that the supposedly old military leaders have accumulated so much practical experience that they are no longer capable of accepting new strategic and tactical decisions. This is not true. Do not confuse inert thinking with combat experience - these are things of a different order. It is the inertness of thinking, the stereotyped choice of a solution from the known options that leads to helplessness in the face of new military realities. And combat experience is completely different. This is a special ability to adapt to any sudden changes, the ability to make decisions quickly and correctly, this is a deep understanding of the mechanisms of war and its mechanisms. Indeed, despite the movement of progress, the basic laws of war practically do not undergo revolutionary changes.
Many of the Soviet commanders who managed to fight before the beginning of the Second World War had a chance to do this back in the Civil War, which was of a very peculiar nature. In it, combat operations were for the most part conducted by semi-partisan methods and were fundamentally different from the large-scale battles of the millions of regular armies, saturated to the limit with a variety of military equipment. In terms of the number of officers - veterans of the First World War - the Wehrmacht surpassed the Red Army many times over. This is not surprising, given how many officers of the Imperial Russian Army fought against the Bolsheviks and were later forced to emigrate. First of all, this concerned officers who had a full-fledged pre-war education, in this they were head and shoulders above their much more numerous colleagues of wartime graduation. A small part of these officers of the "old school" still remained, went over to the side of the Bolsheviks, and were accepted to serve in the Red Army. Such officers were called "military experts". Most of them were fired from there during numerous "purges" and trials of the 1930s, many were shot as enemies of the people, and only a few managed to survive this time and remain in the ranks.
If we turn to the figures, then about a quarter of the tsarist officer corps made a choice in favor of the new government: out of 250 thousand "gold-diggers", 75 thousand went to serve in the Red Army. Moreover, they often occupied very important positions. Thus, about 600 former officers served as chiefs of staff of the Red Army divisions during the Civil War. In the interwar period, they were consistently "cleaned out", and in 1937-38. 38 of the 63 former chiefs of staff who had survived by that time became victims of repression. As a result, out of 600 "military experts" who had combat experience as chief of staff of a division, by the beginning of the Second World War, no more than 25 people remained in the army. Such is the sad arithmetic. At the same time, most of the "military experts" lost their posts not because of age or health, but only because of the "wrong" questionnaire. The continuity of the traditions of the Russian army was interrupted.
In Germany, the army traditions and continuity were preserved.
Of course, the Red Army also had more recent combat experience. However, it could not be compared with the combat experience of the Wehrmacht in European wars. The scale of the battles on the Chinese Eastern Railway, near Lake Khasan and the campaign to Poland was small. Only battles on the river. Khalkhin Gol and the Finnish campaign made it possible to "fire" a number of Soviet commanders. But, let's face it, the experience gained in Finland was very, very controversial. First, the battles were fought in the very specific conditions of the northwestern theater of operations, and even in winter. Secondly, the nature of the main combat missions facing our troops was very different from what they had to face in 1941. Of course, the "Winter War" made a great impression on the Soviet military leadership, but the experience of breaking through the fortified enemy defenses did not come in handy soon, only at the final stage of the Second World War, when our army entered the territory of Germany with its pre-war stationary fortification lines. Many important points in the "Winter War" remained untested and had to be studied already under German attacks. For example, the concept of using large mechanized formations remained completely untested, and it was the mechanized corps that were the main striking power of the Red Army. In 1941 we paid bitterly for this.
Even the experience that was gained by Soviet tankers during the conflicts of 1939-1940 was largely lost. For example, all 8 tank brigades that participated in the battles with the Finns were disbanded and turned to the formation of mechanized corps. The same was done with the nine combined tank regiments, the same fate befell 38 tank battalions of rifle divisions. In addition, junior commanders and privates of the Red Army, veterans of the "Winter War" and Khalkhin-Gol, were demobilized by June 1941, they were replaced by new recruits. Therefore, even the units and formations that had time to fight lost their experience, training and cohesion. And there weren't many of them. So, on the eve of the war, only 42 units with combat experience in Khalkhin Gol or the Finnish War were part of the western military districts, that is, less than 25%:
LVO - 10 divisions (46, 5% of all troops in the district), PribOVO - 4 (14, 3%), ZAPOVO - 13 (28%), KOVO - 12 (19.5%), ODVO - 3 (20%).
In contrast, 82% of the Wehrmacht divisions allocated for Operation Barbarossa had real combat experience in the battles of 1939-1941.
The scale of the hostilities in which the Germans had a chance to participate were much more significant than the scale of local conflicts in which the Red Army participated. Based on the foregoing, we can say that the Wehrmacht was utterly superior to the Red Army in terms of practical experience in modern highly maneuverable warfare. And it is precisely such a war that the Wehrmacht imposed on our army from the very beginning.
REPRESSION IN THE RKKA
We have already touched upon the topic of repression, but I would like to dwell on this topic in more detail. The most prominent Soviet theorists and practitioners of military affairs, who had the courage to defend their views, were declared enemies of the people and destroyed.
In order not to be unfounded, I will briefly cite such figures from the report of the head of the Directorate for the commanding staff of the Red Army of the USSR People's Commissariat of Defense E. A. Shchadenko "On the work for 1939" dated May 5, 1940. According to these data, in 1937, only from the army, not counting the Air Force and the Navy, 18,658 people were dismissed, or 13.1% of the payroll of its command personnel. Of these, 11,104 people were dismissed for political reasons, and 4,474 were arrested. In 1938, the number of dismissed was 16,362 people, or 9, 2%, of the payroll of the commanders of the Red Army. Of these, 7,718 people were dismissed for political reasons, and another 5,032 were arrested. In 1939, only 1,878 people were dismissed, or 0.7% of the payroll of the command staff, and only 73 people were arrested. Thus, in three years, the ground forces alone lost 36,898 commanders, of whom 19,106 were dismissed for political reasons, and another 9,579 people were arrested. That is, direct losses from repressions in the ground forces alone amounted to 28,685 people, the reasons for the dismissal of another 4,048 people were drunkenness, moral decay and theft. Another 4,165 people were removed from the lists due to death, disability or illness.
There are axioms that have been tested for decades in all armies of the world: an average platoon leader can be trained in 3-5 years; company commander - in 8–12 years; battalion commander - in 15-17 years; regiment commander - in 20-25 years. For generals and marshals in general, especially exceptional conditions.
The repressions of the 30s affected all the officers of the Red Army. But most of all, they decapitated her. This is a very accurate word - "beheaded." From the word "head". The numbers of the repressed are simply stunning:
60% of marshals, 100% 1st rank army commanders, 100% 2nd rank army commanders, 88% of the corps commanders (and if we consider that some of the newly appointed were also repressed - in general, 135%!)
83% of division commanders, 55% of brigade commanders.
There was just a quiet horror in the navy:
100% of the flagships of the 1st rank fleet, 100% of the flagships of the 2nd rank fleet, 100% flagships of the 1st rank, 100% of the flagships of the 2nd rank …
The situation with the command personnel in the Red Army became disastrous. In 1938, the shortage of command personnel reached 34%! Only the regular army needed 93 thousand commanders, the shortage of reserves was approaching the mark of 350 thousand people. In these conditions, it was necessary to return many who were dismissed "for politics" in the ranks of the army, in 1937-39. 11,178 people were rehabilitated and reinstated in the army, 9,247 of them were simply dismissed as “politicians” and 1,457 others who had already been arrested and investigated were under way.
Thus, the irrecoverable losses of the command staff of the USSR ground forces for three peaceful years amounted to 17,981 people, of which about 10 thousand people were shot.
For two years, the USSR Armed Forces have irretrievably lost 738 commanders with the ranks corresponding to those of generals. Is it a lot, or a little? For comparison: during the Second World War, 416 Soviet generals and admirals were killed and died for various reasons. Of these, 79 died of disease, 20 died in accidents and disasters, three committed suicide, and 18 were shot. Thus, purely combat losses caused the immediate death of 296 representatives of our generals. In addition, 77 Soviet generals were captured, 23 of them died and died, but they have already been taken into account in the previous figures. Consequently, the combat irrecoverable losses of the highest command personnel of the USSR amounted to 350 people. It turns out that in just two years of repression their "decline" was twice as much as in four years of the most terrible bloody meat grinder.
Those who were at hand - the so-called "promoted" were appointed to the positions of the repressed. In fact, as Commander N. V. Kuibyshev (commander of the troops of the Transcaucasian Military District) said at a meeting of the Military Council on November 21, 1937, this resulted in the fact that captains commanded three divisions of his district, one of them had previously commanded a battery. One division was commanded by a major, who had previously been a teacher at a military school. Another division was commanded by a major, who had previously been the chief of the division's military-economic supplies. To a question from the audience: "Where did the commanders go?" In modern terms, they were simply arrested. The straightforward corps commander Nikolai Vladimirovich Kuibyshev, who blurted out THIS, was arrested on February 2, 1938 and shot six months later.
The repressions not only inflicted sensitive losses on the command cadres, but no less severely they affected the morale and discipline of the personnel. In the Red Army, a real orgy of "revelations" of senior commanders with junior ranks began: they reported both for ideological reasons and for purely materialistic reasons (hoping to take the post of their boss). In turn, senior commanders reduced their exactingness in relation to their subordinates, justifiably fearing their discontent. This, in turn, led to an even greater fall in discipline. The most serious consequence of the wave of repression was the reluctance of many Soviet commanders of all ranks to take the initiative out of fear of repressive consequences for their failure. Nobody wanted to be accused of "sabotage" and "voluntarism", with all the ensuing consequences. It was much easier and safer to stupidly carry out orders issued from above, and passively wait for new guidelines. This played a cruel joke with our army, especially at the initial stage of the Second World War. I, and no one else, can not say that the military leaders destroyed by Stalin could at least stop the offensive of the Wehrmacht. But they were strong at least in that they had independence and were not afraid to express their opinion. Still, it seems that in any case it would have been possible to avoid tens of thousands of casualties and such a deafening defeat that the Red Army suffered in the border battles. At the end of the 30s, Stalin knew that the army commanders were divided into supporters of Voroshilov and Tukhachevsky. To eliminate the split in the military leadership, Stalin had to choose between the personal loyalty of his old comrades-in-arms and representatives of the "new military intelligentsia."
TEAM TRAINING LEVEL
In connection with the reorganization and a sharp increase in the number of the Armed Forces of the USSR, as well as in connection with the pre-war "cleansing", the level of training of Soviet tactical commanders, and especially the level of operational training of the senior command personnel of the Red Army, dropped sharply.
The rapid formation of new units and large formations of the Red Army led to a massive promotion to the highest command positions of commanders and staff officers, whose career growth was rapid, but often poorly substantiated, which was stated by the People's Commissar of Defense in directive No. 503138 / op from
1941-25-01:
1. The experience of recent wars, campaigns, field trips and exercises showed low operational training of senior command personnel, military headquarters, army and front-line directorates….
The senior command staff … does not yet possess the method of correct and complete assessment of the situation and decision-making in accordance with the plan of the high command …
Military headquarters, army and front-line directorates … have only initial knowledge and a superficial understanding of the nature of the modern operation of the army and the front.
It is clear that with such a level of operational training of the highest command personnel and staffs, it is impossible to count on decisive success in a modern operation.
[…]
d) all army directorates …. by July 1, to complete the study and development of an army offensive operation, by November 1 - a defensive operation."
[TsAMO F.344 Op.5554 D.9 L.1-9]
The situation was also bad with the commanders of the operational-strategic level, who in large exercises NEVER acted as trainees, but only as leaders. This primarily applies to the newly appointed commanders of the border military districts, who were to meet face to face with the fully deployed Wehrmacht in the summer of 1941.
KOVO (Kiev Special Military District) for 12 years was headed by I. Yakir, who was subsequently shot. Then the district was commanded by Timoshenko, Zhukov, and only from February 1941 - by Colonel-General M. P. Kirponos. Commanding the 70th SD during the Finnish campaign, he received the title of Hero of the Soviet Union for the distinction of his division in the capture of Vyborg. A month after the end of the "Winter War" he was in command of the corps, and six months later - the Leningrad military district. Behind Mikhail Petrovich's shoulders are instructor courses at the Oranienbaum officer's rifle school, a military paramedic school, and service as a company paramedic at the front of the First World War. In the Red Army, he was a battalion commander, chief of staff and regiment commander. In 1922, he graduated from the school of "stars of hearts" in Kiev, after which he became its head. In 1927 he graduated from the Military Academy of the Red Army. Frunze. He served as the chief of staff of the 51st SD, since 1934 the chief and military commissar of the Kazan infantry school. Judging by the track record, Mikhail Petrovich, despite his undoubted personal courage, simply did not have experience in managing such a large military formation as a military district (by the way, the strongest in the USSR!)
You can compare Kirponos with his counterpart. Field Marshal Karl Rudolf Gerd von Rundstedt became a lieutenant in 1893, entered the military academy in 1902, served in the General Staff from 1907 to 1910, ended World War I as a major, as a corps chief of staff (at that time Kirponos was still in command of a battalion). In 1932 he was promoted to general of the infantry and commanded the 1st Army Group (more than half of the Reichswehr personnel). In the course of the Polish campaign, he headed GA "South" in the composition of three armies, which delivered the main blow. During the war in the west, he commanded GA "A" consisting of four armies and a tank group, which played a key role in the victory of the Wehrmacht.
The post of commander of the ZAPOVO, which at one time was led by the executed I. P. Uborevich, from June 1940 was taken by General of the Army D. G. Pavlov. Dmitry Grigorievich volunteered for the front in 1914, received the rank of senior non-commissioned officer, in 1916 he was taken prisoner wounded. In the Red Army since 1919, platoon commander, squadron, assistant regimental commander. In 1920 he graduated from the Kostroma Infantry Courses, in 1922 - the Omsk Higher Kavshkol, in 1931 - the Academic Courses of the Military Technical Academy of the RKKA named after V. I. Dzerzhinsky, since 1934 - the commander of the mechanized brigade. He took part in battles at the Chinese Eastern Railway and in Spain, where he earned the title of GSS. From August 1937 at work in the ABTU of the Red Army, in November of the same year he became the head of the ABTU. During the Finnish campaign, he inspected the troops of the NWF. It was with this baggage that the hero of the Spanish war was appointed commander of the Western Special Military District.
And he was opposed by Field Marshal Fyodor von Bock, who became a lieutenant in 1898. In 1912 he graduated from the military academy, and with the outbreak of the First World War, he became the chief of the operations department of the infantry corps, in May 1915 he was transferred to the headquarters of the 11th Army. He ended the war as chief of the operations department of an army group with the rank of major. In 1929 he was a major general, commander of the 1st cavalry division, in 1931 the head of the Stettin military district. From 1935 he commanded the 3rd Army Group. In the war with Poland, he headed GA "North" as part of two armies. In France - the commander of GA "B", which included 2, and then 3 armies and a tank group.
PribOVO Commander F. I. Kuznetsov. In 1916 he graduated from the school of warrant officers. Platoon leader, then head of a team of foot scouts. In the Red Army since 1918, a company commander, then a battalion and a regiment. In 1926 he graduated from the Military Academy of the Red Army. Frunze, and in 1930 - Refresher courses for the highest command staff under her. From February 1933, the head of the Moscow, later - Tambov infantry school. Since 1935, he headed the department of general tactics of the Military Academy. Frunze. Since 1937, senior teacher of infantry tactics, and then head of the department of tactics at the same academy. As the deputy commander of the Baltic Fleet in September 1939, he took part in the "liberation" campaign in Western Belarus. Since July 1940 - the head of the Academy of the General Staff of the Red Army, in August he was appointed commander of the North Caucasus Military District, and in December of the same year - the commander of the PribOVO. Of all the three commanders, it was Fyodor Isidorovich who had the best theoretical training, but he clearly lacked experience in the practical leadership of troops.
His opponent, the commander of GA "Sever", Wilhelm Joseph Franz von Leeb, entered the 4th Bavarian Regiment as a volunteer in 1895, since 1897 he was a lieutenant. In 1900 he participated in the suppression of the boxing uprising in China, after graduating from the military academy in 1909 he served in the General Staff, then commanded an artillery battery. Since March 1915 - Chief of Staff of the 11th Bavarian Infantry Division. He graduated from the First World War as a major in the position of chief of the logistics of an army group. In 1930 - Lieutenant General, commander of the 7th Infantry Division and at the same time the commander of the Bavarian military district. In 1933, commander of the 2nd Army Group. Commander of the 12th Army since 1938. Participated in the occupation of the Sudetenland. In the French campaign, he commanded the GA "C".
The contrast in the level of training, qualifications, service and combat experience among the opposing commanders, in my opinion, is obvious. A useful school for the aforementioned German military leaders was their consistent career advancement. They fully succeeded in practicing the hard art of planning combat operations and commanding troops in a modern maneuver war against a well-equipped enemy. Based on the results obtained in battles, the Germans made important improvements in the structure of their subunits, units and formations, in the combat manuals and methods of training troops.
Our commanders, raised overnight from divisional commander to leader by huge masses of troops, clearly felt insecure in these highest positions. An example of their unfortunate predecessors constantly hung over them like the Domocles sword. They blindly followed JV Stalin's instructions, and the timid attempts of some of them to show independence in addressing the issues of increasing the readiness of troops for a German attack were suppressed "from above."
This article is in no way aimed at denigrating the Red Army. There is simply an opinion that the pre-war Red Army was powerful and strong, everything in it was fine: there were a lot of tanks, planes, and rifles with guns. However, this overshadowed the most serious problems in the pre-war Red Army, where quantity, unfortunately, did not turn into quality. It took two and a half years of intense and bloody struggle against the strongest army in the world for our Armed Forces to become what we know them in the victorious 1945!
