The Soviet commanders had undeniable advantages over the German
The Great Patriotic War showed how important the role of front and army commanders is.
Let's talk about fifteen leading military leaders from both sides. Information about the Soviet command is taken in the new 12-volume edition "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". Information about the German generals is contained in the biographical encyclopedic dictionary of K. A. Zalessky "Who was who in the Third Reich."
Among the 15 leading German military leaders, 13 were Field Marshals: F. von Bock, W. von Brauchitsch, W. Keitel, E. von Kleist, G. von Kluge, G. von Küchler, W. von Leeb, W. List, E von Manstein, W. Model, F. Paulus, W. von Reichenau, G. von Rundstedt; one - Colonel General G. Guderian; one - Admiral General G. von Friedeburg. With the exception of Friedeburg, each of them was over 50 years old, seven began the war against the USSR at the age of 60 and older. Rundstedt, commander of Army Group South, turned 66; Leeb, commander of Army Group North, 65 years old; Bock, commander of Army Group Center, is 61; the same number for List, commander of Army Group "A" operating in the Caucasus.
Each of the one and a half dozen representatives of the Soviet high command personnel was less than 50 years old. Nine of them during the war years were marshals of the Soviet Union: A. M. Vasilevsky, L. A. Govorov, G. K. Zhukov, I. S. Konev, R. Ya. Malinovsky, K. A. Meretskov, K. K Rokossovsky, S. K. Timoshenko, F. I. Tolbukhin. Five had the rank of army general: A. I. Antonov, I. Kh. Bagramyan, F. I. Golikov, A. I. Eremenko, I. D. Chernyakhovsky and one - N. G. Kuznetsov - admiral of the fleet. The oldest, 49-year-old Eremenko, was deputy and then commander of a number of fronts. Tolbukhin, 47, is the same. 46-year-old Vasilevsky - first deputy, after a while chief of the General Staff, then front commander. Marshals Govorov, Konev and Meretskov started the war at 44, Zhukov and Rokossovsky at 45. Chernyakhovsky was 35, Kuznetsov was 37 years old.
Soviet commanders took full advantage of the advantages of youth: the ability to quickly acquire professional knowledge, efficiency, the ability to instantly respond to changes in the situation and find non-standard solutions, accumulate the experience of the enemy and oppose him with innovative options for action.
Age also affected the education of military leaders. German commanders, almost all of whom came from the hereditary military, graduated from the academy before the First World War, in 1907-1914. Soviet military leaders graduated from various military academies after the First World War and the Civil War, in 1927-1937. Two of them, Zhukov and Rokossovsky, did not have an academic education. But thanks to independent constant work and exceptional abilities, they thoroughly mastered military theory.
Bloody experience
Before the fascist aggression, Soviet military leaders did not have combat experience in modern wars. The experience of the Wehrmacht's operations in Europe in 1939-1941 was not analyzed. The nature of the Winter War with Finland was studied very superficially, in which many miscalculations in the actions of the Red Army were manifested. No serious conclusions were made at that time. A significant part of the domestic command staff, especially the highest circles, remained in captivity of the experience of the First World War and the Civil War.
From left to right: Marshals of the Soviet Union I. S. Konev, F. I. Tolbukhin, A. M. Vasilevsky, R. Ya. Malinovsky, G. K. Zhukov, L. A. Govorov, K. K. Rokossovsky, General of the Army A. I. Eremenko, Marshal of the Soviet Union K. A. Meretskov, General of the Army I. Kh. Bagramyan. Moscow. June 1945
At first, our generals were inferior to the Germans in a professional respect. The commanders of the five fronts created on the first day of the war (Northern, Northwestern, Western, Southwestern and Southern) - M. M. Popov, F. I. Kuznetsov, D. G. Pavlov, M. P. Kirponos and I. V. Tyulenev - did not cope with their tasks. They were unable to rationally organize the defense, lost command of the troops, and showed confusion.
The commander of the Western Front, General of the Army Pavlov, commanded a tank brigade in Spain, then a quick promotion followed: head of the Red Army Armored Directorate, since 1940 - the commander of the Western Special Military District. A little over a year later, war broke out. And 44 divisions were immediately subordinate to him. The commander of the Southwestern Front, Colonel-General Kirponos, also made a quick ascent up the career ladder: in the war with Finland he commanded a rifle division, for less than three months a rifle corps, then successively became commander of the Leningrad and Kiev special military districts. As commander of the front, he had to manage more than 58 formations. Such a load was too much for both of them. In addition, they did not master the methods of managing strategic, front-line and army operations, which were practiced by the enemy on European fields.
Pavlov was removed from the post of commander a week after the start of the war, Kirponos died surrounded on September 20, 1941. The other three front commanders were dismissed as having failed.
Unfortunately, other marshals and generals also turned out to be professionally insolvent. For 46 months of the war, 43 people occupied the positions of front commanders, while in different periods there were from five to ten fronts. Most of the commanders - 36 - were in these positions in the first 14 months. On the Western Front alone, seven commanders were replaced in just four months.
Back in 1944, Zhukov noted: “We did not have any well-trained commanders of fronts, armies, corps, divisions in advance. At the head of the fronts were people who failed one case after another (Pavlov, Kuznetsov, Popov, Budyonny, Cherevichenko, Tyulenev, Ryabyshev, etc.)”.
Untrained people were forced to be appointed to high command positions. And there were simply no others, there was no personnel reserve at the operational-strategic and operational levels. The front commander corps was formed only by the fall of 1942.
Pleiad of winners
In the next 32 months of the war, only seven new military leaders out of 43 were appointed to such high posts. I. Kh. Bagramyan, N. F. Vatutin, L. A. Govorov, G. K. Konev, R. Ya. Malinovsky, K. A. Meretskov, K. K. Rokossovsky, I. D. Chernyakhovsky. Such important qualities as youth, exceptionally deep knowledge of the history and theory of military art, ennobled by talent and willpower, ensured a quick mastery of the methods of modern warfare and allowed them to professionally surpass the German commanders.
In early September 1941, Soviet troops under the command of G. K. Zhukov carried out the first offensive operation in the course of the war to defeat the shock group of German fascist troops in the Yelnya region. And on December 5, 1941, the troops of the Western Front led by him launched a counteroffensive near Moscow. The victory was achieved thanks to the skillful actions of the commander.
Zhukov possessed the gift of foreseeing the intentions of the enemy, the ability to penetrate into the essence of the current situation and find effective solutions and methods of action in accordance with the prevailing conditions. Together with Vasilevsky, he proposed abandoning unsuccessful counterattacks and conducting an offensive operation to encircle and destroy the Nazi troops at Stalingrad. In the summer of 1943, Zhukov supervised the actions of the fronts in the Battle of Kursk, which began with repelling enemy strikes, followed by the transition of Soviet troops to a counteroffensive. At the final stage of the war, in the Berlin operation, he brought two tank armies into battle to defeat a strong enemy grouping on the outskirts of the city, in order to then avoid protracted battles in the capital of the Reich. Zhukov carefully designed all operations, provided them comprehensively, skillfully applied one of the most important principles of the art of war - the concentration of forces and means on the axes of the main attack in order to defeat the main enemy groupings.
The operations of one of the most gifted commanders of the Great Patriotic War, Marshal K. K. Rokossovsky, were distinguished by originality, the ability to use the enemy's weaknesses, to provide maximum fire support for troops in defense and offensive, and the creative solution of tasks. In the battles in the Stalingrad region, the troops of the Don Front subordinate to him participated in the encirclement of the group of German fascist troops and its destruction by the method of sequential cutting off. In the battles near Kursk in the summer of 1943, by the decision of Rokossovsky, for the first time, artillery counter-preparation, which played a certain role, was carried out. In the Belarusian offensive operation of 1944, the headquarters accepted Rokossovsky's unusual proposal to deliver two strikes by the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front led by him in order to encircle and destroy the enemy's Bobruisk grouping.
The military leadership skill of Marshal I. S. Konev was clearly manifested, especially in the offensive Kirovograd, Korsun-Shevchenko, Umansko-Botoshansk, Lvov-Sandomierz, Vistula-Oder, Berlin, Prague operations. And none of them, in design and execution, repeated the other. Each one was distinguished by originality, a creative approach to solving operational problems, bore the stamp of individuality, military leadership inspiration.
Marshal KA Meretskov acted superbly as commander of the Volkhov and Karelian fronts, where operations were carried out in a complex wooded and swampy area with numerous lakes and rivers. Despite the incredibly difficult conditions, his troops, together with the Leningrad Front, broke through the blockade at the beginning of 1943. In 1944, the troops of the Karelian Front liberated Karelia, the Soviet Arctic and the northern honor of Norway. As a result, Finland withdrew from the war.
Success in these operations was achieved thanks to Meretskov's military leadership. He was distinguished by a skillful choice of directions of the main attack, a thoughtful concentration of troops and material and technical reserves in these areas with a limited number of roads, bold bypass maneuvers with the aim of reaching the flanks and rear of the enemy, as well as coordinated actions with the Northern Fleet and the Onega Flotilla. These operations entered Russian military historiography among the best achievements of Soviet military art.
Vasilevsky and Malinovsky, Govorov and Tolbukhin, Eremenko and Chernyakhovsky were distinguished by their creative originality, originality, thorough thoughtfulness and the ability to implement strategic operations.
Nazi German propaganda minister J. Goebbels made the following entry in his diary on March 18, 1945: “The General Staff sent me a book with biographies and photographs of Soviet generals and marshals. There are many things that can be deducted from this book that we have missed to do in the past years. Marshals and generals are, on average, extremely young, almost none over 50 years old … The commanding elite of the Soviet Union is formed from a better class than our own. I told the Fuehrer about the book of the General Staff about Soviet marshals and generals that I had reviewed and added: I have the impression that we cannot compete with such a selection of personnel at all. The Fuhrer fully agreed with me: our generals are too old and too used up."
