Optimise the Red Army for World War 2

[Aslangeo]

My first thread

In light of optimise the armies of world war 2 threads - maybe one for the Soviet Army

Starting from 1931 - 10 years what would you do?

a. get Stalin to be less paranoid
a.1 - No great purge of the Red Army - Tukhachevsky or Blyukher in command in 1941
a.2. Stalin trusts his intelligence service - heeds warnings of Barbarossa

b . Economic Measures

Industry
Resources

c. Equipment
Tanks
Small arms
Guns
Trucks

Opinions please

 

[Garrison]

My first thread

In light of optimise the armies of world war 2 threads - maybe one for the Soviet Army

Starting from 1931 - 10 years what would you do?

a. get Stalin to be less paranoid
a.1 - No great purge of the Red Army - Tukhachevsky or Blyukher in command in 1941
a.2. Stalin trusts his intelligence service - heeds warnings of Barbarossa

b . Economic Measures

Industry
Resources

c. Equipment
Tanks
Small arms
Guns
Trucks

Opinions please

That would be like making water less wet. Your best bet is that Stalin suffers a premature stroke somewhere in the 1930s.

 

[Lalli]

1. Kill Stalin.
2. Pick as Stalin's successor someone who is not so much purge-happy and allows his best generals to live.
3. Basic reforms to Red Army already before WW2.
4. Let generals to do whatever they see good as long as they are loyal.
5. Listen carefully all warnings specaility about Barbarossa.

 

[jsb]

c. Equipment
Tanks
Small arms
Guns
Trucks

Opinions please

Most of this stuff was fine or actually very good, yes you could build an early huge stock of PPS43 and PTRD-41 really easily and make life very hard if you did not fight at the border and allowed a flexible defence in depth.....?

 

[Crueldwarf]

a. get Stalin to be less paranoid
a.1 - No great purge of the Red Army - Tukhachevsky or Blyukher in command in 1941
a.2. Stalin trusts his intelligence service - heeds warnings of Barbarossa

1. Blukher is a terrible choice, period. Tukhachesky is somewhat better but he was uninspired commander at best. Uborevich was probably the best among all purged high command members.
2. There was nothing to trust really because Soviet intelligence service failed to produce credible warnings about Barbarossa. This whole thing is total hindsight and ignoring everything wrong that was reported in favor of correct bits and pieces spread around multiple reports.

Intelligence is probably the most important area in which lack of the Great Purge would have a noticeable effect because foreign intelligence apparatus was gutted by it. So by making Purge not happen, you will already make Soviet chances of actually discovering German plans much better regardless of Stalin's attitude.

 

[Popcorn]

Everything that’s already been mentioned above plus remove the political officers from the military.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Everything that’s already been mentioned above plus remove the political officers from the military.

It will make situation worse because commissars performed a lot of vital functions that were impossible to shift towards conventional officers for a variety of reasons.

To put it simply: Soviet 'officer corps' was already undermanned and undertrained, increasing workload on the commanders on all levels would degrade military performance further. Remember, people, if your average battalion commander was a freshly minted lieutenant two years ago, he cannot do all the work that professional officers in Western-style militaries traditionally perform. Soviet solution to that problem was to specialize officers and use commissars for the additional oversight.

 

[marathag]

By the mid 1930s, you have the World's largest Army, with the most tanks and artillery pieces, and the largest airforce.
But both had been well and truly purged in the middle and upper ranks of leadership.
So by OTL 1940, the Armed Forces had already been decapitated without any help from the Nazis, whom you've almost Allied with.
So avoid all that, starting in 1932.
Next is to make a template for a large 3 division expeditionary force, completely mechanized, that trains with the VVS for true Combined Forces training.
For tech,, keep production of Armor and Aircraft lower than OTL, but spend more on parts to keep serviceability up.
You really don't need 10,000 T-26 and 7000 BT tanks. More trucks and halftracks would be more useful, and they won't go obsolete as fast as Armor and Aircraft.

So by time the Spanish Civil War rolls around you can offer a partial Сэк, a Soviet Expeditionary Force to the Republicans, and should be able to take care of the Italian and German backed Nationalist, while providing feedback on how combat with Modern Arms is working, vs WWI and the War with Poland.

For the Japanese border squabbles, should be able to stomp them hard without the purge and emphasis on better training and supply/logistics.
Meanwhile,
Have Molotov do meetings with the Nazis, to make them think they have an agreement with you.
But release the Agreement to the World Press, a week before the Nazis plan to attack Poland, and state that you are instead have guaranteed Independence for Poland and the Baltic States. An offer for a full Сэк to advance in to Poland, should they desire that force to aid in their defense against the Fascists.

 

[CaptainCalvert]

For me, the BT 5 and 7 had potential. Give them decent radios, some motorised infatry and artillery and air support. Add a good commander who can take Tukachevsky's theory and train up a workable divisional or corps strength battle group and roll up the Japanese in 1934 or 1935.
Bring the idea west and develop corps or army strength forces in the north, centre and south as counter attacking forces based a few hundred km from the main forces.
Find a Monty-like leader who can keep people traing or digging, so you either get good or you get fit and have lots of stop lines (and just before planting time, the local farmers will appreciate the digging effort).
Kidnap some exANZACs for the frontier forces so that while the usable stocks of T26 will decrease, the troops are trained to scrounge and improvise to kep the good ones running.
This won't stop an initial German rampage but it should slow them down a bit and cause more casualties, while the BT7 armies have a possibility of landing a few very expensive blows on the German forces.
Germany runs out of people and equipment 3 to 6 months earlier. Meanwhile in the east, two or three smaller forces cover the Kwantung army and ward off incursions, and can threaten or actually conduct powerful raids into Manchuria.

 

[Popcorn]

It will make situation worse because commissars performed a lot of vital functions that were impossible to shift towards conventional officers for a variety of reasons.

To put it simply: Soviet 'officer corps' was already undermanned and undertrained, increasing workload on the commanders on all levels would degrade military performance further. Remember, people, if your average battalion commander was a freshly minted lieutenant two years ago, he cannot do all the work that professional officers in Western-style militaries traditionally perform. Soviet solution to that problem was to specialize officers and use commissars for the additional oversight.

Hence the stuff that had already been mentioned. Get rid of Stalin, don’t do any purges of the military.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Hence the stuff that had already been mentioned. Get rid of Stalin, don’t do any purges of the military.

Will not help much with that either. Purge removed about between 15 to 20 thousand officers from the ranks. Red Army had a shortage of officers according to existing mobilization plan about 100 000 by 1941. Actual mobilization effort that was launched during the Barbarossa and continued throughout the war exceeded pre-war estimations by a factor of at least three.

So if your purpose here to noticeably improve Red Army performance during the war then removing Purge factor is statistically insignificant. It helps for sure, but not by a lot because core issue was not the Purge and not ideological. It was very simple and very critical shortage of educated and qualified personnel in basically all aspects of Soviet society and the only real way to fix that was educational reforms that needed time to kick in.

In fact noticeable increase in Red Army performance in 1943 and after could be traced (in part) to the delayed effect of introducing wide access to universal school education in the mid 30s across the country. Recruits that had the opportunity to finish 7 to 9 years of school education began to be available for draft en masse.

 

[marathag]

your purpose here to noticeably improve Red Army performance during the war then removing Purge factor is statistically insignificant.

Besides the raw numbers of officers removed(around 75%) the remaining ones were cowed, promoted above their ability, and unwilling to take any risks at all.
You know, like putting up much of a defense on the outset of Barbarossa, because they didn't have orders on that contingency, and the Commissars weren't able to get a response from Moscow on what to do.

 

[Crueldwarf]

Besides the raw numbers of officers removed(around 75%) the remaining ones were cowed, promoted above their ability, and unwilling to take any risks at all.

Soviet officer corps being cowed by the Purge is also not something that can be established with any degree of certainty. Even if simply because of the fact that Purge was not happening on the basis of competence or willingness of taking initiative or risks. Purge on the wider scale was happening on the basis of personal connections and random confessions made under threat or torture.
So there was no selection towards 'keep your head down, do not do anything'.
It is again known fact that Purge did very little in terms of inducing discipline in the military or even wider Soviet society. 'Stalinist order' is same kind of myth as Nazi supposed efficiency. It was just how Stalinist propaganda was perceived and internalized by the outside world.

And promotion above the ability factor is also not really relevant. Firstly because even before the Purge Soviet officer corps was already 'promoted above its ability' with a very limited experience pool of waging proper war and promotion structure based around ideological loyalty and personal connections to known revolutionary figures (and this factor affected how Purge was spreading across these personal connections).

The numbers actually tell us that proportion of the officers who had formal military education increased after the Purge because revolutionary Old Guard from the Civil War time and their acquired cliques were hit disproportionally hard relatively to the rest of the younger commander pool.

You know, like putting up much of a defense on the outset of Barbarossa, because they didn't have orders on that contingency, and the Commissars weren't able to get a response from Moscow on what to do.

Again, it is another interesting piece of persistent mythology.

Firstly, the Soviet defense was actually the hardest in the first months of the Barbarossa with German daily losses were at their highest in the summer months of 1941 and slowly decreased during the autumn and the winter. Germans were loosing ~2500 men each day in June 1941. For comparison they were loosing slightly more than 1000 in November.
So for all practical intents and purposes Soviet forces and their commanders were fighting one hell of a fight at the border against a better prepared and numerically superior enemy.

Secondly, Soviet commanders rather obviously had a contingency orders for the defense and were even using them. The orders were just inadequate because intelligence actually failed to discover the scope of German preparations in time for such orders to be adapted accordingly.

And thirdly, Soviet military had fully unitary command system in summer 1941, Commissars had no power over their commanders and were in fact subordinated to them.

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

Equipment
Tanks
Small arms
Guns
Trucks

Opinions please

Tanks.
Have KV 1 changed to KV85 with 3 man turret. Move from tank brigade heavy coy, to a heavy tank bn per rifle corps. Use to support infantry and hold major road junctions.
(Older / less important corps have T28)

Form smaller cavalry / light tank brigades solely of T 26 / BT. 2 bns plus motor rifle bn with arty and log. Let these units run deep under cav officers, and be expendable.

Concentrate your best armour and tank officers into armd divisions. T34 retain 76mm, but in 3 man turret. Radio needs big expansion, one per platoon of 3 tanks. This is about as good as one can suggest. 3 tank bdes and 1 motor rifle. These divisions are to fight panzers directly.

Small arms.
Rifle platoons of 3, not 4 squads. Save a LMG, ONLY 9 per plt.
5 SMG per squad, 1 per 3 man team and NCO.
PHQ have 1 counter sniper SLR with spotter
Create MG 08/15 light maxim, for coy, 2 guns. No trolley or shield.
2 only 50mm Mortar , 2 ATR , 2 sniper teams per coy

 

[RedSword12]

Equipment was the least of the Red Army's problems. Its command culture had not yet matured and its doctrine was not worked out. Fix those, and performance goes way up. Without having to design anything more advanced than OTL. Whether or not the T-34 has a three man turret, or if they have AK-47s is of trifling importance by comparison.

 

[Sam R.]

The soviet party purge happened largely because rank and file party members were demanding a liquidation of middle ranking party and state figures who blocked their promotion and incidentally were provably incompetent. (S Fitzpatrick).

Stalin was notoriously a tail-ender of the line—what made Stalin unique was his ability to discover what the line would necessarily be and then agree with it.

Soviet society is going to see a hysteric cycle of purges; on top of the class war by nomenklatura and urban workers against peasants and rural workers; on top of the class war by nomenklatura against urban workers. Soviet society is going to see a hysteric cycle of purges: the ideological system of Soviet rule within the ruling class required the elimination of a generation of firm level directorial managers and senior state and financial managers—this was required because of the massification of the party and the party's survival being more important than any particular party members. It will be hysteric because the ideological justification is purity. It will be hysteric because it is occurring after a social and political revolution which is not yet put to bed. It will be hysteric because it is occurring during a forced industrialisation by mass enclosure in the financial interests of the nomenklatura. Things are on edge, and edges are sharp. It will be hysteric because it is in the economic interests of the nomenklatura to maximise capital growth and maximise the nomenklatura's control over capital through group ideological bargaining methods. While different banks and bond structures formally own soviet capital, the day to day power (ie: real ownership) is partly contested with the working class but chiefly decided by ideological, leap-frog game, and bureaucratic homogeneity. The impossibility of homogeneity of policy during an ongoing social revolution, just after a political revolution, while there's a primary accumulation ("vicious agricultural enclosure complete with famines") means that the life of Fred from Accounting or the rule of law (amongst nomenklatura) is worth much much much less than with the interests of the nomenklatura in maximising capital growth.

Stalin is slightly paranoid.

The Soviet ruling class is hysterically paranoid. And unlike any other Soviet style society except China it is motivated to vicious deep cutting purges during their cycle of consolidation of power.

You get purges. You get purges of the Red Army. The question is which faction of nomenklatura purges which factions of the Red Army (or all factions of the Red Army). This is not negotiable within the Soviet Union being the Soviet Union. All effective oppositions within the Soviet Union in the 1930s agreed with the principle of nomenklatura rule btw: a goatee will be as more more bloody than a luxuriant moustache. I didn't mention which goatee did I?

[But the Soviet Working class could form an effective opposition.]

If you take mass enclosures to solve the scissors crisis off the table, yes they're going to murder the nomenklatura. And then reform a nomenklatura, possibly with more concilliar features of government. And the first thing the workers councils are going to do is go into the country side and take grain en masse. And when the climactic conditions get fucked there'll be food shortages across the country. And in two major regions, if the working class attempt famine amelioration (which they might not, Stalin did by the way), their famine amelioration will fail due to bureaucratic incompetence due to even greater social dislocation due to the third revolution happening. Incidentally a lot of the Red Army is going to be purged.

You get blood. The question is for whose ends and who survives.

yours,
Sam R.

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

Equipment was the least of the Red Army's problems. Its command culture had not yet matured and its doctrine was not worked out. Fix those, and performance goes way up. Without having to design anything more advanced than OTL. Whether or not the T-34 has a three man turret, or if they have AK-47s is of trifling importance by comparison.

That's why everything is in threes.

One is literate, one is numerit, and one keeps tract of the two academics!

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

The Soviet ruling class is hysterically paranoid. And unlike any other Soviet style society except China it is motivated to vicious deep cutting purges during their cycle of consolidation of power.

What you need is a benign dictactor, tempered with the occasional assassination.

 

[Sam R.]

What you need is a benign dictactor, tempered with the occasional assassination.

The problem for the Soviet Union in the 1930s is that any of the people capable of summarising the decision of the room of the Political bureau of the central committee is not going to be benign, but deranged by having lived through a violently contested social revolution whose institutions rely overly so on dictat.

The other problem is of course that quite a lot of the party demands to get ahead, and the way to get ahead in the 1930s is to get a head. This is separate to the whirlwind. You accuse the Deputy manager of incompetence (true), and the poor quality institutions and lack of a restriction on state power gets you a dead Deputy manager and a new Deputy manager (soon to be dead.)

There are some admirable elements of this system of governance: it is capable of widespread rapid changes in policy. The average level of competence is decent. Most personal power networks don't involve personal quirks like the sexual execution of children but the more generic temptation to concentrate power. But the concentration of power being institutional rather than individual tempers empire building because you never know where your next posting could be.

But its going to execute a lot of officers regardless of which facial hair chairs the meeting that voices the concerns of the Omsk Sub Secretary.

 

[Capt Thunderbolt]

The problem for the Soviet Union in the 1930s is that any of the people capable of summarising the decision of the room of the Political bureau of the central committee is not going to be benign, but deranged by having lived through a violently contested social revolution whose institutions rely overly so on dictat.

The other problem is of course that quite a lot of the party demands to get ahead, and the way to get ahead in the 1930s is to get a head. This is separate to the whirlwind. You accuse the Deputy manager of incompetence (true), and the poor quality institutions and lack of a restriction on state power gets you a dead Deputy manager and a new Deputy manager (soon to be dead.)

There are some admirable elements of this system of governance: it is capable of widespread rapid changes in policy. The average level of competence is decent. Most personal power networks don't involve personal quirks like the sexual execution of children but the more generic temptation to concentrate power. But the concentration of power being institutional rather than individual tempers empire building because you never know where your next posting could be.

But its going to execute a lot of officers regardless of which facial hair chairs the meeting that voices the concerns of the Omsk Sub Secretary.

And....
At junior officer level, the guys don't know and don't care. They just have to get on with the job, with what they have.