Question by REED: How did Russia beat the German Army in the second world war?
What was the most important reason? I have an essay to do asking to what extent Russia’s war economy aided them in victory.
What were the other factors? What was the most important?
Answers and Views:
Answer by Michael B
3 main factors
1 – a HUGE army
2 – massive amounts of arms and food from the US
3 – factories in the East that cranked out large numbers of very good tanks.
Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!
bob and dolly k says
the big reason is the germans weren't prepared for the russian winter
they were wearing summer uniforms. a lot of them froze to death.
hitler assumed the russians would be push overs and it wouldn't take
long to defeat them and it would be over before winter came. the germans
also had no supplies and hitler refused to send reinforcements. a lot starved to death or died from disease. hitler told the commanders that
they had to fight till the last man and would not give permission for them to retreat. the russians also had masses of troops and really good tanks.
the germans just got overwhelmed by shear numbers eventually. the
german commander finally decided to go against hitler and surrendered
instead of losing all his men.
Tim says
Stalin just threw men at the Nazis. Many of them did not even have boots or rifles. If they tried to run away they would be shot, by their own officers. The Russian cold also delayed the Nazis. While the Nazis waited in the cold for food, the Russians boiled roots and ate them. If the Russian peasants had not boiled those roots we would probably have been beaten.
thesurfer says
Hello there
I am the surfer
I came from family and relationships, yet however i like military history and read books, magazines and i watch military history tv shows
several reasons stand for soviet / russian victory
1.) Population and conscription . Stalin never had a shortage of men to fight, it was human wave after human waves of soldiers from a huge army!
2.) material help from england and us . the western allies sent huge amounts of warplanes, submarines and so on to help the soviets , it was called the law of loan and rent from the us, a law to send material help to russia
3.) during the first phases of german invasion the soviets were able to move their industries literally brick to brick towards deep inside siberia by train
4.) the soviets out produced the germans , example : germany produced 8,000 stukas during the war, the soviets produced a dive fighter called the sturmovich il 2 of 30,000 units during the war !
soviet tanks were better and more than those of the germans, especially after the first half of the invasion
5.) weather, logistics and distance: russian winter suited russian soldiers! with weather of 40C celsius under zero the germans froze! the germans got trouble of logistics because of distance, sabotage of trains by soviet commandos and german air force air lifting capacity was over stretched and reduced by medium not range air planes like junkers 52 transports
german navy never played a major factor in fighting or transport of supplies, russia is big land power with reduced acces to sea, so it was army and air force of both sides doing the main fighting
Miss direction of strategic german planning and decisions: the germans should have put their main effort towards moscow alone, not that much into Leningrad, or ukraine , minsk or kiev!
Big battles moscow, stalingrad and kusk
Moscow : the 1st mayor defeat of german army, the german navy was defeated at the battle of the atlantic, the german air force suffered a loss at the battle of britain and the army suffered at moscow,
then stalingrad cost half a million german men
and then kursk became the biggest battle of tanks in history
after kursk the germans were never able to mount another big offensive again!
little by little, mile by mile, day by day the soviet pushed the germans back to germany, the soviet never retreated despite losses in men or material !
From the surfer!
Andy Watson says
Old man winter came and stopped the Nazis dead in their tracks.
Protege' says
Russia threw snowballs at them until they froze and then they parties with the Germans but the Germans beat the Russians so more Russians came and beat the Germans and the Germans died out of Germany.