Question by Leard: How did the Soviet Union lose such a unbelievable amount of soldiers during WW2?
I think it was 10 million, 65% of allied deaths were Soviet and if you include civilians, 16% of the population were killed.
Answers and Views:
Answer by Mike
Well when you send a mass of unarmed, untrained, unfed, and unclothed peasants against Panzer tanks that tends to happen.
I once heard an anecdote about a convo. between Zhukov (the head Russian general) and one of the generals from the Western allies. Apparently the Western general was showing to Zhukov all these fancy contraptions that he had to detect and clear minefields. Zhukov commented that the best way to clear a minefield was to march the infantry over it.
Read all the answers in the comments.
What do you think?
Cam says
Greman small unit tactics and leadership was far and away superior to anything the USSR had. Germany based their infantry units around machine gun fire that allowed deadly advances during offensive ops I.e. fire and movement. In a retreat the same thing happened. German troops were able to cover each other as they moved from one cover point to another. The soviets empolyed no such tactics. German leadership was the second part of why German troops slaughtered their soviet counterparts. German NCOs and junoir officers were second to none in leadership, they had a grasp of modren tactics, which are still used today, drilled into them during years of schooling. They also trained their subornats to the same high level. They also had the respect of their men, both of which the soviets can not claim. This difference can be seen all the way up to the fall of Berlin, when even at that direr point the German army was still able to win tactical victories even when out numbered 100 to 1. The soviet and in modern times Russian way of war is untenable.
Leon B says
The Germans had better training and equipment, and Stalin had knocked off most of his good officers during the Purges. The US Civil War is a good illustration of the difference good leadership can make in battle.
wiremaxman says
GO GERMANY!!!
Cabal says
Lack of interest or respect for human life. You're talking about leaders who found nothing wrong in causing the death of up to 10 millions people by starvation in 1932 just to keep up with the Great Soviet Plan. What were a few million soldiers more, there were more where they came from.
rohak1212 says
They simply were not concerned with the lives of their soldiers. Many were poorly trained and ill equipped, but sent into the attack anyway, often simply as shock troops to engage the Germans and wear them down a bit before the real attack.
John de Witt says
There's a long list of reasons. I'll try to give some but I'm sure to leave out others.
The Soviets were caught unprepared. Stalin went into a funk and was essentially not acting as a leader for days after Barbarossa.
The upper leadership of the Red Army still hadn't shaken itself out. Stalin's purges in the 1930's had gotten rid of a large portion of the top leadership, leaving a vacuum at the top.
The Soviets and the Germans had an innate hatred of each other. The feeling between the Germans and the British, French, and Americans was that they were enemies, but had some commonality; the Russian soldiers were "Untermenschen" to the Germans, and the Russians pretty well felt the same way.
The bulk of the fighting was on that front. Even when the Germans shifted a large number of troops west for Wacht am Rhein (the Battle of the Bulge, if you're American) they still had more than 70% of their strength on the eastern front.
There are doctrinal differences. The US was criticized by its western allies because they'd blast a historical site to smithereens if it saved a few troops. The Soviets used penal battalions, soldiers many of whom had only committed minor infractions, marching them across a minefield for their boots to clear the mines; i.e., they weren't exactly over-sensitive to casualties.
fallenaway says
The German high command couldn't believe the casualty rate either. By pre-war estimates, the Soviets had a casualty rate of 100% after six month's combat; the Germans believed that they had killed or captured the entire Soviet force according to their intelligence–except an Army has large as that already destroyed appeared before them at the gates of Moscow.
German estimates were wrong, of course.Equally, the Red Army believed in mass frontal attacks against German positions. Although the Russians were masters of artillery and battlefield camouflage and deception, when the Red Army attacked, casualties did not matter, only seizing the objective. No excuses were allowed, least of all casualties. Any soldier accused of shirking combat duty was assigned to serve in punishment unit, to be used as shock troops to lead an assault against a defensive position.
In Berlin at the German surrender, Marshall Zhukov explained to Gen. Eisenhower how the Red Army cleared mine fields: run prisoner battalions over the field until the mines are gone
In short, individual soldiers were cyphers, regardless. Battle death just didn't matter as much as the battle's result.
Chariotmender says
They did most of the fighting against the Germans, hence they lost more troops. As well, although they initially had little in the way of materiel resources, guns, tanks, planes etc. what they did have was a virtually inexhaustible supply of man power, which they had very little regard for. Cannon fodder.
shatnerpossum says
Here's why, as translated (OK made up!) from original experiences:
Officer: Ivan- you take the rifle! Sergei- You take the bayonet! Ilya- you take the ammo! Vladimir- you take the rifle! Pavel-you take the bayonet! Alexei- You take the ammo!
All right! Charge that machine gun nest! When one of you dies, take his stuff!
[ They charge and are all taken out in one burst]
Officer: Dammit! You forty men! Go get that stuff back!!!!!
Jay on the coast says
It is true that the Soviets sent out poorly trained poorly armed soldiers into unwindable battles. There was also the siege of Moscow, German troops cut Moscow off from all supply lines and there were mass striations. It was the siege and the several attempt to brake the siege that caused allot of troops.
Tap says
The soviets lost so many men because they used their soldiers in full frontal attacks against fixed german positions and got slaughtered, The ordinary soldier was looked apon as cannonfodder by a lot of officers in the soviet army and only the crack units were equiped with anything near what they should have been, soldiers were also shot if they retreated by their own commisars in many instances.
dnldslk says
The SU was never as interested in preserving life as, say, the US. They were willing to lose more people. The Chinese have had that same attitude in their wars.
The US emphasis in war has always been as much as preserving life as in winning victories. Thus foolish assaults with little likelihood of success are not taken by US commanders.
Germany and the SU were engaged in a long front, with heavy casualties on both sides. Stalingrad was the bloodiest battle in history. Neither side was willing to give up.