Duffy Christopher. Red Storm On The Reich (ENG)

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Mechanical Recovery and Repair

Out of all the Russian tanks and assault guns which were lost

temporarily or permanently in the Great Patriotic War, about

one-quarter bogged or broke down, and three-quarters were

knocked out by enemy action. More specifically:

Losses to Categories of Weapons During

Soviet Offensive Actions

Weapons Losses

Aircraft 1.5-17.7%

Anti-tank mines 2.0-14.0%

Panzerfausts Up to 24.0%

Art'y and tank gunfire 58.8-94.8%

The estimate for Panzerfausts, however, does not include the

great increase of kills by these weapons towards the end of the

war. Out of all losses, tanks made up about 65 per cent, and

assault guns 45 per cent.

On 11 November 1944 STAVKA put all the facilities for me-

chanical repair under unified command, a measure which in-

creased their productivity by 50 per cent. A significant role was

played by the recovery tractors and workshops of the damaged

vehicle assembly points (SPAMS), which attended to running

repairs. The more difficult cases were left for repair at the army,

corps or Front level.

The results were quite remarkable. In the first six days of the

Vistula-Oder Operation, the Eighth Guards Army (1st Belo-

russian Front) had a total of 159 tanks and assault guns disabled,

but only 71 of them permanently inoperable. In January as a

whole the 1st Belorussian Front carried out 3,786 successful

repairs of tanks and assault guns, and the 1st Ukrainian Front

4,267. This means that many of the vehicles were patched up

more than once.

APPENDIX: THE SOVIET STYLE

349

The rate of repair undeniably fell off towards the end of the

Vistula-Oder Operation. There were a number of reasons. The

SPAMS themselves began to suffer heavy losses, they were now

three to four hundred kilometres from their depots of spares,

and they scarcely began to set themselves down and start work

before the fighting far outran the distance of forty to fifty kil-

ometres within which they operated most efficiently. However,

these failings are only relative, and the work of the Soviet me-

chanical repair teams helped to extend the 'sustainability' of

the Russian offensives beyond the twenty or so days which

had been the limit in 1942 and 1943.

The Soviets applied to shattered human beings the same basic

principle which they applied to broken vehicles, that is, they

gave their first priority to the units which could be put together

with little delay and returned to the front line. In the case of

the soldiers the category of such 'lightly wounded' covered

about 40 per cent of all casualties. Medium cases made up 37

per cent, and the severely wounded about 23 per cent.

Army by army, the casualties in the tank formations did not

differ greatly from one campaign to another:

Medical Services

Losses in Tank Armies

Casualties as Proportion of

proportion casualties returned

to service

Vistula-Oder Op. 1GTA 14.5%

2GTA 7.2%

3GTA 8.7%

27.0%

31.5%

24.0%

East Prussian Op. 5GTA 17.5%

E. Pomeranian Op. 1GTA 12.4%

2GTA 14.5%

24.0%

23.0%

16.0%

APPENDIX: THE SOVIET STYLE

350

These casualties among the tank forces do not correspond to

the Soviet losses as a whole, which display great variations.

When measured against what was achieved, the Russian losses

in the Vistula-Oder Operation were astoundingly low, at

around 15,000 dead and 60,000 wounded (see p. 114). Fur-

thermore, a high proportion of these casualties was sustained

in the early stages, when the offensive was breaking through

the fixed defences. However, the grinding process went on

much longer in East Prussia, which helped to bring the Russian

casualties there to a grisly 200,000 to 250,000.

Such figures reflect the role of the infantry, which was much

greater in East Prussia than between the Vistula and the Oder.

In fact, it was much safer to be inside a tank than out of it, and

tank forces in general suffered only about 10 per cent of the

losses of the accompanying motor rifle troops, who had to ride

around in soft-skinned vehicles or clinging to the outside of the

tanks. Nothing much short of an artillery or tank round or an

anti-tank mine could injure a tank crew, whereas the motor

rifle troops suffered 32 per cent of their casualties through small-

arms and machine-gun fire, as opposed to just 6 to 7 per cent

of the tankmen. This drives home the lesson, which few armies

have been willing to accept, that supporting infantry will always

take disproportionately heavy losses until they are put into

something about as well protected as a tank.

Special Forms of Operations

Combat Against Roving Cauldrons

As some of the pioneers of blitzkrieg had foreseen, when the

armoured columns exploited deep into the enemy rear the char-

acter of the combat took on some of the characteristics of naval

warfare, with the forces clashing in 'meeting engagements,'

and cut-off formations and units trying to fight or infiltrate their

way back to their parent armies. The Germans showed great

APPENDIX: THE SOVIET STYLE

351

persistence and resourcefulness in this respect, as Konev ad-

mits (Konev, 1969, 75), and Katukov writes about one of the

actions of the XI Guards Tank Corps in East Pomerania that

what saved us more than anything else was the fact that

every officer of the staff had a full understanding of military

realities. Now that our tank forces had driven deep into the

enemy rear the fighting could develop at any hour or

minute—and not just to our front, but on the flanks and

around the whole arc of the circle. The only thing that mat-

tered was not to lose your presence of mind. (Katukov, 1976,

380)

Attacks on Towns, Cities and Fortifications

The Russians experienced two sequences of close-quarter fight-

ing in their offensives in Poland and Germany in 1945. The

first, comparatively short, was when they ground through the

German tactical zone of defence. The second developed later,

when the Germans had recoiled to the Baltic, the Oder and the

Sudetens, and they had to be winkled out of the cities and

industrialised areas.

In most cases the Soviet procedure was to encircle the target

city, then divide it into manageable segments by concentric

thrusts through what they called the 'new town' (novyi gorod)

of suburbs and factories, where the Germans usually held about

two-thirds of their strength. (Strangely enough, the Russians

failed to carry out this practice at Breslau, and the Germans

were able to maintain a coherent defence until the very end.)

The final blow was then dealt against the historic core.

The concentrations of force were gigantic. A division might

be committed to an advance down a single street, and as many

direct-fire weapons as possible were brought up to blast the

defenders at close range. The Russians devoted no less than

41,600 guns to their grand offensive against Berlin in April and

early May.

APPENDIX: THE SOVIET STYLE

352

For the detailed business of fighting, the Russians constituted

storm detachments of up to three companies of infantry, a

machine-gun company, half a dozen tanks and assault guns,

twenty pieces of calibres up to 152 mm, and a large complement

of mortars, the whole amounting to about four hundred men.

The storm detachments were in turn divided into storm

groups, such as those organised in the Forty-Seventh Army,

which consisted of fifteen to twenty riflemen, three or four

knapsack flame-throwers, a group of four or five sappers with

demolition charges, one or two assault guns, and three or four

light artillery pieces (45-mm and 76-mm).

The work of the units was highly specialised:

After he had studied the intelligence concerning the en-

emy, the commander of the storm detachment or group used

to set the various tasks: the supporting artillery was to sup-

press or destroy the enemy weapons positions and their iso-

lated groups of infantry; the sappers prepared charges to

break through walls or destroy individual buildings or strong-

points; the flame-throwers suppressed enemy weapons or

units which could not be eliminated by our artillery; the rifle

sub-units attacked designated targets in a specified sequence;

the heavy and medium machine-guns concentrated their fire

against the most accessible and least well-covered targets,

and then, as necessary, swept the streets and alleys with

their fire. (Zav'yalov and Kalyadin, 1960, 68)

Few of the Russians had any experience of this kind of action,

and the veterans of Stalingrad and other episodes of urban

combat were pumped for their experiences. The learning pro-

cess continued during the fighting. Chuikov found that the best

use for his tanks in Posen was to form them in pairs of double

columns, which then drove down both sides of a given street

simultaneously, protecting the infantry in the middle, and

shooting up targets on the opposite sides of the road. On 7

April, when the assault on Königsberg threatened to bog down,

APPENDIX: THE SOVIET STYLE

353

Marshal Bagramyan called on his officers for inspiration. Gen-

eral Shcheglov reported:

We must alter the way we use direct fire against strong-

points and other masonry buildings. The attics and upper

floors should be our first target—that's where the enemy

have the observers and staffs who direct the combat. They

are the 'eyes' of the strongpoint, and it's important for us to

pluck them out. After that we direct the fire from the top

downwards, as far as the half-basements and the cellars.

(Beloborodov, 1978, 381-82)

The Russians experienced particular problems when they had

to smash open a number of the tough old Prussian fortress-

towns. Some of the core works were not particularly modern

—those at Küstrin dated from the sixteenth century, at Grau-

denz from the eighteenth century, and at Posen and Königsberg

from the middle decades of the nineteenth century, but all were

built of hard brick with thick overhead coverings of earth, and

they were endowed with pillboxes, minefields, belts of wire

and other exterior defences.

The first step of the Russians was usually to rain down fire

on the earthen overmantles of the forts, as at Königsberg on 2

April: 'The artillery fire gradually stripped away the cushioning

of earth. Explosions with a characteristic grey smoke confirmed

that the shells were bursting on concrete cover, while black

smoke indicated bursts on brick masonry' (Beloborodov, 1978,

377). Not even direct hits from 280-mm shells could be guar-

anteed to crack open the concrete or brick scarps, but once the

Germans had been driven from the exterior defences, the way

was normally open for Russian sappers to rush across the

ditches and make or expand practicable breaches (ramps of

rubble) with explosive charges. The storm detachments then

climbed the breaches and worked their way through the interior

of the fort just as if they had been clearing a town.

APPENDIX: THE SOVIET STYLE

354

The German Style

The German Forces Under the Storm

IT IS NOT DIFFICULT to present a passably comprehensive ov-

erview of the principles of Soviet warfare as they stood in 1945.

The same is by no means true of the German conduct of war

at that time. The coherence had largely broken down, partly

on account of internal contradictions, and partly because the

weight of the Soviet superiority in material. The Germans there-

fore reacted to events instead of dominating them.

The German performance in general was degraded by the

fact that the Reich was fast coming to the end of its usable

manpower. The Red Army was no better off in this respect,

but it was able to compensate for human failings through the

number and quality of its machines. The German decline is best

illustrated with reference to some of its Panzer divisions, which

were by definition counted among the crack forces. Under the

pressure of operations a number of these formations suffered

unmistakable breakdowns of discipline and morale, like the

Panzer Division Holstein during its retreat with the von Tettau

corps group on 8 March, or the 5th Panzer Division in the last

days in Samland on 15 and 16 April. There was a cumulative

decline in the 7th and 4th Panzer divisions, which were even-

tually pushed back through Pomerania into the Danzig-Goten-

hafen Fortified Region:

• On 1 January the commander of the 7th Panzer Division

reported that the division was hampered by a shortage of

355

tanks and fuel. On the other hand, 'the esprit de corps of all

personnel is good and there is confidence in our strength.'

• By 1 February heavy losses in vehicles and personnel had

taken their toll, though the division was still capable of lim-

ited offensive action.

• By 1 March the losses were critical, and the new officers were

'inexperienced and not tough enough.' The division was

equal to defensive operations only. (Glantz, 1986, 467)

In the companion division, the 4th Panzer, losses were so

heavy that on 11 February the first battalion of the 33rd Panzer-

Grenadier Regiment had just twelve combatants with which to

hold a frontage of twelve kilometres. Drafts of service troops

were being sent up from the rear, 'but some of them were

wounded or disappeared before we had a chance to take their

names. An old corporal with two or three soldiers could hold

a trench better than thirty or forty scraped-together men of this

kind, who were untrained and devoid of front-line experience.'

By the final stages it

had become clear to the most stupid soldier that the war

was lost. There was absolutely nothing more to gain—no

military honours, no decorations, no promotion, no special

leave, just a 'cold arse,' to use the apt expression of the

Latidser at that time. It had become a pitiless battle for sheer

survival. (Schäufler, 1979, 85, 67)

Organisation and Weapons

Army Group

The German army group was the equivalent of the Soviet Front.

It was Army Group A under Colonel-General Harpe which

stood most directly in the path of the Soviet offensive in Poland

in January 1945. It was comprised of

APPENDIX: THE GERMAN STYLE

356

four armies, made up of 28 to 30 divisions

400,000 troops

318 tanks

616 assault guns and varieties of tracked anti-tank vehicles

4,000 artillery pieces and mortars

Army

This large formation had no stable organisation, and included

everything from two to seven corps. In Army Group A in Jan-

uary the Fourth Panzer Army had a relatively powerful con-

centration of 474 tanks and assault guns and 597 artillery pieces

on its frontage of 187 kilometres. The other army, the Ninth,

was spread much more thinly, for it possessed only 323 tanks

and assault guns and 586 artillery pieces on its sector of 220

kilometres.

Corps

The components once more varied considerably, and numbered

between two and seven divisions.

Division

This was the basic level of German command. The German

divisions were many fewer than the Soviet, but in partial com-

pensation they were individually at least twice as strong. They

came in the following categories.

Infantry Division

12,000 troops (six-battalion organisation), or

15,000 troops (nine-battalion organisation).

APPENDIX: THE GERMAN STYLE

357

Panzer-Grenadier (Mechanised Infantry) Division

Two Panzer-Grenadier regiments of three battalions each, to-

gether with a tank or assault gun battalion and supporting

troops:

14,000 troops

48 tanks.

Panzer (Armoured) Division

One or two tank battalions, one Panzer-Grenadier brigade, with

supporting battalions of reconnaissance troops, motorised ar-

tillery and Jagdpanzers. The details varied considerably, but as

an example we may take the 7th Panzer Division in East Prussia,

which consisted of a tank regiment, two Panzer-Grenadier reg-

iments, an armoured reconnaissance battalion, an armoured

artillery regiment, an armoured engineer battalion, and a sig-

nals battalion. A full-strength Panzer Division had

14-17,000 troops

103-125 tanks.

However, a reliable Soviet source puts the average in 1945 sur-

prisingly low:

11,400 troops

40 tanks

40 assault guns and Jagdpanzers

16 armoured cars

120 artillery pieces and mortars

90 armoured infantry carriers

350 motor cycles

115 tractors

2,171 other vehicles. (Radzievskii, 1977, 21)

APPENDIX: THE GERMAN STYLE

358