What Western units, would you equate them with (Axis or Allied).

Example (not my opinion) ___ Guards Division was the best in the Red Army, would equal Panzer Lehr.




I ask, as I'm pretty good with Macro Eastern Front history, and know the western Allied and German units pretty well (and Japanse, for that matter).


Looking for some Soviet units to read up on.

Mass horde

That's it . The human wave made up for their lack of tactics and strategy.

Quantity has a quality all its own...

With some notable exceptions, it's not that the Soviet forces were "good", so much as "good enough".

Enough good enough will eventually wear down and overwhelm the Best.

(Especially when they are eating Spam and driving a bazillion American trucks)

 

Gotcha.


I'm looking for the exceptions.


Also, the Red Army of 44-45 was not the same animal of 41; I think that supports your "good enough" point and is not a rebuttal.


Those chiming in or reading the thread with the idea that it was all human wave stuff throughout the war don't know what they think they know.

 
The Soviets were using the German style blitzkrieg type doctrine; with maneuver warfare and all by 1943-4 and on. With all their massive and very well organized and executed offensives.


People here don't realize how good the Russians got at ground fighting. It wasn't all "just point Ivan at the enemy and have him charge at 'em!".


I'm not sure what you could say would be a good equivalent. We didn't fight like the Germans or Russians.

Hmm.

The Soviet Communist Party, I suppose.

If you can lose 10 or 15 million people and still maintain enough control over your population that they keep fighting, that is an accomplishment.

Stavka, the Soviet General Staff, was better then OKW by late in the war.

The Soviet Intelligence arm was far better then the Germans by 1943.  

Whoever was responsible for maskirovka was the best in the world.  That guy...whoever he was.

The Soviets were better at maneuvering forces 100 miles or so in the rear of their lines and the German intel had no clue of those whereabouts.

The Russians created one grand strategic level victory per year due to massive intelligence or counterintelligence victories.

The double envelopment that destroyed 6th Army at Stalingrad
The defensive scheme that defeated the Germans at Kursk.
Bagration, destruction of Army Group Center in 1944.

I would equate the best Soviet Generals like Konev, Rokkossovsky, Zhukov as pretty good.

Soviet strategic thinking was better then the Allies much of the time. Their concept of deep battle was better then what passed fro strategy in Western Euurope.

Great OPSEC, good intelligence, double envelopments designed to drive deep, hundreds of miles into the rear, after ripping open penetrations 1-2 divisions deep in the line, so wide they couldnt be sealed.

Rokkossovsky compares well with Hodges and Bradley and Montgomery, for that matter.  

I would recommend the Glantz books.  I get the impression that the Soviet strategic planners, industrial planners, and Army level staff officers by 1943 were better then their peers...at least the ones working for the famous marshals,

The Soviets  were still more often than not losing more than they were killing and making up for it in sheer weight right up to the end. Consider Seelow Heights,10:1 numerical advantage and lost 3X as many troops as Germans killed. All things being equal,and they rarely ever were after 1943,man for man the Soviets were never the measure of  Germans and allies.
 


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I usually pick up the MG42 and kick ass on that in Call of Duty. Fun shooting the tanks with Panzerschreks too.

A couple of times they were.

At Bagration the Russians outnumbered the Germans 2:1. About 1.6million to 800k.

Some of the stats show the Germans took twice as many casualties as the Russians. So it was close.

At the point of attack, probably not equal.  Some of the larger offensives cost the Germans enough POWs that in effect it was an even exchange.

Typically in war among equals, the defender tends to have the advantage in an all out slugging match so inherently casualties will be high for the attacking side, unless you get a breakthrough/encirclement, etc. Couple this with Stalin's burning desire to beat the West to Berlin and you have a situation which invited the ratio that Seelow produced. Plain and simple, the Russians didn't care since they could easily replace the 3 while Germany could ill-afford the 1.

NKVD Divisions.  Motivation.  They were very good at that.

Lots of truth here, but GD is often full of soviet loving nuthuggers and revisionists.  Saying the Soviet Army was better than the German Army is like saying that the Chinese Communists won the Korean War.  

Soviets won only because they had more manpower and our resources to buoy them.  The Soviets received the bulk of all Lend Lease Aid during WWII , by their own admission they would have starved had Lend Lease not been there.

Hands-down the most innovative type of formation was the kampfgruppe.

Mission-made ad-hoc units made very efficient use of Germany's mobile assets, of which they didn't really have as many as one might think.

The 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Belorussian Fronts in 1944 had the best commanders and the best equipment in the whole Red Army. They destroyed the German Army Group Centre in Operation Bagration, which might serve as some kind of comparison.

Interesting movie->
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vBDuO2zq1Zc
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt3213684/

 

Such a scholar of history you are.


Soviet Army was better than the German Army.  That is an Objective fact.


If your definition is anything other than "who won" you don't understand the purpose of warfare.


Also, it is not "nut hugging" to acknowledge that the Soviets faced 80% of the German war effort.


Western Allies made significant contributions.  But they were a side show.


The War against Germany was overwhelmingly fought and won in the East.  

This six minute clip pretty well sums it up - they just steamrolled they way to Berlin

Winter War

+1
If the US was faced with an army equal to about 2% of the population, say six million personnel, that invaded the country and took nearly 30% of the industrialized portion, we'd do what they did. Field divisions on three months notice and throw them into the meatgrinder.

There isnt a luxury of waiting around for quality when you need to eject a four million man army.  

Given the scope of the problem, the quality with the Russians were with their strategic thinkers who understand deep operations and pincers and envelopments to envelop Germans was the best strategy possible. Coupled with great intelligence, deception, and ruthless prioritization at the top to mass forces against vulnerabilities.  Which were superior to the fight in the West, frequently.

Any tactical formation was a tool in the toolbox and would get ground to nothing.

Read George Nipe's "Blood, Steel & Myth".

It's about The Battle Kursk.

It's an exhaustive study of Soviet AND German primary source documents.

Would you believe the Soviets, massively under reported their casualties and conversely lied on huge scale, on the size of the German armored formations that faced them and the casualties they inflicted on them.

The massed attacks at Prochorowcha, the Waffen SS inflicted losses on the Soviets at a rate of 7-1, amazingly when 50% of their tanks were Panzer IIIs.

Essentially much of what we think we know about the Russian front is based on Soviet propaganda.  Even the Soviet authors have admitted this.

I took a course in ww2 a while back. All I really recall from it regarding the soviets was that the professor maintained that they went through a sort of darwinism, I guess, to where the troops that ended up continually surviving the blundering tactics of their superiors and the German assaults ended up being very good fighters. Essentially that the Soviet  army became very competent through anyone that wasn't competent getting killed. Guess that's a way to do it if you've got enough people.

Not really....The Soviets designated entire Army formations as a Guards Army after a victory.

The 8th Guards Army (designated after the Stalingrad victory) comes to mind.

Guards formations were merely better equipped survivors.  

2nd Guards Motor Rifle Division

O

So you would say the U.S. Army was only on parity with the PLA,inferior to the PLF/PAVN,worse than Iraqi insurgents and is losing to and unable to defeat the Taliban?

I read that too, IIRC the reports weren't discovered until the 70's?

I never quite understood why they didn't just call the 62nd Army the 62nd Guards Army....

 

Um. You seem to have missed the "not my opinion" part.

 

I would say it isn't an apples comparison because it is limited versus unlimited warfare.


That said, the enemy in our recent wars in Afg and Iraq has, by and large, held the initiative, planned and executed better political and military strategy and has done everything better than us except for unit level tactics.

If the Russians would make their own version of Band of Brothers, I'd watch it.

A shit ton of illiterate savages grunting at each other, then being herded by NKVD assholes with belt fed machine guns into the Nazi firestorm.

Yay.