The short answer is - a German division is twice as big as a Soviet division, a German
corps is approximately the size of a Soviet Army, and a German Army is roughly the size
of a Soviet Front. And this size difference impacted the Soviet performance at both Blau
and Stalingrad. But you’re probably wanting more details than that, and we’re going
to get into the numbers and show you some examples. The immediate questions though are
- Why was a Soviet Army the size of a German corps in 1942? Why was a Soviet division half
the size of a German division? And what happened to the Soviet Corps level? Because they don’t
actually have a corps level in 1942 - it jumps straight from division to army. And this jump
leads to problems, as you’re about to find out. After the heavy fighting in the first several months
of the war (1941), many Soviet units were wiped out, and the German and Soviet units
that remained were also sapped of their strength. In 1942, each assume that the other side is
totally exhausted and about to collapse - but this isn’t the case. Both were in-fact busy
rebuilding their shattered forces. However they each approach this rebuilding process
in different ways. The Axis react to this by creating a few more divisions (going from
175 combat divisions on the Eastern Front in 1941 to 212 in 1942) and they formalize the
fact that many divisions in Army Groups North and Centre had 6 battalions rather than 9.
Many say that the Germans didn’t replenish their losses from 1941, but it isn’t true.
They did in-fact recover their losses, and they actually gained 110,000 men by mid-1942.
Total German army strength everywhere increased by 11% (an extra 550,000) from June 1941 to
July 1942. Which at first glance doesn’t make sense because we know many units are
depleted. However they didn’t spread these replacements out across the front - they concentrated
them in Army Group South, ready for Fall Blau - the summer offensive. The way the Soviets
react is a little bit different. German divisional strengths were weakened after the winter,
but the divisions themselves still existed. Whereas Soviet units didn’t exist - since
many had been wiped out during Barbarossa and the Winter counterattacks. So what the
Soviets do is create a lot of new units to make up their losses. Now there’s two problems
the Soviets face when creating new units - the first is that the pre-war and early-war Soviet
corps and armies had been big and cumbersome. This made them easy prey for the Germans,
who just wiped them out. The second is that you need generals and staff officers to create
the different tiers of management - brigade staffs, divisional staffs, corps staffs, army
staffs, front staffs. Well, the Soviets simply didn’t have the officers and generals to
slot into all these tiers. I’ve done a video on the Stalinist Purges already, and the conclusion
is that the expansion of the Soviet army as they were mobilizing, meant that they couldn’t
recruit enough officers quickly enough. The Purges didn’t help, but even without the
Purges, there still wouldn’t have been enough officers. Go watch that video for more details,
but either way the Soviets don’t have enough officers to fill the ranks. And the officers
they did have weren’t all skilled at higher-tiered levels, because many of them were new. So
what they decide to do is get rid of the army-corps level, and reduce the number of divisions
in an army down to around half a dozen (plus several attached brigades and regiments) in
order to compensate. They actually do this in July of 1941, but they carry this practice
on into 1942. Their reasoning for doing this is because it would allow the more experienced
commanders at the army level to have direct control over the divisions below them - so,
cutting out the middleman. And by having independent rifle brigades in the armies - also known
as demidivisions - this would allow the new commanders to gain experience commanding small
units. And the divisions were also simplified so that they wouldn’t have as many specialised
anti-tank, anti-aircraft, armour, engineer and artillery units as they’d had before
the war. These specialised units were then given to the army in order to be used where the army
commander thought they were needed most. On the one hand, this would centralise command
and coordination of the Soviet forces to the army commanders, and it allowed new commanders
time to gain experience. But it also meant that the commanders were commanding smaller
units than their German counterparts, and the army commanders were commanding a lot
of individual units. So let’s look at the numbers. According to Table 10 in Glantz’s
Book 1 of the Stalingrad Trilogy, there were 68 German divisions taking part in Blau. I’ve
heard it was 72, but whatever, let’s just go with this source. With 21 Axis allied divisions,
that’s 89 total Axis divisions, with approximately 1.25 million men. If you take into account
corps and army assets, like artillery units and so on, the Germans and Axis divisions
have around 13,000 men in them for Blau. The Soviets have 102 divisions and 100 brigades.
With 3 brigades to a division, that’s 135 division equivalents. However, they also had
independant battalions and regiments in the armies as well. While the Soviet divisions
at this point have an authorized strength of 11,000, Glantz says that Soviet divisions had
around 6,000 to 10,000 men, but also usually had 2,500 to 5,000 men in the field, or even as
few as 1,000. And Soviet Brigades had 4,000 to 5,000 men. Being really rough with this,
we can conclude that an Axis division is around 13,000 men, whereas a Soviet division is at
7,000 men on average. This is pretty much half a German division. I’m going to use
this chart to explain it. A Soviet division is more like a German Brigade. And as we said,
we have no corps level for the Soviets, so there’s no practical equivalent to a German
division (until late 1942). A Soviet army is probably the size of a German corps, although
some are actually bigger than that, and some are smaller. And a Soviet Front is about the
size of a German army - which is why in the Blau video last week I made the Fronts the
same size as the German armies. Certainly in 1942, there’s no Soviet equivalent to
a German Army Group - although that does change after Operation Uranus gets underway. Now
obviously this is a rough estimate, and there will be exceptions. For example, the North
Caucasus Front in 1942 actually ends up having 300 to 600 thousand men, due to the fact it
assumes control of another front’s units, and it recruits from the local population
and from the Black Sea Fleet. So it’s almost as big as Budyonny’s mustache. Hello Ladies!
Oooo yeah! But these unit levels are a good general guide for late-1941 to late-1942.
So when you hear that the Soviets had 400 divisions - yes, but you need to half it when
comparing to the German divisions to get the true picture. Here’s the thing though - this
halving of the units and the deletion of the corps level causes the Soviets big problems
when they face the Germans. The best way to get a sense of the difficulty that the Soviet
officers and generals are facing, is to picture the position they’re in. Imagine you’re
a Soviet divisional commander going up against a German division. Well, straight away, your
division is half the size of the German division. It’s a case of - David vs Goliath! So in
order to go up against the German division, you’re going to need the help of at least
one other division, and or additional battalions and brigades - that hopefully the army commander
will graciously give to support you. The problem is though that you’re not in command of
these other units. And they’re not in command of you. Plus, the Army commander isn’t going
to be on hand to coordinate these attacks. So straight away, you’ve got a command
issue with no real solution. You’re going to be on the phone, trying to communicate
with the other units, trying to organise the attack. You’re going to be asking for help,
and they’re going to be asking for your help, and you’re going to have to make decisions
on who to help - if you’re going to help anyone else at all - and you’re going to be concentrating
on your own front, and you’ll need to talk to the army commander, who going is busy commanding
several divisions (and even more brigades and regiments) so really hasn’t got time to talk
to you. And all this is complicated by the terrible communication system. As Jones points
out in the book, Stalingrad: How the Red Army Triumphed - the Germans had much better wireless
intercept units (especially in 6th Army) and were able to interfere with Soviet communications.
They were able to butt-in and even speak directly to the Soviet radio communicators, cutting
them off from speaking to each other. Army commanders may have benefitted from this ‘getting
rid of the corps level’ idea - because they were overall commanding fewer divisions than
a normal army commander - but they had to command all of these divisions directly, without
the benefit of the corps-level of command. This places greater strain on them - trying
to organise and meet the needs of all the units beneath them. It’s no wonder the army
commanders couldn’t cope. If we take a look at the 62nd Army on the 22nd of July 1942,
Kolpakchi has 5 rifle divisions, 1 guards rifle division, 1 tank brigade, 6 independent
tank battalions, 3 independent artillery regiments, 9 independent anti-tank artillery regiments,
1 independent mortar regiment, 4 independent guards-mortar (Katiusha) regiments, 1 independent
guards mortar battalion, and 1 independent anti-aircraft artillery regiment. Do the math,
and that’s 32 independent units directly answerable to him. Not every army has quite
so many units as this, but hopefully you can see the issue here. If you’re managing 3
or 4 corps (who are each managing 3 or 4 divisions or subunits on your behalf) that’s a lot
easier than managing 32 individual units. As someone with managerial experience, I can
tell you that this organisational structure isn’t a good thing. And the army commanders
are suffering. They cannot cope. They’re stressed out. They’re constantly being replaced.
Kolpakchi is dismissed in the middle of the fight. Lopatin takes over, but Lopatin is
overwhelmed and then relieved for withdrawing troops across the Volga, thinking the situation
was hopeless. Chuikov takes over Lopatin, but Chuikov was actually 64th Army’s commander
when Kolpakchi is around, and he’s demoted to deputy commander of the 64th Army because
he fails to stop the Germans with the forces he has. Now, I plan to do a video on Chuikov
in the future where I’ll go into more details with this, but when Chuikov is fighting as
commander of 64th Army, he isn’t able to get a grip of the situation. He has 6 rifle
divisions, 2 rifle brigades, and 2 tank brigades. That’s 10 units directly under his command.
And he’s demoted after just 6 days of fighting. Interestingly though, when he’s made deputy
commander of 64th Army (under Shumilov), Chuikov is then put in charge of a battlegroup in
the south, as part of this army. Basically, he’s put in command of a corps-tier unit
- only having 6 individual units under his command, 4 of them being divisions and 2 being
brigades. And you know what? He fights much better, and is able to stop the Germans.
And I honestly don’t think this is a coincidence. It is at this point that he starts to formulate
the tactics and strategies he would later use against the Germans in the city of Stalingrad.
But even when Chuikov is put into command of the 62nd Army in Stalingrad, he’s still
stressed. He reportedly suffered from a stress-induced eczema on his hands, and had to have them
bandaged because they were oozing from the lesions. And it has been said that his violent
temper - and his tendency to hit people with a stick - was as a direct result of this stress.
Now, I’m not saying that all this stress was just because of the number of units he
had to command. But it certainly didn’t help. If you take into account that Chuikov’s
constantly complaining throughout the battle and before it of the poor communications the
Soviets have, and the fact that he gives his subordinate commanders permission to exercise
their own authority and do their own thing - which is unlike a lot of Soviet commanders
at the time - I think this explains a lot. Chuikov finds ways around the shortcomings
of the Soviet organisational and communications problems, giving him a chance to beat Paulus.
And you hear this in the accounts, that the leadership and atmosphere in the 62nd Army
in Stalingrad was just different to that of other armies. I don’t think it’s just
a coincidence. A lot of people have the impression that the Soviet commanders were bad. Now whether
you believe that or not, if you were going to sing the praises of your former commander,
what are you more likely to say? He was a great tactician? He was a great strategist?
A great fighter? Well, how about none of the above. How about - a good organiser. When
Rokossovsky takes over the Briansk Front in July 1942, Batov (65th Army’s commander)
later praises Rokossovsky for being able to organise his forces. “Indeed, the soldiers
and generals sighed with relief; we immediately sensed the hand of an experienced organizer.”
An organizer! He also says Rokossovsky created a great atmosphere (unlike other commanders)
where the officers felt like they could go to Rokossovsky and express their opinions.
He then gained their confidence and allowed them to do their own thing, which is just
like Chuikov! Interestingly, Vatutin is also praised for appreciating staff work. Yeah
- staff work! The masterful commander Vatutin - great at staffwork. Govorov was credited
for his mastery of artillery, and being well-versed in operational-tactical problems - which sounds
more like he was getting involved with his army-level commanders who were under great
strain commanding so many units. So in 1942, as part of Blau and the Battle of Stalingrad,
the Soviet generals are troubled by a command and control crisis - this was a result of
deleting the corps level of command (which they were forced to do). Experienced or not,
these generals are facing many internal problems - from organisational, to communication, to
dual command - and this stretches their ability to use their forces effectively. They also
face the Germans, who usually outnumber them at the tactical level, who are disrupting
their communications, who have got experience, who have air superiority, who have a better organized
command structure at the army-level downwards at least. I honestly think that this is an element of the
Axis-Soviet Front justthat hasn’t been examined in enough detail - the differences between the size
of German and Soviet units, as well as the command and communications issues which impacted
the leadership on the Soviet side - none of this has been looked at. And, in English as
a whole, there’s a lack of books on the Soviet generals, or the Soviet side. If I’m
honest, I’m struggling to find any information on the Soviets at all. Everything seems to
be written from the German perspective. And while I am learning German right now - Ich
spreche Deutsch nicht gut - a part of me wishes I’d taken up Russian first so I could dive
into the details and give you more information. Unfortunately, I think it’s going to be
a while before we fully understand and appreciate the Soviet side of the war. But hopefully,
one day soon, we will. Thank you to my Patreons for your continuing support. You guys are
making these videos possible, because you’re awesome! The question I want to leave you
with is this - Who is your favourite Soviet general? And why? Let me
know in the comments below. Thanks for watching, bye for now.