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| Russian BA-20 armored cars issued to units on their way to the front, 19 October 1941. |
by John Lundstrum
Introduction
From the outbreak of the 1917 Revolution through the tribulations of the two succeeding decades, the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics relied for defense against the hostile world on the prowess of the “Workers’ and Peasants’ Army” (Raboche-Krest’yanskaya Krasnaya Army, officially abbreviated RKKA). Victorious in a hard-fought Civil War, the RKKA emerged from the first two decades of its existence as an energetic, if crude, military organization. Fascinated with the possibilities of increased technology in all levels of the society, the Soviet military planners undertook commendable, if sometimes bizarre, efforts to develop new weapons and tactics and increasingly modernize the RKKA. For this reason the factories in the Soviet Union produced no less than 29,800 tanks in the years 1930-1941. Aircraft also appeared in unheard of numbers. With their new weapons the Soviets believed that they had the basis of a truly modern fighting force. Western military observers during the 1930s attended large-scale military maneuvers staged by the RKKA. Hundreds of parachutists leaped out of giant transport aircraft, while on the ground thousands of soldiers participated in mock battles, accompanied by hordes of scuttling light tanks. The great anniversary parade of the Revolution occurred in November of each year, and the Soviets made a practice of exhibiting many of their new weapons among the battalions which trooped past Lenin’s tomb. Like the French in the days before World War I, Soviet military doctrine centered around the principle of attack. They envisioned the coming war as perhaps a “capitalist-imperialist” invasion swiftly crushed, followed by a victorious sweep by the RKKA into Central Europe to “liberate” the “oppressed proletariat.”
Behind the veneer of mechanization the thousands of tanks, the “ersatz-Ford” GAZ trucks, and the myriad types of aircraft, lay almost fatal weaknesses in the RKKA. Flushed in the attempt to transform the RKKA into a truly up-to-date fighting force, the Soviets, either through inability or neglect, failed to complete modernization in all the areas such as a new army required. The consequence was a gross imbalance in what was to be modernized and the methods used. Out of the thousands of tanks made most were easily-constructed light versions, obsolete by 1940. As important, very few of the tanks and aircraft, indeed the whole army, had radio equipment. The heart of the RKKA still lay in its rifle divisions, largely horse-drawn and organized very much as divisions during World War I.
During the mid-1930s when the real tactical innovations in mechanized and airborne warfare occurred, the RKKA was relatively small, still only 1.5 million men in January 1938. The Officer Corps was close-knit and generally competent. In 1937 and 1938 the entire Soviet Union was the victim of a widespread general purge of hundreds of thousands of professional people thought by Stalin to be subversive. The NKVD firing squads and camps particularly devastated the RKKA as the officer cadre lost most of its best leaders, succeeded in command by politically reliable but incompetent men from lower ranks. Three of the five Marshals of the Soviet Union, including the famous M. I. Tukhachevskiy, were removed from their posts and executed by Joseph Stalin’s orders. The remaining hierarchy of the RKKA consisted mostly of such Stalinist sycophants as Marshal K. E. Voroshilov, S. M. Budenny and the infamous G. I. Kulik. A few of the brighter young officers remained, especially Marshal S. K. Timoshenko and Lt. Gen. G. K. Zhukov. Some able officers caught up in the purges were later released, notably K. K. Rokossovskiy.
Soon after the purges, the RKKA became involved in the general reaction to the rise of National Socialist Germany and Imperial Japan. To meet the growing threats in both East and West the Soviet leaders decided to triple the strength of the RKKA. Between January 1939 and June 1941 no fewer than 125 new rifle divisions were added to the Army and twenty-nine new mechanized corps were created along with them. The strength of the RKKA rose from 1.5 million in January 1938 to just over 4.2 million in January 1941. By the outbreak of the war the RKKA numbered about five million men. With the tremendous increase in new formations the RKKA found itself in desperate need of trained cadre to staff them. Even had the purges not taken place, the RKKA would have to had spread its trained officers and NCOs very thinly. With the purge and the departure of most of its officers, the RKKA had a virtual dearth of competent leaders on most levels. Colonels who commanded regiments during the purge found themselves, if spared by the NKVD, commanding armies at the start of the war. Colonel General M. I. Kirponos, commanding the Kiev Special Military District in June 1941 fought in the 1939-1940 Winter War as a division commander. He was appointed to command the Leningrad Military District in 1940, skipping both the corps and army levels of command. With the vast influx of new recruits to man the new divisions, officers and NCOs required to train them did not exist in the numbers required to do an adequate job. In addition to it all there were the political commissars and the NKVD, sources of authority independent of the military commands themselves.
The RKKA fought two major campaigns during the course of 1939 and they best illustrate the contrast between the strength and weaknesses of the Soviet military machine. The first was the Khalkhin Gol Campaign, waged during the summer of 1939 on the remote Mongolian-Manchurian border against the Imperial Japanese Army. The Soviet Commander was Col. Gen. G. K. Zhukov, one of the brightest stars of the RKKA. He utilized large scale mechanized attacks to disorganize the less mobile Japanese and encircled a goodly portion of their troops. Close cooperation among Soviet commanders, the timely use of tanks and the tough, well-trained troops of the Transbaikal Military District spelled success for the RKKA against a most stubborn opponent. The officers of the Far Eastern Front apparently fared somewhat better in the purge and the troops themselves, hardy Siberians, were fully combat ready. The victories of the 57th Special Rifle Corps at Khalkhin Gol exemplified the RKKA at its best.
The deep-seated debilitative effects of the purge and the later rapid expansion of the RKKA came to the surface during the ill-conceived “Winter War” against Finland, 1939-1940. The initial invasion was one Soviet blunder after another as whole armies floundered in the dark taiga forests of Eastern Finland. Newly formed units lacked cohesion, incompetent officers lacked initiative, or even worse, expended their exhausted troops in fruitless attacks. Soviet casualties increased as a great lack of foresight in equipping some units left them virtually defenseless against the cold. Not until Marshall Timoshenko assumed command in early 1940 was a concerted effort made to regroup and strike the Finns in their most vital area—the Mannerheim Line. Heavily reinforced with artillery and fresh troops, Timoshenko’s armies threw themselves at the Finnish fortifications and broke through. The war ended with an armistice and peace agreement in which the Finns ceded portions of their border lands and “leased” the naval base at Hango (Hanko) to the Soviets.
The disasters in Finland, compounded soon after by the amazing German successes in the Low Countries and France, led the RKKA commanders to reconsider the progress of their modernization. The People’s Commissariat for Defense recognized the German menace and went to desperate measures to reorganize and re-equip the Mechanized Forces. Extensive fortifications on the western border began to take shape. There was a general awareness in the RKKA of the ever-present danger of attack, but also hope that the dreaded event would be postponed until the Soviet people were ready to deal with it. At the very least, many Soviet military leaders felt that a German invasion would be delayed by the armies in the border military districts until the vast resources of the Soviet Union could be mobilized to repulse the enemy. “Wait until 1942,” was the watchword. Stalin himself said as much secretly in May 1941 to a group of officer candidates in Smolensk. Until then nothing would happen.
The story is many times told in Soviet histories and elsewhere that Stalin refused to be convinced by the mounting evidence of a German attack, that he believed all such indications to be the work of Allied provocateurs seeking to embroil the Soviet Union in a war with Germany. He was loathe to disturb the apparent harmony with Germany resulting from the 1939 pact. Consequently all thoughts of an upcoming war with Germany were soft-pedaled in the RKKA for political reasons. The RKKA was particularly lulled into complacency by an article which appeared in the 14 June 1941 Tass release indicating that no hostilities with Germany could be foreseen in the near future. The shock of the early morning hours of 22 June 1941 found many commanders reporting, “We are being fired upon! What shall we do?”
Composition of the RKKA
The title “Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army,” like the German term Wehrmacht, encompassed more than merely the Ground Forces or “Army,” but also the Air Force and Navy, in the Soviet Union even more subordinated to the land troops than in Germany. The RKKA comprised four basic arms:
Ground Forces (Sukhoputnye Voiska)
Navy (Morskoi Flot or VMF)
Military Air Force (Voenno Vozdushnye Sil or VVS)
Air Defense Force (Protivovozdushnaya Oborona or PVO)
Although this article concerns the Ground Forces only, it may be useful to provide a short account of the other branches of the RKKA. The Navy (VMF) consisted of four fleets based in the various oceans and seas bordering the huge land mass of the Soviet Union. The VMF had its own air arm and also a small force of naval infantry for minor amphibious operations. As its small number and emphasis on submarine warfare illustrate, the VMF, like the German Kriegsmarine, was under the ultimate control of political leaders operating in a continental rather than a global context. Caught by war before naval expansion began to roll, the VMF reverted largely to a sea denial rather than a sea control method of warfare. Once the disasters of 1941 had reached their height, huge numbers of sailors, over 390,000 in the first year of the war, entered land combat units and quickly participated in the fighting as naval infantry brigades.
The Military Air Force (VVS) was also largely subordinate to the Ground Forces, particularly at the military district and army level. Most field army commanders had under their operational control a mixed aviation division of fighters, light bombers and assault planes. The military district headquarters controlled all aviation within its territorial confines, including PVO fighter units. Only the Long-Range Aviation Bomber Corps (DBA) remained under higher command. The Anti-aircraft Defense Organization (PVO) comprised all the air defense units not immediately under the field armies, corps and divisions. The PVO consisted of fighter aircraft as well as anti-aircraft artillery units organized into independent battalions, brigades, divisions and even corps for important localities. Operational control, but not administrative control, of the PVO units within the military districts lay in the jurisdiction of the military district headquarters.
In numerical terms, the Ground Forces far outnumbered the other branches of the RKKA. As of January 1941, one of the few prewar dates for which percentage breakdowns are furnished, the RKKA had the following composition:
In the spring of 1941, the People’s Commissariat for Defense recalled an additional 800,000 reservists into the RKKA the vast majority of the men entering the Ground Forces, further increasing the portion of the RKKA encompassed by the land troops.
The Administrative Structure of the RKKA
The administration of power in the Soviet Union revolved around the position of Josef Stalin, Secretary-General of the Central Committee of the Communist Party, Soviet Union (KPSS) and concurrently President of the Council of People’s Commissars. The Council consisted of the People’s Commissariats, were grouped together into a number of councils as well, depending on function. The three councils affecting the Soviet military were the Economic Council, with jurisdiction over the several people’s commissariats of the defense industries, the Supreme Naval Council covering the VMF, and most importantly, the Supreme Military Council controlling the People’s Commissariat for Defense. The Supreme Military Council met periodically to consider questions of great importance to the general direction of the RKKA. Its members included Stalin and other key members of the Party and Government under the chairmanship of the People’s Commissar for Defense.
The People’s Commissariat for Defense was the central headquarters controlling the RKKA, both administratively and operationally. Specific departments within the commissariat handled organization, training, planning, development of weapons and political education within three branches of the RKKA: the Ground Forces, VVS and PVO. The VMF had its own People’s commissariat, but that headquarters in practice was generally inferior in power to the People’s Commissariat for Defense. So vital were the functions of the People’s Commissariat for defense that Stalin felt constrained after the disasters of the Winter War to replace the incumbent commissar, Marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko. Voroshilov, a noted old comrade and Stalinist hack, was obviously not up to the tremendous task of whipping the RKKA into shape, a job entrusted to the vigorous and competent Timoshenko. Timoshenko was put into an almost impossible situation; the extensive modernization of the RKKA was realistically beyond the current capabilities of the Soviet Union.
The People’s Commissariat for Defense consisted largely of a number of departments under the control of deputy commissars. Each of the departments and the various sections is listed below:
Under personal control of Marshall Timoshenko
Main Motor-Armor Division
Finance Division
Personnel Division
Design Bureau
First Deputy Commissar, Marshal of the Soviet Union S. M. Budenny
Main Supplies Division
Medical and Veterinary Division
Material Stocks Department
Deputy Commissar, Army-Gen. Zhukov, Chief of the General Staff
Communications Division
Fuel Supply Division
Main PVO Division
M. V. Frunze Military Academy
Deputy Commissar, Marshall of the Soviet Union G. I. Kulik
Main Artillery Division
Chemical Defense Division
Artillery Academy
Deputy Commissar, Marshal of the Soviet Union B. M. Shaposhnikov
Main Division of Military Engineering
Division of the Construction of Fortified Areas
Deputy Commissar, Army-Gen. K. A. Meretskov
Inspectorate of Troops
Training of Troops
Deputy Commissar, Lt. Gen. of Aviation P. V. Rychagov
Main VVS Division
Deputy Commissar, Army Commissar 1st Grade A. I. Zaporozhets
Main Orientation Division (political functions)
Undertaking operational planning and mobilization schemes for the People’s Commissariat for Defense was the General Staff under Army-Gen. G. K. Zhukov, another replacement made by Stalin in an attempt to speed the modernization of the RKKA. The General Staff was responsible for assessing the military-political situation and in conjunction with its knowledge of the RKKA, producing the yearly general mobilization plan. The People’s Commissar along with the Supreme Military Council reviewed the operational plans of the General Staff and decided whether they were to be implemented. The People’s Commissar forwarded the necessary orders and plans directly to the military districts.
The highest regional headquarters of the RKKA was the military district of which sixteen existed for the entire country. The military districts ranged in importance from the five Western border military districts, controlling over half of the RKKA which was in defense against Germany and her satellites, to the less vital more remote areas like Central Asia. The military district commander supervised the operational and administrative handling of all the various types of troops within his district, including VVS, PVO and airborne units. There were exceptions to this, namely the armies placed in strategic reserve by the People’s Commissar for Defense and the long-range bomber units—the DBA. In peacetime, the district headquarters conducted the conscription of the new recruit classes and recall of reservists. For the units remaining in High Command Reserve, the military district provided quarters and supplies.
The five Western border military districts controlled from twenty-one to fifty-eight divisions each, and therefore were analogous to the army groups of Western armies. In the event of war, four of the five Western border districts became fronts, the term used for a combat command of which a district was not. One front already existed in the RKKA, the Far Eastern Front (Col. Gen. I. S. Apanasenko), set up in response to the recurring hostilities with Japan. The other military districts, encompassing fewer divisions each than the four big Western border military districts (excluding Odessa), formed field army commands to control their troops when outside of the confines of the military district. Thus Lt. Gen. M. F. Lukin, commander of the Transbaikal Military District, took command of the 16th Army when in the spring of 1941 the troops of his district comprised that army and were sent west as part of the strategic reserve. Similarly, other military districts became army headquarters both before and after the outbreak of the war. This included the lone exception among the Western border military districts, Odessa (Col. Gen. Y. T. Cherevichenko), which became 9th Army upon the outbreak of the war.
Notice must be taken of the peculiar political organization within the RKKA, namely the infamous Commissar system. Every RKKA unit, battalion level and above had assigned to it a political commissar and staff administered along an independent chain of command emanating from the Politburo of the KPSS and the People’s Commissar for State Control (Army Commissar 1st Grade L. A. Mekhlis).
The functions of the Commissars were to safeguard the political reliability of the units and its members and observe them intensely for any signs of deviation. Consequently the Commissars and their helpers, usually Party members and Komsomols, maintained strict surveillance over their unit, including the commander, on whom the Commissars sent periodic secret reports to their superiors. During the Civil War and again in the 1939-1940 Winter War, the Commissars actually exercised dual command with the unit commanders with a veto over his orders. The frightful reverses in Finland caused a gradual swing of power back to the unit commanders, so that by June 1941, the regular officers issued their orders without the political commissar’s influence. Other duties of the Commissars included the maintenance of discipline and assistance in the administration of the unit, in short seeing to the physical welfare of the men. The political officers kept up a constant barrage of propaganda produced by the Agitprop Department to keep the men politically motivated.
The real impact of the Commissars upon the combat efficiency of the RKKA is difficult to ascertain. Certainly the institution as a whole was not healthy for the maturation of responsible combat leaders. Apparently, harmony depended upon the personalities of the individual Commissars and commanders. At his best the Commissar served as an adviser and de facto chief of staff to his unit commander. At his worst the Commissar used his powers to harass the unit commander and challenge his right of control over the unit. Army Commissar 1st Grade L. A. Mekhlis was a perfect example of the worst kind of commissar, a person inclined “to use extreme measures.” He was a Stalinist hatchet man who followed up reverses with a long list of scapegoats discovered by his own ruthless “investigations.”
Organization of the RKKA Ground Forces
The Higher Commands—Armies
In June 1941, the highest independent tactical grouping in the RKKA was the army, of which only one type existed, the “Combined Arms” or “General” army. As the title implied, the combined arms army controlled a mixture of units from most of the various branches of the RKKA. Armies had from one to three rifle corps, a mechanized or cavalry corps, one or more mixed aviation divisions (fighters, close bombers and assault planes) and attachments of artillery regiments, anti-aircraft and anti-tank battalions, engineers and sundry other non-divisional troops. In addition, army commanders generally exercised control over fortified areas and PVO troops in their sectors. Thus an army could be considered an independent fighting force with its own aviation, tanks and artillery under one headquarters. It was Soviet practice to shift the bulk of their reserves under the control of army headquarters. Two of the Western border military districts had whole armies in reserve, while the strategic reserve in Western Russia consisted mainly of five armies. Thus the armies in the RKKA tended to be more cohesive and remained intact as a unit in contrast to more flexible Western military practice. Of course, the outbreak of the war and its attendant disasters changed this radically. In June 1941, the RKKA had a total of twenty-four army headquarters in the field with provisions for the activation of several others from the staffs of the military districts in order to control the independent rifle divisions distributed in the districts.
The Organization of the Various Branches
Unlike the combined arms armies, the corps structure of the RKKA was segregated according to the major branches of service, namely rifle (infantry), cavalry, mechanized and airborne. Like most other armies, the Soviet corps headquarters controlled a number of divisions with attached corps and army troops. However, in the RKKA, the corps tended almost invariably to consist of one type of division, i.e. rifle, cavalry and tank-motorized rifle without interchanging the different types. Thus it would be useful to discuss the organization of each of the major branches of the service separately, beginning with the corps structure.
Rifle Units
As in every other military force of the time, the backbone of the RKKA was its infantry, organized into rifle corps, divisions, and a few independent brigades. In keeping with the rigid structure according to corps in the RKKA, each rifle corps controlled from two to three rifle divisions supported by a large number of organic corps troops. Thus a corps “on paper” had two corps artillery regiments, an anti-aircraft artillery battalion, an engineer battalion and a corps observation aviation squadron. In June 1941 the RKKA had a total of sixty-two rifle corps. The principal problem with the corps lay in equipping the corps troops. In practice, many corps possessed only one corps artillery regiment instead of two, and if the corps had two regiments, usually they were not up to full strength (apparently one corps artillery regiment had a table of organization of probably twenty-four 122mm and 152mm howitzers and the other supposedly twenty-four 152mm gun-howitzers).
The Soviet rifle divisions had the triangular infantry organization common with many armies of the period. Complementing the three rifle regiments was an unusual divisional artillery structure based on two artillery regiments, one a “light,” and the other a “howitzer.” The last prewar tables of organization, issued in April 1941, called for sixteen 76mm guns, thirty-two 122mm howitzers and twelve 152mm howitzers in the two artillery regiments. Supporting units in the rifle division included an anti-aircraft artillery battalion, an anti-tank battalion, an engineer battalion and an organic light tank battalion with sixteen light tanks (mostly T-26s) and thirteen armored cars. Total manpower in the division totaled close to 14,500, with 294 guns and mortars, 558 trucks, ninety-nine tractors and over three thousand horses.
Despite the April 1941 decree of the People’s Commissar for Defense, the rifle divisions (like most of the RKKA) were in a state of flux. The mechanized forces, involved in a rapid reorganization, swallowed all of the organic divisional tank battalions, leaving the rifle divisions no tanks or armored cars. Far from numbering 14,500 men, most of the rifle divisions had between 8,000 and 6,000 men, with corresponding deficiencies in equipment. In April 1941 the People’s Commissar for Defense finally convinced Stalin of the necessity of recalling 500,000 reservists just in an attempt to bring all of the 103 rifle divisions in the Western border military districts to 8,000 men each. The rifle divisions in the interior were fortunate to have 6,000 men under arms. The only exceptions to the rule appear to have been in the Far Eastern Front where some rifle divisions apparently had 14,000 men. When Col. A. P. Beloborodov’s 78th Rifle Division, a prewar regular unit, arrived in the West in October 1941 it went into action nearly up to full strength in men and equipment.
In June 1941 the RKKA had a total of 194 rifle and mountain rifle divisions, the greater proportion formed during the 1939-1941 expansion. Standard policy was to create new rifle divisions partly out of existing formations, further diluting the already thin numbers of existing cadre with combat experience. Conscripts, reservists and cadre (often reservists as well) collected in the military districts where the formation of the division began. Summer was the period utilized for extensive unit training, whole divisions being sent to special maneuver areas. Even when the unit left its military district, the divisions continued to draw replacements and conscripts from their place of origin, giving a large number of rifle divisions a territorial base of recruitment. The extensive reorganization of the cadre of the RKKA deprived many veteran units of the value of combat experience so dearly bought in the blood-soaked snow drifts of Finland, and tended to equalize at an inferior level the quality of all the units.
In April 1941 the People’s Commissar for Defense ordered several of the military districts to transform some of their rifle divisions into mountain rifle divisions. It appears that a total of fifteen rifle divisions were so modified, most in the rugged Transcaucasian and Central Asian Military Districts. In the Kiev Special Military District, five such divisions were reorganized. The mountain rifle divisions differed radically from the regular rifle divisions, particularly in the infantry structure. In the mountain rifle divisions there were four mountain rifle regiments, each consisting of five reinforced “companies,” although the organization was really analogous to the cavalry squadron. The divisional artillery was organized on lighter lines with 107mm mountain mortars along with 76mm guns and 122mm howitzers. Instead of an organic tank battalion, the mountain rifle divisions had a squadron of cavalry. Like the regular rifle divisions, the mountain rifle divisions were drastically understrength and under-equipped.
In addition to the rifle divisions, the RKKA organized a small number of independent rifle brigades for the execution of special missions. In the aftermath of the 1939-1940 Winter War and the 1939-1940 occupation of the Baltic Republics, certain territorial acquisitions posed special problems for the RKKA to garrison. In consequence, it appears that the People’s Commissar for Defense reorganized two rifle divisions into independent rifle brigades to provide infantry support for an extensive array of coastal artillery and other specialized arms. For the garrison of the Baltic Islands of Sarume and Chiuma (Dago and Osel), the 3rd Rifle Division became the 3rd Independent Rifle Brigade, losing one rifle regiment and artillery regiment. The remaining artillery regiment had twenty-four 76mm guns and twelve 122mm howitzers. In addition, an independent machine gun battalion was added to the brigade. The island garrisons also included a considerable array of coastal artillery, engineers and anti-aircraft units.
In 1940, as a result of the treaty with Finland, the Soviet Union acquired rights to the naval base at Hanko (Hango) on the southwest coast of Finland. The 8th Rifle Division, a veteran unit with service in the Winter War, became the 8th Independent Rifle Brigade probably with a similar organization to that of the 3rd Brigade. Supporting units in the isolated Hanko base included the equivalent of two brigades of artillery and twenty-seven coastal batteries, along with the 13th Aviation Fighter Regiment and light naval units.
It appears also that the 1st Mountain Rifle Brigade was in existence in the Archangel Military District before the start of the war. The unit participated in the defense of Leningrad, but little is known of its origins. It was probably created, not converted from an existing rifle division. Realistically the term “rifle brigade” meant little to the RKKA. It appears that the rifle brigades, especially the 8th in Hanko, were kept close to full strength and as many or more men than many of the under strength rifle divisions.
A rifle corps consisted of two, sometimes three, rifle divisions, one artillery regiment with twenty-four 122mm and 152mm howitzers, one artillery regiment with twenty-four 122mm and 152mm guns (although in practice, many corps had only one mixed artillery regiment), one anti-aircraft battalion with eight 37mm and four 76mm guns, one engineer battalion, one signal battalion, and one air observation battalion.
A rifle division had three rifle regiments, one artillery regiment with two artillery battalions each with eight 76mm guns and four 122mm howitzers, one artillery regiment with three artillery battalions each with eight 122mm howitzers and four 152mm howitzers, one anti-tank battalion with eighteen 45mm guns, one signal battalion, one anti-aircraft battalion with eight 37mm and four 76mm guns, one engineer battalion, one chemical warfare company with thirty flame-throwers, one armored cavalry battalion with sixteen light tanks, thirteen armored cars and three 50mm mortars. The division totaled 14,483 men, 294 guns and mortars, sixteen tanks, thirteen armored cars, 558 trucks, ninety-nine tractors, and three thousand horses.
A rifle regiment consisted of three rifle battalions (each including one infantry heavy weapons company with twelve heavy machine guns, three infantry companies each with three 50mm mortars, one artillery company with six 82mm mortars, and one anti-tank section with two 45mm guns), one artillery company with six 76mm howitzers, one artillery company with four 120mm mortars, and one anti-tank company with six 45mm guns. The regiment had a total of 3,180 men.
A mountain rifle division consisted of four mountain infantry regiments, one mountain artillery regiment with two artillery battalions each with eight 76mm guns and six 107mm mortars, one mountain artillery regiment with two artillery battalions each with twelve 122mm howitzers, one anti-aircraft battalion with eight 37mm guns, one anti-tank battalion with eight 45mm guns, one cavalry battalion, one signal battalion, and one engineer battalion. The division had a total of 14,160 men.
The mountain rifle regiment had five mountain infantry companies each with three heavy machine guns, twelve light machine guns and three 50mm mortars, one artillery company with four 76mm howitzers, one artillery company with twelve 82mm mortars, and one anti-aircraft company with twelve heavy machine guns. The regiment had a total of 2,200 men.
An independent rifle brigade consisted of two infantry regiments, one artillery regiment with three artillery battalions each with eight 76mm guns and four 122mm howitzers, and one infantry heavy weapons battalion.
Cavalry Units
The mounted arm was a mainstay of the old Czarist armies, and the Soviets naturally adopted it in the Civil War as their elite force. The First Cavalry Army under Budenny earned the plaudits of the proletariat as it helped to turn back the onrush of the “White Guardists” and other evil Imperialists. Many of the higher commanders of the RKKA originally served in the cavalry, including S. K. Timoshenko, S. M. Budenny, K. E. Voroshilov, G. K. Zhukov, K. K. Rokossovskiy, A. T. Eremenko and others. Consequently it must have been with some regret that the RKKA drastically cut its cavalry force from thirty-two divisions in 1938 to a mere thirteen in June 1941. Most of the cavalrymen apparently transferred to the rapidly growing mechanized force.
The highest cavalry command in June 1941 was the cavalry corps, of which four existed. It is not known for certain whether corps troops were organic to the headquarters, but German intelligence reported that each cavalry corps had at least an artillery regiment of twelve 107mm guns and twelve 152mm howitzers and an anti-aircraft artillery battalion of eight 37mm guns. Each corps definitely controlled a corps aviation squadron of light observation planes.
Of the thirteen cavalry divisions, nine had the regular tables of organization while the remaining four were “mountain cavalry divisions,” with a smaller, more streamlined structure. Each regular cavalry division had four cavalry regiments, each of five squadrons, a horse artillery regiment (total twenty-four 76mm guns and twelve 122mm howitzers), an anti-aircraft battalion, reconnaissance battalion and a regiment of sixty-four light BT tanks. On paper the cavalry divisions had 7,500 men, 132 guns and mortars, eighteen armored cars and sixty-four tanks. Unlike the rifle divisions, the regular cavalry divisions had a greater portion of their allotted men and equipment, including some light tanks. The seven cavalry divisions in the Western border military districts averaged about 6,000 men. Depending on their place of origin, some of the cavalry units had the additional title of “Cossack,” maintained by the Soviet prewar practice of territorial recruitment.
The four mountain cavalry divisions served as garrisons and patrol forces in the remote vastness of Kazakstan and Fergana in Central Asia and in the Caucasian Mountains. Each division had only three cavalry regiments of four squadrons with light arms in general, a horse artillery battalion of twelve 76mm guns, an anti-aircraft battalion, and a company of light T-37 amphibious tanks. The divisions apparently numbered about 23,000 men each.
A cavalry corps consisted of three cavalry divisions, one artillery regiment (although the organization is not certain, each probably consisted of one artillery battalion with twelve 107mm guns and one artillery battalion with twelve 152mm howitzers), one signal battalion, and one anti-aircraft battalion with eight 37mm guns.
A cavalry division consisted of four cavalry regiments, one horse artillery regiment with three horse artillery battalions each with eight 76mm guns and four 122mm howitzers, one armored regiment with sixty-four light tanks and eighteen armored cars, one anti-aircraft battalion with eight 37mm guns, one signal battalion, and one reconnaissance battalion. The division totaled 7,490 men.
A cavalry regiment consisted of five cavalry companies each with eight light machine guns, one cavalry heavy weapons company with twenty machine guns, one anti-tank section with two 45mm guns, and one horse artillery company with four 76mm howitzers.
A mountain cavalry division consisted of three cavalry regiments, one horse artillery battalion with twelve 76mm guns, one armored company with seventeen T-37 light tanks, one engineer battalion and one anti-aircraft battalion.
Mechanized Forces
It is still most difficult to determine the tables of organization for mechanized corps, tanks and motorized rifle divisions as proposed by the People’s Commissariat for Defense in 1940-41. No divisions attained the authorized levels and the variation between individual units was tremendous.
Some corps remained at very low strength with even fewer than one hundred tanks total. On the other end of the spectrum were such units as the 4th Mechanized Corps under the later to be famous Lt. Gen. A. I. Vlassov. The corps had 101 heavy tanks (KVs and T-35s mostly), thirty-eight above the table of organization, 359 medium tanks (all T-34s), under the required 420, and over four hundred light tanks. The 1st Moscow Motorized Rifle Division of the 7th Mechanized Corps was an elite unit kept at full strength as a showpiece unit in the capital.
Consequently it will suffice to provide a revised and more detailed series of probable tables of organization for mechanized corps, tank and motorized rifle divisions based on new information from Soviet sources and some captured German documents. The table of organization of sixty-three heavy tanks, 210 mediums and 102 lights, and consequently each motorized rifle division was authorized 275 light tanks.
A mechanized corps consisted of two armored divisions, one armored infantry division, one motorcycle regiment and one technical engineer battalion.
A tank division consisted of one heavy armored regiment, one medium armored regiment, one armored infantry regiment, one artillery regiment with three artillery battalions each with eight 122mm howitzers and four 152mm howitzers, one anti-aircraft battalion with eight 37mm and four 76mm guns, one armored cavalry battalion and one pontoon engineer battalion.
A heavy tank regiment consisted of a headquarters company (with staff with three KVs and one armored cavalry platoon with ten armored cars and six BTs) and three armored battalions each with a headquarters company with three KVs, three BTs and two armored cars, one heavy armored company (with two KVs) with three armored platoons each with five KVs, and two medium armored companies each with three armored platoons each with five T-34s.
A medium tank regiment consisted of a headquarters (with staff with three T-34s and one armored cavalry platoon with ten armored cars and five BTs) and three armored battalions each with a headquarters company with one T-34, three BTs and three armored cars, one light armored company with three armored platoons each with five BTs, and two medium armored companies each with three armored platoons with five T-34s.
A motorized rifle regiment (tank division) consisted of five motorized infantry companies each with twelve light machine guns, three heavy machine guns and three 50mm mortars, one artillery company with four 76mm howitzers, one artillery company with twelve 82mm mortars, one anti-aircraft company with twelve heavy machine guns, and one anti-tank company with six 45mm guns.
A reconnaissance battalion (tank division) consisted of one headquarters company with five BTs and six armored cars, three armored cavalry companies each with seventeen armored cars, and one light armored company with seventeen BTs.
A motorized rifle division consisted of one light armored regiment, two motorized infantry regiments, one artillery regiment with three artillery battalions each with eight 122mm howitzers and four 152mm howitzers, one armored cavalry battalion, one anti-tank battalion with eighteen 45mm guns, one anti-aircraft battalion with eight 37mm and four 76mm guns, and one technical engineer battalion.
A motorized rifle regiment (motorized rifle division) consisted of two motorized infantry battalions (each with one motorized infantry heavy weapons company with twelve heavy machine guns, three motorized infantry companies, one artillery company with six 82mm mortars, and one anti-tank company with six 45mm guns), one artillery company with four 76mm howitzers, and one light armored company with a headquarters company with three BTs and three armored companies each with one BT and three armored platoons each with five BTs.
A light tank regiment consisted of a headquarters company with three BTs and six armored cars, and three armored battalions each with one headquarters company with three BTs, and three armored companies each with one BT and three armored platoons each with five BTs.
A reconnaissance battalion (motorized rifle division) consisted of a headquarters company with one T-37 and six armored cars, three armored cavalry companies each with thirteen armored cars, and one armored company with sixteen T-37s.
A motorized anti-tank brigade consisted of one engineer battalion with 4,800 anti-tank mines and 1,000 anti-personnel mines and two anti-tank regiments (each with two anti-tank battalions with twelve 76mm guns each, one anti-tank regiment with twelve 107mm guns, two anti-aircraft regiments with eight 85mm guns each, and one anti-aircraft regiment with eight 37mm guns).
Airborne Units
The Soviets long recognized the possibilities of airborne troops and began experimenting with their tactical employment in large numbers during the 1930s. The giant TB-3 bombers doubled as transports, parachutists tumbling out of several hatches including, strangely enough, one on the top deck of the aircraft! By the beginning of the war the RKKA had trained chose to 200,000 military parachutists.
By 1939 the airborne forces of the RKKA consisted of six airborne brigades, three in the West and three in the Far East. The Soviets hoped to drop one of their airborne brigades in the Khalkhin Gol campaign, but circumstances forced the uses of the unit in a ground role. Similarly, the winter conditions in Finland did not permit the use of large scale air drops. However, in 1940 the Soviets utilized the peaceful occupation of Rumanian Bessarabia (later the Moldavian Soviet Socialist Republic) to drop the 214th Airborne Brigade in a major tactical test. To support the operation two of the three airborne brigades in the Far East were transferred West.
No doubt because of the success of German airborne troops in the attack on Norway and the Low Countries, the People’s Commissariat for Defense in the spring of 1941 contemplated a great expansion of Soviet airborne units. In March 1941 the RKKA set up a Directorate of Airborne Troops, and a month later began the formation of five airborne corps incorporating the five airborne brigades in the West. Each airborne corps was a divisional sized unit of about 10,000 men organized around three airborne brigades, a battalion of fifty air-transportable T-37 light tanks and a special signal company incorporating light observation aircraft. The airborne brigades numbered about 3,000 men organized into four parachute infantry battalions (450 men each), a brigade artillery unit with six 76mm guns, twelve 45mm anti-tank guns, six 82mm mortars, a reconnaissance company on bicycles, an anti-aircraft machine gun company and ancillary units.
By June 1941 the formation of the five airborne corps was largely completed, but only a few brigades (the original regulars) were in condition for a jump. The newly formed brigades lacked training. In June 1941 four of the five airborne corps were in western border military districts while the 2nd Airborne Corps was stationed at Kharkov. During the course of the first few weeks of the war all the airborne corps participated in the fighting as infantry units, often thrown in to protect key positions. Thus three airborne corps fought at the approaches to Kiev, a fourth at Leningrad and the remaining corps in the vicinity of Smolensk. None of the original units had the opportunity for a combat drop which did not occur until January 1942, long after the first wave of airborne corps had been destroyed.
An airborne corps consisted of three airborne brigades, one signal battalion, one infantry heavy weapons platoon, one armored cavalry section, and one armored company with fifty T-37s.
An airborne brigade consisted of four airborne battalions, one artillery battalion (composed of one artillery company with six 76mm guns, one artillery company with six 82mm mortars, and one anti-tank company with twelve 45mm guns), one bicycle reconnaissance company, one anti-aircraft company with six machine guns, one signal company with an air unit with four Po-2 aircraft.
The Specialist Arms
Artillery
Like their predecessors in the old Imperial Armies, the soldiers of the RKKA loved their artillery pieces and placed a high priority on artillery development and production. As the RKKA grew so did the numbers of artillery pieces and mortars, from 17,000 in 1934 to 45,790 in 1939. In the period January 1939 to June 1941 the Soviet Union produced 29,639 field and anti-tank guns and 52,407 mortars. At the start of the war the RKKA had about 92,600 guns and mortars, about 25,000 of which were the platoon 50mm mortars, 14,200 the battalion 82mm mortars, and 3,800 the 120mm regimental mortar, leaving about 49,300 artillery pieces of all calibers and types.
Unlike later in the war, the peacetime RKKA did not emphasize the use of non-divisional artillery units, but instead heavily armed the individual rifle divisions with strong organic artillery. In June 1941 only eight per cent of the RKKA’s artillery consisted of independent artillery brigades, regiments and battalions intended to reinforce the divisions in order to accomplish special tactical missions. This figure does not include the independent anti-aircraft artillery corps, divisions, brigades and regiments under the separate command of the PVO.
The independent artillery units under the Supreme Command (RVGK) consisted of several types according to their intended tactical use. Under the category of “heavy firepower,” there existed seventy-four regiments of heavy artillery designed to aid divisions in breaking through enemy fortifications. Sixty of the regiments were howitzer units, having either forty-eight 152mm howitzers or twenty-four of the powerful 203mm tractor mounted howitzers. According to Soviet sources it appears that each of the Western border military districts may have had one 203mm regiment as well as one or more regiments of 152mm howitzers. The remaining fourteen RVGK artillery regiments were armed with guns, either forty-eight 122mm guns and 152mm gun-howitzers or twenty-four of the more potent 152mm guns. The RVGK artillery regiments apparently were largely tractor-drawn and therefore had considerable mobility in the field.
The second type of RVGK artillery unit was the independent battalion of heavy siege weapons, designated RVGK artillery for “special firepower.” Each battalion had five artillery pieces, either 210mm guns, 280mm mortars or 305mm howitzers. Despite the large caliber of these weapons, the Soviets were not adverse to throwing the battalions into the thick of the fighting. During the 1940 breach of the Mannerheim Line, the Soviets brought up 210mm and 280mm weapons to use in direct fire on individual Finnish strongpoints.
The advent of the German panzers in Poland and particularly in France greatly impressed the leaders of the RKKA. Consequently they decided to form a number of huge, independent mobile anti-tank artillery brigades to blunt enemy mass tank attacks. According to the tables of organization each brigade was to consist of 120 guns and twenty-eight heavy machine guns, along with a special mine-sapper battalion with large numbers of anti-tank mines. The brigades each had two regiments, each with twenty-four 76mm anti-tank guns, 121 107mm anti-tank guns, sixteen 85mm anti-aircraft guns and eight 37mm anti-aircraft guns. In addition the brigades were to have been fully motorized with a large number of tractors. Tactically they were expected to protect a sector of considerable area and guard the flanks of the mechanized corps.
In April 1941 the People’s Commissar for Defense instructed the Kiev, Western, and Baltic Special Military Districts to form respectively five, three and two, for a total of ten, mobile anti-tank artillery brigades. The three districts apparently combined existing anti-tank and anti-aircraft battalions to form the brigades. The other military districts apparently retained the independent battalion as their basic anti-tank units. When Deputy Commissar Army-General K. A. Meretskov inspected the brigades in the Kiev district, he found their formation impaired by the fact that the PVO forces took away much of their equipment. Few, if any, of the ten brigades completed formation by 22 June 1941. The beginning of the war found most of them with a dearth of transportation and what vehicles present were trucks and not tractors as intended. As a consequence the brigades lacked the ability to maneuver off the roads, severely limiting their ability to cope with the German tanks. Even so when smartly handled like the 1st Anti-tank Brigade under Maj. Gen. (later Marshall of the Soviet Union) K. S. Moskalenko, the mobile anti-tank artillery brigades were capable of inflicting a sharp local repulse to the German tank units.
Engineer Troops
The RKKA regarded engineer, like artillery, as integral parts of the corps and divisions themselves, providing each with engineer, technical or pontoon-bridging battalions depending on the type of unit. Under the command of the combined-arms armies were the specialized engineers of the technical battalions as well as independent engineer-sapper companies for specific tasks (flame-throwers, assault pioneers, etc.). The High Command itself exercised control over a number of independent technical and pontoon bridging units.
The combat engineers also suffered in the drastic expansion of the RKKA. In addition to providing the engineer battalions required for all the new rifle divisions, the Engineer Troops of the RKKA undertook to double by fiat all the units under High Command Reserve. From February to April 1941 the People’s Commissariat for Defense doubted the strength of the RVGK Engineer Troops, expanding battalions into regiments. By June 1941 the RVGK Engineer Units consisted of eighteen technical regiments and sixteen pontoon bridging regiments.
The RKKA also controlled a large number of non-combat construction battalions engaged in various building tasks in the military districts. In June 1941 these troops totaled 201 battalions, 160 of them in the border military districts and forty-one battalions in the interior. In addition, large numbers of construction troops were in the process of completing the massive fortified areas in the Western in Border Military Districts.
Signal Troops
Perhaps in no other area but communications were the glaring deficiencies of the RKKA exposed with more impact. The RKKA started the war with fewer radios per combat unit than any of the other major powers. Even the communications net of the People’s Commissar and the General Staff lay incomplete. Those of the military districts were even worse. Field commanders mostly relied on field telephones connected by strung wire, hardly the most efficacious means of conducting mobile warfare. Once the war started and the mobile battles and encirclements began, communications between the High Command and Fronts, not to mention with the smaller units, largely broke down. Authorities in Moscow had to send personal representatives, aircraft, and even special parachutists to regain contact with many commands. At the beginning of the war the Signal Troops of the RKKA comprised independent regiments, battalions and companies and all were with units as the High Command had none in reserve.
Transport
As stated above, the Soviet Union produced large numbers of trucks and other motor vehicles before the war, but not nearly in the quantity needed to fulfill the quotas laid down by the High Command’s grandiose plans. Most units were short of required transport, especially most so-called “motorized” units. Because of the rather primitive Soviet trucks and conditions, the number of vehicles under repair were phenomenal. In June 1941 the entire Soviet Union had a total of 800,000 “cargo-carrying” motor vehicles, mostly trucks, of which some 272,000 were under RKKA control. A considerable portion of the remaining vehicles were allocated to the NKVD. The predominant truck types were the GAZ (“Russki Ford”), ZIS and YAG, with the major automobile makes being the GAZ M-1 and the ZIS-101.
Fortified Areas
The Soviets designated their permanent border fortifications “Fortified Areas” (Ukreplennyi Rayony—UR’s). Under the supervision of Marshall B. M. Shaposhnikov’s department in the People’s Commissariat for Defense the fortified areas consisted of a large number of strong points concentrated around key cities close to the border. The initial system of UR’s was built, naturally, on the current pre-1939 borders, largely between the years 1929 to 1935. They consisted of ferro-concrete emplacements based largely on machine gun nests and pillboxes. Only a few were provided with artillery.
When the Soviet Union in 1939-1940 expanded into Poland, the Baltic Republics and Bessarabia, their UR’s suddenly became obsolete as a front line defense. The Supreme Military Council decided in 1940 to begin an enormous construction program of UR’s on the new frontier. Concurrently they began to strip the old UR’s of armaments and material and funnel them into the new UR’s as they reached completion. As of June 1941 there were eighty-four special construction battalions, in addition to the normal RKKA construction units, at work building the new UR’s, whose work force totaled over 140,000 in the Western border military districts. Unfortunately a large portion of the work force was under the supervision of the NKVD whose slave labor units hardly provided the most willing workers. Political and administrative interference by the NKVD helped to slow progress in many of the key sectors.
By June 1941 of the UR’s on the new frontier, only those at Rava Russka, Vladimir Volynsky and Strumilov in the Kiev Special Military District were in any shape to stop an enemy attack. The fortifications in the other Western border military districts were largely incomplete and totally ineffective, little more than muddy construction sites. The second line of original UR’s (the so-called “Stalin Line”) was of little more use. At any rate, the Germans pierced the fortifications long before they could be adequately manned. The principal unit of the RKKA UR Troops was the independent machine gun battalion. Immediately before the war the People’s Commissar for Defense authorized the recall of 300,000 reservists intended for the specialist arms, and of these only 40,000 went to the UR’s. Naturally the UR’s were greatly undermanned and equipped.
Deployment of the RKKA, June 1941
In June 1941 the number of divisions in the RKKA reached 303: 194 rifle, sixty tank, thirty-six motorized rifle and thirteen cavalry divisions deployed in the sixteen military districts and one active front. In terms of general areas the divisions were distributed as follows:
Western Border Military Districts
102 rifle, forty tank, twenty motorized rifle, seven cavalry divisions, four airborne corps and two rifle brigades;
Strategic Reserve and units in Western Russian Military Districts
fifty-two rifle, eleven tank, six motorized rifle, one cavalry divisions, one airborne corps, one rifle brigade;
Far East, Southern border, and interior military districts
thirty-nine rifle, nine tank, ten motorized rifle, five cavalry divisions, one airborne brigade.
Easily the most important and sensitive border area of the Soviet Union was the Western Frontier, where the country faced the hostile Finns, Germans, Hungarians and Rumanians on a frontier about 2,800 kilometers in length. Understandably worried over the most natural line of invasion into their country, the Soviets from 1939 began a series of diplomatic maneuvers designed to strengthen their borders through the acquisition of new territory. They were able to do this largely through the confusion wrought by Nazi Germany and with the connivance of Hitler. Unfortunately for the RKKA, the new border areas it was expected to defend were totally devoid of fortifications and other supports upon which a defending army relies. As previously demonstrated, the new Western border areas were peculiarly exposed to attack in the summer of 1941.
The RKKA deployed 170 divisions in the five Western border military districts, which altogether comprised some 2.9 million troops of all types, about fifty-eight per cent of the personnel in the RKKA. These 2.9 million men had 1,800 heavy and medium tanks (1,475 of them modern KVs and T 34s), “many” (perhaps 10,000 or more) light tanks, and 34,695 guns and mortars. The five districts drew the priority of all the new weapons produced, in an effort to fully equip their units, this being much to the detriment of the forces in the interior. Even so, the vast majority of the units were far below authorized strength in men and material. Of the 170 divisions in the West 144 averaged 8,000 men, nineteen (probably tank divisions) had between 5,000 and 6,000 men, while the seven cavalry divisions fared somewhat better with about 6,000 men each.
With reference to specific arms, examples of deficiencies in the specific military districts will be given below. In general, the situation of the mechanized corps was deplorable, with out-of-date and inferior tanks, poor maintenance and lack of needed equipment. The mechanized corps in particular lacked field guns and transport. Lieutenant Gen. K. K. Rokossovskiy’s 9th Mechanized Corps, for example, had no trucks for the motorized infantry in the tank divisions. Other mechanized corps were so understrength that they were considered tactically as merely understrength divisions (hence the inability to get the divisional numbers of their component units out of Soviet sources). In contrast to the mechanized units, the artillery in the Western border military districts was generally in good shape. Their only real deficiency was a lack of actual firing practice which was slated to begin during the summer 1941 training session. In actuality, their “practice” came about under somewhat different circumstances.
The General Staff of the RKKA under Army-General G. K. Zhukov was the principal agent for the strategic planning, mobilization and operational planning of the RKKA. Periodically the General Staff prepared war plans for the general mobilization of the country and contingency plans for war with their various neighbors. The overall plan then superseded the out of date plans currently in use. In June 1941 the plan in force was “MP-41,” drawn up in early 1941, approved by the Supreme Military Council, and gradually implemented between February and April 1941. Under “MP-41,” the RKKA was to undertake and complete full mobilization and concentration of its main field forces while shielded from the enemy (German) invaders by the border security armies fighting out of the UR’s and their own field fortifications. The RKKA High Command thought, as shown in Zhukov’s memoirs, that the war would begin on classic World War I lines. By this, it is meant that the RKKA would begin full mobilization at the same time as the enemy, fight several frontier actions while the main forces of both sides concentrated, and only then engage in decisive battle. As it was Germany completely mobilized and concentrated her forces for the attack while the Soviets remained essentially unaware of the impending attack. Consequently the Germans with their surprise attack were able quickly to defeat and penetrate the forces guarding the frontier and “seize in a short time the material resources of the districts, which affected the supply and the formation of reserves.”
Under the conditions of “MP-41,” nine border security armies were in position facing the Germans and Rumanians along the 2,000 kilometer front from Palanga (Lithuania) in the north to the mouth of the Danube to the south. The covering troops of these armies, forty rifle and two cavalry divisions, held an average of fifty kilometers of front. Of course, frontage was actually determined by the conditions of local terrain—in the Carpathian Mountains rifle divisions spanned a front of up to 120 kilometers each, while in the more important sectors, rifle divisions averaged 25 to 50 kilometers each. Even in the most vital sectors, rifle divisions with the aid of the still incomplete UR’s and their own field fortifications, guarded a 25 to 30 kilometer area. Current RKKA tactical doctrine called for an 8 to 12 kilometer front as the largest zone a rifle division could adequately defend.
The General Staff plan called for the border security armies to defend the frontier, while the second echelon of troops within the military districts destroyed any enemy forces penetrating the first line. Naturally the plan called for the second echelon to be predominantly mechanized corps. Other troops in the military districts, mostly newly formed divisions, remained deep in the districts to complete their training. The actual distribution of the 170 divisions in the five Western border military districts was:
1st Echelon: fifty-six divisions and two brigades—distance 5-50 kilometers from the border;
2nd Echelon: fifty-two divisions—distance 50-100 kilometers from the border;
Military District reserves: sixty-two divisions—distance 150-400 kilometers from the border.
In terms of actual distribution there was a great bias toward the southwest direction (Kiev Special Military District) which received exceptionally strong reserves. Stalin and the High Command felt that the Ukraine was in the greatest danger from enemy attack and took the appropriate measures to seal that avenue of approach, much to the detriment of the Baltic and Western Special Military Districts.
The Soviet defense lay further compromised by the fact that the majority of the divisions in the military districts were partially or completely in training camps absorbing the new class of recruits. Drafted after the fall harvests, the new class of conscripts underwent individual training during the harsh winter months and left in late spring for training camps where specialized and unit training took place in the good weather of the summer months. Thus, just before the start of the war, the border military districts received a large influx of barely trained recruits. The Kiev Special Military District only received its recruits in mid-May 1941. Even the rifle divisions of the covering forces often had only single battalions per regiment in the line, while the rest of the division was billeted in barracks and training camps some distance behind the lines. Mobilization plans envisioned an early alert from the High Command which would allow plenty of time for the divisions to concentrate in their field fortifications to await the enemy attack. Naturally when the warnings were not forthcoming, unbelievable confusion in most places attended the German attack.
In detailing the deployment of the RKKA in the West it would be useful to briefly sketch the situation in each of the border military districts. The Leningrad Military District (Lt. Gen. M. M. Popov) comprised the 14th, 7th and 23rd Armies and defended the area between Leningrad and Murmansk. The district controlled fifteen rifle, four tank, two motorized rifle divisions (two mechanized corps) and the 8th Independent Rifle Brigade in Hanko. The principal missions of the district were to defend the approaches of Leningrad from Finnish attack and secure the terminus and right of way of the Kirov Railway running from Murmansk into the interior. To aid in its defense, the district had the well-equipped UR’s at Murmansk and Kandalaksha and the solidly built fortification lines spanning the Karelian isthmus. These last series of lines included the forward post-1940 fortifications; the remains of the old Mannerheim Line and finally the still formidable pre-1939 “Stalin Line” on the outskirts of Leningrad itself. The district also had an airborne reserve in the form of the 5th Airborne Corps at Leningrad. Of all the border military districts, Leningrad was in one of the best positions to adequately defend itself.
The Baltic Special Military District (Col. Gen. F. I. Kuznetsov) consisted of the 8th, 11th and 27th Armies, the last-named in reserve. General Kuznetsov’s command encompassed the newly acquired countries of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. The district had under its command nineteen rifle, four tank, two motorized rifle divisions (two mechanized corps) and the 3rd Independent Rifle Brigade garrisoning the Baltic Islands. The two mechanized corps bad a total of 1,150 tanks, only 105 of which were KVs or T-34s. Because of the size of the newly occupied territory, most of the troops in the district were scattered far behind the frontier. The border UR’s, incomplete elsewhere, were even worse in the Baltic Special Military District, little better than excavation sites in most places. Three of the district’s rifle corps (each of two divisions) were the reorganized national armies of Estonia (22nd Rifle Corps), Latvia (24th Rifle Corps) and Lithuania (29th Rifle Corps), each training in their own Soviet Socialist Republic. Thoroughly purged of all doubtful elements, the three corps nevertheless were not highly regarded. Circumstances later forced the Soviets to commit the three corps to help defend the Baltic littoral, and they performed reasonably well in combat.
The Western Special Military District (Col. Gen. of Tank Forces D. G. Pavlov) was an outgrowth of the old Belorussian Military District with the additional incorporation of the sequestered lands of Eastern Poland. General Pavlov’s forces, twenty-four rifle, twelve tank, six motorized rifle (six mechanized corps), and two cavalry divisions, occupied one of the most dangerous sectors of the border—the Belostok (Bialystok) salient. Pavlov’s 3rd Army on the right flank and his 4th Army on the left only weakly protected the rear of 10th Army which protruded into the bulge. In reserve but some distance back was the district reserves, one rifle corps and 13th Army. Like the neighbor to the north, the Western Special Military District had little effective support from its partially completed frontier UR’s. Only the old fortress city of Brest offered significant resistance as a border strongpoint, but that only until 29 June 1941 despite Soviet myths to the contrary. The deficiencies in the district mirrored the same situation in the whole RKKA. The district had 75 per cent of its allotted guns and mortars, 56.5 per cent of its tanks, 55 per cent of its trucks and 80 per cent of its required anti-aircraft guns. In addition, the district also had an airborne corps, the 4th, at Marino Gorkiy, a good distance behind the frontier.
The Kiev Special Military District (Col. Gen. M. I. Kirponos) was the largest of all the military districts in terms of manpower, controlling fifty-eight divisions, including thirty-two rifle, sixteen tank, eight motorized rifle (eight mechanized corps) and two cavalry divisions. The district also had the 1st Airborne Corps stationed in the Kiev area. The district’s major commands were the 5th, 6th, 26th and 12th Armies, all on the frontier. Alone in this district, the forward UR’s in several places had reached advanced states of completion and effectively supported the covering troops in several areas. As shown before, the General Staff along with Stalin believed strongly that the Ukraine was the most vulnerable area of the Soviet Union and heavily reinforced the Kiev direction. At the beginning of the war, no fewer than five rifle and four mechanized corps were in reserve behind the frontier, not to mention two armies of the strategic reserve only a short distance behind them. The district’s mechanized corps received most of the modern tanks in the RKKA, namely 313 KVs and 627 T-34s scattered among the eight mechanized corps. Three corps especially were strong, including the 4th previously mentioned (860 tanks with 359 T-34s), the 8th (119 heavy, 100 medium and about 500 light tanks) and the 15th Mechanized Corps (sixty-three heavy, ninety-three medium and 759 light tanks). At the beginning of the war Southwest Front (formerly the Kiev Special Military District) gave the German Heeresgruppe Süd a most difficult time.
The remaining Western border military district was Col. Gen. Y. T. Cherevichenko’s Odessa Military District covering the border with Rumania. The district contained no army headquarters but directly controlled the individual corps. Its forces included thirteen rifle, four tank, two motorized rifle (two mechanized corps) and three cavalry divisions and the 3rd Airborne Corps. Defending a long frontier for the forces at hand, the district relied upon successive river lines to slow an enemy attacker. The district also had jurisdiction over the 9th Independent Rifle Corps guarding the Crimea. Upon war mobilization the forces of the district (excluding the Crimea) became the 9th Army. The districts’ tank forces had a total of 998 tanks, including ten KV and fifty T-34.
In conjunction with the strengthening of the Western border military districts, Plan “MP-41” also envisioned a major shift of troops from the interior border military districts into Western Russia to serve as a strategic reserve. Under plans formulated early in the spring of 1941, five of the interior military districts were to dispatch large numbers of their troops to the West. Thus on 13 May 1941 there began massive troop movements westward by rail. For the most part the troops of each of the military districts were organized under a combined arms army headquarters drawn from the headquarters of their military district and in most instances commanded by the military district commander. The principal formations involved in the relocation included:
22nd Army (Maj. Gen. F. A. Ershakov, commander of the Oral Military District) moving from the Urals to Velikiye Luki in the Moscow Military District;
21st Army (Lt. Gen. V. F. Gerasimenko, commanding Privolga Military District) moving from the Volga to Gomel in the Western Special Military District;
19th Army (Lt. Gen. I. S. Konev, commanding North Caucasian Military District) from Caucasus to Belaya Tserkov in the Ukraine;
25th Rifle Corps moving from Kharkov Military District to join the 19th Army at Belaya Tserkov;
16th Army (Lt. Gen. M. F. Lukin, commanding Transbaikal Military District) moving from Transbaikal to Shepetovka in the Ukraine; this move was not completed at the start of the war which found part of the troops at Shepetovka and the rest in Orel;
20th Army (Maj. Gen. F. N. Remezov) raised in the Moscow Military District to command troops already there and a few scattered rifle divisions drawn from other districts.
By the end of May 1941 the movements were underway, with four army headquarters and twenty-eight rifle divisions already in their new locations. On 22 June 1941 counting the 16th Army which was still en route west, the organized strategic reserve consisted of five army headquarters with thirty-six rifle, eleven tank, six motorized rifle (five mechanized corps) and one cavalry divisions, not an inconsiderable force. As emphasized before, the strategic reserve covered the Ukraine with two armies even though the sector already had strong covering forces. The two armies, in addition, were concentrated fairly close to the front (225-450 kilometers). The Western Special and Baltic Special Military Districts were covered by three reserve armies (22nd, 20th and 21st), but they were much farther back from the frontier (575-900 kilometers) and of little immediate use to the front line troops. Marshal Zhukov in his memoirs considered the deployment of the reserve and front line troops with regards to the Western Special Military District as perhaps the major fault of the deployment of the RKKA in June 1941.
In addition to the organized reserves, other units, mostly rifle divisions, garrisoned or trained within the interior and Southern border military districts. Defense of the Transcaucasian frontier with Turkey required thirteen divisions with an additional four divisions guarding the rough southern border areas of Central Asia and Siberia. The total forces in the interior and Southern border military districts amounted to thirty-nine rifle divisions, five cavalry divisions and one motorized rifle division. Many of the units, including eighteen rifle divisions, were scheduled for immediate transfer west upon outbreak of war.
The Far Eastern Front (Col. Gen. I. R. Apanasenko) effectively controlled all units on the Siberian-Mongolian-Manchurian borders, probably including the Transbaikal Military District after Lt. Gen. M. F. Lukin’s departure for the West. The front received the cooperation of the military forces of the Soviet-dominated Mongolian People’s Republic. The Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Army numbered, according to one estimate, 80,000 sabers organized into probably eight cavalry divisions. The Mongolian Cavalry fought well in the 1939 Khalkhin Gol Campaign against the Japanese. The actual forces of the RKKA Far Eastern Front consisted of five armies (the 1st Red Banner, 2nd Red Banner, 15th, 17th and 25th Armies) controlling substantial mechanized forces, the 25th, 26th, 27th, 28th, 29th and provisional 30th Mechanized Corps (nine tank and six motorized rifle divisions) along with three independent motorized rifle divisions; the rifle troops of the Front comprised sixteen rifle divisions. As its airborne group, the Front had the 202nd Airborne Brigade stationed at Khabarovsk.
RKKA Reserves
Because of the massive expansion of the RKKA in the years 1939-1941 the reservist pool was greatly reduced. As related previously, the People’s Commissar for Defense authorized the recall in April and May 1941 of 800,000 reservists, 500,000 to the border military districts to bring their rifle divisions to 8,000 men each, and the remaining 300,000 to the specialist arms. Despite the depletion of the number of available reservists, the RKKA apparently had plans to activate on full mobilization seventy reserve rifle divisions and ten reserve cavalry divisions to be filled partially by people’s volunteers as well. Like the reserve troops in other armies, the eighty reserve divisions were expected to arrive at the front from three to six weeks after mobilization. The ferocity of the German attack greatly disrupted the machinery for mobilization, but most of the reserve divisions assembled in fair order. In terms of actual combat efficiency, the reserve divisions differed little from the large number of newly raised volunteer and territorial conscript divisions, mainly because of the lack of an adequately trained cadre.
The NKVD
Long feared as the principal instrument of Soviet terror, the secret police of the NKVD (Narodnyi Kommissariat Vnutrennikh Del—People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) were the major buttress upon which the KPSS relied to remain in power. Totally exempt of control by the RKKA, the NKVD served as a counterweight to the Red Army as another large armed force within the Socialist state. There were few facets of Soviet life untouched by the pervasive influence of the NKVD. Most of the NKVD’s myriad activities are beyond the scope of this work, but in brief the NKVD controlled all of the Soviet regular police Militia, all travel within the country, many of the censorship activities, as well as a widespread network of informers ever watchful for any “saboteurs and wreckers,” whether real, imagined or created. The NKVD maintained a vast system of forced labor camps, whose wretched inmates constructed vital canals and important transportation links at a hideous cost of human life. Other NKVD prisoners worked in industry, the production of which totaled some 1.2% of the entire 1941 Soviet economy.
The NKVD as such came into existence in July 1934 as a result of the reorganization of the previous secret police, the OGPU. The decree promulgating the creation of the NKVD outlined its basic tasks:
safeguard the revolutionary order and state security;
safeguard public (i.e. state) property;
safeguard the frontier.
Under successive People’s Commissars G. G. Yagoda and N. I. Ezhov, the NKVD conducted the great purges of 1936-1939. The NKVD hierarchy itself fell victim to Stalin’s wrath when in 1939 Ezhov and many other high NKVD leaders were themselves purged. (Yagoda was replaced originally by Ezhov a few years before and then shot.) Stalin replaced Ezhov as People’s Commissar for Internal Affairs with L. P. Beria, a trusted confederate and stalwart of Stalin during the purges. Ezhov’s crime was that he “over-did” it during the purges, but actually Stalin felt he had outlived his usefulness.
In February 1941, the Council of People’s Commissars divided the NKVD into two People’s Commissariats, the original NKVD still under Beria and the new NKGB (Narodnyi Kommissariat Gosudarstvennoi Bezopasnosti—People’s Commissariat for State Security) under V. N. Merkulov, a former (and still de facto) deputy under Beria. The NKGB assumed responsibility for surveillance and detection of enemies of the state. The NKGB operatives within the RKKA comprised a large net of secret informers coordinated by special NKGB sections (“OO” or Osobye Otdely—Special Sections) within all the higher units of the RKKA, division level and above. During the war, the NKVD reabsorbed the NKGB for a time (20 July 1941 to sometime in 1943), and the GUGB (to use the department designation within the NKVD) greatly expanded the “OO” sections within the RKKA, re-designating them SMERSH, from Smert’ Shpionam—”Death to Spies.”
The importance of the NKVD within a discussion of the Soviet military in 1941 lies in the fact that the NKVD maintained a very large number of fully armed and trained combat troops apart from that of the RKKA. These included Border Guard Troops and whole divisions of Internal Troops. Although the Soviets are naturally reticent in this matter, it appears from fairly reliable sources that the 1941 NKVD numbered over one million armed troops without counting the members of all the other sections of that most complex organization. A reasoned estimate would place NKVD military strength at about 1.4 million men. In comparison, the 1941 German Waffen SS (for we are talking about troops and not merely police) paled into insignificance. The militarized arms of the NKVD were divided into two groups according to function, the Border Guards to protect the frontiers and the Internal Troops to protect the KPSS. Each group will be covered independently below.
One of the principal tasks of the NKVD was, as shown previously, the protection of the frontiers of the Soviet Union. More clearly, this meant the absolute sealing of the border to prevent penetration by enemy spies and saboteurs and also the escape of any “enemies of the People.” (Anybody who wanted to leave the Soviet Union was an “Enemy of the People.”) The NKVD Border Guard Troops (Pogranichnye Voisk) also had the mission of initially resisting an enemy invasion, fighting with absolute resistance in order to allow time for the regular RKKA units to deploy in their frontier defense positions. The NKVD Border Guards were a well-trained, elite combat force organized into three branches, Land, Maritime and Aviation Border Guard Troops. The general headquarters commanding the Border Guards was the GUPV (Glavnoye Upravienive Pogranichnykv Voisk NKVD—Main Administration of NKVD Border Guard Troops) under a Deputy People’s Commissar, Lt. Gen. I. I. Maslennikov. Under the GUPV were seventeen frontier districts (Pogranichnye Okruga), the principal regional command of the Border Guards. In Western Russia there were nine of these districts. Each district controlled a number of land units (from three to twelve), aviation units and, depending on the location, maritime units as well. It appears that overall, the NKVD Border Guard Troops may have numbered about 400,000 men.
The basic land border guard was the Border Guard Detachment (Pogranichnye Otryad), a roughly regimental-sized unit (about 2,000 men). Each border guard detachment had from four to six “Komendatury,” each with four to six company-sized “zavasty” or border posts. The regiments were fully combat-equipped including heavy weapons. It has been estimated that some 110 border detachments existed in 1941, along with some independent “Komendatury.” In June 1941, there were forty-seven border guard detachments in the nine frontier districts in Western Russia, and it appears that several other detachments were in immediate reserve in the interior. Less is known about the Maritime Border Guard troops other than they consisted largely of patrol craft units with a few good-sized cutters. Six of these Maritime Border Guard Detachments were in the Western Border Guard districts at the start of the war. About the Aviation Border Guard Detachments, even less is known, except that they apparently flew light observation planes, notably the Po-2.
The Border Guards organized the frontier into a number of fortified zones backed up by mobile groups of 50-150 men each. Their defense was coordinated with the local RKKA units. Along with the NKVD Troops of Special Purpose, the NKVD Border Guards garnered the pick of the new conscripts. Officers in most cases served for twenty-five years as professionals, while even conscripts had a three-year term of service. The Border Guards underwent vigorous training in their own camps and academies and had full combat training. In practice, a man never served in his home region, but was sent away as far as possible. The Border Guards wore the standard RKKA khaki uniform, but were distinguished by the green and blue on their caps and their green shoulder straps. In the Russo-Finnish War, the NKVD Border Guards fought well, assisting the attack of the RKKA and dealing with the many small Finnish raids into Soviet territory. During the opening hours of the Russo-German War, the NKVD Border Guards, in many instances, acquitted themselves with great valor and received much praise from their German adversaries.
The second type of NKVD Troops was the Internal NKVD Forces, a generic name for a number of specialized arms each with a different function. According to the foregoing estimate, the NKVD Internal Troops numbered no fewer than one million men:
NKVD troops of Special Purpose: 450,000
NKVD Installation and Railroad Guard Troops: 450,000
NKVD Convoy Troops: 100,000
All of the NKVD Internal Troops were controlled by the GUVVO (Glavoyne Upravleniye Vnutrennykh Voisk NKVD—Main Administration of NKVD Internal Troops) under another Deputy People’s Commissar, Col. Gen. P. A. Artemev. Like the Border Guards, there were a number of regional commands controlling forces within their districts, but their number is not known. The districts did not correspond with the RKKA military districts or the political organization of the country.
The most important branch of the NKVD Internal Troops were the “Troops of Special Purpose” (Voiska Osobovo Naznacheniya NKVD, abbreviated “OSNAZ,” and also known as “NKVD Troops”—NKVD Voiska). With a strength reasonably estimated at 450,000 men, the OSNAZ Troops provided a well trained and fully equipped combat force at the disposal of the Communist Party (KPSS) to quell internal disturbances and counterbalance the RKKA. Other tasks of the OSNAZ troops included undertaking to carry out the orders of the NKGB against the enemies of the state, including the deportation of whole national minorities within the Soviet Union. The OSNAZ troops also provided bodyguards for the highest leaders of the Party.
Like a parallel structure to the RKKA, the NKVD troops of the OSNAZ underwent full combat training in their own units. Officer candidates were selected from the top of the standard military academies and the men were all rigorously screened. Better equipped than the majority of the RKKA units, the OSNAZ troops were always maintained at full authorized strength within their units with generous tables of organization. Mobilization for the OSNAZ troops consisted of separating supernumerary cadre and men from existing units in order to organize new formations together with recalled OSNAZ reservists. OSNAZ troops were stationed in special camps in all areas of the Soviet Union and remained ready at a short notice should the Party require their services.
As stated above, the NKVD troops were organized into a number of regional district headquarters. The OSNAZ troops themselves had a divisional organization as well. It is not known whether the regional headquarters itself (or an adjunct) served as a divisional staff, or whether one regional headquarters controlled more than one division of OSNAZ troops. Probably both cases were true. The regional headquarters for important areas (i.e. Moscow) perhaps administrated more than one division of OSNAZ troops, while less vital regions had fewer regiments of OSNAZ troops and consequently the district itself constituted a division headquarters. At any rate, it appears likely that there were about twenty-two divisions of “NKVD troops (OSNAZ) in existence in June 1941. Each division controlled a varying number of OSNAZ regiments according to its mission.
The basic OSNAZ unit was the regiment of which several types existed, including rifle, artillery, cavalry, tank and aviation. Each unit was fully manned and equipped with weapons similar to a like RKKA unit. In addition it is likely that each OSNAZ regiment, except the cavalry, were fully or partially motorized. The OSNAZ motorized rifle regiment had three full battalions of infantry and a light tank company besides. Thus a division of NKVD troops was generally motorized, with several rifle regiments, an artillery regiment and probably a tank or cavalry regiment. The OSNAZ had its own aviation regiments which presumably included combat aircraft as well as observation planes. In addition to the divisions, there were a number of independent OSNAZ regiments of the various arms. OSNAZ troops themselves also wore the RKKA khaki, but had red and blue on their service caps and red shoulder straps.
Little is known of the deployment of the OSNAZ troops at the start of the war. It appears that one division was stationed in the Baltic Republics, while several of the major cities each had at least one regiment quartered in them. Moscow and Leningrad both apparently had two or more divisions of OSNAZ troops, and Tashkent in Central Asia was a major center of OSNAZ troops. The Soviets do say that eleven regiments of NKVD “operational” troops were deployed in the immediate vicinity of the Western frontier in June 1941.
OSNAZ troops also played a prominent role in the Russo-Finnish War. When the reverses of December 1939 became apparent, the Leningrad regional headquarters, probably with some outside reinforcement, rapidly organized eight special NKVD regiments for expeditionary duty in Finland. Not part of the Border Guards as generally thought, the eight regiments went into action in January 1940 alongside their comrades in the RKKA and the NKVD Border Guards. One regiment (the 3rd Special) fought its way to the entrapped 44th Rifle Division near Suomussalmi, only to be itself encircled and destroyed. The ability of the NKVD to form and quickly dispatch such forces to the front illustrated strikingly the strength and depth of organization of the NKVD’s troops.
The second group of NKVD Internal troops were the “Special Guard of Important Objectives and Constructions” (Okhrana Osobo Vazhnuyh Obiektov i Sooruzhenyi). Like the mobile NKVD Troops of Special Purpose, the static NKVD Guard troops had as their objective the prevention of any armed insurrection against the state. The NKVD Guard troops protected all installations vital to the maintenance of the security of the state, including government ministries, key industries, armories and other munitions installations, and important areas of natural resources, such as the Caucasian oilfields. NKVD Guard troops had the prime mission to hold out until relieved by the mobile troops of the OSNAZ.
The NKVD Guard troops came in two types, the Installation Guards covering buildings and actual complexes, and the Railroad Guards protecting vital transportation links, bridges, tunnels, etc. from sabotage. The basic unit of both types of Guard troops was the regiment armed with light weapons (rifles and machine guns). The Guard troops patrolled in fixed fortifications, backed up by mobile reserve groups. The troops received full military training, but unit training proceeded only to the company level, with emphasis on protection procedures. Again numbers are difficult to determine, but the NKVD Guard troops probably had some 450,000 men, 300,000 in the Installation Guards and 150,000 men in the Railway Guard. Headquarters higher than regiments may have existed for the Guard troops, but it is not certain whether these divisional sized units were formed before the start of the war. In 1942, the Caucasian oilfields were protected by a number of NKVD Guard divisions.
The last group of NKVD Internal troops were the NKVD Convoy troops (Konvoinykh Voisk NKVD) with the primary task of escorting large numbers of prisoners from arrest sites to detention camps in the rear. The Convoy troops were controlled by the UKV (Upravleniye Konvoinykh Voisk). Because of their specialized mission, the NKVD Convoy troops were organized into independent regiments and battalions, lightly armed. Like the Guard troops, the Convoy troops had full military training, but only partial tactical training within the units. However, like anyone in the Soviet Union, they could be thrown into combat in an emergency. Estimated strength of the convoy troops was 100,000 men, probably largely motorized. They handled prisoners of war as well, and were probably responsible for the execution, at the orders of the GUGB of the NKVD, of all the Soviet POWs repatriated from Finland after the Winter War.
The Border and Internal troops of the NKVD alone comprised a most significant proportion of the military strength of the Soviet state, in June 1941 perhaps twenty per cent of the total strength of the RKKA. In comparison, the German Waffen-SS numbered 160,000 men in June 1941, a very small percentage of the entire Wehrmacht. Even in 1944, the Waffen-SS totaled less than five per cent of the entire Wehrmacht. The major difference between the NKVD military troops and the Waffen-SS lay in their intended employment within their various systems. The Waffen-SS, originally created as a smaller replica of the NKVD OSNAZ troops, actually became the elite shock troops of the Wehrmacht. Its forte was the battlefield. The NKVD, especially in the harshest wartime periods, remained fixed to its original mission as the elite political shock troops within the Soviet regime, staying for the most part behind the lines, almost as much a threat to their comrades in the RKKA as were the Nazi invaders.
Conclusion
The Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army in June 1941 manifested severe faults which allowed the Wehrmacht to drive deeply into the Soviet Union in a feat of arms almost unprecedented in the annals of war. The Wehrmacht defeated, virtually destroyed, the RKKA described in this paper, almost according to the grandiose plans formulated in Berlin. Unfortunately for the Germans, the Soviets had contrived to scrape together essentially an entirely new RKKA just in time to stave off the final German hammer blows in Moscow. The Nazi leaders had planned well, but not wisely as they failed to reckon with the tremendous recuperative powers of their crude and clumsy, but mighty neighbor to the East.
Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army, 22 June 1941
People’s Commissar for Defense: Marshal of the Soviet Union S. K. Timoshenko
Chief of the General Staff: Army-Gen. G. K. Zhukov
Western Border Military Districts
Leningrad Military District, Lt. Gen. M. M. Popov
District direct control:
1st Mechanized Corps
1st Tank Division
3rd Tank Division
163rd Motorized Rifle Division
5th Airborne Corps
201st Airborne Brigade
9th Airborne Brigade
10th Airborne Brigade
Hanko Garrison:
8th Independent Rifle Brigade
10th Mechanized Corps
21st Tank Division
24th Tank Division
198th Motorized Rifle Division
41st Rifle Corps
111th Rifle Division
118th Rifle Division
191st Rifle Division
under Voenno-Morskoi-Flot
5th Marine Infantry Brigade
Fourteenth Army
Lt. Gen. V. A. Frolov
14th Rifle Division
52nd Rifle Division
42nd Rifle Corps
104th Rifle Division
122nd Rifle Division
Seventh Army
Lt. Gen. F. D. Gorolenko
23rd Rifle Corps
70th Rifle Division
168th Rifle Division
56th Rifle Corps
54th Rifle Division
71st Rifle Division
Twenty-third Army
Lt. Gen P. S. Pshennikov
19th Rifle Corps
115th Rifle Division
142nd Rifle Division
50th Rifle Corps
43rd Rifle Division
123rd Rifle Division
Baltic Special Military District
Col. Gen. F. I. Kuznetsov
District Direct control
9th Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
10th Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
Eighth Army
Lt. Gen. P. P. Sobennikov
10th Rifle Corps
10th Rifle Division
90th Rifle Division
11th Rifle Corps
11th Rifle Division
48th Rifle Division
125th Rifle Division
12th Mechanized Corps
23rd Tank Division
28th Tank Division
202nd Motorized Rifle Division
Eleventh Army
Lt. Gen. V. I. Morozov
16th Rifle Corps
5th Rifle Division
33rd Rifle Division
188th Rifle Division
29th Rifle Corps (Lithuanian)
179th Rifle Division
184th Rifle Division
23rd Rifle Division
126th Rifle Division
128th Rifle Division
3rd Mechanized Corps
2nd Tank Division
5th Tank Division
84th Motorized Rifle Division
Twenty-seventh Army
Maj. Gen. N. E. Berzarin
22nd Rifle Corps (Estonian)
180th Rifle Division
182nd Rifle Division
65th Rifle Corps
16th Rifle Division
67th Rifle Division
24th Rifle Corps (Latvian)
181st Rifle Division
183rd Rifle Division
Baltic Islands Garrison
3rd Independent Rifle Brigade
Western Special Military District
Col. Gen. of Tank Forces D. G. Pavlov
Direct district command
13th Mechanized Corps
27th Tank Division
31st Tank Division
4th Motorized Rifle Division
6th Cossack Cavalry Corps
6th Cossack Cavalry Division
36th Cavalry Division
47th Rifle Corps
121st Rifle Division
143rd Rifle Division
155th Rifle Division
17th Mechanized Corps
25th Tank Division
54th Tank Division
103rd Motorized Rifle Division
55th Rifle Division
6th Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
4th Airborne Corps
214th Airborne Brigade
7th Airborne Brigade
8th Airborne Brigade
Third Army
Lt. Gen. V. I. Kuznetsov
5th Rifle Corps
27th Rifle Division
56th Rifle Division
85th Ritle Division
12th Rifle Corps
2nd Rifle Division
50th Rifle Division
86th Rifle Division
11th Mechanized Corps
29th Tank Division
33rd Tank Division
204th Motorized Rifle Division
Tenth Army
Maj. Gen. K. D. Golubev
3rd Rifle Corps
13th Rifle Division
89th Rifle Division
113th Rifle Division
6th Mechanized Corps
4th Tank Division
7th Tank Division
29th Motorized Rifle Division
21st Rifle Corps
17th Rifle Division
24th Rifle Division
37th Rifle Division
8th Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
Fourth Army
Maj. Gen. A. A. Korobkov
28th Rifle Corps
6th Rifle Division
42nd Rifle Division
49th Rifle Division
75th Rifle Division
14th Mechanized Corps
22nd Tank Division
30th Tank Division
205th Motorized Rifle Division
Thirteenth Army
Maj. Gen. P. M. Filatov
2nd Rifle Corps
100th Rifle Division
161st Rifle Division
20th Mechanized Corps
26th Tank Division
38th Tank Division
210th Motorized Rifle Division
44th Rifle Corps
64th Rifle Division
108th Rifle Division
7th Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
Kiev Special Military District
Col. Gen. M. I. Kirponos
District direct command
9th Mechanized Corps
20th Tank Division
35th Tank Division
131st Motorized Rifle Division
19th Mechanized Corps
40th Tank Division
43rd Tank Division
208th Motorized Rifle Division
31st Rifle Corps
193rd Rifle Division
195th Rifle Division
200th Rifle Division
37th Rifle Corps
140th Rifle Division
146th Rifle Division
228th Rifle Division
55th Rifle Corps
136th Rifle Division
169th Rifle Division
32nd Cossack Cavalry Division
190th Rifle Division
15th Mechanized Corps
10th Tank Division
37th Tank Division
212th Motorized Rifle Division
24th Mechanized Corps
39th Tank Division
45th Tank Division
216th Motorized Rifle Division
36th Rifle Corps
80th Rifle Division
139th Rifle Division
141st Rifle Division
49th Rifle Corps
196th Rifle Division
199th Rifle Division
227th Rifle Division
1st Airborne Corps
204th Airborne Brigade
211th Airborne Brigade
1st Airborne Brigade
2nd Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
3rd Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
4th Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
Fifth Army
Maj. Gen. of Tank Forces M. I. Potapov
15th Rifle Corps
45th Rifle Division
62nd Rifle Division
87th Rifle Division
22nd Mechanized Corps
19th Tank Division
41st Tank Division
215th Motorized Rifle Division
27th Rifle Corps
124th Rifle Division
135th Rifle Division
1st Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
Sixth Army
Lt. Gen. I. N. Muzychenko
6th Rifle Corps
41st Rifle Division
97th Rifle Division
159th Rifle Division
4th Mechanized Corps
8th Tank Division
32nd Tank Division
81st Motorized Rifle Division
3rd Cavalry Division
5th Anti-tank Artillery Brigade
Twenty-sixth Army
Lt. Gen. F. Y. Kostenko
8th Rifle Corps
72nd Mountain Rifle Division
99th Rifle Division
173rd Rifle Division
8th Mechanized Corps
12th Tank Division
34th Tank Division
7th Motorized Rifle Division
Twelfth Army
Maj. Gen. P. E. Ponedelin
13th Rifle Corps
47th Mountain Rifle Division
58th Rifle Division
164th Rifle Division
17th Rifle Corps
44th Mountain Rifle Division
45th Mountain Rifle Division
96th Mountain Rifle Division
16th Mechanized Corps
15th Tank Division
49th Tank Division
218th Motorized Rifle Division
Odessa Military District
Col. Gen. Y. T. Cherevichenko
Direct district command
7th Rifle Corps
147th Rifle Division
206th Rifle Division
18th Mechanized Corps
36th Tank Division
47th Tank Division
209th Motorized Rifle Division
116th Rifle Division
186th Rifle Division
Crimean garrison
9th Independent Rifle Corps
106th Rifle Division
156th Rifle Division
3rd Airborne Corps
212th Airborne Brigade
5th Airborne Brigade
6th Airborne Brigade
Frontier Forces
2nd Mechanized Corps
11th Tank Division
16th Tank Division
15th Motorized Rifle Division
2nd Cavalry Corps
2nd Cavalry Division
5th Cavalry Division
9th Cavalry Division
14th Rifle Corps
25th Rifle Division
51st Rifle Division
150th Rifle Division
35th Rifle Corps
30th Rifle Division
95th Rifle Division
48th Rifle Corps
74th Rifle Division
176th Rifle Division
Strategic Reserve—Western Russia
Quartered in Moscow Military District:
Twenty-second Army
Maj. Gen. F. A. Ershakov
51st Rifle Corps
98th Rifle Division
112th Rifle Division
117th Rifle Division
167th Rifle Division
62nd Rifle Corps
153rd Rifle Division
154th Rifle Division
232nd Rifle Division
67th Rifle Corps
137th Rifle Division
69th Rifle Corps
18th Rifle Division
138th Rifle Division
7th Mechanized Corps
14th Tank Division
18th Tank Division
1st Moscow Motorized Rifle Division
Quartered in Western Special Military District:
Twenty-first Army
Lt. Gen. V. F. Gerasimenko
45th Rifle Corps
102nd Rifle Division
148th Rifle Division
187th Rifle Division
61st Rifle Corps
53rd Rifle Division
110th Rifle Division
172nd Rifle Division
25th Mechanized Corps
50th Tank Division
55th Tank Division
219th Motorized Rifle Division
Quartered in Kiev Special Military District:
Nineteenth Army
Lt. Gen. I. S. Konev
25th Rifle Corps
38th Rifle Division
134th Rifle Division
162nd Rifle Division
34th Rifle Corps
28th Mountain Rifle Division
91st Rifle Division
158th Rifle Division
171st Rifle Division
178th Rifle Division
23rd Mechanized Corps
44th Tank Division
48th Tank Division
220th Motorized Rifle Division
5th Cavalry Corps
14th Cavalry Division
Sixteenth Army
Lt. Gen. M. F. Lukin
20th Rifle Corps
132nd Rifle Division
144th Rifle Division
160th Rifle Division
32nd Rifle Corps
46th Rifle Division
127th Rifle Division
152nd Rifle Division
5th Mechanized Corps
13th Tank Division
17th Tank Division
109th Motorized Rifle Division
57th Independent Tank Division
213th Motorized Rifle Division
Western Russian Military Districts
Archangel Military District
Lt. Gen. V. Y. Kachalov
88th Rifle Division
177th Rifle Division
235th Rifle Division
237th Rifle Division
1st Mountain Rifle Brigade
Moscow Military District
Col. Gen. I. V. Tyulenev
107th Rifle Division
129th Rifle Division
133rd Rifle Division
211th Rifle Division
226th Rifle Division
229th Rifle Division
Orel Military District
Lt. Gen. A. I. Bogdanov
19th Rifle Division
145th Rifle Division
149th Rifle Division
217th Rifle Division
222nd Rifle Division
Kharkov Military District
Lt. Gen. A. K. Smirnov
130th Rifle Division
2nd Airborne Corps
2nd Airborne Brigade
3rd Airborne Brigade
4th Airborne Brigade
Southern Border and Interior Military Districts
North Caucasian Military District
Lt. Gen. I. S. Konev
12th Mountain Rifle Division
22nd Motorized Rifle Division
165th Rifle Division
175th Rifle Division
203rd Rifle Division
Transcaucasian Military District
Lt. Gen. D. T. Koxlov
9th Mountain Rifle Division
20th Mountain Rifle Division
31st Rifle Division
63rd Mountain Rifle Division
68th Rifle Division
76th Mountain Rifle Division
77th Mountain Rifle Division
157th Rifle Division
192nd Mountain Rifle Division
225th Rifle Division
236th Rifle Division
15th Cavalry Corps
1st Cavalry Division
21st Mountain Cavalry Division
17th Mountain Cavalry Division
Privolga Military District
Lt. Gen. V. F. Gerasimenko
197th Rifle Division
Ural Military District
Maj. Gen. F. A. Ershakov
214th Rifle Division
231st Rifle Division
Central Asian Military District
Lt. Gen. S. G. Trofimenko
Border Security
83rd Mountain Rifle Division
18th Mountain Cavalry Division
20th Mountain Cavalry Division
Interior
120th Rifle Division
194th Rifle Division
238th Rifle Division
Siberian Military District
Lt. Gen. S. A. Kalinin
166th Rifle Division
Far Eastern Front and Transbaikal Military District
Far Eastern Front
Col. Gen. I. R. Apanasenko
Armies
First Red Banner Army
Second Red Banner Army
Fifteenth Army
Seventeenth Army
Twenty-fifth Army
Mechanized Corps
26th Mechanized Corps
27th Mechanized Corps
28th Mechanized Corps
29th Mechanized Corps
30th Mechanized Corps
58th Tank Division
239th Motorized Rifle Division
Airborne unit
202nd Airborne Brigade
Tank Divisions
6th, 9th, 51st, 52nd, 53rd, 56th, 58th, 59th, 60th
Rifle, Mountain and Motorized Rifle Divisions
21st, 26th, 32nd, 34th, 36th, 39th, 40th, 57th, 59th, 65th, 66th, 69th, 78th, 79th, 82nd, 92nd, 93rd, 94th, 101st, 105th, 114th, 119th, 207th, 239th
Associated with Far Eastern Front
Mongolian People’s Revolutionary Army (probably eight cavalry divisions)
Distribution of Soviet Units, 22 June 1941
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| Moscow, 1937. Mounted Kuban Cossacks on parade. |
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| Soviet infantrymen in training. |
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| Soviet gun crew in action at Odessa in 1941. |
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| Captured Soviet equipment. |
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| A group of Soviet POWs, taken to an undefined prison camp. Some 2.8 million Soviet prisoners were killed in just eight months of 1941–42. |
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| Belarus or Ukraine farmhouse destroyed during the German invasion in 1941. |
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| Soviet women prepare fortifications. |
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| Soviet women stand guard in their town. |
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| Citizens of a Russian city bid farewell to troops headed for the front. |
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| German troops move past huge quantities of abandoned Russian equipment. |
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| German artillery unit with half-track prime movers pass knocked out Soviet BT-5 light tank and BA-10 armored car, Russia, circa 1941. |
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| Russia’s last line of defense west of the Volga was a narrow strip of stony beach between the embankment and the river. |
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