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Ike said when he talked with Zukov after the war Zukov told him when they come to a mine field they just send the infantry through it. After they explode the mines then the vehicles go through. And if the infantry did not go through the mine field their own troops were told to fire at them and make them go through the mine field. Not much respect for the lifes of your own soldiers in my opinion. Dont think I would have wanted to serve in Zukov's army. Ron
Ike said when he talked with Zukov after the war Zukov told him when they come to a mine field they just send the infantry through it. After they explode the mines then the vehicles go through. And if the infantry did not go through the mine field their own troops were told to fire at them and make them go through the mine field. Not much respect for the lifes of your own soldiers in my opinion. Dont think I would have wanted to serve in Zukov's army. Ron
Don't think you would want to be born a Russian, period, of course you'd rather be born an American.
No mass extermination in German concentration camps, and when it comes to a choice between value of American lives and value of some.. er... Japanese lives, guess what decision is going to be taken, and what death ratio is going to be accepted?
But for Russians, it's "do or die" situation; if they don't comply with their superior's commands ( who are in the same danger of extermination as their soldiers,) then they are going to be finished off by the enemy.
Of course it's better to be born rich and healthy than being born poor and sick as they say))))
a) From 1941 until some time in 1944, the war on the Eastern Front was fought in Soviet territory, so that would cause more civilian casualties.
b) "Special" Nazi units would follow the behind the front line to exterminate large portions of civilians who didn't flee the battle zones.
c) The frigid winters were deadly to the Russian troops just as they were to the Germans. In the winter of 41/42, they were better equipped than the Krauts, but exposure to that kind of cold for long periods will get even the hardiest eventually.
d) In the first few months of Barbarossa, Stalin's "Stand and fight - no retreat" orders doomed hundreds of thousands of troops to captivity and starvation in engagement after engagement. The Wermacht simply surrounded them in pincer movements. The lucky ones were sent back to Germany as slave labor. Most were just encircled by barbed wire and machine guns and left to die.
e) Russian tactics were largely the old "steamroller" variety: gather an overwhelming force and simply push forward against whatever defenses they faced. There are many reports of instances where instead of clearing minefields, the troops were ordered to advance over them anyway.
f) The scale of the battles on the Eastern Front is mind-boggling. In many cases, half a million or more troops on each side faced one another in a single battle. The Russians lost more men at Stalingrad than the US lost in the entire war. Estimates go as high as 1 million in that battle alone.
Ike said when he talked with Zukov after the war Zukov told him when they come to a mine field they just send the infantry through it. After they explode the mines then the vehicles go through. And if the infantry did not go through the mine field their own troops were told to fire at them and make them go through the mine field. Not much respect for the lifes of your own soldiers in my opinion. Dont think I would have wanted to serve in Zukov's army. Ron
Air superiority was a big reason for the German Army's efficiency against the Soviets. The Luftwaffe destroyed most of the Soviet air force while it was grounded in the opening hours of Barbarossa. This allowed them to gain total air superiority over the theater for the rest of 1941. With total air superiority, they could bomb Soviet troops columns and supplies heading to the front. Soviet infantry were helpless sitting ducks against Stuka dive bombers. Vast armies of Soviet troops could be bottled up into a pocket, encircled, and annihilated thanks to the Luftwaffe paralyzing their movements. Meanwhile, German troops, tanks, and supplies could advance unhindered deep into Russian territory. This is the same advantage that the Germans held against France in 1940 and virtually every other country they invaded.
This advantage was lost once the armies advanced beyond the Luftwaffe's range, and once the Russian Winter set in and grounded the Luftwaffe due to poor weather. Without air superiority, the German advance bogged down and the rate of casualties of Germans vs. Russians is more equal. By 1943, the Soviets were producing thousands of new planes enabling them to take the air offensive.
I read it in one of the 24 volumes in my WWII encyclopedia collection (dont remember which volume off the top of my head) and they even said it on one of the three History channels I have. Ron
In many respects, the Eastern Front was a Perfect Storm for carnage on an epic scale.
*The German military machine, after Poland and the offensive in the West and the operations in the Balkans, had sufficient recent experience that it was running at peak efficiency, with many of the early kinks ironed out. In contrast, the Soviet's mopping up in Poland and fiasco in Finland (which provided lessons that were more negative than positive, and thus less useful) were of more marginal utility, and in any case were less applicable towards defense. This meant mass casualties among the Soviet defenders of the initial invasion.
*The state of the Red Army, from the oft-noted purges of the officer corps to the even more critical fact that in June 1941 they were in the midst of a reorganization that put it in a state of temporary complete disarray. Again, this translated to a rout and the resulting carnage.
*The sheer scale of the front on which this Perfect Storm played out.
*ideological attitudes: "We must forget the concept of comradeship between soldiers. A communist is no comrade before or after the battle. This is a war of annihilation."
--Adolf Hitler, speaking in the Reich Chancellery to senior officers on 30 March 1941
Germany did not intend merely to defeat the Soviets militarily. Rather, it explicitly (if secretly) intended to, as Hitler said, annihilate much of the population outright, and enslave those that survived to serve Germany's needs until they were worked to death. This directly caused mass casualties and spurred the Soviets to fight with even greater ferocity, further still increasing the bloodshed.
Russian attitudes - what were the soldiers of the Red Army to do? They had no cultural history of much of anything but obedience to absolute autocrats. And the brutality of Stalin's state was such that facing near-certain death on the battlefield was usually no worse an option - and often, given the potential consequences to individuals and their families, a batter one - than fleeing or trying to flee.
German treatment of Soviets, both uniformed and civilians, was so harsh that Red Army soldiers inevitably behaved with similar attitudes towards POWs and those German civilians they came across as they eventually took the war into German territory. And, of course, this resulted in a particularly desperate defensive struggle (compared, for example, to the West, where soldiers were relatively content to surrender to the Allied forces there, and the people were little concerned about reprisals) by the men of the German military.
Finally, given all of this, you had in the Russian geography and the Soviet populace a land that could absorb many hundreds of miles of territory lost and a people that could lose millions yet still not break. Germany pushed the Soviets close to the breaking point - and then the USSR finally turned the tide. In this, the scale and duration of the destruction was maximized.
It would be a challenge to choreograph a scenario for a larger scale of death by conventional means.
The rest of the Allies had campaigns with breaks between. North Africa, then a break. Sicily, then a break. Italy, then a break when the Italians surrendered. The fighting on the Russian front was NON-STOP. The biggest group of the US Army was the USAAF and only a few actually fought, the pilots and crews, then after each days fighting they got to deep in their own beds.
I just want to point out that many of the claims about "machine gunning their own" or using infantry to "clear minefields" is largely myth. The Soviets operated penal units. They learned the tactic from the Germans who had the same type of units and used them for the same reasons. In combat they took on the role of the classical "Forlorn Hope" which has been part of military tactics for centuries.
A person assigned to a penal unit ended up there by tribunal following some violation of military rules or by volunteering in order to escape a labor camp or criminal sentence. Serivce in the unit lasted until one had proven themselves, at which point they would return to regular units. There are DOZENS of "Heroes of the Soviet Union" who started out as part of penal units who then joined regular units and served throughout the war. It was not a universal death sentence. The members were also equally composed of officers, NCO's and regular soldiers. In fact, disgraced officers and NCO's made up a disproportionately large number of the men in penal units.
They did spearhead assaults, many times these occurred over minefields or against heavily defended areas. The troops were not used to "clear the mines" they way that was implied, but getting through the minefield and marking it was part of their job during the assault. They were equipped with tools for doing so. Members of the penal unit who refused orders could be summarily executed by the NKVD units attached to them. This is where the "they shoot their own troops for retreating" thing comes from.
If you take the time to study it, service in penal units was brutal, but it was not permanent and the Soviets didn't do anything that others didn't (the Germans had an entire Waffen-SS penal DIVISION) and the concept of which had been part of military history for centuries.
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Why were WWII Soviet casualties extremely high?
