How did USSR draft 34 million soldiers during WWII? (WW2, war, Roman)
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Hello, everyone. I recently did research on Red Army's manpower during WWII and found some staggering statistics. According to Wikipedia,
Quote:
During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war.
That adds up to 34,401,807 Soviets who fought in WWII.
I fully understand how many a million people is. 34 million is just beyond comprehension. That is far more than the entire population of countries like Romania and Holland. I realize the USSR had a population of 200 million at the time. But still, being able to conscript that many men and women into the military service is just unprecedented. At the time, only a handful of nations could dream of drafting barely 3.4 million men for its military. Again, 34 million is just unheard of and incomprehensible.
I have three Qs for you guys.
1. Could anyone give me insights on how this gigantic draft was possible? 2. With such inexhaustible manpower, how did the USSR produce enough uniforms and weapons?
3. How did the Red Army train such vast number of troops?
"Komrad, you vill come veeth us or ve veel shoot your family."
Seriously, the Great Patriotic War enjoyed huge public support and most men were more than willing to go, at least at first. As the casualties mounted, they were kept at their duties by a very strict and unforgiving military justice system.
Their traning was minimal; just enough to learn how to shoot and take orders.
As for how they were equipped? I think most of it was produced internally, especially in the latter years of the war when the Soviet Union's displaced industries got up and running at full blast east of the Urals.
I have three Qs for you guys.
1. Could anyone give me insights on how this gigantic draft was possible? 2. With such inexhaustible manpower, how did the USSR produce enough uniforms and weapons?
3. How did the Red Army train such vast number of troops?
Thanks in advance for any insights.
1 - As explained already, brute force.
2 - They didn't. They didn't have nearly enough.
3 - They didn't. Often not enough or precious little anyway.
China and others have done similar. Just throw bodies at the enemy.
It would probably be difficult to obtain an accurate figure of how many people were conscripted in the USSR in WWII. In addition to the millions in the armed forces there must have been millions more in quasi-military units, performing duties normally assigned to uniformed personnel. The building of the battlements at Leningrad, Moscow and other defenses often fell to large brigades of civilians, comprised of women, children and old men. Partisan bands numbering in the thousands harassed the enemy behind Axis lines. One source cited a figure of 800,000 women who were conscripted in the USSR. Soviet women often fought alongside men and many were combat aviators. Hundreds of Soviet women were decorated for their effectiveness as snipers. Credit for the defense of the Soviet Union proper must be given, in a large part, to the civilian population as well as the military.
The standard issue rifle in the Red Army (and the Russian army before 1917) was the Mosin-Nagant rifle. It is one of the most mass produced weapons in history (second only to the even more ubiquitous AK-47). About 37 million were produced in total, of which about half were made during WW2. In addition, the Soviets made over 6 million PPSh-41 sub-machine guns. They were cheap to make and, even more importantly, cheap to train soldiers to use because they were crude, very short range weapons requiring little skill.
So, to sum up, almost 20 million rifles produced during the war, plus indeterminate (but large) stockpiles from WWI and the interwar period, plus 6 million sub-machine guns. That's plenty of weapons, especially considering that far from every soldier needs a weapon (fighter pilots, for example, or various support personnel).
Contrary to popular but incorrect belief, in general Soviet soldiers didn't go into combat without a weapon. The idea that they were told to wait until their comrade is killed and then pick up his rifle is largely a myth. Temporary and/or localized shortages did exist, to be sure, but generally existing stockpiles and the Soviet industry were capable of supplying the troops with basic weapons.
Much more difficult to obtain for this vast army was food. That came from Uncle Sam.
They didn't "just" draft 34 million men. They weren't all YOUNG men.
I seem to recall that not only did they enjoy popular support (at first), they called older men and veterans of WW1 into service as well. I also seem to remember that they were placed into "a" "b" and "c" units, based on age, equipment available and job needed. Not everyone made it to the front lines- a lot of them were "Home Guards" units.
the Soviet Union was quite masterful at stockpiling weapons and supplies, from what I understand they stored weapons from WW1-WW2 up until the breaking up of the USSR.
The Soviets saw that Hitler had designs on the USSR and from the late 1930s began to move its war industries out of the immediate reach of Germany. They built a whole steel industry on the scale of what the US had in Pittsburgh in a new city they called Magnitogorsk beond the Urals and the Soviets did this in less than 3 years. Similar industrial centers were built all up and down the TransSiberian Railway. The same with power plants. The Soviets had great engineers and designers who built good tanks and artillery, the Stormovik and first Migs and these weapons were well built were it counted and easy to use and fix in the field. Russian firepower consumed the Germans.
From what I heard from my grandparents in Poland, when the Red Army came they looked largely like they were prisoners - on the verge of starving, often with no shoes, most had incomplete uniforms. And had their rifles on strings.
It's completely anecdotal, but I heard this from several seniors that lived and/or fought back then, so there must be some truth to it.
Yac.
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