The Red Army

At the beginning of the war, the Red Army was the largest in the world, however, loses during the first months meant that by November 1941, the Red Army was outnumbered and fighting for it’s life against the best trained, equipped and led army in the world. Kept in the war by lend lease weapons, vehicles and canned food, and by their own factories which had been dismantled, sent to the Ural mountains and rebuilt, the Red Army slowly clawed it’s way back from it’s early defeats.  Lessons were learned from the Germans at enormous cost and by 1944 it was finally able to match the Germans in quality as well as quantity.

 

The losses suffered by the Red Army were truly horrendous. In total the Red Army lost around 9 million dead (3 million dying in POW camps from starvation). Another 500,000 fell fighting as partisans (guerrillas) behind the German lines or in untrained volunteer units.

 

The Red Army soldier was in an unenviable situation, faced by an enemy who regarded him as sub human fit only to serve the Germans as a slave, and serving a home grown dictatorship that would have him shot or sent to a punishment battalion for saying anything that implied criticism of the state. The 1.5 million prisoners who survived German captivity were sentenced to labour camps for daring to surrender.

 

With 16 million civilian deaths, many soldiers had marched off to war, never to see their loved ones again. When they reached German territory, the discovery of prosperous German farms and well laid out towns led to a great deal of confusion amongst the Soviet troops, who couldn’t understand why the Germans with a higher standard of living than they themselves enjoyed, had chosen to invade them. At the same time the hatred that they had for the invader boiled over into an orgy of murder, rape and plunder.

 

The Frontoviki

Soviet Union was made up of over 100 different nationalities and units in the Red Army reflected this, it also reflected the fact that everyone that the Soviets could spare was thrown into the battle. Recruits came in all shapes, sizes and colours. ‘Oriental’ looking Khazaks and ‘middle eastern’ looking Azerbijanis fought beside Russians and blond northern Europeans from the Baltic states. Referred to by the Germans as ‘Ivans’ the Russian soldiers nicknamed themselves ‘the Slavs’.

 

It’s recorded that drafts of recruits could be well over 40 years of age, undernourished or physically unfit.

 

Often as the Red Army pushed on into areas occupied by the Germans they would be joined by partisans, freed Soviet prisoners of war or those who had so far sat out the war under German rule. Many were hastily trained and thrown into battle as re-enforcements. Often their hatred for the Germans and a thirst for revenge was the only thing allowing them to stand and fight in situations were poorly trained troops would normally break and run.

 

A Red Army Unit that spent any time in the front line could expect to take heavy losses often 60-80%. Anyone who had spent 6 months at the front and survived was regarded as a veteran or ‘Frontovik’.