Russia at war 1941-1945

If, on some sectors of the front the Germans were literally on the run, in others they continued to fight very stubbornly; thus, in Kaluga, one of the towns which Hitler had ordered to be held at all costs, the Germans were only driven out after several days of heavy street fighting.

True, the Germans were often handicapped by a shortage of adequate winter clothing; but the bitter cold and the deep snow did not make things easy for the Russians either. It should also be stressed that the Russians had no marked superiority, either in trained men or in equipment. According to the present-day Russian History the State Defence Committee and the Stavka had, on the eve of the Russian counter-offensive, failed, despite enormous efforts, to achieve the necessary superiority in the Moscow area, where the Germans had concentrated their most powerful army group. They still had a

superiority of 1.1:1 in men, of 1.8:1 in artillery and of 1.4:1 in tanks, while Soviet troops, both in the Kalinin and the Moscow sectors, had been weakened by the defensive battle for the capital. The available strategic reserves which were thrown in, especially in the areas of the main thrusts, helped to overcome the enemy's superiority in manpower, but were not sufficient to tip the scales, the more so as the Germans still had more tanks and guns at their disposal.

[ IVOVSS, vol. II, p. 260.]

The Red Army was very severely handicapped by a shortage in motorised transport.

There were only 8,000 trucks available on the Moscow sectors of the front, a totally inadequate number. Not even half of the required ammunition, food and other supplies could be delivered by motor transport, and many hundreds of horse-sleighs had to be

used to make up for the shortage in trucks. Although the carrying capacity of the horse-sleighs was small, they had the advantage of getting through snow-drifts more easily than heavy lorries.

The shortage of the Red Army's motor transport in 1941-2 is very striking when one

thinks of the hundreds of thousands of American trucks which were to increase so

enormously the Red Army's mobility from 1943 on—but not before.

Numerous measures were taken, despite all these difficulties, to move the Army's supply bases nearer the Front; but if the great Russian counter-offensive in the winter of 1941-2

proved in the end to be only a partial success, it was due, as we shall see, to several factors; shortage of transport, especially as the lines of communications grew longer and longer; a growing shortage of arms and ammunition; and, finally, the exhausting nature of the winter war. Before spring came, the Red Army was terribly tired. Also, the High Command had made a number of errors.

In very heavy fighting during the whole of December, and the first half of January, the Red Army had driven the Germans a considerable distance away from Moscow; but the

progress of the Russian offensive was very uneven; the northern flank had advanced

furthest west—by some 200 miles, and the southern flank by nearly as much, but due

west of Moscow itself, the Germans were clinging to their Rzhev-Gzhatsk-Viazma

springboard. The Stavka's directives of December 9 show that the Russian command was planning a vast encirclement of the German forces opposite Moscow, with one pincer

striking north of them and the other south. Hitler, on the other hand, who after the purge among his generals had assumed the supreme command himself, ordered Army Group

Mitte to defend fanatically the positions held west of Moscow, and to take no notice of the enemy breaking through on their flanks.

The Germans had suffered severe losses in the Battle of Moscow; they were fighting in unusual winter conditions, their morale was often low; nevertheless they continued to represent a formidable force.

By January 1, the Russians, drawing on their reserves, achieved equality in manpower and, on some sectors of the front, even a certain superiority in tanks and aircraft—tanks, 1.6:1, aircraft, 1.4:1 —but the Germans still had a 3:1 superiority in anti-tank weapons. In short, notwithstanding the Red Army's great successes in December and the first half of January, its superiority was, according to present-day Soviet historians, totally

insufficient for the major offensive the Soviet Supreme Command had in mind.

It was very cold in January 1942, and the heavy snowfall had made transport extremely difficult.

[Temperatures averaged minus 20° to 25 °C, (4° to 13° of frost Fahrenheit.)]

Except for a relatively small number of ski troops, the Russian troops could, in fact, move only along the roads, and not without much difficulty at that. As the Russians advanced, the difficulties of using aircraft also increased, since there were no airfields ready for use in the newly liberated areas. Yet a further set of instructions dated January 7, 1942, confirms that the Soviet High Command was still determined to break up, encircle and destroy all the German forces between Moscow and Smolensk. But as the Russians