Russia at war 1941-1945

commissars, an uneasy relationship continued to exist between many officers and those Party and Komsomol cadres in the Army which were expected to go on "helping" the officers; and, in July, the fully-fledged military commissars were reintroduced again.

Although (in July 1940) fifty-four per cent of officers were Party members or Party

candidates and twenty-two per cent were Komsomols, there remained, among the

officers, a constant after-taste of the Tukhachevsky affair, and a feeling of strain between them and certain Party bosses in the army with their anti-officer complex. It was not till the autumn of 1942, as we shall see, that the officer fully came into his own rights.

The training of specialised troops—notably tank crews and airmen—had also been

seriously neglected. There are some quite astounding admissions on this score in the official History. Not only was there a shortage of modern tanks and planes in the frontier areas on the day the Germans struck, but there was also a serious shortage of properly trained airmen and tank crews:

The new tanks did not begin to arrive in the frontier zones until April-May 1941, and, on June 22, in all the five Military Districts, there were no more than 508 KV's and 967 T-34's in all. True, there were considerable numbers of old tanks (BT-5's, BT-7's, T-26's, etc.) but by June 15, only twenty-seven per cent were in working

order.

Worse still—

The training of specialists for the new tanks required a considerable time. Since there was a shortage of tank crews, it was necessary to transfer to the tank units officers, sergeants and soldiers from other army formations—from infantry and

cavalry units. But time was too short to let these learn their job properly. By the beginning of the war, many tank men had had only one-and-a-half to two hours'

experience in actual tank driving. Even many officers in tank units were not fully qualified to command them... Similarly, our airmen had not become properly

familiarised with the new planes.

[IVOVSS, vol. I, pp. 475-6.]

Thus, in the Baltic Military District those operating the new planes had had, by June 22, only fifteen hours' flying experience, and those in the Kiev Military District as little as four hours— extraordinary figures when one considers that in the US air force, for

instance, 150 hours' flying experience are required before combat.

Such were some of the extraordinary shortcomings in the Red Army on the day the

Germans attacked. There were many others, with which the History deals in some detail.

The frontier was an extremely long one—the Finnish frontier, between the Arctic and the Gulf of Finland about 750 miles long, and the "German" frontier, between a point just east of Memel on the Baltic and the mouth of the Danube in Rumania, over 1,250 miles long.

No doubt the Soviet Government took a few belated precautions in May 1941; but the

troops that were moved nearer the frontier "were neither fully mobilised nor at full strength, and they lacked the necessary transport. The railways worked according to a peacetime schedule, and the whole deployment of these troops was carried out very

slowly, since it was not thought that the war would start in the immediate future."

By June 22, most of the troops in the frontier areas were scattered over wide spaces.

In the Special Baltic Military District they were scattered over a depth of 190 miles from the frontier; in the Western District over a depth of 60 to 190 miles, in the Kiev District over a depth of between 250 and 380 miles.

The General Staff of the USSR assumed that these troops would be brought up to full

strength during several days that would elapse between mobilisation and the actual

beginning of military operations.