Tank Warfare on the Eastern Front, 1941-1942: Schwerpunkt

None of the officers who commanded the Red Army’s mechanized corps in June 1941 had been in their position for more than a year when the German invasion began, and most only for a few months. Soviet mechanized corps commanders were considerably younger than their German counterparts – an average age of forty-four versus an average of fifty-three for the Germans – and less experienced. Some 58 per cent of the mechanized corps commanders had no prior experience with tank or mechanized units and 16 per cent had no prior experience with commanding large formations. After the purges gutted much of the original cadre of experienced Soviet tank officers and the original mechanized corps disbanded in 1939, the new mechanized corps recreated in 1940–41 were heavily staffed with cavalry officers; by June 1941, half the mechanized corps were commanded by cavalrymen. However, it would be a mistake to generalize all the Soviet tank commanders of 1941 as incapable. In particular, General-major Semen M. Krivoshein, commander of the 25th Mechanized Corps in the Volga Military District (MD), was one of the most experienced tankers in the Red Army; he had successfully commanded tank units in Spain, the Far East, Finland and Poland. Indeed, Krivoshein was easily as experienced and capable as most of the German panzer division or corps commanders of 1941. Although only thirty-nine years old in 1941, General-major General Dmitri D. Lelyushenko, commander of the 21st Mechanized Corps, was another experienced and capable Soviet tanker. Most of the Soviet tank officers were graduates of the Frunze Military Academy or VAMM, but some, such as General-major Mikhail P. Petrov, had negligible civilian or military education (in his case, limited to a fourth-grade education), which put them at a huge disadvantage when matched against the Wehrmacht’s Generalstab-trained panzer generals. Among the commanders with no tank experience was General-major Konstantin K. Rokossovsky, a cavalry officer who would quickly demonstrate an aptitude for combined-arms warfare. Overall, the Red Army’s tank leadership in June 1941 was a mixed bag, with a few exceptional officers, a large batch of moderately-capable but inexperienced officers, and a healthy number of chair-warmers.

At the division, brigade, regiment and battalion levels, the situation was about the same, although there were far more unfilled vacancies, with many units still awaiting 25 to 50 per cent of their junior officers from training units. Pre-war officer training required between one and two years and the rapid formation of so many mechanized units temporarily overwhelmed the tank training schools administered by the GABTU. For example, the premier Orel Tank Training School (BTU) had begun training 800 junior officers in September 1940 to operate as T-34 platoon leaders, and the first would be available in the late summer of 1941. In the interim, the Red Army did have a number of outstanding mid-level tank officers, such as Polkovnik Pavel Rotmistrov and Polkovnik Mikhail E. Katukov, who were quite capable of handling a tank brigade or division-size force in combat, if given the opportunity. At the company and platoon level, most extant junior officers were the products of hasty training and few could read a map or direct more than their own tank in battle. Although the enlisted ranks had not been damaged by Stalin’s purges, the rapid expansion of 1940–41 created a great shortage of trained drivers and gunners that had not yet been made good by June 1941. Thousands of conscripts had been sent to six-month tank training schools at Orel and Leningrad, but were still in the pipeline when the invasion began. Lacking a solid NCO corps like the Wehrmacht, the Red Army had few unit-level trainers and had to rely upon centralized training facilities, and there was no one in most tank units to enforce training standards. Few crewmen were cross-trained on other crew functions, which meant that it was difficult to replace casualties. Soviet driver training was particularly inadequate; before the invasion, the Soviet general staff training directorate had issued a directive that the obsolete T-27 tankette would be the primary vehicle used for training in order to save wear and tear on the Red Army’s main battle tanks. Unfortunately, the handling characteristics of the 2.7-ton T-27 were so dissimilar that operating it in no way prepared novice drivers to operate the 32-ton T-34 or 45-ton KV-1. The number of hours allocated to driver training during the hectic re-formation of the mechanized corps was minimal, particularly for the newer tanks. Consequently, Soviet tank crews had numerous accidents during road movements in 1941, often resulting in the loss of tanks.