Were the Soviet generals better than their german (or even american) counterparts by the end of the war?
No.
>>64293286They had access to three things: a fuckload of firepower, a fuckload of men, and not all that much care for the lives of their personnel so long as they got the job done.Zhukov's infamous "If my men come acrossa minefield, they will advance as if it isn't there" makes some level of sense when you get down to the context. The Germans used minefields to control enemy movement, either squeezing Soviet forces into narrow areas of fire control or forcing them to slowly pick their way through the mines and get shredded. Zhukov ran the numbers and figured that he'd actually lose less men just pushing straight through the mines than he would trying to be careful about it. It's not exactly the most advanced strategy in the world, and it is one born from a certain degree of carelessness, but it worked given their circumstances and views.
>>64293595So the old idea the Soviets won due to the sheer number of soldiers and human wave assault is true? I thought modern historians didn't agree with it.
>>64293286Lol no. The only tactic they had was to throw more men at the enemy. If they had been even remotely competent the soviets would have taken a third of the casualties they did.
>>64293644When you get enough manpower together, every attack looks like a human wave.
By the end of the war, Soviet generals were the most expert military commanders in the world, leading the best land army on planet Earth. Case in point, operation Bagration and Soviet invasion of Manchuria, two of the largest and most successful combined arms offensives in military history. By 1944, there was no one in the Axis, let alone among the anglo-americans, who could even rival the likes of Vasilevsky or Rokossovsky in planning and conducting big scale operations. Subsequent events in Korea have proven that Americans failed to produce anyone of that caliber even by the 1950s
>>64293831Two words. Iron Tits
>>64293644soviets would have lost if they just sent in human waves without any strategysoviets actually had a really limited amount of firepower relative to their size, their chemical industry was decimated in barbarossa, leaving them with a lot of guns but not a lot of shells for each of themso the soviets were really anal about maximizing weight of fire at the critical moment, and would save shells for large operations
>>64293650Russian casualties were so high only because the UK fed the Germans intelligence on Soviet troop movements.
>>64293831>two of the largest and most successful combined arms offensives in military historythe speed of the invasion of manchuria had more to do with the total lack of anything resembling resistance outside of the amphibious operations
>we only took more casualties than the outnumbered and outgunned enemy because perfidious anglos shat in our pants!
>>64293644It's partially true. They were also given incredible amounts of resources from the west. Trucks, food, fuel, trains, weapons, strategically critical machinery, entire factories....
>>64293286That's a lot of officers you're talking about there. Some of them, like Zhukov, were genuinely brilliant even if they were borderline subhuman evil in how they treated their men. Most of them were pretty unremarkable; and some of them were so absolutely pants on head retarded that laughing at them almost feels cruel.
>>64293644>So the old idea the Soviets won due to the sheer number of soldiers and human wave assault is true? I thought modern historians didn't agree with it.The problem with countering an argument is that people act like pendulums, if the argument is swung one way the counter will swing the other and eventually the truth will settle in the middle. It's like how the idea that we'd be technologically 20 years ahead if Germany won the war due to their futuristic science was once prevalent and often repeated. Then a counter-movement started that called these people wehraboos. After spending years arguing with Wehraboos they got so used to shitting on Germany that you'd think the most impressive thing ever used by the German's was the horse drawn carriage and everything else secretly sucked. Now it has settled in the middle where they as a technologically advanced European country were ahead in some fields and behind in other.It's the same with the Soviet Armies performance, it used to shit like we killed them 10-1 but they always had more men than ammunition and we were always ten steps ahead of them but the hoard was just too great and if only we made this small change to our strategy the war would have been over by 43 and so on. Now it is that the Soviets were incompetent after the great purge but managed to right the ship and while they were more willing to throw away resources to achieve objectives they often could out maneuvered the Germans and their losses were not near as skewed in Germanies favor as once believed.
>>64293644>sheer number of soldiersKind of a meme. On paper they did, but often they just repeatedly cobbled together new units from shattered ones, and they did that constantly. In actuality a Soviet rifle division was smaller than German and US counterparts. Don’t forget that the Germans occupied most of the highly populated regions of the USSR, there wasn’t going to be more untapped hordes of Russians any further than the Volga basin, let alone the Urals. Central Asia barely had anyone. The one thing the Russians did well was churning out fuck tons of T-34s with reckless abandon and amassing crazy amounts of artillery.
>>64293286No since it really involved just human waves and using handouts received from other countries as well as Soviet propaganda overseas deceiving the foolish masses.While many will save the human waves were effective and talk of how "brave" the conscripts and "volunteers" were, they seem to ignore the fact that Stalin and his generals were willing to use countless Russians, Ukrainians, and other peoples as disposable to prolong Soviet totalitarianism. Those same people praising will then self-contradict by making accusations of recklessness and heartlessness when talking about the Third Reich using the Volksturm (many were veterans of WW1 and trained youth group memebers) during the last ditch efforts.
>>64293286A generals "quality" is largely irrelevant and most decisions emerge quite naturally from the resources you have available.Every general in a modern-style conflict is about as good as every other general, the only real difference are the resources they have available.
>>64293644>I thought modern historians didn't agree with it.Turns out said historians were commie cocksuckers
>>64298484Is this bait?
>>64298484If that was really the case, Ukraine really would have been knocked over in three days given the sheer amount of resources Russia threw at them in the opening stages. The ability to leverage resources in a useful way is just as important as actually having them.
>>64295545>t-34A poorly made shitbox often without proper optics, bad ammo, armor which wasn't properly treated, a transmission which in practice was less reliable than the Tiger 2's, and the crudest interior possible. But it was still a shitbox with a big fucking gun on it. I think it's better to assess the t-34 not a medium tank but an all purpose AFV because that's how it was employed by the Soviets and within that context it was suitable for its task. The shitbox is still immune to autocannons so unless you run into something more than 37mm at the minimum for the shittiest of shitboxes you'd likely overwhelm the enemy simply because you have METAL BAWKSES and they do not.
>>64295659The Germans also weren't known for raping every child and domestic animal in sight, Dirlewanger's unit not withstanding while the Soviets were. The Germans thought and were somewhat justified in thinking that the kids might as well get killed.
>>64302912>Ukraine really would have been knocked over in three days given the sheer amount of resources Russia threw at them in the opening stagesWrong, it was simply the circumstances that made a quick victory unviable. There were a variety of unsurmountable problems that even the best general in the universe could not have solved. War is so complex, that a single person, even one of the highest ranking managers only has a small impact on the outcome.
