Stalin's superiority: with what forces did the USSR meet Hitler's invasion

Serial production of armored vehicles in the USSR began in the mid-20s of the 20th century. Even then, the whole world began to understand that in the future “great war” tanks and other armored vehicles would play a decisive role in combat operations on land fronts. At first, the use of tanks in various local conflicts between the two world wars did not provide a clear answer to the question of the use of armored fighting vehicles in a large-scale war. And only the Second World War, which began in 1939, revealed to the world the “treasury sword” of modern highly maneuverable combat operations - large mechanized formations.

The USSR independently came to a similar concept for the use of tank forces, and also tried to take into account the experience of the Wehrmacht using tank strike groups in the Polish and Western campaigns.

In 1940, mechanized corps were organized in our country, uniting the vast majority of armored vehicles of the Red Army. Mechanized corps were the main striking force of the ground forces and were very powerful formations. The number of equipment in them was for a long time, as indeed the total number of tanks in the USSR in 1941, a “terrible military secret.” It was hard for Soviet historians to admit that the Red Army, having outnumbered both Germany and its allies in the number of armored vehicles by about three and a half times, and in the border districts by two times, was never able to realize such a solid advantage, having lost almost all available armored vehicles.

As a rule, the official point of view of Soviet historical science sounded something like this: “Soviet designers, even before the start of the Great Patriotic War, developed a new model of the T-34 medium tank and the KV heavy tank... However, production of these tanks began only at the end of 1940, and therefore, by the beginning of the war with Nazi Germany, our tank forces had them in limited quantities.”[1] Or like this: “Soviet designers created samples of first-class tanks (T-34 and KV), but their mass production has not yet been launched.”[2] Or even like this: “Since the summer of 1940, new T-34 tanks began to arrive in the corps, of which 115 were produced in 1940, and from the beginning of 1941 - KV tanks. But at the beginning of the war there were still few new tanks.”[3]

Even the specialized literature at that time did not report the number of tanks in the army, much less their distribution among mechanized corps. For example, in the secret textbook of the Military Academy of Armored Forces, “History of Armored and Mechanized Forces of the Soviet Army,” about the tank fleet of the USSR on the eve of the war it is said only: “By the summer of 1941, i.e. by the time of the treacherous attack of Nazi Germany on the Soviet Union, our tank and motorized divisions and mechanized corps as a whole were not fully equipped with new military equipment, which undoubtedly had a negative impact on the course of hostilities in the initial period of the Great Patriotic War... our troops did not have sufficient numbers tanks, especially medium and heavy ones, which at that time were just entering service.”[4]

In the 60s, the number of new types of tanks (meaning, of course, the KV and T-34) became “generally known,” probably from the six-volume encyclopedia of the history of the Second World War; the number “1861 new tanks” began to wander from book to book. For example, the book “50 Years of the Armed Forces of the USSR” reports: “However, on the eve of the war, the factories managed to produce only 636 heavy KV tanks and 1225 medium T-34 tanks.”[5] Those. In total, supposedly, before the start of the war, 1,861 new T-34 and KV tanks were produced. In Marshal Zhukov’s book “Memories and Reflections” this number is also given: “As for the KV and T-34, by the beginning of the war the factories managed to produce 1861 tanks. This, of course, was not enough.”[6]

Actually this is not true. Back in 1960, in the first volume of the history of the Great Patriotic War, the entire production of new heavy and medium tanks was described: “New types of vehicles - KB and T-34, which were significantly superior in quality to German ones, were not produced in 1939, but in 1940 Not many of them were produced: 243 KB and 115 T-34. Only in the first half of 1941 did the production of new tanks increase noticeably. During these six months, the industry produced 393 KB tanks and 1,110 T-34 tanks.”[7] That is, 1861 tanks of new types were produced on July 1, 1941.

In the 70-80s. In the 20th century, the “pandemonium” with the number of T-34s and KVs continued: some authors indicated the almost canonized “1861 new tanks”, others continued to confuse the first half of the year and the entire period before the start of the Great Patriotic War, i.e. dates July 1 and June 22, 1941, and sometimes June 1: “The Soviet Armed Forces by June 1941 numbered 5,373 thousand people, over 67 thousand guns and mortars, 1,861 tanks, over 2,700 new types of combat aircraft.”[ 8] Moreover, they were confused even when the source wrote in black and white “in the first half of the year” (as you know, the first half of the year ends on June 31st, and not at all on the 22nd).

The official publicly available (and erroneous!) version was presented by the “Soviet Military Encyclopedia”, which stated that on the eve of the Great Patriotic War the army had 1,861 KV and T-34 tanks, of which 1,475 were in the western border districts.[9]

But if with the new types of tanks everything was more or less clear, then with the number of other armored vehicles there was a complete mess. Soviet historians, while indicating the number of new KV and T-34 tanks, “modestly” did not explain how many tanks of all types there were in the army. As a result, all other tanks (except for the KV and T-34) began to be called impersonally “tanks of outdated designs” and “lightly armed” or simply “light and outdated.” This definition, in general, was very crafty; the number of these “obsolete” tanks was still not given, which then allowed writers like V. Rezun or V. Beshanov complete carte blanche to get smart and make fun of Soviet historians and memoirists.

There were many reasons for such secrecy (and deliberate silence) and some were quite objective, but the main one, I think, was the fears of the political leadership. After all, for the average reader, who had no idea about the size of the Soviet tank fleet and was brought up on a different version of the beginning of the war, such revelations could cause sharply anti-Soviet sentiments, which would ultimately affect not only the position of party historians, but also the state itself. Which actually happened later, during perestroika. One of the instruments for the destruction of the Soviet Union was a change in the mass consciousness of the population, an important role in which was then played by all sorts of revelations of the secrets of party and state power, hidden from the people until the end of the 80s. For Soviet people unprepared for such revelations, such publications first caused shock, and then a reaction, which is most accurately characterized by the slogan “Everyone lied to us!” and as a consequence - total denigration of any Soviet source and, at the same time, blind trust in any work of both her and the author who polemicized with Soviet sources (especially if this polemic was of a “revealing” nature).

It is quite clear that Soviet historians were wrong to suppress information about the actual state of the army by June 22, 1941, including its tank forces. But the complexity of the situation in which the leadership found itself was that, having widely announced such statistics, they would have to face new problems. After all, having received information about the number of tanks, the average reader will not ask the question “how many tanks were there in the USSR?” automatically moved on to the question “how, with so many tanks, did we manage to suffer such a crushing defeat at the beginning of the war?” What could party ideologists do, given that they answered the question long ago, based on the false assertion that the enemy was superior to us (including in the number of tank troops)? And this was only part of the general problem of incorrect explanations of the causes of the 1941 disaster. Fearing a revision of the “approved” official version of the reasons for our defeat in 1941, the Soviet leadership preferred to pretend that the problem did not exist, maniacally hushing up and classifying everything that could become the basis for doubt, including statistics on the state of the army and its armored forces .

However, the mechanism of keeping silent about the real state of the Red Army in 1941 was malfunctioning. So, in 1964, in the multi-volume “History of Russian Artillery” - a book that was openly available in libraries - the number of Soviet tanks in the spring of 1941 was indicated! On the number of tanks in the Red Army, information was given by year, starting from 1933 (4906 tanks and 244 armored vehicles) and ending with two dates - as of 09.15.40 (23364 units, including 27 KV, 3 T -34, and 4034 BA) and as of April 1, 1941 (23815 tanks, including 364 KV and 537 T-34, and 4819 BA) [10]

Unfortunately, the figures presented in this book were practically not noticed by both professional historians and military history buffs.

However, in works marked “secret” or DSP, the situation was somewhat different.
Regarding the number of armored forces of the Red Army in the pre-war period, no special secrets were made in such work. So, back in 1960, Lieutenant Colonel M.P. Dorofeev, in a brochure published by the Military Academy of Armored Forces, provided data on the number of personnel, tanks, armored vehicles, guns and mortars, cars, tractors and motorcycles in the mechanized corps of the western border districts, although from his calculations, 16 somehow “fell out” th MK. But even without the 16th MK, according to M.P. Dorofeev, in the 19 mechanized corps of the western border districts, there were 11,000 combat vehicles [11]: Table 1.

On the other hand, the real number of armored vehicles in the Red Army before the war was a kind of “open secret”, and was quite calculated by an attentive reader even from open sources. For example, according to the memoirs of G.K. Zhukova:

“The production of tanks increased rapidly. During the first five-year plan, 5 thousand were produced; by the end of the second, the army already had 15 thousand tanks and wedges...

The annual production of tanks increased from 740 in 1930-1931 to 2271 in 1938...

From January 1939 to June 22, 1941, the Red Army received more than seven thousand tanks; in 1941, the industry could produce about 5.5 thousand tanks of all types...” [6]

Taking a calculator in hand, based on the above quotes from the book by Georgy Konstantinovich, the total number of tanks in the USSR by June 1941 can be approximately estimated at 24,000 units.

But with the beginning of “glasnost” and “perestroika” the situation changed dramatically. In 1988, an article by V.V. appeared in the journal International Affairs. Shlykov “And our tanks are fast,” where the author, without any hesitation, multiplied the standard number of armored vehicles in the tank divisions of the Red Army by the number of divisions themselves, receiving the upper limit of the number of combat vehicles at 22,875, while the lower limit of his calculations gave the number of 20,700 tanks and tankettes. However, despite the approximately correct result (±1,500 units), Shlykov’s calculation method was incorrect, because none of the tank and motorized divisions of the Red Army had a full-time tank fleet. Despite this, the article caused a huge resonance, forcing official historical science to finally come out of hibernation.

Soon VIZH will publish an article by the editor on the history of strategy and operational art of the Military Historical Journal, Colonel V.P.
Krikunov “Simple arithmetic V.V. Shlykov”, where in addition to criticizing Shlykov’s method, Colonel Krikunov provides archival data on the presence and distribution of tanks among the mechanized corps of the pre-war Red Army [12]: Table 2.

The number of tanks was given by V.P. Krikunov, taking into account those available in combat formations, military schools, courses, training centers, and civilian higher educational institutions.

At about the same time, pseudo-historical studies by amateurs from history and falsifiers like V. Rezun (pseudonym - V. Suvorov) began to pour out of a cornucopia. It is Shlykov’s article that resonates with the chapter “Which tanks are considered light?” his book "The Last Republic". V. Rezun was not alone in his revelations; in one way or another, the issue of the number of tanks in the Soviet Union before the Great Patriotic War was touched upon by almost all modern pseudo-historians - V. Beshanov, B. Sokolov, I. Bunich and others, but the author of “Icebreaker” is among of them, of course, the most famous and read. However, they all used either Krikunov’s or Dorofeev’s data, and did not bring anything new to the study of the question of the number of Soviet armored vehicles by the beginning of the Second World War.

The next big step in research into the state of the tank forces of the Red Army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War was the analytical work “1941 - Lessons and Conclusions” published in 1992 under the heading DSP.
It gives an approximate number of new tanks at the beginning of the war: “only about 1,800 units,” but there is a total number of combat vehicles: “over 23 thousand units.” The book also shows the distribution of tanks among the mechanized corps of the western border districts “at the beginning of the war,” including the “forgotten” 16th mechanized corps by Lieutenant Colonel Dorofeev [13]: Table 3.

From the tables above it can be seen that the number of tanks in the mechanized corps of the Red Army does not coincide with each other among different authors.

An article by N.P. Zolotov and S.I. Isaev once set a peculiar line in the debate about the number of Soviet armored vehicles in June 1941.
They provided not only the distribution of tanks by district as of June 1, but also for the first time showed the qualitative state of the combat vehicle fleet using the standard categorization scheme for reporting at that time [14]: Table 4.

Finally, in 1994, a truly “bible” of historians dealing with the problems of the initial period of the Second World War was published, the publication of the Institute of Military History of the RF Ministry of Defense “Combat and numerical strength of the armed forces of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.”
Statistical collection No. 1 (June 22, 1941)." True, the circulation of this publication is mesmerizing - as many as 25 copies! The collection turned out to be a unique work; nothing like it had been published either before or after its publication. Specifically for the tank fleet, information was given on the distribution of tanks by type (including a breakdown into radial and linear, chemical and artillery, etc.) and by district, as well as by category as of June 1, 1941 and equipment deliveries in June 1941 [15]: Table 5.

* - including T-27 chemical and sapper.

The statistical collection became, without a doubt, the most complete and reliable source on the number of armored vehicles in the Red Army on the eve of the Second World War for a long time.

In 2000, M. Meltyukhov published his book “Stalin’s Lost Chance.” In several chapters, the author, on a documentary basis, describes in detail the process of the pre-war construction of the Red Army and naturally cannot ignore the issue of the condition of its tank forces. The author focuses on organizational events carried out in 1939-41. in ABTV, but statistics are not forgotten either. Thus, in the appendices, based on materials from RGASPI, tables of the availability of tanks in the Red Army by type and district as of 09/15/40, 01/01/41, 04/1/41 and 06/1/41 are compiled, and the production of armored vehicles in the USSR in 1930-44 is covered. In addition, information is provided on the tanks available in the Red Army by type for different dates, starting from January 1, 1934. But the staffing of M. Meltyukhov’s mechanized corps by the beginning of the war, unfortunately, is secondary and repeats the data of Colonel V.P. Krikunov 1989 G.

A serious approach to studying the problem of the number of armored forces of the Red Army in 1941 is demonstrated by such authors as Maxim Kolomiets and Evgeniy Drig, who in their works examine in great detail the quantitative and qualitative composition of almost every mechanized corps of the pre-war Red Army.
Maxim Kolomiets gives the following figures for the presence of armored vehicles in two mechanized corps of PribOVO [16]: Table 6.

* - from the former armies of the Baltic states

A unique collection of documents on tank forces was published in 2004, it is called “Main Armored Directorate”. It published several interesting documents, incl. report by the head of the GABTU, Lieutenant General Fedorenko, who gave the total number of tanks in mechanized corps and individual divisions as of June 1, 1941.

At the moment, the most complete data is contained in E. Drig in his book “Mechanized Corps of the Red Army in Battle” published in the “Unknown Wars” series by AST publishing house in 2005. Evgeny Drig used all available sources, including the appendix to the report of the head of the GABTU, Lieutenant General Fedorenko. Naturally, we are primarily interested in the mechanized corps of the border districts. So let's start from north to south.

LenVO

1st mechanized corps, district subordination.
Corps Directorate in Pskov, personnel 31348, or 87% of the staff. Fully equipped with armored vehicles. As of June 22, there are no new types of tanks in the corps. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 7.

10th Mechanized Corps, 23rd Army.
Corps Directorate in New Peterhof, personnel 26065, or 72% of the staff. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 8.

The 1st MK was one of the most powerful mobile formations of the Red Army. In addition, it was an “exemplary” mechanized corps, to which the close attention of the leadership was always paid. There were about 1,540 tanks in two mechanized corps of the Leningrad Military District.

Pages of history

Let's consider the number of tanks in the armies of the five largest military powers before World War II. The first place with a huge gap from the rest of the world in terms of the number of tanks before the Second World War is occupied by the USSR. In the photo: Soviet tanks produced by Kharkov plant No. 183

According to the reference book “Military-Industrial Complex of the USSR in the 20-50s”, tanks were produced in the Soviet Union by year: 1930 - 170 1931 - 740 1932 - 3038 1933 - 3509 1934 - 3565 1935 - 3055 1936 - 4804 1937 - 1559 1 938 — 2271 1939 - 2985 1940 - 2790 1941 (two quarters) - 2413

According to Statistical Collection No. 1 “Combat and numerical strength of the Armed Forces of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War” (1994 Voenizdat), as of June 1, 1941, there were more than 25,000 tanks in the Red Army. In June 1941, another 305 tanks were produced.

Types of tanks and their number, in brackets - serviceable: T-34 (76 mm gun) - 1030 units. (1029 pcs.) KV-1 (76 mm gun) - 412 pcs. (410 pcs.) KV-2 (152 mm howitzer) - 135 pcs. (134 pcs.) T-35 (76 mm cannon, 2 45 mm cannons) - 59 pcs. (42 pcs.) T-28 (76 mm gun) - 442 pcs. (292 pcs.) BT-7M (45 mm gun) - 704 pcs. (688 pcs.) BT-7 (45 mm gun) - 4563 pcs. (3791 pcs.) BT-5 (45 mm gun) - 1688 pcs. (1261 pcs.) BT-2 (37mm gun) - 594 pcs. (492 pcs.) T-26 (45 mm gun) - 9998 pcs. (8423 pcs.) T-40 (2 machine guns 12.7 mm and 7.62 mm) - 160 pcs. (159 pcs.) T-38 (1 7.62 mm machine gun) - 1129 pcs. (733 pcs.) T-37 (1 7.62 mm machine gun) - 2331 pcs. (1483 pcs.) T-27 (1 7.62 mm machine gun) - 2376 pcs. (1060 pcs.) Su-5 (1 76 mm cannon) - 28 pcs. (16 pcs.) Total: 25,621 tanks, of which 19,997 are serviceable (combat ready) - 78%.

It is curious that according to peacetime states, as of June 1, 1941, the Red Army should have had 34,950 tanks. Thus, the army officially had a tank shortage of 9,329 units. (source: report of the head of the GABTU to the Main Military Council of the Red Army on the state of provision of armored vehicles and transport equipment to the Red Army as of June 1, 1941)

Germany deservedly takes second place. Tank production by year: Pz Kpfw I: before 1939 - 1493 Pz Kpfw II: before 1939 - 1001; 1939 - 246; 1940 - 9; 1941 - 236 Рz Kpfw 35(t): 1939 - 219; total - 219. Pz Kpfw 38(t): 1939 - 150; 1940 - 370; 1941 - 698 Pz Kpfw III: before 1939 - 71; 1939 - 206; 1940 - 916; 1941 - 1998 Pz Kpfw IV: before 1939 - 115; 1939 - 141; 1940 - 278; 1941 - 467... StuK assault gun (7.5 cm L/24): 1940 - 184; 1941 - 548 On September 1, 1939, the Wehrmacht had 3190 tanks, of which Pz Kpfw I - 1145, Pz Kpfw II - 1223, Pz Kpfw 35(t) - 219, Pz Kpfw 38(t) - 76, Pz Kpfw III - 98 , Pz Kpfw IV - 211, 215 - command, 3 - flamethrower, 5 assault guns. By the beginning of the war with the USSR, the Wehrmacht had about 4.5 thousand tanks in service.

In third place is France, which at the time of the German invasion had 2,700 light tanks, 300 medium and 172 heavy. The main tank at the beginning of the war was the R-35 (1,400 units), which was armed with a 37 mm cannon, 40 mm frontal armor and a speed of only 20 km/h on the highway.

4th place: the British Army had about 1 thousand light tanks armed with 40 mm guns. By the beginning of the war, the army received literally several heavy Matildas with 75 mm frontal armor, but with the same weak 40 mm cannon and a speed of 24 km/h on the highway. The main tank of the British army in the second half of the 30s was the Cruiser Mk.IV. During mass production in 1938-1939, 655 tanks of this type were produced; it was characterized by unsatisfactory reliability and weak armor (see photo)

The United States was in last 5th place: in the summer of 1940, the army had 300 light M1 tanks and 20 medium M2 tanks (see photo). TTX M2: 37 mm gun, forehead. armor 32 mm, 43 km/h highway speed.

Sources: 1. Statistics on tanks https://historical-fact.livejournal.com/72615.ht... 2. “Military-industrial complex of the USSR in the years 20−50” https://www.pseudology.org/colonels/ VPK1920_1950... 3. Meltyukhov M. “The problem of the balance of forces of the parties by June 22, 1941” https://www.e-reading.by/chapter.php/1029111/4/V... 4. Combat and numerical strength of the USSR armed forces in period of the Great Patriotic War (1941−1945) Statistical collection No. 1. (June 22, 1941) https://istmat.info/node/44934 5. Report of the head of the GABTU to the Main Military Council of the Red Army on the state of provision of armored vehicles and transport equipment Red Army on June 1, 1941 https://pro-tank.ru/publikacii/465-prilogenie-31... 6. Tanks of Germany https://tanki-tut.ru/germany/ 7. Tanks of Great Britain https:// tanki-tut.ru/uk/ 8. Tanks of France https://tanki-tut.ru/france/ 9. American tank building https://tanki.wanka.ru/tankostroenie-v-1930-e-go…

PribOVO

3rd Mechanized Corps, 11th Army.
Corps Directorate Vilnius, 31975 personnel, or 87% of the staff. As of 06/20/41, tanks available: Table 9.

12th Mechanized Corps, 8th Army.
Corps Directorate of Siauliai (from 06/18/41), personnel 29998, or 83% of the staff. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 10.

Thus, in the two mechanized corps of PribOVO there were 1475 tanks (without tankettes and BA).

Preparing for war: Wehrmacht weapons

To strike the Soviet Union, the Wehrmacht managed to allocate 3,932 tanks and 266 assault guns. Moreover, we note that in 1941 the Germans managed to produce only 3094 tanks of all types, including 678 Czech light tanks.

What was it? The classic formulation that was used in Soviet times: all our tanks were hopelessly outdated, no good, except for the T-34 and KV. However, there is a certain figure of deceit here, because if we consider what the Wehrmacht tank units were armed with, the picture emerges very, very interesting.

At the beginning of the war, the Wehrmacht was armed with a significant number of not even tanks, but T-I tankettes, which weighed only 5.5 tons and were armed with machine guns; T-II tanks, which weighed 9 tons and had a 20-mm automatic cannon and, as our veterans recalled, could not withstand being hit by a heavy machine gun bullet. It was simply impossible for them to survive being hit by even a 37-mm shell. As a matter of fact, these tanks were originally created as training tanks. Later, during the war, they were used in counter-guerrilla and patrol operations. And such equipment made up a good half of what the Wehrmacht had at the start of the war.

Wehrmacht soldier near a burnt-out Soviet T-34 tank, 1941. (wikipedia.org)

In addition, the Wehrmacht had a certain number of Czech tanks, which German tankers loved very much because they were better than T-I and T-II. These are Skoda LT vz.35 tanks, which weighed 10 tons, had a crew of four people and more or less decent armor. This tank could withstand a hit from a 20mm shell, but anything larger was already deadly for it. The Germans had 218 such tanks. In addition, there were Czech tanks LT vz.38, which were of a later production, weighing about 10 tons; they had a little more armor, but by December 10, 1941, the last LT vz.38 was disabled, and subsequently all such tanks (those that survived) were used by the Germans, as already mentioned, for anti-partisan and patrol purposes.

As for decent equipment that could be called a tank, these were the T-III, which were in service with the Panzerwaffe. The weight of this tank was 19.5 tons; at first it was armed with a 37 mm cannon, then with a 50 mm short-barreled gun.

This tank became, so to speak, a draft horse, which during the first years of the war, on its backbone, carried out everything and anything that fell to the lot of the Panzerwaffe, although these vehicles could not be compared with our later tanks. The Wehrmacht had 1,440 such tanks at its disposal at the beginning of the war. And, in fact, they managed to allocate 965 vehicles to the Soviet front.

Well, the most formidable vehicle, which was lighter than the T-34 and which for some reason we call a “heavy tank,” was the T-IV. The T-IV appeared in 1938, it was armed with a short 75-mm cannon, and it really was a vehicle capable of providing some more or less serious resistance to our tanks, although its parameters were also inferior to what we had.

Of course, one can endlessly list which tanks the Germans got from the French as trophies, but these vehicles were simply not suitable for any purpose other than training tasks. There was a very interesting trend in the production of weapons in Germany after the end of the Strange War. As Halder noted in his memoirs, the word “impossible” ceased to exist for the Wehrmacht high command and, accordingly, for the political leadership of Germany in general. That is, a period of some euphoria and mischief began, which, in general, later acquired quite pronounced consequences.

ZapOVO

6th Mechanized Corps, 10th Army.
Corps Directorate in Bialystok, personnel 24005, or 67% of the staff. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 11.

*- no data

According to some reports, the corps also had T-28 tanks (part of the T-34) and KV-2 (part of the KV).

11th Mechanized Corps, 3rd Army.
Corps Department in Volkovysk, personnel 21605, or 60% of the staff. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 12.

13th Mechanized Corps, 10th Army.
Office of the Corps of Biala Podlaski, personnel 17809, or 49% of the staff. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 13.

14th Mechanized Corps, 4th Army.
Corps Directorate in Kobrin, personnel 15550, or 43% of the staff. Table 14.

17th mechanized corps, district subordination.
Corps Department of Baranovichi, personnel 16578, or 46% of the staff. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 15.

20th mechanized corps, district subordination.
Corps Directorate in Borisov, personnel 20389, or 57% of the staff. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 16.

Thus, in the six mechanized corps of ZapOVO there were 2220 tanks available. Moreover, only one of the six mechanized corps had a full-time tank fleet, namely the 6th MK of the 10th Army. It is generally difficult to consider the 17th and 20th mechanized corps as formations of tank forces. Rather, these are training units. Things weren't much better in the 13th and 11th MKs. Both of them were at most a tank division. Tanks of new types also arrived in significant quantities only to the 6th MK; the material part of the remaining corps consisted mainly of T-26 and BT tanks of various modifications.

Soviet tanks in 1941

The most significant losses at the beginning of the war were suffered by the tank and mechanized troops of the Red Army. By the fall of 1941, the Red Army had actually lost its main strike and maneuver force - large tank formations. Before the war, the Red Army had a huge armada of 25 thousand tanks, of which almost 20 thousand were operational. This was much more than in all countries of the world combined. The USA and Great Britain each had 1.5 thousand tanks, France - 3.5 thousand, Germany at the time of the attack on the USSR - 7 thousand. Until now, no one can understand Stalin’s “strategists”: why did they make so many tanks if there was a catastrophic lack of equipment, without which it is also impossible to fight - fuel tankers, tractors, armored personnel carriers, self-propelled guns and even ordinary trucks? In appearance, the powerful Soviet mechanized corps were not fully equipped with means of communication, transport, repair and evacuation of equipment; by mid-June 1941, the staffing level was: for cars - 39%, for tractors - 44%, for repair equipment - 29%. Example: an artillery regiment of one of the Soviet tank divisions with 24 guns of 122 mm and 152 mm caliber had only 5 tractors. How could this regiment carry out combat missions?

The newest Soviet tanks produced by plant No. 183 (Kharkov)

From left to right: A-8 (BT-7M), A-20, T-34 mod. 1940 with L-11 cannon, T-34 mod. 1941 with F-34 cannon

It’s hard to believe, but Soviet T-34 and KV tanks fought the war... without armor-piercing shells. In the 6th mechanized corps of ZAPOVO, which has the largest number of the latest KVs and T-34s, there was not a SINGLE armor-piercing projectile for them. The same situation is in the 3rd mechanized corps of the PribVO: armor-piercing 76-mm shells are available - 0. It is no better in the 4th mechanized corps of KOVO - the same 0. At the beginning of June 1941, the most provided with shells for 76-mm guns for KV and tanks The T-34 turned out to be the 8th mechanized corps: out of the 8,163 armor-piercing shells required by the state, there were as many as 2,350 pieces, that is, a third of the norm.

On June 22, 1941, the Germans had significantly fewer tanks; the group concentrated to attack the USSR had 3,712 tanks and assault guns. Of these, only 961 are new tanks of the Pz.III type (37 mm or 50 mm gun) and 439 of the Pz.IV type (75 mm short-barreled gun). The armament, as we see, is so-so, and the frontal armor of the Pz.IV is only 30 mm without slope. The rest of the tank fleet was completely outdated light tanks with thin armor and small-caliber guns. However, all tank divisions were well balanced in composition, and the personnel were well trained at all levels. The German tank division of the 1941 model had 149 or 209 tanks, 27 armored vehicles, 192 guns and mortars, 400 armored personnel carriers, 1,500 trucks, 600 cars and 1,300 motorcycles.

In general, in 1941, the industry produced 2996 T-34 tanks with 45 mm sloping frontal armor and a very successful 76 mm gun. Considering this impressive number, one cannot help but be struck by the insignificant effectiveness of the combat use of the latest Soviet tanks in the initial period of the war. Only small-scale successful battles are known, for example, the battle of ace tanker Dmitry Lavrinenko against 8 German tanks. His T-34 was not far from General Panfilov’s command post when 8 German tanks appeared on the highway near the village. Lavrinenko's tank rushed towards the enemy at maximum speed. Just before the column, he sharply turned to the side, stopped and began shooting point-blank, at close range. The first shot destroyed the lead tank, the rest stopped. This helped Lavrinenko shoot without missing, and with seven shells he destroyed seven tanks. On the eighth shot, the gun trigger jammed and the last German tank managed to escape.

The battle of August 20, 1941 is also widely known, in which the crew of the KV-1 tank under the command of Zinovy ​​Kolobanov destroyed 22 German tanks from an ambush with competent actions. Such success was largely achieved by the presence of 75 mm of frontal armor on the KV-1, which German tanks simply could not penetrate. You can also recall the skillful actions of Katukov’s tank brigade. Unfortunately, there were very few successful battles with the massive participation of Soviet tanks in 1941. This is reliable evidence that the Germans were significantly superior to the Soviet commanders in tactical training. Communications worked well in the Wehrmacht, and clear interaction between the military branches was established. In the event of attacks by large masses of Soviet tanks, artillery combat groups were immediately created and, with the support of aviation, which dominated the Soviet skies, they successfully repelled almost any attack. For example, in fact, the most powerful in the world, the 6th Mechanized Corps of the Red Army, which was armed with more than a thousand tanks, including 450 of the latest T-34 and KV, was destroyed in the Grodno region in just a few days by the actions of 3 infantry divisions and aviation. In 1941, the Wehrmacht used 37-mm and 50-mm Pak anti-tank guns against Soviet tanks (the frontal armor of the T-34 and KV could not be penetrated, but caused serious damage), 75-mm leIG 18 infantry guns, 105-mm hull guns, anti-aircraft guns artillery (for example, 88 mm FlaK).

The Germans are looking at the abandoned Soviet KV-2 with great curiosity; for them it was an incredible hulk

There are plenty of documents testifying to the monstrous losses in the Soviet tank forces, this is just one of many: “... July 1941 in the mechanized corps of the Southern Front there were: in the 2nd mechanized corps (MK) combat-ready: 1 piece - KV, 18 piece - T -34, 68 units - BT, 26 units - T-26, 7 units - flamethrowers, 27 units - T-37 (total tanks - 147, there were 489 units on 06/22/41); 18 MK: 15 BT and T-26, 5 T-28, 2 flamethrower (total tanks - 22, there were 280 on 06/22/41); 16 MK: 5 T-28 (as of 06/22/41 there were 608 tanks); 24 MK: 10 BT, 64 T-26, 2 flamethrower (total tanks - 76, there were 222 on 06/22/41). The state of the mechanized corps can be judged from the combat report of the headquarters of the 6th Army of the Southern Front dated July 26: 16th mechanized corps with minimal remnants: 240th MD, 15th and 44th TD, from which an infantry detachment of battalion strength was formed, MCP , with the strength of a battalion. The 16th Mechanized Corps does not represent any real force at all...”

In total, according to the research group of Colonel General Krivosheev, 20.5 thousand Soviet tanks were lost in 1941. Wehrmacht in 1941 lost 2,758 tanks - also very significant losses for the total number of 3.7 thousand tanks that invaded the USSR. But the loss ratio of 7:1 looks simply shameful for the Soviet side. But someone was going to fight with “little blood on foreign territory”!

Tank T-34-76 produced in 1940-42. Despite its serious advantages, it also had a huge number of defects. It was possible to cope with many problems only by 1943-44. The V-2 tank diesel engine was of disgusting quality. A resource of 100 engine hours for the V-2 diesel engine (which was much more expensive than a carburetor engine) was achieved on the stand only in 1943. German Maybach gasoline engines worked in the tank for 300-400 hours.

NIBTP officers who tested the T-34 in the fall of 1940 identified many design flaws. The report of the NIBTP commission stated: “The T-34 tank does not meet modern requirements for this class of tanks for the following reasons: the firepower of the tank could not be fully used due to the unsuitability of surveillance devices, defects in the installation of weapons and optics, the cramped fighting compartment and the inconvenience of using the ammunition rack ; with a sufficient reserve of diesel power, the maximum speeds and dynamic characteristics of the tank are poorly chosen, which reduces the speed performance and maneuverability of the tank; tactical use of the tank away from repair bases is impossible due to the unreliability of the main components - the main clutch and the chassis. The plant was asked to expand the dimensions of the turret and fighting compartment, which would make it possible to eliminate defects in the installation of weapons and optics; re-develop ammunition stowage; replace existing surveillance devices with new, more modern ones; rework the main clutch, fan, gearbox and chassis components. Increase the warranty period of the V-2 diesel engine to at least 250 hours.” However, by the beginning of the war, almost all of these shortcomings remained.

KV-1 came under fire from the flank

The T-34 four-speed gearbox was unsuccessful in design and easily broke due to errors in gear shifting by an inexperienced driver. To avoid breakdowns, skills were required that were developed to the point of automaticity, which was unattainable, because driver mechanics were given literally several hours of driving time to train. The design of the clutches was unsuccessful; they often failed. Fuel pumps were unreliable. In general, the T-34 was very difficult to operate and required high training and physical endurance from the driver. During the long march, the driver lost 2-3 kg in weight - it was hard work. The gunner-radio operator often helped the driver switch gears. German tanks did not have such difficulties with control, and if the driver failed, he could be replaced by almost any crew member.

The T-34 had mirrored periscopes on the driver and in the tank's turret. Such a periscope was a primitive box with mirrors installed at an angle at the top and bottom, and the mirrors were not glass, but made of polished steel. The image quality was disgusting. The same primitive mirrors were in the periscopes on the sides of the turret, which were one of the main means of observation for the tank commander. It was difficult to monitor the battlefield and carry out target designation.

There was smoke and burning in the fighting compartment after the shot, like in a gas chamber; the crew literally went crazy during the shooting, because the fan in the tank was very weak. According to the regulations, hatches in battle were required to be closed. Many tankers did not close it, otherwise you would not be able to keep track of the rapidly changing situation. For the same purpose, I had to stick my head out of the hatch from time to time. The driver, as a rule, left the hatch slightly open to the palm of his hand.

The situation with KV tanks was no better than the T-34; they were also equipped with low-quality clutches and gearboxes. When a projectile hit the forehead, the KV's turret often jammed. The T-34's driver's hatch, located in the front armor plate, was easily penetrated.

Soviet BT tanks burn after a failed attack

It is known that the Germans fought with captured Soviet tanks. However, of the many Soviet tanks captured by the Germans in the summer-autumn of 1941, only a few dozen were put into operation by October. Why so few? The fact is that Soviet tanks were unsuitable for the Wehrmacht. The fact is that Soviet tank engines required only high-grade gasoline (for the T-26 no worse than “Grozny”, and for BT and T-28 no worse than “Baku”). And according to F. Halder’s “War Diary”, the Germans already in 1940-42. experienced an acute shortage of natural oil and, as a consequence, high-grade gasoline. His German army didn't even have enough gas for aviation, so why waste it on mediocre Soviet tanks? Domestic tank engines refused to “eat” German synthetic gasoline. This was typical not only for pre-war tanks: the engines of the newest Soviet tanks also needed high-grade gasoline.

The Germans had it even worse with diesel fuel for the T-34 and KB diesel engines. In 1941-42 In the German army, the shortage of diesel fuel was felt more acutely than gasoline, since it cannot be replaced by any synthetic product. Therefore, instead of diesel fuel, a mixture of crude oil with kerosene and oil was poured into the engines of diesel cars and tanks. Only captured gas oil somehow saved the situation, but most of it also went into the tanks of trucks. In total, according to German sources, from 1941 to 1945 the Wehrmacht used no more than 300 Soviet tanks and self-propelled guns.

Captured modernized T-34s in Wehrmacht combat formation

But the main problems were due to the fact that criminally little importance was attached to the training of Soviet tank crews of all levels before the war. “By the beginning of the war, many driver mechanics had only 1.5 hours of practice driving tanks” [IVOV, 7, vol. 1, p. 476]. The main training of T-34 mechanics and drivers, under the pretext of saving the vehicle's engine life, was carried out on T-26 tanks; as a result, the T-34s that entered the troops were not mastered by the crews. It also became clear that tank crews were holding onto textbooks and instructions for training against the backdrop of paranoid spy mania; thus, tank crews did not receive the training materials they needed. Poorly trained Soviet crews often simply could not start the tanks or fix even a simple breakdown. Due to low reliability and poor crew training, the main tank losses were non-combat. The newest tanks were often forced to be destroyed or simply abandoned when it was impossible to repair the damage, as well as due to lack of fuel. From archival documents: “The 125th tank regiment of the 202nd MD of the 12th MK PribOVO on June 22, 1941, alerted 49 T-26s, and abandoned 16 combat vehicles faulty in the parks...”

Not only was the training of Soviet tank crews at the lowest level, but there was also a catastrophic lack of command and technical personnel. Data for some formations as of June 1941: in the 35th TD of the 9th KOVO mechanized corps, instead of 8 tank battalion commanders there were 3 (37% staffing), company commanders - 13 instead of 24 (54.2%), platoon commanders - 6 instead of 74 (8%). The 215th MD of the 22nd MK KOVO lacked 5 battalion commanders, 13 company commanders, the staffing level of junior command personnel was 31%, and technical staffing was 27%.

The training system for German tank crews was much better than for Soviet ones: “The emphasis in training and combat units was placed on the most thorough training of crews. The tank drivers were especially selected first. If the instructors did not see progress in the cadet after the first practical training, then he was immediately transferred to loader or gunner-radio operator. The crew trained to move in mixed columns along with the artillery, engineering and reconnaissance units of the tank division. Such columns were sent on multi-kilometer hikes for 2-3 days along special routes. Specially assigned navigators monitored the cadets' adherence to the given course. Gunners and loaders of tank guns, in endless training, sought to meet strict standards - each of their operations was regulated in seconds. The gunners were trained separately, achieving maximum accuracy from them, and no ammunition was spared, so their training mainly consisted of practical exercises. The driver was required to have a good understanding of the tank engine and, in general, the structure of numerous mechanisms. The cadets devoted all their free time from classes to maintaining the tank. In addition to combat training, future tankers did intense physical training, often running cross-country races, which increased their overall endurance. Upon completion of their studies, the worst cadets were mercilessly eliminated. Such training principles were preserved in tank training units until the very end of the Second World War. It was thanks to all its components that German tank crews showed themselves so well in both offensive and defensive operations on all fronts...”

Soviet tank crews recalled: “If a German tank misses you with the first shot, then it never missed you with the second.” Excellent optics and high training allowed German tankers to have a significant advantage when firing.

The impressions of tanker R. Ulanov are interesting: “During my service in the army, I had the opportunity to deal with many tanks and self-propelled guns. I was a driver-mechanic, a vehicle commander, a deputy technical engineer of a battery, a company, a battalion, a tester in Kubinka and at the training ground in Bobochino (Leningrad Region). Each tank has its own “character” in terms of control, overcoming obstacles, and the specifics of making turns. In terms of ease of control, I would put the German T-III and T-IV tanks in first place... I note that driving the Pz.IV was not tiring due to the ease of operating the levers; The seat with a back also turned out to be comfortable - in our tanks, the driver's seats did not have backs. The only irritations were the howl of the gearbox gears and the heat emanating from it, which burned the right side. The 300-horsepower Maybach engine started easily and worked flawlessly. The Pz.IV was shaky, its suspension was stiffer than the Pz.III, but softer than the T-34. The German tank was much more spacious than our T-34. The successful location of the hatches, including those on the sides of the turret, allowed the crew, if necessary, to quickly leave the tank..."

In general, it is very difficult to get rid of the impression that the Soviet tank forces were being prepared for war by a “group of saboteurs” or “enemies of the people.” Although the authorities assured that all the pests, including the military, were shot in 1937-38, but based on the results of the summer-autumn of 1941, it is absolutely clear: the wrong ones were shot...

Statistics.

After the war, GBTU conducted a study on the reasons for the defeat of our tanks. Anti-tank artillery accounted for about 60%, 20% was lost in battles with tanks, howitzer artillery destroyed 5%, 5% was blown up by mines, and aviation and infantry anti-tank weapons accounted for 10%.

According to Statistical Collection No. 1 “Combat and numerical strength of the Armed Forces of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War” (1994 Voenizdat), as of June 1, 1941, there were more than 25,000 tanks in the Red Army. In June 1941, another 305 tanks were produced. Types of tanks and their number, in brackets - serviceable: - T-34 (76 mm gun) - 1030 pcs. (1029 pcs.) – KV-1 (76 mm gun) – 412 pcs. (410 pcs.) – KV-2 (152 mm howitzer) – 135 pcs. (134 pcs.) – T-35 (76 mm gun, 2 45 mm guns) – 59 pcs. (42 pcs.) – T-28 (76 mm gun) – 442 pcs. (292 pcs.) – BT-7M (45 mm gun) – 704 pcs. (688 pcs.) – BT-7 (45 mm gun) – 4563 pcs. (3791 pcs.) – BT-5 (45 mm gun) – 1688 pcs. (1261 pcs.) – BT-2 (37mm gun) – 594 pcs. (492 pcs.) – T-26 (45 mm gun) – 9998 pcs. (8423 pcs.) – T-40 (2 machine guns 12.7 mm and 7.62 mm) – 160 pcs. (159 pcs.) – T-38 (1 7.62 mm machine gun) – 1129 pcs. (733 pcs.) – T-37 (1 7.62 mm machine gun) – 2331 pcs. (1483 pcs.) – T-27 (1 7.62 mm machine gun) – 2376 pcs. (1060 pcs.) – Su-5 (1 76 mm cannon) – 28 pcs. (16 pcs.)

Total: 25,621 tanks, of which 19,997 are serviceable (combat ready) - more than 78%.

Sources: Krotov I. “Tanks and the tragedy of 1941” https://igor155.livejournal.com/1319.html Kravchenko A. “Quiet horror in tank forces” https://topwar.ru/9316-1941-god-tihiy -u​zhas-v-tankovyh-voyskah.html Baryatinsky M. “Tanks of the Second World War” https://coollib.com/b/138095/read “The classification has been removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts.” Ed. G. F. Krivosheeva. M.: Voenizdat, 1993. https://tankfront.ru/ussr/losses.html

KOVO

4th Mechanized Corps, 6th Army.
Corps Directorate in Lviv, personnel 28097, or 78% of the staff. The corps attracts attention primarily because of its commander, the notorious General Vlasov. However, in fact, the 4th MK is interesting for others: the corps was QUALITATIVELY the strongest mobile formation of the Red Army in June 1941. Although quantitative estimates of the corps' tank fleet do not coincide in various sources. As of 06/22/41, tanks available: Table 17.

* Total number of tanks in the corps: 892 according to A. Isaev, 950 according to the Kyiv Museum of the Great Patriotic War, 979 according to the book “1941 - Lessons and Conclusions”. - M.: Voenizdat, 1992.

8th Mechanized Corps, 26th Army.
Corps Directorate in Drohobych, personnel 31927, or 89% of the staff. A very powerful formation - the hero of the counterattack on Dubno. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 18.

* Total number of tanks in the corps: 858 according to A. Isaev, 899 according to the book “1941 - Lessons and Conclusions”. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1992, 932 according to the memoirs of G.L. DI. Ryabysheva.

9th mechanized corps of district subordination.
Corps Directorate Novograd-Volynsk, personnel 26833, or 74% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 19.

15th Mechanized Corps, 6th Army.
Brody Corps Directorate, personnel 33935, or 94% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 20.

16th Mechanized Corps, 12th Army.
Corps Directorate in Kamenets-Podolsk, personnel 26380, or 73% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 21.

19th mechanized corps of district subordination.
Corps Directorate in Berdichev, personnel 22654, or 63% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 22.

22nd Mechanized Corps, 5th Army.
Corps Directorate in Rivne, 24,087 personnel, or 67% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 23.

24th mechanized corps of district subordination.
Corps Directorate Proskurov, personnel 21556, or 60% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 24.

*As of 06/30/41 in stock: BT-7 rad. - 10, T-26 rad. — 52, T-26 lin. - 70, T-26 double turret. - 43, HT - 3, T-27 - 7. A total of 185 tanks and wedges.

Thus, in the eight mechanized corps of KOVO as of June 22, there were from 4672 tanks to 4950 tanks according to various sources. Moreover, two of the five most powerful mechanized corps are stationed in KOVO.

Stalin's superiority: with what forces did the USSR meet Hitler's invasion

The website of the Zvezda TV channel publishes a series of articles about the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945 by the writer Leonid Maslovsky, based on his book “Russian Truth”, published in 2011.

In his original materials, Maslovsky, in his words, exposes “the myths invented by Russia’s ill-wishers about the events of the Great Patriotic War and shows the greatness of our Victory.” The author notes that in his articles he intends to “show the unseemly role of the West in preparing Germany for war with the USSR.”

In June 1941, the Red Army surpassed the Wehrmacht in terms of the number of weapons in its troops, despite the fact that Germany captured the weapons of all the European countries it conquered, including the weapons of France, which had a huge number of tanks, guns and aircraft. In terms of the number of troops, the armed forces of Germany alone exceeded the Armed Forces of the USSR by 1.6 times, namely: 8.5 million people in the Wehrmacht and a little more than 5 million people in the Workers' and Peasants' Red Army.

This balance of forces took place despite the fact that, in preparation for repelling aggression, the USSR only increased the number of the Red Army from 1.433 million people to 5.1 million people in the period from 1937 to June 22, 1941. But when they talk about our defeats in 1941, they somehow casually mention the force that came against us at that terrible time. After all, this is not the strength of Germany, but of a huge “country” - Europe. It far exceeded our strength and capabilities in peacetime.

It took boundless tension over 4 years of all the forces of the entire Soviet people to defeat the enemy who attacked our country. At this time, workers often slept in the shops, saving working time, and tens of thousands of soldiers and officers of the Red Army died in fierce continuous battles with the enemy.

So let's look at the issue of enemy power. Germany's 8.5 million armed forces included 1.2 million civilian personnel, recruited throughout Europe and possibly in non-European countries as well. Of the 8.5 million people, ground forces accounted for about 5.2 million people. The number of 8.5 million did not include the number of armies of Germany’s European allies that have their own armed forces: Italy, Hungary, Romania, Finland. And this is a considerable force - only, for example, the armed forces of royal Romania numbered from 700 thousand to 1 million 100 thousand people, and the armed forces of Finland - 560-605 thousand people.

If we accept that on average the armies of these allies numbered 625 thousand people, and this is the minimum possible number, then we will see that in fact on June 22, 1941, Germany and its allies had at least 11 million trained, armed soldiers and officers, and Germany could very quickly make up for the losses of your army and strengthen your troops.

Our Red Army of 5 million people in 1941 was opposed by armies subordinate to Germany with a total number of at least 11 million people. And if the number of German troops alone exceeded the number of Soviet troops by 1.6 times, then together with the troops of the European allies it exceeded the number of Soviet troops by at least 2.2 times.

Such a monstrously huge force opposed the Red Army. That’s why Krebs told Halder: “Russia will do everything to avoid war. He will make all concessions, including territorial ones.”

The fact is that the population of the “new Germany”, that is, a united Europe, was more than 300 million people and by 1941 was more than 1.5 times greater than the population of the USSR, which at that time had a population of 194.1 million people.

The question may arise: why did the USSR not increase the size of its army to 11 million people in pre-war times? We must understand that these 11 million men had to be removed from the national economy at a time when industry and agriculture valued every pair of working hands; they had to be armed and trained in military affairs, clothed, shod, and provided with normal nutrition.

Russia, which had just gotten back on its feet after two devastating wars, did not have the means to maintain armed forces equal in size to the armed forces of the rich and huge state - Europe united by Germany. With the outbreak of the war, enterprises switched to working with extended working hours according to wartime laws, some workers and specialists were drafted into the army, and women and children replaced them at the factories' machines, usually performing work that did not require high qualifications. Skilled workers were booked and continued to work. The majority of peasants did not have armor.

The 8.5 million people of the German army were armed with 5,639 tanks and assault guns, over 10 thousand combat aircraft, over 61 thousand guns and mortars. By June 1941, the Navy consisted of 217 warships of the main classes, including 161 submarines. On June 22, 1941, 5.5 million soldiers and officers of Nazi Germany and its satellites crossed the border of the USSR and invaded our land. Of the 5.5 million people, there were at least 800 thousand people in the armies of Germany's allies.

During the war, the number of troops of states allied with Germany increased. During the war, we captured 752,471 Romanian, Hungarian, Italian and Finnish soldiers alone. The 5.5 million-strong army of Europe that attacked the USSR was armed with about 4,300 tanks and assault guns, 47.2 thousand guns and mortars, 4,980 combat aircraft and over 190 warships.

The number of Soviet Armed Forces by June 1941 was over 5 million people (5,080,977 people): in the Ground Forces and Air Defense Forces - over 4.5 million people, in the Air Force - 476 thousand people, in the Navy - 344 thousand people The Red Army was armed with over 67 thousand guns and mortars, 1860 new tanks and over 2700 (3719 pieces, according to G.K. Zhukov) new types of combat aircraft. In addition, the troops had a large number of outdated armored and aircraft equipment.

The Navy had 276 warships of the main classes, including 212 submarines. The number of troops that attacked us was approximately 500 thousand greater than the number of all armed forces of the USSR. But we must keep in mind that in June 1941, the troops that were in the Far East in case of an attack by Japan, in the Caucasus in case of an attack by Turkey, and in other dangerous areas did not participate in the war with Germany. I believe that at least one million military personnel were in service in these places.

Thus, the number of Red Army troops intended to repel an attack by Germany and its allies was no more than 4 million people as of June 22, 1941, against 5.5 million troops of Germany and its satellites. In addition, from the first weeks of the war, Germany transferred fresh divisions from Europe to the Eastern Front.

As can be seen from the above data, at the beginning of the war, the Red Army, in comparison with the troops of Germany and its allies that attacked the USSR, had 19,800 more guns and mortars, 86 more warships of the main classes, and also surpassed the attacking enemy in terms of number of machine guns.

Small arms, guns of all calibers and mortars were not only not inferior in combat characteristics, but in many cases were superior to German weapons.

As for armored forces and aviation, our army had them in quantities that far exceeded the number of units of this equipment available to the enemy at the beginning of the war. But the bulk of our tanks and aircraft, in comparison with the German ones, were “old generation” weapons, morally obsolete. Most of the tanks had only bulletproof armor. A significant percentage were also faulty aircraft and tanks subject to write-off.

At the same time, it should be noted that before the start of the war, the Red Army received 595 units of KB heavy tanks and 1225 units of T-34 medium tanks, as well as 3719 new types of aircraft: Yak-1, LaGG-3, MiG-3 fighters, Il-3 bombers 4 (DB-ZF), Pe-8 (TB-7), Pe-2, Il-2 attack aircraft.

Basically, we designed and produced the specified new, expensive and high-tech equipment in the period from the beginning of 1939 to the middle of 1941, that is, for the most part during the validity of the non-aggression treaty concluded in 1939 - the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact. During the 19 peaceful pre-war years, the USSR built 11.5 thousand large industrial enterprises. With the outbreak of the war, most of these enterprises began to work for the front, for victory. And before the war, the bulk of weapons were manufactured thanks to the construction of new plants and factories: blast furnaces and open-hearth furnaces for steel smelting, enterprises for the production of guns, aircraft, tanks, ships, submarines and other enterprises of the military-industrial complex.

It was the presence of a large number of weapons that allowed us to survive and win. For despite the huge losses of weapons in the initial period of the war, we still had a sufficient amount of weapons to resist during the retreat and for the offensive near Moscow. A short-term shortage of artillery, small arms, and automatic weapons was felt in certain sectors of the front, as well as a shortage of ammunition, due to the untimely appearance of artillery units in the right direction and violations in matters of supply, delivery of weapons and ammunition to the troops.

As a result of bloody battles and the retreat of the army, a large number of aircraft and especially tanks were lost. Many tanks were lost due to lack of fuel. Especially often, for this reason, tanks were abandoned when our troops left the encirclement. We lost planes both in battles and at airfields. It must also be said that in 1941 the German army did not have equipment similar to our heavy KB tanks, Il-2 armored attack aircraft and BM-13 (Katyusha) rocket artillery.

To be continued... The opinions expressed in the publications of Leonid Maslovsky are the opinions of the author and may not coincide with the opinions of the editors of the Zvezda TV channel website.

Author: Leonid Maslovsky

ODVO

2nd Mechanized Corps, 9th Army.
Corps Directorate Tiraspol, personnel 32396, or 90% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 25.

18th Mechanized Corps, 9th Army.
Corps Directorate Ackerman, personnel 26879, or 75% of the staff. As of June 22, available tanks: Table 26.

Consequently, the two mechanized corps of the OdVO have only 732 tanks. Which, given the secondary importance of the district, is not surprising.

In all mechanized corps of the border districts there are from 10,639 to 10,917 combat vehicles (although 2,232 tanks belonged to the 3rd and 4th categories). And this is only in mechanized corps, without taking into account other units and formations that were armed with tanks.

The terrible build-up of German tanks

Already in the summer of 1940, Hitler ordered the number of German tank divisions to be doubled. However, since production could be increased, but only slowly, they used a peculiar technique.

Anyone who plans something significant must prepare. But will alone will not create any weapons, let alone ten-ton tanks. And who would dare tell an unpredictable and unbalanced boss the unpleasant truth? Then they prefer to perform deceptive tricks.

On July 31, 1940, Adolf Hitler, counting on a campaign against the Soviet Union, ordered the German army to be strengthened from 120 to 180 divisions. Independent German tank divisions, especially important for the conduct of the war, should have even been doubled from 10 to 20. Nominally, a tank division at this time consisted of 218-328 tanks, divided into two tank and one motorized infantry regiment. In general, after the victorious end of the French campaign, the Wehrmacht had about 2,200 combat-ready combat vehicles.

Wehrmacht tank

German tank Pz.Kpfw.I Ausf.B on the streets of Paris, June 1940.

To double the number of tanks as ordered, a significant increase in production was required. Until the spring of 1941, with a monthly actual production volume of approximately 120 vehicles, no more than a thousand new tanks could be built. Hitler’s directive of December 18, 1940 on the necessary completion of preparations for an attack on the Soviet Union “before May 15, 1941” changed little.

Although the military department, being optimistic, on August 23, 1940, promised to deliver 1,500 tanks and 300 assault guns (armored self-propelled guns without movable turrets) by May 1. But it was unrealistic. Also, captured tanks were not a solution. While more than 400 tanks were used in the German tank divisions in France, there were not many suitable vehicles from captured French stocks.

Although some of them actually outperformed most German models in direct combat. But these tanks in no way corresponded to German control principles, they were slow, had too short a range, and the commander was also a gunner, so he could not concentrate on fighting in a unit that corresponded to German tactics.

One of the two regiments was formed

If just enough tanks were available for 20 regiments, but to equip the same number of divisions, only one possibility remained: from January 1, 1941, each panzer division no longer included two tank regiments and one motorized infantry regiment, but one tank regiment and two rifle.

The responsible planners of the Supreme Command of the Ground Forces (OKH) knew that in this way the fighting qualities of each unit were reduced, although not by half: the experience of the French campaign showed that the tank divisions at the forefront of the advancing troops were often not equipped with a sufficient number of riflemen. Therefore, they had to sometimes wait for the infantry to approach.

Tanks of World War II

A Question of Quantity: The number of tank production shows the characteristic limits of the Nazi war economy.

Image: Infografik Welt Online.

In the spring of 1941, when the new tank divisions were largely established, they nominally numbered 140 tanks each. But in addition to numbers, the models of tanks used were also important.

Before the French campaign, a quarter of German combat vehicles were Pz.I. These were light tracked vehicles weighing 5.5 tons and armed with only two machine guns. In principle, we were talking about training vehicles, the armor of which was vulnerable even to small arms.

Another third were also light tanks Pz.II weighing 9 tons with a 20-mm cannon. Approximately the same number of vehicles belonged to the newer medium tanks Pz. III and Pz. IV, equipped with 50 mm or 75 mm guns and a combat weight of 20 to 25 tons. The remaining cars were of Czechoslovak production.

This pieced together arsenal also says something about the state of the arms industry when the Nazi regime began the war. It was not the quality or quantity of tanks that led to a quick victory in the west, but their cohesive combat use in large formations. Since then, the tank was considered a symbol of the so-called "lightning war", which was also supposed to lead to success against the Soviet Union.

Already on August 20, 1940, Hitler demanded that the Pz.I and Pz tanks no longer be produced. II, but only Pz.III and Pz.IV. However, on the one hand, production is not so easy to rebuild, and on the other hand, one of the two modern models required four to five times more steel than the small Pz.I tank.

German tank

Wehrmacht tank Pz.Kpfw.III Ausf. D in Poland, September 1, 1939.

Photo: Wikimedia Commons, Bundesarchiv.

The newly structured tank divisions in the spring of 1941 numbered about 60 Pz. III and 48 Pz.IV tanks each, and in addition, about 25 Pz.II tanks and other tracked vehicles, for example, command and staff vehicles with fixed superstructures and gun models. But even despite the maximum increase in production, a sufficient number of Pz.III tanks could not be delivered; Therefore, they were replaced in some companies with Skoda tanks. Pz.I tanks were operated as special vehicles or tugs of ammunition for artillery.

In general, the Wehrmacht had almost 5,700 tanks by the reporting date of June 1, 1941, half of which were Pz.I. and Pz.II, as well as at least 572 Pz.IV tanks. For Operation Barbarossa, 3,648 of these vehicles were redeployed to the eastern border of the Third Reich; the rest were used in North Africa or the Balkans. Very few armored units were present in occupied France, as no further invasion was expected.

However, the Red Army already in June 1941 was equipped with almost a thousand modern T-34 medium tanks, which were at least equivalent to the Pz.IV. In addition, at least ten thousand other tracked vehicles were in combat readiness: from the light BT-7 tanks (comparable to the German Pz.II tanks) to the heavier KV-1, for which there were no analogues in the Wehrmacht.

Given this balance of forces, an attack on the USSR was an extremely risky and reckless undertaking. Even more surprising is that it nevertheless led to almost victory by the end of 1941.

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I will deliberately not take into account the losses of the Red Army tank army - since they exceeded the threshold of 10,000 for many reasons. Lack of balance, first of all, deliberately not delivered to the front.

Suffice it to say that most of these tanks were lost without...participation in hostilities.

But German losses were also great. And this despite the fact that the Red Army did not have a large number of anti-tank guns and the only means of fighting Wehrmacht tanks were Soviet tanks

Those Soviet tanks that our patriots say are “worthless”.

The leadership of the Red Army had no choice but to use their tanks against enemy tanks

GERMAN LOSSES IN THE FIRST TWO MONTHS

By September, the Wehrmacht had lost more than half of its tank armada. The winning divisions were missing many tanks

As of September 10, 1941, 62 Pz.38(t) tanks remained in service with the 7th German Tank Division, with irretrievable losses amounting to 59 vehicles. On the same date, the 8th Tank Division had 78 combat-ready Pz.38(t) (20 tanks were irretrievably lost).

In the 12th Panzer Division, 42 Pz.38(t) remained in service on August 26 (47 vehicles of this type were destroyed).

As of August 25, the 19th Tank had 57 serviceable Pz.38(t) in service (irretrievable losses of 21 tanks), and the 20th Tank had 52 (irretrievable losses of 37 tanks). It goes without saying that other types of combat vehicles also suffered losses.

These battles were fierce and often were not in favor of the Wehrmacht tanks

One of these battles is described in the report on the actions of the 29th Tank Regiment of the 12th Tank Division dated August 30, 1941:

“August 30 at about 10:10 a.m. The first battalion advanced with the task of taking a defensive position near the Popovka railway station, covering the right flank of the division. The battalion consisted of 2 Pz.II, 18 Pz.38(t) and 5 Pz.IV. The regiment commander sent forward reconnaissance, which reported that there was Russian infantry in the Popovka area.

As a result of the attack, the enemy, up to a battalion strong, holding positions east of the railway line, was driven back to Chernikovo with heavy losses.

At 12 noon, four enemy heavy tanks (52 tons) came out from the southern outskirts of Chernikovo and opened fire on the first battalion from a long distance. Then two more enemy tanks appeared 1 km northeast of the station and entered the battle. Our fire was ineffective.

The enemy managed to destroy one Pz.38(t) and one Pz.IV with their fire and retreated back to Chernikovo. Then the enemy tanks tried to attack again, but they were driven away by artillery fire, and they took cover between the houses in Chernikovo.

Our losses were: one killed, three wounded, the Pz.IV was completely destroyed, and the Pz.38(t) was heavily damaged.”

A typical case of the victory of Soviet tanks over German tanks

An indicative incident occurred in November 1941, when one T34 tank, under the command of Lieutenant Dmitry Lavrinenko, entered into battle with 18 German tanks, destroyed 6 enemy vehicles and safely escaped pursuit...

LOSSES OF THE RED ARMY AND WEHRMACHT NEAR DUBNO

The Red Army lost 80% of its tanks near Dubno—although the result of the battle is far from clear.

On June 23-29, a large counter tank battle took place in the area of ​​Lutsk, Brody, Rivne, and Dubno, as a result of which it was possible to slow down the enemy’s advance. It was decided to launch a counterattack against Kleist's 1st Panzer Group with six mechanized corps and some rifle units from the front. Mechanized corps were introduced into battle gradually, upon arrival at the site.

The first to enter the battle were the 22nd (Major General S.M. Kondrusev, from June 24, Major General V.S. Tamruchi), 4th and 15th (Major General I.I. Karpezo) mechanized corps.

Then the 9th (Major General K.K. Rokossovsky), 19th (Major General of Tank Forces N.V. Feklenko) and 8th (Lieutenant General Ryabyshev). The corps were battered even on the march. They completed a 200-400 km march under German air raids. On June 26, the 9th and 19th mechanized corps from the area of ​​Lutsk, Rivne and the 8th and 15th mechanized corps from the Brody area attacked the enemy tank group.

The 43rd Panzer Division of the Red Army entered into battle with the 11th Panzer Division of the Wehrmacht and emerged victorious.

The Ostiates of the 11th division retreated 25 km, however, the 43rd division had to retreat back to Rivne by the end of June 27.

The 11th Wehrmacht division was partially destroyed, dozens of crew members were captured

The most successful was the 8th Mechanized Corps, which managed to defeat German units in the area north of Brody, then on June 27, the corps defeated units of the 16th Panzer Division, captured Dubno and went to the rear of the 3rd Motorized Corps of the Wehrmacht .

The 13th German Tank Division was defeated in approximately the same way...

In the memoirs of N.K. Popel events unfolded like this:

“The Germans wavered and, under the cover of a Pz-IV platoon, took to their heels. They fled openly, helplessly, cowardly... Our KB shook the imagination of the Nazis..."

At this point the offensive stopped at the request of the command of the Southwestern Front

Its successes can be partly explained by the presence in some regiments of the new T-34 tank, which in many respects was superior to any German tank of that time.

As a result of this tank battle, the enemy was not defeated, but it was possible to gain time in order to withdraw troops, avoiding encirclement, and prepare defense lines on the approaches to Kiev.

CAUSE OF DEFEAT NEAR DUBNO

1. Lack of resources

Of great importance for the outcome of the battle was the fact that the Red Army tanks stopped due to lack of fuel.

This is exactly how the tank crews of the 12th and 34th tank divisions were destroyed... the tanks stopped and their crews entered into battle with the German infantry... almost all the tank crews died...

But 2 divisions are an entire mechanized corps!….it turns out that an entire mechanized corps was lost only because the tanks stopped due to lack of fuel….

The crews were destroyed, but the tanks remained intact... These are the features of the tank battle of Dubno.

ARMORED TRAIN AGAINST TANKS

The 3rd Panzer Group continued to advance deeper into Soviet territory. Through Rzhev, Kalinin and Klin, its tanks advanced on Moscow, covering it from the north. At the end of November 1941, units of the 56th Tank Corps (6th and 7th Tank and 14th Motorized Divisions), striking at a weak point in the defense of the Soviet troops - the junction between the 30th and 16th armies, reached Moscow-Volga channel.

The combat group under the command of Colonel Manteuffel (6th Infantry Regiment and 25th Tank Regiment) captured the bridge in Yakhroma on the night of November 28, secured a foothold on the right bank of the canal and began advancing towards Dmitrov, where army headquarters were located.

The commander of the 1st Shock Army, Lieutenant General V.I. Kuznetsov, threw armored train No. 73 of the NKVD troops to protect the railways against the breaking through German tanks. The armored train included an armored locomotive and two motorized armored cars D-2, armed with two 76-mm cannons each.

Having reached the bridge, the armored train opened fire. Three Pz.38(t) tanks immediately caught fire, the rest opened direct fire.

For more successful maneuvering and increasing the firing sector, the commander of the armored train, Captain F.D. Malyshev, ordered one motorized armored car to be uncoupled and taken to a parallel track. Now the German tankers had to fire at two targets.

They, however, managed to knock out an armored locomotive, and one motorized armored car was forced to retreat to Dmitrov station. After quick repairs, he returned to the battlefield, which continued until dark.

The Germans lost 12 tanks, 24 vehicles and at least 700 soldiers and officers in this battle. On November 29, a counterattack by the 123rd and 133rd separate tank battalions, the 29th and 44th rifle brigades, with artillery support, pushed the Germans back to the western bank of the canal and on November 30, having exhausted their offensive potential, went on the defensive.

As you can see, the Germans were always defeated - if only there was a desire

GENERAL SCHEDULE

With fuel available and in a direct collision with German tanks, the result was 2:1 in favor of the Red Army.

The Wehrmacht managed to win its greatest victory at Senno and Leppel...how could such a disaster happen?

But if you look at the name of the commander of the Polar Front - S. Timoshenko... then this explains a lot about what happened at Senno.

If the front was not commanded by Timoshenko, as a rule, the tank divisions of the Wehrmacht lost to the tank divisions of the Red Army.

CONCLUSION

By September, the Wehrmacht had lost 30% of its tank armada, another 23% went to repairs and was later returned to service.

Most of them were knocked out by Soviet tankers, who from the very first days of the war offered worthy resistance to the enemy.

By September 1941, T-34 and KV tanks had knocked out, according to various estimates, from 600 to 1000 German tanks; how many other Soviet tanks were knocked out is unknown.l

German tank aces knew how to fight, but they were the first to realize that the war was lost. And this realization came in the tragic year of 1941

Just imagine what kind of industrial monsters - Daimler-Benz, Henschel and MAN - developed and produced the basic German Pz. III and Pz. IV, but were never able to resist Mikhail Koshkin’s “thirty-four” ….