In Defense of the Red Army

[Raellus]

I'm currently finishing up Max Hastings' single-volume history of WWII, Inferno (it was published first in the UK under a different title) and, in his analysis of the war, he brings up a couple of points about the WWII Red Army that I would like to reiterate here.

WWII-era Soviet troops, many of them illiterate peasants, were able to withstand sustained hardships that most troops from the Western Allies (henceforth WA) did not experience often or for long periods of time. Whereas WA troops often had the "luxury" of stopping and calling in massive artillery barrages and airstrikes when they met strong enemy resistance, Soviet troops were often forced to attack again and again without the benefit of strong supporting fires. Wehrmacht troops who fought on both fronts often noted this contrast. They generally stood in awe of WA fire support while simultaneously being fairly contemptuous of WA reliance on said. On the other hand, Wehrmacht troops learned to cede a grudging respect for the Red Army soldier who they considered simple-minded but incredibly tough and determined. In other words, the Red Army often did more with less than the WA.

Soviet units, although well supplied with lend-lease trucks, were able to live off the land much better than WA or even Wermacht units, reducing their need for the long logistical chains that WA armies could not operate without. One of these days I'll track down the stats that back this up, but the Red Army in WWII was able to field and supply a larger combat force than the WA with fewer supporting units and trucks. Even so, the Red Army during Operation Bagration was able to advance over 450 miles along a broad front in a matter of a few weeks before logistical difficulties slowed them to a halt.

I know that the Red Army of the late Cold War was not the same force as that fielded in '43-45, and that the WA, later NATO, armies also changed (mostly for the better), but it's hard to contend that young men raised during consumer goods shortages in the authoritarian U.S.S.R. were not tougher, in many ways, than those young men raised in the West on Pac-Man, MTV, and Big Macs (insert your prefered equivalent Western cultural equivalents here).

Also, the Red Army's leadership and operational doctrine steadily improved over the course of the Great Patriotic War. I know that some detractors here have pointed out as proof of their inherent inferiority to the West how poorly led, and chained to outdated military dogma, the Soviet Army was in Afghanistan and, later, as the Russian Federation, in Chechnya. I contend that the Red Army of the Twilight War, much like that of WWII, would have identified and elevated talented generals and weeded out the incompetent ones as the war progressed. Some of this would have happened during the China campaign. More would occur as NATO pushed the Soviets east towards their own border. In the case of the latter, you can be sure the entire Soviet economy, monolithic as it may have been, would have been operating at full capacity in support of the war.

All of this suggests to me that, after the tech advantages of the West were rendered null by time and attrition, the Soviets would be in a better condition/position to continue the war on a stronger footing than NATO would.

There's one more point that I would like to make based on a recent viewing of Soviet War Scare 1983 (a History Channel documentary on Able Archer and the near nuclear war that occured as a result), and that is, as a result of their historical collective experience, the Cold War Soviets had an almost atavistic fear of invasion and war. If attacked, I have no doubt that they would have fought with a patriotic furor that would have surprised the West. In the v1.0 timeline, it is the German Army who strikes first (again!).