In the post-war decades, Soviet cinema created many films dedicated to the events of the Great Patriotic War. Most of them in one way or another touched on the theme of the tragedy of the summer of 1941. Episodes in which small groups of Red Army soldiers, armed with one rifle for several people, confront formidable terrible bulks (their role was played by T-54s sheathed with plywood or other modern vehicles) were very common in films. Without questioning the valor of the Red Army soldiers who crushed the Nazi war machine, it is worth analyzing some of the statistical data available to the modern reader interested in history. It is enough to compare the staffing of the tank division of the Soviet Army and the Wehrmacht to make sure that the fascist military power was somewhat exaggerated by the movie screen artists. With our qualitative superiority, there was also a quantitative advantage, which was especially pronounced in the second half of the war.
Questions to be answered
Wehrmacht tank divisions rushed to Moscow, they were heldfamous Panfilovites or unknown companies, and sometimes squads. Why did it happen that the country in which industrialization was carried out, which had a cyclopean industrial and defense potential, lost a significant part of its territory and millions of citizens taken prisoner, maimed and killed in the first six months of the war? Perhaps the Germans had some monstrous tanks? Or was the organizational structure of their mechanized military units superior to the Soviet one? This question worries our fellow citizens for three post-war generations. How did the fascist German tank division differ from ours?
The structure of the Soviet armored forces in 1939-1940
Until June 1939, the Red Army had four tank corps. After Deputy People's Commissar of Defense E. A. Kulik headed the commission that checked the activities of the General Staff, the reorganization of the system of subordination of this type of troops began. One can only guess about the reasons for the change in the corps structure, but the result was the creation of 42 tank brigades, which, accordingly, had fewer pieces of equipment. Most likely, the goal of the reforms was the possible implementation of the updated military doctrine, which provides for the conduct of deep penetrating strategic operations of an offensive nature. Nevertheless, by the end of the year, on the direct instructions of I. V. Stalin, this concept was revised. Instead of brigades, not the previous tank, but mechanized corps were formed. Six months later, in June 1940, their number reached nine. The composition of each according to the regularthe schedule included 2 tank and 1 motorized divisions. Tank, in turn, consisted of regiments, motorized rifle, artillery and two directly tank. Thus, the mechanized corps became a formidable force. It had an armored fist (more than a thousand formidable machines) and a huge force of artillery and infantry support with all the necessary infrastructure to keep the gigantic mechanism alive.
Pre-war plans
The Soviet tank division of the pre-war period was armed with 375 vehicles. Simply multiplying this figure by 9 (the number of mechanized corps) and then by 2 (the number of divisions in the corps) gives the result - 6750 armored vehicles. But that is not all. In the same year, 1940, two separate divisions were formed, also tank divisions. Then events began to develop with uncontrollable swiftness. Exactly four months before the attack of Nazi Germany, the General Staff of the Red Army decided to create another two dozen mechanized corps. The Soviet command did not have time to fully implement this plan, but the process began. This is evidenced by the number 17 of the corps, which received the number 4 in 1943. The tank Kantemirovskaya division became the successor to the military glory of this large military unit immediately after the Victory.
The reality of Stalin's plans
29 mechanized corps, two divisions each, plus two more separate ones. A total of 61. In each, according to the staffing table, there are 375 units, in total 28 thousand 375 tanks. This is the plan. But in fact? Maybe these figures are just for paper and Stalin was just dreaminglooking at them and smoking his famous pipe?
As of February 1941, the Red Army, consisting of nine mechanized corps, had almost 14,690 tanks. In 1941, the Soviet defense industry produced 6,590 vehicles. The totality of these figures, of course, is less than the required for 29 corps (and this is 61 tank divisions) 28,375 units, but the general trend suggests that the plan was generally carried out. The war began, and objectively, not all tractor factories could withstand full productivity. It took time to carry out a hasty evacuation, and the Leningrad "Kirovets" generally ended up in a blockade. And still continued to work. Another tractor-tank giant, KhTZ, remained in Nazi-occupied Kharkov.
Germany before the war
Panzerwaffen troops at the time of the invasion of the USSR had tanks in the amount of 5639 units. There were no heavy ones among them, T-I, included in this number (there were 877 of them), can be attributed, rather, to wedges. Since Germany was also at war on other fronts, and Hitler needed to ensure the presence of his troops in Western Europe, he sent not all of his armored vehicles against the Soviet Union, but most of it, in the amount of about 3330 vehicles. In addition to the mentioned T-I, the Nazis had Czech tanks (772 units) with extremely low combat characteristics. Before the war, all equipment was transferred to the four tank groups being created. Such a scheme of organization justified itself during the aggression in Europe, but in the USSR it turned out to be ineffective. Instead of groups, the Germans soonorganized armies, each of which had 2-3 corps. The tank divisions of the Wehrmacht were armed in 1941 with approximately 160 armored vehicles each. It should be noted that before the attack on the USSR, their number was doubled, without increasing the total fleet, which led to a decrease in the composition of each of them.
1942. Panzergrenadier regiments of tank divisions
If in June-September 1941 the German units were rapidly advancing deep into Soviet territory, then by autumn the offensive had slowed down. The initial success, expressed in the encirclement of protruding sections of the border, which became a front on June 22, the destruction and capture of huge stocks of material resources of the Red Army, the capture of a large number of soldiers and professional commanders, eventually began to exhaust its potential. By 1942, the regular number of vehicles was increased to two hundred, but due to heavy losses, not every division could support it. The tank armada of the Wehrmacht was losing more than it could get as a replenishment. The regiments began to be renamed panzergrenadier (there were usually two of them), which to a greater extent reflected their composition. The infantry component began to prevail.
1943 structural transformation
So, the German division (tank) in 1943 consisted of two panzergrenadier regiments. It was assumed that each battalion should have five companies (4 rifle and 1 sapper), but in practice they managed with four. By the summer the situation worsened, the entire tank regiment, which was part of the division (one) often consisted ofone battalion of Pz Kpfw IV tanks, although by this time the Panthers Pz Kpfw V appeared in service, which could already be attributed to the class of medium tanks. New equipment hastily arrived at the front from Germany unrolled, and often failed. This happened in the midst of preparations for Operation Citadel, that is, the famous Battle of Kursk. In 1944, the Germans had 4 tank armies on the Eastern Front. The tank division, as the main tactical unit, had a different quantitative technical content, from 149 to 200 vehicles. In the same year, tank armies actually ceased to be such, and they began to be reorganized into ordinary ones.
SS divisions and separate battalions
The transformations and reorganizations that took place in the Panzerwaffen were forced. The material part suffered from combat losses, went out of order, and the industry of the Third Reich, which experienced a constant shortage of resources, did not have time to make up for the loss. Special battalions were formed from new types of heavy vehicles (Jagdpanther, Jagdtigr, Ferdinand self-propelled guns and King Tiger tanks), they, as a rule, were not included in tank divisions. The SS Panzer Divisions, which were considered elite, underwent practically no transformations. There were seven of them:
- "Adolf Hitler" (No. 1).
- "Das Reich" (No. 2).
- Dead Head (No. 3).
- "Viking" (No. 5).
- Hohenstaufen (No. 9).
- Frundsberg (No. 10).
- Hitler Youth (No. 12).
Separate SS battalions and panzer divisionsused by the German General Staff as special reserves sent to the most dangerous sectors of the fronts both in the East and in the West.
Soviet tank division
Twentieth century warfare was characterized by resource base conflicts. Despite the impressive successes of the Wehrmacht in 1941-1942, German military experts, already three months after the attack on the USSR, for the most part understood that victory was becoming impossible, and hopes for it were futile. Blitzkrieg did not work in the USSR. The industry, which survived the large-scale evacuation, started working at full capacity, providing the front with a huge amount of military equipment of excellent quality. There was no need to reduce the staffing of the formations of the Soviet Army.
Guards tank divisions (and there were practically no others, this honorary title was awarded to all combat units leaving for the front in advance) were completed from 1943 with a regular number of pieces of equipment. Many of them were formed on the basis of reserves. An example is the 32nd Red Banner Poltava Tank Division, created on the basis of the 1st Corps of the Airborne Forces at the end of 1942 and initially received No. 9. In addition to regular tank regiments, it included 4 more (three rifle, one artillery), and also an anti-tank battalion, a sapper battalion, communications, reconnaissance and chemical defense companies.
