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Blumentrltt's reflections touched on a point that played a part almost as great as morale. For all the generals emphasized that the Russians' greatest asset was the way they could do without normal supplies. Manteuffel, who led many tank raids deep behind their front, gave the most vivid picture-"The advance of a Russian Army is something that Westerners can't imagine. Behind the tank spearheads rolls on a vast horde, largely mounted on horses. The soldier carries a sack on his back, with dry crusts of bread and raw vegetables collected on the march from the fields and villages. The horses eat the straw from the house roofs-they get very little else. The Russians are accustomed to carry on for as long as three weeks in this primitive way, when advancing. You can't stop them, like an ordinary army, by cutting their communications, for you rarely find any supply columns to strike."

(“The Generals Talk,” B. H. Liddel Hart, p. 226)

Philip S wrote:Blumentrltt's reflections touched on a point that played a part almost as great as morale. For all the generals emphasized that the Russians' greatest asset was the way they could do without normal supplies. Manteuffel, who led many tank raids deep behind their front, gave the most vivid picture-"The advance of a Russian Army is something that Westerners can't imagine. Behind the tank spearheads rolls on a vast horde, largely mounted on horses. The soldier carries a sack on his back, with dry crusts of bread and raw vegetables collected on the march from the fields and villages. The horses eat the straw from the house roofs-they get very little else. The Russians are accustomed to carry on for as long as three weeks in this primitive way, when advancing. You can't stop them, like an ordinary army, by cutting their communications, for you rarely find any supply columns to strike."

(“The Generals Talk,” B. H. Liddel Hart, p. 226)

Very interesting.

In analyzing what the German generals had to say in captivity, one U.S. Army commentator stated that the Germans came to view the Russians as a force of nature. Indeed, that was so much the case that the American commentator wanted to somewhat discount their comments, stating that the Germans came to believe that the Russians couldn't be compared to human beings at all, that they were more like wolves or other wild animals, and were unaffected by privation and the cold. They did wonder, however, if material advances inside the Soviet Union, which they acknowledged were occurring, would lessen this and cause them to loose these perceived attributes.

Anyhow, this is a great description of a Soviet Army on the march, and I've never seen it before. It does go a long ways towards explaining why an Army like Germany's, which after all was a highly organized European army, found itself increasingly on the loosing end with an army that was partly fully modern and partly rooted in the distant past.

Well, Westerners can hardly imagine how it really was, when Red Army conquered a territory. As it was usual for them to loot each and everything they could get into their hand. So they were not depending so much on their rear area support. Well, for the civilians in those areas it was a tragedy, not comparable to warfare between civilized nations.
Thats why German officers were so shocked... such a behaviour was unimaginable for a German soldier.
I think in the anglo-american world most ones still had not comprehend how Stalins Army functioned.

Horrido!

Nicole

Reiter wrote: Thats why German officers were so shocked... such a behaviour was unimaginable for a German soldier.

Sounds more like a situation of 'payback', in spades.

Unimaginable to whom, I wonder?

Initially many Russians welcomed the Germans as liberators. However their brutal Nazi policies turned them against the Germans and many Russians were anxious for revenge. Both sides were pretty horrible.

The Russians used horse mounted units in support of their armor:

“By the final stages of the war only the Soviet Union was still fielding mounted units in substantial numbers, some in combined mechanized and horse units. The advantage of this approach was that in exploitation mounted infantry could keep pace with advancing tanks. Other factors favouring the retention of mounted forces included the high quality of Russian Cossacks and other horse cavalry; and the relative lack of roads suitable for wheeled vehicles in many parts of the Eastern Front. Another consideration was that the logistic capacity required to support very large motorised forces exceeded that necessary for mounted troops.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalry#World_War_II

I believe there was an article on the Russian combined armor-cavalry tactics in a WWII issue of the "Cavalry Journal"

Philip S wrote:The Russians used horse mounted units in support of their armor:

“By the final stages of the war only the Soviet Union was still fielding mounted units in substantial numbers, some in combined mechanized and horse units. The advantage of this approach was that in exploitation mounted infantry could keep pace with advancing tanks. Other factors favouring the retention of mounted forces included the high quality of Russian Cossacks and other horse cavalry; and the relative lack of roads suitable for wheeled vehicles in many parts of the Eastern Front. Another consideration was that the logistic capacity required to support very large motorised forces exceeded that necessary for mounted troops.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cavalry#World_War_II

I believe there was an article on the Russian combined armor-cavalry tactics in a WWII issue of the "Cavalry Journal"

There is an article on that in the Cavalry Journal. If I recall it correctly, the article tends to suggest that the U.S. Army should follow the example, which was rather Quixotic given the date of publication. I think the Lone Sentry site might have that or some other articles of that period on Soviet Cavalry up on line.

I have to wonder about Manteuffels suggestion that most troops following a Soviet advance were mounted. That'd be a lot of mounted men. Granted, I know the Soviets deployed a fair number of mounted men, but most would be an obvious exaggeration.

It is more possible that Manteuffel was simply misstranslated. When he meant "mounted" he surely rather talked about mounted on trucks... as everybody knows Red Army was in 1944/45 well equiped with US-vehicles.

Horrido!

Nicole

Reiter wrote:It is more possible that Manteuffel was simply misstranslated. When he meant "mounted" he surely rather talked about mounted on trucks... as everybody knows Red Army was in 1944/45 well equiped with US-vehicles.

Horrido!

Nicole

I don't think Von Manteuffel meant trucks or was mistranslated. This quote is attributed to B. H. Hart who was able to interview quite a few German generals post war, and who developed a pretty cozy relationship with them. Frankly, they weren't above schmoozing him, and he was receptive to it. And he spoke very fluent English. At any rate, Hart quotes Von Manteuffel as saying "mounted on horse" and that the horses were fed the straw from thatched roofs. I'm unfamiliar with Russian rural architecture of any period, but I've seen a cow to that very thing, eat right from a straw roof, in South Korea so it's easily imaginable. In a lot of areas with that sort of roof they're frequently re-roofed, sometimes every year, so the roofs are in essence bad bails. Anyhow, what I suspect is that Von Manteuffel was making a large exaggeration in order to get his point across. He'd been a cavalryman himself, so he may have been attuned to both armor and cavalry and have somewhat seen it that way.

Two related links on the deployment of Russian cavalry in WWII:

http://www.quikmaneuvers.com/horse_cava ... _army.html

http://www.lonesentry.com/articles/cavalry/index.html

The russian Army was very the same as the German army in WW2 I think.
First line was Tanks and Trucks to make Blitzkrieg and the following Troops mounted, on foot and with horsedrawn transport.

The horses in the German army were fed with the things found on the way to,
I talked with soldiers, who were in Action in the Ardennes in 44/45 with Artillery Units. They did´t get food for the horses. They dig in the snow for some gras to give it to the animals.

This is how the transport was going on. And it worked until the end.

I think you'll find that by 1944, the Russians had developed operational spearheads formed of tank/mech units and horse cavalry. The bulk of their army was still foot infantry, but the German officers are talking about those deep-driving spearheads which were all mounted.

But remember that while the "Cossacks" didn't have a supply line, the tanks did! So their tether is the same as any mechanized force of that day...penetrations were limited to some 30-miles or so broken by a long pause to get the fuel up, and railroads repaired (the only way to get that much fuel forward...no "horse drawn fuel tankers" <g>).

What the Cossacks did was exploit those penetrations to twice that depth, but only as "light cavalry." But in a breakthrough,that is all you need to maintain a line-breaking penetration that caused the entire front to retreat to their next line. They also acted as the eyes and ears of their tank forces, and in dire situations could dismount as infantry too (but by this time, the Soviets had a lot of truck-borne infantry battalions following the tanks around, too).

The horse-mounted cavalry divisions increased the shock effect of the supply-tethered armor formations in the run across Poland and Eastern Germany. Niether one, alone, would be nearly as effective.

Clair

KY Hussar wrote:I think you'll find that by 1944, the Russians had developed operational spearheads formed of tank/mech units and horse cavalry. The bulk of their army was still foot infantry, but the German officers are talking about those deep-driving spearheads which were all mounted.

But remember that while the "Cossacks" didn't have a supply line, the tanks did! So their tether is the same as any mechanized force of that day...penetrations were limited to some 30-miles or so broken by a long pause to get the fuel up, and railroads repaired (the only way to get that much fuel forward...no "horse drawn fuel tankers" <g>).

Also, tanks were quite limited in terms of operational range by breakdown rates. I'm not familiar with the breakdown rate of Soviet armor, which was quite good. German armor had an abysmal breakdown rate which grew worse with the heavier late war tanks. This is often missed in conventional histories, but was always a major concern to the Wehrmacht itself. For example, by their own estimates, the Germans would shot their bolt by the relatively quickly in their 1944-45 Winter Ardennes Offensive and there was really no chance of their being able to really truly exploit it as is so often claimed in conventional histories of the Battle of the Bulge. The real thought was to throw the Allies way back, give them a bloody nose, and see what happened, not to throw the Allies back to the sea, which simply could not happen. Within a couple of weeks, best case scenario the Germans expected to have next to no armor operational. FWIW, American armor, which is so often castigated, was the most mechanically reliable of the war, which probably made more of a difference in terms of real combat than armor thickness or gun size.

KY Hussar wrote:What the Cossacks did was exploit those penetrations to twice that depth, but only as "light cavalry." But in a breakthrough,that is all you need to maintain a line-breaking penetration that caused the entire front to retreat to their next line. They also acted as the eyes and ears of their tank forces, and in dire situations could dismount as infantry too (but by this time, the Soviets had a lot of truck-borne infantry battalions following the tanks around, too).

The horse-mounted cavalry divisions increased the shock effect of the supply-tethered armor formations in the run across Poland and Eastern Germany. Niether one, alone, would be nearly as effective.

Clair

We have to be careful, however, in using the term "Cossack" here. Red Army Cossack units weren't really made up of Cossacks after the very early stages of the war.

It's sort of a complicated story, but the Red Army had aggressively attempted to recruit Cossacks, the ethnic group, during the Civil War, and was able to recruit an appreciable number. Having said that, Cossacks mostly threw in with the Whites. Post Civil War they suffered as a group accordingly. At the start of WWII, there were some Soviet cavalry units, I think, that had large numbers of Cossacks in them, but a distressing number of ethnic Cossacks went over to the Germans early in the war, and the Germans in turn exploited that by raising a "Cossack Corps" (which was nowhere near "corps" level in strength), and otherwise using Cossacks. This in turn caused the Red Army to re-institute "Cossack" formations, to include traditional elements of clothing and the like, but they recruited from anybody able and willing to serve as cavalry, so most of the men in Red Army Cossack units weren't actually Cossacks.

Most Soviet cavalry during World War Two were not organized as Cossack units at all, but were in Guards formations. The Soviet Army had many Guards units. Indeed, they would have had more of them, but they had to disband some due to horse shortages. As you note, however, they effectively incorporated horse cavalry and armor, making their armored units truly unique. I think they were the only army in World War Two that blended armor and cavalry. Their example served as a last hope for US traditional minded cavalrymen, who sort of envisioned something like their example in the U.S. Army, which was obviously a forlorn hope.

Please, take a look on organisation and formation of XV. SS-Kosaken-Kavallerie-Korps and tell me where it did not have had Corps-strenght?
And for the blend of armour and horses, just take a look on the organisation of Heer-Kavallerie-Division in late war...

Horrido!

Nicole

Pat Holscher wrote: Also, tanks were quite limited in terms of operational range by breakdown rates. I'm not familiar with the breakdown rate of Soviet armor, which was quite good. German armor had an abysmal breakdown rate which grew worse with the heavier late war tanks. This is often missed in conventional histories, but was always a major concern to the Wehrmacht itself. For example, by their own estimates, the Germans would shot their bolt by the relatively quickly in their 1944-45 Winter Ardennes Offensive and there was really no chance of their being able to really truly exploit it as is so often claimed in conventional histories of the Battle of the Bulge. The real thought was to throw the Allies way back, give them a bloody nose, and see what happened, not to throw the Allies back to the sea, which simply could not happen. Within a couple of weeks, best case scenario the Germans expected to have next to no armor operational. FWIW, American armor, which is so often castigated, was the most mechanically reliable of the war, which probably made more of a difference in terms of real combat than armor thickness or gun size.

Pat,

The breakdown rate of Soviet tanks was lower with every year with coming of experience of exploitation and manufacturing.
And yes, they were good. As the American.

Pat Holscher wrote:We have to be careful, however, in using the term "Cossack" here. Red Army Cossack units weren't really made up of Cossacks after the very early stages of the war.

It's sort of a complicated story, but the Red Army had aggressively attempted to recruit Cossacks, the ethnic group, during the Civil War, and was able to recruit an appreciable number. Having said that, Cossacks mostly threw in with the Whites. Post Civil War they suffered as a group accordingly. At the start of WWII, there were some Soviet cavalry units, I think, that had large numbers of Cossacks in them, but a distressing number of ethnic Cossacks went over to the Germans early in the war, and the Germans in turn exploited that by raising a "Cossack Corps" (which was nowhere near "corps" level in strength), and otherwise using Cossacks. This in turn caused the Red Army to re-institute "Cossack" formations, to include traditional elements of clothing and the like, but they recruited from anybody able and willing to serve as cavalry, so most of the men in Red Army Cossack units weren't actually Cossacks.

Most Soviet cavalry during World War Two were not organized as Cossack units at all, but were in Guards formations. The Soviet Army had many Guards units. Indeed, they would have had more of them, but they had to disband some due to horse shortages. As you note, however, they effectively incorporated horse cavalry and armor, making their armored units truly unique. I think they were the only army in World War Two that blended armor and cavalry. Their example served as a last hope for US traditional minded cavalrymen, who sort of envisioned something like their example in the U.S. Army, which was obviously a forlorn hope.

Yeah, the story is not so common. In the Civil War many of Cossaks have served with the Whites and only a few went with the Reds. My great grandfather was from among them.
After the CW is over the Soviet government begin the politics of "uncossacking" (rackazachivanie) for their role in the formation of White's forces. And that - that was a pretty complicate and bloody story. But they do not disappear as the ethnic and cultural group, only become more decentralized and stripped of every privileges.
Organization of Cossack units (divisions, corps - not only cavalry but also the rifles) begin at Marshal Voroshilov's order in 1936, partly they were territorial units (local - like camped only at Kuban and Don areas) partly regular. In 1936 them have been return the privilege to wear distinctive uniform.
It's important to say that not every Red Army cavalry unit consisted of Cossacks. Cossacks often prefer to serve in their own formations or another Caucasus volunteer units.

With the beginning of war the number of soviet cav divisions was increased from 13 in early 1941 to 82 in the end of the year. The reason is simple - we don't have many trucks or half-tracks to transport vast amounts of infantry.
And no, we don't have SO many Guards formations.
The Guards status eventually given to units which distinguish themselves. If not in the WW2 (Great Patriotic War) then in Civil War. There was not only the Guards divisions - even the corps. Sometimes these units have an additional rewards that were reflected in their's designation (Red flagged, Order of Lenin etc.). But the unit with such designation not necessarily had status of the Guards.

The Red Army begin reorganization of it's cavalry in 1943 with Marshal Budyonny in head of this. As lend lease had going in full strength many of cavalry units become horse-mechanized, just like the US cavalry in the 30's and beginning of WW2.
And to add - the Guards status was good for morale. They've become like an elite of branch of Army. That was like the status of King's or Queen's Own.

protze wrote:The russian Army was very the same as the German army in WW2 I think.
First line was Tanks and Trucks to make Blitzkrieg and the following Troops mounted, on foot and with horsedrawn transport.

The horses in the German army were fed with the things found on the way to,
I talked with soldiers, who were in Action in the Ardennes in 44/45 with Artillery Units. They did´t get food for the horses. They dig in the snow for some gras to give it to the animals.

This is how the transport was going on. And it worked until the end.

Yes, Christian they were pretty similar in common, although the Wehrmacht had a little more half-tracks and trucks.
In Red Army horses were also often used in the Artillery units due to lack of roads and vehicles.

Reiter wrote:Please, take a look on organisation and formation of XV. SS-Kosaken-Kavallerie-Korps and tell me where it did not have had Corps-strenght?

Samuel J. Newland, who was a professor at the US. Army's War College, maintained in his book regarding them that the "Corps" designation was mostly propagandistic upon the unit being transferred from the Heer to the SS, although I'd have to dig my copy up to see why he maintained that. He stated that they were not Corps level in strength. Corps level , of course, would have put them up over 100,000 men, assuming full strength.

The unit was basically organized around two units of division strength, each of which had two brigades, which would make it a corps in strength. The immediate post war U.S. Army analysis of them granted that they were a corps, but that they were very weak in supporting arms. That probably makes sense, however, given the nature of the unit. The Army's contemporary report held that the 1st division of two brigades was split later into two divisions, which I think is in error, as it seems to me that what actually occurred is that the late corps absorbed a variety of Cossack formations that were otherwise in German service but which had not

In any event, numbers of Cossacks in the unit are actually difficult to determine, but at least some figures estimate that there were half that many men serving in this unit, i.e., 50,000, which would have really put them at division size overall, but organized like a corps, but lacking in heavy supporting arms. If the number of men was actually 50,000 or so, we could assume that they were organizationally a corps, but a very light one. Or we could assume that the corps designation was for some other purpose. It's clear that the number of ethnic Cossacks who were overall in German service were more than ample to supple a corps, probably two, but they were never all unified in a single unit, and it would not have made sense to do so. Having said that, they were not really ever used in the manner they anticipated either, and provide an odd example of a people who were fighting a war within a war, and who really had no chance of achieving their aims no matter what.

Reiter wrote:And for the blend of armour and horses, just take a look on the organisation of Heer-Kavallerie-Division in late war...

The German army undoubtedly continued to use cavalry, and reestablished it as a formal organization after temporarily abolishing it, but the Soviet example is really unique. The Soviets were incorporating large numbers of mounted men into their armored formations. The German example incorporated cavalry, to be sure, but in a manner more analogous to the late traditional role. It would have probably been impossible for the Germans to replicate the Soviet example, had they wanted to, as the number of horses required for it would have been beyond their ability to acquire. For that matter, the horse requirement of the Soviet Army was so vast that it had to disestablish some Guard cavalry divisions as it lacked the horsepower to keep them all supplied.

The 1935-1945 examples of what was going on in this respect are quite interesting. The German Army kept cavalry up until 1940 and then seemed to assume that as an independent formation mechanization made it obsolete, only to be forced to reintroduce it due to conditions in the East. Of course, the German Army kept mounted formations within their divisions for other purposes, so they never really completely eliminated cavalry at any point. The Soviets went into the war with a lot of cavalry, but conditions caused it to blend its cavalry and armor in a fairly effective way. The US tried very early on to mechanize it's own cavalry with the introduction of Horse Mechanized Cavalry, but the experiment failed and no Horse Mech unit was ever actually deployed in combat. Of course, horse transportation concerns kept conventional US cavalry from being deployed overseas to the ETO due to the concerns about transporting horses by ship in 1943.

Alexander wrote: The breakdown rate of Soviet tanks was lower with every year with coming of experience of exploitation and manufacturing.
And yes, they were good. As the American.

In terms of combat effectiveness, they were better than any Western allies tanks until at least very late war. U.S. tanks that matched what the Soviet Army had did not really appear until late 1945 and saw little use in World War Two.

Alexander wrote: Yes, Christian they were pretty similar in common, although the Wehrmacht had a little more half-tracks and trucks.
In Red Army horse were also often used in the Artillery units due to lack of roads and vehicles.

Also very true of the German army, where artillery was very often horse drawn. I suspect that by the later stages of the war quite a bit more Soviet artillery was truck towed than in the German army, which by 1944 - 45 was being de-mechanized due to material attrition. Of course, the Germans always used a lot of horse drawn artillery during the war.

Probably only the US and British armies used all vehicle towed artillery for the most part in WWII, if the entire course of the war is considered.

Alexander wrote:The Red Army begin reorganization of it's cavalry in 1943 with Marshal Budyonny in head of this. As lend lease had going in full strength many of cavalry units become horse-mechanized, just like the US cavalry in the 30's and beginning of WW2.

That's interesting. I wouldn't really have equated Soviet efforts in this period with U.S. Horse Mech, but then I'm not really very familiar with the organization or structure of Soviet cavalry. Interesting topic.