Thread by @LaurentFranckx

Time for another thread. Why did the USSR lose 25 million people during the 2nd World War?
To see why this is an important question, consider that Germany lost around 7 million people, the US around 400 000, the United Kingdom around 450 000 thousands & Japan around 3 milllion.

China lost between 15 and 20 million people, but for them the war already started in 1937.
Note that the Sowiet Union did not suffer the highest per capita losses: those were higher in Poland, where around 17% of the pre-war population died en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War…

In short, I think the people in the Sowiet Union were the unfortnate victims of two being at the crosspoints between two totalitarian regimes,

one who had the deliberate intention of committing genoice, the other who combined a total indifference regarding the suffering of individuals with utmost incompetence.
Let me elaborate on all this.

First, on the issue of genocide. We all know (or should know) the story of the Shoa – what is less generally known is that Nazi Germany had, right from the start, the intention to commit an even more colossal mass murder in the territories of the Sowiet Union.

The basic premise of the "hunger plan" was Germany did not have the resources to feed itself. Rather than looking for ways to improve the productrivity of German agriculture, German agronomists came up with the idea of appropriating the fertile grounds of the Ukraine

The logical implication of this reasoning would be that the local population would be left the starve. The "master mind" behin this plan was Herbert Backe

So, when the Nazis and their allies invaded the Sowiet Union in June 1941, the idea was to cut off all the cities from their agricultural hinterland, and let the populuation of the cities starve to death.
Now, let's be clear about one thing: this was not just an SS thing.

The Wehrmacht was totally complicit in this. For instance, people have often wondered why the Germans didn't take Leningrad when they had the opportunity to do it.

The answer is: because they thought it was simpler to let the city starve to death under Sowiet administration. Why have to cope with all the bother when someone else can do it for you?

The implementation also included letting the prisoners of war starve to death. It is estimated that about a third of the Red Army soldiers who died during the war, died in captivity rather than on the battlefield.

Although the plan did result in the deaths of millions of people, if failed utlimately, because the Germans simply did not have the resources to implement it: people in the cities did succeed in setting up black markets with the countryside, and no repression could end this.

Actually, if you want to know more about it this, I recommend the wondeful "wages of destruction" by @adam_tooze . Or you can have a look at the Wikipedia page
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hunger_Pl…

@adam_tooze It's important to let all this sink in. A lot of the people know about the infamous "commissar order", which required the Germands to kill all political commissioners of the Red Army. Although this was a horrible war crime, it was actually peanuts compared to the "grand design".

@adam_tooze Also, most of use are familiar with the stories of the civilian population being massacred in the fight against Partizans. But the reality is that the crimes against the civilian population of the Sowiet Union preceeded the partizan action.

@adam_tooze The mass killings of civilians in the Sowiet Union were not the unfortenate side effect of a war that had turned out to be very vicious. Its was always the plan itself.
Time for a short break and we will be back with the Sowiet side of the coin.

@adam_tooze Let us start from a rather startling fact: when the Germans launched Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army had 303 divisions and 22 brigades: a total of almost 5 million troops, almost 3 of which were stationed in the western military districts.

Given that the Germans threw around 3 million men in the battle, this means that the fight was started with almost equal forces.
Nevertheless, the first months of the war were a complete disaster for the Red Army.

To give just a few key figures: in the Białystok–Minsk pocket, the Red Army lost around 400 000 men; in the Smolensk pocket, another 300 000 men; in the Kiev pocket, a staggering 600 000; in the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets, another 600 000. All this by mid-october 1941.

So what had happened?
The key to understanding the Red Army's dismal performance is the political system in which it had to operate.

Born during the civil war following the October Revolution, the Red Army had rapidly modernized in the 1920s and the 1930s, often in secret collaboration with the Reichswehr of the Weimar Republic.

But then, in the second half of the 1930s, Stalin deciced to "purge" the Red Army. 3 of the 5 marschals of the Sowiet Union were executed, besides 14 of the 16 army commanders, all 8 admirals, 60 of the 67 army corps commanders, 136 of the 199 division commanders

All in all, 35 000 officers were executed.
The direct cost of these actions was of course the annihilation of tonloads of precious experience and professional competence as

capable professional soldiers were replaced by loyalists such as Boudjonni and Timoshenko, who in normal armies would never have been promoted beyond the rank of captain.
But there was another cost: a general athmosphere of paranoia,

especially as a parallel hierarchy was created of political commissioners, who had no professional competence whatsoever, but would constantly control every action taken by the military hierarchy.

It may surprise some people, but, usually one does not perform very well if one constantly wonders whether his actions will result in him getting shot.

The disastrous consequences of the purges became clear when the Sowiet Union invaded Finland in the winter of 1939-40, and suffered humilatiating defeats at the hand of a small but extremely well organised and motivated ennemy.

At least, the painful campaign in Finland did result in some critical self-examination and it was decided to thoroughly reform the army. The T-34 tank, winter camouflage and equipment, the rehabilation of some officers: all these were lessons learned from the campaign.

But it was too little, too late. The Red Army was still in the middle of its reforms when Barbarossa was launched. Which leads us to the next question: why was the Soviet Union caught by surprise?

There is something astonishing about the weeks preceeding the German invasion: almost literally everybody knew it was upcoming. The concentration of huge German armies close to the Russian border was widely known; it was even discussed on the front page of the New York Times.

But for some reason historians will debate for centuries to come, Stalin decided to just ignore all the information, and pretend nothing was going on.

Worse than that, Staling even gave explicit orders not to react against violations of the Sowiet air space by German planes, lest this would lead to an escalation

As a result, the Red Army did not react when the Luftwaffe started its surprise attack, in the first day of Barbarossa, the Sowiets lost no less than 1500 planes, 1200 of which were simply destroyed in the ground.

In the first days after the beginning of the offensive, the Red Army was completely paralysed. It took Stalin 10 days to recover from the schock he got from the "betrayal" by his supposed ally.

In the absence of any meaningful order by the top, it is not surprising that a military hierrachy that had learned to survive by not taking any initiative that may have looked suspect, remained extremely passive.

Although indvidual Soviet soldiers often showed an incredible courage in battle, coordination between unit commanders was almost non-existent. As discussed above, by the 10th of July, this already led to the first mass capitulation of the war, in the Minsk pocket.

Writing a complete history of the war on the Eastern Front would sligthly exceed the scope of a Twitter thread, so I will not discuss in detail the operations.

While the Red Army was suffering defeat after defeat, there was a clear realisation that, above all, the Germans needed to be slowed down lest they would reached Moscow before the winter.

And the Red Army was literally willing to sacrifice any number of soldiers to reach that goal – witness the Kiev pocket.

If you are interested in more details, I would recommend "Leningrad" by Anna Reid, where she describes in vivid detail how students with no miltary training whatsoever, would be sent to the front, without equipment or armament.

They would literally learn how to use the guns while under ennemy fire. You may not be surprised that this approach led to high casualties.

Actually, this would be one of the big constants of the war: a tank crew, for instance, would get just 78 hours of training before being sent to battle. To give a point of reference for people with no military background:

just getting my driving's license for the Leopard Tank in 1988 took three weeks – and that's just the technical aspects of driving, and did not include tactical training.

Anyway, when looking at the results, this approach worked: after the collapse at the Red Army in the Vyazma and Bryansk pockets, the Russian fal set in, and, together with the rains, Barbarossa ground to a halt in the mud.

The Wehrmacht lost precious time while Stalin could send in fresh troops from Siberia, as his spies in Tokyo had assured him that the Japanese would not attach the Sowiet Union.
The mud was followed by the winter.

We all have seen the images of German soldiers freezing to death because they lacked proper winter clothes (like their unfortuneae Sowiet colleagues in Finland two winters earlier) and the tanks and planes immobilised because their engines couldn't operate.

This, combined with the arrival of well trained and equipped Siberian troops, saved the day for the USSR.
In december 1941, the Red Army was finally able to start a large scale counterfoffensive

The pink surface on these maps show the territories taken back by the Red Army in that period, and show clearly how the initial successes seriously threatened the Germany Central Army Group. And still the counterfoffensive ended it failure. Again, why?

Once again, the responsability of Stalin is key. When Stalin got the first signals that the German army could well collapse under the Sowiet attacks, he decided to launch a general counteroffensive over the whole front line from Leningrad to the Sea of Azow.

For a Red Army that had barely survived the first six months of the war, this was clearly asked too much. And it would have some long term consequences.

For instance, in January 1942, an operation was launched to break the siege of Leningrad. General Vlasov's 2nd Army was able to break through the German lines, but the follow up forces were less succesful.

Vlasov asked the permission to retreat, but this was not granted. Finally, his army was cut off, and destroyed. To add to the gore: in the winter, the army had progressed through a frozen swamp.

One does not even want to imagine what happened when the thaw set in, and all the heavy equipment sank to the bottom of the marches.

Anyway, Vlassov was so disgusted by Stalin's refusal to allow a retreat (and the ensuing massacre of his troops) that he switched sides after his surrender to the Germans (he was hanged after the war for treason, although he would argue that Stalin had been the real traitor).

Although it became clear very early in the spring of 1942 that the Red Army was overreaching itself, Stalin insisted in a continuation of the offensive in the region of Kharkov, under the command of his loyalist Timochenko (remember, the marschal who should have stayed captain).

Although it became clear very early in the spring of 1942 that the Red Army was overreaching itself, Stalin insisted in a continuation of the offensive in the region of Kharkov, under the command of his loyalist Timochenko (remember, the marschal who should have stayed captain).

So, by June 1942, the Red Army had wasted its window of opportunity – it had not only lost its offensive capacity, but was again vulnerable for a Wehrmacht that had recovered from its initial defeat. But, this time, someting was about to change.

After the disastrous outcome of the Second Batte of Kharkov, Stalin finally accepted to stop micromanaging the war and left the operational command to the professionals.

And, when the Germans set in their large summer offensive of 1942, the professional finally decided to exploit the infinte space of the Russian steppes to avoid battle until the Red Army had licked its wounds.

Enough books have been written on the campaign that would eventually lead to the destruction of the 6th army at Stalingrad. What I would like to point out here is that, although Stalingrad was a major defeat for the Wehrmacht, it also came at an extremely high cost to the USSR.

Around half a million Soviet citizens died in the battle – more than Americans did during the whole war, all theatres combined.

And this was largely the result of deliberate decisions, such as not evacuating civilians (under the assumption that soldiers would fight less hard for an empty city) or to use the city as a bait for the Germans.

Some of the tactics used by the Red Army leaders (sending untrained soldiers to battle, who knew that their own machine gunners would should them in case of retreat) were ruthless, to say the least

But, in a context where saving time was key, and where there was an almost infinite reservoir of human lives (and no public opinion to protest), this was a rather rational approach.

After the surrender of the 6th Army, thjough, the Red Army took up its bad habit once again of overreaching itself.

In its ambitious push to destroy alll German forces south of Kursk, it overexposed itself and a brilliant German counteroffensive once again pushed the Red Army into chaotic route, that was only ended thanks to the spring rains (and mud).

The real turning point of the war was the Battle of the Kursk saliant in July 1943. By then, the Sowiet industry was operating at full capacity & producing massive amounts of T-34 tanks. It had survived the critcial period & from now on the balance of power would be in its favor.

But, although the Germans were in almost permament retreat modes from August 1943, the Red Army proved time over time incapable of exploiting its newly found numeric superiority.

It was only during the summer campaign of 1944 (Operation Bagration) that the Red Army was finally able to inflict a clear, total defeat on the Wehrmacht with the destruction of Heeresgruppe Mitte .

Not incidentally, this was after the Luftwaffe had to spread its close air support operations over two fronts as the result of the Battle of Normandy.

What is the general conclusion to draw from all this? There is no doubt in my mind that the people of the USSR have suffered a lot from the second world war, and, if I was living in a former Soviet Republic, I think I would also find D-Day overrated.

But we should also keep in mind that this suffering was too a large extent of the making of its own leadership. With the human and material resources that were available to the Sowiet Union, the Red Army should have stopped the invaders in the summer of 1941,

or at least avoided the non-stop sucession of battles of annihilation between 22 June 1941 and the Batle of Moscou.

Nothing better exemplifies the difference between the Western Allies and the Red Army than the post-war discussion where Eisenhow explained how the Allies had developed engineering tanks (the so-called "funnies") to clear minefields and destroy obstacles.

To the complete consternation of Marshal Zjoekov – in the Red Army, minefields were cleared by sending in desertors or mutinees. Literally expendables.