Frank Chadwick wanted the Soviet players in this game to have a better understanding of the Soviet military background. Accordingly, he wrote the Frunze Academy Staff Course and Home Study Guide for all Soviet players. For the benefit of all CD2 players, it is presented here for their study. Almost everything you have read about the Red Army now, and the Russian Army historically, is wrong. You have probably been told repeatedly that Russian soldiers lack initiative, Russian officers lack talent, and Russian tactics lack finesse. You have been told that Russians at all levels of the army are reluctant soldiers who fight mostly because they are herded into battle by KGB "Barrage" Battalions, lines of submachinegunners ready to cut down any soldier who runs. You have been told that the officers will repeatedly hurl their troops forward to certain destruction because they are afraid to do otherwise, afraid of the unit's political officer who will, at the least little provocation, draw his pistol and begin summarily dispatching the enemies of the state. It goes without saying that all such political officers are party stooges, with little military education and no brains. These moronic military illiterates are vested with the power of life and death and the absolute authority to dictate the course of operations to their cringing, groveling military counterparts. Sure. If you believe this, then you have no business playing the Soviets in any CD2 game. If you think the only way the Soviets can win is by piling up mountains of troops in front of the NATO guns and overwhelming them with bodies, then we don't need you. If you think it is somehow "unfair" to use the units you command intelligently and take maximum advantage of their numerous strong points, we don't want you. If, after you realize the Soviets do not have a significant numeric superiority, you think the Soviets are in a hopeless position, it's time to think about switching sides. If you are interested in having your horizons broadened a bit, however, read on. First, a history lesson The Nazis did not lose the Second World War-—the Red Army won it. The Nazis were not beaten by mud, or bad roads, or the Allied strategic bombing offensive, or a stab in the back-—they were beaten by the Red Army. The vital turning points of the war against Germany were not El Alamein or Salemo or D-Day—they were Moscow, Stalingrad and Kursk. Got it?? After World War II, a small army of German senior officers wrote their memoirs. At about the same time, a former writer for the German propaganda ministry, writing under the pen name of Paul Carrel, published a series of popular histories on the war from the German perspective. The Cold War was getting very chilly about then, and the German authors had several motivations: First, sell books (obviously), and the easiest way to do that is to tell your audience what they want to hear. Second, vindicate yourself and your role in the war. Third, ingratiate yourself with your new masters. The result was a string of memoirs which all had several points in common. These can be summarized roughly as follows: 1. "The German Army was brilliantly trained and brilliantly led." Only Hitler's moronic interference prevented the authors from gaining the victories to which their obvious talents entitled them." This was a pretty safe position to take. The considerable German ethnic contribution to the American immigrant stream has meant that the Americans have always entertained much more cordial feelings toward the Germans than have, say, the English (or French or Poles or Russians or Italians or Czechs or just about everyone else who lives on the south side of the Baltic). As a result, the "it was all Hitler's fault" argument found many very sympathetic ears in the US. It enabled Americans to admire the German commanders and soldiers without any twinge of guilt. As Hitler was dead, who was going to say otherwise? 2. "The Red Army was scarcely more than an armed mob. The brilliant and heroic German soldiers repeatedly massacred tens of thousands of them, but they just kept coming in limitless, faceless, robotic waves." Again, this image of the Slavic hordes coming from the snowy wastes of the East was one that played well in Peoria in the 1950s. It fanned American paranoia, which suited the rearmament lobby just fine. It also, by repackaging the Slavic untermensch characterization, somehow managed to de-Nazify it. Finally, it gave the authors the perfect excuse for their own failures. There was everything to admire in the clean-limbed, handsome German landsers, and nothing to admire in the dull, brutish, shambling Slavic hordes that persevered in the face of epic losses, not out of heroism, but rather out of total and inhuman insensitivity to any death, even their own. They were, the German generals imply, hardly human after all. Myths such as this, once they take hold, develop a sort of self-sustaining momentum that distorts reality to fit the theory and thus provide further reinforcement. A good example of this is the oft-recounted conversation between Zhukov and Ike. Ike is reported to have been appalled at Zhukov's callous disregard for human life as shown by his statement that the Red Army cleared minefields by driving troops through them. This supposed statement has grown in the retelling to the point that many sources declare as a statement of fact that the standard Soviet doctrine on breaching mine barriers was to drive a rifle regiment into it and use up the regiment. This is very nearly the opposite of Zhukov's position. What Zhukov actually said was that his practice was to attack through minefields as though they weren't there because this resulted in fewer casualties than any other option. He observed that the Germans tended to place minefields in such a way as to protect areas that were not swept by fire. Thus, if the Soviets found a gap through the minefield, it was sure to be covered by German machineguns and mortars. Attempting to move through such a gap would inflict more casualties from fire than would have occurred from the minefield. By the same token, if the Russians stopped and attempted to clear a gap through the minefield, it gave the Germans time to bring up reserves and call down artillery fire. Again, more casualties would be inflicted upon the Russians than from the mines alone. If the minefield could be quickly crossed and the covering German forces driven off, then the task of making gaps in the minefield was made far easier, since German fire would no longer be falling on the troops so employed. Though this tactic meant taking some losses from the mines at first, it also meant taking fewer losses overall. Thus, when Zhukov preferred to launch an immediate attack directly through the minefields, it was because that method was the most economical in terms of loss of life. Nevertheless, in the midst of the Cold War, this incident was repeated as proof of the Russians' insensitivity to casualties, which was further proof of the Russians' "inexhaustible" manpower reserves and limitless numbers. (As an historical aside, Patton's own standing orders for the 3rd Army instructed troops encountering minefields to attack through them without pausing for the same reasons.) Not only did the Cold War make this argument palatable, but it also eliminated most opposition to it. Defending any act by a Communist in the 1950s was nearly as unpopular as defending Hitler (more so at the height of the hysteria). The Soviets responded to the Cold War with traditional Russian paranoia and for over a decade said, for all practical or actual purposes, nothing about the war. There was simply no body of counterbalancing argument. The last possible source of check to this theory was the German archives themselves. However, although they were in US hands, they were still sealed, and it would be many years before they could even be catalogued. Thus, Manstein, for example, could confidently claim that at the time he launched his famous "backhand blow," the Soviets outnumbered the Germans all along the front by a factor of over 6:1, and on his front by a factor of 8:1. Only years later would the Germans records of Gehlen's Abteilung Fremde Herre Ost be sufficiently reconstructed to confirm the actual numbers: 1.5:1 overall, and slightly less than 2:1 facing Manstein. It is an interesting comment on the extent to which German hero worship has taken hold that the defenders of the German generals brand most Soviet accounts of the war "obvious lies," then shrug off things like Manstein's four-fold exaggeration of Soviet strength as an unimportant slip. The whole argument as to Soviet ineptitude falls apart as soon as it is examined objectively. The Red Army in June 1941 suffered from anumber of very genuine problems: The officer corps was still reeling from the purges of the late '30s; the whole armored arm was in the process of a complete reorganization; and the army had just taken in large numbers of untrained or poorly trained reservists. By comparison, the Axis forces outnumbered the Red Army in the West, and achieved complete tactical, operational and strategic surprise. This, coupled with the problems listed above, allowed the Wehrmacht to deal a blow that would almost certainly proven fatal to any other army in the world. Throughout 1941, postwar sources reveal, the Axis armies consistently outnumbered the Red Army, including the period of the winter counteroffensive from December 1941 to March 1942. Nevertheless, the Red Army managed to slow the Germans up, rebuild an army virtually from scratch and in the frontline trenches, and gain an important, if limited, operational success with their counteroffensive. In 1942, when the forces were about equal, the Soviets suffered another reverse early in the year but again regained their balance, and by winter they managed to launch a counteroffensive of strategic proportions and gain a breathtaking victory. In 1943, with the numbers finally clearly in their favor, the Soviets achieved virtually uninterrupted success that was to carry them to Berlin with scarcely a pause and without any serious operational reverses. Nevertheless, the illusion of the Russians as inept soldiers persists, in part because the German memoirists (Guderian, Manstein, Mellenthin) were not involved in the later part of the war when the Red Army began displaying not only tenacity but also considerable tactical finesse. The fact remains that the Soviets beat the Germans, not with overwhelming numbers, but with the skillful use of severely limited resources. By the end of the war, they were a better army than the Wehrmacht, not just a bigger one. They developed the art of mobile warfare to a high and exact art, and it remains such today in the Red Army. In the following lesson, we will examine the nature of Soviet theories of mobile of mobile warfare, how to apply them on the game table, and why they will enable you to win this campaign. In the meantime, concentrate on this one lesson: Lesson 1 The Red Army has historically been, and today remains, one of the most competent and effective armies on earth. It can deliver victory, but only if skillfully led. It will certainly destroy any commander who does not respect its strengths and capacities, including Soviet commanders who can think of no better way to use it than a cudgel. Assignments Assignments will not be turned in or graded, are purely voluntary and are only included in these lessons as a suggestion for further work. They are study exercises designed to build on what you know and stretch it further. Assignment 1: We have discussed the Red Army's performance in World War II and suggested that the popular view of it in the West, particularity the United States, is not accurate. At the same time that this portrayal gained popularity, wargaming became popular, and a variety of miniatures rules on a widerange of historical periods appeared. The Russian Army figured prominently in both the Seven Years War and the Napoleonic Wars. Early rules portrayed the Russian Army as being slow to maneuver on the battlefield, poor shots, shaky in terms of morale, and in general one of the less desirable armies of the period. Subsequent rule sets have tended to accept this on face value. Your assignment is to pick either one of these wars and make a brief study of the battlefield performance of the Russian Army compared to its allies. After studying how it fought, answer the following question and give reasons for your answer: If forced to choose between one of the two following statements, which one do you feel comes closer to the truth? A. The Russian Army fought better than any major army with which it was allied. B. The Russian Army fought worse than any major army with which it was allied. Frunze Academy Staff College and Home Study Guide Lesson 1: The Myth of Russian Military Ineptitude Lesson 2: Soviet Operational Art: Blueprint for Victory? Back to Table of Contents -- Command Post Quarterly # 9 To Command Post Quarterly List of Issues To MagWeb Master Magazine List © Copyright 1995 by Greg Novak. This article appears in MagWeb.com (Magazine Web) on the Internet World Wide Web. Other articles from military history and related magazines are available at http://www.magweb.com