By the time the war started, none of the corps were fully formed. While most of them had required numbers of lower enlisted personnel, a great portion of them were either new recruits or recently called-up reservists. None of the mechanized corps had the assigned strength of 1,031 tanks, with the actual strength being between 300 to 900 machines.
The round-out of the Soviet armored fighting vehicles would not be complete without mentioning the armored cars. These numerous vehicles were generally represented by wheeled light BA-20 and medium BA-10 armored reconnaissance cars. While the BA-20 was armed with one 7.62mm machine gun, the BA-10, in addition to the same machine gun, also mounted a turret with a 45mm cannon. These were the same turrets as the two secondary ones mounted on the heavy T-35 tanks. Overall, over 5,300 of these two types of vehicles were made, with most of them perishing in combat by the spring of 1942. The cannon-armed BA-10, if used properly, would have presented a significant challenge to German vehicles of the same type. As it was, Soviet commanders proved completely incapable of effectively employing these weapons platforms in the type of missions for which armored cars were designed.
The Red Army’s artillery was technically on par with the German Army. Regimental artillery batteries were mainly equipped with 76mm and older 107mm guns. Divisional and corps artillery regiments were equipped largely with 120mm guns and 152mm howitzers. There were additional separate battalions and regiments of large-caliber 210mm guns, 203mm and 305mm howitzers, and 280mm mortars that belonged to the Reserve of Supreme Command and were doled out to support the field armies.
At the start of the war, the vaunted BM-13 rocket launcher artillery systems, later nicknamed Katyushas, existed only in seven experimental models. Ironically, their serial production was ordered on June 21, 1941, one day before the war started.[22]
The mortars were largely represented by 50mm mortars of limited effectiveness. The more-effective 82mm and 120mm mortars existed in smaller numbers.
However, the greatest weakness of Soviet artillery was in its lack of mobility. The majority of artillery was still horse-drawn, and there were insufficient numbers of draft horses, the shortage of which was supposed to be made up from the civilian economy upon the announcement of mobilization. The heavier-caliber artillery was supposed to be towed by slow-moving tractors, of which there was also a dearth.
The drive to increase the antitank capability to counter possible (German-led) armored threat started late. Only in May 1941 the Soviet high command began forming ten antitank artillery brigades in the western border districts. Five of such brigades were being formed in the Kiev Special Military District. However, due to the common tone of shortage of everything, only one such brigade was more or less completed by the beginning of war. These brigades were to be assigned one per field army and designated to cooperate with the mechanized corps of these armies. To keep up with the mechanized formations, these antitank brigades were also to be completely mechanized. However, with the exception of the 1st Antitank Artillery Brigade, due to overwhelming shortages, most brigades were at 40 to 80 percent of assigned guns, and many brigades were without a single tractor to tow them. There were also severe shortages of wheeled vehicles to transport supplies, personnel, and ammunition.
CHAPTER 3
Dispositions of Kiev Special Military District
FROM THE SOGGY VASTNESS OF PRIPYAT MARSHES, then south along the meandering Western Bug River and to the craggy Carpathian Mountains, the Kiev Special Military District was responsible for defending slightly over six hundred miles of Soviet Union’s western frontier. In the center of district’s border, a salient of land, centered on ancient Ukrainian city of Lvov, protruded into German-occupied southern Poland. The importance which the Soviet leadership allocated this area was underscored by the amount of troops deployed in and around Lvov salient. This area could have been easily used as a beachhead for a thrust southwest, threatening Rumanian oil fields, crucial for German war effort. In a similar manner, a Soviet attack could have been launched northwest, into the southern flank of German-controlled Poland.
There has been much discussion whether Soviet deployment was indicative of their offensive or defensive intentions. The official version presented by the Soviet Union was that its peace-loving country was treacherously attacked by predatory Nazi Germany. This version has many adherents, especially in the former Soviet Union. Others advocate the dense concentration of Soviet troops in the Lvov salient as indication of offensive intentions. However, documentation and memoirs of participants on both sides of the conflict could be interpreted in favor of either viewpoint, massing for a powerful offensive or concentrating for a determined defense in depth.
The truth, as it often tends to, most likely lies somewhere in the middle. In this writer’s opinion, Soviet Union did have aggressive intentions, but not in July 1941, as presented by sensationalist writer and ex–Chief Intelligence Directorate (GRU) defector Victor Suvorov (pen name of Vladimir Rezun), but in spring of 1942. Declassified documents and numerous memoirs consistently paint the picture of the Soviet military on the eve of World War II as a cumbersome organization in a state of flux. Based on my own research for this work, I do not believe that the Soviet Union was in shape to conduct invasion-scale offensive operations in 1941.
The nonaggressive rhetoric decried by the Soviet propaganda does not bear scrutiny when compared against the actual course of action carried out under Stalin’s stewardship. Just as Hitler browbeat the aging Czech president Emil Hacha into permitting the unopposed entrance of German troops into Czechoslovakia in March 1939, Stalin similarly bullied the three small Baltic states of Latvia, Estonia, and Lithuania in September/October of that same year into accepting Red Army garrisons on their soil, effectively subjugating them by the Soviet Union. In the similar manner, Rumania was forced to cede the province of Northern Bukovina to Stalin in 1940.
Once threats failed, the communist state had no qualms about using force. When, in November 1939, unlike the Baltic states, Finland defiantly refused establishment of Red Army bases on its territory, the Soviet Union invaded its small northern neighbor. And, almost simultaneous with swallowing of the three small Baltic democracies, the Soviet Union lopped off for itself a large chunk of eastern Polish territory in September 1939.
However, these territorial acquisitions reached the limits of Soviet offensive capabilities. Performance of Red Army troops during the easy campaign against Poland was dismal and was duly noted by the German observers. The Winter War against Finland was downright disastrous, exposing for the whole world the weaknesses of the Soviet military machine. Faced with cumulative effects of purges, humiliating Finnish campaign, and need for rearmament and reorganization, Stalin required at least two years of peace to rebuild his offensive potential.