Why the Allies Won

by Richard Overy

  The modernisation of the Soviet air force was just as essential. The reform of the tank arm would have achieved considerably less without air support. In 1941 Soviet aircraft suffered the same fate as Soviet armour. Most of the estimated eight thousand aircraft facing the German assault were wiped out, either where they stood, invitingly unconcealed, on open airfields, or in hundreds of uneven tournaments in the air between Soviet I-15 and I-16 fighters and German Me-109s. Soviet air tactics were stuck in the First World War. Fighters flew in tight formations of three aircraft abreast. They were no match for German pilots who operated in pairs or fours, flying in loose vertical formation with good air-to-air communication. The feeble fighter shield left Soviet ground forces open to the same demoralising pounding from German medium-bombers and Stuka dive-bombers that had helped to break Polish and French resistance earlier in the war.11

  Air force reform ran alongside the reform of ground forces. The Soviet authorities rightly saw concentration of air attack and close support for ground operations as the core of German success. This persuaded them to put their effort into winning local air supremacy over the battlefield, and using aircraft as part of the battering ram to penetrate the enemy front. The vast area of the eastern front, and the short combat range of most fighter aircraft, made it imperative for them to concentrate air forces at the critical point of attack, rather than dispersing the aircraft all along the front as they had done in 1941. The Soviet air force borrowed and refined the German strategy with striking results. During 1943 air superiority over the battlefield passed to the Soviet air force.

  The architect of Soviet revival in the air was a little-known general, Alexander Novikov. A veteran of the Civil War, and a Communist Party member, he survived the army purges of the 1930s to become head of the Leningrad District air forces in 1941. Like his chief, Zhukov, he won promotion on his performance in battle. In February and March 1942 he organised the air defence of Moscow and Leningrad, but he did so by grouping all his aircraft together into a powerful offensive instrument to carry out the first concerted massed air strikes against German targets. A month later his success was rewarded with nothing less than his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of all Soviet air forces. At 42 he was four years Zhukov’s junior, but looked younger. Handsome, forthright, energetic, he came to his new office with a self-driven mission to modernise Soviet aviation. His abilities brought him appointment to a new rank of Marshal of Aviation in 1943, but like Zhukov he fell foul of the renewed wave of Stalinist purges after the war. Incarcerated in 1946, he was released and had his honours restored only on Stalin’s death, in March 1953.12

  Novikov’s reforms were comprehensive. Starting at the top the air force was placed under central direction, instead of being parcelled out to each front-line army or division. Aircraft were organised like German air fleets into large ‘air armies’ made up of fighters, bombers and ground-attack aircraft. The air armies were then assigned to critical points of the front, where they came under direct command of local front commanders in order to achieve the closest possible collaboration between army and air forces. The air armies, like the tank armies, were set up to follow the strategy of concentrated offensive. Their task was to attack enemy air power and smash a path forward for the armoured forces below. To enhance this striking power the Supreme Command built up a strategic reserve of air corps which could be sent to critical points of the battle to reinforce existing air armies. Though the strategy of reserve-building, insisted on by Stalin himself, sometimes left parts of the front denuded of air support, it did allow the Red air force to impose irresistible force where it mattered most, at the front of the main axes of advance.13 During 1942 each of the seventeen air armies could muster only 800-900 aircraft; but by 1943 they averaged 1,500 aircraft. By the end of the war air armies of 2,500– 3,000 aircraft were built up. The Soviet Union ended the war with over eleven thousand front-line aircraft.

  There were a host of smaller changes which together transformed the fighting power of Soviet airmen. A new generation of simple but technically advanced aircraft was introduced – the Yak-9, Lagg-3 and La-5 fighters, and the formidable Sturmovik Il-2 dive-bomber, with its tank-busting rockets. They proved capable of regular upgrading, which avoided disruption to the assembly lines, and by 1944 they could outperform the latest Me-109 and Fw-190 fighters. The models were few in number, and relatively easy to maintain. Novikov overhauled the rear services for aviation, providing teams of mobile repair units, improving the building and organisation of a host of small, temporary airfields, and insisting on high standards of camouflage and deception, so that Soviet aircraft would never experience again the pre-emptive destruction of 1941. Radar was gradually introduced; dummy aerodromes were constructed; aircraft in forward areas were hidden in woods and farm buildings. The Soviet air force of 1943 was an effective fighting force, unrecognisable from the clumsy and incompetent instrument of 1941.14 By the time of the Battle of Kursk the reforms were largely completed. After a week or so of fighting, Soviet aircraft built up a superiority of ten to one on some parts of the battlefield. For the first time it was the turn of German soldiers to scan the skies in desperate search of friendly craft.

  The pace of modernisation never slackened thereafter. The Soviet Union emerged in 1945 with the sinews of a military super-power in place. Some of this was the fruit of Allied assistance. The United States motorised not only its own army but the Red Army too. Under ‘Lend-Lease’ war aid agreements America supplied over half a million vehicles – 77,900 jeeps, 151,000 light trucks, and over 200,000 Studebaker army trucks, the backbone of the Soviet motorised supply system.15 American aid also made possible the revolution in radio communications by supplying 956,000 miles of telephone cable, 35,000 radio stations and 380,000 field telephones.16 During 1943 the Soviet air force concentrated on improving radio control of its aircraft, and radio communication between ground and air forces. Radio control centres were set up about a mile and a half behind the front, enabling aircraft to be directed quickly and flexibly to help the ground forces, or to attack enemy aircraft and air bases. In the main, modernisation and reform were driven by the sharp spur of necessity. The Soviet solution to the crisis of 1941 was deceptively easy: tanks and aircraft were organised into large, flexible offensive forces, backed by huge reserves of robust and effective weapons. Mistakes were still made, and Soviet losses remained high throughout the war, but enough was done during 1942 to erode the margin between the two sides in military performance and military technology.

  The German experience on the eastern front was almost exactly the reverse. German forces started the war on the Soviet Union with over 3,600 tanks; by the summer of 1943 they had only two-thirds this number. In 1941 the Luftwaffe fielded 2,500 aircraft; in the summer of 1944 there were 1,700 aircraft along the entire eastern front, including a mere three hundred bombers and three hundred fighters.17 The vaunted Panzer divisions became primarily defensive units: the number of tanks and vehicles in each division declined steadily over the course of the conflict, though German production of tanks in 1944 was more than ten times higher than in the first year of war. Panzer divisions started the war each with an established strength of 328 tanks; at Kursk they started the battle with an average of 73; in March 1945 their average was 54.18 Though German forces fought with high tactical skills throughout the war, they experienced a progressive ‘demodernisation’.

  There were extenuating circumstances. The slow development of mass-production has already been observed. By 1944 German forces had to be spread thinly over three main fronts. Bombing contributed a good deal to the dislocation of the German military supply system. But the process of demodernisation was already evident in 1942, when the main theatre of operation was the eastern front, and bombing had barely begun. The explanation for the growing technical weakness of German forces lies with Germany rather than the Allies, and it goes back to the summer of 1941 when Panzer forces raced with apparent ease across the Soviet steppe.

  The
army that Hitler assembled to crush Bolshevism was essentially two armies, one small modernised army based on tanks and trucks, and a vast old-fashioned army still reliant on rail and horse. The first contained an expanded number of Panzer divisions; 21 of them had been created by parcelling out the stock of tanks in smaller packets than before. The second comprised 119 divisions moving at the pace of the foot-soldier and the horse and cart. This was the result of a conscious decision taken in the 1930s to neglect the modernisation of a large part of the army in favour of developing a hard-core of heavily-armed mobile divisions. The split was maintained in the Barbarossa plan. The Panzer armies were established as entirely self-contained forces, carrying the fuel and ammunition required to take them 400 miles into the Soviet Union. This strategy avoided trying to supply the mobile forces through a poor road and rail system clogged with the slow infantry army behind. It was managed only by starving the war effort elsewhere of fuel and vehicles. Some 600,000 vehicles were mobilised for the invasion, many of them in the Panzer armies; the rest of the army made do with some 700,000 horses.19

  In reality even the modernised core of the army was weaker than it looked. To assemble the required number of armoured divisions, the number of tanks in each had been reduced to 150. Of these tanks half were of poor quality – the weakly armed Panzer-II and the captured Czech TNHP-38 tank which was now becoming obsolescent. There were a thousand of the Panzer-III, and 479 of the Panzer-IV, but neither was a match for the T-34.20 Much of the Soviet armour destroyed in the summer attack was the victim not of German tanks but of German artillery. The incompetence of Soviet forces in 1941 allowed the Panzer armies to penetrate far and fast, but by the autumn the toll was very great. The losses sustained in combat and from wear saw the modern army crumble away; when the front stabilised in late 1941 the infantry mass had caught up to support it. By August tank strength was down to half what it had been in June 1941; by November there were only 75,000 vehicles still working out of the half-million committed in June. By December the Panzer armies were using horses again. These were rates of loss never anticipated by German leaders. Little thought or preparation had gone into the question of what to do if the quick campaign of annihilation failed. The German army too needed to modernise in 1942.

  The collapse of the air-tank offensive in 1941 was compounded with problems of geography and terrain. When the autumn rains came German vehicles were brought to a standstill on roads that were little more than sand-tracks. The supply of fuel oil and lubricants for the front broke down; tanks that could cruise on a pint of oil for 60 miles on flat summer roads now consumed over 4 gallons to cover the same distance, creeping forward in first gear. The coming of cold winter weather gave some respite, but with their narrow tracks German tanks were unsuited to traversing frozen mud, and the sub-zero temperatures brought new problems. Turrets and gun-sights froze solid. Rubber seals became brittle. Efforts to warm up engines with small braziers produced explosions. On open grassy airstrips mechanics literally froze to the machines they worked on. The supply system, overstretched already by the rapid advance, threatened to snap entirely.21 It was rescued by horses, which pulled tanks and guns when engines failed, and dragged rows of covered wagons full of supplies and ammunition. Even this brought difficulties, for the large European horses suffered from frostbite and malnutrition. In the first months of the campaign there were over a quarter of a million horse casualties. Their place was taken by the smaller Russian panje horse and sled, which became the primary form of transport for much of the German army. During 1942 another 400,000 horses were brought to Russia from German-dominated Europe; the same year German industry turned out just 59,000 trucks for an army of three million men.22

  The growing reliance on horses was not due only to climate and terrain. Great difficulties were also experienced in servicing and repairing motor vehicles, a problem that persisted in the German forces for the rest of the war. The German army, unlike its Soviet enemy, had a bewildering array of different vehicles and engines. In the effort to provide lorries and fighting vehicles for the Panzer armies Europe had been scoured for motor vehicles of all kinds. There were two thousand different types of vehicle in the assault on the Soviet Union. Army Group Centre alone had to carry over a million spare parts. One armoured division went into battle with 96 types of personnel carrier, 111 types of truck, and 37 different motor-cycles.23 Repair work became a nightmare, all the more so as the poor terrain and harsh combat produced exceptionally high levels of wear and tear. By November 1941 the same armoured division reported only 12 per cent of its entire stock of vehicles as roadworthy. Understandably, vehicle spares were not top priority in the strained supply organisation. Nor were they a production priority. In the Reich much more emphasis was placed on producing the whole product than a satisfactory ratio of spares and components, particularly engines. During 1942 and 1943 efforts were made to produce more spares, but the absence of standardisation and the poor state of the long supply routes into Russia left a great many vehicles immobilised for months or weeks, forcing the German armed forces to rely increasingly on horse-drawn artillery and long marches on foot.24

  During the winter of 1941–2 the German army hoped to make good the collapse of the armoured force by developing new tanks that could both outgun the Soviet T-34, and remain immune to anti-tank fire with greatly strengthened armour. Hitler took a leading role in planning them, but instead of developing a tank that was easy to maintain and to produce in quantity, he demanded large, technically complex tanks of very great weight. The result was the ‘Tiger’ and the ‘Panther’. Though they could deliver the enhanced firepower, they were slow and unmanoeuvrable, a liability on poor ground. When Hitler insisted on throwing the first six Tigers into battle in the early summer of 1942 the result was a fiasco. On a road fringed by marshland the tanks were ambushed by Soviet troops. The first and last tank were hit in the poorly protected side and rear, immobilising the remaining four which were destroyed one by one.25 The Panther’s baptism of fire was no more propitious. The first batch was sent into battle before the development work was complete. All 325 had to be returned to Berlin for modification of the steering and control mechanism; the Maybach engine proved inadequate and had to be improved, making an already complex piece of engineering yet more sophisticated.26 The level of technical quality of the new tanks was such that they were difficult to produce and maintain. There were too few to turn the armoured battle in Germany’s favour in 1943; they were too heavy and cumbersome to be used on anything but flat summer ground; and like other German vehicles they were difficult to repair. The Tiger tank required a small army of mechanics to keep it in the field, while the ratio of spares produced was derisory. For every ten Tiger tanks only one spare engine and one transmission were produced. The new heavy tanks were supposed to be repaired at the front-line, but the absence of heavy repair equipment or adequate stocks of spare parts meant a long trail of tank transporters carrying damaged vehicles back to repair depots in Germany, 2,000 miles away.27