These have been well answered. However I will add General Patton's assessment. He did a study shortly after the war and told Eisenhower that in his opinion the Red Army in Europe had enough ammunition to fight for 5 days with sufficient firepower to resist an allied assault. He said they would put up 5 days of resistance and then would also be low on fuel and food as well as out of sufficient tank and artillery ammunition to be a credible threat to an allied advance.
The Soviet supply lines were long and the railways and bridges were destroyed all the way back to Russia and rolling stock was also destroyed and the Red Army had about 1/10th of the transport infrastructure of the allied army.
The Red Army also lacked enough transport to retreat quickly enough to avoid a catastrophic encirclement even before Allied tactical air was applied to the task of destroying the transport they did have.
The entire Allied army was motorized. It could move very rapidly carrying plenty of supplies with it for any encounter battle and would be closely followed by a massive motorized supply train. Red infantry mostly walked.
No supporting Red Army force was available with the transport ability to move the distances required to save them and would be in the same supply situation if they did manage to arrive.
The Allied army had supply dumps sufficient to sustain months of fighting at a high intensity within a short distance of their armies and sooooo much more supplies further back and they had the transport infrastructure to keep it coming with the army. They had enormous reserves of men and equipment not yet committed to the battle in Europe to replace losses. The Soviets were exhausted.
The reason the Soviets were still in the Soviet Union when the Allies invaded France was that they could not get past the Germans. They were slowly winning ground but after every battle they could not advance far because it took them a long time to build up enough supplies of everything and move it forward for their next offensive. Much of the Red Infantry was walking. Trucks were for supplies.
After the Allied successes in invading and then breaking out of the Normandy containment the Germans were forced to swing massive forces west. The Soviets were then able to push forward and make longer advances because they were not using the same amount of combat supplies to cover the same ground. The Germans were pulling back much faster and while the battles were furious still the battles were much further apart allowing the Soviets to advance further each hop.
So the actual assessment based on what counts in major wars, supply situation and industrial capacity, was massively in favor of the Allies, not the Russians. When you take into account that the Allies were supplying around 1/3 of the Soviet war supplies including trucks, tanks and aircraft you start to realize the Red Army was a long way from home with no friends and existing on the good will of the Allies.
No comments:
Post a Comment