World War Two Country-The Soviet Union

14 Jul 2023, 07:14

A communistic spur has washed over me! Now it’s time for the Soviet Union! The nation that trampled the fascist beast while also trampling itself at the same time…

We start after the Russian civil war, the nation was devastated, and under the rule of the new communist Soviet Union, headed by Lenin would begin to rebuild. Soon after Lenin would die, Stalin would follow. While not liked by Lenin he had political power and managed to maneuver his way in to leading the USSR. A paranoid man, he built a cult of personality and began destroying any dissenting forces. His policy was of rapid industrialization, and while his 5 year plans massively strengthened the once rural country, it came at a ridiculous human cost. A man made famine called Holodomor took place in 1932. It was created in Ukraine, killing millions senselessly and only really damaging the Soviet Union with no gain.

His paranoia went too far. Eventually he orchestrated the death of a certain Kirov, and began the great purges in the 30s. Trotsky, an important figure from the Russian civil war and Lenin’s right hand man who had fled to Mexico in exhale was killed by Stalin. He then tried to erase him from history, since he was the main rival to Stalin’s rule, and even though he was in exile the paranoid Stalin still feared him. The red army was crippled with many talented officers being arrested or killed. Millions were sent to gulags for minor offenses and the Soviet Union was heavily damaged. Some of these arrested would have to eventually return… this also gave way for many lower ranking officers to quickly climb the ranks. Many were not ready and incompetent, but what caused even more damage was the top heavy Soviet chain of command. Officers could be heavily reprimanded if they didn’t follow orders, even if they were successful. Political commissars held large amounts of power, and could execute officers on the spot without trial. Still, some like a man named Zhukov would prove useful for the country. He would defeat the Japanese in a series of border wars and began to rise in the red army.

A communist state was the boogeyman and more hated than even the Nazis and Japanese! No one liked the Soviets but no one could or wanted to fight them. For now. They had puppeted Mongolia, Tana Tuva, and Xinjiang (temporarily in the latter’s case) but didn’t really have a global communist empire yet. They supported the Spanish republicans in the civil war, and though they lost they had gained plenty of military experience. The Germans and Soviets both hated each other since one considered the other sub human and their being in the opposite sides of the political spectrum. While they had many similarities in the way they ruled, their ideologies were direct enemies of each other. Still, a non-aggression pact was formed with trade and testing of weapons being coordinated by both sides. They agreed to split Eastern Europe and especially Poland…

But behind each others backs they both prepared to go to war. The Germans ideology literally consisted of wiping out all Slavs and Jews (which The USSR was filled with, obviously) and turning Eastern Europe into German colonies. The Soviets created the Stalin line to fortify and planned to invade the Germans by around 1942 and 3, with the newly started war between Germany and the west hopefully weakening them and allowing for a rearming USSR to defeat them. The Soviet Union used deep battle doctrine developed within the 20s and 30s, which basically consisted of combined arms assaults, that broke down enemy defenses and allowed Soviet forces to break though and crush an army through multiple offensives. On the other hand they considered defensive strategy as rather unimportant, and didn’t expect to need to use any form of it. Soviet tanks were of many different shapes and sizes before the war, with the union implementing and using many ideas in hopes of success. Tanks like the T-34 and KV were the best created, but others classes like the BT didn’t do as well (though they found some success, especially in the light tank realm of scouting and vs the Japanese). The Soviets, like every major power also experimented with multi turret tanks, but ran into the issue of weak armor to size ratio, on top of required many men to command. The Soviet Air Force was subpar, but expanding and far larger than most neighbors. The USSR’s biggest advantage was its size and resources. It could trade vast amounts of land, use scorched earth tactics, and weaken an army quite significantly. By the time an army reached a crucial point, Russian winter and autumn would extract a horrible toll with terrible freeze and disease. Logistics would be overstretched, the invading army weakened. The Russian forces could then attack with all they had, using the fact they were close to home and supply lines to completely overwhelm and rout an enemy army.

But the Red Army turned out to be not so good on the offense. While Germany obliterated the Poles in 1939 and quickly stormed the country, the Soviets advance was slower and their performance overall quite average or subpar. This was due to many reasons, like bad commanders, middling logistics and other factors. But in the end the Poles were overpowered, and the east taken. The Soviets also bullied Romania into giving Bessarabia and the Baltic states into joining the Union. Political repression was harsh and many people were murdered, arrested or sent to gulags. There were many summary executions of anyone the Soviets deemed a threat to their rule. Eventually in 1940 the paranoid Stalin made the mistake of trying to force Finland to give up land and form a demilitarized zone to protect Leningrad. After they refused, the Soviets invaded in a complex plan, mimicking the German invasion of Poland. But instead lacking supplies, good commanders and in terrible terrain. The Soviets had their asses handed to them on a 400k causality platter, but a switch of tactics allowed the Soviets to break though the Mannheim line (Finnish defense for Helsinki) with a well supplied and simple attack and win the war, taking 11% of Finland and even its second largest city. (Though terrible Soviet rule has left it in disrepair to this day. The Russian government was not much better.) This was a costly offensive that empowered the Germans who had conquered almost all of Europe to crush the Soviets, and made the Finns enemy’s of the USSR. Big mistake.

1941, Operation Barbarossa. While Stalin knew war was coming with the Germans, he thought they wouldn’t be dumb enough to risk a two front war yet, ignoring his own and British intelligence. They were dumb enough to risk it. The axis attacked the Soviets Union in the largest invasion in all of human history, and the unprepared country rushed to protect itself. They swept with unprecedented speed, encircling massive Soviet armies and ironically threatening Leningrad with the Finns, who joined to regain their land. The siege of Leningrad was the longest in all of human history. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet soldiers were lost as Stalin refused to retreat, taking ridiculous casualties and leaving civilians stuck under Nazi rule. At first the people felt liberated by the Germans, from the terrible repression of the Soviet government. They would end up missing the USSR. While most major cities in the west were lost, most of the Soviet factories were moved to the Urals, and their oil supply in the Caucasus was safe. Throughout the war, Stalin would reduce his oversight, and micromanage less and less. Eventually slowly but surely letting his generals take over and command more. The opposite of Hitler though-out the war. Generals like Rokossovsky we’re freed from their purge era imprisonment while others like Zhukov were promoted. Most Soviet tanks were destroyed, but some like the T-34 and KV classes would prove effective. The Soviet air forces at first stood no chance against their German counter parts, who were better trained, equipped and used superior tactics. But as time went on they began to learn and adapt, and the Soviet industry surely helped.

Thanks to Zhukov’s ass kicking of the Japanese, they decided to form a non-aggression pact, and were so scared of provoking the USSR while fighting also the US that they didn’t even sink lend lease convoys going there. Far east forces could be transferred to protect the Union, while the incoming Rasputitsa and Winters would damage the horse-drawn reliant German logistics. While at the gates of Moscow, the Germans were pushed back during the winter. Hitler told his generals to focus on the Ukraine and Caucasus. This was actually a good idea. Capturing Moscow would not cause the Soviet Union to surrender; Stalin and more importantly his country would fight to the very end, against an enemy who wanted them exterminated. The Germans needed the resources of Ukraine and especially the oil of the Caucasus or else their tanks and planes could not run. The US had joined the war so ending the eastern front became even more important!

CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

10 Replies

14 Jul 2023, 07:15 (edited)

(Part two, I didn’t have enough space lol)

By 1942 the Germans by the orders Hitler, launched an invasion to capture the precious oil fields of the Caucasus, but to do this thy ended up deciding they’d need to take Stalingrad to do this; as if the Germans could capture the city they could move down and reach the oil fields with ease. At first things went well, the city was almost taken… but the Soviets had learned from their mistakes. And instead of launching costly counter attacks or trying large encirclements of German armies (Maybe less so the latter this time, but most of the time they went for smaller groups and slowly weakened the Germans.) decided to outsmart the Germans. Under the command of Zhukov, the Red army gathered a mass of planes, tanks and newly conscripted and somewhat trained soldiers for a counter attack in Operation Uranus. The German 6th army stood no chance, and faced encirclement. Hitler did not let them retreat. The war had turned around, and 600k Germans were gone. Later on in Kursk the Germans would launch their final offense against the Soviets in 1943, Operation Citadel. While Hitler was against it his generals convinced him to launched the attack. In this case the genius of Soviet generals like Zhukov and Rokossovsky combined with new military equipment made by Soviet industry which was now pouring on the front, and rising Soviet morale and tenacity handed a costly defeat for the Germans. Now the Soviet Air Forces were beating the Luftwaffe, and the red army was the strongest. Germany was now on the defense.

It was in 1943 onward where most of American lend lease reached the USSR. While not crucial for victory, it sped up the war and saved many Soviet lives. The allied powers had begun coordinating together more often and successfully, and it seemed more and more like the war was coming to a close. By the fall of Italy, allied victory had become all but inevitable. They met in Tehran and made many of the agreements that would draw the post war borders of Europe. With all the power of the American and Soviet industries, allied air and naval superiority combined with Soviet land power, the Reich’s days were numbered. The allied powers had the ability to raise more soldiers than the population of core Germany! But darkness awaited behind German lines…

In 1944 Stalin’s many calls throughout the war for the Allied powers to launch an invasion of Europe, and warnings that the Red Army was in a squalid state and needed to be relived were answered. In June the greatest offensives of the war, Operation Bagration and Overlord were launched in tandem. From both sides the Germans were wrecked, losing France and basically all Soviet territory they occupied in Europe. It was over for the Axis. Finland left the Axis and made peace with the Soviets. So did Bulgaria. Hitler became increasingly desperate and began speeding the final solution, which was the systemic murder of Jews that had begun in 1942 (before that there were murders and camps, but it was not on the industrial scale that it would become). The Soviet and allied armies would have to see something even worse than the war they were fighting…

By 1945 things got even better. The battle of the bulge was an allied victory, Romania switched sides. Yugoslav partisans under Tito had completely liberated Yugoslavia with Soviet help. Germany had to occupy Hungary so it wouldn’t switch sides. The Germans desperately defended with all they could, as the allies closed in on every front. The western allies allowed the Soviets to take Berlin, and in a bloody last stand Berlin fell. Hitler committed suicide and Germany soon surrendered. The Soviet flag flew over the Reichstag. The fuhrer was dead and Europe was red, very red. Death camps were liberated by the soviet forces, and they were even worse than the Gulags of Siberia. But the fascist beast was killed-in Europe.

For various reasons but mostly to gain as much land as possible before the war ended, the Soviet Union launched the final battle of World War

Two: The invasion of Manchuria. This showed how far the red army had gotten, as an underdeveloped land larger than Germany had fallen in two weeks. It also coincided with the bombing of Nagasaki. The Soviets had learned about the Manhattan project before the Americans revealed it and were eager to get their own bombs. The Soviet-Western alliance states to unravel and the USSR made communist states in the east while the west made democratic and capitalist nations in the west. The stage was set for a far colder war…

The Soviet Union’s fight against the Germans was the largest battle of WW2. 20 million people had died on the Soviet side, the most of the entire war. Single battles costed more lives than all American or British loses during the war. In fact even today Russia and the other republics in Europe have declining populations, mostly due to the lives lost in the war! But on the same coin, 80% of German losses were inflicted by the USSR. While the Soviet Union was not a very benevolent nation, it’s peoples contributions to ending the threat of nazism and the horrible loss of lives should not be forgotten, even while in Eastern Europe another war takes place. There was a lot of learning done, and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics came out of the war scared forever but a superpower that would change the world, for better or worse.

Random sources for further reading:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_Union_in_World_War_II

https://daviscenter.fas.harvard.edu/insights/soviet-role-world-war-ii-realities-and-myths

https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-II/Invasion-of-the-Soviet-Union-1941

https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-soviet-union-and-the-eastern-front

https://www.britannica.com/event/Great-Purge

https://cla.umn.edu/chgs/holocaust-genocide-education/resource-guides/holodomor

https://tanks-encyclopedia.com/ww2/soviet/ww2_soviet_tanks.php

(Simply search up “Soviet Union in WW2 on google or YouTube and you’ll find plenty of good sources!)

I wonder what country I’ll do next… we will see.

CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

15 Jul 2023, 08:55

I’m not doing Germany next though

CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

15 Jul 2023, 10:38

I’ll do either France or Japan. Pick one!

CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

15 Jul 2023, 12:59

Nice synopsis, though I would have used different wordings and emphasizes, generally correct and a nice read.

France next please.

When the enemy is driven back, we have failed. When he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded.
- Alexander Suvorov.

15 Jul 2023, 13:10

K.Rokossovski wrote:
Nice synopsis, though I would have used different wordings and emphasizes, generally correct and a nice read.
France next please.

Thank you! But can you tell me which parts were incorrect or perhaps misleading? Part of the reason I wrote this was to lay my knowledge of history out and have people correct it.

I was leaning towards France too. They shall be next.

CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

16 Jul 2023, 10:14

i can agree, its a nice read. if you want more info you can always find it on google, like comrade carking said. and france or japan? one country was aggressor, another was destroyed by hitler. if really yeah, i wish to know more about france during WW2. still soviets, germany, usa and japan for me is first countries im thinking, then talking about WW2. thanks for time and effort.

16 Jul 2023, 15:30

Carking the 6th wrote:
K.Rokossovski wrote:
Nice synopsis, though I would have used different wordings and emphasizes, generally correct and a nice read.
France next please.
Thank you! But can you tell me which parts were incorrect or perhaps misleading? Part of the reason I wrote this was to lay my knowledge of history out and have people correct it.

Well, small stuff really. Here's a few:

- You could have mentioned that Trotsky was in exile when he was killed.

- The problem with the (non-purged) officer corps in the late thirties/ early forties wasn't so much that they were incompetent or not ready, but that the purges had taken the will to use their own initiative, because going astray from the "official" doctrine came at a very high personal risk.

- The "deep battle doctrine" was Soviet doctrine in the twenties and early thirties, not when the war actually started. When the purges also hit Tukhachevsky and some other propagators of the deep battle doctrine in 1937/1938, it became "policially incorrect" and abondoned for years.

- BT-5/7 were actually pretty decent tanks for their role. Of course they couldn't match battlefield tanks, but that was never what they were intended for.

- The goal of the summer 1942 offensive surely wasn't capturing Stalingrad; it wasn't even mentioned in the original draft of the operation iirc. It only became the focal point when the operation was already underway.

- Soviets were not trying large encirclements?? The victory in Stalingrad was actually a GIANT encirclement of an entire army!

- Stalin had called for an invasion in the West long before 1944.

- (about 1944) "Hitler became desperate and began the final solution." If you mean the holocaust or endlösung, the main part of that was executed in 1942/1943; in fact in 1944 many top brass SS considered it "finished".

- "In fact even today Russia and the other republics in Europe have declining populations, mostly due to the lives lost in the war! " This is a very bold statement; I would doubt that very much.

When the enemy is driven back, we have failed. When he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded.
- Alexander Suvorov.

16 Jul 2023, 16:06

K.Rokossovski wrote:
Carking the 6th wrote:
K.Rokossovski wrote:
Nice synopsis, though I would have used different wordings and emphasizes, generally correct and a nice read.
France next please.
Thank you! But can you tell me which parts were incorrect or perhaps misleading? Part of the reason I wrote this was to lay my knowledge of history out and have people correct it.
Well, small stuff really. Here's a few:
- You could have mentioned that Trotsky was in exile when he was killed.
- The problem with the (non-purged) officer corps in the late thirties/ early forties wasn't so much that they were incompetent or not ready, but that the purges had taken the will to use their own initiative, because going astray from the "official" doctrine came at a very high personal risk.
- The "deep battle doctrine" was Soviet doctrine in the twenties and early thirties, not when the war actually started. When the purges also hit Tukhachevsky and some other propagators of the deep battle doctrine in 1937/1938, it became "policially incorrect" and abondoned for years.
- BT-5/7 were actually pretty decent tanks for their role. Of course they couldn't match battlefield tanks, but that was never what they were intended for.
- The goal of the summer 1942 offensive surely wasn't capturing Stalingrad; it wasn't even mentioned in the original draft of the operation iirc. It only became the focal point when the operation was already underway.
- Soviets were not trying large encirclements?? The victory in Stalingrad was actually a GIANT encirclement of an entire army!
- Stalin had called for an invasion in the West long before 1944.
- (about 1944) "Hitler became desperate and began the final solution." If you mean the holocaust or endlösung, the main part of that was executed in 1942/1943; in fact in 1944 many top brass SS considered it "finished".
- "In fact even today Russia and the other republics in Europe have declining populations, mostly due to the lives lost in the war! " This is a very bold statement; I would doubt that very much.

I agree with a lot of this. Some of it was me simply writing in a misleading way though.

-I will edit it to mention that he in exile in Mexico, good point here.

-This is 100% true. Especially during the war, Stalin preferred to micromanage. The Red army was very very too heavy. In early war Germany commanders could somewhat ignore orders and not be punished if they succeeded. This was not true in the USSR. Even today in Ukraine this is part of the reasons for Russian failures.

-This is true of the deep battle doctrine. I knew this in my research but I should edit this to exemplify that.

-That is what I meant by “(though they found some success).” They were pretty decent light tanks but the Germans found them easy to kill with their own tanks, planes and anti tank guns. The heavier tanks especially early on were much harder to destroy and pushed the USSR to use medium tanks very often. This was also part of the reason the Germans wasted so many resources on tanks like the tiger, to combat larger Soviet tanks.

(Side note: I think I should have mentioned the Soviet multi turret tanks lol)

-This is 100% true. They wanted to capture the oil fields, not the city. It was just that they needed to secure the city to take them, iirc.

-Oh they were, it’s just that they failed and changed tactics, not doing it most of the time. An example is a certain operation I could not find the name of, where the USSR tried to encircle army group center after they formed a salient near Moscow. It was a complete failure, among other attempts. After these failures that most Soviet encirclements were more modest and against smaller German armies, with a few exceptions like Stalingrad. I think I’ll edit it for this one.

-This is also true, and I will need to edit that.

-I was definitely wrong here, think I got the dates mixed in my head. I just remembered reading as it became more clear the Germans were going to lose they got more desperate to exterminate the Jews. I may have assumed that it was in 1944.

-Definitely not the only reason, but one of the biggest. It also was not just WW2, but just in this time period in general. Stalins idiotic murders, famines like Holodomor and disease killed many as well. About 70-80% of Russian men born in 1923 were dead by the wars end. That number is similar in other republics. All these men who couldn’t have children prevented Russia from really having a baby boomer generation, and scarred the population pyramid. Every generation this leads to a wave of population decline the old die off and those unborn children are simply not there. 15% of the population dying though was not the only reason of course. Russia has simply failed to convince the young to have new children, in such a chaotic state. The invasion of Ukraine caused 1 million (many of whom were young educated men!) to flee the country, and the deaths in war don’t help.

Basically it was not just the war, the Soviet Union being the Soviet Union was a big chunk of that, though the war caused most of it. Follow this by the next generations failing to fix this cycle and now you know why Java and Bangladesh both have larger populations than Russia!

CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

16 Jul 2023, 16:34

The main reason for the populations of those places is that poor people simply have more children. They are basically the only way you can insure your pension. Also, large numbers of children guaranteed that there would be some left when the traditional high percentage of children's deaths were subtracted from it - but when the developing world got at least SOME share of the great advances in medicine, agriculture, etc in the last century, that pattern was culturally much harder to change, so cynically speaking the overpopulation problems in the developing world are largely caused by scientific progress. Lastly, birth control devices and medicine are MUCH harder to get to in those countries as well.

When the enemy is driven back, we have failed. When he is cut off, encircled and dispersed, we have succeeded.
- Alexander Suvorov.

16 Jul 2023, 16:48

Oh yeah that was just a joke. It’s just that Russia would probably have a larger population than those if it wasn’t curtailed by the war and prevented from growing much after.

On the bright side those two countries/provinces are some of the most developed and fastest developing in their regions! (Well maybe less so in Java’s case but it’s already the most developed island in Indonesia) Pretty rare seeing any success in countries these days, even if somewhat slow.

CarKing the 6th of the Abrahamic Caliphate

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