Stalin's Aggressive Plan in 1941

Because of Peace Loving Nature of Soviet Russia no documents exist that shows their intent to attack Germany, at least not in Public.
We as fans of military history have to reach our own conclusions.
Nazis realized that Soviets were going to destroy them. They went and kicked in the door, only to find Soviets cleaning their weapon. But Russia had every intension of using that weapon to conquer the whole Europe.

 

Are you? In that case it shouldn't be very difficult to locate some historians that agree with you. Name me one.

Probably not as much as you mate. Reading your well thought out posts, one can only imagine how many his portraits you got hanging around in your house.

And I suspect that you wont last long on this site. Your kind never do.

 

Wait for it....here it comes....David Irving in all probability.

 

Oleg,

The Soviets kept excellent records. They documented virtually everything just as the Nazis had. The reason why no records exist is because what you tend to believe is a myth as a result "your own conclusion" becomes some sort of a conspiracy theory with no hard evidence to back it up. As said before, every country till this day has a contingency plan for waging war with another nation. U.S. I bet, has invasion plans for Canada and Mexico, but that doesnt mean that the U.S. is going to invade!

If you are familiar with Soviet leaders then you should be aware that it was Trotsky NOT Stalin who wanted to spread communism through any means necessary. There is more proof however, which backs the claim of Stalin wanting to wait it out till German, France and Great Britain fought themselves into exhaustion at which point he would come into the picture and liberate Europe.... But even this is a far cry from invading Germany.

 

First of all, I'm not using Wikipedia, in contrast to you
Second, you forgot to mention something:

In 1939, the Red Army received a unique and invaluable experience in breaking through powerful field defenses of the Japanese army in Mongolia. At that time not a single army in the world had such experience.
The Soviet troops counted 57,000 soldiers, 498 tanks, 500 guns, 385 armored cars, 515 airplanes, artillery transport, automobiles, etc.
To this desert location the Soviets needed to supply by truck 25,000 tons of ammunition, 15,000 tons of fuel and lubricants, 4,000 tons of foodstuff, 7,000 tons of fuel, and a lot of other cargo. All this was supplied in such a fashion that the enemy did not even suspect preparations of a sudden crushing attack.

Also you forgot to say Soviet Union invaded Poland 17 September.


Nuremberg trials

DR. HORN: What further Russian measures caused Hitler anxiety as to Russia's attitude and intentions?
VON RIBBENTROP: Various things made the Fuehrer a little sceptical about the Russian attitude. One was the occupation of the Baltic States, which I have just mentioned. Another was the occupation of Bessarabia and North Bukovina after the French campaign and of which we were simply informed without any previous consultation. The King of Romania asked us for advice at that time. The Fuehrer, out of loyalty to the Soviet pact, advised the King of Romania to accept the Russian demands and to evacuate Bessarabia.
In addition, the war with Finland in 1940 caused a certain uneasiness in Germany, among the German people who had strong sympathies for the Finns. The Fuehrer felt himself bound to take this into account to some extent. There were two other points to consider. One was that the Fuehrer received a report on certain communist propaganda in German factories which alleged that the Russian trade delegation was the center of this propaganda. Above all, we heard of military preparations being made by Russia. I know after the French campaign he spoke to me about this matter on several occasions and said that approximately 20 German divisions had been concentrated near the East Prussian border; and that very large forces -- I happen to remember the number, I think about 30 army corps -- were said to be concentrated in Bessarabia. The Fuehrer was perturbed by these reports and asked me to watch the situation closely. He even said that in all probability the 1939 Pact had been concluded for the sole purpose of being able to dictate economic and political conditions to us. In any case, he now proposed to take countermeasures. I pointed out the danger of preventive wars to the Fuehrer, but the Fuehrer said that German-Italian interests must come first in all circumstances, if necessary. I said I hoped that matters would not go so far and that, at all events, we should make every effort through diplomatic channels to avoid this.


DR. HORN: Was not the Russian occupation of territory in the Balkans and also in the Baltic States the reason for inviting Molotov to Berlin?
VON RIBBENTROP: In the Balkans, no; for there were no Russian occupation zones there. But it did apply to Bessarabia which is not a Balkan country in the strictest sense of the term. It was the occupation of Bessarabia, which took place with surprising speed, and that of Northern Bukovina, which had not been agreed to fall within the Russian sphere of influence in the discussions at Moscow -- and which was, as the Fuehrer said at the time, really an old Austrian crown land -- and the occupation of the Baltic territories. It is true that this caused the Fuehrer a certain amount of anxiety.

Defendant JODL


DR. EXNER: According to the reports received, how did the military situation
develop in the East after the Polish campaign?
JODL: When we first contacted the Russians in the Polish campaign, relations were rather cool. We were carefully prevented from gaining any information about their troops or equipment. There were constantly unpleasant incidents on the San. The Russians shot at everything, at fleeing Poles or at German soldiers, and there were wounded and dead; and the demarcation line was flown over in numerous cases. The unusually strong forces employed by Russia for the occupation of the Baltic states, of Poland and Bessarabia struck us from the very beginning.

 

So you're taking Von Ribbentrop and Jodl at face value? Men on trial for their lives and scrambling to say anything to cover their enormous crimes? Not a good source for true facts.

 

Your not really trying to pass of disgruntled German war criminals at Nurmeburg, who attempt justify an attack on Russia in order to save their own skin as legitimate sources are you??

I am sure that it was Russia's actions in Bessarabia which prompted Hitler to initiate the immediate extermination or enslavement of the Slav people once Germany crossed the border.


Shameful.

 

Well than What was your source for the info? You posted from????

in which Wikipedia starts off

Notice the similarities?

Since I was discussing who started the boarder war between the Soviet Union and Japan, what effect does mentioning this have?

[/FONT]I don't see what the trial of war criminals has to do with the fact that there is no documented evedince that the Soviet Union intended to invade Germany between 1941 and 1942 or any time after.

 

You absolutely incompetent comrade

Special Archive of the USSR, fund 7, index 1, document 1223.
Published in the December 1994, issue of Noviy Mir.
Excerpts from Stalin’s speech at the conclusion of a pact regarding invasion from August 19, 1939: “If we accept Germany’s proposal about the conclusion of a pact regarding invasion, she will of course attack Poland, and France and England’s involvement in this war will be inevitable. Western Europe will subjected to serious disorders and disturbances. Under these conditions, we will have many chances to stay on the sidelines of the conflict, and we will be able to count our advantageous entrance into the war. . . It is in the interest of the USSR – the motherland of workers – that he war unfolds between the Reich and the capitalist Anglo-French block. It is necessary to do everything within our powers to make this war last as long as possible, in order to exhaust the two sides. It is precisely for this reason that we must agree to signing the pact, proposed by Germany, and work on making this war, once declared, last a maximum amount of time”

«The experience of the last 20 years has shown that in peacetime the Communist movement is never strong enough to seize power. The dictatorship of such a party will only become possible as the result of a major war ...». Comrade Stalin said it in August 19, 1939 in a secret speech, which remained so until 1994. It was said at the very moment when Stalin opened the floodgates of World War II.


Stalin declared that the communists' main task was to fight against social demo cracy : 'first of all, the struggle with social democratism along all lines, including and following from this the exposure of bourgeois pacifism'. (Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 11, p. 202) Stalin's attitude towards those who openly favoured war with, for example, the German Nazis, was just as simple and understandable. The Nazis had to be supported: leave it to the Nazis to eliminate the Social Democrats and the pacifists; let the Nazis start another war and destroy every state in Europe, every political party, every parliament, every army and every trade union. In 1927 Stalin already foresaw that the Nazis would come to power and he considered that this would be a positive event. 'It is precisely this fact which will lead to an exacerbation of the internal situation in the capitalist countries and to the workers coming out in favour of revolution.' (Stalin, Sochineniya, Vol. 10, p. 49)
Stalin supported the Nazis. Zealous Stalinists, such as Herman Remmele, who was a member of the Politburo of the German Communist Party, was quite open in his support of the Nazis, then eager for power. The part which Stalin played in the Nazis' seizure of power in Germany was considerable. As Leon Trotsky said in 1936: 'Without Stalin there would have been no Hitler, there would have been no Gestapo!' (Bulletin of the Opposition (BO), Nos. 52-53, October 1936) Another statement he made in November 1938 reveals Trotsky's shrewdness and his knowledge of the point at issue. 'Stalin finally untied Hitler's hands, as well as those of his enemies, and thereby pushed Europe towards war.' He said this at a time when Chamberlain was rejoicing that there would be no war, Mussolini was regarding himself as a peacemaker and Hitler still had no intention of issuing a directive to attack Poland, even less France. At the moment when Europe was heaving a sigh of relief in the belief that there would be no war, Trotsky already knew both that war would quickly come and who would be to blame for it.

 

If you would have fully read my post to Oleg, then you would have noticed that I said exactly what you have just posted. There is more proof stating that Stalin wanted Germany to fight it out with BG and France and then "liberate" them with red flags... This is not the same as attacking Germany outright.

Interesting how you conveniently pic and choose which posts to address.

 

I'm not following you.
Are you trying to say that Stalin wanted to destroy Britain and France bypassing Germany, therefore to attack them from the Atlantic? Very clever, iron logic.


In September 1939, as a result of the Red Army’s “war of liberation” in Poland, the new western border of the Soviet Union advanced in such a way that the so-called Belostok bulge formed in Byelorussia- a powerful wedge that, like a ship’s bow, broke into the territory occupied by Germany. The same thing happened in the Lvov region – there, another powerful wedge of Soviet territory formed. The Belostok and Lvov bulges were like two Soviet peninsulas in the German sea. Basic military logic dictated: if the Red Army intended to defend itself, it could not keep troops in the Belostok and Lvov bulges. Already, in peacetime, enemy troops surrounded the Soviet army on three sides in the bulges. The Soviet flanks were open and vulnerable. A sudden and decisive German attack on the flanks in these bulges would have cut off the best sections of the Red Army from the main forces and supply bases. In the event of an enemy invasion, such an alignment of Soviet troops inevitably and immediately would have led to catastrophe.

That is exactly what happened in the 1941. Before the German invasion into the territory of the Kiev military district, the most powerful Soviet front was deployed: the Southwestern Front. The three most powerful armies of that front were in the Lvov bulge. In peacetime, these three armies were already almost surrounded. Hitler only had to shut the trap on them. On June 22, the very weak 1st German Tank Group hit Lutsk, Rovno, and Berdichev, quickly cutting of all three Soviet armies in the Lvov bulge – the 12th (mountain), 6th, and 26th.
The 1st Tank Group, faced with open, unprotected operational space, immediately went through the Soviet rear, crushing air bases, staffs, and hospitals. Here, in the rear, they found tremendous quantities of Soviet weapons, fuel, ammunition, foodstuffs, and medical supplies. The Germans seized truly remarkable trophies. The three Soviet armies in the Lvov bulge were left with a problem that had two solutions, both of which were catastrophic: either remain in the trap and wait for the 1st Tank Group to completely lock the encirclement, or run to the east, abandoning everything that cannot be carried. They ran. Soon, they were left without fuel and ammunition. The entire Soviet Southwestern Front crumbled from one rather weal blow. But that was not all: this same blow threatened the entire Southern Front.
In Byelorussia, the Red Army had an even worse time. The Western Front had four armies. The main forces of the front were concentrated in the Byelostok bulge. Two German tank groups struck the undefended flanks and linked east of Minsk. The 3rd, 10th, and parts of the 4th and 13th armies, all together almost thirty divisions, found themselves in a pocket. The Western Front collapsed even quicker that the Southwestern and the Southern Fronts.
Could it be that before the war General Zhukov did not understand one cannot herd huge numbers of troops into bulges that become trap?

General Vlassov. In a protocol from questioning on August 8, 1942, it was recorded:
“Regarding the question of whether Stalin had intentions to attack Germany, Vlassov declared that such intentions, undoubtedly, existed. The concentration of troops in the Lvov region points to the fact that a strike against Romania was being planned in the direction of the petroleum sources. . . The Red Army was not prepared for the German invasion. Despite all the rumors about the operations conducted by Germany, in the Soviet Union nobody believed in such a possibility. During preparations, the Russians meant only their own offensive.” There is no other explanations for the concentration of Soviet troops in the Lvov and Byelostok bulges.

The consequences of Zhukov’s positioning were catastrophic. In order to divert the attack on Moscow, the Red Army had to send, urgently and under heavy enemy bombers’ raids, railway trains with divisions, corps and armies form the Southwestern Front to the Western Front. There, again under heavy bombing , the trains were unloaded and the troops went straight into battle. What happened was that the 16th Army had just advanced from the Trans-Baikal region to Ukraine, meaning south of Polesye. The army had just begun to unload when the German invasion happened. They were forced to urgently load the 16th Army back into trains and herd it several hundred kilometers to the north. The staff of the 16th Army arrived at Smolensk from Ukraine and began to unload, but the communications battalion could not be found. Without communication, it is impossible to command troops. An entire army found itself without command. And there are plenty more examples.

But Zhukov was not thinking of defense, and was not planning it. There is plenty of testimony that right before the invasion Zhukov, Vatutin, Vasilevsky, and all the generals and officers of the General Staff worked sixteen and seventeen hours a day without weekends and holidays. The areas for the concentration of primary efforts were not chosen by Soviet commanders in the interests of strategic defense operations (such an operation was simply not foreseen and planned), but for entirely different means of action.

 

No im not saying that at all....

What I said was that there is more evidence of Stalin simply waiting it out until Germany and the allies destroyed themselves then walk through Europe planitng red flags.

Why do you keep repeating yourself? Why is this relevant? Where are you getting this from? And please do not quote anything Vlasov said.

 

It means you agree that Hitler simply had no choice at that moment whether attack USSR or not, because he knew very well that the Soviets were preparing offensive operation on eastern borders with dense concentration in south, not far from the Germans only oil in Romania. But the scale of this preparation made by communists to “liberate” Europe he appreciated much later.

Because, instead of admitting and commenting facts, you are asking irrelevant questions?
What is more relevant if not the real facts and logic?
Why you so interested in my sources, while possessing, as I see, absolute historic truth.
What the game you are playing here?

 

Lets all get along. We have here a very good debate here.

 

Well I do have sources quoting German documentation of deployment as at Barbarossa was far more comprehensive and detailed than any records so far discovered in Russia, and that only general inferrences could be gleaned from large scale administrative functions, ie. divisional strength can be estimated at the time of the initial invasion, where German units are detailed down to individual formations and equipment.
The reasons given for this are propaganda and the various epochs of Soviet dictatorship attempting to rewrite and rewrite again historical contexts. For example the six volume "History of the Great Patriotic War" is filled with heroic cliche's and superfluous details, punctuated by such statements as inherent Soviet "incontestable superiority over the military art of (any and all) bourgeois armies."
To this day Soviet deployment at the eve of invasion is only documented in any corroberative fashion to the army level, where German deployment is known and highly detailed in many cases to company level.

Still there are some inconsistencies with the little available documentation of Soviet frontal deployment and the claims made by the OP of the thread.
For one Gen Halder records in his diary on the evening of June 22 that across the entire frontier zone the Soviet troops were widely dispersed and easily overcome. This does not at all fit with the contention that entire army Fronts were concentrated at launching points in the salients west of Bialystock and Lvov.

In fact the Soviet 3rd and 10th armies had to cover the entire area of Vilnius in Lithuania to Brest-Litovsk, the 5th army virtually the entire Pripet Marshes and the 6th and 26th armies from the Lvov area to Chernovtsy at the Bessarabian border, which the 18th and 9th armies were assigned to protect, form the last line of Ukrainian defence and guard the entire Black Sea coast. Each and every one of these regions covered several thousand square kilometres and the situation was entirely compounded by the protracted nature of Soviet rearmament, outdated equipment, poor familiarity with the relatively small amount of new equipment sent to the border defences, wide gaps between prepared defensive fortifications (some 200,000 men had been working on them since the previous year but they were far from comprehensive or complete and the workforce also had to build airfields)...

I have such sporadic documentation such as tank officer reports (T-28 models, threatened by volleys from Kar98 Mausers), that his only communications links with command sections existed by using local telegraph stations. These were destroyed in the initial German artillery barrage...

There were some notable points of resistance, in the south there were a number of new model MiG fighters encountered, although they didn't last long in action and most were captured on their airfields and flown by Luftwaffe comparative test pilots.
And there was a KV-1 tank force in the Baltic states that managed to put up a resistance for exactly two days before being decimated by aerial attacks.


My personal appraisal, I've a fair bit of documentation here and there about the Eastern Front and I honestly concur with the general theme of what the original poster has said, but disagree with the details.

I do not personally believe Barbarossa had the slightest thing to do with Lebensraum. And yes I've also got a copy of Mein Kampf, a good one with plenty of PhD annotations for reference, and have been reading. I also see very generalised themes where Lebensraum is described, in fact I personally read it to mean lebensraum of a political and psychological and not even literal nature, that to absolve the German psyche Hitler felt the need to render Versailles defunct in terms of the old Austrian/Germanic empire and Poland/Prussia and this is what is being referred to by the east, with a view to moving into the Ukraine and B'yelorussia as German colonialists, and interest in the Balkans. Effectively a great new central European power combining territorial elements of German Protestantism, Catholicism and the Orthodoxy into a new religion/territory of Nazism, a true mediaeval empire.

But Barbarossa was something else, and it partly had to do with selling Nazism to the Prussian General Staff back in the mid-thirties I think, without the Wehrmacht Nazism was never going to get off the ground. The only thing which ever made Hitler stand out from any other raving twat in 1923 was Ludendorff, without the army the Nazis were nothing, this had always been the case and even frustrated the leader to the point he began replacing them with the SS-Panzerkorps at his earliest opportunity.

Once Germany was committed, which Göring achieved with his economic policy, the Rumanian oil fields were necessary and the occupation of Belarus and the Ukraine were necessary. That was it, no further, but those were necessary (achievable by knocking out Kiev, and Leningrad or Moscow or both). Then a clean up in the Balkans and finally western Europe. Simple strategy, no idealism about it.
I think Barbarossa was far from Hitler's political agenda, which indeed was far more alligned to gaining combinations of acceptance, fear and respect from west European powers, but his sell to the military. Then he got megalomania on yo ass, ahem.

The Soviet Union I concur was absolutely intending on invading the west, of this there is no question. But where I defer is to the timeframe, Stalin and the General Staff clearly asserted this could not be done before late 1941 at the earliest, with 1943 a more realistic proposition. That was simply the nature of getting the latest equipment to the front lines in a military of that size. The Soviets were playing catchup by crawling out of mid-thirties military technologies and they knew it, and it was going to take years just to get the equipment currently on production lines properly sorted and in the troops hands.

Yes the KV-1 and T-34 were in production, but aside from one tiny formation in the Baltic the army had the obsolete T-28 and a propaganda exercise for heavy tank warfare, the T-35 (essentially a rolling bunker no better protected than a T-28).
The MiG-3 was in production, as was the Yak-1 and LaGG-3 but these were all still under development, had been rushed into service and most squadrons had the I-16 and biplanes. The story continues along the same lines. Even Soviet fuel quality was about five years behind western Europe, though their artillery was excellent and numerous.

Now the west didn't fully appreciate this, and on a hard press the Soviets could've invaded western Europe and the Balkans in 1942 and basically kicked butt. This was probably on the minds of the Wehrmacht General Staff through early 41.

But this degree of speculation is about as far as I'd go personally, and it is pure speculation.

 

We've been here before, can't find the threads (Can't be bothered to be honest ). I still feel strongly that recent 'Bigging up' of Stalin's territorial intentions in the 30s & 40s are little more than bad history being used to somehow justify, or loosen, the accurate portrayal of Adolf as a voracious & arrogant nationalist predator who felt that if he wanted a country, he could just take it.

I've seen translations of bits of the supposed aggressive plans of the Soviets against the West from that period (lost in a laptop failure, will see if I can refind the links, but it's proving hard to find coverage again without Irvingesque 'interpretation' applied ). As far as I can make out they were little more than the normal 'all eventualities' military planning that any state engages in. It's a truly foolish government that doesn't sandbox for all conceivable possibilities (I really wouldn't be surprised if the UK, or any other state, even now, has some very odd documents on 'How to take Stockholm', 'A Theoretical assault on Paris' or 'Theories for war with the united States' lurking in the filing cabinets and hard drives of their ministries of defence and HQs). It is the role of a sensible government/military to plan for the worst... particularly when there's a state nearby that's already in the process of gobbling up territory in a manner not seen since Napoleon.
Stalin was a bastard, fair enough comment, he colluded with the carving up of Poland, and was the type to essentially admire the territorial gains of the Nazis, but he wasn't a fool - what kind of further plans would one make if dealing with a deteriorating relationship with another extremist state of a directly opposing ideology, regardless of one's intentions or ability to use that plan? A bastard maybe, but such slender 'evidence' of malicious intent is not enough to somehow belittle the immense contribution of the Soviets in knocking the Nazis back to Berlin. They did not incite the attack; Hitler did. They were not the offending party; the Nazis were.

The difference between these plans through the ages, their reporting when revealed, and this speculation that the Soviets were somehow the real aggressors around 1940, seems to me to be that there isn't a strange layer in most other military history areas that constantly seeks to find justification for the real aggressors actions. Hanging their hats on the slimmest evidence that feeds into their pre-prepared viewpoint ('evidence' often mirroring the contemporary suggestions of Goebbels's expert misinformation industry) while ignoring more obvious or condemnatory sources - as there is for Adolf and his boys.

Even if, somehow, it were proven that Uncle Joe was massing for an attack (It hasn't been... I don't think it will be) It can't have been a very good plan, or very advanced, can it? As the early events of barbarossa proved.

~A

 

Barbarossa was not caused by an unlikely possibility of a Russian attack;the reasons were 1)If Hitler defeated the Sovjet Union,he had won the war (UK + USA could not win without the USSR) 2) Germany was depending of the USSR for supplies and without these he could not continue the war;but since the autmn of 1940 the relations between the two countries were worsening,and Hitler was afraid that Stalin would stop delivering the supplies 3)Hitler was afraid of a Russian threat of Finnish tin and Roumanian oil .There has yet been no proof for the theories of Suwurov,it's all speculation .But people like conspiracy theories .

 

We have to remember that Soviet system was rotten to the core from the beginning. When Germany kicked in the door , only their Ost Policy prevented the whole house from crumbling down upon itself.

Yes Soviets did not have modern weapons in numbers that they needed and their divisions were not fully equipped. They were poorly organized and the quality of army leadership should have been better. Do you think Stalin understood or cared about that. Probably not!

Well being of Russian Army and Russian people were not his concerns. Human life was cheap and plentiful. This is how it always was in Russia and always will be. Tsars and Bolsheviks never cared about soldiers quality, but mostly quantity. I think it was Lenin who said: “ Quantity has a quality of its own.”

So could Stalin give order to attack Germany in 1941? I think yes!

 

Here is a striking revelation. On 21 June 1941, all the Soviet armies on the German and Romanian borders, as well as the 23rd Army on the Finnish frontier, were of shock army standard, although, as we have already seen, they were not called such. They were, from north to south, the 23rd, 8th, 11th, 3rd, 10th, 4th, 5th, 6th, 26th, 12th, 18th and 9th. The 16th Army was then added to them. This was a typical shock army, with more than 1,000 tanks on its complement. (Central Archives of the Ministry of Defence of the USSR, Archive No. 208, list 2511, item 20, p. 128) The 19th, 20th, and 21st Armies, which had been secretly moved up to the German border, had already been fully brought up to this standard.
Germany had a powerful engine for aggression in its tank groups. The Soviet Union had a similar engine. The difference lay in their designations and in their numbers. Hitler had four tank groups, while Stalin had sixteen shock armies. Not all mechanized corps were made up entirely of tanks. But to appreciate Stalin's intentions fully, account must be taken both of what he achieved, and also of what he was prevented from achieving. The German attack caught the Soviet Union in the process of setting up a great number of shock armies. First came the framework for these enormous structures, which was then filled in, completed, and finally put into working order. Not all armies reached the levels planned for them, but this work was proceeding when Hitler interrupted it. He had enough sense not to wait until they were all ready to be turned loose.

Among the ordinary Soviet invasion armies, which usually consisted of one mechanized corps, two rifle corps, and some detached divisions, were some armies that did not conform to the general pattern. There were three of them, the 6th, 9th and l0th. These armies together had not three corps, but six. Two were mechanized, one was cavalry, and three were rifle. Each of these armies was moved as close as possible to the frontier, so that if a large salient developed on the enemy side, the special armies would find themselves precisely in these salients. Each army was equipped with the latest weaponry. The 6th Mechanized Corps of the 10th Army, for instance, was armed with 452 of the latest T-34 and K V tanks. The 4th Mechanized Corps of the 6th Army, had 460 of the latest T-34 and KV tanks, besides others. The air divisions of these armies had hundreds of the latest planes, including the YAK-1, MIG-3, IL-2, and PE-2.
After each army had been fully equipped, it must have had 2,3 50 tanks, 698 armoured vehicles, over 4,000 guns and mortars and more than 250,000 soldiers and officers. In addition to their basic complements, these armies were given ten to twelve heavy artillery regiments, NKVD units and much else besides.
I do not know what to call these out-of-the-ordinary armies. If we use their official names, the 6th Army, the 9th, and the loth, then we involuntarily fall into the trap which was set as long ago as 1939 by the Soviet General Staff. We lose our awareness and begin to think of these armies as ordinary shock armies, or ordinary invasion armies. They were completely out of the ordinary; each one of these armies, with more than 2,000 tanks each, was equal to or even exceeded one half of the entire German Wehrmacht, while in quality the superiority of the Soviet tanks was astonishing.


If we call the German tank groups, each with between 600 and 1,000 tanks, engines of aggression, what then are we to call the 6th, 9th, and 10th Soviet Armies?
That was not all, however. The Soviet High Command had a fair number of corps at its disposal which did not belong to these armies, but which were deployed quite close to the frontier. Any ordinary army could be changed into a shock one just by including corps in its complement, and any shock army could be changed into a heavy shock one without changing either its name or number.
Of the three heavy shock armies, it is the most powerful of them, the 9th, which attracts our attention. Not very long before, in the Winter War against Finland, the 9th Army was simply a rifle corps consisting of three rifle divisions with a fine-sounding name. After the Winter War, the 9th Army dissolved into the mists, appeared elsewhere, was dissolved once again, only to turn up yet again under cover of the TASS report of 13 June 1941. It had not yet been brought up to full strength, but was still the unfinished shell for the most powerful army in the world. It had six corps, two of which were mechanized, and one cavalry.
On 21 June 1941, the 9th Army had 17 divisions in all, including two air, four tank, two motorized, two cavalry and seven rifle. It was very similar to other heavy shock armies, but it was planned to add to the 9th Army yet another mechanized corps, the 20th, commanded by Major-General I. E. Petrov. This corps was established in the Turkestan Military District, and was secretly transferred westwards before its formation had been fully completed. After it had been included, the Army's complement consisted of 20 divisions, including six tank. At full strength, the seven corps of the 9th Army had 3,341 tanks. This was roughly the same number as the Wehrmacht had; in quality, they were superior. According to Colonel-General P. Belov (at that time he was a major-general, commander of the 2nd Cavalry Corps of the 9th Army), it was intended to give T-34 tanks even to the cavalry of this army. (VIZH, 1959, No. u, p. 66)