Most Notorious Military Blunders

[Sarmatian]

overlook how the Soviets started virtually every offensive from Uranus onwards.......by lining up tube after tube of artillery for kilometers on end for the bombardment prep; having thousands of Il-2's to pound the hard-points; and then sending in huge armored formations.

That is so not how the Soviets conducted operations. There's nothing remotely similar between Uranus and Mars and later operations.

Seelow Heights, anyone?

Seelow Heigths was a special case due to political reasons, terrain configuration favoured the defender as there was basically only one possible axis of attack and in the end it was only a few days delay.

[ReluctantSamurai]

That is so not how the Soviets conducted operations. There's nothing remotely similar between Uranus and Mars and later operations.

Really?

Uranus: Troops involved...1,000,500 men, 13,541 guns (exclusive of AA guns and 50mm mortars), 894 tanks, and 1,115 aircraft.

"At 07.20 hours, in the murk of Thursday morning 19 November, South-Western and Don Fronts issued the call-sign 'Siren', at which all guns, settled during the night in their firing pits or drawn up to their stations, were loaded; ten minutes later, the order to fire was given and eighty minutes of bombardment was signalled by the first salvoes from the RS-6 rocket launchers. More than 3,500 guns and mortars, deployed along the three narrow breakthrough sectors which stretched altogether for some fourteen miles, joined in the bombardment after the first rocket salvoes."

[Figures and narrative from The Road to Stalingrad: Stalin's War with Germany, by John Erickson]

Mars: Troops involved...The initial strength of the seven Soviet armies committed in Operation Mars amounted to about 667,000 men and over 1,900 tanks out of the 1,890,000 men and 3,375 tanks that comprised the Kalinin and Western Fronts and the Moscow Defense Zone in November 1942. Additionally, at least 150,000 men and several hundred tanks reinforced the attacking armies during the operation.

[A brief description of the opening assault in 20A sector, from David Glantz's Zhukov's Greatest Defeat]

"Hundreds of meters to the rear all along the front, commanders and staff officers, huddled in their greatcoats to ward off the bone-chilling cold and with precious map cases under their arms, crawled into command bunkers where they would oversee the assault. Farther to the rear, one could hear the muffled sounds of artillery casing rattling together like the unlikely sound of crickets in winter as the thousands of artillery and mortar tubes of 20th Army's twenty-odd artillery regiments readied to fire into the snowy skies"

And this is just for the 20th Army sector.....

In January 1944, the offensive to break the siege of Leningrad employed 375,000 men, 1,200 tanks and SP guns, 718 aircraft for close tactical support, 192 aircraft from the Baltic Fleet, and 330 bombers of Long Range Aviation in Leningrad & Volkhov Fronts, while Baltic Front numbered no less than 45 rifle divisions, 4 tank brigades, and 335 aircraft.

[Narrative from John Erickson's The Road to Berlin]

"[Baltic sector]At 0935 hours a salvo of rockets opened the artillery preparation for the attack, 2nd Shock Army guns being joined by the long-range guns from Kronstadt forts and the warships of the Baltic Fleet, 100,000 rounds loosed off in a 65 minute bombardment."
"[Leningrad sector]At 0920 hours on 15 January, 3000 guns and heavy mortars opened a massive bombardment of the German positions, firing off over 200,000 rounds in one hundred minutes."

In the attack on Vyborg, Finland in 1944 the Soviet command massed thousands of guns and almost 1,000 Katyusha rocket-launchers, 536 bombers and almost 500 tanks to knock the Finn's out of the war.

Bagration: Four Soviet Fronts assigned. 118 Rifle Divisions, 2 cavalry corps, 1 tank army, eight tank/mech corps, four air armies (5,327 aircraft in addition to 700 bombers from the Long Range Bomber Force). A total of 1,254,000 men (plus 416,000 men from the left flank of 1st Belorussian Front), 2,715 tanks and 1,335 SP guns. Lined up, practically hub-to-hub were 24,000 guns and mobile heavy mortars, supplemented by 2,306 Katyusha rocket-launchers.

Beginning to see a pattern here?

For the final advance to the Oder River, Marshal Zhukov's 1st Belorussian and Marshal Koniev's 1st Ukrainian Front disposed of no less than 163 rifle divisions, 32,143 guns and heavy mortars, almost 6,500 tanks and SP guns, 4,772 aircraft, involving in all just under 2 1/4 million men. The average density in infantry formations was one rifle division per 3.7 km, with 64 guns and 12 tanks per km along a front that stretched for some 300 miles. [figures from The Road to Berlin]

And folks say Monty liked his artillery and bombers

Seelow Heigths was a special case due to political reasons, terrain configuration favoured the defender as there was basically only one possible axis of attack and in the end it was only a few days delay.

Seelow Heights happened because of Zhukov's immense ego. Instead of letting Konev complete the turning of Heinrici's right flank, he decides to make a direct frontal assault. A few days delay, indeed.....tell that to the 30,000 or so who died there so that Zhukov could reach Berlin first...........

[Sarmatian]

Really?

Really.

There's a vast difference between using artillery and planes to create a gap within enemy lines which can later be exploited by mobile forces and senseless pounding of enemy with artillery.

The fact that Soviets did use a lot of artillery doesn't mean that they didn't do much else. Comprende?

Seelow Heights happened because of Zhukov's immense ego. Instead of letting Konev complete the turning of Heinrici's right flank, he decides to make a direct frontal assault. A few days delay, indeed.....tell that to the 30,000 or so who died there so that Zhukov could reach Berlin first...........

No, it's because Stalin purposefully draw the demarcation line right over Berlin, slightly weakened Zhukov's forces and made May the 1st the deadline for taking Berlin, kind of creating a race between them. My guess is that he would have preferred Konev to take Berlin, fearing Zhukov's popularity. Only after he saw what kind of disaster could potentially happen, he changed the orders, allowing Zhukov to assault the city and Konev to provide support.

[ReluctantSamurai]

"There's a vast difference between using artillery and planes to create a gap within enemy lines which can later be exploited by mobile forces and senseless pounding of enemy with artillery."

I think I made my point that the Soviets loved their artillery preps...and they employed it en-masse even more than their Western allies

"Comprende?"

I comprehend just fine, thank you I'm not criticizing the heavy use of firepower...by either the Soviets or the Western Allies, just illustrating how it was done.....As for Seelow Hts., I guess we'll have to agree to disagree....Zhukov wanted to be the first in....period. Agreed that Stalin played upon his ego to get him to push harder, but as with most Zhukov orchestrated battles, the Soviet Army paid in blood for his glory. Koniev's drive up from the SW would have made Heinrici's position untenable. 30,000 brave soldiers died for a bit of time.....

[Sarmatian]

"There's a vast difference between using artillery and planes to create a gap within enemy lines which can later be exploited by mobile forces and senseless pounding of enemy with artillery."

I think I made my point that the Soviets loved their artillery preps...and they employed it en-masse even more than their Western allies

Then you misunderstood what PJ wanted to say. There's nothing wrong with having a local superiority in men and equipment, it's where you choose to use it, how you choose use it and what will you do afterwards, and that's where German and later Soviets differed from western allies for the most part.

Now, I'm not bashing western allies. Considering their situation, it was probably the best way all in all. Western allies had much larger industrial base, much more raw materials and few manpower issues. That basically meant that they could always outgun their opponent and that they're gonna have few logistical problems. Basically, fighting the war of attrition was the best way to fight a war for them.

I comprehend just fine, thank you I'm not criticizing the heavy use of firepower...by either the Soviets or the Western Allies, just illustrating how it was done.....As for Seelow Hts., I guess we'll have to agree to disagree....Zhukov wanted to be the first in....period. Agreed that Stalin played upon his ego to get him to push harder, but as with most Zhukov orchestrated battles, the Soviet Army paid in blood for his glory. Koniev's drive up from the SW would have made Heinrici's position untenable. 30,000 brave soldiers died for a bit of time.....

Generals tend to have big egos but I don't think Zhukov was worse than average. They didn't anticipate such heavy resistance and Stalin, never completely trusting western allies, insisted that the attack commence on April 16th, which allowed for only two weeks of preparation, and later that the city must be taken by May 1st.

Also, Zhukov most of the time made correct decisions, there were few blunders of course, but he also was the general who saw "most action" and was involved in every major Soviet operation from 1941 to 1945. Overall, he was a very competent commander.

[Gaius Sempronius Gracchus]

Are we not missing a major differentiation between the goals of each side. The Western allies were attempting to defeat the Germans; to push them back and force their surrender. The Russians were, lets be frank, on a bit of a charge because they were eye-ing up a land-grab.

[ReluctantSamurai]

"Then you misunderstood what PJ wanted to say."

I understood the point he was trying to make.

"There's nothing wrong with having a local superiority in men and equipment, it's where you choose to use it, how you choose use it and what will you do afterwards, and that's where German and later Soviets differed from western allies for the most part"

Not sure what you mean by this.....

"Overall, he was a very competent commander."

In an overall strategical sense, and perhaps on the operational level. But at the tactical level, he was brutal (read as careless with human life) and he didn't get along well with subordinates (not unlike Monty, in that respect). Zhukov is one of my top three over-rated generals of WW2...