The State of the Soviet Economy and Red Army in June of 1942

Since the Second World War ended it has been popular to present the Soviet Union as an overwhelming economic and military colossus that was essentially undefeatable by 1942 if not earlier in the war. The groundwork for this belief was laid by German officers who after the war sought to cast blame for their own failures of leadership. American military leaders then latched onto these aguments. Doubtlessly this occured in part as a response to the Cold War era Communist threat. However, the idea of the Red Army and Soviet Union as possessing an unstoppable military machine of immense proportions has continued to be refreshed today by historians (such as David Stahel) holding the belief that numerical determinants were key to the war's outcome. As a result the Third Reich was doomed to defeat no later than the fall of 1941. A deeper look at the historical record shows that little about this artificially constructed conventional wisdom is true.

For instance, let's start with the big picture and look at the state of the Soviet economy after six months of war against Germany. By 1942, the Soviet Union’s Gross Domestic Product, GDP, had fallen to only 70% of German GDP.  And it's not like 1942 represented an economic renaissance. It would not be until 1945 that Soviet GDP once again surpassed German GDP (and this was after the German economy had been put into free fall as Allied and Soviet forces swarmed across German borders). Thus, as the war in Eastern Europe entered it's second year the German economy in isolation versus the Soviet economy held far more economic potential. Now, let's delve into the defails behind those numbers.

To say that the Soviet economic situation was catastrophic was to understate things. Between the start of the German invasion in June of 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) and January of 1942 the Soviet economy's access to natural resourcs had been horribly constrained. In 1939 the Soviet Union ranked as the world's largest producer of manganese, second largest producer of chrome, and third largest producers of crude oil and iron ore. The destruction caused by Barbarossa completely flipped that pre-war status on its head. Early in 1942 the Germans were producing roughly 80% more coal than the Soviet Union (understandably given German control over the Donbass). Soviet steel output was equally dire - with the Germans outproducing the Soviet Union by over 70% by the winter of 1941-1942. From there Soviet infrastucture had been reduced to a shambles as a result of the Axis invasion. Both the road and rail network had either been ripped to pieces or badly compromised by German control over key transportation nodes in the Western Soviet Union. This meant that the most productive remaining source of raw materials for the Soviet economy (Southern Russia and the Caucuses region) was in mortal danger of being completely cut off from the rest of the country. As it was, even before Case Blue (the German 1942 summer offensive) began the destruction inflicted on the Soviet rail network in 1941 meant that the distribution of oil from the Caucuses had been severely impacted. As a result Soviet crude oil output had fallen by 33% year-over-year from 1941 to 1942. It plummeted another twenty percent by 1943 due to the destruction caused by the fighting in 1942. That said, the Soviet Union was vigorously responding to the immense challenges it faced.

The Soviet leadership had cancelled out every other iniative or strategic goal other than the marshaling of resources to fight for their survival against Nazi Germany (in contrast to the Germans who pursued multiple strategic goals at the same time). At the grand strategic level, Stalin organized the State Defense Committee, GKO, with him as chairman and also initially comprising Beria, Malenkov, Molotov, Voroshilov, and Stalin. In February of 1942 Voznesenski, Mikoyan and Kaganovich joined them. One week prior to the June 30th formation of the GKO Stalin also ordered Stavka of the Supreme High Command to act as a single military command operating at the strategic level. Stalin also led Stavka, with Timoshenko as the presiding officer, Zhukov as the initial Chief of the General Staff, Navy Minister Admiral Kuznetsov, Molotov, and Marshalls Voroshilov and Budenny rounding out the core group. Though its members would change during the war this single organization stood responsible for directing the Soviet military effort. In comparison the Germans had created two competing organizations, OKW and OKH, that often worked at odds rather than together (with, for instance, OKW responsible for, among other things, the fighting in the Mediterranean and OKH largely running the war in Eastern Europe).The Soviets also folded the Red Army’s General Staff into Stavka where it primarily focused on  operational level decisions and coordinating the activities of the Fronts. General Staff “representatives” would be sent into the field to assist in planning and directing critical campaigns. In addition, at different points in the war staff representatives would even take over individual fronts as needed.

In addition the Soviet leadership leveraged the NKVD to lock down the rear areas leading up to and including the operational areas at the front. While the NKVD sought to maintain order amongst the population the Politburo had on June 27, 1941 ordered all state financial reserves, precious metal reserves, and valuable works of art evacuated to the east. In contrast to the Germans, who in 1941-42 were still trying to minimize the war's impact on the civilian population, Stalin immediately called for his people to sacrifice. He presented the German invasion as not an attack on the Soviet Union and its much despised leadership but an attack on the Russian people and motherland. The war became "the great patriotic war" to defend "mother Russia". Stalin also called for intense propaganda efforts to help raise morale at the front. More than one thousand writers and artists, of which four hundred would die in combat, were embedded with the Red Army to provide inspired accounts of military success designed to push the soldiers to fight. In addition, on September 18, 1941 Stalin had ordered “Guards” units created from units performing well in battle. To further motivate his field commanders he would also put in place or agree to a number of proposals that would elevate the prestige of the Red Army's officer corps. Though the motivational and propoganda war quickly kicked into high gear that still left survival and rebuilding.

Economically speaking the total war effort extended across the home front. The most pressing matter was preserving Soviet industry. As a result the Soviet leadership called for every factory in the western Soviet Union to be relocated away from the rampaging German armies and moved deep into the Russian interior to the east. By November 1941 some 1,523 factories had been transferred to the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and other locations east of the Volga River. In addition, in August of 1941 both the United States and Great Britain extended a massive expansion in the Lend-Lease program to aid the Soviet Union - though its effects wouldn't begin to really be felt until November of 1941. Nevertheless by the end of 1941 the British had sent 187 Matilda and 259 Valentine tanks to the Red Army as well as 484 Hurricane and 216 Tomahawk fighters (U.S. manufactured). In spite of all these efforts labor shortages were just as big a problem in the Soviet Union as they had been in Germany.

Because of the massive casualties the Germans inflicted during Barbarossa (by February 1942, the Red Army had lost over 3 million men captured by the Germans, and another 2,663,000 killed in action) and the huge population centers lost to the Germans the Soviet industrial labor force fell from 8.3 million people in 1940 to 5.5 million people in 1942. This also impacted the Red Army. September 1942 estimates done by E.A. Shchadenko (the man responsible for creating new Red Army units) found that more than five and a half million military age men had been lost from Red Army usage due to the German occupation of Soviet western territories. This meant that list strength of rifle divisions fell from a pre-war total of 14,483 men to 11,626 men in December of 1941. Though many point to the Soviet Union's huge size as the major impediment to any chance of German success in the war this misses a number of crucial points. Not least of which is that the Red Army's major source of reliable manpower was in the Western Soviet Union, and much of that was under German occupation in 1942.

This is not to say that the Red Army did not try to make use of the manpower that could be found in the Caucuses and Central Asia - it just didn't work out. Language barriers represented a formidable obstacle to integrating non-Russian speaking populations into the Red Army. The Red Army raised twenty-six rifle or mountain divisions from the Caucuses, Central Asia, and Baltic states, but almost none of these were deployable against the Germans. Though four Armenian rifle divisions saw combat, as well as the majority of Georgian units, those cases proved the exception rather than the rule. For instance, only three of fifteen Uzbek units saw combat and the Chechen-Ingush cavalry divison never came close to a battlefield. The loss of population in Western Russia, Belorussia, and the Ukraine therefore had an outsized impact on Soviet military potential as a whole. Moreover, there is a strong argument that that had the Germans, even in failing to meet the goals of their 1941-1942 campaigns, merely been able to hold onto the Soviet population centers captured in 1941-1942 that the Red Army may have been in deep trouble. That's because as early as January of 1943 a key component in the Red Army's ability to rejuvenate its strength would be its ability to move west and recapture land and population lost to the Germans. For evidence as to that we need look no further than the Voronezh Front's experiences early in 1943 as it pursued German forces withdrawing from Southern Russia as the German pocket at Stalingrad was slowly being reduced.

From January 13th to March 3rd 1943 the Voronezh Front's pursuit operations further beat up the Axis armies in Southern Russia but at a cost of 100,00 casualties (this included 33,331 irrecoverable losses) from the front's total initial strength of 350,000 men. To help ameliorate these losses the front received nearly 50,000 replacements during January and February. However, less than 10,000 of these replacements represented trained manpower released from the Stavka reserves. The largest single category of replacements comprised 20,902 men press-ganged into service from recaptured territory as the front moved west. The remainder consisted of front reserve units, previously sick or wounded men released from hospitals, liberated prisoners of war, penal troops (men released from the gulag and prisons) and the like. This meant that forty percent of the Voronezh Front's replacement manpower only came about because the front was able to move west. Nor was this situation unique. At this point in the war the Red Army was running short in the trained reserves needed to replenish the massive losses still being incurred while it also built up a strategic reserve and created new units.

The manpower problems facing the Red Army proved a constant throughout the Second World War. Even December 1944 revisions to the shtat of rifle divisions (when the Red Army was otherwise knocking on Germany's door) saw the number of rear-area personnel assigned to a rifle division cut in half compared to where it had been in June of 1941 (1,852 to 3,359 such personnel). At the same time the Red Army had spent 1944 making strenuous efforts to locate and press into immediate service (i.e. without training) men as old as 45 from the recaptured territories in the Western Soviet Union. By 1945 the Red Army was even taking Soviet citizens and POW's found on the march into Germany. These people, who had previously been rounded up by the Germans for service in the Third Reich's factories, were being sent to flesh out front-line ranks even though most were hardly in the physical condition needed to perform adequately in combat. Going back to early in 1942 we find entire rifle divisions being manned by far from inexhuastible sources of manpower. For instance, in April of 1942 the 112th Rifle Division was manned by Siberian Russians and penal troops.

The simple truth for the Red Army was that not even one year into the war extra manpower still not only needed to be found, but would be even more badly in demand as the Germans continued to brutalize the Red Army and Soviet population alike. Before the 1942 German summer offensive even began the Red Army suffered another 3,404,313 casualties during the first six months of 1942 and lost another 3,048 tanks and 2,037 aircraft on top of the 20,500 tanks, 21,200 aircraft and 4,473,8200 casualties lost during 1941. By June of 1942 the Red Army was losing over four men for each German killed, injured, or captured.

In response the Red Army's leadership demanded that the minimization of exorbitant casualties be a primary goal of all future combat operations. But this directive came rather late in the game. So the Red Army took in tens of thousands of women, cannibalized the navy, the NKVD, training centers, and removed workers from factories. For example, in July of 1942 the GKO ordered the Navy to release 100,000 men (nearly a quarter of its allotted manpower at that time) for army service. The Soviet authorities even combed the gulags and prisons for another 80,000 men. Meanwhile teenagers were used to replace military age men being sent to the front from reserve units, the Navy, and NKVD. In August of 1942 and to help mask its trouble in filling out the front lines the Red Army began forming the first of 100 machine-gun artillery battalions. Numbering 667 men in each such battalion, these units would play a key role in the creation of fortified districts to hold the line in quieter areas - where firepower intensive weapons like machine-guns were relied upon to mask the sparse nature of the Soviet defensive front. 

By the spring of 1942 women were also taking on greater roles within the Red Army. All told, 490,235 women would be conscripted into the Red Army during the war, serving in a variety of roles but chiefly medical, communications personnel, truck drivers, and anti-aircraft crewmembers. As early as March of 1942 the GKO ordered the Air Defense Force (PVO) to bring in 100,000 women between the ages of 19 and 25 while the NKO also requested that same month that 30,000 women be drafted to serve as communications personnel in the Red Army. The next month the GKO requested another 40,000 women to replace men in similar roles plus other rear area jobs like that of cooks, bookkeepers, and drivers. Given the bloodletting at the front women soon trained as bomber pilots (the 588th Night Aviation Regiment) and snipers - in both cases proving their effectiveness in combat. Soviet authorities leaned on women to not only flesh out the Red Army but to work in the factories. By 1944 women represented three-fifths of the public workforce. Rosie the Rivetor was as much if not more so a Soviet phenomenon as an American one. However, there were economic downsides created by the Red Army's insatiable demand for people to replace those being killed at the front.

With women in the factories, and the Red Army scouring the countryside for able-bodied men and boys, Soviet agricultural output declined dramatically. This problem only worsened as the Germans swept through the Kuban in the summer of 1942, thereby removing one of the last remaining large scale agricultural centers from the Soviet Union. As it was, a huge percentage of the best Soviet farm land had been lost in 1941 no less what happened as a result of the 1942 German summer campaign. As early as the fall of 1941 non-factory or military employed Soviet citizens had started facing significant nutritional deprivation. Even the Red Army's frontline combat units lacked appropriate food supply. Throughout 1942 it would be far from uncommon for Soviet combat troops to fight and expend massive amounts of calories on empty stomachs - all of which caused rates of sickness and combat exhaustion to soar. A NKVD Special Section report of October 27, 1942 would single out these problems, as well as associated ones involving a lack of food, as impacting the combat efficiency of front-line Soviet troops. It is entirely possible that the Soviet Union may have been starved out of the war by 1944 without the massive supply of foodstuffs brought by Lend-lease aid (which really started arriving in significant quantities in 1943).

Though things were still very much awful in 1942, the Soviet economy was also beginning to regain its footing - at least in part. Nearly every facet of the Soviet economy had been redirected toward manufacturing a limited selection of inexpensively produced, but reliable and proven weapons systems. The ability of the Soviet economy to even do this much stemmed in part from Stalin’s pre-war industrialization programs set in formerly desolate areas of the Soviet Union such as the Ural Mountains, Siberia, and Kazakhstan. This meant that when factories relocated from the Western Soviet Union and into these regions that in many instances there was just enough infrastructure in place to not only accomodate them but also exploit local natural resources toward partially mitigating the massive losses endured to date. The upside to the Soviet Union's strenuous efforts is that by 1942 its entire war footing was economically and strategically far more focused than was Germany. This meant that even though Germany had a much larger economy in 1942 it was the Soviet Union getting the most from its efforts - locked in as the county was in terms of hanging on against the German assault. In leveraging the German concept of schwerpunkt the Soviet Union had not only stolen a page from the German playbook but was implementing it with far greater conviction and dedication.

That said, as Germany's Army Group South launched Case Blue late in June of 1942 the Soviet economy still operated on a shoe string - having lost regions of the country holding 58 percent of Soviet pre-war steel output, 71 percent of iron production, 63 percent of coal, and nearly all manganese production (92 percent gone). Moreover, only 54 iron and steelworks, from the 94 in the Soviet Union the previous year, operated anywhere near capacity. For that matter the need to relocate factories had cut heavily into medium and heavy tank production.

Factory Number 183 had been the main T-34 ( with the T-34 medium tank pictured here parading through Red Square in November 1941) producing plant in 1941 until a GKO decree in September of that same year ordered it evacuated to Nizhnii Tagil in the Urals. Having produced 1,560 T-34's by August, the factory wouldn't factor into T-34 production in any meaningful way until 1942. In addition, the Kirov factory (primary producer of the KV-series tanks) was also evacuated east. Consequently, and in just one example of what this meant for the Red Army, medium tank production had suffered heavily even after tank models had been redesigned to lower manufacturing costs and increase output. Thus, though by May 1, 1942 the Red Army could put 4,020 tanks into the field the ramped up production in the first quarter had been mostly that of light tanks. More than half of the Red Army's available tanks, 2,025, were light tanks. Soviet light tanks simply could not compete against qualitatively superior German Panzer III and IV medium tanks forming a majority of the Ostheer's 1942 tank park.

Of the 11,178 tanks the Soviet economy manufactured in the first six month of 1942 one third were T-60 and T-70 light tanks that not only were inadquately armed and armored for the battlefield but were much more mechanically fickle than the otherwise reliably durable T-34. As late as the summer of 1942 the shtat for Soviet tank brigades called for 21 of 53 tanks to be light tanks. This is important to remember because many like to point out that Soviet factories produced 12,553 T-34s during 1942 - dwarfing German medium tank output during the same year. However, what they often fail to mention is that this boon in armor production had been achieved mostly by squeezing the Soviet population relentlessly and building few other vehicles but tanks. In addition, three quarters of the increased T-34 output came in the second half of the year - after the penetrations created by Case Blue had reached the brink of bringing the Soviet economy to its knees.

In addition, because of the number of formations being created to replace or reinforce those being shredded at the front individual Soviet rifle divisions consistently went into battle with substantial shortfalls in equipment and manpower. Early in 1942 Soviet rifle divsions weren't just running as much as 30% smaller in terms of manpower compared to their pre-war versions, but also were substantially less mobile and missing much of their pre-war punch. The main source of anti-tank capability late in 1941 had become the PTRD anti-tank rifle. Obviously, an anti-tank rifle was hardly as effective as an anti-tank gun. Nevertheless, the problem the Red Army faced late in 1941 was that divisional anti-tank gun complements in its rifle divisions had falled from 54 to only 18 such weapons. In terms of mobility things were even worse. The December 1941 rifle division was only assigned 248 motor vehicles and 2,410 horses versus pre-war totals of 558 and 3,039 respectively. All of this contribued to the problems Soviet rifle divisions would have in terms of effectively challenging German forces in 1941-1942.

The Red Army is often portrayed as overwhelmingly powerful in 1942; for quantitative reasons as much as anything else. In reality it was numerically far weaker than it had been in June of 1941. For instance, in spite of concentrating production on key weapons systems like tanks, aircraft and artillery and mortars the Red Army's stocks hadn't come anywhere close to pre-war levels. In June of 1941 the Red Army had 22,600 tanks on its books. In May of 1942 this total had fallen to 9,325 such machines. Aircraft had dropped from 20,000 to 14,967. Artillery and mortar stocks were down from 112,800 to 107,795 on the eve of the 1942 German summer campaign. Moreover, the increased focus on tank, artillery, and aircraft production that had even enabled the Red Army to maintain such those numbers came at the expense of other very important items - not least of which being truck production.

In 1941 the Soviet economy produced 118,704 trucks; a number that hadn't come close to meeting the Red Army's needs. Then truck output collapsed in 1942, with only 32,409 such vehicles manufactured in the entire year. This meant the Red Army's long-standing problems in coordinating the disparate combat arms only worsened as the increased flow of tanks was not matched by motorized infantry and artillery. This lack of trucks thus greatly hindered the Red Army's ability to go on the offensive. Not only couldn't the prime mover starved artillery keep up with Soviet armor once the battlefield became mobile (at least the infantry could ride on tanks - though at dreadful cost as they entered the battlefield), but each mile removed from railheads meant needed fuel, munitions, and other such critical supplies failed to reach the front. Though the 1942 era Red Army would launch aggressive offensives and counteroffensives at a dizzying pace; few of them had the logistical legs to truly threaten to take away the German hold on the initiative.

Spare parts shorfalls also greatly inhibited the Red Army's combat efficiency. For instance, the VVS had 14,967 planes on its books in May of 1942. However, a third of these aircraft, 4,938, were immobilized by a lack of spare parts. Moreover, the Soviet economy cranked out 1,990 T-34's and 730 KV-1's in the first quarter of 1942. Regardless, the Red Army reported in April of 1942 that 1,989 of its tanks were inoperable (including 667 T-34's and 410 KV-series tanks) - all due to spare parts shortages.

As a result it would once again take more than brute force for the Red Army to slow the German advance. More importantly than the numbers of combat machines that all too often are the focus of our attention, qualitative factors had improved in many key areas. For instance, by 1942 the T-34 had received a number of improvements that included better protection and crew visibility. The PPSh-41 submachinegun and it's 71-round drum magazine was much more frequently found in the hands of the Red Army's infantry. The lighter, more mobile ZIS-3 field gun had entered production to replace its predecessor. So had an improved Il-2 that had added a much needed rear gunner. In addition, the Red Army entered the summer campaign season with more experienced tactical and operational level leadership plus had invested greater training time for recruits. However, many of the new training measures didn't really begin until late in the spring of 1942. Thus many of the lingering problems involving insufficiently trained and educated junior and mid-level commanders continued to hurt the Red Army.

That said, the Red Army had begun rebuilding from the depths of the winter months when tank brigades represented the largest mobile elements in a bare bones Red Army bleeding through manpower as fast as it reached the front (the Red Army would take in over two million men per year in 1941-43 and would need every one of them). In the spring of 1942 the Red Army had recognized its human resources weren't limitless. It thus turned to creating formations capable of more effectively challenging Germany’s murderously effective combined arms combat teams. To this end, on March 18, 1942 rifle divisions received a new shtat, or table of organization, authorizing additional automatic weapons, mortars, and anti-tank weapons than that fielded by their late 1941 edition. The Red Army further attempted to bolster the effectiveness of the armor and infantry by re-organizing the artillery. The idea being that the artillery could be concentrated where needed as getting the various combat arms to work together effectively very much remained a work in progress during 1942. Thus began a trend that would remain consistent throughout the war - as the Red Army increased the firepower in its frontline units even while cutting their respective manpower allotment.

The cornerstone to the Red Army's 1942 reorganization revolved around standing up a formation capable of taking on the panzer division. The new Soviet tank corps aimed to serve that role. To that end, General of Tank Forces, I.N. Fedorenko, who led the Red Army’s armored re-organization early in 1942, put in place plans that resulted in the Red Army creating 28 tank corps that year. The new tank corps were much more streamlined than the unwieldy mechanized corps of 1941 and possessed far more punch than the bare bones tank brigades that had served as the Red Army's primary armored heavy unit from the fall of 1941 to spring of 1942. Each tank corps initially had around 7,800 men, 98 T-34’s, and 70 light tanks (T-60 and T-70) apiece, with some receiving KV-1 tanks and others Lend-Lease tanks to round out their armored complement. However, the tank corps' shtat was regularly adjusted. Nonetheless, throughout the war, Soviet tank corps remained roughly commensurate in offensive armored punch to a 1941 era German panzer division; albeit they were far from the balanced combined arms combat formations needed to truly combat panzer divisions. Perhaps as a result, during August of 1942 and following the destruction of many of the first tank corps put into service, the Red Army brought back the mechanized corps.

At 13,500 men and 204 tanks, the mechanized corps were closer in form to the panzer division than were tank corps - though still not quite the equivalent in terms of fully integrating the combat arms. In addition, on May 25, 1942 the Soviet command also ordered the creation of tank armies. These were meant to engage the German panzer or motorized corps. Though the execution would be problematic in these moves there was nothing inherently wrong with what the Red Army was trying to do. Regardless, as is so often the case with entirely new combat formations issues like compressed training schedules, continued problems in bringing command & control up to par, and the such would hamper the tank corps and tank army's well into 1943. Moreover, lingering logistical problems further inhibited the ability of the Red Army to get the most of its new and improved armor heavy formations. For instance, at the war's beginning front-line first echelon combat divisions lacked as much as 60 percent of the transportation resources needed to keep them in supply. By the end of 1942 this situation not only hadn't improved, perhaps understandable considering the fall in truck output since the war had begun, but had gotten signficantly worse. The resources shunted to the tank corps, tank armies, and mechanized corps meant the average rifle division's transport dedicated to supply and resupply was down three and a half times over the already insufficient available lift at the war's beginning.

The uneven nature of the Red Army's qualitative improvement can also be seen in examining the VVS - which had undergone a significant transformation from its nadir in the summer of 1941. Again, much as elsewhere this was a process that moved forward unevenly throughout 1942. For instance, as mentioned earlier though absolute numbers of aircraft produced had risen, spare parts shortages kept a significant percentage of these machines grounded. Poor pilot training also continued to inhibit the effectiveness of the VVS even as it took delivery of modern aircraft nearly equal to German machines. It wouldn't be until 1943 that the training of Soviet aircrews had improved enough to give them much better odds of surviving air-air combat against the veteran German pilots.

From an organizational perspective the VVS addressed the shortcomings of 1941 by forming air armies assigned to the various fronts. Each air army averaged around 400-500 aircrat broken into individual air divisions. Each such division was equipped with a single aircraft type (i.e. La-5 fighter in one, Il-2 ground-attack aircraft in another). Air divisions deployed anywhere from two to four air regiments, with each regiment numbering at least 32 aircraft (ground-attack regiments could have as many as 40 aircraft). These tactical formations were much smaller than in 1941 and ostensibly easier to control, service, and deploy. In addition, the VVS also formed eleven air corps, with each corps including two-three air divisions and 120-180 aircraft. Though air-air performance improved, ground-attack remained spotty. The numbers of aircraft available were significant but their effectiveness paled in comparison to the numerically smaller Luftwaffe. In particular, a lack of radios made it too difficult to call in and direct the kind of reliable close-air-support the German army had received throughout the war to date.

The Red Army had also sought to rebuild its leadership. Thankfully for the Soviet Union, and considering that he wasn't going anywhere, Stalin was learning enough that by the end of 1942 he was no longer as great of a military liability as he had been from the pre-war period through early in 1942. In terms of the strategic command cadre the period since the onset of the German invasion had seen a gradual winnowing in access and assignments away from the politicallly connected to those leaders demonstrating efficacy. This was not a linear process (with no clear cut purge occurring and oftentimes ineffective senior level leaders remained in posts they shouldn't have) but as 1942 wore on a much more competent group of men took over in the Red Army's top ranks. Politically connected leaders from the security state saw their military responsbilities and authority wane - men such as Beria, G.G. Sokolov (who went from the NKVD to ineffectually commanding 2nd Shock Army in December of 1941 before being removed from command in January of 1942), and others. That said, the completely ineffective Lev Mekhlis continued to receive high profile appointments allowing him to do tremendous damage - not least of which being in the Crimea in 1942.

Nevertheless, the Five Marshals of the Soviet Union in 1940 had by 1942 been almost completely sidelined. This included notable reactionary Kulik and the slightly less capable Budenny as well as Shaposhnikov. Though the latter's replacement was due to physical decline it would prove expedient, as Vasilevsky represented a notable improvement as Chief of Staff. In addition, following his role in pushing, planning, and leading the disastrous offfensive of May 1942 against Army Group South (discussed below), Timoshenko's star had also waned. His less than stellar command of the Northwestern Front would prove the final straw for him in receiving front level assignments. In terms of generals, there had been twenty-four from the class of 1940 (generals promoted to the rank of general by June 1940) who commanded fronts during Barbarossa's first six months. Only eleven of these generals remained in such positions at the end of 1941. The rest had been killed, executed, or otherwise reassigned for lack of performance. Meanwhile Konev had shaken off a rough beginning to the war and had learned enough to become much more competent during 1942 while on a path to rising as one of the top front level commanders of the war. Rokossovsky had performed exceedingly well at all levels and been promoted to front level command in 1941. Vatutin as well had been promoted becuase of obvious merit, and would be one of the Red Army's best front level commanders until his death in the spring of 1944. And then there was Zhukov; who in spite of being far too willing to take massive losses to accomplish his military goals was clearly one of the Red Army's best.

From there, and in examining the Fronts gathered to battle Army Group South we still have a mixed bag in 1942. The primary fronts in that regard included the Briansk Front, Southwestern Front, Southern Front and Crimean Front. In terms of leadership several of the commanders in these fronts offered promise but, and inevitably, the process of weeding out the chaff from the real stars was still a work in progress. For instance, The Briansk Front’s Lieutenant General F. I. Golikov would prove not up to the tasks given him. As a result and within weeks of the beginning of the German onslaught the far more talented K. K. Rokossovsky would replace him while Golikov was demoted to army level command. On the other hand, R.I. Malinovsky ably commanded the Southern Front and proved to be a competent field commander. Nonetheless, by 1942 Soviet leadership at the front level wasn't really the problem. It was the leadership at the army and corps level that proved the biggest issue. For instance, the four Soviet Fronts opposing Army Group South contained fifteen field armies. Far too many were led by men that lacked the training or aptitude for their positions. Most of those commanding these armies simply did not have the experience of their German opponents, and the situation was hardly better as we move further down the chain of command. For instance, one-third of the twenty-nine tank and mechanized corps commanders in opposition to Army Group South had never held a field command prior to the spring of 1942. What's more, in spite of reform at the top, near strategic level mistakes were still being made.

In spite of the mixed results from the January 1942 front-wide offensive Stalin still sought to regain the initiative and go on the attack once more in the spring of 1942. Neither Zhukov nor Shaposhnikov really pushed back as hard as they could, and though arguing the need to remain on the strategic defense allowed Stalin to bully his way into a number of highly questionable campaigns that proved disastrous for the Red Army on the eve of Germany's Case Blue. Particularly costly was the decision to push General A.A. Vlasov's 2nd Shock Army to maintain its attack far too late into the spring - resulting in Vlasov's command being completely destroyed. In spite of this disaster Stalin and Timoshenko (now the commander of the South-Western Direction) also planned another offensive on the other end of the front. One that would fall apart with even worse results in May of 1942 against Army Group South. There, the Soviet Southwestern Front woud attack into the teeth of the refreshed German armies assembling for Case Blue. The Southwestern Front made some promising initial gains but the German armies in the region reacted aggressively and with the support of substantial air power. As a result the Soviet forces committed to the attack between May 10 and 31st lost a staggering 266,927 men, 652 tanks, and almost 5,000 artillery pieces. This defeat, nearly as great as the huge losses the Red Army suffered in the massive pocket created by the German 2nd and 3rd panzergruppe's near Smolensk in the summer of 1941, largely paved the way for the first phases of the German summer offensive to proceed largely on schedule.

Regardless of Timoshenko's ultimate defeat, late in the spring of 1942 Stavka had authorized additional reinforcements for the region, in part because of another German intelligence gaffe. Consequently before Case Blue began, Stavka heavily reinforced Golikov’s Briansk Front to the point that it deployed 1,600 tanks in seven Tank Corps and eight independent Tank Brigades. Just east of Kursk Golikov’s Front faced the German Second Army, Hungarian Second Army, and the Fourth Panzer Army’s 733 tanks and assault guns. Immediately south of these armies sat the Southwestern Front with 640 tanks in four Tank Corps and 15 independent Tank Brigades. The German Sixth Army served as its initial opponent. The Soviet Southern Front was weakly equipped in armor with only eight independent Tank Brigades and was poorly prepared to stand up to a mixed bag of Axis forces in opposition that included assorted Romanian, Hungarian, Italian, and Slovakian units but also contained the German Seventeenth Army, and First Panzer Army. Further south the all infantry German Eleventh Army faced the North-Caucuses Front and Trans-Caucuses Front. Each of these Soviet Front's were ill prepared to stop Manstein even though neither these German or Soviet forces possessed much in the way of armor.

Overall, and if we step back to look at German prospects against the Red Army in 1942 it appeared that Germany's Army Group South was well set up for success. Just like in 1941 the Soviet forces arrayed against it were either newly organized or organizing. Just like in 1941 the Soviet field commanders in opposition were nowhere near the level of Army Group South's command cadre. Just like in 1941 the Soviet Fronts had more men and tanks but still hadn't come close to mastering combined arms warfare. Worse yet for the Red Army, and unlike in 1941 the quality of the German tank park was far superior in 1942. In addition, the Germans fielded a much wider range of weapons and ammunition capable of defeating Soviet T-34 and KV-1 tanks that had seemed so formidable the year before. The Germans had also correctly identified Southern Russia and the Caucuses as the natural resource linchpin of the Soviet war machine. However, the Germans hadn't made Case Blue the true Schwerpunkt it needed to be - ongoing offensives in Army Group Center and North's sectors had been planned that were simply inconsequential until Blue achieved its objectives. Beyond that, truly peripheral campaigns in the Arctic Circle, Mediterranean, and North Africa not only drained the Ostheer of badly needed veteran combat troops, tanks, and aircraft but also dramatically undermined the logistical base for Army Group South. However, to truly understand the how and why of the 1942 campaign in Southern Russia we need to look further at the goals of Case Blue and why its final objectives were so important - a subject of a future article in this series.