Excluding the meme just how well trained/equipped was the average soviet soldier?

If you look at the inventory of the red army 1941-5 there was 6 rifles in circulation. Despite western propaganda, Soviet soldiers actually received 3 weeks of training before deploying:
>Week one = Athletics and reading the hit novel 'Zukov's guide to running towards machine guns' (the 1942 guide had edits from Haig, D.)
>Week two = Learning to deny war crimes (doctrine translated from English by bomber "do it again" Harris)
>Week three = Learn to throw your rifle to comrade after being shot (Fun fact 80% of Russians born in 1923 became professional jugglers due to this rifle throwing and catching technique)
These 6 rifles were passed around the red army like a German woman and won the second world war for the red army.

They where also drunk before attacking the enemy, your know it boost the bravery and honor for the motherland

And the NKVD comissars who killed the ones who agreed and survived - such men were obviously too dangerous to the state to be allowed to live.
Some secret documents mention that these NKVD men were in turn executed by The Great Butcher himself.

>(the 1942 guide had edits from Haig, D.)
i snorted and chuckled despite being autistic when people meme about """"""""""""butcher"""""""" haig

Aye Haig was actually a decent general like most in world war one, it was just that all of them had to take a harsh learning curve from Napoleonic to modern warfare which revisionists in the 21st century overlook because they have the unique strategic brilliance of hindsight. I just included that little spicy meme to pander to the autism on Veeky Forums

It improved during war, but main problem was purges and the lack of proper cadre. Otherwise they had adequate training and equipment. This was especially evident in their airforce.
If you want to meme about Russian zerg rushing and lack of equipment and training, look at WW1, but even that is exaggerated. Brusilov Offensive demonstrated that.

>it was just that all of them had to take a harsh learning curve from Napoleonic to modern warfare
Is this a meme too, or did you forget the Crimean, Franco-Prussian and Boer wars happened?

They made a shitload of firearms, but they couldn't quite furnish the ammo and ordnance. Iirc, the U.S. provided upwards of 50% of Soviet ammo either through the means to make the ammo or by making it for them.

>Implying that the Crimean, Franco-Prussian, Boer and even the US civil war or the boxer rebellion were ANYTHING like the first world war
Holy shit kys my man you are exactly what I was talking about in regards to hindsight armchair generals of the 21St century.
>Crimean war = still used muskets and (for the most part [inkerman]) lined up against eachother in battle.
>Franco-Prussian war = used the grand strategy Napoleon was famous for at Sedan and smooth bore cannons.
>Boer war = nigga wut, you must be memeing, thats asymmetrical warfare at its finest.
>Civil war = probably closest to world war one and it still was standing armies fighting one another on set piece battles unlike the long hostile zone the western front saw.
The first world war was a fundamentally different war to every other before hand because of so many aspects. The rapid advancement of artillery which ment indirect fire and explosive shells, muti-round bolt action rifles on all sides with modern ammunition not powder and shot, actual machine guns deployed on all sides en mass, societies being completely geared towards war, single fronts stretching from the channel to Switzerland rather than small set piece battles, and conscription as never before seen in a war. You my friend have absolutely no idea what you are talking about if you think the first world war could have been avoided by looking at the doctrines and wars of the recent past, it is people who thought like you who invented the meme of lions led by donkeys.

Cont.
Generals on all sides were competent and the notion that a massive assault across a wide front after a huge artillery bombardment to "cripple" the enemy makes absolutely perfect sense on paper, however they only found out the limitations of modern weaponry after they had empirically tested them at Verdun and the Somme.
By the end of the war generals like Haig had developed astonishing advanced doctrines like creeping barrages and storm trooper tactics considering that it had been 4 years earlier that red trousers and marching in a line had been the norm.
Thankyou and bless up famalamadingdong.

nice citations m8

>The United States gave to the Soviet Union from October 1, 1941 to May 31, 1945 the following [...] Provided ordnance goods (ammunition, artillery shells, mines, assorted explosives) amounted to 53 percent of total domestic production.[24]
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lend-Lease#US_deliveries_to_the_USSR

Google returned that

Interesting article on the lend leasing of meat

journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/view/299

>The average Soviet soldier
According to a U.S. study conducted after the war (which I cannot find no matter how hard I've googled for the last half hour) the Red army was "characterised by great abundance of SMGs and mortars". This trend continued from the beginning of the war towards the end.
A notable deficiency of Soviet units compared to other WWII armies was their lack of radio at lower level formations. The poor command and control often impacted tactical decision making, meaning that units lacked the tactical flexibility enjoyed by U.S. and German units. To compensate for this, the Soviets would assign a greater number of soldiers to a particular objective on the offensive in order to ensure the success of the attack at critical moments regardless of command and control; whereas the U.S. would send a Company that used maneuver to exploit weak spots and seize the objective, the Soviets would send a Battalion to attack in waves; if the first wave failed, the second wouldn't. This trait was exclusive to the Red Army and was what gave rise to the "human wave" meme that the Americans love to ridicule today.

In regards to training, the aforementioned lack of radio meant that there was less reliance on junior officers to make tactical decisions when compared to U.S. and German forces, who emphasised tactical decision making from their officers in order to take objectives or perform successful defences.
The average soldier was as well trained as their U.S. or German counterparts, but more emphasis was placed on rapid, combined arms assault, which is why SMGs were more prominent than rifles with Soviet soldiers. Their equipment was simple and rugged, a practice that the Russians continue to this day.

Nobody said they were exactly alike, no two wars were fought exactly the same, you stupid fuck. But they introduce developments incrementally. World War I did not throw Napoleonic line infantry into a 20th century war, it threw armies that had been developed over multiple wars and technological developments, led by Generals who understood the significance of these inventions even if they didn't know their exact ramifications.

You complain about armchair generals when you're the retard completely ignoring the individual changes each war brought about that contributed to tactics and theory in WWI.

So let's start with all your bullshit about how things were the same, instead of how things were different.

The Crimean War was the first wartime use of railroads and telegraphs, both of which would be vital to World War I strategy, as the Germans discovered when the Belgians cut their telegraph lines and destroyed the railroad tracks that ultimately held up the German advance, prevented their heavy artillery from reaching the Marne in time to stop the French counteroffensive. It also demonstrated the ultimate obsolescence of shock cavalry used in a napoleonic setting.

The Crimean war also demonstrated the deadliness of Trench Warfare three decades before the civil war and eight decades before the first world war, and brought about the increasing prominence of indirect artillery in warfare. You know, Artillery as we regard it in the first world war, you fucking ignoramus.

(cont'd)

The Franco-Prussian War was the first major war no longer fought primarily with muzzle-loading rifles, but with breechloading needle guns and percussion cap rifles, which no longer necessitated reloading while standing.

In terms of military logistics it cemented the absolute dominance of the railroad in being able to move troops and materiel quickly and effectively; while France had the men to match the Prussians, their less advanced infrastructure made them unable to muster their men and bring them to the front in time. It was for this reason that Russia mobilized early during the first world war, because they were aware that their railroad infrastructure would not allow them to muster in time should the Germans or Austrians strike first. And, as every Germanboo in World War I reminds you, this is allegedly what caused the Germans to declare war on Russia.

The Franco-Prussian War also cemented the technological advantages breechloading, indirect-fire large-caliber artillery had over bronze muzzle-loading direct-firing artillery. The ability of Prussia's krupp cannon to shell French defensive positions spurred rapid French artillery development, culminating in the French 75, the first "Modern" Artillery piece that would play a pivotal role at the Marne.

In terms of doctrine, the power of artillery in overcoming French defensive positions and the rapid advance of German infantry advancing in skirmish formation put a decisive end to line tactics and ingrained within the French High Command an obsession with rapid attack and maneuver, an obsession that would prove to be disastrous in the opening of the war and allowed Germany to bring the war into France.

So, you ignorant dipshit, the lessons of the Franco-Prussian war DIRECTLY affected how the first world war panned out.

(cont'd)

The Boer War, while more tangentially related, illustrated stark lessons in infantry tactics that would be employed by the French and British during the first world war in developing their own squad tactics parallel with the Germans. The ability of the numerically inferior Boer Commandos to repel more numerous and technologically advanced British forces demonstrated the obsolescence of standard skirmish lines and highlighted the use of covering fire and squad-based advances rather than a dependence on raw massed charges.

The Civil War was an afterthought for the Europeans: most of the advances and developments of that war had already been developed in the Crimean War. The largest takeaway of the war was the advent and power of the Ironclad. The disparity in tactics was most demonstrated in the Spanish-American War, when outnumbered soldiers of a third-rate European Power still exacted a heavy price on American infantry still advancing in skirmish lines on San Juan Hill, even as American naval power crushed the Spansih fleet elsewhere.

(cont'd)

Finally, to sum up the stupid shit you said in , let's talk about all these
>fundamentally different
aspects and where they came out, individually.
>The rapid advancement of artillery which ment indirect fire and explosive shells
Indirect Fire had existed for a long time in the form of mortars, and had already been used extensively in the Crimean and Franco-Prussian Wars.
>High-Explosive shells
If you mean shrapnel shells, these had been used well before the first world war.
>muti-round bolt action rifles on all sides with modern ammunition not powder and shot
Powder and Shot was extinct by the Franco-Prussian War, you fucking ignoramus. The British had also been stung rather badly by the multi-shot bolt-action Mauser 1895 in the second boer war.
>actual machine guns deployed on all sides en mass
The Maxim Gun had been used both in colonial wars and the Boer Wars, as well as the Russo-Japanese War. The biggest improvements were in portability, but the machine gun was not a novel concept even if we disregard the gatling gun and the mitrailleuse.
>societies being completely geared towards war
There have ALWAYS been societies completely geared towards war, starting from ancient history. I don't know where you're going with this, but I presume you mean INDUSTRIALIZED societies completely geared towards war, and Prussia was the first to do so, using its factories to churn out the Krupp cannon that would win them the Franco-Prussian war.
>single fronts stretching from the channel to Switzerland rather than small set piece battles
Yes, this was the first war where a front specifically stretched from the channel to Switzerland, but the techniques involved and used had been developed well before.
>and conscription as never before seen in a war.
Levee en masse had been used since the Napoleonic period. If you mean more people were conscripted, yes, but that would be because the population was also significantly larger.
(cont'd)

>Two anons arguing end up writing a book together

Moving on,
>You my friend have absolutely no idea what you are talking about if you think the first world war could have been avoided by looking at the doctrines and wars of the recent past
Nice strawman, dipshit. I never said it cold have been avoided, but that the learning curve was not nearly as harsh, but an incremental development built upon wars which had already significantly advanced military theory, strategy and tactics well beyond a napoleonic understanding of warfare.
>it is people who thought like you who invented the meme of lions led by donkeys.
No, it is people like you who blindly parrot that men were advancing in line formation with napoleonic tactics that are the donkeys.

>Generals on all sides were competent and the notion that a massive assault across a wide front after a huge artillery bombardment to "cripple" the enemy makes absolutely perfect sense on paper, however they only found out the limitations of modern weaponry after they had empirically tested them at Verdun and the Somme.
Agreed. But these generals were of this belief BECAUSE they had seen the power of indirect fire, cast-iron artillery in previous wars, and while they may have overestimated its effectiveness they did not underestimate the significance of new weaponry thanks to these previous wars.
>By the end of the war generals like Haig had developed astonishing advanced doctrines like creeping barrages and storm trooper tactics
Agreed.
>considering that it had been 4 years earlier that red trousers
Agreed
>and marching in a line had been the norm.
No, not in the same sense as a Napleonic line of men standing shoulder to shoulder, but of a skirmish line, of men advancing in loose order, using cover where necessary, which they learned from the Prussians who had defeated them in the previous war.

So there we go, I hope you learned something. Maybe read a fucking book (or even a wikipedia page, you could probably learn all this from there) before you call out anyone.

Also, here are your fucking sources.
>jstor.org.proxy.library.stonybrook.edu/stable/pdf/1879217.pdf
A discussion on the Boer War and how it provided insights on how the first world war would be fought.

>jstor.org.proxy.library.stonybrook.edu/stable/pdf/1986698.pdf
>jstor.org.proxy.library.stonybrook.edu/stable/pdf/1987399.pdf
A discussion on how the French developed the infantry tactics that would bring them into the first World War in response to the events of the Boer and Franco-Prussian wars.

>archive.org/stream/riseofrailpoweri00prat/riseofrailpoweri00prat_djvu.txt
On the massive development of railroad infrastructure in the wake of the lessons learned from the Franco-Prussian War by both France and Germany. It was written in fucking 1916, so you can be sure that this was written with the situation on the ground at the time in mind.

>jstor.org.proxy.library.stonybrook.edu/stable/pdf/2148077.pdf
Mass British Mobilization in the Crimean wars.

There are others, but these are the ones I remember and have in my bookmarks.

>The Crimean war....three decades before the civil war and eight decades before the first world war
>1853 - 1856
>three decades before 1861-1865
>eight decades before 1914-1918

wut? you mean one decade and six decades

(not to challenge anything else in ur really good posts)

>TL;DR
The Soviets got their asses kicked for a year at the beginning of Operation Barbarossa. Because of that, now everyone believes in the no guns for the green conscript maymay despite the fact that by the end of world war 2 they were arguably just as an effective fighting force as the Wehrmacht from 1939-1942. There was nearly no discernible difference in standard equipment, training or squad composition either. Germany just kicked ass first, they they got the fame for it.

In 1942 the Red Army was in shambles, they were just came off of an embarrassingly executed campaign against Finland. Their leadership was fucked, no one knew how to run an army because Stalin replaced all the dead officers with NKVD cronies. When Operation Barbarossa hit, the Wehrmacht took a lot of ground and killed a lot of Soviet soldiers in a very short time. This means the Red Army lost a lot of equipment and many regular or veteran troops were killed all at once. There was a shortage that had to be made up for, in equipment and manpower. Equipment takes time to make and pumping out conscripts too quickly means that they will probably get killed pretty fast.

As the war went on though, surviving conscripts had plenty of experience in battle and Soviet industry had hit it's stride.The of equipment become much less severe, they began producing many more SMGs, semi-auto rifles, more tanks that where better than their previous models etc...

Late-war Soviet tactics and strategy had evolved similarly to the Wehrmacht's did from 1936-1939. Armored spearheads punched through German defenses, and mechanized infantry became more common.

>continued.

You can look at squad structure too:

>Wehrmacht
1 squad lead: SMG or semiauto rifle
7 riflemen: bolt action rifle (one doubled as an ammo carrier for the MG)
1 machine gunner:Belt-fed MG and sidearm
1 Mg assistant: sidearm

>Red Army
1 squad lead: SMG or semiauto rifle
2 submachine gunners
6 riflemen: bolt action rifle
1 machine gunner: mag-fed light machine gun and side arm
1 MG assistant: bolt action rifle

There was no real difference in the structure of an average squad and their equipment excluding two things. The Wehrmacht had an edge in their belt-fed MG and the Soviet Squad was theoretically supposed to have two dedicated sub machine gunners. You can claim that the standard weapons for the Germans where better, but a slight difference in the individual characteristics of a small arm wont matter in the overall picture. Besides the Soviets had SMGs that where generally accepted to be better, so it probably balances out the German's MG advantage somewhere along the line.

Despite the evolution of the Red Army from 1942-1945 no one remembers it because they had a bad start and all anyone cares about on the eastern front is Stalingrad, Leningrad and how close the Germans where to Moscow before screwing Army Group South.

Also by TL;DR, I only mean the first paragraph. I didn't feel like spamming green text.

More on the structure of Soviet infantry formations?

there are too many to list, as they would vary greatly in different units and just as importantly over time

I, uh
yeah.
I don't know why I thought the crimean war took place in 1830.

i dont have my book with me now
1944 german description of the red army infantry goes something like this

>the infantry is easy to break but must be pursued
>they apply clever tactics on the field
>on the defense they hide themselfs well and occupy strategic points which they give up easily but reorganise and counterattack or ambush an unsuspecting force in rapid succession
>they will hold fire until the last moment with their guns and rifles, but often leaving their equipment behind (AT guns, mortar, artillery) only to sneak back up and shoot you in the back
>master of infiltration, house to house combat, they would rather fight to the last man than giving up if encircled

urban combat was hell for germans, red army was abundantly equiped with SMGs, they used it well in close quarters combat
basement, rooftops, every house could be a potentional nest which if left uncleared caused trouble in the back line
a serious issue for the germans since they lacked infantry to clear up these often hidden spots of resistance

>on the offense they are smart and tricky
>they will throw themself to the ground if caught out in the open
>feign death, crawl to safety and lead deadly mortar fire on our 1st line of defense
>infiltration again, attacking during the night, scouting for weak spots and reveal our machine guns or guns for their artillery
>if they arent successfull they try again, and again, until they are successful

by late war the meme of human wave tactics were gone
they attacked again and again but not mindlessly throwing troops to a meatgrinder