Be the Red Army

>be the Red Army
>you're the best and largest army in the world
>get recognized by everyone
>be on the cutting edge of military doctrine, technology, weapons
>but then one day Stalin decides to purge all your good officers
>become the laughing stock of the military world
>everyone sees you as a disorganized mob waiting to collapse at any moment
>try to invade some tiny mem-tier country and get absolutely BTFO
>everyone laughs at you even more
>now there's a new army just across the border
>sign a non-aggression pact and share some of your cool tanks to win them over
>they proceed to BTFO the WW1 powers with the doctrine and tanks you helped them develop
>they realize they can't invade the UK so they turn to your country
>ohshit.jpg
>we're about to fight one of the world's best armies and we couldnt beat Finland
>try to tell Stalin but he insists the Germans wont attack
>finally they do in the Summer of 1941
>literally your commanders refuse to believe that Germans are invading
>despite all odds, despite everyone saying that you'd collapse, you successfully stop the Wehrmacht
>they are right outside of Moscow but your defenses are their lack of logistics mean it's virtually impossible for them to take the city
>the Russian winter comes in and seals the deal
>spend a couple more years single-handedly fighting and beating the Germans until your allies help you
>take Berlin and win the war
>realize that despite all odds, your resolve and ingenuity stopped one of the best armies in the world, despite everyone saying you couldn't do it
>go on the internet 75 years later

"The Germans would have won if they invaded a week earlier"
"The Russians only won because they uses human wave tactics"
"The Russians would have lost if the US didn't give them supplies"

Why are people so fucking retarded

you got it all wrong

the miracle was germans got as far as they did
they were stopped by losing 1/3 of their personel and 2/3 of their equipment BEFORE
Operation Typhoon

history board, not history channel

>you're the best army
Stopped reading there.

>Well the wehrmacht was actually shit!!
Nah they were pretty good.
Can't argue with results, just like you can't argue with the soviets' results.

>Nah they were pretty good.
Well considering the fact that they couldn't beat the same army that Finland did, I'd say they weren't

nobody said that, try to think beyond kindergarden terms of good/shit/super/crap

their offensive was costly, they underestimated the red army and payed the price for it or keep believing popular history

Finland lost, the soviets just took ridiculous losses to do it.

>you're the best and largest army in the world

>Pre-GPW Red army
>Not laughing stock of the world already

Go and read about how many armoured vehicles and aircraft Germany lost in Poland, that's embarrassing on its own

Maybe the Soviets just let them get that far since they wantes them to feel proud of themselves before their women got mass-raped

Dude, the Red Army was the first army in the world to build large armoured units (divisions and corps), the first to create paratrooper units and was experimenting with long range bombers.

Deep Battle was a new and innovative concept, while being somewhat similar to basically all the other theories around, but managed to integrate it into understanding a whole level of warfare: operations. The US wouldn't really get into operational analysis until the 80s.

>>but then one day Stalin decides to purge all your good officers
total number of purged officers was less than percent of percent of total army body

Before the war all these were still in conception and the Red army was anything but prestigious.

>first army in the world to build large armoured units (divisions and corps)
Yet they didn't knew how to utilize armout up until the late war. Germans on the other hand had an excellent armour doctrine and outperformed Soviets despite inferiour equipment.

>the first to create paratrooper units and was experimenting with long range bombers.
Useless without fighters. Also VDV were turned into ground forces and only became the big guys. they are now, during the cold war.

>Best and largest army in the world.
No. Even the US before entering the war had a better army than the Soviets.

>Cutting edge of military doctrine, technology, weapons.
Not even close to the truth. If this was true why didn't the Soviets have the world's number 1 navy (Brit), or number 2 (Japan), or number 3 (US) before the war?

>i am an american please look at me and laugh

Your post doesn't address the problem and makes assumptions.

>Even the US before entering the war had a better army than the Soviets.

The USA army prior to WWI was smaller than most European powers police forces. Bulgaria, Greece or Serbia had armies several times the size and with more hardware.
The USA effectively had NO ARMY and had to field one from scratch, its why nobody was very exited about them entering the war, it was known it would take them 15-20 months to do anything.

Maybe the Soviets let them get that far because thats how defense in depth works?
Enemy supply lines are larger, yours are shorter.
Enemy gets harassed by uncooperative locals, you get supported.
Enemy is stuck in rural mud and forests, you are in your core industrial cities.
Enemy can't reinforce from other fronts since the distance got too large, you only focus on this line.
Enemy can't use your railroads with his own machines due to different tracks, you use all infrastructure.
And of course scorched earth during retreat amplifies all of that.

>Red Army
> best and largest army in the world
>before purge

Well yeah their armoured doctrine was terrible, all their best/most experienced generals were purged and they were the ones who had developed that doctrine, so no one picked it up for fear of being associated with them.

But they didn't. Pre-war doctrine called for immediate counter-offensives, which the STAVKA tried (and failed) to implement. A lot of those problems the Germans brought on themselves or was a natural outcome of invading Russia.

I should say, the pre-war doctrine was good, it was terrible in execution because of the purges, etc

Pre-war doctrine didn't matter when Stalin personally called to tell all his soldiers to retreat, because there must be some mistake and there is no way Hitler would attack. Don't panic comrades, just fall back, I'll tweet at Adolf and we will correct this, maybe they thought they are going south or something.

not quite, until 1943 units were not allowed to move back, result was huge encirclements

but these encircled units had to be dealt with, and that cost lifes

because its so stupid, you know absolutely nothing about the red army, your information is from youtube amateurs and history channel and instead of education its entertainment, spreading myth and misinformation

why would the soviet union with no clear warm water ports have an oceanfaring navy? for what purpose? knowing the political situation

why dont you know the US army had to be rearmed and prepared for even a minor operation such as Torch, how do you have the confidence to comment such retardation that the soviets were below that level?

stop posting here without elementary education

are you literally retarded?

>Even the US before entering the war had a better army than the Soviets

...

There's an irony in the purges
the skilled officers got purged were the ones who had to reign in on Trotsky's pointless gambits and his shittier ideas of military discipline and when they got purged those ideas are what Stalin falled back on in 1941
dude was basically a secret trotskyist

The land lease program inacted by the US won the war for the reds.

All memes aside, Poland actually performed fairly well in the war with Germany/Soviet Union.

Yeah but it was around 80% of the men ranked colonel or higher.

>Enemy gets harassed by uncooperative locals
The Soviets could not rely on the Baltic populations nor Ukrainians to help them. If the Germans had been less autistic and racist they could have enlisted huge numbers of these people to fight against the Soviet military.

Eh, idk about that.

I mean when germany did that in ww1 they ended the war with russia about to march on petrograd almost unopposed with Moscow ready to follow suit within a few months after.

Lend-lease was after Stalingrad, therefore it did not win the Soviets the war. What it did do is let the Soviets roll westward all the way to Berlin and establish the USSR

>Quantity has a quality of its own

I've heard this quote attributed to many different people, from Joseph Stalin to Henry Ford. Who is the true progenitor?

In 1941, about 2.1% of US aid was going to the Soviet Union. Are you seriously telling me that that 2.1% was enough to shift the entire balance of the war?

I'm love the USA too dude, but I still recognize that Russia did most of the work.

>I love the US too.
Lol, I'm not saying this out of love.

And yes,2% us a lot considering the USSR was a shit hole. We provided supply trucks for the dumb fuck Soviets.

>The Soviets could not rely on the Baltic populations nor Ukrainians to help them. If the Germans had been less autistic and racist they could have enlisted huge numbers of these people to fight against the Soviet military.

This is a meme, the red armies had more people from both these areas in them than the germans had. Look at numbers, not memes.

>And yes,2% us a lot considering the USSR was a shit hole. We provided supply trucks for the dumb fuck Soviets.

Very unbiased, neutral and historical examination of facts.
Not at all drunk redneck screaming at eagles.

And it's even worse after Typhoon

So yo be sayin that having half your hardware be looted from other countries that use different sizes and styles for bolts, different parts design, different sizes for tires, different shell and bullet size, is actually a problem when you move away from the factories to conquer thousands of square miles of empty villages?

germans very effective with maintance, if youd read division archives youd know their repair bay were always working full time recovering whatever they could

those losses were combat losses, the supply line too long is a meme
german units had no shortage of ammo or fuel over extended period of time (let alone refillment) when it was ready to be transported

they liked to use captured T-34s, capture KVs, and generally just anything they could capture apart from the Mosin, they were about the same as the k98s, so the problem you are implying the too wide variety of equipment was not a problem

the romanian army was a ragtag band of captured and previously bought everything, they had no issues with it either

Dude, going from an italian car to a french car meant I had to replace half my wrenches arsenal to repair shit, don't tell me it isn't a problem. Its a problem even today, for individuals owning cars, let alone for armies owning tanks build in two civilizations that actively hated each other and didn't share any production secrets.

member the finnish offensive and their wide front

Finland lost all the battles, lost the war, lost their only industrial city, lost their only eastern port, etc.
They didn't beat shit. A costly win is still a win. Critiquing the red army for its performance is perfectly reasonable, pretending they didn't win the war is perfectly retarded.

would the germans actually won world war 2 if they didnt lose

>germans very effective with maintance, if youd read division archives youd know their repair bay were always working full time recovering whatever they could
i don't get how them constantly repairing stuff is meant to prove anything, of course they're doing it because their equipment is constantly breaking down moving across a shitty dirt road system with seasonal mud and snow
not to mention how their main repair facilities were back in poland
>those losses were combat losses
you really think 260,000 horses + 50k trucks were killed/destroyed by enemy fire?
how about the cold and lack of fodder
hell it says in the picture that vehicle losses mean "write offs and vehicles not repairable within 5 days"
>supply line too long is a meme
ah yes because they can just teleport everything they need
>german units had no shortage of ammo or fuel over extended period of time (let alone refillment) when it was ready to be transported
you're kidding right? each army group struggled to receive even half of the trains they needed a day throughout the campaign, armored groups constantly had to wait due to insufficient fuel being delivered
german logistical problems were acute from the very start
>they liked to use captured T-34s, capture KVs, and generally just anything they could capture apart from the Mosin, they were about the same as the k98s, so the problem you are implying the too wide variety of equipment was not a problem
it very much was a problem, considering how one army group required 2 million different spare parts alone
obtaining and keeping track of them is not easy
>the romanian army was a ragtag band of captured and previously bought everything, they had no issues with it either
the romanian army that got embarrassed at odessa?

They'd lose World War 3

No, the legislation for Lend-Lease went into effect even before America entered the war (Dec. 1941).

>This is a meme, the red armies had more people from both these areas in them than the germans had. Look at numbers, not memes.

Right, and this is largely because the Germans were so awful to these populations.

>"The Germans would have won if they invaded a week earlier"
>"The Russians only won because they uses human wave tactics"
>"The Russians would have lost if the US didn't give them supplies"

You're correct in that the first two are flat wrong, but there is a nugget of truth in the third. Not that the USSR would have flat out lost without US aid, but that their counteroffensives from late 1943 on would have been immensely more difficult due to the amount of logistics equipment (trains, trucks, etc), food and fuel the US provided.

Could the USSR have still won? Probably, yes. But it would have been slower and more costly. It's even debatable that the eastern front could have ended in a draw as the Red Army's advance slowed to a crawl and the Wehrmacht built up its defences in Eastern Europe.

It got embarrassed by their wars with Poland and Finland, and seeing as most people saw the Soviet Union as the successor state to the Russian Empire, they judged their capabilities off the Russo-Japanese War and WW1 as well. Only during/after WW2 were they recognized as the military power they were.

Some faggot.

>Lend-lease was after Stalingrad

>Countries with 3 major ports thousands of miles away need large navies

>"The Russians would have lost if the US didn't give them supplies"

Lend lease trucks played a huge part in taking some of the burden off the USSR's overloaded railroad system.

>realize that despite all odds, your resolve and ingenuity stopped one of the best armies in the world, despite everyone saying you couldn't do it

>come home to the bombed shell crater that used to be your home
>have to wait in breadlines till the day you die
>slowly realize that all that suffering and death was pointless
when will vatniks learn?

by definition yes