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  • 8th Guards Army

    During the Belorussian Offensive the 8th Guards Army was the spearhead and was advancing up to 50 kilos a day. Yet, looking at its composition, the Army was composed almost completely of Rifle Divisions. Did it gain trucks, tanks and motorized artillery during the offensive to give it mobility?
    All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
    -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

  • #2
    I'm talking out of my hat here--I haven't checked a detailed order of battle.

    But the Soviets usually beefed up armies going on the offensive with a host of artillery, tank, and various specialist units. A lot of Soviet medium artillery, and almost all of the heavy armour, was in independent brigades directly attached to army or front-level commands.

    It was also a Guards Army, so to begin with it probably had a lot more motor transport than ordinary infantry armies.

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    • #3
      If I remember, the 8th guards had the 11th heavy tank brigade attached to it. I'm not sure what the make-up of the rifle-corps were but even reg. rifles divisions had tanks in them. I would imagine they were given additional resources for the operation.

      Also where did you get your numbers on their speed of advancement.

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      • #4
        From a friend who is reading Chuikov's memoir, The Fall of Berlin that I am also reading on my free time. The rapidity of the advance is not very surprising since he was talking about Operation Bagration.

        It struck me that in the first chapter of the book, the 62nd Guards was fighting Panzer Divisions from their foxholes and had only 15 dug-in tanks to bolster their antitank firepower, many of them captured panzers. Chuikov emphasized that this was an infantry fight. But Chuikov was more taciturn when it turns to numerical strenght and casuality figures. He also did not mention tanks except as providing direct fire support for his riflemen.
        Last edited by Triple C; 04 Nov 07,, 19:04.
        All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
        -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

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        • #5
          Originally posted by Triple C View Post
          From a friend who is reading Chuikov's memoir, The Fall of Berlin that I am also reading on my free time. The rapidity of the advance is not very surprising since he was talking about Operation Bagration.

          It struck me that in the first chapter of the book, the 62nd Guards was fighting Panzer Divisions from their foxholes and had only 15 dug-in tanks to bolster their antitank firepower, many of them captured panzers. Chuikov emphasized that this was an infantry fight. But Chuikov was more taciturn when it turns to numerical strenght and casuality figures. He also did not mention tanks except as providing direct fire support for his riflemen.
          Official Soviet memoirs have very low reliability as sources. I have Marshall Zhukovs 3-tome ''Thoughts and Memories'' sitting on my shelf. Brrr. Not what I would expect from ''the'' Soviet Marshall.

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          • #6
            Feanor: was armour integral to ordinary Soviet Rifle Divisions again by 1944? I know that the formal organization of rifle divisions changed a few times during the war.


            Re: Chuikov's reliability.

            Depends when the memoirs were written, and of whom they might have been critical. The political situation fluctuated in the USSR over the decades, and if a Marshal was writing his memoirs at a time when criticism of certain figures was allowed, then those parts might be surprisingly frank.

            Really, all memoirs have to be treated with caution. Manstein's Lost Victories, for example, is sometimes quite suspect. But even unreliable memoirs can be informative--their lies, omissions and insinuations furnish useful data.

            I was just reading Glantz' book on the Kharkov fiasco, and there was an interesting discussion about sources. There is considerable dispute and disagreement among the memoir sources: Moskalenko, Bagramian, Malinovsky, etc. That's not what one would necessarily expect from books written under a totalitarian state. But because the various memoirs were written at different times, under different regimes, quite a bit of the story eventually got published.

            As for Chuikov, he seems to usually be treated as a worthwhile source by mainstream Western historians, e.g. John Keegan (who is by no means pro-Soviet).

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            • #7
              Originally posted by Feanor View Post
              Official Soviet memoirs have very low reliability as sources. I have Marshall Zhukovs 3-tome ''Thoughts and Memories'' sitting on my shelf. Brrr. Not what I would expect from ''the'' Soviet Marshall.
              Chuikov was writing during Kruschev's reign. I believe that the memoir was written during 'the thaw' and a period of loosened censorship.
              All those who are merciful with the cruel will come to be cruel to the merciful.
              -Talmud Kohelet Rabbah, 7:16.

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