Originally posted by Toby
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The point is that the tactics adopted by Zhukov were strongly influenced by 'Deep Battle'. It isn't about the opposition, its about what the Russians did. The Russians deployed 60,00 men & 500 tanks in the final battle. I'm pretty sure this was the largest use of tanks & armored vehicles in a single battle to date (there was a similar sized French deployment at Soissons in 1918, but the Russians had an equal number of armored cars, and there were no German tanks deployed against the French). There was extensive use of deception; a big logistics build up; large scale co-ordination with air units; armored units with motorized infantry; co-ordination of artillery, infantry & armor; a frontal attack to pin the enemy & then a double envelopment.
This is the sort of battle Russian theorists had planned for in the 20s & 30s. It was also the sort of battle the Germans conducted on a much larger scale a week later in Poland - combat finished here on March 31. So, the Russians didn't just implement these ideas on a large scale in their own army before the Germans, they even used them in combat first. I need to do a bit of digging, but there may also have been use of some of these ideas in the second phase of the Winter War in 1940 - after Vorishilov had comprehensively cocked up the initial attacks. Unfortunately for the Red Army the impact of the purges & Stalin robbed it of the ability to properly implement these ideas against Germany until 1942-3.
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