Red Army

:This article is about the armed forces of the Soviet Union. See Red Army Faction for the German militant group; Japanese Red Army for the Japanese militant group; and People's Liberation Army for the Chinese Red Army.

World War II

At the time of the Nazi assault on the USSR in June 1941, the Red Army numbered around 1.5 million men, but political cleansing of its ranks had weakened it. The German invasion took the Red Army cadres by surprise. The first weeks of the War saw the annihilation of virtually the entire Soviet Air Force on the ground, as well as major equipment, tanks, artillery, and major Soviet defeats as German forces trapped hundreds of thousands of Red Army soldiers in vast pockets.

Related Topics:
Nazi - USSR - 1941 - Soviet Air Force

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Soviet forces were destroyed in the field as a result of poor levels of preparedness (defences in territory recently annexed from Poland were poor), a rejection of the earlier Soviet offensive doctrine of deep operations which resulted in static formations being overwhelmed and a refusal of Stalin to authorise preparations in case these were regarded as provocations by Hitler.

Related Topics:
Poland - Deep operations

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However, a generation of brilliant commanders, most notably Zhukov learned from the defeats and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow, at Stalingrad, Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive in what was known as the Great Patriotic War. But Soviet military conditions were brutal and losses were higher than in any other combatant nation's armed forces.

Related Topics:
Zhukov - Battle of Moscow - Stalingrad - Kursk - Operation Bagration - Great Patriotic War

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The Soviet government adopted a number of measures to improve the state and morale of the retreating Red Army in 1941. Soviet propaganda turned away from political notions of class struggle, and instead invoked the deeper-rooted patriotic feelings of the population, embracing pre-revolutionary Russian history. Propagandists proclaimed the War against the German aggressors as the Great Patriotic War, in allusion to the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon. References to ancient Russian military heroes such as Alexander Nevski and Mikhail Kutuzov appeared. Repressions against the Russian Orthodox Church stopped, and priests revived the tradition of blessing arms before battle. The Party abolished the institution of political commissars -- although it soon restored them. Military ranks were introduced. Many additional individual distinctions such as medals and orders were adopted. The Guard was re-established: units which had shown exceptional heroism in combat gained the names of "Guards Regiment", "Guards Army" etc.

Related Topics:
Class struggle - Great Patriotic War - Patriotic War of 1812 - Alexander Nevski - Mikhail Kutuzov - Russian Orthodox Church - Political commissar - Guard

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During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army drafting helped bring the ranks up to a high point of about 20 million at the end of 1941, of which an estimated 7 million died by the end of the war, though some cite this number to be as high as 10 million. Nazi troops who captured Red Army soldiers frequently shot them in the field or shipped them to concentration camps and executed them as a part of the Holocaust. Hitler's notorious Commissar Order implicated all the German armed forces in the policy of war crimes.

Related Topics:
Concentration camp - The Holocaust - Commissar Order

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In the first part of the war, the Red Army's weaponry proved inefficient and outdated against the Germans. Additionally, the army suffered very high losses of critical weapons. Later on, as British and American supplies started to increase, the technological difference shrunk. Among the most popular foreign equipment given to the Red Army were Sherman tanks (ca. 4100), Valentine Tanks (ca. 3700), M3A1 Stuart (ca. 1700), M17 MGMC (ca. 1000), Bren Carriers (more than 2500), Matilda IIA (ca. 1100), and escort aircraft carriers, as well as M3A3 Lee and M3A5 Grant tanks. In addition, the red aviation was reinforced with several thousand modern planes, including various models of P-39 Airacobra fighters (almost 5000), Hawker Hurricane (3000), A-20 Havoc medium bombers (3000), P63 KingCobra (ca. 2400), P40 TomaHawk and P40 KittyHawk (2130), Supermarine Spitfire (ca. 1350). Finally, the Red Army received no less than 9600 pieces of various anti-tank and anti-air guns, as well as millions of tonnes of ammunition, personal weapons and other pieces of war equipment. In later parts of the war, Soviet production surged, producing newly developed weapons as the famous T-34 tank, and the Katyusha rocket launcher. Soviet military doctrine heavily emphasized artillery, and this doctrine remains in place today.

Related Topics:
Sherman tank - Valentine Tank - M3A1 Stuart - M17 MGMC - Bren Carrier - Matilda IIA - Escort aircraft carrier - M3A3 Lee - M3A5 Grant - P-39 Airacobra - Hawker Hurricane - A-20 Havoc - P63 KingCobra - P40 TomaHawk - P40 KittyHawk - Supermarine Spitfire - T-34 tank - Katyusha - Rocket launcher

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Following its costly victory over Germany after the capture of Berlin in 1945, the prestige and influence of the Red Army in post-war Soviet society increased greatly.

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To mark the final step in the transformation from a revolutionary militia to a regular army of a sovereign state, the Red Army gained the official name of the Soviet Army in 1946.

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