Comments by "Nattygsbord" (@nattygsbord) on "Barbarossa: Why such high Soviet Losses? - Explained" video.
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Many reasons....
1. The Germans took the Russians by surprise and could encircle huge groups of men on the first days, and when encircled units were trapped without food, ammo, fuel and water their fighting effectivness was much lower.
Furthermore, did the unexpected attack on Russia cause lots of confusion so the Russians couldn't co-ordinate all their men to make effective counter-measures to the German invasion.
2. The Russian army lacked good leadership since Stalin had killed lots of Generals, Field marshals, Colonels and so on... and then he took incompetent, but politically loyal men to replace all his murdered Generals as leaders over their each own army with hundreds of thousands of men.
And those stupid incompetent leaders would make many mistakes... attacking on the wrong time, getting lured into traps, and so fourth.
3. Russia wasn't prepared for the war, so their airplanes were nicely positioned as a straight lines on their airfields. So when Russias former friend (Germany) decided to betray her, it was quite easy for Russias enemies to destroy thousands of Russian planes the first days of the war.
Thousands of planes was destroyed even before the Russians had any chance to make counter-measures.
4. The Germans would have the total advantage of control over the skies and could therefore use planes to spot Russians troop movements on the ground, while the Russians couldn't see were the Germans were going with their ground troops. So the Germans could make better plans than the Russians.
Another advatage the Germans had with air superiority was that they could bomb Russian troops on the ground and attack trains transporting Russian tanks to the frontline and easily knock them out even before those tanks had a chance to get unloaded off the trains.
And when German ground troops were in danger of getting destroyed they could always call their airforce for help, and German planes would rain bombs upon Russian troops and destroy their attack. But the Russians ground troops never had the same luxury in 1941 because their entire air force had been destroyed the first days of the war.
5. Russian tanks didn't have any radio, while the Germans had. So the Russian unit leader had to order his troops movments by using signal flags in the middle of all enemy fire. And the view range was also limited.
So if you roll forward and attack an enemy there is not much of a problem. But if the enemy on the other hand just suddenly appears on the sides and the tanks got no way of telling their commander, so he could order a swing to the left or right, well then you got a problem...
And Russian tanks would therefore often get outflanked and outsmarted by the experienced German tank arm.
6. The Russian army was in a bad shape when the war begun. On paper it was extremely impressive, but about half of the tanks in a normal tank regiment was in need of repairs before they could be put to use against the Germans.
And Russian infantry regiments often didn't have the manpower they were supposed to have in times of war.
7. The German surprise attack caused panic in Stalin and made him make stupid decisions out of desperation. He forbade retreats and ordered ill-crafted offensives that costed lots of men. And things didn't get better by him ordering the execution of people who disobeyed his insane orders.
And hundreds of thousands Russian solidiers would get killed by the Russians themselves during the war - a waste of lives and solidiers no other army in history have been able to afford.
And the Russians also used unarmed men in punishment battallions to attack German positions in order to clear minefields. And the Russians also lacked rifles for all of their troops, so a regiment could therefore attack the Germans like in the "Enemies at the gates" movie about Stalingrad, so not every man had something to shot with, unless he could pick up a rifle from a dead comrade to use... so the losses was of course heavy for the Russians.
8. Germany had the best army in the world in 1941. In fact, the army of 1941 was even much better than the German army of 1940 that had conquered Western Europe.
The confidence and pride of the German army was record high in 1941. The solidiers was trained and battle experienced. The superior German tactics from World War 1 combined with a great airforce, a skilled leadership, the invention of the radio, and the newly used kampfgruppe tactics had helped the Germans crush the armies of Poland, Denmark, Norway, Belgium, France, Netherlands, Luxemburg, Yugoslavia, Greece and giving the British a bloody nose.
But as I said earlier, the German army had even become much better in 1941 than what it was in 1940. Since the Germans had learned lessons from the wars in Europe and seen what worked well, and what didn't work well.
So training and tactics was improved to deal with all the shortcomings.... the oversized panzer divisions had their number of tanks reduced by half, so more panzer divisions could be created.
The great StuGIII had proven itself to be a great weapon in France and was therefore ordered into massproduction. It was decided that German tanks should get more powerful guns, because they had lacked much to ask for in the fight against French tanks.
So Germany was in the best fighting shape, while the Russian army was in a shitty condition. Stalin had just killed his military leadership. His regime was extremely unpopular - especially in Ukraine where millions had been starved to death under his reign.
Much of his tanks was in need for repairs. And the self-confidence of the Red army wasn't that great after Stalins embarrasing failure in Finland - the poorest country in Europe - where the Russians suffered heavy losses against a small and badly equiped army.... while the Russians had plenty of tanks, planes and guns to spare, but failed to gain any results.
9. Another reason worth mentioning is that the Axis had numerical superiority at the frontline in the first months of the war, because half of the huge Russian army was positioned in the Russian interior, and not all Armies was sitting along the border with Germany.
So it would take time for the Russians to move all men to the front. And meanwhile did the Germans have the upper hand in the fighting the first months of the war.
The Germans had prepared for this war, and the Russians had not.
And the Russian road and railroad network got overloaded, which caused deleys and lower effectiveness for the Russian war effort. Wounded men had to be moved back. Tanks had to go to repairshops. Factories had to be evacuated and equipment moved.
And meanwhile did more men and equipment have to reach the frontline. And millions of men had to be supplied with ammo and fuel. And all this had to be done, while German airplanes was wrecking railroad stations, bridges, and attacked trains and supply trucks.
So things was quite caotic for the Russians in 1941 and 1942.
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Russia was fighting a life and death struggle. Hitler wanted to exterminate half of the population of Russia and enslave the other half. So unlike western countries did Russia not have the option of just surrendering, because of the unacceptably high price of such a thing. And the huge scale of the conflict and large territories that had to be conquered makes a fast victory seem unlikely to me.
Germany had many strenghts, but they also had many weaknesses. Preparations had been insuffiecent. German intelligence expected opposition from 150 Divisions, but after just a few months after Barbarossa had begun they had counted opposition from atleast 300, and despite they had already destroyed 150 by then so were they nowhere even close to victory. And many German Divisions were running low on ammo just 2 weeks after the war had begun.
Luftwaffe was bombing targets with steaming intensity, and its role in the first months was large, and Barbarossa could easily had ended very bad for the Germans if they hadn't been able to take control over the skies as fast as they did. The German army did had very little artillery compared to the Russians, and instead relied more upon air support to soften up enemy opposition. So when Germany lost air superiority in 1943, did the Army also lose much of its fire support for its ground troops. So if Germany had not won the battle over the skies the first days in 1941 and bombed Russian tanks to pieces before they even had a chance to reach the front by railroad, then things could have gotten very tough for the Germans.
Germanys preparations for the Eastern front conflict was insuffient. German trains was smaller than Soviet trains, and therefore needed to be refueled with coal more often and couldn't travel the same huge distances between coaling towers and water stops as Russian trains without running out of fuel. And strangly enough had no German planners thought about this.. so the Germans had no other choice than to start building an entire new railroad network in Russia with new stations and narrower space between the tracks for German trains. Which was a task that sucked resources.
German tanks got exhausted by all wear and tear the long distances it had to travel. And less than half of the German tanks were operational by October if I remember correctly. And the Russians also had many better tank designs than the Germans - but they had simply not started to build those tanks in large numbers yet and given them radios and learned how to use them move effectivly... but it was just a matter of time that the Russians would learn their lesson.
Germany had also started the war with insuffiecent warproduction. The lack of standardization made Germany unable to massproduce things like the Russians and Americans. And instead Hitler thought that he could win this war by using army trucks stolen by the countries he had conquered. But that just added up to even more difficulties to the German logistical organization. And that combined with Spanish, Italian, Hungrian, and Romanian made stuff just made the logistics hopeless when millions of spareparts had to be stored and transported
And I have heard that the average lifespan of a German military truck was just two months because of all wear and tear.
And Luftwaffe was running out of bombs because of all intense bombing. And pilots was getting exhausted by making multiple dive bombing raids day in and day out. And the logistical capacity to transport bombs and fuels to forward airfields was getting harder and harder. So the Luftwaffe had to prioritize between ground support and strikes against communications and industrial facilities... because there was simply not enough planes and bombs to attack all targets that the Germans wanted destroyed at the moment.
And in the long run did Russia have many advantages. Its huge landmass enabled it to sacrifice land to an enemy in a way other countries could not afford to. Its large landmass also provided Russia with lots of resources, such as oil, while the Germans had to set aside large resources to produce much more expensive oil in amounts that were also much smaller. Germany did also consume more food than it produced, and importing food was not an option because of the royal navy blockade... so it was not in a favourable position in a long war.
Russia was also slowly learning from its mistakes. And the confusion the first weeks of the war did not last forever. The Soviet air force was copying Luftwaffes tactics. Soviet tanks was supporting the infantry in their attacks so their attacks didn't just collapse in 1943 like they did in 1942 and 1941. Weapons got improved, and tanks were made easier to massproduce. And the Russians never over-engineered weapons like the Germans too often did.
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Barbarossa was a bad plan on a too large scale with too little planning. The German airforce ran out of bombs to drop. Army units were running low on ammo within the first weeks. More than half of all tanks were no longer operational by October thanks to heavy losses by combat and wear and tear. The Germans had also not planned anything at all on how to refuel their small trains with coal on the Russian railway lines that was built for supplying larger Russian trains that didn't need refueling as often as German trains.... so the Russian water and coaling stations were standing too far apart from each other to be used by the German trains, so new ones had to be built.
Furthermore was the idea of occupying everything west of the Ural mountains completly unrealistic. Militarily as well as logistically. And starting a genocide on East Europeans didn't make things easier.
So I am not surprised at all that Germany couldn't win the war in 1941 or 1942. I am rather surprised that things didn't turn into a disaster for them in 1941 instead of 1944... after all was it just pure luck that the Luftwaffe could destroy the red airforce - the world largest airforce by far - on the first days of the war... and therefore was able to unhindred bomb Russian ground troops and destroy their attacks and soften up their defences.
And if Stalin just had a few IQ-points above 60, he should have not overextended his winter-offensive that almost destroyed the entire German army on the Eastern front. And if the Russians had used their superior tanks (KV2, KV1, T-34, BT7) to fight togheter instead of being spread out destoyed piecemeal by the German tankers, then the Russians could have avoided many unnessary losses and inflicted heavy casualties on the Germans.
My adivice to Hitler would be to fix supplies and tanks for a long war before attacking, and meanwhile let the German army fix a victory in North Africa. And when a war on Russia should be unleashed, then grabbing Caucausus/Ukraine and Southern Russia should be the limited initial goal - since it is a place that can provide Germany with black soil, lots of oil, lots of factories and provide Germany with a strong strategic position with control over the black sea trade, and airbases for strikes into Persia and deep into Russia. And losing Southern Russia would be heavy blow for the Russians - that would be denied many key resources that could be very helpful for a long war.
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