Tula and particularly Sevastopol are remarkable examples of Soviet tenacity in defense but they are, like Odessa, a case of stubborn defense of fortifications, not defense in a city. Sevastopol came under siege from November 1941, and was finally reduced by massive German air, artillery, and ground assault in June and July 1942. Tula was defended in winter 1941–42 by massive defensive installations ringing the city. Indeed, the defense was deliberately conducted to keep Axis forces out of artillery range of Odessa's port. 6 Odessa, for example, held out against besieging Romanian and German forces for almost two and a half months, until the steady reduction of the city's three major belts of fortifications led the Soviets to evacuate 80,000 defenders from Odessa to the major naval base of Sevastopol in mid-October 1941, well before the fighting moved into the city of Odessa itself. As a result, the gap in Soviet doctrine was matched by a gap in Soviet experience. The Soviets did conduct several tenacious and inspiring city defensive operations in 1941 and early 1942, but those were clearly defense of cities, not defense in cities. 5Īfter the German invasion of the Soviet Union, the first year of fighting provided the Soviets with little concrete experience of fighting in cities. Even today, thanks in large part to bitter experience in Chechnya, Russian military thinking stresses avoiding urban combat whenever possible, and defending cities from prepared positions well outside the city proper. Wwii battle group how to#In urban reconnaissance, for example, “a thorough search is conducted with the assistance of the workers, the poor, and the strata of the population close to us.” The first task of reconnaissance in urban warfare was to determine “the political condition of the urban population and the possibility of enlisting the workers in active struggle.” counterpart was even thinner on issues of urban warfare, and could provide little assistance to Soviet commanders forced to improvise how to fight in cities. Under its fundamental orientation to the offensive, it presumed that urban warfare would take place on foreign soil, and that foreign proletarians would naturally sympathize with their Soviet liberators. The 1929 manual, for instance, was quite sketchy about urban problems, and emphasized taking towns rather than defending them. Wwii battle group manual#3 Soviet doctrine, including both the 1929 field manual and the more innovative 1936 provisional field manual, clearly emphasized offensive warfare, with defensive warfare as a temporary means of transition to the offensive. 2īefore Barbarossa, the Soviets had generally done far less thinking about defense than offense in modern warfare, a problem magnified with regard to fighting in cities. Contrary to a picture drawn from German sources, Stalingrad shows the Soviet Army as analytical and innovative, understanding technology and employing resources effectively, and relying heavily on the initiative and flexibility of individual soldiers and junior officers. It will undermine some of the older conventional wisdom about the fighting in Stalingrad, and about the Soviet Army itself. What this investigation will show is the improvised, ad hoc nature of much Soviet thinking about urban warfare before and during Stalingrad, as well the surprising effectiveness of that improvisation. This analysis will specifically examine Soviet urban warfare, using Stalingrad as a laboratory and testing ground, much as the Soviets themselves did. 1 Too often in the past, that story has focused on the German experience, given the relative ease of access to German sources. The story of Stalingrad has been told many times.
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