Why was it that Russian weapons and vehicles worked better in the cold of the Eastern Front. Obviously since the Russians lived in a colder climate than the Germans, they built their weapons to work in the cold. But how exactly did they do it?
There are two main reasons why Russian built weapons worked better in the cold:
1)the Russians had cold weather lubricants that stayed fluid at the winter temperatures. This kept breechblocks moving and enabled their guns to fire. The Germans had no low temp. lubricants, so their weapons gave problems.
2) Russian weapons were built to looser tolerances than the Germans. This allowed them to fire under extreme conditions. An example of this was the tank engines-the Russian T-34s worked well under freezing conditions-while the Germans had to keep the tank engines running at night-otherwise, they would not start in the mornings.
The difference in clothing was striking-the Russian troops wore wool felt boots (“valenki”) that were several sizes large-the troops would stuff them with grass and straw-and their feet stayed warm. The Germans had hobnailed leather boots-which lead to frostbitten toes (the hobnails conducted the heat away from their feet).
German casualties (due to the winter cold) were several times those caused by Russian bullets.
What defeated the Germans was the extreme cold, muddy roads, and failure to prepare-Hitler thought the war would be won in 3-4 months…so there was no need to equip the troops for winter conditions (he thought the army could start demobilizing by November 1941).
And How!
I had the misfortune of owning a Russian-built sidecar rig. Leaked oil, low compression and very underpowered, but would run (poorly) on nearly anything that would burn and would* always *start.
So, at -20, you could push a better bike, or actually ride that piece of crap!
luck of good design, i don’t think you can say the russians were better engineers. they did design the t34 to be more cheap to build, and only built up to the standard to work, not be perfect so they could make more, things like the tracks being wide enough for the mud/snow were fortunate decisions. there were too many competing factions in germany and bad leadership as well i guess, their stuff was not maintainable from the documentaries/books i’ve seen. american tanks were junky, but you could engine swap them in no time at all, they were built to be field maintained, the german stuff didn’t have that kind of fore thought. anyways weapons without the logistics and numbers is nothing, and thats also the reason the germans suffered, too many types of weapons as well.
plus the russians had the helping hand of having much of their economy/infrastructure being supported by the allies, you can find the numbers out there, but the vast majority of their trucks and locamotives were given to them by the allies, taking a huge burden off their backs, while the germans on the other hand wasted time and resources rounding up jews to kill. i’ve also seen claims that the wonder weapons they made were equivalent to the resources to make tens of thousands more tanks and planes that they desperately needed.
Once again, tolerances are being confused with clearances. Russian stuff works well when dirty and cold because they design the moving parts to have generous clearances. Depending on what the item is, they may or may not do a good job a manufacturing the parts within tolerances.
Russia was only one part of the Soviet Union, or the USSR.
This is nonsense, the German High Command (OKH) on the Eastern Front had no interest in doing this, their priority was a military victory, and increasingly carrying out the military wishes of the Fuhrer.
What happened behind the lines had no initial bearing on the war in Russia as far as weapons and resources are concerned, the bulk of the dirty work you allude to being carried out by police units, local militia and convalescing soldiers unable to yet return to the Front, as well as “second grade” non-Germanic SS units. Very few frontline fighting units were involved in “rounding up Jews to kill”, the Germans didn’t invade Russia to kill Jews.
It is true that considerable resources were tied up in designated anti-partisan operations, especially as the advance turned into retreat and Red Army commanders were inserted into partisan groups, making them a serious problem for the Germans as they became organised fighting units, not bandits.
But ONE atomic bomb, or weapon of similar clout, might have been enough to stop the war, certainly on the Western Front, where the resolve to smash the Reich wasn’t as solid as you may believe. It’s not that far-fetched, remember that the war being fought between the Western Allies and Germany was far more “civilised” than on the Eastern Front, we had no real unanimous desire to throw our troops into an all-out revenge assault on Germany, despite the gung-ho attitude of certain US commanders.
It wouldn’t have taken much to break the Allied will to throw more lives at the Western Front, as was nearly shown by the Ardennes Offensive. With a stalled Allied advance and a truce at, say, the pre-war German borders, everything could have been turned Eastwards. (Some German Top Brass also believed fervently that the Western Allies would gladly accept a truce and join them in the struggle to throw back the Red Army advance into Western Europe.)
Although the Germans apparently weren’t close to making an A-bomb, their jet engine research was doing well - V2 rocket attacks were having a serious demoralising effect on the UK population, far more than the Blitz or the V1, because there was no warning.
The ME 262 would have been a serious problem for the Allies had it appeared earlier in the war, no Allied fighter could catch one.
Think of the infamous Tiger tank - Allied units on the Western Front would shit themselves at the very mention and would be ready to retreat from this pretty formidable, but not invincible tank. If the Germans had had Tigers at every place the Allied advance faltered because of rumours they were ahead, they would have had to have produced 4 times the amount they actually did. Self-propelled guns and Tank Destroyers were cheaper, easier and faster to manufacture, but had nowhere near the same psychological clout, an important consideration against an enemy who may not be totally committed to throwing themselves at your line of defence. Imagine the impact of a new supertank on the horizon…
The Germans still had too many different weapons, despite Speer’s efforts to streamline production and cut down the numbers of different guns and tanks. Even the most basic weapons were still far better in quality and more complicated and over-engineered than the crude Russian mass-produced stuff. The Russians also could put a peasant behind every cheaply cast gun, and push them forward to either soak up German fire, or to victory through overwhelming the defence (although admittedly, the Red Army had progressed by that point in the war from the mass infantry wave assaults to co-ordinated infantry/tank/artillery tactics)
The Germans were running out of suitable fighting manpower, they had no reserves of “cannon fodder” to swamp the enemy. New pilots had a few hours of training and were then put up against Allied aces with the inevitable results. As the war drew to a close, fuel was an issue for sorties, let alone training. You can’t fly planes or drive tanks without fuel, no matter how many you have waiting to roll, even if you have managed to scrape together people to man them.
A huge factor here was German use of captured equipment and manufacturing facilities. In the midst of a war, it’s much easier to have a captured factory continue manufacture of their existing product and issue that than it is to re-tool and produce the standard German arm. As for the enormous stockpiles of existing captured weapons, you largely either use them or scrap them. Though they did make some efforts toward conversions, such as rebarreling Italian Carcanos to 7.92mm Mauser, they also had large enough stocks of captured ammunition that it made good sense to simply issue the captured arms to their troops. It seems they did try to route the better stuff to combat troops and issue the obviously inferior or obsolete things to “second grade” units.
Woodenspoon- I think you may be underestimating Soviet engineers. Yes, they were not great at innovative design, for the most part, but things like wider treads were almost certainly a specific thing that was requested, not “luck”. The Soviets were well aware of the environment they would be fighting in (ie: their own lands). Russian actually has a word for that time of year when the spring thaw happens and all the roads (at the time, usually dirt roads) would turn to 3 feet of muck. Rasputitsa is something the Soviets were quite aware of, and would have designed for.
That being said, there is a common effort to dismiss the logistical gift given to the Soviet Union, in the form of all those trucks, locomotives, food, uniforms, etc. I (and others) tend to hold to the theory that Allied equipment may have very well saved the Soviet Union. Hitlers prediction of 3-4 months damn near came true. Nobody really knows what would have happend if the Germans would have captured Moscow, but logistically it would have been a NIGHTMARE for the Soviets. West of the Urals, almost all rail lines went through Moscow, Stalingrad, Leningrad and Kiev.
For the record, only 1,347 Tigers were built. Compare this to 44,286 Sherman tanks and 57,339 T-34s produced during the war (more of these Allied tanks were produced postwar but are not included in these figures).
Side note – some innovations of the T-34 design (particularly the excellent off-road-capable suspension and the famous sloped armor) are the work of an American, Walter Christie, whose ideas had been largely ignored in the US.
An interesting line of thought I’ve been following lately is how many of the war-winning weapons were the product of two or more different nations pooling their creativity:
[ul]
[li]Poland, France, and Britain worked together on breaking Enigma.[/li][li]An American airframe and British engine produced the P-51 Mustang.[/li][li]The T-34 was the result of an American inventor’s ideas greatly expanded and adapted through Soviet design principles.[/li][li]The atomic bomb was built by scientists exiled from Germany and Hungary alongside British and American scientists.[/li][/ul]
I’m sure there are more examples.
I think you’re overstating the impact of the Ardennes offensive. The Germans were hoping it would break the Allied will to see the war to its conclusion… but there was zero chance of that happening, none whatsoever. By that point the Allies were going to destroy the Nazi regime, full stop. Total conquest was the only acceptable outcome.
Sure, and if a frog had wings it wouldn’t bump its ass when it hops. The Germans didn’t have Tigers everywhere, didn’t have Me-262s in 1941, didn’t have V-2 in sufficient numbers to make a difference, and didn’t have laser blasters and X-Wing fighters. And if the Germans HAD had more Tigers or more Me-262s, that would simply have changed Allied technological and industrial priorities.
The quality of Soviet weapons is being understated a little here. Soviet weapons were of outstanding quality. Their small arms were sensational, their artillery excellent. Soviet stuff in general is rightly regarded as shitty; anyone who ever visited the USSR noticed that. But they put solid, intelligent engineering into their weaponry during WWII, and it was good stuff.
Furthermore, the Soviets managed their arsenal of wepaons and weapons platforms with an eye towards strategic capability that the Germans never did. One of the more fascinating facts about the war is that the Soviets had spare engines and engine parts roughly approximating a full replacement for every tank in the army; the Germans usually didn’t have spare engines at all, and lacked parts. So when a Soviet tank blew an engine, as tanks of that time did a lot, it could be fixed; a German tank became an obstacle. There were periods during the war when more than half the German tank fleet was unavailable because of mechanical breakdown. Tanks are, and have always been and probably always will be, prone to breakdown; the Soviets simply had the foresight to provide the army with spare parts and to design tanks with a mind towards making field repair easy. The Germans didn’t have the spare parts. It’s a simple thing, and yet it decides wars. As the old saying goes, amateurs discuss tactics, but professionals discuss logistics.
I don’t know if I’d go quite that far. In my personal collection, I have a Mosin Nagant rifle, a Tokarev pistol, and a Nagant revolver. I’ve handled, but not fired, a PPSh-41. The Mosin Nagant rifle is inferior to the German Mauser, the British SMLE, and the American Springfield rifles IMO. Right at the top of the list of its shortcomings is its safety that is so difficult to use that it might as well not have one. The Tokarev pistol is an okay design, but there’s nothing outstanding about it save machining the feed lips into the frame. In use, it is one more Browning clone, this one lacking any kind of safety at all which mandates chamber empty carry. The Nagant pistol is an underpowered mechanical curiosity, no more. I won’t say much about the PPSh since I didn’t get to fire it. It was heavier than I expected it to be, though.
The Tiger tank was already on the edge of being outclassed by fairly early on in 1944, the Soviet IS2 was more than a match.
The upgunned Sherman - the Firefly was good enough to be a serious threat to the Tiger, well capable of taking them out with one shot.
The Firefly itself was only a stopgap, for the incoming Comet, which itself was the direct forerunner of the Centurian. Both of these were much more than a match for German tanks.
Had the Ardennes campaign delayed things, we would have seen much more use of these, along with the US Pershings.
The idea that the Tiger was some sort of fear inducing superweapon is not truly borne out, by wars end it was already 2 years out of date and its star was fading fast - it was only the German tank crews superb tactics that kept them in the game.
(Stormfront liar infiltration alert)
Yes, the Germans did invade Russia to kill Jews, you liar: mass murder of the Jews
was premeditated Nazi policy since 1939 in Poland, and would be so throughout the
war, with increasing ferocity. It may be that the resources needed for the round up
and murder civilians were not great enough to effect military operations, but that is
beside the point. As for OKH and the battlefield commanders they did nothing to
prevent the murders they could not have avoided having knowledge of, and so they
were accessory to mass murder.
This is a falsification of history, you liar. The Western Allies in fact did throw their
troops into an all-out assault on Germany, millions of the, in an assualt which succeeded
in conquering more than half the country.
What are you talking about, you liar? The Ardennes Offensive was stalled by resolute
defence, and then reversed by resolute counterattack.
Straight out of the mouth of Goebbels.
The Me262 was not maneuverable enough to be a effective dogfighter, and was
vulnerable to enemy fighters especially when landing. Chuck Yeager shot one down.
However, the Me262 may have been developed soon enough to seriously diminish
the bombing campaign, since it was a great interceptor. Luckily Hilter tried to make
a light bomber out of it, thus curtailing effective deployment.
The original 75mm gun on the Sherman could possibly have failed point blank against
the Tiger’s turret armor, so the Tiger’s reputation was deserved. The Soviet t-34s had
a much better fighting chance vs the Tiger.
This sneer ridiclously understates the value of the potent PPSh-41 machine gun
whose chrome lining made it nearly jam-proof, and whose 900rmp rate of fire
far exceeded any other infantryman’s weapon. By the end of the war entire divsions
were armed with this excellent weapon, whose service life extended to the
Viet Nam war.
Chrome lining doesn’t make weapons less prone to jamming. It prolongs barrel life in full auto weapons and protects against corrosion, especially when corrosive ammo is used. The Japanese chromed the bores of their bolt action rifles. The extremely high rate of fire is less of a feature and more of a bug. Reducing rates of fire in hand held weapons was generally considered more valuable than increasing it. The American Thompson smg had a cyclic rate of around 600 to 700 rounds per minute depending on the model. This was replaced by the M3 “Grease Gun” which ran around 400 rounds per minute. Machine pistols like the Mauser M1932 / M712 Schnellfeuer never really caught on exactly because their high rate of fire made them hard to control and quickly exhausted their ammo.
If you speak with authority, OK, but I know I have read that the PPBSh
was reliable against jamming, and i would think the chrome would have
been a necessary if not sufficient factor in that.
As for magazine exhaustion that would not be as much of an issue when
using the ?80-round drum magazine-- close to triple modern assualt rifle standard.
What happened behind the lines had no initial bearing on the war in Russia as far as weapons and resources are concerned, the bulk of the dirty work you allude to being carried out by police units, local militia and convalescing soldiers unable to yet return to the Front, as well as “second grade” non-Germanic SS units. Very few frontline fighting units were involved in “rounding up Jews to kill”, the Germans didn’t invade Russia to kill Jews.
It is true that considerable resources were tied up in designated anti-partisan operations, especially as the advance turned into retreat and Red Army commanders were inserted into partisan groups, making them a serious problem for the Germans as they became organised fighting units, not bandits. *
But the Germans did invade the Soviet Union to kill Russians, Ukranians, Georgians, and others.
Remember that the Soviets had been having purges and a reign of terror prior to the German invasion.
When the German armies arrived, initially they were greeted by many people as liberators. Then, of course, their savagery changed that attitude. Their need to maintain large forces to handle partisans was very much their own fault.
If you want to look for things that made the papasha reliable, there are better places to look than the chrome-lined bore. The 7.62 x 25mm cartridge is bottlenecked, for starters. It’s easier to get a bottleneck cartridge to feed reliably than it is one that is straight walled or, like the 9mm, has a minimal taper. The PPSh series also featured the characteristically Russian generous clearances between moving parts; always a good idea in a weapon that has to function even when dirty or in intense cold. The drum was nominally a 71-rounder, but in practice was downloaded by several rounds due to (uh-oh!) jamming problems. Drum magazines, for just about anything, are notoriously slow to load and complicated to manufacture. The Soviets phased out the drum and replaced it with a conventional box magazine.
WRT drum magazines: I remember reading some years ago that British commandos in the early days of the war preferred the box magazines for their Thompsons as the drums were slow to load, rattled loudly, and were an inconvenient size and shape.
*The Me262 was not maneuverable enough to be a effective dogfighter, and was
vulnerable to enemy fighters especially when landing. Chuck Yeager shot one down.
However, the Me262 may have been developed soon enough to seriously diminish
the bombing campaign, since it was a great interceptor. Luckily Hilter tried to make
a light bomber out of it, thus curtailing effective deployment. *
He also conceived of a ground attack version of it, giving it one of those 88 mm cannon. I’ve seen pictures; apparently it would fly, but a more obscene abortion you’ve never seen.
No cite save “I saw it on TV”, I had an idea half remembered that they used a mix of oil and petrol to produce something runnier. Am I remembering correctly.
From the same cite as above (the TV) Russians preferred textile hats to the German’shelmets, which apparently kept heads a few degrees warmer.