Germany wiped the floor with Russia in WWI but the USSR ended up getting into Berlin in WWII, how come?
Excellent video from the Khan Academy:
World War I Eastern front
Compare the relative balance of forces: WW1 and WW2. Note the Imperial Germany superiority in heavy guns. This superiority was mirrored in many logistical areas versus the Tsar’s army. Conversely, at the start of Barbarossa, the Soviet Union was one of the most lavishly equipped militaries in the world. They lost a giant chunk of it in 1941, of course. The Soviets, in WW2, could draw on a seemingly inexhaustible supply of manpower, and, thanks to Lend-Lease and a pliant Iran, a similarly inexhaustible supply of ordnance and matériel.
Go look at how far German/Central Powers troops advanced in 1917 versus December 1941. The Nazis went much further, and took much more ground. But the Soviets didn’t have a Lenin and a Bolshevik revolution eating their resolve from within, unlike the Tsar and later, Kerensky.
During WWI, Russia was a weak country beset by internal struggles and led by a Czar who just wasn’t that bright and didn’t really realize how precarious his position was. Once Russia suffered some major setbacks, the country’s government fell to pieces and one of the factions in the civil war offered surrender terms to Germany so that they could finish winning the civil war. While the terms Germany insisted on were harsh (significantly harsher than the Versailles treaty that they liked to whine about later), they were basically just giving up territory that was part of Imperial Russia but not Russia proper. Russia was also a fairly weak country in terms of industry, agriculture, and organization, though this wasn’t their main problem.
Two decades later when WW2 started, the Bolshevicks had consolidated their power in the USSR and set up lots of measures to ensure that they stayed in power. Instead of a weak, overly trusting Czar, they were led by a paranoid dictator who was convinced that everyone was plotting against him. The USSR had also completed a massive and ruthless program of industrializing and modernizing farming. When the Germans invaded, they didn’t just want to knock the USSR out of the war and get some territory like in WW1, they wanted to enslave and exterminate all of the slavs, and began murdering, enslaving and looting from the very start. This meant that there was little internal division or resistance to the Soviet government, and no reason for them to do anything but fight back until death. Germany also had no real plan to secure a victory or achievable war goals beyond ‘blow stuff up and advance east’, which didn’t work too well.
Germany had far from an easy time against Russia in WW1, at least until the Revolution, and Russia largely stomped its allies Austria and Turkey.
Easier, though. They did win the war against Russia.
I think the answer is simply that the Soviet Union was bigger, stronger, and had a better army. Prior to WWII the USSR was the world’s biggest and most powerful armed forces, and even after early defeats it was still an immensely powerful force.
The USSR remained a cohesive state after early defeats, and the populace largely supported the war against an enemy that was openly a predatory and murderous force to an extent the Germans were not in WWI. Russia was a sick, weak state even before the war started; the USSR in 1941 was a state with growing power and confidence, and despite the army purges it had a pretty solid base of military capability.
Furthermore, as a result of that cohesion, the Soviets were able to learn and adapt from experience to an extent Imperial Russia was not. The Soviets were a better armed force in 1942 than they had been in 1941, and better still in 1943, and by 1944 were in many ways qualitatively superior to the Germans.
I would offer - without putting a lot of study into this - the hypothesis that thew warfare of World War II was more favourable to the Russians than of WWI. War in 1914-1918 was not as mobile or as fast as in 1941-1945 and was more two dimensional; airplanes weren’t important in World War I. In such a situation, the ability of the numerically smaller force to effectively stop the other side’s offensive is likely greater; however, when your enemy has a lot of mechanized infantry, tanks, and airplanes, it’s harder to stem the tide.
In fact, in the first months of WW2, the Nazis had an easier time than the Kaiser.
In WW1, offensives were inconclusive as the reinforcements by train could move faster than the attackers on feet. German offensives were limited in depth, for logistical reasons and also because the western front was given priority. The estern front was largely an Austrian responsability ( and their constant failures to resist or push the Russians would force the Germans to intervene, only to the extent that Austria doesn’t collapse). The huge advance at the end of the war was possible as the Russian army was collapsing ( political turmoil, industrial difficulties, lack of food,…)
In WW2, the USSR was more industrialised, with a better command and a more efficient (if ruthless) intern police than the tsarist Russia. The Nazis advanced up to Leningrad, Moscow and Rostov in 6 months. That’s far more than in WW1. But they weren’t interested in a peace treaty, nor in the support of minorities ( Poles, Balts, Belarus, Ukrainians, or even non-communist Russians) and so they faced a ennemy that would not collapse, nor negotiate and were stuck in a forever war.
Germany didn’t invade Russia and planned on a defensive war and WWI favored the defensive. It also helped that Germany wiped out the Russian Army early on at Tannenberg. The Russians were slowed by the soft Polish soil, and the Germans had internal lines of communication and rail lines that allowed then to move troops quickly. It didn’t help that the Russians did not encode their radio messages, so the Germans knew their plans.
Tannenberg wiped out an entire Russian Army and another was destroyed in the Battle of the Masurian Lakes.
It all forced the Russians to raise an army of untrained troops, and the Germans were able to dig in and be ready for them.
Also, military history buff Dan Carlin (who takes pains to emphasize he is not a historian, just a voracious reader) argues that the German army in WWI was substantially better – relative to its enemies – than the WWII version:
Look at the Russian casualty figures for each war. Stalin’s better logistics and consolidated hold on power allowed him to throw vastly more young Russian men into the meat grinder to preserve his regime than the Tsar or Kerensky ever could.
A lot of that was because after the Bolsheviks came into power, Lenin didn’t really give a shit about continuing the war, and basically just gave the Germans most of what they wanted. Germany lucked out there. (Well, until they were defeated by the rest of the Allies)
Lenin wasn’t like Stalin. He didn’t have the same kind of ego.
He was willing to concede plenty to the west after the war as well. He had an absolute belief that Communism was inevitable, and that history was moving in that direction, so he felt it didn’t really matter. Communism would spread, regardless of whether he gave up this or that area of land, or conceded this or that diplomatic point.
In WWI, the first Russian wave over the trenches was, or course, armed.
The second wave was not armed, and instructed to retrieve weapons from the first wave casualties. Indicative of Russia’s lack of arms, it was not a morale booster.
That same story is told of the Russian army in World War II, though. In both cases, it’s likely only something that happened in odd and isolated examples. A much larger problem for the Czarist army was ammunition.
The WWII Soviet army was definitely WAY better equipped, that much is for sure, and placed a lot of emphasis on putting capable officers in charge of logistics.
The first time I heard that was in a history class lecture in undergraduate school. Wow.
Also, a factor I recall was ineptness and corruption. A lot of WWI Russian military brass were there by connections and birth; the nobility was heavily favored over competent commoners. Similarly, a lot of government business including military supplies were arranged by cronyism with much corruption, resulting in a severe lack of supplies, weapons, and rations.
As others mentioned, the Soviet response was more motivated, even if by fear. It seems to be a hallmark of leftist totalitarian dictatorships to do better than laissez-faire corrupt right wing dictatorships.
Knowing that you can be shot is a great motivator for generals.
Party suitability/being drinking buddies with Stalin was the early WW2 equivalent. Which explains how inept leaders like Kliment Voroshilov or Semyon Budyonny ended up commanding Army Groups at the start of Barbarossa. The Soviets had to drag Rokossovsky out of a Gulag camp, and Zhukov from de facto Far East exile.
As to Gray Ghost’s point there, it’s worth further noting that as the war progressed, Stalin became a better war leader, putting less emphasis on who sucked up to him and more emphasis on who was actually competent.
Hitler went in the opposite direction; all his worst tendencies as a war leader kept getting worse.
didn’t the russian armies also have a few mutiny incidents also ?