Red Army 1941

Strength and Organization of the Red Army at Operation Barbarossa in June 1941.

The Red Army in 1941

During the first German assaults, the Red Army almost collapsed. Units fell back, leaving behind them huge quanti­ties of valuable supplies, ammunition and irreplaceable heavy equipment. Forma­tions and units lost their coherence, and headquarters, often staffed by completely inexperienced staff officers, struggled with poor communications.

From June until the end of the year, the Red Army withdrew eastwards, suffering grievous losses but also inflicting heavy losses on the enemy. In the autumn, the front line ran from Leningrad in the north to Odessa in the south, but the Red Army had lost nearly one-third of its entire pre­war strength. Despite these colossal defeats, the Germans had failed to annihilate the Red Army and had failed to take either Leningrad or Moscow.
Moscow now became the focal point of German efforts, while Stalin, as Supreme Commander, decided to remain in Moscow and defend the capital to the bitter end.

Orders of Battle of the Red Army in June 1941

Although it is hard to arrive at a completely accurate figure, there were about 170 million people in the Soviet Union in 1941, of whom all eligible adult males, totaling 25 million, were liable for military service. The length of service was two years, after which the recruit would go into the reserves, ready to be called to the colors when necessary.

The quality of peace-time training in the Red Army left much to be desired: instruction was by rote learning, so that recruits were taught to value obedience over initiative. The sluggish Soviet response to the German invasion reflected an inadequate level of technical com­petence.

The regular army consisted of some nine million men, of whom about a half were based in the European Soviet Union.
On the western front the Russians deployed 170 divisions (of about 230 divisions) in five major groups: Leningrad Military District (three armies); Baltic Special Military District (two armies); West Special Military District (three armies); Kiev Special ¥ilitary District (four armies) and the Odessa Military District (two armies).

Orders of Battle of the Red Army on June 22, 1941:

Northern Front (Leningrad):

North-West Front (Baltic, Gen Kusnezow):

Western Front (Minsk, Gen Pavlov):

South-West Front (Kiev, Gen Kirponos):

Southern Front (Odessa, Gen Tjulenev):

Reserves inside Soviet Union:

Remarks:
Mech. = Mechanized (Armoured Corps)
MD = Motorised Infantry Division
TD = Armoured Division (Tank Division)
Cav = Cavalry division

Organisation of the Red Army 1941

During the period leading up to Opera­tion Barbarossa, the Soviet Army was undergoing the turmoil of reorganization. This was a consequence of the salutary lessons imposed by the Finnish war and, more immediately, of the German Blitz­krieg in the west.
Russian theorists now realized that a coherent military doctrine was an urgent priority; a doctrine, moreover, which allowed for the crucial role of armored formations in battle. When the Wehrmacht struck against the Soviet Union, however, the problem of reorganization had still to be resolved.

Reacting swiftly to the German invasion surprisingly has come for him on June 23, Stalin supervised the creation of an inter-service general head­quarters (Stavka) and took control of it a month later, becoming in effect the guid­ing light of military operations.

By centralizing all military departments under general political control, the Stavka was able to supervise the deployment of the nation’s resources with considerable effici­ency. A major function of the Stavka was the co-ordination of forces throughout the Soviet Union, which amongst others improvements, entailed they successful evacuation of central key industries into the east as well as the transfer of the Siberian divisions to the west in time for the crucial battle for Moscow.
At the same time, the Stavka struggled to form a strategic reserve with which to mount counter-attacks as soon as the opportunity arose, although this entailed depriving front-line units of desperately­ needed reinforcements.

The Russian armed forces of 1941 were organized into armies of from two to four corps, each of two to four divisions.
An average army might have 12 divisions which, with auxiliary services (signals, engineer, supply, maintenance and trans­portations), amounted to nearly 200,000 men.

Following the invasion, the Stavka found the rifle corps unwieldy due to the shortage of trained command and staff personnel, and they were abolished for a while, the size of an army being reduced as a result to around eight divisions.
The rifle corps was re-introduced in the Soviet Army, but never acquired the semi­-independent function of corps in the other Allied armies.

Basic units of the Red Army, June 1941:

The paradoxical problem faced by the Red Army in 1941 was that although it possessed a vast pool of tanks and motorized equipment, it could not possibly supply the tremendous equipment demands of the new Mechanized Corps.
Of the 24,000 tanks available, 4,060 were already committed to the requirements of organic tank units in rifle, cavalry and airborne divisions, leaving about 20,000 tanks for the Mechanized Corps.
The corps tables, however, called for 31,574 tanks and 8,040 armored cars. This was about 150 per cent of the available tanks, and 165 per-cent of all armored cars.

What made the situation worse was that of the 24,000 Red Army tanks in 1941, 29 per cent required major overhaul and 44 per cent required rebuilding.
In other words, only 27 per cent or about 7,000 tanks were in good enough mechanical condition to last more than a few days fighting before suffering mechanical breakdown.

Armored fighting vehicles of the Red Army, June 1941:

Armoured Car Strength of the Red Army on June 22, 1941: 4,819

Tractors of the Red Army, June 1941:

Total Motor vehicles in the Red Army, June 1941: 272,600

References and literature

Krieg der Panzer (Piekalkiewicz)
The Armed Forces of World War II (Andrew Mollo)
World War II – A Statistical Survey (John Ellis)
Der Grosse Atlas zum II. Weltkrieg (Peter Young)
Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis, and Military Simulation, Volume I – IIIB (Nigel Askey)
Soviet Tanks and Combat Vehicles of World War Two (Steven J. Zaloga, James Grandsen)