WWII Soviets had low moral?

[swing_voter]

So hundreds of thousands of Soviets surrendered at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Why do you think this happened?

The Soviets eventually stopped the Germans, so the Soviets must've resolved their moral problems.

 

[WillyPete]

So hundreds of thousands of Soviets surrendered at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Why do you think this happened?

Because the Germans caught them flatfooted, the Russians initial defensive strategy was poor (they tried to defend everywhere, and failed everywhere) and the Germans used their (for the time) advanced tactics to envelop massive areas of land. Any Russian soldiers thus trapped would be forced to surrender or fight to the death, as they were cut off from all support and resupply.

Given similar circumstances, it would have worked against any army on the planet at that time. Nothing to do with morale.

The Soviets eventually stopped the Germans, so the Soviets must've resolved their moral problems.

The Russian endured hell, but they were defending their homeland, and their supply situation was improving constantly.

The Germans had the exact opposite situation, and also changed their minds in the middle about their objective.

So the Russian may or may not have improved morale, but the Germans' morale cracked and that was the beginning of the end for them.

 

[Mr Person]

Yeah, well, when you're underfed, underarmed, poorly lead, and people who escape capture to make it back to their own lines get summarily shot anyway, you kinda do have a morale problem.

When you're losing 1,000 men and women per mile while driving the Germans back, you probably aren't going to feel so great about the situation.

 

[swing_voter]

Somehow the Soviets turned things around and stopped the Germans at Stalingrad.

 

[Jredbaron96]

So hundreds of thousands of Soviets surrendered at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Why do you think this happened?

The Soviets eventually stopped the Germans, so the Soviets must've resolved their moral problems.

The mass surrender of Soviet troops in the beginning of the war was because they were overwhelmed. Most of the front line Soviet divisions had virtually no spare supplies and their troops were in a pitifful state off readiness. In some tank divisions, tank crewmembers had less than five hours of practice on their tanks. They never stood a chance.

 

[Jredbaron96]

Somehow the Soviets turned things around and stopped the Germans at Stalingrad.

War is a crucible where ultimately the pragmatic wins through 99% of the time. The Soviets learned from their mistakes and got better. The Germans did not.

 

[beerftw]

So hundreds of thousands of Soviets surrendered at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Why do you think this happened?

The Soviets eventually stopped the Germans, so the Soviets must've resolved their moral problems.

The soviets had purged their ranks right before thanks to stalin, so they were leaderless and outclassed at that point. The soviet union though was very united outside it's outer nations in the war effort, so as the war went on, the old leaderless ranks were filled with battle hardened officers, the soviet union built an entire infrastructure to support the war.

 

[HK.227]

So hundreds of thousands of Soviets surrendered at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Why do you think this happened?

The Soviets eventually stopped the Germans, so the Soviets must've resolved their moral problems.

We know what the Germans had to say about the subject. That the Russians were hard, but poorly trained and organized fighters.
That when attacking Russians head on, you would have to grind them down bit by bit, but when outflanked and surrounded, they didn't know what to do and would often just give up.
That when encircled, they would predictably attempts breakouts at the point where the distance to their own lines was the shortest (so easy to counter).

General Winter stopped the Germans in '41.
A city that couldn't be bypassed and surrounded stopped them in '42.
A static defense prepared well in advance against an attack the Soviets knew was coming, stopped them in '43.
And by '44, the quality of their armies had surpassed the Germans'.

 

[Evilroddy]

The Red Army was a mess in May of 1941, just before the June 22nd invasion by the Axis forces. First and foremost it lacked transport capabilities so the Red Army's logistics capability was very poor. Second, its communications and thus its command and control was very, very poor, not allowing the Red Army to react or effectively counterattack the Axis forces in an effective way. Third, its kit was generally poor and not up to the job of stopping the German and even other Axis invaders. For example while good Soviet anti-tank rifles had been available since September of 1941, no ammunition for these weapons had been produced and none would be available until November of 1941. All of this combined with a purged Red Army leadership which did not know how to fight a modern combined arms war of manoeuvre left the Red Army largely helpless on the eve of the Axis invasion.

The result was that the Soviets were strategically and operationally unable to counter the Axis invasion except at the very local level. Artillery lacked ammunition, tanks and what few trucks they could muster lacked fuel, tanks and troops lacked ammunition and troops lacked food. The Air Force was crippled at the start of Operation Barbarossa but had reserves of aircraft in other parts of the Soviet Union; but it lacked fuel, spare parts and ammunition so had almost no impact on the start of the Great Patriotic War. The result was that huge numbers of Red Army troops were kesselled (pocketed), starved of supplies and systematically reduced through killing or capturing by often inferior numbers of German and other Axis forces who had better logistics and command and control structures in place.
By October 1941 3.5 million Soviet soldiers were encircled and captured while more than that (~4.5 million) were killed.

Under these circumstances the morale and elan of the Red Army plummeted and fear was used to replace the disintegrated esprit de corps of Soviet military units in an effort to make them stand and repel the invaders. That fear was imposed by commissars who were ideologically trained but usually lacked combat training and much tactical, operational or strategic sense. So ideologues overrode sound military decisions, leading to more failure and more huge costs in human life and materiel. This mess continued throughout 1941 and 1942 and endured into 1943 when the Soviets began to sort their command and control and their logistics out, began to mount better coordinated combined arms operations and when the commissars had died or stepped back to allow more competent military officers to plan and prepare operations against the western invaders. Stalin did not help in this process, too often demanding quick results rather than thoroughly planned and prepared operations right up to the end of the war, but the Red Army got better and its morale and elan improved from late 1942 onwards.

Cheers and be well.
Evilroddy.

 

[Litwin]

So hundreds of thousands of Soviets surrendered at the beginning of the German invasion of the Soviet Union.

Why do you think this happened?

The Soviets eventually stopped the Germans, so the Soviets must've resolved their moral problems.

you have to understand , ussr solders have been poor like Papuas , soviet slaves went daily semi- hungry until western oil cash came in 70s. but stalin´s propaganda was telling them that they live in the best country , the aggressive badly alcoholaized slave solders were in deep shock when they saw western civilization + koba gave them green light for raping children , looting, killings

 

[Litwin]

War is a crucible where ultimately the pragmatic wins through 99% of the time. The Soviets learned from their mistakes and got better. The Germans did not.

Germany has never had a chance, UPA leadership wrote it in 1941 ,not enough resources and way too outstretched, it collape was just matter of time , must like moscow´s empire ussr in 1945