Deep operation

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The theory of deep operation ( Russian Теория глубокой операции Teorija glubokoi operazii ) was a Soviet military doctrine adopted in the 1920s by General Staff officers of the Red Army and others. a. by Vladimir Triandafillow .

content

Triandafillow's approach envisaged a precisely determined course of attack, calculated according to the width and depth of the enemy defense, which should allow the enemy to be attacked simultaneously in the entire depth of his position zone. Different troops should be led in different, coordinated attack operations at the same time. The breakthrough was to be made by mobile, mechanized corps with tanks and airplanes, which were to prevent the enemy from regrouping his forces in the enemy rear. Above all, the raid tactics introduced by the German army in the First World War should be used .

Emergence

During the 1920s, the Red Army did not have a uniform concept for operational warfare or operational planning. Therefore, a short time after the founding of the Soviet armed forces, a controversy arose over the basic positions of the strategy of exhaustion ( Russian strategija ismora ) and the strategy of destruction or prostration ( Russian strategija sokrusenija ).

The main representative of the fatigue strategy was the professor for war history at the military academy "MW Frunze" in Moscow, Alexander Swetschin . The strategy should not defeat the opponent through quick decisive battles, but rather weaken him through a chain of limited military actions over a long period and induce a cessation of the fighting.

This was contradicted by the representatives of the strategy of extermination under the words of the Chief of the General Staff of the Red Army, Mikhail Tukhachevsky . They referred to the then modern possibilities of conducting operations with tanks, aircraft, poison gas, and long-range artillery as a mobile battle command with the aim of destroying the opposing armed forces. The doctrine of the Deputy Chief of Staff, Vladimir Triandafillow, written in 1929: "Character of the Operations of Modern Armies" ( Russian Характер операций современных армий ) contained the idea of deep operations . The starting point was the experiences of the final phase of the First World War , in which rigid fronts no longer offered any operative room for maneuver. The solution was seen in a corresponding breakthrough in the enemy's defense lines with subsequent regaining of freedom of operation in the depths of the enemy space.

In 1935, the deep operation doctrine was adopted by the Red Army and put into practice during a large-scale maneuver .

According to itself, the Red Army did not have a properly developed theory of defense. The official 12-volume work "History of the Second World War 1939–1945" says:

“The military command organs effectively ignored strategic defense because they viewed the future operations of the Soviet Army and the naval navy almost exclusively as acts of aggression. As General I. W. Tyulenev noted at the December 1940 meeting, the Soviet art of war did not then have a sufficiently well-founded defense theory that would have been adequate to the theory and practice of the army's deep offensive operation. The defensive actions of the troops in the initial period of a war were only considered for parts of the strategic front and with regard to the tasks facing the cover armies. "

execution

In the course of the Great Terror in the Soviet Union in the 1930s, important representatives of the deep operation , including Tukhachevsky, were liquidated. Therefore, this military doctrine was neglected between 1936 and 1939, also in view of the experience of the Red Army in the Spanish Civil War and the Finnish-Soviet Winter War .

The Wehrmacht then demonstrated the successful feasibility of this strategy during their western campaign in May / June 1940, see also Blitzkrieg .

In the summer of 1944, the Red Army successfully deployed Deep Operation as part of Operation Bagration , which resulted in the collapse of Army Group Center .

See also

swell

  • Garthoff, Raymond L .: Soviet Military Doctrine , Santa Monica 1953.
  • Habeck, Mary R .: Storm of Steel. The Development of Armor Doctrine in Germany and the Soviet Union 1919-1939 , Cornell University Press, New York 2003, ISBN 978-0-8014-4074-8 .
  • Harrison, Richard W .: The Russian Way of War. Operational Art 1904–1940. Univ. Pr. Of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas 2001, ISBN 978-0-7006-1074-7 .
  • Simpkin, Richard E.: Deep Battle. The Brainchild of Marshal Tuchachevskii , Brassey's Defense, London 1987, ISBN 0-08-031193-8 .
  • United States War Department: Handbook on USSR Military Forces , War Department Technical Manual TM30-430, o. O. 1945.
  • Zeidler, Manfred: Reichswehr and Red Army 1920-1933. Paths and stages of an unusual collaboration, Munich 1993.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Andrei A. Gretschko (chairman of the main editorial office): History of the Second World War 1939-1945 in twelve volumes . Berlin 1975, Volume 3, p. 499.