In the summer of 1944, the Soviets were making great advances on the eastern front, advancing through the western Soviet Union and into Poland. In early August they advanced right up to the doorstep of Warsaw. And then Stalin halted the Soviet advance, and it did not resume until January of 1945, during which time Stalin choose to focus on liberating the Balkans and Hungary. Was Stalin’s decision to halt the Soviet advance through Poland militarily necessary; or did he halt it in order to avoid helping the Warsaw Uprising, which could have provided legitimacy to the Polish government in exile? And did he wait until January 1945 to resume the Soviet’s westward drive through Poland in order to put the rest of eastern Europe within the Soviet sphere of influence prior to the end of the war? And did Stalin’s decision to halt the Soviet advance west through Poland from August 1944 to January 1945 unnecessarily prolong the war by several months?
Everything that you listed are all secondary parts of the reason why Stalin halted the main offensive until January 1945. The questions you have stated had been emphasized by both Western and Soviet historians prior to the fall of the Soviet Union. The reason why the Soviet historians emphasized the same reasons as the Western historians was to hide the horrendous losses the Soviet Army suffered in 1944.
The Soviet Army divided their casualties into 2 categories:
Irrecoverable Losses – Killed in Action, Missing in Action
Wounded and Sick – sick and wounded included men incapable of further service such as a soldier who had 4 toes amputated due to trench foot or a soldier who lost his arm due to shrapnel.
These are the casualties suffered by the Soviet Army in the first 8 months of 1944:
Dnieper-Carpathian Strategic Offensive (driving the Axis out of Ukraine)
December 24, 1943, to April 17, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 270,198
Wounded and Sick: 839,330
Total Casualties: 1,109,528
Leningrad-Novgorod Strategic Offensive (breaking the siege of Leningrad)
January 14, 1944, to March 1, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 76,686
Wounded and Sick: 237,267
Total Casualties: 313,953
Crimean Strategic Offensive (driving the Axis out of Crimea)
April 8, 1944, to May 12, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 17,754
Wounded and Sick: 67,065
Total Casualties: 84,819
Vyborg-Karelian Strategic Offensive (forcing Finland from the Axis side)
June 10, 1944, to August 9, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 23,674
Wounded and Sick: 72,701
Total Casualties: 84,819
Byelorussian Strategic Offensive (Operation Bagration)
June 23, 1944, to August 29, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 178,507
Wounded and Sick: 587,308
Total Casualties: 765,815
Lvov-Sandonierz Strategic Offensive (offensive into Southern Poland)
July 13, 1944, to August 29, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 65,001
Wounded and Sick: 224,295
Total Casualties: 289,296
The total Soviet losses for these 6 major offensives will come out to:
Irrecoverable Losses: 631,820
Wounded and Sick: 2,027,966
Total Casualties: 2,659,786
These casualties are literally the Soviet Army losing the equivalent of nearly 284 (9,380 man) rifle divisions. With the casualties in the quiet sectors, the Soviet Army had lost almost 3,200,000 men killed and wounded from January to August 1944. The Soviet Army was in no condition to conduct an all-out offensive against Germany until 1945.
The reason why the Soviets continued military operations was that they relied on the Allied armies to provide the manpower to fight against Germany and Hungary. In the north, the Soviets are relying on the Finnish Army to help them drive the German 20th Mountain Army back into Norway. In the center, they are relying on rapidly expanding communist Polish and Czechoslovakian armies to provide the manpower to engage the Germans.
The main effort will be in the Balkan peninsula due to Allied assistance. The defection of Romania provided the Soviet Army with 382,524 men to fight the Germans. The defection of the Bulgarian Army provided the Soviets with 455,000 men to fight alongside their forces. The Yugoslavian partisans will provide over 500,000 men to assist the Soviets which Tito will rapidly expand to a 700,000 men army by the end of the year.
You are going to the results of these Allied reinforcements in the Soviet casualties in their next wave of offensives. These Allied formations are providing the majority of the cannon fodder in engaging the Germans and the Hungarians.
Iazi-Kishinov Strategic Offensive (the defection of Romania and Bulgaria)
August 20, 1944, to August 29, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 13,197
Wounded and Sick: 53,933
Total Casualties: 67,130
East Carpathian Strategic Offensive (failed attempt to breakthrough to Slovakia)
September 8, 1944, to October 28, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 26,893
Wounded and Sick: 99,368
Total Casualties: 126,211
Baltic Strategic Offensive (driving Army Group North back to Courland)
September 14, 1944, to November 24, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 61,468
Wounded and Sick: 218,672
Total Casualties: 280,000
Belgrade Strategic Offensive (the liberation of Belgrade)
September 28, 1944, to October 20, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 4,350
Wounded and Sick: 14,488
Total Casualties: 18,838
Petsamo Strategic Offensive (driving 20th Mountain Army back to Norway)
October 7, 1944, to October 29, 1944
Irrecoverable Losses: 6,084
Wounded and Sick: 15,149
Total Casualties: 21,233
The total Soviet losses for these 5 major offensives will come out to:
Irrecoverable Losses: 111,942 (54.9% of killed in Baltic offensive)
Wounded and Sick: 444,650 (49.2% wounded and sick in Baltic offensive)
Total Casualties: 556,592 (50.3% of total casualties in Baltic offensive)
You can see how severe the casualties were for the Soviet Army when it had to fight without the use of Allied cannon fodder against Army Group North. This is the real reason why the Soviets are concentrating in Hungary and Yugoslavia.
The following YouTube video shows the progress of the war in Europe, every day from September 1939 to May 1945, and it shows the sizes of the the Axis and allied armies on the various fronts, every day of the war.
It shows that when the Soviets halted their advance through Poland on August 8, 1944, the allies had 6,749,827 soldiers on the eastern front, compared to only 2,449,344 for the Axis. This is an overwhelming numerical advantage for the allies. As such, I find it hard to believe that the Soviets were not capable of continuing their advance through Poland in 1944.
That video is inaccurate and should not be used for anything.
I had to take a couple of days to decipher where the author of the video obtained the numbers for the Soviet Army from for the video since he did not list any sources. It appears that he is drawing from the summaries of the Field Army reports that the Active Fronts submit to Stavka on the first day of every month. Additional weekly summaries are also generated by the Active Fronts to provide estimates on total strength. The Field Army reports lists the total number of men assigned to the Front in the last 28 to 31 days of combat operations. There are two mistakes with using the Field Army reports. The first is that all combat units of the Soviet Air Force are assigned to the fronts which means he is counting the Soviet Air Force as fighting on the ground against the Axis. The second is that he did not subtract the casualties.
The vast majority of the Field Army reports, and weekly summaries are still classified. Only the total strength of the Soviet Army has been published which incorporates the total amount of hospitalized men and women. There is no breakdown of the hospitalized among the Active Fronts. The Russian archivists had slipped up a couple of times and allowed the true numbers to slip through. These numbers come from When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler by Dr. David Glantz and Dr. Jonathan Whitehouse.
| Field Army Weekly Summaries | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Total Strength | In Hospital | Actual Strength | |
| April 1, 1943 Report | 5,792,000 | 674,000 | 5,118,000 |
| July 9, 1943 Report | 6,724,000 | 446,445 | 6,277,555 |
| March 12, 1944 Report | 6,394,000 | 727,000 | 5,667,000 |
This is the total size of the frontline Soviet forces averaged out for each quarter with the total number of casualites for each quarter during the war in Europe. The calculation for casualties does not include prisoners of war:
| Red Army and Air Force Personnel Losses, June 1941 to 9 May 1945 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Average Strength (monthly) | Killed or Missing | Wounded and Sick | Total | |
| 1941, 3rd Quarter | 3,334,400 | 2,067,801 | 676,964 | 2,744,765 |
| 1941, 4th Quarter | 2,815,500 | 926,002 | 637,327 | 1,563,329 |
| Yearly Total | 3,024,000 | 2,993,803 | 1,314,291 | 4,308,094 |
| 1942, 1st Quarter | 4,186,000 | 619,167 | 1,172,274 | 1,791,441 |
| 1942, 2nd Quarter | 5,060,300 | 776,578 | 702,150 | 1,478,728 |
| 1942, 3rd Quarter | 5,664,000 | 1,141,991 | 1,276,810 | 2,418,801 |
| 1942, 4th Quarter | 6,343,000 | 455,800 | 936,031 | 1,391,831 |
| Yearly Total | 5,313,600 | 2,993,536 | 4,087,265 | 7,080,801 |
| 1943, 1st Quarter | 5,892,800 | 656,403 | 1,421,140 | 2,077,543 |
| 1943, 2nd Quarter | 6,459,800 | 125,172 | 471,724 | 596,896 |
| 1943, 3rd Quarter | 6,816,800 | 694,465 | 2,053,492 | 2,747,957 |
| 1943, 4th Quarter | 6,387,200 | 501,087 | 1,560,164 | 2,061,251 |
| Yearly Total | 6,389,200 | 1,977,127 | 5,506,520 | 7,483,647 |
| 1944, 1st Quarter | 6,286,800 | 470,392 | 1,565,431 | 2,035,823 |
| 1944, 2nd Quarter | 6,447,000 | 251,745 | 956,828 | 1,208,573 |
| 1944, 3rd Quarter | 6,714,300 | 430,432 | 1,541,965 | 1,972,397 |
| 1944, 4th Quarter | 6,770,100 | 259,766 | 1,026,645 | 1,286,411 |
| Yearly Total | 6,550,100 | 1,412,335 | 5,090,869 | 6,503,204 |
| 1945, 1st Quarter | 6,461,100 | 468,407 | 1,582,517 | 2,050,924 |
| 1945, 2nd Quarter | 6,135,300 | 163,226 | 609,231 | 772,457 |
| Yearly Total | 6,330,880 | 631,663 | 2,191,748 | 2,823,381 |
| Wartime Total | 5,778,500 | 10,008,434 | 18,190,693 | 28,199,127 |
| This table was revised and updated in 2009. This should give you an idea of the actual size of Soviet frontline forces. |
The fundimental weakpoint the Soviet Army faced in World War 2 was Joseph Stalin. Stalin was obsessed with regiments, brigades, and divisions. Stavka had to present overwhelming evidence to Stalin in order for a change or reorgainzation of the Soviet Army to occur. Stalin very rarely allowed for the disbanding of regiments, brigades, and divisions and Stalin would constantly order the creation of new Army units throughout the War. The only force to be reduced in size in the Soviet Army was the cavalry which shrunk from 65 divisions in 1942 to 26 divisions in 1944. Stavka convinced Stalin that the loss of horses prevented the Soviet Army from mounting a large cavalry force and that the cavalrymen can be motorized to provide infantry for the tanks, assault guns, and tank destroyers of the expanding Soviet armor force.
This is the size of the Soviet infantry forces in the fall of 1944:
111 Guards Rifle Divisions (10,660 men in division)
393 Rifle Divisions (9,380 men in division)
1 Guards Mountain Rifle Division (14,100 men in division)
4 Mountain Rifle Divisions (14,100 men in division)
2 Motorized Rifle Divisions (in Far East) (11,600 men in division)
15 Rifle Brigades (5,129 men in brigade)
4 Ski Rifle Brigades (2,800 men in brigade)
8 Separate Rifle Regiments (2,281 in regiment)
47 Fortified Regions (three machine gun/artillery battalions each) (664 men in battalion)
The Soviet losses were so severe by the summer of 1942 that they were unable to keep the infantry at 100% strength. In quiet sectors, they hold the infantry at 50% strength while they try to keep the infantry actively fighting the Germans at full strength.
The situation became worse in 1943 due to the casualties. The Soviets are unable to restore divisions bact to full strength. In the buildup for Kurst, the Soviets can only build up the Guards Rifle Divisions from 85% to 88% strength (9060 to 9380 men) and the Rifle Divisions to 78% to 80% strength (7316 to 7504 men). The inactive areas are kept at 50% strength.
1944 was worse than 1943 due to the casualties. The Soviet Army can only build up the Guards Rifle Divisions to 8600 men and the Rifle Divisions 7200 men at the start of an offensive. Once the offensive starts, the infantry received no more replacements. They are solely dependent on what men they have to continue on the offensive and being reinforced by men who have recuperated from the hospitals. All new drafted men out of basic training are being routed for the frontline divisions conducting the next offensive. As a result, the Soviet offensive would collapse when too many of the frontline infantry are killed, wounded, fall to illness, or injury and it would take a couple of months for the frontline divisions to return back to around 50% strength.
Macdurm, I don’t disupte any of the figures you offered. However, your post leads me to two conclusions:
The first is that even if we factor in the losses suffered by the Soviet Red Army, it looks as though they still have a significant numerical advantage over the Germans during the period in question.
The second is that it looks as though in the latter half of 1944, Stalin chose to prioritize the replenishment of Soviet units that were fighting in the Balkans over those that were part of the main drive towards Germany. This suggests that Stalin could have prioritized replenishment of the units that were part of the main drive towards Germany in order to to prioritize the offensives that would have ended the war sooner.