Inferno - Max Hastings [346]
The Red Army never displayed much tactical subtlety, save perhaps in harassing the enemy through the hours of darkness, a skill in which its men surpassed the Western Allies. A British analyst has written: “In Soviet thinking the concept of economy of force has little place. Whereas to an Englishman the taking of a sledgehammer to crack a nut is a wrong decision and a sign of mental immaturity … in Russian eyes the cracking of nuts is clearly what sledgehammers are for.” Russian attacks emphasised massed artillery bombardment and sacrificial tank and infantry advances, often led by “staff battalions”—penal units of political and military prisoners offered the possibility of reprieve in return for accepting the likelihood of extinction. Some 442,700 men served in them, and most died. The Russians continued to suffer higher casualties than did the Germans. If all soldiers find it hard to describe to civilians afterwards what they have endured, for Russians it was uniquely difficult. Even in the years of victory, 1943 to 1945, the Red Army’s assault units accepted losses of around 25 percent in each action, a casualty rate the Anglo-American forces would never have accepted as a constant. Of 403,272 Russian soldiers who completed tank training in the course of the war, 310,000 died.
The poet David Samoilov noted, “This was the last Russian war in which most of the soldiers were peasants.” Partly in consequence, Stalin’s soldiers were even more superstitious than most warriors. Some, for instance, thought it unlucky to curse while loading a weapon; many wore good-luck charms and crosses. If relatively few admitted a formal allegiance to banished Christianity, many crossed themselves before going into action. Song played a big part in the army’s culture. Men sang as they marched, and in the evenings around their fires—mostly ballads heavy with sentiment, lacking the cynicism of British soldiers’ favoured numbers. With so many frontoviks quickly wounded or killed, it was estimated that Russian soldiers spent an average of only three months together. But men said that inside a week they learned more about one another than in a year of civilian life. The Red Army offered its men neither sex education nor condoms. Those who developed venereal diseases were sometimes punished by the denial of medical treatment. Children sometimes marched with the regiments, because they had lost everything and only the army offered them some hope of subsistence.
A Soviet report on 25 August 1944 described the Germans still resisting effectively: “The enemy’s use of self-propelled guns and tanks to cover their retreats makes it difficult for us to engage their infantry. In these circumstances, our infantry often behave indecisively. The nature of our units has changed significantly during the last few months. Many consist overwhelmingly of green replacements. There are few men who have served since 1941. Many who have fought since 1943 complain about the inexperience of replacements.” Soviet operations were punctuated with displays of stunning incompetence, often influenced by drunkenness. The cruelties inflicted on ordinary soldiers by their superiors explain the fact that even in 1944–45 some Russian soldiers continued to desert to the Germans. It can be said of Stalin’s men, as of the Japanese, that their barbarous conduct towards other races merely mirrored their own rulers’ treatment of themselves. But Russian higher commanders now displayed an impressive confidence