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I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda. It's true they took [1] heavy losses durin

by the_af 2y ago

I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda. It's true they took [1] heavy losses during their operations, but "human wave" attacks wasn't a tactic the Soviets used. -- [1] They took and accepted heavy losses, but given the alternative was total extermination, their tradeoffs were entirely different to the Western Allies'...

ffgjgf1 2y ago
> I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda Also Western (considering silly movies like Enemy at the Gate). They had more than enough equipment outside of some brief periods to make something like that entirely unnecessary. BUT the Soviets were much more tolerant about manpower losses than the allies and even the Germans. They regularly traded massive amounts of casualties (in ways that would have been entirely unacceptable in Britain/US) to sped up their advance (or due to political reasons).
- the_af 2y ago
  Agreed about Enemy of the Gates! Such an awful and misleading movie. As for your last point, I think the tradeoffs the Soviets were forced to make were entirely different to the Western Allies, especially say the US. If the US lost the war, their soldiers got to go back home. If the USSR lost the war, about 80% of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe would have been wiped out, as per stated Nazi plans. A terrible situation surely demanded terrible resolve to overcome.
  - ffgjgf1 2y ago
    Not in 1944/45. The Germans had lost and had no way of winning. Even if that was not obvious on the ground to some allied leadership clearly understood that. Regardless the Soviets had almost no concerns about throwing away manpower unnecessarily due to political and other reasons. e.g. the whole “Race to Berlin” and the ensuing battle, had Stalin and his generals had any concern about the lives of their soldiers (compared to most western generals/leaders) hundreds of thousands of Soviet lives could have been saved at a very small cost.
    - thriftwy 2y ago
      Race to Berlin made sense because it led to better post-war outcomes for USSR, which also had price in human lives. However, helping Polish uprising would do the opposite, as the Poles proudly tell themselves. It wasn't impossible though. Yugoslavia pulled that trick and that allowed it to remain neutral.
ajuc 2y ago
[Zhukov said:]“There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the vehicular mine. When we come to a mine field our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider only equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area with strong bodies of troops instead of with mine fields. The attacking infantry does not set off the vehicular mines, so after they have penetrated to the far side of the field they form a bridgehead, after which the engineers come up and dig out channels through which our vehicles can go.”
- thriftwy 2y ago
  I wonder if you understand that you just quoted how Zhukov avoids human wave tactics. I guess you have a better strategy than Zhukov has described, with more favourable tradeoffs. Perhaps you could share it with Ukrainian command since they went with Zhukov in the summer of 2023.
- the_af 2y ago
  Regardless of anything else, in this well-known quote Zhukov isn't describing a human wave attack. He furthermore explains how the casualties of ignoring infantry mines are in the end about the same. Remember minefields were not really used as area denial but for delaying operations. An offensive operation that gets successfully delayed results in much greater casualties later on, as the enemy has more time to prepare or retreat in an orderly fashion. Which is the whole point of using minefields! But in any case, as Zhukov explained, the casualties of ignoring mines vs taking the time to disable them would have been about the same. So no real difference in lives. The context of Zhukov's quote also matters. Unlike the case with the Western Allies, the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany was existential. Had the USSR lost, there was no surrender or retreat possible. There was no "going back home" or being "under new management": Nazi Germany had their Generalplan Ost, most of the Soviet officers would have been executed and more importantly 80% of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe would have been executed as well. When facing this kind of outcome, the tradeoffs that must be made are different. But this is all a tangent, because what Zhukov describes is not a human wave attack. A human wave attack is infantry charging in waves, without cover or any tactics, and getting mowed down by dug in enemy infantry, without care about casualties and without any thought for tactics. This is definitely NOT what the Soviets did; in fact commanders who wasted the lives of their soldiers in this way were reprimanded, punished or removed from their posts (with some exceptions, of course, but exceptions also happened with the Western Allies).

by the_af 2y ago

ffgjgf1 2y ago

> I can't speak for current Russian doctrine, but Soviet "human wave" attacks during WWII are mostly German propaganda Also Western (considering silly movies like Enemy at the Gate). They had more than enough equipment outside of some brief periods to make something like that entirely unnecessary. BUT the Soviets were much more tolerant about manpower losses than the allies and even the Germans. They regularly traded massive amounts of casualties (in ways that would have been entirely unacceptable in Britain/US) to sped up their advance (or due to political reasons).

the_af 2y ago
Agreed about Enemy of the Gates! Such an awful and misleading movie. As for your last point, I think the tradeoffs the Soviets were forced to make were entirely different to the Western Allies, especially say the US. If the US lost the war, their soldiers got to go back home. If the USSR lost the war, about 80% of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe would have been wiped out, as per stated Nazi plans. A terrible situation surely demanded terrible resolve to overcome.
- ffgjgf1 2y ago
  Not in 1944/45. The Germans had lost and had no way of winning. Even if that was not obvious on the ground to some allied leadership clearly understood that. Regardless the Soviets had almost no concerns about throwing away manpower unnecessarily due to political and other reasons. e.g. the whole “Race to Berlin” and the ensuing battle, had Stalin and his generals had any concern about the lives of their soldiers (compared to most western generals/leaders) hundreds of thousands of Soviet lives could have been saved at a very small cost.
  - thriftwy 2y ago
    Race to Berlin made sense because it led to better post-war outcomes for USSR, which also had price in human lives. However, helping Polish uprising would do the opposite, as the Poles proudly tell themselves. It wasn't impossible though. Yugoslavia pulled that trick and that allowed it to remain neutral.

ajuc 2y ago

[Zhukov said:]“There are two kinds of mines; one is the personnel mine and the other is the vehicular mine. When we come to a mine field our infantry attacks exactly as if it were not there. The losses we get from personnel mines we consider only equal to those we would have gotten from machine guns and artillery if the Germans had chosen to defend that particular area with strong bodies of troops instead of with mine fields. The attacking infantry does not set off the vehicular mines, so after they have penetrated to the far side of the field they form a bridgehead, after which the engineers come up and dig out channels through which our vehicles can go.”

thriftwy 2y ago
I wonder if you understand that you just quoted how Zhukov avoids human wave tactics. I guess you have a better strategy than Zhukov has described, with more favourable tradeoffs. Perhaps you could share it with Ukrainian command since they went with Zhukov in the summer of 2023.
the_af 2y ago
Regardless of anything else, in this well-known quote Zhukov isn't describing a human wave attack. He furthermore explains how the casualties of ignoring infantry mines are in the end about the same. Remember minefields were not really used as area denial but for delaying operations. An offensive operation that gets successfully delayed results in much greater casualties later on, as the enemy has more time to prepare or retreat in an orderly fashion. Which is the whole point of using minefields! But in any case, as Zhukov explained, the casualties of ignoring mines vs taking the time to disable them would have been about the same. So no real difference in lives. The context of Zhukov's quote also matters. Unlike the case with the Western Allies, the war between the USSR and Nazi Germany was existential. Had the USSR lost, there was no surrender or retreat possible. There was no "going back home" or being "under new management": Nazi Germany had their Generalplan Ost, most of the Soviet officers would have been executed and more importantly 80% of the Slavic population of Eastern Europe would have been executed as well. When facing this kind of outcome, the tradeoffs that must be made are different. But this is all a tangent, because what Zhukov describes is not a human wave attack. A human wave attack is infantry charging in waves, without cover or any tactics, and getting mowed down by dug in enemy infantry, without care about casualties and without any thought for tactics. This is definitely NOT what the Soviets did; in fact commanders who wasted the lives of their soldiers in this way were reprimanded, punished or removed from their posts (with some exceptions, of course, but exceptions also happened with the Western Allies).