Military Leaders of the GPW: The Art of Victory.

The article probes deep into one of the specific features of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945: the contribution made by the brilliant military leaders to the military science and its application in defensive and offensive operations.

The experience of the Great Patriotic War is still topical today, 60 years after the war started on June 22, 1941.

The Art of Winning was how the great Russian military leader Alexander Suvorov called his book in which he laid the foundations of military science and developed them. He brilliantly applied them in battles and never lost one. He wrote one of the most vivid pages into the history of Russian military theory and practice.

Military theoreticians further developed the theory of victory in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: they investigated in minutest detail its conditions and the roads leading to it; they looked at victory and defeat as two sides of the same phenomenon whether an engagement, a battle, an operation or a war. Indeed, where one of the sides scores a victory the other is inevitably defeated. In the course of time the idea of victory became associated with a complete defeat of the armed forces and with the destructive impact on the enemy's rear. If the armed forces are totally destroyed while the rear is squashed to the extent it can no longer continue restoring the military potential so that to go on fighting the enemy can be described as routed. In his definitive work On War Karl von Clausewitz wrote: "In each particular case the end may differ yet the beginning is always the same: destruction of the enemy's armed forces, which means a big victory over it and the enemy's defeat. The sooner, that is closer t o the frontier, the victory is won the easier it is to attain it; later, that is, in the heart of the enemy's territory the victory would mean a total defeat."' He was convinced that a defeat and a victory was an aim in the war which was achieved not only through the enemy's defeat but also by capturing the enemy's capital and by delivering a crippling blow at its main ally. This idea of a victory typical of the nineteenth century survived through the next 100 years.

Throughout the history of wars the victory, military victory in the first place, has been an indication that the armed forces were used as a political instrument and signified that society moved from the state of war into the state of peace. This interpretation was confirmed by the United Nations Declaration [2] adopted on January 1, 1942 which declared that a final victory (that ruled out separate agreements, etc.) over fascist Germany and its allies was needed to protect life, freedom and independence and ensure human rights and justice for all nations that suffered from the nazi aggression.

The history of wars has demonstrated that in the course of time the content of the concept of victory and defeat have acquired new elements mainly of the social and political nature which broadened its reflection of the concrete historical content of the war. This content is determined, on the one hand, by the political and military aims and, on the other, by the correlation between the warring sides. It should be added that the concept of the military victory was imbibing the features and trends of each particular epoch which boosted its significance and intensified its social and political dimensions. Victories, especially victories in world wars, exerted tremendous impact on the course of history and resulted in a new theory of victory.

The conceptions of victory elaborated between the two world wars were mainly based on the experience gained during World War I and the Civil War and took into account contemporary theoretical trends. In the Soviet Union "the art of winning" was further developed by outstanding military leaders, theoreticians and historians Ia. Alksnis, S. Belitskiy, N. Varfolomeev, A. Zaionchkovskiy, G. Isserson, K. Kalinovskiy, D. Karbyshev, A. Kork, V. Melikov, V. Novitskiy, F. Ogorodnikov, I. Uborevich, and E. Shilovskiy. Mikhail Frunze, Mikhail Tukhachevskiy, Boris Shaposhnikov, and Alexander Svechin made the greatest contribution into the theory of victory. Shaposhnikov in his The Brain of the Army and Svechin in Strategy that appeared in the twenties and thirties offered profound analysis of military history and looked at the problems of strategy in their intimate connection with the specific features of a new historical epoch. They also discussed a possible dynamics of the correlation of opposing forces (states, coali tions) in a probable war and their political and military aims.

At that time military science looked at a military victory as a rout of the enemy's armed forces or inflicting a defeat to prevent it from a possibility to continue the war (hostilities); seizure of territory, major administrative, industrial and other objects; depriving it of its allies and of the necessary resources, demoralization of the army and civilians, detracting its forces, etc. It was emphasized that to successfully deal with the above tasks it was necessary to correctly identify the political and military aims of the war, its stages, campaigns, operations, etc. It is also necessary to rationally use the material and spiritual resources and seize favorable chances and neutralize negative factors.

Success was associated with offensive operations which called for qualitative and quantitative superiority over the enemy. It was especially important to reach a military technological superiority on which depended the main factors: fire density, movements, strikes and their spatial-temporal correlation. Back in the thirties there had appeared a theory of a deep-cutting operation (battle) that during the Great Patriotic War was enriched with the ideas about artillery offensive, aviation offensive, new forms of connection between defense, counteroffensive, and offensive; about the interconnection between the army and guerrilla operations, coordination with resistance forces, allies, etc.

The propositions on the interconnection between politics and strategy, strategy, operational art, and tactics; the role of initiative, surprise, concentration and scattering of forces depending on the context received detailed treatment.

The military theory recommended to take into account that victories and defeats, their content and impact depended on the nature of the war and the epoch, on the political and military aims pursued and on the material and spiritual means used.

Regrettably the problem of the price of victory had not been elaborated within the military theory of victory--it was merely touched upon on the tactical level. This problem received closer attention after the war, in new military-political and military-strategic conditions.

During the Great Patriotic War the theory of victory was developed together with its practical implementation. Theoretical propositions and recommendations were used in various conditions. In this way the theory was tested in practice which either confirmed or refuted them. New ideas, new theoretical propositions and conceptions were offered that better suited new conditions of the war and armed struggle. This was how the military and political leaders contributed to the military science and, in fact, were building it up.

In the past, all military leaders who led armies small by today's standards were called commanders. At Cannae Hannibal had about 40 thousand infantry and 10 thousand cavalry; at Lake Peipus Alexander Nevskiy commanded about 17 thousand infantry (a division by today's standards).

In our time not all military leaders earn the honor to be called commanders: it belongs to those who command armed forces of states or fronts, who scored brilliant victories, and earned nation-wide appreciation.

During the Great Patriotic War there were 43 military leaders. Some of them (A. Yeremenko) commanded fronts from the beginning till the end of the war with short intervals; others (N. Chibisov) commanded fronts for two weeks. There were 125 military leaders (if we also count army commanders) but not all of them can be called commanders in the true sense of the word. Few of them went down to history as such: Georgii Zhukov, Alexander Vasilevskiy, Konstantin Rokossovskiy, Nikolai Voronov, Ivan Konev, Nikolai Vatutin, Fedor Tolbukhin, Ivan Cherniakhovskiy, Kirill Meretskov, Ivan Petrov, Rodion Malinovskiy, Andrei Yeremenko, Alexander Antonov, Ivan Bagramian, and Leonid Govorov. Some other commanders of fronts and even armies are called commanders. Each and everyone among them is an amazing historical personality with very specific nature, creative potential, an ability to grasp the situation and correctly assess it, the way of thinking, the means and methods of making and implementing decisions. They were all di fferent where the art of commanding troops and seeking victory are concerned. It is impossible in one article to go into finer details: let's have a look at some of the brilliant commanders.

Alexander Vasilveskiy was a profound thinker and a skillful strategist able to deal with various tasks: as the Head of the General Staff, as a representative of the Supreme Headquarters and as a front commander. His talent was fully revealed in August 1945 when he completely routed the Japanese Guangdong Army.

The Bagration operation is associated with the names of Rokossovskiy and Cherniakhovskiy who organized the front operations in such a way as to catch tens of thousands of German privates, officers and generals into a huge pocket.

During the war Marshal Zhukov invariably found himself at the critical points. He understood the enemy and could quickly assess the situation, dynamics of armed struggle as a whole and in separate sectors. He never hesitated to make bold decisions and showed inordinate willpower when implementing them. He managed to stabilize the situation at Leningrad within a month, then he defended Moscow. V. Karpov has the following to say about this: "He saved the capital with his brains, his talent, his sagacity... He knew the Germans' favorite tactics and the condition in which they were at that time. Zhukov managed to stop the enemy because he realized that it was exhausted. It was the right time to counterattack--it would be wrong to wait for fresh forces. He launched an offensive, attacked, and overran the enemy. It was much later that people started to talk about a counteroffensive at Moscow." [3] In fact, there was no numerical superiority. Georgii Zhukov betrayed his talents of a military strategist and a no mean tactician throughout the war.

All of them demonstrated their individuality, their original approaches to strategic and tactical tasks--together they produced the result which has become part of our and world history. They made a huge contribution to military science which became the science of the Great Victory, the most advanced scientific theory of the time much superior to Western military thought (and the military thought of fascist Germany in the first place). Several circumstances were conducive to this.

First, there was a Soviet school of military commanders, a result of the transitional period which, at all times, produce numerous talents in all spheres of human endeavor. The commanders of the Great Patriotic War were convinced patriots who were fighting for the causes they believed in. They were part of the nation, they trusted the people and wanted to defend them. They were true to their oath and military duty. They believed in the final victory over fascism and won.

Second, all of them possessed, to different degrees, an important element of a military talent: an ability to maximally strain mental faculties under great strain and overloads; they could fish out of their memory the knowledge they needed there and then. Boris Teplov, the outstanding Soviet psychologist, wrote about that. He studied a large number of facts to arrive at thought-provoking conclusions: military commanders are people of predominantly practical type of mind, though an ability to theorize is not alien to them. They possess a vast body of knowledge, their thinking is well organized. In the conditions of war knowledge is implemented within a very short span of time and produces right decisions. Their memory is part of the highly motivated activity. All of them are very intuitive people yet their decisions are solidly substantiated.

Intuition makes a commander a good theoretician: he is capable of a careful analysis of numerous details which presupposes an inordinate ability to synthesize information and to discern the whole in the host of particulars. On the one hand, they have to deal with a situation that is vague, complicated and full of contradictory factors; on the other, the results of his thinking--military operations--are always straightforward, clear, unambiguous and definite. Boris Teplov had the following to say on this score: "At first, there is analysis of complex material, the result is the synthesis that produces clear and simple propositions. To put this most important side of a military commander's mental activity in a nutshell there is a movement from the complex to the simple." [4] This was what allowed the commanders to implement the already formulated propositions of military science, to assess their pluses and minuses in the process and to offer new formulas that raise science to a new theoretical level.

Third, the wartime achievements of military science are the direct result of high professional qualities of outstanding commanders, their profound understanding of the nature and the course of war, its interconnection with politics, economy and social relations. They were constantly acquiring new knowledge extracted from their defeats, victories, defensive and offensive operations. They were learning all the time, consistently and with good results. The entire war, the best school for victory, can be divided into three stages.

The first stage embraced the events between June 22, 1941 and the beginning of counteroffensive at Moscow. This period produced an experience of strategic defense with an aim to preserve the front line and to restore it if it was broken. At the same time the commanders had to deal with the theoretical and practical side of defense at the strategic and operational-tactical levels when it was necessary to take the strategic, operational and tactical initiative away from a numerically stronger enemy at critical sectors. Much attention was paid to the determining factors both material and political-moral. Regrettably, the period abounded in theoretical and practical errors some of which invited serious negative strategic and political repercussions.

The second stage lasted for about eighteen months from December 1941 to the Kursk Battle and crossing the Dnieper in July 1943. The Soviet side held the strategic initiative for five months and lost it in summer and autumn 1942. After the Battle of Stalingrad the Soviet side recaptured the initiative and retained it till the end of the war. The commanders also felt that time was short, that there was not enough material and technical means. Yet despite grave mistakes of spring and summer 1942 their activity brought good results. They resolved the main task, theoretically and practically, of organizing interaction between defensive and offensive operations: stable and strong defense allowed the troops to counterattack and then to switch to offensive. It is interesting to note that this problem was differently resolved at Moscow, Stalingrad, and Kursk with increasingly significant results.

The third stage lasted from July 1943 to the Victory Day. Strategically it was an offensive stage. The Soviet command held the strategic initiative and used it with good results. Theoretical thought was dealing successfully with the tasks of organizing offensive on all levels, from the strategic to tactical. The plans the commanders elaborated (the manner and forms of actions) varied and were constantly improving. Military victories were translated into political successes at the Soviet-German front and within the anti-Hitler coalition.

The division into the stages is conventional. The second stage, for example, contained the Battle of Stalingrad, the key event of the war. Prior to it the Soviet commanders were learning the art of war (armed struggle) at a very fast pace: after eighteen months Soviet military practice closed the gap between it and German theory and practice and even outstripped them in the most important fields. Directives of the Supreme Headquarters and the General Staff, all sorts of other documents and the 1942 Infantry Regulations reflected the progress. After the Battle of Stalingrad the military successes were swiftly accumulating and enriching the Soviet military art with important theoretical propositions that entered, as a component part, the draft Field Service Regulations of 1943, instructions for breaking position defenses and other documents. Much has been done by the outstanding Soviet military theoretician Boris Shaposhnikov and his pupils Vasilevskiy, Antonov, Shtemenko, and others.

There appeared new approaches to such important and difficult problems as the choice of directions of strategic blows and counterattacks; breakthrough of in-depth defenses; use of all forms of strategic moves, including counteroffensive, encirclement and destruction of large enemy task forces; strategic maneuvering; delivering blows at unprepared enemy.

The Supreme Headquarters and the commanders had to deal with one of the major problems, namely, the direction of main attack in strategic operations. They had to analyze in depth and take into account the political and strategic context, political and military tasks, the correlation of forces, deployment and composition of the enemy task groups, the conditions of the theater of hostilities. This approach was the key to success of all Soviet strategic operations.

Theoretical elaboration of the problem of breakthrough of the fortified in-depth enemy defense was of great importance outlined in the directive letter of the Supreme Headquarters of January 10, 1942 sent to the military councils of the fronts and armies. New approaches to the encirclement and destruction of large enemy task groups were also formulated. The Soviet troops were engaged in exceptionally large-scale dynamic operations; in some cases they managed to encircle and destroy numerically equal task groups. This happened in the Battle of Stalingrad which was the turning point in the course of war. Starting with 1943 the Soviet troops were delivering surprise and increasingly stronger blows at the enemy.

It was thanks to the contribution the military commanders made to military science that their appeared a mechanism of changing the balance of forces in the course of military operations of diverse nature and scale. It was thanks to them that it became possible to identify the ways and means of snatching strategic initiative, to preserve and to increase it. The methods and forms of situation assessment were improved, etc.

When writing about military science and its development during the war one cannot ignore the fact that Stalin as the Supreme Commander was also an outstanding strategist and made an important contribution to military science.

During the Great Patriotic War military science was developing in all directions and at all levels. The commanders performed their great feat at the fronts and in science as true patriots and as outstanding practically minded and strong-willed personalities. It was Napoleon who created "a formula of a square" in which brains formed one of the sides and willpower, another. Their equality is the best possible correlation for any military commander. [5] The outstanding commanders demonstrated their best qualities during the war at all its stages: they learned how to win, they mastered the theory and practice of victory, they won the Great Victory and created a new "art of winning" that matched the demands of the epoch and the nature of wars of the middle of the twentieth century (pre-nuclear era).

NOTES:

(1.) K. Clausewitz, O voine, Vol. 2, Moscow, 1941, p. 361.

(2.) Vneshniaia politika Savctskogo Soiuza v period Velikoi Otechestvennoi voiny: Dokumenty i materialy, Vol. I, Moscow, 1946, p. 194.

(3.) Pravda, April 26, 1995.

(4.) B.M. Teplov, Um polkovodtsa, Moscow, 1990, p. 244.

(5.) Ibid., p. 20.