Sharpened Sickle: The WFRA Prepares for War

Sharpened Sickle: the WFRA Prepares for War

Operation Red Banner, the 1935 joint exercises with the RKKA provided the first major refinement of the experience accumulated in the Civil War. Conducted in corps level field operations as well as army level war game simulations, and supplemented with a host of scientific testing, Red Banner put the new army through its paces.

The results identified the major areas of deficiency in the WFRA. Still a young army finding its footing, there was tremendous room for improvement. On an organizational level, the Army still was structured much as it was as the ad hoc army of the Civil War. The officer corps was free of dead wood, but still building up its young and passionate core. The NCOs and enlisted men were courageous, but the science of modern combat on the tactical, operational and strategic level was still being worked out.

In 1935, the WFRA had just short of 800,000 officers and enlisted, though of that number a sizeable fraction were still in training. The core of the Army’s fighting strength were its thirty infantry divisions, organized into ten corps.

One third of these divisions were between half and three-quarters strength in men. They were further hindered by a lack of standardization in infantry small arms, artillery and motorization, though these problems were already being worked out. The field armies of the Great War existed only as minimal headquarters for organizational purposes, attached to each of the planned defense districts.

Each corps headquarters had sizable support brigades for artillery, reconnaissance, engineering, and anti-aircraft duties. To supplement the corps in the attack, each corps maintained a corps mobile group, consisting of a tank brigade and a mechanized cavalry brigade. Additional battalions of infantry support tanks were dispersed into some of the corps.

Red Banner proved what many patrons of the Tank Arm had already believed. The Unified Military Doctrine’s concept of deep operations had received additional validation. By masking intentions through concealment, disinformation and emulation, the Red Army could achieve superior correlations of forces at the chosen point of attack. Carefully timed with the resulting tactical breakthrough, mechanized forces would move through the breach and into the enemy’s operational depths to sever lines of communication, secure important ground, destroy logistical concentrations and achieve encirclement of enemy forces.

These operations were too complex to be organized on a corps level. While corps level mobile groups had important tactical utility, the depth of enemy formations limited the effectiveness of such penetrations.

These operations would have to be conducted on the army or front level to achieve optimal penetration into the enemy’s rear area, and require greater concentrations of tanks and mechanized infantry. Existing equipment was not fit to purpose. The tanks of the mobile group would need greater armor and firepower to protect themselves against the expected proliferation of anti-tank forces. They would require additional infantry to screen their attacks and to hold ground for exploitation.

The line infantry would need additional support to achieve its tactical breakthroughs. Close support artillery and heavy tanks would be needed.

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Stavka formalized a new series of Operational Requirements in 1936 to supplement the new infantry rifles, machine guns and mortars already entering service. In addition to the planned new tanks, armored infantry carriers, assault guns, self-propelled artillery and attack aircraft were ordered.

In anticipation of this new equipment, the Army would be reorganized under new, standard tables of organization and equipment. The existing corps would be reorganized as rifle corps. The corps level artillery assets were strengthened, while the existing mobile groups were detached. In their place, the corps would receive a breakthrough heavy tank brigade.

The breakthrough tank brigade would consist of three battalions, each of three thirteen tank companies, for a total of forty-tanks per battalion. Regulations specified that the tank brigades were to train extensively with the corps infantry. In operations, the battalions could be detached to each support an infantry division, or combined to support a single main-effort.

Two or three rifle corps would be combined into an army. Under this arrangement, the army would be the main operational formation for the time being, though the 1937 edition of FM 100-5 would ominously note that this was a transitional arrangement until the establishment of front-level operational requirements. As such, much of the logistical train would be organized under the army headquarters. With this reorganization, all logistical related activities were centralized in the WFRA’s Intendance Arm, and all major field formations would now have a deputy commander for supply immediately subordinate to the commanding officer.

The field army would support army-level objectives with organic support from aviation and artillery assets. Exploitation into the operational depths would be conducted by the army mobile group, consisting of a mechanized corps and supporting assets.

In spite of their name, under this schema the mechanized corps were actually divisional-equivalent units, consisting of two tank brigades and a mechanized infantry brigade. The tank brigades themselves consisted of three tank battalions. Each battalion had two companies of tanks and a mechanized infantry company.

The formation of the mechanized corps came soon after the Wehrmacht formed its first Panzer divisions. These parallel developments were not intended to counter one another; the Revolutionary Military Council in 1936 still saw the UK as its primary strategic opponent, and imagined the support of Soviet operations in central Europe as a secondary concern. They instead expected to fight in Canada and across North Africa in their blows against British imperialism.

The first mechanized corps were not as tank heavy as the first Panzer divisions. Each tank battalion had twenty-two medium and eleven light tanks, resulting in a brigade strength of one hundred tanks supported by organic infantry. On the march, each brigade would be supported by one of the infantry brigade’s battalions.

The field manuals of the tank brigades stressed the importance of effective cooperation with infantry elements, a lesson learned harshly in the Civil War, where many tank units had been wasted in attacks without infantry support. The tanks and infantry trained together for the support of the operational objectives in attack and defense.

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The modernisation of the Red Army would proceed rapidly in the years following. Building on the lessons of the Civil War and ongoing experience gleaned from intervention in the Spanish Civil War, the Revolutionary Military Council structured equipment, doctrine and training to favor flexibility, mobility and firepower. The triangular infantry division was the army’s backbone, and with the reforms of 1936-7, it would emerge a fully motorised formation, allowing not only a solid logistical base, but also the means of rapid redeployment of a full regiment.

At the base, the infantry platoon was the embryonic combined arms team, consisting of 3 thirteen man sections and a mortar team led by a lieutenant. The belt-fed MG-5 general purpose machine gun formed the core of the section’s firepower. In its light bipod configuration, the MG-5 was portable by a single man. His assistant would carry an extra barrel and assist in the operation of the gun.

The riflemen of the section would engage in fire and maneuver armed with M1 Garand semi automatic rifles. Both weapons utilized the 7 x 51 mm intermediate cartridge, firing the 8 gram M37 ball in the vicinity of 840 m/s. In spite of being much lighter than the standard ball for the 7.7 x 63 mm from M1903 Springfield, the boat-tail shape ensures long range terminal performance isn’t impaired. The gain is lighter ammunition and weapons that are more controllable with less recoil, allowing the section to carry more firepower and utilize it more effectively.

The most important innovations, though, were less the weapons themselves and the tools that enabled the weapons to be utilized effectively. Each platoon commander had a radioman and a backpack carried M38 two-way radio. Each level of headquarters had signals detachments suited to its communications needs, including encrypted telegraph radios at regiment level or above.

The radio not only allowed faster and more accurate communication on maneuver, it allowed the rapid shifting of tactics based on the situation, and a shift away from pre-planned artillery barrages to a faster, more dynamic targeting of artillery support, a doctrine which continued to evolve and be refined into the war.

The expansion of signals was paralleled in the mechanised forces. Each tank or armored infantry carrier would have a radio-set. Soldiers trained not only on the effective usage of signals, but also on the tactical and operational need for radio silence.

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In addition to the comprehensive planning by the General Staff’s Military-Industrial Committee to rapidly mobilise the UASR and her allies’ industry, natural resources and labor for a war economy, the Revolutionary Military Council worked diligently to prevent the calamity that had befallen the National Army in the Great War, where masses of poorly prepared, ill-led men were slaughtered on the Western Front.

In 1934, the Revolutionary Military Academy at West Point began a major expansion. A sister institution, the Hans Kahle Military Academy in Harlan, Kentucky, was established. A system of military boarding schools was established to fast-track willing volunteers for a future as officers and NCOs. The polytechnic secondary schools and the Pioneer League youth movement would also provide basic physical and military education for the nation’s youth.

These primarily recreational matters would go a long-way to preparing the youth coming of age in the workers’ republic with the basic skills that would ease the transition to military life. A population already proficient with the basic use of firearms, comfortable with their use and cleaning, and who had learned the basics of bushcraft could be more rapidly advanced to more substantive military matters.

Major innovations in nutrition, as well as public programs for community canteens and other means of food support were spearheaded as much by the military as social welfare groups. The Great Depression had left the population underfed and scrawny, to the point where Stavka identified it as the leading national security issue.

Ensuring youths were eating healthily and exercising, comfortable handling firearms and camping led into the final component: the creation of a large pool of reservists. The nation had a modest pool of reservists already, from the millions of men who served in the Great War as well as the several million men who’d served in the National Guards during the 1920s and early 30s under the Selective Service Act of 1921. But they had trained for a different army, and some of them were getting advanced in age. They were inducted in the second and third reserve categories, based on age.

Beginning in the fall of 1934, the UASR established a system of universal military service. Upon graduation from secondary school or reaching the age of majority, all men and women would serve six-months in the Armed Masses Militia, an auxiliary force of the WFRA. An adjunct system was established in the nation’s universities, providing basic military training for students who would be mobilised as specialists. The system existed to provide the raw material the military would draw from whether as volunteers or to be mobilised in the event of war.

The large facilities established for training recruits, as well as the command infrastructure for this training, would be utilized to rapidly expand the military in the event of war. In tandem, the WFRA began establishing cadre forces for new divisions, able to be rapidly expanded into new units.

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By virtue of America’s mercantile interests and her total dominance of the North American continent, the Navy has historically been the senior service. The Army might undergo crash expansions in periods of crisis, but it was the Navy’s priorities that endured even in peacetime.

This was true even in the era immediately after the revolution. The WFRN still absorbed the greatest share of outlays, beginning a naval arms race against both the British and Japanese empires. This calculus changed overnight, when Germany invaded Czechoslovakia.

By the summer of 1938, the gap between perceived and actual threats became apparent. For all the provocation from the naval arms race and the militarization of the border with Canada, the growth in British arms spending was highly restrained. Britain remained committed to its traditional doctrine of limited war, and would not risk its treasure fighting total wars in North America or continental Europe.

By contrast, the German Reich was militarizing with reckless abandon, and had poorly concealed its intent to engage in a wars of aggression and settler colonialism in the east. Regardless of Soviet actions or intentions, the Nazis were intent upon waging war upon them.

Britain had no intention of joining, let alone leading, a broad anti-communist crusade. It was, however, more than happy to use Germany as its catspaw. British and French capital continued to pour into the German Reich, and with the termination of guarantees on Czechoslovakia, it appeared that the threat of German dominion on the continent was an acceptable price to secure the empire without going to war.

On 16 July 1938, the Central Executive Council held a secret session to vote on mobilizing for war against Germany. While this would not be a declaration of war as such, the national economy would move to a war-footing, and the two-tier system in the military would end, with Armed Masses Militia conscripts being inducted directly into the military.

The vote failed based on the counsel provided by Soviet ambassador Konstantin Umansky that the Soviet government was pursuing a non-aggression pact with Germany that was certain to delay war with the Soviet Union, and could ensure an inter-imperialist war over continental Europe.

A more modest expansion of the WFRA was instead authorized on a purely voluntary basis. Through recruitment drives and re-enlistment, it would expand by almost 400,000 soldiers, to just over 1.5 million men by year end 1939.

Concomitant, there was a major expansion of Army Ground Forces and Army Air Forces field formations. The tank and mechanized infantry brigades were expanded into full divisions. The much enlarged mechanized corps were moved from the army-level headquarters to serve as the basis of front-level mobile groups. The field armies would maintain a mobile group of 1-2 tank or mechanised divisions plus supporting brigades.

[…]

With the fall of Poland on 14 June 1939, the direction the next war would take became apparent. If France and Britain would not go to war over Poland, then the German drive to the east would continue, non-aggression pact or not. The Revolutionary Military Council indefinitely suspended all core planning for Case Sepoy, the planned offensives against the British Empire, and refocused all resources for Case Nevsky, the contingency plan to support the USSR in a defensive war against Germany and her allies.

Based on the assumption that war, one way or the other, was inevitable, and that a major German offensive could begin within ten months, on 30 June the RMC gave its official recommendation to the CEC to begin mobilising for war.

At 10 A.M. the next day, Premier Foster gave his address on the matter. Broadcast by radio and television, Foster’s address warned of the alignment between Germany, Britain and France, citing the revocation of guarantees to Poland and the unprovoked war of conquest as proof that war could be imminent. While carefully steering away from any talk about inevitability, Foster argued instead that a strong and profound determination to defend the revolution could deter further aggression.

The CEC voted that afternoon to mobilise for war. The vote was unanimous, with the small opposition from Christian pacifists in the DFLP and the DRP agreeing to abstain rather than oppose the measure. In immediate terms, it mobilised the entirety of the Militia into active military service, and established a three-year universal service obligation. An additional 600,000 reservists were called up.

This spike in global tension rippled outwards. In Canada, the government of R.B. Bennett used the resulting political crisis to declare a state of unlimited national emergency, through which he and the cabinet could govern virtually by decree. The Permanent Active Militia was restructured in August into the Canadian Army, and began conscription for the defense of Canada. The federal and provincial governments began surveillance and repression activities against the Workers’ Party of Canada, especially the Francophone section Quebec by the provincial government of Premier Adrien Arcand.

In the United Kingdom, the government publicly downplayed the threat of war, but the First Lord of the Admiralty Sir Samuel Hoare had issued instructions to the Royal Navy to prepare all measures necessary to ensure the freedom of British merchant vessels, an instruction understood by the professional leadership of the Royal Navy to prepare for an American policy of unrestricted submarine warfare.

By contrast, the government of Nazi Germany paid little attention to these developments. As planning developed for Operation Teutonic, both the senior Nazi leadership and the Supreme Command of the Wehrmacht considered American involvement to be a non-issue for their operational objectives. The messy outcomes of the Soviet-Japanese border conflicts, and the assumptions of Nazi ideology had assured that victory could be achieved after a quick, brutal campaign. Once the door was kicked in, the whole rotten structure would come tumbling down, and by the time the decadent Americans could get involved, they’d have already taken Moscow.

Appendix: 1938 Tables of Organization
Tables of Organization

Infantry Division

• Division Headquarters
• 3 x Infantry Regiment
  • 3 x Infantry Battalion
    • 3 x Infantry Company
      • 3 x Infantry Platoon
        • 48 men, 3 light machine guns, 1 x 57mm mortar
      • Weapons Platoon (45 men)
        • Machine Gun section
          • 12 men, 2 medium machine guns
        • Mortar section
          • 17 men, 3 light mortars
        • Anti-tank rifle section
          • 9 men, 3 anti-tank rifles
    • Weapons Company
      • 2 machine gun platoons
        • 44 men, 6 medium machine guns
      • Mortar platoon
        • 40 men, 6 x 81 mm mortars
    • Anti-tank platoon
      • 3 x 57 mm anti-tank guns
  • Cannon Company
    • 6 x 75 mm howitzer, 2 x 120 mm mortars
• Artillery Regiment
  • 3 x 100 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
  • 152 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
• Service Regiment
  • Signal battalion
  • Material support battalion
  • Medical battalion
  • Maintenance battalion
• Engineer Battalion
• Reconnaissance Battalion
• Anti-tank battalion
  • 3 x anti-tank company
    • 12 x AT-57
• Assault gun company
  • 3 x gun platoon
    • 4 x SA-76
• Political Commissariat

Total: 16,500 men, 380 light and medium machine guns, 54 anti-tank guns, 24 infantry guns, 12 assault guns, 72 artillery pieces

Mechanised Division

• Division Headquarters
• 3 x Mechanised Regiment
  • 3 x Mechanised Battalion
    • 3 x Mechanised Company
      • 3 x Mechanised Platoon
        • 3 x Rifle Section
          • 1 MC-36 half-track, 1 x 12.7mm HMG, 1 x 7 mm LMG, 12 Men
        • Mortar section
          • 1 MC-36 half-track, 1 x 12.7mm HMG, 1 x 81 mm mortar
      • Weapons Platoon (45 men)
        • Machine Gun section
          • 12 men, 2 HMG
        • Mortar section
          • 17 men, 3 x 81 mm mortars
        • Anti-tank rifle section
          • 9 men, 1 x 14.5 mm AT rifle
    • Weapons Company
      • 2 x machine gun platoons
        • 44 men, 6 medium machine guns
      • Mortar platoon
        • 40 men, 6 x 81 mm mortars
    • Anti-tank platoon
      • 3 x 57 mm anti-tank guns
  • Assault gun company
    • 3 x assault gun platoons
      • 4 x SA-76 assault guns
• Artillery Regiment*
  • 3 x 100 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
  • 152 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 guns
• Service Regiment
  • Signal battalion
  • Material support battalion
  • Medical battalion
  • Maintenance battalion
• Tank battalion
  • 3 x Tank company
    • 3 x medium tank platoon
      • 4 x T-4 medium tank
• Engineer Battalion
• Reconnaissance Battalion
  • Armored car company
    • 13 x SV-5 armored cars
  • Light tank company
    • 13 x T-3 light tanks
  • Mechanised company
• Anti-tank company
• Political Commissariat

Total: 17,450 men, 162 medium mortars, 36 assault guns, 40 medium tanks, 72 artillery pieces

Tank Division

• Division Headquarters
• 3 x Tank Regiment
  • 2 x Tank battalion
    • 2 x Medium tank company
      • 3 x medium tank platoon
        • 4 x T-4 medium tank
    • Light tank company
      • 3 x light tank platoon
        • 4 x T-3 light tank
  • Mechanised battalion
  • Assault gun company
    • 3 x assault gun platoons
      • 3 x SA-76 assault guns
• Artillery Regiment*
  • 3 x 100 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 GMC-4 self-propelled guns
  • 152 mm artillery battalion
    • 3 batteries
      • 6 GMC-5 self propelled guns
• Service Regiment
  • Signal battalion
  • Material support battalion
  • Medical battalion
  • Maintenance battalion
• Engineer Battalion
• Reconnaissance Battalion
• Anti-tank company
• Political Commissariat

Total: 12,800 men, 90 light tanks, 166 medium tanks, 72 SPGs

Breakthrough Tank Brigade

• Brigade HQ
• 3 x Heavy Tank battalion
  • 3 x tank company
    • 3 x tank platoon
      • 3 T-5 heavy tanks
  • Maintenance company
• Service battalion
• Machine gun company
• Engineer company
• Reconnaissance company

Total: 94 heavy tanks, 1,850 men

Mechanised Corps

• Corps HQ
• 2 x Tank Division
• 1 x Mechanized Division
• Corps Artillery
  • SP Artillery Brigade
  • AAA regiment
• Material support brigade
• Engineer regiment
• Maintenance regiment
• Corps Reserve:
  • 1-2 Independent tank battalions
  • 1 Mechanized Brigade

Combined Arms Army

• Army HQ
• 3-4 Rifle Corps
  • 3 x Infantry Division
  • Corps Artillery
    • 1-2 artillery brigades
    • Anti-tank brigade
    • AAA regiment
  • Material support brigade
  • Engineer regiment
  • Corps Reserve:
    • Breakthrough Tank Brigade
    • Machine gun battalion
• Army mobile group
  • 1-2 Mechanized divisions
  • 1-2 Tank brigades
• Army Reserve
  • 1-2 Infantry Division
• Army Artillery HQ
  • 2-4 Artillery brigades
  • 1+ separate artillery regiment
  • 2-3 AAA regiment
  • 2-4 AT brigades
• Material Support Group
  • 2+ Material support brigades

*[WPA]: Works Progress Administration *[NBI]: National Bureau of Investigation