Unlikely Success of the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front During World War II

摘要

Traditionally, Western accounts of the Soviets' conduct on the Eastern Front paint the Red Army as incompetent. These accounts indicate that the Soviets' victory over the technically and tactically superior German Wehrmacht and Luftwaffe was due to the Red Army's overwhelming numbers and their disregard for the human cost to their own citizens. Histories and accounts of the Great Patriotic War from the eastern perspective became available to western scholars after the fall of the Soviet Union. Historians such as David Glantz and Richard Overy lead the vanguard in analyzing and synthesizing the new material to give a more objective account of events on the Eastern Front during World War II. An accurate portrayal of events may be gleaned from an amalgamation of Eastern and Western accounts that present an accurate portrayal of events. The Soviet military, economy, and society recovered from the brink of collapse, enabling victory against the German invaders. Strategic Red Army victories shifted the initiative to the Soviets. Soviet industry, disrupted by the German invasion, reconstituted itself and began surpassing German production. Soviet society stayed intact and provided the personnel required to maintain the military and economic war effort. These factors were paramount to the Soviet triumph over the Germans. The rapid reestablishment of Soviet war industries granted the capacity to outproduce the Germans and was the most significant enabler of the resurgent Red Army and VVS. Without the evacuation, the Soviet economy would have collapsed, unable to supply the war effort due to the loss of industrial capacity.