The command structure of the Soviet Army in the GPW

[Tommy]

Hey guys,

Im slightly embarassed to say it but the structure of the Armed forces still confuses me. What i'd really appreciate is a laymans guide .

For example:

What were the differnt layers and how did they fit together?

Ie Platoons, batallians, regiment? What were the average sizes of them? What were the command structures?

Apologies for the ignorance, sometimes all the terms just get all muddled up in my head.

Any help appreciated,

Cheers!

[Auke]

From large to small the wartime formations and units were: front - army - corps - division - brigade - regiment - battalion - company - platoon - squad. Not always did a hierarchical structure have each of these though; regiments were often directly subordinated to divisions, brigades were often directly subordinated to corps and consisted of battalions, etc.

A unit strength overview can be seen here: Military organization - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
In general it seems though that Soviet units were smaller than their western counterparts and commanded by officers holding lower ranks.

If you're really interested in this subject, try to obtain Charles C. Sharp's Soviet order of battle series. These books are highly informative and contain a lot of information on unit strength and organizational structures.

[CtahhR]

Believe it or not I've spent a few hundred hours compiling a definitive (as possible) order of battle of the entire Red Army for June-October 1941. It has been difficult seeing as not only were records destroyed, communication completely break down, units having unknown fates, obscure "state bank" field posts, random renumbering and many of the units were "paper" only.
Some units are detailed down to the company level and others are far more difficult to pinpoint. There are a few numbers missing but hopefully those blanks will get filled in with time.

After I've completed that I will be working on the formation during other key dates.

It is all in English and if folks are particularly friendly I'll do a full presentation here so they will be able to have a greater understanding of the layout of the defending forces.

There are a few cases of Stavka sending orders to units that had surrendered or been completely destroyed days or weeks before, the communications must have been a true nightmare. It is very surprising there were any survivors of many units and the collapse of communications certainly allowed many of these behind enemy lines survivors to hide until the partisans could be mustered into some sort of structure.

Strangely the order of battle of the far eastern troops is very straight forward. Almost like their structure and communication wasn't completely destroyed in late 1941.