Researching Red Army/Navy Units

[otlichnik]

There was a posting recently on the Orders forum, about an Order of Glory issued to a soldier in the 19th Army, asking for info on this unit. While I posted some comments there, I though I would take this opportunity to make a general posting about researching Red Army units in the GPW era.

Unfortunately, the Red Army is one of the hardest armies of WWII to research. It is extremely easy to research the history of almost any unit in a Western army (US, UK, Canadian) or in the German army. Many sources give info on Divisions and it is usually easy to find info on lower units. For example, you can easily track almost every US regiment with the official US Army histories and you can even track every company of Canadian armoured units in the war. Red Army units are another story entirely. Keeping full track of anything below the level of Army (i.e. corps and divisions) is quite difficult unless you find the few specialized sources.

The best non-primary source was, until the last ten years or so, the book “Red Army Order of Battle” by Poirier and Connor. This small hardcover book attempts to list all Red Army units from Front down to Division with information about their formation, combat history, commander and subordinate units. It is a remarkable work representing a huge amount of labour. The authors combed many sources for data. While out of print now it is still fairly easy to find and is a good beginning reference. However, it has substantial problems as it was made BEFORE access to the Soviet archives and military libraries was possible.

The Poirier and Conner book uses three main sources of information - all flawed. First, and primarily, they used the German army wartime records - the OKW (Oberkommando des Wehrmacht) diaries. Obviously, anything that attempts to examine an army from the perspective of its enemy during a time of war will be flawed. David Glantz has shown in his various books and papers the errors made by the Germans during the war. They “lost” or never knew of many Soviet divisions and even entire armies. At the beginning of the war they over-estimated the number of infantry faced by AG Centre by around 100% and under-estimated the number of tanks by half. The OKW diaries are themselves available in any really good library. I have used them myself - they are good for info on the German army but not for reliable info on the Red Army.

The second source the authors used were the post-war records of the US and UK militaries. Unfortunately, these are 99% based on captured German army records and on interrogations of German army personnel. Thus they are in reality source #1 one all over again. The final source used by the authors were post-war Soviet military publications in the “public domain” - the Great Military Encyclopedia and the journals Military-Historical Journal (VIZh) and Military Thought (VM) - also all available at any really good library. These were obviously limited in what they said as they were for the public - also they either provide only broad overviews (encycopedia) or detailed info but on small operations (VIZh). In other words coverage was spotty and piecemeal.

So, what to do for better and more reliable info??

The best option is the official Red Army record of unit histories. This is available in two forms - either in very expensive (well over $1000) microfilm of poor copies of Russian language docs - or in the English language works compiled by Charles Sharp and sold by Naf****** Press. To date there are about 11 volumes (selling for about $20-25 each) covering the Red Army. This provides excellent and official information but has some gaps or holes. First, the Russian work is concerned with the formative and structural history of the units - when and where formed/re-formed, what units were subordinate and how their structure changed. They do not contain the official combat record. They d contain the basic combat record but not necessarily every operation the unit was involved in. Second, they are for (some) Corps, (almost all) Divisions and (most) Brigades only. There is no info on Fronts, Armies or infantry Corps. There is no info on air force units. But if you want info on any division and any special (armour, arty, etc.) Corps or Brigade these are the best source.

Battle history of Fronts, Armies and even some Divisions can be traced from some good secondary sources. The two volumes “Road to Stalingrad” and “Road to Berlin” by the recently deceased John Erickson are very good. Books by David Glantz are even better - he has had un-parallelled access to Soviet archives. It takes a while but through indexes and maps in these books you can determine what almost all of these larger units were up to almost all of the time.

There are also some Russian language official Red Army sources. Unfortunately these are very rare and hard to find even if someone can use a Russian text. There are a variety of General Staff studies on the formations of units during the early part of the war. The very rare Komandirovanie (Commanders) gives names of unit commanders during the war. Oslobozhdenie Gorodov (the Liberation of Towns) gives units and commanders cited for liberation of specific towns.

I have done detailed research into several Red Army units. In some cases no more than a few pages is possible but in other cases I have been able to put together ten or more pages on a particular unit. However, for histories this size it is an extremely long and complex process. Even if someone had all the sources they are not simply indexed by unit. Research goes back and forth from unit, to higher unit, to operations, back to units, commanders, etc. Sometimes you can get lucky and find detailed reports on a battle or operation in which the unit in question fought - thus adding much detailed info.

In conclusion, with time, patience, research skills and access to a good library, good sources or good contacts it is possible to put together a good detailed study of a Red Army unit.

Shawn