{"id":17182,"date":"2016-07-06T17:00:23","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T22:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/hcstx.org\/?p=17182"},"modified":"2016-07-06T17:00:23","modified_gmt":"2016-07-06T22:00:23","slug":"military-history-was-the-russian-military-a-steamroller-from-ww2-until-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/2016\/07\/06\/military-history-was-the-russian-military-a-steamroller-from-ww2-until-today\/","title":{"rendered":"Military History: Was The Russian Military A SteamRoller From WW2 Until Today?"},"content":{"rendered":"<div class=\"body-text \">\n<div class=\"fullwidth post-wrap\">\n<div class=\"text centered single-post-text single-post-container\">\n<div class=\"single-content-section\">\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\"><img decoding=\"async\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"aligncenter size-large wp-image-17184\" src=\"https:\/\/hcsblogdotorg.files.wordpress.com\/2016\/07\/red-army-troops.jpg?w=620\" alt=\"Red-Army-Troops\" width=\"620\" height=\"357\" \/><\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">Joseph Stalin supposedly claimed that \u201c<a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikiquote.org\/w\/index.php?title=Joseph_Stalin&amp;oldid=1993027\">quantity has a quality all its own<\/a>,\u201d justifying a cannon-fodder mentality and immense casualties. The problem is, Stalin never actually said that, but it fits our stereotype about the Russian military so neatly that everyone believes he did.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">When it comes to war, Russia is commonly perceived as favoring quantity over quality and winning mainly by overwhelming its opponents with hordes of poorly trained soldiers. You can hardly find any account of Russia\u2019s wars that does not use terms like \u201chordes,\u201d \u201cmasses,\u201d and even \u201c<a href=\"http:\/\/www.jstor.org\/stable\/41756499?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents\">Neolithic swarms<\/a>.\u201d Quantity, it is believed, made quality almost irrelevant.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">German generals propagated the myth of a Red Army comprised of faceless masses of troops, motivated only by NKVD rifles at their backs and winning only through sheer force of numbers. Many Western histories accept this view, and it is standard fare in Hollywood, notably in the 2001 <a href=\"http:\/\/www.imdb.com\/title\/tt0215750\/?ref_=nv_sr_1\"><em>Enemy at the Gates<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0 The story was also standard fare during the Cold War, when the intelligence community frequently overestimated the quantitative side of Soviet capabilities while belittling its quality.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">True, some analysts argued for a more nuanced approach. For instance, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.tandfonline.com\/doi\/abs\/10.1080\/01402398108437082?journalCode=fjss20\">Michael Handel in 1981 wrote<\/a> that \u201cTo claim that the USSR is emphasizing quantity over quality in military equipment is to foster a <em>dangerous misconception<\/em>\u201d [emphasis in the original]. We also know that the \u201cmissile gap\u201d and \u201cbomber gap\u201d were artifacts of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.thecrimson.com\/article\/2011\/9\/27\/gap-missile-cia-soviets\/#.ToOeNYsw8IQ.email\">faulty intelligence analysis<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">However, when you crunch the numbers, it turns out that Russian superiority has not been as great as most people believe. In fact during World War II, the U.S. Army often had about the same numerical advantage over its enemies as did the Red Army. A better understanding of the past might shift our perceptions of the present.<\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">Read the Remainder at <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/warontherocks.com\/2016\/07\/was-the-russian-military-a-steamroller-from-world-war-ii-to-today\/\">War on the Rocks<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<p class=\"selectionShareable\">\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Joseph Stalin supposedly claimed that \u201cquantity has a quality all its own,\u201d justifying a cannon-fodder mentality and immense casualties. The problem is, Stalin never actually said that, but it fits our stereotype about the Russian military so neatly that everyone believes he did. When it comes to war, Russia is commonly perceived as favoring quantity&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[4479,4333,475,477,1286,2426,5582,4319,1899],"tags":[12715,12716,4828,1567],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17182"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17182"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17182\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17182"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17182"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thetacticalhermit.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17182"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}