OPERATIONAL ART AND DEEP OPERATIONS

"By the first few days of December, the noose had been tightly drawn around the German forces, and our troops proceeded to the next phase, the liquidation of the trapped groups."1 This is how General Georgi K. Zhukov described the final phase of Operation Uranus, the first successful counter offense of the Soviet Union in World War II. While it took forty-five days to plan this operation, it was the culmination and advancement of the military philosophy written about decades before. This essay will focus on two main areas. The first area is the development and philosophy of operational art and deep operations. Born out of World War I's stalemate and broken by technological advancements of the 1930s, the operational art and deep operations was a fundamental change in the way nations waged war. The second area will look at the actual implementation of those principals at Stalingrad. We see two places where the principles of deep operations and the operational art are expressed on vastly different battlefields. In the grand operation of Operation Uranus, we see the textbook example of a deep operation to retake Stalingrad. However, within the city itself, we see these principals exercised in a way that the military thinkers of the interwar period could not have imagined. To better understand the military doctrine of World War II, we must start with World War I.

On its face, World War I ground to a halt because of an imbalance in the relationship between offensive and defensive capabilities of the warring factions. Specifically, a defender could use emplaced machineguns and artillery against an attacking enemy. Early in the war, the attacking enemy had no effective means of overcoming this level of firepower during an assault. The attackers' only real hope of getting past emplaced machine guns was to send more soldiers than the defenders could shoot in a given amount of time or go around the emplacements and attack the defenders' flanks. This forced the defensive lines to expand laterally, covering an extraordinary amount of land, thus forcing the attackers to send massive amounts of men at a defending position in an attempt to break the line, essentially pitting one belligerent party's manpower against the other belligerents' industry. Georgii S. Isserson, a highly influential Soviet military theoretician of the 1930s, refers in his book The Evolution of Operation Art, to this lateral expansion of the front as a "linear strategy," "continuous front" or "linear front"2 Isserson goes on the write that "the entire linear front became a mechanism for the highly efficient delivery of continuous firepower."3 The formation of the front was a response to advancement in armaments.

Isserson notes that with the invention and widespread deployment of rifling technology in the late 1800s, armies could engage the enemy once they could see them, thus ending the break between the march and combat. Between 1870 and 1914, the effective range of infantry armaments increased from 1200 meters to about 2000 meters. The range of light field artillery increased from 3.5 kilometers to about 5 kilometers.4 While this is quite an extension in range, it was not particularly useful to armies at this time because troops were still limited by what they could see on the ground with their eyes and a lack of long-range communication. With range being practically maximized, weapons research moved its focus from increasing armaments range to increasing volume of fire. Between 1870 and 1914, the rate of fire for a rifle had increased from five to about ten rounds per minute. The rate of fire for a field gun had increased from two rounds per minute to about twelve.5 The most considerable leap in the volume of fire was in the invention of the machine gun in the late 1800s, firing about 300-600 rounds per minute. While this was a massive leap in firepower, 2/3rds of this weaponry was stationary and would mainly benefit a defending force.

It is not until the advent of the tank that the balance between offensive and defensive measures begins to shift. The tank in World War I was invented to support advancing infantry. It did this by providing mobile physical cover and enough mobile firepower to destroy or assist in destroying emplaced machine guns. While artillery was the primary means of destroying emplaced machine guns, artillery could not advance at the same pace as infantry and provide the suppressive support the infantry would demand.6 Furthermore, artillery was used to saturate an area with its fire. Isserson writes that one kilometer of front would contain between sixty and one hundred pieces of artillery during World War I.7 However, because artillery would be placed further behind the front line, it would be out of view of the battlefield and would not have real-time information about where its rounds were landing. Without forward observers equipped with long-range communication, there was no way to adjust artillery fire during a barrage like we would see in World War II, ensuring emplacements were destroyed. Attacking infantry needed something mobile, with enough firepower to destroy emplaced machine guns, and they could either communicate with or could self-adjust its point of impact. A tank is essentially a piece of light artillery attached to a tractor and armored. However, the adoption of tanks and later mechanized units was controversial for all great military powers after the First World War. This was compounded for the Red Army with its newly acquired power and a societal revolution. The Soviet Union was grappling with what the composition of the Red Army was going to be.

After the end of the Civil War in 1923, the Bolsheviks had to deal with no longer being the "oppressed" people they had been when they were not ruling Russia and began dealing with the problems of running a massive nation. A literal growing pain came in the form of a growing military in the 1930s. Amnon Sella writes in "Red Army Doctrine and Training on the Eve of the Second World War" that by 1934 the Red Army cadre force grew to 940,000.8 This force is not the Red Army's total but reflects the number of commissioned and noncommissioned officers. By this time, the Red Army was moving away from having a revolutionary-class army of workers and towards the idea of a large national professional army. This stood in contrast to the Red Army's original foundation, in which an armed militia was preferred over a standing professional military. In June of 1917, at the All-Russian Conference of Front and Rear Military Organizations of the RSDRP(B) decided that a revolutionary-class army was to be the military arm of the Soviet State.9 However, the social composition of the Red Army was in line with the All-Russian conference. By 1934 45.8% of the Red Army was composed of workers and half of the Red Army were official Communists.10 More importantly to this essay was a claim made by Marshal Voroshilov that almost 100% of divisional and regimental commanders were Civil War veterans.11

Among some of the Civil War veterans there was a distaste for the adoption of a combined arms military. However, in the 1920s and 1930s, calls for a modernized combined arms military were becoming more prominent. The writings and teachings of military theorists like Tukachevsky, Triandafillov, and Svechin confronted the idea of a revolutionary-class army. At this time, many Civil War veterans who were rising through the Red Army ranks and entering into the Academy of General Staff found this problematic. Many of these veterans saw employing infantry and tanks, cars, airplanes, artillery, and other technology to assist with war fighting, as "old fashion" and accused Triandafillov of advancing the same positional warfare that the imperial armies of World War I used.12 According to Tukhchevsky, some people felt that the Red Army soldiers needed less artillery support than soldiers of capitalist countries because of the moral advantage of the Soviet soldier.13 Jochen Hellbeck writes in his book Stalingrad, that the "Soviet new person… was strong of will, full of fight, fearless, and optimistic."14 However, as the Red Army grew larger, its capability to be a highly maneuverable fighting force, which was central to the revolutionary-class army, was diminishing, and it was recognized that it would need to mechanize in order to maintain both its maneuverability, as well as its ability to fight industrialized nations like Germany. At an assembly of industrial executives in 1931, Joseph Stalin expressed that the Soviet Union was fifty to one hundred years behind other developed nations. Stalin went on, "We must cover this distance in ten years, or we will be crushed."15 Stalin was speaking both economically and militarily. However, even before Stalin laid out his Five-Year plans to industrialize the Soviet Union, Commissar of War Leon Trotsky called for a "real armed force, constructed on the basis of military science" in 1918.16 In doing so, many officers of the tzarist army were able to bring their knowledge of war into the Red Army. The Red Army's early adoption of tzarist era military officers or voenspetsy proved instrumental in the Red Army’s ultimate triumph during the Civil War. Dr. Jacob W. Kipp writes in “Mass Mobility and the Red Army’s Road to Operational Art”, that by the end of the Civil War, "82 percent of all infantry regiment commanders, 83 percent of all division and corps commanders, and 54 percent of all commanders of military districts were former Tsarist officers"17 In 1929, the Red Army revised their field regulations and the idea of deep battle, planning operations that went past the enemy's front line.18 Again, in 1936 with Field Service Regulations of 1936 (PU-36), the theory of simultaneous attacks throughout the enemy's depths was formalized. These operations were contingent upon having large mechanized armies smash through the enemy's front line and continue deep into the enemy's inner echelons, attacking support infrastructure and encircling the enemy, also known as deep operations.19 Moreover, on a larger scale, this was a move away from a single decisive battle and towards a series of consecutive operations, which is the essence of operational art. It is essential to understand that operational art is planning and that deep operations are the plan.

One of the most outstanding examples of both operation art and deep operations is expressed in the Battle of Stalingrad, or rather the operations to regain Soviet control of Stalingrad. With the Red Army trapped in the city and surrounded by German and Romanian forces on the west and the Volga River on the east, the Soviets desperately held onto the city that bore their leader's name. By the spring of 1942, the situation for the Soviets began to improve. International support for the Soviet Union and the fight against Germany and its allies was formalized. The Germans had halted their advance and took defensive positions, allowing the Soviets to do the same. This allowed for the Red Army to regroup and assess its situation after a year of retreat. This regrouping included reviews of successful and unsuccessful operations and sharing these lessons within the entire structure of the Red Army. This lull in the fighting was not only taken advantage of on the front lines but the home front as well. The economic reorganizing of the Soviet Union had begun churning out the necessary equipment to fight a modern war and employ the strategy of deep operations. By the second half of 1942, most Soviet factories had been dismantled and relocated eastward, away from the invading Germans.20 By the end of 1942, an estimated 2,593 enterprises were relocated to the Urals, Western Siberian, and the Volga Basin. It is estimated that 25 million workers and their families moved with these factories marking one of the largest mass migrations in human history.21 By the end of 1942, 1523 major factories were fully or almost fully operational.22 With the Soviet economy both physically moved and objectively aligned, it produced approximately 13,000 tanks and 15,000 aircraft in the last six months of 1942, in some cases out producing their German counterparts. This was an almost doubling in output compared to the first six months of 1942.23 The completion of economic reorientation allowed for a massive number of arms to flow not just to the front but also to Red Army training facilities. Specifically, tanks, artillery, and aircraft manufacturing allowed for the Red Army to fully utilize its operational art and deep operations.24

Throughout the spring and summer of 1942, the Soviet Union launched minor offensives just west of Moscow. According to Marshal Georgi Zhukov, this was intended to be a distraction for the Germans, ultimately causing them to shift twelve divisions to Army Group Center by November of 1942, in an attempt to anticipate a Soviet offensive.25 During this deception, the Red Army was able to prepare eleven armies for the Stalingrad offensive. This included separate tank, mechanized, and cavalry corps, 13,500 pieces of artillery and mortars, 1,100 antiaircraft guns, 115 detachments of rocket artillery, 900 tanks, and 1,115 airplanes.26 They were organized into three fronts, the South-West Front and the Don Front, both extending along the Don River in an east to west orientation, and the Stalingrad Front extending along the Volga River in a north-south orientation. On a map, these fronts form a boomerang shape with Stalingrad in the middle and the arms extending west and south. With this vital movement of material and men, the Stalingrad counteroffensive took shape, and on November 19th at 0730 hours, the Southwest Front began their southern assault.27

The 5th Tank Army and the 21st Army advanced in a southeastern movement where they were able to push through the 3rd Romanian Army. The Germans launched a counterattack to support the 3rd Romanian, but the 1st and 26th tank corps overcame the counterattack. The 26th Tank Corp pressed on west towards Kalatch with the 4th Tank Corps. The 1st Tank Corps continued pressing south with the 1st Guards Army to secure points along the Chir River. With the Chir River secure, mechanized corps deep behind enemy lines, and air support from the 2nd and 17th air armies, the rest of the 5th Tank Army and 21st Army was able to advance and destroy the remaining 3rd Romanian Army and any supporting German units. By November 24th, the 5th Tank Army and the 21st Army captured more than 30,000 prisoners.28

On the other side of the boomerang, the Stalingrad front began its movements on November 20th. The 51st Army advanced in a southwestern direction towards the southern part of the Chir River. The 54th Army advanced in a northwestern direction towards Kalatch to link up with elements of the Southwestern Front. The 64th Army advanced in a northwestern direction to cover the 54th Armies right flank from any German units that might detach from Stalingrad. These three armies were able to defeat the 4th Romanian Army and the 29th Motorized Division, punching a hole in the enemy's front. This allowed the 4th Mechanized Corps to push through the gap created and seize a vital railway station at Abganerovo on the same day.29 On November 23rd, 1942, the 4th Mechanized Corp and the 4th Tank Corp linked up outside of Kalach while the rest of the Stalingrad Front and Southwestern Front pursued the retreating enemy southwest. This cut the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army off from its parent army of Army Group B as well as from reinforcements and resupply's that were desperately needed.30

This is an exceptional example of deep operations and operational theory. We see clear examples of the Red Army using sequential operations that lead to a decisive victory. We see the use of tanks, mechanized infantry, and airplanes to exploit holes in the enemy lines and push deep into their rear echelons and cut them off from their support lines. We see operations throughout the depth of the enemy territory. Zhukov could have taken the eleven different armies that made up Operation Uranus and had them descend onto Stalingrad in a heroic frontal assault. This could have resulted in the decisive victory over Stalingrad but would have most likely only concentrated more of the Red Army into one place, only for the Germans to launch a counterattack or simply continue to lay siege to the city. What we see is a series of operations spread out over a vast amount of space and time. All of this culminated in a decisive victory and a turning point in the war. Moreover, Operation Uranus did not devolve into trench warfare like in World War I. The open steppe land of southern Russia provides little natural features like mountains or forests for armies to use as cover and concealment. This is similar to World War I's western front, where hundreds of miles of trenches were dug, with some of them still visible today. With the deployment of highly mobile units like tanks and mechanized infantry, the Soviets rushed over the steppe land, using speed to make up for their open advancement. While Operation Uranus did not devolve into a World War I battle, it did evolve the Soviet strategy for fighting World War II.

Operation Uranus was essentially two deep operations culminating in a double envelopment. When elements of the 5th Tank Army and the 54th Army took Kalatch outside of Stalingrad, they completed the double envelopment. This created an outer ring in which the Germans would be pushed west. An inner ring was created when the 4th Tank Corps of the Don front crossed the Don River and linked up with the 4th Mechanized Corps of the Stalingrad Front (they were a part of the 54th Army).31 With both rings set, the Soviets were able to "tighten the noose" on the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army by the first few days of December 1942.32 This completed the first phase of Operation Uranus, and the second phase was "the liquidation of the trapped groups."33 Operation Uranus was a success; in fact, more successful than the Soviets had planned. Soviet intelligence gathered estimated that about 90,000 troops had been captured, but after the "liquidation" process commenced, they found that it was much closer to 300,000 troops were trapped.34 After the massive success of Operation Uranus, the multi-front double envelopment became the Soviet standard for defeating large enemy formations throughout the rest of the war.35 However, for this type of operation to succeed, it required a change in leadership style from Joseph Stalin. Many other counteroffensives during the first year of the war had ended in utter defeat. At Stalin's urging, operations were launched without the proper preparations, leaving soldiers without reinforcements and vital equipment.36 Stalin's initial response to Stalingrad's situation was to send the troops and reinforcements into Stalingrad. However, Zhukov convinced Stalin to leave those resources for an offensive outside of the city. While this did cause a massive loss of life within Stalingrad's city, it ultimately allowed for a buildup of troops and equipment to execute Operation Uranus and turn the tide of the war in favor of the Soviet Union.37 However, this demonstrated Stalin's willingness to listen and trust in someone other than himself. Famously, Stalin disregarded the message of a defector the night before the German invasion. After the invasion, Stalin still refused to believe his men reporting that the Germans were overrunning the border. With Zhukov's success in stopping the German advance towards Moscow and stabilizing Leningrad's situation, Zhukov may have been the only person that Stalin was willing to listen to in 1942. At Zhukov's insistence, Stalin agreed to hold off the counteroffensive to allow time for resources to flow to the various fronts involved in the operation, even though it was at the expense of the soldiers inside of Stalingrad.

The planning for Operation Uranus took forty-five days. During this time, the Red Army soldiers in Stalingrad were told nothing of the coming offensive. The 62nd Army, commanded by General Vasiliy Chuikov, occupied the northern end of the city and on the Volga River's eastern banks. The 64th Army, commanded by General Mikhail Shumilov, occupied the southern portion of the city and was also on the eastern bank of the Volga. General Chuikov ordered his men to maintain positions as close to the Germans as they possibly could. This forced the Germans to restrain their use of artillery and bombing out of fear of hitting their own men.38 Without artillery and air support, the Germans were forced to fight close quarter battles, building to building and room to room. This was radically different for the German Army, who by this time was used to the fast pace of combat on the open steppe, with air and tank support.39 Richard Overy notes in his book “Russia’s War: A History of the Soviet War Effort”, that Chuikov "ordered his men to take every advantage of the terrain and of their own fighting skills."40 This led the Red Army to employ nighttime raids on German positions. "They infiltrated German Units until, on a given order, they let out a barrage of fearsome yells and machine gun fire against their nervous enemy."41 Due to the inconsistent and insufficient resupplies from across the Volga, hand to hand combat often took place. Overy writes that Tatars and Siberians would often use knives and bayonets to kill Germans, who were inept at hand-to-hand fighting.42 During the day, when the initiative lay with the German attackers, snipers were deployed to harass the Germans and continue striking fear into the front-line soldiers.43 However, by November 18th, 1942, the 62nd Army had been split into small pockets along the Volga River's west banks. The German 6th Army had pushed two different corridors through Stalingrad and onto the shores of the Volga.44 This was marked by the intense fighting at the Tractor Factory on the northern end of the city, and the Krasny Oktyabr Factory, or the Red October Factory, to the south of the Tractor Factory, both on the western banks of the Volga.45 The Red Army was so significantly reduced in numbers and supplies that soldiers were organized into small units called "storm groups" and continued launching small maneuvers to harass the enemy.46 On November 18th, Chuikov was given notice that a large offensive was to take place that would encircle the German Army and alleviate some of the pressure in Stalingrad.47 While this was welcome news, Chuikov and the 62nd Army would continue to fight inside of Stalingrad for another six weeks.48

The fighting within Stalingrad demonstrated some of the pros and cons of a debate that militaries had been having since the end of World War I. As V.K. Triandafillov, a very influential Soviet military theoretician writing in the 1920s, writes in The Nature of the Operations of Modern Armies, the debate of "small motorized units or million-man-armies"49 or as Isserson notes, "small professional armies."50 While a multimillion-man army supported the units in Stalingrad, they were cut off from the Red Army's central mass for several months. While 62nd and 64th Armies were not able to completely repel the German 6th Army and 4th Panzer Army, they were able to hold their positions along the Volga and inflict a significant amount of damage to the numerically and mechanically superior enemy. Both Isserson and Trianafillov accuse the supporters and the theory of the "small professional armies" of being bourgeois51 and inherently contradictory.52 However, the events at Stalingrad demonstrate what small units can do, namely, their ability to still conduct deep operations, albeit on a much smaller scale. The nighttime raids in Stalingrad still used the same principles of deep operations. Penetrate the enemy's front line and conduct operations to either eliminate the enemy or deny them their ability to continue fighting. What is not articulated in the writing of Isserson is the level of intimacy that deep operations perpetuate. While actual combat is fought at a distance with ranged weapons, although as noted above with melee weapons on occasion, it is the setting for these battles that is intimate. The attacker is not attacking on their own ground. It is not one line smashing into another line, but rather an attack from within the enemy's echelons. Moreover, the attacker is not only targeting combat units, but strategic objectives like bridgeheads, supply routes, communication lines, railway stations, and other support infrastructure. In the case of fighting within Stalingrad, nighttime raids were meant to kill as many enemies as possible and instill fear in the enemy.53 On a broader scale, we also see the principles of the operation art implemented as well. As noted above, both the 62nd and 64th armies occupied both the east and west banks of the Volga river. While the river would prove challenging to get supplies and reinforcements across either due to German airpower or, during the early winter months with large chunks of ice causing damage to boats, it still acted as a barrier that allowed for those armies to stage reserves, supplies, and artillery. The Soviets used the Volga River as a sort of natural continuous front. In the context of Operation Uranus, the foothold that the 62nd and 64th armies on the west side of the Volga maintained was the easternmost portion of the "noose" that would tighten around the trapped German Armies.

Operation Uranus was a turning point in World War II. It turned back an enemy that, up until that point, was thought to be unstoppable. However, it also proved that the philosophy of deep operations and the operational art were useful tools for fighting wars. While many of these principles were adopted in other militaries, specifically the German Army that had just invaded the Soviet Union, it proved that the strategies worked, and it was not the superiority of the German people. Looking at Operation Uranus and the fighting within Stalingrad shows just how engrained the writings of Isserson, Triandafillov, and Tukachevsky were in the Red Army and the level of foresight those military minds had. From the bitter fighting on the streets of Stalingrad to the rapid advance of tanks over the open steppe of southern Russia, the principles laid out in the 1920s and 1930s were critical to the Soviet Union’s success against the onslaught of Nazi Germany.

Title Photo Courtesy of Gabriel Lenca

Georgi Konstaninovich Zhukov,, and Harrison Evans Salisbury, and David M. Glantz Marshal Zhukovs Greatest Battles. New York: Cooper Square Press, 2002. 177.
G. S. Isserson, Bruce Menning, and Combat Studies Institute. Press. Issuing Body. The Evolution of Operational Art. Revised and Expanded Second ed. Fort Leavenworth, Kansas: Combat Studies Institute Press, US Army Combined Arms Center, 2013. 23. I would like to note that the reason I chose Isserson over the writings of Triandafillov as the main source for military doctrine was because he was of his role in the creation of Field Service Regulation 36 (PU-36). Issersons was the editor and coordinating author of these field regulations.
Isserson, 24.
Ibid.
Isserson, 24.
Ibid., 34.
Ibid.
Sella, Amnon. "Red Army Doctrine and Training on the Eve of the Second World War." Soviet Studies 27, no. 2 (1975): 245-64, 249.
John Erickson, The Soviet High Command: A Military-political History, 1918-1941. Independence: Routledge, 2001. 6.
Sella, 249.
Erickson, 374.
Sella, 249.
Ibid., 250.
Jochen Hellbeck,. Stalingrad: The City That Defeated the Third Reich New York: Public Affairs, 2016. 30
Ibid., 29.
Jacob W Kipp, “Mass, Mobility, And The Red Army's Road To Operational Art 1918-1936”, Foreign Military Studies Office, Fort Leavenworth, KS. 1988. 7.
Kip, 7.
Isserson, xiv.
Ibid., xvii.
R.J. Overy, Russias War: A History of the Soviet War Effort: 1941-1945.Harmondsworth: Penguin Book 1998. 170.
Ibid., 170.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Zhukov. 114.
Ibid., 158.
Ibid., 159.
Zhukov, 174.
Ibid., 175.
Zhukov, 176.
Ibid., 177.
Zhukov, 177.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Lieutenant Colonel William M. Connor, “Analysis of Deep Operations Operation Bragation Bellorussia 22 June-29 August 1944.” Combat Studies Institute, Fort Leavenworth Kansas 1987
Overy, 177.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Overy, 175.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid.
Ibid., 180.
Ibid., 175.
Ibid.
Ibid., 178.
V. Triandafillov and Jacob W. Kipp, The Nature of the Operations of Modern Armies (Ilfor, Essex, England: F. Cass, 1994). 26.
Isserson, 43.
Triandafillov, 27.
Isserson, 42.
Overy, 175.