Authors

Hugh Davie¹;  ¹ University of Wolverhampton, UK

Discussion

The orthodox view is that during the Soviet-German War, the Red Army transport fleet grew through the delivery of Lend-Lease vehicles and this was a major factor in its rising mobility during 1943-45. However, study of the recently released vehicle records of Red Army units shows a different picture. Similarly, little account has been taken of the overall picture of the national motor fleet and the flows of vehicles between the civil economy and the army. This paper will argue that a re-evaluation of the national motor vehicle fleet of the USSR during the war is long overdue and would lead to very different assessments of the source of the rising mobility of the army. It will use published documents from Gosplan, the Main Directorate of Motor Transport of the Red Army, the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defence and the US Congress to analyse both the national and army motor fleets and to put them into a proper context alongside the growth in size of the Red Army and its evolving composition. In addition, it will consider the role of alternate forms of transport available to the army and how these were incorporated alongside motor vehicles, into the operation of the army. From this it will conclude that the Red Army gained its additional mobility in the second half of the war from innovative and intelligent use of the available assets, as opposed to a fleet of Lend Lease, superior vehicles.