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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thunderfoot" data-source="post: 5859095" data-attributes="member: 34175">But subtlety in tactics only goes so far.  The fact is, pre-WWII the Soviets were the only army that had real battle experience, of course, most of it was because they were cleaning up the October surprise, but regardless, they had officers that were not only loyal, but had some amount of training.  The Germans, sent their men into Spain to get their training and while their air forces certainly became the best of the best, their ground forces just kind of puffed up their abilities.Let's face it, until the Germans began fighting the Soviets and the British, and later the Americans, they were just running roughshod over inferior troops.  The Poles, the Slovaks, the French, the Dutch, not exactly the creme'de'la'creme of military forces in the WWII time frame.  Not that the German army was anything to sneeze at, but once they started fighting troops that had the material, the numbers and the leadership to give them a fight, it went from lighting war to lightly gaining war to "why are we moving in the opposite direction?"Zhukov understood that superior numbers is sometimes your only advantage, and he knew when to use them.  Yes there are times when strategy will defeat numbers but in all the cases of Soviet major victory it was numbers and logistics, not strategy.  Leningrad, Stalingrad all battles of attrition, only the battle of Kursk do we see true Soviet innovation in tactics, great defensive positions, solid intelligence, positive logistics, and superior weapons (anti-tank vs tank).</blockquote>

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