Russia has announced another big mobilization against Ukraine, and the media is full of breathless speculation about the impending all-out offensive by which V. Putin hopes to turn the tide of what, for him, has been a disastrous military adventure.
Once again much is being made of Russia’s numerical superiority, though if numbers could have won the war for Russia, the Moscow victory parade would presumably have happened months ago. But despite the Russian Army’s initial numerical advantage, and a large-scale mobilization of additional troops after the setbacks of the war’s first phase, no such thing has happened. So instead of exclaiming over this new mobilization, people might ask themselves why Russian numerical superiority hasn’t produced the expected results.
The short answer to this question is that numerical superiority, unless it’s truly crushing, cannot compensate for poor battlefield performance. Nor can numerical superiority be fully exploited if the requisite logistical support is lacking.
Relevant historical examples abound, and in his excellent study of one of World War II’s great battles, Overlord: D-Day and the Battle for Normandy, Max Hastings provides one. As that battle developed after the success of the initial Allied landings, the strength of the US and British armies steadily grew, while that of the defending German armies dwindled away. And in addition to their growing numerical advantage, the Allies enjoyed near-total air superiority. Yet the benefits of all these advantages were exasperatingly slow to manifest themselves. Despite everything, the Germans contrived to stave off repeated breakout attempts by the British and Americans. A typical incident was the debacle—there is no other word for it—suffered by the British 7th Armoured Division at Villers-Bocage.
Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery’s original plan had called for the capture of the city of Caen (on the left flank of the Allied bridgehead) on D-Day itself, to be followed by a rapid advance inland. But the assault on Caen misfired, leaving the Germans in possession of the city and the high ground beyond. British Second Army thus found itself squeezed into a relatively small area. Montgomery therefore decided to break things open by committing two divisions, 7th Armoured and 51st (Highland) Infantry, in a concentric attack to encircle and destroy the German defenders. These divisions were veterans of the Eighth Army and the Western Desert campaign, during which the former earned its famous nickname: “the Desert Rats.” Monty had specially requested their transfer to his new command and relied on them to stiffen the otherwise untried Second Army.
Operation Perch, as it was codenamed, commenced on 9 June, and on 11 June, 51st Highland launched its attack east of Caen. It was immediately stopped dead in its tracks by the Germans, who then counterattacked, recovering what little ground the British had gained. 7th Armoured fared little better in its initial attack west of the city. But there was more room for maneuver in its sector, so the division swung farther west in an attempt to outflank the defenders. Its immediate objective was Point 213, high ground northeast of the town of Villers-Bocage on the road to Caen, some ten miles behind the main German line.
Forward elements of the division reached and occupied the town on 13 June, and a mixed reconnaissance group was sent on to secure Point 213. There they encountered a single Tiger tank of Heavy Panzer Battalion 101 of the Waffen-SS. Its commander was SS-Obersturmführer Michael Whittmann, a famous tank ace recently transferred from the Eastern Front. Whittman was in charge of his battalion’s second company, but he himself had just arrived on the scene and had no time to assemble the rest of his tanks. So he attacked alone, pouring 88mm rounds and machine gun fire into the British reconnaissance group. In short order, its stunned and decimated remnants were withdrawing in disorder toward Villers-Bocage, with the lone Tiger in hot pursuit.
Inside the town, Whittmann knocked out several more British tanks and vehicles before his Tiger was damaged by a shot from an antitank gun. He then withdrew, leaving chaos behind him. In less than fifteen minutes, one German tank had destroyed thirteen British tanks, two anti-tank guns, and fifteen other vehicles. The entire British force was reduced to disorder. While this was going on, the German commander in the area assembled a scratch battle group and launched a counterattack that compelled the British to abandon Villers-Bocage.
Montgomery was dismayed by the poor performance of his veteran divisions. But in Overlord, Max Hastings points out that they both contained a high proportion of veterans of the North African, Sicilian and Italian campaigns: tired men, many of whom felt that they’d done their part. Added to this was the carelessness and sluggishness of British battlefield tactics, particularly poor security and a lack of close cooperation between tanks and infantry. The Second Army’s commander, Sir Miles Dempsey, was bitterly critical of 7th Armoured Division’s performance, later writing that “the whole handling of that battle was a disgrace.”
Though after a change of command 51st Highland’s performance improved somewhat, 7th Armoured’s remained unsatisfactory right up to VE Day.
On the Allied right flank, the US Army had similar problems. Fighting in the bocage (hedgerow) country that typified rural Normandy, the Americans were repeatedly frustrated in the attempt to expand their sector of the bridgehead. Normandy hedgerows were high mounds of earth, thickly planted with trees and brush, dividing the terrain into a checkerboard over which fields of observation and fire were limited. It was particularly difficult to spot and call down artillery concentrations on enemy targets. Also the Americans found that in the bocage, tanks were highly vulnerable to well-sited antitank guns and infantry antitank weapons like the German Panzerfaust.
This difficult terrain was dotted with sturdy, stone-built farm buildings that made ideal strongpoints, and the Germans wasted no time in organizing the bocage for defense in depth. They used their own tanks as mobile antitank guns, deploying them in carefully chosen positions with only their turrets exposed. The tanks were backed up by machine guns and Panzerfaust-armed infantry, with mortars in close support.
This kind of defense could have been overcome by well-trained infantry operating in small teams, employing infiltration tactics to isolate and neutralize each defensive strongpoint, one checkerboard square at a time. But with certain exceptions, US infantry lacked both the training and the small-unit leadership necessary to execute such tactics. Instead, the typical attack was a battalion-level operation, with two rifle companies up and one held back in reserve. Little or no attempt was made to maneuver in groups smaller than the platoon (40-50 men). Inevitably, therefore, most such attacks soon stalled out, and some broke down with heavy casualties.
It should be noted at this juncture that the British and American armies in Normandy included some fine fighting formations: the airborne divisions, the US Army’s Rangers and its 1st Infantry Division, the British 50th Infantry Division, and others. But the overall standard was measurably lower that of the German Army. Time and again, even as their strength dwindled away, the Germans blunted Allied attacks. As at Villers-Bocage, they employed the technique of the battle group, cobbled together from whatever odds and ends lay ready to hand, first to stop the attackers then to regain lost ground. German regimental, battalion and company commanders, junior officers, even NCOs, displayed a level of initiative and tactical mastery that their adversaries could not match. In the end, it was sheer attrition and the Allies’ relentlessly growing numerical and firepower superiority that turned the tide of the battle.
In the Russo-Ukrainian War, we’ve witnessed a similar tactical mismatch. Fighting on the defensive, the Ukrainians make good use of terrain and effectively combine the effects of various weapons. The Russians, however, display an inability to coordinate their attacks, for instance sending tanks into action unsupported by infantry, which is one reason for the high tank losses they’ve suffered. Another is poor logistics: Many tanks are simply abandoned on the battlefield, either damaged though repairable or simply out of fuel. The numerical superiority that the Russians enjoyed in the first phase of the war was thus negated by other factors: terrain and weather—with which both sides had to cope—but also tactical and logistical incompetence.
In Normandy, the Allies gradually made good some of their tactical deficiencies, besides being aided by superior logistics and the attritional nature of the battle. The Germans’ tactical advantage could not in the long run compensate for logistical problems that starved them of reinforcements and supplies. The defenders fought well but as Rommel, their commander, told Hitler not long after D-Day, it was an unequal struggle that could end only in defeat.
V. Putin cannot count on a similar deliverance. As far as we can tell, attrition has not written down the strength of the Ukrainian forces to the advantage of the Russians. And though on paper the latter’s military resources are superior, logistics has proved to be a major Russian weak spot—and mobilization of those resources is primarily a logistical exercise. Another 300,000 troops may be called to the colors, but preparing them for active service, transporting them to the war zone, and keeping them supplied is another matter. On the other hand, Ukraine benefits from a steady flow of equipment, munitions and other supplies from the US and Western Europe. So far at least, there has been no sign that Ukrainian forces are suffering from supply problems.
Finally, there’s the air dimension. Not long after end of the war in Europe, the British military writer B.H. Liddell Hart commented that had it not been for Allied airpower, which so hampered the Germans throughout the Battle of Normandy, the outcome for the Allies might have been far worse. If the Russians could dominate the skies over the zone of operations in Ukraine, that might be enough to turn the tide of battle in their favor. But the Russian Air Force has absolutely failed to do so, despite its large margin of superiority on paper. This, a failure of great significance, is due to the effectiveness of Ukrainian air defenses and, probably, to the Russian Air Force’s inability to sustain a sortie rate that could swamp those defenses. And without close air support, it’s hard to see how Russian ground forces can mount a successful breakthrough offensive.
In Normandy, the Allies contrived, albeit with some difficulty, to make their numerical edge effective by learning on the job and leveraging their additional advantages, primarily logistics and airpower. It appears, however, that the Russian armed forces’ numerical superiority is purely nominal, lacking as it does those tactical and logistical force multipliers. Whether this means that Ukraine can score a clear-cut victory remains a question—but at this stage of the war it seems clear that Russia cannot do so.