German Infantryman vs Soviet Rifleman by David Campbell

Author:David Campbell
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: German Infantryman versus Soviet Rifleman
ISBN: 9781472803269
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing

Lieutenant-General Mikhail F. Lukin. From peasant stock, Lukin was conscripted into the Tsar’s army in 1913, where his ambition and capabilities saw him gain a commission and – upon the Revolution (when he joined the Red Guards) and subsequent civil war – rise to become a divisional chief-of-staff and a double-winner of the Order of the Red Banner. Staying in the RKKA after the war he rose steadily, becoming the Commandant of Moscow, though he came close to the edge during Stalin’s rabid Great Purge, escaping more lightly than many of his contemporaries with a transfer to the Siberian Military District. As war approached Lukin returned to the West, bringing the newly formed 16th Army with him, but the initial stages of the invasion saw little opportunity for anything other than a retreat to Smolensk, already burning from Luftwaffe raids. He would gain a third Order of the Red Banner for his defence of the city, but in October he was shot through the knee and captured, spending the rest of the war in captivity. (Author’s Collection)

From the Soviet perspective, things were looking bleak. Desperate measures were taken to try to reduce the chaos that the German advance had made of Soviet forces, though ‘In reality, the Stavka’s wholesale reorganization of the Red Army simply validated the damage the Wehrmacht had already done to the army’s force structure by abolishing those elements the Germans had already largely destroyed or had proved ineffective during the German onslaught’ (Glantz 2010: 142). The changes, issued on 15 July, would have little bearing on the immediate situation that faced the commanders and men tasked with defending the city and environs of Smolensk from the fast-approaching invaders. Lieutenant-General Mikhail F. Lukin had arrived in the city in early July. His first impressions were inauspicious:

I arrived in Smolensk by car with a group of staff officers on the night of July 8, 1941. The city was under a blackout – all sources of light were masked. The streets were deserted. There was an ominous silence. This major regional centre seemed dead. It was with heavy hearts that we looked upon the city’s homes, wrecked and burned by enemy aircraft. (Lukin 1979)

By 14 July Lukin was given formal command of the defence of Smolensk and its immediate surrounding area by Marshal of the Soviet Union Timoshenko. His main force, 16th Army, was formed in the first half of 1940 in the Trans-Baikal Military District, and currently consisted of one rifle corps fielding two rifle divisions, the 46th and 152nd (though they would later be joined by 19th Army’s 129th Rifle Division), and 57th Tank Division. Major-General Alexandr A. Filatov’s 46th Rifle Division was initially concentrated in the countryside north-east of Smolensk near Koryavin, Veino and Kolotovino; Major-General Avksentii M. Gorodniansky’s 129th Rifle Division was to the north-west; Colonel Petr N. Chernyshev’s 152nd Rifle Division was to the south-west; and Colonel Vasilii A. Mishulin’s 57th Tank Division was at Krasnyi, south-west of Smolensk.

Few regular forces were available to

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