Red Army

The Red Army of the Soviet Union was created on February 23, 1918. The reason of its creation was to protect Lenin's revolutionary government against the anti-communist White armies, which endeavored to re-establish the monarchy of the Czars. Leon Trotsky, the People's Commissar for War, was in charge of building it up, forming new military units; infantry and cavalry. Thus, between 1918 and 1924, he created a strong fighting force of 5.5 million men, whose units were under the command of faithful army officers.

Below, Soviet infantry soldiers in the Summer of 1942.

Despite its size and the large number of soldiers, the Red Army was equipped with obsolete armament in the first years after its creation. It was evident in the Soviet-Polish War of 1920, in which the Polish Army defeated the Red Army and Lenin was forced to sign a peace treaty, in which the Russian communist government had to relinquish the western portions of Ukraine and Byelorussia to Poland. This led the Soviet government to mobilize resources to refit its army with modern weapons.

In 1922, the Soviet Union signed the Treaty of Rapallo, which had a secret clause by which Lenin authorized the establishment of German military and aviation bases within Russian territory. These bases would be employed as research centers for development of new weapons and training, which had been banned by the Treaty of Versailles. In exchange, Germany would allow the Soviet government to monitor all research and tests and to share the new armament. Although new modern armored and mechanized divisions were created, the Red Army would be beheaded with a massive purge as traditional Generals and other high ranking officers were executed for treason on forged charges between 1928 and 1939.

The Marxist purges hindered further innovation and modernization of the Red Army in the 1930s, as Germany, under the Third Reich, modernized and increased the size of the Wehrmacht, with new tanks and aircraft. Under Stalin, the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, were constantly monitoring the new commanders through infiltration, with undercover agents. The German offensive of 1941 (Operation Barbarossa) showed how badly trained the new Soviet high ranking officers and commanders were. It would be the desperate need for survival, that Stalin allowed smart army officers to plan and innovate with an acceptable degree of freedom and flexibility as new tanks and aircraft would be designed and massively produced in the factories that had been relocated in the Ural regions.

During World War II, the Red Army carried out powerful counteroffensives, such as Operation Uranus, by which they defeated the Germans at the Battle of Stalingrad, and Operation Bagration. It was organized around powerful military units called "Front". Being the equivalent of the German 'Army Groups', each Front was composed of three or more armies. Thus, when the Battle of Berlin began in April 1945, there were six powerful Fronts; the 1st and 2nd Belorussian and the 1st Ukrainian Front, which advanced into Berlin, and the 1st and 2nd Baltic Front, which fought in the Courland Pocket against the German Army Group 'Courland'.

After the war, the Red Army would emerge as the most powerful army in the world, with 11 million highly-trained and combat-hardened men. They were equipped with the best tanks and armored vehicles, such as the T-34/76 and the IS-3 heavy tank. During the armed conflict, the Soviet Union saw the importance of air supremacy to win the battles on the ground; therefore, they would intensively promote the development of jet engines and the rocketry industry. It also financially and secretly boosted the development of atomic industry, and, in 1948, they tested their first atomic bomb.

Below, 1st Sergeant Roza Shanina, a sniper credited with more than 60 enemy soldiers killed. In contrast with the US Army, the Red Army highly valued women, who fought tenaciously alongside men.

Below, the IS-3 heavy tank, which was the most power tank in 1945, superior to the American M26 Pershing, as it was fitted with a 122-mm gun and thicker armor. The M26 featured a 90-mm gun, which was less powerful than the Soviet.