Beat runaway fire 152-mm howitzer M-10. This means that fighters-the box (retrieve from boxes of 40-pound shells and 4.5 and 8.4-pound shells with gunpowder), installers (put in position the detonator shell) and charging for 15 minutes to transfer on average half a ton each1.
Does the March of the infantry. This means that machine guns and Maxim dragged, disassembled the body, the machine and 8-pound shield on yourself. Machine “went well on both shoulders”, but it is good only for “an hour and a half”: weight – 35 pounds. The body of the gun (thanks to the ledge between the box and casing) “is well included in the shoulder” that was taking it to another room calculation, but still it was “hard to bear” – 20,2 kg. And if the casing is flooded with water to cool the trunk, and 24.2; “the most difficult thing is to drag the body of the gun”2.
Need to dig around tank T-34. This means that each of the four members of the crew should take out 7-8 cubic meters of soil. To fill the T-34 is to pour 10 litre buckets from the barrels into the tanks of the tank 500 liters of fuel3. Raising the bucket to a height of over five feet.
Equip firing position – to dig trenches for the guns (about a meter in depth) and rovikah for shelter payments. And then to build trenches in front of the log fences with a height of a meter and a half, and instead of rovikah – bunkers. That is to acccess the dugout to block at least three forward (layer) logs, and the top removes to fill another earthen pillow.
Battle tank is the roar, the heat, and in summer (when the fan did not have time to remove the powder gases) and the gas chamber. 12 hours of battle in the T-34-85 gunner lost on average 2.2 kg, the tank commander – 2,4, mechanics, drivers – 2.8 and loader, manipulated in a small space with a 16 kg 85 mm unitary rounds – on 3,14… and the T-34 with 76 mm gun, “when in a tough fight, rare loader stuck with him until the end. […] Look, and he lies in the combat pack – carbon monoxide poisoning, having swallowed these gases, and lost consciousness”5.
After a long March “the driver” T-34 “was exhausted”: switch gear required such effort to pounce on the arm had happened, together with the shooter-radio operator. A “tank March was full of these exercises”6.
the Germans in this respect, it was generally easier.
And not only because it is easier to machine guns, tanks – more spacious, and the management of even the 56-ton “Tiger” was not required (due to the servos) no effort.
Not only because German usually better fed.
“Fritz” often were physically stronger. Taller, more weight, better trained.
the German was strong and agile
Well tailored, tightly sewn,
Alexander Tvardovsky wrote this not for effect.
memories of the Soviet frontoand wick we read the same thing: he met them in battle or (dead or prisoners) after the battle, the Germans – is a “healthy fat”, “tall”, “tall guys”, “tall”, “high”, “strong high”, “Maypole”, “long, healthy”, “pound”, “portly”, “broad-shouldered”, “healthy man”, “big”, “oversized”, “healthy, under a hundred pounds”, “the big redheaded fellow, heads two above me”, “a hefty man”, “big Germans”7.
“[…] I Germans sample of forty-two well know, my main skirmishes happened to them, – said the author of the novel “the dawns are quiet here” by Boris Vasilyev. Meter eighty at least […]”8. A marine Sergeant Vladimir Osipov “the big men, from six feet and taller” resisted and even at the end of October 1944, near Kirkenes in Norway.9.
Here’s three very eloquent testimony.
“And our thought I was German – I was long [ … ]” – recalled of his landing after a parachute jump from a burning Yak-9T Nikolai Ivanov10.
“We are him “Kurt” called – in German it was similar: tall, bony,” said about your colleague is another fighter pilot, Constantine Zvonarev11.
I fled from the captivity of the Germans, said the former mountain Ranger Siegfried ERT, it was impossible to get lost in Russia: “they are immediately recognizable on the figure.” Except that one of the fugitive “was indistinguishable from the Russian”: “small squat”12.
So it was before the war. “If you look at German youth, German army, – said in the spring of 1936, after passing through Germany, the commander of the 1st grade Jerome Uborevich, we compared them very frail and weak. […] Health it is necessary to raise through sport and good health”13.
Indeed, the surrender of the standards of the TRP in the Soviet Union, many, especially in the villages, was “covered” only on paper, and in the Third Reich all the young people passed through cultivating sports organization “Deutsches jungvolk” and Hitler youth.
But above all “the feebleness and weakness” determined the standard of living.
Industrialization and collectivization is the development of heavy industry at the expense of all other sectors of the economy, it’s “guns instead of butter” is a low standard of living of the villagers, which the state seized even what was necessary for a normal diet. This famine of 1932-1933, is a local famine in the villages in 1936-1937-m, is food shortages in cities in the Finnish war.
Before the collectivization, the red army was different. “You can see only muscular, not heavy, well-built body”, was reported, having been in September of 1927 on maneuvers near Odessa, the German Colonel Hans Halm14.
And in December 1940 Lieutenant-General Ivan Muzychenko said at the meeting that the infantry comes “weak, undersized fighter. Not a secret, comrades, that very often we we can observe in parts of the fighter, which in its growth, his physique is so watery, well, just unformed child, and sometimes it is even lower rifle” (length rifle model 1891/30 with a bayonet g – 166 centimeters). “Indeed, confirmed Lieutenant-General Vasilii Gerasimenko, when you come into a small company, it turns out, even the unpleasant impression: very many small, frail people, very young”. (“Frankly speaking, bad impression produced 18-year – old children,” – said the Marshal of the Soviet Union Semyon Timoshenko.)15
Yes, in the autumn of 1939 the Red Army began to call in 21-22, and 18-19 years, and to grow men ceased not to the 18 then, as now, and 25 years old. But for 19-year-old German in 1940 was considered a small height 170 cm16, and we? “Rare recruit climbs the dimensions of 160 cm and 50 kg,” stated, having examined the documents draft boards, who worked before the war in the current Kurgan region, Alexander Bazarov. Have 279 of recruits villagers Bazarov the average height was 153 cm, average weight – 52 kg17.
“gather Around me the Germans are young, healthy, fit, well-fed guys,” recalled captured in August 1941 near Leningrad Boris Sokolov18.
“Majority in 1943 under the age of 18, wrote about in the autumn of 1943, his motorized rifle platoon replenishment Evgeni Bessonov. Physically they were fragile, growth is mostly below average, uploadage physique […]”19.
18-year-old mortar man Vladimir Logachev in 1944, was carrying a 19-pound barrel 82 mm mortar with weight of 51 kilos20.
But in 1943-1944 had to mobilize and 17-year-old…
to Fight the red army was physically heavier than the Wehrmacht. But it is she, and not the fed “pumped” the Wehrmacht reached the Victory, mobilizing patience and moral readiness to hardship, at all times distinguished the Russian soldier.
so many shells and cartridges with gunpowder and threw 15 minutes the calculation of the 152-mm howitzer M-10
machine Maxim machine gun, which the soldier carried on the back
the volume of soil removed when digging the T-34 crew
lost weight loader of the T-34-85 in a 12-hour battle.
the average height of pre-war recruits in the Kurgan region.
