Did the Red Army really have 35,000 tanks in 1941?

by Yeangster

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oET1WaG5sFk

From this recording of Hitler speaking with Mannerheim in 1942, Hitler is claiming that the Red Army was much larger, and had deeper reserves than what the Germans expected when planning Barbarossa. While it's well-attested than the Germans underestimated the Soviet Union, I wonder about hte figure of 35,000 tanks?

Where did they get that number? Was that just hte European theater? How many did the Germans capture/destroy. And while I understand that relatively few were the t-34s or KV-1s, why didn't they make more of an impact against the Nazi's relatively smaller forces that I believe still were mostly Pz Is, IIs, and IIIs?

HereticalShinigami

No, it did not, although estimates given to Harry Hopkins, Roosevelt's personal representative put the number of Soviet tanks at a still substantial 24,000, with over 20,500 of these lost by the end of 1941. Of this 24,000, some 600 were KVs and 1,200 were T-34s, although these were still suffering teething troubles, further exacerbated by inexpert and under-trained crews. The remainder were the largely outmoded T-26 and BT-series tanks, which combined thin armour with poor ergonomics and severely lacking optics to make their numbers something of an irrelevance.

In general, the Soviet armoured forces at the beginning of Barbarossa were sorely underprepared for a mobile war, not only due to the surprise and suddenness of the German invasion, but because their organisation and deployment had been consistently changed in recent years, with the new mechanised corps only being brought into being in July 1940, reversing the decision of a year prior to disband large armoured formations. On top of this, a consistent lack of spare parts (which worsened as the Axis captured Soviet forward supply dumps), poor crew quality and sorely lacking leadership, the latter due to Stalin's purges and the general confusion of the Soviet high command during the initial invasion, meant that Soviet armoured forces were of limited value through 1941, even if they did have a nominal nearly 8-1 numerical advantage over their German adversaries.

Recommended sources

Ogorkiewicz, Tanks: 100 Years of Evolution, 2015

Harris and Toase, Armoured Warfare, 1990

DYGTD

The number was around 26,000 in all, with about 14,000 deployable in the West (The Soviets were still wary of Japan after having some large-scale encounters along the Soviet/Chinese border regions). Even that still does not mean that 14k were available to fight Germans. These tanks were spread out all over the vast landscape of the Soviet territories fighting rebellions or "bandits", or maintaining security. They weren't all sitting on the German/Soviet border ready for a fight. The vast majority of these tanks were BT-7s and T-26s, with a few thousand being non-combat tanks (like recovery and support vehicles). Further, very few of these tanks were new and ready to fight. Approximately 2 thousand combat (cannon-armed or command/radio) tanks were off the line with no real notable mechanical issues (Category 1). A little under 8,000 were relatively battle-ready and needed mechanical work that could be done by crews in the field (Category 2). About 1200 needed mechanical attention from regional workshops (category 3), and another thousand needed to be sent back to major production factories for mechanical work (category 4). Those last two categories are basically combat write-offs and could not contribute to a fight.

Furthermore, category 2 didn't just need an oil job and they were ready to go. They could need some replacements for parts like tracks, gun components, motor parts, and other crucial replacements, which crews didn't always have on-hand. So there were parts shortages on top of ammo shortages (especially for newer T-34 and KV tanks), fuel shortages, etc. On top of that, basic motorized/mechanized vehicles (especially fuel trucks) were in disrepair and themselves short on fuel and parts. This is where numbers get into some hard estimates and puts the Soviets roughly on parity or possibly even less than the Germans in raw combat-ready numbers of tanks (with many of them being outmoded in design). And many of these had to be moved to the front from various territories to a front that was rapidly shifting daily with casualties skyrocketing.

http://tankarchives.blogspot.com/2015/07/common-questions-red-army-afvs-in.html