The Great Patriotic war saw the Red Army grow from a small self defense force into the largest army on Earth.

After the German invasion all able bodied men who were not employed in critical defense industries found themselves eligible for conscription.  Many young men and women volunteered for service.  The war would prove difficult.  At first units were forbidden to surrender or even withdraw to regroup.  This led to tremendous loss of life. Despite this, there were many heroic defensive actions.

By 1943 new tactics that emphasized large envelopments were used.  Marshal Zhukov executed many such attacks.  This change in doctrine enabled the Red Army to capture large numbers of German forces with fewer losses.  Still, the soldiers, sailors, and airmen of the Red Army would sustain casualties that no other army could endure before victory would be theirs.

Strength of Armed Forces

The organization of the Red Army rifle company of April 1941 (1)

This section will be used to highlight the organization of the Red Army during the Patriotic War.  At this point only the Red Army rifle company at the beginning of the war is shown.  More will follow as time goes on.

The early Red Army rifle company still retained some pre-Finnish war concepts (such as the use of relatively ineffective light  mortars at the platoon level for fire support), but had begun the shift towards automatic weaponry.  Its rifle platoons reflected this, with each man being optimistically being armed with either a submachine gun or semi-automatic rifle.  This rarely happened in reality, but demonstrated the thinking of the high command.  The shift towards rapid fire weapons would only be complete near the end of the war.

The tables below will illustrate the various component units that made up the basic Red Army rifle company of the Patriotic War.  Links to relevant vehicles and weapons are included to enhance the reader's understanding.

• Rifle Company
• Rifle Platoon
• Machine Gun Platoon
• Rifle Squad
• Infantry Mortar Squad

(1) Zaloga, Steven J. and Leland S. Ness, Red Army Handbook (1939-1945), Sparkford: Sutton Publishing, 1998. Print.