10th Army (Soviet Union)

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The 10th Army of the Soviet Union's Red Army was a field army active from 1939 to 1944.

The Army was formed in September 1939 in the Moscow Military District, and then deployed to the Western Special Military District. During the Soviet invasion of Poland it consisted, according to Steven Zagola, of the 11th Rifle Corps (6th, 33rd, and 121st RD), the 16th Rifle Corps (8, 52, 55 RD) and the 3rd Rifle Corps (in reserve) (33, 113 RD), under General I.G. Zakharin.[1]

On June 22, 1941, at the onset of Operation Barbarossa the Army was part of the Soviet Western Front. It consisted of the 1st and 5th Rifle Corps, 6th Cavalry Corps, and 6th and 13th Mechanised Corps,[2] under General K.D. Golubev. It was encircled by German forces during the Battle of Białystok-Minsk in June 1941 and largely destroyed. The headquarters was officially disbanded on 5 July 1941. It was formed three times in 1941, next in October in the Southern Front, but its formation 'was halted due to severe battle conditions'.[3]

It was then reformed in November 1941 in the Volga region, with nine rifle divisions, seven of which were new formations. (Soviet official websites give the nine divisions as the 322nd, 323rd, 324th, 325th, 326th, 328th and 330th Rifle, and 57th & 75th Cavalry, thus including two cavalry divisions.) Nine of these divisions had been formed in the space of three weeks from the reserve of the Moscow Military District and been trained for 12 hours a day. General Lieutenant Filipp Golikov took command. Golikov's 1967 book describes how the army finished its concentration in the Penza area on 8 November 1941, after which 15 days were devoted to combat training and 5 days to construction of living quarters and other facilities.[4] There were shortages of everything including warm winter clothing. The majority of the troops were between 30 and 40 years of age, and in some cases up to 65% of the men had no military training. Initially part of the Stavka reserve, it was reassigned to the Western Front for the Battle of Moscow, after moving up to Ryazan attacking on the morning of 6 December 1941. In 1942 it continued its defensive operations on the central axis, and in 1943 took part in the Battle of Smolensk.

In April 1944 the Army was disbanded, and its headquarters formed the basis of Headquarters 2nd Belorussian Front while its formations were reassigned to the 49th Army.

[edit] References and Sources

  1. ^ Steven Zagola, Poland 1939, Osprey Books.
  2. ^ Orbat.com/Niehorster 10th Army Order of Battle, 22 June 1941, accessed April 2008
  3. ^ Keith E. Bonn (ed)., 'Slaughterhouse: The Handbook of the Eastern Front,' Aberjona Press, Bedford, PA, 2005, p.313
  4. ^ F.I. Golikov, 'V Moskovskoi bitve,' (In the Moscow battle), Moscow, Nauka, 1967, p.8-51, in William J. Spahr, 'Zhukov: The Rise and Fall of a Great Captain,' Presidio Press, Novato, CA., 1993, p.89-91