Red Army Battle Norms Influenced by Napoleon

One of the most important influences on the success of the Red Army in WW2 and thereafter, was Napoleon Bonaparte. His concepts shaped many Red Army warfighting approaches, including battle norming.

“Before he formally established a staff, the great French Field Marshall, Napoleon Bonaparte, was forced to retain a prodigious amount of highly relevant military/logistics data in his field notebooks. He maintained figures on his troop characteristics, dispositions, march lengths and rates, frontages, time and space factors and units of supply. (In another set of books he maintained constantly upgraded intelligence data.) The aggregate of troop management and maneuver information constituted Napoleon's battle norms.
The odd bits of seemingly unrelated information contained in battle norms were vitally important to the execution of Napoleon's campaigns, especially since his opponents regularly failed to make adequate assessment of such realities. Many of the Emperor's own combat marshals never mastered his system either.
Napoleon's battle norms enabled him to think more rapidly and realistically while under the pressure of campaigning. Supported by his battle norms and latest intelligence data, he could study maps and plan campaigns with a precise command of the relevant factors of time (e.g. for movement, entrenching, terrain effects) and space (e.g. frontages, depths, maneuver room).” (except from Red Blitzkreig)

It is very evident that organized warfare is a direct indicator of success on the battlefield. This is just as true today as it was in the 1700s. The Soviets evoked a scientific method to what they learned from Napoleon, realizing success against the Germans in WW2. Read more about that next time…