Red Army
143-933: Kazan Operation was the Red Army 's offensive (5–10 September 1918) against the Czechoslovak Legion and the People's Army of Komuch during the Russian Civil War . Following the capture of Samara by the Czech Legion on 8 June, several members of the Constituent Assembly , which had been dissolved by the Bolsheviks , organized a Committee of Members of the Constituent Assembly (in Russian "Constituent Assembly"
286-544: A body "formed from the class-conscious and best elements of the working classes." All citizens of the Russian republic aged 18 or older were eligible. Its role being the defense "of the Soviet authority, the creation of a basis for the transformation of the standing army into a force deriving its strength from a nation in arms, and, furthermore, the creation of a basis for the support of the coming Socialist Revolution in Europe." Enlistment
429-487: A collective committee of Vladimir Antonov-Ovseyenko , Pavel Dybenko , and Nikolai Krylenko . At the same time, Nikolay Dukhonin was acting as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief after Alexander Kerensky fled from Russia. On 12 November 1917 the Soviet government appointed Krylenko as the Supreme Commander-in-Chief, and because of an "accident" during the forceful displacement of the commander-in-chief, Dukhonin
572-550: A common border between Japanese controlled areas and the Soviet Far East and Mongolia . The Soviets and Japanese, including their respective client states of the Mongolian People's Republic and Manchukuo , disputed the boundaries and accused the other side of border violations. This resulted in a series of escalating border skirmishes and punitive expeditions , including the 1938 Battle of Lake Khasan , and culminated in
715-594: A congressional resolution calling on North Korea to repatriate POW/MIAS and abductees from North Korea. In January 2012 it was announced that members of JPAC would go to North Korea in the spring to search for an estimated 5,000 MIAs in the Unsan & the Chosin Reservoir areas. In February 2012 talks were going ahead between the US and North Korea to resume discussions to recover US MIAs after seven years. On March 8, 2012,
858-418: A further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. Thus the grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million men, including 7.7 million killed or missing in action and 2.6 million prisoners of war (POW) dead (out of 5.2 million total POWs), plus 400,000 paramilitary and Soviet partisan losses. Officials at
1001-544: A half million German MIAs have been buried in new graves since the end of the Cold War. Most of them will stay unknown. The German War Graves Commission is spearheading the effort. Similarly, there are approximately 4 million missing Russian service personnel scattered across the former Eastern Front , from Leningrad down to Stalingrad , though around 300 volunteer groups make periodic searches of old battlefields to recover human remains for identification and reburial. During
1144-498: A hundred times as many tanks . The Red Army, however, had been hindered by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin 's Great Purge of 1937, reducing the army's morale and efficiency shortly before the outbreak of the fighting. With over 30,000 of its army officers executed or imprisoned, most of whom were from the highest ranks, the Red Army in 1939 had many inexperienced senior officers. Because of these factors, and high commitment and morale in
1287-762: A large number of North Vietnamese and Viet Cong MIAs from the Vietnam war whose remains have yet to be recovered. In 1974, General Võ Nguyên Giáp stated that they had 330,000 missing in action. As of 1999, estimates of those missing were usually around 300,000. This figure does not include those missing from former South Vietnamese armed forces, who are given little consideration under the Vietnamese regime. The Vietnamese government did not have any organized program to search for its own missing, in comparison to what it had established to search for American missing. The discrepancy angered some Vietnamese; as one said, "It's crazy for
1430-450: A major reshuffling took place in the Soviet military administration. On 13 March 1918, the Soviet government accepted the official resignation of Krylenko and the post of Supreme Commander-in-Chief was liquidated. On 14 March 1918, Leon Trotsky replaced Podvoisky as the Narkom of War Affairs. On 16 March 1918, Pavel Dybenko was relieved from the office of Narkom of Marine Affairs. On 8 May 1918,
1573-515: A pilot remains recovery project. A number of Australian combatants and POWs have also never been recovered from Korea. Of 340 Australian servicemen killed in the Korean War, 43 are listed as MIA. Since 1996, the remains of Korean People's Army combatants recovered from battlefield exhumations across South Korea have been buried in the Cemetery for North Korean and Chinese Soldiers , the majority of
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#17328443664101716-589: A result, if someone was killed in action and their body was not recovered until much later, there was often little or no chance of identifying the remains unless the person in question was carrying items that would identify them, or had marked their clothing or possessions with identifying information. Starting around the time of the First World War , nations began to issue their service personnel with purpose-made identification tags. These were usually made of some form of lightweight metal such as aluminium. However, in
1859-440: A small fragment of human remains. Although it is possible to take genetic samples from a close relative of the missing person, it is preferable to collect such samples directly from the subjects themselves. It is a fact of warfare that some combatants are likely to go missing in action and never be found. However, by wearing identification tags and using modern technology the numbers involved can be considerably reduced. In addition to
2002-667: A soldier in Confederate uniform were recovered from, say, the Gettysburg battlefield , he would be interred in a single grave with a headstone which stated that he was an unknown Confederate soldier . This change in attitudes coincided with the Geneva Conventions , the first of which was signed in 1864. Although the First Geneva Convention did not specifically address the issue of MIAs, the reasoning behind it (which specified
2145-540: A stable nucleus. By 1925, this system provided 46 of the 77 infantry divisions and one of the eleven cavalry divisions. The remainder consisted of regular officers and enlisted personnel serving two-year terms. The territorial system was finally abolished, with all remaining formations converted to the other cadre divisions, in 1937–1938. The Soviet military received ample funding and was innovative in its technology. An American journalist wrote in 1941: Even in American terms
2288-509: A surrender the following day although some Japanese units continued to fight for several more days. A proposed Soviet invasion of Hokkaido , the second largest Japanese island, was originally planned to be part of the territory to be taken but it was cancelled. Military administration after the October Revolution was taken over by the People's Commissariat of War and Marine affairs headed by
2431-418: A thorough forensic examination (including such methods as DNA testing and comparison of dental records ) the remains are interred with a tombstone which indicates their unknown status. The development of genetic fingerprinting in the late 20th century means that if cell samples from a cheek swab are collected from service personnel prior to deployment to a combat zone, identity can be established using even
2574-410: A thorough forensic examination. If this is achieved, attempts are made to trace any living relatives. However, it is frequently impossible to identify the remains, other than to establish some basic details of the unit they served with. In the case of British and Commonwealth MIAs, the headstone is inscribed with the maximum amount of information that is known about the person. Typically, such information
2717-542: A total of 459 have been identified as of June 2018 950 sets of remains were uncovered in South Korea; of 20 sets of remains 11 were identified. The U.S. Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command (now the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency ) and the equivalent South Korean command are actively involved in trying to locate and identify remains of both countries' personnel. Remains of missing combatants from
2860-543: Is deduced from metallic objects such as brass buttons and shoulder flashes bearing regimental/unit insignia found on the body. As a result, headstones are inscribed with such information as "A Soldier of The Cameronians " or "An Australian Corporal " etc. Where nothing is known other than the soldier's national allegiance, the headstone is inscribed "A Soldier of The Great War". The term "Sailor" or "Airman" can be substituted, as appropriate. There are many missing combatants and other persons in service from World War II. In
3003-642: Is in our custody). There was a subsequent report that Maj Waraich was in a North West Frontier jail. Their current status is unknown. They are listed as missing by the Indian Government along with 52 others including a Maj Ashok Suri who wrote a letter to his father in 1975 from Karachi stating that he was alive and well. Pakistan denies holding any of the soldiers missing in action. The Iran–Iraq War of 1980–1988 left tens of thousands of Iranian and Iraqi combatants and prisoners of war still unaccounted for. Some counts include civilians who disappeared during
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#17328443664103146-472: Is not conspiracy theory, not paranoid myth, not Rambo fantasy. It is only hard evidence of a national disgrace: American prisoners were left behind at the end of the Vietnam War. They were abandoned because six presidents and official Washington could not admit their guilty secret. They were forgotten because the press and most Americans turned away from all things that reminded them of Vietnam." There are also
3289-737: Is often considered the last depressing, divisive aftereffect of the Vietnam War. To skeptics, "live prisoners" is a conspiracy theory unsupported by motivation or evidence, and the foundation for a cottage industry of charlatans who have preyed upon the hopes of the families of the missing. As two skeptics wrote in 1995, "The conspiracy myth surrounding the Americans who remained missing after Operation Homecoming in 1973 had evolved to baroque intricacy. By 1992, there were thousands of zealots—who believed with cultlike fervor that hundreds of American POWs had been deliberately and callously abandoned in Indochina after
3432-561: The Battle of Tarawa in 1943. Between 2013 and 2016 the remains of 37 US Marines were recovered from Tarawa. Among those recovered was Medal of Honor recipient Alexander Bonnyman . As of March 26, 2024, according to the U.S. Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, there were still 72,104 U.S. servicemen and civilians still unaccounted for from World War II. According to official US Department of Army and Department of Navy casualty records, submitted to Congress in 1946 and updated in 1953,
3575-464: The Battle of Verdun . Even in the 21st century, the remains of missing combatants are recovered from the former battlefields of the Western Front every year. These discoveries happen regularly, often during the course of agricultural work or construction projects. Typically, the remains of one or several men are found at a time. However, occasionally the numbers recovered are much larger e.g.
3718-626: The Eastern Front , it accounted for 75–80% of the casualties that the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS suffered during the war, and ultimately captured the German capital, Berlin . Up to 34 million soldiers served in the Red Army during World War II, 8 million of which were non-Slavic minorities. Officially, the Red Army lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) ( mostly captured ). The majority of
3861-530: The Gulag . During the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army conscripted 29,574,900 men in addition to the 4,826,907 in service at the beginning of the war. Of this total of 34,401,807 it lost 6,329,600 killed in action (KIA), 555,400 deaths by disease and 4,559,000 missing in action (MIA) (most captured). Of the 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in the subsequently liberated Soviet territory, and
4004-907: The Imperial Japanese Army ), the doctrine was not used. Only in the Second World War did deep operations come into play. The Red Army was involved in armed conflicts in the Republic of China during the Sino-Soviet conflict (1929) , the Soviet invasion of Xinjiang (1934), when it was assisted by White Russian forces, and the Islamic rebellion in Xinjiang (1937) in Northwestern China . The Red Army achieved its objectives; it maintained effective control over
4147-1088: The Laws of War . Technology and logistics had also changed. Railroads were used during the Crimean War and played a decisive role in several battles of the American Civil War and – especially the quick mobilisation of Prussian and allied forces – at the beginning of the Franco-Prussian War. Where previously there were hardly any alternatives to bury the dead close to where they fell before their bodies decomposed, now they could – if logistics allowed – be transported elsewhere for identification and proper burial. Those killed in action at sea had previously simply been thrown overboard or their bodies pickled in distilled alcohol for preservation (as happened with Horatio Nelson ). Now steamships allowed for much quicker transport than sailing or rowing vessels ever had. The phenomenon of MIAs became particularly notable during World War I, where
4290-626: The Red Army , was the army and air force of the Russian Soviet Republic and, from 1922, the Soviet Union . The army was established in January 1918 by Leon Trotsky to oppose the military forces of the new nation's adversaries during the Russian Civil War , especially the various groups collectively known as the White Army . In February 1946, the Red Army (which embodied the main component of
4433-697: The Russian Constituent Assembly (5–6 January 1918) and the Soviet government signed the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk (3 March 1918), removing Russia from the First World War. Freed from international obligations, the Red Army confronted an internecine war against a variety of opposing anti-Bolshevik forces, including the Revolutionary Insurgent Army of Ukraine led by Nestor Makhno , the anti-White and anti-Red Green armies , efforts to restore
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4576-742: The Soviet Armed Forces alongside the Soviet Navy ) was renamed the " Soviet Army " – which in turn became the Russian Army on 7 May 1992, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union. The Red Army provided the largest land force in the Allied victory in the European theatre of World War II , and its invasion of Manchuria assisted the unconditional surrender of Imperial Japan . During its operations on
4719-602: The Soviet invasion of Manchuria on 9 August 1945 (three days after the first atomic bombing of Hiroshima and the same day the second atomic bomb was dropped on Nagasaki , while also being exact three months after the surrender of Germany). It was the largest campaign of the Soviet–Japanese War , which resumed hostilities between the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics and the Empire of Japan after almost six years of peace following
4862-948: The United States . In total, the U.S. deliveries to the USSR through Lend-Lease amounted to $ 11 billion in materials ($ 180 billion in the 2020 money value): over 400,000 jeeps and trucks; 12,000 armored vehicles (including 7,000 tanks, about 1,386 of which were M3 Lees and 4,102 M4 Shermans ); 14,015 aircraft (of which 4,719 were Bell P-39 Airacobras , 2,908 were Douglas A-20 Havocs and 2,400 were Bell P-63 Kingcobras ) and 1.75 million tons of food. Soviet soldiers committed mass rapes in occupied territories, especially in Germany . The wartime rapes were followed by decades of silence. According to historian Antony Beevor , whose books were banned in 2015 from some Russian schools and colleges, NKVD (Soviet secret police) files have revealed that
5005-614: The United States Armed Forces , 78,750 personnel missing in action had been reported by the end of the war, representing over 19 percent of the total of 405,399 killed during the conflict. As with MIAs from the First World War, it is a routine occurrence for the remains of missing personnel killed during the Second World War to be periodically discovered. Usually they are found purely by chance (e.g. during construction or demolition work) though on some occasions they are recovered following deliberate, targeted searches. As with
5148-561: The Wehrmacht in combat. The Axis's numeric superiority rendered the combatants' divisional strength approximately equal. A generation of Soviet commanders (notably Georgy Zhukov ) learned from the defeats, and Soviet victories in the Battle of Moscow , at Stalingrad , Kursk and later in Operation Bagration proved decisive. In 1941, the Soviet government raised the bloodied Red Army's esprit de corps with propaganda stressing
5291-502: The Wehrmacht was especially harsh. Per a 1941 Stalin directive , Red Army officers and soldiers were to "fight to the last" rather than surrender; Stalin stated: "There are no Soviet prisoners of war, only traitors". During and after World War II freed POWs went to special " filtration camps ". Of these, by 1944, more than 90% were cleared, and about 8% were arrested or condemned to serve in penal battalions . In 1944, they were sent directly to reserve military formations to be cleared by
5434-578: The brigade and regimental levels. The commissars also had the task of spying on commanders for political incorrectness . In August 1918, Trotsky authorized General Mikhail Tukhachevsky to place blocking units behind politically unreliable Red Army units, to shoot anyone who retreated without permission. In 1942, during the Great Patriotic War (1941–1945) Joseph Stalin reintroduced the blocking policy and penal battalions with Order 227 . The Soviet westward offensive of 1918–1919 occurred at
5577-532: The death penalty . Simultaneously, Trotsky carried out a mass recruitment of officers from the old Imperial Russian Army , who were employed as military advisors ( voenspetsy ). The Bolsheviks occasionally enforced the loyalty of such recruits by holding their families as hostages. As a result of this initiative, in 1918 75% of the officers were former tsarists . By mid-August 1920 the Red Army's former tsarist personnel included 48,000 officers, 10,300 administrators, and 214,000 non-commissioned officers . When
5720-407: The triumphantly advancing enemy. The Red Guard units are brushed aside like flies. We have no power to stay the enemy; only an immediate signing of the peace treaty will save us from destruction." The Russian Civil War (1917–1923) can be divided into three periods: At the start of the civil war, the Red Army consisted of 299 infantry regiments . The civil war intensified after Lenin dissolved
5863-471: The " fog of war ". Finally, since military forces had no strong incentive to keep detailed records of enemy dead, bodies were frequently buried (sometimes with their identification tags) in temporary graves, the locations of which were often lost or obliterated e.g. the forgotten mass grave at Fromelles . As a result, the remains of missing combatants might not be found for many years, if ever. When missing combatants are recovered and cannot be identified after
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6006-673: The "Second Soviet-Finnish War") which was a conflict fought by Finland and Germany against the Soviet Union from 1941 to 1944. In accordance with the Soviet-Nazi Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact of 23 August 1939, the Red Army invaded Poland on 17 September 1939, after the Nazi invasion on 1 September 1939. On 30 November, the Red Army also attacked Finland, in the Winter War of 1939–1940. By autumn 1940, after conquering its portion of Poland, Nazi Germany shared an extensive border with
6149-463: The 1929 Field Regulations and became codified in the 1936 Provisional Field Regulations (PU-36). The Great Purge of 1937–1939 and the 1941 Red Army Purge removed many leading officers from the Red Army, including Tukhachevsky himself and many of his followers, and the doctrine was abandoned. Thus, at the Battle of Lake Khasan in 1938 and in the Battle of Khalkhin Gol in 1939 ( major border conflicts with
6292-527: The 1932–1939 Soviet–Japanese border conflicts . The Red Army, with support from Mongolian forces, overwhelmed the Japanese Kwantung Army and local Chinese forces supporting them. The Soviets advanced on the continent into the Japanese puppet state of Manchukuo , Mengjiang (the northeast section of present-day Inner Mongolia which was part of another puppet state) and via an amphibious operation
6435-652: The 2000s, there was renewed attention within and without the U.S. military to finding remains of the missing, especially in the European Theatre and especially since aging witnesses and local historians were dying off. The group World War II Families for the Return of the Missing was founded in 2005 to work with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command and other governmental entities towards locating and repatriating
6578-614: The All-Russian Chief Headquarters was created, headed by Nikolai Stogov and later Alexander Svechin . On 2 September 1918, the Revolutionary Military Council (RMC) was established as the main military administration under Leon Trotsky, the Narkom of War Affairs. On 6 September 1918 alongside the chief headquarters, the Field Headquarters of RMC was created, initially headed by Nikolai Rattel . On
6721-470: The Americans to keep asking us to find their men. We lost several times more than the Americans did. In any war there are many people who disappear. They just disappear." In the 2000s, thousands of Vietnamese were hiring psychics in an effort to find the remains of missing family members. The Vietnamese Army organizes what it considers to be the best of the psychics, as part of its parapsychology force trying to find remains. Additionally, remains dating from
6864-602: The Army. The Council of People's Commissars appointed itself the supreme head of the Red Army, delegating command and administration of the army to the Commissariat for Military Affairs and the Special All-Russian College within this commissariat. Nikolai Krylenko was the supreme commander-in-chief, with Aleksandr Myasnikyan as deputy. Nikolai Podvoisky became the commissar for war, Pavel Dybenko , commissar for
7007-618: The Bolshevik Revolution took place there were few machines in Russia. Marx said Communism must come in a highly industrialized society. The Bolsheviks identified their dreams of socialist happiness with machines which would multiply production and reduce hours of labour until everyone would have everything he needed and would work only as much as he wished. Somehow this has not come about, but the Russians still worship machines, and this helped make
7150-402: The DPAA "does not currently conduct" operations in North Korea. On June 24, 2016, Congressmen Rangel, John Conyers , Sam Johnson introduced House Resolution No. 799 calling on the U.S. Government to resume talks in regard to the US MIAs. On September 27, 2016, House Resolution No. 799 was referred to the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific. It was not enacted. In
7293-402: The Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, as of March 26,2024 there were still 126 U.S. servicemen unaccounted for from the Cold War. The 1991–1993 United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs investigated some outstanding issues and reports related to the fate of U.S. service personnel still missing from the Cold War. In 1992, Russian President Boris Yeltsin told the committee that
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#17328443664107436-543: The Dungan Cavalry Regiment commanded by the Dungan Magaza Masanchi . It also co-operated with armed Bolshevik Party-oriented volunteer units, the Forces of Special Purpose from 1919 to 1925. The slogan "exhortation, organization, and reprisals" expressed the discipline and motivation which helped ensure the Red Army's tactical and strategic success. On campaign, the attached Cheka special punitive brigades conducted summary field court-martial and executions of deserters and slackers. Under Commissar Yan Karlovich Berzin ,
7579-451: The Eastern Front consisted of an estimated 3,604,800 KIA/MIA within the 1937 borders plus 900,000 ethnic Germans and Austrians outside the 1937 border (included in these numbers are men listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war) and 3,576,300 men reported captured (total 8,081,100); the losses of the German satellites on the Eastern Front approximated 668,163 KIA/MIA and 799,982 captured (total 1,468,145). Of these 9,549,245,
7722-410: The Fifth Army with the flotilla's backing reached the right (west) bank of Volga and shelled Kazan from the commanding position of Uslan Hill. The Left Bank Group reached the mouth of the Kazanka River . That day the Arsk Group took Kinderle and Klyki villages to the east of Kazan. On September 9, sailors and landed marksmen under Nikolay Markin took the beachhead at the western part of Kazan. On that day
7865-408: The Finnish forces, Finland was able to resist the Soviet invasion for much longer than the Soviets expected. Finnish forces inflicted stunning losses on the Red Army for the first three months of the war while suffering very few losses themselves. Hostilities ceased in March 1940 with the signing of the Moscow Peace Treaty . Finland ceded 9% of its pre-war territory and 30% of its economic assets to
8008-521: The First World War, in western Europe MIAs are generally found as individuals, or in twos or threes. However, sometimes the numbers in a group are considerably larger e.g. the mass grave at Villeneuve-Loubet , which contained the remains of 14 German soldiers killed in August 1944. Others are located at remote aircraft crash sites in various countries. But in eastern Europe and Russia, World War II casualties include approximately two million missing Germans, and many mass graves remain to be found. Almost
8151-420: The Korean War are periodically recovered and identified in both North and South Korea. It is thought that 13,000 South Korean and 2,000 U.S. combatants are buried in the Korean Demilitarized Zone alone and never found. In the summer of 2018 President Moon Jae-in of South Korea expressed his hopes to recover the remains of Korean soldiers from the DMZ. South Korea MIAs are believed to number 120,000. In 2018
8294-421: The Korean war-Cpl Billie Charles Driver of the 8th US Cavalry Regiment. Remains of nine sets of remains of Korean War MIA servicemen have also been discovered at Arrowhead Hill, aka Hill 281 Battle of White Horse , which is located in the Korean Demilitarized Zone , during minesweeping operations between October and November 2018. Arrowhead Hill had previously been selected for both Koreas to jointly conduct
8437-455: The Left Bank Group and Arsk Group joined and laid siege to part of Kazan. On September 10, after storming the city from three directions, Red Army troops took control of Kazan. The majority of Whites managed to sail away via the Volga. The capturing of Kazan and Simbirsk by the Red Army made continued strategic offensives westwards possible for the Red Army. Red Army The Workers' and Peasants' Red Army , often shortened to
8580-399: The Manchurian Chinese Eastern Railway , and successfully installed a pro-Soviet regime in Xinjiang . The Soviet–Japanese border conflicts , also known as the "Soviet–Japanese Border War" or the first "Soviet–Japanese War", was a series of minor and major conflicts fought between the Soviet Union and the Empire of Japan from 1932 to 1939. Japan's expansion into Northeast China created
8723-478: The Missing of the Somme in France bears the names of 72,090 British and Commonwealth combatants, all of whom went missing in action during the Battle of the Somme, were never found and who have no known grave. Similarly, the Menin Gate memorial in Belgium commemorates 54,896 missing Allied combatants who are known to have been killed in the Ypres Salient . The Douaumont ossuary , meanwhile, contains 130,000 unidentifiable sets of French and German remains from
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#17328443664108866-418: The NKVD. Further, in 1945, about 100 filtration camps were set for repatriated POWs, and other displaced persons , which processed more than 4,000,000 people. By 1946, 80% civilians and 20% of POWs were freed, 5% of civilians, and 43% of POWs were re-drafted, 10% of civilians and 22% of POWs were sent to labor battalions, and 2% of civilians and 15% of the POWs (226,127 out of 1,539,475 total) were transferred to
9009-522: The Pakistan Army on 3 December 1971 at 1835 hours. Nearly 4,000 Pakistani men attacked the Indian side with 15 tanks and heavy artillery support. The Indian commanders included Major Waraich, Major Singh's and Major Kanwaljit Sandhu, who was badly injured. Major SPS Waraich was reported captured, as were many JCOs and men as the squadrons were taken by surprise and had little time to get to their bunkers. A Pakistani radio news telecast reported (in Urdu ) that Maj Waraich hamari hiraasat mein hain (Maj Waraich
9152-460: The Red Army finally achieving a Soviet-Mongolian victory over Japan and Manchukuo at the Battles of Khalkhin Gol in September 1939. The Soviet Union and Japan agreed to a ceasefire. Later the two sides signed the Soviet–Japanese Neutrality Pact on 13 April 1941, which resolved the dispute and returned the borders to status quo ante bellum . The Winter War ( Finnish : talvisota , Swedish : finska vinterkriget , Russian: Зи́мняя война́ )
9295-481: The Red Army numbered some 6.5 million men, many of whom the Army had difficulty supporting, around 581,000 in the two operational fronts, western and southwestern. Around 2.5 million men and women were mobilized in the interior as part of reserve armies. The XI Congress of the Russian Communist Party (Bolsheviks) (RCP (b)) adopted a resolution on the strengthening of the Red Army. It decided to establish strictly organized military, educational and economic conditions in
9438-906: The Red Army the most highly mechanized in the world, except perhaps the German Army now. Like Americans, the Russians admire size, bigness, large numbers. They took pride in building a vast army of tanks, some of them the largest in the world, armored cars, airplanes, motorized guns, and every variety of mechanical weapons. Missing in action Missing in action ( MIA ) is a casualty classification assigned to combatants , military chaplains , combat medics , and prisoners of war who are reported missing during wartime or ceasefire . They may have been killed , wounded , captured , executed , or deserted . If deceased, neither their remains nor grave have been positively identified. Becoming MIA has been an occupational risk for as long as there has been warfare. Until around 1912, service personnel in most countries were not routinely issued with ID tags . As
9581-404: The Red Army was composed mainly of peasants, the families of those who served were guaranteed rations and assistance with farm work. Some peasants who remained at home yearned to join the Army; men, along with some women, flooded the recruitment centres. If they were turned away, they would collect scrap metal and prepare care-packages. In some cases, the money they earned would go towards tanks for
9724-474: The Red Army with an initial Red Guard organization and a core soldiery of Red Guard militiamen and the Cheka secret police. Conscription began in June 1918, and opposition to it was violently suppressed. To control the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Red Army soldiery, the Cheka operated special punitive brigades which suppressed anti-communists , deserters , and " enemies of the state ". The Red Army used special regiments for ethnic minorities, such as
9867-483: The Red Army's defeat of Pyotr Wrangel in the south in 1920 allowed the foundation of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics in December 1922. Historian John Erickson sees 1 February 1924, when Mikhail Frunze became head of the Red Army staff, as marking the ascent of the general staff , which came to dominate Soviet military planning and operations. By 1 October 1924 the Red Army's strength had diminished to 530,000. The list of Soviet divisions 1917–1945 details
10010-411: The Red Army's strength was 401 divisions. The Soviet forces were apparently unprepared despite numerous warnings from a variety of sources. They suffered much damage in the field because of mediocre officers, partial mobilization, and an incomplete reorganization. The hasty pre-war forces expansion and the over-promotion of inexperienced officers (owing to the purging of experienced officers) favored
10153-473: The Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. The majority of the losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). As many as 8 million of the 34 million mobilized were non-Slavic minority soldiers, and around 45 divisions formed from national minorities served from 1941 to 1943. The German losses on
10296-501: The Russian Central Defense Ministry Archive (CDMA) maintain that their database lists the names of roughly 14 million dead and missing service personnel. In September 1917, Vladimir Lenin wrote: "There is only one way to prevent the restoration of the police, and that is to create a people's militia and to fuse it with the army (the standing army to be replaced by the arming of the entire people)." At
10439-447: The Soviet Union had held survivors of spy planes shot down in the early 1950s in prisons or psychiatric facilities. Russian Colonel General Dmitri Volkogonov , co-leader of the U.S.–Russia Joint Commission on POW/MIAs , said that to his knowledge no Americans were currently being held against their will within the borders of the former Soviet Union. The Select Committee concluded that it "found evidence that some U.S. POWs were held in
10582-631: The Soviet Union made Red Army logistical support difficult because many depots (and most of the USSR's industrial manufacturing base) lay in the country's invaded western areas, obliging their re-establishment east of the Ural Mountains. Lend-Lease trucks and jeeps from the United States began appearing in large numbers in 1942. Until then, the Red Army was often required to improvise or go without weapons, vehicles, and other equipment. The 1941 decision to physically move their manufacturing capacity east of
10725-522: The Soviet Union. Soviet losses on the front were heavy, and the country's international reputation suffered. The Soviet forces did not accomplish their objective of the total conquest of Finland but did receive territory in Karelia , Petsamo , and Salla . The Finns retained their sovereignty and improved their international reputation, which bolstered their morale in the Continuation War (also known as
10868-436: The Soviet defence budget was large. In 1940 it was the equivalent of $ 11,000,000,000, and represented one-third of the national expenditure. Measure this against the fact that the infinitely richer United States will approximate the expenditure of that much yearly only in 1942 after two years of its greatest defence effort. Most of the money spent on the Red Army and Air Force went for machines of war. Twenty-three years ago when
11011-585: The Soviets released 3,572,600 from captivity after the war, thus the grand total of the Axis losses came to an estimated 5,976,645. Regarding POWs, both sides captured large numbers and had many die in captivity – one recent British figure says 3.6 of 6 million Soviet POWs died in German camps, while 300,000 of 3 million German POWs died in Soviet hands. In 1941, the rapid progress of the initial German air and land attacks into
11154-693: The US and North Korea-claiming it couldn't guarantee Americans safety. In 2007 New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson traveled to Pyongong and returned with six sets of remains. In 2010, it was reported that the Obama administration was reversing the Bush administration's suspended talks in regard to North Korea MIAs. In 2011 the Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW) adopted Resolution # 423 calling for renewed discussions with North Korea to recover Americans missing in action. On July 27, 2011, Congressman Charles Rangel introduced
11297-459: The US announced it would search for MIAs in North Korea, however on March 21, 2012, US President Obama's administration suspended talks with North Korea over the recovery of US servicemen killed and missing in North Korea. In 2013 Korea War/Cold War Families Inc started an online petition to Obama to resolve Cold/Korean War mysteries. In October 2014, North Korea announced it was going to move
11440-654: The USSR, with whom it remained neutrally bound by their non-aggression pact and trade agreements . Another consequence of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact was the Soviet occupation of Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina , carried out by the Southern Front in June–July 1940 and Soviet occupation of the Baltic states . These conquests also added to the border the Soviet Union shared with Nazi-controlled areas. For Adolf Hitler ,
11583-422: The Ural Mountains kept the main Soviet support system out of German reach. In the later stages of the war, the Red Army fielded some excellent weaponry, especially artillery and tanks. The Red Army's heavy KV-1 and medium T-34 tanks outclassed most Wehrmacht armor, but in 1941 most Soviet tank units used older and inferior models. The Red Army was financially and materially assisted in its wartime effort by
11726-421: The Vietnamese government and every American government since then to hide the existence of these prisoners. The U.S. government has steadfastly denied that prisoners were left behind or that any effort has been made to cover up their existence. Popular culture has reflected the "live prisoners" theory, most notably in the 1985 film Rambo: First Blood Part II . Several congressional investigations have looked into
11869-621: The army. However, it was recognized that an army of 1,600,000 would be burdensome. By the end of 1922, after the Congress, the Party Central Committee decided to reduce the Red Army to 800,000. This reduction necessitated the reorganization of the Red Army's structure. The supreme military unit became corps of two or three divisions. Divisions consisted of three regiments. Brigades as independent units were abolished. The formation of departments' rifle corps began. After four years of warfare,
12012-570: The beginning of its existence, the Red Army functioned as a voluntary formation, without ranks or insignia. Democratic elections selected the officers. However, a decree on 29 May 1918 imposed obligatory military service for men of ages 18 to 40. To service the massive draft, the Bolsheviks formed regional military commissariats ( voyennyy komissariat , abbr. voyenkomat ), which as of 2023 still exist in Russia in this function and under this name. Military commissariats, however, should not be confused with
12155-472: The brigades took hostages from the villages of deserters to compel their surrender; one in ten of those returning was executed. The same tactic also suppressed peasant rebellions in areas controlled by the Red Army, the biggest of these being the Tambov Rebellion . The Soviets enforced the loyalty of the various political, ethnic, and national groups in the Red Army through political commissars attached at
12298-493: The case of the British Army the material chosen was compressed fiber, which was not very durable. Although wearing identification tags proved to be highly beneficial, the problem remained that bodies could be completely destroyed (ranging from total body disruption to outright disintegration), burned or buried by the type of high-explosive munitions routinely used in modern warfare or in destructions of vehicles. Additionally,
12441-410: The centuries have created many MIAs. The list is long and includes most battles which have ever been fought by any nation. The usual problems of identification caused by rapid decomposition were exacerbated by the fact that it was common practice to loot the remains of the dead for any valuables e.g. personal items and clothing. This made the already difficult task of identification even harder. Thereafter
12584-712: The circumstance was no dilemma, because the Drang nach Osten ("Drive towards the East") policy secretly remained in force, culminating on 18 December 1940 with Directive No. 21, Operation Barbarossa , approved on 3 February 1941, and scheduled for mid-May 1941. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union in June 1941, in Operation Barbarossa, the Red Army's ground forces had 303 divisions and 22 separate brigades (5.5 million soldiers) including 166 divisions and brigades (2.6 million) garrisoned in
12727-420: The civil war ended in 1922, ex-tsarists constituted 83% of the Red Army's divisional and corps commanders. In 1919, 612 "hardcore" deserters of the total 837,000 draft dodgers and deserters were executed following Trotsky's draconian measures. According to Figes, "a majority of deserters (most registered as "weak-willed") were handed back to the military authorities, and formed into units for transfer to one of
12870-423: The combat environment itself could increase the likelihood of missing combatants. The odds of a combatant being declared MIA could be increased by scenarios such as jungle warfare , submarine warfare , aircraft crashes in remote mountainous terrain, or sea battles. Alternatively, there could be administrative errors; the actual location of a temporary battlefield grave could be misidentified or forgotten due to
13013-457: The combined possible total of missing service personnel worldwide is closer to approximately 6600 and probably considerably fewer. Significantly, DPAA continues to list as "unaccounted for" the five Sullivan brothers —arguably the single most accounted-for group of WWII casualties ever recorded. Since DPAA alone designates such WWII personnel as the entire crew of the USS ; Arizona and most of
13156-555: The crew of the USS Oklahoma as both "missing" and "unaccounted for" it is likely that DPAA records keeping is irregular and prone to opinion rather than fact. The US Department of Defense DPAA gives dates for the Korean War from June 27, 1950, to January 31, 1955. Between June and October 1950, an estimated 700 civilian and US military POWs had been captured by the North Koreans. By August 1953 only 262 were still alive; one of
13299-470: The dead were routinely buried in mass graves and scant official records were retained. Notable examples include such medieval battles as Towton , the Hundred Years' War , The Battle of Alcácer Quibir where King Sebastian of Portugal disappeared, the later English Civil Wars , and Napoleonic Wars together with any battle taking place until around the middle of the 19th century. Starting around
13442-721: The defeated Provisional Government, monarchists, but mainly the White Movement of several different anti-socialist military confederations. "Red Army Day", 23 February 1918, has a two-fold historical significance: it was the first day of conscription (in Petrograd and Moscow), and the first day of combat against the occupying Imperial German Army . The Red Army controlled by the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic also against independence movements, invading and annexing newly independent states of
13585-532: The defense of Motherland and nation, employing historic exemplars of Russian courage and bravery against foreign aggressors. The anti-Nazi Great Patriotic War was conflated with the Patriotic War of 1812 against Napoleon , and historical Russian military heroes, such as Alexander Nevsky and Mikhail Kutuzov , appeared. Repression of the Russian Orthodox Church temporarily ceased, and priests revived
13728-499: The depth of the enemy's ground forces, inducing catastrophic defensive failure. The deep-battle doctrine relies upon aviation and armor advances with the expectation that maneuver warfare offers quick, efficient, and decisive victory. Marshal Tukhachevsky said that aerial warfare must be "employed against targets beyond the range of infantry , artillery , and other arms. For maximum tactical effect aircraft should be employed en masse , concentrated in time and space, against targets of
13871-422: The earlier French colonial era are sometimes discovered: in January 2009, the remains of at least 50 anti-French resistance fighters dating from circa 1946 to 1947 were discovered in graves located under a former market in central Hanoi. As of March 26,2024, according to the U.S. Department of Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency, US Military and Civilian personnel still unaccounted for number 1,577. According to
14014-628: The fate of U.S. service personnel still missing from the Korean War. In 1996, the Defense Department stated that there was no clear evidence any of the U.S. prisoners were still alive. As of 2005 , at least 500 South Korean prisoners of war were believed to be still detained by the North Korean regime. That same year the U.S. suspended talks with North Korea over the recovery of MIAs; the George W. Bush administration had broken off relations between
14157-430: The first US-South Korean Joint repatriation service was held: U.S. received the remains of 1 of 6 U.S. soldiers to be repatriated; South Korea received remains of two of 68 ROK Soldiers to be repatriated. On February 22, 2023, the second US-South Korean Joint repatriation service was held: U.S. received from South Korea the remains of 1 U.S. Soldier. On June 25, 2023, the third US-South Korean Joint repatriation service
14300-512: The fleet. Proshyan, Samoisky, Steinberg were also specified as people's commissars as well as Vladimir Bonch-Bruyevich from the Bureau of Commissars. At a joint meeting of Bolsheviks and Left Socialist-Revolutionaries , held on 22 February 1918, Krylenko remarked: "We have no army. The demoralized soldiers are fleeing, panic-stricken, as soon as they see a German helmet appear on the horizon, abandoning their artillery, convoys and all war material to
14443-561: The formations of the Red Army in that time. In the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, Soviet military theoreticians – led by Marshal Mikhail Tukhachevsky – developed the deep operation doctrine, a direct consequence of their experiences in the Polish–Soviet War and in the Russian Civil War. To achieve victory, deep operations envisage simultaneous corps - and army-size unit maneuvers of simultaneous parallel attacks throughout
14586-566: The former Russian Empire. This included three military campaigns against the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic , in January–February 1918, January–February 1919, and May–October 1920. Conquered nations were subsequently incorporated into the Soviet Union. In June 1918, Leon Trotsky abolished workers' control over the Red Army, replacing the election of officers with traditional army hierarchies and criminalizing dissent with
14729-552: The former Soviet Union after WW II, the Korean War and Cold War incidents," and that it "cannot, based on its investigation to date, rule out the possibility that one or more U.S. POWs from past wars or incidents are still being held somewhere within the borders of the former Soviet Union." In the Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 , two companies of the Indian Army's 15th Punjab (formerly First Patiala) were attacked by four brigades of
14872-453: The highest tactical importance." "To the Red army, Stalin has dealt a fearful blow. As a result of the latest judicial frameup, it has fallen several cubits in stature. The interests of the Soviet defense have been sacrificed in the interests of the self-preservation of the ruling clique." Trotsky on the Red Army purges of 1937. Red Army deep operations found their first formal expression in
15015-550: The humane treatment of wounded enemy soldiers) was influential. The Geneva Convention was in part inspired by the experiences of Henri Dunant after the Battle of Solferino in 1859 where 40,000 wounded soldiers had lingered in agony for lack of care, facilities and logistics to ameliorate their condition. Dunant also founded the Red Cross (in 1863), an organization dedicated to reduce the suffering of wounded in war and to ensure humane treatment of POWs. Summary executions of POWs (or in
15158-593: The hundreds of thousands, and possibly as many as two million. While the Soviets considered the surrender of Germany to be the end of the "Great Patriotic War", at the earlier Yalta Conference the Soviet Union agreed to enter the Pacific Theater portion of World War II within three months of the end of the war in Europe . This promise was reaffirmed at the Potsdam Conference held in July 1945. The Red Army began
15301-426: The institution of military political commissars . In the mid-1920s, the territorial principle of manning the Red Army was introduced. In each region, able-bodied men were called up for a limited period of active duty in territorial units, which constituted about half the army's strength, each year, for five years. The first call-up period was for three months, with one month a year thereafter. A regular cadre provided
15444-551: The issue, culminating with the largest and most thorough, the United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs of 1991–1993 led by Senators John Kerry , Bob Smith , and John McCain . Its unanimous conclusion found "no compelling evidence that proves that any American remains alive in captivity in Southeast Asia." This missing in action issue has been a highly emotional one to those involved, and
15587-417: The leadership knew what was happening, but did little to stop it. It was often rear echelon units who committed the rapes. According to professor Oleg Rzheshevsky, "4,148 Red Army officers and many privates were punished for committing atrocities". The exact number of German women and girls raped by Soviet troops during the war and occupation is uncertain, but historians estimate their numbers are likely in
15730-423: The life of any soldier and (almost any) officer of the unit to which he was attached. In 1942, Stalin established the penal battalions composed of gulag inmates, Soviet PoWs, disgraced soldiers, and deserters, for hazardous front-line duty as tramplers clearing Nazi minefields, et cetera. Given the dangers, the maximum sentence was three months. Likewise, the Soviet treatment of Red Army personnel captured by
15873-440: The losses, excluding POWs, were ethnic Russians (5,756,000), followed by ethnic Ukrainians (1,377,400). Of the 4.5 million missing, 939,700 rejoined the ranks in liberated Soviet territory, and a further 1,836,000 returned from German captivity. The official grand total of losses amounted to 8,668,400. This is the official total dead , but other estimates give the number of total dead up to almost 11 million. Officials at
16016-458: The mass grave at Fromelles (excavated in 2009) which contained the skeletal remains of no less than 250 Allied soldiers. Another example is the excavation which took place at Carspach ( Alsace region of France) in early 2012, which uncovered the remains of 21 German soldiers, lost in an underground shelter since 1918, after being buried by a large-calibre British artillery shell . Regardless, efforts are made to identify any remains found via
16159-525: The mechanized nature of modern warfare meant that a single battle could cause astounding numbers of casualties. For example, in 1916 over 300,000 Allied and German combatants were killed in the Battle of the Somme . A total of 19,240 British and Commonwealth combatants were killed in action or died of wounds on the first day of that battle alone. It is therefore not surprising that the Thiepval Memorial to
16302-419: The men involved survived their shootdown and, if not, efforts to recover their remains. POW/MIA activists played a role in pushing the U.S. government to improve its efforts in resolving the fates of the missing. Progress in doing so was slow until the mid-1980s, when relations between the U.S. and Vietnam began to improve and more cooperative efforts were undertaken. Normalization of U.S. relations with Vietnam in
16445-408: The mid-1990s was a culmination of this process. Considerable speculation and investigation has gone to a theory that a significant number of these men were captured as prisoners of war by Communist forces in the two countries and kept as live prisoners after the war's conclusion for the United States in 1973. A vocal group of POW/MIA activists maintains that there has been a concerted conspiracy by
16588-628: The northern portion of Korea . Other Red Army operations included the Soviet invasion of South Sakhalin , which was the Japanese portion of Sakhalin Island (and Russia had lost to Japan in 1905 in the aftermath of the Russo-Japanese War ), and the invasion of the Kuril Islands . Emperor Hirohito announced the surrender of Japan on 15 August. The commanding general of the Kwantung Army ordered
16731-602: The obvious military advantages, conclusively identifying the remains of missing service personnel is highly beneficial to the surviving relatives. Having positive identification makes it somewhat easier to come to terms with their loss and move on with their lives. Otherwise, some relatives may suspect that the missing person is still alive somewhere and may return someday. However, many of these identifying procedures are not typically used for combatants who are members of militias, mercenary armies, insurrections, and other irregular forces. The numerous wars which have occurred over
16874-829: The operation, the Reds' disposition was as follows: To the west of Kazan were the Fifth Army of the Eastern Front under Pēteris Slavens and the Volga Flotilla under Fyodor Raskolnikov ; to the east of Kazan was the Arsk group of the Second Army under Woldemar Azin . They opposed the Czechoslovak legion and KomUch People's Army under A. P. Stepanov. On September 7, the Right Bank Group of
17017-507: The over 770 burials are unknowns. Following the Paris Peace Accords of 1973, 591 U.S. prisoners of war were returned during Operation Homecoming . The U.S. listed about 1,350 Americans as prisoners of war or missing in action and roughly 1,200 Americans reported killed in action and body not recovered. By the early 1990s, this had been reduced to a total of 2,255 unaccounted for from the war, which constituted less than 4 percent of
17160-420: The past their abduction into slavery or human sacrifice ) are another common cause for casualties to become missing in action. The Hague Convention of 1899 was the first piece of codified International law to explicitly outlaw such collective punishment as it banned " no quarter ". Now any execution of POWs would require a formal court martial creating a paper trail — at least for armed forces that followed
17303-477: The rear armies or directly to the front". Even those registered as "malicious" deserters were returned to the ranks when the demand for reinforcements became desperate". Forges also noted that the Red Army instituted amnesty weeks to prohibit punitive measures against desertion which encouraged the voluntary return of 98,000–132,000 deserters to the army. In September 1918, the Bolshevik militias consolidated under
17446-558: The remaining troops as numbering 10 million. While the Imperial Russian Army was being taken apart, "it became apparent that the rag-tag Red Guard units and elements of the imperial army who had gone over the side of the Bolsheviks were quite inadequate to the task of defending the new government against external foes." Therefore, the Council of People's Commissars decided to form the Red Army on 28 January 1918. They envisioned
17589-563: The remains of 1 North Korean were repatriated to North Korea from the U.S. On Sept 27, 2018, the remains of 64 South Korean soldier MIAs were repatriated to South Korea from the United States. On June 25, 2020, the remains of 147 South Korean soldier MIAs were repatriated to South Korea from the United States. In July 2020 it is reported that 50,000 South Korean POWS were never repatriated from North Korea in 1953. The 1991–1993 United States Senate Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs investigated some outstanding issues and reports related to
17732-543: The remains of Americans lost in the conflict. The president of the group said in reference to the far more publicised efforts to find remains of U.S. dead from the Vietnam War , "Vietnam had advocates. This was an older generation, and they didn't know who to turn to." In 2008, investigators began to conduct searches on Tarawa atoll in the Pacific Ocean, trying to locate the remains of 139 American Marines , missing since
17875-538: The remains of about 5,000 U.S. combatants en masse in an apparent attempt to force the U.S. to restart MIA recovery. North Korea also gave a warning that "... North Korea blamed the United States 'hostile policy' for causing the remains recovery missions to end. The statement warned that "remains of American soldiers would soon be lost", as they were being "carried away en masse due to construction projects of hydro-power stations, land rezoning and other gigantic natureremaking projects, flood damage, etc…" As of December 2015
18018-668: The same day the office of the Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces was created, and initially assigned to Jukums Vācietis (and from July 1919 to Sergey Kamenev ). The Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces existed until April 1924, the end of Russian Civil War . In November 1923, after the establishment of the Soviet Union, the Russian Narkom of War Affairs was transformed into the Soviet Narkom of War and Marine Affairs. At
18161-569: The same time as the general Soviet move into the areas abandoned by the Ober Ost garrisons that were being withdrawn to Germany in the aftermath of World War I . This merged into the 1919–1921 Polish–Soviet War , in which the Red Army invaded Poland, reaching the central part of the country in 1920, but then suffered a resounding defeat in Warsaw , which put an end to the war. During the Polish Campaign
18304-670: The supreme command of the Revolutionary Military Council of the Republic ( Russian : Революционный Военный Совет , romanized : Revolyutsionny Voyenny Sovyet (Revvoyensoviet) ). The first chairman was Trotsky, and the first commander-in-chief was Jukums Vācietis of the Latvian Riflemen ; in July 1919 he was replaced by Sergey Kamenev . Soon afterwards Trotsky established the GRU (military intelligence) to provide political and military intelligence to Red Army commanders. Trotsky founded
18447-666: The survivors was Private First Class Wayne A. "Johnnie" Johnson, who secretly documented the deaths of 496 US military and Korean/European civilian POWs. Johnson would later be awarded the Silver Star medal for valor in 1996. In August 1953, General James Van Fleet , who had led US and UN forces in Korea, estimated that "a large percentage" of those service members listed as missing in action were alive. (Coincidentally, General Van Fleet's own son Captain James Alward Van Fleet Jr
18590-464: The time of the Crimean War (1853-1856), American Civil War (1861-1865), and Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871), it became more common to make formal efforts to identify individual soldiers. However, since there was no formal system of ID tags at the time, this could be difficult during the process of battlefield clearance. Even so, there had been a notable shift in perceptions e.g. where the remains of
18733-618: The time, the Imperial Russian Army had started to collapse. Approximately 23% (about 19 million) of the male population of the Russian Empire were mobilized; however, most of them were not equipped with any weapons and had support roles such as maintaining the lines of communication and the base areas. The Tsarist general Nikolay Dukhonin estimated that there had been 2 million deserters, 1.8 million dead, 5 million wounded and 2 million prisoners. He estimated
18876-423: The total 58,152 U.S. service members killed. This was by far the smallest proportion in the nation's history to that point. About 80 percent of those missing were airmen who were shot down over North Vietnam or Laos, usually over remote mountains, tropical rain forest, or water; the rest typically disappeared in confused fighting in dense jungles. Investigations of these incidents have involved determining whether
19019-619: The tradition of blessing arms before battle. To encourage the initiative of Red Army commanders, the CPSU temporarily abolished political commissars , reintroduced formal military ranks and decorations, and introduced the Guards unit concept. Exceptionally heroic or high-performing units earned the Guards title (for example 1st Guards Special Rifle Corps , 6th Guards Tank Army ), an elite designation denoting superior training, materiel, and pay. Punishment also
19162-463: The wake of the June 2018 meeting between U.S. President Trump and North Korean leader Kim, the U.S. received 55 boxes of MIA remains on July 27, 2018—the 65th anniversary of the Korean War truce. As of September 28, 2021, 77 Korean War MIAs have been identified from these 55 boxes. As of April 1, 2022 82 remains have been identified from 55 boxes; the total of remains recovered from 1996 to 2005 are 612 of whom 16 are yet unknown. On September 22, 2021,
19305-439: The war, that there was a vast conspiracy within the armed forces and the executive branch—spanning five administrations—to cover up all evidence of this betrayal, and that the governments of Communist Vietnam and Laos continued to hold an unspecified number of living American POWs, despite their adamant denials of this charge." Believers reject such notions; as Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Sydney Schanberg wrote in 1994, "It
19448-671: The western military districts. The Axis forces deployed on the Eastern Front consisted of 181 divisions and 18 brigades (3 million soldiers). Three Fronts, the Northwestern , Western , and Southwestern conducted the defense of the western borders of the USSR. In the first weeks of the Great Patriotic War (as it is known in Russia), the Wehrmacht defeated many Red Army units. The Red Army lost millions of men as prisoners and lost much of its pre-war matériel. Stalin increased mobilization, and by 1 August 1941, despite 46 divisions lost in combat,
19591-505: Was " Uch reditel'noe Sobranie", hence the abbreviation for Com mittee was "Komuch"). This threatened to form an alternative socialist government to the Bolshevik regime. In August 1918, the Whites occupied Kazan . Bolshevik forces were defeated, and they dispersed to Kazan's neighborhood. The Whites killed the remaining of Bolsheviks in the city, including Mullanur Waxitov . At the beginning of
19734-542: Was MIA from a United States Air Force mission over North Korea April 4, 1952.) The total number of Korean War MIAS/remains not recovered was 8,154. In 1954 during Operation Glory , the remains of 4,023 UN personnel were received from North Korea, of which 1,868 were Americans; of the recovered US remains, 848 could not be identified. Between 1982 and 2016, 781 unknown remains were recovered from North Korea, South Korea, China, Japan, and Punchbowl Cemetery in Hawaii, of which
19877-482: Was a war between the Soviet Union and Finland . It began with a Soviet offensive on 30 November 1939 – three months after the start of World War II and the Soviet invasion of Poland . The League of Nations deemed the attack illegal and expelled the Soviet Union on 14 December 1939. The Soviet forces led by Semyon Timoshenko had three times as many soldiers as the Finns, thirty times as many aircraft, and
20020-467: Was conditional upon "guarantees being given by a military or civil committee functioning within the territory of the Soviet Power, or by party or trade union committees or, in extreme cases, by two persons belonging to one of the above organizations." In the event of an entire unit wanting to join the Red Army, a "collective guarantee and the affirmative vote of all its members would be necessary." Because
20163-554: Was held: South Korea received the remains of 7 ROK soldiers of whom 1 was identified; previous repatriation ceremonies in 2012, 2016, 2018, 2020 and 2021 have returned over 200 ROK remains to South Korea. As of October 1,2024, according to the US Department of Defense the total of working number of MIA U.S. service members is 7,453. As of September 9,2024 the US Department of Defense has accounted for 700th Missing in Action soldier from
20306-540: Was killed on 20 November 1917. Nikolai Podvoisky was appointed as the Narkom of War Affairs, leaving Dybenko in charge of the Narkom of Marine Affairs and Ovseyenko – the expeditionary forces to the Southern Russia on 28 November 1917. The Bolsheviks also sent out their own representatives to replace front commanders of the Russian Imperial Army . After the signing of Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918,
20449-402: Was used; slackers, malingerers, those avoiding combat with self-inflicted wounds cowards, thieves, and deserters were disciplined with beatings, demotions, undesirable/dangerous duties, and summary execution by NKVD punitive detachments. At the same time, the osobist (NKVD military counter-intelligence officers) became a key Red Army figure with the power to condemn to death and to spare
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