No army in history has ever used human wave tactics. It is only something that people accuse their opponent's army of doing. Wasting lives, in of itself, isn't a strategy.
When it comes to WWII, the American public perception of the Eastern front has been essentially been written by the losing German generals. Halder, Donitz, etc., all wrote memoirs that were popular in the US while the cold war froze out the Soviet perspective. And what do you know...the generals realized they did everything right, Hitler was holding them back, and the only reason Germany lost was because Russia cheated by fighting back.
The German army before WW2 was constrained to a tiny size by the Treaty of Versailles so the German army spent a disproportionate amount of resources to keep an elite force with skilled officers. The Soviet Army was enormous and there was no experience and no trust in their officers and many were purged. The Soviet Army made mistakes during the war but they learned from those mistakes and made new strategies to compensate for their temporary weaknesses. Within a year, the veteran German officers were dead and the Soviets had experienced leaders and competent logistics.
Unlike the German Army, the Soviet officers had little experience (both generals and lower rank officers) and they could not be relied upon to take the initiative. Therefore, tactics were kept as simple as possible and the objectives of tactical maneuver took place at a "higher" level, with sophisticated strategy and multiple simultaneous battles which shocked and incapacitated their enemies. The Soviet doctrine placed a lot of emphasis on defensive battles, fortifications, and using superior firepower to not waste Soviet lives and instead efficiently drain the opponent's ability to wage war.
To an individual soldier in a battle, I think it could feel like human wave tactics, but as you say, the same is true of Gettysburg and the Somme.
Steven Kotkin knocks down many of these sorts of myths one by one in this fantastic lecture. He is a respected mainstream historian and anti-Stalin and anti-communist so it gives you an idea how much mainstream historians reject the framing.
No army in history has ever used human wave tactics. It is only something that people accuse their opponent's army of doing. Wasting lives, in of itself, isn't a strategy.
When it comes to WWII, the American public perception of the Eastern front has been essentially been written by the losing German generals. Halder, Donitz, etc., all wrote memoirs that were popular in the US while the cold war froze out the Soviet perspective. And what do you know...the generals realized they did everything right, Hitler was holding them back, and the only reason Germany lost was because Russia cheated by fighting back.
The German army before WW2 was constrained to a tiny size by the Treaty of Versailles so the German army spent a disproportionate amount of resources to keep an elite force with skilled officers. The Soviet Army was enormous and there was no experience and no trust in their officers and many were purged. The Soviet Army made mistakes during the war but they learned from those mistakes and made new strategies to compensate for their temporary weaknesses. Within a year, the veteran German officers were dead and the Soviets had experienced leaders and competent logistics.
Unlike the German Army, the Soviet officers had little experience (both generals and lower rank officers) and they could not be relied upon to take the initiative. Therefore, tactics were kept as simple as possible and the objectives of tactical maneuver took place at a "higher" level, with sophisticated strategy and multiple simultaneous battles which shocked and incapacitated their enemies. The Soviet doctrine placed a lot of emphasis on defensive battles, fortifications, and using superior firepower to not waste Soviet lives and instead efficiently drain the opponent's ability to wage war.
To an individual soldier in a battle, I think it could feel like human wave tactics, but as you say, the same is true of Gettysburg and the Somme.
Steven Kotkin knocks down many of these sorts of myths one by one in this fantastic lecture. He is a respected mainstream historian and anti-Stalin and anti-communist so it gives you an idea how much mainstream historians reject the framing.
https://youtu.be/1NV-hq2akCQ