Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

Discussions on WW2 in Eastern Europe.
Post Reply
Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#31

Post by Sid Guttridge » 23 Mar 2011, 12:41

Hi ljadw,

Death rates are not necessarily reflective of commitment. If they were, German Jews would statistically appear to be the most committed to the Reich. All its citizens were considered expendable by the Soviet leadership, but not all were equally reliable.

The unreliability of the Soviet minorities is illustrated by the very large numbers the Germans recruited, despite the fact that they were offered no political or national incentive to enlist. Even the Slovak Rapid Division (not itself always a byeword for reliability to Germany) took in many times more deserters from the Soviet division opposite it in the first half of 1942 than it lost itself. (see Axis Slovakia)

Because of the Nazis' racial policies and ambitions for lebensraum largely on the territory of Soviet minorities, Germany disqualified itself from taking full advantage of the discontent amoungst the Soviet minorities. They thus largely served the USSR by default, not because they were enthusiastic to do so.

Paul Atreides' link is interesting. It gives only 100 million Russians in the 1939 census, not the 120 million I thought. This would give a ratio of "reliable national cores" of only 5:4 in favour of the Russians over the Germans!

It is often overlooked that the Reich in 1939 was itself a big country compared with its neighbours. It had nearly twice the population of France or the metropolitan UK. It could conscript twice as many men as France annually. It was only when it ran into a larger foe, the USSR, that it found itself over extended. But, as we have seen above, this numerical inferiority to the USSR was rather less than is generally assumed, especially if the minorities issue is investigated.

ljadw
Member
Posts: 15584
Joined: 13 Jul 2009, 18:50

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#32

Post by ljadw » 23 Mar 2011, 13:26

the comparison with the German Jews is flawed,because ,they were not fighting for Germany .Whatever,
1)IMHO,the most (only ?)unreliable soldiers were originating from the between 1939-1940 annexed territories
2)are there any proofs that non Russians were more likely becoming deserters than Russians ?
3)as a third of the killed belonged to the non Russian nationalities,we can assume that these formed a third of the Red Army,unless one should claim that the non Russians had more killed than the Russians (and I like to see the proof for these claims)
4)are there any proofs that from those who(directly or indirectly) served in the Wehrmacht (Hiwi's....)there were relatively more non Russians than Russians ?


ljadw
Member
Posts: 15584
Joined: 13 Jul 2009, 18:50

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#33

Post by ljadw » 23 Mar 2011, 13:43

One hypothetical exemple for point 4 :If the Ukrainians formed 15 % of the number mobilized by the Red Army,what was the % of the Ukrainians serving in (whatever role) in the Wehrmacht)?
If it was 25 %,that would be a proof that,on an average,the Ukrainians were less reliable than the Russians .
But,I am doubting that such figures exist.
I am also doubting that there are any figures about the motives of those serving in the WM :as the conditions in the POW camps were not very good (an euphemism),survival would be a big motive,and IMHO,one should not overestimate political motives :was somebody hostile to the regime (and there were a lot of them) more likely to serve in the WM ?I doubt it very much.
Whatever,the theory that millions of non Russians were willing to serve in the WM,but that the stupid Hitler (always him 8-) ) was preventing this,is,IMHO,or a myth,or a non proved theory (is there a difference between both ? 8-) )

Art
Forum Staff
Posts: 7028
Joined: 04 Jun 2004, 20:49
Location: Moscow, Russia

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#34

Post by Art » 23 Mar 2011, 14:28

ljadw wrote:It's the opposite,Table 121 of "Russia and the USSR in the 20th century -the losses of the armed forces"is giving the % (following the nationality) of those that had been killed
Russians :66,4 % of the total number
Others :33,6 %
Ukrainians :15,9
Bielorussians:2.9
That is in fact the percentage of nationalities in the army not the percentage of losses, it can be seen if you read the text near the table. I don't know about the English edition, but it's Russian one it's said that the standard form of the name list of losses didn't provide for registering nationality (and even if it did, it should be added, nobody would make arithmetic operations with millions of records). The number given in the table are calculated by applying coefficients derived from the reports on national composition of the army as of 1 January 1943, 1944, 1945 to the total number of losses. The previous table (distribution of losses by age) is is compiled using the same method, although the authors don't explicitly admit it. It must be said that there were no documents that could give the breakdown of losses by nationality, but there were reports on social-demographic characteristics (age, nationality, education etc) of personnel (aka Form No.6) that were submitted twice a year as of 1 January and 1 July.

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#35

Post by Sid Guttridge » 23 Mar 2011, 14:52

Hi ljadw,

The Jewish example was tongue-in-cheek, to illustrate the flawed conclusions that mkay be drawn from an uninformed look at statistics.

I would agree that the most unreliable Soviet soldiers probably came from areas annexed in 1939-40. But they were used as cannon-fodder by the Red Army just the same.

This does not mean that others were not unreliable as well. How, if they were reliable, does one explain the hundreds of thousands of "Hiwis", the hundreds of Byelorussian, Ukrainian, Cossack, Georgian, Armenian and "Turkoman" security battalions enlisted by the Germans, or the divisions of "Galicians" and Turkomans which saw front line service. All existed even though the Germans offered almost none of them any political incentive by way of independence.

Nor does it explain the existence of Ukrainian nationalist bands not in direct German service.

As you will see from earlier posts, I am not arguing that the Red Army did not enlist minorities. Only that Germany failed to fully exploit their unreliability for ideological reasons on race and lebensraum.

The number of Russians compared with non-Russians serving in the Wehrmacht is skewed because most of Russia was not over run by the Wehrmacht and only at the very end of the war did the Germans recruit Russian prisoners into their own units.

By contrast, most of the minority populations were over run by 1942 and their own units quickly followed. It is worth pointing out that even though few Turkomans were over run, they were still recruited in large numbers from early on, unlike the Russians.

If the Russians were as unreliable as non-Russians, surely this should have masde the USSR even more vulnerable as it would have had no "Reliable national core"? This makes German failure even more culpable.

ljadw
Member
Posts: 15584
Joined: 13 Jul 2009, 18:50

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#36

Post by ljadw » 23 Mar 2011, 20:22

Art wrote:
ljadw wrote:It's the opposite,Table 121 of "Russia and the USSR in the 20th century -the losses of the armed forces"is giving the % (following the nationality) of those that had been killed
Russians :66,4 % of the total number
Others :33,6 %
Ukrainians :15,9
Bielorussians:2.9
That is in fact the percentage of nationalities in the army not the percentage of losses, it can be seen if you read the text near the table. There were no documents that could give the breakdown of losses by nationality, but there were reports on social-demographic characteristics (age, nationality, education etc) of personnel (aka Form No.6) that were submitted twice a year as of 1 January and 1 July.
I have no text near the table ( I only have excerpts from the net) ,it reads as such:
First column :nationality of those been killed the soldiers :Russians,Ukrainians,Belorusians,etc.
Second column:number of the losses (thous pers.):Russ:5756,Ukrainians :1377,4etc...
Third column:% to the total number the permanent losses(8.868.400):Russians:66.402,Ukrainians:15.89,etc ....
Maybe there is a problem with the translation (babelfish) ?

Art
Forum Staff
Posts: 7028
Joined: 04 Jun 2004, 20:49
Location: Moscow, Russia

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#37

Post by Art » 23 Mar 2011, 20:25

I've edited the previous message, if you use the online Russian text see the comment to the table:
http://rus-sky.com/history/library/w/w05.htm#49

User avatar
Qvist
Member
Posts: 7836
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 17:59
Location: Europe

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#38

Post by Qvist » 25 Mar 2011, 12:17

MajorT wrote:Hi ljadw,

If you apply Paul Atreides Soviet figures (which average 1,089,683 per year) with your for the Germans (which average 550,000 per year), we get almost a 2:1 ratio.

If one were then to subtract the non-Russian minorities, who amounted to about one third of the total, one is left with a Russian:German ratio of about 1.4:1.

As I said earlier, "For nationalist reasons, the largely reliable core of the Third Reich and the USSR came down to about 80 million Germans and 120 million Russians. The smaller peoples standing between them mostly wanted independence and had more or less negotiable loyalties. In the event, Soviet policy made them more available cannon-fodder for the USSR than Nazi policy did for Germany."
Why on earth should anyone subtract "non-russian minorities"? They made up a very substantial part of Red Army manpower, and the notion of the non-russians as a sort available-to-both undecided group with "negotioable loyalties" is simply nonsense.



Attempts at discussing manpower issues in the east on the basis of global and scantily understood statistics invariably tend to be subject to a number of predictable pitfalls, and this thread has already plunged into most of them. I'd recommend keeping a few things in mind:

1. Comparing the overall manpower size of military establishments doesn't get you very far, because a large portion of the German Wehrmacht was devoted to other purposes than the war in the East.

2. Static comparison of strength figures tell only a part of the story. Soviet losses consistently vastly exceeded the German, hence the maintenance of their strength levels required the mobilisatoin of much more men than was the case for the German side.

3. When both of these things are taken into account, it is very quickly clear that the Soviet manpower stream was indeed massively larger than the flow of German personnell to the Eastern Front. I haven't done the big global calculus, but for many periods of the war that flow was in the area of ten times larger than the German, and I should think that for the war as a whole it would be somewhere between five times and ten times larger. Quite simply, a vastly larger number of men were made available to the Red Army than to the Ostheer over the course of the eastern campaign. There is no question whatsoever of any near-parity in this regard in the way that one can create an illusion of by juggling population figures.

4. There were fundamental structural differences between the two sides in the manpower field which had a vast effect on the availability of military manpower. In simple terms, the Soviet war effort was unidimensionally geared to support a major land camapign against Germany, and was waged with a higher degree of economic mobilisation than with any other combatant. This was partly a result of a higher readiness to accept sacrifices (such as famine-like conditions over protracted periods) and partly a possibility opened up by the fact that strategic niches could be filled wholly or partly by lend-lease. The German war effort was multi-dimensional, and involved additionally major and complex sea and air campaigns in the West and an additional two fronts, both of whom drew major resources also on the land forces side from mid-43 on - all of which required vast industrial support which again laid claim to vast numbers of men. The availability of manpower was severely strained already in 1941 - it was only the massive influx of foreign labor subsequently that made possible the comparatively paltry 1-2 million man influx the Wehrmacht received anually.

5. What in point of actual fact affected the war in the east was not the overall number of men in a German or Soviet uniform somewhere in the world, but the combat power deployed by the main operational formations in the East - the Fronts and the AOKs. This is a more complex calculation, and also not one that can be reduced to a raw manpower figure.

User avatar
Qvist
Member
Posts: 7836
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 17:59
Location: Europe

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#39

Post by Qvist » 25 Mar 2011, 12:37

MajorT wrote:Hi ljadw,

Death rates are not necessarily reflective of commitment. If they were, German Jews would statistically appear to be the most committed to the Reich. All its citizens were considered expendable by the Soviet leadership, but not all were equally reliable.

The unreliability of the Soviet minorities is illustrated by the very large numbers the Germans recruited, despite the fact that they were offered no political or national incentive to enlist. Even the Slovak Rapid Division (not itself always a byeword for reliability to Germany) took in many times more deserters from the Soviet division opposite it in the first half of 1942 than it lost itself. (see Axis Slovakia)

Because of the Nazis' racial policies and ambitions for lebensraum largely on the territory of Soviet minorities, Germany disqualified itself from taking full advantage of the discontent amoungst the Soviet minorities. They thus largely served the USSR by default, not because they were enthusiastic to do so.

Paul Atreides' link is interesting. It gives only 100 million Russians in the 1939 census, not the 120 million I thought. This would give a ratio of "reliable national cores" of only 5:4 in favour of the Russians over the Germans!

It is often overlooked that the Reich in 1939 was itself a big country compared with its neighbours. It had nearly twice the population of France or the metropolitan UK. It could conscript twice as many men as France annually. It was only when it ran into a larger foe, the USSR, that it found itself over extended. But, as we have seen above, this numerical inferiority to the USSR was rather less than is generally assumed, especially if the minorities issue is investigated.

That's because you have no grip on how population figures relate to the reality of the issues at hand. Also, most of the above relies on simplistic assumptions that are simply wrong.

The point is not whether all Soviet nationalities were equally reliable. Clearly, they weren't. The point is that non-Russian manpower was utilised by the Red Army on a large scale, and generally proved sufficiently reliable to continue to be so, for the entire duration of the war. Hence, there is no good reason why they should not be considered as part of the Soviet manpower pool - something which they undisputably were.

The same cannot be said for the other side. The Soviet nationals who were recruited into eastern volunteer units in the German army consistently proved so unreliable that they were systematically limited to behind-the-front anti partisan operations. Even in that role they proved increasingly a liability. By the fall of 1943, it had gotten so bad that the Germans decided they were more a risk than an asset, and over the next months they were withdrawn from the east wholesale, to the West, where it was hoped they'd prove more loyal. Which they didn't, of course. Hence, the German experience massively and uniformly shows that these populations did NOT represent a viable military manpower pool for the German war effort. They had some use as Hiwis integrated in German formations, but that's about as far as it went.

Of course, if we're prepared to assume that the nazi party was instead the fluffy bunny party who was prepared to offer every eastern minority a life of riches and freedom and got people to believe in it, that might have been different. But that's twilight zone. The nazis were nazis - they had no success winning hearts and minds even where they actually tried to (such as in Scandinavia), and even a willingness to contemplate some sort of independent existence for the eastern nationalities would have amounted to an earthquake in their worldview. It's simply beyond the range of historical options.

Sid Guttridge
Member
Posts: 10158
Joined: 12 Jun 2008, 12:19

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#40

Post by Sid Guttridge » 25 Mar 2011, 13:51

Hi Qvist,

You will find that some of your points were already advanced by me early on in the thread and are not in dispute.

Nazi Germany was a German nationalist state. In late 1941 the hitherto internationalist USSR, which had been reduced in extremis to an even more predominantly Russian rump, began to cultivate Russian nationalist sentiment itself. I would argue that the 80 million Germans and 100/120 million Russians represent the largely reliable national cores of both empires. All the peoples between them had more or less negotiable loyalties and were recruited by both sides. The difference is that the USSR exploited them more fully than did Germany.

My main point is that initially the Germans disqualified themselves from making more use of discontented Soviet minority manpower due to their racial and lebensraum policies, which didn't simply deny them political incentives, but in some cases threatened their national existence. By the time the Nazi hierarchy had swallowed their official objections to recruiting them in late 1942 the war was already at stalemate. The moment had passed.

"The German experience" does not "massively and uniformly shows that these populations did NOT represent a viable military manpower pool for the German war effort." because the Nazis never attempted to exploit them at the opportune moment. The Hiwis you mention were a case in point. They were recruited from late 1941 by individual army formations against the specific instructions of the Nazi hierarchy. They only officially acquiesced to their existence in the second half of 1942. Their own political hang-ups meant that the Nazis never properly explored the possibilities of exploiting the Soviet minorities. By the time they began to address some of their various national political ambitions it was 1945!

User avatar
Qvist
Member
Posts: 7836
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 17:59
Location: Europe

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#41

Post by Qvist » 25 Mar 2011, 14:30

Nazi Germany was a German nationalist state. In late 1941 the hitherto internationalist USSR, which had been reduced in extremis to an even more predominantly Russian rump, began to cultivate Russian nationalist sentiment itself. I would argue that the 80 million Germans and 100/120 million Russians represent the largely reliable national cores of both empires. All the peoples between them had more or less negotiable loyalties and were recruited by both sides. The difference is that the USSR exploited them more fully than did Germany.
You can argue as much as you like - the simple fact was that these people of supposedly "negotiable loyalty" consituted a major part of the Red Army's manpower from the beginning of the war to the end of it, and simultaneously made no remotely comparable or very significant contribution to German military manpower. Given this, it is simply obfuscation to say that "the USSR exploited them more fully than Germany", as if they were a resource comparably availble to both sides.
My main point is that initially the Germans disqualified themselves from making more use of discontented Soviet minority manpower due to their racial and lebensraum policies, which didn't simply deny them political incentives, but in some cases threatened their national existence. By the time the Nazi hierarchy had swallowed their official objections to recruiting them in late 1942 the war was already at stalemate. The moment had passed.
That point overlooks that the nature of the Germans' approach to these minorities were inherent and central to the basic outlook of the German regime, and also to the whole rationale of Barbarossa. You are presupposing options for the Germans that they did not have and could not have had without being something entirely different from what they in fact were, or without Barbarossa being something completely different than what it was. This removes your whole line of reasoning from any relevance with regard to the historical issues under discussion. And even if that had not been the case, the basis for assuming that it would have been possible to utilise these people as efficient military manpower for the German army would still be essentially entirely speculative.
"The German experience" does not "massively and uniformly shows that these populations did NOT represent a viable military manpower pool for the German war effort." because the Nazis never attempted to exploit them at the opportune moment. The Hiwis you mention were a case in point. They were recruited from late 1941 by individual army formations against the specific instructions of the Nazi hierarchy. They only officially acquiesced to their existence in the second half of 1942. Their own political hang-ups meant that the Nazis never properly explored the possibilities of exploiting the Soviet minorities. By the time they began to address some of their various national political ambitions it was 1945
[/quote]

I'm sorry, but that's simply ignorant. By 1942-43, several hundred thousand Soviet citizens were serving in some capacity with the German armed forces, with strong efforts being made to recruit as many as possible. Large shortfalls in Hiwis was a consistent and major feature since they began to be recorded. And in any case, the experience with these was consistently that they could not be relied upon in combat functions. As early as the fall of 1943, Osteinheiten could not generally even be relied upon not to mutiny and desert if they were kept well back from the front - and hence, as I keep pointing out, they were withdrawn from the East altogether because they were more a risk than an asset. Let me repeat: The conclusion drawn after two years experience of employing Soviet volunteers by the hundreds of thousands and in all sorts of roles was that this was feasible only in certain limited functions when dispersed within German units. Even batallion-sized Osteinheiten with German cadres were more likely to be a risk than to help, even if they were employed in the rear without the pressure of heavy combat and the easy opportunity to desert.

The Germans did not lack large scale experience with using Soviet volunteers, in limited roles or in heavy combat, in small groups or in large units. And that experience unequivocally showed that within the general parameters actually existing in the East, eastern manpower did not represent a generally viable resource for the German army, other than for specific and limited roles and even that only with partial suitability.
Last edited by Qvist on 25 Mar 2011, 16:28, edited 2 times in total.

ljadw
Member
Posts: 15584
Joined: 13 Jul 2009, 18:50

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#42

Post by ljadw » 25 Mar 2011, 15:57

If I may add about the unreability of the Ostunits :in april 1945,on the Dutch island of Texel,a Georgian batallion rebelled and killed more than 400 Germans .

CJK1990
Member
Posts: 350
Joined: 10 Apr 2010, 21:15

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#43

Post by CJK1990 » 25 Mar 2011, 18:23

Qvist--how much more manpower did they really have? As I said earlier, there were about 130 million Soviets under Stalin's control against 115 million Axis. Secondary fronts didn't become a serious issue for the Germans until mid-1943.

ljadw
Member
Posts: 15584
Joined: 13 Jul 2009, 18:50

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#44

Post by ljadw » 25 Mar 2011, 19:44

The secundary fronts were already a big problem in 1941 :less aircraft and artillery than in 1940 and in june 1941,the contibution of the German allies was minimal .,

User avatar
Qvist
Member
Posts: 7836
Joined: 11 Mar 2002, 17:59
Location: Europe

Re: Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

#45

Post by Qvist » 25 Mar 2011, 20:40

CJK1990 wrote:Qvist--how much more manpower did they really have? As I said earlier, there were about 130 million Soviets under Stalin's control against 115 million Axis. Secondary fronts didn't become a serious issue for the Germans until mid-1943.
It's not a question of how much more manpower they had, it's a question of how many more men they were able to feed into the campaign in the East. You can gain a fair understanding of that very simply. The Red Army started the war with less than 3 million men in their operational fronts and ended 1944 with roughly 6 million. In between, they suffered roughly 27 million casualties, which means that during that period they added some 30 million men to their forces - including, of course, returning wounded and sick. The Germans began the campaign with roughly the same number of men, and at the end of 1944 fielded roughly 2 million men. In the interval they had, what, 5-6 million casualties, hence added something in the vicinity of 5 million men over that period. You can even give or take a few million on either side, it doesn't really affect the basic issue. These were only procured with enormous difficulty and as a result of the conscription of millions of foreign laborers and the lowering of military age.

It is not remotely in question that the Soviet manpower stream in the East dwarfed the German - that is clear from the most basic data. It is only a question of accounting for how and why. On the German side, as already mentioned, they were essentialy already dry when Barbarossa started, except for the new age classes growing into military age and returning convalescents, which was entirely insufficient. They didn't need any additional drain from other fronts to be in trouble - when that kicked in, it simply made things even more intolerable. The key reason for this is that German industry occupied many million able-bodied men who could not be released without hurting armaments output or other critical economic activity. In this sense, other fronts was in fact already having a huge effect on the manpower situation, though mainly in the form of millions of workers devoted to supporting the hugely resource-demanding aerial and naval campaigns in the West and South. They were gradually tapped into as foreign workers were brought in, but Germany simply didn't have more than a few million more men to draft, additional to what they already had in the field in the summer of 1941, mobilised to the hilt as they were (given the labour resources they then had).

The Soviets did - for several reasons. Firstly, the USSR only moved to a war footing as war broke out - they could tap into the same sort of slack that the GErmans did on the outbreak of war in 1939. Their armaments industry was smaller than the German, the rest of their economy smaller still and living conditions was cut more mercilessly. The economy was generally less reliant on highly qualified labor, hence workers could more easily be replaced inexperienced labor. Women participated economically to a much greater degree than in any other combatant nation. The population was younger. Proportionately more men could be freed up for the military war effort, all of them could be devoted to the land campaign against Germany and they could be mobilised very quickly because the USSR had an enormous number of trained reservists. Eventually, lend/lease helped to buffer against some of the worst effects of the merciless plundering of the economy for men, for instance through food deliveries. As the RA went on the offensive and regained ground, they could - and did - draw on manpower from the liberated areas. It all added up.

In summation - the notion that you have two states with 80 and 120 million people both starting on square one and with a corresponding ability to devote new men to an ongoing war in the East doesn't survive any contact with realities of the situation. The Germans were severely pressed to come up with ANY significant additional manpower if Barbarossa couldn't be finished in a few months.

Post Reply

Return to “WW2 in Eastern Europe”