Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

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Hikari
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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#31

Post by Hikari » 25 May 2020, 04:05

Max Payload wrote:
20 May 2020, 18:52
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
20 May 2020, 12:57
During the immediate post-Taifun period, AGC captured ~4,500 PoW/day.

During November 15 to Jan 12, 1942 AGC captured only 71,827 PoW or ~1,260/day. Although the Red Army was advancing for most of the later period, the Ostheer was launching frequent counterattacks.

This seems pretty clear evidence that Red Army soldiers were much more willing to surrender tactically during the post-Taifun period than either earlier in Barbarossa or later, after the Red Army started pushing the Germans back. It indicates that the Red Army may have been on the brink of morale collapse in October '41, which the fall of Moscow might have accelerated.
You are mis-quoting the figures (page116).
71,827 prisoners is for the period 15 Nov - 1 Dec (15.11 - 1.12.41), i.e. 16 days, not the 58 days to 12-Jan.
This equates to 4,490 per day, not 1,260, and is pretty much identical to the earlier post-Typhoon rate of late Oct - early Nov.
So the surrender rate of the ‘demoralised’ Soviet armies post Typhoon was the same of that of the resurgent armies of late November that brought AGC’s advance to a halt.
I think it's because the mud, not the Soviet army has shown greater strength.

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#32

Post by Yuri » 26 May 2020, 20:18

Max Payload wrote:
22 May 2020, 11:02
Wouldn’t a more direct and meaningful measure of morale be desertion/defection rates, which, IIRC Geoffrey Jukes cited as being consistently high (particularly among non-Russian personnel) up until the early spring of ‘43, and relatively low thereafter.
This is a more significant measure.
At first glance, it seems a paradox, but in most cases, a large number of PoWs is a consequence of high combat spirit.
If you prioritize the measures that determine the combat spirit of troops, then the measure "number of PoWs" will be at the very end of the list. The priority of both the measure of "desertion" and the measure of "defection" is significantly higher than the measure of "number of PoWs". However, if the Red Army is similar to the armies of other countries in respect of the measure of "desertion", the same cannot be said for the measure of "defection". We must remember that the name "The Red Army" is an abbreviated name, and the full name is "The Workers-Peasants' Red Army". This army is the product of a civil war that ended less than twenty years before the start of the Great Patriotic war. The civil war had a great impact and there were a large number of Russian emigrants who were politically hostile to the Red Army. Some people from the "defection" category went over to the side of the red Army's enemies not because they had low combat spirit, but because they wanted to fight against the Red Army. In the first two years, everyone who wanted to switch sides realized this desire. In a sense, the Red Army is comparable to the army of Paten and the army of de Gaulle in terms the measure of "defection". But of course there is no direct analogy.


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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#33

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 27 May 2020, 08:13

Yuri wrote: a large number of PoWs is a consequence of high combat spirit.
That is one hell of a claim. What is your argument?

By this standard, Graziani's army facing Operation Compass had extremely high fighting spirit while the Japanese who defended Pacific Islands to the last man - with insignificant POW's - were peaceniks. The fighting spirit of the German Army reached its peak in April-May '45, when most were trying to surrender to the Wallies. Maybe if the Germans had actually fought with some spirit during Barbarossa (only 10,500 PoW's in '41) they might have won.
If you prioritize the measures that determine the combat spirit of troops, then the measure "number of PoWs" will be at the very end of the list.
Another claim; what's your argument?
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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#34

Post by Yuri » 27 May 2020, 18:08

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
27 May 2020, 08:13
Yuri wrote: a large number of PoWs is a consequence of high combat spirit.
That is one hell of a claim. What is your argument?
Dear, TMP!
All due to the fact that You are not fully quoting my phrase. Full phrase: "At first glance, it seems a paradox, but in most cases, a large number of PoWs is a consequence of high combat spirit".
"In most cases", it does not mean "in all cases".
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
27 May 2020, 08:13
By this standard, Graziani's army facing Operation Compass had extremely high fighting spirit while the Japanese who defended Pacific Islands to the last man - with insignificant POW's - were peaceniks. The fighting spirit of the German Army reached its peak in April-May '45, when most were trying to surrender to the Wallies. Maybe if the Germans had actually fought with some spirit during Barbarossa (only 10,500 PoW's in '41) they might have won.
If you prioritize the measures that determine the combat spirit of troops, then the measure "number of PoWs" will be at the very end of the list.
Another claim; what's your argument?
I did not study the topic "The combat spirit and morale of solders of the Italian armed forces during the war for the North African colonies". It was possible that the combat spirit of troops of the Italian soldiers was at a high level, but high moral principles did not allow Italian soldiers to participate in the war for the colonies. The war in North Africa was a war in the colonies, it was a war for the colonies, it was a colonial war.
I don't say that because I don't know, I haven't studied it.
But what I am almost certain of is that if the combat spirit of the European infantry ( primarily German, Romanian, and Finnish infantry) was higher than it has been historically, their losses in 1941 would be about 1,000,000 killed and about 500,000 PoWs, and they (i.e. the Europeans) would most likely have captured Moscow by the end of September or early October 1941.
Another thing is that the final for them (that is, for the Europeans) was the same as it was historically, but not in May 1945, but in May 1944 or even in December 1943.

As I mentioned earlier, I have not yet finished studying the topic of the red Army's combat spirit and morale, and it will take me another year or a year and a half to do so.
Therefore, at the moment, I am not ready to fully participate in the discussion and defend my point of view based on documents and facts. I will watch what you write here and only occasionally make comments.

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#35

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 27 May 2020, 21:27

Yuri wrote:"In most cases", it does not mean "in all cases".
So far "most cases" - or even "significant cases" - doesn't seem supported either. Rather, it seems to me that more soldiers surrender (most cases, not all cases) when a country's war is not going well.
I have not yet finished studying the topic of the red Army's combat spirit and morale, and it will take me another year or a year and a half to do so.
Glad you're studying this topic and hope you'll share your research findings here. Why and how the Red Army and the SU generally persisted in the face of so much death and privation still requires some explanation. In the West, the stereotype has been that Stalinist repression was more effective than Czarist repression at compelling resistance but, given the many opportunities to shirk even in Stalin's SU, I find that explanation lacking. I suspect that the Communist ethos played a much larger role in creating the required social solidarity than the capitalist West has been willing to admit.
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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#36

Post by Max Payload » 29 May 2020, 11:35

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
27 May 2020, 21:27
I suspect that the Communist ethos played a much larger role in creating the required social solidarity than the capitalist West has been willing to admit.
For the majority I suspect that bloody-minded patriotism and a stoic determination to defend hearth and kin took precedence over any willingness to suffer and die for the Party. Perhaps that’s something that Yuri’s study might clarify, but it seems that Soviet domestic propaganda in the early period of the war switched rapidly from calls for the defence of Bolshevism to exhorting soldiers to rally to the defence of family.

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#37

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 29 May 2020, 13:35

Max Payload wrote:
29 May 2020, 11:35
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
27 May 2020, 21:27
I suspect that the Communist ethos played a much larger role in creating the required social solidarity than the capitalist West has been willing to admit.
For the majority I suspect that bloody-minded patriotism and a stoic determination to defend hearth and kin took precedence over any willingness to suffer and die for the Party. Perhaps that’s something that Yuri’s study might clarify, but it seems that Soviet domestic propaganda in the early period of the war switched rapidly from calls for the defence of Bolshevism to exhorting soldiers to rally to the defence of family.
Yeah I know that line but it raises an obvious question:

Why didn't hearth and kin similarly motivate the same peoples 25 years earlier?

There are surely multiple necessary conditions and no single sufficient condition for something like the SU's WW2 effort. Patriotism is one necessary condition but social solidarity - a willingness to suffer with/for one's compatriots and under some of their direction- collapsed in 1917 but not in '42/'43 despite arguably worse material conditions. The easy patriotism line is too simplistic to explain these differences.
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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#38

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 31 May 2020, 10:57

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
29 May 2020, 13:35

Why didn't hearth and kin similarly motivate the same peoples 25 years earlier?
I don't know how quickly information about the deliberate starvation of Soviet prisoners became widely known in the rest of the Red Army? I'm guessing that knowledge of the exterminatory treatment that they could expect from the Wehrmacht if captured probably inspired some to fight on.

Regards

Tom

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#39

Post by stg 44 » 31 May 2020, 17:48

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
31 May 2020, 10:57
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
29 May 2020, 13:35

Why didn't hearth and kin similarly motivate the same peoples 25 years earlier?
I don't know how quickly information about the deliberate starvation of Soviet prisoners became widely known in the rest of the Red Army? I'm guessing that knowledge of the exterminatory treatment that they could expect from the Wehrmacht if captured probably inspired some to fight on.

Regards

Tom
Given Soviet surrender rates into early 1943 that doesn't seem to have deterred Soviet troops from surrendering until the war situation improved to the point that surrender was a worse option than fighting. Likely the big factor was the encirclements and general war situation of 1941 and 1942 that prompted the mass surrenders. By summer 1943 things had improved so much for the average Soviet soldier and there weren't any significant encirclements by the Germans that surrender rates dropped off to very low rates compared to earlier. Meanwhile as Soviet pockets of German/Axis troops started to happen in larger numbers their surrender rates increased, though they remained low overall until 1945 out of fear of what would happen to them if they did surrender.

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#40

Post by Max Payload » 01 Jun 2020, 00:36

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
29 May 2020, 13:35
Yeah I know that line but it raises an obvious question:

Why didn't hearth and kin similarly motivate the same peoples 25 years earlier?
Do you have evidence that the Tsar’s soldiers in the first two years of WW1 were less motivated than Stalin’s soldiers in the first two years of WW2? If so I’d be interested to see it. You could cite Tannenberg and the great summer retreat of 1915 but they were no worse than the great encirclements of 1941 or the collapse of the Red Army’s southern wing in 1942.
A major subsequent difference was that after two years of war it was obvious that the tide had turned in WW2 whereas in WW1, despite Brusilov’s offensive, Russian economic mismanagement and military/industrial inefficiency signalled nothing but more of the same privations with no end in sight.

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#41

Post by Ружичасти Слон » 04 Jun 2020, 15:51

Max Payload wrote:
29 May 2020, 11:35
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
27 May 2020, 21:27
I suspect that the Communist ethos played a much larger role in creating the required social solidarity than the capitalist West has been willing to admit.
For the majority I suspect that bloody-minded patriotism and a stoic determination to defend hearth and kin took precedence over any willingness to suffer and die for the Party. Perhaps that’s something that Yuri’s study might clarify, but it seems that Soviet domestic propaganda in the early period of the war switched rapidly from calls for the defence of Bolshevism to exhorting soldiers to rally to the defence of family.
Walter in Germany embassy in Moskau was write about.
Die Sowjet-Union wird einen Angriffskrieg gegen Deutschland auf keinen Fall wagen. Bei einem Verteidigungskrieg würde zweifellos die ganze Bevölkerung hinter der Regierung stehen. Der in den letzten Jahren mit allen Mitteln geförderte Patriotismus für die Idee des Vaterlandes „Mütterchen Rußland" hat in der Bevölkerung tiefe Wurzeln geschlagen. Wenn es auch bei der Abneigung des Russen gegen jeden Krieg schwierig sein würde, Offensiv-Handlungen durchzuführen, so würden zweifellos trotz der sofort eintretenden Niederlagen, Rückzügen und Verlusten Entbehrungen bis zu einem unwahrscheinlich hohem Grade durchgehalten werden. Irgendwelche Zersetzungs-Erscheinungen der Be-völkerung oder in der Armee auf sozialer oder nationaler Basis hat die Regie-rung nicht zu fürchten. Vor allem ist die Gefahr nationaler Zersetzung durch die Liquidierung aller Kreise mit irgendwelchen Aspirationen auf nationale Selbständigkeit beseitigt, umsomehr als solchen Tendenzen jede Organisation und alle Machtmittel fehlen würden. Während des ganzen finnischen Feld-zuges, mit seinen starken Verlusten und Rückschlägen ist kein Fall von Meuterei oder oppositionellen Störungen im Lande zu bemerken gewesen. Jede eventuelle Opposition würde außerdem von der vorzüglich ausgerüsteten und disziplinier-ten N.K.W.D.-Armee ohne weiters mit brutalsten Mitteln unterdrückt werden.
Halder was read document on 2.november 1940.

Why was be surprise for Red Army to fight so much hard.

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#42

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 29 Jun 2020, 13:37

Tom from Cornwall wrote:
31 May 2020, 10:57
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
29 May 2020, 13:35

Why didn't hearth and kin similarly motivate the same peoples 25 years earlier?
I don't know how quickly information about the deliberate starvation of Soviet prisoners became widely known in the rest of the Red Army? I'm guessing that knowledge of the exterminatory treatment that they could expect from the Wehrmacht if captured probably inspired some to fight on.

Regards

Tom
...was reading Mark Harrison's Econimics of WW1, which reminded me of this thread.

You and a few others are missing the main point of the difference between SU and Czarist Russia. It wasn't the armies, it was the societies. Within reason, it didn't matter how well/poorly the Russian armies fought; Germany was cooked if they just kept fighting.

An economist (I forget who) called WW1 Russia's collapse the "secession of the peasantry": the peasants stopped delivering food to the state, which caused urban famine and collapse (same thing happened in Germany and Austria a bit later). Arguably the average food supply was worse, on average, in '42 than in '17 but the peasants didn't "secede" - they kept delivering enough food to enable most Soviet workers not to starve.

That's the key difference, not the soldiers. WW1 Germans revolted/mutinied just like the Russians once the social underpinnings of the military collapsed; it would have been the same story in other countries given similar material conditions.

The question is why Soviet society was so much more resilient than Czarist. Compulsion played a part, yes. But it seems obvious that Communism engendered some feeling of social solidarity greater than that engendered by the brutally exploitative, anachronistic Czarist system - which preserved de facto much of the feudal structures eradicated de jure only 50 years earlier.

None of that is to say that a brutally exploitative capitalist society like Gilded Age America wouldn't have produced similar results. Whatever the flaws of either system; they're both better for the poor than feudalism. Just saying that Communism added something to Russia that Czarism lacked. I'd further venture that such a transformation couldn't have occurred in just a generation via market liberalization (just look at Russia now) but that's just a venture.
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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#43

Post by Tom from Cornwall » 29 Jun 2020, 20:21

TheMarcksPlan wrote:
29 Jun 2020, 13:37
You and a few others are missing the main point of the difference between SU and Czarist Russia. It wasn't the armies, it was the societies.
Hi,

Perhaps so, but I do think that you are also missing a couple of key points... :D

Firstly, I make no pretensions at all about having studied the combat motivation of the Soviet soldier - hence my question; so if I have missed some key points I wouldn't be at all shocked to hear it. :wink:

I've recently read Timothy Snyder's Bloodlands though so do have some idea of the nature of both the Nazi and Soviet systems and the levels of terror that both could impose on their own people, alongside, of course, their essentially genocidal policies towards their perceived "enemies".

The other main point that you are missing, in my humble opinion, is of the difference in the "enemies" of the Soviet Union and Czarist Russia and the ideological/political religion aspect of the war that the Soviet state fought with the Nazis.
TheMarcksPlan wrote:
29 Jun 2020, 13:37
Arguably the average food supply was worse, on average, in '42 than in '17 but the peasants didn't "secede" - they kept delivering enough food to enable most Soviet workers not to starve.
Snyder explains very cogently how little choice the Soviet "peasants" had about what happened to their food, and of course all that Lend-Lease food was centrally controlled in the first place.

Regards

Tom

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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#44

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 12 Aug 2020, 09:38

As a relative newcomer to this field, I'm still in the stage of learning great new things and sometimes, of learning that others have investigated ideas I reached on my own. That's one of the great pleasures of reading - to find somewhere else in the world a mind that is thinking like yours.

In this case, the relevant idea - that the rate of PoW capture is correlated negatively with enemy morale - seemed so obvious and predictable to me that I didn't credit myself with sharing some brilliant insight.

So I was surprised by vehement pushback to this simple idea, such as:
Richard Anderson wrote:You got to admire the logical disconnects. For example, the 12th Army Group G-1 mentions that a single division in First U.S. Army captured 3,813 German PoW over a single day in latter August '44 - so after Cobra's breakthrough. They were from many different German SS and Heer divisions, so not green militias whose tactical surrender would be less surprising. Was this a representative sample of German morale, post-Cobra? Or another division that captured 4,853 in early September.
Others objected as well but now that I've read the Dupuy Institute's report on enemy capture rates, which states:
There is a definite impact on capture rates caused by a force having lower morale, unit cohesion, motivation, and combat effectiveness.


http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/e-4epw1and2final.pdf at 86

So I've found a similarly-thinking mind, only I didn't expect it to be so difficult.

...but the report also states:
This study is almost entirely the work of two persons, Christopher A. Lawrence and Richard C.
Anderson.
...now it seems very odd to have received pushback from an internet persona that claims attachment to Richard C. Anderson, formerly of the Dupuy Institute.

Maybe the explanation is here?:
The final report was primarily written by Chris Lawrence with
support and inputs from Richard Anderson.
Maybe Mr. Anderson fed Mr. Lawrence data and Mr. Lawrence conducted analysis with that data with which Mr. Anderson disagrees?

Whatever the case, the conclusion of the Dupuy Institute is unambiguous: PoW capture rates and morale are deeply related.

...which seems obvious but even the obvious benefits from imprimatur of a TDI study.

Another Dupuy Institute presentation (this time credited to Mr. Lawrence alone), compares the German-American combat performance ratios in Italy and the Ardennes and concludes regarding the American relative improvement between the two data sets:
Decline in German morale may have been responsible for the difference in casualty effectiveness
http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/pdf/e-5humanfactors.pdf at 10.

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The Dupuy analysis also discusses a correlation between AWOL/deserters and Captured in Action. Upthread Yuri has argued that deserters indicate low morale but more PoW's means high morale. Again the first-cited report:
The deserter figure is the most interesting. There is probably also a correlation between the
number of deserters and the number of CIA [capture in action]. A force with a higher number of deserters will probably
have a correspondingly higher number of CIA. It is felt that such measurement of deserters and AWOL
is probably a reflection of the general state of a unit’s morale and cohesion. The Soviets’ high desertion
rate reflected their low morale and cohesion, and is therefore reflected in their higher capture rate.
Concededly the author (Mr. Lawrence I presume) declaims any empirical measurement of his postulated correlation.

So can we pick up where TDI left off, at least in a rough sense? Where's the data on Soviet desertion rates at a somewhat-granular level, such as monthly? With that data, we could correlate roughly with German PoW hauls and test TDI's hypothesis.
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Re: Statistics on German PoW hauls in latter October 1941?

#45

Post by TheMarcksPlan » 12 Aug 2020, 10:58

The TDI report gives additional reasons to attribute high tactical PoW's to low Soviet morale: The influence of battle outcomes and Force Mix (tanks) on enemy capture rate.

Unsurprisingly, the TDI report concludes (Chapter 8 - analysis) that capture rates increase with both the attacker's tactical success (ranging from advance through penetration to envelopment) and with attacker's level of armor support.

While we don't have TDI-level data for October 15 through December 5 for AGC's sector, we can make some general observations.

First, AGC's level of tactical success in this period was unremarkable. It was advancing but only very slowly. Compared to, e.g., the previously-discussed drive of AGN in summer '41, it moved at a snail's pace yet captured >5x as many Soviets.

Second, AGC's armor support was unremarkable. This is especially true of the non-panzer armies (2nd, 4th, 9th) who between them had only a few Stug battalions with atrocious serviceability rates and abominable replacement flow (Hitler withheld Stug replacements to particularly ludicrous degree as Askey and DRZW v.4 discuss). Yet the infantry armies claimed tens of thousands of Soviet PoW's.

The analytical section of TDI's CIA report singles out only three factors for demonstrable effects on CIA rates: battle outcomes, armor support, and morale. Other factors (artillery density, force ratios) were considered but either failed to demonstrate compelling correlation or lacked sufficient data clarity (air support).

Given that AGC had unremarkable tactical success and armored support in our period, yet claimed abnormally high tactical PoW's (both absolutely and as a percentage of opposing force), the only remaining explanatory variable with any kind of analytical or data support is Soviet morale.

The Red Army endured a severe morale crisis in October/November 1941 that caused elevated PoW yields and that likely continued until the Moscow Strategic Offensive was underway.
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