Wehrmacht at Eastern Front...

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vintovka
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Wehrmacht at Eastern Front...

#1

Post by vintovka » 08 Jan 2003, 17:24

During in eastern front especially In USSR Wehrmacht defeat red Army w/ 11 million casualties killed, why Red Army lost so many man. R they not equipped good, because they have everything like T-34, Ik-2, Yak-9,or they verry2 untrained or they stategy is poor. With nymber like this it's mean WM slaughter them, this casualties equal with Holocaust.
As comparison in Asia, We took sample from Japan in China, even Chine weapon is obsolete, their casualties not bigger like USSR had. It's mean WM very effective. Any explanation about this? Thanks

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Oleg Grigoryev
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Re: Wehrmacht at Eastern Front...

#2

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 08 Jan 2003, 23:30

vintovka wrote:During in eastern front especially In USSR Wehrmacht defeat red Army w/ 11 million casualties killed, why Red Army lost so many man. R they not equipped good, because they have everything like T-34, Ik-2, Yak-9,or they verry2 untrained or they stategy is poor. With nymber like this it's mean WM slaughter them, this casualties equal with Holocaust.
As comparison in Asia, We took sample from Japan in China, even Chine weapon is obsolete, their casualties not bigger like USSR had. It's mean WM very effective. Any explanation about this? Thanks
and here I was thinking that it was RKKA that defeated Wehrmacht.


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#3

Post by vintovka » 09 Jan 2003, 05:49

:D Da Oleg, of course RKKA defeated German, but why their casualties is so high, (11 m killed)? Comparison German fight in 3 front but they lost 3.6 m casualties, Comparing Japan too who many doing suicide attack in their infantry, naval n AF eg Kamikaze, even GI said sometime they breaktrough their own artilry fire, do not have casualties so high...Remember 11 m killed in eastern front...

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#4

Post by makov25 » 09 Jan 2003, 07:05

Simply because Stalin and his generals didn't care have many soldiers going to die and they waste most of them for nathing. Russians lost thet many not because Germans ware better soldiers or had smarter generals just because they ware Stalins "screws" .Its a shame.

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Oleg Grigoryev
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#5

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 09 Jan 2003, 07:49

vintovka wrote::D Da Oleg, of course RKKA defeated German, but why their casualties is so high, (11 m killed)? Comparison German fight in 3 front but they lost 3.6 m casualties, Comparing Japan too who many doing suicide attack in their infantry, naval n AF eg Kamikaze, even GI said sometime they breaktrough their own artilry fire, do not have casualties so high...Remember 11 m killed in eastern front...
they did not sufferd 11 mil killed. And Germans certanly sufferd more than 3.6 and in addition to Germans there were their allies that suffered casualties too.

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Qvist
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#6

Post by Qvist » 09 Jan 2003, 11:41

Well, this is an apples and oranges comparison - killed against casualties. According to Krivosheev, Soviet casualties amounted to some 27-28 million in the war against Germany, as I recall. German is given as some 6.5 million up to and including March 1945 in a late Verlustwesen report, but since the reporting system no longer functioned accurately after November 1944, this is almost certainly not accurate (and too low). In any event, it is quite clear that there is a very big difference indeed between German and Soviet casualties.

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Oleg Grigoryev
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#7

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 09 Jan 2003, 12:23

Qvist wrote:Well, this is an apples and oranges comparison - killed against casualties. According to Krivosheev, Soviet casualties amounted to some 27-28 million in the war against Germany, as I recall. German is given as some 6.5 million up to and including March 1945 in a late Verlustwesen report, but since the reporting system no longer functioned accurately after November 1944, this is almost certainly not accurate (and too low). In any event, it is quite clear that there is a very big difference indeed between German and Soviet casualties.

cheers
According to Krivosheev, Soviet casualties amounted to some 27-28 million in the war against Germany
According to Krivosheev Soviet causlties ammounted to 11444100 KIA,MIA,POW, desrters, convicts etc. 26.6 million is a number of total deaths civillian population included. According to Muller-Gillebrand German lost form 01.09.39 to 31.12.44
KIA 1965324
MIA and POW 1858404
and from 01.01.45 to 30.04.45 KIA 2230324
MIA 2870404

obviously after the capitualtion number of MIA/POW goes up.

Data is obviously not comparable, for the variety of reasons. Among the data for German army is form 1939 while for RKKA form 1941. Not all German casualties were inflicted by Soviets, Not all Soviet casualties were inflicted by Germans. Soviet casualty figure gets quite a kick up due to mortality in the German POW camps, on the other hand German casualties do not count it all the auxiliary, police units made of local collaborators, while Soviet do count casualties suffered by these kind of service on their part. In general German Vs Soviet casualties question is generally faulty since the correct way would be to ask about Axis Casualties on the Eastern front vs. Soviet ones.

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#8

Post by varjag » 09 Jan 2003, 12:43

No matter how figures and statistics are juggled - it appears crystal clear that the Russian casualties vastly exceeded the German - and all other warring nations for that matter. Thus I think that 'vintovkas' question is well put. Makov 25's point - I think is very relevant, the people in Kreml didn't care an iota about casualties, they cared about preserving themselves and the Soviet regime. I thought Viktor Kravchenko put it very well when he wrote; 'With it's total disdain for human lives - the Soviet government recklessly threw Russian flesh against German armour, Russian blood against German gasoline'.

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Qvist
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#9

Post by Qvist » 09 Jan 2003, 13:04

According to Krivosheev Soviet causlties ammounted to 11444100 KIA,MIA,POW, desrters, convicts etc. 26.6 million is a number of total deaths civillian population included.
You misunderstand me. The figure I quoted from Krivosheev is CASUALTIES from all causes - that is KIA, MIA and wounded. It is directly comparable to the German figures I mentioned.

This is IMO clearly the most relevant as well as the most reliable basis for comparison. It is most relevant in this case because casualty infliction is what matters when you look at losses as an angle to understanding battlefield effectiveness. Secondly, deaths is an altogether much more uncertain quantity than total casualties. Müller-Hildebrand's figure is not considered reliable. Rüdiger Overmans demonstrated in the German case that the records do not give an adequate picture of fatalities. If this guy is on to something,

http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/ubb/Forum ... 00051.html

there may be a similar problem even with Krivosheev's figures. Total casualties is of course a different matter, and something which it is much easier for a reporting system to cope with than it is to classify each individual casualty correctly. And at least, nobody has offered any serious revisal of these, not even Overmans for the Germans.

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Oleg Grigoryev
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#10

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 09 Jan 2003, 13:09

varjag wrote:No matter how figures and statistics are juggled - it appears crystal clear that the Russian casualties vastly exceeded the German - and all other warring nations for that matter. Thus I think that 'vintovkas' question is well put. Makov 25's point - I think is very relevant, the people in Kreml didn't care an iota about casualties, they cared about preserving themselves and the Soviet regime. I thought Viktor Kravchenko put it very well when he wrote; 'With it's total disdain for human lives - the Soviet government recklessly threw Russian flesh against German armour, Russian blood against German gasoline'.
KIA, Died of wounds and illnesses, committed suicide, executed

USSR -6 885,100 GERMANY - 4 457,0


MIA, POW

USSR - 5 059,000 GERMANY - 7 387,0

Throw in the axis what will you get?

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Qvist
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#11

Post by Qvist » 09 Jan 2003, 14:32

Throw in the axis what will you get?
Axis minors thrown in or not, you will get an irrelevant comparison. For reasons that are obvious, it makes no sense to include men who went into captivity after capitulation, certainly not if you look at casualties as a guide to combat effectiveness which was the focus of the initial question. And whichever way you cut it, the Red Army suffered 27-28 million casualties, a number at least 3 times higher than the Germans.

Just to make clear my general position on this sort of comparison:

There are three main ways to look at losses -

1. Deaths
2. Irrecoverable Losses (KIA, death from wounds and other causes, MIA)
3. Casualties (KIA, WIA, MIA, non-combat losses)

They all give different kinds of information and have different levels of reliability.

Deaths: The number of soldiers who died is of course a question of significant historical interest in it's own right. It will usually be of less direct importance in the analysis of individual battles. It has also proven to be a perennially contentious issue both in Russia and Germany. The main problem is that soldiers who were initially classified as wounded later died, and that soldiers classified as MIA may have been dead, particularly when large groupings were destroyed and lost. It is thus, for obvious reasons, a huge task to assess the number correctly, and even more daunting for a wartime organisation. I do not think anyone can claim with confidence that we have truly reliable figures for this for either side, even for the whole war. To assess deaths from wounds for a single battle is of course even more fundamentally difficult. All in all, I can only agree with Oleg Sheremets when he wrote at RMZ, in comment to the above link, that "the only thing that is certain is that nothing is certain."

Irrecoverable Losses: This is a less significant question in it's own right, it is primarily a combination of loss categories designed to give a specific type of information: Losses incurred that were permanent in nature. The first thing to note is that it does not strictly speaking do this. It includes wounded who died, but not wounded who were sufficiently hurt to be unable to return to the ranks. Since it includes Deaths, it suffers from the same inherent problems of reliability. It does however eliminate one possible source of error for Deaths, in that it incorporates dead erroneously classified as MIA.

I must say I am not too fond of this construct all in all. It is of course, when discussing specifically the cost of a battle or campaign, a useful way of looking at the figures. But it is quite meaningless as a guide to casualty infliction levels and military effectiveness. The relation between KIA and wounded rarely varies much - it is in most cases between 1:3 and 1:4. Nor would the percentage of wounded that later died or were incapacitated vary much, unless very special circumstances were present. The main variable is MIA, and of the three main loss categories it is the one that generally tells us the least about combat performance. When a front or an army group is encircled and destroyed, several hundred thousand non-combat troops march into captivity, which reflects the outcome of operations rather than the operations themselves. And the outcome again reflects many factors, not just military effectiveness.

Casualties: This avoids most of the very serious reliability problems connected with the others, and is IMO also generally the most relevant. It is inherently more reliable because it does not matter if a soldier has been erroneously classified, as long as he has been counted as a casualty of some sort. Conceivably, it might of course also have been beyond the capacity of wartime reporting systems to record even this accurately, but this at least is something that nobody has yet proven, and not many have suggested. It seems a fairly reasonable assumption that overall casualty figures are generally accurate, except under particularly chaotic circumstances such as 1945 for the Germans and to an extent 1941 for the Soviets. It also has the considerable advantage that it allows the use of primary documentation, and also comparison, since it corresponds to the categories used by the reporting systems, rather than to post-war constructs. Such factors as the one mentioned by you here :
Soviet casualty figure gets quite a kick up due to mortality in the German POW camps,
cease to become a concern to the validity of the figures.

For the assesment of battlefield performance, and for military history in general, it is also obviously thye most relevant. Good weapons, tactics, organisation etc inflicts casualties, be they wounded or killed, and be the battle won or lost. In fact, these two are arguably the most crucial for battle analysis, because they neccessarily are combat related, whereas MIA may or may not be.

In summation - casualties - divided into KIA, WIA and MIA - is to me quite obviously the category to use under almost all circumstances. It gives the information most relevant to military analysis. It avoids most of the severe problems of reliability and compatibility connected with the other constructs. It will not tell us reliably how many people died, but this we do not really need to accurately know in most cases. Bearing in mind that a certain portion of WIA will be permanent losses, it is in any case not difficult to glean a fair picture about overall permanent losses, if that is really required.

BTW - Krivosheev invariably provides these numbers, as well as IL. It is a mystery to me why most people seem to prefer quoting just the latter rather than the total.


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Last edited by Qvist on 09 Jan 2003, 16:49, edited 1 time in total.

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Fred
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#12

Post by Fred » 09 Jan 2003, 15:16

Soviet losses quarter by quarter:



http://www.magweb.com/sample/sgmbn/sgm80sov.htm

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Qvist
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#13

Post by Qvist » 09 Jan 2003, 15:27

Bravo Fred!

This is the general overview scanned out of Krivosheev's book. This is an internet reference to hold on to for the future.

So, my memory erred a little on the low side - it was 29,6 million, not 27-28.

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#14

Post by Qvist » 09 Jan 2003, 16:39

Oh, and a few other things. The German figures I mentioned - 6.5 million CASUALTIES - were specifically for the Eastern Front, cumulative from June 1941. I should have said so. Even if they are certainly too low for 1945 and do not cover Wehrmachtsgefolge, Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine (possibly also not the Finnish front, I'm not sure by memory), it appears quite certain that they can hardly reach even 1/3 of the Soviet figures. Sorry, but there it is.

Then the German allies problem. This is a little tricky in cases of force ratios and also casualty comparisons as a basis for conclusions on military efficiency. Generally, the validity of a simple comparison presupposes a reasonably uniform quality among the forces on one side, otherwise it becomes rather pointless to just add up the numbers. The problem is most acute for the Axis in North Africa, where the overwhelming bulk of forces were Italian, but most of the actual combat power resided in the 2-3 German mobile divisions present. So, how do you compare forces? On the one hand, you can't just ignore several hundred thousand Italians (well, not completely anyway :D ), on the other hand what fundamentally matters is the strength and state of the German forces. The solution is usually, and reasonably, to give three figures: German, Italian, Allied. Same goes for casualties. Of course, this means that there is no easy way to make analysis based on figures for that campaign.

I believe the problem is not as fundamental for the Eastern Front. The proportion of German-allied forces was much lower, their share of actual combat power and losses inflicted on the RKKA much less still. The problem is in some cases also present on the Soviet side, where low-grade militia units sometimes made up a considerable part of forces (Leningrad 1941, f.e.). If you compare total casualties directly in such cases, you really only get a very artificial average that tells you little about either the militia units (who will likely have performed worse than the figure indicates) or the regular units (who will likely have performed better than the figure indicates). The problem is similar with mixing German and allied strength and casualties (with the exception of the Finns, at least).

On the other hand, it obviously cannot be ignored that there were allied units of significant numerical strength (some 650,000 in July 42, and 240,000 in July 43, Finns not included in either number), that the RKKA had to deploy parts of their forces against them and that they inflicted some of the Soviet casualties. I don't think there is any better solution to this than, again, to quote three sets of numbers: Soviet, German, other axis. In very many cases, the involvement of the latter will anyway be marginal or non-existent, and it is clear that the vast weight of Soviet casualties must have been inflicted by the Germans.

cheers

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#15

Post by Qvist » 09 Jan 2003, 17:27

I thought Viktor Kravchenko put it very well when he wrote; 'With it's total disdain for human lives - the Soviet government recklessly threw Russian flesh against German armour, Russian blood against German gasoline'.
And yet that doesn't really seem accurate either. Already in 1942, the RKKA not only had more tanks, guns, and aircraft than the Germans - they even had a higher ratio of tanks, guns and aircraft pr. soldier than the Germans did (i.e., Soviet numerical superiority in equipment is greater than Soviet numerical superiority in manpower). Of course, more peripheral equipment than these (trucks, radios etc) also count, but this nevertheless runs against the view of the RKKA as a human mass predominantly based on endless masses of men with little equipment. A more accurate way of putting it might be to say that they "recklessly threw Soviet armour against German balanced structure , Russian iron against German expertise".

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