OK, that's good enough to work from.Heer/Waffen-SS KIA/MIA/POW on all fronts were 409,000 for the same period. Let's assume that German losses in Africa are about the same as Luftwaffe and Finnish losses in Russia combined during that period, so that we have a wash there, unless somebody wants to dig out the numbers.
Removal of the Italian army from the OOB - 235,000 men either KIA/POW, or removed by Italian government
Romanian losses - on the order of 200,000 I think, including KIA/POW, survivors removed to Romania
Hungarian losses - on the order of 200,000 again, including KIA/POW, removed to Hungary
So we end up with just over 1 million Axis losses vs. just short of 2 million Soviet losses, assuming that your calculation of the wounded not returning is correct (I have no idea how Krivosheev defines wounded, and how that compares to German wounded definitions).
I am not speaking of the performance, I am speaking of the cost of the fighting.I have to disagree here, since I think this is a very narrow view. Strictly speaking, their observed performance on the battlefield was irrelevant to the question of their numerical superiority, if looked at in isolation.
Yes, but you must take into account that the effect of the losses and the effect of the force generation are not mutually reinforcing factors, but on the contrary draw in opposite directions. The reason this works for the Red Army is not the amount of losses, the reason is the superiority in force generation. The losses side is a factor that has to be constantly overcompensated by greater force addition in order to not cause a worsening of the strength situation.It was instead linked to a higher starting strength, and a higher ability to generate manpower. As long as the attrition on the battlefield resulted in opponent losses that were higher than what their opponents could replace, while keeping their losses at a level below what they could replace, or at the very least at a level where they could replace a greater share of their losses than their opponents, they would achieve increasing numerical superiority, which is simply a relative comparison after all.
No you don't - you've just gone from a 2:1 superiority to a 3:2 superiority. . You'll have to make that 24 men knocked out against 13. Also, you'll have difficulty finding many periods of the war where the Red Army had only twice as many men and only twice as many losses. Anyway, the actual effect depends entirely on the the starting ratio, the absolute size of the losses relative to starting strength and also both the relation of and the absolute size of replacements. If we presuppose 1 million Axis losses and a bit under 2 million Soviet as you suggest, and, to follow the logic of this example, zero force addition for both sides, and estimated starting strengths of , say 6 and 3.5 million respectively, the strength ratio drops from 1.7:1 to 1.6:1. And there's not many other times (none, actually) that you get a vast effect on the figures from the obliteration of three allied armies with limited capabilities. So again, it would be difficult to find a less representative example than this one.In a static fight, if you start with 30 guys in a bar brawl against 15, and at the end you lose 27 while your opponent loses 13, you have had over twice as many losses, but you have increased your superiority by 50%, from 2:1 to 3:1.
Sorry, no - this it demonstrably did not manage to do. What it managed to do was to retain enough of a superiority in force generation to overcompensate for its disparate losses. The losses in themselves would have caused a swiftly declining force relation. Check the figures if you like.This the Red Army managed to do after 1941, obviously.
To use your bar brawl analogy, it starts with 30 guys apiece, and then new ones keep turning up. After the first ten minutes, 45 guys have been knocked out on the one side, but since 60 new ones have turned up, they 've grown to 45. On the other side, 9 have been knocked out and only 7 have turned up, so they're now down to 28.
In the second ten minutes, 85 more turn up to join the 45, but 70 of them are knocked out. Nevertheless, they now have 60. 10 guys are knocked out on the other side, but 10 new ones arrive. They're still 28.
In the third ten minutes, the 60 men are joined by 80 more, and 78 of them are knocked out.They're now 62 left standing. They knock out 20 of the other guys, and only 15 arrive, so now they're down to 23.
And that's pretty much 41, 42 and 43, if in a much simplified fashion. What happens if no new men arrive, of if roughly the same number of men arrive on each side?
Well, this is in essence the same thing I am saying, so on that point we appear to agree. It is just a question of the relative effects and weight of the losses and force generation side respectively. The losses worked to erode the Red Army position, even late in the war. The force addition overcompensated for that. Conversely, the losses represented the core of the German ability to stay in the field for this long, but the force addition was too puny to compensate even for losses that were much lower than the Soviet. To put it in a different way, the Soviet losses exceeded their average strength in every year of the war up to 1945, the German never exceeded it before 1945, and they were for the first three calendar years less than or roughly equal to half their average strength. The losses, if more or less equally replaced, would have burned out the Red Army much more quickly than they burnt out the Ostheer. Force addition is the reason they didn't.Having even highly unfavourable exchange rates does not matter (except for the individuals who are being exchanged, i.e. killed or maimed), as long as you force your opponent to dig deeper into his manpower pool than you yourself do, relatively speaking.
However, I would not say that highly unfavourable exchange rates do not matter - in this case they meant that victory was slow and phenomenally costly, and they handed the opponent the most major advantage they possessed. The Red Army paid a high price for it, and if they had not been endowed with such ample means with which to pay it, they would have lost the war. Hence, which is my point, these ample means are neccessarily the fundamental reason why they did win it.
cheers