Russians simply won by the power of numbers

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Art
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#301

Post by Art » 03 Apr 2007, 18:02

Andreas wrote:I am not questioning correlation. But as an economist I feel the need to point out however that correlation does not equal causation.
Usualy it doesn't, but hardly in this case. That the ratio of forces affects the outcome of battle engagement is an obvious fact, that doesn't need to be proven. Of course, strictly speaking this doesn't mean that there were no other factors underlying the outcome of struggle on Eastern Front. I'm not ready to weigh their relative importance, but in my opinion the impact of the rise of Red Army numerical strengh was very significant.

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#302

Post by Qvist » 03 Apr 2007, 21:05

Hello Art, and thanks for very good points.
With. I encoutered the same mistake made bu you and by Zetterling&Francson and I believe it is caused by some imperfections in the english edition of Krivosheev's book. I russian one there is small remark after the table with the breakdown of losses (that is where you toook the figures from): :"In the number of irrevocable losses all the men died of wounds and deseases are included. They are also included in the sanitary losses". In other words this category of losses is accounted twice: one time in sanitary losses, and the second time in IL. Hence, the actual number of losses is smaller then the sum of IL and SL.


Ah - yes, you are right - I was aware of it, but failed to take it into consideration. The DOW/DOS should be subtracted in this context, where what we need is a figure for the number of men who left the Fronts strength. (In other contexts it does not matter so much, because much the same is the case with the German figures, as far as I can make out). That is - as long as all losses are used. For IL as used above, they are already deducted (since they were deducted from the 1/3 of wounded).

That was not what I referred to with my question though. What I was wondering is whether the Fronts strength figures (quoted from Glantz WTC, who generally quote the GKO decrees) could include men hospitalised - sometimes they do, sometimes they don't. Often a breakdown is given, but not in these two cases.
Krivosheev sums these two categories in his table, but I don't know for what sake he does it. Some simple means to check the sorrespondence between two tables with losses data in Krivosheev's book: the actual number of losses is roughly equals to KIA+MIA+WIA+Sick&Frostbited. If we take the numbers for the rourth quarter of 1942 we'll receive 1373218. That is in very good agreement with the table of losses of Active Army wich gives 1391831. The difference could be attributed to addition of number of men died in accidents and other factors of small significance. Note that the sum in table 1 (the breakdown of losses by type) for 4th quarter 1942 is 1457404, that is 100 thousands higher that the figure of losses of Active Army in the table #2. If we take the whole period of war the difference would be even greater:29629205 in table #1 against 28199127 in table #1.
Ah, excellent - I have always wondered what caused that difference. This seems a plausible explanation.
Of course. By this means that the case was not in only in human recources available but also in the way how this recources were used.
Certainly.
And what is important if to take the number if men mobilized into german armed forces this number were enough to compenate for much greater losses than that were actually suffered on Eastern Front.


Here I do not agree with you. On the basis of a fairly extensive research effort into the German manpower situation in general, it is my firm estimation that there was quite simply little or no potential for any notably greater force addition in the East than was already the case. The situation was one of desperate and perpetual shortage, and already the historical level is the result of almost constant extraordinary measures and improvisations, over and above what we might call normal force generation. If there had been additional ways in which they could have significantly increased the force addition in the East without intolerable cost elsewhere, they would have done so - they certainly were never of the opinion that they had enough men there. Already in February 1941 - half a year before the Eastern campaign started - Fromm were holding crisis meetings with the Wehrersatzinspekteure and discussing extensive emergency measures because of the already very tense manpower situation. Once Barbarossa started, it naturally went from bad to worse, and then pretty quickly to disastrous, where it pretty much stayed. They could not have compensated for much higher losses without either hamstringing their armaments industry or completely denuding other fronts. Indeed, they could not even keep pace with the losses they were suffering - note for example the very strong drop in strength during the second half of 1943 (when strength drops down well below the 2.5 million mark, after being 3.3 million in early July), which they never were able to reverse - the reason for which was not that they were sanguine about the prospects of fighting the eastern campaign with much fewer men than the preceding summer. The generation effort during 1st half of 43 was already huge, comparatively speaking - they took out an extra year class by lowering the conscription age for example, and achieved by such and other means the peak strength levels both the Ostheer and the Wehrmacht as a whole enjoyed at mid-point 43. One of the consequences of this was that were much fewer resources to draw on in the second half of the year. The next step were the various emergency measures the institituted in summer 1944, with extensive transfers from the Luftwaffe to the army and numerous releases of previously protected men from industry etc. But this represented the very last gasp - after that, beyond the scheduled call-up of the next year-group, the final resort was to begin cannibalising the Ersatzheer, which of course more or less negated their capacity for continued force generation. They could have done either earlier, theoretically, but if they had been forced to do so earlier in response to much higher losses, it would merely have hastened the end.
So we can challenge the conclusion "the losses represented the core of the German ability to stay in the field for this long". If to take the figures of losses and the manpower available in isloation of other factors, the German Army were able to sustain losses even if they would be let's say two times more than they actually were in 1943.
In my honest opinion, it is realistically absolutely out of the question that they might have been able to achieve anything like that. It is always possible to think of things that could have been done and weren't, but on the whole I think we have to accept that they were already doing more or less everything that could reasonably be achieved to generate force for the EF. I would also assume that the Red Army could not have very easily compensated for a much reduced force generation.

In any case however, that is not really the point. The "model", to use that word, is not predictive - it can after all not be supposed that if one of these very major factors changed significantly, nothing else would, and in that sense your above point contains a core of truth. The point is rather that it shows how the losses that were suffered and the force generation that did take place impacted on the situation, and their interrelation - specifically, that the losses worked in the axis favor, and that the force generation worked even more strongly in the opposite direction. We can say that if the losses of one side had been this or that and the force generation had stayed the same, this would have had so and so results. But that is really essentially just a didactic exercise to explicate the actual effects and make them clearer.
Does this include the men recovered from wounds and deseases being not evacuated from the Army rear area?
No, and this is one of the beautiful points about the model - as long as you know that you are using a losses figure that consists of casualties that left the strength figure and only that, you're home and dry on that point - and that is by definition the nature of Abgänge. If a casualty wasn't evacuated, and stayed on strength, he wasn't an Abgang. That is also why you can't use Blutige Verluste, which does include wounded men who stayed on strength. Furthermore, this is also why you strictly speaking need to use a total casualties figure that include also wounded and NCL, on the principle of "all men out" on the losses side and "all men in" on the force addition side - if you use IL including 1/3 of the wounded, you are in effect a) not including recuperated men in the force addition and b) assuming that the number of men who returned as recuperated is equal to to 2/3 of the evacuated sick and wounded during the period, which is not of course the case. Some other types of force reduction and addition are caught implicitly rather than explicitly - for example, the model will reflect the net balance of reinforcements and formations withdrawn on the force addition side, and simply compensate for any personell withdrawn for transfer to industry and so on and who were not casualties, without making these explicit on the "out" side.
6605498 according to inherently unreliable and biased modern russian official historians. This must include fleet forces. Also 202965 in GHQ reserve.
Really? That is a much higher figure - would you consider this more reliable and relevant than the GKO figure quoted by Glantz? Do you think it is likely to include hospitalised men? And shouldn't we deduct the Fleet forces?
63900046 according to the same mean liars, and 533110 in Stavka reserve.
Heh - the first thing that strikes me is that if both of these figures are correct, the OrgAbt estimate would, against all expectation, be exactly correct - they thought the Red Army strength had declined by 200,000 over the period. :) Same questions here, and for this point the figure Glantz quotes is only an estimate too. Otherwise, I note that the Stavka reserve figure is, against my expectation, more than twice as high in late 1943 as in early November 1942. How very interesting.

cheers
Last edited by Qvist on 04 Apr 2007, 21:43, edited 1 time in total.


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#303

Post by Kunikov » 04 Apr 2007, 05:38

Art wrote: 63900046 according to the same mean liars, and 533110 in Stavka reserve.
Art, what is your source?

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#304

Post by Andreas » 04 Apr 2007, 16:50

Art wrote:
Andreas wrote:I am not questioning correlation. But as an economist I feel the need to point out however that correlation does not equal causation.
Usualy it doesn't, but hardly in this case. That the ratio of forces affects the outcome of battle engagement is an obvious fact, that doesn't need to be proven. Of course, strictly speaking this doesn't mean that there were no other factors underlying the outcome of struggle on Eastern Front. I'm not ready to weigh their relative importance, but in my opinion the impact of the rise of Red Army numerical strengh was very significant.
I don't disagree with that at all. But I am interested in the relative importance, since that is where Qvist and I disagree. :-)

All the best

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#305

Post by Qvist » 04 Apr 2007, 22:50

I don't disagree with that at all. But I am interested in the relative importance, since that is where Qvist and I disagree.
We may have a little bit a paradigmatic issue here. Historical interpretations stressing the importance of soviet operational art have, it seems, mostly ignored the quantitative aspect or at least treated it in a fairly dismissive manner (unlike you), while an issue like the efficacy and centrality of operational methods is of course not something that quantitative analysis can shed much direct light on. However, if we agree on the critical nature of the strength levels and the force genration (including as a precondition for the feasibility of the operational methods), the question is how much room that leaves for a if not comparable then at least major place for operational art as an explanatory factor. Another question is of course how to regard "operational art" as such. To me It seems that if it conferred any special advantages on the Red Army to reverse other shortcomings, it is not easy to find very many direct traces of them. Offensive operations generally seem to have been marked by the same high relative cost that you find generally, except in the comparatively few cases of successful encirclement/annihiliation battles, and even in them, except for Iassy-Kishinev, the Red Army suffered considerably more heavily than the opponent.

The overall picture seems to me to suggest a gradual and in sum not dramatic improvement in the efficiency (as opposed to strength, or rather, relative to its strength) of the Red Army as an instrument of war compared to its state in June 1941 (though more so relative to what appears as its nadir in early-mid 1942). The dramatically improved force relation in itself accounts for some of it - it enables things that simply aren't possible or at least much, much more difficult otherwise, gives options that otherwise aren't there and also in itself should cause a more favorable relative cost in the fighting. Then you need to make room for the fact that the quality of the opposing forces almost certainly declined, for the much improved organisational structure of Red Army formations (with much developed support functions and more complex and versatile large formations), and for such improvements in tactical proficiency, training and leadership that seem reasonable - all of these factors dictate that Red Army performance ought to gradually improve, as indeed it did. I'm just not sure that leaves a lot of room for operational art as a significant qualitative advantage. To me it quite frankly appears as not a lot more than the specifically Red Army way of doing things that all competent armies are essentially capable of doing. It does seem to me justified to say that it was very well tailored to the specific advantages and shortcomings of the Red Army, but that is after all normally the case with any army's operational methods.

That's how it looks from where I am standing, anyway. It would be interesting if we could make further progress towards some sort of integrated understanding from starting points in two quite different interpretative traditions. I do not really believe that differences need to be paradigmatic in the strict sense, ie, that meaningful discussion and cross-fertilizing between different (in this case pseudo)paradigms should be impossible.

cheers

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#306

Post by Art » 05 Apr 2007, 17:40

Kunikov wrote:Art, what is your source?
Великая Отечественная война 1941-1945. Действующая армия
The book contains some data sheets taken from the hanbooks "The combat and numerical composition of Soviet Army" issued by the Institute of Military History under Russian Defense Ministry (the most official Russian military history organization that could be even imagined). This seems to be the most up-to-date source on the strength of Soviet Armed forces.

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#307

Post by Kunikov » 05 Apr 2007, 18:08

Can you point me to the page :) I have the book :D

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#308

Post by Art » 05 Apr 2007, 18:27

Qvist wrote: That was not what I referred to with my question though. What I was wondering is whether the Fronts strength figures (quoted from Glantz WTC, who generally quote the GKO decrees) could include men hospitalised - sometimes they do, sometimes they don't.
I haven't seen the text of this decrees. Those I've seen inculde the number of men in hospitals, but in separate column. An example (decree establishing the ration distribution in May 1942):
http://www.soldat.ru/doc/gko/scans/1704-01-1.jpg
The table contains three columns: the rations for men, ration for hospitalized, and ration for horses. It should be said that artion strength must be established according to strength reports of the 20th date of the previous month. Sometimes (in September-October) it created some lag led to meaningless figures but hardly in this case.
That is a much higher figure - would you consider this more reliable and relevant than the GKO figure quoted by Glantz?
The answer depends on the list of units included in the calculations. It could be quite possible that Glantz and authors from IVI MO give the strength figures for the different sets of units. Here are the alternative data taken from the official Soviet history od WW2:
On 1st November 6591 thousands of men in Soviet Active Army
On 1st January 1944 6354 thousands of men
In the latter case the authors were as kind as to provide the breakdown of the strength figure:
5507 thousands in land forces
388 in air forces
252 in Fleet
207 in Antiaircraft Defence Forces
As could be seen the result is very close to modern calculations. And one quetions: does Glantz give the strength figure only for the fronts? There were some forces in Active Army outside the fronts (in fleet, AA defence, long-range aviation)
Do you think it is likely to include hospitalised men?
Interesting question. I don't have the handbook itself, only the data tables from it and I can't say were they are included or not. As some reference - there was roughly half a million of men in hospitals in frontline zone on 1st January.
And shouldn't we deduct the Fleet forces?

Certainly we shouldn't. It is listed in the forces included in the calculation.
In my honest opinion, it is realistically absolutely out of the question that they might have been able to achieve anything like that.
If to take into acount onlu the manpower available they could. Roughly 3 millions men per year were drafted to army till summer 1943, and the number of personnel in armed forces had been contantly growing till that time. The problem was that these men were used somewhere else outside the Eastern Front. Whether the situation could be different? In 1943 unlikely, till that time - don't know for certain.
No, and this is one of the beautiful points about the model - as long as you know that you are using a losses figure that consists of casualties that left the strength figure and only that, you're home and dry on that point - and that is by definition the nature of Abgänge.
Nice, but the Soviet side didn't use this beautiful system, so you should be aware that you compare the values of different nature - all the losses from teh soviet side and a part of losses from the German one. And another question does the addition includes only the normal replenishment or also men arrived to Eastern Front with their units?

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#309

Post by Art » 05 Apr 2007, 18:29

Kunikov wrote:Can you point me to the page :) I have the book :D
Is there anything wrong? I can look at home.

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#310

Post by Qvist » 05 Apr 2007, 19:23

Hello Art,
Nice, but the Soviet side didn't use this beautiful system, so you should be aware that you compare the values of different nature - all the losses from teh soviet side and a part of losses from the German one. And another question does the addition includes only the normal replenishment or also men arrived to Eastern Front with their units?
Well, you can add the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine losses in the East to improve the accuracy, but it wouldn't really have any meaningful impact - they would be just a very small fraction of the overall figure. The same seems to be the case for the VVS part of the Soviet losses, from what Krivosheev writes on that.

See previous comment on that - force addition includes essentially absolutely everything that arrived - since it is based on the difference between strength points plus the losses. For units, it would in effect reflect the net addition, ie, the difference between the strength of the units departing and those arriving.

For the rest, I will have to return.

cheers

cheers

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#311

Post by Kunikov » 05 Apr 2007, 19:50

Art wrote:
Kunikov wrote:Can you point me to the page :) I have the book :D
Is there anything wrong? I can look at home.
Of course not, I'm just curious! Take your time, PM me the info if need be.

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#312

Post by Andreas » 06 Apr 2007, 10:48

Qvist wrote: That's how it looks from where I am standing, anyway. It would be interesting if we could make further progress towards some sort of integrated understanding from starting points in two quite different interpretative traditions. I do not really believe that differences need to be paradigmatic in the strict sense, ie, that meaningful discussion and cross-fertilizing between different (in this case pseudo)paradigms should be impossible.

cheers
You have obviously started on your PhD. I give it another year or so before sensible debate with you will be impossible. ;-) Don't worry, it's part of the process, and necessary for you to finish it.

To me this question is really quite simple. First of all I fully accept that given the observed performance, the Red Army needed numerical superiority to win the war agains the Germans, during all phases of the war. It needed it to survive the initial battering, to hold on during the second German strategic offensive, and to be able to prevail over its adversary when it started pushing him west. No doubt about it being a critical element.

But the more interesting question for me is whether by itself, numerical superiority would have been enough to not just survive, but to actually win on the battlefield. Here I think that numerical superiority is not sufficient to win, again based on the demonstrated performance on the battlefield. Instead what was required was an evolution in structure, command and control, and strategic direction that used numerical superiority in a way that allowed the Red Army to prevail. Numerical superiority did not help the Red Army to prevail during Operation Mars, and it did not help the Red Army to prevail with its grand designs during the second phase of the winter 42/43 battles. Instead, it got soundly beaten both times. This, from what I have read at least, drove the point home to Stavka that they needed to come up with something better than just numerical superiority if they wanted to beat the Germans, even though it was clear that numerical and material superiority were quite sufficient to beat most of the German allies. This they did. They created a doctrine of assault that would allow them to overcome the defences that they failed on outside Bjelyi, Rzhev, and Ssinyavino in winter 1942, harnessing their ability to generate local superiority, and to sustain large scale losses. They created large maneuver units capable of sustained in-depth combat, the tank armies, to overcome German mobile reserves, which they had failed to do in late winter 42/43. They created the logistical basis to allow these two developments to function. They created an integrated strategic approach to their fight that took stock of their limitations, e.g. by allowing the Germans to attack first at Kursk, instead of trying to pre-empt them as they did at Izyum in 1942.

In my view, all of these developments were absolutely critical, and without them, the Red Army would not have prevailed, and I therefore disagree that these were minor things, compared to numerical superiority. They were the mechanisms harnessing numerical superiority into a war-winning factor, instead of a war-surviving factor.

All the best

Andreas

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#313

Post by Art » 06 Apr 2007, 12:44

Qvist wrote: Well, you can add the Luftwaffe and the Kriegsmarine losses in the East to improve the accuracy, but it wouldn't really have any meaningful impact - they would be just a very small fraction of the overall figure.
I'm afraid you didn't understand me. I mean that you take into account only those wounded and sick that leaved OstHeer, and don't include those who recovered staying in German Army in the East. At the same time from Soviet side you include all the losses suffered. Thus, you are using the data of different type and that is not entirely correct, if you want to recieve the meaningful comparison.
See previous comment on that - force addition includes essentially absolutely everything that arrived - since it is based on the difference between strength points plus the losses.
Ok, thanks.

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#314

Post by Qvist » 06 Apr 2007, 15:50

I'm afraid you didn't understand me. I mean that you take into account only those wounded and sick that leaved OstHeer, and don't include those who recovered staying in German Army in the East. At the same time from Soviet side you include all the losses suffered. Thus, you are using the data of different type and that is not entirely correct, if you want to recieve the meaningful comparison.
Ah, right. Well, I am supposing that Krivosheev's figures are on the whole on a similar footing - that they do not substantially include those who recovered without leaving their units. He specifically ties his non-lethal NCL figure to the records of hospitalised men, and hospitalised men were recorded separately. It is also the case that, taking into account that the Red Army was a much larger force, his NCL figures are already very low compared to the German. If they additionally are to be considered to include sick men who remained with their units, the comparable German NCL (which would be more than doubled if such NCL were included, judging from studies into that point) would be absurdly larger than the Soviet.

His wounded figure does exceed the hospital records by roughly 600,000 through the war as a whole, something he attributed to these may having remained with their formations despite being reported wounded. Even if so, I do not think this is a major problem, considering that the German strength figures to a greater extent than this included sick and wounded who were not present - all men expected to return within 4 weeks (including those reported as Abgänge. From fall 1943, those expected to return within 8 weeks) were retained in Iststärke.
Quote:
See previous comment on that - force addition includes essentially absolutely everything that arrived - since it is based on the difference between strength points plus the losses.

Ok, thanks.
One addition here - I am supposing that you are speaking of the data I posted, and not of OKHs nov-42-nov43 comparison? In the latter, units arriving and departing are specifically accounted for - 600,000 men in arriving Divisions and Brigades plus 50,000 men in arriving Heerestruppen, minus 50,000 men in departing units of both types - the latter two figures estimated.
I haven't seen the text of this decrees. Those I've seen inculde the number of men in hospitals, but in separate column. An example (decree establishing the ration distribution in May 1942):
http://www.soldat.ru/doc/gko/scans/1704-01-1.jpg
The table contains three columns: the rations for men, ration for hospitalized, and ration for horses. It should be said that artion strength must be established according to strength reports of the 20th date of the previous month. Sometimes (in September-October) it created some lag led to meaningless figures but hardly in this case.
1. The figure in the first column is exactly similar to the one quoted by Glantz as "RKKA Field Strength", and that in the second to what he quotes as hospitalised men in the operating Fronts at this point (which he does not include in Field Strength).

2. More generally, the nature of the GKO figures raise questions. In principle, rations-based figures have an advantage over some other ways of force accounting in that they relate to men actually present (unlike f.e. the German Iststärke, which is rather a personell management term which for this reason includes fairly substantial numbers of men not actually present). On the other hand, they have the disadvantage that there is every incentive to avoid erring downwards, which may tend to systematically exaggerate the figures, at least slightly. But the key point is really inclusiveness. The German Ration Strength figures are largely useless for force strength purposes, because they apparently had the practice of using the army to supply everything within the army area, down to and including civilians and enemy prisoners of war. The Soviet Ration strengths do not seem to suffer from such weaknesses if my impression is correct - for example, it seems that NKVD forces do not form part of the GKO ration strengths. Do you have a fuller understanding of this?

3. Important clarification that the figures refer to an earlier point in time. That means that strictly speaking it is not a strength figure for the date of the GKO decree, it is a strength figure for the 20th April.
he answer depends on the list of units included in the calculations. It could be quite possible that Glantz and authors from IVI MO give the strength figures for the different sets of units. Here are the alternative data taken from the official Soviet history od WW2:
On 1st November 6591 thousands of men in Soviet Active Army
On 1st January 1944 6354 thousands of men
In the latter case the authors were as kind as to provide the breakdown of the strength figure:
5507 thousands in land forces
388 in air forces
252 in Fleet
207 in Antiaircraft Defence Forces
As could be seen the result is very close to modern calculations. And one quetions: does Glantz give the strength figure only for the fronts? There were some forces in Active Army outside the fronts (in fleet, AA defence, long-range aviation)
1. Good question. Glantz provides no further details on inclusion, but you can check that (unlike me, who does not read Russian) from the link you posted to the 5 May figure - whatever is included in that is also included by Glantz, who as said gives an exactly similar figure. I'm curious to see what you find.

2. 1 January 44 strength: Here Glantz (that is, for 31.12.43) quotes 6,165,000 in the operating fronts and 10.2m in the Red Army as a whole (plus 1,000,000 hospitalised men), with all other categories put as "unknown". I think it can be assumed, from the structure of the table, that it would at least not include Navy or hospitalised men.
Certainly we shouldn't. It is listed in the forces included in the calculation.


Not in Glantz' figures though - at leasts he lists the Navy figures separately, and his figures are much higher than the average monthly listed strengths for operational fleets and independent flotillas in Krivosheev.
f to take into acount onlu the manpower available they could. Roughly 3 millions men per year were drafted to army till summer 1943, and the number of personnel in armed forces had been contantly growing till that time. The problem was that these men were used somewhere else outside the Eastern Front. Whether the situation could be different? In 1943 unlikely, till that time - don't know for certain.
No. Roughly 3 million men were called up to the Wehrmacht annually (or at least, more or less on average). Trying to relate the number of men called up to actual generation of military forces is a bummer of a task that is complicated by many things (such as f.e. the fact that roughly 2 million men were released from the Wehrmacht to industry). What cannot be assumed though is that 3 million men called up turns into 3 million men in the army, still less that it could possibly turn into 3 million men in the Ostheer.

Fortunately it is not, at least for our purposes, neccessary to do so. The end of result of the overall mobilisation minus the (in this case, irrecoverable) losses you see in the development of the strengths of the arms of service, and of the Wehrmacht as a whole. As you see (in the table directly beneath the one giving call-up figures), this unsurprisingly increases far less than the call-up figures minus the losses.

If we look at the 1943 figures compared to 1942, there were

- An increase from 4 m to 4.25m in the Field Army
- An increase from .23 to .45m in the W-SS
- An increase from 1.2 to 1.8 m in the Reserve Army
- A steady strength of 1.7m in the Luftwaffe
- An increase from .58 to .78 in the Navy

Overall, the Wehrmacht increased its strength from 8.3 to 9.5 million. The Reserve army consists of men being trained, men training them and various home staffs, Landesschützen and sundry administrative elements (essentially the army's home establishment) and more than half a million wounded and sick (this is where the Abgänge ended up). The increase in the Waffen-SS figure is probably mainly personell for the new divisions who started forming around mid-43 and became operational only in 1944, plus recruits in training and more wounded and sick, because no major new W-SS formations entered the picture between mid-42 and mid-43. W-SS (like the KM and Luftwaffe) figures include what is essentially their service equivalent of the Reserve Army. What the Germans essentially had available to compensate for any losses additional to those they actually suffered in the preceding period were the parts of the Field Army not in the East, which at this time totalled somewhat less than 1 million men. Even if every single one of them had been sent East, it would not have compensated for losses twice as high oct42-mar 43. Additionally, they were just about to run into a considerably increased demand for forces elsewhere than the East, due to the allied landings in Italy the disappearence of Italian forces from the Balkans after the Italian surrender. And that is before they even start worrying about a possible allied landing in France in 1943, which they certainly did (and which was a very real possibility, as far as they knew). Anything above that would have had to come from cutbacks in the Luftwaffe that was facing both an increased task in the mediterranean and an accelerating allied strategic air campaign, or in the Navy that was at just this time undergoing the climactic phase of the battle of the Atlantic. If the German losses in the East had been much higher, then their strength would have dropped much lower. There were no major personell reserves that they could have drawn on without major negative consequences elsewhere. If there had been, they would have used them - there was no shortage of warning voices pointing out the dangers of the situation and the development in it, and an intense tug for the resources that were available.

Incidentally, the German call-up figures must have been higher than MH lists, because his figure for men aclled up from war-important work during the last year of the war does not seem to be correct. Exactly the same figure can be found in Wehrersatzplan 45 (which was produced in December 1944), and it refers not to call-ups from war-important work between 1.6.44 and 30.6.45, but to all call-ups from the economy between 1.6.44 and 30.9.44.

cheers

GaryD
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#315

Post by GaryD » 07 Apr 2007, 18:51

Andreas wrote:But the more interesting question for me is whether by itself, numerical superiority would have been enough to not just survive, but to actually win on the battlefield. Here I think that numerical superiority is not sufficient to win, again based on the demonstrated performance on the battlefield. Instead what was required was an evolution in structure, command and control, and strategic direction that used numerical superiority in a way that allowed the Red Army to prevail. Numerical superiority did not help the Red Army to prevail during Operation Mars, and it did not help the Red Army to prevail with its grand designs during the second phase of the winter 42/43 battles. Instead, it got soundly beaten both times. This, from what I have read at least, drove the point home to Stavka that they needed to come up with something better than just numerical superiority if they wanted to beat the Germans, even though it was clear that numerical and material superiority were quite sufficient to beat most of the German allies. This they did. They created a doctrine of assault that would allow them to overcome the defences that they failed on outside Bjelyi, Rzhev, and Ssinyavino in winter 1942, harnessing their ability to generate local superiority, and to sustain large scale losses. They created large maneuver units capable of sustained in-depth combat, the tank armies, to overcome German mobile reserves, which they had failed to do in late winter 42/43. They created the logistical basis to allow these two developments to function. They created an integrated strategic approach to their fight that took stock of their limitations, e.g. by allowing the Germans to attack first at Kursk, instead of trying to pre-empt them as they did at Izyum in 1942.

In my view, all of these developments were absolutely critical, and without them, the Red Army would not have prevailed, and I therefore disagree that these were minor things, compared to numerical superiority. They were the mechanisms harnessing numerical superiority into a war-winning factor, instead of a war-surviving factor.
I think it's quite clear that the Soviets improved steadily from 1941 to 1945. It would be difficult to think otherwise: like all humans they learned from their mistakes. What's really interesting is why they stopped their development at a stage which still required them to lose 2-3 times more casualties than the Germans. What exactly was it that caused them to lose so many men? Could it have been as simple as the following?

From the Recollection of the Commander of the 39th Guards Rifle Division E. T. Marchenko*

G. E. Marchenko retells a story from his father, Colonel Efim Timofeevich Marchenko, who, as commander of the 39th GRD, 8th Guards Army of General Chuikov, participated in the storming of the Seelow Heights.

"Before the battle for the Seelow Heights a tank corps was attached to the 39th GRD. I don't remember the name of the commander, I only remember that he was not young, very cultured, and a very knowledgeable general. He and my father started to think about how to take the heights. All of the bunkers there were targeted against tanks, and were dug in very well. Father said that tanks could not take them, so they had to think of something else. He thought of forming small, 3-4 person combat teams which would cross the front lines and use grenades to take out enough bunkers so as to create gaps for the tanks. The [tank corps] general agreed with father. When father spoke with Chuikov, he also agreed that it would be reasonable.

The night before the attack they were preparing the combat teams, when suddenly there was a call. The [tank corps] general was summoned to the telephone. It turned out the it was Zhukov calling from the Army CP, and Zhukov started to curse at him. Papa remembered that in an instant the general turned as white as paper while Zhukov screamed obscenities at him, saying that he was a traitor and Zhukov would personally shoot him - why were the tanks not attacking? Then Chuikov took the phone and repeated the same thing to Colonel Marchenko, cursing him hysterically. After this the tanks attacked. Papa remembered that the morning was unusually quiet and clear, and the smoke from burning tanks rose in straight pillars, as if they were tree trunks... It seemed like the entire hillside was covered with a forest of smoke. Around 400 tanks had turned into black pillars, and it was obvious that the tanks had not broken through."

*Military-Historical Archive, 2/2007, p. 58-59.

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