Russians simply won by the power of numbers

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Kunikov
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#346

Post by Kunikov » 09 Apr 2007, 20:10

My friends reply: "я только запомнила характеристику." Hopefully you can see the verb.

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#347

Post by GaryD » 09 Apr 2007, 20:40

Kunikov wrote:My friends reply: "я только запомнила характеристику." Hopefully you can see the verb.
I thought you said we were done! Please go look at the article in VIA yourself, because your friend is wrong. It says "zapomnil kharakteristiku."

God, at least Quist's and f.kriukov's quote war was interesting!

I am done talking to you about it.


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#348

Post by Kunikov » 09 Apr 2007, 21:11

I said we were done talking if all you could do was advance against me with ad hominem attacks. I posted my friends reply to you as a courtesy. Lastly, you yourself have admitted it was his daughter.

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#349

Post by Kunikov » 09 Apr 2007, 21:23

My friend's last reply to you:
Congratulations on discovering the gender of Marchenko's daughter. I should point out that it was a minor correction which you did not have to start an argument over. The main point is that when it came to verifiable facts her account proved to be mostly erroneous. Why you would think that unverifiable facts are true remains a mystery. As for reader's comments, what exactly do you expect from the unsophisticated audience of the most liberal Russian newspaper? If you want other comments, visit a forum for Russian military enthusiasts. Any view of history should be based on facts (of which there are pretty much none in the article), not ideological bias diluted with dubious hearsay from children of the actual participants.

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Qvist
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#350

Post by Qvist » 09 Apr 2007, 23:21

Hello Art,
Do you mean the men that were physically present in theair units or do you mean the men that were listed in the units strength while being evacuated in th hospital in the fronline area? The latter system of account of unit strength was not used in Red Army.
I mean that I am presuming that a Soviet casualty in Krivosheev's figures is a man who left the strength figure of his Front.
and it seems that we are talking about different things again. If I undestand you correctly the Abgange figures you talked about includes only those wounded and sick who left OstHeer and you compared this figures with Krivosheev's ones wich include all men lost regardless of whether they were evacuated from Fronts area or not.
The essential point is not evacuation, the essential point is removal from strength.
The question I interested in is how many of wounded and sick remained in OstHeer and two what extent taking them into account would alter German losses figures.
Yes, of course it would. Ditto for the Red Army. But that is neither here nor there. The point is that as long as those counted as casualties are casualties in the sense of leaving the strength of the formation, it is valid to say that differnce in strenght plus losses equals force generation. If they are not to any subsantial degree, then it is not valid. I do not think there were very large numbers of wounded who were not evacuated, for several reasons. But sick is a different matter. A study was made of the issue in late 42 as I recall (The "Hosemann Study"), which found that in 1941/42, a larger number of sickness cases remained with the troops than was evacuated. Not really surprising, after all, many sickness cases are quite trivial and short-term, and well within the capabilities of local treatment.
Well, there are alternative data, that show much greater NCO. And what is the typical scale of German NCO figures?
Really? That is most interesting - could you tell a little more about this?

It is unfortunately quite difficult to find very systematic data for German NCL, though I am still trying. Vol. 5/2 of DRZW does give figures for 1941 and early 1942, based on the troop sickness certificates:

3q41: 157 800
4q41: 220 237
1q42: 275 662

These pertain to the army (in the East) only.

Beyond that, there is however a very good and quite easy way of establishing a minimum threshold for them, by subtracting the Blutige Verluste from the Abgänge. Doing so inherently understates the NCL, because BV includes unevacuated wounded, which Abgänge does not. There are numerous other complications as well, which I won't go into unless you should prove unexpectedly interested in the minutiae of German reporting practices. :) Nevertheless, they generally indicate figures of a fairly comparable magnitude to those quoted above.

Also it should be noted that GKO decrees establishing ration strength were freqeuntly issued in the middle of the month, so the lag was even more significant.
A very basic and somewhat strange methodological error then to use the date of the GKO decree rather than the point in time the figures actually refer to.
I don't fully understand. To find what?
The answer to this: "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)".

Well, I didn't say that. However, the number of mobilized to some extent gives some scale of available manpower.
Ok, on that you are of course right.
Quote:
If we look at the 1943 figures compared to 1942, there were

On what date, but the way?
I think it ultimately does not matter too much, but MH does not really clarify that. So I am assuming here that he is using the same division as in his mobilisation table - 31.5.-1.6. Which is also in many ways the logical thing to do.
Quote:
Overall, the Wehrmacht increased its strength from 8.3 to 9.5 million.

That is 1.2 million increase, significantly more then IL suffered during the same period (I don't include wounded and sick demobilized)
Yes, but the mob figure is also significantly more than the IL plus the increase in strength. If you look at 40 to 41 (when IL were much less), this is even clearer. Hence, it seems clear that call-up figures are scant guidance to the growth in military strength in themselves.
That is generally close to what I said: Eastern Front didn't recieve more men because they were used elsewhere, but not due to the physical anavailability of manpower. But that they were used elsewhere wasn't the law of nature but the result of decisions made. In essence you statement is not that sending higher reinforcement to EF was impossible, but rather that it was unreasonable in that situation.
Well, yes - obviously, with no calls on their resources elsewhere, Germany would have been very much better placed in terms of manpower in the East. But as they did have such calls, it boils down to much the same thing. There were not enough men for any purposes - the situation was one of distribution of scarcity. That places brutal, obvious and real constraints on any potential for compensating for greatly increased losses in the East by transfering even more forces there from elsewhere (by a quick count, 19 divisions were historically transferred to the the EF from elsewhere between 1042 and 0343, not counting the freshly raised LW-FD - with a further 9 following during the next three months) - especially considering that the overall size of the relevant type of forces elsewhere were so comparatively low.
By the way, it is intersting why such a disparity in number of men hospitalized existed: Soviet Army had about million men hospitalized both in the rear and on the Fronts, German Army had at the end of war 700 thousands or more in rear only, while the sanitary losses of Red Army were much higher.
One of a large number of highly interesting things concerning this issue. One possible contribution to the explanation: It seems, though I can see no very good reason why this should be so, that wounded were hospitalised for shorter periods in the Red Army compared to the German. Krivosheev gives average recovery times of 76.4 days for wounded and 34.5 days for sick. By contrast, a Heeressanitätsinspekteur mid-1944 analysis of the same issue in the German forces gave these results:

Wounded:
Return to full fitness:
By 3months 40%
By 6 months 60%
By 12 months 70%
(30% died or failed to return to full fitness)

Sick:
By 1 month 75%
By 3 months 90%
3 months or more 94%
(6% died or failed to return to full fitness)

Sick seem pretty similar, but the average time must have been considerably higher for the wounded.

cheers

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#351

Post by Andreas » 10 Apr 2007, 10:06

GaryD, Kunikov, take it outside and stop cluttering the thread.

Thank you.

Andreas

Ps. No, I do not care who started it either.

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#352

Post by Andreas » 10 Apr 2007, 10:16

GaryD wrote:
Andreas wrote:Dismissing what is obviously a silly argument does not confer upon me the responsibility to provide an explanation for a phenomenon which I did not even bring up, and which may or may not be relevant to the discussion.
I disagree quite strongly that the aggressiveness of some Soviet commanders to drive forward at any cost, regardless of casualties or the considered recommendations of subordinates who might have a better evaluation of the current situation, is irrelevant to why the Soviets suffered such large casualties vs. the Germans. It has to be at least part of the explanation. But perhaps you didn't understand the reference so I'm sorry if it wasn't clear. I thought the quote illustrated it rather well.
I understood perfectly well. Higher or lower casualties by themselves say nothing about the evolution of command and operational capabilities. Casualty ratios are a measure of efficiency, but efficiency is only one item relevant to the debate, and not the most important one either when looking at the evolution in Soviet command. Effectiveness is far more important. Ideally of course both would improve, but if you can choose one as a commander, you will have to go for effectiveness.

Regarding the actual example provided, it is meaningless. Yes, the battle of the Seelower Höhen was a clusterf*ck. But that's life, or indeed death for many of the poor Soviet soldiers, you can not always choose your battles the way you want to. There were all the ingredients of a very nasty piece of work - time pressure (need to get to Berlin before the US does, and Stalin breathing down Zhukov's neck while Konev was frolicking around south of Berlin), unfavourable terrain (but unfortunately there was only that bridgehead), determined defense (by what Rumsfeld would call "dead-enders"), and all these combined lead to command failure (when the maneuver element was inserted into battle too early). But that does not make it typical of late-war Soviet battles. It maybe typical of Zhukov's battles, but that's as far as I would go at this point.

I hope that is clearer now.

All the best

Andreas

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#353

Post by Art » 11 Apr 2007, 15:25

GaryD wrote: By the way, do you know of any discussions of the of the archival document published in VIA 1/2007 (page 21) from a General Staff officer named Vasilenko which strongly criticizes Zhukov's actions in January-April 1942?
Surely, this document was known even before it was published in VIA this year, but I'm afraid, now I can't remember were I saw the discussion of this document, sorry.

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#354

Post by Art » 11 Apr 2007, 15:35

Art wrote: The same should be apllied to the civillian personnel, under the decree #660 of 11th September 1941 wich established the ration system they have to be written of from the quartermaster supply - that is from ration figures.
I used rather unsuccesfull espression. It would be more correct to say that the decree order to exlude the formations of non-military commissariats (and there were military servicemen in this formations) from the Army rations figures. However they recieved rations, that were allocated to them separately from Red Army. As concerns military personnel in Red Army and Red Fleet, as far as I can see from late GKO decrees they recieved rations but again they were listed separetly from the main figures of Red Army rations.

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#355

Post by Art » 11 Apr 2007, 15:45

Andreas wrote: Regarding the actual example provided, it is meaningless. Yes, the battle of the Seelower Höhen was a clusterf*ck.
IMO the role of this batlle is usually exagerated. As I said the heights wew seized on the second day of the offensive (and in the narrow sense it was only part of the forces of 1 BF struggling for this heghts). However, problems of 1 BF didn't disapeared after that, and the front didn't managed to achieve the full freedom of manoeuvre but instead continued to push the opposing German forces westward. If to make comparison with other Soviet operations of 1945, then during the offensive in East Prussia in January 2nd and 3rd BFs had at least no less problems in breaking through enemy defence than Zhukov had in April.

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#356

Post by Qvist » 11 Apr 2007, 16:00

On the issue of German manpower reserves in 1942/43, I have just been reading a long letter from Fromm (as chief of the Ersatzheer) to Zeitzler (as head of OKH) on 18 November 1942. It deals primarily with the possibilities for finding the forces neccessary tp address the worsened situation in the Mediterranean following the toch landings, but it is also a succinct summation of the general manpower situation of the army. Since I need to translate the salient parts of it anyway, I thought I'd might as well post it here. My emphasis throughout, except where otherwise stated.
Dear Zeitzler blablabla....A second front has without question been established through the retreat of Armee Rommel and the American landings in Africa. It remains to be seen to what extent it will threaten us, and in what direction. What is beyond doubt is that at the present time, the forces at our disposal in Africa and on the European mainland with whom we can oppose this are quite insufficient. What you have been able to commit so far has only been won at the expense of the Atlantic Front, which remains of critical importance and whose weakening is indesirable and highly risky. The strength of our allies in Italy and on the Balkans numerically, spiritually, and in terms of determination and endurance, I am not in a position to evaluate. But on these alone we cannot base the defence of Africa, Southern Europe and the Balkans. From this follows the neccesity of forming a new German army for the defence of Southern Europe. This is a large word based on small possibilities.

The manpower situation, even more than the materiel situation, does not permit a further increase in the number of units. New formations must be found among those already existing. An increase is not possible, as the maintenenance of those already existing entails the use of every last man available. The limits imposed on us here are exactly known, their extension is only possible by tapping into the pool of armaments labor, with ensuing heavy consequences. What despite this could be done, has been done. The call-up of the Kriemhilde Divisions is, with the exception of individual measures that would have profound consequences for the already weak training staffs, the last burden the Ersatzheer (which has so far carried the brunt of manpower sacrifices in this war) can assume. But we are not yet at the end. We no longer have any other cards to play than the sudden and unprepared weaknening of our fronts by the shifting of all (emphasis in original) divisions which the various fronts can cope without in the immediately foreseeable future. By careful and timely preparation, this should be possible.

I see this as possible in the following manner:

1. The main burden for a new army for Southern Europe can only be carried by the Feldheer itself. We still possess 64 divisions with 9 Btl. Additionally, we have 13 Divisions of 8 Btl. All other divisions have been restructured to 6 Btl. One could entertain the notion of converting all divisions to a 6 Btl. structure, and combine the released units into new formations. This would however lead to an excessive weakening of the front, and be organisationally infeasible.

I propose that the 9th batallion of those divisions still possessing them is withdrawn, and used to form new divisions.... artillery batteries, engineer and reconnaissance units and some infantry regimental units must in any case be given over by the Feldheer. We cannot expect the Feldheer to find the neccessary Signals units. I can however provide the personell for these provided the infantry do not make to many calls on the personell of the signals troops. Command elements must be provided by the Field Army from its relatively speaking fairly adequate stock of Corps HQs, including Corps troops. When I omit from consideration the 9-Btl. Divisions in Norway, Finland and Denmark (there are 5 of them), this leaves us with 59 divisions with 9 Btl. Hence, we can get from them 59 Btl. That is 10 Divisions with 6 Btl. each, a structure that would be more appropriate than a 9 Btl. one considering the broken terrain of southern Europe.

2. The resulting weakening of the front can largely be compensated for if the proposal of the Chief of the General Staff to call up 200,000 men from industry and use them as replacements for the Eastern Front is accepted. Under such circumstances, I deem it acceptable to reduce these divisions from 9 to 8 Btl.

The formation of this army of ten divisions, the last reserve of the German Reich, seems to me urgently required. This army can be provided additional to the two Kriemhilde divisions not yet deployed, and the two motorised Kriemhilde divisions who have not yet been called up - in all, that makes 14 Divisions. Whether these are committed as a whole or used to free up different divisions from elsewhere does not matter from my point of view. I can however envisage that it might be possible to find another two divisins by doing so, that the Croats could be imposed upon more than hitherto to make contributions to the two divisions they are planning to form.
The Kriemhilde divisions were an emergency measure to quickly form new divisions from the personell of the Ersatzheer.

The nature of the measures proposed by Fromm in order to produce a force of perhaps 150-200,000 men with which to defend southern Europe puts the manpower situation in stark relief. It is worth noting that the letter was written two days before the Stalingrad offensive opened, and with no consideration for the impending loss of a whole army in the East. In the end, his proposals were not carried out - instead, the Germans resorted to measures not within Fromm's authority - they dipped deeper into their manpower pool by lowering the conscription age and accepting the consequences of call-ups from industry, then used a large part of these to form numerous new divisions (or re-forming those destroyed at Stalingrad), once again virtually emptied the Atlantic sector of mobile forces and from these drew the forces with which they defended southern Europe from the following summer. This ate directly into their ability to maintain their strength in the East, as a consequence of which replacements were completely inadequate during the summer 43 battles, and virtually no reinforcements arrived until late autumn. This again caused a sharp drop in German strength in the East over the middle months of 1943, which left the Ostheer in such a wekaned state by late 1943 that a large number of divisions were dissolved or amalgamated and an overall drop in strength from which they never recovered, just at the time when the Red Army was fielding peak strengths.

cheers

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#357

Post by Art » 11 Apr 2007, 16:44

Qvist wrote: I mean that I am presuming that a Soviet casualty in Krivosheev's figures is a man who left the strength figure of his Front.
Let us say these are the losses according the units reports. I'm not sure that all men listed in losses reportes were excluded from the strength figures.
The essential point is not evacuation, the essential point is removal from strength.
Three questions. Is it right that:1)removing from strength of the units = removing from the strength figure of OstHeer as a whole, 2)removing from strength of the units = Abgange, 3)Abgange (in the part of wounded and sick) = physical evacuation from Eastern front
The point is that as long as those counted as casualties are casualties in the sense of leaving the strength of the formation, it is valid to say that differnce in strenght plus losses equals force generation
The question is that to what extent "leaving the strength of the formation" reflects the actual number of men disabled temporary or permanently. As far as I understand Krivosheev's figures give the total number of that men, and what I want to know is the relation between that number in German Army and Abgange figures. In other words what part of men disabled due to the sickness or wounds was included in Abgange figures?
Really? That is most interesting - could you tell a little more about this?
http://www.ozon.ru/context/detail/id/3164407/
This is the study of Soviet Medical Service in War made by colonels Gladkikh and Loktev. The authors provide the sanitary losses figures for the Soviet Active Army from the documents of the Chief Military Sanitary Department of Red Army. The crucial point is that their figures of wounded are significantly less then Krivosheev's ones and the figures of sick are significantly more (on the level of 2 mln per year). I don't know why is it so, but this discrepancy exists.
It is unfortunately quite difficult to find very systematic data for German NCL, though I am still trying. Vol. 5/2 of DRZW does give figures for 1941 and early 1942, based on the troop sickness certificates:
Thanks.
A very basic and somewhat strange methodological error then to use the date of the GKO decree rather than the point in time the figures actually refer to
Do you mean Glantz? Well, I don't think this makes much difference on long-term timescale.
The answer to this: "does Glantz give the strength figure only for the fronts?
Well, if to take the decree of 5th May, it includes in Active Forces Stavka's Reserve (24th and 58th Armies and troops called simply Stavka Reserve - evidently the forces less of Army size) and airborne Corps, 9 from 10 of which are listed in Inactive Forces by the authors of "Combat and numerical composition..." handbook. The decree's figires for Active Army don't include Fleet forces and include part of AAD forces, but not all of them. I can add that as far as I can see from GKO rations decrees, they always included Stvaka's reserve in Active Army strength, and didn't include Fleet (it was listed separetely) from Red Army, This must be one of the source of dicrepancy between Glantz's figures and CNCSA ones.
Well, yes - obviously, with no calls on their resources elsewhere, Germany would have been very much better placed in terms of manpower in the East
Well, I think were are decribing the same situation in different words and probably with different attitude.
By contrast, a Heeressanitätsinspekteur mid-1944 analysis of the same issue in the German forces gave these results:
thanks, very intersting. And another question: what caused such huge buid-up of wounded in Ersatzheer at the end of war compared with 1942-43?

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#358

Post by Andreas » 11 Apr 2007, 16:56

Qvist wrote:One of a large number of highly interesting things concerning this issue. One possible contribution to the explanation: It seems, though I can see no very good reason why this should be so, that wounded were hospitalised for shorter periods in the Red Army compared to the German. Krivosheev gives average recovery times of 76.4 days for wounded and 34.5 days for sick. By contrast, a Heeressanitätsinspekteur mid-1944 analysis of the same issue in the German forces gave these results:

Wounded:
Return to full fitness:
By 3months 40%
By 6 months 60%
By 12 months 70%
(30% died or failed to return to full fitness)

Sick:
By 1 month 75%
By 3 months 90%
3 months or more 94%
(6% died or failed to return to full fitness)

Sick seem pretty similar, but the average time must have been considerably higher for the wounded.

cheers
Not sure about this conclusion. If you exclude the non-returns (which are difficult to include in a mathematical calculation, unless you use a proxy figure to stand in for the value 'never'), then the average of the German return to service is below three months (90 days), and it could be well below that, because we do not know how the distribution works within the three months (e.g. if 30% return in 30 days, 35% in 60, and 40% in 90 days).

All the best

Andreas

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#359

Post by Qvist » 11 Apr 2007, 21:42

Not sure about this conclusion. If you exclude the non-returns (which are difficult to include in a mathematical calculation, unless you use a proxy figure to stand in for the value 'never'), then the average of the German return to service is below three months (90 days), and it could be well below that, because we do not know how the distribution works within the three months (e.g. if 30% return in 30 days, 35% in 60, and 40% in 90 days).
Hm, I see your point. So much for that then.

cheers

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#360

Post by Qvist » 11 Apr 2007, 22:07

Hello Art, thanks again for good points
Let us say these are the losses according the units reports. I'm not sure that all men listed in losses reportes were excluded from the strength figures.
There is the fact that Krivosheev relates his figures to those provided by military hospitals. It's not really neccessary to be absolutely certain that absolutely all men listed in loss reports also left strength, as long as that was generally case - the uses of this type of reckoning is more to provide a general picture than a really precise figure.
Three questions. Is it right that:1)removing from strength of the units = removing from the strength figure of OstHeer as a whole, 2)removing from strength of the units = Abgange, 3)Abgange (in the part of wounded and sick) = physical evacuation from Eastern front
1. Yes
2. Yes, at least as long as we are talking of Iststärke. Tagesstärke omits all men who aren't present and fit for service, for whatever reason.
3. Yes, as far as I can understand.
The question is that to what extent "leaving the strength of the formation" reflects the actual number of men disabled temporary or permanently. As far as I understand Krivosheev's figures give the total number of that men, and what I want to know is the relation between that number in German Army and Abgange figures. In other words what part of men disabled due to the sickness or wounds was included in Abgange figures?
You mean Abgänge compared to the wounded and sick who were not evacuated? I can't provide anything better than what I already have on that point I'm afraid. Blutige Verluste includes, generally, all the wounded but none of the sick. For sick who were not evacuated I have no data, but if the Hosemann Study is to be believed, these were more numerous than those who were evacuated. Why is this important though?
This is the study of Soviet Medical Service in War made by colonels Gladkikh and Loktev. The authors provide the sanitary losses figures for the Soviet Active Army from the documents of the Chief Military Sanitary Department of Red Army. The crucial point is that their figures of wounded are significantly less then Krivosheev's ones and the figures of sick are significantly more (on the level of 2 mln per year). I don't know why is it so, but this discrepancy exists.
Hm. Krivosheev also quotes the hospital data, which is slightly lower for wounded (by about 610,900, which he states may be due to these having remained with their units), but roughly twice as large as his figures for sick - 7,641,312. He accounts for this by assuming that the 4,593,600 sick not listed in the Fronts reports must have been sick in the interior MDs, non-active Fronts etc. What exactly are the alternative figures?
Do you mean Glantz? Well, I don't think this makes much difference on long-term timescale.
No, but it does in many other contexts. Very good thing to be aware of.
Well, if to take the decree of 5th May, it includes in Active Forces Stavka's Reserve (24th and 58th Armies and troops called simply Stavka Reserve - evidently the forces less of Army size) and airborne Corps, 9 from 10 of which are listed in Inactive Forces by the authors of "Combat and numerical composition..." handbook. The decree's figires for Active Army don't include Fleet forces and include part of AAD forces, but not all of them. I can add that as far as I can see from GKO rations decrees, they always included Stvaka's reserve in Active Army strength, and didn't include Fleet (it was listed separetely) from Red Army, This must be one of the source of dicrepancy between Glantz's figures and CNCSA ones.
Than you, very interesting. So, this would in essence mean that Stavka Reserves are included generally in Glantz' figures, insofar as they are based on the GKO decrees?
Well, I think were are decribing the same situation in different words and probably with different attitude.
To a large extent yes, though I am not quite sure what "attitude" means in this context. ;) Having read a few thousand pages of documents on the manpower issue, the conclusion rather screams out at you. :)
And another question: what caused such huge buid-up of wounded in Ersatzheer at the end of war compared with 1942-43?
More wounded - as the losses increased (which they steadily did), so did the number of hospitalised men in the EH at any given point.

cheers

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