Instead of trying to count production of heterogeneous things such as "airplanes", "rifles" and "tanks", considering the vast qualitative disparity between German and Soviet manufactured items (obvious when one compares a Lada with a BMW) one should instead try to measure the munitions available to both armies by their
value. Even ammunition have different levels of quality: each 120 mm shell is not equal to all others. Even the steel and the explosives vary in quality. In the end, quantitative comparisons of individual munitions items produces a highly distorted view.
So how we could determine the value of munitions? Well, the ultimate function of weapons is to inflict casualties on the enemy (gains in territory occur when the enemy forces are either destroyed or retreat due to superior enemy casualty infliction capabilities in proportion to the forces engaged).
Using a conventional Cobb-Douglas casualty production function, where the volume of casualties is determined by the equation:
Enemy casualties =
A x
M^{z} x
P^{1-z} (1)
Which can be interpreted as the equation determining the output of the military sector of the economy given by the number of casualties it inflicts on the enemy.
Where:
A = fighting power parameter (total factor productivity of the armed force, i.e. efficiency)
M = munitions
P = personnel
z = parameter between 0 and 1 that yields the relative importance between munitions and personnel, in civilian sectors, human resources are usually around 60% while capital (i.e. munitions in the military sector) are 40%. However, workers have human capital, which is not taken into account here (we abstract human capital away from personnel and allocate it to parameter A). So I would give 50% / 50% of the relative contribution of personnel and material capital (munitions) to the output of an armed force. That's it, I give z a value of 0.5, that's the only assumption I make in this post.
Note that if we double both M and P we will double our casualty infliction capability. That makes sense, doesn't it? I mean, an army twice the size with twice everything should inflict twice the casualties. One thing that I don't consider in this model would be the size of the enemy forces, that's it, the density of enemies along the front. If there are few men to man the frontlines, artillery barrages, for instance, would tend to produce fewer casualties than if manpower is plenty.
Anyway, my objective is to determine
M(german)/M(soviets)given that we know
P,
A and the number of casualties. These are the statistics for Germany and the USSR on force strength and the number of casualties:
German force strength:
2,500,000 - March 1942
2,550,000 - May 1942
2,600,000 - June 1942
2,600,000 - July 1942
2,500,000 - August 1942
2,490,000 - October 1942
Average: 2,540,000
German casualties:
1,080,950
Soviet force strength:
1st quarter 1942 - 4,186,000
2nd quarter 1942 - 5,060,300
3rd quarter 1942 - 5,664,600
4th quarter 1942 - 6,343,600
Average: 5,313,600
That means that Germany had 47.8% of the personnel strength of the Soviet Union in the Eastern front in 1942.
Soviet casualties:
7,369,278
However, Soviet casualties include besides killed, wounded and missing also sick and frostbitten, while German casualty figures don't. I don't have 1942 sick and frostbitten numbers, but during the whole war they were 12.4% of all Soviet losses. So cutting down 12.4% of the Soviet numbers we reach:
6,455,488 casualties.
That means that Germany inflicted 597% of the casualties using 47.8% of the personnel. The main reason was that Germany was much richer and hence could afford to invest a greater amount of physical capital on their soldiers.
Now, what would be a reasonable estimate of the discrepancy between German and Soviet fighting power? If you assume, for instance, that Germany had 50% of the material resources invested in the eastern front that the Soviet Union had, they also had 47.8% of the personnel, so we would have by applying equation (1) to both armed forces that
A(german)/A(soviet) would be a very, very high number:
Soviet casualties / German casualties =
A(German) x
2.54^{1/2} x
M(German)^{1/2} /
A(Soviet) x
5.314^{1/2} x
M(Soviet)^{1/2}
-->
Soviet casualties / German casualties =
A(German)/
A(Soviet) x
2.54 / 5.314^{1/2} x
M(German)/M(Soviet)^{1/2}
--->
6,455,488 / 1,080,950 =
A(German)/
A(Soviet) x
0.478^{1/2} x
1/2^{1/2}
Each German soldier would have 1,221% of the casualty infliction capability of the Soviet soldier. They would have been almost an army of supermen.
If you assume in 1942 (like some people do) that each Soviet soldier had 50% more equipment than each German soldier, that would mean that the Soviets would have 3.14 times more munitions in total. Which would imply that the Germans would be able to magically increase the casualty infliction capability of their human and material resources by a factor of 1,531% relative to Soviet levels.
However, if we are more reasonable, let's say, use an A of around 250%, which means that the German army was significantly more efficient than the Soviet army but not that much more efficient to the point where each German soldier would be supermen (the 250% was the difference in efficiency between the German and the Western Allies, forces which had a much more similar level of per capita endowment of physical capital). This would mean by applying equation (1) that
M(german)/M(soviet) would be 11,93. Yep, this model concludes, assuming that the Germans had about 250% of the level of casualty infliction efficiency of the Soviets, that the German army had about 12 times more munitions than the Soviets in 1942, and each German soldier would have 25 times more munitions than the Soviet equivalent. Of course, measured in terms of
value derived from combat efficiency and not in terms of physical quantities. That shows the massive qualitative difference between the two forces.
Anyway, the Eastern front was a war between an industrialized country and a developing country. Such as the Vietnam War, and in both cases one force had 10 times or more the casualty infliction capability per soldier of the other. In both cases the discrepancy in combat power was caused by the difference in the state of economic and social development of the two countries: a first world country and a third world country.
The fact that German forces were better equipped than Soviet forces is obvious to one that understands basic world history: Western Europe was always much more advanced than Eastern Europe, since the 14th century with the Italian renascence. And today the GDP per capita of Germany is 4-5 times that of Russia (in terms of market rates, not Maddison's PPP masturbation), in 1938, the ratio was about the same, while the modern GDP of the areas that were under German control in 1942 were about 10 times the GDP of the areas under Soviet control in 1942.
Sources:
http://pt.scribd.com/doc/59330786/Stati ... ir-Own-Los
Zetterling, Normandy 1944
"In tactics, as in strategy, superiority in numbers is the most common element of victory." - Carl von Clausewitz
),who wrote:Germany itself produced 30 % of these Nobel Prices(1919-1939)
