The State of the Ostheer - May 1942

[HistoryGeek2019]

My quote was

"Puny Japan" had a bigger economy than the SU by 1942, once you consider Korea, Manchukuo, and Taiwan (where Japan had a lot of heavy industry)" plus the extractive resources of Southeast Asia..

Look at table 1-1: Japanese colonies had $63bn GDP in 1938 (37% of Japan's).
It's not well-known the extent of Japanese investment in its colonies, partially because the formerly colonized don't like to talk about it. For example: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Korea_und ... ploitation, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Showa_Steel_Works

Japan '42 GDP at 197 (growth of 16% over '38). If colonies grew by 16% as well, Japan + Colonies GDP = $270bn in 1942.

SU '42 GDP = 274.

Does captured Southeast Asia make up a $4bn difference?
Easily - DEI alone was 77.4bn in '38.
Just the oil, rubber, and tin extracted from SE Asia by Japan makes up the difference. To say nothing of food stolen from the inhabitants (Records of local occupations are sparse but just ask my grandma, who lived in the Philippines at the time, whether the Japanese took food.)

The USSR had a GDP of 318 in 1942, not 274:

WW2 GDPs.png (410.56 KiB) Viewed 1526 times

If you read Chapter 6 on Japan, you would know that the economies of Japan's occupied territories (and of the Japanese empire as a whole) suffered greatly due to the termination of trade outside the Yen bloc and the lack of shipping. You can even see the decline in Japan's GDP following its initial year in the war in Table 1.3 above. In any event, Japan's military production (the only thing that matters) was puny in comparison to the USSR's in every category except naval vessels:

Japan v USSR war production.png (241.02 KiB) Viewed 1526 times

[TheMarcksPlan]

The USSR had a GDP of 318 in 1942, not 274:

That's an error in the table of the print edition; Harrison corrects it in other work and I meant to point that out to you earlier.

See page 27:

Figures in red correct a spreadsheet error in the published version
that overstated figures for Soviet GDP

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/do ... 1&type=pdf

...so we can blame Harrison for that dispute.

In any event, Japan's military production

I said Japan+colonies had a bigger economy than SU in '42, which is true.

Econ mobilization was 36% for Japan in '42 (iirc) versus 70% for SU. Plus warships were kind of a big deal for Japanese production and merchant shipping construction probably more so (definitely later in the war merchant shipping dominated warship building).

...response re "what's the ATL?" underway...

[Ружичасти Слон]

Hello

I ask for to themarksplan to give author explanations for datas images. He not give. And nobody here can to help.

But on different forum peoples is very helping and send explanations.

I give to topic for every members for to read.

Despite the large increase in starvation mortality, those who died were, in fact, a minority of all starvation sufferers. What do the data reveal about who died of starvation and who survived? Who was most vulnerable and who had greater access to the limited food aid that the state was able or willing to make available, that factories and local political authorities could grow themselves or wangle out of unofficial sources, or that workers could obtain from their private or collectively tilled
allotments?

We can illustrate the larger trend through the example of the Vysokogorskii Machine
Factory in Nizhnii Tagil, which during the war operated as an ammunition factory under
the designation of Factory No. 63 (table 5.2). While we could have chosen several Urals
factories, the value of No. 63 is that it allows us to trace the progression of days
lost to starvation on a month-by-month basis over the entire course of 1943 and 1944.
Row 2 of the table shows the total number of days lost to sickness and injury per 100
workers for each month in 1943; row 3 shows the number of days lost specifically to
semi-starvation and starvation; and row 4 converts the raw figures in rows 2 and 3 into
percentages, allowing us to measure starvation’s relative importance among the various
causes of workers’ ill-health. Rows 5–7 repeat the same exercise for 1944.
Even in 1943, starvation cost this factory more days lost to sickness than any other
factor except for skin infections, a category also sensitive to malnutrition. In 1944,
however, starvation reigned supreme, outstripping even the catch-all category of “other
causes” of lost work time. More importantly, the table reveals the chronological
progression of the problem. During the first three months of 1943 starvation was at
very low levels, accounting for well under 10 percent of all days lost to sickness. In
April 1943, it began to rise, and fluctuated at fairly high levels through September,
after which it underwent a gradual decline. In January 1944, however, it began once
more to rise, accelerating in both absolute numbers and as a percentage of all
sickness, reaching a peak in July at a level more than twice as costly as July of the
previous year, and 64 percent higher than 1943’s worst month, September. In August
1944, it fell back to its June level, and then dropped sharply, and by December 1944
had disappeared altogether as a factor influencing workers’ health.

Factory No. 63 was probably at the more extreme end of the spectrum in terms of the
total number of days of temporary disability and the number of days attributed to
starvation, but all the Urals factories for which we have collected medical reports
showed the same general trajectory.

[Ружичасти Слон]

Figures 5.2a–5.2c show the distortion that arises if we include the under-fives in our
calculations. The figures look at the major hinterland cities for which we have found
both 1939 census data and population estimates for January 1, 1944, and compare
percentage changes in three variables during the period 1940–1944: population; the
crude mortality rate; and the number of deaths of persons aged five years and older.
Each city has five bars. Reading from left to right, the first bar shows the percentage
change in population between the 1939 census and December 31, 1943, the second bar
shows the percentage change in the crude mortality rate (CMR) between 1940 and 1943, and the third bar, the percentage change in the number of deaths among people aged five years and older between these same two years. Bars 4 and 5 show the same percentage changes in comparing 1944 with 1940. In cities where bars 2 and 4 appear to be missing, as in Ivanovo, this is because the changes in the CMR were close to zero and are not visible on the graph.

What do figures 5.2a—5.2c tell us? During the war, Soviet home-front cities saw
simultaneous increases in the size of their populations and the number of people who
died. Was the greater number of deaths due simply to the larger number of people? One
way to try to find out is to look at the crude mortality rate (CMR), that is the number
of deaths per 1,000 population. If the increase in population sees the CMR remain more
or less stable, this suggests that the conditions affecting mortality have not
fundamentally altered, and the larger absolute number of deaths is simply in line with
the greater number of people. This is indeed the picture that seems to emerge if we
look at the CMR in home-front towns and cities. Cities that recorded very large
increases in the total number of deaths during 1943 show either very small increases in
the crude death rate (Gor′kii, Kuibyshev), or even an actual decline (Kazan′, Izhevsk,
Molotov, Novosibirsk, Stalinsk, Kemerovo). An even larger number of cities shows a fall
in the crude mortality rate during 1944 (Moscow, Ivanovo, Iaroslavl′, Gor′kii,
Kuibyshev, Kazan′, Izhevsk, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Stalinsk, Kemerovo, Prokop′evsk).
Looking at the crude death rate alone gives the impression that wartime mortality in
these cities either remained in line with changes in population or even improved. Such
a conclusion would have very real political and historiographical implications—it would
suggest that the USSR, and in particular its food distribution mechanisms and its
public health system, had far greater success withstanding the ravages of the war than
in fact it did.

Yet this conclusion is incorrect. As soon as we strip out deaths among infants and
young children and look only at the fates of those aged five and older, the picture
changes significantly. Given the dramatic decline in the size of the under-five
population and with it the number of under-five deaths, a stable, or even a modest
decline in the CMR would mean that deaths among the non-child population had risen and
were cancelling out the drop in infant and child deaths. Groups that in normal times
had a lower propensity to die now saw their death rates go up. During 1943, deaths in
the five-and-older age group, which traditionally accounted for fewer than half of all
deaths, shot up by over 100 percent in Kazan′, Stalinsk, and Kemerovo; by between 136
and 186 percent in Iaroslavl′, Gor′kii, Kuibyshev, Saratov, Izhevsk, and Novosibirsk;
by over 200 percent in Molotov, Sverdlovsk, and Prokop′evsk; and by a truly staggering
335 percent in Zlatoust, 439 percent in Kirov, 448 percent in Magnitogorsk, and 571
percent in Cheliabinsk. These rises so vastly outstripped both increases in population
and changes in the crude mortality rate that they could not possibly be attributable to
population growth alone. On the contrary, they point to a real and very marked increase
in mortality among the five-and-older population and an unmistakable shift in the
burden of mortality onto older age groups.41 This conclusion holds valid even if we
compare 1940 with 1944, when mortality in absolute terms fell by very large amounts.
The percentage increase in deaths among those five and older compared to 1940 is much
smaller than in 1943, but it still measurably outstrips changes in population and in
the crude mortality rate.
Among the adult population the distribution of deaths within and between age groups,
and between men and women, changed with the war.42 With the exception of Moscow, we see
three trends. Firstly, except for the very elderly, within each age group the gap
between male and female deaths widened. In other words, the extra deaths caused by the
war fell most heavily on men, despite the greater proportion of females in the
population. Secondly, there was a slight—and in some regions pronounced—downward shift
in mortality toward younger age groups. The share of deaths among those over the age of
sixty declined, and the share of deaths among those aged thirty to fifty-nine went up.
Thirdly, there were marked regional differences in this process. Again, the most
hard-hit region was the Urals, where the downward shift in the burden of mortality was
especially sharp: in 1943 men aged thirty to forty-none (as opposed to thirty to
fifty-nine) accounted for a full third of all deaths. In Kirov they made up 38 percent
of all deaths, and in Cheliabinsk 41.7 percent.

[Ружичасти Слон]

Figures 5.3a–5.3b show the relative importance of the major causes of death among the population aged five and older in 1940, 1943, and 1944. Two classes of
disease—gastrointestinal diseases (infections and conditions such as stomach ulcers),
and pneumonia and other diseases of the respiratory system—showed relatively little
fluctuation over the period. Some localities (Iaroslavl′ and Ivanovo provinces in
Central Russia, Molotov and Kirov provinces in the Urals) saw a spike in deaths from
gastrointestinal infections during 1942, probably associated with the arrival or
through-transit of evacuees, many of whom fell ill and eventually died due to the
horrendous sanitary conditions on the trains that carried them eastwards.
The picture with coronary artery disease (in which we also include deaths from strokes)
is more mixed. With the exception of Moscow, which retained a relatively large number
of elderly inhabitants, deaths from coronary artery disease either remained stable or
declined in importance. However, the regional aggregates conceal some measurable local deviations, namely in Kirov (where heart deaths fell markedly in line with the influx
of young workers) and Kazan′ (where coronary deaths rose following the arrival of
elderly evacuees). In general the war should have brought a downward shift in the age
profile of the non-child population which, all things being equal, should then have
reduced the percentage of deaths due to heart disease. That these deaths stayed stable
among a generally younger population is itself an indirect indicator of a marked
deterioration in people’s general health, the impact of extreme hunger, and the strains
of an almost unbearable intensity of labor. However, without age-specific population
data, this observation remains only conjecture. It is equally possible that local
variations in coronary artery mortality had less to do with actual medical or social
conditions than with local variations in the way the disease was diagnosed (or
misdiagnosed) and identified as the probable cause of death.

Figures 5.3a–5.3b clearly show one cause of death that loomed above all others in its
contribution to wartime mortality: the starvation-tuberculosis complex. Only Moscow,
with its older population and high incidence of heart disease, did not reflect this
trend. In the small number of cities and regions for which we have data for 1942, most
show that death from the starvation-tuberculosis complex was already starting to rise,
but the real surge came in 1943.43 Within the TB-starvation complex, starvation was the
major component, although for reasons already explained, we cannot be certain of the
exact relative weights of the two factors. We can illustrate this with the columns for
the Urals. Roughly speaking, the importance of starvation would fall within a range:
its minimum contribution would be the difference between TB + “other” deaths in 1940
and TB + “other” deaths in 1943, a difference of 22 percentage points. Its maximum
contribution would be the gap between TB deaths in 1943 and TB + “other” deaths in
1943, approximately 37.3 percentage points. If we take the maximum end of the range, in every region except Moscow, starvation became the most important cause of death among the non-child population. If we take the lower end of the range, the picture is
somewhat more varied and open to conjecture. In Central Russia and, even more
dramatically, the Urals, the role of starvation seems clear and unambiguous. In the
Volga and Western Siberia—areas that had very high prewar rates of tuberculosis
mortality—it is possible that starvation played a more secondary role. It added
substantially to overall mortality, without itself becoming the dominant cause.
What is unambiguous, however, is the combined influence of tuberculosis and starvation.

[Ружичасти Слон]

In the Urals, by far the worst-affected region, the starvation-tuberculosis complex
accounted for 52 percent of all non-child deaths in 1943, and an almost unimaginable 72 percent in the city of Kirov. One way to visualize its effect is to look at the
contribution that the starvation-tuberculosis complex made to the increase in all
non-child deaths between 1940–1943 and 1940–1944. In other words, how many of the
additional people who died in 1943 compared to 1940 died because of starvation or
tuberculosis? We do this by taking the number of additional tuberculosis + “other”
deaths in 1943 compared to 1940 (or respectively, 1944 versus 1940), and seeing what
percentage it represents of all additional non-child deaths in these same years. We
show this in Figure 5.4.

Figure 5.4 is particularly salient because it illustrates the persistence of the
starvation-tuberculosis complex during 1944, when we would generally have assumed that the food situation was improving. Although there were some important local
exceptions,44 the absolute number of deaths in each region declined markedly during
1944, although it is likely that this improvement was confined to the second half of
the year. Yet despite this decrease, starvation and tuberculosis combined continued to
be the most important single cause of non-child mortality in every region but Moscow,
and in some regions their relative importance even increased. Figure 5.4 shows that if
we look only at the “extra” deaths that occurred in 1944 compared to 1940, the
starvation-tuberculosis complex accounted for the vast majority of them, Moscow
included.

[Ружичасти Слон]

Another striking feature of wartime starvation is that its burden fell overwhelmingly
on males between the ages of thirty and fifty-nine. The age gradient was less
pronounced in some regions than in others, but the pattern was true everywhere. We show this graphically by disaggregating “other” deaths from the TB-starvation complex and showing the age and gender distribution of deaths in this category during 1943, the
year that saw the highest number of starvation deaths.45 The result is in figures
5.5a–5.5b. Two features stand out above all others: (1) very few women died of
starvation, despite their high representation in the workforce;46 and (2) among men,
the most vulnerable were those aged thirty to fifty-nine. These two features were true
in every region, including Moscow, but found their sharpest expression in the Urals and
Western Siberia.

The small number of female deaths was not unique to the Soviet Union in World War II.
It is a general historical feature of famines that women have a “mortality advantage.”
What is surprising, however, is that its causes have attracted relatively little
research or been plausibly explained.47 Soviet women were hardly immune to
malnutrition. Limited evidence shows that they suffered from amenorrhea, and that
malnutrition was the largest single cause of illness-related work absence among women textile workers in Orekhovo-Zuevo in Moscow province during 1942.48 Yet actual female mortality from starvation remained very low. One possible explanation is that women in
any town or region were more likely to have been local. They were also more likely to
have been in better health before the war and to have access to a personal plot and
social networks through which they could find food. Men, on the other hand, whether
mobilized from other parts of the USSR or native to the locality, would by definition
have been physically unfit for conscription into the military, and thus would have been
more vulnerable to malnutrition.49 Men mobilized for factory work and shipped east seem to have fared particularly poorly. They were housed in earthen dugouts and makeshift barracks, with no sanitation, and no means to supplement their diets beyond what they received from the ration.

[TheMarcksPlan]

I ask for to themarksplan to give author explanations for datas images. He not give. And nobody here can to help.

If you are rude and insulting you can't expect people to spend time doing research for you.

Given that your recent posts have been civil and substantive, I'm willing to engage again.

The quotes you provide demonstrate just how scrupulous and, in fact, conservative, the authors were in attributing mortality/morbidity to starvation:

Even in 1943, starvation cost this factory more days lost to sickness than any other
factor except for skin infections, a category also sensitive to malnutrition.

That [coronary] deaths stayed stable
among a generally younger population is itself an indirect indicator of a marked
deterioration in people’s general health, the impact of extreme hunger, and the strains
of an almost unbearable intensity of labor. However, without age-specific population
data, this observation remains only conjecture.

In all likelihood, many lost days and deaths were attributable to starvation impacts on diseases not listed under "starvation," but the authors chose not to include them in their tables due to lack of data.

-------------------------------------
Although starvation is the book's main topic, it also contains statistics/narratives illustrating other health problems plaguing the wartime SU:

Some localities (Iaroslavl′ and Ivanovo provinces in
Central Russia, Molotov and Kirov provinces in the Urals) saw a spike in deaths from
gastrointestinal infections during 1942, probably associated with the arrival or
through-transit of evacuees, many of whom fell ill and eventually died due to the
horrendous sanitary conditions on the trains that carried them eastwards.

This is a factor I haven't explicitly accounted for in ATL's but it's undeniably true that the harsh, unsanitary conditions for evacuees took a toll on their health and caused excess mortality/morbidity. Not only were the trains unsanitary, so too was most of the makeshift housing to which they fled. Surely this accounts for some of the general productivity declines in rear areas, and for some of the excess rear area mortality not explained by starvation.

Had the Germans conquered more territory and thereby forced more evacuations, an increasing portion of the Soviet populace would experience mortality/morbidity due to the insalubrious conditions of life on the run.

[HistoryGeek2019]

That's an error in the table of the print edition; Harrison corrects it in other work and I meant to point that out to you earlier.

You know, in a book specifically dedicated to the economics of WW2, that's a significant error. Disappointing that so much of the material out there is unreliable.

[TheMarcksPlan]

That's an error in the table of the print edition; Harrison corrects it in other work and I meant to point that out to you earlier.

You know, in a book specifically dedicated to the economics of WW2, that's a significant error. Disappointing that so much of the material out there is unreliable.

It's particularly bad that it's a major error that should have been obvious to a competent editor because it shows Soviet GDP in '43 being higher than in '40. It's ridiculous to think that a country still missing its most important ag/industrial areas, having lost tens of millions of people to occupation and death, would have seen increased GDP. I don't have post-war stats at hand but I'd be surprised if Soviet GDP reached pre-war levels even by '48 (query the Cold War dynamics if the SU doesn't suffer a >35mil demographic deficit - deaths and foregone wartime/baby-boom births inclusive - while the West mostly watched the bleeding and built up its industrial plant and human capital). To the extent that your mental frame of the Soviet wartime economy stemmed from that table it's understandable and regrettable.

[Ружичасти Слон]

Today i was write author explanations for datas images by themarksplan.

When you read you see data images not give informations on total number dead. Only give %.

I found some informations and analysis in book on topic. I give for you to read.

The data, when taken together with figures on infant mortality and medical reports, show that the war produced two more or less distinct mortality crises in hinterland cities and industrial regions. The first ran from late 1941 throughout 1942, and its main victims were infants, small children, the elderly, and the ill and infirm. These groups quickly succumbed to the shocks of evacuation and to the two major epidemics—measles and typhus—that broke out in late 1941 and early 1942 and spread eastwards with the mass displacement of the population. Nineteen forty-two was a year of astronomically high infant mortality. In urban areas of the RSFSR, infant mortality leapt from 206 deaths for every 1,000 live births in 1941, to 345 deaths per 1,000 live births in 1942,5 with rates approaching, or even exceeding, one out of every two live births in cities such as Ivanovo, Kazan', and Kirov.6 The Form 5 data for 1942 are very incomplete, but those that we have suggest that many, although not all, localities also began to see increasing deaths from starvation in that year. The real hunger crisis, however, erupted in 1943, and differed qualitatively from that of the previous eighteen months. Its main victims in the towns were not children or the elderly, but males between the ages of thirty and fifty-nine. For this group the main cause of death was either starvation or starvation in conjunction with other, often preexisting, malnutrition-sensitive diseases and conditions. The most important of these was tuberculosis.
The data for 1944 suggest a more complex picture. General mortality fell, but starvation and starvation-dependent diseases continued to be the main cause of death. What is more, there was greater geographical unevenness in the severity of starvation. Central Russia, Moscow, and the Volga showed a significant recovery. In the Urals, however, deaths from starvation remained high, while morbidity from the condition began to affect a far greater number of “cadre” workers in large defense factories than it had in 1943.

Most starvations dead in 1942 was childrens.
Starvations dead in 1943 was biggest.

The validity of this hypothesis can be tested in two ways. First, in the city of Cheliabinsk, officials did not list starvation deaths on Form 5, but the number of such deaths does appear in other documentation, and it is possible to compare the figures in the two documents. In Cheliabinsk in 1940, the two categories of “other” (line 83) and what may be termed “non-classified” (line 84) deaths accounted for just 244 out of a total 7,007 deaths—3.5 percent. In 1943, however, these two categories accounted for a staggering 5,768 deaths out of a total of 17,852—32.3 percent. Assuming that the incidence of genuinely “other” and “non-classified” causes of death remained roughly the same in 1940 and 1943, and accounted for the same percentage of total mortality in both years (around 3.5 percent), the remaining deaths in lines 83 and 84 in 1943 would account for 28.8 percent of Cheliabinsk’s total mortality. The contention here is that almost all of these additional or extra deaths were the result of starvation. This contention is confirmed by the city’s own state sanitary inspectors. In 1943, the city’s State Sanitary Inspectorate (Gosudarstvennaia Sanitarnaia Inspektsiia, or GSI) reported 18,073 deaths (about 1.2 percent more than the city’s statistical administration recorded on Form 5), of which 5,346—29.6 percent—were from starvation (istoshchenie, which can be translated variously as “exhaustion,” but also more clinically precisely as “emaciation” or even cachexia). The fit between the two sets of figures is not exact, but it is extremely close.
Second, it is possible to compare our indirect estimations of starvation deaths, for example, in Cheliabinsk, with the ratio of starvation deaths to total deaths in cities, such as Sverdlovsk, which explicitly listed starvation deaths on Form 5. In Sverdlovsk in 1940, lines 83 and 84 totaled 180 deaths, out of a city-wide total of 9,254—1.95 percent. In 1943, lines 83 and 84 totaled 707 deaths, out of a total of 15,665—4.5 percent. This is more than double their share in 1940, but still a very small figure, especially when we contrast it with the number of deaths attributed overtly to starvation. These came to 4,364—27.9 percent of all deaths in Sverdlovsk in that year, roughly the same order of magnitude we saw in Cheliabinsk.

In worstest year in one of worstest citys starvations dead was estimate by author at 5.346. In one other city estimate was 4.364.

In theory it should be possible to use this method to arrive at a rough estimate of the number of starvation deaths in the Soviet Union as a whole. Unfortunately, the data do not allow us to do this. Causes of death among the rural population were not registered, so we have no way to assess the impact of starvation upon the largest subset of the Soviet population. For the towns we do not have longitudinal cause-of-death data for either the USSR or the RSFSR, home to the vast majority of the Soviet population living in unoccupied territory. The best we can do is estimate starvation mortality within the urban RSFSR for 1943, the year when starvation deaths peaked. In 1940, “other” causes of death accounted for approximately 3.8 percent of all deaths; in 1943 they accounted for 21.3 percent. The difference between the two magnitudes is 17.8 percent. If we take as a working hypothesis that this is a valid proxy for starvation, and apply this to the 761,000 deaths recorded in the nonoccupied urban areas of the RSFSR (excluding Leningrad) during 1943, this implies 135,000 deaths from starvation.16 As we explain below, we have to allow for very large margins of error in these figures, mainly because of uncertainties surrounding the diagnosis and recording of deaths due to hunger. Moreover, without Form 5 for the RSFSR for 1942 and 1944, we cannot replicate even this crude calculation for the three full war years. Our local data suggest that, although the total number of deaths in Russian towns and cities fell in 1944, the percentage of those deaths due to starvation changed very little. About 1942, however, we know almost nothing, since even the local data are very incomplete, and in any case the instruction on how to record starvation deaths was issued only in the middle of that year. Can we at least make an educated guess about a lower boundary of starvation mortality? For the three years 1942–1944, the towns and cities of the unoccupied parts of the RSFSR (again, excluding Leningrad), recorded 2,277,000 deaths. If even 10 percent of these were due to starvation, this would give a total of 227,000 deaths. 1944, yielding a three-year average of, let us say, 15 percent, then we would be looking at around 340,000 deaths just in Russia’s urban areas. This pales in comparison to the 4.1 million Soviet citizens estimated to have died from hunger, disease, and overwork in the occupied territories,17 but even our lowest estimate signals a nutritional crisis on the Soviet home front of famine proportions.

Starvations dead in worstest year for all rsfsr was estimate by author 135.000.

Numbers are high. Anypersons dead from starvings is bad.

Is 227.000 total dead from starvations for 3 years big enough to say total economy on brink of total collapse?

Book give no datas on how close to total collapse.
Book give no datas on how many more dead to make collapse.
Book give little datas on who is dead. How many from estimate 227.000 is in war factorys? How many is outside factorys?

[FORBIN Yves]

Maybe in this topic ?
Please only AGS IDs have in 1942 9 infantry Bns as in 1939 -1941 including 11th Army in Crimea ? and all IDs ?
NB : Same for Panzer Divisions only in AGS are full and ID Mot with a Panzer Bn in more a Stug Bn for Gross Deutschland

All others or almost in AGC or AGN have 6 Bns or 7 with a fusilliers Bn sometimes created with the 3 Bns stand down ?
I don't think Artillery Rgt change ?
Exist TOE or strength for those IDs less powefuls ?

[KDF33]

Putting aside May 1942, I am under the strong impression that the typical strength given for the Ostheer at the beginning of Fall Blau is a significant undercount.

The typical figure given is an Iststärke of 2,635,000 men on July 1st, 1942, which comes from an OKH planning document dated August 8th, 1942. It apparently refers to Heer only, and thus excludes the not-insignificant Waffen-SS forces deployed in the East at the time. It also appears to exclude the Kommissariate as well as Finland.

Another, rarer, source is given here. It shows a total of 2,734,448 Army and 70,000 Waffen-SS personnel deployed in the East on July 1st. It doesn't include Finland, but might include the Kommissariate.

There is a strong indication that the latter might be the case. The typical figure given for Heer strength in the Reichskommissariate on July 1st, 1942 is 99,000. Applied to the figure of 2,734,448, it reduces the total deployed at the front to 2,635,448 men, which fits with the Org. Abt. document dated 8.8.1942. Those two sets of figures thus seem to fit, and would indicate that German ground forces deployed on the Eastern Front on 1.7.1942 amounted to roughly 2,700,000 men, a not-insignificant reduction over their initial 1941 strength.

There is, however, a problem. The document I linked to also shows an Iststärke of 2,932,329 Heer and 60,000 Waffen-SS personnel for October 1st, 1942. This closely tracks another document from the OKW, Bd.III, HB 2, S.1481, that shows a total of 3,100,000 men deployed in Heer/Waffen-SS/Luftwaffe Field formations on November 1st, 1942. The latter figure also includes Finland and the Kommissariate. This document provides a balance of losses and intake up to November 1st, 1943, and its figure for that date closely tracks the well-known Iststärke figures available here.

There is thus a major discrepancy. Over the course of the 1942 summer offensive, the Ostheer received few extra divisions, and actually lost a few to be reconstituted in France. It started receiving Luftwaffe Field Divisions in October, but this hardly explains the jump from about 2,800,000 men, with the Reichskommissariate but minus Finland, to 3,100,000 men, this time inclusive of Finland. The gap is further accentuated when one accounts for the July-October losses: German formations lost 727,800 men, for an intake of only 448,500, a net loss of 279,300 men.

It also doesn't fit with known casualties and reinforcements. Germany started Barbarossa with 3,050,000 men in its ground forces, either at the front or in reserve. It lost, from June 1941 to June 1942, 2,109,881 men (KIA+WIA+MIA+evacuated sick/frostbitten). It received in turn 1,234,700 replacements and returned convalescents, for a net loss of 875,181 men.

It also received a large number of fresh divisions. A quick count gives me:

-35 Infantry Divisions
-3 Jäger Divisions
-2 Gebirgs Divisions
-2 Security Divisions
-1 Motorized and 5 Panzer Divisions

For a total of 48 divisions, anywhere between 720,000 - 816,000 men, if one estimates a 15,000 or 17,000-man establishment. It lost in turn 16 depleted Divisions (10 Infantry, 1 Jäger, 1 Cavalry, 1 Motorized and 3 Panzer).

Thus, a balance of intake and outtake would average 2.9 - 3 million men still in the Ostheer on 1.7.1942, minus the residual strength of the 16 divisions transferred out of theater. Given that returned wounded that recuperated in-theater aren't included in the reinforcements given above, as well as sub-divisional additional formations, I can't see the Ostheer fielding less than 2.9 million men at the front on 1.7.1942.

It is noteworthy to mention that the 8.8.1942 OKH document gives a total of 212,000 Heer personnel in the "Ostgebiete". Given how a significant number of German divisions arrived in June just before Fall Blau, I would posit that a significant share, if not all, of those 212,000 men were in fact at the front on 1.7.1942, and are excluded from the usual numbers either due to simple error or to time-lag between their arrival and their inclusion in the strength reporting. The usual figure of 2,635,000, after all, seems to be based on one planning document issued a mere 5 weeks after the launch of the offensive.

If this analysis is correct, Ostheer personnel strength in the summer of 1942 was very close (about 2,900,000) to that of Barbarossa (3,050,000). Combat strength reduction was obviously more pronounced, given that the total number of German divisions had grown from 145 to 179, and therefore the non-combat elements constituted a larger share of the overall manpower than in the previous year. Yet, if it is correct to conclude that the mid-1942 Ostheer packed a weaker punch than its 1941 counterpart, it shouldn't be exaggerated: the large deficit between establishment strength and actual strength had more to do with having almost an extra 25% divisions compared to Barbarossa, and not to an absolute collapse of manpower in-theater. This would also imply that the Fall Blau Ostheer was closer in strength to its Kursk incarnation than is commonly acknowledged.

P.S.: Special thanks to Michate and Art for having provided most of the basic data used in this analysis years ago. My salutations to them.

[TheMarcksPlan]

Thanks for the original documents. As I think I said upthread somewhere, it always seemed to me that May would have been a nadir of Ostheer strength with a buildup for Blau during ensuing months. In general, your evidence supports that. On this point, however:

It also received a large number of fresh divisions. A quick count gives me:

-35 Infantry Divisions
-3 Jäger Divisions
-2 Gebirgs Divisions
-2 Security Divisions
-1 Motorized and 5 Panzer Divisions

For a total of 48 divisions, anywhere between 720,000 - 816,000 men, if one estimates a 15,000 or 17,000-man establishment. It lost in turn 16 depleted Divisions (10 Infantry, 1 Jäger, 1 Cavalry, 1 Motorized and 3 Panzer).

...there seems too much uncertainty about arriving divisional strengths, non-divisional slices, and the residual strength of departing divisions to arrive confidently at your number. Unless you're going off additional data on those parameters left indeterminate above?

[KDF33]

...there seems too much uncertainty about arriving divisional strengths, non-divisional slices, and the residual strength of departing divisions to arrive confidently at your number. Unless you're going off additional data on those parameters left indeterminate above?

The figure of 2.9 million is merely the best estimate I can arrive at. It happens to match the usual given figure of 2,635,000 men in the Heer + 70,000 in the Waffen-SS + 212,000 men in the "Ostgebiete".

As for the divisions mentioned, I'd be greatly interested if anyone had data on their individual strength returns. For arrivals, they are:

Infanterie: 81., 82., 83., 88., 205., 208., 211., 212., 215., 216., 218., 223., 225., 227., 246., 250., 305., 323., 328., 329., 331., 336., 339., 340., 342., 370., 371., 376., 377., 383., 384., 385., 387., 389., 707.

Jäger : 5., 8., 28.

Gebirgs : 5., 7.

Sicherungs: 201., 203.

Infanterie (mot.): Grossdeutschland (expanded from the Regiment already deployed)

Panzer: 2., 5., 22., 23., 24.

Almost all of these units were fresh formations that had not yet seen combat. I don't know their exact establishment strength, but I see no reason to believe they arrived in the East understrength. Hence my manpower estimate of 15,000 - 17,000 men per division, admittedly based on the average Infanterie establishment for the first half of the war.

Now for departures:

Infanterie: 5., 8., 15., 17., 23., 28., 106., 162., 167., 239.

Jäger: 99. leichte Infanterie

Kavallerie: 1.

Infanterie (mot.): SS "Das Reich"

Panzer: 6., 7., 10.

Note that 5., 8., 28. Infanterie, as well as 99. leichte Infanterie and 1. Kavallerie, had returned in the East by the time of Blau - the Infantry Divisions as Jäger (or leichte Infanterie as they were first called), the 99. leichte Infanterie as the 7. Gebirgs, and the cavalry division as the 24. Panzer.

The 239. Infanterie was not, in point of fact, a departure. It was dissolved and its residual strength was absorbed by the 294. Infanterie, which stayed on the Ostfront. From a manpower outflow standpoint, thus, it is more accurate to speak of a net loss of 15 divisions.

If anyone knows the strength returns of these 15 divisions before they left the East, I would be grateful.

Another way to determine strength in 1942 would be to look at individual Armies Iststärke. The book Enduring the Whirlwind (p228) gives the following data for July 1st:

2. Armee: 280,482
4. Panzerarmee: 85,643
6. Armee: 317,896
1. Panzerarmee: 226,688
17. Armee: 135,504
11. Armee: 164,648

For a total of 1,210,861 men. We could complete the picture with data for the Armies deployed in Heeresgruppen Nord and Mitte on or around the same date, if anyone has it.