Total size of the German and Soviet Armed Forces

[CJK1990]

Do we have information about the total number of personnel in the German and Soviet Armed forces (including army, navy, air force, etc.) in 1942, 1943, and 1944? By total I mean grand total everywhere, not just the total deployed on the Eastern Front.

[Paul_Atreides]

USSR

Germany (from Müller-Hillebrand's "Das Heer")

m-h1.jpg

By columns

Year
Feldheer
Ersatzheer
Heer in total
LW
KM
W SS
Wehrmacht + W SS in total

[CJK1990]

On the thread you linked to they mentioned only the Soviet army and navy. Is the air force included? And do the German numbers include people in hospitals?

[Paul_Atreides]

On the thread you linked to they mentioned only the Soviet army and navy. Is the air force included?

VVS is included in the Army.

And do the German numbers include people in hospitals?

They are included in Ersatzheer.

[Art]

See also:
http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 9&t=170020

[CJK1990]

Are the German figures an average, or for a particular time in that year?

[CJK1990]

Okay so from what I've gathered from this and the other thread, the maximum total strength of Soviet forces in 1943 was approximately 12.6 million and German strength was about 9.5 million, giving a ratio of 1.33:1.

[Paul_Atreides]

Are the German figures an average, or for a particular time in that year?

There is no any concrete date for these number, but by indirect signs I can assume that it was:
September 1939
May/June 1940
June 1941
June/July 1942
September/October 1943
December 1944

For July 1944 there is such data

Page 84.jpg

[Sid Guttridge]

When one strips away all the Soviet minorities, there were about 120 million Russians.

The Reich contained 80 million Germans.

Thus the core reliable manpower of the two states was of the order of 3:2 in the Russian favour - very different from the massive superiority usually attributed to the Russians.

[ljadw]

and,why should one strip away all non Russian minorities ? Unless you are thinking that none of these were joining the Red Army .

[ljadw]

Iststaerke of the wehrmacht on 1 october 1943(source:Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg Tome 8 P 252)
Feldheer :4.09 million
Luftwaffe Felddivisions :200.000
Ersatzheer :2.3 million
WSS :300.000
Kriegsmarine :670.000
Luftwaffe :1.8 million
Total :9.36 million

[Sid Guttridge]

Hi Ljadw - For the same reason, for example, one always strips away the non-German Czech or Polish subjects of the Reich.

The loyalty of most of the Soviet minorities was to a greater or lesser degree negotiable, as is evidenced by the German ability to recruit them in large numbers even though they weren't offering them any political reward. (Even two divisions of Russians were recruited after the war was already lost!). There was a point at the end of 1941 that more Soviet minorities were under German rule than under Soviet rule and were simply unavailable to the Red Army.

The Soviet Union outside Russia was arguably a house of cards, provided the right nationalist political incentives were used to detach its various nationalities. However, the Germans failed to use them because Nazi racial ideology and its imperative to lebensraum (largely on the territory of non-Russian Soviet minorities) stood in the way.

For nationalist reasons, the largely reliable core of the Third Reich and the USSR came down to about 80 million Germans and 120 million Russians. The smaller peoples standing between them mostly wanted independence and had negotiable loyalties. In the event, Soviet policy made them more available cannon-fodder for the USSR than Nazi policy did for Germany.

In the end, the USSR put over 34 million men under arms and Germany put nearly 20 million under arms - not far different from the 3:2 ratio of Russians to Germans. The difference was that Germany had a more high-tech army with, presumably, a higher proportion of "tail", increasingly had other secondary fronts to worry about and did not introduce Soviet levels of comprehensive mobilization and abbreviated training until mid 1944.

[CJK1990]

If you include the NKVD and GPO, the Soviet total rises to about 14 million as opposed to about 9.5 million Germans.

[CJK1990]

Um, the reason the ratio was around 3:2 was because Germany occupied Soviet areas containing about 70-80 million people until late 1943, leaving only 120-130 million under control of the Soviet government.

[Art]

If you include the NKVD and GPO, the Soviet total rises to about 14 million as opposed to about 9.5 million Germans.

What is GPO?