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Originally posted by Kjetil Aasland:
Darrin -

You have to differentiate between the name-based and the numerical reporting channels and procedures, which were separate. As regards the former, an important reason for late war reform was indeed the need for simplification, but it belongs to this picture that the complexity of the system was an important reason why the WAst was unable to maintain an accurate picture. In theory, the name-based system was supposed to keep track of the fates of ALL German soldiers, including periods of hospital treatment, not just the dead. In practice it was unable to deal accurately and timely with even just the dead, and particularly late in the war.

As regards the latter, internal documentation does seem to reflect concern over accuracy as well as functionality regarding parts of the system.

I suggest you read Overmans, which treats these issues at length. Of course, his treatment relates almost solely to deaths.

cheers

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In Zetterling website critique of Overmans he gives an example for the an entire year on the east front. From 1 jun 43 to 1st of jun 44. Taking istrake strength from 43 subtracting all types of cas and adding in new replacments and convelecents plus accounting for units coming and going. his estimate of ger str on the east front in 44 is within 1% of the reported str. Is´s also interesting to see that he actually found the reported str on 1 jun 44 varies from one report to another. By no more then 1% a similar error to his estimate.

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Originally posted by Andreas:
"I would be a bit careful with von Mellenthin's accounts. IIRC he also states that the Germans never managed to destroy a Soviet bridgehead (not so), and that the Russian soldier was good at digging in and camo because he was closer to nature, or something. A look in the Soviet field manual may have told him that maybe it was a matter of training."

I will take note of your warning about v.Mellinthin's accuracy. I have no problem with the assertion that he may have had a number of biases that shaded his opinions. However, I would not neccessarily say that the existance of extensive fieldcraft and field fortification techniques in a manual offer much explanation of why the Soviets were good at them. It has been noted at various times and places that national CEVs stay fairly stable over long periods. I would suggest that it is reasonable to assume that the Soviet military did not get worse over the 40 years after WWII, at least not substantially so. Given that, by all accounts I have read, the Soviet Army did not, in the 60's and 70's have the time, trained officers and NCOs, fuel or ammunition to properly train their men in even a substantial fraction of the techniques in their training regimen, I do not think that the contents of their manuals during a time of constant crisis such as WWII point to much.

"There are a number of favourite myths of the Eastern Front in your post that have little basis in reality. Russian medical service was actually quite good, as far as I know, and pretty well organised, according to TM30-430. The unarmed second waves were exceptions early on in the war. Later on a second wave would be Katukov or Rybalko bringing a tank army along.

Generalising from the dark days of 1941 for the whole war is as justified as saying that:

- The Germans used 12-year olds regularly in the frontline
- The Germans sent 60-year olds armed with a PF into the line throughout the war
- The Germans handed out captured weapons with no ammo to scraped up units throughout the war
- the Germans regularly shot anyone away from the frontline, no questions asked

All four things happened in the German dark and desperate days of 1945. To make a generalised statement for the whole war out of them follows the same logic as the statements you made.

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I have not read in detail about the Russian medical service in WWII, however, I would be hesitant to ascribe adequate medical facilities to the Soviet Army, for two reasons.

1.)Given the way they were willing to callously expend the lives of fit soldiers, it seems very contradictory that they would go to much trouble to provide for wounded ones.

2.)Their battle doctrine in the 1980's stressed that matters such as food and medical services were relatively unimportant. Only ammunition and fuel were to be given any real concern. Since they probably had more trained medical personnel available in the 1980's than 1940's,as well as a greatly improved transport capacity, it seems very unlikely that the were more concerned about those issues in the 40's.

3.)I would tend to wonder how many available
medical personnel the Russians had available.
They still had a largly rural and highly illiterate population at the time, as far as I know. While I would not support v.Mellinthin's probably rascist attitude, I would note that most stereotypes start with some basis of fact,and then twist it out of context. Rather than a racial inferiority, I would argue that Russian history, and the singularly Byzantine and confusing nature of Russian government produced a marked educational inferiority, which would affect both their medical service and their ability to keep adequate casualty records, as well as allowing men such as v.Mellinthin to justify rascist assertions to themselves. The Germans, with a strong eduactional system, and
a relatively large medical community, found themsleves so short of doctors that by 1944 female doctors outnumbered male doctors in Germany, in spite of National Socialist pressure against professional women.

Finally, I do not believe I am making generalizations from 1941 to cover the whole war. The incident in question was from 1943.
Perhaps v.Mellinthin was lying about it, however if he did have some kind of prejudice against the Russians, it would be odd of him to make them out to be only children if they weren't. It would not make him or the German Army look more heroic or effective to have suuccessfully defeated a bunch of untrained 13 year olds, nor would it have done much to show the Russians as inferior, since we would tend to expect that experienced combat troops form most countries should be able to make short work of such opponents, regardless of their opponents' national origin.

Any army suffering continuous cas as the ger were after june 41 and especially after Dday when the second front began. Was going to swamp its normal medical services with more crtical cases. This is a war and wars are bloody. The medical services had to deal with the normal civ plus pows, workers, conquered army and the army. In battle the armies tended to suffer 10 times as many battle cas as none bat cas. And in war all thes non battle cas in civ and army actually rise.

One thing I liked about the ger system was each unit had a replacment bat. Even in the summer of 44 although some were weak bats with ready inf replacments avilable. So they didn´t have to make a report to a central place and wait for reinforcements to come. Or withdraw to absorb replacments immediatly this bat was fully trained trained integral parts of the div. This bat would also be used as an extra reserve bat at times.

One of the problem with the ger and even US reporting system was lightly wounded personnal who were expected to return quickly say 4-6 weeks were kept on the units istreke strength. Therefore the unit was under str in reality but could not recieve replacments. It appears the soilders wished to return to thier original units very much. But this could probaly be done anyways in most cases even if the unit had recieved reinforcments you could count on more loses in 44 for the US and germany.

I know. That is why I wrote that I thought Niklas in his article offered a decisive counterargument to Overmans as far as concerns the general accuracy of OVERALL CASUALTY FIGURES.

"While the ger may not have known the name of every single person. They at least knew the number of cas with high acceracy months before the ger report you were talking about. The system seemed to work accuratly regardless of what this report or overmans says."

The ger in 43 suffered tot cas of 1.7 mil from all causes on the east. Now some of these people who were hospitalized for short time nerver left thier div str and proably skipped the replacment bat most of the time. Also many other returning convelescents were also experinced and proably skipped thier replecment bat as well.

If we use 1.5 mil cas a nice round number so I don´t have to search for a calculator. And about 150 a nice round number again ger div on the east front in 43. So we have 10,000 cas per div for a whole year on avg. A little over 800 cas per month. The ger replacment bats normally had str no more than this and would on avg be emptied in about a month. And the ger inf might on avg go through its 6-7 bat 43 including recce bat frontline str in about 5 months. That means ger inf personnal would be expected to last on avg about 5 months. Replacment from the rep bat were used up quickly and new rep had to keep being found to keep the army working.

And the 1.7 mil cas for 43 although I don´t have the eaxct caues for this year on the east in front of me. I have numbers that are for the entire east front from 41 to aug 43. During this period roughly 10% went missing and 30% became dead due to all causes. Not just killed in action but also died of wounds and sickness as well. 60% of the cas were due to wounded and sick who eventually recovered. I have numbers for the entire eastern front from 41 to may 44 and they seem to agree with this as well.

It also seems from looking at some figures in zetterlings critique of overmans that roughly 10% of the ger wounded in action in the east died due to thier wounds. At least on avg up to feb 44.

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Originally posted by Andreas:
Joseph,
I agree with all three of your points - just wanted to point out that things are not always as German general officers would like them to have been

German replacement battalions - from the German divisional histories I have read, it is clear that these were often seen as just another line unit. Especially after infantry strength went down to 2 BNs/Rgt. This process of utilising the manpower in the line, instead of giving it time to train and gradually acclimitise started in 1941 (e.g. both divisions of XXXXVIIIth AK (Gebirgs) on the Mius. There are also very early complaints about the (ab)use of divisional specialists as leg infantry, with consequently high losses, and the consequently lower level of quality of the specialist units (in this case the pioneers in 1. Gebirgsdivision). Source for this is Steets 'Gebirgsjaeger zwischen Dnjepr und Don'). Another source indicating heavy line-use of replacement BNs is Esteban-Infantes 'Die Blaue Division'.

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I wouldn't use the Blau Division as an example. By 1943 it had 12 infantry battalions available! Truth is that while organised like a german division, the Blue Division had no manning problems due to the fact that Spain could keep it up to strength, therefore the Depot Bn, the Recon Bn and the Sapper Bn were used as standard infantry Bns, to which a ski company was added at divisional level.

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Originally posted by JM Serrano:
I wouldn't use the Blau Division as an example. By 1943 it had 12 infantry battalions available!

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Originally posted by Darrin:
One of the other problems with sov army personnal is a lack of knowledge about what thier actual reports due or don´t include.

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Becuase of the way they were counted, the division strength reports tended to be "feeding strength". I have not had access to the Front level files, which is what Krivosheyev used, so I do not know what they are reporting.

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Also a similar problem existed for people and tanks. The tanks had id number usually in rus but only tot numbers des were given.

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My bias is to look at the number ready-for-action for each day, and count the difference (if it is a decline) as the number broke-down/damaged/destroyed each day. Looking at just destroyed tanks provides a distorted picture as this figure is clearly influenced by the repair philosophies of both armies (which seemed to be at two ends of the spectrum).

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The ger tanks had serial numbers wich were included in the final report of the crew for tanks des. Which included a sketch of how the tank was lost.

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Wonderful records, but not always available. Still, some German tanks were dragged back to the rear and only later written off, and some were dragged into long-term repair and left there for what appears to be forever. Some of these damaged tanks were later overrun (for example many Panthers during the Soviet offensive phase at Kursk).

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Your post seems to be one of those. Having lived nearly all my life in Russia and unofficially talked (one of my grandfathers was one, the other didn't make it through the war) to many veterans and generally being interested in the last war without accepting the official theories (We never trusted what they said about the war), I have never repeat never heard even a mention that Soviets would use children as soldiers. We Russians know all about the tremendous casualties and that they were much higher than German ones etc. etc. etc. We know who’s to blame, but 12 years olds being sent to be slaughtered – this a little bit overboard.

You’re forgetting just one thing - Russia is not a China. Look at the pre-war population numbers. They’re probably only twice as high as in Germany, Austria and satellites. If Russians had been slaughtered at the rate some German memoirs and you assert, there would have been a big demographic gap after the war, which in reality there had been none.

And don’t forget, it was Soviets who ended up triumphantly in Berlin - not the other way round. The Soviets took prisoner the whole of the East Germany (please include that in total count of losses), not the other way round. Do you think the “human-wave and child-soldier hoards” tactics would have brought Soviets all the way to Berlin. I don’t think so - they would have run out of people long before they crossed the Russian boarder.

As far as medical service. Certainly not as good as German, given the traditionally “low cost” of human life in Russia.

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Originally posted by Ivan:
I generally like this forum. It tends to be well-thought-out and balanced...

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Thanks. I still haven't figured out what the purpose of this forum is (and I set it up), but I for one have found it useful for discussing various issues and gathering information.

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...even though there is some tendency to challenge the lately appeared notions of the Soviet military performance and revert back to the old & good notion...

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Well, the problem is that the "lately appeared notions of the Soviet military performance" do not explain the lop-sided casualty ratios. For example, at Kursk, in the defensive fighting in the south, even though the Soviet army was on the defense, in prepared positions, outnumbered the Germans in men, tanks, guns and planes, they were still driven back and lost 3.2 men to every one the Germans lost.

It is this casualty exchange disparency that sticks out like a sore thumb and is not explained by the "lately appeared notions of the Soviet military performance"

While I am not of the "faceless earth-brown mass" variety of historian, as I've had the pleasure on knowing and meeting these people....one still has to ask the question that with good equipment, veteran formations, and sufficient strength and prepared positions, why are the Soviet defenders losing a whole lot more men then the German attacker?

It would appear that if one just coldly examines the "statistics" of the battle....that this so-called new scholarship (since the mid-1970s?) is seriously flawed and does not get to the root of the issue. There appears to have been a performance differential between the two armies for most of the war.

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Your post seems to be one of those.

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I do not control the content of the other posters and have only deleted two posts (they were obscene) since the board started.

There are things posted on this forum that are reaching a little. In general, one should be careful of any story from any side unless one can find confirming or supporting evidence.

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If Russians had been slaughtered at the rate some German memoirs and you assert, there would have been a big demographic gap after the war, which in reality there had been none.

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Actually, there was a big demographic gap after the war.

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Originally posted by Kjetil Aasland:
[B
"While the ger may not have known the name of every single person. They at least knew the number of cas with high acceracy months before the ger report you were talking about. The system seemed to work accuratly regardless of what this report or overmans says."

As far as OVERALL CASUALTY FIGURES are concerned, yes, except for the final 6 or 7 months of the war. At least, nobody has proven otherwise. Concerning, DEATHS (which, with the above exception is what Overmans deals with) no, if we are to believe both Overmans extensive research and the internal documentation of the reporting system itself.[/B]

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One possible example of the by name list perhaps being reliable even late in the war is referenced in Zetterlings Normandy 44 book on p.77. He gives jun, jul and aug cas for OB west in 44 broken down into kia, wia and mia. He then quotes; 'These figures have been compared to by name list of killed soilders and found them to be very reliable.'

Is there much validity to Boris Sokolov's claim that the Soviet census in 1939/41 under-counted by about 10 million?

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Originally posted by Gary Dickson:
As I said earlier, one link at Yale is

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Gary, thanks for the link. According to the "cover sheet", they were reporting 162 million in 1937 and 1939. I assume if I flipped through the 318 rolls of microfilm, I could confirm this.

This census did not include the Baltic States, Moldavia or eastern Poland.

Who could show me the chart?

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Originally posted by Gary Dickson:
It's on its way. You reminded me that I should send an email to the editor of the magazine to see if they ever finished.

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Thank you.

Happy new year to you.