In my opinion, no nation in WW2 performed as bad as the Soviets. While I feel sad for all the people that died, they took in the highest amount of casualties at 24 millions versus 8 million Germans despite having twice the population, economy and endless teritory.
Every german-soviet battle resulted in massive casualties for the Soviets. Even Battle of Berlin where the Soviets had an army 3 times the size of the german army, they still ended up with about the same amount of losses.

What are your thoughts?

poor strategies and the commanders couldnt care less how many casualties they would end up with.
If it was bad, throw in many units, if it was good, throw in many more units ...


Herr

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Looking for Kriegsmarine cloth and Heer Blitzes

So that's 2 more completely Germanocentric points of view utterly dismissing the fact of the Soviets massive and crushing victory over the aggressors and their ever increasing sophistication in strategy, tactics, and technology.

My thoughts are that these old-fashioned opinions have more to do with a poor choice of information source and post-war politics than any actual attempt to really understand the Nazi/Soviet war.

Cheers,
Adam.

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It's only the Internet.

Operation Bagration summer 1944 shows how good the Red Army could be with its different elements getting top results. That´s when Army Group Center ceased to exist for Germans.

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I think this figures include civilian casualties, which doesn't say much other than how good was the German army at civilian slaughtering.

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Join the C-cube now !

Well, let's see:

In the Battle of Stalingrad, the 6th Army outnumbered their adversary by factor of 2:1 in manpower, and far more than 3:1 in armor and aircraft strength. They were unable to sieze their objective before the Red Army started its own offensive.

During the Battle of Kursk, the Germans attacked the Russians at a time when they nearly reached technological dominance over their opponents in tank and antitank weapons but at a place where "anyone who can read a map" could predict. They lost.

In Bagration, the German Army suffered more casaulties than the Russians, inspite of having the advantage of being on the defense.

And before anyone start talking about the Red Army human wave attacks, generally on the Eastern Front the Germany Army and the Red Army were at numeric parity from 1941 to 1942. The Germans had preformed martial feats that are rightfully considered some of the greatest in history. That did not mean the Russians were bumbling fools.

More than half of the 26-28 million dead were non-combatants, particularly Jews.

Omaha Beach was the bloodiest beach landing on D-day. An estimated 3000 troops where killed, to about 1200 German troops. Does this mean The US just threw wave after wave of soldiers at the Germans.

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"Like so many of our people, we have now had a personal experience of German barbarity which only strengthens the resolution of all of us to fight through to final victory."-King George VI
"Casualties many; Percentage of dead not known; Combat efficiency; we are winning."-Colonel David M. Shoup-Saipan

What the heck are you trying to do, burst preconception bubbles? Blow prejudices away? If some people know it all already, just let them!

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What makes so many people always think that these truely unfortunate Russian civilians were all "slaughtered" by the Germans?

Regards
Kruska

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The world is grey - not black and white

Errrr, Finnish Einsatzgruppen?

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Einsatzgruppens (self-explainatory) and starvation, the latter of which attributable to OKH's decision to make more grain requisitions from Ukrain and Belurusia than the maximum necessary to sustain the indigenous population. Ukrain which was already starving experienced an increase of levee on grain as compared to Stalin's rule; German units were under standing orders not to give food to besieged civilians and to take what winter equipment and rations they needed without regard to the survival of the Russian civilians, as documented in the war diaries of the relevant units.

As to the question of the relative size of the armies involved. If you could achieve overwhelming superiority in numbers to ensure victory would you not do so? Even though the Germans were initially superior in tactics; the Russians were learning and the Germans knew it. By the end of the war they may have not been equal in tactics(Which I argue they were damn close) but the Soviets had made up for this with numbers. Had Stalin not been such a fool at the start of Barbarossa and listened to all the intelligence pointing to a German invasion weeks before it happened the Germans may have been in for a nasty surprise.



Yours,

Bill

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Plus a couple of million civilians that were shot, murdered and died during deporting them from the Wolga to Alma Ata, trapped in war zones or accusing them of having worked with the Germans.

Regards
Kruska

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The world is grey - not black and white

True the Russians suffered higher losses than the Germans but don't mistake that as innability to perform extremely well. Take operation bagration as other forum members pointed out. The main trouble for Russians in the early stages was the fact they were poorly equiped and trained (especially in 41 and they were poorly equiped in terms of officers too!) and, had poor comanders using tactics fit for WWI. Now opposing this was an army made up by veterans of the previous Polish and French campaigns (well, not all of them but the mobile part of the army was as well as a lot of other dvisions who had already seen combat!). However, in 43 the tide turns and oddly it coincided with the time the Russians finally had the equipement to properly implement their tactcs as they were devised (deep operations and all that crap) and a good cadre of officers who knew what they were doing (no more Kulik or Voroshilov for you!).



Cheers...

Which in no way invalidate the civilian casualties inflicted by the policy and direct military action of the German forces.
In fact since 'they started it' I rather think nearly all casualties outside of the 'political' can quite comfortably be laid down as their fault. Even Stalin's worst excesses hardly excuse what the Germans did, and I'm puzzled as to how they can be presented as some kind of justification or tipping of the 'moral balance' away from the aggressive invading force that precipitated the whole sorry business.

Cheers,
Adam.

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It's only the Internet.

That is true. However, given the eight digit figures of civilians dead, two million is within the statistical margin of error.

USSR lost the majority of its military casaulties early in 1941. Hence forth they fought with reasonable efficiency.

Hello Von Poop,

I am not justifing anything but these constant rants against the Germans get on my nerves - especially if terms such as "slaughtered" by the Germans are used to generalize the huge loss of civilian lives in Russia.

These millions of German/Russians who were murdered instantly or deported to Alma Ata under dreadfull conditions were certainly not "slaughtered" by the Germans but suffered and had to endure their fate due to Hitlers attack. Such as other millions of Russian civilians that as I above mentioned became a victim of war due to starvation, etc. etc.

Regards
Kruska

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The world is grey - not black and white

It may be productive to compare the respective performance of the Russians and the Americans.

Both were not prepared for war at the outset; the Germans were, and thus had a demonstrable initial advantage.

As time passed, the Russians and Americans organized for war, conscripted capable troops, designed and built superior equipment, and came up with effective strategies: the result was that by 1944 they had a true advantage over the Germans.

The Germans lacked the resources and population to match them.

Not wishing to 'shoot anyone down', but to avoid tiresome repetition it would be nice to know we've discussed these matters at some length in the past in:

Best soldier?

Was the Wehrmacht overrated?

Colonel Trevor Dupuy said...

German vs. Russian infantry

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