They were not partisans but rather regular Soviet soldiers that had been separated from their units and cut off by the rapid German advance.
The two are completely different things.
Not exactly. Many became partisans after being cut off. The problem is the definition of the word partisan is rather nebulous. Does it refer only to specifically trained NKVD agents, anyone resisting the occupation/invasion, or somewhere in between those opposites?
This is incorrect; I went back and checked. Reading the 10-day reports again from the archived
ww2stats.com, I have to say that I can't support my earlier assertions about June 1941 Ostheer casualties. I can't remember why, at some point, I decided that the German Yearbook stats were more accurate. For various reasons I suspect the 10-day reports understate losses for this period but, again, I can't support those contentions right now.
As I said, trust in God all others (inc. me) need evidence (but also don't trust God).
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That said, let's take the first 40 days of Ostfeldzug as a comparison to the 47 days of Westfeldzug.
Ost: 46,470 KIA or 1,162/day.
West: ~35k dead or 744/day.
Even after correcting my earlier error, Ostfeldzug is still more costly per day.
Note that 10-day KIA ("gefallen") stats typically don't count those who later died of wounds, which increases the Ost dead count significantly (perhaps by 30%, so still not enough to vindicate my earlier figure of 22k dead).
Sure, but can you also do a comparison of the number of operational Soviet aircraft and tanks vs. those of the Allies (including Dutch and Belgians)? And number of men on each side in the campaign? There were dozens more German divisions in the operation and in 47 days over 5 million Soviets encountered, which is a different scale of campaign as well.
The Germans had less aircraft in support as well.
The dead for the West in total was more like 49k, I dropped it to 35k because it eliminated things like died of wounds and KM casualties. Even at that higher total the Soviets still inflicted more casualties in a shorter time, but the numbers converge much more closely. The difference then could be said to be partisan related.
Plus none of that includes the Norwegian campaign, which was technically part of the spring-summer campaign of 1940.
I don't trust those numbers (the AHF cite is to the wrong page, btw - p1020 of GSWW v.5/1, not p885). GSWW's source is the "10-day troop sickness certificates," which is a very odd source to use. Why would the administrative body tallying sickness certificates have any insight into how many were killed on the battlefield and never reached hospitals? GSWW sometimes has sketchy sources. In the graph cited (p1020), for example, it uses a source that gives no KIA figures for 1942 - only total casualties. Seems lazy and sketchy.
Of the sources replicated in the Wikipedia article, Deutsche Statistiches Jahrbuch is lower and only covers Feldheer+WSS. Non-Ostheer dead would have been similar to pre-Barb '41 or ~2k. IIRC Askey's stats align with mine.
I'll leave this aside because it was addressed above with your later post.
Fair, let's say 35k then. I just grabbed the nearest Wikipedia cite.
Let's clarify on what we're disagreeing/discussing:
- Did the Germans lose more or fewer men per day in summer '41 against RKKA or while fighting the Westfeldzug?
- Did Soviet armies kill more or fewer Germans per RKKA-man-day in 1941 or 1943?
The second point wasn't clear, apparently. I say RKKA was better, per man, at killing Germans in 1941 than in 1943. Agree/disagree?
35k was comparing some different things, but if you want for the sake of argument we can run with that here.
At this point I'm not going to take a position, because 'better' requires a man-for-man calculation that factors in number of troops involved, heavy weapons like artillery, tanks, and aircraft if not other things I'm not considering. So really to arrive at that claim you need to control for variables. I'd say that in a very simplistic calculation like you did in a different post of number of casualties per day the Soviets did better, but there were more Soviets fighting than Allied troops, the Germans had more and better air support, the Soviets had a lot more heavy equipment, the front was much wider, etc. Surprise was a factor as well, partisans were an issue that didn't exist in the west, so on and so forth. IMHO the issue hasn't really been proven either way yet.
Not sure if Dupuy ever ran his equations on the Soviets vs. the French or 1940 British. Certainly he thought the Soviets did very poorly relative to the later American and British armies.
Whether the Soviets fought "very well"... What do we mean?
At the operational/strategic level they fought disastrously - obviously. Their logistics were terrible also.
At the tactical level it's pretty clear the Soviets fought better in 1941 than at any point later in the war. Again they killed as many Germans per day, with half the men and much worse equipment/supply, as they did in 1943. On my numbers they fought about as effectively as French/British soldiers also, which would be astounding.
The Soviets fought more resolutely in certain situations, as they were somewhat less willing to surrender than the Allies in 1940 for a variety of reasons. But then there were also a lot more of them and their quality and morale was quite variable. Without question they were willing to suffer many more losses than the Allies despite all their handicaps.
Do you have a source for the claim that the 1943 and 1941 rates were the same? Also the Germans in 1943 were a lot better equipped with weapons and had much more experience fighting the Soviets in 1943 than 1941. Though they were able to compensate the Germans did face some serious handicaps vs. the Soviets in 1941.
As to them fighting about as well as the French and British that is basically my take as well. When you account for the variables they certainly fought not worse despite the massive surrenders and were failed by their leadership at the strategic and operational levels. Does make you think how dangerous they would have been had they not been caught by surprise and wrong footed.
yep. Amazing. Historians should take more seriously, however, that the 1941 disembowelling had permanent effects. Needing to use direct fire because you don't have enough well-trained artillerists, for example.
I think that is generally acknowledged.
The Soviets never really recovered from 1941 even by 1945 and that should be acknowledged more rather than simply stating that the Soviets were the bestest ever in 1945, rather than the reality being that they were fighting a collapsing foe that was being overloaded on all fronts, so couldn't resist effectively especially when Hitler ceased to follow even basic logic. Frankly I think the Soviets got lucky that in 1944-45 Hitler was making major mistakes that played to their strengths; things could have been much bloodier for them otherwise.
The new book Fortress Dark and Stern is a great discussion of the Soviet homefront - mind-boggling what they did without falling apart. And as the book convincingly argues, it wasn't a matter of state control only or even primarily. Soviets had to decide to fight/work/cooperate; the state lacked the ability to force them otherwise (a minority chose not to and most were unpunished).
Yeah I have that book and have been meaning to read it (among many others, not enough time in the month!).
Frankly I think by 1941 the Soviet people had been so brutalized from 1914-1941 that they were psychologically broken into submission to authority. Like a cultist who cannot conceive of like outside the cult due to operant conditioning. So while people 'chose' to keep going along it seems that they really had no other choice because conceptually they couldn't conceive of anything else after a generation under Soviet domination and abuse. Of course we see this in modern society, where if you can induce fear in the public they can be very easily manipulated if authorities have some credibility.