For years one of the few generally agreed upon facts concerning the battles on the Eastern Front in World War Two was that the Germans inflicted many more casualties than they suffered. Using the German figures for prisoners taken and losses inflicted (the only ones available) and the German records of their own casualties, various writers derived ratios of Soviet to German losses of anywhere from 5 to 1 to 12 to 1. When Dupuy and the HERO group made up their Combat Effectiveness figures for Germans versus Russians using these figures, 1 German soldier was the equal of 2.6 Soviet soldiers in his ability to inflict casualties on his battlefield opponent.

Up until 1988, German estimates were the only information available on Soviet casualties. The only Soviet figures were very general, on the order of 20,000,000 to 50,000,000 "Soviet citizens" lost in the war-figures that could include any part of the population, including those in occupied territories, and which were not obviously based on any actual official statistics. Glasnost, and the consequent opening of the Soviet archives, has dramatically changed all of that. As a result, for the first time there are figures available for both sides' casualties on the Eastern Front, and it is possible to compare their actual ability to inflict losses on each other. More importantly for the gamer, it is possible to compare reality with the game board and see if our system is capable of reflecting or reproducing what actually happened.

Soviet Statistics

First, we need to discuss what the figures mean. In the United States, and generally in the West, we are used to figuring casualties as Killed, Wounded, or Missing. The Soviet military, however, did not use those categories. Soviet casualties, as reported to higher headquarters, are divided into Permanent Losses and Recoverable Losses. The permanent losses include those killed in action, prisoners who never returned, and wounded who never recovered enough for further duty. Recoverable losses include wounded returned to duty, and prisoners who returned, either during or after the war. Sick, "shell-shocked" (psychological casualties) or frostbite casualties are sometimes included with combat casualties, and sometimes listed separately.

This makes it difficult to directly compare figures between the German and the Soviet forces. However, because there are figures (from NKVD files, among other sources) for prisoners taken and held by Soviet forces, the German "Missing in Action" category can be added to the Killed in Action category to come up with an approximation of the Soviet Permanent Losses group. In addition, one Soviet writer did list separately those troops "released from (concentration) camps" and returned after the war, so that the actual wartime Soviet losses can be pretty accurately assessed.

There are some other qualifications, which I will note as we come to them in the figures.

I have not included a comparison of total wartime casualties on the Eastern Front. Any such comparison would be very misleading. The total Soviet casualties we available for the entire "war in Europe" (to 9 May 1945), but German casualties are only available until 20 March 1945--before the last battles in and around Berlin, Prague, and Silesia. During these battles, the Soviet total of prisoners taken for the entire war more than doubled, as they rounded up every German and Axis Allied soldier still in uniform. The resulting inflated figures make a reasonable comparison almost impossible.

It is possible to compare overall casualties up to March 1945. Based on the division of German statistics, the war from 22 June 1941 to 20 March 1945 breaks down into two periods:

Casualties: 22 Jun 41 to 30 Nov 43
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Permanent	1,047,393	9,974,796	1:9.5
Recoverable	2,360,921	14,328,884	1:6.1
Total Losses	3,408,314	24,303,680	1:7.1

Casualties: 1 Dec 43 to 20 Mar 45:
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Permanent	1,164,712	1,596,239	1:1.4
Recoverable	1,460,105	5,685,874	1:3.9
Total Losses	2,624,817	7,282,113	1:2.8

Discussion

Three things should strike anyone looking at these figures.

First, that in the last 16 months the Soviets were approximately 2.6 times better than they were in the first 27, at least as far as their relative ability to inflict casualties on their opponents.

Second, that in the first 27 months of the war, the Germans were actually considerably better than was previously supposed: approximately 7 to 1 instead of the 5 to 1 which is the most common figure accepted-and this period includes the German losses at Stalingrad!

Third, that in the last 16 months the Germans suffered more permanent losses than they did in the first 27 months of the war. This, and the enormous Soviet figures in permanent losses during 1941-43, reflects the effects of encirclements.

Just to reinforce this, from 22 June 1941 to 1 March 1944 the entire Soviet armed forces took just 252,028 prisoners of all nationalities. From March to 1 October 1944, they took another 536,194 prisoners: in 6 months, double the number they had managed in the previous 33 months!

The change in the ratio of effectiveness shows up even more when casualties are assessed by year:

Casualties: 22 Jun to 31 Dec 41
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Permanent	209,595	4,511,380	1:21.5
Recoverable	621,308	1,314,000	1:2.1
Total Losses	830,903	5,825,380	1:7.0

Discussion

The ratio of German Permanent (Killed and Missing) to Recoverable (Wounded) is about I to 3, which is "in the ballpark" for killed to wounded. The Germans, according to General Franz Halder, returned about 60% of their wounded to some kind of active duty (not necessarily front-line or full duty). The enormous discrepancy between Soviet Permanent and Recoverable losses reflects the catastrophic losses in encirclements: the Germans claimed 5,500,000 prisoners by mid-1942 (of which, about 50%, or 2,777,700, survived to return to the USSR after the war).

Many of these prisoners never, in fact, got into the Soviet military records at all: the Germans in 1941, like the Soviets, or, for that matter, the Western Allies in 1945, rounded up every man of military age in their path. Many of these men in 1941 were militia or "volunteers" raised by local Communist Party organizations, which had not yet reported to any military authority. They swelled the German POW count without, in fact, ever appearing in Soviet Army statistics! (They do appear in some Party records of militia raised, such as the 1,500,000+ recorded as mustered in the Ukrainian districts in July- August 1941.)

There is a separate check, of sorts, on these ferocious Soviet casualty figures. The Soviets long ago published the figure of 10.5 million men mobilized by 1 December 1941. On 1 December 1941, the total Soviet forces included:

Active Army: 3,394,000
Far East/Other Borders 1,568,000
STAVKA Reserves 531,000
Total: 5,493,000

Adding this to the 1941 total of 5,825,380 casualties suffered gives 11,318,380, or the 10.5 million mobilized plus approximately 820,000. Since the Soviets claim 600,000 militia and volunteers sent into the regular army in 1941, and the casualties suffered during December are not included, this is very close to matching and confirming the total Soviet casualties for 1941.

Casualties: 1 Jan to 31 Dec 42
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Permanent	555,192	2,859,472	1:5.2
Recoverable	818,952	5,726,728	1:7.0
Total Losses	1,374,144	8,586,200	1:6.3

Casualties: 1 Jan to 31 Dec 43
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Permanent	Not Available	2,603,944	-
Recoverable	Not Available	7,288,156	-
Total Losses	1,809,735	9,892,100	1:5.5

Casualties: 1 Jan 44 to 31 Dec 44 (approximate)
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Permanent	Not Available	1,314,132	-
Recoverable	Not Available	4,625,158	-
Total Losses	2,018,349	5,939,290	1:2.9

Discussion

Obviously, there was a dramatic improvement in the Soviets' ability to inflict casualties between 1941 and 1942, and even more between 1943 and 1944. Less apparent is the improvement between 1942 and 1943: the casualty ratios are almost identical, but in 1942 the Soviets were on the defensive for most of the year, and suffered major encirclements at Kharkov and the Crimea. In 1943, the Soviet forces were on the offensive for 7 months of the year, the Germans for only about 2 months (February-March and 2 weeks in July).

To put it another way, in 1943 the Soviets could inflict as many relative casualties on the Germans while attacking as they could while defending in 1942. Considering that in 1941 they were abysmal at inflicting casualties regardless of their posture, this was a remarkable improvement!

One problem with all of these figures, is that while they reflect all Soviet casualties, they do not reflect Axis Allied losses. It is very difficult to get figures on Axis Allied losses; The only casualty figures I could get were for Finnish and Hungarian forces, as follows:

Finnish Forces, Jun 41 to Oct 43:
Permanent Losses: 41,037
Recoverable Losses: 93,754
Total Losses: 134,791
Hungarian Losses, Jun 41 to 1945: "around" 300,000

The real problem is that the combat effectiveness of the various Axis Allies was so very different from that of the Germans that including their casualties slants all the casualty statistics, even if we could differentiate the Soviet casualties suffered against the Axis Allies from those suffered against the Germans, which we can't.

Bloodbath: Casualties on the WWII Eastern Front

Introduction and War Totals
Barbarossa 1941 and Soviet Winter Offensive 1941-42
German Summer Offensive 1942 and Soviet Winter Offensive 1942-43
Soviet Summer Offensive 1943 and 1944 Offensives
Equipment, Tank, Aircraft Losses 1941-44
Conclusions