Losses in Individual Campaigns:

Casualties: "Barbarossa" : June-November 1941
Type	German	Soviet
Permanent	252,675	4,411,380
Recoverable	496,871	1,314,000
Total Losses	749,546	5,725,380

Discussion

These reflect German casualties from 22 June to 30 November 1941, and Soviet casualties for 1941, so Soviet figures minus the month of December may be about 250,000 less. The casualty ratio overall is 1:7.6 in favor of the Germans, but more interesting is the ratio of permanent and recoverable (wounded) losses. The German to Soviet casualty ratio for wounded (recoverable) losses is 1:2.6. If the same ratio is applied to the permanent losses, Soviet losses in that category come out to 668,211.

If this is close to the actual number of Soviet Killed in Action, then the rest of the permanent losses, 3,743,169, would be largely prisoners lost to German encirclements. This very nearly matches German claims for 1941 of over 3.5 million prigoners taken. It also points up a fact that will be reaffirmed later: the encirclement was the greatest source of permanent losses on the Eastern Front.

Incidentally, the Soviets only claimed to have taken 9,147 prisoners of all nationalities up to 31 December 1941, which points out the difficulty of taking prisoners while retreating!

It also indicates that very few Germans were surrendering to the Soviets voluntarily and, since the POW figures are from NKVD camps, that many front-line Soviet soldiers were not bothering to take prisoners. Both of these conclusions are supported by anecdotal evidence from German reports: the German soldier, from the beginning to the end of the war in the east, regarded being captured by the Soviets as the worst thing that could happen to him, and German officers and men reported numerous incidents of finding comrades who had been killed by front-line Soviet troops after being cut off or captured.

Casualties: Soviet Winter Offensive: 1941-1942
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Total Losses	414,763	1,430,800	1:3.5

Discussion

This covers the period from approximately 1 December 1941 to the end of April 1942, during which the Soviets conducted "Major Offensive Operations" at Tikhvin, Rostov, Moscow, and Rzhev-Vyazina. The casualty figures include Soviet losses to sickness and frostbite, but not German losses to frostbite. This is because of the nature of the fioures. Soviets regularly included sick, frostbitten, and psychological casualties in their "recoverable losses" category, while the Germans list them separaLeiy.

In addition, the German losses to frostbite in the first winter are hard to pin down. While a figure of over 800,000 has been listed in some German sources, in fact the total reported loss to sickness of all kinds, including frostbite, was only 327,417 from 1 January to 30 April 1942 for the entire front.

I believe, therefore, that up to 50% of the "frostbite" casualties were treated within their own unit and never made it onto higher headquarters' casualty figures. These troops may have been temporarily incapacitated, but they did not really represent a loss of combat strength comparable to a man killed or evacuated to a rear area hospital. By comparison, the Soviets only had 90,000 serious (that is, reportable) cases of frostbite during the war and 10% or more of those were during the 1944 winter offensive against the Germans north of the Arctic Circle, across northern Finland into Norway--which is understandably frostbite country!

By the end of March 1942 the Germans listed 1,107,830 casualties from all causes, battle and non-battle, on the Eastern Front. Another way to look at this is the effect on German divisions.

On 30 March 1942, the official German estimate of the effectiveness of the divisions in the east was as follows:

162 Infantry Divisions:
8 "Completely ready" for any operations.
3 Ready after a (short) rest.
47 Ready for "limited attacks" only.
73 Ready only for defensive operations.
29 Only limited capabilities.
2 "Not capable of any effort."

16 Panzer Divisions:

Total 140 tanks in working order.

Quite simply, 151 out of 162 infantry divisions had lost 50% or more of their attack ability by the end of the winter. That many of them were brought up to strength before the summer campaign season started does not disguise the fact that the Germans had suffered a severe loss of the combat power with which they had started the war on 22 June 1941.

Soviet and German figures both indicate that 86-90% of all casualties were suffered by the infantry: 1,100,000 casualties meant, essentially, about 1200 infantry battalions completely wiped out! In fact, before June 1942, 69 infantry divisions in Army Group North and Center were reduced to 6 battalions each reflecting 207 infantry battalions that could not be rebuilt at all with the resources on hand.

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