Casualties: German Summer Offensive: 1942
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Total Losses	853,850	2,640,245	1:3.1

Discussion

This reflects the fighting from June to mid-November 1942, and so is somewhat approximate. The German casualties do not, for example, include casualties from Army Groups North and Center, while it was impossible to completely factor out some of the Soviet casualties suffered against those two groups, where, for most of the summer, it was the Soviets who were attacking, not the Axis. Also, the German allies' casualties are not reflected here. They were probably not great, as the figures I do have for the Hungarian forces do not show great losses until the Soviet offensives of the winter 1942-43.

The biggest change from 1941 is the change in Soviet Permanent Losses (I couldn't get accurate German figures to compare them to): from almost 4.5 million in the summer of 1941, in this second summer they fall to 1,000,000. This reflects the lack of large encirclements, more than anything else. At least one Soviet work has recently confirmed that at Kharkov-Izyum and Kerch in May 1942 the Soviets lost over 400,000 in prisoners.

Note that the Germans estimated that 1.5 million young men reached military age (18-19) every year in the Soviet Union. If the Soviet "recoverable losses" were really all recoverable, the losses of the summer of 1942 actually allowed the active Soviet Army to grow in size-which in fact it did, in active forces from 5.6 million men in May to 6.5 million in November.

Casualties: Soviet Winter Offensive: 1942-43
Type	German	Soviet	Ratio
Total Losses	664,602	840,260	1:1.3

Discussion

This covers the Stalingrad, North Caucasus, and Don River offensives from 19 November 1942 until approximately March 1943. These figures are skewed in opposite directions. On the one hand, the German figures include 250,000 permanent losses when 6th Army was encircled and destroyed (including 72,000 German prisoners taken by Don Front).

On the other hand, the above loss figures do not include the casualties suffered by Rumanian, Hungarian, and Italian forces during this period, but do include Soviet casualties suffered while destroying those Axis Allied armies.

One thing that does become obvious, compared to 1941 or the summer of 1942, is that the winter offensive that started in November 1942 was an enormous success for the Soviets, both actually and relatively. In fact, if the Axis Allied casualties are factored in, the Soviets for the first time may have inflicted more overall casualties than they suffered. The combination of striking at weaker Rumanian, Italian, and Hungarian forces, and encircling large numbers of the opposition, resulted in casualties all out of proportion to the actual efficiency of the forces engaged.

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