Casualties: Soviet Summer Offensive: 1943
Permanent Losses	209,070	590,700	1:2.8
Recoverable Losses	1,014,044	1,945,300	1:1.9
Total	1,223,114	2,536,0001	2.1

Discussion

This covers the last part of 1943: the Soviet offensives at Orel, Kharkov, the Mius River, and across the Dnepr to Krivoi Rog and Kiev. There were no major encirclements, but the Soviets were benefiting both from force ratios in their favor and from improved training and organization that allowed them to take advantage of their numbers. In 1943 the Soviets had trained infantry (over 900,000 men in military schools by the middle of the year) and large armored formations, artillery organized (Artillery Divisions and Corps) for mass offensive action, and air superiority. In July, just before the German attack on Kursk, and just before the Soviets started their summer offensive that the above figures reflect, the force ratio on the Eastern Front was as follows (from both German and Soviet records):

Type	German	Soviet	FHO
Rifle/Infantry Divisions	151	511	506
Tanks/SP Artillery	2088	12,887	7855
Artillery Pieces	8063	41,000	21,050
Aircraft	3415	11,864	-
Total Manpower (in 1000s)	3064	7723	5755

Note: "FHO" is the German estimate of Soviet strength: underestimating them by 2,000,000 men, 5000 tanks, and 20,000 guns--does anyone still wonder why Zitadelle (the Kursk Offensive) was not a good idea?

The point is, by the middle of 1943 the Soviets had more resources relative to their opponents than ever before, in modern tanks and aircraft, in numbers of guns and trained men, and so it is little wonder that they were able to go over to the offensive in a major way.

1944

There are no good figures for German and Axis Allied casualties for individual battles and campaigns in 1944, largely because most of the Axis units that took part in these campaigns were destroyed in the process! There are estimates, but they are not precise enough to allow comparisons with the Soviet casualty figures that are available. There are some observations possible from the Soviet figures alone, however.

Soviet Casualties in 1944 Campaigns
Type	Spring	Summer-Fall
Permanent	377,000	470,300
Recoverable	1,166,500	1,628,500
Total Losses	1,543,500	2,098,800

Discussion

The Spring Campaigns include the Soviet Offensives into the Carpathians, the Crimea, and Leningrad-Novgorod. The Summer-Fall campaigns include the offensive against Finland (June-August 1944), Lvov-Sandomir, Belorussia, Iasi-Chisinau, the clearing of the Baltic States, Belgrade, and the initial drive on Budapest. Compare these figures to the figures for the Soviet Summer Offensive in 1943. As much as anything else, they reflect continuing improvement in the Soviet forces relative to the declining German Wehrmacht in the east. The figures for the summer-fall campaign are most revealing: these were the offensives that destroyed Army Group Center, cleared the Ukraine and the Baltic States of enemy forces, knocked Finland and Rumania out of the war, and drove into the Balkans and Poland. Yet all this was accomplished with fewer casualties than were suffered a year earlier driving from Kharkov to across the Dnepr River!

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