Sunday, December 17, 2017

Criticism by Nigel Askey of the ‘Myth of German superiority on the WW2 Eastern Front’


My opinion on this matter is given in the following comparisons:






Also note the following statements by Christopher Lawrence in ‘War by Numbers: Understanding Conventional Combat‘, p48:

We conclude from the Kursk comparison that the Germans had a clear advantage in combat capability that showed itself in both offensive and defensive casualty effectiveness and mission accomplishment. The difference appears to be a factor of 3. This difference appears in the middle of 1943, after the Soviet Army had two years of wartime experience, was using experienced units, and had time to rest, train, and rebuild before the German offensive. Yet there was still a very clear performance difference between these armies’.

and in page 50:

One cannot help but note that the relative combat performance of the Israelis and the Arabs in 1956-73 was similar in disparity to that between the Germans and the Soviets in 1943’.

Understandably the truth hurts…

Additional information: Comments on “Deutsche Militärische Verluste” by Rüdiger Overmans

4 comments:

  1. Very interesting essay.
    There are complete reports of the German Army and Red Army died of wounds/wounded/killed by month for the period June '41/December '44?
    I mean something like the tables published on this site, but with casualties divided by month and by type.
    Also, there are complete reports of the German and Soviet force distributio? Namely, how many men in each month were in every place of German occupied Europe?

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    1. For data on the Soviet forces check Krivosheev:
      https://www.amazon.com/Soviet-Casualties-Combat-Twentieth-Century/dp/1853672807

      I don’t know of a similar source for the German forces. The data you need will only be available at the German archives, specifically the German strength and loss reports.

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    2. So you really trust figures of Krivosheev? Any idea that the grim truth of Soviet losses might have been even much more horrible?

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  2. Krivosheev’s numbers are enough to show German combat superiority. Worse losses just tip the scales even more.

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