Cheating at Statistics

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“I must say, that the increase in dead and wounded was greatly inconvenient for German officials, filtering information from the front, and attempting to present it in the best possible light. As one of them admitted to me later, they worked on the principle of “Let us lose the war in reality, but we must win it on paper.”” - Hendrick C. Verton, In the Fire of the Eastern Front, The Experiences of a Dutch Waffen-SS Volunteer, 1941-1945

In the wake of the apparently controversial M4 vs Panther myth article, I was asked to write a similar article for the Eastern Front. However, since there is no “authority” on the subject that claims any kind of ludicrous ratio like Belton Cooper did for the Western, I’m going to have to do my own legwork.

You might have heard some kind of ridiculous figures like “Each Tiger would take out 10 T-34s”. First of all, let’s start with the fact that a Tiger that even engaged enemy tanks on its own in the first place was not doing its job. Tigers were meant to act as parts of assault groups, accompanied by infantry, assault guns, and tank destroyers. Even if a s.Pz.Abt goes off on its own and starts fighting enemy tanks, we run into a different problem. German tank losses were counted much differently than Soviet losses. A German tank is considered lost if it is destroyed, and, more importantly, there is no longer hope of recovering it. That is why losses can show up days, even weeks, after the tanks have actually been destroyed. When looking for German tanks losses, a much more reliable method is to look at dead crew members. You can’t fake those.

On the other hand, the Germans would claim an immobilized Soviet tank in no-man’s land as a kill, even if the Soviets would recover it later. A German tank in the same position would not be counted as a loss, but a Soviet one would be, even if the Germans didn’t actually do any work to knock it out! Pretty sneaky.

Let’s count the claims in that article, and compare them to reality.
KVs: 1 actually destroyed by the Germans, 4 lost in total. Germans claim 5 KVs. Claim inflation: 500%.
T-34s: 8 actually lost (let’s give them the MIA one), Germans claim 16. Claim inflation: 200%

And that’s only for tanks. When it comes to infantry, the claims can get even more ludicrous. The Germans claim 300 killed to 3 of their men lost, compared to the harsh reality: at a cost of 150 SS troops, only 8 wounded Soviets were killed. Even if you throw in all Soviet soldiers from the entire unit killed or missing in action in that area over two months, that’s still just over 100 people. So much for the “elite” SS unit. However, sometimes they didn’t make things up in their favour, sometimes, you have to make the enemy look good in order to get away with executing POWs!

Moral of the story? Don’t trust kill claims. If you want to blabber on about how your favourite tank has an x:1 kill ratio, go play Counterstrike, where that wins battles. In the real world, it does not.

362 thoughts on “Cheating at Statistics”

  1. SO MUCH BS.. SS you need a mod to clean this mess.
    By the way EnsignEx any chance you copy the Kursk article from WoT as a next big EYE opener?

  2. Hero of the Soviet Union – You deserve this medal. You compare to what “Reality” one made up by soviets? History is not like math. You can’t be sure at mostly everything when discussing kill claims.

    • Exactly, the most basic thing you need to do when making a historical research is to determine how credible are your sources. Things that SS described happened more than you think and they can reach as far back in the past as Medieval or even Antics. Many scribes “rewrote” historical facts just because of political climate or their own ambition to show something better than actual reality.

      • Here’s a tidbit for you: AFAIK that kind of critical reading of the primary sources only became the norm after the downright iconoclastic Leftist ferment of students in the Sixties and the Seventies…

        Note also that eg. Medieval people had a whole different concept of “history” – in practice the point of the chronicles and whatnots – than we do. They weren’t particularly concerned with “what actually happened”, but rather with the chronicles’ *moral teachings* and that kind of thing.
        Well, and legitimising their specific patrons’ status or achievements or whatevers of course. That produced some pretty amazing fabrications out of whole cloth in some cases.

        All of which doesn’t make modern historians’ task any easier and by what I’ve seen – mom’s one – tends to give them an interesting if a little nihilistic view to concepts like “facts” and “truth”.

  3. the most important scientific achievements of the 20th century are based on german awesomenes.
    the german genius gives us again the economically lead in europe.

    • That must be why in the Thirties they roundly wrecked their national economy with a helter-skelter rearmament programme and nearly crippled their own industry by failing to maintain and renew their rolling stock (the factories having converted to making tanks and stuff). Did you know just about the first thing they appropriated from their Western conquests was the local train fleet (which did wonders to cripple the local industial bases and keep the Germans from exploiting them, but eh)? Their own were all but falling apart in their hands…

      Did you *also* know that by as early as ’36 or so the German Mark in effect had no value AT ALL on the world market, and they were thus obliged to arrange for their assorted necessary imports with a complex and rather ineffective web of bilateral barters?

      Oh, and the Nazis’ original Minister of Finance, one Hjalmar Schacht who was apparently nicknamed “the Sorcerer” for the veritable black magic by which he somehow kept the state vaguely solvent for years, eventually resigned in protest over the unacceptably reckless economic policies…

      GG confusing “irresponsible lunacy” with “genius” and compounding your sins by making paralles between the loony warmongers of the Thirties and the responsible parlamentarians who diligently and patiently built a robust economy over many decades in close cooperation with their neighbours.

        • Note that I was referring to *before* the war. During it they built whatever they needed to keep going obviously, and already given the attentions the Allied bombers lavished on marshaling yards throughout the Grossraum I’d be very surprised if that didn’t include new train engines sooner or later.

  5. There we go agaion, the Panzer FanboySS have their dreams shattered and get angry.
    Dunno the numbers the OP is referencing but I know the practise is correctly described.
    For instance in august 1944 the Germans lost hundreds of tanks in one day. What happened? The allies overran their repair depot, forcing the Germans to finally add to the tally tanks knocked out as early as June.

    In fairness it must be said the SU spruced up their numbers too. There is a known and rather huge gap between the publicly admitted losses suffered and the actual losses that have since been dug up from their archives.

    • The difference seems to be that the Soviets’ “internal” accounting was apparently pretty robust, whatever they might decide to claim in public. The Germans seem to have been actively lying to *themselves*, however much they were deliberately constructing heroic myths for posterity – I know eg. Speer certainly engaged in that. No particular reason why the military men wouldn’t have done the same, not like they were getting anything else out of the whole clusterfuck after all.

      Then again, the Soviets weren’t the ones increasingly obviously losing the war which might of be related…

    • Yes, very good for those who can’t be bothered to read and think for extended period of time. No sources, no questioning the validity of pro/contra claims, data presented “as is” etc.

      Belton Cooper – lunatic, madman, fool and idiot.
      Waffen SS *volunteer* (!) – great and objective source of historical info.

      Discredit those who speak against you, support those who speak in your favor (even if you are accustomed to pissing on them). You know, there is a reason why there was hammer AND sickle.

      • .__.
        Yeah, it Communism was always about both the industrial AND the rural proletariat.

        As far as Cooper goes, I’ve seen enough direct quotes of his writings to know he’s full of shit. Or rather puts the bar retardedly high and then declares the Sherman a *categorical* failure when it doesn’t meet his absurd demands, which amounts to the same thing.
        Funny thing is the Democracies got some pretty seriously good mileage out of the thing regardless.
        Now, kids, what do we conclude when some armchair general’s musings don’t actually match up with the demonstarted empirical reality?

      • Now, now the Waffen SS did print recruiting posters… And they sent the posters, in local languages, all over occupied Europe and did get honest volunteers. Not as many as the Waffen SS wanted which is mentioned quite often when ever a show or publication is produced about them. The reasons behind the recruitment’s is simple.

        It solves 2 problems at once. Frees up normal troops for other locations and uses locals to control the local areas and gives the Germans some measure of security that the locals wont go ape-shit crazy if they pull out their regular troops.

        Three examples:
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/13th_Waffen_Mountain_Division_of_the_SS_Handschar_%281st_Croatian%29
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/21st_Waffen_Mountain_Division_of_the_SS_Skanderbeg_%281st_Albanian%29
        http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23rd_Waffen_Mountain_Division_of_the_SS_Kama_%282nd_Croatian%29

        • Considering they eventually started accepting all manner of “Untermensch scum” once the manpower shortages got dire enough…

          Anyway, I was under the impression the native auxiliaries employed for internal security tended to be a rather different bunch from the ones who signed up in the Waffen-SS volunteer units. Certainly from what I’ve read when Milice members were enrolled into the “Charlemagne” division (the French volunteer unit) after the liberation of France there was a lot of friction between them and the old-salt volunteers. Something about one party being “irresponsible adventurers who’d rather go abroad than fight the TRUE Communist threat at home” and the other being “carpetbaggers who’d rather bully their countrymen than risk their lives fighting the TRUE Soviet threat”, to parpahrase it somewhat.
          Ironically enough that lot was apparently among the very last cohesive Axis formations in Berlin when the end came…

  7. You will get Order of Lenin for this comrade!

    Seriously, start writing about your own area of expertise. So far, only Zarax is doing that. You won’t see him babbling about nonsense from “other” side.

    • My “area of expertise” is the Eastern Front. Soviet tanks didn’t exist in a vacuum, and this is why you see me write about German tanks, LL tanks, and infantry on both sides as well.

      • Your area of expertise seems to be keeping alive Soviet propaganda for new generations. As to “vacuum”, German tanks also fought with Soviet but you don’t see anybody doing propaganda about them. Instead, they write about less known projects, interesting details etc. So far, all you have done is wrote about a) Soviet stronk! b) Germans crap. Sell your nonsense to somebody else (try it at NA forum for starters).

        • “you don’t see anybody doing propaganda about them”

          ‘What does Marcellus Wallace look like?’ Because you gotta be trying to shit him.

            • Fine, I’ll explain it in simple terms since “subtle” is obviously too much for you. They don’t write propaganda about German stuff because A) those who have seriously studied the matter know better B) the ingorant masses propagate and sustain any number of bullshit myths (“commonplaces”) that to my knowledge the folks mentioned in A) are usually violently allergic to.

              Now it may be simply a case of “professional courtesy” (or “don’t shit where you eat” so to speak) but I note the other well-read sriters rarely if ever dispute Ensign’s points. The “hue and cry” seems to come from the proverbial “peanut gallery” instead… a rather specific section thereof, to be exact.
              One whose behavior has more than a little in common with religious true-believers who’ve just had the rug pulled out from under central tenets of their creed, I would even say.

    • Wouldn’t it be interesting if you quoted those statements in the article you disagree with or provided better sources on the topic?

  8. The Waffen SS was a political and ideological organization not an elite military formation. They thought of themselves as that and thanks to political pressure they got away with aquiering quiet a bit of high end equipment that could’ve been used to greater effect by the conventional Heer forces. But at the end of the day, having blue eyes, blond hair and beeing 180cm high does not make you an elite killing force no matter how great your propaganda machine is.

    This of course does not mean there were no impressive SS soldiers, like the Tank Ace Wittmann. But even he was ‘infected’ by his own propaganda and did a lot of plain stupid stuff because he seemed to think of himself as an invulerable Ubermensch.
    In contrast you got Knispel who had more confirmed kills even though he claimed less and would readily give up kill claims to his gunner or other tank crews operating with him, but who did not fit the german propaganda picture of the perfect german soldier and recieved quiet a bit less cover in the propaganda lecture of the time… and resulting from that, less cover by the conventional literature post war.

    • Curio detail: you know all that obligatory Hitler-Jugend outdoors activity and whatnot that was supposed to mold the prewar generation of German youths into warriors without peer? Whether that was achieved or not can be debated, but apparently it turned out having growing boys do endurance marches in full kit was an excellent way to make them *flat-footed* instead…
      ‘oops.’

    • And who died two weeks before ending of war – if there is any tragedy that i can call a death of a German soldier, it would be that one. Not because he was an “ace”, but because the way he was.

  9. I love how all these Na*i fanboys suckers get all worked up.
    German army where to puny, their equipment not so robust and equipment failing ti winter condition and mud all the time. The largest losses of the Red Army where in the beginning of Operation Barbarossa when they where taken by surprise and Stalingrad. Some how the Germans mixed civilian casualties with army losses too. Making the Soviet military loss even larger then it is.

    Like all good Na*i’s they rewrite history like butthurt.

    • Yes, those “Nazis” were outnumbered and outproduced 20:1 and yet fought for 4 years (last one with no fuel and limited ammo). And despite all that managed 3:1 kill ratio. But they were “faking reports”…Well a blind man might lie but eye certainly doesn’t (to paraphrase).

      • “Outnumbered 20:1″ and “3:1 kill ratio” only hold true when you include civilians. Congrats for celebrating genocide and war crimes, I suppose.

        • Haha, last straw in any discussion including “Nazis”. Regarding numbers: please put forward Soviet military loses on Eastern front. It is, after all, your area of “expertise”.

          • They speak of little but the absurd levels of fail in the Soviet decision-making in the early war, and their pitiless insensitivity to casualties when fighting for their very existence,
            The Germans did their level best to match that – Hitler actually once triumphantly boasted to his coterie that the Eastern Front “had finally created a *political* soldier” – but demonstrably failed, however ghastily willing they may have been to industrialise the mass murder of defenseless civilians and POWs.

          • Military losses on the Eastern Front:
            Soviets: 14.7 million
            Germany: 10.8 million
            Other axis: 1.7 million

            From “The Soviet-German War 1941-1945, Myths and Realities: A Survey Essay”, Colonel David M. Glantz.

            • And you were writing something about “cheating statistics”? You are just a joke.

              German military casualties (including “losses” after capitulation) on Eastern front
              Men: 5.3 million (including other Axis soldiers)
              AFVs (tanks, SPGs, TDs): 23 802

              Soviet military casualties on Eastern front
              Men: 23.8 million
              AFVs (tanks and SPG/TDs): 96 000+

              Casualties = KIA + WIA + MIA (does not refer to AFV losses)

              Casualty ratios:
              men – 4.5:1 in German favor
              AFVs – 4:1 in German favor
              Do you now get an idea why it took 4 years? Be happy that Americans opened Western front. These levels of losses are unsustainable, regardless of military power.

              Most favorable period for Soviets: July-September 1944. (2.02:1 in German favor).
              Most unfavorable period for Soviets: October-December 1942. (7.24:1 in German favor). Red Army outnumbered Wehrmacht in men by 1.2:1 (1941.) to 3.6:1 (1945.) or 2.4:1 (on average). In terms of AFVs, Red Army outnumbered Wehrmacht 3:1 throughout entire war.

              Sources (cross-checked and compared):
              G.F.Krivoshev: “Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century”
              Vadim Erlikman, “Human losses in the 20th century: Handbook”
              Rűdiger Overmans, “German military losses in WW2″
              various books by Zaloga and Jentz
              various military studies (“Analyzing World War II eastern front battles”, “Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis” etc.)

              Shameless communist pig.

            • Wow, it’s like you didn’t read the article I wrote at all.

              Different sides count their losses differently. The whole point of Glantz’s paper is that he brings both casualty figures to the same standard.

              But of course, you can pick unrelated numbers from several different books and cry about how the Soviets won the war unfairly or some nonsense like that.

            • …and however badly the Soviets suffered, the exchange ratio *still* hurt the Germans worse. Badly enough that they get their asses completely kicked. So moot point.
              “Hey baby, can you bleed like me?”
              That’s kind of like trying to compete with a full-grown grizzly bear in who takes longer to bleed out and then complaining it cheated…

            • Oh, by the way, I looked over Krivosheev’s figures, he includes executed and otherwise killed POWs into the Soviet casualty figures. So congrats, you are celebrating the ability of the Wehrmact to kill defenseless civilians and prisoners.

            • ^^
              Oh, thank you! I got all the answers I needed.

              “Different sides”
              -Colonel General G. F. Krivoshev (the deputy chief of the USSR Armed Forces General Staff) writing about Soviet losses in WW2 – “unrelated numbers”?
              -Russian writer Vadim Erlikman (Jewish ancestry) writing about Soviet and German losses in WW2 – “unrelated numbers”?
              And what do you know – they both agree on these “unrelated numbers”. Makes you think…

              -American tank expert Zaloga writing on Soviet AFV losses in WW2 – “unrelated numbers”?
              -German tank expert Jentz writing on German AFV performance in WW2 – “unrelated numbers”?
              Well, they agree just fine…

              By the way, do you know who wrote “Analyzing World War II eastern front battles” and “Kursk 1943: A Statistical Analysis”? Niklas Zetterling & Anders Frankson of The Journal of Slavic Military Studies founded by non-other than dear Colonel David M. Glantz.

              “[...]cry about how the Soviets won the war unfairly or some nonsense like that”
              If it were not for us, you could not win the war. Simple as that. No amount of propaganda or lying can change that.

              Anything else commie?

            • If we drop the ‘military’ part out we get roughly 10mil German vs 25mil Russian losses in total. I would carry on from there. Really now there is not such thing as accurate numbers unless you can truly find statistics corporated of static numbers which aren’t just declassified ‘modifications’.

              No one kept real records because war is chaotic. We can merely estimate from various sources. Thus even with wild guesses we are far off.

              Hobbled to this link earlier while just browsing up… http://www.tank-net.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=30346 – They seemed to have exact same idea of counting the armored losses…

        • This is why you’re a stalinite. You say shit like this. Between these “articles” of “interesting details”, your posts in comments, and that nearly everyone outside of other stalinites laugh at your posts on the official forums, you’re no better than the “Nazi lovers”.

          Talking about civilian casualties? Let’s talk about all the soviet civilian casualties of your boyfriend Stalin…

          The fact that you mock the Germans and their known propaganda but think the soviets tell only the truth instantly makes you look like a fool and thus why everyone thinks you’re a joke character at the very least on the official forums…

          Ensign… Lmao.

          • Way to mix up separate topics and outright strawmen for your rhetorical convenience.

            By the by, Stalin never industrialised racially motivated mass murder nor made a policy out of exporting it which already makes him a fair bit the lesser evil.

      • Also, economic statistics were readily enough available before the war – if now only ballpark ones about the Soviets (who in practice much of the time didn’t *themselves* know the actual facts due to systematic falsifying of reports by local adminstrators trying to polish their shields or just keep their heads). And the Germans themselves knew only too well they had literally *starved out* in the previous Great War.

        Shoulda maybe thought twice about it before throwing down the gauntlet.

    • “History is written by the victors.”

      Winston Churchill

      I’m thinking of ways how to write history when being dead… If I come up with something I’ll gladly share. Writing documentary is different from history and documents were very strict, but propaganda was the way to lie about bad numbers. But if you start lying in documents you get no real reinforcements nor equipment and end up with less than expected. Thus it is very unlikely to do so, atleast to me.

        • Either have too much time at hand or have Asperger syndrome … ? As you post nearly 20-50 posts per day on topics and you just can’t back down … Not that it is bad, but seems obvious.

          • Weekend. Plus everyone needs a hobby. Mine’s making fun of arguments I find stupid on the Internets (ie. I won’t be running out of potential recreational activity any time soon).

            • Hobby worth undertaking, fun never runs out, maybe should switch from W40k and playing Go, but I guess I’ll stick to them.

    • The Germans weren’t getting squat anyway and knew it perfectly well; when newly formed SS Panzer units have to make do with StuGs instead of proper tanks and armoured unit commanders are basically told to scrounge up the fuel they need to even *attempt* carrying out their missions from wherever they can – they usually ended up stealing another unit’s allotment – it’s kind of obvious your reporting practices aren’t going to make any difference one way or another.
      Plus, if that’s the established reporting practice Quartermaster’s will be well versed in reading between the lines anyway.

      And finally, do remember that there was always a touch of the surreal in the whole German adventure; it only got worse as the war ground on and reality became ever more unpalatable. Did you know the Kriegsmarine (being a mite unemployed) apparently found it necessary to author its own official history during the war, no expenses spared etc.? Apparently by the time they got it more or less ready for print the Soviet spearheads were within kilometers of the office working on it…
      The Army guys weren’t behaving any more rationally either. Objectively by ’45 it should have become obvious their best bet would have been to mount only token resistance to the Democracies while trying to stall the far more brutally vengeful Soviets for as long as possible, ie. to allow themselves get conquered by the by far lesser evil and Hitler be damned.
      Fuck no.
      While the East obviously had priority, that didn’t keep them from doing their level best to make the Allied advance as slow as they possibly could. AFAIK no rational explanation for this blatantly foolish behavior was ever given by any of the senior officers involved; seems to have been one of those “martial honour” things.
      You know, the same sort of thing that kept most of the lot loyal to Adolf to the last despite the fact he was blatantly wrecking the Fatherland and, indeed, made no bones about preferring total national immolation…

      • StuGs were actually pretty great, and much more dependable in combat than Tigers/Panthers/King Tigers/Ferdinands, despite their much more humble history.

        • Certainly. But when a high-priority outfit like a brand new SS Panzer division is given them simply because there aren’t enough turreted tanks to go around the issue isn’t the assault guns’ combat performance…

          Plus from what I’ve read the factual backbone of the Panzerwaffe, the Pz IV, was by that point so thoroughly debugged as to be approximately as reliable as a German tank now could get (give or take the effects of all the added armour and gun, ofc…).
          They didn’t even have enough of *those* venerable little clunkers on hand to kit the unit out with. That’s kinda desperate.

          • You use what you have on had and what is not being used or has not been assigned to other units.

            Plus the StuG’s were reorganized at least twice in terms of their numbers of tanks per unit and their overall unit organization which could have freed up some tanks for new units. Please go watch the German Warfiles series as they discuss the reorganization. Plus numinous tanks were rebuilt into StuGs rather then fully repaired back into normal tanks.

            • Obviously, and unit structures got reshuffled every now and then anyway for various reasons.
              That wasn’t the point though, which was to underline the “scavenger economics” under which the German military operated.

  11. get a life, the only thing the Soviets won was at vodka drinking contest.
    here in the “real life” of World of tanks the Soviets and their fanboys can jerk off and sign-off with their forward stalin crap.

    what a bunch of loosers.

    • That must be why the USSR collapsed in ’42 and the Glorious Thousand-Year Reich has since then been the beacon of all mankind.

      orite.

        • The Reich instead was SO good that the world just couldn’t do without TWO Germanies!

          • …both of which very self-consciously tried to be as un-Reich as they now could, however. Also I believe that was originally a de Gaulle snark.

            • And still now Russia is a poor country full of old men and Germany is doing great paying for everyone in the EU.
              And the US are the most hated now so in the end it ended well for atleast one country.

            • *shrug* Far as I know Russia went to shit already in the later Middle Ages and has thereafter been a lousy place to live in irrespective of what its international stature happens to be at the moment – although it must be said some periods have obviously been more tolerable than others.

              Irrelevant to the discussion. Russia is what it is in no small part due to *centuries* of sociocultural baggage and other circumstances; Germany today is no less a product of its circumstances, but more to the point it’s an okay place IN SPITE OF the collective insanity of the Nazi years. Indeed it’s achieved its current prosperity more or less by systematically doing the polar opposite of what the Nazis espoused, ie. by acting like a reasonable and sane neighbour you can safely do business with.

        • In hindsight, sure, but it actually looked pretty credible up to around the early Seventies or so.

          Also hardly relevant to the topic. Apples. Cheese.

          • “looked pretty credible”…. i cant believe what i just…
            Go back under your stone bridge troll, i bet you never needed to live under this system so just go F urself and keep your Lenin ass kissing mouth shut.

            • *SO* much fucking woosh…

              Thanks for having not the foggiest what I was even talking about.

            • I think he refers to you partly stating that you think the Communism is a “pretty credible” system.
              So much for your fucking woosh… but i dont want to fight a red guy so, here please have a laugh with your friends: http://www.soviet-empire.com/ussr/

            • With hindsight everyone knows communism sucks. The point that was being made, though, was that severla decades ago, you might not have necessarily known that. The hideous shortcomings of the communist system weren’t quite so obvious back then.

  12. “If you want to blabber on about how your favourite tank has an x:1 kill ratio” go play wot.

  13. These discrepancies seems valid enough. However, there’s also perfectly plausible explanations how they could have happened other than deceit as the only reason. Even today, there are still issue with these same items. You cherry pick your examples and apply it across the board is a fallacy. By your logic, all nations are guilty because I am sure similar instances can be found in their records too. You could do with some lessons on how to present a rational argument.

    Like someone mentioned earlier, stick with what you are good at (reviewing Soviet equipment) and keep away from these sort of articles because they make you look stupid.

    • Ok, then find them, and write your own article on them. Don’t cry about how I’m mistreating war criminals on the internet.

      Also these aren’t just specific occurrences, the article talks about general standards in keeping track of vehicle losses. Did you actually read it, or do you just scroll down and complain in the comments?

      • Yes, I read the article. It’s just a longer version of this one. Do you always use your own writing as a reference to support your own arguments?

        Who is crying? I’m only laughing at your article. I still haven’t figured out if you hate Nazi Germany more than you love Soviet Russia.

        • “mistreating war criminals”

          So u are saying every Wehrmacht Soldier was a War criminal, EE?

          Are u really surprised about the rage you get here?

          My Granddad fought in Stalingrad, was captured there and kept as POW…Want to talk about War Crimes now?

          @ silentstalker: EE’s Articles get way to political, can u please put an end to this in any way u like?

          • …and *my* granpa fought the Soviets first in ’39/40, then again in ’41-44, and then the Germans briefly when Finland ditched that sinking ship.
            Don’t mean shit, and if your grandpa was an East Front vet odds are actually pretty good that at some point he did something he’d really rather forget and sure as fuck wasn’t going to tell his family about afterwards.

            Nerve much, btw?

            • That “sinking ship” which helped those ungrateful Fins when nobody wanted.
              Where many of them fought in the SS and maybe did things they sure as fuck werent going to tell anybody.
              Maybe your granpa kello was one of those fighting for the SS.

              Nerve much, btw?

            • Oh, so the “my grandpa fought for X and died/survived X” argument only works when we’re talking about the the average Fritz, an “ill-fated victim of the plans his own misguided government enterprised”? Please. We all have/had grandfathers, no need to bring that grave-dug-up sentimentalism to the argument.

              By the way, thank you for not overwhelming us with convincing claims intensively backed-up by evidence, that sure helps realize whether you’re worth listening to or not. Kellomies either loves arguing with defenseless wehraboos or finds some sort of morbid, masochist pleasure in reasonably replying to all of you.

            • Ooooooh, aren’t you being clever. But no dice, dah’ling. For starters, go and actually read up of the Finnish SS battalion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finnish_Volunteer_Battalion_of_the_Waffen-SS) – also often informally referred to as the “hostage battalion” here – which was disbanded already in ’43 when their “contract” ran out. The last I checked they’ve never been credibly charged with war crimes so nyah. (The gov’t actually specifically tried to exclude actual Nazis and similar firebrands from the lot during the volunteer screening, and such could always go and sign up in the other SS volunteer units anyway.)

              As for Grandpa, he spent the whole war in Finnish Army greys with squad-leaders chevrons in Karelia. Could come home easily enough by train during leaves and all, even, married man and whatnot. Mom actually knows unusually accurately when she was actually conceived, as it was his only chronologically suitable home leave was cut *extremely* short (think one night) by the opening of the great ’44 Soviet summer offensive…

              And not OUR fault Hitler was dumb and easily swindled (and desperate to hang on to his increasingly uneasy and skittish allies), despite Ribbentrop smelling the rather obvious rat and trying to warn his boss about it. ‘S a kinda amusing episode actually, read it up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryti-Ribbentrop_Agreement

  14. As a US reader, I find the levels of animosity amusing. To us, the british, germans, and russians are all pretty much the same. Why are you all so upset about some crap that happened like 70 years ago :)

    • Well for one thing it’s still in what’s teknik’ly known as “living memory” – although bona fide war vets are starting to get scarce these days. But for example my own mother was born at the very end of the war – and she was the (by far) youngest of four siblings, all of whom are still alive and vigorous.
      (Not to mention that by the time the guns fell silent Central Europe wa ssuddenly short on ethnic minorities – and their sudden exodus to their “parent states” wasn’t terribly voluntary.)

      Now if I suggest you put “remember Alamo” in THAT kind of context, will it help you understand it somewhat?

      • Nope, I don’t even know what happened at the Alamo beyond some Texans and some Mexicans shot each other or something. Happened long before I was born, so it has no effect on my life. People need to relax and stop living in the past.

  15. 150 Waffen SS only killed 8 wounded Soviet soldiers ?
    Am I misunderstanding something or what ?
    What is this bullshit.
    How many russians where fighting those 150 Waffen SS soldiers ?
    To what dou you refer this ?!

    • You realise there were also incidents where badly outnumbered Sherman units pretty literally wiped out forces armed mostly with Panthers and the like while suffering at best trivial damage in return, right? (The first batch of Kingtigers to see combat in the East btw apparently more or less perished without achieving shit.)

      The Germans had no magic immunity to low-quality troops, suicidally bad decisions and rank incompetence you know.

    • Click the link and find out, maybe? A bunch of methed up fantatics (and this is what the SS was, by the way), rushing into a well prepared defensive line could very plausibly result in those kinds of casualties.

        • *shrug* Attacks against stubbornly held village over period of nine days or so, if this is about Lesser Opuyevo. Even with relatively small units and only small arms 150 casualties doesn’t sound particularly incredible – and downright low if Yakovlevich’s lot was able to call on even sporadic standoff fire support.
          Note also that it would appear that the Soviets were able to hang onto the village ergo repulse the German efforts at recapturing it, which certainly suggests something…

          One notes the Soviet estimates of the German casualties don’t really seem to match what the latter themselves recorded, but then again the severity of infantry casualties in particular ought to be pretty difficult to estimate from distance (“dude seemed to get hit, fell down, was dragged away”) and it doesn’t sound like the Soviet troopers were in the position to make very detailed investigations into the matter.

  16. The level of butthurtness in the comments is way over 9000, gg EnsignExpendable!

    • Your contribution is very important to us.

      By the by, isn’t it hard to type with fingers showed into your ears?

    • That is a fantastic way to dismiss evidence. Please, if you are going to argue please bring objective reasoning and not BS.

      • Now we have 3 big trolls on SilentStalkers blog all together in a german wehraboo bashing not really interesting post with exactly 0 evidence.
        Ensign arent you happy beeing able to spam on your own blog where you can post things strait after the military commis readed and approved them to be published?

      • Not my fault the wehraboos can’t argue back properly. It ends a bit one-sided due to that. :v

    • Actually, the literate write history, how you got this far though is beyond me.

  18. what the hell is this .. “article” really about, eh?!
    the only sources mentioned are soviet and there is no source for the “score keeping” from the Axis (the Eastern front were not only german, but other countries too)

    • Er, the last I checked he was referring to the “kill counts” reported by the Germans themselves and then comparing them to what the Soviets actually wrote off as losses…

      And as far as the “Axis Minors” go… are you serious? Because we were never more than a rounding error in the big-boy totalitarian deathmatch.

        • Are you actually incapable of reading? The following documents referred to are of German origin:

          Diaries of the 503rd, 507th, and 509th s.Pz.Abt
          3rd Panzer Regiment operations report
          Oberleutnant Schmidt’s report on action at Sena
          Interrogation of Brigade Commander Tarasov
          Operation report of the 123rd Infantry Division
          Report of the 2nd Gebirgsjager division at Height 122 (and memoirs of a German soldier present at the time)

  19. Moral of the story? Don’t trust kill claims. If you want to blabber on about how your favourite tank has an x:1 kill ratio, go play Counterstrike, where that wins battles. In the real world, it does not.

    Yay, counter strike!

  20. Everyone needs to know more about sowiet history from the archives.
    Because in Sowiet Russia history writes you!

  21. Ah, this article is so confusing…. But the Wehrmacht used the SS as cannon fodders, as I recall, becouse they were more fanatical. As I read the books, with fighter pilots, there had to be confirmed by another pilot to be count as a kill. Anyways I always interested in this topic, I have a deep-inside book, “Soliders of the Wehrmacht” by this guy: http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johannes_Poeppel Maybe If someone interested in I look after this. But beware all nazi and commie fanboy, this book is very academic and not fun, it has materials from cca. 1908-2007 (i thinnk) on 500 pages. duh. So it is not an adventure book. lol

  22. Let’s bring in some real numbers for a change…

    The total Axis tank claims on the Eastern Front (including about 7.000 claims by the Luftwaffe) was 134.165 (Source: OKW/FHO T78R465) by April 1945. Until November 1942 the Wehrmacht estimated a 20% overlaim (overclaims due to double counting and tanks that were recovered by the Soviets). From December 1942 onwards a 50% overclaim was estimated resulting in roughly 81.100 “confirmed” claims. According to Krivosheev the Red Army suffered about 89.000 total losses in tanks and assault guns until April 1945.
    That gives a “real” or “historical” Axis overclaim ratio of 1,51:1 in raw claims and 0,91:1 ratio underclaim ratio in confirmed claims.

    • Still no comment on this one from Kello or Ensign thats pretty shocking, or ok no its not.

    • Hm? Didn’t think there too much to comment on, as it’s pretty obvious right in the face of it the claims *before* the bean-counter reality check (ie. the ones you find in unit diaries, reports etc.) were exaggerated as fuck.

      Ofc the German claims are the total aggregate including those by aircraft, AT guns and peasants with pitchforks while the Soviet tally then includes virtually everything that had tracks and a gun – a T-70 taken out by a hidden 5cm PaK gun or SU-76 totaled by a hand grenade in the fighting compartement have preciously little to do with the main bones of contention which tend to obsess with the likes of Panther-to-T-34 exchange ratios.

      Your frantic efforts at spinning every straw you find into some kind of proof positive without actually investing any of the necessary effort and elaboration are kind of amusing though, Anon.

  23. Boy… I sure am glad the USSR officials didn’t lie at all about Rzhev.
    Communists are known for their honesty and lack of greed when it comes to pleasing superiours after all…

      • “I may be drunk, madam, but in the morning I will be sober and you will still be ugly.”
        - also W. Churchill

        Just because the dude was pretty witty doesn’t mean you should take his political opinions as gospel, you know. He WAS kind of an old-school reactionary aristocratic twit from what I gather and like most such morbidly suspicious of anything that so much as *hinted* at doing something about the then-established social order and class distinctions.

    • By all accounts the Red Army actually ran a pretty tight adminstrative ship those days; and it’s not like the propaganda guys’ work back home was the least bit affected by the internal memos being legit.
      Plus Stalin was a fucking scary taskmaster.

      More or less systematic falsifying of reports and whatnots became ingrained in the system probably during the Five-Year plans when desperate local bosses faced with absurd quotas tried to keep their heads by basically lying through their teeth, and IIRC already Kruschev complained about the fallout. Didnät get any better with time; but that was the PRODUCING side.
      The military was and is always the end-user -consumer- who’s mainly concerned with actually getting their damn supplies and whatnots, and factual lack of tanks an’ stuff sent to the front would be a mite difficult to cover up even for the most accomplished alchemist of records methinks.

      Do also note that unlike the Germans the Soviets were not busily losing a (supposed) life-or-death struggle started primarily due to the lurid delusions of their Great Leader however hard they tried, which one imagines breeds a wee bit less the kind of culture of surreal escapism that increasingly took hold in the Reich in the later years. After all, in a fairly real sense the Germans were trapped in a nightmare more or less of their own making with no way out (thanks to the totalitarian nutters in charge) on top of the usual introvercy that police states breed in their subjects; their grasp of reality really could be a tad tenuous at times.

      • Well at first they where, even Stalin was afraid to go outside.
        And i doubt that anyone wanted to keep him informed about the losses out there.

        • I guess they could’ve gone through Voroshilov if it came down to that. During the Winter War he once threw his dinner plate at Stalin and told him some blunt truths about why, exactly, their glorious Red Army was bleeding in the Karelian woods in a most terrible and embarassing manner (although he conveniently forgot he’d personally masterminded much of the officer purges).
          Stalin apparently had a curiously soft spot for that bastard. Fucker even outlived his boss and apparently died peacefully of old age in ’69.

          Anyway, ’41 was ’41. These aren’t from that year as you can probably pick up from the overall context and tone.

  24. Shame on you! Trying to invalidate German propaganda with soviet propaganda is nothing but dumb. They both lied, but the Soviets won the war, so their ‘facts’ are right; at least for blinded people.

    SS, I’m disappointed that you allow a sympathizer of the USSR (which was an inhuman dictatorship) write his political bullshit in YOUR blog. I thought that this is a neutral blog, but I was wrong.

    • Totally agree, these german bashing articles are a real turn-off to this otherwise great blog. They are obviously only posted to startle the german readers.

      • Nonsense, these must be the best “conversation pieces” to date. I’d estimate the only articles to rival these at the rate of new comments being added are Q&A’s featuring unusually egregious SerB Style(tm) trolling and those documenting some embarassing failure of some part of WG’s organisation (usually community teams).

  25. dude, take your communistic “facts” and get off that page. (drags down the level)

    the german counting kills-system is one of the most accurate ones you will ever find in history of warfare.
    there was no space for unsupported kill claims as they wouldnt be counted.

    IT is totally sure the ussr wouldnt oficially tell ppl how much losses they really suffered.. that is a known fact.

    If you want to tell us something about that the russian system (which also took kills as kills when somebody told his companions some “hero-storys” and how he killed 5 king tigers with his t34-76)… i can just laugh about you… for even believing in such utter shit

    • …you mean those Kingtigers the Germans wrote off as total losses and some of which later had a brief and eventful career as Gun Test Dummies at Kubinka? Oskin commanded a T-34/85 btw.

    • You mean the system of “I found this tank in a swamp, I’m going to claim it as mine”? Oh yeah, such an accurate system. I can’t believe nobody else thought of using it.

      • Source? No? Well…At least we know it’s Germans who are lying, and Soviets are saints…

            • Also may I point out that any serious historian would probably laugh very derisively indeed at the phrase “objective historical evidence”?

              Because THAT would be something like the ruins of Pompeii or similar blatantly indisputable traces of geological activity impacting human lives…

            • Digging up the dog tags of German soldiers is pretty objective, unless you expect the Soviets to make fake ones, dig up the legit ones, and scatter the fakes around, just in case.

    • According to Col. Glantz the Soviets would have won without a Western Front or Lend-Lease. I don’t completely buy into his idea that it would only take 1.5 years longer for the Soviets to crush the Nazis, but he does make it clear that the Soviets could have won without support against the Germans.

      • In their dreams only. In 1944. Soviet tank losses were virtually 100% (produced). It was simply unsustainable. If the Germans could focus all their strength on Eastern front, Soviets would lose !regardless! of Lend Lease or any other factor. They simply would be unable to replace losses fast enough.

        • Where are you getting those #s from? It also isn’t like that Germany was completely beaten as an offensive fighting force after Stalingrad or that after Kursk the Germans had practically no hope of stopping the Soviet Army.

          • Kursk, Hell. If Tooze’s “The Wages of Destruction” is to go by – and I don’t see why not -German strategists themselves regarded the failure to reach the Caspian oilfields in Summer ’42 as the final nail in the coffin after which victory was impossible, and advised the Fuhrer to start looking for peace.
            Adolf instead developed a sudden and deep interest in kooky “super weapons” he previously had had scant time for.
            :/
            It takes all kinds.

            • Yes, because synthetic plants and Romanian imports were insufficient at that time…*facepalm*

            • Oh yes, the synthetic fuel. See there was a wee bit of a problem with it. You know what it’s made of? Coal. At what I gather was enormous expenditure of energy and rather bad raw material to end product ratio.

              Want a lecture of just HOW vital coal was to not only the industries but the SOCIETIES of the time? Short form is the Germans controlled most of Europe’s production and didn’t have NEARLY enough for their needs as it was, plus they had to give some to the Swedes in return of the Kiiruna iron ore (the alternative was Sweden basically shutting down and no longer producing anything beyond grain and fish; during the war Germany was effectively their sole coal supplier). Eg. a clever idea to make use of the rather formidable French aluminium and aircraft industry to build more warbirds for the Luftwaffe fell through basically because the Germans crunched their numbers and realised they simply couldn’t supply the coal needed to power the furnaces and factories.
              Coal miners were just about the last “specialist laborer” group to be exempt from conscription, and when the manpower deficit at the front grew so desperate the draft had to be extended to them the authorities went to great pains (and brutality) in trying to make up for the difference with forced labor.
              Speer and co. actually came to treat the RAF’s and USAAF’s regular raids as more a nuisance to budget for than a real concern, although Dresden and Hamburg caused some alarm. But whenever the “bomber barons” for whatever reasons sent their streams to raid the Ruhr coalfields everyone in the armaments ministry got instant ulcers.
              And so on and so on.
              In short: coal was the fucking lifeblood of economy and society, only second to food in fundamental importance as a strategic resource.

              As for the Ploesti oilfields, get real. The Germans converted umpteen tons of desperately needed coal into synthetic oil at a lousy exchange rate (and had built up conversion capacity before the war for the purpose) specifically because the output of those didn’t cover shit.
              There was a REASON they were so damn desperate to reach the Caspian oilfields you know, if only to deny them to the Soviets.

            • Might be stating the obvious but just to play it safe, that enormous energy expended in the conversion process? (I understand great heat and pressure is involved – basically, simulating the geological conditions which turn coal into oil.)
              It was supplied mostly by burning coal, obviously.

              Kind of burning the candle at both ends you could say.

          • Aha, when I say something it’s [beep] – when you say something it’s “irrefutable evidence”. Go and read a book or two. Once again, IF Germans could concentrate all of their forces on Eastern front, Soviets would collapse simply because they would be unable to replace their losses fast enough. It’s called attrition and no army is immune to it. Why did Stalin request opening of “second” (third actually) front in November 1943. in Teheran? If everything was going smoothly why bother?

            • You have NO idea about Great Power geostrategies and the related politics do you? Hells yeah Stalin wanted the Democracies to get their hands dirty for real, too. Aside from the obvious enough emotional point – “about time you started helpin me with the heavy lifting” – in purely practical terms the more blood and treasure his current allies expended during the war the more his own empire saved, and the longer it would take them to recover to the point where they might seriously consider turning on him.

              Elementary, dear Watson.

              As far as East Front attrition goes, you *do* realise the Germans were the ones who suffered from it rather worse than the Soviets? And what troops they theoretically had available is secondary to how many they could actually field at the front at the end of absurdly long and thinly stretched supply lines – the Soviets’ were a fair bit shorter from reasons obvious from a map.

              Good luck leaving eg. France without major occupation forces present, by the by…

        • Okay, so who wants to tell him about the way the Soviets counted casualties and more to the point that his numbers don’t mean what he thinks they mean?

    • In ’41 when the Germans were on the approaches of Moscow (and their logistics finally collapsed under the strain) the only “Western Front” existed in the skies of Britain and under the waves of the Atlantic.
      There was a SOUTHERN one in Africa, mind, but the German commitment there amounted to a rounding error compared to Barbarossa…

      Could you at least TRY having your basic facts straight? This is getting embarassing…

  27. This is an intentionally provocative bait article to generate pageviews and comments. It is lame, stupid und puts a stain on the nice work Silentstalker has done here. I hope I don’t have to see more of this filth from this “writer”.

    Here is my +1 click and +1 post. Last ones though because I am going to stay away from further article this guy makes here.

        • *shrug* They’re witnesses as much as anyone, aren’t they? In this case presumably ones having a bit of a moral hangover I’d guess. Plus the words Verton put into his nameless German officer’s mouth are pretty much an exact description of the “Speer Myth” the man systematically built over his achievements in the last stages of the war – the Reich engendered some rather absurd-seeming fixations in many peoples’ heads.

          • Aha, when they suit you then it’s fine? Last time was a different story (effects of artillery on tanks article)…

            • When did I mention the Waffen-SS in that one?

              Here, they serve to illustrate how taking a bunch of methed-up fanatics and writing lots of fan-fiction about them does not make them an effective fighting force. Do you have a problem with that?

            • Plus half of them just signed up for the prestige, snazzy uniform and bragging rights anyway.

            • You know, the usual reasons people volunteer for prestigious élite outfits anywhere.

            • @EE
              Ferdinad – destroyed by 203mm artillery shell (according to Russian sources) – truth, truth and noting but truth

              Ferdinand – actually destoyed by its own crew to prevent capture (supported by officlal unit reports) – one big German lie.

              So, once again – when facts suit your point of view you have no problem with source. When the same source doesn’t support your view you ignore it. Just great.

            • I’m sure telling whether a Ferdi turned into a confetti was taken out by a direct hit from a large shell or scuttled by internal explosion is easiest thing ever. (Sure hoping you’re not trying to imply the thing could actually survive that kind of hit…)

            • ^^
              Just read your OWN article. And then read comments below. Another guy and me warned you of your “unintentional” mistake. And stop playing village idiot.

            • Your level of idiocy is astounding.

              Since you are so lazy that you can’t read your own article (or won’t since you know already what I am talking about):

              Karlheinz Munch: “The combat history of German heavy anti-tank unit 653 in WW2″ p123.
              (since there are two photos on same page) “The bottom vehicle was completely destroyed by its crew prior to it being abandoned” Pages 171-271 contain complete unit history (organization, deployment, combat record…)

              The book contains 81 (published) sources.

              When facts suit your point of view you have no problem with source. When the same source doesn’t support your view you ignore it.

            • Ah, so you are saying that the crew destroyed the vehicle, walked back to it, took a photo, signed “hey, we destroyed this”, and only then got out of the battlefield? That’s adorable.

              Not to mention that the favoured method of destroying your own tank was torching it. An ammo rack detonation doesn’t look like that, either.

  28. Nice article.

    P.S. I really can`t understand why all the butthurt?
    Also why the people from “Western democracies” refuse to hear any other side of a story, except the one their local media fed them with?

    • Apparently articles such as this one go against the almost religious belief of “Panzerphilism” . If you have ever argued with religious extremists you are bound to get the same basic responses as you are from wehraboos.

      • Objection! Whenever I’ve debated theology with Jehovah’s Witnesses who’ve rung my doorbell (or, once, a pair of lost-looking* Mormon missionaries during a subway trip) both parties behaved themselves far better, spoke more politely, and actually try to formulate halfway legitimate arguments rather than spewing generalised abuse!

        You owe the religious nuts an apolofy. ;p

        *must be freaking frustrating trying to preach a sect as kooky and empathically Murrican as Mormonism in this land of thoroughly secularised asocial Protestants…

        • I do apologize, comparing the religious to these wehraboos is too insulting. It is more like the creationist movement which is pretty large in the “Bible Belt” where I reside.

      • You guys are sick. All of you. You’re trying to ARGUE with them. Don’t you realize how pointless that is? For sanity’s sake… I hope you get paid or is some kind of fetish of yours.

  29. I’m always surprised by how many people believe the soviet government falsifies its own data when it comes to kill-loss ratio. They might do it in propaganda, but sure as hell wouldn’t do it when they had to arrange proper supply, weapon and troop distribution. Every nation in WW2 had imprecise statistics, most notably the airforces did, but ground units were also very guilty. The most guilty were generally the Germans though, not only because of propaganda, but also because of the fact that they were never left in control of the battlefield towards the wars end. As for those who think german numbers were so precise, I do believe the RAF was obliterated several times during the Battle for Britain, and yet somehow managed to make a couple hundred fighters overnight. This article clearly points out fallacies in German kill counting, and everyone instantly takes that to be Soviet propaganda, despite the fact that its merely a study of over-the-top kill claims by the Germans. Also, whichever idiot posted that the Soviets “lost” 96k armored vehicles is utterly wrong. The worst year and a half of the war for the soviets, 1941-42 saw the destruction of roughly 35k machines which was massive, but from then on the numbers consistently dropped. Also, if every one of those kills was true, the soviets would have lost almost every tank they produced in the war, which i find unlikely.

  30. Yes lets revise history.. ignoring the fact that millions of Soviet troops died in the war, at your ridiculous ratio, that would have the entire German nation in population killed by those Soviet troops.. which clearly did not happen, so stop with the BS.

    • “Millions of Soviets died in the war, therefore their kill ratio has to be low”. You have some excellent logic.

      The 1939 German census yielded 79 million people. Why do you think that a ratio of 1.17:1 would end up in the entire German nation being killed?

      • “at a cost of 150 SS troops, only 8 wounded Soviets were killed”

        Your own ridiculous statement about ratios. That kind of BS doesn’t fly well even according to Soviet documents. Its not a myth that over 20 million soviet men died. Unless they all stabbed and shot themselves, im pretty certain that most of that is inflicted by the Germans.

        • That alpart of article was an example of how Germans sometimes faked the killcount. And why didn’t you quote the whole part concerning this operation, hmm? Because you basically left out the part where it says that A) this is just single operation, not a ratio for whole eastern front B) The most important part: The Waffen SS claimed that during this
          skrimish, they lost only few soldiers and killed 300 – which is the obvious fake.

          Cherry picking from article that is just few seconds of scrolling above this comment is kinda stupid.

  31. EE spreading more bullshit as usual. Germans are lairs, but the Russians never used propaganda and lies. GTFO troll. And the fucking fact that you likened ALL German soldiers to war criminals like the SS is fucking disgusting. But the soviets weren’t war criminals because they didn’t lose the war (barely) and did the same shit to German soldiers and civilians?

    There’s a reason that everyone either just laughs at you on the official forums or writes you off as a joke poster. And its all the shit you said in the comments, let alone in your “informative article” lol.

    Keep riding that IS-D. Josef Stalin dick.

    • LMFAO ass-hurt wehraboo who knows nothing other than the crap the History Channel spoon-feeds him.

    • Redacting last statement, it was pointlessly hostile and nothing good with come of it.

      You completley missed the point of the article. EE was not arguing that the Soviets were some paragon of human honesty or integrity, but that the kill/loss ratios that the Germans provide aren’t worth shit.

      This is a problem because people actually BELIEVE the German figures, and they’re wrong. Possibly even more wrong than the Soviet figures that nobody believes.

      • I don’t miss the context here, war numbers are not to be believed from ANY SIDE. That is the nature of war, TRUTH IS THE 1st CASUALTY. But at the end of the day, each nation has a record of troop deaths, vehicles lost (through destruction or just broken down), and the totals speak for themselves. There’s no need for the BS revisionist going on in this blog, where an average joe tries to muddle the waters of history, we have professional historians for that. This blog is visited due to WoT info. Turning it into some lame propaganda BS is not a good idea.

        • Thing is the German accounting practices seem to have been a bit misleading, whether intentionally or not (and given their circumstances the former cannot be entirely ruled out). That’s a problem when ignorants parrot them at a face value.

          • And the Sowiet sources never lie come on face reality every nation have done that….
            Thats the problem with guys like you thinking that they are know the only one truth.

            The german count their losses quiet accurate thats sure. The kills? No one knows…
            The red army? the losses sure accurate but the kill count …..?
            You know how Stalin react on bad news….
            I think many numbers were pushed up in all the armies to can report something good
            in hard times.
            “We have lost but their blood toll was heavy!” Was better to say than “We were totally overrunned”

            • Stalin was rather intolerant of *failure*, which in part accounts for his commanders’ total indifference to casualties as long as the mission goals were achieved. Unlike Hitler however he actually learned to be pretty cool with most bad news and let the professional soldiers do their jobs in reasonable peace.

              Also the Soviets were well out of “hard times” after ’42 at the latest – while conversely the Germans were increasingly backed into corner and increasingly in denial about it, especially in the upper circles.

            • When you are fighting a war with an enemy that wants to wipe out your way of life, kill most of your people, and enslave the rest, you get the job done at any cost. It still beats the alternative.

            • Also why The Germans tended to develop a partisan problem in their rear areas in very short order, though part of that also came from the fact their famous encirclement actually leaked like fuck between the Panzer speaheads cutting them off and the mop-up infantry divisions arriving however many days later. And the Frontoviks who slipped off into the woods in the meantime weren’t so accommodating as to just throw away their guns and become peaceful hunter-gatherers.

    • “And the fucking fact that you likened ALL German soldiers to war criminals like the SS is fucking disgusting. But the soviets weren’t war criminals because they didn’t lose the war (barely) and did the same shit to German soldiers and civilians?”

      A) Irrelevant. Leave the strawmen alone.
      B) Matter of fact as nasty as they tended to act the Soviets *still* on the whole treated the Germans better than vice versa; notably they didn’t have a policy of systematically starving POWs to death and extirpating entire civilian populations due to bizarre racist fantasies.
      C) Did you know the SS Einsatzgruppen death squads were quite early into Barbarossa complaining to their superiors about regular soldiers coming to gawk at their execution sites like damn tourists? The “good honest German soldier” is largely a whitewash myth as far as the East Front is concerned; they were more or less *actively encouraged* to behave like total bastards in regards to the natives and had their heads pumped full of nasty racist BS – and given how soldiers tend to behave merely when not properly supervised…

      • The Einsatzgruppen were no saints either, there are reports from Wehrmacht commanders complaining that they would not share looted property of those that they executed! How rude.

        • The Einsatzgruppen were no regular troops they were formed out of SS (not Waffen-SS) and SD members (Sicherheitsdienst under Richard Heydenreich) .
          The Einsatzgruppen were formed to execute civilians behind the frontlines.
          Thats all well documented by the 3.Reich themself. Even the number of the executed civilians.
          That broke some necks at the Nünrberg process while ther subsciption was on the documents.

            • My point was that the “clean and honourable” Wehrmacht was content to sit there and let civilians be massacred, and their only complaint was that the executioners wouldn’t share.

            • By our incorrect german sources ;) it was their main reason at the begin of the war against poland. While the psychological presusser for the members were so high (many was drunk at the executions) an Himmler was puking at a visit there. He reported the a other solution was needed. Then they build the concentration camps for the final solution. But the keep operating behind the lines to shot political comissars (Komissarbefehl) Partisans (mostly innocent civllians as revenge).
              So its in my mind….

      • Sorry soviet troops done enough warcrimes too. Waffen-SS Members was shot after they get captured. From 3 Million German POWs dies 1 million in soviet camps by starving and disease.
        well documented by soviets every POW got his own File.
        But counting up crimes and they but they did more is quite stupid becaus a crime is a crime and
        isn´t ok while the other side did more. Thats the fact.

        And its quite stupid to count them up over 70 years after the war is over. That was a terrible time for all of the Nations were in. And it was good that the third reich lost the war.
        All german soldiers were warcriminals? sure not.

        And by the way I am german I am 38years old an not responsible for that time and my father was born after the war. Think about that

        • Allied soldiers weren’t always in the mood to take prisoners either especially if they’d just taken heavy losses storming a position – that’s an universal discipline problem. And I understand the Canadians and the SS “Hitlerjugend” division developed a really nasty blood feud in Normandy.

          Now considering the Waffen-SS in a real enough sense embodied the sharp end of an ideology that basically called for the murder of most Soviet citizens and endless slavery for the rest small wonder they tended to get short shrift when captured, doubly so as Soviet propaganda efforts weren’t shy of urging bloody vengeance (for real enough offenses, mind) as a motivational tool. The side effects infamously kind of ran out of control in Eastern Prussia to real alarm of the Soviet authorities, who duly about-faced in the official propaganda in a somewhat futile effort to reverse years of indoctrination and real grudges in the space of months.

          Oh, and the Soviets *still* didn’t have a systematic policy of starving POVs to death and wiping out entire ethnic groups so they still have the Germans beat in moral high gound, however much that contest now happens at the bottom of a mine shaft.

  32. Well damn, this is a great discussion. Thanks EE for the read, both article-wise and the shitstorm afterwards. :)

    Why do blogs such as FTR attract such obsessive, autistic WW2 nerds that get angry over tiny things? It’s just a written analysis of WW2, no need to get all upset about things.

    • Some people like to do edgy things as teenagers. Liking nazis is pretty edgy, in their opinion. Sadly, a lot of them never grow out of it.

      Can you guys smoke weed or jaywalk or something instead, and stop pissing over the sacrifice of millions of Allied soldiers?

      • lel, edgy faggot calling other people “edgy”, that’s hilarious
        “sacrifice of millions of Allied soldiers” hahaha oh wow, only a complete retard can take these levels of pathos seriously

        • And not EVEN complete retards take sorry little shits like you seriously.
          Sad, isn’t it?

  33. you should starting to look at the beginning of the battles not the kills. As someone stated above allied outnumbered german tanks in most battles and still lost – despite of any kill counts claimed. If claims are not true how do you explain all the battles german tanks won so many battles easily in the first years of war though they had much less tanks!? Its not only Blitzkrieg tactics…

    • Ah, so here we have the typical internet argument: zero evidence of any kind, incorrect assertions, and then *poof* a conclusion! How? Must be magic.

      Obtaining local superiority is the goal of every tactician. It doesn’t matter how many tanks you have on the front, it matters how many tanks you have in the village. If you have more tanks than the other guy, you will probably win.

    • Achieving local superiority in SOMETHING is the very basics of military strategy, what the Hell do you think the German concept of “Schwerpunkt” means? Hint: it’s got a lot to do with how they employed their tanks…

      Their problem they bit off far more than they could chew and got duly curbstomped in all directions.

  35. This a response to an earlier comment which I can’t find again…

    The point of his article is to show that germans suck and russians are awesome. That is the common theme in all of his articles like this. His bias taints the presentation. It’s difficult to assess the validity of his arguments when most of the time its in a foreign language or a partial translation. If you are trying to convince someone of something, the burden falls upon you to present the evidence where the other person can at least read it at a minimum so he can make his own evaluation (I can predict his answer to this already, “Not my fault you can’t read it”).

    It seems to me that all of his conclusions are already predetermined and he just looks for evidence that supports it. His lack of objectivity drives the narrative. That’s the problem.

    • As opposed to what, the only too common perception that the Nazis had the bestest army evar and the only way the Soviets won was by burying them under drunken human waves?

      Also, The Point.
      You completely missed it.

    • I translate the entirety (or at least the relevant parts) of archive documents. That is far above and beyond than what most history textbooks and essays do. If you think that I cherry-pick evidence to match my thesis, why don’t you go and find some that disagrees with it, instead of crying that I’m being mean to some nazis?

      • If don’t deny what you write is agenda driven, then don’t try to pass it off as a “historic essay”. I don’t have a problem with your facts, it’s your conclusions that are the joke. If there was someone else who was your pro-Nazi counterpart, I would laugh at him too…and yes, you cherry pick your info, like that quote from Verton. From what I read so far, he seems to an unrepentant Nazi who pines for the glory days. Credible is not first word that comes to mind when describing his character.

        Trust me, I won’t be reading anything else you have to write. No wonder you use the forums from an arcade tank game as your stage… it’s fitting.

        • Because that quote from Verton was *totally* “info” and a really major point of the article…

          It also nicely summarises what at least some people in the regime specifically *did*, I’d point out.

        • “No wonder you use the forums from an arcade tank game as your stage… it’s fitting.”

          BURNED!

        • Where do I use the words “historic essay”? My “agenda” is to bring out archive documents that most people don’t know or care about. I seem to be pretty successful at that.

          The point of the quote is an introduction to the article. I don’t actually care whether or not he’s telling the truth in anything he write. That isn’t the point.

          If you have a problem with my conclusions, present some evidence to refute it. If you don’t keep crying in the comments about how I’m very mean to those poor nazis.

          • I don’t have to refute anything when you just admitted you write with a bias. That makes any conclusion you come up with as untrustworthy because a lack of objectivity.

            I am done here. I have wasted enough time on this trash.

  36. Man the bias… just ‘sigh*

    I like how the writer never stated how much Soviet Union lied about battle results or statistics or Western allies. Fact is German statistics were more often than not more accurate than Soviets or allied. Often western allies did not even recognize German tanks right same with aircraft.

    How about article how bad tank T-34 was and how much more reliable Germans tanks were compared to Allied ones unlike myths that tell Germans being unreliable.

    • Tank reliability: Yeah, Germenz OP, bitch! Science/Achtungpanzer/History Chanel bitch!

      I’m not saying that Wehrmacht’s hardware was shit, many of German tanks are relly great. But the truth is that at least some of them were very prone to breaking down. This kind of problems mostly concerned engines and related things. Examples: Ferdinand, Tiger II, Jagdtiger but also some versions of other tanks. It was because as the time went, Germans plastered more and more armor at engines that simply didn’t have enough power to haul them around the place and thus they quickly collapsed because of the strain. Of course there is also the Porche’s system that was put into vehicles when it still wasn’t properly tested and it had shown all of it’s flaws as soon as the vehicles in which it was used were sent on the battlefield.

    • I so enjoy how these wehraboos love to use ” fact is..”, “known fact that…”, followed by complete unsupported b.s.

      It makes me smile, and I thank you for that.

    • I kind of wonder on what exactly he bases his confident declaration that “Fact is German statistics were more often than not more accurate than Soviets or allied”…? Also GJ not knowing the difference between internal Army reports and what the home front was told.
      As for “Often western allies did not even recognize German tanks right same with aircraft”, bitch please. The “Tiger panic” was a morale problem and mostly a product of the circumstances of the fighting – and as for the planes, in the late years German flak tended to shoot at their own as they’d came to automatically assume anything up there was hostile which ought to tell you a bit about how relevant those tended to be.

    • “how much more reliable Germans tanks were compared to Allied ones unlike myths that tell Germans being unreliable”

      Myth. Right.
      http://worldoftanks.com/en/news/21/chieftains-hatch-french-panthers/
      I presume you consider the world being round to be a “myth” too? Mind you the older stuff, Pz IIIs and IVs and vehicles based on them, and the Tiger *were* reliable although the last was a bitch to transport. Not sure about the Kingtiger, and the Panther was simply terrible.
      Which is kind of unfortunate as it was in principle supposed to replace the IV as the backbone of the Panzerwaffe… brilliant going there guys.

  37. The soldiers of each country see themself invincible, but the fact is they die the same ways

    • I’m seeing no discussion of German accounting practices at all (nevermind now how legt some of those claimed battle results actually were), and little that doesn’t boil down to an anecdote. A more systematic analysis would be kind of nice.

    • Read Tigers in Normandy. The “precise note of everything” the SS took was so precise, that the Wehrmacht cut their kill claims by half in their reports, and still managed to overestimate the truth.

      The SS was a bunch of methed-up political fanatics. They were never an effective fighting force.

      • Now now, be fair. The Waffen-SS was a huge organisation and contained everything from first-rate combat divisions to murderous thugs only fit for brutalising civilians like Dirgewangler’s mob. AFAIK their better units were as good as their Heer peers and fanaticism has its obvious uses in war, however little it might alter the ultimate outcome.

        Plus it *needed* to be at least halfway decent when you remember its original and fundamental purpose was to be the Party’s private-army insurance against the regular military getting unruly…

      • “The SS was a bunch of methed-up political fanatics. They were never an effective fighting force.”

        Here you just clearly deny the entire history of WW2, and how it needed the USA and Soviet combined to crush one nation.

        Your bias is too blatant, next time I will skip your lame articles.

        • Because the Waffen-SS was SO central to the German war effort.
          *eyeroll*
          I hope you realise nothing at all would have changed if the organisation hadn’t existed in the first place?

        • The Waffen-SS was a terrible sink of resources that accomplished next to nothing. The Wehrmacht was doing the heavy lifting when it came to actually fighting. Even the Luftwaffe was better at fighting on the ground than the SS.

          • Not actually as far-fetched a claim as one might think, as the redoubtable Fallschirmjäger were a Luftwaffe formation.
            Still having to agree to disagree more generally, though I’ll be the first to state the Waffen-SS added nothing NEW to the German military – whatever one considers their fighting qualities to be, they brought nothing to the table the Heer didn’t already supply in abundance. An as-such redundant organisation which existed mainly because, like most authoritarian regimes, the Nazis didn’t wholly trust the regular conscript army.

  40. For some reason I’m reminded of a book I recently read, Double Cross by Ben Macintyre, where he points out that almost the opposite thing was happening on the Western front — in the weeks leading up to D-Day German intelligence was routinely overestimating the number of troops massing in Britain, to the point where by June 6 the Germans had convinced themselves that only half of the allied army was actually landing in Normandy, and the other half was going to jump at Pas de Calais the minute German presence in the area decreased.

      • No, all the Allies did was try to convince Germany that their troops were massing in South-east and North-east Britain for attacks on Pas de Calais and Norway; the relevant German intelligence organization (FHW, aka Fremde Heere West) grossly inflated the number of troops on its own.

        • Ever heard of Operations Fortitude and Bodyguard, FUSAG, simulated radio traffic and the little detail the British intelligence had long ago turned all of the German spies in the country and gleefully fed their erstwhile masters whatever bullshit they liked through them?

          The Allies were *good* at information warfare.

      • Have you heard “extraordinary claims require extra ordinary evidence”?

        He begins his article quoting someone who provides “evidence” in support of his hypothesis? Not only is it hearsay, but person is of dubious character. I am supposed to overlook that? If this is how your apply critical thinking skills, you are a bigger idiot than what you already appear to be.

        • What makes you think the quote is supposed to be anything else than an amusing anecdote that happens to touch on something relevant to the topic? Good luck arguing how, exactly, eg. Speer didn’t do EXACTLY as described after all.

        • The quote is there because you can trust fascist cowards to throw their buddies under the bus when the time for retribution comes, and that’s exactly what he’s doing. Note how I don’t actually take anything he says as fact.

  44. There are three things to remember about German kill claims:

    1) The single most famous Tiger action – Wittman fighting solo at Villers-Bocage – traditionally has the SS claiming that Witmman killed 20 tanks on his own. In reality, post-war verification reveals that he only killed seven, not 20 – meaning that there was a threefold inflation of the figure.

    Don’t believe me? Check out “Tigers in Nomandy”. The author even got the pictures showing that only seven tanks were actually destroyed, not 20.

    2) Even if we assume that there is some grand conspiracy by the British to hide their incompetence, the reality of the kill claims is that the Wermacht itself tended to dismiss most Tiger kill claims out of hand – habitually reducing them by 50%.

    3) Finally, and most importantly, the ace of aces – Otto Carius – revealed in a 2012 interview that the kill tallies of the German tank aces were “pure rubbish” (his exact words) and invented by Nazi propaganda. His own total, often claimed to be 150+, is no more than 100 by his own count. Knispel, the other “ace of aces” candidate – vehemently denied his supposed 100+ total during the war, and believed he only really killed 60.

    In short, anyone who thinks that Tigers killed 10,000 Allied tanks is most like a member of the SS, high on meth, and under enormous pressure to write a new fanfic to get Hitler to sleep better at night. The actual total is much, much lower.

    • 1) They never claimed that. They claimed company !commanded! by Wittman did that. Personally, he is credited with 4 Cromwells, 2 Sherman artillery observation post tanks, 3 M5 Stuarts, 2 6pndr anti-tank guns, 4 Loyd carriers, 10 half-tracks and a scout car. In total, 9 medium and light tanks (hard targets) and 17 various soft targets (which could be destroyed by simple MG fire).

      2) British never tried to hide their incompetence, unlike some others *cough* *cough*. It’s contra productive. They parked their vehicles beside road, got out and drank tea in what they knew was contested area, without scouting ahead. But they learned from those mistakes, unlike some others *cough*.

      3) Both Carius and Knispel are/were extremely modest, down-to-earth men. They had to be, in time when life was at stake every day. Carius, for example, in his memoirs never overestimated his strength nor underestimated enemy strength. Why Russian news reporters bothered to visit him and ask him about that speaks volumes about Russian state of mind today. Regardless, they both gave credit to other tankers, their own gunners (as it should be) etc. They simply didn’t bother with how many tanks they destroyed but with how many there were yet to be destroyed. Knispel could not deny anything because he died in 1945. You are making it up, but nothing new there.

      4) Every army was dismissing kill claims by certain factor (or not *cough*). There is a difference between what soldiers perceive as kill and what commanders perceive as kill. Especially notorious were pilots, but you have to understand them: they were approximating and that is all you can do flying around at 400 km/h – you can’t stop and count every single one.

      5) The actual total is 1715 Tigers (1&2) lost for 9800+ enemy vehicles destroyed. As is expected from highly specialized, heavy tank fighting usually second class, medium tanks. Great tactical weapon, not so much strategic one. Very well documented in various works (“Tigers in combat I and II”) and unit histories (“German heavy tank battalion [501-510]“). Once again, it speaks volumes about Russian mentality that anybody is contesting that.

      • Schneider admits that Tigers in Combat uses unverified kill claims taken straight from the battalions’ combat diaries. To pretend that those claims are flawless is lunacy.

      • “2) British never tried to hide their incompetence, unlike some others *cough* *cough*. It’s contra productive. They parked their vehicles beside road, got out and drank tea in what they knew was contested area, without scouting ahead. But they learned from those mistakes, unlike some others *cough*.”

        Feel free to elaborate who, exactly, you’re referring to – because from what I know of it the British were as a matter of fact the *single slowest learners* on the organisational level. It tended to take them YEARS to figure out fairly simple lessons most other armies digested in a matter of months.

        Though all things considered the Desert Rats’ showing at Villiers-Bocage was absurd even by British standards (which by that time were on the whole decent). The only rational explanation I’ve seen proposed is that they were simply still mentally stuck in the desert and hadn’t yet adapted to the much more obstructive terrain of Western Europe…

        • Whoever thinks that the 9800+ kill claims from the War Diaries is the “minimum” is on crack. Even the Wermacht did not accept these figures during the war and dismissed them out of hand, dividng the figure by half when they did their actual intelligence estimates.

          Moreover, in many cases it was physically impossible for the Tigers to have achieved the kills they claim, such as the insane claim that the lone Tiger battalion in North Africa destroyed 150 Allied tanks

          You cannot kill 150 tanks when your war diary ALSO shows you never actually fought any major battles during the time you supposedly killed those 150 tanks.

          • Yeah, yeah, Soviets didn’t lost that many men, Tigers didn’t inflict ~10% of your total AFV casualties, Tiger 2 front armor was penetrated in combat etc. Yadadada. There is always some itch you’d like to scratch. Invent time machine and do so.

            • Losts of yadada, very little actual facts.

              By the way, did you miss the pictures of Tiger IIs that were penetrated in front? (ignoring how utterly meaningless that statistic is)

        • I’d say that Wittman’s success at Villers Bocage owes more to luck and daring than anything else – really, who expects a lone tank to attack an entire enemy regiment solo?

          Interestingly, people keep forgetting that the rest of Wittman’s battalion engage the Desert Rats at Villers Bocage later that day, and lost 30 Tigers in exchange for a dozen British tanks.

            • I am not lying. Nicklas Zetterling has shown the actual losses of 101st SS Heavy Tank Battalion, and it reveals they lost 9 Tigers permanently and 21 others disabled due to damage.

              Hence, 30 Tigers lost at Villers-Bocage. The 101st battalion was in fact ANNIHILATED. It was not in action for the rest of June as it rebuilt its strength.

  45. Also, regarding the idiots still claiming that the Soviets lost 25 million soldiers vs 5 million German soldiers…

    The total male military population of the Soviet Union was only 2x more than the Germans. A 5:1 loss rate was simply unsustainable for the Soviet Army.

    That is why the actual loss rate was 15 million Soviet permanent military losses (25-40 million overall including civilians) versus 10 million German permanent losses plus 1 million Axis allied troops. Meaning the ratio of losses among military age men was 1.5 x 1, or well within the 2:1 advantage of the Soviet Union.

    Again, you need to stat-pad by counting massacred civilians to get to the 5:1 ratio. And while the loss of so many lives is regretable (and demonstrates the heinous character of the Nazi regime), gunning down the 60 year old grandparents who got left behind in some Soviet village did not hurt the Soviet war effort. What mattered was the 20+ million men of military age.

    • So, colonel general G. F. Krivoshev (the deputy chief of the USSR Armed Forces General Staff) who wrote that in his work (“Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century”) is also an idiot? Hm?

      • Krivosheev counts deaths in POW camps as combat losses. If you want to point at those numbers for German superiority, you are just celebrating how good they were at killing unarmed prisoners.

          • I don’t see how the Geneva convention is relevant to this conversation.

            German human losses, once again, are counted differently than Soviet losses. For one, there is no “died from wounds” field in the combat losses. A soldier that has died from wounds after the battle counts as a non-combat loss. The Soviets count said soldier as a combat loss.

            That is why Glantz’s numbers actually make sense: he’s comparing apples to apples.

            • Aha, it was LEGAL to kill German POWs. And you were saying something about celebrating muders? Great. Well, at least you are not afraid of showing your true face.

              No, they are not. Like I said before, casualties include killed, wounded and missing in action. Soldier wounded in action, and then dies = nothing changes. He is still counted as casualty. Germans have it toughest, since after capitulation, EVERY SINGLE soldier, even those that are still fit, IS COUNTED AS CASUALTY. Just like EVERY SINGLE AFV is counted as DESTROYED, even if it was not phyisically destroyed. Got it now?

            • The Germans did not even consider the Soviets people. Soviet POWs were by the thousands, and this behaviour was encouraged. The opposite was not. Quit pretending like life is unfairly stacked against your precious Teutonic Warriors ™.

            • The USSR was not a signatory of Geneva, yet still treated German POWs and civilians less murderously than vice versa.

              Chew on that for a moment.

      • If those loss rates were real, then Germany should have won the war because again the military manpower of the Soviet Union was only twice as large as Germany’s. Quite clearly, he’s not actually counting just military losses then.

        That doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. I’m saying YOU’RE an idiot because you can’t tell the difference – Not to mention you’re quite clearly a bigoted Nazi-lover because your entire modus operandi seems to be trying to play the moral equivalence game; when there is none to be had and the Nazi regime quite simply deserves to be reviled as nothing more than a hooligan regime to whom even the excesses of the Soviet Unionseem amateurish in comparison.

        • Yadadada, I’ve heard that story before. I am “Nazi lover” because I want to view things objectively. And in my quest I found out that you commies think that everything is justified if you win a war.

          1) It means YOU ARE AN TOTAL IDIOT BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T READ HIS BOOK AND YOU ARE STILL COMMENTING ABOUT IT.

          2) Soviets outnumbered Germans in ACTIVE manpower (that is, serving in army) almost 4:1 (actually 3.6:1). In PASSIVE manpower (that is, those who could be drafted) they simply dwarfed Germans (10+ : 1). By the end of war, Germans were drafting even old men since they SIMPLY LACKED manpower. Soviets didn’t have such problems, even with such horrible losses.

          3) If those loss rates were real, it would take 4 YEARS for Soviets to defeat Germans. Oh, wait…

          4) Blame your comrades Stalin and Zhukov. Instead of celebrating men and women who died fighting for their country and who deserve every single praise, you celebrate two butchers (among others).

          5) And I am sick of your crap in every discussion. “Moral equivalence game”? One man’s death is worthless, while other ones is not? You sure do love life. Excesses of Soviet Union simply can’t be compared to those of Nazi Germany because they were far greater and long, long lasting. But if you are going to condemn crime then condemn it in all its forms. Otherwise, it called *hate*.

          Getting bored on NA server?

          • “2) Soviets outnumbered Germans in ACTIVE manpower (that is, serving in army) almost 4:1 (actually 3.6:1). In PASSIVE manpower (that is, those who could be drafted) they simply dwarfed Germans (10+ : 1). By the end of war, Germans were drafting even old men since they SIMPLY LACKED manpower. Soviets didn’t have such problems, even with such horrible losses.”

            How about you don’t try to pass such BS off as fact when both countries’ ’39 census numbers can be found already on Wikipedia? The USSR had only about twice Germany’s population base (~170 mil to ~70) which already kind of invalidates your claim by what I can see…

            On another note, IIRC over the course of the war Red Army infantry divisions’ TO&E gradually went from some four component battalions to *two* due to manpower shortages. Their manpower reserves weren’t bottomless either, merely sufficiently deeper than the Germans’ that they could take the attrition on the chin and keep going.

            “3) If those loss rates were real, it would take 4 YEARS for Soviets to defeat Germans. Oh, wait…”
            Your logic is idiotic (or rather not there in the first place; the above is pure BS rhetoric). To wit, the casualty rates between the US and Japan were stupidly one-sided – FAR more so than between Germany and the USSR – and it still took over three years to batter the latter into submission…

          • “5) And I am sick of your crap in every discussion. “Moral equivalence game”? One man’s death is worthless, while other ones is not? You sure do love life. Excesses of Soviet Union simply can’t be compared to those of Nazi Germany because they were far greater and long, long lasting. But if you are going to condemn crime then condemn it in all its forms. Otherwise, it called *hate*.”

            Another logic failure. There was a fundamental difference between the crimes of the two, and that was the Nazis’ hideous racist dogmas. Stalin HAD his way and Germans, Jews, Poles and whoever still exist; had Hitler had HIS this would not be any more the case for several major ethnic groups.

            I’ll take callous first-degree murder over ax-crazy genocide any day thanks, it leaves way more survivors.

          • Idiot says: I’ve heard that story before. I am “Nazi lover” because I want to view things objectively.

            Zine says: Moral equivalency is not objective. It is being a Nazi lover.

            Idiot says: 1) It means YOU ARE AN TOTAL IDIOT BECAUSE YOU HAVEN’T READ HIS BOOK AND YOU ARE STILL COMMENTING ABOUT IT.

            Zine’s Reply: I don’t need to read a book to know that its contents are wrong; especially when it claims 25 million Soviet military deaths which is statistically unsustainable.

            Idiot says: 2) Soviets outnumbered Germans in ACTIVE manpower (that is, serving in army) almost 4:1 (actually 3.6:1). In PASSIVE manpower (that is, those who could be drafted) they simply dwarfed Germans (10+ : 1). By the end of war, Germans were drafting even old men since they SIMPLY LACKED manpower. Soviets didn’t have such problems, even with such horrible losses.

            Zine’s Reply: What kind of moron believes that the Soviet Union had 4x the manpower of the Germans, when their total population was only 2x that?

            Idiot says: 3) If those loss rates were real, it would take 4 YEARS for Soviets to defeat Germans. Oh, wait…

            Zine replies: Actually, the loss rates were incurred over the course of 4 years on both sides. The Germans for instance had already suffered 1 million casualties in the first year. So again, those loss rates, while impressive for the small-minded Nazi-lover, are meaningless.

            The real loss rate is 1.5×1. The German army did well, but it was not exceptional and in no way represents German martial prowess as being inherently superior to the Soviets. This is just Nazi Aryan superority bullshit being bought lock stock and barrel by morons like you.

            Idiot says: 4) Blame your comrades Stalin and Zhukov. Instead of celebrating men and women who died fighting for their country and who deserve every single praise, you celebrate two butchers (among others).

            Zine replies: Moral equivalency, which is laughable given that I never said Stalin was a particularly good world leader.

            Nazi-lover says: 5) And I am sick of your crap in every discussion. “Moral equivalence game”? One man’s death is worthless, while other ones is not? You sure do love life. Excesses of Soviet Union simply can’t be compared to those of Nazi Germany because they were far greater and long, long lasting. But if you are going to condemn crime then condemn it in all its forms. Otherwise, it called *hate*.

            Zine replies: No, Nazi-lover, no amount of semantic gibberish changes the fact you are playing moral equivalency games all to absolve the crimes of the worst criminal regime that ever walked the face of the Earth, all because you can’t accept the fact that you decided to throw your admiration for a bunch of mass-murdering war criminals.

            That’s why you react with such childish babblings. You’re a certifiable fanboy of mass-murderers, got called out for it in the most objective manner possible, and are now too busy trying to hide your own Nazi-wank to engage in any meaningful self-evaluation.

            • Also, for those interested in actual history, here’s an nice tidbit:

              The US combat deaths in the Pacific amounted to 100,000 men.

              Japanese losses in the Pacific War? 2 million.

              20:1 kill rate; but only if you follow stupid accounting practices like our Nazi-lover here.

  46. RE: The SS

    The SS were utter crap.

    The problem with the SS is that people keep thinking there are only three SS Divisions – Life Guard Adolf Hitler, Das Reich, and Totenkopf – and they think these three Divisions did great.

    In reality, there were actually over thirty SS Divisions. Some were so awful than they mutinied and shot their own officers.

    A more precise breakdown would reveal that they had 3-5 “good” Divisions (but not consistently good), 10 or so average ones (e.g. they did not embarass themselves), and the rest were Volksgreandier quality or worse.

    And of the good Divisions most only performed well in specific time periods, and not as well as people suppose. The 1st SS Panzer Corps (the three Divisions I named) did well at Third Kharkov and Kursk, but both battles were marred by poor decision-making by SS commanders resulting in heavy losses that the Germans could no longer afford.

    By 1944, the 1st SS Panzer Corps was basically gutted, with its Divisions performing abysmally in Normandy. It was not, for instance, the SS Panzers that were stopping the British from taking Caen – it was instead a massive Luftwaffe anti-tank battery supported by Heer Panzers.

    It was so bad that at one point, a single battalion of US National Guard (30th Infantry) essentially fought the entire Das Reich Division and crushed it. Yes, one battalion of weekend warriors crushed Germany’s supposedly second-best Panzer Division (by my own ranking, it would barely make the top 10 Panzer Divisions, and definitely not make the top 10 German Divisions). To quote Keegan: “So much for the dreaded reputation of the stormtroopers of Das Reich”.

      • Really, feel free to try and debunk the fact that the SS were a complete waste of time, were war criminals as opposed to soldiers (and pretty bad ones) for the most part, and were reviled by every branch of the German army that did the actual fighting.

  47. Kill count inflation happened on all sides and have been debunked numerous times before.

    • Aye, I think it’s people who are clinging to their preconceived notions about nations, not realizing (or perhaps only subconsciously) that the Nazi’s and Soviets were TOTALITARIAN governments that skewed EVERYTHING to their favor.

    • I think it’s people who are clinging to their preconceived notions about nations, not realizing (or perhaps only subconsciously) that the Nazi’s and Soviets were TOTALITARIAN governments that skewed EVERYTHING to their favor.

  49. Oh my, there are so many comments! If you want to bitch and moan about your nazi heroes being defiled, please do so underneath this post, or I will not be able to read it.

    Thanks in advance <3

  50. Who’s embarassed? I am merely stating facts, which our favorite Anonymous retard tries to shout down by nonsensical arguments, spurious logic, and blatant inability to do simple division.

    Again, I find it very funny that Mr Anonymous Nazi-lover here keeps up his game of double-speak and denial that no one finds impressive except for the terminally retarded.

    • Do you fully understand what your mantra is implying?

      By your “reasoning”:
      Jentz&Doyle are “Nazi-lovers” because they write about “fascist” tanks (and not only that, they also give a praise to those tanks where praise is due),
      Zaloga is “Nazi-lover” because he is “glorifying” “fascist” tank effectiveness (because he is writing about Soviet AFV losses)
      Krivosheev&Erlikman are “Nazi-lovers” because they write about how many deaths “fascists” caused (by counting Soviet losses)

      So, next time you want to repeat that boring mantra of yours, just don’t bother with me. I am small fish. I just read what those men wrote. Send them a e-mail/postcard/letter/give them a phone call and tell them they are “Nazi-lovers”, that they “deny” and “double-talk”. You never know, they just might stop doing their job because of your “reasoning” and give you peace at last – no black&red but just red.

      Term “retarded” implies term “terminally” (as in unrecoverable). If you wanted to look “smart” you should have simply keep your mouth shut.

      • I really enjoy how Anonymous tots big names like Zaloga, while completely failing to understand what Zaloga actually wrote in his books.

        For instance: Zaloga’s accounting of Soviet tank losses in Red Army handbook does not, in any way, support the idea that the Germans had particularly awesome tanks. Why? Because the vast majority of Soviet losses – as noted in the book – were incurred in 1941-42, when the Germans had the advantage of surprise and were fighting unprepared Soviet units.

        totting out big names while not understanding what they’re actually trying to say is the very definition of terminal retardation.

        • Copy/paste from “Red Army Handbook” by Zaloga
          1941: 20 500
          1942: 15 000
          1943: 22 400
          1944: 16 900
          1945: 8 700

          He doesn’t include TD/SPG (“assault guns”) losses in those numbers, which is weird since Red Army classified those “assault guns” as “turretless tanks”. And they ARE included in German AFV losses.

          If we include them, losses are as follows:
          1941: 20 500
          1942: 15 100
          1943: 23 500
          1944: 23 700
          1945: 13 700

          You commies were STILL surprised and unprepared in 1943. and 1944.? Oh, my….

          • Oh, look, the Anonymous idiot still thinks I’m a commie. How cute.

            First of all, again, Soviet tank losses are counted differently from the Germans. Germans counted only unrecoverable losses. Soviets counted any tank that had to go back to the factory as a loss. The same Soviet tank could be counted 2-3 times in terms of losses. Why do you think they ended the war with still tens of thousands of tanks in their inventory?

            Secondly, you completely ignore that German losses actually DOUBLED starting 1943. German losses averaged 2,500 in 1941-42. They were up to 6000 annually by 1943, going up to 7,000 by 1945 even though there was only half a year worth of fighting left.

            In short, the German kill ratio kept dropping. Disastrously, most especially by 1943. What used to be a 7:1 kill ratio (thanks to Germans attacking unprepared Soviet Divisions) was down to barely above 1:1 by 1945, despite the Russians being on the constant offensive.

            And yes, the effect of the sneak attack actually extended all the way to 1943. The loss of several million men – including enormous numbers of trained officers – could not be made good easily. This exacerbated training issues with the Red Army, who could not really field well-trained regiments until 1943, and not consistently until 44/45.

            Finally, and this really cements your reputation as a TERMINAL RETARD, you fail to realize that the vast majority of Soviet armor was not destroyed by German tanks. The tens of thousands of tanks lost early in the war were lost due to supply deprivation thanks to the German sneak attack. The losses of 43-44 were caused mainly by anti-tank guns of the German infantry Divisions, not the mythical Panzers of the idiot SS.

            So again, please keep revealing yourself to be a moron who is very good at bringing up big names and figures, but completely failing to understand them.

            Winning 7:1 on a sneak attack is the measure of morons and cowards. It’s the equivalent of saying Japan is so awesome for sinking 10 ships while losing only 20 aircraft at Pearl Harbor. This is why it’s the most meaningless kill ratio _ever_.

            • Also, fun fact:

              1943, the year when German lost rates nearly tripled – was the first year the supposedly oh-so-awesome Panther was deployed in.

              So much for the mythical Panzerwaffen being so much better because of their “superior” Panthers and Tigers. What we really have here are SS wannabes who can’t accept reality: The SS were hooligans who stat-padded. No surprise that WoT stat-padders are among their most stalwart fans.

  51. It’s quite funny how Anonymous tries to keep laughing in the vain hope that people would stop noticing that the only one worthy of ridicule, mockery, and laughter is himself.

    And all because he knows damn well that he’s a terminally retarded pathological liar who tried to hide the fact that German loss rates nearly tripled in 1943.

  52. Pingback: Common Myths About WWII | For The Record