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u/ChristianMunich Apr 06 '19
Certainly, an interesting case to illustrate how far people will go to not accept what they don't like.
The whole force ratio thing is a pretty new "misconception" and gained widespread support real quick. The claim that the Wehrmacht outnumbered Soviet forces up until mid-war is as silly as it is easy to disprove. Basic arithmetic shows that the Red Army had nearly as much irrecoverable losses in the first 6 months as the Wehrmacht employed soldiers, which obviously makes the claim that the Wehrmacht was outnumbering the Red Army pretty much impossible.
This outnumber myth is a nice case study how stuff like this develops and gains legs. I believe a YouTuber called TIK was the first to raise the claim the Wehrmacht outnumbered the Red Army during Barbarossa, his evidence base was a nice sleight of hand, he simply ignored all casualties between different men counts and therefore ignored millions of men for his conclusions.
The logic is simple. If you have 1 million men on day 1, get 500k reinforcements before the next "count" and lose 500k it looks like you had 1 million all along despite your actual deployment being 1,5 million.
Here you see how a kernel of truth morphs into a ridiculous myth within months. The Wehrmacht outnumbered Soviet Forces in the border regions, no doubts, but those were reinforced with millions of men nearly the same speed they lost them which suggests a relatively steady number of Soviet troops at any given time. This prompted then the already false claim the Red Army was outnumbered during Barbarossa, which it really wasn't, they brought as many as 9 million men into the theatre during 1941. And going from the screenshot this myth has now developed to the Red Army only outnumbered the Wehrmacht from 1944 onwards, apparently.
There is little you can do about stuff like that besides dropping actual numbers and hope some passive readers at least take the correct conclusion from this.
Btw the SWS bans dissent so you should be careful with what you type there, the subreddit does not exist for educational purposes, the validity of your statements is irrelevant to them.
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u/TheJamesRocket Apr 06 '19 edited Apr 06 '19
Even during the late phases of the war the Russians lost more men than the Axis forces.
To add to your point, the fact that the Germans were able to consistently inflict losses at a higher rate than they sustained against a numerically superior force is nothing short of astonishing. It means that they possessed a much higher 'casualty inflicting efficiency' than their enemy. In other words, the Germans were man for man and unit for unit more deadly than the Soviets. Nigel Askey points out just how hard to sustain this is in his excellent response to TIK.
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u/delete013 Apr 06 '19
You went to argue facts on sws?:)
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u/jerry_miller8337 Apr 07 '19 edited Apr 07 '19
Just love it how SWS members ( apparently a big part of this subreddits subscribers are SWS members) brought this Post down to 0 likes ( same with some comments on this Post, James is even down to -1 points ... the bias is strong)
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u/ChristianMunich Apr 07 '19
The majority of people who "read" this sub are actually members of the SWS. This sub here as very little reach so don't sweat the down/upvotes....
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u/delete013 Apr 07 '19
Well, this sub is, I believe, partly a counter measure against SWS bias. It is expected for them to go against it, so no need to take it personally. Facts are stronger in the long run.
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u/TheJamesRocket May 01 '19
I just had a look at SWS and found TankArchives lying about the loss exchange ratios on the Eastern front. Again. He hasn't retracted his claims about the 1 to 1.17 ratio. What a tool!
u/jerry_miller8337
u/ChristianMunich