Calculating the cost to the western allies or Soviets to beat the Nazis on their own

raharris1973

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1st method - comparing exchange ratios and attrition.
The base assumption here is that to defeat the European Axis, its enemies had to inflict at the least the same combat deaths on Axis forces as the Axis sustained in OTL, as part of rendering Axis forces completely incapable of resistance through conventional combat (this exercise excludes the atomic weapons factor).
I used casualty figures from Wikipedia to establish the German (actually the entire European Axis) KIA exchange ratios with the Soviets on the one hand and the western Allies, respectively, to estimate the likely sacrifices required by the Soviets to defeat the Germans without the western Allies, and of the Western Allies to defeat the Germans without the Soviets –
WWII Military casualties (from Wikipedia, illustrated in text and chart)
Eastern Front (European Theater) OTL –
Axis – 5.2 million
Soviets & clients – 10.65 million
Exchange ratio – 2.05 Russians per Axis

Western Front (European Theater) OTL –
Axis - .8 million
Western Allies (& Yugoslavia) – 1.5 million
Exchange ratio- 1.9 western Allies per Axis
The figures aggregate the Yugoslavs (probably conventional forces and partisans) with the western Allies, and I suspect that the Yugoslavs had a much worse exchange ratio with the Germans than the British Commonwealth and American forces had, distorting the exchange ratio to make it appear worse for the western Allies. So, I’ve added two different alternatives for the Western Front trying to exclude the Yugoslav factor
Yugoslav casualties were .45 million, suppose they were responsible for .05 m (50,000 Germans)
…Exchange ratio 1.4 western Allies per Axis
Suppose Yugoslavs accounted for 100 k, or .1 million
Then exchange ratio (exclusive of Yugoslavs) would be 1.5 western Allies per Axis

If the Soviets had to fight the Germans to the finish without the Western Allies, we might reasonably assume that to bring about German defeat, the Soviets would have had to face and kill the number of Axis military forces that the western Allies faced and killed.
So, that would have been another .8 million (800,000) Axis troops the Soviets would have had to kill.
At the prevailing Axis: Soviet exchange ratio, 1 : 2.05, this would have caused 1.64 million additional Soviet military deaths. And by the measures already used it would have led to a wartime total 12.29 million Soviet deaths, a figure 15% higher than OTL. Did the Soviets have the manpower reserves and political capacity to recruit, train and expend another 1.64 million soldiers?
This seems within the realm of the achievable, although accounts often mention the Soviets hitting the bottom of their barrel of manpower reserves by 1944.

Playing this in reverse, if the western Allies had to fight the Germans to the finish without the Soviets, we might reasonably assume that to bring about German defeat, the western Allies would have had to face and kill the number of Axis military forces that the Soviets faced and killed.
So, that would have been another 5.2 million Axis troops the western allies would have had to kill.
At the prevailing Axis: Western allied exchange ratio, figured at 1 : 1.4 (the best-case), this would have caused 7.28 million additional western Allied military deaths. And by the measures already used it would have led to a wartime total 8.33 million western Allied deaths, 793% higher than OTL. Did the Soviets have the manpower reserves and political to recruit, train and expend another 1.64 million soldiers? Using the 1:15 exchange ratio the western Allied situation worsens to 7.8 million additional deaths , and using the 1.9 ratio it worsens much more to 9.88 million additional deaths.
This seems within the realm of physically achievable given the populations of the US, Commonwealth, Empire and (plus a probably available Latin American manpower pool that they could access more easily than the Axis or Soviets). However, it would still be hard, given that unlike most Soviet manpower, the North American center of gravity of these manpower reserves is across the ocean, and manpower needs to be allocated to production and maintenance of equipment for long-distance heavy transport as well as for firepower and mobility in range of the battlefield.
Sustaining combat effective forces to make up for Soviet non-participation would have been a staggering effort physically. Politically, it is hard to imagine it succeeding, and even if it did, the consequences to the western Allied societies would have been immense and would have dwarfed the consequences of WWI.
The western Allies have the further problem of having to attack over the sea, enabling only small initial fronts that would need to be widened, against Axis forces capable of reinforcing defenses in depth and counter-attacking to far greater degrees than in OTL.


The 2nd method calculates the cost by the number of KIA the Soviets sustained per mile of advance toward Germany and thenumber of the KIA the western Allies sustained.
This method makes things appear relatively better for the western Allies, compared to the previous method, although still horrific compared to OTL. And it makes the task confronting the Soviets much, much harder, to the point of daunting.
First the Soviet situation -
1,350 miles from Stalingrad to the Elbe –
Soviets lost 10.65 million fighting men to advance this distance
At this rate, .007890 million (or, about 7,890) were lost for each mile of advance
Assuming no western Allied attacks in Europe, the Soviets would have had to cover an additional 700 miles to reach the Atlantic coast of France at Brittany, or 795 miles to reach the French-Spanish border.
Based on the Soviets historic cost in military deaths per mile, this would have resulted in an additional 5,523,000 military deaths to reach Brittany (or, by analogy, 6,272,550 to reach the Pyrenees) –
..so half again as many losses on the Soviet side as OTL, pretty doubtful.
Now, for the western Allies
558 miles from Normandy to the Elbe -
Western Allies lost 1.05 million fighting men to advance this distance
At this rate, .001882 million (or about 1,882) were lost for each mile of advance
Assuming no Soviet participation in the war as an attacker or defender, the Allies would have had to cover an additional 467 miles to reach the eastern boundary of German occupied Poland. Based on the western Allies historic cost in military deaths per mile, 878,894 more western Allied service people would have been killed getting there.
 
It would depend on the rest of the context. I think the most likely is simply a Nazi leadership deciding on one front at time. This means that as well as not fighting stalin they likely retain an economic relationship.
 
You should take not oly KIA but also POWs into account. I suppose relatively small Axis KIA numbers on the western front are such because large numbers of Axis soldiers chose to surrender, while those facing Soviets often fought to the death.

As for the second method, all the Allies or Soviets need is to conquer Germany,not the entire territory they hold. You can't expect Germans to stay in Paris when Soviet armies are on the Rhine. They would have withdrawn their forces already to defend Fatherland.
 
It would depend on the rest of the context. I think the most likely is simply a Nazi leadership deciding on one front at time. This means that as well as not fighting stalin they likely retain an economic relationship.


you cannot do it this easy way...

if germany fights ONLY against one enemy, the losses of this enemy will be higher/lower, cause of different situations

look at the west - in 1940, the things had been cleared... so from 1941 to 1944 it was a "small" groundwar....
without the russians been so terrible, german army ´had no real enemy... so more soldiers could go to work and produce more products... also, germany needs more subs and airplanes, less guns and tanks...

in the east it is different, too...

without the allies in the west, the germans can concentrate in tanks and guns, not planes and anti-air-guns and subs...

so, germany produce around 4000-10000 tanks more each year (average numbers), instead of so many heavy antiairguns, they can produce much more antitank guns and heavy artillery (heavy = 150mm)

also, no air war means, the germans control the sky, have zero damage by air war...

if you try to put this in the numbers, the germans should loose less troops ini the east and west... because they have more numbers, more and better weapons and they can train their troops without interferences... here we ignore the facts, that stalin would send supply if germany fight only in the west...

or short: the numbers are wrong - any time
 
If Germany faces the USSR alone, Soviet policies pre-war aren't exactly going to be a direct copy of OTL.

Regardless of the state of the RKKA in this timeline, without taking down France, Hitler can't concentrate anywhere near the forces required to take on the USSR. There was also a great amount of motor transportation taken from France which won't be in German service without France falling.
 
This kind of calculations makes little sense. E.g. how likely would it be for Soviets to stick to their encirclement prone forward deployment in Poland if the Germans aren't in war with Britain? Or the ridiculous 'don't provoke them' orders for that matter. These alone would save hundreds of thousands of men from being bagged as POWs during summer '41 (assuming that's still going on) and thus screw any calculations based on OTL results.
 
The Western Allies are simply not going to accept 8 million casualties.

They are also simply not going to accept defeat.

There's a solution somewhere that I think may involve the atomic bomb and weaponized anthrax that should end the war nicely...

And as for the Soviets, if the Western Allies aren't involved at all, I'm assuming that includes Lend Lease. Remember, the casualties taken by the Soviets historically were taken in the context of everything provided by Lend Lease. Without it, and the avgas, railroad equipment, food, uniforms, radios, trucks, etc. that came along with it, doesn't it stand to reason that Soviet casualties would be even higher, and their ability to wage a mobile war much lower? I can't see how the Soviets can win at all on their own.
 
Once the Soviets or the Allies reached the positions they were in at the end of the war, there wouldn't be much industry, manpower or money left for the Germans to sustain a successful war effort. They would collapse pretty soon afterwards.
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
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Some ideas on metrics and variables in response to some early posters

Rudi Maxer said:

You should take not oly KIA but also POWs into account. I suppose relatively small Axis KIA numbers on the western front are such because large numbers of Axis soldiers chose to surrender, while those facing Soviets often fought to the death.

----there were huge bags of prisoners taken by the Soviets. The overall difference in ratios between POWs versus killed from front to front was not that great, and it only widened in the last few months of the war.-----

As for the second method, all the Allies or Soviets need is to conquer Germany,not the entire territory they hold. You can't expect Germans to stay in Paris when Soviet armies are on the Rhine. They would have withdrawn their forces already to defend Fatherland.

---The relative values could still hold, you could expect each side to face additional “friction” compared to OTL as they approached Germany, ie, the allies coming from either side would lose more people per mile, because of the effects of the Germans thinning out their occupation force in France to deal with the Soviets or in Poland to deal with the western allies.

Of course in OTL to Germans did decide to hold some positions to block French ports until the end of the war to harass Allied logistics. In the east, even if the Germans would thin out forces in Poland and Czechoslovakia to deal with a Rhine crossing by the western allies, they still do have core German territories like Pomerania, Silesia and East Prussia that are about as far east as Poland is, and which the Western Allies would certainly have to fight to reach So I think that the the original calculating method gets you a rough order of magnitude high and low estimates.------

Informationfan said:

you cannot do it this easy way...

if germany fights ONLY against one enemy, the losses of this enemy will be higher/lower, cause of different situations

look at the west - in 1940, the things had been cleared... so from 1941 to 1944 it was a "small" groundwar....
without the russians been so terrible, german army ´had no real enemy... so more soldiers could go to work and produce more products... also, germany needs more subs and airplanes, less guns and tanks...

…Well, this would have quantifiable consequences, increasing western allied casualties would be distributed between the ground forces, air forces and shipping losses. Western aircrew losses would rise enormously, but, if the Allies anticipate a period of more than a year where bombing is their only way to get at Germany, they were will have larger air forces….


in the east it is different, too...

without the allies in the west, the germans can concentrate in tanks and guns, not planes and anti-air-guns and subs...

so, germany produce around 4000-10000 tanks more each year (average numbers), instead of so many heavy antiairguns, they can produce much more antitank guns and heavy artillery (heavy = 150mm)


…..While I’m not sure that manufacturing could be shifted that easily from one service to another, more artillery and tanks sounds right in an east-only war. Those would be causing the additional Soviet casualties, probably somewhere between the low estimate of 1.5 million or the high estimate of 6 million, that I discussed in the OP….

also, no air war means, the germans control the sky, have zero damage by air war...

if you try to put this in the numbers, the germans should loose less troops ini the east and west... because they have more numbers, more and better weapons and they can train their troops without interferences... here we ignore the facts, that stalin would send supply if germany fight only in the west...

or short: the numbers are wrong - any time

-----“the numbers” will never be spot on, but your arguments are dealing with quantities that change the equation,you said the Germans have more bumbers yourself, so you are not arguing that quantities are irrelevant.. Each of the things you mention, training opportunities, and supplies from Stalin has a consequence in terms of the endurance, capability and lethality of German forces. Basically, what all these things would result in, would be an improvement in the German allied exchange ratio. In the OP, I had a western allied(A): axis (G) loss ratio of 1.4:1, trade with Soviets and ability to concentrate on air defenses and a comparative lack of ground casualties would make A go up in compared to OTL. Likewise, in the eastern front scenario, where the Soviet (S): Axis (G) loss ratio was 2.05:1, ability to mobilize free from air attack and with trading opportunities overseas and to concentrate on tank and artillery production would make Soviet losses higher than 2.05…..

Urpa said:

This kind of calculations makes little sense.

…It is difficult to capture the dynamics, but some elements will be fairly constant, other factors have as much opportunity to even out over time as to diverge….

E.g. how likely would it be for Soviets to stick to their encirclement prone forward deployment in Poland if the Germans aren't in war with Britain? Or the ridiculous 'don't provoke them' orders for that matter.

..This is very good question. I would not rule out Stalin being just as foolish as in OTL. The belief that Germany shouldn’t, and wouldn’t attack the USSR while still at war with Britain was a big prop to Stalin’s denial, but he could have clung to other indicators or theories as well to end up following his OTL behavior. For example, seeing a lack of German purchases of lambskin coats, he concludes the Germans are not attacking, or he sticks to his belief that the Germans are merely probing to gain bloodless concessions before starting a frontal assault…

These alone would save hundreds of thousands of men from being bagged as POWs during summer '41 (assuming that's still going on) and thus screw any calculations based on OTL results.

…Personally, I think that a British-German separate peace in 1940 would change Hitler and Stalin’s calculations. Stalin would probably take more security precautions, or decide to preempt. However, Hitler would be equally likely to anticipate this, and really may not be able to stop himself from launching an autumn campaign into the Soviet Union in 1940. Either way, the outcome of the initial campaign would probably be less lopsidedly against the Soviets than OTLs. So, you would have to adjust Soviet capabilities upward to account for it never losing the production and manpower reserves of the Donbass region, which could make up for a good bit of what they are not getting by lend-lease. Against this, the Germans can more effectively organize European resources and trade links to support production and recruitment for the anti-Soviet crusade. The net effect is probably to keep the sides more even throughout several years of war, instead of OTL’s pattern of rapid initial German gains and Soviet losses and then a boomerang reversal or fortune….
 

raharris1973

Gone Fishin'
Donor
Monthly Donor
...some additional thoughts, on atomic rescue and stats in general...

Dave Floyd said:

The Western Allies are simply not going to accept 8 million casualties.

They are also simply not going to accept defeat.

There's a solution somewhere that I think may involve the atomic bomb and weaponized anthrax that should end the war nicely...

….this raises a crucial question for this speculation. Is it plausible for the western allied leaderships to base their “theory of victory” for the entire four years after June 1941 on the idea of massive biological warfare or the science-fictional sounding prospect of a “city-busting” atomic bomb? Even if the leaders believed it, how would they convince their own people they had a method to win? There are going to be some campaigns in the med and in the air at least, and will the gains of those peripheral pinpricks seem commensurate with the costs and sacrifices involved? Any measure to make a play for greater gains on the ground would raise the manpower costs enormously. In this environment, would the US and UK leaderships keep a commitment of resources to develop bombs and delivery systems on track by the summer of ’45? Lots of things could happen between the summer of 1941 and the summer of 1945, including successful but over costly campaigns on the periphery, failed invasion attempts, opening of Iberian, Italian, Scandinavian or Balkan with staggering for low gains, probable replacement of the Roosevelt and Churchill governments, etc. Now I would not rule out the weapons of mass destruction solutions, but if the nuclear solution succeeds, it will surprise everyone. Chemical warfare is hard to develop into more than just a supporting adjunct of conventional ops, and German capabilities match western capabilities, likewise ….

And as for the Soviets, if the Western Allies aren't involved at all, I'm assuming that includes Lend Lease. Remember, the casualties taken by the Soviets historically were taken in the context of everything provided by Lend Lease. Without it, and the avgas, railroad equipment, food, uniforms, radios, trucks, etc. that came along with it, doesn't it stand to reason that Soviet casualties would be even higher, and their ability to wage a mobile war much lower? I can't see how the Soviets can win at all on their own.

…My discussion with Urpa deals with some of these variables. I’ll be the first to admit that my formula is extremely rough and lazy, and there are more elements to the equation, but I thought that dealing with some gross quantities added more to the discussion than hagving a simple list of unquantified variables and saying that = Soviets not winning. Many who have speculated have the opposite hunch, and see the Soviets winning on their own, though usually months to years later..


As for mowque and gridley:

War =/ numbers. It might work in Victoria or Red Alert but not in real life.

This is an excellent example of "how to lie with statistics."


How profound of you both, spoken by two posters who have not bothered to estimate either casualties or the final outcomes of an alt-WWII. Apparently it is even possible to "lie" when talking about counterfactual history. I didn't know it was possible to do that in an exercise of the imagination.
 

mowque

Banned
How profound of you both, spoken by two posters who have not bothered to estimate either casualties or the final outcomes of an alt-WWII. Apparently it is even possible to "lie" when talking about counterfactual history. I didn't know it was possible to do that in an exercise of the imagination.

It is perfectly acceptable to try and estimate numbers of deaths. But I think you broke it down to a level that is no longer useful.
 
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