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Any army with those kind of casualty figures doesn't deserve to be rated, especially not when a favourite tactic of the Red Army was to gather up all the civilians in the nearby towns and drive them in front of their infantry just so that the Germans would waste bullets having to shoot them. Especially not when these civilians were their own citizens. As a general rule, Russian troops were poorly trained and poorly lead, and usually relied on 'human wave' tactics to overwhelm their oposition, right up to the end of the war.
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I guess, I more or less proved that it's pure BS.

Bob:
60 million??? With total pre-war population of 195.3 mln people? Of whom after the war there were 157.2 mln (not counting kids of age 5 and yonger in the later case)? It's only 38,1 mln shortage, of which AT LEAST 12.5 mln would die at peace time due to natural causes (age, ilness etc); and another 5.5 mln are emigrants, mostly from West Ukraine, Latvia and Estonia. Balance 19,9 mln.

JKT: all the figures for civilian deaths are demographic studies, and that 25,6 mln figure quoted in your reference does not take into account the immigration.

Opa: Latvians and Estonians, by the way, were considered by Nazi along the same line as norwegians and danes.

While 12 million soviet civilians were killed almost exclusively by germans, and 10 mln chinese civilians were killed by japanese, most of the 3.8 mln german civilians were killed by British and American heavy bombers, and not by advancing soviet troops, despite all the heavy urban fighting.

As you can see, the designations show that none of these divisions were considered "true " SS-divisions. Although SS-officers in estonia were impressed by the estonians(I think Himmler himself considered them to be Volksdeutsche after a while), they were never amongst the elite nucleus of the SS, and were not on the same level as the norwegian and danish formations.

And Alex.
Remember the debate on the IS2? I did some reading, and it seems like some only considers the weight of the part of the projectile that actually does the penetration.(According to my sources, the entire shell does not contribute towards penetration). My sources estimated the KE of a round fired from the gun of a Tiger II to be roughly 7.5MN, and that of a round fired from the gun of a IS2 to be roughly 4.8MN.
These are the exact figures:

Tiger II:
Caliber: 88
Muzzle Velocity: 1000 m/s
Mass of AP shell: 15 kg(penetrating part)
KE: 7.5 MN

IS2:
Caliber: 122
Muzzle Velocity: 800 m/s
Mass of AP shell: 15 kg(Again, only the pen. part)
KE: 4.8 MN

122 mm AP projectile (full caliber) is 24 kg. 88 mm gun projectiles are 7.5 kg (subcaliber) or 10 kg (full caliber).

HE rounds (projectiles again) are 24 and 9,5 kg, respectively.

Anecdotal evidence, as well as very extensive field tests in Kubinka (recently declassified), suggest that penetration power of both guns was about same, although IS-2 could sometimes kill MBTs or their crews with HE rounds.

122 mm caliber was chosen for IS-2 after extensive tests because it was taking the same amount of space in the turret and was able to throw much heavier HE rounds, that were far more effective against infantry and AT guns.

Furthermore(quote): "Muzzle velocity will differ because we have used exclusively the muzzle velocity of the APCBC shell since all units were equipped with APCBC shells of some sort but many never received APDS, APCR and HVAP rounds."

Yet another quote: "Factors such as shell flight stability, tip hardness, aerodynamic design, shell balance etc., all combine to play a part in determining penetration."

Again, I am referring to early 1943 TESTS at Kubinka firing range, that were conducted particularly to determine which gun to use in IS series.

I feel, I am preaching to a stone here. Right, the barrel was fiddled with. It was made much worse than it originally was. And it came from Tzar-Cannon, XVI century. All USSR male population was killed during WWII and so russians are multiplying by cloning ever since.

Besides, Latvian combat units in german sevice had the same status and were implemented in the same way as ukranian. Right.

Polish: Clarify, please, when this 1.5 million poles were taken and where the figure is coming from. I also wonder if western ukrainians are considered polish here.

In any event, there was no selecting young german (or polish) women and sending them to USSR to be slaves in russian households. Germans did that en masse.

POWs: I don't have accurate figures for how many POWs returned from soviet captivity. I remember seeing somewhere a figure of 60 or 70%; most who did not survive were captured at Stalingrad.

I know, however, how many were in captivity. Namely: 3,770,290 POWs, including 2 546 242 germans.

Young Russian women kidnapped to be household slaves in Germany? Any references?

There certainly were a lot of poles sent to Gulag after USSR took the country over. Stalin's way. The figure of 1.5 mln, however, looks suspiciously like "100,000 german women raped in Berlin by Soviet troops". One keeps wondering, where is it coming from?

The whole story is biased quite a lot. Like, it never mentions that another Polish government in exile was formed in USSR and that there was Vojsko Polskoe (Polish Army) of several thousand people, fighting alongside Red Army on Eastern Front. There was also a sizeable Polish partisan movement, apart from Armija Krajowa (dont remember the name already).

Tiger I
[img]http://armor.kiev.ua:8101/Tanks/WWII/PzVIH/Pz6_4.gif [/img]

Tiger II (King Tiger)
No scheme, but it had 150mm on upper hull fore; 190 mm on turret fore and basically same armor as original Tiger elsewhere.

Tests in Kubinka dated end 1944 showed (loose translation):

"during tests KwK 43 demonstrated good accuracy, almost same as our 122mm D-25 (IS-2 gun)... Penetration of 88mm KwK 43 with barrel length of 71 calibers, with initial velocity of AP projectile of 1000 m/s was 165 mm / 30 degrees for 1000 m distance. Particularly, turret of it's "brother" Tiger perforated from 400 m".

Penetration of D-25 gun, that was measured using the same methodics on the same Kubinka range, was said to be 120 mm.

I've seen the above stated in a number of places actually.
http://www.achtungpanzer.com/pz5.htm#tiger2

The quality of the surface hardened steel armour in the design of German armoured vehicles was superior in several respects to that used by several other armies. It was welded interleaved, creating a stronger connection, which was harder to break, and it was often hard enough to break enemy projectiles, preventing penetration.

As for the comparison of the guns: the KWK 43 (Kampf Wagen Kanone 43) L71 had not only a higher velocity, and higher penetration in mm's than the Russion D25 gun. It was also more acurate, allowing kills to be made at several kilometres distance.

If you look at the advantages of the IS 2 vs. the PzKpfw VI B (H), the lower ground pressure, lower height and bigger HE (High explosive) projectiles come to mind.

The PzKpfw VI B (H) had better armour, had a longer effective tank killing range main gun, and had better accuracy (combined gun and sighting).

The main thing when comparing tanks is: how effective where they when manned adequately, and deployed in terrain favourably to them.

With the weight of the IS 2 being so much lower, the fuel consumption being a lot less than that of the PzKpfw VI B, the engine being more reliable and the IS2 being less underpowered, it had a somewhat better mobility. When used mostly in the defensive role, as so many German vehicles were at that time in the war, that mobility didn't matter that much for the PzKpfw VI B. It was too heavy for many bridges...

(I think that the Battle of the Bulge and the attack on the Hungarian capital were some of the few occasions where PzKpfw VI B's were actually used to atack in reasonable numbers.)

If you have the production of the Russians, compared to that of the Germans at the end of the war, I would not consider the PzKpfw VI B to be such a good tank over all. With only 484 being produced, it didn't have the impact that more successful designs, like the PzKpfw V G (a.k.a. Panther) had.

I'd also rate the IS 2 rather low on the Russian "successful tank designs" list.

I consider the Panther and late model T34/85 to be some of the best tanks during WW II.
They had a good combination of mobility, firepower and armour protection, that tanks like the U.S. M4 Sherman (75 mm) even with the marginally better 76 mm gun) and the British Cromwell (75 mm) lacked.

As for who has the thickest armour on a production armoured vehicle that was used in that war, the German JagdTiger (or "Hunting Tiger") with its 128mm gun and awsome 250 mm frontal protection beats both the IS 2 and it's nephew the PzKpfw VI B in firepower and armour protection...

But, with only a handful ever being made, and even fewer seeing combat what's the point of mentioning it here?

1. Standard deviation of the KwK 43 gun that was tested (when shooting at a target 1500 m away) was slightly worse than D-25's.

2. That german tank armor had less molibden than previously encountered Tigers I and welding quality was quite poor.

Another article I've read says that somewhere around '44 problem of penetrating german AFV's has gradually ceased to exist, because of poorer and poorer steel they were using. D-25 HE round proved effective against Tigers on several occasions, simply cracking Tiger's hull.

bob: There were not a lot of examples when Tigers were killed through the frontal armor.

Unfortunately, an account about first engagement of soviet tankers with King Tigers is too long to translate. Brief version is this: germans thrown 40 strong unit of new tanks, coupled with Panthers and PzIVs to breach a frontline. Of the new Tigers less than 20 made it to the battlefield, others have stopped due to mechanical failures. Germans assault was cleverly ambushed and crushed by a similarly sized force of T-34/76s and T-34/85s.

Which unit was it that you were referring to? Were you talking about this? "The first time Tiger II saw action was in May of 1944 near Minsk, followed by another action (of sPzAbt 501) in July of 1944 at Sandomierz in Poland."

You cannot compare the Tiger I's 100 to 110mm almost vertical frontal armour (and the whole design for that matter, as it was brought out in 1942) to that sloped 185 to 250mm armour of a Tiger II.

Sure, there were Russian guns that could penetrate a Tiger I's frontal armour.
With the relatively long ranges at which the Tiger (I and II) crews usually tried to stay during combat, it was pretty rare for any Russian gun to come close enough to actually be able to penetrate the frontal armour of the Tiger II. Don't mistake one for the other...

During some combat footage that I saw which was filmed from within a Tiger II during an attack in Hungary, several of the tanks were hit and destroyed during that attack. However, this was in a built up area, at which both the distances and angles at which they came under fire were not favouring the use of heavy armour.

Similar things happened a lot to Russian armour that was used in street fighting...
Tanks and cities don't mix well.

An account by a British tank commander (in the Guinness book of tank facts) about a lone Hunting Tiger in Luxembourg gives a better idea of how to use that kind of armour and firepower.

He explains how they were taken to a battlefield, where they saw British tank wrecks littering the approach route. At the end, they arrived at the position of their opponent, a lone Hunting Tiger, destroyed by its crew. It was parked in a farm, from where it had shot up about three British tank squadrons, before being abandoned by their crew.

Similar stories can be read about small groups of Tigers, which defended small villages against an overwhelming majority of Russian armour. They were the most dangerous in those positions.

German armour late in the war was better on a one to one basis (which hardly ever happened) than that of their opponents.

A sometimes shaky reliability, lack of fuel, loss of air superiority and there simply not being enough of the newest toys to go around, meant that they didn't have a chance against the overwhelming numbers that were thrown at them.

If you want to see comparisons of the real data of different Russian tanks vs. several German tanks, have a look at the classified documents that are printed in the back of Walter Spielberger's books about the Panther (and its derivatives) and the Tigers (and their derivaties). The armour values, angles, as well as the penetration of their guns, power to weight ratios etc. are all there.

These values are confirmed by other sources, like the French, British and U.S. wartime and post-war research done into Tigers and Panthers.

I like to add that one of the reasons that the Germans often did so well against the overwhelming odds on the eastern front, was that they used their scarce artillery a lot more effective than the Russians. In part that was because the german artillery was more mobile, but also because of better inter-arms communications.

This was not so much of an advantage on the western front, where the U.S. proved that they were as accurate, could switch targets a quickly and that they knew how to use mobile artillery as effectively (if not better) than the Germans. They also had very good communications, and knew how to use fully mechanised units to their advantage.
It also helped that the Allies had a lot more artillery than the Germans. :-)

Alex, it's true that at the end of the war, the quality of the Russian soldiers improved, especially that of the Guards units.

However, their tactics were still rather straightforward, often relying upon heavy artillery barrages to blow a hole in a line, then punching through with all they had, untill they were either running out of fuel and ammo, or they ran into stubborn German resistance.

They were very good at then digging in, while the Germans hurled everything they had at them, and either waiting untill the mass of the Russian units had reached them, or untill they were killed.

It's a rather straightforward approach, but it worked. When it comes to that, with the lack of communication equipment and other problems that they encountered, the Russians still were effective in kicking the Germans back to Berlin.

Get ready to take it in August, Toe. Again, where do you want the first one? The USA had two nuclear weapons, with another coming every month or so. So, what? You think the Russkies could have pushed the Allied Armies out of Europe before August? I'm not sure they would have pushed them anywhere. Again, the Russkies would have needed the usual 2 or 3 to one man advantage to have had an even chance, them being on the offensive and all. Look at the losses the beaten, depleted German army put on them in the last days. Try to extrapolate that out with the artillery, air, Naval and fresh manpower assets you would have them hurl themselves into. Think about the supply lines, then think about the air forces opposing them.

I guess if the Russkies could have done a sneak attack, like the Germans in the Ardennes, that could have a chance.

I like how everyone on these boards disses the Amis. It is very fashionable these days. Let me say this. I will take a US Marine Division, any one of them, today, yesterday, or tomorrow, and take on the best you can come up with. You think the Waffen SS was bad to the bone? The Canadians? They durn sure were. But...Do me an itty bitty favor. Read a book, any book about the battle of Iwo Jima. A good one is "Flag of our Fathers". No battle in history was as intensely bloody, personal, and savage.
I submit that the US Marines are as well trained and equipped as any comprable sized (large) special fighting force in the world today, or yesterday, and have an UNMATCHED Esprit de Corps. You think the Germans hated the Canadians? Read how the Japanese felt about the Marines. Or how the Germans felt about the Marines in WW1.
Talk about specialized training. ALL Marines, even Aviators, are Infantry first. Can the Canadian Infantry do amphibious ops? Are they liable to appear on ANY beach in the world on a moment's notice? Do they have their own air support? Naval Support?

It was the same in WW2. They assaulted those beaches, in the teeth of brave and determined enemies, and won every battle, took every island, blazing a record of blood, honor and death that the good folks on this board conveniently forget about. And did it with the left over equipment, I might add.
You want to have some sort of magic one on one infantry battle, with no artiller, air, or naval? Get your best division of Infantry you can find, lets put em on an island, and let em go. Marines in 4 days.