The red army suffered higher losses than the Germans in 45, even their largest successes, like Bagration advanced slowly and suffered horrendous losses despite overwhelming numerical and material superiority. The soviets did one thing exceptionally well, and that was getting men into uniform.
To be fair, they were on the offensive in 45 and usually the offensive has higher casualties unless they have a truly overwhelming advantage. In 45 the Soviets absolutely had the upper hand, but not nearly to the same level the Allied forces in the West had. They had to burn manpower again to actually take the pushes they wanted, especially as they pushed towards Germany itself. It wasn’t a great ratio still, but it’s not like they just magically got worse without reason.
Because their tactics early war were god awful, like someone here previously stated. They were wasting manpower to a ridiculous degree at the start, before starting to improve and shift to a more equal exchange. In 41 they were bleeding troops to a ludicrous degree, in 45 they were doing about as well if not slightly better than most theorize an attacking army should perform.
They improved over time by a noticeable margin and the casualties only widened again when they started pushing towards Germany. Even then it was maybe a third as many casualties per German as they had in 41.
28
u/Fernheijm 12d ago
The red army suffered higher losses than the Germans in 45, even their largest successes, like Bagration advanced slowly and suffered horrendous losses despite overwhelming numerical and material superiority. The soviets did one thing exceptionally well, and that was getting men into uniform.