Production and losses of tanks

Soviet and German production and losses of tanks on the Russian Front from 1941 to 1945 and could the Red Army have won the war alone ?

back to Part I: Russian vs German AFVs in WW II

If the Western Allies would not take into consideration, and the Russians had not received the 11,900 armored vehicles by Lend-Lease, and all German armored vehicles of the Wehrmacht, which had been lost in the West and the South, could have been deployed on the Eastern Front a kill-to-loss ratio of 2.45 to 1 is needed to destroy all 23,300 Russian AFVs on 22 June 1941 plus all 99,150 vehicles built during the war (a total of 122,450 AFVs). This figure is well below the actual ratio of 2.91 to 1 achieved on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Could the Red Army have won the war alone?

This kill-to-loss ratio destroys another recent myth, which has recently come again into fashion, which refers to the situation on the Eastern Front. It is said that the Russians could have won the Second World War without any support from the US or Commonwealth forces, above all because of their large quantity of produced T-34 tanks.

This assertion is untenable, as is shown by the loss ratio – and even before the increased production in Germany had been taken into account, because of the absence of the Allied bombing war. At the same time, the increasing German air superiority on the Eastern Front from 1943 on would have acted, while the Red Army would have been deprived of half of its motorized transport, which consisted of Lend-Lease vehicles.
The 9,000 to 10,000 88mm Flak guns, which would not have been necessary to defend Germany against Allied air raids, could have been used as an effective anti-tank force on the Eastern Front.
In addition, e.g. tor the approximately 1,000 then non-necessary German U-boats, other war materials – such as tanks – could have been produced.

Approx. monthly Production and Losses of Russian and German Armored Vehicles (Germany: only tanks and assault guns, but on all fronts):

German tank production and losses June-December 1941:

About 240 Pzkpfw II, III and IV were lost in North Africa.

see also: Military Performance on the Russian Front

References and literature

Operation Barbarossa: the Complete Organisational and Statistical Analysis, and Military Simulation, Volume I – IIIB (Nigel Askey)
Krieg der Panzer (Piekalkiewicz)
World War II – A Statistical Survey (John Ellis)
Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg (10 Bände, Zentrum für Militärgeschichte)
Kraftfahrzeuge und Panzer der Reichswehr, Wehrmacht und Bundeswehr (Werner Oswald)
Encyclopedia of German Tanks of World War Two (P.Chamberlain, H.L.Doyle)
Soviet Tanks and Combat Vehicles of World War Two (Steven J. Zaloga, James Grandsen)