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Thanks for the reply. I always thought the Russians had been lost more people, materiel, etc. than anyone else and were pretty much done in by the end of the war. (I'm not sure where I got that idea, now that I examine it.)



The Russians indeed lost more people and material than anyone else.

The weird fact is that they lost 26 million due to military, but they lost 10 million to their own internal political oppression.

In either case, USSR had 200 million population in June 1941. At the end of 1945 the population was 170 million[1]. So they still had "plenty" of manpower left.

Also material losses were indeed huge, but mostly because complete disregard for safety of personnel and equipment. They could always replenish their losses at faster rate than their enemies (USSR had vast industry and material base), very inefficient but still huge.

For example. Germans built 6500 JU-87 Stuka assault planes[2] during whole war. Soviets have build 43.000 IL-2 Sturmovik assault planes from 1942-1945[3]. Since Germans had air superiority on eastern front, Soviets would just send in Sturmovik's without air cover.

There's an expression here in eastern Europe for overwhelming numbers, in literal translation it would go something as: "There is as many of them as Russians".

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties_of_the_... [2]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junkers_Ju_87#Production [3]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ilyushin_Il-2#Production




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