Size does matter. OOOHHH YEAAAHH. Anyway, it turns out that the Soviet
Red Army of World War 2 was massively endowed. But how big was it? Let’s find out.
[Intro]
My Patron, Guillermo Hernandez has asked a question, he says:
“Good evening TIK, question:”
“I recently saw a video from a YouTube channel called Knowledgia claiming that the Soviet
Red Army had a total of over 34 million personnel throughout the war. I checked on Wikipedia
and they say something similar; 34,476,700. When I checked the Encyclopedia Britannica,
they said that it was at around 11,365,000 by 1945, while the docu-series World War II
In Colour claims that 16 million troops were mobilized. Can you help make sense of these
numbers?”
Yes I can. On the Eastern Front page of Wikipedia, it lists the total deployment of Soviet and
Soviet Allied troops as 34 million. Now, they don’t give a source for these numbers, but
I know exactly which source they’re using.
They’re using Krivosheev’s numbers. He lists the total number of those who had been
recruited into the Soviet military as 34,476,700 troops (the number you said in your question).
Now, I have mentioned in the past that there are problems with Krivosheev’s numbers when
it comes to the casualty figures on both sides, but his numbers for the recruitment of Soviet
personnel are probably correct. So this 34-plus million number is about right. But obviously,
this includes both Red Army and Red Army Air Force personnel, plus rear services, and probably
also the navy as well (although I’m not sure about that one). So it’s not just the
army, and it’s not just those fighting on the front line. And not all 34-plus million
soldiers would have fought at the same time - they would have been spread out over the
whole of the war.
Encyclopedia Britannica says that “By war’s end the Soviet armed forces numbered 11,365,000
officers and men”. So it’s not saying that they recruited 11.3 million throughout
the war, but that the Red Army had a size of 11.3 million at the end of the war.
I’m not sure where they got this number from if I’m honest, but it’s not a million
miles away from the numbers Krivosheev gives. I just want to note though that Krivosheev’s
numbers at this point are disputed - they’re probably lower than they really were - but
as a ballpark figure, Krivosheev says that the total number of men in the Red Army at
its absolute peak in the Second World War was 11,084,086 men, and that number was for
the 1st of January 1945. His final figure for the 8th of May 1945 (the end of the war)
is a total of 10,102,267 men. However, that’s not including Soviet Allied soldiers, like
the Poles and Romanians etc who were fighting with the Red Army too. If we add them in,
the total figure for January 1945 is actually 11,533,921 men, and the total for the end
of the war is 10,515,167 men.
There is another source that says the Soviets had a total of 11,999,100 men at the end of
the war, suggesting that Krivosheev’s numbers are a little bit low. Assuming that the peak
was in January 1945, we could probably add another 1.4 million men on top of Krivosheev’s
number to get a total of approximately 13 million men at it’s absolute peak size in
January 1945. And that’s including non-combat troops and rear service personnel, plus the
air force at least, so please bear that in mind.
I’m not going to rewatch the entire “World War II in Colour” series just to find out
exactly what they said, therefore I’ll take your word on it that they said the Soviets
mobilized about 16 million troops. The Soviets had 4,629,500 men in their entire military
prior to the war, and if we add 16 million men to that like the documentary says, that
would bring the total to 20,629,500 men, which is 13,847,200 men shy of the 34,476,700 that
were mobilized. So, with the more up-to-date numbers, I would say that it wasn’t 16 million
men mobilized, but probably something more like 29 to 30 million.
Obviously, that’s a massive difference, so I’m wondering if they have taken out
the NKVD, and the air force, and the navy, and the rear services, and many other elements,
and just stripped the number down to the amount of men recruited for the front line combat
formations? Or if they were simply using out-of-date numbers? The documentary came out in 2008,
meaning that it was probably in production for a good year or two before then, and Glantz
notes in the forward to the second edition of his book “When Titan’s Clashed” that
the archives weren’t fully open by this point. Glantz says:
“When the first edition of this book was published in 1995… Up to 60 percent of the
war’s content remained largely conjecture… but by 2015, this figure had decreased to
roughly 10 percent.”
The Price of Victory also only came out in 2017, and it was this that questioned some
of Krivosheev’s original numbers. So it’s likely that the documentary was using out-of-date
numbers.
Now, there’s a couple of things to note here. For starters, none of these figures
are 100% accurate. But if we use them as a rough approximation, we can conclude that
34,476,700 men were mobilized for the Soviet military in the Second World War, and the
peak strength was in the region of 11.5 and 13 million men in the January of 1945. But
it’s worth remembering that the actual number of combat troops on the front line would probably
have been much less than this.
I also want to point out that the reason Hernandez got confused was because he was comparing
three different sets of numbers which weren’t measuring the same thing. He said that Knowledgia
and Wikipedia claimed 34 million men in total over the entire war, but then said that Encyclopedia
Britannica said 11 million. But it didn’t say that; it said that there were 11 million
at the end of the war, which is not the same thing. So he’s comparing the total number
recruited across the entire war to the size of the Red Army at its peak, which is why
the numbers don’t match. He then said that the “World War II in Colour” documentary
series claimed 16 million were mobilized. But again, that’s not the number of men
that the Red Army had over the entire war, or the number at its peak. And again, this
16 million number might be wrong, but you’re comparing apples and oranges here, and then
wondering why there’s such a difference.
My advice here is twofold: first, be careful with the language. Going off his name, Hernandez,
I’m assuming that English is his second language, and that’s fine, but just be careful
when you’re reading or listening to the sources. The “total” number, and the amount
“mobilized”, aren’t the same thing, although I can understand why you would think
that they were. This advice also applies to native English speakers as well, and when reading
your own native languages, because it’s very easy to slip up and misunderstand what’s
being said, or what’s being asked. In fact, this is actually related to another question
I’ll be answering in another upcoming video, so be sure to subscribe if you haven’t done
so already. The advice I was given at college and university was to read the exam questions
two or three times just to make sure that you fully grasp what the question is actually
asking. Because sometimes students will think that the question said one thing, proceed
to answer that, when in reality it was asking something completely different, and then the
entire answer will get thrown out and they’ll fail, so I don’t want you to do that.
So just be careful with the sources and make sure you’re reading them correctly. The
second piece of advice I want to give you is to be careful with statistics in general.
No doubt I’ll have made a statistical mistake in this video. Or no doubt that, even if I
haven’t, there will be people complaining about the stats that I’ve used. Because
there’s been entire debates on this channel surrounding whether I used the correct statistics,
or it those stats were right or not, so it won’t surprise me if I get accused of being
anti-Russian, or anti-German again… because it happens every time, and it’s getting
boring now. But the point is that statistics don’t descend from the heavens and get delivered
to us by holy omnipotent beings. They come from flawed sources, written by flawed human
beings, compiled in flawed ways. The debate surrounding Krivosheev’s numbers is a prime
example of this. Even so-called “official” numbers cannot be trusted, because it’s
not like the government statistics are ever wrong! So be ready to throw out the numbers
I’ve provided today when a new genuine source comes along and updates us on the more accurate
numbers. The way to protect yourself and not get ego invested is to say “okay, these
are the facts I believe right now, but I’m ready to change my mind when a better source
of information comes along in the future”. And that applies to history in general. It’s
constantly being revised, so nothing is set in stone. Therefore, keep an open mind, question
everything, and thanks for watching, bye for now.