After all, how did the astonishing number of Germans get to the gates of Moscow? Is this some kind of miracle? Apparently, even after so many victories, there were still five Soviets per German army.
The Wehrmacht had a numerical advantage at the beginning of the war
The German armed forces are more experienced at all levels, from individual soldiers to chiefs of staff
The Wehrmacht and the Luftwaffe were fully deployed and in 100% wartime readiness, while the Soviet Union was in the process of deployment, redeployment, organizational reform, rearmament and mobilization.
The German General Staff had adequate wartime plans and matched local real-life situations, while the Soviet plan proved to be Cloud Castle, without Plan B.
The Luftwaffe had overwhelming technical, tactical and technical superiority.
Panzerwaffe has an overwhelming tactical advantage.
Now there are more details about the digital aspect:
Advancing Soviet tanks.
At 7,324,000 men on 22 June 1941, the Wehrmacht was the largest military force on earth. Of this figure, 4,050,000 people are committed to Operation Barbarossa. With Allied reinforcements, the number of invading troops increased to 4,810,000.
On June 22, 1941, the total number of red army troops was 5,774,211. Of this figure, the Western Military District has 2,885,265 men. This gives the invading force a numerical advantage of 1:1.66.
The Germans and Allies had 49,916 guns and the Reds 55,506. The advantage of 1.11:1 is not very significant. However, the Red Army was unable to take full advantage of this small advantage, as some of the ammunition was still unusable and the type of artillery was not optimally distributed (76 mm shells were severely inadequate, and almost no front-line anti-aircraft guns were available).
On the tank side, the Wehrmacht could deploy 3,502 tanks on the front line and 350 tanks in the 2nd and 5th Reserve Divisions. Plus Finland's 124 tanks and 185 flamethrower tanks. If we add assault guns and Allied contingents on the tank chassis to the count, we will get 5,328 tanks and we F-FDTL SP guns. The Red Army nominally owned 15,209 tanks. The advantage of 2.85:1 was in favor of the Soviet Union.
The Luftwaffe and allies had 4,197 aircraft and the Red Army 11,231. The ratio of the USSR was 2.68:1.
In the mechanization sector, the Wehrmacht has a significant advantage: 613 166 trucks compared to 175 923 trucks. The Germans have an advantage of 1:3.49.
The Wehrmacht had 646 265 horses mobilized for the war, western military district of the USSR - 266 187. The 2,43:1 horse advantage was the Wehrmacht.
In general, we can say that the Red Army had a significant advantage in the number of tanks and aircraft, comparable to artillery, but also in large numbers, and the mobility of the carriages was also relatively insufficient.
On the face of it, we can say that the strength of the opponents is more or less equal – the Wehrmacht has numerical superiority in some areas, while the Red Army has superiority in others. In order to get a clearer picture of the Red Army's early defeats (which resulted in huge losses, so that the numerical superiority in all areas was firmly in the hands of the Germans), we had to go a little deeper and "zoom in" on the lines close to the front – to see how the adversaries were mobilized and deployed.
As we know, the Wehrmacht has been fully mobilized for two years, and by 22 June it has been fully deployed, i.e. delivered to the staging ground of the attack, with ammunition and supplies in warehouses, vehicles repaired and ready, and a command structure established, drawn and studied maps.
On the other hand, the Red Army remained an unmobilized peacetime army. The figures I have given to the Red Army above are those of the Western Military District, that is, the general areas of the Western Frontier. But despite the concentration of German divisions on the border, Soviet divisions were still more or less evenly distributed deep in the country. At the beginning of the war, some divisions were 400 to 500 kilometers from the front, and the nominal "Western Military District" actually needed a strategic redeployment to function.
Here is a map of the deployment of troops in the northern part of the front line on June 22:
Here's a map of the South Zone:
Overall, only 33% of red army divisions were located near the border (56 divisions). Meanwhile, 79 percent of German and Allied divisions were concentrated directly on the border. Coupled with the overall digital advantage, the numerical advantage of the situation is pushed to the three-to-one area, which is beneficial to the National Defense Force.
Naturally, the first line of defense was annihilated, and dozens of Soviet divisions were erased from the map before the Red Army could react. This further exacerbated Germany's advantage and laid the groundwork for a snowball effect. The feeling of blitzkrieg - a quick first success weakens the enemy, which gives impetus to the next success, thus further weakening the enemy.
Red Army units that rushed to the front kept arriving while the front troops had been severely beaten. This allows the Wehrmacht to firmly grasp the strategic initiative and maintain a key advantage at all times – not "generic" but direct superiority in manpower on the battlefield at any given moment. Whenever a Soviet division entered combat, it always fought against a numerically superior enemy and was crushed and bled before reinforcements could arrive from the rear to balance the numbers. As a result, reinforcements were once again in the same situation, and they had to fight an enemy force that was still numerically stronger, even though the strength of the Soviet 1st Echelon + Echelon 2 combined was the same strength.
For example, on June 22, the Soviet 56th Division was attacked by three German divisions (the German division was about 1.5 times the size of the Soviet division, so the Germans gained an advantage of 5 to 1), and by the 24th, the 56th Division was attacked and reportedly only 700-800 men remained. This meant that it was completely destroyed before any reinforcements could arrive from the rear.
In essence, this is the story of the continuation of all the battles on the Eastern Front in 1941 – the endless German strikes that followed, without giving the Red Army the opportunity to pull in the reserves and concentrate a force comparable to the Wehrmacht front. When the new division marches from the rear, the current front is occupied, when the new division arrives, they are weaker than the enemy on the other side, and in turn they are occupied, and so on.
It was not until the end of 1941 that the Red Army succeeded in achieving the impossible goal of inflicting enough losses on the Wehrmacht despite heavy losses and pulling enough new troops from depth to achieve equality. By January 1, 1942, about 4 million Red Army soldiers were fighting the same number of Germans and their allies.
The initial problem, therefore, was based on the false premise that in 1941 the Germans were never outnumbered by the Red Army.