Boots On The Ground: A New Condition For Victory Version 1.0

That data seems a little odd in spots. I know Japan had 1/2 of its forces tied up in China - how could they have that little bit of population compared to Japan? And Russia - smaller than the USA? Germany 80 mil to Russia’s 109 - in my reading the Russians WAY outnumbered Germany.

Italy more than France?
Australia 7 Millions?
China 0.8 Million?

Those number don’t sound realistic to me.

Good job Tobler, might work as a fun alternative game because it changes everything so much… might be fun to try.

I just googled Population of XXX in 1940.  Not saying the numbers are 100% accurate, but they are probably pretty close.  Well, the US Population I know is accurate since I got it from the United States Census Bureau  from 1940.

France/Italy/Germany I am not sure on.  But it seems plausible.

China does seem really weak in those numbers…not sure if google was accurate there or not.

Russia is also probably pretty accurate.  A lot of Russian soil is uninhabitable in 1940 - cannot farm it, cannot survive temperature extremes, too far from civilization, you name it.  I think a lot of your reading here might be left over civilians, most of Germany was involved in the war - unless you literally could not hold a rifle.  Even children were pressed into service for the Germans.

Of course, feel free to go find your own numbers.  Not overly easy finding accurate ones because you are at the whim of who posts what for numbers, lol.  All of my numbers (except the United States of America’s) could be wrong, or dead on…

Did you mean 0.8 billion for China? And 0.5 billion for India? Those numbers would make more sense.

At least Italy seems to be rather correct:

(Wikipedia) 42.994.000 (1936)

This fact surprises me. I did expect less.

@General:

Did you mean 0.8 billion for China? And 0.5 billion for India? Those numbers would make more sense.

Could be a difference in reporting.  If the websites listed it as 0.X of a billion instead of a million I would have missed it.

I should note, I couldn’t find a website with ALL nations listed, I did have to go to multiple sites.

Toblerone - I was listing overall population, not service members.  Or I was trying too.

I still say using manpower is a sound idea - it is on my pencil list of future game upgrades. As suggested earlier, maybe you could look at the manpower listed for the different countries in a grand strategy PC game like Hearts of Iron 3. Somebody already did all the research there.

Here are some Hearts of Iron 3  numbers:

MANPOWER - total + gain each month in December 1941

USA: 2030 + 29.3
USSR: 2815 + 40.6
UK: 1535 + 22.1
Germany: 998 + 24.1
Italy: 573 + 9.2
Japan: 440 + 15.2

A little math could be done to get percentages from these figures. But HOI3 is a lot more detailed - all smaller countries are separate, so countries like Canada, Australia and Finland would have to be added in to increase accuracy.

Good work there M.E. - although it looks unbelievable that Germany could have more reserves than the Soviet Union.

@Der:

Good work there M.E. - although it looks unbelievable that Germany could have more reserves than the Soviet Union.  Â

Not that hard to imagine when you look at the ecology of most of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (as opposed to Russia itself, which is much smaller!)  Much of it is not very habitable for human life.

Also, Germany was a lot bigger before 1945.  Believe it was bigger still before WWII actually began, when the world thought Adolf Hitler was just annexing territories stolen after WW1.

It appears we do have corroboration that Italy had more population than France - which is interesting.

So I suppose we could take (10)*(total population / mobilized manpower) and have that be inactive, ready reserves that you could place where you will.  Would give the United States 80 reserve infantry.  Just for one example.

@Der:

although it looks unbelievable that Germany could have more reserves than the Soviet Union.  Â

I’m not sure I believe it either.  I’d be interested in knowing what Ellis defines as “mobilized” and I’m also curious about his “peak number” concept for the Soviet Union because it may imply that he’s referring to the highest number of troops who were in service at any given moment, not the total number who fought during the war.  Assuming that the USSR hit its peak manpower in the first half of 1945 (when, as I recall, it had something like 300 divisions in Europe), does this figure of 13.2 million in service at that time include the millions of Soviet soldiers who died from 1941 to 1944 and who therefore were no longer on the payroll in 1945?

@MidnightExpress:

Another source (War in the East: The Russo-German Conflict, 1941-45 by the Staff of Strategy and Tactics Magazine) gives an estimate that 25 million Soviet Citizens were mobilized between 1941-45. This estimate would give Russia a significant advantage (250:179) over Germany for reserves.Â

That sounds like a credible figure, at least in terms of the general impression it gives.  Also, it should be noted that in the wartime Soviet Union the distinction between the military and civilian sectors got rather blurry.  The members of the population who weren’t directly serving under arms were still very much mobilized to the war effort, to a degree that had no counterpart in the US or the UK.  I once read a description of a group of Soviet female workers, poorly clothed and poorly fed, being marched into an unheated factory at the beginning of their shift under the watchful eye of armed soldiers.  They weren’t delinquent citizens who’d been sentenced to a punitive labour detail; this was just an example of the kind of regimentation that existed in the USSR during WWII, where all citizens – including young people and old men – were considered part of the war effort.  Workplace absenteeism and slacking off on production quotas were considered the equivalent of military desertion, and were punishable by deportation to a labour camp (where conditions weren’t actually all that different from the harsh conditions that ordinary citizens were experiencing at home) or even by outright execution.  In fairness, compliance with all of this wasn’t achieved by coercion alone; there was a lot of genuine fear and hatred of the German invaders among the Soviet people, and these were powerful motivators to them as they toiled at their workbenches under barracks-like conditions that nobody in the US or the UK would have tolerated.