"Nazi propaganda nurtured the image of Germans fighting against “innumerable masses from the East”, but this is just a racist propaganda. In actual fact, the war on the Eastern Front in 1941 was characterised by a Soviet inferiority in pure numbers. On 22 June 1941, the four Soviet western military districts between the Baltic Sea and the Black Sea had 2.3 million men, opposed to nearly 4.5 million Axis troops. The Wehrmacht had amassed 3.35 million troops. To this the Romanian army contributed 600,000, and in the north, Finland had already mobilised its army and could muster 530,000 men.
When the Red Army counter-attacked at Moscow in December 1941, the Soviet numerical inferiority was even larger. Soviet strength returns in archives show that on 1 December 1941, the Soviets were able to muster 576,500 soldiers and 574 tanks against German Army Group Centre – which at the time had between 1.9 and 1.2 million troops with 1,800 tanks and assault guns. The Germans not only enjoyed a three-fold numerical superiority in tanks, but of the Soviet tanks employed against them at Moscow, only around 30 per cent were T-34s or KVs, with the remainder being completely obsolete tankettes.
As the war continued, the Germans gradually lost their numerical superiority – which reflects the greater Soviet industrial capacity – but their most brilliant victories in 1941 were achieved with a convincing numerical superiority."
