Quote Originally Posted by Sarmatian
Well, it's not really 3-1. I mean it is on paper but not in practice. If we count only Hungary and Romania together that's 25 million more for the Germans. Before the real fighting even started SU lost Ukraine - that's 15-20 million less (possibly even more, IIRC a good portion of Russians lived in Ukraine). How much of the population was lost in the European Russia that was conquered before Soviets even knew what hit them?

I think in reality the difference in manpower was much smaller than 3:1, in winter 1941 I mean. At that time German pretty much had everything going for them. They practicaly reached Moscow, they cut off large population centers from the rest of SU and if I remember correctly, Germans also had higher production of coal, oil and steel than SU until 1943. It wasn't really David vs Goliath as it is often portrated to be.
Well, then how can it be that the german army ran out of men, killed far more russians and was still outnumbered 20:1 toward the end? Did all those germans just surrender by the millions?