What was the lowest available population to the Soviet Union in WW2?
score:6
Let's start with the 165-170 million based on the 1939 borders. The Soviets lost all of Poland and the Baltic states and Bessarabia, so those numbers (about 25 million) don't count. They also lost about 10 million Bylorussians and 40 million Ukrainians. Count 20-25 million casualties and occupied people not in the above categories, so a total reduction of 70-75 million seems about right from the original total, leaving 95-100 million. The Germans started with about 70 million but this total rose to about 85 million counting ethnic Germans in Austria, the Czech Republic, Poland, and elsewhere.
It's true that by the end of 1942, that the Soviet Union had a bare population preponderance over German, having lost half of its population conquered territories. The balance of power was held by the nearly 100 million "East Europeans," (Poles, Baltics, Byelorussians, Ukrainians, etc.) as the "Heartland Theory" would predict. If Germany had turned those East Europeans against "Russia," it could have won the war on the eastern front.
Upvote:6
I don't think it would be possible to produce a "day to day" statistics.
One datapoint is Order No. 227 (1942 July 28):
The territory of the USSR which the enemy has captured and aims to capture is bread and other products for the army, metal and fuel for industry, factories, plants supplying the army with arms and ammunition, railroads. After the loss of Ukraine, Belarus, Baltic republics, Donetzk, and other areas we have much less territory, much less people, bread, metal, plants and factories. We have lost more than 70 million people, more than 800 million pounds of bread annually and more than 10 million tons of metal annually. Now we do not have predominance over the Germans in human reserves, in reserves of bread.
Note that the numbers here are not necessarily true (just like all official Soviet data).
PS. When making manpower comparison, you can easily dig yourself into a sinkhole. E.g., from the POV of productive work, Germany could draw upon not just Germany, but France, Denmark, Norway, Italy, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania. However, USSR was also helped by US and Britain. However a Germany was also fighting in Atlantic and North Africa. However, US was also fighting Japan...
PPS. When making rough estimates like @TomAu does, one must account for evacuation which, in the case of USSR, had truly gargantuan scales.
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