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Sorry, what? Mass production of guns is what enables mass armies, it's a lot faster to learn to use gun than sword or bow (which required life dedication to efficiently use).
Completely lopsided kill ratios existed well before Maxium gun. Historically horses chariots were a big game changer too. Battle of Otumba, etc.
that's both unkind and untrue. The Soviets had numerical advantage but not that much. 170 million USSR in 1939 vs 80 million Third Reich (and what if you count only ethnic Russians)? . Considering how much better was German war machine than Soviet (in part, because of Stalin cleansed nearly all military leadership and officers) it wasn't impossible target.
For country of 1.5 billion, they do have a shortage.
Mass armies matter when you have rough parity in technology and tactics. Sure, lopsided victories have existed for much of human history, but the industrial revolution really turbocharged the process to an absurd degree. Notably, technology and tactics are areas where we would naively expect IQ to deliver outsized results.
...It also doesn't seem to be a claim I made. The post above was conflating "The Allies" with "The Anglosphere", as though the former were equivalent to the later.
Is the per-capita number what's important, or the absolute numbers?
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