"Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

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stg 44
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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#31

Post by stg 44 » 25 Oct 2016, 12:44

ljadw wrote: Besides, 300000 desertions are negligible on 18 million soldiers who served in the WM.
There were never 18 million soldiers in the WM, that number also includes the labor services as well, with at least 2 million forced foreign laborers. Who knows how many administrative personnel, women, non-combatants of foreign origin were included in that number.

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#32

Post by ML59 » 25 Oct 2016, 19:29

18 millions is not intended to represent the strength of the WH at any time, it represents the accepted figure of men that, overall, served in the armed forces all along the war, including dead, missing, wounded, discarded for any reason and, of course, executed.


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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#33

Post by ljadw » 25 Oct 2016, 20:41

On P 215 of Deutsche Militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg, Overmans gives the following figures :

Army : 13.6 million

LW : 2.5 million

KM : 1.2 million

WSS : 0.9 million


Total : 18.2 million

While it is so that a part of the WSS consisted of foreigners, the figure of 18.2 million does not include Volkssturm, SS, Police, HJ, RAD,etc .

Thus 18 million is a plaisible number .

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#34

Post by ljadw » 25 Oct 2016, 21:07

In WWII the number of desertions on German side was some 2 % of the total that served,while in WWI it was 1 % :130000/150000 on a total of 13.5 million (it was slighty higher for Britain) . OTOH it is so that almost half of the WWII desertions happened in 1945.

For the motives of desertions , on P 9 of "Deserteure der Wehrmacht;Feiglinge,Opfer, Hoffnungsträger ? ",Wolfgang Wette writes : "We still don't know much of the motives of the deserters " .

That in 1932 2/3 of the electors did not vote for Hitler is irrelevant, because it does not prove that between 1939/1945 2/3 of the German population was hostile to the regime . Most Germans were not hostile to the regime, most Germans were no supporters of the regime, but most Germans accomodated themselves to the regime,as long as it was successful .

The same applies for the Russians, Chinese,etc,etc...

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#35

Post by Kar43 » 26 Oct 2016, 16:39

ljadw wrote:
Kar43 wrote:
ljadw wrote:From WW2 Stats
Number of executions in the WM

September 1939 - September 1940 : 515

Sept 1940 - Sept 1941 : 445

Sept 1941 - Sept 1942 : 1648

Sep 1942 - Sept 1943 : 2748

Sept 1943 - Sept 1944 : 4039

Sept 1944 - November 1944 : 82
515 executed for desertion between September 1939 and September 1940? Why so many when Germans seemed to be "winning?" Aren't we always told the Germans were enthusiastically behind Hitler at this stage? Presumably not all were deserters, but still, why so many at this point in the war?
NO : NOT 515 executions for desertion, but a TOTAL of 515 executions .
I wrote , "Presumably not all were deserters." It seems likely someone who got himself executed during the first year of the war was not enthusiastically for the war, whether a deserter or not.

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#36

Post by ljadw » 27 Oct 2016, 08:19

Kar43 wrote: .
It seems likely someone who got himself executed during the first year of the war was not enthusiastically for the war, whether a deserter or not.[/quote]


This is very questionable as a big number of those executed during the first year of the war were executed for murder, rape, theft,...It is also questionable to assume that a deserter was not enthusiastically for the war . The relation between desertion and no enthusiasm for the war is an unproved assumption .

It is not that because someone was not enthusiastically about the war, he would desert ,and it is not so that if someone deserted,he was not enthusiastically about the war .Hundreds of thousand soldiers were not enthusiastically about the war and only less than one % deserted .Someone who was enthusiastically about the war also could desert .

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#37

Post by Stovepipe » 27 Oct 2016, 18:04

Germany was effectively a militarised state even after WW1. Given all of the fighting between Socialists, Communists and the forces of the Right, violent death for a German male was still a common thing. Weren't there Freikorps/Rightists fighting in the Baltics and Russia well into 1920? Germany didn't really have democratic, stable peace between the wars and the concept of stiff punishment and iron discipline were known to every citizen, so a deserter or military criminal could expect to be shot and a civilian resister/dissenter could expect the blade. A soldier in the British Army, by comparison, would have to go well beyond the pale to get himself executed, whereas getting executed as a German soldier seemed to be a lot easier, so to speak.

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#38

Post by Sheldrake » 27 Oct 2016, 21:12

Stovepipe wrote:Germany was effectively a militarised state even after WW1. Given all of the fighting between Socialists, Communists and the forces of the Right, violent death for a German male was still a common thing. Weren't there Freikorps/Rightists fighting in the Baltics and Russia well into 1920? Germany didn't really have democratic, stable peace between the wars and the concept of stiff punishment and iron discipline were known to every citizen, so a deserter or military criminal could expect to be shot and a civilian resister/dissenter could expect the blade. A soldier in the British Army, by comparison, would have to go well beyond the pale to get himself executed, whereas getting executed as a German soldier seemed to be a lot easier, so to speak.
Not sure I follow that logic.

The pre 1918 German Reich was a militarised state with all sorts of privileges and status attached to military service. It also had a very lenient disciplinary policy during the First World War, and executued very few of its own troops; far fewer than the British or French.

The Versailles treaty effectively disarmed Germany. It had a tiny army and navy and no air force. It is true that the Weimar Republic was born in civil war but for ten years Germany was far from militarised.

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#39

Post by Stovepipe » 27 Oct 2016, 22:39

There seemed to be no shortage of infantry weapons available to the likes of the Freikorps. The 100,000 man Army was regarded as "100,000 future Officers" by at least one General officer of the time. Any time I read of that era, I always get the feeling that elements of the old Military looked West and thought, "Right, you won Round one. Lets get ready for Round two" and looked East and said "we have unfinished business there, too". There seemed to be a distinct air of lack of regret in some quarters for going to war in the first place.

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#40

Post by Sheldrake » 27 Oct 2016, 23:06

Stovepipe wrote:There seemed to be no shortage of infantry weapons available to the likes of the Freikorps. The 100,000 man Army was regarded as "100,000 future Officers" by at least one General officer of the time. Any time I read of that era, I always get the feeling that elements of the old Military looked West and thought, "Right, you won Round one. Lets get ready for Round two" and looked East and said "we have unfinished business there, too". There seemed to be a distinct air of lack of regret in some quarters for going to war in the first place.
The FreiKorps were little different to the militia we see in civil war torn states. There were plenty of small arms at the end of a European war.

Sure there were people who denied that Germany had been beaten, hence the "Durchstoss" myth that sustained the German right and tapped into by the Nazis. How many there were and how significant they were in 1918 is a matter of debate.

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#41

Post by Passo Stanco » 04 Nov 2016, 15:23

Soldiers were "occasionally" killed by their superiors in the field, albeit it was a very extreme punishment indeed, there are numerous war time witnesses telling it. No other army, except the very ruthless RKKA, applied this kind of measures to maintain discipline or to punish infringements to military code. Examples of the harshness of German military discipline are reported in a vast array of essays, including the well known works of Omer Bartov, Guido Knopp and others.
Sorry, is not correct. In italian Regio Esercito both in WWI and WWII is expected to kill directy the soldier in some severe cases.
My grandfather, officer of a mortar platoon, told me that during the approach to the line of fire in Greece in 1940, one of his soldiers had been thrown to the ground and refused to continue. The platoon has stopped and my grandfather while repeating the order had not obtained result. then he pulled the gun even threatened the soldier not got up. At that point he told me that he could shoot but fortunately other soldiers intervened and took to arms the soldier and they did go.
He has confirmed to me also that it was possible summary execution but which entailed severe interrogation officer in charge.

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Re: "Wehrmacht executed 15,000 troops for desertion"

#42

Post by ML59 » 13 Nov 2016, 19:16

I generalized my answer, creating a misunderstanding. The meaning of my statement is that in the Third Reich death penalty was applied to such a grand scale only surpassed by the RKKA. it's true that death sentences were common in the REI in WWI (by far the highest figures of executions among the western Allies) and in WWII, but still not on the same level of what happened in Germany and USSR.

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