German strength in 1945

[kenwhiffeyjr]

Having just re-read Gerald Reitlinger's 'SS-Alibi of a Nation' I picked up on a quite interesting fact that I must have missed when I previously read the book. The size of the Wehrmacht was well over 18 million personnel during its entire existence through out 1945. Getting back to Reitlinger, he states at the end when Germany is about to capitulate that there were 10 million soldiers serving in German uniform with nine million of them being German during the year of 1945. So my question is what happened to this force? Surely, with those numbers, the way the Germans fought throughout the whole war they could have put up more of a resistance to the invasion coming from both East and West. So what happened?

[lutrebois]

Numbers don't say everything.
The quality of young, trained well equiped troops in general didn't exist any more. After 1943 the number of personal drafted wasn't enough to keep up with the losses. So the strenght of each type of unit lowered year by year.
The training late '44 and '45 was reduced to lower than minimum.
Draftees end '44 - '45 were from the year 1928 ( 16 - 17 years of age)
The material, although superb quality ( tiger, Panther), couldn't be produced fast enough to obtain the numbers needed.
To give an example : the antitank bataljon of an average infantry division had early on up to 12 heavy guns drawn and up to 10 heavy guns (sturmgeschütze) motorised
In 1945 the antitank bataljon had 54 individual rocket launchers (up to 200 meters) to execute the same mission.
So again : numbers don't say everything.
P.

[Qvist]

Even if that figure is correct, which I strongly doubt, I don't see what is surprising about the result. Wehrmacht strength peaked at roughly 10.5 million in late 1943 and early 1944, which at that point was insufficient to prevent them from being consistently defeated and pushed back on every major major front. By 1945, they were facing opponents much stronger still, after the opening of a new major front in NW Europe in June 44. I don't know what your idea of tough resistance is, but the Red Army lost roughly 3 million men in 4 months of fighting in 1945 - which in terms of daily average represented about the same rate as in 1941. Much like in 1943 or 1944, they fought hard, but lost. What changed was that they ran out of space and people.

There aren't a lot of WH strength data points in late 1944 or 1945 (at least in my material), but I strongly doubt that Reitlinger's figure is correct, or close to it. Regarding the Ostheer for example, there is no doubt that strength was very considerably lower than in previous times, dipping below the 2 million mark already in late 1944. The Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine both strongly declined, as personnel were being transferred to the army, and the Ersatzheer was also gradually absorbed into the Field Army - which does not AFAICS leave much room for maintaining overall strength. What does Reitlinger really mean anyway? January 1945? April? (I have one data point at least that gives a WH strength (German) of less than 6 million at that point). Average through the year? The number of people who passed through the ranks at one point or another?

The April strength:

A handwritten breakdown of Wehrmacht strength on 8 April in the records of the Org.Abt. gives this breakdown:

Heer 4,474,124
SS u. Pol. 512,746
Luftwaffe 645,481
Marine 127,600
Total 5,757,951

Foreigners 103,806
Osttruppen 203,373
Böhmisch/Mährisch 2,198
Total 309,377

Hungarians 153,406
Italians 103,710
Total 257,116

Volkssturm 2,667
Weh.Gef. (ie, non-Wehrmacht incl. civilian employees) 391,582
IN ALL 6,718,698
Added 41,877


cheers

[AriX]

In "Das Heer 1933-1945" autor provides info - WHandSS strenght at the and of Apriul 1945 - aprox. 7.500.000 men. Dont know how reliable this figure is.
By the way, there is data about WH&SS totyal strenght on 1/1/1945?

[Gilles de Rais]

Having just re-read Gerald Reitlinger's 'SS-Alibi of a Nation' I picked up on a quite interesting fact that I must have missed when I previously read the book. The size of the Wehrmacht was well over 18 million personnel during its entire existence through out 1945. Getting back to Reitlinger, he states at the end when Germany is about to capitulate that there were 10 million soldiers serving in German uniform with nine million of them being German during the year of 1945. So my question is what happened to this force? Surely, with those numbers, the way the Germans fought throughout the whole war they could have put up more of a resistance to the invasion coming from both East and West. So what happened?

Not certain about the exact numbers, but I believe the author confuses the terms "soldiers" and "personel". While Wehrmacht as a whole might have had that many people in it by May of 1945, only a minority would have been real front-line fighting soldiers. The rest served in various support roles and in Luftwaffe and Kriegsmarine.

The reason why these soldiers didn't put up more resistance by April/May of 1945 was that the German industrial and supply system had been devastated through the loss of major industrial areas like Ruhr, Saar and Silesia and enemy progress basically made any kind of organised resistance impossible. By Aprl of 1945 Germany couldn't anymore form a coherent front as it already lost many of its key areas.

[FlyingStukas]

Verry correct, Gilles. It is often confused between "personel" and "soldiers" , in such a time of crisis, almost everyone had to have some sort of military role to help. Be it a simple support role or intelligence, it doesn't specify they were "Schütze"

[BunkerOwner2]

During final capitulation, an estimated 200.000 troops where left in the 'Festung Holland' (west-part of the country), the last part that was occupied in the Netherlands.