Mori wrote: ↑05 Jan 2021, 16:08
Roberto Muehlenkamp wrote: ↑05 Jan 2021, 11:40
In a related footnote he wrote:
The only specific figures available are from OB WEST for the period 2 June 1941 – 10 April 1945 as follows: Dead, 80,819; wounded, 265,526; missing, 490,624; total, 836,969. (Of the total, 4,548 casualties were incurred prior to D-day.) See Rpts, Der Heeresarzt im Oberkommando des Heeres Gen St d H/Gen Qu, Az.: 1335 c/d (IIb) Nr.: H.A./263/45 g. Kdos. of 14 Apr 45 and 1335 c/d (Ilb) (no date, but before 1945). The former is in OCMH X 313, a photostat of a document contained in German armament folder H 17/207; the latter in folder 0KW/1561 (OKW Wehrmacht Verluste). These figures are for the field army only, and do not include the Luftwaffe and Waffen-SS. Since the Germans seldom remained in control of the battlefield in a position to verify the status of those missing, a considerable percentage of the missing probably were killed. Time lag in reporting probably precludes these figures' reflecting the heavy losses during the Allied drive to the Rhine in March, and the cut-off date precludes inclusion of the losses in the Ruhr Pocket and in other stages of the fight in central Germany.
Assuming MacDonald's assessment is correct, Marshall's figure of 263,000 German dead in the 1944/45 campaign (which is still much lower than the ca. 655,000 suggested by Overmans) would be too high.
I came across the following in a source I was just reading today for another research. It's from end September 1944.
OB West losses June-September 1944.PNG
Total of 516 900 men for June-September 1944, it says. Admittedly not all Germans as it includes 8 400 Ostruppen, admittedly not all Heer as it includes 89 500 Marine + Luftwaffe. And it counts as MIA all the 95 000 men stuck in besieged ports.
Still: 516 900 losses in 4 months (ca 130k/month) but, taking your quote, 836 969 in 10 months (6 June- 10 April). Meaning 1st October- 10 April has 836 969 - 516 900 = 320 000 extra losses (ca 53k/month), as if the intensity of the fight had decreased. Hum... not quite right!
Just mentioning that to point how problematic using consolidated reports is. The minute you get more than one, it's contradictions everywhere.
Good point, thanks. Both reports seem to be from the same source (OB West), so maybe there was a subsequent correction of the June-September 1944 figures.
Consolidated reports can also be problematic when it comes to estimates of enemy casualties. Case in point, from the first part of my article in the OP (
viewtopic.php?p=2063043#p2063043):
According to the US Third Army’s After Action Report of May 1945, the Third Army inflicted 1,811,388 losses on the enemy forces facing it between 1 August 1944 and 13 May 1945, thereof 144,500 killed, 386,200 wounded and 1,280,688 POWs, against own losses of 16,596 killed, 96,241 wounded, and 26,809 missing in action for a total of 139,646 casualties.[24]
However, Robert Fuller’s review of Third Army records, while confirming the aforementioned number of POWs, found that the number of enemy killed and wounded was somewhat lower than claimed in the May 1945 report, respectively 47,500 and 115,700. Fuller’s comparative assessment of German and Allied casualties is the following (emphasis added):[25]
Victory in the European Theater of Operations exacted its toll on the Allies. The total Allied casualties (killed, wounded, captured, missing) were 766,294 men. This included 586,628 Americans with 135,576 killed. The remainder of the Allied deaths reached about 60,000 men.
The German deaths on all fronts were about 3,000,000. German casualties on the Western Front probably equaled, or exceeded, Allied casualties. There were more than 2,000,000 Germans captured by the Allies in the West. German statistics have been less precise because of records destroyed and a progressively disintegrating German support staff at all unit levels that kept and maintained accurate figures.
The Third Army claimed by its records to have killed 47,500 and wounded 115,700 of the enemy between August 1, 1944 and May 9, 1945 at the time hostilities were to have ceased. There were 765,483 prisoners captured during the same time period. Between May 9 and May 13, there were 515,205 prisoners who were processed by various U.S. Army corps and division cages. This gave a total of 1,280,688 enemy prisoners captured. To include the killed and wounded, total enemy losses attributed to the Third Army were estimated at 1,443,888.
Between August 1, 1944 and May 9, 1945 (0001 B hours or one minute past midnight, double daylight saving time) the Third Army lost 27,104 killed and 86,267 wounded. There were 18,957 injuries of all kinds and 28,237 men listed as missing in action. To include 127 men captured by the enemy, brought total casualties of the Third Army to 160,692 in 281 continuous days of operations.
So the report of May 1945 claims 144,500 killed, 386,200 wounded of the enemy, whereas individual reports by Third Army units apparently add up to 47,500 killed and 115,700 wounded of the enemy according to Fuller. A difference of 97,000 killed and 270,500 wounded. Could it be that the May 1945 report was one of the sources behind Marshall's 263,000 figure? If so, and if Fuller's review of Third Army records is correct, Marshall's figure would have to be reduced by 97,000 from 263,000 to 166,000.
Marshall's figures also seem to be too high as concerns the Battle of the Bulge. From my article:
Throughout history military commanders have tended to overestimate or deliberately overstate casualties inflicted on the enemy side, especially where such casualties could not be accurately counted (as is usually the case with enemy dead and wounded, whereas the number of prisoners of war taken can be more precisely assessed). Was Marshall a big exception to this rule, a military commander who underestimated enemy fatalities by a factor of about 2.15? There is no indication in this direction in his mention of German casualties throughout his reports, on the contrary. Regarding the outcome of the German Ardennes Offensive (16 December 1944 – 29 January 1945), Marshall wrote the following:[20]
The Germans gained an initial tactical success and imposed a delay of about six weeks on the main Allied offensive in the north, but failed to seize their primary objectives of Liege and Namur. They lost 220,000 men, including 110,000 prisoners, and more than 1,400 tanks and assault guns. The operation was carried out by the Fifth and Sixth Panzer Armies, supported by the Seventh Army, thus stripping the Reich of all strategic reserves and seriously depleting the resources required to meet the powerful Soviet offensive in January.
Marshall’s figure of 220,000 German casualties in the Ardennes Offensive, thereof 110,000 killed and wounded and 110,000 prisoners of war, has not been confirmed by military historiography. The lowest estimate comes from Dipl.-oec. Ralph W. Göhlert of the Militärhistorischer Arbeitskreis, RK Ratingen, who states that the losses of the three armies involved in the offensive were about 68,000 men, thereof 10,749 killed, 35,169 wounded and 22,388 missing, versus Allied casualties of about 77,000, thereof 8,607 killed, 47,138 wounded and 21,144 missing.[21] Antony Beevor writes the following:[22]
German and Allied casualties in the Ardennes fighting from 16 December 1944 to 29 January 1945 were fairly equal. Total German losses were around 80,000 dead, wounded and missing. The Americans suffered 75,482 casualties, with 8,407 killed. The British lost 1,408, of whom 200 were killed. The unfortunate 106th Infantry Division lost the most men, 8,568, but many of them were prisoners of war. The 101st Airborne suffered the highest death rate with 535 killed in action.
Roger Cirillo of the US Army Center of Military History provides the following information[23] :
No official German losses for the Ardennes have been computed but they have been estimated at between 81,000 and 103,000. A recently published German scholarly source gave the following German casualty totals: Ardennes-67,200; Alsace (not including Colmar Pocket)-22,932.
The above-quoted sources suggest that Marshall’s aforementioned figure of German casualties in the Ardennes Offensive is rather on the high side, which in turn suggests the same for his overall total of 263,000 deaths on the German side.
So it seems likely that the inventive Marshall erred on the high rather than on the low side. That also seems to be case with some of his figures for Japanese casualties. I compared these with the figures from the Japanese Relief Bureau of the Ministry of Health and Welfare in March 1964, which are available under
http://ajrp.awm.gov.au/ajrp/AJRP2.nsf/5 ... enDocument, and reached the conclusion that Marshall's figure for China is much lower than that of the Relief Bureau (126,000 vs. 435,600), but for the theaters where Japanese forces confronted American and British Empire forces the sum of Marshall's figures (1,093,000) is slightly higher than the sum of the Relief Bureau's figures for the Japanese army (i.e. not including the navy) in these theaters (1,020,900). The details of my comparison are under
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_ca ... an_Losses .
