German losses per font and year?

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dead-cat
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German losses per font and year?

#1

Post by dead-cat » 03 Feb 2004, 18:27

does anyone have access to german casualty figues by front and year?
ex. Western front 1914/ Eastern front 1914 etc.

thanx.

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Peter H
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#2

Post by Peter H » 04 Feb 2004, 14:16

Churchill's The World Crisis gives Reicharchiv figures for the Western front only.

1914
Killed 171,575
Missing 118,760
Wounded 557,152
Total 847,487

1915
Killed 122,896
Missing 87,105
Wounded 442,869
Total 652,870

1916
Killed 154,256
Missing 158,672
Wounded 651,560
Total 964,488

1917
Killed 143,826
Missing 180,954
Wounded 559,199
Total 883,979

1918
Killed 196,847
Missing 423,326
Wounded 877,962
Total 1,498,135

Missing=Missing in action/Prisoners of War


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Lord Gort
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#3

Post by Lord Gort » 04 Feb 2004, 17:11

Interesting to see that the figures for those wounded and killed increases in 1916 probably due to the Somme and Verdun and in 1918, the Kaiserschlact.


I read in A.J.P.Taylo that the number of German soldiers on the western front actually increased every year, until the losses of 1918, from the number serving the year before. Incredible, their armies were being added to more and more with each succesive draft.



regards,

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dead-cat
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#4

Post by dead-cat » 04 Feb 2004, 17:29

thanx alot Moulded!


now a few thoughts:
the most often quoted figures for the numer of war deaths is 1 773 700 respectively 1 152 800 for missing&POW.

now if i add up the western front deaths i end up with 789 400 and 968 817 missing&POW.

that'd leave 984 300 deaths and 183 983 for the eastern front + balkans.

more dead in east than in the west? unlikley. maybe the number of POW&missing is correct for the east but the dead certainly not.
wounded is 3 088 742 west vs. 1 127 316 east.
the ratio of kills vs. wounded is between 0,3-0,45 : 1 for pretty much all major combattants
but on the eastern front it would be 0,87:1 which doesn't fit in the scheme. the medical assistance wasn't all that bad in the east for the german troops. there was no somme, no verdun, no 2nd and 3rd ypres and no michael also, not to talk about frontier battles. not a war of attrition, at least not for the german army. neither was the war in Romania a war of attrition, nor the operations in Serbia.

a bit confusing...

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dead-cat
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#5

Post by dead-cat » 04 Feb 2004, 17:34

I read in A.J.P.Taylo that the number of German soldiers on the western front actually increased every year, until the losses of 1918, from the number serving the year before. Incredible, their armies were being added to more and more with each succesive draft.
well i think it's normal that the numbers for 1915 and 1917 and lower than for the years before since during those years the germans shifted the focus to the eastern front and were on the defensive in the west.

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Peter H
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#6

Post by Peter H » 05 Feb 2004, 12:09

dead-cat,
German casualty records are somewhat unreliable.

I got this from another forum a few years ago,reconciling German dead for WW1.
Western Front deaths

789,400 as per incomplete Reichsarchiv records
300,000 died of wounds(initially included in Wounded figure)
364,000 Missing--later listed as dead
40,000 KIA against Americans(excluded from Churchill's figures)
1,493,400 Total Western Front

Other Fronts
500,000 Eastern Front/Rumania/Italy/Serbia
55,066 POWs subsequently died of privatition/disease

2,048,466 Total German military deaths in WW1

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dead-cat
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#7

Post by dead-cat » 05 Feb 2004, 14:07

the cca. 300 000 died of wounds probably explain the diffrence between the 1.773 million and 2.048 million figures, but i belive having read that those 300K died after 11.11.1918. the qestion is, if somebody was severly wounded during, let's say oct. 1918 and he dies in mid-late 1919 or so, should that person count as dead or wounded?

i assumed the MIA&POW figures tto be relativley accurate since, at least the allies should be able to count the POWs detained in their camps. then one should be able to estimate the number of MIAs (which were probably dead 99%) to asses the KIA numer more exactly.
so i allways thought the 1 152 800 figure for MIA&POW is based on allied data and actually represents the numer of POW.

the 500 000 for other theatres sounds reasonable just as the 1,493,400 figure for the western front (perhaps substracting the mentioned 300K dead after 11.11.1918).

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Peter H
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#8

Post by Peter H » 05 Feb 2004, 14:35

As I understand it the German war dead figure of 1.773 million was the accepted figure up until the early 1920s.Then it was updated as data on the missing and died of wounds(including postwar 1919) was tabulated.By the late 1920s reported war deaths had increased to around 1.9 million,by 1936 the finalised accepted figure was 2.05 million.However someone who died of lung damage due to gassing 10 years after the event would not be in the mortality figures.

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#9

Post by Anthony EJW » 05 Feb 2004, 20:15

Picked this up from a debate an a similar subject several months ago,
Robert Weldon Whalen's, Bitter Wounds: German Victims of the Great War, 1914-1939 (Cornell University Press, 1984) gives the adjusted official death toll (Dec 31 each year)

1914 142,502
1915 628,445
1916 963,501
1917 1,271,573
1918 1,621,034
1919 1,718,608
1920 1,842,459
1933 1,900,876
1938 2,037,000

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