German Losses (KIA)

[Art]

3. WASt's running total through February 1945:

1944 Heer
KIA Tote Kr/Unf Selbstm T in Gef. Vermisst Wounded Verletzungen (Feld und Heimat) KGF (England) Interniert

Qvist, could you clarify these designations? I don't understand all of them, I'm afraid. Thank you in advance.

[Qvist]

With pleasure. And as usual, apologies for the poor formatting.

KIA - self-explanatory
Tote Kr/Unf - Dead from sickness and accident
Selbstm - Dead from suicide
T in Gef. - Dead in captivity (in practice only Western Front I think)
Vermisst - Missing
Wounded - Self-explanatory
Verletzungen (Feld und Heimat) - Literally, injuries (field and home). I am actually quite curious myslef just what this refers to, especially in view of the large number of cases. This is not a term you normally encounter in a casualties context.
KGF (England) - Prisoners of War (only WF)
Interniert - Interned, presumably in neutral countries (such as the crew of GRaf spee in Uruguay etc)

As I understand it, this is the Stand of the individual reports WASt had finished processing, so the figures are practically by definition behind events.

cheers

[Art]

So, the losses of all branches by 30.11.1944 constituted 1 419 505 KIA, 180 172 dead of sickness and accidents, 16 647 suicides, 732 dead POWs, 541 341 non-combat injuries, 4 232 846 wounded, 1 275 833 missing, 69 521 POWs, 1 152 internees. Did I translate your table right? There is pretty much difference in the number of MIA&POWs as compared with other sources as far as I can see. Does the "wounded" catergory include DoW?
Now that's what I called the variant I have, that is the table giving the distribution of losses by years:


Columns:
1. Period (4 lines for each period: Heer+SS/KM/LW/Total)
2. Killed due to enemy action (KIA and DoW)
3. Died from accidents, deseases, suicides
4. ?
5. Executed
6. Total dead
7. Missing, POWs, internees.
7a. Of them POWs
8. Discharged
9. Deserters
10. Total losses
The losses of officers are given in brackets.
Any commments on the table?

[Qvist]

Hello Art,

No, not quite:

KIA 1419505
DOS/A 180172
DOSui 16647
Dead in Capt 732
MIA 541341
WIA 4232846
Verletzungen 1275833
POW 69521
Interned1152

Non-fatal non-combat losses are not included in the above. By 30.11, there were apparently records for some 7,267,000 cases of treatment in hospital of Wehrmacht members for other than combat causes.

Does the "wounded" catergory include DoW?

Good question. I'm not sure. But I would assume it is probably included in what I have called "KIA", and which will probably have been "gefallene" in the original.

Any commments on the table?

In the main, the sort of contrasts you'd expect to see given that the WASt figures represent the Stand of individual Meldungen the WASt had finished processing. The backlog at this time was large, and these totals were I think never intended as totals for anything else than just that. They will have been well aware, for example, that the number of actually missing was hugely larger than the sum of individuals who had been formally classed as such. Otherwise, not too much useful I can add I am afraid - I have not really made any serious attempt yet at trying to get to grips with the overall figures that were appearing late in 44 and in 45. But there's certainly no shortage of competing data sets.

cheers

[Art]

Sorry for late reply. So the loss figures for 29.11.44 represent the numbers of killed, missing, wounded etc that WASt registered by that day and not the actuall losses suffered by November 1944. In other words some losses suffered before 1.11.44 could be registered after that date. Do I understand it right?

[Qvist]

Hi Art.

Yes, and that's an understatement. It is no exaggeration to say that these should not be regarded as casualty overviews at all, but simply as records of the state of WASt's work, in my opinion. Whenever a soldier was killed, wounded, sick or went missing, there would in principle be an individual report making its way back to WASt who would, in due course, process it and add it to the soldier's personal file and its own statistical base. Even if tyhe system worked optimally, it would always be behind events. And optimally it certainly did not work. A report no doubt happened quickly if a Colonel on the WASt staff died of gout, but it probably was not high on the priority list of a Division engaged in hard combat. And in any case, WASt itself was not manned to deal with an avalanche of reports in a limited time. Since these figures were not used for any decision making purpose, there cannot have been any strong impetus to always keep pace with thedevelopment.

Obviously, the greatest difficulties applied when formations got wiped out, and with them the Truppenteile responsible for reporting back to WASt. You have already noted the low MIA figures. Do you recall the figures from the Abwicklungsstäbe I have posted earlier and elsewhere? A notable trait in them is that most of the losses remain classified as "unclarified", while only a very small number of men are formally classed as "Vermisste". That will be the better part of the explanation for the very low number of missing in the WASt figures. Those still classed "unclarified" do not as far as I can understand show up in the WASt figures at all. It is not really very strange when you think about it, considering that these figures represent individual cases of named soldiers.

cheers

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

What were the German military casualties in Poland in period 7 X 1939 - 3 I 1944?

And what were the German military casualties in Poland after 3 I 1944, but not related to the Soviet operations?

[thom]

1. Wehrmacht Zentralstatistik, Stand 30.11.44. Killed includes all causes, including illness, accident etc. But the figures refer only to the Heer.

Theater......Killed..... Missing
Ostfront.......1419728....907858
Poland..........16543.......320
HKG.............64855......1315
West ab 060644...54754....336933
West to 300544....66206....3218
Italy..............47879.......97134
Afrika............12808.......90052
Balkans...........24207.......12060
TOTAL...........1706980.....1448890

BA-MA RH3/134.

Well, some of these figures need to be corrected. RH 3/134 contains barely readable copies while RH 7/653 has the original document:

Theater: killed/missing

East: 1419728/997050
Poland: 16843/320
Norway: 4375/691
Home front: 64055/1315
West after invasion: 54754/338935
West until 30/5/44: 66166/3218
South: 47873/97154
Africa: 12808/90052
Southeast: 24267/12060

[Qvist]

Thanks Thom, that's a useful correction.

cheers

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Poland: 16843/320

In September of 1939.

And what about the whole war?

Are there any statistics for Poland during the whole war, or numbers are simply included into the East or Home Front?

[Qvist]

"Poland" is the polish campaign in 1939, yes. Later fighting on polish territory is of course included in the Eastern campaign. I would suspect that any losses inbetween is included in Heimatkriegsgebiet.

cheers

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Later fighting on polish territory is of course included in the Eastern campaign. I would suspect that any losses inbetween is included in Heimatkriegsgebiet.

The Red Army crossed the pre-war border of Poland on 04.01.1944 and on 21.07.1944 it crossed the river Bug.

Action "Burza" started on 04.01.1944 (when the Red Army crossed the Polish border) and ended in January of 1945.

So I suppose that the vast majority of casualties inflicted by Polish armed resistance movement during Action "Burza" are included in the Eastern campaign. While most probably casualties inflicted to the occupier in period 06.10.1939 - 03.01.1944 are included in Heimatkriegsgebiet.

I have got some data, but very fragmentary. For example German casualties in one Oberfeldkommandantur of GG - OFK Lublin:

In 1942 - 372 killed (on average 31 killed per month) - including Polizei - 86

16.05.1943 - 15.06.1943 - Wehrmacht: 28 killed, Polizei: 15 killed, occupation administration: 19 killed - in total 62.

Casualties of Orpo and Sipo during first 7 months of 1943 - Orpo: 142 killed, Sipo: 46 killed

January 1944 - June 1944 (during Action "Burza") - 6102 killed (on average 1017 killed per month)

And these are casualties only in one district of GG - OFK Lublin - according to reports of KdS of this district.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

By the way:

Poland: 16843/320

Does this document provide information how many of them were officers?

[thom]

Not this document. But there is another one in RH 7/653 which compares different German loss reporting channels (also cited in Overmans' book, p. 54). Early reports gave figures of 593 (Sanitaetsinspektion) or 759 (KTB) killed officers during the Polish campaign. More completed 1944 figures (WVW) give a number of 819 officers killed. The figures refer to the Heer only.

[Piotr Kapuscinski]

Yes - I know all of these figures (I've read Overmans).

No of them is complete.

The biggest figure - 819 killed officers - comes from the report from 30.08.1944 (in this report it is underlined that these are not complete casualties and official numbers might grow in the future).

It provides the number of total KIA of Heer as 15450 (including 819 officers), while the real casualty number of Heer in Poland (the one given in the report from 30.11.1944 - so the last known report concerning Heer casualties in Poland made before the fall of the III Reich) was at least 16843 killed + 320 missing (as many as 1713 men more), so the number of officers of Heer killed or missing was certainly also much bigger than 819.

Moreover - see here:

http://forum.axishistory.com/viewtopic. ... 20&start=0

We already have got much more than 819 KIA officers - almost 900 (although some of them are from Luftwaffe, the number of officers from Heer is still bigger than 819).

So I guess that if there is no any known official "final" figure for German officers KIA in Poland, this thread is going to help in establishing at least an estimated figure.

Best regards!
Peter