I had a question regarding total German deaths during the Second World War. The Third Reich Factbook places the total Wehrmach deaths at 4,859,056 (4,202,030 in the army alone.) Now, those numbes seemed high to me so I looked at another source (http://www.feldgrau.com) and they listed some different numbers.
According to feldgrau.com, the entire Wehrmacht suffered 2,230,324 deaths, and of those around 1,600,000 were in the army. These numbers seemed a little small to me.
Now, obviously these both can't be correct. Which is more accurate of how many really died? Does anybody know?
-- Zachary White
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Wehrmacht losses
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ZackdeBlanc
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Christoph Awender
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Casualties
Hello!
There are several threads about this topic already in the forum.
Here is a document I found at the BAMA and reconstructed.
Hope it helps,
Christoph
There are several threads about this topic already in the forum.
Here is a document I found at the BAMA and reconstructed.
Hope it helps,
Christoph
Well - I believe the TR numbers are Overmans. The Feldgrau numbers were unsourced the last time I looked at them, but they seem likely to be derived directly from contemporary overviews like the one kindly provided by Christoph, which certainly are too low as far as fatalities are concerned. Note that Christophs document provides "Gefallene", i.e. KIA, which I presume would not, f.e., include dead from wounds. Nor does it include non-army personnell, possibly not even W-SS.
The crux of the matter is really the last six months of the war. For this period, there are no reliable figures from the German reporting system, so source-wise it is a grey area. It is equally key to Overmans figures - he does not find a very big discrepancy between recorded German figures and his own calculations prior to the last phase of the war, and the most striking aspect with his figures is a dramatic jump in fatalities during the last phase of the war. Unfortunately, he does not treat the issue of overall casualties, so an outstanding major interpretative issue even if one accepts his figures is whether this reflects primarily an increased fatality rate relative to overall casualties, or whether there was a similiarly dramatic jump in overall casualties. The former seems intuitively likely to a certain degree I think.
Some interesting aspects with Christophs document. In the KTB-OKW there is a relatively similar report covering the period until the end of March 1945, giving a total casualty figure about 1 million lower than this, but with a roughly similar number of KIA.
cheers
The crux of the matter is really the last six months of the war. For this period, there are no reliable figures from the German reporting system, so source-wise it is a grey area. It is equally key to Overmans figures - he does not find a very big discrepancy between recorded German figures and his own calculations prior to the last phase of the war, and the most striking aspect with his figures is a dramatic jump in fatalities during the last phase of the war. Unfortunately, he does not treat the issue of overall casualties, so an outstanding major interpretative issue even if one accepts his figures is whether this reflects primarily an increased fatality rate relative to overall casualties, or whether there was a similiarly dramatic jump in overall casualties. The former seems intuitively likely to a certain degree I think.
Some interesting aspects with Christophs document. In the KTB-OKW there is a relatively similar report covering the period until the end of March 1945, giving a total casualty figure about 1 million lower than this, but with a roughly similar number of KIA.
cheers