German losses from April 44 till may 45 (Eastern Front)

[DavidFrankenberg]

Hi,

all is in the title : what were the German losses from April 44 till may 45 on the Eastern Front ?
By eastern front, I mean the German losses inflicted by the Red Army in USSR but also in Eastern Europe (44) and in Germany (45).

1 million dead ?

[Michael Kenny]

The short answer is the actual number is unknown.

[DavidFrankenberg]

The short answer is the actual number is unknown.

Not even a little estimate ?

[Art]

There are known estimates by Overmans:

For the year 1945 Overmans gives the aggregate numbers without breakdown by fronts. It should be borne in mind that these numbers are probably maximal estimates.

[Richard Anderson]

For the year 1945 Overmans gives the aggregate numbers without breakdown by fronts. It should be borne in mind that these numbers are probably maximal estimates.

I'm still wondering how he estimated a third of a million casualties after 8 May 1945...

[Art]

POWs death, I guess.

[Richard Anderson]

POWs death, I guess.

Because German POW were systematically starved and murdered after the war by the Allies? Yeah, but no.

[Jan-Hendrik]

Overmanns and his 'interpolations'....old story. Simply sucks...

Jan-Hendrik

[DavidFrankenberg]

There are known estimates by Overmans:

For the year 1945 Overmans gives the aggregate numbers without breakdown by fronts. It should be borne in mind that these numbers are probably maximal estimates.

Thank you Art. So it is like 1 million German losses for the eastern front for 1944 and 1945.

What about German losses from January till march ? I don't remember great battles during that time.

Overmanns and his 'interpolations'....old story. Simply sucks...

Jan-Hendrik

Do you have better sources, please ?
Thank you in advance.

[Art]

Original (and sometimes seriously downstated) reports are available down the link:
https://web.archive.org/web/20161109232 ... okw44.html

[stg 44]

POWs death, I guess.

Because German POW were systematically starved and murdered after the war by the Allies? Yeah, but no.

Soviet records do show that something like 450k German PoWs died in Soviet custody and likely many more died before they could be added to PoW rolls given the large number of permanent missing. So no, not Basque's 'other losses' or systematic starvation (other than arguably what happened to the Stalingrad PoWs) like what the Germans did to the Soviet PoWs in 1941-42, but still a substantial mortality rate.

[Art]

Soviet records do show that something like 450k German PoWs died in Soviet custody

Official numbers are 380,000 death of POWs from the German Wehrmacht, not all of whom were actually Germans by ethnicity. The bulk of these deaths happened before May 1945. There were probably slightly more than 100,000 deaths beginning from June 1945 and until the end of repatriation.

given the large number of permanent missing

I would attribute them to the gap in reporting.

[Peter89]

POWs death, I guess.

Because German POW were systematically starved and murdered after the war by the Allies? Yeah, but no.

In the case of Hungary, the POWs and other rounded-up males were very badly treated in slave labor camps in the SU. Even if it was not a systematic plan, thousands perished of infections, malnutrition and cold.

To be fair, I personally met and talked to some people who were taken away to do forced labor in Kiev, and the guy was so talented (he was a plumber) that the Soviets wanted to keep him there, offered him a flat, a decent salary and multiple wives.

About 30% of the Hungarian POWs and malenkij robot prisoners died.

[Richard Anderson]

POWs death, I guess.

Because German POW were systematically starved and murdered after the war by the Allies? Yeah, but no.

In the case of Hungary, the POWs and other rounded-up males were very badly treated in slave labor camps in the SU. Even if it was not a systematic plan, thousands perished of infections, malnutrition and cold.

To be fair, I personally met and talked to some people who were taken away to do forced labor in Kiev, and the guy was so talented (he was a plumber) that the Soviets wanted to keep him there, offered him a flat, a decent salary and multiple wives.

About 30% of the Hungarian POWs and malenkij robot prisoners died.

I understand, but when we have reasonably well documented estimates of c. 178,000 postwar PW deaths becoming 750,000, then I have a problem. The only way that Overmann can make it work is by forcing a further 575,000 deaths into the wartime years, after already shoehorning in hundreds of thousands into those years with little explanation of how they occurred other than "German reporting was bad", which simply wasn't the case.

[Art]

The number of Hungarian POWs death in 1944-1949 was about 50,000 of nearly half a million registered prisoners.