German Losses (KIA)
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Hi Qvist,
As mentioned above, those are killed, wounded and missing totals.
I got them many years ago in the the Imperial War Museum's archive section. They are from photocopied (i.e. photographed in the 1940s or 1950s) German military archives. I think the same material is available in the US Archives on microfilm. Unfortunately this set are from a previous computer record and do not have a specific reference attached and my original hand-written notes are long since stored in the garage.
If I remember correctly, Overmans compiles his figures by taking a statistical sample of personnel records, whereas the above are theatre returns.
Sorry to be so vague.
Sid.
As mentioned above, those are killed, wounded and missing totals.
I got them many years ago in the the Imperial War Museum's archive section. They are from photocopied (i.e. photographed in the 1940s or 1950s) German military archives. I think the same material is available in the US Archives on microfilm. Unfortunately this set are from a previous computer record and do not have a specific reference attached and my original hand-written notes are long since stored in the garage.
If I remember correctly, Overmans compiles his figures by taking a statistical sample of personnel records, whereas the above are theatre returns.
Sorry to be so vague.
Sid.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Thanks anyway Sid.
cheers
cheers
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
As I can see the loss figure for 31 March 1945 is the same as in this document:Qvist wrote:
- These are KIA, WIA and MIA totals?
- What reports are these? The figures are completely different from the Heeresarzt OKH summaries. Which isn't a bad sign really.
http://chrito.users1.50megs.com/verluste1.gif
Hope that helps
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Hi Art,
Thanks. At least I am not fantasizing!
Sid.
Thanks. At least I am not fantasizing!
Sid.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Qvist, Sid & Art,
The losses of OB-Südost are 105.000 that resembles the numbers Sid presents.
But ............look at the losses for the 6th Army and I loose every faith in the numbers presented in the tables.
You all know of the horrendous losses of 6th Army at Stalingrad and the second disastrous encirclement of august 1944 (again with both Rumanian armies on its wings!).
The grand total doesn't fit in the picture Overmans give us. There is a real huge gap between the grand-total and the 5,3 million losses KIA/MIA of Overmans.
Qvist, I again agree on all your remarks. Dienststelle WASt & Volksbundes Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK).
Yes my approach has its faults, but see no other that fits better.
The approach can be intensified by reading German divisional documents on losses of those divisions which operated in the mentioned areas in a given time span. This is a lot of work and the sources must be clear on losses too. Of course it all results in rough or less rough estimations.
The losses of OB-Südost are 105.000 that resembles the numbers Sid presents.
But ............look at the losses for the 6th Army and I loose every faith in the numbers presented in the tables.
You all know of the horrendous losses of 6th Army at Stalingrad and the second disastrous encirclement of august 1944 (again with both Rumanian armies on its wings!).
The grand total doesn't fit in the picture Overmans give us. There is a real huge gap between the grand-total and the 5,3 million losses KIA/MIA of Overmans.
Qvist, I again agree on all your remarks. Dienststelle WASt & Volksbundes Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK).
Yes my approach has its faults, but see no other that fits better.
The approach can be intensified by reading German divisional documents on losses of those divisions which operated in the mentioned areas in a given time span. This is a lot of work and the sources must be clear on losses too. Of course it all results in rough or less rough estimations.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Sorry, but the April 1945 figures for the 6. Armee are for the second iteration. The losses of the "Stalingrad" 6. Armee are subsumed into the 1.3-million "Verschiedene".Bergveen wrote:But ............look at the losses for the 6th Army and I loose every faith in the numbers presented in the tables.
You all know of the horrendous losses of 6th Army at Stalingrad and the second disastrous encirclement of august 1944 (again with both Rumanian armies on its wings!).
Perhaps because Overmans "picture" is in fact incorrect? The criticism of his methodology by Niklas Zetterling is perhaps the best. I suggest you read it. But to put it succinctly, Overman relied on a dubious statistical sampling methodology and compounded that error by make some - to put it charitably - dubious assumptions. Overmans’ argument, in its fundamentals, is that previous estimates of German losses undercounted military deaths in the war by as much as 2.2-million. He arrives at that figure by a statistical analysis of a sample of the Allgemeine Kartei, which totals 15.2-million and which in theory represents those Wehrmacht personnel who did not die in combat (that number is documented in the approximately 3.1-million Totenkartei). Now, given that the evidence is that possibly 496,000 of those acknowledged “war” casualties were not combat related (the 16 percent figure above), is it surprising that 14.4 percent of the Allgemeine Kartei sample investigated by Overmans contained cases he classified as additional deaths? One could as easily say that Overmans’ sample was too small (7,619 of 15.2-million or 0.05 percent of the total) and that it is just as likely that 16 percent of the personnel represented in the Allgemeine Kartei, or 2.432-million is the correct number of “additional” deaths.The grand total doesn't fit in the picture Overmans give us. There is a real huge gap between the grand-total and the 5,3 million losses KIA/MIA of Overmans.
The crux of the matter is that Overmans assumes that the majority of these “additional” deaths were due to combat. Unfortunately, there does not appear to be much evidence for this theory. Furthermore, his conclusion that the German casualty reporting system prior to 1945 was highly inaccurate has been dealt with in Zetterling’s critique. Zetterling demonstrates that Overmans data, as found in his table of confidence intervals, closely matches the data provided for the Heersartz (on the Ostfront through 4 September the Heeresartz reported about 1,220,000 killed and wounded whereas Overmans calculates 1,240,000 for the same period).
Fundamentally, Overmans problem is that military casualty reporting systems are not really designed to answer the question he raised – “how many German servicemen lost their lives”? Rather, such systems are designed as manpower management tools and as means for tracking the combat effectiveness of a force.
To start, you may want to begin by making sure that your assumptions fit the facts, rather than adjusting the facts to fit your assumptions.Qvist, I again agree on all your remarks. Dienststelle WASt & Volksbundes Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK).
Yes my approach has its faults, but see no other that fits better.

Why is that methodology so superior when there are vast holes in the divisional documentation? Essentially, as Qvist has intimated, we have a very good and accurate picture of German casualties though early January 1945, after that everything is basically speculation. Now we can chose to accept or reject documented figures based upon their source, but replacing them with numbers made up to fit into assumptions doesn't help things much?The approach can be intensified by reading German divisional documents on losses of those divisions which operated in the mentioned areas in a given time span. This is a lot of work and the sources must be clear on losses too. Of course it all results in rough or less rough estimations.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Just a comment on this - a sample size of 7,619 is excellent, regardless of the population size (in this case 15.2M) as long as the sample was randomly selected. Statistically, 'all' that changing the sample size does is adjust the confidence in the results (which, to be fair, is no small matter).RichTO90 wrote:One could as easily say that Overmans’ sample was too small (7,619 of 15.2-million or 0.05 percent of the total)
In general terms, 1000 (random) samples is sufficient to be confident that the answer the sample gives is within 5% of the true answer.
Summary: You may be able to attack Overmans on his sampling methodology, but you can't really mount a legitimate attack on the sample size.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Huh? Are you a statistician too?JonS wrote:Just a comment on this - a sample size of 7,619 is excellent, regardless of the population size (in this case 15.2M) as long as the sample was randomly selected. Statistically, 'all' that changing the sample size does is adjust the confidence in the results (which, to be fair, is no small matter).
In general terms, 1000 (random) samples is sufficient to be confident that the answer the sample gives is within 5% of the true answer.
Summary: You may be able to attack Overmans on his sampling methodology, but you can't really mount a legitimate attack on the sample size.

I probably didn't word that correctly, not being a statistician myself, and anyway that part I wrote about four years ago after a conversation with Niklas. My point is that whether or not Overman's total assumed deaths is correct or not is irrelevent since the "missing" number can be as easily accounted for by unrecorded natural deaths as anything. There is also little evidence that his sampling methodology was acceptable, for one thing there is no firm date of death on many of the Kartei and they were collected into the 1950s so it is just as likely that a proportion of those "wartime" deaths didn't even occur during the war.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Note however that Overmans' almost similar figure refers only to the period up to October 1944.The losses of OB-Südost are 105.000 that resembles the numbers Sid presents.
As Rich points out, these casualties are contained in the "Verschiedene" category. It's a good idea to understand the structure of the document before dismissing it.But ............look at the losses for the 6th Army and I loose every faith in the numbers presented in the tables.
You all know of the horrendous losses of 6th Army at Stalingrad and the second disastrous encirclement of august 1944 (again with both Rumanian armies on its wings!).
Of course it doesn't. Even if Overmans and this document was completely accurate (neither of which is likely to be the case), they would not be even remotely similar. You do not appear to understand either the documentation or Overmans fully. Overmans does not give a figure for KIA/MIA. He gives a figure of dead German servicemen, or to be even more precise, of dead German males of military age whose records at Deutsche Dienststelle do not show as having died after the war for non-war-related causes. 'This includes not just the possible problems mentioned by Rich, but also for example soldiers who died of illness or wounds during the war. None of these are encompassed by the figures in the above report. Nor are the casualties of the Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine.The grand total doesn't fit in the picture Overmans give us. There is a real huge gap between the grand-total and the 5,3 million losses KIA/MIA of Overmans.
Well then, I would suggest to simply accept that the source basis for any firm figures of German war dead does not exist. There is no way anybody is ever going to account reliably for hundreds of thousands of German soliders who could be killed in action, dead of aother causes, dead after capture but beffore registration, dead in captivity or dead after the war for unrelated causes. War graves, the sort of investigation Overmans made and the surviving documentation all suggest a certain magnitude, and within the field they betwen them define lies the answer.Qvist, I again agree on all your remarks. Dienststelle WASt & Volksbundes Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VDK).
Yes my approach has its faults, but see no other that fits better.
And why's the question so important anyway? From the point of view of the human cost of the war, it makes no difference if a soldier died chopping timber in Siberia, from a bullet at the front or in some other way or some other place. And from the point of view of analysing military campaigns, a general figure of deaths is pointless and unusable for any analytical purpose I can think of. What matters there is if he became a casualty of some sort of other, exactly when and as part of which command, not when and if he died.
Sure, you can conceivably try to do that. But the effort would be gargantuan just for one area, and would never enable you to reach a global figure. If, that is, the divisional records had been more or less complete. As Rich points out, they are not. The surviving documentation of the German army is fragmentary, that is simply an unfortunate fact that historians have to live with.The approach can be intensified by reading German divisional documents on losses of those divisions which operated in the mentioned areas in a given time span. This is a lot of work and the sources must be clear on losses too. Of course it all results in rough or less rough estimations.
cheers
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Hi Bergveen,
You write "look at the losses for the 6th Army and I loose every faith in the numbers presented in the tables."
The specifics have been answered well by others above. I would just add that, if not corrected by those others, in this case you would have thrown out perfectly sound primary source material based on a false premise. I would urge you to be more measured in your approach.
Cheers,
Sid.
You write "look at the losses for the 6th Army and I loose every faith in the numbers presented in the tables."
The specifics have been answered well by others above. I would just add that, if not corrected by those others, in this case you would have thrown out perfectly sound primary source material based on a false premise. I would urge you to be more measured in your approach.
Cheers,
Sid.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Hi Qvist,Qvist wrote:Of course it doesn't. Even if Overmans and this document was completely accurate (neither of which is likely to be the case), they would not be even remotely similar. You do not appear to understand either the documentation or Overmans fully. Overmans does not give a figure for KIA/MIA. He gives a figure of dead German servicemen, or to be even more precise, of dead German males of military age whose records at Deutsche Dienststelle do not show as having died after the war for non-war-related causes. 'This includes not just the possible problems mentioned by Rich, but also for example soldiers who died of illness or wounds during the war. None of these are encompassed by the figures in the above report. Nor are the casualties of the Luftwaffe or Kriegsmarine.
I think part of the problem may be that many simply don't appear to realize or appreciate the immensity of the Wehrmacht wartime non-battle losses and that even the known figures for that are incomplete. Nor do I think is it realized that the majority of the German wartime death reports only include battle deaths. The most complete global report - but only including Heer (and Waffen SS?), KM and LW is Total Losses of the Wehrmacht (Gesamtausfälle der Wehrmacht) by Year (1 Sep-31 Aug) as of 30 November 1944 (NARA T78, R414, F3184). That reveals that as of 30 November 1944, along with 1,722,616 KIA and DOW Wehrmacht deaths also included 326,630 dead of disease and accidents, 270 dead from unknown or unspecified causes, 9,513 executed, as well as 1,435,853 MIA and 278,201 known PW. IN other words, for every 5.12 combat related deaths there was another death that was unrelated to combat.
Now, given that the last "war year" in the report (1944/1945) at that time actually only encompassed three of those final eight months, and yet had already resulted in 128,904 KIA, 10,727 dead, 82 executed, 236,229 MIA, and 28,037 PW, it seems apparent that the "trend" was pretty obviously on an upswing?
Furthermore, the report tells us that as of 30 Noevember 1944 a total of 438,352 Wehrmacht members had been discharged because of wounds, injuries, or illness that had disabled them severely enough that they could no longer serve. As would be expected, their long-term health prospects weren't good.
And yet Overman does not distinguish in any way in his sampling methodology between those categories, as you say, he only was interested in "total deaths"; a term that has a demographic importance but which in the context of military analysis is meaningless.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Hi Rich,
Very true on all points. I am reminded also of the example Niklas Zetterling uses in his critique to show that the recorded total actually matches Overmans' very well at this point, and which demonstrates just what a major impact death from wounds and non-combat related deaths had on the figures.
Generally I find that Overmans pays remarkably little attention to what the actual scope of a given channel of reporting was. In several cases he quotes contrasting figures from different channels as signs of the unreliability of the reporting, when it is in fact clear that they operate with different scopes making it entirely unsurprising that they give different figures. As far as I can see, he also has a major problem - particularly with regard to the distribution of losses in time - with two things, who are somewhat connected. One is his assumption that last sign of life is identical with time of death. The other is the fact that he subtracts only the number of soldiers confirmed as dead in captivity, while at the same time accepting that the Maschke commission estimate -which is many hundred thousamnd higher - is reasonable. If the latter is true, that means his figures not only reflect deaths in captivity as deaths in combat, but also that they place a very large number of such deaths at the last point the soldier gave a sign of life before being captured. In any case, as you say , the figures are only interesting demographically. The way they are constructed, they simply do not give a result that can be meaningfully understood as combat losses.
That being said, Given the state of the documentation, I think an investigation of the sort he has made is an obvious option to answer the question he has formulated, and also because it can perhaps yield some interesting perspectives on the reporting. There is some support in the documentation itself for regarding aspects of it with scepticism. When Wehrmacht Verlustwesen Zentralstatistik dug their heels into the problem in 1944, they discovered some quite worrying shortcomings - it turned out that when they investigated the number of deaths more closely through the more roundabout route of going through the Wehrersatzdienststellen, they got figures which were very considerably higher than existed with other Dienststellen, for all fronts and campaigns. For instance, the Heeresarzt OKH had 165,467 deaths recorded in the East for the summer of 1943, while investigations through the Wehrersatzdienststellen came up with 193,508 - and that didn't even include death from wounds, which apparently the Heeresarzt figure did. They appear to have concluded that the system simply was not working adequately. It's hard to ignore that, although this - importantly - pertain to deaths and not to the overall total of casualties. It is hence possible that it is a question of distribution between different types of losses. But to return to the point I was about to make, I believe he makes a fundamental error in simply dismissing the documentation completely and making no use of it. Firstly, he has done nothing to prove that this is generally warranted. Secondly, even if it is reasonable to assume that the documentation cannot answer his question directly, that does not mean that it has no value as for it, in any respect. It seems to me that on the contrary an investigation of the kind he makes would be most useful if regarded as a corrective to the reporting rather than an alternative to it, which it cannot be even if it is 100% successful. And, in some cases the documentation poses a problem for his findings. Take for example his Balkan figure. More than 100,000 deaths before 1 October 1944, a figure many times higher than any other source states. It seems obvious to me that it simply lacks the most basic plausibility that the reporting was off by several orders of magnitude in a theater were casualties occurred so seldom as here. It's one thing if losses in the East were 20% off in some channel of reporting, but several 100% in a theater with a trivial level of losses? This ought at least to have caused him to ask himself how this could conceivably be explained, and if he had used the documentation he presumably would have. Unfortunately, by far the most plausible explanation in my opinion is that his methodology doesn't work well, at a minimum when it comes to distributing losses accurately in time and by theater.
cheers
Very true on all points. I am reminded also of the example Niklas Zetterling uses in his critique to show that the recorded total actually matches Overmans' very well at this point, and which demonstrates just what a major impact death from wounds and non-combat related deaths had on the figures.
Generally I find that Overmans pays remarkably little attention to what the actual scope of a given channel of reporting was. In several cases he quotes contrasting figures from different channels as signs of the unreliability of the reporting, when it is in fact clear that they operate with different scopes making it entirely unsurprising that they give different figures. As far as I can see, he also has a major problem - particularly with regard to the distribution of losses in time - with two things, who are somewhat connected. One is his assumption that last sign of life is identical with time of death. The other is the fact that he subtracts only the number of soldiers confirmed as dead in captivity, while at the same time accepting that the Maschke commission estimate -which is many hundred thousamnd higher - is reasonable. If the latter is true, that means his figures not only reflect deaths in captivity as deaths in combat, but also that they place a very large number of such deaths at the last point the soldier gave a sign of life before being captured. In any case, as you say , the figures are only interesting demographically. The way they are constructed, they simply do not give a result that can be meaningfully understood as combat losses.
That being said, Given the state of the documentation, I think an investigation of the sort he has made is an obvious option to answer the question he has formulated, and also because it can perhaps yield some interesting perspectives on the reporting. There is some support in the documentation itself for regarding aspects of it with scepticism. When Wehrmacht Verlustwesen Zentralstatistik dug their heels into the problem in 1944, they discovered some quite worrying shortcomings - it turned out that when they investigated the number of deaths more closely through the more roundabout route of going through the Wehrersatzdienststellen, they got figures which were very considerably higher than existed with other Dienststellen, for all fronts and campaigns. For instance, the Heeresarzt OKH had 165,467 deaths recorded in the East for the summer of 1943, while investigations through the Wehrersatzdienststellen came up with 193,508 - and that didn't even include death from wounds, which apparently the Heeresarzt figure did. They appear to have concluded that the system simply was not working adequately. It's hard to ignore that, although this - importantly - pertain to deaths and not to the overall total of casualties. It is hence possible that it is a question of distribution between different types of losses. But to return to the point I was about to make, I believe he makes a fundamental error in simply dismissing the documentation completely and making no use of it. Firstly, he has done nothing to prove that this is generally warranted. Secondly, even if it is reasonable to assume that the documentation cannot answer his question directly, that does not mean that it has no value as for it, in any respect. It seems to me that on the contrary an investigation of the kind he makes would be most useful if regarded as a corrective to the reporting rather than an alternative to it, which it cannot be even if it is 100% successful. And, in some cases the documentation poses a problem for his findings. Take for example his Balkan figure. More than 100,000 deaths before 1 October 1944, a figure many times higher than any other source states. It seems obvious to me that it simply lacks the most basic plausibility that the reporting was off by several orders of magnitude in a theater were casualties occurred so seldom as here. It's one thing if losses in the East were 20% off in some channel of reporting, but several 100% in a theater with a trivial level of losses? This ought at least to have caused him to ask himself how this could conceivably be explained, and if he had used the documentation he presumably would have. Unfortunately, by far the most plausible explanation in my opinion is that his methodology doesn't work well, at a minimum when it comes to distributing losses accurately in time and by theater.
cheers
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
To elaborate a little on what Qvist has said, the problem of Overmans’s figures lies within the data itself, rather than in statistical methods employed to judge from the samples, which seems sound according to the tables of confidence he himself provides.
(Except that IMHO he would have been well advised to round of his figures to the nearest thousand instead of giving his calculated figures to the last digit, to avoid the impression of a precision that simply is not there. But that is only cosmetics).
While the data from the Totenkartei (the known death cases) provide fairly safe data on the time of death (and are - at least for the Eastern front - actually in pretty good agreement with Wehrmacht reported casualty figures), the time and circumstances of death of those cases that are not in the Totenkartei (the missing and unclear cases) are often very unclear. In many cases the person was declared dead after the war by a court or a Standesamt, and often of the person's fate nothing is known than a date with a last sign of living (holiday visit or fieldpost letter). This results only in a very vague possibility to judge on the exact time of death.
Worse, the majority of those missing and unclear cases unsurprisingly occur at the final period of the war. But the nearer we come towards the end of the war, the more likely it becomes that postwar deaths are allocated to a certain period (figuratively speaking it is rather unlikely a soldier listed by Overmans as a dead case from the allgemeine Kartei in e.g. 1942 did not give a single sign of living for 3 years of continued military service. However, it is much more likely a soldier gave e.g. his last sign of living in January or February 1945, then experienced the end of the war sitting in some pocket while his home was already overrun or his relatives fleeing and then died in captivity or after the war without any further sign of living being noted by an official authority.
Overmans now (IIUIC, he is not very clear of his method here) simply allocated the death of that person to the period, when that last sign of living was shown, or to the period following that period.
Thus Overmans's weakness IMHO is that apparently he does not recognize this difference in data quality between known dead and unclear fates. Thus he simply lumps together the data from both samples (known dead and unclear fates), again IMHO a very unsatisfying way to treat the data. He would have been much better advised to treat and analyse the two data samples separately.
(Except that IMHO he would have been well advised to round of his figures to the nearest thousand instead of giving his calculated figures to the last digit, to avoid the impression of a precision that simply is not there. But that is only cosmetics).
While the data from the Totenkartei (the known death cases) provide fairly safe data on the time of death (and are - at least for the Eastern front - actually in pretty good agreement with Wehrmacht reported casualty figures), the time and circumstances of death of those cases that are not in the Totenkartei (the missing and unclear cases) are often very unclear. In many cases the person was declared dead after the war by a court or a Standesamt, and often of the person's fate nothing is known than a date with a last sign of living (holiday visit or fieldpost letter). This results only in a very vague possibility to judge on the exact time of death.
Worse, the majority of those missing and unclear cases unsurprisingly occur at the final period of the war. But the nearer we come towards the end of the war, the more likely it becomes that postwar deaths are allocated to a certain period (figuratively speaking it is rather unlikely a soldier listed by Overmans as a dead case from the allgemeine Kartei in e.g. 1942 did not give a single sign of living for 3 years of continued military service. However, it is much more likely a soldier gave e.g. his last sign of living in January or February 1945, then experienced the end of the war sitting in some pocket while his home was already overrun or his relatives fleeing and then died in captivity or after the war without any further sign of living being noted by an official authority.
Overmans now (IIUIC, he is not very clear of his method here) simply allocated the death of that person to the period, when that last sign of living was shown, or to the period following that period.
Thus Overmans's weakness IMHO is that apparently he does not recognize this difference in data quality between known dead and unclear fates. Thus he simply lumps together the data from both samples (known dead and unclear fates), again IMHO a very unsatisfying way to treat the data. He would have been much better advised to treat and analyse the two data samples separately.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
Interesting, the variant I have gives 1 725 616 killed and died of wounds, 175 901 non-combat deaths, 270 death due to uknown reasons, 9 513 executed, 1 714 054 missing including 278 201 POWs in Wehrmacht and SS by 30 November 1944. All the figures are almost identical except noncombat deaths, in my variant they consitute less then 10 % of the total number of deaths. Can anybody clarify this? It's worth to notice that in my variant the total numbers of dead and missing for Heer and SS and their distribution by years are identical to those given by Mueller-Hillebrand.RichTO90 wrote: The most complete global report - but only including Heer (and Waffen SS?), KM and LW is Total Losses of the Wehrmacht (Gesamtausfälle der Wehrmacht) by Year (1 Sep-31 Aug) as of 30 November 1944 (NARA T78, R414, F3184). That reveals that as of 30 November 1944, along with 1,722,616 KIA and DOW Wehrmacht deaths also included 326,630 dead of disease and accidents, 270 dead from unknown or unspecified causes, 9,513 executed, as well as 1,435,853 MIA and 278,201 known PW.
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Re: German Losses (KIA)
There are many of this exact type of overview, but it is strange if there exists ones giving different figures for the same point in time. Unless one of them is an adjustment report. I'll see if I have one for this date.
In the meantime, just to give an idea of the difficulties in working on a basis of killed as opposed to overall casualties:
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.
2. WH zentralstatistik
Gesamtverluste des Heeres an Toten
Month Tot nc deaths (approx)
1941
06.2007 18320 2000
Juli 45358 2000
August 45665 2000
September 38717 2000
Oktober 33809 2000
November 22910 2000
Dezember 28941 3000
42
Januar 26925 3000
Februar 28996 3000
März 32220 4000
April 19655 3000
Mai 23367 3000
Juni 22701 2500
Juli 27854 3000
August 42453 3500
September 37551 3500
Oktober 19104 3500
November 19192 4000
Dezember 24747 4000
43
Januar 25118 4000
Februar 35128 4500
März 33623 5000
April 13883 4500
Mai 14310 4000
Juni 12235 4000
TOTAL 692782 81000
RM7/807
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
29.01 900740 94184 9909 189224 2962951 1038957
28.02 917953 95909 10022 202186 3042997 1046714
29.03 939472 97406 10118 221402 3117973 1053978
29.04 967889 99469 10223 255562 3207014 1062266
29.05 999205 101746 10428 286400 3293230 1066924
29.06 1036997 104356 10724 301356 3390630 1074197
08.07 1052590 105727 10811 448 307254 3413814 1077272 39957 7
1139638 146525 14489 610 360905 3568865 1237487 55481 1083
29.07 1083399 109957 10930 461 326601 3474972 1083017 40266 7
1173884 151545 14657 624 381487 3632278 1244445 56024 1083
29.08 1127084 115181 11210 492 353889 3570593 1091502 40446
1222929 159108 15026 658 411684 3737088 1254437 56354
09.10 1200495 122530 11804 522 403269 3850869 1102891 42501
1304923 168819 15810 689 466392 4040054 1267818 59119
29.09 1179076 120420 11702 519 388510 3810045 1100916 41518 22
1280867 166058 15666 686 450309 3995240 1265369 57798 1148
28.10 1240522 125614 12000 537 429884 3919070 1106006 44625 22
1350520 173327 16075 705 497829 4116660 1271696 61520 1152
29.11 1298893 130282 12412 561 465731 4020389 1109129 51006 22
1419505 180172 16647 732 541341 4232846 1275833 69521 1152
29.12 1335358 133129 12617 567 501287 4062332 1110294 56847 22
1461901 183951 16913 739 582897 4280006 1277269 76596 1152
31.01 1376532 135835 12880 616 507246 4066328 1110294 72478 22
1509116 187388 17230 794 589762 4284384 1277269 95336 1152
28.02 1422149 138506 13148 627 513654 4072138 1111258 85250 104
Stat.erfasst.Meldungen 1559905 190712 17562 806 596931 4290998 1278460 111904 1242
1st line, Heer
2nd line, Wehrmacht.
RW6/549
4. Gemeldete Todesfälle. RW48/5
Date since sep39 week since 220641
2106 112713 0
2806 113737 1024 1024
507 114492 755 1779
1207 115915 1423 3202
1907 118140 2225 5427
2607 121463 3323 8750
208 124895 3432 12182
908 128679 3784 15966
1608 132767 4088 20054
2308 138675 5908 25962
3008 145333 6658 32620
609 152184 6851 39471
1309 159460 7276 46747
2009 165404 5944 52691
2709 173149 7745 60436
410 181882 8733 69169
1110 189467 7585 76754
1810 198008 8541 85295
2510 206361 8353 93648
111 215826 9465 103113
811 225539 9713 112826
1511 236164 10625 123451
2211 248347 12183 135634
2911 258104 9757 145391
612 268086 9982 155373
1312 274552 6466 161839
2012 280501 5949 167788
2412 283074 2573 170361
301 287868 4794 175155
1942
1001 294006 6138 181293
1701 301032 7026 188319
2401 308648 7616 195935
3101 315446 6798 202733
702 322321 6875 209608
1402 330897 8576 218184
2102 338030 7133 225317
2802 344740 6710 232027
703 351324 6584 238611
1403 358843 7519 246130
2103 366908 8065 254195
2803 374595 7687 261882
404 381567 6972 268854
1104 388397 6830 275684
1804 396761 8364 284048
2504 407227 10466 294514
205 415815 8588 303102
905 426037 10222 313324
1605 436654 10617 323941
2305 448771 12117 336058
3005 458307 9536 345594
606 470390 12083 357677
1306 480993 10603 368280
2006 489865 8872 377152
2706 501465 11600 388752
407 511980 10515 399267
1107 522160 10180 409447
1807 531945 9785 419232
2507 541609 9664 428896
108 550058 8449 437345
808 558311 8253 445598
1508 566494 8183 453781
2208 574088 7594 461375
2908 582491 8403 469778
509 591105 8614 478392
1209 600420 9315 487707
1909 609644 9224 496931
2609 618575 8931 505862
310 628741 10166 516028
1010 641853 13112 529140
1710 652823 10970 540110
2410 660519 7696 547806
3110 670789 10270 558076
711 679160 8371 566447
1411 686103 6943 573390
2111 694464 8361 581751
2811 703520 9056 590807
512 710856 7336 598143
1212 719155 8299 606442
1912 727407 8252 614694
2312 731147 3740 618434
1943
201 735839 4692 623126
901 742560 6721 629847
1601 750055 7495 637342
2301 757108 7053 644395
3001 765120 8012 652407
602 773420 8300 660707
1302 781808 8388 669095
2002 790494 8686 677781
2702 798526 8032 685813
603 806479 7953 693766
1303 812692 6213 699979
2003 818056 5364 705343
2703 824006 5950 711293
304 829983 5977 717270
1004 837125 7142 724412
1704 845827 8702 733114
2404 853143 7316 740430
105 858229 5086 745516
805 868717 10488 756004
1505 881007 12290 768294
2205 889733 8726 777020
2905 900921 11188 788208
506 912751 11830 800038
1206 923793 11042 811080
1906 932290 8497 819577
2606 942864 10574 830151
5. Gesamtverluste des Heeres an Toten RM7/808
Wehrmacht Verlustwesen
includes Non-combat losses
41
Juni 18320
Juli 45358
August 45665
September 38577
Oktober 33706
November 22431
Dezember 27066
42
Januar 26925
Februar 28996
März 32220
April 19655
Mai 23367
Juni 22701
Juli 27854
August 42453
cheers
In the meantime, just to give an idea of the difficulties in working on a basis of killed as opposed to overall casualties:
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.
2. WH zentralstatistik
Gesamtverluste des Heeres an Toten
Month Tot nc deaths (approx)
1941
06.2007 18320 2000
Juli 45358 2000
August 45665 2000
September 38717 2000
Oktober 33809 2000
November 22910 2000
Dezember 28941 3000
42
Januar 26925 3000
Februar 28996 3000
März 32220 4000
April 19655 3000
Mai 23367 3000
Juni 22701 2500
Juli 27854 3000
August 42453 3500
September 37551 3500
Oktober 19104 3500
November 19192 4000
Dezember 24747 4000
43
Januar 25118 4000
Februar 35128 4500
März 33623 5000
April 13883 4500
Mai 14310 4000
Juni 12235 4000
TOTAL 692782 81000
RM7/807
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
29.01 900740 94184 9909 189224 2962951 1038957
28.02 917953 95909 10022 202186 3042997 1046714
29.03 939472 97406 10118 221402 3117973 1053978
29.04 967889 99469 10223 255562 3207014 1062266
29.05 999205 101746 10428 286400 3293230 1066924
29.06 1036997 104356 10724 301356 3390630 1074197
08.07 1052590 105727 10811 448 307254 3413814 1077272 39957 7
1139638 146525 14489 610 360905 3568865 1237487 55481 1083
29.07 1083399 109957 10930 461 326601 3474972 1083017 40266 7
1173884 151545 14657 624 381487 3632278 1244445 56024 1083
29.08 1127084 115181 11210 492 353889 3570593 1091502 40446
1222929 159108 15026 658 411684 3737088 1254437 56354
09.10 1200495 122530 11804 522 403269 3850869 1102891 42501
1304923 168819 15810 689 466392 4040054 1267818 59119
29.09 1179076 120420 11702 519 388510 3810045 1100916 41518 22
1280867 166058 15666 686 450309 3995240 1265369 57798 1148
28.10 1240522 125614 12000 537 429884 3919070 1106006 44625 22
1350520 173327 16075 705 497829 4116660 1271696 61520 1152
29.11 1298893 130282 12412 561 465731 4020389 1109129 51006 22
1419505 180172 16647 732 541341 4232846 1275833 69521 1152
29.12 1335358 133129 12617 567 501287 4062332 1110294 56847 22
1461901 183951 16913 739 582897 4280006 1277269 76596 1152
31.01 1376532 135835 12880 616 507246 4066328 1110294 72478 22
1509116 187388 17230 794 589762 4284384 1277269 95336 1152
28.02 1422149 138506 13148 627 513654 4072138 1111258 85250 104
Stat.erfasst.Meldungen 1559905 190712 17562 806 596931 4290998 1278460 111904 1242
1st line, Heer
2nd line, Wehrmacht.
RW6/549
4. Gemeldete Todesfälle. RW48/5
Date since sep39 week since 220641
2106 112713 0
2806 113737 1024 1024
507 114492 755 1779
1207 115915 1423 3202
1907 118140 2225 5427
2607 121463 3323 8750
208 124895 3432 12182
908 128679 3784 15966
1608 132767 4088 20054
2308 138675 5908 25962
3008 145333 6658 32620
609 152184 6851 39471
1309 159460 7276 46747
2009 165404 5944 52691
2709 173149 7745 60436
410 181882 8733 69169
1110 189467 7585 76754
1810 198008 8541 85295
2510 206361 8353 93648
111 215826 9465 103113
811 225539 9713 112826
1511 236164 10625 123451
2211 248347 12183 135634
2911 258104 9757 145391
612 268086 9982 155373
1312 274552 6466 161839
2012 280501 5949 167788
2412 283074 2573 170361
301 287868 4794 175155
1942
1001 294006 6138 181293
1701 301032 7026 188319
2401 308648 7616 195935
3101 315446 6798 202733
702 322321 6875 209608
1402 330897 8576 218184
2102 338030 7133 225317
2802 344740 6710 232027
703 351324 6584 238611
1403 358843 7519 246130
2103 366908 8065 254195
2803 374595 7687 261882
404 381567 6972 268854
1104 388397 6830 275684
1804 396761 8364 284048
2504 407227 10466 294514
205 415815 8588 303102
905 426037 10222 313324
1605 436654 10617 323941
2305 448771 12117 336058
3005 458307 9536 345594
606 470390 12083 357677
1306 480993 10603 368280
2006 489865 8872 377152
2706 501465 11600 388752
407 511980 10515 399267
1107 522160 10180 409447
1807 531945 9785 419232
2507 541609 9664 428896
108 550058 8449 437345
808 558311 8253 445598
1508 566494 8183 453781
2208 574088 7594 461375
2908 582491 8403 469778
509 591105 8614 478392
1209 600420 9315 487707
1909 609644 9224 496931
2609 618575 8931 505862
310 628741 10166 516028
1010 641853 13112 529140
1710 652823 10970 540110
2410 660519 7696 547806
3110 670789 10270 558076
711 679160 8371 566447
1411 686103 6943 573390
2111 694464 8361 581751
2811 703520 9056 590807
512 710856 7336 598143
1212 719155 8299 606442
1912 727407 8252 614694
2312 731147 3740 618434
1943
201 735839 4692 623126
901 742560 6721 629847
1601 750055 7495 637342
2301 757108 7053 644395
3001 765120 8012 652407
602 773420 8300 660707
1302 781808 8388 669095
2002 790494 8686 677781
2702 798526 8032 685813
603 806479 7953 693766
1303 812692 6213 699979
2003 818056 5364 705343
2703 824006 5950 711293
304 829983 5977 717270
1004 837125 7142 724412
1704 845827 8702 733114
2404 853143 7316 740430
105 858229 5086 745516
805 868717 10488 756004
1505 881007 12290 768294
2205 889733 8726 777020
2905 900921 11188 788208
506 912751 11830 800038
1206 923793 11042 811080
1906 932290 8497 819577
2606 942864 10574 830151
5. Gesamtverluste des Heeres an Toten RM7/808
Wehrmacht Verlustwesen
includes Non-combat losses
41
Juni 18320
Juli 45358
August 45665
September 38577
Oktober 33706
November 22431
Dezember 27066
42
Januar 26925
Februar 28996
März 32220
April 19655
Mai 23367
Juni 22701
Juli 27854
August 42453
cheers