Estimates of combined military and civilian German war dead range from 5.5 to 6.9 million, the lower number are losses in 1937 borders, the higher figure includes losses of the ethnic Germans in east-central Europe. They were given considerable freedom and mixed with local people. [119][120], In 1951, Gregory Frumkin, who was throughout its existence the editor of the Statistical Year Book of the League of Nations, provided an assessment of German military losses based on a demographic analysis of the European population from 1939 to 1947. Oldenbourg 2000. He worked with Heinrich Himmler during World War II. Marshall's figure for the Aleutian Islands is 8,000. Share . Of the 350,000 civilians listed as dead (not including refugees), 126,000 of the deaths occurred after January 31, 1945. The battle was part of the Soviet assault on Berlin, lasting three days in April 1945. The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000 victims, they maintain the figure of 2 million expulsion deaths cannot be supported. Bevlkerungsbilanzen fr die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. "[71] For comparison, in the Battle of Halbe on the Eastern Front from 24 April to 1 May 1945, over 30,000 German soldiers, out of a much smaller number encircled, were killed fighting the Red Army.[72]. Since the collapse of communism previously classified documentation regarding German military casualties became available to German researchers. 12224. (3) Erich Hampe "Der Zivile Luftschutz im Zweiten Weltkrieg" pp.138-142, The United States Strategic Bombing Survey gave three different figures for German air raid deaths, 1-The summary report of September 30, 1945 put total casualties for the entire period of the war at 305,000 killed and 780,000 wounded. Bonn 1989. According to the report of General George Marshall issued in 1945 the "breakdown of German and Italian losses against American, British, and French forces" in the war in Europe was as follows: Source of figures: Biennial report of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War: July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1945[109], (A) 252,415 Germans and Italians were captured in Tunisia[110] According to the Imperial War Museum Following the Italian surrender in 1943, 100,000 Italians volunteered to work as 'co-operators'. Overmans found that the wartime casualty figures compiled by German High Command were incomplete because the reporting system broke down during the chaos of the war. [79] A study by the German demographer Peter Marschalck put the total deaths directly related to the war both military and civilians at 5.2 million, plus an estimated decline in births of 1.7 million, bringing total population losses related to the war at 6.9 million persons within the borders of 1937. This category has only the following subcategory. The project sought to determine total deaths and their cause, when and in which theatre of war the losses occurred as well as a demographic profile of the men who served in the war. [95] The Federation of Expellees initiated the formation of the Center Against Expulsions. [94] The Federation of Expellees has represented the interests of Germans from Eastern Europe. [154] A study by the German demographer Peter Marschalck put the total deaths directly related to the war both military and civilians at 5.2 million, plus an estimated decline in births of 1.7 million, bringing total population losses related to the war at 6.9 million persons within the borders of 1937. Karl Cramm's father was one of the more than 1 million German soldiers still considered missing after WWII. 83,307 dead; 57,258 missing and 118,127 wounded. Frumkin put total German military dead and missing at 3,975,000: Germany (1937 borders) 3,500,000; Austria 230,000; 200,000 Sudeten Germans from Czechoslovakia; 40,000 from France, 3,700 from the Netherlands; 700 from Norway and 398 from Denmark.[16]. Source: Statistisches Jahrbuch fr die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, Page78, In 1969, the West German military historian Burkhart Mller-Hillebrand (de) published the third volume of his study of the German Army in World War II Das Heer 19331945 that listed OKW casualty figures and his estimate of total German casualties. The Statistisches Bundesamt put the total at 3,760,000. This figure includes 4.3 million military dead and missing, 500,000 killed by strategic bombing, 300,000 victims of Nazi political, racial and religious persecution, 2,251,500 civilian dead in expulsions and 24,300 Austrian civilians. 83,307 dead; 57,258 missing and 118,127 wounded. In post-war Germany the fate of civilians and prisoners of war has been a contentious topic. [81], 3-Net Immigration-German Refugees were ethnic Germans of Eastern Europe who lived outside Germany in 1937 borders before the war. Professor Ryszard Kaczmarek of the University of Silesia in Katowice, author of a monograph titled Polacy w Wehrmachcie ("Poles in the Wehrmacht") noted that many Polish citizens in the Polish areas annexed by Nazi Germany were forcibly conscripted in Upper Silesia and in Pomerania. Russian POW at the Regiment HQ. Follow edited Nov 16, 2021 at 7:27. In its report of 1974 they found that 3,060,000 German military personnel were taken prisoner by the USSR and that 1,094,250 died in captivity (549,360 from 1941 to April 1945; 542,911 from May 1945 to June 1950 and 1,979 from July 1950 to 1955). It was common for Germans to listen to foreign radio stations, which mentioned the mass killings of Jews as well. The prisoners were turned over to the local police and lodged in the town's . Lasting from August 1942 to February 1943, the Battle of Stalingrad was the largest battle of World War II and in the history of warfare. A. OKW figures from 9/1/1939 to 12/31/1944, Source: Statistisches Jahrbuch fr die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, Page 78, B. -Other, Misc. According to a report published by the Reuters News Agency, on July29 1945 highly confidential archives found at Flensburg, in the house of General Reinecke showed German losses up to November 30, 1944, as 3.6 million, detailed in the following schedule. 12-Emigrated & Murdered Jews- The Statistisches Bundesamt(German government Statistical Office) gave a total of 200,000 Jews who had emigrated or were murdered, they did not estimate those actually who were murdered. According to the report of General George Marshall the break-down of German and Italian losses against American, British, and French forces in the war in Europe is as follows: Source of figures: Biennial report of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War: July 1, 1943, to June 30, 1945 [9], (A) 252,415 Germans and Italians were captured in Tunisia [10] According to the Imperial War Museum Following the Italian surrender in 1943, 100,000 Italians volunteered to work as 'co-operators'. The estimate by West German government in November 1949 for Germany in 1937 borders was 450,000 killed in bombing and 50,000 in ground fighting. 12:28 GMT 02 Oct 2014. (A parallel Polish summary translation was also included, this paper was a presentation at an academic conference in Warsaw Poland in 1994), Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik XXI-1994. Ullstein Taschenbuch vlg., 2002. PolyGeo . With an addition of this estimate of 1944 and 1945 unrecorded deaths, the final estimation gave in round numbers a half a million German civilians killed by Allied aerial attacks"[131], Historian Richard Overy in 2014 published a study of the air war The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940-1945 in which he disputed the official German figures of air war dead. For Austria the consequences of the Nazi regime and the Second World War were disastrous: During this period 2,700 Austrians had been executed and more than 16,000 citizens murdered in the concentration camps. [97] Rdiger Overmans believes that on the basis of factual individual data, shown before, the thesis of the Canadian James Bacque cannot be supported.[32]. Due to the threat of epidemic at that time there was a rush to remove the countless corpses of men and animals as soon as possible. The current view of the German government is that these losses were due to an aggressive war started by the German nation. He estimated total air raid deaths at 353,000. Some people did speak out against that, most famously the resistance movement White Rose, who distributed pamphlets that attacked the killings of hundreds of thousands of Jews. During the cold war in West Germany there were claims that one million German prisoners of war were held in secret by the USSR. 3-Included in these statistics are 322,807 POWs held by the US and UK. Those remaining in 1950 became Polish citizens but were German nationals in 1939. -Net Immigration-German Refugees were ethnic Germans of Eastern Europe who lived outside Germany in 1937 borders before the war. Der Zweifrontenkrieg. Based on information available in January 1946, the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. put German military dead at 3,250,000. Prisoners held during the war are listed in a separate schedule below. More than 5,000 were slaughtered on the island of Cephalonia in 1943. A 1946 estimate by the Metropolitan Life Insurance Co. put German military dead at 3.250 million, a figure that still appears in many reference works. Nineteen employees at Deutsche Dienststelle assisted in the survey. [153] There were additional deaths of the ethnic Germans outside of Germany in Eastern Europe, men conscripted during the war and ethnic German civilian deaths during post war expulsions. A team of archaeologists - the Association for the Recovery of the Fallen - have uncovered the skeletons of men who died defending Berlin from the soldiers of the Red Army in the final days of the Second World War. [46] After the collapse of communism, data from the Soviet Archives became available concerning the deaths of German POWs in the USSR. The official German figures for the final months of the war include the inflated total of 60,000 deaths from the, Overy based his analysis on data in German archival sources for the years 1940-1942 and the Civilian Defense Division report of. Schramm put the total at 4,188,057. Entwicklung des organisatorischen Aufbaues. [35], Monthly German military casualties at point of death per Overmans study. Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent. Historian Rdiger Overmans of the Military History Research Office (Germany) published a study in 2000 that estimated the German military dead and missing at 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria, and in east-central Europe. - Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1958 p. 14, Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. Military Wiki is a FANDOM Lifestyle Community. We pay forvideostoo. The high rate of German casualties in the Eastern front occured for a number of reasons. [33]For the entire year 1945 Overmans puts total losses at 1,540,000 (1,230,045 in the final battles; 57,495 in other theaters and 252,188 POW). The 83-year-old had last seen him when he was just a boy . George C Marshall, Biennial reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War: 1 July 193930 June 1945. 9-Germans remaining in Poland in October 1946 were 1,750,000, but by 1950 the number had been reduced to 1,100,000 because of expulsions after October 1946. 3-4, "Merkel ally quits after claiming Nazis didn't start war", Centre Against Expulsions, foundation website, "Our Foundation", "Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgrberfrsorge e. V.", "Germany Still Locates 40,000 War Casualties a Year", https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=German_casualties_in_World_War_II&oldid=1118106334, Military history of Germany during World War II, Articles with unsourced statements from August 2015, Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License 3.0, By Official Cause of Death (per R. Overmans), German military dead on the Eastern Front (per R. Overmans), Add:Estimated losses of Soviet Volunteers, German POW deaths- Overmans estimate 2000, German POW Held in Captivity (Per R. Overmans), Expulsion and Deportation Civilian Dead/Missing, Sources for figures: Wirtschaft und Statistik October 1956, Journal published by Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland. at 215,000. Germany (West). [169] The former President of Germany Joachim Gauck and the former German chancellor Angela Merkel have voiced support for the Center Against Expulsions. The Japanese Relief Bureau's army dead figure for Sakhalin & Aleutian Islands is 8,200. He pointed out that this was the case of some Germans in American and British hospitals. For the campaign against the Soviet Union, the Germans allotted almost 150 divisions containing a total of about 3,000,000 men. [155]:12, The Austrian government provides the following information on human losses during the rule of the Nazis. Often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, World War II encircled the globe, forcing nearly every country on Earth to align with one of two massive military alliances: the Axis powers, led by Germany, Italy, and Japan; or the Allies, led by Great Britain, the United States, the Soviet Union, France, and China. [22], Overmans believes that there is not sufficient data to breakout the 1,230,045 deaths in the 1945 Final Battles in Germany between the Western Allied invasion of Germany and Eastern Front in 1945,[20] although he estimates that 2/3 of these casualties can be attributed to the Eastern Front. Source of figures: Gregory Frumkin. The. Source of figures Deutsche militrische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg page 286, Source:Rdiger Overmans Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. A new cemetery in Russia will be the final resting place of 70,000 Wehrmacht soldiers killed on the Eastern Front. (. The following schedules give a brief overview of the Overmans study. Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. [81] The German government Statistical Office figures in the above table put the deaths due to natural causes at 7,130,000. A recent study by Rudiger Overmans, a German historian, estimated that German military casualties were 5.3 million. The gap in vital statistics between the middle of 1944 and the end of 1945 was estimated. A photo shows the fear on the faces of the Senegalese riflemen fighting for the French army, as German soldiers lead them into a field. 1940. [24], A. - Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1958 pp.45-6, Percy Schramm Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht: 1940 - 1945: 8 Bde. The financial support for the study came from a private foundation. [43] A 1958 West German estimate put the military war dead of ethnic German(deutschen Bevlkerung) foreign nationals from east-central Europe in the German Armed Forces at 432,000 (Baltic States 15,000, Poland 108,000, Czechoslovakia 180,000, Hungary 32,000, Yugoslavia 40,000 and Romania 35,000)[44], Overmans does not include Russian volunteers in the Wehrmacht in his figures, only persons of German ancestry (Deutsche nach Abstammung). -Population May 1939 Census- These figures are for Germany in 1937 borders, they do not include Austria or the ethnic Germans of East Europe. The soldiers fought to kill, and German P.O.W.s captured in 1945 considered themselves lucky if they were captured by Western forces, since they could escape the vengeful treatment of the Red Army. last german soldier to be killed in WW1. He believes that the previous studies by the German government should be subject to critical revision and new research is needed to establish the actual number of expulsion deaths.[141]. Keegan, John, Second World War, Penguin Books , 1990, Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder, Transaction Publishers, 1992 Table A. Hermann Kinder, Werner Hilgemann & Ernest A. Menze, Ishikida, Miki (2005). Page72. Source: Rdiger Overmans. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriege. -Killed in 1945 Land Battles- This is a rough estimate made in 1956 for Germany in current post war borders, not including the former German territories in post war Poland. The German people paid an enormous price in human lives for their support of the Nazi regime during the war. -Population October 1946 Census- Figure of 65,310,000 does not include 693,000 displaced persons (DPs) living in Germany. A book of transcripts to be published in. Ambrose points out that the US and the UK had to cope with a major logistical problem in order to maintain the huge number of surrendered German personnel and finds the claim that Eisenhower and the US military deliberately withheld support for the German POW to be without merit. RM2AGN3DH - The feet and legs of deceased soldier protrude from the ground in a World War II German soldier's snapshot, ca. A 1990 study by the East German historian de:Olaf Groehler estimated 360,000370,000 civilians were killed by Allied strategic bombing within the 1937 German boundaries, for the German Reich including Austria, forced laborers, POW and military the total is estimated at 406,000. (Military deaths include men conscripted outside of Germany, in addition perhaps 250,000 died of natural causes, suicide or were executed. The West German government set up the Maschke Commission to investigate the fate of German POW in the war; in its report of 1974 the Maschke Commission found that about 1.2 million German military personnel reported as missing more than likely died as POWs, including 1.1 million in the USSR. The Germany, Military Killed in Action 1939-1948 collection contains index cards for about 2 million German soldiers killed during WWII. Categories Video World . Estimated total deaths 4,200,000. The following schedules summarize the OKW figures published in post war era. (German government Statistical Office), Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. The system was not uniform because various military branches such as the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen SS and the military hospitals each had different systems of reporting. When they do focus on people, it is usually on a male soldier. After a 12-year prison sentence, he started working as a translator in France but was murdered after his real identity as a war criminal was discovered. -Germans remaining in Poland in October 1946 were 1,750,000, but by 1950 the number had been reduced to 1,100,000 because of expulsions after October 1946. The figures include those killed in the 1945 military campaign and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union. The bombing of Dresden and the bombing campaign in general has been a topic of discussion in post-war Germany. 'We are looking for people - Sons, Fathers, Brothers. The current view of the German government is that these losses were due to an aggressive war started by the German nation. Civilian bombing deaths (not including refugees) of 436,000 include 350,000 dead, 54,000 died of wounds and 32,000 missing and presumed dead. The US military historian Stephen Ambrose was co-editor of the book Eisenhower and the German POWs in which he refutes Bacques claims. This figure was to remain unchallenged until the end of the cold war in the 1990s when some German historians put the actual death toll in the expulsions at between 500,000-600,000 confirmed deaths. Millions were killed, wounded, missing, or captured in what was perhaps . According to Mller-Hillebrand actual irrecoverable losses in the war were between 3.3 and 4.5 million men. 'We are not looking for soldiers of the Wehrmacht, not for U.S. GI's, Marines, soldiers of the red army or Polish Military - not for infantry, soldiers, sailors or airmen - not for Good or Bad. The Statistisches Jahrbuch fr die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, Page 78. Bevlkerungsbilanzen fr die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. Civilian deaths due to the Flight and expulsion of Germans (194450) and the Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union are sometimes included with World War II casualties, during the Cold War the West German government estimated the death toll at 2.2 million. OKW Casualty Figures Sept 1, 1939 to Jan 31, 1945, Source of Figures: Percy Schramm Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht: 19401945: 8 Bde. More than 5.5 million German soldiers were killed over the course of World War II. The German Red Cross reported in 2005 that the records of the military search service WAS list total Wehrmacht losses at 4.3 million men (3.1 million dead and 1.2 million missing) in World War II. Erika Steinbach, the current President of the Federation, provoked outrage when she supported the statements of other members of the expellee organization claiming that Hitler's attack on Poland was a response to Poland's policy. A 2005 report by the German Red Cross put the death toll due to strategic bombing at 500,000. Overmans statistical approacg leads to 5,3 million. 'Fallen soldiers are also victims - victims of a gruesome war, which they had not caused and had not wanted. [54] From early March these surrenders seriously weakened the Wehrmacht in the West, and made further surrenders more likely, thus having a snowballing effect. In post-war Germany the fate of civilians and prisoners of war has been a contentious topic. Russians also point to the fact that Soviet forces killed more German soldiers than their Western counterparts, accounting for 76 percent of Germany's military dead. Overmans was an associate of the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office from 1987 until 2004 and was on the faculty of the University of Freiburg from 1996-2001. Amongst others, the German historian Wolfgang Benz believes that the use of the term Bombing Holocaust runs contrary to historical fact. It involved more land combat than all other World War II theatres combined. The massacre was a turning point in Greece and Italy's . Also, check out the " White Death ," AKA Simo Hyh, the deadliest sniper of them all. Bacques book received wide attention when it was first published in 1989, since then his claims have been challenged by historians who have found his thesis to be unsubstantiated. 14 Dec 2011 | Posted by vlogger. A recent study by German historian Rdiger Overmans found that the German military casualties were 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria and in east-central Europe, higher than those originally reported by the German high command. [55] In March the daily rate of POWs taken on the Western Front was 10,000;[56] in the first 14 days of April it rose to 39,000[57] and in the last 16 days the average peaked at 59,000 soldiers captured each day. Source of figures Deutsche militrische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg page 286, Source:Rdiger Overmans Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. On the third day the final line of the Seelow Heights was breached leaving nothing but fractured German divisions between the Red Army and the chancellery in Berlin. Untold millions were murdered in thousands of death camps in Eastern Europe. The Austrian government puts their losses in the air war at 24,000. In recent years there has been a joint Russian-German project to investigate the fate of POWs in the war. The following 200 pages are in this category, out of approximately 697 total. -Civilian Deaths- These are deaths due to natural causes not directly related to the war. It is very important.. The gap in vital statistics between the middle of 1944 and the end of 1945 was estimated. "[6], Based on Soviet sources Krivosheev put German losses on the Eastern Front from 1941-1945 at 6,923,700 men: including-Killed 4,137,100, taken prisoner 2,571,600 and 215,000 dead among Russian volunteers in the Wehrmacht. It is now known that they did not survive the war, Rdiger Overmans believes that more than likely they died in Soviet custody. For other inquiries, Contact Us. The fate of over one million missing German soldiers in the USSR was an issue in post-war West Germany, with some claiming that they were held in secret labor camps by the Soviets. The Biennial report of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army issued in 1945 also estimated Japanese "battle dead" at 1.219 million. They maintain the files of over 18 million men who served in the war. [28] Based on his research Rdiger Overmans believes that the deaths of 459,000 dead POWs can confirmed be in the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt)(including 363,000 in the USSR). The sum of the Relief Bureau's army dead figures for these regions is 654,800. Fighting began in the early hours of April 16 with a massive bombardment by thousands of artillery weapons. Soviet sources claimed that In 1945 the German Army lost more than 1,000,000 men killed on the Soviet-German front alone. [8]. A spokesman for the German War Graves Commission said they initially thought that 800 bodies were buried in the mass grave. Source: Statistisches Jahrbuch fr die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, Page 78, In 1969, the West German military historian de:Burkhart Mller-Hillebrand published the third volume of his study of the German Army in World War II Das Heer 19331945 that listed OKW casualty figures and his estimate of total German casualties. ), Mnchen: Piper 1989, pages 862-63, Great patriotic war of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945: a general outline - Moscow: Progress Publishers, [1974] Page 392, Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Statistical bulletin January 1946 Page 7, Wirtschaft und Statistik November 1949, journal published by Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland. [18] The German historian de:Rdiger Overmans used the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) to conduct his research project on German military casualties. Band III. Session ID: 2022-08-24:ccbe57c2e1e6e04a888a394b Player Element ID: vjs_video_3. Dead Russian soldier, 1941. However, during WWII, the Germans often executed female soldiers on sight. Hungary (cited by Austrian government 1940) 845,000 Romania (1930 census) 745,000 Total 16,559,000 (est) The official death figures are listed here . However, there are some who attempt to trivialize the crimes of the Hitler period by comparing German losses to the Holocaust. The schedule below details the statistics published by the West German government 1956. According to Mller-Hillebrand actual irrecoverable losses in the war were between 3.3 and 4.5 million men. This figure was to remain unchallenged until the 1990s when some German historians put the actual death toll in the expulsions at 500,000 confirmed deaths listed in a 1965 German Red Cross study. German losses of around 200,000 were killed or wounded; a further 200,000 were taken prisoner during the Campaign. When April 23 rolled in, Berlin was encircled fully by the Allied troops. (German government Statistical Office), Based on his research Overmans believes that the total of 459,000 dead POWs listed in the files of. Researching German WWII soldiers can be tricky because many service records were destroyed during the war. [118]) Marshall's figure for China is much lower than that of the Relief Bureau (126,000 vs. 435,600), but for the theaters where Japanese forces confronted American and British Empire forces the sum of Marshall's figures (1,093,000) is slightly higher than the sum of the Relief Bureau's figures for these theaters (1,020,900). In 2005 Groehler's figures were published in the authoritative series The German Reich and the Second World War[57], B. Military archaeologists are currently identifying the troops, and are hoping that the relatives of these troops can be traced. Some 16,000 Austrians were killed in prison, while over 67,000 Austrian Jews were deported to death camps, only 2,000 of them lived to see the end of the war.
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