German casualties in World War II

According to a report published by the Reuters News Agency, on July 29 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.

1961 (ISBN 9783881990738) Pages 1508–1511 Notes: 1-These statistics include losses of the Waffen SS as well as Volkssturm and paramilitary serving with the regular forces.

Monthly Field Army (Feldheer) casualties September 1939 to November 1944 Notes: Figures include Waffen SS, Austrians and conscripted ethnic Germans.

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 to 2001.

The research project involved taking a statistical sample of the confidential German military personnel records located at the (WASt).

[43] The statistics of the German High Command put casualties of the volunteer forces from the Soviet Union up until 1/31/1945 at: 83,307 dead; 57,258 missing and 118,127 wounded[44] Overmans maintains that his research project taking a statistical sample of the records of the Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) found that the German military casualty reporting system broke down during the war and that losses were understated.

[48] Based on his research, Rüdiger Overmans believes that the deaths of 459,000 dead POWs can be confirmed in the files of Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt)(including 363,000 in the USSR).

[49] Data from the Soviet Archives published by G. I. Krivosheev put the deaths in the USSR of German POWs at 450,600 including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit.

[55] The number of prisoners taken in the west in March and April was over 1,800,000,[56] more than double the 800,000 German soldiers who surrendered to the Russians in the last three or four months of the war.

Ullstein Taschenbuch vlg., 2002 Pages 272–273 Overmans has made the following points in Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg The Russian military historian G. I. Krivosheev has published figures for the casualties on all fronts compiled by the German High Command up until April 30 1945 based on captured German records in the Soviet Archives.

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.

[113][114] 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.

[117] Official statistics published by the West German government 1956 put the death toll due to air raids at 635,000.

They estimated 635,000 total deaths, 500,000 due to the strategic bombing of Germany and an additional 135,000 killed in air raids during the 1945 flight and evacuations on the eastern front.

[119] The civilian deaths in the air raids on eastern Front after 1/31/1945 are also included with the figures of the losses during the Flight and expulsion of Germans (1944–50)[120] Sources for figures in schedule: (1) Hans Sperling, Die Luftkriegsverluste während des zweiten Weltkriegs in Deutschland, Wirtschaft und Statistik October 1956, journal published by Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland.

Archived 2016-12-05 at the Wayback Machine 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.

[121] 2- The section Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy of October 31, 1945, put the losses at 375,000 killed and 625,000 wounded[122][123] 3-The section The Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany of January 1947 made a preliminary calculated estimate of air raid dead at 422,000[124][123] According to the report "no complete and accurate figures on German civilian air raid casualties, covering the entire period of the war, are available".

[130] Not included in these figures are civilians who died in the fighting and atrocities in East-Prussia (Konigsberg, Pillau), Pommerania (Danzig, Kolberg) and Silesia (Breslau).

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.

In 1956 the West German government figures in the table below list an estimated about 5.5 million deaths (military and civilian) directly caused by the war within the borders of 1937.

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.

In addition, 247,000 Austrians lost their lives serving in the army of the Third Reich or were reported missing, and 24,000 civilians were killed during bombing raids.

[158] Ingo Haar points out that of the 886,000 estimated civilian dead from east Europe only about 170,000 deaths have been confirmed; the balance are considered unsolved cases.

[160] The German government currently places the ultimate blame for the mass flight and expulsion on the wartime policy of the Nazis in Eastern Europe.

[citation needed] 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.

[164] James Bacque, a Canadian author with no previous historical research experience, has written a book Other Losses in which he claims that the United States are responsible for the deaths of 800,000 to 1,000,000 German POW.

Bacque alleges that General Eisenhower and the US military deliberately withheld support for the German POW, causing their deaths.

Bacque presents his arguments with a description of the horrific conditions at the Rheinwiesenlager POW camps and eyewitness accounts of retired US military officers.

[165] Rüdiger Overmans believes that "on the basis of factual individual data, shown before, the thesis of the Canadian James Bacque cannot be supported".

'German War Graves Commission'), is directed by the Federal Republic of Germany to record all the German fallen soldiers and maintain their graveyards abroad in 46 countries.