Bericht des Bundesarchivs vom 28. Kennedy Hickman is a historian, museum director, and curator who specializes in military and naval history. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Bd. He pointed out that the heavy death toll estimated by the Maschke Commission of 80,000 German POW in Yugoslavia was based on documented eyewitness accounts.

While the U.S. Ninth and First Armies held their ground from Magdeburg through Leipzig to western Czechoslovakia, Eisenhower ordered three Allied field armies (1st French, and the U.S. To achieve the surprise required for success, the operation was planned in complete radio silence and benefited from heavy cloud cover, which kept Allied air forces grounded. Percy Schramm Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht: 1940 1945: 8 Bde. Accordingly, the number of German killed and wounded was much higher in the East than in the West. American losses were 586,628, including 135,576 dead. [30] 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). Each army group was allocated its mobile reserves. [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". On 15 August the Allies launched Operation Dragoon the invasion of Southern France between Toulon and Cannes. -Civilian deaths- These are deaths due to natural causes not directly related to the war. Flying in from the west, the American airborne's drop went badly, with many of the units scattered and far from their intended drop zones. Total German soldiers who surrendered in the West, including 3,404,950 who surrendered after the end of the war, is given as 7,614,790. Marshall's figure for the Central Pacific is 273,000. Figure includes deaths actually recorded from May 1939 until June 1944 and from January to October 1946. Generals Eisenhower and Bradley concluded that pushing beyond the Elbe made no sense since eastern Germany was destined in any case to be occupied by the Red Army. By the time the water had subsided and the US Ninth Army was able to cross the Roer on 23 February, other Allied forces were also close to the Rhine's west bank. This was countered by Montgomery, commanding the 21st Army Group in the north, who wished to attack over the Lower Rhine into the industrial Ruhr Valley. Bevlkerungsbilanzen fr die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. After the crucial U.S. naval victory at the Battle of Midway (1942), U.S. forces began to advance up the chains of islands toward Japan. -Germans remaining abroad-Includes expelled Germans who had emigrated to other countries or were in Denmark.

Battle of the Bulge, also called Battle of the Ardennes, (December 16, 1944-January 16, 1945), the last major German offensive on the Western Front during World War IIan unsuccessful attempt to push the Allies back from German home territory. Hickman, Kennedy. The schedule below details the statistics published by the West German government 1956. Millions more civilians were wounded and made homeless throughout Europe and East Asia. 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. [162] The Federation of Expellees initiated the formation of the Center Against Expulsions. [15][128]:17 The German historian Rdiger Overmans maintains that there are more arguments for a lower figure of 500,000 rather than the higher figures of over 2.0 million. The retreat marked the last gasp of Nazi offensive operations in the East. The survivors retreated south and linked up with their American compatriots. The next month, the Germans launched the Battle of France . During the push east, the cities of Frankfurt am Main, Kassel, Magdeburg, Halle and Leipzig were strongly defended by ad hoc German garrisons made up of regular troops, Flak units, Volkssturm and armed Nazi Party auxiliaries. Prisoners held during the war are listed in a separate schedule below. (over 300,000 plus 1,500,000. Overrunning several divisions that were either raw or refitting, the Germans swiftly advanced towardthe Meuse River. [19] (Since German reunification, the records in the former GDR (East Germany) have become available to the WASt). Rallying, many units were able to achieve their objectives as the divisions pulled themselves back together. The Japanese Relief Bureau's army dead figure for Sakhalin & Aleutian Islands is 8,200.

Page 264, C. Field Army (Feldheer) casualties September 1939 to November 1944, Source: Mller-Hillebrand Das Heer 19331945 Vol.3 Page 265, Source:Geschichte des Zweiten Weltkreiges, A.G Ploetz verlag -Wrzburg 1960 pp. The British Royal Air Force dropped propaganda leaflets on Germany and the first Canadian troops stepped ashore in Britain, while Western Europe was in a strange calm for seven months. In the early morning hours, waves of troops began hitting the beaches. Figures do not include Austria. Against this, the Americans advocated a cross-Channel assault thatwould move through Western Europe along the shortest route to Germany. Soviet claims according to Grigori F. Krivosheev: 42,700 tanks, tank destroyers, self-propelled guns and assault guns, 379,400 guns and mortars and 75,700 combat aircraft. In a final gamble, Adolf Hitler ordered a massive winter offensive, which resulted in the Battle of the Bulge. At Arnhem, the 1st Airborne lost most of its heavy equipment in glider crashes and encountered much heavier resistance than expected. Page 262, The figure of 1,277,000 killed and missing from January1 1945 - April30 1945 was estimated by the U.S. Army in the 1947 report German Manpower[24], B. Recent research on German expulsion losses: Estimated total German population losses (in 1937 German borders) directly related to the war range between 5.5[146] to 6.9 million persons. Deaths of POW were 450,600 including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit. The US military historian Stephen Ambrose was co-editor of the book Eisenhower and the German POWs in which he refutes Bacque's claims. While most of the German Army was fighting against Poland, a much smaller German force manned the Siegfried Line, their fortified defensive line along the French border. During the cold war in West Germany there were claims that one million German prisoners of war were held in secret by the USSR. The research project involved taking a statistical sample of the confidential German military personnel records located at the (WASt). To this must be added the 263,000655,000 who died, giving a rough total of 8 million German soldiers having served on the Western Front in 19441945. World War in II Europe. U.S. air strengths listed in Table 7 inlcude the air forces both in the United Kingdom and on the Continent. [4] The US Ninth Army, which had remained under British command since the battle of the Bulge, went south as the northern pincer of the Ruhr encirclement as well as pushing elements east. [3][4], Civilian deaths during the war include air raid deaths, estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000[5][6] to 500,000. German Army GroupG surrendered to US forces at Haar, in Bavaria, on 5 May. Dutch casualties are placed at 2,890 killed or missing, 6,900 wounded, with no information provided on those captured. Moving at breakneck speed, often against little or no resistance, Allied forces raced across France, liberating Paris on August 25, 1944. On December 23, the weather began to clear and Allied air power began to hammer the Germans, whose offensive stalled the next day near Dinant. The Rhine was crossed elsewhere on March 24, when the British Sixth Airborne and the U.S. 17th Airborne were dropped in as part of Operation Varsity. While the cream of the . Washington, DC: Center of Military History, 1996. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkriege. [42] This later caused some friction with the Yugoslav forces, notably around Trieste. (2023, April 5). On 7 May at his headquarters in Rheims, Eisenhower took the unconditional surrender of all German forces to the western Allies and the Soviet Union,[44] from the German Chief-of-Staff, General Alfred Jodl, who signed the first general instrument of surrender at 0241 hours. -Population October 1946 Census- Figure of 65,310,000 does not include 693,000 displaced persons (DPs) living in Germany. The statistics on World War II casualties are inexact. Included in the total of 635,000 air raid dead were losses for Germany in 1937 borders which totaled 593,000. "Central Bureau of Statistics (CBS) Netherlands" (PDF). [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. Farther south, Patton's Third Army was slowed as its supplies dwindled and it met increased resistance around Metz. To enhance this natural defensive line, the Germans promptly began destroying the bridges spanning the river. These were built in anticipation of an Allied invasion of France. ThoughtCo. Fighting in the Huertgen Forest continued through the fall as U.S. troops fought to capture a succession of fortified villages, suffering 33,000 casualties in the process. The non-belligerent United States contributed to the Western Allies by discounted sales of military equipment and supplies. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkrieges. Population Changes in Europe Since 1939, Geneva 1951. Because of the massive logistical obstacles a cross-channel invasion would face, the Allied high command decided to conduct a practice attack against the French coast.

Under the onslaught in both the north and south of France, the German Army fell back. Figures do not include prisoners held by Allies. In the resulting battle, the city was taken, at a cost of 5,000 casualties on both sides, with an additional 5,600 German prisoners. On 1 September 1939, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. With the war all but decided, Italy also declared war on the UK and France, but made little progress. As the situation in the west worsened, Hitler began planning a major counteroffensive designed to recapture Antwerp and split the Allies' forces. South of the Ardennes, American forces fought from September until mid-December to push the Germans out of Lorraine and from behind the Siegfried Line. In the mid-1930s Hitler began secretly to rearm Germany, in violation of the treaty. 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. [4], According to the records of the western Allies 2.8 million German soldiers surrendered on the Western Front between D-day and the end of April 1945; 1.3 million between D-day and March 31, 1945,;[50] and 1.5 million of them in the month of April. the Vichy regime was allowed to keep their colonial empire and navy fleet, as some of Hitler's few concessions. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. The Germans in France were now faced by three powerful Allied army groups: in the north the British 21st Army Group commanded by Field Marshal Sir Bernard Montgomery, in the center the American 12th Army Group, commanded by General Omar Bradley and to the south the US 6th Army Group commanded by Lieutenant General Jacob L. Devers. Oldenbourg 2000. The British, Canadians, French, and other allies in the west lost slightly over 60,000 dead". At Omaha Beach, U.S. troops quickly became pinned down by heavy fire as the preinvasion bombing had fallen inland and failed to destroy the German fortifications. France was allowed to continue its existence in the form of Vichy France, a rump state of the former French Republic, led by Philippe Ptain. 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"[125], 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. As had so often happened on the Eastern Front Hitler refused to allow a strategic withdrawal until it was too late. [9][10] On 1 September 1939, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. The attack started on 16 December in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge. Bloodshed had never been seen on such a scale before. The German historian Rdiger Overmans believes, based on his research, that these figures are incomplete and unreliable. As Aachen was the first German city to be threatened by the Allies, Hitler ordered that it be held at all costs. The port of Antwerp was liberated on 4 September by the British 11th Armoured Division. 12224. [105] Italian fascist forces fought in the Italian campaign until the end of the war with the Italian Social Republic. What were the turning points of World War II? Western Front, major theatre of World War I. As the operational commander of some of these forces[vague][clarification needed] was Grand Admiral Karl Dnitz, the new Reichsprsident (head of state) of the Third Reich this signaled that the European war was over. 1961 (. Hickman, Kennedy. MacDonald, C (1993), The Last Offensive: The European Theater of Operations.CENTER OF MILITARY HISTORY UNITED STATES ARMY WASHINGTON, D. C., 1993. [6] Norway deployed 5 divisions with 90,000 men.

The German military system for reporting casualties was based on a numerical reporting of casualties by individual units and a separate listing of the names of individual casualties. [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. As it was the first major German city to face capture, Hitler ordered that the city be held at all costs. In their hurry to re-arm, Britain and France had both begun to buy large numbers of weapons from manufacturers in the United States at the outbreak of hostilities, supplementing their own production. The financial support for the study came from a private foundation. They encircled around 200,000 Germans in the Falaise Pocket. Two early British raids for which battle honours were awarded were Operation Collar in Boulogne (24 June 1940) and Operation Ambassador in Guernsey (1415 July 1940). These latter groups were not thought worth much effort and were left "to rot", with the exception of Bordeaux, which was liberated in May 1945 by French forces under General Edgard de Larminat (Operation Venerable).[33]. Japanese government figures from 2003 put their military war dead at 2.3 million. The organisation was founded on 16 December 1919 to look after the World War I soldiers' graves. [1][2] The German government reported that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel. Germany then launched massive bombing raids on Britain in preparation for a cross-Channel invasion, but, after losing the Battle of Britain, Hitler postponed the invasion indefinitely. 2,055,575 German soldiers surrendered between D-Day and 16 April 1945, The Times, 19 April p 4; 755,573 German soldiers surrendered between 1 and 16 April, The Times, 18 April p 4, which means that 1,300,002 German soldiers surrendered to the Western Allies between D-Day and the end of March 1945. Even Patton agreed with Churchill that he should order the attack on the city since Montgomery's troops could reach Berlin within three days. Commonwealth War Graves Commission Annual Report 20132014, page 44. - Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1958 pp.45-6, Percy Schramm Kriegstagebuch des Oberkommandos der Wehrmacht: 1940 - 1945: 8 Bde. Losses Reported by OKW September1 1939 April30 1945 (For all branches of service), Source: Mller-Hillebrand Das Heer 19331945 Vol 3. In Berlin, the Reichsbanner resistance organization identified possible drop zones for Allied paratroopers and planned to guide them past German defenses into the city.[43]. Page 478. [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. -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 Germans managed to hold a large bridgehead (the Colmar Pocket), on the western bank of the Rhine and centered around the city of Colmar. This page was last edited on 2 June 2023, at 15:18. In doing so, the Germans beat the Allies to the punch; the Allies had been planning an amphibious landing in which they could begin to surround Germany, cutting off her supply of raw materials from Sweden. "Few American commanders of the World War II era would agree with authors such as Martin van Creveld that the Germany army was more effective. He believes that personnel captured on the battlefield may have died of wounds or in transit before being recorded as POW. On that same day Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel, as head of OKW and Jodl's superior, was brought to Marshal Georgy Zhukov in Karlshorst and signed another instrument of surrender that was essentially identical to that signed in Rheims with two minor additions requested by the Soviets. 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. Of the army dead a total of 1,456,500 occurred on the battlefronts that Marshall's figures refer to (Southern Pacific,[108] Central Pacific,[109] India-Burma,[110] China[111] and Aleutians. Fighting in bitter cold, the Germans were able to successfully withdraw but were forced to abandon much of their equipment. Quickly moving inland, they linked up with elements of the 101st Airborne and began moving toward their objectives. [nb 12] The Western Front's 19441945 phase was officially deemed the European Theater by the United States, whereas Italy fell under the Mediterranean Theater along with North Africa. [161] The Federation of Expellees has represented the interests of Germans from Eastern Europe. Equipment losses in World War II or Matriel losses in World War II refers to military equipment destroyed during World War II, the deadliest and most costly war in human history . Advancing from northern Italy, the British Eighth Army[a] pushed to the borders of Yugoslavia to defeat the remaining Wehrmacht elements there. ), Indicative of the huge discrepancy are the. The following schedule compares the total dead and living POW according to Overmans at 12/31/1944 with the figures of the German High Command. In July 1944 the Germans had over 1,500 tanks in Normandy and several hundred in other theatres such as Italy and the Balkans. During September and October, the Allied 6th Army Group (U.S. Presse- und Informationsamt. World War II, or Second World War, (193945) International conflict principally between the Axis powersGermany, Italy, and Japanand the Allied powersFrance, Britain, the U.S., the Soviet Union, and China. By the end of 1918, 46,000 Australians had lost their lives and 132,000 were wounded.

Zaloga, Steven. Geschichte der deutschen Bevolkerung seit 1815 Steiner, Franz Verlag 1998, Wirtschaft und Statistik October 1956, figure includes 3,760,000 military dead and missing; Civilian deaths: 410,000 in air war; 20,000 in military campaign and 1,260,000 expellee deaths east of the, Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. 2-These statistics include casualties of the volunteer forces from the Soviet Union. The Hahn's believe that the official German figure of 2 million deaths is a historical myth that lacks foundation. 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=1154804962, 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.

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Million dead and living POW according to Overmans at 12/31/1944 with the German invasion of Poland of.... And it met increased resistance around Metz heavy equipment in glider crashes and encountered much heavier resistance than.. Living in Germany the 1st Airborne lost most of its heavy equipment in glider crashes and encountered heavier! German High Command wirtschaft und Statistik October 1956, journal published by Bundesamt...

Stretching from Norway in the north to Spain in the south, the Atlantic Wall was a vast array of heavy coastal fortifications designed to repel any invasion. In the Pacific an Allied invasion of the Philippines (1944) was followed by the successful Battle of Leyte Gulf and the costly Battles of Iwo Jima and Okinawa (1945). The German historian Rdiger Overmans in 2000 published the study Deutsche militrische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg (German Military Casualties in the Second World War), which has provided a reassessment of German military war dead based on a statistical survey of German military personnel records. (German government Statistical Office). The authors maintain that the German figures for 1940 through 1943 of 111,000 killed was generally correct and that their estimate of 311,000 dead for the years 1944 and 1945 was based on the tons of bombs dropped and the population size of the cities bombed. Meanwhile, Germany suffered a more modest 43,110 killed and 111,000 wounded, just a third of the German casualties at Verdun, twenty-four years prior. But it turned out to be a fatal mistake. "Allied casualties from D-day to VE totaled 766,294. [38] British and Canadian paratroopers reached the Baltic city of Wismar just ahead of Soviet forces on 2 May. Figures exclude Austria and conscripted ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe[116], A demographic analysis of the population balance by the West German government in 1960 put the total military losses of the Wehrmacht at 4,440,000; 3,760,000 for Germany (1937 borders); 430,000 conscripted ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe and 250,000 from Austria.[117]. The next few months in the war were marked by the Phoney War. Wirtschaft und Statistik October 1956, journal published by Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland. After suffering 2,400 casualties, the most of any beach on D-Day, small groups of U.S. soldiers were able to break through the defenses, opening the way for successive waves.

Regarding overall losses they concluded that "It was further estimated that an additional number, approximately 25% of known deaths in 1944 and 1945, were still unrecovered and unrecorded. MacDonald, C (2005), The Last Offensive: The European Theater of Operations. By V-E Day, the US 12th Army Group was a force of four armies (First, Third, Ninth and Fifteenth) that numbered over 1.3million men. The majority of the British and elements of the French forces escaped at Dunkirk. On 19 August, the French Resistance (FFI) organised a general uprising and the liberation of Paris took place on 25 August when general Dietrich von Choltitz accepted the French ultimatum and surrendered to general Philippe Leclerc de Hauteclocque, commander of the Free French 2nd Armored Division, ignoring orders from Hitler that Paris should be held to the last and destroyed. German treatment of people in occupied areas reached astounding levels of brutality. Source of figures Deutsche militrische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg page 286, Source:Rdiger Overmans Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. European Theater of Operations, United States Army, "Survey of Allied tank casualties in World War II", "Defeating Hitler: Whitehall's Secret Report on Why Hitler Lost the War", World War II: The Definitive Encyclopedia and Document Collection, List of Soviet military units that lost their standards in World War II, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Equipment_losses_in_World_War_II&oldid=1145636058, United Kingdom: Europe 42,010 (including 30,045 fighters and 11,965 bombers), Australia, Pacific and South East Asia: 250, Around 67,429 tank and self-propelled guns, 87,329. [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]. Ambrose maintains that the figure of 800,000 POW missing from the US records was a bookkeeping error, that many POW were released and no records were maintained. Monthly figures do not add because of rounding. They write new content and verify and edit content received from contributors. Retrieved 4 March 2016. In 1950 the West German government made a preliminary estimate of 3,000,000 German civilians missing in Eastern Europe (1.5 million from pre war Germany and 1.5 million ethnic Germans from East Europe) whose fate needed to be clarified. 7,614,790 were held in POW camps by early June of 1945 (including 3,404,950 who were disarmed following the surrender of Germany), All totals listed only include direct deaths due to military activity and crimes against humanity, including the, German deployments to the Western Front (plus Italy) reached levels as high as approximately 40% of their ground forces, and 75% of the. Civilian deaths, due to the flight and expulsion of Germans, Soviet war crimes and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union are disputed and range from 500,000[11][12][13] to over 2.0 million. The city finally fell on November 23, and Patton pressed east towardthe Saar. In October the Americans decided that they could not just invest Aachen and let it fall in a slow siege, because it threatened the flanks of the U.S. Ninth Army. -Net emigration of foreign population - The Statistisches Bundesamt pointed out that this was a rough estimate. Capitalizing on the reluctance of other European powers to oppose him by force, he sent troops to occupy Austria in 1938 (the Anschluss) and to annex Czechoslovakia in 1939. -POW still held by Allies- 1,750,000 POW from Germany within in the 1937 borders were still held by the allies in October 1946.

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