Global InformationGerman casualties in World War II information
Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent. The wartime military casualty figures compiled by the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht (the German High Command, abbreviated as OKW) through January 31, 1945 are often cited by military historians in accounts of individual campaigns in the war. A study by German historian Rüdiger Overmans concluded that total German military deaths were much higher than those originally reported by the German High Command, amounting to 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria and in east-central Europe.[1][2] The German government reported that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel.[3][4]
Air raids were a major cause of civilian deaths. Estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000[5][6] to 500,000.[7][8][9][10][4] Estimates of 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.[14][4][15] According to the German government Suchdienste (Search Service) there were 300,000 German victims (including Jews) of Nazi racial, political and religious persecution.[16] This statistic does not include 200,000 German people with disabilities who were murdered in the Action T4 and Action 14f13 euthanasia programs.[17][18]
- ^ Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. Volume 46 Beiträge zur Militärgeschichte ISBN 3-486-56531-1 page 228
- ^ Hartmann, Christian (2013). Operation Barbarossa: Nazi Germany's War in the East, 1941–1945. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 978-0-19-966078-0. "Since the end of the 1990s, we have known that the total German military losses were actually far higher that had long been believed: close to 5,318,000 men".
- ^ Rüdiger Overmans, Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. ISBN 3-486-56531-1 pp.147-48
- ^ a b c [1] Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily
- ^ Gregory Frumkin. Population Changes in Europe Since 1939, Page 74 Geneva 1951.
- ^ Richard Overy, The Bombers and the Bombed: Allied Air War Over Europe 1940–1945 (2013) pp 304-7
- ^ Erich Hampe "Der Zivile Luftschutz im Zweiten Weltkrieg" pp.138-142 The figure of 500,000 includes 436,000 civilians, 39,000 foreign workers and prisoners of war and 25,000 police and military personnel.
- ^ Wirtschaft und Statistik October 1956, journal published by Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland. (German government Statistical Office)
- ^ The Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, Page 78.
- ^ United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany, P. 13 According to the report "no complete and accurate figures on German civilian air raid casualties, covering the entire period of the war, are available". 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. 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. 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".
- ^ Die Flucht der deutschen Bevölkerung 1944/45
- ^ Herausforderung Bevölkerung: zu Entwicklungen des modernen Denkens über die Bevölkerung vor, im und nach dem Dritten Reich Ingo Haar, "Bevölkerungsbilanzen und Vertreibungsverluste". Zur Wissenschaftsgeschichte der deutschen Opferangaben aus Flucht und Vertreibung Verlag für Sozialwissenschaften 2007 ISBN 978-3-531-15556-2
- ^ Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn: Die Vertreibung im deutschen Erinnern. Legenden, Mythos, Geschichte. Paderborn 2010, ISBN 978-3-506-77044-8
- ^ Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50. Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. Stuttgart: Kohlhammer Verlag, 1958
- ^ Christoph Bergner, Secretary of State in Germany's Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions in Deutschlandfunk on 29 November 2006, [2]
- ^ [3] Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine|Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily
- ^ German Federal Archive. "Euthanasie im Dritten Reich". Bundesarchiv-German Federal Archive. German Federal Archive. Retrieved 4 March 2018.
- ^ "Quellen zur Geschichte der "Euthanasie"-Verbrechen 1939-1945 in deutschen und österreichischen Archiven" (PDF). bundesarchiv. Retrieved 3 March 2018."der Zahl von200.000 Ermordungen zu rechnen ist" the number murdered is calculated at 200,000