Page 202", "George C Marshall, Biennial reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War: 1 July 1939-30 June 1945. PART I LAND Section A, ENEMY OPERATIONS. For most of the war, 75-80 percent of the Wehrmacht had to be deployed in the East, a preponderance dictated by the sheer size of the front, and 80 percent of German war dead perished there: about four million of the five million German soldiers killed in World War II. Montgomery's plan for advancing over the Lower Rhine called for airborne divisions to drop into Holland to secure bridges over a series of rivers. Italian losses amounted to 1,250 killed or missing, 4,780 wounded, and no information is provided on any who were captured. Figures do not include prisoners held by Allies. As the Allies advanced across France, their supply lines stretched to breaking point. - Stuttgart: Verlag W. Kohlhammer, 1958. See also: German prisoners of war in northwest Europe, German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union and German prisoners of war in the United States, The fates of German prisoners of war have been a concern in post war Germany. This was also the period in which the United Kingdom and France did not supply significant aid to Poland, despite their pledged alliance. While the cream of the . Ideal for defensive warfare, the bocage greatly slowed the American advance. -Population May 1939 Census- These figures are for Germany in 1937 borders, they do not include Austria or the ethnic Germans of East Europe. Mittler, Frankfurt am Main 1969 Pages 258-266, Great patriotic war of the Soviet Union, 1941-1945: a general outline - Moscow: Progress Publishers, [1974] Page 392, Die deutschen Vertreibungsverluste. The organisation was founded on 16 December 1919 to look after the World War I soldiers' graves. Marshall's figure for the Central Pacific is 273,000. The following studies were published by the West German government estimating expulsion deaths. The result was the near-destruction of the British 1st Airborne Division during the Battle of Arnhem, which sustained almost 8,000 casualties. Although the great powers of Europe had declared war on one another, neither side had yet committed to launching a significant attack, and there was relatively little fighting on the ground. Bloodshed had never been seen on such a scale before. They maintain the files of over 18 million men who served in the war. Beginning on July 25, elements of the U.S. First Army broke through the German lines near St. On 1 September 1939, World War II began with the German invasion of Poland. [23], A. Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent. Below is the article summary. [134], See Also: Flight and expulsion of Germans (194450) and Forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union, Civilian deaths, due to the flight and expulsion of Germans and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union, are sometimes included with World War II casualties. The German historian Rdiger Overmans believes, based on his research, that these figures are incomplete and unreliable. Adopting the COSSAC plan, Eisenhower appointed General Sir Bernard Montgomery to command the invasion's ground forces. Marshall's figure is 128,000. Confronting the Allies was Hitler's Atlantic Wall. 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. The bombing of Dresden and the bombing campaign in general has been a topic of discussion in post-war Germany. 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.[135]. 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. 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. [7][8][9][10][4]
The breakthrough was exploited by Lt. General George S. Patton's newly activated Third Army. Following the Allied breakout, the German front in Normandy collapsed, with troops retreating east. Sensing that a German collapse was imminent, Montgomery ordered U.S. forces to turn east as British forces pressed south and east, attempting to encircle the Germans. The terms of the armistice called for the occupation of Northern France, along with the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine into the German Reich. Page 478. -Expulsion and deportation dead - This estimate is only for the. As this was the strategy favoured by the Supreme Allied Commander, General Dwight D. Eisenhower, and most of the American high command, it was soon adopted. Pressing east, they advanced to the Elbe River, where they linked up with Soviet troops in mid-April. [52] In March the daily rate of POWs taken on the Western Front was 10,000;[53] in the first 14 days of April it rose to 39,000[54] and in the last 16 days the average peaked at 59,000 soldiers captured each day. Herausforderung Bevlkerung: zu Entwicklungen des modernen Denkens ber die Bevlkerung vor, im und nach dem Dritten Reich, Ploetz Geschichte des zweiten Weltkrieges Wrzburg, Ploetz 1960 page 80, Burkhart Mller-Hillebrand Das Heer 19331945. To enhance this natural defensive line, the Germans promptly began destroying the bridges spanning the river. 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. Hickman, Kennedy. If the British refused to agree to a peace treaty, one option was to invade. When the Germans demanded their surrender, the 101st's commander, General Anthony McAuliffe, famously replied "Nuts!". [147] These figures do not include ethnic Germans from other nations in the German military and ethnic German civilians who were killed in expulsions. [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]. Because the Allied lines had become severely stretched in response to the crisis in the Ardennes, holding and throwing back the Nordwind offensive was a costly affair that lasted almost four weeks.
In the post-war era the military search service Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) has been responsible for providing information for the families of those military personnel who were killed or went missing in the war. Polands defeat was followed by a period of military inactivity on the Western Front, known as the Phony War. [126], The West German government in made a rough estimate in 1956 of 20,000 civilians killed during the 1945 military campaign in current post war German borders, not including the former German territories in Poland. 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. (German government Statistical Office). [148] 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. Fighting on the Western Front was preceded by the Phony War. The research project involved taking a statistical sample of the confidential German military personnel records located at the (WASt). by Konrad Adenauer. 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. These were built in anticipation of an Allied invasion of France. If all went well XXX Corps would advance into Germany without any remaining major obstacles. Entwicklung des organisatorischen Aufbaues.
Figures for missing include POW held by Allies. In six weeks of fighting, the combined allied armies suffered more than 375,000 killed or wounded, as well as 1,800,000 soldiers becoming prisoners of war. Presse- und Informationsamt. Elements of the US 3rd Infantry Division were the first Allied troops to arrive at Berchtesgaden, which they secured, while the French 2nd Armoured Division seized the Berghof (Hitler's Alpine residence) on 4 May 1945. The Germans had been preparing a massive counter-attack in the West since the Allied breakout from Normandy. Despite the U.S. stance, operations did commence in Sicily and Italy; however, the Mediterranean was understood to be a secondary theater of the war. As the Germans were using bases in Belgium and Holland to launch V-1 buzz bombs and V-2 rockets at Britain, Eisenhower sided with Montgomery. However, in Poland it is viewed by some as an attempt to reopen the wounds of the war and to revert to pre-war borders. The French forces launched a small offensive, the Saar Offensive against Germany in the Saar region but halted their advance and returned. The statistics on World War II casualties are inexact. 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. In 1992 when Overmans began the project, German military dead in the war listed at the military search service Deutsche Dienststelle (WASt) were 4.3 million men (3.1 million confirmed dead and 1.2 missing and presumed dead). Murray, Williamson and Millett, Alan R. (2000). This instance of tying prisoner's hands contributed to Hitler's decision to issue his Commando Order instructing that all captured Commandos or Commando-type personnel were to be executed as a matter of procedure.
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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. 5 p153, The Allied armies in the west captured more than 1,500,000 prisoners during April., In the last sixteen days of April, (over) 951,827 Germans were captured to make a total of (over) 1,500,000 for the whole of April, see Ref. Universe, Inc. (July 13, 2005). This page was last edited on 2 June 2023, at 15:18. 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. Italy also was allowed a small occupation zone in the southeast. Hickman, Kennedy.
The Nazis' plan for Eastern Europe, unlike in the West, was to murder or enslave the local inhabitants (most of whom were Slavs, considered sub-human in Nazi racial classification) in order to created 'living space' for Germans in these territories. Von Rundstedt's divisions, which had remained on the west bank, were cut to pieces in the ''battle of the Rhineland' 280,000 men were taken prisoner. By early 1940 the Soviet Union had divided Poland with Germany, occupied the Baltic states, and subdued Finland in the Russo-Finnish War. Previously it was reported that 70,000 persons were murdered in the euthanasia program, recent research in the archives of the former East Germany indicate that the number of victims in Germany and Austria was about 200,000. Metropolitan Life Insurance Company, Statistical bulletin January 1946 Page 7, Wirtschaft und Statistik November 1949, journal published by Statistisches Bundesamt Deutschland. Though originally scheduled for June 5, the landings in Normandy were postponed one day due to foul weather. Paul Winter, in Defeating Hitler, states "these figures are undoubtedly too low"[15].