western front ww2 casualtieswestern front ww2 casualties

Deaths of POW were 450,600 including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit. 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. The crossing of the Moselle River and the capture of the fortress of Metz proved difficult for the American troops in the face of German reinforcements, supply shortages, and unfavorable weather. Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917, "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. Figures do not include prisoners held by Allies. [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. [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. "Hvor mange drbte danskere?". Murray, Williamson and Millett, Alan R. (2000). [19] (Since German reunification, the records in the former GDR (East Germany) have become available to the WASt). [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. Total German casualties between September 1939 to 31 December 1944, on the Western Front for both the army, Waffen SS, and foreign volunteers amounts to 128,030 killed, 399,860 wounded. With the war all but decided, Italy also declared war on the UK and France, but made little progress. [42] This later caused some friction with the Yugoslav forces, notably around Trieste. [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). British forces captured Bremen on 26 April after a week of combat. Let's be blunt: the German army lost World War II on the Eastern Front. Page 202. Retrieved 4 March 2016. In post-war Germany the fate of civilians and prisoners of war has been a contentious topic. 226,300 Military cars and 97,470 Military motor-cycles destroyed or captured. Bevlkerungsbilanzen fr die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50. XXX Corps was able to advance beyond six of the seven airborne-held bridges but was unable to link up with the troops near the bridge over the Rhine at Arnhem. On the Western Front in 19441945, 4,477 British Commonwealth tanks were destroyed, including 2,712 M4 Sherman tanks, 656 Churchill tanks, 609 Cromwell tanks, 433 M3 Stuart light tanks, 39 Cruiser Mk VIII Challenger tanks, 26 Comet tanks, 2 M24 Chaffee light tanks.[8]. 2,055,575 German soldiers surrendered between D-day and April 16, 1945, The Times, April 19 p 4; 755,573 German soldiers surrendered between April 1 and 16, The Times, April 18 p 4, which means that 1,300,002 German soldiers surrendered to the Western Allies between D-day and the end of March 1945. -Expulsion and deportation dead - This estimate is only for the. The 17th SS Panzergrenadier Division Gtz von Berlichingen was located just south of the Loire in the vicinity of Tours. On 16 November the Allies started a large scale autumn offensive called Operation Queen. 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. 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. Bevlkerungsbilanzen fr die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. The U.S. dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and Japans formal surrender on September 2 ended the war. [147] 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. Figures do not include Austria. Many civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation. By 1950 the Soviets reported that they had repatriated all German prisoners of war except a small number of convicted war criminals. Dutch casualties are placed at 2,890 killed or missing, 6,900 wounded, with no information provided on those captured. Hitler hoped that such a victory would prove demoralizing for the Allies and would force their leaders to accept a negotiated peace. 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. The Western Front of the European Theater of World War II encompassed Denmark, Norway, Luxembourg, Belgium, the Netherlands, France, and West Germany.

Pages 339-345. Bacque maintains that there has been a conspiracy by the United States to cover up these losses. 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. Defending the Ardennes were troops of the US First Army. When you visit the site, Dotdash Meredith and its partners may store or retrieve information on your browser, mostly in the form of cookies. 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. Coming ashore in Normandy, Allied forces broke out of their beachhead and swept across France. Source of figures-Rdiger Overmans, Soldaten hinter Stacheldraht. According to Krivosheev "The figures in the Wehrmacht documents relating to Germany's war losses are therefore contradictory and unreliable. 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. The West German government set up a unified body the Suchdienst (search service) of the German churches working in conjunction with the, In 1974, the West German Federal Archive (, In his 2000 study of German military casualties Rdiger Overmans found 344,000 additional military deaths of Germans from the, The German historians Hans Henning Hahn and Eva Hahn have published a detailed study of the flight and expulsions that is sharply critical of official German accounts of the cold war era. [161] The Federation of Expellees has represented the interests of Germans from Eastern Europe. Das Deutsche Reich und der Zweite Weltkrieg, Bd. How many people died during World War II? [163] The former President of Germany Joachim Gauck and the former German chancellor Angela Merkel have voiced support for the Center Against Expulsions. [7][8][9][10][4] [149]:12, The Austrian government provides the following information on human losses during the rule of the Nazis. In the North Africa campaigns the British and Americans defeated Italian and German forces by 1943. Their advance only slowed down as they encountered regrouped and entrenched German troops in the Vosges Mountains. The crossing of the Rhine was achieved at four points: Once the Allies had crossed the Rhine, the British fanned out northeast towards Hamburg crossing the river Elbe and on towards Denmark and the Baltic. The raid was a disaster, almost two-thirds of the attacking force became casualties. Pressing forward on all fronts, Eisenhower's forces met with success as the Germans had exhausted their reserves during the Battle of the Bulge. Air An American C-47 aircraft burning after being shot down during Operation Market Garden [58][59], The Western Allies also took 134,000 German soldiers prisoner in North Africa[60] On April 30, with the end in sight, Hitler committed suicide in Berlin. Archivalien und ausgewhlte Erlebnisberichte. Marshall's figure is 128,000. -Population October 1946 Census- Figure of 65,310,000 does not include 693,000 displaced persons (DPs) living in Germany. The gap in vital statistics between the middle of 1944 and the end of 1945 was estimated. [32] If the British had broken out of the Normandy bridgehead (or beachhead) around Caen when they launched Operation Goodwood and pushed along the coast, facts on the ground might have turned the argument in favour of a narrow front. With the Luftwaffe unable to defeat the RAF in the Battle of Britain, the invasion of Great Britain could no longer be thought of as an option. The current view of the German government is that these losses were due to an aggressive war started by the German nation. Nineteen employees at Deutsche Dienststelle assisted in the survey. The bulk of the Allied armies were occupied in the Mediterranean, seeking to clear the sea lanes to the Indian Ocean and capture the Foggia Airfield Complex. The Ninth and First American armies then turned east and pushed to the Elbe river by mid-April. -Live births- are those actually recorded from May 1939 until June 1944 and from January to October 1946. [40] 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)[41], Overmans does not include Russian volunteers in the Wehrmacht in his figures, only persons of German ancestry (Deutsche nach Abstammung). [147] These figures do not include ethnic Germans from other nations in the German military and ethnic German civilians who were killed in expulsions. German treatment of people in occupied areas reached astounding levels of brutality. Fighting began with Operation Weserbung, the German invasion of Denmark and Norway, in April, 1940. While the Western Front remained quiet in April 1940, the fighting between the Allies and the Germans began in earnest with the Norwegian Campaign when the Germans launched Operation Weserbung, the German invasion of Denmark and Norway.