german death toll on the eastern front?

another area where i'm finding varying figures.

most seem to agree that about 80% of german losses were in the eastern theatre.

A book by Paul Farrel i'm reading at the mo suggests about 1.5 million dead in Russia, which seems rather low considering the fear germans had of being sent to Russia. Then again the book is fairly old now.

other sources, including wikipedia (which im reluctant to quote,) say that that between 3 and 4 million Germans died on the eastern front, and just over a million died in captivity. These figures seem a bit more realistic, but like I said wikipedia can be a bit dodgy.

so what do you guys think?

 

Wiki is closer to the figure then the author (I presume you mean Paul Carell?)

I have a website with a graph showing the figures bookmarked somewhere but can't seem to find it at the moment, but also in Andrew Robert's superb book The Storm Of War he mentions that between 22nd June 1941 & December 1944 Germany had lost 2.4milion men on the Eastern Front compared to 202,000 fighting the Western Allies, and that German lost as many as another 400,000 men killed in the first 5 months of 1945 on the Eastern Front.

Paul Carell...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_carell

 

yes i did mean paul carrel, sorry.

2.4 million up to December 1944 seems fair enough.
Any ideas on how many died in addition to this, during the Vistula-Oder operation and the Berlin offensive?

 

I edited my post to include that figure from the same book. And then there are the approx 1.7million ethnic/eastern German refugees killed in the exodus from the Russian army.

 

army losses in the east from june 22 1941 to january 10 1945 (AOK 20 not included ):
KIA 888262
WIA 3458986
MIA 11O7339
AOK 20 :
KIA 16299
WIA 6O329
MIA 6845
Source :AHF German versus allied technology

 

army losses in the east:1 june 1944 to 10 january 1945
KIA 136493
WIA 632028
MIA 565834
AOK 20 :
KIA 4184
WIA 15034
MIA 45087
There is also a report about the losses till 20 april 1945,but I should not put much faith in its reliability .

 

About the figure of 400000 killed in 1945:I should not put any faith in it :it could be more,or less :there are no reliable figures for 1945 .

 

I totally agree and it will always depend on what source is used. I gave that figure as that was the one given in the book I had to hand at the time and as an approx figure it sufficed.
However, I have reservations about your KIA figures for June 22 1941 - Jan 1945.

 

there is also the problem of the number of german POW that died in Soviet custody during and after the war :we only can guess :there are figures of 360000 and 1.100000

 

Taken from the footnotes of Wiki:
German Military Casualties
Dr. Rüdiger Overmans, an associate of the German Armed Forces Military History Research Office until 2004, provided an official reassessment of German military war dead based on a statistical analysis of German military personnel records. The Overmans research project was supported and funded by the German government. The study found that the statistics collected by German military during the war were incomplete and did not provide an accurate accounting of casualties. The research by Overmans concluded that German military dead and missing were 5,318,0000.[6], not including an additional 215,000 Soviet citizens conscripted by Germany [7,278]. Overmans includes 344,000 deaths that were previously listed as civilian losses in eastern Europe and 230,000 deaths of paramilitary, Volkssturm and police forces fighting with the regular forces.,
Military Losses by Theatre
Overmans lists the following losses- Africa 16,066 ; the Balkans 103,693 ; Northern Europe 30,165 ; Western Europe until 12/31/44- 339,957 ; Italy 150,660; against the U.S.S.R. until 12/31/44- 2,742,909 ; final battles in Germany during 1945-1,230,045 ; other (including air war in Germany & at sea) 245,561 ; confirmed deaths of POWs in captivity 459,475 - Grand Total 5,318,000.
Military Losses by Country of origin
Overmans lists deaths of 4,456,000 men from pre-war Germany(1937 borders) and the Free City of Danzig, 261,000 from Austria, 534,000 ethnic Germans conscripted in eastern Europe, 30,000 French (mostly men conscripted in Alsace-Lorraine), and 37,000 volunteers from western Europe. In addition to these losses the Oberkommando der Wehrmacht reported the losses of Soviet citizens serving in the German military [24]separately, these losses were not included in the Overmans analysis of German casualties.[6,228-230]. A Russian source, G. I. Krivosheev reported these losses as 215,000[7,278]. In this schedule they are included with German military war dead.
Military Losses by branch of service
Overmans lists losses by branch as: Army-4,202,030; Air Force-432,706; Navy-138,429; Waffen SS – 313,749; Volkssturm – 77,726;Other Paramilitary and support forces- 153,891- Grand Total – 5,318,531.[6,335].
Military Prisoners of War and Missing
Overmans Includes in the total of 5,318,000 war dead 2,008,000 men that are listed as missing in action or unaccounted for after the war and 459,000 prisoners of war who died in captivity.[6,333-336] The details of these POW deaths by country that held them in custody are as follows: USSR 363,000; France 34,000; USA 22,000; UK 21,000; Yugoslavia 11,000; other nations 8,000[6,286]Dr. Rüdiger Overmans believes that “It seems entirely plausible, while not provable, that one half of the missing were killed in action, the other half however in fact died in Soviet custody” [6,289] Soviet sources list the deaths of 474,967 of the 2,652,672 German Armed Forces POW taken in the War.

Rűdiger Overmans. Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. ISBN 3-486-56531-1

 

Fatalities
Germany
Military 3,250,000
Civilian 3,810,000
Total 7,060,000

http://www.secondworldwar.co.uk/index.php/fatalities

The country-by-country medians for military personnel killed in the war are:

• USSR: 10.0M
• Germany: 3.5M
• China: 2.05M
• Japan: 1.5M
• USA: 0.4M
• Romania: 0.3M
• Yugoslavia: 0.3M
• UK: 0.28M
• Italy: 0.23M
• France: 0.21M
• Hungary: 0.14M
• Poland: 0.125M
• TOTAL: 19.0M

http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat1.htm

 

I have Overmans,but I am very critical;he has been debunked (see "Critique on Overmans ",available on the Web)
Fundamentally :
His figure is much to high:you can't count missing as deaths
A precise figure is of course nonsens :we never will know how much POW died,nor how much missing were death,nor the number of death in 1945
A lot of figures in his book are suspect .
We only can guess,and my guess would be for the east(and probably I will be wrong):1.3 million death + 1.3 million missing + an unknown number of POW that died in custody