Italy neutral

Well, I have researched in the old encyclopedias. Not even with all the new Germans of all the new terrotories there would be more than 60.000.000 Germans...

 

I state only the facts Herr General nothing more, nothing less

 

Perhaps the wartime population includes non germans as well. Im sure there were very many czechs in czechoslovakia when it was absorbed. And i dont see why they wouldnt be mobilised for military service.

 

I also do, Herr Feldmarschall. What you are saying is wrong, the population of reunified Germany in 1991 was aproximately 82.000.000 people. How could we have had the same ammount of population than 50 years ago? Beside. I have checked a version of the Britanicca encyclopedy awith datum until 1935 were it clearly says that Germany had a population of 50.000.000 people, and Austria only had five million. That means that nearly 60.000.000, of which 55% were women were in 1939.

 

Friedrick:

Sources: Command Chaplain of the United States Air Force, The American Heritage Encyclopedia of ww2, and The Marshall Cavendish Encyclopedia of WW2. Please let me know just how and why these sources are all so very wrong? As I posted before--its the C.C. of the USAF job to KNOW these numbers--among other things. Who is more better qualified than someone who keeps up to date with these things?--and presides over several funerals daily. If he is wrong--I would like to bring it to his attention to correct.

The day he presided over my Uncles funeral in San Antonio, he had just come from doing two ww2 veterans funerals from that morning. He still had two more to do in the afternoon. When I was talking to him after the services for my uncle--he said he has presided at the funerals to many who had served in the Wehrmacht in ww2. His last of this particular day--was a man who had been in Rommels Afrika Korps, had been imprisoned here in the USA (the POW camp in Houston, which is where Memorial Park is now) This camp in particular held mostly men of the D.A.K, and men who were in the Kriegsmarine.

My mother lived a short distance from this very POW camp. Back to the DAK vet------

After the war ended--he asked to stay in the USA, and joined the Army--where in 1950--he was stationed in Korea. This man retired in the late 1960s, after having done two tours in Vietnam.

I know several German vets who served in the US military as well--including the chap who was an Obersturmfuhrer in the Waffen SS Polizei Division. He was captured by the Frainch in late 1945--served in the Frainch Forign Legion till about a year or so after Dien Bien Phu--when he got out and had earned his Frainch citizenship.

This man in the later part of the 1950s--moved to the USA, where he joind the US Army--and became an instructor of Guerilla Warfare. I met him in 1998, and he passed away in late 1999 in his home in Lucerne Florida. This man was Hans J. Schwartz. This man had also been a mutual friend of my friend Hans Goebeler of U 505 fame.

Through Hans Goebeler--I met Erich Topp. When Herr Goebeler passed away--Hans J. Schwartz called me up one day on Hans's request on his passing. When Hans Goebeler passed away--I recieved four letters in the mail from none other than the likes of FOUR Knights Cross Recipients.

These men were: Erich Topp, Reinhard Hardegen, Hans-Gunther Lange and Paul Braseck. All sent me letters of condolences about Hans (to which I still and will always have) plus they sent me autographed photos of themselves. I Got two from Erich Topp, two from H.G. Lange, and one each from the others. These were also the first of many pictures and autographes that I got from RKT's.

I am friends with several RKTs and my best RKT friend is Remy Schrijnen--an RKT from SS Sturmbrigade Langemarck.

I think through my long association with veterans--German and American, and the many letters and long talks I have with them---I think I know a little something about which I make postings on--dont you think?

 

Of course you bloody know. That is why you are a bloody field marshall. And about veterans, we know you are the bloody expert. However, we once posted that according to that bloody USA department, 3 veterans of the Spanish-American war are still alive. And that is a bloody unsanity! Because they should be 130 years old! That made me distrust that US organisation.

However, I was not talking about the veterans more. But is fine. You know I appreciate you and consider you my friend. Thanks for the tales about your friends. But anyway:

 

No problem, and believe it or not--there ARE still Spanish-Aaerican War vets still living. One thing oft forgotten is that humans tend to lie about their ages sometimes........ The last US Civil War vet to pass away was in 1955, if I remember correctly. He would have been around 120.

 

HAHAHA!

Yes, I have a neighbour who is a veteran of the Waterloo battle...

 

Even if Mussolini had survived and continued to back Austria against Germany Hitler may have been backed off if he had made common cause with the Czechs, France Poland and the UK. That might have been very different.

 

http://www.ww2f.com/what-if/22674-what-if-italy-stayed-neutral-world-war-2-a.html

 

will the German 1939 census help figure out a number everybody can agree on?

"At the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the population of Germany had reached about 68 million. A major demographic catastrophe, the war claimed 2.8 million lives and caused a steep decline in the birth rate. In addition, the 1919 Treaty of Versailles awarded territories containing approximately 7 million German inhabitants to the victors and to newly independent or reconstituted countries in Eastern Europe.

"In the 1930s, during the regime of Adolf Hitler, a period of expansion added both territory and population to the Third Reich. Following the annexation of Austria in 1938 and the Sudetenland (part of Czechoslovakia) in 1939, German territory and population encompassed 586,126 square kilometers and 79.7 million people, according to the 1939 census. The census found that women still outnumbered men (40.4 million to 38.7 million), despite a leveling trend in the interwar period.

"By 1950 the newly established Federal Republic of Germany had a population of about 50 million, more than 9 million of whom were "expellees." The German Democratic Republic had about 4 million newcomers and 14 million natives (see table 6, Appendix)."

From:

Germany - Population

Another thing to keep in mind is that during both our Civil War and the Spanish-American the use of "drummer boys" was still an accepted standard, not an exception really. This could put boys as young as ten in "official" service. So it isn't completely OUT of the realm of possibility that some of these boys were alive well into the 20th Century.

There was a story about the last surviving Confederate Widow awhile back, she married this old guy who had been a drummer boy and was in his seventies when she married him. She was in her twenties, but the "laws" concerning veteran benefits had changed to extend to any and all surviving family members by blood or marriage. She managed to collect veteran benefits for nearly sixty years after his demise, and before her own!

But, this is a LONG way from the number of Nazi troops in Italy which started this original disagreement. The number of a million men is believeable in some respects, but certainly not as front-line troops. The logistics trail behind an army usually is about a ratio of three or four to one in the Nazi Heer in the later years. Whereas the American ratio was one man on the line, and nearly twelve men in the "rear with the gear" making sure of bullets, butter, and beans.

So perhaps that "total" Nazis in Italy included not only their Quartermaster Corps, but the Military police, the Gestapo, the SD, the SS, ect. who may or may NOT have been on the frontlines.

Just my opinion on this of course!