Overclaiming

"..... and lists these people from the best downward".....

It's up there in black and white....I asked for a communique listing EVERYBODY....you responded with announcements for INDIVIDUALS....

Individual pilots scores were broadcast....the majority of the rest were not mentioned...


They only windmill tilting here is from Russian historians.

 

Besides, Kenny, where are your sources?

All I've heard to argue against this is speculation....you haven't qouted one author, Soviet or otherwise, who seriously questions the claims of the Luftwaffe.

Instead of nit picking, how about giving us a source or two....You seem to be the best informed...so lets hear it

 

When this has come up on other forums such as the axis history forum there were cases post war where they compared claims to actual losses recorded by the other side. These clearly support that the Germans like everyone else overclaimed and on average by about the same amount (not including US bomber gunners who were in a league by themselves in the over claiming department). Furthermore it's hard to excuse it in some cases as confusion.

 

Stunned silence from another Brit not willing to listen to ANYTHING that "Germans" have to say. Well, I'm British too, Ken.

You do the reading, and you come to the conclusions. We can't just rate everything thats not to our taste as "Goebbels Propaganda".

 

Your exact words:

I find three challenges in the above:


1) Play me even one broadcast where Goebbels mentions these people by name and tags their number of "kills".



2)....Show me the propaganda that mentions individual pilots from the extensive library of Goebbels output.

3) show me a copy of even ONE communique for consumption of the ordinary citizen that mentions pilot "kills" and lists these people from the best downward

Only your 3rd challenge could be argued over the other 2 have been answered.

I suppose if a list was found listing say 999 of a 1000 you would wiggle out of it complaining it was not 'complete'

You are as cavalier with the facts as Glantz!

 

Air combat is the MOST confusing of all...its over so quickly....Overclaiming is not done deliberately...it just happens.

Put yourself in the shoes of these people. You have lost friends and classmates, gone to one funeral after another. It's all very sobering. The last thing you want to do is take the credit for someone elses work, something they frequently died for.

 

Kenny, you haven't presented ANY counter argument.

Until you do so, you have no argument. So, what are these sources that contradict German claims?


So it's just you disbelieving then? Well, you've gone down the same path as people before you, and historians such as Dr. Alfred Price, Constable and Toliver, Philip Capland and Galland, all disagree with you.

Face these people and call them liars (would you have the stomach for it?)....most of the principal protagonists are dead. Dead men tell no tales, eh?

 

Like I had no sources to counter your claim that the Aces and the kill claims were a military secret and never broadcast you mean?

Which is the heart of the matter. It happened and can be documented.
2 posters got their knickers in a twist over the reasons for overclaiming suggesting deliberate overclaiming is just not in the German character and somehow their system would not tolerate such deception.
Considering the horrors this system inflicted on the world I find it astonishing anyone can claim they would never lie.
It must be included as at least a possiblity.

 

Yes....it IS a possibility, but ask yourself, why would you lie to yourself? I can accept the fact that Goebbels would have twisted the truth for propaganda, but as to the professionals themselves, it seems out of character to deliberately claim for things that you just have not achieved.

I did get my 'knickers' in a knot....and I apologise for this.

 

Yes. Do you think we of the ivory tower really believe the official story?

 

Let me put it this way. When encouraged or pressured by superior officers to falsify information, the average soldier, airman and sailor WILL obey that order. Obedience is the first thing they teach a man of war, and in NAZI Germany, disobedience carries far more severe consequences than what was written in the military code of law.

I will walk everyone through the difference between primary, secondary and tertiary sources. Kruska did not give us anecdotal evidence; what he gave us is PRIMARY source information about what pilots said what they actually saw and did. Official reports is secondary to tertiary material. Official report is written by officers, who relied on the information provided by their subordinates, who then relied on the information relayed from the rank and file.

Kruska's father, as well as his other interview subjects, suggested that in their units, the pressure to falsify kill records came directly from the top. This means the authentication system failed catastrophically in their units from non-enforcement and the validity of the data is rendered null. Now, is this practice wide-spread? Matching Luftwaffe and Panzerwaffe kill claims to losses reported by the Allies and the Soviets, then we find conflicting official reports.

Record of losses take precedence over record of kills. It is more trustworthy because it was in the officer's interest to make loss report as accurately as possible if he wants his replacements, and it is harder to hide the disappearance of machines and men. On the other hand, there is a lot of incentive, or in the case of Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia, immense pressure, to over-claim kills.

I know to a certainty that by mid '44 German military record-keeping is already untrustworthy due to the chaos of the situation. Post '45, the chaos and political insanity of the Wehrmacht ensured that most of its records of kill claims are utterly worthless. This is a military that shot its child soldier for feeding enemy POWs.

The American military in Vietnam, which was certainly more professional than the SS in 1945, MASSIVELY inflated body-counts and made false AARs at a large scale, much of it confirmed by post-war JAG investigations.

So, my answer is a firm Positive. In this situation, we historians do not take official documents, procedures and records over anecdotes.

 

Fair enough....

When it comes to Erich Hartmann, though, Russian authorities have already admitted that his total of Soviet aircraft destroyed still stands...

When Hartmann became a prisoner of the Soviet Union, he was put on 'trial' for war crimes...to quote the story....

"He and a few other German officers were later taken before a Russian judge in a crude coutroom near the camp. The room held an audience of about fifty Russian civilians. When called to approach the judge, Erich asked why he had been charged with war crimes. Reading from a dossier before him, the judge specified the charges. Erich was accused of participating in illegal, brutal and unprovoked attacks on the Soviet Union and destroying at least 345 expensive Russian aircraft. He was further accused of attacking a bread factory in the central sector of the Russian Front on 23rd May 1943, and, finally, of killing 780 civilians, including women and children, in the Russian village of Briansk. Erich defended himself against the charges, accepting only the destruction of the Russian aircraft which, as a German soldier, was only his duty and not a war crime. His defence against the charges was a waste of time and effort. Even the judge conceded as much and urged Erich, once again, to sign the confession prepared for him. Again Erich refused to sign, and this time he asked for a bullet. The furious judge declared: "War criminal! 25 years hard labour. Take him away!"

(From "Fighter Aces of the Luftwaffe",2007, by Philip Kaplan, page 122)

I think that about sums it up. Hartmann, by the Soviet's own admission, destroyed 345 of their aircraft (the remainder were against the Americans in Czechoslovakia in the closing days of the war).

Seems funny that, with Hartmann dead in 1993, that Russian 'historians' should suddenly 'find' 'new evidence' that completely contradicts their own records!

Touche' fellows....

I was saving that one, but I thought I'd bring it out at this point

Regards
VB

 

That's probably true for all armies during wartime, and the penalty for disobedience during war is mostly the same. As such you are only offering a commonplace.

Wrong. But why bother.
Primary source - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Secondary source - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Tertiary source - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
That is a pretty big mistake for a college-trained semi-historian. When I read a interview of his father, then I have a primary source. When I have him talking about what his father has told him then I have anecdotal evidence at best and hearsay at worst.
That being said, I still don't understand why you regard his father more trustworthy than other veterans. As far as I can see it you absolutely zero lead judging his objectivity.
I repeat I see no reason to categorically disbelieve him, but the same rule should apply to others also. The horizon of experience of a single pilot is also nothing I would want to build my case upon to.

True but a commonplace. Reports of kills and losses almost never match. Otherwise the crews of the B-17 alone would probably have destroyed the Luftwaffe twice.

True.

Here I disagree. Propaganda figures aside, commanders of all armies have absolutely no interest in getting presented falsified numbers, be it kills or losses. It simply serves no purpose.
Imagine every second Luftwaffe or VVS pilot would have gotten one kill for free. That alone would have blown up statistics to ridiculous proportions. It didn't happen.

Or already utterly unavailable for "post '44" claims.

I truly believe that almost every SS, Wehrmacht or Luftwaffe soldier had other problems in 44/45 than falsifying on a sophisticated level.

Who is we? Certainly not the majority of historians I know of.

 

same question found on this forum..may be of interest...
LUFTWAFFE EXPERTEN Claims vs. Kills - Aircraft of World War II - Warbird Forums

 

Overclaiming is due to many things confusion certainly is one but there's pretty clear evidence of that on at least some occasions it was deliberate as well.

 

Well a few points..
1. IMHO Harttman probably got a very high score he flew something like 1200-1400 missions whilst being an excellent pilot so 300+ kils is perfectly reasonable to me.

2. Onto the procedures/beauocratics of crediting a kill well it sounds almost like the same as the beauracracy of my divorce from my kid's mother . The laws/procedures used in figuring child support/enforcement thereof haven't changed that much since October of 1991 but in that same time we've had 3 different judges,2 different prosecutors and 5 different administrative heads of the child support office in the county where I live. Trust me any procedure/process/beauracracy changes when you have different people interpreting those procedures. Sorry to go off subject guys but I feel something real-life like this applies to the issue at hand.

3. On wether or not the pressure to cheat,sponge,overclaim or whatever you wanna call it came down from the top could it not be that instead the pressure was to increase kills/obtain success wether it be Panzers killing tanks or Luftwaffe obtaining more kills? Pressure exerted from the top to obtain more success on the battlefield could IMHO lead to overclaiming just as much as Hitler//Goebbels out & out personally ordering the lower ranks to deliberatly over-claim.

 

Hello Volga Boatman,

now I find your above conclusion not really solid at all.

The Russians also claimed he attacked a breadfactory - which was untrue
The Russians also claimed that stray ammo killed civilians - which was untrue.

Now as for the "Soviets own admission" - try and read the book about Hartmann (Holt Hartmann vom Himmel)
He states that initially the Soviets didn't even know that the "Black Devil of the South" and this young blond Luftwaffe pilot were one and the same person.
The "evidence" in regards to his kills was presented on behalf of German newspaper articles.
As such the primary evidence against Hartmann was based entirely on German information. - not Russian information.
His kills until today were never counterchecked with Russian loss records.

The reason was, that the Soviets in the meantime had found out who "he" actually was "Germany's highest Luftwaffe ace" and they wanted to set an example towards prominent NAZIs, if necessary convict them off warcrimes. Later they tried to "convience" him to join the newly established East German Luftwaffe for propaganda reasons. Within the German PoW's a pro Soviet group was enacted (ANTIFA and a officer group-Forgot the name) Fieldmarshall Paulus was their most prominent figure alongside with General v. Seidlitz.

So there are three reasons for the Soviets NOT to dismantle his kills. One being that those kills (originating purely from German sources) were to be used against him to brand him as a warcriminal, the second one being later to use his reputation for their own propaganda purposes. The third one being that Hartmann's kills might be correct. -which I personally doubt -maybe due to confusion .

Hartmann had lost his second wardiary (AFAIK 180 kills plus) when he was captured in Chechoslovakia. So on that part there would be no way to reconfirm upon his kills besides the articles from German broadcast or German Newspaperclips. His kills until today were never counterchecked with Russian loss records. AFAIK the Luftwaffe squadron files are not available at all - therefore to state that Hartmann's kills were all counterchecked (By Toliver) is already beyond reason IMO.
In the Hartmann book it is stated that the kill accounts from 180? and above are from memorised accounts of Hartmann himself (15/20? years after his killclaims.

This statement is totally wrong since all German holders of the Knightcross and above were listed and printed regularly - with their respective kills and deeds in the Newspaper and partially in the newsreel-Wochenschau.

An example of these newspaper articles is also published in Hartmann's book.

BTW, my fathers cousin was the groupleader of Hartmanns flighttraining school. He is also pictured in Hartmann's book. At that time however no one had a feeling that this young man would become Germany's top ace.

IIRC one of the biggest blunder on "killclaims" was this German U-boot captain who had reported of sinking the British aircraft carrier "Ark Royal?"
Goebbels apperatus had already proclaimed this "fact" - I think he looked quite silly on that day or week.
Now to "mistakenly" claim the sinking of an aircraft carrier - oh boy.

I am not well versed in Naval issues so I will leave the explanation about this "confusion" to those who know better in this issue.

I would like to add one thought on this "gentleman claim issue". There are two very distinct groups of war veterans in Germany.
Those who are members and organized in veteran clubs and those who are not.
As for my part I found out that reports and accounts from non-organized vetrans differentiate a whole lot from the other group.
Unfortunatly? the "killers/scorers" who contributed to the whole load of warbooks and literature are AFAIK all organized members.

One day I talked to my father (early 80's) "making use of my extensive knowledge" drawn from those known publications (Holt Hartmann vom Himmel, Das waren die Deutschen Flugasse, Marseille, etc, etc. He just shook his head - and said; where do get this nonsense from? all these ....... ( I do not want to mention the publisher company) is total rubbish and propagada by many of those who already were a tool of propaganda during Hitler's time. If you want to know what really happened I will introduce some pilots to you that are not of this kind.

Well he did, and that is were I changed my thoughts about myself having "extensive knowledge" One of the pilots I met was with the Me 262 at the end - my father was flying a protection squad FW, he and my father had common history during WWII and later in the new Luftwaffe of the Bundeswehr. My father flew the F-84F and F-104 in the same WaSlw10+30 and JaboG partially with Krupinski (197 kills) and Barkhorn (301 kills) and this gentleman from the Me 262 unit.

Regards
Kruska

 

Kruska, out of curiousity what is your fathers name and which squadron did he fly for during the war? Also which squadrons were the pilots you talked to from?

 

No it is not conclusive proof of overclaiming, and if you could actually read German you'd know that. The reported kills were reduced by 50% because as mentioned in the report:

a) During WW2 many tanks knocked out during combat were later repaired and returned to service. And the Germans knew that cause they did it themselves. And in 1944 the Germans were on the retreat, and thus they often had no way of checking wether their kills were total write offs or just damaged to later reach service again. And since the Soviets were advancing they had an easy time scooping up all their knocked out vehicles, repair them and put them back into action. Thus the Germans were always unsure of how many of their kills were total ones, esp. since they often found themselves fighting tanks they had previously knocked out, clearly showing the repairs done to damage caused in earlier encounters.

b) Many times in the heat of battle two different commanders could individually report being responsible for knocking out the same tank, resulting in double kill claims. (Same thing as what happened in the air)


That is why kill claims were lowered by 50% in 1944, it had nothing to do with deliberate overclaiming, the military simply didn't do that.

In short the report doesn't in any way prove that any form of deliberate overclaiming was going on, and that because there wasn't, simply because such an act was strictly forbidden and soldiers were severely punished if caught committing it.

Think about that next time you post that paper.

 

What 'report'?
I did not post any report so be so kind as to end the confusion and link/paste said 'report'.

I hope it isn't your usual idea of a report. i.e a passing reference in Jentz.

There you go again. Inventing straw men so you can rail against your own invention.
No one is saying it was the norm simply that it must have happened .
However if you have conclusive proof that German soldiers had higher moral standards than every other army in historyby all means post it.
And the example I gave was for Kursk in 1943, not 1944.

Show us an example where a soldier was punished . It should be interesting reading and I know you must have an example because you would not make the claim if you did not.

What paper?

How is an claim made that is in excess of actual losses not conclusive proof of overclaiming?