Heinrich Severloh The beast of Omaha

It is obvious that I am dealing with mild grade retards that do not know the difference between their bloated opinions of their "knowledge" and of themselves in their nit wit world and greater historical reality. So be it! It is a SOLID FACT that all armies try to hide their losses from their adversaries, past, current and future, for a host of good and practical reasons. That is one reason for the existence of Intelligence agencies. A fair rule of thumb when dealing with the US army "facts and figures" is that the US tends to report perhaps half their actual losses and "over estimates" their adversaries by a factor of four. A good example of this tendency is the battle of Cold Harbor in the US Civil War. Compare admitted Union losses at Cold Harbor with estimated Confederate losses at Pickett's Charge at Gettysburg. You will find that both figures are near identical at about 7,000 killed, wounded, captured. Now consider this: About 15,000 Confederates took part in Pickett's Charge, so their loss was a bit less than 50 percent. At Cold Harbor approximately 40,000 Union soldiers attacked very well prepared Confederate positions in exactly the same manner of Pickett's men and yet only lost 7,000 men? All sources say that Grant ordered a second attack and his men would not do it. Not even when their offices ordered them at gun point! By all accounts the Yankees were in severe shock from the Confederate meat grinder. My belief is that the Yankees actually lost something near 15,000 men at Cold Harbor. I also believe that Hein Severloh racked up about 2,000 GIs at Omaha because that is what the real facts indicate.

 

Damn child, even as a troll you are dumber than a whole box of hammers.

 

If you had bothered to look at the credentials and posts of some of those who tried to inform you it would be clear that it's you who doesn't know what they are talking about. Even if you do have some understanding of German mgs and their doctrine you display no comprehension of the larger picture.

Well it's mostly true (i.e. not quite a "SOLID FACT that all armies try to hide their losses from their adversaries" but completely irrelevant to the issue at hand. If you mean the casualty figures for Omaha are off, well they aren't exact but are reasonably close as history has long sense negated any need to hide them and it's not all that easy to hide US casualty figures in the long run either.

There is a huge difference between casualty estimates given by the army at the time and those arrived at by historians looking at the details (like regimental rolls) after the conflict is over.

Believe what you wish to believe. Expect to be laughed at however if you claim that an obviously fallacious opinion is a fact.

 

FACTS are FACTS! Pretending that they don't exist is a mark of true ignorance. My "opinions" which are based on provable facts, leave no doubt that I am right. The silly notion that "between 5,000 and 50,000 rounds fired per fatality" proves that (Severloh) killed a couple of GIs" is the stupidest lack of thinking remark that I have ever encountered. Sheldrake must taken a couple of bottles of STUPID pills to have come up with that one! Maybe he works for the Chicago Police Department? Down in Dixie, it takes one bullet to equal one dead deer. Two bullets equal a mediocre shot. By that measure, Severloh should have nailed 5,000 to 10,000 GIs. So I am giving the guy a brake by estimating only 2,000. Sheldrake, the same DoeDoe thought processes are evident in your other remarks, but I am a forgiving soul, so I will not try to hurt your feelings.

 

This is an interesting use of the words "solid fact," as used by the poster. It may be true that armies may try to conceal their losses in war time in specific operations. However, it is impossible to conceal losses for long even in wartime, Relatives were told of deaths, injuries and missing - and notice if their loved ones stop writing; and the media can count. There are no hidden losses after 75 years.

 

Units do not normally fabricate casualty reports internally, as it is critical for commanders to know the status of units at any particular time in order for them to determine the units capabilities. Medical units up the evacuation chain need to know how many casualties to expect. Graves registration needs to bury and record the dead.

RichT90 gave you the most accurate casualty statistics available for units that were in the Severloh's field of fire. They were based upon records not assumptions. If he were responsible for every last one, which he wasn't, the number is dwarfed by his claims.

-It's a FACT that 75% of US casualties during the war were caused by fragmentation weapons mortars, bombs, artillery, grenades, etc. (this percentage held close across other nationalities as well). So unless the German artillery, A/T guns, mortars, etc. were particularly inept; some of the casualties Rich mentioned should be attributed to these weapons.

100 meters? Really? That's basically point blank for a machine gun.

Why not tripod and T&E mechanism? It is the most stable and accurate configuration. Why one cartridge? You'd be better off using a rifle. Single shot does not use one of the most important of the machine guns characteristics, the beaten zone. That's why enfilade fire is the most effective form of machine gun fire against advancing infantry.

ENFILADE FIRE:
When the long
axis of the beaten zone coincides
or nearly coincides with the long
axis of the target. It is the most
desirable type of fire with respect
to a target because it makes
maximum use of the beaten zone.

 

Golly, who would have ever thought that all those morning reports, day in, day out, the bane of company 1st Sergeants and clerks, battalion S-1s, Regiment S-1s, and so on up the line, the basic report of the US Army, the status change of every swinging Richard in the company, transferred, attached, dead, wounded, evacuated, whatever, over the previous 24 hours were for naught. It is patently obvious to me that someone has not a clue how military units report their situations. Morning reports, those are the solid facts from which casualty reports are drawn, not a fan-boy love of german machine guns and outrageous claims to their efficacy.

 

One of the really neat things about the Germans in WW2 was that they compiled and enormous amount factual information. One can go through their reports and discover the most interesting things when comparing their numbers against "our" numbers. For example, when comparing the German army units involved in the Battle of the Bulge requests for replacements for losses of personnel. Their numbers totaled one fourth of what the US army claimed they had inflicted upon them! How did that happen?
One of the things that got me questioning "official" US army records, was that about 30 years ago I was doing genealogy and a rather elderly lady was having trouble finding out what had happened to her great grandfather. I decided to help her pro bono. Her mother, long deceased, had passed on to her a number of letters that had passed down in her family. They had been written by her great grandfather while in the Union army, one of which was written shortly before the Battle of Cold Harbor. It was a very touching letter, filled with love for his family and expressing hope that the war would be over soon and how very much he wanted to see them all again. I went through the "Official Record of the War of the Rebellion" and found him in a Pennsylvania unit. The "Official Record" reported that he, and the rest of his unit, had been mustered out of service in the summer of 1865 at a town I do not recall the name of. I took this information to her and to OUR surprise, when she got out her family records, we discovered that the town where he was supposedly mustered out in was very close to where he had lived. Yet, he never returned home. When we checked all of his letters, they numbered two or three for every month he was in service, but none were written after Cold Harbor. Apparently one way of hiding dead Yankees is to give them a discharge!

 

Well, considering that Cold Harbor is only about 25 miles / 35 minutes up the road where I sit, that's a pretty far stretch, not to mention 80 years, from Omaha Beach and Normandy and hardly cogent to the question.

 

NO! I completely disagree! The two things are obviously tied together by the question of how reliable is the data available? On the one hand we have a person who contends that takes between 5,000 and 50,0000 machinegun bullets to kill a man. He obviously, has seen far to many war movies. Another who thinks that because 75% per cent of US casualties in WW2 were caused by fragmentations, that must "prove" that Severloh could not have done it? He should be a big enough boy to realize that statistics, if ACCURATE, can give an overall picture, but are often meaningless in a given situation. A third person who is silly enough to think that a 100 meters on a gun range is "point blank" and that apparently "proves" I don't know how to sight in a machinegun! He would really be surprised to know that I really use a laser at 15 meters and only go to the gun range to check accuracy. It is very obvious that those fellows are really clueless, and so are you, if you can not see the connections.

 

Hmmm.
Name Of German Soldier That Killed 2000 Allied Soldiers With... | War History Fans

 

Damn, but this critter takes stupid to a whole new level.

 

American Civil War Army records are not comparable to WWII Army records which are not comparable to current US military records, technology and methods improve over time. No more than accuracy or completeness of WWII German records compare to Franco-Prussian war records. Another problem with US Civil War records especially enlistment and discharge records is, that many were not the responsibility of the central government but of the individual states.

If you'd spit the Johnson out of your mouth long enough to engage your brain or accurately read the information and apply it rationally to the argument

That would be me, and the point is that based upon the Severloh fairy tale, US casualties would have been in the range of 8000, he would have been the only German machine gunner on the beach, and would have had a position that placed every casualty produced by a rifle caliber round within his field of fire.

Not a third person, me again. I don't doubt you've screwed around enough with an MG42 to know how to sight it, but you obviously don't know how to employ one in combat. Plinking away at a six inch triangle at 100 meters on a range is a whole lot different than shooting at groups of moving men or bouncing landing craft at 300-500-1000 yards, because if you had practical knowledge of machine gunnery you'd be touting the characteristics of the weapon (which you ignore) that make it most effective.

 

It occurs to me that you fellows do not really understand how easy it is for a government to hide its' actual losses. One of the Germans that I had the pleasure of knowing by sight, but never by name, confessed to me that he had been in the Gestapo during the war. In one of our conversations, the subject of England's actual losses came up and he told me that the Brits had suffered much more losses than they had ever admitted. So I ask him how he knew that to be true? Here, in substance is what he told me:
In peaceful times, tourists from Germany traveled to all parts of the world. Many went to Britain, among them certain persons who had excellent command of the English language and toured the countryside. They would find a village to their liking, spend time there and ask the local paper if they could subscribe and have the paper sent overseas? Yes! Was the invariable answer and they would then give an innocuous name, like "Randy Miller" and an address in Rio or New Zeeland. Just about anywhere that was not Germany. Do that about 5,000 times and you have covered just about all of Britain. The payoff comes in wartime. A big city newspaper might have in the obits section something like "Lt. Reginald Graystokes III, son of Sir John Graystokes, and fifteen other ranks were killed in action in Lower Slobivia. The clever Krauts would spend their time piecing together all those Brit newspaper obits coming into the Fatherland and figure out that they had nailed not only Sir John's son, but 32 other Brits whose names appeared in home town papers all over the country and know to have been in his unit. Not easy to see, but governments have their ways.

 

USMCPrice. You are a nitwit stuck on your own "knowledge" which is actually of little import. You don't even know what a J number is and pretend that you are a great fount of wisdom when it comes to "machineguns". At most, you may have looked at a book or two, and it shows. If you actually knew ANYTHING about how the Germans actually used their weapons, you would realize exactly how STUPID your remarks have been! Question: Do you know how to hit a target YOU CANNOT SEE 2 miles away with a MG34? I do. Moreover, I can explain exactly how to do it in the most minute detail. I also have every item needed to do it. Think about it Einstein! If you can't come up with a detailed answer to that one. I'll tell you where to find it.

 

Oh good lord! This is still going on?
I can see the Shooterike's crap has gotten so deep that even waders will offer no protection...

Shooterike is his own worst enemy, because he makes the best case against Severloh's claim.

You see...His claim works only if Severloh, is the only person and the only MG-42 gunner defending Omaha Beach


Except, he is not... He is only one small part of a larger defensive position, WN 62.

Which had upwards of 10 MGs(two each in positions marked "8", and one each in positions marked "7")

Nor, is this the only German defensive position on Omaha Beach...There were several, as well as, a lot more MGs...


Thus, for Shooterike's claim to be Fact, and not one of those Alternative Facts that are so popular lately...Severloh must be capable of shooting the penis off a flea at 600 meters, while the rest of the Germans cannot hit the broadside of a barn, with a pistol, rifle, MG, mortar, AT Gun, or artillery, at 1 meter. Either that, or all the Americans were killed on Omaha, and the American victory there is one big lie created for public consumption.


Then he moves into tinfoil hat conspiracy theories not only for World War II, but the Civil War as well...Not that this brings him any closer to proving his point...But it makes for hilarious reading. I almost choked from laughing about how only the American government "fakes" it's casualty lists. But, the Nazi government were quite the sticklers and would not stoop so low as to partake in such actions. I, however, will vote for my favorite theory...Alien Space Bats!

 

Now that you have recognized this are you going to start acknowledging the facts and start learning or are you going to continue with your willful ignorance?

Well I guess that answers that question. Your opinons are based on a few facts some of which are minimally or completely irrelevant to the topic at hand and they are based on ignoring all the facts that invalidate your opinion.

Now the question is do you not understand what was actually written or are you deliberately distorting it?
The 5,000 to 50,000 round per fatality is not a "silly notion" it's a number derived from studying the facts. Does it prove that he killed a couple of GIs? No. It doesn't prove he killed anyone. What it does do is suggest that it is so unlikely that he killed 2,000 GIs that the phrase "vanishingly small: comes into play.

So you do have a problem with comprehending what was written by who. Maybe you should work on that before you embarrass yourself even more.

What an inane thing to say.

Except that measure isn't worth the bandwidth it consumed to post. I do like that you are now only "estimating" he hit 2,000 GIS rather than claiming it's a fact. Obviously your estimation skills are minimal but given some practice and a bit of learning you can improve them.

QUOTE="shooterike, post: 808880, member: 40080"]One of the really neat things about the Germans in WW2 was that they compiled and enormous amount factual information. One can go through their reports and discover the most interesting things when comparing their numbers against "our" numbers. [/quote]
The US did the same thing. The trick is to know which numbers to use. US numbers from unit rosters for instance are very accurate. Similar German numbers are also pretty good at least until very late in the war.

What a silly thing to ask. Casualties estimated to have been inflicted at the time are almost always off by quite a bit. But in discussing Omaha casualties we aren't looking at the German estimates of casualties inflicted on the US we are looking at the casualty records that reflect the actual casualties sustained by the US.

All rather interesting but irrelevant to the topic at hand.

Reading comprehension isn't your strong point is it. The statistic is the number of rounds expended per kill. It includes rounds from weapons other than machineguns. It also doesn't imply that said rounds were fired at an individual as you seem to be suggesting.

Really? You are suggesting war movies as a source?

Well when taken in context with other information they make a very strong case for it. If no artillery or mortars were firing on Omaha that would have been one thing but they were weren't they? Indeed several landing craft were hit by artillery before they even reached shore. So clearly artillery was inflicting some casualties. Then there's the fact that the units at either end of the beach suffered the worse casualties. He couldn't cover both ends of the beach now could he?

Further proof that you have problems with reading comprehension and the ability to construct a logical argument with relevant data.

 

Or not. It depends to a large extent on the government and the duration over which it is trying to hide said losses.

Amazing. You are doing an incredible job of ignoring the relevant and a mediocre job of trying to obscure it with your "smoke and mirrors" campaign.

Consider:
1) The Gestapo was an internal security agency.
2) The German intelligence apparatus in Great Brtiain was pretty much in total turned or eliminated early in the war.
3) The British deliberately posted misleading information in their newspapers.
4) You are still don't understand or acknowledge or ignore the difference between wartime estimates and or public reports compared to post war analysis of unit records.

 

Let's take a step back.

The claim has been made that a articular individual inflicted 2,000 casualties (or in some cases kills) on US troops on Omaha Beach on D-day.
This claim has been questioned and by the conventions of this (and most if not all good historical boards) it is up to the proponent to support his contentions. While not required the counter point has been supported by pointing out that this was a huge percentage of the casualties inflicted on the US force and it is unlikely that one mg could have had such an effect especially when one considers that other machineguns and weapons were inflicting casualties during this period.

To date the only support that has been given relates to the German machine guns and their doctrine. This however does little to support the claim given that there were quite a few German machine guns in action during the assault.

The only argument presented against the counter point has been that the number of casualties reported is not accurate. Nothing to support this contention in this particular case has been given. General arguments have been listed but they pretty much ignore both the data sources used and the efforts made to get an accurate count of US casualties on D-day.

Insults, irrelevant anecdotes, unsubstantiated claims (particularly those of marginal or no relevance), ignoring or misrepresenting the facts and posts of others, and repeatedly posted opinions do not in any way support the original claim. At this point based on any reasonable criteria an objective observer would have to conclude that the original claim is inaccurate and well refuted by the evidence at hand.

 

Takao, this one is for YOU! Nice photo, but if you actually knew anything important to this argument, you would realize that the two "holes" are called "Ringstaene", or "Tobruk". They are a type of German fighting position and can be found on WN62, BUT Hein Severloh,DID NOT use them as they were intended as secondary positions to guard against some sneaky devil trying to attack from the rear. So I am grading your post as "O", because, as usual, it is worthless. As I am a really nice guy full of highly relevant information, I am going to tell you where you can see what Hein Severloh's fighting position really looks like. Get on youtube and do a search for "WN62, Easy Red Sector, Omaha Beach - 10 minute tour". Now, this is very important. Pay close attention to how really well WN62 has stood the test of time. A bit of a clean up and install the necessaries and it could be put to use to defend France from an invasion from Great Britain! But there is one German fighting position on WN62 that would require a lot of fixing. You will see it beginning about 5:50 into the video. Somebody has knocked a lot of concrete off it. Like the damage you would see if someone took a Garand and fired about 10,000 or 20,000 practice shots at it. It would take a very, very brave and no doubt lucky German to MAN that position! How many of you brave armchair experts would volunteer to man that spot for 60 seconds if a few thousand GIs got a shot at you?