How come in official german casulaty records, they have so many missing, while the allies have so few ?Did the allies declare MIA's dead after a certain while, and the germans did not ?This alos brings another question.How come so many could go missing in some battles.Like in the battle of Dieppe the germans had hundreds listed as missing . Could these be because of naval bombardement and the such ?
One explanation (if you are referring to the latter half of the war) is the same as why the Allies had a much better AFV recovery rate than the Germans: The Allies were advancing, while the Germans were withdrawing, and thus the Allies had a much better chance at finding their dead after the battle. The German military records would obviously not get updated after the war, so even though many dead German soldiers since been found, these numbers are not reflected in the casualty reports. Of course, we can now say with a fairly high degree of accuracy, that almost all MIAs are KIAs.
a lot of German MIA were lost on the eastern front and as such "dissapeared" Many were not killed but still were not returned after the war. Apparently the Russians kept a lot of germans for a long time after the war making them work in camps. Given the break down of east/west relations as well nobody could chase up the records if anyone actually cared. Also the allies being on the offensive used a lot of very heavy artillery/bombs. Whole platoons could just dissapear as their position was hit by a 16inch round or 500lb bomb in Normandy. Again listed as MIA but because anyone who cared were not in a position to look the records just never got updated. The allies kept meticulas records on these things and are still updating them now if additional information comes to light, such as finding crashed planes in mainland europe. The germans just wanted to move on and had nothing left of their adminstration to deal with the future let alone the backlog of 2 years of significiant losses FNG
Soviets kept pretty meticolous records. It seems that they did not capture so many germans as it was thought. Cold war propaganda had much to do with it. It was assumed that those that were MIA and did not return after the war or in 1950's were killed or kept in SSSR. This is ussualy supported by appaling losses of POW's captured in the end battles of Stalingrad. But it is ussualy forgoten that those men captured in Stalingrad were in incredibly bad shape even for eastern front standards and that Soviets did not count that so many would survive the siege. There is a slight chance (like one japanese POW found couple of years back happily living with his family in Ukraine) that some were kept or stayed voluntarily in the SSSR. One also has to understand that Germany was separated into two different states. This was not helpfull to updating war records.
apparently the russians held 3.4 million axis soldiers at the end of the war. The last bunch to be returned officially according to this were 10,000 in 1955. However I am sure I have heard of several news article from the early 90's were axis pensioners were found in camps after the fall of communsim or documents relating to their long term incarceration exist http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v21/v21n1p39_michaels.html http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=383012004 FNG
There were attacks were the germans could have easily looked for missing afterwards, such as the battle of france and dieppe
one has to wonder of the many hundreds of thousands of soviet pows who were freed ,returned to russia and then reinterned into the gulag system ,how many thousands must have been what we would call medal of honour or v.c. winners had their exploits been reported by other surviveing soldiers ...this has to be one of the greatest betrayals of war veterans ever in history ..ie a russian soldier fighting the axis invader with everthing and anything at his disposal for weeks or months until surrounded ,wounded and out of food, ammo ,energy and hope finally sucumbs and surrenders ...then manages to survive brutal years of near starvation in a german pow camp to be freed at last in 1945 .....and then arrested by nkvd thugs and deported to the gulag ..the murder of millions of innocents by the communists is sad enough but the betrayal of so many soviet war heros by their own country is somehow something even worse ,imo...
