The myths of WWII (Eastern Europe)

The mass surrending and deserting was rare in the russian army because if caught by the Germans chances were you were killed and if caught by the russians you were most def killed for treason. The German defeat is because of multiple reasons. Hitler being one of the bigger ones. And most soviets would not have co-operated with germans nor would germans be willing to co-operate with soviets. But had Moscow fallen and the government been de-centralized then the USSR would have most likely gone to civil war and negotiated a peace with Germany. It was Hitler who wanted no peace with Communists he wanted them dead which was why his goal was to first find the Soviet army and eliminate it. But Other German high command like Bock, and Guderian insisted on taking Moscow in an effort to split the soviet union as this was the only way the Germans would be able to avoid an ultimate defeat in the long run. And even more German Commanders had a completely different view of everything. As for casualties they are not 100% accurate and therefore only general things can be implied from them like The russians had more soldiers, and the Germans killed at a higher rate.

 

About the dismissal of Guderian,this was of course just,because,he disobeyed (not for the first time) a public order of Hitler(commander in chief of the army)and violated thus the principle of obedience,which is the backbone of every army ;he was even very lucky:in other armies he would be executed for disobedience in wartime .
In fact,Guderian did the same as von Sponeck,who disobeyed an order from his superior (Manstein,commander of the 11th army).

 

Yes most commanders are put to death for disobedience but Guderian was far to valuable to do that. Hitler tried to keep him in-active but ended up having to make Guderian Cheif inspector of Panzer forces in 44. And even though Guderian broke a military law by dis obeying a superior he did save his army from being lost. Had he stood his ground as Hitler ordered he would have been en circled and crushed by the full force of the Soviet army. It would have been worse than stalingrad for the Germans. By retreating against orders he saved his soldiers and avoided a big disaster so I would commend him for that as a commander. Hitler's order'd cost the Germans dearly in numerous campaigns and Hitler's refusal to accept that the German army could be defeated is why so many Commanders eventually turned on him or tried to have him killed. Even Kluge who had supported Hitler for so long eventually turned.

 

I will repeat. German casualties are pretty well documented up to Jan 1945.
Thus anyone saying they are wrong or simple estimates is ignoring reality because it suits the case they are trying to make.

Utter rubbish.
The German Army knew how many men it had on(any) Jan 1st and therefore it could work out on Feb 1st how many had become casualties.

 

This is simply not corect. There is a whole field of mathmatics/science called statistics the deals with how to make valid judgmements, observations, and decisions when only partial data is available.

 

Thats the problem, how do we tell which source used it? Even if we saw the data, we could not agree on which one was considered the best, there would always be emotional hardliners.

 

Well if we are examing a decision made then there are often pointers to the sources of data that they used.

There are a number of techniques. One looks at how the data was gathered and where and in what direction the errors would likely lie. One can also use different data sets and see if it effects ones conclusions. Often they don't. If you have multiple data sets of aproximatly equal "trustworthyness" one can also average them or apply statistics to the combined sets. The fact that we don't have perfect data is one we have to live with in almost if not all fields of endeavor. Ignoring what data we do have because it isn't perfect is not the answer if decisions need to be made or one wants to understand what is going on in various procesess.

 

No simply looking at a list is not accurate at all. it is an estimate. And yes there is a science known as statistics and probability but neither are accurate. Like I said earlier. When the Germans counted casualties by using active personnel reports many casualties were counted twice because people who were initially counted as a casualty would either not actually be dead and return to combat or would be wounded and still return to combat. The easiest example i showed was the loss reports of the Tiger tank which had 1,715 Tigers lost but only 1,347 were produced. Now how do you have more tanks lost than produced? because losses were often counted twice by the Germans. And this is the case with almost every loss count the Germans did especially on teh Eastern front where losses were so high. The only 100% accurate way to do it would have been to do a progressive body count which would be very time consuming and expensive and im no tsure that the technology back then would have enabled that to even be acccurate. IT is impossible to have an accurate losses count when things are as hectic as they were on the eastern front. Its not hard to understand if you have a reality what it was like. And there are several different estimations of losses on the eastern front. I have seen numerous different casualty numbers which is why I really dont look twice at them. I know they are high and that the Germans killed more than they lost. Thats really the best information i can get from that.

 

Sorry but I just have to say it.
You are talking complete and utter bollocks.
When dealing in such large numbers on different dates and using varied counting methods you are bound to get differing numbers but any claim German numbers up to Dec 1944 are 'estimates' is rubbish. Total and absolute delusion.

Quite simply not true. A lie, an invention, total fabrication or whatever. The figures are bunk.
There is (if anything) an UNDERCOUNTING of Tiger losses and your figures are fiction.
You are falling into the trap of believing garbled internet postings by people who have no real understanding (much like you) of the facts.
I am at a loss to understand how you think you can get away with posting such bare faced lies.



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It is quite obvious you have never looked at anything.
Again put up these numbers and I will yet again link you to the real numbers used by the real Germans who were fighting the real war and needed real replacements.

Germany

Please pick a total from those pages and show how they are wrong.

You are a joke.

 

??? On it's surface this seems to be a rather obsurd statement. Care to clarify?

A list may or may not be an estimate whether it is or isn't it may be accurate or not.

Yes they are. To make such a statment suggest that you know little of ether the sciences mentioned or the defintion of accurate.

A casualty is not necessarily a fatality so where's the problem here?

Such an example may indeed be quite accurate. One needs to know just what was counted and why though.

But 100% accuracy is not called for in all cases and even here is likely not to be met.

That depends on what your standards for accuracy are which reflects on why you want that particular statistic.

That is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. It's not surprising at all that there are different estimations of losses. They use different souces, cover different periods, and may have different defintions of loss. By looking at as many as possible and the conditions related to them one can actually build a very reasonable understanding of the situation.

So I guess that's accurate enough for you. Others have different views on that though.

 

The difference between the loss reports and the production figures of the Tiger Tank (only Tiger I ?) can be caused by the fact that more tanks were produced than 1347:some Tigers officialy mentioned as lost,appeared later again,being repaired with the remnants of other Tigers :the cannibalization system,well known in every army .

 

You are nearly there but please do not show our expert where he is going wrong.
He copied these figures from other posts on inferior forums and he has not the wit to realise where he has gone wrong!

 

m kenny. your are a moron at the least. Show me a casualty record that can list the names of all the German soldiers who were killed and the date of record and then your list can be credible. Some guy that simply says this is the numbers from the german archive these are accurate does not mean ****. If you have credible records of casualties then show me the actual reports which means a full infirmery report will be there and have the names of the soldier, their unit name, their status, and date of record. untill then you are full of ****. I remember you on another forum trying to trash the Tiger tank by calling its armor of shoddy quality. i should have jumped in on that one. Secondly i did not copy those numbers form aanother "inferior forum" as you would call it that would be the number in the book "Great tanks of World War II" also it can be found in simple places like wiki you jackass.

 

lwd i agree with you that the accuracy of a casualty account is based off of what the person who is doing the count actually counts and how accurately he counts. which is one of my points. on a front of that size the numbers had to be collected first from the lower/smaller units by taking an initial and current count (the number subtracted would be the number lossed ,wounded, killed, or missing) this number would have to paased to somebody making reports for the platoon , then on up to the brigade, to the battallion and so forth all the way up to the final group. Note that calculators, and computers dont exist. Databases at this time are filing cabinets and done by paper or physical count. The chances of these numbers being mis counted from teh bottom up are very good. including the fact that many people probably took a rough guess or didnt even bother to file a report of their losses, or the possibility of a report being lossed, or even an error in combining the reports or any other error that can occur. So yes while i agree the numbers are in general a rough representation of the reality, it is not accurate. there is a range of mis conformity and that is from the science of statistics and probability which i do know a little about. probably more than mr kenny here.

 

LJAD so are you agreeing with me that Tigers were often counted more than once in losses? Yes i completely agree as not just tigers but alot of German tanks assault guns, TD's, and so forth were recovered, repaired, and used again, and they were counted as losses again. and this was especially true on the eastern front. And it is similar for soldiers who would be counted as casualties but would often return to battle because they were needed. and they would be counted twice. does this not seem true? or is there some confusion as to my point?

 

Acutally they (computers and calculators) did exist at least in primitive forms. Unit record machines as well. See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_computing_hardware#Desktop_calculators
At what point they come into use if at all is anther question.

What do you mean by "not accurate"? Certainly the individual digits will be off and probably the ten's and even hundred's. However how important is that for what we are discussing? If you say the casualty ratio is 3:1 that's essentially only one significant digit. That means if your casualties are in the 100,000's +or- 10,000 is plenty good enough.

 

lastly as much as i like your link read the very first page on it that describes how the count was taken and then apply my argument. "Wehrmacht casualties were reported in two general ways – numerically and by name. For the German Heer, numerical reports were issued by the IIa (Personnel Officer) or the IVb (Medical Officer) channel from the company level up to higher commands" did i not just mention passing reports from low to high units? "The IVb reporting channel was of greater accuracy and generally preferred, particularly after the reformation of the German loss reporting system at the end of 1942" hmmm... so this system of greater accuracy wasnt even prefferred until the end of 1942? well our argument is about the time preoid from summer of 1941 until summer of 1942. "Due to their incompleteness, Heeresarzt figures were stepwise replaced by figures of the Wehrersatzdienststellen (WED) in the OKW monthly summaries, beginning in March 1944" so even this system that was preffered beginning at the end of 1942 had "incompleteness" and required further data to be more accurate beginning in 1944. And finally "Beginning from July 1942, the WED data was incorporated in the loss reporting system of the Wehrmachtverlustwesen (WVW) office of the OKW. A few WVW/WED statistics from the end of 1944 survived the war. They can be considered the most complete German casualty figures available at that time." This does not even mention losses from 1945 and the reports from 1944 are few in number meaning less than most of the reports even survived. So in what time frame would you consider any of this accurate? As at one time or another it is either "not preferred, incomplete, or did not survive, or was not even reported" It is nice record. I like how they have the summary of reports even though they are not even the actual reports because they arent even in German. They are in english.

 

yes lwd i agree there were electronic devices that could be used as counters but they werent databases like say a computer or a calculator can do now days. and yes you are right there were primitive computers and things but those werent really in use because it was new tech at the time. and being off by a little is not that big of a deal unless the numbers were off by a little bit every time because if the numbers were off by a little every time then the little numbers would turn into large numbers. kind of a concept of accounting which i do know alot about. but really my point lwd was that a precise accusation like "the germans did not have enough men to fight the russians in 1941 and my proof is these casualty numbers" because the casulties numbers are not precise so that would be enitrely your opinion. My argument for that was that teh Germans always fought outnumbered and being outnumbered in 1941 really was not something the Germans did not expect. Not untill around 1944 when the german were actually running out of men would i say those casualty numbers erally mattered for the germans but not in 1941. Does that make sense at what im getting at?

 

I mean yeah it is true that the germans were losing men but to say that the germans could not have re inforced the men in 1941? There were so many reserve soldiers in Germany, Norway, France, the Balkans, Italy, and so forth that had Hitler chosen to he could have fully re inforced German units in 1941. But the German army was not having problems with the number of russians yet. and thats a big yet because by 1944 Germany would be having large problems with the number of enemies it was facing and was quickly running out of men.