263,000 Germans killed according to George C Marshall, Biennial reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War : 1 July 1939–30 June 1945. Washington, DC : Center of Military History, 1996. Page 202. According to MacDonald (The Last Offensive, page 478), "exclusive of prisoners of war, all German casualties in the west from D-day to V–E Day probably equaled or slightly exceeded Allied losses". In the related footnote on the same page MacDonald writes the following: "The only specific figures available are from OB WEST for the period 2 June 1941 – 10 April 1945 as follows: Dead, 80,819; wounded, 265,526; missing, 490,624; total, 836,969. (Of the total, 4,548 casualties were incurred prior to D-day.) See Rpts, Der Heeresarzt im Oberkommando des Heeres Gen St d H/Gen Qu, Az.: 1335 c/d (IIb) Nr.: H.A./263/45 g. Kdos. of 14 Apr 45 and 1335 c/d (Ilb) (no date, but before 1945). The former is in OCMH X 313, a photostat of a document contained in German armament folder H 17/207; the latter in folder 0KW/1561 (OKW Wehrmacht Verluste). These figures are for the field army only, and do not include the Luftwaffe and Waffen-SS. Since the Germans seldom remained in control of the battlefield in a position to verify the status of those missing, a considerable percentage of the missing probably were killed. Time lag in reporting probably precludes these figures’ reflecting the heavy losses during the Allied drive to the Rhine in March, and the cut-off date precludes inclusion of the losses in the Ruhr Pocket and in other stages of the fight in central Germany."
263,000 Germans killed according to George C Marshall, Biennial reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War : 1 July 1939–30 June 1945. Washington, DC : Center of Military History, 1996. Page 202. According to MacDonald (The Last Offensive, page 478), "exclusive of prisoners of war, all German casualties in the west from D-day to V–E Day probably equaled or slightly exceeded Allied losses". In the related footnote on the same page MacDonald writes the following: "The only specific figures available are from OB WEST for the period 2 June 1941 – 10 April 1945 as follows: Dead, 80,819; wounded, 265,526; missing, 490,624; total, 836,969. (Of the total, 4,548 casualties were incurred prior to D-day.) See Rpts, Der Heeresarzt im Oberkommando des Heeres Gen St d H/Gen Qu, Az.: 1335 c/d (IIb) Nr.: H.A./263/45 g. Kdos. of 14 Apr 45 and 1335 c/d (Ilb) (no date, but before 1945). The former is in OCMH X 313, a photostat of a document contained in German armament folder H 17/207; the latter in folder 0KW/1561 (OKW Wehrmacht Verluste). These figures are for the field army only, and do not include the Luftwaffe and Waffen-SS. Since the Germans seldom remained in control of the battlefield in a position to verify the status of those missing, a considerable percentage of the missing probably were killed. Time lag in reporting probably precludes these figures’ reflecting the heavy losses during the Allied drive to the Rhine in March, and the cut-off date precludes inclusion of the losses in the Ruhr Pocket and in other stages of the fight in central Germany."
Christoph Bergner, Secretary of State in Germany's Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions in Deutschlandfunk on 29 November 2006, [4]
United States Strategic Bombing Survey, The Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany, P. 13 According to the report "no complete and accurate figures on German civilian air raid casualties, covering the entire period of the war, are available". The authors maintain that the German figures for 1940 through 1943 of 111,000 killed was generally correct and that their estimate of 311,000 dead for the years 1944 and 1945 was based on the tons of bombs dropped and the population size of the cities bombed. Regarding overall losses they concluded that "It was further estimated that an additional number, approximately 25% of known deaths in 1944 and 1945, were still unrecovered and unrecorded. With an addition of this estimate of 1944 and 1945 unrecorded deaths, the final estimation gave in round numbers a half a million German civilians killed by Allied aerial attacks".
[1]Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily
[3]Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine|Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily
[5]Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine|Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily)
[1]Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily
Christoph Bergner, Secretary of State in Germany's Bureau for Inner Affairs, outlines the stance of the respective governmental institutions in Deutschlandfunk on 29 November 2006, [2]
[3]Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine|Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily
Indicative of the huge discrepancy are the Heeresarzt 10-Day Casualty Reports per Theater of War, 1945 [BA/MA RH 2/1355, 2/2623, RW 6/557, 6/559]. While certainly incomplete (especially for the period 11-20.4.1945), they reflect the ratio between casualties in both theaters in the final months of the war. For the period 1.3.1945-20.4.1945 they recorded 343,321 killed and wounded in the East (62,861 killed, 280,460 wounded) vs. 22,598 killed and wounded in the West (5,778 killed, 16,820 wounded), an East vs. West ratio of about 15:1 in killed and wounded. The largest difference was in the period from 1-10.4.1945, for which the Heeresarzt recorded 63,386 killed and wounded in the East (12,510 killed, 50,876 wounded) vs. only 431 in the West (100 killed, 331 wounded), an East vs. West ratio of about 147:1 in killed and wounded.
The Wehrmacht Monthly Casualty Reports, 1945 [BA/MA RM 7/810] show figures for the period from 1.9.1939 to 31.1.1945, which add up to 1,793,010 dead (thereof 1,497,351 killed in action - KIA, broken down by theaters, and 295,659 died of wounds - DOW, not broken down), 4,401,049 wounded in action or sick (WIA) and 1,901,940 missing in action (MIA), for a total of 8,095,999 casualties (7,800,340 without DOW). The MIA figure includes, in unknown relative proportions, servicemen killed in action and prisoners of war. The sum of KIA and MIA is 3,399,291, the sum of KIA and DoW is 5,898,400. Adding up the figures of the three branches of services for Osten (East) yields 1,164,755 KIA (77.79% of the total of 1,497,351), 3,621,568 WIA (82.29% of the total of 4,401,049) and 1,071,415 MIA (56.33% of the total of 1,901,940), the sum of the three categories being 5,857,738 (75.10% of the total of 7,800,340). Of the 3,399,291 KIA+MIA, 2,236,170 (65.78%) correspond to the East, whereas of the 5,898,400 KIA+WIA 4,786,323 (81.15%) occurred in the East.
[5]Archived 2017-06-11 at the Wayback Machine|Willi Kammerer; Anja Kammerer- Narben bleiben die Arbeit der Suchdienste - 60 Jahre nach dem Zweiten Weltkrieg Berlin Dienststelle 2005. (Published by the Search Service of the German Red Cross. The foreword to the book was written by German President Horst Köhler and the German interior minister Otto Schily)
Rüdiger Overmans (de). Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. Oldenbourg 2000. ISBN3-486-56531-1 Page 13-66
DRüdiger Overmans (de). Personelle Verluste der deutschen Bevölkerung durch Flucht und Vertreibung. (A parallel Polish translation was also included, this paper was a presentation at an academic conference in Warsaw Poland in 1994), Dzieje Najnowsze Rocznik XXI-1994
