World War II Deaths

[Gary]

http://warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/deaths.htm

I found this list extremely interesting. It put a lot of things into perspective.

The UK had very little civilian and military deaths compared to a lot of countries

Germany lost 3.5 million military personel, and we lost 1/3 of a million

Netherlands lost 200,000 civilians compared to the uk's 62,000

Soviet Union lost 20 million people altogether..

total number of estimated deaths in wwII 48,231,700 (which would have been about the whole of the population of the UK)

These figures are estimates I assume, but certainly give you something to think about.

 

[photon]

By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 UK civilians had been killed in the Blitz.

Contrast with 9/11 and its aftermath.

 

[Lifeboat Man]

1/3 of a Million too many!

 

[Amp34]

1/3 of a Million too many!

Or too less in some senses. War is a brilliant way of culling the human population.

But seriously I'm always amazed at that figure, as you think it will be far more, however that's due to figures normally quoted as killed, wounded and prisoners.

 

[Ian D J]

Not forgetting the 1st World War. The first war was a bloody and senseless one, the second one had something of a purpose behind it and it even had the effect of promoting technology as we know it, but still was terrifying all the same.
I do wonder how many lives would be so different if both wars didn't take place.

 

[Strangways]

There seems to be a little bit of intrest in WW2 here. Maybe you might like to read my Dads memories of his war. It is a recommended read of the BBC Peoples War.

http://www.speedbird747.com/roy/

 

[Marc]

By the end of May 1941, over 43,000 UK civilians had been killed in the Blitz.

Contrast with 9/11 and its aftermath.

But 9/11 happened in "peacetime" and over 2,000 were killed in a single incident, so not really a fair comparison. Couple that with the fact that the US never suffered the sort of attacks on their homeland that we did during WW2, they were always going to react differently. The "Blitz mentality" has always stayed with us which I think was shown after 7/7.

 

[Arkady]

Looking back, WW2 looks like being the last truly 'righteous' war - one that could perhaps have been avoided if events had gone a different way, but not so much as WW1, which was a monumental waste of life and set the scene for the (almost) century of war that has followed.
In Germany, many people make no distinction between WW1 and WW2 - the fact that Germany wasn't beaten in 1918 - they simply stopped fighting - meant that there were always going to be those who regarded it as 'unfinished business' - especially as the Versailles Treaty stitched Germany up good and proper...creating all the right tensions and political polarisation that allowed the Nazis to come to power and carry on.

 

[desantnik]

Eddie Izzard:

So, America did well, Russia did well, and deservedly so, because half a million American soldiers died, half a million British soldiers died, and about 26 million Russian soldiers died. Soldiers and civilians, and that's just 50 times as many. It's just un-****ing-believable, you know, and no one mentions it!

I was delivering a presentation to some kids a few weeks back about the battle of Stalingrad. On the news that morning they were talking about how it was terrible that we had lost a few soldiers over the last couple of weeks in Afganistan. I tried to put things into perspective for them and explained how a Red Army unit, the 13th Guards Rifle Division, of 10,000 men were thrown in to recapture the railway station in Stalingrad. After 36 hours of fighting and the station changing hands a dozen times, only a couple of hundred members of the 13th Guards were still combat capable and they had met out similar casualties to the fascist invader. A single railway station a bit over a day's fighting...

Kinda sobering really...

 

[Arkady]

Ah yes, but no-one mentions that had the Wehrmacht not been bloody hard as nails in defence and had the Soviet High Command not been so ruthlessly purged by Stalin (and consequently utter rubbish in 1941), a lot fewer Soviets would have died...

Yes, a lot of Soviet Soldiers also died in captivity, (due to their commanders buggering off in the early days and leaving them to it - entire Army Groups surrendered en masse - those that didn't went into hiding and formed the rump of the partisan groups that gave the Germans such a grim time later on) but so did about 80% of German POWs after the war ended - the last to be repatriated came home in the late '50's...

 

[Amp34]

Not forgetting the 1st World War. The first war was a bloody and senseless one, the second one had something of a purpose behind it and it even had the effect of promoting technology as we know it, but still was terrifying all the same.
I do wonder how many lives would be so different if both wars didn't take place.

I'm just reading a book on the formation an use of tank in the first world war (Band of Brigands) and it just reinforces that view. It seems the Germans were sitting in defence most of the time, whilst we were just throwing troops at them, whilst those at the top were just turning down ideas to reduce troop deaths and throwing more troops at them.

 

[desantnik]

Don't get all "Beavor and his Cold War Warriors" on me Arkady

Out of an officer corps of some 120,000 the purges in the Great Terror removed some 40,000. In round numbers 10,000 were executed, 10,000 were sent to the Gulag and the remaining 20,000 were dismissed from the service. Both Rokossovsky and Bogdanov, for example, were purged and later reinstated.

The weight of this was felt, predominantly, by the higher command staffs (division and above) of the Western Military Districts. And, of course, the survivors had just received a graphic demonstration of where independent thought got you and they were somewhat inhibited by that it has to be said.

But the idea that the purges swept away the entire officer corps of the RKKA is, frankly, outdated.

A browse through the careers of of the generals listed at http://www.generals.dk will reveal a large number of officers with experience stretching right back to WW1 and the Civil War. You can even find one guy who fought for the White Armies and died of old age some time after WW2.

Additionally, pretty much everyone did badly in 1940/41 against the Germans. The fact that first major reverses suffered by the German Armed forces were all in 1941 and were all inflicted by the Red Army (Yelnya, Rostov and Moscow). It was late 1942 before the Western Allies managed anything similar implying that their assault tactics in the same period were just as ineffective, though, no doubt, more elegant.... Perhaps they had been more thoroughly purged than the RKKA

(hmmmm a pet subject of mine... perhaps)

 

[30psi]

Some different figures are quoted here

Don't know which source is more accurate, but the overall message remains the same.

 

[desantnik]

I'm just reading a book on the formation an use of tank in the first world war (Band of Brigands) and it just reinforces that view. It seems the Germans were sitting in defence most of the time, whilst we were just throwing troops at them, whilst those at the top were just turning down ideas to reduce troop deaths and throwing more troops at them.

You have to remember that a lot of what the British Army did was to try and take pressure off of the French who were getting a battering on the Marne and at Verdun.

Unless the British did what they did the French would have collapsed, the flank would have fallen and everybody would be eating sausage and cabbage in Paris in a couple of weeks...

So yes, where the British Army were concerned the Germans were largely trying to hold on, although thats probably the "big picture" - it certainly doesn't mean that the Hun wouldn't try and get into British trenches!

 

[Amp34]

You have to remember that a lot of what the British Army did was to try and take pressure off of the French who were getting a battering on the Marne and at Verdun.

Unless the British did what they did the French would have collapsed, the flank would have fallen and everybody would be eating sausage and cabbage in Paris in a couple of weeks...

So yes, where the British Army were concerned the Germans were largely trying to hold on, although thats probably the "big picture" - it certainly doesn't mean that the Hun wouldn't try and get into British trenches!

Very true, I think the two biggest bloodbaths, the Somme and Flanders were both designed to alleviate pressure from the French, which meant that even after both were seen as failures they had to be pressed on.

I do question however why the French were always being battered (even at the start of the war the original BEF had to retreat, even though they held their ground, due to french retreat on their flank).

 

[feeb]

whats more disturbing is that all the German bomber were fuelled with American sold oil

 

[desantnik]

Very true, I think the two biggest bloodbaths, the Somme and Flanders were both designed to alleviate pressure from the French, which meant that even after both were seen as failures they had to be pressed on.

Well, neither was designed to be rubbish They were both supposed to blow a hole in the German lines and hence cause the German line to collapse, or at the very least, divert Germans from the French. They didn't succeed at the first point, but certainly did with the secondary objective - obviously at a horrific price.

I do question however why the French were always being battered (even at the start of the war the original BEF had to retreat, even though they held their ground, due to french retreat on their flank).

Well, the war was actually a German-French effort... it was a continuation war from the Franko-Prussian war, which in turn was a continuation from a couple of other previous bangings of heads across the same border. Britain was only there technically because of mutual defence agreements. Sure there were probably a fair number of geo-political objectives that would have been achieved by smashing Germany in 1914 (afterall, the Kaiser's aim was to have an empire like the British and the French had, so he was an economic competitor to The Empire)

The German plan was to bleed the French army to death at Verdun and cause either military or political collapse of France - sap their strength. And pretty much they *almost* succeeded. BTW Verdun is a place to the French much like say the Somme or Ypres is to the British psyche, only of course its actually French soil. Mind you, did you know that after WW1 Churchill lead a movement to try and get Ypres to be given to Britain because basically it had been paid for in British blood...

Anyway, I digress

 

[Amp34]

They were supposed to, but their position and timing were set by the need to alleviate pressure from the french from what I understand.

There were a hell of a lot of undertones to the war, that we publicly went into to protect the Belgians. I've been to a few of the Battlefields and cemetaries and the size of some is just amazing.

 

[desantnik]

Have you been to Ypres? And then up to Paschendale? ooooooooh

Verdun is also totally fascinating... well, it is for saddos like me anyway

 

[Amp34]

I've been to a few places over the years, can't remember where exactly, however I have sung (god help all those that heard ) under the Menin gate during one of their rememberence calls and I remember going to Vimy ridge, also the largest german graveyard of WW1, now that was a sight. Most of the trenches have been filled in (obviously) and even the ones that remain are in poor condition (compared to how they were, obviously the years of decay have taken their toll). I've also seen a couple of the craters they blew at the start of flanders (I think), massive things, and apparently there is a few tons of explosives somewhere that never went off...

What I would love to do is go into one of the chalk caverns that were mined for storage near the lines. The photos I've seen look impressive.

 

[desantnik]

Been around a bit then You need one of Major and Mrs Holt's battlefield guides -top books, shows you stuff you'd never find without.

If you want to see something impressive, try the Cave Du Dragon up on the Chemain Des Dames - actually not far from the first action of British tanks...

 

[Amp34]

Been around a bit then You need one of Major and Mrs Holt's battlefield guides -top books, shows you stuff you'd never find without.

If you want to see something impressive, try the Cave Du Dragon up on the Chemain Des Dames - actually not far from the first action of British tanks...

What you get when you have active parents, the cities could be boring but the rest normally interesting.

Those cave may very well be what I was on about actually. Now I know the name of them I should be able to look them up.

 

[Arkady]

The Somme's a good Battlefield Tour, Vimy Ridge is also pretty good - the opposing trenches being only 25 feet apart in some places - though I sometimes question the validity of some of those guides...lol

I most enjoyed roaming across the fields that were fought over in the first few months of WW1, when it was more manouvre warfare...there you can really get a feel for what it must have been like as the massive destruction of the land and buildings that occurred later on didn't happen - you can still see the bullet-holes in the farm buildings that were fought over...
The numerous small cemetaries testify to the 'small' company and battalion actions that took place, as the troops were buried near to where they fell - a section of troops here, half a platoon there - classic fire-and-manouvre warfare...

I've also done the route that Horrocks' XXX corps took on Market Garden (stand at the river's edge on the Waal at Nijmegen to see the task facing the 82nd Abn guys after they came across in small canvas boats - 300m of car-park-flat uphill sodden water-meadow with machine guns on the Dijke opposite - no wonder there were no German prisoners taken afterwards).

Another good one, but one that takes a while longer is the Band-of-Brothers tour - from Normandy all the way to Berchtesgaden - the 'fun' parts are France, Holland and Bastogne, obviously...very easy to find, though Bois Jaques woods is spoiled from all the wannabe tourist digging fox-holes - which one local wag described as "authentic - dug by Easy Company"...hmmm yeah...fully intact after 60 years and after the wood has been harvested and replanted twice...

Another good place to visit is the Seelow Heights, just east of Berlin - there's a massive Soviet memorial in the nearby village, but the trench-systems are still quite visible...

 

[MartynK]

I've spent most of my adult life outside the UK, and I've never visited any of the WW1 or WW2 battlefields in Europe, but I will, at some point. Obviously I have no experience of the "tours", but all my instincts tell me to go alone. I'm not particularly gregarious, and I generally don't get on very well with organised activities. Anyone like to comment on the tour versus self guided approach?

 

[desantnik]

Tours can be ok, I suspect Arkady's tours he talks about aren't with a coach company ;-)

As I said earlier, get a Major and Mrs Holts battlefield guide book for the area you are interested in and use that. Its got all the details plus an itenary for you and then you can take your time and see the bits you want!

Really, really good books those (even if you aren't actually going!)

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_ss?url=search-alias=stripbooks&field-keywords=major+holt

Get the bigger book, not the pocket guide or map though!

 

[Arkady]

He's right - I did a 'Somme' Guided tour once and although the guide's knowledge was impressive, she was pretty tipsy for the most part and it was nothing I couldn't have researched for myself - which is more fun anyway...
Her house in Auchonvillers (named Ocean Villas by the Brits) was the RAP (Regimental 1st-Aid Post) for the front line about 1km away, so most of the casualties from there passed through her cellar...

The other stuff I researched myself, using as Desantnik rightly points out, Anthony Beevor's Books, period maps and other 1st-hand accounts...

If you're going to do the B-O-B tour, 'forget' the TV series or even the book of the same name - instead look to the war memoirs of Donald R. Burgett: http://www.donaldrburgett.com/ who was in 'A' Coy 506 PIR (B-O-B concentrates on 'E' Coy 506 PIR as you know) and wrote a far more balanced and authoritative version of events...

 

[desantnik]

Sign up to my "bin the Beaver" campaign

Go find a proper account, try Alexander Werth - someone with no Cold War axe to grind and who was seeing it with his own eyes, not copying and pasting other people's work. Modern books on WW2 are all just rehashes of other people's work now.

See if Werth's own first hand account of standing on the deck of a ship in convoy PQ16 watching torpedoes pass down the side of the ship doesn't make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up!

 

[Arkady]

mmm...Nice Beevor...

Going to Crete next dressed as a Fallschirmjager and see how far I get before being bludgeoned to death by the locals...

Parents went there a while back and were continuously asked "Are you German...?" by suspicious-looking squinty-eyed locals who visibly lightened-up when informed they were Brits...lol

 

[mark_wilson]

Unbeleivable numbers! Really puts makes you remember how hard the Russians got it. They probably lost the British number of deaths in Stalingrad alone!

 

[boyfalldown]

Looking back, WW2 looks like being the last truly 'righteous' war - one that could perhaps have been avoided if events had gone a different way, but not so much as WW1, which was a monumental waste of life and set the scene for the (almost) century of war that has followed.
In Germany, many people make no distinction between WW1 and WW2 - the fact that Germany wasn't beaten in 1918 - they simply stopped fighting - meant that there were always going to be those who regarded it as 'unfinished business' - especially as the Versailles Treaty stitched Germany up good and proper...creating all the right tensions and political polarisation that allowed the Nazis to come to power and carry on.

there's many historians now regard both as one conflict over here now.

 

[desantnik]

They probably lost the British number of deaths in Stalingrad alone!

Yes, about 480,000 soldiers killed at Stalingrad and about 40,000 civillians (mainly in the initial German bombing raids on the city)

 

[desantnik]

Going to Crete next dressed as a Fallschirmjager and see how far I get before being bludgeoned to death by the locals...

Errrr ok, whatever floats your boat - who do you do that with?

 

[MartynK]

I have a couple of the Holt's books, and about 2000 other history books, mostly military history from the High Middle Ages onwards, but they're all in storage in SA at the moment. I'll ship them over eventually.

Self guided sounds about right, and there's always the bonus of getting lost and finding something interesting by chance. Signposting in SA, once you get beyond the major cities and routes, can be a bit conspicuous by its absence and tends to just stop, for no apparent reason. We got lost trying to find the gun park at Colenso and ended up chatting to the locals in their township, surrounded by children, chickens and goats. They pointed out the route and some of the older people remembered their grandparents talking about it. I also met an elderly Afrikaner near Spion Kop. He told us that his grandfather fought there, and at Majuba twenty years before, and remembered him saying that they picked off the Rooinek soldiers as they peered over the edge of the summit, silhouetted against the sky. This sort of thing, and unexpected meetings/discoveries, puts flesh on the bones of history for me.

 

[78seconds]

In Germany, many people make no distinction between WW1 and WW2 - the fact that Germany wasn't beaten in 1918 - they simply stopped fighting - meant that there were always going to be those who regarded it as 'unfinished business' - especially as the Versailles Treaty stitched Germany up good and proper...creating all the right tensions and political polarisation that allowed the Nazis to come to power and carry on.

I don´t agree with your statement that in germany WWI and II are beeing mixed. It´s rather that WWII was more powerfull in a negative way and it was the last german war beeing fought. There are also many soldiers still alive that can tell from this war. That´s why the first WW is forgotten many times.

I agree with you that the "unfinished business" of WWI and the financial crisis played a big part in accepting Hitler and WWII.

Luckily germany has not been involved in any wars since then and the majority of germans want their soldiers out of afghanistan who are there to support the locals and rebuild the country.

The lost wars changed the way germans feel about their country and their identy. It was until 2006 that you couldn´t sing along the german national anthem in a football stadium because people would think your a nationalist. The sentence "I´m proud to be german" is still not beeing heard, only by nationalists. Since the World Cup in Germany you can see germany flags everywhere when the national side is playing and people sing along the national anthem. The new generation is eager to identfy themselves with and through their country.

 

[Arkady]

I don´t agree with your statement that in germany WWI and II are beeing mixed..

It wasn't a statement - I said that many people in Germany regard them as two phases of the same conflict...

That's me reporting what I've observed here...you might not agree with it, but that's what people that I've spoken to here in NRW think.

Lots of German flags flown here now and I've noticed in the past few years that 'nationalism' is less of a dirty word - and curiously for the same reasons as in the UK - football...it's allowed Germans to reclaim their National Flag as a symbol of pride in the same way it allowed the English to reclaim the Cross of St George from the Right-Wingers and NF...

As to the conflict in Afghanistan...well you can't have it both ways - if you decide to play a full role in NATO then you have to take the rough with the smooth - the Bundeswehr needs to man-up and get back some of the professionalism that was lost following the war... Trying to conduct operations in a conflict area with hands tied by the political masters and by public opinion will only get more German soldiers killed...

It's going to get worse before it gets better - al Qaeda doesn't care that the New German Army is all sweetness and light compared to the 'old days' - it just sees foreign troops who are an easy target...

Remember that suicide bomber in Kabul that killed all those German troops? The car bomb that rammed the Fuchs at a roundabout failed to detonate, so the soldiers - one colonel and two majors, plus troops from the other vehicle got out to help the driver... NATO standing orders are to pull back to a safe distance and let the Afghan Police deal with RTAs...

Driver regains conciousness, looks at all the uniforms around him, thinks "thanks guys" and presses the button.
Can you honestly see the Wehrmacht of old doing that? Too touchy-feely...
Seriously, the Bundeswehr needs to get a bit ugly...
Even the Dutch and the Danes are laughing at them...

 

[78seconds]

That´s true, the Bundeswehr are pretty soft and before they attack and kill they have to ask for permission a few times.
According to the german basic law the Bundeswehr is only allowed to defend Germany not to attack and invade other countries. The afghanistan mission is declared as a helping mission to rebuild the country, not to fight.

Yes, Germany wants to play a part in the Nato but as far as I can remember, the Nato and the UN were against the war in afghanistan and iraq. The world police ( USA ) started yet another war on their own and then asked for help from the Nato countries and tried to make them responsible.

The air strike, ordered by a german officer, is still in the press these days because many civilians died in the attack. The Bundeswehr is under harsh observation because of what the Wehrmacht did.

 

[desantnik]

Germany needs a Foreign Legion, that is how France got around similar problems ;-)

Mind you, wasn't the Condor Legion that before

 

[78seconds]

Mind you, wasn't the Condor Legion that before

Yes, the Condor Legion fought in Spain.

 

[Arkady]

Germany needs a Foreign Legion, that is how France got around similar problems ;-)

Mind you, wasn't the Condor Legion that before

No it was all Luftwaffe with the planes repainted with nationalist markings...most of the aircraft were left behind...
Spain paid for the privelige by 'donating' much of it's heavy industrial output for the next five years or so...

On the other side, the Soviets took the country's gold reserves to Moscow for 'safe-keeping' - never been seen since...

 

[Nod]

Going to Crete next dressed as a Fallschirmjager and see how far I get before being bludgeoned to death by the locals...

Parents went there a while back and were continuously asked "Are you German...?" by suspicious-looking squinty-eyed locals who visibly lightened-up when informed they were Brits...lol

There are some villages that Germans are ill advised to stop in - watch out for villages populated entirely by very elderly ladies dressed in black. Some of the walls will still have the bullet scars as well. Once they know you're not German, you may well find yourself plied with coffee and/or tsikoudia (Cretan Raki) and all will be smiles (toothless but still smiles).

This is one of the least shot-up signs in the mountains!