The "machine guns" of Mons ?

[Robert Dunlop]

It may be that the British were presenting the Germans with a much better tactical answer than they had been presented with before and this is why they were caught out exposing themselves to fire while still in close formation.

Quite right, Tom. A couple of key differences between the BEF and the French forces in the Ardennes immediately spring to mind. First, the BEF independent cavalry, namely 1st Cavalry Division, performed very well in detecting the nearby presence of a major German combined arms force. Another example of this came to light today. While reading the 9th Brigade's War Diary entry for the 22nd August, the day before Mons, mention of a visit from General Allenby came to light. He reported that significant German cavalry forces had been detected and that these were being followed by significant infantry forces. All of the Brigade's units were then warned that a major battle was likely. This meant that the infantry had made some preparations, including loop-holing buildings, digging trenches, setting up machine guns, and (probably) stockpiling some ammunition. More importantly, the Staff were better prepared than their French counterparts. Some communications had been established between units (eg 9th Brigade used the existing civilian telephone system to hook up the battalion HQs with the brigade HQ), and preparations had been made in the event that a retirement might be necessary. Although bottlenecks did occur during the evening of the 23rd, there was nothing like the log jam that occurred south of Rossignol for example. There was no sense amongst the divisional and brigade Staffs that the BEF should push on once contact had been made because there was a shared understanding that a significant force was approaching, as opposed to the seemingly prevalent idea in the relevant French armies that they were facing light resistance.

There were examples in the Ardennes where French infantry were unseen and shot well. Clearly, the BEF were consistently good at this across the board. Given the high level of fire discipline, it is not surprising that the German infantry started off their assaults in more massed formations. One of the goals of First Army, as clearly espoused by von Kluck and reinforced throughout his book, was the need to press forward vigorously. It may be surprising, however, that the infantry could adjust their method of assault very quickly. My impression from other sources is that poorly trained troops who come under fire tend to bunch even more, rather than spread out in the manner described.

Another factor that was important relates to the way in which it could be determined that fire superiority was achieved. In training, as outlined by Zuber, German teaching held that an important indication of fire superiority was when the level of fire from the enemy abated. Then there would be signs that the some of the enemy were quitting their position. Zuber illustrates this very well with several examples in the Ardennes. As we saw with Bloem's quote, an easing or stopping of BEF musketry could not be equated with winning the firefight. It was probably a different story in the Nimy-Obourg Salient however. From British descriptions, there was evidence, at least in some places, of the 'retirement' being less orderly shall we say, never the panic of a rout though.

Robert

[truthergw]

In fairness to the French soldiers, the bad showing they made at most of the battles in the Ardennes was the mindless application of attaque a l'outrance which had been preached at Military College pre war. Marshal Foch being a great advocate of this doctrine which had to be hastily dropped. The BEF were a different kettle of fish with many of them in all ranks having memory of the damage artillery and accurate rifle fire could inflict on an exposed infantry.

[phil andrade]

There are also accounts of German infantry being severely repulsed by the Belgians in the earliest battles. The initial assaults on Liege, for example. Are these true, or a product of wishful thinking, as if they were inspired by a David v Goliath view of the German onslaught?

Phil.

[salesie]

Salesie

Now, so that we can move on, can you please do us all the courtesy of reading into the subject more widely, so that your contributions can add to our collective knowledge?

Jack

Before I read-up on Edmonds, Jack, perhaps you could do me the courtesy of reading my posts more thoroughly. I have never attempted to defend Edmonds, I have used his name to make a point simply because you and others have used him to make your own shallow, disingenuous points e.g. when you said "if it's alright for Edmonds to use German sources then surely it's Ok for me as well", when you had already called him a fantasist and George had pointed out your own caveats regarding the very sources you now rely upon implicitly. So, in your case, I was simply pointing out your lack of continuity of plot i.e. that German sources carry plenty of health warnings, stated by you in this thread and in one of your own books, but, all of a sudden, they seem to have miraculously become written in stone and are now regarded as the one true gospel.

As for Phil - I was simply highlighting that the point I was making was valid regardless of what Edmonds or anyone else had to say on the matter - then I went on to add that his arithmetic was not pure but despite this I believe he was on the right track. But just to make this point clearer, I do not need to examine Edmonds work more closely because I don't use his work to validate my points, and I never have. Because the points I have consistently made stand on their own logic, and the more others try to wheedle their way out of answering my simple, straightforward questions then the more I believe that I am also on the right track.

I also voiced the possibility (actually said maybe, just maybe) that Edmonds may have been privy to secret British Military Intelligence calculations vis-à-vis German casualty levels but, for obvious reasons, could not identify his true source. Which means, that invented sources and calculations could easily be seen to be false - which, if this scenario is correct, they surely would have been, but that, even if this scenario is complete poppycock, he was on the right track about the spurious nature of the Germans own casualty figures (as the British Military Intelligence records clearly show).

Now back to my main question, the one that seems to upset those of a certain persuasion the most, the one that mentions those who glory in the argument that German casualties were always far lighter than the British. In fact, I always asked the following, "does this indeed provide a stock answer to those who glory in the persistent argument that German losses were nearly always far lighter than the British, and show as being unfounded the Junkerphiles' insistence that British sources can't be relied upon when criticising German casualty returns as being understated?"

Please note the "does this indeed" at the beginning of the question, what I'm actually asking is: does Dr Michael Occleshaw's assertion in his well-researched book about British Military Intelligence in WW1 stand up? i.e. from my post #265:

"The tables on pp. 91 and 92 were compiled from 849 paybooks belonging to men of the 14th German Division captured on 23 October 1917 at Laffaux-Allemant. They provide an accurate rep-resentation of the composition of that division when compared with the composition of the same division in 1916, and also reveal the losses suffered by the division. The accompanying graph on p. 93 shows the staggering wastage by classes in the 10th Company of the 202nd Reserve Infanterie Regiment, showing that as early as April 1917 the lads of the 1918 class were being put into the line over a year early and that by September the only members of earlier classes remaining with the Company were returned sick and wounded. In human terms they make shocking reading: these cold figures mean that the hundreds of thousands of young men aged twenty in 1917 had mostly been slaughtered, maimed or imprisoned and that the men of 1918 were undergoing the same fate. They should provide a stock answer to those who glory in the persistent argument that German losses were nearly always far lighter than the British..."

So you see, Jack, if you read my posts correctly, I have introduced evidence from a viable, well-researched source, whose author is a historian far from being biased towards Britain and its secret service, (take look at this review of another of his books to see his lack of bias towards Britain and its intelligence services - http://www.greenleft.org.au/2007/707/36695 ). In reality, all I have asked are highly pertinent questions (to the theme of this thread) stemming from the work of Michael Occleshaw, but, judged by the way these questions have received plenty of reasons for not answering (or no answers at all), you'd think that I'd been asking for sizeable cash donations to my retirement fund.

So, let's see if I can inveigle at least a semblance of an answer by changing the wording a little, and not mentioning Edmonds at all? In your last post, Jack, you agree with me that the German army faced a major manpower crisis from mid-1916 onwards, hence the premature call-up of the 1917 and onwards classes. And, seeing as the German army did not increase in size then, logically, these premature recruits were purely replacements for losses suffered. As far as I, and Dr Occleshaw, can see, and British Military Intelligence could see back then, from the evidence contained in captured German paybooks, these replacements were greater in number than the German casualty returns, how do you account for the difference in the two?

Cheers-salesie.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

This thread has some interesting views from many members of the forum. Until now I have been tied up with other issues and projects but with some free time coming up I want to take a look at the threads and see if i can provide another point of view that may or may not help some members.

I am going to look over the German Verlustlisten that were published daily except for Sunday and list the losses reported by the different units. At this stage of the war some of the returns provide great detail as to rank, type of wound, etc. so it might very well be possible to establish approximately how many losses were reported and the different types if we are lucky.

Saying this I did mention the approximate losses. From the different lists I have looked at over the years the German system of 10 day returns was not always utilized as planned. In some cases part of regiments reported on one day, the rest on others. In some cases losses were reported in 3-4 weeks following the losses, in others 3-4 months. It makes it difficult to assess the actual losses in many cases.

At this point in the war many of the lists also indicate the location and dates the losses occurred. Something I would have hoped carried through the war but as time passed the lists evolved to the point where the men were simply listed in alphabetical order without the identification of regiment, etc.

Given all this I will compile a list of the German units at Mons and Le Cateau and see what loss records exist as well as the type of loss, etc. The categories are Killed (self explanatory), died of wounds, wounded (severe, slight or simply wounded), missing, sick, injured, PoW if known. There was also a category of slightly wounded, remained with the regiment. I have one instance o this type, a German in RIR 121 hit by a spent shell splinter near Serre in June 1915. It seems it just penetrated his finger while his hand was on his head. While wounded he remained with his company and continued serving.

It may take a bit to get them all together and fingers crossed they will be concentrated on the days in question so please be patient. If anyone has a request or idea regarding this search please pass it along, thanks.

Ralph

P.S. I read a brief account somewhere in the thread of the use of Soldbuchs, etc. to trace the owner's Class and the possible numbers of losses. These would not be overly accurate in the case of estimating losses as in some cases where companies were transferred to form core units of new regiments, etc. so the numbering system was not always an accurate guide to losses. It could give evidence of the Class of the soldier and that could provide other insights into manpower shortages, etc.

[Paul Hederer]

Paul, a general defence of the Sanitaetsbericht figures but with no detail. My serious doubts about them spring from the following: If the German Army was not running out of men in late 1916, contrary to what their casualty returns said, then why were the classes of 1917 and 1918 called to the colours up to two years early? And, seeing as those premature German conscripts outnumbered the German casualty returns, and the German Army did not grow in size, then where on earth did they go?

Now that you've explained the differing principles behind the Sanitaetsbericht and the ten-day returns, you seem to confirm what Phil stated earlier that there are differences between the Government returns made during the war and the Sanitaetsbericht. Perhaps you could be so good as to tell us, in overall terms, what the differences are - did the Sanitaetsbericht lower the overall German casualty rate?

Cheers-salesie.

Salesie,

I've not been involved in any of the discussions of German Army ration strength. I'm not sure of the context of "German Army did not grow in size, then where on earth did they go?..." To try to answer your question I can only say that the Sanitaetsbericht work only shows the ration strength of the German field Army growing.

Figures given for ration strength of Field Army:

New Year

1914/15

2,578,646

1915/1916

4,135,853

1916/17

4,989,737

1917/18

5,028,160

As to your second question you'll need to be more specific. What casualty rates are you asking about? The work has literally 100's of tables and charts.

As an alternative, and seconding Jack's suggestion on reading, I would suggest you get a copy of "The Blood Test Revisited:. A New Look at German Casualty Counts in World War I," James McRandle. James Quirk. It includes the salient casualty data from the Sanitaetsbericht, and it's in English, so you can read it yourself, and draw your own conclusions.

Paul

[salesie]

Salesie,

I've not been involved in any of the discussions of German Army ration strength. I'm not sure of the context of "German Army did not grow in size, then where on earth did they go?..."

Paul

Thanks for that, Paul. Sorry about my lack of specifying the context - I was talking about the class sizes in one year being far greater than what the actual casualty returns said, and I should have included the proviso (as I did in an earlier post) that the German Army did not grow in size, at least not enough to absorb two whole premature classes plus the class of that year as well, to account for the difference...

Cheers-salesie.

[phil andrade]

Paul's figures for ration strength show that the German army did increase in size, being very nearly twice the size in 1917/18 as it had been in 1914/15.

That might provide the answer to your queston, salesie.

Phil.

[Halder]

Many thanks for those figures Paul - really eye-opening.

Calling up the various Jahrgänge would account for some of the Feldheer's numbers swelling (tempered, of course, by casualties). Would I be right in thinking that the remainder came from totaler Krieg methods: women taking the place of men in the workplace, scaling down the number of reserved occupations, combing out the Etappe. The Wehrmacht did the same in the autumn of 1943 and, especially, post July 20th putsch with mixed results.

[Tom A McCluskey]

Paul's figures for ration strength show that the German army did increase in size, being very nearly twice the size in 1917/18 as it had been in 1914/15. - PJA

Phil,

This all depends on how low, or high, you set the bar on selecting soldier-material.

Aye

Tom McC

[phil andrade]

Paul's figures for ration strength show that the German army did increase in size, being very nearly twice the size in 1917/18 as it had been in 1914/15. - PJA

Phil,

This all depends on how low, or high, you set the bar on selecting soldier-material.

Aye

Tom McC

Didn't the Germans have a higher age qualification than the British for soldiers being sent to the front? A minimum of 20 years of age, I think, although I'm not sure; the impression I get is that German standards were quite high; the High Command was loathe to dilute the front line soldiery with sub prime replacements. There was an emphasis on quality rather than just quantity : at least, that was the theory. How far that could be upheld is another matter. One satistic that really shocks me - in fact, I find it hard to believe - is that of all the males in Germany born between 1892 and 1895, who were between 19 and 22 when the war started, 35 to 37% were killed. That's a vastly heavier per- centage than the overall rate for all men of military age in Germany in 1914, and implies a phenomenal concentration of mortality in one age band i.e. those in their early to mid twenties. If this statistic is true, it might imply that, far from robbing the "cradle and the grave", German military custom exposed a relativley small part of its male population to the lethality of the war. This is speculation on my part, and I'm reluctant to push the point, but the outrageous figure does require some explanation.

Phil.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

Phil, While the standard induction age was 20 they did take younger men into the army. I have several references to soldiers age 16-19 being sent to the front as volunteers in 1915. I also came across references where the earlier training periods at the start of the war were being reduced over time and partially trained men were being sent to the front. This led to the formation of recruit depots behind the lines where the men could receive the final weeks of training before being integrated into a line company.

There was also the practice on the Somme to comb out older, less fit men and send them to the relative safety of the rear where they performed all types of services and labor from charcoal making to preparing wooden frames for the mined dugouts. While safer it would appear the work was constant and harder. This last bit may also partially account for the higher numbers of fatalities among the younger age soldiers, but as I have never looked into this question I cannot even make a guess at the true reasons until further work is done.

[Desdichado]

There are also accounts of German infantry being severely repulsed by the Belgians in the earliest battles. The initial assaults on Liege, for example. Are these true, or a product of wishful thinking, as if they were inspired by a David v Goliath view of the German onslaught?

Phil.

Not wishful thinking at all. The forts around Liege held out against a massive German bombardment between August 4th and August 17th, 1914. There was heavy fighting on the left bank of the Meuse as the Germans attempted to cross. The Belgian infantry deployed to prevent the crossing had no machine guns or field artillery yet they managed to delay the enemy who attempted the crossing on pontoons. The river was eventually crossed by German cavalry and the Belgian flank retreated. From roughly that point, they fought a holding action as best they could, from the forts which came under constant fire from heavy German artillery. The battle raged at night too, the field being illuminated with searchlights. To make matters worse, refugees were flooding into the area.

This is probably not the place though to go into this battle in depth as it deserves a thread of its own.

[salesie]

Paul's figures for ration strength show that the German army did increase in size, being very nearly twice the size in 1917/18 as it had been in 1914/15.

That might provide the answer to your queston, salesie.

Phil.

Not at all, Phil - have a look at my posts again to see the key period of the premature classes call-up (mid 1916 to mid 1917), plus, as Halder has pointed out, there were other methods of obtaining extra men over and above the class system.

It is interesting to note, with just a cursory glance at Paul's figures, that between New Year 1914/15 and New Year 1915/16, meaning the whole of 1915, the German army increased in size by 60% (just over 1.5 million men) without calling-up any classes earlier than planned. Yet, by mid to late 1916 (some six to nine months later) they faced a major manpower crisis that needed classes being conscripted up to two years early. And in the two full years of 1916 & 17 it increased in size by just 0.9 million men even with the boost in manpower of the premature classes and the methods Halder mentioned.

Cheers-salesie.

[Jack Sheldon]

Salesie

I shall get back to you on your earlier post as soon as I can, but just to answer your last point, the answer is the existence of the Ersatz Reserve. Surprising though it may be to the modern mind, service in the various contingents of the German army was regarded as a real privilege and they were very choosy. By law the army was not permitted to exceed 1% of the population, despite the fact that many more young men than that were fully fit for military service. In fact pre-war, no more than 20% of a year group served with the active army, but a further approximately 15% were chosen for the Ersatz Reserve. They were fully fit and suitable in every way, but there was no space for them. They were given basic training, then called up four times for additional training during the next twelve years, then they they transferred to a different tranche altogether. In 1914, though undoubtedly some did deploy, they were not the source of filling out either the active army formations or the reserve ones. So once the casualties began to hit and the army needed to expand, Germany could call on another pool of manpower, trained to various standards to fill the gap. The 'fat' helped them through to late summer 1916 when the casualtes really began to bite. Contrast this with France, which called up many more of each year group (around 60% pre-war, which is close to the outer limit of the practical). When they ran through that, their manpower crisis began at the back end of 1915. By then their casualty figure had hit 1,961,687, of whom no fewer than 1,001,271 were killed or missing. No wonder, then, that they started to make noises to the British army to take over more and more of the front. Hope this helps.

Jack

[Desdichado]

Jack,

Was that particular law suspended between 1914 and 1918?

[Tom A McCluskey]

Phil,

There were not so many 'choice' pickings as the war wore on. From The War the Infantry Knew:

Page 245, 25th July 1916:

At Corbie: a large party of newly captured Germans, a fine body of men marching by in sullen pride.

Page 404, September/October 1917, The Salient:

The fourteen prisoners were given as many of their wounded compatriots, of whom 6 to 8 were found in Jerk Farm, as they could carry. There was scarcely a man, younger or older, of good military type among these Germans [...] Not long afterwards a German prisoner, under examination, said only eleven of his company had followed their officer in an advance. About that date the trench strength of a BEF company was 100, of a German company 60.

Aye

Tom McC

[Jack Sheldon]

It was, but in fact the 1% rule was effectively beginning to be breached before that. Balkan crises etc had decided them that they needed to beef up the size of the army, so as to generate more reserves as much as anything. For example, it was decided for financial year 1913 - 1914 to up the size of the active army from 544, 211 to 661,176 - a substantial difference and it is pretty clear that they intended to increase this in subsequent years. Laid out, the figures do not seem all that dramatic, but the trend is clear. i.e Inf battalions from 651 - 669, Cavalry from 516 - 550, no increase in field artillery, but small increases for foot artillery engineers, supply and logistics. One difficulty was that even if the will was there, the cash was not. The Tirpitz Plan was running away with loads of money, especially after the British switched to building the Dreadnought class and they had to match it. Then of course all these ships had to be manned and maintained which was very pricy.

Jack

[salesie]

Jack, you may be interested in the following table, in which the Ersatz reserve is mentioned (sorry about the quality of the scan, but you can still see the detail that British Military Intelligence were able to glean from German paybooks):

This is taken from Michael Occleshaw's book, which ties-in with the graph I posted earlier in the thread (which evaluated roll numbers as well as class), and is used as one example of many such tables for many other German units; British Military Intelligence handled may hundreds of thousands of German paybooks throughout the war (the word captured in this case refers to the paybook not the man who owned it, who may well have had it taken from his pocket after being killed).

Here's what Occleshaw had to say about it: "Paybooks therefore gave the Allies an accurate means of measuring the wastage of German manpower and also provided a guide to the casualties suffered by German forces in the field, for by subtracting the roll-numbers of the class already known to be serving from the roll-numbers of the new recruits, one was left with the total number of draftees to bring the unit up to strength. Furthermore, study of the roll-numbers also revealed what proportion of any German unit was composed of new draftees. Thus the tables for the 14th Division show that of the 849 paybooks tabulated, 517, or 60.89 per cent, belonged to new draftees."

You see, Jack, British Military Intelligence had their very own German sources.

Cheers-salesie.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

"Paybooks therefore gave the Allies an accurate means of measuring the wastage of German manpower and also provided a guide to the casualties suffered by German forces in the field, for by subtracting the roll-numbers of the class already known to be serving from the roll-numbers of the new recruits, one was left with the total number of draftees to bring the unit up to strength. Furthermore, study of the roll-numbers also revealed what proportion of any German unit was composed of new draftees. Thus the tables for the 14th Division show that of the 849 paybooks tabulated, 517, or 60.89 per cent, belonged to new draftees."

There are some fundamental flaws with this intelligence system. There were times where entire companies were removed from one unit to form another or to provide immediate reinforcements. The newer members of the company that had been removed were given sequential numbers indicating a false positive of the number of supposed casualties and numbers of men that passed through the regiment.

Also, unless the intelligence officers had a complete set of documents from every member of a company or larger unit the percentage of the men taken might or might not be accurate. Newer men were often more likely to become losses because of inexperience, etc. than older veterans.

The numbering system also could cause problems in interpreting loss details. For instance, a man killed in June 1915 near Serre, after serving 11 months at the front had the company roll number 2. He was a Landwehrmann and had completed his original service in 1902. Using the system mentioned above it might appear that a higher percentage of men in this unit were veterans of almost a year at the front and still intact giving the impression few men had been killed or he was just lucky.

There is also the fact that lightly wounded and lightly wounded, remained with the regiment categories generally returned to their units and kept their number from earlier service. While the books might provide some details it is dangerous to read too much into the information with all of the variables that existed.

Ralph

[salesie]

"Paybooks therefore gave the Allies an accurate means of measuring the wastage of German manpower and also provided a guide to the casualties suffered by German forces in the field, for by subtracting the roll-numbers of the class already known to be serving from the roll-numbers of the new recruits, one was left with the total number of draftees to bring the unit up to strength. Furthermore, study of the roll-numbers also revealed what proportion of any German unit was composed of new draftees. Thus the tables for the 14th Division show that of the 849 paybooks tabulated, 517, or 60.89 per cent, belonged to new draftees."

There are some fundamental flaws with this intelligence system. There were times where entire companies were removed from one unit to form another or to provide immediate reinforcements. The newer members of the company that had been removed were given sequential numbers indicating a false positive of the number of supposed casualties and numbers of men that passed through the regiment.

Also, unless the intelligence officers had a complete set of documents from every member of a company or larger unit the percentage of the men taken might or might not be accurate. Newer men were often more likely to become losses because of inexperience, etc. than older veterans.

The numbering system also could cause problems in interpreting loss details. For instance, a man killed in June 1915 near Serre, after serving 11 months at the front had the company roll number 2. He was a Landwehrmann and had completed his original service in 1902. Using the system mentioned above it might appear that a higher percentage of men in this unit were veterans of almost a year at the front and still intact giving the impression few men had been killed or he was just lucky.

There is also the fact that lightly wounded and lightly wounded, remained with the regiment categories generally returned to their units and kept their number from earlier service. While the books might provide some details it is dangerous to read too much into the information with all of the variables that existed.

Ralph

The paybooks gave the man's class as well as his roll number, so classes were readily and easily discernible, and hundreds of thousands of paybooks were in allied hands so cross-referencing was relatively easy to do. That said, you're absolutely correct about roll numbers; the inherent variables caused the problems with GHQ's intelligence assessments (Charteris aegis) which I pointed out in earlier posts. However, as I also pointed out earlier, British Military Intelligence (War Office under Macdonogh's aegis) were well aware of these problems and as such made adjustments, and when GHQ adopted the War Office methods it can be seen that their accuracy improved.

Here's part of what Occleshaw says about the differences between GHQ and the War Office calculations: "There was a sharp difference in emphasis between the War Office and GHQ over the way in which Germany was to be beaten. GHQ, as was its job, held that victory in the field, a la Napoleon, was the only way to force Germany to sue for peace. A circle of brighter minds at the War Office did not exclude victory in the field from their picture but they placed it in perspective as one part - albeit a key part - of a very much broader equation. The differing approaches originated to some degree in the evidence supplied by the different Intelligence branches upon which those judgements were based, their respective manpower and morale studies...

..Charteris argued that the total casualties suffered by the Germans since the beginning of April 1917 were not less than 500,000 men, an average of nearly 250,000 a month. The War Office held that German losses at Arras from 9 April to 16 May had been only 132,000 men. The discrepancy between their figures and those of Charteris, no fewer than 368,000 Germans - would have had to be accounted for by wastage and French efforts. This was clearly excessive for a period of barely two months; two months, moreover, which had seen the French Army racked by widespread 'collective indiscipline', as the mutinies of early 1917 have been called...

Following the change of method at GHQ, in December 1917 both the War Office and GHQ submitted papers on German losses in the course of the year, which had GHQ's calculations just 19,000 higher than the War Office.

Cheers-salesie.

[Robert Dunlop]

... you're absolutely correct about roll numbers; the inherent variables caused the problems with GHQ's intelligence assessments ...British Military Intelligence (War Office under Macdonogh's aegis) were well aware of these problems and as such made adjustments, and when GHQ adopted the War Office methods it can be seen that their accuracy improved.

salesie, what were the 'adjustments'?

Robert

[phil andrade]

Following the change of method at GHQ, in December 1917 both the War Office and GHQ submitted papers on German losses in the course of the year, which had GHQ's calculations just 19,000 higher than the War Office.

Cheers-salesie.

Interesting statements about the disparity between estimates made by War Office and GHQ. What was the actual estimate that the War Office made in December 1917 regarding German losses in the course of the year ?

Phil.

[phil andrade]

Salesie

By then their casualty figure had hit 1,961,687, of whom no fewer than 1,001,271 were killed or missing. No wonder, then, that they started to make noises to the British army to take over more and more of the front. Hope this helps.

Jack

Remarkable difference in the ratio of dead/missing to wounded : Germany, by end of 1915, counted 948,599 dead/missing and 1,595,406 wounded. Why was the French ratio of dead/missing to wounded so much higher? POWs among the missing would account for a lot of the difference, since the French had lost more than a quarter of a million prisoners by the end of 1915, about double the German total. Even allowing for this, the French proportion of fatalities is inordinately high. Perhaps it was the French, not the Germans, who excluded the lightly wounded from their casualty figures.

Phil.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

The odd part of it all is that the German Verlustlisten were regularly sent to the U.S. until we declared war on Germany in 1917. These would have been easily accessible to the British Embassy and other personnel in the U.S. and it would have been an easy method to determine the numbers of dead, etc. albeit 4-8 weeks behind the actual dates of the list.

I wounder if these were ever referenced during the war or at least until April 1917 by any of the Allied intelligence agencies/units?

Ralph