German Casualty discussion

[Robert Dunlop]

The book was based on various intelligence estimates, some of which were not very - er - intelligent. It is an interesting resource, especially now that it is freely available. The content must be treated with caution. In general, the records of heavy losses do correspond with the various battles but the numbers are not necessarily accurate.

Robert

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

I have a copy of that book, Mike (reprinted a few years ago), and I often wondered how those figures were obtaied, given that it was not a German publication, and produced in wartime anyway, when figures would, presumably be difficult to obtain. (Gosh. What a long sentence).

Steven, There is a very good chance some of this information came from a review of the VL as these were available to the Allies through neutral countries. Other sources could be captured reports and other related documents. At the end of the war much of the information concerning regimental and division records were either destroyed or in some cases captured and then evaluated by intelligence groups. Then there is also the newspapers that printed loss details. While each one has limitations they can all be used with other sources to creat a good idea of the losses suffered by any group.

Ralph

[Latze]

Does anyone have access to this: The Spanish flu 1918/19. course, consequences and interpretations in Germany in the context of the first world war by Michels, E. (2010). Vierteljahrshefte für Zeitgeschichte: Vol. 58, No. 1, pp. 1-33

Might explain a lot.

Bill

Hi Bill,

I went to the library today and I have the article by Michels. I will ost any relevant information tomorrow or so. Just to tired right now to read it.

so long

Matt

[Latze]

Well, here is another nugget for all of us still searching for millions of missing German soldiers: According to the parliamentary commission of the Reichstag into the reasons for Germanys defeat there were all in all 1.320,590 soldiers that were mobilized but were not at the colors.

This numbers include for example almost 250,000 men working the railroad or 290,000 in metal working industries.

I can give the whole breakdown to anybody who is interested.

regards

Matt

[phil andrade]

there were all in all 1.320,590 soldiers that were mobilized but were not at the colors.

regards

Matt

Almost exactly ten per cent of all the Germans who were mobilised.

There is another dimension to this debate about casualties that I think we might consider : the number who were taken prisoners, and the ratio of that number to the number killed.

The Allies claimed 924,000 German prisoners from all fronts.

More than forty per cent of these were claimed on the Western Front in the last four months of fighting.

Up until that time, the number of Germans that the Allies claimed to have taken prisoner, as a ratio of the total of officially reported killed and wounded, is remarkably small....probably in the order of ten per cent.

And that, it must be emphasised, is based on the numbers of prisoners claimed by the Allies, which might differ significantly from the number admitted by the Germans themselves.

If, as some will insist, the number of German dead is understated by thirty to fifty per cent, that anomalously small proportion of prisoners to killed ( and wounded) becomes smaller still.

The British armies on the Western Front admitted to losing prisoners which amounted in number to just over one quarter of the total of battle fatalities they sustained there ( 174,926 prisoners of war, 677,515 killed or died from wounds).

If the German casualties in killed and wounded were as great as Edmonds and others would have us believe, then their proportionate yield in prisoners was so small as to be truly wondrous...unless we countenance that old chestnut of German prisoners being killed rather than sent back to the cages.

Phil (PJA)

[Ken S.]

100,000 GERMAN DESERTERS

New York Times - September 4, 1919

-claims that of these, 40,000 were in Switzerland, and that "many thousands" in America and England were considered deserters because they had not returned when "advised" to do so.

GERMAN DESERTER'S WAR EXPERIENCE

http://www.gwpda.org/memoir/Deserter/GermanTC.htm

etc. etc.

[Ken S.]

I personally still believe that the most convincing manner in which to gauge the number of German dead during the war is to simply look at the numerous war memorials located in most German towns. It's not a matter of counting the names, rather simply looking at the relative numbers between the First and Second Wars. Sometimes the lists will include villagers who died while displaced, were strafed, or were caught in the crossfire--if these are ruled out, you still consistently have the dead from the First war being 1/2 to 1/3 of those of the Second. If 5.5 million died during the Second war, then how do you come up with 4 million for the First?

If the German casualties in killed and wounded were as great as Edmonds and others would have us believe, then their proportionate yield in prisoners was so small as to be truly wondrous...unless we countenance that old chestnut of German prisoners being killed rather than sent back to the cages.

Phil (PJA)

[phil andrade]

Your suggestion strikes me as plausible, Ken,

The 5.5 million for 1939-45 is a very high estimate : a more widely agreed number is four million. Two million for the First, four million for the Second. Perhaps an actual count on the names of fifty war memorials throughout Germany would throw light on this.

A much higher proportion of Germany's military dead in the Great War were actual battle casualties than was to be the case in the Second war, when the fate of those captured by the soviets accounted for huge numbers of deaths.

Phil (PJA)

[Jack Sheldon]

I agree in principle with Ken, though it would be far from easy to find sufficient detailed war memorials to do the survey. In former Prussia a great many, probaby most, have fallen into total disrepair or have been vandalised. In addition, not every place produced memorials by name - a lot simply give an overall figure. However, I repeat, that I agree with this type of approach, concentrating, as I have been recently, on the internal evidence of the documents. Rolls of Honour, memorials etc were assembled with care, often by sizeable voluntary teams, to get at the truth and represent it accurately. I have yet to come across anything more than the odd slip and nothing which even hints at a cover up. I believe that the issue was too complex to provide such a massive potential fraud with a ghost of a chance of being successful.

Jack

[phil andrade]

How right you are, Jack, to steer our thinking away from the notion of a cover up.

If there had been any intention to surpress the figures which indicated the extent of Germany's casualties, then the government would have been at pains to prevent the continuing tabulation of casualties in the inter war years. This was, indeed, an excercise not of concealement, but of revelation. Why go to the trouble of compiling the addition of an extra half million casualties, if the intention had been to mount a cover up ?

You've already said this, I know, Jack but it stands repetition.

As for exclusion of lightly wounded, a quick glance at the VL will dispel that notion.

The fact that 903,000 German Great War soldiers are buried in France and Belgium cannot be reconciled with the notion of three million having been killed there.

The arithmetical premise of Edmonds' assertions is flawed, let alone the validity of his argument.

If there is a conspiracy to distort German casualty statistics, it lies within the remit of the BOH.

Game, Set and Match to the anti Edmonds school, I think.

Phil (PJA)

[Latze]

Hi all,

sorry I am so late with following up on my last post but real world intervened.

The paper from the VfZ by Michels does contain some useful information but I do not think that I alters the general consensus here in the forum. It says that during the flu's first wave the number of soldiers 'ill' and hospitalized rose from 300.00 (the rough number in March, April and May) to 685.000 in July of which 399.000 were flu cases. In the last days of July however these numbers droped to dramatically. The author makes the point that not everybody was admitted to the hospitals and that usually people were very much weakend even after the flu had passed. On the other hand the mortality rate among German troops was lower than for example among US soldiers (1% vs. 0.3%, 20,000 to 25,000 in absolute terms).

Michels denies that the OHL was influenced in its decisions in July by the number of flu cases or that the flu was the cause of the attack 15th of July was unsuccessful.

Numbers for the second and third wave of the flu are only estimates because SanB data etc. for these times are missing. On the whole the authors thinks that the following breakdown in Great Britain should have been very similar in Germany: 10% off all deaths in the first wave, 64% in the second wave (October 1918 in Germany), 26% in the third (at the turn of 1918/1919). The second wave not only was the one in which curiously mostly middle-aged people died but also the pattern where the illness spread was very inconsistent: For example in Bamberg 6% of all soldiers fell ill - in Fürstenfeldbrück 75%.

On the whole the author concludes that the influenza was not a decisive factor on the Western Front.

regards

Matt

[Latze]

The "under arms" total for the German Army is grossly understated, bmac. According to the British Statistical tome mentioned earlier in the thread, the German Army ration strength at 11/11/1918 was 4.2 million all fronts (including 300,000 on the Home Front), plus 800,000 reserves (including the class of 1920 of some 450,000). Some 5 million in total.

Given that no one, so far, has managed to find some 5.25 million unaccounted-for German soldiers (though I've just discovered the whereabouts of 1 million of them, only 4.25 million to go), good luck with finding a few thousand flu fatalities.

That said, is the latest lame excuse for German failure at arms really going to be the flu pandemic? Perhaps Ludendorff believed that the virus had been "delivered" to his troops by civilians at home?

Cheers-salesie.

Hi salesie,

I think you should consider in your quest for the 4.25 'missing' soldiers that not everybody mobilized was supposed to be at the front. Soldiers were graded to be 'k.v' meaning kriegsverwendungsfähig = fit for frontline duty (jokers translated it as keine Verbindungen = not socially well connected) or 'g.v' meaning garnison-verwendungsfähig = fit for garrison duty (or gute Verbindungen = well connected). A g.v. soldier might be an one-legged artillery instructor...

regards

Matt

[Latze]

One last post for today:

I leaved through the whole report of the German parlimentary commission about the reasons for the defeat (some 12 volumes) - there is no mention of mis-reported casualties to be found. I think that this is very relevant because the report contains a sharp debate between social democrats and old wilhelmites about responsibility for the defeat - no punches are pulled here. The book by Philipp Scheidemann "Der Zusammenruch" also found the way on my desk because it had a sub-chapter heading 'the missing army' (Das verschwundene Herr). But: no anonymous mass graves from the Somme fighting here but just discussion of the mass refusal to fight any longer after the failed great offensives. Last thing I read was the booklet "Why Germany Capitulated on November 11, 1918 based on documents in the possession of the French General Staff, published 1919. Jonathan Boff gave me that hint that it might contain French estimates for German casualties (I still think that British estimates should ba benchmarked against US and French assesments). This book does not however give any casualty numbers. It gives the impression that the French GHQ mainly counted and rated divisions to assess German combat strength.

regards

Matt

[bmac]

Matt,

Not a 'decisive' factor but a factor nonetheless, particularly when added to the rationing problem (in terms of both quality and supply)? Especially so if, as you say, that "The second wave ... was the one in which curiously mostly middle-aged people died". The age peak for these fatalities in the W graph was around 30, covering the sort of age groups likely to be under arms at this time?

Bill

[Latze]

Matt,

Not a 'decisive' factor but a factor nonetheless, particularly when added to the rationing problem (in terms of both quality and supply)? Especially so if, as you say, that "The second wave ... was the one in which curiously mostly middle-aged people died". The age peak for these fatalities in the W graph was around 30, covering the sort of age groups likely to be under arms at this time?

Bill

Bill,

first thing: I am just repeating what Eckard Michels says in his paper. He thinks that the second wave did not have that much of an impact due to the following factors:

1) medical conditions at the front were actually better than in Germany proper (soldiers had immediate access to the bulk of German MDs as these were serving, etc)

2) acute malnutrition was more common in Germany than in front-line units (these had priority in food allocation); in any case there seems to be no clear correlation between nutrition and flu deaths

3) the general under-nurished state of soldiers seemed to have prevented the extreme immune-system overreaction which killed other victims of the second wave

All these factors led to the flu hitting the civilians more than the soldiers. But I would subscribe to your description of "not a 'decisive' factor but a factor nonetheless".

regards

Matt

[phil andrade]

3) the general under-nurished state of soldiers seemed to have prevented the extreme immune-system overreaction which killed other victims of the second wave

That is a bizarre notion, isn't it ? The idea of physical robustness itself being the cause of a virus becoming more lethal. But it would account for what appears to be a remarkably low death rate among German soldiers from the disease. I have read that in the summer of 1918 German divisions were reduced by an average of 1,000- 2,000 each because of the 'flu, but the death rate was not at all high.

It would suit Ludendorff's agenda to maintain that the disease was the reason for the stalling of his offensives.

Phil (PJA)

[salesie]

It would suit Ludendorff's agenda to maintain that the disease was the reason for the stalling of his offensives.

Phil (PJA)

Not so much "stab in the back" then, Phil, more like "one flu over the cuckoo's nest"?

Cheers-salesie.

[phil andrade]

What a thought !

Imagine Jack Nicholson playing Ludendorff !

Oscar ?

No...on second thoughts, we'll stick to Colin Firth, and cast him as Haig.

How about Haig's speech ?

Phil (PJA)

[Steven Broomfield]

"one flu over the cuckoo's nest"?

Cheers-salesie.

Someone fetch Mr Sales's coat please.

[Robert Dunlop]

Death rate was only one aspect of the flu' effect. The W graph needs to be considered in light of the incidence of disease. Somewhat akin to the effects of gas, the flu' could disable far more men for periods than it killed.

See the top graph here:

Robert

[josquin]

That is a bizarre notion, isn't it ? The idea of physical robustness itself being the cause of a virus becoming more lethal. But it would account for what appears to be a remarkably low death rate among German soldiers from the disease. I have read that in the summer of 1918 German divisions were reduced by an average of 1,000- 2,000 each because of the 'flu, but the death rate was not at all high.

It would suit Ludendorff's agenda to maintain that the disease was the reason for the stalling of his offensives.

Phil (PJA)

Phil

Let's get the pathophysiology right, at least, given the uncertainty about the casualty statistics. Physical robustness, vigor, and youth did not affect the virulence of the influenza virus;rather, robustness gave rise to the much stronger immune system response that was the real cause of the mortality rather than the degree of virulence of the virus. The unexpected reversal of the immune system's protective function was quite a surprise for physicians and infectious disease researchers in 1918-19, as well,

but now we know about autoimmune diseases, also, and the notion is no longer bizarre.

Regards

Trelawney

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

In the time since this thread was active I have been able to review several thousand military Stammrolle records for Bavarian troops. These are the books that detailed the basic information on each soldier, including their Company number, full name, religion, place of birth, place living, married or single and number of children, parents names and location, dates of service, promotions, courses, medals and even their conduct, punishments, general remarks, etc.

Some are very detailed and include the date, time and exact location of their wound or death (including map locations such as 400 meters west of hill120, trench number 23, etc.) Some details wounds and causes including if the man was hit by 5 shrapnel balls, just what parts of the body were hit. Hospital stays are listed, injuries, illnesses, all movement in and out of the company. Others have less detail but all account for the major events of each soldier’s career. One company apparently considered the immunization records to be paramount and every man has a record of when he received a vaccination against Typhus, etc.

The entries and inquiries do not end in 1918. They continue through the 1920’s, 30’s and 40’s. In some cases there are indications of reviews and inquiries into the 1980’s. I was looking at specific units that contained large numbers of missing men. Part of the overall original discussion on the thread was the discrepancies between numbers of men killed, missing, etc. and that the math did not add up. At the end of the war there was a large number of missing men whose fate was still uncertain and this number was divided between those that could be a POW or killed, the majority were eventually relegated to the latter category.

Even using this procedure and even if every MIA was considered killed it does not raise the death toll beyond what is officially accepted. In that I mean the numbers do not rise to 3,000,000 or 4,000,000 as Edmonds might allude to.

In looking through these records there was also evidence relating to the issue that concerns the earliest Verlustlisten records that may or may not have contained all of the casualty returns or if many were entered in later months.

Like all reporting systems there is a lag time between the actual dates of injury to the initial reports and then finally the public entries in the VL, the Stammrolle, etc.

What I found was that the Verlustlisten, the published lists, may have had issues of timing and complete accuracy during the early months due to the sheer numbers of losses involved and the delays in getting all reports through to the rear while the heavy fighting was taking place. The Stammrolle entries did not have the same issue. There were no time concerns, no public printing of these books. These were the property of the different German states and an official record of every man who served.

The Stammrolle were distinct and separate from the VL reports. The same data that eventually ended up in the VL was also dispersed through the reporting systems, the Stammrolle, medical records, etc. Even if a group or even some men were not reported in a timely basis on the VL their fate, or should I say the events that warranted reporting were indeed listed on the Stammrolle or other official medical records even if it was simply to state the man was missing.

In the Stammrolle where the comment section contains basic details and little else you can then go to the section where their dates of service are located (when they entered the army, their transfers, etc.) and then the section that lists the actions they were involved in to see just where the list ended. For the majority of the men I searched the date 1 July 1916 was the last one entered into their active service list.

In regard to the issue of missing men, there were numerous attempts to resolve their status. This took place not only during the war but also in the years following. I came across a large number of entries relating to the fighting in August 1914 during my search. They simply listed a man as being missing and provided a date, location, etc.

The books then contained documents relating to the search for their fate. Apparently protocols were established that looked at every aspect of the missing man’s life. If his family had not heard from them since the date he was listed as missing; if his home town had no word, if his company or regiment did not have any word from him. Nothing from the Red Cross, from enemy lists of captured men, etc. then a final decision was made that all evidence pointed to the man being killed on the date he went missing and an official certificate was issued reporting this finding.

Other records were used to establish the fate of the missing men. Affidavits from their comrades were considered if the man had first hand knowledge of the fate of the missing man. These came in the form of reports from active duty men, from men in enemy prisoner of war camps. In these instances a man would provide an affidavit regarding the fate of the missing man. In the French camps it was normally written in German and French, witnessed by two NCO’s and the camp commandant. These affidavits also came from men who had returned to Germany after the war and who then provided letters and statements to the authorities.

Some missing men were actually prisoners and while much of this information came through the Red Cross, much of it also came from letters from families and friends who had received letters from the missing men showing they had been captured. For men listed as MIA on 1 July 1916 many of these personal letters arrived over time and well into 1918 before their fate was officially known. Sometimes the facts came to light after the body was found by another German unit or in some cases by an English soldier who then reported his find. The details eventually ended up in the Stammrolle account.

This last aspect leads to some questions of interest as to why the Red Cross prisoner notification system did not already address the fate of these men. Was there a breakdown in the reporting system? The delay in sending all names through to the opposing side? The sheer issue of tracking captured men from the dozens of camps and hospitals? Who knows?

There were some scattered letters and reports showing that the fate of some men was finally determined well into the 30’s and 40’s as in one such instance a relative of a man missing since 1914 became solved in 1944. Apparently the relative visited a mill and saw a photo of her missing relative on the wall. After inquiring about him to the owner it seems that the missing man and mill owner served together. On the date the relative went missing the mill owner was wounded in the arm and saw his friend shot through the chest and fall dead to the ground.

The unit had to withdraw, leaving the body in the hands of the French who apparently buried him. The letter and related documents were sent to the Bavarian government and placed in the Stammrolle as part of the official record. While this last example was the latest date I found it would seem that the vast majority were resolved between 1920 ad 1922 from the dates I have found. I have looked a number of different regiments, artillery and infantry and searched through each record for each company so that I could identify and download the images I needed.

In reviewing the listed fatalities for the regiments against the Stammrolle details I did not find any differences; no hidden fatalities, etc. If there was an additional 2,000,000 killed it is safe to say the men would have been lost in hundreds of different units over the 4 years of the war. To indicate that they all occurred in the last year would mean that almost no man returned home alive from 1918 and this is not borne out by the evidence we have.

I should emphasize that there was no one method of entering information. Some were very detailed, others had basic facts of their service. Some listed everything down to vaccinations, others simply stated he was wounded, killed, etc. One affidavit found goes into such detail that it is difficult to believe it would be falsified. One man reported seeing his friend severely wounded; his abdomen torn open by a shell fragment and much of his intestines being exposed. He was at an aid station but he bled to death before he could be helped. Of course there was a good chance he was already beyond help. Another man who was carrying men to the rear was torn apart by a shell explosion, others with severe wounds were never seen again and presumed killed, etc. There was no single reason for a man’s death, no standard response. Each one is unique and many are extremely detailed.

I am always willing to look at any opposing views or avenues of research that could disprove what I have found and provide supporting evidence for Edmonds. I currently have nothing to go on other than the statements made. If anyone does know of a source that could provide evidence to support the 4,000,000 dead theory I would be glad to look it over.

I know my sample is only a small portion of the overall German army but then if the massive cover up was present then I would expect to see some evidence of it in at least one of the regiments I reviewed. Also, the review of the existing Stammrolle shows just what loss historians suffered when the Prussian records were destroyed. This is not an excuse, it is a simple observation. The details in these records is fascinating, revealing and useful in any research on the war (from my point of view) and to genealogy researchers.

If all of these books were still in existence, currently available on the Internet in digital form, it would be possible to list every known German casualty on 1 July 1916 with accuracy. This could also be used for any other period of the war. I hope that the other records in Stuttgart and several other archives will one day join the Bavarian records on-line.

In several cases I found men who died at the end of the war or in 1919 while still a POW in England. I would have previously assumed it was due to war injuries, possibly the flu, etc. In these cases one died from tuberculosis and the other from stomach cancer. I know where they lived, the number of children they had, the name of their wives and their maiden names, etc. Some may not find such details as fascinating as I do as I try to restore a face with the historical records but for the many families that we have come into contact with through NML (The Great War Archaeology Group) the knowledge of their relatives, their details and fate are important. It is no less for any family of any soldier killed from any country or time period. Due to the numerous memorial cards that exist and you can literally put a face to a name. Now the enemy becomes a human being, a man with children, a family who will miss him. It brings a whole new meaning to the study of simple loss numbers.

Just a few recent thoughts on an on going subject.

Ralph

Image 1, a typical medical record of a soldier.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

These illustreations show how paper was recycled. The printed side is a Verlustlisten, the reverse side was used to show the record of a soldier.

reverse side

1920 certificate declaring a soldier missing since 1914 as dead.

Notice of a man who returned from being a POW in England

1921 certificate of death for a man missing on 1 July 1916

[bob lembke]

Ralph;

I have to admit that I have not followed this great thread systematically, which I should do sometime, as I would learn a lot about data sources that I do not understand satisfactorily. Your kind of research is exactly the sort of work I love, down in the data-mining trenches, digging down and compiling lists and tables. Also a lot like a lot of my life's employment as an analyst and computer model builder.

I understand, that while the main Prussian archive was burned at the end of WW II, the medical records were stored elsewhere and at least in part survived. Could you give me a clue as to the possibilities of some success looking at a couple of problems? My questions are narrow but the answers might be of interest to others.

1. My father served in the volunteer Pioniere company at Gallipoli, was not wounded, but contracted malaria. (Most of the company personnel got sick in that medical hell-hole.) Is there any chance that I might get my hands on some record of that? I think that that is a long shot. (I do have a lead on an interesting, novel source of some data and info for that information black hole, if you have a need there.)

2. My father was wounded four times on the western front during the war, in 1916 (twice, Verdun) and twice late in 1918. I have the precise or rough locations, and the precise or approximate dates. (Two wounds were more severe, and are recorded in his Militaer=Pass, two "lighter" ones I know from detailed oral history but were not inscribed in his Pass, being lighter, but still not wounds I would like to suffer. Both easily could have killed him, but could have been treated at the aid station level.) Any chance of getting medical records at least for the more serious wounds? I have lots of specifics, even hospital locations, as well as dates, his unit, of course, etc.

3. He spent much of 1917 in and out of hospitals, with an infected wound that troubled him and spit bone for over ten years. (It was classified as a "light wound", which angered him 40 years later. As an arm wound, he was ambulatory, which I think was a big factor in rating a wound.) Would I be able to get medical records? It least one hospital was in Bavaria, I even have a photo and stories about the nurses, who were mostly "society ladies".

4. My grand-father, a staff officer, contracted malaria in the swamps of Russia in 1915 and had his health damaged, he could not serve at the front again, but did staff work in or closer to Germany for the rest of the war. Any chance of finding records?

Again, very narrow questions, but perhaps also of interest to others.

Have you heard from our German friend Frank?

Bob Lembke

[ph0ebus]

Hi Bob,

I was, several years ago, able to get a typed transcript of my grandfather's Prussian Army medical records from LAGeSo in Berlin (http://www.berlin.de/lageso/), but they subsequently closed to research inquiries. I will see if I can dig up the very kind contact I had there and send it to you. It might be worthwhile to reach out to them if for no other reason than to see if and when they might be open to fulfilling your request. FYI, I had to pay via international bank transfer, which was not cheap but was certainly worth every penny.

-Daniel

Edit: Bob, your PM box is full, will try email.