German Casualty discussion

[salesie]

The SB did compile figures for the MIA : about 771,000 in all, very close ineed to the number they posted as killed. The British Medical Statistics also posted the figure for missing. If German medical staff were not in a position to deal with the numbers of their missing comrades in arms, then it would follow that neither were their British counterparts.

Phil (PJA)

That's quite true, Phil, but that's not the point. The point is that, as far as I know, no one has ever claimed that physical counts by medical staff are "proof" of the veracity of the British Medical Statistics, as has been claimed many times previously on this forum, and in the McRandle & Quirk paper, for the SanitatsB. Hence my last line in the post you responded too i.e. "If actual physical counts are in fact "proof" of veracity then the SanitatsB's veracity takes a big knock indeed." In other words, I was pointing out that all of the SanitatsB’s supporters used the mantra of “physical-count” to deflect criticism of the SanitatsB’s glaring discrepancies with other German lists, but now that this has been shown to be a flawed battle-cry the SanitatsB just becomes another German list that doesn’t tally.

I also note that since I first raised this problem in another thread with the SanitatsB, many of its previously ardent and vocal supporters seem to have gone somewhat silent, leaving the rump attempting to either ignore, flirt-around, or fudge the issue.

Now, back to an earlier point, if both the ZN and SanitatsB figures are too low for 1914 (the SB actually being a touch lower than the ZN), you tell us that you calculate around one-million German casualties in 1914, then, if true, what implications do you see this having for the two "machine guns of Mons" threads? (And I don't mean whether Germans actually thought they were facing more machine guns or not)

Cheers-salesie.

[salesie]

Ralph, Phil & Jack

Like many others, I have been reading this thread with a great deal of interest and would like to thank you for the scholarly and erudite tenor of your contributions.

It appears that certain of your opponents are incapable of moving beyond ad hominem slights on the sources that you are exploring and the authors of the same. When that has repeatedly failed then it seems that you are fair game to be traduced and your motives impugned.

The only contra position that has been presented to your analysis hitherto is little more than a cringeworthy deference to official British sources precisely because they are 'official' and 'British'.

It would seem that It is about time that the opponents adduced evidence and analysis to support their contra position (whatever that may be).

Mel

Well, Mel (blimey, a poet and I didn't know it)

What kind of evidence/analysis would you like to see in support our contra position (whatever that may be)? Hold on a minute, if you don't know what our contra position is, how do you know it's contra to Ralph, Phil's and Jack's?

Cheers-salesie.

[truthergw]

I am on record in this thread and others with my view of The OH and its authors and Edmonds, its chief editor. I have referred here and elsewhere to the way Edmonds lays out his references for all to see. I do not believe that Edmonds was trying to mislead his readers and I have yet to see a shred of evidence that he did. The sources for the allegation, Churchill and Lidell Hart both had their axes to grind. I believe Edmonds was genuinely trying to arrive at a true estimate of German losses. I would now like to turn to the subject of this thread. The various lists produced by Germans of their casualties. One in particular, a list of casualties in one of the constituent parts of the Imperial German Forces under the overall command of the Kaiser and OHL. The Sanitats Bericht is presented as being an impeccable source. There is no corroboration that I have seen. It stands on its own. We can like it or lump it. Those who have studied it say that they believe it to be accurate. I have no way of judging but I can point to the existence of other lists, all different and ask for something more than bland assurance that this latest is the real McCoy. I can look at figures in the OH and then I can go to the sources quoted by Edmonds or his colleagues and check. them. In the Reichsarchiv volumes, I find the British OH referenced as a source. They do not seem to find it tainted. A small aside here. I do not have every volume of the German OH. but in the ones I do have, I can find the occasional footnote numbering French and British losses but I have not yet found any count of the German losses. There are complete OOBs for all the belligerents, beautiful maps and other useful tables but no equivalent of the tables of losses scattered through the British OH referring to each action as it is covered in the body of the book. It is possible I have missed the figures but I have looked, so if they are there, they are not emphasised. I know that Churchill did not go there for his figures, he approached a German public information office. So the situation as I see it is, as I have said before, Edmonds made an honest attempt to give a true estimate of the German casualties. I have been reading Mangin's memoirs today. He describes at some length, the reductions and redistributions that went on in the German forces throughout the war. In particular, the numbers that were being encountered in the field in 1918. Edmonds was far from being alone when he corrected the published figures to tally with the numbers of soldiers the Germans were able to field as the war drew to a close.

[George Armstrong Custer]

Tom

You are right; he had no reason to but, as I have pointed out in this thread several times, he did in fact make some dubious points along the way. Just to home in on one, because George does not seem to wish to answer the question directly. Do you agree with Edmonds when he asserted that the total of German KIA after scrutiny of the German regimental histories would prove to be be approximately 4 million? If you do, perhaps you will explain what persuaded you. If you do not then I assume you would agree with Ralph and me that not everything he said or wrote was scrupulously evidentially based.

Jack

Let's finally knock this one on the head, Jack. Where have I, or anyone else, asserted that all of Edmonds' estimates were demonstrably exact? On the contrary, way back on post # 116, I stated the following opinion:

"Edmonds pretty much knew from British wartime intelligence reports what the scale of German losses must have been in round terms. What he was openly working through in several revisions and reassessments in the British OH, in its various editions and subsequent addenda and corrigenda, was to find a way of reconciling what the Germans had published during and after the war with the scale of damage which it was known their army had suffered 1916 - 18. As he explored various German sources in successive editions of the OH his figures fluctuated, yet because he set out the thought process behind them it is not difficult to pin down where he was more likely to have ended up with perhaps too high, or even too low, a figure in some of his attempts. None of which is the modus operandi of a fraudster. [....]

Did Edmonds convincingly succeed in cutting the Gordian knot of German casualty totals in so far as reconciling what was produced in Germany during and after the war with what British Intelligence knew to be the state of the German army by 1918? I don't think so. No more than has anyone on this thread. But the assessments of historians like Richard Holmes for German casualties on the Somme (after citing the vaunted SanB vol 3 in his bibliography) is still that "it cannot have been much less than 600,000." Whilst William Philpott concludes that "by inference, the heaviest casualties suffered by the German Army in 1916 were on the Somme, probably more than 500,000 irreplaceable losses." Neither is far from the OH corrected figure of 582,919. We have yet to see an evidentially based argument to sustain the accusations put forward that Edmonds was a liar and a fraudster."

In other words, the accuracy of all of the figures which Edmond's arrived at whilst trying to find ways of reconciling fundamentally flawed and contradictory German figures with what he knew the manpower situation of the German army to have been is not the issue. The fact that these German figures do not reconcile with the German manpower situation at the end of the war is, however. The point, which has been conceded by all parties here, is that that final situation in 1918 is undeniable. For the German army to have been so reduced, German totals must, therefore, be considerably higher than computations based on various combinations of contradictory German figures for different phases of the war suggest. However, I have made my own view perfectly clear to you - I believe that total German casualties were considerably in excess of anything which can be deduced from the various German figures being bandied about. It is undeniable that many German regimental histories indicate a higher KIA ratio that other German sources give. But that is only one part of the jigsaw puzzle of competing and contradictory German sources with which Edmonds was working. If these German totals for various phases of the war cannot be reconciled with each other, never mind with the dried up pool of German reserves which pertained by 1918, then it is not illogical to suppose that the German total for the war might be equally suspect. The thinking behind this becomes apparent when we look at Edmonds' estimate for what that total of dead (not 'KIA') might be, alluded to here for the second time by Jack, but in the context within which Edmonds places it:

"The enemy's losses were considerably heavier. During the war he did his utmost not only to mislead his foes, but also to conceal the truth from his own people. His casualties at Verdun, for instance, once vaunted as a quarter of those of the French, are now admitted to have been about the same; similarly, for the Somme, during which battle he endeavoured to persuade the world that his casualties were almost negligible, it is now certain that he lost about 600,000, that is the total of the British and French combined; even popular German accounts admit to half a million. Statistical investigation has shown that his official total of two million dead must be very nearly doubled." [bOH, 1918, Vol. V, pp 597 -8].

George

[Jack Sheldon]

George

Thank you for that robust post. To save time and just so I know where to begin checking, could you point me at the evidence which leads you to state, ' ... many German Regimental histories indicate a higher KIA ratio than other German sources give'? I have several hundred to go at here, so anything you can offer to give me a start would be appreciated. Four or five precise ones would do to be going on with.

Jack

[George Armstrong Custer]

Jack,

Well, your post to which I was responding made some pretty robust imputations so I thought you'd appreciate a response in similar vein. ;-)

I had in mind the 40 regimental histories referenced by Middlebrook on p. 311 of his The Kaiser's Battle, already referenced earlier on this thread by your compadre, PJA. I imagine that you will know better that I which 40 of the 96 regiments involved on 21 March '18 left histories, and whether you have copies of them.

Beyond your wish to look up regimental histories, I take it that you recognise the thinking behind Edmonds' reasoning on the German total of war dead when it is placed in the context of what Philpott called "the complex, often incomplete and contradictory nature of German statistical returns"? None of which is Brit bias, of course, given the opinion of the German Historical Research Institute to M J Williams that "The uncertainty in the statistics was, of course, always known from the beginning in German quarters." It's always worth re-emphasising where there's consensus, I think, especially when some prefer to ignore it.

George

[Robert Dunlop]

It is undeniable that many German regimental histories indicate a higher KIA ratio that other German sources give.

George, do you know which "other German sources" are being referred to? It seems clear from Ralph's comments that the VL would not have provided a complete list of KIA in near real time. So comparing a German regimental history with the near real time VL statistics for the regiment would reveal exactly this discrepancy. The same would apply to British regimental histories too, where the author had taken the time to compile a list or number of KIAs after the war compared with compiling the list from casualty returns on a particular day of battle. It is a case of comparing apples with pears.

Robert

[phil andrade]

Now, back to an earlier point, if both the ZN and SanitatsB figures are too low for 1914 (the SB actually being a touch lower than the ZN), you tell us that you calculate around one-million German casualties in 1914, then, if true, what implications do you see this having for the two "machine guns of Mons" threads? (And I don't mean whether Germans actually thought they were facing more machine guns or not)

Cheers-salesie.

There was, if memory serves me, a tabulation presented to the Machine Guns of Mons thread, which gave the reported casualties of Von Kluck's 1st Army in the period of the Mons campaign. I thought it was too low. I am not sure whether this compilation was from the San B......it probably was.

I am convinced that the SB figures for 1914 are too low. I suspect that my stance on this will not be endorsed by Ralph or Jack ; I am worried about appearing "All things to all men" - a charge that was laid against Edmonds.

I am sure that Jack provided us with evidence of German casualties for Mons that came from regimental histories . These, I do not imagine for one moment, were understated, and they do not bear out the popular perception of six thousand or more falling victim to the British musketry there. Zuber uses these regimental histories and deduces that the German casualties at Mons on August 23rd 1914 were in the order of 1,900. Many will suspect this figure because Zuber is rather too keen to emphasise the superiority of German training and doctrine....to my mind he comes over as a bit of a propagandist in that respect. But I trust those regimental figures, and, if I had to choose between the nineteen hundred and the six thousand, the lower figure would get my vote.

So I will have to nail my colours to the mast....I think that the SB is very deficient in its compilation of casualties for 1914. Likewise the ZN. Thereafter, I believe that both sources managed to get their reporting into better gear, although the ZN was left under-reported by virtually half a million by the end of the war - which, set against the final total of over seven million, is quite an achievement. And, it should be noted, every effort was made to complete and correct the totals, even fifteen years after the war. If that's a conspiracy to understate and distort, it's a damn strange way to go about it.

The SB, it seems to me, did not restore the 1914 totals to what I believe must have been a substantially higher figure. But thereafter it kept its reporting up to speed. I am uncomfortable with two aspects of its ciphering : it understates the number killed - I wish I knew why and how. It also overstates the number wounded...the reason being, I suspect, because it includes large numbers of sick in that category, especially in the quiet periods of routine trench warfare. I state all this with diffidence, acutely aware of how minimal my knowledge of this is compared with Ralph's.

George and salesie and Tom make constant reference to the parlous state of German manpower by 1918, and suggest that this cannot be reconciled with the evidence of official German statistics. I retort that those ZN statistics give ample evidence of the terrible strain that was being pt on Germany. Two and a half million by the end of 1915, five million by the end of 1917....'struth, that's bad enough, isn't it ?

If thirteen and a quarter million men are mobilised, and well over half of them are reported as having died, or been wounded, or captured, then the attrition is all too apparent and thoroughly acknowledged.

What on earth possessed Edmonds to make that suggestion that those two million dead should be doubled ?

When the war ended, there were still four million German soldiers on enemy territory, West and East. How can that be reconciled with four million dead, with the attendant millions of wounded and invalids, and prisoners ? There wouldn't have been many left, would there ?

Phil (PJA)

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

Just a couple of points I would loke to add after reviewing the recent posts. I often see mention that Edmonds was a fraudster, a charlatan, etc. I am not sure where this started but it is not what is being said from my review. It is being put forth that the math used by this man was in error and there could be numerous reasons for it or ones we do not know. This of course hinges on the fact that you agree that the numbers are off.

In regard to the 4,000,000 dead there are other sources of information that was alluded to by an earlier post, the large memorial books put out by various cities and locales where the dead are listed. I have 6 of these covering a wide area of Germany as well as numerous rolls of honour that appear in illustrated newspapers such as those I have seen from Britain. In the course of researching loss details for different areas and actions I often cross reference to these sources and so far all have tallied with the materials found in war time lists of dead. If there was suddenly a case of doubling the known dead then these publications would have to be part and parcel to the cover up. The numbers of killed as a percentage of population would in fact double and be far higher than experienced by any other nation if all of the ratios and numbers put forth in the different articles show.

It was said in one thread that individual families would not know if there lost family member was among the additional dead. I would disagree to a point. If their names did not appear on the VL, the village memorial,the published loss reports in the different cities and towns and then left out of the post-war publications I would be of the opinion someone would have spotted this. Still, there would be no way to know if they did appear on an official list but there are sufficient post-war publications that were primarily targeted to veterans of the regiments, the families of the men killed and in the case of the city and state honour rolls it would be the local populace. If names were omitted they would have noticed. If names were printed but not part of the 'official' war records then some would have turned up regardless of the small number of men looked at and in my case this runs into the thousands as of this date.

There is talk of ratios of killed and wounded being off but in order to know if this is true or not you would have to know how many died, how many were wounded for each unit. Smaller sets of statistics will have different results. Once put together in the millions then the final average is shown. It is sort of the story for what the U.S. considered the 'correct' blood pressure. I was advised by a physician years back that the army took the blood pressure of 400,000 or more men, averaged them all out and there was the ideal blood pressure.

Finally, the previous issue of Mons, etc. and the idea of first hand accounts and estimates. If the British had kept the field and buried the dead and cared for the wounded it would make more sense to me. A man seen falling could be dead, wounded, tripped over a gopher hole or simply fallen to earth to get out of the fire. Numbers are difficult to establish from a long distance visual view. I have often seen accounts of enemy losses estimated by the French, British and Germans. Almost every one is wrong and sometime by quite a bit. Estimating enemy losses is just a guess.

In regard to memory we make use of eye witness accounts daily. We also know from scientific studies that a person's memory is extremely good within hours of the event but if you get to the end of the day it drops drastically and grows even smaller as each day passes. This study was also based on testing thousands of subjects and coming up with a graph trying to show just what we in the insurance field could expect.

I note that some members doubt the accuracy of any German lists and I can accept this. I have also noted by some that when discussing Mons and 1914 fighting the German book The Advance from Mons by Bloem often comes up. I too find it a fascinating read into the early fighting and the personal observations of the author are very helpful for many things if not simply to try and understand the events of the early fighting in 1914.

While he is often quoted for his descriptions and used to provide accounts for different histories it would seem that other parts of his story are less than truthful if you completely write off German loss reports for the early fighting. Readers may recall Bloem listing any number of his friends and soldiers being killed or wounded in the fighting as well as his own wound later in the book. As a bit of fun one day I located the regimental loss reports for Bloem and his company. I found each and every man named and the loss details corresponded to his descriptions. If his version of the fighting can be accepted then should we also accept his factual details on loss information? It only goes to help verify the accuracy of his story.

Finally, something that is starting to take shape from a review of German loss details and the work by Oman found in his article. I had always wondered how accurate any historian or intelligence officer could be when using the VL to look at losses. Without dates and locations it is hard to know if all men on a particular list were casualties for a particular day. There will always be the unknown factor in this aspect of the research. Saying all this I am of the opinion that a reasonable presentation of losses for particular actions or dates can be established to some degree of accuracy. If a regiment came from a rest area and had no loss numbers listed, goes to the Somme and then suffers heavy losses in several weeks of fighting I would expect to find this unit absent in earlier reports and then suddenly find one or more longer lists that would indicate Somme losses. If there is a regimental roll of honour, a post-war book,etc. that could provide additional cross references as to names and dates then it is possible to establish the dates that the list covers, at least as to the dates of the men whose actual date of death can be established.

In the initial review of the lists and numbers put forth by Oman, if I am correct, the same that would have been put forth as the possible German losses on the Somme in 1916. Oman mentions some units had losses into November and these would not all be identified by regiment as the list had a major change in presentation so there still could be more losses to count. I checked these against the divisional losses put forth by the Germans in the series Der Weltkrieg, 1914-1918 and after matching the units and loss numbers it indicates in some cases Oman was off by only a few hundred men from the German numbers.

I want to finish the entire list and compare all numbers to see what the final tallies are and the differences betwen them. If Oman and the bean counters were as acurate as they appear to be then there is still hope for people like me in doing similar research involving large numbers of men. More of this as soon as all numbers are matched.

Lastly, Oman apparently placed an arbitrary number of losses for November, 45,000 - 60,000 I believe, I do not have the article at hand. If wrong please let me know. The German lists do cover losses in some cases that extend into the first third of December and while the time frames for both sources are not exact any review of the two sets of numbers will at least give us some idea of the accuracy of British Intelligence. I can say that in the losses reported by the Germans in the last time period of the battle the loss numbers are drastically lower than during the heavier months of fighting so at present it appears Oman was over estimating these numbers. Still, let's see the final counts and then see what it tells us.

Ralph

[salesie]

George and salesie and Tom make constant reference to the parlous state of German manpower by 1918, and suggest that this cannot be reconciled with the evidence of official German statistics. I retort that those ZN statistics give ample evidence of the terrible strain that was being pt on Germany. Two and a half million by the end of 1915, five million by the end of 1917....'struth, that's bad enough, isn't it ?

If thirteen and a quarter million men are mobilised, and well over half of them are reported as having died, or been wounded, or captured, then the attrition is all too apparent and thoroughly acknowledged.

What on earth possessed Edmonds to make that suggestion that those two million dead should be doubled ?

When the war ended, there were still four million German soldiers on enemy territory, West and East. How can that be reconciled with four million dead, with the attendant millions of wounded and invalids, and prisoners ? There wouldn't have been many left, would there ?

Phil (PJA)

Phil, if you're right about the 1914 German returns being "light" by 225,000, and if Ralph & Jack are right about the BEF's performance in 1914, it must follow that said 225,000 relate to actions against the French/Belgians? If so, how does that affect your ratios for their performance in 1914?

Also, some 13,250,000 Germans mobilised in total, some 7,000,000 reported casualties, some 4,000,000 left standing in 1918 (on the verge of imminent collapse with no reserves), one has to ask where were the 2,250,000 not accounted for in your list?

Cheers-salesie.

[Jack Sheldon]

Salesie can you say where the 7,000,000 casualties figure comes from? The numbers treated by the German medical services were far higher than that figure. The total number of cases (wounded and ill) was 23,763,218. (San B Vol III p 23). Of this number 22,457,611 were thereby rendered fit for further service of some kind and some length - either immediately (medicine and duties) or after lengthy treatment and convalescence, 407,926 died and 897,681 disappeared off the radar - invalided out, sent on lengthy leave or deserted. Incidentally on p 12 the San B quotes a Reichsarchiv figure stating that the total number mobilised for some form of service with the army was 13,387,000. I am not sure why there is a difference betwen this figure and yours - unless, possibly, the RA figure came later.

Jack

[salesie]

Salesie can you say where the 7,000,000 casualties figure comes from? The numbers treated by the German medical services were far higher than that figure. The total number of cases (wounded and ill) was 23,763,218. (San B Vol III p 23). Of this number 22,457,611 were thereby rendered fit for further service of some kind and some length - either immediately (medicine and duties) or after lengthy treatment and convalescence, 407,926 died and 897,681 disappeared off the radar - invalided out, sent on lengthy leave or deserted. Incidentally on p 12 the San B quotes a Reichsarchiv figure stating that the total number mobilised for some form of service with the army was 13,387,000. I am not sure why there is a difference betwen this figure and yours - unless, possibly, the RA figure came later.

Jack

I did say it was PJA's list, Jack. The 13.25 million & 4 million coming from his post #208, with the 7 million coming from his post #183 (but the 7 million also tallies with the SanitatsB list of ZN totals, apart from some 90,000, that you supplied in post #142).

Cheers-salesie.

[phil andrade]

Salesie,

Those figures that I suggested ....I was really firing from the hip. To use my own favoured expression, I was trying to establish that "general order of magnitude".

You infer that there are two and a quarter million Germans missing from my reckoning.

To suggest that these should really be added on to the German casualty lists ( is that what you're doing?) would carry the most striking implications for the veracity of the ZN list. It would certainly bear out George's contentions, and, to a degree, make Edmonds' assertion seem less preposterous.

I need to try and assess how many German soldiers were still in the ranks at war's end. I have in front of me Gray and Argyle's Chronicle of the First World War which tabulates German Western Front strength on November 11 1918 : 3,403,000 on the ration strength, of whom 2,911,700 were, supposedly, designated as on the Combat Strength. I don't know how many were left occupying the Eastern territories from the Baltic Gulf down to the Ukraine, and in the Balkans, and elsewhere....I would have thought it not less than one million, and then we have to reckon with those still in garrisons in Germany itself. Then there were the invalids, the deserters etc.

I would welcome being proved wrong, but it does look as if the seven million plus casualty list is in harmony with the terrific strain that was put on Germany : the casualties, military defeat, the hunger and deprivation, the political grievances, the diplomatic failure...all combined to make the situation for the German people completely toxic, and attest the effectiveness of the war of attrition that was imposed upon them. George is convinced that the official figures are short of the mark, but does not venture an opinion as to the extent of this deficiency. Cyril Falls, a brilliant military historian, veteran of the war and colleague of Edmonds (?) comments that the four million dead that Edmonds postulated was an exageration, but that three million is short of the mark.

But I opt for Churchill's take on this : the seven million casualties and the two million dead are in harmony with the overall impression that the statistics of major belligerents convey. Forgive me for the mantra : that "general order of magnitude" again.

I am taken back at your emphasis on the role of the BEF in 1914 in this controversy, salesie.

Let me venture a rather wild guess at their performance. I believe that they inflicted 2,000 casualties on the Germans at Mons, perhaps 2,500 on the fighting on the following day, 3,000 at Le Cateau and no more than two thousand in the various other actions in the Mons campaign. A total of ten thousand maximum, Against that they suffered fifteen thousand, of whom approaching half were unwounded prisoners. In terms of actual bloodshed - the killed and wounded - I reckon they inflicted significantly more damage than they suffered., and did indeed bring their musketry to bear with deadly effect. The German burial parties who cleared up one sector near Frameries reported that they buried 169 German and 135 British dead - a good indication, I suggest, of the kind of casualty exchange rate in this fighting, after which the Germans commented "..the old British mercenaries were excellent shots.."

At the Marne and the Aisne the BEF suffered another fifteen thousand casualties, and probably inflicted comparable damage, capturing significant numbers of Germans in the Marne episode.

The big one was Ypres, where British casualties were 54,000 : here again, a significant proportion - more than ten thousand - were unwounded prisoners. I should think that they shot down sixty thousand Germans and captured several thousand more.

The final miserable month of 1914 cost the BEF ten thousand plus casualties, and I doubt that they would have bettered the Germans in that period, having made an abortive atttack in support of the French.

One hundred thousand British casualties, then, against a very similar number of Germans. In killed and wounded alone, the Old Contemptibles probably gave a good deal better than they got. They captured six thousand Germans that year, but lost at least three times that many.

It seems that neither the French nor the Belgians did as well as the BEF in the casualty exchange rate in 1914.

That's my take on 1914 : suppositional to an unforgivable degree.

Edit : salesie, just a couple of days before the British and the Germans fought their little battle at Frameries, the Germans were burying the dead in the Massin- Anloy sector of the Battle of the Frontiers, and reported burying five or six French dead for every two German. In view of their count at Frameries ( 169 German to 135 British) I thought this attests the relative fighting prowess of the British. OTOH, one of the most extreme German regimental casualty figures that I've ever seen occurred at the hands of French soldiers around Langemark in the First Battle of Ypres...a reminder of the fact that this was not a solely British epic. I hope Jack won't mind me quoting a passage from his brilliant new book on the Germans at Ypres 1914

During this catastrophic day for 9th Reserve Division, Reserve Infantry Regiment 19 suffered no fewer than twenty four officers and 213 other ranks killed, clear indication of how hard the junior officers attempted to inspire their men to get forward. Five officers and 293 other ranks were wounded, whilst no fewer than two officers and 590 other ranks were missing. Although a few of this last category were captured, the greatest number was also killed.

Not only is the number of casualties dreadful, it also contains an appalling proportion of killed, especially taking into account those missing. The San B has a very different complexion from these regimental returns on the make up of German casualties.

Phil (PJA)

[George Armstrong Custer]

George, do you know which "other German sources" are being referred to? It seems clear from Ralph's comments that the VL would not have provided a complete list of KIA in near real time. So comparing a German regimental history with the near real time VL statistics for the regiment would reveal exactly this discrepancy.

I think you've partly answered your own question there, Robert. But in addition we've seen references to the San B as being the vital key to German casualty figures - but also that that indicates similar discrepancies.

All of which, of course, endorses the 1963 view of the Militärgeschichtliches-Forschungsamt (German Historical Research Institute) as expressed to Williams that "The uncertainty of the statistics was, of course, always known from the beginning in German quarters". The Militärgeschichtliches-Forschungsamt then goes on to emphasise the 1925 Reichsarchiv opinion on these statistics that "whether reliable certainties are still today generally possible appears questionable." When the latter opinion was written, the RA was sitting on top of the intact records of the Imperial German army 1914-18, which would be destroyed 20 years later. Yet we're being asked to believe that 66 years after the destruction of the primary documentation it can be demonstrated that the opinions of the Militärgeschichtliches-Forschungsamt and the Reichsarchiv can be bettered. Just as Williams completely ignored these German institutional opinions as inconvenient to his purpose of undermining the British OH, so have they been ignored on this thread by those who argue that the various German figures provide reliable certainties on German casualties.

I think this thread - as it was always going to - has just about hit the point of starting to go around in circles.

George

[salesie]

Salesie,

Those figures that I suggested ....I was really firing from the hip. To use my own favoured expression, I was trying to establish that "general order of magnitude".

You infer that there are two and a quarter million Germans missing from my reckoning.

To suggest that these should really be added on to the German casualty lists ( is that what you're doing?) would carry the most striking implications for the veracity of the ZN list. It would certainly bear out George's contentions, and, to a degree, make Edmonds' assertion seem a lot less preposterous.

I need to try and assess how many German soldiers were still in the ranks at war's end. I have in front of me Gray and Argyle's Chronicle of the First World War which tabulates German Western Front strength on November 11 1918 : 3,403,000 on the ration strength, of whom 2,911,700 were, supposedly, designated as on the Combat Strength. I don't know how many were left occupying the Eastern territories from the Baltic Gulf down to the Ukraine, and in the Balkans, and Italy....I would have thought it not less than one million, and then we have to reckon with those still in garrisons in Germany itself. Then there were the invalids, the deserters etc.

Phil (PJA)

You know my take on the Old Contemptibles, Phil - they punched well-above their weight, and I'll leave it at that (in this thread).

As for the 2,250,000 "missing" from your reckoning? Seeing as the German army had no reserves left by the end, and judging by the way they rushed half-trained units into 1st Ypres in 1914, I would say that each garrison in Germany held not much more than a sergeant's guard from summer 1918. And the invalids would be included in the casualty figures anyway, so let's not count them twice. Which, if the casualty lists are in fact accurate, just leaves deserters and those refusing to answer their class' conscription call-up. Although 2.25 million seems an inordinate "order of magnitude" of men refusing to fight, I suppose it's not an impossible scenario. So, if this was in fact the case, could not a strong argument be made to say that these men were just as much casualties of British attrition (the blockade and BMI's political subversion campaign, as well as military action on land) as were other casualties, and should, therefore, be listed as missing (they would, after all, be missing from where they were supposed to be i.e. their units)?

I would, of course, in such an implausible scenario accept that allied deserters and call-up dodgers would need to be added to allied casualty totals as well.

Cheers-salesie.

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

Tom, You mentioned the following in an earlier post:

'I do not have every volume of the German OH. but in the ones I do have, I can find the occasional footnote numbering French and British losses but I have not yet found any count of the German losses. There are complete OOBs for all the belligerents, beautiful maps and other useful tables but no equivalent of the tables of losses scattered through the British OH referring to each action as it is covered in the body of the book. It is possible I have missed the figures but I have looked.'

In the series Schlachten des Weltkrieges by the Reichsarchivs you will find the issue of individual loss numbers hit and miss. Some of the series discusses division and corps movements and does not go into smaller details while those involving the Somme and I believe Verdun, about 5 books in total, often mention loss numbers for individual regiments and other units. Not all are covered in this manner so there is a strong possibility the books relied upon the regiments and units that had already published loss details for the fighting on the Somme and Verdun.

Ralph

[JimSmithson]

Often during this thread, which I am enjoying immensely being awed by the depth of knowledge poured into it, Edmonds has been quoted out of the Official Histories. I know from previous work that his papers are held in the Liddell Hart Centre in Kings College London. I had a quick look what was there and if anyone can steal a glance, a copy of the Army Navy and Air Force Gazette from 1927 has a piece written by Edmonds on German Casualties. This will perhaps provide an insight into his thoughts on the matter before eventually completing the OH some years later. Maybe the man deserves a little more primary research (of a less statistical nature) before being condemned or vindicated as the rival factions here seem to have in mind. I also have seen some cabinet papers (sorry can't remember the CAB number and my index is not here) which hold discussions about all of the volumes as they were being produced including correspondence and notes - maybe therein can be found some answers, if only to how figures were arrived at if not to their accuracy.

If I was in the UK I would be tempted to go and have a look (unfortunately non are on-line) as the wider topic of problems behind the creation of the OH is beginning to fascinate me. As Jack eluded to much earlier in the thread, what motives might have caused the work to be written in a certain way. Somewhere buried in my files I vaguely remember reading about a scandal even during the war as the first volumes were being written, something about the fleet not going down well at all with the Royal Navy chiefs. I will root it out.

Jim

[Robert Dunlop]

But in addition we've seen references to the San B as being the vital key to German casualty figures - but also that that indicates similar discrepancies.

George, I don't know SB well enough. Does it provide casualty statistics by regiment?

Robert

[Ralph J. Whitehead]

Robert, The SanB does not report loss details on regiments (none I recall seeing). It does provide division losses and other charts. Most regimental details can be found in the post war histories.

Ralph

[George Armstrong Custer]

Edmonds has been quoted out of the Official Histories. I know from previous work that his papers are held in the Liddell Hart Centre in Kings College London.

Maybe the man deserves a little more primary research (of a less statistical nature) before being condemned or vindicated as the rival factions here seem to have in mind.

Jim, I have spent much of the past year and more in, amongst other archives, those of the LHC, doing precisely that. As I've said, though, the results of that work will be published elsewhere before appearing here. In the meantime, however, everything I've said here about the literature on the German casualty debate is based upon the conclusions I've drawn from that research.

George

[phil andrade]

And the invalids would be included in the casualty figures anyway, so let's not count them twice.Cheers-salesie.

No, not those invalided out through sickness : they were in addition to the seven million batle casualties.

Phil (PJA)

[salesie]

No, not those invalided out through sickness : they were in addition to the seven million batle casualties.

Phil (PJA)

Does SanitatsB give a figure for this category, Phil? I ask not least because McRandle & Quirk say that the SanitatsB figure for WIA includes the sick as well as the wounded, and they give in table 11 on page 689, as part of their attempted balancing act, the SanitatsB total casualty count as 7,064,000 compared to the ZN's 7,081,000 (with much greater discrepancies between the two in the individual categories, of course).

Cheers-salesie.

[salesie]

Did I miss something, have some posts just vanished into the aether?

Cheers-salesie.

[phil andrade]

Phil, if you're right about the 1914 German returns being "light" by 225,000, and if Ralph & Jack are right about the BEF's performance in 1914, it must follow that said 225,000 relate to actions against the French/Belgians? If so, how does that affect your ratios for their performance in 1914?

Cheers-salesie.

Another very important point, here, salesie : the shortfall for 1914 in the San B, which I believe to be in excess of 200,000, apertains to both Western and Eastern Fronts.

If the deficiency is as high as 225,000 - and I suspect that it might be - we would need to remember that a very significant portion of that loss was inflicted by the Russians.

The San B records only 149,418 German battle casualties on the Russian Front in 1914, compared with 643,237 in the West.

On that basis, I would contend that a much higher per centage increase needs to be applied to the Eastern Front figure than for the Western Front.

Gray and Argyle, in their tabulations, estimate 275,000 German casualties on the Russian Front in 1914.

The RA, which tends to indicate lower overall casualty totals than the San B, provided an estimate of German 1914 Western Front losses to Churchill's researcher : 677,440 for August to November, and a further 170,025 for December 1914 to January 1915, which I think implies a 1914 total of in excess of 750,000 against the Franco- Belgian and British armies.

The German officials who provided this information were at pains to point out that " For the losses from August ,1914, to January , 1915 (inclusive), only general totals are available, which are partly based on estimates"

Those German officials did not have the San B to turn to when Churchill was researching his history, because it was not completed until the earlier 1930s.

I thought that I'd better offer some provenance for my conviction that the San B understates German 1914 losses, and, in the light of those German comments, and the supposed 100,000 plus German casualties at Lodz alone in November December 1914 fighting against the Russians, it seems reasonable to assume that more than 200,000 of the 1.7 million casualties tabulated in the ZN in 1915 were, indeed, "borrowed" from 1914.

Phil (PJA)

[AlanCurragh]

No you're not seeing things, Salesie - an off-topic (and verging on the personal) exchange has been removed

Alan