Dead Reckoning

[phil andrade]

As a statistical footnote to the point I made in post 51, I post these figures to demonstrate what I alluded to and how it might be a useful aid to shaping our perceptions of the ordeal of British soldiers in the Great War.

 

Surely, the war between the Soviet Union and Germany 1941-45 was the most titanic, intense and awful conflict in modern history. Apart from its scale and intensity, it incorporated all the most atrocious attributes of total, indiscriminate warfare between totalitarian regimes.  More than that, the Red Army was under appalling pressure from June 22nd 1941 until the very end of hostilities, and sustained immense casualties from first to last. There was no other ally to share the burden on the main front. To make the cup run over, the colossal toll of battle was compounded by genocidal onslaught on Russian prisoners.  According to John Erikson, citing the military demographer Krivosheev, the Soviet Union mobilised, in all, 34,476,700 military personnel, of whom 8,668,400 lost their lives from all causes in the Second World War. Of these, 6,287,517 were killed in battle or died from wounds.  These figures represent 25.14% and 18.24% respectively of the total mobilised from beginning to end.

 

Using Bean's table of British Empire Army fatalities in the Great War, I see that the UK mobilised 5,704,416 troops 1914-18 ( 5,399,563 of whom " took the field " ) ; of these, 702,410 were killed or died. This equates to 12.3% of the overall total....just under half the rate suffered by the Soviet Union 1941-45.  If we exclude non battle causes, the UK figure is 618,000 killed in action or died from wounds, which is 10.83% of all the soldiers.  That is a pretty chilling figure, representing more than half that of the Russians in the Second World War ( 18.24%), despite the fact that the great preponderance did not occur until July 1916 onwards, in a conflict which afforded British soldiers the advantage of being supported throughout by the French and later by the Americans ; an advantage denied those Russian soldiers in WW2. 

 

The death rates of the Great War might have been sensationalised, but the truth was shocking.

 

Phil

 

 

 

[SiegeGunner]

If you want a comparison that is truly shocking, try comparing the fatal casualties of the British Empire in four years of an 'industrial' war with the death toll in the Rwandan genocide, where upwards of a million people were done to death in a period of about 100 days.

[Guest]

Not knowing the figure and not having the remotest idea are slightly different positions.

 

if someone doesn't know how many British soldiers died in the Great War, they might be able to make a reasonable guess. If they knew the population today was 65 million, they might make a reasonable gues of the size of the population in 1914 , halve it for the men, and make some assumption on the proportion of men who served and then guess the proportion that died.

 

if they knew the population in 1914 was 42 million, they might make a better guess.. Or if they knew the Army numbered 5.7 5.9 million, a better guess and if they knew fatalities were around a million a better guess again.

 

The reality is that the Great War for most people is such a distant thing, observed across a "moat of pitying tears of the war poets" through the distorting lense of remembrance, concentrated focus on the glimpses and sound bites relating to First Day of the Somme and the mud and slaughter of Passchedaele in 1917...which in turn are assumed to be representative of the whole war. Most people have absolutely no reference points or, at best, distorted reference points for the real numbers and consequently when they guess, if is not from an informed standpoint.

 

By comparison, if one was to guess the number of cars in the UK, or the number of mobile phones, I suspect most would come to a figure much closer to the truth than their guess on the British dead because they have more tangible reference points. As we have seen from the small samples, people are typically overestimating the British dead by around 300% on average. I think this is because, despite the millions of £ thrown at the centenary, the Great War remains very remote and still trapped in remembrance, memorials, wreath laying, gauntlets and flag-bearing and solemn last posts; the irony is that few seem to understand how many the national remembrance is supposed to be remembering. This is not a criticism of the man in the street, merely my perception of their perceptions. Does it matter? Probably not. 

 

I think Stalin said something along the lines that "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic". He would know. 

Edited 1 February , 2018 by Guest

[Steven Broomfield]

11 hours ago, phil andrade said:

 

 

This includes outrageous mortality among their POWs in German hands, as well as stupefying loss of life in battle.

 

Phil

 

 

Out of interest, what about German deaths in both World Wars? I suspect the death rate of German (or should we say 'Nazi'?) POWs in Russia during and (long) after the second conflict might be quite an eye-opener.

[Ron Clifton]

56 minutes ago, QGE said:

if someone doesn't know how many British soldiers died in the Great War, they might be able to make a reasonable guess. If they knew the population today was 65 million, they might make a reasonable gues of the size of the population in 1914 , halve it for the men, and make some assumption on the proportion of men who served and then guess the proportion that died.

 

if they knew the population in 1914 was 42 million, they might make a better guess.. Or if they knew the Army numbered 5.7 million, a better guess and if they knew fatalities were around a million a better guess again.

This is a good way of informing those who stubbornly cling to the idea that the Great War represented "the death of a generation." Fatalities for the UK only were around 750,000 which represents about ten per cent of a generation.

 

Ron

[Len Trim]

20 hours ago, phil andrade said:

Dad experienced the Battle of El Alamein at first hand.

 

He often  alluded to its fourteen thousand British ( and Commonwealth) dead.

 

I would then  remind him that these were casualties, and only  about one quarter of them were fatal.

 

Oh, right ! , he would say, and then carry on as before.... more than a thousand men killed every day for nearly two weeks, he would comment.

 

In the end, I gave up.

 

Phil

 

 

 

 

 

 

I don't know how the mind works but I often find the above scenario comes true when discussing the Great War but also other things such as politics. People hold a certain belief eg. the Blackadder view of the GW. We discuss it and I point out the error of their ways. They seem to understand what I am saying but continue to hold the same views. Some beliefs seem to be hard wired into us after a certain age and are very hard to change. They become part of our world view, a part of us, and only a severe shock changes our beliefs.

Len

 

[phil andrade]

2 hours ago, SiegeGunner said:

If you want a comparison that is truly shocking, try comparing the fatal casualties of the British Empire in four years of an 'industrial' war with the death toll in the Rwandan genocide, where upwards of a million people were done to death in a period of about 100 days.

 

Oh Lord , yes !

 

Your point strikes home, Mick,  especially when you consider the manner of weapons used...matchete , knife and iron bar in many cases.

 

Phil

 

 

[phil andrade]

1 hour ago, Steven Broomfield said:

 

Out of interest, what about German deaths in both World Wars? I suspect the death rate of German (or should we say 'Nazi'?) POWs in Russia during and (long) after the second conflict might be quite an eye-opener.

 

Yes , we need eyes wide open on this one.

 

In the days of George Webster and John Sales we did discuss German casualties, and I still haven’t recovered from the battering I got !

 

Phil

[Guest]

50 minutes ago, Ron Clifton said:

This is a good way of informing those who stubbornly cling to the idea that the Great War represented "the death of a generation." Fatalities for the UK only were around 750,000 which represents about ten per cent of a generation. Ron

 

You raise an interesting example of postwar propaganda: who first coined the phrase "Death of a Generation"?  It is soundbites such as this that may well have had a disproportionate impact on the national perceptions. Reginald Pound's "The Lost Generation of 1914" published in 1965 possibly? 

 

The fact that the nation is focused on the 'generation' that died rather than those who survived is a fundamental aspect of the distortions. If one turns the 10% on its head and focus people on the 90% (or thereabouts) who survived the War, most people are quite surprised. "Framing" or positioning the numbers has a profound impact on  perceptions - this is effectively what the media does by focusing on the Somme, Passchendaele etc; psychologists would call this 'anchoring'. It is these anchors that create the huge gaps between perception and reality.  

 

It is interesting to survey book titles over the decades. Memoirs written in the aftermath of the Great War by participants tended to lack the sensationalist titles, tending to have more sober approach such as "Subaltern on the Somme" (1928). Contrast this with "Slaughter on the Somme" published in 2013. More modern titles tend to use far more extreme vocabulary: "lost generation", "Slaughter on the Somme" "Death's Men", "Six Weeks" "Bloody April" and the gory  triumvirate of "death, mud and blood'"  etc... This has even started to permeate the academic world with titles such as "Moonlight Massacre" and "Trial by Fire" etc.. 

 

Edited 31 January , 2018 by Guest

[phil andrade]

1 hour ago, QGE said:

Not knowing the figure and not having the remotest idea are slightly different positions.

 

if someone doesn't know how many British soldiers died in the Great War, they might be able to make a reasonable guess. If they knew the population today was 65 million, they might make a reasonable gues of the size of the population in 1914 , halve it for the men, and make some assumption on the proportion of men who served and then guess the proportion that died.

 

if they knew the population in 1914 was 42 million, they might make a better guess.. Or if they knew the Army numbered 5.7 million, a better guess and if they knew fatalities were around a million a better guess again.

 

The reality is that the Great War for most people is such a distant thing, observed across a "moat of pitying tears of the war poets" through the distorting lense of remembrance, concentrated focus on the glimpses and sound bites relating to First Day of the Somme and the mud and slaughter of Passchedaele in 1917...which in turn are assumed to be representative of the whole war. Most people have absolutely no reference points or, at best, distorted reference points for the real numbers and consequently when they guess, if is not from an informed standpoint.

 

By comparison, if one was to guess the number of cars in the UK, or the number of mobile phones, I suspect most would come to a figure much closer to the truth than their guess on the British dead because they have more tangible reference points. As we have seen from the small samples, people are typically overestimating the British dead by around 300% on average. I think this is because, despite the millions of £ thrown at the centenary, the Great War remains very remote and still trapped in remembrance, memorials, wreath laying, gauntlets and flag-bearing and solemn last posts; the irony is that few seem to understand how many the national remembrance is supposed to be remembering. This is not a criticism of the man in the street, merely my perception of their perceptions. Does it matter? Probably not. 

 

I think Stalin said something along the lines that "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is just a statistic". He would know. 

 

Martin,

 

When being told that one in eight of all British soldiers died in the Great War , most of my contacts were taken back and virtually blurted our “ is that all. ? !”

 

What I hope I have managed to achieve is to present an alternative perception ... one in eight is actually an appallingly high death rate, especially considering how four fifths was suffered by the infantry, who comprised barely half the force, and also that, again , four fifths was sustained in just over half the time that the war lasted .

 

Add to that the fact that the overwhelming preponderance of these were deaths from hardcore battle violence - a distinct departure from the record of previous wars - and that 12.5%assumes a more striking aspect.

 

Phil

 

 

[Guest]

9 minutes ago, phil andrade said:

 

Martin,

When being told that one in eight of all British soldiers died in the Great War , most of my contacts were taken back and virtually blurted our “ is that all. ? !”

Phil

 

I suspect if you said 7 in 8 survived  you would get a different response...  My main interest is trying to understand why they say "is that all?" to your 1 in 8...why are their perceptions so distorted? 

 

If you asked the same group how many bicycles there are in the world, I suspect most would simply say they didn't know. The fact that most offer answers to the Great War question suggest that most think they stand a decent chance of guessing something close. The reason most are astonished is their realisation that they could be 'that far out'...  In my experience very few people decline to offer an answer, which given the outputs is interesting. 

 

 

Edited 31 January , 2018 by Guest

[Steven Broomfield]

1 minute ago, Gareth Davies said:

 

I think the use of the word "only" when referring to three quarters of a million dead is probably inappropriate.  

 

Mr Clifton was referring to 'the UK only' - as in the UK alone (i.e. not including anywhere else), rather than as in 'a mere 750,000', I think.

[paulgranger]

Gareth

Your point is good, but I think Ron was pointing out that the losses for the UK alone were 750,000, not that 750,000 is insignificant.

Snap.(Mr B got there before me)

Edited 31 January , 2018 by paulgranger
update

[Gareth Davies]

Whoops - so he was. My apologies.  I will delete the offending post.  

[Perth Digger]

I notice earlier in this thread that the wounded data are still seen as the number of men wounded rather than the number of wounds suffered. It makes a difference.

 

Mike

[phil andrade]

An error on my part, for which I apologise.

 

My repeated assertion that four fifths of the British Army’s Great War dead are attributable to the period from July 1916 onward is an exaggeration : I’ve consulted CWGC and the correct proportion is three quarters.

 

I suspect that,  if the calculation were to be made for the Western Front only, the four fifths might hold good.

 

Editing : Just done the excercise. CWGC cites UK army deaths for the Western Front only between 4th August 1914 and 11th November 1918 as 574,000, of whom 22.5% are attributable to the period to the 30th June 1916, and 77.5% for the period from the First day of the Somme to the Armistice : my four fifths fails to pass the censor, but stands as plausible in rough and ready terms !

 

Phil

Edited 31 January , 2018 by phil andrade

[Ron Clifton]

4 hours ago, Perth Digger said:

I notice earlier in this thread that the wounded data are still seen as the number of men wounded rather than the number of wounds suffered. It makes a difference.

 

Mike

You are right, Mike, although some figures in Casualties and Medical Statistics suggest that the difference is between five and ten percent. Not insignificant, but quite easy to allow for in the realm of round figures. Both that book and SMEBE do make your point specifically.

 

Ron

[phil andrade]

Certainly it’s an important distinction : the number of wound cases is one thing ; the number of men surviving with wounds another.

 

Another aspect that needs to be considered is that gas cases are also included among the wounds ; this will alter ratios of mortality, since a relatively small percentage of gas casualties died in hospital.

 

Phil

[Guest]

The infantry medal rolls  (1914 Star and 1914-15 Star) clearly show the number of men discharged before their service was complete was around 600,000. It is a reasonable assumption that the underlying causes were Discharged Medically Unfit  due to wounds, injury or sickness. The human toll, if measured by fatalities and those with a permanent medical impact will be about 40% of all who served.If one then looks at the Medical Pension data, the numbers grow even more. A decade after the War thousands of men were being awarded pensions for war related reasons. The process was long and drawn out. 

 

Below is my precis of Page 315 "Ministry of Pensions Medical Review" in the History of the Great War Medical Services Statistics. The parts in italics are verbatim transcriptions.

 

4th Aug 1914 - 11th Nov 1918 (all numbers are as stated in Medstats and are approximate)

Numbers served : .......................................6,000,000

Death casualties: ..........................................750,000

Discharged on Medical grounds:................600,000

 

11th Nov 1918 - 31st Mar 1919

Discharged as disabled by war service:...335,000

War disablement pension or gratuity:.......485,000

 

"By 31st March 1920 1,420,000 or 23.6% of the total who served had been awarded [medical] pensions or gratutities."

 

"By 1925 this total had increased to 1,654,000 and by 31st March 1930 to 1,664,000 or 27.7 % of those who had served. It to this total is added the 750,000 death casualties, the total numbers affected by war service in the sense of death or some form of war disablement for which State compensation was given, may be estimated at approximately 2,414,000 or 40.2 % of those who served"

 

120,000 men died while in receipt of their medical pension. 

Edited 1 February , 2018 by Guest

[phil andrade]

Martin,

 

If I interpret your post correctly, we might conclude that for every British soldier who died in the war itself, another two were left suffering long term from wounds or invalidity, with lives thereby damaged  and/or diminished.

 

Is there a reference as to the date by which the 120,000 men died while in receipt of medical pension ?

 

I note that there is a signifant mention in Italian archives, which implies that the total of that nation’s war dead, as enumerated by the end of the actual fighting, was increased by fifteen per cent as invalids perished in the following year or two.

 

Phil

 

 

[brummell]

I asked the question in my office today - 10 officers, rank range Colonel to Captain.  Answers ranged from 15% to 40%.  Interestingly, the Combat brethren were all grouped at the top end of the scale, the Combat Support lower (granted, it's a very small sample, but I thought this difference between the tribes was interesting).

 

When asked why they gave the answer they did, the Colonel (a cavalryman) wisely pointed out that '...not everyone in the Army found himself in the happy position of dying for the country' and that most of the Army served, as it would now, in relative safety.   The callow captains argued that 'everyone knows'  the whole thing was bungled and whole units were wiped out; I was urged to look at the Pals, for example. The Pals do garner a lot of attention in books and TV documentaries; perhaps the impression of what happened to the Pals - probably only half understood - has been superimposed on the Army as a whole.

 

I got the distinct impression that, when I gave the actual answer, some of them were actually disappointed.  Too desperate to conform to the orthodoxy to accept the fact?  After all, they're only human.

[Gareth Davies]

It seems that Op REFLECT has passed them by.  Please put them in touch with me @brummell.

[Guest]

10 minutes ago, brummell said:

I asked the question in my office today - 10 officers, rank range Colonel to Captain.  Answers ranged from 15% to 40%.  Interestingly, the Combat brethren were all grouped at the top end of the scale, the Combat Support lower (granted, it's a very small sample, but I thought this difference between the tribes was interesting).

 

When asked why they gave the answer they did, the Colonel (a cavalryman) wisely pointed out that '...not everyone in the Army found himself in the happy position of dying for the country' and that most of the Army served, as it would now, in relative safety.   The callow captains argued that 'everyone knows'  the whole thing was bungled and whole units were wiped out; I was urged to look at the Pals, for example. The Pals do garner a lot of attention in books and TV documentaries; perhaps the impression of what happened to the Pals - probably only half understood - has been superimposed on the Army as a whole.

 

I got the distinct impression that, when I gave the actual answer, some of them were actually disappointed.  Too desperate to conform to the orthodoxy to accept the fact?  After all, they're only human.

 

 

It would be interesting to know the average .... and whether they even thought it matters. 

[Guest]

13 hours ago, phil andrade said:

Is there a reference as to the date by which the 120,000 men died while in receipt of medical pension ?

Phil

 

In theory all men on a medical pension would die whilst in receipt. 

 

"120,000 died whilst in receipt of pension before 31st March 1929"

Ref "MedStats" page 317 table 4 Types of Disablement and Corresponding Form of Compensation at 31st March 19129.

 

This means, roughly speaking for every 10 men killed another 2 died whilst in receipt of pensions for war related wounds, injury of sickness.... so one might reasonably crank the fatalities up by an arbitrary factor. If one believed they all died before their time the fatality figures would need to be multiplied by a factor of 1.2...so the 11.5%-12.5% range (depending on parameters) would be 13.8% - 15.0%. ....so people at the lower end of the guesstimation range made pretty good guesses. 

 

Martin

 

 

Edited 1 February , 2018 by Guest

[brummell]

The average was 26%.

 

We did chat, whilst glumly hacking away at our inboxes, about whether it mattered.  One view, for which there was some sympathy, was that it doesn't matter because, whilst interesting, it doesn't affect our understanding of what it is important to know - the character of the war, the course of it, the 'lived experience' of it and what practical military things can be learnt from it.

 

Another slightly more sophisticated view was it doesn't matter because ignorance of the fact only makes people think the war was bloodier than it actually was - and how could that be a bad thing?  If history is the thing on which we base future actions, what bad consequences might flow from people thinking war is more terrible than it actually is? 

 

Personally I think it does matter, because it is true.