A military historian from Freiburg R. Overmans published the book "German military losses in World War II", which took him 12 years, - a rather rare case in our fleeting time.
The cadre of the German military machine in World War II is 13.6 million infantry, 2.5 million military pilots, 1.2 million sailors and 0.9 million SS troops.
But how many German soldiers died in that war? To answer this question, R. Overmans turned to the surviving primary sources. Among them - a consolidated list of identification marks (tokens) of German servicemen (a total of about 16.8 million names) and documentation "Kriegsmarine" (about 1.2 million names), on the one hand, and a summary card file of losses of the Wehrmacht Information Service about military losses and prisoners of war (a total of about 18.3 million cards), on the other.
Overmans claims that the irrecoverable losses of the German army amounted to 5.3 million people. This is about one million more than the number ingrained in the mass consciousness. According to the calculations of the scientist, almost every third German serviceman did not return from the war. Most of all - 2,743 thousand, or 51.6% - fell on the Eastern Front, and the most crushing losses in the entire war were not the death of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, but the breakthroughs of Army Group Center in July 1944 and Army Group "Southern Ukraine" in the Yass region in August 1944 In the course of both operations, from 300 to 400 thousand people were killed. On the Western Front, however, irrecoverable losses amounted to only 340 thousand people, or 6.4% of the total losses.
The most dangerous was the service in the SS: about 34% of the personnel of these specific troops died in the war or in captivity (that is, every third; and if on the Eastern Front, then every second). The infantry also got it, with a mortality rate of 31%; the Air Force (17%) and the Naval Force (12%) follow with a large "lag". At the same time, the share of the infantry among the dead was 79%, in second place was the Luftwaffe - 8.1%, in third - the SS troops - 5.9%.
During the last 10 months of the war (from July 1944 to May 1945), almost the same number of soldiers died as in the previous 4 years (therefore, it can be assumed that in the event of a successful attempt on Hitler's life on July 20, 1944 and subsequent surrender, irrevocable the combat losses of the Germans could be half less, not to mention the losses of the civilian population that do not lend themselves to the same account). In the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people died, and if, on the average, 4 years of life were released to those called up in 1939, then those called up in 1943 - only a year, and those called up in 1945 - a month!
The most affected age is born in 1925: of those who would have turned 20 in 1945, every two out of five did not return from the war. As a result, the ratio of men and women in the key age group from 20 to 35 years in the structure of the post-war German population reached a dramatic ratio of 1: 2, which had the most serious and varied economic and social consequences for the dilapidated country.
Pavel Polyan, "Obshchaya Gazeta", 2001
