Re: Casualties in the Battle of France?

On Aug 6, 11:21 am, Cubdriver <usenet.AT.danford.DOT....@xxxxxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
A wildly successful air-ground battle like the invasions of France in
1940 and Iraq in 2003 is obviously going to inflict disproportionate
casualties on the losing side. I finder it easier to believe that the
French lost 100,000 men than that the Germans lost 45,000! (The
Americans and British lost about 300 in their blitz of Iraq.)

Sorry Dan, but what might seem "obvious" is not always true. :)

From NARA RG242, T77, R826, F2114~ Report on the Central Statistics on
Manpower Losses in the War, 30 August 1944. There were three sources
for the number of dead in the Western Campaign:

1) The summary reports of casualties by the Wehrmacht-Führungsstab:
26,455 (including 1,253 officers).
2) The reports of the Sanitäts-Inspektur: 30,267 (including 1,558).
3) The reconciled reports including decisions on the fate of those
previously recorded as MIA: 46,059 (including 2,501 officers).

In my experience in working with the types of records described, I
would anticipate that the first said was simply incomplete. That is,
that all the records from all the units were not forwarded and
coallated in time to be incorporated into the those figures, which
were apparently published nearly simultaneously with the armistace.
They also probably did not include the Wehrmachtgefölge (non-military
Wehrmacht civilian personnel) and possibly many of the SS losses
(which were reported through the SS-Führungshauptamt IIRC at this
time). The second were probably more complete, but would not have
included either missing-in-action. Which leaves the final and most
complete set, which we must accept as definitive.

.

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