Nazi Casualties

[Faux Real]

I've recently been hearing about the percentage of Nazi Germany's soldiers being killed by the USSR as high as the mid 80% compared to the UK at 5% and the US at 4%. Are there any credible statistics to this? It seems unproportionally high but I guess that's the American media feeding it into my head that narrative of how "America killed Nazi Germany off".

Time of reference being during WWII of course.

[RNK]

The highest percentage I've seen was about 75% of all Nazi soldiers killed during WW2 dying on the East Front. If you're looking for a more general criteria, such as soldiers defeated (ie killed or captured), then the bulk still goes to the USSR, although the Western Allies captured more Germans than the Soviets did, which is probably due to the fact that Germans were more 'willing' to surrender to the Westenr Allies rather than the Soviet Union given the fact that mutual hatred between the Nazis and the Soviets was much stronger, and that the Soviets weren't about to treat the people who just tried to exterminate them very nicely.

But yeah, I guess about 75% of all Nazi troops killed were killed by the Soviets.

[Andres Marcos]

Not sure of the numbers but they were very high, the USSR was fighting the for 4 years on the ground compared to the UK and America's one. I know in the East the Chinese Red Army inflicted over double the casualties of the Nationalists and the allies combined, Communists in both occasions fought heroically, this of course surprised Hitler.



Hitler himself was confused. In the Great War the Russian infantrymen had fought poorly; now they were tigers. Why? (John Toland, Adolf Hitler, Vol 2., p. 791).


...the Russians fought far more bitterly than had the Poles or Allied troops... (Joachim Fest, Hitler, p. 679

[Comrade Castro]

Yes, the figure is generally 75-80%. I know that among German soldiers, especially in 1944 and 45, being "sent East" was pretty much the highest punishment for misbehavior- it was considered a death sentence, and besides being thrown out of the army or sent to jail, for an officer in the west, being sent to an Eastern front infantry unit was the highest disgrace.

[Comrade Rage]

Yes, the figure is generally 75-80%. I know that among German soldiers, especially in 1944 and 45, being "sent East" was pretty much the highest punishment for misbehavior- it was considered a death sentence, and besides being thrown out of the army or sent to jail, for an officer in the west, being sent to an Eastern front infantry unit was the highest disgrace.After about 1943. Operation Barbarossa was essentially doomed to failure anyway. Who launches a ground invasion in the worlds biggest country?:rolleyes:

These are approximations, I don't have the exact figures here:
USSR: 75%
East (Non-USSR): 7%
France: 6%
Mediterranean: 5%
UK: 2%
Other campaigns naval/arctic: 4%

[Dros]

Yeah. The USSR (or perhaps the weather in the USSR (not to undermine the very significant role of the red army)) killed a lot of Nazis. Hitler also made a lot of mistakes. For instance, they deployed into Russia two weeks late and Hitler refused to send them any winter gear because that would impy that the swift victory he had promised wouldn't occur. So, when winter happened, the Nazis didn't have jackets and died en masse.

[RNK]

The people of the Soviet Union, obviously, felt a great sense of dedication to their way of life, to sacrafice so much to protect it. Nowhere else during the war was such dedication shown in the face of the Nazi's aggression. I'd even go so far as to say that the response of the people of the Soviet Union, not the actions of the Soviet government or the Red Army, were what saved them from annihilation.

And this opinion, I believe, is backed up by the way in which the Soviets viewed their people. Throughout the entirety of the war, particularly during the fighting in Stalingrad and Leningrad, local and national authorities made a point of allotting more rations and food to workers than they did even to their own Red Army; during the siege of Leningrad, it was the population of the city which essentially kept the Red Army fed, sheltered, and clothed, and even armed via the small number of factories still operating. This hardly sounds like a logical attitude the people would take if the Red Army, the armed wing of the "Stalinist" Soviet government, were really as brutal and oppressive as some make them seem.