Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Non-naval discussions about the Second World War. Military leaders, campaigns, weapons, etc.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Dear Bernard "I lost my battles" Mkenny,

How do I call you, dumb boy? Because every time you try to proof something you aim incorrectly (and this thread is 26 pages long thanks for your defense to Monty, to Tiger vs. Sherman anomalies, nice repetitive photos and such, etc.) The period, whatever, documentation is due to revision and check as time passes and new information arrives. Many information available still in the 50ies and 60ies was classified by the allies and all from the soviets (who can believe what the soviets said during the Cold War?) was and is superseed by new research.

That`s the good thing of Glantz and House. Must say that it is why Beevor makes a living of writing history whilst we must endure you.

The more reliable data, dumb boy, is the one I posted, which cames from serious revision. Yours is only for the guys that still want to drive a lonely Sherman when in effective fire range of a lonely Tiger.

What else?
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
mkenny
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by mkenny »

Karl Heidenreich wrote: The period, whatever, documentation is due to revision and check as time passes and new information arrives. Many information available still in the 50ies and 60ies was classified by the allies and all from the soviets (who can believe what the soviets said during the Cold War?) was and is superseed by new research.
It is not my fault you were caught using faulty figures.
You have not got a clue here and to cover your error you resort to childish name calling.
Believe whatever makes you happy but do not make a fool of your self by posting fiction as fact..

Karl Heidenreich wrote:The more reliable data, dumb boy, is the one I posted, which cames from serious revision. Yours is only for the guys that still want to drive a lonely Sherman when in effective fire range of a lonely Tiger.
You just confirm the obvious, you are a spent force.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Dear Sir Bernard, Lord of Arnhem, Mkenny:
It is not my fault you were caught using faulty figures.
You have not got a clue here and to cover your error you resort to childish name calling.
Believe whatever makes you happy but do not make a fool of your self by posting fiction as fact..
On the contrary. It is you who is using dubious information. I checked my source and yours, as a matter of fact. In the pdf document your link provided there is a very dubious statement in pages 131-132 which you used as your Holy Grail:

6,115,468 prisioners to be overall caught by allied forces. We must acknowledge is that those figures are mentioned only then and in a superficial way. No further clasification or clarification on this data is provided. It is clear that what you refered as "fiction" which are the estimates Beevor, House and Glantz offer are extensively more researched and cross checked. Anyway, your numbers are divided in two:

1. 2,057,138 as POW
2. 4,098,330 as Disarmed Enemy Forces

Which is clearly well understandable were your provocated confusion comes. See? You read a lot but dunno understand what you are reading:

Define, please, Disarmed Enemy Forces. The document authors fail to produce a definition to that and the info could be extended from armed civilian militias, firemen, Peoples Militias, etc. etc. in addition to formal surrendered Army and SS units.

The authors are clear that by July 1946 the amount of prisioners are no more than 216,657 men. But, what about the info in hands of the russians? That info could never be uncovered until the fall of the Iron Curtain in the decade of the 90ies, in which the serious researchers got hold of those documents.

Anyway, and I`m saying this just on my perception, is that 6 million military PoWs in the hands of westerners is an extreme and incredible figure because WE KNOW, that the Germans only fielded 1,5 million soldiers during the 1944-45 campaing in the West. By House, Beevor and Glantz (amongst others) we know that, and denying it (not dying me but them, understand?, not me but them) is failing to understand the basic realiable and accepted information we now have. You are the one living in a fiction.
You confirm are a spent force when you resort to pathetic juvenile name-calling.
I once accepted in this thread that I went too far and that ,even when you confirmed how mistaken you was (with Monty by then), your only answer was an insult ("you know what it is said of opinions?" ). Of all the forum members there is no one as utter ugly as you. So, I will call you whatever I please, because you deserve it. And thanks for the juvenile part, I reckon.

It is late and I need to work tomorrow, so I leave you here and now,
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
mkenny
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by mkenny »

The reference says:
and the three-millionth on 1 May. Supreme Headquarters authorized army group comanders on 4 may, to consider the
great masses of German troops then surrendering , not as prisoners of war
but as disarmed eneqy forces,


Thus AFTER 3 million surrendered it was decided to call the next lot 'disarmed'
Later it says:

the total number captured was 6,155,468.
2,057,138 were prisoners of war and 4,098,330 were disarmed enemy
forces.


So either way 2-3-6 million is still way over the 1.5 million you claimed and it excludes dead and wounded!

Karl Heidenreich wrote:Anyway, and I`m saying this just on my perception, is that 6 million military PoWs in the hands of westerners is an extreme and incredible figure because WE KNOW, that the Germans only fielded 1,5 million soldiers during the 1944-45 campaing in the West.
You seem unable to recognise the futility of your case. You think that because you believe it was 1.5 million then it must be 1.5 million. Get real and accept you were wrong.

There is nothing more pathetic than a fan-boy clutching at straws.
Byron Angel

Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by Byron Angel »

mkenny & karl,


Is there any possibility that you two can conduct this discussion in a more civil manner?



Byron
mkenny
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by mkenny »

The information is out now and those with an interest in the subject can make their own decisions as to the real numbers.
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by mkenny »

Karl Heidenreich wrote: In the pdf document your link provided there is a very dubious statement in pages 131-132 which you used as your Holy Grail:

6,115,468 prisioners to be overall caught by allied forces. We must acknowledge is that those figures are mentioned only then and in a superficial way. No further clasification or clarification on this data is provided.
That is not true. The figures are referenced by footnotes and here are the original documents that gave the totals:


A) 545756 POW's SHAEF, G-1 Div, Daily report of enemy Prisoners of war, 3 Oct. 1944
B) 811796 POW's SHAEF, G-1 Div, Daily report of enemy Prisoners of war, Jan 4 1945
C) 1 million POW's SHAEF, G-1 Div, Daily report of enemy Prisoners of war, Mar 12 1945
D) 2 million POW's SHAEF, G-1 Div, Daily report of enemy Prisoners of war, April 20 1945
E) 3 million POW's SHAEF, G-1 Div, Daily report of enemy Prisoners of war, May 5 1945
F) 6 million POW's SHAEF, G-1 Div PW & DEF report June 22 1945

Karl Heidenreich wrote:the authors are clear that by July 1946 the amount of prisioners are no more than 216,657 men.
Again you misquote the document. After listing the vast number of POW's who were released it ends by saying:

"In July 1946, 216,657 prisoners of war and 66,868 internees
were in the custody of the U.S. Army"


There were another 4 Million who were NEVER in the custody of the US Army.

Karl Heidenreich wrote:But, what about the info in hands of the russians?
What would the Russians know about POW's in Allied custody?

Karl Heidenreich wrote:By House, Beevor and Glantz (amongst others) we know that, and denying it (not dying me but them, understand?, not me but them)
I see no quotes or references from any of them saying that. In fact you have not produced anything but a WIKI source.
.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

Byron Angel:
mkenny & karl,


Is there any possibility that you two can conduct this discussion in a more civil manner?
There is and once I tried when I offered my apologies to continue in a more friendly way. That has not been possible with an arrogant person who insults anybody that does not abide to his self proclaimed gospel. However will try to be more civilized and resemble less what Genda has criticized of me.
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
alecsandros
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by alecsandros »

Hello all,

The "how many German PoW's were there in the end" greatly resembles the "how many Axis troops were captured in Tunis, by the Allies" dilema (most primary sources range from 200.000-250.000, although there are several notable historians who highly question the validity of those p. sources, and bring forth a much, much lower number, of about 30.000-50.000 actual soldiers captured, excluding auxiliary forces such as cooks, doctors, etc).

It's extremely difficult to come to terms with those kind of problems.
What we could do, I guess, would be to try a very educated guess, and determine the maximum possible number of German soldiers in WW2, substract the dead/missing/incapacitated through the war, and highlight the remainder... I don't know if this has been tried before. It's importance: it would provide a maximum-maximorum cap for the number of G. prisoners on the 9th-11th of May 1945.

What I do know was that their population was ~ 80milion when the war started, with about 40 million of male sex.

I don't have any info about German male population in 1939, distributed by age, nor about the ones that "came fo age" during the war.

I hope someone could provide that kind of reference;

I have some info about the total military deaths/permanently handicaped/missing (including the Navy, Air Force and land forces - Wehrmacht, SS, SD, SA, etc) and they range from 10~15 millions during the war.

P.S: My two cents: in Normandy/Battle of the Bulge, there were involved a total of max 1.5 mil Germans. In Northern Italy, Kesselring fielded ~ max 300.000 men in early 1945. I'm pretty sure half of those were dead/m/w/mia by spring 1945. So the total number of prisoners on the W front couldn;t have been higher than ~ 1 million (at the most). In the east, the battle of Berlin being the final battle, with about 700.000 German soldiers involved against the Soviets. I tend to consider a 50% loss rate as highly likely for that fight, so ~300.000-400.000 German prisoners would remain in the end...
Byron Angel

Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by Byron Angel »

Karl Heidenreich wrote:Byron Angel:
mkenny & karl,


Is there any possibility that you two can conduct this discussion in a more civil manner?
There is and once I tried when I offered my apologies to continue in a more friendly way. That has not been possible with an arrogant person who insults anybody that does not abide to his self proclaimed gospel. However will try to be more civilized and resemble less what Genda has criticized of me.

..... Thank you, Karl. I appreciate your effort in this regard.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

mkenny:
You seem unable to recognise the futility of your case. You think that because you believe it was 1.5 million then it must be 1.5 million. Get real and accept you were wrong.

There is nothing more pathetic than a fan-boy clutching at straws.
That´s hardly the case.

First: By going this way we are, entirely, taken to a path alien to the original discussion. Which is a clever use of "diversion" in the sense that the aim is not to pursue the fact that the allies won by the sheer weight of numbers (which cannot be contested due that all sources point to that) but try to proof that the Germans fielded more personnel in the Western Front than actually done.

Second: It is of public domain a series of researchs and documents that are clear in the quantity of German troops in the East and the West from June 1944 to May 1945. Basically, according to Beevor, Glantz and House, that quantity was 1,5 million troops during that period. To that the western allies mustered 5,412,000 men. Also, in accordance to those same authors the casualties during that period of time were of 339,957 dead for the Germans and 776,294 dead and wounded for the western allies.

Third: we have information coming from authors like Anthony Beevor, David Glantz and Jonathan House which are a three of the most prominent World War II researchers, specially in the Eastern Front issues. Their reputation is highly appraised in the academic world. The wikipedia source that I used came from them and it quoted them, as shown previously. (and that I´m using because is the only one available to me where I am working abroad. Being at home I can use direct references from some of the original sources. However I don´t doubt the accuracy of these researchers).

Fourth: The source you are using, as I said previously, was inmediate and not precisely related to the issue at hand. As a matter of fact it only refer to those quantities in a small section of the document which regards to fraternization, atletic disciplines or movie theaters in the occupied zone. None has been taken out of context, mainly because, there is not much that of a context.

Fifth: It is, in this case, mkenny who has to come up forward with equivalent research information, as that of Glantz, House and Beevor (or better primary sources), and present it to all of us in order to start changing our minds on this. In this, care must be taken because in the previous arguments, like that about Montgomery, he tried to make a point and we take a different conclusion, which General Sosawoski learned the hard way.

Sixth: Just in order to give some clarification on this matter, an using again trackable information from wikipedia (in this case Rutiger Overmans, "Deutsche militarische Verluste im Zweigen Weltkrieg", Oldenbourg, 2000 ISBN 3486-56531 and Richard Overy, "The Dictators, Hitler`s Germany and Stalin´s Russia", 2004, ISBN 0-7134-93090-X) to complete the set of information of Beevor, Glantz and House. Look that both books are within this decade which could mean new primary sources revealed. We have the following:

German Forces during WWII:

13,600,000 for the Army
2,500,000 for the Luftwaffe
1,200,000 for the Kriegmarine
900,000 for the Waffen SS

German Casualties (killed, missing) by branch during WWII:

4,202,000 for the Army
433,000 for the Lutfwaffe
138,000 for the Kriegmarine
314,000 for the Waffen SS

Of those totals of Army and Waffen SS had during the whole conflict, how many of it was on the field by June 1944-April 1945? According to Krivosheev, G. I. Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses. Greenhill 1997 ISBN 1-85367-280-7 (new research, a little more than a decade from first publishing) at the East the Germans lost 3,985,009 men total whilst the russians had in their possesion some 3,024,800 PoWs (of which at least 442,000 died in captivity).

That means that 88% of German field casualties perished were in the East. As a matter of fact, the substraction of the total German casualties of WWII minus those in the East gaves a total of 530,991. But, of course we must sustract the totals for the following campaigns:

1. Poland
2. Netherlands, Denmark and Norway
3. France
4. The Balcans
5. North Africa
6. Italy and the Mediterranean (and those German troops that surrendered to the allies in Italy at the end of the war).

We return then that the information that we have of 339,957 lethal casualties from June 1944 to May 1945 is accurate by using a logic procedure.

Warmest regards,
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
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Karl Heidenreich
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by Karl Heidenreich »

alecsandros:

Please look at the following links where you can get some of the information you are looking for:

1. About the western front:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_Fr ... ld_War_II)


2. About the casualties:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

3. About the eastern front:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eastern_Fr ... ld_War_II)

In 2 and 3 there are very interesting tables and the correspondant sources.

Warmest regards,
An appeaser is one who feeds a crocodile, hoping it will eat him last.
Sir Winston Churchill
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by alecsandros »

Hello Karl!
Many thanks for the links.
Yes, they provide interesting info. However, they mostly refer to the total number of deaths (which I find somewhat downsized anyway...), while the permanently crippled/missing in action/captured before the end of the war are not easy to explain.

Just a passing thought: I once heard that 80% of the soviet men born in 1924 did not survive the SWW. Can somebody confirm this?

All the best,
Alex
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Re: Revisionist tendencies and Ambrose Sindrome

Post by minoru genda »

Hello all,

alecsandros had a very good idea. So I did my homework here. From Mr. Pipes website on this link:

http://www.feldgrau.com/stats.html

We have:

Total in Wehrmacht Service 1939-1945: 17,893,200
This is the total of men that served in the Wehrmacht at one time or another some time between 1939-1945.

Total Wehrmacht Casualties 1939-1945: 10,340,728
This includes KIA, MIA, WIA at one time or another some time between 1939-1945.

So, the total max. of possible German POW is 7,552,472 between 1939-1945 in all fronts.

If the Western Allies captured 6,155,468 men then there are only 1,397,004 left for the Soviets. :shock: It just doesn't make any sense.
Tora! Tora! Tora!
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