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,