Casualty and Replacement Figures WW2

German campaigns and battles 1919-1945.

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yangtze
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Casualty and Replacement Figures WW2

Post by yangtze »

Hi there

I'm trying to find casualty and replacement figures for all nations (hopefully including China) by year (at least) for WW2. Casualty stats are relatively hard to come by, but replacement figures not so much.

I wondered if someone might know of a single source for such figures.

Don
lwd
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Re: Casualty and Replacement Figures WW2

Post by lwd »

Replacements maybe problematic. Not sure if the defintion is consistent across nations either. What exactly is meant by a replacement may be an open question as well. Do you mean troops that were raised and sent to the theater as replacements only? What if a formation was disbanded and its members redistributed? How about casualties returned to the front? I wish you luck in this but it's definitly going to be a non trivial exercise.
yangtze
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Re: Casualty and Replacement Figures WW2

Post by yangtze »

I think newly raised troops send to each theatre would do it, whether as part of a new formation or replacement to existing formations. With that information plus casualty info, which seems plentiful, I can then work out total troops in arms at the end of each year.

Alternatively, if I have casualty figures and total troops in arms by nation by year I can work out replacements.
lwd
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Re: Casualty and Replacement Figures WW2

Post by lwd »

I'd check out hyperwar as they have a lot of original documents. The US numbers should be fairly easy to come by and I think the German and British as well. I know a lot of Japanese records were destroyed though so that will likely be problematic. In China's case my impression is that there were a fair number of "irregular" troops which will make things difficult even if official numbers are available. Soviet numbers have to be treatd with caution as well.

I do wish you good luck on this. It will be very intersting to see what you come up with. Have you asked it on other forums as well? I haven't seen it on the WWII forum and haven't checked axis history recently.

In some cases it may not be clear by the way whether a unit was sent to replace or supement an existing one. This may be particularly hard in the case of the Japanese who sufferes severe troop losses at sea.
yangtze
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Re: Casualty and Replacement Figures WW2

Post by yangtze »

Thanks, yes I'll share whatever I find, if I find anything worth sharing.
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