Main Causes Of Casualties - Eastern Front

[august winter]

Hi, does anyone know of any publications or reports which detail the main causes of casualties amongst the german armed forces on the eastern front. I assume the higher percentage would be due to artillery fire then small arms.

Just curious....

[Mansal D]

I would put money on the weather and lack of supplies instead of anything man could conjure.

[sid guttridge]

Hi august,

Yes, artillery caused nearly half of all battle casualties.

Somewhere I have a book on the Eastern Front that breaks casualties down by weapon of infliction.

From memory artillery caused about 45%, small arms about 30% and things like armour and aircraft were down in single figures. However, this bears double checking before you quote it.

Cheers,

Sid

[Mansal D]

Sid,

On the eastern front, you do not think weather would be a considerable force, or was this list, KIA by enemy combatants only?

Thanks,
Mansal

[Christoph Awender]

Hello

The reports vary from battle to battle but the average casualties to artillery and mortar was in most battles over 70%

\Christoph

[Commissar D, the Evil]

Makes sense to me--artillery and mortars were the great killing firepower of WWII, much as they are today. Consider the masses of artillery the Soviets mustered on each of their great offensives after mid-1944!

Best,
~D, the EviL

[Abicht]

I have 2 relatives KIA on the eastern front, one WIA from a grenade (1941) then KIA from and artilley wound to the chest (1942) near Kharkov, the other KIA by a bullet in 1944 in the former East Prussia.

There must have been stats kept by the OKH/W on this sort of subject, yet who knows if the survived the war.

[Reb]

Dunagin (War in the East) says losses by Germans to artillery were much lower than in the West - i.e. 50% with Russian losses at 70%.

In the west both sides tended to lose roughly 70% to shell fire (guns and mortors).

cheers
Reb

[panzerschreck1]

And what about losses in the western part of the scene? The allied fierce airial bombardements? how many casualties were ascribed by the often relentless bombing of german convoys etc..in % compared next to arty fire for instance..

In this case we might aslo look at the late 44/45 soviet massed airial attacks on operations like Bagration where the soviets unleashed the entire 2nd air army in a matter of days..could the airial bombardments actually outperform arty bombardments in certain stages of an attack?

[Qvist]

Just as a bit of context, casualties from shrapnel weapons however also had the lowest mortality rate. The Germans (Specifically, Zentralarchiv für Wehrmedizin, using mechanical statistical aids) developed statistics for this on the basis of ALL Krankenblätter filed up to July 1942 (some 1.3 million individual cases):

Weapon Killed heavy wounded light wounded
Panzer/PAKgr 69.4 22.2 8.48
Blanke Waffen 64.3 14.3 21.4
Kolbenhieb 61.5 30.8 7.7
Run over by tank 33.3 33.3 33.3
Inf. Weapons 29.9 31.4 38.7
Landmines 22.4 40.3 37.3
Air bomb 19.8 37.3 42.9
Artillery 18.6 28.7 52.7
Handgrenade 17 17.7 65.3
Mortar 7.7 30.8 61.5

Hence, more than two thirds of the soldiers who sustained injury from a tank or AT round were killed and less than 10% only lightly wounded. With mortar rounds, it was essentially the other way around.

Source; Müller-Hillebrand, Statistische Systeme.

cheers

[Leo Niehorster]

Hi Qvist,
These statistics indicate the probability of death/injury when encountering specific weapons. Does it also indicate the percentage of being injured/killed for the specific weapons indicated?

Apparently, if you were in a tank or similar, the chances of getting out were slim when the vehicle was hit.

Interestingly enough, the man-to-man close-up encounters, with bayonets (Blanke Waffen) and rifle butts (Kolbenhieb) were also very deadly.

The type of casualties caused by the last four shows the importance of digging in.

Cheers
Leo

[Reb]

Gentlemen

Interestingly enough - historians of the Napoleonic Wars and American Civil War often claim there were few casualties from the Arme Blanche and that hand to hand fighting never ocurred. I've read the same about WW2.

Their justification for this assumption is that doctors treated fee casualties from bayonet wounds.

Veteran accounts differ. I think Leo nailed it when he stated that bayonets and rifle butts are usually fatal.

cheers
Michael (reb)

[phylo_roadking]

Interestingly enough, the man-to-man close-up encounters, with bayonets (Blanke Waffen) and rifle butts (Kolbenhieb) were also very deadly.

Yes. When you get to THIS level in modern warfare, you're NOT injuring to supress - you're killing or getting killed. And bayonet wounds, remember, are not slices...most bayonets are not overly sharp...they are full body-force puncture wounds. IF they get into a vital organ they kill you. If they don't get into a vital organ, you get a wound that kills you eventually - OR you get the sort of minor injury under a twist of rag that probably never sees an M.O. Very little between the two extremes. Nobody AIMS for an arm or a leg when they're coming at you with a bayonet, they're trying to kill you before you kill them; noone aims at extremities.

[lwd]

There is also little tendency to let up or accept surrender when in a bayonet fight. From what I've read people tend to concntrate on the physical battle and pay less attention to interpreting and acting on verbal utterances with the possible exception of warnings.

[Qvist]

Hello Leo

These statistics indicate the probability of death/injury when encountering specific weapons. Does it also indicate the percentage of being injured/killed for the specific weapons indicated?

If I understand the question correctly: As you see, the three figures for each weapons category add up to 100. In other words, f.e. for mortars, the total number of cases where soldiers have been injured by mortar shells have been used, and these have then been divided into killed, heavily injured and lightly injured on a percentage basis.

Reb:

Interestingly enough - historians of the Napoleonic Wars and American Civil War often claim there were few casualties from the Arme Blanche and that hand to hand fighting never ocurred. I've read the same about WW2.

Their justification for this assumption is that doctors treated fee casualties from bayonet wounds.

Veteran accounts differ. I think Leo nailed it when he stated that bayonets and rifle butts are usually fatal.

Well, this goes much beyond the anecdotal, being based on 1.6 million Krankenblätter. The statistics should show with undisputable validity just how fatal wounds from bayonets or rifle butts were. Of course, what they do not show is the overall volume of such injuries. For example, there cannot have been many cases recorded as "run over by tank" given that the percentages for each category of injury are exactly similar.

cheers