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German KIA in Normandy

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wokelly

Grizzled Veteran
Mar 27, 2006
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#1
I know there are lots of figures out there but I figure a look at the cemeteries gives an idea of how many Germans were at least killed in the campaign.

1)Huisnes-sur-Mer, near Pontorson, 11 956 burials

2)La Cambe, between Bayeux and lsigny, 21 160 burials

3)Saint-Desir-de-Lisieux, near Lisieux, 3 735 burials

4)Marigny - La Chapelle-en-Juger, near Saint-Lo, 11 169 burials

5)Orglandes, near Valognes, 10 152 burials

6)Champigny-St-Andre-de-I'Eure, 19 794 burials

Plus 2 329 German soldiers who are buried on British cemeteries in Bayeux, Cheux-St. Manvieu, Douvres-la-Delivrande, Fontenay-le-Pesnel, Hottot-les-Bagues, Ranville, Ryes-Bazenville, Sequeville-en-Bessin, Tilly-sur-Seulles and Tourgeville. The Grave Commission of the British Commonwealth cares for their graves.

That makes for a total of at least 80 295 dead for Normand. God knows there are probably more since they are still finding the a few bodies each year.

So I figure at least 80,000 germans were killed in normandy if you go by the count in each cemetery. One thought came to mind maybe some of thoes dead are from the BoF, but I dont beleive there was much fighting in the normandy area in 1940, the french may not have lasted long enough for battle to reach there.
 
#3
Then you have to figure in casualties attained from artillery, where bodies are basically disintegrated beyond recognition. The Americans and British were using all available naval artillery in this region as well, so the explosive firepower would have been immense.

I think by the conquest of France by the Allies, the Germans had suffered an enormous 400,000+ casualties. The Western theatre was very costly for the Germans, and a lot of that had to do with just our difference in fighting methods. The Wehrmacht in the west was also comprised of a lower quality amount of soldiery, as the creme of the crop had been sent or kept on the Eastern Front.
 
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#4
I'd Hardly call the germans on the western front low quality. Many units were combat hardened SS units and regular army units with combat experience in Russia.

I think it must be noted that the Germans didnt consider the Russian front more important then the Western Front. The Russian front was a massive 1000km long while the Western front was somewhere less then half of that. The Germans simply needed to put most of there troops there to keep some kind of solid front line over such a vast distance while they could use less troops in the west to do the same.

The 400,000+ the germans lost was crippling. The Allies netted at least 200,000 prisioners alone, not to mention the loss of 1800-2000 tanks out of 2200 tanks that went into battle.
 
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#7
wokelly said:
Kinda hard to ignore the 80,000+ bodies in those cemeteries. Unless someone can give a good reason, that has gotta be the base limit for the German killed in Normandy. At least 80,000 it seems, or where else did the bodies come from?
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Out of over 200,000 total German casualties that is probably correct for the base (bottom) limit, although I would assume the German KIA figure likely to be far higher given the reasons above plus the fact that Allied fighter/bombers ruled the skies over Normandy and not much would be left of the remains to be identified (my apologies for the gore) after an allied aerial attack on ground units quite often.
 
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#8
OneShot said:
Out of over 200,000 total German casualties that is probably correct for the base (bottom) limit, although I would assume the German KIA figure likely to be far higher given the reasons above plus the fact that Allied fighter/bombers ruled the skies over Normandy and not much would be left of the remains to be identified (my apologies for the gore) after an allied aerial attack on ground units quite often.
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Makes you think about Goodwood and Cobra, the Lancasters and B-17s carpet bombing the German lines. Pictures of tigers flipped over, God forbid the tiny pieces that anyone near one of those bomb blasts would have turned into.
 
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#12
Ranari said:
I think by the conquest of France by the Allies, the Germans had suffered an enormous 400,000+ casualties. The Western theatre was very costly for the Germans, and a lot of that had to do with just our difference in fighting methods. The Wehrmacht in the west was also comprised of a lower quality amount of soldiery, as the creme of the crop had been sent or kept on the Eastern Front.
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The total amount of casualties for the krauts on the Western Front was smaller than Operation Citadel alone on the Eastern.
 
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#15
wokelly said:
I'd Hardly call the germans on the western front low quality. Many units were combat hardened SS units and regular army units with combat experience in Russia.
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Nestor Makhno said:
Everybody is talking about German casualties but wasn't one of the divisions stationed closest to the landing zone made up, to a large extent, of Eastern European 'volunteers' - mebbe the 716th?
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The 716th division was in the area of the Normany landings, and an under strength company of the 736th Grenadier regiment was garrisoned at (or near enough) to what is now called Pegasus bridge.
I think it's fair to say that this company wasn't at anything close to 100% fighting efficiency. It had been a garrison unit for so (too???) long as well as being under strength, under equipped and under trained. The company had German officers and NCOs, while the enlisted were mostly conscripts from other nations, including Polish, Russian and French. I imagine the rest of the regiment was the same, but as for the division, I couldn't say.

A couple of the off-duty garrison troopers had arrived to see the the situation at the bridge, had then "legged it" until out harms way and fired off all their rounds into the air / ground. Then they run again, to report they had defended the bridge until they had run out of ammunition. :D

Also in the area of Pegasus bridge was the 125th Panzer Grenadiers of the 21st Panzer Division, commanded by Colonel Hans A. von Luck. He was the officer who put his pistol to the head of the Lufftwaffe officer commanding some 88 Flak gun, to get the guns to engage advancing Allied tanks.

Anyway von Luck had served in Poland in '39, Dunkirk in '40, Moscow in '41 and North Africa in '42-'43. The 21st Panzer had the best equipment going, including Tiger tanks. If von Luck was an indication of the divisions officers, it would had been trained to a very high level. As the 21st was an elite panzer division, it was under the personal command of Hilter.

So, quite a mix of troops in just 1 small area.

I do recommend reading Pegasus Bridge, which is where I've blantantly ripped this info from. It's by Stephen Ambrose. Even if you hated HBO's Band of Brothers, please give it a read, it's not that long.
If anyone wants to trash Ambrose, let's start a different thread ;)
 
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#16
agreed. i enjoyed the book pegasus bridge. I acutally bought that book back when i was mapping for MOH:AA for research. With that book and all the online research i did IMO i made the most historically correct/accurate map of pegasus bridge to date. [just a fyi, the pegasus map in call of duty isnt that correct]. Its been a few years now and ive pretty much forgotten alot of things about the 21st panzer div, but didnt von luck help in the defense of Caen? What i do know is that yes, the majority of the 'german' troops in normandy were not the best especially the ones that occupied the coastline. for example the 352nd, in which there was even asains in the division and other conscripts from eastern countries. the conscripts were even known to shoot their german NCOs and surrender to the allies during the first few days of the invasion. but untill only after the afternoon of d-day did hitler start sending his SS and other better whermacht divisions in, in which the allied airpower constantly harrassed and severly weakend their strengths.
 
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#17
but untill only after the afternoon of d-day did hitler start sending his SS and other better whermacht divisions in, in which the allied airpower constantly harrassed and severly weakend their strengths.
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Somehow related with that Pegasus Bridge, I recall a situation that first the 21st PzDiv units were going to move there, but about half-way the order was withdrawn and they returned. Later they were ordered again, but I presume something similiar happened again. And after that they finally were 'really' ordered to move somewhere nearby in order to hear that Pegasus Bridge was no longer under german control.

Might be inaccurate info, I have no memory where I heard about it, but always keeps popping up when speaking about Pegasus and 21st PzDiv.

hitler start sending his SS and other better whermacht divisions in
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FYI, Wehrmacth is the term for the entire german army back then, including WSS, Heer and other stuff like that.

I presume with "Wehrmacht" you mean "Heer" ;)
 
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#18
I'd Hardly call the germans on the western front low quality. Many units were combat hardened SS units and regular army units with combat experience in Russia.
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Or conscripts from the opposite sides of the front who were thousands of miles away from their homes with no choice but to fight. I'd rate the average German soldier of the Western front to be a mixed bag. As we both know, the overall quality of the Heer by 1944 was vastly lower than it had been in 1941/42 due to the losses it had sustained on the Eastern front. Heck, the members of the Hitlerjugend SS Division were just kids! And that brings up another point, just how good was the SS? Manstein stated that in the early years ('39-41), the fighting quality of the SS was lower than that of the Wehrmacht due to too much emphasis on marching and aesthetics and not enough on inadequate practical training.

But did this change, or did the average fighting quality of the Heer through the losses it had sustained and rush to replenish its ranks, drop to lower than SS, making it appear as if the SS was truly an elite fighting organization?

To quote a Wikipedia article (Link):

"Several divisions are seen by historians as being elite, notably those with higher proportions of ethnic Germans in them. These divisions were characterised by extremely high unit morale and combat ability, as well as commitment to the ideals of the Crusade against Bolshevism.

These divisions included the LSSAH, Das Reich, Totenkopf, the multi-national Wiking, the Hohenstaufen and Frundsberg, and the Hitlerjugend.

In spite of heavy casualties, some of the Waffen-SS units retained their reputations as crack formations until the end of the War, though the quality of formations raised late in the war was often execrable, and some of the Freiwillige troops were prone to mutiny."
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I'm not really trying to use this bit to prove my point, as it doesn't exactly go into detail, but I did want to quote it giving a source acknowledging the imaginary quality of the Waffen SS. While they were given the highest priority in equipment, they were defeated just like everything else.

I do want to raise a counterargument to my own point though: The SS were given some of the hardest tasks to accomplish, which might explain the abnormally high casualty rate.
 
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#19
The W-SS was never an elite organization, it was the military arm of the SS. There were some units within the SS that were considered elite (later in the war) as well as others that were mediocre or rather last-ditch. Same can be said about the Wehrmacht, although they received at least rudimentary training not true for all SS units). If one wants to know whether a unit that fought at a battle was above or below standard you have to look at the individual units themselves, not look for an SS-tag. In general, Allied troops in Normandy were most probably of higher quality than the German defenders.

Guenther Grass, a famous novelist in Germany, was also part of the W-SS, but he certainly wasn't an elite soldier.
 
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