German casualties in World War II

Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent and contradictory. The wartime military casualty figures compiled by German High Command, up until January 31, 1945, are often cited by military historians when covering individual campaigns in the war. A recent study by the German historian Rüdiger Overmans found that the German High Command statistics are not reliable, he estimated German military dead at 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria, and in east-central Europe. However the German government still maintains that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel. Civilian deaths during the war include air raid deaths, estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000 to 500,000. Civilian deaths, due to the flight and expulsion of Germans and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union are disputed and range from 500,000 to over 2.0 million. According to the German government Suchdienste (Search Service) there were 300,000 German victims (including Jews) of Nazi racial, political and religious persecution. This statistic does not include 200,000 German people with disabilities who were murdered in the Nazi euthanasia program.

The German military system for reporting casualties was based on a numerical reporting of casualties by individual units and a separate listing of the names of individual casualties. The system was not uniform because various military branches such as the Army, Air Force, Navy, Waffen SS and the military hospitals each had different systems of reporting. In early 1945 the German High Command (OKW) prepared a summary of total losses up to January 31, 1945. The German historian Rüdiger Overmans believes, based on his research, that these figures are incomplete and unreliable. According to Overmans, the casualty reporting system broke down in the chaos at the end of the war. Many men who went missing or were taken prisoner were not included in the German High Command (OKW) figures. Overmans maintains that many individual reports of casualties were not processed by the end of the war and are not reflected in the German High Command (OKW) statistics.

The following schedules summarize the OKW figures published in post war era.

According to a report published by the Reuters News Agency, on July 29, 1945 highly confidential archives found at Flensburg, in the house of General Reinecke showed German losses up to November 30, 1944 as 3.6 million, detailed in the following schedule.

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