GERMAN CASUALTIES

Korero (AEWS), Volume 3, Issue 12, 16 July 1945, Page 12

GERMAN CASUALTIES

Secret German casualty figures have been discovered by our Intelligence. They are extremely interesting, though it is perhaps too early to take them, as accurate , they were found in the house of the chief of the German High Command s propaganda department. From the beginning of the war until November, 1944, German Army casualties on all fronts came to 1,911,300 killed and 1,435,853 missing. These are large figures. They may be compared with the total number of German killed in the last war of two million and our Imperial dead in this war of just over half a million. But at the same time they are far below what we should have expected, particularly on the Eastern Front. The German figures for this front until November, 1944, are 1,419,000 killed and 907,000 missing. Yet on June 22, 1943, at the end of two years of war, an official Russian statement was issued estimating German killed at 6,400,000. Far more striking was the admission in that same document that the Russians themselves had already suffered 4,200,000 killed and missingmore by then than the German figures for the whole course of the war. This too was before Stalingrad and the great Russian counter-offensives. It has always been assumed that Russia s losses to the German tank armies in the early years were extremely heavy, but it is a shock to find that they were, according to these enemy figures, so out of proportion to the German. Our Intelligence must put some faith in the document to publish it at all, but it will need careful checking against figures from other sources as they come into our hands. — The Manchester Guardian Weekly.