German losses in Operation Bagration - a mystery that must be solved
In June we have a significant date - the anniversary of Operation Bagration (the Belarusian strategic operation, carried out according to the plan under the code name "Bagration"). The operation, which began on June 23, 1944, became an outstanding achievement of domestic military art and an example of the effectiveness of the actions of Soviet troops, who achieved colossal strategic results.
During the two months that Bagration was carried out, the irretrievable losses of the Soviet troops amounted to 178 people (few were captured in this operation, so these were mostly killed). Also, 000 were wounded and sick. In total, the Soviet troops lost 537 people, about a third of their initial number.
Alternative history from German historians
And how many did the Germans lose in Bagration? German sources readily cite large figures of our losses. The German side's losses are stated as 26 killed, 397 missing and 262 wounded. Some of the missing later reached the German positions - taking them into account, the final figure is 929. That is, the Germans, although they admit their defeat in Operation Bagration, believe that German troops inflicted twice as many losses on the Soviet side as the Germans themselves suffered.
The basis for the German loss figures is the data of the OKW casualty accounting service. However, even Müller-Hillebrand, who cited them in his work "The German Ground Forces 1933-1945", doubted the reliability of this service's data.
You can find references to this work and the figures of German losses during the war given in it with comments along the lines of, here is an authoritative source that counts German losses and compares them with much higher Soviet losses in the war. But Müller-Hillebrand in his work not only cited the data of the casualty accounting service, but also, right there, from the next paragraph, criticized these data and the entire German system of accounting for losses. As a result, he comes to the conclusion that the real German losses significantly exceeded the figures collected by the casualty accounting service.
The accounting service relied on reports from troops on losses. But these reports could contain erroneous information. Müller-Hillebrand identified the reasons for the errors: "By the time the report was sent... it was not always possible to collect complete and reliable information on the number of killed"; "In the conditions of a fast-moving maneuver war... especially during periods of troop retreat, there was, naturally, some delay in submitting reports or a partial absence of such reports for many days." Operation Bagration is a striking example of exactly this situation for the Germans (fast-moving combat, defeat and retreat), when the German system of accounting for losses not only began to fail, but fell apart. As a result, a lot of real German soldiers lost were not included in the reports.
The famous German contemporary researcher R. Overmans also assessed the data on losses collected by the German accounting service as unreliable. According to Overmans' calculations, the real losses of the German armed forces in June-December 1944 exceed the data of the official accounting service by approximately 500 killed. A significant part of this excess should be attributed to "Bagration".
In general, there are reasonable indications of the unreliability of the OKW statistics, namely, the underestimation of German losses. But German sources on Bagration still stick to the OKW figures, maintaining the conviction that Soviet losses in this battle were twice or even more than German ones. Even doubting this can cause an aggressive reaction. On one Internet forum (German Catastrophe in Belorussia in 1944 - Feldgrau.net), a Russian participant doubted the figure of 390 German losses, to which a German participant burst into a vicious tirade that such doubts are Stalinist propaganda and falsification. The Russian participant did not respond to the attack. And in vain, since his opponent's position is vulnerable, he too can be immediately accused of propaganda and falsification - Hitler's, with the development that this opponent himself is a fan of Nazism.
An example of German losses is a destroyed column of equipment.
German sources, in support of their belief about lower losses, always write about the high military skill of their army. But the main argument is the thesis about the small number of troops of the Army Group "Center" (that is, there were so few Germans that they could not lose much). According to their credo (reflected in the German Wiki), the Army Group "Center" had only 486 people - and losses in the battle cannot exceed this number.
It is necessary to understand that the German side is not interested in correcting the figures of their losses, they are satisfied with it, allowing them to present the complete defeat that happened to them as a kind of victory over the Russians. The special problem here is that their figures can penetrate into the Russian media sphere due to the uncritical attitude towards German sources and, accordingly, mistrust of domestic ones. Therefore, it is necessary to show the falsity of the German figures, their basis in the form of fraudulent manipulations.
How to establish the real history?
The losses claimed by the German side in Operation Bagration — two times smaller than the Soviets — do not correspond at all to the nature of the battle, in which many German units were destroyed and routed, and the front was thrown back 600 km to the west. The second reason why the German loss figures should be immediately regarded as false and unacceptable is that they are based on unreliable data from the OKW accounting service. Having given the German figures a deserved assessment, it is necessary to contrast them with the actual amount of German losses. But determining it today is a problem. One of its manifestations is the wide variation in the figures for German losses in Russian sources. They contain the following data:
- 410 people. This data was first given by I. Timokhovich; the breakdown of German losses in Timokhovich's text (000, of which 410 were irretrievable; 000 were taken prisoner) is not entirely clear, the total losses can be calculated as 255 (000 + 200). Other authors, taking figures from Timokhovich, do not do such an addition. But if 000 prisoners are obtained by subtracting 610 irretrievable losses, then 000 remain for the killed, which is implausible, since it does not correspond to the nature of the battle.
- 380 killed and 000 captured Germans in just one month from June 158 to July 000. This figure was obtained by summing up data from Soviet troop reports on enemy losses.
- 289 killed and captured, 000 wounded. This figure is from the official German casualty report.
- 350. This is apparently a “rounding” of the figure from the German report.
Well-known historians A. Isaev and R. Irinarkhov do not provide the total German losses in their monographs devoted to Operation Bagration, avoiding this issue. The figure of German losses according to the reports of Soviet troops seems to be exaggerated. But if we take the figure according to the reports of German troops, then the story of a brilliant Soviet victory becomes some kind of a casus belli. Even in such an operation, Soviet losses are twice as great as German losses.
The current situation poses the task of refuting pro-Nazi falsifications and reliably determining the amount of German losses in Operation Bagration to our national historiography. Not a single Nazi who perished should escape the count. Falsification means not just understating German losses, but also belittling the feat of our warriors – soldiers and commanders. All this requires an answer – a real, close to the actual determination of German losses in the battle.
As a first step in solving this problem, it is necessary to establish the number of German forces participating in the battle. German sources give a figure of 486. At the same time, Soviet sources determine the number of enemy forces at the beginning of the operation as 000 million. How does such a difference arise? The answer is described below, its essence is the cheating manipulations of the German side, underestimating its forces participating in the battle and their losses.
486 is the so-called combat strength of Army Group Center. The total strength of Army Group Center was 000 people. German historians themselves seem to be surprised - where did so many people come from - 850? It is assumed that these were the occupation administration, paramilitary organizations, various collaborationist formations, etc. In general, people who had nothing to do with the Wehrmacht itself. Apparently, the Germans have been instilled with the figure of 000 people since childhood and the general idea that there were 360-000-400... times more Russians at the front.
But these ideas are false both for the Soviet-German front in general and in the particular case of Bagration. Müller-Hillebrand gives the following data on the German forces on the Eastern Front: on July 1, 1944, the Wehrmacht had 2,2 million people there (in Army Group Center more than 800, in Army Group North 000, in Army Group North Ukraine and Army Group South Ukraine – 540 and 000; while the total number of German armed forces was more than 400 million). There are authors who take the figure of 000 million and compare it with the total number of the Soviet active army of 510 million. Isayev, for example, does this, effectively participating in the German falsification. But, as in the previous example with Müller-Hillebrand, it must be read more carefully. Citing the figure of 000 million, he makes a note that it does not include the SS troops, the Luftwaffe forces (including Defense, and, in general, very numerous among the Germans), as well as the 20th Mountain Army, airfield units, as well as service personnel, paramilitary organizations, collaborators. It is even possible that security units are not taken into account (an indication of this was present in the previous summary of the strength of the German army in the east). And what is certain is that about a million people in the armies of the German allies operating on the eastern front are not taken into account.
In general, we should accept the number of enemy forces at the front as 4,3 million, as indicated in Soviet sources, and compare this figure with the Soviet 6,6 million. It turns out that the overall Soviet superiority by the summer of 1944 was approximately one and a half times, and two times in the Bagration zone by its beginning (2,4 million on the Soviet side against at least 1,2 million on the German side).
So 360 people in addition to the combat strength of the Army Group Center are also the Wehrmacht. They must have been in the rear units of corps, army and higher subordination. The Wehrmacht consisted not only of combat units, it had developed rear support, so a lot of people were in the supply service, training, repair, medical and veterinary, etc. units.
In the Soviet group, with a total number of 2,4 million people, there were 1,6 million in combat units, that is, a third were in the rear. For the Germans, the percentage of the total number in the rear is significantly higher - 43%. Perhaps it is a matter of the calculation method: we took into account corps, army and front rears, but the Germans also counted divisional ones. Or the Germans did not take into account all combat units. And the combat strength was greater than 486.
So, the figure of 486 people given in German sources is only the combat strength and only the Army Group Center. But in a group that has undergone deep breakthroughs - as happened in Bagration - the entire mass of troops becomes combat. The rear units end up at the front and are drawn into battle. So when calculating losses, the entire strength of Army Group Center must be taken into account, not just the nominal combat strength.
Moreover, the Soviet troops were confronted in the battle not only by the troops of Army Group Center. The Soviet operation also captured the adjacent flanks of the neighboring Army Groups - North and Northern Ukraine. German sources try not to mention that the troops of neighboring Army Groups also participated in the battle. But these Army Groups added significant forces to the Germans in the battle.
By the beginning of the operation, there were 13 German divisions in the areas of Army Group "North" and Army Group "Northern Ukraine" that it had captured. Together with combat and rear units of corps and higher subordination, the total number of personnel in this group should be estimated at no less than 200 people. Adding them to Army Group "Center", we get a total figure of German troops of more than a million people in three Army Groups located in the "Bagration" zone at its beginning. But this figure is far from complete; it does not take into account all the enemy forces.
Müller-Hillebrand has some remarkable information about the German group in the West on March 1, 1944 - the following were listed as being on the payroll:
Ground forces - 806 people
SS troops and police - 85 people
Foreign volunteers - 61 people
Allied forces - 13 people
Air Force - 337 people
Naval fleet - 96 people
Service staff
Wehrmacht (civilian employees) - 145 people
Total - 1 people.
This table is a clear example of what a complete accounting of German forces should look like. There is no such data on German forces in the Operation Bagration zone. But such information is necessary for a complete accounting of German forces in the operation.
On March 1, 1944, there were approximately 50 divisions in the West, with over 800 men in the troops. Army Group Center before Bagration had approximately the same number of units and men. But the total number of men in the German group in the West was one and a half million. The above table shows that this number was achieved due to the fact that the group included, in addition to the army, also the police, the Air Force, the Navy, allies, service personnel, etc.
But the same elements were also included in the German group in Belarus, increasing its overall numbers. The Army Group "Center" had allied troops - 5 Hungarian divisions, as well as foreign volunteers. The German source estimates the number of collaborators in the Army Group "Center" zone to be approximately 100.
A large number of people in the German group should be added by the Air Force, which was distinguished by the large number of its personnel. The German Air Force also included quite numerous air defense units. The 2nd Anti-Aircraft Corps, which operated in the GA Center zone, included three anti-aircraft artillery divisions and a brigade - these forces should definitely be included in the calculation of the German group in the operation.
In the West, the German Air Force numbered 337 people. Was the Luftwaffe smaller in Belarus? The 000th Air Fleet, which supported the Center Group, was a fairly large unit – more than 6 aircraft (900 serviceable). In the West, there were about the same number of aircraft (with fewer serviceable ones).
During the battle, Luftwaffe ground personnel suffered losses as a result of intensive air raids on airfields, and flight personnel suffered losses in air battles. But the nature of Operation Bagration was such that the German Air Force was also drawn into ground battles. Anti-aircraft units were required to engage in combat with the enemy on the ground that had broken through. Air Force personnel were trapped in pockets or became the target of Soviet attacks on retreating columns. And during the battle, Air Force personnel were transferred to front-line units.
Abandoned German anti-aircraft gun in MogilevNow about the column "police" - it includes German police troops. These are precisely troops consisting of Germans. In 1944, German police formations numbered more than 500 people, which makes them a noticeable part of Hitler's forces. In partisan Belarus, the Germans were forced to maintain a large police group; the most famous of them was the so-called Gottberg battle group, which consisted of several police regiments, had its own artillery and even armored vehicles. And police units were also thrown to the front during the battle. Some analogues of the German police troops on the Soviet side were the NKVD troops. They entered the battle during German breakthroughs, and their losses are included in the total losses of the USSR armed forces (approximately 100 out of the total 000 million).
German police unit in Belarus
Soviet sources estimate the number of enemy troops at the beginning of the operation at 1,2 million people. And this figure should be considered minimally correct. The figure of 486 from German sources is a lie of the unfinished super-subhumans.
The second stage should follow the determination of the number of German troops at the beginning of the operation – the calculation of the German forces introduced into the battle during the operation. During the battle, which lasted more than two months, the German side introduced a lot of troops – they should be added to the initial number. On the Soviet side, 46 divisions were counted, as well as 22 separate regiments and 7 brigades (which gives another 10 calculated divisions), additionally introduced by the Germans into the battle. There were also many smaller units, so Tippelskikh mentions dozens of separate battalions thrown into the battle. It should be assumed that only in the composition of new formations and units the Germans threw into the battle at least another half a million people. Also, a stream of marching reinforcements went to the front to the units already there.
The enemy forces in front of the operation also included troops of the Army Group "North" (87th, 205th, 290th, 389th Infantry Divisions) and the Army Group "Northern Ukraine" (56th Tank Corps: 4th Infantry Division (26th, 131st, 253rd, 342nd), 2nd Tank Division (4th, 5th), 28th Jaeger, 1st Ski-Jaeger, 454th Security).
During the battle, the Germans added eleven more tank divisions to the three they initially had (3rd, 6th, 7th, 12th, 14th, 19th, 25th, 3rd SS, 5th SS Viking, Hermann Goering, Grossdeutschland). The 1st, 367th Infantry Division, and 5th Jaeger Division were transferred from Army Group Northern Ukraine; the 17th Infantry Division from Army Group Southern Ukraine; and the 21st, 58th, 69th, 170th, and 212th Infantry Divisions were transferred from Army Group North to Army Group Center. Also in Army Group North to the southern flank affected by Operation Bagration, already in early July the 24th, 81st, 132nd, 215th Infantry Divisions were transferred from the center and northern flank. Subsequently, other units were also transferred to the southern flank. From Germany to Army Group Center the 50th and 73rd Infantry Divisions were transferred, from Norway the 196th Infantry Division. Also in July the formation of fifteen new grenadier divisions began, from the end of July they began to advance to the area of Army Group Center. The formation of ten new tank brigades also began, some of which took part in the battle.
German reinforcements are heading to the front
In general, taking into account all the forces on the German side that took part in the battle, gives grounds to determine their size at least at 1,8 million (excluding service personnel, paramilitary organizations, allies and collaborators (including Lithuanian, Latvian, Azerbaijani, etc. formations)). This figure is the basis on which to assess the losses suffered by the German side. The nature of Operation Bagration allows us to assume that German losses in this battle were so great that they significantly exceeded Soviet losses. The German forces that took part in the battle were quite sufficient for such losses (more than 800).
An example of a German paramilitary organization in battle - the Reich Labor Service prepares positions for retreating German troops
The applied methodology of operations research is applicable to other cases as well. For example, Wikipedia has an article on the “First Jassy-Kishinev Operation”. In Soviet historiography, these battles of April-June 1944 in the Romanian direction were not singled out as a separate battle; in the 12-volume “History In WWII, two paragraphs are devoted to them, although it is noted that the battles were fierce, both sides tried to solve their offensive tasks - and both failed. These battles were combined into a separate battle in Western historiography, an example being the book by D. Glantz, from which the data in Wikipedia is taken (including the data copied into the Russian Wikiarticle on the operation). In terms of the balance of forces, Glantz gives the Soviet side a threefold advantage (830 against 000 for the enemy; the same threefold excess is given for the losses of the Soviet side).
There is no need to look for Glantz's book and understand it. The very thesis about the threefold excess of Soviet forces and their losses (in mid-1944) shows that this is another fake. The methods of its creation are the same as for "Bagration". On our side, everything and everyone is counted, and on the German side - only, so to speak, the clean Wehrmacht - its so-called combat strength (it is clear that the "clean Wehrmacht" is a joke, intended to remind us that the entire Wehrmacht was dirty due to its mass participation in war crimes). But the Wehrmacht, in addition to combat units, also included various rear services, making up about 40% of its total strength. These percentages should immediately increase the declared number of German forces in battle - and this will be far from their full figure.
Müller-Hillebrand gives the Wehrmacht strength on the Soviet front in June 1944 as 2,2 million people, of which the share of the Southern Ukraine Army Group, operating in the Romanian direction, accounted for more than 500 people (this was after the withdrawal of a number of units from the Army Group, since a relative lull had set in in its sector). To this figure should be added the forces of the Luftwaffe (at least, the numerous anti-aircraft gunners among the Germans for sure) and the SS, also not included by M-G in the Wehrmacht strength. In addition to the Germans, another 000 Romanian divisions and 18 brigades were involved in this sector.
All this allows us to conclude that in the "First Jassy-Kishinev Operation" approximately equal forces from the Soviet and Nazi sides clashed. The losses of the sides should also be approximately equal, since there was nothing catastrophic in the nature of the battle for the Soviet side. On the contrary, there were many unsuccessful German-Romanian attacks, in which the enemy should have suffered more losses than the Soviet side.
P.S. This publication is based on an article in the Military History Journal (No. 3, 2024, “On the problem of calculating the enemy’s forces and losses in Operation Bagration in 1944”), also authored by me.
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