The number of human beings killed as a direct or indirect result of the atrocities of World
War II is staggering. Honestly, my jaw drops every time I read into it,
and the team and I can't help but take a step back and contemplate how those figures are far,
far more than just that. Every one of the men and women who passed
represent genetic lines and individuals -- someone's daughter and someone's son.
Military persons, of course, make up a large portion of these figures, and in this series,
we're going to look into not only military deaths, but some of the most catastrophic
military casualties — which we'll define as including deaths, injuries, illnesses,
captures, and even desertions. We'll be looking through a fairly broad scope, considering freakish
casualties to military units on the scale of formations to commands while keeping that scope
pointed at identifiable military operations rather than attempting to encompass the war as a whole.
It's also important to note that it's pretty much impossible to calculate casualties with precision,
and the actual military casualties may be far less or more than the figures gathered for this series.
In this 4th entry into the series, our scope encompasses the Western Front,
the Mediterranean, and the Middle Eastern theatre and all the operations therein
On the 6th of June 1944, the Allies crashed onto the shores of Normandy, France in the
greatest amphibious invasion in history, known commonly as the Normandy Landings or D-Day,
and part of Operation Overlord. Leading up to the landing, the Allies pummeled Nazi-occupied France
from the air — destroying roads, railway lines, bridges, fuel supplies, airfields,
and aircraft-production facilities — and staged extraordinary deceptions]. Throwing body after
body at German coastal defences, the Allies eventually broke through and spread inland,
capturing the port at Cherbourg on the 26th of June and the city of Caen on the 21st of
July and crushing a German counterattack in the Battle of the Falaise Pocket. Following
another Allied landing in southern France on the 15th of August, Paris was liberated,
and the remaining German forces withdrew eastward. Overall, Operation Overlord granted
the Allies a foothold in Europe and facilitated the invasion of German-occupied Western Europe.
East to west, the beaches the Allies landed on were codenamed Sword, Juno, Gold, Ohama,
and Utah. On these shores, 160,000 troops of the Allied 21st Army Group landed,
under the command of British General Bernard Montgomery Trafford Leigh-Mallory commanded
the air, and Bertram Ramsay the sea, and American Dwight D. Eisenhower was
Supreme Allied Commander of the entire operation. Throughout Operation Overlord
more than 2,000,000 Allied personnel landed in France, delivered by either the sea or the air.
Field Marshal Gerd von Rundstedt commanded Oberbefehlshaber West and Panzer Group West, while
Erwin Rommel commanded Army Group B. German forces in the Battle of Normandy numbered around 640,000.
In the landings, the Allies fought their way to German bunkers and cliff positions through sea,
sand, barbed wire, stakes, tripods, anti-tank obstacles, and mines. Many
died before disembarking, and many soon after. Many drowned in the rising tide.
"It was very difficult to see anything now for all the sea spray and smoke. [...] The
stench of spilled diesel oil and cordite stung my nose and made my eyes water. Two explosions
occurred [...] to our left and water spurted up and showered down onto our craft in an absolute
deluge. [...] I ran up the beach and dived for cover behind a sand dune [...] An assault
craft [...] lay on its side next to us. It was shattered [...] Two bodies were actually hanging
from the side [...] Large streaks of red ran down the side of the assault craft to the sea
where their life blood had drained away. [...] Obstacles were everywhere; one vicious looking
pronged object with heavy explosive devices hung around the prongs was to our right. [...] I saw
firing coming from a bombed house, just beyond the formidable sea wall of concrete. A nasty
wire fence just in front of the concrete wall was decorated with the sprawled bodies of about
twenty Canadians [...] Naval shells continued to pass overhead and further waves of [...]
Typhoons [...] roared in letting off rockets into the defences over the sea wall [...] Many
of the casualties lying everywhere were caused by the mines sown on this stretch of beach."
Off the beach, the belligerents fought in the bocage and flooded fields. Thorny hedgerows,
embankments, and ditches slowed the Allied advance, and they were up against German mortars,
machine-gun positions, rifle pits, and snipers. In the villages, towns, and cities,
they fought room to room, down the narrow streets and roads, and through the rubble and dust.
"Circular holes dug close to the hedges caught my attention, and was told these
were German weapon pits. The next field was a charnel house of dead cattle and sheep [..]"
"[...] We took shelter in a long hedgerow, and [...] were [...] looking at this big farmhouse
[...] The crack and hiss of bullets passing through the hedge told us that this was not a good
place to be [...] It was a very hard battle as the Germans had a complete view of the battlefield,
and could move about easily, covered as he was by thick hedgerow and high banks of earth."
World War II veteran Paul Golz was only 17 when he joined the Wehrmacht. In Normandy,
he was in a machine gun team which planted "sharpened logs connected with barbed wire,"
designed to impede Allied glider troopers and paratroopers. On the 6th of June,
he saw them descending. Paul recalls what happened then: "We stopped in the fields where gliders and
parachute troops had landed. I was so hungry. I hoped to find something edible in the pastures,
which were separated by thorny hedges and ditches. Suddenly,
I saw something moving in the hedges. [...] It was a parachutist [...]. I cocked my gun
and walked toward him. He was trembling with fright. [...] I said, 'I won’t do anything to
you. [...] He offered me his canteen. [...] I made him drink first. His rifle had been thrown away,
but I took away the knife he wore on his leg and took him to the prisoner holding area." Paul was
later taken prisoner by the Americans and claimed to have been treated well.
The grandson of British veteran Edward Heath told the story of his grandfather,
who survived D-Day and the war: "They hit the beaches on D-Day and in seconds his cousin,
by his side, was shot dead. My Grandfather had to keep moving,
because they were totally exposed. [...] Along the way, his brother fell." He then recalls what
his grandfather said a while after coming home: "[...] Losing your friends and family
before your eyes was hard; and though in the short term it spurred you on, you look back
and wonder about the feelings of the families of those whose lives you were to take away."
Casualties for both the Allied 21st Army Group and the combined German forces were immense,
though the Germans suffered proportionally higher casualties, with the number between 288,000 and
530,000 out of the approximated 640,000 involved in the battle. Of the eventual 2,000,000 Allied
troops to land in France in Operation Overlord, some 226,000 became casualties.
Niklas Zetterling wrote: "[...] Casualties per division and month were actually lower
in the East than, for example, in Normandy in 1944, and this holds true for German as
well as British and U.S. divisions. Even the Soviet divisions did not,
on average, suffer a loss rate that was higher than experienced in Normandy."
After the Red Army swept westward across Europe in the Vistula-Oder Offensive,
it positioned itself around the German capital and then, on the 20th of April 45, starting shelling
the city centre and pouring into the streets of Berlin, eventually fighting it out in the
charred skeleton of the Reichstag. The Battle of Berlin resulted in the suicide of Adolf Hitler,
the capitulation of Germany, and the end of the war in the European theatre. However,
to come to this result, both the Soviet attackers and German defenders suffered
monstrous casualties. The line between military and civilian casualties gets
a little blurry here; boys from the Hitler Youth and elderly men from the Volkssturm,
which was almost a civilian militia, were among those killed, wounded, and captured.
The Soviet 1st Belorussian Front, commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov; 2nd Belorussian Front,
commanded Marshal Konstantin Rokossovsky; and 1st Ukrainian Front, commanded Marshal
Ivan Konev closed in on and fought through Berlin with a combined might of 2,500,000.
The German Army Group Vistula, commanded by Colonel-General Gotthard Heinrici;
Army Group Centre, commanded by Feldmarshal Ferdinand Schörner; and Berlin Defence
Area, last commanded by General Helmuth Weidling had a combined force of around
840,000 defending the areas around Berlin and the capital itself.
The belligerents fought in the country around Berlin and in the city itself. The city could
hardly be called that; it had been reduced to ruin by shelling, leaving few rooms to fight between
and only rubble-choked roads road for tanks to squeeze through. Snipers perched on rooftops,
harrying the broken streets below, and soldiers hiding in the rubble were flushed out with
shrapnel and flame. The battle wasn't just in the city proper, though; war was waged in the suburbs,
swallowing tens of thousands of German civilians down its insatiable throat.
Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel Lawson, a mother who, at 29, was living in Berlin during the battle,
described what it was like after the German troops in the city surrendered: "Our nightmare
had become a reality. The entire three hundred square miles of what was left of Berlin were
now completely under control of the Red Army. The last days of savage house to house fighting
and street battles had been a human slaughter, with no prisoners being taken on either side.
These final days were hell. Our last remaining and exhausted troops, primarily children and old men,
stumbled into imprisonment. We were a city in ruins; almost no house remained intact."
The red carpet to the Reichstag was throttled with trenches, moats, barbed wire,
and when the Soviets did breach the columned fortress, they fought diehard Nazis toe to toe.
In his book Berlin: The Downfall: 1945, Antony Beevor describes the fighting in the Reichstag:
“[Riflemen from the Soviet 150th Rifle Division] eventually forced their way
through to the main hall, only to discover German defenders firing down at them with
panzerfausts or throwing grenades from the stone balconies. One of the attackers [...] vividly
remembers the splattering of blood on the huge stone columns. The casualties were terrible,
but the Red Army soldiers, using the usual combination of grenade and sub-machine gun,
began to fight their way up the broad staircases, firing from behind balustrades.”
Dorothea spoke about a "radio announced that Hitler had come out of his safe bomb-proof
bunker to talk with the fourteen to sixteen year old boys who had 'volunteered' for the
'honor' to be accepted into the SS and to die for their Fuhrer in the defense of
Berlin" [...] In her account, Dorothea said: "These boys did not volunteer,
but had no choice, because boys who were found hiding were hanged as traitors by the SS [...]"
Dorothea also told a story of how she "noticed a sad looking young boy [...] in a self-dug shallow
trench [...]" In her account, she said: "I [...] found a mere child in a uniform many sizes too
large for him, with an anti-tank grenade lying beside him. Tears were running down his face,
and he was obviously very frightened [...] [He] told me that he had been ordered to lie in wait
here, and when a Soviet tank approached he was to run under it and explode the grenade. [...] This
frail child didn't even look capable of carrying such a grenade. It looked to me like a useless
suicide assignment because the Soviets would shoot him on sight before he ever reached the tank."
For casualties of around 360,000, the 1st and 2nd Belorussian Fronts and 1st Ukranian Front
closed like a noose on the German Army Groups Vistula and Centre and the Berlin Defence Area,
inflicting upon them some 840,000 casualties, of which around 480,000 were captures.
Reviewing Dorothea von Schwanenfluegel Lawson's accounts, it's safe to say that many of the
"military" casualties in the Battle of Berlin were hardly that, and were not even inflicted
by the enemy in some instances, but by fanatical members of those "casualties'" own people.
After the Nazis invaded Poland, France declared war on Germany. Following the withdrawal of the
French forces in the Saar Offensive, the Germans began their invasion of the Low Countries and
France on the 10th of May 1940, invading Luxemburg, the Netherlands, and Belgium,
then punching through the French Maginot Line in the Ardennes and surrounding a portion of
the French and British defenders, encouraging many of the latter to evacuate over the English
Channel via Dunkirk The Germans used their fast and coordinated Panzer, motorised, and infantry
divisions, supported always by the Luftwaffe, to smash Allied counterattacks and roll over the
remaining French forces. On the 10th of June, the French declared Paris an "open city," meaning that
the Germans could occupy it without any resistance from the French military, and on the same day,
Italy declared war on France and Britain and invaded southeastern France over the Alps
On the 14th, Paris fell to the Germans, and soon after, the French government requested an
armistice, which went into effect on the 25th of June. In just six weeks, the Germans had
successfully invaded the Low Countries and France, and not until June 1944, in Operation Overlord,
would there be any more conventional ground operations on the Western Front. Western Europe
was in Hitler's hands, and the French military had melted. The numbers of British and French
wounded or killed in the Fall of France were some of the highest in World War II,
though the amount of Allies — particularly French — taken prisoner by the Germans was just insane.
The French 1st, 2nd, and 3rd Army Groups defended their country against the Germans,
with the British Expeditionary Force attributing to the 1st. The 22-division strong Belgian Army
defended Belgium and attributed to the French 1st Army Group, and the Royal Netherlands Army,
four corps strong, was also deployed. The French Armee des Alps fought against the Italian Army
Group "West" in the southeast. Allied forces in the Fall of France totalled around 3,450,000.
German Army Groups A, B, and C invaded the Low Countries and France with some 3,350,000 troops,
while the Italian Army Group West invaded over the Alps.
The belligerent fought all through the Low Countries and northern France, out in the
wooded country and in villages, towns, and cities. Tank-to-tank combat was heavy, though the Allied
forces were generally more motorised than the Germans, who still used horse-drawn vehicles for
transport. One particular tank-heavy engagement was the Battle of Stonne, in which a French
Char B1-Bis took 140 hits from German anti-tank fire and destroyed 13 German tanks. There was a
concentration of armour at the Battle of Stonne, with many armoured units hitting the battle before
infantry support, and it has been referred to as the "Verdun of 1940." One German officer stated:
"There are three battles I will never forget: Stonne, Stalingrad and Monte Cassino." Back
to the Fall of France on a whole, barbed wire, tank obstacles, and mines were common, as were
artillery and German anti-air Flak guns, and the Luftwaffe laid waste to the Allies from the sky.
Men taken prisoner by the Germans were transported to POW camps in German-occupied countries or
Germany itself, where they suffered and/or died from starvation and disease and, in many cases,
were forced to labour for the enemy. Some prisoners never made it to the camps;
they were massacred on the spot or soon after, often as a result of Nazi racial policy.
Léopold Sédar Senghor was born in Dakar, Senegal but was living in France as a French citizen
and university professor when the Germans invaded. He joined the French 59th Colonial
Infantry Division and was taken prisoner in la Charité-sur-Loire during the Battle
of France. The Germans were about to massacre Leopold among other French colonial soldiers,
though a French lieutenant managed to convince the Germans to let them
live . Leopold was taken to several different camps before being taken to a frontstalag in
France. A poetic and politically minded individual, when Leopold was freed,
he published the poem "Camp 1940", which gives an insight into the condition of German POW camps:
"It is a huge village of mud and branches, a village crucified
By two pestilential ditches. Hatred and hunger ferment there
in the torpor of a deadly summer. It is a large village surrounded by
the immobile spite of barbed wire A large village under the tyranny
of four machine guns Always ready to fire.
And the noble warriors beg for cigarette butts, Fight with dogs over bones,
and argue among themselves Like imaginary cats and dogs."
Léopold Sédar Senghor went on to be the first president of Senegal.
Philippe de Laubier recalled the sacrifice of his father, Dieudonné de Laubier, who was in
the French Air Force during the Battle of France. Dieudonne's plane was shot down by German Flak,
and he was killed. Along with Philippe, Dieudonne's grandson Charles believes that
the French fighting spirit during the invasion was/is often perceived as lacking and that this
perception is misplaced and offensive. Charles said: "These soldiers have been doubly punished.
Not only did they lose their lives in the Battle of France, but then they lost the battle of our
memories." This story shows how casualties can echo through the generations, and also how easy
it is for lesser events and sacrifices therein to be overshadowed by the greater events of the war.
The Italian Army Group West suffered total casualties of only around 6,000, while German
Army Groups A, B, and C's total casualties were more than 157,000, with 27,000 of those casualties
being deaths. Allied casualties were much greater, though the amount of French captured from the 1st,
2nd, and 3rd Army Groups, and the Armee des Alps, was 1,540,000. This accounted
for around 68% of total Allied casualties in the battle, which was about 2,260,000.