Battered, broken, or straight-up wiped out,
some military units of the Second World War took more casualties than any others.
In this video, we shed light on seven of the most dangerous units a new recruit could be sent to.
The German regiment Großdeutschland was one of the most experienced and
best-equipped regiments in the Wehrmacht.
High command knew how useful such a unit could be and threw them into combat every chance they got.
Großdeutschland’s first major battle of the war was the crossing of the Meuse River
early in the invasion of France. The regiment was supporting Panzers, which were supposed
to be the armoured spearhead, but ended up assaulting the French fortifications themselves.
With their Panzer support in retreat, Großdeutschland infantry advanced to the town of
Stonne, which was taken and re-taken by them and the French *17 times* over the next three days.
By the end of the Battle of France 10 days later, Großdeutschland had lost around a
quarter of its infantry. But by Spring 1945, this battle would have seemed like a cakewalk.
Großdeutschland was sent to the Eastern Front, and by 1943 had been upgraded to a Panzergrenadier
force. Suffering heavy losses during Operation Barbarossa, battered from the Battle of Kursk,
and reeling from losses in the Baltic, Großdeutschland was a shell of its former self.
By March 1945, the last remnants managed to escape into Germany and were fighting a desperate
rearguard. They got as far as Pillau, in modern Kaliningrad, before being entirely wiped out.
The US Army Rangers have an epic reputation, and it all started with
one of the most dangerous units of the Second World War: Merrill’s Marauders.
Officially designated the 5307th Composite Unit,
Merrill’s Marauders were an all-volunteer force of 3,000 men from across the US Army.
Their namesake commander, Brigadier-General Merrill, wanted to hit the Japanese supply
lines in Burma with a long-range force of elite jungle troops. He got his wish in February 1944.
The lightly armed Marauders weren’t weighed down by heavy support weapons,
and they excelled in launching swift attacks to cut off Japanese supply lines.
They were experts in mobile warfare and always inflicted more casualties than they took.
But it wasn’t long before the Marauders started taking significant casualties, with tropical
diseases eroding their combat strength from the inside. In April of 1944, the increasingly
worn-out soldiers were ordered to defend a jungle village. This was an operation they were not cut
out for, and casualties mounted. The exhausted and half-starved Marauders won the battle, only
to be ordered on a 100-kilometre march over the Kumon mountains to attack the Myitkyina airfield.
Military intelligence lived up to its reputation, and the 1,300 surviving Marauders attacked 4,600
well-armed Japanese defenders. The airfield was taken with support from the Chinese Army,
but the Marauders were decimated. By August 1944, only six months after entering Burma,
the 2,750 original Marauders had been cut down to only 130 combat-effective soldiers,
the rest being killed or evacuated due to wounds and disease.
It wasn’t just infantry soldiers that were thrown into danger again and again.
Air Force units flying deadly missions every few days often had extremely high casualty
rates. One of the most dangerous units was the Royal Australian Air Force’s 460 Squadron.
460 Squadron started out flying bombing missions in the Vickers Wellington before
upgrading to the much heavier Avro Lancaster. Flying missions over Germany and Italy,
460 Squadron was Australia’s top bomber unit. They flew more raids than any other
Australian bomber squadron and dropped the most bombs — at 24,856 tons. The last of
these bombs were dropped on Hitler’s mountain retreat, Berchtesgaden, on April 25th 1945.
Flying this many missions had a deadly price for the aviators of 460 Squadron.
From their first bombing run in November 1941 to their last in April 1945,
181 bomber planes were lost, along with 1,018 aircrewmen. To cover the staggering losses,
the unit was constantly given new aircraft and crews. With a standard strength of 200 aircrewmen,
460 Squadron was effectively *wiped out* no less than five times during the war.
It wasn’t just German Army units that were smashed against the Soviet bulwark on the Eastern front.
Axis allies like Hungary and Romania were pulled in to support the faltering German advances.
The Hungarian 2nd Army was one of these units — a 209,000
strong force composed mostly of infantry. Unlucky for them, they were sent to Stalingrad.
Before they even got there the Hungarian 2nd Army was suffering casualties. Fighting over
the Don river as part of the Battle of Voronezh, the Hungarian infantry were frequently ordered
to assault well-entrenched Soviet positions without any sort of air cover or tank support.
The Russians fought hard, and the Hungarian 2nd Army was battered,
suffering around 42,000 casualties and losing another 26,000 soldiers as POWs.
This won’t surprise you, but Stalingrad was *worse*. After the German 6th Army was
trapped in the city in November 1942, the Soviets launched Operation Little Saturn.
Under Little Saturn, Soviets attacked the Hungarian flank then,
after consolidating their position, attacked with three fronts simultaneously.
Caught in the Soviet vice, the Hungarian 2nd Army was annihilated. Hitler was furious,
and partly blamed the Hungarian 2nd Army for Axis losses in the East. When speaking of the Army,
he said: "No nation lost as much blood during World War II in such a short period of time."
In the meatgrinder of Stalingrad, there was an
even more dangerous unit to be assigned to — the Soviet Penal Legions or Shtrafbat.
Usually made up of disgraced Red Army officers who had been temporarily demoted for crimes like
desertion or cowardice, the Shtrafbat were the most expendable units of the entire Red Army.
ANY officer in a penal unit had the right to execute ANY soldier — for
ANY reason they deemed necessary. There were thousands of these on-the-spot executions.
The most dangerous were the assault companies. Disgraced soldiers in these
units were consistently ordered into frontal attacks of German positions.
Casualty rates in these desperate attacks sometimes reached 80%. This wasn’t seen
as a problem, however, as many in Soviet command believed that the only way for a disgraced soldier
to atone for their actions was to be wounded or killed by the enemy. This was commonly the
only way for a penal soldier to escape back to a regular Soviet unit. In some cases, however,
soldiers were released from the penal unit if they committed an act of extreme bravery.
With such a high casualty rate, penal units had to be moved to the rear for reinforcements
frequently. These reinforcements weren’t battle-hardened infantrymen but an assortment
of soldiers condemned for all sorts of reasons. In one case, the penal unit only received sailors,
none of whom knew how to fire a machine-gun or anti-tank weapons. They got two weeks of
training before being sent to the front; the casualty rate was through the roof.
The Navy had its share of extremely dangerous units too, and by far the most dangerous were
German U-boat crews. Losing just under 800 submarines and 28,000 submariners
by the end of the war, a sailor on a German U-boat had a survival chance of roughly 25%.
This is the lowest survival chance of ANY German unit of the war.
That’s right, you’d be more likely to survive Stalingrad than a U-boat mission after May 1943!
In the early years of the war, German U-boats were decimating Allied shipping in the Atlantic.
This was perhaps the start of their undoing, as the Allies were forced
into developing technology and strategies for killing these deadly undersea predators.
Between March and May 1943, the war suddenly turned against the U-boats. Allied technological
research had finally paid off with the deployment of carrier-based planes, with radar on board that
could detect a surfaced U-boat. The Allies also made strategic changes, transporting cargo in
well-defended convoys with support from small aircraft carriers. US industry had also kicked
up a gear, manufacturing more escort ships, carriers, and planes for anti-submarine warfare.
These measures worked wonders, and 71 U-boats were sunk from March to May 1943.
The fate of the U-boats was sealed, but they kept stalking the Atlantic,
losing 785 of the total 1,162 before the war was over.
Even when fighting against incredible odds, a soldier still aims to come out alive to fight
another day. This last military unit threw that logic out the window, aiming to die and
take as many enemies with them as possible. We’re talking, of course, about the Japanese Kamikazes.
Mostly novice pilots aged between 17 and 25, Kamikazes had to volunteer to fly their suicide
missions, but the pressure from their friends and commanders often made it impossible to say no.
They were placed in a "Special Attack Unit"
and commanded by an experienced pilot who would lead them to their target.
The first planned Kamikaze mission took place during the Battle of the Leyte Gulf
in October 1944. 55 Kamikazes attacked the US carrier fleet,
hitting 47 ships and sinking five. This was seen as a huge success, and the Special
Attack Units were expanded, launching over 2,000 attacks over the next few months.
Also, many Japanese pilots deliberately crashed their planes into Allied ships
after they had been severely damaged. While not part of Special Attack Units,
these kamikaze attacks still inflicted casualties on the Allied Navies.
It’s hard to say for sure, but research shows that 57 Allied ships were sunk and 368 were
damaged by 2,800 Kamikaze attackers throughout the war, while 4,900 sailors were killed and
4,800 were wounded. None of the Kamikazes who reached their destinations survived.
From dying of tropical diseases in the jungles of Burma to charging headlong into an enemy position
to earn your freedom, that was seven of the most dangerous units to be in during the Second World
War. Don’t worry if your country didn’t get featured in this video; World War Two wrought
so much death and destruction that we’ve easily got enough material for a part 2. Who do you think
we’ll include next? Which unit do you think would be the worst? Let us know in the comments below!