Colossal Kills on All Fronts in 1944/45, World War II-by Michael Roberts

Michael Roberts

Hitler Germany’s greatest reach 1942

Hitler Germany’s greatest reach 1942

In venturing into reflections on VE Day commemorations, by pure chance I stumbled on You Tube reviews of the ways in which German POWs were dealt with in Britain during and after the war. This data base also provides partial information on the enormous loss of life on the various moments in the Western front as the Allied forces advanced on Germany after D Day in June 1944.

Besides the dramatic beachfront struggles after the D-Day landings,[1] some of us are familiar with the tales of the “Battle of the Bulge.”[2] My recent Your Tube find also brought up stories about the “Death Factory” occurring at Hürtgen Forest in the Northern Eiffel region of Germany.

Do absorb this summary description capped by Ernest Hemingway’s recollections: “the decision to advance into the thick forest in September 1944 proved to be a fatal mistake. The Americans completely miscalculated North Eifel region’s rugged terrain. They became disoriented in an area the German forces, the Wehrmacht, had crisscrossed with trenches and peppered with anti-personnel mines, making the wood into a veritable fortress. Continual rain and fog, followed by snow and frigid temperatures, turned the battle into a scene of dystopian butchery. Author Ernest Hemingway spent 18 days on the front in the Hürtgen Forest. He wrote later, “It was a place where it was extremely difficult for a man to stay alive even if all he did was be there.”

It is well-known that the death toll on both sides (Russian and German) on the Eastern Front was monumental and loomed even larger. That is, the collapse of Germany in 1944/45 was principally due to the situation on that front, though the efforts of the Allies in the west of Europe were also of consequence.

German infantry in Russia, June 1943

Soviet sniper Roza Shanina in 1944. About 800,000 women served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war.

When one adds the fighting in Burma, East Asia and the Pacific theatre, the gigantic scale of human slaughter takes one’s horror into the cumulus clouds – even before we add the colossal figures pounded out by the atomic bombs. It is not simply a story of fighting men dying in the fighting. One has to add (A) the instances of rape and murder on civilians inflicted by troops on all sides; (B) the scales of civilian death in Vietnam and China in 1944/45 because the Japanese armies therein were not supplied from home and therefore pursued a programme involved the seizure of crops cultivated by the resident villagers.[3]

I restrain my numerical illustrations to just two fields.

ONE: the Eastern Front warfare between Germany and its Allies on one side and the Russians and their allies on the other

Germans plus = 5.1 million dead ……………….4.5 million captured

Russians plus = 8.7-10 million dead …………… 5.7 million captured

Civilian casualties all told = 18-24 million civilians dead

The stark evidence of guesswork in this data-base highlights the enormity of the carnage and the tale of humankind’s ferocity towards their fellow-beings. Some photographs provide glimpses of just a few scenarios from this ‘stage’. Do they implant lessons in our puny minds?