War deaths
I'm reading Adam Tooze's excellent book on the Nazi war economy (in short - it wasn't much of one) and it has a staggering chart that reminds you just how deadly the battle on the Eastern Front was.
The worst month for the German armed forces was August 1944, when 280,000 soldiers died. The previous month 175,000 died. Thus in July - August 1944 more German soldiers died than British soldiers did in the entire conflict, and our deaths were horrendously high.
In total between June 1941 and May 1944, more than 60,000 German soldiers died each month, and that doesn't include Summer 1944, which as noted above was the most deadly period (although January 1943, after Stalingrad, was the second most deadly month). This means on average every two-three days more German soldiers died than Allied casualties in the Iraq war.
Of course Soviet Union casualties were even worse, if at different time periods.
posted by Matthew @ 8/18/2007 12:48:00 PM
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