soc.history.war.world-war-ii

"Louis C" wrote

> Glantz & House, p. 275: "The II SS Panzer Corps' records indicate
> that, on 13 July, the corps had 251 operational tanks and assault
> guns ... as opposed to ... a strength of 293 on 11 July. Considering
> repaired armored vehicles, these figures indicate that the corps lost
> between 60 and 70 tanks on 12 July ..."

It has fairly recently come to light that the SS employed a bunch of
statisticians from 1942 specifically to revise and edit the SS statistical
returns from the field, which I think also includes Waffen SS returns. The
SS started writing its own history in the middle of WW2 (as did lots of
Party bodies) and naturally enough they wanted to make sure that it was
sufficiently glorious. A lot of basic returns were destroyed and substituted
by new forged documents.

Do you know whether this applies to the sort of documents you are quoting
here? I am more aware of the editing in the political and social fields than
the military.