soc.history.war.world-war-ii

Andrew Clark wrote:

> 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. ...
> Do you know whether this applies to the sort of documents you are quoting
> here?

I have never seen the primary sources involved on either side, and
don't know the first thing about Waffen SS editing of its military
returns. Given that these returns were compiled for, and held by,
higher command (non-SS) it seems unlikely.

There is little reason to suspect that the figures were edited,
because the returns of the 48th panzer corps (Heer, not SS) show a
similar loss rate. So either the Waffen SS didn't edit its strength
returns, or it edited both its own and the neighboring non-SS corps'.
Please note that editing strength returns to show lower losses will
result in a smaller flow of replacements and looks like a particularly
stupid thing to do. If the Waffen SS did it, then at some point it
would find itself with an official strength of 80% of TO&E while only
having a handful of actual tanks.

But Rich clearly has more complete figures than the ones I have
provided so you should ask him, not me.


LC