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Former featured articleBattle of the Bulge is a former featured article. Please see the links under Article milestones below for its original nomination page (for older articles, check the nomination archive) and why it was removed.
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August 21, 2004Featured article candidatePromoted
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On this day...Facts from this article were featured on Wikipedia's Main Page in the "On this day..." column on December 16, 2004, December 16, 2007, December 16, 2011, and December 16, 2014.
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High and low est. for infobox

[edit]

Please see this link. [1] this was dicussed before, the reason those numbers weren't in the infobox have nothing to do with "low number for germans and high for americans", it has to do with their origin and using the ones based off own unit reports vs estimates by commanders on ENEMY losses. The person who changed it a few days ago ignores this. Will Tyson for real (talk) 01:52, 17 March 2023 (UTC)[reply]

The higher German casualty numbers were already addressed by me in the above post, the linked previous discussion above, and a previous post further up this discussion page brought up by me titled "German Casualties in the infobox". the 89,000 figure comes from Miles, not "Stewart", who simply is included in the range, and McNeese also gives at least 81,000 casualties and 19,000 killed. BTW, looking at the primary sources, Maj.Gen.Franklin Kibler, the operations officer of 12th AG, estimated casualties at 81,810 in the December 22-January 14 1944-45 period alone (read the Kibler papers). This would have included some very minor losses outside the Ardennes too, notably at Kesternich, but that's chump change compared to the losses discounted by missing the first week and last two weeks of the Ardennes battles. 89,000 is definitely not a really high number. If we assume that the US Army suffered 75,000 casualties, yet the Ardennes-Alsace campaign lists 106,000 battle casualties, but the Operation Nordwind article only accounts for 11,000 battle casualties, where did the other 20,000 battle casualties occur I wonder? Pray do tell, since only units with the "Ardennes-Alsace" campaign credit were included in those casualties. (casualties for the 95th ID for example is not included in that number despite being a part of Third Army, for example, because it did not receive "Ardennes-Alsace" battle honor and is considered outside the scope)
If you've ever been to NARA or the OCMH library (at the modern U.S. Army Center of Military History) in Washington D.C., check out Royce Thompson's "Measuring the Intensity of Fighting in Certain Large-Scale Engagements" (1954), its a little known adjunct to the official US Military history of the war, and he had access to the same material the famous adjutant generals report on battle casualties did. He did a more comprehensive breakdown of the losses in the Ardeness adjusting the parameters of "Ardennes-Alsace" to just the Ardennes part. His figure for the Ardennes only, 16 December-25 Jan, is 81,521 total casualties (incl. 14,013 battle deaths). That being not an openly published book, its a primary source at a specific location, I can't use it for wikipedia but its the actually correct figure if you must know, the problem being it is only those listed as dead during the Ardennes time frame and not those who died of wounds later that month, and it misses the last few days of this article. Also, he used punch cards that didn't account for soldiers who were killed but weren't given a clear death date, and doesn't reconcile missing presumed dead. I agree that the 19,000 killed figure is high and too similar to the Ardennes-Alsace killed, so leaving Miles overall figure but removing 19,000 from the infobox, listed only in the casualties section, is the solution IMO. Will Tyson for real (talk) 00:13, 14 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
There are 3 issues here:
1.) German casualties
German casualties for this campaign were well in excess of 67,000, and probably around 100,000. The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Database mentions German reports listing casualties for Army Group B at over 67,000, but this came with the problems of time delay and incomplete recordkeeping. Dupuy, Anderson, and Bongard's treatment of the subject in the database and in "Hitler's Last Gamble" show around 75,000 casualties only among the participating divisions and brigades - excluding attachments and other corps and army-level troops - and only from the period 16 December to 16 January. These various units are listed by name: they do NOT include the German 15th Army or other German forces on the Western Front; this is strictly confined to divisions assigned to the three armies that fought in the Ardennes.
Overall German losses can only be guessed at; one way to approximate is to 1.) Compare the initial and final strengths of all German units that participated in the campaign - 498,622 and 425,941 (a difference of 72,681), 2.) Add to that number the total replacements received by the 7th, 5th & 6th Pz Armies, and 3.) Deduct evacuations due to frostbite and other nonbattle causes plus desertion. As far as I'm aware the ACSDB has the numbers for (2) and (3) - maybe not desertion - but only in day by day format for each individual unit.
Then on top of all this you'd have to extend those numbers another 10 days or so to come up with figures analogous to Allied losses.
2.) American casualties
Donna Miles is a reporter, not a historian. The numbers she quoted (19,000 killed, 47,500 wounded, and 23,000 missing) appear to combine the number of wounded from the SHAEF G-2 report and the numbers for deaths among battle casualties + captured and interned in the Final Report on Battle/Nonbattle casualties for the whole Ardennes-Alsace Campaign. In addition, she also erroneously wrote that 600,000 Germans and 500,000 Americans participated in the battle; the real numbers were something like the reverse of that.
Volume II of the 12th Army Group's After Action Report (pp. 80-88) lists the difference in battle casualties between 27 January 1945 and 15 December 1944 for the force as a whole as 10,980 killed, 46,677 wounded, 20,565 missing, and 3,474 captured. However, this includes a lot of data for both the Ninth and the incipient Fifteenth Armies (which didn't fight at all in the Bulge), as well as the Third Army's XX Corps, which wasn't involved either. If you subtract those I suspect the final total comes pretty close to the 75,500 in the SHAEF report, which is why I didn't bother to go through unit by unit to confirm a 7% difference. As for your reference to Royce Thompson - Richard Anderson addressed this directly here. Thompson (among other mistakes) misattributed battle casualties for the entire Ardennes-Alsace campaign to the Ardennes portion only. As for the 105,000 figure, it covers all battle casualties (ground and air forces) in both the Ardennes, Alsace, and other adjacent operations from the entire period 16 December 1944 to 25 January 1945 ("Nordwind" proper didn't start until 31 December). The discrepancy can be explained by the inclusion of both 6th Army Group and Seventh Army casualties between 15-31 December 1945, battle casualties among Army Air Force units (2,793), and casualties among the 94th, 95th, 104th Infantry, and 8th Armored Divisions over that time period, which did not participate. (US Divisions credited in Ardennes-Alsace Campaign).
The bottom line: primary documentation for US personnel casualties in the Ardennes proper all agree on a figure of ~76,000. This, along with the more problematic ~81,000 explained above, is the number quoted by all reliable secondary sources today.
3.) Last, although you didn't mention it, there's the issue of the tanks:
The version of the article you restored relies on Christer Bergstroem; since you linked my past discussion in your above post you're already familiar with the issues concerning his reliability. The 900 Allied tank losses also look like they came straight from ChristianMunich and should be discarded outright. The Pittsburgher (talk) 21:22, 15 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]


A comprehensive response to The Pittsburgher
So there are a number of things to address, and I did quite a bit more research. At the risk of "TL;DR" I feel the need to make an in-depth response, which I hope isn't too long-winded for any readers to bear.
1. On American casualties
You are correct that Miles is a reporter and not reliable, and more units have received the "Ardennes-Alsace" campaign credit than I originally recalled, however your take on Thompson's study is simply wrong.
Firstly, addressing the Ardennes-Alsace number itself, are you suggesting all Airforce losses need to be removed from "Ardennes-Alsace"? From you "The discrepancy can be explained by the inclusion of both 6th Army Group and Seventh Army casualties between 15-31 December 1945, battle casualties among Army Air Force units (2,793)," Parts of both the 8th Airforce and more obviously the 9th Airforce (which had a tactical air command permanently attached to each of the armies involved: IX to the First, XIX to the Third, and XII to the Seventh) were heavily involved in supporting the operations on the ground and inhibiting enemy supplies supporting both the Ardennes and Alsace offensives, and engaging the Luftwaffe over the battlefields (I'm not even referring to Bodenplatte here, the Luftwaffe was quite a bit more active in the Ardennes in general than it was in previous late-war campaigns). They were not just used for supporting Ninth Army and bombing factories and harbors, and this is without mentioning the airlift efforts to Bastogne, which continued for days even after CCR 4th AD breached the encirclement.
Secondly, I know who Richard Anderson is and I interact with him all of the time on the AHF forum (my username there is "Texas Jager") both on the threads and occasionally DMs. Rich is actually the person that pointed out Thompson's study to me, and I went to find it for myself at the NARA II building (I was told by a staff member there that it was only available on microfilm, but there might be a physical copy you could find too if you look hard enough, but it's at least not listed in their already immense inventory). The total unrevised "Ardennes-Alsace" number from the Adjutants Generals report is NOT all of the ETO losses over Dec 16-Jan 25 44-45, nor does it include all the USAAF losses in that period, that is a mistake on Rich's part and he even accepts correction on that at post #17 at the forum link you provide. I know you didn't say that yourself, but forums posts are more casual compared to academic work even for someone like Rich, so quoting that and the mistakes that are made more easily therein, is problematic itself. If we are going to bring Rich Anderson, then I'll be sure to supply some of his opinions as well later in my reply.
The actual problems with the "Ardennes-Alsace" losses, as you say, is that it includes SOME units, not all ETO but some, that weren't opposing either Wacht am Rhein/Herbstnebel (Ardennes) or Nordwind/Sonnenwind (Alsace). It's simply because all the units under Third and First Armies at that time were given the Ardennes-Alsace campaign credit, a possible reason is that the Germans also launched regional attacks in the northern part of the V corps sector (Kesternich) and also in the XX corps sector (11th Panzer attacked the 94th ID at Orscholz) in January, which encompasses the only remaining front areas under First and Third Armies not directly effected by the aforementioned twin German offensives, which while not part of either Alsace or Ardennes could be lumped in "the German winter counter-offensives", which is my guess for why the credit was given out that way. I already acknowledged this issue from the get-go, which is why I quoted Thompsons Examining Intensity to you: the entire point of his study was to point out the areas where units were included that didn't fight in either "Ardennes" or "Alsace", and to remove those and the "Alsace" losses to come up with the true "Ardennes" casualty count for the U.S. Army. He even adjusted the days included for certain divisions so the numbers only include the days where the division in question was present in the Ardennes front, for example 4th Armored beginning from December 21 rather than December 16.
His only error of inclusion was the 8th Armored Division, which he included in his MRU run on accident, and which he realized and acknowledged at the end of his report. Otherwise, he made a couple minor typos with the division battle casualty totals, such as the 26th ID where he put a "1" in the thousands-place where a "3" should be when he added it together. These typos are easily corrected and have nothing to do with the actual MRU data, they are just typing errors when putting together the wounded, killed etc for each division cumulative total collected from the MRU results. Those typos were actually all under counts, and when removing 8th AD and correcting the typos (-708, +2,111, =82,924) the result is actually higher by 1,403 than the original as-written derived total of 81,521.
Regarding the comparison to the number Forrest Pogue used in The Supreme Command[2], citing the SHAEF G-3 (Operations) message to SHAEF G-2 (Intelligence), it is, as Pogue himself says on page 396, an approximation. It was made mere days after the battle ended, and it's pretty obvious that it's just the same 12th AG G-1 daily summary casualty reports, which is what the cumulative period totals in the 12th AG Final After Action report you linked are based on, with the units not in the Ardennes removed. As a reflection of purely that, it is correct. The First issue is this: bringing up the The Ardennes Campaign Simulation Database (ACSDB) about the issue on the estimated losses of the 28th Division and 106th Division, they were significantly higher in their estimations than the daily summaries suggest (see PDF of the official report[3], pages 58 and 74). Although I have a problem with the estimation reliability they use for divisions, especially German ones where they had far less material to work with. The second, far more important issue is this: they are based on daily unit reports that often had to be reconciled later, whereas Thompson used Machine Record Units that use individual casualty data. There is simply no comparison in terms of accuracy between the often estimated figures of the daily reports to the actual number of individual casualties recorded. Sorry. If you still aren't convinced, I asked Rich for his opinion on which was more reliable since you value it, and he said Thompson.(from a thread I started awhile ago before I had visited NARA and before I had access to a lot of the primary material I do now) [4] BTW, as Rich says they weren't able to do MRU runs for the ACSDB, hence its reliance on the 12th AG daily reports for most U.S. units. The ACSDB report I linked already above, where they are transparent about their methods and numbers.
About Donna Miles, she definitely flubbed the numbers from her source, but that source is clearly Charles MacDonald's A Time for Trumpets and not the Ardennes-Alsace campaign or the SHAEF number. Her number is identical with MacDonald's (81,000 , with 19,000 killed , 47,000 wounded , and 15,000 captured) with the exception of the "missing/captured" being an 8,000 overcount, and she flips the respective strengths of the armies that MacDonald provides. MacDonald's number, in turn, is almost identical to Royce Thompson's. The exception is how he handles the missing. Although Thompson's MRU data was able to reconcile a large number of missing troops as either "killed" or "captured", there was still a substantial number under "missing" by the end of it. MacDonald, Pogue, and Thompson were all researchers/historians at OCMH (MacDonald also wrote The Last Offensive) during all these MRU runs and knew each other well, it seems MacDonald simply took the remaining "missing" and grouped them as "killed"(presumed dead). MacDonald's number is one of the most widely cited by secondary sources: Those Who Hold Bastogne by Peter Schrijvers, Battle of the Bulge by Tim McNeese, Corps Commanders of the Bulge by Harold R. Winton, Omar Bradley: General at War by Jim DeFelice, Great Sieges in World History by Spencer Tucker, Victory in World War II by Nigel Cawthorne, among many others, all use the casualty number provided by MacDonald, although sometimes flubbing it like the Department of Defense press statement. So yes, although I can't cite Thompson's report directly since it's largely inaccessible, MacDonald's is definitely the closest when it comes to secondary sources. (the "19,000 killed" should be out of the infobox though, since it's too similar to the Ardennes-Alsace number, even if it's obvious that he was trying to reconcile missing as all killed.)
2. On German casualties.
For one thing, the existing citation for the 103,000 German casualty number is an allied estimate, nothing more. It can be included in the casualties section, that is what it's for afterall--letting people decided for themselves based on all the data. But in the infobox? No.
The other higher numbers, 81,000-98,000 have the issue of being a misinterpretation of the primary source. I gave the link to the FMS study that Danny Parker quoted already above in a different topic (posted while I was logged out). It's an interview with Percy Schramm, who was the OKW war diarist. Even the way it's presented in that is problematic, as its not clear what the parameters he's talking about are despite the title of the FMS record, since he brings up figures for the entirety of A.G. B just before hand, as well as events elsewhere on the western front. The actual "primary source" is the OKW kriegstagebuch (war diary). Schramm had lots of notes leftover from his time as high command diarist, which he later assorted appropriately and published in 1961 as its own multi-volume book. Band IV: 1. Januar 1944 - 22. Mai 1945 is where the relevant figures comes from. (His notes are also saved on microfilm rolls at NARA) At page 1,362 he gives the exact remarks as given in the FMS study, in their original diary context. (You won't be able to see a preview of it on google books so use this. [5], and here for the index[6]) It's in section 2, B. The West, as an addendum at the end of I. The Winter Battle of the Ardennes and Concurrent Fighting. It is not just the Ardennes at all, the entire section is about the western front in general during this period, starting with the launch of the Ardennes offensive but also covering Nordwind and the other western events for the period, as does the next section, and as does most of the accompanying notes. On top of that, his figure for Dec 16-Jan 25 is 81,834 (12,652 killed, 38,600 wounded, 30,582 missing), while the entirety of OB West reported within that period (Dec 20-Jan 20) a total of 81,871 casualties (11,634 killed, 39,996 wounded, 30,241)[7][8], virtually the same number, with slightly different dates and reconciliation time marking the differences. (Schramm also gives a count of captured enemy troops of ~26,000 while Pogue in Pogue's War: Diaries of a WWII Combat Historian (p. 328) gives a figure of ~28,000 for all Americans captured in the ETO during the months of December and January.) It's a theater report, and he does the same thing at the end of the next sub-section, C. Southwest[9], where he gives theater casualties for OB Sudwest (Italy). So frankly regardless of the numerous authors that seemed to have misattributed his figures, it's painfully obvious that it's theater losses and not "Ardennes losses", which makes sense since the OKW usually dealt with theater numbers anyways, with the alternate 98,000 (which doesn't have any break downs) being some sort of reconciliation figure. It could be used for "western front" losses in the casualties section but it should cite the published book directly, and not other authors "interpretations" based on his FMS interview. I'm not sure where you got those strength figures for the German side from, but given their OOB was not static (116. PzD was pulled out of the Ardennes and sent to the British front halfway through January, XXXIX Pzkorps was sent from the Ardennes to the Alsace area in mid January, several units in reserve were never committed than sent elsewhere on the front, 10th SS PzD and 11th PzD coming to mind), it's not exactly accurate to go by that.
As for the ASCDB, which is where Hitler's Last Gamble gets its statistics from, and you can find the final report/encompassing information for here[10] (or here[11] if you prefer a non-PDF format), although you've apparently already read it: the German numbers are estimates based on fragmentary information, a large portion of which comes from none-other than....drumroll please... the Heeresarzt (army surgeon) 10 day reports! There actually was no primary source "daily German battle casualties" used except for units of one corps, LXXXI., which wasn't actually used in the Ardennes (part of 15.Armee). They had the ten day reports, as well as some 10 day reports for divisions, mostly under 5.Panzerarmee, and monthly reports for German divisions. The units they had aggregate data for directly from the source is at page 293. In order to come up with daily casualties, they essentially used the units they had information on for an "average" for the units of the same type they didn't, then distributed the losses by day depending on whether a unit was "Active", "Inactive", or "Out of Contact". The problem was they used "averages" that were based on many units that weren't in the Ardennes to begin with, like the 353d, 362d, 360th VGDs, etc to inform the averages for the units that did participate but where limited information was available. It's perfectly possible that how they redistributed losses was erroneous, based on perceived level of activity. Even further they took a lot of German data aggregates and averages for the entire Ardennes period and put it into the artificially smaller Dec 16-Jan 16 timeframe, which according to Richard Anderson was something they didn't want to do but were obliged by their contract.[12](post #37) There is a lot more at play here, and they allowed the German daily losses to balloon past what the actual Heeresarzt reports account for, despite using much of that info to inform the averages and aggregates to begin with; I suspect they mistook Schramm's figure for Ardennes losses is the reason the "ceiling" was raised for German losses (His OKW diary is cited as a primary source, albeit only for the tank figures). The only real issue brought up in the ACSDB about the ten day reports themselves (other than a lack of unit breakdowns) is the question of latency. I'll have to ask Rich a bunch of questions on his own work on the project to sort this out, although Chris Lawrence was the main guy behind its creation along with Dupuy. I understand why they did the ASCDB like this, the whole point was a day-by-day comparison, but trying to claim that these approximations based on more than a few stretches' somehow supersede the primary source, is akin to saying that cutting off the points of a triangle so it fits in a circular hole proves that the triangle was circular all along, it's cochamamie. The American casualties question is a matter of unit reports losses vs even more precise recorded individual losses, whereas the German casualties is about misattribution of primary sources on one hand (81,000-98,000 number), as well as in the ACSDB case using very rough approximations where the goal wasn't even to "fix" German losses but rather give comparable daily numbers with American G-1 daily losses, and on the other hand what actual German unit losses were reported as, albeit with latency issues like the 12thAG reports. Makes me wish there were German MRUs for their casualties, but alas there wasn't. At pages 759-761 you'll find the ACSDB giving a reliability rating for the information used, the German divisions (except a few from 15. Armee and, 150th PzBgd, based on Skorzeny's FMS interview) all get the E rating for the casualties column, the lowest possible.


3. On Tank Losses
Fair enough on Bergstrom, I went back to the thread and the issue actually seems to be with the Tank destroyer losses he provides too. Dully left out. However the 800 tanks lost is from Peter-Caddick Adams, not Bergstrom. Rich Anderson's own estimate at 839 when including tank destroyers, if we're going with the forum post trend, citing AF&W section loss reports in that same Bergstrom thread you posted awhile ago.[13] The 527-554 German losses also seems to agree with Rich Anderson[14]. I see no German reports anywhere that come close to Danny Parker's 800 figure. The ACSDB came up with figures for 556 as well, but even that is high based on what they use: they check it against Jung's figure of 600 for the entire Western Front period of Dec 16-Feb 1, and the A.G. B (incl. 15. Armee) tank losses of 324 from Dec 16-31.(page 561 in the ACSDB PDF) If the premise is applied as presented: the Germans lost 44 tanks in the entirety of Nordwind, the 11 PzD at Orscholz, the final 12 days of the Bulge, and all of the assault guns with the infantry units across the western front? Another issue again of the ACSDB redistributing figures, averages, and aggregates for a smaller timeframe.
Anyways I'm going to use Jung's slightly higher 10-day report losses for the German losses in the infobox. They seem to incorperate some latent returns, explaining the surplus compared with the 10-day reports linked in the infobox atm.[15] Will Tyson for real (talk) 11:16, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
BTW, why did you remove the "Ardennes-Alsace" number from the casualties section?[16] Yes, it doesn't belong in the infobox because of a wider definition, like the OKW war diary number, but the casualties section is a fine spot for both so long as its parameter is specified. I added it back and made it very clear that it includes more than the Bulge and Nordwind.Will Tyson for real (talk) 23:58, 23 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
I appreciate the response, but there's still a lot to cover here. To keep things neat, I'll go through point by point:
US Casualties
"Why did you remove the "Ardennes-Alsace" number from the casualties section?"
If we're going to compare American and German battle casualties, it makes the most sense that they be compared across equivalent categories, like for like. This is why I removed the Department of the Army number from my revision, because it includes events outside the scope of this article without a clear breakdown. In my opinion, it only creates confusion.
"Army Air Force losses"
Compared with the numbers given by the Department of the Army, the SHAEF casualty report only covers ground forces, as does the 12th Army Group after action report. So to address your objection (14 April) on the discrepancy between the SHAEF casualty report, the Seventh Army's losses during "Nordwind," and the Department of the Army's numbers for the overall campaign, it's necessary to identify and reconcile what actually went in to the latter:
1.) Casualties incurred in the Ardennes from 16 December to 25 January (75,500)
2.) Casualties incurred in Alsace from 31 January until the end of Nordwind (11,500)
3.) Casualties among air force personnel (3,000)
4.) Casualties among 12th Army Group divisions given campaign credit but which either didn't fight or minimally participated in the Bulge. These were the 94th & 95th Infantry and 8th Armored Division (the 104th mentioned above is an error). According to the 12th Army Group AAR the 94th Division suffered 1,202 battle casualties from 15 December to 26 January, the 95th - 599, and the 8th Armored - 61 (though, apparently the number for the 8th AD is very low and should be over 700).
Lastly,
5.) Casualties among Seventh Army and 6th Army Group personnel from 15-31 December 1944.
According to "Seventh Army History, Phase Three" p. 705, total casualties for the Seventh Army during December 1944 were 12,113, though unfortunately there is no breakdown given by time period or by unit. Although I suspect most of these were incurred during the latter half of the month because the Seventh Army reached the Siegfried Line on 17 December, for purposes of mental accounting I'll call it 6,000.
Combined, these numbers add up to (75,500 + 11,500 + 3,000 + 2,000 + 6,000) = 98,000. Now, even though this is a very rough approximation the discrepancy of ~7,000 still leaves the possibility that one or more of these numbers is understated, but without definitive information it's hard to say. This brings us back to Royce Thompson's numbers and Anderson's comments:
"Royce Thompson's study"
OK, you've convinced me as to the reliability of Thompson's data over the SHAEF preliminary report; once everything is sorted with that we should cite it in the article. But we're still unclear on a few things:
1.) Anderson says the number 14,013 represents "deaths." Does this include nonbattle deaths, or does it refer only to "deaths among battle casualties:" killed, died of wounds, died in captivity, and missing presumed dead?
2.) Anderson quotes 81,521 (corrected to 82,924 by adding 2,000 for the 26th Division, subtracting 708 for the 8th Armored, and adding 111 for the 17th and 101st Airborne - barring any additional discrepancies not mentioned). Does he still have the breakdown for each division plus corps and army troops, killed, wounded, etc.?
"MacDonald and others"
It's really uncertain how MacDonald arrived at 19,000 dead and 15,000 captured during the Bulge, since out of the total of 26,600 captured and missing for the whole Ardennes-Alsace Campaign, only 800 or so are listed as having died. To me it just seems like a mistake, and without a footnote we can't know where he got these figures from (I don't have "A Time for Trumpets," either). We also can't say MacDonald's figures are based on Thompson, since MacDonald's own book, "The Last Offensive" (1973) cites the 12th Army Group daily returns for the period 3 through 28 January (39,672) on top of the 41,315 given by Dr. Hugh Cole ("The Ardennes," 1964) from 16 December through 2 January - which Cole calls "probably incomplete." Either way, it doesn't look like either got their data from Thompson (1954).
------------------------------------------------
In my opinion, the temporary solution is keep MacDonald's number in the infobox with the casualty breakdown as given in the SHAEF report, with the understanding that the real numbers may have been higher than either.
German casualties
"100,000 shouldn't be in the infobox"
The infobox should contain a range depicting the most credible figures available - 100,000 belongs there because its inclusion is supported by the data. Just because it is an Allied estimate does not mean it is unbelievable. This is regardless of whether or not the Germans themselves recorded 81,000 or 98,000 casualties for the entire Western front at the time (more on this below).
"ACSDB and casualty reconstruction"
Yes, I'm well aware that Dupuy and his team had to use statistical methods to bridge the (many) gaps in German records when they compiled the database. But, you do realize that the German 10-day reports you quote relied on the same fragmentary information? The section starting on page 292 of the document (II-G-1-1) discusses this. Not only divisional casualty reports but also the Heeresarzt totals (which suggest something like 67,000 casualties from 10 December through the end of January) contained so many anomalies and omissions that casualties for corps and army-level personnel also had to be estimated. The notes to HLG talk about this as well.
And while we're on the subject of Heeresarzt and German casualty reporting methods, during one of the meetings between the DMSi team and the advisory panel, the following discussion took place (p. 730 of the PDF):
“After reviewing the cumulative divisional casualties for German units, it was determined that the ratio of German wounded to killed for the Ardennes period was approximately 3:1, a figure that was considerably lower than comparable US data for the period and for the entire European Theater of Operations. This raised the question about German reporting methods, namely whether or not lightly wounded in action who are not evacuated from the division are reported in the German casualty reports. Dr. [Hugh] Cole indicated that he did not think lightly wounded in action (non-evacuees) were reported. Dr. Cole also stated that the British regularly increased the number of German WIA by approximately 30% to cover for the difference in the reporting systems of the Germans. This percentage is in the range of numbers being considered by Chris Lawrence in a similar approach. Dr. Cole will look for a source he remembers seeing on German medical reporting systems and provide it to DMSi, if available.”
This refers to the total of 74,459 in the ACSDB based on German records: 11,048 killed, 34,168 wounded, 29,243 missing. "Adjusting" wounded in the manner described by Dr. Cole would push this up to about 84,500, just for the German divisions and only for the period 16 December through 16 January.
"ACSDB and Hitler's Last Gamble"
The total German casualties - as reconstructed in the ACSDB - are presented cumulatively in "Hitler's Last Gamble" (not to mention being referred to in that context in the database itself and by Anderson in the linked thread and elsewhere). From the intro of Appendix E of "HLG":
"The following data on personnel statistics for the opposing forces in the Ardennes campaign are derived from the daily personnel records for units contained in the Ardennes Campaign Simulation Data Base (ACSDB). In their original format these data are too extensive to include in this work; this, the data have been consolidated to reflect the personnel strengths and losses of the units during key periods of the campaign."
There is no suggestion that interpretation of these figures in this sense is either invalid or inaccurate.
"The 15th Army and other statistical questions"
The 15th Army was used to expand the data sample for the experience of German units fighting under certain conditions. From this, they were better able to judge the effects of combat on those units of the 5th, 6th, and 7th Armies that did fight in the Bulge but for which data is fragmentary or absent, together with the existing records from those armies. If anything, given the nature of the defensive fighting around Aachen at the time the inclusion of 15th Army data may have even biased the results downward; ditto for the casualty experience of German units after 16 January - by then the most intense fighting was already over. The point is, the larger the dataset you have to work with, the more statistically safe the conclusions you draw from it will be. While the lack of direct data from the desired units can be described as a source of error, it's better than a set of inferences that would otherwise be invalid outright (not saying that in this particular case inferences only based on 5th, 6th, and 7th Army data would be invalid, but from the way the problem is described they would probably be less reliable).
"German OOB"
From Appendix E of "Hitler's Last Gamble," the initial and final strength of all German units that participated in the campaign was as follows:
Unit, including attachments Initial Strength Final Strength Time Period
5th Panzer Army HQ 13,153 14,414 16 Dec-16 Jan
6th Panzer Army HQ 31,370 28,196 "
7th Army HQ 22,151 19,954 "
I SS Panzer Corps HQ 13,570 6,749 "
II SS Panzer Corps HQ 2,517 2,824 "
XIII Corps Felber HQ 1,179 12,109 30 Dec-16 Jan
XXXIX Panzer Corps HQ 4,817 1,524 27 Dec-4 Jan
XLVII Panzer Corps HQ 10,674 7,089 16 Dec-16 Jan
LIII Corps HQ 2,963 6,812 "
LVIII Panzer Corps HQ 13,816 16,615 "
LXVI Corps HQ 7,133 8,417 "
LXVII Corps HQ 13,232 11,930 16-27 Dec
LXXX Corps HQ 8,707 8,803 16 Dec-16 Jan
LXXXV Corps HQ 6,478 1,702 16 Dec-12 Jan
1st SS Panzer Division 21,292 15,772 16 Dec-16 Jan
2nd SS Panzer Division 16,970 13,995 21 Dec-16 Jan
9th SS Panzer Division 13,307 10,305 20 Dec-16 Jan
12th SS Panzer Division 20,700 16,087 16 Dec-16 Jan
2nd Panzer Division 14,457 13,092 "
9th Panzer Division 13,876 12,581 24 Dec-16 Jan
116th Panzer Division 15,468 12,328 16 Dec-16 Jan
Panzer Lehr Division 14,892 12,174 "
3rd Panzergrenadier Division 11,424 11,274 18 Dec-16 Jan
15th Panzergrenadier Division 11,181 9,629 25 Dec-16 Jan
Fuehrer Begleit Brigrade 7,003 5,969 19 Dec-16 Jan
Fuehrer Grenadier Brigade 6,925 5,222 21 Dec-16 Jan
150th Panzer Brigade 2,955 2,536 21-27 Dec
3rd Fallschirmjaeger Division 12,474 10,347 16 Dec-16 Jan
5th Fallschirmjaeger Division 16,342 7,225 "
9th Volksgrenadier Division 8,730 8,611 24 Dec-16 Jan
12th Volksgrenadier Divison 9,517 6,916 16 Dec-16Jan
18th Volksgrenadier Division 12,117 7,552 "
26th Volksgrenadier Division 10,580 8,604 "
62nd Volksgrenadier Division 11,050 7,849 "
79th Volksgrenadier Division 10,116 8,943 22 Dec-16 Jan
167th Volksgrenadier Division 10,973 9,868 24 Dec-16 Jan
212th Volksgrenadier Division 11,151 10,237 16 Dec-16 Jan
272nd Volksgrenadier Division 8,771 8,630 16-19 Dec
276th Volksgrenadier Division 9,320 8,152 16 Dec-16 Jan
277th Volksgrenadier Division 7,249 6,257 16-27 Dec
326th Volksgrenadier Division 9,083 7,105 16-21 Dec, 4-16 Jan
340th Volksgrenadier Division 7,147 5,367 2-16 Jan
352nd Volksgrenadier Division 10,595 9,346 16 Dec-16 Jan
560th Volksgrenadier Division 11,197 6,831 16 Dec-16 Jan
Total German Army 498,622 425,941 --
Page 347 of the ACSDB final report lists estimated total replacements for divisions belonging to the 5th Panzer, 6th Panzer, and 7th Armies as 18,125 during December and January. Replacements for corps and army-level units are estimated at 6.7% of strength, based on the average for Army Group B divisions. Taking this proportion and applying it to the 150,000 in corps and army-level units suggests another 10,000 replacements for them throughout the campaign. Even if this calculation is too high due to the number of non-combat units contained in that 150,000 (among other factors), it still suggests several thousand additional personnel were taken on by the three German armies in the Ardennes, beyond the 18,000 received by their divisions.
If the troop basis decreased by 72,681 while receiving at least 18,125 replacements, we can conclude that total losses due to battle casualties (dead, missing, evacuated wounded), desertion, and non-combat evacuations were well in excess of 90,000 by 16 January and certainly over 100,000 if non-evacuated wounded are counted. The number of evacuations for non-battle casualties doesn't appear to have been estimated in the ACSDB; in the discussion starting on p. 317 it's implied that by and large German forces kept their sick on the line (or at least didn't subtract them from figures for a division's strength). The sick rate for all German units, combat or otherwise, is estimated at 0.24% per day.
Tanks
The figure quoted by Parker comes from Magna Bauer, "The Cost of the Ardennes Offensive," MS # R-60, an unpublished study at CMH. I don't have much else to say here, save the factoid that the Seventh Army's intelligence section (G-2) estimated German tank and assault gun losses during Operation Nordwind as "at least" 176, along with 17,000 killed and wounded and 5,985 prisoners. ("G-2 History, Seventh Army Operations in Europe" p. 135) The Pittsburgher (talk) 05:12, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
More on the opposing orders of battle: Due to limitations in the data the personnel and equipment strength given in the infobox does not strictly reflect those forces that were actually in contact with each other on 16 December 1944. The 228,000 for the Americans is comprised of the complete headquarters and attachment strength of the First Army, V Corps, and VIII Corps, and the complete strength of the 78th, 99th, 106th, 28th, and 4th Infantry Divisions and 7th & 9th Armored Divisions - which logically includes men and equipment that were involved elsewhere at that time.
The number of troops actually on the line of contact when the German offensive began is usually described as about 80,000 Americans vs 200,000+ Germans. But because this is how the opposing sides are accounted for in the appendix of "Hitler's Last Gamble" and because the accuracy of this method for describing the extent of the battle increases after the initial phase, this is how it's been shown in the article up until now for the sake of internal consistency. The Pittsburgher (talk) 15:54, 29 April 2023 (UTC)[reply]
The situation is far more complicated. I asked Chris Lawrence on his blog mystics and statistics (he worked on this along with Richard Anderson) and he said the difference was down to reliance on oral testimony for German infantry Division losses, as is cited in the ASCDB paper (mostly from the Foreign Military Studies where the interviewees were often “without access to primary sources”) a lot of the division-level strengths are also derived from oral testimony.
The numbers arent clear cut as presenting it from HLG would appear: the strengths you put in a neat table arent usually what was actually reported, so no “German strengths before and after indicate heavier losses” is not accurate, its what the ASCDB lists, but is mostly estimates based on testimony and other reports that were available. I followed the primary sources listed in the PDF of the ASCDB volumes and searched them at the Bundesarchiv Freiberg (BAMA) website, where the info comes from, you can go there yourself and use the Invenio function to view them yourself, using the “signature” search prompt. RH19/IV-241 and 242 in this instance, they are digitally available. You’ll find that the Wochmeldung strength reports are actually missing for 6th Panzer Army and 7th Army; in other words there are no strength reports for them. What they did use were the army-level strength reports from 5th Pz Army and 15th Army. And they are not just wounded and killed or even non-battle casualties, they are strengths and show shortfalls for any reason as in any other army, and are distinct from any casualties metric, not to he confused with specific reports of non-battle casualties where the criteria is unclear, which is what you brought out; again for clarity one is a strength reports one is a loss report, not the same thing. On top of that the division monthly casualties were used to inform the loss totals: the problem being that, for 116. Panzer Division for example, the files on BAMA cited are monthly sums: 1-31 December, 1-31 January etc, and the same is true for the strengths reported for that unit. Its entirely subjective how much of that could be indicated in the Ardennes period. These were decisions made to rectify data, but you are implying that these conclusions of yours are organic to the German reporting stream which they are not.
Its not a case that actual German strength figures indicate the ten-day loss reports are too small, its a case of fragmentary pieces of strength reports and interviews glued together for a simulator, and the presumptive figures gathered from those indicate that the losses might have been higher. There is also the question of even-handedness. My interpretation of Mr Pittsburgher’s argument is that only US loss reports can be used for US losses, hence why we don’t have “German estimates of US casualties” under discussion, but for some reason the burden of proof is much smaller for wide ranging German statistics. Fact is we do have German loss reports, and there is no indication that they undercount substantially unless we accept wild conclusions based on fragments of German strength reports used for enabling divisional day-by-day losses in a simulator. I’d argue the real issue is that the ASCDB had no way of reconciling German strengths, or an apt understanding of what German strength reports included, and was forced to condense information from a wide pool, a lot of which is from oral interviews, which is why so much of the German material is given D and E class ratings for lower reliability in the ASCDB link provided earlier. Regardless, the silly thing is you are trying to use the ASCDB figure to support even higher losses from US estimates, which is bogus. At the very least the US estimate figure should be qualified with “US Estimate” as in the case of other articles like the Battle of Okinawa and Soviet invasion of Manchuria, which is the one thing I’ve edited regarding this discussion so don’t think I’m being presumptuous, although I’d say thats an unequal solution already based on the above criteria of using official casualty counts and records for one side and estimates based off scattered research for the other. Personally I don’t consider the oral testimony often used for German casualties in the ASCDB to be on a par with the 10 day reports in terms of reliability. There might be something to it, but that this all indicates German losses were as much as one third higher seems silly.
On a different topic you mention Pogue citing the British using a “30% extra casualties for the Germans” rule. Thats a rather notorious assumption by Edmonds in the British official history, that German losses somehow didn’t include lightly wounded, something that was refuted by the Reichsarchives he got the info from to begin with.(see more on that [17]) Regards to all. Michaelson15 (talk) 23:03, 24 July 2023 (UTC)[reply]
Sorry I'm only responding to this now:
So what we've got then are German official reports "from 30,000 feet" but apparently few surviving division/corps level records, US intelligence estimates, and the Dupuy group's reconstruction based on statistical inference after actually going into the weeds. I think this may be one of the cases where the latter may be more reliable than the former; it's simply not credible to claim the Germans inflicted 30% more casualties in this campaign. The Pittsburgher (talk) 02:58, 31 December 2023 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 23 April 2024

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I would like to add a source for the “further reading section”. Doughterykyle (talk) 22:13, 23 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Not done: this is not the right page to request additional user rights. You may reopen this request with the specific changes to be made and someone may add them for you, or if you have an account, you can wait until you are autoconfirmed and edit the page yourself. Tollens (talk) 00:22, 24 April 2024 (UTC)[reply]

10th Armored Division?

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If I'm not mistaken, I recall the fact that the 10th Armored Division played a major part of the BotB, yet the 10th Armored isn't even listed in the "Initial German Assault" section. I recall that a large part of them were already in Bastogne before even the 101st Airborne Division. If I am incorrect, please let me know. Thanks! Sergeantwade011 (talk) 16:09, 7 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Semi-protected edit request on 8 May 2024

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In the section 'German forces held up', there is a line which reads: "This created a bottleneck in the German advance. Kampfgruppe Peiper did not begin his advance until nearly 16:00". I believe it should instead read: "This created a bottleneck in the German advance. Kampfgruppe Peiper did not begin its advance until nearly 16:00". This is a minor grammatical correction. Megalonychidae (talk) 18:01, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

 Done Liu1126 (talk) 20:05, 8 May 2024 (UTC)[reply]

Infobox contradiction

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At least twice in the article it states that the Battle of the Bulge ended on January 25, 1945. WHY does the Infobox say January 28? How can such an obvious contradiction be justified? Rontrigger (talk) 22:21, 21 September 2024 (UTC)[reply]

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