Death toll of German troops during the battle of the Caucasus in 1942–1943

Abstract

The battle of the Caucasus 1942–1943 became one of the longest and largest battles of the Great Patriotic War. Various studies in Russia and abroad are devoted to its study. However, many aspects of the Soviet-German confrontation in the North Caucasus require deeper research. This article draws attention to the problem of losses of German troops during the battle of the Caucasus. Their assessment in domestic and foreign publications differs markedly. The solution to this problem required the study of various statistical sources. The author established the fact of underestimation of figures in the monthly reports of the department of registration of losses of the Wehrmacht. The evidence of this was the data of the medical and sanitary service of the 1st Panzer Army and the 17th Army. The data of the personal records of the personnel of the German ground forces turned out to be more objective. Soviet documents of the Transcaucasian and North Caucasian fronts became the source of information on the number of captured military personnel of the armies of Germany and its allies. The analysis of the dynamics of monthly death toll of German troops during the battle for the Caucasus was carried out. It shows that German suffered the greatest losses during the offensive in 1942 and during the withdrawal from the North Caucasus at the beginning of 1943. In total, during the battle of the Caucasus, the German ground forces lost more than 315 thousand killed, captured, wounded and sick. This figure does not include air and navy personnel, collaborators and German allies.