German Tank Kills: Lying with Statistics?
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- Опубліковано 18 тра 2024
- In this video we particularly look at the aspect that Fremde Heere Ost (the German military intelligence for the Eastern Front) discounted German Tank Kill claims by 50 % / divided them by two. This is not necessarily incorrect, yet the reason for this discount is often not mentioned or unknown. Additionally, one has to keep in mind when this statement was made and that the explanation given might not be correct either. Furthermore, various other problems with statistics, kill claims, keeping records etc. are also short discussed. In short, context matters and usually there are several aspects to consider.
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» SOURCES «
Overmans, Rüdiger: Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg. 3. Auflage, Oldenbourg: München, Germany, 2004.
BArch, RH 2/1933; Vortragsnotiz über Instandsetzung abgeschossener Panzerkampfwagen und Fertigung von Panzerkampfwagen und Sturmgeschützen in der SU, FHO (IId), 1.10.1943.
Zaloga, Steven: Sledgehammers: Strengths and Flaws of Tiger Tank Battalions in World War II (review), in: The Journal of Military History. Volume 68, Number 4, October 2004, p. 1283-1284. Online version (with typo in the heading) muse.jhu.edu/article/173363, last accessed: 3rd September 2021.
Morison, Samuel Eliot: Breaking the Bismarck Barrier 22 July 1942-1 May 1944. History of the United States Naval Operation in World War II. Volume VI. Naval Institute Press, Annapolis, Maryland, USA, 1950 (2010).
BArch, RL 10/512: Angriffsverfahren von Sturzkampfverbänden gegen Seeziele. (Einsatzerfahrungen der II/St.G.1 England und Mittelmeer.)
McNab, Chris: Hitler’s Tanks: German Panzers of World War II. Osprey Publishing: Oxford, UK, 2020.
#GermanKillClaims,#TankKills,#LyingWithStatistics
Check out the Stuka: The Doctrine of the German Dive-Bomber Book campaign here: stukabook.com
3:02 - Typo it should be "Instandsetzungsfähige" not "nstandsetzungsfähige", thanks to Flo from RealTimeHistory
OK, I'm curious. Why is showing photos of the documents prohibited?
I am also curious. If the documents are not being used for Volksverhetzung or slander, then why the censorship of photograph’s on social media? Are people sometimes known to get offended by just the picture’s of the document’s alone? Sorry if it’s a stupid question with an obvious answer, I am just generally curious as to why that is the case. Must be terribly frustrating for you at times, having to put in all that extra work. Really enjoying the video’s, thank you!
Wow, was really delighted to learn you're from Austria!
Then I found out it's actually Salzburg and was disappointed ;-)
(please don't take the second part seriously, I love Salzburg)
I have the exact same problem when I am pheasant hunting. I claim I shot a pheasant and my dog does not bring it back and claims I am lying when I told him I shot it. I claim my dog is to lazy to go into the thick brush to find the dead bird. We have major trust issues now. :(
lol
To be honest. When i read your comment for the first time i just missed the h in pheasants.
Makes much more sense now and is incredibly more unconcerning.
I hope you and your dog can talk this out.
@@DerNiker yes hunting peasants has been frowned upon for a few centuries now. My dog and I are attempting to work thru our issues.
Some dogs will take anything down as a prize.
@@DerNiker this made my morning. luckely for me I didn´t drink tea when I read it.
I'm gonna need a tee shirt with that "sober approach" graphic.
I would need a t shirt with Pappy Boyington on it with a large drink in one hand and an arrow pointing to the empty hand saying ‘ the sober approach’
I think that this T-shirt needs to have a shot of Jägermeister on it.
@@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344 yeah that would run you into copyright hell , better spoof it ‘ jagdtigermiester ‘
@@jimsackmanbusinesscoaching1344 😂
Written in decidedly unsober text
The figures can be inflated just the fact that a tank, the same tank, can be knocked out, repaired, knocked out and repaired again multiple times during the course of the war.
yep
I read somewhere that when Germans undestood how effective were Allied and Soviet repair units, they shells enemy tanks so long as they caught fire. Or they blow up any tank that they need to abandone. That way that tanks could not be repaired.
I have seen at least one German manual that noted that continuous firing was encouraged to make sure it is "dead".
Fire/explosions are the only real ways to tell if a tank is destroyed at range. We are dealing with small ordnance and really long ranges for purely optical evaluation.
If you ever get a chance to look through some binoculars of the era I recommend it. Some are very good, most are decent, some are truly shockingly bad.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized When I was an armor and cavalry officer, I always told my men that overkill is always better than underkill!
It is probably realistic to approach war reports with a salt shaker nearby.
:D
Bring some food to the table and reports will have to wait
Using a Mk-1 Eyeball, I think seeing a big explosion followed by a large fire would lead me to conclude that the vehicle is destroyed.
Also, a tank at 800 yards looks smaller than a Matchbox car and I doubt anyone is going to be in a rush to get up close and personal to confirm their kills.
So basically - it is very complex as a topic and even without malice (and some of it may indeed exist) one cannot really get truly correct claims. Not from a single source.
Hell, even comparing several sources or sides of the war may not be enough since different nations or units may report or count their loss differently or even see the battle and its temporal component differently... and all of them can actually make sense on their own.
very good summary!
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized But how do you find out the truth then?
@@geschlittert The truth is that the elephant is a snake, a fan, a tree, a wall, a spear, and a rope.
@@geschlittert by looking at the documents of both sides. While comparing the losses each side reports on itself. This is not always accurate either but it does give you a good idea of the truth.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Plus, didn't Roman Toppel say, in another of your videos, that most tank commanders didn't count/claim kills? IF that is the case, then it makes it even more difficult, to determine valid numbers. Add some wonderful propaganda, to the mix (for both sides but WAY more on the red side), and everything becomes as clear as mud.
as my Arma experience has shown, a lot of times multiple people shooting at one thing everyone takes credit for it going down if they've shot at it in the last half second (except with tubes as the explosions are easy to spot). Then the kill count shows up and you killed about a third of what you thought you killed.
So this concept isn't weird to me.
its amazing how stuff like this bleeds over into video games. really shows its a human issue and not a setting issue lol
I can relate.
Not to mention, we've always got examples like Soviet Womble taking credit for killing a BMP because the guy who actually killed it died shortly after
I need to get back into Arma. I forgot you don't get to see your kills right away in that game.
I heard of one interview with a German tank ace, recounted on WW2TV's UA-cam channel by Paul Woodage, credited with more than 50 kills. He said that in fact he didn't know how many tanks he destroyed because there was no way for them to verify it. He said they shot up an enemy tank with multiple rounds until they were convinced it was no longer a danger to them, and other tanks were shooting up the same tank, so he had no way of knowing who killed it or even if it actually was killed. You could never just jump out of your tank and go take a look to see if it was destroyed because bullets and tank shells were flying everywhere. Moreover, the enemy tank might be a kilometer or even more away and they were not going to expose themselves to bullets and shell fire for such a silly reason. So he said he took the big claims of Michael Wittmann and the other big aces with a massive grain of salt. There was no possible way for Wittmann or the others to know exactly how many tanks they had destroyed. The entire big ace system was dreamed up by the Nazi propaganda machine for the newsreels back home--and all the real tankers knew it.
I heard a similar story from a Panther commander who accompanied me, with his grandson, on a battlefield tour I led about the Ardennes Offensive. He had excellent stories, that kept the tour in awe. He emphasized the movement to the start line on narrow icy roads, and his guys being as concerned with sliding off the road into a gully as with the opposition. Over lunch, I asked about Wittman; and he said no one he knew had a clue about "kills" -having higher priorities like not being killed....
@@grumblesa10 Yes, the German ace with 50+ credited kills, also apparently told Paul Woodage that they were trying to stay alive and not count kills. Paul is a battlefield guide in Normandy, too, and lives in Bayeux. The tanker told him they were busy maneuvering and trying not to get shot up themselves and only had a certain amount of time to assess the battlefield situation with regards to tanks they had shot up. And it wasn't really a priority like it was with fighter pilots who had film of their fights. Staying alive was more important and took up the lion's share of their time, too, just like the Panther commander. Once in a while it was clear that a tank was destroyed because it was on fire or the tank blew up and shot its turret right off. But that was not at all the majority of the time, and meanwhile artillery was landing and mortars were landing and it was better to get out of sight than to count up what may or may not have been a kill.
It is kind of appalling to see all these hero worshiping websites dedicated to Wittmann and others. They just haven't yet come to the realization that there is an entire industry dedicated to making money from a guy who has been dead since August 8, 1944. And a thoroughly unsavoury Nazi fanatic at that. Pre-1943 SS men like him were truly evil-minded people folks. There is a _reason_ Hitler decorated him in person! Wittmann was a Nazi party member since 1937, IIRC. So when you think of atrocities against civilians and POWs alike, think of people like Wittman--who were all for it!
Sometimes I think it would be better if Wittmann was just left to rest in peace and not be dredged up to say "My side is better than your side!" and sold back and forth like a bag of potatoes. 🙄
@@ToddSauve the only German tank ace I actually like would have to be Kurt Knisple.
Seemed like a pretty good man to be stuck at war with.
And alot of his commanders didnt like him die to him not being a party member (if I remember correctly)
@@ZeSgtSchultz I believe Kurt Knispel got in his commanders' bad books because he tried to get better treatment for Soviet prisoners who were being abused and murdered by Nazi fanatics. Most of the German army on the Russian front became murdering fanatics and many millions perished at their hands. Knispel was not amongst the murderers to the best of my knowledge.
@@ToddSauve most based Jerry
There's another more common reason for inflated kill statistics than "Glory Hounds" - and that's pressure from the top.
In the case of merchant ship tonnage for instance, the U-boat arm had set monthly tonnage targets that they believed was necessary to blockade Britain. While these targets were not distributed as quotas to individual U-boats, the overall targets were known to the U-boat Captains and there was pressure to try and hit them. As a result there was a tendency to over-estimate the tonnage of ships they did actually sink / hit.
Likewise US Navy kill claims tend to get rather inflated when they suffer defeats as opposed to when they're winning. At Tassafaronga for instance the US lost one heavy cruiser and had three severely damaged in exchange for just one Japanese destroyer, but the US Admiral in charge claimed to have sunk four Japanese destroyers. As a result the Admiral not only escaped censure for his poor handling of the action, but was even awarded the Navy Cross by his superiors who preferred to believe they had won a victory rather than admit that this was a second Savo Island.
So as a rule of thumb, I would suggest that kill inflation tends to go up when a side is losing / failing; and they persist even when they're in a losing / failing situation. You can't have scrupulous statistics if the people in charge have already pre-determined the outcomes they want to see.
My father and uncles were in WW2 (USA), and when someone in the media related a statistic, most of they would say, "That is a bull sh|t number they fed everyone." My father flew B-17's and according to his gunners they shot down more ME109's than were ever produced. Not out of malice; a fighter might be shot at by several planes, and when it starts to smoke, every plane notes "one plane downed'. Look at the number of 'Tiger' tanks knocked out by the US Army, even though Tigers were rarely used against them. "They attacked us with 5000 Tiger tanks!" Hmm, this agrees with Albert Speer's production numbers...
That's one suspected reason why so many Zeros were claimed as kills. Reportedly, the Zeros had an early form of afterburner which would speed the plane up but dump lots of black smoke. When the US pilot saw the smoke, they assumed it was because the enemy plane was on fire instead of being about the enemy plane just speeding out of danger.
Of course, the hallucinations caused by sleep deprivation and stimulate abuse probably contributed to the problem.
Mark Twain said it: "There are three kinds of lies. Lies. damned lies, and statics."
Statistics???
Tank kills are probably the hardest of all to properly calculate. Firstly you have establish what constitutes a kill. Take in that all sides prioritized the retrieval of damaged, destroyed, broken down and captured tanks. Knowing they were valuable for parts or for repairing damaged units and for basic spare parts. This made getting number of tanks in the units back up to operational strength in hours, days or weeks as opposed to the wait for delivery from the factory. So theoretically a tank could be destroyed on the battle field and counted as killed 3 times in the battle and then same thing in a battle 3 weeks later and counted as killed again and so on and so on. The recycling of these vehicles helped keep the sides relatively stable until you went on full retreat like the Germans did in 1944-45 losing its ability to recover these vehicles, plus the loss of quality tank crews probably from fatigue and just luck running out making inexperience crews to lose more tanks in battle or due to mechanical breakdowns from this.
Yeah, very good points.
I recalled seeing the film "Panfilov's 28" addressing this issue on several occasions. In the first instance, after beating back the German vanguard, the commander of the 2 gun AT "Battery" directed the gun layers of his battery to fire at 2 of the 4 "mission killed" tanks, explicitly stating that they were only lightly damaged, and would be repaired in 30 minutes if they don't shell it into scrap.
The film brought up the issue of kill claims again at the end, as the survivors pondered how many tank wreckages were there. One thought they destroyed about 50 tanks, to which the surviving NCO responded that "we will tell our grandchildren that there's more, but for the Germans, 14 is enough, not counting the 4 we destroyed earlier this morning."
"Panfilov's 28" story is a propaganda crap
In a way the entire panfilovs 28 thing is an example of this as well, which nobody realized until a few years after the war
@@JohnSmith-mb8hi Not more than the iraqi weapons of mass destruction! And the fuking sharade of fighting ISIS when in fact you sponsored it ;)
@Rita 25 y.o - check my vidéó As MHV stated in several of his videos, it can be induced by multiple reasons, the ones you stated a major one.
That aside, there's propaganda, since troop and civilian morale can be boosted with the exploits of their comrades, and be inspired to perform similar heroics.
Also, there is the issue of how one defines a "kill". In the context of the film itself, one can say that no tanks were destroyed, since none of them were "totalled" and fully unrepairable like having their ammunition ignited and have their entire structure destroyed in a giant explosion. On the other hand, one can claimed that there are 18 mission kills, since the tanks for a while were rendered inoperable until repairs could be done. And one can also say somewhere in between, since the troops went out of their way to kill the tank crews in tanks that drove right on top of their trenches, and tanks can't operate themselves until crew replacements can be found.
@@stormtrooper9404 so much salt.
I've always figured the simple fact of multiple units shooting the one tank inflates numbers quite a bit. If I'm an infantryman with an anti tank gun and I shoot at a tank then it subsequently bursts into flame I'm gonna chalk that up as a kill and not check to see if maybe someone else also shot it. The someone else shooting it is likely doing the same.
The "failing perception rolls" line is probably the best description of the 'the blind men and the elephant' problem with personal accounts. A healthy dose of 'trust, but verify' really helps when comparing archival accounts, which still have at their core what someone reported or wrote down on paper after the action finished. :) Great stuff MHV!
thank you!
The Sherman tank poses an interesting problem. The Americans developed a highly efficient retrieval system. I spoke with a man once who had been one of the members of a unit whose job it was to clean these tanks out after they were returned. Some had an entire section of armor blasted away... through which they would spray hoses to get the remains of the crew members out. On other occasions, they were required to climb inside and hand pieces up to team members outside the tank. He estimated he was involved in the cleaning and repair of approximately 860 different Sherman tanks. Now mind you, some of those were relatively minor, but the severe ones were sufficient to guarantee him a long occupancy in various mental institutions over the years.
He eventually did great work with his life and is well remembered by many people. So, yes, he turned out not only all right, but exceptional.
The fact that they employed men in this way indicates how essential the Allies considered keeping Sherman tanks in the fight to be.
Thats why you compare crew kills to tank lost...
Nicholas Moran (The Chieftain's Hatch) his video on the M-4 Sherman states that the Sherman had the highest crew survivability rate of any tank if WWII. A tank might be a total loss, and the crew would walk away unscathed. Not uncommon for a crew to loose their Sherman in the morning, and be in a new/repaired tank by evening.
@@oduffy1939
I understand that, but there is a very good reason that they called it the "Tommy cooker" or the "Ronson lighter."
@@rogersheddy6414 It sounds cool, so people keep quoting it.
@@joeTheN
Bear in mind, as part of Blitzkrieg tactics, the Germans were very familiar with how to properly use a tank. SO waiting in concealment for a Sherman to putter on by and then blasting their ass off was a no-brainer.
And then you've got some GI at the repair base hosing someone's brains out of the Old Shell of that tank.
Also there are statistical methods to find out if something has been meddled with thats how tax auditors find tax frauds very easily.
Good point, although I am not sure what the requirements are for those, since the probably require a certain amount of "completeness" I guess?
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Have you looked into Allied Operations Research efforts, that may have tried to gain a fully accounting of kill claims, casualties, attribution for losses, etc.? I recalled that Operations Research was used to look at the battle field after the failure of the German Operation Luttich, around Mortain, in 1944 (a key conclusion was that the air support didn't really hit as many Germans tanks as claimed)...
not yet, but then again I mostly look at German stuff for the simple reason that a lot more people can look at English documents than at German ones, well, looking is not the problem, reading is ;)
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Did the Germans attempt anything like those Operations Research style studies of the Allies (using the definition of Wikipedia -"discipline that deals with the development and application of advanced analytical methods to improve decision-making" - not a source I like to use, but accessible)?
And if they did conduct equivalent studies, were they able to take advantage of them in say the 1941/1942 time period when German forces were able to take and hold quite a bit of real estate in Europe? Conversely, I take it that the change in the tide of battle in the Soviet Union, North Africa, Sicily made such studies (or all kinds of reporting) impractical for all intents and purposes due to inaccessibility to war zones...
as far as I know, not, if I am not mistaken they were aware that their personnel loss numbers did not add up, but I assume that was not initially and they had "bigger problems" at hand. There was a severe lack of engineers and other specialists. Might be wrong, but I think the Americans were leading in many ways in that area and they also could afford it.
Well, I don't believe I can say anything that hasn't been said before, but I'd still like to say your videos are some of the most balanced and detailed to be found in these kinds of topics. Your use of sources and statistics is fantastic, and your work is a wonderful contribution to public knowledge on history. Thank you for making content like this.
Glad you like them!
@@johnlonne7062 yeah, I never oh wait: ua-cam.com/video/hgQglp7OZcA/v-deo.html
Apparently you don't know all my content, yet the larger problem at hand is that
you clearly don't understand how Austrians and Germans communicated back then or even how they/we communicate now. I covered all of these topics before. Here are
the relevant videos.
Why was the Wehrmacht so Combat Effective: ua-cam.com/video/hgQglp7OZcA/v-deo.html
Q: Why are you so negative about the Wehrmacht: ua-cam.com/video/0uSOPG-wprA/v-deo.html
Poland 1939. A German Failure? German High Command about the Campaign: ua-cam.com/video/crfn5k_JGpc/v-deo.html
Of course, if I was so negative why would I translate German war-time regulations
and pamphlets as books?
» The Assault Platoon of the Grenadier-Company November 1944 (StG 44) - sturmzug.com
» Army Regulation Medium Panzer Company 1941 - www.hdv470-7.com
I love the Chieftain hat graphic for "significant emotional event"
;)
Glad you included Vella LaVella. I think the Eastern Front probably gets overly criticised for "false" reporting of numbers.
yeah, I know that air kills on all sides were ridiculously high at times. But flying a few thousands meters above the ground with a few hundred kilometers per hour while the everyone is shooting at everyone... counting correctly is likely a rather low priority for the human brain. I mean just look at how many typos one can find in a book even after several proof-readings.
Sub sinkings were notorious over-reported (both in terms of tonnage sunk and in terms of subs eliminated). Clay Blair (for all his other faults) did make an effort to compile a list of claimed kills and archive confirmed losses.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Would this imply that the kills of Erich Hartmann was inflated?
@@natteravn7336 Lol, are you even asking this? Nazi squadron leaders often took kills their men did to inflate their figures (and/of were given them by their superiors for propaganda reasons). That is before the issue of 3-4x overclaim of kills mentioned in video - I'd be surprised if more than 20% of his "kills" were real...
“failed perception rolls” Well that’s one way to put it lol
Rolls dice*
The hell is with these commenters?
the other issue is the definition of "destroyed". The air force may define something as "destroyed" because the bomb hit it. the Army may say that they saw the tank burn and the crew bail out. This difference of perspective is based on weapon effectiveness assumptions. We saw during DS/DS that many tanks claimed as "killed" by the coalition air forces had their crews killed, but the vehicle could be recrewed and still fight. The note about multiple kill claims on a single target are also an important note. In battle, many vehicles may be hit by several units almost simultaneously. The report up through the chain of command ends up on a desk miles from the actual action. The officer there sees 3 or 4 units claiming to have killed vehicles and the simple solution is to add these up. This was really tough to sort out before everything was recorded on video for analysis.
During the war Soviets produced 107341 AVF (including light, medium and heavy tanks, plus SPGs) . Germans produced 49777, excluding half-tracks. Advantage to Soviets was 2.16 : 1. Therefore, even if you include Lend Lease tanks and the fact that Germans employed some of the tanks in the West, German claims of 5:1 tanks losses (or even 10:1) were and are ludicrous. Note that at end of the war Soviets still had plenty of tanks, while Germans practically had none.
And what is a "tank kill", anyway? A tank stopped with a damaged track? Several wheels damaged? Repaired on site, in regimental workshop? Army workshop? Factory?
Even severely damaged tanks could be repaired at the factory, using a mix of cannibalised and new parts.
The legendary ancient hammer, which was refurbished few years ago when the head was replaced and the handle changed for a new one.🙂
@@aleksazunjic9672 Are you sure about 50.000 German tanks EXCLUDING the halftracks ?
@@ottovonbismarck2443 Yes, excluding halftracks, including StuGs etc . Same for the Soviet of course . Search "German armored fighting vehicle production during World War II" in Wiki.
@@aleksazunjic9672 Thanks, will do !
"Whoops i put 100 instead of 10 my bad"
Nein!
This has been the case forever. I think it was first highlighted by the British media regarding claims made by Napoleon during the Italian campaign in the late 1700, where it was observed that if Napoleon’s claims were true, there wouldn’t be a single male left in all of Austria. That said, the British media certainly didn’t shy away from trying to discredit Napoleon either. As the saying goes, “the first casualty of war is the truth “.
Love the videos, and excited to hear your take on this topic.
Glad to hear and thank you!
Great stuff. I like how you replicated the original document. Keep up the work using primary sources / documents. A well nuanced discussion on the topic.
Thanks, will do! Glad you liked it!
In a tutorial we were shown a situation in The Great War where a battle was not only unrecognisable in the reports from either side but between the constituent units undertaking the attack, in some cases the unit diaries even had the wrong days of the attack listed.
Conversely the mindset of the reporter might not be malign but their view of the enemy might heavily influence their interpretation. Last night I was reading a declassified Cold War report on a subject and the writer's language and interpretations changed to a considerable degree depending on which 'side' he was considering, especially when it came to motivations (taking into account differences in language changes in the intervening interval between then and now). I don't think the writer was intentionally misrepresenting the subject but was rather incapable of thinking beyond the mindset he had that was necessary for his occupation.
Very useful, thought provoking clip on the realities/difficulties of accounting for claims and casualties, especially if one side fails to gain/retain control of the territory where a battle/campaign took place.
thank you!
During the war Soviets produced 107341 AVF (including light, medium and heavy tanks, plus SPGs) . Germans produced 49777, excluding half-tracks. Advantage to Soviets was 2.16 : 1. Therefore, even if you include Lend Lease tanks and the fact that Germans employed some of the tanks in the West, German claims of 5:1 tanks losses (or even 10:1) were and are ludicrous. Note that at end of the war Soviets still had plenty of tanks, while Germans practically had none.
Are there any good materials on what the Soviet Archives indicate? I thought the Soviets conducted a set of studies on the combat effectiveness/comparability of various AFVs of WWII, during the Cold War (and maybe comparisons with Cold War adversaries' hardware too?)? Would think that such studies would have drawn upon reports at the time (or even analyses) ...
tl;dr: believable that same tank (wreck) gets KIA 3-4 times before its towed away
I can believe that one tank that got taken out by an assault gun last week gets popped by a passing tank because it turned the corner and was like 'woah shit!'
and then the next day a movement of infantry almost shit bricks when they looks to the left and see a tank barrel poking at them.
It is pretty clear that a tank, anti-tank or other crew who shoot a tank and see it stop or be abandoned have no way to know if it is later recovered and repaired. In some cases they could blow it up to be sure, but mostly need to turn attention to other enemies.
Not even getting into several weapons firing on the same tank, maybe far enough apart to be unaware of the other, so each claiming a kill.
"Based on a few samples where the claim vs real losses were 2:1, we decided to just half all kill claims from then on to hopefully get reliable figures."
There is a Russian saying "Врёт как очевидец" (He is lying like a witness), which can be to some extent applied to the situation described in the video.
No , numbers do not lie but they sure can be twisted to change the facts they are presenting . E.G. When the US first landed in Europe almost all reported tank engagements were against Tigers . I guess the Americans thought that was the only tank the Germans had but does that mean they actually ran into Tigers and not Pz. IVs or Stugs ? NICE to see someone pointing out the difference between "reported" "estimated" and "actual" for a change .
The Soviets actually assumed at one point that the armor skirts on the Panzer IV were added by the Germans to make them look like Tigers.
Best thing about the Tiger Scare was once playing Steel Division with friends, where one incorrectly identified some tanks as Tigers and called in our Air Support, we had a good chuckle once we noticed those were not Tigers and he pointed out how ironic that was.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized lol Even today the Germans still scare the crap out of the world . I find this fact hilarious .
Another well researched and presented video. Excellent actually. Danke.
Very informative video, thanks! As someone who is working with statistical subjects routinely, I can confirm that even today, with all these powerful computers, advance statistical software, improved data sharing systems, etc., statistics are highly unreliable and could easily be misleading if interpreted by someone without enough experience in the matter.
So, considering the WW II technology, and considering the chaos of war and all those things, it's not really surprising that war time statistics can be very wrong. But then again, some people won't accept that, because it's always easier to just eat up everything you are spoon fed rather than thinking about the details and the context.
thank you!
So true, there is an issue with the reproducibility of many scientific studies (especially in social sciences) and a lack of understanding of statistics probably plays a large role in it.
@@Difcar Exactly! People usually think the understand statistics so they don't really bother to study it, and this has caused massive problems.
MHV discusses dubious claimed tank kills.
Airforce be like: *little black dude sideways glance*
The airforce (of any nation) regularly got more confirmed tank kills than enemy had tanks.
The fly boys 😂
I'd really be interested in a video of the evolution of tank doctrine and use in the future.
Loved your Icon for "Exposure to Austrian Bureaucracy" and All of them are Very Inventive and are pretty Well thought out.
Thank you!
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized I Always Enjoy your videos and the Very Well spoken German you speak along with it's English counterpart as I've Always enjoyed the Very Original & Different sound of the German language so I Appreciate ALL You do. And You're Welkommen....if that was correct ; )
I read similar things with russian snipers and infantry destroying bunkers in the Pacific, which the same thing had occurred, the bunker was already taken out or sniper shot already dead soldiers.
But like you said no one's going to wait around to find out if it's been taken out or not unless they have a death sentence. Nice Video.
yeah, a bit like there is no overkill. Thank you!
Soviet snipers worked in pairs, and verification of a kill is a tough process. To be precise, a verification of a “hit”.
I v watched an interview with an old soviet sniper, who said that they didn’t really know if a target was killed, unless it was quite close. The enemy could be not moving, wounded, but credited as a “kill” by a spotter, or friendly infantry unit, who would full in the report
In the Pacific War, the Japanese soldiers frequently infiltrated back into Japanese bunkers and strongpoints that the Americans had bloodily cleared. The Americans had to clear them again and again.
Some Japanese bunkers were too sturdy to be demolished (they were built to withstand naval bombardment), so the Americans used armored bulldozers to bury the bunkers , and deny their use to the Japanese.
(I think armored bulldozers are very under appreciated. They also hacked out trails for tanks, enabling the tanks to be maneuvered into positions whence they could use direct fire.)
To add weight to the argument Chieftan has checked out a Flak Panzer rebuilt Project and they have found 3 different shell penetration points being resealed over or patched
Excellent video. I trust you will be turning out t-shirts with some of those wonderful icons you use.
It is well known that statistic numbers can be interpreted in many different ways, i.e. one can make them say what one want (on peut leur faire dire ce qu'on veut).
Excellent as always - very much appreciated - thank you
Glad you enjoyed it
This reminds me somewhat of search and rescue efforts after Hurricane Katrina struck in 2005, where they employed a specific way of marking houses that had already been searched. That way, the independently operating search teams wouldn't check a house multiple times.
If commanders rely on their troops to report kill numbers, there's a risk that two or more independently operating entities all claim the same target as their kill because they're not talking to each other and are too busy to decide whose kill it was.
Accurate counts would probably be easier if you utilized rear-echelon teams to do the counting, marking each tank, vehicle, artillery piece, etcetera, as they count it. But that's a use of manpower and resources a commander might not be able to afford, and anyone defending or retreating might not have an opportunity to count what they've killed.
You know, after watchin about everyone of your tank videos, i gotta ask. Do you plan on doing videos about specific tank ace teams? Like the black baron AND his crewmen? As well as other tank aces? It would be nice to learn a bit more about such individuals after spending so much time looking at the technical and statistical information of tanks. Knowing about the men who commanded them would be a good next step in my opinion.
> Do you plan on doing videos about specific tank ace teams?
In general, the concept is hogwash, also: ua-cam.com/video/pfmilK8D0_Y/v-deo.html
> black baron AND his crewmen
Kudos to you that you for adding "AND his crewmen".
The guy in question was a "commoner", so the name makes even less sense than "Blitzkrieg", which is quite an accomplishment. I know you didn't make it up, but it is just cringe.
> It would be nice to learn a bit more about such individuals after spending so much time
> looking at the technical and statistical information of tanks.
Not for me, because for me it is understanding about systems, so individual are of limited importance particularly "aces" etc. Generals are more interesting, yet even those I mostly avoid.
Just playing with those numbers in the Tiger tanks effectiveness video, if you divide all those Tiger reported kills by 2 (or just the 11.52 combat K/D ratio by 2), you will still get a 5.76 combat K/D ratio, which it is still pretty good.
3 guys say they hit something and it went down. Not knowing they all hit the same something. It happens.
And often the single tank those 3 guys hit would be repaired and recrewed and once again in action a week later
I thoroughly enjoyed this video but I am suprized that it is being treated as if it's a recent revolation. The discrepancies between reported losses and actuall losses is a subject that has been discussed since the day the war ended and probably during the war too. I suppose that every new generation needs to hash it out for themselves. I was happy to hear that new archival sources are being discovered all of the time on this subject and many others concerning the war and other events. Kudos to the researchers that keep digging for that additional info and to those that bring it to light.
> I thoroughly enjoyed this video but I am suprized that it is being treated as if it's a recent revolation.
I might be wrong, but the revelation was the argument of FHO for the 50 %. The 50 % gets mentioned several times, but either without an explanation or a wrong one. Additionally, that the Germans had an issue with their own loss counting is from what I know also not particularly known.
The problem was known
But up to today nobody could explain the topic to me in such a light understanding and thorough way.
And THAT is why MHV is so great!
Here my Paintball experience:
Most guys I could paint were already painted by others. It takes quite a time for someone to figure out he/she was painted and to raise his/her arm ...
think so too. 2,4 or even 10 tanks shoot at one enemy tank and each records the destroyed tank to himself.
We also have a very good phrase in English which is "fog of war."
I'm not sure how old that phrase is, but it does describe the problem very succinctly.
I think it was use at the medieval or a little bit earlier or something idk really but pretty sure it was meant for smoke caused by fires that blind everyone. Not 100% sure that is the reason but it does make sense.
It is from Clausewitz but they translated completely wrong 😂 it was fog of uncertainty or something in the original.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized
I think we can agree that "fog of War" sounds way cooler in English than "fog of uncertainty"...
😁
Maybe you could put "God of War" on a t-shirt with your picture above it.
I love the Chieftain shout out.
5 days...
@@landenfisher585 people who love donating money for early access
@@landenfisher585 Early Access ;) www.patreon.com/join/mhv
@@landenfisher585 well the people who help make these videos as good as possible with good sources I think should get a good bonus and 5 days is quite good in my opinion
That's what historians do. Keep the work. We are still arguing about losses in Marathon, Cannae, and Gaul campaigns.
Thanks for the duel explanation!
Any time!
Is it possible to see how many tanks of a certain type was produced? To compare number of killed vs produced
I think the better question is what happened to all those tanks the Soviets themselves said they produced that were not still listed as serviceable when the war was over. The USA made well over 100,000 tanks and other armored fighting vehicles between 1937 and 1945, and the best estimates I have for losses between Normandy and VE day was maybe 10,000? Maybe one of every ten Shermans made didn't make it to the war's end. Zaloga and Krivosheev both agree Soviet losses were in the six-figures for the same kinds of vehicles, and only so many of those were the obsolete and obsolescent weapons lost in 1941. Really makes you wonder wonder.
you do good historical work, MHV
Great report. But another reason about `inflated tank kills, i`m surprised you never touched upon is, what defines a `tank`? are we to include ,armoured cars; armoured assault guns as used by the German`s .and even make-shift armoured vehicles and obsolete armoured equipment? some or all the above would inflate these kill claims
Hans, this is a Panzer. It zers pans.
12:25 LOVE the D&D reference.
;)
I lovy data analysis combined with history!
thank you!
I love your Channel and you make learning about History really Interresting and i would love to read the Book but 58€ are a bit to much for me :)
thank you!
Another great Video. Thank you.
Couldn't one just compare claimed kills and reported losses on the other side during the same timeframe to get a better picture?
I bet russians recorded tank losses and put it in a archive somewhere.
Yeah, that is a first step, but losses are sometimes count differently and wehraboos believe nothing out of a soviet archive.
They did, but the problem is that the Soviet definition of loss includes any tank that for whatever reason could not make it to the battlefield or was disabled (ran out of fuel, broke a track/engine/transmission, knocked out by enemy fire, fell into a ditch, stuck in a swamp, etc.), whereas the German definition of a loss is a complete, irrecoverable destruction of the tank.
This is why it is not possible to straight up compare loss figures, especially in 1943 onward, because most of the Soviet tanks "lost" in a battle were usually recovered after the battle and would be back in the fight after some repairs.
yes, to a certain degree, but that assumes that each side counted their kills properly, this problem is also discussed in this video although for manpower losses. There are other problems: access and "completeness" of the files. But also time-frame, e.g., the Battle of Kursk for Germany was different than for the Soviets, see also Monte Cassino 3 vs 4 battles. One major critique about the book Sledgehammers was that the author did not take into account Soviet files, funnily enough I haven't seen anyone doing that for the numbers he used and the book is about 20 years old? The question is why?
As Nerevar said, losses were often counted differently. One Army may count any tank that is mission killed for example, whilst another army may only count tanks actually permanently destroyed. Obviously the first army will post far higher losses because they are not accounting for the vehicles pulled off the battlefield, repaired and put back into action.
Another problem may be that those reported actual losses may not actually be accurate either. Your average unit commander never feels he/she has quite enough equipment or personel, so combat losses by individual Battalions may be innaccurate, they may for example forget to mention that several of their 'destroyed' tanks were mobility kills and the units own support vehicles were able to put them back into action in hours. Sometimes this may even be done purposefully in order to try get as many replacements and spares from the supply chain as possible.
Loss figures, unless supported by further evidence do have to be treated with the same caution as casualty figures. They are not as wildly innaccurate as kill claims can be, but innaccuracies can and do creep in.
@@wolfi9933 Probably because most Soviet reports are demonstrable garbage. *cough* Panther test *cough*
If the documents are not being used for Volksverhetzung or slander, then why the censorship of photograph’s on social media? Are people sometimes known to get offended by just the picture’s of the document’s alone? Sorry if it’s a stupid question with an obvious answer, I am just genially curious as to why that is the case. Must be terribly frustrating for you at times having to put in all that extra work. Really enjoying the video’s, thank you!
Ask the Bundesarchiv.
Great video!
How many tanks did we destroy? Ships did we sink? Planes did we shoot down? Men did we kill or capture? Twice as many as the enemy had in the first place, and yet the enemy is (for some strange reason) still fighting.
Kill claims by all parties in all circumstances in all eras have a tenuous relationship with reality, and it has always been near impossible to actually VERIFY which ones are legit without having the hull in question to analyse. And even that's iffy because of the 'shoot first ask questions later' approach soldiers naturally developed, so there's vast numbers of duplicate kills.
The Soviets would transport tanks off the field if something could be salvaged from the tanks.
The metal of the tank would be of value in itself. I have always thought that it was strange that the Germans didn't salvage Soviet tanks for their metal content. After all they did have the additives the Germans lacked.
i dont think you can save alloying metals when you reycle.
Can you do a topic on ww2 helicopters (German, French, etc.)?
that is something for @MilitaryAviationHistory
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized ok, I mean your channel is called ‘military history’ for a reason, just because it might be covered on another channel (I checked, it's not) does not mean it would not be covered altogether.
well, Chris and I work closely together and I generally go mostly for ground forces, since Chris covers the air and Drach the sea.
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized why not do a collab together like ‘ww2 helicopters feat. Military Aviation History’ you can do that.
I heard the claim that a T34 was rebuilt three times on average.
I like your points. 20 years ago I was reading different German memoirs from WW2. Suddenly from a boogeyman, the T-34 transformed into the tank made from paper. As You pointed out, 3 branches claimed kill of the single tank but the tank kill (total loss) and mobility kill are different things. If the tank was hit by another enemy tank and antitank gun and have a two holes, both crews will report that they were made a kill. We all know that all tanks weren't made totally by standards in USSR and Germany. Some are broken on the way to the front. But soldiers soot first than ask questions. And newspapers were main morale booster and cog of the propaganda machine.
Though it is just a fact that the Soviets lost far more vehicles, even if inflated. Simply because they made them so fast, and often cheap, that it was cheaper to just send them out than to worry about repairs.
It's a small point, but you have to wonder about the perverse incentives created by giving Soviet soldiers bonuses for pulling damaged tanks back to the repair yard. It would seem that the more tanks you have to repair the less likely you are to fully repair each one. It would be more interesting if sending someone back into battle with a half working tank was a likely death sentence. I can only imagine what tanks that were poorly machined to begin with look like after shell impacts and repairs done by the side of the road.
In military statistics, as in so much of life, Hanlon's Razor applies!
Great video
'there are Lies, Damned lies, and Statistics' Mark Twain!
Military History Visualized!!!
I have one topic or question. Why did not Germany concentrate all its industrial resources on producing a single tank model instead of producing so many different tank models.
For example, why not just mass-produce the Panzer IV and stop the production of Stug, Tigers and Panther tanks. Could it have helped the Germans win the war?
Do you have the answer on this question/topic?
many reasons, but in the end of the war they focused on 2 or 3 standard models.
So what was the actual kill ratios on the eastern front? By the way how do you mistake a sinking ship, kinda obvious when a ship is sinking or not don't you think?
> By the way how do you mistake a sinking ship, kinda obvious when a ship is sinking or not don't you think?
from above, after you dove several hundred meters on it and dropped several bombs and then try to get away as fast as possible?
@@MilitaryHistoryVisualized Good point I concluded from ship to ship only!
@@clausbohm9807 - Naval "kills" are often far less spectacular than the fiery explosions you see in the likes of movies and games. Ships, especially warships, can take hours or even days to actually sink. This can also happen well after a battle, often while enroute to distant drydock facilities, as the ship finally succumbs to the damage despite the efforts of her crew.
In some cases a hit looks very convincingly like a kill, such as the Yamato's salvoes on the USS White Plains, which were recorded as sinking her because the ship in question shit itself when a 46cm shell detonated under her keel. This caused severe hull damage, damaged machinery spaces, and managed to trip every breaker in her electrical system. Black smoke began pouring out of the ship, which in combination with the explosion of the shell, was /assumed/ to be a kill.
In other cases, seemingly minor damage could in fact be extremely severe. A shell might impact a ship for seemingly little effect, while in reality it has exploded inside a machine space, fuel bunker, or even secondary magazine, all causing immense internal damage and very possibly uncontrollable fires. HMS Hood, for example, took seemingly minor damage from a 38cm shell hit... But the shell had, in fact, been fatal. By all reports it took a fair amount of time before any sign of how badly she was damaged became visible to the other ships in her formation, by this time the damage had become uncontrollable. Internally, however, her crew was fighting for their lives to prevent the magazines from detonating.
Same as Normandy and the allies, every Panzer IV was a Tiger..🤣
Any sufficiently advanced incompetence is indistinguishable from malice.
When I look at these german numbers I have these possibilities to think of.
-The knock off. There are possibilities that a tank gets shoot and the round kills the crew inside but other than having a hole in the armor it does not gets such structural damage that it is unrepairable.
-The double report. Could happen if later on a different unit see the tank mentioned before gives a shoot on it but this time it caught fire and visibly destroyed.
-The multy report. Usually happens if more than one unit shoots at the target and both reports as their own. This is usually happening in poor visibility.
-Fallacious memories, In the heat of the war you don't have time to count. When the report written they recal their actions with estimations. However human brain has the bad tendency to recall the tanks they shoot at rather than the ones destroyed for sure.
-Who counts what. It could be the case that armored cars and other vehicles end up being reported as tanks even in good faith. Especially in poor visibility.
As we can evaulate recent wars, and indeed I am getting more experienced in the topic It just gets more difficult to understand german claims.
German tank "claims" usually fall withing the range of 30% difference compare to loss reports. Which is being judged by the ukranian war, too accurate.
In the ongoing war about 35 percent of the vehicles are going lost without being shoot at. And some 30% appears to be recoverabele. Keeping in mind that ranks back then were less consumable by fires it would mean that about 65 percent of the claims would not be write offs. Eighter temporally abadoned by receiving damages or eighter being shoot at and got crew killed but did not set it on fire.
Now the tricky part. It the germans would just count vehicles left on the field it would be much higher tank their own action. However if they are only counting tanks they are shooting at the numbers would be smaller than the actual enemy write offs.
1941-42:Germany moving forward - 25 %.
1943-45: Germany retreating - 50 % as the Soviets were in posession of the battlefield afterwards and therefore could repair tanks.
Isn't it that simple?
Crazy... Such a video without mentioned Kursk 🤣🤣🤣 Well made!
Thanks! 😃
This may be an impossible question, but what percentage of German military archives are digitized? The question assumes that digitized records can be searched by anyone in any university, but non digital records can only be searched by a visit to the archives. Thus an answer would give some idea of how many new discoveries are waiting buried in written records that only a handful of scholars can access.
Searchable well I would say less than 1 %. Unless NARA did some ocr on their scans.
Interesting. I studied ancient history where the primary sources all fit on a CD. One now sees amazing online collections of medieval manuscripts but I have no idea what is available from military archives. Obviously crowd sourced projects could change the whole profession if directed at important scholarly questions.
Translating the "NO!" into "NEIN!" will have a greater impact on your Anglo-American audience. ;-)
Bravo!
It seems to me there is a "both/and" rather than "either/or" that comes into play here. When a German battlefield commander reports 100 Russian tank kills in a given battle, (assuming an accurate count) then he would be accurately reporting tactical reality that 100 Russian tanks were taken out of the battle. However, if the Russians are able to recover and repair 50 of those tanks, then from a strategic standpoint, there were only 50 kills.
Funny that for Soviet Union it was exact opposite - damaged tank = 'lost'. So, they can 'lost' one tank many times.
Again I have learned something ….. Thank you .
Glad to hear it!
Congratulations on 666 hundred thousand subscribers 👏🙌
It's the maliciously incompetent that worry me most these days.
In a book recently I seen a British pilot that was involved in the planning of Normandy, was arguing with the Americans about their propaganda kills. they had to convince the Americans not use their kill numbers for planning purposes. seems the British only credited german planes shot down, if they caught it on film. The Americans were using the word of the pilot's and gunners. so, say a flight of bombers shot down a german plane, like 30 gunners would all claim the kill because as none had an idea who's bullets shot it down as they were all aiming in that general direction. not even being dishonest, just no one could tell. not a good way to start an invasion assuming the germans had way less planes than they did.
interesting, which book was it?
Kind of hard to believe the germans had false Tank kill callouts since the wehrmacht (The entire German army) was very organized to where they never left out a single piece of information about kills up until 1944 when it all started to fall apart
Sober approach? Where is the fun in that?
I have been in bars and clubs sober for quite some time, it can get really funny... especially the faces of the people the next time I told them what they told me when they were drunk ;)
"There was no Excel..." is the most German of reasons there could be.
There is a huge diffetence between knocked out and destroyed i guess.
I think lies sometimes are used here as much for personal protection then as glory hounding
Probably worth during the caveat that kill claims are made specifically for the intelligence boys to estimate enemy strength, of course it’s not accurate, nor specific, it’s essentially a guess. Which everyone has to do
Killed 0
MIA 5000
This type of thing Happened a lot,
Hanlon's razor at its finest