page_title: German casualties in World War II
section_title: Air raid deaths
hierarchical_section_title: German casualties in World War II / Civilian casualties / Air raid deaths
caption_attribution_description: For documentary purposes the German Federal Archive often retained the original image captions, which may be erroneous, biased, obsolete or politically extreme. Illus/Hahn 2.12.50 Zehntausende von Toten wurden in den Straßen Dresdens in hohen Stapeln auf Roste geschichtet und, zum Teil ohne Identifizierung, verbrannt.
context_page_description: Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent. The wartime military casualty figures compiled by German High Command, up until January 31, 1945, are often cited by military historians when covering individual campaigns in the war. A recent study by German historian Rüdiger Overmans found that the German military casualties were 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria and in east-central Europe, higher than those originally reported by the German high command. The German government reported that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel.
  Civilian deaths during the war include air raid deaths, estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000 to 500,000.
  Civilian deaths, due to the flight and expulsion of Germans, Soviet war crimes and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union are disputed and range from 500,000 to over 2.0 million. According to the German government Suchdienste there were 300,000 German victims of Nazi racial, political and religious persecution.
context_section_description: Official statistics published by the West German government 1956 put the death toll due to air raids at 635,000. However, estimates from other sources tend to be lower, ranging from 305,000 to 500,000 persons killed by Allied bombing of German cities.
caption: A pile of bodies before cremation after a bombing raid on Dresden, 1945
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