Denis Winter (1979) writes about German soldiers transported to battle in boxcars:
“After the stint at base, the railway took the men toward the front line. To a generation with visual memories of the railway lines running into Hitler’s death camps, tense faces peering from cattle trucks, there is something disconcerting about the imagery of this journey from base camp.
“The soldiers went in waggons of the same type, forty of them in each waggon, kit hanging from hoods in the roof. Death was a high probability for both.” |
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Robert Whalen
German Casualties of the First World War
| Dead |
2,037,000 |
| Wounded |
4,300,000 |
| Missing or Prisoner |
974,977 |
| TOTAL |
7,311,977 |
According to the official Army Medical Report, the estimated numbers of cases treated by doctors during the war were:
| |
Wounded |
Diseased |
Total |
| 1914/15 |
1,579,023 |
4,513,215 |
6,092,238 |
| 1915/16 |
1,398,281 |
5,706,370 |
7,104,651 |
| 1916/17 |
1,303,322 |
5,491,044 |
6,794,366 |
| 1917/18 |
1,406,311 |
5,787,674 |
7,193,985 |
| 1914-1918 |
5,686,937 |
21,498,303 |
27,185,240 |
533,000 widows and 1,192,000 orphans. |
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