Why were German losses so intense in the last 6 months of WW2?

IIRC, in addition to the dire strategic military situation, Hitler as a part of his batshit racial theory also thought that once the war became unwinable, the Germans didn't deserve to live as the races of his competitors were proven to be more worthy; thus the willingness to have Germany be burnt to the ground.
 
In those last six months, how many died on the West on how many on the East?

If I was German, I'd fight to the death in the East as it's better to get a bullet between the eyes than getting captured by the Soviets.
 
Everything was going to shit, to put it bluntly. Germany was suffering manpower shortages and force to enlist old men and children as soldiers, often being given obselete weaponry (though some were equipped the effective Panzerfaust). Also resource shortages, equipment to transform those resources into bullets, guns and tanks. And if equipment was made, they were designed and manufactured poorly. Volkssturmgewehr rifle is a good example, as Soviet testing of captured samples showed that it's inaccurate.
 
If my country initiated an unjust war and invaded other people's land, then my country deserved to be counter-invaded.
Every country is founded on invading some other people's land.

Your profile says you're from Hong Kong, as a frequent traveler there myself, I am always grateful that the place was invaded by the British - even today the economy and society of the former territory is far better organized and corruption-free than the rest of the PRC.
 
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There is also the fact that many allied soldiers East and West saw that the war was coming to an end and nobody wanted to be the last one to die - so if there were German soldiers holed up somewhere the Allied soldiers would be not so inclined to take risks in order to take POWs - for the most part they were citizen soldiers not fanatics.

That and they had the wherewithal to do so. The Red Army & US Army were at the top of their game in 1945. They had the weapons and ammunition to crush the Germans with firepower, and enough combat experience/training to use it with relative efficiency. In both armies the combined battalions of artillery and armor outweighed the infantry. In the US Army a infantry division in the attack had seven to nine artillery battalions in support, 84 to 108 cannon, plus as many as 90 75mm & 3" cannon in the attached tank and TD battalions. The others, Red Army, Commonwelath, French were not much different. Add in some 10,000-15,000 tactical bombers combined on all fronts and the weight of fire was simply crushing.
 

Deleted member 1487

Given what we know today, the Heer (and the Wehrmacht) esp. those fought at the Eastern Front cannot be described as morally much superior than SS. The "Clean Wehrmacht" myth needs to strongly protested.

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistori...y_is_the_popular_view_in_western_pop_culture/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/771kc3/did_the_wehrmacht_commit_a_disproportionally/

https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/619lia/rommels_legacy/dfd5n4f/
I don't think anyone was arguing for the 'clean Wehrmacht' mythos, rather that the Allies in general targeted the SS specially as being viewed as the worst of the worst and the cause of the war (being the military arm of the Nazi party). In the West the US forces targeted them specially because of events like Malmedy (though they apparently included paratroopers in the same treatment according to one set of orders I've seen) and probably the general frustration of the Germans not quitting the war despite clearly having lost.
 
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Every country is founded on invading some other people's land.

Your profile says you're from Hong Kong, as a frequent traveler there myself, I am always grateful that the place was invaded by the British - even today the economy and society of the former territory is far better organized and corruption-free than the rest of the PRC.

1. Nationalism is not necessarily something to be proud of.

2. What you said sounds like apologism to colonialism influenced by euro/western centrism. The notion of 'Western colonialism as a force of good' has been challengee in a robust manner in academia:
https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/3i2mp9/how_is_niall_fergusons_empire_regarded/
I'll only add that, as an economist, you might be most interested in the ways in which the argument that Europe was a "force for good" have been countered by long term analyses of wealth in the non-European world before, during, and after the growth of European empire. Bairoch's (1981) “The Main Trends in National Economic Disparities Since the Industrial Revolution” in he and Leboyer's Disparities in Economic Development since the Industrial Revolution caused a stir by arguing (with convincing economic data) that there was no support for claims of the economic backwardness of Asian and African states pre-empire when compared to European states of the same era. An overview of the debate surrounding this issue, and a meta-analysis of the evidence since then which generally supports Bairoch's findings, can be found in Alam (2006) Global Disparities Since 1800: Trends and Regional Patterns

As for corruption, corruption was actually serious during colonial days until the colonial government finally started reform in the mid 1970s after riots and severe disturbances in the 1960s. The colonial government adopted a hands free approach before 1970s and the wages of civil servant were low, creating conditions that even expat police officers joined in the corruption:

As Hong Kong recovered after WWII, the population began to swell and manufacturing industries grew. By the 1960s Hong Kong was experiencing economic growth, yet the government kept Civil Service salaries very low. Officials in all departments took advantage of their positions to supplement their wages with demands for "tea money", "lucky money" or substantially larger sums. Examples of corruption ranged from nursing sisters demanding money to provide services such as extra blankets, food or to allow visitors outside normal hours; firemen lived by the saying, "Mo chin mo sui" ("No money, no water") and sometimes asked for money to turn off the water, preventing water damage, once a fire had been put out; officials in Lands and Public Works departments secured huge sums of money for "advice" and "signatures" that procured the award of tenders and enabled developments and projects to proceed; the Royal Hong Kong Police organised entire stations to "make money" from hawkers, licenses, and in many other illicit schemes. Civil servants often had to pay for promotions and postings in positions known for a lucrative return.

The Hong Kong Police Force previously had an Anti-Corruption Branch, but it did little to reduce corruption. Public perception was that Anti-Corruption police, following the discovery of corrupt practices, would then enter into the dealings themselves. One example was Peter Godber, a senior officer stationed at Wanchaipolice station and later at Kai Tak Airportpolice station. Before his retirement in 1973, he had amassed at least 4.3 million Hong Kong dollars (approximately 600,000 US dollars) in overseas bank accounts. The police's Anti-Corruption Branch investigated his wealth and ordered him to explain his source of income. In response, Godber immediately arranged for his wife to leave the colony, then used his police airport pass to bypass Immigration and Passport checks and walked onto a plane for London. Godber's escape led to a large public outcry over the integrity and quality of the police's self-investigation and called for reforms in the government's anti-corruption efforts. Godber was later extradited back to Hong Kong to face trial and was convicted.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Independent_Commission_Against_Corruption_(Hong_Kong)
While the reform adopted by the then colonial governemnt is a good thing, part of the reason was also to fight against incitement by both PRC and ROC exploiting wealth disparity and widespread social instability.
 
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From what I read in the last year of the war, even SS troops were mostly conscripted. Nothing is EVER as black and white in history.
 

Deleted member 1487

Citations for the maniacs being conscripted please.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waffen-SS#Origins_(1929–39)
About a third of the total membership were conscripts.[14]
In September 1934, Hitler authorized the formation of the military wing of the Nazi Party and approved the formation of the SS-Verfügungstruppe (SS-VT), a special service troop under Hitler's overall command.[15] The SS-VT had to depend on the German Army for its supply of weapons and military training, and they had control of the recruiting system through local draft boards responsible for assigning conscripts to the different branches of the Wehrmacht to meet quotas set by the German High Command (Oberkommando der Wehrmacht or OKW in German). The SS was given the lowest priority for recruits.[19]
 

Deleted member 1487

A good bit of it was also trying to surrender to the WALLIES rather than the Soviets.
Though the deal the Allies had with the Soviets meant that they turned a good number of them over after surrender to the Soviets.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_prisoners_of_war_in_the_Soviet_Union
According to Edward Peterson, the U.S. chose to hand over several hundred thousand German prisoners to the Soviet Union in May 1945 as a "gesture of friendship".[16] Niall Ferguson maintains that "it is clear that many German units sought to surrender to the Americans in preference to other Allied forces, and particularly the Red Army".[17] Heinz Nawratil maintains that U.S. forces refused to accept the surrender of German troops in Saxony and Bohemia, and instead handed them over to the Soviet Union.[18]

According to a report in the New York Times thousands of prisoners were transferred to Soviet authorities from POW camps in the West, e.g. it is known that 6,000 German officers were sent from the West to the Sachsenhausen concentration camp which at the time was one of the NKVD special camp and from which it is known that they were transferred to POW camps .[19] Soviet Ministry for the Interior documents released in 1990 listed 6,680 inmates in the NKVD special camps in Germany 1945–49 who were transferred to Soviet POW camps.[20]
 
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