How many people did the average solider kill during WW1 and WW2?

>>2124955
bump

>>2124955
none, unless you were on an artillery crew

>>2124985
is that true?

>>2124995
for ww1 yeah, the vast majority of soldier deaths in combat were from artillery, not machine guns or other small arms. Also note that all the chemical weapons were fired from artillery.

most soldiers in the western front never actually killed anyone

>>2125006
How about the soldiers who actually did see combat? Guys like a machine gunner at Passchendale, the 101st Airborne in Normandy or a german soldier at Stalingrad.

>>2124995
>>2125006
For American princess-soldiers, it's true in WW2 as well
The Eastern Front on the other hand....

>>2124995
The vast majority of deaths In world war 2 came from Artillery, Bombing and Attrition.

Then of foot soldiers, most kills came from machine gun fire. Now consider that only about one in every 20 men had a machine gun, that's one per platoon or whatever. So that one man would probably have killed the majority of the enemy troops out of his entire unit. Also there is evidence that a majority of soldiers never even fired their guns at the enemy or that they did not shoot to kill evem if they had an open shot. Also don't forget that hitting a person with a bullet doesn't always kill them. There is a large chance that they will survive. So even the few people who did intentionally shoot to kill and not just fire to suppress, even fewer soldiers soils have killed enemy troops.

Which suggests that the average foot soldier never killed a single enemy.

But this is all just my conjecture don't take this as gospel. I can't find any statistics

>>2124955
I got 2 in Iraq and half of one in Afghanistan.

Vet that's a usual /k/ poster. Visiting.

>>2125012
in ww1 the machine guns tended to not really kill that many people, they were just there to make getting to the enemy trench pretty much impossible, they were also protected by layer after layer of barbed wire.

The general idea of trench warfare was that you kept 80% of your troops in reserve and 20% in the trenches. When you want to do an offensive you use your artillery to lay down a huge bombardment on an enemy position to destroy all the barbed wire, machine gun nests, etc. But since you had to lay down a very heavy barrage to do this they've called in their reserves and have massively reinforced that position by the time you're ready to send in the infantry.

So you can start to see why it was such a stalemate.

>>2125032
Doubtful
Modern US soldiers kill even less than WWs ones
The main tactic of US forces now is

1. Send ground troops to bait the enemy outside of their hideouts
2. Once engaged, ground troops will take cover, shoot suppressing fire at the general direction of the enemy and call air support
3. Air support arrives and kill the enemy

US ground troops barely ever kill at all

>>2125006
you don't seem aware of battles like La Somme

>>2125051
Near 100% of deaths at the Somme were due to artillery, mud, exposure and barbed wire. Hundreds of me would become entangled in the wire and starve to death or from the rain.

>>2124995
It is the same for most wars in modern history, but it's just a meme that only 1% of men actually aim to kill

>>2125046
He's probably a mortarfag

>>2124955
Depends on the division, individual units, their commanders and on the amount of artillery they've had. Even with all the advancements in military technology, rifle fire was still largely inaccurate at medium to long range.

>>2124955
About six million.

>>2125051
You should read some books.

>>2125014
death from shitty supply lines are directly credited to zhukov's account.

>>2124955

Considering the total death tolls of either war was lower than the number of soldiers mobilized, the answer would be somewhere between 0 and 1.

Adding in what>>2124985
says, and it goes up by a lot if you're in an artillery crew or an Einsatzgruppenish unit, and way down if you're pretty much anything else.

>>2125022
>Also there is evidence that a majority of soldiers never even fired their guns at the enemy or that they did not shoot to kill evem if they had an open shot. Also don't forget that hitting a person with a bullet doesn't always kill them. There is a large chance that they will survive. So even the few people who did intentionally shoot to kill and not just fire to suppress, even fewer soldiers soils have killed enemy troops.
On Killing is bullshit and doesn't count as evidence. And the whole point of suppressive fire it to shoot where they would be if they pop up, so they stay down and the flanking element flanks and kills/the artillery lands on their head.

probably less than 1 if we are including the ones who died.

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Silly OP, don't you know that during the war they weren't actually shooting each other?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zViyZGmBhvs

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>>2125022
>>2125862
Wonder how these pussy ass niggas would have fared in the Napoopan Wars
You couldnt just aim your bayonet near the enemy in a pretend attack if you wanted to vsurvive the day

>>2125862
total bullshit

>>2125046
Are you saying no one got shot in that war?

>>2125894
Some Americans get shot during their baiting opeartions, yes
But very few enemies were killed by US troops, it's mostly helicopters

>>2125903
There's most definitely a process from being engaged to helicopter support- firing ones rifle has a place in that process far before apache rocket death

I don't know, maybe... 5 or 6, my dude?

>>2125032
cringe

>>2125881
Yeah but the napoleonic soldiers were probably more motivated since they would often freely loot the dead and the average soldier was dirt poor.

>>2124955
I remember watching a Youtube video saying that less than 10% of the US Army in WW2 actually fired at the enemy with the intent to kill. Has someone heard about this?

>>2128205
Never mind found it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zViyZGmBhvs

Really interesting video, but this reality did not apply to the Eastern Front.

80 20 rule

20% of the soldiers were doing 80% of the killing

>>2125022
>one machine gun per platoon
Just about every rifle section would have a LMG in the western armies.

>riflement have never shot anyone in the last century of warfare

That being said, the average soldier probably isn't in combat arms. It takes, well, an entire army in order to keep the joes up front fighting.

>>2125032
Lurk more you fucking faggot. Get the fuck off our board.

>>2125032
tyfys <3

>>2124955
Less than one.

>>2125096
>would become entangled in the wire and starve to death
I find it hard to believe wire is this effective

>>2124955

The average soldier of both wars never saw combat and fired zero shots at the enemy or even saw him.

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>>2124955
Great grandfather killed 3 japs on Guadalcanal in hand to hand fighting. Stabbed 2 of them to death & strangled 1.He also shot a few

>>2128333
Triple threes confirm three dead japs

>>2125014
This is probably coming from some commiefag in a western euro country that the Nazis conquered within a few days to a few weeks.

Meanwhile most Soviet soldiers probably never killed anyone since you'd be splitting 1 German casualty between 12 Soviet casualties on average.

>>2125014
I love it when people get salty about superior fighting styles

CAS and danger close, because we can afford it - the American way

>>2124955

Zero.

For every line grunt there were 7 dudes behind the lines that never fired their weapons.

Even on the line, you won't know how many dudes you kill simply due to the fact that you spend more time shooting at likely or suspected targets than known targets. Amazingly enough, people don't like to expose themselves for very long in combat...

>>2128426
Unlike the British, we can do that and get away with it since we actually know how to call in fire on the enemy and not our own positions.

>>2125046
>US ground troops barely ever kill at all


"Never send good men to do what good high explosives can do better."

t. Grunt

>>2128333
Checked

>>2125881

They would have fared just fine as actual bayonet combat was extremely rare.

>>2128780
Well memed
Is that the meme general thread?
"Soldiers never shooted to kill during the world wars", "Bayonets were never used during the Napoleonic Wars"
We could use some Lindybeige ones too

>>2128731
>call in fire on the enemy and not our own positions.
You really should have a word with general Bradley.

>>2128969
Lindybeige made videos about both of those memes.

>>2128969

Bayonet wounds represented on average something like 5-10% of all the wounds soldiers suffered in the battles of the 18th and 19th centuries, I'm sorry but the Patriot is not a documentary.

>>2129491
Except these """datas""" were recorded on surviving wounded soldiers and are far from representative as most bayonet wounds were deadly (and thus not counted since the recording was on surviving wounded)

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>>2128333
My great grandfather also was one of the tunnel rats. He went into tunnels underground with a flashlight and a .45 looking for japs to kill. He said they would throw in grenades & go into the tunnels to clear them out of japs. Apparently great grandpa had a set of brass balls. Pretty scary when you think about it. He still bitches about japs & he's 92 years old now.

>>2124955
>How many people did the average solider kill during WW1 and WW2?

The vast majority killed zero. This is a simple mathematical certainty. Number of soldiers >>> number of combat deaths. As has been the case for every war. In real life nobody respawns.

>>2124955
Very few. The vast majority of casualties were caused through artillery, not through bullets.

>>2129642

You're leaving out the number of civilians murdered.

>>2125111

You aim in their general direction, but it's true that small arms fire is meant to suppress, not to kill. Gunfire is aimed in only a general way, to fix them in place and force them to seek cover. Artillery does the killing, then and now, by a wide margin, followed by aerial bombs and waaay down the list is getting shot with a rifle. For the sake of discussion we're ignoring death by natural causes like disease and whatnot.

>>2129669

Not him, but depending on where you start with "Modern history", that's not quite true. For instance, in the Napoleonic wars, you had about 6-7 times as many casualties from musket fire as you did from artillery. Artillery only really starts getting the upper hand around the turn of the 20th century.

>>2129592
My pap said the japs were happy just to wound a soldier. If you kill 1 soldier that's it,1 soldier out of the battle. Wound him and you take out at least 3 men from the battle. The wounded guy plus at least 2 more taking care of him

>>2129655
>You're leaving out the number of civilians murdered.

That's a good point but it doesn't change the answer. 1.9 billion people served in WW2 in some capacity. All deaths, including civilians, was 72 million. So at most ~4% killed anybody. And realistically it's far less than that.

>>2129694

Fair enough, but the thread defined our area of interest as WW1 and WW2. Since WW1, artillery does the killing, right up to the present.

Since we are talking artillery. Grim factiods about why it accounted for most deaths

>In the first 10 hours of Verdun the Germans fired 1,000,000 shells.
>The French fired three million into an area 4km x 0.5 km.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QxuOxdbK-BI

>>2129708


>That's a good point but it doesn't change the answer. 1.9 billion people served in WW2 in some capacity.

I have a bit of trouble believing that, given that the UN estimate of the world population in 1940 was about 2.3 billion, and that includes things like the elderly, disabled, children, and people living in bumfuck nowhere.

>>2129718

Oh yeah, sure. I was just quibbling with the phrase in >>2125111 of "modern history", which seemed to be branching off into its own thing.

>>2129729
He's totted up populations of all combatant countries.

>>2129738

But that includes an enormous number of people who aren't soldiers, and is a shitty metric.

>>2128295
While an exaggeration, barbed wire in no man's land is not what you're thinking of that you might see on a ranch or in a western. It has longer, shaper, and more frequently spaced barbs. And it wasn't pulled in a straight line that you could do some gymnastics to get between the 2 lines like a James Bond movie. It was thrown around in great big bundles of death with a frequently equipment stakes to keep it on the ground when the shelling happened. And if you manged to navigate one section there was 10 more just as harsh or worse to advance through.

>>2129729
>>2129738
>>2129746

You're right, I just picked the first Google result and I realize after its implausible. But it still doesn't really change the answer. The vast majority didn't kill anybody.

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>>2128295
>>2129782

It was also thick. You could have expenses of wire that were 30 metres thick in places. It wouldn't snare a healthy man until he starved, but it would keep a wounded man pathetically hanging there until he succumbed.

>>2125881
There was actually a problem with people aiming high

>>2125022
>But this is all just my conjecture don't take this as gospel. I can't find any statistics
Bless you

>>2129833
That's just due to the nature of flintlock firearms though.
>Priming powder ignites a few inches from your face
>You flinch
>Barrel raises slightly
>Main charge goes off
>Ball goes high

>>2128333
>tfw he's a lying coward and either killed no one or raped and killed three children

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>>2125032
>shot at distant gunfire and then the gunfire stopped
>CONFIRMED KILL!!!

correct me if I'm wrong though

>>2129016
We're talking about our modern forces.

>>2129491
It could mean other things :
-Bayonets are very lethal.
-A bayonet charge would often result in one side's morale collapsing and fleeing before much damage was made.
-The wounded tend to be finished after a successful charge, hence the low number of survivors.