Shocking is also how they died. On 40 years ago on our farm worked a heavily alcoholic tank-driver from the eastern front- when drunk he would ramble about what happend there.<p>The sovjet officers told there hastily trained recruits that they had Anti-Tank-Guns who could penetrant german tanks.
They could not.
So the tank would drive along the dug emergency trench.
One Tankchain in the trenches.
They would fire.
They would be crushed.
Dont remember the length - but about one day of nightmarish driving of this.
Despite having tried to google it a few times, I have never found a table of deaths by birth year over WWI or WWII for any country. You'd think it would be on Wikipedia. Even rough estimates would make for a nice blog post.
Possibly more shocking, more than 60% of men who were born in 1923 and still alive in 1941 would die during the War (assuming I've understood the article correctly and my maths is sound).