I've been watching the movie "The Book Thief" and this question came across my mind after seeing a German woman crying when her husband was conscripted into the German army. I was wondering what his average chances to come home were, maybe even unharmed / wounded.
It seems like an obvious question to be asked here, so I've searched for a similar one, haven't found any. Reddit's search isn't too good, so please point me in the right direction if you remember a similar question asked.
About 15.2 million men served in the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS and 5,318,000 died. So you had a 1 in 3 chance of not surviving the war. 2 million of that 5,318,000 were never found and were 'presumed dead'.
You had a 1 in 15 chance of dying whilst fighting the Russians in 1945 alone.
Source is Rűdiger Overmans, 'Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg.' Oldenbourg 2000.
Which front? A soldier on the western front had better odds of survival than on the eastern front. Though, 80% of German operational capabilities were used on the eastern front.