Trying to pin down exactingly how many German males died in WW2 is going to be a very difficult prospect. The problem is just how often the casualties numbers change. When World War 2 ended it was estimated that there were just over 3 million German soldiers dead. However, numerous studies after the war, the most notable being the "Overmans study", showed that the German high command's numbers were incorrect. The new number for German military dead was now over 5 million as estimated by Overman. This new number of 5 million is generally supported by historians.

David Glantz in his book "When Titans Clashed" puts the total German casualties (including wounded) at over 11 million (6 million wounded, 5 million dead). 11 million was 75% of the entire German Army and 46% of the German male population in 1939.

Now it gets even trickier. Do you factor POWs who would later die into the kill count? If you do than get ready for more issues. Some historians assert that as many as 1 million of the over 2 million German POWs taken by the Soviet Union died. Others assert that only around 500,000 of the German POWs. Not to mention the POWs who died in American and British captivity, (a very small number when compared to the amount that died in Soviet captivity, somewhere in the 10,000 range).

But of course we aren't just talking about military dead. So lets add some more confusion into the mix. West German reports put the total amount of civilians killed by Strategic bombing at over 500,000. But Richard Overy, a respected historian who has wrote on the bombing of Germany, argues that the 500,000 number is based off inflated Nazi reports and that the real number of civilians killed by strategic bombing is just over 350,000.

Now I won't touch on the subject of German expulsions since that happened after were World War 2 (though it started as early as 1944-1945) and that would just add to the mess of numbers as those numbers are more heavily disputed than the rest of them. Some say as many as 2 million Germans were killed others will go as low as around 300,000-500,000.

So as you see pinning down exact numbers in a conflict like World War Two is next to impossible. But if we just count military deaths. We are looking at around 5.3 million Germans dead. With another 10 million held in POW camps most of whom wouldn't be released until the late 1940's in the case of the allies and as late as the early 1950's in the case of the Soviet Union. The 5.3 million includes those who never returned from captivity. That being said its difficult to calculate the amount of German soldiers who died in the battles in late 1945 because there was no way to report them. This is why most historians who write about casualties will paint with very broad strokes, most will say over "4 million" dead braver ones will say "over 5 million". The breakdown of communications and reporting in Germany in 1945 makes getting an accurate number near impossible.

The population of Germany took a major hit. 46% of the 1939 male population was either dead or seriously wounded. The German population was now close to the number it had been at the turn if the century. The German population had been nearly 80 million in 1939 and it was about 65 million (both Germanys) in 1946, but this number could be heavily disputed.

In 1950 the newly founded West Germany had about 51 million people. With 4 million more women than men. The GDR was trailing with about 18 million people.

Some Sources:

The Third Reich Series by Richard Evans for pre-war data

When Titans Clashed by David Glantz for casualty figures

This site has good census data on it and can help you get an idea about populations, its not too in depth but its interesting none the less.

I focus on the demographic aspect with some nice statistics, I am no historian though, and my credentials is the general german education ...

THIS (1) or this (2) (! 1.6 MB !) is the (official) age distribution in germany (at 2010).

THere are several things labeled. The more obvious one is (best visible in (1)) the lesser population aged 65 - due to the fact that people have less children during war (same is true for age 95, but you can't really see that).

Also, there are siginificatly less old males than females, this gender difference is higlited in (2) in violet (left side is male, right side is female). THe problem is, that this is not soly due to the deaths in WW2, but also due to the higher live expectance of women (the surplus of younger males is probably from imigration, as males are more likely to migrate to germany).

Here is an image comparing Germany Italy (kind of similar, well probably less strong) to the USA and Kenya - notice the bigger dent in the birth year 1915-1919.

You can't really see the direct deaths in the current demographic (because they are old, and most would have died anyway...), but you can clearly see the lack of births during both world wars.

As for the genetic makeup of germany, I don't see any way that would have been affected. (There was no natural selection at work, as there is no genetic resistance against bullets, and there were enough males left to keep the gene pool big enough).

Could someone answer this question but for the French instead? I remember hearing an anecdote about 7 years ago that they've only recently recovered from the devastation.

This might be a tricky and difficult question. But where do all the German Citizens that were killed in concentration and destruction camps, including Jewish people, come in to play? These probably number in the millions if you just look at the German percentages. These are also lost to the general population, and I can imagine had a big impact as much of them were middle to upper class citizens, a lot even of the intellectual branch. Wasn't that a huge brain drain as well?

This isn't about Germany in WWII, but if someone is interested in this topic (post-war population differentials between men and women) I'd suggest looking into the "bloodiest war in South America," The War of the Triple Alliance (or The Paraguayan War, 1865-1870), which effectively solidified the power dynamics of South America for much of its history and resulted in Paraguay having a post-war male to female ratio of roughly 1:8.

It's fascinating reading about how it developed and the essential insanity of Lopez, and heartbreaking to see what happened to the Paraguayan people as a result.

There were about 4.0 million men that were dead or missng.

What are the overall casualties in World War 2.