What percentage of Combattants received Valor awards

[PaulR]

I am interested in your input.

What percentage of the men assigned to combat units received valor awards? Of these, what percentage went on to earn the EK1 or higher?

Regards
Paul

[PaulR]

No one up for speculation or discussion?

[Gregorio Torres]

I can´t say anything about germans as I don´t know how much of them fought in the war.
I can tell you about spanish volunteers in Wehrmacht the % was 5% of them won the EK2 and only 0´72% won EK1. Usually the was in the East Front for a medium time of 1 year when in the Heer and 6 months in the LW. If german soldiers were usually 4-5 years in the front, probability to win the EK must be multiplied x 5 in Heer-Waffen SS and x 10 in LW. So we have 25% for EK2 and 4% for EK1.
My 2 cents

[tystgaard]

From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Cross

It is estimated that some four and a half million Second Class Iron Crosses were awarded in the Second World War, and 300,000 of the First Class.

Soo about 1 out of 15 went from EK2 to EK1. More easy if you where a officer than low rank. Soo it where hard to get a EK1 for a normal front soldier. I think that most front soldiers if they survived after some time would get the EK2 for frontline service and fast of course for a act of bravery.

Nicolai

[McCulloh]

Nope- again Wikipedia is inaccurate.

By June, 1944 OVER 3 million EK2s had been awarded and OVER 500,000 EK1s.

Almost 40% of the entire Wehrmacht had received some sort of combat award. This included combat badges and KVkxs, by D-Day. Thats' 12 MILLION in feldgrau and add another 1 million other uniforms as a pool of medal recipients.

see the old Koblenz Bundesarchiv file R : 22 p.39: "Informationsdeinst ders
Reichministers der Justiz ". This is now at NARA but I am unsure as to how they converted the file numbers.

In a brief survey done here on this forum @ 2002 from a random sample of 200+(!) Wehrpasses, we determined that over 1/3rd % of all EKs were awarded AFTER D-Day.

Towards the end, entire companies were awarded the EK2 en masse.

I'd estimate @ 4.3 million EK2s and @ 650,000 EK1s by June 1, 1945.

Hey Paul!! Wilkommen zurick!!

[tystgaard]

.

OK thanks

[fabri-online]

Hello
about EKIs I think we need to separate the crosses really awarded from the private purchases (LDO marked).
Are 600.000 just the awarded ??? many awarded had 1 - 2 EKis L/xx more.
Maybe 600.000 is the total amount of awarded + private purchase. Just a thought I want to share with you.

[McCulloh]

Uh-no, I am referencing actual awards. Many EK1 holders (esp. officers) had a presentation cross and a private purchase spare-and some had many 'spares".