Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2021 May 21

= May 21 =

Loss-exchange ratios
During World War 2, which of the German military branches achieved the higher overall loss exchange ratio against the Allied forces (excluding Allied civilians killed), the Wehrmacht or the SS? 2601:646:8A01:B180:55AF:8634:30FF:8B6B (talk) 08:33, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Waffen-SS notes that the Waffen-SS (the military wing of the S.S. that would have been the closest in function to the Deutsches Heer) had similar casualty rates as the regular army. Of course, if they had significantly higher kill rates, then the LER would be higher.  -- Jayron 32 12:35, 21 May 2021 (UTC)
 * Thanks! That answers half the question -- now, can anyone refer me to any info about their respective kill rates?  (And yes, when I said SS, I meant Waffen-SS -- the Allgemeine-SS and the Totenkopf-SS were mainly engaged in murdering civilians, so would not fall within the scope of this discussion.) 2601:646:8A01:B180:110F:B559:B7EC:994A (talk) 04:02, 22 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Just note that you are not really comparing like-for-like. Although Waffen-SS divisions may have comparable to the Deutsches Heer panzer divisions, since both of these received the best of the manpower, weaponry and equipment, although the SS were always at the front of the queue. The great bulk of the Heer divisions (about 85% of front-line strength) were very badly equipped by Western standards, relying on bicycles or horses and carts for transport, and any armour and artillery at their disposal was likely to be obsolescent and/or second-hand from occupied countries. By 1944, the manpower shortage was so great that most German infantry divisions included two battalions of Osttruppen, Russians, Poles, Czechs, Ukrainians or Cossacks who had only volunteered to fight for Germany to escape starvation in POW camps, or had been conscripted from "Germanized" areas of the new Reich. These troops (especially in the west) were more likely to surrender than fight. Some divisions, like 716th Static Infantry Division that met the D-Day landings, were filled by the medically unfit or over-aged, known as "stomach divisions". These were obviously not going to be as effective as the well equipped and motivated SS formations. Alansplodge (talk) 14:10, 22 May 2021 (UTC)
 * See stomach division. DuncanHill (talk) 06:47, 23 May 2021 (UTC)
 * I was aware of all that, however I should note that toward the end of the war (from about August 1944) the quality of Waffen-SS divisions dropped considerably as well (and by spring 1945 they were down to conscripting teenage boys straight out of the Hitlerjugend and sending them into the trenches after minimal training). 2601:646:8A01:B180:F920:582:FB24:2435 (talk) 07:12, 24 May 2021 (UTC)

Technical question
Hello. I know, lately I've been taking advantage of Wiki a lot, but I think it's the only way to clarify my questions, the result of my great curiosity. I do not know if it is the latest in the matter, but certainly among the last, yes. The Votomatic system was different from the DataVote, the first did not have the names of the candidates on the ballot, but on the board where the same ballot was inserted, but had numbers next to the candidates themselves. These numbers I guess were the references for the specially programmed computer software, to count everyone's votes. But the DataVote card that yes, had the candidates' names on the ballot but not the numbers, for the computer software that counted the DV cards, what was the reference and how was it programmed? I mean, if the Mickey Mouse square has been punched on the DataVote ballot, how does the computer recognize it as a vote and count it for Mickey Mouse? I am waiting for an expert opinion, to clarify this point for me. Thank you so much, as always.
 * These were, as far as I can tell, all variations on the punch card which were fairly standard ways in which both programming and data processing for most early IBM computers such as the ones likely used to read these ballots. Punched card input/output covers the technical ways in which such cards could be read.  The computers didn't look at any writing on the cards at all; they only read the holes on the card as bits (either as a hole or as a not-a-hole) and the writing on the cards was only there for humans to check and make sure there wasn't a mistake or a misalignment.  There were two possibilities, for the post part.  Either metal brushes or probes were used to make a contact through the paper: if a circuit was completed, the computer would read that as a hole, or if not, then that was a "not-a-hole".  There were also optical systems that used a light source and a photodiode to detect if a hole was present or not.  That's pretty much it. -- Jayron 32 16:13, 21 May 2021 (UTC)