Soldiers Mistakenly Reported Killed in Action: Three German World War II Examples Related to Operation Dragoon in August 1944

While researching the histories of 492 German soldiers killed in Southern France in August and September 1944, three cases of soldiers having falsely been reported as killed in action were discovered. There were different reasons for each of the misidentifications; in the first case, the precise circumstances are unclear, but may have occurred after an accidental exchange of identification tags with a fellow soldier; the second case was probably caused by a mistaken report from a witness; the third seems to have been misidentification by medical personnel unfamiliar with the bodies they were dealing with. The Wehrmacht used poorly designed identification tags, while there was no use of methods such as fingerprinting and tooth charts when identification tags were not available. Unreliable methods such as visual identification or witness testimony were deemed to be sufficient to report a soldier dead. As a consequence, false reports of death seem to have been relatively commonplace.