I recommend the book Supplying War, by Martin Van Creveld. It is on the official reading list for United States military officers, and covers the history of military logistics, mostly in Europe, from the Napoleonic Era through WWII.
The insight most relevant to the question is that until WW1, most armies essentially did leave each soldier to look after themselves. This method of supplying the army is called 'forage' which means that the army spreads out and acquires supplies through whatever means (sometimes commerce, often plunder and rapine). In WWI this changed, for two reasons according to Van Creveld:
So during and after WWI, a military needs to make sure it has enough stuff, that it can use, so that it can continue to prosecute the war. This cannot be accomplished by every soldier looking after themselves; they will run out of ammunition, cannot fix their broken weapons or vehicles; etc.
However, it is absolutely possible for there to be too much central planning, and this problem is centuries old. Covered in the book is the case of Operation Overlord, the legendary assault on the western shores of Europe to invade the Third Reich. It is a tale of horror, and of heroic courage; the moment in the popular mind when the war turned and the Allies effectively ensured final victory. It was also a logistical catastrophe. Unprecedented efforts went into the planning of assault, down to exactly how many cans of gas were required for each jeep, which is precisely where they went wrong. In the chaos of the invasion, whole armies landed miles away from where they were expected; armies landing nearer supply depots meant for different armies used them as a matter of necessity. The Allies did not succeed in their objectives the first day; in places ammunition ran short and vehicles ran out of fuel. The invasion nearly failed. Fortunately recovery was swift; 160,000 men were in the assault in June; 2,000,000 were in Europe by August, on the strength of a tenuous foothold the first day.
Cycling back to the initial question, how many people die in war as a consequence of logistics vs. enemy action: almost all. The largest killer of soldiers across history by far is disease; typhoid, dysentery, malaria, etc. The lack of sufficient food and shelter increases vulnerability to disease; the lack of good hygiene guarantees disease; the lack of good medical care increases the fatalities from disease. All of these are logistical questions. Since the health and equipment of soldiers has a huge impact on whether they win engagements, logistics remains a large factor in how many deaths result from enemy action, as well.
Addendum for a broader interpretation of centrally planned that includes stuff like hierarchy and strategy: information management is basically the reason. When soldiers disperse to forage, it takes a long time to get them back together again such that they are militarily effective; catching the enemy army at forage is extremely advantageous and practically guarantees winning. In the modern era, armies grew to the population of whole cities; this is too huge a burden for local resources to sustain in most places.
So the problem becomes how to keep them wate... (read more)
We watched Dunkirk, and wondered how many military deaths are for reasons more of logistics than of facing the enemy. Probably lots - we have heard that war is made of colossal logistical feats, so probably they often fail, and often lives depend on them.
(Imagine organizing a party with hundreds of thousands of people at it. Imagine that is located in an overseas country, where you don’t have a house, and everyone hates you. Imagine that it goes for several years. Imagine it is a very stressful party for the partygoers, but also you are counting on them to carry out some hard and terrifying tasks for you during the party. Imagine you anticipate many deaths during the proceedings.)
Which made me wonder, why is war so centrally planned? Why wouldn’t all these logistical details be simpler and cheaper in the usual ways if each soldier looked after himself mostly? Similar to how it works better for each person to look after themselves during peacetime, rather than having commanders organize and dictate the whole peaceful existence effort. Thoughts?