How many Soviet citizens died in World War II. How many died in World War II

Calculation of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic war remains one of the scientific problems unsolved by historians. Official statistics - 26.6 million dead, including 8.7 million military personnel - underestimate the losses among those who were at the front. Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the dead were military personnel (up to 13.6 million), and not the civilian population of the Soviet Union.

There is a lot of literature on this problem, and maybe someone gets the impression that it has been studied enough. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but there are still many questions and doubts. Too much here is unclear, controversial and clearly unreliable. Even the reliability of the current official data on the loss of life of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts.

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

The official figure for the demographic losses of the Soviet Union has changed several times. In February 1946, the loss figure of 7 million people was published in the Bolshevik magazine. In March 1946, Stalin, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, stated that the USSR had lost 7 million people during the war years: “As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, and also thanks to the German occupation and seven million people." The report “The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War” published in 1947 by the chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR Voznesensky did not indicate human losses.

In 1959, the first post-war census of the population of the USSR was carried out. In 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden, reported 20 million dead: “Can we sit back and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists unleashed a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people?” In 1965, Brezhnev, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, announced more than 20 million dead.

In 1988–1993 A team of military historians led by Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev conducted a statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about casualties in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. The result of the work was the figure of 8,668,400 people lost by the power structures of the USSR during the war.

Since March 1989, on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a state commission has been working to study the number of human losses in the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. The commission included representatives of the State Statistics Committee, the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Defense, the Main Archival Administration under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Committee of War Veterans, the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The commission did not calculate losses, but estimated the difference between the estimated population of the USSR at the end of the war and the estimated population that would have lived in the USSR if there had been no war. The commission first made public its demographic loss figure of 26.6 million people at a solemn meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990.

May 5, 2008 President Russian Federation signed an order "On the publication of the fundamental multi-volume work" The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 "". On October 23, 2009, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation signed an order "On the Interdepartmental Commission for Calculating Losses During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". The commission included representatives of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosstat, Rosarkhiv. In December 2011, a commission representative announced the country's overall demographic losses during the war period. 26.6 million people, of which losses of active armed forces 8668400 people.

military personnel

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense irretrievable losses during the fighting on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945, they amounted to 8,860,400 Soviet military personnel. The source was data declassified in 1993 and data obtained during the search work of the Memory Watch and in historical archives.

According to declassified data from 1993: killed, died from wounds and diseases, non-combat losses - 6 885 100 people, including

Killed - 5,226,800 people.
Died from inflicted wounds - 1,102,800 people.
perished by various reasons and accidents, shot - 555,500 people.

On May 5, 2010, Major General A. Kirilin, head of the RF Ministry of Defense Directorate for perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military casualties - 8 668 400 , will be reported to the leadership of the country, so that they are announced on May 9, the day of the 65th anniversary of the Victory.

According to G. F. Krivosheev, during the Great Patriotic War, 3,396,400 military personnel were missing and captured (about 1,162,600 more were attributed to unaccounted for combat losses in the first months of the war, when combat units did not provide any reports), that is, all

missing, captured and unaccounted for combat losses - 4,559,000;
1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, did not return (died, emigrated) - 1,783,300, (that is, the total number of prisoners - 3,619,300, which is more than together with the missing);
previously considered missing and were called up again from the liberated territories - 939,700.

So the official irretrievable losses(6,885,100 dead, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 who did not return from captivity) amounted to 8,668,400 military personnel. But from them you need to subtract 939,700 re-conscripts who were considered missing. We get 7,728,700.

The mistake was pointed out, in particular, by Leonid Radzikhovsky. The correct calculation is as follows: the number 1,783,300 is the number of those who did not return from captivity and went missing (and not just those who did not return from captivity). Then official irretrievable losses (dead 6,885,100, according to declassified data of 1993, and those who did not return from captivity and went missing 1,783,300) amounted to 8 668 400 military personnel.

According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet servicemen and 500,000 conscripts called up for mobilization, but not included in the lists of troops, were captured and went missing. From this figure, the calculation gives the same result: if 1,836,000 returned from captivity and 939,700 were re-conscripted from those who were considered unknown, then 1,783,300 military personnel were missing and did not return from captivity. So the official irretrievable losses (6,885,100 died, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 went missing and did not return from captivity) are 8 668 400 military personnel.

Additional data

Civilian population

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses civilian population USSR in the Great Patriotic War, approximately 13.7 million people.

The final number is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:

were exterminated in the occupied territory and died as a result of hostilities (from bombing, shelling, etc.) - 7,420,379 people.
died as a result of a humanitarian catastrophe (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
died in forced labor in Germany - 2,164,313 people. (another 451,100 people according to different reasons did not return and became emigrants).

According to S. Maksudov, about 7 million people died in the occupied territories and in besieged Leningrad (1 million of them in besieged Leningrad, 3 million were Jews, victims of the Holocaust), and about 7 million people died as a result of increased mortality in non-occupied territories.

The total losses of the USSR (together with the civilian population) amounted to 40–41 million people. These estimates are confirmed by comparing the data of the 1939 and 1959 censuses, since there is reason to believe that in 1939 there was a very significant undercount of the male draft contingents.

In general, the Red Army during the Second World War lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders in the dead, missing, dead from wounds, diseases and in captivity.

Finally, we note another new trend in the study of the demographic results of World War II. Before the collapse of the USSR, there was no need to assess the human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century, L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate value of the human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.

Nationalitydead soldiers	Number of casualties (thousand people)	% of total irretrievable losses
Russians	5 756.0	66.402
Ukrainians	1 377.4	15.890
Belarusians	252.9	2.917
Tatars	187.7	2.165
Jews	142.5	1.644
Kazakhs	125.5	1.448
Uzbeks	117.9	1.360
Armenians	83.7	0.966
Georgians	79.5	0.917
Mordva	63.3	0.730
Chuvash	63.3	0.730
Yakuts	37.9	0.437
Azerbaijanis	58.4	0.673
Moldovans	53.9	0.621
Bashkirs	31.7	0.366
Kyrgyz	26.6	0.307
Udmurts	23.2	0.268
Tajiks	22.9	0.264
Turkmens	21.3	0.246
Estonians	21.2	0.245
Mari	20.9	0.241
Buryats	13.0	0.150
Komi	11.6	0.134
Latvians	11.6	0.134
Lithuanians	11.6	0.134
Peoples of Dagestan	11.1	0.128
Ossetians	10.7	0.123
Poles	10.1	0.117
Karely	9.5	0.110
Kalmyks	4.0	0.046
Kabardians and Balkars	3.4	0.039
Greeks	2.4	0.028
Chechens and Ingush	2.3	0.026
Finns	1.6	0.018
Bulgarians	1.1	0.013
Czechs and Slovaks	0.4	0.005
Chinese	0.4	0.005
Assyrians	0,2	0,002
Yugoslavs	0.1	0.001

The greatest losses on the battlefields of the Second World War were suffered by Russians and Ukrainians. Many Jews were killed. But the most tragic was the fate of the Belarusian people. In the first months of the war, the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by the Germans. During the war, the Byelorussian SSR lost up to 30% of its population. In the occupied territory of the BSSR, the Nazis killed 2.2 million people. (The data of recent studies on Belarus are as follows: the Nazis destroyed civilians - 1,409,225 people, destroyed prisoners in German death camps - 810,091 people, driven into German slavery - 377,776 people). It is also known that in percentage terms - the number of dead soldiers / population, among the Soviet republics, Georgia suffered great damage. Almost 300,000 out of 700,000 Georgians called to the front did not return.

Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

To date, there are no sufficiently reliable figures for losses german army obtained by direct statistical calculation. This is explained by the absence, for various reasons, of reliable source statistics on German losses. The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, Soviet troops 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in the NKVD camps. According to estimates by German historians, there were about 3.1 million German servicemen in Soviet prisoner of war camps alone.

The discrepancy is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in the estimate of the number of Germans who died in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of the Germans who died in captivity is more reliable, and the missing 0.7 million Germans who went missing and did not return from captivity actually died not in captivity, but on the battlefield.

There is another statistics of losses - the statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the appendix to the law of the Federal Republic of Germany "On the preservation of burial places", the total number of German soldiers who are in recorded burials in the territory of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is 3 million 226 thousand people. (on the territory of the USSR alone - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as the starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, but it also needs to be adjusted.

Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burial places of the Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (of which 270 thousand people died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states (357 thousand people died). From total number dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6-0.7 million people.
Secondly, this figure refers to the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German graves in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, established in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence, it had transferred information about the burial places of 400,000 Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Union for the Care of War Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they have already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, no generalized statistics of the newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers could be found. Tentatively, it can be assumed that the number of newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
Thirdly, many burial places of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht on Soviet soil disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could be buried in such disappeared and nameless graves.
Fourthly, these data do not include burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops in Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, only in the last three spring months of the war, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, on German soil and in Western European countries, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died in battles with the Red Army.
Finally, fifthly, the Wehrmacht soldiers who died of “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people) were also among the buried.

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses of Germany

The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
Population in 1946 - 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
Emigration inflow of 7.25 million people.
Total losses ((70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.

conclusions

Recall that disputes about the number of deaths are ongoing to this day.

Almost 27 million citizens of the USSR died during the war (the exact number is 26.6 million). This amount included:

military personnel killed and died from wounds;
who died from diseases;
executed by firing squad (according to the results of various denunciations);
missing and captured;
representatives of the civilian population, both in the occupied territories of the USSR and in other regions of the country, in which, due to hostilities in the state, there was an increased mortality from hunger and disease.

This also includes those who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return to their homeland after the victory. The vast majority of the dead were men (about 20 million). Modern researchers argue that by the end of the war, of the men born in 1923. (i.e. those who were 18 years old in 1941 and could be drafted into the army) about 3% survived. By 1945, there were twice as many women as men in the USSR (data for people aged 20 to 29).

In addition to the actual deaths, a sharp drop in the birth rate can also be attributed to human losses. So, according to official estimates, if the birth rate in the state remained at least at the same level, the population of the Union by the end of 1945 should have been 35-36 million people more than it was in reality. Despite numerous studies and calculations, the exact number of those who died during the war is unlikely to ever be named.

The newspaper "Tomorrow" clarifies the results of the Second World War, for us - the Patriotic War. As usual, this happens in polemics with historical falsifications.

Professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences G. A. Kumanev and a special commission of the USSR Ministry of Defense and the Department of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, using previously closed statistics in 1990, established that human casualties in the Armed Forces of the USSR, as well as the border and internal troops of the country during the Great Patriotic War wars amounted to 8,668,400 people, which is only 18,900 more than the number of losses of the armed forces of Germany and its allies who fought against the USSR. That is, the losses in the war of German military personnel with the allies and the USSR were almost the same. The well-known historian Yu. V. Emelyanov considers the indicated number of losses to be correct.

Member of the Great Patriotic War, Doctor of Historical Sciences B. G. Solovyov and Candidate of Sciences V. V. Sukhodeev (2001) write: “During the years of the Great Patriotic War (including the campaign for Far East against Japan in 1945) the total irretrievable demographic losses (killed, missing, taken prisoner and never returned from it, died from wounds, diseases and as a result of accidents) of the Soviet Armed Forces, together with the border and internal troops, amounted to 8 million 668 400 thousand people ... Our irretrievable losses over the years of the war are as follows: 1941 (for half a year of the war) - 27.8%; 1942 - 28.2%; 1943 - 20.5%; 1944 - 15.6%; 1945 - 7.5 percent of the total losses. Consequently, according to the above historians, our losses for the first year and a half of the war amounted to 57.6 percent, and for the remaining 2.5 years - 42.4 percent.

They also support the results of serious research work carried out by a group of military and civilian experts, including employees of the General Staff, published in 1993 in a work entitled: “Secrecy removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts ”and in the publications of General of the Army M.A. Gareev.

I draw the reader's attention to the fact that these data are not the personal opinion of boys and uncles in love with the West, but scientific research, conducted by a group of scientists with a deep analysis and a rigorous calculation of the irretrievable losses of the Soviet army during the Great Patriotic War.

“In the war with the fascist bloc, we suffered huge losses. They are received with great sorrow by the people. They hit the fate of millions of families with a heavy blow. But these were sacrifices made in the name of saving the Motherland, the life of future generations. And dirty speculation unfolded in last years around losses, the deliberate, malevolent exaggeration of their scale is deeply immoral. They continue even after the publication of previously closed materials. Under the false mask of philanthropy, well-thought-out calculations are hidden by any means to desecrate the Soviet past, a great feat accomplished by the people, ”wrote the above-mentioned scientists.

Our losses were justified. Even some Americans understood this at the time. “So, in a greeting received from the United States in June 1943, it was emphasized: “Many young Americans survived thanks to the sacrifices that were made by the defenders of Stalingrad. Every Red Army soldier who defends his Soviet land, by killing a Nazi, thereby saves the life of American soldiers. We will keep this in mind when calculating our debt to the Soviet ally.

For the irretrievable losses of Soviet military personnel in the amount of 8 million. 668 thousand 400 people are indicated by the scientist O. A. Platonov. The specified number of losses included irretrievable losses of the Red Army, Navy, border troops, internal troops and state security agencies.

Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences G. A. Kumanev in his book “Feat and Forgery” wrote that the Eastern Front accounted for 73% of the casualties of the Nazi troops during World War II. Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front lost 75% of their aircraft, 74% of their artillery, and 75% of their tanks and assault guns.

And this despite the fact that on the Eastern Front they did not surrender in hundreds of thousands, as on the Western, but fought fiercely, fearing in captivity retribution for the crimes committed on Soviet soil.

The wonderful researcher Yu. Mukhin also writes about our losses of 8.6 million people, including those who died from accidents, diseases and those who died in German captivity. This number of 8 million 668 thousand 400 people of irretrievable losses of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is recognized by the majority of Russian scientists, historians and researchers. But, in my opinion, the indicated losses of Soviet military personnel are significantly overestimated.

German losses by the majority of Russian scientists, historians and researchers are indicated in the amount of 8 million 649 thousand 500 people.

G. A. Kumanev draws attention to the huge number of Soviet losses of military personnel in German prisoner of war camps and writes the following: “While out of 4 million 126 thousand captured military personnel of the Nazi troops, 580 thousand 548 people died, and the rest returned home , out of 4 million 559 thousand Soviet military personnel taken prisoner, only 1 million 836 thousand people returned to their homeland. From 2.5 to 3.5 million died in Nazi camps.” The number of German prisoners who died may be surprising, but one must take into account that people always die, and among the captured Germans there were many frostbitten and emaciated, as, for example, near Stalingrad, as well as the wounded.

V. V. Sukhodeev writes that 1 million 894 thousand people returned from German captivity. 65 people, and 2 million 665 thousand 935 died in German concentration camps Soviet soldiers and officers. Due to the destruction of Soviet prisoners of war by the Germans, the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War had irretrievable losses approximately equal to the losses of the armed forces of Germany and its allies who fought against the USSR.

Directly in battles with the German armed forces and the armies of their allies, the Soviet Armed Forces lost 2 million 655 thousand 935 less Soviet soldiers and officers in the period from 06/22/1941 to 05/09/1945. This is explained by the fact that 2 million 665 thousand 935 Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity.

If the Soviet side in Soviet captivity had killed 2 million 094 thousand 287 (in addition to the dead 580 thousand 548) prisoners of war of the fascist bloc, then the losses of Germany and its allies would have exceeded the losses of the Soviet army by 2 million 094 thousand 287 people.

Only the criminal murder of our prisoners of war by the Germans led to almost equal irretrievable losses of servicemen of the German and Soviet armies during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.

So which army fought better? Of course, the Soviet Red Army. With an approximate equality of prisoners, she destroyed more than 2 million more enemy soldiers and officers in battle. And this despite the fact that our troops stormed the largest cities in Europe and took the very capital of Germany - the city of Berlin.

Our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers brilliantly led fighting and showed the highest degree of nobility, sparing the German prisoners of war. They had the full moral right not to take them prisoner for the crimes committed, shooting them on the spot. But the Russian soldier never showed cruelty towards the defeated enemy.

The main trick of liberal revisionists when describing losses is to write down any number and let the Russians prove it wrong, and in the meantime they will come up with a new fake. And how can you prove it? After all, the true exposers of the liberal revisionists are not allowed on television.

By the way, they tirelessly shout that all the people who returned prisoners and were driven to work in Germany were tried in the USSR and sent to forced labor camps. This is also another lie. Yu. V. Emelyanov, based on the data of the historian V. Zemskov, writes that by March 1, 1946, 2,427,906 Soviet people who returned from Germany were sent to their place of residence, 801,152 - to serve in the army, and 608,095 - to the workers' battalions of the People's Commissariat defense. Of the total number of those who returned, 272,867 (6.5%) were placed at the disposal of the NKVD. These, as a rule, were those who committed criminal offenses, including those who took part in the battles against the Soviet troops, such as, for example, the “Vlasovites”.

After 1945, 148,000 "Vlasovites" entered the special settlements. On the occasion of the victory, they were released from criminal liability for treason, limiting themselves to exile. In 1951-1952, 93.5 thousand people were released from their number.

Most of the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians who served in the German army as privates and junior commanders were sent home before the end of 1945.

V.V. Sukhodeev writes that up to 70% of former prisoners of war were returned to the active army, only 6% of former prisoners of war who collaborated with the Nazis were arrested and sent to penal battalions. But, apparently, many of them were forgiven.

But the United States, with its 5th column inside Russia, presented the most humane and fair Soviet government in the world as the most cruel and unjust government, and the most kind, modest, courageous and freedom-loving Russian people in the world were presented as a people of slaves. Yes, they imagined that the Russians themselves believed in it.

It is high time for us to throw off the veil from our eyes and see Soviet Russia in all the splendor of her great victories and achievements.

Recently, parliamentary hearings “Patriotic Education of Russian Citizens: “The Immortal Regiment”” were held in the Duma. They were attended by deputies, senators, representatives of the legislative and supreme executive bodies of state power of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the Ministries of Education and Science, Defense, Foreign Affairs, Culture, members of public associations, organizations of foreign compatriots ... True, there were no those who came up with - journalists from Tomsk TV-2, no one even remembered them. And, in general, there was really no need to remember. The "Immortal Regiment", which, by definition, did not provide for any staffing, no commanders and political officers, has already completely transformed into a sovereign "box" of parade crew, and its main task today is to learn to step in step and keep alignment in the ranks.

“What is a people, a nation? First of all, it is respect for victories,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the parliamentary committee, admonished the participants when opening the hearings. “Today, when a new war is going on, which someone calls “hybrid”, our Victory becomes one of the main targets for attacks on historical memory. Waves of falsification of history are coming, which should make us believe that it was not us, but someone else who won, and still make us apologize ... ”For some reason, the Nikonovs are seriously sure that it was they who, long before their own birth, won the Great A victory for which, moreover, someone is trying to make them apologize. But they weren't attacked! And the aching note of the nationwide misfortune that has not passed, the phantom pain for the third generation of the descendants of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War is drowned out by a cheerful, thoughtless cry: “We can repeat it!”

Really, can we?

It was at these hearings that a terrible figure was named in between times, which for some reason was not noticed by anyone, which did not make us stop in horror on the run in order to understand WHAT we were told after all. Why this was done now, I do not know.

At the hearings, the co-chairman of the Immortal Regiment of Russia movement, State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, presented the report “Documentary basis of the People’s Project “Establishing the Fates of the Missing Defenders of the Fatherland”, within the framework of which studies of the population decline were carried out, which changed the idea of the scale of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War.

“The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people,” Zemtsov said, citing declassified data from the USSR State Planning Committee. - Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of the action of war factors - more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians. The total natural mortality of military personnel and the civilian population during this period could have amounted to more than 10 million 833 thousand people (including 5 million 760 thousand - deceased children under the age of four). The irretrievable losses of the population of the USSR as a result of the action of war factors amounted to almost 42 million people.

Can we… do it again?!

Back in the 60s of the last century, the then young poet Vadim Kovda wrote a short poem in four lines: “ If only in my front door / there are three elderly disabled people / then how many of them were injured? / And killed?

Now these elderly invalids are in effect natural causes less and less noticeable. But Kovda imagined the scale of losses quite correctly, it was enough just to multiply the number of front doors.

Stalin, based on inaccessible normal person considerations, personally determined the losses of the USSR at 7 million people - a little less than the losses of Germany. Khrushchev - 20 million. Under Gorbachev, a book was published, prepared by the Ministry of Defense under the editorship of General Krivosheev, “Secrecy has been lifted”, in which the authors named and in every possible way justified this very figure - 27 million. Now it turns out that she was wrong.

Military losses during the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War have been the subject of both disputes and speculation for many years. Moreover, the attitude towards these losses is changing exactly the opposite. So, in the 70s, the propaganda apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU for some reason almost proudly broadcast about the heavy human losses of the USSR during the war years. And not so much about the victims of the Nazi genocide, but about the combat losses of the Red Army. With completely incomprehensible pride, the propaganda “canard” was exaggerated, allegedly about only three percent of the front-line soldiers born in 1923 who survived the war. With rapture they broadcast about entire graduation classes, where all the young men went to the front and not one returned. An almost socialist competition was launched among rural areas, who has more villages, where all the men who went to the front died. Although, according to demographic statistics, on the eve of the Great Patriotic War there were 8.6 million men in 1919-1923. birth, and in 1949, during the All-Union census of the population, there were 5.05 million of them alive, that is, the decline in the male population of 1919-1923. births during this period amounted to 3.55 million people. Thus, if we accept that for each of the ages 1919-1923. Since there is an equal size of the male population, there were 1.72 million men of each year of birth. Then it turns out that 1.67 million people (97%) died of conscripts born in 1923, and conscripts born in 1919-1922. births - 1.88 million people, i.e. about 450 thousand people of those born in each of these four years (about 27% of their total number). And despite the fact that the military personnel of 1919-1922. births made up the regular Red Army, which took the blow of the Wehrmacht in June 1941 and almost completely burned out in the battles of the summer and autumn of that year. This alone easily refutes all the conjectures of the notorious "sixties" about the allegedly three percent of the surviving front-line soldiers born in 1923.

During the "perestroika" and so-called. reforms, the pendulum has swung the other way. Unthinkable figures of 30 and 40 million servicemen who died during the war were enthusiastically cited, the notorious B. Sokolov, a doctor of philology, by the way, and not a mathematician, is especially zealous with the methods of statistics. Absurd ideas were voiced that Germany lost only almost 100 thousand people during the entire war, about a monstrous ratio of 1:14 dead German and Soviet soldiers, etc. Statistical data on the losses of the Soviet Armed Forces, given in the reference book “Secrecy Removed”, published in 1993, and in the fundamental work “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century (Losses of the Armed Forces)”, were categorically declared falsifications. Moreover, according to the principle: since this does not correspond to someone's speculative concept of the losses of the Red Army, it means falsification. At the same time, the losses of the enemy were underestimated in every possible way and are being underestimated. With veal delight, figures are announced that do not climb into any gates. So, for example, the losses of the 4th Panzer Army and the Kempf task force during the German offensive near Kursk in July 1943 were cited in the amount of only 6900 killed soldiers and officers and 12 burnt tanks. At the same time, miserable and ridiculous arguments were invented to explain why the tank army, which had practically retained 100% combat capability, suddenly backed away: from the landing of the allies in Italy, to the lack of fuel and spare parts, or even about the rains that had begun.

Therefore, the question of the human losses of Germany during the Second World War is quite relevant. Moreover, interestingly, in Germany itself there are still no fundamental research about this question. Only circumstantial information is available. Most researchers, when analyzing the losses of Germany during the Second World War, use the monograph of the German researcher B. Müller-Hillebrandt as the main primary source " Land Army Germany. 1933-1945". However, this historian resorted to outright falsification. Thus, indicating the number of those drafted into the Wehrmacht and the SS troops, Müller-Hillebrand gave information only for the period from 06/01/1939 to 04/30/1945, modestly keeping silent about the contingents previously called up for military service. But by June 1, 1939, Germany had already been deploying its armed forces for four years, and by June 1 of that year, there were 3214.0 thousand people in the Wehrmacht! Therefore, the number of men mobilized in the Wehrmacht and the SS in 1935-1945. takes on a different form (see table 1).

Thus, the total number of people mobilized into the Wehrmacht and SS troops is not 17,893.2 thousand people, but about 21,107.2 thousand people, which immediately gives a completely different picture of Germany's losses during the Second World War.

Now let's turn to the actual losses of the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht operated three different loss accounting systems:

1) through the channel "IIa" - military service;
2) through the channel of the medical and sanitary service;
3) through the channel of personal accounting of losses in the territorial bodies of the list accounting of German military personnel.

But at the same time there was interesting feature- the losses of units and subunits were taken into account not in total, but according to their combat mission. This was done in order for the Reserve Army to have comprehensive information about which contingents of military personnel must be submitted for replenishment in each specific division. A reasonable enough principle, but today this method of accounting for the loss of personnel allows you to manipulate the numbers of German losses.

Firstly, separate records were kept of the losses of personnel of the so-called. "combat strength" - Kampfwstaerke - and support units. So, in the German infantry division of the state in 1944, the "combat strength" was 7160 people, the number of combat support and rear units - 5609 people, and the total number - Tagesstaerke - 12 769 people. In a tank division according to the state of 1944, the “combat strength” was 9307 people, the number of combat support and rear units was 5420 people, and the total number was 14,727 people. The "combat strength" of the active army of the Wehrmacht was approximately 40-45% of the total number of personnel. By the way, this allows you to very famously falsify the course of the war, when the total number of Soviet troops at the front is indicated, and the German ones only combat. Like, signalmen, sappers, repairmen, they don’t go on attacks ...

Secondly, in the "combat strength" itself - Kampfwstaerke - units "directly fighting" - Gefechtstaerke - were separately allocated. Infantry (motorized rifle, tank-grenadier) regiments, tank regiments and battalions and reconnaissance battalions were considered units and subunits "directly engaged in combat" as part of divisions. Artillery regiments and divisions, anti-tank and anti-aircraft divisions belonged to combat support units. IN Air force- Luftwaffe - "units directly engaged in combat" were considered flight personnel, in the Naval Forces - Kriegsmarine - sailors belonged to this category. And accounting for the losses of personnel of the "combat strength" was carried out separately for the personnel "directly fighting" and for the personnel of combat support units.

It is also interesting to note that only those killed directly on the battlefield were taken into account in combat losses, but the military personnel who died from severe wounds during the evacuation stages were already attributed to the losses of the Reserve Army and were excluded from the total number of irretrievable losses of the active army. That is, as soon as the wound was determined to require more than 6 weeks to heal, the Wehrmacht soldier was immediately transferred to the Reserve Army. And even if they did not have time to take him to the rear and he was dying near the front line, anyway, as an irretrievable loss, he was already taken into account in the Reserve Army and this serviceman was excluded from the number of combat irretrievable losses of a specific front (Eastern, African, Western, etc.) . That is why, in accounting for the losses of the Wehrmacht, almost only those killed and missing appear.

There was another specific feature of accounting for losses in the Wehrmacht. Czechs drafted into the Wehrmacht from the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Poles drafted into the Wehrmacht from the Poznan and Pomeranian regions of Poland, as well as Alsatians and Lorraine through the channel of personal loss accounting in the territorial bodies of the German military personnel list were not taken into account, since they did not belong to the so-called . "Imperial Germans". In the same way, ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) drafted into the Wehrmacht from the occupied European countries were not taken into account through the personal accounting channel. In other words, the losses of these categories of servicemen were excluded from the total accounting of irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht. Although more than 1200 thousand people were called up from these territories to the Wehrmacht and the SS, not counting the ethnic Germans - Volksdoche - the occupied countries of Europe. Only from the ethnic Germans of Croatia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, six SS divisions were formed, not counting a large number military police units.

The Wehrmacht did not take into account the losses of auxiliary paramilitary formations: the National Socialist Automobile Corps, the Speer Transport Corps, the Imperial Labor Service and the Todt Organization. Although the personnel of these formations were directly involved in combat operations, and on final stage During the war, units and units of these auxiliary formations rushed into battle against Soviet troops on German territory. Often, the personnel of these formations were added as reinforcements to the Wehrmacht formations right at the front, but since this was not a reinforcement sent through the Reserve Army, no centralized accounting of this reinforcement was kept, and the combat loss of this personnel was not taken into account through the service loss accounting channels.

Separately from the Wehrmacht, the losses of the Volkssturm and the Hitler Youth were also recorded, which were widely involved in hostilities in East Prussia, East Pomerania, Silesia, Brandenburg, West Pomerania, Saxony and Berlin. The Volksshurm and the Hitler Youth were under the control of the NSDAP. Often, units of both the Volkssturm and the Hitler Youth were also directly at the front merged into the Wehrmacht units and formations as replenishment, but for the same reason as with other paramilitary formations, personal nominal accounting of this replenishment was not carried out.

Also, the Wehrmacht did not take into account the losses of the SS military-police units (primarily the Feljandarmerie), which fought against partisan movement, and at the final stage of the war they rushed into battle against units of the Red Army.

In addition, the so-called. "volunteer assistants" - Hilfswillige ("Hiwi", Hiwi), but the losses of this category of personnel in the total combat losses of the Wehrmacht were also not taken into account. Special mention should be made of "voluntary helpers". These "assistants" were recruited in all countries of Europe and the occupied part of the USSR, in total in 1939-1945. up to 2 million people joined the Wehrmacht and the SS as "voluntary assistants" (including about 500 thousand people from the occupied territories of the USSR). And although most of the Hiwi were service personnel of the rear structures and commandant's offices of the Wehrmacht in the occupied territories, a significant part of them were directly part of the combat units and formations.

Thus, unscrupulous researchers from the total number of irretrievable losses of Germany excluded a large number of lost personnel who directly participated in the hostilities, but were not formally related to the Wehrmacht. Although the auxiliary paramilitary formations, and the Volkssturm, and "voluntary assistants" suffered losses during the battles, these losses can rightly be attributed to the combat losses of Germany.

Table 2, presented here, attempts to bring together the strength of both the Wehrmacht and the German paramilitaries, and roughly calculate the loss of personnel of the armed forces of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.

The number of German soldiers captured by the Allies and capitulating to them may be surprising, despite the fact that 2/3 of the Wehrmacht troops operated on the Eastern Front. The bottom line is that both Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS soldiers (the designation of the SS field troops operating on the fronts of World War II) and the personnel of various paramilitary formations, Volkssturm, NSDAP functionaries, employees territorial divisions of the RSHA and police territorial formations, up to firefighters. As a result, the Allies counted as prisoners up to 4032.3 thousand people, although the actual number of prisoners of war from the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS was significantly lower than the Allies indicated in their documents - about 3000.0 thousand people, however, in our calculations will use official data. In addition, in April-May 1945, German troops, fearing retribution for the atrocities committed on the territory of the USSR, rapidly rolled back to the west, trying to surrender to the Anglo-American troops. Also at the end of April - beginning of May 1945, the formation of the Wehrmacht Reserve Army and all kinds of paramilitary formations, as well as police units, surrendered en masse to the Anglo-American troops.

Thus, the table clearly shows that the total losses of the Third Reich on the Eastern Front in killed and died from wounds, missing, dead in captivity reach 6071 thousand people.

However, as you know, not only German troops, foreign volunteers and paramilitary formations of Germany, but also the troops of their satellites fought against the Soviet Union on the Eastern Front. It is also necessary to take into account the losses and "voluntary assistants -" Hiwi ". Therefore, taking into account the losses of these categories of personnel, the overall picture of the losses of Germany and its satellites on the Eastern Front takes the picture shown in Table 3.

Thus, the total irretrievable losses of Nazi Germany and its satellites on the Eastern Front in 1941-1945. reach 7 million 625 thousand people. If we take losses only on the battlefield, excluding those who died in captivity and the losses of "voluntary assistants", then the losses are: for Germany - about 5620.4 thousand people and for satellite countries - 959 thousand people, in total - about 6579.4 thousands of people. Soviet losses on the battlefield amounted to 6885.1 thousand people. Thus, the losses of Germany and its satellites on the battlefield, taking into account all factors, are only slightly less than the combat losses of the Soviet Armed Forces on the battlefield (about 5%), and there is no ratio of 1:8 or 1:14 combat losses of Germany and its satellites the losses of the USSR are out of the question.

The figures given in the tables above, of course, are very indicative and have serious errors, but they give, in a certain approximation, the order of losses of Nazi Germany and its satellites on the Eastern Front and during the war as a whole. At the same time, of course, if it were not for the inhuman treatment of Soviet prisoners of war by the Nazis, the total number of losses of Soviet military personnel would have been much lower. With an appropriate attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war, at least one and a half to two million people from among those who died in German captivity could have survived.

Nevertheless, a detailed and detailed study of the real human losses in Germany during the Second World War does not exist to date, because. there is no political order, and many data relating to the losses of Germany are still classified under the pretext that they can cause "moral injury" to the current German society (let them remain in happy ignorance of how many Germans perished during the Second World War). Contrary to the popular print of the domestic media in Germany, actively falsifying history. The main goal of these actions is to introduce into public opinion the idea that in the war with the USSR, Nazi Germany was the defending side, and the Wehrmacht was the "vanguard of European civilization" in the fight against "Bolshevik barbarism." And there they actively extol the “brilliant” German generals, who for four years held back the “Asian hordes of Bolsheviks”, with minimal losses of German troops, and only the “twenty-fold numerical superiority of the Bolsheviks”, who filled the Wehrmacht with corpses, broke the resistance of the “valiant” soldiers of the Wehrmacht. And the thesis is constantly being exaggerated that more “civilian” German population died than soldiers at the front, and most of the dead civilian population supposedly falls on the eastern part of Germany, where the Soviet troops allegedly committed atrocities.

In the light of the problems discussed above, it is necessary to touch on the clichés stubbornly imposed by pseudo-historians that the USSR won by “filling up the German with the corpses of its soldiers.” The USSR simply did not have such an amount of human resources. On June 22, 1941, the population of the USSR was about 190-194 million people. Including the male population was about 48-49% - approximately 91-93 million people, of which men 1891-1927. births were about 51-53 million people. We exclude approximately 10% of men unfit for military service even in war time, is about 5 million people. We exclude 18-20% of the "booked" - highly qualified specialists who are not subject to conscription - this is about 10 million more people. Thus, the draft resource of the USSR was about 36-38 million people. What the USSR actually demonstrated by conscripting 34,476.7 thousand people into the Armed Forces. In addition, it must be taken into account that a significant part of the draft contingent remained in the occupied territories. And many of these people were either deported to Germany, or died, or embarked on the path of collaborationism, and after the Soviet troops liberated from the occupied territories, much fewer people were drafted into the army (by 40-45%) than could be called up before the occupation. In addition, the economy of the USSR simply could not stand it if almost all men capable of carrying weapons - 48-49 million people - were drafted into the army. Then there would be no one to melt steel, to produce T-34 and Il-2, to grow bread.

In order to have in May 1945 the Armed Forces numbering 11,390.6 thousand people, to have 1046 thousand people to be treated in hospitals, to demobilize 3798.2 thousand people for injuries and illnesses, to lose 4600 thousand people. prisoners and lose 26,400 thousand people killed, just 48,632.3 thousand people should have been mobilized into the Armed Forces. That is, with the exception of cripples completely unfit for military service, not a single man of 1891-1927. birth in the rear should not have remained! Moreover, taking into account that some of the men of military age ended up in the occupied territories, and some worked at industrial enterprises, the mobilization inevitably had to get older and more younger ages. However, the mobilization of men older than 1891 was not carried out, as well as the mobilization of conscripts younger than 1927. In general, the doctor of philology B. Sokolov would have been engaged in the analysis of poetry or prose, perhaps he would not have become a laughingstock.

Returning to the losses of the Wehrmacht and the Third Reich as a whole, it should be noted that the issue of accounting for losses there is quite interesting and specific. Thus, the data on the losses of armored vehicles, cited by B. Müller-Gillebrandt, are very interesting and noteworthy. For example, in April-June 1943, when there was a lull on the Eastern Front, and the fighting went on only in North Africa 1019 tanks and assault guns were taken into account as irretrievable losses. Moreover, by the end of March, the "Africa" army had barely 200 tanks and assault guns, and in April and May, 100 armored vehicles were delivered to Tunisia at most. Those. in North Africa in April and May the Wehrmacht could lose at most 300 tanks and assault guns. Where did another 700-750 lost armored vehicles come from? Were there secret tank battles on the Eastern Front? Or did the Wehrmacht tank army find its end in Yugoslavia these days?

Similarly, the loss of armored vehicles in December 1942, when there were fierce tank battles on the Don, or the losses in January 1943, when the German troops rolled back from the Caucasus, abandoning their equipment, Müller-Hillebrand leads in the amount of only 184 and 446 tanks and assault guns. But in February-March 1943, when the Wehrmacht launched a counteroffensive in the Donbass, the losses of the German BTT suddenly reached 2069 units in February and 759 units in March. It must be borne in mind that the Wehrmacht was advancing, the battlefield remained behind German troops, and all armored vehicles damaged in battles were delivered to the tank repair units of the Wehrmacht. In Africa, the Wehrmacht could not suffer such losses, by the beginning of February the “Afrika” army consisted of no more than 350-400 tanks and assault guns, and in February-March received only about 200 armored vehicles for replenishment. Those. even with the destruction of all German tanks in Africa, the losses of the Afrika army in February-March could not exceed 600 units, the remaining 2228 tanks and assault guns were lost on the Eastern Front. How could this happen? Why did the Germans lose five times more tanks in the offensive than in the retreat, although the experience of the war shows that the opposite is always the case?

The answer is simple: in February 1943, the 6th German Army of Field Marshal Paulus capitulated in Stalingrad. And the Wehrmacht had to transfer to the list of irretrievable losses all armored vehicles, which they had long lost in the Don steppes, but continued to be modestly listed in the medium and long-term repairs in the 6th Army.

It is impossible to explain why, while gnawing through the defenses of the Soviet troops near Kursk in depth, saturated with anti-tank artillery and tanks in July 1943, the German troops lost fewer tanks than in February 1943, when they delivered counterattacks against the troops of the South-Western and Voronezh fronts. Even if we assume that in February 1943 the German troops lost 50% of their tanks in Africa, it is difficult to assume that in February 1943 in the Donbass, small Soviet troops were able to knock out more than 1000 tanks, and in July near Belgorod and Orel - only 925.

Not by chance for a long time when the documents of the German “panzerdivisions” were captured in the “cauldrons”, serious questions arose as to where the German equipment had gone, if no one broke out of the encirclement, and the amount of abandoned and broken equipment did not correspond to what was written in the documents. Each time, the Germans had significantly fewer tanks and assault guns than were listed according to the documents. And only by the middle of 1944 did they realize that the real composition of German tank divisions must be determined according to the “combat-ready” column. Often there were situations when in the German tank and tank-grenadier divisions there were more "dead tank souls" than actually available combat-ready tanks and assault guns. And burnt out, with turrets rolled to the side, with gaping gaps in the armor, the tanks stood in the yards of tank repair enterprises, on paper moving from vehicles of one repair category to another, waiting either to be sent for remelting, or they were captured by Soviet troops. On the other hand, German industrial corporations at that time were quietly “sawing” the finances allocated for allegedly long-term repairs or repairs “with shipment to Germany”. In addition, if the Soviet documents immediately and clearly indicated that the irretrievably lost tank burned down or was broken so that it could not be restored, then the German documents indicated only the disabled unit or unit (engine, transmission, chassis), or it was indicated location of combat damage (hull, turret, bottom, etc.). At the same time, even a tank completely burned out from a shell hit in the engine compartment was listed as having engine damage.

If we analyze the same B. Muller-Gillebrandt's data on the losses of the "Royal Tigers", then an even more striking picture emerges. At the beginning of February 1945, the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS had 219 Pz. Kpfw. VI Ausf. B "Tiger II" ("Royal Tiger"). By this time, 417 tanks of this type had been produced. And lost, according to Muller-Gillebrandt, - 57. In total, the difference between produced and lost tanks is 350 units. In stock - 219. Where did 131 cars go? And that is not all. According to the same retired general in August 1944, there were no lost King Tigers at all. And many other researchers of the history of the Panzerwaffe also find themselves in an awkward position, when almost everyone points out that the German troops recognized the loss of only 6 (six) Pz. near Sandomierz. Kpfw. VI Ausf. B "Tiger II". But what about the situation when, near the town of Szydlów and the village of Oglendow near Sandomierz, Soviet trophy groups and special groups from the armored department of the 1st Ukrainian Front were studied in detail and described with serial numbers of 10 wrecked and burnt and 3 fully serviceable "Royal Tiger" ? It remains only to assume that, standing within the line of sight of the German troops, the wrecked and burned-out "Royal Tigers", were listed by the Wehrmacht in their long-term repair under the pretext that theoretically these tanks could be beaten off during a counterattack and then returned to service. Original logic, but nothing else comes to mind.

According to B. Müller-Gillebrandt, by February 1, 1945, 5840 heavy tanks Pz. Kpfw. V "Panther" ("Panther"), lost - 3059 units, 1964 units were available. If we take the difference between the produced "Panthers" and their losses, then the remainder is 2781 units. There was, as already mentioned, 1964 units. At the same time, Panther tanks were not transferred to German satellites. Where did 817 units go?

With tanks Pz. Kpfw. IV is exactly the same picture. Produced by February 1, 1945 of these machines, according to Muller-Gillebrandt, 8428 units, lost - 6151, the difference is 2277 units, there were 1517 units on February 1, 1945. No more than 300 machines of this type were transferred to the Allies. Thus, up to 460 cars are unaccounted for, having disappeared to who knows where.

Tanks Pz. Kpfw. III. Produced - 5681 units, lost by February 1, 1945 - 4808 units, the difference - 873 units, there were 534 tanks on the same date. No more than 100 units were transferred to the satellites, so it is not known where about 250 tanks evaporated from the account.

In total, more than 1,700 tanks "Royal Tiger", "Panther", Pz. Kpfw. IV and Pz. Kpfw. III.

Paradoxically, to date, none of the attempts to deal with the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in technology has not been successful. No one was able to decompose in detail by months and years what real irretrievable losses the Panzerwaffe suffered. And all because of the peculiar methodology of "accounting" for the loss of military equipment in the German Wehrmacht.

In the same way, in the Luftwaffe, the existing methodology for accounting for losses made it possible for a long time to list in the “repair” column downed, but fallen on their territory, aircraft. Sometimes even a shattered plane that crashed at the location of German troops was not immediately included in the lists of irretrievable losses, but was considered damaged. All this led to the fact that in the squadrons of the Luftwaffe up to 30-40%, and even more, the equipment was constantly listed as not combat-ready, smoothly moving from the category of damaged to the category to be written off.

One example: when in July 1943 on the southern front Kursk Bulge pilot A. Gorovets shot down 9 Ju-87 dive bombers in one battle, the Soviet infantry examined the Junkers crash sites and reported detailed data on the downed aircraft: tactical and serial numbers, data on the dead crew members, etc. However, the Luftwaffe acknowledged the loss of only two dive bombers that day. How could this happen? The answer is simple: by the evening of the day of the air battle, the territory where the Luftwaffe bombers had fallen was occupied by German troops. And the downed planes were in the territory controlled by the Germans. And of the nine bombers, only two scattered in the air, the rest fell, but retained relative integrity, although they were mangled. And the Luftwaffe peace of mind attributed the downed aircraft to the number of only received combat damage. Surprisingly, this is a real fact.

And in general, considering the issue of losses of Wehrmacht equipment, it must be borne in mind that a lot of money was made on the repair of equipment. And when it came to the financial interests of the financial and industrial oligarchy, the entire repressive apparatus of the Third Reich stood at attention before it. The interests of industrial corporations and banks were guarded sacredly. Moreover, most of the Nazi bosses had their own selfish interests in this.

It is necessary to note one more specific point. Contrary to popular belief about the pedantry, accuracy and scrupulousness of the Germans, the Nazi elite was well aware that a complete and accurate accounting of losses could become a weapon against them. After all, there is always a possibility that information about the true extent of the losses will fall into the hands of the enemy and be used in a propaganda war against the Reich. Therefore, in Nazi Germany they turned a blind eye to the confusion in accounting for losses. At first there was a calculation that the winners were not judged, then it became a deliberate policy in order not to give the winners, in the event of the complete defeat of the Third Reich, arguments for exposing the scale of the disaster to the German people. In addition, it cannot be ruled out that at the final stage of the war, a special erasure of archives was carried out in order not to give the winners additional arguments in accusing the leaders of the Nazi regime of crimes not only against other peoples, but also against their own, German. After all, the death of several million young men in a senseless massacre for the sake of implementing crazy ideas about world domination is a very strong argument for the prosecution.

Therefore, the true scale of Germany's human losses during the Second World War is still waiting for its scrupulous researchers, and then very curious facts may be revealed to them. But on the condition that these will be conscientious historians, and not all kinds of corned beef, milk, Svanidze, Afanasyev, Gavriilpopov and Sokolov. Paradoxically, the commission to counter the falsification of history will have more work to do inside Russia than outside it.

Calculation of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War remains one of the scientific problems unsolved by historians. Official statistics - 26.6 million dead, including 8.7 million military personnel - underestimate the losses among those who were at the front. Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the dead were military personnel (up to 13.6 million), and not the civilian population of the Soviet Union.

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

On May 5, 2008, the President of the Russian Federation signed a decree "On the publication of the fundamental multi-volume work" The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 "". On October 23, 2009, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation signed an order "On the Interdepartmental Commission for Calculating Losses During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". The commission included representatives of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosstat, Rosarkhiv. In December 2011, a commission representative announced the country's overall demographic losses during the war period. 26.6 million people, of which losses of active armed forces 8668400 people.

military personnel

According to declassified data from 1993: killed, died from wounds and diseases, non-combat losses - 6 885 100 people, including

Killed - 5,226,800 people.
Died from inflicted wounds - 1,102,800 people.
Died from various causes and accidents, shot - 555,500 people.

missing, captured and unaccounted for combat losses - 4,559,000;
1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, did not return (died, emigrated) - 1,783,300, (that is, the total number of prisoners - 3,619,300, which is more than together with the missing);
previously considered missing and were called up again from the liberated territories - 939,700.

Additional data

Civilian population

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses of the civilian population of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War at approximately 13.7 million people.

The final number is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:

were exterminated in the occupied territory and died as a result of hostilities (from bombing, shelling, etc.) - 7,420,379 people.
died as a result of a humanitarian catastrophe (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care, etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
died in forced labor in Germany - 2,164,313 people. (another 451,100 people did not return for various reasons and became emigrants).

The total losses of the USSR (together with the civilian population) amounted to 40–41 million people. These estimates are confirmed by comparing the data of the 1939 and 1959 censuses, since there is reason to believe that in 1939 there was a very significant undercount of the male draft contingents.

In general, the Red Army during the Second World War lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders in the dead, missing, dead from wounds, diseases and in captivity.

Nationalitydead soldiers	Number of casualties (thousand people)	% of total irretrievable losses
Russians	5 756.0	66.402
Ukrainians	1 377.4	15.890
Belarusians	252.9	2.917
Tatars	187.7	2.165
Jews	142.5	1.644
Kazakhs	125.5	1.448
Uzbeks	117.9	1.360
Armenians	83.7	0.966
Georgians	79.5	0.917
Mordva	63.3	0.730
Chuvash	63.3	0.730
Yakuts	37.9	0.437
Azerbaijanis	58.4	0.673
Moldovans	53.9	0.621
Bashkirs	31.7	0.366
Kyrgyz	26.6	0.307
Udmurts	23.2	0.268
Tajiks	22.9	0.264
Turkmens	21.3	0.246
Estonians	21.2	0.245
Mari	20.9	0.241
Buryats	13.0	0.150
Komi	11.6	0.134
Latvians	11.6	0.134
Lithuanians	11.6	0.134
Peoples of Dagestan	11.1	0.128
Ossetians	10.7	0.123
Poles	10.1	0.117
Karely	9.5	0.110
Kalmyks	4.0	0.046
Kabardians and Balkars	3.4	0.039
Greeks	2.4	0.028
Chechens and Ingush	2.3	0.026
Finns	1.6	0.018
Bulgarians	1.1	0.013
Czechs and Slovaks	0.4	0.005
Chinese	0.4	0.005
Assyrians	0,2	0,002
Yugoslavs	0.1	0.001

Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

To date, there are no sufficiently reliable figures for the losses of the German army, obtained by direct statistical calculation. This is explained by the absence, for various reasons, of reliable source statistics on German losses. The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured by Soviet troops, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in the NKVD camps. According to estimates by German historians, there were about 3.1 million German servicemen in Soviet prisoner of war camps alone.

Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burial places of the Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (of which 270 thousand people died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states (357 thousand people died). Of the total number of dead Wehrmacht soldiers of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6-0.7 million people.
Secondly, this figure refers to the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German graves in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, established in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence, it had transferred information about the burial places of 400,000 Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Union for the Care of War Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they have already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, no generalized statistics of the newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers could be found. Tentatively, it can be assumed that the number of newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
Thirdly, many burial places of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht on Soviet soil disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could be buried in such disappeared and nameless graves.
Fourthly, these data do not include burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops in Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, only in the last three spring months of the war, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, on German soil and in Western European countries, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died in battles with the Red Army.
Finally, fifthly, the Wehrmacht soldiers who died of “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people) were also among the buried.

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses of Germany

The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
Population in 1946 - 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
Emigration inflow of 7.25 million people.
Total losses ((70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.

conclusions

Recall that disputes about the number of deaths are ongoing to this day.

Almost 27 million citizens of the USSR died during the war (the exact number is 26.6 million). This amount included:

military personnel killed and died from wounds;
who died from diseases;
executed by firing squad (according to the results of various denunciations);
missing and captured;
representatives of the civilian population, both in the occupied territories of the USSR and in other regions of the country, in which, due to hostilities in the state, there was an increased mortality from hunger and disease.