Second World War was the most destructive war in the entire history of mankind. Its consequences are still debated to this day. 80% of the world's population took part in it.
Many questions arise about how many people died in World War II, as different sources of information give different estimates of human casualties between 1939 and 1945. The differences may be explained by where the source information was obtained and the method of calculation used.
Total death toll
It is worth noting that many historians and professors have studied this issue. Number of deaths from the side Soviet Union was calculated by employees of the General Staff of the Armed Forces Russian Federation. According to new archival data, the information of which is provided for 2001, the Great Patriotic War claimed the lives of a total of 27 million people. Of these, more than seven million are military personnel who were killed or died from their injuries.
Conversations about how many people died from 1939 to 1945. as a result of military operations, continue to this day, since it is almost impossible to count losses. Various researchers and historians give their data: from 40 to 60 million people. After the war, the real data was hidden. During Stalin's reign it was said that the USSR's losses amounted to 8 million people. During Brezhnev's time, this figure increased to 20 million, and during the perestroika period - to 36 million.
The free encyclopedia Wikipedia provides the following data: more than 25.5 million military personnel and about 47 million civilians (including all participating countries), i.e. in total, the number of losses exceeds 70 million people.
Read about other events in our history in the section.
“I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they will do to Germany” (With)
This article examines the losses suffered by the Red Army, the Wehrmacht and the troops of the satellite countries of the Third Reich, as well as the civilian population of the USSR and Germany, only in the period from 06/22/1941 until the end of hostilities in Europe
1. USSR losses
According to official data from the 1939 population census, 170 million people lived in the USSR - significantly more than in any other single country in Europe. The entire population of Europe (without the USSR) was 400 million people. By the beginning of World War II, the population of the Soviet Union differed from the population of future enemies and allies high level mortality and low life expectancy. However, the high birth rate ensured significant population growth (2% in 1938–39). Also different from Europe was the youth of the USSR population: the proportion of children under 15 years old was 35%. It was this feature that made it possible to restore the pre-war population relatively quickly (within 10 years). The share of the urban population was only 32% (for comparison: in Great Britain - more than 80%, in France - 50%, in Germany - 70%, in the USA - 60%, and only in Japan it had the same value as in THE USSR).
In 1939, the population of the USSR increased noticeably after the entry into the country of new regions (Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltics, Bukovina and Bessarabia), whose population ranged from 20 to 22.5 million people. The total population of the USSR, according to a certificate from the Central Statistical Office as of January 1, 1941, was determined to be 198,588 thousand people (including the RSFSR - 111,745 thousand people). According to modern estimates, it was still smaller, and on June 1, 1941 it was 196.7 million people.
Population of some countries for 1938–40
USSR - 170.6 (196.7) million people;
Germany - 77.4 million people;
France - 40.1 million people;
Great Britain - 51.1 million people;
Italy - 42.4 million people;
Finland - 3.8 million people;
USA - 132.1 million people;
Japan - 71.9 million people.
By 1940, the population of the Reich had increased to 90 million people, and taking into account the satellites and conquered countries - 297 million people. By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, where 74.5 million people lived before the start of the Second World War. This once again emphasizes that despite Hitler’s assurances, the USSR did not have an advantage in human resources over the Third Reich. 
During the entire Great Patriotic War in our country, 34.5 million people put on military uniforms. This amounted to about 70% of the total number of men aged 15–49 years in 1941. The number of women in the Red Army was approximately 500 thousand. The percentage of conscripts was higher only in Germany, but as we said earlier, there is a shortage work force the Germans covered it at the expense of the workers of Europe and prisoners of war. In the USSR, such a deficit was covered by increased working hours and the widespread use of labor by women, children and the elderly.
About direct irretrievable losses of the Red Army for a long time they didn’t say it in the USSR. In a private conversation, Marshal Konev in 1962 named the figure 10 million people, a famous defector - Colonel Kalinov, who fled to the West in 1949 - 13.6 million people. The figure of 10 million people was published in the French version of the book “Wars and Population” by B. Ts. Urlanis, a famous Soviet demographer. The authors of the famous monograph “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” (edited by G. Krivosheev) in 1993 and in 2001 published the figure of 8.7 million people; at the moment, this is precisely what is indicated in most reference literature. But the authors themselves state that it does not include: 500 thousand persons liable for military service, called up for mobilization and captured by the enemy, but not included in the lists of units and formations. Also, the almost completely dead militias of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other large cities are not taken into account. Currently, the most complete lists of irretrievable losses of Soviet soldiers amount to 13.7 million people, but approximately 12-15% of the records are repeated. According to the article “Dead Souls of the Great Patriotic War” (“NG”, 06.22.99), the historical and archival search center “Fate” of the “War Memorials” association established that due to double and even triple counting, the number of dead soldiers of the 43rd and 2nd of the Shock Armies in the battles studied by the center was overestimated by 10-12%. Since these figures refer to a period when the accounting of losses in the Red Army was not careful enough, it can be assumed that in the war as a whole, due to double counting, the number of Red Army soldiers killed was overestimated by approximately 5–7%, i.e. by 0.2– 0.4 million people
On the issue of prisoners. American researcher A. Dallin, based on archival German data, estimates their number at 5.7 million people. Of these, 3.8 million died in captivity, that is, 63%. Domestic historians estimate the number of captured Red Army soldiers at 4.6 million people, of which 2.9 million died. Unlike German sources, this does not include civilians (for example, railway workers), as well as seriously wounded people who remained on the battlefield occupied by the enemy, and subsequently died from wounds or were shot (about 470-500 thousand). The situation of prisoners of war was especially desperate in the first year of the war, when more than half of their total number (2.8 million people) was captured, and their labor had not yet been used in interests of the Reich. Open-air camps, hunger and cold, illness and lack of medicine, cruel treatment, mass executions of the sick and unable to work, and simply all those unwanted, primarily commissars and Jews. Unable to cope with the flow of prisoners and guided by political and propaganda motives, the occupiers in 1941 sent home over 300 thousand prisoners of war, mainly natives of western Ukraine and Belarus. This practice was subsequently discontinued.
Also, do not forget that approximately 1 million prisoners of war were transferred from captivity to the auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht. In many cases, this was the only chance for prisoners to survive. Yet again most of These people, according to German data, tried to desert from Wehrmacht units and formations at the first opportunity. In local auxiliary forces German army stood out:
1) volunteer helpers (hivi)
2) order service (odi)
3) front auxiliary parts (noise)
4) police and defense teams (gema).
At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht operated: up to 400 thousand Khivi, from 60 to 70 thousand Odi, and 80 thousand in the eastern battalions.
Some of the prisoners of war and the population of the occupied territories made a conscious choice in favor of cooperation with the Germans. Thus, in the SS division “Galicia” there were 82,000 volunteers for 13,000 “places”. More than 100 thousand Latvians, 36 thousand Lithuanians and 10 thousand Estonians served in the German army, mainly in the SS troops.
In addition, several million people from the occupied territories were taken to forced labor in the Reich. The ChGK (Emergency State Commission) immediately after the war estimated their number at 4.259 million people. More recent studies give a figure of 5.45 million people, of whom 850-1000 thousand died.
Estimates of direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK data from 1946.
RSFSR - 706 thousand people.
Ukrainian SSR - 3256.2 thousand people.
BSSR - 1547 thousand people.
Lit. SSR - 437.5 thousand people.
Lat. SSR - 313.8 thousand people.
Est. SSR - 61.3 thousand people.
Mold. USSR - 61 thousand people.
Karelo-Fin. SSR - 8 thousand people. (10)
Another important question. How many former Soviet citizens chose not to return to the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War? According to Soviet archival data, the number of the “second emigration” was 620 thousand people. 170,000 are Germans, Bessarabians and Bukovinians, 150,000 are Ukrainians, 109,000 are Latvians, 230,000 are Estonians and Lithuanians, and only 32,000 are Russians. Today this estimate seems clearly underestimated. According to modern data, emigration from the USSR amounted to 1.3 million people. Which gives us a difference of almost 700 thousand, previously attributed to irreversible population losses.
For twenty years, the main estimate of the losses of the Red Army was the far-fetched figure of 20 million people by N. Khrushchev. In 1990, as a result of the work of a special commission of the General Staff and the State Statistics Committee of the USSR, a more reasonable estimate of 26.6 million people appeared. At the moment it is official. Noteworthy is the fact that back in 1948, the American sociologist Timashev gave an assessment of the USSR's losses in the war, which practically coincided with the assessment of the General Staff commission. Maksudov’s assessment made in 1977 also coincides with the data of the Krivosheev Commission. According to the commission of G.F. Krivosheev.
So let's summarize:
Post-war estimate of Red Army losses: 7 million people.
Timashev: Red Army - 12.2 million people, civilian population 14.2 million people, direct human losses 26.4 million people, total demographic 37.3 million.
Arntz and Khrushchev: direct human: 20 million people.
Biraben and Solzhenitsyn: Red Army 20 million people, civilian population 22.6 million people, direct human 42.6 million, general demographic 62.9 million people.
Maksudov: Red Army - 11.8 million people, civilian population 12.7 million people, direct casualties 24.5 million people. It is impossible not to make a reservation that S. Maksudov (A.P. Babenyshev, Harvard University USA) determined the purely combat losses of the spacecraft at 8.8 million people
Rybakovsky: direct human 30 million people.
Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov (General Staff, Krivosheev Commission): direct combat losses of the Red Army 8.7 million (11,994 including prisoners of war) people. Civilian population (including prisoners of war) 17.9 million people. Direct human losses: 26.6 million people.
B. Sokolov: losses of the Red Army - 26 million people
M. Harrison: total losses of the USSR - 23.9 - 25.8 million people.
The estimate of the losses of the Red Army given in 1947 (7 million) does not inspire confidence, since not all calculations, even with the imperfections of the Soviet system, were completed.
Khrushchev's assessment is also not confirmed. On the other hand, “Solzhenitsyn’s” 20 million casualties in the army alone, or even 44 million, are just as unfounded (without denying some of A. Solzhenitsyn’s talent as a writer, all the facts and figures in his works are not confirmed by a single document and it’s difficult to understand where he comes from took - impossible).
Boris Sokolov is trying to explain to us that the losses of the USSR armed forces alone amounted to 26 million people. He is guided by the indirect method of calculations. The losses of the officers of the Red Army are known quite accurately, according to Sokolov this is 784 thousand people (1941–44). Mr. Sokolov, referring to the average statistical losses of Wehrmacht officers on the Eastern Front of 62,500 people (1941–44), and data from Müller-Hillebrandt , displays the ratio of losses of the officer corps to the rank and file of the Wehrmacht as 1:25, that is, 4%. And, without hesitation, he extrapolates this technique to the Red Army, receiving his 26 million irretrievable losses. However, upon closer examination, this approach turns out to be initially false. Firstly, 4% of officer losses is not an upper limit, for example, in the Polish campaign, the Wehrmacht lost 12% of officers to the total losses of the Armed Forces. Secondly, it would be useful for Mr. Sokolov to know that with the regular strength of the German infantry regiment being 3049 officers, there were 75 officers, that is, 2.5%. And in the Soviet infantry regiment, with a strength of 1582 people, there are 159 officers, i.e. 10%. Thirdly, appealing to the Wehrmacht, Sokolov forgets that the more combat experience in the troops, the fewer losses among officers. In the Polish campaign, the loss of German officers was 12%, in the French campaign - 7%, and on the Eastern Front already 4%.
The same can be applied to the Red Army: if at the end of the war the losses of officers (not according to Sokolov, but according to statistics) were 8-9%, then at the beginning of the Second World War they could have been 24%. It turns out, like a schizophrenic, everything is logical and correct, only the initial premise is incorrect. Why did we dwell on Sokolov’s theory in such detail? Yes, because Mr. Sokolov very often presents his figures in the media.
Taking into account the above, discarding the obviously underestimated and overestimated estimates of losses, we get: Krivosheev Commission - 8.7 million people (with prisoners of war 11.994 million, 2001 data), Maksudov - losses are even slightly lower than the official ones - 11.8 million people. (1977?93), Timashev - 12.2 million people. (1948). This can also include the opinion of M. Harrison, with the level of total losses indicated by him, the losses of the army should fit into this period. These data were obtained using different calculation methods, since Timashev and Maksudov, respectively, did not have access to the archives of the USSR and Russian Defense Ministry. It seems that the losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War lie very close to such a “heaped” group of results. Let's not forget that these figures include 2.6–3.2 million destroyed Soviet prisoners of war.
In conclusion, we should probably agree with Maksudov’s opinion that the emigration outflow, which amounted to 1.3 million people, which was not taken into account in the General Staff study, should be excluded from the number of losses. The losses of the USSR in the Second World War should be reduced by this amount. In percentage terms, the structure of USSR losses looks like this:
41% - aircraft losses (including prisoners of war)
35% - aircraft losses (without prisoners of war, i.e. direct combat)
39% - losses of the population of the occupied territories and the front line (45% with prisoners of war)
8% - rear population
6% - GULAG
6% - emigration outflow.
2. 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 lack of various reasons reliable source statistical materials on German losses.
According to Russian sources, Soviet troops 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured, of which 2,388,443 Germans were in NKVD camps. According to the calculations of German historians, there were about 3.1 million German military personnel alone in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. The discrepancy, as you can see, is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in estimates 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 Germans killed 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.
The vast majority of publications devoted to calculations of combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops are based on data from the central bureau (department) for recording losses of armed forces personnel, part of the German General Staff of the Supreme High Command. Moreover, while denying the reliability of Soviet statistics, German data are regarded as absolutely reliable. But upon closer examination, it turned out that the opinion about the high reliability of the information from this department was greatly exaggerated. Thus, the German historian R. Overmans, in the article “Human casualties of the Second World War in Germany,” came to the conclusion that “... the channels of information in the Wehrmacht do not reveal the degree of reliability that some authors attribute to them.” As an example, he reports that “... an official report from the casualty department at Wehrmacht headquarters dating back to 1944 documented that the losses that were incurred during the Polish, French and Norwegian campaigns, and the identification of which did not present any technical difficulties, were almost twice as high as originally reported." According to Müller-Hillebrand data, which many researchers believe, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 3.2 million people. Another 0.8 million died in captivity. However, according to a certificate from the OKH organizational department dated May 1, 1945, the ground forces alone, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), lost 4 million 617.0 thousand during the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945. people This is the latest report of German Armed Forces losses. In addition, since mid-April 1945, there was no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. The fact remains that in one of the last radio broadcasts with his participation, Hitler announced the figure of 12.5 million total losses of the German Armed Forces, of which 6.7 million are irrevocable, which is approximately twice the data of Müller-Hillebrand. This happened in March 1945. I don’t think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.
There is another statistics on losses - statistics on the burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites”, the total number of German soldiers located in recorded burial sites on 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 a starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, however, it also needs to be adjusted.
Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burials of Germans, and fought in the Wehrmacht big number soldiers of other nationalities: Austrians (270 thousand of them 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 dates back to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern European countries has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of newly discovered burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. Tentatively, we can assume that the number of graves of Wehrmacht soldiers newly discovered over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
Third, many graves of fallen Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil have disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried in such disappeared and unmarked graves.
Fourthly, these data do not include the burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops on the territory of Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, in the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died on German soil and in Western European countries in battles with the Red Army.
Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people)
Articles by Major General V. Gurkin are devoted to assessing Wehrmacht losses using the balance of the German armed forces during the war years. His calculated figures are given in the second column of the table. 4. Here two figures are noteworthy, characterizing the number of those mobilized into the Wehrmacht during the war, and the number of prisoners of war of Wehrmacht soldiers. The number of those mobilized during the war (17.9 million people) is taken from the book by B. Müller-Hillebrand “German Land Army 1933–1945,” Vol. At the same time, V.P. Bohar believes that more were drafted into the Wehrmacht - 19 million people.
The number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war was determined by V. Gurkin by summing up the prisoners of war taken by the Red Army (3.178 million people) and the Allied forces (4.209 million people) before May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is overestimated: it also included prisoners of war who were not Wehrmacht soldiers. The book “German Prisoners of War of the Second World War” by Paul Karel and Ponter Boeddeker reports: “...In June 1945, the Allied Command became aware that there were 7,614,794 prisoners of war and unarmed military personnel in the “camps, of which 4,209,000 by the time capitulations were already in captivity.” Among the indicated 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other people. For example, in the French camp of Vitril-Francois, among the prisoners, “the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70.” The authors write about captured Volksturm soldiers, about the organization by the Americans of special “children’s” camps, where captured twelve- to thirteen-year-old boys from the “Hitler Youth” and “Werewolf” were collected. There is even mention of placing disabled people in camps.
Overall, among the 4.2 million prisoners of war taken by the Allies before May 9, 1945, approximately 20–25% were not Wehrmacht soldiers. This means that the Allies had 3.1–3.3 million Wehrmacht soldiers in captivity.
The total number of Wehrmacht soldiers captured before the surrender was 6.3–6.5 million people.
In general, the demographic combat losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Soviet-German front amount to 5.2–6.3 million people, of which 0.36 million died in captivity, and irretrievable losses (including prisoners) 8.2 –9.1 million people It should also be noted that domestic historiography before recent years did not mention some data on the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war at the end of hostilities in Europe, apparently for ideological reasons, because it is much more pleasant to believe that Europe “fought” fascism than to realize that a certain and very large number of Europeans deliberately fought in the Wehrmacht. So, according to a note from General Antonov, on May 25, 1945. The Red Army captured 5 million 20 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers alone, of which 600 thousand people (Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, etc.) were released before August after filtration measures, and these prisoners of war were sent to camps The NKVD was not sent. Thus, the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in battles with the Red Army could be even higher (about 0.6 - 0.8 million people).
There is another way to “calculate” the losses of Germany and the Third Reich in the war against the USSR. Quite correct, by the way. Let’s try to “substitute” the figures relating to Germany into the methodology for calculating the total demographic losses of the USSR. Moreover, we will use ONLY official data from the German side. So, the population of Germany in 1939, according to Müller-Hillebrandt (p. 700 of his work, so beloved by supporters of the “filling up with corpses” theory), was 80.6 million people. At the same time, you and I, the reader, must take into account that this includes 6.76 million Austrians, and the population of the Sudetenland - another 3.64 million people. That is, the population of Germany proper within the borders of 1933 in 1939 was (80.6 - 6.76 - 3.64) 70.2 million people. We figured out these simple mathematical operations. Further: natural mortality in the USSR was 1.5% per year, but in Western European countries the mortality rate was much lower and amounted to 0.6 - 0.8% per year, Germany was no exception. However, the birth rate in the USSR was approximately the same proportion as it was in Europe, due to which the USSR had consistently high population growth throughout the pre-war years, starting from 1934.
We know about the results of the post-war population census in the USSR, but few people know that a similar population census was conducted by the Allied occupation authorities on October 29, 1946 in Germany. The census gave the following results:
Soviet occupation zone (without East Berlin): men - 7.419 million, women - 9.914 million, total: 17.333 million people.
All western zones of occupation (without western Berlin): men - 20.614 million, women - 24.804 million, total: 45.418 million people.
Berlin (all sectors of occupation), men - 1.29 million, women - 1.89 million, total: 3.18 million people.
The total population of Germany is 65,931,000 people.
Purely arithmetic operation 70.2 million - 66 million, seems to give a loss of only 4.2 million. However, everything is not so simple.
At the time of the population census in the USSR, the number of children born since the beginning of 1941 was about 11 million; the birth rate in the USSR during the war years fell sharply and amounted to only 1.37% per year of the pre-war population. The birth rate in Germany even in peacetime did not exceed 2% per year of the population. Suppose it fell only 2 times, and not 3, as in the USSR. That is, the natural population growth during the war years and the first post-war year was about 5% of the pre-war population, and in figures amounted to 3.5–3.8 million children. This figure must be added to the final figure for the population decline in Germany. Now the arithmetic is different: the total population decline is 4.2 million + 3.5 million = 7.7 million people. But this is not the final figure; To complete the calculations, we need to subtract from the population decline figure the figure of natural mortality during the war years and 1946, which is 2.8 million people (let’s take the figure 0.8% to make it “higher”). Now the total population loss in Germany caused by the war is 4.9 million people. Which, in general, is very “similar” to the figure for irretrievable losses of the Reich ground forces given by Müller-Hillebrandt. So did the USSR, which lost 26.6 million of its citizens in the war, really “fill up with corpses” of its enemy? Patience, dear reader, let’s bring our calculations to their logical conclusion.
The fact is that the population of Germany proper in 1946 grew by at least another 6.5 million people, and presumably even by 8 million! By the time of the 1946 census (according to German data, by the way, published back in 1996 by the “Union of Expellees”, and in total about 15 million Germans were “forcibly displaced”) only from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia were evicted to German territory 6.5 million Germans. About 1 - 1.5 million Germans fled from Alsace and Lorraine (unfortunately, there are no more accurate data). That is, these 6.5 - 8 million must be added to the losses of Germany itself. And these are “slightly” different numbers: 4.9 million + 7.25 million (arithmetic average of the number of Germans “expelled” to their homeland) = 12.15 million. Actually, this is 17.3% (!) of the German population in 1939. Well, that's not all!
Let me emphasize once again: the Third Reich is NOT JUST Germany! By the time of the attack on the USSR, the Third Reich “officially” included: Germany (70.2 million people), Austria (6.76 million people), the Sudetenland (3.64 million people), captured from Poland “Baltic corridor”, Poznan and Upper Silesia (9.36 million people), Luxembourg, Lorraine and Alsace (2.2 million people), and even Upper Corinthia cut off from Yugoslavia, a total of 92.16 million people.
The procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany
The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
The population in 1946 was 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
Emigration influx of 7.25 million people.
Total losses ((70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.
Every tenth German died! Every twelfth person was captured!!!
Conclusion
The irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War amount to 11.5 - 12.0 million irrevocably, with actual combat demographic losses of 8.7–9.3 million people. The losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Eastern Front amount to 8.0 - 8.9 million irrevocably, of which purely combat demographic 5.2-6.1 million people (including those who died in captivity) people. Plus, to the losses of the German Armed Forces proper on the Eastern Front, it is necessary to add the losses of the satellite countries, and this is no less than 850 thousand (including those who died in captivity) people killed and more than 600 thousand captured. Total 12.0 (largest number) million versus 9.05 (smallest number) million people.
A logical question: where is the “filling with corpses” that Western and now domestic “open” and “democratic” sources talk about so much? The percentage of dead Soviet prisoners of war, even according to the most gentle estimates, is no less than 55%, and of German prisoners, according to the largest, no more than 23%. Maybe the whole difference in losses is explained simply by the inhumane conditions in which the prisoners were kept?
The author is aware that these articles differ from the latest officially announced version of losses: losses of the USSR Armed Forces - 6.8 million military personnel killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing, German losses - 4.046 million military personnel killed, died from wounds, missing in action (including 442.1 thousand killed in captivity), losses of satellite countries - 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand captured. Irreversible losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people. The total losses of Germany are 11.2 million people. (for example on Wikipedia)
The issue with the civilian population is more terrible against the 14.4 (smallest number) million victims of the Second World War in the USSR - 3.2 million people (largest number) of victims on the German side. So who fought and with whom? It is also necessary to mention that without denying the Holocaust of the Jews, German society still does not perceive the “Slavic” Holocaust; if everything is known about the suffering of the Jewish people in the West (thousands of works), then they prefer to “modestly” remain silent about the crimes against the Slavic peoples.
I would like to end the article with a phrase from an unknown British officer. When he saw a column of Soviet prisoners of war being driven past the “international” camp, he said:
“I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they will do to Germany”Estimation of the loss ratio based on the results of a comparative analysis of losses in wars of the last two centuries
The application of the method of comparative analysis, the foundations of which were laid by Jomini, to assess the ratio of losses requires statistical data on wars of different eras. Unfortunately, more or less complete statistics are available only for wars of the last two centuries. Data on irretrievable combat losses in the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, summarized based on the results of the work of domestic and foreign historians, are given in Table. The last three columns of the table demonstrate the obvious dependence of the results of the war on the magnitude of relative losses (losses expressed as a percentage of the total army strength) - the relative losses of the winner in a war are always less than those of the vanquished, and this dependence has a stable, repeating character (it is valid for all types of wars), that is, it has all the signs of law. 
This law - let's call it the law of relative losses - can be formulated as follows: in any war, victory goes to the army that has fewer relative losses.
Note that the absolute numbers of irretrievable losses for the victorious side can be either less (Patriotic War of 1812, Russian-Turkish, Franco-Prussian wars) or greater than for the defeated side (Crimean, World War I, Soviet-Finnish) , but the relative losses of the winner are always less than those of the loser.
The difference between the relative losses of the winner and the loser characterizes the degree of convincingness of the victory. Wars with similar relative losses of the parties end in peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese War). In wars that end, like the Great Patriotic War, with the complete surrender of the enemy (Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the vanquished (by no less than 30%). In other words, the greater the losses, the larger the army must be in order to win a landslide victory. If the army's losses are 2 times greater than those of the enemy, then to win the war its strength must be at least 2.6 times greater than the size of the opposing army.
Now let’s return to the Great Patriotic War and see what human resources the USSR and Nazi Germany had during the war. Available data on the numbers of warring parties on the Soviet-German front are given in Table. 6.
From the table 6 it follows that the number of Soviet participants in the war was only 1.4–1.5 times larger than the total number of opposing troops and 1.6–1.8 times larger than the regular German army. In accordance with the law of relative losses, with such an excess in the number of participants in the war, the losses of the Red Army, which destroyed the fascist military machine, in principle could not exceed the losses of the armies of the fascist bloc by more than 10-15%, and the losses of the regular German troops- more than 25-30%. This means that the upper limit of the ratio of irretrievable combat losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht is the ratio of 1.3:1.
The figures for the ratio of irretrievable combat losses given in table. 6, do not exceed the upper limit of the loss ratio obtained above. This, however, does not mean that they are final and cannot be changed.
As new documents, statistical materials, and research results appear, the figures for losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht (Tables 1-5) may be clarified, changed in one direction or another, their ratio may also change, but it cannot be higher than 1.3:1 .
Sources:
1. Central Statistical Office of the USSR “Number, composition and movement of the population of the USSR” M 1965
2. “Population of Russia in the 20th century” M. 2001
3. Arntz “Human losses in the Second World War” M. 1957
4. Frumkin G. Population Changes in Europe since 1939 N.Y. 1951
5. Dallin A. German rule in Russia 1941–1945 N.Y.- London 1957
6. “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century” M. 2001
7. Polyan P. Victims of two dictatorships M. 1996.
8. Thorwald J. The Illusion. Soviet soldiers in Hitler,s Army N. Y. 1975
9. Collection of messages of the Extraordinary State Commission M. 1946
10. Zemskov. Birth of the second emigration 1944–1952 SI 1991 No. 4
11. Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
13 Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
14. Arntz. Human losses in the Second World War M. 1957; "International Affairs" 1961 No. 12
15. Biraben J. N. Population 1976.
16. Maksudov S. Population losses of the USSR Benson (Vt) 1989; “On the front-line losses of the SA during the Second World War” “Free Thought” 1993. No. 10
17. Population of the USSR over 70 years. Edited by Rybakovsky L. L. M 1988
18. Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov. "Population of the Soviet Union 1922–1991." M 1993
19. Sokolov B. “Novaya Gazeta” No. 22, 2005, “The Price of Victory -” M. 1991.
20. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
21. Müller-Hillebrand. “German Land Army 1933-1945” M. 1998
22. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
23. Gurkin V.V. About human losses on the Soviet-German front 1941–45. NiNI No. 3 1992
24. M. B. Denisenko. WWII in the demographic dimension "Eksmo" 2005
25. S. Maksudov. Population losses of the USSR during the Second World War. "Population and Society" 1995
26. Yu. Mukhin. If it weren't for the generals. "Yauza" 2006
27. V. Kozhinov. The Great Russian War. A series of lectures on the 1000th anniversary of the Russian wars. "Yauza" 2005
28. Materials from the newspaper “Duel”
29. E. Beevor “The Fall of Berlin” M. 2003
Literature
The largest wars in human history in terms of death toll.
The earliest war for which there is evidence from excavations took place approximately 14,000 years ago.
It is impossible to calculate the exact number of victims, since in addition to the death of soldiers on the battlefield, there is death civilians from the effects of weapons of war, as well as the death of civilians from the consequences of hostilities, for example from hunger, hypothermia, and disease.
Below is a list of the largest wars by number of victims.
The causes of the wars listed below are very different, but the number of victims exceeds millions.
1. Civil War in Nigeria (Biafra War of Independence). The death toll is more than 1,000,000 people.
The main conflict took place between the Nigerian government forces and the separatists of the Republic of Biafra. The self-proclaimed republic was supported by a number of European states, including France, Portugal, and Spain. Nigeria was supported by England and the USSR. The UN did not recognize the self-proclaimed republic. There were enough weapons and finances on both sides. The main victims of the war were the civilian population, who died from hunger and various diseases.
2. Imjin War. The death toll is more than 1,000,000 people.
1592 - 1598. Japan made 2 attempts to invade the Korean Peninsula in 1592 and 1597. Both invasions did not lead to the seizure of territory. The first Japanese invasion involved 220,000 soldiers and several hundred warships and transport ships.
The Korean troops were defeated, but at the end of 1592, China transferred part of the army to Korea, but was defeated; in 1593, China transferred another part of the army, which managed to achieve some success. Peace was concluded. The second invasion in 1597 was not successful for Japan and in 1598 hostilities were stopped.
3. Iran–Iraq War (death toll: 1 million)
1980-1988. The longest war of the 20th century. The war began with the invasion of Iraq on September 22, 1980. The war can be called positional - trench warfare, using small arms. Chemical weapons were widely used in the war. The initiative passed from one side to the other, so in 1980 the successful offensive of the Iraqi army was stopped, and in 1981 the initiative passed to the side of Iraq. On August 20, 1988, a truce was concluded.
4. Korean War (death toll: 1.2 million)
1950-1953. War between North and South Korea. The war began with North Korea's invasion of South Korea. Despite the support of North Korea by the Soviet Union, Stalin opposed the war because he feared that this conflict could lead to World War 3 and even nuclear war. On July 27, 1953, a ceasefire agreement was concluded.
5. Mexican Revolution (1,000,000 to 2,000,000 death toll)
1910-1917. The revolution fundamentally changed Mexico's culture and government policies. But at that time the population of Mexico was 15,000,000 people and losses during the revolution were significant. The preconditions for the revolution were very different, but as a result, at the cost of millions of victims, Mexico strengthened its sovereignty and weakened its dependence on the United States.
6. Conquests of Chaka's army. First half of the 19th century. (death toll 2,000,000)
The local ruler Chaka (1787 - 1828) founded the state of KwaZulu. He assembled and armed a large army that conquered disputed territories. The army plundered and devastated the tribes in the occupied territories. The victims were local Aboriginal tribes.
7. Goguryeo-Sui Wars (2,000,000 dead)
These wars include a series of wars between the Chinese Sui Empire and the Korean state of Goguryeo. The wars took place on the following dates:
· war of 598
· war of 612
· war of 613
· war of 614
Ultimately, the Koreans managed to repel the advance of Chinese troops and win.
The total number of casualties is much higher because civilian casualties are not taken into account.
8. Religious Wars in France (death toll 2,000,000 to 4,000,000)
The religious wars in France are also known as the Huguenot Wars. Occurred between 1562 and 1598. They arose on religious grounds as a result of the conflict between Catholics and Protestants (Huguenots). In 1998, the Edict of Nantes was adopted, which legalized freedom of religion. On August 24, 1572, Catholics staged a mass massacre of Protestants, first in Paris and then throughout France. This happened on the eve of the feast of St. Barthomey, this day went down in history as St. Bartholomew's Night, on that day more than 30,000 people died in Paris.
9. Second Congo War (killed from 2,400,000 to 5,400,000)
The deadliest war in the history of modern Africa, also known as the African World War and the Great African War. The war lasted from 1998 to 2003, involving 9 states and more than 20 separate armed groups. The main victims of the war were the civilian population, who died due to disease and hunger.
10. Napoleonic Wars (death toll 3,000,000 to 6,000,000)
The Napoleonic Wars were an armed conflict between France, led by Napoleon Bonaparte, and a number of European states, including Russia. Thanks to Russia, Napoleon’s army was defeated. Various sources provide different data on victims, but the largest number of scientists believe that the number of victims, including civilians, from famine and epidemics reaches 5,000,000 people.
11. Thirty Years' War (death toll 3,000,000 to 11,500,000)
1618 - 1648. The war began as a conflict between Catholics and Protestants in the collapsing Holy Roman Empire, but gradually a number of other states were drawn into it. The number of victims from the Thirty Years' War, according to most scientists, is 8,000,000 people.
12. Chinese Civil War (death toll 8,000,000)
The Chinese Civil War was fought between forces loyal to the Kuomintang (the political party of the Republic of China) and forces loyal to the Chinese Communist Party. The war began in 1927, and it essentially ended when major active fighting ceased in 1950. Although historians give the war's end date as December 22, 1936, the conflict ultimately led to the formation of two de facto states, the Republic of China (now known as Taiwan) and the People's Republic of China on the Chinese mainland. During the war, both sides carried out mass atrocities.
13. Russian Civil War (killed between 7,000,000 and 12,000,000)
1917 - 1922. The struggle for power of various political trends and armed groups. But mainly the two largest and most organized forces fought - the Red Army and the White Army. The Russian Civil War is considered the greatest national catastrophe in Europe in the entire history of its existence. The main victims of war are the civilian population.
14. Wars led by Tamerlane (casualty ranged from 8,000,000 to 20,000,000)
In the second half of the 14th century, Tamerlane led cruel, bloody conquests in Western, South, Central Asia, and in southern Russia. Tamerlane became the most powerful ruler in the Muslim world, conquering Egypt, Syria and Ottoman Empire. Historians believe that 5% of the entire population of the Earth died at the hands of his warriors.
15. Dungan uprising (number of victims from 8,000,000 to 20,400,000 people)
1862 - 1869. The Dungan uprising was an ethnic and religious war between the Han Chinese (a Chinese ethnic group originally from East Asia) and Chinese Muslims. The rebels against the existing government were led by the spiritual mentors of Xinjiao, who declared jihad infidel.
16. Conquest of the Americas (casualty ranged from 8,400,000 to 148,000,000)
1492 - 1691. During the 200 years of colonization of America, tens of millions of the native population were killed by European colonizers. However, there is no exact number of casualties, since there are no initial estimates of the original size of the Native American population. The conquest of America is the largest extermination of the indigenous population by other peoples in history.
17. An Lushan rebellion (casualty ranged from 13,000,000 to 36,000,000)
755 - 763 AD Revolt against the Tang Dynasty. According to scientists, up to two children of the entire Chinese population could have died during this conflict.
18. First World War (casualties: 18,000,000)
1914-1918. War between groups of states in Europe and their allies. The war claimed 11,000,000 military personnel who died directly during the fighting. 7,000,000 civilians died during the war.
19. Taiping Rebellion (casualties 20,000,000 - 30,000,000)
1850 - 1864. Peasant revolt in China. The Taiping Rebellion spread throughout China against the Manchu Qing dynasty. With the support of England and France, Qing troops brutally suppressed the rebels.
20. Manchu conquest of China (25,000,000 casualties)
1618 - 1683. The war of the Qing Dynasty, to conquer the territories of the Ming Dynasty Empire.
As a result of long wars and various battles, the Manchu dynasty managed to conquer almost all strategic territories of China. The war claimed tens of millions of human lives.
21. Sino-Japanese War (casualties 25,000,000 - 30,000,000)
1937 - 1945. War between the Republic of China and the Empire of Japan. Separate fighting began in 1931. The war ended with the defeat of Japan with the help of allied forces, mainly the USSR. The USA launched 2 nuclear strikes on Japan, destroying the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. September 9, 1945 government Republic of China accepted the surrender from the commander of Japanese forces in China, General Okamura Yasuji.
22. Wars of the Three Kingdoms (number of casualties 36,000,000 - 40,000,000 people)
220-280 AD Not to be confused with the War (of England, Scotland and Ireland between 1639 and 1651). The war of three states - Wei, Shu and Wu for complete power in China. Each side tried to unite China under its own leadership. The bloodiest period in Chinese history, which led to millions of victims.
23. Mongol conquests (casualties 40,000,000 - 70,000,000)
1206 - 1337. Raids across the territories of Asia and Eastern Europe with the formation of a state Golden Horde. The raids were distinguished by their cruelty. The Mongols spread the bubonic plague over vast territories, from which people died, having no immunity to this disease.
24. World War II (casualties 60,000,000 - 85,000,000)
The most brutal war in human history, when people were destroyed along racial and ethnic lines with the help of technical devices. The extermination of peoples was organized by the rulers of Germany and their allies, led by Hitler. Up to 100,000,000 troops fought on both sides of the war. With the decisive role of the USSR, Nazi Germany and its allies were defeated.
A pile of burnt remains of prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp. Outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin.
In the twentieth century, more than 250 wars and major military conflicts took place on our planet, including two world wars, but the bloodiest and most brutal in the history of mankind was the 2nd World War, unleashed by Nazi Germany and its allies in September 1939. For five years there was a massive extermination of people. Due to the lack of reliable statistics, the total number of casualties among military personnel and civilians of many states participating in the war has not yet been established. Estimates of the death toll vary widely across studies. However, it is generally accepted that more than 55 million people died during the Second World War. Almost half of all those killed were civilians. More than 5.5 million innocent people were killed in the fascist death camps Majdanek and Auschwitz alone. In total, 11 million citizens from all European countries were tortured in Hitler's concentration camps, including about 6 million Jews.
The main burden of the fight against fascism fell on the shoulders of the Soviet Union and its Armed Forces. This war became the Great Patriotic War for our people. The victory of the Soviet people in this war came at a high price. The total direct human losses of the USSR, according to the Population Statistics Department of the USSR State Statistics Committee and the Center for the Study of Population Problems at Moscow State University, amounted to 26.6 million. Of these, in the territories occupied by the Nazis and their allies, as well as during forced labor in Germany, 13,684,448 civilian Soviet citizens were deliberately destroyed and died. These are the tasks that Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler set for the commanders of the SS divisions “Totenkopf”, “Reich”, “Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler” on April 24, 1943 at a meeting in the building of Kharkov University: “I want to say and think that those to whom I I’m saying this, and they already understand that we must wage our war and our campaign with the thought of how best to take away human resources from the Russians - alive or dead? We do this when we kill them or capture them and force them to really work, when we try to take possession of an occupied area, and when we leave deserted territory to the enemy. Either they must be driven to Germany and become its labor force, or die in battle. And leaving people to the enemy so that he can have labor and military strength again is, by and large, absolutely wrong. This cannot be allowed to happen. And if this line of exterminating people is consistently pursued in the war, which I am convinced of, then the Russians will lose their strength and bleed to death already during this year and next winter.” The Nazis acted in accordance with their ideology throughout the war. Hundreds of thousands were tortured in concentration camps in Smolensk, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Lvov, Poltava, Novgorod, Orel Kaunas, Riga and many others. Soviet people. During the two years of occupation of Kyiv, tens of thousands of people of different nationalities were shot on its territory in Babi Yar - Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Gypsies. Including, on September 29 and 30, 1941 alone, Sonderkommando 4A executed 33,771 people. Heinrich Himmler gave cannibalistic instructions in his letter dated September 7, 1943 to the Supreme Fuhrer of the SS and the Ukrainian Police Prützmann: “Everything must be done so that when retreating from Ukraine not a single person, not a single head of cattle, not a single gram of grain, or meter of railway track, so that not a single house would survive, not a single mine would survive, and not a single well would remain unpoisoned. The enemy must be left with a completely burned and devastated country.” In Belarus, the occupiers burned over 9,200 villages, of which 619 together with their inhabitants. In total, during the occupation in the Belarusian SSR, 1,409,235 civilians died, another 399 thousand people were forcibly taken to forced labor in Germany, of which more than 275 thousand did not return home. In Smolensk and its environs, during the 26 months of occupation, the Nazis killed more than 135 thousand civilians and prisoners of war, more than 87 thousand citizens were taken to forced labor in Germany. When Smolensk was liberated in September 1943, only 20 thousand inhabitants remained. In Simferopol, Yevpatoria, Alushta, Karabuzar, Kerch and Feodosia from November 16 to December 15, 1941, Task Force D shot 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Crimean Cossacks, 824 Gypsies and 212 communists and partisans.
More than three million civilian Soviet citizens died from combat exposure in front-line areas, in besieged and besieged cities, from hunger, frostbite and disease. This is how the military diary of the command of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht for October 20, 1941 recommends acting against Soviet cities: “It is unacceptable to sacrifice the lives of German soldiers to save Russian cities from fires or to supply them at the expense of the German homeland. The chaos in Russia will become greater if the inhabitants of Soviet cities are inclined to flee into the interior of Russia. Therefore, before taking cities, it is necessary to break their resistance with artillery fire and force the population to flee. These measures should be communicated to all commanders." In Leningrad and its suburbs alone, about a million civilians died during the siege. In Stalingrad, in August 1942 alone, more than 40 thousand civilians died during barbaric, massive German air raids.
The total demographic losses of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 8,668,400 people. This figure includes military personnel killed and missing in action, those who died from wounds and illnesses, those who did not return from captivity, those who were executed by court verdicts, and those who died in disasters. Of these, more than 1 million Soviet soldiers and officers gave their lives during the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the brown plague. Including 600,212 people died for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia - 139,918 people, Hungary - 140,004 people, Germany - 101,961 people, Romania - 68,993 people, Austria - 26,006 people, Yugoslavia - 7,995 people, Norway - 3436 people. and Bulgaria - 977. During the liberation of China and Korea from Japanese invaders, 9963 Red Army soldiers died.
During the war years, according to various estimates, from 5.2 to 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war passed through German camps. Of this number, from 3.3 to 3.9 million people died, which is more than 60% of the total number of those in captivity. At the same time, from prisoners of war Western countries About 4% died in German captivity. In the verdict of the Nuremberg trials, the cruel treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was qualified as a crime against humanity.
It should be noted that the overwhelming number of Soviet military personnel missing and captured occurred in the first two years of the war. The sudden attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR put the Red Army, which was in the stage of deep reorganization, in an extremely difficult situation. The border districts lost most of their personnel in a short time. In addition, more than 500 thousand conscripts mobilized by military registration and enlistment offices never made it to their units. During the rapidly developing German offensive, they, lacking weapons and equipment, found themselves in enemy-occupied territory and, for the most part, were captured or died in the first days of the war. In the conditions of heavy defensive battles in the first months of the war, the headquarters were unable to properly organize the accounting of losses, and often simply did not have the opportunity to do this. Units and formations that were surrounded destroyed records of personnel and losses in order to avoid being captured by the enemy. Therefore, many who died in battle were listed as missing or were not counted at all. Approximately the same picture emerged in 1942 as a result of a number of offensive and defensive operations that were unsuccessful for the Red Army. By the end of 1942, the number of Red Army soldiers missing and captured had sharply decreased.
Thus, the large number of victims suffered by the Soviet Union is explained by the policy of genocide directed against its citizens by the aggressor, whose main goal was the physical destruction of most of the population of the USSR. In addition, military operations on the territory of the Soviet Union lasted more than three years and the front passed through it twice, first from west to east to Petrozavodsk, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and the Caucasus, and then in the opposite direction, which led to huge losses among civilians , which cannot be compared with similar losses in Germany, on whose territory the fighting took place for less than five months.
To establish the identity of military personnel who died during hostilities, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (NKO USSR) dated March 15, 1941 No. 138, the “Regulations on personal accounting of losses and burial of deceased personnel of the Red Army in war time" On the basis of this order, medallions were introduced in the form of a plastic pencil case with a parchment insert in two copies, the so-called address tape, into which personal information about the serviceman was entered. In the event of the death of a serviceman, it was assumed that one copy of the address tape would be seized by the funeral team and subsequently transferred to the unit headquarters to add the deceased to the list of casualties. The second copy was to be left in the medallion with the deceased. In reality, during the hostilities this requirement was practically not met. In most cases, the medallions were simply removed from the deceased by the funeral team, making subsequent identification of the remains impossible. The unjustified cancellation of medallions in units of the Red Army, in accordance with the order of the USSR NKO dated November 17, 1942 No. 376, led to an increase in the number of unidentified dead soldiers and commanders, which also added to the lists of missing persons.
At the same time, it must be taken into account that in the Red Army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War there was no centralized system of personal registration of military personnel (except for regular officers). Personal records of citizens called up for military service were kept at the level of military commissariats. There was no general database of personal information about military personnel called up and mobilized into the Red Army. In the future, this led to a large number of errors and duplication of information when accounting for irretrievable losses, as well as the appearance of “dead souls” when the biographical data of military personnel was distorted in reports of losses.
On the basis of the order of the NCO of the USSR dated July 29, 1941 No. 0254, maintaining personal records of losses in formations and units of the Red Army was entrusted to the Department for recording personal losses and the letter bureau of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Recruitment of Red Army Troops. In accordance with the order of the NPO of the USSR dated January 31, 1942 No. 25, the Department was reorganized into the Central Bureau for Personal Accounting of Losses of the Active Army of the Main Directorate of the Red Army. However, the order of the NCO of the USSR dated April 12, 1942 “On personal accounting of irretrievable losses at the fronts” stated that “As a result of untimely and incomplete submission of lists of losses by military units, there was a large discrepancy between the data of numerical and personal accounting of losses. At present, no more than one third of the actual number of those killed is on personal records. The personal records of missing and captured people are even further from the truth.” After a series of reorganizations and the transfer in 1943 of the accounting of personal losses of senior commanding personnel to the Main Personnel Directorate of NPOs of the USSR, the body responsible for personal accounting of losses was renamed the Directorate for Personal Accounting of Losses of Junior Commanders and Rank-and-Old Personnel and Pension Provision of Workers. The most intensive work on registering irreparable losses and issuing notices to relatives began after the end of the war and continued intensively until January 1, 1948. Considering that information about the fate of a large number of military personnel was not received from military units, in 1946 it was decided to take into account irretrievable losses based on submissions from military registration and enlistment offices. For this purpose, a door-to-door survey was conducted throughout the USSR to identify dead and missing military personnel who were not registered.
A significant number of military personnel recorded as dead and missing during the Great Patriotic War actually survived. So, from 1948 to 1960. it was found that 84,252 officers were mistakenly included in the lists of irretrievable losses and in fact remained alive. But this data was not included in the general statistics. How many privates and sergeants actually survived, but are included in the lists of irretrievable losses, is still not known. Although the Directive of the General Staff of the Ground Forces Soviet army dated May 3, 1959 No. 120 n/s obligated the military commissariats to carry out a reconciliation of the alphabetical books of registration of dead and missing military personnel with the registration data of military registration and enlistment offices in order to identify the military personnel who actually survived; its implementation has not been completed to this day. Thus, before placing on memorial plaques the names of Red Army soldiers who fell in battles for the village of Bolshoye Ustye on the Ugra River, the Historical and Archival Search Center “Fate” (IAPC “Fate”) in 1994 clarified the fates of 1,500 military personnel whose names were established based on reports from military units. Information about their fates was cross-checked through the card index of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF), military commissariats, local authorities at the place of residence of the victims and their relatives. At the same time, 109 military personnel were identified who survived or died at a later time. Moreover, the majority of the surviving soldiers were not re-registered in the TsAMO RF card file.
Also, during the compilation in 1994 of a database of names of military personnel who died in the area of the village of Myasnoy Bor, Novgorod region, the IAPTs "Fate" found that out of 12,802 military personnel included in the database, 1,286 people (more than 10%) were taken into account in reports about irreparable losses twice. This is explained by the fact that the first time the deceased was counted after the battle by the military unit in which he actually fought, and the second time by the military unit whose funeral team collected and buried the bodies of the dead. The database did not include military personnel missing in action in the area, which would likely have increased the number of duplicates. It should be noted that the statistical accounting of losses was carried out on the basis of digital data taken from the lists of names presented in the reports of military units, categorized by categories of losses. This ultimately led to a serious distortion of data on the irretrievable losses of Red Army soldiers in the direction of their increase.
In the course of work to establish the fates of Red Army servicemen who died and disappeared on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the IAPTs "Fate" identified several more types of duplication of losses. Thus, some officers are simultaneously registered as officers and enlisted personnel; military personnel of the border troops and the navy are partially registered, in addition to departmental archives, in the Central Aviation Administration of the Russian Federation.
Work to clarify data on the casualties suffered by the USSR during the war is still ongoing. In accordance with a number of instructions of the President of the Russian Federation and his Decree No. 37 of January 22, 2006 “Issues of perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland,” an interdepartmental commission was created in Russia to assess human and material losses during the Great Patriotic War. The main goal of the commission is by 2010 to finally determine the losses of the military and civilian population during the Great Patriotic War, as well as to calculate material costs for more than a four-year period of combat operations. The Russian Ministry of Defense is implementing the Memorial OBD project to systematize registration data and documents about fallen soldiers. The implementation of the main technical part of the project - the creation of the United Data Bank and the website http://www.obd-memorial.ru - is carried out by a specialized organization - the Electronic Archive Corporation. The main goal of the project is to enable millions of citizens to determine the fate or find information about their dead or missing relatives and friends, and determine the place of their burial. No other country in the world has such a data bank and free access to documents on the losses of the armed forces. In addition, enthusiasts from search teams are still working on the fields of past battles. Thanks to the soldiers' medallions they discovered, the fates of thousands of military personnel who went missing on both sides of the front were established.
Poland, the first to be subjected to Hitler's invasion during the 2nd World War, also suffered huge losses - 6 million people, the vast majority of the civilian population. The losses of the Polish armed forces amounted to 123,200 people. Including: September campaign of 1939 (invasion of Hitler’s troops into Poland) – 66,300 people; 1st and 2nd Polish armies in the East - 13,200 people; Polish troops in France and Norway in 1940 - 2,100 people; Polish troops in the British army - 7,900 people; Warsaw Uprising of 1944 – 13,000 people; Guerrilla warfare – 20,000 people. .
The allies of the Soviet Union in the anti-Hitler coalition also suffered significant losses during the fighting. Thus, the total losses of the armed forces of the British Commonwealth on the Western, African and Pacific fronts in killed and missing amounted to 590,621 people. Of these: – United Kingdom and colonies – 383,667 people; – undivided India – 87,031 people; – Australia – 40,458 people; – Canada – 53,174 people; – New Zealand – 11,928 people; – South Africa– 14,363 people.
In addition, during the fighting, about 350 thousand British Commonwealth troops were captured by the enemy. Of these, 77,744 people, including merchant seamen, were captured by the Japanese.
It must be taken into account that the role of the British armed forces in the 2nd World War was limited mainly to combat operations at sea and in the air. In addition, the United Kingdom lost 67,100 civilians.
The total losses of the armed forces of the United States of America in killed and missing on the Pacific and Western fronts were: 416,837 people. Of these, army losses amounted to 318,274 people. (including the Air Force lost 88,119 people), Navy - 62,614 people, Marine Corps - 24,511 people, US Coast Guard - 1,917 people, US Merchant Marine - 9,521 people.
In addition, 124,079 US military personnel (including 41,057 Air Force personnel) were captured by the enemy during combat operations. Of these, 21,580 military personnel were captured by the Japanese.
France lost 567,000 people. Of these, the French armed forces lost 217,600 people killed or missing. During the years of occupation, 350,000 civilians died in France.
More than a million French troops were captured by the Germans in 1940.
Yugoslavia lost 1,027,000 people in World War II. Including the losses of the armed forces amounted to 446,000 people and 581,000 civilians.
The Netherlands suffered 301,000 casualties, including 21,000 military personnel and 280,000 civilian deaths.
Greece lost 806,900 people killed. Including the armed forces lost 35,100 people, and the civilian population 771,800 people.
Belgium lost 86,100 people killed. Of these, military casualties amounted to 12,100 people and civilian casualties 74,000.
Norway lost 9,500 people, including 3,000 military personnel.
The 2nd World War, unleashed by the “Thousand Year” Reich, turned into a disaster for Germany itself and its satellites. The real losses of the German armed forces are still not known, although by the beginning of the war a centralized system of personal registration of military personnel had been created in Germany. Each German soldier immediately upon arrival at the reserve military unit was given a personal identification mark (die Erknnungsmarke), which was an oval-shaped aluminum plate. The badge consisted of two halves, on each of which were stamped: the personal number of the serviceman, the name of the military unit that issued the badge. Both halves of the personal identification mark easily broke off from each other due to the presence of longitudinal cuts in the major axis of the oval. When the body of a dead serviceman was found, one half of the sign was broken off and sent along with a casualty report. The other half remained with the deceased in case subsequent identification was necessary during reburial. The inscription and number on the personal identification badge were reproduced in all personal documents of the serviceman; the German command persistently sought this. Each military unit kept accurate lists of issued personal identification marks. Copies of these lists were sent to the Berlin Central Bureau for the Accounting of War Casualties and Prisoners of War (WAST). At the same time, during the defeat of a military unit during hostilities and retreat, it was difficult to carry out a complete personal accounting of dead and missing military personnel. For example, several Wehrmacht servicemen, whose remains were discovered during search operations carried out by the Historical and Archival Search Center "Fate" at the sites of former battles on the Ugra River in the Kaluga region, where intense fighting took place in March - April 1942, according to the WAST service, they were counted only as conscripts into the German army. There was no information about their further fate. They were not even listed as missing.
Starting with the defeat at Stalingrad, the German loss accounting system began to malfunction, and in 1944 and 1945, suffering defeat after defeat, the German command simply physically could not account for all its irretrievable losses. Since March 1945, their registration stopped altogether. Even earlier, on January 31, 1945, the Imperial Statistical Office stopped keeping records of the civilian population killed by air raids.
The position of the German Wehrmacht in 1944-1945 is a mirror reflection of the position of the Red Army in 1941-1942. Only we were able to survive and win, and Germany was defeated. At the end of the war, mass migration of the German population began, which continued after the collapse of the Third Reich. The German Empire within the borders of 1939 ceased to exist. Moreover, in 1949 Germany itself was divided into two independent states- GDR and FRG. In this regard, it is quite difficult to identify the real direct human losses of Germany in the 2nd World War. All studies of German losses are based on data from German documents from the war period, which cannot reflect real losses. They can only talk about registered losses, which is not at all the same thing, especially for a country that has suffered a crushing defeat. It should be taken into account that access to documents on military losses stored in WAST is still closed to historians.
According to incomplete available data, the irretrievable losses of Germany and its allies (killed, died of wounds, captured and missing) amounted to 11,949,000 people. This includes human losses of the German armed forces - 6,923,700 people, similar losses of Germany's allies (Hungary, Italy, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia) - 1,725,800 people, as well as losses of the civilian population of the Third Reich - 3,300,000 people - this those killed by bombings and hostilities, missing persons, victims of fascist terror.
The German civilian population suffered the heaviest casualties as a result of the strategic bombing of German cities by British and American aircraft. According to incomplete data, these victims exceed 635 thousand people. Thus, as a result of four air raids carried out by the Royal British Air Force from July 24 to August 3, 1943 on the city of Hamburg, using incendiary and high-explosive bombs, 42,600 people were killed and 37 thousand were seriously injured. Three raids by British and American strategic bombers on the city of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945 had even more catastrophic consequences. As a result of combined attacks with incendiary and high-explosive bombs on residential areas of the city, at least 135 thousand people died from the resulting fire tornado, incl. city residents, refugees, foreign workers and prisoners of war.
According to official data given in a statistical study of the group led by General G.F. Krivosheev, until May 9, 1945, the Red Army captured more than 3,777,000 enemy troops. 381 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and 137 thousand soldiers of the armies allied to Germany (except Japan) died in captivity, that is, only 518 thousand people, which is 14.9% of all recorded enemy prisoners of war. After the end of the Soviet-Japanese War, out of 640 thousand military personnel of the Japanese army captured by the Red Army in August - September 1945, 62 thousand people (less than 10%) died in captivity.
Italian losses in World War 2 amounted to 454,500 people, of which 301,400 died in the armed forces (of which 71,590 on the Soviet-German front).
According to various estimates, from 5,424,000 to 20,365,000 civilians became victims of Japanese aggression, including from famine and epidemics, in the countries of Southeast Asia and Oceania. Thus, civilian casualties in China are estimated from 3,695,000 to 12,392,000 people, in Indochina from 457,000 to 1,500,000 people, in Korea from 378,000 to 500,000 people. Indonesia 375,000 people, Singapore 283,000 people, Philippines - 119,000 people, Burma - 60,000 people, Pacific Islands - 57,000 people.
The losses of the Chinese armed forces in killed and wounded exceeded 5 million people.
331,584 military personnel from different countries died in Japanese captivity. Including 270,000 from China, 20,000 from the Philippines, 12,935 from the US, 12,433 from the UK, 8,500 from the Netherlands, 7,412 from Australia, 273 from Canada and 31 from New Zealand.
The aggressive plans of Imperial Japan were also costly. Its armed forces lost 1,940,900 military personnel killed or missing, including the army - 1,526,000 people and the navy - 414,900. 40,000 military personnel were captured. Japan's civilian population suffered 580,000 casualties.
Japan suffered the main civilian casualties from US Air Force attacks - the carpet bombing of Japanese cities at the end of the war and the atomic bombings in August 1945.
The American heavy bomber attack on Tokyo on the night of March 9–10, 1945, using incendiary and high-explosive bombs alone, killed 83,793 people.
The consequences of the atomic bombings were terrible when the US Air Force dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. The city of Hiroshima was subjected to atomic bombing on August 6, 1945. The crew of the plane that bombed the city included a representative of the British Air Force. As a result of the bomb explosion in Hiroshima, about 200 thousand people died or went missing, more than 160 thousand people were injured and exposed to radioactive radiation. The second atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945 on the city of Nagasaki. As a result of the bombing, 73 thousand people died or went missing in the city; later, another 35 thousand people died from radiation exposure and wounds. In total, more than 500 thousand civilians were injured as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The price paid by humanity in the 2nd World War for the victory over the madmen who were striving for world domination and trying to implement the cannibalistic racial theory turned out to be extremely high. The pain of loss has not yet subsided; the participants in the war and its eyewitnesses are still alive. They say that time heals, but not in this case. Currently, the international community is faced with new challenges and threats. The expansion of NATO to the east, the bombing and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the occupation of Iraq, aggression against South Ossetia and the genocide of its population, the policy of discrimination against the Russian population in the Baltic republics that are members of the European Union, international terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons threaten peace and security on the planet. Against this background, attempts are being made to rewrite history, subject to revisions enshrined in the UN Charter and other international legal documents, the results of the 2nd World War, to challenge the basic and irrefutable facts of the extermination of millions of innocent civilians, to glorify the Nazis and their henchmen, and also to denigrate the liberators from fascism. These phenomena are fraught chain reaction– the revival of theories of racial purity and superiority, the spread of a new wave of xenophobia.
Notes:
1. The Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.P. 430.
2. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 269
3. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.P. 430.
4. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945: Review volume. – /Editorial Board: E.M.Chekharin (chairman), V.V.Volodin, D.I.Karabanov (deputy chairmen), etc. – M.: Voenizdat, 1995.P. 396.
5. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945: Review volume. – /Editorial Board: E.M. Chekharin (chairman), V.V. Volodin, D.I. Karabanov (deputy chairmen), etc. - M.: Voenizdat, 1995. P. 407.
6. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 103.
7. Babi Yar. Book of memory/comp. I.M. Levitas. - K.: Publishing house "Steel", 2005. P.24.
8. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 – 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 232.
9. War, People, Victory: materials of international scientific research. conf. Moscow, March 15-16, 2005 / (responsible editor: M.Yu. Myagkov, Yu.A. Nikiforov); Institute of General history of the Russian Academy of Sciences. – M.: Nauka, 2008. Contribution of Belarus to the victory in the Great Patriotic War A.A. Kovalenya, A.M. Litvin. P. 249.
10. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 123.
11. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005. P. 430.
12. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “The War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 68.
13. Essays on the history of Leningrad. L., 1967. T. 5. P. 692.
14. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - statistical research. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001
15. Classified as classified: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study / V.M. Andronikov, P.D. Burikov, V.V. Gurkin and others; under general
Edited by G.K. Krivosheev. – M.: Military Publishing House, 1993. P. 325.
16. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.; Soviet prisoners of war in Germany. D.K. Sokolov. P. 142.
17. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001
18. Guide to search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association “War Memorials”. – 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. – M.: Lux-art LLP, 1997. P.30.
19. TsAMO RF, f.229, op. 159, d.44, l.122.
20. Military personnel of the Soviet state in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945. (reference and statistical materials). Under the general editorship of Army General A.P. Beloborodov. Military publishing house of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Moscow, 1963, p. 359.
21. “Report on losses and military damage caused to Poland in 1939 – 1945.” Warsaw, 1947. P. 36.
23. American Military Casualties and Burials. Wash., 1993. P. 290.
24. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 329.
27. American Military Casualties and Burials. Wash., 1993. P. 290.
28. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 329.
30. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 326.
36. Guide to search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association “War Memorials”. – 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. – M.: Lux-art LLP, 1997. P.34.
37. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. The largest scale bombing of the Second World War / Transl. from English L.A. Igorevsky. – M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2005. P.16.
38. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945...P.452.
39. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. The largest scale bombing of the Second World War / Transl. from English L.A. Igorevsky. – M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf. 2005. P.50.
40. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden... P.54.
41. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden... P.265.
42. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945….; Foreign prisoners of war in the USSR...S. 139.
44. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001.
46. History of the Second World War. 1939 – 1945: In 12 vols. M., 1973-1982. T.12. P. 151.
49. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden...P.11.
50. The Great Patriotic War 1941 – 1945: encyclopedia. – / ch. ed. M.M. Kozlov. Editorial Board: Yu.Ya. Barabash, P.A. Zhilin (Deputy Chief Editor, V.I. Kanatov (responsible Secretary) and others // Atomic weapons. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1985. P. 71 .
Martynov V. E.
Electronic scientific and educational journal “History”, 2010 T.1. Issue 2.
Before we go into explanations, statistics, etc., let’s immediately clarify what we mean. This article examines the losses suffered by the Red Army, the Wehrmacht and the troops of the satellite countries of the Third Reich, as well as the civilian population of the USSR and Germany, only in the period from 06/22/1941 until the end of hostilities in Europe (unfortunately, in the case of Germany this is practically unenforceable). The Soviet-Finnish war and the “liberation” campaign of the Red Army were deliberately excluded. The issue of losses of the USSR and Germany has been repeatedly raised in the press, there are endless debates on the Internet and on television, but researchers on this issue cannot come to a common denominator, because, as a rule, all arguments ultimately come down to emotional and politicized statements. This once again proves how painful this issue is in our country. The purpose of the article is not to “clarify” the final truth in this matter, but to attempt to summarize the various data contained in disparate sources. We will leave the right to draw conclusions to the reader.
With all the variety of literature and online resources about the Great Patriotic War, ideas about it largely suffer from a certain superficiality. The main reason for this is the ideological nature of this or that research or work, and it does not matter what kind of ideology it is - communist or anti-communist. The interpretation of such a grandiose event in the light of any ideology is obviously false.
It's especially sad to read Lately that the war of 1941–45 was just a clash between two totalitarian regimes, where one, they say, was completely consistent with the other. We will try to look at this war from the most justified point of view - geopolitical.
Germany in the 1930s, for all its Nazi “peculiarities,” directly and unswervingly continued that powerful desire for primacy in Europe, which for centuries determined the path of the German nation. Even the purely liberal German sociologist Max Weber wrote during World War I: “...we, 70 million Germans...are obliged to be an empire. We must do this, even if we are afraid of failure.” The roots of this aspiration of the Germans go back centuries; as a rule, the Nazis’ appeal to medieval and even pagan Germany is interpreted as a purely ideological event, as the construction of a myth mobilizing the nation.
From my point of view, everything is more complicated: it was the German tribes that created the empire of Charlemagne, and later on its foundation the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation was formed. And it was the “empire of the German nation” that created what is called “European civilization” and began the aggressive policy of the Europeans with the sacramental “Drang nach osten” - “onslaught to the east”, because half of the “original” German lands, up until the 8th–10th centuries, belonged to Slavic tribes. Therefore, giving the plan of war against the “barbaric” USSR the name “Plan Barbarossa” is not a coincidence. This ideology of German “primacy” as the fundamental force of “European” civilization was the original cause of two world wars. Moreover, at the beginning of World War II, Germany was able to truly (albeit briefly) realize its aspiration.
Invading the borders of one or another European country, German troops met resistance that was amazing in its weakness and indecisiveness. Short-term battles between the armies of European countries and the German troops invading their borders, with the exception of Poland, were more likely compliance with a certain “custom” of war than actual resistance.
Extremely much has been written about the exaggerated European “Resistance Movement,” which supposedly caused enormous damage to Germany and testified that Europe flatly rejected its unification under German leadership. But, with the exception of Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland and Greece, the scale of the Resistance is the same ideological myth. Undoubtedly, the regime established by Germany in the occupied countries did not suit large sections of the population. In Germany itself there was also resistance to the regime, but in neither case was it resistance of the country and the nation as a whole. For example, in the Resistance movement in France, 20 thousand people died in 5 years; Over the same 5 years, about 50 thousand Frenchmen died who fought on the side of the Germans, that is, 2.5 times more!
In Soviet times, the exaggeration of the Resistance was introduced into the minds as a useful ideological myth, saying that our fight with Germany was supported by all of Europe. In fact, as already mentioned, only 4 countries offered serious resistance to the invaders, which is explained by their “patriarchal” nature: they were alien not so much to the “German” order imposed by the Reich, but to the pan-European one, because these countries, in their way of life and consciousness, were largely not belonged to European civilization (although geographically included in Europe).
Thus, by 1941, almost all of continental Europe, one way or another, but without any major shocks, became part of the new empire with Germany at its head. Of the existing two dozen European countries, almost half - Spain, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Croatia - together with Germany entered the war against the USSR, sending their armed forces to the Eastern Front (Denmark and Spain without a formal announcement war). The rest of the European countries did not take part in military operations against the USSR, but one way or another “worked” for Germany, or, rather, for the newly formed European Empire. Misconceptions about events in Europe have made us completely forget about many of the real events of that time. So, for example, the Anglo-American troops under the command of Eisenhower in November 1942 in North Africa initially fought not with the Germans, but with a 200,000-strong French army, despite the quick “victory” (Jean Darlan, due to the clear superiority of the Allied forces, ordered the surrender of the French troops), 584 Americans, 597 British and 1,600 French were killed in action. Of course, these are miniscule losses on the scale of the entire Second World War, but they show that the situation was somewhat more complicated than is usually thought.
In battles on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured half a million prisoners, who were citizens of countries that did not seem to be at war with the USSR! It can be argued that these are “victims” of German violence, which drove them into Russian spaces. But the Germans were no more stupid than you and me and would hardly have allowed an unreliable contingent to the front. And while the next great and multinational army was winning victories in Russia, Europe was, by and large, on its side. Franz Halder, in his diary on June 30, 1941, wrote down Hitler's words: "European unity as a result of a joint war against Russia." And Hitler assessed the situation quite correctly. In fact, the geopolitical goals of the war against the USSR were carried out not only by the Germans, but by 300 million Europeans, united on various grounds - from forced submission to desired cooperation - but, one way or another, acting together. Only thanks to their reliance on continental Europe were the Germans able to mobilize 25% of the total population into the army (for reference: the USSR mobilized 17% of its citizens). In a word, the strength and technical equipment of the army that invaded the USSR was provided by tens of millions of skilled workers throughout Europe.
Why did I need such a long introduction? The answer is simple. Finally, we must realize that the USSR fought not only with the German Third Reich, but with almost all of Europe. Unfortunately, the eternal “Russophobia” of Europe was superimposed by the fear of the “terrible beast” - Bolshevism. Many volunteers from European countries who fought in Russia fought precisely against a communist ideology that was alien to them. No less of them were conscious haters of the “inferior” Slavs, infected with the plague of racial superiority. The modern German historian R. Rurup writes:
“Many documents of the Third Reich captured the image of the enemy - the Russian, deeply rooted in German history and society. Such views were characteristic even of those officers and soldiers who were not convinced or enthusiastic Nazis. They (these soldiers and officers) also shared ideas about “ "the eternal struggle" of the Germans... about the defense of European culture from the "Asian hordes", about the cultural vocation and right of domination of the Germans in the East. The image of an enemy of this type was widespread in Germany, it belonged to "spiritual values."
And this geopolitical consciousness was not unique to the Germans as such. After June 22, 1941, volunteer legions appeared by leaps and bounds, later turning into the SS divisions “Nordland” (Scandinavian), “Langemarck” (Belgian-Flemish), “Charlemagne” (French). Guess where they defended “European civilization”? That’s right, quite far from Western Europe, in Belarus, Ukraine, Russia. German professor K. Pfeffer wrote in 1953: “Most of the volunteers from Western European countries went to the Eastern Front because they saw this as a COMMON task for the entire West...” It was with the forces of almost all of Europe that the USSR was destined to face, and not just with Germany, and this clash was not “two totalitarianisms,” but “civilized and progressive” Europe with the “barbaric state of subhumans” that had frightened Europeans from the east for so long.
1. USSR losses
According to official data from the 1939 population census, 170 million people lived in the USSR - significantly more than in any other single country in Europe. The entire population of Europe (without the USSR) was 400 million people. By the beginning of World War II, the population of the Soviet Union differed from the population of future enemies and allies in its high mortality rate and low life expectancy. However, the high birth rate ensured significant population growth (2% in 1938–39). Also different from Europe was the youth of the USSR population: the proportion of children under 15 years old was 35%. It was this feature that made it possible to restore the pre-war population relatively quickly (within 10 years). The share of the urban population was only 32% (for comparison: in Great Britain - more than 80%, in France - 50%, in Germany - 70%, in the USA - 60%, and only in Japan it had the same value as in THE USSR).
In 1939, the population of the USSR increased noticeably after the entry into the country of new regions (Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltics, Bukovina and Bessarabia), whose population ranged from 20 to 22.5 million people. The total population of the USSR, according to a certificate from the Central Statistical Office as of January 1, 1941, was determined to be 198,588 thousand people (including the RSFSR - 111,745 thousand people). According to modern estimates, it was still smaller, and on June 1, 1941 it was 196.7 million people.
Population of some countries for 1938–40
USSR - 170.6 (196.7) million people;
Germany - 77.4 million people;
France - 40.1 million people;
Great Britain - 51.1 million people;
Italy - 42.4 million people;
Finland - 3.8 million people;
USA - 132.1 million people;
Japan - 71.9 million people.
By 1940, the population of the Reich had increased to 90 million people, and taking into account the satellites and conquered countries - 297 million people. By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, where 74.5 million people lived before the start of the Second World War. This once again emphasizes that despite Hitler’s assurances, the USSR did not have an advantage in human resources over the Third Reich.
During the entire Great Patriotic War in our country, 34.5 million people put on military uniforms. This amounted to about 70% of the total number of men aged 15–49 years in 1941. The number of women in the Red Army was approximately 500 thousand. The percentage of conscripts was higher only in Germany, but as we said earlier, the Germans covered the labor shortage at the expense of European workers and prisoners of war. In the USSR, such a deficit was covered by increased working hours and the widespread use of labor by women, children and the elderly.
For a long time, the USSR did not talk about direct irretrievable losses of the Red Army. In a private conversation, Marshal Konev in 1962 named the figure 10 million people, a famous defector - Colonel Kalinov, who fled to the West in 1949 - 13.6 million people. The figure of 10 million people was published in the French version of the book “Wars and Population” by B. Ts. Urlanis, a famous Soviet demographer. The authors of the famous monograph “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” (edited by G. Krivosheev) in 1993 and in 2001 published the figure of 8.7 million people; at the moment, this is precisely what is indicated in most reference literature. But the authors themselves state that it does not include: 500 thousand persons liable for military service, called up for mobilization and captured by the enemy, but not included in the lists of units and formations. Also, the almost completely dead militias of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other large cities are not taken into account. Currently, the most complete lists of irretrievable losses of Soviet soldiers amount to 13.7 million people, but approximately 12-15% of the records are repeated. According to the article “Dead Souls of the Great Patriotic War” (“NG”, 06.22.99), the historical and archival search center “Fate” of the “War Memorials” association established that due to double and even triple counting, the number of dead soldiers of the 43rd and 2nd of the Shock Armies in the battles studied by the center was overestimated by 10-12%. Since these figures refer to a period when the accounting of losses in the Red Army was not careful enough, it can be assumed that in the war as a whole, due to double counting, the number of Red Army soldiers killed was overestimated by approximately 5–7%, i.e. by 0.2– 0.4 million people
On the issue of prisoners. American researcher A. Dallin, based on archival German data, estimates their number at 5.7 million people. Of these, 3.8 million died in captivity, that is, 63%. Domestic historians estimate the number of captured Red Army soldiers at 4.6 million people, of which 2.9 million died. Unlike German sources, this does not include civilians (for example, railway workers), as well as seriously wounded people who remained on the battlefield occupied by the enemy, and subsequently died from wounds or were shot (about 470-500 thousand). The situation of prisoners of war was especially desperate in the first year of the war, when more than half of their total number (2.8 million people) was captured, and their labor had not yet been used in interests of the Reich. Open-air camps, hunger and cold, illness and lack of medicine, cruel treatment, mass executions of the sick and unable to work, and simply all those unwanted, primarily commissars and Jews. Unable to cope with the flow of prisoners and guided by political and propaganda motives, the occupiers in 1941 sent home over 300 thousand prisoners of war, mainly natives of western Ukraine and Belarus. This practice was subsequently discontinued.
Also, do not forget that approximately 1 million prisoners of war were transferred from captivity to the auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht. In many cases, this was the only chance for prisoners to survive. Again, most of these people, according to German data, tried to desert from Wehrmacht units and formations at the first opportunity. The local auxiliary forces of the German army included:
1) volunteer helpers (hivi)
2) order service (odi)
3) front auxiliary parts (noise)
4) police and defense teams (gema).
At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht operated: up to 400 thousand Khivi, from 60 to 70 thousand Odi, and 80 thousand in the eastern battalions.
Some of the prisoners of war and the population of the occupied territories made a conscious choice in favor of cooperation with the Germans. Thus, in the SS division “Galicia” there were 82,000 volunteers for 13,000 “places”. More than 100 thousand Latvians, 36 thousand Lithuanians and 10 thousand Estonians served in the German army, mainly in the SS troops.
In addition, several million people from the occupied territories were taken to forced labor in the Reich. The ChGK (Emergency State Commission) immediately after the war estimated their number at 4.259 million people. More recent studies give a figure of 5.45 million people, of whom 850-1000 thousand died.
Estimates of direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK data from 1946.
RSFSR - 706 thousand people.
Ukrainian SSR - 3256.2 thousand people.
BSSR - 1547 thousand people.
Lit. SSR - 437.5 thousand people.
Lat. SSR - 313.8 thousand people.
Est. SSR - 61.3 thousand people.
Mold. USSR - 61 thousand people.
Karelo-Fin. SSR - 8 thousand people. (10)
Such high figures for Lithuania and Latvia are explained by the fact that there were death camps and concentration camps for prisoners of war there. The population losses in the front line during the fighting were also enormous. However, it is virtually impossible to determine them. The minimum acceptable value is the number of deaths in besieged Leningrad, i.e. 800 thousand people. In 1942, the infant mortality rate in Leningrad reached 74.8%, that is, out of 100 newborns, about 75 babies died!
Another important question. How many former Soviet citizens chose not to return to the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War? According to Soviet archival data, the number of the “second emigration” was 620 thousand people. 170,000 are Germans, Bessarabians and Bukovinians, 150,000 are Ukrainians, 109,000 are Latvians, 230,000 are Estonians and Lithuanians, and only 32,000 are Russians. Today this estimate seems clearly underestimated. According to modern data, emigration from the USSR amounted to 1.3 million people. Which gives us a difference of almost 700 thousand, previously attributed to irreversible population losses.
So, what are the losses of the Red Army, the civilian population of the USSR and the general demographic losses in the Great Patriotic War. For twenty years, the main estimate was the far-fetched figure of 20 million people by N. Khrushchev. In 1990, as a result of the work of a special commission of the General Staff and the State Statistics Committee of the USSR, a more reasonable estimate of 26.6 million people appeared. At the moment it is official. Noteworthy is the fact that back in 1948, the American sociologist Timashev gave an assessment of the USSR's losses in the war, which practically coincided with the assessment of the General Staff commission. Maksudov’s assessment made in 1977 also coincides with the data of the Krivosheev Commission. According to the commission of G.F. Krivosheev.
So let's summarize:
Post-war estimate of Red Army losses: 7 million people.
Timashev: Red Army - 12.2 million people, civilian population 14.2 million people, direct human losses 26.4 million people, total demographic 37.3 million.
Arntz and Khrushchev: direct human: 20 million people.
Biraben and Solzhenitsyn: Red Army 20 million people, civilian population 22.6 million people, direct human 42.6 million, general demographic 62.9 million people.
Maksudov: Red Army - 11.8 million people, civilian population 12.7 million people, direct casualties 24.5 million people. It is impossible not to make a reservation that S. Maksudov (A.P. Babenyshev, Harvard University USA) determined the purely combat losses of the spacecraft at 8.8 million people
Rybakovsky: direct human 30 million people.
Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov (General Staff, Krivosheev Commission): direct combat losses of the Red Army 8.7 million (11,994 including prisoners of war) people. Civilian population (including prisoners of war) 17.9 million people. Direct human losses: 26.6 million people.
B. Sokolov: losses of the Red Army - 26 million people
M. Harrison: total losses of the USSR - 23.9 - 25.8 million people.
What do we have in the “dry” residue? We will be guided by simple logic.
The estimate of the losses of the Red Army given in 1947 (7 million) does not inspire confidence, since not all calculations, even with the imperfections of the Soviet system, were completed.
Khrushchev's assessment is also not confirmed. On the other hand, “Solzhenitsyn’s” 20 million casualties in the army alone, or even 44 million, are just as unfounded (without denying some of A. Solzhenitsyn’s talent as a writer, all the facts and figures in his works are not confirmed by a single document and it’s difficult to understand where he comes from took - impossible).
Boris Sokolov is trying to explain to us that the losses of the USSR armed forces alone amounted to 26 million people. He is guided by the indirect method of calculations. The losses of the officers of the Red Army are known quite accurately, according to Sokolov this is 784 thousand people (1941–44). Mr. Sokolov, referring to the average statistical losses of Wehrmacht officers on the Eastern Front of 62,500 people (1941–44), and data from Müller-Hillebrandt , displays the ratio of losses of the officer corps to the rank and file of the Wehrmacht as 1:25, that is, 4%. And, without hesitation, he extrapolates this technique to the Red Army, receiving his 26 million irretrievable losses. However, upon closer examination, this approach turns out to be initially false. Firstly, 4% of officer losses is not an upper limit, for example, in the Polish campaign, the Wehrmacht lost 12% of officers to the total losses of the Armed Forces. Secondly, it would be useful for Mr. Sokolov to know that with the regular strength of the German infantry regiment being 3049 officers, there were 75 officers, that is, 2.5%. And in the Soviet infantry regiment, with a strength of 1582 people, there are 159 officers, i.e. 10%. Thirdly, appealing to the Wehrmacht, Sokolov forgets that the more combat experience in the troops, the fewer losses among officers. In the Polish campaign, the loss of German officers was −12%, in the French campaign - 7%, and on the Eastern Front already 4%.
The same can be applied to the Red Army: if at the end of the war the losses of officers (not according to Sokolov, but according to statistics) were 8-9%, then at the beginning of the Second World War they could have been 24%. It turns out, like a schizophrenic, everything is logical and correct, only the initial premise is incorrect. Why did we dwell on Sokolov’s theory in such detail? Yes, because Mr. Sokolov very often presents his figures in the media.
Taking into account the above, discarding the obviously underestimated and overestimated estimates of losses, we get: Krivosheev Commission - 8.7 million people (with prisoners of war 11.994 million, 2001 data), Maksudov - losses are even slightly lower than the official ones - 11.8 million people. (1977−93), Timashev - 12.2 million people. (1948). This can also include the opinion of M. Harrison, with the level of total losses indicated by him, the losses of the army should fit into this period. These data were obtained using different calculation methods, since Timashev and Maksudov, respectively, did not have access to the archives of the USSR and Russian Defense Ministry. It seems that the losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War lie very close to such a “heaped” group of results. Let's not forget that these figures include 2.6–3.2 million destroyed Soviet prisoners of war.
In conclusion, we should probably agree with Maksudov’s opinion that the emigration outflow, which amounted to 1.3 million people, which was not taken into account in the General Staff study, should be excluded from the number of losses. The losses of the USSR in the Second World War should be reduced by this amount. In percentage terms, the structure of USSR losses looks like this:
41% - aircraft losses (including prisoners of war)
35% - aircraft losses (without prisoners of war, i.e. direct combat)
39% - losses of the population of the occupied territories and the front line (45% with prisoners of war)
8% - rear population
6% - GULAG
6% - emigration outflow.
2. 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 initial statistical materials 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 captured 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in NKVD camps. According to the calculations of German historians, there were about 3.1 million German military personnel alone in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. The discrepancy, as you can see, is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in estimates 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 Germans killed 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.
The vast majority of publications devoted to calculations of combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops are based on data from the central bureau (department) for recording losses of armed forces personnel, part of the German General Staff of the Supreme High Command. Moreover, while denying the reliability of Soviet statistics, German data are regarded as absolutely reliable. But upon closer examination, it turned out that the opinion about the high reliability of the information from this department was greatly exaggerated. Thus, the German historian R. Overmans, in the article “Human casualties of the Second World War in Germany,” came to the conclusion that “... the channels of information in the Wehrmacht do not reveal the degree of reliability that some authors attribute to them.” As an example, he reports that “... an official report from the casualty department at Wehrmacht headquarters dating back to 1944 documented that the losses that were incurred during the Polish, French and Norwegian campaigns, and the identification of which did not present any technical difficulties, were almost twice as high as originally reported." According to Müller-Hillebrand data, which many researchers believe, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 3.2 million people. Another 0.8 million died in captivity. However, according to a certificate from the OKH organizational department dated May 1, 1945, the ground forces alone, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), lost 4 million 617.0 thousand during the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945. people This is the latest report of German Armed Forces losses. In addition, since mid-April 1945, there was no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. The fact remains that in one of the last radio broadcasts with his participation, Hitler announced the figure of 12.5 million total losses of the German Armed Forces, of which 6.7 million are irrevocable, which is approximately twice the data of Müller-Hillebrand. This happened in March 1945. I don’t think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.
In general, the information from the Wehrmacht loss department cannot serve as the initial data for calculating the losses of the German Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War.
There is another statistics on losses - statistics on the burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites”, the total number of German soldiers located in recorded burial sites on 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 a starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, however, it also needs to be adjusted.
Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burials of Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (270 thousand of them 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 dates back to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern European countries has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, created in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence it transferred information about the burials of 400 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Association for the Care of Military Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they had already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of newly discovered burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. Tentatively, we can assume that the number of graves of Wehrmacht soldiers newly discovered over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
Thirdly, many graves of dead Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil have disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried in such disappeared and unmarked graves.
Fourthly, these data do not include the burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops on the territory of Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, in the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died on German soil and in Western European countries in battles with the Red Army.
Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people)
Articles by Major General V. Gurkin are devoted to assessing Wehrmacht losses using the balance of the German armed forces during the war years. His calculated figures are given in the second column of the table. 4. Here two figures are noteworthy, characterizing the number of those mobilized into the Wehrmacht during the war, and the number of prisoners of war of Wehrmacht soldiers. The number of those mobilized during the war (17.9 million people) is taken from the book by B. Müller-Hillebrand “German Land Army 1933–1945,” Vol. At the same time, V.P. Bohar believes that more were drafted into the Wehrmacht - 19 million people.
The number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war was determined by V. Gurkin by summing up the prisoners of war taken by the Red Army (3.178 million people) and the Allied forces (4.209 million people) before May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is overestimated: it also included prisoners of war who were not Wehrmacht soldiers. The book “German Prisoners of War of the Second World War” by Paul Karel and Ponter Boeddeker reports: “...In June 1945, the Allied Command became aware that there were 7,614,794 prisoners of war and unarmed military personnel in the “camps, of which 4,209,000 by the time capitulation were already in captivity." Among the indicated 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other people. For example, in the French camp of Vitril-Francois, among the prisoners, “the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70.” The authors write about captured Volksturm soldiers, about the organization by the Americans of special “children’s” camps, where captured twelve- to thirteen-year-old boys from the “Hitler Youth” and “Werewolf” were collected. Mention is made of placing even disabled people in camps. In the article “My path to Ryazan captivity” (“ Map" No. 1, 1992) Heinrich Schippmann noted:
“It should be taken into account that at first, although predominantly, but not exclusively, not only Wehrmacht soldiers or SS troops were taken prisoner, but also Air Force service personnel, members of the Volkssturm or paramilitary unions (the Todt organization, the Service labor of the Reich", etc.) Among them were not only men, but also women - and not only Germans, but also the so-called "Volksdeutsche" and "aliens" - Croats, Serbs, Cossacks, Northern and Western Europeans, who "fought in any way on the side of the German Wehrmacht or were assigned to it. In addition, during the occupation of Germany in 1945, anyone who wore a uniform was arrested, even if it was a question of the head of a railway station."
Overall, among the 4.2 million prisoners of war taken by the Allies before May 9, 1945, approximately 20–25% were not Wehrmacht soldiers. This means that the Allies had 3.1–3.3 million Wehrmacht soldiers in captivity.
The total number of Wehrmacht soldiers captured before the surrender was 6.3–6.5 million people.
In general, the demographic combat losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Soviet-German front amount to 5.2–6.3 million people, of which 0.36 million died in captivity, and irretrievable losses (including prisoners) 8.2 –9.1 million people It should also be noted that until recent years, Russian historiography did not mention some data on the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war at the end of hostilities in Europe, apparently for ideological reasons, because it is much more pleasant to believe that Europe “fought” fascism than to realize that that a certain and very large number of Europeans deliberately fought in the Wehrmacht. So, according to a note from General Antonov, on May 25, 1945. The Red Army captured 5 million 20 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers alone, of which 600 thousand people (Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, etc.) were released before August after filtration measures, and these prisoners of war were sent to camps The NKVD was not sent. Thus, the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in battles with the Red Army could be even higher (about 0.6 - 0.8 million people).
There is another way to “calculate” the losses of Germany and the Third Reich in the war against the USSR. Quite correct, by the way. Let’s try to “substitute” the figures relating to Germany into the methodology for calculating the total demographic losses of the USSR. Moreover, we will use ONLY official data from the German side. So, the population of Germany in 1939, according to Müller-Hillebrandt (p. 700 of his work, so beloved by supporters of the “filling up with corpses” theory), was 80.6 million people. At the same time, you and I, the reader, must take into account that this includes 6.76 million Austrians, and the population of the Sudetenland - another 3.64 million people. That is, the population of Germany proper within the borders of 1933 in 1939 was (80.6 - 6.76 - 3.64) 70.2 million people. We figured out these simple mathematical operations. Further: natural mortality in the USSR was 1.5% per year, but in Western European countries the mortality rate was much lower and amounted to 0.6 - 0.8% per year, Germany was no exception. However, the birth rate in the USSR was approximately the same proportion as it was in Europe, due to which the USSR had consistently high population growth throughout the pre-war years, starting from 1934.
We know about the results of the post-war population census in the USSR, but few people know that a similar population census was conducted by the Allied occupation authorities on October 29, 1946 in Germany. The census gave the following results:
Soviet occupation zone (without East Berlin): men - 7.419 million, women - 9.914 million, total: 17.333 million people.
All western zones of occupation (without western Berlin): men - 20.614 million, women - 24.804 million, total: 45.418 million people.
Berlin (all sectors of occupation), men - 1.29 million, women - 1.89 million, total: 3.18 million people.
The total population of Germany is 65,931,000 people. A purely arithmetic operation of 70.2 million - 66 million seems to give a loss of only 4.2 million. However, everything is not so simple.
At the time of the population census in the USSR, the number of children born since the beginning of 1941 was about 11 million; the birth rate in the USSR during the war years fell sharply and amounted to only 1.37% per year of the pre-war population. The birth rate in Germany even in peacetime did not exceed 2% per year of the population. Suppose it fell only 2 times, and not 3, as in the USSR. That is, the natural population growth during the war years and the first post-war year was about 5% of the pre-war population, and in figures amounted to 3.5–3.8 million children. This figure must be added to the final figure for the population decline in Germany. Now the arithmetic is different: the total population decline is 4.2 million + 3.5 million = 7.7 million people. But this is not the final figure; To complete the calculations, we need to subtract from the population decline figure the figure of natural mortality during the war years and 1946, which is 2.8 million people (let’s take the figure 0.8% to make it “higher”). Now the total population loss in Germany caused by the war is 4.9 million people. Which, in general, is very “similar” to the figure for irretrievable losses of the Reich ground forces given by Müller-Hillebrandt. So did the USSR, which lost 26.6 million of its citizens in the war, really “fill up with corpses” of its enemy? Patience, dear reader, let’s bring our calculations to their logical conclusion.
The fact is that the population of Germany proper in 1946 grew by at least another 6.5 million people, and presumably even by 8 million! By the time of the 1946 census (according to German data, by the way, published back in 1996 by the “Union of Expellees”, and in total about 15 million Germans were “forcibly displaced”) only from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia were evicted to German territory 6.5 million Germans. About 1 - 1.5 million Germans fled from Alsace and Lorraine (unfortunately, there are no more accurate data). That is, these 6.5 - 8 million must be added to the losses of Germany itself. And these are “slightly” different numbers: 4.9 million + 7.25 million (arithmetic average of the number of Germans “expelled” to their homeland) = 12.15 million. Actually, this is 17.3% (!) of the German population in 1939. Well, that's not all!
Let me emphasize once again: the Third Reich is NOT JUST Germany! By the time of the attack on the USSR, the Third Reich “officially” included: Germany (70.2 million people), Austria (6.76 million people), the Sudetenland (3.64 million people), captured from Poland “Baltic corridor”, Poznan and Upper Silesia (9.36 million people), Luxembourg, Lorraine and Alsace (2.2 million people), and even Upper Corinthia cut off from Yugoslavia, a total of 92.16 million people.
These are all territories that were officially included in the Reich, and whose inhabitants were subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht. We will not take into account the “Imperial Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” and the “Government General of Poland” here (although ethnic Germans were drafted into the Wehrmacht from these territories). And ALL of these territories remained under Nazi control until the beginning of 1945. Now we get the “final calculation” if we take into account that Austria’s losses are known to us and amount to 300,000 people, that is, 4.43% of the country’s population (which in %, of course, is much less than that of Germany). It would not be much of a stretch to assume that the population of the remaining regions of the Reich suffered the same percentage losses as a result of the war, which would give us another 673,000 people. As a result, the total human losses of the Third Reich are 12.15 million + 0.3 million + 0.6 million people. = 13.05 million people. This “number” is already more like the truth. Taking into account the fact that these losses include 0.5 - 0.75 million dead civilians (and not 3.5 million), we obtain the losses of the Third Reich Armed Forces equal to 12.3 million people irrevocably. If we consider that even the Germans admit the losses of their Armed Forces in the East at 75-80% of all losses on all fronts, then the Reich Armed Forces lost about 9.2 million (75% of 12.3 million) in battles with the Red Army. person irrevocably. Of course, not all of them were killed, but having data on those released (2.35 million), as well as prisoners of war who died in captivity (0.38 million), we can say quite accurately that those actually killed and those who died from wounds and in captivity, and also missing, but not captured (read “killed”, which is 0.7 million!), the Armed Forces of the Third Reich lost approximately 5.6-6 million people during the campaign to the East. According to these calculations, the irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces and the Third Reich (without allies) are correlated as 1.3:1, and the combat losses of the Red Army (data from the team led by Krivosheev) and the Reich Armed Forces as 1.6:1.
The procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany
The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
The population in 1946 was 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
Emigration influx of 7.25 million people.
Total losses ((70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.
Every tenth German died! Every twelfth person was captured!!!
Conclusion
In this article, the author does not pretend to seek out the “golden ratio” and “ultimate truth”. The data presented in it are available in the scientific literature and on the Internet. It’s just that they are all scattered and scattered across various sources. The author expresses his personal opinion: you cannot trust German and Soviet sources during the war, because your losses are underestimated by at least 2–3 times, while the enemy’s losses are exaggerated by the same 2–3 times. It is even more strange that German sources, unlike Soviet ones, are considered to be completely “reliable”, although, as a simple analysis shows, this is not the case.
The irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War amount to 11.5 - 12.0 million irrevocably, with actual combat demographic losses of 8.7–9.3 million people. The losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Eastern Front amount to 8.0 - 8.9 million irrevocably, of which purely combat demographic 5.2-6.1 million people (including those who died in captivity) people. Plus, to the losses of the German Armed Forces proper on the Eastern Front, it is necessary to add the losses of the satellite countries, and this is no less than 850 thousand (including those who died in captivity) people killed and more than 600 thousand captured. Total 12.0 (largest number) million versus 9.05 (smallest number) million people.
A logical question: where is the “filling with corpses” that Western and now domestic “open” and “democratic” sources talk about so much? The percentage of dead Soviet prisoners of war, even according to the most gentle estimates, is no less than 55%, and of German prisoners, according to the largest, no more than 23%. Maybe the whole difference in losses is explained simply by the inhumane conditions in which the prisoners were kept?
The author is aware that these articles differ from the latest officially announced version of losses: losses of the USSR Armed Forces - 6.8 million military personnel killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing, German losses - 4.046 million military personnel killed, died from wounds, missing in action (including 442.1 thousand killed in captivity), losses of satellite countries - 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand captured. Irreversible losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people. The total losses of Germany are 11.2 million people. (for example on Wikipedia)
The issue with the civilian population is more terrible against the 14.4 (smallest number) million victims of the Second World War in the USSR - 3.2 million people (largest number) of victims on the German side. So who fought and with whom? It is also necessary to mention that without denying the Holocaust of the Jews, German society still does not perceive the “Slavic” Holocaust; if everything is known about the suffering of the Jewish people in the West (thousands of works), then they prefer to “modestly” remain silent about the crimes against the Slavic peoples. The non-participation of our researchers, for example, in the all-German “dispute of historians” only aggravates this situation.
I would like to end the article with a phrase from an unknown British officer. When he saw a column of Soviet prisoners of war being driven past the “international” camp, he said: “I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they will do to Germany.”
The article was written in 2007. Since then, the author has not changed his opinion. That is, there was no “stupid” inundation of corpses on the part of the Red Army, however, there was no special numerical superiority. This is also proven by the recent emergence of a large layer of Russian “oral history,” that is, memoirs of ordinary participants in the Second World War. For example, Elektron Priklonsky, the author of “The Diary of a Self-propelled Gun,” mentions that throughout the war he saw two “death fields”: when our troops attacked in the Baltic states and came under flanking fire from machine guns, and when the Germans broke through from the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky pocket. This is an isolated example, but nevertheless, it is valuable because it is a wartime diary, and therefore quite objective.
Estimation of the loss ratio based on the results of a comparative analysis of losses in wars of the last two centuries
The application of the method of comparative analysis, the foundations of which were laid by Jomini, to assess the ratio of losses requires statistical data on wars of different eras. Unfortunately, more or less complete statistics are available only for wars of the last two centuries. Data on irretrievable combat losses in the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, summarized based on the results of the work of domestic and foreign historians, are given in Table. The last three columns of the table demonstrate the obvious dependence of the results of the war on the magnitude of relative losses (losses expressed as a percentage of the total army strength) - the relative losses of the winner in a war are always less than those of the vanquished, and this dependence has a stable, repeating character (it is valid for all types of wars), that is, it has all the signs of law.
This law - let's call it the law of relative losses - can be formulated as follows: in any war, victory goes to the army that has fewer relative losses.
Note that the absolute numbers of irretrievable losses for the victorious side can be either less (Patriotic War of 1812, Russian-Turkish, Franco-Prussian wars) or greater than for the defeated side (Crimean, World War I, Soviet-Finnish) , but the relative losses of the winner are always less than those of the loser.
The difference between the relative losses of the winner and the loser characterizes the degree of convincingness of the victory. Wars with similar relative losses of the parties end in peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese War). In wars that end, like the Great Patriotic War, with the complete surrender of the enemy (Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the vanquished (by no less than 30%). In other words, the greater the losses, the larger the army must be in order to win a landslide victory. If the army's losses are 2 times greater than those of the enemy, then to win the war its strength must be at least 2.6 times greater than the size of the opposing army.
Now let’s return to the Great Patriotic War and see what human resources the USSR and Nazi Germany had during the war. Available data on the numbers of warring parties on the Soviet-German front are given in Table. 6.
From the table 6 it follows that the number of Soviet participants in the war was only 1.4–1.5 times larger than the total number of opposing troops and 1.6–1.8 times larger than the regular German army. In accordance with the law of relative losses, with such an excess in the number of participants in the war, the losses of the Red Army, which destroyed the fascist military machine, in principle could not exceed the losses of the armies of the fascist bloc by more than 10-15%, and the losses of regular German troops by more than 25-30 %. This means that the upper limit of the ratio of irretrievable combat losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht is the ratio of 1.3:1.
The figures for the ratio of irretrievable combat losses given in table. 6, do not exceed the upper limit of the loss ratio obtained above. This, however, does not mean that they are final and cannot be changed. As new documents, statistical materials, and research results appear, the figures for the losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht (Tables 1-5) may be clarified, change in one direction or another, their ratio may also change, but it cannot be higher than the value of 1.3 :1.
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