Military casualties. Losses in the Great Patriotic War
USSR losses
.
Taking into account the latest archival data, employees of the General Staff of the Russian Armed Forces provide information (1998) about those killed during the four years of war:
irretrievable losses of the Red (Soviet) Army amounted to 11,944,100 people,
including deaths 6 885 000
person, missing, captured 4 559 000
. Total Soviet Union
lost
26,600,000 citizens
.
Total in combat operations during the war 34,476,700 participated
Soviet military personnel.
German losses.
During three years of war (June 1941 - June 1944) casualties in Germany amounted to 6.5 million
killed, wounded and missing. It suffered its greatest losses during the war against the USSR. In the summer of 1941 he died 742 thousand
German soldiers, while in the war against Poland, France, England, Norway, Belgium, Holland, Denmark and the Balkan countries, Germany lost 418,805 soldiers
.
Destructions in the USSR.
Destroyed in the USSR 1710 cities
, more 70 thousand villages
, 32 thousand factories
and factories, looted 98 thousand collective farms
And 2890 MTS
.
Cost of war expenses (in comparable prices).
Direct expenses
for the conduct of the war of all countries participating in it are $1117 billion
(including military expenses for the war in China in 1037). Cost of destruction
amounted to 260 billion dollars,
of which in the USSR - 128 billion
., in Germany - 48 billion
., in France - 21 billion
., in Poland - 20 billion
., in England - 6.8 billion.
Statistical data prepared by Yakov SHVARTZ,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, war veteran.
Statistics of two world wars
| Wars of the 20th century | 1st World War | World War 2 |
| Duration of the war | 1564 days (4 years and 3.5 months) | 2195 days (6 years) |
| Number of countries participating in the war | 36 | 61 |
| Population of countries participating in the war | 1050 million 62% of world population | 1700 million 80% of world population |
| Neutral countries | 17 | 6 |
| Death toll | 10 million | 32 million |
| Number of wounded | 20 million | 35 million |
| Number of countries where hostilities took place | 14 | 40 |
| The area of territories where hostilities took place | 4 million sq. km | 22 million sq. km |
| Number of conscripts into active armies | 70 million | 110 million |
On the eve of Victory Day, I would like to raise several important, fundamental issues. I will try to outline in general terms the pre-war potential of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and will also provide data on human losses on both sides, including the latest. There is also the latest data on the number of dead Yakut residents.
The issue of losses in the Second World War has been discussed throughout the world for several years. There are various assessments, including sensational ones. Quantitative indicators are influenced not only by various calculation methods, but also by ideology and a subjective approach.
Western countries, led by the USA and England, tirelessly repeat the mantra that victory was “forged” by them in the sands of North Africa, Normandy, on the sea routes of the North Atlantic and through the bombing of industrial facilities in Germany and its allies.
The USSR’s war against Germany and its allies is presented to the Western public as “unknown.” Some residents of Western countries, judging by polls, seriously claim that the USSR and Germany were allies in that war.
The second favorite saying of some Westerners and home-grown “Western-style” liberal democrats is that the Victory over fascism was “littered with the corpses of Soviet soldiers,” “one rifle for four,” “the command threw its soldiers at machine guns, the retreating detachments were shot,” “ millions of prisoners,” without the help of the allied troops, the Red Army’s victory over the enemy would have been impossible.
Unfortunately, after N.S. Khrushchev came to power, some of the Soviet military leaders, in order to elevate their role in the battle against the “brown plague” of the 20th century, described in their memoirs the implementation of orders from the Headquarters of Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin, as a result of which Soviet troops suffered unreasonably high losses.
And few people pay attention to the fact that during the period of active defensive, and even offensive battles, the main task was and is to achieve replenishment - additional troops from the reserve. And in order to satisfy the request, you need to provide such a combat note about the large losses of personnel of a particular military unit in order to receive replenishment.
As always, the truth is in the middle!
At the same time, official data on the losses of Nazi armies on the Soviet side were often clearly underestimated or, conversely, overestimated, which led to a complete distortion of statistical data on the military losses of Nazi Germany and its direct allies.
Captured documents available in the USSR, in particular, 10-day reports from OKW (the highest military command of the Wehrmacht), were classified, and only recently have military historians gained access to them.
For the first time, I.V. Stalin announced the losses of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War in 1946. He said that as a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost about seven million people in battles with the Germans, as well as as a result of the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude.
Then N.S. Khrushchev, in 1961, having debunked Stalin’s personality cult, in a conversation with the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, mentioned that 20 million people died in the war.
And finally, a group of researchers led by G.F. Krivosheev estimates the total human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, determined by the demographic balance method, at 26.6 million people. This includes all those killed as a result of military and other enemy actions, those who died as a result of military and other enemy actions, those who died as a result of the increased mortality rate during the war in the occupied territory and in the rear, as well as persons who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return after its ending.
Data on the losses of G. Krivosheev’s group are considered official. In 2001, the updated figures were as follows. USSR casualties:
- 6.3 million military personnel were killed or died from wounds,
- 555 thousand died from illnesses, as a result of accidents, incidents, were sentenced to death,
- 4.5 million– were captured and disappeared;
General demographic losses – 26.6 million Human.
German casualties:
- 4.046 million military personnel were killed, died of wounds, or went missing.
At the same time, the irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) are 11.5 million and 8.6 million (not counting 1.6 million prisoners of war after May 9, 1945), respectively.
However, new data is now emerging.
The beginning of the war is June 22, 1941. What was the balance of power between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union? What forces and capabilities did Hitler count on when preparing an attack on the USSR? How feasible was the “Barbarossa” plan prepared by the Wehrmacht General Staff?
It should be noted that in June 1941 the total population of Germany, including its direct allies, was 283 million people, and in the USSR - 160 million. Germany's direct allies at that time were: Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Croatia. In the summer of 1941, the Wehrmacht personnel numbered 8.5 million people; four army groups with a total number of 7.4 million people were concentrated on the border with the USSR. Nazi Germany was armed with 5,636 tanks, more than 61,000 guns of various calibers, and over 10,000 aircraft (excluding the weapons of allied military formations).
General characteristics of the Red Army of the USSR for June 1941. The total number was 5.5 million military personnel. The number of divisions of the Red Army is 300, of which 170 divisions were concentrated on the western borders (3.9 million people), the rest were stationed in the Far East (which is why Japan did not attack), in Central Asia, and Transcaucasia. It must be said that the Wehrmacht divisions were staffed according to wartime levels, and each had 14-16 thousand people. Soviet divisions were staffed according to peacetime levels and consisted of 7-8 thousand people.
The Red Army was armed with 11,000 tanks, of which 1,861 were T-34 tanks and 1,239 were KV tanks (the best in the world at that time). The rest of the tanks - BT-2, BT-5, BT-7, T-26, SU-5 with weak weapons, many vehicles were idle due to lack of spare parts. Most of the tanks were to be replaced with new vehicles. More than 60% of the tanks were in the troops of the western border districts.
Soviet artillery provided powerful firepower. On the eve of the war, the Red Army had 67,335 guns and mortars. Katyusha multiple launch rocket systems began to arrive. In terms of combat qualities, Soviet field artillery was superior to German, but was poorly equipped with mechanized traction. The needs for special artillery tractors were met by 20.5%.
In the western military districts of the Red Army Air Force, there were 7,009 fighters, and long-range aviation had 1,333 aircraft.
So, at the first stage of the war, qualitative and quantitative characteristics were on the side of the enemy. The Nazis had a significant advantage in manpower, automatic weapons, and mortars. And thus, Hitler’s hopes to carry out a “blitzkrieg” against the USSR were calculated taking into account real conditions and the distribution of available armed forces and means. In addition, Germany already had practical military experience gained as a result of military operations in other European countries. Surprise, aggressiveness, coordination of all forces and means, precise execution of orders from the Wehrmacht General Staff, the use of armored forces on a relatively small section of the front - this was a proven, fundamental tactic of action by military formations of Nazi Germany.
This tactic performed exceptionally well in military operations in Europe; Wehrmacht casualties were small. For example, in France, 27,074 German soldiers were killed and 111,034 were wounded. At the same time, the German army captured 1.8 million French soldiers. The war ended in 40 days. The victory was absolute.
In Poland, the Wehrmacht lost 16,843 soldiers, Greece - 1,484, Norway - 1,317, and another 2,375 died en route. These “historic” victories of German weapons incredibly inspired Adolf Hitler, and they were given the order to develop the “Barbarossa” plan - a war against the USSR.
It should also be noted that the question of surrender was never raised by Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin; Headquarters quite soberly analyzed and calculated the current military situation. In any case, in the first months of the war there was no panic at the army headquarters; panickers were shot on the spot.
In mid-July 1941, the initial period of the war ended. Due to a number of subjective and objective factors, Soviet troops suffered serious losses in manpower and equipment. As a result of heavy fighting, using air supremacy, the German armed forces by this time reached the borders of the Western Dvina and the middle reaches of the Dnieper, advancing to a depth of 300 to 600 km and inflicting major defeats on the Red Army, especially on the formations of the Western Front. In other words, the Wehrmacht’s priority tasks were completed. But the “blitzkrieg” tactics still failed.
The Germans met fierce resistance from the retreating troops. The NKVD troops and border guards especially distinguished themselves. Here, for example, is the testimony of a former German sergeant major who participated in the attacks on the 9th outpost of the border city of Przemysl: “...The fire was terrible! We left a lot of corpses on the bridge, but we never took possession of it right away. Then the commander of my battalion gave the order to ford the river to the right and left in order to surround the bridge and capture it intact. But as soon as we rushed into the river, the Russian border guards began to pour fire on us here too. The losses were terrible... Seeing that the plan was failing, the battalion commander ordered fire from 80-mm mortars. Only under their cover did we begin to infiltrate the Soviet shore... We could not advance further as quickly as our command wanted. The Soviet border guards had firing points along the coastline. They sat in them and shot literally until the last cartridge... Nowhere, never have we seen such stamina, such military perseverance... They preferred death to the possibility of captivity or withdrawal...”
Heroic actions made it possible to gain time for the approach of the 99th Infantry Division of Colonel N.I. Dementyev. Active resistance to the enemy continued.
As a result of stubborn battles, according to US intelligence services, as of December 1941, Germany lost 1.3 million people killed in the war against the USSR, and by March 1943, Wehrmacht losses already amounted to 5.42 million people (information has been declassified by the American side in our time ).
Yakutia 1941. What was the contribution of the peoples of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic to the fight against Nazi Germany? Our losses. Heroic fighters of the Olonkho Land.
As you know, the scientific work “History of Yakutia” has been prepared since 2013. Researcher at the Institute for Humanitarian Research and Problems of Indigenous Peoples of the North SB RAS Marianna Gryaznukhina, the author of the chapter of this scientific work, which talks about the human losses of the Yakut people during the Great Patriotic War, kindly provided the following data: the population of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1941, on the eve of the war, was 419 thousand Human. 62 thousand people were drafted and went to the front as volunteers.
However, this cannot be called the exact number of Yakuts who fought for their Motherland. By the beginning of the war, several hundred people were doing military service in the army, and a number were studying at military schools. Therefore, the number of Yakuts who fought can be considered from 62 to 65 thousand people.
Now about the human losses. In recent years, a figure has been cited - 32 thousand Yakuts, but it also cannot be considered accurate. According to the demographic formula, they did not return to the regions from the war; about 30% of those who fought died. It should be taken into account that 32 thousand did not return to the territory of Yakutia, but some soldiers and officers remained to live in other regions of the country, some returned late, until the 1950s. Therefore, the number of residents of Yakutia who died at the front is approximately 25 thousand people. Of course, for the small population of the republic this is a huge loss.
In general, the contribution of the Yakut people to the fight against the “brown plague” is enormous and has not yet been fully studied. Many became combat commanders, demonstrated military training, dedication, and courage in battles, for which they were awarded high military awards. Residents of the Khangalassky district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) remember the general with warmth Prituzov (Pripuzov) Andrey Ivanovich. Participant of the First World War, commander of the 61st Guards Slavic Red Banner Division. The division fought through Romania, part of Austria and ended its journey in Bulgaria. The military general found his eternal peace in his native Pokrovsk.
How can one not remember on the eve of Victory Day about the Yakut snipers - two of whom were included in the legendary top ten snipers of the Second World War. This is a Yakut Fedor Matveevich Okhlopkov, on whose personal account there are 429 killed Nazis. Before becoming a sniper, he destroyed several dozen fascists with a machine gun and machine gun. And Fyodor Matveevich received the Hero of the Soviet Union only in 1965. Legendary person!
The second one is Evenk Ivan Nikolaevich Kulbertinov- 489 killed Nazis. He taught sniper training to young Red Army soldiers. Originally from the village of Tyanya, Olekminsky district.
It should be noted that until the end of 1942, the Wehrmacht command missed the opportunity of sniper warfare, for which it paid dearly. During the war, the Nazis began hastily learning the art of snipers using captured Soviet military training films and instructions for snipers. At the front they used the same Soviet captured Mosin and SVT rifles. Only by 1944 did the Wehrmacht military units include trained snipers.
Our colleague, lawyer, Honored Lawyer of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia), has passed the worthy path of a front-line soldier. Yuri Nikolaevich Zharnikov. He began his military career as an artilleryman, in 1943 he retrained as a T-34 driver, his tank was hit twice, and the hero himself received severe concussions. He has dozens of military victories, hundreds of killed enemies, and a large number of broken and burned enemy heavy equipment, including German tanks. As Yuri Nikolaevich recalled, the calculation of enemy losses was carried out by the commander of the tank unit, and his concern was the constant maintenance of the mechanical part of the combat vehicle. For military exploits, Yu.N. Zharnikov was awarded many orders and medals, of which he was proud. Today Yuri Nikolaevich is not among us, but we, the lawyers of Yakutia, keep his memory in our hearts.
Results of the Great Patriotic War. Losses of the German armed forces. The ratio of the losses of Nazi Germany and its direct allies with the losses of the Red Army
Let us turn to the latest publications of a prominent Russian military historian Igor Ludvigovich Garibyan, who did a tremendous amount of statistical work, studying not only Soviet sources, but also captured archival documents of the Wehrmacht General Staff.
According to the Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command - OKW, Wilhelm Keitel, Germany lost 9 million soldiers killed on the Eastern Front, 27 million were seriously wounded (without the possibility of returning to duty), went missing, were captured, all of this is united by the concept of “irretrievable losses.” "
Historian Gharibyan calculated German losses based on 10-day OKW reports, and the following data was obtained:
Germans and Austrians killed during hostilities - 7,541,401 people (data as of April 20, 1945);
Missing – 4,591,511 people.
The total irretrievable losses are 17,801,340 people, including disabled people, prisoners, and those who died from diseases.
These figures concern only two countries – Germany and Austria. The losses of Romania, Hungary, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia and other countries that fought against the USSR are not taken into account here.
Thus, Hungary, with its population of nine million, lost only 809,000 soldiers and officers killed in the war against the Red Army, mostly young people aged 20 to 29 years. 80,000 civilians died in the fighting. Meanwhile, in the same Hungary in 1944, on the eve of the collapse of the fascist regime, 500,000 Hungarian Jews and Gypsies were killed, which the Western media prefer to “shamefully” keep silent about.
To sum up, we must admit that the USSR had to fight virtually one-on-one (in 1941-1943) with all of Europe, except England. All factories in France, Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Italy worked for the war. The Wehrmacht was provided not only with military materials, but also with the human resources of Germany's direct allies.
As a result, the Soviet people, showing the will to Victory and mass heroism both on the battlefield and in the rear, defeated the enemy and defended the Fatherland from the “brown plague” of the 20th century.
The article is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather - Stroev Gavril Egorovich, a resident of the village of Batamai, Ordzhonikidze district of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the chairman of the Zarya collective farm, who died heroically in the Great Patriotic War in 1943, and all the Yakut residents who did not return from the war.
Yuri PRIPUZOV,
President of the Yakut Republican
Bar Association "Petersburg"
Honored Lawyer of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).
The losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War in relation to the losses of Germany were 1:5, 1:10, or even 1:14 - this is a very common myth. This leads to the conclusions about being “filled with corpses” and “they didn’t know how to fight.” In fact, the loss ratio is completely different.
We often hear that the ratio of losses of the USSR and Germany with their allies in World War II was 1:5, 1:10, or even 1:14. Then, naturally, a conclusion is drawn about “being littered with corpses,” inept leadership, etc. However, mathematics is an exact science. The population of the Third Reich at the beginning of World War II was 85 million people, of which more than 23 million were men of military age. The population of the USSR is 196.7 million people, of which 48.5 million are men of military age. So, even without knowing anything about the real numbers of losses on both sides, it is easy to calculate that victory through the complete mutual destruction of the male population of military age in the USSR and Germany (even if at least 100 thousand people survive in the USSR, since it is the winning side) , is achieved by a loss ratio of 48.4/23 = 2.1, but not 10. By the way, here we do not take into account the German allies. If you add them to these 23 million, then the loss ratio will become even smaller. It should be taken into account that at the very beginning of the war, the Soviet Union lost large densely populated territories, so the actual number of men of military age was even smaller
However, if, in fact, for every killed German the Soviet command would sacrifice 10 Soviet soldiers, then after the Germans would have killed 5 million people, the USSR would have died 50 million - that is, we would have no one else to fight , and in Germany there would still be as many as 18 million men of military age left. And if you count Germany’s allies, then even more. There is only one option left, in which a loss ratio of 1:10 is possible - Germany managed to lose even before it lost 5 million, and the USSR lost 50 million people. However, then this can only speak of the cowardice of the German troops and the mediocrity of the German command, which was unable to take advantage of the fact that the Wehrmacht killed ten times more enemy soldiers than it lost itself. It is unlikely that such a humiliation of the military capabilities of the Wehrmacht was part of the plans of those Russian truth-seekers who talk about losses of 1:10 and even 1:14, and even more so it does not correspond to reality - the Germans fought well.
However, let us turn to scientific research concerning the losses of the USSR and Germany in the Second World War.
USSR losses
The main and most detailed source on losses in the Great Patriotic War is the book “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century” under the general editorship of Candidate of Military Sciences, Professor of the Academy of Sciences, Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev (M.: Olma-press, 2001)
Here is the table “Procedure for calculating irrecoverable losses” from this book. The table is compiled based on an analysis of the total number of casualties recorded promptly by the headquarters of all levels and military medical institutions during the Great Patriotic War, including during the campaign in the Far East in 1945.
Table 1. Procedure for calculating irrecoverable losses| № p.p. |
Types of losses | Total losses thousand people | Including | ||
| Red Army and Navy | Border troops* | Internal troops | |||
| 1 | Killed and died from wounds during the stages of sanitary evacuation (according to troop reports)5226,8 | 5187,2 | 18,9 | 20,7 | |
| 1102,8 | 1100,3 | 2,5 | |||
| 6329,6 | 6287,5 | 18,9 | 23,2 | ||
| 2 | Non-combat losses: died from disease, died as a result of accidents, sentenced to death (according to reports from troops, medical institutions, military tribunals)555,5 | 541,9 | 7,1 | 6,5 | |
| 3 | Missing, captured3396,4 | 3305,6 | 22,8 | 68,0 | |
| 1 162,6 | 1150,0 | 12,6 | |||
| 4559,0 | 4455,6 | 35,4 | 68,0 | ||
| Total military casualties | 11444,1 | 11285,0 | 61,4 | 97,7 | |
| 4 | In addition, some persons liable for military service went missing on the way,500,0** | ||||
| Excluded from irrecoverable losses (total) Of them: |
2775,7 | ||||
| - military personnel who were previously surrounded and registered at the beginning of the war as missing in action (re-conscripted into the army in the liberated territory) |
939,7 | ||||
| - Soviet soldiers returning from captivity after the war (according to repatriation authorities) |
1836,0 | ||||
| Demographic losses of registered military personnel (actual number of all killed, died and did not return from captivity) |
8668,4 | ||||
** Included in the total losses of the country's population (26.6 million people).
The irretrievable losses of the army include not only those killed and those who died from wounds, but also those captured. As can be seen from the table, their total number was 11.44 million people. If we take into account those who returned from captivity and those who, after the liberation of the occupied territories, were re-drafted into the army, then the actual number of all those killed, died and did not return from captivity amounted to 8.668 million people. This number also includes 12 thousand people who died in the war with Japan. The number of those killed on the battlefield and those who died from wounds is 6326.9 thousand.
However, this calculation method has its critics. Thus, Igor Kurtukov notes that Krivosheev mixes the accounting and statistical method with the balance sheet method. The first of these is to estimate losses based on available accounting documents. The balance method is based on a comparison of the size and age structure of the population of the USSR at the beginning and end of the war. Thus, mixing the total number of human losses, operationally recorded by the headquarters of all instances, with data on the number of those called up in the liberated territories and those who returned from captivity is a mixing of two methods. In addition to this, the reports themselves were not always accurate. Igor Kurtukov proposes using the balance method to calculate losses, based on the data given in the same work by Krivosheev.
Table 2. Balance of use of human resources called up (mobilized) during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. (in thousand people)
|
So, we know the number of troops on June 22, 1941 - 4901.8 thousand and on July 1, 1945 - 12839.8 thousand. We know the total number of those called up after June 22, 1941, minus those re-called up - 29574.9 thousand. Thus, the total loss is: 4901.8 thousand + 29574.9 thousand – 12839.8 = 21636.9 thousand. The breakdown of this loss is given in the same table - these are those who were commissioned due to injury or illness, demobilized to work in industry, convicted and sent to camps, etc. In total, there are 9,692,800 such people. The remaining 11,944,100 people constitute irretrievable losses of the army. Igor Kurtukov believes that it is from this number that it is appropriate to subtract 1,836,562 people who returned from captivity, which gives us 10,107,500 people those who died during service in the army and navy or in captivity during the war. Thus, it differs from Krivosheev’s previously obtained figure of 8,668,400 people by 1,439,100 people, or 16.6%. To calculate the number of those directly killed during the fighting, it is necessary to subtract the number of those killed in captivity from the previously obtained figure of 10.1 million. Their number, according to various estimates, ranges from 1.2 to 3.1 million people. Igor Kurtukov considers the most reliable figure to be 2.4. million. Thus, the number of those killed directly during hostilities and those who died from wounds can be estimated at 7.7 million people. It is not very clear what to do with the NKVD troops - on the one hand, they are not clearly represented in this table, on the other hand, in other tables Krivosheev includes the losses of the NKVD troops among the total losses, highlighting them in a common line. We will assume that in this case the losses of the NKVD troops - about 160 thousand - must be added separately. It is also necessary to take into account the losses of the Polish Army, Romanian and other allied armies - about 76 thousand people. The total losses of the USSR and its allies directly on the battlefield amounted to 7936 thousand people.
Note that the upper estimate of the number of deaths is the number of records of the Generalized Data Bank (GDB) "Memorial", which contains information about Soviet soldiers killed, deceased and missing during the Great Patriotic War. At the moment, the database contains more than 13.5 million records, but often several records refer to the same person - this is due to the receipt of data on the same fighter from different sources. There are also quadruple duplicate entries. Therefore, it will be possible to rely on Memorial’s data only after data duplication has been eliminated.
Enemy losses
The same book by Krivosheev will serve as our source. There are the following difficulties in calculating enemy losses, which are listed in this work:- There is no real data on losses in 1945, which were very significant. During this period, the Wehrmacht headquarters mechanism lost clarity in its work, losses began to be determined approximately, most often based on information from previous months. Their systematic documentary recording and reporting was sharply disrupted.
- The reporting documents on the number of casualties of the armed forces of Nazi Germany in the Second World War did not show the losses of Germany's allies, as well as other foreign formations and units that took part in the battles on the Soviet-German front.
- Confusing military casualties with civilian casualties. Therefore, in many states, the losses of the armed forces are significantly reduced, since some of them are included in the number of civilian casualties. This is typical not only for Germany, but also for Hungary and Romania (200 thousand military casualties, and 260 thousand civilian casualties). In Hungary, this ratio was 1:2 (140 thousand - military casualties and 280 thousand - civilian casualties). All this significantly distorts the statistics on the losses of troops of the countries that fought on the Soviet-German front.
- If the casualties of the SS troops are taken into account according to reports from the ground forces, then the losses of security service personnel, Gestapo and SS men (from the non-military number of members of the National Socialist Party), as well as police forces, are essentially not taken into account. Meanwhile, it is known that in all the occupied territories of European states, including in the occupied part of the Soviet Union, a network of branches of the Gestapo and the Security Police (ZIPO) was deployed, which formed the basis of the military occupation administration. The losses of these organizations are not recorded in the documents of the German military department. It is known that the number of SS members during the war years (not counting SS troops) ranged from 257 thousand (1941) to 264 thousand people. (1945), and the number of police forces performing tasks in the interests of field troops in 1942-1944 ranged from 270 to 340 thousand people.
- The losses of “hiwis” (Hilfwillider - German - voluntary helpers) - persons from among prisoners of war and civilians who lived and agreed to help the German army - are not taken into account. They were used as support personnel in the rear units - cart drivers in convoys, auxiliary workers in workshops and kitchens. Their percentage in units was different and depended on the need for service personnel (availability of horses, other vehicles, etc.). Since in the Red Army the field kitchen workers and the soldiers in the convoys were military personnel and the losses among them were taken into account like any other losses of the Red Army, it is necessary to take into account the corresponding losses in the German troops. In June 1943, according to the report of the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces, General Zeitler, there were 220 thousand “voluntary assistants”.
To compile a table of enemy losses, Krivosheev’s team used documents from the war period stored in Soviet and German archives, as well as government reports published in Hungary, Italy, Romania, Finland, Slovakia and other countries containing information on the number of troops who took part in World War II war and their losses. Information about human losses in Hungary and Romania was clarified based on materials received from the general staffs of these states in 1988.
Table 3. Irreversible human losses of the armed forces of Nazi Germany on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 (without the armies of its allies)
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* Including Air Force and Air Defense - 117.8 thousand people, Navy - 15.7 thousand people, non-combat losses - 162.7 thousand people, died from wounds in hospitals - 331.3 thousand people.
** Including Air Force and Air Defense - 181.4 thousand people, Navy - 52 thousand people, non-combat losses - 25.9 thousand people, died from wounds in hospitals - 152.8 thousand people.
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* The number of irretrievable losses of Hungary and Romania includes persons conscripted into the Hungarian Army from Northern Transylvania, Southern Slovakia and Transcarpathian Ukraine, and Moldovans into the Romanian Army.
** Including 27,800 Romanians and 14,515 Moldovans were released from captivity directly by the fronts.
The combined data on losses of Germany and its allies are summarized in the following table:
Table 5. Irreversible human losses of the armed forces of Germany and the army of its allies on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 (thousands of people)
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* Without prisoners of war from among the citizens of the USSR who served in the Wehrmacht.
So, according to Krivosheev’s team, the total losses of Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front amounted to 8649.3 thousand people, of which 4273.0 were killed and missing, and 4376.3 were captured. As for German studies on German losses, the most authoritative at the moment is the study by Rüdiger Overmans “Deutche militärishe Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg”. Overmans made statistically reliable samples from two sets of information - the list of combat units (Wehrmacht, SS, Luftwaffe, Kriegsmarine, etc. - more than 18 million records) and those who died from the same categories. He calculated what percentage of each category was lost, and from this he derived his approximate estimate of German irretrievable losses. Here is what Igor Kurtukov writes about this study:
According to this study, for only 1939-1956. The German armed forces lost 5,318,000 people killed, killed and captured. Of this number, 2,743,000 were lost in killed and killed troops on the Eastern Front during 1941-44. . In 1945, the total losses in killed and killed by the German armed forces amounted to 1,230,000 people, but their distribution along the fronts is unknown. If we assume that in 1945 the proportion of losses on the Eastern Front was the same as in 1944 (that is, 70%), then the losses of the Eastern Front troops in 1945 would be 863,000, and the total losses in the east for the entire war – 3,606,000 people.Overmans did not count the number of killed and deceased soldiers of the German allies, so we can take it from Krivosheev’s work. The corresponding number has already been given above - 668.2 thousand. Summarizing, we get that the total losses in killed and dead of Germany and its satellites in the east are 4,274,200 people. That is, this value differs by only 800 people from the data given in Table 5.
Table 6. Loss ratio This table does not specifically take into account those who died in captivity, because this indicator says nothing about the military skill of the enemy, but only about the conditions of detention of prisoners. At the same time, for the military operations themselves, it is the number of people captured that is important - until the end of the war they are considered irretrievable losses, because cannot take part in hostilities. As we can see, there is no talk of any loss ratio of 1:5, 1:10. We're not even talking about a 1:2 ratio. Depending on the calculation method, the ratio of losses on the battlefield ranges from 1.5 to 1.8, and if prisoners are taken into account, the situation for the USSR is even better - 1.3-1.4. As already written above, we must not forget that the German losses do not take into account the Hiwis, the military police, the Gestapo, etc. It must also be taken into account that the number of German troops captured could have been much greater - it is known that German units tried to surrender if possible Anglo-American troops and for this purpose they specifically fled from Soviet units to the west. That is, under other conditions, they could well have been captured by the Red Army.
It is also interesting to calculate the relative losses. So, according to Table 2, during the war years, a total of 34.5 million people were recruited into the army, navy, formation of other departments and to work in industry (taking into account those who had already served at the beginning of the war). The number of those killed and captured, according to maximum estimates, is 11.9 million. That is, as a percentage, the losses were 29%. According to Krivosheev’s work, during the war years, a total of 21.1 million people were recruited into the armed forces of Nazi Germany, taking into account those who served before March 1, 1939 (excluding allies). Taking into account the fact that Germany started the war earlier than the USSR, we will accept the share of German troops fighting on the eastern front as 75%. The total is 15.8 million people. Germany's losses on the Eastern Front, excluding allies, amounted, based on the above data, to 3.6 million killed + 3.5 million prisoners, a total of 7.1 million. As a percentage of the number of those who fought, 45% was more than the USSR.
Militia registration
Krivosheev’s critics often blame him for allegedly not taking into account losses among the people’s militia divisions (DNO), the total number of which was quite large. To this end, it is worth noting that, firstly, the militias did not always enter the battle as part of the DNO. Thus, the militia units of the “first wave” formed in Moscow did not go to the front, but to the Mozhaisk defense line that was being built in the rear, where they were engaged in combat training and the construction of fortifications. In September, the people's militia divisions were divided into regular rifle divisions of the Red Army. Secondly, all DNO were subordinate to the army and reported to it. For example, the 2nd LANO division (Leningrad militia), still in the status of DNO (before reorganization into the 85th regular rifle division), reported losses to the Luga combat sector of the Northern Front. Therefore, losses among the people's militia divisions were included in the figures cited by Krivosheev.
Successful and unsuccessful operations of the Red Army
Let's look at specific operations of the Red Army, both successful and unsuccessful. Mostly the operations of the most difficult years 41 and 42, as well as one operation of 1944, will be affected here. You can read in detail about how the Red Army fought in the summer of 1941 in the article by Alexei Isaev
Hitler on December 11, 1941, in his speech in the Reichstag, stated that German losses from June 22 to December 1 amounted to only 195,648 killed and missing. OKH's loss accounting department is less optimistic - 257,900 people. And now let’s give the floor to Wehrmacht Major General B. Müller-Hillebrand, author of the monumental study “German Land Army. 1933-1945":
“In June 1941, the ground forces had at their disposal, not counting the conscript contingent born in 1922 that entered the reserve army on May 1, 1941, over 400 thousand trained reservists, including the conscript contingent born in 1921 ., of which about 80 thousand people were trained as part of field reserve battalions of divisions, and the rest were in full readiness as part of the reserve army. However, it soon became clear that such forethought was insufficient. The heavy losses that were expected only at the beginning of the campaign remained almost equally high during the summer months. Only in November 1941 did they decline, and even then only temporarily. Already in the first four weeks, the field reserve battalions of the divisions transferred all their personnel to the active units... By the end of November 1941, the shortage of the active army in the East amounted to 340 thousand people. This meant that the infantry on average lost about one-quarter of its original strength when heavy winter fighting began. However, it was not possible to decide to immediately hold large events in order to prepare many hundreds of thousands of new recruits...”
So, the losses are minimal, the successes are fantastic, and there is nothing to make up for the losses. We have already written above that there are problems with German loss accounting statistics, and now let’s move on to examples of our successes and defeats in 1941 and the price they cost. Thanks to the peculiar German method of calculating our own losses, we cannot always indicate their losses.
Battle of Bialystok-MinskAccording to Plan Barbarossa, the Germans planned to encircle and destroy the forces of the Workers 'and Peasants' Red Army in a series of border battles. And Army Group Center under the command of Field Marshal Fedor von Bock almost succeeded in completing the tasks outlined in the plan. Von Bock's task was to launch flank attacks and create pockets in which Soviet troops would be destroyed. On July 1, the Bialystok boiler closed. Two days earlier, German tanks burst into Minsk, and another cauldron was formed - Minsk. On July 8, the fighting in this pocket stopped. Ahead were Smolensk and Moscow, behind was the capital of one of the union republics and endless columns of 324 thousand Soviet prisoners of war.
The success of the Germans was facilitated by geography itself - the so-called Bialystok bulge extended into the depths of their territory, ideal for carrying out encirclement operations. In addition, the Germans had an almost twofold superiority in manpower in this direction. The actions of General Dmitry Pavlov, commander of the Western Special District, also contributed to German successes - in particular, he did not even withdraw the troops entrusted to him to summer camps and in the very first days of the war completely lost control of the troops. On June 30 he was arrested, charged with conspiracy and sentenced to death.
But victorious fanfare and bravura marches were heard only in Berlin radio broadcasts and in the German Military Review film magazine. German generals looked at the events taking place more soberly. Franz Halder, Chief of the German General Staff, writes in his diary on June 24:
“It should be noted the tenacity of individual Russian formations in battle. There have been cases when garrisons of pillboxes blew themselves up along with the pillboxes, not wanting to surrender.” Entry from June 29: “Information from the front confirms that the Russians are fighting everywhere to the last man.
And according to German official data, the Brest Fortress, located on the border, was taken only on June 30. The Germans had never faced such an enemy before.
Losses of the parties:Soviet:
341,073 permanent losses
76,717 sanitary losses
German:
Approximately 200 thousand killed and wounded.
Kyiv operation
At the end of July, our troops left Smolensk. The German General Staff and the command of Army Group Center insisted on an attack on Moscow. But Army Group South had not been able to defeat the Soviet Southwestern Front by that time, whose troops could strike the flank of the advancing Army Group Center. And on August 21, Hitler issues a directive according to which most of Army Group Center (2nd Panzer Group of Guderian and 2nd Army of Weichs) should turn south to join the troops of Gerdt von Runsted.
The Soviet command was confident that the Germans would continue their attack on Moscow and began withdrawing troops to the other side of the Dnieper when it was already too late. By mid-September 1941, most of the troops of the Southwestern Front found themselves in a giant cauldron. On September 19, Soviet troops left Kyiv. On September 26, the boiler was liquidated. The Germans reported a record number of prisoners - more than 665 thousand people (however, this figure is in doubt, since the entire number of troops of the Southwestern Front at the beginning of the Kyiv defensive operation was 627 thousand people).
However, during this time the Red Army managed to prepare for the defense of Moscow. The battle was lost, but time was gained for the defense of the capital.
Losses of the parties:
Soviet:
killed and missing, captured - 616304,
wounded - 84240,
total - 700544 people
German: 128,670 killed and wounded
Vyazma operation
By the end of September, the Germans in the central direction regrouped their forces and launched Operation Typhoon, an attack on Moscow. Their goal was the victorious conclusion of the autumn campaign and the war as a whole.
The Soviet command was preparing for a German offensive, but misjudged the direction of the German attacks. Soviet troops were concentrated along the Smolensk-Vyazma road, while the enemy launched an offensive to the north and south on September 2. As a result, on October 7, another cauldron was formed - Vyazemsky. The fighting there continued until October 13. The encircled troops pinned down 14 of the 28 German divisions advancing towards Mozhaisk. While they held out, the Soviet command managed to strengthen the Mozhaisk defense line.
Losses of the parties:Soviet:
110-130 thousand people
Losses in the Vyazemsky cauldron can only be determined approximately - by subtracting from the total losses of the Western Front from September 30 to December 5 the losses of the troops defending Moscow (units for which there are accurate statistics).
German:
No data
Tula defensive operation and the Battle of Moscow
On October 24, during Operation Typhoon, the Germans launched an offensive along the Orel-Tula road. They reached Tula six days later. The attempt to take the city head-on was unsuccessful. The further history of the defense of Tula is continuous battles, attacks, attempts to encircle. But the city, being semi-encircled, held out until December 5 - the day when our counter-offensive near Moscow began.
Losses of the partiesThe Tula operation is an integral part of the battle for Moscow, so we give the total losses in this battle:
Soviet:
1,806,123 people, of which 926,519 people were killed and captured German (according to official data):
581.9 thousand killed, missing, wounded and sick, evacuated from the area of jurisdiction of army groups. There is no data on the number of German prisoners.
Battle for Rostov-on-Don
The first successful counter-offensive of the Red Army and the first defeat of the Wehrmacht is considered to be the counter-offensive near Moscow on December 5. But half a month earlier, our army carried out a successful counter-offensive near Rostov-on-Don. This city, after fierce fighting, was occupied by the Germans on November 21, 1941. But already on November 27, the troops of the Southern Front struck the enemy from three directions. The threat of encirclement loomed over the German troops. On November 29, the city was liberated. The Red Army continued to pursue the enemy to the Mius River, on the banks of which the Germans quickly had to build a fortified area. An attempt by German troops to break through to the North Caucasus was thwarted. The front line stabilized until July 1942.
Losses of the parties:Soviet:
33,111 killed and wounded
German (according to official data):
20,000 killed and wounded
Defense of Sevastopol
Sevastopol fell. But the enemy entered the city at the end of June 1942, and fighting on the outskirts of the city began on October 30, 1941. For eight long months, the city's garrison pinned down large enemy forces that could not be used in other sectors of the front. The assault on this city cost the Germans dearly, even according to their official data.
Losses of the parties:Soviet (on June 6, 1942):
Killed – 76,880
Captured – 80,000
Wounded 43,601
Total – 200,481
German - up to 300 thousand killed and wounded.
Operation Bagration
In conclusion, I would like to give an example of not just a successful, but a triumphant operation at the final stage of the war. We are talking about Operation Bagration - an operation whose start was timed to coincide with June 22, the anniversary of the start of the German invasion. Moreover, it was carried out in the same place where the Germans achieved the greatest successes in the summer of 1941 - we spoke above about our crushing defeat in the Battle of Bialystok-Minsk. Three years later, here, in the same forests and swamps of Belarus, the time for the Russian blitzkrieg came. Much more destructive and effective than the German blitzkrieg.
If in June 1941 the so-called Bialystok ledge protruded into the depths of German territory, then in June 1944 the so-called Belarusian balcony (the line Vitebsk - Orsha - Mogilev - Zhlobin) protruded into the depths of Soviet territory. At the same time, the Germans did not expect a Soviet offensive on this particular section of the front. They believed that the Russian offensive would begin in Ukraine - a strike would be launched there with the goal of reaching the Baltic Sea and cutting off Army Groups Center and South. The German command was preparing for this blow. In response to the request of the command of Army Group Center to level the front and withdraw troops to more convenient positions, a directive was issued declaring the cities of Vitebsk, Orsha, Mogilev and Zhlobin as fortresses that should take up all-round defense. It was impossible to think of better actions on the part of the enemy.
Preparations for the operation were carried out in the strictest secrecy - radio silence was maintained, all arriving units were carefully camouflaged, even telephone conversations about the future offensive were strictly prohibited.
The start of the operation was preceded by the coordinated actions of almost 200 thousand partisans, which practically paralyzed railway communications in the area of the future crushing blow.
On June 23 the offensive began. The attack was sudden for the enemy, initially taken as a diversionary attack. The scale of the disaster became obvious to the German command only a few days later. And this was precisely a catastrophe - Army Group Center ceased to exist. A gigantic gap 900 kilometers wide opened up in the German defenses and Soviet troops rushed into this gap. During the summer of 1944, they reached Warsaw and East Prussia, cutting off Army Group North along the way.
One of the results of this operation was the famous “parade of the vanquished” - on July 17, 57 thousand German prisoners led by generals marched through the streets of Moscow. There was a little less than a year left before the Victory Parade.
Losses of the parties:Soviet:
178,507 killed/missing
587,308 injured
German (official):
381 thousand dead and missing
150 thousand injured
158,480 prisoners
Conclusion
Due to the lack of data on German losses, it is not possible to calculate the loss ratio for all operations, which was discussed so much in the first part of the article, but for those operations for which such data are known, it is clear that we are not talking about losses of 1:10. During the defense of Sevastopol, which, although it occurred during the most difficult period of the war - 1941-1942 and ended with the surrender of the city, German losses exceeded Soviet ones. Well, Operation Bagration clearly demonstrates that it was not “filling with corpses” that was the method that led the Soviet Union to Victory.
Estimates of the losses of Soviet citizens in the Great Patriotic War have a huge range: from 19 to 36 million. The first detailed calculations were made by the Russian emigrant, demographer Timashev in 1948 - he came up with 19 million. The maximum figure was called by B. Sokolov - 46 million. The latest calculations show that the USSR military alone lost 13.5 million people, but the total losses were over 27 million.
At the end of the war, long before any historical and demographic studies, Stalin named the figure: 5.3 million military losses. He also included missing persons (obviously, in most cases, prisoners). In March 1946, in an interview with a correspondent of the Pravda newspaper, the generalissimo estimated the human losses at 7 million. The increase was due to civilians who died in the occupied territory or were deported to Germany.
In the West, this figure was perceived with skepticism. Already at the end of the 1940s, the first calculations of the demographic balance of the USSR during the war years appeared, contradicting Soviet data. An illustrative example is the calculations of the Russian emigrant, demographer N.S. Timashev, published in the New York “New Journal” in 1948. Here is his method:
The All-Union Population Census of the USSR in 1939 determined its population at 170.5 million. The increase in 1937-1940 reached, according to his assumption, almost 2% for each year. Consequently, the population of the USSR by mid-1941 should have reached 178.7 million. But in 1939-1940, Western Ukraine and Belarus, three Baltic states, the Karelian lands of Finland were annexed to the USSR, and Romania returned Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Therefore, excluding the Karelian population who went to Finland, the Poles who fled to the west, and the Germans who were repatriated to Germany, these territorial acquisitions gave a population increase of 20.5 million. Considering that the birth rate in the annexed territories was no more than 1% per year, that is, lower than in the USSR, and also taking into account the short time period between their entry into the USSR and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the author determined the population growth for these territories by mid-1941 at 300 thousand. By sequentially adding the above figures, he received 200 .7 million living in the USSR on the eve of June 22, 1941.
Timashev further divided 200 million into three age groups, again relying on data from the 1939 All-Union Census: adults (over 18 years old) -117.2 million, teenagers (from 8 to 18 years old) - 44.5 million, children ( under 8 years old) - 38.8 million. At the same time, he took into account two important circumstances. First: in 1939-1940, two very weak annual streams, born in 1931-1932, moved from childhood to the adolescent group, during the famine that covered large areas of the USSR and negatively affected the size of the adolescent group. Second: in the former Polish lands and Baltic states there were more people over 20 years of age than in the USSR.
Timashev supplemented these three age groups with the number of Soviet prisoners. He did it in the following way. By the time of the elections of deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in December 1937, the population of the USSR reached 167 million, of which voters made up 56.36% of the total figure, and the population over 18 years of age, according to the All-Union Census of 1939, reached 58.3%. The resulting difference of 2%, or 3.3 million, in his opinion, was the population of the Gulag (including the number of those executed). This turned out to be close to the truth.
Next, Timashev moved on to post-war figures. The number of voters included in the voting lists for the elections of deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the spring of 1946 was 101.7 million. Adding to this figure the 4 million Gulag prisoners he calculated, he received 106 million adult population in the USSR at the beginning of 1946. Calculating the teenage group, he took as a basis 31.3 million primary and secondary school students in the 1947/48 school year, compared them with data from 1939 (31.4 million schoolchildren within the borders of the USSR until September 17, 1939) and obtained a figure of 39 million When calculating the children's group, he proceeded from the fact that at the beginning of the war the birth rate in the USSR was approximately 38 per thousand, in the second quarter of 1942 it decreased by 37.5%, and in 1943-1945 - by half.
Subtracting from each year group the percentage calculated according to the normal mortality table for the USSR, he received 36 million children at the beginning of 1946. Thus, according to his statistical calculations, in the USSR at the beginning of 1946 there were 106 million adults, 39 million adolescents and 36 million children, and a total of 181 million. Timashev’s conclusion is as follows: the population of the USSR in 1946 was 19 million less than in 1941.
Other Western researchers came to approximately the same results. In 1946, under the auspices of the League of Nations, F. Lorimer’s book “The Population of the USSR” was published. According to one of his hypotheses, during the war the population of the USSR decreased by 20 million.
In the article “Human Losses in the Second World War,” published in 1953, the German researcher G. Arntz came to the conclusion that “20 million people is the closest figure to the truth of the total losses of the Soviet Union in the Second World War.” The collection including this article was translated and published in the USSR in 1957 under the title “Results of the Second World War.” Thus, four years after Stalin’s death, Soviet censorship released the figure of 20 million into the open press, thereby indirectly recognizing it as correct and making it available to at least specialists - historians, international affairs experts, etc.
Only in 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to Swedish Prime Minister Erlander, admitted that the war against fascism “claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people.” Thus, compared to Stalin, Khrushchev increased Soviet casualties by almost 3 times.
In 1965, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, Brezhnev spoke of “more than 20 million” human lives lost by the Soviet people in the war. In the 6th and final volume of the fundamental “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union,” published at the same time, it was stated that of the 20 million dead, almost half “were military and civilians killed and tortured by the Nazis in occupied Soviet territory.” In fact, 20 years after the end of the war, the USSR Ministry of Defense recognized the death of 10 million Soviet military personnel.
Four decades later, the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, in a line-by-line commentary, told the truth about the calculations that military historians carried out in the early 1960s when preparing the “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union”: “Our losses in the war were then determined at 26 million. But high authorities turned out to accept the figure “over 20 million.”
As a result, “20 Million” not only took root in historical literature for decades, but also became part of the national consciousness.
In 1990, M. Gorbachev announced a new figure for losses obtained as a result of research by demographers - “almost 27 million people.”
In 1991, B. Sokolov’s book “The Price of Victory” was published. The Great Patriotic War: the unknown about the known.” In it, direct military losses of the USSR were estimated at approximately 30 million, including 14.7 million military personnel, and “actual and potential losses” at 46 million, including 16 million unborn children.”
A little later, Sokolov clarified these figures (he added new losses). He obtained the loss figure as follows. From the size of the Soviet population at the end of June 1941, which he determined to be 209.3 million, he subtracted 166 million who, in his opinion, lived in the USSR on January 1, 1946 and received 43.3 million dead. Then, from the resulting number, I subtracted the irretrievable losses of the armed forces (26.4 million) and received the irretrievable losses of the civilian population - 16.9 million.
“We can name the number of Red Army soldiers killed during the entire war, which is close to reality, if we determine the month of 1942, when the losses of the Red Army in the dead were taken into account most fully and when it had almost no losses in prisoners. For a number of reasons, we chose November 1942 as such a month and extended the ratio of the number of dead and wounded obtained for it to the entire period of the war. As a result, we came to a figure of 22.4 million Soviet military personnel who were killed in battle and died from wounds, illnesses, accidents and executed by the verdict of tribunals.”
To the 22.4 million received in this way, he added 4 million soldiers and commanders of the Red Army who died in enemy captivity. And so it turned out that 26.4 million irretrievable losses suffered by the armed forces.
In addition to B. Sokolov, similar calculations were carried out by L. Polyakov, A. Kvasha, V. Kozlov and others. The methodological weakness of this kind of calculations is obvious: the researchers proceeded from the difference in the size of the Soviet population in 1941, which is known very approximately, and the size of the post-war population of the USSR, which is almost impossible to accurately determine. It was this difference that they considered the total human losses.
In 1993, a statistical study “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Actions and Military Conflicts” was published, prepared by a team of authors headed by General G. Krivosheev. The main source of statistical data was previously secret archival documents, primarily the reporting materials of the General Staff. However, the losses of entire fronts and armies in the first months, and the authors specifically stipulated this, were obtained by calculation. In addition, the reporting of the General Staff did not include the losses of units that were not organizationally part of the Soviet armed forces (army, navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR), but were directly involved in the battles - the people's militia, partisan detachments, groups of underground fighters.
Finally, the number of prisoners of war and missing in action is clearly underestimated: this category of losses, according to the reports of the General Staff, totals 4.5 million, of which 2.8 million remained alive (were repatriated after the end of the war or again drafted into the ranks of the Red Army in the territory liberated from the occupiers), and, accordingly, the total number of those who did not return from captivity, including those who did not want to return to the USSR, amounted to 1.7 million.
As a result, the statistical data in the “Classified as Classified” directory was immediately perceived as requiring clarification and additions. And in 1998, thanks to V. Litovkin’s publication “During the war years, our army lost 11 million 944 thousand 100 people,” these data were replenished by 500 thousand reservists drafted into the army, but not yet included in the lists of military units and who died along the way to the front.
V. Litovkin’s study states that from 1946 to 1968, a special commission of the General Staff, headed by General S. Shtemenko, prepared a statistical reference book on losses in 1941-1945. At the end of the commission’s work, Shtemenko reported to the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal A. Grechko: “Taking into account that the statistical collection contains information of national importance, the publication of which in the press (including closed ones) or in any other way is currently not necessary and undesirable, the collection is intended to be kept at the General Staff as a special document, to which a strictly limited circle of persons will be allowed to become familiar.” And the prepared collection was kept under seven seals until the team under the leadership of General G. Krivosheev made its information public.
V. Litovkin’s research sowed even greater doubts about the completeness of the information published in the collection “Classified as Classified”, because a logical question arose: were all the data contained in the “statistics collection of the Shtemenko Commission” declassified?
For example, according to the data given in the article, during the war years, military justice authorities convicted 994 thousand people, of which 422 thousand were sent to penal units, 436 thousand to places of detention. The remaining 136 thousand were apparently shot.
And yet, the reference book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” significantly expanded and supplemented the ideas not only of historians, but also of the entire Russian society about the cost of the Victory of 1945. It is enough to refer to the statistical calculation: from June to November 1941, the Armed Forces of the USSR lost 24 thousand people every day, of which 17 thousand killed and up to 7 thousand wounded, and from January 1944 to May 1945 - 20 thousand people, of which 5.2 thousand were killed and 14.8 thousand wounded.
In 2001, a significantly expanded statistical publication appeared - “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the armed forces." The authors supplemented the General Staff materials with reports from military headquarters about losses and notifications from military registration and enlistment offices about the dead and missing, which were sent to relatives at their place of residence. And the figure of losses he received increased to 9 million 168 thousand 400 people. These data were reproduced in volume 2 of the collective work of the staff of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Population of Russia in the 20th century. Historical essays”, published under the editorship of academician Yu. Polyakov.
In 2004, the second, corrected and expanded, edition of the book by the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, “Feat and Forgery: Pages of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945,” was published. It provides data on losses: about 27 million Soviet citizens. And in the footnote comments to them, the same addition mentioned above appeared, explaining that the calculations of military historians back in the early 1960s gave a figure of 26 million, but the “high authorities” preferred to accept something else as the “historical truth”: “over 20 million."
Meanwhile, historians and demographers continued to look for new approaches to determining the magnitude of the USSR's losses in the war.
The historian Ilyenkov, who served in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, followed an interesting path. He tried to calculate the irretrievable losses of the Red Army personnel based on the files of irretrievable losses of privates, sergeants and officers. These files began to be created when, on July 9, 1941, a department for recording personal losses was organized as part of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Recruitment of the Red Army (GUFKKA). The responsibilities of the department included personal accounting of losses and compiling an alphabetical card index of losses.
The records were kept in the following categories: 1) dead - according to reports from military units, 2) dead - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 3) missing in action - according to reports from military units, 4) missing - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 5) dead in German captivity , 6) those who died from illnesses, 7) those who died from wounds - according to reports from military units, those who died from wounds - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices. At the same time, the following were taken into account: deserters; military personnel sentenced to forced labor camps; those sentenced to capital punishment - execution; removed from the register of irretrievable losses as survivors; those on suspicion of having served with the Germans (the so-called “signals”) and those who were captured but survived. These military personnel were not included in the list of irretrievable losses.
After the war, the card files were deposited in the Archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense (now the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). Since the early 1990s, the archive began counting registration cards by letters of the alphabet and categories of losses. As of November 1, 2000, 20 letters of the alphabet were processed; for the remaining 6 letters that were not counted, a preliminary count was carried out, with fluctuations up or down by 30-40 thousand persons.
The calculated 20 letters for 8 categories of losses of privates and sergeants of the Red Army gave the following figures: 9 million 524 thousand 398 people. At the same time, 116 thousand 513 people were removed from the register of irretrievable losses, as they turned out to be alive according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices.
A preliminary calculation based on 6 uncounted letters gave 2 million 910 thousand people as irretrievable losses. The result of the calculations was as follows: 12 million 434 thousand 398 Red Army soldiers and sergeants were lost by the Red Army in 1941-1945 (Remember that this does not include the losses of the Navy, internal and border troops of the NKVD of the USSR.)
Using the same methodology, the alphabetical card index of irretrievable losses of officers of the Red Army was calculated, which is also stored in the TsAMO of the Russian Federation. They amounted to about 1 million 100 thousand people.
Thus, during the Great Patriotic War, the Red Army lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders killed, missing, died from wounds, diseases and in captivity.
These data are 4 million 865 thousand 998 people higher than the irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces (payroll) according to the General Staff, which included the Red Army, sailors, border guards, and internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR.
Finally, we note another new trend in the study of the demographic results of the Great Patriotic War. Before the collapse of the USSR, there was no need to estimate human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate amount of human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.
(Quotes: S. Golotik and V. Minaev - “Demographic losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War: history of calculations”, “New Historical Bulletin”, No. 16, 2007)
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Leonid Rybakovsky
Leonid Leonidovich Rybakovsky - Doctor of Economics, Professor, Head of the Center for Social Demography at the Institute of Socio-Political Research of the Russian Academy of Sciences.
The history of mankind has never known such colossal human losses as those caused by the Second World War, during which an average of 8 million people died annually. Almost half of these losses fell on the Soviet Union. It also suffered the greatest material damage: 1,710 cities and towns, more than 70 thousand villages and hamlets were completely or partially destroyed, in total about 30% of the national wealth. Not a single European country, having experienced such a blow and moral shock, would have withstood the power of Nazi Germany. Almost 3/4 of the military potential of the fascist bloc was thrown against the USSR...
/…/ The range of estimates of human losses in the USSR is large: from 7 to 46 million people. Obviously, one should not comment on estimates of human losses, determined at 44, 46 or more million people. The first assessment (I. Kurganov), carried out methodically incorrectly, received reasoned criticism in the foreign and domestic press. The figure of 46 million people is even less worthy of attention. Its author, S. Ivanov, claimed that civilian losses amounted to 24 million, and a total of 46 million. The same numbers were given by V. Kondratiev. These and similar assessments were subjected to thorough criticism by Academician A. Samsonov. A figure of 43.3 million human losses appeared, obtained by B. Sokolov by subtracting from the population in June 1941 (209.3 million) the population in May 1945 (166 million people). Both figures were calculated by the author himself. If desired, the number of losses can be increased further by slightly (say, ten million) overestimating the pre-war population and underestimating the post-war population accordingly. The rest of the estimates are within the bounds of common sense.
Estimates by Western scientists range from 16.2-25 million people. With the exception of S. Maksudov's data, they were obtained before the first post-war census of the USSR population and turned out to be more realistic than those that were done in the Soviet Union until the end of the 80s. The reason for this is not the different level of professionalism of Western and domestic scientists, but the fact that in the USSR ideologically significant information was voiced only by the leaders of the party and state. Censorship until 1987, and for scientific literature a little later, did not allow the appearance in print of a figure of human losses exceeding the official one. From 1946 to 1990, the estimate of human losses changed 4 times upward, but the authors of the new figures were always the general secretaries - I. Stalin, N. Khrushchev, L. Brezhnev and M. Gorbachev. Scientists were then allowed to interpret them. How were these assessments made?
From 7 to 27 million: history of estimates
Data on human losses in the Soviet Union were provided already during the Great Patriotic War. But until the war ended, while the fighting continued, there were no objective conditions, and there was no need to assess the total human losses. The losses of the armed forces were taken into account, and the remaining mobilization potential was calculated. The belligerents tended, as in all wars, to underestimate their own losses and overestimate the losses of the enemy. ... As far as we know, estimates of the total losses of the Soviet Union before the end of the war were published only in the press of Great Britain and the United States. The estimate of losses of 30 million people made at that time was not so different from the calculations made in the late 80s. in Russia. Germany's losses are still being counted. The known figures are 6.5 million total losses, 6.2 and 6.0 million, 5.95 million, 5.2 million, 5.7 million and 8.6 million. Accurate Germans believe that casualty data is unreliable; Wehrmacht losses are still being determined. ...
Officially, the first figure for military losses appeared in 1946. I. Stalin, in an interview with a correspondent of the Pravda newspaper, stated: “As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, and also thanks to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude - about seven million people." ... by March 1946, the Extraordinary State Commission (ESC), created in November 1942, completed calculations of civilian casualties ... According to archival data, 11.3 million civilians were killed in the occupied territories. In addition, 4.9 million people died as prisoners. P. Polyan, referring to the data of the ChGK, notes that approximately 11 million civilians and prisoners of war died in the occupied territory and 4 million people were taken to “eastern work” in Germany. ...
The best means of persuasion for the “Russians” is a stick in the hands of a German soldier
(From trophy photographs seized from captured and killed Wehrmacht soldiers). 1941
Kyiv, 1941. To Nazi hard labor in Germany...
Stalin's estimate of human losses in the war in the Soviet Union lasted 15 years. The new figure was named by N. Khrushchev in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden: “... the German militarists launched a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people.” One can guess where N. Khrushchev got this figure from. In 1957, a book by German authors, “Results of the Second World War,” was published in the USSR. It contained an article about human losses in World War II. Professor G. Arntz noted that the losses of the USSR are classified; but this is not specific to the USSR - the practice of classifying losses in wars is accepted in many countries. It is no coincidence that various sources cited information about the USSR’s losses in the war ranging from 7 to 40 million people. He himself estimated the losses of the Soviet Union at 20 million. It is difficult to say whether the censorship missed a figure in the translated work that diverged from the official point of view due to an oversight or with permission. But the fact remains...
It is worth adding that by this time a population census had been carried out. In 1959, the population was greater than in 1940 by only 14.7 million people. The then published indicators of natural population growth for the first half of the 50s (average rate of natural increase 17%) indicated that in 1951-1955 alone the country's population increased by 9-10 million people. But there was population growth in 1946-1950, not to mention 1956-1958. The figure of 20 million dead at least somehow corresponded to the magnitude of natural increase in the post-war pre-census years. ...The mentioned assessment and quotation were reproduced in statistical yearbooks for 1961 and 1962, in the journal International Affairs.
...7 months after the resignation of N. Khrushchev, L. Brezhnev, on the occasion of the twentieth anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War, said: “the war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people.” It was from this time, after L. Brezhnev’s speech, that “more than 20 million” appear in the statistical publications of the Central Statistical Office of the USSR. This very convenient figure lasted until the end of the 80s, i.e. 25 years.
It took approximately three years from the beginning of perestroika for new figures to appear on the USSR’s human losses in the last war. ... The first to mention in the newspapers the figure of human losses of 26-27 million people were historians A. Samsonov, Y. Polyakov and demographer A. Kvasha.
The initiator of the change in the official value of human losses in the war was the Ministry of Defense. In December 1988, it sent a note to the CPSU Central Committee about the losses of personnel of the USSR armed forces during the Great Patriotic War: irretrievable losses were determined at 8668.4 thousand people. In January-February, there was a discussion of this issue in the CPSU Central Committee with the participation of M. Gorbachev, E. Ligachev, N. Ryzhkov, and other members of the Politburo. In A. Yakovlev’s speech it was said: “I consider this issue to be very important and very serious from all points of view.” It is symptomatic: he and E. Shevardnadze opposed the publication of new data. The General Staff itself published in 1990 calculations of the losses of the armed forces.
From the discussion in the CPSU Central Committee of the issue of human losses, it became clear that the losses of the armed forces must be supplemented by the losses of the civilian population (the calculation was entrusted to the USSR State Statistics Committee). Then the CPSU Central Committee adopted a resolution (top secret!) to instruct the State Statistics Committee, the Ministry of Defense and the USSR Academy of Sciences, with the involvement of interested departments and organizations, to form a temporary scientific team (VNK) to clarify the losses of military personnel and civilians. The relevant departments included in the VNK: 4 people from the USSR Academy of Sciences, 4 people from the State Statistics Committee and its scientific division, one from the General Staff, one from Moscow State University and one from the Central State Academy of Economy. The VNK worked almost weekly in March-April 1989, arguing about numbers and counting methods. /…/ It was assumed that after the VNC completed its work, a communiqué with an agreed assessment of human losses in the war, signed by members of the temporary scientific team, would be published. That did not happen. Even the leaders of the state and the Communist Party came out with different estimates a year later - M. Gorbachev named the figure 27 million, E. Shevardnadze - 26 million.
/…/In 1991, B. Sokolov estimates the losses of civilians at 14.9 million, and military personnel at 14.7 million. His total figure is 29.6 million people. A. Shevyakov considers the losses of civilians in 1991 to be about 19 million, which together with military personnel amounts to 27.7 million. In 1992, he increases civilian losses to 20.8 million and total losses to 29.5 million. Samsonov in 1991 gives a loss figure of 26-27 million. E. Andreev, L. Darsky and T. Kharkova determine human losses at 26.6 million people, etc.
On the factors of losses of the Soviet Union
The Soviet Union accounted for almost half of all human losses of World War II. It also suffered the greatest material damage: 1,710 cities and towns, more than 70 thousand villages and hamlets with production and social infrastructure were completely or partially destroyed. In total - about 30% of the country's national wealth.
On August 23, 1942, the Luftwaffe dropped tons of bombs on Stalingrad and practically wiped the city off the face of the earth. In the photo: oil flowing into the Volga is burning.
In the destroyed total volume of national wealth of the European countries at war, the USSR's share was at least half. Not a single European country, at least, having suffered such human and material losses, having experienced such a moral shock, would have withstood the power of Nazi Germany. Almost ¾ of the military potential of the fascist bloc was thrown against the USSR; Wehrmacht losses on the Soviet-German front amounted to about 75% of personnel and equipment. The Soviet Union retained a fairly large part of its armed forces in the Far East. Nevertheless, the USSR resisted and achieved a triumphant victory - it made a decisive contribution to the defeat of the aggressor and, in fact, destroyed fascism. The scale of losses, primarily human, is determined by the action of at least seven groups of factors.
1. The Second World War, unlike all the wars that preceded it, was distinguished by the level of technology and techniques for killing people. It was a war of a huge number of engines thrown to exterminate the population. In combat, and often punitive operations, tens of thousands of aircraft, armored vehicles, powerful guns and mortars were used, and automatic weapons were used on a massive scale. During the three years of the war (1942-1944), Germany alone produced about 80 thousand combat aircraft, 49 thousand tanks and 69.6 thousand guns, most of which were used on the Soviet-German front. The use of this entire arsenal of murders, if the resisting side (state, locality, etc.) did not capitulate, led to enormous losses of the armed forces and civilians...
Leninskaya Street in Minsk, destroyed by the Nazis
Dresden. February 1945. After the Anglo-American bombings
2. Hitler’s Germany, attacking the Soviet Union, sought not only to seize its territory with human, natural and economic resources, as happened with other countries, but also pursued the main, monstrous goal - to exterminate at least one fourth of the population , who lived in the European part of the Soviet state. … Let us quote an excerpt from one of Hitler’s speeches: “We must develop the technique of depopulation... I mean the elimination of entire racial units... I have the right to eliminate millions of people of the lower race.”
Remains of those killed in the Majdanek extermination camp
...Hitler's directive regarding the Slavic peoples in general, and the Soviet people in particular, was strictly carried out by the Gestapo services and other punitive bodies after the invasion of the Soviet Union. “The purpose of the campaign against Russia,” Himmler said at the beginning of 1941, “is the extermination of the Slavic population.” Hitler's doctrine was the basis for the Ost master plan, which envisaged the destruction of 46-51 million Russians and other Slavs within a few years.
Victims of fascist terror (Kharkov, 1943)
German soldiers among the destruction in a captured village
Particular importance was attached to the destruction of such major cities as Moscow and Leningrad, in which 7-8 million people lived. It was planned to surround Moscow and wipe it off the face of the earth, Leningrad was to be starved to death (the Finns proposed flooding).
In besieged Leningrad
Tortured children
The occupation of Soviet territory was accompanied by the creation of concentration camps, as was the case in other parts of conquered Europe. But the extermination of the Slavs, first of all (as well as the Jews), was the ideological dogma of the Nazi regime. This explains the fact that, on the one hand, the Germans released prisoners of war home, for example, from Holland, Greece and a number of other countries, allowed prisoners from the armies of Western states to receive parcels and mail, and on the other hand, they methodically destroyed Soviet prisoners. Of the 3.4 million Soviet soldiers and officers captured in 1941, according to German sources, 2 million died. Every day, up to 6 thousand Soviet prisoners of war were shot and died in concentration camps. According to other sources, by the end of 1941, the Germans captured 3.9 million Soviet military personnel, of which 1 million remained by February 1942. 280 thousand agreed to serve in the police and auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht, the remaining 2.6 million, Apparently they died. Of those captured, only one in five waited until the end of the war.
Selection of prisoners of war (From trophy photographs taken from captured and killed Wehrmacht soldiers, 1941)
Unfortunately, there are still arguments that the Nazis destroyed Soviet prisoners because the USSR did not sign the Geneva Convention. This is nothing more than a mockery of the fallen. The fascists ignored this convention in the same way as earlier, having come to power, they neglected, with the tacit consent of the leaders of the countries of the former Entente, the Versailles agreements [The Geneva Convention of 1929 did not cross out the previous ones, namely the Hague Conventions of 1889 and 1907, signed by both Russia and and Germany. On July 17, 1941, the People's Commissariat for Foreign Affairs of the USSR officially recalled through Sweden, which during the war years represented the Soviet side diplomatically before Berlin, that the Soviet Union supports the Hague Convention and is ready to implement it on the basis of reciprocity. - Approx. ed. site "Perspectives"]. ...
3. The scale of losses is largely connected, and this applies not only to the Soviet Union, with objective factors. First of all, the aggressor always has a number of advantages, one of which is surprise, especially if aggressive intentions are camouflaged by non-aggression agreements. ...Attacking the USSR without declaring war, the fascists concentrated forces in a number of directions that were 3-4 times larger than the Red Army units. In the first two days, the Nazis gained complete air supremacy, knocking out several thousand Soviet aircraft at airfields. In 1941, irretrievable losses of Soviet troops amounted to 98.9% of the average monthly number of military personnel. In the first 6 months, almost 3 million people went missing out of 5 million during the war years.
The fascist army, unlike the armies of the countries that were victims of aggression, including the USSR, was fully equipped and armed. What is especially important is that it had extensive experience in successful combat operations, and possessed the art of maneuver warfare, the use of mobile formations in operations, and the use of aviation to support ground forces, proven in the Balkans, France and other European countries. To this we add that as a result of the lightning defeat of Poland, Yugoslavia, France, etc., the German soldiers developed a feeling of victory and moral superiority.
Berlin, July 6, 1940. The crowd gathered at Wilhelmplatz welcomes the Fuhrer after his triumphant return from Paris
4. The USSR was opposed not only by the human and material resources of Hitler’s Germany, but also by the resources of almost all the countries of Europe that had been conquered by that time. Hungary, Romania, Finland, and Italy fought on the side of Germany. In fact, almost the entire natural and economic potential of mainland Europe was used for the war against the USSR. The aggressor's troops included volunteers from Spain, Sweden, Denmark, France, Belgium, Holland, and a number of Slavic countries. During the war years, 1.8 million citizens of other countries were drafted into the German armed forces, including representatives of all republics of the former Union. The national “eastern” legions fought on the side of Germany: Turkestan, Azerbaijan, Georgian, Armenian, North Caucasus and Volga-Ural. Almost 50 battalions were created from representatives of the Caucasian peoples alone, with up to a thousand people in each. Here we should also add 8 battalions of Crimean Tatars (numbering up to 20 thousand people), a Kalmyk cavalry corps, and a Cossack corps of three regiments. By 1944, there were 200 infantry battalions from Russians, Ukrainians and other peoples of the Soviet Union on the German side. There were 800-900 thousand people in Vlasov’s army alone.
5. The huge scale of human losses is largely due to the criminal activities of Stalin and his entourage, strategic miscalculations made on the eve of the war; persistent unwillingness to reckon with the realities of war, especially at its first stage.
The repressions that became widespread in the second half of the 1930s did not spare the army. Thus, from May 1937 to September 1938, about 40 thousand command personnel were repressed. The purges affected 65% of the Red Army's senior officers. ...A check of combat training in December 1940 showed that of the 225 regiment commanders recruited, only 25 graduated from military schools. ...
The Red Army's acquisition of experience in modern warfare was accompanied by a huge number of dead and captured. These are mainly those who found themselves in the “cauldrons” due to Stalin’s desire to hold positions at any cost, as well as the inept leadership on the part of many, if not most, commanders. Here are some examples from German sources. The German army captured 300 thousand in the Minsk-Grodno ring, in the Uman region - over 100 thousand, in the Smolensk cauldron - 350 thousand, in the Kiev cauldron - over 600 thousand, near Vyazma - 663 thousand, in the Crimea, including Sevastopol - 250 thousand, south of Kharkov - 240 thousand, etc. . In the listed “cauldrons” alone, 2.7 million people were captured in the first year of the war.
Stalin, having concluded a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany, did not make a mistake, but made a huge strategic miscalculation. According to A. Mikoyan, I. Stalin was an expert on Bismarck and believed that Hitler would follow the principles of the “Iron Chancellor” and would not dare, as was the case in the First World War, to fight on two fronts. Naturally, Stalin believed that the Soviet Union had several years left. Hence the understaffing of units, the lack of fortification of new borders, the slow re-equipment of troops with modern types of weapons, such as T-34 tanks or IL-2 attack aircraft. This technique was just being mastered. This explains the fact that in the western districts only 27% of old-type tanks were fully combat-ready, 25 air divisions were in the process of being formed, etc. ...
6. In the Soviet Union, as in the Russian Empire, and even in modern Russia, human life was not valued. The times of Ivan the Terrible, Peter I and Stalin, who loved films about the first two, are no different in terms of the ruthless destruction of human resources. In the Great Patriotic War, as in most past wars, the ability to fight was replaced by the use of huge human masses. So the victory over Napoleon was achieved with great blood: the French lost an army of six hundred thousand, and the Russians lost almost 2 million people, including militias and civilians.
During the Great Patriotic War, more than 31 million people were mobilized, a third of the country’s male population. The presence of huge masses of people and the lack of responsibility for their lives explain the unprepared assaults on populated areas and heights, and the capture of large cities on memorable dates. Providing assistance to the Allies in the Ardennes can be considered irresponsible in relation to one's own armed forces. Although the Soviet troops were not ready for the offensive, this step was taken despite the fact that Stalin was well aware that the Allies did not open a second front in order to preserve their own resources and in order to exhaust the forces of the Soviet Union and Germany. ... We should also add the ambitions of the marshals, who argued about who would be the first to enter Berlin, take the Reichstag, which could simply be erased from the surface, and much more. Of course, it is easy to evaluate historical events. They never go without errors...
7. The human losses of the Soviet Union would have been much less if the army and civilian population had behaved as they did in most countries conquered by the Nazis. By attacking the Soviet Union, Hitler did not achieve a lightning victory like those he won in mainland Europe. So, he captured Poland in three weeks; German losses amounted to 10.6 thousand killed and 30.3 thousand wounded; France - in 4 weeks, capturing 2 million French (almost 5% of the country's population). Yugoslavia fell in 12 days with its army of 1.4 million people. Greece lasted 2 months.
Hitler expected to end the war with the USSR in 4 months. However, it lasted almost 47 months and did not have the ending that was envisioned in the first months of the war. All the countries attacked by Germany, according to K. Tippelskirch, were unable to resist it, as if confirming Moltke’s thesis: “the mistake made in the initial alignment of forces can hardly be corrected during the entire war.” The USSR denied this truth, despite the huge number of dead and prisoners captured in the first weeks and even months of the war. Note that during the Second World War, the total number of prisoners, according to archival data from Germany, was about 35 million people. The Soviet Union accounts for 16.3%. At the same time, the share of the USSR among the dead population of all warring countries was almost half, and among military personnel about a quarter. Despite all the unfavorable reasons, less than 3% of the population of the Soviet Union or 5.7 million people were captured, of which 0.5 million fled, and many continued to fight. With the exception of Yugoslavia, whose people offered fierce resistance to the invaders, and therefore did not count 11% of their pre-war numbers by the end of the war, all other countries, as they say today, capitulated “in a civilized manner” and therefore did not suffer much. Relative to pre-war numbers, 1% of the population (military and civilian) died in Belgium, 2.4% in Holland, 2.2% in Greece, 0.3% in Norway, 1.4% in France and 2.4% in Czechoslovakia. Denmark suffered virtually no losses. In Poland, 12.4% of the population died, this is largely due to the mass extermination of Jews living in the country. Vulkan of Luck https://vulkan-udachi.net/ casino - official gaming club
Due to a sudden attack on well-explored areas, the control of Soviet troops was disorganized in the very first hours. As a result of the rapid breakthrough of defensive lines, many formations were surrounded and destroyed and captured in the first days of the war. Nevertheless, stubborn resistance was shown to the enemy everywhere. In the first month of the war alone, 1,300 German aircraft were shot down.
Fighting in the Murmansk direction (1941)
Other equipment and manpower of the enemy were destroyed on an equally large scale. The legendary Brest Fortress is not the only example of the steadfastness of a Soviet soldier at the beginning of the war. The defense of Leningrad, Stalingrad, Sevastopol and many other cities and villages - all this led to huge casualties, but at the same time forged a future victory. The fortitude of the Soviet soldier was also appreciated by Hitler’s generals. “The Russian soldier,” notes Colonel General G. Guderian, “has always been distinguished by special tenacity, strength of character and great unpretentiousness.” And here is what Infantry General Tippelskirch says: “Units and formations of Russian troops continued to fight steadfastly even in the most desperate situation.” Let's also add here a massive partisan movement, underground struggle, a militia of people poorly armed and unprepared for war. It is believed that there were about 2 million people in the people's militia. From 1.3 to 2 million Soviet people fought in partisan detachments and underground. Many of them died, making a contribution to the common cause of victory over fascism. Both military and civilians, men and women, adults and children fought against the fascists. A. Sokolov very accurately noted that if on the German side the war was for destruction, then on the USSR’s side it was for survival. The civilian population and the army fought for survival, for their fatherland, perhaps not entirely affectionate, but still dear, and therefore they survived and brought liberation to the peoples of Europe from Hitlerism...