Lost.ru

Chapter 11

........................................................ ..........CONCLUSIONS From the above, one should conclude that the Red Army has fire superiority over the German army. Moreover, this fire superiority cannot be explained by quantitative superiority in gun barrels. Moreover, as a result of poor transport equipment, the Red Army made little use of its mortar weapons at the battalion and regimental level. After all, an 82 mm mine weighs 3 kg, and 30 of them are fired per minute. For 10 minutes of shooting you need 900 kg of ammunition per mortar. Of course, transport was provided primarily by artillery, not mortars. It turned out that the maneuverable, light artillery weapon was tied to ammunition supply points and could not work in the interests of the battalions. The problem was solved by consolidating the mortars into mortar regiments, where they could be supplied with ammunition centrally. But as a result, the battalion, regimental and even divisional link turned out to be weaker than the German one, because mortars made up half of the guns in the division in the pre-war states. The anti-tank artillery of the Soviet rifle divisions was weaker than the German one. As a result, three-inch light artillery regiments were rolled out for direct fire. There were not enough air defense systems. It was necessary to divert heavy machine guns and anti-tank rifles from the first line for these purposes. How was fire superiority achieved from the first days of the war? Fire superiority by the Red Army was achieved through skill and courage. This is confirmed not only by calculations of personnel losses, but also by losses of military equipment, property, and transport.

Here is Halder’s entry dated November 18, 1941, which states that out of 0.5 million cars that were in the German army on June 22, 1941, 150 thousand were irretrievably lost and 275 thousand required repairs, and for this repair 300 thousand were needed. tons of spare parts. That is, to repair one car you need about 1.1 tons of spare parts. What condition are these cars in? All that was left of them were frames! If we add to them those cars from which not even frames remain, it turns out that all the cars produced by German car factories in a year burn out in Russia in less than six months. So Hitler became concerned about this circumstance, so Halder was forced to discuss these issues with General Bule.

But cars are not the first line of troops to fight. What was going on in the first line? Pitch hell! Now we need to compare all this with the losses of automotive and tractor equipment in the Red Army. With the beginning of the war, the production of cars and tractors was sharply reduced in favor of tanks, and the production of artillery tractors ceased altogether. However, by the fall of 1942, the Soviet Union had lost only half of its pre-war fleet of artillery tractors, mainly in encirclement, and then used the remaining half until the victory, suffering virtually no losses in them. If in the first six months of the war the Germans lost almost all the vehicles they had in the army at the beginning of the war, then the Soviet army lost 33% of the vehicles they had and received over the same period. And for the whole of 1942, 14%. And by the end of the war, car losses were reduced to 3-5%.

But these losses repeat, in the form of the loss graph, the irretrievable losses of Red Army personnel, with the only difference that the average monthly vehicle losses are 10-15 times less. But the number of cars at the front was just as many times smaller. It can be assumed that vehicle losses from enemy fire in 1941 in the Red Army were no more than 5-10%, and 23-28% of losses were due to maneuver actions of German troops and encirclement. That is, vehicle losses can also serve to characterize personnel losses. Because they also reflect the fire capabilities of the parties. That is, if fascist troops lose 90% of their vehicles in 1941, then almost all of these losses are losses from fire from Soviet troops, which is 15% of losses per month. It can be seen that the Soviet army is at least 1.5-3 times more effective than the German army.

In an entry dated December 9, 1941, Halder writes about the irretrievable average daily losses of horsepower at 1,100 horses. Considering that horses were not placed in the battle line and that there were 10 times fewer horses at the front than people, the figure of 9465 average daily irretrievable losses for December 1941 from Table 6 receives additional confirmation.

German losses in tanks can be estimated based on their availability at the beginning and end of the period of interest. As of June 1941, the Germans had about 5,000 of their own and Czechoslovak vehicles. In addition, Halder’s entry dated December 23, 1940 indicates the figure of 4930 captured vehicles, mostly French. There are about 10,000 cars in total. At the end of 1941, the German tank forces were 20-30% equipped with tanks, that is, there were about 3000 vehicles left in stock, of which about 500-600 were captured French ones, which were then transferred from the front to guard the rear areas. Halder also writes about this. Even without taking into account the tanks produced by the German industry over the past six months, without taking into account the Soviet captured tanks used by the Germans, Soviet troops irrevocably destroyed about 7,000 German vehicles, not counting armored cars and armored personnel carriers, in the first 6 months of the war. Over four years, this will amount to 56,000 vehicles destroyed by the Red Army. If we add here 3,800 tanks produced by German industry in 1941 and 1,300 Soviet captured tanks captured by the Germans at storage bases, we get more than 12,000 destroyed German vehicles in the first six months of the war. During the war years, Germany produced about 50,000 vehicles, and the Germans had 10,000 vehicles before the war, as we calculated. The USSR allies could destroy 4-5 thousand tanks or so. Soviet troops lost approximately 100,000 tanks and self-propelled guns during the war, but one must understand that the operational life of Soviet tanks was significantly less. There is a different approach to life, to technology, to war. Different ways to use tanks. Different tank ideology. Soviet principles of tank building are well described in the trilogy by Mikhail Svirin under the general title “History of the Soviet tank 1919-1955”, Moscow, “Yauza”, “Eksmo”, (“Armor is strong, 1919-1937”, “Stalin’s armor shield, 1937-1943” ", "Stalin's steel fist, 1943-1955"). Soviet wartime tanks were designed for one operation, had a service life of 100-200 km at the beginning of the war, to 500 km by the end of the war, which reflected views on the operational use of tanks and military economics. After the war, the service life of tanks had to be increased by a number of measures to 10-15 years of service, based on the needs of the peacetime economy and the new concept of weapons accumulation. Thus, it was initially planned not to spare tanks. These are weapons, why feel sorry for them, they need to fight. That is, the losses in tanks of the USSR are 1.5-2 times higher, and the losses of people are 1.5-2 times lower.

It should be taken into account that the Germans could restore up to 70% of damaged tanks within a week, according to Guderian. This means that if out of a hundred German tanks that entered the battle at the beginning of the month, 20 vehicles remained by the end of the month, then with irretrievable losses of 80 vehicles, the number of knockouts could exceed 250. And such a figure will appear in the reports of the Soviet troops. However, the Soviet General Staff, more or less accurately, corrected the troops' reports taking this circumstance into account. Therefore, the operational report for December 16, 1941, announced by the Sovinformburo, states that the Germans lost 15,000 tanks, 19,000 guns, about 13,000 aircraft and 6,000,000 people killed, wounded and captured in the first five months of the war. These figures are quite consistent with my calculations and fairly accurately reflect the actual losses of German troops. If they are overpriced, it is not very much, given the situation at that time. In any case, the Soviet General Staff assessed the situation much more realistically than the German General Staff even in 1941. Subsequently, the estimates became even more accurate.

The losses of aircraft by the German side are discussed in the book by G. V. Kornyukhin “Air War over the USSR. 1941”, Veche Publishing House LLC, 2008. There is a table of calculations of German aviation losses without taking into account training vehicles.

Table 18:

Years of war	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945
Number of aircraft produced in Germany	10247	12401	15409	24807	40593	7539
The same without taking into account training aircraft	8377	11280	14331	22533	36900	7221
Number of aircraft at the beginning of next year	4471 (30.9.40)	5178 (31.12.41)	6107 (30.3.43)	6642 (30.4.44)	8365 (1.2.45)	1000*
Theoretical attrition	8056	10573	13402	21998	35177	14586
Losses in battles with allies according to their (allies) data	8056	1300	2100	6650	17050	5700
Theoretical losses on the Eastern Front	-	9273	11302	15348	18127	8886
Losses on the Eastern Front according to Soviet data**	-	4200	11550	15200	17500	4400
The same according to modern Russian sources***	-	2213	4348	3940	4525	****

* Number of aircraft surrendered after surrender
** According to the reference book "Soviet aviation in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 in numbers"
*** An attempt to calculate using extracts from the documents of the Quartermaster General of the Luftwaffe, carried out by R. Larintsev and A. Zabolotsky.
**** For 1945, the Quartermaster General’s papers could not be found; apparently he was tired of preparing propaganda opuses. It is unlikely that the Quartermaster General quit his job and went on vacation; rather, he quit the minor job that the Ministry of Propaganda assigned to him.

From Table 18 it is clear that modern ideas about German aviation losses are completely untrue. It is also clear that the Soviet data differ significantly from the theoretically calculated values ​​only in 1945 and 1941. In 1945, discrepancies arise because half of the German aviation refused to fly and was abandoned by the Germans at airfields. In 1941, discrepancies arose from the Soviet side’s poor accounting of downed German aircraft in the first two to three months of the war. And they were embarrassed to include the estimated wartime figures announced by the Sovinformburo into post-war history. Thus, 62,936 German aircraft destroyed by the Soviet side are clearly visible. The combat losses of the Soviet Air Force during the war amounted to 43,100 combat vehicles. However, non-combat losses of Soviet Air Force combat vehicles are almost the same as combat ones. Here again the difference in the quality of technology and attitude towards it is visible. This difference was fully recognized by the Soviet leadership; the USSR could compete with a united Europe in the volume of military production only if it had a completely different view of the quality, nature and application of these products. Soviet vehicles, especially fighters, wore out very quickly under wartime conditions. However, plywood-canvas aircraft with engines that lasted for several flights successfully competed against all-duralumin aircraft with engines of German quality.

It was not for nothing that Hitler believed that Soviet industry would not be able to make up for the loss of weapons, and would not have been able to if it had sought a symmetrical response to the German challenge. Having 3-4 times fewer workers, the Soviet Union could produce 3-4 times less labor costs.

At the same time, one should not draw a conclusion about the mass death of Soviet pilots or tank crews from imperfect technology. Such a conclusion will not be confirmed either in memoirs, or in reports, or in statistical studies. Because he is unfaithful. It’s just that the USSR had a different technical culture from the European one, a different technogenic civilization. The book lists the losses of Soviet military equipment, including decommissioned equipment that has used up its resources and cannot be restored due to a lack of spare parts and a weak repair base. It should be remembered that in terms of production development, the USSR had the basis of only two, albeit heroic, five-year plans. Therefore, the response to European technical equipment was not symmetrical. Soviet technology was designed for a shorter, but also more intensive period of operation. It’s more likely that it wasn’t even calculated, but just turned out that way on its own. Lendlease cars also did not last long under Soviet conditions. Producing repair forces means taking people away from production, from war, and producing spare parts means occupying the capacity that can produce finished machines. Of course, all this is necessary, the question is the balance of opportunities and needs. Taking into account the fact that in battle all this work can burn out in a minute, and all the produced spare parts and repair shops will remain out of business. Therefore, when, for example, Shirokorad in the book “The Three Wars of Great Finland” complains about the unsuitability of the budenovka or the differences in the quality of uniforms of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, the question arises: did he think well? To pursue European quality, you need to have a European industry; Germany had one, not the USSR. Budenovka or bogatyrka is a mobilization version of a headdress; they were invented at the end of the First World War, precisely because production was weak. As soon as the opportunity arose, they were replaced with normal hats. Who is to blame that such an opportunity appeared only in 1940? Honorary saint and honorary pope of our kingdom, Tsar Nicholas the Bloody and his satraps. Democrats from Kerensky's gang. And also the currently glorified white bandits. At the same time, the Germans wore winter caps. When Shirokorad, in the book “The March on Vienna,” complains that the gun turrets on armored boats were built from tanks and were not specially designed, he does not take into account that tank turrets were mass-produced at tank factories, and specially designed turrets should have been produced in medium series at factories shipbuilding Doesn't a specialist in the history of technology see the difference? Rather, he is looking for cheap sensations where there are none. And so it is in everything. Airplanes were produced in furniture factories, and cartridges in tobacco factories. Armored cars were produced at the crushing equipment plant in Vyksa, and PPS wherever there was a cold stamping press. The famous joke in Soviet times about a combine harvester with a vertical take-off is more suitable for Stalin's time than for later times.

The decisive role was played by the labor heroism of the Soviet people, but we must not forget about the merits of the Soviet government, Stalin personally, who correctly set priorities in the scientific, technical, industrial and military spheres. Now it is fashionable to complain that there were few radios and many tanks, but would it be better if there were fewer tanks and more radios? The radios don't fire. Although they are needed, where can we get enough money for everything? Where necessary there were also walkie-talkies.

In this regard, I would like to focus attention on a key moment in the history of the war, on the preparation of pre-war industry for mobilization in wartime. Special samples and modifications of all weapons were developed for release in wartime. Special technologies were developed for implementation in non-core industries, and specialists were trained to implement these technologies. Since 1937, the army began to receive modern, domestic weapons to replace alterations and modifications of pre-revolutionary and licensed models. The first to be introduced was artillery and automatic rifles. Then priority was given to tanks and combat aircraft. Their production began only in 1940. New machine guns and automatic cannons were introduced during the war. It was not possible to develop the automobile and radio industries to the required extent before the war. But they set up a lot of locomotives and carriages, and this is much more important. The capacity of specialized factories was sorely lacking, and the mobilization of non-core enterprises, prepared even before the war, gives the right to assert that Stalin deserved the title of generalissimo even before the war, even if he had done nothing more for victory. And he did a lot more!

On the anniversary of the start of the war, the Sovinformburo published operational reports summarizing the results of military operations since the beginning of the war on an accrual basis. It is interesting to summarize these data in a table that will give an idea of ​​the views of the Soviet command, of course, adjusted for some forced propaganda element regarding their own human losses. But the nature of Soviet propaganda of that period is interesting in itself, because now it can be compared with published data from the work.

Table 19:

Date of Sovinformburo operational report	Germany (23.6.42)	USSR (23.6.42)	Germany (21.6.43)	USSR (21.6.43)	Germany (21.6.44)	USSR (21.6.44)
Casualties since the beginning of the war	10,000,000 total casualties (of which 3,000,000 were killed)	4.5 million people total losses	6,400,000 killed and captured	4,200,000 killed and missing	7,800,000 killed and captured	5,300,000 killed and missing
Losses of guns over 75 mm since the beginning of the war	30500	22000	56500	35000	90000	48000
Tank losses since the beginning of the war	24000	15000	42400	30000	70000	49000
Aircraft losses since the beginning of the war	20000	9000	43000	23000	60000	30128

From Table 19 it is clear that the Soviet government hid only one figure from the Soviet people - losses of missing persons in encirclement. During the entire war, the USSR's losses in missing persons and captured amounted to about 4 million people, of which less than 2 million people returned from captivity after the war. These figures were hidden in order to reduce the fears of the unstable part of the population about the German advance, to reduce the fear of encirclement among the unstable part of the military. And after the war, the Soviet government considered itself guilty before the people for failing to foresee and avoid such a development of events. Therefore, even after the war, these figures were not advertised, although they were no longer hidden. After all, Konev quite openly declared after the war about more than 10,000,000 irretrievable losses of Soviet troops. He said it once, and there was no need to repeat it again, to reopen the wounds.

The remaining numbers are generally correct. During the entire war, the USSR lost 61,500 field artillery barrels, 96,500 tanks and self-propelled guns, but no more than 65,000 of them for combat reasons, 88,300 combat aircraft, but only 43,100 of them for combat reasons. About 6.7 million Soviet soldiers died in battles (including non-combat losses, but excluding those killed in captivity) during the entire war.

Enemy losses are also indicated correctly. Losses of enemy personnel have been greatly underestimated since 1942, and in 1941 they were correctly reported as 6,000,000 total casualties. Only the losses of German tanks are perhaps slightly overestimated, by about 1.5 times. This is naturally due to the difficulty of accounting for the number of machines repaired and reused. In addition, troop reports could indicate other armored vehicles along with destroyed tanks and self-propelled guns. The Germans had a lot of different combat vehicles, both on half-tracks and on wheeled chassis, which can be called self-propelled guns. Then the German losses in armored vehicles are also indicated correctly. A slight overestimation of the number of German aircraft shot down is not significant. The losses of guns and mortars of all calibers and purposes for the Red Army during the war amounted to 317,500 pieces, and for Germany and its allies, the work indicates losses of 289,200 pieces. But in the 12th volume of “History of the Second World War,” in table 11, it is said that Germany alone produced and lost 319,900 guns, and Germany produced mortars and lost 78,800. The total loss of guns and mortars in Germany alone will amount to 398,700 guns, and it is unknown whether this includes rocket systems; most likely they do not. In addition, this figure does not exactly include guns and mortars produced before 1939.

Since the summer of 1942, there has been a tendency in the Soviet General Staff to underestimate the number of killed Germans. Soviet military leaders began to assess the situation more carefully, fearing to underestimate the enemy at the final stage of the war. In any case, one can only talk about special, propaganda figures of losses published by the Sovinformburo in relation to the number of captured and missing Soviet soldiers. Otherwise, the same figures were published that the Soviet General Staff used in its calculations.

The course and outcome of the war cannot be understood if we exclude from consideration the European fascist atrocities against the civilian Soviet population and prisoners of war. These atrocities constituted the goal and meaning of the war for the German side and all Germany's allies. Combat actions were only a tool to ensure the unhindered implementation of these atrocities. The only goal of Europe united by the fascists in the Second World War was the conquest of the entire European part of the USSR, and the destruction in the most brutal way of the majority of the population, in order to intimidate those who remained and enslave them. These crimes are described in the book by Alexander Dyukov “What the Soviet People Fought For”, Moscow, “Yauza”, “Eksmo”, 2007. During the entire war, 12-15 million Soviet civilians, including prisoners of war, became victims of these atrocities, but we must remember that During the first war winter alone, the Nazis planned to kill more than 30 million civilian Soviet citizens in the occupied territories of the USSR. Thus, we can talk about the salvation by the Soviet army and partisans, the Soviet government and Stalin of more than 15 million lives of Soviet people planned for destruction in the first year of occupation, and about 20 million planned for destruction in the future, not counting those saved from fascist slavery, which often it was worse than death. Despite numerous sources, this point is extremely poorly covered by historical science. Historians simply avoid this topic, limiting themselves to rare and general phrases, but these crimes exceed in the number of victims all other crimes in history combined.

In an entry dated November 24, 1941, Halder writes about the report of Colonel General Fromm. The general military-economic situation is represented as a falling curve. Fromm believes that a truce is necessary. My findings confirm Fromm's findings.

It also states that the loss of personnel at the front is 180,000 people. If this is a loss of combat personnel, then it is easily covered by recalling vacationers from vacation. Not to mention the conscription of the contingent born in 1922. Where is the falling curve here? Why then does the entry dated November 30 say that there were 50-60 people left in the companies? To make ends meet, Halder claims that 340,000 men constituted half the fighting force of the infantry. But this is funny, the combat strength of the infantry is less than a tenth of the army. In fact, it should be read that the loss of troops at the front is 1.8 million people as of 11/24/41 in combat strength and 3.4 million in the total number of troops of the “Eastern Front” as of 11/30/41, and the regular number of troops " Eastern Front" 6.8 million people. This will probably be correct.

Perhaps someone will not believe my calculations about German losses, especially in 1941, when, according to modern ideas, the Red Army was completely defeated and supposedly the German army, in some cunning way, did not suffer losses. That's bullshit. Victory cannot be forged from defeats and losses. The German army suffered defeat from the very beginning, but the Reich leadership hoped that the USSR would have it even worse. Hitler spoke directly about this in the same diary of Halder.

The situation of the border battle was best conveyed by Dmitry Egorov in the book “June 41st. The defeat of the Western Front.”, Moscow, “Yauza”, “Eksmo”, 2008.

Of course, the summer of 1941 was terribly difficult for the Soviet troops. Endless battles with no visible positive results. Endless environments in which the choice was often between death and captivity. And many people chose captivity. Maybe even the majority. But we must take into account that mass surrenders began after one or two weeks of intense fighting in the encirclement, when the fighters ran out of ammunition even for small arms. The commanders, despairing of victory, abandoned control of the troops, sometimes even on a front-line scale, ran away from their fighters and in small groups either tried to surrender or go to their own to the east. The soldiers ran away from their units, changed into civilian clothes, or, left without leadership, gathered in crowds of thousands, hoping to surrender to the German troops clearing the area. And yet the Germans were beaten. There were people who chose a more reliable position for themselves, stocked up on weapons and took on their last battle, knowing in advance how it would end. Or they organized disorderly crowds of encirclement into combat detachments, attacked German cordons and broke through to their own. Sometimes it worked. There were commanders who retained control of their troops in the most difficult situations. There were divisions, corps and entire armies that attacked the enemy, inflicted defeats on the enemy, defended staunchly, evaded German attacks and struck themselves. Yes, they beat me so much that it was 1.5-2 times more painful. Each blow was answered with a double blow.

This was the reason for the defeat of the fascist hordes. The irretrievable demographic losses of the German army amounted to about 15 million people. Irreversible demographic losses of other Axis armies amounted to up to 4 million people. And in total, to win, it was necessary to kill up to 19 million enemies of different nationalities and states.

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

There is a lot of literature on this problem, and perhaps some people get the impression that it has been sufficiently researched. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but many questions and doubts remain. There is too much here that is unclear, controversial and clearly unreliable. Even the reliability of the current official data on the human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts.

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

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

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

In 1988–1993 a team of military historians under the leadership of Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev conducted a statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about human losses in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. The result of the work was the figure of 8,668,400 casualties of the USSR security forces during the war.

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

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

Military personnel

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

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

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

On May 5, 2010, the head of the Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense for perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland, Major General A. Kirilin, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military losses are 8 668 400 , will be reported to the country's leadership so that they are announced on May 9, the 65th anniversary of the Victory.

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

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

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

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

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

Additional data

Civilian population

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, we note another new trend in the study of the demographic results of the Second World 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.

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

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

Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

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

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

There is another statistics of losses - statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites”, the total number of German soldiers located in recorded burial sites on the territory of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is 3 million 226 thousand people. (in the territory of the USSR alone - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as a starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, however, it also needs to be adjusted.

1. Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burials of Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (270 thousand of them died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states (357 thousand people died). Of the total number of dead Wehrmacht soldiers of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6–0.7 million people.
2. Secondly, this figure dates back to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern European countries has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, created in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence it transferred information about the burials of 400 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Association for the Care of Military Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they had already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of newly discovered burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. Tentatively, we can assume that the number of graves of Wehrmacht soldiers newly discovered over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
3. Thirdly, many graves of dead Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil have disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried in such disappeared and unmarked graves.
4. Fourthly, these data do not include the burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops on the territory of Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, in the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died on German soil and in Western European countries in battles with the Red Army.
5. Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people)

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany

1. The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
2. The population in 1946 was 65.93 million people.
3. Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
4. Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
5. Emigration influx of 7.25 million people.
6. Total losses ((70.2 – 65.93 – 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.

conclusions

Let us remember that disputes about the number of deaths continue to this day.

During the war, almost 27 million USSR citizens died (the exact number is 26.6 million). This amount included:

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

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

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

“I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they will do to Germany” (With)

This article examines the losses suffered by the Red Army, the Wehrmacht and the troops of the satellite countries of the Third Reich, as well as the civilian population of the USSR and Germany, only in the period from 06/22/1941 until the end of hostilities in Europe

1. USSR losses

According to official data from the 1939 population census, 170 million people lived in the USSR - significantly more than in any other single country in Europe. The entire population of Europe (without the USSR) was 400 million people. By the beginning of World War II, the population of the Soviet Union differed from the population of future enemies and allies in its high mortality rate and low life expectancy. However, the high birth rate ensured significant population growth (2% in 1938–39). Also different from Europe was the youth of the USSR population: the proportion of children under 15 years old was 35%. It was this feature that made it possible to restore the pre-war population relatively quickly (within 10 years). The share of the urban population was only 32% (for comparison: in Great Britain - more than 80%, in France - 50%, in Germany - 70%, in the USA - 60%, and only in Japan it had the same value as in THE USSR).

In 1939, the population of the USSR increased noticeably after the entry into the country of new regions (Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic States, Bukovina and Bessarabia), whose population ranged from 20 to 22.5 million people. The total population of the USSR, according to a certificate from the Central Statistical Office as of January 1, 1941, was determined to be 198,588 thousand people (including the RSFSR - 111,745 thousand people). According to modern estimates, it was still smaller, and on June 1, 1941 it was 196.7 million people.

Population of some countries for 1938–40

USSR - 170.6 (196.7) million people;
Germany - 77.4 million people;
France - 40.1 million people;
Great Britain - 51.1 million people;
Italy - 42.4 million people;
Finland - 3.8 million people;
USA - 132.1 million people;
Japan - 71.9 million people.

By 1940, the population of the Reich had increased to 90 million people, and taking into account the satellites and conquered countries - 297 million people. By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, where 74.5 million people lived before the start of the Second World War. This once again emphasizes that despite Hitler’s assurances, the USSR did not have an advantage in human resources over the Third Reich.

During the entire Great Patriotic War in our country, 34.5 million people put on military uniforms. This amounted to about 70% of the total number of men aged 15–49 years in 1941. The number of women in the Red Army was approximately 500 thousand. The percentage of conscripts was higher only in Germany, but as we said earlier, the Germans covered the labor shortage at the expense of European workers and prisoners of war. In the USSR, such a deficit was covered by increased working hours and the widespread use of labor by women, children and the elderly.

For a long time, the USSR did not talk about direct irretrievable losses of the Red Army. In a private conversation, Marshal Konev in 1962 named the figure 10 million people, a famous defector - Colonel Kalinov, who fled to the West in 1949 - 13.6 million people. The figure of 10 million people was published in the French version of the book “Wars and Population” by B. Ts. Urlanis, a famous Soviet demographer. The authors of the famous monograph “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” (edited by G. Krivosheev) in 1993 and in 2001 published the figure of 8.7 million people; at the moment, this is precisely what is indicated in most reference literature. But the authors themselves state that it does not include: 500 thousand persons liable for military service, called up for mobilization and captured by the enemy, but not included in the lists of units and formations. Also, the almost completely dead militias of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other large cities are not taken into account. Currently, the most complete lists of irretrievable losses of Soviet soldiers amount to 13.7 million people, but approximately 12-15% of the records are repeated. According to the article “Dead Souls of the Great Patriotic War” (“NG”, 06.22.99), the historical and archival search center “Fate” of the “War Memorials” association established that due to double and even triple counting, the number of dead soldiers of the 43rd and 2nd of the Shock Armies in the battles studied by the center was overestimated by 10-12%. Since these figures refer to a period when the accounting of losses in the Red Army was not careful enough, it can be assumed that in the war as a whole, due to double counting, the number of Red Army soldiers killed was overestimated by approximately 5–7%, i.e. by 0.2– 0.4 million people

On the issue of prisoners. American researcher A. Dallin, based on archival German data, estimates their number at 5.7 million people. Of these, 3.8 million died in captivity, that is, 63%. Domestic historians estimate the number of captured Red Army soldiers at 4.6 million people, of which 2.9 million died. Unlike German sources, this does not include civilians (for example, railway workers), as well as seriously wounded people who remained on the battlefield occupied by the enemy, and subsequently died from wounds or were shot (about 470-500 thousand). The situation of prisoners of war was especially desperate in the first year of the war, when more than half of their total number (2.8 million people) was captured, and their labor had not yet been used in interests of the Reich. Open-air camps, hunger and cold, illness and lack of medicine, cruel treatment, mass executions of the sick and unable to work, and simply all those unwanted, primarily commissars and Jews. Unable to cope with the flow of prisoners and guided by political and propaganda motives, the occupiers in 1941 sent home over 300 thousand prisoners of war, mainly natives of western Ukraine and Belarus. This practice was subsequently discontinued.

Also, do not forget that approximately 1 million prisoners of war were transferred from captivity to the auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht. In many cases, this was the only chance for prisoners to survive. Again, most of these people, according to German data, tried to desert from Wehrmacht units and formations at the first opportunity. The local auxiliary forces of the German army included:

1) volunteer helpers (hivi)
2) order service (odi)
3) front auxiliary units (noise)
4) police and defense teams (gema).

At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht operated: up to 400 thousand Khivi, from 60 to 70 thousand Odi, and 80 thousand in the eastern battalions.

Some of the prisoners of war and the population of the occupied territories made a conscious choice in favor of cooperation with the Germans. Thus, in the SS division “Galicia” there were 82,000 volunteers for 13,000 “places”. More than 100 thousand Latvians, 36 thousand Lithuanians and 10 thousand Estonians served in the German army, mainly in the SS troops.

In addition, several million people from the occupied territories were taken to forced labor in the Reich. The ChGK (Emergency State Commission) immediately after the war estimated their number at 4.259 million people. More recent studies give a figure of 5.45 million people, of whom 850-1000 thousand died.

Estimates of direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK data from 1946.

RSFSR - 706 thousand people.
Ukrainian SSR - 3256.2 thousand people.
BSSR - 1547 thousand people.
Lit. SSR - 437.5 thousand people.
Lat. SSR - 313.8 thousand people.
Est. SSR - 61.3 thousand people.
Mold. USSR - 61 thousand people.
Karelo-Fin. SSR - 8 thousand people. (10)

Another important question. How many former Soviet citizens chose not to return to the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War? According to Soviet archival data, the number of the “second emigration” was 620 thousand people. 170,000 are Germans, Bessarabians and Bukovinians, 150,000 are Ukrainians, 109,000 are Latvians, 230,000 are Estonians and Lithuanians, and only 32,000 are Russians. Today this estimate seems clearly underestimated. According to modern data, emigration from the USSR amounted to 1.3 million people. Which gives us a difference of almost 700 thousand, previously attributed to irreversible population losses.

For twenty years, the main estimate of the losses of the Red Army was the far-fetched figure of 20 million people by N. Khrushchev. In 1990, as a result of the work of a special commission of the General Staff and the State Statistics Committee of the USSR, a more reasonable estimate of 26.6 million people appeared. At the moment it is official. Noteworthy is the fact that back in 1948, the American sociologist Timashev gave an assessment of the USSR's losses in the war, which practically coincided with the assessment of the General Staff commission. Maksudov’s assessment made in 1977 also coincides with the data of the Krivosheev Commission. According to the commission of G.F. Krivosheev.

So let's summarize:

Post-war estimate of Red Army losses: 7 million people.
Timashev: Red Army - 12.2 million people, civilian population 14.2 million people, direct human losses 26.4 million people, total demographic 37.3 million.
Arntz and Khrushchev: direct human: 20 million people.
Biraben and Solzhenitsyn: Red Army 20 million people, civilian population 22.6 million people, direct human 42.6 million, general demographic 62.9 million people.
Maksudov: Red Army - 11.8 million people, civilian population 12.7 million people, direct casualties 24.5 million people. It is impossible not to make a reservation that S. Maksudov (A.P. Babenyshev, Harvard University USA) determined the purely combat losses of the spacecraft at 8.8 million people
Rybakovsky: direct human 30 million people.
Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov (General Staff, Krivosheev Commission): direct combat losses of the Red Army 8.7 million (11,994 including prisoners of war) people. Civilian population (including prisoners of war) 17.9 million people. Direct human losses: 26.6 million people.
B. Sokolov: losses of the Red Army - 26 million people
M. Harrison: total losses of the USSR - 23.9 - 25.8 million people.

The estimate of the losses of the Red Army given in 1947 (7 million) does not inspire confidence, since not all calculations, even with the imperfections of the Soviet system, were completed.

Khrushchev's assessment is also not confirmed. On the other hand, “Solzhenitsyn’s” 20 million casualties in the army alone, or even 44 million, are just as unfounded (without denying some of A. Solzhenitsyn’s talent as a writer, all the facts and figures in his works are not confirmed by a single document and it’s difficult to understand where he comes from took - impossible).

Boris Sokolov is trying to explain to us that the losses of the USSR armed forces alone amounted to 26 million people. He is guided by the indirect method of calculations. The losses of the officers of the Red Army are known quite accurately, according to Sokolov this is 784 thousand people (1941–44). Mr. Sokolov, referring to the average statistical losses of Wehrmacht officers on the Eastern Front of 62,500 people (1941–44), and data from Müller-Hillebrandt , displays the ratio of losses of the officer corps to the rank and file of the Wehrmacht as 1:25, that is, 4%. And, without hesitation, he extrapolates this technique to the Red Army, receiving his 26 million irretrievable losses. However, upon closer examination, this approach turns out to be initially false. Firstly, 4% of officer losses is not an upper limit, for example, in the Polish campaign, the Wehrmacht lost 12% of officers to the total losses of the Armed Forces. Secondly, it would be useful for Mr. Sokolov to know that with the regular strength of the German infantry regiment being 3049 officers, there were 75 officers, that is, 2.5%. And in the Soviet infantry regiment, with a strength of 1582 people, there are 159 officers, i.e. 10%. Thirdly, appealing to the Wehrmacht, Sokolov forgets that the more combat experience in the troops, the fewer losses among officers. In the Polish campaign, the loss of German officers was 12%, in the French campaign - 7%, and on the Eastern Front already 4%.

The same can be applied to the Red Army: if at the end of the war the losses of officers (not according to Sokolov, but according to statistics) were 8-9%, then at the beginning of the Second World War they could have been 24%. It turns out, like a schizophrenic, everything is logical and correct, only the initial premise is incorrect. Why did we dwell on Sokolov’s theory in such detail? Yes, because Mr. Sokolov very often presents his figures in the media.

Taking into account the above, discarding the obviously underestimated and overestimated estimates of losses, we get: Krivosheev Commission - 8.7 million people (with prisoners of war 11.994 million, 2001 data), Maksudov - losses are even slightly lower than the official ones - 11.8 million people. (1977?93), Timashev - 12.2 million people. (1948). This can also include the opinion of M. Harrison, with the level of total losses indicated by him, the losses of the army should fit into this period. These data were obtained using different calculation methods, since Timashev and Maksudov, respectively, did not have access to the archives of the USSR and Russian Defense Ministry. It seems that the losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War lie very close to such a “heaped” group of results. Let's not forget that these figures include 2.6–3.2 million destroyed Soviet prisoners of war.

In conclusion, we should probably agree with Maksudov’s opinion that the emigration outflow, which amounted to 1.3 million people, which was not taken into account in the General Staff study, should be excluded from the number of losses. The losses of the USSR in the Second World War should be reduced by this amount. In percentage terms, the structure of USSR losses looks like this:

41% - aircraft losses (including prisoners of war)
35% - aircraft losses (without prisoners of war, i.e. direct combat)
39% - losses of the population of the occupied territories and the front line (45% with prisoners of war)
8% - rear population
6% - GULAG
6% - emigration outflow.

2. Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

To date, there are no sufficiently reliable figures for the losses of the German army obtained by direct statistical calculation. This is explained by the absence, for various reasons, of reliable initial statistical materials on German losses.

According to Russian sources, Soviet troops captured 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in NKVD camps. According to the calculations of German historians, there were about 3.1 million German military personnel alone in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. The discrepancy, as you can see, is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in estimates of the number of Germans who died in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of Germans killed in captivity is more reliable, and the missing 0.7 million Germans who went missing and did not return from captivity actually died not in captivity, but on the battlefield.

The vast majority of publications devoted to calculations of combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops are based on data from the central bureau (department) for recording losses of armed forces personnel, part of the German General Staff of the Supreme High Command. Moreover, while denying the reliability of Soviet statistics, German data are regarded as absolutely reliable. But upon closer examination, it turned out that the opinion about the high reliability of the information from this department was greatly exaggerated. Thus, the German historian R. Overmans, in the article “Human casualties of the Second World War in Germany,” came to the conclusion that “... the channels of information in the Wehrmacht do not reveal the degree of reliability that some authors attribute to them.” As an example, he reports that “... an official report from the casualty department at Wehrmacht headquarters dating back to 1944 documented that the losses that were incurred during the Polish, French and Norwegian campaigns, and the identification of which did not present any technical difficulties, were almost twice as high as originally reported." According to Müller-Hillebrand data, which many researchers believe, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 3.2 million people. Another 0.8 million died in captivity. However, according to a certificate from the OKH organizational department dated May 1, 1945, the ground forces alone, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), lost 4 million 617.0 thousand during the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945. people This is the latest report of German Armed Forces losses. In addition, since mid-April 1945, there was no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. The fact remains that in one of the last radio broadcasts with his participation, Hitler announced the figure of 12.5 million total losses of the German Armed Forces, of which 6.7 million are irrevocable, which is approximately twice the data of Müller-Hillebrand. This happened in March 1945. I don’t think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.

There is another statistics on losses - statistics on the burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites”, the total number of German soldiers located in recorded burial sites on the territory of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is 3 million 226 thousand people. (on the territory of the USSR alone - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as a starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, however, it also needs to be adjusted.

Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burials of Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (of which 270 thousand people died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states ( 357 thousand people died). Of the total number of dead Wehrmacht soldiers of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6–0.7 million people.

Secondly, this figure dates back to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern European countries has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of newly discovered burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. Tentatively, we can assume that the number of graves of Wehrmacht soldiers newly discovered over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.

Third, many graves of fallen Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil have disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried in such disappeared and unmarked graves.

Fourthly, these data do not include the burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops on the territory of Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, in the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died on German soil and in Western European countries in battles with the Red Army.

Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people)

Articles by Major General V. Gurkin are devoted to assessing Wehrmacht losses using the balance of the German armed forces during the war years. His calculated figures are given in the second column of the table. 4. Here two figures are noteworthy, characterizing the number of those mobilized into the Wehrmacht during the war, and the number of prisoners of war of Wehrmacht soldiers. The number of those mobilized during the war (17.9 million people) is taken from the book by B. Müller-Hillebrand “German Land Army 1933–1945,” Vol. At the same time, V.P. Bohar believes that more were drafted into the Wehrmacht - 19 million people.

The number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war was determined by V. Gurkin by summing up the prisoners of war taken by the Red Army (3.178 million people) and the Allied forces (4.209 million people) before May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is overestimated: it also included prisoners of war who were not Wehrmacht soldiers. The book “German Prisoners of War of the Second World War” by Paul Karel and Ponter Boeddeker reports: “...In June 1945, the Allied Command became aware that there were 7,614,794 prisoners of war and unarmed military personnel in the “camps, of which 4,209,000 by the time capitulations were already in captivity.” Among the indicated 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other people. For example, in the French camp of Vitril-Francois, among the prisoners, “the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70.” The authors write about captured Volksturm soldiers, about the organization by the Americans of special “children’s” camps, where captured twelve- to thirteen-year-old boys from the “Hitler Youth” and “Werewolf” were collected. There is even mention of placing disabled people in camps.

Overall, among the 4.2 million prisoners of war taken by the Allies before May 9, 1945, approximately 20–25% were not Wehrmacht soldiers. This means that the Allies had 3.1–3.3 million Wehrmacht soldiers in captivity.

The total number of Wehrmacht soldiers captured before the surrender was 6.3–6.5 million people.

In general, the demographic combat losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Soviet-German front amount to 5.2–6.3 million people, of which 0.36 million died in captivity, and irretrievable losses (including prisoners) 8.2 –9.1 million people It should also be noted that until recent years, Russian historiography did not mention some data on the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war at the end of hostilities in Europe, apparently for ideological reasons, because it is much more pleasant to believe that Europe “fought” fascism than to realize that that a certain and very large number of Europeans deliberately fought in the Wehrmacht. So, according to a note from General Antonov, on May 25, 1945. The Red Army captured 5 million 20 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers alone, of which 600 thousand people (Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, etc.) were released before August after filtration measures, and these prisoners of war were sent to camps The NKVD was not sent. Thus, the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in battles with the Red Army could be even higher (about 0.6 - 0.8 million people).

There is another way to “calculate” the losses of Germany and the Third Reich in the war against the USSR. Quite correct, by the way. Let’s try to “substitute” the figures relating to Germany into the methodology for calculating the total demographic losses of the USSR. Moreover, we will use ONLY official data from the German side. So, the population of Germany in 1939, according to Müller-Hillebrandt (p. 700 of his work, so beloved by supporters of the “filling up with corpses” theory), was 80.6 million people. At the same time, you and I, the reader, must take into account that this includes 6.76 million Austrians, and the population of the Sudetenland - another 3.64 million people. That is, the population of Germany proper within the borders of 1933 in 1939 was (80.6 - 6.76 - 3.64) 70.2 million people. We figured out these simple mathematical operations. Further: natural mortality in the USSR was 1.5% per year, but in Western European countries the mortality rate was much lower and amounted to 0.6 - 0.8% per year, Germany was no exception. However, the birth rate in the USSR was approximately the same proportion as it was in Europe, due to which the USSR had consistently high population growth throughout the pre-war years, starting from 1934.

We know about the results of the post-war population census in the USSR, but few people know that a similar population census was conducted by the Allied occupation authorities on October 29, 1946 in Germany. The census gave the following results:

Soviet occupation zone (without East Berlin): men - 7.419 million, women - 9.914 million, total: 17.333 million people.
All western zones of occupation (without western Berlin): men - 20.614 million, women - 24.804 million, total: 45.418 million people.
Berlin (all sectors of occupation), men - 1.29 million, women - 1.89 million, total: 3.18 million people.
The total population of Germany is 65,931,000 people.

A purely arithmetic operation of 70.2 million - 66 million seems to give a loss of only 4.2 million. However, everything is not so simple.

At the time of the population census in the USSR, the number of children born since the beginning of 1941 was about 11 million; the birth rate in the USSR during the war years fell sharply and amounted to only 1.37% per year of the pre-war population. The birth rate in Germany even in peacetime did not exceed 2% per year of the population. Suppose it fell only 2 times, and not 3, as in the USSR. That is, the natural population growth during the war years and the first post-war year was about 5% of the pre-war population, and in figures amounted to 3.5–3.8 million children. This figure must be added to the final figure for the population decline in Germany. Now the arithmetic is different: the total population decline is 4.2 million + 3.5 million = 7.7 million people. But this is not the final figure; To complete the calculations, we need to subtract from the population decline figure the figure of natural mortality during the war years and 1946, which is 2.8 million people (let’s take the figure 0.8% to make it “higher”). Now the total population loss in Germany caused by the war is 4.9 million people. Which, in general, is very “similar” to the figure for irretrievable losses of the Reich ground forces given by Müller-Hillebrandt. So did the USSR, which lost 26.6 million of its citizens in the war, really “fill up with corpses” of its enemy? Patience, dear reader, let’s bring our calculations to their logical conclusion.

The fact is that the population of Germany proper in 1946 grew by at least another 6.5 million people, and presumably even by 8 million! By the time of the 1946 census (according to German data, by the way, published back in 1996 by the “Union of Exiles”, about 15 million Germans were “forcibly displaced”) only from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia were evicted to German territory 6.5 million Germans. About 1 - 1.5 million Germans fled from Alsace and Lorraine (unfortunately, there are no more accurate data). That is, these 6.5 - 8 million must be added to the losses of Germany itself. And these are “slightly” different numbers: 4.9 million + 7.25 million (arithmetic average of the number of Germans “expelled” to their homeland) = 12.15 million. Actually, this is 17.3% (!) of the German population in 1939. Well, that's not all!

Let me emphasize once again: the Third Reich is NOT JUST Germany! By the time of the attack on the USSR, the Third Reich “officially” included: Germany (70.2 million people), Austria (6.76 million people), the Sudetenland (3.64 million people), captured from Poland “Baltic corridor”, Poznan and Upper Silesia (9.36 million people), Luxembourg, Lorraine and Alsace (2.2 million people), and even Upper Corinthia cut off from Yugoslavia, a total of 92.16 million people.

The procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany

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

Every tenth German died! Every twelfth person was captured!!!

Conclusion

The irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War amount to 11.5 - 12.0 million irrevocably, with actual combat demographic losses of 8.7–9.3 million people. The losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Eastern Front amount to 8.0 - 8.9 million irrevocably, of which purely combat demographic 5.2-6.1 million people (including those who died in captivity) people. Plus, to the losses of the German Armed Forces proper on the Eastern Front, it is necessary to add the losses of the satellite countries, and this is no less than 850 thousand (including those who died in captivity) people killed and more than 600 thousand captured. Total 12.0 (largest number) million versus 9.05 (smallest number) million people.

A logical question: where is the “filling with corpses” that Western and now domestic “open” and “democratic” sources talk about so much? The percentage of dead Soviet prisoners of war, even according to the most gentle estimates, is no less than 55%, and of German prisoners, according to the largest, no more than 23%. Maybe the whole difference in losses is explained simply by the inhumane conditions in which the prisoners were kept?

The author is aware that these articles differ from the latest officially announced version of losses: losses of the USSR Armed Forces - 6.8 million military personnel killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing, German losses - 4.046 million military personnel killed, died from wounds, missing in action (including 442.1 thousand killed in captivity), losses of satellite countries - 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand captured. Irreversible losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people. The total losses of Germany are 11.2 million people. (for example on Wikipedia)

The issue with the civilian population is more terrible against the 14.4 (smallest number) million victims of the Second World War in the USSR - 3.2 million people (largest number) of victims on the German side. So who fought and with whom? It is also necessary to mention that without denying the Holocaust of the Jews, German society still does not perceive the “Slavic” Holocaust; if everything is known about the suffering of the Jewish people in the West (thousands of works), then they prefer to “modestly” remain silent about the crimes against the Slavic peoples.

I would like to end the article with a phrase from an unknown British officer. When he saw a column of Soviet prisoners of war being driven past the “international” camp, he said:

“I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they will do to Germany”

Estimation of the loss ratio based on the results of a comparative analysis of losses in wars of the last two centuries

The application of the method of comparative analysis, the foundations of which were laid by Jomini, to assess the ratio of losses requires statistical data on wars of different eras. Unfortunately, more or less complete statistics are available only for wars of the last two centuries. Data on irretrievable combat losses in the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, summarized based on the results of the work of domestic and foreign historians, are given in Table. The last three columns of the table demonstrate the obvious dependence of the results of the war on the magnitude of relative losses (losses expressed as a percentage of the total army strength) - the relative losses of the winner in a war are always less than those of the vanquished, and this dependence has a stable, repeating character (it is valid for all types of wars), that is, it has all the signs of law.

This law - let's call it the law of relative losses - can be formulated as follows: in any war, victory goes to the army that has fewer relative losses.

Note that the absolute numbers of irretrievable losses for the victorious side can be either less (Patriotic War of 1812, Russian-Turkish, Franco-Prussian wars) or greater than for the defeated side (Crimean, World War I, Soviet-Finnish) , but the relative losses of the winner are always less than those of the loser.

The difference between the relative losses of the winner and the loser characterizes the degree of convincingness of the victory. Wars with close relative losses of the parties end in peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese War). In wars that end, like the Great Patriotic War, with the complete surrender of the enemy (Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the vanquished (by no less than 30%). In other words, the greater the losses, the larger the army must be in order to win a landslide victory. If the army's losses are 2 times greater than those of the enemy, then to win the war its strength must be at least 2.6 times greater than the size of the opposing army.

Now let’s return to the Great Patriotic War and see what human resources the USSR and Nazi Germany had during the war. Available data on the numbers of warring parties on the Soviet-German front are given in Table. 6.

From the table 6 it follows that the number of Soviet participants in the war was only 1.4–1.5 times larger than the total number of opposing troops and 1.6–1.8 times larger than the regular German army. In accordance with the law of relative losses, with such an excess in the number of participants in the war, the losses of the Red Army, which destroyed the fascist military machine, in principle could not exceed the losses of the armies of the fascist bloc by more than 10-15%, and the losses of regular German troops by more than 25-30 %. This means that the upper limit of the ratio of irretrievable combat losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht is the ratio of 1.3:1.

The figures for the ratio of irretrievable combat losses given in table. 6, do not exceed the upper limit of the loss ratio obtained above. This, however, does not mean that they are final and cannot be changed.

As new documents, statistical materials, and research results appear, the figures for losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht (Tables 1-5) may be clarified, changed in one direction or another, their ratio may also change, but it cannot be higher than 1.3:1 .

Sources:

1. Central Statistical Office of the USSR “Number, composition and movement of the population of the USSR” M 1965
2. “Population of Russia in the 20th century” M. 2001
3. Arntz “Human losses in the Second World War” M. 1957
4. Frumkin G. Population Changes in Europe since 1939 N.Y. 1951
5. Dallin A. German rule in Russia 1941–1945 N.Y.- London 1957
6. “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century” M. 2001
7. Polyan P. Victims of two dictatorships M. 1996.
8. Thorwald J. The Illusion. Soviet soldiers in Hitler,s Army N. Y. 1975
9. Collection of messages of the Extraordinary State Commission M. 1946
10. Zemskov. Birth of the second emigration 1944–1952 SI 1991 No. 4
11. Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
13 Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
14. Arntz. Human losses in the Second World War M. 1957; "International Affairs" 1961 No. 12
15. Biraben J. N. Population 1976.
16. Maksudov S. Population losses of the USSR Benson (Vt) 1989; “On the front-line losses of the SA during the Second World War” “Free Thought” 1993. No. 10
17. Population of the USSR over 70 years. Edited by Rybakovsky L. L. M 1988
18. Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov. "Population of the Soviet Union 1922–1991." M 1993
19. Sokolov B. “Novaya Gazeta” No. 22, 2005, “The Price of Victory -” M. 1991.
20. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
21. Müller-Hillebrand. “German Land Army 1933-1945” M. 1998
22. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
23. Gurkin V.V. About human losses on the Soviet-German front 1941–45. NiNI No. 3 1992
24. M. B. Denisenko. WWII in the demographic dimension "Eksmo" 2005
25. S. Maksudov. Population losses of the USSR during the Second World War. "Population and Society" 1995
26. Yu. Mukhin. If it weren't for the generals. "Yauza" 2006
27. V. Kozhinov. The Great Russian War. A series of lectures on the 1000th anniversary of the Russian wars. "Yauza" 2005
28. Materials from the newspaper “Duel”
29. E. Beevor “The Fall of Berlin” M. 2003

Literature

A pile of burnt remains of prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp. Outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin.

In the twentieth century, more than 250 wars and major military conflicts took place on our planet, including two world wars, but the bloodiest and most brutal in the history of mankind was the 2nd World War, unleashed by Nazi Germany and its allies in September 1939. For five years there was a massive extermination of people. Due to the lack of reliable statistics, the total number of casualties among military personnel and civilians of many states participating in the war has not yet been established. Estimates of the death toll vary widely across studies. However, it is generally accepted that more than 55 million people died during the Second World War. Almost half of all those killed were civilians. More than 5.5 million innocent people were killed in the fascist death camps Majdanek and Auschwitz alone. In total, 11 million citizens from all European countries were tortured in Hitler's concentration camps, including about 6 million Jews.

The main burden of the fight against fascism fell on the shoulders of the Soviet Union and its Armed Forces. This war became the Great Patriotic War for our people. The victory of the Soviet people in this war came at a high price. The total direct human losses of the USSR, according to the Population Statistics Department of the USSR State Statistics Committee and the Center for the Study of Population Problems at Moscow State University, amounted to 26.6 million. Of these, in the territories occupied by the Nazis and their allies, as well as during forced labor in Germany, 13,684,448 civilian Soviet citizens were deliberately destroyed and died. These are the tasks that Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler set for the commanders of the SS divisions “Totenkopf”, “Reich”, “Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler” on April 24, 1943 at a meeting in the building of Kharkov University: “I want to say and think that those to whom I I’m saying this, and they already understand that we must wage our war and our campaign with the thought of how best to take away human resources from the Russians - alive or dead? We do this when we kill them or capture them and force them to really work, when we try to take possession of an occupied area, and when we leave deserted territory to the enemy. Either they must be driven to Germany and become its labor force, or die in battle. And leaving people to the enemy so that he can have labor and military strength again is, by and large, absolutely wrong. This cannot be allowed to happen. And if this line of exterminating people is consistently pursued in the war, which I am convinced of, then the Russians will lose their strength and bleed to death already during this year and next winter.” The Nazis acted in accordance with their ideology throughout the war. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet people were tortured in concentration camps in Smolensk, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Lvov, Poltava, Novgorod, Orel Kaunas, Riga and many others. During the two years of occupation of Kyiv, tens of thousands of people of different nationalities were shot on its territory in Babi Yar - Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Gypsies. Including, on September 29 and 30, 1941 alone, Sonderkommando 4A executed 33,771 people. Heinrich Himmler gave cannibalistic instructions in his letter dated September 7, 1943 to the Supreme Fuehrer of the SS and the Ukrainian Police Prützmann: “Everything must be done so that when retreating from Ukraine not a single person, not a single head of cattle, not a single gram of grain, or meter of railway track, so that not a single house would survive, not a single mine would survive, and not a single well would remain unpoisoned. The enemy must be left with a completely burned and devastated country.” In Belarus, the occupiers burned over 9,200 villages, of which 619 together with their inhabitants. In total, during the occupation in the Belarusian SSR, 1,409,235 civilians died, another 399 thousand people were forcibly taken to forced labor in Germany, of which more than 275 thousand did not return home. In Smolensk and its environs, during the 26 months of occupation, the Nazis killed more than 135 thousand civilians and prisoners of war, more than 87 thousand citizens were taken to forced labor in Germany. When Smolensk was liberated in September 1943, only 20 thousand inhabitants remained. In Simferopol, Yevpatoria, Alushta, Karabuzar, Kerch and Feodosia from November 16 to December 15, 1941, Task Force D shot 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Crimean Cossacks, 824 Gypsies and 212 communists and partisans.

More than three million civilian Soviet citizens died from combat exposure in front-line areas, in besieged and besieged cities, from hunger, frostbite and disease. Here is how the military diary of the command of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht for October 20, 1941 recommends action against Soviet cities: “It is unacceptable to sacrifice the lives of German soldiers to save Russian cities from fires or to supply them at the expense of the German homeland. The chaos in Russia will become greater if the inhabitants of Soviet cities are inclined to flee into the interior of Russia. Therefore, before taking cities, it is necessary to break their resistance with artillery fire and force the population to flee. These measures should be communicated to all commanders." In Leningrad and its suburbs alone, about a million civilians died during the siege. In Stalingrad, in August 1942 alone, more than 40 thousand civilians died during barbaric, massive German air raids.

The total demographic losses of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 8,668,400 people. This figure includes military personnel killed and missing in action, those who died from wounds and illnesses, those who did not return from captivity, those who were executed by court verdicts, and those who died in disasters. Of these, more than 1 million Soviet soldiers and officers gave their lives during the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the brown plague. Including 600,212 people died for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia - 139,918 people, Hungary - 140,004 people, Germany - 101,961 people, Romania - 68,993 people, Austria - 26,006 people, Yugoslavia - 7,995 people, Norway - 3436 people. and Bulgaria - 977. During the liberation of China and Korea from Japanese invaders, 9963 Red Army soldiers died.

During the war years, according to various estimates, from 5.2 to 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war passed through German camps. Of this number, from 3.3 to 3.9 million people died, which is more than 60% of the total number of those in captivity. At the same time, about 4% of the prisoners of war of Western countries died in German captivity. In the verdict of the Nuremberg trials, the cruel treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was qualified as a crime against humanity.

It should be noted that the overwhelming number of Soviet military personnel missing and captured occurred in the first two years of the war. The sudden attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR put the Red Army, which was in the stage of deep reorganization, in an extremely difficult situation. The border districts lost most of their personnel in a short time. In addition, more than 500 thousand conscripts mobilized by military registration and enlistment offices never made it to their units. During the rapidly developing German offensive, they, lacking weapons and equipment, found themselves in enemy-occupied territory and, for the most part, were captured or died in the first days of the war. In the conditions of heavy defensive battles in the first months of the war, the headquarters were unable to properly organize the accounting of losses, and often simply did not have the opportunity to do this. Units and formations that were surrounded destroyed records of personnel and losses in order to avoid being captured by the enemy. Therefore, many who died in battle were listed as missing or were not counted at all. Approximately the same picture emerged in 1942 as a result of a number of offensive and defensive operations that were unsuccessful for the Red Army. By the end of 1942, the number of Red Army soldiers missing and captured had sharply decreased.

Thus, the large number of victims suffered by the Soviet Union is explained by the policy of genocide directed against its citizens by the aggressor, whose main goal was the physical destruction of most of the population of the USSR. In addition, military operations on the territory of the Soviet Union lasted more than three years and the front passed through it twice, first from west to east to Petrozavodsk, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and the Caucasus, and then in the opposite direction, which led to huge losses among civilians , which cannot be compared with similar losses in Germany, on whose territory the fighting took place for less than five months.

To establish the identity of military personnel who died during hostilities, by order of the People's Commissar of Defense of the USSR (NKO USSR) dated March 15, 1941 No. 138, the “Regulations on personal accounting of losses and burial of deceased personnel of the Red Army in wartime” was introduced. On the basis of this order, medallions were introduced in the form of a plastic pencil case with a parchment insert in two copies, the so-called address tape, into which personal information about the serviceman was entered. In the event of the death of a serviceman, it was assumed that one copy of the address tape would be seized by the funeral team and subsequently transferred to the unit headquarters to add the deceased to the list of casualties. The second copy was to be left in the medallion with the deceased. In reality, during the hostilities this requirement was practically not met. In most cases, the medallions were simply removed from the deceased by the funeral team, making subsequent identification of the remains impossible. The unjustified cancellation of medallions in units of the Red Army, in accordance with the order of the USSR NKO dated November 17, 1942 No. 376, led to an increase in the number of unidentified dead soldiers and commanders, which also added to the lists of missing persons.

At the same time, it must be taken into account that in the Red Army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War there was no centralized system of personal registration of military personnel (except for regular officers). Personal records of citizens called up for military service were kept at the level of military commissariats. There was no general database of personal information about military personnel called up and mobilized into the Red Army. In the future, this led to a large number of errors and duplication of information when accounting for irretrievable losses, as well as the appearance of “dead souls” when the biographical data of military personnel was distorted in reports of losses.

On the basis of the order of the NCO of the USSR dated July 29, 1941 No. 0254, maintaining personal records of losses in formations and units of the Red Army was entrusted to the Department for recording personal losses and the letter bureau of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Recruitment of Red Army Troops. In accordance with the order of the NPO of the USSR dated January 31, 1942 No. 25, the Department was reorganized into the Central Bureau for Personal Accounting of Losses of the Active Army of the Main Directorate of the Red Army. However, the order of the NCO of the USSR dated April 12, 1942 “On personal accounting of irretrievable losses at the fronts” stated that “As a result of untimely and incomplete submission of lists of losses by military units, there was a large discrepancy between the data of numerical and personal accounting of losses. At present, no more than one third of the actual number of those killed is on personal records. The personal records of missing and captured people are even further from the truth.” After a series of reorganizations and the transfer in 1943 of the accounting of personal losses of senior commanding personnel to the Main Personnel Directorate of NPOs of the USSR, the body responsible for personal accounting of losses was renamed the Directorate for Personal Accounting of Losses of Junior Commanders and Rank-and-Old Personnel and Pension Provision of Workers. The most intensive work on registering irreparable losses and issuing notices to relatives began after the end of the war and continued intensively until January 1, 1948. Considering that information about the fate of a large number of military personnel was not received from military units, in 1946 it was decided to take into account irretrievable losses based on submissions from military registration and enlistment offices. For this purpose, a door-to-door survey was conducted throughout the USSR to identify dead and missing military personnel who were not registered.

A significant number of military personnel recorded as dead and missing during the Great Patriotic War actually survived. So, from 1948 to 1960. it was found that 84,252 officers were mistakenly included in the lists of irretrievable losses and in fact remained alive. But this data was not included in the general statistics. How many privates and sergeants actually survived, but are included in the lists of irretrievable losses, is still not known. Although the Directive of the Main Staff of the Ground Forces of the Soviet Army dated May 3, 1959 No. 120 n/s obligated military commissariats to carry out a reconciliation of the alphabetical books of registration of dead and missing military personnel with the registration data of military registration and enlistment offices in order to identify the military personnel who actually survived, its implementation has not been completed to this day. Thus, before placing on memorial plaques the names of Red Army soldiers who fell in battles for the village of Bolshoye Ustye on the Ugra River, the Historical and Archival Search Center “Fate” (IAPC “Fate”) in 1994 clarified the fates of 1,500 military personnel whose names were established based on reports from military units. Information about their fates was cross-checked through the card index of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF), military commissariats, local authorities at the place of residence of the victims and their relatives. At the same time, 109 military personnel were identified who survived or died at a later time. Moreover, the majority of the surviving soldiers were not re-registered in the TsAMO RF card file.

Also, during the compilation in 1994 of a database of names of military personnel who died in the area of ​​the village of Myasnoy Bor, Novgorod region, the IAPTs "Fate" found that out of 12,802 military personnel included in the database, 1,286 people (more than 10%) were taken into account in reports about irreparable losses twice. This is explained by the fact that the first time the deceased was counted after the battle by the military unit in which he actually fought, and the second time by the military unit whose funeral team collected and buried the bodies of the dead. The database did not include military personnel missing in action in the area, which would likely have increased the number of duplicates. It should be noted that the statistical accounting of losses was carried out on the basis of digital data taken from the lists of names presented in the reports of military units, categorized by categories of losses. This ultimately led to a serious distortion of data on the irretrievable losses of Red Army soldiers in the direction of their increase.

In the course of work to establish the fates of Red Army servicemen who died and disappeared on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the IAPTs "Fate" identified several more types of duplication of losses. Thus, some officers are simultaneously registered as officers and enlisted personnel; military personnel of the border troops and the navy are partially registered, in addition to departmental archives, in the Central Aviation Administration of the Russian Federation.

Work to clarify data on the casualties suffered by the USSR during the war is still ongoing. In accordance with a number of instructions of the President of the Russian Federation and his Decree No. 37 of January 22, 2006 “Issues of perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland,” an interdepartmental commission was created in Russia to assess human and material losses during the Great Patriotic War. The main goal of the commission is by 2010 to finally determine the losses of the military and civilian population during the Great Patriotic War, as well as to calculate material costs for more than a four-year period of combat operations. The Russian Ministry of Defense is implementing the Memorial OBD project to systematize registration data and documents about fallen soldiers. The implementation of the main technical part of the project - the creation of the United Data Bank and the website http://www.obd-memorial.ru - is carried out by a specialized organization - the Electronic Archive Corporation. The main goal of the project is to enable millions of citizens to determine the fate or find information about their dead or missing relatives and friends, and determine the place of their burial. No other country in the world has such a data bank and free access to documents on the losses of the armed forces. In addition, enthusiasts from search teams are still working on the fields of past battles. Thanks to the soldiers' medallions they discovered, the fates of thousands of military personnel who went missing on both sides of the front were established.

Poland, the first to be subjected to Hitler's invasion during the 2nd World War, also suffered huge losses - 6 million people, the vast majority of the civilian population. The losses of the Polish armed forces amounted to 123,200 people. Including: September campaign of 1939 (invasion of Hitler’s troops into Poland) – 66,300 people; 1st and 2nd Polish armies in the East - 13,200 people; Polish troops in France and Norway in 1940 - 2,100 people; Polish troops in the British army - 7,900 people; Warsaw Uprising of 1944 – 13,000 people; Guerrilla warfare – 20,000 people. .

The allies of the Soviet Union in the anti-Hitler coalition also suffered significant losses during the fighting. Thus, the total losses of the armed forces of the British Commonwealth on the Western, African and Pacific fronts in killed and missing amounted to 590,621 people. Of these: – United Kingdom and colonies – 383,667 people; – undivided India – 87,031 people; – Australia – 40,458 people; – Canada – 53,174 people; – New Zealand – 11,928 people; – South Africa – 14,363 people.

In addition, during the fighting, about 350 thousand British Commonwealth troops were captured by the enemy. Of these, 77,744 people, including merchant seamen, were captured by the Japanese.

It must be taken into account that the role of the British armed forces in the 2nd World War was limited mainly to combat operations at sea and in the air. In addition, the United Kingdom lost 67,100 civilians.

The total losses of the armed forces of the United States of America in killed and missing on the Pacific and Western fronts were: 416,837 people. Of these, army losses amounted to 318,274 people. (including the Air Force lost 88,119 people), Navy - 62,614 people, Marine Corps - 24,511 people, US Coast Guard - 1,917 people, US Merchant Marine - 9,521 people.

In addition, 124,079 US military personnel (including 41,057 Air Force personnel) were captured by the enemy during combat operations. Of these, 21,580 military personnel were captured by the Japanese.

France lost 567,000 people. Of these, the French armed forces lost 217,600 people killed or missing. During the years of occupation, 350,000 civilians died in France.

More than a million French troops were captured by the Germans in 1940.

Yugoslavia lost 1,027,000 people in World War II. Including the losses of the armed forces amounted to 446,000 people and 581,000 civilians.

The Netherlands suffered 301,000 casualties, including 21,000 military personnel and 280,000 civilian deaths.

Greece lost 806,900 people killed. Including the armed forces lost 35,100 people, and the civilian population 771,800 people.

Belgium lost 86,100 people killed. Of these, military casualties amounted to 12,100 people and civilian casualties 74,000.

Norway lost 9,500 people, including 3,000 military personnel.

The 2nd World War, unleashed by the “Thousand Year” Reich, turned into a disaster for Germany itself and its satellites. The real losses of the German armed forces are still not known, although by the beginning of the war a centralized system of personal registration of military personnel had been created in Germany. Each German soldier, immediately upon arrival at the reserve military unit, was given a personal identification mark (die Erknnungsmarke), which was an oval-shaped aluminum plate. The badge consisted of two halves, on each of which were stamped: the personal number of the serviceman, the name of the military unit that issued the badge. Both halves of the personal identification mark easily broke off from each other due to the presence of longitudinal cuts in the major axis of the oval. When the body of a dead serviceman was found, one half of the sign was broken off and sent along with a casualty report. The other half remained with the deceased in case subsequent identification was necessary during reburial. The inscription and number on the personal identification badge were reproduced in all personal documents of the serviceman; the German command persistently sought this. Each military unit kept accurate lists of issued personal identification marks. Copies of these lists were sent to the Berlin Central Bureau for the Accounting of War Casualties and Prisoners of War (WAST). At the same time, during the defeat of a military unit during hostilities and retreat, it was difficult to carry out a complete personal accounting of dead and missing military personnel. For example, several Wehrmacht servicemen, whose remains were discovered during search operations carried out by the Historical and Archival Search Center "Fate" at the sites of former battles on the Ugra River in the Kaluga region, where intense fighting took place in March - April 1942, according to the WAST service, they were counted only as conscripts into the German army. There was no information about their further fate. They were not even listed as missing.

Starting with the defeat at Stalingrad, the German loss accounting system began to malfunction, and in 1944 and 1945, suffering defeat after defeat, the German command simply physically could not account for all its irretrievable losses. Since March 1945, their registration stopped altogether. Even earlier, on January 31, 1945, the Imperial Statistical Office stopped keeping records of the civilian population killed by air raids.

The position of the German Wehrmacht in 1944-1945 is a mirror reflection of the position of the Red Army in 1941-1942. Only we were able to survive and win, and Germany was defeated. At the end of the war, mass migration of the German population began, which continued after the collapse of the Third Reich. The German Empire within the borders of 1939 ceased to exist. Moreover, in 1949, Germany itself was divided into two independent states - the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany. In this regard, it is quite difficult to identify the real direct human losses of Germany in the 2nd World War. All studies of German losses are based on data from German documents from the war period, which cannot reflect real losses. They can only talk about registered losses, which is not at all the same thing, especially for a country that has suffered a crushing defeat. It should be taken into account that access to documents on military losses stored in WAST is still closed to historians.

According to incomplete available data, the irretrievable losses of Germany and its allies (killed, died of wounds, captured and missing) amounted to 11,949,000 people. This includes human losses of the German armed forces - 6,923,700 people, similar losses of Germany's allies (Hungary, Italy, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia) - 1,725,800 people, as well as losses of the civilian population of the Third Reich - 3,300,000 people - this those killed by bombings and hostilities, missing persons, victims of fascist terror.

The German civilian population suffered the heaviest casualties as a result of the strategic bombing of German cities by British and American aircraft. According to incomplete data, these victims exceed 635 thousand people. Thus, as a result of four air raids carried out by the Royal British Air Force from July 24 to August 3, 1943 on the city of Hamburg, using incendiary and high-explosive bombs, 42,600 people were killed and 37 thousand were seriously injured. Three raids by British and American strategic bombers on the city of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945 had even more catastrophic consequences. As a result of combined attacks with incendiary and high-explosive bombs on residential areas of the city, at least 135 thousand people died from the resulting fire tornado, incl. city ​​residents, refugees, foreign workers and prisoners of war.

According to official data given in a statistical study of the group led by General G.F. Krivosheev, until May 9, 1945, the Red Army captured more than 3,777,000 enemy troops. 381 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and 137 thousand soldiers of the armies allied to Germany (except Japan) died in captivity, that is, only 518 thousand people, which is 14.9% of all recorded enemy prisoners of war. After the end of the Soviet-Japanese War, out of 640 thousand military personnel of the Japanese army captured by the Red Army in August - September 1945, 62 thousand people (less than 10%) died in captivity.

Italian losses in World War 2 amounted to 454,500 people, of which 301,400 died in the armed forces (of which 71,590 on the Soviet-German front).

According to various estimates, from 5,424,000 to 20,365,000 civilians became victims of Japanese aggression, including from famine and epidemics, in the countries of Southeast Asia and Oceania. Thus, civilian casualties in China are estimated from 3,695,000 to 12,392,000 people, in Indochina from 457,000 to 1,500,000 people, in Korea from 378,000 to 500,000 people. Indonesia 375,000 people, Singapore 283,000 people, Philippines - 119,000 people, Burma - 60,000 people, Pacific Islands - 57,000 people.

The losses of the Chinese armed forces in killed and wounded exceeded 5 million people.

331,584 military personnel from different countries died in Japanese captivity. Including 270,000 from China, 20,000 from the Philippines, 12,935 from the US, 12,433 from the UK, 8,500 from the Netherlands, 7,412 from Australia, 273 from Canada and 31 from New Zealand.

The aggressive plans of Imperial Japan were also costly. Its armed forces lost 1,940,900 military personnel killed or missing, including the army - 1,526,000 people and the navy - 414,900. 40,000 military personnel were captured. Japan's civilian population suffered 580,000 casualties.

Japan suffered the main civilian casualties from US Air Force attacks - the carpet bombing of Japanese cities at the end of the war and the atomic bombings in August 1945.

The American heavy bomber attack on Tokyo on the night of March 9–10, 1945, using incendiary and high-explosive bombs alone, killed 83,793 people.

The consequences of the atomic bombings were terrible when the US Air Force dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. The city of Hiroshima was subjected to atomic bombing on August 6, 1945. The crew of the plane that bombed the city included a representative of the British Air Force. As a result of the bomb explosion in Hiroshima, about 200 thousand people died or went missing, more than 160 thousand people were injured and exposed to radioactive radiation. The second atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945 on the city of Nagasaki. As a result of the bombing, 73 thousand people died or went missing in the city; later, another 35 thousand people died from radiation exposure and wounds. In total, more than 500 thousand civilians were injured as a result of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The price paid by humanity in the 2nd World War for the victory over the madmen who were striving for world domination and trying to implement the cannibalistic racial theory turned out to be extremely high. The pain of loss has not yet subsided; the participants in the war and its eyewitnesses are still alive. They say that time heals, but not in this case. Currently, the international community is faced with new challenges and threats. The expansion of NATO to the east, the bombing and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the occupation of Iraq, aggression against South Ossetia and the genocide of its population, the policy of discrimination against the Russian population in the Baltic republics that are members of the European Union, international terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons threaten peace and security on the planet. Against this background, attempts are being made to rewrite history, subject to revisions enshrined in the UN Charter and other international legal documents, the results of the 2nd World War, to challenge the basic and irrefutable facts of the extermination of millions of innocent civilians, to glorify the Nazis and their henchmen, as well as to denigrate the liberators from fascism. These phenomena are fraught with a chain reaction - the revival of theories of racial purity and superiority, the spread of a new wave of xenophobia.

Notes:

1. The Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.P. 430.

2. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 269

3. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.P. 430.

4. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945: Review volume. – /Editorial Board: E.M.Chekharin (chairman), V.V.Volodin, D.I.Karabanov (deputy chairmen), etc. – M.: Voenizdat, 1995.P. 396.

5. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945: Review volume. – /Editorial Board: E.M. Chekharin (chairman), V.V. Volodin, D.I. Karabanov (deputy chairmen), etc. - M.: Voenizdat, 1995. P. 407.

6. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 103.

7. Babi Yar. Book of memory/comp. I.M. Levitas. - K.: Publishing house "Steel", 2005. P.24.

8. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 – 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 232.

9. War, People, Victory: materials of international scientific research. conf. Moscow, March 15-16, 2005 / (responsible editor: M.Yu. Myagkov, Yu.A. Nikiforov); Institute of General history of the Russian Academy of Sciences. – M.: Nauka, 2008. Contribution of Belarus to the victory in the Great Patriotic War A.A. Kovalenya, A.M. Litvin. P. 249.

10. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 123.

11. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005. P. 430.

12. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “The War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 68.

13. Essays on the history of Leningrad. L., 1967. T. 5. P. 692.

14. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001

15. Classified as classified: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study / V.M. Andronikov, P.D. Burikov, V.V. Gurkin and others; under general
Edited by G.K. Krivosheev. – M.: Military Publishing House, 1993. P. 325.

16. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.; Soviet prisoners of war in Germany. D.K. Sokolov. P. 142.

17. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001

18. Guide to search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association “War Memorials”. – 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. – M.: Lux-art LLP, 1997. P.30.

19. TsAMO RF, f.229, op. 159, d.44, l.122.

20. Military personnel of the Soviet state in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945. (reference and statistical materials). Under the general editorship of Army General A.P. Beloborodov. Military publishing house of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Moscow, 1963, p. 359.

21. “Report on losses and military damage caused to Poland in 1939 – 1945.” Warsaw, 1947. P. 36.

23. American Military Casualties and Burials. Wash., 1993. P. 290.

24. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 329.

27. American Military Casualties and Burials. Wash., 1993. P. 290.

28. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 329.

30. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 326.

36. Guide to search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association “War Memorials”. – 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. – M.: Lux-art LLP, 1997. P.34.

37. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. The largest scale bombing of the Second World War / Transl. from English L.A. Igorevsky. – M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2005. P.16.

38. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945...P.452.

39. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. The largest scale bombing of the Second World War / Transl. from English L.A. Igorevsky. – M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf. 2005. P.50.

40. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden... P.54.

41. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden... P.265.

42. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945….; Foreign prisoners of war in the USSR...S. 139.

44. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001.

46. ​​History of the Second World War. 1939 – 1945: In 12 vols. M., 1973-1982. T.12. P. 151.

49. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden...P.11.

50. The Great Patriotic War 1941 – 1945: encyclopedia. – / ch. ed. M.M. Kozlov. Editorial Board: Yu.Ya. Barabash, P.A. Zhilin (Deputy Chief Editor, V.I. Kanatov (responsible Secretary) and others // Atomic weapons. - M.: Soviet Encyclopedia, 1985. P. 71 .

Martynov V. E.
Electronic scientific and educational journal “History”, 2010 T.1. Issue 2.

Surprisingly, 70 years after our Victory, one of the most important questions has not been settled - how many of our fellow citizens died during the Great Patriotic War. Official figures have changed several times. And always in one direction – the direction of increasing losses. Stalin called 9 million dead (which is close to the truth, if we take into account military losses); under Brezhnev, the figure of 20 million lives given for the freedom of the Motherland was introduced. At the end of Perestroika, figures appeared that historians and politicians use today - 27 million USSR citizens died during the Great Patriotic War. Voices are already being heard that “more than 33 million people actually died.”

So who and why is constantly increasing our losses, why is the myth of “being showered with corpses” maintained? And why did the Immortal Regiment appear, as the first step towards a new version of the “inhuman leadership of the USSR” during the Second World War, “saving itself at the expense of ”.

On the eve of Victory Day, I received two letters that are an excellent illustration of the question of the true losses of our people in the war against fascism.

From these two letters from readers we got material about the war and our losses.

Letter one.

“Dear Nikolai Viktorovich!

I agree with you that history is like the rules of the road (). Failure to follow the rules leads to a dead end or worse... In history, not only facts are important, but also numbers (not just dates).

Since “perestroika and glasnost” a lot of figures have appeared, but not achievements, but losses. And one of these figures is 27 million who died in the Great Patriotic War (WWII).

At the same time, this is not enough for some “politicians” and they begin to voice larger numbers.

Remember what a shock (as they say nowadays) the number of many millions of “victims of repression” causes in people. For some, it is obligatory and with clarification - “Stalinist”. And the real figure for normal researchers is from 650 thousand to 680 thousand people. By the way, in Grover Furr’s book “Shadows of the 20th Congress, or anti-Stalinist meanness” (M. Eksmo, Algorithm, 2010) the following figures are given for those executed in 1937 - 353,074 people, 1938 - 328,618 people, a total of 681,692 people. But this number includes not only political, but also criminals.

The study of WWII losses itself indicates a figure of 26.6 million people. It is indicated that 1.3 million are emigrants. That is, they left the country. This means that there are still 25.3 million dead.

It is very difficult to directly establish the losses of the USSR. The number of casualties of the Red Army alone was established in a study conducted by the Min. Defense in 1988-1993 under the leadership of Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev.

Estimates of the direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK data from 1946, amounted to 6,390,800 people on the territory of the USSR. This number also includes prisoners of war. What about the number of deaths from hunger, bombing, and artillery shelling? I have not seen such studies.

The assessment of USSR losses is carried out according to a completely logical formula:

Losses of the USSR = Population of the USSR as of June 22, 1941 - Population of the USSR at the end of the war + Number of children who died due to increased mortality (from those born during the war) - The population would have died in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 .

We substitute the numbers into the above formula and get:

196.7 million - 159.5 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 26.6 million people

There is almost no discrepancy between the researchers in two figures - these are:

Number of children who died due to increased mortality (among those born during the war). The figure cited is 1.3 million people.

The population would have died in peacetime, based on the 1940 mortality rate = 11.9 million people.

But there are questions about the other two numbers. The population of the USSR at the end of the war (those born before June 22, 1941) was determined to be 159.5 million people based on data for December 1945. It is worth remembering the following facts: in 1944, Tuva became part of the USSR. Moreover, since 1943, Tuvan volunteers took part in battles on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In 1939 and 1940, the lands of Western Belarus, Ukraine, and the Carpathian region became part of the USSR. The population of these regions was included in the population of the USSR. But in 1945 Poland and

Czechoslovakia, and also defined new borders for them (and for Hungary and Romania). And many Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians (former citizens of the USSR) decided to return to their states. This raises the question: how were these people counted in the post-war census? Researchers are silent about this.

Now the population of the USSR as of June 22, 1941. How did this figure come about?

To the population of the USSR as of January 1939, we added the population of the annexed territories and the population growth over 2.5 years, i.e.

170.6 million + 20.8 million + 4.9 million and another + 0.4 million due to the “infant mortality reduction coefficient” and received 196.7 million people by June 22, 1941.

Wherein:

The population of the USSR according to the 1926 census is 147 million people

The population of the USSR according to the 1937 census is 162 million people.

The population of the USSR according to the 1939 census is 170.6 million people.

The 1926 census took place in December, the 1937 and 1939 censuses took place in early January, that is, all three censuses were carried out within the same boundaries. Population growth from 1926 to 1937 amounted to 15 million people over 10 years, or 1.5 million per year. And suddenly, over the 2 years of 1937 and 1938, it was calculated that the population growth was 8.6 million. And this was at the time of urbanization and the “demographic echo” of the First World War and the Civil War. By the way, the average annual population growth of the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s was approximately 2.3-2.5 million people per year.

In statistical reference books of the 50s, the population of the USSR in 1941 was generally indicated as 191.7 million people. Even a democrat and officially called a traitor, Rezun-Suvorov, in his books about the Second World War, writes that “The population of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1941 was 191 million people” (Viktor Suvorov. About half a billion. Chapter from a new book. http://militera. lib.ru/research/pravda_vs-3/01.html).

(The question of why, when calculating the population of the USSR, they decided to increase the population figure by 5 million remains unanswered).

By indicating in the calculation a figure that is closer to the real value, i.e. 191.7 million people at the beginning of the Second World War we get:

The population of the USSR as of June 22, 1941 was 191.7

The population of the USSR as of December 31, 1945 was 170.5

Incl. born before June 22, 1941 - 159.5

Total population decline among those living on June 22, 1941 (191.7 million - 159.5 million = 32.2 million people) - 32.2

Number of children who died due to increased mortality (of those born during the war) - 1.3

The population would have died in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 - 11.9

Total human losses of the USSR as a result of the war: 32.2 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 21.6 million people.

Firstly, we must take into account that non-military mortality in 1941-1945 It is incorrect to calculate based on mortality in 1940. During the war years 1941-1945. non-military mortality should have been much HIGHER than in the peaceful year of 1940.

Secondly, this “general population decline” also includes the so-called. “second emigration” (up to 1.5 million people) and the loss of collaborationist formations that fought on the side of the Germans (Estonian and Latvian SS men, “ostbattalions”, policemen, etc.) - they also consisted, as it were, of citizens of the USSR! This is still up to 400,000 people.

And if these numbers are subtracted from 21.6 million, you get about 19.8 million.

That is, in round numbers - the same “Brezhnev” 20 million.

Therefore, until researchers have been able to provide reasonable calculations, I propose not to use the figures that appeared during Gorbachev’s time. The purpose of these calculations was certainly not to establish the truth. I wrote to you about this because I heard several times in your speeches about the USSR’s losses of 27 million people.

Sincerely, Matvienko Gennady Ivanovich

P.S. According to estimates, the losses (minimal) of the Germans alone in the 2nd World War are at least 12 million people (while the maximum estimate of losses of the German civilian population does not exceed 3 million). And they completely forgot the Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Finns.

At Stalingrad in September 1942, Paulus’s army was 270 thousand people, and 2 Romanian and 1 Hungarian armies were about 340 thousand people.”

Thank you very much to Gennady Ivanovich for his letter. But the letter from another reader sent a little earlier is simply an illustration of what is written above.

Letter two.

“Dear Nikolai Viktorovich

Let me introduce myself. My name is Berkaliev Askar Abdrakhmanovich. I live in Kazakhstan in Almaty, a pensioner, but I continue to be interested in social and political life in the territory of the former USSR. I try to follow the television battles that our television broadcasts. I am impressed by your interpretation of the History of the Great Patriotic War and the fact that you examine the most controversial moments of this war. I would not bother you and take up your time if I had not accidentally stumbled upon facts that shook the established (for me personally) information about the losses of our country in the last war.

Until the 70s of the last century, it was believed that our country’s losses in the Great Patriotic War amounted to 20 million dead. Then the figure of 27 million appeared out of nowhere and there is a strong trend towards an increase in the number of our losses.

Some sections of society (especially the intelligentsia) have a point of view that the Soviet army showered the Germans with the corpses of its soldiers and won not by skill, but by numbers. I think that such an opinion contributes to belittling the merits of our people in winning that war. As well as regularly expressed points of view that without supplies under Lend-Lease we would not have won, that without the second front we would not have won, etc.

I'll tell you a little about what facts I found.

In the fall of 2013, I made a trip to Ukraine. My older brother Nariman Berkaliev died there at the end of 1943. For a long time we did not know the exact place of death and burial. The death notice stated that he died in the Kirovograd region on December 20, 1943, without indicating the exact place of burial. In 1991, the “Book of Memory” was published in our regional newspaper. The names of our fellow countrymen who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War were listed there, and the specified places of their burial were indicated.

Due to various circumstances, none of the remaining family members were able to travel to Ukraine. The parents were no longer alive, the older brothers were aged and their health did not allow them to travel to Ukraine. I was the youngest of the brothers and, putting aside other matters, I still went to the Kirovograd region and found the village of Sukhodolskoye in the Dolinsky district (during the war it was called Batyzman). Found a mass grave. The brother's name and surname were on the list engraved on granite stones. The mass grave is kept in good condition, thanks to the village residents. I laid flowers and handfuls of earth brought from my homeland.

Having the goal of visiting the grave of my older brother, I wanted to look at the land for the liberation of which my father fought. My father was drafted into the army in the summer of 1942 and ended up in the Stalingrad area. He was awarded the rank of sergeant (he had experience in the Civil War). He served in the 706th Infantry Regiment of the 204th Division, which was part of the 64th Army. On January 18, 1943, during the liquidation of an encircled German group, he was wounded. He was in a hospital in the city of Buzuluk and in the summer of 1943 he returned to the active army. He ended up in the 983rd regiment of the 253rd division, which was part of the 40th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. He took part in the battles for the liberation of the Poltava region, walked through Gogol’s places, was in Dikanka, and almost drowned in the Psel River there. In November 1943, part of them crossed the Dnieper in the area of ​​the Bukrin bridgehead, simulating that the main attack would come from here. In fact, the main attack was made from the Lyutezh bridgehead. For two days, their regiment, which moved to the right bank, held out under fire from the Germans, who were entrenched on the high bank of the Dnieper. On the third day, my father was wounded by a German mine explosion and evacuated to the rear. They wanted to amputate his legs, but he did not allow it, endured six months of treatment in a rear hospital and returned home in the summer of 1944. My father died in 1973 at the age of 70.

After a trip to Ukraine, I began to study in more detail the combat path of my closest relatives. From close relatives, my father, older brother, and six older cousins ​​took part in that war.

I am now retired, I have enough time and after a trip to Ukraine I decided to compose something like memoirs for the younger generation. Of course, a lot of space in the memoirs is devoted to how the older generation showed itself in the war. Of the eight close relatives who went to war, only four returned alive.

In the course of compiling my notes, which later grew into memoirs, I had to rummage through my home archives. It turned out that a lot of information can be found on the Internet. There are special sites “Feat of the People” and OBD “Memorial”. You, of course, know about this, but for me it was a big find. It turns out that having information about the number of a military unit, you can trace its combat path. You can find information about awards and even awards submissions. I remember my father talking about his last battle - crossing the Dnieper in early November 1943. On the third day after the crossing, already on the right bank, my father was wounded and was taken to the rear. Before being sent to the hospital, the commander told my father that he would nominate him for the Order of Glory, 2nd class (my father already had the Order of Glory, 3rd class). But he never received the promised order. On the Internet I found an award sheet (nomination for an award). My father was nominated not for the order, but only for the medal “For Courage,” but he didn’t receive that either. The award sheet indicated the circumstances and location of the battle. It was near the village of Khodorovka on the famous Bukrinsky bridgehead.

I started digging more thoroughly on the Internet. I entered the Memorial OBD website and found out that my father was considered killed on January 18, 1943 during the liquidation of an encircled German group (that is, during the first wound).

After discovering an obvious discrepancy between the information received and reality, I checked whether the Memorial OBD contained information about my other relatives who died at the front.

1. Two older cousins ​​died back in 1941. There is no information about them. They were ordinary soldiers. In addition, I do not know exactly the years of birth and surnames (for Kazakhs, the surname is often taken from the name of the father, grandfather or distant ancestor).
2. Another older cousin of Kairov, Salim, was a career military man who fought on the Kalinin Front. His name is listed on the Memorial OBD list of irretrievable losses three times. All three information contain the same last name and first name. Even the numbers of the military unit and division are the same. The difference is that somewhere he was recorded as a lieutenant, and somewhere as a senior lieutenant. In one case he was considered killed on January 9, 1943, and in another information on January 8, 1943. Somewhere he was considered to have been born in the Ashgabat region, and somewhere in the West Kazakhstan region. Although they were clearly talking about the same person (too many coincidences in details). But at the same time, each information from the Memorial OBD has a separate folder and file.

1. My actually deceased elder brother Nariman also appears on the lists of the dead in the Memorial OBD three times. In one case, he is considered a fighter of the 68th brigade and is buried in the village. Batyzman, Dolinsky district. In other information, he is identified as a fighter who only has field mail 32172, without indicating the place of death. In the third case, he is recorded as a fighter of the 68th brigade. But the burial place is named the village of Batyzman, Novgorodkovsky district.

1. There was another participant in the war in our family - the father of my wife Seidalin Mukash, born in 1910. When searching for data about him, the Memorial OBD indicated that senior sergeant of the 1120th Infantry Regiment Mukash Seydalin died in hospital from wounds in December 1942. In fact, he was wounded on December 6, 1942. After being wounded, he was given a commission and from 1943 worked as a teacher in the city of Chu, Dzhambul region. He died in 1985 at the age of 75.

I got a bunch of contradictory information.

• My father returned from the war wounded but alive. According to information from Memorial OBD, he is considered dead.
• My wife's father returned from the war wounded but alive. There is information about him that he died in the hospital.
• My brother Nariman really died, but according to information from the Memorial OBD, he is on three lists, that is, he is listed as three different dead people.
• Another brother (cousin) was also really killed, but according to information from the Memorial OBD, he was killed three times and there are three separate records about this.

It turns out that for four people there are eight reports of death, although only two actually died.

It seems to me that errors in the information could have arisen at the first stage, i.e. when filling out reports of irrecoverable losses. I saw the original military field records on the Internet. These are certainly genuine documents, written on yellowed paper which confirms the authenticity of the originals. But we must take into account that the recordings were made in conditions of hostilities, and by people who did not always themselves witness what happened, they often wrote from the words of other people. I cannot explain the appearance of information about the death of people who were in fact only wounded by other reasons. Ordinary human factor.

The appearance of errors associated with repeated inclusion in lists of irretrievable losses, I think, occurred at the digitization stage. Probably the information was not filtered enough to repeat the information. The computer is not able to detect the identity of the information if, for example, if there is the same last name and first name, the burial place does not match. For the computer, this is a different person. Here we can talk not about the human factor, but about its absence or insufficiency. A person would definitely guess that the information contained information about the same person. Too many matching details.

To objectively assess my doubts, it is necessary to conduct a study of a large sample of hundreds and thousands of people. I can’t do this, and besides, I’m not an expert in digging through archives and the Internet. Here we need professional historians who know how to understand archives and have access to large amounts of archival documents. I ask you to clarify whether my doubts are justified. If the facts that I encountered are widespread, then it is necessary to find out, at least to a first approximation, the percentage of errors. The usual human factor could greatly exaggerate our losses in the war. To my letter I attach information about my relatives who died in the war (and are considered dead). Maybe this will help you get a more objective picture.

I congratulate you on the upcoming 70th anniversary of Victory, I wish you creative success in the necessary work that you are carrying out.”

Thank you very much, dear Gennady Ivanovich and Askar Abdrakhmanovich, for your important and extremely interesting letters. Health and happiness to you!

So what is it, the true price of our Victory? When will speculation about the feat of our people come to an end and “new research” and “independent researchers” will stop exaggerating the number of victims that our multinational people brought to the altar of Victory?

And as a postscript, material about the Immortal Regiment as an inappropriate and harmful reform of the established order of celebrating Victory Day:

Let the Immortal Regiment become an attribute