(in brackets - including officers)

* There are summation errors in the table. - Ed.

Germany was forced to surrender its losses in manpower. In principle, she had enough weapons and equipment, even the newest and most advanced models, such as, say, ballistic missiles, jet aircraft, powerful tanks, etc.

Against Nazi Germany a coalition of allies fought with its satellites: the USSR, England and the USA. And from the point of view of inflicting decisive losses on Germany, looking at the tables, one can determine which of the allies played the main role in that war.

Losses Navy Germany is undoubtedly determined by the combat operations of the fleets and aviation of England and the USA. And although by December 1944 Baltic Fleet has not yet said his final word and Captain Marinescu has not yet drowned the whole school submarine fleet Germany did not personal enemy Fuhrer, but let's give the Allies their due - probably in the end they determined the losses of the Germans at sea by almost 95%. But human losses Germans at sea by the beginning of 1945 account for just over 2% of their total recorded losses.

In the air, by the middle of the war, England and the United States crushed the Germans with their numerical superiority, it is natural that the main forces of the Luftwaffe were always defending the territory of Germany itself and here they suffered serious losses. However, if we sum up the losses of Luftwaffe manpower only from hostilities (the first four sums of the final column), we get combat losses– 549393, of which 218960 are losses on Eastern Front, or 39.8% of all combat losses of the German Air Force.

If we accept that the losses of the Luftwaffe airmen on all fronts were proportional, then on the Eastern Front, the Germans would have to lose 39.8% of all their pilots. The number of those killed among the missing is not known, let's assume that half of the flight personnel listed as missing were captured, and half died. Then the estimated amount of the dead flight personnel on 01/31/1945 will be (43517 + 27240/2) = 57137 people, and 39.8% of this number will be 22740 people.

The Soviet Air Force lost 27,600 pilots throughout the war. If we take into account which aircraft they had to fly in the initial period of the war (in the first 6 months we lost more than 20 thousand aircraft, and the Germans about 4 thousand), then the constantly exaggerated tales of some kind of super superiority German pilots over the Soviet ones do not look convincing. Indeed, to these figures of German losses, one must add the losses after 01/31/45, and the losses of the Finns, Hungarians, Italians and Romanians.

And finally loss ground forces fascist Germany on all fronts (the top six numbers of the final column of the corresponding part of the table) as of January 31, 1945 amounted to 7065239 people, of which the Germans lost 5622411 people on the Soviet German front. This accounts for 80% of all their combat losses.

Since the Germans were reluctant to surrender to the troops of the Red Army, it is possible to calculate the proportion of those killed German soldiers on the Eastern Front, of all those killed as of January 31, 1945. This proportion is more than 85%. This is for the period from September 1, 1939.

On 01/31/1945, the Germans on all fronts in the air and on the seas lost in battle at least (according to the Navy, let me remind you, the losses are given on 12/31/1944) - 7789051 people. Of them in battles with the Red Army, Soviet Air Force and fleets - 5851804 people, or 75% of all German losses. One ally out of three pulled out 3/4 of the entire war. Yes, there were people!

In preparation for the 65th anniversary Great Victory the problem of military losses, which has never been removed from the agenda for all these decades, is being discussed with new acuteness in the media. And the Soviet component of losses is always highlighted. The most common ideologemem is this: the price of victory in World War II "turned out to be too high" for our country. When deciding to conduct major military operations, the leaders and generals of the United States and Great Britain, they say, took care of their people and as a result suffered minimal losses, while we did not spare the blood of soldiers.

AT Soviet time it was believed that the USSR lost in Veklika Patriotic war 20 million people - both military and civilian. During the perestroika period, this figure increased to 46 million, while the rationale, to put it mildly, suffered from obvious ideologization. What are the true losses? For several years now, he has been clarifying them. Center for the History of Wars and Geopolitics of the Institute world history RAN.

- Historians have not yet come to a consensus on this issue, - told our correspondent Head of the Center Dr. historical sciences Mikhail Myagkov. — Our Center, like most scientific institutions, adheres to such estimates: Great Britain lost 370 thousand military personnel killed, the United States - 400 thousand. Our greatest losses are 11.3 million soldiers and officers who fell at the front and were tortured to death in captivity, as well as more than 15 million civilians who died in the occupied territories. Losses Hitler's coalition make up 8.6 million military personnel. That is, 1.3 times less than ours. This ratio was the result of the hardest for the Red Army initial period war, as well as the genocide that the Nazis carried out against Soviet prisoners of war. It is known that more than 60 percent of our captured soldiers and officers were killed in Nazi camps.

"SP": - Some "advanced" historians put the question this way: wouldn't it be wiser to fight like the British and Americans in order to win like them - "with little blood"?

- That is not the right question to ask. When the Germans developed the Barbarossa plan, they set the task of reaching Astrakhan and Arkhangelsk - that is, the conquest living space. Naturally, this meant the "liberation" of this gigantic territory from most of the Slavic population, the total extermination of Jews and Gypsies. This cynical, misanthropic task was solved quite consistently.

Accordingly, the Red Army fought for the elementary survival of its people and simply could not use the principle of self-saving.

"SP": - There are also such "humane" proposals: should not the Soviet Union, like France, for example, capitulate after 40 days in order to save the human resource?

- Of course, the French blitz capitulation saved lives, property, financial savings. But, according to the plans of the Nazis, the French were waiting, we note, not destruction, but Germanization. And France, or rather, its then leadership, in fact, agreed to this.

The situation in Great Britain was incomparable with ours. Take the so-called Battle of Britain in 1940. Churchill himself said that then "the few saved the many." This means that the small number of pilots who fought over London and the English Channel made it impossible for the Fuhrer's troops to land on British Isles. It is clear to anyone that the loss of aviation, naval forces is always much less than the number of people killed in land battles, which mainly went to the territory of the USSR.

By the way, before the attack on our country, Hitler conquered almost all Western Europe for 141 days. At the same time, the ratio of the losses of Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium and France, on the one hand, and Nazi Germany- on the other hand, it was 1:17 in favor of the Nazis. But in the West they don't talk about "the mediocrity" of their generals. And they like to teach us more, although the ratio of military losses of the USSR and the Nazi coalition was 1:1.3.

Member Association of Historians of World War II Academician Yury Rubtsov believes that our losses would have been less if the Allies had opened a second front in a timely manner.

- In the spring of 1942, - he said, - during the visits of the Soviet People's Commissar for Foreign Affairs Molotov to London and Washington, the Allies promised to land in a few months in continental Europe. But they did not do this either in 1942 or in 1943, when we carried especially heavy losses. From May 1942 to June 1944, while the Allies were delaying the opening of a second front, more than 5.5 million Soviet servicemen died in fierce battles. It is probably appropriate here to talk about the price of a certain selfishness of the allies. It is worth recalling that it was in 1942, after the collapse of the Blitzkrieg, that mass executions and deportations began. Soviet population. That is, the Germans began to actually carry out a plan to destroy life force USSR. If the second front had been opened, as agreed, in 1942, of course, we could have avoided such terrible losses. Another nuance is also important. If for us the problem of the second front was a matter of life and death for many millions Soviet people, then for the Allies it was a problem of strategy: when is it more expedient to land? They landed in Europe, hoping to better determine the post-war map of the world. Moreover, it was already obvious that the Red Army could independently end the war and enter the English Channel coast, providing the USSR, as a winner, with a leading role in the process of post-war development of Europe. What the allies could not allow.

You can't discount a moment like this. After the landing of the Allies, a large and the best part fascist forces remained on the Eastern Front. And the Germans resisted our troops much more fiercely. In addition to political motives, great value was afraid here. The Germans were afraid of retribution for the atrocities committed on the territory of the USSR. After all, it is well known that the Nazis surrendered entire cities to the allies without a shot, and on both sides the losses in sluggish battles were almost “symbolic”. With us, they laid down hundreds of their soldiers, clinging with their last strength to some village.

- Low at first glance, the losses of the allies have purely "arithmetic" explanations, - continues Mikhail Myagkov. - On the German front, they really fought for only 11 months - more than 4 times less than we did. Fight with ours, the combined losses of the British and Americans, according to some experts, can be predicted at the level of at least 3 million people. The Allies destroyed 176 enemy divisions. The Red Army - almost 4 times more - 607 enemy divisions. If Great Britain and the USA had to overcome the same forces, then we can expect that their losses would increase by about 4 times ... That is, it is possible that the losses would be even more serious than ours. This is about the ability to fight. Of course, the allies took care of themselves, and such tactics brought results: losses were reduced. If ours often continued to fight until the last bullet, even when surrounded, because they knew that they would not be spared, then the Americans and the British acted “more rationally” in similar situations.

Consider the Japanese siege of Singapore. The British garrison held the defense there. He was well armed. But a few days later, in order to avoid losses, he capitulated. Tens of thousands of English soldiers went into captivity. Ours also surrendered. But most often in conditions when it was impossible to continue the struggle, and there was nothing to do. And already in 1944, on final stage war, to imagine such a situation as in the Ardennes (where many allies were captured) on the Soviet-German front was incredible. Here we are not only talking about fighting spirit, but also about the values ​​that people directly defended.

I want to emphasize that if the USSR had fought Hitler as “cautiously” as our allies, the war would certainly have ended, I think, with the Germans reaching the Urals. Then Great Britain would inevitably fall, since even then it was limited in resources. And the English Channel would not have saved. Hitler using resource base Europe and the USSR, would strangle the British economically. As for the United States, at least they would not have acquired those real advantages that they received thanks to the selfless feat of the peoples of the USSR: access to raw materials markets, superpower status. Most likely, the United States would have to make an unpredictable compromise with Hitler. In any case, if the Red Army fought on the basis of "self-preservation" tactics, then this would put the world on the brink of disaster.

Summarizing the opinions of military scientists, I would like to suggest that the now-cited loss figures, or rather, the data on their ratio, require some correction. When counting, the formal division of combatants into two camps is always taken into account: countries anti-Hitler coalition and allies of Nazi Germany. Let me remind you that it is believed that the Nazis and their allies lost 8.6 million people. The fascist allies traditionally include Norway, Finland, Czechoslovakia, Austria, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Spain, Japan. But after all, large military contingents of France, Poland, Belgium, Albania, etc. fought against the USSR, which are classified as countries of the anti-Hitler coalition. Their losses are not taken into account. But, say, France lost 600,000 troops in the war. At the same time, 84 thousand were killed in hostilities while protecting national territory. 20 thousand - in the Resistance. Where about 500 thousand died? It will become clear if we remember that almost in full force Air Force and Navy of France, as well as about 20 ground divisions. A similar situation with Poland, Belgium and other "fighters against fascism." Part of their losses must be attributed to the opposing side of the USSR. Then the ratio will be somewhat different. So the "black" myths about corpse-snatching, which they allegedly sinned Soviet military leaders, let them remain on the conscience of too idiologized politicians.

In 1945, the most "bloody" war of the 20th century ended, causing terrible destruction and claiming millions of lives. From our article you can find out what losses the countries participating in the Second World War suffered.

Total losses

62 countries were involved in the most global military conflict of the 20th century, 40 of which were directly involved in hostilities. Their losses in World War II are primarily calculated among the military and civilian population, which amounted to about 70 million people.

Financial losses (the price of lost property) of all parties to the conflict were significant: about $2,600 billion. The countries spent 60% of their income on providing the army and conducting military operations. total amount spending reached $4 trillion.

The Second World War led to huge destruction (about 10 thousand people). major cities and settlements). In the USSR alone, more than 1,700 cities, 70,000 villages, and 32,000 enterprises suffered from bombing. Opponents destroyed about 96 thousand people. Soviet tanks and self-propelled artillery installations, 37 thousand units of armored vehicles.

Historical facts show that it was the USSR that of all the participants in the anti-Hitler coalition suffered the most serious losses. Special measures were taken to clarify the death toll. In 1959 a population census was carried out (the first since the war). Then the figure of 20 million victims sounded. To date, other specific data are known (26.6 million), voiced by state commission in 2011. They coincided with the figures announced in 1990. Most the dead were civilians.

Rice. 1. The ruined city of the Second World War.

human sacrifice

Unfortunately, the exact number of victims is still unknown. Objective reasons(lack of official documentation) complicate the count, so many continue to be listed as missing.

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Before talking about the dead, let's indicate the number of people called up for service by states whose participation in the war was key, and who suffered during the hostilities:

• Germany : 17,893,200 soldiers, of which: 5,435,000 wounded, 4,100,000 were captured;
• Japan : 9 058 811: 3 600 000: 1 644 614;
• Italy : 3,100,000: 350 thousand: 620 thousand;
• USSR : 34,476,700: 15,685,593: about 5 million;
• Great Britain : 5,896,000: 280 thousand: 192 thousand;
• USA : 16 112 566: 671 846: 130 201;
• China : 17,250,521: 7 million: 750 thousand;
• France : 6 million: 280 thousand: 2,673,000

Rice. 2. Wounded soldiers from World War II.

For convenience, here is a table of countries' losses in World War II. The number of deaths in it is indicated, taking into account all causes of death, approximately (average figures between the minimum and maximum):

Country	Dead military	Dead civilians
Germany	About 5 million	About 3 million
Great Britain
Australia
Yugoslavia
Finland
Netherlands
Bulgaria

What were the population losses of the USSR during World War II? Stalin stated that they were equal to 7 million, Khrushchev - 20. However, is there any reason to believe that they were significantly larger?
By the beginning of the war, the population of the USSR was 197,500,000 people. The "natural" population growth from 1941 - 1945 was 13,000,000 people, and the "natural" decline was 15,000,000 people, since the war was going on.
By 1946, the population of the USSR should have been 195,500,000 people. However, at that time it was only 168,500,000 people. Consequently, the loss of population during the war was 27,000,000 people. An interesting fact: the population of the republics and territories annexed in 1939 is 22,000,000 people. However, in 1946 it was 13 million. The fact is that 9 million people emigrated. 2 million Germans (or those who called themselves Germans) moved to Germany, 2 million Poles (or those who knew a few words from the Polish dialect), 5 million inhabitants moved to Poland western regions The USSR moved to the countries of the West.
So, direct losses from the war: 27 million - 9 million = 18 million people. 8 million people out of 18 million is civilians: 1 million Poles who died at the hands of Bandera, 1 million who died during the siege of Leningrad, 2 million civilians classified by the Nazis as persons capable of taking up arms (age from 15 to 65 years) and kept in concentration camps along with Soviet prisoners of war , 4 million Soviet citizens, classified by the Nazis as communists, partisans, etc. Every tenth Soviet person died.

Losses of the Red Army - 10 million people.

What were the German population losses during World War II?By the beginning of the war, the population of Germany proper was 74,000,000 people. The population of the Third Reich is 93 million people.By the autumn of 1945, the population of Germany (Vaterland, not the entire Third Reich) was 52,000,000 people. More than 5 million Germans immigrated from the Volksdeutsche to the country. So, the losses of Germany: 74 million - 52 million + 5 million = 27 million people.

Consequently, the loss of the German population during the war was 27,000,000 people. About 9 million people emigrated from Germany.
Direct military losses of Germany - 18 million people. 8 million of them are civilians who died as a result of air raids by US and British aircraft, as a result of shelling. Germany lost about a third of its population! By October 1946, more than 13 million Volksdeutsche arrived in Western Germany from Alsace and Lorraine (about 2.2 million people Volksdeutsche) , Saara ( 0.8 million people ), Silesia (10 million people), Sudetenland ( 3.64 million people), Poznan (1 million people), Baltic states (2 million people), Danzig and Memel (0.54 million people) and other places. The population of Germany began to equal 66 million people. On the German population persecution began outside the territory of the occupation zones. The Germans were thrown out of their homes and were often slaughtered in the streets. The non-German population spared neither children nor the elderly. It was because of this that the mass exodus of the Germans and those who collaborated with them began. The Kashubians with Schlenzaks considered themselves Germans. They also went to the western occupation zones.

Editorial note. For 70 years, first the top leadership of the USSR (having rewritten history), and later the government Russian Federation supported a monstrous and cynical lie about greatest tragedy XX century - World War II

Editorial note . For 70 years, first the top leadership of the USSR (having rewritten history), and later the government of the Russian Federation, supported a monstrous and cynical lie about the greatest tragedy of the 20th century - World War II, mainly privatizing victory in it and keeping silent about its price and the role of other countries in the outcome. war. Now in Russia they have made a parade picture of victory, they support victory frenzy at all levels, and the cult St. George ribbon reached such an ugly form that it actually grew into a frank mockery of the memory of millions of fallen people. And while the whole world mourns for those who died fighting against Nazism, or became its victims, eReFiya arranges a blasphemous Sabbath. And over these 70 years, the exact number of losses of Soviet citizens in that war has not been finally clarified. The Kremlin is not interested in this, just as it is not interested in publishing the statistics of the dead military of the Russian Armed Forces in the Donbass, in the Russian-Ukrainian war, which he unleashed. Only a few who did not succumb to the influence of Russian propaganda are trying to find out the exact number of losses in WWII.

In the article that we bring to your attention, the most important thing is that the Soviet and Russian authorities, while PR in every possible way on their feat.

Estimates of the losses of Soviet citizens in World War II have a huge spread: from 19 to 36 million. The first detailed calculations were made by a Russian emigrant, demographer Timashev in 1948 - he got 19 million. B. Sokolov called the maximum figure - 46 million. The latest calculations show that only the military of the USSR lost 13.5 million people, the total losses were over 27 million.

At the end of the war, long before any historical and demographic studies, Stalin gave the figure - 5.3 million military losses. He included in it the missing (obviously, in most cases - prisoners). In March 1946, in an interview with a correspondent for the Pravda newspaper, the generalissimo estimated the casualties at 7 million. The increase was due to civilians who died in the occupied territory or were driven to Germany.

In the West, this figure was perceived with skepticism. Already in the late 1940s, the first calculations of the demographic balance of the USSR for the war years, contradicting Soviet data, appeared. Case in point- estimates of the Russian emigrant, demographer N. S. Timashev, published in the New York "New Journal" in 1948. Here is his technique.

The all-Union census of the population of the USSR in 1939 determined its number at 170.5 million. The increase in 1937-1940. reached, according to his assumption, almost 2% for each year. Consequently, the population of the USSR by the middle of 1941 should have reached 178.7 million. But in 1939-1940. were annexed to the USSR Western Ukraine and Belarus, the three Baltic states, the Karelian lands of Finland, and Romania returned Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Therefore, excluding the Karelian population who went to Finland, the Poles who fled to the West, and the Germans repatriated to Germany, these territorial acquisitions gave a population increase of 20.5 million. Considering that the birth rate in the annexed territories was no more than 1% in year, that is, lower than in the USSR, and also taking into account the shortness of the time period between their entry into the USSR and the start of World War II, the author determined the population growth for these territories by mid-1941 at 300 thousand. Sequentially summing up the above figures, he received 200.7 million living in the USSR on the eve of June 22, 1941.

Next, Timashev divided 200 million into three age groups, again relying on the data of the All-Union Census of 1939: adults (over 18 years old) - 117.2 million, adolescents (from 8 to 18 years old) - 44.5 million, children (under 8 years old) - 38.8 million. In doing so, he took into account two important factors. First: in 1939-1940. from childhood two very weak annual flows, born in 1931-1932, during the famine, which covered large areas of the USSR and negatively affected the size of the adolescent group, passed into the group of adolescents. Second, there were more people over 20 in the former Polish lands and the Baltic states than in the USSR.

Timashev supplemented these three age groups with the number Soviet prisoners. He did it in the following way. By the time of the elections of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in December 1937, the population of the USSR reached 167 million, of which voters made up 56.36% of total figure, and the population over 18, according to the All-Union census of 1939, reached 58.3%. The resulting difference of 2%, or 3.3 million, in his opinion, was the population of the Gulag (including the number of those executed). This turned out to be close to the truth.

Next, Timashev moved on to post-war figures. The number of voters included in the voting lists for the elections of deputies of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the spring of 1946 amounted to 101.7 million. Adding to this figure the 4 million prisoners of the Gulag calculated by him, he received 106 million of the adult population in the USSR at the beginning of 1946. Calculating the teenage group, he took as a basis 31.3 million students in primary and high school in 1947/48 academic year, compared with the data of 1939 (31.4 million schoolchildren within the borders of the USSR until September 17, 1939) and received a figure of 39 million. Calculating the children's group, he proceeded from the fact that by the beginning of the war the birth rate in the USSR was approximately 38 per 1000, in the second quarter of 1942 it decreased by 37.5%, and in 1943-1945. - half.

Subtracting from each annual group the percentage due according to the normal mortality table for the USSR, he received at the beginning of 1946 36 million children. Thus, according to his statistical calculations, in the USSR at the beginning of 1946 there were 106 million adults, 39 million adolescents and 36 million children, and a total of 181 million. Timashev’s conclusion is as follows: the population of the USSR in 1946 was 19 million less than in 1941.

Approximately the same results came and other Western researchers. In 1946, under the auspices of the League of Nations, F. Lorimer's book "The Population of the USSR" was published. According to one of his hypotheses, during the war the population of the USSR decreased by 20 million people.

In an article published in 1953, “Casualties in World War II,” the German researcher G. Arntz concluded that “20 million people is the closest figure to the truth. total losses Soviet Union in World War II." The collection, which includes this article, was translated and published in the USSR in 1957 under the title "Results of the Second World War". Thus, four years after Stalin's death, Soviet censorship let the figure of 20 million into the open press, thereby indirectly recognizing it as true and making it public, according to at least, specialists: historians, international affairs specialists, etc.

Only in 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Swedish Prime Minister Erlander, admitted that the war against fascism "claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people." Thus, in comparison with Stalin, Khrushchev increased the Soviet casualties by almost 3 times.

In 1965, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, Brezhnev spoke of "more than 20 million" human lives, lost Soviet people in the war. In the 6th and final volume of the fundamental “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union” published at the same time, it was stated that out of the 20 million dead, almost half “are military and civilians killed and tortured by the Nazis in the occupied Soviet territory". In fact, 20 years after the end of the war, the USSR Ministry of Defense recognized the death of 10 million Soviet troops.

Four decades later, the head of the Center military history Russian Institute Russian history RAS Professor G. Kumanev, in a footnote, told the truth about the calculations that military historians carried out in the early 1960s when preparing the “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union”: “Our losses in the war were then determined at 26 million. But it turned out to be accepted by high authorities figure "over 20 million".

As a result, "20 million" not only took root for decades in historical literature but also became part of the national identity.

In 1990, M. Gorbachev published a new figure of losses, obtained as a result of research by demographic scientists, - "almost 27 million people."

In 1991, B. Sokolov's book “The Price of Victory. The Great Patriotic War: the unknown about the known. In it, direct military losses of the USSR were estimated at about 30 million, including 14.7 million military personnel, and "actual and potential losses" - at 46 million, including 16 million unborn children.

A little later, Sokolov clarified these figures (brought new losses). He received the loss figure as follows. From the size of the Soviet population at the end of June 1941, which he determined at 209.3 million, he subtracted 166 million who, in his opinion, lived in the USSR on January 1, 1946, and received 43.3 million dead. Then subtract from the resulting number irretrievable losses armed forces(26.4 million) and received irretrievable losses of the civilian population - 16.9 million.

“It is possible to name the number of killed Red Army soldiers during the entire war close to reality, if we determine that month of 1942, when the losses of the Red Army by the dead were taken into account most fully and when it had almost no losses as prisoners. For a number of reasons, we chose November 1942 as such a month and extended the ratio of the number of dead and wounded obtained for it to the entire period of the war. As a result, we came to the figure of 22.4 million killed in battle and died from wounds, illnesses, accidents and shot by the tribunals of Soviet military personnel.

To the 22.4 million received in this way, he added 4 million fighters and commanders of the Red Army who died in enemy captivity. And so it turned out 26.4 million irretrievable losses suffered by the Armed Forces.

In addition to B. Sokolov, similar calculations were made by L. Polyakov, A. Kvasha, V. Kozlov, and others. USSR, which is almost impossible to determine exactly. It was this difference that they considered the total loss of life.

In 1993 it was published statistical study“Secret stamp lifted: losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts”, prepared by a team of authors headed by General G. Krivosheev. Previously secret archival documents, primarily reporting materials, became the main source of statistical data. General Staff. However, the losses of entire fronts and armies in the first months, and the authors specifically stipulated this, were obtained by them by calculation. In addition, the reports of the General Staff did not include the losses of units that were organizationally not part of the Soviet Armed Forces (army, navy, border and internal troops NKVD USSR), but taking direct participation in battles: civil uprising, partisan detachments, underground groups.

Finally, the number of prisoners of war and missing persons is clearly underestimated: this category of losses, according to the reports of the General Staff, totals 4.5 million, of which 2.8 million remained alive (were repatriated after the end of the war or re-conscripted into the ranks of the Red Army on the liberated from the occupiers of the territory), and, accordingly, total number those who did not return from captivity, including those who did not wish to return to the USSR, amounted to 1.7 million.

As a result, the statistical data of the handbook “The Classification Removed” were immediately perceived as requiring clarifications and additions. And in 1998, thanks to the publication of V. Litovkin “During the war years, our army lost 11 million 944 thousand 100 people”, these data were replenished by 500 thousand reserve reservists drafted into the army, but not yet enrolled in the lists military units and died on the way to the front.

V. Litovkin's study states that from 1946 to 1968, a special commission of the General Staff, headed by General S. Shtemenko, prepared a statistical reference book on the losses of 1941-1945. At the end of the work of the commission, Shtemenko reported to the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal A. Grechko: “Taking into account that the statistical collection contains information of national importance, the publication of which in the press (including closed) or in any other way is currently not necessary and undesirable, the collection is supposed to be stored in the General Staff as a special document, to which a strictly limited circle of persons will be allowed to familiarize themselves. And the prepared collection was under seven seals until the team led by General G. Krivosheev made public his information.

V. Litovkin’s research sowed even greater doubts about the completeness of the information published in the collection “Secret Classification Removed”, because a logical question arose: were all the data contained in the “Statistical Collection of the Shtemenko Commission” declassified?

For example, according to the data given in the article, during the war years, military justice authorities convicted 994 thousand people, of which 422 thousand were sent to penal units, 436 thousand to places of detention. The remaining 136 thousand, apparently, were shot.

And yet, the handbook "Secrecy Removed" significantly expanded and supplemented the ideas not only of historians, but of all Russian society about the price of the Victory in 1945. It is enough to refer to the statistical calculation: from June to November 1941, the Armed Forces of the USSR daily lost 24 thousand people, of which 17 thousand were killed and up to 7 thousand were wounded, and from January 1944 to May 1945 - 20 thousand people , of which 5.2 thousand were killed and 14.8 thousand were wounded.

In 2001, a significantly expanded statistical publication appeared - “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the armed forces. The authors supplemented the materials of the General Staff with reports from military headquarters about losses and notices from the military registration and enlistment offices about the dead and missing, which were sent to relatives at the place of residence. And the figure of losses received by him increased to 9 million 168 thousand 400 people. These data were reproduced in the 2nd volume of the collective work of the staff of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Population of Russia in the 20th century. Historical essays”, published under the editorship of academician Yu. Polyakov.

In 2004, the second, corrected and supplemented, edition of the book by the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, "Feat and Forgery: Pages of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", was published. It provides data on losses: about 27 million Soviet citizens. And in the footnotes to them, the same addition mentioned above appeared, explaining that the calculations of military historians back in the early 1960s gave a figure of 26 million, but the "high authorities" preferred to take for " historical truth» other: «over 20 million».

Meanwhile, historians and demographers continued to look for new approaches to ascertaining the magnitude of the losses of the USSR in the war.

The historian Ilyenkov, who served in the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, followed an interesting path. He tried to calculate the deadweight loss personnel Red Army on the basis of card files of irretrievable losses of privates, sergeants and officers. These file cabinets began to be created when, on July 9, 1941, a department for recording personal losses was organized as part of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Manning of the Red Army (GUFKKA). The duties of the department included personal accounting of losses and the compilation of an alphabetical file of losses.

Accounting was carried out according to the following categories: 1) dead - according to reports from military units, 2) dead - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 3) missing - according to reports from military units, 4) missing - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 5) those who died in German captivity, 6) those who died from diseases, 7) those who died from wounds - according to reports from military units, those who died from wounds - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices. At the same time, the following were taken into account: deserters; military personnel sentenced to imprisonment in forced labor camps; sentenced to highest measure punishment - execution; removed from the register of irretrievable losses as survivors; those who are suspected of having served with the Germans (the so-called "signals"), and those who were captured, but survived. These soldiers were not included in the list of irretrievable losses.

After the war, the file cabinets were deposited in the Archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense (now the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). Since the early 1990s, the archives have begun counting index cards by alphabetical letters and loss categories. As of November 1, 2000, 20 letters of the alphabet were processed, according to the remaining 6 letters that were not counted, a preliminary calculation was carried out, which fluctuates in large or the smaller side for 30-40 thousand personalities.

Calculated 20 letters in 8 categories of casualties of private and non-commissioned officers The Red Army was given the following figures: 9 million 524 thousand 398 people. At the same time, 116 thousand 513 people were removed from the register of irretrievable losses as they turned out to be alive according to the reports of the military registration and enlistment offices.

A preliminary calculation for 6 uncounted letters gave 2 million 910 thousand people of irretrievable losses. The result of the calculations turned out as follows: 12 million 434 thousand 398 Red Army soldiers and sergeants lost the Red Army in 1941-1945. (Recall that this is without the loss of the Navy, internal and border troops NKVD USSR.)

The alphabetical file of irretrievable losses was calculated using the same method. officers Red Army, which is also stored in TsAMO RF. They amounted to about 1 million 100 thousand people.

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

These data are 4 million 865 thousand 998 more than the irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces (roster) according to the General Staff, which included the Red Army, military sailors, border guards, internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR.

Finally, we note one more 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 assess the human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century, L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate value of the human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.

(Quotes: S. Golotik and V. Minaev - “The demographic losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War: the history of calculations”, “New historical messenger", No. 16, 2007.)