Estimates of the losses of Soviet citizens in the Great Patriotic War 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, while the total losses were over 27 million.

At the end of the war, long before any historical and demographic studies, Stalin gave a figure: 5.3 million people were killed in the war. He included in it the missing persons (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. An illustrative example is the estimates of the Russian emigrant, demographer N.S. Timashev, published in the New York "New Journal" in 1948. Here is his methodology:

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% per year. Consequently, the population of the USSR by the middle of 1941 should have reached 178.7 million. But in 1939-1940, Western Ukraine and Belarus, the three Baltic states, the Karelian lands of Finland, and Romania returned Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Therefore, after subtracting 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% per year, that is, lower than in the USSR, and also taking into account the short time interval between their entry into the USSR and the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, the author determined the population growth for these territories by mid-1941 at 300 thousand. Sequentially adding the above figures, he received 200 .7 million who lived 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 circumstances. 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 the total figure, and the population over 18 years old, 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 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 thousand, the second quarter of 1942, it fell by 37.5%, and in 1943-1945 - by 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 the article “Casual losses in World War II” published in 1953, the German researcher G. Arntz concluded that “20 million people is the closest figure to the truth of 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 the property of 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 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 by the Soviet people in the war. In the 6th and final volume of the fundamental “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union” published at the same time, it was stated that out of 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 servicemen.

Four decades later, the head of the Center military history Russian Institute Russian history Professor G. Kumanev of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 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 high authorities the accepted figure is "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. Out of numbers 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, from the resulting number, he subtracted the irretrievable losses of the armed forces (26.4 million) and received the 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 a 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. The methodological weakness of this kind of calculations is obvious: the researchers proceeded from the difference in the size of the Soviet population in 1941, which is known very approximately, and the size of the post-war population of the USSR, which is almost impossible to determine exactly. It was this difference that they considered the total loss of life.

In 1993, the statistical study “Secrecy Removed: Losses” was published. armed forces USSR in wars, combat actions and military conflicts”, prepared by a team of authors headed by General G. Krivosheev. The main source of statistical data was previously secret archival documents, first of all - the reporting materials of the General Staff. However, the losses of entire fronts and armies in the first months, and the authors specifically stipulated this, were obtained by 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 territory liberated from the invaders), and, accordingly, the total number of those who did not return from captivity, including those who did not want to return to the USSR, amounted to 1.7 million people.

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 included in the lists of military units and who died along the way to the front.

V. Litovkin's study says 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 natural 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 were apparently shot.

And yet, the handbook “Secrecy Removed” significantly expanded and supplemented the ideas not only of historians, but of the entire Russian society about the price of the Victory of 1945. Suffice it to refer to the statistical calculation: from June to November 1941, the Armed Forces of the USSR lost 24 thousand people daily, of which 17 thousand killed and up to 7 thousand wounded, and from January 1944 to May 1945 -20 thousand people, of which 5.2 thousand were killed and 14.8 thousand 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”, edited by Academician Y. 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 irretrievable losses of the personnel of the Red Army on the basis of card indexes 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 to a large or the smaller side for 30-40 thousand personalities.

Calculated 20 letters in 8 categories of losses of privates and sergeants of the Red Army gave the following figures: 9 million 524 thousand 398 people. At the same time, 116 thousand 513 people were removed from the register of irretrievable losses, as they turned out to be alive according to the reports of the military registration and enlistment offices.

A preliminary calculation of 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 of the NKVD of the USSR.)

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

Thus, the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War 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 people higher than the irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR (listed composition) according to the General Staff, which included the Red Army, 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 Great Patriotic 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.

The killer, loved by people who are very sick in the head. And the war itself
the work of his hands, and the millions killed are the work of this serial killer

The Second World War is still rightly considered the most bloody conflict in the history of mankind, the victims of which were tens of millions of people around the world, and especially in Europe. The Soviet Union, as one of the largest powers of that time, suffered its huge losses during this war.

If you search carefully, you can find a variety of data on how many people the Soviet Union lost. The point is that even today information technologies and developed documentation does not always have the ability to calculate the number of victims of the war, and then it was quite difficult to accurately calculate the population, not to mention the fact that a significant part of the information collected was never published. In 1946, Stalin spoke of 7 million dead citizens Soviet Union (both soldiers and civilians), and after a decade and a half, Khrushchev called the figure 20 million. In our time, it is generally accepted that the Soviet Union lost about 27 million people during the war years, of which 8 million were Soviet soldiers, and the rest died due to various reasons associated with the war.

And here it is even more difficult to calculate the number of losses. There are at least three reasons preventing such a calculation. First, it is not always possible to determine exactly who the nationality of a particular victim was. The second is that in the Soviet Union of the pre-war years it was a common custom to record as Russian even citizens who were not Russian. Finally, the third, which many do not like to mention Russian historians- this is the fact that the Russians fought not only for the Soviet Union, but also against it, and it’s extremely difficult to calculate the losses of the opponents of the Soviet Union, because The best way destroy the enemy - do not mention him.

According to the most common opinion, more than 5.5 million people died during the Second World War. Soviet soldiers Russian nationality. The German occupation did not touch most of the territory of Russia, so the losses among civilians are somewhat lower here - for example, Ukraine, which is much smaller in population, lost the same number of people only among civilians. As for the Russians, who were opponents of the Soviet Union, they fought mainly as part of the so-called Russian Liberation Army, whose number in Russian sources usually listed as 120-130 thousand people, and in foreign countries the number of 600 thousand volunteers is mentioned.

The Soviet Union suffered the most significant losses in World War II - about 27 million people. At the same time, the division of the dead along ethnic lines was never welcomed. However, such statistics exist.

History of counting

For the first time, the total number of victims among Soviet citizens in World War II was named by the Bolshevik magazine, which published in February 1946 the figure of 7 million people. A month later, Stalin gave the same figure in an interview with the Pravda newspaper.

In 1961, at the end of the post-war population census, Khrushchev announced corrected data. “How can we sit back and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists unleashed a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people?” wrote the Soviet Secretary General to Swedish Prime Minister Fridtjof Erlander.

In 1965, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, already new head USSR Brezhnev said: "So brutal war, which the Soviet Union suffered, did not fall to the lot of any people. The war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people.

However, all these calculations were approximate. Only in the late 1980s did the group Soviet historians under the leadership of Colonel General Grigory Krivosheev, she was admitted to the materials of the General Staff, as well as the main headquarters of all types of the Armed Forces. The result of the work was the figure of 8 million 668 thousand 400 people, reflecting the losses power structures USSR throughout the war.

The final data of all human losses of the USSR for the entire period of the Great Patriotic War was published by state commission, who worked on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 26.6 million people: this figure was announced at the solemn meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990. This figure turned out to be unchanged, despite the fact that the methods of calculating the commission were repeatedly called incorrect. In particular, it was noted that the final figure included collaborators, "Khivi" and other Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Nazi regime.

By nationality

For a long time, no one was engaged in counting the dead in the Great Patriotic War on a national basis. Such an attempt was made by the historian Mikhail Filimoshin in the book “Casualties of the Armed Forces of the USSR”. The author noted that the lack of a nominal list of the dead, dead or missing with an indication of nationality greatly complicated the work. Such a practice was simply not provided for in the Report Card of Urgent Reports.

Filimoshin substantiated his data with the help of proportionality coefficients, which were calculated on the basis of reports on the payroll of the Red Army military personnel according to socio-demographic characteristics for 1943, 1944 and 1945. At the same time, the researcher failed to establish the nationality of approximately 500,000 conscripts called up in the first months of the war for mobilization and missing along the way to the unit.

1. Russians - 5 million 756 thousand (66.402% of total number irretrievable losses);

2. Ukrainians - 1 million 377 thousand (15.890%);

3. Belarusians - 252 thousand (2.917%);

4. Tatars - 187 thousand (2.165%);

5. Jews - 142 thousand (1.644%);

6. Kazakhs - 125 thousand (1.448%);

7. Uzbeks - 117 thousand (1.360%);

8. Armenians - 83 thousand (0.966%);

9. Georgians - 79 thousand (0.917%)

10. Mordva and Chuvash - 63 thousand each (0.730%)

The demographer and sociologist Leonid Rybakovsky in his book "The USSR's Human Losses in the Great Patriotic War" separately calculates civilian casualties using the ethno-demographic method. This method includes three components:

1. Death of civilians in combat areas (bombing, shelling, punitive operations etc.).

2. Non-return of part of the Ostarbeiters and other population who voluntarily or under duress served the occupiers;

3. increase in mortality of the population over normal level from hunger and other deprivations.

According to Rybakovsky, Russians lost 6.9 million civilians in this way, Ukrainians - 6.5 million, Belarusians - 1.7 million.

Alternative estimates

Historians of Ukraine give their own methods of counting, which relate primarily to the losses of Ukrainians in the Great Patriotic War. The researchers of Nezalezhnaya refer to the fact that Russian historians adhere to certain stereotypes when counting victims, in particular, they do not take into account the contingent of corrective labor institutions, where a significant part of the dispossessed Ukrainians were located, whose sentence was replaced by being sent to penal companies.

Head of the research department of the Kyiv " National Museum History of the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945. Lyudmila Rybchenko refers to the fact that Ukrainian researchers have collected a unique fund of documentary materials on accounting for the human military losses of Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War - funerals, lists of missing persons, correspondence on the search for the dead, loss records.

In total, according to Rybchenko, more than 8.5 thousand archival files were collected, in which about 3 million personal testimonies about the dead and missing soldiers called up from the territory of Ukraine. However, the museum worker does not pay attention to the fact that representatives of other nationalities also lived in Ukraine, which could well be included in the number of 3 million victims.

Belarusian experts also give independent estimates of the number of losses during the Second World War. Some believe that every third inhabitant of 9 million Belarus became a victim of Hitler's aggression. One of the most authoritative researchers of this topic is the professor of the State Pedagogical University doctor historical sciences Emmanuel Ioffe.

The historian believes that in total 1 million 845 thousand 400 inhabitants of Belarus died in 1941-1944. From this figure, he subtracts 715,000 Belarusian Jews who became victims of the Holocaust. Among the remaining 1 million 130 thousand 155 people, in his opinion, about 80% or 904 thousand people are ethnic Belarusians.

A pile of burnt remains of Majdanek concentration camp prisoners. 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 2nd World War unleashed by Nazi Germany and its allies in September 1939 became the most bloody and fierce in the history of mankind. For five years there has been mass destruction of people. Due to the lack of reliable statistics, the total number of casualties among the military and civilian population of many states participating in the war has not yet been established. Estimates of the number of deaths in various studies differ significantly. However, it is generally accepted that more than 55 million people died during the years of the Second World War. Nearly half of all deaths civilians. Only in fascist camps The deaths of Majdanek and Auschwitz killed more than 5.5 million innocent people. In total, 11 million citizens from all European countries were tortured to death in Hitler's concentration camps, including about 6 million people of Jewish nationality.

The main burden of the fight against fascism fell on the shoulders of the Soviet Union and its Armed Forces. This war became for our people - the Great Patriotic War. high price got the victory the Soviet people in this war. The total direct human losses of the USSR, according to the Department of Population Statistics 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 in forced labor in Germany, 13,684,448 peaceful Soviet citizens were deliberately destroyed and died. These are the tasks that Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler set before the commanders of the SS divisions "Dead Head", "Reich", "Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler" on April 24, 1943 at a meeting in the building Kharkiv University: “I want to say and I think that those to whom I say this already understand that we must wage our war and our campaign with the thought of how best to take human resources from the Russians - alive or dead? We do this when we kill them or take them prisoner and make them really work, when we try to take possession of an occupied area and when we leave uninhabited territory to the enemy. Either they must be driven to Germany, and become her labor force, or die in battle. And to leave people to the enemy so that he again has a working and military force, by and large, is absolutely not right. This cannot be allowed. And if this line of extermination of people is consistently pursued in the war, as I am convinced, then the Russians will already lose their strength and bleed to death during this year and next winter. In accordance with their ideology, the Nazis acted throughout the war. Hundreds of thousands of Soviet people were tortured to death in concentration camps in Smolensk, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Lvov, Poltava, Novgorod, Orel Kaunas, Riga and many others. During the two years of the occupation of Kyiv, on its territory in Babi Yar tens of thousands of people were shot different nationalities- Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Gypsies. Including, only on September 29 and 30, 1941, 33,771 people were executed by Sonderkommando 4A. Cannibalistic instructions were given by Heinrich Himmler in his letter dated September 7, 1943 to Prützmann, High Fuhrer of the SS and Police of Ukraine: “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, not meters of railroad tracks, so that not a single house survived, not a single mine was preserved, and there was not a single well that was not poisoned. The enemy must be left with a totally burned and devastated country. In Belarus, the invaders burned over 9,200 villages, of which 619 were together with the inhabitants. In total, during the occupation in the Byelorussian SSR, 1,409,235 civilians died, another 399 thousand people were forcibly taken to forced labor to 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 driven away for forced labor in Germany. When Smolensk was liberated in September 1943, only 20 thousand inhabitants remained in it. In Simferopol, Evpatoria, Alushta, Karabuzar, Kerch and Feodosiya, from November 16 to December 15, 1941, 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Crimean Cossacks, 824 Gypsies and 212 communists and partisans were shot by task force D.

More than three million peaceful Soviet citizens died from combat action in the front-line areas, in besieged and besieged cities, from hunger, frostbite and disease. Here is how in the military diary of the command of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht for October 20, 1941, it is recommended to act against Soviet cities: “It is unacceptable to sacrifice lives German soldiers to save Russian cities from fires or supply them at the expense of german homeland. There will be more chaos in Russia if the inhabitants of Soviet cities are inclined to flee into the depths of Russia. Therefore, before the capture of 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. Only in Leningrad and its suburbs about a million civilians died during the blockade. In Stalingrad in August 1942 alone, more than 40,000 civilians were killed during the barbaric, massed German air raids.

The total demographic losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR amounted to 8,668,400 people. This figure includes military personnel who died and went missing in action, died from wounds and illnesses, did not return from captivity, were shot by court sentences and died in disasters. Of these, during the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the brown plague, more than 1 million Soviet soldiers and officers gave their lives. Including for the liberation of Poland, 600,212 people died, Czechoslovakia - 139,918 people, Hungary - 140,004 people, Germany - 101,961 people, Romania - 68,993 people, Austria - 26,006 people, Yugoslavia - 7995 people, Norway - 3436 people. and Bulgaria - 977. During the liberation of China and Korea from the Japanese invaders, 9963 soldiers of the Red Army died.

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

It should be noted that the overwhelming number of Soviet servicemen missing and taken prisoner falls on the first two years of the war. The sudden attack of fascist Germany on the USSR put the Red Army, which was in a 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 500,000 people liable for military service mobilized by military registration and enlistment offices did not get into their units. In the course of the rapidly developing German offensive, they, having no weapons and equipment, ended up in the territory occupied by the enemy and most of them 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 so. Units and formations that were surrounded, destroyed records of personnel and losses, in order to avoid its capture by the enemy. Therefore, many who died in battle were listed as missing or were not taken into account at all. Approximately the same picture emerged in 1942 as a result of a series of unsuccessful offensive and defensive operations for the Red Army. By the end of 1942, the number of Red Army soldiers missing and taken prisoner had dropped sharply.

In this way, big number The victims suffered by the Soviet Union are explained by the policy of genocide directed against its citizens by the aggressor, the main purpose of which 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 was fought for less than five months.

To establish the identity of servicemen who died in the course of hostilities, by order People's Commissar Defense USSR(NKO USSR) dated March 15, 1941 No. 138, the “Regulations on the personal accounting of losses and the burial of the dead personnel of the Red Army in war time". On the basis of this order, medallions were introduced in the form of a plastic pencil case with a parchment insert in two copies, the so-called address tape, into which personal information about the serviceman was entered. When a serviceman died, it was assumed that one copy of the address tape would be seized by the funeral team with subsequent transfer to the headquarters of the unit to include the deceased in the lists of losses. 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 dead by the funeral team, which made it impossible for the subsequent identification of the remains. The unreasonable cancellation of medallions in the Red Army units, in accordance with the order of the NKO of the USSR dated November 17, 1942 No. 376, led to an increase in the number of unidentified dead soldiers and commanders, which also replenished the lists of missing people.

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

On the basis of the order of the NCO of the USSR dated July 29, 1941 No. 0254, the personal loss records for formations and units of the Red Army were entrusted to the Department for Recording Personal Losses and the Bureau of Letters of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Manning 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 Loss Recording active army Guf of the Red Army. However, in the order of the NCO of the USSR dated April 12, 1942 “On the personal accounting of irretrievable losses on the fronts”, it was stated that “As a result of the untimely and incomplete submission of lists of losses by the 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 real number killed. The personal records of the missing and captured are even more far from the truth. After a series of reorganizations and the transfer in 1943 of accounting for the personal losses of the senior commanding staff in the Main Directorate of Personnel of NCOs of the USSR, the body responsible for personal accounting of losses was renamed the Directorate for Personal Recording of Losses of Junior Commanders and Enlisted Personnel and Pensions for Workers. The most intensive work on the registration of irretrievable losses and the issuance of notices to relatives began after the end of the war and continued intensively until January 1, 1948. Considering what's about fate a large number information from military units was not received, in 1946 it was decided to take into account irretrievable losses according to submissions from the military registration and enlistment offices. For this purpose, a door-to-door survey was conducted throughout the USSR to identify unregistered dead and missing servicemen.

A significant number of military personnel recorded during the Great Patriotic War as dead and missing in action actually survived. So, from 1948 to 1960. it was found that 84,252 officers were erroneously listed as irretrievable losses and actually survived. But these data were not included in the general statistics. How many privates and sergeants actually survived, but are included in the lists of irretrievable losses, is still not known. Although the Directive of the General Staff ground forces Soviet army dated May 3, 1959 No. 120 n / s obliged the military commissariats to verify the alphabetical books of the dead and missing military personnel with the registration data of the military registration and enlistment offices in order to identify the military personnel who actually survived, its execution up to today not completed. So, before putting on the memorial plates the names of the soldiers of the Red Army who fell in the battles for the village of Bolshoe Ustye on the Ugra River, the Historical and Archival Search Center "Fate" (IAPTs "Fate") in 1994 clarified the fate of 1500 servicemen, whose names were established according to reports from military units. Information about their fate was cross-checked through the card file of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation (TsAMO RF), military commissariats, local authorities authorities at the place of residence of the deceased and their relatives. At the same time, 109 servicemen were identified who survived or died at a later time. Moreover, most of the surviving soldiers in the TsAMO RF card index were not recounted.

Also, in the course of compiling in 1994 a database of names of servicemen who died in the area of ​​the village Myasnoy Bor Novgorod region, IAPTs "Fate" it was found that out of 12,802 servicemen included in the database, 1,286 people (more than 10%) were taken into account in reports of irretrievable losses twice. This is explained by the fact that the first time the deceased was taken into account after the battle by the military unit in which he really fought, and the second time by the military unit, the funeral team of which collected and buried the bodies of the dead. The database did not include servicemen who went missing in the area, which would likely increase the number of doubles. It should be noted that statistical accounting of losses was carried out on the basis of numerical data taken from the nominal lists presented in the reports of military units, classified by category of losses. As a result, this led to a serious distortion of the data on the irretrievable losses of the Red Army servicemen in the direction of their increase.

In the course of work to establish the fate of the Red Army soldiers who died and went missing on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the IAPTs "Fate" revealed several more types of duplication of losses. So, some officers simultaneously go through the records of officers and enlisted personnel, military personnel of the border troops and navy partially taken into account, in addition to departmental archives, in the TsAMO of the Russian Federation.

Work to clarify the data on the victims suffered by the USSR during the war years continues to this day. In accordance with a number of instructions of the President of the Russian Federation and his Decree of January 22, 2006 No. 37 “Issues of perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland”, an interdepartmental commission was created in Russia to assess the human and material losses during the Great Patriotic War. The main goal of the commission is to finally determine by 2010 the losses of the military and civilian population during the Great Patriotic War, as well as to calculate the material costs for more than a four-year period of hostilities. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is implementing the Memorial OBD project to systematize credentials and documents about fallen soldiers. The implementation of the main technical part of the project - the creation of the United Data Bank and the site http://www.obd-memorial.ru - is carried out by a specialized organization - the Corporation "Electronic Archive". 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, to determine the place of their burial. No other country in the world has such a databank and free access to documents on the losses of the armed forces. In addition, enthusiasts from search parties. Thanks to the soldiers' medallions they discovered, the fate of thousands of servicemen who went missing on both sides of the front was established.

Poland, which was the first to be invaded by Hitler 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: the September campaign of 1939 (the invasion of Nazi 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 war– 20,000 people .

The allies of the Soviet Union in the anti-Hitler coalition also suffered significant losses during the hostilities. Thus, the total losses of the armed forces of the British Commonwealth on the Western, African and Pacific fronts in dead 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 hostilities, about 350 thousand soldiers of the British Commonwealth were captured by the enemy. Of these, 77,744, including merchant marine sailors, were captured by the Japanese.

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

The total losses of the armed forces of the United States of America in dead and missing in the Pacific and Western fronts amounted to: 416,837 people. Of these, the losses of the army amounted to 318,274 people. (including the Air Force lost 88,119 people), the Navy - 62,614 people, the corps marines– 24 511 people, Coast security USA - 1,917 people, merchant navy USA - 9,521 people.

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

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

More than a million French troops fell into German captivity in 1940 .

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

The Netherlands lost 301,000 dead, including 21,000 military personnel and 280,000 civilians.

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

Belgium lost 86,100 dead. Of these, the losses of the armed forces amounted to 12,100 people and civilian casualties 74 000 .

Norway lost 9,500 men, 3,000 of them 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 in Germany a centralized system of personal records of military personnel was created. Immediately upon arrival at the reserve military unit, each German soldier 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 are engraved: 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 badge was broken off and sent along with a loss report. The other half remained on the deceased in case of need for subsequent identification during reburial. The inscription and number on the personal identification mark were reproduced in all personal documents of a serviceman, this was persistently sought German command. Each military unit kept accurate lists of issued personal identification marks. Copies of these lists were sent to the Berlin Central Office for the Accounting of War Losses and Prisoners of War (WAST). At the same time, during the defeat of a military unit during the hostilities and retreat, it was difficult to carry out a complete personal account of the dead and missing servicemen. So, for example, several Wehrmacht servicemen, whose remains were discovered during the search work carried out by the Historical and Archival Search Center "Fate" at the sites of past battles on the Ugra River in Kaluga region, where intense hostilities were fought in March - April 1942, according to the WAST service, they were counted only as called up for German army. Information about them future fate was absent. They were not even listed as missing.

Starting with the defeat at Stalingrad, the German loss accounting system began to falter, and in 1944 and 1945, suffering defeat after defeat, the German command simply could not physically take into account all its irretrievable losses. From March 1945, their registration ceased altogether. Even earlier, on January 31, 1945, the Imperial Statistical Office stopped keeping records of the civilian population who died from air raids.

The position of the German Wehrmacht in 1944-1945 is a mirror image of the position of the Red Army in 1941-1942. Only we were able to survive and win, and Germany was defeated. Even at the end of the war, the mass migration of the German population began, which continued after the collapse of the Third Reich. 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 FRG. In this regard, it is rather difficult to identify the real direct human losses of Germany in the 2nd World War. All studies German losses based on data German documents period of the war, which cannot reflect real losses. They can only talk about losses taken into account, which is not at all the same thing, especially for a country that has suffered a crushing defeat. At the same time, 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 the casualties 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 the loss of the civilian population of the Third Reich - 3,300,000 people - this those who died from the bombing and hostilities, the missing, the victims of the fascist terror.

The German civilian population suffered the heaviest casualties as a result of strategic bombing German cities British and American aviation. According to incomplete data, these victims exceed 635 thousand people. So, 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 died and 37 thousand were seriously injured. Even more disastrous consequences had three raids by British and American strategic bombers on the city of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945. As a result of combined strikes with incendiary and high-explosive bombs on residential areas of the city, at least 135 thousand people died from the resulting fire tornado, incl. residents of the city, refugees, foreign workers and prisoners of war.

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

The losses of Italy in the 2nd World War amounted to 454,500 people, of which 301,400 were killed in the armed forces (of which 71,590 were 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, the victims of the civilian population of China are estimated from 3,695,000 to 12,392,000 people, Indo-China from 457,000 to 1,500,000 people, 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 armed forces of China in dead and wounded exceeded 5 million people.

331,584 soldiers died in Japanese captivity different countries. 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 dead and missing, including the army - 1,526,000 people and the fleet - 414,900. 40,000 military personnel were captured. Japan's civilian population lost 580,000.

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

Only as a result of the attack of American heavy bombers on Tokyo on the night of March 9-10, 1945, using incendiary and high-explosive bombs, 83,793 people died.

The consequences of the atomic bombing were terrible, when the US Air Force dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. The city of Hiroshima was atomically bombed 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 bombing in Hiroshima, about 200 thousand people died and went missing, were injured and subjected to radiation more than 160 thousand people. The second atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945 on the city of Nagasaki. As a result of the bombardment, 73 thousand people died or went missing in the city, later another 35 thousand people died from radiation and wounds. Total as a result atomic bombing Hiroshima and Nagasaki suffered more than 500 thousand civilians.

The price paid by mankind in the 2nd World War for the victory over the madmen who were eager for world domination and tried to realize the cannibalistic race theory, was extremely high. The pain of loss has not subsided yet, the participants in the war and its eyewitnesses are still alive. They say that time heals, but not in this case. At present, the international community is faced with new challenges and threats. NATO expansion to the east, bombardment and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, 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 spread of nuclear weapons threaten the peace and security of the world. Against this background, attempts are being made to rewrite history, to revise the results of World War II enshrined in the UN Charter and other international legal documents, to challenge the basic and irrefutable facts of the extermination of millions of peaceful innocent people, to glorify the Nazis and their henchmen, and also to denigrate the liberators. from fascism. These phenomena are fraught chain reaction- the revival of theories of racial purity and superiority, the spread of a new wave of xenophobia.

Notes:

1. Great Patriotic War. 1941 - 1945. Illustrated Encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.S. 430.

2. 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). S. 269

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

4. All-Russian Book memory, 1941-1945: Review volume. - / Editorial board: E.M. Chekharin (chairman), V.V. Volodin, D.I. Karabanov (deputy chairmen) and others. - M .: Military Publishing House, 1995.S. 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 .: Military Publishing House, 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 the Argon publishing house, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). S. 103.

7. Babi Yar. Book of memory / comp. I.M. Levitas.- K .: Publishing house "Stal", 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). S. 232.

9. War, People, Victory: materials of the international scientific. conf. Moscow, March 15-16, 2005 / (responsible editors M.Yu. Myagkov, Yu.A. Nikiforov); Inst. history of the Russian Academy of Sciences. - M.: Nauka, 2008. The contribution of Belarus to the victory in the Great Patriotic War A.A. Kovalenya, A.M. Litvin. S. 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). S. 123.

11. Great Patriotic War. 1941 - 1945. Illustrated Encyclopedia. - M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005. S. 430.

12. 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 the Argon publishing house, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). 68.

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

14. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under general edition G.F. Krivosheeva. - M. "OLMA-PRESS", 2001

15. Classification removed: 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 the general
edited by G.K. Krivosheev. – M.: Military Publishing, 1993.S. 325.

16. Great Patriotic War. 1941 - 1945. Illustrated Encyclopedia. - M .: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005 .; Soviet prisoners of war in Germany. D.K. Sokolov. S. 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. Guidelines for search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association "War Memorials". - 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. - M .: LLP "Lux-art", 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 1941 - 1945. (reference and statistical materials). Under the general editorship of Army General A.P. Beloborodov. Military publishing house of the Ministry of Defense of the USSR. Moscow, 1963, p. 359.

21. "Report on the 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: Ed. Polygon, 1994. S. 329.

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

28. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Ed. Polygon, 1994. S. 329.

30. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Ed. Polygon, 1994. S. 326.

36. Guidelines for search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association "War Memorials". - 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. - M .: LLP "Lux-art", 1997. P.34.

37. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. The largest bombing of World War II / Per. 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 bombing of World War II / Per. from English. L.A.Igorevsky. - M .: CJSC Tsentrpoligraf. 2005. P.50.

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

41. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden ... S.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 vol. M., 1973-1982. T.12. S. 151.

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

50. Great Patriotic War 1941 - 1945: Encyclopedia. – / ch. ed. M.M. Kozlov. Editorial board: Yu.Ya. Soviet Encyclopedia, 1985. S. 71.

Martynov V. E.
Electronic scientific and educational journal "History", 2010 T.1. Release 2.

To date, it is not known exactly how many people died in World War II. Less than 10 years ago, statistics claimed that 50 million people died, data for 2016 says that the number of victims exceeded the mark of 70 million. Perhaps, after some time, this figure will be refuted by new calculations.

The number of deaths during the war

The first mention of the dead was in the March issue of the Pravda newspaper for 1946. At that time, the figure of 7 million people was officially announced. Today, when almost all archives have been studied, it can be argued that the losses of the Red Army and the civilian population of the Soviet Union in total amounted to 27 million people. Other countries that are part of the anti-Hitler coalition also suffered significant losses, or rather:

• France - 600,000 people;
• China - 200,000 people;
• India - 150,000 people;
• United States of America - 419,000 people;
• Luxembourg - 2,000 people;
• Denmark - 3,200 people.

Budapest, Hungary. Monument on the banks of the Danube in memory of the Jews shot in these places in 1944-45.

At the same time, the losses on the German side were noticeably smaller and amounted to 5.4 million soldiers and 1.4 million civilians. The countries that fought on the side of Germany suffered the following human losses:

• Norway - 9,500 people;
• Italy - 455,000 people;
• Spain - 4,500 people;
• Japan - 2,700,000 people;
• Bulgaria - 25,000 people.

The least dead in Switzerland, Finland, Mongolia and Ireland.

During which period did the greatest losses occur?

The most difficult time for the Red Army was 1941-1942, it was then that the losses amounted to 1/3 of the dead during the entire period of the war. The armed forces of Nazi Germany suffered the greatest losses in the period from 1944 to 1946. In addition, 3,259 civilians in Germany were killed at this time. Another 200,000 German soldiers did not return from captivity.
The United States lost the most people in 1945 in air attacks and evacuations. Other countries participating in hostilities experienced the most terrible times and colossal losses in the final stages of the Second World War.

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