Who fought in numbers, and who fought with skill. The monstrous truth about the losses of the USSR in World War II Sokolov Boris Vadimovich
The ratio of irretrievable losses of the Soviet Union and Germany in World War II
The true size of Soviet Armed Forces casualties, including those who died in captivity, according to our estimate, may be 26.9 million people. This is approximately 10.3 times higher than the losses of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front (2.6 million dead). The Hungarian army, which fought on the side of Hitler, lost about 160 thousand killed and dead, including about 55 thousand who died in captivity. The losses of another ally of Germany, Finland, amounted to about 61 thousand killed and dead, including 403 people who died in Soviet captivity and about 1 thousand people died in battles against the Wehrmacht. The Romanian army lost about 165 thousand killed and dead in the battles against the Red Army, including 71,585 killed, 309,533 missing, 243,622 wounded and 54,612 dead in captivity. 217,385 Romanians and Moldavians returned from captivity. Thus, from among the missing, 37,536 people must be attributed to the dead. If we assume that approximately 10% of the wounded died, then the total losses of the Romanian army in battles with the Red Army will be about 188.1 thousand dead. In the battles against Germany and its allies, the Romanian army lost 21,735 killed, 58,443 missing and 90,344 wounded. Assuming that the mortality among the wounded was 10%, the number of deaths from wounds can be estimated at 9 thousand people. 36,621 Romanian soldiers and officers returned from German and Hungarian captivity. Thus, the total number of killed and died in captivity from among the missing Romanian military personnel can be estimated at 21,824 people. Thus, in the fight against Germany and Hungary, the Romanian army lost about 52.6 thousand dead. The Italian army lost about 72 thousand people in the battles against the Red Army, of which about 28 thousand died in Soviet captivity - more than half of the approximately 49 thousand prisoners. Finally, the Slovak army lost 1.9 thousand dead in battles against the Red Army and Soviet partisans, of which about 300 people died in captivity. On the side of the USSR, the Bulgarian army fought against Germany, losing about 10 thousand dead. Two armies of the Polish Army, formed in the USSR, lost 27.5 thousand dead and missing, and the Czechoslovak corps, which also fought on the side of the Red Army, lost 4 thousand dead. The total losses of the dead on the Soviet side can be estimated at 27.1 million military personnel, and on the German side - at 2.9 million people, which gives a ratio of 9.1–9.3: 1. In the Soviet-Finnish war of 1939–1940, the ratio of losses killed and dead was 7.0:1, not in favor of the Red Army (we estimate Soviet losses in the dead at 164.3 thousand people). people, and Finnish - 23.5 thousand people). It can be assumed that this ratio was about the same in 1941–1944. Then, in battles with the Finnish troops, the Red Army could lose up to 417 thousand killed and died from wounds. It should also be taken into account that the irretrievable losses of the Red Army in the war with Japan amounted to 12 thousand people. If we accept that in battles with the rest of the German allies, the losses of the Red Army were approximately equal to the losses of the enemy, then in these battles it could lose up to 284 thousand people. And in the battles against the Wehrmacht, the losses of the Red Army in the dead should have been about 22.2 million killed and died of wounds against about 2.1 million killed and died on the German side. This gives a loss ratio of 10.6:1.
According to Russian search engines, for one found corpse of a Wehrmacht soldier, on average, there are ten corpses of Red Army soldiers. This ratio is almost equal to our estimate of the ratio of the losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.
It is interesting to trace at least an approximate ratio of the losses of the parties over the years of the war. Using the ratio established above between the number of dead and injured in the battles of Soviet military personnel and based on the data given in the book of E.I. Smirnov, the number of dead Soviet soldiers by years can be distributed as follows: 1941 - 2.2 million, 1942 - 8 million, 1943 - 6.4 million, 1944 - 6.4 million, 1945 - 2.5 million It should also be taken into account that approximately 0.9 million Red Army soldiers who were listed as irretrievable losses, but later found themselves in the liberated territory and called up again, mainly fall on 1941-1942. Due to this, the loss of the dead in 1941, we reduce by 0.6 million, and in 1942 - by 0.3 million people (in proportion to the number of prisoners) and with the addition of prisoners we get the total irretrievable losses of the Red Army by years: 1941 - 5, 5 million, 1942 - 7.153 million, 1943 - 6.965 million, 1944 - 6.547 million, 1945 - 2.534 million. For comparison, let's take the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht ground forces over the years, based on the data of B. Müller-Gillebrand. At the same time, we subtracted from the final figures the losses suffered outside the Eastern Front, tentatively spreading them over the years. The result is the following picture for the Eastern Front (in parentheses is the figure of the total irretrievable losses of ground forces for the year): 1941 (since June) - 301 thousand (307 thousand), 1942 - 519 thousand (538 thousand), 1943 - 668 thousand (793 thousand), 1944 (for this year, losses in December are taken equal to January) - 1129 thousand (1629 thousand), 1945 (before May 1) - 550 thousand (1250 thousand) . The ratio in all cases is obtained in favor of the Wehrmacht: 1941 - 18.1: 1, 1942 - 13.7: 1, 1943 - 10.4: 1, 1944 - 5.8: 1, 1945 - 4, 6:1. These ratios should be close to the true ratios of the irretrievable losses of the ground forces of the USSR and Germany on the Soviet-German front, since the losses of the ground army amounted to the lion's share of all Soviet military losses, and much larger than that of the Wehrmacht, and the German aviation and navy were the main irretrievable losses in during the war suffered outside the Eastern Front. As for the losses of the German allies in the East, the underestimation of which somewhat worsens the indicators of the Red Army, it should be taken into account that in the fight against them the Red Army suffered relatively much fewer losses than in the fight against the Wehrmacht, that the German allies did not actively act in all periods war and suffered the greatest loss of prisoners as part of the general capitulations (Romania and Hungary). In addition, the losses of the Polish, Czechoslovak, Romanian and Bulgarian units operating together with the Red Army were not taken into account on the Soviet side. So, in general, the ratios we have identified should be fairly objective. They show that the improvement in the ratio of irretrievable losses for the Red Army occurs only from 1944, when the Allies landed in the West and Lend-Lease assistance already gave the maximum effect in terms of both direct deliveries of weapons and equipment, and the deployment of Soviet military production. The Wehrmacht was forced to abandon reserves to the West and could not, as in 1943, unleash active operations in the East. In addition, there were heavy losses of experienced soldiers and officers. Nevertheless, until the end of the war, the ratio of losses remained unfavorable for the Red Army due to its inherent vices (temporality, contempt for human life, inept use of weapons and equipment, lack of continuity of experience due to huge losses and inept use of marching replacements, etc. ).
A particularly unfavorable ratio of losses for the Red Army was in the period from December 1941 to April 1942, when the Red Army carried out its first large-scale counter-offensive. For example, the 323rd Rifle Division of the 10th Army of the Western Front alone lost 4,138 people in three days of fighting, from December 17 to 19, 1941, including 1,696 dead and missing. This gives an average daily loss rate of 1346 people, including 565 irretrievable losses. The entire German Eastern Army, numbering more than 150 divisions, for the period from December 11 to December 31, 1941 inclusive, had an average daily loss rate only slightly higher. On the day the Germans lost 2658 people, including only 686 - irretrievably.
It's just amazing! One of our divisions lost as much as 150 German ones. Even if we assume that not all German formations were in combat every day during the last three weeks of December 1941, even if we assume that the losses of the 323rd Rifle Division in three-day battles were for some reason uniquely large, the difference is too striking and cannot be explained by statistical errors. Here we must talk about the social errors, the fundamental vices of the Soviet method of warfare.
By the way, according to the testimony of the former commander of the 10th Army, Marshal F.I. Golikov, and in the previous days the 323rd division suffered heavy losses, and, despite the fact that the Soviet troops were advancing, the losses were dominated by the missing, most of whom, most likely, were killed. So, in the battles of December 11, during its turn to the south towards the city of Epifan and the settlement of Lupishki, the 323rd division lost 78 people killed, 153 wounded and up to 200 missing. And on December 17–19, the 323rd division, together with other divisions of the 10th Army, successfully, by Soviet standards, attacked the German defensive line on the Upa River. And by the next frontier, the Plava River, the 323rd Division was not yet the most battered of the divisions of the 10th Army, which were fully equipped before the start of the Moscow counteroffensive. In the 323rd division, 7613 people remained, while in the neighboring 326th - only 6238 people. Like many other divisions that participated in the counteroffensive, the 323rd and 326th divisions were just formed and entered the battle for the first time. The lack of experience and internal cohesion of the units led to heavy losses. Nevertheless, on the night of December 19-20, two divisions took Plavsk, breaking through the enemy line. At the same time, the Germans allegedly lost more than 200 people only killed. In fact, taking into account the fact that at that moment most of the German divisions were operating in the Moscow direction, and Plavsk was defended by only one regiment, the losses of the latter could not exceed several dozen killed. The commander of the 323rd division, Colonel Ivan Alekseevich Gartsev, was considered a completely successful divisional commander and on November 17, 1942 he became a major general, in 1943 he commanded the 53rd rifle corps, successfully ended the war, having been awarded the commander's order of Kutuzov 1st degree, and died peacefully in 1961.
Let us compare the above monthly data on the irretrievable losses of the Red Army for 1942 with the monthly data on the losses of the German land army, calculated from the diary of the Chief of the General Staff of the German Land Army, General F. Halder. It should be noted here that the Soviet data include not only losses in the ground forces, but also losses in aviation and the navy. In addition, the irretrievable losses on the Soviet side include not only those killed and missing, but also those who died from wounds. In the data given by Halder, only the losses in killed and missing are included, relating only to the ground forces, without the Luftwaffe and the fleet. This circumstance makes the loss ratio more favorable for the German side than it actually was. Indeed, taking into account the fact that in the Wehrmacht the ratio of the wounded and killed was closer to the classical one - 3: 1, and in the Red Army - closer to the unconventional ratio - 1: 1, and also taking into account that the death rate in German hospitals was much higher, than in the Soviet ones, since the latter received much fewer seriously wounded, the category of those who died from wounds accounted for a much larger share in the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht than the Red Army. Also, the share of aviation and navy losses was relatively higher for the Wehrmacht than for the Red Army, due to the extremely large losses of the Soviet ground forces. In addition, we do not take into account the losses of the Italian, Hungarian and Romanian armies allied with the Wehrmacht, which also makes the loss ratio more favorable for Germany. However, all these factors can overestimate this indicator by no more than 20-25% and are not able to distort the general trend.
According to the entries in the diary of F. Halder, from December 31, 1941 to January 31, 1942, German losses on the Eastern Front amounted to 87,082, including 18,074 killed and 7,175 missing. The irretrievable losses of the Red Army (killed and missing) in January 1942 amounted to 628 thousand people, which gives a loss ratio of 24.9:1. Between January 31 and February 28, 1942, German losses in the East amounted to 87,651 people, including 18,776 killed and 4,355 missing. Soviet losses in February reached 523 thousand people and turned out to be 22.6 times more than German irretrievable losses.
In the period from March 1 to March 31, 1942, German losses on the Eastern Front amounted to 102,194 people, including 12,808 killed and 5,217 missing. Soviet losses in March 1942 amounted to 625 thousand dead and missing. This gives us a record ratio of 34.7:1. In April, when the offensive began to fade, but the losses of prisoners of the Soviet troops were still quite small, German losses amounted to 60,005 people, including 12,690 killed and 2,573 missing. Soviet losses this month amounted to 435 thousand dead and missing. The ratio is 28.5:1.
In May 1942, the Red Army suffered heavy losses in prisoners as a result of its unsuccessful offensive near Kharkov and the successful German offensive on the Kerch Peninsula, its losses amounted to 433 thousand people. This figure is likely to be significantly underestimated. After all, the Germans alone captured almost 400 thousand prisoners in May, and compared to April, when there were almost no prisoners, the losses even decreased by 13 thousand people - while the index of those killed in battles fell by only three points. The losses of the German ground forces can only be calculated for the period from May 1 to June 10, 1942. They totaled 100,599, including 21,157 killed and 4,212 missing. To establish the ratio of irretrievable losses, a third of the losses in June must be added to the Soviet losses in May. Soviet losses for this month amounted to 519 thousand people. Most likely, they are overestimated due to the inclusion of underestimated May losses in the June parts. Therefore, the total figure of losses for May and the first ten days of June at 606 thousand dead and missing seems close to reality. The deadweight loss ratio is 23.9:1, not fundamentally different from the indicators of several previous months.
During the period from 10 to 30 June, the losses of the German ground forces in the East amounted to 64,013 people, including 11,079 killed and 2,270 missing. The ratio of deadweight losses for the second and third decades of June is 25.9:1.
In July 1942, the German land army in the East lost 96,341 men, including 17,782 killed and 3,290 missing. Soviet losses in July 1942 amounted to only 330 thousand people, and, most likely, they are somewhat underestimated. But this underestimation is largely compensated by the more significant losses of the German allies who participated in the general offensive in the south that began at the end of June. The deadweight ratio turns out to be 15.7:1. This already means a significant improvement in this indicator for the Red Army. The German offensive turned out to be less catastrophic for the Red Army in terms of casualties than its own offensive in the winter and spring of 1942.
But the real turning point in the ratio of irretrievable losses occurred in August 1942, when German troops advanced on Stalingrad and the Caucasus, and Soviet troops in the Rzhev region. Soviet losses in prisoners were significant, and there certainly was an underestimation of Soviet irretrievable losses, but most likely it was no more than in July. In August 1942, the German army in the East lost 160,294 men, including 31,713 killed and 7,443 missing. Soviet losses this month amounted to 385 thousand dead and missing. The ratio is 9.8:1, i.e., an order of magnitude better for the Red Army than in the winter or spring of 1942. Even taking into account the likely underestimation of Soviet losses in August, the change in the ratio of losses looks significant. Moreover, the likely underestimation of Soviet losses was offset by a significant increase in the losses of the German allies - Romanian, Hungarian and Italian troops, who actively participated in the summer-autumn offensive. The loss ratio is improving not so much due to the reduction in Soviet losses (although this, in all likelihood, took place), but due to a significant increase in German losses. It is no coincidence that it was in August 1942 that Hitler, according to W. Schellenberg, for the first time allowed the possibility that Germany would lose the war, and in September the loud resignations of the Chief of the General Staff of the Land Army F. Halder and the Commander-in-Chief of the Army Group A operating in the Caucasus Field Marshal V. List. Hitler began to realize that there was no way out of the impasse into which the German offensive in the Caucasus and Stalingrad was increasingly entering, and that the growing losses would soon enough lead the Wehrmacht to exhaustion, but he could not do anything.
Halder's diary allows us to calculate the losses of the ground forces only for the first ten days of September. They totaled 48,198, including 9,558 killed and 3,637 missing. Soviet losses in September amounted to 473 thousand dead and missing. These losses not only do not seem to underestimate, but, on the contrary, rather underestimate the true size of Soviet losses in September by including earlier unrecorded losses, since in this month the index of those killed in battles fell from 130 to 109 compared to August. A third of 473 thousand . is 157.7 thousand. The ratio of Soviet and German irretrievable losses in the first decade of September 1942 turns out to be 11.95: 1, which proves that the August trend of improving the ratio of losses continued into September, especially taking into account the overestimation of Soviet losses in this month .
In the further course of the war, the irretrievable losses of the German land army, with rare exceptions, only grew. The number of Soviet prisoners fell sharply in 1943, while the German troops this year for the first time suffered significant losses of prisoners on the Eastern Front as a result of the Stalingrad disaster. Soviet losses in killed after 1942 also experienced an upward trend, but the absolute value of the increase in killed was significantly less than the amount by which the average monthly number of Soviet prisoners decreased. According to the dynamics of the casualty rate, the maximum losses in killed and dead from wounds were noted in July, August and September 1943, during the Battle of Kursk and the crossing of the Dnieper (the index of casualties in battles in these months is 143, 172 and 139, respectively). The next peak of the Red Army's losses in killed and dead from wounds falls on July, August and September 1944 (132, 140 and 130). The only peak of casualties in 1941-1942 falls on August 1942 (130). There were some months when the ratio of deadweight losses was almost as unfavorable for the Soviet side as in the first half of 1942, for example, during the Battle of Kursk, but in most months of 1943-1945 this ratio was already significantly better for the Red Army than in 1941-1942.
A significant, by Soviet standards, improvement in the ratio of irretrievable losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht and its allies, which began in August 1942 and continued until the end of the war, was due to several factors. Firstly, Soviet middle and senior commanders, starting with regimental commanders, gained some combat experience and began to fight a little more competently, adopting a number of tactics from the Germans. At a lower command level, as well as among ordinary fighters, there was no significant improvement in the quality of combat operations, because due to huge losses, a large turnover of personnel remained. The improvement in the relative quality of Soviet tanks and aircraft also played a role, as well as an increase in the level of training of pilots and tankers, although in terms of the level of training they were still inferior to the Germans even at the end of the war.
But an even greater role than the growth of the combat capability of the Red Army in the defeat of Germany on the Eastern Front was played by the decline in the combat capability of the Wehrmacht. Due to the ever-increasing irretrievable losses, the proportion of experienced soldiers and officers decreased. Due to the need to replace increasing losses, by the end of the war, the level of training of pilots and tankers decreased, although it remained higher than that of their Soviet opponents. This drop in the level of training could not even compensate for the growth in the quality of military equipment. But more importantly, starting in November 1942, after the Allied landings in North Africa, Germany had to send more and more aircraft, and then ground forces, to fight against the Western Allies. Germany had to make greater use of its weaker allies. The defeat by the Red Army of large Italian, Romanian and Hungarian troops in late 1942 - early 1943 and in the second half of 1944 - early 1945 significantly improved the ratio of irretrievable losses in favor of the Soviet side and significantly increased the numerical advantage of the Red Army over the Wehrmacht. Another turning point here occurred after the Allied landings in Normandy in June 1944. It was from July 1944 that there was a sharp increase in the irretrievable losses of the German army, primarily prisoners. In June, the irretrievable losses of the ground forces amounted to 58 thousand people, and in July - 369 thousand and remained at such a high level until the end of the war. This is due to the fact that Germany was forced to withdraw significant forces of the ground forces and the Luftwaffe from the Eastern Front, due to which the Soviet numerical superiority in men increased to seven or even to eight times, which made it impossible for any effective defense.
Explaining the enormous Soviet casualties, German generals usually point to the neglect of the lives of soldiers by the high command, the poor tactical training of the middle and lower command personnel, the stereotyped methods used during the offensive, the inability of both commanders and soldiers to make independent decisions. Such statements could be considered a simple attempt to belittle the dignity of the enemy, who nevertheless won the war, if not for numerous similar testimonies from the Soviet side. So, Zhores Medvedev recalls the battles near Novorossiysk in 1943: “The Germans near Novorossiysk had two lines of defense, perfectly fortified to a depth of about 3 km. It was believed that artillery preparation was very effective, but it seems to me that the Germans quickly adapted to it. Noticing that the equipment was concentrating and powerful shooting began, they went to the second line, leaving only a few machine gunners on the front line. They left and, with the same interest as we, observed all this noise and smoke. Then we were ordered to go forward. We walked, got blown up by mines and occupied the trenches - already almost empty, only two or three corpses were lying there. Then the order was given - to attack the second line. It was then that up to 80% of the attackers died - after all, the Germans were sitting in well-fortified structures and shot all of us almost at point blank range. The American diplomat A. Harriman conveys Stalin’s words that “in the Soviet Army one must have more courage to retreat than to advance” and comments on it this way: “This phrase of Stalin clearly shows that he was aware of the state of affairs in the army. We were shocked, but we understood that this forced the Red Army to fight ... Our military, who consulted with the Germans after the war, told me that the most destructive thing in the Russian offensive was its mass character. The Russians came wave after wave. The Germans literally mowed them down, but as a result of such pressure, one wave broke through.
And here is the testimony of the battles in December 1943 in Belarus of the former platoon commander V. Dyatlov: “A chain of people in civilian clothes with huge “sidors” behind their backs passed by, in the course of the message.” "Slavs, who are you, where are you from?" I asked. - "We are from the Oryol region, replenishment." - "What kind of replenishment, when in civilian clothes and without rifles?" - "Yes, they said that you will receive in battle ..."
The artillery strike on the enemy lasted five minutes. 36 guns of the artillery regiment "hollowed out" the front line of the Germans. From the discharges of shells, visibility became even worse ...
And here is the attack. The chain rose, writhing like a black, curved snake. Behind her is the second. And those black snakes writhing and moving were so absurd, so unnatural on the gray-white earth! Black on snow is a perfect target. And the German "watered" these chains with dense lead. Many firing points came to life. Large-caliber machine guns fired from the second line of the trench. The chains are stuck. The battalion commander yelled: “Forward, your mother! Forward!.. In battle! Forward! I'll shoot!" But it was impossible to get up. Try to tear yourself off the ground under artillery, machine-gun and automatic fire...
The commanders still managed to raise the "black" village infantry several times. But all in vain. The enemy fire was so dense that, after running a couple of steps, people fell as if they had been cut down. We, the gunners, also could not reliably help - there was no visibility, the Germans camouflaged the firing points well, and, most likely, the main machine-gun fire was fired from bunkers, and therefore the firing of our guns did not give the desired results.
The same memoirist very vividly describes the reconnaissance in force, so praised by many memoirists from among the marshals and generals, carried out by a battalion of penalists: “Two divisions of our regiment participated in a ten-minute fire raid - and that’s it. There was silence for a few seconds after the fire. Then the battalion commander jumped out of the trench onto the parapet: “Guys, ah! For the Motherland! For Stalin! Follow me! Hooray!" The penitentiaries slowly crawled out of the trench and, as if waiting for the last, throwing their rifles at the ready, ran. A groan or a cry with a drawn-out "ah-ah-ah" shimmered from left to right and again to the left, now fading, now intensifying. We also jumped out of the trench and ran forward. The Germans threw a series of red rockets towards the attackers and immediately opened a powerful mortar and artillery fire. The chains lay down, and we also lay down - a little behind in the longitudinal furrow. I couldn't raise my head. How to detect and to whom to detect enemy targets in this hell? His artillery hit from covered positions and far from the flanks. They also beat heavy guns. Several tanks fired at direct fire, their blank shells whining overhead...
Penal boxes lay in front of the German trench in an open field and in small bushes, and the German “threshed” this field, plowing the earth, and the bushes, and the bodies of people ... Only seven people left us with a battalion of fines, and there were all together - 306 ".
By the way, there was no attack in this area.
We have a story about such senseless and bloody attacks in the memoirs and letters of German soldiers and junior officers. One unnamed witness describes the attack of units of the 37th Soviet army of A.A. Vlasov to the height occupied by the Germans near Kiev in August 1941, and his description in detail coincides with the story of the Soviet officer given above. Here and useless artillery preparation past the German positions, and an attack in thick waves, dying under German machine guns, and an unknown commander, unsuccessfully trying to raise his people and dying from a German bullet. Similar attacks on a not very important height continued for three days in a row. The German soldiers were most struck by the fact that when the whole wave perished, single soldiers still continued to run forward (the Germans were incapable of such senseless actions). These failed attacks nevertheless exhausted the Germans physically. And, as the German soldier recalls, he and his comrades were most shocked and depressed by the methodicalness and scale of these attacks: “If the Soviets can afford to spend so many people trying to eliminate such insignificant results of our advance, then how often and how many people they will attack if the object is really very important? (The German author could not imagine that otherwise the Red Army simply did not know how to attack and could not.)
And in a letter from a German soldier home during the retreat from Kursk in the second half of 1943, it is described, as in the quoted letter of V. Dyatlov, an attack by almost unarmed and non-equipped reinforcements from the newly liberated territories (the same Oryol region), in which the vast majority died participants (according to an eyewitness, even women were among those called). The prisoners said that the authorities suspected the inhabitants of collaborating with the occupying authorities, and mobilization served as a form of punishment for them. And in the same letter, an attack by Soviet penalty boxers through a German minefield to blow up mines at the cost of their own lives is described (the story of Marshal G.K. Zhukov about this practice of the Soviet troops is cited in his memoirs by D. Eisenhower). And again, the German soldier was most struck by the obedience of the mobilized and the penalized. Captured penalists, "with rare exceptions, never complained about such treatment." they said that life is hard and that "you have to pay for mistakes". Such submissiveness of the Soviet soldiers clearly shows that the Soviet regime brought up not only commanders capable of issuing such inhuman orders, but also soldiers capable of carrying out such orders unquestioningly.
The inability of the Red Army to fight otherwise than at the cost of very large bloodshed is also evidenced by high-ranking Soviet military leaders. So, Marshal A.I. Eremenko characterizes the features of the “art of war” of the famous (deservedly?) “Marshal of Victory” G.K. Zhukova: “It should be said that Zhukov’s operational art is 5-6 times superior in strength, otherwise he will not get down to business, he does not know how to fight not in numbers and builds his career on blood” . By the way, in another case, the same A.I. Eremenko conveyed his impression of getting to know the memoirs of the German generals in this way: “The question naturally arises, why did the Hitlerite“ heroes ”,“ defeating ”our squad together, and five together a whole platoon, failed to complete the tasks in the first period of the war, when the undeniable numerical and technical superiority was on their side? It turns out that the irony here is ostentatious, because A.I. Yeremenko actually knew very well that the German military leaders did not exaggerate the balance of power in favor of the Red Army. After all, G.K. Zhukov led the main operations in the main directions and had an overwhelming superiority of forces and means. Another thing is that other Soviet generals and marshals were hardly able to fight otherwise than G.K. Zhukov, and A.I. Eremenko was no exception here.
We also note that the huge irretrievable losses of the Red Army did not allow, to the same extent as in the Wehrmacht, and even more so in the armies of the Western allies, to retain experienced soldiers and junior commanders, which reduced adhesion and stamina of units and did not allow replenishment fighters to learn combat experience from veterans , which further increased the losses. Such an unfavorable ratio of irretrievable losses for the USSR was the result of a fundamental flaw in the communist totalitarian system, which deprived people of the ability to independently make decisions and act, taught everyone, including the military, to act according to a template, to avoid even reasonable risk and, more than the enemy, to be afraid of responsibility before their higher authorities.
As the former intelligence officer E.I. Malashenko, who rose to the rank of lieutenant general after the war, even at the very end of the war, Soviet troops often acted very inefficiently: “A few hours before the onset of our division on March 10, a reconnaissance group ... captured a prisoner. He showed that the main forces of his regiment were withdrawn 8-10 km in depth ... By telephone, I reported this information to the division commander, who - to the commander. The divisional commander gave us his car to deliver the prisoner to the army headquarters. Approaching the command post, we heard the rumble of the artillery preparation that had begun. Unfortunately, it was carried out on unoccupied positions. Thousands of shells delivered with great difficulty through the Carpathians (this happened on the 4th Ukrainian Front. - B.S.), turned out to be wasted. The surviving enemy with stubborn resistance stopped the advance of our troops. The same author gives a comparative assessment of the fighting qualities of German and Soviet soldiers and officers - not in favor of the Red Army: “German soldiers and officers fought well. The rank and file was well trained, skillfully acted on the offensive and in defense. Well-trained non-commissioned officers played a more prominent role in combat than our sergeants, many of whom were almost no different from privates. Enemy infantry constantly fired intensely, acted persistently and swiftly on the offensive, stubbornly defended and carried out quick counterattacks, usually supported by artillery fire, and sometimes by air strikes. The tankers also aggressively attacked, fired on the move and from short stops, skillfully maneuvered and conducted reconnaissance. In case of failure, they quickly concentrated their efforts in another direction, often striking at the junctions and flanks of our units. Artillery promptly opened fire and sometimes conducted it very accurately. She had plenty of ammunition. German officers skillfully organized the battle and controlled the actions of their subunits and units, skillfully used the terrain, and timely maneuvered in a favorable direction. With the threat of encirclement or defeat, German units and subunits made an organized retreat in depth, usually to occupy a new line. Soldiers and officers of the enemy were intimidated by rumors of reprisals against prisoners, they rarely surrendered without a fight ...
Our infantry was trained weaker than the German. However, she fought bravely. Of course, there were cases of panic and premature withdrawal, especially at the beginning of the war. The infantry was greatly helped by artillery, the most effective was the Katyusha fire in repelling enemy counterattacks and striking at areas where troops were concentrated and concentrated. However, artillery in the initial period of the war had few shells. It must be admitted that the tank units in the attacks did not always act skillfully. At the same time, in the operational depth during the development of the offensive, they showed themselves brilliantly.
Even then, some Soviet generals recognized the prohibitively large losses of the Soviet armed forces in the Great Patriotic War, although this was by no means safe. For example, Lieutenant General S.A. Kalinin, who previously commanded the army, and then was engaged in the preparation of reserves, had the imprudence to write in his diary that the Supreme High Command "does not care about maintaining human reserves and allows heavy losses in individual operations." This, along with others, "anti-Soviet" statement cost the general a sentence of 25 years in the camps. And another military leader - Major General of Aviation A.A. Turzhansky - in 1942 he received only 12 years in the camps for a completely fair opinion about the reports of the Sovinformburo, which "are intended only to calm the masses and do not correspond to reality, since they downplay our losses and exaggerate the losses of the enemy."
It is interesting that the ratio of irretrievable losses between Russian and German troops in the First World War was approximately the same as in the Great Patriotic War. This follows from a study conducted by S.G. Nelipovich. In the second half of 1916, the troops of the Russian Northern and Western fronts lost 54 thousand killed and 42.35 thousand missing. The German troops operating on these fronts and the few Austro-Hungarian divisions fighting on the Western Front lost 7,700 killed and 6,100 missing. This gives a ratio of 7.0:1 for both killed and missing. On the Southwestern Front, Russian losses amounted to 202.8 thousand killed. The Austrian troops operating against him lost 55.1 thousand killed, and the German troops - 21.2 thousand killed. The ratio of losses turns out to be very indicative, especially considering that in the second half of 1916, Germany had far from the best on the Eastern Front, mostly secondary divisions. If we assume that the ratio of Russian and German losses here was the same as on the other two fronts, then from the composition of the Russian Southwestern Front, approximately 148.4 thousand soldiers and officers were killed in battles against the Germans, and approximately 54.4 thousand - in battles against the Austro-Hungarian troops. Thus, with the Austrians, the ratio of losses killed was even slightly in our favor - 1.01: 1, and the Austrians lost significantly more prisoners than the Russians - 377.8 thousand missing against 152.7 thousand among the Russians throughout the South -Western Front, including in battles against German troops. If we extend these coefficients to the entire war as a whole, the ratio between the total losses of Russia and its opponents killed and died from wounds, diseases and in captivity can be estimated as 1.9:1. This calculation is made as follows. German losses on the Eastern Front of the First World War amounted, including losses on the Romanian front, to 173.8 thousand killed and 143.3 thousand missing. In total, according to official data, there were 177.1 thousand prisoners of war in Russia, of which more than 101 thousand people were repatriated by the end of 1918. Until the spring of 1918, 15.5 thousand people died in captivity. Perhaps some of the German prisoners repatriated later or died. The official Russian figure of German prisoners is probably overestimated due to subjects of the German Empire interned in Russia. In any case, almost all the missing German soldiers on the Eastern Front can be attributed to prisoners. If we assume that during the entire war there were on average seven Russian soldiers per dead German soldier, the total losses of Russia in the fight against Germany can be estimated at 1217 thousand killed. The losses of the Austro-Hungarian army on the Russian front in 1914-1918 amounted to 311.7 thousand killed. Losses of Austro-Hungarian missing reached 1194.1 thousand people, which is less than Russian data on the number of Austro-Hungarian prisoners - 1750 thousand. The excess was probably formed due to civilian prisoners in Galicia and Bukovina, as well as double counting in reports. As in the case of Germany, in the case of Austria-Hungary, one can be sure that almost all those missing on the Russian front are prisoners of war. Then, spreading the proportion between Russian and Austrian killed, which we established for the second half of 1916, for the entire period of the First World War, Russian losses killed in the fight against the Austro-Hungarian troops can be estimated at 308.6 thousand people. Losses of Turkey in the First World War by those killed by B.Ts. Urlanis is estimated at 250 thousand people, of which, in his opinion, probably up to 150 thousand people fall on the Caucasian front. However, this figure is questionable. The fact is that the same B.Ts. Urlanis cites data that 65 thousand Turks were in Russian captivity, and 110 thousand in British captivity. It can be assumed that the real combat activity on the Middle East (including the Thessaloniki front) and the Caucasian theaters of military operations differed in the same proportion, given that since the beginning of 1917 there were no active hostilities on the Caucasian front. Then the number of Turkish soldiers killed in the fighting against the Caucasian front, as well as against the Russian troops in Galicia and Romania, can be estimated at 93 thousand people. The losses of the Russian army in the fight against Turkey are unknown. Considering that the Turkish troops were significantly inferior to the Russians in terms of combat effectiveness, the losses of the Russian Caucasian Front can be estimated at half the Turkish losses - at 46.5 thousand killed. The losses of the Turks in the fight against the Anglo-French troops can be estimated at 157 thousand killed. Of these, about half died at the Dardanelles, where Turkish troops lost 74.6 thousand people, British troops, including New Zealanders, Australians, Indians and Canadians, 33.0 thousand killed, and French troops - about 10 thousand killed. This gives a ratio of 1.7:1, close to that which we assumed for the losses of the Turkish and Russian armies.
The total losses of the Russian army killed in the First World War can be estimated at 1601 thousand people, and the losses of its opponents - at 607 thousand people, or 2.6 times less. For comparison, let's determine the ratio of losses killed on the Western Front of the First World War, where the German troops fought with the British, French and Belgian. Here, Germany lost 590.9 thousand people killed before August 1, 1918. For the last 3 months and 11 days of the war, the German loss of life can be estimated at about one quarter of the previous 12 months of the war, given that in November there was almost no fighting. German losses in the period August 1, 1917 to July 31, 1918, according to the official sanitary report, amounted to 181.8 thousand killed. Taking this into account, the losses in the last months of the war can be estimated at 45.5 thousand people, and all the losses of Germany killed on the Western Front - at 636.4 thousand people. The losses of the French ground forces killed and died of wounds in the First World War amounted to 1104.9 thousand people. If we subtract from this number 232 thousand dead from wounds, the loss of those killed can be estimated at 873 thousand people. Probably about 850,000 were killed on the Western Front. English troops in France and Flanders lost 381 thousand people killed. The total loss of killed British dominions amounted to 119 thousand people. Of these, at least 90 thousand died on the Western Front. Belgium lost 13.7 thousand people killed. American troops lost 37 thousand people killed. The total losses of the allies killed in the West are approximately 1,372 thousand people, and Germany - 636 thousand people. The loss ratio turns out to be 2.2:1, which turns out to be three times more favorable for the Entente than the ratio between Russia and Germany.
The extremely unfavorable ratio of Russian losses to Germany is equalized by the losses of the German allies. To get the total irretrievable losses of Russia in the First World War, it is necessary to add to the losses killed the losses of those who died from wounds, died from diseases and died in captivity - respectively 240 thousand, 160 thousand (together with victims of suicide and accidents) and 190 thousand. Human. Then the total irretrievable losses of the Russian army can be estimated at 2.2 million people. The total number of Russian prisoners is estimated at 2.6 million people. About 15.5 thousand German and at least 50 thousand Austro-Hungarian soldiers, as well as about 10 thousand Turks, died in Russian captivity. The total number of deaths from wounds in the German army is estimated at 320 thousand people. Given that the Eastern Front accounts for about 21.5% of all German soldiers killed, Germany's losses in the fight against Russia who died from wounds can be estimated at 69 thousand people. The number of deaths from diseases and accidents in the German army is determined at 166 thousand people. Of these, up to 36 thousand people may fall on the Russian front. The Austrians lost 170 thousand people who died from wounds and 120 thousand people who died from diseases. Since the Russian front accounts for 51.2% of all losses of Austria-Hungary (4273.9 thousand people out of 8349.2 thousand), the number of those who died from wounds and died from diseases related to the Russian front can be estimated at 87 thousand, respectively. and 61 thousand people. The Turks lost 68,000 dead from wounds and 467,000 from disease. Of these, the Russian front accounts for 25,000 and 173,000, respectively. The total irretrievable losses of Russia's opponents in the First World War amounted to about 1133.5 thousand people. The ratio of total deadweight losses turns out to be 1.9:1. It becomes even more favorable for the Russian side than the ratio of dead only, due to the significant mortality from disease in the Turkish army.
The ratio of losses in the First World War was much more favorable for the Russian army than in the Second World War, only due to the fact that in 1914-1918, not German, but much less combat-ready Austro-Hungarian troops fought on the Russian front.
Such an unfavorable for Russia (USSR) ratio of losses in the two world wars in relation to the losses of the German troops is explained primarily by the general economic and cultural backwardness of Russia in comparison with Germany and with the Western allies. In the case of the Second World War, the situation was aggravated due to the peculiarities of Stalinist totalitarianism, which destroyed the army as an effective instrument of warfare. Stalin failed, as he urged, to overcome the ten-year lag behind the leading capitalist countries, which he defined as 50-100 years. On the other hand, he completely remained in line with the late imperial tradition, preferring to win not with skill, but with great bloodshed, since he saw a potential threat to the regime in creating a highly professional army.
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Calculation of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War remains one of the scientific problems unsolved by historians. Official statistics - 26.6 million dead, including 8.7 million military personnel - underestimate the losses among those who were at the front. Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the dead were military personnel (up to 13.6 million), and not the civilian population of the Soviet Union.
There is a lot of literature on this problem, and maybe someone gets the impression that it has been studied enough. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but there are still many questions and doubts. Too much here is unclear, controversial and clearly unreliable. Even the reliability of the current official data on the loss of life of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts.
History of calculation and official state recognition of losses
The official figure for the demographic losses of the Soviet Union has changed several times. In February 1946, the loss figure of 7 million people was published in the Bolshevik magazine. In March 1946, Stalin, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, stated that the USSR had lost 7 million people during the war years: “As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, and also thanks to the German occupation and seven million people." The report “The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War” published in 1947 by the chairman of the State Planning Committee of the USSR Voznesensky did not indicate human losses.
In 1959, the first post-war census of the population of the USSR was carried out. In 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden, reported 20 million dead: “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?” In 1965, Brezhnev, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, announced more than 20 million dead.
In 1988–1993 A team of military historians led by Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev conducted a statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about casualties in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. The result of the work was the figure of 8,668,400 people lost by the power structures of the USSR during the war.
Since March 1989, on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU, a state commission has been working to study the number of human losses in the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. The commission included representatives of the State Statistics Committee, the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Defense, the Main Archival Administration under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Committee of War Veterans, the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The commission did not calculate losses, but estimated the difference between the estimated population of the USSR at the end of the war and the estimated population that would have lived in the USSR if there had been no war. The commission first made public its demographic loss figure of 26.6 million people at a solemn meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990.
On May 5, 2008, the President of the Russian Federation signed a decree "On the publication of the fundamental multi-volume work" The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 "". On October 23, 2009, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation signed an order "On the Interdepartmental Commission for Calculating Losses During the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945". The commission included representatives of the Ministry of Defense, the FSB, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosstat, Rosarkhiv. In December 2011, a commission representative announced the country's overall demographic losses during the war period. 26.6 million people, of which losses of active armed forces 8668400 people.
military personnel
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense irretrievable losses during the fighting on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945, they amounted to 8,860,400 Soviet military personnel. The source was data declassified in 1993 and data obtained during the search work of the Memory Watch and in historical archives.
According to declassified data from 1993: killed, died from wounds and diseases, non-combat losses - 6 885 100 people, including
- Killed - 5,226,800 people.
- Died from inflicted wounds - 1,102,800 people.
- Died from various causes and accidents, shot - 555,500 people.
On May 5, 2010, Major General A. Kirilin, head of the RF Ministry of Defense Directorate for perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military casualties - 8 668 400 , will be reported to the leadership of the country, so that they are announced on May 9, the day of the 65th anniversary of the Victory.
According to the data of G. F. Krivosheev, during the Great Patriotic War, 3,396,400 military personnel were missing and captured (about 1,162,600 more were attributed to unaccounted for combat losses in the first months of the war, when combat units did not provide any reports), that is, all
- missing, captured and unaccounted for combat losses - 4,559,000;
- 1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, did not return (died, emigrated) - 1,783,300, (that is, the total number of prisoners - 3,619,300, which is more than together with the missing);
- previously considered missing and were called up again from the liberated territories - 939,700.
So the official irretrievable losses(6,885,100 dead, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 who did not return from captivity) amounted to 8,668,400 military personnel. But from them you need to subtract 939,700 re-conscripts who were considered missing. We get 7,728,700.
The mistake was pointed out, in particular, by Leonid Radzikhovsky. The correct calculation is as follows: the number 1,783,300 is the number of those who did not return from captivity and went missing (and not just those who did not return from captivity). Then official irretrievable losses (dead 6,885,100, according to declassified data of 1993, and those who did not return from captivity and went missing 1,783,300) amounted to 8 668 400 military personnel.
According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet servicemen and 500,000 conscripts called up for mobilization, but not included in the lists of troops, were captured and went missing. From this figure, the calculation gives the same result: if 1,836,000 returned from captivity and 939,700 were re-conscripted from those who were considered unknown, then 1,783,300 military personnel were missing and did not return from captivity. So the official irretrievable losses (6,885,100 died, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 went missing and did not return from captivity) are 8 668 400 military personnel.
Additional data
Civilian population
A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses of the civilian population of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War at approximately 13.7 million people.
The final number is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:
- were exterminated in the occupied territory and died as a result of hostilities (from bombing, shelling, etc.) - 7,420,379 people.
- died as a result of a humanitarian catastrophe (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care, etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
- died in forced labor in Germany - 2,164,313 people. (another 451,100 people did not return for various reasons and became emigrants).
According to S. Maksudov, about 7 million people died in the occupied territories and in besieged Leningrad (1 million of them in besieged Leningrad, 3 million were Jews, victims of the Holocaust), and about 7 million people died as a result of increased mortality in non-occupied territories.
The total losses of the USSR (together with the civilian population) amounted to 40–41 million people. These estimates are confirmed by comparing the data of the 1939 and 1959 censuses, since there is reason to believe that in 1939 there was a very significant undercount of the male draft contingents.
In general, the Red Army during the Second World War lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders in the dead, missing, dead from wounds, diseases and in captivity.
Finally, we note another new trend in the study of the demographic results of World War II. 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.
| Nationalitydead soldiers | Number of casualties (thousand people) | % of total irretrievable losses |
| Russians | 5 756.0 | 66.402 |
| Ukrainians | 1 377.4 | 15.890 |
| Belarusians | 252.9 | 2.917 |
| Tatars | 187.7 | 2.165 |
| Jews | 142.5 | 1.644 |
| Kazakhs | 125.5 | 1.448 |
| Uzbeks | 117.9 | 1.360 |
| Armenians | 83.7 | 0.966 |
| Georgians | 79.5 | 0.917 |
| Mordva | 63.3 | 0.730 |
| Chuvash | 63.3 | 0.730 |
| Yakuts | 37.9 | 0.437 |
| Azerbaijanis | 58.4 | 0.673 |
| Moldovans | 53.9 | 0.621 |
| Bashkirs | 31.7 | 0.366 |
| Kyrgyz | 26.6 | 0.307 |
| Udmurts | 23.2 | 0.268 |
| Tajiks | 22.9 | 0.264 |
| Turkmens | 21.3 | 0.246 |
| Estonians | 21.2 | 0.245 |
| Mari | 20.9 | 0.241 |
| Buryats | 13.0 | 0.150 |
| Komi | 11.6 | 0.134 |
| Latvians | 11.6 | 0.134 |
| Lithuanians | 11.6 | 0.134 |
| Peoples of Dagestan | 11.1 | 0.128 |
| Ossetians | 10.7 | 0.123 |
| Poles | 10.1 | 0.117 |
| Karely | 9.5 | 0.110 |
| Kalmyks | 4.0 | 0.046 |
| Kabardians and Balkars | 3.4 | 0.039 |
| Greeks | 2.4 | 0.028 |
| Chechens and Ingush | 2.3 | 0.026 |
| Finns | 1.6 | 0.018 |
| Bulgarians | 1.1 | 0.013 |
| Czechs and Slovaks | 0.4 | 0.005 |
| Chinese | 0.4 | 0.005 |
| Assyrians | 0,2 | 0,002 |
| Yugoslavs | 0.1 | 0.001 |
The greatest losses on the battlefields of the Second World War were suffered by Russians and Ukrainians. Many Jews were killed. But the most tragic was the fate of the Belarusian people. In the first months of the war, the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by the Germans. During the war, the Byelorussian SSR lost up to 30% of its population. In the occupied territory of the BSSR, the Nazis killed 2.2 million people. (The data of recent studies on Belarus are as follows: the Nazis destroyed civilians - 1,409,225 people, destroyed prisoners in German death camps - 810,091 people, driven into German slavery - 377,776 people). It is also known that in percentage terms - the number of dead soldiers / population, among the Soviet republics, Georgia suffered great damage. Almost 300,000 out of 700,000 Georgians called to the front did not return.
Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops
To date, there are no sufficiently reliable figures for the losses of the German army, obtained by direct statistical calculation. This is explained by the absence, for various reasons, of reliable source statistics on German losses. The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured by Soviet troops, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in the NKVD camps. According to estimates by German historians, there were about 3.1 million German servicemen in Soviet prisoner of war camps alone.
The discrepancy is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in the estimate of the number of Germans who died in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of the Germans who died in captivity is more reliable, and the missing 0.7 million Germans who went missing and did not return from captivity actually died not in captivity, but on the battlefield.
There is another statistics of losses - the statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the appendix to the law of the Federal Republic of Germany "On the preservation of burial places", the total number of German soldiers who are in recorded burials in the territory of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is 3 million 226 thousand people. (on the territory of the USSR alone - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as the starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, but it also needs to be adjusted.
- Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burial places of Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (of which 270 thousand people died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states (357 thousand people died). Of the total number of dead Wehrmacht soldiers of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6-0.7 million people.
- Secondly, this figure refers to the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German graves in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, established in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence, it had transferred information about the burial places of 400,000 Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Union for the Care of War Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they have already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, no generalized statistics of the newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers could be found. Tentatively, it can be assumed that the number of newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
- Thirdly, many burial places of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht on Soviet soil disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could be buried in such disappeared and nameless graves.
- Fourthly, these data do not include burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops in Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, only in the last three spring months of the war, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, on German soil and in Western European countries, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died in battles with the Red Army.
- Finally, fifthly, the Wehrmacht soldiers who died of “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people) were also among the buried.
An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses of Germany
- The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
- Population in 1946 - 65.93 million people.
- Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
- Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
- Emigration inflow of 7.25 million people.
- Total losses ((70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.
findings
Recall that disputes about the number of deaths are ongoing to this day.
Almost 27 million citizens of the USSR died during the war (the exact number is 26.6 million). This amount included:
- military personnel killed and died from wounds;
- who died from diseases;
- executed by firing squad (according to the results of various denunciations);
- missing and captured;
- representatives of the civilian population, both in the occupied territories of the USSR and in other regions of the country, in which, due to hostilities in the state, there was an increased mortality from hunger and disease.
This also includes those who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return to their homeland after the victory. The vast majority of the dead were men (about 20 million). Modern researchers argue that by the end of the war, of the men born in 1923. (i.e. those who were 18 years old in 1941 and could be drafted into the army) about 3% survived. By 1945, there were twice as many women as men in the USSR (data for people aged 20 to 29).
In addition to the actual deaths, a sharp drop in the birth rate can also be attributed to human losses. So, according to official estimates, if the birth rate in the state remained at least at the same level, the population of the Union by the end of 1945 should have been 35-36 million people more than it was in reality. Despite numerous studies and calculations, the exact number of those who died during the war is unlikely to ever be named.
The newspaper "Tomorrow" clarifies the results of the Second World War, for us - the Patriotic War. As usual, this happens in polemics with historical falsifications.
Professor, Academician of the Russian Academy of Natural Sciences G. A. Kumanev and a special commission of the USSR Ministry of Defense and the Department of History of the USSR Academy of Sciences, using previously closed statistical data in 1990, established that human casualties in the Armed Forces of the USSR, as well as the border and internal troops of the country during the Great Patriotic War wars amounted to 8,668,400 people, which is only 18,900 more than the number of losses of the armed forces of Germany and its allies who fought against the USSR. That is, the losses in the war of German military personnel with the allies and the USSR were almost the same. The well-known historian Yu. V. Emelyanov considers the indicated number of losses to be correct.
Participant of the Great Patriotic War, Doctor of Historical Sciences B. G. Solovyov and Candidate of Sciences V. V. Sukhodeev (2001) write: “During the years of the Great Patriotic War (including the campaign in the Far East against Japan in 1945), total irretrievable demographic losses ( were killed, went missing, were captured and did not return from it, died from wounds, diseases and as a result of accidents) of the Soviet Armed Forces, together with the border and internal troops, amounted to 8 million 668 thousand 400 people ... Our irretrievable losses over the years of the war look like as follows: 1941 (for half a year of the war) - 27.8%; 1942 - 28.2%; 1943 - 20.5%; 1944 - 15.6%; 1945 - 7.5 percent of the total losses. Consequently, according to the above historians, our losses for the first year and a half of the war amounted to 57.6 percent, and for the remaining 2.5 years - 42.4 percent.
They also support the results of serious research work carried out by a group of military and civilian experts, including employees of the General Staff, published in 1993 in a work entitled: “Secrecy removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts ”and in the publications of General of the Army M.A. Gareev.
I draw the reader's attention to the fact that these data are not the personal opinion of boys and uncles in love with the West, but a scientific study conducted by a group of scientists with in-depth analysis and a rigorous calculation of the irretrievable losses of the Soviet army during the Great Patriotic War.
“In the war with the fascist bloc, we suffered huge losses. They are received with great sorrow by the people. They hit the fate of millions of families with a heavy blow. But these were sacrifices made in the name of saving the Motherland, the life of future generations. And the dirty speculation that has unfolded in recent years around the losses, the deliberate, malevolent inflating of their scale is deeply immoral. They continue even after the publication of previously closed materials. Under the false mask of philanthropy, well-thought-out calculations are hidden by any means to desecrate the Soviet past, a great feat accomplished by the people, ”wrote the above-mentioned scientists.
Our losses were justified. Even some Americans understood this at the time. “So, in a greeting received from the United States in June 1943, it was emphasized: “Many young Americans survived thanks to the sacrifices that were made by the defenders of Stalingrad. Every Red Army soldier who defends his Soviet land, by killing a Nazi, thereby saves the life of American soldiers. We will keep this in mind when calculating our debt to the Soviet ally.
For the irretrievable losses of Soviet military personnel in the amount of 8 million. 668 thousand 400 people are indicated by the scientist O. A. Platonov. The specified number of losses included irretrievable losses of the Red Army, Navy, border troops, internal troops and state security agencies.
Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences G. A. Kumanev in his book “Feat and Forgery” wrote that the Eastern Front accounted for 73% of the casualties of the Nazi troops during World War II. Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front lost 75% of their aircraft, 74% of their artillery, and 75% of their tanks and assault guns.
And this despite the fact that on the Eastern Front they did not surrender in hundreds of thousands, as on the Western, but fought fiercely, fearing in captivity retribution for the crimes committed on Soviet soil.
The wonderful researcher Yu. Mukhin also writes about our losses of 8.6 million people, including those who died from accidents, diseases and those who died in German captivity. This number of 8 million 668 thousand 400 people of irretrievable losses of the Red Army during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 is recognized by the majority of Russian scientists, historians and researchers. But, in my opinion, the indicated losses of Soviet military personnel are significantly overestimated.
German losses by the majority of Russian scientists, historians and researchers are indicated in the amount of 8 million 649 thousand 500 people.
G. A. Kumanev draws attention to the huge number of Soviet losses of military personnel in German prisoner of war camps and writes the following: “While out of 4 million 126 thousand captured military personnel of the Nazi troops, 580 thousand 548 people died, and the rest returned home , out of 4 million 559 thousand Soviet military personnel taken prisoner, only 1 million 836 thousand people returned to their homeland. From 2.5 to 3.5 million died in Nazi camps.” The number of German prisoners who died may be surprising, but one must take into account that people always die, and among the captured Germans there were many frostbitten and emaciated, as, for example, near Stalingrad, as well as the wounded.
V. V. Sukhodeev writes that 1 million 894 thousand people returned from German captivity. 65 people, and 2 million 665 thousand 935 Soviet soldiers and officers died in German concentration camps. Due to the destruction of Soviet prisoners of war by the Germans, the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War had irretrievable losses approximately equal to the losses of the armed forces of Germany and its allies who fought against the USSR.
Directly in battles with the German armed forces and the armies of their allies, the Soviet Armed Forces lost 2 million 655 thousand 935 less Soviet soldiers and officers in the period from 06/22/1941 to 05/09/1945. This is explained by the fact that 2 million 665 thousand 935 Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity.
If the Soviet side in Soviet captivity had killed 2 million 094 thousand 287 (in addition to the dead 580 thousand 548) prisoners of war of the fascist bloc, then the losses of Germany and its allies would have exceeded the losses of the Soviet army by 2 million 094 thousand 287 people.
Only the criminal murder of our prisoners of war by the Germans led to almost equal irretrievable losses of servicemen of the German and Soviet armies during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945.
So which army fought better? Of course, the Soviet Red Army. With an approximate equality of prisoners, she destroyed more than 2 million more enemy soldiers and officers in battle. And this despite the fact that our troops stormed the largest cities in Europe and took the very capital of Germany - the city of Berlin.
Our fathers, grandfathers and great-grandfathers fought brilliantly and showed the highest degree of nobility, sparing the German prisoners of war. They had the full moral right not to take them prisoner for the crimes committed, shooting them on the spot. But the Russian soldier never showed cruelty towards the defeated enemy.
The main trick of liberal revisionists when describing losses is to write down any number and let the Russians prove it wrong, and in the meantime they will come up with a new fake. And how can you prove it? After all, the true exposers of the liberal revisionists are not allowed on television.
By the way, they tirelessly shout that all the people who returned prisoners and were driven to work in Germany in the USSR were tried and sent to forced labor camps. This is also another lie. Yu. V. Emelyanov, based on the data of the historian V. Zemskov, writes that by March 1, 1946, 2,427,906 Soviet people who returned from Germany were sent to their place of residence, 801,152 - to serve in the army, and 608,095 - to the workers' battalions of the People's Commissariat defense. Of the total number of those who returned, 272,867 (6.5%) were placed at the disposal of the NKVD. These, as a rule, were those who committed criminal offenses, including those who took part in the battles against the Soviet troops, such as, for example, the “Vlasovites”.
After 1945, 148,000 "Vlasovites" entered the special settlements. On the occasion of the victory, they were released from criminal liability for treason, limiting themselves to exile. In 1951-1952, 93.5 thousand people were released from their number.
Most of the Lithuanians, Latvians and Estonians who served in the German army as privates and junior commanders were sent home before the end of 1945.
V.V. Sukhodeev writes that up to 70% of former prisoners of war were returned to the active army, only 6% of former prisoners of war who collaborated with the Nazis were arrested and sent to penal battalions. But, apparently, many of them were forgiven.
But the United States, with its 5th column inside Russia, presented the most humane and fair Soviet government in the world as the most cruel and unjust government, and the most kind, modest, courageous and freedom-loving Russian people in the world were presented as a people of slaves. Yes, they imagined that the Russians themselves believed in it.
It is high time for us to throw off the veil from our eyes and see Soviet Russia in all the splendor of her great victories and achievements.
There are various estimates of the losses of the Soviet Union and Germany during the war of 1941-1945. The differences are related both to the methods of obtaining the initial quantitative data for different groups of losses, and to the calculation methods.
In Russia, official data on losses in the Great Patriotic War are those published by a group of researchers led by Grigory Krivosheev, a consultant at the Military Memorial Center of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, in 1993. According to updated data (2001), the losses were as follows:
- The human losses of the USSR - 6.8 million soldiers killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing. General demographic losses (including dead civilians) - 26.6 million Human;
- German casualties - 4.046 million servicemen dead, dead from wounds, missing (including 442.1 thousand who died in captivity) 910.4 thousand returned from captivity after the war;
- The casualties of Germany's allied countries - 806 thousand military personnel who died (including 137.8 thousand who died in captivity) 662.2 thousand returned from captivity after the war.
- Irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people (not to mention 1.6 million prisoners of war after May 9, 1945) respectively. The ratio of irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany with the satellites is 1,3:1 .
History of calculation and official state recognition of losses
The study of the losses of the Soviet Union in the war actually began only in the late 1980s. with the advent of publicity. Prior to that, in 1946, Stalin announced that the USSR had lost during the war years 7 million people. Under Khrushchev, this figure rose to "more than 20 million". Only in 1988-1993. A team of military historians led by Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev conducted a comprehensive statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about casualties in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. In this case, the results of the work of the commission of the General Staff to determine the losses, headed by General of the Army S. M. Shtemenko (1966-1968) and a similar commission of the Ministry of Defense under the leadership of General of the Army M. A. Gareev (1988) were used. The team was also admitted to the declassified in the late 1980s. materials of the General Staff and the main headquarters of the branches of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the border troops and other archival institutions of the former USSR.
The final figure of casualties in the Great Patriotic War was for the first time made public in rounded form (" almost 27 million people”) at the solemn meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990, dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. In 1993, the results of the study were published in the book Classified Removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Actions and Military Conflicts: A Statistical Study”, which was then translated into English. In 2001, a reprint of the book “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study".
To determine the scale of human losses, this team used various methods, in particular:
- accounting and statistical, that is, by analyzing the available accounting documents (primarily, reports on the losses of personnel of the Armed Forces of the USSR),
- balance, or the method of demographic balance, that is, by comparing the size and age structure of the population of the USSR at the beginning and end of the war.
In the 1990-2000s. both papers have appeared in the press suggesting corrections to official figures (in particular, due to the refinement of statistical methods), and completely alternative studies with very different loss data. As a rule, in works of the latter type, the estimated human losses far exceed the officially recognized 26.6 million people.
For example, the modern Russian publicist Boris Sokolov estimated the total human losses of the USSR in 1939-1945. in 43,448 thousand people, and the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. in 26.4 million people (of which 4 million people died in captivity). According to his calculations about the loss 2.6 million German soldiers on the Soviet-German front, the loss ratio reaches 10:1. At the same time, the total human losses in Germany in 1939-1945. he appreciated in 5.95 million people (including 300 thousand Jews, gypsies and anti-Nazis who died in concentration camps). His estimate of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS (including foreign formations) is 3 950 thousand Human). However, it must be borne in mind that Sokolov also includes demographic losses in the losses of the USSR (that is, those who could have been born, but were not born), but does not conduct such a calculation for Germany. The calculation of the total losses of the USSR is based on frank falsification: the population of the USSR in the middle of 1941 was taken at 209.3 million people (12-17 million people higher than the real one, at the level of 1959), at the beginning of 1946 - at 167 million (by 3, 5 million more than the real one) - which in total just gives the difference between the official and Sokolov's figures. B. V. Sokolov’s calculations are repeated in many publications and the media (in the NTV film “Victory. One for All”, interviews and speeches by writer Viktor Astafiev, I. V. Bestuzhev-Lada’s book “Russia on the eve of the 21st century”, etc.)
human losses
Overall score
A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimates the total human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, determined by the demographic balance method, in 26.6 million people. This includes all those who died as a result of military and other actions of the enemy, who died as a result of an increased mortality rate during the war in the occupied territory and in the rear, as well as persons who emigrated from the USSR during the war years and did not return after its end. For comparison, according to the estimates of the same team of researchers, the decline in the population of Russia during the First World War (losses of military personnel and civilians) amounted to 4.5 million people, and a similar decline in the Civil War - 8 million people.
As for the sex composition of the deceased and the dead, the overwhelming majority, of course, were men (about 20 million). On the whole, by the end of 1945, the number of women between the ages of 20 and 29 was twice the number of men of the same age in the USSR.
Considering the work of the group of G. F. Krivosheev, American demographers S. Maksudov and M. Elman come to the conclusion that the estimate of human losses given to her at 26-27 million is relatively reliable. However, they indicate both the possibility of underestimating the number of losses due to incomplete accounting of the population of the territories annexed by the USSR before the war and at the end of the war, and the possibility of overestimating losses due to not taking into account emigration from the USSR in 1941-45. In addition, official calculations do not take into account the drop in the birth rate, due to which the population of the USSR by the end of 1945 should have been approximately 35-36 million people more than in the absence of war. However, this figure is recognized by them as hypothetical, since it is based on insufficiently rigorous assumptions.
According to another foreign researcher M. Haynes, the figure of 26.6 million, obtained by the group of G. F. Krivosheev, sets only the lower limit of all the losses of the USSR in the war. The total population decline from June 1941 to June 1945 amounted to 42.7 million people, and this figure corresponds to the upper limit. Therefore, the real number of military casualties is in this interval. However, he is objected to by M. Harrison, who, on the basis of statistical calculations, comes to the conclusion that even taking into account some uncertainty in assessing emigration and declining birth rates, the real military losses of the USSR should be estimated within 23.9 to 25.8 million people.
military personnel
According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, irretrievable losses during the fighting on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 amounted to 8,860,400 Soviet military personnel. The source was data declassified in 1993 - 8,668,400 military personnel and data obtained during the search work of the Memory Watch and in historical archives. Of these (according to 1993 data):
- Killed, died from wounds and diseases, non-combat losses - 6,885,100 people, including
- Killed - 5,226,800 people.
- Died from inflicted wounds - 1,102,800 people.
- Died from various causes and accidents, shot - 555,500 people.
According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet servicemen and 500,000 conscripts called up for mobilization, but not included in the lists of troops, were captured and went missing.
According to the data of G. F. Krivosheev: during the Great Patriotic War, 3,396,400 servicemen were missing and taken prisoner; returned from captivity 1,836,000 military personnel, did not return (died, emigrated) - 1,783,300.
Civilian population
A group of researchers led by G.F. Krivosheev estimated the losses of the civilian population of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War at approximately 13.7 million people. The final figure is 13.684.692 people. consists of the following components:
- was deliberately exterminated in the occupied territory - 7.420.379 people.
- died and died from the cruel conditions of the occupation regime (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care, etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
- died in forced labor in Germany - 2.164.313 people. (another 451,100 people did not return for various reasons and became emigrants)
However, the civilian population also suffered heavy losses from the combat impact of the enemy in the front-line areas, besieged and besieged cities. There are no complete statistical materials on the considered types of civilian casualties.
According to S. Maksudov, about 7 million people died in the occupied territories and in besieged Leningrad (1 million of them in besieged Leningrad, 3 million were Jewish victims of the Holocaust), and about 7 million more died as a result of increased mortality in unoccupied territories.
Property losses
During the war years, 1,710 cities and urban-type settlements and more than 70,000 villages and villages, 32,000 industrial enterprises were destroyed on Soviet territory, 98,000 collective farms and 1,876 state farms were destroyed. The State Commission found that material damage amounted to about 30 percent of the national wealth of the Soviet Union, and in the areas subjected to occupation - about two-thirds. In general, the material losses of the Soviet Union are estimated at about 2 trillion. 600 billion rubles. For comparison, the national wealth of England decreased by only 0.8 percent, France - by 1.5 percent, and the United States, in essence, avoided material losses.
Losses of Germany and their allies
human losses
In the war against the Soviet Union, the German command involved the population of the occupied countries by recruiting volunteers. Thus, separate military formations appeared from among the citizens of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Croatia, as well as from the citizens of the USSR who were captured or in the occupied territory (Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Muslim, etc.). How exactly the losses of these formations were taken into account, there is no clear information in the German statistics.
Also, a constant obstacle to determining the real number of losses of personnel of the troops was the mixing of losses of military personnel with losses of the civilian population. For this reason, in Germany, Hungary, and Romania, the losses of the armed forces are significantly reduced, since some of them are counted among the civilian casualties. (200 thousand people lost military personnel, and 260 thousand civilians). For example, in Hungary this ratio was "1:2" (140 thousand - the loss of military personnel and 280 thousand - the loss of the civilian population). All this significantly distorts the statistics on the losses of the troops of the countries that fought on the Soviet-German front.
A German radiotelegram dated 22 May 1945 from the Wehrmacht Loss Records Department addressed to the Quartermaster General of the OKW provides the following information:
According to a certificate from the organizational department of the OKH dated May 10, 1945, only the ground forces, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), for the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945, lost 4 million 617.0 thousand people.
Two months before his death, Hitler announced in one of his speeches that Germany had lost 12.5 million killed and wounded, of which half were killed. With this message, he, in fact, refuted the estimates of the scale of human losses made by other fascist leaders and government bodies.
General Jodl after the end of hostilities said that Germany, in total, lost 12 million 400 thousand people, of which 2.5 million were killed, 3.4 million were missing and captured and 6.5 million were wounded, of which approximately 12-15% did not return to service for one reason or another.
According to the annex to the law of the Federal Republic of Germany “On the preservation of burial sites”, the total number of German soldiers buried in the USSR and Eastern Europe is 3.226 million, of which the names of 2.395 million are known.
Prisoners of war of Germany and its allies
Information on the number of prisoners of war of the armed forces of Germany and its allied countries, recorded in the camps of the NKVD of the USSR as of April 22, 1956
Nationality |
Total number of prisoners of war |
Released and repatriated |
Died in captivity |
Austrians |
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Czechs and Slovaks |
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French people |
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Yugoslavs |
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Dutch |
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Belgians |
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Luxembourgers |
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Norse |
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Other Nationalities |
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Total for the Wehrmacht |
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Italians |
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Total Allies |
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Total prisoners of war |
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Alternative theories
In the 1990s-2000s, publications appeared in the Russian press with data on losses that differed greatly from those accepted by historical science. As a rule, the estimated Soviet losses far exceed those given by historians.
For example, a modern Russian publicist Boris Sokolov estimated the total human losses of the USSR in 1939-1945 at 43,448 thousand people, and the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. 26.4 million people (of which 4 million people died in captivity). According to his calculations about the loss of 2.6 million German soldiers on the Soviet-German front, the loss ratio reaches 10:1. At the same time, he estimated the total human losses of Germany in 1939-1945 at 5.95 million people (including 300 thousand Jews, gypsies and anti-Nazis who died in concentration camps). His estimate of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS (including foreign formations) is 3,950 thousand people). However, it must be borne in mind that Sokolov also includes demographic losses in the losses of the USSR (that is, those who could have been born, but were not born), but does not conduct such a calculation for Germany. The calculation of the total losses of the USSR is based on frank falsification: the population of the USSR in the middle of 1941 was taken at 209.3 million people (12-17 million people higher than the real, at the level of 1959), at the beginning of 1946 - at 167 million (by 3, 5 million below the real one), which in total just gives the difference between the official and Sokolov's figures. B. V. Sokolov’s calculations are repeated in many publications and the media (in the NTV film “Victory. One for All”, interviews and speeches by writer Viktor Astafiev, I. V. Bestuzhev-Lada’s book “Russia on the eve of the 21st century”, etc.)
In contrast to the highly controversial publications of Sokolov, there are works by other authors, many of which are driven by the establishment of a real picture of what was happening, and not by the requirements of the current political situation. The work of Garibyan Igor Ludwigovich stands out from the general series. The author uses open official sources and data, clearly pointing out inconsistencies in them, focuses on the methods used to manipulate statistics. The methods that he used for his own assessment of Germany's losses are interesting: the female preponderance in the sex and age pyramid, the balance method, the method of assessing the structure of prisoners and the assessment of the rotation of army formations. Each method gives similar results - from 10 before 15 million people of irretrievable losses, excluding the losses of the satellite countries. The results obtained are often confirmed by indirect and sometimes direct facts from official German sources. The paper deliberately makes a bias towards the indirectness of multiple facts. Such data is more difficult to falsify, because it is impossible to foresee the totality of facts and their twists and turns during falsification, which means that attempts at fraud will not stand the test under different methods of assessment.
The Second World War, which involved four-fifths of the world's population, became the bloodiest in the history of mankind. Through the fault of the imperialists, mass extermination of people took place for six years in various regions of the globe.
More than 110 million people were mobilized into the armed forces. Many tens of millions were killed, injured, left disabled. Civilian casualties increased sharply. They accounted for almost half of the total losses, while in the First World War - 5 percent.
It is extremely difficult to accurately determine the number of dead military personnel and civilians for a number of countries, since in many of them there are no statistics on population losses for the war as a whole, or these data do not reflect the actual situation. In addition, the fascists tried in every possible way to hide their atrocities, and after the war their ideological advocates deliberately distorted the indicators of the casualties of individual countries. All this was the reason for significant discrepancies in the estimate of the number of deaths. The most authoritative studies show that more than 50 million people died during the Second World War.
In addition to direct human losses, many warring states also suffered large indirect losses. The mobilization of a significant part of the male population into the armed forces, the accelerated involvement of women in the system of socially organized labor, material and domestic difficulties, etc., dramatically changed the mode of population reproduction, lowered birth rates and increased mortality.
The states of Europe suffered the largest direct and indirect population losses. About 40 million people died here, that is, significantly more than on other continents combined. During the war years, in almost all European countries, the conditions for the existence and development of the population deteriorated for a long time.
In 1938, the population of European countries was 390.6 million people, and in 1945 - 380.9 million. If not for the war, with the same birth and death rates, it would have increased over the years by about 12 million people . The war seriously deformed the age, gender, family and marriage structure of the population of the continent. The quality and, in many countries, the level of general education and vocational training have declined significantly.
Half of the human losses in Europe are in the USSR. They amounted to over 20 million people, a significant part of them - the civilian population who died in the Nazi death camps, as a result of fascist repression, disease and hunger, from enemy air raids. The losses of the USSR significantly exceed the human losses of its Western allies. The country has lost a large part of the population of the most able-bodied and productive ages, with labor experience and professional training. The great losses of the Soviet Union were due primarily to the fact that it took upon itself the main blow of Nazi Germany and for a long time alone opposed the fascist bloc in Europe. They are explained by the particularly cruel policy of mass extermination of Soviet people, which was pursued by the aggressor.
A difficult demographic situation developed after the Second World War in Poland and Yugoslavia, which lost a significant part of their population: Poland - 6 million, Yugoslavia - 1.7 million people.
The fascist leadership set as its goal to change the demographic process in Europe, and subsequently throughout the world. This provided for the mass physical destruction of the conquered peoples, as well as forcible birth control. Along with this, the Nazis sought to stimulate the growth of the "chosen" nations in order to gain a foothold in the occupied territories. However, the war led to great losses in Germany itself - over 13 million people were killed, wounded, captured, missing. Fascist Italy lost 500,000 dead.
The population losses of countries such as France (600 thousand) and Great Britain (370 thousand) are less than the losses of a number of other states participating in the war, but they also had a negative impact on their post-war development.
The peoples of Asia suffered considerable human losses during the war years. The number of dead and wounded in China amounted to over 5 million people. Japan lost 2.5 million people - mostly military personnel. Of the 350,000 civilians who died in Japan, the majority - over 270,000 people - were victims of the atomic bombings of the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Compared to Europe and Asia, other continents suffered significantly less human losses. In general, they amounted to 400 thousand people. The United States lost about 300 thousand people dead, Australia and New Zealand - over 40 thousand, Africa - 10 thousand people (206).
Large differences in human losses in relation to individual countries, groups of states, regions of the world are due, on the one hand, to the nature and degree of their participation directly in the armed struggle, and on the other hand, to the class and political goals pursued by the warring countries. The latter determined their different attitude towards prisoners of war and the civilian population of the enemy, as well as towards the fate of the population of the allied states and the world as a whole.
Many hundreds of thousands of prisoners of war and millions of civilians were destroyed in the territories occupied by the Nazi and Japanese invaders. With particular ferocity, the Nazis applied their carefully developed policy of the physical destruction of the Soviet people. The Nazis carried out mass deportation of the civilian population to Germany, where they ended up either in hard labor or in concentration camps. Executions, poisoning in gas chambers, beatings, torture, monstrous medical experiments, forced to overwork - all this led to the mass destruction of people. Thus, out of 18 million European citizens who ended up in Nazi concentration camps, more than 11 million people were killed.
The aggressors themselves, although their armed forces were defeated and forced to unconditional surrender, suffered comparatively smaller losses, which was evidence of the humane attitude towards prisoners of war and the civilian population of the defeated countries on the part of the victors, primarily the USSR.
The war had a great impact not only on the natural reproduction of the population in all countries of the world, but also on its interstate and internal migration. Already the coming of the fascists to power and the preparation of aggression they began caused the flight of the population from Germany and other European states to the countries of Africa, North and Latin America. The offensive of the fascist armies led to the displacement of the population in almost all countries of Europe. In addition, the Nazis resorted to mass forcible export of labor force from the occupied regions to Germany. War-induced internal migration, accompanied by great hardship and hardship, contributed to an increase in mortality and a decrease in the birth rate. Similar processes took place in Asia.
Thus, the Second World War brought about major changes in the structure of population throughout the world. For a number of countries, including socialist ones, the demographic consequences of the war became one of the most unfavorable factors.
The Second World War confirmed the conclusions of Marxism-Leninism about the enormous impact of the economic factor on the outbreak of wars, the methods of their conduct, their course and results. In the second world war, the most bloody and fierce, the interconnection and interdependence of economic, scientific, social, moral-political and military factors intensified. The results of the actions of the armed forces, along with other factors, were determined by the degree of their economic support. The volume and qualitative structure of the material needs of the armed forces have sharply expanded, and the importance of the timing of the main military-economic measures has increased. The influence of the social system of states on the military economy, its ability to meet the needs of the front, manifested itself with particular force.
One of the important lessons of the Second World War is the strengthening of its reverse impact on the economy. The degree of subordination of the national economy to the needs of the war increased sharply. Almost all branches of the economy worked for her to some extent. The credit and financial system of states, money circulation, domestic and foreign trade underwent a deep restructuring.
In terms of the number of human and material losses, in terms of their immediate and long-term consequences, the Second World War has no equal in history. It far surpassed the First World War in terms of human casualties, expended material resources, the volume of production of military equipment, the intensity of economic efforts and the hardships that most of its participants had to endure.
The experience of the Second World War reminds us that not only the war itself and its consequences, but also the preparations for it, the arms race lead to a serious aggravation of population problems and to undermining the economy. Only a lasting democratic peace creates the necessary conditions for the development of economic and demographic processes in directions that meet the interests of social progress.
