The truth about our losses in the Great Patriotic War (4 photos). World War II statistics

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 information

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 killed in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of Germans 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.

conclusions

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.

Before jumping into explanations, statistics, and so on, let's first clarify what we mean. This article discusses the losses suffered by the Red Army, the Wehrmacht and the troops of the satellite countries of the Third Reich, as well as the civilian population of the USSR and Germany, only in the period from 06/22/1941 until the end of hostilities in Europe (unfortunately, in the case of Germany, this is practically impracticable). The Soviet-Finnish war and the "liberation" campaign of the Red Army were deliberately excluded. The issue of the losses of the USSR and Germany has been repeatedly raised in the press, there are endless disputes on the Internet and on television, but the researchers of this issue cannot come to a common denominator, because, as a rule, all arguments come down to emotional and politicized statements. This once again proves how painful this issue is in national history. The purpose of the article is not to "clarify" the final truth in this matter, but an attempt to summarize the various data contained in disparate sources. We leave the right to draw a conclusion to the reader.

With all the variety of literature and online resources about the Great Patriotic War, ideas about it in many respects suffer from a certain superficiality. The main reason for this is the ideologization of this or that study or work, and it does not matter what kind of ideology it is - communist or anti-communist. The interpretation of such a grandiose event in the light of any ideology is obviously false.

It is especially bitter to read lately that the war of 1941-45. was just a clash of two totalitarian regimes, where one, they say, fully corresponded to the other. We will try to look at this war from the point of view of the most justified - geopolitical.

The Germany of the 1930s, with all its Nazi "peculiarities", directly and steadily continued that powerful desire for primacy in Europe, which for centuries determined the path of the German nation. Even the purely liberal German sociologist Max Weber wrote during the 1st World War: “... we, 70 million Germans ... are obliged to be an empire. We have to do it even if we are afraid to fail.” The roots of this aspiration of the Germans go back centuries, as a rule, the appeal of the Nazis to medieval and even pagan Germany is interpreted as a purely ideological event, as the construction of a myth mobilizing the nation.

From my point of view, everything is more complicated: it was the Germanic tribes that created the empire of Charlemagne, and later the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation was formed on its foundation. And it was the “empire of the German nation” that created what is called “European civilization” and began the aggressive policy of Europeans from the sacramental “Drang nach osten” - “onslaught to the east”, because half of the “originally” German lands, up to the 8th-10th centuries, belonged to Slavic tribes. Therefore, the assignment of the name "Plan Barbarossa" to the plan of war against the "barbarian" USSR is not a coincidence. This ideology of "primacy" of Germany as the fundamental force of "European" civilization was the original cause of the two world wars. Moreover, at the beginning of World War II, Germany was able to really (albeit briefly) fulfill its aspirations.

Invading the borders of this or that European country, the German troops met amazing resistance in their weakness and indecision. Short-term clashes between the armies of European countries with the German troops invading their borders, with the exception of Poland, were rather the observance of a certain “custom” of war than actual resistance.

Much has been written about the exaggerated European "resistance movement" that allegedly inflicted enormous damage on Germany and testified that Europe categorically rejected its unification under German leadership. But, with the exception of Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland and Greece, the extent of the Resistance is the same ideological myth. Undoubtedly, the regime established by Germany in the occupied countries did not suit the general population. In Germany itself, there was also resistance to the regime, but in neither case was this the resistance of the country and the nation as a whole. For example, in the resistance movement in France, 20 thousand people died in 5 years; over the same 5 years, about 50 thousand Frenchmen who fought on the side of the Germans died, that is, 2.5 times more!

In Soviet times, the exaggeration of the Resistance was introduced into the minds as a useful ideological myth, they say, all of Europe supported our fight against Germany. In fact, as already mentioned, only 4 countries put up serious resistance to the invaders, which is explained by their “patriarchy”: they were alien not so much to the “German” orders imposed by the Reich as to the pan-European ones, because these countries, in their way of life and consciousness, in many respects do not belonged to European civilization (although geographically included in Europe).

Thus, by 1941, almost all of continental Europe, one way or another, but without much upheaval, became part of the new empire with Germany at the head. Of the two dozen European countries that existed, almost half - Spain, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Croatia - joined the war against the USSR together with Germany, sending their armed forces to the Eastern Front (Denmark and Spain without a formal announcement wars). The rest of the European countries did not take part in the hostilities against the USSR, but somehow "worked" for Germany, or rather, for the newly formed European Empire. A misconception about the events in Europe made us completely forget about many real events of that time. So, for example, the Anglo-American troops under the command of Eisenhower in November 1942 in North Africa fought at first not with the Germans, but with a 200,000-strong French army, despite a quick “victory” (Jean Darlan, due to the clear superiority of the Allied forces, ordered the French troops to surrender), 584 Americans, 597 British and 1,600 French were killed in the fighting. Of course, these are meager losses on the scale of the entire Second World War, but they show that the situation was somewhat more complicated than is usually thought.

The Red Army in the battles on the Eastern Front captured half a million prisoners who are citizens of countries that did not seem to be at war with the USSR! It can be objected that these are the "victims" of German violence, which drove them into the Russian expanses. But the Germans were no more stupid than you and me and would hardly have allowed an unreliable contingent to the front without exception. And while another great and multinational army won victories in Russia, Europe was, by and large, on its side. Franz Halder in his diary on June 30, 1941 recorded Hitler's words: "European unity as a result of a joint war against Russia." And Hitler quite correctly assessed the situation. In fact, the geopolitical goals of the war against the USSR were carried out not only by the Germans, but by 300 million Europeans, united on various grounds - from forced submission to desired cooperation - but, one way or another, acting together. Only thanks to the reliance on continental Europe, the Germans were able to mobilize 25% of the entire population into the army (for reference: the USSR mobilized 17% of its citizens). In a word, the strength and technical equipment of the army that invaded the USSR was provided by tens of millions of skilled workers throughout Europe.

Why did I need such a long introduction? The answer is simple. Finally, we must realize that the USSR fought not only with the German Third Reich, but with almost all of Europe. Unfortunately, the eternal "Russophobia" of Europe was superimposed by the fear of the "terrible beast" - Bolshevism. Many volunteers from European countries who fought in Russia fought precisely against the communist ideology alien to them. No fewer of them were conscious haters of the "inferior" Slavs, infected with the plague of racial superiority. The modern German historian R. Ruhrup writes:

"Many documents of the Third Reich imprinted the image of the enemy - Russian, deeply rooted in German history and society. Such views were characteristic even of those officers and soldiers who were not convinced or enthusiastic Nazis. They (these soldiers and officers) also shared ideas about" eternal struggle" of the Germans ... about the protection of European culture from the "Asian hordes", about the cultural vocation and the right of domination of the Germans in the East. The image of an enemy of this type was widespread in Germany, he belonged to the "spiritual values".

And this geopolitical consciousness was characteristic not only of the Germans, as such. After June 22, 1941, volunteer legions appeared by leaps and bounds, later turning into the SS divisions Nordland (Scandinavian), Langemarck (Belgian-Flemish), Charlemagne (French). Guess where they defended "European civilization"? That's right, quite far from Western Europe, in Belarus, in Ukraine, in Russia. The German professor K. Pfeffer wrote in 1953: “Most of the volunteers from the countries of Western Europe went to the Eastern Front because they saw this as a GENERAL task for the entire West ...” It was with the forces of almost all of Europe that the USSR was destined to face, and not only with Germany, and this clash was not “two totalitarianisms”, but “civilized and progressive” Europe with the “barbarian state of subhumans”, which for so long frightened Europeans from the east.

1. Losses of the USSR

According to the official data of the 1939 census, 170 million people lived in the USSR - significantly more than in any other single country in Europe. The entire population of Europe (excluding the USSR) was 400 million people. By the beginning of World War II, the population of the Soviet Union differed from the population of future enemies and allies by a high mortality rate and low life expectancy. Nevertheless, the high birth rate ensured a significant increase in the population (2% in 1938–39). Also, the difference from Europe was in the youth of the population of the USSR: the proportion of children under 15 years old was 35%. It was this feature that made it possible relatively quickly (within 10 years) to restore the pre-war population. The share of the urban population was only 32% (for comparison: in the UK - more than 80%, in France - 50%, in Germany - 70%, in the USA - 60%, and only in Japan did it have the same value as in USSR).

In 1939, the population of the USSR increased markedly after the entry into the country of new regions (Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic States, Bukovina and Bessarabia), whose population ranged from 20 to 22.5 million people. The total population of the USSR, according to the certificate of the CSB on January 1, 1941, was determined at 198,588 thousand people (including the RSFSR - 111,745 thousand people). According to modern estimates, it was still less, and on June 1, 41 it was 196.7 million people.

Population of some countries for 1938–40

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

By 1940, the population of the Reich had increased to 90 million people, and taking into account satellites and conquered countries - 297 million people. By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, on which 74.5 million people lived before the start of the Second World War. This once again emphasizes that despite Hitler's assurances, the USSR had no advantages in human resources over the Third Reich.

During the entire period of the Great Patriotic War in our country, 34.5 million people put on military uniforms. This amounted to about 70% of the total number of men aged 15–49 in 1941. The number of women in the Red Army was approximately 500,000. The percentage of those called up was higher only in Germany, but as we said earlier, the Germans covered the labor shortage at the expense of European workers and prisoners of war. In the USSR, such a deficit was covered by the increased length of the working day and the widespread use of the labor of women, children and the elderly.

For a long time, the USSR did not talk about direct irretrievable losses of the Red Army. In a private conversation, Marshal Konev in 1962 called the figure 10 million people, the well-known defector - Colonel Kalinov, who fled to the West in 1949 - 13.6 million people. The figure of 10 million people was published in the French version of the book "Wars and Population" by B. Ts. Urlanis, a well-known Soviet demographer. In 1993 and 2001, the authors of the well-known monograph “Secret Classified Removed” (under the editorship of G. Krivosheev) published the figure of 8.7 million people; at the moment, it is indicated in most reference literature. But the authors themselves state that it does not include: 500,000 conscripts called up for mobilization and captured by the enemy, but not included in the lists of units and formations. The almost completely dead militiamen of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other large cities are also not taken into account. Currently, the most complete lists of irretrievable losses of Soviet soldiers are 13.7 million people, but approximately 12-15% of the records are repeated. According to the article "Dead Souls of the Great Patriotic War" ("NG", 06/22/99), the historical and archival search center "Destiny" of the "War Memorials" association found that due to double and even triple counting, the number of dead soldiers of the 43rd and 2 th Shock armies in the battles studied by the center were overestimated by 10-12%. Since these figures refer to the period when the accounting of losses in the Red Army was not accurate enough, it can be assumed that in the whole war, due to double counting, the number of dead Red Army soldiers is overestimated by about 5–7%, i.e., by 0.2– 0.4 million people

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

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

1) voluntary helpers (hiwi)
2) order service (one)
3) front-line auxiliary parts (noise)
4) police and defense teams (gema).

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

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

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

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

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

Such high figures for Lithuania and Latvia are explained by the fact that there were death camps and concentration camps for prisoners of war. The losses of the population in the front line during the hostilities were also huge. However, it is virtually impossible to determine them. The minimum allowable value is the number of deaths in besieged Leningrad, that is, 800 thousand people. In 1942, the infant mortality rate in Leningrad reached 74.8%, that is, out of 100 newborns, about 75 babies died!

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

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

So let's summarize:

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

What do we have in the "dry" residue? We will be guided by simple logic.

The estimate of the losses of the Red Army, given in 1947 (7 million) is not credible, because not all calculations, even with the imperfection of the Soviet system, were completed.

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

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

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

In view of the foregoing, discarding deliberately underestimated and overestimated estimates of losses, we get: the Krivosheev Commission - 8.7 million people (with prisoners of war 11.994 million data for 2001), Maksudov - losses are even slightly lower than the official ones - 11.8 million people. (1977 −93), Timashev - 12.2 million people. (1948). The opinion of M. Harrison can also be included here, with the level of total losses indicated by him, the losses of the army should fit into this interval. These data were obtained by various calculation methods, since both Timashev and Maksudov, respectively, did not have access to the archives of the USSR and Russian Defense Ministry. It seems that the losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War lie very close to such a "heap" group of results. Let's not forget that these figures include 2.6-3.2 million destroyed Soviet prisoners of war.

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

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

2. Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

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 German historians, there were about 3.1 million German military personnel in Soviet prisoner of war camps alone. The discrepancy, as you can see, is about 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in the estimate of the number of Germans killed in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of Germans 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.

The vast majority of publications devoted to the calculations of the combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops are based on the data of the central bureau (department) for accounting for the losses of personnel of the armed forces, which is part of the German General Staff of the Supreme High Command. Moreover, while denying the reliability of Soviet statistics, the German data are regarded as absolutely reliable. But upon closer examination, it turned out that the opinion about the high reliability of the information of this department was greatly exaggerated. Thus, the German historian R. Overmans in the article “The human casualties of World War II in Germany” came to the conclusion that “... the channels of information in the Wehrmacht do not reveal the degree of reliability that some authors attribute to them.” As an example, he reports that “... the official report of the losses department at the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, relating to 1944, documented that the losses that were incurred during the Polish, French and Norwegian campaigns and the identification of which did not present any technical difficulties were almost twice as high as originally reported." According to Muller-Gillebrand, which many researchers believe, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 3.2 million people. Another 0.8 million died in captivity. However, according to a certificate from the organizational department of the OKH dated May 1, 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. people This is the most recent report on the losses of the German Armed Forces. In addition, from mid-April 1945, there was no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. It remains a fact that in one of the last radio broadcasts with his participation, Hitler announced the figure of 12.5 million total losses of the German Armed Forces, of which 6.7 million are irretrievable, which exceeds the Müller-Hillebrand data by about two times. This was in March 1945. I do not think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.

In general, the data of the Wehrmacht loss department cannot serve as the initial data for calculating the losses of the German Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War.

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.

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

The number of prisoners of war of the Wehrmacht was determined by V. Gurkin by summing up the prisoners of war taken by the Red Army (3.178 million people) and the allied forces (4.209 million people) until May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is too high: it also included prisoners of war who were not soldiers of the Wehrmacht. The book by Paul Karel and Ponter Beddecker “German Prisoners of War of the Second World War” states: “... In June 1945, the Allied Joint Command became aware that there were 7,614,794 prisoners of war and unarmed military personnel in the “camps, of which 4,209,000 by the time capitulations were already in captivity." Among the indicated 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other persons. For example, in the French camp of Vitrilet-Francois, among the prisoners, "the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest - almost 70." The authors write about captive Volksturmites, about the organization by the Americans of special "children's" camps, where captured twelve-thirteen-year-old boys from the "Hitler Youth" and "Werwolf" were gathered. Mention is made of the placement of even disabled people in the camps. In the article "My way to Ryazan captivity" (" Map" No. 1, 1992) Heinrich Shippmann noted:

"It should be taken into account that at first they were taken prisoner, although predominantly, but not exclusively, not only Wehrmacht soldiers or SS troops, but also Air Force service personnel, members of the Volkssturm or paramilitary unions (organization "Todt", "Service labor of the Reich", etc.) Among them were not only men, but also women - and not only Germans, but also the so-called "Volksdeutsche" and "aliens" - Croats, Serbs, Cossacks, North and West Europeans, who in any way fought on the side of the German Wehrmacht or were ranked among it.In addition, during the occupation of Germany in 1945, anyone who wore a uniform was arrested, even if it was the head of the railway station.

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

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

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

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

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

Soviet zone of occupation (without East Berlin): men - 7.419 million, women - 9.914 million, total: 17.333 million people.

All western zones of occupation, (without western Berlin): men - 20.614 million, women - 24.804 million, total: 45.418 million people.

Berlin (all sectors of occupation), men - 1.29 million, women - 1.89 million, total: 3.18 million people.

The total population of Germany is 65?931?000 people. A purely arithmetic operation of 70.2 million - 66 million, it seems, gives a decrease of only 4.2 million. However, everything is not so simple.

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

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

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

These are all territories that were officially included in the Reich, and whose inhabitants were subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht. We will not take into account the “Imperial Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” and the “Governorship of Poland” (although ethnic Germans were drafted into the Wehrmacht from these territories). And ALL of these territories until the beginning of 1945 remained under the control of the Nazis. Now we get the “final calculation” if we take into account that the losses of Austria are known to us and amount to 300,000 people, that is, 4.43% of the country's population (which, of course, is much less in % than Germany). It will not be a big "stretch" to assume that the population of the remaining areas of the Reich suffered the same percentage losses as a result of the war, which will give us another 673,000 people. As a result, the total human losses of the Third Reich are 12.15 million + 0.3 million + 0.6 million people. = 13.05 million people. This "number" is already more like the truth. Taking into account the fact that these losses include 0.5 - 0.75 million dead civilians (and not 3.5 million), we get the losses of the Third Reich Armed Forces equal to 12.3 million people irrevocably. Considering that even the Germans recognize the loss of their Armed Forces in the East as 75-80% of all losses on all fronts, then the Reich Armed Forces lost about 9.2 million in battles with the Red Army (75% of 12.3 million) man irrevocably. Of course, by no means all of them were killed, but having data on the released (2.35 million), as well as prisoners of war who died in captivity (0.38 million), we can say quite accurately that actually killed and died from wounds and in captivity, and also missing, but not captured (read "killed", and this is 0.7 million!), The Third Reich Armed Forces lost about 5.6-6 million people during the campaign to the East. According to these calculations, the irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR and the Third Reich (without allies) correlate as 1.3: 1, and the combat losses of the Red Army (data from the team led by Krivosheev) and the Armed Forces of the Reich as 1.6: 1.

The procedure for calculating the total human losses of Germany

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

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

Conclusion
In this article, the author does not pretend to seek out the "golden section" and "ultimate truth." The data presented in it are available in the scientific literature and the web. It's just that they are all scattered and scattered across various sources. The author expresses his personal opinion: it is impossible to trust the German and Soviet sources of the war, because their own losses are underestimated by at least 2-3 times, the losses of the enemy are exaggerated by the same 2-3 times. It is all the more strange that German sources, in contrast to Soviet ones, are recognized as completely “reliable”, although, as the simplest analysis shows, this is not so.

The irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War amount to 11.5 - 12.0 million people irrevocably, with actual combat demographic losses of 8.7-9.3 million people. The losses of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops on the Eastern Front amount to 8.0 - 8.9 million people irrevocably, of which 5.2-6.1 million are purely combat demographics (including those who died in captivity) people. In addition to the losses of the German Armed Forces themselves on the Eastern Front, it is necessary to add the losses of the satellite countries, and this is neither more nor less than 850 thousand (including those who died in captivity) people killed and more than 600 thousand prisoners. Total 12.0 (largest) million versus 9.05 (lowest) million.

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

The author is aware that these articles differ from the latest officially proclaimed version of the losses: the losses of the USSR Armed Forces - 6.8 million servicemen killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing, Germany's losses - 4.046 million servicemen dead, dead from wounds, missing (including 442.1 thousand dead in captivity), the loss of satellite countries 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand prisoners. Irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people. The total loss of Germany 11.2 million people. (for example on Wikipedia)

The issue with the civilian population is more terrible against 14.4 (the smallest number) million people of the victims of the Second World War in the USSR - 3.2 million people (the largest number) of victims from the German side. So who fought with whom? It is also necessary to mention that, without denying the Holocaust of the Jews, the German society still does not perceive the “Slavic” Holocaust, if everything (thousands of works) is known about the suffering of the Jewish people in the West, then they prefer to “modestly” keep quiet about the crimes against the Slavic peoples. The non-participation of our researchers, for example, in the all-German "dispute of historians" only exacerbates this situation.

I would like to end the article with the phrase of an unknown British officer. When he saw a column of Soviet prisoners of war being driven past the "international" camp, he said: "I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they do to Germany."

The article was written in 2007. Since then, the author has not changed his opinion. That is, there was no “stupid” flooding with corpses from the side of the Red Army, however, as well as a special numerical superiority. This is also proved by the recent appearance of a large layer of Russian “oral history”, that is, memoirs of ordinary participants in the Second World War. For example, Elektron Priklonsky, the author of The Self-Propelled Diary, mentions that throughout the war he saw two “killing fields”: when our troops were attacked in the Baltic states and they came under machine gun flank fire, and when the Germans broke through from the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky pocket. The example is a single one, but nevertheless, it is valuable in that the diary of the war period, which means it is quite objective.

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

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

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

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

The difference between the relative losses of the winner and the loser characterizes the degree of persuasiveness of the victory. Wars with similar values of the relative losses of the parties end with peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese War). In wars ending, like the Great Patriotic War, in the complete surrender of the enemy (Napoleonic wars, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the vanquished (by at least 30%). In other words, the greater the loss, the greater must be the size of the army in order to win a convincing victory. If the losses of an army are 2 times greater than those of the enemy, then in order to win the war, its strength must be at least 2.6 times the strength of the opposing army.

And now let's return to the Great Patriotic War and see what human resources the USSR and Nazi Germany had during the war. Available data on the strength of the opposing sides on the Soviet-German front are given in Table. 6.

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

The figures for the ratio of irretrievable combat losses given in Table. 6 do not exceed the value of the upper limit of the loss ratio obtained above. However, this does not mean that they are final and not subject to change. As new documents, statistical materials, research results appear, the losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht (Tables 1-5) can be refined, changed in one direction or another, their ratio can also change, but it cannot be higher than 1.3 :one.

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27. V. Kozhinov. The Great War of Russia. Series of lectures 1000th anniversary of Russian wars. "Yauza" 2005
28. Materials of the newspaper "Duel"
29. E. Beevor "The Fall of Berlin" M.2003