Percentage of deaths in World War II. How many Soviet people died in World War II

World War II was the most destructive war in the history of mankind. Its consequences are still debated to this day. 80% of the world's population took part in it.

Many questions arise about how many people died in World War II, as different sources of information give different figures for the loss of life between 1939 and 1945. The differences are due to where the source information was obtained, as well as to which method of calculation was used.

Total death toll

It is worth noting that many historians and professors have been studying this issue. The number of dead from the Soviet Union was calculated by the staff of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. According to new archival data, the information of which is given for 2001, the Great Patriotic War claimed the lives of 27 million people in total. Of these, more than seven million people are military personnel who were killed or died from their injuries.

Talk about how many people died from 1939 to 1945. as a result of hostilities, continue to this day, since it is almost impossible to calculate the losses. Various researchers and historians give their data: from 40 to 60 million people. After the war, the real data was hidden. During the reign of Stalin, it was said that the losses of the USSR amounted to 8 million people. During the Brezhnev era, this figure increased to 20 million, and during the period of perestroika - up to 36 million.

The free encyclopedia Wikipedia provides the following data: more than 25.5 million military personnel and about 47 million civilians (including all participating countries), i.e. in total, the number of losses exceeds 70 million people.

Read about other events in our history in the section.

In 1993, after the collapse of the USSR, the first public Soviet statistics of losses during World War II appeared, created under the leadership of General Grigory Krivosheev by order of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Here is an article by the St. Petersburg amateur historian Vyacheslav Krasikov about what the Soviet military genius actually calculated.

The topic of Soviet losses in World War II is still taboo in Russia, primarily because of the unwillingness of society and the state to look at this problem in an adult way. The only "statistical" study on this topic is the work "Secrecy Removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Operations and Military Conflicts" published in 1993. In 1997, an English-language edition of the study was published, and in 2001, the second edition of “Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts” appeared.

If you do not pay attention to the shamefully late appearance of statistics on Soviet losses in general (almost 50 years after the end of the war), the work of Krivosheev, who headed the team of employees of the Ministry of Defense, did not make a big splash in the scientific world (of course, for the post-Soviet autochthons, it became a balm per capita, since it brought Soviet losses to the same level as German ones). One of the main sources of data for the team of authors led by Krivosheev is the General Staff Fund in the Central Archive of the RF Ministry of Defense (TsAMO), which is still classified and to which researchers have no access. That is, it is objectively impossible to verify the accuracy of the work of military archivists. For this reason, in the West, the scientific community, which has been dealing with the issue of losses in World War II for almost 60 years, reacted coolly to the work of Krivosheev and simply did not even notice it.

In Russia, attempts were repeatedly made to criticize the study of Grigory Krivosheev - critics reproached the general for methodological inaccuracies, the use of unverified and unproven data, purely arithmetic inconsistencies, and so on. As an example, you can see. We want to offer our readers not so much another criticism of Krivosheev's work itself, but an attempt to introduce new, additional data (for example, party and Komsomol statistics) into circulation, which will shed more light on the size of total Soviet losses. Perhaps this will contribute in the future to their gradual approach to reality and the development of a normal, civilized scientific discussion in Russia. The article by Vyacheslav Krasikov, in which all links are affixed, can be downloaded in full. All the scans of the books he refers to

Soviet historiography: how many are left unforgotten?

After a war in civilized countries, it is customary to reflect on the course of battles by subjecting them to a critical discussion in the light of enemy documents that have become available. Such work, of course, requires maximum objectivity. Otherwise, it is simply impossible to draw the right conclusions so as not to repeat past mistakes. However, the works that were published in the USSR in the first post-war decade cannot be called historical research even with a big stretch. They consisted mainly of cliches on the theme of the inevitability of victory under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the original superiority of Soviet military art and the genius of Comrade Stalin. Memoirs during the life of the “leader of the peoples” were almost never published, and the little that came out of print looked more like fantastic literature. There was essentially no serious work for censorship in such a situation. Unless to identify those who are not diligent enough in the matter of glorification. Therefore, this institution turned out to be completely unprepared for the surprises and metamorphoses of the hectic Khrushchev “thaw”.

However, the information explosion of the 50s is the merit of more than one Nikita Sergeevich. The blissful idyll described above was destroyed by banal human ambition.

The fact is that in the West the process of understanding the recent hostilities proceeded in a normal civilized way. The generals talked about their achievements and shared their smart thoughts with the public. The Soviet military elite, of course, also wanted to participate in such an interesting and exciting process, but the "Kremlin mountaineer" did not like this kind of activity. But after March 1953, this obstacle disappeared. As a result, Soviet censorship was immediately attacked by an order to publish translations of some works about the Second World War written by former enemies and allies. In this case, they limited themselves only to cuts of especially unpleasant pages and editorial comments that helped Soviet readers to “correctly” understand the work of foreigners “prone to falsification”. But when, following this, a large number of their own gold-chasing authors received permission to publish their memoirs, the process of “comprehension” finally got out of control. And it led to completely unexpected results for its initiators. A lot of events and figures became public property, which, complementing and clarifying each other, formed a completely different mosaic than the previously existing picture of the war. What is worth only one threefold increase in the official figure of the total losses of the USSR from 7 to 20 million people.

Of course, the writers themselves understood "what's what" and tried to pass over their own failures in silence. But something was reported about such moments in the battle path of former comrades-in-arms. As a result, there were also side effects. Such as a public scandal with written complaints against each other in the Central Committee of the CPSU, Marshals Zhukov and Chuikov, who did not share the victorious laurels. In addition, any pleasant, at first glance, fact can destroy the myth created over the years in one fell swoop. For example, the flattering information for high-ranking "home front workers" that the Soviet industry was constantly producing more equipment than the German one inevitably called into question the general's bragging about victories "not by number, but by skill."

Thus, military-historical science has taken, on the scale of the Soviet Union, a gigantic step forward. After that, it became impossible to return to Stalin's times. Nevertheless, with the coming to power of Brezhnev, they again tried to streamline the affairs in the field of coverage of the events of the Great Patriotic War.

Thus, by the middle of the 1980s, the intellectual environment of the Russian historiography of the Second World War was finally formed. Most of the specialists who are developing this topic today have been nourished by its traditions. It cannot, of course, be argued that all historians continue to cling to the stereotypes of "the times of Ochakov and the conquest of the Crimea." Suffice it to recall the “perestroika” euphoria of revelations that ended in a grandiose scandal in 1991, when, in order to please the generals from history, who literally went into a “protective” hysteria, the editorial board of the new 10-volume “History of the Great Patriotic War” was purged, since its authors wanted to rise to objective analysis performed according to Western scientific standards. As a result, the "rootless cosmopolitans" were excommunicated from the archives, as well as the corresponding organizational conclusions. The head of the Institute of Military History, General D. A. Volkogonov, was relieved of his post, and most of his young assistants were dismissed from the army. Control over the work on the preparation of the 10-volume book was tightened, for which they connected to it marshals and generals tested and proven in their previous activities. Nevertheless, a fairly large amount of statistical information on this topic during the post-war decades managed to break out of the archival doors. Let's try to systematize it.

Official Soviet figures

If we carefully trace the history of how the “numerical equivalents” of the victims of World War II changed in the USSR, we will immediately find that these changes were not in the nature of random digital chaos, but were subject to an easily traced relationship and strict logic.

Until the end of the 80s of the last century, this logic boiled down to the fact that propaganda, although very, very slowly, but gradually still gave way to science - albeit overly ideologized, but based on archival materials. Therefore, Stalin's 7,000,000 total military losses of the USSR under Khrushchev turned into 20,000,000, under Brezhnev into "more than 20,000,000", and under Gorbachev into "more than 27,000,000". In the same direction, the numbers of losses of the Armed Forces "danced" as well. As a result, already in the early 60s, it was officially recognized that more than 10,000,000 soldiers died at the front alone (not counting those who did not return from captivity). In the 70s of the last century, the figure of "more than 10,000,000 dead at the front" (not counting those killed in captivity) became generally accepted. She was cited in the most authoritative publications of the time. As an example, it suffices to recall an article by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Colonel-General of the Medical Service E.I. ".

By the way, in the same year, another "landmark" book was presented to the readers - "The Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", where the numbers of army losses and Red Army soldiers who died in captivity were published. For example, up to 7 million civilians (?) and up to 4 million captured Red Army soldiers died in German concentration camps alone, which gives a total of up to 14 million dead Red Army soldiers (10 million at the front and 4 million in captivity). Here, apparently, it is also appropriate to recall that then in the USSR each such figure was official state - it necessarily passed through the strictest censorship "sieve" - ​​it was repeatedly rechecked and often reproduced in various reference and information publications.

In principle, in the USSR in the 70s, in fact, it was recognized that the losses of the army by those who died at the front and in captivity for 1941-1945 amounted to approximately 16,000,000 - 17,000,000 people. True, the statistics were published in a somewhat veiled form.

Here in the 1st volume of the Soviet Military Encyclopedia (article "Combat losses") it is said: " So, if in the 1st World War about 10 million people were killed and died from wounds, then in the 2nd World War only the losses killed on the fronts amounted to 27 million people.» . These are precisely army losses, since the total number of deaths in World War II in the same publication is defined as 50 million people.

If we subtract from these 27,000,000 losses of the Armed Forces of all participants in the Second World War, except for the USSR, then the remainder will be about 16-17 million. It is these figures that are the number of dead military personnel recognized in the USSR (at the front and in captivity). To count "everyone except the USSR", then it was possible according to the book by Boris Urlanis "Wars and the population of Europe", which was first published in the Union in 1960. Now it is easy to find it on the Internet under the name "History of military losses".

All of the above statistics on army losses were repeatedly reproduced in the USSR until the end of the 80s. But in 1990, the Russian General Staff published the results of its own new "updated" calculations of irretrievable army losses. Surprisingly, they somehow mysteriously turned out not more than the previous "stagnant", but less. Moreover, less cool - almost in 2 times. Specifically, 8,668,400 people. The solution to the puzzle here is simple - during the period of Gorbachev's perestroika, history again became politicized to the limit, turning into a propaganda tool. And the "big stripes" from the Ministry of Defense decided in this manner "on the sly" to improve the "patriotic" statistics.

Therefore, no explanation for such a strange arithmetic metamorphosis followed. On the contrary, soon these 8.668.400 (again without explanation) were "detailed" in the reference book "Secrecy stamp removed", which was then supplemented and republished. And what is most striking is that Soviet figures were instantly forgotten - they simply quietly disappeared from books published under the patronage of the state. But the question to the logical absurdity of such a situation remained:

It turns out that in the USSR for 3 decades they tried to “denigrate” one of their most important achievements - the victory over Nazi Germany - they pretended that they fought worse than they actually did and for this they published false data on army losses, inflated by two times.

And the real "beautiful" statistics were kept under the heading "secret" ...

Vulture of secrecy eating the dead

Analyzing all the amazing data of Krivosheev's "research", one can write several solid monographs. Different authors are most often carried away by examples of analyzing the results of individual operations. These are, of course, good visual illustrations. However, they call into question only partial figures - against the background of general losses, they are not very large.

Krivosheev hides the bulk of the losses among the “re-conscripted”. In the “Secret Classification” he indicates their number as “more than 2 million”, and in “Russia in the Wars” he generally throws out from the text of the book an indication of the number of this category of conscripts. He simply writes that the total number of mobilized people is 34,476,700 - excluding those re-conscripted. The exact number of those re-conscripted - 2,237,000 people - was named by Krivosheev in only one article, published in a small-circulation collection sixteen years ago.

Who are the "re-called"? This is, for example, when a person was seriously wounded in 1941 and after a long treatment was "written off" from the army "for health reasons." But, when in the second half of the war human resources were already coming to an end, the medical requirements were revised and lowered. As a result, the man was again recognized as fit for service and drafted into the army. And in 1944 he was killed. Thus, Krivosheev counts this person in the mobilized only once. But he “takes out” twice from the ranks of the army - first as a disabled person, and then as a dead man. Ultimately, it turns out that one of the "withdrawn" hides from accounting in the amount of total irretrievable losses.

Another example. The man was mobilized, but was soon transferred to the NKVD troops. A few months later, this part of the NKVD was transferred back to the Red Army (for example, on the Leningrad Front in 1942, an entire division was immediately transferred from the NKVD to the Red Army - they simply changed their number). But Krivosheev takes this soldier into account in the initial transfer from the army to the NKVD, but does not notice the return transfer from the NKVD to the Red Army (since those re-conscripted from him are excluded from the list of those mobilized). Therefore, it turns out that the person is again "hidden" - in fact, he is in the army of the post-war period, but Krivosheev is not taken into account.

Another example. The man was mobilized, but in 1941 he went missing - he remained surrounded and "taken root" among the civilian population. In 1943, this territory was liberated, and the "Primak" was again drafted into the army. However, in 1944, his leg was torn off. As a result, disability and write-off "on the net." Krivosheev subtracts this person from 34,476,700 as many as three times - first as a missing person, then among 939,700 called up in the former occupied territory of the encirclement, and also as a disabled person. It turns out that "hides" two losses.

It would take a long time to list all the tricks used in the handbook to "improve" statistics. But it is much more productive to recalculate the figures that Krivosheev offers as base ones. But to recalculate in normal logic - without "patriotic" cunning. To do this, let us again turn to the statistics indicated by the general in the small-circulation collection of losses already mentioned above.

Then we will get:
4.826.900 - the number of the Red Army and the RKKF on June 22, 1941.
31.812.200 - The number of mobilized (together with the re-conscripted) for the entire war.
In total - 36.639.100 people.

After the end of hostilities in Europe (at the beginning of June 1945), there were 12,839,800 people in the Red Army and the Red Army (including the wounded in hospitals). From here you can find out the total losses: 36.639.100 - 12.839.800 = 23.799.300

Next, we count those who, for various reasons, left the Armed Forces of the USSR alive, but not at the front:
3.798.200 - commission for health reasons.
3.614.600 - transferred to the industry, MPVO and VOKhR.
1.174.600 - transferred to the NKVD.
250.400 - transferred to the Allied armies.
206.000 - expelled as unreliable.
436.600 - convicted and sent to places of detention.
212.400 - no deserters found.
Total - 9.692.800

Let us subtract these “living” from the total losses and thus find out how many people died at the front and in captivity, and were also released from captivity in the last weeks of the war.
23.799.300 – 9.692.800 = 14.106.500

To establish the final number of demographic losses that fell to the share of the Armed Forces, it is necessary to subtract from 14,106,500 those who returned from captivity, but did not enter the army again. Krivosheev with a similar purpose deducts 1,836,000 people registered by the repatriation authorities. This is another trick. In the collection “War and Society”, prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Russian History, an article by Zemskov V.N. “Repatriation of Displaced Soviet Citizens” was published, which details all the components of the number of prisoners of war of interest to us.

It turns out that 286,299 prisoners were released on the territory of the USSR before the end of 1944. Of these, 228,068 people were re-mobilized into the army. And in 1944-1945 (during the period of hostilities outside the borders of the USSR), 659,190 people were released and mobilized into the army. In other words, they are also already counted among the re-conscripted.

That is, 887.258 (228.068 + 659.190) former prisoners at the beginning of June 1945 were among the 12.839.800 souls who served in the Red Army and the Red Army. Consequently, from 14.106.500 it is necessary to subtract not 1.8 million, but approximately 950.000 released from captivity, but not re-mobilized into the army during the war.

As a result, we get at least 13,150,000 servicemen of the Red Army and the Red Army Fleet who died at the front in 1941-1945, were captured and were among the "defectors". However, this is not all. Krivosheev also "hides" losses (killed, died in captivity and defectors) among those written off for health reasons. Here, "Secrecy removed" p. 136 (or "Russia in the wars ..." p. 243). In the figure of 3,798,158 commissioned invalids, he also takes into account those who were sent on leave for injury. In other words, people did not leave the army - in fact, they were in its ranks, and the reference book excludes them and thus “hides” at least several hundred thousand more dead.

That is, if we proceed from the figures that Krivosheev himself proposes as the initial basis for calculations, but handle them without general juggling, then we will get not 8.668.400 dead at the front, in captivity and "defectors", but about 13.500. 000.

Through the lens of party statistics

However, those data on the number of those mobilized in 1941-1945, which are declared by Krivosheev as "base" figures for calculating losses, also seem to be underestimated. A similar conclusion suggests itself if we check the reference book with the official statistics of the AUCP(b) and VLKSM. These calculations are much more accurate than army reports, since in the Red Army people often did not even have documents and even posthumous medallions (the Interpreter's blog partially touched on the related topic of tokens in the Red Army). And communists and Komsomol members were taken into account incomparably better. Each of them necessarily had a party card in his hands, regularly participated in party meetings, the protocols of which (indicating the nominal number of the “cell”) were sent to Moscow.

These data went separately from the army - along a parallel party line. And this figure was published much more readily in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev USSR - censorship treated it more condescendingly - as indicators of ideological victories, where even losses were perceived as proof of the unity of society and the devotion of the people to the socialist system.

The essence of the calculation boils down to the fact that the losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in terms of Komsomol members and communists are known quite accurately. In total, by the beginning of the war in the USSR, there were a little less than 4,000,000 members of the CPSU (b). Of these, 563,000 were in the Armed Forces. During the war years, 5,319,297 people joined the party. And immediately after the end of hostilities, its ranks consisted of about 5,500,000 people. Of which 3.324.000 served in the Armed Forces.

That is, the total losses of members of the CPSU (b) amounted to more than 3,800,000 people. Of which about 3,000,000 died at the front in the ranks of the Armed Forces. In total, approximately 6,900,000 communists passed through the Armed Forces of the USSR in 1941-1945 (out of 9,300,000 in the party during the same period of time). This figure is made up of 3,000,000 dead at the front, 3,324,000 who were in the Armed Forces immediately after the end of hostilities in Europe, as well as about 600,000 invalids who were commissioned from the Armed Forces in 1941-1945.

Here it is very useful to pay attention to the ratio of killed and disabled 3,000,000 to 600,000 = 5:1. And Krivosheev has 8.668.400 to 3.798.000 = 2.3:1. This is a very telling fact. Let us repeat once again that Party members were counted incomparably more carefully than non-Party members. They were issued a party card without fail, in each unit (up to the company level) their own party cell was organized, which took into account each newly arrived party member. Therefore, party statistics were much more accurate than regular army statistics. And the difference in this very accuracy is clearly illustrated by the ratio between the dead and the disabled among non-party and communists in official Soviet figures and by Krivosheev.

Now let's move on to the Komsomol members. As of June 1941, there were 1,926,000 people in the Komsomol from the Red Army and the RKKF. Still, at least several tens of thousands of people were registered in the Komsomol organizations of the NKVD troops. Therefore, it can be assumed that by the beginning of the war there were about 2,000,000 members of the Komsomol in the Armed Forces of the USSR.

More than 3,500,000 members of the Komsomol were drafted into the Armed Forces during the war years. In the Armed Forces themselves, over 5,000,000 people were accepted into the ranks of the Komsomol during the war years.

That is, in total, more than 10,500,000 people passed through the Komsomol in the Armed Forces in 1941-1945. Of these, 1,769,458 people joined the CPSU (b). Thus, it turns out that in total at least 15,600,000 communists and Komsomol members passed through the Armed Forces in 1941-1945 (about 6,900,000 communists + more than 10,500,000 Komsomol members - 1,769,458 Komsomol members who joined the CPSU (b).

This is approximately 43% of the 36,639,100 people who, according to Krivosheev, passed through the Armed Forces during the war years. However, the official Soviet statistics of the 1960s and 1980s do not confirm this ratio. It says that at the beginning of January 1942 there were 1,750,000 Komsomol members and 1,234,373 Communists in the Armed Forces. This is a little over 25% of the entire armed forces, numbering about 11.5 million people (together with the wounded who were being treated).

Even after twelve months, the proportion of communists and Komsomol members was no more than 33%. At the beginning of January 1943, there were 1,938,327 Communists and 2,200,200 Komsomol members in the Armed Forces. That is, 1.938.327 + 2.200.000 = 4.150.000 communists and Komsomol members from the Armed Forces, who had approximately 13.000.000 people.

13,000,000, since Krivosheev himself claims that since 1943 the USSR maintained an army of 11,500,000 people (plus about 1,500,000 in hospitals). In the middle of 1943, the proportion of communists and non-party people did not increase very noticeably, reaching only 36% in July. At the beginning of January 1944, there were 2,702,566 Communists and approximately 2,400,000 Komsomol members in the Armed Forces. I have not yet found a more accurate figure, but in December 1943 it was exactly 2,400,000 - the highest number in the entire war. That is, in January 1943 it could not be more. It turns out - 2.702.566 + 2.400.000 = approximately 5.100.000 communists and Komsomol members from the army of 13.000.000 people - about 40%.

At the beginning of January 1945, there were 3,030,758 Communists and 2,202,945 Komsomol members in the Armed Forces. That is, at the beginning of 1945, the share of communists and Komsomol members (3.030.758 + 2.202.945) from the army of about 13,000,000 people was again about 40%. Here it is also appropriate to recall that the bulk of the losses of the Red Army and the Red Army (respectively, the number of those mobilized to replace them) occurred in the first year and a half of the war, when the share of the CPSU (b) and the Komsomol was less than 33%. That is, it turns out that the average share of communists and Komsomol members in the Armed Forces during the war was no more than 35%. In other words, if we take as a basis the total number of communists and Komsomol members (15,600,000), then the number of people who passed through the Armed Forces of the USSR in 1941-1945 will be approximately 44,000,000. And not 36.639.100, as indicated by Krivosheev. Accordingly, the overall losses will also increase.

By the way, the total losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR for 1941-1945 can also be approximately calculated if we start from the official Soviet data on losses among communists and Komsomol members, published in the 60-80s. They say that the army organizations of the CPSU (b) lost approximately 3,000,000 people. And the VLKSM organizations number about 4,000,000 people. In other words, 35% of the army lost 7,000,000. Consequently, all the Armed Forces lost about 19,000,000 - 20,000,000 souls (killed at the front, killed in captivity and became "defectors").

Losses in 1941

Analyzing the dynamics of the number of communists and Komsomol members in the Armed Forces, one can quite clearly calculate Soviet front-line losses over the years of the war. They are also at least twice (more often than twice) higher than the data published in the Krivosheev reference book.

For example, Krivosheev reports that in June-December 1941, the Red Army irretrievably lost (killed, missing, died from wounds and diseases) 3,137,673 people. This figure is easy to verify. The encyclopedia "The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" reports that by June 1941 there were 563,000 communists in the army and navy. It is further indicated that over 500,000 members of the CPSU (b) died in the first six months of the war. And that on January 1, 1942, there were 1,234,373 party members in the army and navy.

How to find out what is the meaning of "above"? The twelfth volume of The History of the Second World War 1939-1945 states that during the first six months of the war, more than 1,100,000 communists joined army and navy organizations from civilians. It turns out: 563 (as of June 22) + "over" 1,100,000 (mobilized) = "over" 1,663,000 communists.
Further. In the sixth volume "History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945" from the plate "Numerical growth of the party" you can find out that the military party organizations accepted into their ranks in July-December 1941 145,870 people.

It turns out: “More than” 1.663.000 + 145.870 = “more than” 1.808.870 communists were involved in the Red Army in June-December 1941. Now from this amount we subtract the amount that was on January 1, 1942:
"Over" 1.808.870 - 1.234.373 = "Over" 574.497

It was we who received the irretrievable losses of the CPSU (b) - killed, captured, missing.

Now let's decide on the Komsomol members. From the "Soviet Military Encyclopedia" you can find out that by the beginning of the war there were 1,926,000 members of the Komsomol in the army and navy. The encyclopedia "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" reports that over 2,000,000 Komsomol members were drafted into the army and navy during the first six months of the war, and indicates that in addition, 207,000 people were already accepted into the Komsomol in the ranks of the Red Army and the RKKF. We also see there that by the end of 1941, the Komsomol organizations in the Armed Forces numbered 1,750,000 people.

We calculate - 1.926.000 + "over" 2.000.000 + 207.000 = "over" 4.133.000. This is the total number of Komsomol members who passed through the Armed Forces in 1941. Now you can find out irretrievable losses. From the total, we subtract what was available on January 1, 1942: “Over” 4.133.000 - 1.750.000 = “over” 2.383.000.

It was we who got the dead, the missing, the prisoners.

However, here the figure should be slightly reduced - by the number of those who left the Komsomol by age. That is, about one tenth of those remaining in the ranks. It is also necessary to take away the Komsomol members who joined the CPSU (b) - approximately 70,000 people. Thus, according to a very conservative estimate, the irretrievable losses of the Red Army and the RKKF among the communists and Komsomol members amounted to at least 2,500,000 souls. And Krivosheev has the number 3.137.673 in this column. Of course, together with non-party people.

3.137.673 - 2.500.000 = 637.673 - this remains on the non-partisans.

How many non-party people were mobilized in 1941? Krivosheev writes that by the beginning of the war there were 4,826,907 souls in the Red Army and Navy. In addition, at the training camp in the ranks of the Red Army at that time there were another 805.264 people. It turns out - 4.826.907 + 805.264 = 5.632.171 people by June 22, 1941.

How many people were mobilized in June - December 1941? We find the answer in an article by General Gradoselsky, published in the Military Historical Journal. From the analysis of the figures given there, we can conclude that during the two mobilizations of 1941, more than 14,000,000 people came to the Red Army and the Red Army (excluding militias). And in total, 5.632.171 + more than 14.000.000 = approximately 20.000.000 people were involved in the army in 1941 in this way. This means that from 20,000,000 we subtract "more than" 1,808,870 Communists and about 4,000,000 Komsomol members. We get about 14,000,000 non-party people.

And, if you look at these figures through the statistics of the losses of the Krivosheev reference book, it turns out that 6,000,000 communists and Komsomol members irretrievably lost 2,500,000 people. And 14,000,000 non-party 637,673 people ...

Simply put, the losses of non-party people are underestimated at least six times. And the total irretrievable losses of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941 should not be 3.137.673, but 6-7 million. This is at the bare minimum. Most likely more.

In this regard, it is useful to recall that the German Armed Forces in 1941 lost about 300,000 people killed and missing on the Eastern Front. That is, for each of their soldiers, the Germans took at least 20 souls from the Soviet side. Most likely, more - up to 25. This is approximately the same ratio with which European armies of the 19th and 20th centuries beat African savages in colonial wars.

The difference in the information that governments communicated to their peoples also looks about the same. Hitler, in one of his last public speeches in March 1945, announced that Germany had lost 6,000,000 men in the war. Now historians believe that this did not differ much from reality, determining the final total of 6,500,000-7,000,000 dead at the front and in the rear. Stalin in 1946 said that Soviet losses were about 7,000,000 lives. Over the next half century, the figure of human losses in the USSR increased to 27,000,000. And there is a strong suspicion that this is not the limit.

Recently, parliamentary hearings “Patriotic Education of Russian Citizens: “The Immortal Regiment”” were held in the Duma. They were attended by deputies, senators, representatives of the legislative and supreme executive bodies of state power of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the Ministries of Education and Science, Defense, Foreign Affairs, Culture, members of public associations, organizations of foreign compatriots ... True, there were no those who came up with - ​journalists from Tomsk TV-2, no one even remembered them. And, in general, there was really no need to remember. The "Immortal Regiment", which, by definition, did not provide for any staffing, no commanders and political officers, has already completely transformed into a sovereign "box" of parade crew, and its main task today is to learn to step in step and keep alignment in the ranks.

“What is a people, a nation? First of all, it is respect for victories,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the parliamentary committee, admonished the participants when opening the hearings. “Today, when a new war is going on, which someone calls “hybrid”, our Victory becomes one of the main targets for attacks on historical memory. There are waves of falsification of history that should make us believe that it was not us, but someone else who won, and still make us apologize ... "For some reason, the Nikonovs are seriously sure that it was they, long before their own birth, who won the Great A victory for which, moreover, someone is trying to make them apologize. But they weren't attacked! And the aching note of the nationwide misfortune that has not passed, the phantom pain for the third generation of the descendants of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War is drowned out by a cheerful, thoughtless cry: “We can repeat it!”

Really, can we?

It was at these hearings that a terrible figure was named in between times, which for some reason was not noticed by anyone, which did not make us stop in horror on the run in order to understand WHAT we were told after all. Why this was done now, I do not know.

At the hearings, the co-chairman of the Immortal Regiment of Russia movement, State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, presented the report “The Documentary Basis of the People’s Project “Establishing the Fates of the Missing Defenders of the Fatherland”, within the framework of which studies of the population decline were carried out, which changed the idea of ​​the scale of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War.

“The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people,” Zemtsov said, citing declassified data from the USSR State Planning Committee. - Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of the action of war factors - more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians. The total natural mortality of military personnel and the civilian population during this period could have amounted to more than 10 million 833 thousand people (including 5 million 760 thousand - ​deceased children under the age of four). The irretrievable losses of the population of the USSR as a result of the action of war factors amounted to almost 42 million people.

Can we… do it again?!

Back in the 60s of the last century, the then young poet Vadim Kovda wrote a short poem in four lines: “ If only in my front door / there are three elderly disabled people / then how many of them were injured? / And killed?

Now these elderly people with disabilities due to natural causes are less and less visible. But Kovda imagined the scale of losses quite correctly, it was enough just to multiply the number of front doors.

Stalin, proceeding from considerations inaccessible to a normal person, personally determined the losses of the USSR at 7 million people - a little less than the losses of Germany. Khrushchev - 20 million. Under Gorbachev, a book was published, prepared by the Ministry of Defense under the editorship of General Krivosheev, "The Classification Mark Removed", in which the authors named and in every possible way justified this very figure - 27 million. Now it turns out that she was wrong.

On the eve of Victory Day, I would like to touch upon several important, fundamental issues. I will try to describe in general terms the pre-war potential of the USSR and Nazi Germany, and also give data on casualties on both sides, including the latest. There is also the latest data on the number of dead Yakuts.

The issue of losses in World War II has been discussed all over the world for more than a year. There are various estimates, including sensational ones. Quantitative indicators are influenced not only by various methods of calculation, but also by ideology, a subjective approach.

Western countries, led by the United States and Britain, tirelessly repeat the mantra that victory was “forged” by them in the sands of North Africa, Normandy, on the sea routes of the North Atlantic and with the help of bombing industrial facilities of Germany and its allies.

The war of the USSR against Germany and its allies is presented to the Western layman as "unknown". Some residents of Western countries, judging by the polls, in all seriousness claim that the USSR and Germany were allies in that war.

The second favorite saying of some Westerners and homegrown liberal democrats of the “Western persuasion” that the Victory over fascism was “littered with the corpses of Soviet soldiers”, “one rifle for four”, “the command threw its soldiers at machine guns, retreating was shot by detachments”, “ millions of prisoners”, without the help of the Allied troops, the victory of the Red Army over the enemy would have been impossible.

Unfortunately, after N.S. Khrushchev came to power, some of the Soviet military leaders, in order to elevate their role in the battle against the “brown plague” of the 20th century, described in their memoirs the execution of orders from the Headquarters of the commander-in-chief I.V. Stalin, as a result of which the Soviet troops suffered unreasonably high losses.

And few people pay attention to the fact that during the period of active defensive and offensive battles, the main task was and is to achieve replenishment - additional troops from the reserve. And in order to satisfy the request, you need to provide such a drill note about the heavy losses of the personnel of a particular military unit in order to receive replenishment.

As always, the truth lies in the middle!

At the same time, the official data on the losses of the Nazi armies from the Soviet side were often clearly underestimated or, conversely, overestimated, which led to a complete distortion of the statistical data on the military losses of Nazi Germany and its direct allies.

The trophy documents available in the USSR, in particular, the 10-day reports of the OKW (the high military command of the Wehrmacht), were classified, and only recently military historians have gained access to them.

For the first time, I.V. Stalin announced the losses of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War in 1946. He said that as a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost about seven million people in battles with the Germans, as well as due to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude.

Then N.S. Khrushchev, in 1961, debunking Stalin's personality cult, in a conversation with the Deputy Prime Minister of Belgium, mentioned that 20 million people died in the war.

And, finally, 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, at 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 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 her graduation.

Data on the losses of G. Krivosheev's group are considered official. In 2001, the revised figures were as follows. USSR casualties:

- 6.3 million military personnel killed or died of wounds,

- 555 thousand died from diseases, as a result of accidents, incidents, sentenced to death,

- 4.5 million- were captured and disappeared without a trace;

General demographic losses - 26.6 million Human.

German casualties:

- 4.046 million servicemen died, died of wounds, went missing.

At the same time, the irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) are 11.5 million and 8.6 million (not counting 1.6 million prisoners of war after May 9, 1945), respectively.

However, new information is now emerging.

The beginning of the war - June 22, 1941. What was the balance of power between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union? What forces and capabilities did Hitler count on when preparing an attack on the USSR? How realistic was the Barbarossa plan prepared by the Wehrmacht General Staff?

It should be noted that in June 1941 the total population of Germany, together with direct allies, amounted to 283 million man, and in the USSR - 160 million. The direct allies of Germany at that time were: Bulgaria, Hungary, Italy, Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Croatia. In the summer of 1941, the personnel of the Wehrmacht was 8.5 million people, four army groups with a total number of 7.4 million people were concentrated on the border with the USSR. Nazi Germany was armed with 5,636 tanks, more than 61,000 guns of various calibers, over 10,000 aircraft (excluding the weapons of allied military formations).

General characteristics of the Red Army of the USSR for June 1941. The total number was 5.5 million military personnel. The number of divisions of the Red Army is 300, of which 170 divisions were concentrated on the western borders (3.9 million people), the rest were stationed in the Far East (that's why Japan did not attack), in Central Asia, Transcaucasia. I must say that the divisions of the Wehrmacht were staffed according to the states of wartime, and each had 14-16 thousand people. The Soviet divisions were staffed according to the states of peacetime and consisted of 7-8 thousand people.

The Red Army was armed with 11,000 tanks, of which 1,861 were T-34 tanks and 1,239 were KV tanks (the best in the world at that time). The rest of the tanks - BT-2, BT-5, BT-7, T-26, SU-5 with weak weapons, many vehicles were idle due to lack of spare parts. Most of the tanks were to be replaced with new vehicles. More than 60% of the tanks were in the troops of the western border districts.

Soviet artillery provided powerful firepower. On the eve of the war, the Red Army had 67,335 guns and mortars. Katyusha multiple launch rocket systems began to arrive. In terms of combat qualities, Soviet field artillery was superior to German, but was poorly provided with mechanized traction. The need for special artillery tractors was met by 20.5%.

In the western military districts, the Red Army Air Force had 7,009 fighters, long-range aviation had 1,333 aircraft.

So, at the first stage of the war, qualitative and quantitative characteristics were on the side of the enemy. The Nazis had a significant advantage in manpower, automatic weapons, and mortars. And thus, Hitler's hopes to carry out a "blitzkrieg" against the USSR were calculated taking into account the real conditions, the alignment of the available armed forces and means. In addition, Germany already had practical military experience gained as a result of hostilities in other European countries. Surprise, aggressiveness, coordination of all forces and means, the precise execution of orders from the Wehrmacht General Staff, the use of armored forces on a relatively small sector of the front - this was the proven, fundamental tactic of the military formations of Nazi Germany.

This tactic has worked exceptionally well in military operations in Europe; losses in Wehrmacht manpower were small. For example, in France, 27,074 German soldiers were killed and 111,034 wounded. At the same time, the German army captured 1.8 million French soldiers. The war ended in 40 days. The victory was absolute.

In Poland, the Wehrmacht lost 16,843 soldiers, Greece - 1,484, Norway - 1,317 and another 2,375 died on the way. These "historical" victories of German weapons indescribably inspired Adolf Hitler, and they were ordered to develop the "Barbarossa" plan - a war against the USSR.

It should also be noted that the question of surrender was never raised by the Supreme Commander-in-Chief I.V. Stalin, the Stavka quite soberly analyzed and calculated the current martial law. In any case, in the first months of the war there was no panic at the main headquarters of the armies; alarmists were shot on the spot.

In mid-July 1941, the initial period of the war ended. Due to a number of subjective and objective factors, the Soviet troops suffered serious losses in manpower and equipment. As a result of heavy fighting, using air supremacy, the German armed forces by that moment had reached the borders of the Western Dvina and the middle reaches of the Dnieper, advancing to a depth of 300 to 600 km and inflicting major defeats on the Red Army, especially on the formations of the Western Front. In other words, the priority tasks of the Wehrmacht were completed. But the tactics of "blitzkrieg" still failed.

The Germans met with fierce resistance from the retreating troops. The troops of the NKVD and the border guards were especially distinguished. Here, for example, are the testimonies of a former German sergeant who participated in the attacks on the 9th outpost of the border town of Przemysl: “... The fire was terrible! We left a lot of corpses on the bridge, but we never took possession of it right away. Then the commander of my battalion gave the order to ford the river on the right and left in order to surround the bridge and capture it whole. But as soon as we rushed into the river, the Russian border guards began to pour fire on us here too. The losses were terrible ... Seeing that the plan was frustrated, the battalion commander ordered to open fire from 80-mm mortars. Only under their cover did we begin to infiltrate onto the Soviet coast ... We could not move further as quickly as our command wanted. The Soviet border guards had firing points along the coastline. They sat down in them and shot literally to the last bullet ... Nowhere, never have we seen such stamina, such military tenacity ... They preferred death to the possibility of captivity or retreat ... "

Heroic actions made it possible to buy time for the approach of the 99th Infantry Division of Colonel N.I. Dementyev. Active resistance to the enemy continued.

As a result of stubborn fighting, according to US intelligence services, in December 1941, Germany lost 1.3 million people killed in the war against the USSR, and by March 1943, the Wehrmacht’s losses amounted to 5.42 million people (information declassified by the American side in our time ).

Yakutia 1941. What was the contribution of the peoples of the Yakut ASSR to the fight against Nazi Germany? Our losses. Heroic fighters of the Olonkho Land.

As you know, since 2013, the scientific work "History of Yakutia" has been prepared. Researcher at the Institute for Humanitarian Research and Problems of Indigenous Peoples of the North SB RAS Marianna Gryaznukhina, the author of the chapter of this scientific work, which refers to the human losses of the Yakut people during the Great Patriotic War, kindly provided the following data: the population of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic in 1941, on the eve of the war, was 419 thousand Human. 62 thousand people were called up and went to the front as volunteers.

However, this cannot be called the exact number of Yakuts who fought for their homeland. Several hundred people by the beginning of the war were serving in the army, a certain number studied at military schools. Therefore, the number of Yakutians who fought can be considered from 62 to 65 thousand people.

Now about human losses. In recent years, a figure has been called - 32 thousand Yakutians, but it also cannot be considered accurate. According to the demographic formula, they did not return to the regions from the war, about 30% of those who fought died. It should be taken into account that 32 thousand did not return to the territory of Yakutia, however, some soldiers and officers remained to live in other regions of the country, some returned late, until the 1950s. Therefore, the number of residents of Yakutia who died at the front is approximately 25 thousand people. Of course, this is a huge loss for the small population of the republic.

In general, the contribution of the Yakut people to the fight against the "brown plague" is huge and has not yet been fully studied. Many became combat commanders, showed military skills, selflessness, courage in battles, for which they were awarded high military awards. Residents of the Khangalassky district of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) fondly remember General Prituzov (Pripuzov) Andrey Ivanovich. Member of the First World War, commander of the 61st Guards Slavic Red Banner Division. The division fought through Romania, part of Austria and ended its journey in Bulgaria. The military general found his eternal rest in his native Pokrovsk.

How not to remember on the eve of Victory Day about the Yakut snipers - two of which were included in the legendary top ten snipers of World War II. This is Yakut Fedor Matveevich Okhlopkov, on whose personal account 429 killed Nazis. Before becoming a sniper, he destroyed several dozen Nazis with a machine gun and machine gun. And Fedor Matveyevich received the Hero of the Soviet Union only in 1965. Legendary person!

The second is Evenk Ivan Nikolaevich Kulbertinov- 489 killed Nazis. He taught sniper business to young soldiers of the Red Army. Originally from the village of Tyanya, Olekminsky district.

It should be noted that until the end of 1942, the Wehrmacht command missed the opportunity of a sniper war, for which they paid dearly. During the war, the Nazis began to hastily learn sniper art from captured Soviet military training films and memos for snipers. At the front, they used the same Soviet captured Mosin and SVT rifles. Only by 1944 did the Wehrmacht military units include trained snipers.

Our colleague, a lawyer, Honored Lawyer of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia) passed the worthy path of a soldier-front-line soldier Yuri Nikolaevich Zharnikov. He began his military career as an artilleryman, in 1943 he retrained as a T-34 driver, his tank was hit twice, the hero himself received severe shell shock. On his account, dozens of military victories, hundreds of killed enemies, a large number of broken and burned enemy heavy equipment, including German tanks. As Yuri Nikolayevich recalled, the calculation of enemy losses was carried out by the commander of a tank unit, and his concern was the constant maintenance of the mechanical part of the combat vehicle. For military exploits, Yu.N. Zharnikov was awarded many orders and medals, which he was proud of. Today, Yuri Nikolayevich is not among us, but we, the lawyers of Yakutia, keep his memory in our hearts.

Results of the Great Patriotic War. Losses of the German armed forces. The ratio of the losses of Nazi Germany and its direct allies with the losses of the Red Army

Let us turn to the latest publications of a prominent Russian military historian Igor Ludwigovich Garibyan, who did a tremendous amount of statistical work, studying not only Soviet sources, but also captured archival documents of the Wehrmacht General Staff.

According to Wilhelm Keitel, Chief of Staff of the Wehrmacht High Command - OKW, Germany lost 9 million soldiers killed on the Eastern Front, 27 million were seriously wounded (without the possibility of returning to duty), went missing, were captured, all this is united by the concept of "irretrievable losses ".

Historian Gharibian counted German losses from OKW's 10-day reports, and the following figures were obtained:

Germans and Austrians killed during hostilities - 7,541,401 people (data as of April 20, 1945);

Missing - 4,591,511 people.

Total irretrievable losses - 17,801,340 people, including disabled people, prisoners who died from diseases.

These figures refer to only two countries - Germany and Austria. This does not take into account the losses of Romania, Hungary, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia and other countries that fought against the USSR.

Thus, nine million Hungary lost only 809,000 soldiers and officers killed in the war against the Red Army, mostly young people aged 20 to 29 years. 80,000 civilians died in the fighting. Meanwhile, in the same Hungary in 1944, on the eve of the collapse of the fascist regime, 500,000 Hungarian Jews and Gypsies were exterminated, about which the Western media prefer to be "shamefully" silent.

Summing up, we must admit that the USSR actually had to fight one on one (in 1941-1943) with all of Europe, except for England. All factories in France, Poland, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Italy worked for the war. The Wehrmacht was provided not only with military materials, but also with the manpower of Germany's direct allies.

As a result, the Soviet people, showing the will to win, mass heroism both on the battlefield and in the rear, defeated the enemy and defended the Fatherland from the “brown plague” of the 20th century.

The article is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather - Stroev Gavril Egorovich, a resident of the Batamay village of the Ordzhonikidzevsky district of the Yakut Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, the chairman of the Zarya collective farm, who died heroically in the Great Patriotic War in 1943, and all the Yakuts who did not return from the war.

Yuri PRIPUZOV,

President of the Yakut Republican

bar association "Petersburg",

Honored Lawyer of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

“I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they do with Germany” (with)

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

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 THE 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)

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.

For twenty years, the main estimate of the losses of the Red Army 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.

The estimate of the losses of the Red Army, given in 1947 (7 million) is not credible, since 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? 12%, in the French - 7%, and on the Eastern Front already 4%.

The same can be applied to the Red Army: if at the end of the war the 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

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.

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.

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.

First of all, this figure takes into account only the burial places of the 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. 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.

Fourth, 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, fifth, among the buried were Wehrmacht soldiers who died of "natural" death (0.1-0.2 million people)

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. In the book of Paul Karel and Ponter Beddecker “German prisoners of war of the Second World War” it is reported: “... 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 these 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other people. For example, in the French camp of Vitrilet-François, among the prisoners, "the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70." The authors write about captured Volksturmites, about the organization by the Americans of special "children's" camps, where captured twelve-thirteen-year-old boys from the "Hitler Youth" and "Werewolf" were gathered. Mention is made of the placement in camps even of the handicapped.

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 the supporters of the theory of "filling up 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 Western European countries the mortality rate was much lower and amounted to 0.6 - 0.8% per year, Germany was no exception. However, the birth rate in the USSR 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 war years 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 decline 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.

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

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 irretrievably, of which 5.2-6.1 million people are purely combat demographics (including those who died in captivity). 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 not less than 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.

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 with Germany”

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) may be refined, changed in one direction or another, their ratio may also change, but it cannot be higher than 1.3: 1 .

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Literature