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Real losses of the USSR in the Second World War. Updated estimates of the number of deaths in the Great Patriotic War

, border and internal troops of the NKVD. At the same time, the results of the work of the General Staff commission to determine losses, headed by Army General S. M. Shtemenko ( - ) and a similar commission of the Ministry of Defense under the leadership of Army General M. A. Gareev ( ) were used. The team was also cleared to be declassified in the late 1980s. materials of the General Staff and main headquarters of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, border troops and other archival institutions of the former USSR.

The total number of casualties in the Great Patriotic War was first published in rounded form (“ almost 27 million people.") at the ceremonial meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. The results of the study were published in the book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study", which was then translated into English. A reissue of the book “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study."

To determine the scale of human losses, this team used various methods, in particular:

accounting and statistical, that is, by analyzing existing accounting documents (primarily reports on losses of personnel of the USSR Armed Forces),
balance, or demographic balance method, that is, by comparing the size and age structure of the population of the USSR at the beginning and end of the war.

Casualties

Overall rating

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimates the total human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, determined by the demographic balance method, in 26.6 million people. This includes all those killed as a result of military and other enemy actions, those who died as a result of the 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 and did not return after its end. For comparison, according to the same team of researchers, the population decline in Russia in the First World War (losses of military personnel and civilians) was 4.5 million people, and a similar decline in the Civil War was 8 million people.

As for the gender composition of the dead and deceased, the overwhelming majority, naturally, were men (about 20 million). In general, by the end, the number of women aged 20 to 29 years old was twice the number of men of the same age in the USSR.

Considering the work of G. F. Krivosheev’s group, American demographers S. Maksudov and M. Elman come to the conclusion that their estimate of human losses of 26-27 million is relatively reliable. They, however, indicate both the possibility of underestimating the number of losses due to incomplete accounting of the population of the territories annexed by the USSR before the war and at the end of the war, and the possibility of overestimating losses due to failure to take into account emigration from the USSR in 1941-45. In addition, official calculations do not take into account the drop in the birth rate, due to which the population of the USSR by the end should have been approximately 35-36 million people more than in the absence of war. However, they consider this number to be hypothetical, since it is based on insufficiently strict assumptions.

According to another foreign researcher M. Haynes, the number 26.6 million obtained by G. F. Krivosheev’s group sets only the lower limit of all USSR losses in the war. The total population loss from June 1941 to June 1945 was 42.7 million people, and this number corresponds to the upper limit. Therefore, the real number of military losses lies in this interval. However, he is opposed by M. Harrison, who, based on statistical calculations, comes to the conclusion that even taking into account some uncertainty in estimating emigration and the decline in the birth rate, the real military losses of the USSR should be estimated within 23.9 to 25.8 million people.

Military personnel

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense, irretrievable losses during combat operations on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945 amounted to 8,860,400 Soviet troops. The source was data declassified in 1993 - 8,668,400 military personnel and data obtained during the search work of the Memory Watch and in historical archives. Of these (according to 1993 data):

According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet military personnel and 500 thousand persons liable for military service, called up for mobilization, but not included in the lists of troops, were captured and went missing.

According to G.F. Krivosheev: during the Great Patriotic War, a total of 3,396,400 military personnel went missing and were captured (about another 1,162,600 were attributed to unaccounted combat losses in the first months of the war, when combat units did not provide any information for these losses reports); 1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, did not return (died, emigrated) - 1,783,300, 939,700 - were called up a second time from the liberated territories.

Civilian population

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses of the civilian population of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War at approximately 13.7 million people. The final number is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:

According to S. Maksudov, about 7 million people died in the occupied territories and in besieged Leningrad (of which 1 million in besieged Leningrad, 3 million were Jewish victims of the Holocaust), and about 7 million more people died as a result of increased mortality in non-occupied areas. territories.

Property losses

During the war years, 1,710 cities and towns and more than 70 thousand villages, 32 thousand industrial enterprises, 98 thousand collective farms, and 1,876 state farms were destroyed on Soviet territory. The State Commission found that material damage amounted to about 30 percent of the national wealth of the Soviet Union, and in areas subject to occupation, about two-thirds. In general, the material losses of the Soviet Union are estimated at about 2 trillion. 600 billion rubles. For comparison, the national wealth of England decreased by only 0.8 percent, France - by 1.5 percent, and the United States essentially avoided material losses.

Losses of Germany and their allies

Casualties

The German command involved the population of the occupied countries in the war against the Soviet Union by recruiting volunteers. Thus, separate military formations appeared from among the citizens of France, the Netherlands, Denmark, Norway, Croatia, as well as from citizens of the USSR who were captured or in occupied territory (Russian, Ukrainian, Armenian, Georgian, Azerbaijani, Muslim, etc.). How exactly the losses of these formations were taken into account is not clear in German statistics.

Also, a constant obstacle to determining the real number of military personnel losses was the mixing of military casualties with civilian casualties. For this reason, in Germany, Hungary, and Romania, the losses of the armed forces are significantly reduced, since some of them are included in the number of civilian casualties. (200 thousand people lost military personnel, and 260 thousand lost civilians). For example, in Hungary this ratio was “1:2” (140 thousand - military casualties and 280 thousand - civilian casualties). All this significantly distorts the statistics on the losses of troops of the countries that fought on the Soviet-German front.

A German radio telegram emanating from the Wehrmacht loss accounting department dated May 22, 1945, addressed to the OKW Quartermaster General, provides the following information:

In response to the OKW radiogram, Quartermaster General No. 82/266 dated May 18, 1945, I report:

1. a) Deaths, including 500 thousand who died from wounds - 2.03 million. In addition, 200 thousand died as a result of accidents and illnesses;
c) Wounded…………………………………………… 5.24 million.
c) Missing persons…………………………… 2.4 million.
Total losses…………………………………………………………… 9.73 million.
2. Since May 2, 1945, the USSR has about 70 thousand wounded and 135 thousand among the Americans and British.
3. The total number of wounded in the Reich is currently about 700 thousand...
Wehrmacht casualty department 5/22/45

According to a certificate from the OKH organizational department dated May 10, 1945, the ground forces alone, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), lost 4 million 617.0 thousand people during the period from September 1 to May 1, 1945.

Two months before his death, Hitler announced in one of his speeches that Germany had lost 12.5 million killed and wounded, half of whom were killed. With this message, he actually refuted the estimates of the scale of human losses made by other fascist leaders and government agencies.

General Jodl, after the end of hostilities, stated that Germany, in total, lost 12 million 400 thousand people, of which 2.5 million were killed, 3.4 million missing and captured and 6.5 million wounded, of which approximately 12-15% did not return to duty for one reason or another.

According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites,” the total number of German soldiers buried in the USSR and Eastern Europe is 3.226 million, of which the names of 2.395 million are known.

According to Soviet data, as of June 26, 1944, Wehrmacht losses amounted to 7.8 million killed and captured. Since the number of prisoners of war at that time was at least 700,000 people, German casualties according to Soviet data amounted to 7.1 million killed.

It should be noted that Overmans’s modern data on German losses practically coincide with Hitler’s data at that time. For example, according to Overmans, 302,000 German soldiers fell in 1941, and according to the data of that time, 260,000. American military observers estimated Wehrmacht losses on December 11, 1941 at 1.3 million killed. And the Sovinformburo on December 15, 1941 at 6 million, that is, 1.5-2 million killed. But even Hitler himself admitted to Mussolini the falsity of German propaganda.

He himself later told Mussolini about the reasons for this during their meeting in Salzburg, which took place in April 1942. “During a meeting in Salzburg,” said Mussolini, speaking at a meeting of the Council of Ministers, “Hitler admitted to me that the past winter was terrible for Germany and it miraculously avoided disaster... The German high command fell victim to a nervous crisis. Most of the generals were influenced by the Russian climate first she lost her health, and then her head and fell into complete moral and physical prostration. Officially, the Germans report 260 thousand killed. Hitler told me that in reality there were twice as many, in addition, more than a million wounded and frostbitten. There is not a single German family , in which there would be no killed or wounded.

Property losses

According to data from the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, published in 2005, during the Great Patriotic War, a total of 4,559,000 Soviet military personnel were captured. The vast majority of them (4,380,000 people) died. However, according to German documents, by May 1, 1944, the number of Soviet prisoners of war reached 5,160,000 people. .

Prisoners of war of Germany and its allies

Information on the number of prisoners of war of the armed forces of Germany and its allied countries, recorded in the camps of the NKVD of the USSR as of April 22.

Nationality	Total prisoners of war counted	Released and repatriated	Died in captivity
Germans	2388443	2031743	356700
Austrians	156681	145790	10891
Czechs and Slovaks	69977	65954	4023
French people	23136	21811	1325
Yugoslavs	21830	20354	1476
Poles	60277	57149	3128
Dutch	4730	4530	200
Belgians	2014	1833	181
Luxembourgers	1653	1560	93
Spaniards	452	382	70
Danes	456	421	35
Norse	101	83	18
other nationalities	3989	1062	2927
Total for the Wehrmacht	2733739	2352671	381067
%	100 %	86,1 %	13,9 %
Hungarians	513766	459011	54755
Romanians	187367	132755	54612
Italians	48957	21274	27683
Finns	2377	1974	403
Total for allies	752467	615014	137753
%	100 %	81,7 %	18,3 %
Total prisoners of war	3486206	2967686	518520
%	100 %	85,1 %	14,9 %

Alternative theories

Since the late 80s of the last century, new publications and scientific research began to appear in the public space with data on the losses of the USSR in the war of 1939-1945, which are very different from those accepted in the Soviet historiography of the war. As a rule, the estimated losses of the USSR far exceed those given in Soviet historiography. And convincing arguments are given in favor of this fact, for example, the fact that in the documents of the Red Army units there is a huge number of unaccounted for personnel, marching reinforcements, mobilizations in the front line, etc. The annual work of search engines in places of combat only confirms this fact. And the dead continue to be found every year. There is no end in sight to this process, which also makes one think about the price of victory.

For example, Russian literary critic Boris Sokolov estimated the total human losses of the USSR in 1939-1945 at 43,448 thousand people, and the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. 26.4 million people (of which 4 million people died in captivity). According to his calculations about the loss of 2.6 million German soldiers on the Soviet-German front, the loss ratio reaches 10:1. At the same time, he estimated the total human losses of Germany in 1939-1945 at 5.95 million people (including 300 thousand Jews, Gypsies and anti-Nazis who died in concentration camps). His estimate of the dead Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel (including foreign formations) is 3,950 thousand people).

Notes

Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century. Losses of the Armed Forces: Statistical Study
General assessment of losses, table No. 132] Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century: Statistical study. - M.: Olma-Press, 2001. - P. 514.
Enemy casualties, table No. 201 Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century: Statistical study. - M.: Olma-Press, 2001. - P. 514.
"Pravda", March 14, 1946
Gorbachev M.S. Lessons of war and victory // Izvestia. 1990. May 9.
Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century / Ed. by Colonel-General G.F. Krivosheev. London: Greenhill Books, 1997. - 304 p. ISBN 1-85367-280-7
G. F. Krivosheev (edited). Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century: Losses of the armed forces
Ellman M., Maksudov S. Soviet deaths in the Great Patriotic War: a note // Europe-Asia Studies. 1994. Vol. 46, No. 4.Pp. 671-680.
Haynes, Michael. Counting Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: a Note // Europe-Asia Studies. 2003. Vol. 55, No. 2.Pp. 303-309.
Harrison, Mark. Counting Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: Comment // Europe-Asia Studies. 2003. Vol. 55, No. 6.Pp. 939-944. PDF
“The Ministry of Defense named losses in the Great Patriotic War” // 05/04/2007.
“Enemy casualties”, article on “Soldat.ru”
“Irreversible losses”, article on “Soldat.ru”
Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev. "Analysis of forces and losses on the Soviet-German front". Report at the meeting of the Association of Historians of the Second World War on December 29.
Unknown soldiers
Civilian casualties
The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945: A Brief History. - M.: Military Publishing House, 1984, Chapter twenty-two
From Goering's directive on the economic robbery of the USSR territory planned for occupation.
Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-45
TsAMO. F. 48A, op. 3408, d. 148, l. 225. Link to the article “Enemy casualties”
Arntu G. “Human losses in the Second World War. - Results of the Second World War." M., 1957, p. 594-595.
Military archive of Germany. WF No. 01/1913, l. 655.
Urlanis B. Ts. “War and population of Europe.” - M., 1960. p. 199.
Brief recording of the interrogation of A. Yodl on June 17, 1945 - GOU General Staff. Inv. No. 60481.
Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century - Losses of the armed forces
THE PRICE OF VICTORY: HOW A LIE IS STAINED
Our Victory. Day after day - RIA Novosti project
MILITARY LITERATURE -[Military history]- Crusade against Russia
Ueberschar Gerd R., Wette Wolfram. Unternehmen Barbarossa: Der Deutsche Uberfall Auf Die Sowjetunion, 1941 Berichte, Analysen, Dokumente. - Frankfurt-am-Main: Fischer Taschenbuch Verlag, 1984. - P. 364-366. - ISBN 3-506-77468-9, with reference to: Nachweisung des Verbleibes der sowjetischen Kriegsgefangenen nach dem Stand vom 1.05.1944(Bundesarchiv/Militararchiv Freiburg, RH 2 / v. 2623).
TsKHIDK. F.1p, op. 32-6, d.2, l.8-9. (The table does not include prisoners of war from among the citizens of the Soviet Union who served in the Wehrmacht.)
Sokolov B.V. World War II: facts and versions. - M.: AST-PRESS KNIGA, 2005, p. 340.
There, p. 331.
Right there. With. 343.
Right there.

Literature

The secrecy has been removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study. / Under general ed. G. F. Krivosheeva. M.: Voenizdat, 1993.
Human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War: Collection of articles. St. Petersburg, 1995.
Maksudov S. Population losses of the USSR during the Second World War // Population and Society: Information Bulletin. 1995. No. 5.
Mikhalev S.N. Human losses in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945: Statistical research. Krasnoyarsk: RIO KSPU, 2000.
Mikhalev S. N., Shabaev A. A. The tragedy of confrontation. Losses of the armed forces of the USSR and Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945: Historical and statistical study. M.: MHF "Domestic History", 2002.
Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study. / Under general ed. G. F. Krivosheeva. M.: Olma-Press, 2001.
Sokolov B.V. The price of war: human losses of the USSR and Germany, 1939-1945 // Sokolov B.V. The truth about the Great Patriotic War (Collection of articles). - St. Petersburg: Aletheya, 1989.
Sokolov B.V. World War II: facts and versions. - M.: AST-PRESS KNIGA, 2005.

Links

Has nothing to do with science - an article refuting the calculations of B.V. Sokolov

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

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

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

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

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

Invading the borders of one or another European country, German troops met resistance that was amazing in its weakness and indecisiveness. Short-term battles between the armies of European countries and the German troops invading their borders, with the exception of Poland, were more likely compliance with a certain “custom” of war than actual resistance.

Extremely much has been written about the exaggerated European “Resistance Movement,” which supposedly caused enormous damage to Germany and testified that Europe flatly rejected its unification under German leadership. But, with the exception of Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland and Greece, the scale of the Resistance is the same ideological myth. Undoubtedly, the regime established by Germany in the occupied countries did not suit large sections of the population. In Germany itself there was also resistance to the regime, but in neither case was it resistance of the country and the nation as a whole. For example, in the Resistance movement in France, 20 thousand people died in 5 years; Over the same 5 years, about 50 thousand Frenchmen died who fought on the side of the Germans, that is, 2.5 times more!

In Soviet times, the exaggeration of the Resistance was introduced into the minds as a useful ideological myth, saying that our fight against Germany was supported by all of Europe. In fact, as already mentioned, only 4 countries offered serious resistance to the invaders, which is explained by their “patriarchal” nature: they were alien not so much to the “German” order imposed by the Reich, but to the pan-European one, because these countries, in their way of life and consciousness, were largely not belonged to European civilization (although geographically included in Europe).

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

In battles on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured half a million prisoners, who were citizens of countries that did not seem to be at war with the USSR! It can be argued that these are “victims” of German violence, which drove them into Russian spaces. But the Germans were no more stupid than you and me and would hardly have allowed an unreliable contingent to the front. And while the next great and multinational army was winning victories in Russia, Europe was, by and large, on its side. Franz Halder, in his diary on June 30, 1941, wrote down Hitler's words: "European unity as a result of a joint war against Russia." And Hitler assessed the situation quite correctly. In fact, the geopolitical goals of the war against the USSR were carried out not only by the Germans, but by 300 million Europeans, united on various grounds - from forced submission to desired cooperation - but, one way or another, acting together. Only thanks to their reliance on continental Europe were the Germans able to mobilize 25% of the total population into the army (for reference: the USSR mobilized 17% of its citizens). In a word, the strength and technical equipment of the army that invaded the USSR was provided by tens of millions of skilled workers throughout Europe.

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

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

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

1. USSR losses

According to official data from the 1939 population census, 170 million people lived in the USSR - significantly more than in any other single country in Europe. The entire population of Europe (without 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 in its high mortality rate and low life expectancy. However, the high birth rate ensured significant population growth (2% in 1938–39). Also different from Europe was the youth of the USSR population: the proportion of children under 15 years old was 35%. It was this feature that made it possible to restore the pre-war population relatively quickly (within 10 years). The share of the urban population was only 32% (for comparison: in Great Britain - more than 80%, in France - 50%, in Germany - 70%, in the USA - 60%, and only in Japan it had the same value as in THE USSR).

In 1939, the population of the USSR increased noticeably 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 a certificate from the Central Statistical Office as of January 1, 1941, was determined to be 198,588 thousand people (including the RSFSR - 111,745 thousand people). According to modern estimates, it was still smaller, and on June 1, 1941 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 the satellites and conquered countries - 297 million people. By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, where 74.5 million people lived before the start of the Second World War. This once again emphasizes that despite Hitler’s assurances, the USSR did not have an advantage in human resources over the Third Reich.

During the entire 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 years in 1941. The number of women in the Red Army was approximately 500 thousand. The percentage of conscripts 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 increased working hours and the widespread use of labor by 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 named the figure 10 million people, a famous 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 famous Soviet demographer. The authors of the famous monograph “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” (edited by G. Krivosheev) in 1993 and in 2001 published the figure of 8.7 million people; at the moment, this is precisely what is indicated in most reference literature. But the authors themselves state that it does not include: 500 thousand people liable for military service, called up for mobilization and captured by the enemy, but not included in the lists of units and formations. Also, the almost completely dead militias of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and other large cities are not taken into account. Currently, the most complete lists of irretrievable losses of Soviet soldiers amount to 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 “Fate” of the “War Memorials” association established that due to double and even triple counting, the number of dead soldiers of the 43rd and 2nd of the Shock Armies in the battles studied by the center was overestimated by 10-12%. Since these figures refer to a period when the accounting of losses in the Red Army was not careful enough, it can be assumed that in the war as a whole, due to double counting, the number of Red Army soldiers killed was overestimated by approximately 5–7%, i.e. by 0.2– 0.4 million people

On the issue of prisoners. American researcher A. Dallin, based on 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 people who remained on the battlefield occupied by the enemy, and subsequently died from wounds or were 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 medicine, cruel treatment, mass executions of the sick and unable to work, and simply all those unwanted, primarily commissars and Jews. Unable to cope with the flow of prisoners and guided by political and propaganda motives, the occupiers in 1941 sent home over 300 thousand prisoners of war, mainly natives of western Ukraine and Belarus. This practice was subsequently 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, tried to desert from Wehrmacht units and formations at the first opportunity. The local auxiliary forces of the German army included:

1) volunteer helpers (hivi)
2) order service (odi)
3) front auxiliary units (noise)
4) police and defense teams (gema).

At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht operated: up to 400 thousand Khivi, from 60 to 70 thousand Odi, 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. Thus, in the SS division “Galicia” there were 82,000 volunteers for 13,000 “places”. 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 taken to forced labor in the Reich. The ChGK (Emergency 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 whom 850-1000 thousand died.

Estimates of direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK data from 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. USSR - 61 thousand people.
Karelo-Fin. SSR - 8 thousand people. (10)

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

Another important question. How many former Soviet citizens chose not to return to the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War? According to Soviet archival data, the number of the “second emigration” was 620 thousand people. 170,000 are Germans, Bessarabians and Bukovinians, 150,000 are Ukrainians, 109,000 are Latvians, 230,000 are Estonians and Lithuanians, and only 32,000 are Russians. Today this estimate seems 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 irreversible population losses.

So, what are the losses of the Red Army, the civilian population of the USSR and the general demographic losses in the Great Patriotic War. For twenty years, the main estimate was the far-fetched figure of 20 million people by N. Khrushchev. In 1990, as a result of the work of a special commission of the General Staff and the State Statistics Committee of the USSR, a more reasonable estimate of 26.6 million people appeared. At the moment it is official. Noteworthy is the fact that back in 1948, the American sociologist Timashev gave an assessment of the USSR's losses 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 Red Army losses: 7 million people.
Timashev: Red Army - 12.2 million people, civilian population 14.2 million people, direct human losses 26.4 million people, total demographic 37.3 million.
Arntz and Khrushchev: direct human: 20 million people.
Biraben and Solzhenitsyn: Red Army 20 million people, civilian population 22.6 million people, direct human 42.6 million, general 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: losses of the Red Army - 26 million people
M. Harrison: total losses of the USSR - 23.9 - 25.8 million people.

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

The estimate of the losses of the Red Army given in 1947 (7 million) does not inspire confidence, since not all calculations, even with the imperfections of the Soviet system, were completed.

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

Boris Sokolov is trying to explain to us that the losses of the USSR armed forces 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 known quite accurately; according to Sokolov, this is 784 thousand people (1941–44). Mr. Sokolov, referring to the average statistical losses of Wehrmacht officers on the Eastern Front of 62,500 people (1941–44), and data from Müller-Hillebrandt , displays the ratio of 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 26 million irretrievable losses. However, upon closer examination, this approach turns out to be initially 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 being 3049 officers, there were 75 officers, 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 fewer losses among officers. In the Polish campaign, the loss of German officers was −12%, in the French campaign - 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 losses of officers (not according to Sokolov, but according to statistics) were 8-9%, then at the beginning of the Second World War they 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 presents his figures in the media.

Taking into account the above, discarding the obviously underestimated and overestimated estimates of losses, we get: Krivosheev Commission - 8.7 million people (with prisoners of war 11.994 million, 2001 data), Maksudov - losses are even slightly lower than the official ones - 11.8 million people. (1977−93), Timashev - 12.2 million people. (1948). This can also include the opinion of M. Harrison, with the level of total losses indicated by him, the losses of the army should fit into this period. These data were obtained using different calculation methods, since 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 “heaped” group of results. Let's not forget that these figures include 2.6–3.2 million destroyed Soviet prisoners of war.

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

41% - aircraft losses (including prisoners of war)
35% - aircraft losses (without prisoners of war, i.e. direct combat)
39% - losses of the population of the occupied territories and the front line (45% with prisoners of war)
8% - rear 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 initial statistical materials on German losses.

The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, Soviet troops captured 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in NKVD camps. According to the calculations of German historians, there were about 3.1 million German military personnel alone in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps. The discrepancy, as you can see, is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in estimates of the number of Germans who died in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of Germans killed 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 calculations of combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops are based on data from the central bureau (department) for recording losses of armed forces personnel, part of the German General Staff of the Supreme High Command. Moreover, while denying the reliability of Soviet statistics, German data are regarded as absolutely reliable. But upon closer examination, it turned out that the opinion about the high reliability of the information from this department was greatly exaggerated. Thus, the German historian R. Overmans, in the article “Human casualties of the Second World War 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 “... an official report from the casualty department at Wehrmacht headquarters dating back 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 Müller-Hillebrand data, 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 OKH organizational department dated May 1, 1945, the ground forces alone, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), lost 4 million 617.0 thousand during the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945. people This is the latest report of German Armed Forces losses. In addition, since mid-April 1945, there was no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. The fact remains 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 irrevocable, which is approximately twice the data of Müller-Hillebrand. This happened in March 1945. I don’t think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.

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

There is another statistics on losses - statistics on the burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites”, the total number of German soldiers located in recorded burial sites on 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 a starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, however, it also needs to be adjusted.

Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burials of Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (270 thousand of them 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 dates back to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern European countries has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, created in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence it transferred information about the burials of 400 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Association for the Care of Military Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they had already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of newly discovered burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. Tentatively, we can assume that the number of graves of Wehrmacht soldiers newly discovered over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.

Thirdly, many graves of dead Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil have disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried in such disappeared and unmarked graves.

Fourthly, these data do not include the burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops on the territory of Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, in the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died on German soil and in Western European countries in battles with the Red Army.

Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people)

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

The number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war 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) before May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is overestimated: it also included prisoners of war who were not Wehrmacht soldiers. The book “German Prisoners of War of the Second World War” by Paul Karel and Ponter Boeddeker reports: “...In June 1945, the Allied 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 capitulation were already in captivity." Among the indicated 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other people. For example, in the French camp of Vitril-Francois among the prisoners, “the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70.” The authors write about captured Volksturm soldiers, about the organization by the Americans of special “children’s” camps, where captured twelve- to thirteen-year-old boys from the “Hitler Youth” and “Werewolf” were collected. Mention is made of placing even disabled people in camps. In the article “My path to Ryazan captivity” (“ Map" No. 1, 1992) Heinrich Schippmann noted:

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

Overall, 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 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 amount to 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 believe that Europe “fought” fascism than to realize that that a certain and very large number of Europeans deliberately fought in the Wehrmacht. So, according to a note from 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 was not sent. Thus, the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in battles with the Red Army could 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. Moreover, we will use ONLY official data from the German side. So, the population of Germany in 1939, according to Müller-Hillebrandt (p. 700 of his work, so beloved by supporters of the “filling up with corpses” theory), 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 was approximately the same proportion as it was in Europe, due to which the USSR had 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 occupation zone (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 seems to give a loss of only 4.2 million. However, everything is not so simple.

At the time of the population 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 even 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 population growth during the war years and the first post-war year was about 5% of the pre-war population, and in figures amounted to 3.5–3.8 million children. This figure must be added to the final figure for the population decline in Germany. Now the arithmetic is different: the total population decline is 4.2 million + 3.5 million = 7.7 million people. But this is not the final figure; To complete the calculations, we need to subtract from the population decline figure the natural mortality rate during the war years and 1946, which is 2.8 million people (let’s take the figure 0.8% to make it “higher”). Now the total population loss in Germany caused by the war is 4.9 million people. Which, in general, is very “similar” to the figure for irretrievable losses of the Reich ground forces given by Müller-Hillebrandt. So 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 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 data, by the way, published back in 1996 by the “Union of Exiles”, about 15 million Germans were “forcibly displaced”) only from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia were evicted to German territory 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 itself. And these are “slightly” different numbers: 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!

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

These are all territories that were officially included in the Reich, and whose inhabitants were subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht. We will not take into account the “Imperial Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia” and the “Government General of Poland” here (although ethnic Germans were drafted into the Wehrmacht from these territories). And ALL of these territories remained under Nazi control until the beginning of 1945. Now we get the “final calculation” if we take into account that Austria’s losses are known to us and amount to 300,000 people, that is, 4.43% of the country’s population (which in %, of course, is much less than that of Germany). It would not be much of a stretch to assume that the population of the remaining regions of the Reich suffered the same percentage losses as a result of the war, which would give us another 673,000 people. As a result, the total human losses of the Third Reich are 12.15 million + 0.3 million + 0.6 million people. = 13.05 million people. This “number” is already more like the truth. Taking into account the fact that these losses include 0.5 - 0.75 million dead civilians (and not 3.5 million), we obtain the losses of the Third Reich Armed Forces equal to 12.3 million people irrevocably. If we consider that even the Germans admit the losses of their Armed Forces in the East at 75-80% of all losses on all fronts, then the Reich Armed Forces lost about 9.2 million (75% of 12.3 million) in battles with the Red Army. person irrevocably. Of course, not all of them were killed, but having data on those released (2.35 million), as well as prisoners of war who died in captivity (0.38 million), we can say quite accurately that those actually killed and those who died from wounds and in captivity, and also missing, but not captured (read “killed”, which is 0.7 million!), the Armed Forces of the Third Reich lost approximately 5.6-6 million people during the campaign to the East. According to these calculations, the irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces and the Third Reich (without allies) are correlated as 1.3:1, and the combat losses of the Red Army (data from the team led by Krivosheev) and the Reich Armed Forces as 1.6:1.

The procedure for calculating the total human losses in 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 influx 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 person was captured!!!

Conclusion
In this article, the author does not pretend to seek out the “golden ratio” and “ultimate truth”. The data presented in it are available in the scientific literature and on the Internet. It’s just that they are all scattered and scattered across various sources. The author expresses his personal opinion: you cannot trust German and Soviet sources during the war, because your losses are underestimated by at least 2–3 times, while the enemy’s losses are exaggerated by the same 2–3 times. It is even more strange that German sources, unlike Soviet ones, are considered to be completely “reliable”, although, as a simple analysis shows, this is not the case.

The irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War amount to 11.5 - 12.0 million irrevocably, with actual combat demographic losses of 8.7–9.3 million people. The losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Eastern Front amount to 8.0 - 8.9 million irrevocably, of which purely combat demographic 5.2-6.1 million people (including those who died in captivity) people. Plus, to the losses of the German Armed Forces proper on the Eastern Front, it is necessary to add the losses of the satellite countries, and this is no less than 850 thousand (including those who died in captivity) people killed and more than 600 thousand captured. Total 12.0 (largest number) million versus 9.05 (smallest number) million people.

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

The author is aware that these articles differ from the latest officially announced version of losses: losses of the USSR Armed Forces - 6.8 million military personnel killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing, German losses - 4.046 million military personnel killed, died from wounds, missing in action (including 442.1 thousand killed in captivity), losses of satellite countries - 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand captured. Irreversible losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people. The total losses of Germany are 11.2 million people. (for example on Wikipedia)

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

I would like to end the article with a phrase from 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 will do to Germany.”

The article was written in 2007. Since then, the author has not changed his opinion. That is, there was no “stupid” inundation of corpses by the Red Army, nor was there any special numerical superiority. This is also proven by the recent emergence of a large layer of Russian “oral history,” that is, memoirs of ordinary participants in the Second World War. For example, Elektron Priklonsky, the author of “The Diary of a Self-propelled Gun,” mentions that throughout the war he saw two “death fields”: when our troops attacked in the Baltic states and came under flanking fire from machine guns, and when the Germans broke through from the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky pocket. This is an isolated example, but nevertheless, it is valuable because it is a wartime diary, and therefore quite objective.

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

The application of the method of comparative analysis, the foundations of which were laid by Jomini, to assess the ratio of losses requires statistical data on wars of different eras. Unfortunately, more or less complete statistics are available only for 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 a war are always less than those of the vanquished, and this dependence has a stable, repeating character (it is valid for all types of wars), that is, it has all the signs of 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 fewer 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 greater than for 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 convincingness of the victory. Wars with similar relative losses of the parties end in peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese War). In wars that end, like the Great Patriotic War, with the complete surrender of the enemy (Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the vanquished (by no less than 30%). In other words, the greater the losses, the larger the army must be in order to win a landslide victory. If the army's losses are 2 times greater than those of the enemy, then to win the war its strength must be at least 2.6 times greater than the size of the opposing army.

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 numbers of warring parties on the Soviet-German front are given in Table. 6.

From the table 6 it follows that the number of Soviet participants in the war was only 1.4–1.5 times larger than the total number of opposing troops and 1.6–1.8 times larger than 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.

Sources:
1. Central Statistical Office of the USSR “Number, composition and movement of the population of the USSR” M 1965
2. “Population of Russia in the 20th century” M. 2001
3. Arntz “Human losses in the Second World War” M. 1957
4. Frumkin G. Population Changes in Europe since 1939 N.Y. 1951
5. Dallin A. German rule in Russia 1941–1945 N.Y.- London 1957
6. “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century” M. 2001
7. Polyan P. Victims of two dictatorships M. 1996.
8. Thorwald J. The Illusion. Soviet soldiers in Hitler,s Army N. Y. 1975
9. Collection of messages of the Extraordinary State Commission M. 1946
10. Zemskov. Birth of the second emigration 1944–1952 SI 1991 No. 4
11. Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
13 Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
14. Arntz. Human losses in the Second World War M. 1957; "International Affairs" 1961 No. 12
15. Biraben J. N. Population 1976.
16. Maksudov S. Population losses of the USSR Benson (Vt) 1989; “On the front-line losses of the SA during the Second World War” “Free Thought” 1993. No. 10
17. Population of the USSR over 70 years. Edited by Rybakovsky L. L. M 1988
18. Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov. "Population of the Soviet Union 1922–1991." M 1993
19. Sokolov B. “Novaya Gazeta” No. 22, 2005, “The Price of Victory -” M. 1991.
20. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
21. Müller-Hillebrand. “German Land Army 1933-1945” M. 1998
22. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
23. Gurkin V.V. About human losses on the Soviet-German front 1941–45. NiNI No. 3 1992
24. M. B. Denisenko. WWII in the demographic dimension "Eksmo" 2005
25. S. Maksudov. Population losses of the USSR during the Second World War. "Population and Society" 1995
26. Yu. Mukhin. If it weren't for the generals. "Yauza" 2006
27. V. Kozhinov. The Great Russian War. A series of lectures on the 1000th anniversary of the Russian wars. "Yauza" 2005
28. Materials from the newspaper “Duel”
29. E. Beevor “The Fall of Berlin” M. 2003

In military-strategic terms, the Great Patriotic War is divided into three periods, in each of which several campaigns were carried out.

First period, which lasted from June 22, 1941 to November 18, 1942, included three campaigns: summer-autumn 1941, winter 1941/42 and summer-autumn 1942.

Second period(November 19, 1942 - December 31, 1943) covered two campaigns: the winter 1942/43 and the summer-autumn 1943.

Third period(January 1, 1944 - May 9, 1945) consisted of three campaigns: the winter-spring 1944, summer-autumn 1944 and the 1945 campaign in Europe.

In the war with Japan an independent Far Eastern campaign was carried out (August 9 - September 2, 1945)

Thus, during the war, the Soviet Armed Forces conducted 9 campaigns, 7 of which were offensive. The latter accounted for 70% of the entire duration of military operations on the Soviet-German and Soviet-Japanese fronts.

The final data on human losses for periods and campaigns of the Great Patriotic War, given in Table 140, show that they were greatest for the Soviet Armed Forces in the first period of the war (37.7% of total losses and 54.6% irrevocable for the entire war). The greatest number of irretrievable losses occurred in the summer-autumn defensive campaigns of 1941 and 1942. (25.2% and 18.3%, respectively), when the troops of the active fronts and armies fought back into the interior of the country.

These campaigns note the excess of irretrievable losses (more than 1 million people) over sanitary losses. In subsequent periods of the war, irretrievable losses decreased and were 2-2.5 times less than sanitary losses.

As for the total human losses (irretrievable and sanitary) in military campaigns, they were greatest in the summer-autumn 1943 (17%), and the smallest in the winter campaigns of 1941/42 and 1942/43, (9 .6% and 9.5%, respectively, of all losses during the war).

The losses of Soviet troops and naval forces in the Far Eastern campaign were relatively small, during which 36,4 thousand people were out of action in 25 days of combat, including 12 thousand people killed, died, or went missing.

Data on the number of average daily losses deserve special attention. Every day on the Soviet-German front, an average of 20,869 people were out of action, of which about 8 thousand were irretrievably lost. The largest average daily losses were noted in the summer-autumn campaigns of 1941 - 24 thousand people. and 1943 - 27.3 thousand people. per day.

Losses in strategic and independent front-line operations

To achieve operational, operational-strategic and strategic goals, the Soviet Armed Forces conducted various operations during the war. They were a set of battles, battles, and strikes of heterogeneous forces coordinated and interconnected in purpose, objectives, place and time, carried out simultaneously or sequentially within a set period of time. Based on the scale of combat operations, operations were divided into strategic, front-line and army, and based on the nature of combat operations - into offensive and defensive.

Strategic operations consisted, as a rule, of front-line operations, while front-line operations consisted of army operations. Each of them had its own indicators characterizing its scope, the number of forces involved, the width of the combat zone, duration, depth of advance (in defensive operations - depth of withdrawal), and pace of attack.

During the Great Patriotic War, the Soviet Armed Forces conducted more than 50 strategic, about 250 front-line and over 1000 army operations. Some front-line and army operations were carried out within the framework of strategic ones, and some independently.

In the last war, a strategic operation was understood as an operation during which one of the most important tasks of the entire campaign or one of its stages was solved in a strategic direction or in a theater of military operations. Such operations are characterized by the involvement of troops from one or several fronts, long-range aviation formations and air defense forces of the country, and in coastal areas - naval forces (flotillas).

Table 138. Average monthly headcount and personnel losses of active fronts and individual armies from 22.6.1941 to 9.5.1945

Periods		Average monthly headcount	Irrevocable losses				Sanitary losses				All losses
Years	Quarters		If- quality	% to losses	% to number		If- quality	% to losses	% to number		If- quality	% to losses	% to number
Years	Quarters		If- quality	% to losses	All losses	Medium period	If- quality	% to losses	All losses	Medium period	If- quality	% to losses	All losses	Medium period
1941	III quarter	3334400	2067801	75,34	62,01	18,79	676964	24,66	20,30	6,15	2744765	100,0	82,31	24,94
	IV quarter	2818500	926002	59,23	32,85	10,95	637327	40,77	22,61	7,54	1563329	100,0	55,46	18,49
	Total	3024900	2993803	69,49	98,97	15,71	1314291	30,51	43,45	6,90	4308094	100,0	142,42	22,61
1942	I quarter	4186000	619167	34,56	14,79	4,93	1172274	65,44	28,00	9,33	1791441	100,0	42,79	14,26
	II quarter	5060300	776578	52,52	15,35	5,12	702150	47,48	13,87	4,63	1478728	100,0	29,22	9,75
	III quarter	5664600	1141991	47,21	20,16	6,72	1276810	52,79	22,54	7,51	2418801	100,0	42,70	14,23
	IV quarter	6343600	455800	32,75	7,19	2,40	936031	67,25	14,76	4,92	1391831	100,0	21,95	7,32
	Total	5313600	2993536	42,28	56,34	4,69	4087265	57,72	76,92	6,41	7080801	100,0	133,26	11,10
1943	I quarter	5892800	656403	31,60	11,14	3,71	1421140	68,40	24,12	8,04	2077543	100,0	35,26	11,75
	II quarter	6459800	125172	20,97	1,94	0,65	471724	79,03	7,30	2,43	596896	100,0	9,24	3,08
	III quarter	6816800	694465	25,27	10,19	3,40	2053492	74,73	30,12	10,04	2747957	100,0	40,31	13,44
	IV quarter	6387200	501087	24,31	7,84	2,62	1560164	75,69	24,43	8,14	2061251	100,0	32,27	10,76
	Total	6389200	1977127	26,42	30,95	2,58	5506520	73,58	86,18	7,18	7483647	100,0	117,13	9,76
1944	I quarter	6268600	470392	23,11	7,51	2,51	1565431	76,89	24,97	8,32	2035823	100,0	32,48	10,83
	II quarter	6447000	251745	20,83 .	3,91	1,30	956828	79,17	14,84	4,95	1208573	100,0	18,75	6,25
	III quarter	6714300	430432	21,82	6,41	2,13	1541965	78,18	22,97	7,66	1972397	100,0	29,38	9,79
	IV quarter	6770100	259766	20,19	3,84	1,28	1026645	79,81	15,16	5,05	1286411	100,0	19,00	6,33
	Total	6550000	1412335	21,72	21,57	1,80	5090869	78,28	77,72	6,48	6503204	100,0	99,29	8,28
1945	I quarter	6461100	468407	22,84	7,25	2,42	1582517	77,16	24,49	8,16	2050924	100,0	31,74	10,58
	II quarter	6135300	163226	21,13	2,66	2,05	609231	78,87	9,93	7,63	772457	100,0	12,59	9,68
	Total	6330880	631633	22,37	9,98	2,32	2191748	77,63	34,62	8,05	2823381	100,0	44,60	10,37
Total for the war		5778500	10008434	35,49	173,20	3,72	18190693	64,51	314,80	6,77	28199127	100,0	488,0	10,49

Notes
1. Losses from June 22 to June 30, 1941 are included in the III quarter of 1941, and from April 1 to May 9, 1945 - in the II quarter of 1945.
2. The wounded and sick who subsequently died in hospitals are represented among the sanitary losses.

Table 140. Human losses of the Red Army and Navy by periods and campaigns of the Great Patriotic War

Periods of war	Campaigns	Number of days	Human losses (thousand people)
			Irreversible		Sanitary		Total
			Number	%	Number	%	Number	%
First (22.6.41-8.11.42)	Summer-autumn (22.6-4.12.1941)	166	2841,9 17,1	25,2 0,15	1145,8 6,9	6,2 0,04	3987,7 24,0	13,5 0,08
	Winter (12/5/1941-4/30/1942)	147	1249,0 85	11,1 0,08	1602,7 10,9	8,7 0,06	2851,7 19,4	9,6 0,07
	Summer-autumn (1.5-18.11.1942)	202	2064,1 10,2	18,3 0,09	2258,5 11,2	12,3 0,06	4322,6 21,4	14,6 0,07
	Total	515	6155.0 12.0	54,6 0,11	5007,0 9,7	27,2 0,05	11162,0 21,7	37,7 0,07
Second (11/19/42 - 12/31/43)	Winter 11/19/1942-3/31/1943)	133	967,7 7,3	8,6 0,06	1865,9 14,0	10,2 0,08	2833,6 21,3	9,5 0,07
	Operational-strategic pause (April 1 – June 30, 1943)	91	191.9 2,1	1,7 0,02	490,6 5,4	2,7 0,03	682,5 7,5	2,3 0,03
	Summer-autumn (1.7-31.12.1943)	184	1393,8 7,6	12,3 0,07	3628,8 19,7	19,8 0,11	5022,6 27,3	17,0 0,09
	Total	408	2553,4 6,3	22,6 0,06	5985,3 4,7	32,7 0,08	8538,7 20,9	28,8 0,07
Third (1.1.44-9.5.45)	Winter-spring (1.1-31.5.1944)	152	801,5 5,3	7,1 0,05	2219,7 14,6	12,1 0,08	3021,2 19,9	10,2 0,07
	Summer-autumn (1.6-31.12.1944)	214	962,4 4,5	8,5 0,04	2895,9 13,5	15,8 0,07	3857,4 18,0	13,0 0,06
	Campaign in Europe (1.1-9.5.1945)	129	800,8 6.2	7,1 0.05	2212,7 17.2	12,1 0,09	3013,5 23,4	10,2 0,08
	Total	495	2564,7 5,2	22,7 0,05	7327,4 14.8	40,0 0,08	9892,1 20,0	33,4 0,07
Total for the war on the Soviet-German front		1418	11273,1 7,9	99,9 0,07	18319,7 12,9	99,9 0,07	29592,8 20,9	99,9 0,07
Campaign in the Far East (9.8-2.9.1945)		25	12,0 0,5	0,1 -	24,4 0,97	0,1 -	36,4 1,5	0,1 -
Total for the Great Patriotic War		1443	11285,1 7,8	100 0,07	18344,1 12,7	100 0,07	29629,2 20,5	100 0,07

Note.
The numerator includes all losses, the denominator includes average daily losses.

As a rule, troops from a group of fronts were involved in strategic operations. This was due to the fact that it was difficult to solve an important military-political problem in a strategic direction or theater of military operations using the forces of one front. Therefore, such a new form of strategic action as a group of fronts operation was developed and successfully applied. In it, the front carried out tasks of operational-strategic significance, acting in one of the strategic or operational directions. Such strategic offensive operations of the group of fronts were Moscow, Stalingrad, North Caucasus, Oryol, Belgorod-Kharkov, Dnieper-Carpathian, Chernigov-Poltava, Belarusian, Baltic, Vistula-Oder, Berlin and others. Thus, during the Great Patriotic War, 82.3% of all strategic operations of the Soviet troops were carried out by forces of two or more fronts, 9.8% by forces of the front and navy, and only 7.9% by forces of one front.

When considering the scale of human losses in strategic and independent front-line operations, it is necessary to keep in mind that they depended on the duration and intensity of combat operations, the number of forces involved (fronts, armies), the degree of training of troops, and the generalship of commanders and staffs. For example, the greatest losses of personnel (irretrievable and sanitary), as can be seen from the tables above, were in the Dnieper-Carpathian (1109.5 thousand people), Belarusian (765.8 thousand people) and East Prussian (584, 8 thousand people) offensive operations. However, their daily losses were not the highest due to the duration of these operations.

Interesting data characterize the percentage of irretrievable losses in relation to the number of troops available at the beginning of the operation. As the tables show, it was greatest in the operations of the first and second periods of the war, when Soviet troops had to fight heavy defensive battles with superior enemy forces and retreat to the east, into the interior of the country. In the defensive operations of the first period of the war, there was a sharp excess of irretrievable human losses over sanitary ones. This is explained mainly by the fact that during this period a significant number of seriously wounded soldiers and commanders left on the battlefield and who did not return from battle were included in the number of missing and captured. In subsequent periods of the war, the accounting of losses became more reliable. As a result, the number of irretrievable losses decreased and became 2.5-3 times less than sanitary losses.

Analyzing information about human losses in specific strategic operations, we can conclude that our troops suffered the greatest irretrievable losses in defensive operations of the first period of the war, which amounted to a total of 3517.2 thousand people. or 31.2% of the total number of irretrievable losses for the entire war. At the same time, in the Kyiv defensive operation they amounted to 616.3 thousand people, in the Smolensk - 486.2 thousand people, Moscow - 514.3 thousand people, Voronezh-Voroshilovgrad - 370.5 thousand people, Stalingrad — 323.8 thousand people.

Table 141. Human losses of the Red Army and Navy in strategic operations of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945. (by periods and campaigns)*

Name of the campaign, timing, number of days	Number of operations	Casualties
Name of the campaign, timing, number of days	Number of operations	Irreversible	Sanitary	Total	Average daily
First period (22.6.1941 - 18.11.1942)
Summer-autumn (22.6 - 4.12.41; 166 days)	9	2630067	877815	3507882	21132
Winter (12/5/41 - 4/30/42; 147 days)	5	477547	794244	1271791	8652
Summer-autumn (1.5 - 11/18/42, 202 days)	3	887169	698931	1586100	7852
Total (515 days)	17	3994783	2370990	6365773	12361
Second period** (11/19/1942 – 12/31/1943)
Winter (11/19/42 –3/31/43; 133 days)	5	359146	636282	995428	7484
Summer-autumn (1.7. - 31.12.43; 184 days)	9	725494	2141220	2866714	15580
Total (317 days)	14	1084640	2777502	3862142	12183
Third period (1.1.1944 – 9.5.1945)
Winter-spring (1.1–31.5.44; 152 days)	3	364638	1143662	1508300	9923
Summer-autumn (1.6 - 31.12.44; 214 days)	9	459150	1525920	1985070	9276
Campaign in Europe (1.1-9.5.45; 129 days)	7	367009	1285337	1652346	12809
Total (495 days)	19	1190797	3954919	5145716	10395
Campaign in the Far East (9.8-2.9.45; 25 days)	1	12031	24425	36456	1458
Total losses (1352 days)	51	6282251	9127836	15410087	11398

* In contrast to the data in Table 140, this shows the number of losses suffered by troops only during strategic operations.

** In the second period of the war, from April 1, 1943 to June 30, 1943, there was an operational-strategic pause on the Soviet-German front, during which strategic and front-line operations were not carried out.

In defensive strategic operations of the second period of the war, the irretrievable losses of our troops were significantly less. Thus, in the Kharkov defensive operation (March 1943) they amounted to 45.2 thousand people, and in the Kursk defensive operation (July 1943) - 70.3 thousand people.

In the third period of the war, the Soviet Armed Forces did not conduct defensive operations, except for Balaton. In the Balaton frontal defensive operation, the total losses amounted to 32.9 thousand people, of which 8.5 thousand were irrecoverable.

In offensive strategic operations, there is a tendency to reduce the number of irretrievable losses and increase sanitary losses by 2-2.5 times. Thus, in the Rzhev-Vyazemsk operation of 1942, irretrievable losses amounted to 272.3 thousand people, and sanitary losses - 504.6 thousand people. (1:1.8), in the Stalingrad operation - 154.9 and 330.9 thousand people. (1:2.1), in the Oryol operation - 112.5 and 317.4 thousand people. (1:2.8) respectively. The ratio of irretrievable and sanitary losses in offensive operations of the third period of the war changes especially. Thus, in the Leningrad-Novgorod operation the ratio of irretrievable and sanitary losses was 1:3, in the Lviv-Sandomierz operation - 1:3.4, Baltic - 1:3.5, Vistula-Oder 1:3.5, Berlin - 1:3 ,5, Manchu 1:2.

The information given in Tables 142 and 143 about the human losses of troops in independent front-line operations confirms the above-mentioned trend of changes in the ratio of the number of irretrievable losses to the number of sanitary losses. So, they were greatest in the first period of the war. In the Kharkov battle of 1942, irretrievable losses amounted to 170.9 thousand people, in the Kerch defensive of 1941 - 162.3 thousand people, in the Lyuban and Demyansk offensive operations - 95.1 and 88.9 thousand people. respectively. In these operations, daily losses were also greatest, when up to 15 thousand people were out of action per day. (Battle of Kharkov, Kerch defensive operation). Our troops suffered significant casualties in both Rzhev-Sychevsk offensive operations of 1942.

When analyzing the total number of casualties of the active army and navy on the Soviet-German front (Tables 140, 141, 143), attention is drawn to the fact that 74.5% of them occurred in strategic and independent front-line operations. If in strategic operations irretrievable losses amounted to 6,270.2 thousand people. (55.6% of all irretrievable losses during the war), then in independent front-line operations carried out outside the strategic framework, they amounted to 2124.5 thousand people. (18.8% of all irrecoverable losses). Consequently, during these operations, Soviet troops and naval forces irretrievably lost 8,394.7 thousand people, and the remaining number of 2878.4 thousand out of 11,273 thousand people (25.5%) falls during periods of active hostilities it was not carried out on the Soviet-German front.

When considering the tables characterizing each strategic operation, the number of formations participating in them is shown up to the division and brigade of rifle and tank forces, and the corps - only tank and mechanized, formed in May 1942. In independent front-line operations, the forces involved are given up to front-line and army formations . The number of personnel (due to the difficulty of accounting for formations and formations brought in and withdrawn during combat operations) was taken only that which was available at the beginning of the operation, i.e., without troops and marching reinforcements brought in additionally during the fighting. Losses are calculated for all troops (forces) that took part in this operation. At the same time, monthly reports from the fronts were taken as the basis, as the most complete and reliable. In cases where operations lasted less than a month, ten-day reports were taken. The percentage of irretrievable losses is determined by the number of troops available at the beginning of the operation.

Information is being received...

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 initial statistical materials on German losses. The picture regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front is more or less clear. According to Russian sources, Soviet troops captured 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers, of these were in NKVD camps 2388443 Germans. According to German historians, in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps there were only about German military personnel 3.1 million. The discrepancy, as you can see, is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in estimates of the number of Germans who died in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, those who died in Soviet captivity 356,700 Germans, and according to German researchers, approximately 1 .1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of Germans killed 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 calculations of combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops are based on data from the central bureau (department) for recording losses of armed forces personnel, part of the German General Staff of the Supreme High Command. Moreover, while denying the reliability of Soviet statistics, German data are regarded as absolutely reliable. But upon closer examination, it turned out that the opinion about the high reliability of the information from this department was greatly exaggerated. So, the German historian R. Overmans in the article “Ch Human casualties of World War II in Germany" came to the conclusion that " ...the channels of information flow in the Wehrmacht do not reveal the degree of reliability that some authors attribute to them" As an example, he reports that " ...an official report from the casualty department at Wehrmacht headquarters dating back to 1944 documented that the losses suffered 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 the data Müller-Hillebrand, which many researchers believe, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 3.2 million Human. More 0.8 million. died in captivity. However, according to a certificate from the OKH organizational department from May 1, 1945., only ground forces, including SS troops (without air force and navy), for the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945. lost 4 million 617.0 thousand people. This is the latest report of German Armed Forces losses. Besides from mid-April 1945 There was no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. The fact remains 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 irrevocable, which is approximately twice the Müller-Hillebrand data. This happened in March 1945. I don’t think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.
In general, the information from the Wehrmacht loss department cannot serve as the initial data for calculating the losses of the German Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War.

There is another statistics of losses - statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the appendix to the German law “ On the preservation of burial sites", the total number of German soldiers located in recorded burials on the territory of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is 3 million 226 thousand people. (on the territory of the USSR only - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as a starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, however, it also needs to be adjusted.
Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burials of Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (of which died 270 thousand people.), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (died 230 thousand people.) and representatives of other nationalities and states (died 357 thousand people.). 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 dates back to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern European countries has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, created in 1992, reported that during the 10 years of its existence it transferred information about burials to the German Association for the Care of Military Graves 400 thousand soldiers Wehrmacht However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they had already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of newly discovered burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. Tentatively, we can assume that the number of graves of Wehrmacht soldiers newly discovered over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2-0.4 million people.
Third, many graves of fallen Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil have disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4-0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried in such disappeared and unmarked graves.
Fourthly, these data do not include the burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops on the territory of Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, in the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, approximately 1.2-1.5 million. Wehrmacht soldier.
Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1-0.2 million people)

Articles by Major General are devoted to assessing Wehrmacht losses using the balance of the German armed forces during the war years V. Gurkina. His calculated figures are given in the second column of the table. 4. Here two figures are noteworthy, characterizing the number of those mobilized into the Wehrmacht during the war, and the number of prisoners of war of Wehrmacht soldiers. The number of those mobilized during the war ( 17.9 million people) taken from the book by B. Müller-Hillebrand “ German Land Army 1933-1945.”, T.Z. At the same time V. P. Bokhar believes that more were drafted into the Wehrmacht - 19 million people.
The number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war 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) before May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is overestimated: it also included prisoners of war who were not Wehrmacht soldiers. In the book Paul Karel And Pontera Boeddecker A " German prisoners of war of World War II"reported: "... In June 1945, the Allied Command became aware that there were 7,614,794 prisoners of war and unarmed military personnel in the camps, of which 4,209,000 were already in captivity at the time of surrender" Among the indicated 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other people. For example, in the French camp Vitril-Francois among the prisoners " the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest almost 70" The authors write about captured Volksturm soldiers, about the organization by the Americans of special “ children's"camps where captured twelve- to thirteen-year-old boys from " Hitler Youth" And " Werewolf". There is even mention of placing disabled people in camps. In the article " My path to Ryazan captivity"("Map" No. 1, 1992) Heinrich Schippmann noted: “It should be taken into account that at first, although predominantly, but not exclusively, not only Wehrmacht soldiers or SS troops were taken prisoner, but also Air Force service personnel, members of the Volkssturm or paramilitary unions (the Todt organization, the Service labor of the Reich", etc.) Among them were not only men, but also women - and not only Germans, but also the so-called "Volksdeutsche" and "aliens" - Croats, Serbs, Cossacks, Northern and Western Europeans, who "fought in any way on the side of the German Wehrmacht or were assigned to it. In addition, during the occupation of Germany in 1945, anyone who wore a uniform was arrested, even if it was a question of the head of a railway station."

Overall, 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 in captivity the Allies had 3.1-3.3 million Wehrmacht soldiers. The total number of Wehrmacht soldiers 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 amount to 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 believe that Europe “ fought"with fascism, than to realize that a certain and very large number of Europeans deliberately fought in the Wehrmacht. Yes, according to the note General Antonov, on May 25, 1945 The city was captured by the Red Army 5 million 20 thousand. only Wehrmacht soldiers, of whom were released until August after filtration measures 600 thousand people to (Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, etc.), and these prisoners of war were not sent to NKVD camps. Thus, the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in battles with the Red Army could be even higher (about 0.6 - 0.8 million people).

There is another way " calculations» losses of Germany and the Third Reich in the war against the USSR. Quite correct, by the way. Let's try " substitute» figures relating to Germany are included in the methodology for calculating the total demographic losses of the USSR. Moreover, we will use ONLY official data from the German side. So, population of Germany in 1939 was according to Müller-Hillebrandt (p. 700 of his work, so beloved by supporters of the theory “ piled up with corpses») 80.6 million. Human. 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 is still 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 was approximately the same proportion as it was in Europe, due to which the USSR had 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 carried out by the Allied occupation authorities October 29, 1946 in Germany. The census gave the following results:
Soviet occupation zone(excluding East Berlin): men - 7.419 million, women - 9.914 million, total: 17.333 million people.
All western zones of occupation, (without West 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.
Total population of Germany - 65,931,000 people. A purely arithmetic operation of 70.2 million - 66 million seems to give a loss of only 4.2 million. However, everything is not so simple.
At the time of the population census in the USSR, the number of children born since the beginning of 1941 was about 11 million, the birth rate in the USSR fell sharply during the war years and amounted to only 1.37% per year of the pre-war population. The birth rate in Germany even 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 population growth during the war years and the first post-war year was about 5% of the pre-war population, and in figures amounted to 3.5-3.8 million children. This figure must be added to the final figure for the population decline in Germany. Now the arithmetic is different: the total population decline is 4.2 million + 3.5 million = 7.7 million people. But this is not the final figure; To complete the calculations, we need to subtract from the figure of population decline the figure of natural mortality during the war years and 1946, which is 2.8 million people (let’s take the figure 0.8% so that it is “ higher"). Now the total population loss in Germany caused by the war is 4.9 million people. Which, in general, is very “ Seems like"to the figure of irretrievable losses of the Reich ground forces given by Müller-Hillebrandt. So what does the USSR, which lost 26.6 million of its citizens in the war, really “ filled with corpses» your opponent? Patience, dear reader, let’s bring our calculations to their logical conclusion.

The fact is that the population of Germany proper grew up in 1946 oh, by at least another 6.5 million people, and presumably even by 8 million! By the time of the 1946 census (according to German data, by the way, published back in 1996 “ Union of Exiles", and all there was " forcibly displaced"about 15 million Germans) 6.5 million Germans were evicted to German territory from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia alone. 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 itself. And this is already " a little" other figures: 4.9 million + 7.25 million (arithmetic average of the number " expelled"to the homeland of the Germans) = 12.15 million. Actually, this amounts to 17.3% (!) of the German population in 1939. Well, that's not all!
Let me emphasize once again: the Third Reich is NOT JUST Germany! By the time of the attack on the USSR, the Third Reich “officially” included: Germany (70.2 million people), Austria (6.76 million people), the Sudetenland (3.64 million people), captured from Poland “Baltic corridor”, Poznan and Upper Silesia (9.36 million people), Luxembourg, Lorraine and Alsace (2.2 million people), and even Upper Corinthia cut off from Yugoslavia, a total of 92.16 million people.

These are all territories that were officially included in the Reich, and whose inhabitants were subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht. " Imperial Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" and "g General Government of Poland“We will not take into account here (although ethnic Germans were drafted into the Wehrmacht from these territories). And ALL of these territories remained under Nazi control until the beginning of 1945. Now we get " final payment“If we take into account that Austria’s losses are known to us and amount to 300,000 people, that is, 4.43% of the country’s population (which, of course, is much less than that of Germany). It won't be big" tension“assume that the population of the remaining regions of the Reich suffered the same percentage losses as a result of the war, which would give us another 673,000 people. As a result, the total human losses of the Third Reich are 12.15 million + 0.3 million + 0.6 million people. = 13.05 million people. This one " number"is already more like the truth. Taking into account the fact that these losses include 0.5 - 0.75 million dead civilians (and not 3.5 million), we obtain the losses of the Third Reich Armed Forces equal 12.3 million people irrevocably. If we consider that even the Germans admit the losses of their Armed Forces in the East amount to 75-80% of all losses on all fronts, then The Reich Armed Forces lost about 9.2 million (75% of 12.3 million) people irrevocably in battles with the Red Army. Of course, not all of them were killed, but having data on those released (2.35 million), as well as prisoners of war who died in captivity (0.38 million), we can say quite accurately that those actually killed and those who died from wounds and in captivity, and also missing, but not captured (read " killed", and this is 0.7 million!), The Armed Forces of the Third Reich lost approximately 5.6-6 million. Human. According to these calculations, the irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces and the Third Reich (without allies) are correlated as 1,3:1, and the combat losses of the Red Army (data from the team led by Krivosheev) and the Reich Armed Forces as 1,6:1 .

The procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany

Total losses ((70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.
Every tenth German died! Every twelfth person was captured!!!

Conclusion

In this article, the author does not pretend to seek “ golden ratio" And " ultimate truth". The data presented in it are available in the scientific literature and on the Internet. It’s just that they are all scattered and scattered across various sources. The author expresses his personal opinion: you cannot trust German and Soviet sources during the war, because your losses are underestimated by at least 2-3 times, the enemy’s losses are exaggerated by the same 2-3 times. It is all the more strange that German sources, unlike Soviet ones, admit quite “ reliable“, although, as the simplest analysis shows, this is not so.
The irretrievable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War amount to 11.5 - 12.0 million irrevocably, with actual combat demographic losses of 8.7-9.3 million people. The losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Eastern Front amount to 8.0 - 8.9 million irrevocably, of which purely combat demographic 5.2-6.1 million people (including those who died in captivity). Plus, to the losses of the German Armed Forces proper on the Eastern Front, it is necessary to add the losses of the satellite countries, and this is no less than 850 thousand (including those who died in captivity) people killed and more than 600 thousand captured. Total 12.0 (largest number) million versus 9.05 (smallest number) million people.
A logical question: where is “ littering with corpses", about which Western, and now domestic, people talk so much about open" and "d" democratic» sources? The percentage of dead Soviet prisoners of war, even according to the most gentle estimates, is no less than 55%, and of German prisoners, according to the largest, no more than 23%. Maybe the whole difference in losses is explained simply by the inhumane conditions in which the prisoners were kept?
The author is aware that these articles differ from the latest officially announced version of losses: losses of the USSR Armed Forces - 6.8 million military personnel killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing, German losses - 4.046 million military personnel killed, died from wounds, missing in action (including 442.1 thousand killed in captivity), losses of satellite countries - 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand captured. Irreversible losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people. The total losses of Germany are 11.2 million people. (for example on Wikipedia)
The issue with the civilian population is more terrible against the 14.4 (smallest number) million people who were victims of the Second World War in the USSR - 3.2 million people (the largest number) of victims on the German side. So who fought and with whom? It is also necessary to mention that without denying the Holocaust of the Jews, German society still does not perceive the “Slavic” Holocaust; if everything is known about the suffering of the Jewish people in the West (thousands of works), then they prefer to “modestly” remain silent about the crimes against the Slavic peoples. The non-participation of our researchers, for example, in the all-German " dispute between historians“only aggravates this situation.
I would like to end the article with a phrase from an unknown British officer. When he saw a column of Soviet prisoners of war being driven past " international" camp, he said: " I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they will do to Germany».
The article was written in 2007. Since then, the author has not changed his opinion. That is " stupid“There was no inundation of corpses from the Red Army, however, nor was there any particular numerical superiority. This is also proven by the recent emergence of a large layer of Russian “ oral history", that is, memoirs of ordinary participants of the Second World War. For example, Electron Priklonsky, author " Diary of a self-propelled gun", mentions that during the entire war he saw two " killing fields": when our troops attacked in the Baltic states and came under flanking fire from machine guns, and when the Germans broke through from the Korsun-Shevchenko cauldron. This is an isolated example, but nevertheless, it is valuable because it is a wartime diary, and therefore quite objective.
Recently the author of the article came across (materials from the newspaper " Duel" edited by Yu. Mukhina) to an interesting table, the conclusion is controversial (although consistent with the author’s views), but the approach to the problem of losses in the Second World War is interesting:
Estimation of the loss ratio based on the results of a comparative analysis of losses in wars of the last two centuries
Application of the method of comparative analysis, the foundations of which were laid by more Jomini, to estimate the loss ratio requires statistical data on wars of different eras. Unfortunately, more or less complete statistics are available only for 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 size) - the relative losses of the winner in a war are always less than those of the vanquished, and this dependence has a stable, repeating character (it is valid for all types of wars), that is, it has all the signs of 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 fewer 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 greater than for 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 convincingness of the victory. Wars with similar relative losses of the parties end in peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese War). In wars that end, like the Great Patriotic War, with the complete surrender of the enemy (Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the vanquished (by no less than 30%). In other words, the greater the losses, the larger the army must be in order to win a landslide victory. If the army's losses are 2 times greater than those of the enemy, then to win the war its strength must be at least 2.6 times greater than the size of the opposing army.

From the table 6 it follows that the number of Soviet participants in the war was only 1.4-1.5 times larger than the total number of opposing troops and 1.6-1.8 times larger than 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 1,3:1.

The figures for the ratio of irretrievable combat losses given in table. 6, do not exceed the upper limit of the loss ratio obtained above. This, however, does not mean that they are final and cannot be changed. As new documents, statistical materials, and research results appear, the figures for losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht (Table 1-5) may be clarified, change in one direction or another, their ratio may also change, but it cannot be higher than 1.3:1.
__________
Sources:
1. Central Statistical Office of the USSR “Number, composition and movement of the population of the USSR” M 1965
2. “Population of Russia in the 20th century” M. 2001
3. Arntz “Human losses in the Second World War” M. 1957
4. Frumkin G. Population Changes in Europe since 1939 N.Y. 1951
5. Dallin A. German rule in Russia 1941-1945 N.Y.—London 1957
6. “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century” M. 2001
7. Polyan P. Victims of two dictatorships M. 1996.
8. Thorwald J. The Illusion. Soviet soldiers in Hitler,s Army N. Y. 1975
9. Collection of messages of the Extraordinary State Commission M. 1946
10. Zemskov. The birth of the second emigration 1944-1952. SI 1991 No. 4
11. Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
13. Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
14. Arntz. Human losses in the Second World War M. 1957; "International Affairs" 1961 No. 12
15. Biraben J. N. Population 1976.
16. Maksudov S. Population losses of the USSR Benson (Vt) 1989; “On the front-line losses of the SA during the Second World War” “Free Thought” 1993. No. 10
17. Population of the USSR over 70 years. Edited by Rybakovsky L. L. M 1988
18. Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov. "Population of the Soviet Union 1922-1991." M 1993
19. Sokolov B. “Novaya Gazeta” No. 22, 2005, “The Price of Victory -” M. 1991.
20. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
21. Müller-Hillebrand. “German Land Army 1933-1945” M. 1998
22. “Germany’s War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945” edited by Reinhard Rürup 1991. Berlin
23. Gurkin V.V. About human losses on the Soviet-German front 1941-45. NiNI No. 3 1992
24. M. B. Denisenko. WWII in the demographic dimension "Eksmo" 2005
25. S. Maksudov. Population losses of the USSR during the Second World War. "Population and Society" 1995
26. Yu. Mukhin. If it weren't for the generals. "Yauza" 2006
27. V. Kozhinov. The Great Russian War. A series of lectures on the 1000th anniversary of the Russian wars. "Yauza" 2005
28. Materials from the newspaper “Duel”
29. E. Beevor “The Fall of Berlin” M. 2003

Gennady OSIPOV, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Photo by RIA Novosti and ITAR - TASS. — 27.04.2010

Every time, knowledgeable and authoritative people with numbers in their hands convincingly prove that this myth is an ideological weapon in the information and psychological war against Russia, that it is a means of demoralizing our people, a means of compromising the country’s leadership and the political system itself, and there is no reason behind this campaign. search for historical truth. And every time we have to answer them, because with each new anniversary a new generation grows up, which must hear a sober voice that, to some extent, neutralizes the efforts of manipulators.

Literally on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Victory, on April 3, 2005, on the TV show V.V. Posner’s “Times” was invited by the President of the Academy of Military Sciences, Army General M.A. Gareev, who in 1988 headed the Ministry of Defense commission to assess losses during the war. Writers were also among the guests. V.V. Posner states: “This is an amazing thing - we still don’t know exactly how many of our fighters, soldiers, and officers died in this war.”

And this despite the fact that in 1966-1968. The calculation of human losses in the Great Patriotic War was carried out by a commission of the General Staff, headed by Army General S.M. Shtemenko. Then in 1988-1993. a team of military historians under the leadership of Colonel General G.F. was responsible for collating and verifying the materials of all previous commissions. Krivosheeva. A large comprehensive statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about losses in the army and navy, in the border and internal troops of the NKVD was carried out.

This team had the opportunity to study the materials of the General Staff and the main headquarters of the branches of the Armed Forces, the Ministry of Internal Affairs, the FSB, the border troops, and materials from the archival institutions of the USSR, declassified at the end of the 1980s. The results of this fundamental study of the losses of personnel and military equipment of the Soviet Armed Forces in combat operations for the period from 1918 to 1989 were published in the book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed. Losses of the Armed Forces in wars, hostilities and military conflicts" (M., 1993). This information was also published in the journal of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Sociological Research”.

This book says: “According to the results of calculations, during the years of the Great Patriotic War (including the campaign in the Far East against Japan in 1945) general irreversible demographic losses(killed, missing, captured and did not return from it, died from wounds, illnesses and as a result of accidents) of the Soviet Armed Forces along with border and internal troops amounted to 8 million 668 thousand 400 people." The ratio of human losses between Germany and its allies on the Eastern Front was 1:1.3 in favor of our enemy.

If a journalist, while preparing for a television program, has not studied the subject of discussion, then this is more than a negative indication of his professional qualities. V.V. Posner was obliged to inform the audience official data, and only then express your opinion personal an opinion with justification for distrust of these official data. But after the publication of the book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed,” data continued to be regularly published, to which minor clarifications were made in the course of further research

On that TV show with V.V. Posner, invited as an expert by M.A. Gareev tried to report well-known and more than once verified data, but they simply did not pay attention to them and brushed them aside. He, the main expert on the issue under discussion, was practically not allowed to speak! Writer Boris Vasiliev entered the conversation: “Stalin did everything to lose the war... The Germans lost a total of 12.5 million people, and we lost 32 million in one place, in one war.” How can one remember the interview with A.N. Yakovlev “Arguments and Facts” on March 1, 2005, when another high-ranking falsifier stated: “At least 30 million people died in the war with Germany... I think the number is higher. This is the bitter truth of Victory." Excessive aplomb, coupled with disregard for facts, characterizes all slanderers!

There are figures who, following the behests of Goebbels, in their “truth” bring the scale of Soviet losses to absurd, absurd levels. The most tireless “professional” forger was B.V. Sokolov, who estimated the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. V 26.4 million people with German losses on the Soviet-German front in 2.6 million(that is, at a loss ratio of 10:1). And he counted 46 million Soviet people who died in the Great Patriotic War.

His calculations are absurd, because... During all the years of the war, 34.5 million people were mobilized (taking into account the pre-war number of military personnel), of which about 27 million people were direct participants in the war. After the end of the war, there were about 13 million people in the Soviet Army. Of the 27 million participants in the war, 26.4 million could not have died.

B.V. Sokolov is not alone. This ratio of losses was repeated in his book “Russia on the Eve of the 21st Century” (1997) by futurist I.V. Bestuzhev-Lada: “Soviet soldiers literally blocked Moscow with their bodies, and then paved the road to Berlin: nine fell dead, but the tenth still killed an enemy soldier.” Then the writer Viktor Astafiev appeared in this field, and in 2000 these figures were repeated on the memorable dates of May 8 and June 23 in the television film “Victory. One for all" (NTV). We are not talking about small counterfeiters.

What prompted all these people to so insistently spread myths, the obvious purpose of which was to devalue the Victory, give it the appearance of defeat, darken the collective memory of it and lower the morale of the people? This campaign is a social phenomenon, the people leading it act not as isolated individuals, but as a unit formed and united by a common task in the information war against Russia. They are solving a kind of “humanitarian” task - to show how poorly the Red Army fought in comparison with civilized Germans (more broadly, with “Western civilization”). They are trying to convince us that “we overwhelmed the Germans with the corpses of our own soldiers.” This malicious exaggeration of our losses is a vile use of a phenomenon well known in psychology. It lies in the fact that people who have experienced the grief of losing a loved one in war tend to believe the tragic myth, which gives the general losses the scale of universal destruction.

Well poisoners use this feeling. They turned the people's grief into a political technology directed against the people who have experienced the grief of losses.

M.A. Gareev writes in 2005, analyzing the experience of the smear campaign during the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the Victory: “Starting from the time of perestroika and especially in recent years, everything has turned upside down. Most of the media, literature, school and university textbooks and especially television have almost completely switched to distorting the most important events and revising the results of the Second World War as a whole. It is becoming increasingly difficult to defend the real truth about the war. A journalist who calls himself a historian can go on television for months, telling all kinds of fiction about the war. Real historians or war veterans are almost deprived of the opportunity to speak in the media, to have their say... It even goes so far as to claim that it was a shameful war in which we were defeated.”

It must be emphasized: this campaign in a particularly rabid manner is underway V last years! Despite the fact that on June 22, 2001, on the 60th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, V.V. Putin said: “We will defend the truth about this war and fight any attempts to distort this truth, humiliate and insult the memory of those who fell.” It turns out that the authority of the head of state for our finally “untied” media is an empty phrase.

In this light, this fact is seen differently. A commission of the USSR Ministry of Defense, which for many years had been calculating military losses, proposed in December 1988 to make the results public. Defense Minister Marshal D.T. Yazov sent the Commission’s conclusion and a draft resolution on the publication of data to the CPSU Central Committee. When discussing the issue at a meeting of the Politburo of the CPSU Central Committee, Shevardnadze sharply spoke out against the publication. For him, like Gorbachev and Yakovlev, knowledge by society of the true number of losses would greatly hinder the implementation of destructive plans. Society would receive psychological protection against V.V. Posner, B. Sokolov and the like.

Even under Gorbachev, an ideological machine was created that produced a stream of disinformation denigrating all sides of the Great Patriotic War. In the 90s, the creation of this machine was completed, and a stream of lies poured into Russia. In “Rossiyskaya Gazeta” in 2005, the year of the Victory anniversary, one could read: “Over these years, we have learned a lot about the war that is shocking, debunking the myth of total heroism and the fight for a just cause.” It turns out that this was the task - to debunk the image of the Great Patriotic War as the myth of fighting for a just cause.

Military historians of the older generation are generally inclined to believe that the exaggeration of the losses of the Red Army, brought to the point of absurdity, is aimed at instilling the idea of depravity and insolvency Soviet state system, about mediocrity Soviet military command, about the impact of Stalin's repressions on the combat effectiveness of the army. These historians consider the main target of the falsification campaign to be the Soviet political system, which needed to be destroyed during perestroika and reforms. As M.A. writes Gareev, one well-known political figure literally said the following: “Without debunking this Victory, we will not be able to justify everything that happened in 1991 and in subsequent years.”

Judging by many signs, the target of the attack is already current Russia, not so much as a political entity, but as a civilizational entity. In the interpretation of the Great Patriotic war, anti-Sovietism is linked to the denial of historical Russia in general, with the denial of the civilizational meaning of all its domestic wars against the invasions of the West - even the Teutons in the 13th century or the Poles in the 17th century, Napoleon in the 19th or Hitler in the 20th. The impulse of this campaign now comes not from anti-Sovietism, but from Russophobia .

M.A. Gareev writes: “No less than a dozen writers and historians have written that Leningrad should not have been defended, but should have been surrendered. But Hitler’s order of September 18, 1941 is known: The surrender of Leningrad and Moscow will not be accepted, even if it is proposed.”. Let us sharpen the question: does Russia even have the right to decide for itself whether to surrender to the enemy or defend itself? Or does it depend on the desires of Hitler, Napoleon and “a dozen writers and historians” inside Russia? The answer would seem obvious, but the events of recent years cast doubt on it too.

What remains for us in this situation? Fight against falsifiers on every inch of the historical bridgehead. Therefore, let us return to the most reliable, at the moment, information about the losses of both sides in the war on the Soviet-German front. Let us provide in more detail the data on the irretrievable losses of the Red Army, Navy, border and internal troops for the entire period from June 22, 1941 to September 9, 1945 (that is, including the war with Japan).

Irreversible losses of the Soviet Armed Forces

To irrevocable combat Losses include those killed on the battlefield, those who died from wounds during sanitary evacuation and in hospitals. These losses amounted to 6329.6 thousand people. Of these, 5226.8 thousand were killed or died from wounds during the sanitary evacuation stages, and 1102.8 thousand people died from wounds in hospitals.

Irretrievable losses also include missing And captured. There were 3396.4 thousand of them. In addition, in the first months of the war there were significant losses, the nature of which was not documented (information about them was collected subsequently, including from German archives). They amounted to 1162.6 thousand people.

The number of irrecoverable losses includes non-combat losses - those who died from illnesses in hospitals, those who died as a result of emergency incidents, those who were executed by verdicts of military tribunals. These losses amounted to 555.5 thousand people.

The sum of all these losses during the war amounted to 11,444.1 thousand people. Excluded from this number are 939.7 thousand military personnel who were recorded as missing in action at the beginning of the war, but were again called up to the army in the territory liberated from occupation, as well as 1836 thousand former military personnel who returned from captivity after the end of the war - a total of 2775.7 thousand people.

Thus, the actual number of irretrievable (demographic) losses of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 8668.4 thousand people.

Of course, this number is constantly being updated. The Russian Ministry of Defense is creating an electronic database, which is constantly being updated. In January 2010, the head of the Department of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation for perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland, Major General A. Kirilin, told the press that on the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory, official data on the losses of our country in the Great Patriotic War would be made public. General Kirilin also confirmed that the Ministry of Defense currently estimates the losses of military personnel of the Armed Forces in 1941-1945 at 8.86 million people - there are no big changes. He said: “By the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory, we will finally come to that official figure, which will be recorded in a government regulatory document and communicated to the entire population of the country in order to stop speculation on loss figures.”

I would like to hope, but it’s hard to believe, the flywheel of falsifications and distortions is too spinning.

However, with the release of official figures study The problem of casualties in war should not stop. This problem remains a methodologically important and difficult task for sociology, which has general significance for the study of society. Historians, sociologists, and demographers are moving to a more “subtle” and more complex structure of losses, and this requires clarification of concepts.

Close to real information about losses is contained in the works of the outstanding Russian demographer L.L. Rybakovsky, in particular, one of his latest publications: “Human losses of the USSR and Russia in the Great Patriotic War” (M., Ekon-Inform, 2010) .

Objective research is also appearing abroad in Russia. Thus, the famous demographer researcher, emigrant S. Maksudov (A. Bubenyshev), working at Harvard University (USA) and studying the losses of the Red Army, estimated the irretrievable losses at 7.8 million people, which is 870 thousand less than in book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed.” He explains this discrepancy by the fact that Russian authors did not exclude from the number of losses those military personnel who died a “natural” death (this amounts to 250-300 thousand people). In addition, they overestimated the number of dead Soviet prisoners of war. From these, according to Maksudov, it is necessary to subtract those who died “naturally” (about 100 thousand), as well as those who remained in the West after the war (200 thousand) or returned to their homeland, bypassing official repatriation channels (about 280 thousand people). ). Maksudov published his results in Russian in the article “On the front-line losses of the Soviet Army during the Second World War” (“Free Thought”, 1993, No. 10).

While recognizing these amendments as reasonable, the Russian authors, however, did not include them in the final result. Estimation of the number of military personnel who died for reasons not related to the war is methodologically insufficiently developed and still requires approval - after all, the magnitude of losses is widely used in international comparisons. And there is no documentary evidence yet for data on the fate of former prisoners of war in the West - Maksudov used data from sources that have not been published.

But there is another, more serious problem that gives rise to debate. As already mentioned, those servicemen who were captured by the Germans and did not return to their homeland are considered irretrievable losses. However, it is known that from the first months of the war, the Germans used Soviet prisoners of war as part of the military formations of the Wehrmacht, SS and police. In the overwhelming majority of cases, prisoners of war agreed to serve in German formations for the sake of salvation from imminent death, as well as in the hope of crossing the front line or joining the partisans. But personal motives and hopes are one thing, but a mass phenomenon is another, and we are talking specifically about the massive side of reality.

In April 1942, in the Wehrmacht ground forces there were about 200 thousand “voluntary assistants” from prisoners of war (the so-called “hivi”), in February 1943 - up to 400 thousand. They made up a significant proportion of the number of military units. In the Reich Panzer Division, some companies had up to 80% Hivi. The 6th Army, surrounded at Stalingrad, included 51,780 Russian personnel. In total, the number of “Khiwis” is estimated at approximately 700 thousand people.

According to German sources, by May 1943, in the occupied territory of the USSR, about 70 thousand Soviet citizens, mainly prisoners of war, served in the military police, and about 300 thousand in police teams. The total number of German military formations from Turkic and Caucasian nationalities was about 150 thousand. Most of them were also Soviet prisoners of war.

Some of these people were repatriated after the war and excluded from the category of losses. Some part “went missing” in the West or died. This is where a methodological problem arises. If at the time of capture by the Germans these Soviet military personnel should rightfully be counted among our losses, then after they entered service in the German army and police, a new count should begin, and their death or capture by Soviet troops should already be attributed to enemy losses. It is difficult to say whether this is taken into account (and to what extent) in the statistics of German losses, but this is a significant value, it can change the ratio of losses.

It is even more difficult to qualify the following quantities. Some of the prisoners of war and missing persons deliberately began to collaborate with the Germans. Thus, 82 thousand volunteers tried to join the SS division “Galicia” with a staff strength of 13 thousand. About 100 thousand Latvians, 36 thousand Lithuanians and 10 thousand Estonians served in the German army, mainly in the SS troops. Is it right to consider the surrender or disappearance of those who were drafted into the Red Army and did not return home as irretrievable losses? This is getting rid of the hidden enemy.

In the same way, the number of losses also includes those military personnel who were sentenced to death by tribunals and shot (mostly deserters). This community is small, and the question is purely methodological - is it correct to include it in the category of military losses? Of course, these considerations should not complicate the formal calculation, because there is inherent uncertainty here. But we must keep in mind that taking this value into account, if it could be measured, would lead to a reduction in the number of irretrievable losses on the Soviet side. In other words, the official amount of losses of our army somewhat overestimates the real one.

Now about losses in the enemy's armed forces.

Irreversible losses of enemy armed forces

In 1998, a joint work of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation “The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945" in 4 volumes. It says: “The irretrievable human losses of the German armed forces on the eastern front are equal to 7181.1 thousand military personnel, and together with the allies ... - 8649.3 thousand.” If we count using the same method, i.e., taking into account prisoners, then “irretrievable losses of the armed forces of the USSR ... exceed enemy losses by 1.3 times.”

This is the most reliable loss ratio at the moment. Not 10:1, like other “disinterested seekers of truth,” but 1.3:1. Not ten times more, but 30%.

The Red Army suffered its main losses at the first stage of the war - in 1941, that is, in just over 6 months of the war, 27.8% of the total number of deaths during the entire war occurred. And for 5 months of 1945, which included several major operations - 7.5% of the total number of deaths.

Also, the main losses in the form of prisoners occurred at the beginning of the war. According to German data, from June 22, 1941 to January 10, 1942, the number of Soviet prisoners of war amounted to 3.9 million. At the Nuremberg trials, a document was read out from the office of A. Rosenberg, which reported that of the 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war by the beginning 1942 1.1 million remained in the camps.

At the first stage, the German army was objectively much stronger - due to its great superiority in technical equipment, in the command and control of troops worked out on the fields of Europe, as well as the high degree of training and extensive combat experience of its personnel.

And the numerical advantage at first was on the side of Germany. On June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht and the SS troops deployed a fully mobilized and combat-experienced army of 5.5 million people against the USSR. The Red Army had 2.9 million people in the western districts, a significant part of whom had not yet completed mobilization and had not undergone training.

We must also not forget that in addition to the Wehrmacht and the SS troops, 29 divisions and 16 brigades of Germany’s allies - Finland, Hungary and Romania - immediately joined the war against the USSR. On June 22, their soldiers made up 20% of the invading army. Then Italian and Slovak troops joined them, and by the end of July 1941, German satellite troops accounted for about 30% of the invasion force. In our public opinion, the importance of these forces has been very, very underestimated. They tried not to talk about this, because a number of Germany's former allies were allies of the USSR under the Warsaw Pact, and Finland was a friendly country. For the sake of detente and strengthening friendship, we had to turn a blind eye to the past.

In fact, in 1945 what happened invasion Europe to Russia(in the form of the USSR), in many ways similar to the invasion of Napoleon. A direct analogy was drawn between these two invasions (Hitler even granted the “Legion of French Volunteers” the honorable right to begin the battle on the Borodino field; however, during one major shelling, this legion immediately lost 75% of its personnel). It is clear that fascism split the European peoples, and a handful of volunteers fought in the Red Army or in the Resistance movement against the Nazis. However, participation in the “march to the East” was institutionalized— the divisions of the Spaniards and Italians, the divisions “Netherlands”, “Landstorm Netherlands” and “Nordland”, the divisions “Langermak”, “Wallonia” and “Charlemagne”, the division of Czech volunteers “Bohemia and Moravia”, the Albanian division “Skanderbek” fought with the Red Army ", as well as separate battalions of Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, and Danes.

As ideological fighters, volunteers were mainly enlisted in the SS troops. There were 46.5 thousand such volunteers from all over Europe in the SS at the beginning of 1944 - an entire army corps. There were 18,473 Dutch SS men alone, and 6,033 Flemings. It would seem that Russia belongs to the Flemings! But no, I couldn’t wait to shoot at the Slavs and burn their huts. We need to think about this. Those who came to us with a sword out of hatred were very stubborn opponents; It was in the Red Army that hatred of the heart arose only after a year of war, when during counter-offensives the soldiers saw the ashes of their villages.

But Germany’s official allies also represented a serious force. Suffice it to say that in battles with the Red Army on the territory of the USSR, the Romanian army lost more than 600 thousand soldiers and officers killed, wounded and captured. Hungary fought with the USSR from June 27, 1941 to April 12, 1945, when the entire territory was already occupied by Soviet troops. On the Eastern Front, Hungarian troops numbered up to 205 thousand bayonets. The intensity of their participation in the battles is evidenced by the fact that in January 1942, in the battles near Voronezh, the Hungarians lost 148 thousand people killed, wounded and prisoners.

Finland mobilized 560 thousand people, 80% of the conscript contingent, for the war with the USSR. This army was the most trained, well-armed and resilient among Germany's allies. From June 25, 1941 to July 25, 1944, the Finns pinned down large Red Army forces in Karelia. The Croatian Legion was small in number, but had a combat-ready fighter squadron, whose pilots shot down (according to their reports) 259 Soviet aircraft, losing 23 of their own aircraft.

The Slovaks were different from all of these allies of Hitler. Of the 36 thousand Slovak military personnel who fought on the Eastern Front, less than 3 thousand died, and more than 27 thousand soldiers and officers surrendered, many of whom joined the Czechoslovak Army Corps, formed in the USSR. At the start of the Slovak National Uprising in August 1944, all Slovak military aircraft flew to the Lvov airfield.

In general, according to German data, on the Eastern Front, 230 thousand people were killed and died as part of the foreign formations of the Wehrmacht and the SS, and 959 thousand people as part of the armies of satellite countries - a total of about 1.2 million soldiers and officers. According to a certificate from the USSR Ministry of Defense (1988), the irretrievable losses of the armed forces of the countries officially at war with the USSR amounted to 1 million people. In addition to the Germans, among the prisoners of war taken by the Red Army were 1.1 million citizens of European countries. For example, there were 23 thousand French, 70 Czechoslovaks, 60.3 Poles, 22 Yugoslavs, 10.2 thousand Jews.

Perhaps even more important is the fact that by the start of the war against the USSR, Germany had occupied or effectively brought under control all of continental Europe. A territory of 3 million square meters was united under common power and purpose. km and a population of about 290 million people. As the English historian writes, “Europe has become an economic whole.” All this potential was thrown into the war against the USSR, whose potential, by formal economic standards, was approximately 4 times less (and decreased by approximately half in the first six months of the war).

At the same time, Germany also received significant assistance from the United States and Latin America through intermediaries. Europe supplied German industry with labor on a huge scale, which made it possible to carry out an unprecedented military mobilization of the Germans - 21.1 million people. During the war, the German economy employed approximately 14 million foreign workers. On May 31, 1944, there were 7.7 million foreign workers (30%) in the German military industry. Germany's military orders were carried out by all large, technically advanced enterprises in Europe. Suffice it to say that the Skoda factories alone produced as much military products in the year before the attack on Poland as the entire British military industry. On June 22, 1941, a military vehicle burst into the USSR with an amount of equipment and ammunition unprecedented in history.

The Red Army, which had only recently been reformed on a modern basis and had just begun to receive and master modern weapons, faced a powerful enemy of a completely new type, which was not present either in World War I, or in the Civil War, or even in the Finnish War. However, as events showed, the Red Army had an exceptionally high ability to learn. She showed rare resilience in the most difficult conditions and quickly strengthened. The military strategy and tactics of the high command and officers were creative and of high systemic quality. Therefore, at the final stage of the war, the losses of the German army were 1.4 times greater than those of the Soviet armed forces. Starting from Stalingrad, the Red Army carried out strategic operations of the highest class.

The fate of prisoners of war on opposite sides of the front

In addition, the Armed Forces of the USSR suffered large irreparable losses due to the unprecedented cruelty of the enemy towards prisoners of war. As was said, according to reports from the troops, 3,396 thousand military personnel were captured. In addition, the enemy captured about 500 thousand conscripts who did not have time to join the troops. There is no exact data yet on the fate of all the prisoners - some of them began to serve the Germans, some remained in the West after liberation by the Allied troops. A number of people from various kinds of paramilitary formations who were not military personnel, etc., were also captured.

Therefore, researchers of the fate of prisoners of war often rely on a certificate from the Office of Prisoners of War of the Wehrmacht High Command (OKB). Unlike the USSR Ministry of Defense, the OKB counted as prisoners of war all captured Soviet citizens who were part of paramilitary forces (mainly construction workers and transport workers). Therefore, the number of prisoners of war was estimated at 5.7 million people.

According to this OKB certificate, 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity (the Extraordinary State Commission under the Council of People's Commissars of the USSR estimated these losses at 3.9 million people). Thus, even according to the German Office, the death of Soviet prisoners of war amounted to 58%! Massive deaths of prisoners were already observed during their transportation to the camps. So, upon arrival at the station. Bridge (Latvia) in one train, which was followed by 1,500 Soviet prisoners of war, it was discovered that not a single one was left alive in its carriages.

For comparison, we note that of the number of British and American prisoners of war captured by the Germans in 1941-1942, 3.5% died before the end of the war, and of the French prisoners of war in 1940, only 2.6%. The Great Patriotic War had a pronounced civilizational character; on the part of Hitler's Germany it was a war of destruction against Russia.

What was the fate of prisoners of war from the troops of Germany and its allies in the USSR? In total, there were 3486.2 thousand prisoners of war in Soviet camps. Of these, 85.1% were released and repatriated. 14.9% died in captivity (and among Wehrmacht prisoners of war 13.9%). Compare these values!

Historians acknowledge that in Soviet captivity all norms of international law were observed, and everything the country could do was done to provide life support for the prisoners. The mortality of prisoners was largely a consequence of the delay in capitulation by German troops who were surrounded, especially in winter. Thus, archival sources published in 1992 in Germany show that at Stalingrad already in October 1942 the 6th Army was left without food and relied only on plundering the occupied Soviet territories. At the beginning of December, the grain quota was reduced to 200 per day, and by the end of December to 50-100. In mid-January 1943, they stopped issuing food to soldiers. As a result of the belated surrender, the 110 thousand German soldiers captured were in extremely serious condition. Most of them soon died - only 18 thousand arrived in places of permanent detention, of which about 6 thousand people returned to Germany. The death of Germans captured at Stalingrad and suffering from dystrophy and frostbite accounted for a third of all Germans who died in Soviet captivity.

Let’s briefly talk about the reasons for this now unnecessary persistence. As the German historian O. Bartov, who himself went through the war, writes, the fear of capture among German soldiers and officers was so great because they knew what they had done on the lands of the USSR they occupied, and were afraid of retribution. As the soldiers wrote, “the fear of Ivan was stronger than the horror of death.”

All this is quite well known among those ideologists and journalists who have been busy destroying the image of Victory for twenty years. And in conclusion, we again pose the question: what motivates them? What are the motives for this tireless activity? The most reasonable and detailed explanation, it seems to me, is given by my sociology colleague L.D. Gudkov, director of the Yuri Levada Analytical Center.

He writes that the cultural core of the Russian people includes “the social attitude towards war, embodied and enshrined in the main symbol that integrates the nation - Victory in the war, victory in the Great Patriotic War. This is the most significant event in the history of Russia, according to its residents, a supporting image of national consciousness. None of the other events can be compared to this one. In the list of the most important events that determined the fate of the country in the twentieth century, an average of 78% of respondents named victory in the Second World War... Whenever “Victory” is mentioned, we are talking about a symbol that is the most important for the vast majority of respondents, for society as a whole an element of collective identification, a point of reference, a yardstick that sets a certain lens for assessing the past and, partly, understanding the present and future.”

Apparently, this is precisely why the destruction of this memory continues to be an important tool in information and psychological warfare against Russia. This memory gives the population of Russia a language of “high collective feelings” that unites them, necessary in order to overcome the current severe crisis and develop a project for a new development cycle that is understandable and close to the majority. Without this language, no “common cause” is possible in Russia.

The people's memory of the Victory does not allow us to finish off the centralized state and deprive Russia of the remnants of its independence. Therefore, the image of the Great Patriotic War will be the object of violent attacks for a long time. And Russian citizens need to learn to calmly and skillfully repel these attacks. I would, of course, like to have more active support from the state in this, but apparently it does not have enough funds on all fronts.

Nothing, it’s the Patriotic War.

Real losses of the USSR in the Second World War. Updated estimates of the number of deaths in the Great Patriotic War

Casualties

Overall rating

Military personnel

Civilian population

Property losses

Losses of Germany and their allies

Casualties

Property losses

Prisoners of war of Germany and its allies

Alternative theories

Notes

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