How many Russians died in World War 2. How many people died in the Great Patriotic War

There are different estimates of losses Soviet Union and Germany during the war of 1941-1945. The differences are related both to the methods of obtaining initial quantitative data on different groups losses, as well as with calculation methods.

In Russia, official data on losses in the Great Patriotic War considered data published by a group of researchers led by a consultant of the Military Memorial Center of the RF Armed Forces Grigory Krivosheev in 1993. According to updated data (2001), the losses were as follows:

• Human losses of the USSR - 6.8 million military personnel killed, and 4.4 million captured and missing. Total demographic losses (including civilian deaths) - 26.6 million Human;
• German casualties - 4.046 million military personnel killed, died from wounds, missing in action (including 442.1 thousand died in captivity), more 910.4 thousand returned from captivity after the war;
• Human losses of Germany's allied countries - 806 thousand military personnel killed (including 137.8 thousand died in captivity), also 662.2 thousand returned from captivity after the war.
• Irreversible losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million And 8.6 million people (not to mention 1.6 million prisoners of war after May 9, 1945) respectively. The ratio of irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany with their satellites is 1,3:1 .

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

Research into the Soviet Union's losses in the war actually began only in the late 1980s. with the advent of glasnost. Before this, in 1946, Stalin announced that the USSR had lost during the war 7 million people. Under Khrushchev this figure increased to "more than 20 million". Only in 1988-1993. a team of military historians under the leadership of Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev conducted a comprehensive statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about human losses in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. In this case, the results of the commission’s work were used General Staff to determine losses, headed by Army General S. M. Shtemenko (1966-1968) and a similar commission of the Ministry of Defense led by Army General M. A. Gareev (1988). 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 final figure of human losses 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, 1990, dedicated to the 45th anniversary of the Victory of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War. In 1993, the results of the study were published in the book “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 language. In 2001, a reissue of the book “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century” was published. 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 number and age structure population of the USSR at the beginning and end of the war.

In the 1990-2000s. Both works proposed amendments to official figures (in particular, by clarifying statistical methods) and completely alternative studies with very different data on losses appeared in the press. As a rule, in works of the latter type, the estimated loss of life far exceeds the officially recognized 26.6 million people.

For example, the modern Russian publicist Boris Sokolov estimated the total human losses of the USSR in 1939-1945. V 43,448 thousand people, and the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. V 26.4 million people (of which 4 million people died in captivity). If you believe his calculations about the loss 2.6 million German soldiers on the Soviet-German front, the loss ratio reaches 10:1. At the same time, the total human losses of Germany in 1939-1945. he rated it 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 Human). However, it must be taken into account that Sokolov also includes demographic losses in the losses of the USSR (that is, those who could have been born, but were not born), but does not keep such a calculation for Germany. The calculation of the total losses of the USSR is based on outright falsification: the population of the USSR in mid-1941 was taken at 209.3 million people (12-17 million people higher than the real one, at the level of 1959), at the beginning of 1946 - at 167 million (3. 5 million higher than the real one), - which in total gives the difference between the official and Sokolov figures. B.V. Sokolov’s calculations are repeated in many publications and media (in the NTV film “Victory. One for All”, interviews and speeches of writer Viktor Astafiev, book by I.V. Bestuzhev-Lada “Russia on the eve of the 21st century”, etc.)

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 higher level mortality 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 estimates of the same team of researchers, the population decline in Russia in the First world war(losses of military personnel and civilian population) amounted to 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 of 1945, the number of women aged 20 to 29 years 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 of 1945 should have been approximately 35-36 million people more than in the absence of war. However, they consider this figure to be hypothetical, since it is based on insufficiently strict assumptions.

According to another foreign researcher M. Haynes, the figure of 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 decline from June 1941 to June 1945 was 42.7 million people, and this figure 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 search work Memory Watch and in historical archives. Of these (according to 1993 data):

• Killed, died from wounds and illnesses, non-combat losses - 6,885,100 people, including
• Killed - 5,226,800 people.
• Died from wounds - 1,102,800 people.
• Died from various causes and accidents, were shot - 555,500 people.

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 were missing and captured; 1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, 1,783,300 did not return (died, emigrated).

Civilian population

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

• were deliberately exterminated in the occupied territory - 7,420,379 people.
• died and perished from the cruel conditions of the occupation regime (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care, etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
• died in forced labor in Germany - 2,164,313 people. (another 451,100 people by various reasons did not return and became emigrants)

However, the civilian population also suffered heavy losses from enemy combat in front-line areas, besieged and besieged cities. There are no complete statistical materials on the types of civilian casualties under consideration.

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 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 casualty department dated May 22, 1945, addressed to the OKW Quartermaster General, provides the following information:

According to a certificate from the OKH organizational department dated May 10, 1945, only ground forces, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), during the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945, lost 4 million 617.0 thousand people.

Two months before his death, Hitler announced in one of his speeches that Germany had lost 12.5 million killed and wounded, 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 those buried on the territory of the USSR and of Eastern Europe German soldiers number 3.226 million, of which the names of 2.395 million are known.

Prisoners of war of Germany and its allies

Information on the number of prisoners of war of the armed forces of Germany and its allied countries, recorded in the camps of the NKVD of the USSR as of April 22, 1956.

Alternative theories

In the 1990-2000s, publications appeared in the Russian press with data on losses that were very different from those accepted by historical science. As a rule, the estimated Soviet losses far exceed those cited by historians.

For example, the modern Russian publicist Boris Sokolov estimated the total human losses of the USSR in 1939-1945 at 43,448 thousand people, and the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941-1945. 26.4 million people (of which 4 million people died in captivity). According to his calculations about the loss of 2.6 million German soldiers on the Soviet-German front, the loss ratio reaches 10:1. At the same time, he estimated the total human losses of Germany in 1939-1945 at 5.95 million people (including 300 thousand Jews, Gypsies and anti-Nazis who died in concentration camps). His estimate of the dead Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS personnel (including foreign formations) is 3,950 thousand people). However, it must be taken into account that Sokolov also includes demographic losses in the losses of the USSR (that is, those who could have been born, but were not born), but does not keep such a calculation for Germany. The calculation of the total losses of the USSR is based on outright falsification: the population of the USSR in mid-1941 was taken at 209.3 million people (12-17 million people higher than the real one, at the level of 1959), at the beginning of 1946 - 167 million (3. 5 million below the real one), which in total gives the difference between the official and Sokolov’s figures. B.V. Sokolov’s calculations are repeated in many publications and media (in the NTV film “Victory. One for All”, interviews and speeches of writer Viktor Astafiev, book by I.V. Bestuzhev-Lada “Russia on the eve of the 21st century”, etc.)

In contrast to Sokolov’s highly controversial publications, there are works by other authors, many of whom are driven by establishing the real picture of what happened, and not by the requirements of the modern political situation. The work of Igor Lyudvigovich Garibyan stands out from the general series. The author uses open official sources and data, clearly pointing out inconsistencies in them, and focuses on the methods used to manipulate statistics. Interesting are the methods that he used for his own assessment of Germany’s losses: the female preponderance in the age-sex pyramid, the balance method, the method of assessment based on the structure of prisoners, and the assessment based on the rotation of army formations. Each method produces similar results - from 10 before 15 million people of irretrievable losses, excluding losses of satellite countries. The results obtained are often confirmed by indirect and sometimes direct facts from official German sources. The work deliberately focuses on the indirectness of multiple facts. Such data is more difficult to falsify, because the totality of facts and their vicissitudes during falsification cannot be foreseen, which means attempts at falsification will not stand up to scrutiny under different methods of assessment.

The results of Britain's participation in World War II were mixed. The country retained its independence and made a significant contribution to the victory over fascism, at the same time it lost its role as a world leader and came close to losing its colonial status.

Political games

British military historiography often likes to remind that the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact of 1939 actually gave the German military machine a free hand. At the same time, the Munich Agreement, signed by England together with France, Italy and Germany a year earlier, is being ignored in Foggy Albion. The result of this conspiracy was the division of Czechoslovakia, which, according to many researchers, was the prelude to World War II.

On September 30, 1938, in Munich, Great Britain and Germany signed another agreement - a declaration of mutual non-aggression, which was the culmination of the British “policy of appeasement.” Hitler quite easily managed to convince British Prime Minister Arthur Chamberlain that the Munich Agreements would be a guarantee of security in Europe.

Historians believe that Britain had high hopes for diplomacy, with the help of which it hoped to rebuild the Versailles system in crisis, although already in 1938 many politicians warned the peacemakers: “concessions to Germany will only embolden the aggressor!”

Returning to London on the plane, Chamberlain said: “I brought peace to our generation.” To which Winston Churchill, then a parliamentarian, prophetically remarked: “England was offered a choice between war and dishonor. She chose dishonor and will get war.”

"Strange War"

On September 1, 1939, Germany invaded Poland. On the same day, Chamberlain's government sent a note of protest to Berlin, and on September 3, Great Britain, as the guarantor of Poland's independence, declared war on Germany. Over the next ten days, the entire British Commonwealth will join it.

By mid-October, the British transported four divisions to the continent and took up positions along the Franco-Belgian border. However, the section between the cities of Mold and Bayel, which is a continuation of the Maginot Line, was far from the epicenter of hostilities. Here the Allies created more than 40 airfields, but instead of bombing German positions, British aviation began scattering propaganda leaflets appealing to the morality of the Germans.

In the following months, six more British divisions arrived in France, but neither the British nor the French were in a hurry to take active action. This is how the “strange war” was waged. Chief of the British General Staff Edmund Ironside described the situation as follows: “passive waiting with all the worries and anxieties that follow from this.”

French writer Roland Dorgeles recalled how the Allies calmly watched the movement of German ammunition trains: “obviously the main concern of the high command was not to disturb the enemy.”

Historians have no doubt that the “Phantom War” is explained by the wait-and-see attitude of the Allies. Both Great Britain and France had to understand where German aggression would turn after the capture of Poland. It is possible that if the Wehrmacht immediately launched an invasion of the USSR after the Polish campaign, the Allies could support Hitler.

Miracle at Dunkirk

On May 10, 1940, according to Plan Gelb, Germany launched an invasion of Holland, Belgium and France. The political games are over. Churchill, who took office as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, soberly assessed the enemy’s forces. As soon as German troops took control of Boulogne and Calais, he decided to evacuate parts of the British Expeditionary Force that were trapped in the cauldron at Dunkirk, and with them the remnants of the French and Belgian divisions. 693 British and about 250 French ships under the command of English Rear Admiral Bertram Ramsay planned to transport about 350,000 coalition troops across the English Channel.

Military experts had little faith in the success of the operation under the sonorous name “Dynamo”. The advance detachment of Guderian's 19th Panzer Corps was located a few kilometers from Dunkirk and, if desired, could easily defeat the demoralized allies. But a miracle happened: 337,131 soldiers, most of whom were British, reached the opposite bank almost without interference.

Hitler unexpectedly stopped the advance of the German troops. Guderian called this decision purely political. Historians differ in their assessment of the controversial episode of the war. Some believe that the Fuhrer wanted to save his strength, but others are confident in a secret agreement between the British and German governments.

One way or another, after the Dunkirk disaster, Britain remained the only country that avoided complete defeat and was able to resist the seemingly invincible German machine. On June 10, 1940, England's position became threatening when fascist Italy entered the war on the side of Nazi Germany.

Battle of Britain

Germany's plans to force Great Britain to surrender have not been canceled. In July 1940, coastal convoys and naval bases Britain, in August the Luftwaffe switched to airfields and aircraft factories.

On August 24, German aircraft carried out their first bombing attack on central London. According to some, it is wrong. The retaliatory attack was not long in coming. A day later, 81 RAF bombers flew to Berlin. No more than a dozen reached the target, but this was enough to infuriate Hitler. At a meeting of the German command in Holland, it was decided to unleash the full power of the Luftwaffe on the British Isles.

Within weeks, the skies over British cities turned into a boiling cauldron. Birmingham, Liverpool, Bristol, Cardiff, Coventry, Belfast got it. During the whole of August, at least 1,000 British citizens died. However, from mid-September the intensity of the bombing began to decrease, due to the effective counteraction of British fighter aircraft.

The Battle of Britain is better characterized by numbers. In total, 2,913 British Air Force aircraft and 4,549 Luftwaffe aircraft were involved in air battles. Historians estimate the losses of both sides at 1,547 Royal Air Force fighters and 1,887 German aircraft shot down.

Lady of the Seas

It is known that after the successful bombing of England, Hitler intended to launch Operation Sea lion"on the invasion of the British Isles. However, the desired air superiority was not achieved. In turn, the Reich military command was skeptical about the landing operation. According to German generals, force German army was on land, not at sea.

Military experts were sure that ground army Britain was no stronger than the broken armed forces of France, and Germany had every chance of overpowering the United Kingdom's forces in a ground operation. The English military historian Liddell Hart noted that England managed to hold out only due to the water barrier.

In Berlin they realized that the German fleet was noticeably inferior to the English. For example, by the beginning of the war, the British Navy had seven operational aircraft carriers and six more on the slipway, while Germany was never able to equip at least one of its aircraft carriers. In the open seas, the presence of carrier-based aircraft could predetermine the outcome of any battle.

The German submarine fleet was only able to inflict serious damage on British merchant ships. However, having sunk 783 German submarines with US support, the British Navy won the Battle of the Atlantic. Until February 1942, the Fuhrer hoped to conquer England from the sea, until the commander of the Kriegsmarine, Admiral Erich Raeder, finally convinced him to abandon this idea.

Colonial interests

Back in early 1939, the British Chiefs of Staff were strategically one of the most important tasks recognized the defense of Egypt with its Suez Canal. Hence the special attention of the Kingdom's armed forces to the Mediterranean theater of operations.

Unfortunately, the British had to fight not at sea, but in the desert. May-June 1942 turned out for England, according to historians, as a “shameful defeat” at Tobruk from Erwin Rommel’s Afrika Korps. And this despite the British having twice the superiority in strength and technology!

The British were able to turn the tide of the North African campaign only in October 1942 at the Battle of El Alamein. Again having a significant advantage (for example, in aviation 1200:120), the British Expeditionary Force of General Montgomery managed to defeat a group of 4 German and 8 Italian divisions under the command of the already familiar Rommel.

Churchill remarked about this battle: “Before El Alamein we did not win a single victory. We haven't suffered a single defeat since El Alamein." By May 1943, British and American troops forced the 250,000-strong Italian-German group in Tunisia to capitulate, which opened the way for the Allies to Italy. In North Africa, the British lost about 220 thousand soldiers and officers.

And again Europe

On June 6, 1944, with the opening of the Second Front, British troops had the opportunity to rehabilitate themselves for their shameful flight from the continent four years earlier. General leadership of the allies ground forces was entrusted to the experienced Montgomery. By the end of August, the total superiority of the Allies had crushed German resistance in France.

Events unfolded in a different vein in December 1944 near the Ardennes, when a German armored group literally pushed through the lines of American troops. In the Ardennes meat grinder, the US Army lost over 19 thousand soldiers, the British no more than two hundred.

This ratio of losses led to disagreements in the Allied camp. American generals Bradley and Patton threatened to resign if Montgomery did not leave leadership of the army. Montgomery's self-confident statement at a press conference on January 7, 1945, that it was British troops who saved the Americans from the prospect of encirclement, jeopardized the further joint operation. Only thanks to the intervention of the commander in chief of the allied forces, Dwight Eisenhower, was the conflict resolved.

By the end of 1944, the Soviet Union liberated a significant part Balkan Peninsula, which caused serious concern in Britain. Churchill, who did not want to lose control over the important Mediterranean region, proposed to Stalin a division of the sphere of influence, as a result of which Moscow got Romania, London - Greece.

In fact, with the tacit consent of the USSR and the USA, Great Britain suppressed the resistance of the Greek communist forces and on January 11, 1945, established complete control over Attica. It was then on the horizon of the British foreign policy a new enemy clearly loomed. “In my eyes, the Soviet threat had already replaced the Nazi enemy,” Churchill recalled in his memoirs.

According to the 12-volume History of the Second World War, Britain and its colonies lost 450,000 people in World War II. Britain's expenses for waging the war amounted to more than half of foreign capital investments; the Kingdom's external debt by the end of the war reached 3 billion pounds sterling. The UK paid off all its debts only by 2006.

The tragedy of the Great Patriotic War claimed many lives not only from the Soviet Union and countries in the commonwealth, but also from Nazi Germany. In the Great Patriotic War, which began on June 22, 1941 at 4 a.m. Moscow time, according to the USSR, 6 million 329 thousand military personnel died - figures including those killed and missing. 555 thousand died not as a result of violent death, but from diseases and local incidents. 4 million 559 thousand people were captured by enemy troops and are considered missing. 500 thousand people were mobilized, but were not enrolled in the official military forces. Of these, 1 thousand 784 people were captured.

The military losses of Nazi Germany are two times less: 3 million 604 thousand people died during hostilities, including missing soldiers. About 3 million 576 thousand soldiers were captured by Soviet troops and 442 thousand of them died. On the first day of the military operation, both sides suffered losses. The USSR lost 1,200 aircraft, 800 of which were blown up right at the airfields before the flights began. After the first failures, the government of the Soviet Union carried out active military policy, as a result of which 120 thousand aircraft were produced, 870 units. military equipment, 90 thousand tanks, 300 thousand mortars and small artillery equipment.

Over the entire period of hostilities, which lasted 6 years (taking into account the start of the war in European countries ah) 32 million people died, and 35 million were injured according to official data. Forty countries were involved in the war, where military operations were directly carried out, and sixty allied countries. 1700 million people of the world population - this amount of the population was covered during the war - this is 80% percent of total number inhabitants according to world indicators in those years. The Great Patriotic War covered an area of ​​22 million. sq. kilometers.

During four years of active hostilities in the USSR, 1,700 cities and about 70 villages were destroyed, 32 plants and factories were destroyed, and 98 thousand collective farms were plundered. In terms of the amount of funds spent on restoration, the USSR occupies a leading position: 260 billion dollars were required to pay off military expenses and restore the destruction. If we compare with the famous countries of Europe and Nazi Germany, the latter needed 48 billion dollars to restore its country, France and Poland, approximately the same amount - 20 billion, England the least - 6.9 billion dollars.

In 1990, alternative theories emerged about how many people participated and died in the Great Patriotic War. Discrepancies with official data were recorded, citing the fact that the country's leadership allegedly tried to hide the true scale of losses. B. Sokolov, a candidate of sciences in history, believes that during the six years of the war (from 1939 to 1945), 26 million 400 thousand people died and 4 million were taken prisoner and are considered missing. In 2012, Doctor of Historical Sciences V. Zemskov published a work in which he describes that real losses do not exceed 12.55 million military personnel and 4.5 million citizens of the USSR, but these data are already much higher than the official figure.

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Calculating the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War remains one of the scientific problems unsolved by historians. Official statistics - 26.6 million dead, including 8.7 million military personnel - underestimate the losses among those who were at the front. Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the dead were military personnel (up to 13.6 million), and not the civilian population of the Soviet Union.

There is a lot of literature on this problem, and perhaps some people get the impression that it has been sufficiently researched. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but many questions and doubts remain. There is too much here that is unclear, controversial and clearly unreliable. Even the reliability of the current official data on the human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts.

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

The official figure for the demographic losses of the Soviet Union has changed several times. In February 1946, the figure of losses of 7 million people was published in the Bolshevik magazine. In March 1946, Stalin, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, stated that the USSR lost 7 million people during the war: “As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, as well as thanks to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German hard labor about seven million people." The report “The Military Economy of the USSR during the Patriotic War” published in 1947 by the Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee Voznesensky did not indicate human losses.

In 1959, the first post-war census of the USSR population was carried out. In 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden, reported 20 million dead: “Can we sit back and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists launched a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed the lives of two tens of millions of Soviet people?” In 1965, Brezhnev, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, announced more than 20 million dead.

In 1988–1993 a team of military historians under the leadership of Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev conducted a statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about human losses in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. The result of the work was the figure of 8,668,400 casualties of the USSR security forces during the war.

Since March 1989, on behalf of the CPSU Central Committee, a state commission has been working to study the number of human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. The commission included representatives of the State Statistics Committee, the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Defense, the Main Archival Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Committee of War Veterans, the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The commission did not count losses, but estimated the difference between the estimated population of the USSR at the end of the war and the estimated population that would have lived in the USSR if there had been no war. The commission first announced its figure of demographic losses of 26.6 million people at the ceremonial meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990.

On May 5, 2008, the President of the Russian Federation signed a decree “On the publication of the fundamental multi-volume work “The Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.” On October 23, 2009, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation signed the order “On the Interdepartmental Commission for Calculating Losses during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.” The commission included representatives of the Ministry of Defense, FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosstat, and Rosarkhiv. In December 2011, a representative of the commission announced the country’s overall demographic losses during the war period 26.6 million people, of which losses of active armed forces 8668400 people.

Military personnel

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense irrecoverable losses during the fighting on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945, there were 8,860,400 Soviet troops. The source was data declassified in 1993 and data obtained during the search work of the Memory Watch and in historical archives.

According to declassified data from 1993: killed, died from wounds and illnesses, non-combat losses - 6 885 100 people, including

• Killed - 5,226,800 people.
• Died from wounds - 1,102,800 people.
• Died from various causes and accidents, were shot - 555,500 people.

On May 5, 2010, the head of the Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense for perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland, Major General A. Kirilin, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military losses are 8 668 400 , will be reported to the country's leadership so that they are announced on May 9, the 65th anniversary of the Victory.

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 about these losses reports), that is, in total

• missing, captured and unaccounted for combat losses - 4,559,000;
• 1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, 1,783,300 did not return (died, emigrated) (that is, the total number of prisoners was 3,619,300, which is more than together with the missing);
• previously considered missing and were called up again from the liberated territories - 939,700.

So the official irrecoverable losses(6,885,100 dead, according to declassified 1993 data, and 1,783,300 who did not return from captivity) amounted to 8,668,400 military personnel. But from them we must subtract 939,700 re-callers who were considered missing. We get 7,728,700.

The error was pointed out, in particular, by Leonid Radzikhovsky. The correct calculation is as follows: the figure 1,783,300 is the number of those who did not return from captivity and those who went missing (and not just those who did not return from captivity). Then official irrecoverable losses (killed 6,885,100, according to declassified data in 1993, and those who did not return from captivity and missing 1,783,300) amounted to 8 668 400 military personnel.

According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet 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. From this figure, the calculation gives the same result: if 1,836,000 returned from captivity and 939,700 were re-called from those listed as unknown, then 1,783,300 military personnel were missing and did not return from captivity. So the official irrecoverable losses (6,885,100 died, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 went missing and did not return from captivity) are 8 668 400 military personnel.

Additional data

Civilian population

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses of the civilian population of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War at approximately 13.7 million people.

The final number is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:

• were exterminated in the occupied territory and died as a result of military operations (from bombing, shelling, etc.) - 7,420,379 people.
• died as a result of a humanitarian catastrophe (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care, etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
• died in forced labor in Germany - 2,164,313 people. (another 451,100 people, for various reasons, did not return and became emigrants).

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 Jews, victims of the Holocaust), and about 7 million more people died as a result of increased mortality in non-occupied territories.

The total losses of the USSR (together with the civilian population) amounted to 40–41 million people. These estimates are confirmed by comparing data from the 1939 and 1959 censuses, since there is reason to believe that in 1939 there was a very significant undercount of male conscripts.

In general, during the Second World War, the Red Army lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders killed, missing, died from wounds, diseases and in captivity.

Finally, we note another new trend in the study of the demographic results of the Second World War. Before the collapse of the USSR, there was no need to estimate human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate amount of human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.

The greatest losses on the battlefields of the Second World War were suffered by Russians and Ukrainians. Many Jews were killed. But the most tragic was the fate of the Belarusian people. In the first months of the war, the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by the Germans. During the war, the Belarusian SSR lost up to 30% of its population. In the occupied territory of the BSSR, the Nazis killed 2.2 million people. (The latest research data on Belarus is as follows: the Nazis destroyed civilians - 1,409,225 people, killed prisoners in German death camps - 810,091 people, drove into German slavery - 377,776 people). It is also known that in percentage terms - the number of dead soldiers / the number of population, among Soviet republics big damage Georgia suffered. Of the 700 thousand residents of Georgia called up to the front, almost 300 thousand did not return.

Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

To date, there are no sufficiently reliable figures for the losses of the German army obtained by direct statistical calculation. This is explained by the absence, for various reasons, of reliable 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 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured, of which 2,388,443 Germans were in NKVD camps. According to German historians, there were about 3.1 million German military personnel in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps.

The discrepancy 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.

There is another statistics of losses - statistics of 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. (in 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.

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. 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.
4. 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.
5. Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people)

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany

1. The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
2. The population in 1946 was 65.93 million people.
3. Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
4. Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
5. Emigration influx of 7.25 million people.
6. Total losses ((70.2 – 65.93 – 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22) 12.15 million people.

conclusions

Let us remember that disputes about the number of deaths continue to this day.

During the war, almost 27 million USSR citizens died (the exact number is 26.6 million). This amount included:

• killed and died from wounds of military personnel;
• those who died from disease;
• executed by firing squad (based on various denunciations);
• missing and captured;
• representatives of the civilian population, both in the occupied territories of the USSR and in other regions of the country, in which, due to the ongoing hostilities in the state, there was an increased mortality rate from hunger and disease.

This also includes those who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return to their homeland after the victory. The vast majority of those killed were men (about 20 million). Modern researchers claim that by the end of the war, of the men born in 1923. (i.e. those who were 18 years old in 1941 and could be drafted into the army) about 3% remained alive. By 1945, there were twice as many women in the USSR as men (data for people aged 20 to 29 years).

In addition to the actual deaths, human losses include a sharp drop in the birth rate. Thus, according to official estimates, if the birth rate in the state had remained at least at the same level, the population of the Union by the end of 1945 should have been 35–36 million more people than it was in reality. Despite numerous studies and calculations, exact amount those killed during the war are unlikely to ever be named.

“According to the results of calculations, during the years of the Great Patriotic War (including the campaign on Far East against Japan in 1945), the total irretrievable demographic losses (killed, missing, captured and not returned from it, died from wounds, illnesses and as a result of accidents) of the Soviet Armed Forces, together with the Border and Internal Troops, amounted to 8 million. 668 thousand 400 people.” Ratio with Germany and its allies 1:1.3

Every time another anniversary approaches Great Victory, the myth about our unimaginable losses is activated

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. And with each new anniversary, a new generation grows up, which must hear a sober voice that, to some extent, neutralizes the efforts of manipulators.

WAR OF NUMBERS

Back in 2005, literally on the eve of the 60th anniversary of the Victory, the President of the Academy of Military Sciences, Army General Makhmut Gareev, who in 1988 headed the Ministry of Defense commission to assess losses during the war, was invited to Vladimir Pozner’s TV show “Times”. Vladimir Pozner said: “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 Sergei Shtemenko. Then, in 1988 - 1993, a team of military historians was engaged in collating and verifying the materials of all previous commissions.

The results of this fundamental study of the losses of personnel and military equipment of the Soviet Armed Forces in combat 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.”

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), the total 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, together with the 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.

In the same TV program, a famous front-line writer entered into 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.”

There are people who, in their “truth,” bring the scale of Soviet losses to absurd, absurd levels. The most fantastic figures are given by the writer and historian Boris Sokolov, who estimated the total number of deaths in the ranks of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941 - 1945 at 26.4 million people, with German losses on the Soviet-German front at 2.6 million (that is, with loss ratio 10:1). And he counted 46 million Soviet people who died in the Great Patriotic War.

His calculations are absurd: 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 in Soviet army there were about 13 million people. Of the 27 million participants in the war, 26.4 million could not have died.

They are trying to convince us that “we overwhelmed the Germans with the corpses of our own soldiers.”

LOSSES BATTLE, IRREVOCABLE AND OFFICIAL

Irreversible combat losses include those killed on the battlefield, those who died from wounds during medical evacuation and in hospitals. These losses amounted to 6329.6 thousand people. Of these, 5,226.8 thousand were killed or died from wounds during the sanitary evacuation stages, and 1,102.8 thousand people died from wounds in hospitals.

Irretrievable losses also include those 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 irretrievable losses also 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 registered as missing in action at the beginning of the war, but were called up for the second time into the army in the territory liberated from occupation, as well as 1,836 thousand former military personnel who returned from captivity after the end of the war - a total of 2,775, 7 thousand people.

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

Of course, these are not final numbers. The Russian Ministry of Defense is creating an electronic database, which is constantly being updated. In January 2010, the head of the Russian Ministry of Defense Department for perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland, Major General Alexander Kirilin, told the press that on the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory, official data on our country’s losses in the Great Patriotic War would be made public. The general 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. 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.”

Close to real information about losses is contained in the works of the outstanding Russian demographer Leonid Rybakovsky, in particular one of his latest publications, “Human Losses of the USSR and Russia in the Great Patriotic War.”

Objective research is also appearing abroad in Russia. Thus, the famous demographer Sadretdin Maksudov, who works at Harvard University and studied the losses of the Red Army, estimated irrevocable losses at 7.8 million people, which is 870 thousand less than in the book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed.” He explains this discrepancy by the fact that the Russian authors did not exclude from the number of losses those military personnel who died a “natural” death (this is 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.”

THE PRICE OF EUROPE'S SECOND COMING TO RUSSIA

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 - 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 “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, 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. Nuremberg trials a document was read out from the office of Alfred Rosenberg, which reported that of the 3.9 million Soviet prisoners of war by the beginning of 1942, 1.1 million remained in the camps.

The German army was objectively much stronger at the first stage.

And the numerical advantage at first was on the side of Germany. On June 22, 1941, the Wehrmacht and 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 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 fact, there was an invasion of Europe into 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). The Red Army was fought by the Spanish and Italian divisions, the Netherlands, Landstorm Netherlands and Nordland divisions, the Langermac, Wallonia and Charlemagne divisions, the Bohemia and Moravia division of Czech volunteers, and the Skanderberg Albanian division. , as well as separate battalions of Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, and Danes.

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 captured.

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 forces of the Red Army 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 vehicles.

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 Lviv airfield.

In general, according to German data, 230 thousand people were killed and died on the Eastern Front as part of foreign formations of the Wehrmacht and 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.

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 on a huge scale labor force, which allowed for an unprecedented military mobilization of the Germans - 21.1 million people. During the war, approximately 14 million foreign workers were employed in the German economy. On May 31, 1944, there were 7.7 million foreign workers (30%) in the German war 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, the USSR was invaded war machine with an amount of equipment and ammunition unprecedented in history.

The Red Army, only recently reorganized on a modern basis and just beginning to receive and master modern weapons, had before her a powerful enemy of a completely new type, which was not seen either in the First World War or in Civil wars, not even in 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. Military strategy and the 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.