Losses of the USSR in World War II, information about declassified data from the USSR State Planning Committee, population decline during the Second World War.

Attention! The author of this article does not claim to recognize the conclusions of this material as the ultimate truth. This material is an analysis of certain events, based on certain sources, considered through the prism of the author’s vision. The author may not be as close to the truth as he sees it!

Reasons for considering the issue?

Recently, Novaya Gazeta published the material “Victory Presents the Score,” which claims that almost 42 million people died on the USSR’s side in World War II. The author of the material, a certain Pavel Gutionov, referring to the statement of State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, who announced this figure of irretrievable losses, at the parliamentary hearings “Patriotic education of Russian citizens: “Immortal Regiment”,” referring in turn to “declassified data from the USSR State Planning Committee.” The article also indicates that these data include the figure for the population decline of the USSR in 1941-1945 - more than 52 million 812 thousand people.

« Stalin, based on considerations inaccessible to a normal person, personally determined the losses of the USSR at 7 million people - slightly less than the losses of Germany. Khrushchev - 20 million. Under Gorbachev, a book was published, prepared by the Ministry of Defense under the editorship of General Krivosheev, “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed,” in which the authors named and in every possible way justified this very figure - ​27 million. Now it turns out: it was not true, too.”

This statement was circulated by some media outlets, mainly opposition ones (, etc.), focusing on the number of losses, without questioning it at all. And immediately in these media the question is raised: “did the USSR win the Second World War at all?”

What did Zemtsov say?

So, on the official website of the All-Russian public civil-patriotic movement “Immortal Regiment of Russia”, in fact, in the article covering these hearings, there is the following information:

“— General population decline in the USSR 1941-45. - more than 52 million 812 thousand people. Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of war factors are more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians. The total natural mortality of military personnel and civilians during this period could have amounted to more than 10 million 833 thousand people (including 5 million 760 thousand deaths of children under the age of four). The irretrievable losses of the population of the USSR as a result of war factors amounted to almost 42 million people, says the presentation report.”

However, an inquisitive person immediately asks the question, where is this declassified data from the USSR State Planning Committee? After searching the Internet for a long time, I didn’t find anything (if you, the reader, find it, be sure to let me know in the comments). After some time, an explanation from Nikolai Zemtsov himself appeared, in which he stated that the research was carried out by alternative historians and it was too early to give out the figures announced at the hearings as official, and the information found in the State Planning Committee was transferred to the Institute of State Memory, where, together with experts and the Ministry of Defense, it would be determined how much the information is correct or incorrect. Nikolai Zemtsov emphasized that this assessment should be carried out by the state.

Let's go over the official data.

In all the figures presented at these hearings, there is a complete discrepancy with the official ones. For example, the total population decline of the USSR in 1941-1945 is about 52 million people. What is there about this in official sources? According to the 1939 population census in the USSR, the population was 170 million people. In 1957, at the next census, the population was 209 million people. That is, if you believe the data of the State Planning Committee, then in 8 years the population of the USSR should have almost doubled. Arouses suspicion doesn't it?

No census was conducted in 1941 and 1945, however, if you look at the 1993 RAS research on the population of the USSR for 1922-1991, then in 1941 there were 196 million people in the USSR, and in 1945 - 170 million people. As seen the figure is almost two times smaller.

It is important to understand that population decline is not only due to military losses, but, for example, due to the phenomenon of war itself, when, obviously, the birth rate in the country is falling.

According to official data, such as the report of the deputy head of the Federal Archive Agency V.P. Tarasov, it follows that “the total irretrievable losses of the armed forces of the USSR (i.e. killed, died and did not return from captivity) amount to 8 million 668 thousand 400 people”, which in no way corresponds to the figure of 19 million mentioned at the hearings.
And the main human losses of the Soviet Union were civilians, the number of losses of which is almost an approximate estimate 17 - 18 million Human. That is, in total about 26-27 million Human.

Opinion of some experts on the statistics of losses in World War II:

• V.N.Zemskov. Problems of establishing the scale of human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War
• Anatoly Wasserman.

Part 1. USSR losses

The armed forces of the Soviet Union suffered the greatest loss of life in World War II. It would seem that our duty to the dead required the fastest and most complete account possible of all those who fell in the fight against fascism. However, for several post-war decades, the very topic of Soviet military losses was strictly prohibited: the documentary base was classified, no open publication of relevant research was allowed, and there were no official figures for our military losses. The official figures for overall demographic losses were falsified. At the beginning of 1946, it was announced that the total losses (army and population) in the just ended war were about 7 million. 15 years later, in 1961, the figure was given as more than 20 million. From books and magazines about the statistics of German military losses, one could compile a small library. About our military losses it was possible to glean only fragmentary data from the memoirs of German generals and some Western historical works, where each time such references were accompanied by an editorial note that all “this data is pure fiction and in no case can be taken into account ".

The situation is both absurd and shameful. Let me give you a few examples out of many. The largest Soviet demographer Boris Urlanis published in 1960 a fundamental study “Wars and the population of Europe. Human losses of the armed forces of European countries in the wars of the 17th-20th centuries.” Trying to find out how many German soldiers died during the Second World War, on 25 pages, citing dozens of scientific works of German, American, English, Soviet scientists, archival documents and census results, he critically analyzes and compares numerous data. Lists Germany's military losses by year, by front and region, and by type of armed forces. And one gets the impression that you are reading an ordinary scientific work, with some of its conclusions you agree with, and with others you don’t. Urlanis writes in no less detail about the military losses of Italy, Finland, Romania, Hungary, Great Britain, the USA, France, etc. At the same time, the losses of our allies in the Anti-Hitler Coalition are given with an accuracy of one person and broken down by year of war. By the way, our allies already during the war began publishing name lists of the dead and soon after the war they basically completed this noble work. Although, of course, these lists can be refined indefinitely.

So, when Urlanis comes to the military losses of the Soviet Union, all the numbers evaporate. Only one number is given. I quote: “Party members have always been in the most responsible and difficult sectors of the fight against the enemy. In the first year of the war alone, 400,000 communists gave their lives in battles for the Motherland. This figure alone speaks of the scale of the sacrifices made by the Soviet people on the altar of victory.” That's all. Our scientist himself took this figure from the book “History of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union,” M., 1959, p. 576.

I wasn’t too lazy and looked at what source “History of the CPSU” itself refers to. Not at all. "History of the CPSU" is the source itself. This was our Khrushchev era.

Now let's see with what scientific successes on the topic of interest to us the Brezhnev era ended. So, I’m looking at the most complete Soviet study - “The History of the Second World War” in 12 volumes, the authors of which were more than 20 Marshals of the USSR and academicians and the ministries, departments and institutes behind them. Of the almost 500 pages of the 12th volume, which is entirely devoted to the results of the Second World War, only two (!) speak about the human losses and demographic consequences of the greatest massacre in human history. Nothing is said at all about the losses of the armed forces of the countries participating in the war (!). And this is understandable. In this way, the dissonance that was so striking when reading Urlanis’s book is overcome.

In 1985, after a series of deaths of the General Secretaries of the CPSU Central Committee, on the 40th anniversary of the Great Victory, the Institute of Military History of the USSR Ministry of Defense, the Military Academy of the General Staff, the Institute of Marxism-Leninism under the CPSU Central Committee, the Central Statistical Office of the USSR and many academic institutions presented the Soviet people with their next " scientific" creation - "Encyclopedia. The Great Patriotic War. 1941-1945". There are, of course, no articles about our demographic losses, and even more so about our military losses. But there is an article about the material damage caused to the state by the Nazi invaders. Already in 1945, it was calculated how many machine tools (175,000), hammers and presses (34,000), looms (45,000), spinning spindles (3 million) were destroyed or stolen, how many were destroyed or looted in agriculture - 7 million horses, 17 million cows, 20 million pigs, 27 million goats and sheep, etc.

I write about this without irony. The volume of material losses had to be determined. And it was defined (though I don’t presume to judge how correctly it was done). But since 1945, in all multi-volume and single-volume histories of the Great Patriotic War (under Stalin, and under Khrushchev, and under Brezhnev), these material losses were necessarily and punctually listed, and it was said about the dead people, or that there were more than 20 million of them, or that “our people paid dearly for victory.” And this, in my opinion, showed the same disdainful attitude of those in power towards human lives that prevailed during that terrible war. However, it remains the same to this day. Only in the introductory military-political essay of the Encyclopedia could one read that the war claimed over 20 million lives of Soviet people, that more than 1 million soldiers of the Soviet Armed Forces gave their lives during the liberation of the peoples of Europe and Asia, and that over 3 million died during the war communists. The entire Soviet military demography was exhausted by this information.

A revolution in our military demography occurred in 1989-1990, when a state commission was working, composed of scientists and specialists from the State Statistics Committee, the USSR Ministry of Defense, the USSR Academy of Sciences and Moscow State University named after M.V. Lomonosov. According to her calculations, the country's direct human losses in 1941-1945 amounted to 27 million people. A number of other modern calculations, including those performed abroad, are close to this result. In 1993, the first statistical study of the losses of personnel and military equipment of the Soviet Armed Forces in wars, hostilities and military conflicts for the period from 1918 to 1989 was published (“The classification has been removed...”, a team of authors led by Colonel General G.F. Krivosheeva, M., Voenizdat, 1993, 415 pp.). This work is now the official Russian point of view on the topic of interest to us.

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, diseases and as a result of accidents) the Soviet Armed Forces, together with border and internal troops, amounted to 8 million 668 thousand 400 people. At the same time, the army and navy lost 8,509,300 people, internal troops - 97,700 people, border troops and state security agencies - 61,400 people. The total irretrievable demographic losses did not include 939,700 military personnel who were counted as missing in action at the beginning of the war, but who in 1942-1945. were conscripted into the army for the second time in the territory liberated from occupation, as well as 1,836,000 former military personnel who returned from captivity after the end of the war. These military personnel (2 million 775 thousand 700 people) are excluded from the total losses.

I have already used information from this statistical study several times when writing my articles, usually emphasizing if they are to be believed. I have reason to believe that these latest official data also underestimate our military losses. I would like to immediately make a reservation that the figure for the country’s total direct demographic losses of 27 million people is most likely correct, since a comparison of the results of general population censuses on the territory of the USSR, taking into account the patterns of our demographic development, is unlikely to allow this figure to be increased. In other words, I think that our military losses are underestimated, and civilian casualties are overestimated.

So, the arguments.

1. The authors of the study “The classification has been removed...” proceeded from the fact that on June 22, 1941, there were 4,826,907 military personnel on the list in the Red Army and Navy. In addition, the People's Commissariat of Defense had 74,945 military personnel and military construction workers serving in the formations of civilian departments on payroll. Over the four years of the war, another 29,574,900 people were mobilized (minus those re-conscripted), and in total, together with personnel, 34 million 476 thousand 752 people were recruited into the army, navy and military formations of other departments. A huge figure (for comparison: in Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia in 1939 there were 24.6 million German men aged 15 to 65 years). In fact, it was even higher. The fact is that, for reasons unknown to me, the authors of the study did not take into account the number of air defense troops, border and internal troops as of June 22, 1941. And taking them into account, the total number of the armed forces of the USSR at the beginning of the war amounted to 5 million 700 thousand people (see "Military Encyclopedia" in 8 volumes, vol. 2, M., Voenizdat, 1994, p. 35). The fate of these 798,148 people has not been taken into account satisfactorily. Military losses in the first months of the war, as well as in those cases when reports about them were not received (Kiev, Crimean, Kharkov 1942 and other operations) were determined by the authors of the study by calculation (information was used on the payroll number of personnel of formations and formations defeated by the enemy or found themselves surrounded).

2. The losses of the people's militia divisions before their inclusion in the Red Army were not taken into account. Divisions and regiments of the people's militia suffered huge losses (absolute and relative) during the defense of Moscow, Leningrad, Smolensk, Tula, Odessa, Sevastopol, Stalingrad and other cities. In total, at least 4 million people joined the divisions and regiments of the people's militia. Of these, about 2 million subsequently entered the active army. The losses of this half of the total number of militias were taken into account. There were no losses in the first half. That is, hundreds of thousands of people who died with weapons in their hands in the fall of 1941 were not included in the total number of irretrievable losses of the armed forces of the USSR.

3. The methodology for calculating losses of partisan formations is not clear.

4. The losses of active participants in the war are not taken into account - merchant seamen and river workers, railway and road transport workers.

5. All those military personnel who, in one form or another, expressed a desire to help the Wehrmacht and the occupation authorities were not taken into account. We are talking about the fate of at least one million former Soviet soldiers.

6. The fate of 500 thousand people liable for military service, called up for mobilization, but not enlisted in the troops, one part died on the way to the places of formation, and the rest were captured.

7. The situation with determining the number of Soviet prisoners of war is very confusing. The authors of the study claim that a total of 4,059,000 Soviet military personnel were in captivity, of which 1,836,000 returned from captivity after the end of the war, 939,700 military personnel from among those who were captured were called up again in the territory liberated from occupation. Thus, 1,783,300 people did not return from captivity (perished, died, emigrated to other countries). It was this figure that was included in the final data of our direct military losses. However, the same author, Colonel General G.F. Krivosheev, in his latest publication in the book “Human Losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War”, St. Petersburg, Publishing House of the Russian Academy of Sciences, 1995, on page 80, writes that 2,700,000 people did not return from captivity. That is, having increased the initial number by 916,700 people (which is quite a lot), he nevertheless did not revise the final total figure of our direct losses of 8,668,400 military personnel (!?). German researchers, relying on an impressive documentary base, claim that during the period from June 22, 1941 until the end of the war, 5,700,000 Red Army soldiers were captured by the Wehrmacht. By the beginning of 1945, 930 thousand of them were in German prisoner of war camps. 1 million prisoners were released from the camps mainly in exchange for agreeing to serve in the Wehrmacht as “willing to help” (Hilfswillige). 3.3 million (57%) died, almost 2 million of them before February 1942. The rest were liberated by the Red Army (for the latest publication in Russian, see the book "World War II. Discussions. Main trends. Research results", M., Ves Mir Publishing House, 1997, - article by Christian Streit "Soviet prisoners of war - mass deportations - forced laborers").

8. And, finally, the most important argument against the official figure of our direct military losses. In accordance with the program for the preparation and publication of books of Memory, in September 1990, a powerful computer center was formed at the All-Russian Research Institute of Documentation and Archival Science to create a Central Automated Data Bank (CDB) on irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces during the Great Patriotic War. As of March 15, 1995, about 19 million personal records were entered into the Central Database about the dead, missing, and died in captivity and from wounds of military personnel of the USSR Armed Forces during the Great Patriotic War. The formation of the Data Bank ends: according to rough estimates, based on the volume of remaining unprocessed documents, about 500 thousand more records need to be entered into the CDB and then their total number will reach 19.5 million (!). And this, apparently, has already been done.

Scientists and specialists working on the creation of CBD claim that this result is the closest to the truth. I quote: “This result is the closest to the truth. It may or may not coincide with the logical constructions, inferences and extrapolations of those who study this topic, we have deep respect for these studies, but we believe that more accurate data cannot be obtained now no other way" (for more details, see the book "Human Losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War", pp. 68-70).

I myself visited this computer center two years ago and I must say that the people working there accomplished a real feat. The only strange thing is that the holder of the official point of view on our military losses during the Second World War, the Institute of Military History of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, does not react in any way to the existence of the Central Database and 19.5 million personal records.

To be continued. The next part of the article will talk about Germany's irretrievable military losses in World War II, on the Eastern Front in particular.

Part 2. German losses

More than fifty years of studying the problem of German military losses during the Second World War have generated a truly boundless stream of publications. Under these conditions, the thesis that there is no universally accepted final figure for these losses may seem dubious. But, nevertheless, it is so. If the information from German headquarters about losses was objective until approximately January 1945, then at the last stage of the war, when the German armed forces suffered major defeats, the headquarters mechanism lost its former clarity in its work, and the systematic documentary recording of losses was disrupted. Contradictions and inaccuracies appeared in information about them. This is especially true for the statistics of rear and service units, units and institutions, as well as police and other paramilitary forces, which were staffed by citizens of other countries (Serbs, Croats, Czechs, Slovaks, Poles, French, Belgians, Dutch, Spaniards, etc.). The losses of the Volkssturm units and military formations of the so-called volunteer helpers of Germany from among the representatives of the peoples of the Soviet Union (Baltic, Muslim, Ukrainian, Russian Liberation Army, etc.) were not included in the reports. It is still very difficult to determine the number of military personnel who died in Soviet captivity. Therefore, first I will provide fairly accurate information about the military losses of the German armed forces until January 1945, and then how much, after all, was irretrievably lost in the last months of the war.

According to the Central Bureau for Recording Losses of Armed Forces Personnel at the General Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German Armed Forces, from September 1, 1939 to December 31, 1944, the following were lost:

by ground forces together with SS troops - 1,750,281 people killed and died from wounds, 1,609,698 people missing or captured; by the navy - 60,029 people killed and died from wounds, 100,256 people missing or captured;

air force - 155,014 people killed or died from wounds, 148,450 people missing or captured; total by the German armed forces - 1,965,324 people killed and died from wounds, 1,858,404 people missing or captured.

For the most significant military campaigns and periods of the Second World War, the above losses of ground forces and SS troops are distributed as follows:

capture of Poland (1939) - 16,343 people killed and 320 people missing;

capture of Norway (1940) - 4,975 killed and 691 missing;

the defeat of France and the British expeditionary forces, the capture of Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg (1940) - 45,774 killed and 635 missing;

losses in the Western Theater of Operations (after the defeat of France and before May 30, 1944) - 20,512 killed and 2,583 missing;

air battle for England (July-October 1940) - 1,449 killed and 1,914 missing (only Air Force losses are given);

capture of Yugoslavia and Greece (1941) - 1,206 killed and 548 missing;

capture of the island of Crete (May 1941) - 2071 killed and 1888 missing;

the death of the battleship "Bismarck" (May 27, 1941) - 2180 killed and 110 captured (Navy losses);

military operations in Africa (March 1941 - May 1943) - 12,808 killed and 90,052 missing or captured;

fight against partisans in the Balkans (1941-30 November 1944) - 23,061 killed and 11,512 missing;

military operations against the USSR (from June 22, 1941 to November 30, 1944) - 1,419,728 killed and died from wounds and 997,056 missing or captured, totaling the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front amounted to 2,416,784 people (for comparison , according to official Soviet data, from June 22, 1941 to December 31, 1944, the Red Army (without the Navy) lost 10,472,300 people killed, died from wounds, went missing or captured, that is, the ratio of irretrievable losses was 1:4 ,3;

military operations in Italy (from May 1943 to November 30, 1944) - 47,873 killed and 19,154 missing or captured; military operations in the West, from the moment of the Allied invasion (June 6, 1944) to November 30, 1944 - 54,754 killed and 338,933 missing or captured;

losses incurred on the territory of Germany proper (from September 1, 1939 to November 30, 1944) - 64,055 killed and 1,315 missing;

Ardennes offensive (December 1944) - 12,610 killed and 9,154 missing or captured.

As I already wrote, the main problem in determining the total losses of the German armed forces in World War II is the uncertainty regarding military losses in January-May 1945. Although even then - in May 1945 - an attempt was made to solve this problem. The central loss accounting authorities made an approximate estimate of the losses suffered by the armed forces for the period from January 1, 1945 to April 30, 1945, on the basis of current reports and other reports of losses. It was calculated that the ground forces, SS, air force and navy lost 265,000 people killed or died from wounds, and 1,012,000 missing or captured.

If we consider these indicative data to be sufficiently justified, then the total losses of the German armed forces for the period from September 1, 1939 to April 30, 1945 will be the following figures: 2,230,324 military personnel were killed or died from wounds, 2,870 were missing or captured. 404.

However, these total loss data are not exhaustive. Data on losses during the last days of the war (from May 1 to May 11) are completely ignored. It is extremely difficult to count them, but they were significant, primarily in the Berlin region, in Silesia, the Czech Republic and Austria. The information about the mass surrender of German military personnel in March-April on the Western Front and about military losses in April on the Eastern Front was taken into account extremely unsatisfactorily. Finally, no count was made of the missing who were actually killed.

According to Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand, in January-May 1945, on the Eastern Front alone, 1.5 million people were lost as missing or captured, and not 1,012,000 on all fronts.

According to the Soviet General Staff, during the period from January 1 to May 9, 1945, 1,940,900 people were captured, most of whom surrendered in late April and early May. After May 9, another 1,284,000 troops surrendered on the Eastern Front.

According to calculations by S.N. Mikhalev from the Institute of Military History of the RF Ministry of Defense, on the Eastern Front alone in January-May 1945, the Wehrmacht lost 250 thousand killed, and not 265 thousand on all fronts (for comparison, according to official Soviet data, in January-May 1945 the Red Army lost killed and 557,643 people died during the sanitary evacuation stages, by the way, more than she lost in killed and died during the sanitary evacuation stages for the entire 1941).

Taking into account those killed on the Western Front and in Italy, the Wehrmacht lost 320 thousand people in 1945, which is not much higher than the German estimated loss of 55 thousand. It is more difficult to calculate how many of the missing were captured, and how many died on the battlefield, and how many died in captivity, broken down by time - during the war and after it. And in this, German archives can help little - it is necessary to turn to Soviet documents, and they are traditionally confusing. According to the General Staff, in 1941-1945, 4,540,900 people (not only Germans) were captured, including 1,940,900 during the period from May 1 to May 9. In the report of the Chief of the General Staff, Army General A.I. Antonov, who summarized the reporting and statistical data of the fronts, fleets and armies, the total number of prisoners was estimated at 5,061,850 people (that is, he had 520,950 more prisoners), including 3,777,850 who were captured before May 10, 1941, from There were only 2,389,560 Germans. According to the records of the UPVI NKVD of the USSR, only 3,438,500 people (not only Germans) were admitted to prisoner of war camps. According to calculations by V.V. Gurkin from the RF Ministry of Defense, 3,127,380 people (Germans only) were kept in Soviet camps, of which 2,652,413 people returned to their homeland after the war, and 474,967 died in captivity. And in the official statistical collection of the Moscow Region, in the compilation of which Gurkin took part, it is said that out of 2,389,600 people, only 1,939,000 returned to their homeland, and 450,600 died in captivity.

The Germans themselves cite significantly higher numbers of those killed in Soviet captivity - from 800 thousand to 1.5 million people (according to various sources).

The most reliable data in Western historiography is now considered to be data on the losses of the German armed forces in World War II, prepared for the 40th anniversary of the end of the war in Europe by the German Federal Office for the Calculation of Military Losses. This institution, continuing the activities of the Central Bureau for Registration of Personnel Losses of the German Armed Forces of the war era, compiled lists of names of those killed in 1939-1945 and those who died in captivity after the war (similar to those that would later become part of the Central Automated Data Bank for irretrievable military losses us - see part 1 of the article).

The result of many years of work of the German Federal Administration was the following final figures of military losses on all fronts, at sea and in the air: 3,100,000 soldiers and officers died or died from wounds (the highest figure among all German sources), went missing and died in captivity (most died after the war) - 1,200,000.

Unfortunately, I do not yet have a breakdown of this figure by war period and theater of operations. According to our official data, the picture emerges completely different: the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Eastern Front alone lost 2,869,300 people killed, died from wounds and illnesses in 1941-1945; missing and died in captivity 1,423,400. In total, the total demographic irretrievable losses amounted to 4,292,700 people. But already 2 years after the publication of this official figure, one of its developers (V.V. Gurkin) reduces German losses by 793,157 people, claiming that the Germans lost 3,024,576 people killed, died from wounds and diseases, missing in captivity 474,967.

Sources:

B. Müller-Hillebrand "German Land Army. 1933-1945", vol. 3, M., Military Publishing House, 1976, p. 338.

Ibid., pp. 223, 341, 343; K. Tippelskirch "History of the Second World War", vol. 1, St. Petersburg, 1994, pp. 28, 93, 156; William Shirer "The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich", vol. 2, M., Military Publishing House, 1991, p. 93; F. Halder "Military diary. Daily notes of the Chief of the General Staff of the Ground Forces. 1939-1942", vol. 3, M., Military Publishing House, 1971; "Losses of ships of the main combat classes in the Second World War. 19939-1945", part 2, M., 1995, p. 7.

B. Müller-Hillebrand, op. cit., p. 343.

"The secrecy has been lifted...", pp. 157-158.

The losses of the allies of Germany and the USSR are not taken into account here. The 1st and 2nd Polish armies fought as part of the Red Army (at the end of 1944 they numbered 300,000 soldiers and officers), the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps, the 1st Romanian Volunteer Infantry Division, 20 Hungarian companies, etc. Together with the Red Army they fought on the Eastern Front: the armed forces of Bulgaria (290,000 people) - from October 1944; Armed forces of Romania (20 divisions, air corps, separate armored units) - since August 1944. In the war with Germany, Romania lost only 170 thousand people killed, the 1st Polish Army lost 18 thousand people killed in Poland alone, the 1st Czechoslovak Army Corps lost 4 thousand people in Czechoslovakia alone. But, of course, the contribution of our allies on the Eastern Front to the victory over Germany was still very small. Now about the losses of Germany's allies on the Eastern Front. According to a certificate from the USSR Minister of Defense dated December 16, 1988, irretrievable losses (killed, died from wounds, missing, died in captivity) of Finland amounted to 85 thousand people, Italy - 90 thousand, Hungary - 350 thousand, Romania - 480 thousand. Total - 1,005,000. However, in the official statistical study “The classification of secrecy has been removed...” different figures are given: Romania irretrievably lost 520 thousand, Hungary - 404,700, Italy - 45 thousand, Finland - 84 thousand. Total - 1,053,700 (p. 392). Statistical studies of the countries themselves that were allies of Germany in World War II give us a third group of figures: Finland irretrievably lost 52,500 people, Italy - 89,800, Romania - 361,100, Hungary - about 150 thousand. Total - 653,400 people. According to calculations by S.N. Mikhalev from the Institute of Military History of the Russian Ministry of Defense, the demographic irretrievable losses of the armed forces of Germany together with its allies on the Eastern Front are determined at 2.7 million people (the Germans themselves - 1.8 million, the rest - 0.9 million) . In this case, the ratio of losses of Soviet troops (without allies) and enemy troops for the entire war will be equal to 8.7 million to 2.7 million, or 3.2: 1 (“human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War”, p. 93).

“The classification has been lifted...”, page 392.

"Human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War", p. 109.

What were the losses of the USSR population during World War II? Stalin said that they were 7 million, Khrushchev - 20. However, is there any reason to believe that they were significantly larger?
By the beginning of the war, the population of the USSR was 197,500,000 people. The “natural” population growth from 1941 to 1945 was 13,000,000 people... and the “natural” decline was 15,000,000 people, since the war was going on.
By 1946, the population of the USSR should have been 195,500,000 people. However, at this time it was only 168,500,000 people. Consequently, population losses during the war amounted to 27,000,000 people. An interesting fact: the population of the republics and territories annexed in 1939 is 22,000,000 people. However, in 1946 it was 13 million. The fact is that 9 million people emigrated. 2 million Germans (or those who called themselves Germans) moved to Germany, 2 million Poles (or those who knew a few words from the Polish dialect) to Poland, 5 million residents of the western regions of the USSR moved to Western countries.
So, direct losses from the war: 27 million - 9 million = 18 million people. 8 million people out of 18 million are civilians: 1 million Poles who died at the hands of Bandera, 1 million who died during the siege of Leningrad, 2 million civilians classified by the Nazis as persons capable of taking up arms (age from 15 to 65 years) and held in concentration camps along with Soviet prisoners of war, 4 million Soviet citizens, classified by the fascists as communists, partisans, etc. Every tenth Soviet person died.

Losses of the Red Army - 10 million people.

What were the population losses in Germany during World War II?By the beginning of the war, the population of Germany proper was 74,000,000 people. The population of the Third Reich is 93 million people.By the fall of 1945, the population of Germany (Vaterland, not the entire Third Reich) was 52,000,000 people. More than 5 million Germans immigrated to the country from among the Volksdeutsche. So, German losses: 74 million - 52 million + 5 million = 27 million people.

Consequently, the loss of the population of Germany during the war was 27,000,000 people. About 9 million people emigrated from Germany.
Direct military losses of Germany - 18 million people. 8 million of them are civilians who died as a result of air raids by US and British aircraft, as a result of artillery shelling. Germany lost about a third of its population! By October 1946, more than 13 million more Volksdeutsche from Alsace and Lorraine arrived in Western Germany (about 2.2 million people Volksdeutsche) , Saara ( 0.8 million people ), Silesia (10 million people), Sudetenland ( 3.64 million people), Poznan (1 million people), Baltic states (2 million people), Danzig and Memel (0.54 million people) and other places. The population of Germany became 66 million people. Persecution began against the German population outside the occupation zones. The Germans were thrown out of their homes and were often slaughtered in the streets. The non-German population did not spare either children or old people. It was because of this that a mass exodus of Germans and those who collaborated with them began. The Kashubians with Schlenzaks considered themselves to be Germans. They also went to the western occupation zones.

In 1945, the bloodiest war of the 20th century ended, causing terrible destruction and claiming millions of lives. From our article you can find out what losses the countries participating in World War II suffered.

Total losses

The most global military conflict of the 20th century involved 62 countries, 40 of which were directly involved in hostilities. Their losses in World War II are primarily calculated by casualties among military and civilians, which amounted to about 70 million.

The financial losses (the price of lost property) of all parties to the conflict were significant: about $2,600 billion. The country spent 60% of its income on providing the army and conducting military operations. The total cost reached $4 trillion.

The Second World War led to enormous destruction (about 10 thousand large cities and towns). In the USSR alone, more than 1,700 cities, 70 thousand villages, and 32 thousand enterprises suffered from bombing. The enemy destroyed about 96 thousand Soviet tanks and self-propelled artillery units, 37 thousand armored vehicles.

Historical facts show that it was the USSR that, of all the participants in the anti-Hitler coalition, suffered the most serious losses. Special measures were taken to clarify the number of deaths. In 1959, a population census was conducted (the first after the war). Then the figure of 20 million victims was announced. To date, other specific data are known (26.6 million), announced by the state commission in 2011. They coincided with the figures announced in 1990. Most of the dead were civilians.

Rice. 1. Destroyed city during World War II.

Human casualties

Unfortunately, the exact number of victims is still not known. Objective reasons (lack of official documentation) complicate the count, so many continue to be listed as missing.

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Before talking about the dead, let us indicate the number of people called up for service by states whose participation in the war was key, and those injured during the fighting:

• Germany : 17,893,200 soldiers, of which: 5,435,000 were wounded, 4,100,000 were captured;
• Japan : 9 058 811: 3 600 000: 1 644 614;
• Italy : 3,100,000: 350 thousand: 620 thousand;
• USSR : 34,476,700: 15,685,593: about 5 million;
• Great Britain : 5,896,000: 280 thousand: 192 thousand;
• USA : 16 112 566: 671 846: 130 201;
• China : 17,250,521: 7 million: 750 thousand;
• France : 6 million: 280 thousand: 2,673,000

Rice. 2. Wounded soldiers from World War II.

For convenience, we present a table of countries' losses in World War II. The death toll is indicated taking into account all causes of death approximately (averages between the minimum and maximum):

A country	Dead military personnel	Dead civilians
Germany	About 5 million	About 3 million
Great Britain
Australia
Yugoslavia
Finland
Netherlands
Bulgaria

USSR and Russia at the slaughter. Human losses in the wars of the 20th century Sokolov Boris Vadimovich

Civilian losses and total German population losses in World War II

The greatest difficulty is determining the losses of the German civilian population. For example, the death toll from the Allied bombing of Dresden in February 1945 ranges from 25,000 to 250,000 because the city contained a significant but unspecified number of West German refugees whose numbers could not be counted. Now the most likely number of deaths in Dresden in February 1945 is considered to be 25 thousand people. According to official data, 410 thousand civilians and another 23 thousand police and civilian members of the armed forces became victims of air raids within the borders of the Reich in 1937. In addition, 160 thousand foreigners, prisoners of war and displaced persons from the occupied territories died from the bombing. Within the borders of 1942 (but without the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia), the number of victims of air raids increases to 635 thousand people, and taking into account the victims of civilian Wehrmacht employees and police officers - up to 658 thousand people. The losses of the German civilian population from ground combat are estimated at 400 thousand people, the losses of the civilian population of Austria - at 17 thousand people (the latter estimate seems to be underestimated by 2-3 times). The victims of Nazi terror in Germany were 450 thousand people, including up to 160 thousand Jews, and in Austria - 100 thousand people, including 60 thousand Jews. It is more difficult to determine how many Germans became victims of hostilities on German territory, as well as how many Germans died who were deported from the Sudetenland, Prussia, Pomerania, Silesia, and also from the Balkan countries in 1945-1946. In total, more than 9 million Germans were evicted, including 250 thousand each from Romania and Hungary and 300 thousand from Yugoslavia. In addition, in the zones of occupation of Germany and Austria, mainly in the Soviet Union, up to 20 thousand war criminals and Nazi functionaries were executed after the war, and another 70 thousand internees died in camps. There are other estimates of the casualties of the civilian population of Germany (without Austria and other annexed territories): about 2 million people, including 600-700 thousand women aged 20 to 55 years, 300 thousand victims of Nazi terror, including 170 thousand Jews. The most reliable estimate of the deaths among the expelled Germans seems to be 473 thousand people - this is the number of people whose deaths were confirmed by eyewitnesses. It is not possible to determine the exact number of victims of ground combat on German territory, as well as the possible number of deaths from hunger and disease (excess mortality during the war).

It is also impossible to estimate today the total irretrievable losses of Germany, as well as the losses of civilians. The estimates that sometimes appear of 2-2.5 million civilians killed during the Second World War are arbitrary, not supported by any reliable statistics or demographic balances. The latter are practically impossible to build due to significant changes in borders and population migrations after the war.

If we assume that the number of civilian casualties of combat operations on German territory was approximately equal to the number of victims of aerial bombing, i.e., about 0.66 million people, then the total losses of the civilian population of Germany within the borders of 1940 can be estimated at approximately 2.4 million people, excluding victims of excess natural mortality. Together with the armed forces, this would give a total loss of 6.3 million people, if we take the estimate of the losses of the armed forces made by B. Müller-Hillebrand. Overmans puts the number of dead German soldiers called up from Austria at 261 thousand people. Since we consider his assessment of the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht to be overestimated by approximately 1.325 times, then in the same proportion we must reduce his assessment of the losses of the Austrians in the Wehrmacht - to 197 thousand people. The number of victims of aerial bombing in Austria was small, since this country was never the main target of Allied air operations. The population of Austria was no more than one-twelfth of the population of the Reich within the borders of 1942, and taking into account the lower intensity of bombing of Austrian territory, the losses of Austrians from the bombings can be estimated at approximately one-twentieth of the total number of victims, i.e. 33 thousand people. We estimate the number of victims of military operations on Austrian territory to be no less than 50 thousand people. Thus, the total losses of Austria can be estimated, together with the victims of Nazi terror, at 380 thousand people.

It must be emphasized that the figure for total German losses of 6.3 million people cannot be compared with the total losses of the USSR of 40.1-40.9 million people, since the figure for German losses was obtained without taking into account excess non-violent deaths of the civilian population. Only the losses of the armed forces can be compared. Their ratio turns out to be 6.73:1 in favor of Germany.

From the book Results of the Second World War. Conclusions of the vanquished author German Military Specialists

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COMPARATIVE TABLE OF POPULATION (IN THOUSANDS) OF EUROPEAN COUNTRIES PARTICIPATED IN THE SECOND WORLD WAR (EXCEPT GERMANY AND THE SOVIET UNION)