The total number of deaths in the Second World War. Updated estimates of the number of deaths in the Great Patriotic War

History experts assess the losses incurred during the Second World War differently. In this case, different methods of source data and calculation methods are used. Today in Russia, the data provided by a research group that worked as part of a project conducted by specialists from the Military Memorial is recognized as official.

As of 2001, when the research data were further clarified, it is generally accepted that during the war with Hitler’s fascism Soviet Union lost 6.9 million military personnel. Almost four and a half million Soviet soldiers and officers were captured or disappeared. The most impressive is the country's total human losses: taking into account the dead civilians, they amounted to 26 million 600 thousand people.

Losses fascist Germany turned out to be significantly lower and amounted to slightly more than 4 million military personnel. The total losses of the German side as a result of the actions are estimated at 6.6 million people; this includes the civilian population. Germany's allies lost less than a million soldiers killed. The overwhelming number of deaths on both sides of the military confrontation was .

Losses of World War II: questions remain

Previously, Russia adopted completely different official data on its own losses. Almost until the end of the USSR, serious research on this issue was practically not conducted, since most of the data was closed. In the Soviet Union, after the end of the war, loss estimates were first established, called by I.V. Stalin, who determined this figure to be 7 million people. After N.S. came to power. Khrushchev, it turned out that the country had lost about 20 million people.

When a team of reformers led by M.S. came to rule the country. Gorbachev, it was decided to create a research center, at whose disposal documents from the archives and other reference materials. Those data on losses in the Second World War that are used were made public only in 1990.

Historians of other countries do not dispute the research results of their Russian colleagues. The total human losses suffered by all countries that participated in World War II in one way or another are almost impossible to accurately calculate. The figures range from 45 to 60 million people. Some historians believe that as new information is found and calculation methods are refined, the upper total losses of all warring countries could be up to 70 million people.

A pile of burnt remains of prisoners of the Majdanek concentration camp. Outskirts of the Polish city of Lublin.

In the twentieth century, more than 250 wars and major military conflicts took place on our planet, including two world wars, but the 2nd was the bloodiest and most violent in the history of mankind. World War, unleashed by Nazi Germany and its allies in September 1939. For five years there was a massive extermination of people. Due to the lack of reliable statistics, the total number of casualties among military personnel and civilians of many states participating in the war has not yet been established. Estimates of the death toll vary widely across studies. However, it is generally accepted that more than 55 million people died during the Second World War. Almost half of all those killed were civilians. More than 5.5 million innocent people were killed in the fascist death camps Majdanek and Auschwitz alone. In total, 11 million citizens from all European countries, including about 6 million people of Jewish nationality.

The main burden of the fight against fascism fell on the shoulders of the Soviet Union and its Armed Forces. This war became the Great Patriotic War for our people. The victory of the Soviet people in this war came at a high price. The total direct human losses of the USSR, according to the Population Statistics Department of the USSR State Statistics Committee and the Center for the Study of Population Problems at Moscow State University, amounted to 26.6 million. Of these, in the territories occupied by the Nazis and their allies, as well as during forced labor in Germany, 13,684,448 civilian Soviet citizens were deliberately destroyed and died. These are the tasks that Reichsführer SS Heinrich Himmler set for the commanders of the SS divisions “Totenkopf”, “Reich”, “Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler” on April 24, 1943 at a meeting in the building of Kharkov University: “I want to say and think that those to whom I I’m saying this, and they already understand that we must wage our war and our campaign with the thought of how best to take away human resources from the Russians - alive or dead? We do this when we kill them or capture them and force them to really work, when we try to take possession of an occupied area, and when we leave deserted territory to the enemy. Either they must be driven to Germany and become its labor force, or die in battle. And leaving people to the enemy so that he can have labor and military strength again is, by and large, absolutely wrong. This cannot be allowed to happen. And if this line of exterminating people is consistently pursued in the war, which I am convinced of, then the Russians will lose their strength and bleed to death already during this year and next winter.” The Nazis acted in accordance with their ideology throughout the war. IN concentration camps in Smolensk, Krasnodar, Stavropol, Lvov, Poltava, Novgorod, Orel Kaunas, Riga and many others, hundreds of thousands of Soviet people were tortured. During the two years of occupation of Kyiv, tens of thousands of people were shot on its territory in Babi Yar different nationalities– Jews, Ukrainians, Russians, Gypsies. Including, on September 29 and 30, 1941 alone, Sonderkommando 4A executed 33,771 people. Heinrich Himmler gave cannibalistic instructions in his letter dated September 7, 1943 to the Supreme Fuhrer of the SS and the Ukrainian Police Prützmann: “Everything must be done so that when retreating from Ukraine not a single person, not a single head of cattle, not a single gram of grain, or meter of railway track, so that not a single house would survive, not a single mine would survive, and not a single well would remain unpoisoned. The enemy must be left with a completely burned and devastated country.” In Belarus, the occupiers burned over 9,200 villages, of which 619 together with their inhabitants. In total, during the occupation in the Byelorussian SSR, 1,409,235 civilians died, another 399 thousand people were forcibly taken to forced labor in Germany, of which more than 275 thousand did not return home. In Smolensk and its environs, during the 26 months of occupation, the Nazis killed more than 135 thousand civilians and prisoners of war, more than 87 thousand citizens were taken to forced labor in Germany. When Smolensk was liberated in September 1943, only 20 thousand inhabitants remained. In Simferopol, Yevpatoria, Alushta, Karabuzar, Kerch and Feodosia from November 16 to December 15, 1941, Task Force D shot 17,645 Jews, 2,504 Crimean Cossacks, 824 Gypsies and 212 communists and partisans.

More than three million civilian Soviet citizens died from combat exposure in front-line areas, in besieged and besieged cities, from hunger, frostbite and disease. Here is how the military diary of the command of the 6th Army of the Wehrmacht for October 20, 1941 recommends action against Soviet cities: “It is unacceptable to sacrifice the lives of German soldiers to save Russian cities from fires or to supply them at the expense of the German homeland. The chaos in Russia will become greater if the inhabitants of Soviet cities are inclined to flee into the interior of Russia. Therefore, before taking cities, it is necessary to break their resistance with artillery fire and force the population to flee. These measures should be communicated to all commanders." In Leningrad and its suburbs alone, about a million civilians died during the siege. In Stalingrad, in August 1942 alone, more than 40 thousand civilians died during barbaric, massive German air raids.

The total demographic losses of the USSR Armed Forces amounted to 8,668,400 people. This figure includes military personnel killed and missing in action, those who died from wounds and illnesses, those who did not return from captivity, those who were executed by court verdicts, and those who died in disasters. Of these, more than 1 million Soviet soldiers and officers gave their lives during the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the brown plague. Including 600,212 people died for the liberation of Poland, Czechoslovakia - 139,918 people, Hungary - 140,004 people, Germany - 101,961 people, Romania - 68,993 people, Austria - 26,006 people, Yugoslavia - 7,995 people, Norway - 3436 people. and Bulgaria - 977. During the liberation of China and Korea from Japanese invaders, 9963 Red Army soldiers died.

During the war years, according to various estimates, from 5.2 to 5.7 million Soviet prisoners of war passed through German camps. Of this number, from 3.3 to 3.9 million people died, which is more than 60% of the total number of those in captivity. At the same time, about 4% of the prisoners of war of Western countries died in German captivity. In the verdict of the Nuremberg trials, the cruel treatment of Soviet prisoners of war was qualified as a crime against humanity.

It should be noted that the overwhelming number of Soviet military personnel missing and captured occurred in the first two years of the war. The sudden attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR put the Red Army, which was in the stage of deep reorganization, in an extremely difficult situation. The border districts lost most of their personnel in a short time. In addition, more than 500 thousand conscripts mobilized by military registration and enlistment offices never made it to their units. During the rapidly developing German offensive, they, lacking weapons and equipment, found themselves in enemy-occupied territory and most of them were captured or died in the first days of the war. In the conditions of heavy defensive battles in the first months of the war, the headquarters were unable to properly organize the accounting of losses, and often simply did not have the opportunity to do this. Units and formations that were surrounded destroyed records of personnel and losses in order to avoid being captured by the enemy. Therefore, many who died in battle were listed as missing or were not counted at all. Approximately the same picture emerged in 1942 as a result of a number of offensive and defensive operations that were unsuccessful for the Red Army. By the end of 1942, the number of Red Army soldiers missing and captured had sharply decreased.

Thus, the large number of victims suffered by the Soviet Union is explained by the policy of genocide directed against its citizens by the aggressor, whose main goal was the physical destruction of most of the population of the USSR. In addition, military operations on the territory of the Soviet Union lasted more than three years and the front passed through it twice, first from west to east to Petrozavodsk, Leningrad, Moscow, Stalingrad and the Caucasus, and then in the opposite direction, which led to huge losses among civilians , which cannot be compared with similar losses in Germany, on whose territory fighting lasted less than five months.

To establish the identity of military personnel killed during hostilities, by order People's Commissar Defense USSR(NPO of the USSR) dated March 15, 1941 No. 138, “Regulations on personal accounting of losses and burial of deceased personnel of the Red Army in wartime" On the basis of this order, medallions were introduced in the form of a plastic pencil case with a parchment insert in two copies, the so-called address tape, into which personal information about the serviceman was entered. In the event of the death of a serviceman, it was assumed that one copy of the address tape would be seized by the funeral team and subsequently transferred to the unit headquarters to add the deceased to the list of casualties. The second copy was to be left in the medallion with the deceased. In reality, during the hostilities this requirement was practically not met. In most cases, the medallions were simply removed from the deceased by the funeral team, making subsequent identification of the remains impossible. The unjustified cancellation of medallions in units of the Red Army, in accordance with the order of the USSR NKO dated November 17, 1942 No. 376, led to an increase in the number of unidentified dead soldiers and commanders, which also added to the lists of missing persons.

At the same time, it must be taken into account that in the Red Army at the beginning of the Great Patriotic War there was no centralized system of personal registration of military personnel (except for regular officers). Personal registration of citizens called up for military service, was conducted at the level of military commissariats. General base There was no personal information about military personnel called up and mobilized into the Red Army. Subsequently, this led to a large number of errors and duplication of information when accounting for irrecoverable losses, as well as the appearance of “ dead souls", when the biographical data of military personnel is distorted in reports of losses.

On the basis of the order of the NCO of the USSR dated July 29, 1941 No. 0254, maintaining personal records of losses in formations and units of the Red Army was entrusted to the Department for recording personal losses and the letter bureau of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Recruitment of Red Army Troops. In accordance with the order of the NPO of the USSR dated January 31, 1942 No. 25, the Department was reorganized into the Central Bureau for Personal Accounting of Losses of the Active Army of the Main Directorate of the Red Army. However, the order of the NCO of the USSR dated April 12, 1942 “On personal accounting of irretrievable losses at the fronts” stated that “As a result of untimely and incomplete submission of lists of losses by military units, there was a large discrepancy between the data of numerical and personal accounting of losses. Currently, no more than one third of the actual number of those killed is on personal records. The personal records of missing and captured people are even further from the truth.” After a series of reorganizations and the transfer in 1943 of the accounting of personal losses of senior commanding personnel to the Main Personnel Directorate of NPOs of the USSR, the body responsible for personal accounting of losses was renamed the Directorate for Personal Accounting of Losses of Junior Commanders and Rank-and-Old Personnel and Pension Provision of Workers. The most intensive work on registering irreparable losses and issuing notices to relatives began after the end of the war and continued intensively until January 1, 1948. Considering that information about the fate of a large number of military personnel was not received from military units, in 1946 it was decided to take into account irretrievable losses based on submissions from military registration and enlistment offices. For this purpose, a door-to-door survey was conducted throughout the USSR to identify dead and missing military personnel who were not registered.

A significant number of military personnel recorded as dead and missing during the Great Patriotic War actually survived. So, from 1948 to 1960. it was found that 84,252 officers were mistakenly included in the lists of irretrievable losses and in fact remained alive. But this data was not included in the general statistics. How many privates and sergeants actually survived, but are included in the lists of irretrievable losses, is still not known. Although the Directive of the General Staff of the Ground Forces Soviet Army dated May 3, 1959 No. 120 n/s obligated military commissariats to carry out a reconciliation of the alphabetical books of registration of dead and missing military personnel with the registration data of military registration and enlistment offices in order to identify military personnel who were actually alive, its implementation before today not completed. Thus, before placing on memorial plaques the names of Red Army soldiers who fell in battles for the village of Bolshoye Ustye on the Ugra River, the Historical and Archival Search Center “Fate” (IAPC “Fate”) in 1994 clarified the fates of 1,500 military personnel whose names were established based on reports from military units. Information about their fates was cross-checked through the card index of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense Russian Federation(TsAMO RF), military commissariats, local authorities at the place of residence of the victims and their relatives. At the same time, 109 military personnel were identified who survived or died at a later time. Moreover, the majority of the surviving soldiers were not re-registered in the TsAMO RF card file.

Also, during the compilation in 1994 of a database of names of military personnel who died in the area of the village of Myasnoy Bor, Novgorod region, the IAPTs "Fate" found that out of 12,802 military personnel included in the database, 1,286 people (more than 10%) were taken into account in reports about irreparable losses twice. This is explained by the fact that the first time the deceased was counted after the battle by the military unit in which he actually fought, and the second time by the military unit whose funeral team collected and buried the bodies of the dead. The database did not include military personnel missing in action in the area, which would likely have increased the number of duplicates. It should be noted that the statistical accounting of losses was carried out on the basis of digital data taken from the lists of names presented in the reports of military units, categorized by categories of losses. This ultimately led to a serious distortion of data on the irretrievable losses of Red Army soldiers in the direction of their increase.

In the course of work to establish the fates of Red Army servicemen who died and disappeared on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, the IAPTs "Fate" identified several more types of duplication of losses. Thus, some officers are simultaneously registered as officers and enlisted personnel, military personnel border troops and the Navy are partially taken into account in addition to departmental archives and in the Central Academy of Medical Sciences of the Russian Federation.

Work to clarify data on the casualties suffered by the USSR during the war is still ongoing. In accordance with a number of instructions of the President of the Russian Federation and his Decree of January 22, 2006 No. 37 “Issues of perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland,” an interdepartmental commission was created in Russia to assess human and material losses during the Great Patriotic War. The main goal of the commission is by 2010 to finally determine the losses of the military and civilian population during the Great Patriotic War, as well as to calculate material costs for more than a four-year period of combat operations. The Russian Ministry of Defense is implementing the Memorial OBD project to systematize registration data and documents about fallen soldiers. The implementation of the main technical part of the project - the creation of the United Data Bank and the website http://www.obd-memorial.ru - is carried out by a specialized organization - the Electronic Archive Corporation. The main goal of the project is to enable millions of citizens to determine the fate or find information about their dead or missing relatives and friends, and determine the place of their burial. No other country in the world has such a data bank and free access to documents on the losses of the armed forces. In addition, enthusiasts from search teams are still working on the fields of past battles. Thanks to the soldiers' medallions they discovered, the fates of thousands of military personnel who went missing on both sides of the front were established.

Poland, the first to be subjected to Hitler's invasion during the 2nd World War, also suffered huge losses - 6 million people, the vast majority of the civilian population. The losses of the Polish armed forces amounted to 123,200 people. Including: September campaign of 1939 (invasion of Hitler’s troops into Poland) – 66,300 people; 1st and 2nd Polish armies in the East - 13,200 people; Polish troops in France and Norway in 1940 - 2,100 people; Polish troops in the British army - 7,900 people; Warsaw Uprising of 1944 – 13,000 people; Guerrilla warfare – 20,000 people. .

The allies of the Soviet Union in the anti-Hitler coalition also suffered significant losses during the fighting. Thus, the total losses of the armed forces of the British Commonwealth on the Western, African and Pacific fronts in killed and missing amounted to 590,621 people. Of these: – United Kingdom and colonies – 383,667 people; – undivided India – 87,031 people; – Australia – 40,458 people; – Canada – 53,174 people; – New Zealand – 11,928 people; – South Africa – 14,363 people.

In addition, during the fighting, about 350 thousand British Commonwealth troops were captured by the enemy. Of these, 77,744 people, including merchant seamen, were captured by the Japanese.

It must be taken into account that the role of the British armed forces in the 2nd World War was limited mainly to combat operations at sea and in the air. In addition, the United Kingdom lost 67,100 civilians.

The total losses of the armed forces of the United States of America in killed and missing on the Pacific and Western fronts were: 416,837 people. Of these, army losses amounted to 318,274 people. (including the Air Force lost 88,119 people), Navy - 62,614 people, Marine Corps - 24,511 people, US Coast Guard - 1,917 people, US Merchant Marine - 9,521 people.

In addition, 124,079 US military personnel (including 41,057 Air Force personnel) were captured by the enemy during combat operations. Of these, 21,580 military personnel were captured by the Japanese.

France lost 567,000 people. Of these, the French armed forces lost 217,600 people killed or missing. During the years of occupation, 350,000 civilians died in France.

More than a million French troops were captured by the Germans in 1940.

Yugoslavia lost 1,027,000 people in World War II. Including the losses of the armed forces amounted to 446,000 people and 581,000 civilians.

The Netherlands suffered 301,000 casualties, including 21,000 military personnel and 280,000 civilian deaths.

Greece lost 806,900 people killed. Including the armed forces lost 35,100 people, and the civilian population 771,800 people.

Belgium lost 86,100 people killed. Of these, military casualties amounted to 12,100 people and civilian casualties 74,000.

Norway lost 9,500 people, including 3,000 military personnel.

The 2nd World War, unleashed by the “Thousand Year” Reich, turned into a disaster for Germany itself and its satellites. The real losses of the German armed forces are still not known, although by the beginning of the war a centralized system of personal registration of military personnel had been created in Germany. Each German soldier immediately upon arrival at the reserve military unit was given a personal identification mark (die Erknnungsmarke), which was an aluminum plate oval shape. The badge consisted of two halves, on each of which were stamped: the personal number of the serviceman, the name of the military unit that issued the badge. Both halves of the personal identification mark easily broke off from each other due to the presence of longitudinal cuts in the major axis of the oval. When the body of a dead serviceman was found, one half of the sign was broken off and sent along with a casualty report. The other half remained with the deceased in case subsequent identification was necessary during reburial. The inscription and number on the personal identification badge were reproduced in all personal documents of the serviceman; the German command persistently sought this. Each military unit kept accurate lists of issued personal identification marks. Copies of these lists were sent to the Berlin Central Bureau for the Accounting of War Casualties and Prisoners of War (WAST). At the same time, during the defeat of a military unit during hostilities and retreat, it was difficult to carry out a complete personal accounting of dead and missing military personnel. For example, several Wehrmacht servicemen, whose remains were discovered during search operations carried out by the Historical and Archival Search Center "Fate" at the sites of former battles on the Ugra River in the Kaluga region, where intense fighting took place in March - April 1942, according to the WAST service, they were counted only as conscripts into the German army. Information about them future fate was absent. They were not even listed as missing.

Starting with the defeat at Stalingrad, the German loss accounting system began to malfunction, and in 1944 and 1945, suffering defeat after defeat, the German command simply physically could not account for all its irretrievable losses. Since March 1945, their registration stopped altogether. Even earlier, on January 31, 1945, the Imperial Statistical Office stopped keeping records of the civilian population killed by air raids.

The position of the German Wehrmacht in 1944-1945 is a mirror reflection of the position of the Red Army in 1941-1942. Only we were able to survive and win, and Germany was defeated. At the end of the war, mass migration of the German population began, which continued after the collapse of the Third Reich. The German Empire within the borders of 1939 ceased to exist. Moreover, in 1949, Germany itself was divided into two independent states - the GDR and the Federal Republic of Germany. In this regard, it is quite difficult to identify the real direct human losses of Germany in the 2nd World War. All studies of German losses are based on data from German documents from the war period, which cannot reflect real losses. They can only talk about registered losses, which is not at all the same thing, especially for a country that has suffered a crushing defeat. It should be taken into account that access to documents on military losses stored in WAST is still closed to historians.

According to incomplete available data, the irretrievable losses of Germany and its allies (killed, died of wounds, captured and missing) amounted to 11,949,000 people. This includes human losses of the German armed forces - 6,923,700 people, similar losses of Germany's allies (Hungary, Italy, Romania, Finland, Slovakia, Croatia) - 1,725,800 people, as well as losses of the civilian population of the Third Reich - 3,300,000 people - this those killed by bombings and hostilities, missing persons, victims of fascist terror.

The German civilian population suffered the heaviest casualties as a result of the strategic bombing of German cities by British and American aircraft. According to incomplete data, these victims exceed 635 thousand people. Thus, as a result of four air raids carried out by the Royal British Air Force from July 24 to August 3, 1943 on the city of Hamburg, using incendiary and high-explosive bombs, 42,600 people were killed and 37 thousand were seriously injured. Three raids by British and American strategic bombers on the city of Dresden on February 13 and 14, 1945 had even more catastrophic consequences. As a result of combined attacks with incendiary and high-explosive bombs on residential areas of the city, at least 135 thousand people died from the resulting fire tornado, incl. city residents, refugees, foreign workers and prisoners of war.

According to official data given in a statistical study of the group led by General G.F. Krivosheev, until May 9, 1945, the Red Army captured more than 3,777,000 enemy troops. 381 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers and 137 thousand soldiers of the armies allied to Germany (except Japan) died in captivity, that is, only 518 thousand people, which is 14.9% of all recorded enemy prisoners of war. After the end of the Soviet-Japanese War, out of 640 thousand military personnel of the Japanese army captured by the Red Army in August - September 1945, 62 thousand people (less than 10%) died in captivity.

Italian losses in World War 2 amounted to 454,500 people, of which 301,400 died in the armed forces (of which 71,590 on the Soviet-German front).

According to various estimates, from 5,424,000 to 20,365,000 civilians became victims of Japanese aggression, including from famine and epidemics, in the countries of Southeast Asia and Oceania. Thus, civilian casualties in China are estimated from 3,695,000 to 12,392,000 people, in Indochina from 457,000 to 1,500,000 people, in Korea from 378,000 to 500,000 people. Indonesia 375,000 people, Singapore 283,000 people, Philippines - 119,000 people, Burma - 60,000 people, Pacific Islands - 57,000 people.

The losses of the Chinese armed forces in killed and wounded exceeded 5 million people.

331,584 military personnel died in Japanese captivity. different countries. Including 270,000 from China, 20,000 from the Philippines, 12,935 from the US, 12,433 from the UK, 8,500 from the Netherlands, 7,412 from Australia, 273 from Canada and 31 from New Zealand.

The aggressive plans of Imperial Japan were also costly. Its armed forces lost 1,940,900 military personnel killed or missing, including the army - 1,526,000 people and the navy - 414,900. 40,000 military personnel were captured. Japan's civilian population suffered 580,000 casualties.

Japan suffered the main civilian casualties from US Air Force attacks - the carpet bombing of Japanese cities at the end of the war and the atomic bombings in August 1945.

The American heavy bomber attack on Tokyo on the night of March 9–10, 1945, using incendiary and high-explosive bombs alone, killed 83,793 people.

The consequences of the atomic bombings were terrible when the US Air Force dropped two atomic bombs on Japanese cities. The city of Hiroshima was subjected to atomic bombing on August 6, 1945. The crew of the plane that bombed the city included a representative of the British Air Force. As a result of the bomb explosion in Hiroshima, about 200 thousand people died or went missing, more than 160 thousand people were injured and exposed to radioactive radiation. The second atomic bomb was dropped on August 9, 1945 on the city of Nagasaki. As a result of the bombing, 73 thousand people died or went missing in the city; later, another 35 thousand people died from radiation exposure and wounds. Total result atomic bombing More than 500 thousand civilians suffered in Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

The price paid by humanity in the 2nd World War for the victory over the madmen who were striving for world domination and trying to implement the cannibalistic racial theory turned out to be extremely high. The pain of loss has not yet subsided; the participants in the war and its eyewitnesses are still alive. They say that time heals, but not in this case. Currently, the international community is faced with new challenges and threats. The expansion of NATO to the east, the bombing and dismemberment of Yugoslavia, the occupation of Iraq, aggression against South Ossetia and the genocide of its population, the policy of discrimination against the Russian population in the Baltic republics that are members of the European Union, international terrorism and the proliferation of nuclear weapons threaten peace and security on the planet. Against this background, attempts are being made to rewrite history, subject to revisions enshrined in the UN Charter and other international legal documents, the results of the 2nd World War, to challenge the basic and irrefutable facts of the extermination of millions of innocent civilians, to glorify the Nazis and their henchmen, as well as to denigrate the liberators from fascism. These phenomena are fraught with a chain reaction - the revival of theories of racial purity and superiority, the spread new wave xenophobia.

Notes:

1. The Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.P. 430.

2. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 269

3. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.P. 430.

4. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945: Review volume. – /Editorial Board: E.M.Chekharin (chairman), V.V.Volodin, D.I.Karabanov (deputy chairmen), etc. – M.: Voenizdat, 1995.P. 396.

5. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945: Review volume. – /Editorial Board: E.M. Chekharin (chairman), V.V. Volodin, D.I. Karabanov (deputy chairmen), etc. - M.: Voenizdat, 1995. P. 407.

6. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 – 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 103.

7. Babi Yar. Book of memory/comp. I.M. Levitas. - K.: Publishing house "Steel", 2005. P.24.

8. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 – 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 232.

9. War, People, Victory: materials of international scientific research. conf. Moscow, March 15-16, 2005 / (responsible editor: M.Yu. Myagkov, Yu.A. Nikiforov); Institute of General history of the Russian Academy of Sciences. – M.: Nauka, 2008. Contribution of Belarus to the victory in the Great Patriotic War A.A. Kovalenya, A.M. Litvin. P. 249.

10. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 123.

11. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005. P. 430.

12. German original version of the catalog of the documentary exhibition “War against the Soviet Union 1941 - 1945”, edited by Reinhard Rürup, published in 1991 by Argon, Berlin (1st and 2nd editions). P. 68.

13. Essays on the history of Leningrad. L., 1967. T. 5. P. 692.

14. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under general edition G.F. Krivosheeva. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001

15. Classified as classified: Losses of the USSR Armed Forces in wars, hostilities and military conflicts: Statistical study / V.M. Andronikov, P.D. Burikov, V.V. Gurkin and others; under general
Edited by G.K. Krivosheev. – M.: Military Publishing House, 1993. P. 325.

16. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945. Illustrated encyclopedia. – M.: OLMA-PRESS Education, 2005.; Soviet prisoners of war in Germany. D.K. Sokolov. P. 142.

17. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001

18. Guide to search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association “War Memorials”. – 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. – M.: Lux-art LLP, 1997. P.30.

19. TsAMO RF, f.229, op. 159, d.44, l.122.

20. Military personnel of the Soviet state in the Great Patriotic War of 1941 - 1945. (reference and statistical materials). Under the general editorship of Army General A.P. Beloborodov. Military publishing house of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Moscow, 1963, p. 359.

21. “Report on losses and military damage caused to Poland in 1939 – 1945.” Warsaw, 1947. P. 36.

23. American Military Casualties and Burials. Wash., 1993. P. 290.

24. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 329.

27. American Military Casualties and Burials. Wash., 1993. P. 290.

28. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 329.

30. B.Ts.Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg: Publishing house. Polygon, 1994. P. 326.

36. Guide to search and exhumation work. / V.E. Martynov A.V. Mezhenko and others / Association “War Memorials”. – 3rd ed. Revised and expanded. – M.: Lux-art LLP, 1997. P.34.

37. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. The largest scale bombing of the Second World War / Transl. from English L.A. Igorevsky. – M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf, 2005. P.16.

38. All-Russian Book of Memory, 1941-1945...P.452.

39. D. Irving. Destruction of Dresden. The largest scale bombing of the Second World War / Transl. from English L.A. Igorevsky. – M.: ZAO Tsentrpoligraf. 2005. P.50.

40. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden... P.54.

41. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden... P.265.

42. Great Patriotic War. 1941 – 1945….; Foreign prisoners of war in the USSR...S. 139.

44. Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century: Losses of the Armed Forces - a statistical study. Under the general editorship of G.F. Krivosheev. – M. “OLMA-PRESS”, 2001.

46. History of the Second World War. 1939 – 1945: In 12 vols. M., 1973-1982. T.12. P. 151.

49. D. Irving. The destruction of Dresden...P.11.

50. The Great Patriotic War 1941 – 1945: encyclopedia. – / ch. ed. M.M. Kozlov. Editorial Board: Yu.Ya.Barabash, P.A.Zhilin (deputy editor-in-chief, V.I.Kanatov (responsible Secretary), etc. // Atomic weapons. - M.: Soviet encyclopedia, 1985. P. 71.

Martynov V. E.
Electronic scientific and educational journal “History”, 2010 T.1. Issue 2.

Editor's note . For 70 years, first the top leadership of the USSR (by rewriting history), and later the government of the Russian Federation, supported a monstrous and cynical lie about the greatest tragedy of the 20th century - World War II, mainly by privatizing victory in it and keeping silent about its cost and the role of other countries in the outcome war. Now in Russia they have made a ceremonial picture of victory, they support victory at all levels, and the cult of the St. George’s ribbon has reached such an ugly form that it has actually developed into outright mockery of the memory of millions of fallen people. And while the whole world mourns for those who died fighting Nazism or became its victims, eReFiya is organizing a blasphemous Sabbath. And over these 70 years, the exact number of losses of Soviet citizens in that war has not been finally clarified. The Kremlin is not interested in this, just as it is not interested in publishing statistics on the deaths of Russian military personnel in the Donbass, in the Russian-Ukrainian war, which it unleashed. Only a few who did not succumb to the influence of Russian propaganda are trying to find out the exact number of losses in WWII.

In the article that we bring to your attention, the most important thing is that the Soviet and Russian authorities did not care about the fate of how many millions of people, while promoting their feat in every possible way.

Estimates of the losses of Soviet citizens in World War II have a huge range: from 19 to 36 million. The first detailed calculations were made by the Russian emigrant, demographer Timashev in 1948 - he came up with 19 million. The maximum figure was called by B. Sokolov - 46 million. The latest calculations show , that the USSR military alone lost 13.5 million people, but the total losses were over 27 million.

At the end of the war, long before any historical and demographic studies, Stalin named the figure - 5.3 million military losses. He also included missing persons (obviously, in most cases, prisoners). In March 1946, in an interview with a correspondent of the Pravda newspaper, the generalissimo estimated the human losses at 7 million. The increase was due to civilians who died in the occupied territory or were deported to Germany.

In the West, this figure was perceived with skepticism. Already at the end of the 1940s, the first calculations of the demographic balance of the USSR during the war years appeared, contradicting Soviet data. An illustrative example is the calculations of the Russian emigrant, demographer N. S. Timashev, published in the New York “New Journal” in 1948. Here is his technique.

The All-Union Population Census of the USSR in 1939 determined its population at 170.5 million. Growth in 1937-1940. reached, according to his assumption, almost 2% for each year. Consequently, the population of the USSR by mid-1941 should have reached 178.7 million. But in 1939-1940. Western Ukraine and Belarus, three Baltic states, the Karelian lands of Finland were annexed to the USSR, and Romania returned Bessarabia and Northern Bukovina. Therefore, minus the Karelian population who went to Finland, the Poles who fled to the West, and the Germans repatriated to Germany, these territorial acquisitions gave a population increase of 20.5 million. Considering that the birth rate in the annexed territories was no more than 1% in year, that is, lower than in the USSR, and also taking into account the short time period between their entry into the USSR and the beginning of World War II, the author determined the population growth for these territories by mid-1941 at 300 thousand. Consistently adding up the above figures, he received 200.7 million who lived in the USSR on the eve of June 22, 1941.

Next, Timashev divided 200 million into three age groups, again based on data from the 1939 All-Union Census: adults (over 18 years old) - 117.2 million, adolescents (from 8 to 18 years old) - 44.5 million, children (under 8 years old) - 38.8 million. In this he took into account two important circumstances. First: in 1939-1940. From childhood, two very weak annual streams moved from childhood to the group of teenagers, born in 1931-1932, during the famine, which covered large areas of the USSR and negatively affected the size of the teenage group. Second: in the former Polish lands and Baltic states there were more people over 20 years of age than in the USSR.

Timashev supplemented these three age groups with the number of Soviet prisoners. He did it in the following way. By the time of the elections of deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in December 1937, the population of the USSR reached 167 million, of which voters made up 56.36% of total figure, and the population over 18 years of age, according to the All-Union Census of 1939, reached 58.3%. The resulting difference of 2%, or 3.3 million, in his opinion, was the population of the Gulag (including the number of those executed). This turned out to be close to the truth.

Next, Timashev moved on to post-war figures. The number of voters included in the voting lists for the elections of deputies to the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in the spring of 1946 was 101.7 million. Adding to this figure the 4 million Gulag prisoners he calculated, he received 106 million adult population in the USSR at the beginning of 1946. When calculating the teenage group, he took as a basis 31.3 million primary and high school in the 1947/48 school year, compared it with data from 1939 (31.4 million schoolchildren within the borders of the USSR before September 17, 1939) and arrived at a figure of 39 million. When calculating the children's group, he proceeded from the fact that by the beginning of the war the birth rate in the USSR was approximately 38 per 1000, in the second quarter of 1942 it decreased by 37.5%, and in 1943-1945. - half.

Subtracting from each year group the percentage calculated according to the normal mortality table for the USSR, he received 36 million children at the beginning of 1946. Thus, according to his statistical calculations, in the USSR at the beginning of 1946 there were 106 million adults, 39 million adolescents and 36 million children, and a total of 181 million. Timashev’s conclusion is as follows: the population of the USSR in 1946 was 19 million less than in 1941.

Other Western researchers came to approximately the same results. In 1946, under the auspices of the League of Nations, F. Lorimer’s book “The Population of the USSR” was published. According to one of his hypotheses, during the war the population of the USSR decreased by 20 million.

In the article “Human Losses in the Second World War,” published in 1953, the German researcher G. Arntz came to the conclusion that “20 million people is the closest figure to the truth of the total losses of the Soviet Union in the Second World War.” The collection including this article was translated and published in the USSR in 1957 under the title “Results of the Second World War.” Thus, four years after Stalin’s death, Soviet censorship released the figure of 20 million into the open press, thereby indirectly recognizing it as correct and making it available, at least, to specialists: historians, international affairs experts, etc.

Only in 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to Swedish Prime Minister Erlander, admitted that the war against fascism “claimed two tens of millions of lives of Soviet people.” Thus, compared to Stalin, Khrushchev increased Soviet casualties by almost 3 times.

In 1965, on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Victory, Brezhnev spoke of “more than 20 million” human lives, lost Soviet people in war. In the 6th and final volume of the fundamental “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union,” published at the same time, it was stated that of the 20 million dead, almost half “were military and civilians killed and tortured by the Nazis in occupied Soviet territory.” In fact, 20 years after the end of the war, the USSR Ministry of Defense admitted the death of 10 million Soviet military personnel.

Four decades later, the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, in a line-by-line commentary, told the truth about the calculations that military historians carried out in the early 1960s when preparing the “History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union”: “Our losses in the war were then it was determined at 26 million. But the figure “over 20 million” was accepted by high authorities.”

As a result, “20 million” not only stuck for decades in historical literature, but also became part of the national identity.

In 1990, M. Gorbachev announced a new figure for losses obtained as a result of research by demographers - “almost 27 million people.”

In 1991, B. Sokolov’s book “The Price of Victory” was published. The Great Patriotic War: the unknown about the known.” It estimated direct military losses of the USSR at approximately 30 million, including 14.7 million military personnel, and “actual and potential losses” at 46 million, including 16 million unborn children.”

A little later, Sokolov clarified these figures (he added new losses). He obtained the loss figure as follows. From the size of the Soviet population at the end of June 1941, which he determined to be 209.3 million, he subtracted 166 million who, in his opinion, lived in the USSR on January 1, 1946, and received 43.3 million dead. Then I subtracted the irrecoverable losses from the resulting number Armed Forces(26.4 million) and received irretrievable losses of civilians - 16.9 million.

“We can name the number of Red Army soldiers killed during the entire war, which is close to reality, if we determine the month of 1942, when the losses of the Red Army in killed were taken into account most fully and when it had almost no losses in prisoners. For a number of reasons, we chose November 1942 as such a month and extended the ratio of the number of dead and wounded obtained for it to the entire period of the war. As a result, we came to a figure of 22.4 million Soviet military personnel killed in battle and died from wounds, illnesses, accidents and executed by tribunals.”

To the 22.4 million received in this way, he added 4 million soldiers and commanders of the Red Army who died in enemy captivity. This is how it turned out to be 26.4 million irretrievable losses suffered by the Armed Forces.

In addition to B. Sokolov, similar calculations were carried out by L. Polyakov, A. Kvasha, V. Kozlov and others. The methodological weakness of this kind of calculations is obvious: the researchers proceeded from the difference between the size of the Soviet population in 1941, which is known very approximately, and the size of the post-war population USSR, which is almost impossible to accurately determine. It was this difference that they considered the total human losses.

In 1993, a statistical study “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Actions and Military Conflicts” was published, prepared by a team of authors headed by General G. Krivosheev. The main source of statistical data was previously secret archival documents, primarily reports of the General Staff. However, the losses of entire fronts and armies in the first months, and the authors specifically stipulated this, were obtained by calculation. In addition, the reports of the General Staff did not include the losses of units that were not organizationally part of the Soviet Armed Forces (army, navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR), but were directly involved in the battles: the people's militia, partisan detachments, groups of underground workers.

Finally, the number of prisoners of war and missing persons is clearly underestimated: this category of losses, according to the reports of the General Staff, totals 4.5 million, of which 2.8 million remained alive (were repatriated after the end of the war or again drafted into the ranks of the Red Army in the liberated from the occupiers of the territory), and, accordingly, the total number of those who did not return from captivity, including those who did not want to return to the USSR, amounted to 1.7 million.

As a result, the statistical data in the “Classified as Classified” directory was immediately perceived as requiring clarification and additions. And in 1998, thanks to the publication of V. Litovkin “During the war years, our army lost 11 million 944 thousand 100 people,” these data were replenished by 500 thousand reservists drafted into the army, but not yet included in the lists of military units and who died along the way to the front.

The study by V. Litovkin states that from 1946 to 1968, a special commission of the General Staff, headed by General S. Shtemenko, prepared a statistical reference book on losses in 1941-1945. At the end of the commission’s work, Shtemenko reported to the Minister of Defense of the USSR, Marshal A. Grechko: “Taking into account that the statistical collection contains information of national importance, the publication of which in the press (including closed ones) or in any other way is currently not necessary and undesirable, the collection is intended to be kept at the General Staff as a special document, to which a strictly limited circle of persons will be allowed to become familiar.” And the prepared collection was kept under seven seals until the team under the leadership of General G. Krivosheev made its information public.

V. Litovkin’s research sowed even greater doubts about the completeness of the information published in the collection “Classified as Classified”, because a logical question arose: were all the data contained in the “statistics collection of the Shtemenko Commission” declassified?

For example, according to the data given in the article, during the war years, military justice authorities convicted 994 thousand people, of whom 422 thousand were sent to penal units, 436 thousand to places of detention. The remaining 136 thousand were apparently shot.

And yet, the reference book “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed” significantly expanded and complemented the ideas not only of historians, but of everyone Russian society about the price of the Victory of 1945. It is enough to refer to the statistical calculation: from June to November 1941, the Armed Forces of the USSR lost 24 thousand people every day, of which 17 thousand were killed and up to 7 thousand wounded, and from January 1944 to May 1945 - 20 thousand people , of which 5.2 thousand were killed and 14.8 thousand were wounded.

In 2001, a significantly expanded statistical publication appeared - “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. Losses of the armed forces." The authors supplemented the General Staff materials with reports from military headquarters about losses and notifications from military registration and enlistment offices about the dead and missing, which were sent to relatives at their place of residence. And the figure of losses he received increased to 9 million 168 thousand 400 people. These data were reproduced in volume 2 of the collective work of the staff of the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences “Population of Russia in the 20th century. Historical essays”, published under the editorship of academician Yu. Polyakov.

In 2004, the second, corrected and expanded, edition of the book by the head of the Center for Military History of Russia at the Institute of Russian History of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Professor G. Kumanev, “Feat and Forgery: Pages of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945,” was published. It provides data on losses: about 27 million Soviet citizens. And in the footnote comments to them, the same addition mentioned above appeared, explaining that the calculations of military historians back in the early 1960s gave a figure of 26 million, but the “high authorities” preferred to accept something else as the “historical truth”: “over 20 million."

Meanwhile, historians and demographers continued to look for new approaches to determining the magnitude of the USSR's losses in the war.

The historian Ilyenkov, who served in the Central Archives of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, followed an interesting path. He tried to calculate the irretrievable losses of the Red Army personnel based on the files of irretrievable losses of privates, sergeants and officers. These files began to be created when, on July 9, 1941, a department for recording personal losses was organized as part of the Main Directorate for the Formation and Recruitment of the Red Army (GUFKKA). The responsibilities of the department included personal accounting of losses and compiling an alphabetical card index of losses.

The records were kept in the following categories: 1) dead - according to reports from military units, 2) dead - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 3) missing in action - according to reports from military units, 4) missing - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices, 5) dead in German captivity , 6) those who died from illnesses, 7) those who died from wounds - according to reports from military units, those who died from wounds - according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices. At the same time, the following were taken into account: deserters; military personnel sentenced to forced labor camps; sentenced to to the highest degree punishment - execution; removed from the register of irretrievable losses as survivors; those on suspicion of having served with the Germans (the so-called “signals”), and those who were captured but survived. These military personnel were not included in the list of irretrievable losses.

After the war, the card files were deposited in the Archive of the USSR Ministry of Defense (now the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation). Since the early 1990s, the archive began counting registration cards by letters of the alphabet and categories of losses. As of November 1, 2000, 20 letters of the alphabet were processed; a preliminary calculation was carried out using the remaining 6 uncounted letters, which had fluctuations up or down by 30-40 thousand persons.

The calculated 20 letters for 8 categories of losses of privates and sergeants of the Red Army gave the following figures: 9 million 524 thousand 398 people. At the same time, 116 thousand 513 people were removed from the register of irretrievable losses as those who turned out to be alive according to reports from military registration and enlistment offices.

A preliminary calculation based on 6 uncounted letters gave 2 million 910 thousand people as irretrievable losses. The result of the calculations was as follows: 12 million 434 thousand 398 Red Army soldiers and sergeants were lost by the Red Army in 1941-1945. (Recall that this is without losses of the Navy, internal and border troops of the NKVD of the USSR.)

Using the same methodology, the alphabetical card index of irretrievable losses of officers of the Red Army was calculated, which is also stored in the TsAMO of the Russian Federation. They amounted to about 1 million 100 thousand people.

Thus, 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.

These data are 4 million 865 thousand 998 people higher than the irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR (payroll) according to the General Staff, which included the Red Army, sailors, border guards, and internal troops of the NKVD of the USSR.

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.

(Quotes: S. Golotik and V. Minaev - “Demographic losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War: history of calculations”, “New Historical Bulletin”, No. 16, 2007.)

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 – underestimates 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 lost irrevocably in battles with the Germans, and also thanks to German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude of 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 Defense Ministry 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.

Nationalitydead military personnel	Number of losses (thousand people)	% to total irrecoverable losses
Russians	5 756.0	66.402
Ukrainians	1 377.4	15.890
Belarusians	252.9	2.917
Tatars	187.7	2.165
Jews	142.5	1.644
Kazakhs	125.5	1.448
Uzbeks	117.9	1.360
Armenians	83.7	0.966
Georgians	79.5	0.917
Mordva	63.3	0.730
Chuvash	63.3	0.730
Yakuts	37.9	0.437
Azerbaijanis	58.4	0.673
Moldovans	53.9	0.621
Bashkirs	31.7	0.366
Kyrgyz	26.6	0.307
Udmurts	23.2	0.268
Tajiks	22.9	0.264
Turkmens	21.3	0.246
Estonians	21.2	0.245
Mari	20.9	0.241
Buryats	13.0	0.150
Komi	11.6	0.134
Latvians	11.6	0.134
Lithuanians	11.6	0.134
Peoples of Dagestan	11.1	0.128
Ossetians	10.7	0.123
Poles	10.1	0.117
Karelians	9.5	0.110
Kalmyks	4.0	0.046
Kabardians and Balkars	3.4	0.039
Greeks	2.4	0.028
Chechens and Ingush	2.3	0.026
Finns	1.6	0.018
Bulgarians	1.1	0.013
Czechs and Slovaks	0.4	0.005
Chinese	0.4	0.005
Assyrians	0,2	0,002
Yugoslavs	0.1	0.001

The greatest losses on the battlefields of the Second World War were suffered by Russians and Ukrainians. Many Jews were killed. But the most tragic was the fate of the Belarusian people. In the first months of the war, the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by the Germans. During the war, the 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 the Soviet republics Georgia suffered great damage. 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 regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front is more or less clear. 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.

Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burials of Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (270 thousand of them died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states (357 thousand people died). Of the total number of dead Wehrmacht soldiers of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6–0.7 million people.
Secondly, this figure dates back to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, created in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence it transferred information about the burials of 400 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Association for the Care of Military Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they had already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of newly discovered burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. Tentatively, we can assume that the number of graves of Wehrmacht soldiers newly discovered over the past 10 years is in the range of 0.2–0.4 million people.
Thirdly, many graves of dead Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil have disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could have been buried in such disappeared and unmarked graves.
Fourthly, these data do not include the burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops on the territory of Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, in the last three spring months of the war alone, about 1 million people died. (minimum estimate 700 thousand) In general, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died on German soil and in Western European countries in battles with the Red Army.
Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included Wehrmacht soldiers who died a “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people)

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany

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

Conclusions

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

During the war, almost 27 million citizens of the USSR 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 hostilities going on 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, the exact number of those killed during the war is unlikely to ever be known.

At first, after the end of the Second World War, it was impossible to count losses. Scientists tried to keep accurate statistics second fatalities World War by nationality, but information became truly accessible only after the collapse of the USSR. Many believed that the victory over the Nazis was achieved thanks to the large number of deaths. No one seriously kept statistics on the Second World War.

The Soviet government deliberately manipulated the numbers. Initially, the number of deaths during the war was about 50 million people. But by the end of the 90s the figure increased to 72 million.

The table provides a comparison of the losses of the two major 20th centuries:

Wars of the 20th century	World War 1	World War 2
Duration of hostilities	4.3 years	6 years
Death toll	About 10 million people	72 million people
Number of wounded	20 million people	35 million people
Number of countries where fighting took place	14	40
Number of people who were officially called up for military service	70 million people	110 million people

Briefly about the beginning of hostilities

The USSR entered the war without a single ally (1941–1942). Initially, the battles were defeated. Statistics of victims of the Second World War in those years demonstrate huge amount irretrievably lost soldiers and military equipment. The main destructive factor was the seizure of territories by the enemy, rich in the defense industry.

The SS authorities assumed a possible attack on the country. But there were no visible preparations for war. The effect of a surprise attack played into the hands of the aggressor. The seizure of USSR territories was carried out with enormous speed. There was enough military equipment and weapons in Germany for a large-scale military campaign.

Number of deaths during the Second World War

The statistics of losses in the Second World War are only approximate. Each researcher has his own data and calculations. 61 states took part in this battle, and military operations took place on the territory of 40 countries. The war affected about 1.7 billion people. The Soviet Union bore the brunt. According to historians, the losses of the USSR amounted to about 26 million people.

At the beginning of the war, the Soviet Union was very weak in terms of production of equipment and military weapons. However, statistics of deaths in the Second World War show that the number of deaths by year by the end of the battle had decreased significantly. The reason is the sharp development of the economy. The country learned to produce high-quality defensive equipment against the aggressor, and the technology had multiple advantages over fascist industrial blocs.

As for prisoners of war, most of them were from the USSR. In 1941, the prisoner camps were overcrowded. Later the Germans began to release them. At the end of this year, about 320 thousand prisoners of war were released. The bulk of them were Ukrainians, Belarusians and Balts.

Official statistics of deaths in the Second World War indicates colossal losses among Ukrainians. Their number is much greater than the French, Americans and British combined. As statistics from the Second World War show, Ukraine lost about 8–10 million people. This includes all participants in hostilities (killed, deceased, captured, evacuated).

The cost of the victory of the Soviet authorities over the aggressor could have been much less. The main reason is the unpreparedness of the USSR for a sudden invasion of German troops. Stocks of ammunition and equipment did not correspond to the scale of the ongoing war.

About 3% of men born in 1923 are still alive. The reason is the lack of military training. The boys were taken to the front straight from school. Those with secondary education were sent to fast pilot courses or training for platoon commanders.

German losses

The Germans very carefully hid the statistics of those killed in the Second World War. It is somehow strange that in the battle of the century the number of military units lost by the aggressor was only 4.5 million. The statistics of the Second World War regarding those killed, wounded or captured were downplayed by the Germans several times. The remains of the dead are still being excavated in the battle areas.

However, the German one was strong and persistent. Hitler at the end of 1941 was ready to celebrate the victory over the Soviet people. Thanks to the allies, the SS was prepared both in terms of food and logistics. SS factories produced many high-quality weapons. However, losses in the Second World War began to increase significantly.

After a while, the Germans' fervor began to diminish. The soldiers understood that they could not withstand the people's fury. The Soviet command began to correctly build military plans and tactics. The statistics of the Second World War in terms of deaths began to change.

During wartime around the world, the population died not only from hostilities on the part of the enemy, but also from the spread of various types of hunger. China's losses were especially noticeable in World War II. The death toll statistics are in second place after the USSR. More than 11 million Chinese died. Although the Chinese have their own statistics of those killed in the Second World War. It does not correspond to numerous opinions of historians.

Results of the Second World War

Given the scale of the fighting, as well as the lack of desire to reduce losses, affected the number of victims. It was not possible to prevent the losses of countries in the Second World War, the statistics of which were studied by various historians.

The statistics of the Second World War (infographics) would have been different if not for the many mistakes made by the commanders-in-chief, who initially did not attach importance to the production and preparation of military equipment and technology.

Results of the Second World War according to statistics more than cruel, not only in terms of bloodshed, but also in the destructive scale of cities and villages. World War II statistics (losses by country):

Soviet Union - about 26 million people.
China – more than 11 million.
Germany – more than 7 million
Poland – about 7 million.
Japan – 1.8 million
Yugoslavia – 1.7 million
Romania – about 1 million.
France – more than 800 thousand.
Hungary – 750 thousand
Austria – more than 500 thousand.

Some countries or separate groups people fundamentally fought on the side of the Germans, since they did not like Soviet policies and Stalin’s approach to leading the country. But, despite this, the military campaign ended in the victory of Soviet power over the Nazis. The Second World War served as a good lesson for politicians of that time. Such casualties could have been avoided in the Second World War under one condition - preparation for invasion, regardless of whether the country was threatened with attack.

The main factor that contributed to the victory of the USSR in the fight against fascism was the unity of the nation and the desire to defend the honor of their Motherland.