The number of people killed in World War II. How many Soviet people died in the Great Patriotic War

Surprisingly, 70 years after our Victory, one of the most important issues has not been put to an end - how many of our fellow citizens died during the Great Patriotic War. The official figures have changed several times. And always in one direction - in the direction of increasing losses. Stalin named 9 million dead (which is close to the truth, if we take into account the military losses), under Brezhnev, a figure of 20 million lives was put into circulation, given for the freedom of the Motherland. At the end of Perestroika, figures appeared, which historians and politicians use today - 27 million. Perished citizens of the USSR during the Great Patriotic War. Voices are already being heard that "in fact, more than 33 million people died."

So who and why is constantly increasing our losses, why is the myth of “being thrown in corpses” supported. And why did the Immortal Regiment appear, as the first step towards a new version of the "inhuman leadership of the USSR" during the Second World War "who saved himself at the expense of".

On the eve of Victory Day, I received two letters, which are an excellent illustration of the issue of the true losses of our people in the war against fascism.

From these two letters from our readers came the material about the war and our losses.

The first letter.

“Dear Nikolai Viktorovich!

I agree with you that history is similar to the rules of the road (). Failure to comply with the rules leads to a dead end or even worse ... In history, not only facts are important, but also numbers (not only dates).

Since the moment of "perestroika and glasnost", a lot of figures have appeared, only not achievements, but losses. And one of these figures is 27 million people who died in the Great Patriotic War (WWII).

At the same time, this is not enough for some "politicians" and they are beginning to voice big numbers.

Remember the shock (as it is customary to say nowadays) the number of many millions of "victims of repression" causes in people. For some, it is obligatory and with a clarification - "Stalinist". And the real figure for normal researchers is from 650 thousand to 680 thousand people. By the way, Grover Ferr's book "Shadows of the XX Congress, or Anti-Stalinist meanness" (M. Eksmo, Algorithm, 2010) gives the following figures for those executed in 1937 - 353,074 people, 1938 - 328,618 people, a total of 681,692 people. But this number includes not only political, but also criminals.

In the study itself, the losses of the Second World War indicated a figure of 26.6 million people. At the same time, it is indicated that 1.3 million are emigrants. That is, they left the country. This means that the dead are still 25.3 million people.

It is very difficult to establish the losses of the USSR by direct count. The number of casualties, only to the Red Army, was established in a study conducted by Min. Defense in 1988-1993 under the leadership of Colonel-General GF Krivosheev.

Estimates of the direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK from 1946, amounted to 6,390,800 people on the territory of the USSR. This number includes prisoners of war. And the death toll from hunger, bombing, shelling? I have not seen such research.

The assessment of the losses of the USSR is carried out according to a completely logical formula:

Losses of the USSR = Population of the USSR as of 06/22/1941 - Population of the USSR at the end of the war + Number of children who died due to increased mortality (from among those born during the war) - The population would die in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 ...

We substitute the numbers in the above formula and we get:

196.7 million - 159.5 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 26.6 million people

There is almost no discrepancy between the researchers in the two figures - these are:

The number of children who died due to increased mortality (from among those born during the war years). The figure is called 1.3 million people.

The population would have died in peacetime, based on the death rate in 1940 = 11.9 million people.

There are questions about the other two figures. The population of the USSR at the date of the end of the war (born before 06/22/1941) was determined at 159.5 million people as of December 1945. It is worth remembering such facts - in 1944 Tuva became part of the USSR. At the same time, since 1943, Tuvan volunteers took part in battles on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In 1939, 1940, the lands of Western Belarus, Ukraine, and the Carpathian region became part of the USSR. The population of these regions was included in the composition of the population of the USSR. But in 1945 Poland was restored (as states) and

Czechoslovakia, and also defined new borders for them (and for Hungary and Romania). And many Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians (former citizens of the USSR) decided to return to their states. From this the question arises, how were these people taken into account in the post-war census? Researchers are silent about this.

Now the population of the USSR is on 06/22/1941. How did this figure appear?

The population of the USSR as of January 1939 was supplemented by the population of the annexed territories and the increase in population for 2.5 years, i.e.

170.6 million + 20.8 million + 4.9 million and another + 0.4 million due to the "coefficient of reducing child mortality" and received 196.7 million people by June 22, 1941.

Wherein:

The population of the USSR according to the 1926 census is 147 million people

The population of the USSR according to the 1937 census is 162 million people.

The population of the USSR according to the 1939 census is 170.6 million people.

The 1926 census was in December, the 1937 and 1939 censuses were in early January, that is, all three censuses were conducted within the same boundaries. Population growth from 1926 to 1937 amounted to 15 million people in 10 years, or 1.5 million a year. And suddenly, in 2 years 1937 and 1938, it was calculated that the population growth was 8.6 million. And this was at the time of urbanization and the “demographic echo” of the First World War and the Civil War. By the way, the average annual population growth of the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s is approximately 2.3-2.5 million people a year.

In the statistical reference books of the 50s, the population of the USSR in 1941 was actually indicated as 191.7 million people. Even a democrat and officially called a traitor - Rezun-Suvorov in his books about the Second World War writes that "The population of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1941 was 191 million people" (Viktor Suvorov. About half a billion. Chapter from a new book. Http: // militera. lib.ru/research/pravda_vs-3/01.html).

(The question why, when calculating the figure of the population of the USSR, it was decided to increase by 5 million is still unanswered).

Having indicated in the calculation, the figure that is closer to the real value, i.e. 191.7 million people at the beginning of the Second World War we get:

The population of the USSR as of 06/22/1941 - 191.7

The population of the USSR as of December 31, 1945 - 170.5

Incl. born before June 22, 1941 - 159.5

The general decline in the population of those who lived on June 22, 1941 (191.7 million - 159.5 million = 32.2 million people) - 32.2

The number of children who died due to increased mortality (from among those born during the war years) - 1.3

The population would have died in peacetime, based on the 1940 mortality rate - 11.9

The total human losses of the USSR as a result of the war: 32.2 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 21.6 million people.

First, one must take into account that non-military mortality in 1941-1945. it is incorrect to calculate based on the 1940 mortality rate. In the military 1941-1945. non-military mortality should have been much HIGHER than in the peaceful 1940.

Secondly, this “general population decline” also includes the so-called. "Second emigration" (up to 1.5 million people) and the loss of collaborationist formations that fought on the side of the Germans (Estonian and Latvian SS men, "Ostbatalions", policemen, etc.) - after all, they also consisted, as it were, of citizens of the USSR! This is up to 400,000 people.

And if you subtract these numbers from 21.6 million, you get about 19.8 million.

That is, rounded off - the very same "Brezhnev" 20 million.

Therefore, until the researchers were able to provide reasonable calculations, I propose not to use the numbers that appeared during the time of Gorbachev. The purpose of these calculations was certainly not to establish the truth. I wrote to you about this because I heard several times in your speeches about the losses of the USSR in 27 million people.

Yours faithfully, Matvienko Gennady Ivanovich

P.S. According to the estimate of the loss (minimum) of the Germans only in World War II, no less than 12 million people (while the maximum estimate of the losses of the civilian German population does not exceed 3 million). And they completely forgot the Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Finns.

At Stalingrad in September 1942, Paulus's army is 270 thousand people, and 2 Romanian and 1 Hungarian armies - about 340 thousand people. "

Thank you very much, Gennady Ivanovich for his letter. But the letter from another reader sent a little earlier is simply an illustration of what is written above.

Second letter.

"Dear Nikolay Viktorovich

Let me introduce myself. My name is Askar Abdrakhmanovich Berkaliev. I live in Kazakhstan in Almaty, a pensioner, but I continue to be interested in social and political life in the territory of the former USSR. I try to follow the television battles that our television broadcasts. I am impressed by your interpretation of the History of the Great Patriotic War and the fact that you are examining the most controversial moments of this war. I would not bother you and waste time if I had not accidentally stumbled upon facts that have shaken the established (for me personally) information about the losses of our country in the last war.

Until the 70s of the last century, it was believed that the losses of our country in the Great Patriotic War amounted to 20 million dead and dead. Then from somewhere came the figure of 27 million and there is a strong tendency towards an increase in the number of our losses.

Some strata of society (especially the intelligentsia) hold the point of view that the Soviet army bombarded the Germans with the corpses of its soldiers and won not by skill, but by number. I think that such an opinion helps to belittle the merits of our people in the victory in that war. As well as the regularly expressed points of view that without lend-lease supplies we would not have won, that without a second front we would not have won, etc.

I'll tell you a little about what facts I found.

In the fall of 2013, I made a trip to Ukraine. My elder brother Nariman Berkaliev died there at the end of 1943. For a long time we did not know the exact place of death and burial. The death notice indicated that he died in the Kirovograd region on December 20, 1943, without specifying the exact place of burial. In 1991, the "Memory Book" was published in our regional newspaper. There were listed the names of our fellow countrymen who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, and the specified places of their burial were indicated.

For various reasons, none of the remaining family members were able to travel to Ukraine. The parents were no longer alive, the older brothers were aged and their health condition did not allow them to travel to Ukraine. I was the youngest of the brothers, and putting other things aside, I went to the Kirovograd region, found in the Dolinsky district the village of Sukhodolskoye (during the war it was called Batyzman). Found a mass grave. The brother's surname and first name were on the list, engraved on the granite stones. The mass grave is in good condition, thanks to the villagers. I laid flowers and handfuls of earth, brought from my home side.

With the goal of visiting the grave of my older brother, I wanted to look at the land, for the liberation of which my father also fought. My father was drafted into the army in the summer of 1942 and ended up in the Stalingrad region. He was awarded the rank of sergeant (he had experience in the Civil War). He served in the 706th Infantry Regiment of the 204th Division, which was part of the 64th Army. On January 18, 1943, during the liquidation of the encircled German group, he was wounded. He was in a hospital in the city of Buzuluk and in the summer of 1943 returned to the active army. He ended up in the 983rd regiment of the 253rd division, which was part of the 40th Army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. He took part in the battles for the liberation of the Poltava region, walked through Gogol's places, was in Dikanka, almost drowned in the local river Psel. In November 1943, their part crossed the Dnieper near the Bukrinsky bridgehead, imitating as if the main attack would come from here. In fact, the main blow was made from the Lutezh bridgehead. For two days their regiment, which had moved to the right bank, held out under the fire of the Germans, who had settled down on the high bank of the Dnieper. On the third day, my father was wounded by the explosion of a German mine and was evacuated to the rear. They wanted to amputate his legs, but he did not give it up, underwent six months of treatment in the rear hospital and returned home in the summer of 1944. Father died in 1973 at the age of 70.

After a trip to Ukraine, I took up in more detail the study of the combat path of my closest relatives. From a close relative, my father, my elder brother, and also six older cousins took part in that war.

I am now retired, I have enough time, and after a trip to Ukraine I decided to compose something like a memoir for the younger generation. Of course, a large part of the memoirs is devoted to how the older generation showed themselves in the war. Of the eight close relatives who went off to the war, only four returned alive.

In the course of compiling my notes, which later grew into memoirs, I had to rummage through my home archives. It turned out that a lot of information can be found on the Internet. There are special sites "People's Feat" and the "Memorial" WBS. You, of course, know about this, but for me it was a great find. It turns out, having information about the number of a military unit, you can trace its combat path. You can find information about awards and even presentation for awards. I remember my father talking about his last battle - the crossing of the Dnieper in early November 1943. On the third day after the crossing, already on the right bank, my father was wounded and he was taken to the rear. Before he was sent to the hospital, the commander told my father that he would submit him to the Order of Glory of the II degree (the order of Glory of the III degree was already with his father). But he never received the promised order. On the Internet, I found an award list (presentation for an award). The father presented himself not to the order, but only to the medal "For Courage", but he also did not receive it. The award list indicated the circumstances and place of the battle. It was near the village of Khodorovka on the famous Bukrin bridgehead.

I took a closer look at the Internet. I went to the Memorial WBS website and found out that my father was presumed dead on January 18, 1943, during the liquidation of the encircled German group (that is, during the first wound).

After discovering an obvious discrepancy between the information received and the reality, I checked whether the Memorial WBS had information about my other relatives who had died at the front.

Two older cousins died back in 1941. There is no information about them. They were rank and file soldiers. In addition, I do not know exactly the years of birth and surnames (among Kazakhs, the surname is often taken from the name of a father, grandfather or a distant ancestor).
Another older cousin, Kairov Salim, was a career soldier who fought on the Kalinin front. His surname is on the list of irrecoverable losses of the Memorial WBS three times. All three information contains the same first and last name. Even the numbers of the military unit and the division match. The difference is that somewhere he was recorded as a lieutenant, and somewhere as a senior lieutenant. In one case, he was considered killed on January 9, 1943, and in another information on January 8, 1943. Somewhere he was considered to be born in the Ashgabat region, and somewhere in the West Kazakhstan region. Although it was clearly about the same person (too many coincidences in the details). But at the same time, each information from the Memorial HBS has a separate folder and file.

My real deceased elder brother Nariman also passes through the lists of those killed in the Memorial WBO three times. In one case, he is considered a fighter of the 68th m / brigade and is buried in the village. Batyzman, Dolinsky district. In other information, he passes as a fighter, who has only field mail 32172, without specifying the place of death. In the third case, he is recorded as a fighter of the 68th m / brigade. But the burial place was named the village of Batyzman, Novgorodkovsky district.

There was one more participant in the war in our family - this is the father of my wife, Seydalin Mukash, born in 1910. When searching for information about him, the Memorial WBS indicated that the senior sergeant of the 1120th rifle regiment Mukash Seydalin died in the hospital from his wounds in December 1942. In fact, he was wounded on December 6, 1942. After being wounded, he was discharged and from 1943 worked as a teacher in the city of Chu, Dzhambul region. He died in 1985 at the age of 75.

I got a bunch of contradictory information.

My father returned from the war wounded, but alive. According to the "Memorial" OBD, he is considered dead.
My wife's father returned from the war wounded, but alive. There is information about him that he died in the hospital.
My brother Nariman did indeed die, but according to information from the Memorial WBS, he is on three lists, that is, he is listed as three different people who have died.
Another brother (cousin) was also really killed, but according to information from the Memorial WBS, he was killed three times and there are three separate entries about this.

It turns out that for four people there are eight information about the death, although only two actually died.

It seems to me that errors in information could have arisen at the first stage, i.e. when filling out reports on irrecoverable losses. I saw the originals of military field records on the Internet. These are undoubtedly genuine documents, written on yellowed paper, which confirms the authenticity of the originals. But we must take into account that the recordings were made in conditions of hostilities, and people, who were not always themselves witnesses of what happened, often wrote from the words of other people. I cannot explain the appearance of information about the death of people who are actually only wounded by other reasons. The usual human factor.

The appearance of errors associated with repeated entry into the lists of irrecoverable losses, I think, occurred at the digitization stage. Probably the information was not filtered enough to repeat the information. The computer is not able to detect the identity of information, if, for example, if there is the same name and surname, the burial place does not match. For a computer, this is a different person. Here we can speak not of a human factor, but of its absence or insufficiency. A person would certainly have guessed that the information contained information about the same person. There are too many overlapping details.

For an objective assessment of my doubts, it is necessary to conduct a study of a large sample of hundreds and thousands of people. I can’t do that, and besides, I’m not an expert in digging in archives and the Internet. Here we need professional historians who know how to understand the archives and have access to large arrays of archival documents. I ask you to clarify whether my doubts have grounds. If the facts that I have come across are widespread, then it is necessary to find out, at least in the first approximation, the percentage of errors. The usual human factor could greatly exaggerate our losses in the war. To my letter I attach information about my relatives who died in the war (and are considered dead). Maybe this will help you get a more objective picture.

I congratulate you on the approaching Day of the 70th anniversary of Victory, I wish you creative success in the necessary work that you are doing. "

Thank you very much, dear Gennady Ivanovich and Askar Abdrakhmanovich, for your important and extremely interesting letters. I wish you health and happiness!

So what is it, the true price of our Victory? When will the speculation on the feat of our people be put to an end and "new research" and "independent researchers" will cease to overestimate the number of victims that our multinational people brought to the altar of Victory?

And as a postscript, material about the Immortal Regiment as an inappropriate and harmful reform of the established order of celebrating Victory Day:

Let the Immortal Regiment become an attribute

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

Every time the next anniversary of the Great Victory approaches, the myth of our unthinkable losses is activated.

Every time, knowledgeable and authoritative people with numbers in their hands convincingly prove that this myth is an ideological weapon in the information and psychological war against Russia, that it is a means of demoralizing our people. And for each new anniversary, a new generation grows up, which should hear a sober voice, to some extent neutralizing the efforts of manipulators.

WAR OF NUMBERS

Back in 2005, literally on the eve of the 60th anniversary of Victory, President of the Academy of Military Sciences, General of the Army Makhmut Gareev, who in 1988 headed the Defense Ministry's commission on assessing losses during the war, was invited to Vladimir Pozner's TV show "Vremena". Vladimir Pozner said: "This is an amazing thing - we still do not know exactly how many of our soldiers, soldiers and officers died in this war."

And this despite the fact that in 1966-1968, the calculation of casualties in the Great Patriotic War was carried out by a commission of the General Staff, headed by General of the Army Sergei Shtemenko. Then, in 1988-1993, a team of military historians was involved in the mixing and verification of the materials of all previous commissions.

The results of this fundamental study of the losses of personnel and military equipment of the Soviet Armed Forces in hostilities for the period from 1918 to 1989 were published in the book “The secrecy stamp has been removed. Losses of the Armed Forces in Wars, Military Operations and Military Conflicts ”.

This book says: “According to the results of calculations, during the years of the Great Patriotic War (including the campaign in the Far East against Japan in 1945) total irrecoverable demographic losses (killed, disappeared, were captured and did not return from it , died from wounds, diseases and as a result of accidents) of the Soviet Armed Forces together with the Border and Internal Troops amounted to 8 million 668 thousand 400 people. " The casualty ratio of Germany and its allies on the Eastern Front was 1: 1.3 in favor of our enemy.

In the same telecast, a well-known front-line writer entered the conversation: "Stalin did everything to lose the war ... The Germans lost a total of 12.5 million people, and we lost 32 million in one place, in one war."

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

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

They are trying to convince us that "we filled the Germans with the corpses of our own soldiers."

LOSSES, COMBAT, NON-RETURNABLE AND OFFICIAL

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

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

The number of irrecoverable losses also includes non-combat losses - those who died from illness in hospitals, who died as a result of emergencies, who were shot according to the sentences of military tribunals. These losses amounted to 555.5 thousand people.

The sum of all these losses during the war amounted to 11 444.1 thousand people. From this number, 939.7 thousand servicemen were excluded, registered at the beginning of the war as missing, but recruited into the army for the second time in the territory liberated from the occupation, as well as 1836 thousand former military personnel who returned from captivity after the end of the war, - a total of 2,775, 7 thousand people.

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

Of course, these are not final figures. The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation is creating an electronic database, it is constantly updated. In January 2010, Major General Alexander Kirilin, head of the RF Ministry of Defense Department for the perpetuation of the memory of those killed in the defense of the Fatherland, told the press that official data on the losses of our country in the Great Patriotic War would be made public by the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory. The general confirmed that at present the Ministry of Defense estimates the losses of servicemen of the Armed Forces in 1941-1945 at 8.86 million people. He said: "By the 65th anniversary of the Great Victory, we will finally come to the official figure that will be fixed in the government's regulatory document and communicated to the entire population of the country in order to stop speculation on the figures of losses."

The works of the outstanding Russian demographer Leonid Rybakovsky, in particular, one of his last publications - "Human losses of the USSR and Russia in the Great Patriotic War", contain information close to real information about the losses.

Objective studies are also appearing outside the borders of Russia. For example, the well-known demographer Sadretdin Maksudov, who works at Harvard University and studied the losses of the Red Army, estimated the irrecoverable losses at 7.8 million people, which is 870 thousand less than in the book "The seal of secrecy has been removed." He explains this discrepancy by the fact that the Russian authors did not exclude from the number of losses those servicemen who died a "natural" death (this is 250-300 thousand people). In addition, they overestimated the death toll of Soviet prisoners of war. Of these, according to Maksudov, it is necessary to subtract the "naturally" dead (about 100 thousand), as well as those who remained after the war in the West (200 thousand) or returned to their homeland, bypassing the official channels of repatriation (about 280 thousand people ). Maksudov published his results in Russian in the article "On the front-line losses of the Soviet Army during the Second World War."

PRICE OF EUROPE'S SECOND COMING TO RUSSIA

In 1998, a joint work of the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation “The Great Patriotic War. 1941 - 1945 "in 4 volumes. It says: "Irrecoverable human losses of the armed forces of Germany on the Eastern Front are equal to 7181.1 thousand troops, and together with the allies ... - 8649.3 thousand." If we count according to the same methodology - taking into account prisoners of war - then "the irrecoverable losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR ... exceed the enemy's losses by 1.3 times."

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

The main losses of the Red Army were in the first stage of the war: in 1941, that is, over 6 months of the war, 27.8% of the total number of deaths during the entire war accounted for. And for 5 months of 1945, which accounted for several large operations, - 7.5% of the total number of deaths.

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

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

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

It should also not be forgotten that, in addition to the Wehrmacht and the SS troops, 29 divisions and 16 brigades of Germany's allies - Finland, Hungary and Romania - immediately joined the war against the USSR. On June 22, their soldiers made up 20% of the invading army. Then they were joined by Italian and Slovak troops, and by the end of July 1941, the troops of the German satellites totaled about 30% of the invasion forces.

In fact, Europe's invasion of Russia (in the form of the USSR) took place, in many ways similar to the invasion of Napoleon. A direct analogy was drawn between these two invasions (Hitler even granted the "Legion of French Volunteers" the honorable right to start a battle on the Borodino field; however, with one major shelling, this legion immediately lost 75% of its personnel). Divisions of the Spaniards and Italians, divisions "Netherlands", "Landstorm of the Netherlands" and "Nordland", divisions "Langermack", "Wallonia" and "Charlemagne", division of Czech volunteers "Bohemia and Moravia", division of Albanians "Skanderberg" , as well as separate battalions of the Belgians, Dutch, Norwegians, Danes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Red Army, only recently reformed on a modern basis and just beginning to receive and master modern weapons, had a powerful adversary of a completely new type in front of it, which was not present either in the First World War, or in the Civil War, or even in the Finnish war. However, as events have shown, the Red Army had an exceptionally high ability to train. She showed a rare stamina in the most difficult conditions and quickly strengthened. The military strategy and tactics of the high command and officers were creative and had a high systemic quality. Therefore, at the final stage of the war, the losses of the German army were 1.4 times greater than those of the Soviet Armed Forces.

How the official data on the losses of the USSR changed

Recently, the State Duma announced new figures for the Soviet Union's casualties during the Great Patriotic War - almost 42 million people. 15 million people were added to the previous official data "additionally". The head of the Museum-Memorial of the Great Patriotic War of the Kazan Kremlin, our columnist Mikhail Cherepanov, in the author's column of Realnoe Vremya talks about the declassified losses of the USSR and Tatarstan.

Irrecoverable losses of the Soviet Union as a result of the factors of the Second World War - more than 19 million servicemen.

Despite many years of well-paid sabotage and all sorts of efforts of generals and politicians to hide the true cost of our Victory over fascism, on February 14, 2017, at the parliamentary hearings in the State Duma at the parliamentary hearings “Patriotic education of Russian citizens:“ Immortal regiment ”, the figures that are closest to the truth were finally declassified. :

“According to the declassified data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the losses of the Soviet Union in the Second World War amount to 41 million 979 thousand, and not 27 million, as previously thought. The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 - more than 52 million 812 thousand people. Of these, more than 19 million servicemen and about 23 million civilians are irretrievable losses as a result of the action of the factors of war ”.

According to the report, this information is confirmed by a large number of authentic documents, authoritative publications and testimonies (for details, see the Immortal Regiment website and other resources).

The history of the issue is as follows

In March 1946, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, I.V. Stalin announced: "As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irrevocably lost in the battles with the Germans, as well as due to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude, about seven million people."

In 1961 N.S. Khrushchev wrote in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden: "The German militarists unleashed a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of Soviet lives."

On May 8, 1990, at a meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR in honor of the 45th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War, the total number of casualties was announced: "Almost 27 million people."

In 1993, a team of military historians led by Colonel-General G.F. Krivosheeva published a statistical study “The secrecy label has been removed. Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts. " It indicates the total losses - 26.6 million people, including the first published combat losses: 8,668,400 soldiers and officers.

In 2001, a reprint of the book was published under the editorship of G.F. Krivosheeva “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the XX century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study. One of its tables stated that the irrecoverable losses of the Soviet Army and Navy alone during the Great Patriotic War were 11,285,057 people. (see page 252.) In 2010, in the next edition “The Great Patriotic War without the stamp of secrecy. The Book of Loss ”, again edited by G.F. Krivosheev, the data on the losses of the armies fighting in 1941-1945 were clarified. Demographic losses reduced to 8,744,500 troops (p. 373):

A natural question arises: where were the aforementioned "data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR" about the combat losses of our Army stored, if even the heads of the special commissions of the Ministry of Defense could not study them for more than 70 years? How true are they?

Everything is relative. It is worth remembering that it was in the book "Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century" that we were finally allowed, in 2001, to find out how many of our compatriots were mobilized into the ranks of the Red (Soviet) Army during the Second World War: 34,476,700 people (pp. . 596.).

If we take for granted the official figure of 8,744 thousand people, then the share of our military losses will be 25 percent. That is, according to the commission of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, only every fourth Soviet soldier and officer did not return from the front.

I think a resident of any settlement of the former USSR will not agree with this. In every village or aul there are plates with the names of the fallen compatriots. At best, only half of those who went to the front 70 years ago are on them.

Tatarstan statistics

Let's see what the statistics are in our Tatarstan, on the territory of which there were no battles.

In the book of Professor Z.I. Gilmanov "Working people of Tatarstan on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War", published in Kazan in 1981, it was argued that the republic's military enlistment offices sent 560 thousand citizens to the front and 87 thousand of them did not return.

In 2001, Professor A.A. Ivanov in his doctoral dissertation "Combat losses of the peoples of Tatarstan during the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945." announced that from 1939 to 1945 about 700 thousand citizens were drafted into the army from the territory of the Tatar Republic, and 350 thousand of them did not return.

As the head of the working group of the edition of the Book of Memory of the Republic of Tatarstan from 1990 to 2007, I can clarify: taking into account the natives called up from other regions of the country, the losses of our Tatarstan during the Second World War amounted to at least 390 thousand soldiers and officers.

And these are irrecoverable losses of the republic, on whose territory not a single bomb or shell of the enemy fell!

Are the losses of other regions of the former USSR, even the national average, less?

Time will show. And our task is to wrest from obscurity and enter into the database of losses of the Republic of Tatarstan presented in the Victory Park of Kazan, if possible, the names of all fellow countrymen.

And this should be done not only by individual enthusiasts on their own initiative, but also by professional search engines on behalf of the state itself.

It is physically impossible to do this only in excavations at the battlefield in all Memory Watches. This requires massive and constant work in archives published on the websites of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and other thematic Internet resources.

But that's a completely different story ...

Mikhail Cherepanov, illustrations provided by the author

reference

Mikhail Valerievich Cherepanov- Head of the Museum-Memorial of the Great Patriotic War of the Kazan Kremlin; Chairman of the Association "Club of Military Glory"; Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Military-Historical Sciences, Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Tatarstan.

Was born in 1960.
Graduated from Kazan State University. IN AND. Ulyanov-Lenin with a degree in Journalism.
Since 2007 he has been working at the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan.
One of the creators of the 28-volume book "Memory" of the Republic of Tatarstan about those who died during the Second World War, 19 volumes of the Book of Memory of the Victims of Political Repression of the Republic of Tatarstan, etc.
Creator of the Electronic Book of Memory of the Republic of Tatarstan (a list of natives and residents of Tatarstan who died during the Second World War).
Author of thematic lectures from the cycle "Tatarstan during the war", thematic excursions "The feat of fellow countrymen on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War."
Co-author of the concept of the virtual museum "Tatarstan to the Fatherland".
Member of 60 search expeditions for the burial of the remains of soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War (since 1980), member of the board of the Union of search units of Russia.
Author of more than 100 scientific and educational articles, books, participant of all-Russian, regional, international conferences. Columnist for Realnoe Vremya.

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

The issue of losses in World War II has been discussed throughout the world for several years. There are various assessments, including sensational ones. Quantitative indicators are influenced not only by various methods of calculation, but also by ideology, a subjective approach.

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

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

The second favorite adage of some Westerners and home-grown liberal democrats of the "Western wing" is that the Victory over fascism was "littered with the corpses of Soviet soldiers", "one rifle for four", "the command threw their soldiers on machine guns, retreating detachments were fired upon", " millions of prisoners ”, without the help of the allied troops, the victory of the Red Army over the enemy would have been impossible.

Unfortunately, after NS Khrushchev came to power, some of the Soviet commanders, in order to raise their role in the battle against the "brown plague" of the 20th century, described in their memoirs the fulfillment of the orders of the Headquarters of Commander-in-Chief IV Stalin, as a result of which the Soviet troops suffered unreasonably high losses.

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

As always, the truth is in the middle!

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

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

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

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

And, finally, a group of researchers led by G.F. Krivosheev estimates the total human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War, determined by the demographic balance method, at 26.6 million people. This includes all those who died as a result of military and other actions of the enemy, who died as a result of military and other actions of the enemy, who died as a result of an increased mortality rate during the war in the occupied territory and in the rear, as well as persons who emigrated from the USSR during the war years and did not return after its end.

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

- 6.3 million military personnel killed or died from wounds,

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

- 4.5 million- were captured and disappeared;

Total demographic losses - 26.6 million human.

German casualties:

- 4,046 million servicemen were killed, died of wounds, disappeared without a trace.

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

However, new data is emerging now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The heroic actions made it possible to gain time for the approach of Colonel NI Dementyev's 99th Rifle Division. Active resistance to the enemy continued.

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

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

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

However, this cannot be called the exact number of Yakutians who fought for their homeland. By the beginning of the war, several hundred people were doing compulsory military service, a certain number studied at military schools. Therefore, the number of Yakutians who fought can be considered from 62 to 65 thousand people.

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

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

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

Second - Evenk Ivan Nikolaevich Kulbertinov- 489 killed Nazis. Taught young soldiers of the Red Army to sniper. Originally from the village of Tyanya, Olekminsky district.

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

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

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

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

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

Historian Gharibyan counted the losses of Germany according to 10-day reports of OKW, and the following data were obtained:

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

Missing - 4 591 511 people.

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

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

Thus, the nine millionth Hungary lost 809,000 soldiers and officers, mostly young people aged 20 to 29, killed in the war against the Red Army alone. 80,000 civilians were killed in the fighting. Meanwhile, in the same Hungary in 1944, on the eve of the collapse of the fascist regime, 500,000 Hungarian Jews and Gypsies were exterminated, which the Western mass media prefer to “shyly” keep silent about.

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

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

The article is dedicated to the memory of my grandfather - Stroeva Gavril Egorovich, a resident of the Batamai village of the Ordzhonikidze region of the Yakut ASSR, the chairman of the Zarya collective farm, who died heroically in the Great Patriotic War in 1943, and all Yakutians who did not return from the war.

Yuri PRIPUZOV,

President of the Yakut Republican

bar association "Petersburg",

honored lawyer of the Republic of Sakha (Yakutia).

To date, it is not known exactly how many people died in World War II. Less than 10 years ago, statistics claimed that 50 million people died, data for 2016 says that the number of victims exceeded 70 million. Perhaps, after a while, this figure will be refuted by new calculations.

The number of deaths during the war

The first mention of the victims was in the March 1946 issue of the Pravda newspaper. At that time, the figure was officially announced at 7 million. To date, when almost all the archives have been studied, it can be argued that the losses of the Red Army and the civilian population of the Soviet Union totaled 27 million people. Other countries that are part of the anti-Hitler coalition also suffered significant losses, or rather:

France - 600,000 people;
China - 200,000 people;
India - 150,000 people;
United States of America - 419,000;
Luxembourg - 2,000 people;
Denmark - 3,200 people.

Budapest, Hungary. Monument on the banks of the Danube in memory of the Jews who were shot in these places in 1944-45.

At the same time, losses on the German side were noticeably less and amounted to 5.4 million soldiers and 1.4 million civilians. The countries that fought on the side of Germany suffered the following human losses:

Norway - 9,500 people;
Italy - 455,000 people;
Spain - 4,500 people;
Japan - 2,700,000 people;
Bulgaria - 25,000 people.

Least of all deaths in Switzerland, Finland, Mongolia and Ireland.

During what period did the biggest losses occur?

The most difficult time for the Red Army was 1941-1942, it was then that the losses amounted to 1/3 of those killed during the entire period of the war. The armed forces of fascist Germany suffered the greatest losses in the period from 1944 to 1946. In addition, at this time, 3,259 civilians in Germany were killed. Another 200,000 German soldiers did not return from captivity.
The United States lost the most people in 1945 in air attacks and evacuations. Other countries participating in hostilities experienced the most terrible times and colossal casualties in the final stages of World War II.