In our cycle on the losses of Russia and Germany in the Great Patriotic War, there are only 6 articles. The first four were devoted to the losses of Russia, and the last two (today's and the next) - to Germany.
In the previous parts of the review ("Aesop's language of losses: the pan-European empire VS Russia" and "The losses of Russia / USSR in the war against fascism: the language of numbers" the common enemy - Russia, which led to huge losses of both the servicemen of the Red Army and civilians of the USSR.
In the third part, Losses among the civilian population in 1941-1945: fakes and facts, documents and figures were considered about the huge and inexplicable by nothing other than the inhuman cruelty of the punitive Nazis, casualties among the civilian population of our country in that war.
In the fourth part Typhus in 1941-1944: Bacteriological Warfare, the version is investigated that the Nazis deliberately destroyed the civilians of Russia, infecting them with typhus. The fact is that already at the beginning of the war, the Wehrmacht had a vaccine against this infection. Whereas the USSR only by 1942 was able to invent such a domestic typhus vaccine and establish its mass production. In addition, in order to protect the army and the people from bacteriological aggression during the war years, the work of the country's epidemiological service was completely reorganized.
In this fifth and the next sixth parts, we will examine in detail the extent of Germany's losses. Since a lot of material was selected to describe this issue, then for its detailed presentation we will need two articles at once.
Thus, in our first article on the losses of Germany in 1941-1945. we will consider in detail the various versions about the number of both captured and missing Wehrmacht soldiers.
Disputes over missing Germans
To this day, disputes about the exact figures of the losses of the German army in the battle with Russia / USSR continue. We are talking about those figures that can be substantiated by statistical methods. Experts refer to the lack of true statistics on Germany's losses, which is motivated by various circumstances.
A relatively understandable situation with the number of prisoners of Hitler's army in the Great Patriotic War.
Based on domestic data, it is known that about 3,172,300 soldiers of the Third Reich were captured in the USSR. Moreover, 2,388,443 of them were held in the institutions of the NKVD.
But, for example, the opposition revisionist historian (who seriously believes that our Great Victory Day should be canceled and turned into only a modest commemoration) B. Sokolov estimates the number of captured Wehrmacht soldiers in the USSR as 2,730,000:
In total, 2.33 million former soldiers of the German army were in Soviet captivity.
German historians, on the other hand, believe that the Russians underestimate the number of the Third Reich military personnel placed in camps. They insist that there were not nearly 2.4 million (Russian archives) in our prisons, but about 3,100,000 (German lists including missing persons) fascists.
For example, the book "The War of Germany against the Soviet Union 1941-1945" edited by the German historian Reinhard Rürup (1991) emphasizes that
“During the war, about 3.15 million German soldiers were taken prisoner by the Soviet Union, most of them during the retreat of German troops in 1944–45. and after the German surrender.
Approximately one in three died in captivity."
Between the domestic and Western approaches to counting, there is a difference in the calculation of the Germans who fell into our camps during the war.
As it can be easily calculated (3.1 million people minus 2.4 million people), we are talking about approximately 700,000 differently recorded prisoners. This is the number of Wehrmacht fighters who are missing. (At the same time, the Germans put them in the category of those who died in the camps of the USSR. And Russian historians count them among those killed during the fighting).
Experts explain this dissimilarity of figures by the following circumstance. First of all, the results of the calculation of the dead German prisoners of war, registered in Russian and foreign archives, differ. So, according to the studies of domestic specialists, 356,700 fascists died in captivity at the Soviets. Whereas German historians increase this number of German prisoners of war at least 3 times. In other words, in Berlin, it is believed that 1,100,000 German servicemen have died in Soviet captivity.
Of these two points of view, the most reliable is the position of Russian scientists, who explain this difference of 700,000 as follows. From the standpoint of Russian historians and documentary filmmakers, these are exactly the Germans who really did not return from captivity to Germany and therefore are rightly considered missing there. But in fact, they did not die at all in the Soviet camps, but were killed even before that - earlier and on the battlefields.
Germans lie too
The overwhelming number of published works on calculating the combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops as a basic source rely on the Central Bureau (department) for recording the losses of personnel of the German armed forces, which was included in the General Staff of the Supreme High Command of the German army.
Of course, Western historiography gravitates towards double standards. Everything Soviet and Russian (including counting methods, statistics and even lists) is a priori called “unreliable”. Whereas everything German, including their statistics, is declared the ultimate truth.
Nevertheless, if you take a closer look at the German statistical that vaunted pedantry, then in fact it turns out that it was just there that she stumbled. The work of this German department of accounting for losses did not impress, first of all, the German experts and researchers themselves, precisely because of its dubious credibility.
Take, for example, a respected German expert like Rüdiger Overmans. Recall that this German military historian of the Bundeswehr specializes precisely in the period of the Second World War. And his book "The military losses of Germany in the Second World War" (1996, 1999, 2000, 2004) is one of the most complete works on the losses of the Wehrmacht during that period. Therefore, his opinion about the quality of German statistics of those years is quite competent.
So, R. Overmans in his article “Human Victims of World War II in Germany. Analysis of the results of the study with special attention to the issue of the losses of the Wehrmacht and among the exiled persons (1997) unequivocally summed up:
« channels of receipt of information in the Wehrmacht do not detect to the extent credibilitywhich is attributed to them by some authors”.
Moreover, this specialist clarifies that in the course of 1944 in German statistics, more and more such a note as
“No data” / no specific data”.
In addition, when clarifying the cases of missing Germans in the post-war period, it was discovered that in the period from the invasion of Normandy in the West to the collapse of Army Group Center in the East
« loss information became more and more incomplete ».
The unreliability of the channels for receiving information about the losses was only one of the problems of the German military extras. But experts consider this problem to be secondary too. Because the main problem of German military officials, as R. Overmans notes, is the content of the statistics:
“The other problem - meaningful quality of statistics ».
Most of all claims from German specialists are in the statistical category “missing”. The fact is that since 1943, it was this group of losses that played an increasingly significant role in the statistical array of all Hitler's soldiers who died. By January 31, 1945, 50% of all German losses were already listed as “missing”.
But the most important thing is that when these disappeared suddenly appeared in their units or (as stragglers) continued to fight in other formations and even when they were found in hospitals, no one lowered the number of “missing” in Germany. Here is what the eminent historian of the Bundeswehr writes:
In this category, German officials included everyone whose whereabouts were unknown.
Error correction (in relation to those cases when the disappeared again found themselves in their units, or when, lagging behind their units, the servicemen continued to fight as part of other formations, or when, being wounded, they ended up in hospitals, and their units did not it was known) not practiced.
And here is an intermediate conclusion made by the same military historian:
Thus, reports about the missing in fact turned out to be more really missing ».
Q. E. D.
It turns out that the point of view of Russian historians is fully justified and, moreover, it is fair.
Now attention. The final conclusion of this German expert on the Great Patriotic War is as follows:
“Therefore, taking into account all aspects neither RCW data nor publications based on them can be considered reliable ».
As for the position of domestic specialists regarding the fact that for some reason the German officials who fell in battle were included in the lists of “those killed in the camps of the USSR”, then their own luminary of German historical science asserts:
The official report of the department of losses in the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, relating to 1944, documented that lossesincurred during the Polish, French and Norwegian campaigns and which presented no technical difficulties in identifying, were almost twice as high as originally reported ».
Most experts are of the opinion of B. Müller-Hillebrand (Burkhart Müller-Hillebrand), who calculated the casualties of the Wehrmacht as 3.2 million people and believed that another 0.8 million Germans died as prisoners.
Recall that this researcher served at the top of the Bundeswehr army, and earlier in the Reichswehr and the Wehrmacht. He was in British and American captivity, after which he became a member of the section of the historical division of the United States Army, where he wrote several studies on the history of the Great Patriotic War. He ended his military career as a Major General and Deputy Head of the Strategic Planning Department at NATO Headquarters Europe (SHAPE).
So, this German researcher in his book “The Land Army of Germany. 1933-1945 this is how he estimated the share of missing German servicemen:
"Missing persons for the period up to June 1943 accounted for a total of 5 to 15% of the number of casualties."
By the way, he also repeatedly pointed out the lack of reliable statistical German data on real losses. So, in the same book the following was reported:
« On the loss of personnel in the army since mid-1944 no statistics available ».
Since December 1944 there is no reliable data on losses ».
Nevertheless, the organizational department of the OKH (Oberkommando des Heeres, the High Command of the Ground Forces), just four days before the Great Victory Day celebrated by us for almost 76 years (1945-01-05), prepared the last, as they would say today, release or formally - final certificate of the losses of the German armed forces. This document has been replicated. And many researchers like to refer to it.
So, according to this official German document, the losses of only ground forces (including the SS troops, but without the Air Force and Navy) amounted to 4,617,000 troops. (These data were summarized from 1939-01-09 to 1945-01-05).
Recall that the Germans themselves indicate that the centralized register of losses in Germany has practically ceased to be worked out since April (approximately from its middle) of the last year of the Great Patriotic War. Well, the information that was entered into statistics with the onset of 1945 is incomplete and does not correspond to reality (requires rechecking).
And, of course, one cannot ignore the words of the most important mouthpiece of the fascists. Hitler, in one of his final radio broadcasts, personally announced the losses, naming the total losses of the country's armed forces 12,500,000, and as irrecoverable - 6,700,000 Wehrmacht soldiers.
It is easy to see that Hitler's figures exceed the information published by Müller-Hillebrand, almost twice.
These figures were made public in 1945. In March. There were 2 months left before the Victory. It is hard to believe that in these final 60 days before the triumph of our army, the soldiers of Russia / USSR did not destroy a single fascist.
Based on the foregoing, an unambiguous conclusion follows that the data provided by the German department of losses during the Great Patriotic War cannot be taken as reliable in any way. Accordingly, any objective calculation or fair calculation of the true losses of the servicemen of the Third Reich cannot be based on these information of the Wehrmacht officials.
Alternative statistics
There is another alternative loss accounting system. It is based on the number of graves of German servicemen who died during the Great Patriotic War.
The Federal Republic of Germany has a law “On the preservation of burial sites”. So, in the appendix to this legislative act, specific numbers of the killed Nazis are indicated.
In particular, we are talking about the total number of Wehrmacht soldiers buried in registered graves, both on the territory of the USSR and on the land of Eastern European countries. This document indicates the total number of such burials - 3,226,000. Of these, 2,330,000 fascists were buried in the Soviet Union.
It would seem that this figure is quite reasonable to consider the basic one when calculating losses in manpower of the Third Reich. However, according to the assurances of experts, this source is not sufficiently realistic and complete.
First of all, this number includes only the graves of Germans according to the passport. But after all, servicemen from other countries with a different nationality also fought for Germany.
So, it is known that the citizens of Austria fought for Hitler. They killed 270,000 soldiers. And also of the Sudeten Germans and Alsatians who supported fascism, 230,000 were killed. In addition, 357,000 of the citizens of other countries who had joined the ranks under the Nazi flags and fought against the Soviet Union were left lying on the battlefields.
Thus, it should be borne in mind that, in percentage terms, much more foreigners fought for Hitler against us on the Eastern Front than pure-blooded Germans. Experts specifically calculated that the army fought with the USSR, which consisted of foreigners for more than 75-80%. In other words, by no means and far from only the Germans.
In other words, this pan-European horde that attacked Russia / USSR was nothing more than a hodgepodge of Europeans of different stripes and nationalities.
Scientists even managed to find out the number of these, as they are also called, aliens in the Wehrmacht army who fought against the USSR / Russia. Hitler had them on the Eastern Front 600,000-700,000.
But at the same time, it should be understood that these above calculations were carried out in the early nineties of the XX century.
I must say that over the past three decades, search engines, both in the Russian Federation and in the CIS countries, as well as in Eastern Europe, continued to open more and more burials of soldiers (of both opposing armies) during the Great Patriotic War. Moreover, the information that got into the press or open sources was, to put it mildly, not always accurate and one hundred percent reliable.
Here's an example. In 1992, the Russian Association of War Memorials was established. Its representatives, among other things, released information that over the past decade they transferred to the German side (that is, to the German Union for the Care of War Graves) information about the burials of 400,000 soldiers of the Third Reich in Russia.
However, none of the reports specifically indicated what kind of graves they were. Have they already been taken into account before? And are they already included in the total figure of 3,226,000? Unclear. Or maybe it was about completely new finds during this period? Unknown.
Alas, it is difficult to find summary statistics on the newly discovered burial places of German citizens killed in battles during the Great Patriotic War. Although experts agree that over the past decade, about 200,000-400,000 such graves could be found.
But besides this, one should be aware that the places of death of the Nazis on the territory of the USSR could well have disappeared from the face of the earth in those years of the war. All these Hitlerites were the same for our civilians at that time. And they had no other names, except as "Fritzes". It is not surprising that many of the burial places of these Fritzes remained unnamed at that time.
According to experts, on the territory of the Russian Federation there may be similar unnamed and even disappeared burials of up to 400,000-600,000 German servicemen.
And finally, the above-mentioned list or register of burials of Germans who attacked Russia and died during the battles with the Red Army did not include those graves that appeared immediately after the battles with Soviet troops outside, both Russia itself and Eastern Europe. We are talking about burials in Western Europe.
Let's take as a starting point - the period in the last three months of the Great Patriotic War. So, German military historians (for example, R. Overmans) indicate that during this particular spring period, preceding May 9, Soviet troops destroyed at least 700,000 fascists, and as the maximum limit, scientists call the figure of one million liquidated Wehrmacht soldiers then.
In general, about 1,200,000-1,500,000 German servicemen died in battles with the Red Army on the territory of Germany and other Western European countries.
But that's not all.
It should be understood that, despite the fact that the war was going on, people continued to die by their own death. Including the soldiers of the Third Reich. There were about 100,000-200,000 such natural deaths in Hitler's army. All of them were also included in the number of burials of Wehrmacht servicemen registered during the same period when the fighting with the Red Army was going on.
Of the Russian specialists, the works of Major General Vladimir Vasilyevich Gurkin, former head of the history and archives department of the General Staff (1978-1989) and consultant of the Military Memorial Center of the Russian Armed Forces, are of interest.
In his works, he studied the losses of the Wehrmacht through the balance of the German armed forces during the war years. The calculated data of this specialist is shown in table 4. Note the second column. Especially those figures that indicate the number of those mobilized into the German army for the entire period of the war with Russia / USSR. And also on the number of German prisoners of war in the Soviet Union.
In the book by B. Müller-Hillebrand "The Land Army of Germany 1933-1945." the total number of those mobilized during the war years is indicated - 17,900,000.
However, other researchers hypothesize that there were much more conscripts in Hitler's army - about 19 million people.
Captive Fritz
The number of prisoners of war (according to V. Gurkin) included both the Nazis captured by the Red Army (3,178,000) and those captured by the Allied forces (4,209,000) throughout the war until May 9, 1945.
But it is also possible that the real number of prisoners of war is even overestimated, since their list also includes those prisoners who were not soldiers of the Wehrmacht.
Paul Karel and Gunther Beddecker's book German POWs of World War II 1939-1945 (2004) states that
"In June 1945, the Allied Joint Command learned that there were 7,614,794 prisoners of war and unarmed military personnel in the camps, of whom 4,209,000 were already in captivity at the time of the surrender."
At the same time, among the above-mentioned German prisoners of war who were already in the camps (4,209,000), in addition to the Wehrmacht servicemen, there were also many other persons. For example, in the French camp Vitry-le-François, among the prisoners
"The youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70".
Various researchers also mention the prisoners of the Volksturm. There are works describing the practice of the Americans, who organized special "children's" camps, where they placed the captured youths from the "Hitler Youth" and "Werewolf", who were 12-13 years old. Some scholars also write that among the prisoners in the camps of the allies, even disabled and incapacitated ones were kept.
In their memoirs "My way to Ryazan captivity" (1992) Heinrich Schippmann and Manfred Koch recalled the captivity:
“It should be borne in mind that at first they were taken prisoner, although mainly, but not exclusively, not only the soldiers of the Wehrmacht or servicemen of the SS units, but also the service personnel of the Air Force, members of the Volkssturm or paramilitary unions (organization“Todt”,“Service labor of the Reich , etc.).
Among them were not only men, but also women - and not only Germans, but also the so-called "Volksdeutsche" and "aliens" - Croats, Serbs, Cossacks, North and West Europeans, who in some way fought on the side of the German Wehrmacht or were reckoned with him.
In addition, during the occupation of Germany in 1945, anyone who wore a uniform was arrested, even if it was the head of the railway station."
That is, among the 4,200,000 German prisoners captured by Allied troops in the period preceding Victory Day (May 9, 1945), about a quarter (20-25%) were not Wehrmacht soldiers.
This suggests that it was the Wehrmacht servicemen in the Allied camps for German prisoners of war that there were from 3,100,000 to 3,300,000 people.
So, the total number of the Wehrmacht military captured at the time of Germany's surrender was, according to expert estimates, from 6,300,000 to 6,500,000 people.
Recall that the "Act of unconditional surrender of the German armed forces" entered into force on May 9 at 01:01 Moscow time. It was on this date that the number of prisoners of war was calculated.
