Before embarking on explanations, statistics, and so on, let's immediately clarify what is meant. This article examines the losses incurred by the Red Army, the Wehrmacht and the troops of the satellites of the Third Reich, as well as the civilian population of the USSR and Germany, only in the period from 1941-22-06 until the end of hostilities in Europe (unfortunately, in the case of Germany, this is practically impracticable). The Soviet-Finnish war and the "liberation" campaign of the Red Army were deliberately excluded. The issue of losses of the USSR and Germany was repeatedly raised in the press, there are endless disputes on the Internet and on television, but researchers of this issue cannot come to a common denominator, because, as a rule, all arguments come down to emotional and politicized statements. This proves once again how painful this issue is in Russian history. The purpose of the article is not to "clarify" the final truth in this matter, but to try to summarize the various data contained in disparate sources. We will leave the right to make a conclusion to the reader.
With all the variety of literature and online resources about the Great Patriotic War, ideas about it in many ways suffer from a certain superficiality. The main reason for this is the ideology of this or that study or work, and it does not matter what kind of ideology it is - communist or anti-communist. The interpretation of such a grandiose event in the light of any ideology is deliberately false.
It is especially bitter to read recently that the war of 1941–45. was just a clash of two totalitarian regimes, where one, they say, was quite consistent with the other. We will try to look at this war from the point of view of the most justified - geopolitical.
Germany of the 30s, with all its Nazi "features", directly and unswervingly continued that powerful striving for supremacy in Europe, which for centuries determined the path of the German nation. Even a purely liberal German sociologist Max Weber wrote during World War I: “… we, 70 million Germans … must be an empire. We must do this even if we are afraid to fail. " The roots of this aspiration of the Germans go back centuries, as a rule, the Nazis' appeal to medieval and even pagan Germany is interpreted as a purely ideological event, as the construction of a nation-mobilizing myth.
From my point of view, everything is more complicated: it was the Germanic tribes who created the empire of Charlemagne, and later the Holy Roman Empire of the German nation was formed on its foundation. And it was the “empire of the German nation” that created what is called “European civilization” and began the policy of conquest of Europeans with the sacramental “Drang nach osten” - “onslaught to the east”, because half of the “primordially” German lands, up to 8-10 centuries belonged to Slavic tribes. Therefore, the assignment of the name "Plan Barbarossa" to the plan of war against the "barbarous" USSR is not an accidental coincidence. This ideology of the "primacy" of Germany as the fundamental force of the "European" civilization was the original cause of the two world wars. Moreover, at the beginning of World War II, Germany was able to really (albeit for a short time) realize its aspiration.
When invading the borders of this or that European country, the German troops met with amazing resistance in their weakness and indecision. The short-term clashes between the armies of the European countries with the invading German troops, with the exception of Poland, were more like the observance of a certain "custom" of war than actual resistance.
Extremely much has been written about the inflated European "Resistance Movement", allegedly inflicting gigantic losses on Germany and testifying that Europe flatly rejected its unification under German domination. But, with the exception of Yugoslavia, Albania, Poland and Greece, the scale of the Resistance is the same ideological myth. Undoubtedly, the regime established by Germany in the occupied countries did not suit the general population. In Germany itself, there was also resistance to the regime, but in neither case it was the resistance of the country and the nation as a whole. For example, the Resistance movement in France killed 20 thousand people in 5 years; over the same 5 years, about 50 thousand Frenchmen died, who fought on the side of the Germans, that is, 2.5 times more!
In Soviet times, the exaggeration of the Resistance was introduced into the minds as a useful ideological myth, they say, our fight against Germany was supported by the whole of Europe. In reality, as already mentioned, only 4 countries showed serious resistance to the occupiers, which is explained by their “patriarchal”: they were alien not so much the “German” order imposed by the Reich as the European one, for these countries in their way of life and consciousness in many ways did not belonged to European civilization (although geographically included in Europe).
Thus, by 1941, almost all of continental Europe, one way or another, but without any particular upheavals, became part of the new empire with Germany at its head. Of the two dozen European countries that existed, almost half - Spain, Italy, Denmark, Norway, Hungary, Romania, Slovakia, Finland, Croatia - together with Germany entered the war against the USSR, sending their armed forces to the Eastern Front (Denmark and Spain without a formal announcement war). The rest of the European countries did not take part in hostilities against the USSR, but one way or another "worked" for Germany, or, rather, for the newly formed European Empire. The misconception about events in Europe made us completely forget about many real events of that time. So, for example, the Anglo-American troops under the command of Eisenhower in November 1942 in North Africa fought at first not with the Germans, but with the two hundred thousandth French army, despite a quick "victory" (Jean Darlan, in view of the obvious superiority of the allied forces, ordered the French troops to surrender), 584 Americans, 597 British and 1,600 Frenchmen were killed in the fighting. Of course, these are paltry losses on the scale of the entire Second World War, but they show that the situation was somewhat more complicated than is usually thought.
In the battles on the Eastern Front, the Red Army captured half a million prisoners who were citizens of countries that did not seem to be at war with the USSR! One might argue that these are the "victims" of German violence, which drove them into the Russian expanses. But the Germans were no more stupid than you and me and would hardly have admitted an unreliable contingent to the front. And while another great and multinational army was winning victories in Russia, Europe was, by and large, on its side. Franz Halder in his diary on June 30, 1941, wrote down the words of Hitler: "European unity as a result of a joint war against Russia." And Hitler assessed the situation quite correctly. In fact, the geopolitical goals of the war against the USSR were carried out not only by the Germans, but by 300 million Europeans, united on various grounds - from forced submission to the desired cooperation - but, one way or another, acting jointly. Only thanks to the reliance on continental Europe, the Germans were able to mobilize 25% of the total population into the army (for reference: the USSR mobilized 17% of its citizens). In short, tens of millions of skilled workers throughout Europe provided the strength and technical equipment of the army that invaded the USSR.
Why did I need such a long introduction? The answer is simple. Finally, we must realize that the USSR fought not only with the German Third Reich, but with almost all of Europe. Unfortunately, the eternal "Russophobia" of Europe was superimposed on the fear of the "terrible beast" - Bolshevism. Many volunteers from European countries who fought in Russia fought precisely against the communist ideology alien to them. No less of them were conscious haters of the "inferior" Slavs, infected with the plague of racial superiority. The modern German historian R. Rurup writes:
"In many documents of the Third Reich, the image of the enemy - the Russian, is imprinted, deeply rooted in German history and society. Such views were characteristic even of those officers and soldiers who were not convinced or enthusiastic Nazis. They (these soldiers and officers) also shared the idea of" the eternal struggle "of the Germans … about the protection of European culture from the" Asian hordes ", about the cultural vocation and the right of domination of the Germans in the East. The image of an enemy of this type was widespread in Germany, it belonged to" spiritual values "".
And this geopolitical consciousness was characteristic not only of the Germans as such. After June 22, 1941, volunteer legions appeared by leaps and bounds, which later turned into SS divisions Nordland (Scandinavian), Langemark (Belgian-Flemish), Charlemagne (French). Guess where they defended "European civilization"? True, quite far from Western Europe, in Belarus, in the Ukraine, in Russia. German professor K. Pfeffer wrote in 1953: "Most of the volunteers from Western Europe went to the Eastern Front because they saw this as a COMMON task for the entire West …" Germany, and this clash was not of "two totalitarianisms", but of "civilized and progressive" Europe with a "barbaric state of subhumans" that frightened Europeans from the East for so long.
1. Losses of the USSR
According to the official data of the 1939 census, 170 million people lived in the USSR - significantly more than in any other single European country. The entire population of Europe (excluding the USSR) was 400 million people. By the beginning of the Second World War, the population of the Soviet Union differed from the population of future enemies and allies by a high mortality rate and low life expectancy. Nevertheless, the high birth rate ensured a significant increase in the population (2% in 1938–39). Also, the difference from Europe was in the youth of the population of the USSR: the share of children under 15 years old was 35%. It was this feature that made it possible to restore the pre-war population relatively quickly (within 10 years). The share of the urban population was only 32% (for comparison: in Great Britain - more than 80%, in France - 50%, in Germany - 70%, in the USA - 60%, and only in Japan it had the same value as in THE USSR).
In 1939, the population of the USSR increased markedly after the entry into the country of new regions (Western Ukraine and Belarus, the Baltic States, Bukovina and Bessarabia), whose population ranged from 20 [1] to 22, 5 [2] million people. The total population of the USSR, according to the Central Statistical Bureau on January 1, 1941, was determined at 198 588 thousand people (including the RSFSR - 111 745 thousand people). According to modern estimates, it was still less, and on June 1, 41 was 196.7 million people.
The population of some countries in 1938-40
USSR - 170.6 (196.7) million people;
Germany - 77.4 million people;
France - 40, 1 million people;
Great Britain - 51, 1 million people;
Italy - 42.4 million people;
Finland - 3.8 million people;
USA - 132, 1 million people;
Japan - 71.9 million.
By 1940, the population of the Reich increased to 90 million people, and including the satellites and conquered countries - 297 million people. By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, where 74.5 million people lived before the Second World War. This once again emphasizes that, despite Hitler's assurances, the USSR had no advantage in human resources over the Third Reich.
For the entire time of the Great Patriotic War in our country, 34.5 million people wore military uniforms. This amounted to about 70% of the total number of men aged 15–49 years in 1941. The number of women in the Red Army was about 500 thousand. The percentage of conscripts was higher only in Germany, but as we said earlier, the Germans covered the labor shortage at the expense of the workers of Europe and prisoners of war. In the USSR, such a deficit was covered by the increased working hours and the widespread use of the labor of women, children and the elderly.
For a long time, the USSR did not talk about direct irrecoverable losses of the Red Army. In a private conversation, Marshal Konev in 1962 named the figure of 10 million people [3], the famous defector - Colonel Kalinov, who fled to the West in 1949 - 13, 6 million people [4]. The figure of 10 million people was published in the French version of the book "Wars and Population" by B. Ts. Urlanis, a famous Soviet demographer. The authors of the well-known monograph "The secrecy stamp has been removed" (under the editorship of G. Krivosheev) in 1993 and 2001 published the figure of 8, 7 million people, at the moment it is indicated in most of the reference literature. But the authors themselves state that it does not include: 500 thousand persons liable for military service, called up for mobilization and captured by the enemy, but not included in the lists of units and formations. Also, the almost completely dead militias of Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev and other large cities were not taken into account. At present, the most complete lists of irrecoverable losses of Soviet soldiers are 13, 7 million people, but about 12-15% of the records are repeated. According to the article "Dead Souls of the Great Patriotic War" ("NG", 06.22.99), the historical and archival search center "Destiny" of the Association "War Memorials" established that due to double and even triple counting, the number of dead soldiers of the 43rd and 2 -th Shock armies in the battles investigated by the center was overestimated by 10-12%. Since these figures refer to the period when the registration of losses in the Red Army was not thorough enough, it can be assumed that in the war as a whole, due to double counting, the number of Red Army soldiers killed was overestimated by about 5-7%, that is, by 0.2– 0.4 million people
On the question of prisoners. American researcher A. Dallin, according to German archival data, estimates their number at 5.7 million. Of these, 3.8 million perished in captivity, that is, 63% [5]. Domestic historians estimate the number of captured Red Army soldiers at 4, 6 million people, of whom 2, 9 million died. [6] Unlike German sources, this does not include civilians (for example, railway workers), as well as seriously wounded who remained on the battlefield occupied by the enemy, and subsequently died of wounds or were shot (about 470-500 thousand [7]). The situation of prisoners of war is especially desperate was in the first year of the war, when more than half of their total number (2, 8 million people) was captured, and their labor had not yet begun to be used in the interests of the Reich. Open-air camps, hunger and cold, disease and lack of medicine, cruel treatment, mass executions of the sick and those who are unable to work, and just all those who are objectionable, primarily the commissars and Jews. Unable to cope with the flow of prisoners and guided by political and propaganda motives, the invaders in 1941 dismissed over 300 thousand prisoners of war, mainly natives of western Ukraine and Belarus, to their homes. Later this practice was discontinued.
Also, do not forget that approximately 1 million prisoners of war were transferred from captivity to the auxiliary units of the Wehrmacht [8]. In many cases, this was the only chance for the prisoners to survive. Again, most of these people, according to German data, at the first opportunity tried to defect from the units and formations of the Wehrmacht [9]. In the local auxiliary forces of the German army, the following stood out:
1) volunteers (hivi)
2) order service (odi)
3) front-line auxiliary parts (noise)
4) police and defense teams (gem).
At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht operated: up to 400 thousand hivis, from 60 to 70 thousand odes, and 80 thousand in the eastern battalions.
Some of the prisoners of war and the population of the occupied territories made a conscious choice in favor of cooperation with the Germans. So, in the SS division "Galicia" for 13,000 "places" there were 82,000 volunteers. More than 100 thousand Latvians, 36 thousand Lithuanians and 10 thousand Estonians served in the German army, mainly in the SS troops.
In addition, several million people from the occupied territories were driven off to forced labor in the Reich. ChGK (Emergency State Commission) immediately after the war estimated their number at 4, 259 million people. Later studies give a figure of 5.45 million people, of which 850-1000 thousand died.
Estimates of the direct physical extermination of civilians, according to the ChGK from 1946
RSFSR - 706 thousand people
Ukrainian SSR - 3256, 2 thousand people
BSSR - 1547 thousand people.
Lit. SSR - 437.5 thousand people
Lat. SSR - 313, 8 thousand people.
Est. SSR - 61, 3 thousand people.
Mold. SSR - 61 thousand people
Karelo-Fin. SSR - 8 thousand people (ten)
Such high figures for Lithuania and Latvia are explained by the fact that there were death camps and concentration camps for prisoners of war. The losses of the population in the frontal zone during the hostilities were also huge. However, it is virtually impossible to define them. The minimum allowable value is the number of deaths in besieged Leningrad, i.e. 800 thousand people. In 1942, the infant mortality rate in Leningrad reached 74, 8%, that is, out of 100 newborns, about 75 babies died!
Another important question. How many former Soviet citizens after the end of the Great Patriotic War chose not to return to the USSR? According to Soviet archival data, the number of the "second emigration" was 620 thousand people. 170,000 - Germans, Bessarabians and Bukovinians, 150,000 - Ukrainians, 109,000 - Latvians, 230,000 - Estonians and Lithuanians, and only 32,000 Russians [11]. Today this estimate seems to be clearly underestimated. According to modern data, emigration from the USSR amounted to 1.3 million people. Which gives us a difference of almost 700 thousand, previously referred to the irrecoverable loss of the population [12].
So, what are the losses of the Red Army, the civilian population of the USSR and the general demographic losses in the Great Patriotic War. For twenty years, the main estimate was the "far-fetched" by N. Khrushchev figure of 20 million people. In 1990, as a result of the work of a special commission of the General Staff and the State Statistics Committee of the USSR, a more reasonable estimate of 26.6 million people appears. At the moment, it is official. Noteworthy is the fact that back in 1948 the American sociologist Timashev gave an estimate of the losses of the USSR in the war, which practically coincided with the estimate of the General Staff commission. Also, with the data of the Krivosheev Commission, the assessment of Maksudov, made by him in 1977, coincides. According to the commission of GF Krivosheev [13].
So let's summarize:
Post-war estimate of the losses of the Red Army: 7 million people.
Timashev: Red Army - 12, 2 million people, civilian population 14, 2 million people, direct human losses 26, 4 million people, total demographic 37, 3 million [14]
Arntz and Khrushchev: direct human: 20 million people. [15]
Biraben and Solzhenitsyn: Red Army 20 million people, civilians 22, 6 million people, direct human 42, 6 million, total demographic 62, 9 million people [16]
Maksudov: Red Army - 11.8 million people, civilians 12.7 million people, direct human losses 24.5 million people. It should be noted that S. Maksudov (A. P. Babenyshev, Harvard University of the USA) determined the purely combat losses of the spacecraft at 8, 8 million people [17]
Rybakovsky: direct human 30 million people. [18]
Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov (General Staff, Krivosheev Commission): direct combat losses of the Red Army 8, 7 million (11, 994 including prisoners of war) people. The civilian population (including prisoners of war) 17, 9 million people. Direct human losses 26.6 million people. [19]
B. Sokolov: losses of the Red Army - 26 million people [20]
M. Harrison: total losses of the USSR - 23, 9 - 25, 8 million people.
What do we have in the "dry" residue? We will be guided by simple logic.
The estimate of the losses of the Red Army given in 1947 (7 million) does not inspire confidence, since not all calculations, even with the imperfection of the Soviet system, were completed.
Khrushchev's assessment is also not confirmed. On the other hand, Solzhenitsyn's $ 20 million is just as unreasonable.a person lost only to the army or even 44 million (without denying some talent of A. Solzhenitsyn as a writer, all the facts and figures in his works are not confirmed by a single document and it is impossible to understand where he got what from).
Boris Sokolov is trying to explain to us that the losses of the armed forces of the USSR alone amounted to 26 million people. He is guided in this by an indirect method of calculation. The losses of the officers of the Red Army are fairly well known, according to Sokolov it is 784 thousand people (1941–44) Mr. Sokolov, referring to the average losses of the Wehrmacht officers on the Eastern Front of 62,500 people (1941–44), and the data of Müller-Gillebrant, displays the ratio of losses of the officer corps to the rank and file of the Wehrmacht, as 1:25, that is, 4%. And, without hesitation, extrapolates this methodology to the Red Army, receiving its 26 million irrecoverable losses. However, upon closer examination, this approach turns out to be initially false. Firstly, 4% of the losses of officers is not an upper limit, for example, in the Polish campaign, the Wehrmacht lost 12% of officers to the total losses of the Armed Forces. Secondly, it would be useful for Mr. Sokolov to know that with the nominal strength of the German infantry regiment of 3,049 officers, it had 75 people, that is, 2.5%. And in the Soviet infantry regiment, with the number of 1582 people, there are 159 officers, i.e. 10%. Thirdly, appealing to the Wehrmacht, Sokolov forgets that the more combat experience in the troops, the less losses among officers. In the Polish campaign, the loss of German officers was 12%, in the French - 7%, and on the Eastern Front already 4%.
The same can be applied to the Red Army: if at the end of the war the losses of officers (not according to Sokolov, but according to statistics) were 8-9%, then at the beginning of the Second World War they could have amounted to 24%. It turns out, like a schizophrenic, everything is logical and correct, only the initial premise is incorrect. Why did we dwell on Sokolov's theory in such detail? Because Mr. Sokolov quite often sets out his figures in the media.
Taking into account the above, discarding the deliberately underestimated and overestimated estimates of losses, we get: the Krivosheev Commission - 8, 7 million people (with prisoners of war 11, 994 million in 2001), Maksudov - the losses are even slightly lower than the official ones - 11, 8 million. people (1977 −93), Timashev - 12, 2 million people. (1948). This can also include the opinion of M. Harrison, with the level of total losses indicated by him, the losses of the army should fit into this interval. These data were obtained by various calculation methods, since both Timashev and Maksudov, respectively, did not have access to the archives of the USSR and Russian Ministry of Defense. It seems that the losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War are very close to such a "heap" group of results. Let's not forget that these figures include 2, 6–3, 2 million killed Soviet prisoners of war.
In conclusion, one should probably agree with Maksudov's opinion that the emigration outflow, which amounted to 1.3 million people, should be excluded from the number of losses, which was not taken into account in the study of the General Staff. By this amount, the amount of losses of the USSR in the Second World War should be reduced. In percentage terms, the structure of the losses of the USSR looks like this:
41% - losses of the Armed Forces (including prisoners of war)
35% - losses of the Armed Forces (without prisoners of war, that is, direct combat)
39% - losses of the population of the occupied territories and the front line (45% with prisoners of war)
8% - home front population
6% - GULAG
6% - emigration outflow.
2. 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 source statistical materials on German losses.
The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured by Soviet troops, of which 2,388,443 Germans were in the NKVD camps [21]. According to estimates of German historians, in the Soviet prisoner of war camps only German servicemen were about 3.1 million [22]. The discrepancy, as you can see, is approximately 0.7 million. This discrepancy is explained by differences in the assessment of the number of those killed in captivity by the Germans: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans were killed in Soviet captivity, and according to the estimates of German researchers, approximately 1, 1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of the Germans who died in captivity is more reliable, and the missing 0.7 million missing and unreturned Germans actually died not in captivity, but on the battlefield.
The vast majority of publications devoted to the calculations of the combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops are based on the data of the central bureau (department) for recording the losses of personnel of the armed forces, which is part of the German General Staff of the Supreme High Command. Moreover, denying the reliability of Soviet statistics, the German data are regarded as absolutely reliable. But upon closer examination, it turned out that the opinion about the high reliability of the information of this department was greatly exaggerated. Thus, the German historian R. Overmans in his article "Human victims of World War II in Germany" came to the conclusion that "… the channels of information flow in the Wehrmacht do not reveal the degree of reliability that some authors attribute to them." As an example, he reports that “… the official report of the department of losses in the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, dating back to 1944, documented that the losses that were incurred during the Polish, French and Norwegian campaigns and the identification of which did not present any technical difficulties, were almost twice as high as originally reported. " According to the data of Müller-Hillebrand, which is believed by many researchers, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 3.2 million people. Another 0.8 million died in captivity [23]. However, according to a reference from the OKH organizational department of May 1, 1945, only the ground forces, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and the Navy), lost 4 million 617.0 thousand troops during the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945. people This is the most recent report on the losses of the German Armed Forces [24]. In addition, since mid-April 1945, there has been no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. The fact remains that in one of the last radio broadcasts with his participation, Hitler announced a figure of 12.5 million total losses of the German Armed Forces, of which 6, 7 million are irrevocable, which is about two times higher than the data of Müller-Hillebrand. It was March 1945. I don’t think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.
In general, the information of the department of losses of the Wehrmacht cannot serve as initial data for calculating the losses of the German Armed Forces in the Great Patriotic War.
There is another statistics of losses - statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the appendix to the Federal Republic of Germany's law "On the Preservation of Burial Places," the total number of German soldiers in the recorded burials in the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is 3,226,000. (on 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 the Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (of whom 270 thousand people 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%, that is, 0, 6-0, 7 million people.
Secondly, this figure refers to the early 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, created in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence, it had transferred information about the burials of 400,000 Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Union for the Care of War Graves. However, it is unclear whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they were already included in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand. Unfortunately, it was not possible to find generalized statistics of the newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers. It can be tentatively assumed that the number of newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers over the past 10 years is in the range of 0, 2–0, 4 million people.
Thirdly, many of the graves of dead Wehrmacht soldiers on Soviet soil disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately in such disappeared and nameless graves 0, 4–0, 6 million soldiers of the Wehrmacht could be buried.
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, on German soil and in Western European countries in the battles with the Red Army, about 1, 2-1, 5 million Wehrmacht soldiers were killed.
Finally, fifthly, the number of those buried also included the Wehrmacht soldiers who died a "natural" death (0, 1–0, 2 million people).
The articles of Major General V. Gurkin are devoted to the assessment of Wehrmacht losses using the balance of the German armed forces during the war years. Its calculated figures are given in the second column of the table. 4. Two figures stand out here, characterizing the number of soldiers mobilized into the Wehrmacht during the war, and the number of prisoners of war of the Wehrmacht soldiers. The number of those mobilized during the war years (17, 9 million people) is taken from the book by B. Müller-Hillebrand "The Land Army of Germany 1933-1945." At the same time, V. P. Bokhar believes that more were drafted into the Wehrmacht - 19 million people.
The number of prisoners of war in the Wehrmacht was determined by V. Gurkin by summing up the prisoners of war taken by the Red Army (3, 178 million people) and allied forces (4, 209 million people) before May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is overestimated: it also included prisoners of war who were not soldiers of the Wehrmacht. In the book by Paul Karel and Ponter Beddecker, German POWs of World War II, it is reported: "… In June 1945, the Allied Command learned that there were capitulations were already in captivity. "Among the specified 4, 2 million German prisoners of war, besides the Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many others. For example, in the French camp Vitril-François among the prisoners" the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70 ". The authors write about the prisoners of the Volksturm, about the organization by the Americans of special "children's" camps, where captured twelve-thirteen-year-old boys from the "Hitler Youth" and "Werewolf." Map "No. 1, 1992) Heinrich Schippmann noted:
"It should be borne in mind that at first they were taken prisoner, although mainly, but not exclusively, not only soldiers of the Wehrmacht or servicemen of SS detachments, but also service personnel of the Air Force, members of 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 any way fought on the side of the German Wehrmacht or were numbered with it. 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."
In general, among the 4.2 million prisoners of war taken by the allies before May 9, 1945, approximately 20-25% were not Wehrmacht soldiers. This means that the Allies had 3, 1–3, 3 million Wehrmacht soldiers in captivity.
The total number of Wehrmacht servicemen who were captured before surrender was 6, 3–6, 5 million people.
In general, the demographic combat losses of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops on the Soviet-German front are 5, 2-6, 3 million people, of which 0, 36 million died in captivity, and irrecoverable losses (including prisoners) 8, 2 –9.1 million peopleIt should also be noted that domestic historiography until recent years did not mention some data on the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war at the end of hostilities in Europe, apparently for ideological reasons, because it is much more pleasant to believe that Europe "fought" against fascism than to realize that that a very large number of Europeans deliberately fought in the Wehrmacht. So, according to a note from General Antonov, on May 25, 1945. The Red Army captured 5 million 20 thousand only Wehrmacht soldiers, of which 600 thousand people (Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, etc.) were released until August, and these prisoners of war were sent to the camps. The NKVD did not go. Thus, the irrecoverable losses of the Wehrmacht in battles with the Red Army may be even higher (about 0.6 - 0.8 million people).
There is another way to "calculate" the losses of Germany and the Third Reich in the war against the USSR. Quite correct by the way. Let us try to "substitute" the figures relating to Germany into the methodology for calculating the total demographic losses of the USSR. Moreover, we will use ONLY the official data of the German side. So, according to the data of Müller-Hillebrandt (p. 700 of his work, so beloved by supporters of the theory of "filling up with corpses"), the population of Germany in 1939 was 80.6 million people. At the same time, you and I, the reader, should take into account that this includes 6, 76 million Austrians, and the population of the Sudetenland - another 3, 64 million people. That is, the population of Germany proper within the borders of 1933 for 1939 was (80, 6 - 6, 76 - 3, 64) 70, 2 million people. We have dealt with these simple mathematical operations. Further: the natural mortality rate in the USSR was 1.5% per year, but in Western Europe the mortality rate was much lower and amounted to 0.6 - 0.8% per year, Germany was no exception. However, the birth rate in the USSR exceeded the European one in about the same proportion, due to which the USSR had a consistently high population growth in all the pre-war years, starting from 1934.
We know about the results of the post-war population census in the USSR, but few people know that a similar population census was carried out by the allied occupation authorities on October 29, 1946 in Germany. The census gave the following results:
Soviet occupation zone (excluding east Berlin): men - 7, 419 million, women - 9, 914 million, total: 17, 333 million people.
All western zones of occupation (excluding western Berlin): men - 20, 614 million, women - 24, 804 million, total: 45, 418 million people.
Berlin (all sectors of the occupation), men - 1.29 million, women - 1.89 million, total: 3.18 million.
The total population of Germany is 65? 931? 000 people. A purely arithmetic action of 70, 2 million - 66 million, it seems, gives a decrease of only 4, 2 million. However, everything is not so simple.
At the time of the population census in the USSR, the number of children born since the beginning of 1941 was about 11 million, the birth rate in the USSR during the war years fell sharply and amounted to only 1.37% per year of the pre-war population. The birth rate in Germany and in peacetime did not exceed 2% per year of the population. Suppose it fell only 2 times, and not 3 times, as in the USSR. That is, the natural population growth during the war years and the first post-war year was about 5% of the pre-war number, and in numbers amounted to 3, 5-3, 8 million children. This figure must be added to the final figure for the decline in the population of Germany. Now the arithmetic is different: the total population decline is 4, 2 million + 3.5 million = 7, 7 million people. But this is not the final figure either; for completeness of calculations, we need to subtract from the figure of population decline the figure of natural mortality during the war years and 1946, which is 2.8 million people (take the figure 0.8% to be "higher"). Now the total population decline in Germany caused by the war is 4.9 million people. Which, in general, is very "similar" to the figure of irrecoverable losses of the Reich ground forces given by Müller-Hillebrandt. So what did the USSR, which lost 26.6 million of its citizens in the war, really "overwhelmed the corpses" of its enemy? Patience, dear reader, let's bring our calculations to their logical conclusion.
The fact is that the population of Germany proper in 1946 increased by at least another 6.5 million people, and presumably even by 8 million! By the time of the 1946 census (according to German data, by the way, published back in 1996 by the Union of the Exiled, and in total about 15 million were “forcibly displaced”). Germans) only from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia, 6.5 million Germans were evicted to the territory of Germany. About 1 - 1.5 million Germans fled from Alsace and Lorraine (unfortunately, there is no more accurate data). That is, these 6, 5 - 8 million must be added to the losses of Germany itself. And this is already "slightly" other figures: 4, 9 million + 7, 25 million (the arithmetic average of the number of Germans "expelled" to their homeland) = 12, 15 million. Actually, this is 17, 3% (!) from the population of Germany in 1939. Well, that's not all!
I emphasize once again: the Third Reich is not even ONLY Germany at all! By the time of the attack on the USSR, the Third Reich "officially" included: Germany (70, 2 million people), Austria (6, 76 million people), Sudetenland (3, 64 million people), captured from Poland "Baltic Corridor", Poznan and Upper Silesia (9, 36 million people), Luxembourg, Lorraine and Alsace (2, 2 million people), and even Upper Corinthia cut off from Yugoslavia, 92, 16 million people in total.
These are all territories that were officially included in the Reich, and whose inhabitants were subject to conscription into the Wehrmacht. We will not take into account the "Imperial Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia" and the "General Government of Poland" (although ethnic Germans were drafted into the Wehrmacht from these territories). And ALL these territories until the beginning of 1945 remained under the control of the Nazis. Now we get the "final calculation" if we take into account that the losses of Austria are known to us and amount to 300,000 people, that is, 4.43% of the country's population (which in%, of course, is much less than that of Germany). It will not be a big "stretch" to assume that the population of the rest of the Reich, as a result of the war, suffered the same losses in percentage terms, which will give us another 673,000 people. As a result, the total human losses of the Third Reich are 12, 15 million + 0.3 million + 0.6 million people. = 13.05 million people. This "tsiferka" looks more like the truth. Taking into account the fact that these losses include 0.5 - 0.75 million dead civilians (and not 3.5 million), we get the losses of the Armed Forces of the Third Reich equal to 12, 3 million people irrevocably. If we consider that even the Germans recognize the loss of their Armed Forces in the East in 75-80% of all losses on all fronts, then the Reich Armed Forces lost about 9, 2 million in battles with the Red Army (75% of 12, 3 million) a person is irrevocable. Of course, by no means all of them were killed, but having data on the liberated (2.35 million), as well as prisoners of war who died in captivity (0.38 million), it can be said quite accurately that actually killed and died from wounds and in captivity, and also missing, but not captured (read "killed", and this is 0.7 million!), the Armed Forces of the Third Reich lost about 5, 6-6 million people during the campaign to the East. According to these calculations, the irrecoverable losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR and the Third Reich (without allies) correlate as 1, 3: 1, and the combat losses of the Red Army (data from the team led by Krivosheev) and the Armed Forces of the Reich as 1, 6: 1.
The procedure for calculating the total loss of life in Germany
The population in 1939 was 70, 2 million people.
The population in 1946 was 65, 93 million people.
Natural mortality is 2, 8 million people.
Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
Emigration inflow of 7, 25 million people.
Total losses {(70, 2 - 65, 93 - 2, 8) + 3, 5 + 7, 25 = 12, 22} 12, 15 million people.
Every tenth German died! Every twelfth was captured
Conclusion
In this article, the author does not pretend to seek out the "golden section" and "the ultimate truth." The data presented in it are available in the scientific literature and the network. It's just that they are all scattered and scattered across various sources. The author expresses his personal opinion: it is impossible to trust the German and Soviet sources during the war, because their losses are underestimated at least 2-3 times, the enemy's losses are exaggerated by the same 2-3 times. It is all the more strange that the German sources, in contrast to the Soviet ones, are recognized as quite "reliable", although, as the simplest analysis shows, this is not so.
Irrecoverable losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War amount to 11, 5 - 12, 0 million people irrevocably, with actual combat demographic losses of 8, 7–9, 3 million.human. The losses of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops on the Eastern Front are 8, 0 - 8, 9 million people irrevocably, of which purely combat demographic 5, 2-6, 1 million (including those who died in captivity) people. In addition to the losses of the actual German Armed Forces on the Eastern Front, it is necessary to add the losses of the satellite countries, and this is neither more nor less than 850 thousand (including those who died in captivity) people killed and more than 600 thousand prisoners. Total 12.0 (the largest number) million versus 9.05 (the smallest number) million.
A natural question: where is the "filling up with corpses", about which Western and now domestic "open" and "democratic" sources speak so much? The percentage of Soviet prisoners of war killed, even according to the most benign estimates, is no less than 55%, and German, according to the largest, no more than 23%. Maybe the whole difference in losses is explained simply by the inhuman conditions of detention of prisoners?
The author is aware that these articles differ from the last officially proclaimed version of the losses: the losses of the USSR Armed Forces - 6, 8 million servicemen killed, and 4, 4 million captured and missing, the losses of Germany - 4, 046 million servicemen dead, dead from wounds, missing (including 442, 1 thousand people who died in captivity), losses of satellite countries 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand prisoners. Irrecoverable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11, 5 million and 8, 6 million people. The total losses of Germany 11, 2 million people. (for example on Wikipedia)
The issue with the civilian population is more terrible against 14, 4 (the smallest number) of victims of the Second World War in the USSR - 3, 2 million people (the largest number) of victims from the German side. So who fought with whom? It is also necessary to mention that, without denying the Holocaust of the Jews, German society still does not perceive the "Slavic" Holocaust, if everything is known about the suffering of the Jewish people in the West (thousands of works), then they prefer to "modestly" keep silent about the crimes against the Slavic peoples. The lack of participation of our researchers, for example, in the all-German "dispute of historians" only aggravates this situation.
I would like to end the article with the phrase of an unknown British officer. When he saw a column of Soviet prisoners of war, which was being driven past the "international" camp, he said: "I forgive the Russians in advance for everything that they will do with Germany."
The article was written in 2007. Since then, the author has not changed his opinion. That is, there was no “stupid” heaping of corpses on the part of the Red Army, however, as well as a special numerical superiority. This is also proved by the recent emergence of a large layer of Russian "oral history", that is, memoirs of ordinary participants in the Second World War. For example, Electron Priklonsky, the author of the "Self-propeller's Diary", mentions that during the entire war he saw two "death fields": when our troops attacked in the Baltic States and came under flank machine gun fire, and when the Germans broke through from the Korsun-Shevchenkovsky cauldron. An isolated example, but nevertheless, it is valuable because the diary of the wartime, which means it is quite objective.
Recently the author of the article came across (materials from the newspaper "Duel" edited by Yu. Mukhin) on a curious table, the conclusion is controversial (although it corresponds to the views of the author), but the approach to the problem of losses in the Second World War is interesting:
Estimation of the ratio of losses based on the results of a comparative analysis of losses in wars of the last two centuries
The application of the method of comparative-comparative analysis, the foundations of which was laid by Jomini, to assess the ratio of losses requires statistical data on wars of different eras. Unfortunately, more or less complete statistics are available only for the wars of the last two centuries. Data on irrecoverable combat losses in the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, summarized according to the results of the work of domestic and foreign historians, are given in table. The last three columns of the table demonstrate the obvious dependence of the results of the war on the values of relative losses (losses expressed as a percentage of the total size of the army) - the relative losses of the winner in the war are always less than that of the loser, and this relationship has a stable, repeated nature (it is valid for all types of wars), i.e. it has all the features of the law.
This law - let's call it the law of relative losses - can be formulated as follows: in any war, victory goes to the army that has the least relative losses.
Note that the absolute figures of irrecoverable losses for the victorious side can be either less (Patriotic War of 1812, Russian-Turkish, Franco-Prussian wars), or more than that of the defeated side (Crimean, World War I, Soviet-Finnish), but the relative losses of the winner are always less than that of the loser.
The difference between the relative losses of the winner and the loser characterizes the degree of persuasiveness of the victory. Wars with close values of the relative losses of the parties end in peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese war). In wars that end, like the Great Patriotic War, with the complete surrender of the enemy (Napoleonic Wars, Franco-Prussian War of 1870–1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the defeated (at least 30%). In other words, the greater the loss, the larger the army must be in order to win a convincing victory. If the loss of an army is 2 times greater than that of the enemy, then in order to win the war, its number must be at least 2, 6 times the size of the opposing army.
And now let's return to the Great Patriotic War and see what human resources the USSR and Nazi Germany had during the war. The available data on the numbers of the opposing sides on the Soviet-German front are given in table. 6.
From table. 6 it follows that the number of Soviet participants in the war was only 1, 4–1, 5 times more than the total number of opposing troops and 1, 6–1, 8 times more than the regular German army. In accordance with the law of relative losses with such an excess of the number of participants in the war, the losses of the Red Army, which destroyed the fascist military machine, in principle, could not exceed the losses of the armies of the fascist bloc by more than 10-15%, and the losses of regular German troops by more than 25-30 %. This means that the upper limit of the ratio of irrecoverable combat losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht is the ratio of 1, 3: 1.
Figures of the ratio of irrecoverable combat losses, given in table. 6 do not exceed the value of the upper limit of the loss ratio obtained above. This, however, does not mean that they are final and not subject to change. As new documents, statistical materials, research results appear, the numbers of losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht (Tables 1-5) can be specified, change in one direction or another, their ratio can also change, but it cannot be higher than the value 1, 3:1.
