They did not return from the battle: the number of deaths in the Great Patriotic War has been declassified. Which peoples of the USSR suffered the heaviest losses during the Great Patriotic War?

How did official data on USSR losses change?

Recently, the State Duma announced new figures for human losses. Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War - almost 42 million people. An additional 15 million people were added to the previous official data. 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.

The irretrievable losses of the Soviet Union as a result of the factors of World War II are more than 19 million military personnel.

Despite many years of well-paid sabotage and all possible efforts of generals and politicians to hide the true cost of our Victory over fascism, on February 14, 2017 in State Duma at parliamentary hearings " Patriotic education Russian citizens: The Immortal Regiment has finally declassified the figures closest to the truth:

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

According to the report, this information has been confirmed big amount authentic documents, authoritative publications and certificates (details on the Immortal Regiment website and other resources).

The history of the issue is as follows

In March 1946, in an interview with the newspaper Pravda, I.V. Stalin announced: “As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union lost irrevocably in battles with the Germans, and also thanks to the German occupation and hijacking Soviet people about seven million people were sent to German penal servitude.”

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

May 8, 1990 at a meeting Supreme Council USSR in honor of the 45th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War The final number of casualties was announced: “Almost 27 million people.”

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

In 2001, a reissue of the book was published under the editorship of G.F. Krivosheev “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study." One of its tables stated that the irretrievable 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 publication “The Great Patriotic War Without Classification. The Book of Loss”, again edited by G.F. Krivosheev clarified the data on the losses of the armies fighting in 1941-1945. Demographic losses reduced to 8,744,500 military personnel (p. 373):

A natural question arises: where were the mentioned “data from the USSR State Planning Committee” on 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 20th Century” that we were finally allowed to find out in 2001 how many of our compatriots were mobilized into the ranks of the Red (Soviet) Army during the Second World War: 34,476,700 people (p. 596.).

If we take the official figure of 8,744 thousand people on faith, 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 any resident would disagree with this settlement former USSR. In every village or aul there are slabs with the names of their fallen fellow countrymen. At best, they represent only half of those who went to the front 70 years ago.

Statistics of Tatarstan

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

In the book of Professor Z.I. Gilmanov’s “Workers of Tatarstan on the Fronts of the Great Patriotic War,” published in Kazan in 1981, stated that the military registration and enlistment offices of the republic 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 of 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 editors of the Book of Memory of the Republic of Tatarstan from 1990 to 2007, I can clarify: taking into account natives drafted 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 irreparable losses for the republic, on whose territory not a single enemy bomb or shell fell!

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

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

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 battle sites in all Memory Watches. This requires massive and Full time job 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" 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.

• Born in 1960.
• Graduated from Kazan State University them. IN AND. Ulyanov-Lenin, majoring in Journalism.
• Since 2007 he has been working in National Museum RT.
• One of the creators of the 28-volume book “Memory” of the Republic of Tatarstan about those killed during the Second World War, 19 volumes of the Book of Memory of Victims political repression Republic of Tatarstan, etc.
• Creator eBook in memory of the Republic of Tatarstan (list of natives and residents of Tatarstan who died during the Second World War).
• Author of thematic lectures from the series “Tatarstan during the war years”, 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”.
• Participant of 60 search expeditions to bury the remains of soldiers who died in the Great Patriotic War (since 1980), member of the board of the Union of Search Teams of Russia.
• Author of more than 100 scientific and educational articles, books, participant in All-Russian, regional, international conferences. Columnist of Realnoe Vremya.

Calculating the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War remains one of the scientific problems unsolved by historians. Official statistics - 26.6 million dead, including 8.7 million military personnel - underestimate the losses among those who were at the front. Contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the dead were military personnel (up to 13.6 million), and not the civilian population of the Soviet Union.

There is a lot of literature on this problem, and perhaps some people get the impression that it has been sufficiently researched. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but many questions and doubts remain. There is too much here that is unclear, controversial and clearly unreliable. Even the reliability of the current official data on the human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts.

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

The official figure for the demographic losses of the Soviet Union has changed several times. In February 1946, the figure of losses of 7 million people was published in the Bolshevik magazine. In March 1946, Stalin, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, stated that the USSR lost 7 million people during the war: “As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost in battles with the Germans, as well as thanks to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German hard labor about seven million people." Published in 1947, the report " War economy USSR during the Patriotic War,” Chairman of the USSR State Planning Committee Voznesensky did not indicate human losses.

In 1959, the first post-war census of the USSR population was carried out. In 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden, reported 20 million dead: “Can we sit back and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists launched a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed the lives of two tens of millions of Soviet people?” In 1965, Brezhnev, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, announced more than 20 million dead.

In 1988–1993 a team of military historians under the leadership of Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev conducted a statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about human losses in the army and navy, border and internal troops NKVD. The result of the work was the figure of 8,668,400 casualties of the USSR security forces during the war.

Since March 1989, on behalf of the CPSU Central Committee, a state commission has been working to study the number of human losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War. The commission included representatives of the State Statistics Committee, the Academy of Sciences, the Ministry of Defense, the Main Archival Directorate under the Council of Ministers of the USSR, the Committee of War Veterans, the Union of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies. The commission did not count losses, but estimated the difference between the estimated population of the USSR at the end of the war and the estimated population that would have lived in the USSR if there had been no war. The commission first announced its figure of demographic losses of 26.6 million people at the ceremonial meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990.

May 5, 2008 President Russian Federation signed the order “On the publication of the fundamental multi-volume work “The Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.” On October 23, 2009, the Minister of Defense of the Russian Federation signed the order “On the Interdepartmental Commission for Calculating Losses during the Great Patriotic War of 1941–1945.” The commission included representatives of the Ministry of Defense, FSB, Ministry of Internal Affairs, Rosstat, and Rosarkhiv. In December 2011, a representative of the commission announced the country’s overall demographic losses during the war period 26.6 million people, of which losses of active armed forces 8668400 people.

Military personnel

According to the Russian Ministry of Defense irrecoverable losses during the fighting on the Soviet-German front from June 22, 1941 to May 9, 1945, there were 8,860,400 Soviet troops. The source was data declassified in 1993 and data obtained during search work Memory Watch and in historical archives.

According to declassified data from 1993: killed, died from wounds and illnesses, non-combat losses - 6 885 100 people, including

• Killed - 5,226,800 people.
• Died from wounds - 1,102,800 people.
• Died from various causes and accidents, were shot - 555,500 people.

On May 5, 2010, the head of the Department of the Russian Ministry of Defense for perpetuating the memory of those killed in defense of the Fatherland, Major General A. Kirilin, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military losses are 8 668 400 , will be reported to the country's leadership so that they are announced on May 9, the 65th anniversary of the Victory.

According to G.F. Krivosheev, during the Great Patriotic War, a total of 3,396,400 military personnel went missing and were captured (about another 1,162,600 were attributed to unaccounted combat losses in the first months of the war, when combat units did not provide any information about these losses reports), that is, in total

• missing, captured and unaccounted for combat losses - 4,559,000;
• 1,836,000 military personnel returned from captivity, 1,783,300 did not return (died, emigrated) (that is, the total number of prisoners was 3,619,300, which is more than together with the missing);
• previously considered missing and were called up again from the liberated territories - 939,700.

So the official irrecoverable losses(6,885,100 dead, according to declassified 1993 data, and 1,783,300 who did not return from captivity) amounted to 8,668,400 military personnel. But from them we must subtract 939,700 re-callers who were considered missing. We get 7,728,700.

The error was pointed out, in particular, by Leonid Radzikhovsky. The correct calculation is as follows: the figure 1,783,300 is the number of those who did not return from captivity and those who went missing (and not just those who did not return from captivity). Then official irrecoverable losses (killed 6,885,100, according to declassified data in 1993, and those who did not return from captivity and missing 1,783,300) amounted to 8 668 400 military personnel.

According to M.V. Filimoshin, during the Great Patriotic War, 4,559,000 Soviet military personnel and 500 thousand persons liable for military service, called up for mobilization, but not included in the lists of troops, were captured and went missing. From this figure, the calculation gives the same result: if 1,836,000 returned from captivity and 939,700 were re-called from those listed as unknown, then 1,783,300 military personnel were missing and did not return from captivity. So the official irrecoverable losses (6,885,100 died, according to declassified data from 1993, and 1,783,300 went missing and did not return from captivity) are 8 668 400 military personnel.

Additional data

Civilian population

A group of researchers led by G. F. Krivosheev estimated the losses of the civilian population of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War at approximately 13.7 million people.

The final number is 13,684,692 people. consists of the following components:

• were exterminated in the occupied territory and died as a result of military operations (from bombing, shelling, etc.) - 7,420,379 people.
• died as a result of a humanitarian catastrophe (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care, etc.) - 4,100,000 people.
• died in forced labor in Germany - 2,164,313 people. (another 451,100 people according to various reasons did not return and became emigrants).

According to S. Maksudov, in the occupied territories and in besieged Leningrad About 7 million people died (of which 1 million were in besieged Leningrad, 3 million were Jews, victims of the Holocaust), and another 7 million people died as a result of increased mortality in non-occupied territories.

The total losses of the USSR (together with the civilian population) amounted to 40–41 million people. These estimates are confirmed by comparing data from the 1939 and 1959 censuses, since there is reason to believe that in 1939 there was a very significant undercount of male conscripts.

In general, during the Second World War, the Red Army lost 13 million 534 thousand 398 soldiers and commanders killed, missing, died from wounds, diseases and in captivity.

Finally, let's note one more new trend in studying the demographic results of the Second World War. Before the collapse of the USSR, there was no need to estimate human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate amount of human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.

The greatest losses on the battlefields of the Second World War were suffered by Russians and Ukrainians. Many Jews were killed. But the most tragic was the fate of the Belarusian people. In the first months of the war, the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by the Germans. During the war, the Belarusian SSR lost up to 30% of its population. In the occupied territory of the BSSR, the Nazis killed 2.2 million people. (The latest research data on Belarus is as follows: the Nazis destroyed civilians - 1,409,225 people, killed prisoners in German death camps - 810,091 people, drove into German slavery - 377,776 people). It is also known that in percentage terms - the amount dead soldiers/number of population, among Soviet republics big damage Georgia suffered. Of the 700 thousand residents of Georgia called up to the front, almost 300 thousand did not return.

Losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops

To date, there are no sufficiently reliable loss figures. German army, obtained by direct statistical calculation. This is explained by the absence, for various reasons, of reliable initial statistical materials on German losses. The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, Soviet troops 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured, of which 2,388,443 Germans were in NKVD camps. According to German historians, there were about 3.1 million German military personnel in Soviet prisoner-of-war camps.

The discrepancy is approximately 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in estimates of the number of Germans who died in captivity: according to Russian archival documents, 356,700 Germans died in Soviet captivity, and according to German researchers, approximately 1.1 million people. It seems that the Russian figure of Germans killed in captivity is more reliable, and the missing 0.7 million Germans who went missing and did not return from captivity actually died not in captivity, but on the battlefield.

There is another statistics of losses - statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the annex to the German law “On the Preservation of Burial Sites”, the total number of German soldiers located in recorded burial sites on the territory of the Soviet Union and Eastern European countries is 3 million 226 thousand people. (in the territory of the USSR alone - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as a starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, however, it also needs to be adjusted.

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

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses in Germany

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

conclusions

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

During the war, almost 27 million citizens of the USSR died (the exact number is 26.6 million). This amount included:

• killed and died from wounds of military personnel;
• those who died from disease;
• executed by firing squad (based on various denunciations);
• missing and captured;
• representatives of the civilian population, both in the occupied territories of the USSR and in other regions of the country, in which, due to the ongoing hostilities in the state, there was an increased mortality rate from hunger and disease.

This also includes those who emigrated from the USSR during the war and did not return to their homeland after the victory. The vast majority of those killed were men (about 20 million). Modern researchers claim that by the end of the war, of the men born in 1923. (i.e. those who were 18 years old in 1941 and could be drafted into the army) about 3% remained alive. By 1945, there were twice as many women in the USSR as men (data for people aged 20 to 29 years).

In addition to the actual deaths, human losses include a sharp drop in the birth rate. Thus, according to official estimates, if the birth rate in the state had remained at least at the same level, the population of the Union by the end of 1945 should have been 35–36 million more people than it was in reality. Despite numerous studies and calculations, the exact number of those killed during the war is unlikely to ever be known.

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

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

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

Briefly about the beginning of hostilities

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

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

Number of deaths during the Second World War

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

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

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

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

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

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

German losses

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

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

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

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

Results of the Second World War

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

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

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

1. Soviet Union - about 26 million people.
2. China – more than 11 million.
3. Germany – more than 7 million
4. Poland – about 7 million.
5. Japan – 1.8 million
6. Yugoslavia – 1.7 million
7. Romania – about 1 million.
8. France – more than 800 thousand.
9. Hungary – 750 thousand
10. Austria – more than 500 thousand.

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

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

Vladimir TIMAKOV: In the proposed article, my modest experience in teaching demography is mobilized to investigate one of the most painful historical mysteries: how many Soviet soldiers died in the Great Patriotic War?

Vladimir TIMAKOV

In this article, my modest experience in teaching demography is mobilized to investigate one of the most painful historical mysteries: how many Soviet soldiers died in the Great Patriotic War?

Let us first consider the balance sheet of military personnel who passed through the army, compiled by the author’s group General Staff under the leadership of G.F. Krivosheeva. When the authors reduce the call to decline, the article “irretrievable losses” (dead) leaves 8 million 668 thousand people. However, there are obvious holes in the balance. Thus, the column “loss” includes 427 thousand soldiers sent to penal battalions. But in the end, these penal prisoners had to be included either in the “killed” article or in the army’s combat ranks on July 1, 1945. Where did they go?

Also missing from the balance are 500 thousand recruits who did not manage to get into units, and 939 thousand released from captivity and called up for the second time.

On the other hand, Krivosheev’s group did not reflect in its balance sheet such a loss item as captured Red Army soldiers who went over to the enemy’s side and/or chose to remain in exile. Their numbers reach six figures and, when balanced, reduce the death toll. The loss of emigrants and defectors from the balance of the author’s group of the General Staff indicates a varnishing of reality, but dispels suspicions that main goal Krivosheev's comrades underestimated Soviet combat losses.

Upon first examination, the proportion of male contingents who passed through the Wehrmacht (21.1 million, according to the German historian Müller-Hillebrand) and through the Soviet Army (34.5 million, according to Krivosheev) raises a protest. This ratio seems implausible, since the population of the USSR exceeded the population of Germany (even with Austria and the Sudetenland) by about two and a half times.

However, it is necessary to take into account that by the beginning of the war, the borders of the Reich included a significant part of Poland (East Silesia, West Prussia, Gau Posen), Bohemia and Moravia, Alsace and Lorraine, most of Slovenia, Luxembourg, with general population at least 20 million people. The fact that the inhabitants of these territories were subject to conscription into the armed forces is eloquently evidenced by ethnic composition captured Nazi soldiers. By the way, the share of the inhabitants of these lands who were captured by us significantly exceeds the share of the Red Army soldiers who were captured by the Germans, representing the ten republics that joined (or formed) the USSR after 1922. Thus, taking into account the new lands, the population of the Reich on June 22, 1941 can be estimated at 102 million people.

The population of the Soviet Union on the fateful June Sunday was 196.7 million people (according to the calculations of Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov).

It is also necessary to take into account that the sex and age pyramid in the pre-war USSR resembled the sex and age pyramid of modern Pakistan or India, with a huge preponderance of children's ages. Therefore, the share of Soviet men aged 18 to 50 was only 21.7% (1939 census), while their peers in Germany were 23.4% (Urlanis estimate). Consequently, the potential conscription contingents of our country and the Reich were 42.7 million people. to 23.9 million people, that is, they differed by less than 1.8 times.

Note that the enemy could use its human resources more effectively by attracting huge masses of foreign labor, as well as by recruiting a significant (1.17 million, according to Romanko’s estimate) number of Soviet collaborators and Volksdeutsche into the Wehrmacht. In view of this, the proportion of conscripts resulting from a comparison of the figures of Krivosheev and Müller-Hillebrand looks quite realistic.

The test calculations below can be done by any educated person, since the ones I used background information are situated in open access(for example, on the website demoscope.ru). First of all, we are interested in comparing the census tables of 1939 and 1959 (due to the expansion of the borders of the USSR, the data of 1939, in order to correlate with the data of 1959, must be multiplied by a factor of 1.116).

Having traced the fate of men born in 1889-1898. (when comparing the cohort of 40-49 years old in the pre-war and 60-69 years old in the post-war census), we see that their number decreased from 7.8 million to 4.1 million, or by 47.5%. In the same age cohort, between the 1970 and 1989 censuses the decline was 36.5%. Considering that the natural mortality rates in the near-war years were higher than in the prosperous seventies, it must be admitted that the army losses of men born in 1889-1898. turned out to be not too big. They fully correlate with the figure given in Krivosheev’s work of 520 thousand dead soldiers and officers over 46 years of age.

The fate of the generation born 1899-1928 turned out to be more tragic and can be presented in the table.

The key to determining army casualties is the difference between male and female losses in this cohort—12.9 million. Excess mortality among men is primarily due to war. However, we know that in Peaceful time The natural mortality rate of men reaching the age of 30-60 years significantly exceeds female mortality. From this we can conclude that army losses in the cohort under study are unlikely to exceed 10 million people.

Female decline in 1939-1959. should be divided into civilian casualties (about 4-4.5 million people) and natural loss (5-5.5 million people). Then the civilian casualties among men of this generation can be estimated at 2-2.5 million, and their natural decline at 9-10 million people. (taking into account that male mortality rates for these ages are more than twice that of females, but 1/5 of the male cohort will not live to die naturally as a result of military losses).

As a result, the specific male decline of this generation during the war years will be approximately 10.4-11 million people. This includes not only the losses of military personnel, but also partisans, collaborators, Gulag prisoners, etc.

In general, if we sum up the front-line losses of all age cohorts and add to them the dead female military personnel (1-2% of men), the final figure for the losses of the Soviet army is unlikely to exceed the designated level of 10-11 million people. A similar assessment is given by the British historian Norman Davis, who gained popularity with the recent publication “Europe at War.
1939-1945. Without an easy victory."

Please note: if you “patch” the above “gaps” in Krivosheev’s balance sheet, you will also get very similar figures.

Demography is a science in which it is quite difficult to lie. Various indicators are so linked to each other that any lie shakes the entire system of statistical connections - like a tangled fly shakes the entire fabric of the web.

We can, for example, estimate how many boys born in 1923 returned home from the war. These are conscripts of the forty-first, “knocked out conscription”, who suffered maximum losses compared to other ages.
At the beginning of 1959, for every 100 women of this age, there were 64 women of the same age.

For comparison, in the peaceful year of 1939, per 100 thirty-five-year-olds Soviet women there were 93 peers.
And in Germany, according to Urlanis, in 1950, for every 100 women of the “knocked out” generation (born 1920-1924), there were 71 men. That is, taking into account the traditional difference in natural male mortality among Germans and Russians, it should be recognized that the proportion of those killed at the front in the USSR and in Germany is approximately the same.

The proportionality of front-line losses is also confirmed by the similarity in the post-war proportions of widows: USSR - 19.0%, East Germany - 18.6%, Austria - 18.5%, Germany - 17.7% (“World Population”; from total number adult women). These figures, as well as a careful analysis of the Müller-Hillebrand balance sheet, suggest that German military statistics are “varnished” on approximately the same scale as the official conclusions of the Russian General Staff. But the research of the German historian Overmans, who counted 5.3 million fallen Wehrmacht soldiers, looks quite reliable.

It should be concluded that the army losses of the USSR and the Reich are approximately proportional to the conscription contingents of these countries, i.e. are unlikely to differ by more than a factor of two.

The other day, parliamentary hearings “Patriotic education of Russian citizens: “Immortal Regiment” were held in the Duma. They were attended by deputies, senators, representatives of legislative and higher executive bodies state power constituent entities of the Russian Federation, Ministries of Education and Science, Defense, Foreign Affairs, Culture, members public associations, organizations of foreign compatriots... True, there were no those who came up with the action itself - journalists from Tomsk TV-2, no one even remembered them. And, in general, there was really no need to remember. "Immortal Regiment", which by definition did not provide for any staffing table, no commanders or political officers, has already completely transformed into the sovereign “box” of the parade squad, and its main task today is to learn to march in step and maintain alignment in the ranks.

“What is a people, a nation? “This is, first of all, respect for victories,” the chairman of the parliamentary committee, Vyacheslav Nikonov, admonished the participants when opening the hearing. - ​Today, when it goes new war, which someone calls “hybrid,” our Victory becomes one of the main targets for attacks on historical memory. There are waves of falsification of history, which should make us believe that it was not us, but someone else who won, and also force us to apologize...” For some reason, the Nikonovs are seriously confident that it was them, long before own birth, won Great Victory, for which, moreover, someone is trying to force them to apologize. But those weren’t the ones attacked! And the aching note of the ongoing national misfortune, the phantom pain of the third generation of descendants of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War is drowned out by a cheerful, thoughtless cry: “We can repeat it!”

Really - ​can we?

It was at these hearings that a terrible figure was mentioned casually, but for some reason no one noticed, and did not make us stop in horror as we ran to understand WHAT we were told after all. Why this was done right now, I don’t know.

At the hearings, co-chairman of the “Immortal Regiment of Russia” movement, State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, presented a report “Documentary basis People's project“Establishing the fates of missing defenders of the Fatherland”, within the framework of which studies of population decline were conducted, which changed the understanding of the scale of losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War.

“The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people,” Zemtsov said, citing declassified data from the USSR State Planning Committee. — ​Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of war factors are ​more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians. The total natural mortality of military personnel and civilians during this period could have amounted to more than 10 million 833 thousand people (including 5 million 760 thousand deaths of children under the age of four). The irretrievable losses of the population of the USSR as a result of war factors amounted to almost 42 million people.

Can we... repeat?!

Back in the 60s of the last century, the then young poet Vadim Kovda wrote a short poem in four lines: “ If there are only three elderly disabled people walking through my front door, / does that mean how many of them were wounded? / Was it killed?

Nowadays, due to natural reasons, these elderly disabled people are noticeable less and less. But Kovda understood the scale of losses absolutely correctly; it was enough to simply multiply the number of front doors.

Stalin, based on inaccessible to a normal person considerations, he personally determined the losses of the USSR at 7 million people - slightly less than the losses of Germany. Khrushchev - 20 million. Under Gorbachev, a book was published, prepared by the Ministry of Defense and edited by General Krivosheev, “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed,” in which the authors named and in every possible way justified this very figure - ​27 million. Now it turns out that she was also untrue.