Losses of the USSR and Germany in the Second World War. About the "insignificant" losses of the Wehrmacht
“I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they do with Germany” (with)
This article discusses the losses suffered by the Red Army, the Wehrmacht and the troops of the satellite countries of the Third Reich, as well as the civilian population of the USSR and Germany, only in the period from 06/22/1941 until the end of hostilities in Europe
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 country in Europe. The entire population of Europe (excluding the USSR) was 400 million people. By the beginning of World War II, the population 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 proportion of children under 15 years old was 35%. It was this feature that made it possible relatively quickly (within 10 years) to restore the pre-war population. The share of the urban population was only 32% (for comparison: in the UK - more than 80%, in France - 50%, in Germany - 70%, in the USA - 60%, and only in Japan did it have 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 to 22.5 million people. The total population of the USSR, according to the certificate of the CSB on January 1, 1941, was determined at 198,588 thousand people (including the RSFSR - 111,745 thousand people). modern estimates it was still less, and on June 1, 1941, it was 196.7 million people.
Population of some countries for 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 people.
By 1940, the population of the Reich had increased to 90 million people, and taking into account satellites and conquered countries - 297 million people. By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, on which 74.5 million people lived before the start of the Second World War. This once again emphasizes that despite Hitler's assurances, the USSR had no advantages in human resources over the Third Reich. 
During the entire period of the Great Patriotic War in our country, 34.5 million people wore military uniform. This amounted to about 70% of the total number of men aged 15–49 in 1941. The number of women in the Red Army was approximately 500,000. The percentage of those called up was higher only in Germany, but as we said earlier, the Germans covered the labor shortage at the expense of European workers and prisoners of war. In the USSR, such a deficit was covered by the increased length of the working day and the widespread use of the labor of women, children and the elderly.
On the direct irretrievable losses of the Red Army long time did not speak in the USSR. In a private conversation, Marshal Konev in 1962 called the figure 10 million people, the well-known defector - Colonel Kalinov, who fled to the West in 1949 - 13.6 million people. The figure of 10 million people was published in the French version of the book "Wars and Population" by B. Ts. Urlanis, a well-known Soviet demographer. In 1993 and 2001, the authors of the well-known monograph “Secret Classified Removed” (under the editorship of G. Krivosheev) published the figure of 8.7 million people; at the moment, it is indicated in most reference literature. But the authors themselves state that it does not include: 500,000 conscripts called up for mobilization and captured by the enemy, but not included in the lists of units and formations. Also, the almost completely dead militiamen of Moscow, Leningrad, Kyiv and others are not taken into account. major cities. Currently, the most complete lists of irretrievable losses of Soviet soldiers are 13.7 million people, but approximately 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 "War Memorials" association found that due to double and even triple counting, the number of dead soldiers of the 43rd and 2 th Shock armies in the battles studied by the center were overestimated by 10-12%. Since these figures refer to the period when the accounting of losses in the Red Army was not accurate enough, it can be assumed that in the whole war, due to double counting, the number of dead Red Army soldiers is overestimated by about 5–7%, i.e., by 0.2– 0.4 million people
On the issue of prisoners. The American researcher A. Dallin, according to archival German data, estimates their number at 5.7 million people. Of these, 3.8 million died in captivity, that is, 63%. Domestic historians estimate the number of captured Red Army soldiers at 4.6 million people, of which 2.9 million died. 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 from wounds or shot (about 470-500 thousand). The situation of prisoners of war was especially desperate 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 been used in interests of the Reich. Open-air camps, hunger and cold, illness and lack of medicines, cruel treatment, mass executions of the sick and incapable of work, and simply of all those who are objectionable, primarily commissars and Jews. Unable to cope with the flow of prisoners and guided by political and propaganda motives, the invaders in 1941 sent home over 300 thousand prisoners of war, mainly natives of western Ukraine and Belarus. Subsequently, 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. In many cases, this was the only chance for prisoners to survive. Yet again most of these people, according to German data, at the first opportunity tried to desert from units and formations of the Wehrmacht. In the local auxiliary forces of the German army stood out:
1) voluntary helpers (hiwi)
2) order service (one)
3) front-line auxiliary parts (noise)
4) police and defense teams (gema).
At the beginning of 1943, the Wehrmacht operated: up to 400 thousand Khivs, from 60 to 70 thousand Odies, and 80 thousand in the eastern battalions.
Some of the prisoners of war and the population of the occupied territories made 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 deported to forced labor in the Reich. The ChGK (Extraordinary State Commission) immediately after the war estimated their number at 4.259 million people. More recent studies give a figure of 5.45 million people, of which 850-1000 thousand died.
Estimates of the direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK of 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)
Another important question. How many former Soviet citizens chose not to return to the USSR after the end of the Great Patriotic War? According to Soviet archival data, the number of "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. 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 attributed to irretrievable losses of the population.
For twenty years, the main estimate of the losses of the Red Army was the figure of 20 million people, “far-fetched” by N. Khrushchev. In 1990, as a result of the work of a special commission of the General Staff and the USSR State Statistics Committee, a more reasonable estimate of 26.6 million people appeared. At the moment it is official. Attention is drawn to the fact that back in 1948, the American sociologist Timashev gave an assessment of the losses of the USSR in the war, which practically coincided with the assessment of the General Staff Commission. Maksudov's assessment made in 1977 also coincides with the data of the Krivosheev Commission. According to the commission of G. F. Krivosheev.
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 casualties 26.4 million people, total demographic 37.3 million.
Arntts and Khrushchev: direct human: 20 million people.
Biraben and Solzhenitsyn: Red Army 20 million people, civilian population 22.6 million people, direct human resources 42.6 million, total demographic 62.9 million people.
Maksudov: Red Army - 11.8 million people, civilian population 12.7 million people, direct casualties 24.5 million people. It is impossible not to make a reservation that S. Maksudov (A.P. Babenyshev, Harvard University, USA) determined the purely combat losses of the spacecraft at 8.8 million people
Rybakovsky: direct human 30 million people.
Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov (General Staff, Krivosheev Commission): direct combat losses of the Red Army 8.7 million (11,994 including prisoners of war) people. Civilian population (including prisoners of war) 17.9 million people. Direct human losses 26.6 million people.
B. Sokolov: the loss of the Red Army - 26 million people
M. Harrison: total losses USSR - 23.9 - 25.8 million people.
The estimate of the losses of the Red Army, given in 1947 (7 million) is not credible, 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, the “Solzhenitsyn” 20 million people lost only to the army or even 44 million are just as unfounded (without denying some talent of A. Solzhenitsyn as a writer, all the facts and figures in his writings are not confirmed by a single document and understand where he came from took - impossible).
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 by the indirect method of calculations. The losses of the officers of the Red Army are quite accurately known, according to Sokolov, this is 784 thousand people (1941–44). , displays the ratio of the losses of the officer corps to the rank and file of the Wehrmacht, as 1:25, that is, 4%. And, without hesitation, he extrapolates this technique to the Red Army, receiving his own 26 million irretrievable losses. However, this approach, on closer examination, turns out to be inherently false. Firstly, 4% of officer losses 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 regular strength of the German infantry regiment of 3049 officers, it had 75 people, that is, 2.5%. And in the Soviet infantry regiment, with a strength 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 lower the losses among officers. In the Polish campaign, the loss of German officers? 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 loss of officers (not according to Sokolov, but according to statistics) was 8-9%, then at the beginning of the Second World War it could have been 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? Yes, because Mr. Sokolov very often sets out his figures in the media.
In view of the foregoing, discarding deliberately underestimated and overestimated estimates of losses, we get: the Krivosheev Commission - 8.7 million people (with prisoners of war 11.994 million data for 2001), Maksudov - losses are even slightly lower than the official ones - 11.8 million people. (1977? 93), Timashev - 12.2 million people. (1948). The opinion of M. Harrison can also be included here, with the level of total losses indicated by him, the losses of the army should fit into this interval. These data are received various methods calculations, because both Timashev and Maksudov, respectively, did not have access to the archives of the USSR and Russian Defense Ministry. It seems that the losses of the USSR Armed Forces in the Second World War lie very close to such a "heap" group of results. Let's not forget that these figures include 2.6-3.2 million destroyed 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 value, the value of the losses of the USSR in the Second World War should be reduced. In percentage terms, the structure of losses of the USSR looks like this:
41% - aircraft losses (including prisoners of war)
35% - aircraft losses (without prisoners of war, i.e. direct combat)
39% - loss 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 statistics on German losses.
According to Russian sources, 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured by Soviet troops, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in the NKVD camps. According to estimates by German historians, there were only about 3.1 million German servicemen in Soviet prisoner of war camps. The discrepancy, as you can see, is about 0.7 million people. This discrepancy is explained by differences in the estimate of the number of Germans killed 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 who died 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.
The vast majority of publications devoted to the calculations of the combat demographic losses of the Wehrmacht and Waffen-SS troops are based on data from the central bureau (department) for recording the losses of personnel of the armed forces belonging to the German General base supreme command. Moreover, while 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 the article “The human casualties of World War II in Germany” came to the conclusion that “... the channels of information 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 losses department at the headquarters of the Wehrmacht, relating 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 Muller-Gillebrand, which many researchers believe, the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht amounted to 3.2 million people. Another 0.8 million died in captivity. However, according to a certificate from the organizational department of the OKH dated May 1, 1945, only the ground forces, including the SS troops (without the Air Force and Navy), for the period from September 1, 1939 to May 1, 1945, lost 4 million 617.0 thousand people. people Exactly this last message about the losses of the German Armed Forces. In addition, from mid-April 1945, there was no centralized accounting of losses. And since the beginning of 1945, the data is incomplete. It remains a fact that in one of the last radio broadcasts with his participation, Hitler announced the figure of 12.5 million total losses of the German Armed Forces, of which 6.7 million are irretrievable, which exceeds the Müller-Hillebrand data by about two times. This was in March 1945. I do not think that in two months the soldiers of the Red Army did not kill a single German.
There is another statistics of losses - the statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the annex to the law of the Federal Republic of Germany "On the preservation of burial sites", the total number of German soldiers in recorded burials in the territory of the Soviet Union and eastern European countries, is 3 million 226 thousand people. (on the territory of the USSR alone - 2,330,000 burials). This figure can be taken as the starting point for calculating the demographic losses of the Wehrmacht, but it also needs to be adjusted.
First of all, this figure takes into account only the burial places of the Germans, and a large number of soldiers of other nationalities fought in the Wehrmacht: Austrians (of which 270 thousand people died), Sudeten Germans and Alsatians (230 thousand people died) and representatives of other nationalities and states ( 357 thousand people died). From total number dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6-0.7 million people.
Secondly, this figure refers to the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German burials in Russia, CIS countries and countries of Eastern Europe continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. Unfortunately, no generalized statistics of the newly discovered graves of Wehrmacht soldiers could be found. Tentatively, it can be 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 burial places of the dead soldiers of the Wehrmacht on Soviet soil disappeared or were deliberately destroyed. Approximately 0.4–0.6 million Wehrmacht soldiers could be buried in such disappeared and nameless graves.
Fourth, these data do not include burials of German soldiers killed in battles with Soviet troops in Germany and Western European countries. According to R. Overmans, only in the last three spring months of the war, about 1 million people died. ( minimum score 700 thousand) In general, on German soil and in Western European countries, approximately 1.2–1.5 million Wehrmacht soldiers died in battles with the Red Army.
Finally, fifth, among the buried were Wehrmacht soldiers who died of "natural" death (0.1-0.2 million people)
Major General V. Gurkin's articles are devoted to assessing the losses of the Wehrmacht using the balance of the German armed forces during the war years. Its calculated figures are given in the second column of Table. 4. Here, attention is drawn to two figures characterizing the number of Wehrmacht soldiers mobilized during the war, and the number of prisoners of war of Wehrmacht soldiers. The number of those mobilized during the war years (17.9 million people) is taken from the book by B. Müller-Gillebrand “ Land Army Germany 1933–1945”, v.Z. At the same time, V.P. Bokhar believes that more were drafted into the Wehrmacht - 19 million people.
The number of prisoners of war of the Wehrmacht was determined by V. Gurkin by summing up the prisoners of war taken by the Red Army (3.178 million people) and the allied forces (4.209 million people) until May 9, 1945. In my opinion, this number is too high: it also included prisoners of war who were not soldiers of the Wehrmacht. In the book of Paul Karel and Ponter Beddecker “German prisoners of war of the Second World War” it is reported: “... In June 1945, the Allied Joint Command became aware that there were 7,614,794 prisoners of war and unarmed military personnel in the “camps, of which 4,209,000 by the time capitulations were already in captivity." Among these 4.2 million German prisoners of war, in addition to Wehrmacht soldiers, there were many other people. For example, in the French camp of Vitrilet-François, among the prisoners, "the youngest was 15 years old, the oldest was almost 70." The authors write about captured Volksturmites, about the organization by the Americans of special "children's" camps, where captured twelve-thirteen-year-old boys from the "Hitler Youth" and "Werewolf" were gathered. Mention is made of the placement in camps even of the handicapped.
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 soldiers who were captured before the surrender was 6.3-6.5 million people.
In general, the demographic combat losses of the Wehrmacht and SS troops on the Soviet-German front are 5.2-6.3 million people, of which 0.36 million died in captivity, and irretrievable losses (including prisoners) 8.2 -9.1 million people It should also be noted that until recent years, Russian historiography 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 assume that Europe "fought" against fascism than to be aware that that some and a very large number of Europeans deliberately fought in the Wehrmacht. So, according to a note by General Antonov, on May 25, 1945. The Red Army captured 5 million 20 thousand Wehrmacht soldiers alone, of which 600 thousand people (Austrians, Czechs, Slovaks, Slovenes, Poles, etc.) were released before August after filtration measures, and these prisoners of war were sent to camps The NKVD did not send. Thus, the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in battles with the Red Army can 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's try to "substitute" the figures relating to Germany into the methodology for calculating the total demographic losses of the USSR. And we will use ONLY the official data of the German side. Thus, the population of Germany in 1939, according to Müller-Hillebrandt (p. 700 of his work, so beloved by the supporters of the theory of "filling up with corpses"), was 80.6 million people. At the same time, you and I, the reader, must 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 in 1939 was (80.6 - 6.76 - 3.64) 70.2 million people. We figured out these simple mathematical operations. Further: natural mortality in the USSR was 1.5% per year, but in countries Western Europe mortality 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 approximately the same proportion, due to which the USSR had a consistently high population growth all over the world. prewar years since 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 conducted by the Allied occupation authorities on October 29, 1946 in Germany. The census gave the following results:
Soviet zone of occupation (without East Berlin): men - 7.419 million, women - 9.914 million, total: 17.333 million people.
All western zones of occupation, (without western Berlin): men - 20.614 million, women - 24.804 million, total: 45.418 million people.
Berlin (all sectors of occupation), men - 1.29 million, women - 1.89 million, total: 3.18 million people.
The total population of Germany is 65,931,000 people.
A purely arithmetic operation 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 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, as in the USSR. That is, the natural increase in the population during the years of the war and the first post-war year was about 5% of the pre-war population, and in numbers amounted to 3.5-3.8 million children. This figure must be added to the final figure of the decline in the population of Germany. Now the arithmetic is different: the total population loss 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 for the years of the war and 1946, which is 2.8 million people (let's take the figure of 0.8% to be "higher"). Now the total decline in the population of Germany, caused by the war, is 4.9 million people. Which, in general, is very “similar” to the figure of the irretrievable losses of the Reich ground forces, given by Müller-Gillebrandt. So what did the USSR, which lost 26.6 million of its citizens in the war, really “fill up with corpses” of its enemy? Patience, dear reader, let's still bring our calculations to their logical conclusion.
The fact is that the population of Germany proper in 1946 grew by at least another 6.5 million people, and presumably even by 8 million! By the time of the 1946 census (according to German, by the way, data published back in 1996 by the "Union of Exiles", and in total about 15 million Germans were "forcibly displaced") only from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia were evicted to Germany 6.5 million Germans. About 1 - 1.5 million Germans fled from Alsace and Lorraine (unfortunately, there are no more accurate data). That is, these 6.5 - 8 million must be added to the losses of Germany proper. And these are “slightly” different figures: 4.9 million + 7.25 million (arithmetic average of the number of Germans “expelled” to their homeland) = 12.15 million. Actually, this is 17.3% (!) of the German population 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, a total of 92.16 million people.
The procedure for calculating the total human losses of Germany
The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
The population in 1946 was 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
Natural increase (birth rate) 3.5 million people.
Emigration 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
The irretrievable 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 people. The losses of the Wehrmacht and the SS troops on the Eastern Front amount to 8.0 - 8.9 million people irretrievably, of which 5.2-6.1 million people are purely combat demographics (including those who died in captivity). In addition to the losses of the German Armed Forces themselves 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 (largest) million versus 9.05 (lowest) million.
A logical question: where is the “filling up with corpses”, about which Western, and now domestic “open” and “democratic” sources talk so much? The percentage of dead Soviet prisoners of war, even according to the most benign estimates, is at least 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 the prisoners?
The author is aware that these articles differ from the latest 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, Germany's losses - 4.046 million servicemen dead, dead from wounds, missing (including 442.1 thousand dead in captivity), the loss of satellite countries 806 thousand killed and 662 thousand prisoners. Irretrievable losses of the armies of the USSR and Germany (including prisoners of war) - 11.5 million and 8.6 million people. The total loss 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) million people of the 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, the German society still does not perceive the “Slavic” Holocaust, if everything (thousands of works) is known about the suffering of the Jewish people in the West, then they prefer to “modestly” keep quiet about the crimes against the Slavic peoples.
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 being driven past the "international" camp, he said:
“I forgive the Russians in advance for everything they do with Germany”Assessment of the ratio of losses based on the results of a comparative analysis of losses in the wars of the last two centuries
The application of the method of comparative analysis, the foundations of which were laid by Jomini, to the assessment of 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 irretrievable combat losses in the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries, summarized based on 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 magnitude of relative losses (losses expressed as a percentage of the total army strength) - the relative losses of the winner in the war are always less than that of the loser, and this dependence has a stable, recurring character (it is valid for all types of wars), that is, 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 numbers of irretrievable losses for the victorious side can be either less (Patriotic War of 1812, Russian-Turkish, Franco-Prussian wars), or more than for the defeated side (Crimean, First World War, Soviet-Finnish), but the relative losses of the winner are always less than those 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 similar values of the relative losses of the parties end with peace treaties with the defeated side retaining the existing political system and army (for example, the Russo-Japanese War). In wars ending, like the Great Patriotic War, in the complete surrender of the enemy ( Napoleonic Wars, the Franco-Prussian war of 1870–1871), the relative losses of the winner are significantly less than the relative losses of the vanquished (by at least 30%). In other words, the greater the loss, the greater must be the size of the army in order to win a convincing victory. If the losses of the army are 2 times greater than those of the enemy, then in order to win the war, its strength must be at least 2.6 times more numbers 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. Available data on the strength 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 the total number of opposing troops and 1.6-1.8 times the regular German army. In accordance with the law of relative losses, with such an excess in 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 irretrievable combat losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht is the ratio of 1.3:1.
The figures for the ratio of irretrievable combat losses given in Table. 6 do not exceed the value of the upper limit of the loss ratio obtained above. However, this does not mean that they are final and not subject to change.
As new documents, statistical materials, research results appear, the losses of the Red Army and the Wehrmacht (Tables 1-5) may be refined, changed in one direction or another, their ratio may also change, but it cannot be higher than 1.3: 1 .
Sources:
1. Central Statistical Bureau of the USSR "Number, composition and movement of the population of the USSR" M 1965
2. "The population of Russia in the 20th century" M. 2001
3. Arntts "Casual losses in the Second World War" M. 1957
4. Frumkin G. Population Changes in Europe since 1939 N.Y. 1951
5. Dallin A. German rule in Russia 1941–1945 N.Y.- London 1957
6. "Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century" M.2001
7. Polyan P. Victims of two dictatorships M. 1996.
8. Thorwald J. The Illusion. Soviet soldiers in Hitler,s Army N. Y. 1975
9. Collection of messages of the Extraordinary State Commission M. 1946
10. Zemskov. Birth of the second emigration 1944–1952 SI 1991 No. 4
11. Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
13 Timasheff N. S. The postwar population of the Soviet Union 1948
14. Arnts. Human losses in World War II M. 1957; "International Life" 1961 No. 12
15. Biraben J. N. Population 1976.
16. Maksudov S. Population losses in the USSR Benson (Vt) 1989.; "About the front-line losses of the SA during the Second World War" "Free Thought" 1993. No. 10
17. The population of the USSR for 70 years. Edited by Rybakovsky L. L. M 1988
18. Andreev, Darsky, Kharkov. "Population of the Soviet Union 1922–1991" M 1993
19. Sokolov B. "Novaya Gazeta" No. 22, 2005, "The Price of Victory -" M. 1991
20. Germany's War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945, edited by Reinhard Ruhrup 1991. Berlin
21. Müller-Gillebrand. "Land Army of Germany 1933-1945" M.1998
22. Germany's War against the Soviet Union 1941-1945, edited by Reinhard Ruhrup 1991. Berlin
23. Gurkin V. V. About human losses on the Soviet-German front in 1941–45. NiNI No. 3 1992
24. M. B. Denisenko. WWII in the demographic dimension "Eksmo" 2005
25. S. Maksudov. The loss of the population of the USSR during the Second World War. "Population and Society" 1995
26. Yu. Mukhin. If not for the generals. "Yauza" 2006
27. V. Kozhinov. The Great War of Russia. Series of lectures 1000th anniversary of Russian wars. "Yauza" 2005
28. Materials of the newspaper "Duel"
29. E. Beevor "The Fall of Berlin" M.2003
Literature
AT military history very often it always happens that the one who suffered a grandiose shameful defeat later, decades later, and sometimes even centuries, tries quite unsuccessfully to turn his collapse into a victory. Such precedents have taken place since the time of the Egyptian pharaohs. Now, in the era of global media and the Internet, the scale of falsification, in particular, the history of the Second World War, has reached grandiose proportions.
It got to the point that in the USA and Western countries a significant part of the population, and sometimes a large one (!), Are seriously convinced that Berlin was taken by the Anglo-Americans, and the Eastern Front was secondary for the Nazi Wehrmacht ... Moreover, special attention in this falsification campaign is paid to countries, not only part of the Warsaw Pact organization, but also the former Soviet republics, where every year the number of those who begin to believe in such fabrications is only increasing.
Unfortunately, it can be stated with confidence that the activities of all those who are trying to counter this phenomenon, including the Russian state itself, still remain ineffective and episodic.
In fact, this issue is fundamental for all anti-fascist forces, since it is one thing when a victory is won through unparalleled heroism and every possible effort of all the forces of the people, and another when the enemy is defeated by the so-called "filling up with corpses" and fear of machine guns allegedly standing behind back of the troops of the "blocking detachments".
Such false statements from beginning to end break the connection between generations and make people, primarily Russians, lose faith in the power of their people, dooming them to defeat in the ongoing global confrontation.
The tool of falsifications and lies regarding the Second World War is in an efficient way cause a split in society and further contribute to the conditions for the formation of intrastate conflicts that can directly threaten the security of the state.
Meanwhile, the archives preserved absolutely reliable data testifying to the gigantic losses of Nazi Germany suffered by it precisely on the Eastern Front.
At the same time, let's not forget that the Nazis actively pursued a policy of total destruction of the civilian population of the USSR and prisoners of war of the Red Army, which cannot be said about the Soviet troops and their attitude towards the Germans themselves. Remember "Hitlers come and go, but the German people remain ..."?
Thus, the excess of losses among the citizens of the USSR over the losses of citizens of the united Europe, which was part of the Third Reich, was predetermined from the very beginning. And anyone who tries to reproach the USSR and its leadership for this is simply committing blasphemy against all the dead.
So, let's turn to the evidence of the German archives.
On March 1, 1939, the German army consisted of 3.2 million people. By September 1, 1939, the size of the German armed forces was brought to 4.6 million people, of which 2.7 million served in ground forces, 1 million in the reserve army, the rest in the Air Force and Navy.
In total, there were 103 divisions by the beginning of the world war, that is, about 45 thousand military personnel were involved in ensuring the combat activities of one division.
Such modest efforts were accompanied by the introduction of compulsory labor service for persons from 18 to 25 years old. The number of working women has been increased to 13.8 million people, which accounted for one third of all workers and employees. In Germany at that time, a non-working woman was a rarity.
Officially, the Germans call their losses as 10,572 people killed in the war with Poland, 30,322 wounded and 3,409 missing. Although according to the BA / MA RH 7/653 report, 16843 were killed in Poland, and 320 were missing. The number of missing persons is reduced by 10 times, and the number of those killed is 1.5 times more.
In every occupied country, not to mention its allies in the war with the USSR, fascist Germany attracted the population of such countries for economic activity. For example, the occupation of Poland gave the Third Reich the opportunity to mitigate labor conscription for its women, because 420,000 Polish prisoners were involved in the work, and in October 1939, labor conscription was established for the entire population of Poland from 18 to 60 years old of both sexes.
Thus, the assertion that all of Europe fought against the USSR is by no means an exaggeration. And during the information wars of modernity, this very Europe must be reminded of this in all its languages.
The victory over the USSR and its occupation was to become, if not final, but prerequisite achieve the goals of world domination.
Germany at the time of the attack, in addition to the already mobilized 7.4 million Germans, could call for about 8 million more. But at least 3-5 million had to be left for work in Germany itself, and the organization of the occupation order in the conquered territories. After all, working in the Gestapo, SD, Abwehr, etc. should have been only true Aryans. That is, the mobilization reserve in Germany itself in reality amounted to 3-5 million people.
In Europe, there were still a large number of so-called "Volksdeutsche", or ethnic Germans from among them, 3-4 million people could be mobilized. The influx of conscripts gave another 0.6 million people annually. To the approximate largest number of the Wehrmacht, one could add conscripts from among the conquered peoples, but their number should not, for reasons of combat ability and stability, exceed 10-20%, maybe 30%, of the total number.
Mobilization in Germany in 1939 began at an older age. Consequently, in the normal course of events, that is, with the victorious Drang nach Osten, the mobile resource would have been 15-16 million people, and in a less fortunate set of circumstances, about 25-30 million people (over 6 years of the war, about 3 would have grown, 6 million conscripts), the labor resources of Germany, even without women and prisoners of war, amounted to 30-35 million people. In addition, during the war, 0.5 million women were drafted into the German army, not counting civilians.
By 1940, the population of the Third Reich had increased to 90 million people, and taking into account satellites and conquered countries, it reached a figure of 297 million people.
According to the official data of the 1939 census, 170 million people lived in the USSR, after the annexation of Western Belarus, Western Ukraine, the Baltic countries, Bukovina and Bessarabia, the population of the USSR on June 1, 1941 was just over 196 million people.
As is known, about 34.5 million people passed through the Red Army during the war years. This amounted to about 70% of the total number of men aged 15-49 in 1941.
By December 1941, the USSR had lost 7% of the country's territory, on which 74.5 million people lived before the start of the Second World War. In June-December of the same year, about 17 million people were evacuated.
Thus, the dry statistics indicate that there were no “corpses filled up”, “with sticks for machine guns” and other false slanderous similar fabrications could not and did not exist in principle, because the number of those drafted into the Red Army was approximately comparable to the mobilization resource Germany itself, not to mention the satellite countries of the Third Reich.
By the way, the prisoners of war of these countries - France, Holland, Belgium, Italy, Hungary, Romania, Spain, Finland, etc. following the results of the war in the East, 1.1 million citizens of European countries were counted in the USSR, among them - 500 thousand Hungarians, almost 157 thousand Austrians, 70 thousand Czechs and Slovaks, 60 thousand Poles, about 50 thousand Italians, 23 thousand French, 50 thousand Spaniards. There were also Dutch, Finns, Norwegians, Danes, Belgians and many others.
Hungary during the war on the Eastern Front lost almost 810 thousand people, Italy - almost 100 thousand, Romania - about 500 thousand, Finland - almost 100 thousand.
Thanks to such assistance from Europe, the Germans were able to mobilize 25% of the entire population into the army, while the USSR mobilized "only" 17% of its citizens.
If German losses were minimal, and the Red Army, as Mark Solonin and others like him claim, “collapsed” in 1941, then why, in the autumn of 1941, the entire contingent born in 1922 was called up in Germany and the question arose of conscripting people born in 1923 the year of birth?
They were called up by the summer of 1942. At the beginning of the war, mobilization began from the older conscription ages, from the contingent born in 1894-1906. This means that since the autumn of 1941, no less than 16 ages have been called up during the war alone, this is about 8.8 million Germans within the borders of Germany in 1937, considering the average number of draft age, as Field Marshal Wilhelm Keitel testifies, at 550,000 people.
Consequently, only during the summer-autumn of 1941, at least 1.4 million people were called up, so the number of the Wehrmacht on 06/22/41 was 7.2-7.4 million people. And, finally, if the Red Army was "filled up with corpses", then why, after the defeat at Stalingrad, did they announce total mobilization in Germany?
And the last question: in October 1944, in the Third Reich, "super-total" mobilization was already announced, and all unfit men from 16 to 65 years old were gathered into Volkssturm battalions. Where did those few millions of Germans and their allies go?
945 year. Where did the adult Wehrmacht soldiers go???
You won’t believe it, but modern falsifiers and professional liars of our time were successfully opposed in the past ... by US observers, who on December 11, 1941 estimated the losses of the Germans in the Eastern Company killed at 1.3 million people, which is about 8 times more than the German figure 167 thousand people on December 1, 1941 ...
By the way, the Germans themselves then echoed them ...
On June 29, 1941, the Imperial Minister of Propaganda, Dr. Joseph Goebbels, wrote in his diary: "The Russians are bravely defending themselves. Their command is operationally better than in the early days" ...
“Already the battles of June 1941 showed us what the new Soviet army is like,” recalled General Blumentritt, chief of staff of the 4th Army advancing in Belarus. “We lost up to fifty percent of our personnel in battles ... ”
General G. Doerr in the book "The March on Stalingrad" had information about 100 thousand killed only in the last week of January 1943 in the 6th Army. His data are indirectly confirmed by the number of 147.2 thousand German corpses buried by Soviet troops in Stalingrad.
Veterans of the Wehrmacht, Wieder and Adam, say: “In 1943, the defeats of the Wehrmacht were served with victories. Showing "cemeteries" Soviet tanks, cars, killed and prisoners. In the newsreel, after several shots, the Russians fled. But in the cinema halls, where the wounded German front-line soldiers were sitting, whistling rose, screams - lies! Not a single soldier or officer now speaks disparagingly about Ivan, although until recently they used to say so all the time. The soldier of the Red Army every day more and more often acts as a master of close combat, street battles and skillful disguise"
Colonel-General G. Frisner, commander of the Southern Ukraine Army Group: “It is absolutely fair that the Soviet high command, starting from Stalingrad, often exceeded all our expectations. It skillfully carried out a quick maneuver and the transfer of troops, shifting the direction of the main attack, showed skill in creating bridgeheads and equipping starting positions on them for the subsequent transition to the offensive ...
And it’s completely “unclear” (but in fact it’s understandable!), Where the huge fire superiority of the Red Army disappears in the writings of the falsifiers, especially after 1942, when large artillery lined up literally two or three meters apart on the directions of the main strikes, from 122 mm and above calibers, as well as the famous "Katyusha"? Who were hit by hundreds and thousands of Soviet attack aircraft and bombers? After all, in the end, not on Mars, but on German troops ...
Finally, if the losses of the Red Army were so great, what prevented the Germans in the most critical periods for them, if their losses were so minimal, as pseudo-historians claim, not to announce total and super-total mobilizations, but simply to call on the conscripts allegedly available to them and create for yourself on the decisive sectors of the front a victorious, at least 3-fold according to all canons military science, superior in numbers for a decisive offensive? But after all, these conscripts were never found ...
Only this serves as a clear confirmation of the fact that in reality the victims of the Wehrmacht were gigantic.
And it remains to state that in the case of the falsification of the losses of the Wehrmacht and the Red Army, there is a skillfully organized massive campaign carried out as part of the information war to revise the results of Tehran, Yalta and Potsdam and aiming to get rid of Russia as a geopolitical competitor.
Igor Matveev, military expert, colonel
Summary of the last part: approximately 19 million people were mobilized into the German armed forces (AFG) during the Second World War. But how many VSG lost in the war? It is impossible to calculate this directly, there are no documents that would take into account all the losses, and it only remained to add them up to get the desired figure. The mass of German troops was out of action at all without being reflected in any reporting.
The military-historical team led by Krivosheev stated: “determining ... the losses of the German armed forces ... is a very difficult problem ... this is due to the lack of a complete set of reporting and statistical materials ...” (quote from the book “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century”). To solve the problem of determining German losses, according to Krivosheev, it is possible to use the balance method. We need to look at how much was mobilized in the VSG and how much was left at the time of surrender, the difference will decrease - it remains to distribute it according to reasons. We got the following result (in thousands of people):
In total, during the war years, recruited into the armed forces
Germany, taking into account those who served before March 1, 1939 - 21107
By the beginning of the surrender of the German troops:
- remained in service - 4100
- were in hospitals - 700
Lost during the war (total) - 16307
of them:
a) Irretrievable losses (total) - 11844
Including:
- died, died of wounds and disease, missing - 4457
- was captured - 7387
b) Other loss (total) - 4463
of them:
- dismissed due to injury and illness for a long time
as unfit for military service (disabled), deserted - 2463
- demobilized and sent to work
in industry - 2000
The balance according to Krivosheev: 21.1 million were mobilized in the VSG, of which 4.1 million remained to surrender (+ 0.7 million wounded in hospitals). Consequently, 16.3 million left during the war - of which 7.4 million were captured, 4.4 million were crippled or sent to industry; 4.5 million remain - these are the dead.
Krivosheev's figures have long been the object of criticism. The total number of mobilized (21 million) is overestimated. But the subsequent figures are clearly doubtful. The column "demobilized for work in industry" is unclear - 2,000,000 people. Krivosheev himself does not give references and explanations for the origin of such a figure. So, he just took it from Müller-Gillebrand. But how did M-G get this number? M-G does not give links; his book is fundamental, it does not refer to anything, it is referred to. There is an opinion that these are soldiers who were seriously wounded, because of which they could no longer carry out military service, but they were still able to work. No, this contingent should be included in the column demobilized due to disability (2.5 million people).
It is not clear with the number of prisoners. 7.8 million are counted as having surrendered during the fighting. The number is incredible, the ratio of those who surrendered to those who died in the German army simply was not like that. After the surrender, another 4.1 million surrendered; 700 thousand were in hospitals - they should also be classified as prisoners. 7.8 million prisoners before the surrender and 4.8 million after, total: German soldiers taken prisoner - 12.2 million.
Krivosheev cites statistics: our troops reported taking 4377.3 thousand prisoners. Of these, 752.5 thousand military personnel of Germany's allied countries. Another 600 thousand people. were released directly on the fronts - it turned out that these were not German soldiers. Approximately 3 million people remain.
The number of prisoners taken is really huge. But the problem is that these were not only German soldiers. There are references that firefighters and railway workers were captured (they are in uniform, men of military age); police officers were taken prisoner without fail; the same applies to members of paramilitary organizations, as well as the Volsksturm, the German construction battalion, the Khivs, the administration, and so on.
From clear examples: The troops reported that 134,000 prisoners had been taken in Berlin. But there are publications whose authors insist that there were no more than 50,000 German troops in Berlin. The same with Koenigsberg: 94,000 were taken prisoner, and the garrison, according to German data, was 48,000, including the Volsksturm. In general, there were many prisoners, but how many of them were actually soldiers? - It's unknown. What is the percentage of real soldiers among the total number of prisoners - one can only guess.
Between the Normandy landings and the end of April 1945, 2.8 million surrendered to the Western Allies, 1.5 million of them in April - the German front in the west at that time collapsed. The total number of prisoners of war recorded by the Western Allies by April 30, 1945 amounted to 3.15 million people, and increased to 7.6 million after the surrender of Germany.
But the Allies also counted as prisoners of war not only military personnel, but also the personnel of numerous paramilitary formations, NSDAP functionaries, security and police officers, up to firefighters. There were 7.6 million prisoners of war, but there were much fewer actual prisoners of war.
Canadian D. Buck drew attention to the huge discrepancy between how many the Allies took prisoner and how much they then released. The number released is much less than the number taken. From this, D. Bak concluded that up to a million German prisoners died in the Allied camps. Buck's critics were quick to assure that the prisoners were not starved, and the discrepancies in numbers arose due to careless, relaxed accounting.
Until April 1945, approximately 1.5 million people were taken into Soviet and Western captivity (this is if you count with all the stretch). The total number of prisoners according to Krivosheev is 12 million. It turns out that by April 1945 Germany had a 9 million army - despite all the defeats suffered. And, despite such an army, she suffered a final defeat in a month. Rather, it should be assumed that something is wrong with the count of prisoners. Perhaps there was a double count of the same prisoners. The 4.8 million prisoners taken after the surrender were mixed with the 7.4 million taken before the surrender. So, the figure of 7.4 million taken prisoner before surrender cannot be accepted.
It is also not clear where the figure of 4.1 million soldiers who remained in the VSG at the beginning of the surrender came from.
The map shows the territory remaining with the Reich by May 1945. By May 9, this territory had decreased even more. Could more than 4 million soldiers fit on it? How was such a number established? Perhaps based on the count of those who surrendered after the surrender. We return to the question: who was in captivity, considered to be German soldiers?
The general surrender of Germany on May 9 was preceded by a series of surrenders in the west: on April 29, 1945, German troops in Italy surrendered; On May 4, the act of surrender of the German armed forces in Holland, Denmark, and North-West Germany was signed; On May 5, German troops surrendered in Bavaria and Western Austria.
By May 9, the active German troops remained only in front of the Soviet army (in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Courland) and in front of the Yugoslav. On the western fronts the Germans had already surrendered; only the army remained in Norway (9 divisions with reinforcement units - this is no more than 300,000 military personnel) and small garrisons of several seaside fortresses. Soviet troops reported 1.4 million taken prisoner after capitulation; the Yugoslavs reported 200,000 prisoners. Together with the army in Norway, it turns out no more than 2 million people (again, it is not known how many of them are actually military personnel). Perhaps the phrase "to the beginning of surrender" does not mean by May 9, but by the end of April, when the surrender began on the Western fronts. That is, 4.1 million in the ranks and 0.7 million in hospitals - this is the situation at the end of April. Krivosheev does not specify this.
4.5 million dead German soldiers - this is the figure that Krivosheev ultimately received. The modern (comparatively) German researcher R. Overmans counted 5.1 million military dead (5.3 * together with the dead employees of paramilitary organizations (+ 1.2 million civilian dead)). This is already more than Krivosheev's figure. The figure of Overmans - 5.3 million dead military personnel - is not officially accepted in Germany, but it is indicated in the German wiki. That is, society accepted it
In general, Krivosheev's figures are clearly doubtful; he does not solve the problem of determining German losses. The balance method does not work here either, since there are no necessary reliable data for this either. So this question remains: where did the 19 million fighters of the German army go?
There are researchers who propose a method of demographic calculation: to determine the total losses of the population of Germany, and on their basis, approximately estimate the military. There were also such calculations on the topvar (“Losses of the USSR and Germany in the Second World War”): the population of Germany in 1939 was 70.2 million (excluding Austrians (6.76 million) and Sudetenland (3.64 million)). The occupying authorities in 1946 conducted a census of the population of Germany - 65,931,000 people were counted. 70.2 - 65.9 \u003d 4.3 million. To this figure we must add the natural increase in the population in 1939-46. - 3.5-3.8 million. Then you need to subtract the figure of natural mortality for 1939-46 - 2.8 million people. And then add at least 6.5 million people, and presumably even 8 million. These are Germans expelled from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia (6.5 million) and about 1-1.5 million Germans fled from Alsace and Lorraine. Arithmetic mean from 6.5-8 million - 7.25 million
So, it turns out:
The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
The population in 1946 was 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
The natural increase is 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 million people.
However, according to the 1946 census, much is unclear. It was carried out without the Saar (800,000 pre-war population). Were prisoners taken into account in the camps? The author does not clarify this point; in the English wiki there is an indication that no, they were not taken into account. The emigration inflow is clearly overestimated; 1.5 million Germans from Alsace did not flee. Still, not Germans live in Alsace, but Alsatians, loyal French citizens, there was no need for them to flee. 6.5 million Germans could not be expelled from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia - there were not so many Germans there. And part of the expelled settled in Austria, and not in Germany. But besides the Germans, others also fled to Germany - a lot of variegated accomplices, how many were there? Not even known approximately. How were they counted in the census?
As Krivosheev wrote: “Determining with reliable accuracy the scale of human losses of the German armed forces ... on the Soviet-German front during the Second World War is a very difficult problem.” Krivosheev, apparently, believed that this problem was complex, but solvable. However, his attempt was completely unconvincing. In fact, this task is simply unsolvable.
* Distribution of losses by fronts: 104,000 were killed in the Balkans, 151,000 in Italy, 340,000 in the West, 2,743,000 in the East, 291,000 in other theaters, 1,230,000 in the final period of the war (of which East up to a million), died in captivity (according to official data from the USSR and Western allies) 495,000. According to the Germans, 1.1 million died in captivity, mostly in the Soviet. According to Soviet records, more than half as many died in captivity. So, those dead that are attributed in Germany to Soviet captivity actually died in battle (at least for the most part). After their death, they were again mobilized - to the propaganda front.
Military losses during the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War have been the subject of both disputes and speculation for many years. Moreover, the attitude towards these losses is changing exactly the opposite. So, in the 70s, the propaganda apparatus of the Central Committee of the CPSU for some reason almost proudly broadcast about the heavy human losses of the USSR during the war years. And not so much about the victims of the Nazi genocide, but about the combat losses of the Red Army. With completely incomprehensible pride, the propaganda “canard” was exaggerated, allegedly about only three percent of the front-line soldiers born in 1923 who survived the war. With rapture they broadcast about entire graduation classes, where all the young men went to the front and not one returned. An almost socialist competition was launched among rural areas, who has more villages, where all the men who went to the front died. Although, according to demographic statistics, on the eve of the Great Patriotic War there were 8.6 million men in 1919-1923. birth, and in 1949, during the All-Union census of the population, there were 5.05 million of them alive, that is, the decline in the male population of 1919-1923. births during this period amounted to 3.55 million people. Thus, if we accept that for each of the ages 1919-1923. Since there is an equal size of the male population, there were 1.72 million men of each year of birth. Then it turns out that 1.67 million people (97%) died of conscripts born in 1923, and conscripts born in 1919-1922. births - 1.88 million people, i.e. about 450 thousand people of those born in each of these four years (about 27% of their total number). And despite the fact that the military personnel of 1919-1922. births made up the regular Red Army, which took the blow of the Wehrmacht in June 1941 and almost completely burned out in the battles of the summer and autumn of that year. This alone easily refutes all the conjectures of the notorious "sixties" about the allegedly three percent of the surviving front-line soldiers born in 1923.
During the "perestroika" and so-called. reforms, the pendulum has swung the other way. Unthinkable figures of 30 and 40 million servicemen who died during the war were enthusiastically cited, the notorious B. Sokolov, a doctor of philology, by the way, and not a mathematician, is especially zealous with the methods of statistics. Absurd ideas were voiced that Germany lost only almost 100 thousand people during the entire war, about a monstrous ratio of 1:14 dead German and Soviet soldiers, etc. Statistical data on the losses of the Soviet Armed Forces, given in the reference book “Secrecy Removed”, published in 1993, and in the fundamental work “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century (Losses of the Armed Forces)”, were categorically declared falsifications. Moreover, according to the principle: since this does not correspond to someone's speculative concept of the losses of the Red Army, it means falsification. At the same time, the losses of the enemy were underestimated in every possible way and are being underestimated. With veal delight, figures are announced that do not climb into any gates. So, for example, the losses of the 4th Panzer Army and the Kempf task force during the German offensive near Kursk in July 1943 were cited in the amount of only 6900 killed soldiers and officers and 12 burnt tanks. At the same time, miserable and ridiculous arguments were invented to explain why, having practically retained 100% combat capability tank army suddenly backed away: from the Allied landings in Italy, to the lack of fuel and spare parts, or even about the rains that had begun.
Therefore, the question of the human losses of Germany during the Second World War is quite relevant. Moreover, interestingly, in Germany itself there are still no fundamental studies on this issue. Only circumstantial information is available. Most researchers, when analyzing Germany's losses during World War II, use the monograph of the German researcher B. Müller-Hillebrandt “The Land Army of Germany. 1933-1945". However, this historian resorted to outright falsification. Thus, indicating the number of those drafted into the Wehrmacht and the SS troops, Müller-Hillebrand gave information only for the period from 06/01/1939 to 04/30/1945, modestly keeping silent about the contingents previously called up for military service. But by June 1, 1939, Germany had already been deploying its armed forces for four years, and by June 1 of that year, there were 3214.0 thousand people in the Wehrmacht! Therefore, the number of men mobilized in the Wehrmacht and the SS in 1935-1945. takes on a different form (see table 1).
Thus, total mobilized in the Wehrmacht and the SS troops is not 17,893.2 thousand people, but about 21,107.2 thousand people, which immediately gives a completely different picture of Germany's losses during the Second World War.
Now let's turn to the actual losses of the Wehrmacht. The Wehrmacht operated three different loss accounting systems:
1) through the channel "IIa" - military service;
2) through the channel of the medical and sanitary service;
3) through the channel of personal accounting of losses in the territorial bodies of the list accounting of German military personnel.
But at the same time, there was an interesting feature - the losses of units and subunits were taken into account not in total, but according to their combat mission. This was done in order for the Reserve Army to have comprehensive information about which contingents of military personnel needed to be submitted for replenishment in each specific division. A reasonable enough principle, but today this method of accounting for the loss of personnel allows you to manipulate the numbers of German losses.
Firstly, separate records were kept of the losses of personnel of the so-called. "combat strength" - Kampfwstaerke - and support units. So, in German infantry division state in 1944, the "combat strength" was 7160 people, the number of units combat support and rear - 5609 people, and the total number - Tagesstaerke - 12,769 people. In a tank division according to the state of 1944, the “combat strength” was 9307 people, the number of combat support and rear units was 5420 people, and the total number was 14,727 people. The "combat strength" of the active army of the Wehrmacht was approximately 40-45% of the total number of personnel. By the way, this allows you to very famously falsify the course of the war, when the total number of Soviet troops at the front is indicated, and the German ones only combat. Like, signalmen, sappers, repairmen, they don’t go on attacks ...
Secondly, in the "combat strength" itself - Kampfwstaerke - units "directly fighting" - Gefechtstaerke - were separately allocated. Infantry (motorized rifle, tank-grenadier) regiments, tank regiments and battalions and reconnaissance battalions. Artillery regiments and divisions, anti-tank and anti-aircraft divisions belonged to combat support units. AT Air force- Luftwaffe - "units directly engaged in combat" were considered flight personnel, in naval forces- Kriegsmarine - sailors belonged to this category. And accounting for the losses of personnel of the "combat strength" was carried out separately for the personnel "directly fighting" and for the personnel of combat support units.
It is also interesting to note that only those killed directly on the battlefield were taken into account in combat losses, but the military personnel who died from severe wounds during the evacuation stages were already attributed to the losses of the Reserve Army and were excluded from the total number of irretrievable losses of the active army. That is, as soon as the wound was determined to require more than 6 weeks to heal, the Wehrmacht soldier was immediately transferred to the Reserve Army. And even if they did not have time to take him to the rear and he was dying near the front line, anyway, as an irretrievable loss, he was already taken into account in the Reserve Army and this serviceman was excluded from the number of combat irretrievable losses of a specific front (Eastern, African, Western, etc.) . That is why, in accounting for the losses of the Wehrmacht, almost only those killed and missing appear.
There was another specific feature of accounting for losses in the Wehrmacht. Czechs drafted into the Wehrmacht from the protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Poles drafted into the Wehrmacht from the Poznan and Pomeranian regions of Poland, as well as Alsatians and Lorraine through the channel of personal loss accounting in the territorial bodies of the German military personnel list were not taken into account, since they did not belong to the so-called . "Imperial Germans". In the same way, ethnic Germans (Volksdeutsche) drafted into the Wehrmacht from the occupied European countries were not taken into account through the personal accounting channel. In other words, the losses of these categories of servicemen were excluded from the total accounting of irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht. Although more than 1200 thousand people were called up from these territories to the Wehrmacht and the SS, not counting the ethnic Germans - Volksdoche - the occupied countries of Europe. Only from the ethnic Germans of Croatia, Hungary and the Czech Republic, six SS divisions were formed, not counting the large number of military police units.
The Wehrmacht did not take into account the losses of auxiliary paramilitary formations: the National Socialist Automobile Corps, the Speer Transport Corps, the Imperial Labor Service and the Todt Organization. Although the personnel of these formations were directly involved in combat operations, and on final stage During the war, units and units of these auxiliary formations rushed into battle against Soviet troops on German territory. Often, the personnel of these formations were added as reinforcements to the Wehrmacht formations right at the front, but since this was not a reinforcement sent through the Reserve Army, no centralized accounting of this reinforcement was kept, and the combat loss of this personnel was not taken into account through the service loss accounting channels.
Separately from the Wehrmacht, the losses of the Volkssturm and the Hitler Youth were also recorded, which were widely involved in hostilities in East Prussia, East Pomerania, Silesia, Brandenburg, West Pomerania, Saxony and Berlin. The Volksshurm and the Hitler Youth were under the control of the NSDAP. Often, units of both the Volkssturm and the Hitler Youth were also directly at the front merged into the Wehrmacht units and formations as replenishment, but for the same reason as with other paramilitary formations, personal nominal accounting of this replenishment was not carried out.
Also, the Wehrmacht did not take into account the losses of the SS military and police units (primarily the Feljandarmerie), which fought against the partisan movement, and at the final stage of the war rushed into battle against the Red Army.
In addition, the so-called. "volunteer assistants" - Hilfswillige ("Hiwi", Hiwi), but the losses of this category of personnel in the total combat losses of the Wehrmacht were also not taken into account. Special mention should be made of "voluntary helpers". These "assistants" were recruited in all countries of Europe and the occupied part of the USSR, in total in 1939-1945. up to 2 million people joined the Wehrmacht and the SS as "voluntary assistants" (including about 500 thousand people from the occupied territories of the USSR). And although most of the Hiwi were service personnel of the rear structures and commandant's offices of the Wehrmacht in the occupied territories, a significant part of them were directly part of the combat units and formations.
Thus, unscrupulous researchers from the total number of irretrievable losses of Germany excluded a large number of lost personnel who directly participated in the hostilities, but were not formally related to the Wehrmacht. Although the auxiliary paramilitary formations, and the Volkssturm, and "volunteer assistants" suffered losses during the battles, these losses can rightfully be attributed to the combat losses of Germany.
Table 2, presented here, attempts to bring together the strength of both the Wehrmacht and the German paramilitary forces, and roughly calculate the loss of personnel of the armed forces of Nazi Germany during the Second World War.
The number of German soldiers who were captured by the Allies and surrendered to them may be surprising, despite the fact that 2/3 of the Wehrmacht troops operated on the Eastern Front. The bottom line is that in the captivity of the Allies in a common boiler, both the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS (the designation of the SS field troops operating on the fronts of the Second World War) and the personnel of various paramilitary formations, Volkssturm, NSDAP functionaries, employees territorial subdivisions RSHA and police territorial formations, up to firefighters. As a result, the Allies counted as prisoners up to 4032.3 thousand people, although the actual number of prisoners of war from the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS was significantly lower than the Allies indicated in their documents - about 3000.0 thousand people, however, in our calculations will use official data. In addition, in April-May 1945, German troops, fearing retribution for the atrocities committed on the territory of the USSR, rapidly rolled back to the west, trying to surrender to the Anglo-American troops. Also in late April - early May 1945, the Wehrmacht Reserve Army and all kinds of paramilitary formations, as well as police units, surrendered en masse to the Anglo-American troops.
Thus, the table clearly shows that the total losses of the Third Reich on the Eastern Front in killed and died from wounds, missing, dead in captivity reach 6071 thousand people.
However, as you know, not only German troops, foreign volunteers and paramilitary formations of Germany, but also the troops of their satellites fought on the Eastern Front against the Soviet Union. It is also necessary to take into account the losses and "voluntary assistants -" Hiwi ". Therefore, taking into account the losses of these categories of personnel, the overall picture of the losses of Germany and its satellites on the Eastern Front takes the picture shown in Table 3.
Thus, the total irretrievable losses of Nazi Germany and its satellites on the Eastern Front in 1941-1945. reach 7 million 625 thousand people. If we take losses only on the battlefield, excluding those who died in captivity and the losses of "volunteer assistants", then the losses are: for Germany - about 5620.4 thousand people and for satellite countries - 959 thousand people, in total - about 6579.4 thousands of people. Soviet losses on the battlefield amounted to 6885.1 thousand people. Thus, the losses of Germany and its satellites on the battlefield, taking into account all factors, are only slightly less than the combat losses of the Soviet Armed Forces on the battlefield (about 5%), and there is no ratio of 1:8 or 1:14 combat losses of Germany and its satellites the losses of the USSR are out of the question.
The figures given in the tables above, of course, are very indicative and have serious errors, but they give, in a certain approximation, the order of losses of Nazi Germany and its satellites on the Eastern Front and during the war as a whole. At the same time, of course, if it were not for the inhuman treatment of Soviet prisoners of war by the Nazis, the total number of losses of Soviet military personnel would have been much lower. With an appropriate attitude towards Soviet prisoners of war, at least one and a half to two million people from among those who died in German captivity could have survived.
Nevertheless, a detailed and detailed study of the real human losses in Germany during the Second World War does not exist to date, because. there is no political order, and many data relating to the losses of Germany are still classified under the pretext that they can inflict “moral injuries” on the current German society (let it be better to remain in happy ignorance of how many Germans perished during the Second World War). Contrary to the popular print of the domestic media in Germany, actively falsifying history. main goal these actions is to introduce into public opinion the idea that in the war with the USSR, Nazi Germany was the defending side, and the Wehrmacht was the "vanguard of European civilization" in the fight against "Bolshevik barbarism." And there they actively praise the “brilliant” German generals, who for four years held back the “Asian hordes of Bolsheviks”, with minimal losses of German troops, and only the “twenty-fold numerical superiority of the Bolsheviks”, who filled the Wehrmacht with corpses, broke the resistance of the “valiant” soldiers of the Wehrmacht. And the thesis is constantly being exaggerated that more “civilian” German population died than soldiers at the front, and most of the dead civilian population supposedly falls on the eastern part of Germany, where they allegedly committed atrocities Soviet troops.
In the light of the problems discussed above, it is necessary to touch on the clichés stubbornly imposed by pseudo-historians that the USSR won by “filling up the German with the corpses of its soldiers.” The USSR simply did not have such an amount of human resources. On June 22, 1941, the population of the USSR was about 190-194 million people. Including the male population was about 48-49% - approximately 91-93 million people, of which men 1891-1927. births were about 51-53 million people. We exclude approximately 10% of men unfit for military service even in war time, is about 5 million people. We exclude 18-20% of the "booked" - highly qualified specialists who are not subject to conscription - this is about 10 million more people. Thus, the draft resource of the USSR was about 36-38 million people. What the USSR actually demonstrated by conscripting 34,476.7 thousand people into the Armed Forces. In addition, it must be taken into account that a significant part of the draft contingent remained in the occupied territories. And many of these people were either deported to Germany, or died, or embarked on the path of collaborationism, and after the Soviet troops liberated from the occupied territories, much fewer people were drafted into the army (by 40-45%) than could be called up before the occupation. In addition, the economy of the USSR simply could not stand it if almost all men capable of carrying weapons - 48-49 million people - were drafted into the army. Then there would be no one to melt steel, to produce T-34 and Il-2, to grow bread.
In order to have in May 1945 the Armed Forces numbering 11,390.6 thousand people, to have 1046 thousand people to be treated in hospitals, to demobilize 3798.2 thousand people for injuries and illnesses, to lose 4600 thousand people. prisoners and lose 26,400 thousand people killed, just 48,632.3 thousand people should have been mobilized into the Armed Forces. That is, with the exception of cripples completely unfit for military service, not a single man of 1891-1927. birth in the rear should not have remained! Moreover, taking into account that some of the men of military age ended up in the occupied territories, and some worked at industrial enterprises, the mobilization inevitably had to get older and more younger ages. However, the mobilization of men older than 1891 was not carried out, as well as the mobilization of conscripts younger than 1927. In general, the doctor of philology B. Sokolov would have been engaged in the analysis of poetry or prose, perhaps he would not have become a laughing stock.
Returning to the losses of the Wehrmacht and the Third Reich as a whole, it should be noted that the issue of accounting for losses there is quite interesting and specific. Thus, the data on the losses of armored vehicles, cited by B. Müller-Gillebrandt, are very interesting and noteworthy. For example, in April-June 1943, when there was a lull on the Eastern Front, and the fighting went on only in North Africa 1019 tanks and assault guns were taken into account as irretrievable losses. Moreover, by the end of March, the "Africa" army had barely 200 tanks and assault guns, and in April and May, 100 armored vehicles were delivered to Tunisia at most. Those. in North Africa in April and May the Wehrmacht could lose at most 300 tanks and assault guns. Where did another 700-750 lost armored vehicles come from? Were there secret tank battles on the Eastern Front? Or did the Wehrmacht tank army find its end in Yugoslavia these days?
Similarly, the loss of armored vehicles in December 1942, when there were brutal tank battles on the Don, or the losses in January 1943, when the German troops rolled back from the Caucasus, abandoning their equipment, Müller-Hillebrand leads in the amount of only 184 and 446 tanks and assault guns. But in February-March 1943, when the Wehrmacht launched a counteroffensive in the Donbass, the losses of the German BTT suddenly reached 2069 units in February and 759 units in March. It must be borne in mind that the Wehrmacht was advancing, the battlefield remained behind German troops, and all armored vehicles damaged in battles were delivered to the tank repair units of the Wehrmacht. In Africa, the Wehrmacht could not suffer such losses; by the beginning of February, the Africa army had no more than 350-400 tanks and assault guns, and in February-March received only about 200 armored vehicles for replenishment. Those. even with the destruction of all German tanks in Africa, the losses of the Afrika army in February-March could not exceed 600 units, the remaining 2228 tanks and assault guns were lost on the Eastern Front. How could this happen? Why did the Germans lose five times in the offensive more tanks than during a retreat, although the experience of war shows that the opposite always happens?
The answer is simple: in February 1943, the 6th German Army of Field Marshal Paulus capitulated in Stalingrad. And the Wehrmacht had to transfer to the list of irretrievable losses all armored vehicles, which they had long lost in the Don steppes, but continued to be modestly listed in the medium and long-term repairs in the 6th Army.
It is impossible to explain why, gnawing through the defenses of the Soviet troops near Kursk in depth, saturated with anti-tank artillery and tanks in July 1943, the German troops lost fewer tanks than in February 1943, when they launched counterattacks on the troops of the South-Western and Voronezh fronts. Even if we assume that in February 1943 the German troops lost 50% of their tanks in Africa, it is difficult to assume that in February 1943 in the Donbass, small Soviet troops were able to knock out more than 1000 tanks, and in July near Belgorod and Orel - only 925.
It is no coincidence that for a long time, when the documents of the German “panzer divisions” were captured in the “cauldrons”, serious questions arose about where the German equipment had gone if no one had broken out of the encirclement, and the amount of abandoned and broken equipment did not correspond to what was written in the documents. Each time, the Germans had significantly fewer tanks and assault guns than were listed according to the documents. And only by the middle of 1944 did they realize that the real composition of German tank divisions must be determined according to the “combat-ready” column. Often there were situations when in the German tank and tank-grenadier divisions there were more "dead tank souls" than actually available combat-ready tanks and assault guns. And burnt out, with turrets rolled to the side, with gaping gaps in the armor, the tanks stood in the yards of tank repair enterprises, on paper moving from vehicles of one repair category to another, waiting either to be sent for remelting, or they were captured by Soviet troops. On the other hand, German industrial corporations at that time were quietly "sawing" the finances allocated for supposedly long-term repairs or repairs "with shipment to Germany." In addition, if the Soviet documents immediately and clearly indicated that the irretrievably lost tank burned down or was broken so that it could not be restored, then the German documents indicated only the disabled unit or unit (engine, transmission, chassis), or the location of combat damage was indicated (hull, turret, bottom, etc.). At the same time, even a tank completely burned out from a shell hit in the engine compartment was listed as having engine damage.
If we analyze the same B. Muller-Gillebrandt's data on the losses of the "Royal Tigers", then an even more striking picture emerges. At the beginning of February 1945, the Wehrmacht and the Waffen-SS had 219 Pz. Kpfw. VI Ausf. B "Tiger II" ("Royal Tiger"). By this time, 417 tanks of this type had been produced. And lost, according to Muller-Gillebrandt, - 57. In total, the difference between produced and lost tanks is 350 units. In stock - 219. Where did 131 cars go? And that is not all. According to the same retired general in August 1944, there were no lost King Tigers at all. And many other researchers of the history of the Panzerwaffe also find themselves in an awkward position, when almost everyone points out that the German troops recognized the loss of only 6 (six) Pz. Kpfw. VI Ausf. B "Tiger II". But what about the situation when, near the town of Szydlów and the village of Oglendow near Sandomierz, Soviet trophy groups and special groups from the armored department of the 1st Ukrainian Front were studied in detail and described with serial numbers of 10 wrecked and burnt and 3 fully serviceable "Royal Tigers" ? It remains only to assume that, standing within the line of sight of the German troops, the wrecked and burnt "Royal Tigers", were listed by the Wehrmacht in their long-term repair under the pretext that theoretically these tanks could be beaten off during a counterattack and then returned to service. Original logic, but nothing else comes to mind.
According to B. Müller-Gillebrandt, by February 1, 1945, 5840 were produced heavy tanks Pz. Kpfw. V "Panther" ("Panther"), lost - 3059 units, 1964 units were available. If we take the difference between the produced "Panthers" and their losses, then the remainder is 2781 units. There was, as already mentioned, 1964 units. At the same time, Panther tanks were not transferred to German satellites. Where did 817 units go?
With tanks Pz. Kpfw. IV is exactly the same picture. Produced by February 1, 1945 of these machines, according to Muller-Gillebrandt, 8428 units, lost - 6151, the difference is 2277 units, there were 1517 units on February 1, 1945. No more than 300 machines of this type were transferred to the Allies. Thus, up to 460 cars are unaccounted for, having disappeared to who knows where.
Tanks Pz. Kpfw. III. Produced - 5681 units, lost by February 1, 1945 - 4808 units, the difference - 873 units, there were 534 tanks on the same date. No more than 100 units were transferred to the satellites, so it is not known where about 250 tanks evaporated from the account.
In total, more than 1,700 tanks "Royal Tiger", "Panther", Pz. Kpfw. IV and Pz. Kpfw. III.
Paradoxically, to date, none of the attempts to deal with the irretrievable losses of the Wehrmacht in technology has not been successful. No one was able to decompose in detail by months and years what real irretrievable losses the Panzerwaffe suffered. And all because of the peculiar methodology of "accounting" for the loss of military equipment in the German Wehrmacht.
In the same way, in the Luftwaffe, the existing methodology for accounting for losses made it possible for a long time to list in the “repair” column downed, but fallen on their territory, aircraft. Sometimes even a shattered plane that crashed at the location of German troops was not immediately included in the lists of irretrievable losses, but was considered damaged. All this led to the fact that in the squadrons of the Luftwaffe up to 30-40%, and even more, the equipment was constantly listed as not combat-ready, smoothly moving from the category of damaged to the category to be written off.
One example: when in July 1943, on the southern face of the Kursk Bulge, pilot A. Gorovets shot down 9 Ju-87 dive bombers in one battle, the Soviet infantry examined the Junkers crash sites and reported detailed data on the downed aircraft: tactical and factory numbers, data on dead crew members, etc. However, the Luftwaffe acknowledged the loss of only two dive bombers that day. How could this happen? The answer is simple: by the evening of the day of the air battle, the territory where the Luftwaffe bombers had fallen was occupied by German troops. And the downed planes were in the territory controlled by the Germans. And of the nine bombers, only two scattered in the air, the rest fell, but retained relative integrity, although they were mangled. And the Luftwaffe with a calm soul attributed the downed aircraft to the number of only received combat damage. Surprisingly, this is a real fact.
And in general, considering the issue of losses of Wehrmacht equipment, it must be borne in mind that a lot of money was made on the repair of equipment. And when it came to the financial interests of the financial and industrial oligarchy, the entire repressive apparatus of the Third Reich stood at attention before it. The interests of industrial corporations and banks were guarded sacredly. Moreover, most of the Nazi bosses had their own selfish interests in this.
It is necessary to note one more specific point. Contrary to popular belief about the pedantry, accuracy and scrupulousness of the Germans, the Nazi elite was well aware that a complete and accurate accounting of losses could become a weapon against them. After all, there is always a possibility that information about the true extent of the losses will fall into the hands of the enemy and be used in a propaganda war against the Reich. Therefore, in Nazi Germany they turned a blind eye to the confusion in accounting for losses. At first there was a calculation that the winners were not judged, then it became a deliberate policy in order not to give the winners, in the event of the complete defeat of the Third Reich, arguments for exposing the scale of the disaster to the German people. In addition, it cannot be ruled out that at the final stage of the war, a special erasure of archives was carried out in order not to give the winners additional arguments in accusing the leaders of the Nazi regime of crimes not only against other peoples, but also against their own, German. After all, the death of several million young men in a senseless massacre for the sake of implementing crazy ideas about world domination is a very strong argument for the prosecution.
Therefore, the true scale of Germany's human losses during the Second World War is still waiting for its scrupulous researchers, and then very curious facts may be revealed to them. But on the condition that these will be conscientious historians, and not all kinds of corned beef, milk, Svanidze, Afanasyev, Gavriilpopov and Sokolov. Paradoxically, there will be a commission to counter the falsification of history more work within Russia than outside it.
"Washed in blood"? Lies and truth about losses in the Great Patriotic War Victor Zemskov
Losses of the allies of Germany and the USSR on the Soviet-German front
According to the team of G.F. Krivosheev, the total irretrievable losses of the Armed Forces of Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front amounted to 8649.3 thousand people. But these data, apparently, are noticeably overestimated. First of all, the conspicuous discrepancy in the numbers of irretrievable human losses of Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front raises legitimate doubts when comparing research data from 1993 and 2001. Unlike the USSR, in all the warring countries shortly after the war (not later than 1951) population censuses were carried out, so the work to determine the real figures of their losses is based on a much more accurate demographic base than in the USSR. And although in the eight years that have passed between the above-mentioned publications, G.F. Krivosheev, this base has not changed, the total irretrievable losses of the German satellites were clarified by him. They suddenly decreased by 257.6 thousand people. (while the number of those taken prisoner increased by 33.2 thousand), despite the additional inclusion of Slovakia in their number. But, what is even more surprising, just by the same amount, the irretrievable losses of Germany suddenly increased. And at the same time, the number of German prisoners increased immediately by 1004.7 thousand people.
It turns out an extremely interesting phenomenon: the composition of the allies has changed, the figures for the types of losses in both works significantly “walk”, but as a result, the final number of irretrievable losses has remained almost unchanged. Accordingly, the ratio for them remained unchanged - 1: 1.3. Isn't this another clear evidence of the indicator agreed in advance with the "higher authority"?
Heated discussions around the extensive information published by the team of G.F. Krivosheev, have not weakened since the release of his first edition in 1993. But the spears of the arguing break mainly over the magnitude of the losses of the main participants in the battles on the fields of the Great Patriotic War - the Red Army and the Wehrmacht. At the same time, their allies, who fought shoulder to shoulder with them, most often remain in the shadows. Meanwhile, their contribution to the fierce struggle on the Eastern Front is by no means small. This is especially true for Germany's satellite countries. Almost from the very first days of the war, the troops of Hungary, Romania, Slovakia and Finland acted on its side. In total, they fielded 31 divisions and 18 brigades against the Soviet Union, which accounted for more than 30% of the Wehrmacht units involved in the first line. And in a matter of weeks, the Italian expeditionary force also joined them.
The military contingents of all these states were operationally subordinate to the German command. However, at the same time, they still retained relative independence and kept their own record of successes, failures and losses. The Red Army soldiers and commanders who fell into the hands of the Finns and, in part, the Romanians, remained in their prisoner of war camps until the withdrawal of these countries from the war. The rest of the foreign citizens who fought on the side of Germany on the Eastern Front, as well as the units, units and formations formed from them, were organically part of the Wehrmacht, so their losses were included in its loss.
On the other hand, the irretrievable losses of the armies of the above countries significantly affected general level losses of the opponents of the USSR. G.F. did not pass by them either. Krivosheev. In his book on p. 514 there is a table entitled "Irretrievable casualties of the armed forces of the countries - allies of Germany on the Soviet-German front from 22.6.1941 to 9.5.1945". Two circumstances connected with it immediately catch the eye: firstly, the amazing detail and accuracy of the figures available there. The vast majority of the data is counted to one person. And secondly - there is not a single reference either to Soviet sources or to foreign ones.
Apparently, most of the information included there was obtained from the reports of the fronts (armies) on the results of the operations carried out. Those who directly worked with the primary documents of TsAMO saw these fantastic figures. If you add them up, then by the beginning of 1944 there should have been no land army left in Germany at all. The only exception here is information about the number of prisoners of war who ended up in Soviet camps and their future fate. Therefore, reliable figures for the losses of the German satellites must be sought in the works of authoritative historians who have devoted solid monographs to their participation in the war. And such historians, of course, exist and are well known to everyone interested in this important topic.
These include, first of all, Mark Axworthy, one of the authors of the monograph “Third Axis Fourth Ally. Romanian Armed Forces in the European War, 1941–1945”, dedicated to the participation of the Romanian army in World War II. The monograph immediately after its publication in 1995 became a universally recognized classic. Since then, not a single serious study on this subject is complete without references to it. And appeared after seven years fundamental research of the Slovak armed forces during the same time period, Axis Slovakia: Hitler’s Slavic Wedge, 1938-1945, rightfully occupies a similar place in the topic of this book, previously very little studied.
The issues of the participation of the Hungarian armed forces on the side of Germany in the battles on the Eastern Front today are best covered by the well-known historian Leo Niehorster in his detailed work The Royal Hungarian Army, 1920–1945. His information about the human losses of the Hungarian army was supplemented by the Hungarian scientist Tamas Stark, who published the book “Hungary’s Human Losses in world war II". A reliable figure of the losses of the Italian expeditionary force in the USSR was found in the authoritative statistical publication The World War II Databook, which was prepared by John Ellis. A voluminous collection of documents and materials “Prisoners of War in the USSR. 1939-1956".
Finally, the losses of the Finnish army in 1941-1945. most exhaustively disclosed in the six-volume edition official history of this war "Jatkosodan historia", published in Helsinki in 1988-1994. At the same time, the total number of Finnish prisoners of war captured by the Red Army can be found in a good monograph by Professor D.D. Frolov "Soviet-Finnish captivity. 1939–1944 On both sides of the barbed wire. He worked a lot both in the Soviet archives and in National Archives Finland and significantly clarified previously known data on the number and fate of Finnish soldiers in Soviet captivity. So, if, according to G.F. Krivosheev, there were 2377 of them, of which 403 died, or 17%, then D.D. Frolov counted 3114 captured Finns. 997 of them (32%) did not survive the war.
Information from the above sources is summarized in the following table:
Table 13
Irretrievable losses of the armed forces of Germany's allies on the Soviet-German front
Note: * Excluded from the number of Hungarian prisoners of war were 10,352 people who were released in Budapest during raids, and 70,000 who capitulated after the end of the war.
A serious discrepancy between the total number of irretrievable losses of the armed forces of Germany's allies calculated in the table and the data of G.F. Krivosheev is more than obvious. He got them 1,468,145 people, or 41% more. One of the main reasons for such a significant difference has already been named by us earlier. True to himself G.F. Krivosheev, without further ado, as in the case of the Germans, recorded in the number of prisoners of war taken by the Red Army before May 9, 1945, everyone, including military personnel who capitulated after the end of the war, and even, partially, interned civilians.
Information G.F. Krivosheev about the irretrievable losses of the armed forces of the allies of the USSR on the Soviet-German front is also far from reliable. This applies primarily to his data on the losses of Romania. In addition, the participation of Finland in the war against Germany is not reflected in him at all. But the Finns fought the Germans on the side of the USSR for almost 7 months, from October 1, 1944 to April 25, 1945. These events were called the “Lapland War” in Finland. Interestingly, G.F. Krivosheev carefully took into account the 72 Mongolian soldiers lost in the war with Japan, and for some reason chose to completely ignore the 1036 Finns killed and missing in battles with the Wehrmacht on the extreme northern flank of the Soviet-German front. But they, among other things, captured 2,600 Germans and, in accordance with the agreement, handed them over to the Soviet Union.
Table 14
Irretrievable losses of the armed forces of the allies of the USSR on the Soviet-German front
The total data obtained in the table on the irretrievable losses of the armed forces of the allies of the USSR on the Soviet-German front during the Great Patriotic War differ from the figure of G.F. Krivosheev (76,122 people) more than one and a half times. Moreover, unlike the losses of Germany's satellites, which he significantly exaggerated, the losses of the USSR's allies were underestimated by him to an even greater extent.
The reasons for such distortions are more than clear: the team of G.F. Krivosheeva diligently solved the task set before him to adjust the final ratio of irretrievable losses of opponents on the Soviet-German front to a more or less acceptable value. But the fulfillment of a political order has nothing to do with the search for truth, which conscientious historians should be engaged in.
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From the book Battle of Stalingrad. Chronicle, facts, people. Book 1 author Zhilin Vitaly AlexandrovichTHE STRATEGIC SITUATION ON THE SOVIET-GERMAN FRONT BY THE END OF JUNE 1942 , mbr - 1, cbr - 3), as well as 4 air fleets. Rest
From the book Siberian Vendee. The fate of Ataman Annenkov author Goltsev Vadim AlekseevichOn the German front In 1913, Annenkov was transferred to the 4th Kokchetav Cossack Regiment and began to command the 3rd hundred. With the beginning of the Great War, in connection with the announcement of mobilization and the call for service of a number of ages, the regiment was preparing conscripts for the front. However
From the book Battle of Stalingrad. From defensive to offensive author Mirenkov Anatoly IvanovichNo. 34 HUMAN LOSSES OF THE GERMAN LAND FORCES ON THE SOVIET-GERMAN FRONT IN THE FIRST PERIOD OF THE GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR
From the book of the USSR and Russia in the slaughter. Human losses in the wars of the XX century author Sokolov Boris VadimovichNo. 35 IRREVOCABLE LOSS OF MILITARY EQUIPMENT AND WEAPONS OF THE GERMAN GROUND FORCES ON THE SOVIET-GERMAN FRONT IN THE PERIOD FROM JUNE 22, 1941 TO MARCH 20, 1942.
From the book The Great Patriotic War of the Soviet People (in the context of World War II) author Krasnova Marina AlekseevnaLosses of the civilian population and the general losses of the population of Germany in World War II It is very difficult to determine the losses of the civilian German population. For example, the number of deaths as a result of the bombing of Dresden by Allied aircraft in February 1945
From the book Nuremberg alarm [Report from the past, appeal to the future] author Zvyagintsev Alexander GrigorievichChapter 6 Losses of other countries participating in the Second World War, except for the USSR and
From the book Secrets of World War II author Sokolov Boris Vadimovich11. NOTE BY THE PEOPLE'S COMMISSAR FOR FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE USSR M. M. LITVINOV TO THE AMBASSADOR OF GERMANY IN THE USSR F. VON SCHULENBURG Moscow, March 18, 1939 Mr. Ambassador, I have the honor to acknowledge receipt of your note of the 16th and the note of the 17th of this month, notifying the Soviet government of the inclusion of the Czech Republic
From the book Border Troops of Russia in Wars and Armed Conflicts of the 20th Century. author History Team of authors --14. LETTER F. VON SCHULENBURG, AMBASSADOR OF GERMANY TO THE USSR, TO THE GERMAN MINISTRY OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS August 10, 1939 Content: Poland's position on the Anglo-French Soviet negotiations on the conclusion of the pact. The local Polish ambassador Grzybowski returned from
From the book Essays on the History of Russian Foreign Intelligence. Volume 3 author Primakov Evgeny Maksimovich7. RADIO SPEECH BY THE DEPUTY CHAIRMAN OF THE COUNCIL OF PEOPLE'S COMMISSARS OF THE USSR, THE PEOPLE'S COMMITTEE OF FOREIGN AFFAIRS OF THE USSR V. M. MOLOTOV IN CONNECTION WITH THE GERMAN ATTACK ON THE SOVIET UNION June 22, 1941 Citizens and citizens of the Soviet Union! The Soviet government and its head comrade
From the book Armored vehicles of European countries 1939-1945. author Baryatinsky MikhailThe perfidious attack of Nazi Germany on the USSR. Military training attacks on the USSR Gentlemen, judges! I now turn to an account of the crimes committed by the Hitlerite aggressors against my country, against the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. June 22
From the author's bookTHE PRICE OF WAR: HUMAN LOSSES OF THE USSR AND GERMANY, 1939–1945 (327) Methods, goals and objectives of the study The problem of human losses in wars is one of the most complex and interesting problems historical and demographic sciences, which also opens up wide opportunities for a variety of
From the author's bookOn the ratio of losses on the Soviet-German front Let us now try to determine the ratio of irretrievable losses on the Soviet-German front. To do this, it is necessary to assess the losses of the Wehrmacht in the fight against the USSR, as well as the losses of Germany's allies. Land Army of Germany
From the author's book2. COMBAT ACTIVITIES OF PARTS AND UNITS OF THE BORDER TROOPS ON THE SOVIET-FINNISH FRONT The Soviet-Finnish war, which lasted 105 days, began on November 30, 1939. At 8.00, the Soviet troops went on the offensive. In the official statements of the Soviet government