General human losses in the Second World War. Human losses in the second world war

16.10.2019

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

“What is a people, a nation? First of all, it is respect for victories,” Vyacheslav Nikonov, chairman of the parliamentary committee, admonished the participants when opening the hearings. — Today, when new war, which someone calls "hybrid", our Victory becomes one of the main targets for attacks on historical memory. There are waves of falsification of history that should make us believe that it was not us, but someone else who won, and still make us apologize ... "For some reason, the Nikonovs are seriously sure that it was they who, long before their own birth, won Great Victory for which, moreover, someone is trying to make them apologize. But they weren't attacked! And the aching note of the nationwide misfortune that has not passed, the phantom pain for the third generation of the descendants of the soldiers of the Great Patriotic War is drowned out by a cheerful, thoughtless cry: “We can repeat it!”

Really, can we?

It was at these hearings that a terrible figure was named in between times, which for some reason was not noticed by anyone, which did not make us stop in horror on the run in order to understand WHAT we were told after all. Why this was done now, I do not know.

At the hearings, the co-chairman of the Immortal Regiment of Russia movement, State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, presented the report “The Documentary Basis of the People’s Project “Establishing the Fates of the Missing Defenders of the Fatherland”, within the framework of which studies of the population decline were carried out, which changed the idea of the scale of the losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War.

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

Can we… do it again?!

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

Now these elderly invalids are in effect natural causes less and less noticeable. But Kovda imagined the scale of losses quite correctly, it was enough just to multiply the number of front doors.

Stalin, based on inaccessible normal person considerations, personally determined the losses of the USSR at 7 million people - a little less than the losses of Germany. Khrushchev - 20 million. Under Gorbachev, a book was published, prepared by the Ministry of Defense under the editorship of General Krivosheev, "The Classification Mark Removed", in which the authors named and in every possible way justified this very figure - 27 million. Now it turns out that she was wrong.

For the first time after the end of the Second World War, it was impossible to count the losses. Scientists tried to keep accurate statistics dead second World War II by nationality, however, information became really accessible only after the collapse of the USSR. Many believed that the victory over the Nazis was due to a large number dead. The statistics of the Second World War were not seriously kept by anyone.

The Soviet government deliberately manipulated the numbers. Initially, the number of deaths during the war was about 50 million people. But by the end of the 1990s, the figure had risen to 72 million.

The table provides a comparison of the losses of the two great 20th century:

Wars of the 20th century	1 world war	2 World War II
Duration of hostilities	4.3 years	6 years
Number of dead	About 10 million people	72 million people
Number of wounded	20 million people	35 million people
Number of countries where fighting took place	14	40
The number of people who were officially called up for military service	70 million people	110 million people

Briefly about the beginning of hostilities

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

The SS authorities suspected a possible attack on the country. But, visible preparations for war were not conducted. The effect of a surprise attack played into the hands of the aggressor. The seizure of the territories of the USSR was carried out with great speed. Military equipment and weapons in Germany were enough for a large-scale military campaign.

The number of deaths during WWII

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

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

As for prisoners of war, most of they were from the USSR. In 1941, the prison camps were overcrowded. Later, the Germans began to let them go. At the end of this year, about 320,000 prisoners of war were released. The bulk of them were Ukrainians, Belarusians and Balts.

Official statistics of those killed in World War II points to colossal losses among Ukrainians. Their number is much greater than the French, Americans and British combined. As the statistics of the Second World War show, Ukraine lost about 8-10 million people. This includes all combatants (killed, dead, prisoners, evacuees).

The price of the victory of the Soviet authorities over the aggressor could be much less. The main reason is the unpreparedness of the USSR for a sudden invasion German troops. The stocks of ammunition and equipment did not correspond to the scale of the unfolding war.

About 3% of men born in 1923 survived. The reason is the lack military training. The guys were taken to the front straight from school. Persons with an average were sent to fast courses for pilots or to train platoon commanders.

German losses

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

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

After a while, the fuse of the Germans began to decrease. The soldiers understood that they could not withstand the popular fury. The Soviet command began to correctly build military plans and tactics. The statistics of the Second World War in terms of the dead began to change.

AT war time around the world, the population died not only from hostilities by the enemy, but also from the spread different kind, hunger. The losses of China in the Second World War are especially noticeable. The statistics of the dead is in second place after the USSR. More than 11 million Chinese died. Although the Chinese have their own statistics of those killed in World War II. It does not correspond to the numerous opinions of historians.

Results of the Second World War

Given the scale of hostilities, as well as the lack of desire to reduce losses, it affected the number of victims. It was not possible to prevent the losses of countries in the Second World War, the statistics of which were studied by different historians.

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

The results of the second world war according to statistics more than cruel, not only in terms of shed blood, but also in the destructive scale of cities and villages. World War II statistics (losses by country):

The Soviet Union - about 26 million people.
China - more than 11 million
Germany - more than 7 million
Poland - about 7 million
Japan - 1.8 million
Yugoslavia - 1.7 million
Romania - about 1 million
France - more than 800 thousand.
Hungary - 750 thousand
Austria - more than 500 thousand.

Some countries or certain groups of people fundamentally fought on the side of the Germans, as they did not like the Soviet policy and Stalin's approach to leading the country. But, despite this, the military campaign ended with the victory of the Soviet government over the Nazis. World War II served good lesson for the politicians of the time. Such casualties could have been avoided in the Second World War on one condition - preparation for an invasion, regardless of whether the country was threatened with an attack.

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

World War II was the most destructive war in the history of mankind. Its consequences are still debated to this day. 80% of the world's population took part in it.

Many questions arise about how many people died in World War II, since various sources information is given miscellaneous information about human casualties in the period from 1939 to 1945. The differences are due to where the source information was obtained, as well as to which method of calculation was used.

Total death toll

It is worth noting that many historians and professors have been studying this issue. The number of dead from the Soviet Union was calculated by the staff of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation. According to new archival data, the information of which is given for 2001, the Great Patriotic War claimed the lives of 27 million people in total. Of these, more than seven million people are military personnel who were killed or died from their injuries.

Talk about how many people died from 1939 to 1945. as a result of hostilities, continue to this day, since it is almost impossible to calculate the losses. Various researchers and historians give their data: from 40 to 60 million people. After the war, the real data was hidden. During the reign of Stalin, it was said that the losses of the USSR amounted to 8 million people. During the Brezhnev era, this figure increased to 20 million, and during the period of perestroika - up to 36 million.

The free encyclopedia Wikipedia provides the following data: more than 25.5 million military personnel and about 47 million civilians (including all participating countries), i.e. in total, the number of losses exceeds 70 million people.

Read about other events in our history in the section.

The Soviet Union suffered in the Second world war the most significant losses are about 27 million people. At the same time, the division of the dead according to nationality never welcomed. However, such statistics exist.

History of counting

For the first time, the total number of victims among Soviet citizens in World War II was named by the Bolshevik magazine, which published in February 1946 the figure of 7 million people. A month later, Stalin gave the same figure in an interview with the Pravda newspaper.

In 1961, at the end of the post-war population census, Khrushchev announced corrected data. “Can we sit with folded hands and wait for a repeat of 1941, when the German militarists unleashed a war against the Soviet Union, which claimed two tens of millions of lives Soviet people?” wrote the Soviet Secretary General to Swedish Prime Minister Fridtjof Erlander.

In 1965, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, the new head of the USSR, Brezhnev, declared: “No nation has suffered such a cruel war that the Soviet Union endured. The war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people.

However, all these calculations were approximate. Only in the late 1980s, a group of Soviet historians led by Colonel General Grigory Krivosheev was admitted to the materials General Staff, as well as the main headquarters of all types of the Armed Forces. The result of the work was the figure of 8 million 668 thousand 400 people, reflecting the losses of the power structures of the USSR throughout the war.

The final data on all human losses of the USSR for the entire period of the Great Patriotic War was published by the state commission, which worked on behalf of the Central Committee of the CPSU. 26.6 million people: this figure was announced at the solemn meeting of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR on May 8, 1990. This figure turned out to be unchanged, despite the fact that the methods of calculating the commission were repeatedly called incorrect. In particular, it was noted that the final figure included collaborators, "Khivi" and other Soviet citizens who collaborated with the Nazi regime.

By nationality

Counting those killed in the Great Patriotic War by nationality for a long time no one did. Such an attempt was made by the historian Mikhail Filimoshin in the book “Casualties of the Armed Forces of the USSR”. The author noted that the lack of a nominal list of the dead, dead or missing with an indication of nationality greatly complicated the work. Such a practice was simply not provided for in the Report Card of Urgent Reports.

Filimoshin substantiated his data with the help of proportionality coefficients, which were calculated on the basis of reports on the payroll of the Red Army military personnel according to socio-demographic characteristics for 1943, 1944 and 1945. At the same time, the researcher failed to establish the nationality of approximately 500,000 conscripts called up in the first months of the war for mobilization and missing along the way to the unit.

1. Russians - 5 million 756 thousand (66.402% of total number irretrievable losses);

2. Ukrainians - 1 million 377 thousand (15.890%);

3. Belarusians - 252 thousand (2.917%);

4. Tatars - 187 thousand (2.165%);

5. Jews - 142 thousand (1.644%);

6. Kazakhs - 125 thousand (1.448%);

7. Uzbeks - 117 thousand (1.360%);

8. Armenians - 83 thousand (0.966%);

9. Georgians - 79 thousand (0.917%)

10. Mordva and Chuvash - 63 thousand each (0.730%)

The demographer and sociologist Leonid Rybakovsky in his book "The USSR's Human Losses in the Great Patriotic War" separately calculates civilian casualties using the ethno-demographic method. This method includes three components:

1. Death of civilians in combat areas (bombing, shelling, punitive operations, etc.).

2. Non-return of part of the Ostarbeiters and other population who voluntarily or under duress served the occupiers;

3. increase in mortality of the population over normal level from hunger and other deprivations.

According to Rybakovsky, Russians lost 6.9 million civilians in this way, Ukrainians - 6.5 million, Belarusians - 1.7 million.

Alternative estimates

Historians of Ukraine give their own methods of counting, which relate primarily to the losses of Ukrainians in the Great Patriotic War. The researchers of the Independent refer to the fact that Russian historians adhere to certain stereotypes when counting the victims, in particular, they do not take into account the contingent of corrective labor institutions, where a significant part of the dispossessed Ukrainians were kept, whose sentence was replaced by being sent to penal companies.

Head of the Research Department of the Kyiv "National Museum of the History of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" Lyudmila Rybchenko refers to the fact that Ukrainian researchers have collected a unique fund of documentary materials on accounting for the human military losses of Ukraine during the Great Patriotic War - funerals, lists of missing persons, correspondence on the search for the dead, loss records.

In total, according to Rybchenko, more than 8.5 thousand archival files were collected, in which about 3 million personal testimonies about the dead and missing soldiers called up from the territory of Ukraine. However, the museum worker does not pay attention to the fact that representatives of other nationalities also lived in Ukraine, which could well be included in the number of 3 million victims.

Belarusian experts also give independent estimates of the number of losses during the Second World War. Some believe that every third inhabitant of 9 million Belarus became a victim of Hitler's aggression. One of the most authoritative researchers of this topic is the professor of the State Pedagogical University doctor historical sciences Emmanuel Ioffe.

The historian believes that in total 1 million 845 thousand 400 inhabitants of Belarus died in 1941-1944. From this figure, he subtracts 715,000 Belarusian Jews who became victims of the Holocaust. Among the remaining 1 million 130 thousand 155 people, in his opinion, about 80% or 904 thousand people are ethnic Belarusians.

What were the population losses of the USSR during World War II? Stalin stated that they were equal to 7 million, Khrushchev - 20. However, is there any reason to believe that they were significantly larger?
By the beginning of the war, the population of the USSR was 197,500,000 people. The "natural" population growth from 1941 - 1945 was 13,000,000 people, and the "natural" decline was 15,000,000 people, since the war was going on.
By 1946, the population of the USSR should have been 195,500,000 people. However, at that time it was only 168,500,000 people. Consequently, the loss of population during the war was 27,000,000 people. An interesting fact: the population of the republics and territories annexed in 1939 is 22,000,000 people. However, in 1946 it was 13 million. The fact is that 9 million people emigrated. 2 million Germans (or those who called themselves Germans) moved to Germany, 2 million Poles (or those who knew a few words from the Polish dialect), 5 million inhabitants moved to Poland western regions The USSR moved to the countries of the West.
So, direct losses from the war: 27 million - 9 million = 18 million people. 8 million people out of 18 million - these are civilians: 1 million Poles who died at the hands of Bandera, 1 million who died during the blockade of Leningrad, 2 million civilians classified by the Nazis as persons capable of taking up arms (age from 15 to 65 years) and kept in concentration camps along with Soviet prisoners of war, 4 million Soviet citizens, classified by the Nazis as communists, partisans, etc. Every tenth Soviet person died.

Losses of the Red Army - 10 million people.

What were the German population losses during World War II?By the beginning of the war, the population of Germany proper was 74,000,000 people. The population of the Third Reich is 93 million people.By the autumn of 1945, the population of Germany (Vaterland, not the entire Third Reich) was 52,000,000 people. More than 5 million Germans immigrated from the Volksdeutsche to the country. So, the losses of Germany: 74 million - 52 million + 5 million = 27 million people.

Consequently, the loss of the German population during the war was 27,000,000 people. About 9 million people emigrated from Germany.
Direct military losses of Germany - 18 million people. 8 million of them are civilians who died as a result of air raids by US and British aircraft, as a result of shelling. Germany lost about a third of its population! By October 1946, more than 13 million Volksdeutsche arrived in Western Germany from Alsace and Lorraine (about 2.2 million people Volksdeutsche) , Saara ( 0.8 million people ), Silesia (10 million people), Sudetenland ( 3.64 million people), Poznan (1 million people), Baltic states (2 million people), Danzig and Memel (0.54 million people) and other places. The population of Germany began to equal 66 million people. Persecution began against the German population outside the territory of the occupation zones. The Germans were thrown out of their homes and were often slaughtered in the streets. The non-German population spared neither children nor the elderly. It was because of this that the mass exodus of the Germans and those who collaborated with them began. The Kashubians with Schlenzaks considered themselves Germans. They also went to the western occupation zones.