How many Lithuanians died in World War II. The biggest wars in terms of the number of victims

How the official data on the losses of the USSR changed

Recently, the State Duma announced new figures for the human losses of the Soviet Union during the Great Patriotic War - almost 42 million people. An additional 15 million people were added to the previous official figures. The head of the Museum-Memorial of the Great Patriotic War of the Kazan Kremlin, our columnist Mikhail Cherepanov, in the author's column of Realnoe Vremya talks about the declassified losses of the USSR and Tatarstan.

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

Despite many years of well-paid sabotage and all sorts of efforts by generals and politicians to hide the true price of our Victory over fascism, on February 14, 2017, at the State Duma, at the parliamentary hearings “Patriotic education of Russian citizens: the Immortal Regiment”, the numbers closest to the truth were finally declassified :

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

As stated in the report, this information is confirmed by a large number of original documents, authoritative publications and testimonies (details - on the Immortal Regiment website and other resources).

The history of the matter is

In March 1946, in an interview with the Pravda newspaper, I.V. Stalin announced: "As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irretrievably lost about seven million people in battles with the Germans, as well as due to the German occupation and the deportation of Soviet people to German penal servitude."

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

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

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

In 2001, a reprint of the book was published under the editorship of G.F. Krivosheev “Russia and the USSR in the wars of the XX century. Losses of the Armed Forces: A Statistical Study". One of her tables stated that the irretrievable losses of the Soviet Army and Navy alone during the Great Patriotic War were 11,285,057 people. (See page 252.) In 2010, in the next edition of the Great Patriotic War without a secrecy stamp. The Book of Losses, again edited by G.F. Krivosheev, the data on the losses of the armies fighting in 1941-1945 were specified. Demographic losses reduced to 8,744,500 troops (p. 373):

A natural question arises: where was the mentioned “data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR” on the combat losses of our Army stored, if even the heads of the special commissions of the Ministry of Defense could not study them for more than 70 years? How true are they?

Everything is relative. It is worth remembering that it was in the book “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century” that we were finally allowed to find out in 2001 how many of our compatriots were mobilized into the ranks of the Red (Soviet) Army during the years of World War II: 34,476,700 people (p. 596.).

If we take on faith the official figure of 8,744 thousand people, then the share of our military losses will be 25 percent. That is, according to the commission of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation, only every fourth Soviet soldier and officer did not return from the front.

I think that a resident of any settlement of the former USSR will not agree with this. In every village or aul there are plates with the names of the dead fellow countrymen. At best, only half of those who went to the front 70 years ago wear them.

Statistics of Tatarstan

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

In the book of Professor Z.I. Gilmanov “Workers of Tataria on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War”, published in Kazan in 1981, it was stated that the military registration and enlistment offices of the republic sent 560 thousand citizens to the front and 87 thousand of them did not return.

In 2001, Professor A.A. Ivanov in his doctoral thesis "Combat losses of the peoples of Tatarstan during the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945." announced that from 1939 to 1945 about 700 thousand citizens were drafted into the army from the territory of the Tatar Republic, and 350 thousand of them did not return.

As the head of the working group of the editorial board of the Book of Memory of the Republic of Tatarstan from 1990 to 2007, I can clarify: taking into account the natives called up from other regions of the country, the losses of our Tatarstan during the Second World War amounted to at least 390 thousand soldiers and officers.

And these are the irretrievable losses of the republic, on whose territory not a single bomb or shell of the enemy fell!

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

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

And this should be done not only by single enthusiasts on their own initiative, but also by professional search engines on behalf of the state itself.

It is physically impossible to do this only in excavations at the battlefields in all Memory Watches. This requires massive and constant work in the archives published on the websites of the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation and other thematic resources of the Internet.

But that's a completely different story...

Mikhail Cherepanov, illustrations provided by the author

reference

Mikhail Valerievich Cherepanov- Head of the Museum-Memorial of the Great Patriotic War of the Kazan Kremlin; Chairman of the Association "Club of Military Glory"; Honored Worker of Culture of the Republic of Tatarstan, Corresponding Member of the Academy of Military Historical Sciences, Laureate of the State Prize of the Republic of Tatarstan.

• Born in 1960.
• Graduated from Kazan State University. IN AND. Ulyanov-Lenin with a degree in Journalism.
• Since 2007 he has been working at the National Museum of the Republic of Tatarstan.
• One of the creators of the 28-volume book "Memory" of the Republic of Tatarstan about those who died during the Second World War, 19 volumes of the Book of Memory of the Victims of Political Repressions of the Republic of Tatarstan, etc.
• Creator of the electronic Book of Memory of the Republic of Tatarstan (a list of natives and residents of Tatarstan who died during the Second World War).
• Author of thematic lectures from the cycle "Tatarstan during the war years", thematic excursions "Feat of countrymen on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War".
• Co-author of the concept of the virtual museum "Tatarstan - Fatherland".
• Member of 60 search expeditions to bury the remains of soldiers who fell in the Great Patriotic War (since 1980), board member of the Union of Search Teams of Russia.
• Author of more than 100 scientific and educational articles, books, participant of all-Russian, regional and international conferences. Columnist of Realnoe Vremya.

Loss.ru

Chapter 11

................................................. ........... CONCLUSIONS From the above, it should be concluded that the fire superiority of the Red Army over the German army. Moreover, this fire superiority cannot be explained by quantitative superiority in gun barrels. Moreover, as a result of poor transport equipment, the Red Army made little use of its mortar weapons in the battalion and regimental level. After all, an 82 mm mine weighs 3 kg, and 30 pieces are fired per minute. For 10 minutes of shooting, you need 900 kg of ammunition for a mortar. Of course, the transport was provided primarily by artillery, not mortars. It turned out that a maneuverable, light artillery weapon was tied to ammunition points, and could not work in the interests of the battalions. The problem was solved by mixing mortars into mortar regiments, where they could be centrally supplied with ammunition. But as a result, the battalion, regimental and even divisional level turned out to be weaker than the German one, because mortars made up half of the trunks in the division in the pre-war states. The anti-tank artillery of the Soviet rifle divisions was weaker than the German one. As a result, three-inch light artillery regiments rolled out for direct fire. There were not enough air defense systems. We had to divert heavy machine guns and anti-tank rifles from the first line for these purposes. Due to what was fire superiority achieved from the first days of the war? Fire superiority by the Red Army was achieved through skill and courage. This is confirmed not only by the calculations of personnel losses, but also by the losses of military equipment, property, and transport.

Here is Halder's entry dated 11/18/41 says that out of 0.5 million vehicles that were in the German army on 06/22/41, 150 thousand were irretrievably lost and 275 thousand needed repair, and 300 thousand were needed for this repair. tons of spare parts. That is, about 1.1 tons of spare parts are needed to repair one car. What condition are these cars in? From them, only the frames remained! If we add to them those cars from which there are not even frames left, it turns out that all cars produced by German car factories in a year burn out in Russia in less than six months. So Hitler was worried about this circumstance, so Halder was forced to discuss these issues with General Bule.

But cars are not fighting in the first line of troops. What happened in the first line? Hell is hell! Now we need to compare all this with the losses of auto-tractor equipment in the Red Army. With the outbreak of war, the production of cars and tractors was sharply reduced in favor of tanks, and the production of artillery tractors ceased altogether. Nevertheless, by the autumn of 1942, the Soviet Union had lost only half of the pre-war fleet of artillery tractors, mainly in encirclement, and then, until the very victory, used the remaining half, with practically no losses in them. If the Germans in the first six months of the war lost almost all the vehicles that they had in the army at the beginning of the war, then the Soviet army lost 33% of the available and received vehicles over the same period. And for the whole of 1942, 14%. And by the end of the war, car losses were reduced to 3-5%.

But these losses repeat, according to the form of the loss graph, the irretrievable losses of the personnel of the Red Army, with the only difference that the average monthly loss of cars is 10-15 times less. But after all, the number of cars at the front was just as many times less. It can be assumed that the loss of vehicles from enemy fire in 1941 in the Red Army was no more than 5-10%, and 23-28% of losses were due to maneuvering actions of German troops, encirclement. That is, the loss of vehicles can also serve to characterize the loss of personnel. Because they also reflect the fire capabilities of the parties. That is, if the Nazi troops lose 90% of vehicles in 1941, then almost all of these losses are losses from the fire of the Soviet troops, and this is 15% of losses per month. It can be seen that the Soviet army is at least 1.5-3 times more effective than the German army.

In an entry dated December 9, 1941, Halder writes about the irretrievable average daily loss of 1,100 horses. Considering that horses were not put in the battle line and that horses at the front are 10 times less than people, the figure of 9465 people of average daily irretrievable losses for December 1941 from table 6 receives additional confirmation.

German losses in tanks can be estimated based on their availability at the beginning and end of the period of interest. As of June 1941, the Germans had about 5,000 of their own and Czechoslovak vehicles. In addition, in Halder's entry of December 23, 1940, the figure is 4930 captured vehicles, mostly French. There are about 10,000 cars in total. At the end of 1941, the German tank forces were equipped with tanks by 20-30%, that is, about 3000 vehicles remained in stock, of which about 500-600 captured French, which were then transferred from the front to protect the rear areas. Halder also writes about this. Even without taking into account the tanks produced by the German industry in six months, without taking into account Soviet captured tanks used by the Germans, Soviet troops irretrievably destroyed about 7,000 German vehicles, not counting armored cars and armored personnel carriers, in the first 6 months of the war. In four years, this will amount to 56,000 vehicles destroyed by the Red Army. If we add here 3,800 tanks produced by the German industry in 1941 and 1,300 captured Soviet tanks captured by the Germans at storage bases, we get more than 12,000 destroyed German vehicles in the first six months of the war. During the war years, Germany produced about 50,000 vehicles, and the Germans had 10,000 vehicles before the war, as we calculated. The allies of the USSR could destroy 4-5 thousand tanks or so. Soviet troops lost about 100,000 tanks and self-propelled guns during the war, but it must be understood that the operational life of Soviet tanks was significantly less. Here there is a different approach to life, to technology, to war. Different ways to use tanks. Different tank ideology. The Soviet principles of tank building are well described in the trilogy by Mikhail Svirin under the general title "The History of the Soviet Tank 1919-1955", Moscow, "Yauza", "Eksmo", ("The armor is strong, 1919-1937", "Stalin's armor shield, 1937-1943 "," Stalin's Steel Fist, 1943-1955"). Soviet wartime tanks were calculated for one operation, had a resource of 100-200 km at the beginning of the war, up to 500 km by the end of the war, which reflected views on the operational use of tanks and the military economy. After the war, the resource of tanks had to be increased by a number of measures to 10-15 years of service, based on the needs of the peacetime economy and the new concept of the accumulation of weapons. Thus, tanks were initially conceived not to be spared. This is a weapon, why spare it, they need to fight. That is, the losses in the tanks of the USSR are 1.5-2 times higher, and the losses of people are 1.5-2 times lower.

In this case, it should be borne in mind that the Germans could restore up to 70% of the wrecked tanks within a week, according to Guderian. This means that if out of a hundred German tanks that entered the battle at the beginning of the month, 20 vehicles remained by the end of the month, then with irretrievable losses of 80 vehicles, the number of hits may exceed 250. And such a figure will appear in the reports of the Soviet troops. However, the Soviet General Staff, more or less accurately, corrected the reports of the troops, taking into account this circumstance. Therefore, in the operational report for December 16, 1941, announced by the Soviet Information Bureau, it is said that the Germans lost 15,000 tanks, 19,000 guns, about 13,000 aircraft and 6,000,000 people killed, wounded and captured in the first five months of the war. These figures are quite consistent with my calculations and quite accurately reflect the real losses of the German troops. If they are overpriced, then not very much, given the then situation. In any case, the Soviet General Staff assessed the situation much more realistically than the German General Staff even in 1941. In the future, the estimates became even more accurate.

The losses of aircraft by the German side are considered in the book by Kornyukhin G.V. "Air War over the USSR. 1941", LLC "Publishing House" Veche ", 2008. There is a table of calculations of the losses of German aircraft without taking into account training machines.

Table 18:

War years	1940	1941	1942	1943	1944	1945
Number of aircraft produced in Germany	10247	12401	15409	24807	40593	7539
The same without training aircraft	8377	11280	14331	22533	36900	7221
Number of aircraft at the beginning of next year	4471 (30.9.40)	5178 (31.12.41)	6107 (30.3.43)	6642 (30.4.44)	8365 (1.2.45)	1000*
Theoretical loss	8056	10573	13402	21998	35177	14586
Losses in battles with allies according to their (allies) data	8056	1300	2100	6650	17050	5700
Theoretical losses on the "Eastern Front"	-	9273	11302	15348	18127	8886
Losses on the "Eastern Front" according to Soviet data**	-	4200	11550	15200	17500	4400
The same according to modern Russian sources ***	-	2213	4348	3940	4525	****

* The number of aircraft surrendered after the surrender
** According to the reference book "Soviet Aviation in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 in Figures"
*** An attempt to calculate the "squeeze" from the documents of the quartermaster general of the Luftwaffe, carried out by R. Larintsev and A. Zabolotsky.
**** For 1945, the Quartermaster General's papers could not be found, apparently he was tired of preparing propaganda opuses. It is unlikely that the quartermaster general quit his job and went on vacation, rather, he quit the secondary work that the propaganda ministry had assigned him.

Table 18 shows that modern ideas about German losses in aviation are completely untrue. It can also be seen that the Soviet data differ significantly from the theoretically calculated values ​​only in 1945 and 1941. In 1945, the discrepancies are due to the fact that half of the German aviation refused to fly, and was abandoned by the Germans at the airfields. In 1941, the discrepancy was formed from the poorly organized by the Soviet side accounting for downed German aircraft in the first two or three months of the war. And in the post-war history, the estimated figures from the time of the war, voiced by the Soviet Information Bureau, were ashamed to enter. Thus, 62936 German aircraft destroyed by the Soviet side are clearly visible. The combat losses of the Soviet Air Force amounted to 43,100 combat vehicles during the war. However, non-combat losses of combat vehicles of the Soviet Air Force are practically the same as combat ones. Here again the difference in the quality of technology and the attitude towards it is visible. This difference was fully recognized by the Soviet leadership; the USSR could compete with united Europe in the volume of military production only if it had a completely different view of the quality, nature and use of these products. Soviet vehicles, especially fighters, wore out very quickly in wartime conditions. Nevertheless, plywood-linen aircraft with engine life for several flights successfully resisted all-duralumin aviation with German-quality engines.

Hitler not for nothing believed that the Soviet industry would not be able to make up for the loss of weapons, and could not, if it had strived for a symmetrical response to the German challenge. Having 3-4 times fewer workers, the Soviet Union could produce 3-4 times less labor costs.

At the same time, one should not draw a conclusion about the mass death of Soviet pilots or tankers from the imperfection of technology. Such a conclusion will not find confirmation either in memoirs, or in reports, or in statistical studies. Because he is unfaithful. It's just that in the USSR there was a technical culture different from European, a different technogenic civilization. The book cites the losses of Soviet military equipment, including decommissioned equipment that has used up its resource, which is irreparable due to a lack of spare parts and a weak repair base. It should be remembered that in terms of the development of production, the USSR had a base of only two, albeit heroic, five-year plans. Therefore, the response to European technical equipment was not symmetrical. Soviet technology was designed for a shorter, but more intensive period of operation. Rather, it was not even calculated, but it turned out like this by itself. Lendliz cars did not last long in Soviet conditions either. To produce repair forces means to tear people away from production, from war, and to produce spare parts means to occupy those capacities that can produce finished machines. Of course, all this is necessary, the question is the balance of opportunities and needs. Considering the fact that in battle all this work can burn out in a minute, and all produced spare parts and repair shops will remain out of work. Therefore, when, for example, Shirokorad in the book "Three Wars of Great Finland" complains about the unsuitability of Budenovka or about the differences in the quality of the uniforms of the fighters and commanders of the Red Army, the question arises, did he think well? In order to pursue European quality, one must have a European industry, such was Germany, and not the USSR. Budyonovka or bogatyrka is a mobilization version of a headdress, they were invented at the end of the First World War, just because production was weak. As soon as the opportunity arose, they were replaced with normal hats. Who is to blame that such an opportunity appeared only in 1940? Honorary saint and honorary pope of our kingdom, Tsar Nicholas the bloody and his satraps. Democrats from the Kerensky gang. As well as the now sung white bandits. At the same time, the Germans wore winter caps. When Shirokorad in the book "The March on Vienna" complains that the gun turrets on armored boats were installed from tanks, and were not specially designed, he does not take into account that tank turrets were mass-produced at tank factories, and specially designed turrets should have been produced in a medium series at factories shipbuilding. Does a specialist in the history of technology not see the difference? Rather, he is looking for cheap sensations where there are none. And so it is with everything. Aircraft were produced at furniture factories, and cartridges at tobacco factories. Armored cars were produced at the crushing equipment plant in Vyksa, and PPS wherever there was a cold stamping press. The anecdote about the vertical take-off harvester, famous in Soviet times, is more suitable for Stalin's time than for later times.

The labor heroism of the Soviet people played a decisive role, but one should not forget about the merits of the Soviet government, personally Stalin, who correctly set priorities in the scientific, technical, industrial and military spheres. Now it is fashionable to complain that there were few walkie-talkies and a lot of tanks, but would it be better if there were fewer tanks and more walkie-talkies? The radios don't fire. Although they are needed, but where to get the funds for everything? Where necessary, there were walkie-talkies.

In this regard, I want to focus on a key moment in the history of the war, on the preparation of pre-war industry for mobilization in wartime. Special samples and modifications of all weapons were developed for release in wartime. Special technologies were developed for implementation in non-core industries, specialists were trained to implement these technologies. Since 1937, the army began to receive modern, domestic weapons, to replace the alterations and modifications of pre-revolutionary and licensed samples. Artillery and automatic rifles were the first to be introduced. Then priority was given to tanks and combat aircraft. Their production began to unfold only in 1940. New machine guns and automatic cannons were introduced during the course of the war. It was not possible to develop the automobile and radio industries to the required extent before the war. But they set up a lot of locomotives and wagons, and this is much more important. The capacity of specialized factories was sorely lacking, and the mobilization of non-core enterprises, prepared even before the war, gives the right to assert that Stalin deserved the title of generalissimo even before the war, even if he had done nothing more to win. And he did a lot more!

On the anniversary of the start of the war, the Soviet Information Bureau published operational reports summarizing the results of hostilities since the start of the war on an accrual basis. It is interesting to summarize these data in a table that will give an idea of ​​the views of the Soviet command, of course, adjusted for some, forced, propaganda element in relation to their own casualties. But the nature of the Soviet propaganda of that period is interesting in itself, because now it can be compared with the published data of the work.

Table 19:

Date of the operational summary of the Sovinformburo	Germany (23.6.42)	USSR (23.6.42)	Germany (21.6.43)	USSR (21.6.43)	Germany (21.6.44)	USSR (21.6.44)
Losses since the beginning of the war	10,000,000 total casualties (of which 3,000,000 killed)	4.5 million people total losses	6,400,000 killed and captured	4,200,000 killed and missing	7,800,000 killed and captured	5,300,000 killed and missing
Losses of guns over 75 mm since the beginning of the war	30500	22000	56500	35000	90000	48000
Losses of tanks since the beginning of the war	24000	15000	42400	30000	70000	49000
Aircraft losses since the beginning of the war	20000	9000	43000	23000	60000	30128

Table 19 shows that the Soviet government hid from the Soviet people only one figure - the loss of the missing in the encirclement. During the entire war, the losses of the USSR as missing and captured amounted to about 4 million people, of which less than 2 million people returned from captivity after the war. These figures were hidden in order to reduce the fears of the unstable part of the population before the German advance, to reduce the fear of encirclement among the unstable part of the military. And after the war, the Soviet government considered itself guilty before the people, for being unable to foresee and avoid such a development of events. Therefore, after the war, these figures were not advertised, although they were no longer hidden. After all, Konev quite openly declared after the war about more than 10,000,000 irretrievable losses of Soviet troops. He said it once, and there was nothing more to repeat, to reopen wounds.

The rest of the numbers are generally correct. During the entire war, the USSR lost 61,500 field artillery barrels, 96,500 tanks and self-propelled guns, but no more than 65,000 of them for combat reasons, 88,300 combat aircraft, but only 43,100 of them for combat reasons. About 6.7 million Soviet soldiers died in battle (including non-combat losses, but excluding those who died in captivity) during the entire war.

The losses of the enemy are also indicated correctly. Enemy personnel losses have been greatly underestimated since 1942, and in 1941 they are correctly indicated at 6,000,000 total losses. Only the losses of German tanks are perhaps slightly overestimated, by about 1.5 times. This is naturally related to the difficulty of accounting for the number of repaired and reused machines. In addition, in the reports of the troops, along with damaged tanks and self-propelled guns, other armored vehicles could also be indicated. The Germans had a lot of different combat vehicles on both half-track and wheeled chassis, which can be called self-propelled guns. Then the losses of the Germans in armored vehicles are also indicated correctly. A slight overestimation of the number of downed German aircraft is not significant. The loss of guns and mortars of all calibers and purposes for the Red Army amounted to 317,500 pieces during the war, and for Germany and its allies, the loss of 289,200 pieces is indicated in the work. But in the 12th volume of the "History of the Second World War", in table 11, it is said that Germany alone produced and lost 319900 pieces of guns, and the same Germany produced mortars and lost 78800 pieces. In total, the loss of guns and mortars in Germany alone will amount to 398,700 barrels, and it is not known whether rocket systems are included here, most likely they are not. In addition, this figure definitely does not include guns and mortars produced before 1939.

Since the summer of 1942, there has been a tendency in the Soviet General Staff to underestimate the number of Germans killed. Soviet military leaders began to assess the situation more carefully, fearing to underestimate the enemy at the final stage of the war. In any case, one can speak of special, propaganda loss figures published by the Sovinformburo only in relation to the number of captured and missing Soviet servicemen. Otherwise, the same figures were published that the Soviet General Staff used in their calculations.

The course and outcome of the war cannot be understood if we exclude from consideration the European fascist atrocities in relation to the peaceful Soviet population and prisoners of war. These atrocities constituted the purpose and meaning of the war for the German side and all of Germany's allies. The fighting was only a tool to ensure the unhindered implementation of these atrocities. The only goal of Europe united by the Nazis in World War II was to conquer the entire European part of the USSR, and to destroy most of the population in the most brutal way, in order to intimidate the rest and enslave them. These crimes are described in Alexander Dyukov's book "For what the Soviet people fought", Moscow, "Yauza", "Eksmo", 2007. 12-15 million Soviet civilians, including prisoners of war, became victims of these atrocities throughout the war, but we must remember that only during the first war winter, the Nazis planned to kill more than 30 million peaceful Soviet citizens in the occupied territories of the USSR. Thus, we can talk about the salvation by the Soviet army and partisans, the Soviet government and Stalin of more than 15 million lives of Soviet people planned for destruction already in the first year of the occupation, and about 20 million planned for destruction in the future, not counting those saved from fascist slavery, which often was worse than death. Despite numerous sources, this point is extremely poorly covered by historical science. Historians simply avoid this topic, limiting themselves to rare and common phrases, and yet these crimes exceed in the number of victims all other crimes in history combined.

In a note dated November 24, 1941, Halder writes about the report of Colonel-General Fromm. The general military-economic situation is represented as a falling curve. Fromm believes that a truce is necessary. My conclusions confirm Fromm's conclusions.

It also indicates that the loss of personnel at the front is 180,000 people. If this is a loss of combat strength, then it is easily covered by recalling vacationers from vacation. Not to mention the conscription of the contingent born in 1922. Where is the falling curve here? Why, then, in the entry dated November 30, it says that 50-60 people remained in the companies? To make ends meet, Halder claims that 340,000 men make up half of the combat strength of the infantry. But this is ridiculous, the combat strength of the infantry is less than a tenth of the army. In fact, it should be read that the loss of troops at the front is 1.8 million people on 11/24/41 in combat strength and 3.4 million in the total number of troops of the "Eastern Front" on 11/30/41, and the regular number of troops " Eastern Front "6.8 million people. This is probably the right thing to do.

Perhaps someone will not believe my calculations about German losses, especially in 1941, when, according to modern ideas, the Red Army was completely defeated and supposedly the German army did not suffer losses in some cunning way. That's bullshit. You can't forge victory out of defeats and losses. From the very beginning, the German army suffered defeat, but the Reich leadership hoped that the USSR was having an even worse situation. Hitler spoke directly about this in the same diary of Halder.

The situation of the border battle was best conveyed by Dmitry Egorov in the book "June 41st. Defeat of the Western Front.", Moscow, "Yauza", "Eksmo", 2008.

Of course, the summer of 1941 was terribly difficult for the Soviet troops. Endless battles with no visible positive results. Endless environments where the choice was often between death and captivity. And many chose captivity. Maybe even the majority. But it must be borne in mind that mass surrenders began after one or two weeks of intense struggle in the environment, when the fighters ran out of ammunition even for small arms. The commanders, desperate to win, gave up command of the troops, sometimes even on a front-line scale, fled from their fighters and in small groups either tried to surrender or go to their east. The fighters fled from their units, dressed in civilian clothes or, left without leadership, huddled in crowds of thousands, hoping to surrender to the German detachments clearing the area. And yet the Germans were beaten. There were people who chose a more reliable position for themselves, stocked up on weapons and accepted their last battle, knowing in advance how it would end. Or they organized disorderly crowds of encircled people into combat detachments, attacked German cordons and broke through to their own. Sometimes it worked. There were commanders who kept control of their troops in the most difficult situations. There were divisions, corps and entire armies that attacked the enemy, inflicted defeats on the enemy, staunchly defended themselves, evaded German attacks and beat themselves. Yes, they beat me so much that it was 1.5-2 times more painful. Each blow was answered with a double blow.

This was the reason for the defeat of the fascist hordes. The irretrievable demographic losses of the German army amounted to about 15 million people. The irretrievable demographic losses of other Axis armies amounted to 4 million people. And in total, up to 19 million enemies of different nationalities and states had to be killed to win.

In 1993, after the collapse of the USSR, the first public Soviet statistics of losses during World War II appeared, created under the leadership of General Grigory Krivosheev by order of the USSR Ministry of Defense. Here is an article by the St. Petersburg amateur historian Vyacheslav Krasikov about what the Soviet military genius actually calculated.

The topic of Soviet losses in World War II is still taboo in Russia, primarily because of the unwillingness of society and the state to look at this problem in an adult way. The only "statistical" study on this topic is the work "Secrecy Removed: Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in Wars, Combat Operations and Military Conflicts" published in 1993. In 1997, an English-language edition of the study was published, and in 2001, the second edition of “Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in wars, hostilities and military conflicts” appeared.

If you do not pay attention to the shamefully late appearance of statistics on Soviet losses in general (almost 50 years after the end of the war), the work of Krivosheev, who headed the team of employees of the Ministry of Defense, did not make a big splash in the scientific world (of course, for the post-Soviet autochthons, it became a balm per capita, since it brought Soviet losses to the same level as German ones). One of the main sources of data for the team of authors led by Krivosheev is the General Staff Fund in the Central Archive of the RF Ministry of Defense (TsAMO), which is still classified and to which researchers have no access. That is, it is objectively impossible to verify the accuracy of the work of military archivists. For this reason, in the West, the scientific community, which has been dealing with the issue of losses in World War II for almost 60 years, reacted coolly to the work of Krivosheev and simply did not even notice it.

In Russia, attempts were repeatedly made to criticize the study of Grigory Krivosheev - critics reproached the general for methodological inaccuracies, the use of unverified and unproven data, purely arithmetic inconsistencies, and so on. As an example, you can see. We want to offer our readers not so much another criticism of Krivosheev's work itself, but an attempt to introduce new, additional data (for example, party and Komsomol statistics) into circulation, which will shed more light on the size of total Soviet losses. Perhaps this will contribute in the future to their gradual approach to reality and the development of a normal, civilized scientific discussion in Russia. The article by Vyacheslav Krasikov, in which all links are affixed, can be downloaded in full. All the scans of the books he refers to

Soviet historiography: how many are left unforgotten?

After a war in civilized countries, it is customary to reflect on the course of battles by subjecting them to a critical discussion in the light of enemy documents that have become available. Such work, of course, requires maximum objectivity. Otherwise, it is simply impossible to draw the right conclusions so as not to repeat past mistakes. However, the works that were published in the USSR in the first post-war decade cannot be called historical research even with a big stretch. They consisted mainly of cliches on the theme of the inevitability of victory under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, the original superiority of Soviet military art and the genius of Comrade Stalin. Memoirs during the life of the “leader of the peoples” were almost never published, and the little that came out of print looked more like fantastic literature. There was essentially no serious work for censorship in such a situation. Unless to identify those who are not diligent enough in the matter of glorification. Therefore, this institution turned out to be completely unprepared for the surprises and metamorphoses of the hectic Khrushchev “thaw”.

However, the information explosion of the 50s is the merit of more than one Nikita Sergeevich. The blissful idyll described above was destroyed by banal human ambition.

The fact is that in the West the process of understanding the recent hostilities proceeded in a normal civilized way. The generals talked about their achievements and shared their smart thoughts with the public. The Soviet military elite, of course, also wanted to participate in such an interesting and exciting process, but the "Kremlin mountaineer" did not like this kind of activity. But after March 1953, this obstacle disappeared. As a result, Soviet censorship was immediately attacked by an order to publish translations of some works about the Second World War written by former enemies and allies. In this case, they limited themselves only to cuts of especially unpleasant pages and editorial comments that helped Soviet readers to “correctly” understand the work of foreigners “prone to falsification”. But when, after this, a large number of their own gold-chasing authors received permission to print memoirs, the process of "comprehension" finally got out of control. And it led to completely unexpected results for its initiators. Many events and figures became public knowledge, which, complementing and clarifying each other, formed a completely different mosaic than the previously existing picture of the war. What is worth only one threefold increase in the official figure of the total losses of the USSR from 7 to 20 million people.

Of course, the writers themselves understood "what's what" and tried to pass over their own failures in silence. But something was reported about such moments in the battle path of former comrades-in-arms. As a result, there were also side effects. Such as a public scandal with written complaints against each other in the Central Committee of the CPSU, Marshals Zhukov and Chuikov, who did not share the victorious laurels. In addition, any pleasant, at first glance, fact can destroy the myth created over the years in one fell swoop. For example, the flattering information for high-ranking "home front workers" that the Soviet industry was constantly producing more equipment than the German one inevitably called into question the general's bragging about victories "not by number, but by skill."

Thus, military-historical science has taken, on the scale of the Soviet Union, a gigantic step forward. After that, it became impossible to return to Stalin's times. Nevertheless, with the coming to power of Brezhnev, they again tried to streamline the affairs in the field of coverage of the events of the Great Patriotic War.

Thus, by the middle of the 1980s, the intellectual environment of the Russian historiography of the Second World War was finally formed. Most of the specialists who are developing this topic today have been nourished by its traditions. It cannot, of course, be argued that all historians continue to cling to the stereotypes of "the times of Ochakov and the conquest of the Crimea." Suffice it to recall the “perestroika” euphoria of revelations that ended in a grandiose scandal in 1991, when, in order to please the generals from history, who literally went into a “protective” hysteria, the editorial board of the new 10-volume “History of the Great Patriotic War” was purged, since its authors wanted to rise to objective analysis performed according to Western scientific standards. As a result, the "rootless cosmopolitans" were excommunicated from the archives, as well as the corresponding organizational conclusions. The head of the Institute of Military History, General D. A. Volkogonov, was relieved of his post, and most of his young assistants were dismissed from the army. Control over the work on the preparation of the 10-volume book was tightened, for which they connected to it marshals and generals tested and proven in their previous activities. Nevertheless, a fairly large amount of statistical information on this topic during the post-war decades managed to break out of the archival doors. Let's try to systematize it.

Official Soviet figures

If we carefully trace the history of how the “numerical equivalents” of the victims of World War II changed in the USSR, we will immediately find that these changes were not in the nature of random digital chaos, but were subject to an easily traced relationship and strict logic.

Until the end of the 80s of the last century, this logic boiled down to the fact that propaganda, although very, very slowly, but gradually still gave way to science - albeit overly ideologized, but based on archival materials. Therefore, Stalin's 7,000,000 total military losses of the USSR under Khrushchev turned into 20,000,000, under Brezhnev into "more than 20,000,000", and under Gorbachev into "more than 27,000,000". In the same direction, the numbers of losses of the Armed Forces "danced" as well. As a result, already in the early 60s, it was officially recognized that more than 10,000,000 soldiers died at the front alone (not counting those who did not return from captivity). In the 70s of the last century, the figure of "more than 10,000,000 dead at the front" (not counting those killed in captivity) became generally accepted. She was cited in the most authoritative publications of the time. As an example, it suffices to recall an article by Corresponding Member of the Academy of Medical Sciences, Colonel-General of the Medical Service E.I. ".

By the way, in the same year, another "landmark" book was presented to the readers - "The Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945", where the numbers of army losses and Red Army soldiers who died in captivity were published. For example, up to 7 million civilians (?) and up to 4 million captured Red Army soldiers died in German concentration camps alone, which gives a total of up to 14 million dead Red Army soldiers (10 million at the front and 4 million in captivity). Here, apparently, it is also appropriate to recall that then in the USSR each such figure was official state - it necessarily passed through the strictest censorship "sieve" - ​​it was repeatedly rechecked and often reproduced in various reference and information publications.

In principle, in the USSR in the 70s, in fact, it was recognized that the losses of the army by those who died at the front and in captivity for 1941-1945 amounted to approximately 16,000,000 - 17,000,000 people. True, the statistics were published in a somewhat veiled form.

Here in the 1st volume of the Soviet Military Encyclopedia (article "Combat losses") it is said: " So, if in the 1st World War about 10 million people were killed and died from wounds, then in the 2nd World War only the losses killed on the fronts amounted to 27 million people» . These are precisely army losses, since the total number of deaths in World War II in the same publication is defined as 50 million people.

If we subtract from these 27,000,000 losses of the Armed Forces of all participants in the Second World War, except for the USSR, then the remainder will be about 16-17 million. It is these figures that are the number of dead military personnel recognized in the USSR (at the front and in captivity). To count "everyone except the USSR", then it was possible according to the book by Boris Urlanis "Wars and the population of Europe", which was first published in the Union in 1960. Now it is easy to find it on the Internet under the name "History of military losses".

All of the above statistics on army losses were repeatedly reproduced in the USSR until the end of the 80s. But in 1990, the Russian General Staff published the results of its own new "updated" calculations of irretrievable army losses. Surprisingly, they somehow mysteriously turned out not more than the previous "stagnant", but less. Moreover, less cool - almost in 2 times. Specifically, 8,668,400 people. The solution to the puzzle here is simple - during the period of Gorbachev's perestroika, history again became politicized to the limit, turning into a propaganda tool. And the "big stripes" from the Ministry of Defense decided in this manner "on the sly" to improve the "patriotic" statistics.

Therefore, no explanation for such a strange arithmetic metamorphosis followed. On the contrary, soon these 8.668.400 (again without explanation) were "detailed" in the reference book "Secrecy stamp removed", which was then supplemented and republished. And what is most striking is that Soviet figures were instantly forgotten - they simply quietly disappeared from books published under the patronage of the state. But the question to the logical absurdity of such a situation remained:

It turns out that in the USSR for 3 decades they tried to “denigrate” one of their most important achievements - the victory over Nazi Germany - they pretended that they fought worse than they actually did and for this they published false data on army losses, inflated by two times.

And the real "beautiful" statistics were kept under the heading "secret" ...

Vulture of secrecy eating the dead

Analyzing all the amazing data of Krivosheev's "research", one can write several solid monographs. Different authors are most often carried away by examples of analyzing the results of individual operations. These are, of course, good visual illustrations. However, they call into question only partial figures - against the background of general losses, they are not very large.

Krivosheev hides the bulk of the losses among the “re-conscripted”. In the "Secret Classification" he indicates their number as "more than 2 million", and in "Russia in the Wars" he generally throws out from the text of the book an indication of the number of this category of conscripts. He simply writes that the total number of mobilized people is 34,476,700 - excluding those re-conscripted. The exact number of those re-conscripted - 2,237,000 people - was named by Krivosheev in only one article, published in a small-circulation collection sixteen years ago.

Who are the "re-called"? This is, for example, when a person was seriously wounded in 1941 and after a long treatment was "written off" from the army "for health reasons." But, when in the second half of the war human resources were already coming to an end, the medical requirements were revised and lowered. As a result, the man was again recognized as fit for service and drafted into the army. And in 1944 he was killed. Thus, Krivosheev counts this person in the mobilized only once. But he “takes out” twice from the ranks of the army - first as a disabled person, and then as a dead man. Ultimately, it turns out that one of the "withdrawn" hides from accounting in the amount of total irretrievable losses.

Another example. The man was mobilized, but was soon transferred to the NKVD troops. A few months later, this part of the NKVD was transferred back to the Red Army (for example, on the Leningrad Front in 1942, an entire division was immediately transferred from the NKVD to the Red Army - they simply changed their number). But Krivosheev takes this soldier into account in the initial transfer from the army to the NKVD, but does not notice the return transfer from the NKVD to the Red Army (since those re-conscripted from him are excluded from the list of those mobilized). Therefore, it turns out that the person is again "hidden" - in fact, he is in the army of the post-war period, but Krivosheev is not taken into account.

Another example. The man was mobilized, but in 1941 he went missing - he remained surrounded and "taken root" among the civilian population. In 1943, this territory was liberated, and the "Primak" was again drafted into the army. However, in 1944, his leg was torn off. As a result, disability and write-off "on the net." Krivosheev subtracts this person from 34,476,700 as many as three times - first as a missing person, then among 939,700 called up in the former occupied territory of the encirclement, and also as a disabled person. It turns out that "hides" two losses.

It would take a long time to list all the tricks used in the handbook to "improve" statistics. But it is much more productive to recalculate the figures that Krivosheev offers as base ones. But to recalculate in normal logic - without "patriotic" cunning. To do this, let us again turn to the statistics indicated by the general in the small-circulation collection of losses already mentioned above.

Then we will get:
4.826.900 - the number of the Red Army and the RKKF on June 22, 1941.
31.812.200 - The number of mobilized (together with the re-conscripted) for the entire war.
In total - 36.639.100 people.

After the end of hostilities in Europe (at the beginning of June 1945), there were 12,839,800 people in the Red Army and the Red Army (including the wounded in hospitals). From here you can find out the total losses: 36.639.100 - 12.839.800 = 23.799.300

Next, we count those who, for various reasons, left the Armed Forces of the USSR alive, but not at the front:
3.798.200 - commission for health reasons.
3.614.600 - transferred to the industry, MPVO and VOKhR.
1.174.600 - transferred to the NKVD.
250.400 - transferred to the Allied armies.
206.000 - expelled as unreliable.
436.600 - convicted and sent to places of detention.
212.400 - no deserters found.
Total - 9.692.800

Let us subtract these “living” from the total losses and thus find out how many people died at the front and in captivity, and were also released from captivity in the last weeks of the war.
23.799.300 – 9.692.800 = 14.106.500

To establish the final number of demographic losses that fell to the share of the Armed Forces, it is necessary to subtract from 14,106,500 those who returned from captivity, but did not enter the army again. Krivosheev with a similar purpose deducts 1,836,000 people registered by the repatriation authorities. This is another trick. In the collection “War and Society”, prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences and the Institute of Russian History, an article by Zemskov V.N. “Repatriation of Displaced Soviet Citizens” was published, which details all the components of the number of prisoners of war of interest to us.

It turns out that 286,299 prisoners were released on the territory of the USSR before the end of 1944. Of these, 228,068 people were re-mobilized into the army. And in 1944-1945 (during the period of hostilities outside the borders of the USSR), 659,190 people were released and mobilized into the army. In other words, they are also already counted among the re-conscripted.

That is, 887.258 (228.068 + 659.190) former prisoners at the beginning of June 1945 were among the 12.839.800 souls who served in the Red Army and the Red Army. Consequently, from 14.106.500 it is necessary to subtract not 1.8 million, but approximately 950.000 released from captivity, but not re-mobilized into the army during the war.

As a result, we get at least 13,150,000 servicemen of the Red Army and the Red Army Fleet who died at the front in 1941-1945, were captured and were among the "defectors". However, this is not all. Krivosheev also "hides" losses (killed, died in captivity and defectors) among those written off for health reasons. Here, "Secrecy removed" p. 136 (or "Russia in the wars ..." p. 243). In the figure of 3,798,158 commissioned invalids, he also takes into account those who were sent on leave for injury. In other words, people did not leave the army - in fact, they were in its ranks, and the reference book excludes them and thus “hides” at least several hundred thousand more dead.

That is, if we proceed from the figures that Krivosheev himself proposes as the initial basis for calculations, but handle them without general juggling, then we will get not 8.668.400 dead at the front, in captivity and "defectors", but about 13.500. 000.

Through the lens of party statistics

However, those data on the number of those mobilized in 1941-1945, which are declared by Krivosheev as "base" figures for calculating losses, also seem to be underestimated. A similar conclusion suggests itself if we check the reference book with the official statistics of the AUCP(b) and VLKSM. These calculations are much more accurate than army reports, since in the Red Army people often did not even have documents and even posthumous medallions (the Interpreter's blog partially touched on the related topic of tokens in the Red Army). And communists and Komsomol members were taken into account incomparably better. Each of them necessarily had a party card in his hands, regularly participated in party meetings, the protocols of which (indicating the nominal number of the “cell”) were sent to Moscow.

These data went separately from the army - along a parallel party line. And this figure was published much more readily in the Khrushchev-Brezhnev USSR - censorship treated it more condescendingly - as indicators of ideological victories, where even losses were perceived as proof of the unity of society and the devotion of the people to the socialist system.

The essence of the calculation boils down to the fact that the losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR in terms of Komsomol members and communists are known quite accurately. In total, by the beginning of the war in the USSR, there were a little less than 4,000,000 members of the CPSU (b). Of these, 563,000 were in the Armed Forces. During the war years, 5,319,297 people joined the party. And immediately after the end of hostilities, its ranks consisted of about 5,500,000 people. Of which 3.324.000 served in the Armed Forces.

That is, the total losses of members of the CPSU (b) amounted to more than 3,800,000 people. Of which about 3,000,000 died at the front in the ranks of the Armed Forces. In total, approximately 6,900,000 communists passed through the Armed Forces of the USSR in 1941-1945 (out of 9,300,000 in the party during the same period of time). This figure is made up of 3,000,000 dead at the front, 3,324,000 who were in the Armed Forces immediately after the end of hostilities in Europe, as well as about 600,000 invalids who were commissioned from the Armed Forces in 1941-1945.

Here it is very useful to pay attention to the ratio of killed and disabled 3,000,000 to 600,000 = 5:1. And Krivosheev has 8.668.400 to 3.798.000 = 2.3:1. This is a very telling fact. Let us repeat once again that Party members were counted incomparably more carefully than non-Party members. They were issued a party card without fail, in each unit (up to the company level) their own party cell was organized, which took into account each newly arrived party member. Therefore, party statistics were much more accurate than regular army statistics. And the difference in this very accuracy is clearly illustrated by the ratio between the dead and the disabled among non-party and communists in official Soviet figures and by Krivosheev.

Now let's move on to the Komsomol members. As of June 1941, there were 1,926,000 people in the Komsomol from the Red Army and the RKKF. Still, at least several tens of thousands of people were registered in the Komsomol organizations of the NKVD troops. Therefore, it can be assumed that by the beginning of the war there were about 2,000,000 members of the Komsomol in the Armed Forces of the USSR.

More than 3,500,000 members of the Komsomol were drafted into the Armed Forces during the war years. In the Armed Forces themselves, over 5,000,000 people were accepted into the ranks of the Komsomol during the war years.

That is, in total, more than 10,500,000 people passed through the Komsomol in the Armed Forces in 1941-1945. Of these, 1,769,458 people joined the CPSU (b). Thus, it turns out that in total at least 15,600,000 communists and Komsomol members passed through the Armed Forces in 1941-1945 (about 6,900,000 communists + more than 10,500,000 Komsomol members - 1,769,458 Komsomol members who joined the CPSU (b).

This is approximately 43% of the 36,639,100 people who, according to Krivosheev, passed through the Armed Forces during the war years. However, the official Soviet statistics of the 1960s and 1980s do not confirm this ratio. It says that at the beginning of January 1942 there were 1,750,000 Komsomol members and 1,234,373 Communists in the Armed Forces. This is a little over 25% of the entire armed forces, numbering about 11.5 million people (together with the wounded who were being treated).

Even after twelve months, the proportion of communists and Komsomol members was no more than 33%. At the beginning of January 1943, there were 1,938,327 Communists and 2,200,200 Komsomol members in the Armed Forces. That is, 1.938.327 + 2.200.000 = 4.150.000 communists and Komsomol members from the Armed Forces, who had approximately 13.000.000 people.

13,000,000, since Krivosheev himself claims that since 1943 the USSR maintained an army of 11,500,000 people (plus about 1,500,000 in hospitals). In the middle of 1943, the proportion of communists and non-party people did not increase very noticeably, reaching only 36% in July. At the beginning of January 1944, there were 2,702,566 Communists and approximately 2,400,000 Komsomol members in the Armed Forces. I have not yet found a more accurate figure, but in December 1943 it was exactly 2,400,000 - the highest number in the entire war. That is, in January 1943 it could not be more. It turns out - 2.702.566 + 2.400.000 = approximately 5.100.000 communists and Komsomol members from the army of 13.000.000 people - about 40%.

At the beginning of January 1945, there were 3,030,758 Communists and 2,202,945 Komsomol members in the Armed Forces. That is, at the beginning of 1945, the share of communists and Komsomol members (3.030.758 + 2.202.945) from the army of about 13,000,000 people was again about 40%. Here it is also appropriate to recall that the bulk of the losses of the Red Army and the Red Army (respectively, the number of those mobilized to replace them) occurred in the first year and a half of the war, when the share of the CPSU (b) and the Komsomol was less than 33%. That is, it turns out that the average share of communists and Komsomol members in the Armed Forces during the war was no more than 35%. In other words, if we take as a basis the total number of communists and Komsomol members (15,600,000), then the number of people who passed through the Armed Forces of the USSR in 1941-1945 will be approximately 44,000,000. And not 36.639.100, as indicated by Krivosheev. Accordingly, the overall losses will also increase.

By the way, the total losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR for 1941-1945 can also be approximately calculated if we start from the official Soviet data on losses among communists and Komsomol members, published in the 60-80s. They say that the army organizations of the CPSU (b) lost approximately 3,000,000 people. And the VLKSM organizations number about 4,000,000 people. In other words, 35% of the army lost 7,000,000. Consequently, all the Armed Forces lost about 19,000,000 - 20,000,000 souls (killed at the front, killed in captivity and became "defectors").

Losses in 1941

Analyzing the dynamics of the number of communists and Komsomol members in the Armed Forces, one can quite clearly calculate Soviet front-line losses over the years of the war. They are also at least twice (more often than twice) higher than the data published in the Krivosheev reference book.

For example, Krivosheev reports that in June-December 1941, the Red Army irretrievably lost (killed, missing, died from wounds and diseases) 3,137,673 people. This figure is easy to verify. The encyclopedia "The Great Patriotic War 1941-1945" reports that by June 1941 there were 563,000 communists in the army and navy. It is further indicated that over 500,000 members of the CPSU (b) died in the first six months of the war. And that on January 1, 1942, there were 1,234,373 party members in the army and navy.

How to find out what is the meaning of "above"? The twelfth volume of The History of the Second World War 1939-1945 states that during the first six months of the war, more than 1,100,000 communists joined army and navy organizations from civilians. It turns out: 563 (as of June 22) + "over" 1,100,000 (mobilized) = "over" 1,663,000 communists.
Further. In the sixth volume "History of the Great Patriotic War of the Soviet Union 1941-1945" from the plate "Numerical growth of the party" you can find out that the military party organizations accepted into their ranks in July-December 1941 145,870 people.

It turns out: “More than” 1.663.000 + 145.870 = “more than” 1.808.870 communists were involved in the Red Army in June-December 1941. Now from this amount we subtract the amount that was on January 1, 1942:
"Over" 1.808.870 - 1.234.373 = "Over" 574.497

It was we who received the irretrievable losses of the CPSU (b) - killed, captured, missing.

Now let's decide on the Komsomol members. From the "Soviet Military Encyclopedia" you can find out that by the beginning of the war there were 1,926,000 members of the Komsomol in the army and navy. The encyclopedia "The Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945" reports that over 2,000,000 Komsomol members were drafted into the army and navy during the first six months of the war, and indicates that in addition, 207,000 people were already accepted into the Komsomol in the ranks of the Red Army and the RKKF. We also see there that by the end of 1941, the Komsomol organizations in the Armed Forces numbered 1,750,000 people.

We calculate - 1.926.000 + "over" 2.000.000 + 207.000 = "over" 4.133.000. This is the total number of Komsomol members who passed through the Armed Forces in 1941. Now you can find out irretrievable losses. From the total, we subtract what was available on January 1, 1942: “Over” 4.133.000 - 1.750.000 = “over” 2.383.000.

It was we who got the dead, the missing, the prisoners.

However, here the figure should be slightly reduced - by the number of those who left the Komsomol by age. That is, about one tenth of those remaining in the ranks. It is also necessary to take away the Komsomol members who joined the CPSU (b) - approximately 70,000 people. Thus, according to a very conservative estimate, the irretrievable losses of the Red Army and the RKKF among the communists and Komsomol members amounted to at least 2,500,000 souls. And Krivosheev has the number 3.137.673 in this column. Of course, together with non-party people.

3.137.673 - 2.500.000 = 637.673 - this remains on the non-partisans.

How many non-party people were mobilized in 1941? Krivosheev writes that by the beginning of the war there were 4,826,907 souls in the Red Army and Navy. In addition, at the training camp in the ranks of the Red Army at that time there were another 805.264 people. It turns out - 4.826.907 + 805.264 = 5.632.171 people by June 22, 1941.

How many people were mobilized in June - December 1941? We find the answer in an article by General Gradoselsky, published in the Military Historical Journal. From the analysis of the figures given there, we can conclude that during the two mobilizations of 1941, more than 14,000,000 people came to the Red Army and the Red Army (excluding militias). And in total, 5.632.171 + more than 14.000.000 = approximately 20.000.000 people were involved in the army in 1941 in this way. This means that from 20,000,000 we subtract "more than" 1,808,870 Communists and about 4,000,000 Komsomol members. We get about 14,000,000 non-party people.

And, if you look at these figures through the statistics of the losses of the Krivosheevsky reference book, it turns out that 6,000,000 communists and Komsomol members irretrievably lost 2,500,000 people. And 14,000,000 non-party 637,673 people ...

Simply put, the losses of non-party people are underestimated at least six times. And the total irretrievable losses of the Soviet Armed Forces in 1941 should not be 3.137.673, but 6-7 million. This is at the bare minimum. Most likely more.

In this regard, it is useful to recall that the German Armed Forces in 1941 lost about 300,000 people killed and missing on the Eastern Front. That is, for each of their soldiers, the Germans took at least 20 souls from the Soviet side. Most likely, more - up to 25. This is approximately the same ratio with which European armies of the 19th and 20th centuries beat African savages in colonial wars.

The difference in the information that governments communicated to their peoples also looks about the same. Hitler, in one of his last public speeches in March 1945, announced that Germany had lost 6,000,000 men in the war. Now historians believe that this did not differ much from reality, determining the final total of 6,500,000-7,000,000 dead at the front and in the rear. Stalin in 1946 said that Soviet losses were about 7,000,000 lives. Over the next half century, the figure of human losses in the USSR increased to 27,000,000. And there is a strong suspicion that this is not the limit.

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A comment

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

There is a lot of literature on this problem, and maybe someone gets the impression that it has been studied enough. Yes, indeed, there is a lot of literature, but there are still many questions and doubts. Too much here is unclear, controversial and clearly unreliable. Even the reliability of the current official data on the loss of life of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War (about 27 million people) raises serious doubts.

History of calculation and official state recognition of losses

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

In 1959, the first post-war census of the population of the USSR was carried out. In 1961, Khrushchev, in a letter to the Prime Minister of Sweden, reported 20 million dead: “How can we sit back 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 of Soviet people?” In 1965, Brezhnev, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, announced more than 20 million dead.

In 1988–1993 A team of military historians led by Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev conducted a statistical study of archival documents and other materials containing information about casualties in the army and navy, border and internal troops of the NKVD. The result of the work was the figure of 8,668,400 people lost by the power structures of the USSR during the war.

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

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

military personnel

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

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

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

On May 5, 2010, Major General A. Kirilin, head of the RF Ministry of Defense Directorate for perpetuating the memory of those who died defending the Fatherland, told RIA Novosti that the figures for military casualties - 8 668 400 , will be reported to the leadership of the country, so that they are announced on May 9, the day of the 65th anniversary of the Victory.

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

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

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

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

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

Additional data

Civilian population

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

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

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

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

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

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

Finally, we note another new trend in the study of the demographic results of World War II. Before the collapse of the USSR, there was no need to assess the human losses for individual republics or nationalities. And only at the end of the twentieth century, L. Rybakovsky tried to calculate the approximate value of the human losses of the RSFSR within its then borders. According to his estimates, it amounted to approximately 13 million people - slightly less than half of the total losses of the USSR.

Nationalitydead soldiers	Number of casualties (thousand people)	% of total irretrievable losses
Russians	5 756.0	66.402
Ukrainians	1 377.4	15.890
Belarusians	252.9	2.917
Tatars	187.7	2.165
Jews	142.5	1.644
Kazakhs	125.5	1.448
Uzbeks	117.9	1.360
Armenians	83.7	0.966
Georgians	79.5	0.917
Mordva	63.3	0.730
Chuvash	63.3	0.730
Yakuts	37.9	0.437
Azerbaijanis	58.4	0.673
Moldovans	53.9	0.621
Bashkirs	31.7	0.366
Kyrgyz	26.6	0.307
Udmurts	23.2	0.268
Tajiks	22.9	0.264
Turkmens	21.3	0.246
Estonians	21.2	0.245
Mari	20.9	0.241
Buryats	13.0	0.150
Komi	11.6	0.134
Latvians	11.6	0.134
Lithuanians	11.6	0.134
Peoples of Dagestan	11.1	0.128
Ossetians	10.7	0.123
Poles	10.1	0.117
Karely	9.5	0.110
Kalmyks	4.0	0.046
Kabardians and Balkars	3.4	0.039
Greeks	2.4	0.028
Chechens and Ingush	2.3	0.026
Finns	1.6	0.018
Bulgarians	1.1	0.013
Czechs and Slovaks	0.4	0.005
Chinese	0.4	0.005
Assyrians	0,2	0,002
Yugoslavs	0.1	0.001

The greatest losses on the battlefields of the Second World War were suffered by Russians and Ukrainians. Many Jews were killed. But the most tragic was the fate of the Belarusian people. In the first months of the war, the entire territory of Belarus was occupied by the Germans. During the war, the Byelorussian SSR lost up to 30% of its population. In the occupied territory of the BSSR, the Nazis killed 2.2 million people. (The data of recent studies on Belarus are as follows: the Nazis destroyed civilians - 1,409,225 people, destroyed prisoners in German death camps - 810,091 people, driven into German slavery - 377,776 people). It is also known that in percentage terms - the number of dead soldiers / population, among the Soviet republics, Georgia suffered great damage. Almost 300,000 out of 700,000 Georgians called to the front did not return.

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. The picture is more or less clear regarding the number of Wehrmacht prisoners of war on the Soviet-German front. According to Russian sources, 3,172,300 Wehrmacht soldiers were captured by Soviet troops, of which 2,388,443 were Germans in the NKVD camps. According to estimates by German historians, there were about 3.1 million German servicemen in Soviet prisoner of war camps alone.

The discrepancy is approximately 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.

There is another statistics of losses - the statistics of burials of Wehrmacht soldiers. According to the appendix to the law of the Federal Republic of Germany "On the preservation of burial places", the total number of German soldiers who are 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.

1. Firstly, this figure takes into account only the burial places of 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). Of the total number of dead Wehrmacht soldiers of non-German nationality, the Soviet-German front accounts for 75-80%, i.e. 0.6-0.7 million people.
2. Secondly, this figure refers to the beginning of the 90s of the last century. Since then, the search for German graves in Russia, the CIS countries and Eastern Europe has continued. And the messages that appeared on this topic were not informative enough. For example, the Russian Association of War Memorials, established in 1992, reported that over the 10 years of its existence, it had transferred information about the burial places of 400,000 Wehrmacht soldiers to the German Union for the Care of War Graves. However, whether these were newly discovered burials or whether they have already been taken into account in the figure of 3 million 226 thousand is unclear. 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.
3. 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.
4. Fourthly, 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 estimate 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.
5. Finally, fifthly, the Wehrmacht soldiers who died of “natural” death (0.1–0.2 million people) were also among the buried.

An approximate procedure for calculating the total human losses of Germany

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

conclusions

Recall that disputes about the number of deaths are ongoing to this day.

Almost 27 million citizens of the USSR died during the war (the exact number is 26.6 million). This amount included:

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

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

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

Surprisingly, 70 years after our Victory, one of the most important questions has not been put to rest - how many of our fellow citizens died during the Great Patriotic War. The official figures have changed several times. And always in one direction - the direction of increasing losses. Stalin named 9 million dead (which is close to the truth, given military losses), under Brezhnev, the figure of 20 million lives given for the freedom of the Motherland was put into circulation. At the end of Perestroika, the figures that historians and politicians use today appeared - 27 million Soviet citizens who died during the Great Patriotic War. There are already voices that "in fact, more than 33 million people died."

So who and why is constantly increasing our losses, why is the myth of "thrown with corpses" supported. And why did the Immortal Regiment appear, as the first step towards a new version of the "inhuman leadership of the USSR" during the Second World War "saving itself at the expense of".

On the eve of Victory Day, I received two letters, which are an excellent illustration of the question of the real losses of our people in the war against fascism.

From these two letters from readers, material about the war and our losses was obtained.

First letter.

“Dear Nikolai Viktorovich!

I agree with you that history is like the rules of the road () . Failure to follow the rules leads to a dead end or worse ... In history, not only facts are important, but also numbers (not just dates).

Since the moment of "perestroika and glasnost" a lot of figures have appeared, but not achievements, but losses. And one of these figures is 27 million dead in the Great Patriotic War (WWII).

At the same time, this is not enough for some "politicians" and they begin to voice big numbers.

Remember what a shock (as they say today) causes many millions of "victims of repression" in people. For some, it is mandatory and with a clarification - “Stalinist”. And the real figure for normal researchers is from 650,000 to 680,000 people. By the way, Grover Furr’s book “Shadows of the 20th Congress, or Anti-Stalinist Vileness” (M. Eksmo, Algorithm, 2010) gives the following figures of those executed: 1937 - 353,074 people, 1938 - 328,618 people, a total of 681,692 people. But this number includes not only political, but also criminals.

In the study of the losses of the Second World War, a figure of 26.6 million people is indicated. At the same time, it is indicated that 1.3 million are emigrants. That is, they left the country. This means that 25.3 million people died after all.

It is very difficult to establish the losses of the USSR directly. The number of casualties, only to the Red Army, was established in a study conducted by the Ming. Defense in 1988-1993 under the leadership of Colonel-General Krivosheev G.F.

Estimates of the direct physical extermination of the civilian population, according to the ChGK from 1946, amounted to 6,390,800 people on the territory of the USSR. This number includes prisoners of war. And what about the number of deaths from starvation, bombing, shelling? I have not seen such studies.

The assessment of the losses of the USSR is carried out according to a completely logical formula:

Losses of the USSR \u003d Population of the USSR on 06/22/1941 - Population of the USSR at the date of the end of the war + Number of children who died due to increased mortality (out of those born during the war years) - The population would have died in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 .

We substitute the numbers in the above formula and get:

196.7 million - 159.5 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 26.6 million people

In two figures, researchers have almost no discrepancy - these are:

The number of children who died due to increased mortality (out of those born during the war years). The figure is called 1.3 million people.

The population would die in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 = 11.9 million people.

And there are questions about the other two figures. The population of the USSR at the date of the end of the war (born before 06/22/1941) was determined at 159.5 million people according to December 1945 data. It is worth remembering such facts - in 1944, Tuva became part of the USSR. At the same time, since 1943, Tuvan volunteers participated in battles on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War. In 1939, 1940, the lands of Western Belarus, Ukraine, and the Carpathians became part of the USSR. The population of these regions was included in the population of the USSR. But in 1945 Poland and

Czechoslovakia, as well as new borders for them (and for Hungary and Romania). And quite a few Poles, Slovaks, Romanians, Hungarians (former citizens of the USSR) decided to return to their states. From this the question arises, how were these people taken into account in the post-war census? The researchers are silent about this.

Now the population of the USSR as of June 22, 1941. How did this figure come about?

To the population of the USSR as of January 1939, the population of the annexed territories and population growth over 2.5 years were added, i.e.

170.6 million + 20.8 million + 4.9 million and another + 0.4 million due to the “infant mortality reduction rate” and received 196.7 million people by June 22, 1941.

Wherein:

The population of the USSR according to the 1926 census is 147 million people

The population of the USSR according to the 1937 census is 162 million people.

The population of the USSR according to the 1939 census is 170.6 million people.

The 1926 census took place in December, the 1937 and 1939 censuses in early January, that is, all three censuses were conducted within the same boundaries. Population growth from 1926 to 1937 amounted to 15 million people in 10 years, or 1.5 million per year. And suddenly, over the 2 years of 1937 and 1938, it was calculated that the population growth was 8.6 million. And this was at the time of urbanization and the “demographic echo” of the First World War and the Civil War. By the way, the average annual population growth of the USSR in the 1970s and 1980s was approximately 2.3-2.5 million people a year.

In the statistical reference books of the 50s, the population of the USSR in 1941 was generally indicated as 191.7 million people. Even a democrat and officially called a traitor - Rezun-Suvorov writes in his books about the Second World War that "The population of the Soviet Union at the beginning of 1941 was 191 million people" (Viktor Suvorov. About half a billion. Chapter from a new book. http://militera. lib.ru/research/pravda_vs-3/01.html).

(The question why, when calculating the figure of the population of the USSR, it was decided to increase it by 5 million, remains unanswered).

By indicating in the calculation, a figure that is closer to the real value, i.e. 191.7 million people at the beginning of the Second World War we get:

The population of the USSR on 06/22/1941 - 191.7

The population of the USSR as of December 31, 1945 - 170.5

Incl. born before 06/22/1941 - 159.5

The total decline in the population of those who lived on 06/22/1941 (191.7 million - 159.5 million = 32.2 million people) - 32.2

The number of children who died due to increased mortality (out of those born during the war years) - 1.3

The population would die in peacetime, based on the mortality rate of 1940 - 11.9

The total human losses of the USSR as a result of the war: 32.2 million + 1.3 million - 1 1.9 million = 21.6 million people.

First, it must be taken into account that non-military mortality in 1941-1945. it is incorrect to calculate based on the death rate in 1940. In the military 1941-1945. non-military mortality should have been much HIGHER than in the peaceful 1940s.

Secondly, this “general population decline” includes the so-called. “second emigration” (up to 1.5 million people) and the loss of collaborationist formations that fought on the side of the Germans (Estonian and Latvian SS men, “Ostbattalions”, policemen, etc.) - after all, they also consisted of, as it were, citizens of the USSR! This is up to 400,000 people.

And if these figures are subtracted from 21.6 million, then you get about 19.8 million.

That is, rounded - the same "Brezhnev" 20 million.

Therefore, until the researchers were able to give reasonable calculations, I propose not to use the figures that appeared during the Gorbachev era. The purpose of these calculations was certainly not to establish the truth. I wrote to you about this because I heard several times in your speeches about the losses of the USSR in 27 million people.

Sincerely, Matvienko Gennady Ivanovich

P.S. According to the estimate of the losses (minimum) only of the Germans in the 2nd World War, at least 12 million people (while the maximum estimate of the losses of the civilian German population does not exceed 3 million). And they completely forgot the Hungarians, Romanians, Italians, Finns.

At Stalingrad, in September 1942, the army of Paulus is 270 thousand people, and 2 Romanian and 1 Hungarian armies - about 340 thousand people.

Thank you very much, Gennady Ivanovich for his letter. But the letter sent a little earlier by another reader is simply an illustration of what is written above.

Second letter.

"Dear Nikolay Viktorovich

Let me introduce myself. My name is Berkaliev Askar Abdrakhmanovich. I live in Kazakhstan in Almaty, retired, but I continue to be interested in social and political life in the territory of the former USSR. I try to follow the TV battles that our TV broadcasts. I am impressed by your interpretation of the history of the Great Patriotic War and the fact that you analyze the most controversial moments of this war. I would not bother you and take up your time if I had not accidentally stumbled upon facts that shook the well-established (for me personally) information about the losses of our country in the last war.

Until the 70s of the last century, it was believed that the losses of our country in the Great Patriotic War amounted to 20 million dead and dead. Then the figure of 27 million came out of nowhere and there is a strong trend towards increasing the number of our losses.

Some segments of society (especially the intelligentsia) have a point of view that the Soviet army pelted the Germans with the corpses of their soldiers and won not by skill, but by numbers. I think that such an opinion contributes to belittling the merits of our people in winning that war. As well as the regularly expressed points of view that without Lend-Lease supplies we would not have won, that without a second front we would not have won, etc.

I'll tell you a little about what facts I found.

In autumn 2013 I made a trip to Ukraine. At the end of 1943, my older brother Nariman Berkaliyev died there. For a long time we did not know the exact place of death and burial. The notice of death indicated that he died in the Kirovograd region on December 20, 1943, without indicating the exact place of burial. In 1991, the "Book of Memory" was published in our regional newspaper. The names of our countrymen who died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War were listed there, and the specified places of their burial were indicated.

For various reasons, none of the remaining family members could travel to Ukraine. The parents were no longer alive, the older brothers were aged and the state of health did not allow them to make a trip to Ukraine. I was the youngest of the brothers and, putting aside other things, I still went to the Kirovograd region, found the village of Sukhodolskoye in the Dolinsky district (during the war it was called Batyzman). Found a mass grave. The surname and name of the brother were on the list carved on granite stones. The mass grave is kept in good condition, thanks to the villagers. I laid flowers and handfuls of earth brought from my native land.

Having the goal of visiting the grave of my older brother, I wanted to look at the land, for the liberation of which my father also fought. My father was drafted into the army in the summer of 1942 and ended up in the Stalingrad region. He was given the rank of sergeant (he had Civil War experience). He served in the 706th Infantry Regiment of the 204th Division, which was part of the 64th Army. On January 18, 1943, during the liquidation of the encircled German group, he was wounded. He was in a hospital in the city of Buzuluk and in the summer of 1943 he returned to the active army. He ended up in the 983rd regiment of the 253rd division, which was part of the 40th army of the 1st Ukrainian Front. He participated in the battles for the liberation of the Poltava region, went through Gogol's places, was in Dikanka, almost drowned in the local river Psel. In November 1943, part of them crossed the Dnieper in the area of ​​​​the Bukrinsky bridgehead, imitating that it was from here that the main attack would take place. In fact, the main blow was made from the Lyutezh bridgehead. For two days their regiment, which moved to the right bank, held out under the fire of the Germans, who had settled on the high bank of the Dnieper. On the third day, my father was wounded by a German mine explosion and evacuated to the rear. They wanted to amputate his legs, but he did not give it, he withstood six months of treatment in the rear hospital and returned home in the summer of 1944. My father died in 1973 at the age of 70.

After a trip to Ukraine, I took up the study of the military path of my closest relatives in more detail. From close relatives, my father, older brother, and six older cousins ​​​​participated in that war.

I am now retired, I have enough time, and after a trip to Ukraine, I decided to write something like a memoir for the younger generation. Of course, a large place in the memoirs is devoted to how the older generation showed itself in the war. Of the eight close relatives who went to war, only four returned alive.

In the course of compiling my notes, which later developed into memoirs, I had to rummage through my home archives. It turned out that a lot of information can be found on the Internet. There are special sites "Feat of the people" and OBD "Memorial". You, of course, know about this, but for me it was a great find. It turns out that having information about the number of the military unit, you can follow its combat path. You can find information about awards and even submissions for awards. I remember how my father talked about his last battle - the crossing of the Dnieper in early November 1943. On the third day after the crossing, already on the right bank, my father was wounded and taken to the rear. Before being sent to the hospital, the commander told my father that he would present him with the Order of Glory, II degree (my father already had the Order of Glory, III degree). But he never received the promised order. On the Internet, I found an award sheet (representation for the award). The father was presented not for the order, but only for the medal "For Courage", but he did not receive it either. The award sheet indicated the circumstances and place of the battle. It was near the village of Khodorovka on the famous Bukrinsky bridgehead.

I began to dig more carefully on the Internet. I entered the Memorial website and found out that my father was considered dead on January 18, 1943, during the liquidation of the encircled German group (that is, during the first wound).

After discovering a clear discrepancy between the information received and reality, I checked whether the Memorial OBD contained information about my other relatives who died at the front.

1. Two older cousins ​​died in 1941. There is no information about them. They were ordinary soldiers. In addition, I do not know exactly the years of birth and surnames (among Kazakhs, the surname is often taken from the name of the father, grandfather or distant ancestor).
2. Another older cousin of Kairov, Salim, was a career military man who fought on the Kalinin front. His name has been included in the list of irretrievable losses of the OBD "Memorial" three times. All three information contains the same surname and name. Even the numbers of the military unit and division match. The difference is that somewhere he was recorded as a lieutenant, and somewhere as a senior lieutenant. In one case, he was considered killed on January 9, 1943, and in another information on January 8, 1943. Somewhere he was considered born in the Ashgabat region, and somewhere in the West Kazakhstan region. Although it was clearly about the same person (too many coincidences in the details). But at the same time, each information from the OBD "Memorial" has a separate folder and file.

1. My elder brother Nariman, who actually died, is also listed three times in the list of the dead in the Memorial OBD. In one case, he is considered a fighter of the 68th m / brigade and is buried in the village. Batyzman Dolinsky district. In other information, he passes as a fighter who only has field mail 32172, without indicating the place of death. In the third case, he is recorded as a fighter of the 68th m / brigade. But the burial place is the village of Batyzman, Novgorodkovsky district.

1. There was another participant in the war in our family - this is the father of my wife, Seydalin Mukash, born in 1910. When searching for information about him, the OBD "Memorial" indicated that Senior Sergeant of the 1120th Infantry Regiment Mukash Seydalin died in the hospital from wounds in December 1942. In fact, he was wounded on December 6, 1942. After being wounded, he was commissioned and since 1943 worked as a teacher in the city of Chu, Dzhambul region. He died in 1985 at the age of 75.

I got a bunch of conflicting information.

• My father returned from the war wounded but alive. According to information from Memorial, he is presumed dead.
• My wife's father returned from the war wounded but alive. Information about him is that he died in the hospital.
• My own brother Nariman really died, but according to information from Memorial, he is on three lists, that is, he is listed as three different dead people.
• Another brother (cousin) was also really killed, but according to information from Memorial, he was killed three times and there are three separate records about this.

It turns out that for four people there are eight information about the death, although only two actually died.

It seems to me that errors in the information could have arisen at the first stage, i. when filling out reports of irretrievable losses. I saw the original military field records on the Internet. These are unquestionably genuine documents, written on yellowed paper, which confirms the authenticity of the originals. But we must take into account that the recordings were made in the conditions of hostilities, and people who did not always witness what happened themselves often wrote from the words of other people. I cannot explain the appearance of information about the death of people who are actually only injured by other reasons. The usual human factor.

The appearance of errors associated with the repeated inclusion in the lists of irretrievable losses, I think, occurred at the stage of digitization. Probably the information was not filtered enough to repeat the information. The computer is not able to detect the identity of the information, if, for example, if there is the same last name and first name, the place of burial does not match. For a computer, this is a different person. Here we can talk not about the human factor, but about its absence or insufficiency. A person would definitely guess that the information contains information about the same person. Too many matching details.

For an objective assessment of my doubts, it is necessary to conduct a study of a large sample of hundreds and thousands of people. I can't do it, and besides, I'm not an expert in digging in archives and the Internet. Here we need professional historians who can understand the archives and have access to large arrays of archival documents. I ask you to clarify whether my doubts are grounded. If the facts that I encountered are widespread, then it is necessary to find out, at least as a first approximation, the percentage of errors. The usual human factor could greatly exaggerate our losses in the war. I am attaching information about my relatives who died in the war (and are considered dead) to my letter. Maybe this will help you get a more objective picture.

I congratulate you on the approaching Day of the 70th anniversary of the Victory, I wish you creative success in the necessary work that you are doing.”

Many thanks, dear Gennady Ivanovich and Askar Abdrakhmanovich, for your important and extremely interesting letters. Health and happiness to you!

So what is it, the true price of our Victory? When will the speculations about the feat of our people be put to an end and "new research" and "independent researchers" will stop exaggerating the number of victims that our multinational people brought to the altar of Victory?

And as a postscript, material about the Immortal Regiment, as an inappropriate and harmful reform of the established order of celebrating Victory Day:

Let the Immortal Regiment become an attribute