World War 2 dead. German losses in World War II

On the day of the 70th anniversary of the start of the Great Patriotic War, Gazeta.Ru publishes a debate among military experts on the assessment of the number of deaths in this war.

“Assessing the magnitude of Soviet military losses remains the most painful issue in the history of the Great Patriotic War. The official figure of 26.6 million dead and dead, including 8.7 million military personnel, dramatically underestimates casualties, especially in the Red Army, to make them almost equal to the losses of Germany and its allies in Eastern Front and prove to society that we fought no worse than the Germans,” he believes Boris Sokolov, candidate historical sciences, Doctor of Philology, member of the Russian PEN Center, author of 67 books on history and philology, translated into Latvian, Polish, Estonian and Japanese languages . — The true magnitude of the losses of the Red Army can be established using documents published in the first half of the 90s, when there was almost no censorship on the topic of military losses.

According to our estimate based on them, the losses of the Soviet Armed Forces in killed and killed amounted to about 27 million people, which is almost 10 times higher than the losses of the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

The total losses of the USSR (together with the civilian population) amounted to 40-41 million people. These estimates are confirmed by comparing data from the 1939 and 1959 censuses, since there is reason to believe that in 1939 there was a very significant undercount of male conscripts. This, in particular, is indicated by the significant female preponderance recorded in the 1939 census already at the age of 10-19 years, where purely biologically the opposite should be the case.”

The estimate of 27 million military deaths given by Boris Sokolov should agree with at least the general data on the number of USSR citizens who wore military uniform in 1941-1945, believes Alexey Isaev, author of 20 books about the Great Patriotic War, a graduate of MEPhI, who worked in the Russian State Military Archive and the Central Archive of the Russian Ministry of Defense, as well as at the Institute military history Russian Ministry of Defense.

“By the beginning of the war, there were 4826.9 thousand people in the army and navy, plus 74.9 thousand people from the formations of other departments who were on the payroll of the People’s Commissariat of Defense. During the war years, 29,574.9 thousand people were mobilized (taking into account those who were at military training on June 22, 1941), Isaev cites data. — This figure, for obvious reasons, does not take into account those re-conscripted. Thus, a total of 34,476.7 thousand people were recruited into the Armed Forces. As of July 1, 1945, there were 12,839.8 thousand people remaining in the army and navy, including 1,046 thousand people in hospitals. Having carried out simple arithmetic calculations, we find that the difference between the number of citizens recruited into the army and the number of those in the Armed Forces by the end of the war is 21,629.7 thousand people, in round figures - 21.6 million people.

This is already very different from the figure mentioned by B. Sokolov of 27 million dead.

Such a number of deaths simply physically could not have occurred at the level of use of human resources that took place in the USSR in 1941-1945.

No country in the world could afford to attract 100% of the male population of military age into the Armed Forces.

In any case, it was necessary to leave a considerable number of men at the machines in the military industry, despite the widespread use of women and adolescents. I will give just a few numbers. On January 1, 1942, at Plant No. 183, the leading manufacturer of T-34 tanks, the proportion of women among the employees was only 34%. By January 1, 1944, it had fallen slightly and amounted to 27.6%.

In total in national economy in 1942-1944, the share of women in the total number of workers ranged from 53 to 57%.

Teenagers, mainly aged 14-17 years, made up approximately 10% of the number of workers at plant No. 183. A similar picture was observed at other factories of the People's Commissariat tank industry. More than 60% of industry workers were men over 18 years of age. Moreover, already during the war they were transferred from the army to military industry significant human resources. This was due to a shortage of workers and staff turnover at factories, including tank factories.

When assessing irretrievable losses, it is necessary to rely primarily on the results of recording the dead according to the card files of irretrievable losses in the IX and XI departments of the Central Archive of the Ministry of Defense (TsAMO) of the Russian Federation, states Kirill Alexandrov, Candidate of Historical Sciences, senior researcher (specializing in “History of Russia”) encyclopedic department of the Faculty of Philology of St. Petersburg State University.

“As one of the IX Department employees said in a conversation with me in March 2009, there are more than 15 million such personal cards (including officers and political workers).

Even earlier, in 2007, for the first time on one of scientific conferences similar data were introduced into scientific circulation by a senior researcher at TsAMO and an employee of the Institute of Military History, Colonel Vladimir Trofimovich Eliseev. He told listeners that

the total figure of irrecoverable losses based on the results of accounting cards in the card files of two departments of TsAMO is more than 13.6 million people.

I’ll make a reservation right away: this is after the removal of duplicate cards, which was carried out methodically and painstakingly by archive staff over the previous years,” Kirill Alexandrov clarified. — Naturally, many categories of dead military personnel were not taken into account at all (for example, those who were called up directly to units during the battles from local settlements) or information about them is stored in other departmental archives.

The question of the strength of the Armed Forces of the USSR by June 22, 1941 remains debatable. For example, the group of Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev estimated the strength of the Red Army and Navy as of June 22, 1941 at 4.8 million people, and it is unclear whether this included number of border guards, air force personnel, air defense troops and NKVD. However, the famous Russian scientist M.I. Meltyukhov cited much larger figures - 5.7 million (taking into account the number of Air Force personnel, NKVD troops and border troops). The registration of those called up in the army in 1941 was poorly done people's militia. Thus, presumably

the real numbers of those who died in the ranks of the USSR Armed Forces (including partisans), according to our estimates, are approximately 16-17 million people.

It is very important that this estimated figure generally correlates with the results of long-term research by a group of qualified Russian demographers from the Institute of National Economic Forecasting of the Russian Academy of Sciences - E. M. Andreev, L. E. Darsky and T. L. Kharkova. Almost 20 years ago, these scientists, having analyzed a huge array of statistical material and population censuses of the USSR for different years, concluded that the death toll of young men and boys aged 15-49 years was approximately 16.2 million people. At the same time, demographers of the Russian Academy of Sciences did not use information from the TsAMO card files, since at the turn of the 1980-1990s they had not yet been introduced into scientific circulation. Naturally, to complete the picture, it is necessary to exclude some of the 15-17 year old teenagers who died not in military service, and also to include women and men over the age of 49 who died in military service. But in general the situation is imaginable.

Thus, both the official figures of the Russian Ministry of Defense of 8.6 million dead Soviet servicemen and the figures of Boris Sokolov appear to be incorrect.

General Krivosheev’s group announced the official figure of 8.6 million back in the early 1990s, but, as Colonel V.T. Eliseev convincingly showed, Krivosheev became acquainted with the contents of the file of irretrievable losses of privates and non-commissioned officers only in 2002. Boris Sokolov, It seems to me that there is an error in the calculation method. I think that the known figure of 27 million dead USSR citizens is quite realistic and reflects the true picture. However, contrary to popular belief, the bulk of the dead were military personnel, and not the civilian population of the Soviet Union.”

Summary of the last part: in armed forces Germany (WASH) mobilized approximately 19 million people during World War II. But how many did the VSG lose in the war? It is impossible to calculate this directly; there are no documents that would take into account all the losses, and all that remained was to add them up to get the desired figure. A lot of German military personnel were out of action without being reflected in any reporting at all.

The military-historical team under the leadership of Krivosheev stated: “determining... the losses of the German armed forces... represents a very difficult problem... this is due to the lack complete set reporting and statistical materials..." (quote from the book "Russia and the USSR in the wars of the 20th century"). The problem of determining German losses, according to Krivosheev, can be solved using the balance method. We need to look: how much was mobilized in the VSG and how much was left at the time of surrender, the difference will be a loss - it remains to be distributed according to the reasons. The result was this (in thousands of people):

In total, during the war years, they were recruited into the armed forces
Germany, including those who served before March 1, 1939 - 21107

By the beginning of the surrender of German troops:
- remained in service - 4100
- were in hospitals - 700

During the war there were deaths (total) - 16307
of them:
A) Irrevocable losses(total) - 11844
Including:
- died, died from wounds and illness, went missing - 4457
- captured - 7387

b) Other loss (total) - 4463
of them:
- dismissed due to injury and illness for a long period of time
as unfit for military service (disabled), deserted - 2463
- demobilized and sent to work

in industry - 2000

Balance according to Krivosheev: mobilized in the VSG - 21.1 million, of which 4.1 million remained for capitulation (+ 0.7 million wounded in hospitals). Consequently, 16.3 million died during the war - of which 7.4 million were captured, 4.4 million were maimed or sent to industry; 4.5 million remain - these are the dead.

Krivosheev’s figures have long been the object of criticism. Total mobilized (21 million) is overestimated. But subsequent figures are clearly doubtful. The column “demobilized for work in industry” is unclear - 2,000,000 people. Krivosheev himself does not provide any references or explanations to the origin of such a figure. So, I just took it from Müller-Hillebrand. But how did you get this one? number M-G? Links M-G does not give; his book is fundamental, it does not refer to anything, they refer to it. There is an opinion that these are soldiers who were seriously wounded, due to which they military service They could no longer do it, but they were still able to work. No, this contingent should be included in the column demobilized due to disability (2.5 million people).

It is unclear with the number of prisoners. 7.8 million were counted as having surrendered during the fighting. The number is incredible; the ratio of those who surrendered to those who died in the German army was simply not the same. After the capitulation, another 4.1 million surrendered; 700 thousand were in hospitals - they should also be classified as prisoners. 7.8 million prisoners before the surrender and 4.8 million after, total: German soldiers captured - 12.2 million.

Krivosheev cites statistics: our troops reported taking 4377.3 thousand prisoners. Of these, 752.5 thousand were military personnel from countries allied with Germany. Another 600 thousand people. were released directly at the fronts - it turned out that these were not German soldiers. Approximately 3 million people remain.

The number of prisoners taken is truly enormous. But the problem is that these were not only German soldiers. There are mentions that firefighters and railway workers (they are in uniform, men of military age) were captured; the police were taken prisoner without fail; the same applies to members of paramilitary organizations, as well as the Volkssturm, German construction battalion, Khivi, administration, etc.

From bright examples: The troops reported that 134,000 prisoners had been taken in Berlin. But there are publications whose authors insist that there were no more than 50,000 German troops in Berlin. The same with Koenigsberg: 94,000 were taken prisoner, and according to German data the garrison was 48,000, including the Volksturm. In general, there were many prisoners, but how many of them were actually military? – This is unknown. One can only guess what the percentage of real military men is among the total number of prisoners.

2.8 million people surrendered to the Western Allies between the Normandy landings and the end of April 1945, 1.5 million of them in April - the German front in the west collapsed at that time. Total number prisoners of war accounted for by the Western allies by April 30, 1945 amounted to 3.15 million people, and increased to 7.6 million after the surrender of Germany.

But the Allies also counted as prisoners of war not only military personnel, but also personnel of numerous paramilitary forces, NSDAP functionaries, security and police officers, even firefighters. There were 7.6 million prisoners, but there were significantly fewer actual prisoners of war.

Canadian D. Buck drew attention to the huge discrepancy between how many the Allies took prisoners and how many they then released. The number released is much less than the number taken. From this D. Buck concluded that up to a million German prisoners died in Allied camps. Buck's critics were quick to assure that the prisoners were not starved, and that discrepancies in numbers arose due to careless, relaxed accounting.

Until April 1945, approximately 1.5 million people were taken into Soviet and Western captivity (if we count with all the exaggeration). The total number of prisoners according to Krivosheev is 12 million. It turns out that by April 1945 Germany had an army of 9 million - despite all the defeats suffered. And, despite such an army, it suffered a final defeat within a month. Rather, one must assume that something is wrong with the prisoner count. There may have been double counting of the same prisoners. The 4.8 million prisoners taken after the surrender were mixed with the 7.4 million prisoners taken before the surrender. So, the figure of 7.4 million captured before the surrender cannot be accepted.

It is also not clear where the figure of 4.1 million soldiers remaining in the Armed Forces at the beginning of the surrender came from.

The map shows the territory remaining with the Reich by May 1945. By May 9, this territory had shrunk even further. Could more than 4 million soldiers fit on it? How was such a number even established? Possibly based on the count of those who surrendered after the surrender. Let's return to the question: who was captured and considered German servicemen?

The general surrender of Germany on May 9 was preceded by a series of capitulations in the west: on April 29, 1945 they surrendered German troops in Italy; On May 4, the act of surrender of the German armed forces in Holland, Denmark, and North-West Germany was signed; On May 5, German troops in Bavaria and Western Austria capitulated.

By May 9, active German troops remained only in front of Soviet army(in Czechoslovakia, Austria, Courland) and before Yugoslavia. On the western fronts the Germans had already surrendered; only the army remained in Norway (9 divisions with reinforcement units - no more than 300,000 troops) and small garrisons of several coastal fortresses. Soviet troops reported 1.4 million captured after the surrender; The Yugoslavs reported 200,000 prisoners. Together with the army in Norway there are no more than 2 million people (again, it is unknown how many of them are actually military personnel). Perhaps the phrase “at the beginning of capitulation” does not mean by May 9, but by the end of April, when capitulation began on the western fronts. That is, 4.1 million in service and 0.7 million in hospitals - this is the situation at the end of April. Krivosheev does not specify this.

4.5 million dead German military personnel - this is the figure that Krivosheev ultimately received. The modern (comparatively) German researcher R. Overmans counted 5.1 million military dead (5.3* ​​including dead employees of paramilitary organizations (+ 1.2 million civilian dead)). This is already more than Krivosheev’s figure. Overmans's figure - 5.3 million dead military personnel - is not officially accepted in Germany, but this is what is indicated on the German wiki. That is, society accepted her

In general, Krivosheev’s figures are clearly questionable; he does not solve the problem of determining German losses. The balance sheet method does not work here either, since there is no necessary reliable data for this either. So this question remains: where did the 19 million soldiers of the German army go?

There are researchers who propose a method of demographic calculation: to determine the total losses of the population of Germany, and based on them to roughly estimate the military. There were also such calculations on topvar (“Losses of the USSR and Germany in the Second World War”): the population of Germany in 1939 was 70.2 million (without the Austrians (6.76 million) and the Sudeten people (3.64 million)). In 1946, the occupation authorities conducted a census of the population of Germany - 65,931,000 people were counted. 70.2 – 65.9 = 4.3 million. To this figure we must add the natural population increase in 1939-46. - 3.5–3.8 million. Then we need to subtract the figure for natural mortality for 1939-46 - 2.8 million people. And then add at least 6.5 million people, and presumably even 8 million. These are the Germans expelled from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia (6.5 million) and about 1-1.5 million Germans fled from Alsace and Lorraine. Arithmetic average from 6.5-8 million - 7.25 million.

So it turns out:

The population in 1939 was 70.2 million people.
The population in 1946 was 65.93 million people.
Natural mortality 2.8 million people.
Natural increase 3.5 million people.
Emigration influx of 7.25 million people.
Total losses (70.2 - 65.93 - 2.8) + 3.5 + 7.25 = 12.22 million people.

However, according to the 1946 census there is a lot that is unclear. It was carried out without the Saarland (800,000 pre-war population). Were prisoners counted in the camps? The author does not make this point clear; In the English wiki there is an indication that no were not taken into account. The emigration influx is clearly overestimated; 1.5 million Germans did not flee from Alsace. It’s not the Germans who live in Alsace, but the Alsatians, loyal French citizens; there was no need for them to flee. 6.5 million Germans could not be expelled from the Sudetenland, Poznan and Upper Silesia - there were not so many Germans there. And some of the expelled settled in Austria, and not in Germany. But besides the Germans, others fled to Germany - many different types of accomplices, how many were there? Not even approximately known. How were they counted in the census?

As Krivosheev wrote: “Determining with reliable accuracy the scale of human losses of the German armed forces... on the Soviet-German front during the Second World War is a very difficult problem.” Krivosheev apparently believed that this problem was complex, but solvable. However, his attempt was completely unconvincing. In fact, this task is simply unsolvable.

* Distribution of losses by front: 104,000 killed in the Balkans, 151,000 in Italy, 340,000 in the West, 2,743,000 in the East, 291,000 in other theaters of war, 1,230,000 in the final period of the war (of which East up to a million), died in captivity (according to official data of the USSR and Western allies) 495,000. According to the Germans, 1.1 million died in captivity, for the most part in Soviet. According to Soviet records, more than half that number died in captivity. So, those deaths that are attributed to in Germany Soviet captivity, actually died in battle (at least, for the most part). After their death, they were mobilized again - to the propaganda front.

A military historian from Freiburg, R. Overmans, published the book “German Military Losses in the Second World War,” which took him 12 years - a rather rare case in our fleeting time.

Personnel composition of the German war machine in World War II - this is 13.6 million infantrymen, 2.5 million military pilots, 1.2 million military sailors and 0.9 million SS troops.

But how many German soldiers died in that war? To answer this question, R. Overmans turned to surviving primary sources. These include a consolidated list of identification marks (tags) of German military personnel (about 16.8 million names in total) and Kriegsmarine documentation (about 1.2 million names), on the one hand, and a consolidated file of losses Help Desk Wehrmacht about military losses and prisoners of war (about 18.3 million cards in total), on the other.

Overmans claims that the irretrievable losses of the German army amounted to 5.3 million people. This is approximately one million more than the figure established in mass consciousness. According to the scientist’s calculations, almost every third German soldier did not return from the war. Most of all - 2743 thousand, or 51.6% - fell on the Eastern Front, and the most crushing losses of the entire war were not the death of the 6th Army at Stalingrad, but the breakthroughs of Army Group Center in July 1944 and Army Group “Southern Ukraine” in the Iasi region in August 1944. During both operations, between 300 and 400 thousand people were killed. On the Western Front, irrecoverable losses amounted to only 340 thousand people, or 6.4% of total losses.

The most dangerous was service in the SS: about 34% of the personnel of these specific troops died in the war or in captivity (that is, every third; and if on the Eastern Front, then every second). The infantry also suffered, with a mortality rate of 31%; with a large “lag” followed by the air force (17%) and naval (12%) forces. At the same time, the share of infantry among the dead is 79%, the Luftwaffe is in second place - 8.1%, and the SS troops are in third place - 5.9%.

Over the last 10 months of the war (from July 1944 to May 1945), almost the same number of military personnel died as in the previous 4 years (therefore, it can be assumed that in the event of a successful attempt on Hitler’s life on July 20, 1944 and subsequent surrender, irrevocable German combat losses could have been half as much, not to mention the incalculable losses of the civilian population). Only for the last three spring months About 1 million people died during the war, and if those drafted in 1939 were given an average of 4 years of life, those drafted in 1943 were given only a year, and those drafted in 1945 were given a month!

The most affected age group was those born in 1925: of those who would have turned 20 in 1945, every two out of five did not return from the war. As a result, the ratio of men to women in the key age group of 20 to 35 years in the structure of the post-war German population reached a dramatic proportion of 1:2, which had the most serious and varied economic and social consequences for the dilapidated country.

Pavel Polyan, "Obshchaya Gazeta", 2001

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

Losses of the Red Army - 10 million people.

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

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

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

Really - ​can we?

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

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

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

Can we... repeat?!

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

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

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