In 1945, the bloodiest war of the 20th century ended, causing terrible destruction and claiming millions of lives. From our article you can find out what losses the countries participating in World War II suffered.

Total losses

The most global military conflict of the 20th century involved 62 countries, 40 of which were directly involved in hostilities. Their losses in World War II are primarily calculated by casualties among military and civilians, which amounted to about 70 million.

The financial losses (the price of lost property) of all parties to the conflict were significant: about $2,600 billion. The country spent 60% of its income on providing the army and conducting military operations. The total cost reached $4 trillion.

The Second World War led to enormous destruction (about 10 thousand large cities and towns). In the USSR alone, more than 1,700 cities, 70 thousand villages, and 32 thousand enterprises suffered from bombing. The enemy destroyed about 96 thousand Soviet tanks and self-propelled artillery units, 37 thousand armored vehicles.

Historical facts show that it was the USSR that, of all the participants in the anti-Hitler coalition, suffered the most serious losses. Special measures were taken to clarify the number of deaths. In 1959, a population census was conducted (the first after the war). Then the figure of 20 million victims was announced. To date, other specific data are known (26.6 million), announced by the state commission in 2011. They coincided with the figures announced in 1990. Most of the dead were civilians.

Rice. 1. Destroyed city during World War II.

Human casualties

Unfortunately, the exact number of victims is still not known. Objective reasons (lack of official documentation) complicate the count, so many continue to be listed as missing.

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Before talking about the dead, let us indicate the number of people called up for service by states whose participation in the war was key, and those injured during the fighting:

• Germany : 17,893,200 soldiers, of which: 5,435,000 were wounded, 4,100,000 were captured;
• Japan : 9 058 811: 3 600 000: 1 644 614;
• Italy : 3,100,000: 350 thousand: 620 thousand;
• USSR : 34,476,700: 15,685,593: about 5 million;
• Great Britain : 5,896,000: 280 thousand: 192 thousand;
• USA : 16 112 566: 671 846: 130 201;
• China : 17,250,521: 7 million: 750 thousand;
• France : 6 million: 280 thousand: 2,673,000

Rice. 2. Wounded soldiers from World War II.

For convenience, we present a table of countries' losses in World War II. The death toll is indicated taking into account all causes of death approximately (averages between the minimum and maximum):

The Soviet Union suffered the most significant losses in World War II - about 27 million people. At the same time, dividing the dead along ethnic lines has never been welcomed. Nevertheless, such statistics exist.

Counting history

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

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

In 1965, on the 20th anniversary of the Victory, the new head of the USSR, Brezhnev, stated: “Such a brutal war that the Soviet Union endured has never befallen any nation. The war claimed more than twenty million lives of Soviet people.”

However, all these calculations were approximate. Only at the end of the 1980s, a group of Soviet historians under the leadership of Colonel General Grigory Krivosheev was allowed to access the materials of the General Staff, as well as the main headquarters of all branches of the Armed Forces. The result of the work was the figure of 8 million 668 thousand 400 people, reflecting the losses of the security forces of the USSR during the entire war.

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

By nationality

For a long time, no one was counting those killed in the Great Patriotic War by nationality. Such an attempt was made by historian Mikhail Filimoshin in the book “Human Losses of the Armed Forces of the USSR.” The author noted that the work was significantly complicated by the lack of a personal list of the dead, dead or missing, indicating nationality. Such a practice was simply not provided for in the Table of Urgent Reports.

Filimoshin substantiated his data using proportionality coefficients, which were calculated on the basis of reports on the number of military personnel of the Red Army according to socio-demographic characteristics for 1943, 1944 and 1945. At the same time, the researcher was unable to establish the nationality of approximately 500 thousand conscripts who were called up for mobilization in the first months of the war and went missing along the way to their units.

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

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

3. Belarusians – 252 thousand (2.917%);

4. Tatars – 187 thousand (2.165%);

5. Jews – 142 thousand (1.644%);

6. Kazakhs – 125 thousand (1.448%);

7. Uzbeks – 117 thousand (1.360%);

8. Armenians – 83 thousand (0.966%);

9. Georgians – 79 thousand (0.917%)

10. Mordovians and Chuvashs – 63 thousand each (0.730%)

Demographer and sociologist Leonid Rybakovsky, in his book “Human Losses of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War,” separately counts civilian casualties using the ethnodemographic method. This method includes three components:

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

2. Failure to return part of the ostarbeiters and other population who served the occupiers voluntarily or under duress;

3. an increase in population mortality above the normal level from hunger and other deprivations.

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

Alternative estimates

Historians of Ukraine present their methods of calculation, which relate primarily to the losses of Ukrainians in the Great Patriotic War. Researchers on Square refer to the fact that Russian historians adhere to certain stereotypes when counting victims; in particular, they do not take into account the contingent of correctional labor institutions, where a significant part of the dispossessed Ukrainians were located, for whom the serving of their sentences was replaced by being sent to penal companies.

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

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

Belarusian experts also provide estimates of the number of losses during the Second World War, independent of Moscow. Some believe that every third resident of the 9 million population of Belarus became a victim of Hitler's aggression. One of the most authoritative researchers on this topic is considered to be Professor of the State Pedagogical University, Doctor of Historical Sciences Emmanuel Ioffe.

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

Lost.ru

Chapter 11

........................................................ ..........CONCLUSIONS From the above, one should conclude that the Red Army has fire superiority 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 at the battalion and regimental level. After all, an 82 mm mine weighs 3 kg, and 30 of them are fired per minute. For 10 minutes of shooting you need 900 kg of ammunition per mortar. Of course, transport was provided primarily by artillery, not mortars. It turned out that the maneuverable, light artillery weapon was tied to ammunition supply points and could not work in the interests of the battalions. The problem was solved by consolidating the mortars into mortar regiments, where they could be supplied with ammunition centrally. But as a result, the battalion, regimental and even divisional link turned out to be weaker than the German one, because mortars made up half of the guns 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 were rolled out for direct fire. There were not enough air defense systems. It was necessary to divert heavy machine guns and anti-tank rifles from the first line for these purposes. How 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 calculations of personnel losses, but also by losses of military equipment, property, and transport.

Here is Halder’s entry dated November 18, 1941, which states that out of 0.5 million cars that were in the German army on June 22, 1941, 150 thousand were irretrievably lost and 275 thousand required repairs, and for this repair 300 thousand were needed. tons of spare parts. That is, to repair one car you need about 1.1 tons of spare parts. What condition are these cars in? All that was left of them were frames! If we add to them those cars from which not even frames remain, it turns out that all the cars produced by German car factories in a year burn out in Russia in less than six months. So Hitler became concerned about this circumstance, so Halder was forced to discuss these issues with General Bule.

But cars are not the first line of troops to fight. What was going on in the first line? Pitch hell! Now we need to compare all this with the losses of automotive and tractor equipment in the Red Army. With the beginning of the war, the production of cars and tractors was sharply reduced in favor of tanks, and the production of artillery tractors ceased altogether. However, by the fall of 1942, the Soviet Union had lost only half of its pre-war fleet of artillery tractors, mainly in encirclement, and then used the remaining half until the victory, suffering virtually no losses in them. If in the first six months of the war the Germans lost almost all the vehicles they had in the army at the beginning of the war, then the Soviet army lost 33% of the vehicles they had and received 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, in the form of the loss graph, the irretrievable losses of Red Army personnel, with the only difference that the average monthly vehicle losses are 10-15 times less. But the number of cars at the front was just as many times smaller. It can be assumed that vehicle losses from enemy fire in 1941 in the Red Army were no more than 5-10%, and 23-28% of losses were due to maneuver actions of German troops and encirclement. That is, vehicle losses can also serve to characterize personnel losses. Because they also reflect the fire capabilities of the parties. That is, if fascist troops lose 90% of their vehicles in 1941, then almost all of these losses are losses from fire from Soviet troops, which 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 losses of the horse train of 1,100 horses. Considering that horses were not placed in the battle line and that there were 10 times fewer horses at the front than people, the figure of 9465 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, Halder’s entry dated December 23, 1940 indicates the figure of 4930 captured vehicles, mostly French. There are about 10,000 cars in total. At the end of 1941, the German tank forces were 20-30% equipped with tanks, that is, there were about 3000 vehicles left in stock, of which about 500-600 were captured French ones, which were then transferred from the front to guard the rear areas. Halder also writes about this. Even without taking into account the tanks produced by the German industry over the past six months, without taking into account the Soviet captured tanks used by the Germans, Soviet troops irrevocably destroyed about 7,000 German vehicles, not counting armored cars and armored personnel carriers, in the first 6 months of the war. Over four years, this will amount to 56,000 vehicles destroyed by the Red Army. If we add here 3,800 tanks produced by German industry in 1941 and 1,300 Soviet captured 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 USSR allies could destroy 4-5 thousand tanks or so. Soviet troops lost approximately 100,000 tanks and self-propelled guns during the war, but one must understand that the operational life of Soviet tanks was significantly less. There is a different approach to life, to technology, to war. Different ways to use tanks. Different tank ideology. Soviet principles of tank building are well described in the trilogy by Mikhail Svirin under the general title “History of the Soviet tank 1919-1955”, Moscow, “Yauza”, “Eksmo”, (“Armor is strong, 1919-1937”, “Stalin’s armor shield, 1937-1943” ", "Stalin's steel fist, 1943-1955"). Soviet wartime tanks were designed for one operation, had a service life of 100-200 km at the beginning of the war, to 500 km by the end of the war, which reflected views on the operational use of tanks and military economics. After the war, the service life 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 weapons accumulation. Thus, it was initially planned not to spare tanks. These are weapons, why feel sorry for them, they need to fight. That is, the losses in tanks of the USSR are 1.5-2 times higher, and the losses of people are 1.5-2 times lower.

It should be taken into account that the Germans could restore up to 70% of damaged 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 knockouts could 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 troops' reports taking this circumstance into account. Therefore, the operational report for December 16, 1941, announced by the Sovinformburo, states 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 fairly accurately reflect the actual losses of German troops. If they are overpriced, it is not very much, given the situation at that time. In any case, the Soviet General Staff assessed the situation much more realistically than the German General Staff even in 1941. Subsequently, the estimates became even more accurate.

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

Table 18:

* Number of aircraft surrendered after surrender
** According to the reference book "Soviet aviation in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945 in numbers"
*** An attempt to calculate using extracts 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 minor job that the Ministry of Propaganda assigned to him.

From Table 18 it is clear that modern ideas about German aviation losses are completely untrue. It is also clear that the Soviet data differ significantly from the theoretically calculated values ​​only in 1945 and 1941. In 1945, discrepancies arise because half of the German aviation refused to fly and was abandoned by the Germans at airfields. In 1941, discrepancies arose from the Soviet side’s poor accounting of downed German aircraft in the first two to three months of the war. And they were embarrassed to include the estimated wartime figures announced by the Sovinformburo into post-war history. Thus, 62,936 German aircraft destroyed by the Soviet side are clearly visible. The combat losses of the Soviet Air Force during the war amounted to 43,100 combat vehicles. However, non-combat losses of Soviet Air Force combat vehicles are almost the same as combat ones. Here again the difference in the quality of technology and attitude towards it is visible. This difference was fully recognized by the Soviet leadership; the USSR could compete with a united Europe in the volume of military production only if it had a completely different view of the quality, nature and application of these products. Soviet vehicles, especially fighters, wore out very quickly under wartime conditions. However, plywood-canvas aircraft with engine life for several flights successfully competed with all-aluminum aircraft with engines of German quality.

It was not for nothing that Hitler believed that Soviet industry would not be able to make up for the loss of weapons, and would not have been able to if it had sought 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 tank crews from imperfect technology. Such a conclusion will not be confirmed either in memoirs, or in reports, or in statistical studies. Because he is unfaithful. It’s just that the USSR had a different technical culture from the European one, a different technogenic civilization. The book lists the losses of Soviet military equipment, including decommissioned equipment that has used up its resources and cannot be restored due to a lack of spare parts and a weak repair base. It should be remembered that in terms of production development, the USSR had the basis 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 also more intensive period of operation. It’s more likely that it wasn’t even calculated, but just turned out that way on its own. Lendlease cars also did not last long under Soviet conditions. Producing repair forces means taking people away from production, from war, and producing spare parts means occupying the capacity that can produce finished machines. Of course, all this is necessary, the question is the balance of opportunities and needs. Taking into account the fact that in battle all this work can burn out in a minute, and all the produced spare parts and repair shops will remain out of business. Therefore, when, for example, Shirokorad in the book “The Three Wars of Great Finland” complains about the unsuitability of the budenovka or the differences in the quality of uniforms of the soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, the question arises: did he think well? To pursue European quality, you need to have a European industry; Germany had one, not the USSR. Budenovka or bogatyrka is a mobilization version of a headdress; they were invented at the end of the First World War, precisely 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 Kerensky's gang. And also the currently glorified 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 built 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 medium series at factories shipbuilding Doesn't a specialist in the history of technology see the difference? Rather, he is looking for cheap sensations where there are none. And so it is in everything. Airplanes were produced in furniture factories, and cartridges in tobacco factories. Armored cars were produced at the crushing equipment plant in Vyksa, and PPS wherever there was a cold stamping press. The famous joke in Soviet times about a combine harvester with a vertical take-off is more suitable for Stalin's time than for later times.

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

In this regard, I would like to focus attention 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, and specialists were trained to implement these technologies. Since 1937, the army began to receive modern, domestic weapons to replace alterations and modifications of pre-revolutionary and licensed models. The first to be introduced was artillery and automatic rifles. Then priority was given to tanks and combat aircraft. Their production began only in 1940. New machine guns and automatic cannons were introduced during 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 carriages, 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 for victory. And he did a lot more!

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

Table 19:

From Table 19 it is clear that the Soviet government hid only one figure from the Soviet people - losses of missing persons in encirclement. During the entire war, the USSR's losses in missing persons 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 about 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 failing to foresee and avoid such a development of events. Therefore, even 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 no need to repeat it again, to reopen the wounds.

The remaining 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 battles (including non-combat losses, but excluding those killed in captivity) during the entire war.

Enemy losses are also indicated correctly. Losses of enemy personnel have been greatly underestimated since 1942, and in 1941 they were correctly reported as 6,000,000 total casualties. Only the losses of German tanks are perhaps slightly overestimated, by about 1.5 times. This is naturally due to the difficulty of accounting for the number of machines repaired and reused. In addition, troop reports could indicate other armored vehicles along with destroyed tanks and self-propelled guns. The Germans had a lot of different combat vehicles, both on half-tracks and on wheeled chassis, which can be called self-propelled guns. Then the German losses in armored vehicles are also indicated correctly. A slight overestimation of the number of German aircraft shot down is not significant. The losses of guns and mortars of all calibers and purposes for the Red Army during the war amounted to 317,500 pieces, and for Germany and its allies, the work indicates losses of 289,200 pieces. But in the 12th volume of “History of the Second World War,” in table 11, it is said that Germany alone produced and lost 319,900 guns, and Germany produced mortars and lost 78,800. The total loss of guns and mortars in Germany alone will amount to 398,700 guns, and it is unknown whether this includes rocket systems; most likely they do not. In addition, this figure does not exactly 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 killed Germans. 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 only talk about special, propaganda figures of losses published by the Sovinformburo in relation to the number of captured and missing Soviet military personnel. Otherwise, the same figures were published that the Soviet General Staff used in its calculations.

The course and outcome of the war cannot be understood if we exclude from consideration the European fascist atrocities against the civilian Soviet population and prisoners of war. These atrocities constituted the goal and meaning of the war for the German side and all Germany's allies. Combat actions were only a tool to ensure the unhindered implementation of these atrocities. The only goal of Europe united by the fascists in the Second World War was the conquest of the entire European part of the USSR, and the destruction in the most brutal way of the majority of the population, in order to intimidate those who remained and enslave them. These crimes are described in the book by Alexander Dyukov “What the Soviet People Fought For”, Moscow, “Yauza”, “Eksmo”, 2007. During the entire war, 12-15 million Soviet civilians, including prisoners of war, became victims of these atrocities, but we must remember that During the first war winter alone, the Nazis planned to kill more than 30 million civilian 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 in the first year of occupation, and about 20 million planned for destruction in the future, not counting those saved from fascist slavery, which often it 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 general phrases, but these crimes exceed in the number of victims all other crimes in history combined.

In an entry 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 findings confirm Fromm's findings.

It also states that the loss of personnel at the front is 180,000 people. If this is a loss of combat personnel, 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 does the entry dated November 30 say that there were 50-60 people left in the companies? To make ends meet, Halder claims that 340,000 men constituted half the fighting force of the infantry. But this is funny, 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 as of 11/24/41 in combat strength and 3.4 million in the total number of troops of the “Eastern Front” as of 11/30/41, and the regular number of troops " Eastern Front" 6.8 million people. This will probably be correct.

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, in some cunning way, did not suffer losses. That's bullshit. Victory cannot be forged from defeats and losses. The German army suffered defeat from the very beginning, but the Reich leadership hoped that the USSR would have it even worse. 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. The 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 in which the choice was often between death and captivity. And many people chose captivity. Maybe even the majority. But we must take into account that mass surrenders began after one or two weeks of intense fighting in the encirclement, when the fighters ran out of ammunition even for small arms. The commanders, despairing of victory, abandoned control of the troops, sometimes even on a front-line scale, ran away from their fighters and in small groups either tried to surrender or go to their own to the east. The soldiers ran away from their units, changed into civilian clothes, or, left without leadership, gathered in crowds of thousands, hoping to surrender to the German troops 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 took on their last battle, knowing in advance how it would end. Or they organized disorderly crowds of encirclement into combat detachments, attacked German cordons and broke through to their own. Sometimes it worked. There were commanders who retained 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, defended staunchly, evaded German attacks and struck 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. Irreversible demographic losses of other Axis armies amounted to up to 4 million people. And in total, to win, it was necessary to kill up to 19 million enemies of different nationalities and states.

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

Many questions arise about how many people died in World War II, as different sources of information give different estimates of human casualties between 1939 and 1945. The differences may be explained by where the source information was obtained and the method of calculation used.

Total death toll

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

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

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

Read about other events in our history in the section.

One of the important issues that causes controversy among many researchers is how many people died in the second world war. There will never be general identical data on the number of deaths on the German side and on the side of the Soviet Union (the main opponents). Approximately dead - 60 million people from all over the world.

This gives rise to many myths and unjustified rumors. Most of the dead are civilians who fell during the shelling of populated areas, genocide, bombings, and military operations.

War is the greatest tragedy for humanity. Discussions about the consequences of this event continue to this day, although more than 75 years have passed. After all, more than 70% of the population took part in the war.

Why are there differences between the death tolls? The whole point is in the differences between the calculations, which are carried out using different methods, and information is obtained from different sources, and after all, how much time has already passed...

History of the death toll

It is worth starting with the fact that calculations of the amount of dead people began only during the period of glasnost, that is, at the end of the 20th century. Until that time, no one had done this. One could only guess about the number of dead.

There were only the words of Stalin, who stated that 7 million people died in the Union during the war, and Khrushchev, who reported in a letter to the Minister of Sweden about losses of 20 million people.

For the first time, the total number of human losses was announced at a plenum dedicated to the 45th anniversary of victory in the war (May 8, 1990). This figure amounted to almost 27 million dead.

3 years later, in a book called “The Classification of Secrecy Has Been Removed. Losses of the armed forces..." the results of the study were highlighted, during which 2 methods were used:

• accounting and statistical (analysis of documents of the Armed Forces);
• demographic balance (comparison of population at the beginning and after the end of hostilities)

Death of people in World War II according to Krivosheev:

One of the scientists who worked in a team researching the issue of the number of deaths in the war was G. Krivosheev. Based on the results of his research, the following data were published:

1. The people's losses of the USSR during the Second World War (together with the civilian population) amounted to 26.5 million dead.
2. German losses - 11.8 million.

This study also has critics, according to whom Krivosheev did not take into account the 200 thousand prisoners of war released by the German invaders after 1944 and some other facts.

There is no doubt that the war (which took place between the USSR and Germany and its companions) was one of the bloodiest and most horrific in history. The horror was not only in the number of participating countries, but in the cruelty, mercilessness, and ruthlessness of peoples towards each other.

The soldiers had absolutely no compassion for civilians. Therefore, the question of the number of people killed in the Second World War remains debatable even now.