Red Army lost 8,860,400 men killed in Great Patriotic War

[JackD]

By the way, I was asking about these small cemeteries (roughly 200 square meters) that dot the roadside on the route from Lublin to Zamosc. Mostly these are from the 1915-16 era  when this was the Eastern front. The cemeteries  are mass grave sites, either from the Russian or Austrian side  (although mostly Polish troops). A student of mine who lives in these parts and looks after the graves (there is no official care-taker) says that each plot holds 50 or so bodies, and sometimes there are 5 to 10 plots  - depending on the cemetery. The loss of life in that war was horrendous - eclipsing even the WW2 losses. 

 

[Spr.Earl]

Like Bergan Belsen i.e here lie so many?
Russia lost over 20 million civilian's in the last war never mind all Arm's loss'.

 

[JackD]

hi Earl! Yes, t'is exactly like that  - a translation of one marker: "'68 Soldiers - 1915" , another; 113 soldiers - 1916" . Cannon fodder really... Sometimes there are individual soldier's graves (the markers being a cross - Roman for Catholic or Protestant, Orthodox for the Orthodox (Russian), sometimes a slab - perhaps Jewish? or Moslem?). Usually there is a little chapel  within the cemetery grounds. Unlike most places, there is no graffiti smeared upon the walls. I don't know the age of the grave markers,  but mostly they are concrete and lichen covered. Some are wood  of various ages - (I imagine replacements). Some are cast iron. 

 

[larry Strong]

Like Bergan Belsen i.e here lie so many?
Russia lost over 20 million civilian's in the last war never mind all Arm's loss'.

There is some contention on that figure, estimates range from 8 - 20 million, and now one really knows wether or not civilian deaths from the pogroms conducted by the NKVD before and following the war are included.

 

[JackD]

Although yet again I cannot give the reference, but there was an article on Polish TV about disputes over the dead in the Nazi death camp - the Russians used figures that designated all those who inhabited the Soviet occupied areas of Poland, Lithuania, Estonia, Latvia - as Soviet nationals. So disputes rage even now as to who came from where. All that is known is where they ended up. As to the death camps themselves - the numbers are difficult to determine - sometimes they attempt  estimates  by meter of ash layer within the burial pits - which are still being discovered.

 

[3rd Herd]

There is some contention on that figure, estimates range from 8 - 20 million, and now one really knows wether or not civilian deaths from the pogroms conducted by the NKVD before and following the war are included.

"The greatest human losses, as indicated below, were suffered by combatants and civilians of the Soviet Union and China. In the near two-and-a-half year siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) by the German forces, 1 1/2 million Russians alone died from shelling, bombing, disease and starvation, a figure that exceeded all the military casualties of the U.S.A.and British Commonwealth combined."
Country     Pop.         Killed/Mising         Wounded  Total(Military)      Civilian (deaths)
U.S.S.R.    194m         9 million            18 million       27 million               19 million
Source:

Alan Bullock - Hitler and Stalin: Parallel Lives pg.987 
The Times Atlas of the Second World War pg. 204,205 
Richard Overy - Russia's War pg. 288 

Further:

"Our concern is rather with the figure of 26.6 million which is now widely quoted. This is not the figure of Soviet war dead. It is the figure of the demographic costs of the war in terms of excess deaths. What this means is that the death of several million people is ‘discounted’ because they would have died anyway even though some of them may actually have died of violence or war-related disease and hunger. The figure is calculated by estimating the gross number of deaths in the years 1941–45 and then subtracting those deaths that might have been expected had 1941–45 been ‘normal years’. This leaves the excess death figure, which is 26.6 million."(Haynes)

"During the years 1941–45 42.7 million people were lost from the USSR. Perhaps 2 million or more were migrants, forced or fleeing. The rest were deaths. Had the war not occurred 16.1 million would have died, so the net demographic cost of the war was 26.6 million. But the war did occur, creating horrific conditions on both sides of the lines. Some millions did die peacefully, perhaps of old age, but tens of millions did not. Whatever their fate might have been in the absence of war, they were actually carried off by military violence, malnutrition, disease or repression. Their number lies somewhere between 26.6 and 42.7 million. Both the scale of the figures and their imprecision is a testament to man’s inhumanity to man." (Haynes)

"Historians agree that, whilst the number of civilian and military dead is debated, of all the major Second World War participants the Soviet Union suffered the greatest losses. Soviet historians estimate the number of civilian dead at around 10 million (with another 10 million military losses); Richard Overy offers a total figure of 17 million civilian casualties, including those murdered and starved to death during this period as a result of ‘Soviet brutalities’, with a further 8.6 million military dead.17 Other western historians have suggested 13.6 million military dead and 7.7 million civilians killed—about 11 per cent of the total Soviet population in 1941. The figure currently used in the Russian media is 26 or 27 million dead in total."(Rock)


Source:

Haynes, Micheal, "Counting Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War: a Note" EUROPE-ASIA STUDIES, Vol. 55, No. 2, 2003, 303–309

Rock, S. "Russian revisionism: Holocaust denial and the new nationalist historiography", Patterns of Prejudice, 35:4, 64 - 76

 

[larry Strong]

OK I found this and don't have the pertinent source, leaving David Irving aside the source should be impeccable:

FROM THE record of a Private Talk between the Prime Minister (Mr Winston Churchill) and Marshal Joseph Stalin at a dinner held on July 18, 1945, at Potsdam, Germany:



". . . Marshal Stalin mentioned that Russian losses during the War had amounted to five million killed and missing. The Germans had mobilised 18 million men apart from industry, and the Russians 12 million."

Now this was in Potsdam where the Victors were splitting up the spoil, so to speak. So why would Stalin minimise his losses?



Source: Record taken by Major Birse, the British interpreter, in Public Record Office file PREM.3/430/8, at page 11; quoted by David Irving in vol. iii of his monumental biography, Churchill's War.

 

[Kirkhill]

Now this was in Potsdam where the Victors were splitting up the spoil, so to speak. So why would Stalin minimise his losses?

Just a supposition Larry, but perhaps to reinforce the notion that Russia was still strong and quite capable of taking on Churchill and the West - 5 million would be enough to set a high level of sacrifice and justify a commensurate amount of the spoils. 25 million might have prompted questions about why so many had died and whether or not Russia was in a position to keep its own people and army in line, let alone stand up to a combined push by the Americans, Brits AND the remnants of the Wehrmacht.

 

[3rd Herd]

"Now this was in Potsdam where the Victors were splitting up the spoil"

Was not the splitting done at the Yalta conference( and prior) were from a position of strength(his toops occupied most of eastern Europe) Stalin got his way.

 

[vonGarvin]

Just a supposition Larry, but perhaps to reinforce the notion that Russia was still strong and quite capable of taking on Churchill and the West - 5 million would be enough to set a high level of sacrifice and justify a commensurate amount of the spoils. 25 million might have prompted questions about why so many had died and whether or not Russia was in a position to keep its own people and army in line, let alone stand up to a combined push by the Americans, Brits AND the remnants of the Wehrmacht.

It was common for the Soviets to minimise their own losses and amplify those of the Germans.  Take Kursk for one example.  The contemporary literature suggested that "thousands" of German tanks were destroyed.  Consider the facts:

• The 5th Guards Tank Army, the reserve, was committed by the Soviets well ahead of schedule, in order to block the german breakthrough in the south.
• That same 5th Guards Tank Army was combat ineffective until reconstituted and launched back into battle in August, against Kharkov or Beograd (memory is failing me).  Again, it was rendered combat ineffective with little results.
• The German Panzer Korps, SS I believe, attacking from the south, actually had more tanks after their "encounter" with 5th Guards Tank Army than before (due to field replacements, etc).  
• The Germans were able to get an accurate count of Soviet Tank Losses by physically going into the fields and count them

All these facts, and more, of course, suggest that instead of being "torn a new one" by the Soviets at Prokharovka, the Germans instead called off the offensive due to less than stellar results, combined with the Allied landings in Sicily.  Also, the Soviets had their own little offensive planned and launched.  So, the Germans went back to the start line, held off some more Soviet attacks and then withdrew across Russia, never to advance East again.  
The contemporary version of events suggested that "The Tigers are Burning!", when in fact fewer Tigers existed at that time than were claimed destroyed by the Soviets.

 

[Greymatters]

When it comes to historical Russian records, you can never be certain of the truth... of course some of our own records can be questionable too... 

 

[larry Strong]

Thanks guys had not thought of it in this way.....but perhaps to reinforce the notion that Russia was still strong and quite capable of taking on Churchill and the West

 

[Blackadder1916]

FROM THE record of a Private Talk between the Prime Minister (Mr Winston Churchill) and Marshal Joseph Stalin at a dinner held on July 18, 1945, at Potsdam, Germany:

Now this was in Potsdam where the Victors were splitting up the spoil, so to speak. So why would Stalin minimise his losses?

And of course one cannot discount the possibility that both of the principals at that dinner had consumed an indeterminate quantity of wines and spirits.

 

[larry Strong]

That went with out saying...no!

 

[3rd Herd]

When it comes to historical Russian records, you can never be certain of the truth... of course some of our own records can be questionable too... 

Add into it that the German Army had 11 different ways of calculating manpower strength. One method was ration strength and one can see the obivious problems with it.