Soviet losses in ww2

[Kuniworth]

Just saw a documentary about the russian effort in world war 2. The losses to the Sovvet Union according to the program;

Soviet Union population; 190 millions

Dead; 27 millions

Wounded; 15 Millions

Homeless; 25 millions

Cities burnt or destroyed; 1,700

Villages burnt or destroyed; 70,000

Surviving age 17-21; 5%

DESTROYED AND PLUNDERED;

Hospitals; 40,000

Public libraries; 43,000

Schools; 84,000

Train stations 4,100

Steelwork and coal mines; 60% destroyed

Man I don't know how accurate that BBC Documentary was but I tell you it's easier to understand the devastation when you see the figures. Just wandering how many got traumatized. Talk about beeing near extinction...

[SeaMonkey]

Kuni...I thought you have John Ellis' book?

A good source IMO, it says 11 million killed and missing, 6 million POWs, and 6.7 million civilian casualties. Of course in the USSR, between 41 and 45, these would all be approximations.

BBC is usually pretty accurate, especially documentaries, but beware their agendas, there is always one, probably more.

Anyway, population estimate supports good data, 194,100,000, with 30 million serving in the armed forces.

[Kuniworth]

Yes I have. I'm not sure Ellis is correct on the death toll though this seem to vary heavily between researchers.

[Blashy]

Current population as of 2004. 145 million.

Pretty rare you see such big countries FALL in population, but WW2 killed 27 million, and how many died the next few years due to all the destruction of facilities?

And the birth rate must have dropped seriously.

FYI, birthrate in Russia is so low now that the population has started to decrease.

That country just has a sad history and present.

[Guest Mike]

Blashy is that all the states of the fUSSR, or just Russia? russia is quite a bit smaller than fUSSR orf course, having "lost" Ukraine, the Baltic States, various central Asian & Caucasian states.

[Kuniworth]

David Glantz states that the Armed Forces of the Soviet Union lost 41-45;

Dead or MIA; 11 million

Wounded; 15 million

Sick; 3 million

Frostbit; 90,000

[Kuniworth]

If you then also add POW;s that should be another 3-4 million dead...

[JerseyJohn]

I like that classic exchange between EB and his archenemy back in 2002:

"Stalin killed more Germans than anybody else."

-- "You mean, he killed more Russians than anybody else."

[Kuniworth]

http://www.world-war-2.info/statistics/ states Soviet death to 29 millions.

Either way Ellis figure is totally wrong in some way. No way in hell military losses were bigger than civilians and has he even included the POW:s killed(3-4 million?). Can't make that out from reading that section.

[Blashy]

Originally posted by Stalin's Organist:

Blashy is that all the states of the fUSSR, or just Russia? russia is quite a bit smaller than fUSSR orf course, having "lost" Ukraine, the Baltic States, various central Asian & Caucasian states.

Just Russia.

[JerseyJohn]

A lot of Russians were also killed fighting for the Germans. Around 1943 the Germans began listing them as auxilleries, but prior to that they were just thrown into German units to replace losses. Officially the German Army was forbidden to do that at the time, but divisional commanders did it anyway out of desperation and it was ignored by corps and army commanders for the same reason.

I'd imagine most, if not all, surviving collaborating Russians were executed by the Soviets after the war. Also, most captured Soviets who never cooperated with the Germans in any way and who, somehow, managed to survive being POWs were also sent to gulags after being returned to the Soviets.

-- Stalin, when the capture of his eldest son, Yakov (?spelling) was announced early on, said, "I have no son, Yakov." Eventually he died trying to escape; a nephew of Hitler's also named Hitler, a model nazi, suffered a similar fate in Soviet hands; said at first to have been killed during the war, then that he died in a gulag after it was over.

[David Chapuis]

Originally posted by Blashy:

FYI, birthrate in Russia is so low now that the population has started to decrease.

Been that way in most of europe for awhile now.

[jon_j_rambo]

300,000 Russians died fighting FOR the Buntas. Russia has been a pit because of their beliefs long before Fritz ever went their.

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Kuniworth:

If you then also add POW;s that should be another 3-4 million dead...

They are included in the 11m figure, AFAIK. There has been a fairly involved discussion on the AHF on this matter. The 11m (actually somewhat less) is based on Krivosheev's research in the Russian archives.

All the best

Andreas

[Cary]

Originally posted by jon_j_rambo:

300,000 Russians died fighting FOR the Buntas. Russia has been a pit because of their beliefs long before Fritz ever went their.

Of course you might say Russian beliefs stem from being a military highway between east and west. The fact that Putin is truly popular is explained in part by a common belief that Russia needs a strong man to run it. Which is, of course, part of the reason why Stalin maintained an undercurrent of popularity even after "destalinization."

[Hyazinth von Strachwitz]

@ Cary: yep. Any democracy or modern state would have surrendered after the first month of the Barbarossa Campaign... Russia needed a Lunatic willing to sacrifice millions by that time or they would have lost half of their state... just imagine how the world would look like today if the USSR would have accepted a defeat and accepted a similar preace treaty to the one they accepted in 1918... loosing whole Byelorussia, Ukraine and most likely the Caucasus, the main target of the Campaign... all other fighting in in the western area wouldn`t have been possible with 75% of the german divisions no longer deployed in Russia.... all what happened in 1944 in the western theater was inexperienced Allied troops fighting demoralized german troops with almost no Air and Tank support... just imagine an Operation Overlord against fully equipped and experienced german armies in 1944... no way.

Basically the most important individuals in this period was Churchill (who refused to make peace with Germany in 1940 even against polls in in country) and Stalin who simply couldn`t afford defeat.. with just one of these two people being more like Neville Chamberlain we would have a completely different order in the world... not necessary a better one.

Although I`m german I need to say that Stalin sacrificed his soldiers for the benefit of a better world.. but that was not his intention

[ July 13, 2006, 08:36 AM: Message edited by: Hyazinth von Strachwitz ]

[Andreas]

Originally posted by Hyazinth von Strachwitz:

@ Cary: yep. Any democracy or modern state would have surrendered after the first month of the Barbarossa Campaign... Russia needed a Lunatic willing to sacrifice millions by that time or they would have lost half of their state... just imagine how the world would look like today if the USSR would have accepted a defeat and accepted a similar preace treaty to the one they accepted in 1918... loosing whole Byelorussia, Ukraine and most likely the Caucasus, the main target of the Campaign... all other fighting in in the western area wouldn`t have been possible with 75% of the german divisions no longer deployed in Russia.... all what happened in 1944 in the western theater was inexperienced Allied troops fighting demoralized german troops with almost no Air and Tank support... just imagine an Operation Overlord against fully equipped and experienced german armies in 1944... no way.

Basically the most important individuals in this period was Churchill (who refused to make peace with Germany in 1940 even against polls in in country) and Stalin who simply couldn`t afford defeat.. with just one of these two people being more like Neville Chamberlain we would have a completely different order in the world... not necessary a better one.

Although I`m german I need to say that Stalin sacrificed his soldiers for the benefit of a better world.. but that was not his intention

1) No democracy or modern state would have surrendered under similar conditions, if it was clear that to do so would mean complete subjugation as Untermenschen. The Soviets could read, and they knew the programme that was in store for them. That is the difference to 1918, when the Kaiserreich had no racial and political ideology that included murdering the occupants of the occupied territories. There was no negotiated peace treaty on offer to Stalin and the Soviets, it was from day one a war of extinction.

2) Stalin a lunatic - I think not. A cunning mass murderer yes, but he was completely rational in his actions. And completely immoral.

3) Your description of the fighting in the West bears little resemblance to historical events. The German soldiers there were not demoralised, and they were well supplied with tanks, compared to their comrades in the east. In fact, if those tanks had not been tied down in the west, the great Soviet summer offensives of 1944 would have hit much harder resistance.

All the best

Andreas

[Hyazinth von Strachwitz]

@ Andreas: I do have different opinions in a couple of points.

Just imagine the problems the USA faced in Vietnam although they lost just 59.000 soldiers... I think a modern democracy cannot afford to loose millions of citizens. Apart from that I don`t think that total extinction was the goal of Hitler.. he wanted to create "living room" for Germany to grow to a population of 200 million just as the USA or Russia; that means deportation of large parts of the population existing there. And they needed people to work for them.. after what I read in the last decades this would have meant that the Generalgouverment would have been vastly increased and the Sowjet state itself would have been disbanded into satellite states more or less under own rule...

Apart from that: when you say that the german tank support in the west was way better than in the east, you are right, but that is nothing in comparison to the Allied Forces... esp. in Air Support and Fuel Supply. They morale might have been okay until Falaise, but Germany lost more soldiers in the West from June til August 44 than in Stalingrad... the morale was definitely not the same as in 40, 41 and even 43.

However: this is what a forum is good for.... share opinions.

[Andreas]

How is deportation (where to?) different from extinction in this case? What about the not exactly insignificant number of Jews in western Russia whose life expectancy dropped to somewhere close to 0 if they were overrun by the Wehrmacht?

The Viet Nam comparison is not really relevant, since the war never threatened the US home, life style, and existence.

I am not aware that there were any plans to introduce own-rule for the Russian/Ukrainian satellites. The plan was for colonies, in which the agricultural population would be allowed to slave-work on the large farms, while the urban population would just disappear - hunger, disease, active killing. Maybe (and that is a big maybe) own-rule would have come for the Baltic states, but otherwise that was simply not on offer under the post-victory plans. The war was total, from day one. To submit to this would have been irrational and criminal on the part of the Soviet, or any other leadership, democratic or not.

All the best

Andreas

[Rolend]

I tend to agree with Andreas, in today’s PC world the contributions to the war effort by the Allies seem to be down played. I wonder how much tougher a time Russia would of had, had they not received all the equipment and supplies from America? If they would of had to face all the men, air power and resources that had been tied up in Germany defending the constant air attacks from England and US Air Forces? If they had to face all the troops, equipment and supplies tied up in N. Africa, Italy, Greece and Norway?

Please don't misunderstand me, I think that the Russians did take a HUGE hit in the war and sacrificed far more then the rest of the Allies but that in no way should lessen the efforts the English and Americans put into the war in Europe. Could the Russians have beat off the Germans alone? Maybe but there is NO doubt that without the help of the Allies those numbers being talked about here would of been a fraction of the loses they would of suffered going it alone.

[Kuniworth]

Originally posted by Andreas:

Yes I have to agree on this one. The more I read about Stalin the more obvious it become that this man was highly rational and practical, willing to sacrifice ideals and beliefs to retain power, maybe something Hitler had much likely harder to do.

Zhukov's memoirs are not so critical of Stalin as one could expect. Instead Zhukov emphazise Stalin as a person with good memory(as Hitler) and with a sound and logic approach to problems. He was very good at analyzis and talented in many areas.

[Rolend]

Yep Stalin was not locked into some point of political or racist view, all he cared about was retaining his personal power, the man could and did learn from his mistakes and adjusted his actions if it was a personal benefit to himself. Where as Hitler was so locked into his political and racist views he was willing to sacrifice his power to achieve it, he never seemed to learn from his mistakes. For Hitler power was not the goal but the tool to achieve his political beliefs and for Stalin the goal was power and politics the tool.

No matter how you slice it, as far as the human race is concerned the result was the same, both men brought nothing but death and destruction.

[Liam]

Heir Strachwitz,

You're calculations of a Democracy in the fighting department is way off. During the American Civil War, we lost 600 thousand Soldiers in the field and that is not calculating the cost in Civilian lives nor the damage which still exists to this day! Few Wars aside from the Napoleonic had been as dreadful during the 19th century amongst civilized and modernized nations. For the Age that is Hellish...For WW2 conversion table that'd of been 2.5-5 Million Dead at least purely Soldiers and utter devastation of land.. The South still has Poverty, hatred and a weak economy 141 years later.

Russia needing a Lunatic to save it?? Bahhhh! That lunatic, disorganized the entire Soviet State for Fighting, killing of it's Officer Corp and totally hanging anyone of any skill due to one man's paranoid delusions who loathed his Father. Not to say that Stalin was not successful, but he was vile and he didn't care about death, that is why is nation was nearly destroyed, that and a fanatical Nazi Germany much to oblige him. Quoting Stalin, "The Death of One is a tragedy, the death of millions a statistic!"

If Politicians, would've done there job and backed Italy during German's rapid expansion and showed Hitler that Little Boys get punished for doing certian things they shouldn't, perhaps we could've minimized the damage, a war was likely inevitable, though I'm not sure that's entirely true if Hitler truly feared his Power and Almighty Omnipotence to be wrong? France and England both along with the USSR and USA the Main Powers with Italy all are Thralls to Hitler's Will pre-1939... Only Italy really complained much, odd? Il Duce paraphrazing, "Germany is a nation of Killers, I will not stand for this!" During the annexation of Austria..then he changed his tone when he realized he was alone.

Strong men don't do much without strong guns to back 'em up...

In the End in the West, it was never going to happen, not without more Men, Tanks and more Guns. Even with or without air, which wasn't always decisive and wasn't always useable in the poor European Weather. Germany had too few and less morale due to Stalingrad, Kursk, North Africa, Italy, etc... People lose faith in the losing side, it's just the way of things.. Wars of attrittion are never fun, Germany should've surrendered a week after D-Day and sought Pre-War Borders if any intelligent man ran the show. I would've sought it 6 months earlier. Fact is Hitler was an overly ambitious fool, who believed he was infailable, that's why he lost..

He had a bunch of Major Powers who weren't Mobilized, he Mowed most of them Down, couldn't get to England, an Island, feared Russia and the USA. Once they mobilized they Mowed him down. end of story

Originally posted by Hyazinth von Strachwitz:

@ Cary: yep. Any democracy or modern state would have surrendered after the first month of the Barbarossa Campaign... Russia needed a Lunatic willing to sacrifice millions by that time or they would have lost half of their state... just imagine how the world would look like today if the USSR would have accepted a defeat and accepted a similar preace treaty to the one they accepted in 1918... loosing whole Byelorussia, Ukraine and most likely the Caucasus, the main target of the Campaign... all other fighting in in the western area wouldn`t have been possible with 75% of the german divisions no longer deployed in Russia.... all what happened in 1944 in the western theater was inexperienced Allied troops fighting demoralized german troops with almost no Air and Tank support... just imagine an Operation Overlord against fully equipped and experienced german armies in 1944... no way.

Basically the most important individuals in this period was Churchill (who refused to make peace with Germany in 1940 even against polls in in country) and Stalin who simply couldn`t afford defeat.. with just one of these two people being more like Neville Chamberlain we would have a completely different order in the world... not necessary a better one.

Although I`m german I need to say that Stalin sacrificed his soldiers for the benefit of a better world.. but that was not his intention

[Liam]

P.S. As far as Soviet losses during WW2, they were High, millions, I don't think we'll ever know a precise figure, but you can guess likely over 10-20-30 million dead. Relatively 10-20% of their population, not so bad... Vietnam payed what 5%? and the USA 50 thousand to inflict it?

[Guest Mike]

Serbia in WW1 lost 28% of its total population - 54% of its men.