The Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation intends to make public the loss of the USSR in the Great Patriotic War to the 65 anniversary of the Victory. The ministry hopes that the exact number of losses summarized in an electronic database will put an end to speculations around them. This was announced by the head of the Department for the perpetuation of the memory of those killed in the defense of the Fatherland, Major General Alexander Kirilin.
“The Russian Ministry of Defense is working to create an electronic database of casualties in the Great Patriotic War,” he said. - By the 65 anniversary of the Great Victory, we finally come to the official figure, which will be recorded in the regulatory document of the government and communicated to the entire population of the country, in order to stop speculation on the figures of losses.
Sensations are not expected here. The work on counting the number of deaths has been underway in the ministry for 17 for years, and its approximate results are known: the country's total human losses are 26,6 million people, the combat losses are within 9 million people.
Thus, the thesis of those “historians” who like to repeat is refuted that we “threw corpses into Germany” and only because we won. “You look,” they say, “for our killed German there are five of ours!” It's terrible! How do you have to fight to have such losses? ”Developing the“ thought ”further, they depict our military leaders as a sort of soulless monsters who were driving the soldiers to certain death in fear of Stalin. “But Stalin would not have dealt with Tukhachevsky and other military leaders,” they say, “the war could have gone differently, and there would have been less casualties.”
In a word, according to their logic, everything is bad. Stalin is bad, military leaders are bad, soldiers are untrained, the losses are huge. But the Germans - those are great, yes. Fought sporely and skillfully, captured large territories with small blood weapon they fired better, the grenades flew farther, and the boiling water in the pots was sweet even without sugar.
This myth has been cultivated for twenty years, if not more. It seems, and in the minds of many he ate tightly. Especially in terms of losses. “Yes, yes, great losses!” - agree the inhabitants and shake their heads in contrition. And almost no one takes the trouble to grasp the essence of the matter. And if they had done this, they would immediately open up a few juggling, on which this false construction rests.
First, the five dead against one is a lie. Such a figure will turn out only if the total Soviet casualties of the USSR are divided by the combat losses of Germany (they used to be defined as 25 and 5 of millions of people, respectively). But our civilian population did not fight; consequently, even counting thus lacks any practical sense.
Secondly, the normal ratio of losses to the attacking and defending sides in all military textbooks is defined as 3: 1. On the three killed attacking there is one dead defender. For the most part of the war, our troops attacked, whatever you say. Consequently, the losses they should have more.
Thirdly, comparing the losses of the USSR and Germany, for some reason they did not take into account the losses of its allies for a long time. And if we take them into account, and then divide the USSR combat losses by the combat losses of Germany, we get the ratio 1,5: 1 (not even 3: 1!). Agree, not bad at all (if this word is appropriate here). It turns out that our military leaders, in most cases, fought competently, while the soldiers, contrary to popular belief, mostly took care. So we won Germany, not “thrown into corpses”.
And now about the numbers. The article by Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko, published last year on the site “Invented Stories about War”, which we already wrote about earlier, gives a table of irretrievable losses of Red Army personnel in the Great Patriotic War by years. These include the dead, the missing, prisoners and those who died in captivity.
The last column of the table shows daily losses. In 1941, this figure was the highest, since the troops had to retreat under extremely difficult conditions, and large units were surrounded, in the so-called "Boilers". In 1942, this figure is much less: although our army was still retreating, the troops were less likely to be surrounded. In 1943, fierce battles were fought, especially on the Kursk Bulge, but from this year until the end of the war, the forces of Nazi Germany were already retreating. In 1944, the Supreme Command of the USSR planned and conducted a series of brilliant strategic operations to defeat and encircle entire groups of German armies, therefore the losses of the Soviet army were reduced this year. But in 1945, this figure increased again: the stubbornness of the German army increased, since it was already fighting on its own territory.
The armed forces of Germany, said Archpriest Alexander Ilyashenko, lost 6,92 million people on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, armed forces of its allies - 1,73 million people, just the same - 8,65 million.
Perhaps, these statistics, together with the upcoming electronic base of the Ministry of Defense, will educate lovers to inflate the figure of our losses and draw various conclusions based on their own conclusions, one negative than the other. Although unlikely. Some citizens, as you know, the law is not written.