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 higher executive bodies state power subjects Russian Federation, the Ministries of Education and Science, Defense, Foreign Affairs, Culture, members of public associations, organizations of foreign compatriots... True, those who came up with the action itself were not there - 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 the terrible figure, for some reason not noticed by anyone, not forcing us to stop in horror while running in order to understand WHAT we were told after all. Why this was done right now, I don’t know.
At the hearing, the co-chairman of the “Immortal Regiment of Russia” movement, State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, presented a report “Documentary basis of the 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 understanding 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 civilian population. 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?
Now these elderly disabled people are natural causes 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 considerations inaccessible to a normal person, 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 under the editorship of 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.
(in brackets – including officers)
* There are errors in the table when summing (Editor's note)
Germany was forced to capitulate by its losses in manpower. In principle, it had enough weapons and equipment, even the newest and most advanced models, such as, say, ballistic missiles, jet aircraft, powerful tanks, etc.
Against fascist Germany A coalition of allies fought with its satellites: the USSR, England and the USA. And from the point of view of inflicting decisive losses on Germany, by looking at the tables, you can determine which of the allies played the main role in that war.
Losses Navy Germany is certainly determined by the combat actions of the fleets and air forces of England and the United States. And although by December 1944 the Baltic Fleet had not yet said its final word and Captain Marinescu had not yet drowned the entire school submarine fleet Germany did not become the Fuhrer’s personal enemy, but let’s give the allies their due - they probably ended up determining the German losses at sea by almost 95%. But German human losses at sea by the beginning of 1945 amounted to just over 2% of their total recorded losses.
In the air, by the middle of the war, England and the United States were crushing the Germans with their numerical superiority; naturally, the main forces of the Luftwaffe were always defending the territory of Germany itself and here they suffered serious losses. However, if we sum up the Luftwaffe’s manpower losses only from combat operations (the first four sums of the final column), we get combat losses of 549,393, of which 218,960 are losses on the Eastern Front, or 39.8% of all combat losses of the German Air Force.
If we accept that the losses of Luftwaffe flight personnel on all fronts were proportional, then on the Eastern Front, the Germans would have lost 39.8% of all their pilots. The number of those killed among the missing is not known; let’s assume that half of the flight personnel listed as missing were captured, and half died. Then the estimated amount of dead flight personnel as of January 31, 1945 will be (43517 + 27240/2) = 57137 people, and 39.8% of this number will be 22740 people.
The Soviet Air Force lost 27,600 pilots throughout the war. Considering what kind of planes they had to fly in initial period war (in the first 6 months we lost more than 20 thousand aircraft, and the Germans about 4 thousand), then the constantly circulated tales about some kind of super-superiority of German pilots over Soviet pilots do not look convincing. After all, to these figures of German losses we must add the losses after 01/31/45, and the losses of the Finns, Hungarians, Italians and Romanians.
And finally, losses ground forces Nazi Germany on all fronts (the top six numbers of the final column of the corresponding part of the table) as of January 31, 1945 amounted to 7,065,239 people, of which the Germans lost 5,622,411 people on the Soviet-German front. This accounts for 80% of all their combat losses.
Since the Germans were reluctant to surrender to the troops of the Red Army, it is possible to calculate the proportion of German soldiers killed on the Eastern Front, of all those killed as of January 31, 1945. This proportion is more than 85%. This is for the period from September 1, 1939.
As of January 31, 1945, the Germans on all fronts in the air and at sea lost at least 7,789,051 people in battle (according to the Navy, let me remind you, losses are given as of December 31, 1944). Of these, in battles with the Red Army, Soviet Air Force and Navy - 5,851,804 people, or 75% of all German losses. One ally out of three suffered 3/4 of the entire war. Yes, there were people!
The other day, parliamentary hearings “Patriotic education of Russian citizens: “Immortal Regiment” were held in the Duma. They were attended by deputies, senators, representatives of legislative and supreme executive bodies of state power of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation, the Ministries of Education and Science, Defense, Foreign Affairs, Culture, members of public associations, organizations of foreign compatriots... There were, however, no those who took part in the action came up with journalists from Tomsk TV-2, no one even remembered them. And, in general, there was really no need to remember. The “Immortal Regiment,” which by definition did not have any staffing schedule, 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 there is a new war, which someone calls “hybrid,” our Victory is becoming 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 the victory, and also make us apologize...” For some reason, the Nikonovs are seriously confident that it was they, long before their own birth, who won the Great A 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 hearing, the co-chairman of the “Immortal Regiment of Russia” movement, State Duma deputy Nikolai Zemtsov, presented a report “Documentary basis of the 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 understanding 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 considerations inaccessible to a normal person, 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 under the editorship of 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.
The change in the balance of power in the international arena is also associated with the process of revising the role of the participants in the anti-Hitler coalition in the victory over Nazi Germany. Not only in modern media, but also in a number of historical works, old myths are supported or new myths are created. The old ones include the opinion that the Soviet Union achieved victory only thanks to incalculable losses, many times greater than the losses of the enemy, and the new ones include the decisive role of Western countries, mainly the United States, in the victory and high level their military skill. We will try, relying on what is available to us statistical material, offer a different opinion.
The criterion used is total data, such as, for example, the losses of the parties during the entire war, which, due to their simplicity and clarity, confirm one or another point of view.
In order to select from sometimes contradictory data those that can be relied upon with a significant degree of reliability, it is necessary to use, in addition to total values, specific values. Such values may include losses per unit of time, for example, daily, losses falling on a certain section of the front length, etc.
A team of authors led by Colonel General G. F. Krivosheev in 1988-1993. a comprehensive statistical research archival documents and other materials containing information about human losses in the army and navy, border and internal troops NKVD. The results of this major research were published in the work “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century.”
During the Great Patriotic War, 34 million people were drafted into the Red Army, including those drafted in June 1941. This amount is almost equal to the mobilization resource that the country had at that time. The losses of the Soviet Union in the Great Patriotic War amounted to 11,273 thousand people, that is, a third of the number conscripted. These losses are, of course, very large, but everything can be learned in comparison: after all, the losses of Germany and its allies on the Soviet-German front are also great.
Table 1 shows the irretrievable losses of Red Army personnel by year of the Great Patriotic War. Data on the magnitude of annual losses are taken from the work “Russia and the USSR in the Wars of the 20th Century”. This includes killed, missing, captured and those who died in captivity.
Table 1. Losses of the Red Army
The last column of the proposed table shows the average daily losses suffered by the Red Army. In 1941, they were the highest, since our troops had to retreat in very unfavorable conditions, and large formations were surrounded, in the so-called cauldrons. In 1942, losses were significantly less, although the Red Army also had to retreat, but there were no longer large cauldrons. In 1943 there were very stubborn battles, especially in Kursk Bulge, but, starting from this year and until the end of the war, the troops of Nazi Germany had to retreat. In 1944, the Soviet High Command planned and carried out a number of brilliant strategic operations to defeat and encircle entire groups of German armies, so the losses of the Red Army were relatively small. But in 1945, daily losses increased again, because the tenacity of the German army increased, since it was already fighting on its own territory, and German soldiers courageously defended their fatherland.
Let us compare the losses of Germany with the losses of England and the USA on the Second Front. We will try to evaluate them based on the data of the famous Russian demographer B. Ts. Urlanis. In the book “History of Military Losses,” Urlanis, speaking about the losses of England and the United States, provides the following data:
Table 2. Losses of the British armed forces in World War II (thousands of people)
In the war with Japan, England lost “11.4% of total number dead soldiers and officers,” therefore, in order to estimate the magnitude of England’s losses on the Second Front, we need to subtract the losses for 4 years of war from the total losses and multiply by 1 – 0.114 = 0.886:
(1,246 – 667) 0.886 = 500 thousand people.
Total US losses in World War II amounted to 1,070 thousand, of which approximately three quarters were losses in the war with Germany, thus
1,070 * 0.75 = 800 thousand people.
The total total losses of England and the USA are
1,246 + 1,070 = 2,316 thousand people.
Thus, the losses of England and the United States on the Second Front amount to approximately 60% of their total losses in World War II.
As mentioned above, the losses of the USSR amount to 11.273 million people, that is, at first glance, incomparable with the losses amounting to 1.3 million people suffered by England and the USA on the Second Front. On this basis, the conclusion is drawn that the Allied command fought skillfully and took care of people, while the Soviet High Command allegedly filled the enemy trenches with the corpses of its soldiers. Let us allow ourselves to disagree with such ideas. Based on the data on daily losses given in Table 1, it can be obtained that from June 7, 1944 to May 8, 1945, that is, during the existence of the Second Front, the losses of the Red Army amounted to 1.8 million people, which is only slightly higher than the losses of the Allies. As is known, the length of the Second Front was 640 km, and the Soviet-German Front was from 2,000 to 3,000 km, on average 2,500 km, i.e. 4-5 times greater than the length of the Second Front. Therefore, on a front section with a length equal to the length of the Second Front, the Red Army lost approximately 450 thousand people, which is 3 times less than the losses of the allies.
On the fronts of World War II, the armed forces of Nazi Germany itself lost 7,181 thousand, and the armed forces of its allies - 1,468 thousand people, a total of 8,649 thousand.
Thus, the ratio of losses on the Soviet-German front is equal to 13:10, that is, for 13 killed, missing, wounded, captured Soviet soldiers, accounts for 10 German.
According to the Chief of the German General Staff F. Halder, in 1941-1942. The fascist army lost about 3,600 soldiers and officers every day, therefore, in the first two years of the war, the losses of the fascist bloc amounted to about two million people. This means that over the subsequent period, the losses of Germany and its allies amounted to about 6,600 thousand people. During the same period, the losses of the Red Army amounted to approximately 5 million people. Thus, in 1943-1945, for every 10 Red Army soldiers killed, there were 13 fascist army soldiers killed. These simple statistics clearly and objectively characterize the quality of troop leadership and the degree careful attitude to the soldiers.
General A.I. Denikin
“Be that as it may, no tricks could detract from the significance of the fact that the Red Army has been fighting skillfully for some time now, and the Russian soldier has been selflessly fighting. The successes of the Red Army could not be explained by numerical superiority alone. In our eyes, this phenomenon had a simple and natural explanation.
From time immemorial, Russian people were smart, talented and loved their homeland from the inside. From time immemorial, the Russian soldier was immensely resilient and selflessly brave. These human and military qualities could not drown out twenty-five Soviet years of suppression of thought and conscience, collective farm slavery, Stakhanovite exhaustion and the replacement of national self-awareness with international dogma. And when it became obvious to everyone that there was an invasion and conquest, and not liberation, that only the replacement of one yoke with another was foreseen, the people, postponing accounts with communism until a more opportune time, rose for the Russian land just as their ancestors rose during the invasions Swedish, Polish and Napoleonic...
Under the sign of the international, the inglorious Finnish campaign and the defeat of the Red Army by the Germans on the roads to Moscow took place; under the slogan of defending the Motherland, the German armies were defeated!”
Opinion of General A.I. Denikin is especially important for us because he received a deep and comprehensive education at the Academy of the General Staff, had his own rich experience in combat operations, acquired in the Russo-Japanese, World War I and Civil Wars. His opinion is also important because, while remaining an ardent patriot of Russia, he was and until the end of his life remained a consistent enemy of Bolshevism, so one can rely on the impartiality of his assessment.
Let's consider the ratio of losses of the Allied and German armies. The literature provides the total losses of the German army, but data on German losses on the Second Front is not given, probably deliberately. Great Patriotic War lasted 1418 days, the Second Front existed for 338 days, which is 1/4 of the duration of the Great Patriotic War. Therefore, it is assumed that Germany’s losses on the Second Front are four times less. Thus, if on the Soviet-German front German losses amount to 8.66 million people, then we can assume that German losses on the Second Front are about 2.2 million, and the loss ratio is approximately 10 to 20, which would seem to confirm point of view about the high military art of our allies in World War II.
We cannot agree with this point of view. Some Western researchers also disagree with her. “Against the inexperienced, albeit eager, Americans and the war-weary, cautious British, the Germans could field an army that, in the words of Max Hastings, “won a historical reputation for being undaunted and reaching its zenith under Hitler.” Hastings states: “Everywhere during the Second World War, whenever and wherever British and American troops met head-on with the Germans, the Germans won.”<…>What struck Hastings and other historians most was the loss ratio, which was two to one or even higher in favor of the Germans.”
American Colonel Trevor Dupuy conducted a detailed statistical study of German actions in the Second World War. Some of his explanations for why Hitler's armies were so much more effective than their opponents seem unfounded. But not a single critic questioned his main conclusion that on almost every battlefield during the war, including Normandy, the German soldier was more effective than his opponents.
Unfortunately, we do not have the data that Hastings used, but if there is no direct data on German losses on the Second Front, we will try to estimate them indirectly. Considering that the intensity of the battles waged by the German army in the West and in the East was the same, and that the losses per kilometer of front were approximately equal, we obtain that German losses on the Eastern Front should not be divided by 4, but, taking into account the difference in the length of the front line, at about 15-16. Then it turns out that Germany lost no more than 600 thousand people on the Second Front. Thus, we find that on the Second Front the ratio of losses is 22 Anglo-American soldiers to 10 German ones, and not vice versa.
A similar ratio was observed in the Ardennes operation, which was carried out by the German command from December 16, 1944 to January 28, 1945. As the German general Melentin writes, during this operation the allied army lost 77 thousand soldiers, and the German army lost 25 thousand, that is, we get a ratio of 31 to 10, even exceeding that obtained above.
Based on the above reasoning, it is possible to refute the myth about the insignificance of German losses on the Soviet-German front. It is said that Germany allegedly lost about 3.4 million people. If we assume that this value corresponds to the truth, then we will have to accept that on the Second Front German losses amounted to only:
3.4 million/16 = 200 thousand people,
which is 6-7 times less than the losses of England and the United States on the Second Front. If Germany fought so brilliantly on all fronts and suffered such insignificant losses, then it is unclear why it did not win the war? Therefore, assumptions that the losses of the Anglo-American army are lower than the German ones, as well as that the German losses are significantly lower than the Soviet ones, must be rejected, since they are based on incredible figures and are not consistent with reality and common sense.
Thus, it can be argued that the power of the German army was decisively undermined by the victorious Red Army on the Soviet-German front. With an overwhelming superiority in people and equipment, the Anglo-American command showed amazing indecisiveness and ineffectiveness, one might say mediocrity, comparable to the confusion and unpreparedness of the Soviet command in the initial period of the war in 1941-1942.
This statement can be supported by a number of pieces of evidence. First, we will give a description of the actions of the special groups, which were led by the famous Otto Skorzeny, during the offensive of the German army in the Ardennes.
“On the first day of the offensive, one of Skorzeny’s groups managed to get through the gap made in the allied lines and advance to Yun, which was located near the banks of the Meuse. There she is, having replaced German uniform on the American one, dug in and fortified itself at the intersection of roads and observed the movement of enemy troops. The group commander, who spoke fluent English, went so far as to take a bold walk around the area to “get acquainted with the situation.”
A few hours later, an armored regiment passed near them, and its commander asked them for directions. Without blinking an eye, the commander gave him a completely wrong answer. Namely, he stated that these “German pigs have just cut off several roads. He himself received an order to make a big detour with his column.” Very happy that they were warned in time, the American tankers actually headed along the path that “our man” showed them.
Returning to their unit, this detachment cut several telephone lines and removed signs posted by the American quartermaster service, and also laid mines here and there. Twenty-four hours later, all the men and officers of this group returned to the lines of their troops in perfect health, bringing interesting observations about the confusion that reigned behind the American front line at the beginning of the offensive.
Another of these small detachments also crossed the front line and advanced all the way to the Meuse. According to his observations, the Allies could be said to have done nothing to protect the bridges in the area. On the way back, the detachment was able to block three highways leading to the front line by hanging colored ribbons on the trees, which in the American army means that the roads are mined. Subsequently, Skorzeny's scouts saw that the columns of British and American troops actually avoided these roads, preferring to make a long detour.
The third group discovered an ammunition depot. After waiting until dark; The commandos "removed" the guards and then blew up this warehouse. A little later they discovered a telephone collector cable, which they managed to cut in three places.
But the most significant story happened to another detachment, which on December 16 suddenly found itself directly in front of the American positions. Two GI companies prepared for a long defense, built pillboxes and installed machine guns. Skorzeny's men must have been somewhat confused, especially when an American officer asked them what was happening there on the front lines.
Pulling himself together, the detachment commander, dressed in the fine uniform of an American sergeant, told the Yankee captain a very interesting story. Probably, the Americans attributed the confusion that was visible on the faces of the German soldiers to the last skirmish with the “damned Boches.” The detachment commander, a pseudo-sergeant, stated that the Germans had already bypassed this position, both on the right and on the left, so that it was practically surrounded. The amazed American captain immediately gave the order to retreat."
Let us also use the observations of the German tankman Otto Carius, who fought against Soviet soldiers from 1941 to 1944, and against Anglo-American soldiers from 1944 to 1945. Let us cite an interesting event from his front-line experience in the West. "Almost all of our cars"Kubel" were disabled. Therefore, one evening we decided to replenish our fleet with an American one. It never occurred to anyone to consider this a heroic act!
The Yankees slept in their houses at night, as “front-line soldiers” were supposed to do. Outside in best case scenario there was one hour, but only if the weather was good. Around midnight we set off with four soldiers and returned quite soon with two jeeps. It was convenient that they did not require keys. All you had to do was turn on the switch and the car was ready to go. Only when we returned to our positions did the Yankees open indiscriminate fire into the air, probably to calm their nerves."
Having personal experience wars on the eastern and western fronts, Carius concludes: “In the end, five Russians posed a greater danger than thirty Americans.” Western researcher Stephen E. Ambrose says that casualties can be minimized “only by ending the war quickly, rather than by exercising caution during offensive operations.”
Based on the evidence given and the relationships obtained above, it can be argued that final stage During the war, the Soviet command fought more skillfully than the German command and much more effectively than the Anglo-American command, because “the art of warfare requires courage and intelligence, and not just superiority in technology and the number of troops.”
Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. M. "OLMA-PRESS". 2001 p. 246.
B. Ts. Urlanis. History of military losses. St. Petersburg 1994 228-232.
O'Bradley. Notes of a soldier. Foreign literature. M 1957 p. 484.
Russia and the USSR in the wars of the twentieth century. M. "OLMA-PRESS". 2001 p. 514.
Colonel General F. Halder. War diary. Volume 3, book 2. Military publishing house of the USSR Ministry of Defense. P. 436
D. Lekhovich. Whites against reds. Moscow “Sunday”. 1992 p. 335.
F. Melentin. Tank battles 1939-1945. Test site AST. 2000
Otto Skorzeny. Smolensk Rusich. 2000 p. 388, 389
Otto Carius. "Tigers in the mud." M. Centropolygraph. 2005 p. 258, 256
Stephen E. Ambrose. D-Day AST. M. 2003. pp. 47, 49.
J. F. S. Fuller Second World War 1939-1945 Publishing House of Foreign Literature. Moscow, 1956, p.26.
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, since various sources information gives different information about human casualties in the period from 1939 to 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.