"Soviet War Dead: The Numbers" Topic

Wow!

From here
link

Amicalement
Armand

They should also overlay the deaths by their own Government-upon its own people.

Was this supposed to go on the WW2 board? I'm pretty sure the amount of Latvian war dead since 2006 is rather modest.

The amounts are low.

Impossible to crossport at the "Doom Hour"….

Amicalement
Armand

"Funny" how the populations of independent Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania have suddenly become "Soviet" without any mentioning of them being invaded and occupied by the Soviets nor that a significant chunk of the war dead in those countries were killed by the Soviets…

"They should also overlay the deaths by their own Government-upon its own people."

Can I get an "Amen!"?

Well, they were Soviet at the time.

I have never seen a history book separate out the Baltics separately when discussing Eastern Front war-dead or civilians murdered.

If you want a source about Soviet repressions or German war-crimes, you'd need to find books that deal with that topic specifically.

Other than political reasons, why would those killed in the great purges or the Ukrainian famines be included in a tally of war-dead?
They died before the war started.

We wouldn't include Holocaust victims in a tally of German war-dead or famine victims in India in a tally of British empire war-dead, because doing so would be lunacy.

Thanks for that Tango, it is always sobering to see the cost paid by the Soviet people in the war. Their losses deserve no less respect than the losses of any other Allied nation.

Fatman

Weasel,
According to that logic most war dead of occupied Europe should be counted into the German total, after all they were part of Germany at the time.

No, Daniel S. WW2 was about contesting that very point. With regard to the Baltics, one could make that argument, but the fact that their independence (from Russia) was a short lived inter regnum makes a comparison with France or other European countries occupied by Germany rather disingenuous. I think though that we can all agree that the eastern front was a messy political situation and this just goes to illustrate that history is not neat and tidy.

This is a more useful breakdown of the losses – by cause:

Table 1 – Total Soviet Losses
Calculated loss in excess of expected deaths (Andreev, Darskii, Kharkova)	26,600,000
War-related deaths of people expected to die in the timeframe of other causes (Harrison)	1,100,000
Expected deaths due to Soviet repression	300,000
Total deficit of the Soviet population in the war	28,000,000
Table 2 – Soviet Losses by Cause
Demographic loss of the Soviet Union in the Soviet-German War	28,000,000
Of that losses in migration deficit (Ellman, Maksudov)	2,700,000
Total Soviet war dead	25,300,000
Of that losses due to Soviet state repression	1,500,000
Total Losses due to war and occupation	23,800,000
Table 3 – Losses due to Soviet State Repression
Deaths in prisons, camps and colonies of the gulag	1,000,000
Deaths in deportations, internal exile and the labor army	300,000
Executions by civil authorities	65,000
Executions by military tribunals	135,000
Total deaths due to Soviet state repression	1,500,000
Table 4 – Losses due to War and Occupation
Red Army and NKVD losses due to combat, accidents and disease	7,250,000
Soviet partisan deaths	150,000
Opolchenie militia deaths	100,000
Soviet citizens killed fighting in non-Soviet formations	250,000
Deaths of Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity	3,100,000
Deaths of Soviet prisoners of war in Finnish captivity	20,000
Deaths of Soviet forced laborers in German-run Europe and children born to them	200,000
Jewish citizens of the Soviet Union murdered in the Holocaust	2,550,000
Civilian deaths in the Siege of Leningrad	900,000
Non-Jewish Civilians killed in German anti-partisan reprisals in the countryside	650,000
Non-combatants killed in the Polish-Ukrainian conflict in Galicia and Volhynia	50,000
Killed in reprisals by the Soviet partisans	60,000
Civilians killed in all other German killing policies and repression	200,000-400,000
Civilian deaths in the German aerial bombing of Soviet cities and towns	100,000-200,000
Civilian deaths due to battle munitions in, and in the aftermath, of battles	200,000-400,000
Civilian deaths due to general privation due to invasion and occupation	7,500,000-8,000,000
Total deaths due to occupation and war	23,800,000

link

Actually I think the soviet losses deserve less respect then the other allies since then had a non aggression pact with Germany and their own invasion of Poland in September '39.

By that token then the Polish dead should deserve less respect since Poland had a non-aggression pact with Nazi Germany from 1934 to 1939 and joined with Germany in the invasion of Czechoslovakia in 1938…

link

Marshal Pilsudski and friends

Polish Army entering Český Těšín, Czechoslovakia, in 1938

Incidentaly:

Part of a Lithuanian tank column entering the Polish city of Vilna 1939.
During the partition of Poland, on 10 October 1939, the Soviet occupiers of Lithuania ceded to Lithuania the Vilnius region of Poland, the eastern regions of which the USSR had recently seized after their having been previously annexed by the Poles following the end of the Polish-Soviet War, 1919-1921.
Vilna became Vilnius, the Lithuanian capital. It still remains the capital of Lithuania.

Well, this is going well isn't it.

No mention my friend.

Amicalement
Armand