Soviet sources reported that "In 1945 the German Army lost more than 1,000,000 men killed on the Soviet-German front alone."[37]. The Austrian government puts their losses in the air war at 24,000. In early 1945 the German High Command (OKW) prepared a summary of total losses up to January 31, 1945. [139], The Soviets set up NKVD special camps in the Soviet-occupied parts of Germany and areas east of the Oder-Neisse line to intern Germans accused of alleged ties to the Nazis, or because they were hindering the establishment of Stalinism in East Germany. [145] The strategy paid off, as such industrial increases were able to occur even while the Germans in late 1942 occupied more than half of European Russia, including 40 percent (80 million) of its population, and approximately 2,500,000 square kilometres (970,000 sq mi) of Soviet territory. [123] Despite official Soviet atheism, many soldiers wore crosses around their necks and crossed themselves in the traditional Eastern Orthodox manner before going into battle, through the British historian Catherine Merridale interprets these actions as more "totemic" gestures meant to ensure good luck rather than expressions of "real" faith. [127] Despite these fearsome powers, many of the frontoviki were often openly contemptuous of the politruks if subjected to excessively long boring lectures on the finer points of Marxism–Leninism, and officers tended to win conflicts with the poltitruks as military merit started to count more in the Great Patriotic War than did political zeal. Stalin's shortcomings as a strategist are frequently noted regarding the massive Soviet loss of life and early Soviet defeats. The Germans hid the weather station so well that it was only discovered in the 1970s – 30 years after the war..........The German military employed over 3 MILLION pack animals, most of which were horses during their invasion of the USSR...........The United States employed a ‘Special Weapons Unit’ during WW2 that was entirely made up of foreign weapons. This gave him complete control of his country's entire war effort; more control than any other leader in World War II. Chevron/Ian Allan. [75], In early 1942, the Soviets began a series of offensives labelled "Stalin's First Strategic Offensives". This figure includes 4.3 million military dead and missing, 500,000 killed by strategic bombing, 300,000 victims of Nazi political, racial and religious persecution, 2,251,500 civilian dead in expulsions and 24,300 Austrian civilians. Deaths of POW were 450,600 including 356,700 in NKVD camps and 93,900 in transit. [110] The widespread rapes committed by the Red Army when entering Germany had little to do with sexual desire, but were instead acts of power, in the words of Rottman "the basest form of revenge and humiliation the soldiers could inflict on the Germans". Monthly figures do not add because of rounding. Capturing the city would cut Soviet transport links with southern Russia, and Stalingrad would then serve to anchor the northern flank of the larger German drive into the oil fields of the Caucasus. [189], Soviet troops reportedly raped German women and girls, with total victim estimates ranging from tens of thousands to two million. Its second goal was to eliminate Slavs from central and eastern Europe and to create a Lebensraum for Aryans. In addition, seizing the city that bore the name of Soviet leader Joseph Stalin would serve as a great personal and propaganda victory for Adolf Hitler. They maintain that the figure is correct because it includes additional deaths from malnutrition and disease of those civilians subject to the expulsions. This rendered some 25 million Soviet citizens homeless. mass rape, Der Ruhrkessel: Ende der Kämpfe im Westen – Verbrechen der Wehrmacht, der SS und Gestapo an der Bevölkerung bis zum letzten Tag, Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917, George C Marshall, Biennial reports of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army to the Secretary of War : 1 July 1939-30 June 1945. (Reich Women's Labour Service). Fending off the German invasion and pressing to victory in the East required a tremendous sacrifice by the Soviet Union, which suffered the highest casualties in the war, losing more than 20 million citizens . The Soviets had to supply their troops by barge and boat across the Volga from the other bank. by Konrad Adenauer. [8], The pact was reached two days after the breakdown of Soviet military talks with British and French representatives in August 1939 over a potential Franco-Anglo-Soviet alliance. The US lend-lease around $11 billion in supplies to the Soviet Union during the war. 1945. They were taken to the foreign workers barracks at the local iron foundry. A priest trying to stop the atrocity was murdered. [177] The war resulted in the destruction of approximately 70,000 Soviet cities, towns and villages[178] - 6 million houses, 98,000 farms, 32,000 factories, 82,000 schools, 43,000 libraries, 6,000 hospitals and thousands of kilometers of roads and railway track.[178]. The campaign also had a potent psychological effect and boosted morale, a survival component almost as crucial as bread. The Biennial report of the Chief of Staff of the United States Army issued in 1945 also estimated Japanese "battle dead" at 1.219 million. Marshall's figure is 128,000. When Overmans conducted his research project during 1992 to 1994 he was an officer in the German Armed Forces. The Volga River was now frozen over solid, and Soviet forces and equipment were sent over the ice at various points within the city. Bevölkerungsbilanzen für die deutschen Vertreibungsgebiete 1939/50.Herausgeber: Statistisches Bundesamt - Wiesbaden. Additional rations were often so expensive that they could not add substantially to a citizen's food supply unless that person was especially well-paid. [77], At the same time, Hitler was worried about American popular support after the U.S. entry into the war following the Attack on Pearl Harbor, and a potential Anglo-American invasion on the Western Front in 1942 (which did not occur until the summer of 1944). German war planners hoped to achieve that end with Fall Blau (“Operation Blue”), a proposal that Hitler assessed and summarized in Führer Directive No. . Loss records for 17 VA are incomplete. Figure includes deaths actually recorded from May 1939 until June 1944 and from January to October 1946. Deutsche Kriegsgefangene des Zweiten Weltkrieges. At Metgethen railway station, a refugee train from Konigsberg, consisting of seven passenger coaches, was found and in each compartment seven to nine bestially mutilated bodies were discovered. The schedule below details the statistics published by the West German government 1956. The French definitely have more iron in their blood then say, the Italians [I do not mean it in a derogatory sense. It is unknown just how many people died from the release of chemicals versus how many died from explosions..........More V2 rockets fell on Belgium than on Britain..........The German military was able to establish a secret base of operation on the coast of Labrador, Canada. According to Overmans there is no reliable data on losses of Soviet volunteers[45] Russian military historian G. I. Krivosheev estimated losses in the Wehrmacht of volunteer formations and SS troops (Vlasovites, Balts, Muslims etc.) [67], A pattern soon emerged where Stalin embraced the Red Army's strategy of conducting multiple offensives, while the Germans overran each of the resulting small, newly gained grounds, dealing the Soviets severe casualties. "Turkmenistan during the Second World War,". The material on this site can not be reproduced, distributed, transmitted, cached or otherwise used, except with prior written permission of Multiply. Of the 350,000 civilians listed as dead (not including refugees), 126,000 of the deaths occurred after January 31, 1945. German soldiers in Russia: WW2: As photographed by themselves: Germany Did Occupy Britain During WW2! Ellmana, Michael, and S. Maksudovb. The following schedules summarize the OKW figures published in the post-war era. ANGRIFF: Best German Images of Stalingrad. [20] (Since the fall of communism the records in the former GDR (East Germany) have become available to the WASt). According to Krivosheev "The figures in the Wehrmacht documents relating to Germany's war losses are therefore contradictory and unreliable. [7][8] The USSR was promised the eastern part of Poland, then primarily populated by Ukrainians and Belarusians, in case of its dissolution, and Germany recognised Latvia, Estonia and Finland as parts of the Soviet sphere of influence,[8] with Lithuania added in a second secret protocol in September 1939. He pledged a campaign of massive strategic bombing, to include German civilian targets. [127], 2- The section Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy of October 31, 1945 put the losses at 375,000 killed and 625,000 wounded[128][129], 3-The section The Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany of January 1947 made a preliminary calculated estimate of air raid dead at 422,000[130][129] According to the report "no complete and accurate figures on German civilian air raid casualties, covering the entire period of the war, are available". While the initial Soviet response to Fall Blau was to maintain an orderly withdrawal and thus avoid the massive encirclements and troop losses that had characterized the early months of Operation Barbarossa, on July 28 Stalin issued Order No. Stalin met with Winston Churchill and Franklin D. Roosevelt at the Tehran Conference and began to discuss a two-front war against Germany and the future of Europe after the war. The Statistisches Jahrbuch für die Bundesrepublik Deutschland 1960, Page 78. During the 778 days of the German occupation of Kiev, many thousands of Russian POWs, Ukrainians, Gypsies and other nationalities, were murdered at Babi Yar. But for different ... Waffen SS soldiers crouch in a trench. [180] The second provision of the order directed all units fighting in encirclements to use every possibility to fight. Later on, it commenced to track German casualties again starting from 1946 after the World War II. During the Cold War, the West German government estimated the death toll at 2.225 million[15] in the wartime evacuations, forced labor in the Soviet Union as well as the post war expulsions. "The Marshall Cavendish Illustrated Encyclopedia of World War II".