Causes of World War II- Contents 1 Prerequisites for the Second World War 2 The policy of remilitarization of Germany ... Wikipedia
Participants of the Second World War- Participants of the Second World War. Participants in World War II states that took part in World War II. In total, 62 states out of 73 independent states that existed at that time took part in World War II. 11... ...Wikipedia
Causes of World War II
Causes of World War II- The prerequisites for the Second World War directly stem from the so-called Versailles-Washington system of alignment of forces that developed after the First World War. The main winners (France, Great Britain, USA) were... ... Wikipedia
World War II awards- awards given for participation in military operations of the Second World War and for special achievements at the front and in the rear. Contents 1 Anti-Hitler Coalition 1.1 Soviet Union 1.1.1 ... Wikipedia
World War II personalities- List of military leaders who commanded the armed forces, units and formations during the Second World War. Military ranks are indicated for 1945 or at the time of death (if it occurred before the end of hostilities) ... Wikipedia
World War II ranks- Officer ranks of the troops of the countries of the anti-Hitler coalition and the Axis countries during the Second World War. Not marked: China (Anti-Hitler Coalition) Finland (Axis countries) Designations: Infantry Naval Forces Air Force Waffen... ... Wikipedia
Economic recovery in the United States after World War II- The massive proliferation of automobiles after World War II led to the expansion of suburbs in the United States. The photograph shows the suburbs of Colorado Springs. The economic recovery in the United States after World War II, also known as the post-war... ... Wikipedia
Switzerland during the Second World War- History of Switzerland Switzerland before unification (1291) Prehistoric Switzerland ... Wikipedia
Pacific Theater of World War II- Pacific Theater of Operations World War II Nuclear mushroom in ... Wikipedia
Books
- History of the Second World War. 1939-1945 (set of 12 books), . A multi-volume work on the history of the Second World War - a study that examines all aspects and processes, features and characteristic features of the war: its background, origin and... Buy for 5670 rubles
- History of the Second World War. 1939 - 1945. In 12 volumes. Volume 3, . 1974 edition. The condition is good. A multi-volume work on the history of the Second World War - a study that examines all aspects and processes, features and characteristics...
At the same time, as the study of the balance of power on the world stage and the reconsideration of the role of all those who participated in the coalition against Hitler are proceeding, a quite reasonable question increasingly arises: “How many people died in World War II?” Now all modern media and some historical documents continue to support the old ones, but at the same time create new myths around this topic.
One of the most inveterate says that the Soviet Union won victory only thanks to colossal losses, which exceeded the loss of enemy manpower. The latest, most modern myths that are being imposed on the whole world by the West include the opinion that without the help of the United States, victory would have been impossible, supposedly all this is only because of their skill in warfare. However, thanks to statistical data, it is possible to conduct an analysis and still find out how many people died in World War II and who made the main contribution to the victory.
How many fought for the USSR?
Of course, he suffered huge losses; brave soldiers sometimes went to their death with understanding. Everyone knows this. In order to find out how many people died in the Second World War in the USSR, it is necessary to turn to dry statistical figures. According to the 1939 census, approximately 190 million people lived in the USSR. The annual increase was about 2%, which amounted to 3 million. Thus, it is easy to calculate that by 1941 the population was 196 million people.
We continue to reason and back everything up with facts and numbers. Thus, any industrialized country, even with complete total mobilization, could not afford the luxury of calling on more than 10% of the population to fight. Thus, the approximate number of Soviet troops should have been 19.5 million. Based on the fact that men born in the period from 1896 to 1923 and then until 1928 were first called up, it is worth adding another one and a half million for each year, from which it follows that the total number of all military personnel during the entire period of the war was 27 million.
How many of them died?
In order to find out how many people died in World War II, it is necessary to subtract about 2 million from the total number of military personnel on the territory of the Soviet Union for the reason that they fought against the USSR (in the form of different groups, such as the OUN and the ROA).
That leaves 25 million, of which 10 were still in service at the end of the war. Thus, approximately 15 million soldiers left the army, but it is worth considering that not all of them were dead. For example, about 2.5 million were released from captivity, and some were simply discharged due to injury. Thus, official figures fluctuate constantly, but it is still possible to derive an average: 8 or 9 million people died, and these were military personnel.
What really happened?
The problem is that it was not only the military who were killed. Now let's consider the question of how many people died in the Second World War among the civilian population. The fact is that official data indicate the following: from the 27 million total losses (the official version offers us), it is necessary to subtract 9 million military personnel, whom we calculated earlier using simple arithmetic calculations. Thus, the resulting figure is 18 million civilians. Now let's look at it in more detail.
In order to calculate how many people died in World War II in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and Poland, it is necessary to again turn to dry but irrefutable statistics that indicate the following. The Germans occupied the territory of the USSR, which after the evacuation was home to about 65 million people, which was one third.
Poland lost about one-fifth of its population in this war, despite the fact that the front line passed through its territory many times, etc. During the war, Warsaw was practically destroyed to the ground, which gives approximately 20% of the dead population.
Belarus lost approximately a quarter of its population, and this despite the fact that the most severe fighting and partisan activity took place on the territory of the republic.
On the territory of Ukraine, losses amounted to approximately one-sixth of the entire population, and this despite the fact that there were a huge number of punitive forces, partisans, resistance units and various fascist “rabble” roaming the forests.
Losses among the population in the occupied territory
What percentage of civilian casualties should be typical for the entire occupied part of the USSR territory? Most likely, no higher than approximately two-thirds of the total population of the occupied part of the Soviet Union).
Then we can take as a basis the figure 11, which was obtained when two-thirds were subtracted from the total 65 million. Thus we get the classic 20 million total losses. But even this figure is crude and inaccurate to the maximum. Therefore, it is clear that the official report on how many people died in World War II, both military and civilian, exaggerates the numbers.
How many people died in World War II in the USA?
The United States of America also suffered losses in both equipment and manpower. Of course, they were insignificant compared to the USSR, so after the end of the war they could be calculated quite accurately. Thus, the resulting figure was 407.3 thousand dead. As for the civilian population, there were almost none of them among the dead American citizens, since no military operations took place on the territory of this country. Losses totaled 5 thousand people, mostly passengers of passing ships and merchant marine sailors who came under attack from German submarines.
How many people died in World War II in Germany
As for the official figures regarding German losses, they look at least strange, since the number of missing people is almost the same as the dead, but in fact everyone understands that it is unlikely that they will be found and return home. If we add together all those who were not found and killed, we get 4.5 million. Among civilians - 2.5 million. Isn't this strange? After all, then the number of USSR losses turns out to be doubled. Against this background, some myths, guesses and misconceptions appear regarding how many people died in World War II in Russia.
Myths about German losses
The most important myth that persistently spread throughout the Soviet Union after the end of the war is the comparison of German and Soviet losses. Thus, the figure for German losses, which remained at 13.5 million, was also taken into circulation.
In fact, the German historian General Bupkhart Müller-Hillebrand announced the following figures, which were based on a centralized accounting of German losses. During the war, they amounted to 3.2 million people, 0.8 million died in captivity. In the East, approximately 0.5 million did not survive captivity, and another 3 died in battle, in the West - 300 thousand.
Of course, Germany, together with the USSR, fought the most brutal war of all times, which did not imply a single drop of pity and compassion. The majority of civilians and prisoners on one side and the other died of hunger. This was due to the fact that neither the Germans nor the Russians could provide food for their prisoners, since hunger would then starve their own people even more.
The result of the war
Historians still cannot count exactly how many people died in World War II. Every now and then different figures are announced in the world: it all started with 50 million people, then 70, and now even more. But the same losses that Asia suffered, for example, from the consequences of the war and outbreaks of epidemics against this background, which claimed a huge number of lives, will probably never be possible to calculate. Therefore, even the above data, which was collected from various authoritative sources, is far from final. And it will most likely never be possible to obtain an exact answer to this question.
The Second World War. The Nazis are exterminating civilians. This was called the "sardine method": the victims lay in a large hole like sardines in a jar. This is a very effective way of killing large numbers of people in a very short time. But we are not talking about the Nazis. We will talk about the terrible secrets of the criminal regime of the USSR, the bloodiest in the entire history of mankind.
Hands tied behind back. The shot was fired from behind in the neck. Thousands of people were killed in the same way and thrown into a huge pit. These people were not killed by the Nazis. They were destroyed by the most humane state in the world - the Soviet Union. In this way, masses of people were killed in the USSR for many years - both before and after the country joined the anti-Hitler coalition. No monuments or gravestones were erected for the victims. They were buried in huge mass graves. The authorities who committed these murders never acknowledged these crimes. Therefore, the memory of millions of innocent victims was simply erased from the pages of history.
"We are ours, we will build a new world"
Communism was not Nazism; he promoted the ideas of equality, brotherhood and harmony. In the beginning, there was nothing reprehensible in the ideology itself. But - only at the beginning. There was something that distinguished communism from other utopian teachings. Lenin believed in what he called class struggle, which would lead to universal harmony only after the destruction of certain groups of people.
Whenever communists come to power - no matter where: in Russia, Poland, Cuba, Nicaragua, China, they destroy up to ten percent of the country's population. There is one peculiarity to this. Murders are not committed to destroy enemies: they are not enemies. This is necessary to rebuild society. This is a kind of social engineering. The best representatives of the nation: scientists, workers, engineers, teachers - are destroyed. And only after this is society rebuilt.
In 1917, the communists seized power. Now they have the opportunity to put the ideas of Marxism into practice. Everyone who resisted was shot. To this day, no one knows exactly how many people were killed. We are talking about no less than ten million victims. But even the most merciless terror is not able to completely suppress people's resistance. In particular, in ethnic republics, where communist terror also met with national resistance, as was the case in Ukraine. On September 11, 1932, Stalin wrote to Koganovich: “The situation in Ukraine is very difficult. We must take steps now, otherwise we may lose Ukraine.” Several working meetings between Stalin and the country's leaders gave rise to a clear plan of action. It was truly a terrifying plan. In the winter of 1932-33, all food supplies were removed from Ukraine. At the same time, barrage cordons were set up: no one could leave the republic. At the very beginning, people did not die: household supplies helped maintain life. But this did not fit in with Stalin’s plans. And Stalin ordered the NKVD to confiscate all grain, all food products from the territory of Ukraine. By doing this, he was aware that he was dooming people to death. Peasants were forbidden to go out in search of food; they could not buy, exchange or even earn food. After this, real hunger began. Ukrainians died painfully and slowly. The children cried, asking for bread. Many of the children lost their sense of fear and went to the fields guarded by the NKVD in the hope of collecting some grain. These children were shot to kill. But most people died slowly, at home. Special civilian detachments of the NKVD went from house to house and collected dead bodies, receiving 200 grams of bread for each body delivered. Many were buried alive.
Ten years later, the Nazis would exterminate six million Jews. They will take their gold jewelry and melt it into bullion, which will be stored in Swiss banks. It is not known what the communists did with the gold confiscated from the Ukrainians, or whether they even had gold at all. But we know exactly what they did with the confiscated grain. It was exported to the West. Millions and millions of tons. The Western press wrote about the Holodomor and genocide. Ukrainians were destroyed in front of the whole world. Seven million people were starved to death in just one year. Humanity has never seen a more effective program for exterminating people.
Soviet society was the first communist society on the planet, becoming a gigantic social experiment. And organizing the death of seven million Ukrainians meant nothing in the distorted consciousness of the communist leaders. The ultimate goal of Marxism was the creation of a new man. It was an attempt to go against natural evolution and the laws of nature. Against the fact that people tend to think and act differently. But the communists were not alone in this endeavor. The goal of Hitler's National Socialism was also to create a new man. At the heart of both Hitler's and Soviet ideology was a conflict with nature, which is the essence of totalitarianism. Nazism was based on false biology, proving the Aryan origin of the supernation, and communism was based on false sociology, where selection was made not on national, but on social grounds. At the same time, both systems vigorously defended their scientific origins.
Socialists at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries publicly justified genocide as a necessity. The first statement about this was made in 1849 in an article by Karl Marx published in the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. The point was that after the completion of the socialist revolution and the beginning of the class struggle, primitive societies will appear in Europe, lagging behind by two stages of development, since at the time of the revolution they will not even have reached capitalism. He meant primarily the Basques, Scots, and Serbs, calling them racial trash. According to Marx, these and some other peoples had to be destroyed in any case, since they could not be developed two levels higher in the historical battle. The article also talked about the vulgarity and dirt of the Slavic peoples. In particular, the idea was expressed that Poland has no reason to exist in the world at all. “Classes and races that are inferior in order to build a new life will have to give way. They will have to be sacrificed to the revolution” (Karl Marx).
It was Marx who was the author and primary source of the idea of political genocide.
The teachings of Marx and Engels were carefully studied by Lenin, the man who founded the first Marxist state on earth. A year after Lenin's death, the New York Times published a short article that did not receive due attention at the time. The article was about the creation of the National Socialist Party of Germany, whose founding father was Adolf Hitler. At a party meeting, a certain Dr. Goebbels claims that Hitler and Lenin can be comparable in their actions. He says that Lenin was the greatest man, and the second after him was Hitler. And that the difference between communism and Hitler's ideas is actually minimal. Hitler never hid that he took his ideas from Marx, and that the entire doctrine of National Socialism was based on Marxism.
People rarely think about the fact that the Nazi regime in Germany was also socialist. Its official name is National Socialism. It was an offshoot of socialism. In the USSR there was international socialism, and in Germany there was national socialism.
The only truly Marxist country in the world was the Soviet Union, where people were destroyed strictly in accordance with the teachings of Marx: class enemies. In general terms, the process was absolutely identical to the process of Hitler's extermination of the Jews. First, the victims were ridiculed and publicly humiliated, then they were killed. Millions of people.
In the thirties, the technology of executions and murders was developed. Each region had its own area for burying those executed. Executions were also carried out directly in prisons. Each prison had a special execution room with concrete walls and a hole in the floor for blood drainage. The condemned man was led along the corridor to the “red corner”, where the last comparison of personal data took place, after which he was taken to the execution room, where he was shot in the back of the head with a pistol. This could kill a hundred or even several hundred people in one night. The corpses were then placed in wagons, taken outside the city limits and buried in the forests. Blood dripped from the trucks onto the road along the entire route. They killed indiscriminately: men, women, old people and children. Mass graves covered the entire country.
An entire generation of children lost their parents and became homeless or, as they were called, street children. Millions of such children stole and begged on the streets of Soviet cities. This irritated Stalin greatly, especially when foreign friends visited the Soviet Union. And Stalin quickly found a solution to this problem. He signed a decree allowing the execution of children upon reaching the age of 12.
People were killed day and night. A giant country has turned into a giant meat grinder. Execution orders were signed randomly, based on quotas. For example, it was possible to kill 100,000 people in the Tambov region. Any people who are taken away and shot are included in this limit. No one was interested in names or degrees of guilt. When this limit was chosen, local authorities reported to Stalin to the Central Committee and often asked for an additional quota. Khrushchev asked to increase the limit from 7,000 enemies of the people to 17,000. After the quota was met, a new quota was requested.
M.S. Gorbachev: “Stalin, together with Molotov, Voroshilov, Kaganovich, Zhdanov, signed execution resolutions in batches. Molotov always added: replace ten years with execution. In batches!”
As a result, 11 million people were killed from 1937 to 1941 alone. Here they are, the scale of the repression of their people!
There was at least one person in Europe who was following the situation in Russia very closely. Adolf Gitler. The killing of millions of people in such a short time was truly remarkable. But the Holocaust was still only an idea in Hitler’s head. Hitler's skewed vision of the world, meanwhile, began to take real shape. He annexed Austria and occupied Czechoslovakia. Everyone understood: to avoid a global catastrophe, Hitler must be stopped. But Stalin refused to join the anti-Hitler coalition.
This was Stalin's big game: to allow Hitler to be the cannibal who would come and destroy all of Europe - parliaments, trade unions, governments, armies. After this, Stalin will come as a liberator. Millions of people will wait with hope for this day in concentration camps. And it is Stalin who will free them. However, Hitler had neither the resources nor the people to wage such a large-scale war. On August 23, 1939, Hitler and Stalin signed a pact, according to which Stalin guaranteed Germany security from the eastern border and widespread support with strategic resources. Hitler was triumphant. Now he had everything he needed to start a world war.
And now on September 1, 1939, Hitler attacks Poland from the west. The Poles desperately resist the Nazis, but on September 17, Warsaw receives an unexpected blow in the back: the Soviet Army enters Poland from the east. The actions of the Soviet Union, according to international law, cannot be classified other than aggression against a sovereign state. Luftwaffe bombers attacked Polish cities, and Soviet radio stations in Minsk guided them to their targets. At the very beginning of World War II, the Red Army marched shoulder to shoulder with SS units. The population of the occupied territories made no difference between them. The German army met the Soviet army in the center of Poland, after which the country was divided into two parts: German and Soviet. Thus, the USSR and Germany actually had a common border. In the Soviet press, these actions were described as a war against “Polish fascism”: two peace-loving countries - the USSR and Germany - fought against aggressive Polish “fascists”. But the world did not know that the two dictators agreed not only on the division of Poland. In a secret protocol signed a week before the start of the war, Hitler and Stalin agreed to divide all of Europe. Initially, in the document proposed by Ribbentrop, there was no clause on the division of Europe. However, oddly enough, it was Stalin who initiated the drawing up of the additional agreement. Until the last day, the Soviet Union denied the existence of such an aggressive treaty, according to which Hitler gives Stalin the “green light” to occupy several European states. First on this list was Finland. The first Soviet bomb fell in Helsinki in November 1939. Everyone then thought it was an accident, mistaking the Soviet bombing for some kind of mistake. Moscow called Finland “a country with a fascist regime” and launched a massive ground military operation. It was a disaster. The Red Army lost a third of a million killed and frozen to death. Tiny Finland gave a fantastic rebuff to the world's largest army. But the price for this was also fantastic. The country was destroyed almost to the ground. Soviet bombers deliberately destroyed cities: house by house, street by street, waging war against civilians. For its monstrous aggression against Finland, the USSR was expelled from the League of Nations. The arguments that the USSR was fighting against Finnish “fascism” were not taken seriously by anyone. Only three countries had previously been excluded from the League of Nations: militaristic Japan, fascist Italy and Nazi Germany. Now this list has been expanded to include the Soviet Union. In Europe, Stalin had only one ally left: Hitler.
Meanwhile, Hitler advanced with a blitzkrieg in the west, occupying Denmark, Holland, Belgium and Luxembourg. Norway was attacked with direct assistance from the Soviet Union. Stalin provided the Nazis with a Soviet naval base near Murmansk, from which Hitler launched an attack on Norway. After which Germany sent the People's Commissar of the Navy Kuznetsov a letter of gratitude signed by Admiral Raeder. Stalin wrote to German Foreign Minister Ribbentrop: “Now the friendship between the Soviet Union and Germany is sealed with blood.” It was about the blood of the victims of the outbreak of World War II. The Soviet Union becomes the main supplier for the Nazi war machine. Thousands of tons of oil, iron ore, construction materials, and trains with Soviet grain were sent to the German army. Soviet citizens were starving, but their government sent food to Hitler.
In June 1940, Hitler crushed France. Stalin at the same time occupied Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia. The only country in Europe that continued to resist Hitler was Great Britain. In 1940, American President Roosevelt declared that if Great Britain fell, the Axis powers would control not only Europe, but also Asia, Africa, Australia and the world's oceans, after which they would be able to impose a worldwide militaristic regime. The Axis powers primarily meant Germany and the Soviet Union. It was obvious to everyone: Stalin was in the fascist camp.
Soviet Premier Molotov arrived in Berlin to discuss the new world order. He brought a list of territories that interested the USSR. Molotov demanded that the West not fight Nazi ideology. Moreover, in his message to the Soviet government, Molotov directly stated that the fight against Nazism was a crime. This was published in all major Soviet newspapers. This page later disappeared from copies in public libraries of the USSR, along with other pro-Nazi statements by the Soviet government. Why was the fight against Nazism a crime from the Soviet point of view? Because the mass murders in the concentration camps were based on this ideology. “Work will give you freedom” - the slogan of the Nazi camps. “Labor is a matter of honor and glory” - the slogan of the Soviet camps. If someone wants to fight the ideology of Nazism, he will de facto fight the Soviet regime too. Molotov understood this. After all, it was he who was one of the developers of the plan to exterminate seven million Ukrainians. While Himler was the author of the plan to exterminate the Jews. Both of them understood that joint success required the destruction of certain groups of people. Winston Churchill did not hide the fact that Nazi and Soviet ideologies are one and the same. In his opinion, Nazism was a form of communist despotism. "Hateful communist despotism"- that’s what Churchill called the Soviet regime in 1940. The only one of all allies.
The first victory parade in World War II took place in collaboration with the Nazis. Newsreel footage clearly shows Soviet and German soldiers and officers during the ceremonial parade dedicated to the capture of Poland. In the USSR they never advertised that they were holding a parade under the Nazi flag. Officially, Moscow has always presented itself as an ethical fighter against fascism. Many people believed this. Many Jews left for the USSR in the hope of receiving protection from Hitler. But Stalin did something unimaginable to them. He deported them back and handed over their documents to the Gestapo. As a friendly gesture. They were all killed.
Newsreels show Soviet officers greeting Nazi officers with a Nazi gesture. You need to understand that it is impossible to fake newsreels, even with modern technical means.
Cooperation between Hitler's SS secret police and Stalin's NKVD was very close. Archival documents shed light on the high level of this cooperation. Huge lists with details of Jews whom the Soviets handed over to the Nazis, condemning them to martyrdom in concentration camps. But the partnership between the NKVD and the SS was not limited to the extraditions of mutual enemies. The NKVD trained the Gestapo. The Soviet terror machine had been in operation for almost twenty years before the Nazis came to power. The Nazis had something to learn from the USSR. SS delegations came to the Soviet Union in particular to study the Soviet experience in building concentration camps.
The fact of cooperation between the USSR and Nazi Germany was not denied by Russia. However, to this day it is denied that the cooperation was based on documentary agreements.
“On the basis of this power of attorney, my representative, SS Standartenführer Heinrich Müller, has instructions to sign in Moscow with the leadership of the security agencies of the Soviet Union an agreement on joint activities between the NKVD and the German Main Security Directorate, on which we place great hopes related to the strengthening of peace and security between our countries". Signatures: SS Gruppenführer Heydrich, Mamulov, Beria.
This document was secretly removed from the presidential archive by one of his employees and shown on Russian television. This footage later disappeared from television archives. Unlike the official Kremlin, former Soviet officials who had access to the central (now presidential) archive confirm the existence of this agreement. Vladimir Karpov, former colonel of military intelligence of the GRU, twice Hero of the Soviet Union, member of the Central Committee, consultant to senior Soviet leaders: “A secret agreement was concluded between the KGB (then NKVD) and the Gestapo on cooperation.”
We must agree that the criminal Stalinist regime could not help but be criminal in the foreign policy area. Because the criminal regime acts criminally in all areas. Including in the field of foreign policy. But Moscow does not accept this. It does not recognize the criminal essence of the Soviet regime. Any documents indicating this are usually declared false. Like, for example, the secret protocol on the division of Europe. It is noteworthy that the Kremlin's denial of the facts is supported by only one Western historian - David Irwin. He is widely known for his Holocaust denial.
"The NKVD bodies entrust themselves with obligations to propose to the Soviet government a program to remove persons of Jewish nationality from government bodies, and prohibit the use of Jews and persons descended from marriages with Jews in the fields of culture and education." Signed: Head of the Main Directorate of State Security of the People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs of the USSR Beria and representative Head of the German Main Security Directorate, SS Standartenführer Müller.
Sounds shocking. But what is even more shocking is that today in Russia Stalin’s actions are qualified at the highest level. Here, for example, is a fragment of a speech by former Russian Defense Minister Igor Rodionov: “...It was a war, a real war. It was a war against Jewish fascism within the state.” Rodionov is just one of many who believe that helping Hitler fight the Jews in the 1930s was actually a fight against fascism. Jewish fascism, as it is now called in Russia. In 1939, Stalin removed his Foreign Minister Litvinov, who had held this post for many years. His Jewish roots made him extremely unsuitable for signing any treaties with Germany.
Exiled communist leader Leon Trotsky warned the world about Stalin's anti-Semitism and that Stalin and Hitler were in cahoots. These words were very dangerous for the Kremlin and Trotsky understood that each of his speeches could be his last. He knew that Stalin was persecuting him. But even in his worst forecasts, he could not imagine that his death would be so organized. Stalin sent a secret agent to Mexico. He entered Trotsky's house and hit him on the head with an ice pick. Trotsky fought for life for two days, after which he died from terrible pain. In Stalin's time, there was no arguing with the Kremlin's critics. They were killed.
In March 1940, eight huge holes were dug in the forest near the village of Katyn. Trucks brought people. These were reservists of the Polish army, doctors, engineers, teachers... They were ordered to get out of their cars. None of them knew what was about to happen. And then the NKVD soldiers began to shoot these people. They shot everyone in the neck from behind. People fell into the pit with their hands tied behind their backs. The Politburo of the Central Committee of the All-Russian Communist Party of Belarus decided to shoot all prisoners of war from three concentration camps. Katyn was the first massacre of World War II. The Nazis will take over later. The Katyn massacre was only part of the Soviet history of murder, and these facts will make World War II the bloodiest in human history. After Katyn, the Soviets practiced mass murder regularly. Riga, Tartu, Lvov, Minsk... Relatives could not identify many of the bodies. Horrible torture left the faces of the victims unrecognizable. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, joined the anti-Hitler coalition. Soviet officers who pulled out victims' fingernails, cut out tongues, and drove nails into victims' heads were granted immunity from prosecution. By definition, only Germans committed war crimes. Soviet officers who shot more than twenty thousand unarmed people in Katyn were awarded. Major Saprunenko, who shot people with his own hands, received the Badge of Honor. And Ivan Serov, who later became the chairman of the KGB, received the Order of Lenin, the highest state award, for the execution of Polish officers.
The Second World War claimed the lives of more than 27 million Soviet citizens. The Communist Party has always tried to reduce this number. Why? Because only a quarter of the victims were killed by the Germans.
It is worth remembering that when the Red Army moved forward, there was another army behind it - the NKVD army, the so-called barrier detachments. Their task was to shoot at their own people so that no one would retreat. Viktor Baturin, chairman of the Russian Association of Military History, says shocking things: after battles, NKVD detachments walked through the battlefields and removed dog tags and documents from killed soldiers to make them unidentifiable. No country in the world has done this to its dead military personnel. Because of this policy of the Soviet leadership, more than a million Soviet citizens went over to the Nazi side and selflessly served Hitler.
The Great Patriotic War was coming to an end. Stalin understood perfectly well that no one would condemn the one who defeated Hitler. And at the end of the war, he committed several more of his most terrible crimes. He uprooted entire nations, completely. Young and old, women and men - they were all resettled to Central Asia, Kazakhstan, Siberia. Chechens, Ingush, Kalmyks, Karachais, Crimean Tatars... The conditions were terrifying: people were pressed standing into freight cars, without any hint of sanitary conditions. When the train stopped, the carriages were emptied, as the corpses of those who died along the way were thrown out of them.
In May 1945, the Allies defeated Hitler. Horrifying newsreels from Nazi death camps were shown in the West. However, the Soviet Union did not destroy Nazi camps. He freed them for new prisoners. Thus, the crimes of two equivalent dictatorships were viewed rather one-sidedly: the Nazis were accused of all sins; It is common practice in the world to remain silent about the crimes of the Soviet regime.
The Soviet Union populated the occupied Baltic states with many ethnic Russians. This was a flagrant violation of the Geneva Convention, which prohibits the transfer of civilians to occupied territories. The Kremlin strategically carried out ethnic substitutions in the Baltic states. Russians became the ethnic majority in the largest Baltic cities. Estonians, Latvians and Lithuanians were put into freight cars and deported to Siberia. All conditions were created for the small Baltic peoples to fade away as nations. Deportations, violence and torture have become a daily reality for millions of people. Concentration camps were deployed throughout European Russia and Siberia. Many of them carried out horrific medical experiments on humans. At the Butugychag camp near Magadan, the KGB used thousands of prisoners as experimental animals to experiment with the human brain. All this happened after the victory over Nazism and the installation of monuments to its victims. The victims of Soviet death camps were buried in unmarked, numbered graves. There are no monuments here. Only mounds of shoes from the murdered victims still remain. Children's shoes are also included.
Conclusion.
Vladimir Putin: “The collapse of the Soviet Union was the largest geopolitical catastrophe of the century.”
In the last decade, the dominant idea has been that modern Russia continues the work of the Soviet Union. Any accusation against the Soviet Union is perceived as an attack on modern Russia, and the accuser is most often called a fascist.
The national humiliation experienced by Germany after the First World War, and by Russia after the collapse of the USSR, is the most fertile ground for Nazism. For a whole decade there has been massive xenophobic propaganda from above. In multinational Russia, hatred suddenly appears towards foreigners, people of a different language, a different faith, towards other countries and races.
Former Russian Defense Minister Rodionov: "practically all Russian media work against Russia and its people, as they are in the hands of the Jewish mafia."
Dmitry Rogozin, headed the Russian delegation to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe. He gives an inspired speech about the revival of fascism in Europe. At the same time, his election program in his homeland is built on obvious xenophobia and hatred of other nations, and its slogan is “Let's cleanse Moscow of garbage,” where garbage refers to representatives of other nationalities.
State Duma deputy from the LDPR faction Nikolai Kuryanovich raises his hand in a Nazi salute with the words “Glory to Russia.”
Russian National Socialists easily post videos on their Internet resources that capture moments of the terrible murders of visitors. Under the Nazi swastika. When one of these videos spread around the world, Russian authorities closed the Nazi website, declaring it an American provocation. But unfortunately, the murders in these videos are very real. There are hundreds of them. And they happen all over Russia. Turning human tragedy into farce has become the norm in Russia. Mockery of the Ukrainian Holodomor, the Jewish Holocaust, and the Katyn tragedy have become the norm. Murderers become heroes; mass murderers - respectable veterans. It is explained to the young people that the crimes these people committed against humanity were in fact heroic deeds. And it is not surprising that these crimes are repeated today.
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, as different sources of information give different estimates of human casualties between 1939 and 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.
The largest in history, the Second World War was prepared by the forces of international reaction and unleashed by the main aggressive states - Nazi Germany, fascist Italy and militaristic Japan. It began on September 1, 1939 with the German attack on Poland. The leaders of the Nazi state viewed the seizure of Poland as the initial stage of an armed struggle for world domination. At the same time, the task of creating a springboard for an attack on the Soviet Union was being solved.
The Second World War lasted 6 years. In terms of its scale and ferocity of the struggle, it has no equal in history. Humanity is faced with criminals who have set themselves the goal of exterminating or enslaving entire races and peoples. Fascism intended to impose its notorious “new order” through concentration camps and prisons, through enslavement and colonization of occupied countries not only in Europe. He planned to settle in Africa, prepared for the invasion of England, the USA, Canada, Latin America, the Near and Middle East, and to divide Asia with Japan. The aggressors intended to conquer world domination.
The war pulled into its orbit 61 states with a population of 1 billion 700 million people, i.e. more than 80% of the world's population. Military operations took place in 40 countries of Europe, Asia, Africa and in vast areas of the Atlantic, Arctic, Pacific and Indian oceans. Equipped with the latest military equipment, the armies of the warring parties numbered over 110 million people in their ranks. Its sacrifices and suffering cannot be compared with all previous wars. This most destructive war in world history claimed about 57 million lives, of which over 27 million were our compatriots, and almost half of them were civilians. Thousands of cities and tens of thousands of villages were wiped off the face of the earth, hundreds of thousands of plants and factories were turned into ruins, and enormous damage was caused to agriculture, historical and cultural values.
The total material costs associated with waging the Second World War and eliminating its consequences could feed the entire population of the globe for 50 years. The world still feels the consequences of this war today. The most significant events on the path to victory were on the Soviet-German front. It was they who radically changed the course of World War II in favor of anti-fascist forces.
The Great Patriotic War
Great Patriotic War 1941-1945 - part of the Second World War. This is the liberation war of the Soviet people for the freedom and independence of the Fatherland against Germany and its allies. It was she who was the most important and decisive factor in the Second World War.
The Great Patriotic War is at once the most tragic and the most heroic event in the long-suffering history of all the peoples that were then part of the USSR. The memory of the past war is timeless. It is carefully stored and passed on from generation to generation.
The USSR's war against Germany was extremely just. The content and political goals of the war from the very beginning made it a Patriotic War. In this war, all the peoples of the Soviet Union defended their Fatherland. The place and significance of this war in the history of the peoples of the USSR turned out to be so significant that it entered their consciousness as the Great. If during the Patriotic War of 1812 the country was threatened with a humiliating peace with Napoleonic France, then in 1941 the peoples of the USSR were threatened with extermination and the state with extinction. In this war, the rights of peoples to life, centuries-old traditions, shrines, spiritual social and family values, material and spiritual culture created over the centuries were defended.
The Great Patriotic War, in its qualitative and quantitative parameters, became decisive during the Second World War. Huge groups of armed forces converged along the entire length of the Soviet-German front, from the Barents Sea to the Black Sea. At different stages of the war, from 8 to 13 million people, from 84 to 163 thousand guns and mortars, from 6 to 20 thousand tanks and self-propelled artillery units, from 6.5 to 19 thousand aircraft were concentrated here on both sides. In no other theater of war was there such intense and fierce fighting. This front attracted the overwhelming majority of the armed forces of Germany and its European allies, absorbed their main material and human resources, and had a decisive influence on other fronts of the world war.
In this war, when the peoples of the USSR defended their Motherland, there was a surge of patriotic feelings, an extraordinary spiritual upsurge, and the determination to defend the independence of the Fatherland increased. Each person felt like a citizen in the full sense of the word, felt that the fate of the country was in his own hands. It was a time when the present and future depended on each person.
The Great Patriotic War began not through the fault of the Soviet Union. Its peoples became victims of an attack by the most aggressive force of modern times - German Nazism. Germany's attack on the Soviet Union was an act of pre-planned and carefully prepared aggression. The peoples of the USSR were forced to rise up to fight the invaders.
After quick and relatively easy victories in the West, Hitler, believing in the invincibility of his army, intended to solve the matter in the East with one powerful blow, defeat the Red Army in a few weeks, and complete the entire campaign in a maximum of five months.
On June 22, 1941, violating the Soviet-German non-aggression pact, the armored armadas of the Wehrmacht invaded the USSR. The beginning of the war is still the subject of ideological speculation both on the part of the fascist heirs and newly-minted populists and “truth-seekers” who claim that this attack is just a preventive action, as if on the Soviet Union itself ze is responsible for starting the war.
They seemed to have forgotten that by this time Poland had been defeated in 35 days, Denmark had fallen in 24 hours, and Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg had been occupied in a short time. France soon capitulated. The British expeditionary army on the European continent was defeated. Germany and Italy captured a number of countries in the Balkans. By the summer of 1941, virtually all of Europe was under their rule. Concentration camps began to operate actively. In turn, Japanese aggression quickly jeopardized the fate of the peoples of Asia and the Pacific.
They forgot that the fascists, long before coming to power, proclaimed expansion to the East as their goal, and declared the conquest of “living space” at the expense of Russia, Ukraine, Belarus and other republics of the USSR as their credo.
They also don’t seem to know that back in December 1940, Hitler approved the Barbarossa plan - a plan of aggression against the Soviet Union. The attack on the USSR was a natural continuation of the foreign policy line openly pursued by the leaders of the Third Reich and their accomplices to achieve world domination.
The political goals of Germany’s criminal war against the USSR expressed the misanthropic essence of fascist ideology and politics. They were to destroy the USSR as a state and deprive its people of national independence. Germany's goals fully expressed the principles of genocide in relation to the peoples of the USSR. Hitler categorically stated: “It is not enough for us to simply defeat the Russian army and capture Leningrad, Moscow, and the Caucasus. We must wipe this country off the face of the earth and destroy its people."
The difficult and bloody war imposed on the peoples of the CCCP by the fascist invaders ended in the complete defeat of the aggressors. Under the blows of the troops of the anti-Hitler coalition, Germany suffered complete not only military, but also economic, moral and political defeat. Peace has come to the European continent, which has lasted for over 55 years.
From the first days of aggression, the Nazis trampled upon international laws and customs of warfare. They created a network of camps in Europe - a huge death industry, consisting of 23 main camps and 2 thousand branches. 18 million people languished in them, of which 11 million were destroyed. The death camps of Auschwitz became known to the whole world, in which 4 million people died, Majdanek - 1380 thousand, Treblinka - 800 thousand, Mauthausen - about 123 thousand, Sachsenhausen - 100 thousand, Ravensbrück - 92 thousand, Buchenwald - 56 thousand, Bergen - Belsen - 48 thousand, Dachau - 31 thousand people.
The Great Patriotic War was a difficult test for the Soviet people. It required enormous material sacrifices and efforts. 1,710 cities and towns, 70 thousand villages and villages, 32 thousand industrial enterprises were destroyed to the ground. 25 million people were left homeless. Damage from the destruction and destruction of material assets amounted to almost 41% of the losses of all countries participating in the war. The Soviet Union lost more than 30% of its national wealth during the war years.
Despite enormous difficulties, the people of Russia and other republics of the USSR bore on their shoulders the hardships and hardships that befell them. Victory in the war was achieved thanks to the high patriotic enthusiasm and mass heroism of the soldiers and working people of the country.
The contribution of the Soviet Union to the defeat of the aggressor is enormous. “We,” US President Henry Truman wrote to the Soviet government, “highly appreciate the magnificent contribution made by the mighty Soviet Union to the cause of civilization and freedom.” “Future generations,” says the message of British Prime Minister W. Churchill to I.V. Stalin, “will consider themselves indebted to the Red Army as unconditionally as we, who had the opportunity to witness these magnificent feats.”
The defeat of fascism and the victorious end of the war in Europe became a turning point event of world-historical significance. They opened up to humanity the prospect of a just and lasting peace on Earth.
The Great Patriotic War was one of the most tragic periods in the history of the peoples of Russia and other republics that were part of the USSR. They suffered perhaps the most difficult and terrible trials. At the cost of enormous efforts, the Soviet people defended their freedom and independence and saved humanity from fascism. More than half of the human losses in Europe occurred in the USSR. The war claimed the lives of millions of Soviet people, tens of millions were wounded, shell-shocked, frostbitten, and exhausted. Our people died in battles, in their homes from mines, bombs and shells. They were shot, hanged, poisoned with dogs, burned in death camps.
But the enemy failed to break the spirit of the people, their will in the fight against fascism. From the first days, the war revealed the enormous strength of patriotism of the overwhelming majority of people in Russia, Ukraine, Belarus, and all the republics that were part of the USSR. The hordes of the aggressor, having marched victoriously through many European countries, met stubborn resistance in our country. The people rallied in the face of a common misfortune, forgetting and pushing aside their own hardships and grievances. Everyone rose up to defend the Fatherland - old and young, men and women, all the peoples of the country.
The very beginning of the war showed that the Soviet people were ready to fight without sparing their lives for the independence of their Fatherland. The border guards fought bravely, taking the first, most powerful, blow of the aggressor. The feat of self-sacrifice of the defenders of the Brest Fortress will forever remain in the memory of the people. History contains examples of the boundless resilience of the defenders of Odessa, Sevastopol, Kyiv, Smolensk, Leningrad, Moscow, Tula, Stalingrad, Novorossiysk, Murmansk and many other cities.
The nationwide nature of the war was reflected in the creation of a two-million-strong militia, which was not always justified from a military point of view, but demonstrated the patriotic desire of everyone who could bear arms to be in the ranks of the defenders of the Motherland.
A very remarkable phenomenon of Russian life during the harsh years of the war was also the high political activity of the people, which found expression in various forms of the movement to help the front. Suffice it to say that out of 89,708 million rubles collected through four military loans to the CCCP, 52,486 million were contributed by the working people of the RSFSR.
In numerous battles of the Great Patriotic War, the original talent of many famous military leaders, commanders and naval commanders was revealed. A. I. Antonov, I. Kh. Bagramyan, A. M. Vasilevsky, N. F. Vatutin, L. A. Govorov, A. I. Eremenko, G. K. Zhukov, I. S. Konev, N. G. Kuznetsov, R. Ya. Malinovsky, K. A. Meretskov, I. E. Petrov, K, K. Rokossovsky, V.D. Sokolovsky, F.I. Tolbukhin, Ya.D. Chernyakhovsky, B.M. Shaposhnikov and others showed themselves to be skillful organizers, true architects of victory.
Selflessness, perseverance and courage have become the norm of behavior of people not only at the front, but also behind enemy lines. The Nazis did not know a moment of peace in the occupied territory. Partisan detachments and underground groups operated everywhere.
Through selfless labor the working class, peasantry and intelligentsia brought victory closer. In factories and factories, in scientific institutes and laboratories, on construction sites and in institutions, people worked to the limit of their capabilities. In half-starved villages left without men, long-suffering peasant women soldiers, old men and widows, as well as teenagers shouldered the entire burden of arable farming and harvesting work. Railroad workers, motorists, watermen delivered goods and people around the clock, and signalmen provided communications. In hospitals and ambulance trains, the struggle for the lives of wounded and maimed soldiers and officers did not stop for a minute.
Active patriotic work was carried out by the Church - Orthodox, Muslim, Catholic, etc. The patriotism of the Church was expressed not only in appeals to believers, but also in specific deeds: collecting money for the country's defense fund, sending warm clothes and many items needed by soldiers to the front.
Few people did not understand that for the peoples of our country, defeat in the war would mean a national catastrophe, the colonization of the fragmented territories of the state, the physical extermination of a significant part of the population and the transformation of those remaining into slaves of the “master race.” That is why almost all segments of the country’s population, all the peoples inhabiting the USSR, perceived the war against Nazi Germany as a just, sacred, Patriotic war.
A powerful motive for resisting the enemy was the feeling of hatred towards the aggressor. The cruelty of the occupiers had a strong impact on the psychology and mentality of people. The enemy pursued his policy on Soviet soil with particular cruelty. The entire occupied territory was covered with a network of concentration camps, prisons and ghettos. Mass executions took place everywhere. There was a massive deportation of Soviet people to Germany and other countries occupied by the aggressor. The Nazis, in fact, revived slavery during the war. Therefore, hatred towards them was constantly fed, growing every day. This feeling was strengthened by the purposeful ideological activity of party committees, Soviet authorities, Komsomol and trade union organizations. The works of writers, publicists, composers, artists, film and theater figures were aimed at exposing fascism.
An important source of victory was the friendship of the peoples of the USSR. It is known that, when planning aggression against the USSR, the leaders of the Third Reich hoped to pit the peoples living in the Soviet Union against each other and to incite national hatred. But these strategic calculations were not destined to come true. Under the terrible blows of the fascist hammer, the brotherhood of our peoples did not waver and withstood, uniting even more closely in the face of a common misfortune.
One of the main sources of the USSR's strength in the war was the high degree of centralism and organization of the state system. It cannot be said that there was no strong government in Nazi Germany. But the level of organization in the USSR turned out to be higher. The leadership of the USSR was able, in the conditions of the diversity of the country's regions and lack of communication, to ensure clear management of the economy, maintain the unity of the state, ensure the strictest discipline in society, the coordinated functioning of the political system and, above all, power structures.
A special role in governing the state and influencing the course of the armed struggle belongs to the State Defense Committee (GKO), headed by its chairman I.V. Stalin.
The maximum centralization of political and economic power allowed the State Defense Committee to quickly maneuver relatively limited resources and concentrate them on the most important, decisive areas. The motto is “Everything for the front, everything for victory!” was actually implemented from the first to the last days of the war. The effectiveness of state policy was largely ensured by the organizational and ideological work of the Communist Party. During the war, the mass, united Communist Party, built on the principle of strict centralism, became, in essence, the most important state instrument.
The foreign policy of the Soviet state played an important role in the war with Nazi Germany. Largely thanks to her, an anti-Hitler coalition was created, the core of which was three powers: the USSR, the USA and Great Britain. The Allied armies made a significant contribution to the defeat of the fascist bloc. The US and England provided significant assistance to the Soviet Union under Lend-Lease.
For the peoples of the USSR, victory over fascism meant preserving the sovereignty and independence of the country, preserving their chosen way of life. With the end of the war, the Soviet Union entered the international arena as the strongest world power, one of the most influential forces in the post-war world. He strengthened his military power and geopolitical position.