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The Price of Victory: The Red Army's Casualties in the Great Patriotic War
The Red Army's casualties during the Second World War and the casualties sustained by the German army they fought are a key element in any assessment of the conflict on the Eastern Front. Since the war ended over seventy years ago, the statistics have been a source of bitter controversy, of claim and counterclaim, as each generation of historians has struggled to uncover the truth. This contentious issue is the subject of this absorbing book.
The figures reveal much about the way the war was fought, and they demonstrate the enormous human price the Soviet Union paid for its victory. That is why the statistics have been so strongly contested. Distortion and falsification by official historians have obscured the facts because the issue has been so heavily politicized.
Using recently declassified information from the Russian archives, the authors focus in forensic detail on the way the figures were recorded and compiled and seek to explain why, so many years after the war, the full truth about the subject is still far from our reach.
The figures reveal much about the way the war was fought, and they demonstrate the enormous human price the Soviet Union paid for its victory. That is why the statistics have been so strongly contested. Distortion and falsification by official historians have obscured the facts because the issue has been so heavily politicized.
Using recently declassified information from the Russian archives, the authors focus in forensic detail on the way the figures were recorded and compiled and seek to explain why, so many years after the war, the full truth about the subject is still far from our reach.
- GenresWorld War IINonfiction
208 pages, Hardcover
Published August 8, 2017
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May 29, 2025
In 1939 the Soviet Union conducted its regular decennial census. The results showed the effects of Stalin’s purges of the mid-30s, millions dead and a plunging birthrate. The Great Leader was not happy, and the head of the census bureau was arrested and shot. His successor got the message and quickly modified the results to show that the population was healthy and growing. In Russia, then as now, the interests of the state override considerations of truth.
In 1946 Stalin said in an interview that, ‘As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irrecoverably lost around seven million people in fighting against the Germans, as well as because of the German occupation and penal servitude of Soviet people in German forced-labour camps.’ This statement implied that the total Soviet casualties, military and civilian, were about 7 million, a vast undercount. Nevertheless, once the Generalissimo had said it, no one who wanted to keep their head was going to disagree.
After Stalin’s death in 1953 there was a cautious attempt by state historians to revise that figure, which led to a new official estimate, of 11,444,100 “irrecoverable” military-only casualties. The definition of irrecoverable is important, because it includes more than just deaths. “The irrecoverable losses of the armed forces refer to those who were killed, died of wounds and illnesses, died as a result of accidents, were executed by their own people according to sentences of tribunals and in combat, MIAs and captured servicemen, regardless of their subsequent fate (whether or not they returned to the Motherland after the war).”
The new official number consisted of 6,329,600 killed, 4,559,000 MIA/captured, and 555,500 non-combat losses, adding up to 11,444,100. That number was then reduced to account for the 939,700 soldiers, mostly former partisans, who were remobilized for the army after their territory was liberated from the Germans, and 1,836,000 POWs who returned to the USSR after the war (many of whom were immediately given long sentences in Siberia for the crime of not fighting to the death). Subtracting the remobilized and the returned POWs from the total led to a figure of 8,668,400 military deaths, which became the not-to-be questioned total.
Once communism collapsed there was little to unite the disparate peoples of the former Soviet Union other than the memory of the shared sacrifices and victorious outcome of the Great Patriotic War. As a result, those memories had to be carefully managed by the new government to ensure that people remembered the war in the correct way. In particular, the number of casualties had to be large enough to memorialize the national suffering, but not so large as to reflect badly on the competence of Stalin and the generals, and it was important to demonstrate that the Red Army had inflicted as much damage on the Wehrmacht as they had received, as shown by the ratio of losses. In the early months of the war this ratio was actually 20:1 and even up to 50:1 in favor of the Germans, but as the Red Army gained experience and developed better weapons, the number gradually fell so that the overall ratio through the end of the war was 2.5:1 in favor of Germany.
A ratio of 2.5:1 was unacceptable to the country’s leaders, so the official figures have been gradually lowered, going from 1.3:1 in 1993 to the current 1.1:1, and it will probably go even lower as new “research” is conducted.
Over time more information became available to scholars, which became a problem for the Soviet and then Russian leadership. A closer look at the documents showed that the figure of 8.6 million military deaths vastly undercounted the true cost of the war, but revising it was felt to be politically risky. In 1993 General-Colonel G.F. Krivosheev of the General Staff and Military-Memorial Centre of the Russian Federation Armed Forces published The Sea of Secrecy Has Been Removed, which was the result of a large team of historians examining the evidence. The end result was that despite all the new information that had become available they once again came to the conclusion that the correct number was still 8,668,400, exactly replicating the previous count.
Real historians were not impressed, and this book re-examines Krivosheev’s results to uncover the omissions, half-truths, double-counting, and outright lies necessary to arrive at the politically correct total that state and military leadership demanded. In defending Krivosheev’s work, General of the Army M.A. Greev, President of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation and himself the former head of a 1988 commission for computing casualties in the war, called for the prosecution of anyone who continued to “speculate” on the theme of Red Army casualties during World War II. The Czars/Supreme Leaders may change, but Russia remains the same.
Nevertheless, Russia has always produced courageous men and women who are willing to face the wrath of the state in pursuit of the truth. The best estimate for Soviet military deaths during the war, based on current but still incomplete research is 14,553,100.
In addition to the previously reported casualties, researches found 4,173,700 killed or died of wounds during medical evacuation and 1,383,000 died of wounds in hospital, for a total of 5,556,700. In addition, 62,700 Russian soldiers were executed by the Army or NKVD during the war, and approximately 495,600 were listed as “unrecorded,” meaning that during the initial disastrous months of the 1941 invasion, when entire armies were surrounded and destroyed, no one was sending in official casualty figures so they had to estimated from later troop strength reports. Adding the unrecorded casualties and those killed by their own people to the combat deaths gives 7,651,900 deaths, to which were added the official reported losses, including POW/MIAs, through the remainder of the war, which were 13,271,300 enlisted; 970,000 officers; 153,700 seamen; and 97,000 NKVD troops.
The total irrecoverable losses for the war, then, were 17,229,200 from which were subtracted 839,100 remobilized from recovered territory and 1,836,000 returned POWs after the war (2,675,100 total). Factoring in these adjustments gives the revised total of 14,553,100. This number shows almost 6 million more casualties, or 1.7 times, versus the official count.
The book also includes a number of casualty reports from specific battles that show the scope of the fighting, and the effects of the encirclements of the early months. During the Germans’ Operation Typhoon, from 30 September 1941 to 7 January 1942 thirty-two Soviet divisions were destroyed, with losses of over one million men. The 248th Rifle Division was reduced from its pre-war authorized strength of 14,483 men to 681, and the 93rd Guards Rifle division to only 220.
German casualty figures for the war, based on current research, are also included in this book. The Germans had lost 2,742,909 killed on the Soviet-German Front by the end of 1944, and an additional 1,230,045 by the end of the war on all fronts. Total deaths include 314,000 Waffen SS soldiers and officers and 4,826,000 Wehrmacht soldiers and officers, including 53,000 civilians employed by the military. In addition, 78,000 Volksstrum, 63,000 police officers and 37,000 members of other organizations died, for a total of 5,318,000 men.
The Soviets captured 3,486,206 German prisoners of war, which includes large numbers taken captive after the end of hostilities in May 1945. Of these 57,000 died before reaching the POW camps, and 518,520 in them, or 16.2 per cent of the total died in the camps. By contrast, 2,818,000 Soviet POWs died in German hands, almost half of those captured.
Much of the information about Soviet casualties remains classified, so scholars are working from still incomplete data. The current Russian state desperately uses the Great Patriotic War to bolster its support among the people, so it is unlikely that additional information that would reveal even more losses will be released as long as the current regime is in power. The book even includes a comment which, while written about Russia, is equally true for the United States and other countries: “Jingoists and their supporters agree to consider as a patriot only one who adamantly refuses to see any of his country’s shortcomings, one who strives not only to whitewash but also to paint over the past and turn history into just popular literature.”
The Price of Victory sheds important light on a subject that researchers have debated for years, and it only covers military casualties. Total Soviet casualties, including civilians, are mentioned only in passing, and the official figure of 26.2 million deaths is used, but that number is probably as suspect as the government’s count of military losses.
In 1946 Stalin said in an interview that, ‘As a result of the German invasion, the Soviet Union irrecoverably lost around seven million people in fighting against the Germans, as well as because of the German occupation and penal servitude of Soviet people in German forced-labour camps.’ This statement implied that the total Soviet casualties, military and civilian, were about 7 million, a vast undercount. Nevertheless, once the Generalissimo had said it, no one who wanted to keep their head was going to disagree.
After Stalin’s death in 1953 there was a cautious attempt by state historians to revise that figure, which led to a new official estimate, of 11,444,100 “irrecoverable” military-only casualties. The definition of irrecoverable is important, because it includes more than just deaths. “The irrecoverable losses of the armed forces refer to those who were killed, died of wounds and illnesses, died as a result of accidents, were executed by their own people according to sentences of tribunals and in combat, MIAs and captured servicemen, regardless of their subsequent fate (whether or not they returned to the Motherland after the war).”
The new official number consisted of 6,329,600 killed, 4,559,000 MIA/captured, and 555,500 non-combat losses, adding up to 11,444,100. That number was then reduced to account for the 939,700 soldiers, mostly former partisans, who were remobilized for the army after their territory was liberated from the Germans, and 1,836,000 POWs who returned to the USSR after the war (many of whom were immediately given long sentences in Siberia for the crime of not fighting to the death). Subtracting the remobilized and the returned POWs from the total led to a figure of 8,668,400 military deaths, which became the not-to-be questioned total.
Once communism collapsed there was little to unite the disparate peoples of the former Soviet Union other than the memory of the shared sacrifices and victorious outcome of the Great Patriotic War. As a result, those memories had to be carefully managed by the new government to ensure that people remembered the war in the correct way. In particular, the number of casualties had to be large enough to memorialize the national suffering, but not so large as to reflect badly on the competence of Stalin and the generals, and it was important to demonstrate that the Red Army had inflicted as much damage on the Wehrmacht as they had received, as shown by the ratio of losses. In the early months of the war this ratio was actually 20:1 and even up to 50:1 in favor of the Germans, but as the Red Army gained experience and developed better weapons, the number gradually fell so that the overall ratio through the end of the war was 2.5:1 in favor of Germany.
A ratio of 2.5:1 was unacceptable to the country’s leaders, so the official figures have been gradually lowered, going from 1.3:1 in 1993 to the current 1.1:1, and it will probably go even lower as new “research” is conducted.
Over time more information became available to scholars, which became a problem for the Soviet and then Russian leadership. A closer look at the documents showed that the figure of 8.6 million military deaths vastly undercounted the true cost of the war, but revising it was felt to be politically risky. In 1993 General-Colonel G.F. Krivosheev of the General Staff and Military-Memorial Centre of the Russian Federation Armed Forces published The Sea of Secrecy Has Been Removed, which was the result of a large team of historians examining the evidence. The end result was that despite all the new information that had become available they once again came to the conclusion that the correct number was still 8,668,400, exactly replicating the previous count.
Real historians were not impressed, and this book re-examines Krivosheev’s results to uncover the omissions, half-truths, double-counting, and outright lies necessary to arrive at the politically correct total that state and military leadership demanded. In defending Krivosheev’s work, General of the Army M.A. Greev, President of the Academy of Military Sciences of the Russian Federation and himself the former head of a 1988 commission for computing casualties in the war, called for the prosecution of anyone who continued to “speculate” on the theme of Red Army casualties during World War II. The Czars/Supreme Leaders may change, but Russia remains the same.
Nevertheless, Russia has always produced courageous men and women who are willing to face the wrath of the state in pursuit of the truth. The best estimate for Soviet military deaths during the war, based on current but still incomplete research is 14,553,100.
In addition to the previously reported casualties, researches found 4,173,700 killed or died of wounds during medical evacuation and 1,383,000 died of wounds in hospital, for a total of 5,556,700. In addition, 62,700 Russian soldiers were executed by the Army or NKVD during the war, and approximately 495,600 were listed as “unrecorded,” meaning that during the initial disastrous months of the 1941 invasion, when entire armies were surrounded and destroyed, no one was sending in official casualty figures so they had to estimated from later troop strength reports. Adding the unrecorded casualties and those killed by their own people to the combat deaths gives 7,651,900 deaths, to which were added the official reported losses, including POW/MIAs, through the remainder of the war, which were 13,271,300 enlisted; 970,000 officers; 153,700 seamen; and 97,000 NKVD troops.
The total irrecoverable losses for the war, then, were 17,229,200 from which were subtracted 839,100 remobilized from recovered territory and 1,836,000 returned POWs after the war (2,675,100 total). Factoring in these adjustments gives the revised total of 14,553,100. This number shows almost 6 million more casualties, or 1.7 times, versus the official count.
The book also includes a number of casualty reports from specific battles that show the scope of the fighting, and the effects of the encirclements of the early months. During the Germans’ Operation Typhoon, from 30 September 1941 to 7 January 1942 thirty-two Soviet divisions were destroyed, with losses of over one million men. The 248th Rifle Division was reduced from its pre-war authorized strength of 14,483 men to 681, and the 93rd Guards Rifle division to only 220.
German casualty figures for the war, based on current research, are also included in this book. The Germans had lost 2,742,909 killed on the Soviet-German Front by the end of 1944, and an additional 1,230,045 by the end of the war on all fronts. Total deaths include 314,000 Waffen SS soldiers and officers and 4,826,000 Wehrmacht soldiers and officers, including 53,000 civilians employed by the military. In addition, 78,000 Volksstrum, 63,000 police officers and 37,000 members of other organizations died, for a total of 5,318,000 men.
The Soviets captured 3,486,206 German prisoners of war, which includes large numbers taken captive after the end of hostilities in May 1945. Of these 57,000 died before reaching the POW camps, and 518,520 in them, or 16.2 per cent of the total died in the camps. By contrast, 2,818,000 Soviet POWs died in German hands, almost half of those captured.
Much of the information about Soviet casualties remains classified, so scholars are working from still incomplete data. The current Russian state desperately uses the Great Patriotic War to bolster its support among the people, so it is unlikely that additional information that would reveal even more losses will be released as long as the current regime is in power. The book even includes a comment which, while written about Russia, is equally true for the United States and other countries: “Jingoists and their supporters agree to consider as a patriot only one who adamantly refuses to see any of his country’s shortcomings, one who strives not only to whitewash but also to paint over the past and turn history into just popular literature.”
The Price of Victory sheds important light on a subject that researchers have debated for years, and it only covers military casualties. Total Soviet casualties, including civilians, are mentioned only in passing, and the official figure of 26.2 million deaths is used, but that number is probably as suspect as the government’s count of military losses.
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