Unbelievable Soviet WWII Casualty Figures

Hello, everyone. I first came across shocking WWII casualty figures of USSR while reading newspaper which made me immediately doubt my eyes. So I did some research on my own and the following is what I found.
According to the book, "Armageddon; the battle for Germany, 1944-1945" by Max Hastings,

If you do the math, the USSR suffered 26.7 million dead soldiers and civilians and 22 million soldiers who were wounded, sick, MIA, and POWs. In total, it adds up to 48.7 million casualties with death comprising of more than 50% of total casualties.
How is this possible? How did this come about? Could anyone confirm the casualty figures above using another source?
Thanks in advance for any insights.

 

David Glantz did a paper a while back (presented in South Carolina, IIRC) that said, if I remember correctly, that (a) figures are gross estimates, with little precise reliability, but (b) up to 75 million dead from all causes (famine, war, disease, intentional starvation, execution, etc.) was not impossible. Hasting's 48 million-plus is not unreasonable, if you include everyone who died from the various effects of war. I think Goering mused before Barbarossa that the Nazis might have to displace 20 million people who would starve to death. The numbers are staggering, and really make all other tragedies of the war (except maybe Japan's slaughter in China) pale by comparison.

 

You must take all Stalin era numbers with a grain of salt, still there is no getting around the fact that Russia took huge casualties. It does seem that Germany inflicted a 3 to 1 kill rate in Russia.

 

I have to wonder about the numbers cited in the link, in most cases the killed/missing is nearly equal to the wounded. In most individual battles I read casualties with KIA/MIA equal to 25% to 30% of total casualties.

 

Yah but Russia doesn't always follow the rules

They liked to do things grandly:
When Lions Roared: A Second Front – Part One

 

Im afraid that the link provided grossly underestimates the casualties in the infamous 900 day siege.
Civillian casualties in Leningrad alone number roughly 1 million.

Most commonly come across numbers for total Soviet casualties (killed) is about 30 million with a little more than two thirds being civilian.

Tragic, but such was the cost for ultimate victory.

 

I can only imagine the hell on earth suffered by the civilians.

Also, what about the countless ex POW's that returned to Russia only to be termed as cowards and shipped off by Stalin ?? How many poor souls died from this ?? Could they be counted as WW 2 deaths.

 

One must first ask as to how many returned?

 

I would like to know.

I have no clue but some well versed member will let us know. Had to be a tremendous amount.

 

This book review has a slightly more controversial take on the casualty breakdown;

Express.co.uk - Home of the Daily and Sunday Express | Books :: Review: Bloodlands Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

and on the subject of POWs,

"out of 5.7 million Soviet soldiers captured between 1941 and 1945, more than 3.5 million died in captivity."

from;
http://www.historynet.com/soviet-prisoners-of-war-forgotten-nazi-victims-of-world-war-ii.htm

 

Quite the contrary. Few returned in comparison to how many were captured. I do not have exact figures, but the Germans had a special way of disposing of Soviet POW's. In the winter of 42', as many as 2 million parished by being systematically starved to death (a death rate higher than that suffered by the Jewish people at the height of the Holocaust).

I believe around 1,800,000 returned with roughly 80% being cleared of all charges...

 

Actually, that is my blog. For Leningrad, I do allocate 1.5 million civilian casualties by the end of the siege.

 

Does anyone know how many German POW's died in Russian hands? I remember that out of the 100,000 German POW's taken at Stalingrad, only around 9,000 returned.

 

There are different figures floating around about the casualty number of German POW's. One thing is for sure, while having littlel sympathy for the German soldier, the "sub-Humans" treated them as human beings.

Stalingrad is often looked upon as some sort of stepping stone or a guide as to how the Germans were treated in Soviet Russia, this is quite unfortunate. The reason so few Germans ever saw home again was because of their condition when taken prisoner. Virtually everyman was either malnourished, sick, frostbitten, wounded and absolutely exhausted; many simply died on the long march to the camps and not out of mistreatment (though one would have to be naive to think that this did not occur, even if on isolated inccidents).

Rudiger Overmans and British historian Richard Overy say that 374,000 out of 3.3 million German prisoners of war died in Soviet labor camps...

Cant find the source at hand but if my memory serves me correctly, more German POW's parished at the hands of the French...? Perhaps our very own Skipper can shed some light on this?

 

"In all, at least one million German prisoners died out of the 3,150,000 taken by the Red Army." (S.P. MacKenzie, "The Treatment of Prisoners of War in World War II," The Journal of Modern History, 66: 3 [September 1994], p. 511.)"

from;

Gendercide Watch: Soviet Prisoners-of-War

this reference has some more analysis;
http://www.fpp.co.uk/History/General/HnetPrisoners1.html

this article (itself is a little of topic) lists the details of the Russian and German and some other archives relating to the subject

http://www.dpcamps.org/russianpow.html

 

U.S. (and French) abuse of German PoWs, 1945-1948

this source seems to disagree.

 

Ts Ts Ts no David Irving here

I posted this link sometime earlier myself and didnt realize it came from David Irvings website... but in this site it too claims the following: "the statistical report of Colonel Bulanov, Chief of the Prison Division of the Ministry of Internal Affairs, clearly states the total number of German prisoners (2,388,443) and the total number of the German dead (356,687) along with the capture totals and mortality figures of Hungarians, Rumanians, Austrians, etc. (p. 79).

 

Yes ive seen that one.. The one I was referring to claimed that around 600k died in the hands of the French. Not exactly sure how accurate or inaccurate but frusterating that I cant locate it.

ugh.

 

not sure what that means? That link is a review by a 'Paul Boytinck' of a book by a 'Professor Stefan Karner'