Estimating military losses: a search for truth, ignorance or bias?
Abstract
Although the Great Patriotic War ended more than 70 years ago, the issue of how to estimate military and civilian losses among the Soviet population is still hotly debated today in both academic and socio-political circles. In part, this is the result of the coming to light of new archival materials and information preserved by the families of those who suffered during the war. At the same time, the increased use of media, and especially the Internet, allows people who are not sufficiently competent to assess this material, but who nevertheless are committed to certain viewpoints, to widely disseminate their opinions.
Thus, the historian I. Ivlev claims that in order to estimate the size of the population in 1941 it is not necessary to utilize census data or fertility and mortality statistics, as he has located in the Gosplan archive an absolutely reliable “true” estimate. This article demonstrates the erroneous approach employed by Ivlev and other authors, who generally over-estimate the number of demographic losses.
Regarding actual military losses, the number of deaths cannot be greatly over-stated, as it is bounded by the number of those drafted in the unoccupied territories and the ratio among combat losses of the killed, the wounded and survivors. (As a rule, those killed in battle represent 20-25% of those entering into combat.) Conversely, the authors’ increased estimates for the number of deaths in German captivity appear credible. Krivosheev’s military commission underestimated the number of dead prisoners by a factor of two or more. This and a host of other problems still remain to be resolved by historians of the Second World War.
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References
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