The memorial texts below are written by Olga on Putinger’s Cat Telegram cannel. The article sheds new light on the genocide comitted against the Soviet people – predominantly the residents of Belorussia, Ukraine and Western Russia – by the Nazi-German invaders. We remember. As a 2015 article by Georgij Zotov showed, the same was not the case in Germany, where they asked “So many? Really?” Germans do not know how many Russians were killed by their ancestors
In Russia, June 22 is the Day of Remembrance and Sorrow. On this day, in 1941, the Great Patriotic War, which became the bloodiest and most destructive in the history of the country, began.
The Great Patriotic War had affected every family. More than 27 million people perished. Owing to the heroism of our soldiers and officers, the enemy was defeated, but Victory came at a high price.
Today, we pay tribute to the memory of all those who went through incredible hardship, those who died, but never gave up for a peaceful future for their descendants. We, the descendants, are full of deepest respect and gratitude for their sacrifice.
By the beginning of the war, in June 1941, 196.7 million people lived on the territory of the USSR. According to declassified data of the State Planning Committee of the USSR, the losses of the Soviet Union in World War II amount to 41 million 979 thousand, and not 27 million, as previously thought. The total decline in the population of the USSR in 1941-1945 was more than 52 million 812 thousand people. Of these, irretrievable losses as a result of the factors of war – more than 19 million military personnel and about 23 million civilians.
The total demographic losses of the USSR as a result of the war amounted to 27 million people. Military losses were calculated at 11.4 million, including the war with Japan. From this number, it is necessary to subtract 1.8 million who returned from captivity and 0.9 million called up on the territory liberated from the occupation and sent to the troops from among the military personnel who were previously surrounded or missing.
As a result, the demographic losses of the armed forces amounted to 8.7 million people. In addition, the losses include 500 thousand people called up in 1941 in the first days of mobilization and killed or captured by the enemy before their arrival in military units.
The actual number of demographic losses of military personnel is 9.2 million. According to the complete updated data, 6.3 million people were taken prisoner, according to the full updated data, about 4 million of them died.
Sanitary losses (wounded, sick, frostbite) – 22 million people, of which 70% returned to duty. Persons aged 18 to 50 and older were mobilized into the Soviet army. The mobilization was total, but numerically it was dominated by the age groups of 18-35 years, that is, the most able-bodied and reproductive ages of the population. They amounted to almost 6.5 million people, and persons aged 36 years and older – 2 million.
In the front line, the civilian population suffered from bombing and shelling.
But the biggest losses were associated with the policy of genocide, which was carried out by the Germans and their allies in the occupied territories in relation to the civilian population. 7.4 million Soviet people were deliberately exterminated by the invaders.
Of those driven to Germany from the occupied territories of the USSR, 2.2 million people died, and 451 thousand did not return for various reasons and became emigrants. The population in the occupied territory decreased by 4.1 million as a result of increased mortality from the brutal conditions of the occupation regime (hunger, infectious diseases, lack of medical care). 1.3 million children died from disease and starvation.
Considering all these categories, about 14 million civilians died, which accounted for more than half of the total number of casualties. As a result of human losses during the war, three so-called “demographic pits” were formed in the age structure of the population. The first group consisted of people who died during the war between the ages of 18 and 35, that is, the main military age.
The second target group that suffered damage was the babies of 1941-1944. birth, as during the war years the birth rate fell sharply and infant mortality increased.
And the third category of victims – children and teenagers of 1926-1930. births, victims of bombing and shelling in the front line and places of hostilities, as a result of genocide, disease and famine in the occupied territory, hard work in adolescence in the rear – in factories, in agriculture.
As a result of military losses of the male population, the sex ratio was sharply disturbed, primarily within the age groups, which in 1941 were 18-27 years old. For them, the disproportion in the ratio of men and women is much more significant than in other age groups. The share of men here accounted for 38%, and the share of women – 62%. Even in the age group of 30-34 years, there were 45% of men and 55% of women. Among the persons of 1920-1924. births, especially affected by losses during the war, there were only 63 men per 100 women.
As a result, there was a destabilization of marriage, as evidenced by a significant increase in divorces in the post-war years, an increase in the number of single-parent and maternal families, single women of marriageable age, widows and divorcees, as well as the spread of fatherlessness.
The war caused enormous damage to the health of the population. The evidence is the analysis of statistics of morbidity and causes of death.
It is characteristic that pulmonary diseases were the most common at that time. They were also the leading causes of death. 17-18% of the total number of deaths died from pneumonia. Children suffered much more than adults. In the cities of the RSFSR in the late 1940s, 32.9% of children under one year old died of pneumonia. From tuberculosis died from 25 to 33% of adults and 28.6% of infants (of the total number of deaths).
In second place are gastrointestinal diseases, among which peptic ulcer, gastroenterocolitis, and enteritis prevailed. Dysentery was rampant: hundreds of thousands of diseases were recorded annually, especially among children. It was the result of wartime hardships, lack of food and nervous tension. The pollution of reservoirs and rivers during the war years played a role.
One of the forms of the Nazi policy of genocide and scorched earth in the occupied Soviet territory was the destruction of settlements, most often together with their inhabitants.
Throughout the USSR, the Germans destroyed 1710 cities and more than 70 thousand villages and villages. Only a few of them managed to be reborn from the ashes.
One of the first villages destroyed by the invaders was the village of Khatsun of the Verkhopolsky village council of the Karachaevsky district of the Bryansk region. At the end of October 1941, several Red Army soldiers, leaving the encirclement, attacked three German soldiers who were escorting six Soviet prisoners. The next day, the punishers shot the residents of Khatsuni and neighboring settlements, as well as refugees from Bryansk. A total of 318 people. In 1942, Hatsun was burned to the ground. However, the village, once wiped off the face of the earth, is still on the maps. As of 2012, 8 people lived in it. After the Germans set fire to the village of Elitsa in the Novgorod Region in February 1944, not a single house remained there.
In total, 96 villages and villages were destroyed in the Novgorod region. And in the Leningrad region, the Nazis completely wiped out about 3 thousand villages. Therefore, it is not possible to list all the affected items.
The German invaders during the occupation of Ukraine and during their retreat completely destroyed 61 settlements with the number of households 9737, the Nazis razed to the ground the village of Elino, Shchorsky district, Chernihiv region. During the war, almost all the inhabitants of Elino were engaged in partisan activities. The Ukrainian village of Koryukovka was also famous for its partisan movement. In March 1943, a German punitive detachment surrounded him. By order of General Heusinger, the settlement was set on fire, and its inhabitants were exterminated – more than 7,000 people. A total of 1,390 houses burned down.
Khatyn is not the largest, but the most famous Belarusian village destroyed by punitive detachments. In March 1943, units of the SS Sonderkommando Dirlewanger, in response to the murder of Captain Hans Welke, committed by local partisans, encircled the village. All 149 residents were herded into a collective farm barn and set on fire. Those who tried to escape were ruthlessly shot by the Nazis. Khatyn itself was also burned. In 1969, where the village was once located, a memorial complex was organized. The village of Borki, Vileika district, Minsk region, has also disappeared forever. In May 1942, punishers dealt with its inhabitants. Only one teenage girl survived. In January 1943, during the punitive operation “Yakob”, the invaders wiped out the village of Litavets, also located in the Minsk region. In total, the Germans burned and destroyed 9,200 Belarusian villages and villages on the territory of Belarus.