The Other Evictions in Southern Africa
Economics 101b Lecture: September 12: Using the Solow Model

A Meditation on Twentieth-Century Political-Military History

The Casualties of the Red Army during World War II. Whenever I look at these numbers, and try to imagine what they mean, I wander around in a daze for an hour or so.

What do they mean? The best short thing I have seen is the opening scene of the movie "Enemy at the Gates." It shows the Russians trying to reinforce Chiukov's 62nd Army clinging to the west bank of the Volga River at Stalingrad in 1942.

We Americans and Europeans (and others) have not even kept up on the interest due on our debt to the survivors and descendants of the soldiers of the Red Army and the workers of Magnitogorsk for what they did and suffered during World War II.

Red Army: Battle Strength and Casualties During WWII

Quarter Strength at the Front Killed and Missing Wounded and Sick
1941Q3 3,334,000 2,067,801 676,964
1941Q4 2,818,500 926,002 637,327
1942Q1 4,186,000 619,167 1,172,274
1942Q2 5,060,300 776,578 702,150
1942Q3 5,664,600 1,141,991 1,276,810
1942Q4 6,343,600 455,800 936,031
1943Q1 5,892,800 656,403 1,421,140
1943Q2 6,459,800 125,172 471,724
1943Q3 6,816,800 694,465 2,053,492
1943Q4 6,387,200 501,087 1,560,164
1944Q1 6,268,600 470,392 1,565,431
1944Q2 6,447,000 251,745 956,828
1944Q3 6,714,300 430,432 1,541,965
1944Q4 6,770,100 259,766 1,026,645
1945Q1 6,461,100 468,407 1,582,517
1945Q2 6,135,300 163,226 609,231
TOTAL 10,008,434 18,190,693

Source: David Glantz and Jonathan House (1995), When Titans Clashed: How the Red Army Stopped Hitler (Lawrence, KS: Kansas University Press: 0700608990).

IIRC, the United States lost about 300,000 killed in the European Theater of Operations during World War II.

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