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.