Moscow 1941

I just started reading this book by Rodric Braithwaite and in the first chapter I was flabbergasted to read, "The Soviet Union lost more people in The Battle of Moscow than the British lost in the whole of the First World War......Their casualties in this one battle were greater than the combined (emphasis mine) casualties of the British and the Americans in the whole of the Second World War."

I knew the losses of the Soviet Union were horrendous, but this really puts it in perspective. It's been discussed ad nauseum on this and other forums how misguided Hitler's decision was to invade the SU, but I am still surprised that he was able to convince his generals to go ahead with it.

 

I still can't fathom how the Russians lost so many million under Stalin's purges, famines, and gulags, then went on to lose millions of soldiers, civilians just in the first year, land, and resources in the beginning of the Eastern front campaign, and somehow bounce back with an even better Army that pushed the Germans back and broke them.

 

Because the losses of the purges,famines and gulags have been grossly exaggerated,the same for the 1941 losses and the losses of resources .

 

The author does say in the Notes that "All figures for casualties in the fighting on the Eastern front in the Second World War, and even for the numbers involved on the two sides, need to be treated with circumspection."

 

Without seeing the numbers that is a very tenuous position to hold. Then of course you do tend to confuse your opinions for facts don't you?

 

Its about percentages, the Russians are still paying the price for all the lost population of WW1, the civil war, the purges and ww2. The Russian population growth is negative By 1944 the Soviets were facing manpower shortages, but since they were still a large peasant society with a surplus of men at the start of ww1 they absorded the losses

 

This causal effect has yet to be proved : in 1941,the Soviet population was 200 million,in 1989:it was 280 million .

Countries (as Belgium,Italy,etc) who suffered demografically less from the wars,also have a negative manpower growth.

Afaics, the Soviet manpower shortages in 1944 were limited to the infantry .

I like also to see the proofs for the claim that at the start of WWI,there was a surplus of men,caused by the fact that Russia was a peasant society .

 

The Soviet Union lost in 1941 some 5 million men : big ? Yes: 2.5 % of the population,but ,on the same level of the French losses for 1914 : 1 million ,which is also 2.5 % of the population .

About the resources : a lot of people have the tendency to believe Indian tales and horror stories :the fact that the SU won WWII proves that the losses of resources in 1941 were not that high as was claimed and amplified by successive generations of historians,who failed to make a distinction between the resources needed in peace time and in war .

Whatever the following % are indicating the gross-production of large-scale industry by region (in millions of rubles) ,with as source : the economic transformation of the SU ,p 301,table 30 and the conclusion is that in 1939,the Centre and the N/NW of the RSFSR still were dominating,while the Ukraine,Siberia and the Far East were secundary :

Ukraine : 17.4 %

Bielorussia : 1.8

Caucasus : 3.5

Central Asia + Kazakhstan : 5.8

RSFSR :

Centre : 39.3

N + NW : 13.8

SE : 9.4

Ural + West Siberia : 8.8

East Siberia + Far East : 2.8

These figures also indicate that,although there was a shift to the regions more in the interior, the classic regions were still dominating .:what was essential for the SU,were the regions between the line Leningrad/Moscow,Stalingrad and the Urals,and these regions were not occupied by the Germans .

 

Different figures also resulted by the fact that the Russian demography changed when the SU. annexed territories with its German ally in 1939-1940 ( Carelia, Poland, Baltic states, Bessarabia). Comprising these inhabitants in the population mathematically diminushed the total . 'Forgetting" to add them served the Soviet propaganda to exagerate these same figures .

 

Don´t forget the Soviet women!



Soviet women played a major role in World War II (locally known as the Great Patriotic War or the Great Fatherland War). While most toiled in industry, transport, agriculture and other civilian roles, working double shifts to free up enlisted men to fight and increase military production, a sizable number of women served in the army. The majority were in medical units.
There were 800,000 women who served in the Soviet Armed Forces during the war. Nearly 200,000 were decorated and 89 eventually received the Soviet Union’s highest award, the Hero of the Soviet Union. Some served as pilots] snipers, machine gunners, tank crew members and partisans, as well as in auxiliary roles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_women_in_World_War_II

 

What would the population have been with out all three events??

 

Impossible to answer : it could be

higher than today

lower than today

the same as today .


The point is that one can not attribute the present low birth rate in Europe to losses caused by WWI,WWII,or civil wars .A good exemple is Spain where the birth rate is very low ,but which was not involved in the World Wars .

 

I take it when you ask:

You are talking about:

I see 4 events there and am not sure if you are including the inter war famines as part of the civil war, the purges, or not at all. There are also argueably at least 2 civil wars during the period of interest. Contrary to a previous poster it is possible to answer it but we can't at all be sure of the answer. To get an idea how some of the figures on Soviet losses assume that without the war the population growth rate during the 40s would have mirrored that in the late 30s a not unreasonable assumption. You could use similar logic to make an estimate starting in WWI and working forward. Likely this would be something of an over estimate but I'm pretty sure no matter what reasonable assumptions you made you would find a larger population than is present today. Probably a substantially larger one.


*** edited to correct a typo ***

 

There is no proof for a correlation between birth rates/increase/decrease of the population and war losses.

ONE exemple : France

Birth rate


1913:19.1 per thousand

1918: 12.2

1922 : 19.4

1930: 18.2

1938:14.8

1944 :16.2

1950: 20.6

1960 :17.9

While during WWI,the birth rate collapsed,it was going up during WWII .

For the SU :

the population was some 200 million in 1940 and 280 million in 1989 and a conservative estimation of the WWII losses is 20 million .

No one can say that without WWII,the population of the SU in 1989 would be 300 million,or 320 million,it is possible that without WWII the population of the SU in 1989 would have been less than 280 million .

Projections should be avoided,because they always are wrong .

Exemple : 1949 projections of future population of some European countries

Britain : 1940 :50.2 million; 1970: 46.8 million

France :1940 : 41.2 million;1970 : 36.9 million

Spain :1940 : 25.6 ;1970 : 26.8

 

What an absurd thing to say, unless of course you have a very simpleminded defintion of "correlation".

Your examples simply indicate that the relationship isn't simple.

Or course they can. The question is how likely one judges such an estimation to be.

Certainly possible but highly improbable especially without some catastrophic event or series of the same.

Ah, that's why you make frequent use of them then.
Of course you are wrong about this as well. They may be "wrong" but that doesn't mean they aren't useful. Indeed that's sort of a founding principle of statistics and the latter is found to be quite useful in too many ways to enumerate.

 

You have to include all events when looking at the 1980 figures, because they happen so close together. How many men were not born say in 1936 because dad was killed in ww1. How many men were killed in the first stages of the war because so many officers were killed in the purges and their replacements had no idea what they were doing.

 

That's not correct : you assume that if dad was not killed in wwi,he would have fathered a child ,and your assumption can not be proved .

In WWI,the French birth rate was down ,but,it still was higher than the German actual birth rate,but,in WWII,the French birth rate was going up,but it still was lower than the French birth rate of 1926.

Between 1950 and 1960 the French birth rate was going down from 20.6 to 17.9 . Why ? Noone knows .

Why was the French birth rate in 1950 higher than in 1913 (20.6 against 19.1) ? Noone knows .

Why are a man and woman deciding to have a child ?

 

A difficult question. For instance in Finland once the soldiers retuned from war we had a massive number of babies born 9 months after. Surprise surprise....

 

Mostly after a war,there is a baby boom,but that does not mean that the same babyboom would happen if there was no war .

 

While it is true in detail it is rather irrelevant to the issue of this discussion. Predicting whether one individual has one or more children is subject to a lot of error predicting how many childred a 100 men will father can be done with significantly more accuacy. Make that a thousand or 100 thousand and the accuracy increases even more.

None may know but many have a pretty good idea. Increased prosperity and the ability of women to exercise greater control in such matters has correlated with a decrease in birth rate. So while none know for sure or even all the factors you can build a pretty accurate model with some research.

Indeed it very likely wouldn't. That's why the accuacy of any predictions depend on the quality of the research and the assumptions that go into it. There's also the question of whether or not something else would occur that would either cause a signifiant increase or decrease in birth rate. Impossible to say for sure but by studying the problem you can still come up with useful statistics particularly if you bound the problem.