German Plans to Seize Food from the Soviet Union

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Roberto
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#61

Post by Roberto » 06 Jan 2003, 23:26

viriato wrote:Roberto the quote you have given us speaks of 350 thousand remaining in the city when the Germans came in. Not 500 to 600 thousand.
I'm afraid you read it wrong.
Alexander Werth ([i]Russia at War 1941-1945[/i], 2000 Caroll & Graf Publishers New York, pages 607/608) wrote:

There had been 900.000 people in Kharkov before the war, but when the war spread to Ukraine, and the refugees started pouring in from the west, this figure swelled to 1,200,000 to 1,300,000. Later, in October 1941, with the Germans approaching, the evacuation of Kharkov began in real earnest. Most of the larger plants were more or less successfully evacuated, among them the great Tractor Plant, with nearly all its workers. By the time the Germans came, some 700,000 people had left the city. Now[my empasis] there were only 350,000. What had happened to the rest?[my emphasis]
According to the Russian authorities, the disappearance of half the population of October 1941 is accounted for as follows: it has been established that 120,000 people, mostly young people, had been deported as slaves to Germany; some 70,000 or 80,000 had died of hunger, cold and privation, especially during the terrible winter of 1941-2; some 30,000 had been killed by the Germans, among them some 16,000 Jews (men, women and children) who had remained behind in Kharkov; the rest had fled to the villages. Various checks I made in the next days suggested that the figure for deaths from hunger, et cetera, was slightly, but not greatly, exaggerated; so too was the figure for non-Jews shot, but the figure for the Jews was correct. On the other hand, the figure for slave-labor deportations was, if anything, an underestimate.
Werth arrived at Kharkov with the Red Army in early 1943. 350,000 was the city’s population at this time, not the population at the time of the German conquest. That I established by deducting the 700,000 who, according to Werth, had left the city before the Germans came, from the 1.2 – 1.3 million to which the city’s population had previously been swelled by the influx of refugees, also according to Werth. The balance: 500,000 to 600,000.

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Roberto
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#62

Post by Roberto » 06 Jan 2003, 23:41

viriato wrote:Anyway what I'm trying to think is, if a city like Kharkiv lost at least half the population to evacuation and the other cities I mentioned too had lost a great number of people to evacuation, and knowing also that the USSR at that time had a good part of her inhabitants living in cities (perhaps not 50% but close) how could we have a mean of less than 10%?
No idea, but I would make a distinction not only between the city and the countryside but also between cities that housed armament production transferred to the east and such that did not. What the Soviets were primarily interested in getting to the east, where the railway network allowed for a transfer, was armament factories and their workers.


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Oleg Grigoryev
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#63

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 07 Jan 2003, 00:03

Viriato, Am I correct in thinking that you assume that all the difference in prewar population of the cities when compared to the moment of German occupation came form the results of organized evacuation? If so you are wrong since people flied on their own initiative on foot or using whatever means there were at their disposal. 7 million figure is figure of the people who were supposed to be evacuated on specific orders of local and central governments. Obviously the figure for the people who tried to escape the German onslaught was bigger, but they were not part of evacuation program.
Last edited by Oleg Grigoryev on 07 Jan 2003, 00:15, edited 1 time in total.

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#64

Post by Roberto » 07 Jan 2003, 00:13

oleg wrote:Vitaro,
Oleg,

Whatever you do, don't get that name wrong.

It's like calling a Russian national hero "Alexander Neksif" or similar.

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Oleg Grigoryev
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#65

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 07 Jan 2003, 00:17

Roberto wrote:
oleg wrote:Vitaro,
Oleg,

Whatever you do, don't get that name wrong.

It's like calling a Russian national hero "Alexander Neksif" or similar.
My apologies - it was not intentional. Thank you for pointing it out. Fixed it.

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#66

Post by viriato » 07 Jan 2003, 00:25

Roberto thanks for your correction. So we have 700 thousand people lefting the city of total (maximum) of 1,3 million. That's some 55%. Still a big percentage.

You also wrote:
What the Soviets were primarily interested in getting to the east, where the railway network allowed for a transfer, was armament factories and their workers.
Good point! But there were other industries indirectely related to the war effort thet might be interesting to transfer: textiles and electrical for instance.

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#67

Post by viriato » 07 Jan 2003, 00:49

Oleg you are excused for the misspelling... 8)

You asked:
Viriato, Am I correct in thinking that you assume that all the difference in prewar population of the cities when compared to the moment of German occupation came form the results of organized evacuation?
Not at all! And you are already answering it:
7 million figure is figure of the people who were supposed to be evacuated on specific orders of local and central governments. Obviously the figure for the people who tried to escape the German onslaught was bigger, but they were not part of evacuation program.
My question is, do you know how many were involved on those "random" evacuations? Another 7 million? More? Less?

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Oleg Grigoryev
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#68

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 07 Jan 2003, 01:32

My question is, do you know how many were involved on those "random" evacuations? Another 7 million? More? Less?
hard to tell but I look into it. Although I don’t see how refugees running on foot out of their own will can be named “evacuation”. Officially evacuation started with GKO decision from October 6 of 1941, prior to that nobody was doing in the first place. In Kharkiv , for instance tank factory was working till October 19th. Btw Kharkiv is not really good example since it was one of the major armament producing centers, consequently number of evacuees form this specific city would be far bigger than average.
Maybe slightly off point: in Zaporozhie in 1939 had 289000 population, some of them were evacuated out of the renaming number 44000 died as result of German occupation (number includes POWs) and 58000 were sent to Germany as a forced laborers.

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#69

Post by Darrin » 07 Jan 2003, 15:55

oleg wrote:"
oleg wrote: Totall detah between 1941-9145 is 37 million not 26. 6. 37 Million does include mortality.

Here's how TOTAL demographic losses were calculated by Goskomstat (State Statistics Committtee) during the Gorbachev period:
USSR population on 22 June 1941 -- 196.7
USSR population on 31 Dec 1945 -- 170.5
Of them, born before 22.06.41 -- 159.5
Total population loss -- 37.2
Children prematurely died during the war -- 1.3
Natural mortality est. from 1940 level -- 11.9
Total EXCESS population loss during the war -- 26.6
Note that this includes emigration. Number of emigrants is estimated at 600,000. Therefore, the official estimated of war deaths is 26 million. However, an American demographer named Maksudov pointed out the unsanctioned emigration of ethnic Poles. Since the number is unknown, and it is also uncertain whether it was taken into account in the original Goskomstat estimates, the number of deaths might be reduced. So, 26 million should be treated as the highest bound, probably around 25 million -- lowest.
Correspondingly, since military casualties are better accounted than civilian, the number of civilian deaths is calculated by subtracting military losses from total losses. The most reliable estimate for now is Krivosheev's, which gives us 8.6 million military demographic casulaties. Therefore, total civilian losses are in the area of 16.4 - 17.4 million. It should be noted that they include losses of partisans, people's militia units, and conscripts who were called up but weren't put on strength in their units before perishing (applies to the first month of the war).
The total civilian losses consist of a combination of civilians directly murdered by the occupiers and civilians who prematurely died due to worsened living conditions (starvation, epidemics) both on the occupied territories and on the homefront.
A post-war commission made the following estimate of the mortality attributed DIRECTLY to the occupiers:
Deliberately exterminated: 7,420,379
Died as slave laborers in Germany: 2,164,313
Died of the harsh conditions of the occupation regime: 4,100,000
Total: 13,684,692
That leaves us with 1.8-2.8 million excess deaths on the homefront, including mass starvation of civilians in Leningrad and other besieged cities.
Sources: Krivosheev, "Rossiia i SSSR v voinakh XX veka"; Harrison, "Accounting for War"

Now even if I accept your number of excess civ and army who died. Just subtracting army deaths from this number results in civs who died of all causes or were left in uncounted ways. But which army death numbers krivosheyev 1993 book is certainly widly available and has been the most commonly used numbers. But his 1993 book is just a duplication of late 80´s red army numbers. Remember he was also a general in the red army. His study has been widly critized for its low losses in 1941. Thier is an article by Zetterling in slav mil studies the former SU army journal editted by GLANTZ which gives evidence that his 41 losses are inaccurate.

http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/ubb/Forum ... 00051.html

Now there appears to be a new russian army archive study coming out that gives numbers in the 13.9 mil region for total permant loses of the red army during the war. So with this new study the excess civ death and
deportation from all causes has to be less than 13 million in total over 4 years. Including millions of jews, etc exterminated. The actual number of deaths due to starvation and not just from collateral damage in places like leningard where the siege for 2+ years of battle killed people from more than just starvation was relativly small.

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#70

Post by Roberto » 07 Jan 2003, 16:58

Darrin wrote:The actual number of deaths due to starvation and not just from collateral damage in places like leningard where the siege for 2+ years of battle killed people from more than just starvation was relativly small.
What's that supposed to mean?
Harrison E. Salisbury ([i]The 900 Days[/i], pages 590 and following) wrote:[...]On Aril 15 [1942] Leningrad marked the 248th day of siege. The city had survived. But the cost had no equal in modern times. In March the Leningrad Funeral Trust buried 89,968 persons. In April the total rose to 102,497. Some of these burials were due to clean-up, but the death rate was probably higher in April than in any other month of the blockade.
There now remained in Leningrad, with evacuation at an end, 1,100,000 persons. The total of ration cards was 800,000 less than in January. When Leningrad’s supply resources - the 58 days of flour, the 140 days of meat and fish - were calculated, it was on the basis of a population on April 15 only one-third of what it had been when the blockade began August 30 with the loss of Mga.
More people had died in the Leningrad blockade than had ever died in a modern city - anywhere - anytime: more than ten times the number who died in Hiroshima.
(Footnote: Deaths at Hiroshima August 6, 1945, were 78,150, with 13,983 missing and 37,426 wounded. In another tragedy of World War II, the Warsaw uprising, between 56,000 and 60,000 died.)
By comparison with the great sieges of the past Leningrad was unique. The siege of Paris had lasted only 121 days, from September 19, 1870 to January 27, 1871. The total population, military and civilian, was on the order of one million. Noncombatant deaths from all causes in Paris during November, December and three weeks of January were only 30,236, about 16,000 higher than in the comparable period of the preceding year. The Parisians ate horses, mules, cats, dogs and possibly rats. There was a raid on the Paris zoo and a rhinoceros was killed and butchered. There were no authenticated instances of cannibalism. Food was scarce, but whine was plentiful.
In the great American siege, that of Vicksburg between May 18 and July 4, 1863, only 4,000 civilians were involved, although the Confederate military force was upwards of 30,000. About 2,500 persons were killed in the siege, including 119 women and children. No known deaths from starvation occurred. Horses, mules, dogs and kittens were eaten and possibly rats.
Leningrad exceeded the total Paris civil casualties on any two or three winter days. The Vicksburg casualties, military and civil, were exceeded in Leningrad by starvation deaths on any January, February, March or April day.
How many people died in the Leningrad blockade? Even with careful calculation the total may be inexact by several hundred thousand.
The most honest declaration was an official Soviet response to a Swedish official inquiry published in Red Star, the Soviet Army newspaper, June 28, 1964, which said: “No one knows exactly how many people died in Leningrad and the Leningrad area.”
The official figure announced by the Soviet government of deaths by starvation - civilian deaths by hunger in the city of Leningrad alone - was 632,253. An additional 16,747 persons were listed as killed by bombs and shells, providing a total of Leningrad civilian deaths of 649,000.[my emphasis] To this were added deaths in nearby Pushkin and Peterhof, bringing the total of starvation deaths to 641,803 and of deaths from all war causes to 671,635. These figures were attested to by the Leningrad City Commission to Investigate Nazi Atrocities and were submitted at the Nuremberg Trials in 1946.
The Commission figures are incomplete in many respects. They do not cover many Leningrad areas, including Oranienburg, Sestroretsk and the suburban parts of the blockade zone. Soviet sources no longer regard the Commission totals, which apparently were drawn up in May, 1944, as authoritative, although they were prepared by an elaborate apparatus of City and Regional Party officials, headed by Party Secretary Kuznetsov. A total of 6,445 local commissions carried out the task, and more than 31,000 persons took part. Individual lists of deaths were made up for each region. The regional lists carried 440,826 names, and a general city-wide list added 191,427 names, providing the basic Commission-reported total of 632,253.
Impressive evidence has been compiled by Soviet scholars to demonstrate the incompleteness of the Commission’s total. All official Leningrad statistics are necessarily inaccurate because of the terrible conditions of the winter of 1941-42. The official report of deaths for December, 53,000, may be fairly complete, but for January and February the figures are admittedly poor. Estimates of daily deaths in these months run from 3,500 to 4,000 a day to 8,000. The only total available gives deaths for the period as 199,187. This is offered by Dimitri Pavlov. It represents deaths officially reported to authorities (probably in connection with the turning in of ration cards of the deceased). The number of unregistered deaths is known to be much higher. The Funeral Trust buried 89,968 bodies in March (it has no records for January and February), 102,497 in April and 53,562 in May. It continued to bury 4,000 to 5,000 bodies a month through the autumn of 1942, although by this time Leningrad’s population had been cut by more than 75 percent. Thus mortality as a result of the blockade and starvation continued at a high rate through the whole year.
The Funeral Trust buried 460,000 bodies from November, 1941, to the end of 1942. In addition, it is estimated that private individuals, work teams of soldiers and others transported 228,263 bodies from morgues to cemeteries from December, 1941 through December, 1942.
No exact accounting of bodies delivered to cemeteries was possible in Leningrad during the winter months, when thousands of corpses lay in the streets and were picked up like cordwood, transported to Piskarevsky, Volkov, Tatar, Bolshaya Okhta, Serafimov, and Bogoslovsky cemeteries and to the larger squares at Vesely Poselok (Jolly Village) and the Glinozemsky Zavod for burial in mass graves, dynamited in the frozen earth by miliary miners.
Leningrad had a civilian population of about 2,280,000 in January, 1942. By the close of evacuation via the ice road in April, 1942, the population was estimated at 1,100,000 - a reduction of 1,180,000, of whom 440,000 had been evacuated via the ice road. Another 120,000 went to the front or were evacuated in May and June. This would indicate a minimum of deaths within the city of about 620,000 in the first half of 1942. Official statistics show that about 1,093,695 persons were buried and about 110,000 cremated from July, 1941, through July, 1942.
To take another approach, Leningrad had about 2,500,000 residents at the start of the blockade, including about 100,000 refugees. At the end of 1943 as the 900 days were drawing to a close, Leningrad had a population of about 600,000 - less than a quarter the number of residents at the time Mga fell August 30, 1941.
The most careful calculation suggests that about 1,000,000 Leningraders were evacuated during the blockade: 33,479 by water across Ladoga in the fall of 1941; 35,114 by plane in November-December, 1941; 36,118 by the Ladoga ice road in December, 1941, and up to January 22, 1942; 440,000 by Ladoga from January 22 to April 15; 448,694 by Ladoga water transport from May to November, 1942; 15,000 during 1943. In addition, perhaps 100,000 Lenigraders went to the front with the armed forces.
This suggests that not less than 800,000 persons died of starvation within Leningrad during the blockade.
But the 800,000 total does not include the thousands who died in the suburban regions and during evacuation. These totals were very large. For instance, at the tiny little station of Borisova Griva on Ladoga 2,200 persons died from January to April 15, 1942. The Leningrad Encyclopedia estimates deaths during evacuation at “tens of thousands”.
What is the actual death total for Leningrad? Mikhail Dudin, a Leningrad poet who fought at Hangö and spent the whole of the siege within the lines of Leningrad, suggests that it was a minimum of 1,100,000. He offers this simple figure on the basis of 800,000 bodies estimated buried in mass graves at Piskarevsky Cementery and 300,000 at Serafimov cemetery. There is more than a little truth in the observation of the Leningrad poet, Sergei Davydov, regarding Piskarevsky: “Here lies half the city.”
No official calculation includes a total for military deaths, and no official figures on these have been published. It is known, however, that 12,416 military deaths attributed to hunger diseases occurred in the winter of 1941-42. Overall military deaths are likely to have ranged between 100,000 and 200,000 - possibly more.
One of the most careful Soviet specialists estimates the Leningrad starvation toll at “not less than a million”, a conclusion shared by the Leningrad Party leaders. Pravda on the twentieth anniversary of the lifting of the blockade declared that "the world has never known a similar mass extermination of a civilian population, such depths of human suffering and deprivation as fell to the lots of Leningraders".
Estimates of the Leningrad death toll as high as 2,000,000 have been made by some foreign students. These estimates are too high. A total for Leningrad and vicinity of something over 1,000,000 deaths attributable to hunger, and an overall total of deaths, civilian and military, on the order of 1,300,000 to 1,500,000 seems reasonable.[my emphasis]
It is germane, perhaps, to note that the Leningrad survivors of the blockade thought in January, 1944, that the starvation toll might be 2,000,000.
The Soviet censors in 1944 refused to pass estimates stating the Leningrad death toll as 1,000,000 or 2,000,000. For nearly twenty years after the blockade they insisted the total was 632,253 - not more, not less. Even today Dimitri V. Pavlov insists that new estimates, made by Soviet and foreign students, are incorrect. In a third edition of his magnificent Leningrad v Blokade, the best single source for many details of the siege, he incorporate an attack on the new totals. It is possible, he asserts, to remain silent in the face in the face of the assertion that a million or more people died in Leningrad. “Believe it or not”, he insists, “there is no foundation for such serious conclusions.” He insists that calculations based on the movement of Leningraders in and out of the city are unsound. He contends that the new estimates understate the number of Leningraders who entered military units (he puts the figure at not less than 200,000 rather than the 100,000 which Soviet authorities now use). He insists that the 632,253 calculation was accurate (he says it was completed in May, 1943, although the document is dated May, 1944, and other Soviet authorities contend it was not submitted until May, 1945).
Pavlov concludes that “the life of the Leningraders was so grim that there is no need for historians or writers dealing with these events to strengthen the colors or deepen the shadows.”
In this Pavlov is right. But the truth is that the Soviet Government from the beginning made a deliberate effort to lighten the shadows of the Leningrad blockade.
The death toll was minimized for political and security reasons. The Soviet Government for years deliberately understated the military and civilian death toll of World War II. The real totals were of such magnitude that Stalin, obviously, felt they would produce political repercussions inside the country. To the outside world a realistic statement of Soviet losses (total population losses are now estimated at well above 25 million lives) would have revealed the true weakness of Russia at the end of the war.
The Leningrad death toll had implications both for Stalin and for the Leningrad leadership, headed by Zhdanov. It raised the question of whether the key decisions were the right ones, whether all had been done that could have been done to spare the city this incredible trial. In these decisions the personal and political fortunes of all the Soviet leaders were intermingled.
Zhdanov declared in June, 1942, that there had been no line between the front and the rear in Leningrad, that everyone “lived with a single spirit - to do everything possible to defeat the enemy. Each Leningrader, man or woman, found his place in the struggle and with honor fulfilled his duty as a Soviet patriot.”
This was not quite true, and it begged the question of whether the siege had to be endured, whether it could have been lifted, whether it could have been avoided. These were the questions for which the leadership might have to answer.
Whether Zhdanov was certain of the correctness of these decisions is not clear. Not long before he died on August 31, 1948, he is said to have questioned himself and his acts, acknowledging that “people died like flies” as a result of his decisions, but insisting that “history would not have forgiven me had I given up Leningrad.”
Pavlov asked himself the same questions: Why did Leningrad remain in blockade for so long, and was everything done that could have been done to break the blockade? His conclusion was that the Soviet Command simply did not have the strength to do more than was done.
Meanwhile, “history” was corrected the Soviet way. The sacrifice of Leningrad was understated, the death toll was minimized; the chance of political repercussions was reduced at least for the time being.
Not until many years later was the inscription carved on the wall of the memorial at Piskarevsky Cemetery:

Let no one forget; let nothing be forgotten!

For some years, at any rate, a determined effort was made to forget a very great deal that had happened during the siege of Leningrad.[...]

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#71

Post by Darrin » 08 Jan 2003, 00:01

Lets just say the number of civs lost in leningrad are probably overblown. Or at the very least the number due to provable strvation was understated. Even so the number of civs who died in leningrad was very high esp due to starvation but leningrad was an isolated exception not the rule. No other large city in rus was totally surrounded by ger forces for over two years. Two years of combat and bombarment two years of blockades that prevented normal links with the outside world. The civ death tolls SHOULD be excpected to be high. The rus sent in ammo, fuel, troops, and weapons for thier forces when they could have sent more food. The rus army retreted to len and held out for 2 years. It is not the ger resonsability to supply the rus troops and rus people of a rus city. The resbonsabilty for civ deaths in a besiged city does not hang on german heads. It certainly is not unusall for armyies to seige population centers in the past. There is nothing criminal about cutting off cities and bombarding the deafender with arty and airplanes.

The law actuall says bombardment of non defended cittes should be proceeded by a warning. A law I don´t think stalin ever signed.

Roberto maybe you should get some new sources about what the fins did or didn´t want to happen to lenningrad. The one reference you used bears little resemblance to reality.

Also stop using ger planning documents from early 41 as proof of anything once war started. Even your one goering quote is from late 41 but is already talking about what will hapen in 43. Planning documents are not proof of anything actually happening. When you consider the large number of civ deaths attributed to certain groups such as jews the remainder of civ deaths due to all causes is small. Starvation alone even smaller.

The estimated peace time death rate is going to be much lower than wartime. So a bigger slice of those civ deaths is going to be due many causes besides just staration. On the other hand the huge lose of life and pows for the rus certainly made feeding those who remained easier for both.

Even oleg says there might have been off sov figure of 2.8 mil MAX excess civ dead on the homefront from many causes not just strvation. And he uses krivosheyev low figures for military death totals. Now I am not saying the ger were not evil in many ways and MAYBE would have carried trough these plans after the war. Thier is no evidence that even 10 million civ were starved to death over the war. Let alone the much higher figure you were throwing around earlier.

If you don´t believe the off rus figures tell me which ones why and present your own much larger ones otherwise all I see is smoke but no fire.

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#72

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 08 Jan 2003, 00:39

But his 1993 book is just a duplication of late 80?s red army numbers. Remember he was also a general in the red army. His study has been widly critized for its low losses in 1941. Thier is an article by Zetterling in slav mil studies the former SU army journal editted by GLANTZ which gives evidence that his 41 losses are inaccurate.
Ericson arrived to the approximately the same numbers on his own. What you call new study is one article, and guess what, there is a reason why VMMORF considered to be more reliable than TsAMO. If in total during the war USSR mobilized 34 476,700 men, and Out of this number: discharged for medical reasons 3 798,200, sent to work into military industry -3 614,600, sent to work for NKVD 1174,800, sent to allied forces 250,400, 436,600 ?is sent back to GULAG, 206,000 were discharged for various reasons, 212,400 lost their trains were never accounted for and thus were classified as deserters., and we also know at the war end there was 12 839,800 personnel in the Soviet Armed forces what difference does it give us? 11 944,100. So much for the excess of 13 mil.
Including millions of jews, etc exterminated. The actual number of deaths due to starvation and not just from collateral damage in places like leningard where the siege for 2+ years of battle killed people from more than just starvation was relativly small.
beg you pardon what in your understanding is relatively big?

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#73

Post by Darrin » 08 Jan 2003, 04:30

oleg wrote:
But his 1993 book is just a duplication of late 80?s red army numbers. Remember he was also a general in the red army. His study has been widly critized for its low losses in 1941. Thier is an article by Zetterling in slav mil studies the former SU army journal editted by GLANTZ which gives evidence that his 41 losses are inaccurate.
Ericson arrived to the approximately the same numbers on his own. What you call new study is one article, and guess what, there is a reason why VMMORF considered to be more reliable than TsAMO. If in total during the war USSR mobilized 34 476,700 men, and Out of this number: discharged for medical reasons 3 798,200, sent to work into military industry -3 614,600, sent to work for NKVD 1174,800, sent to allied forces 250,400, 436,600 ?is sent back to GULAG, 206,000 were discharged for various reasons, 212,400 lost their trains were never accounted for and thus were classified as deserters., and we also know at the war end there was 12 839,800 personnel in the Soviet Armed forces what difference does it give us? 11 944,100. So much for the excess of 13 mil.
So we are suposed to rely on western reserch from 30 years ago from someone who is dead? A different attitude for you... What kirovsheyev own numbers do is point out his own inaccuarcyies. 12 mil unaccounted for but only 8.7 mil permanent losses. It doesn´t take much to figure out kirovsheyev proves his own numbers off by OVER 3 MILLION. An increase of roughly 35% just to accomadte his own gap.

http://www.dupuyinstitute.org/ubb/Forum ... 00051.html

You can´t actually use the numbers from one study to prove the other one wrong. Keep kirovsheyev numbers seperate from anything to do with the newer study. Esp since kirovsheyev numbers are known to be suspect. His numbers relied on top only counting of losses from fronts etc... The new study appears to be a more accurate individual soiulder count. Something every other army and study actually uses as much as possible.

It is almost 13.9 mil in this new study according to the article. Of which 13.5 mil is red army and airforce the remainder are navy, border and NKVD losses added in from kirovsheyev book. If over 200,000 deserters were never found then they should be listed as PERMANENT LOSSES. I´m quite sure you would want the ger army to be treated the same way. Missing and presumed dead is missing and presumed dead even if you want to call it deserters who were never found.

The study was started in the early 90s with a group of people and is based on individual card file counts. I guess I value a post cold war post SU study over offical SU army claims from 30 years ago. Go to the end and look at the tital of the person who wrote this article. That has a lot of credibilty in my opinion.

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#74

Post by Oleg Grigoryev » 08 Jan 2003, 07:26

So we are suposed to rely on western reserch from 30 years ago from someone who is dead? A different attitude for you... What kirovsheyev own numbers do is point out his own inaccuarcyies. 12 mil unaccounted for but only 8.7 mil permanent losses. It doesn?t take much to figure out kirovsheyev proves his own numbers off by OVER 3 MILLION. An increase of roughly 35% just to accomadte his own gap.
Ok I was assuming that you know what 11944,100 consist off . Obviously you don't know. Irrecoverable losses, are "killed in action. Missing in action, died of wounds, died of illnesses, died due to other reasons, captured" (btw this is not Krivosheev's formual that is an offical soviet defenition form 1944). Obviously not everyone who was captured died - 1 836 000 made it back. NOT everybody who went MIA was MIA permanently, (939 700). When you subtract these numbers from 11944,100 guess what you get. And Krivosheev never called this number irrecoverable loss he called it demographical loss.
you can?t actually use the numbers from one study to prove the other one wrong
I don't. I use numbers provided Ministry of Defense of Russian Federation. Number of people mobilized has nothing to do with Krivosheev, nor does the number of people who were transferred elsewhere or discharged.
The new study appears to be a more accurate individual soiulder count.
"the new study" presumes that all soldiers returned to the places where they lived before the war which was obviously not the case, for some had no place to return
Immediately after the war and by 1949 the military commissariats conducted the so-called ?canvass of yards? where they went to people?s yards and homes with lists of questions for relatives of frontline soldiers who did not return from the war, with the aim of identifying the missing.
. Nor did it take into account those who were in the filtration camps, or in GULAG.
The study was started in the early 90s with a group of people and is based on individual card file counts. I guess I value a post cold war post SU study over offical SU army claims from 30 years ago
Krivosheev book came out in 1993.
Go to the end and look at the tital of the person who wrote this article. That has a lot of credibilty in my opinion.
I know who he is but his numbers (TSAMO rather0 do not add up. Finally who is fact that Ericson is dead is in any way related to the question on hand. He got the same number overall independently from Krivosheev. Besides that he books came out in the late 90s how is that 30 years ago?

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Roberto
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#75

Post by Roberto » 08 Jan 2003, 11:37

Darrin wrote:Lets just say the number of civs lost in leningrad are probably overblown.
What makes you think so?

Salisbury's assessment suggests that they were initially understated rather than overblown.
Darrin wrote:Or at the very least the number due to provable strvation was understated. Even so the number of civs who died in leningrad was very high esp due to starvation but leningrad was an isolated exception not the rule.
The rule was bad enough, see Kharkov, Kiev, Orel, Rzhev ...

Leningrad was, however, the only place where the original "Hunger Plan" could be put into practice.

My translation from Christian Gerlach, Krieg, Ernährung, Völkermord, pages 29 and following:
Both concepts, the Hunger Plan and the “Territorial Solution Soviet Union” were utopian and could not be carried out in practice. It was not possible to simply force millions of people to starve to death, seal of cities and whole regions[my emphasis] [footnote], especially with the weak security troops, nor was it technically possible to carry out the deportation of so many millions of Jewish people to the thinly populated, far away areas with few transportation facilities. Both were in any case plans for the postwar period. They were in a certain sense mere destructive visions, which only after their failure led to the search for extermination plans that could be implemented.[my emphasis]

[Footnote: This refers to the normal case in the occupation area. The starvation of Leningrad, from 1941 to 1943, which claimed at least 600 000 victims, was an exception; the German siege tied down most of two German armies.[my emphasis]]
Darrin wrote:No other large city in rus was totally surrounded by ger forces for over two years. Two years of combat and bombarment two years of blockades that prevented normal links with the outside world. The civ death tolls SHOULD be excpected to be high. The rus sent in ammo, fuel, troops, and weapons for thier forces when they could have sent more food.
Could they have? Let's see facts and figures.

Through where?

The Ladoga Ice Road, the only link to the rest of Russia that the Germans tried but failed to close?

What they mainly did via that road was a more efficient way of fighting famine and saving lives: getting people out of Leningrad.
Harrison E. Salisbury wrote:[...]The most careful calculation suggests that about 1,000,000 Leningraders were evacuated during the blockade: 33,479 by water across Ladoga in the fall of 1941; 35,114 by plane in November-December, 1941; 36,118 by the Ladoga ice road in December, 1941, and up to January 22, 1942; 440,000 by Ladoga from January 22 to April 15; 448,694 by Ladoga water transport from May to November, 1942; 15,000 during 1943. In addition, perhaps 100,000 Lenigraders went to the front with the armed forces.[...]

Darrin wrote:The rus army retreted to len and held out for 2 years. It is not the ger resonsability to supply the rus troops and rus people of a rus city.
Not as long as it puts up a fight, maybe. But as soon as Leningrad gave in, the Germans would have been responsible for taking care of its population, something they were well conscious of and keen to avoid. Hence the orders that any civilians trying to leave the city in the direction of the German lines were to be shot down and that surrender was neither to be demanded nor to be accepted if offered.
Darrin wrote:The resbonsabilty for civ deaths in a besiged city does not hang on german heads. It certainly is not unusall for armyies to seige population centers in the past. There is nothing criminal about cutting off cities and bombarding the deafender with arty and airplanes.
What is not only unusual, but also criminal, however, is to submit a civilian population to the murderous conditions of siege warfare not for the purpose of forcing the surrender of an enemy stronghold, but for the purpose of obliterating a large urban center and getting rid of its population. That was the German policy.
Darrin wrote:The law actuall says bombardment of non defended cittes should be proceeded by a warning. A law I don´t think stalin ever signed.
The problem is not the bombardment.

The problem is that warfare, especially if directed against a civilian population as siege warfare against a large urban center is, constitutes a crime where not aimed at pursuing a legitimate military objective.

If the purpose of the siege had been to force the surrender of the city and this had been made clear to the opponent, you would have a point.

As it is, you haven't.
Darrin wrote:Roberto maybe you should get some new sources about what the fins did or didn´t want to happen to lenningrad.
I have one here, from the Führer himself:

The Führer’s Decision on Leningrad (Entschluß der Führers über Leningrad), transmitted by the Naval Warfare Command (Seekriegsleitung) to Army Group North on 29.09.1941 (Tagebuch der Seekriegsleitung, quoted in Max Domarus, Hitler Reden und Proklamationen 1932-1945, Volume 4, Page 1755)
Betrifft: Zukunft der Stadt Petersburg
II. Der Führer ist entschlossen, die Stadt Petersburg vom Erdboden verschwinden zu lassen. Es besteht nach der Niederwerfung Sowjetrußlands keinerlei Interesse an dem Fortbestand dieser Großsiedlung. Auch Finnland hat gleicherweise kein Interesse an dem Weiterbestehen der Stadt unmittelbar an seiner neuen Grenze bekundet.
III. Es ist beabsichtigt, die Stadt eng einzuschließen und durch Beschuß mit Artillerie aller Kaliber und laufendem Laufeinsatz dem Erdboden gleichzumachen.
IV. Sich aus der Lage der Stadt ergebende Bitten um Übergabe werden abgeschlagen werden, da das Problem des Verbleibens und der Ernährung der Bevölkerung von uns nicht gelöst werden kann und soll. Ein Interesse an der Erhaltung auch nur eines Teils dieser großstädtischen Bevölkerung besteht in diesem Existenzkrieg unsererseits nicht. Notfalls soll gewaltsame Abschiebung in den östlichen russischen Raum erfolgen.


My translation:
Subject: Future of the City of Petersburg
II. The Führer is determined to remove the city of Petersburg from the face of the earth.[my emphasis] After the defeat of Soviet Russia there can be no interest in the continued existence of this large urban area. Finland has likewise manifested no interest in the maintenance of the city immediately at its new border.[my emphasis]
III. It is intended to encircle the city and level it to the ground by means of artillery bombardment using every caliber of weapon, and continual air bombardment.
IV. Requests for surrender resulting from the city’s encirclement will be denied, since the problem of relocating and feeding the population cannot and should not be solved by us. In this war for our very existence, there can be no interest on our part in maintaining even a part of this large urban population.[my emphasis] If necessary forcible removal to the eastern Russian area is to be carried out.


Looks like Finland also required wiping out the city of Leningrad and thus has a share of responsibility in this crime.

But what's the point of bringing up Finland here?
Darrin wrote:The one reference you used bears little resemblance to reality.
I'll accept that this statement carries more than hot air if Mr. Darrin can quote references that show mine to bear "little resemblance to reality".
Darrin wrote:Also stop using ger planning documents from early 41 as proof of anything once war started.
Planning documents from early 1941 are proof as to what German intentions and policies were.

Why shouldn't I use them in this sense?
Darrin wrote:Even your one goering quote is from late 41 but is already talking about what will hapen in 43.
I'm actually more interested in what he expected to happen in 1941, and in what his statements say about his intentions, policies and attitudes:

File note on a meeting about economic policies and organization of the economy in the newly occupied territories with Hermann Göring on 8.11.1941
Bundesarchiv/Militärarchiv, WI ID/1222
[…] Hinsichtlich der Ernährung bemerkte er [Göring], daß die Truppe ihren Bedarf an Konserven wesentlich einschränken müsse. Der Wehrmacht machte er den Vorwurf, dass sich im Gebiet um Minsk in den Wäldern noch grosse Viehherden herumtreiben, die aber wegen der Partisanen nicht geborgen werden können. Einsatz von Truppen sei unbedingt notwendig.
Das Schicksal der Grosstädte insbesondere Leningrads sei ihm völlig schleierhaft. In diesem Kriege werde das grösste Sterben seit dem dreissigjährigen Krieg sein.
Wenn das Getreide nicht abbefördert werden kann, soll dieses zur Schweinezucht verwandt werden. Ab 1943 verlange er eine Höchstausnutzung der Ukraine. Die Versorgung ganz Europas müsse dann sichergestellt sein. […]
My translation:
[…] In regard to food matters he [Göring] remarked that the troops must significantly reduce their consume of conserves. To the Wehrmacht he addressed the reproach that in the area around Minsk there are still huge herds of cattle running around in the woods which cannot be collected due to the partisans. The deployment of troops was absolutely necessary.
The fate of the major cities, especially Leningrad, was completely indifferent to him. [Translator’s note: the German term “schleierhaft” literally means “veilful” and may also be translated as “unexplainable”. Translating the term as “indifferent” (in the sense of “I don’t know what will happen to them, and I couldn’t care less”) was considered to better fit the context, however] This war would see the greatest dying since the Thirty Years War.
If the grain could not be shipped off it should be used for raising pigs.
From 1943 onward he required a maximum exploitation of the Ukraine. The food supply of the whole of Europe must then be guaranteed. […]

Darrin wrote: Planning documents are not proof of anything actually happening.
Who said they were ?

I'm using them as evidence to policies and intentions, not to what actually happened.

Considering my above quote from Gerlach about the impracticability of the original "Hunger Plan", which I didn't transcribe for the first time here, your statement appears to be crashing into an open door.
Darrin wrote: When you consider the large number of civ deaths attributed to certain groups such as jews the remainder of civ deaths due to all causes is small. Starvation alone even smaller.
Says Darrin and who else?
Current research, for example Hans-Heinrich Nolte, Eastern Europe historian at Hannover University, estimate the Soviet human victims of "Operation Barbarossa", taking into account recent Russian research, at ca. 27 million - thereof seven million starvation dead behind the front line alone[my emphasis].
My translation from the original German text under:

http://www.wk-2.de/unternehmen_barbarossa.html

It would be interesting to have a look at Nolte's substantiation of this figure, which I will try to do.

I also have no problem with accepting that relatively little is known and much research remains to be done about starvation in the German-occupied territories of the Soviet Union.

Official Soviet-era figures I would not rely on, as the Soviets tried to downplay their losses, both military and civilian.

And guesses off the top of Mr. Darrin's head don't appeal to me either.

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