Russian Losses in WW1

[John Gilinsky]

The use of former Imperial officers and especially the "specialists" in the infant and growing USSR armed forces from the fall of 1917 to June 1941 would make for a fascinating study on casualties as well. Wounded, disabled former Imperial officers compelled to "volunteer" or conscripted to serve the Soviets and many who did volunteer to serve their new masters not having realistically other options, etc.... There must have been many tens (and possibly scores) of thousands of such officers as Stalin while appreciating what they did to solidify the Revolution and protect the revolution and Russia mistrusted them and of course come after 1936 with the attempt on his life and his installation of the purges such officers suffered terribly. Prison records, KGB records, Gulag records, etc...would have to be diligently searched to find out both the WWI services and activities of such personnel but the amount of verification due to wilful misrepresentation to protect oneself (ie.g. an Imperial captain or field officer who served throught the war on the front lines stating to his new masters that NO he only served behind the lines, was never decorated, or that he was a closet revolutionary just waiting for his opportunity to liberate his soldiers as workers in the vanguard of proletarian revolution, observed and learned and started or indeed changed his bourgeoise ways and wished to help the worker's, soldier's reovlutionary movement now, etc....)is a major stumbling block as are disappeared, dispersed, little or unknown primary source materials to verify, destruction and dispersal of family members, etc....

John

Toronto

[Pete1052]

While I agree overall with most of your opinions continuing to speculate and extrapolate what obviously were at the very minimum on an international relative scale very heavy casualties (killed, died of wounds, sick who died of disease directly attributable to military/war services, severely wounded who survived but who were either moderately or severely disabled, missing and never found, executed during the war (it would be fascinating to find out who, how and what for and how many Imperial Russian soldiers were "shot at dawn" and/or the Civil War / Revolutionary period (say Spring 1917 to about Spring 1920) practically self-defeats modern attempts to tackle the HUGE task by simply overwhelming anyone who seriously wishes to archivally document casualties or losses on the Eastern Front of WWI.

During the Great War some staff officers would probably have said it was impossible to say how many words are in that sentence and therefore only a rough order of magnitude could be provided. However, with the benefit of having Microsoft Word we can now state conclusively that the total consists of 127 words!

[John Gilinsky]

I can get away with this because a) I take refuge in parentheses (language's walls) thereby avoiding the barbs of the self-annointed linguistic police; I am attempting to compact generations of multiple historiographical omissions in a discussion group message. Frankly people who dwell on other people's writing style and alleged grammar faults I find boringly pedantic. The more diverse and irregular useages of language does not materially harm a language. If the recipients are educated as to both formal and informal useages such "errors" are incorporated into reading comprehension and enjoyment. If everyone wrote perfectly per the official writing manual "by the book" the written word would then suffer emotional deprivation and loose much of its appeal and effectiveness. Sterility would be the order of the day.

John

Toronto

[phil andrade]

The author was a prominent Russian officer who had access to many military archives. According to him between 900,000 to 1,000,000 fatal casualties (all causes) were sustained by the Red Armies between the fall of 1917 and about 1922 during the Civil War.

John

Toronto

And that was just for the Red Army ? Imagine the number if we include the Whites as well.

Bearing in mind the increase in the deficit of males from 700,000 to 5,000,000 in the period of the Great War and the Civil War, and allowing for the probability that one third of this was attributable to increase in male mortality outside the military, it's hard to see how more than half of the 4.3 million increase in the male deficit could be attributable to the Great War itself.

All the same, those 1914-17 casualties were pretty frightful. It seems that roughly half of all the men who donned uniform for Russia were dead, or had been wounded, or were taken prisoner.

Phil

[John Gilinsky]

Here is that in fact semi-famous book (after decades of speculation by everyone over war created or induced losses) -

G.F. Krivosheyev, 'Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the twentieth century', London, Greenhill Books, 1997 and in the USA by Stackpole Books of Pennsylvania

ISBN 1853672807 (ISBN 9781853672804).

"A single death is a tragedy, a million deaths are a statistic." Joseph Stalin

Krivosheyev uses the term "irrecoverable losses" almost in a detached manner presumably to reinforce the historical - scientific manner in which the statistics were compiled and are presented. He also I believe states "loosely" that he contends that the Whites suffered corresponding losses (that is between 900,000 to 1,000,000 during 1918 to 1922 in the Russian Civil War) but he admits that his sources are somewhat shaky on White casualties!

The book is famous for revealing somewhat apparently highly detailed and manageable stats covering practically the entire Soviet Union era in very well organized and presented charts or tables. This is to my mind is both a blessing and a curse. A blessing as it certainly is user friendly to far more people but a curse as it somehow as the author and the team of researchers (6) that Krivosheyev supervised superficially glosses over the actual fullness (or lack of same) and questionable reliability of such figures. In massive encircling captures, great retreats and the like how accurate would medical stats be especially as we know dog tags were abolished by the USSR early in the Second World War? The same of course should be applied to all other stats for major chronic campaigns including the Civil War.

John

Toronto

[John Gilinsky]

The old story: did not commissars eager to please Lenin, Trotsky or Moscow inflate White casualty figures or enemies of the state 'disposed of' or "liquidated?" Since the priority of food distribution would go to the active Red Armies both military commanders (often former Czarist junior officers or senior NCO's) and commissars would be loathe to report dimunition of their own numbers (while more than tempted in a starving land to inflate their own ration strengths) and thus correspondingly less rations and supplies sent or directed to be sent to such Red Army field units. The Whites with a rudimentary medical component were also badly led and somewhat disorganized due to increasing poor morale especially after the failure to capture Petrograd in the early months of 1919. After General Denikin's reversal of fortunes after Orel the writing was clearly on the wall. Deserters could be classified by inefficient paper shufflers as "missing in action" or even "killed in action" especially if any gratutities out of the shrinking White mobile treasury were sought by the accompanying or nearby White relatives of such persons. The overall need to maintain military efficiency amidst overwhelming odds, war weariness, a defeatist attitude for a "lost cause", increasing inefficiencies due to the open overlap amongst civil and military authorities in the White forces as they retreated, increasing scarcity of supplies from all sources: Allies, local populations meant generally that accurate record keeping was not a priority.

The Red Terror instigated in 1918 ran concurrently with the Civil War. Summary executions were a norm as denouncements and denials flourished throughout irrespective of whose side one was on. This politically ideologically driven social upheaval, fluidity of warfare (cossacks, cavalry) in rural and isolated countrysides with a diseased starving population with the influx of refugees of all stripes was hardly the environment for accurate record keeping. The Whites of course deliberately lost or destroyed much of their own official miltiary records for obviously sound political reasons: why would they let the victorious Reds find out about their that is White losses for any propaganda value not to mention the safety of any White family members or more distant relatives or supporters caught or left behind?

Allowing precise statistical counts or figures to critically represent such historical events is misrepresentative considering the scale, scope and duration of the more than hostile environments to keeping accurate records generally. Again, better to precisely limit and chunk up studies that focus on particular units, locales, types of persons, etc.... and even then the same general poor statistical environments exist.

John

Toronto

[John Gilinsky]

An older Emigre publication focussing more on the Russian home front can still be consulted usefully, viz.:

Kohn,S. and Meyendorff, Baron A.F. "The Cost of the War to Russia. The Vital Statistics of European Russia during the War, 1914-1917 - Social Cost of the War" 1932 8vo xv, 219 pages plates

John

Toronto

[phil andrade]

Krivosheyev uses the term "irrecoverable losses"

Yes, John....this term "irrecoverable" apples to those taken prisoner as well as those killed : the loss is construed as permanent in so far as a soldier taken prisoner is as definite a loss as a man killed.

I note that commentators tend to cite the irrecoverable loss and assume that this means the same as killed...which, of course, it does not ; a man taken prisoner is supposed to live to return home...alas ! ...we know how few Russian PoWs did actually survive their ordeal !

By this criterion, the recorded Russian "irrecoverable" loss in battle 1914-17 is about 4.25 million.

I would counsel caution in regard to accepting the statement that up to one million Red Army soldiers were killed in the Civil War...if we count only those actually killed in battle, I suspect that the number would be no more than half that figure.

Editing here, John...apologies, I see that you referred to Red Army fatalities "from all causes"....in my haste to make a point I overlooked that detail .

Phil

[John Gilinsky]

Ideally every single soldier should be accounted for. However most of us know after using online dbs, older paper records, and yes primary sourced archival materials how easy in wartime and after it is to have incomplete, inaccurate and in some cases not very worthwhile records. I have seen huge printed multiple tomes put out I think by Ukrainians on llists of individual Ukrainians who were casualties in WW2 for example. I started a thread "No One Left Behind" on the Eastern Front focussing on Russia especially in the period 1914 to 1918 but it is practically dead in the water for now in part due to an overall lack of responses and contributions despite asking for same explicitly, from Central and Eastern European friends, colleagues and researchers. Linguistical challenges and cultural divides echo the same concerns that manifested themselves during and after the war: one thinks of the AH infantry with between 10 to 20 languages in some battalions! Nevertheless the sheer magnitude and impact of the Eastern Front is now slowly starting to be recognized in Western Europe and elsewhere.

The very late Soviet era book (the author/prime editor was a retired Colonel-General of the USSR army) is undoubtedly based on of course incomplete central state records AND records that of course were censored and tampered with to some extent by varying parties. The real danger is that once such stats are so user friendly and convenient that they very quickly join the mythological pantheon of massive Russian steam roller type myths etc...and are popularly accepted including academia. The central state need for central state planning so worshipped by totalitarian, autocratic or bureaucratic loving states almost becomes a fantasy world in itself. Anyone remember the stats generated by Stalin's "Five Year Plans?"

On the other hand as so many both in and outside of these former Eastern Front areas contend it is easier to quote the famous Hindenburg quote (as you have done Phil) and mentally imagine enormous losses of course as typical: read almost if not crushing losses consistently sustained by Russia while the Central Powers escaped relatively unscathed; here again is another myth. The central powers (as other threads on GWF attest to) suffered substantive casualties that at times approached and sometimes quantitatvely equated with the huge losses normally associated with Russia's war efforts.

You raise a particular point that is also part of this story. NOT ALL POWS were lost "irrecoverably" in WWI. A small percentage (true miniscule in the grand scheme of things) were repatriated during the war. Secondly BOTH sides captured very large numbers of POWS (think of the demoralized AH armies from latter 1915 onwards) and MOST of these actually did survive the war (unlike Second World War POWS, e.g. Soviet pows in Nazi hands). These surviving Russian POWS are MULTIPLY recorded: initially as deserters, missing in action, later, possibly much later as POWS, thirdly NOT even recorded when they returned from early 1918 onwards due to the anarchy in Russia; fourthly as a result of at the time and later inquiries such surviving POWS being lumped into the died or killed in the war category. Moreover NOT all POWS voluntarilly returned to revolutionary Russia but chose to stay in former Central Power countries or move to a newly independent country like Poland, Hungary or Czechoslovakia. YECH: real mess eh? The fluidity of actually what happened overwhelmed ALL and ANYONE attempting at the time and subsequently to actually account for individuals at any given time or even over a period of time during and after the conflict(s). That is until now with modern technology, opening up of these former countries' archives, etc.... What is needed now is the generation of interest and political and economic will to document whatever one can through diverse means.

John

Toronto

[phil andrade]

John, rather than depend on official records from Tsarist and later Soviet archives, when it comes to Russian POW numbers... then what better source than the German and Austro- Hungarian count of prisoners in their possession ?

The number of 2,417,000 Russian POWs can be deduced by citing the German claim of nearly 1.5 million, and the AH count of just under 1 million. The Russians claimed about 1.7 million AH POWs, and about one tenth that number of Germans.

I am sure that the Russians killed.,wounded or captured at least five million of their enemies in the Great War. They might even have attained an exchange rate that was better than that managed by the Allies on the Western Front : that is a controversial thing to suggest.

As you say, Hindenburg's quote tends us to a sterreotyped and one sided view of the conflict.

Phil

[John Gilinsky]

Phil: There is no question that the Central Power figures for their captured Russians are more reliable than those furnished by the Soviets, the Whites or the Emigres. Meticuluous bureaucracies, a worship of orderly control through the minute documentation of anything costing anything (POWS = mouths to feed, clothe and care for overall), omnipotent central state control through "war governments," a strong tradition of social order with a corresponding aversion to anarchy, revolution and disorder are just some of the reasons why Germany and especially Austria-Hungarian records related to casualties and POWS are more reliable than Czarist era records. What one though ultimately should really say is that such C.P. (Central Power NOT Communist Party!) records especially AH are far more abundant, organized and accessible than those of former Imperial Russia. Thus we see more figures, facts, archival citations used from such sources which definitely gives a biased view. The sad part is that there are abundant archival materials especially in Moscow and St. Petersburg and elsewhere in Russia and former component states of the Warsaw Pact but as we all know economic hardships, understaffing of cultural institutions including archives, languague barriers, etc....stymy many if not most attempts by scholars and others usually. Academic researchers are NOT that interested in family histories, individual fates of soldiers, etc.... only when they can fairly readily use such personal stories for a bigger picture or thesis support. Conversely genealogists, family historians, miltaria collectors don't really care for such academic research and writing only when it directly helps them with their own personalized interests. Consequently while POW aid groups were formed during and after the war especially in Emigration their fragmentary records are typically dismissed as part of the Emigration anti-Communist stance to show how barbaric and inhumane the Soviets were to families and individuals especially former Imperail officers. Consequently both Emigre and Soviet POW related records are politically tainted. Censored, self-censored, wilfully neglected, destroyed deliberately for political reasons, etc... means that there are huge gaps. The tragedy is that Imperial Russia, partially aping if not longing to be like any ole good (read German or French) modern state eagerly sought to ape the very German regimentation, orderliness, and state control through central state bureaucratic recording. The central state military archives survived mainly intact and exist today. This all means that if one is fluent in Russian, likes working in a now semi-expensive city (Moscow), is prepared to put up with working with often demoralized underpaid workers in Russian state archives, is financially independent or is supported for long or very long periods of archival research by third parties no strings attached,etc...then someone MAY someday research and publish some very very interesting material on Russian casulaties, POWS, and the like based on the Russian equivalent to those very well known Austro-Hungarian and German massive official WWI histories.

John

Toronto

[phil andrade]

Here'a hoping that new endeavours will reap their rewards, John.

Jack Sheldon has already shown us how much there is to be found in Bavarian archives, and the old mantra " all records are gone" is no longer the excuse it used to be for historians to steer clear.

Norman Stone wrote a definitive history of the Eastern Front 1914-17, and has expressed astonishment that no other ground breaking book has come out in the last 35 years, especially given the access since the end of the Cold War.

On a more poignant level, I notice a recently restored Austro -Hungarian military cemetery in Verona, with several thousand graves, demonstrates a renewed interest in the fate of men from that old, old empire. I visited it and was moved...the remarkable juxtaposition of slavic and teutonic names really made an impact on me.

Phil

[John Gilinsky]

Phil : There are numerous reasons why Norman Stone's pioneering book written close to a generation ago and despite the post-1991 opening of relevant archives has not been replaced many of which have been stated on the GWF. One reason is that both Russians and other central eastern Europeans as well as former Cold War enemies are clearly far more interested in how and why the USSR and the Warsaw Pact functioned or didn't than how a discredited, "corrupt" imperial old world empire functioned or didn't work. Ironically the Stalinistic cult is furthered by the outpouring of archivally based research into this Soviet era leader. Moreover, modern Russians and the Russian mass media have become enamoured of everything of Imperial Russia especially Nicholas II's reign including the war which further ironically somewhat saturates the desire to know by replacing it with a desire to entertain and placate rather than legitimately educate. This media interest in history of course is a universal phenomenon not just strictly speaking Russian. There are HUGE gaps in our knowledge and appreciation of the Eastern Front overall and Imperial Russia's contributions to the war in particular (as indeed this goes for most if not all of central / Eastern Europe). Let us hope that diligent both Russian and other graduate students do their dissertations on relevant Eastern Front topics so that we can benefit from the fruits of their archivally based labours in the years and decades to come.

John

Toronto

[marsyao]

hi, PJA, I have a question, in your previous post you mentioned "As for 1915, the sanitatsbericht gives German battle casualties as 663,739 killed, wounded and missing on the Eastern Front for that year." , could you also tell me the German battle casualties in 1914, 1916 1917 and 1918 on the Eastern Front from sanitatsbericht? Thanks!

[phil andrade]

1914 : 149,418 ; 1916 : 383,505; 1917 : 238,581; 1918 : 33,568;

Beware...the figure for 1918 is grossly inflated by including large numbers of sick; to a much lesser degree, so is that for 1917.

To illustrate this, here are the figures for killed and missing in action only, year by year, with the proportion these represented of the total losses in bracketts:

1914 : 50,030 killed/missing (33.55%) . 1915 : 148,264 killed/missing (22.3%). 1916 : 84,876 killed/missing (22.1%)

1917 : 33,497 killed/missing (8.7%). 1918 : 991 killed/missing (3%).

You can see that there was virtually no fighitng to speak of in 1918 : probably fewer than five or six thousand combat casualties proper; for 1917, the outright battle casualties were probably in the order of 150,000.

I am at a loss to understsand why the sanitatsbericht, the most meticulously compiled source of data you could ever hope to find, should have inflated its numbers for casualties with so many sick and non battle injuries in periods of quiescence on the front line. You see the same phenomenon for the Western Front during the quiet months : relatvely small numbers of killed and missing and a huge number of "wounded" who were surely sick. In periods of peak battle intensity, the reverse occurs.

Phil

[marsyao]

Thanks!

[John Gilinsky]

Phil: Human nature helps to probably explain a goodly number of those many "wounded" in relativley quiet periods on both fronts. Military medical doctors (vast overwhelming majority civilians in uniforms) recognizing the stresses of war and feeling sympathy for soldiers and other military personnel who just wanted to get out of it for a period of time to see their families or relatives labelled them "wounded" rather than "sick" as such front area doctors knew that military bureacrats would very quickly catch on to this "doctor induced disease" and take actions. No one would question contusions, severe bruising, fractures, etc....caused of course by taking cover during say a bombardment. A few kindly words with the M.O., some strategically placed bandages and presto - a ticket to home or at the very least safe rear areas. This reminds me of the WW2 German phenomenon of diagnosing or actually deliberately NOT diagnosing "shell shock" or any other mental stress disorder in soldiers: besides fearing being put of one's misery by official decress (life unworthy of life) the doctors had a neat solution: stomach disorders/ulcers!

John

Toronto

[marsyao]

1914 : 50,030 killed/missing (33.55%) . 1915 : 148,264 killed/missing (22.3%). 1916 : 84,876 killed/missing (22.1%)

1917 : 33,497 killed/missing (8.7%). 1918 : 991 killed/missing (3%).

One more question to you, Mr PJA, from the above statistics, German lost about 300,000 killed/missing between 1914-1918 on East Front, does this include the POW? I know Russsian capturared around 160,000 German in the WWI?

And I remember in one of your previous post

you mentioned "The German counterpart of the CWGC gives statistical info for the number of German war dead buried throughout the World, and while I cannot remember the exact figures, I do remember being taken back at the number of burials for 1914-1918 in Poland and the former Soviet Union. I think it was about 450,000 for Poland and in excess of 100,000 for the Soviet Union ...definitely more than half a million for the Russian front 1914-1917", Do you know what causes the difference between this statistics and those given by sanitatsbericht ?

[phil andrade]

Yes, the missing include PoWs. The Russians claimed in excess of 150,000 German prisoners. The Germans themselves did not admit to losing that many...this disparity is apparent in the claims of all armies, in that war and in others. But your comments are entirely valid....there is a huge difference between the evidence provided by German war graves and the number of deaths recorded in the sanitatsbericht.. Moreover, the German government itself published regular casualty statistics that admitted to many more deaths than the SB. Remember, the killed compiled in the SB refers only to those known to have been killed outright on the field : no inclusion here of died from wounds, or for the large number of missing who were actually killed. But even with those caveats, I am still at a loss to account for the very low number of fatalities recorded in the sanitastsbericht. This source tabulates the German killed in action on the Eastern Front : 173,840. The missing are reported as 143,818. Even if half of these missing were killed, and even if the one million plus reported as wounded included 100,000 who were to died from their wounds, the total deaths would still be below 350,000...we might add on as many as 50,000 for non battle deaths from disease and accident etc....and we still do not account for the difference. The sanitatsbericht itself acknowledges this disparity, and makes no secret of the fact that at least two million German soldiers died in the war. There was no deliberate attempt at concealement, just an obsession with accuracy so meticulous that only certainties were reported, which might tend to understate the actual mortality. If I could read German, I would make a better account of myself in this answer, for I am truly bewildered.

My belief, for what it's worth, is that German battle casualties against the Russians 1914-17 were in excess of 1.5 million, of whom 400,000 were killed or died from wounds, 1,000,000 wounded and 150,000 taken prisoner. Their total battle deaths for all fronts amounted to about 1.75 million, with an additional 250,000 non battle deaths....two million in all. The German sanitatsbericht gives a total of 1.2 million deaths from all causes, but only up to 31 July 1918.

Incidentally, in the Franco-Prussian war of 1870-71, the same meticulous approach to battle casualties tabulated 17,572 Prussians killed in action, a figure that was subsequently increased to 32,000 when the died from wounds and missing presumed dead were accounted for. I suspect that the same sort of differential, for the same sort of reasons, needs to be applied to the SB 1914-1918, which probably used the earlier method as its provenance.

Phil

[phil andrade]

Phil: Human nature helps to probably explain a goodly number of those many "wounded" in relativley quiet periods on both fronts. Military medical doctors (vast overwhelming majority civilians in uniforms) recognizing the stresses of war and feeling sympathy for soldiers and other military personnel who just wanted to get out of it for a period of time to see their families or relatives labelled them "wounded" rather than "sick" as such front area doctors knew that military bureacrats would very quickly catch on to this "doctor induced disease" and take actions. No one would question contusions, severe bruising, fractures, etc....caused of course by taking cover during say a bombardment. A few kindly words with the M.O., some strategically placed bandages and presto - a ticket to home or at the very least safe rear areas. This reminds me of the WW2 German phenomenon of diagnosing or actually deliberately NOT diagnosing "shell shock" or any other mental stress disorder in soldiers: besides fearing being put of one's misery by official decress (life unworthy of life) the doctors had a neat solution: stomach disorders/ulcers!

John

Toronto

A very good and discerning answer, John...I admit that I had not conseidered that....but not enough to account for the massive numbers we're discussing, surely ?

Phil

[marsyao]

PJA, again, you are very helpful

[phil andrade]

If only I could be more informative ! Not being able to read German is a huge disadvantage.

I think guesswork has to prevail here.

I had always assumed that three quarters of all German battle deaths were on the Western Front......now I'm not so sure. Maybe two thirds ?

It's surprising to learn that there are 50,000 German soldiers buried in Romania from the battles of 1916-17, not to mention, IIRC, 16,000 in Italy. There were also losses suffered fighting against the Serbs, and from token contingents who fought alongside Turks and Bulgars.

The more the magnitude of Austo-Hungarian, German and Turkish losses against the Russians becomes apparent, the more plausible Krivosheev's estimate of Russian casualties becomes.

Phil

[marsyao]

hi, PJA, yes it is surprised to know that there were 16,000 German were killed in Italy, considering they only fought one major battle there, looks like Italian also deserved more credit, and do you know how many Germans were buried in the Eastern Prussian?

[John Gilinsky]

Marsyao: "East Prussia" was so devastated between 1914 to the early spring of 1915 and especially during 1944 again that cemeteries and graves from WWI were either greatly neglected or wilfully destroyed. Neverthess your best bet is to contact the official German War Graves service to ascertain which cemeteries are geographically located in the region you are interested in and then obatin current day official stats for German WWI burials in such cemeteries. I hope that they can repsond in a fullsome and timely manner. Can you keep us posted here what the results of your inquiries are?

Tx,

John

Toronto

[marsyao]

John, I know what happened in the East Prussian, I just hope The German counterpart of the CWGC keeps the record, and if Mr PJA know these record, it could save me a lot of trouble