World War II Casualties of The Soviet Union - Causes

Causes

The Red Army suffered catastrophic losses of men and equipment during the first months of the German invasion., In the spring of 1941 Stalin ignored the warnings of his intelligence services of a planned German invasion and refused to put the Armed forces on alert. The units in the border regions were not prepared to face the German onslaught and were caught by surprise. Large numbers of Soviet soldiers were captured and many perished due to the brutal mistreatment of POWs by the Nazis U.S. Army historians maintain the high Soviet losses can be attributed to 'less efficient medical services and the Soviet tactics, which throughout the war tended to be expensive in terms of human life"

Russian scholars attribute the high civilian death toll to the Nazi Generalplan Ost which treated the Soviet people as "subhuman". Contemporary Russian sources use the terms "genocide" and "premeditated extermination" when referring to civilian losses in the occupied USSR. To suppress the partisan units the Nazi occupation forces engaged in a campaign of brutal reprisals against innocent civilians. The extensive fighting destroyed agricultural land, infrastructure, and whole towns, leaving much of the population homeless and without food. The Nazis confiscated food stocks which resulted in famine in the occupied regions. During the war Soviet civilians were taken to Germany as forced laborers under inhuman conditions.