As you know, the battles of the Great Patriotic War in some sectors of the front literally turned into meat grinders, where it was very difficult to survive. At key moments of the confrontation between the Red Army and the Wehrmacht, the number of ruined human lives increased sharply.
Having calculated the ratio of irrecoverable losses to the total number of participants in a particular battle, we can name the approximate mortality rate in battles. We are talking about the killed, those who died of disease, cold and hunger, as well as the missing. It should be borne in mind that the death toll is one of the most controversial issues in the entire history of the Great Patriotic War. In the absence of data on irrecoverable losses in Soviet and Russian sources, figures from German historians were used.
Battle for Moscow
In terms of the percentage of damage suffered by one of the parties, the battle for Moscow turned out to be the most difficult at the initial stage of the war. The Red Army, according to some information, lost about 50.12% of its soldiers here. It is believed that the combined forces of the three fronts on the outskirts of Moscow numbered 1,250,000, and 626,519 Red Army soldiers were killed, died or gone missing.
The losses of the Germans on the outskirts of the Soviet capital were also among the largest in the history of the war. As of November 1941, the commanders of Army Group Center had 1 929 406 privates and officers. Irretrievable losses amounted to about 460,000 or 23.8%. Assessing the results of the battle, the commander of the 2nd Panzer Army, Heinz Guderian, later noted that "the strength and morale" of his soldiers were "broken" precisely in the battle for Moscow.
Stalingrad battle
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The great battle on the Volga was a huge tragedy for both peoples involved in the war. The exact figures of losses in Stalingrad and in the adjacent territories are unlikely to be named sometime. However, according to the available figures, out of 1,140,000 Russians who participated in the battle, 478,741 people died, i.e. the mortality rate was 41.99%.
For the Germans, the Battle of Stalingrad was not an easy walk either. About 300,000 Wehrmacht soldiers and officers did not return alive from the battle. In total, 987,300 of the Fuhrer's subordinates participated in the battle, thus almost every third person died.
There are other estimates as well. The revisionist historian Boris Sokolov, for example, believes that the Soviet government deliberately underestimated the irrecoverable losses by three times.
"Probably the figure of more than 2 million killed and missing Soviet soldiers during the Battle of Stalingrad from July 17, 1942 to February 2, 1943, is closer to the truth than official figures," the researcher says. Sokolov also writes that bombs and famine killed 100,000 civilians in Stalingrad.
Berlin operation
At the final stage of the Great Patriotic War, the battle for Berlin unfolded. During the attack on the German capital, the Red Army suffered relatively small losses - 78,291 people, which amounted to 3.3% of the total number of personnel involved (2,350,000 people). The Germans suffered a catastrophic defeat. Soviet historians report that Berlin was defended by 1,000,000 people. 400,000 of them were killed, i.e. the mortality rate reached 40%.
Most of the destroyed Germans, according to the reports of the Soviet command, were on the account of the troops of the 1st Belorussian Front, which from April 16 to May 13 killed 232,726 enemy soldiers. However, a significant overstatement of the figures is possible.
The Battle of Berlin entered the Guinness Book of Records as the largest battle in human history.
Battle of Kursk
In the bloody clash on the Kursk Bulge in the summer of 1943, almost every fifth soldier of the Red Army died. The Soviet command concentrated 1,300,000 people in these places, and the Germans - 900,000. Irretrievable losses of the Russians amounted to 254,470 people (19.57%), the enemy lost 103,600 soldiers killed (mortality 11.51%).
The Battle of the Kursk Bulge marked a radical turning point in the course of World War II - after it, the losses of the Red Army in major battles in percentage terms no longer exceeded those of Germany.