Anthony Beevor banned

[K. A. Pital]

Yeah, and I actually found the estimate that was off in Stalingrad - see above, it is the number of executed for deserting.

[Mange]

Yeah, and I actually found the estimate that was off in Stalingrad - see above, it is the number of executed for deserting.

The figures you cited are from an NKVD report from October 1942 covering only the period August 1 to October 1942. Beevor didn't pluck the numbers from thin air, but they're from the Russian colonel Krivosheyev's book "Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century" (1997). I've seen higher Russian estimates than Krivosheyev's. Also, not every "deserter" (don't know what to call them) were arrested by the NKVD/Red Army barrier troops, but were summarily executed, shelled or shot en masse.

[K. A. Pital]

Krivosheev's data on losses has been found to be notoriously inaccurate in some aspects; I would assume this is one of them. I haven't seen any estimates much higher than Krivosheev (157k), and I have actually been thinking that most of these were executed in 1941, during the mass panic and desertions. The number is most certainly wrong, though. Because Bochkov's direct report to Stalin on Army executions and trials by military tribunals in 1941 lists 90 322 convicted soldiers, from this number 31 327 - death penalty. Beevor also speaks of people convicted by military tribunals and sentenced to death.

I mean, if 31 327 were condemned to death penalty in the entirety of the collapsing front for the entire period of 22.06 to 31.12 - and 1941 was an unmitigated disaster - how could there be 13 500 people condemned to death just in Stalingrad in Autumn? That's clearly nonsense.

I think Krivosheev's data is simply wrong, it's not a matter of "estimates".

Bear in mind NKVD units operated under the military tribunals, which means Bochkov's 31 327 executed soldiers include all NKVD and non-NKVD executions, with a roughly 60% of NKVD executions for 1941. So even if we apply the same dynamic to Stalingrad, we'd get 2 000 executed at most.

[Patroklos]

Does anyone have Krivosheev's book handy to check his sources?

[Zinegata]

Does anyone have Krivosheev's book handy to check his sources?

That's half of the problem. Krivosheev's not very candid about his sources to begin with; which is why it took a while to figure out that his tank "losses" and production included rebuilt tanks. So when you see an enormous number of Soviet tanks being "lost", many of those may have just been damaged and were just going back to the factory to be rebuilt two, three, or even more times.

The other half of the problem is that a lot of establishment Russian historians want higher loss figures - because it's part of the "West owes the Russians a blood debt" narrative.