The Il-80 is an airborne command post produced by the Ilyushin Design Bureau in the late 1980s based on the Il-86 aircraft.

On May 29, 1985, the aircraft made its first flight from Pridacha airfield. It was flown by experienced test pilot Stanislav Bliznyuk.

In the event of an armed conflict using nuclear weapons the aircraft will be at the disposal of the Armed Forces. When creating the model, measures were taken to reduce the impact nuclear explosion, for example, a minimum number of hatches, the absence of portholes.

Visually, the aircraft differs from its prototype in the presence of a large overhead compartment located in the forward part of the fuselage, which houses various electronic equipment. Choice original type The design of the aircraft is due to the large internal volumes of the Il-86 passenger cabin, which easily accommodated special equipment. There are no windows in the Il-80, and on the wing there are dopplers with electrical equipment. Some aircraft have a boom for in-flight refueling. The exhaust cable antenna is located in the tail section, its length is about 8 kilometers. It is used to communicate with submarines. Measures have been taken to protect the aircraft from nuclear strike, which has already been stated above. Other design features include a reduced number of access hatches in the fuselage.

A total of four such aircraft were produced. All of them are located in the Separate Aviation Relay and Control Squadron of the 8th Aviation Division, and since 1997 they have been transferred to the 3rd Aviation Squadron of military unit 15650.

Aircraft number 93645 (86147) took part in the aerial part of the parade in Moscow in honor of the 65th anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War.

IL-80 video

Il-80 took part in the passage over Zhukovsk on August 12, 2012 in honor of the 100th anniversary of the Russian Air Force.

A huge humpback whale swimming through the sky with a strong roar can cause an adrenaline rush in anyone lucky enough to watch its flight. Appearance this machine stands out business card Chkalovsky airfield. As for the insides, we can say that they keep a real state secret; many mysteries still remain unsolved. Air command posts– 4 Il-86VKP aircraft are based on a civilian model and in our time remain one of the closed models of domestic aircraft.

The model was based on an Il-86 in 144 scale from Zvezda.

Despite the external similarity of all four Il-86VKP, they cannot be called twins. In addition to the absence or presence of a refueling boom, they differ in the number, shape and location of various antennas.

As already mentioned, the model does not have windows. Since the prototype lacks 5 of the 8 doors and a cargo hatch, the designers also removed them. But a hump appeared that was made of epoxy resin. At the rear, stegosaurus antenna plates, characteristic of 86147, were added. They were cut from a plastic travel card. The gargrot type antenna extending from the keel consists of a sprue ground down to half. Two similar antennas, created from resin, are in turn located on the lower part of the aircraft's fuselage, behind the middle landing gear.

The creation of suspended nacelles of turbogenerators is the most difficult stage airplane model assembly. To create them, a search was carried out for a geometric basis, which ended with a complex of deep plastic operations of external fuel lines from the KC-97A Stratofreighter. The pylons are based on fragments of tracks from the Su-27 model.

The refueling rod, other tubes and PVD antennas consist of drawn sprues of various diameters and shapes. The model was painted with Revell enamel: all white surfaces were blown out with it. The rest was painted with acrylic. Blue stripes were hand-painted along the side using masks. The “Aeroflot” inscription and numbers are made with homemade decals.

As a result, the production of the model took a little over a year of work, which was regularly interrupted by the construction of other models.

IL-80 characteristics:

China's losses in World War II are estimated at a figure that is, without exaggeration, astronomical: 35 million people

On the eve of the Beijing parade in honor of the 70th anniversary of China's victory in the war with Japan, news agencies did their best: they wrote about unprecedented security measures, the unprecedented purity of Beijing air, and even about the specially trained falcons and monkeys involved.

This has truly never happened in the Celestial Empire, which has seen everything in its 4 thousand years. Around Beijing, factories have been closed, construction has been stopped, and all sources of the thick smog familiar to Beijing residents have been blocked. All resources have been mobilized up to birds of prey, to scare away other birds, and trained macaques - to destroy bird nests, throwing them from the trees around the airfield where parade squadrons take off.

It reminded me of the late 80s: somehow Chief Editor Komsomolskaya Pravda removed a piece from the page with the headline “There are fewer Chinese.” The conversation in it was about a crashed helicopter with four Chinese on board, which somewhat grotesquely echoed the words famous physicist, where he reported, among other things, that “there are as many Chinese as there are us, plus another billion!” The people at the meeting, understandably, laughed: “Well, there really are four fewer people?!” No malice, of course, just an ineradicable desire to look for paradoxes and laugh everywhere.

But now, over the years, I see that behind all these jokes and humor, we have missed very important things in our picture of the world. For example, China’s losses in World War II are estimated at a figure that is, without exaggeration, astronomical: 35 million people. And I will not forget the amazement I felt when I heard it from Valentin FALINA, former head of the international department of the CPSU Central Committee and the USSR Ambassador to Germany. Because in all available sources such as Wikipedia, a completely different figure is given on this score - “only” 5.8 million. To this objection, the reserved Valentin Mikhailovich exclaimed:

- Bullshit! In 1991, I asked this question personally to Jiang Zemin. " Exact numbers no,” he replied, “but certainly not less than 35 million.” But there are no numbers because the Japanese destroyed the civilian population, conducting all kinds of experiments on them. They took, for example, an area of ​​40 by 40 square kilometers into a ring and did not allow any medicines, food, or fresh water. And the people there died out, every single one..."

Valentin Mikhailovich generally has his own opinion about dates:

— The day the Second World War began is considered to be September 1, 1939, when Germany attacked Poland. AND green light allegedly sparked the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, a non-aggression treaty of August 23, 1939. And for some reason, the fact that Japan started a war against China back in 1931 is not recognized as the beginning of World War II. Although by the time German Wehrmacht crossed the Polish border, almost 20 million Chinese were already dead!

And in this unclean manipulation of facts, Western historians come into conflict even with the assessment of Franklin Delano Roosevelt himself. When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 9, 1941, Roosevelt, in an address to the nation, said that the attack of Japan on China and Germany on Poland, and then the USSR, were all links in one chain.

“According to the documents cited there, Japan decided to attack the USSR in... 1923,” continues Falin. — And in 1931, they summed up the implementation of the first five-year plan in the USSR and realized: the Soviet Union is creating a powerful industry, and if we do not capture Manchuria and Northern China, and then Baikal, Vladivostok - Khabarovsk, Omsk - Novosibirsk, until we modernize our army, They will never succeed in this. This, I repeat, is 1931.

And with the date of the end of the war, everything is completely funny with them: the Second World War ended, as the Americans themselves say, on September 2, 1945, with the signing of the act of surrender by Japan. Why then did it begin with Germany’s attack on Poland? Where is the logic here?

And yesterday at the parade, Xi Jinping announced these mournful figures for all to hear: in the world war against fascism, China lost 35 million human lives, Soviet Union - 27 million. It is impossible to comprehend them. Which doesn't mean that we, normal people, should not constantly try to do this - isn’t this the guarantee that something like this will never happen again?

But I can’t help but think that all these unimaginable sacrifices have long been written off as scrap - especially when I see that there were no representatives of Western democracies at the Chinese parade. Just as they were not present in Moscow at the Victory Parade.

The Second World War was a disaster for all participating countries. Bloody battles took place in several parts of the planet at once. And wherever the examining eye looks, there is fear, horror and many deaths that do not seem unusual. Assessing what happened, the numbers now inspire amazement. And this applies not only to Europe; China’s losses in World War II were no less great.

The Russian-speaking population knows its history very well, but in order to appreciate the true scale of the disaster, it is worth taking in the whole picture and looking at the people of other countries who also suffered irreparable losses. Thus, the Asian side is briefly discussed in textbooks, although this war, which began two years before the Second World War and ended only in 1945, turned out to be no less terrible than the Second World War.

China's role in World War II

The role of this confrontation can be understood by looking at the history of the conflict between China and Japan.

It all started long before World War II; relations worsened at the end of the 19th century. In 1894, Japan carried out aggressive campaigns, annexing:

• Korea, having long-standing plans for it. She was under Chinese protection.

This became the first step towards the development of a full-scale conflict.

Realizing its power after annexing Korea, Japan was unable to moderate its imperial ambitions, which led to pressure on China. This led to constant armed clashes. The political situation within the country was already very turbulent. Already in the 19th century it was thundering with revolutions; at the turn of the century the Empire finally collapsed. This led to mass uprisings, the division of the state into separate parts, the loss of territories that had long wanted independence and decided not to miss the chance. The Civil War also began, in which supporters of the Kuomintang government and the Communists clashed.

Taking advantage of the moment, Japan invades Chinese territory and quickly takes Manchuria and Inner Mongolia.

In 1937, the war officially began. While Japan captured one city after another, annexing Shanghai, Beijing and Nanjing within a year, the country tried to gather strength for the fight. In conditions of civil confrontation, this is not easy, because the parties had difficulty getting on the same side of the barricades. Moreover, no military power was not observed in China.

The command was far from the most professional, " Great Army"there was no such thing, because there was no common country. Foreign volunteers helped - the PRC received help from the USA and the USSR. Even most of weapon was decommissioned from Nazi Germany.

Japan fought against individual pockets of resistance and created a republic, which was called the “Wang Jingwei Regime” after the leader of one of the sides in the Civil War - the Kuomintang Party. It participated on the side of Japan and included, for example, the Mengjiang National Army, consisting of Chinese, which defeated its compatriots in 1937 in the Battle of Taiyuan.

Everything changed in 1941. Deliveries from the United States under Lend-Lease began, we managed to acquire equipment and ammunition, in addition to this, American troops began fighting with Japan to help the Allies. Many Japanese forces went to fight the USA. Also, to protect their colonies, British troops landed in support of the PRC.

Despite this support, the situation took an unexpected turn. In 1942, Japan captured Burma, where weapons supplies from the allies were taking place. As a result, China remained cut off from them and the army quickly felt a lack of ammunition.

Meanwhile, Japan continued to fight, moving further inland, using more and more cruel species weapons - chemical and biological. In 1943, the country was on the brink of disaster, but continued to hold out and restrain Japan from completely seizing territories and approaching the borders of the Soviet Union, which was already at war with Germany. On its territory, Nazi troops suffered major defeat near Stalingrad.

The PRC held out on its own until 1944. After this, the allies who came to the rescue were able to oust the Japanese from the occupied territories. In 1945, the Soviet Union had already been liberated from German troops and was marching on Berlin, and some troops were transferred to Asia. Thus, through joint efforts, the troops of the Soviet Union, Great Britain, the USA and the almost completely exhausted Chinese ousted the Japanese troops.

September 2, 1945 is the official date when the Second World War ended, because only the Second World War ended on May 9. This war was incomplete and was more of a defensive war, but China's participation in World War II contributed to human history. Thanks to the stopping of Japanese troops, the Allies won a number of victories in Asia and waters Pacific Ocean, putting an end to the ongoing nightmare that has gripped the whole world.

How many died

The Sino-Japanese War lasted about 8 years and due to the difficult history of the PRC at that time it is quite difficult to estimate the number of deaths. The country was experiencing internecine clashes, a large number of the population died not at the hands of the Japanese, but from hunger, disease and other factors. Data from the opposing communist and government forces varied.

Thus, according to the Chinese government, China lost about 35 million people during World War II - this includes troops and civilians.

A researcher from the United States, Rudolf Rumpel, a political scientist who studied the issue of methods and systems for exterminating the population during wars, speaks of more than 20 million, of which 12 are civilians. An organization that compiles statistics on everything that is happening and what has happened armed conflicts, speaks of at least 18 million civilians and 11 million military.

Japan's total losses, according to varying sources, amounted to about 800 thousand people.

How many Chinese did the Japanese kill?

They began to count the population, as mentioned earlier, only in 1950. In addition to this, researchers and historians from many other countries assess the data very differently. Therefore, it is not easy to say who is closest to reality. Also, do not forget that the government of a country – China in this case – can “embellish” even such information.

• 1.31 million people were killed.
• 1.753 million injured.
• 115 thousand people are missing.

Data from September 28 of the same year - 1.8 million died, the same number were injured or disappeared. That is, the losses amounted to more than 3 million people, and this is only in the army. Many foreign researchers prefer to talk about figures between 3 and 5 million military deaths, taking into account those who died due to illness.

Allied casualties

Losses allied forces during the Sino-Japanese War are not so great. However, if you look at the picture of World War II, they turned out to be no less, especially for the Soviet Union. main reason is related to the history of the PRC, because the first three years of participation in the war had to be dealt with on our own. There were other factors that influenced the number of victims. For example, unpreparedness for combat operations.

Compared to the First World War, Great Britain, for example, lost fewer soldiers. During the entire Second World War, about 400 thousand military personnel and about 70 thousand civilians were killed. The USSR became poorer by 27 million soldiers and civilians.

US losses were greater in World War II than in World War I. America helped the allies not only in Europe, but also in Africa, as well as China, fighting Japan. Most of the losses came from air force. The number of military deaths is estimated at about 407.5 thousand, in addition to this about 6 thousand civilians.

Civilian casualties

The actions of both sides of the conflict led to this. China could not attack and only defended itself, sacrificing thousands of its citizens just to delay the enemy. Command errors also led to avoidable casualties. As an example, history records a case when the army command in 1938 ordered the destruction of the dams that kept the Yellow River from overflowing. As a result, not only the Japanese suffered, but also hundreds of thousands of local residents.

Don't lose sight of the Japanese side either. Her troops presented themselves as cruel conquerors, and went down in history with their inhumanity, often carrying out “massacres” like the one that happened in Nanjing in 1937. This is one of the most brutal war crimes in the history of mankind. The troops also came running cruel treatment and the murders of thousands of prisoners of war, there is evidence of experiments on prisoners to create bacteriological weapons. You can learn more about this by reading about Unit 731.

The majority of all deaths in China during World War II were civilians.

The parties to the conflict still argue about how many people were killed in that massacre. Japan tends to understate data, sometimes tenfold, while China sometimes exaggerates.

China's weapons and how much equipment was destroyed

China's armament in World War II left much to be desired. There were few weapons before it due to the Civil War, and they were not produced. No one was preparing for full-scale hostilities with Japan. Allied supplies helped, offering not only weapons and ammunition, but also equipment along with specialists. Most of all this concerned airplanes and pilots. Tanks and other heavy equipment, mechanics and doctors also arrived, conducting regular training. Thanks to this, the PRC was able to level out its position a little when it began to produce equipment itself, albeit not large quantities.

In the beginning it was:

• 1.9 million soldiers and officers. Chiang Kai-shek had 300 thousand + 150 thousand partisans, about a million - the government, of which 45 thousand were partisans. The rest were volunteers.
• A little more than 500 aircraft, of which 305 are fighters. About half are unfit for flight. The planes were outdated, the crews had little experience and knowledge. There were no trained army reserves.

The United States supplied equipment, oil products, medicines, food and ammunition under Lend-Lease. Everything that was destroyed was not subject to payment; the rest could be sold to China or returned back to the United States.

Over the entire period the USSR brought:

• 1285 aircraft, including 777 fighters, about 400 bombers and a hundred training ones. At the beginning of the war, the entire army had about 150 aircraft.
• Guns – 1600 pcs.
• T-26, light tanks - 82 pcs.
• Heavy and light machine guns - 14 thousand pieces.
• Tractors and machines – 1850.

Considering that the Allies did not always send as much weapons as they asked for, as well as the number of dead, the superior weapons of Japan and other factors, it is difficult to say that there were enough supplies. China lost a significant part.

Reasons for huge losses

There are many reasons why so many people were killed:

• China was not ready for war.
• The command was unprofessional.
• There was almost no army, the preparation was poor. Japan was superior to the enemy in everything - motivation, professionalism, weapons, physical training, etc.
• There was a Civil War that did not stop during the Second World War.
• Japanese troops committed genocide against the Chinese.

Thus, both countries were to blame for the losses, especially among civilians, were so great.

The incompetence of the Chinese army leadership

Due to the fact that the country was split at the beginning of the war, the army command was completely ineffective and had difficulty making decisions. It was difficult to call the two opposing sides a cohesive army. No one agreed to temporary reconciliation, so defensive battles occurred in patches without coordinating actions with each other.

For this reason, most of the civilian population was left without protection, which the Japanese took advantage of.

The remaining military had almost no equipment, no strength, no motivation to continue fighting, and the Japanese army took any means to break the enemy. Therefore, the victory can be attributed to factors such as:

• The Japanese were outnumbered.
• The Chinese turned out to be resilient.
• Allied forces provided great support.

Could such victims have been avoided?

A study on this topic was conducted by the Study Center. It lasted about 10 years, during which time specialists visited about 95% of all settlements who were under Japanese occupation. About 80% of residents who witnessed those events were interviewed. This made it possible to obtain about 800 thousand evidence and a large layer of data about the Second World War.

Residents of such countries as:

1. Russia.
2. Japan.
3. Great Britain.
4. Taiwan.

To summarize, we can say that this large quantity the casualties could have been avoided. Because the Chinese command failed its army, the country found itself in a trap. An association warring parties could significantly unite the people and increase military power.

The divisions within the country turned out to be stronger than the threat of an external enemy. Therefore, no matter how inhumanely the Japanese army behaved, it cannot be solely blamed for what happened.

Conclusion

Speaking about the role of this war for world history, there is no doubt that it became one of the key ones. China took the blow and won this fight at great cost. It will never be possible to forget how the PRC got this victory. There is still no exact data on all the dead, but even the numbers currently available already make an eerie impression. Having realized that each individual unit in these brief reports was a person, the same as everyone else, the first thing that comes to mind is that this should not happen again. But now there are places where people continue to fight with each other for reasons that really don’t matter if you remember that the world is not divided into parts. And this unity is a value that needs to be nurtured and protected.

USSR and Russia at the slaughter. Human losses in the wars of the 20th century Sokolov Boris Vadimovich

Chinese losses

Chinese losses

Let's start with a country whose losses cannot be estimated even approximately. This is China. He waged war with Japan from July 7, 1937 until the Japanese surrender. In fact, the Sino-Japanese War can be considered an integral part of World War II. How many Chinese soldiers and civilians died from war-induced famines and epidemics, it is in principle impossible to accurately count. The first population census in China took place only in 1950, and mass mortality from famine and epidemics was characteristic of China and pre-war years, especially since in the 20-30s, as well as in the second half of the 40s, the country was engulfed in civil war. There are no demographic statistics or any reliable statistics on the losses of Chinese government troops and Mao Zedong's communist guerrillas in the fight against the Japanese.

Chinese troops, according to official data from the Chiang Kai-shek government on June 7, 1945, lost 1,310 thousand killed, 1,753 thousand wounded and 115 thousand missing in the war with Japan. According to a statement by the command of the army of National (Kuomintang) China on September 28, 1945, 1.8 million Chinese soldiers died in the war with Japan, and about 1.7 million more were wounded or went missing. Considering the losses of communist partisans and the dead among the missing, the total irrecoverable losses The Chinese armed forces certainly numbered more than 2 million. Urlanis, in particular, estimates the number of Chinese soldiers killed at 2.5 million. There is also a higher figure for the losses of the Chinese army at 4 million dead. It is possible that this estimate does not contradict the previous one, since it also includes soldiers who died of hunger and disease. The mortality rate from these factors was undoubtedly very high and could well be comparable to the mortality rate from combat causes.

As for the data on the losses of the Chinese civilian population, they are purely conditional. Thus, V. Erlikhman estimates them at 7.2 million people, and to the 2.5 million dead military personnel he adds another 300 thousand who died in captivity, obviously to total figure losses reached 10 million, although there is no reliable data on either the total number of Chinese prisoners or exactly how many of them died. There are also lower estimates. V.G. Petrovich estimates China's total losses at 5 million people. Obviously, here the losses of the civilian population are simply taken in the amount of army losses. There is much more high marks. So, Yu.V. Tavrovsky estimates the losses of the civilian population of China at 16 million dead, but in in this case the estimate was clearly made in such a way that the losses of the army and civilian population together would amount to 20 million people. There is also a higher figure for Chinese losses - 35 million dead, of which 20 million allegedly died before 1939 - during the great Sino-Japanese War that began in 1937 and during the armed incidents that preceded it in 1931-1937, after the Japanese occupation Manchuria. The fantastic nature of these figures is visible, so to speak, to the naked eye. In fact, the Chinese could not have lost less in a year and a half of the war with the Japanese than in the six and a half years of the subsequent war with the same Japanese. In fact, the 35 million figure includes both dead and wounded. This is the official casualty figure adopted in Communist China and consists of 20 million dead and 15 million wounded.

At the end of the war, Chinese troops accepted the surrender of Japanese troops numbering 1,280 thousand people. The Chinese armies opposing this group probably outnumbered it by 2-3 times. The maximum size of the army of the Kuomintang government of Chiang Kai-shek was 4.3 million people, of which no more than 800 thousand people took part in active hostilities. The communist troops of Mao Zedong, acting in alliance with the Kuomintang (which did not exclude periodic armed clashes between the communists and the Kuomintang), numbered about 1.3 million people in two armies (4th and 8th), formally subordinate to the Kuomintang command, and a number of irregular detachments. Of these forces, no more than 250 thousand people took part in battles with the Japanese. Chinese troops were many times inferior to the Japanese in firepower and level of training.

Here are the official data from the government of National (Kuomintang) China on the distribution of losses in killed and wounded by year, published at the end of 1944:

Table 21. Chinese losses in the war with Japan

According to later data published after the end of the civil war by the government Republic of China in Taiwan, the total losses of the Kuomintang army in the war with Japan amounted to 3238 thousand people, including 1797 thousand wounded, 1320 thousand killed and 120 thousand missing. This proportion between the number of wounded and killed, 1.36:1, proves that due to high level losses, the sanitary service in the Kuomintang army was quite weak, and they did not have time to evacuate the seriously wounded from the battlefield. It can be assumed that as a result of this, the proportion of those who died from wounds was small and could be, as in the Red Army, about 7%. Then total number those who died from wounds in the Kuomintang army can be estimated at 126 thousand people. Total Kuomintang losses in Last year war, from July 1944 to September 1945, can be estimated by subtracting from 3238 thousand the losses killed and wounded in the previous period (2802.8 thousand) and the losses of missing persons (120 thousand). That turns out to be 315 thousand killed and wounded.

Losses of communist troops in the fight against the Japanese official statistics estimates at 580 thousand people, which is 5.4 times lower than our estimate of Kuomintang losses. This proportion seems to us quite plausible and reflects the real contribution of the Communists and Kuomintang to the victory over Japan. Since the sanitary service in Mao Zedong's army was hardly better than in Chiang Kai-shek's army, the proportion of killed in the losses of communist troops could not be lower than one third. Then total those killed here can be estimated at 193 thousand people, and the number of those who died from wounds, also taking their share as 7%, at 27 thousand people.

The majority of the 120 thousand missing Kuomintang soldiers should obviously be classified as prisoners. The number of prisoners from the communist army can be estimated at 22 thousand people. Taking this into account, the total number of Chinese prisoners can be estimated at 142 thousand people. How many of them died in captivity is unknown, but the sometimes found figures of 400 thousand Chinese military personnel who died in Japanese captivity are clearly absurd, since they far exceed the total number of Chinese prisoners of war. Considering that many Chinese prisoners entered collaborationist formations, the number of deaths in captivity could not have been high. They also look significantly exaggerated official figures The PRC reports the losses of Chinese collaborationist forces at 1.18 million killed and wounded. After all, their role in hostilities was purely secondary. We are talking primarily about the army of Manchukuo led by Emperor Pu Yi, the army of the Provisional Government of the Republic of China in Beijing led by Wang Kemin and the government of the Republic of China in Nanjing led by Wang Jingwei. In total, until the end of the war and mainly during the surrender in September 1945, the troops of Chiang Kai-shek’s government and the communist troops of Mao Zedong captured 950 thousand collaborators. Considering that by the end of the war the collaborationist forces had reached their maximum strength of 900 thousand people, it is quite incredible that their losses amounted to 1.18 million people, including 432 thousand dead, taking into account that they mainly carried out security functions and almost did not participate in battles. I think that the total number of those killed among the collaborators, together with the Chinese soldiers who died in Japanese captivity, is unlikely to exceed 100 thousand people.

The Kuomintang government claimed that a total of 5,787,352 civilians were killed or wounded in the fighting. Of this number, 335,934 died and 426,249 were wounded as a result of Japanese bombing. The remaining civilians, 5,025,169, were victims of ground fighting and war crimes by the Japanese. All civilian casualty figures appear to be greatly exaggerated. Japanese aviation, unlike the Anglo-American one, did not have strategic bombers, and its activity was limited by an acute shortage of pilots. Meanwhile, if you believe existing estimates and official data, the results of Japanese strategic bombing in terms of the number of casualties were comparable to the Anglo-American bombing of Germany. But one must rather conclude that the number of victims is significantly overestimated.

Equally questionable is the number of Chinese civilian casualties during ground combat. They were much less intense than on the European fronts, and, it turns out, there were much more casualties than in Europe. The same picture applies to Japanese war crimes, the largest of which is considered to be the massacre of the population of Nanjing by Japanese soldiers in December 1937. The traditional figure is 300 thousand killed. Other estimates range from 155 thousand to 500 thousand. However, as Russian historian V.E. rightly notes. Molodyakov, all testimony about massacre civilians, perpetrated by the Japanese in Nanjing, are post-war and do not inspire much confidence. Thus, one of the witnesses who spoke before the Tokyo tribunal during the trial of the main Japanese war criminals, describing “ mass shooting prisoners and civilians on the banks of the Yangtze on December 18, 1937,” reported that 57,418 people were killed there. The witness was among them, but escaped with a slight injury and was able to hide in a cave, from where he watched what was happening. His testimony was accepted by the tribunal, which did not doubt the figure given. It's not so much the order as the accuracy that's questionable five digit number, before last person. It is interesting to know how a wounded witness who hid in a cave was able to so accurately determine the number of his fellow sufferers?

In addition to the testimony, the tribunal was presented with information about mass graves carried out in and around Nanjing by the Red Swastika Society (Chinese Red Cross) and the small charity organization Chongshantang shortly after the capture of the city. These figures were 43,071 and 112,261 people respectively, i.e. a total of slightly more than 155 thousand people. Both organizations made explanatory notes, indicating in them the place and time of the main burials, the number and gender of those buried and the main places where corpses were found. However, all these documents were prepared backdating, almost ten years after the events, based on sources unknown to us, no contemporary documents were presented to the tribunal. From the Chonshantan documents it follows that this organization, with a funeral team of 12 people, without vehicles or bulldozers, buried an average of 2,600 people a day. From the point of view of common sense, this looks like pure fantasy, so many authors consider this information to be a post-war fabrication. As for the data of the Red Swastika Society, which is much more credible, it appears to be true, but includes mainly Chinese soldiers who died in the defense of Nanjing. It should be noted that the data of the Red Swastika Society contains very few references to buried women and children, on mass destruction which (though without specific statistics) everyone insists official versions. Counting the number of victims of mass tragedies during war involves many specific difficulties: for example, identifying the dead takes a long time, while sanitary conditions(prevention of epidemics, etc.) require speedy burial corpses.

In general, we can agree with these conclusions, but with one reservation. The total number of victims of the Nanjing massacre, as well as the storming of Nanjing, can be estimated approximately equal to the number persons buried by the Red Swastika Society, i.e. 43.1 thousand people. As for the Chongshantang society, there are doubts that it buried anyone at all.

However, contrary to the opinion of V.E. Molodyakov and a number of Japanese revisionist historians, among those killed in Nanjing, it was not Kuomintang army servicemen who predominated, but civilians. After all, the assault on Nanjing, unlike the three-month siege of Shanghai, lasted only 4 days (from December 10 to 13). At the same time, the main part of the Chinese garrison successfully retreated beyond the Yangtze even before the assault began. Only 2 thousand soldiers were captured. Even taking into account the fact that the Japanese did not take prisoner but killed some of the unarmed soldiers who fell into their hands, the number of casualties among Chinese soldiers could hardly have reached 40 thousand people.

In total, as we remember, in 1937 the Kuomintang troops lost 366,382 people killed and wounded. In total, during the Sino-Japanese War, the total losses in killed and wounded amounted to 3,117 thousand people, including 1,797 thousand wounded and 1,320 thousand killed. If we assume that approximately the same proportion between killed and wounded remained in each year of the war, then in 1937 Chinese casualties should have amounted to 156 thousand people. Taking into account that the main battles took place in 1937 in the Shanghai area, and the losses of Chinese killed during the defense of Nanjing could be 20 times less than during the defense of Shanghai, and that, in addition, the Kuomintang troops suffered some losses in 1937 also in Northern and Central China (at least 10%), the losses killed in Nanjing could amount to 6-7 thousand people. Accordingly, 36-37 thousand civilians were killed in the city by Japanese soldiers who burst into it, and 36-37 thousand civilians also fell victim to artillery shelling, which is about 8 times less traditional assessment in 300 thousand dead. It is likely that the total number of Chinese civilians killed in combat is unlikely to significantly exceed 1 million throughout the war.

Japanese losses in China in 1937 amounted to 70 thousand killed and wounded. The ratio of casualties killed and wounded between the Kuomintang and Japanese troops in 1937 it was 5.2:1. It can be assumed that due to much less than China, absolute value The battle casualty ratio for Japanese casualties was lower than for Chinese casualties and may have approached the classic 3:1 wounded-to-killed ratio. Then the number of killed Japanese soldiers in 1937 can be estimated at 17.5 thousand people, and the ratio of Chinese and Japanese casualties is 8.9:1, which is close to the ratio of casualties between the Wehrmacht and the Red Army.

That the ratio of casualties between the wounded and killed in the Japanese army in the Chinese theater of operations was close to 3:1 is proven by the available Japanese data on losses in individual battles. Thus, in the battles near Shanghai in January - February 1932, the Japanese army lost 738 killed and 2257 wounded (ratio 3.1:1), during the fighting in Guangdong in October 1938 - 173 killed and 493 wounded (2.8 :1), in the Wuhan operation (June - November 1938) Japanese losses amounted to about 9.5 thousand killed and died from wounds and about 26 thousand wounded (2.7: 1, and excluding those who died from wounds from the number of killed - not less than 3:1).

The total losses of the Chinese armed forces, Kuomintang and communist, killed and died from wounds, can be estimated at 1166 thousand people, and with losses among those who died in captivity and collaborationist formations - at 1266 thousand people. It is much more difficult to estimate the number of Chinese military personnel who have died from disease. It was certainly in equally significant both among the Kuomintang and communist, and among the collaborationist troops, and probably many times exceeded the number of those who died from wounds. However, accurate statistics of military personnel who died from diseases were hardly kept at all, since they were placed in civilian hospitals. We estimate the number of deaths from wounds in the ranks of the Chinese anti-Japanese armies at 153 thousand people. Chinese researcher Ho Ping-ti puts the number of deaths from disease at 1.5 million people. It is impossible to estimate the degree of reliability of the estimate of 1.5 million people, but in the absence of another, we accept it. We take the total loss of life of the Chinese army at 2.8 million people. Purely conditionally, we will accept that half of the losses in those who died from disease occurred in anti-Japanese, and half in pro-Japanese Chinese formations.

Chinese sources, as we have seen, seriously exaggerate the number of civilians killed by the Japanese army. I roughly estimate the losses of Chinese civilians during the fighting at 1 million people.

It should be kept in mind that between 1937 and 1945, tens of millions of Chinese died from hunger and disease. However, these deaths were an everyday reality in China throughout the first half of the 20th century. The situation was aggravated by the civil war that raged in the country since the early 20s. There is no objective data that in 1937-1945 mortality from famine and epidemics increased, just as there is no data on what was the absolute size of mortality from these factors in the pre-war, and even in post-war years when the civil war resumed.

We estimate the total losses of China in 1937-1945 in killed and killed at 3.8 million people, of which 2.8 million people are losses of the armed forces.