Corporal punishment for a Soviet civilian by German soldiers
Undated
Museum Berlin-Karlshorst, T. Melnik Collection



Soviet women load stones for road construction
Ukraine, July 1943
State Film and Photography Archive, Krasnogorsk


Transporting a corpse to the cemetery
Leningrad, March/April 1942
Private property of Boris Kudojarov

The Soviet Civilian Population in Wartime

From the very beginning, the withdrawal of traditional protective measures for civilians was an important aspect of the war against the Soviet Union. The fighting was carried out without any concern for the civilian population, which was sometimes the actual target of military operations. After the country was occupied this population became the casualty of a politically-willed strategy of starvation. The Soviet appeal to engage in partisan fighting extended the war activity even more to civilians.

The war claimed many civilian victims also behind the front lines and occupied areas. Thirteen million people fled from the occupied territory into the Soviet hinterland. The goal of maintaining a modern armaments industry in the hinterland could only be accomplished with enormous sacrifices on the part of the civilian population in view of the difficult supply situation. While armaments production increased almost threefold between 1940 and 1944, agricultural production dropped 40% between 1940 and 1942 because of the loss of territory.

It is impossible to give an exact figure for the number of civilians who perished in the war, but the estimate is over 15 million. Many died as a result of direct war activities, but many more from hunger and exhaustion.