re: #201 Belafon

I had written a reply that stated “ONLY HALF OF YOU WILL DIE FOR OUR GLORIOUS CAUSE!” But now I can’t get to my phone.

The comment reminded me of a factoid that the Soviet classes of 1940 and 1941. (Boys who turned 18 in 1940 or 1941, and were drafted for two years of active service in 1940 or 1941.)

Each of those two class as a whole, iirc, had a casualty rate of 90%. Normally, one assumes at least 2to1/injured to killed. But in this case the Nazis took most of them prisoner and subsequently murdered them. Basically, every healthy boy born in the Soviet Union in 1922 or 1923 was dead by 1945.