THE AUTHOR'S SURVEY OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC AND HUMAN WAR LOSSES IN YUGOSLAVIA

I began with statistical calculations of population losses during the Second World War in early 1986*. By the end of my calculations I came across a publication by Dr. Bogoljub Kocovic, who used an almost identical method in his statistical calculations**.

It should be stressed that only Mr. Kocovic and I classified our calculations according to republics and provinces, and according to nationality, while all other authors only stated total data for all of Yugoslavia. Therefore, it is interesting to view our comparative surveys:

Here we should explain differences in the number of Serbian and Croatian casualties of war. When calculating the population increase for Belgrade (together with Zemun and Pancevo), Dr. Kocovic considered only the growth rate of the calculated population on March 31, 1931, (289,000), and did not take into account the population which immigrated from rural areas of Serbia, and other parts of the country. According to the Statistics Yearbook of 1938/39, the number of inhabitants of Belgrade increased to 409,000, as of December 31,1938. Thus the Serbian losses for Serbia Proper are larger in my survey (142,000), than in Dr. Kocovic's (Serbian and Montenegrin losses: 114,000).

When calculating Croatia's losses, Dr. Kocovic did not consider that the Biograd and Preko districts (56,000 inhabitants) were incorporated in the pre-war Yugoslav territory, and by this he increased losses of Croatians and decreased the losses in the annexed territory. Dr. Kocovic's calculations of Croatian losses would, with this correction, be 151,000, while my calculations state 192,000.

When calculating Montenegrin losses, Dr. Kocovic implied a considerably larger annual growth rate for the period of 1941- 1948, than Montenegro had in the period between 1921 and 1931, although the registered annual growth rate in all of Yugoslavia was in a constant decline after 1931. For example, the average growth rate in Yugoslavia between 1921 and 1931 was 1.5% per year, while in the year of 1939 the registered growth rate was only 1.1%. My calculations of losses according to republics and provinces are the following:

The second part of my book gives a survey of actual losses published in other sources, i.e. monographs issued by people's committees in individual municipalities and districts, the Karlovac Historical Archives, the Federal Association of the Liberation War Fighters, and by some other authors. Registered, collected and classified data on the actual losses have been important for checking the statistically calculated results. Registered data for Croatia (available for all municipalities and districts), numbered 266,600 losses, while statistically calculated data showed 271,000 losses. For other republics and provinces 80-90% of the data was compiled, which denoted that the actual data could approximately match the statistically calculated data.