The long accepted figure is 12 million. The 6 million is a recent interpretation, which counts Jews only.
This table is from The Holocaust Chronicle…
I have been studying WWII in general, and the European theater of operations in particular for over 30 years. I never heard the 12 million number either, but that of course does not mean it is incorrect, although I do not know how reliable your source is since they are a publishing house and not historians or researchers. The 6 million number is by no means new. It has been the claimed and “accepted” number ever since the late 40’s. Amazingly enough, the same claim was made after WWI but the 6 million was attributed to collateral damage and related starvation then. As far as their numbers go, I will break down what I have found in my research that is a little different:
European Jews - 5,600,000 to 6,250,000
This number is based on (as someone else said) the now discredited Soviet claim of 4 million deaths at Auschwitz. The Auschwitz museum curator verifed in a film by a Jewish man who’s name escapes me right now that no more than 1.4 million died there and that further reductions in that number were possible, if not likely.These ammendments resulted from both census information and from research that showed that it was technically impossible for the Germans to kill and dispose of that many people, with the facilities they supposedly had, in the allowed time. It was determined that six million would have taken decades, not less than two years which is the time period that the camp was in use. As someone else stated, the plaque at Auschwitz has been ammended from 4 million to 1.4 million, I have seen pictures of both plaques. An interesting side note is that the official report of the commander of the liberating army to Stalin put the total number of deaths at just over 150,000.
Soviet prisoners of war - 3,000,000
This number has always been in question because of the notorious unreliability of Soviet information. They may have been among the millions of Soviet soldiers killed by Stalin, if that many were missing at all.
Polish Catholics - 3,000,000
I have never heard any claim like this. I haven’t been able to find any reliable, verifiable claims of large numbers of Catholics murdered by the Germans. The Soviets, and more recently the Chinese, yes. In fact, the Germans were not anti-religion as has always been claimed. I found a translation of the “25 Point Program” of the Nazi party, which was their early blueprint for Germany, written by Hitler and Anton Drexler in 1920. Point 24 states in part “The Party, as such, stands for positive Christianity, but does not commit itself to any particular denomination.” (If they had they would have alienated half of the country which was essentially half Catholic and half Lutheran). The only oppression of Catholics I have found was related to those who were thought (rightly or not) to be involved in opposition activities and not simply because they were Catholic.
I do not mean to belittle the huge numbers killed or excuse the atrocities commited, I just like to rely on the best, most recent documentation available. I have seen different numbers for some of the other numbers listed as well, but none that I feel are sufficiently documented. I doubt that we can ever know how many people were lost in a war of such massive proportions but new information turns up fairly often and we must be open to it.
**Total Deaths from Nazi Genocidal **
