The Russians would lose between 4 and 5 million soldiers, the equivalent of their entire initial invasion force, although their population would end up increasing by the end of the war after the rescue of 15 million slavs from the clutches of the Reich. The Linz Pakt would lose over 3 million soldiers, with the civilian loss of German civilians, mostly of eastern colonists, reaching between 1 and 1.5 million. The Slavs, the local inhabitants of the land over centuries, after two decades being deliberately weakened both physically and mentally into a chaste of serfs by the Hooked Cross, saw the greatest loss as between 20 and 25 million of them would die between 1966 and 1968, only speeding up the German plans to colonize the East.