Lest we forget
| Military | Civilian | Combined | |
|---|---|---|---|
| USSR | 13,600,000 | 7,700,000 | 21,300,000 |
| China | 1,324,000 | 10,000,000 | 11,324,000 |
| Germany | 3,250,000 | 3,810,000 | 7,060,000 |
| Poland | 850,000 | 6,000,000 | 6,850,000 |
| Japan | — — | — — | 2,000,000 |
| Yugoslavia | 300,000 | 1,400,000 | 1,700,000 |
| Rumania | 520,000 | 465,000 | 985,000 |
| France | 340,000 | 470,000 | 810,000 |
| Hungary | — — | — — | 750,000 |
| Austria | 380,000 | 145,000 | 525,000 |
| Greece | — — | — — | 520,000 |
| USA | 500,000 | none | 500,000 |
| Italy | 330,000 | 80,000 | 410,000 |
| Czechoslovakia | — — | — — | 400,000 |
| Great Britain | 326,000 | 62,000 | 388,000 |
| Netherlands | 198,000 | 12,000 | 210,000 |
| Belgium | 76,000 | 12,000 | 88,000 |
| Finland | — — | — — | 84,000 |
| Canada | 39,000 | none | 39,000 |
| India | 36,000 | none | 36,000 |
| Australia | 29,000 | none | 29,000 |
| Albania | — — | — — | 28,000 |
| Spain | 12,000 | 10,000 | 22,000 |
| Bulgaria | 19,000 | 2,000 | 21,000 |
| New Zealand | 12,000 | none | 12,000 |
| Norway | — — | — — | 10,262 |
| South Africa | 9,000 | none | 9,000 |
| Luxembourg | — — | — — | 5,000 |
| Denmark | 4,000 | none | 4,000 |
| Total | 56,125,262 |
- First World War (1914-18): 15,000,000
Russian Civil War (1917-22): 9,000,000
Stalin's regime (USSR, 1924-53): 20,000,000
Second World War (1937-45): 55,000,000
Mao Zedong's regime (China, 1949-1975): 40,000,000
posted by stc @ 6:23 AM
13 comments
13 Comments:
Far too many people have died in far too many wars.
War - What is it good for....?
When applied with discretion it can allow a people to escape attempts by another to control their territories and lives.
Whether one values that ability, of course, depends on one's POV.
10 million civilian deaths in China? I never knew, & we get WW2 rammed down our throats all the time here in the UK (you'd think we won it all on our own!)
hmmm...I wonder how many more deaths would have happenned under Hitler's regime not be ousted. Then again, who knows what war is good for?
• Cyberkitten / 49er:
I agree with 49er that war may serve a useful purpose if we are defending our land and our values. But wars of aggression, which are contrary to Western values, suit the lyric of the old Edwin Starr song.
• Mrs. Aginoth:
I couldn't have told you anything about China's role in the war, either. We certainly don't think of China as one of the Allies, so I googled it.
According to WarMuseum.ca, Japan invaded China in 1931, then seized the most fertile, heavily populated parts of China in 1937. Of course Japan had to maintain an occupying presence there:
China was a Second World War backwater. However, the largest part of the Japanese army was tied down in China, maintaining internal order, and this limited what Japan could do in its war against the Allies.
So there we have it:— a Remembrance Day history lesson. (We call it Remembrance Day in Canada, not Veterans' Day. Is it also called Remembrance Day in the UK?)
• Michael:
That has always been the rationale for dropping the two A-bombs on Japan. It undoubtedly shortened the war by causing the immediate surrender of Japan. Defenders of the act say that it saved many lives because any attempt to invade Japan would have resulted in heavy casualties.
I don't claim to have an informed opinion on the subject. But I think we would have to take into account that dropping the bombs saved the lives of American soldiers at the cost of killing Japanese civilians.
Q
Since I was an aware teen-ager during WWII, and eagerly read what commentary existed in 1944 and 1945, I can tell you before the A-bomb came along the plan was to hold off invading for a time and use B-29's to "dust" every Japanese city - using napalm and incindiaries to burn the industrial and administrative sections to the ground.
Would that inevitable associated loss of life exceed the toll from Hiroshima and Nagasaki? Maybe.
But the dreaded operation was an actual invasion. Virtually every adult/teen Japanese citizen was known to have been trained in subversion and guerilla resistance, and the result of such an operation would likely have sustained huge losses of lives on both sides. Not having to do that must have saved hundreds of thousands of lives, at least half of them ours. Does this somehow not have any value?
Q. Your comment re: defensive over aggressive war is spot on.
Call me conflicted!
49er, I think the argument may have some merit. It seems certain that there was no way to bring about a Japanese surrender without significant loss of life.
Would an invasion have resulted in more or fewer casualties? — we can only speculate. History isn't like science; you can't try it both ways and then compare.
It's good to be conflicted about war. Anyone who embraces it enthusiastically is suspect in my books, no matter what the provocation.
Q
Personally I think the Americans would NEVER have invaded Japan if casualties would be as high as they expected. They would've just bombed them into the stong age and blockaded them until they surrendered. Very few American lives would have been lost. Invasion would have been insane.
The Nukes where basically dropped on Japan for two reasons:
To see if they would work & what effect they would have
The tell the Russians to 'back-off' from any involvement in Pacific Operations.
'Shortening' the war might have been a consideration but saving American lives (in any Invasion) is a smoke screen I think.
Q said: war may serve a useful purpose if we are defending our land and our values.
Indeed (though I'm not quite sure what you mean by the vaues comment).
Countries, like individuals, have a right to defend themselves so defensive wars can be moral wars. However, its not just the reason for a war that needs to be taken into account but the way it is fought. Wars should be between trained combatents - not between armies and enemy civilians. Attacks on cities as seen in WW2 should be avoided.
Cyberkitten:
• I'm not quite sure what you mean by the values comment.
The paradigm I'm working from is not the current "war on terror" but the Allies' opposition to Hitler's evil totalitarian regime.
Hitler scorned core liberal values like individual freedom and racial equality. It was perfectly legitimate for the Allies to use military force to defend those values.
On the other hand, President Bush mouths words like freedom and democracy to justify questionable acts of aggression. I'm not persuaded.
• its not just the reason for a war that needs to be taken into account but the way it is fought. … Attacks on cities as seen in WW2 should be avoided.
Agreed on both points.
Q
Q, I agree with your points too...
There has been a great deal of debate amongst historians recently in regards to dropping the bomb, I guess it is because we are currently at war in so many places.
Unfortunately I don’t have much time to look up the articles and sources so most of this is from memory (of what I have read recently) and since there is a likelihood that I won’t accurately quote sources I have left them out. Maybe when I have more time I will blog them on The Art of The Rant.
The key to understanding the rational for the Bomb is that from all indications the determination of the Japanese not to be defeated was paramount. Although the Japanese position was extremely weak and defeat was considered inevitable, the length of time it would take to accomplish was defiantly not known. It is hard to beat a surrender out of a people that believe their cause is devine.
Although negotiations for peace were underway according to the Japanese there was to be no occupation or formal surrender as the US had requested. Peace was to be based on the fact that Japan could not continue the war. The Japanese were not concerned with ending the conflict they were concerned with preventing an invasion.
There is an argument that the kamikaze had a major impact on the minds of US military leaders.
kamikaze or “devine wind” refers to suicide attacks carried out by Japanese aircrews against Allied shipping towards the end of the Pacific campaign of World War II.
A people that believed that death was preferable to defeat or dishonour, would be impossible to defeat, at least not at a great loss of life. I don't think there is enough evidence to support the theory that Hiroshima and Nagasaki where some sort of display to show American power to the USSR, Though it may have been in the back of mind of some of those that proposed the bomb to end the war.
That said, I do not believe that dropping the bomb was morally right.
I do not believe in war or any form of legitimized murder.
However, the global threat that came from developing the bomb was worse than the loss of life envisioned to end the war with conventional weapons. We have created a monster capable of devouring us all in a flash of light fire and wind. There is really no way to put the genie back in the bottle. Although people will praise the benefits of the nuclear age having eaten from this tree of knowledge of Good and Evil we still may have doomed mankind to a rather horrific end.
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