Introduction
The deadliest military conflict in history was World War II. Not only was it the most significant conflict that ever occurred on the planet, but it is also notorious for the first and the last use of the most destructive weapons in human history – atomic bombs. This, combined with the utilization of other contemporary advances in military technologies, was accompanied by a respective number of casualties, both among the military personnel and ordinary people. In this context, the current paper focuses on the World War II statistics from the perspective of the number of casualties and the reasons behind them.
Military Casualties
The numbers for deaths during World War II are imprecise. Only for the United States and the British Commonwealth can official statistics on military personnel killed, injured, taken as captives, or missing be mentioned with any confidence level, constituting over 650,000 deaths (see Table 1). Most other countries only have estimates that range in dependability (Roediger 16683).
Statistical accounting collapsed in Allied and Axis nations when entire armies were capitulated or dispersed (Roediger 16684). Guerrilla fighting, shifting international borders, and significant population shifts made it extremely difficult to compile accurate postwar statistics. Tables 1, 2, and 3 include what appear to be the most up-to-date figures on military deaths in action of all kinds, civilian casualties from war-related causes, and the estimated total number of deaths in each of the prominent participants in World War II (The National WWII Museum 4). Estimates of differing degrees of dependability are represented by numbers rounded to thousands.
Table 1: Allied Powers (the U.S. and British Commonwealth)
The general overview provides a significant amount of horrifying evidence. Of the 2.3 billion people on Earth in 1940, an estimated 70–85 million died, or about 3% (Barr and Podolsky 613). Estimates place the number of deaths directly attributable to the war, including those of soldiers and civilians, at 50–56 million, plus another 19–28 million due to starvation and disease (Barr and Podolsky 614).
An estimated 50–55 million civilians perished (Barr and Podolsky 615). 21–25 million people died in the military from all causes, including roughly 5 million prisoners of war who died while being held captive (Barr and Podolsky 615). The fatalities of the Soviet Union and the Republic of China account for more than half of the casualties (see tables 1, 2, and 3).
The subject of Second World War losses has received new insight thanks to recent historical studies. Estimates of Soviet World War II mortality have been revised due to research conducted in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union (Jewell et al. 389). Russian government statistics put the number of USSR casualties within its post-war boundaries at 26.6 million, including 8 to 9 million deaths from famine and disease (Jewell et al. 403).
Researchers from the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) calculated that Poland had between 5.6 and 5.8 million fatalities in August 2009 (Jewell et al. 399). In research published in 2000, historian Rüdiger Overmans of the Military History Research Office (Germany) calculated that there were 5.3 million dead and missing members of the German military, including 900,000 conscripts from Austria and east-central Europe (Jewell et al. 410). Most World War II Wehrmacht casualties were attributed to the Red Army. The number of war fatalities reported by the People’s Republic of China is 20 million, while the number reported by the government of Japan is 3.1 million (see Tables 2 and 3).
Table 2: Allied Powers (Other Countries)
Table 3: Axis Powers
Civilian Casualties
Approximations of civilians’ deaths during World War II range from 35,000,000 to 60,000,000, primarily due to a statistical difference of considerable significance (Roediger 16686). Few have even attempted to estimate the total number of people who were injured or rendered permanently disabled. Along with the civilians who died in combat and bombardment, the number of starvation and plague fatalities in China is estimated to be in the millions. Apart from China, the majority of the estimated 7–10 million deaths in the Dutch, British, French, and US colonies in South and Southeast Asia were also due to starvation brought on by conflict (Jewell et al. 389).
More civilian deaths occurred during aerial bombardments, executions based on policy or race, war-related disease and famine, and shipwrecks. Even though it is more difficult to estimate these civilian fatalities, they must be included in any comparison of national losses. The Soviet Union and China, the two nations with unquestionably the highest death tolls, do not have accurate death toll statistics (Table 3).
Causes
The actual cost of World War II, in terms of people and material goods, cannot be quantified statistically. The projected financial cost of the conflict to the participating governments is more than $1,000,000,000,000 (The National WWII Museum 2). Nevertheless, this amount cannot capture the human anguish, deprivation, and suffering, the upheaval of people’s lives and economies, or the physical devastation of property. To sustain the resource war demands, the Nazi masters of occupied Europe depleted the resources of their seized nations.
Many Western European nations, such as France and Belgium, were compelled to supply production for Germany, depriving their populations of necessities. Even more ruthlessly was the wealth of the Eastern European territories under occupation exploited. Millions of healthy males and females were taken away to work as forced laborers in German fields and factories (Jewell et al. 410).
The guerrillas inspired by such an attitude constantly attempted to deal as much damage as possible, leading to German retaliations being ruthless, especially in Slavic-occupied territories (Jewell et al. 410). The projected resistance movement casualties and civilian numbers also included additional victims of Nazi determined persecution. The latter group was represented by approximately 5,700,000 Jews who perished in Nazi concentration and extermination camps; more than half of them were from Poland (The National WWII Museum 2). Overall, the entire German economic exploitation system was carried out cruelly and violently.
The German aerial blitz of 1940–1941 and later V-bombs and rockets severely injured Great Britain, which avoided the miseries of occupation. On the other hand, Allied bombs decimated German cities (The National WWII Museum 4). During the final East-West invasion of Germany, there was considerable retaliatory destruction, pillage, and devastation. The level of physical plant devastation was enormous and significantly exceeded that of World War I, when it was primarily contained in conflict zones, which made millions of people refugees.
The civilian casualties of the Pacific Ocean front deserve a particular note. As a result of the atomic bombings of two Japanese cities, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, over 500,000 people were subjected to the horrors of a nuclear explosion (Tomonaga 493). According to Tomonaga, over 200,000 of them died instantly due to the explosion’s physical energy, or within 5 months because of the lasting effects of radiation (493). The rest had to evacuate and bear the consequences of radiation exposure in the form of leukemia and other forms of cancer.
Conclusion
Due to the sheer scale of the war conflict, the number of human casualties, and the subsequent damage to infrastructure, World War II will always remain a horrifying reminder of what technology is capable of. Only the fact that two-thirds of all casualties were not in the military forces raises numerous ethical concerns. Overall, this fact by itself explains why the call to put an end to conflicts is so relevant.
Works Cited
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Jewell, Nicholas P., et al. “Accounting for Civilian Casualties: From the Past to the Future.” Social Science History, vol. 42, no. 3, 2018, pp. 379–410.
The National WWII Museum. “Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II.” The National WWII Museum | New Orleans, 2022, Web.
Roediger, Henry, et al. “Competing National Memories of World War II.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 116, no. 34, 2019, pp. 16678–16686, Web.
Royde-Smith, John Graham. “World War II – Costs of the War | Britannica.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 2019, Web.
Tomonaga, Masao. “The Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: A Summary of the Human Consequences, 1945-2018, and Lessons for Homo Sapiens to End the Nuclear Weapon Age.” Journal for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament, vol. 2, no. 2, 2019, pp. 491-517. Web.