Vast majority of these deaths being young men btw.
It is estimated that the Soviet Union alone lost +-20 million young men with the ratio of men:women in the age group of 20-29 dropping from 0.96 to 0.70 between 1941 and 1946.
Ridiculous numbers.
Unreal, unbelievable numbers. 20 million young men dead from one nation, out of 70-85 million total losses in a 6 year period of war worldwide, is astounding. The Holocaust led to about 6 million deaths of Jews. Even those who weren't Jews such as black people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Romani peoples ("gypsies"), and the disabled were exterminated by the Nazis, I think it was about 13 million people total due to their work.
Yet young Russian men died at a casualty rate 14 million or so beyond the Jews, which took a massive chunk out of the European Jewish population. Hard to wrap your brain around those numbers. 6 million Jews being slaughtered was only about 30% of young Russian men killed. I mean wow. Wow.
There’s a few videos from Eastory that show divisional movements on the eastern front each year and every once in awhile he shows the total manpower deployed, and it always staggers me. At one point I’m pretty sure the Soviets had around 10,000,000 men deployed from Murmansk to Astrakhan.
Talk about people dying in droves. Absolutely insane. The Battle Of Stalingrad was arguably the most deadly battle in the history of the world, that was a brutal fight.
If you were Romani/Homosexual then there was a good chance, that your house was expropriated by the Germans, and you'd be jailed up when you came home to your country.
Why Romani? Racism, simple as. There were even Romani taking the identities of jews to get better treatment after the war.
If you were trans, then you'd wind up in a mental asylum, given laudanum and beatings while strapped to a bed until you were 'cured.'
From one hell to another.
There are huge caveats to the Soviet numbers. They were doing purges before the war started and the 1939 census was massively fudged in order to cover up millions of civilian deaths.
After the war they didn't start publishing census data for years.So in practice it's very difficult to tell how much is due to the war and how much due to themselves.
>22 each minute. So, a life every 3 seconds
The movie "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946) really does a good job of showing this massive WW2 die off in a cool way.
Every single reddit thread on WWII acknowledges how many russians died. You know who else lost 20 million people that never gets mentioned? The chinese
My son was an exchange student in China and I visited him for a month. In my hotel room they had some movies about WW2 and it was surprising to see American solders fighting the Japanese as heros. I don't know what they were saying as it was in Chinese but it was easy to tell that the American GIs were the good guys. I'd gone there expecting everything I saw about America to be negative propaganda.
This is incredibly moronic.
Ukrainian and Belarusian troops were used to replace the massive (mostly "Russian") casualties that had been sustained in the first 3 years of the war.
For better or worse, I’d guess many of the initial USSR units rolled up in Barbarossa didn’t get much of a chance to show their combat arms skill or bravery.
Not to say there weren’t any hard fights, but massive encirclements of entire armies probably meant a lot of those guys were POWs before they got a chance to fire a shot.
>For better or worse
Definitely for worse considering the vast majority of these Soviet POWs were starved to death, worked to death or straight up murdered by the Nazis
Dont do that.
Don't inject 21st century nationalistic tendensies into a context where they do not make sense.
When looking at military dead all we can guage is from where they are recruited and all are pretty similar, with the four big ones (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazhakstan) loosing about 5-6% of the prewar population in military dead. Smaller republics having a bit lower rate at 3-4%.
How btw would an army in the RKKA been 'Belorusian' 'Ukrainian' or even 'Russian'? The recruitment was pretty much 'anyone in close proximity'and regiments were assigned, reformed, reconstructed with pretty much any avaliable personnel. You wouldnt even be able to do as you say "send in the non-russian troops as cannon fodder" because from the get go you would first have to figure out where those guys are and then reform all your regiments from platoon level up.
And that is a silly notion.
Now we can talk about how within the wider soviet experience from the mid 1930s there was a clear advantage when it came to social mobility/promotions to be ethnically russian. Though it was not a blocker it was a clear advantage.
But no, no formations beyond dedicated Cossacks regiments can in the soviet context be said to of any particular nationality.
I fucking love it when people seriously believe that the names of operational units during the Second World War indicate their national composition, and not the place of formation and/or action. The Belorussian and Ukrainian Fronts could not participate in either Kursk or Stalingrad because they were formed in October 1943 by renaming the Central and Voronezh Fronts respectively, which included troops from the entire USSR. At any point in the war, Russians made up more than half of all troops (52-55%), while accounting for more than 2/3 of all losses. And no one cared about the nationality of the commanders, officers or enlisted personnel, everyone had one goal - to defeat the common enemy who came to their land. Considering what Russia is doing now, it’s understandable why such stupid shit gets likes, but if you don’t want to look like a degenerate idiot, at least briefly study the topic before speaking.
And yet, those 85 mil is roughly 3.7% of the world population then. Kinda hard to imagine how WW3 would look like with the casualty estimation of over 60%
Not really. There was this journalist who wrote a book analyzing nuclear war second by second and through a 10 year period, I think. Her conclusion was 5 bil casualties, so out of roughly 8 bill alive now or makes slightly over 60%
Nuclear war most likely. Even then though, the amount of nuclear weapons deployed today is about an order of magnitude lower than during the Cold War, and the bombs themselves are also a lot smaller than when the public’s idea of nuclear war was formed. The modern US ICBMs are equipped with multiple 100-400kt warheads, while Cold War ICBMs were tipped with single warheads up to 9 megatons, so anywhere between 90 and 40 times the yield. This means there will be much less fallout and the following nuclear winter will be shorter and less severe. While it would still be much worse than WW2, it’s unlikely that 60% of the global population will die
Most nuclear war casualty figures that were super high also typically factored in earlier nuclear winter studies that are seen as questionable and more modern ones show less sever effects.
With that and the full nuclear exchange they figured the global food/health networks would pretty much completely collapse which would be the cause of most of the deaths.
They're equipped with smaller warheads because that's a more efficient way to kill people / destroy targets. The fireball is a sphere, what you are blowing up is flat. The damage scales with the cube root of the yield. Alot of the excess energy is just heating up the atmosphere rather than doing anything to your target.
Soviet Union could easily support all that population, it has enough natural resources.
Although I would agree with you on Germany. With their closed economy, and large population. They would have to either rely on global trade OR expand. Hitler though east wont trade their natural resources when they industrialize and not rely on west for manufactured goods.
I often think of JRR Tolkien. He survived WW1 and went on to create wonderful things. Imagine all the people who would have created equally wonderful things, but didn’t, because they died in war.
That goes for all of human history. Imagine all the great people we could have had if we didn’t have poverty, racism, war, etc? We had someone like Alan Turing during WW2 who decrypted the Nazi code. Helping turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic. He also is considered the father of AI and the modern computer. But he was gay, chemically castrated by the British government which drove him to suicide. So many great minds have went to waste in human history.
# “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”-Stephen Jay Gould
Just to be that guy, Alan Turing didn't really crack the Enigma, the Polish Cypher Bureau (led by Marian Rejewski) had already done so years earlier. They even had made a working Bomba machine before the war had even begun. The Polish team subsequently turned over their information and further assisted the Brits in their future decryption endeavours, but technically yeah it was the Poles who decrypted Enigma first.
You have to account that the baby boom from returning soldiers would not have happened countries that didn’t participate I. The war pretty much kept a steady growth see Mexico for example
Thanks to modern medicine and farming techniques increasing the food supply, we are reproducing at a much higher rate than ever.
Well, we are probably reproducing it about the same rate it's just that a much higher percentage of people are surviving into adult, which in turn means more people to reproduce and so on and so forth
It's actually not this simple. The countries with the most advanced medicine and farming almost universally have decreasing birth rates and are relying on immigration to sustain their populations
Simple, economics. It is getting more expensive every year to raise children. People are also waiting longer to have children because of debt.
When our medicines sucked and we needed farmhands, it was common for a farm family to produce over four children, ten wasnt that rare, but few lived to adulthood because of disease and injury.
Partially. But huge amounts of people went from largely agriculture/farming based systems where having lots of kids was a good thing as in free labor. Then we start to industrialize, people move to cities, have less children because now children are an expense that doesnt quickly (or ever in some cases) pay dividends.
Well given it's pretty much universal it has to be something very simple that would be common amongst any culture. The only thing that common is women lol personally I think it's too much work for women to be moms and have careers. I think they're opting out in lieu of pursuing what would traditionally be masculine goals, and then men dislike that so there's a falling out between men and women.
South Korea and Japan have movement right now where women explicitly refuse to marry and have children because they would have to give up their careers for domesticity so that’s not super far off in some cases. Idk if men are resenting them, but there’s definitely a conscious effort by women.
Yeah the men resenting women thing is just my own opinion from what I've seen on the internet. Feels like there is a new joke everyday about how western men are fed up. Mgtow passport bros drizzle drizzle? Everyday there's something new and I do not think that is normal in human history
Economics. Back in the day, children were economic *assets* because they could work on the farm. Also you could count on some of them dying so you’d have more. Nowadays children are economic *liabilities* and they’re more likely than not to survive so having one or two (or none) makes more sense.
Education of women is one of the biggest things you can do to reduce fertility rates. Women choose to have fewer babies and fewer pregnancies as their education levels go up. This might tie in to overall education rates leading to non agricultural societies when large families are not as necessary and child mortality drops, but even within cultures this happens. Theoretically educated women can make better choices about when they can have a child and how many they can raise, they can keep their children alive better, and they learn that they don’t have to just keep having children - other women in the world don’t. This includes knowing about birth control and how to use and obtain it. Plus they are more able to leave men who may have used lack of education against them.
i forgot where I read it, but there is a good chance that the only red days (days where the total population of earth declined) were the days where nukes were dropped.
I think he was more so implying that there would be another 70-85 million people in the word that would/could have also been adding to the population instead of subtracting. So you could add all those births during the war and then also add a ton more.
i did a back of the napkin calculation one time a few years ago.
i figured we lose about 180,000 people to death every day, ~65 million a year.
we must have a lot more people than back then.
In the next 50 or so years does anyone think we'll start to view WW2 as starting with Japan's invasion of China in 1937?
The argument against that date seems to be it doesn't include major participants but Japan was the second most powerful axis country and China is one of the five victorious powers.
Even in the west the two countries that (arguably) did the most to defeat Germany wouldn't join until 1940 and 1941
I earnestly stand by 1937 as the starting date.
The main argument for September 1939 is that the fighting is international from then on, but that ignores how the Soviets and Germans were already duking it out in Spain at the same time as the Japanese Invasion and how the majority of Axis powers were engaging in power grabs and armed takeovers of other nations prior to the invasion of Poland.
Regardless of the date of invasions, I think it's important to remember when Germany began the expulsion of Jews in the early 30's. While that is not the start of global conflict, it is when the ball started rolling
EDIT: I know there was much more leading up to that. Some key event date into the mid 19th century, but the Holocaust is often overlooked when we consider the war. Germany's entire logistics hung on the movement, enslavement, and extermination of Jews
An interesting point to start WWII from are the Khalkhin Gol battles between Japan and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939.
They link together the European and Asian theatres and would have a profound effect on the decisions made later in the war.
> battles between Japan and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939.
But they made peace afterwards, signed a non-aggression pact, and the Soviets even recognized Manchukuo. They only declared war on Japan *after the nukes*.
It wasn’t a world war until 1941 because Japan attacked America, which was the country whose involvement connected the European and Asian wars into one global conflict. Before then, everyone only really fought in their own continent.
Claiming 1939 as the start date is eurocentric.
weak take. british collonies declared war in 1939, which spanned NA, SA, EU, Asia and Oceania.
dates never really follow when did fighting occur. dates mean when did a state of war begin.
>Weak take. Essentially arguing that every war with Britain is a world war. Was Napoleon the real WWI then?
There was no British commonwealth during the time of Napoleon, and nor were its overseas "colonial" or "empire" troops used in Britain's wars in Europe. There was no Canada or Australia, and there were no people from what would become Canada or Australia used formally.
>Claiming 1939 as the start date is eurocentric.
Nope.
The "Eurocentric date" includes the involvement of:
The United Kingdom
France
Poland
India
Czechoslovakia
Bahrain
Canada
Jamaica
Malta
Australia
Libya
Nepal
New Zealand
Australia
Oman
South Africa
So yes, very much a world war.
In terms of world war 2 Korea wasn't given a permanent seat on the security council after the war and so being recognised as a major victor. For comparison Canada fought from 39 to 45, had pilots in the battle of Britain and wasn't given that.
Also China suffered the second most number of casualties in the war judging by the graph above and I assume if 37-39 was included that would bump up too.
So in the same way the Spanish civil war was a prelude in Europe I would consider Korea similarly in Asia.
The reason I think 37 is different is that it's the start of war between one of the major allies and one of the major axis powers
One of the major reasons I have come across is that it's seen as a regional conflict getting dragged into a world war, not a conflict that caused/initiated it. Nazi germany invading poland did cause half the world getting dragged into a war, yet I feel it's important to add that at the time a whole lot of the world was still in colonial posession.
The graph puts into perspective just how much the Axis fought the war targeting civilian populations.
The Allies weren't "clean", no such thing exists, but it is remarkable how merciful they were with their enemies compared to the Axis. Even the worst American and Soviet war crimes seem like nothing when compared to what the Germans did in Eastern Europe or what Japan did in Asia.
Also during the battle for Warsaw they waited for the Polish to have nearly liberated their own city before finish the job giving the Soviets a propaganda victory and weakening the Polish forces so their revolt was weaker.
They also did that when they captured Poland etc. from the Nazis later during the war, soldiers of resistance movements (like the Home Army) suffered that fate again, after the supposed liberation from the Nazis.
However, the point in the original comment is that even these are not that terrible compared to what Axis members were doing, with which I’ll have to agree.
What would you call the partioning of Poland and supplying the Nazi war machine with oil? It was an alliance. A foolish alliance but an alliance none the less
It was more like, Czechoslovakia took polish land in 1920 while they were fighting against the Soviets and Poland took the land back while Czechoslovakia was being annexed by Germany but there wasn't any agreement between both, everyone thought Germany will have enough with the Sudètes. Also, they had a non aggression pact but I wouldn't call that a close relationship
More like Poland asked the czech to return the land that they had invaded in 1920 when Russia also invaded Poland. And the close relationship part is just your fantasy.
"asked"
Yes and the soviet "asked" too. It's incredible how blind one can be when it suits them. Open a history book, from 1933 to march 1939 Poland and Germany were close friends, Goring regularly went on hunts with the polish dictator and they often spoke of splitting the USSR together.
>What would you call the partioning of Poland and supplying the Nazi war machine with oil?
Not an alliance.
> It was an alliance.
Not an alliance.
Words have meaning.
You're right, they had an "understanding" before the war to partition Poland and Eastern Europe. Oh, and the Soviets allowed the Germans to develop their tanks in the USSR to avoid sanctions of disarmament treaties. And gave them favorable trade agreements.
>You're right, they had an "understanding" before the war to partition Poland and Eastern Europe
not an alliance.
>. Oh, and the Soviets allowed the Germans to develop their tanks in the USSR to avoid sanctions of disarmament treaties.
The Kama tank school was shut down when the Nazis took power. That was a *Weimar* agreement.
>And gave them favorable trade agreements.
That's called international trade.
Not an alliance.
As many as a third of the Soviets killed during the war were killed by other Soviets. And what they did to Axis prisoners during and after the war was just as bad
> was just as bad
As what? The holocaust? The soviets didn't wage a war of industrialized genocide and extermination, in hopes of gaining living space for their superior race, like the moustache man did. What happened to Berlin after the Soviets took it? Now imagine what would happen with Moscow if Germans won.
They literally wiped out thousands of villages and cities off the map while invading the Soviet Union. Germany got off lightly when taking in account all the ville shit they did.
Soviets as a whole suffered unfathomable levels of pain and suffering during the war, which is why i always feel bad for them during that period. Now of course you can't ignore the paranoia ridden Politburo shenanigans and their tendency to mass execute intellectuals, officers and other dissidents. Their leadership was rotten to the core, but the regular Ivan suffered greatly, because as always it's the civilians who get fucked over the most during the war
Yep. Even very recent wars like the war on ISIS, Yemeni civil war, and countless post-WW2 conflicts resulted in tens of thousands of civilians dead per battle, or several 100,000s dead overall.
The civilian deaths in the soviet union honestly surprises me a bit. Based on the different countries tactics, i would’ve previously said the Germans were likely the cleanest in their invasion targeting civilians the least. The Russians and Japanese in particular were known to actively hunt down civilians.
That said, Germany and Russia did engage in many gruesome ground battles inside major cities, which would tend to lead to more civilian deaths.
That said, I learned recently that german soldiers often executed russian civilians as they retreated from towns in 1943 and 1944. Its also likely that Russia’s famous artillery bombardments were indiscriminate even against their own civilians.
Are Chinese and Japanese casualties only counted from the moment Germany invaded Poland, or are they counted from the moment their war started in 1937? Former makes no sense, latter means WW2 started in 1937.
its interesting to compare casualties between countries. USA suffered about half a million casualties in all of WW2. Had USA suffered similar casualties as Finland did in Winter War alone, it would have meant casualties of 1 million men in a war that lasted for 105 days.
Most history syllabi at the college level include WW2 as one of, if not the, primary curriculum. Any casual student of history will then be able to tell you that the cost incurred by the Soviet Union dwarfed even the cost incurred by the European powers themselves. Especially human lives.
> So, a life every 3 seconds
How’s that compare to peace time rates, then and now? And birth rates?
Edit: Google…
> The number of babies born in the world every second is an intriguing statistic, reflecting the constant flow of new life into the global population. As of recent data, it's estimated that approximately 4.3 births occur worldwide every second.
This information is public and widely available. Yet Germans will still get up on a soap box and tell you how you're doing things wrong in your country. Fuckers never learn.
Poland lost 6milion citezens, almost all were civilians imagine where Poland would be now if we didn't loose 1/5 of our population, 3milion Polish Jews, 2milion other Poles and 1milion Ukrainians and Belarussians died in holocaust in Poland alone
I wouldn’t count 1931 as the start date. 1937 is the official beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War too, so that’s an actual date you could assume to be the “beginning” of WW2. More importantly, millions of casualties from these statistics happened during the timeframe of 1937-1939…
Yeah, in the west Germany is seen as the main antagonist of ww2, so them starting the war is seen as the start.
Also Japan and China were at war like odds with each other for like the previous 8 years (starting at 1931). So really it makes sense to think of WW2 as starting in 1931 if you had to pick a date IMO.
> So really it makes sense to think of WW2 as starting in 1931 if you had to pick a date IMO.
Weird how when China and Japan went to war, no one else got involved.
Hitler is the better antagonist for the US, as there isn't a Japanese person who has a similar leadership role in the same way. And German Uboats where sinking US ships before Japan attacked so it they were in a sort of fake not quite a war with Germany already. I think that contributes also. Finnaly though, I think the USA is more able to understand a reflection in hitler and the Germans ion themselves in a way that just isn't true for Imperial Japan.
Not hard to imagine considering the Nazis were killing people for sport. They were literally killing thousands of people a day at Auschwitz at one point, now factor in all of their other death camps, massacres, wartime battles, and everything else
This is what Neville Chamberlain was hoping to avoid when he negotiated with Hitler. People give him a hard time and blame him for the war. This is unfair. Very few people (aside from Churchill) understood what Hitler was. Hindsight is 20/20. Had Hitler's nature been understood in the mid 30's, he'd have been nipped in the bud.
Japan's expansionist movement into China and the resulting 19 million deaths of Chinese is still something that they're getting away with. Seems that America, wanting to profit off of future Japanese trade, fought against bringing Japanese to justice for their atrocities against the Chinese during this period.
Japanese atrocities committed during the Rape of Nanking had Nazi observers reporting back to Germany on the horrors they had witnessed.
Chinese are still fighting for recognition. Japanese are still fighting against justice for the Chinese.
More Japanese people walked out of those internment camps than walked in. And the interment camps began *after* Pearl Harbor, unlike Germany, who put people in camps proactively.
Context kinda ruins your whole delusion. There is no argument.
>more German POWs killed by Americans than vice versa
Shame. Maybe if they were still in Germany instead of all those other countries, that wouldn’t have happened huh?
In a way I'm kinda glad we have nukes now.
Simply put, nobody would allow such an aggressor to gain so much control ever again.
When you have the weapon that kills EVERYTHING and intelligence to know exactly where you are at all times.... yeah, it wouldn't be hard to end WWII before it started with today's technology.
Invaysion of Poland is starting the clock too late. The Japanese invasion of China below Manchuria is where it should start. So July 7, 1937 at the Marco Polo Incident is a good place to start.
But I think this data includes those figures. It is just the post title that is wrong.
Military members currently serving, please keep this in mind as the superpowers gear up for a WWIII. The rich get richer and live in luxury, while military members and civilians die in the streets.
Those numbers are insanity... it literally changed the earth's future losing all those people, like if that didn't happen the earth would be populated by totally different people right now...
One should regard the 2nd Sino Japanese War, started in 1937, as the beginning of that global conflict.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
And yet we always skip out Russia invading Poland right after Germany did..... but while the west went to war w Germany over it, they supported Russia doing it.
Vast majority of these deaths being young men btw. It is estimated that the Soviet Union alone lost +-20 million young men with the ratio of men:women in the age group of 20-29 dropping from 0.96 to 0.70 between 1941 and 1946. Ridiculous numbers.
Unreal, unbelievable numbers. 20 million young men dead from one nation, out of 70-85 million total losses in a 6 year period of war worldwide, is astounding. The Holocaust led to about 6 million deaths of Jews. Even those who weren't Jews such as black people, Jehovah's Witnesses, Romani peoples ("gypsies"), and the disabled were exterminated by the Nazis, I think it was about 13 million people total due to their work. Yet young Russian men died at a casualty rate 14 million or so beyond the Jews, which took a massive chunk out of the European Jewish population. Hard to wrap your brain around those numbers. 6 million Jews being slaughtered was only about 30% of young Russian men killed. I mean wow. Wow.
apparently at the time there were only 11 million jews in total
17 million before the Holocaust. It just now that we're recovering the population.
And lots of people are poised about it. Edit: pissed
Edit: Pissed
There’s a few videos from Eastory that show divisional movements on the eastern front each year and every once in awhile he shows the total manpower deployed, and it always staggers me. At one point I’m pretty sure the Soviets had around 10,000,000 men deployed from Murmansk to Astrakhan.
Talk about people dying in droves. Absolutely insane. The Battle Of Stalingrad was arguably the most deadly battle in the history of the world, that was a brutal fight.
Not one nation! Nations forced into “union” which was exterminating millions of these nationals prior to WW2.
If you were Romani/Homosexual then there was a good chance, that your house was expropriated by the Germans, and you'd be jailed up when you came home to your country. Why Romani? Racism, simple as. There were even Romani taking the identities of jews to get better treatment after the war. If you were trans, then you'd wind up in a mental asylum, given laudanum and beatings while strapped to a bed until you were 'cured.' From one hell to another.
There are huge caveats to the Soviet numbers. They were doing purges before the war started and the 1939 census was massively fudged in order to cover up millions of civilian deaths. After the war they didn't start publishing census data for years.So in practice it's very difficult to tell how much is due to the war and how much due to themselves.
They'll do it again to take Ukraine unless we stop them
>22 each minute. So, a life every 3 seconds The movie "A Matter of Life and Death" (1946) really does a good job of showing this massive WW2 die off in a cool way.
~~Russia~~ Soviet Union lost more people at Stalingrad and Leningrad than America has in **every single war** since 1776 **combined**.
*Soviet Union Plenty of the lives lost were from the other Republics, not just Russia
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Every single reddit thread on WWII acknowledges how many russians died. You know who else lost 20 million people that never gets mentioned? The chinese
My son was an exchange student in China and I visited him for a month. In my hotel room they had some movies about WW2 and it was surprising to see American solders fighting the Japanese as heros. I don't know what they were saying as it was in Chinese but it was easy to tell that the American GIs were the good guys. I'd gone there expecting everything I saw about America to be negative propaganda.
The scale of it is just mind boggling…caused a near demographic collapse because several years of men were just wiped out.
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That's an interesting spin on the Asiatic horde myth, I applaud you.
This is incredibly moronic. Ukrainian and Belarusian troops were used to replace the massive (mostly "Russian") casualties that had been sustained in the first 3 years of the war.
For better or worse, I’d guess many of the initial USSR units rolled up in Barbarossa didn’t get much of a chance to show their combat arms skill or bravery. Not to say there weren’t any hard fights, but massive encirclements of entire armies probably meant a lot of those guys were POWs before they got a chance to fire a shot.
>For better or worse Definitely for worse considering the vast majority of these Soviet POWs were starved to death, worked to death or straight up murdered by the Nazis
Dont do that. Don't inject 21st century nationalistic tendensies into a context where they do not make sense. When looking at military dead all we can guage is from where they are recruited and all are pretty similar, with the four big ones (Belarus, Ukraine, Russia, Kazhakstan) loosing about 5-6% of the prewar population in military dead. Smaller republics having a bit lower rate at 3-4%. How btw would an army in the RKKA been 'Belorusian' 'Ukrainian' or even 'Russian'? The recruitment was pretty much 'anyone in close proximity'and regiments were assigned, reformed, reconstructed with pretty much any avaliable personnel. You wouldnt even be able to do as you say "send in the non-russian troops as cannon fodder" because from the get go you would first have to figure out where those guys are and then reform all your regiments from platoon level up. And that is a silly notion. Now we can talk about how within the wider soviet experience from the mid 1930s there was a clear advantage when it came to social mobility/promotions to be ethnically russian. Though it was not a blocker it was a clear advantage. But no, no formations beyond dedicated Cossacks regiments can in the soviet context be said to of any particular nationality.
I fucking love it when people seriously believe that the names of operational units during the Second World War indicate their national composition, and not the place of formation and/or action. The Belorussian and Ukrainian Fronts could not participate in either Kursk or Stalingrad because they were formed in October 1943 by renaming the Central and Voronezh Fronts respectively, which included troops from the entire USSR. At any point in the war, Russians made up more than half of all troops (52-55%), while accounting for more than 2/3 of all losses. And no one cared about the nationality of the commanders, officers or enlisted personnel, everyone had one goal - to defeat the common enemy who came to their land. Considering what Russia is doing now, it’s understandable why such stupid shit gets likes, but if you don’t want to look like a degenerate idiot, at least briefly study the topic before speaking.
I lost brain cells after reading this idiocy. Please never write anything history related ever again anywhere.
never cook again.
And yet, those 85 mil is roughly 3.7% of the world population then. Kinda hard to imagine how WW3 would look like with the casualty estimation of over 60%
Where did the 60% come from?
His ass.
Studies show 78% of statistics are entirely made up
But 77% come from OP's ass.
Not really. There was this journalist who wrote a book analyzing nuclear war second by second and through a 10 year period, I think. Her conclusion was 5 bil casualties, so out of roughly 8 bill alive now or makes slightly over 60%
That's based on nothing but speculative results though. That shouldn't ever be used as a solid fact.
That doesn’t make it true at all.
Nuclear war most likely. Even then though, the amount of nuclear weapons deployed today is about an order of magnitude lower than during the Cold War, and the bombs themselves are also a lot smaller than when the public’s idea of nuclear war was formed. The modern US ICBMs are equipped with multiple 100-400kt warheads, while Cold War ICBMs were tipped with single warheads up to 9 megatons, so anywhere between 90 and 40 times the yield. This means there will be much less fallout and the following nuclear winter will be shorter and less severe. While it would still be much worse than WW2, it’s unlikely that 60% of the global population will die
Most nuclear war casualty figures that were super high also typically factored in earlier nuclear winter studies that are seen as questionable and more modern ones show less sever effects. With that and the full nuclear exchange they figured the global food/health networks would pretty much completely collapse which would be the cause of most of the deaths.
They're equipped with smaller warheads because that's a more efficient way to kill people / destroy targets. The fireball is a sphere, what you are blowing up is flat. The damage scales with the cube root of the yield. Alot of the excess energy is just heating up the atmosphere rather than doing anything to your target.
Nukes
That 3.7% is fewer than the current casualty rate of the Gaza war which is 5.5% and rising.
And yet the human population is far larger now
Imagine if those 70-85 million did not die in war what our population would be today.
Russia would have 300-400 mil easily not the 150 they have now. Higher pop in eastern europe in general.
A massive war was inevitable I think. There would eventually be a war for resources with that many people without a better supply chain.
Soviet Union could easily support all that population, it has enough natural resources. Although I would agree with you on Germany. With their closed economy, and large population. They would have to either rely on global trade OR expand. Hitler though east wont trade their natural resources when they industrialize and not rely on west for manufactured goods.
I often think of JRR Tolkien. He survived WW1 and went on to create wonderful things. Imagine all the people who would have created equally wonderful things, but didn’t, because they died in war.
That goes for all of human history. Imagine all the great people we could have had if we didn’t have poverty, racism, war, etc? We had someone like Alan Turing during WW2 who decrypted the Nazi code. Helping turn the tide in the Battle of the Atlantic. He also is considered the father of AI and the modern computer. But he was gay, chemically castrated by the British government which drove him to suicide. So many great minds have went to waste in human history.
# “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.”-Stephen Jay Gould
Well that’s a good way to be impressed by no one if you think like that.
Just to be that guy, Alan Turing didn't really crack the Enigma, the Polish Cypher Bureau (led by Marian Rejewski) had already done so years earlier. They even had made a working Bomba machine before the war had even begun. The Polish team subsequently turned over their information and further assisted the Brits in their future decryption endeavours, but technically yeah it was the Poles who decrypted Enigma first.
True, but a lot of the science advancements came about because of WWII - Haber Bosch process especially
Haber Bosch process is WW1, not WW2.
You have to account that the baby boom from returning soldiers would not have happened countries that didn’t participate I. The war pretty much kept a steady growth see Mexico for example
Thanks to modern medicine and farming techniques increasing the food supply, we are reproducing at a much higher rate than ever. Well, we are probably reproducing it about the same rate it's just that a much higher percentage of people are surviving into adult, which in turn means more people to reproduce and so on and so forth
It's actually not this simple. The countries with the most advanced medicine and farming almost universally have decreasing birth rates and are relying on immigration to sustain their populations
why is this?
Simple, economics. It is getting more expensive every year to raise children. People are also waiting longer to have children because of debt. When our medicines sucked and we needed farmhands, it was common for a farm family to produce over four children, ten wasnt that rare, but few lived to adulthood because of disease and injury.
Check out Peter Zeihan on YouTube if you’re interested in falling birthrates. He explains it well.
Birth control and expense.
Partially. But huge amounts of people went from largely agriculture/farming based systems where having lots of kids was a good thing as in free labor. Then we start to industrialize, people move to cities, have less children because now children are an expense that doesnt quickly (or ever in some cases) pay dividends.
Well given it's pretty much universal it has to be something very simple that would be common amongst any culture. The only thing that common is women lol personally I think it's too much work for women to be moms and have careers. I think they're opting out in lieu of pursuing what would traditionally be masculine goals, and then men dislike that so there's a falling out between men and women.
South Korea and Japan have movement right now where women explicitly refuse to marry and have children because they would have to give up their careers for domesticity so that’s not super far off in some cases. Idk if men are resenting them, but there’s definitely a conscious effort by women.
Yeah the men resenting women thing is just my own opinion from what I've seen on the internet. Feels like there is a new joke everyday about how western men are fed up. Mgtow passport bros drizzle drizzle? Everyday there's something new and I do not think that is normal in human history
Economics. Back in the day, children were economic *assets* because they could work on the farm. Also you could count on some of them dying so you’d have more. Nowadays children are economic *liabilities* and they’re more likely than not to survive so having one or two (or none) makes more sense.
Education of women is one of the biggest things you can do to reduce fertility rates. Women choose to have fewer babies and fewer pregnancies as their education levels go up. This might tie in to overall education rates leading to non agricultural societies when large families are not as necessary and child mortality drops, but even within cultures this happens. Theoretically educated women can make better choices about when they can have a child and how many they can raise, they can keep their children alive better, and they learn that they don’t have to just keep having children - other women in the world don’t. This includes knowing about birth control and how to use and obtain it. Plus they are more able to leave men who may have used lack of education against them.
but aren’t more kids good?
Uh I mean. I think generally people have a limit. Just when you’re educated you’re more able to enforce it.
Those advanced countries have already had substantial population booms though.
I’m sure this is a great comfort to all the millions that died
Wars lead almost directly to an increased birth rate, thinking you might die tomorrow leads to a lot of sex.
Barely made a dent
i forgot where I read it, but there is a good chance that the only red days (days where the total population of earth declined) were the days where nukes were dropped.
Look up how many babies were born in Germany during WW2. It far exceeded the losses
I think he was more so implying that there would be another 70-85 million people in the word that would/could have also been adding to the population instead of subtracting. So you could add all those births during the war and then also add a ton more.
i did a back of the napkin calculation one time a few years ago. i figured we lose about 180,000 people to death every day, ~65 million a year. we must have a lot more people than back then.
Global population during WW2 was roughly 25% of what it is now,
In the next 50 or so years does anyone think we'll start to view WW2 as starting with Japan's invasion of China in 1937? The argument against that date seems to be it doesn't include major participants but Japan was the second most powerful axis country and China is one of the five victorious powers. Even in the west the two countries that (arguably) did the most to defeat Germany wouldn't join until 1940 and 1941
I earnestly stand by 1937 as the starting date. The main argument for September 1939 is that the fighting is international from then on, but that ignores how the Soviets and Germans were already duking it out in Spain at the same time as the Japanese Invasion and how the majority of Axis powers were engaging in power grabs and armed takeovers of other nations prior to the invasion of Poland.
Regardless of the date of invasions, I think it's important to remember when Germany began the expulsion of Jews in the early 30's. While that is not the start of global conflict, it is when the ball started rolling EDIT: I know there was much more leading up to that. Some key event date into the mid 19th century, but the Holocaust is often overlooked when we consider the war. Germany's entire logistics hung on the movement, enslavement, and extermination of Jews
Early 30s is also when Japan invaded and colonized Manchuria
An interesting point to start WWII from are the Khalkhin Gol battles between Japan and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939. They link together the European and Asian theatres and would have a profound effect on the decisions made later in the war.
> battles between Japan and the Soviet Union in the summer of 1939. But they made peace afterwards, signed a non-aggression pact, and the Soviets even recognized Manchukuo. They only declared war on Japan *after the nukes*.
Many already do
Fair point, by we I should have specified Western Europeans and Americans
This is true
Probably because it wasn’t a world war in 1937?
It wasn’t a world war until 1941 because Japan attacked America, which was the country whose involvement connected the European and Asian wars into one global conflict. Before then, everyone only really fought in their own continent. Claiming 1939 as the start date is eurocentric.
weak take. british collonies declared war in 1939, which spanned NA, SA, EU, Asia and Oceania. dates never really follow when did fighting occur. dates mean when did a state of war begin.
Weak take. Essentially arguing that every war with Britain is a world war. Was Napoleon the real WWI then?
>Weak take. Essentially arguing that every war with Britain is a world war. Was Napoleon the real WWI then? There was no British commonwealth during the time of Napoleon, and nor were its overseas "colonial" or "empire" troops used in Britain's wars in Europe. There was no Canada or Australia, and there were no people from what would become Canada or Australia used formally.
There’s also North Africa, and east Africa from 1940
>Claiming 1939 as the start date is eurocentric. Nope. The "Eurocentric date" includes the involvement of: The United Kingdom France Poland India Czechoslovakia Bahrain Canada Jamaica Malta Australia Libya Nepal New Zealand Australia Oman South Africa So yes, very much a world war.
What was so impactful about invading China vs annexing Korea even earlier?
In terms of world war 2 Korea wasn't given a permanent seat on the security council after the war and so being recognised as a major victor. For comparison Canada fought from 39 to 45, had pilots in the battle of Britain and wasn't given that. Also China suffered the second most number of casualties in the war judging by the graph above and I assume if 37-39 was included that would bump up too. So in the same way the Spanish civil war was a prelude in Europe I would consider Korea similarly in Asia. The reason I think 37 is different is that it's the start of war between one of the major allies and one of the major axis powers
Is Korea part of Other in OP's graph?
One of the major reasons I have come across is that it's seen as a regional conflict getting dragged into a world war, not a conflict that caused/initiated it. Nazi germany invading poland did cause half the world getting dragged into a war, yet I feel it's important to add that at the time a whole lot of the world was still in colonial posession.
The graph puts into perspective just how much the Axis fought the war targeting civilian populations. The Allies weren't "clean", no such thing exists, but it is remarkable how merciful they were with their enemies compared to the Axis. Even the worst American and Soviet war crimes seem like nothing when compared to what the Germans did in Eastern Europe or what Japan did in Asia.
The Soviet war crimes were brutal. When the Soviets were allied with the Nazis and carved up Poland they rounded up Polish officers and executed them.
They also murdered Polish civilians in reprisals for resistance to Soviet rule.
Not to forget they also invaded Poland in the first place. Twice in one war, effectively.
Also during the battle for Warsaw they waited for the Polish to have nearly liberated their own city before finish the job giving the Soviets a propaganda victory and weakening the Polish forces so their revolt was weaker.
They also did that when they captured Poland etc. from the Nazis later during the war, soldiers of resistance movements (like the Home Army) suffered that fate again, after the supposed liberation from the Nazis. However, the point in the original comment is that even these are not that terrible compared to what Axis members were doing, with which I’ll have to agree.
>When the Soviets were allied with the Nazis The Soviets were never allied with the Nazis.
What would you call the partioning of Poland and supplying the Nazi war machine with oil? It was an alliance. A foolish alliance but an alliance none the less
Poland partitioned Czechoslovakia with Germany and had a really close relationship with Germany until march 1939. Do you call that a alliance too?
It was more like, Czechoslovakia took polish land in 1920 while they were fighting against the Soviets and Poland took the land back while Czechoslovakia was being annexed by Germany but there wasn't any agreement between both, everyone thought Germany will have enough with the Sudètes. Also, they had a non aggression pact but I wouldn't call that a close relationship
More like Poland asked the czech to return the land that they had invaded in 1920 when Russia also invaded Poland. And the close relationship part is just your fantasy.
"asked" Yes and the soviet "asked" too. It's incredible how blind one can be when it suits them. Open a history book, from 1933 to march 1939 Poland and Germany were close friends, Goring regularly went on hunts with the polish dictator and they often spoke of splitting the USSR together.
>What would you call the partioning of Poland and supplying the Nazi war machine with oil? Not an alliance. > It was an alliance. Not an alliance. Words have meaning.
They literally assisted the Nazis in conquering Poland and then later accelerated their conquests of Scandinavia and Western Europe with their oil.
If an alliance is formed just whenever a pact is signed then more countries were aligned with the Nazis than people think
They helped to conquer Poland.
Me and my neighbour both agreeing to shovel the sidewalk is not an alliance, nor is it assisting each other.
You're right, they had an "understanding" before the war to partition Poland and Eastern Europe. Oh, and the Soviets allowed the Germans to develop their tanks in the USSR to avoid sanctions of disarmament treaties. And gave them favorable trade agreements.
>You're right, they had an "understanding" before the war to partition Poland and Eastern Europe not an alliance. >. Oh, and the Soviets allowed the Germans to develop their tanks in the USSR to avoid sanctions of disarmament treaties. The Kama tank school was shut down when the Nazis took power. That was a *Weimar* agreement. >And gave them favorable trade agreements. That's called international trade. Not an alliance.
Soviet war crimes seem like nothing? You don’t know much about it then
As many as a third of the Soviets killed during the war were killed by other Soviets. And what they did to Axis prisoners during and after the war was just as bad
Where did you get that Soviets killing soviets statistic from?
> was just as bad As what? The holocaust? The soviets didn't wage a war of industrialized genocide and extermination, in hopes of gaining living space for their superior race, like the moustache man did. What happened to Berlin after the Soviets took it? Now imagine what would happen with Moscow if Germans won. They literally wiped out thousands of villages and cities off the map while invading the Soviet Union. Germany got off lightly when taking in account all the ville shit they did. Soviets as a whole suffered unfathomable levels of pain and suffering during the war, which is why i always feel bad for them during that period. Now of course you can't ignore the paranoia ridden Politburo shenanigans and their tendency to mass execute intellectuals, officers and other dissidents. Their leadership was rotten to the core, but the regular Ivan suffered greatly, because as always it's the civilians who get fucked over the most during the war
Yeah but it was against Nazis so I dont care
Yep. Even very recent wars like the war on ISIS, Yemeni civil war, and countless post-WW2 conflicts resulted in tens of thousands of civilians dead per battle, or several 100,000s dead overall.
The civilian deaths in the soviet union honestly surprises me a bit. Based on the different countries tactics, i would’ve previously said the Germans were likely the cleanest in their invasion targeting civilians the least. The Russians and Japanese in particular were known to actively hunt down civilians. That said, Germany and Russia did engage in many gruesome ground battles inside major cities, which would tend to lead to more civilian deaths. That said, I learned recently that german soldiers often executed russian civilians as they retreated from towns in 1943 and 1944. Its also likely that Russia’s famous artillery bombardments were indiscriminate even against their own civilians.
I should point out that the Chinese fatality data, dates from July 7, 1937 to the end of the war. That makes your math in the title inaccurate.
Are Chinese and Japanese casualties only counted from the moment Germany invaded Poland, or are they counted from the moment their war started in 1937? Former makes no sense, latter means WW2 started in 1937. its interesting to compare casualties between countries. USA suffered about half a million casualties in all of WW2. Had USA suffered similar casualties as Finland did in Winter War alone, it would have meant casualties of 1 million men in a war that lasted for 105 days.
Helluva of a sequel it was...
Now add 1937 and china/Japan numbers
Can't recommend this enough. It's gut wrenching. Especially towards the end. https://youtu.be/DwKPFT-RioU?feature=shared
Yeah this is a great one. YouTube classic. Poor Russians…
Most history syllabi at the college level include WW2 as one of, if not the, primary curriculum. Any casual student of history will then be able to tell you that the cost incurred by the Soviet Union dwarfed even the cost incurred by the European powers themselves. Especially human lives.
That was a world war. Check out Chairman Mao’s stats.
The US civil war was wild for military deaths. A lot of no good out there.
When killing technology evolves faster than lifesaving technology.
The killing tech comes first, and then the lifesaving tech tries to pick up the pieces
That was a famine in one of the most populated parts of the planet. I’m confused what one has to do with the other.
When you have an incompetent leader that caused the famine
> So, a life every 3 seconds How’s that compare to peace time rates, then and now? And birth rates? Edit: Google… > The number of babies born in the world every second is an intriguing statistic, reflecting the constant flow of new life into the global population. As of recent data, it's estimated that approximately 4.3 births occur worldwide every second.
This only includes war-related deaths. It be more with unrelated included.
Today 6000 people die every hour all causes.
We learn nothing.
This information is public and widely available. Yet Germans will still get up on a soap box and tell you how you're doing things wrong in your country. Fuckers never learn.
Poland lost 6milion citezens, almost all were civilians imagine where Poland would be now if we didn't loose 1/5 of our population, 3milion Polish Jews, 2milion other Poles and 1milion Ukrainians and Belarussians died in holocaust in Poland alone
Ok, except Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and started fighting the Chinese. Nanjing massacre happened in 1937.
I wouldn’t count 1931 as the start date. 1937 is the official beginning of the Second Sino-Japanese War too, so that’s an actual date you could assume to be the “beginning” of WW2. More importantly, millions of casualties from these statistics happened during the timeframe of 1937-1939…
Yeah, in the west Germany is seen as the main antagonist of ww2, so them starting the war is seen as the start. Also Japan and China were at war like odds with each other for like the previous 8 years (starting at 1931). So really it makes sense to think of WW2 as starting in 1931 if you had to pick a date IMO.
> So really it makes sense to think of WW2 as starting in 1931 if you had to pick a date IMO. Weird how when China and Japan went to war, no one else got involved.
US eventually started sanctioning Japan
Sanctions =/= world war
In the US it's especially strange since it was the Japanese that drew the US into hostilities.
Hitler is the better antagonist for the US, as there isn't a Japanese person who has a similar leadership role in the same way. And German Uboats where sinking US ships before Japan attacked so it they were in a sort of fake not quite a war with Germany already. I think that contributes also. Finnaly though, I think the USA is more able to understand a reflection in hitler and the Germans ion themselves in a way that just isn't true for Imperial Japan.
Not hard to imagine considering the Nazis were killing people for sport. They were literally killing thousands of people a day at Auschwitz at one point, now factor in all of their other death camps, massacres, wartime battles, and everything else
This is what Neville Chamberlain was hoping to avoid when he negotiated with Hitler. People give him a hard time and blame him for the war. This is unfair. Very few people (aside from Churchill) understood what Hitler was. Hindsight is 20/20. Had Hitler's nature been understood in the mid 30's, he'd have been nipped in the bud.
How is 12,000,000 annually equal 972,000 per month? Am I stupid?
Probably 11,600,000 rounded to 12
No idea. Even ignoring the decimal error I cant find what they divided by for 97200 instead of 100000
[The scale of it all…](https://www.reddit.com/u/Doomathemoonman/s/If6fSGokxO)
i really wish these numbers were broken down by YPLL as well. years of potential life lost its far more useful and scientific than just “deaths”
I feel incredibly grateful to not have lived through that.
Japan's expansionist movement into China and the resulting 19 million deaths of Chinese is still something that they're getting away with. Seems that America, wanting to profit off of future Japanese trade, fought against bringing Japanese to justice for their atrocities against the Chinese during this period. Japanese atrocities committed during the Rape of Nanking had Nazi observers reporting back to Germany on the horrors they had witnessed. Chinese are still fighting for recognition. Japanese are still fighting against justice for the Chinese.
What happens when you include the war in China?
Someone dies of starvation/related causes every 3 seconds.
So Mao Zedong caused almost as many deaths to WW2 during peacetime
More Japanese people walked out of those internment camps than walked in. And the interment camps began *after* Pearl Harbor, unlike Germany, who put people in camps proactively. Context kinda ruins your whole delusion. There is no argument. >more German POWs killed by Americans than vice versa Shame. Maybe if they were still in Germany instead of all those other countries, that wouldn’t have happened huh?
It was certainly a big one
So which one was the war to end all wars?
Nice
I wonder is there any statistics like this for places like Stalingrad
Since the soviet union lost about 20-25 million people during ww2, does that mean a soviet citizen/soldier died ever 9-12 seconds?
That 22 short stories of Springfield from the Simpsons but about the 506 approximate lives killed over the course of an episode
In a way I'm kinda glad we have nukes now. Simply put, nobody would allow such an aggressor to gain so much control ever again. When you have the weapon that kills EVERYTHING and intelligence to know exactly where you are at all times.... yeah, it wouldn't be hard to end WWII before it started with today's technology.
With that amount of people dying, you’d think there would be a measurable impact on the climate
Invaysion of Poland is starting the clock too late. The Japanese invasion of China below Manchuria is where it should start. So July 7, 1937 at the Marco Polo Incident is a good place to start. But I think this data includes those figures. It is just the post title that is wrong.
Military members currently serving, please keep this in mind as the superpowers gear up for a WWIII. The rich get richer and live in luxury, while military members and civilians die in the streets.
Damn
Yeah Germany, they will fuck up the world again.
Those numbers are insanity... it literally changed the earth's future losing all those people, like if that didn't happen the earth would be populated by totally different people right now...
OK, that's it. From now on, no more war, guys. You are done. Edit: I mean it. You are all cut off from Warfare. Now clean your damn rooms!
Population control?
yet everyone goes on about the 6 million Jews
Then look up how many of his own citizens Chairman Mao killed. The depraved killings of dictator like hitler and mao are mind boggling
Mars approves
One should regard the 2nd Sino Japanese War, started in 1937, as the beginning of that global conflict. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Sino-Japanese_War
Many here mentioned the evils of China at the time, so… https://www.reddit.com/r/Damnthatsinteresting/s/2LVXcfkYKX
And yet we always skip out Russia invading Poland right after Germany did..... but while the west went to war w Germany over it, they supported Russia doing it.
Soviets and Slavics*
Sounds like we’re do for some thinning of the herd .