I saw this video on Facebook this morning, and it really shocked me:


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7cgRwDkP6vk

I knew there were some big numbers involved, but some of the countries on the big-hitter list really surprised me.

Of course, these numbers include both combat deaths and civilian deaths, which were from things like concentration camps as well as general famine and chaos. Wikipedia has a decent breakdown if you want more detail:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

Wow . . . such huge losses. What a waste.

The Soviets took it hard. Stalingrad, Leningrad, Battle of Berlin. I think something like 1.2 million died in Stalingrad.

Damn.

Japanese losses.

That's like everyone in the current day Seattle Metro area... dead... Not just Seattle proper, But Seattle metro....

Basically everyone in Snohomish, King, and Pierce counties...

Holy shit.

China. Wow. It's interesting they start with Brasil.

India and China were the surprise for me. But than again my grandfather was stationed in India for a time being during the Pacific Theater. They would fly surveillance and do bombing raids on Japan and other Pacific islands.

One thing to remember, other than the attacks on Hawaii and Alaska (which were not states back then) the Main land US was not in any real danger. We chose to fight for the freedom of other people and did so bravely.

over 400,000 Americans died so that Europe and Asia could be free....now that generation, the greatest generation, is leaving us, let's hope their legacy and sacrifice remains

That's a pretty powerful visual

I wonder if they used the low range of the estimates? the video reports India is at 2.5M and the famine (with related illnesses) is estimated to have caused up to 3M deaths (5% of the population)

“No dumb bastard ever won a war by going out and dying for his country. He won it by making some other dumb bastard die for his country.”
-G.Patton.

Did you ever wonder if all those millions hadn't died, there might have been a cure for cancer by now? Maybe we'd already be established on another planet due to the potential scientists that could have got us there? Perhaps our world today would be so over populated that Soylent Green would be our staple today....

You make getting rid of King, and Pierce County sound like a bad thing?

easy for you to say now that you have escaped

Throughout recorded history, every 60-100 years a plague hits and wipes out 25% or so of the human population. Last one was the Influenza epidemic of 1919. Modern medicine appears to eliminated a lot of this leading to the population boom we've been experiencing for the last 70 years or so.

In my view, war isn't much different. It controls the population boom - and we haven't had a really big one in 70 years now (and hopefully won't have another big one).

At some point, something's got to give.

Powerful imagery.

Many of these nations sent their own expendable men into meat grinders and sure death as totally indifferent to their fate. When you realize that, it's more tragic.

Millions, perhaps even more died not from combat, but from famine, disease, exposure and not directly due to combat. Entire cities of hundreds of thousands of people were starved.

And not to derail, but the deaths of WWII were comparable to totals in WWI, just a few decades earlier. I'm sure most European families were hit very hard by two devastating wars that killed or ruined everything in its path in basically overlapping consecutive generations.

And in that basic era, from about 1900-1945 or so, there were so many viruses and diseases and advances in technology (particularly violent warfare, like planes, machine guns, poison gas, nuclear weapons, radar, etc.) that it must have been hell on earth for much of the globe.

In 1900, the global population was 1.6 billion. Some huge % of the global population died prematurely of famine, war, disease, or related causes in that era in about a 30 year period.
* WWI - 1914 to 1918 killed 40 million
* Persian famine 1918 killed 10-20 million
* Spanish flue 1918 -1920 killed 75 million
* Russian famines 1921-1925 killed 5-10 million
* Russian famines 1932-1933 killed 5-8 million more
* WWII 1939 to 1945 killed 50-80 million

Staggering to think of that today. Imagine in a 30 year period, two world wars, and widespread famine, violence, epidemics, and diseases that kill several hundred million people! Probably on the order of something like 1 in 7 humans died in that 3 decades!

One of our blessings in the US is that, in spite of our involvement in WWI and WWII and other wars, most people were not directly impacted. Aside from Pearl Harbor and 9/11/01, we've never suffered a long term violent invasion. Even in the Great Depression, we didn't suffer the types of suffering seen in the rest of the world. We've never taken the kinds of widespread generational losses like much of the world, losing MILLIONS of citizens in long-term conflicts.