the average lifespan of an American is 80 years and an 80-year-old today was 10 when World War II ended four when it began a soldier who saw battle would have to be in his late 80s at least today generals political leaders the decision makers of the war few are still with us and over the past few decades we've seen authors and filmm makers rush to capture stories from survivors before this connection of memory is lost this project is not about individual War Stories and it's not about survivors we're going to tally up the tens of
millions of people whose lives are cut short by the war and see how these numbers stack up to other Wars in history including Trends in recent conflicts [Music] we'll be counting soldiers and civilians separately each of these figures represents 1,000 people who died civilians were of all walks of life whereas military deaths were almost entirely men the average age was about 23 in most battles for every 1,000 soldiers killed there are more than a thousand who were injured the word casualty can be confusing because in military speak it often includes both deaths and injuries and
anything else that takes a soldier out of service here we're just counting the deaths and we'll begin with American [Music] soldiers over 400,000 died most of the deaths occurred in the European theater fighting the Nazis and about a quarter were in the Pacific fighting the Japanese when you put them on the timeline you see that casualties were the heaviest at the end of the war The War Began on September 1st 1939 but the US wasn't willing to join the fight until Pearl Harbor 2 years in the deaths increased drastically on dday when the Allies invaded
Normandy one of the most tragic moments of the war was on D-Day at Omaha Beach where 2500 Americans fell so about the same number of US soldiers died on this single Beach Landing as the entire 13 years of the recent war in Afghanistan the bloodiest battle in the Pacific was okanawa which lasted 82 days during which 12,500 Americans died about 5,000 of these deaths were at Sea from kamakazi [Music] attacks now let's look at some other countries starting with Europe Germany started World War II when it invaded Poland Poland ultimately lost 200,000 soldiers in the
war most died after the invasion while the country was occupied by Germany in the Soviet Union Germany meanwhile lost just 16,000 in the invasion of Poland the Nazis went on to invade and Conquer other countries including Denmark Belgium the Netherlands France Greece and Yugoslavia France surrendered but after losing 92,000 soldiers in the Battle of France over 200,000 ultimately fell which includes deaths in P camps French colonies and other fights Yugoslavia suffered almost half a million military deaths the initial Invasion brought relatively few casualties on both sides but the deaths mounted under Nazi occupation due to
Guerilla fighting civil conflict and mass executions the Nazi invasions were Swift with relatively few German losses even the Nazi commanders expressed surprise at their success and then we have the United Kingdom in the United States who are not invaded but took the fight to the Nazis Britain lost about the same number of soldiers as the US which includes the British colonies Germany lost about half a million soldiers fighting the US and Britain in what is known as the Western Front which took place in France and [Music] Belgium but most Nazi soldiers died in the Eastern
Front Germany's unsuccessful invasion of the Soviet Union the numbers are staggering the most famous battle of the Eastern front and perhaps the turning point of the European war was Stalingrad the German 6th Army successfully took Stalingrad but then got surrounded by the Soviets and cut off from food and ammunition half a million Nazis would ultimately die in Stalingrad another 100,000 were taken prisoner of which 6,000 would ever return PWS had a low survival rate throughout World War III and it was particularly Grim in the East when you include these PS roughly the same number of
Germans died in Stalingrad as all the Western Front fighting against France the UK and the US and though Stalingrad was a victory for the Soviets they suffered almost twice as many losses as [Music] Germany the Soviet Union would eventually defeat the once Unstoppable German Army killing 2.3 millon million Nazi soldiers but winning the war came at a costume [Music] [Music] 8.7 million is the official tally by the Russian military a hly disputed number some Studies have calculated as many as 14 million dead to complete the count of European military deaths we need to add German
deaths from other fronts including the North in Africa as well as deaths from other Axis Powers Allied of the Nazis Hungary Romania and Italy when you put these European military debts on the timeline it looks like this you can now interact with the chart to learn more pause the narration if you would like more time and now we switch to civilian deaths in [Music] Europe 6 million Jewish people were killed in the Holocaust if you separate this by country you see that about half 2.7 million were polish 700,000 were Soviets followed by Hungary and 17
other countries [Music] r broken down another way about half of the 6 million were killed in the concentration camps over a million died in osht most were killed in the gas Chambers others died from starvation exhaustion disease and other forms of [Music] execution the second most deadly Camp was Tri blinka which was exclusively an extermination camp set up to look like a train station mobile killing groups killed 1.4 million [Music] Jews like with the gas Chambers men were killed first to reduce the risk of revolt [Music] the Holocaust also includes non-jewish deaths between 130,000 to
500,000 Roma then called gypsies were killed the numbers are disputed about a quar million people with disabilities were killed homosexuals Catholics and other groups were also exterminated but their numbers were relatively small some historians say that other civilian deaths should go under the label of Holocaust about 2 million non-jewish poles were killed under German occupation some of which were sent to the gas Chambers at owitz when you combine civilian and Military deaths over 16% of the total polish population died in World War II which is the highest percentage of any country but not the highest
in total death count the Soviet Union again tops that list losing at least as many civilians as it did soldiers somewhere between 10 and 20 million a particularly dark moment for the Soviet Union was the sieg of Leningrad now St Petersburg German forces surrounded Leningrad before civilians could be evacuated supplies including food were cut off for 2 and 1/2 years 1 and 1/2 million people died as a result mostly from starvation mostly civilians Stalin's cruelty towards his own people is partly responsible for these numbers he often didn't allow civilians to evacuate from cities thinking it
would cause the soldiers protecting them to fight harder about a million Soviets died in Stalin's own labor camps called the gulock just about every country suffered civilian losses especially countries who were invaded while many died as a result of so-called collateral damage the biggest numbers occurred when it was no accident civilians were exterminated purposely fired upon or bombed used as human Shields or intentionally deprived of food the intentional killing of civilians was done by most Waring parties including the United Kingdom and the United States the United Kingdom was spared of a land Invasion but still
lost 60,000 civilians largely from German Air Raids or blitzes often directed at civilian population centers the UK did the same to German cities at a much greater magnitude causing about 10 times the number of deaths but most German civilian deaths came from the ground at the late stage of the war when the Nazi regime collapsed civilians living in occupied regions had to desperately flee from the advancing Soviet Army rapes were widespread and death estimates ranged from 600,000 to 3 [Music] million let's step back and see where we are with the totals we just counted about
20 million civilian deaths in Europe if you add this to the European military deaths we already covered it brings us to over 40 million then we have the Asian theater here we see the vast majority of military debts in Asia came from China and Japan on the civilian side about 6 million deaths from China Indonesia Korea Indochina and the Philippines can be attributed to Japanese war crimes which are sometimes compared to the Nazi atrocities due to the sheer scale of the cruelty China had the second highest death count after the Soviet Union and like the
Soviets the Chinese government demonstrated a stunning willingness to sacrifice its own people Chinese nationalists open the Dyke at the Yellow River hoping the flood would halt the Japanese Advance half a million Chinese civilians or more were killed which is two or three times the number who died in all countries in the 2004 Asian tsunamis but the invasion of China only cost Japan 200,000 soldiers most were killed fighting the US and allies in the Pacific [Music] War significant portion of Japanese civilian deaths were caused by American firebombing and the two nuclear attacks contrary to official US
statements these air strikes were directed at civilian populations not military targets when you add all the deaths outside Europe it brings us to a grand total of 70 million for the war give or take depending on who's counting and what civilian deaths get included more people died in World War II than in any other war in history for comparison here are 20 or so of the very worst wars and atrocities we have on record some of these are more of atrocities than Wars but we've seen how that distinction can get blurry some of these spanned
across centuries World War II had the highest body count and it all happened in just 6 years the world's population has grown significantly since the earliest atrocities on this list if you want to compare them in terms of what percentage of the world died we can adjust the chart to look like this this rough approximation tells us there may have been more devastating Wars before World War II proportionally [Music] speaking when we turn to post-war conflicts it's hard to say anything that isn't controversial but the data shows something quite extraordinary has been happening in 1989
John Gattis coined the phrase the long piece to identify the absence of conflict between the nuclear powers during the Cold War 25 years later the Cold War is Over and the term is still being used although its meaning may have shifted European countries have not fought each other except for this 10-day war in 1956 when the Soviet Union invaded Hungary when we look at European Wars before World War II it looks like this they tend to be more frequent as they go back though smaller in scale and the largest 44 economies of the world have
not battled each other since World War II rich countries have fought poor countries like the US versus Iraq but rich countries have not fought other rich countries such a period of peace between the so-called great Powers hasn't been seen since the Roman Empire to many peace is too strong of a word Wars have occurred since World War II and they can be grouped into these four categories we don't see colonial wars anymore we've already noted that Interstate Wars between rich countries have not occurred at all and here we see wars involving smaller economies have tapered
off that leaves Civil Wars of two types with and without foreign intervention and this is what these battle deaths look like alongside of World War II more people died fighting in World War II than in all the wars since and again we can't forget about world population which has almost tripled since World War II if we scale these numbers to show deaths in proportion to world population showing the likelihood that a person on Earth dies in battle the downward Trend becomes even more pronounced now this isn't to infer anything about why this trend is occurring
that's a discussion for another day you can now interact with this chart to explore what conflicts are behind the totals now bear in mind we're just just looking at Battle deaths here not civilian deaths but those two are in Decline peace is a difficult thing to measure it's a bit like counting the people who didn't die in wars that never happened we give such importance to the word piece but we don't tend to notice it when it occurs or report on it sometimes it takes reminding ourselves of how terrible War once was to see the
peace that has been growing around us of course this trend may not continue and it's not clear how looking at these charts can help us make the right decisions to ensure that it does but the longer the long piece grows the more significant it becomes so if watching the news doesn't make us feel hopeful about where things are heading watching the numbers might [Music] if You' like to support this project and encourage new episodes please follow us using one of the options below and consider paying the suggested ticket price for today's show thank you very
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