Why Was World War II So Bad: 2024 Encore

All wars are bad. But why was World War II so extreme? Coming less than 20 years after World War I (the most extreme war up until that time), the Second World War’s death toll is _conservatively_ calculated at 60 million people. And some estimates are higher than that. Professor Phil Nash joins us to explain why the death and destruction were so severe, and to give us grim statistics on some overlooked facts. These include the number of civilian deaths outnumbering military deaths, and the number of Allied deaths far exceeding Axis deaths. If this episode doesn’t bring the peace-nix in you out into the open, we’ve failed to convince you. Listen and learn!

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:04):
This is Winston Churchill speaking to you from number ten
Downing Street. Nothing lifts my spirits like a blast of
Professor Buzzkill during our darkest hour. He busts myths and
takes names like a squadron of spitfires strafing enemy positions.

(00:27):
And I'm totally stooked that he's here again to save
Western civilization. So relax with your favorite whiskey and become enlightened.

Speaker 2 (00:42):
That's right, is Professor Buzzkill here with one of my
favorite professor's, Professor Phil Nash from Penn State. How are you, sir?
I'm doing great, Thanks very much. You know. One of
the things that buzz Killers always ask me again and
again and again, and one of the reasons is because
we do we do a number of World War two
shows because it's so important, is why was World War
II two so deadly? Why was it worse than World
War One? Why are the numbers so colossal compared to

(01:04):
everything else that we read about?

Speaker 3 (01:06):
Right, which is it's there's obviously a ton out there
on World War Two. Yeah, a lot of documentaries, people
read a lot about World War Two. But this, it
strikes me anyway, is one of these questions which often
just gets ignored because we just you know, we assumed that, well, yeah,
it was a huge war, was super deadly, and lots
of people died a world war, a world war exactly.

(01:27):
But it really is much much worse than World War One.
It's by far the most deadly war in all of
human history. It's a lot of portions. God, it's in
its own category. And so for that reason alone, I
think it's worth sort of peeling back the layers and
looking into why it's absolutely so deadly.

Speaker 2 (01:43):
Well, then, how deadly was how deadly was it?

Speaker 3 (01:46):
The The agreed on figure I've seen over and over
and over is sixty million dead. Sixty million, six zero,
sixty million dead. But that's the low figure. I've seen
estimates higher, estimates as high as eighty million. Others it's
more like seventy million. But so sixty is the conservative figure,

(02:08):
and I don't I've never seen any figure lower than that.
So obviously, at some level these numbers lose meaning one
way or another. It's not like sixty million to somehow
good in eighty million is bad. Of course, let's get
that in mind.

Speaker 2 (02:21):
I used to I used to tell my students this,
sixty million dead figure. And I would say to them
and try to convince them, you know, this is the
worst thing that ever happened. Yes, and a lot of
them would say, whoa, what about Steve McQueen movies, you know,
And it was always disordered because it's so glorified in
so many different ways. You know, people forget the death toll.

Speaker 3 (02:39):
Yeah, exactly, we're looking at this way the Good War,
but we know as the good War costs sixty million
lives minimum. And just for context, World War One, which
was called the Great War for a reason because it
was by far the most destructive war humanity had ever
seen up until that point, costs seventeen million lives. Oh
my good, ten million civilian, seven million military casually. Is

(03:01):
I think I've got those in the right order in
any seventeen million. So the sixty million figure, that represents
three percent of the world's population as of nineteen forty
that's the whole world's probably, that's the entire right So
because the global population was it was billions, but it's
a lot less than it is now. And that's important

(03:22):
to keep in mind, is the proportionality. So just for
comparison purposes, three percent of the world's population was killed
in World War Two. It is as if today the
United States went to war. So, put in a national context,
if we went to war, we have our populations, about
what three hundred and twenty million is if we went
to war today and suffered nine point six million dead.

(03:46):
Oh not just that, which is to me just a
mind nine. I mean, it gets you a little closer
to getting your mind around it, but still you can't.

Speaker 2 (03:54):
It's just such.

Speaker 3 (03:55):
That's how devastating a figure that is, Right, three percent
In most contexts, three percent is a small number, but
if you're looking at the population of the world, it's
an enormous number.

Speaker 2 (04:06):
So how does this break down in terms of different
countries in different places worse than other places? Absolutely?

Speaker 3 (04:11):
And that's the other thing is that, I mean, the
generalization would be that the costs, however, you measure it
in terms of absolute numbers of dead or as a
percentage of population. Either way, there is an enormous variety,
as you might imagine. I mean, there's some peripheral countries,
there were some countries, there were South American countries who

(04:32):
declared war on the axis but sent few, if any,
actual troops. Right, So they're Obviously they're an ally they're
helping the war effort right there, they're supplying goods for
the Allied cause. But they're not actually losing lives typically, right,
So you have some countries where the loss.

Speaker 2 (04:49):
Is zero or near zero. Right.

Speaker 3 (04:52):
People should keep this in mind because it often gets lost,
especially here in the United States. The majority, probably two
thirds of all dead are either Soviet or Chinese two
two thirds, so forty two million, very roughly, and this
is a total debt. This is civilian and military debt.
We're gonna break those down later. But twenty seven million Soviets,

(05:15):
that's it.

Speaker 2 (05:16):
Make you mind.

Speaker 3 (05:17):
I'm using the word Soviet rather than Russian because they're
not all Russians. Yes, of course, it's a huge A
lot of them are Ukrainians and from the Baltic States
or White Russia or the Central Asian Republics or the
Caucasus anyway, so Soviets civilian Soviet citizens, I should say,
twenty seven million, that's what nearly half absolutely, nearly half,
not quite. And then secondly, about fifteen million Chinese people

(05:39):
lose their lives, often completely ignored in the West.

Speaker 2 (05:42):
Well, and people a lot of people don't even think
about China being in the.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
War, right, I'll bet a lot of people if you said, okay,
sixty million people and down in World War two, it
might not in their head. They don't have a picture
of one in four of those dead people being Chinese.

Speaker 2 (05:57):
Yeah. Absolutely, and that's how devastating it was to that country.

Speaker 3 (06:00):
So, like I said, there's a huge range in terms
of percentage of pre war population who die. By far,
the hardest hit country is Poland. So in other words,
so keep this mind, the Soviet Union, they lose the
largest raw number, twenty seven million, but as a percentage
of pre war population, Poland loses about seventeen percent of
its population.

Speaker 2 (06:19):
Oh so of course it's run over several times. It's
the longest way piede.

Speaker 3 (06:24):
It's it's the focal point of the Holocaust, which we'll
talk about later. A huge number of non Jewish Poles
lose their lives under Nazi occupation, often overlooked. So, yeah,
Poland is the hardest hit. I was interested to learn
among the Western quote unquote Western, you know, depending on
how you measure Western, and among the Western allies, the

(06:46):
hardest hit as a percentage was New Zealand because New
Zealand has a tiny population.

Speaker 2 (06:51):
Oh, of course, of course the right.

Speaker 3 (06:53):
And yet they were heavily involved in combat, so you know,
they often overlooked. And once again it's as a percentage,
but that is important as a percentage for the people
in New se right. I mean, if you wipe out
a large part of a small country, that's really really
important to them, and you can't say to them, oll, relax,
it's a small raw number, right, it's right, it's the
percentage of families affected, et cetera, et.

Speaker 2 (07:14):
Cetera, when it's one in every five households or whatever
it is, you.

Speaker 3 (07:17):
Know, exactly, So Poland is in its own category when
it comes to percentage. A Germany, for example, loses something
like eight and a half percent of its population. Just
for comparison purposes.

Speaker 2 (07:27):
Oh, that's interesting, because I would have thought with all
the bombing, especially late in the war, it might have
been at the number will be a lot bigger.

Speaker 3 (07:32):
But although actually in the case, I freaking to mention it.
And the German losses are overwhelmingly military. Oh okay, their
army is just ravaged by combat. And it's a I
mean think I mean in terms of percent if you
break down the percentage within one country military civilian, even
though you're correct they lose hundreds of thousands of people
in civilian civilian deaths in air a raids. Their army

(07:55):
is just especially in the last year of the war,
they suffer appalling casualties. The German army is just ground
to pieces.

Speaker 2 (08:01):
Is that because what's happening both on the Eastern front, on.

Speaker 3 (08:03):
Both and both yeah west, both fronts. Yes, yes, it
just the scale of the killing just goes off the
charts in the last year of the war, and and
they go down hard. Yeah, so's millions of Germans soldiers
lose their lives in any case. So I'm going to
make some generalizations first, and then we're going to break
it down into civilian losses and military losses. Get a

(08:24):
little more deeper into the weeds in terms of individual
factors explaining why World War two is so costly.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
Right, because it does it just you can't you can't
just say, Okay, the entire world has to lose this
amount of people, so it has to come. This percentage
of mery just greatly different in each.

Speaker 3 (08:39):
Place, right, And some of the some of the explanations
as we get into this are going to be not
entirely new, but just sort of greater magnitude, and some
of them will be mostly new in other words, things
you didn't see in the World War One. Oh okay, okay,
But in terms of big picture like if like what
would be my sort of if you are answering this
on Twitter, what would I say?

Speaker 2 (09:00):
Right? Well, twitters expanded exactly to eighty now right.

Speaker 3 (09:05):
The big, big, big, big picture, big histories, we might
say is that when World War Two you basically have large,
heavily populated countries and empires right right, and rememor it's
not just countries as empires sure like on the Allied
side a huge percentage of losses or British Empire losses.
Sure not British losses. Okay, let's keep that in mind.

(09:25):
These heavily populated countries and empires are fully mobilized for
war to a greater extent even than World War One mobilization,
right in terms of percentage of the populations that are
in uniform percentage of the populations that are in war
related work, right, that sort of thing. So that's that's
at play. They are fielding armies and navies and air

(09:48):
forces that are using modern weapons. A lot of them
are the similar or the same as World War One.
A lot of them are similar but far more destructive,
like tanks. Tanks just just sort of firepower, right basically,
you know, high explosives.

Speaker 2 (10:04):
There were tanks in World War One late where they
were sort of a joke and did not play a
crucial role the way they did in World War Two.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
And under all those circumstances, these countries and empires are
fighting for a very long time, right. You know, World
War two is longer than World War One. Right, For example,
the United States has engaged for four years instead of
a year and a half. A place like Poland is
at war or occupied for six years, right, that's fifty
percent longer than the entirety of World War One. So

(10:36):
I would argue have basically have a multiplier effect. Right
when you have all those sort of qualitative things times
number of months fighting, times square mileage that's been fought
over or occupied by a hostile power, all that basically
generates much further and does it.

Speaker 2 (10:55):
Must also impact things like the food supply and other
things later, and if it goes on for six yea, writers,
that's going to affect the food supply in farming and
distribution right terribly.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
Or look at Poland or occupied Soviet Union. Yeah, I
mean they're not just under foreign occupation, they're under Nazi occupation,
which involves basically systematic starvation of the population or what
amounts to that. And then of course that will also
multiply the effect of the impact of things like disease.

Speaker 2 (11:24):
Right.

Speaker 3 (11:25):
If you're malnourished, your body can't fight off disease, and
so things like typhus spread much more quickly and kill
more people that way. So that's part of the big picture.
Another part of the big picture, or slightly smaller picture,
I would say, is that unlike in World War One,
in World War Two, some of the main combatants are
totalitarian or militarist regimes, right that are basically far more

(11:49):
ruthless in every way than the major combatant governments.

Speaker 2 (11:53):
World World War One.

Speaker 3 (11:54):
Okay, so we're talking about not only Nazi Germany obviously,
but to some extent Musolini's Italy, we're talking about stalin
Soviet Union. And when I say militarist, because are you know,
Japan is not a totalitarian power, but it is certainly
an extreme authoritarian militarist regime, right, and these and when
I say ruthless, these are regimes that are not only

(12:17):
more apt to kill large numbers of their enemies, they
are also more apt to sacrifice larger numbers.

Speaker 2 (12:24):
Of their own people.

Speaker 3 (12:26):
Oh okay, and that's an important difference when you compare them, right, Germany,
the Soviet Union, Japan, to say, the United States in Britain,
which are much more reluctant to spend lives to.

Speaker 2 (12:39):
Achieve their objectives. Oh so they're much more reluctant. Does
that show up in a in a sort of calculation
when they're planning out battles and oh, yeah, we have
to be careful. Yes, well, I mean we're just we're
not just throw bodies normal, right.

Speaker 3 (12:52):
For example, it's'll give you one little anecdote. It's my
understanding that FDR was essentially presented with American dead figures
on almost daily basis.

Speaker 2 (13:03):
Oh, I'm pretty sure Joseph Stalin wasn't.

Speaker 3 (13:06):
Yeah, right, and so and we know that you know that,
for example, the British and Americans are much more likely
to call off an offensive that's not working, and partly
because they are squandering lives. And of course they're democracies, right,
they have to worry about being re elected, right subject opinion.
My definition, democracy is more responsive, and so casualties are

(13:27):
the leaders can't ignore the high casualty rates.

Speaker 2 (13:30):
Right.

Speaker 3 (13:31):
So that's a basic And it's not just access versus allies,
it's democracies versus non democracies.

Speaker 2 (13:37):
And that's that's some non democracies on both sides.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Rights, let's keep that in mind. The moral ambiguity of
the lineups in World War two. So, and that's something
for example, if you look at World War One, Yeah,
you have governments of different types. Right, You've got monarchies
and you've got autocracies, and you've got democracies, but they
are more alike each other in their character when it
comes to sort of reverence for human life, I'll put

(14:02):
it that way than in World War Two.

Speaker 2 (14:04):
Right. I think that's a lot of sense. I think
that's a.

Speaker 3 (14:06):
Really important difference between the wars, and that's going to.

Speaker 2 (14:09):
Help lead the to the body count.

Speaker 3 (14:12):
And so one last point I'll make in this introduction,
if I can call it that, is that if you
look at the total breakdown of dead civilian military Allied axis,
I think the numbers are very instructive. So the four categories, right,
Allied civilians, Allied military access, military access, civilian. Yeah, sixty

(14:33):
this debt is not wounded rightssing, This is debt sixty
five percent of the total dead. So sixty five percent
of the sixty plus million were Allied civilians.

Speaker 2 (14:44):
Now this is well, okay, I have a question about
that as we go on later. But this amazes me
that the breakdown is so lopsided on them.

Speaker 3 (14:50):
Yeah, hugely lopsided for multiple reasons. But and once again,
a lot of that is Chinese civilians, right, and a
lot of that is Soviet civilians, yeah, right, who suffer
under the two worst occupations of the war. For at length,
because this is of all the dead, all the breakdown
of civilian dead, just shy of two thirds are Allied

(15:11):
civilians one kind or another. Another twenty five percent are
Allied military. Yeah okay, most of them obviously are Red
Army soldiers. Yeah, oh absolutely, I mean a huge percentage.
I don't have the figures in front of me, but
it's a hue but it's definitely a majority. But still,
one dead person in four is an Allied soldier, sailor airman.

Speaker 2 (15:34):
That just that blows my mind. Yeah, Okay, this is
so complicated, and so many things are going on. All
this is very interesting and sort of an explanation way.
We're talking about why these things happened, and why the
totalitarian and militarist regimes are farmer, ruthless, and and all
that sort of thing we've already talked about. But and

(15:55):
I hesitate to say this because it sounds so so cold,
but let's get down to the numbers. The sheer numbers,
or at least the sheer percentages seem to me as
as you've provided for us on the outline here in
the studio anyway, are just so stark.

Speaker 3 (16:11):
Right, and so as you mentioned, lopsided, lopsided. Oh so,
if you break it down the two sides right axis
and allies, and then break it down within those two
civilian versus military, other numbers I think are sort of shocking.
So this is total dead. Of the sixty plus million
total total dead, total dead from World War two, of

(16:31):
all types, of all categories, I should say, fifty eight
percent are allied civilian. Fifty eight percent, well over half
of the entire the entire dead are allied civilians. And
then even takes in as we mentioned before, the bombing
of Germany.

Speaker 2 (16:45):
And that's right. All these things are right, right.

Speaker 3 (16:48):
And when you consider, for example, some of the major
combat or at least one major combat in the United
States is essentially not touched at home. Right, In terms
of civilian the Americans lose very few civilians, not zero,
but very few civilians. So once again, it's overwhelmingly it's Chinese. Yeah,
and it's Soviet civilians, okay, right.

Speaker 2 (17:07):
Soviet civilians, even though we tend to think of the
grinding Eastern Front as the Soviet military, it's mostly sovietily Yep,
this is just brutal. Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:15):
By the way, the breakdown in the Soviet Union, I'm
pretty sure of the twenty seven million, it's basically, I
believe I think it's seventeen ten seventeen military, ten civilian.
But don't quote me, but it Yeah, it's anyway, yes, obviously,
but it's so lopsized. Yes, So fifty eight percent Allied civilian,

(17:38):
and then another twenty five percent is Allied military losses.

Speaker 2 (17:42):
And of the total, that brings it almost close to
eighty percent. This is astounding, right, Well, you know, we
tend to think of you know, the Allies having one,
so it must have been better for them, so to speak,
and I put better in quotation marks. So I'm sorry,
bust killers. This is a terrible topic, but we have
to bring up the numbers, and this is the way

(18:02):
we have going to talk about them.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
No, the way I describe it is the sacrifice was
worth it because the right side won. But the sacrifice
was enormous. It wasn't there when it wasn't even close
to being fifty to fifty. And let's keep mine that
the Axis is on the attack from early in the
war and then are on the defensive. So man, that's
important too, because you know a large part of this
lopside and this is explained by the fact that the
Allies have to crush their enemies and you always lose

(18:26):
more casualties in attacking than in defending, typically in warfare.
Oh right, so but still the costs of that are huge.
And it's not just that you know those costs the
cost of attacking. Those are military losses. That's only quote
unquote only the twenty five percent, it's the fifty eight
percent that's so it is mind boggling. So yeah, so
you add those two up and that's eighty three percent

(18:47):
of total dead are Allied. So in a way this
is gonna sound odd, but in a way, the Axis
got off easy in terms of percentage of total casualty. Right,
So the Axis, even though they lost total debt because yeah,
I'm sorry, includes yea, yeah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (19:05):
Yes, total dead.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
So yeah, the Axis lose the war, but they inflicted
many more losses than they suffered as a percentage of
the total.

Speaker 2 (19:15):
And by the way, were these numbers you're giving us
are dead, they're not just exactly including cashes which are terriblest, yes, exactly.

Speaker 3 (19:22):
This doesn't talk about wounded or people unable to hold
down a job or families that are destroyed, are right,
I mean the ripple effects are enormous, and this is
not measured the ripple effects.

Speaker 2 (19:31):
Okay, I interrupted you when we were when we got
past the ally before we got onto the Axis numbers,
which are also bad.

Speaker 3 (19:36):
They're bad, and the Access to suffer high losses. But
still as a total it's only quote unquote only seventeen
percent of total dead are access dead. That's four percent.
Four percent of the total are Axis civilians dead. So
that's mostly German and Japanese civilians, right, mean, most of

(19:57):
them die in bombing.

Speaker 2 (19:58):
And we're talking about the great numbers that die in
in the atomic bombings. We're talking about great numbers they
die in the German fire bombings, all these things.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
But so it's basically it's big and bigger and those
those are big figures, but they're dwarfed by the Allied figures. Right,
So four percent of totally our access civilian and that
leaves thirteen percent which are access military losses. And so
that's overwhelmingly once again, German soldiers and Japanese soldiers, German soldiers,
mostly Germans, suffered much many more casualties than the Japanese did.

Speaker 2 (20:29):
And the Italian's numbers are small, right.

Speaker 3 (20:31):
And they were knocked out of the war nineteen forty
three and were never engaged in such a large scale
as the Germans were. So and so, and that's interesting
too to me. Just compare the German and Japanese war efforts.
Even though the fighting in the Pacific is ferocious, and
we will talk about that in some future shows, that
that fight, the fighting on Island X, is of a
minuscule scale compared to for example, the Eastern Front, right,

(20:55):
which is just breathtaking in its scope.

Speaker 2 (20:57):
In terms of numbers. Yes, well, this the difference between
allied and access percentages is mind boggling. It's what, did
we already say, eighty three to seventeen. Eighty three to seventeen.
That's Allied civilians and Allied military eighty three percent, thirteen
Allied access and Allied civilians seventeen percent.

Speaker 3 (21:19):
Well, access civilians and access military.

Speaker 2 (21:21):
All right, yeah, that's right, access civilians and access military.
It's so the numbers are so mind bogglingly out of sync,
if you will. I'm trying to come up with the
best ways to say this because it's such a horrible thing.
But they're so unbalanced. It's really very, very shocking. I'm
I'm sure ninety five percent of bustkalers out there don't

(21:41):
know this number.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
The cost of crushing the axis was.

Speaker 2 (21:44):
Unfathomable, unfathable, absolutely unfatimble. All right, not the happiest time
to take a sponsorship break. But of course this is
not a happy topic. It's a topic we need to
talk about in our culture, we need to talk about
in our history. But it's something that is is very
very bleak. Anyway, we'll be back in a minute after
the necessary sponsorship break. Okay, we're back now, Professor. One

(22:09):
of the things, of course, that was so stark was
of the percentages you gave us before we went to break,
was the percentage of ally dead is so much greater
than the percentage of of access debt. But the other
thing is that the percentage of Allied civilians who died
is so much greater than military civilians, and the present

(22:29):
of the access civilians is so high. The percentage the
numbers of civilian deaths is just truly massive.

Speaker 3 (22:37):
Right, and worth remembering, if only because civilian losses tend
not to get any attention. Right, Oh, the books and
the movies tend to focus on combat and combatants.

Speaker 2 (22:47):
That's right, that's not right. I mean, for obvious reasons.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Right, it's hard to make a gripping movie about civilians
dying of disease. Yeah, I mean, it's been done, but
it just doesn't get nearly as much attention. So if
you break down some of the some of this is
not an exhaustive list, but if you break down some
of the reasons for why civilian losses were so high,
and by the way, you had significant civilian loss in
World War One, Yes, yes, I mean you had millions

(23:12):
of people died who are civilians in World War One.
But still World War Two is worse for several reasons.
One is that in World War Two you tend to
have either have or have more of genocide and mass
killing of civilians. In other words, not just civilians dying
as quote unquote collateral damage I hte that term, but
in other word's dying incidentally, but civilians dying deliberately at

(23:37):
the hands of militaries or occupation forces.

Speaker 2 (23:40):
You don't have in World War One, and you don't
have another right. I mean, think about it this way.
I mean, if you run the numbers.

Speaker 3 (23:44):
The Holocaust kills around six million European Jews, maybe five
point seven million, somewhere in that neighborhood. I mean that
right there is what that's a third of the total
losses from World War One is killed a single obviously
monumental genocidal act. But nevertheless, you know it's only only

(24:07):
a tenth of total World War two lawses. But that's
a single policy, a single act, which kills millions of people.
They're also vicious, especially perpetrated by the Germans. Vicious anti
gorilla campaigns, yes'm which a lot of civilians die in
those one where or Anothery're either being killed or dying
in captivity, or dying because they are, you know, denied

(24:28):
access to food because they're in a gorilla rich area
or whatever.

Speaker 2 (24:32):
And some of them weren't gorillas. They were just.

Speaker 3 (24:34):
Exact wrong place, wrong time, or especially the Germans were
big on this. The Japanese also were reprisals. In other words,
where there's gerilla activity, you lash out of the civilian population,
so the civilians the ideas, so the civilians don't support gorillas.
And we talked about this in other episodes. But here's
one little factory which gets overlooked. It's a famous incident

(24:55):
in the US military effort in the Pacific. It's called
the Doolittle Raid April nineteen forty two.

Speaker 2 (25:00):
Yes, and this is a raid on Tokyo.

Speaker 3 (25:03):
This is where a small group of US bombers is
launched from aircraft carriers in the middle of the Pacific
and they have this It's a little it's a pinprick raid.
It doesn't really cause any serious damage in Tokyo. It's
humiliating for the Japanese who promised their people that they
would never be bombed, and it actually plays an important
role in leading them to the Battle of Midway, which

(25:24):
is decisive June nineteen forty two.

Speaker 2 (25:27):
And it's fame.

Speaker 3 (25:27):
I mean they even they even tacked it onto that
horrible Pearl Harbor movie Alec Baldwin as Jimmy Doolittle. Yeah,
and he's right, right, because Pearl Harper is kind of
a downer for Americans, so you have to end on
an upnote, so you tack on do a little.

Speaker 2 (25:41):
Raid as a retaliation for Pearl Harbor.

Speaker 3 (25:43):
Right, I mean, it was an important morale lifter for
the Americans at the time. What often gets overlooked is
that in retribution for this, because some of the Doo
Little pilots parachuted down into China, oh and some of
them were protected or rescued by Chinese civilians, the Japanese
didn't appreciate that. So the Japanese conducted a reprisal in

(26:04):
the area of China where some of the dew Little
flyers came to earth.

Speaker 2 (26:08):
Uh huh.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
They killed two hundred and fifty thousand Chinese civilians, two
hundred and fifty two hundred and fifty thousand Chinese lost
their lives.

Speaker 2 (26:18):
Because of the dou Little Raid. So this is this
is this sounds crazy because that's in addition to the
fact that the do Little Raid came from the east.

Speaker 3 (26:28):
The Japanese right, because the bombers couldn't fly back to
their carriers. It was a one By the time they
reached Tokyo and dropped their bombs, they don't have enough
fuel to get back to the aircraft carriers, which by
the way have turned and retreated anyway, So they have
no choice but to try and land in China. Some
of them, some of the planes were ditched, some of
the pilots, and they ended up in Soviet territory. Some

(26:49):
of the were captured by the Japanese and executed, but
some of them ended up in China. And the China
and the Japanese really wanted to deter any such behavior,
and so they killed a quarter of.

Speaker 2 (26:58):
A million people.

Speaker 3 (26:59):
This is often overlooked. Obviously, it's a drop in the
bucket compared to the fifteen million Chinese civilians total who
lose their lives in the war, but it is an
enormous figure by any other standard. Yeah, that's right, that's right,
And By the way, it doesn't mean the due little
rate should have taken place, right, You can't foresee these circumstances.
But still the do little rate is always celebrated in

(27:20):
the United States. It's not celebrated in China. No, not
by anyone who knows what went down.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
The proportion, the proportion of that response is just so
is inhuman.

Speaker 3 (27:30):
And the Germans did this too. The Germans policy in
their occupied zones was if a German soldier is killed
or shot at, we go out and kill fifty civilians.
Hanging some of them from lampposts and leaving the bodies
with signs around their necks is a warning too, and
to tur any future such behavior.

Speaker 2 (27:47):
We're sorry that a lot of the show is numbers,
but the fact is that the numbers are so stark
and so brutal and so disheartening we feel like we
have to give them. Yes, you can watch World War
two glory movies all you want, but this is what
actually happens, right, and it also gets at this. Maybe
should do showing this.

Speaker 3 (28:07):
It gets it the whole resistance myth, Yeah, right right,
because there is an enormous downside to the resistance fighters.
We always glorify, and that is the cost to civilians
who did not make the choice to aid or take
part in resistance movements.

Speaker 2 (28:21):
So that's a big story. So then let me ask
about occupations. So we're talking about China and about retaliations
against resistance. How bad is this in terms of numbers.

Speaker 3 (28:31):
Because I mean that because the whole like for example,
reprisals against career activity, those are part of a bigger picture,
which is brutal occupation policies in general, which are worse
than in World War One, which either way, you add
some brutal occupations world War one, don't get me wrong,
but they're worse, especially by the Germans of the Japanese.
Here's a little factoid for you. The Japanese controlled most
of Southeast Asia for most of the war, right in

(28:54):
Southeast Asia. World War two, an estimated five million civilians
died under Japanese occupation one way or another. About by
the way, I think about a million Filipinos lost their
lives in World War Two.

Speaker 2 (29:06):
This doesn't include Chinese just Southeast This is Southeast Asia.

Speaker 3 (29:09):
It includes some ethnic Chinese, we want to go technical,
but they not Chinese nationals. So five, so these are
These are Burmese, these are Ties, these are Singaporeans, these
are Malaysians, these are Indonesians. Right in the Dutch East Indies,
a lot of Indonesians lose their lives. And this is
and now this is of all causes, right, but still
war dead, right, So this is there's no official ground

(29:32):
combat happening in these areas with you know, with exception
of Burma, but still five million civilians lose their lives
for various reasons. Some of them worked to death, some
of them died starvation and disease, some of them desired.
Some of them do die in combat. When the Americans,
for example, we take the Philippines, some of them are
just flat out massacred by the Japanese. When the Japanese
come to Singapore, they kill the twenty five thousand people

(29:54):
who were sort of pro Chinese nationalists. They're just machine
gun them on the beaches. So so it often overlooked
is the Japanese occupation of Southeast Asia, which costs five
million locals in their lives.

Speaker 2 (30:06):
Okay, well, but there these things are horrible. But also
horrible is just bombing in general, right.

Speaker 3 (30:13):
And strategic bombing and that and that is new things
like occupations and civilians dying because there's not enough food
because of the occupation. Those are old strategic bombing, mass
bombing of cities from the air by large, modern bombers
that have big bomb loads, and then you have hundreds
of these bombers. That's new. You had bombing from the

(30:35):
air in World War One, but once again it was
on a tiny scale, It had no impact and very
few civilians lose their lives in it. It becomes systematic
in World War Two. That is new, the US and
the British bombing the Germans, and the US bombing the
Japanese a massive scale for years that has a significant cost.
Once again, the figures vary. Around four hundred thousand Germans,

(30:58):
and this also includes Austrians, by the way, which was
a part of Germany by that point because with the
Anschlas so around four hundred thousand German civilians lose their
lives because of aerial bombardment. Right, and we talked about Dresden, right,
which was twenty eight five thousand people as their lives
in single action show we did a couple of years ago,
a while ago, and then about five hundred thousand Japanese

(31:22):
civilians die from stragic bombing, which includes the atomic bombings. Right,
but just about that, ask that, but the atomic bombing
losses there are a minority of the total Japanese civilian losses, right,
the conventional bombing, the conventional fire bombing. Once again, we
talked about this. The fire bombing of Tokyo was more
destructive than Hiroshima. So about five hundred thousand, about half
a million Japanese civilians died from stragic bombing. And so

(31:45):
just once again put in perspective, even though this is
a minority of the total civilian dead in World War two,
more civilians dines in strategic bombing in World War Two
than die in some entire other wars.

Speaker 2 (31:58):
Oh, like the frank Oppression War exactly.

Speaker 3 (32:02):
Or most wars apart from World War One. Sure, yeah,
so just to keep it in perspective, right, this is,
this is in the big picture, a tiny sliver of
World War two dead. But it's still an enormous number.
This is I feel like I'm repeating myself at no point.

Speaker 2 (32:16):
It's as if it's as if you know, it's all horrible,
all these war dead and all these wars. It's a
horrible statistic but it's as if these wars, as they
get increasingly mechanized, are bad. Civil War, Franco Persian War,
World War one, they're bad. They're bad. And then there's
this massive spike right for World War two and especially
civilian dead.

Speaker 3 (32:37):
Right, And keep in mind that the bombs have gotten
much much bigger. Forget about forget about atomic bombs. Yeah,
conventional bombs. The bombs in World War one or maybe
twenty five fifty one hundred pound bombs. In World War Two,
the bombs are two hundred and fifty pound bombs, five
hundred pound bombs, one thousand pound bombs, So they're much
more sophisticated, which more efficient, but they have a lot

(32:57):
more high explosive in them, and so much more destructive power. Right,
a single bomb could bring if it hits the right spot,
could bring down an entire building. And so people don't
draw die of the blasts, they die of the building
collapsing on them.

Speaker 2 (33:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (33:09):
Right, So, and then of course you also have in
sendy areas which you didn't have world War One, right,
bombs that are intended to start fires, and then you
get firestorms. So there are various technical aspects to teach
your bomb It's not just lots of big planes, but
there are other technological aspects that increase the killing and the.

Speaker 2 (33:26):
Fire storming is happens obviously in Dresden, as a lot
of people know, but but it does happen in Tokyo.

Speaker 3 (33:31):
To Tokyo as well, also Hamburg. I mean, they were
a minority of the bombing raids, but still where they happened.

Speaker 2 (33:39):
They're incredibly destructive, yeah, and must be horrific to try
to escape from and then not escape from, right, So
what about people trying to get out of these situations?

Speaker 3 (33:49):
And so that's once again we're going back to an
old factor that you always see a lot of civilian
refugees who die in World War One, but once again
we're talking about a different scale. Many many more folks
die in World War Two fleeing their homes, you know.
And that and obviously that it's hard to keep the
categories separate. Right, you might die of starvation or disease

(34:12):
because you're fleeing, right, You're things like exposure become factors
when right, disposure to the elements. Right, So obviously we
can't keep these categories clear. But often overlooked, it's getting
more intent. It's gotten more in attention in recent years
is the number of Germans fleeing the East oh at
the end of the war and immediately after the war,

(34:33):
because large numbers of Germans remember their ethnic Germans all
of Rectern Europe from before World War Two, and then
a lot of them were resettled by the Nazis in
newly Nazi occupied territory. But so a lot of these
people flee the advancing Russians, and then after the war
a lot of them are expelled by countries like Poland,
Czechoslovakia and Hungary. These are countries that expel their ethnic

(34:55):
German populations. Something like twelve million ethnic Germans are expelled
from Eastern Europe and end up in the new East
or West Germany after World War Two. Of them probably
in these once again figures vary, of them, probably six
hundred thousand die. So just six hundred thousand ethnic Germans

(35:17):
fleeing either fleeing or being expelled from Eastern Europe at
the end or just after the end of World War two.

Speaker 2 (35:22):
And this is one of the reasons why this huge
percentage of the ally of the death seems to a
civil civilians right, And.

Speaker 3 (35:29):
This is this one little subtopic, like I said, has
been studied recently. For years and years and years was
completely ignored, rightly because people didn't want to hear about
German victimhood. Yeah, okay, right, I mean, it's it's right,
it's it's a complicating factor.

Speaker 2 (35:41):
Right.

Speaker 3 (35:41):
You have to admit that the German civilians paid a
high price for World War Two, as they did, but
it's gotten a lot more attention recently, and so and
remember a lot of these are not German nationals. They're
ethnic Germans who never ever set foot in Germany, but
they're paying the price for the Nazis project.

Speaker 2 (35:58):
They group in Poland and their parents probably group from Poland,
right exactly.

Speaker 3 (36:01):
I mean, let's keep mind they're ethnic Germans who live
as far east as the Vulgar River in Russia. Yeah, sure, so,
ethnic Germans are all over the place.

Speaker 2 (36:08):
And obviously another big part of civilian casualties are the
things that are the lack of things, right that provation
keep privations, the wars take away from you.

Speaker 3 (36:22):
Right, And that's probably the biggest category of all I've
saved for last, which is hunger and disease. And there
are dozens of stories you could tell along this line.
I don't know what percentage of the total civilian death
it is. It's definitely a majority of the total civilian
dead on both sides is because of hunger and disease.
But things that get overlooked, something like the Bengal famine.
Oh yes, and ninety forty three in British India, anywhere

(36:46):
between two point one and three million people lose their lives.

Speaker 2 (36:50):
Yes, this is an astounding figure.

Speaker 3 (36:52):
It's an enormous every figure, right, I mean, that's that's
more destructive than most other wars in their entirety. And
here it it's a footnote. It often gets completely ignored
in histories of World War Two. By the way, Winston
Churchill doesn't come out of this episode looking very good, no,
incredibly callous in his response to this. Now, obviously, running
a war you have to, you know, sacrifice to have

(37:14):
to be made. You can't, you can't accommodate everybody. But still,
but if it had to happen in the English Midlands
a it would have been addressed still a little bit. Yes,
these were acceptable losses if you are in Whitehall, yeah,
two three, two point one to three million dead, two
point one to three million dead, and these are Allied
civilians who die not entirely because of the war. Right,

(37:37):
this has a lot to do with things like flooding,
but still obviously tightly linked to the war, often overlooked.
It's really important I teach about this because they teach
of Vietnam Vietnamese history class. Really important in the history
of Vietnam is a famine in especially northern Vietnam, at
the end of World War two nineteen forty five. It's
occupied French Indo China occupied by the Japanese. The Japanese

(37:58):
are basically extracting way too much rice Spring of nineteen
forty five. Between one and two million of Vietnamese people
lose their lives ye this famine, and I say it's
important Vietnamese history partly because the vietnamn which is the
Communist led guerrillas fighting against the French and then the
Japanese and later they become the viet Cong. In effect,

(38:20):
they actually start seizing rice docks and distributing the rice,
and that gets them enormous credibility, a lot of public
support in French Indo China because neither the French nor
the Japanese were doing anything to provide relief for the
people dropping in the street from starvation.

Speaker 2 (38:37):
And this is forty five.

Speaker 3 (38:39):
Yeah, this is at the very end of the war,
the last few months of the war in French endo China.
And also I actually point out that this is not
a problem. That it's not like a light switch that
gets turned off on VE or VJ day.

Speaker 2 (38:51):
Right.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
In other words, the men at the war ends. These
problems continue, problems with refugees, problems with hunger and disease
in particular, A little the fact here.

Speaker 2 (39:00):
The way, well, it was just something. The second, the
way we see the V and VJ days, Oh, the
war is over, and it is like this, correct, yes, over.

Speaker 3 (39:09):
We see them as sharp delineations before and after. And
that's by the way, it doesn't even help concentration camp
people who are quote unquote liberated and continue to die
in the days after liberation.

Speaker 2 (39:21):
Abs But I'm sorry I interrupted it.

Speaker 3 (39:23):
What you were going to say, This was an astonishing
fact that I came across, and that is an estimated
one million Soviet civilians die of starvation between nineteen forty
five and nineteen forty seven.

Speaker 2 (39:34):
Because of effectively war privations.

Speaker 3 (39:37):
Just because you've driven the Germans. Nowt it doesn't mean
you've re established an economy. No, in the agricultural exactly right.
You know, food production can't get back on its feet immediately.
The Red Army can't bring enough food for all those
civilians with it. So another million congratulations, right, I mean
you've won the great patriotic war against the Nazis, but

(39:58):
large number of civilians cantinue to die because of the
ripple effects.

Speaker 2 (40:03):
Of war after the war's over. This is a million
citizens who are on the winning.

Speaker 3 (40:08):
Winning side. And then shooting has.

Speaker 2 (40:10):
Stopped, and if you will, the morally superior side. Exactly,
I have died right to die from the between the
time the last shot is fired in nineteen.

Speaker 3 (40:21):
Forty, yes, that's right. And then one final factory. It
gets a lot of attention, as it should. And that's
the siege of Leningrad. Oh yes, yes, yes, originally Saint
Petersburg and Petrograd and Leningrad now Saint Petersburg.

Speaker 2 (40:32):
Again. This is like sort of.

Speaker 3 (40:33):
This is the big northern city on the Baltic Peter
the Great's great construction triumph. It's called Leningrad. It was
under siege by the Germans for about nine hundred days,
so almost three For a lot of it completely cut
off from the outside world. For a lot of it
partly cut off from the outside world, especially in nineteen

(40:54):
forty one nineteen forty two, massive loss of life in
the whole siege of Leningrad. About six hundred and thirty
two thousand Leningraders lost their lives.

Speaker 2 (41:04):
Six hundred and thirty two thousand.

Speaker 3 (41:06):
Six hundred and thirty two thousand people died, civilians died
in a single city.

Speaker 2 (41:11):
And it's not it's it's not Moscow, it's not you know,
five million people. It's small. Yeah, I mean it's still
a big city.

Speaker 3 (41:18):
It's a big city, but it's not that's an enormous
percentage of the population, right, Yeah. Basically, the Germans arrived
so quickly that it would have been hard to evacuate
a lot of people, and the Soviets chose not to evacuate,
which was their policy. Basically, this is Joseph Stalin, by
the way, he figures the soldiers will fight harder if
there are all these civilians who were at stake. That
happened in Stallingrad too, by the way, Yeah, sure. Nevertheless,

(41:39):
six hundred and thirty to thirty two thousand civilians lose
their lives. Just for perspective, that means fifty percent more
people died Soviet civilians in the siege of Leningrad than
all Americans killed in World War Two.

Speaker 2 (41:53):
Wow. Wow, And Americans are fighting both right up front.
And once again, I just just still, We're clear. I'm
not amising America's sacrifice. Americans lost just over four hundred
thousand dead. It's our worst foreign war by a mile.

Speaker 3 (42:08):
Yeah, oh yeah, yeah, right, much much worse in Vietnam,
much worse than World War One. It's not worse in
the Civil War, but that belongs to its own category.
It's by far our worst foreign war. It we pay
a lot of attention to it for very good reason.
And yet fifty percent more people died in this single
siege of Landinggrad on the Soviet side, civilians. It doesn't
count their military losses. Well, yeah, in that single in

(42:30):
that single nine hundred day siege.

Speaker 2 (42:32):
Again, astounding numbers and astounding numbers that are just not
talked about. One of the things we like to do
on the show is not just bust you know, overt
miss but talk about things that are misconceptions and also
things that are overlooked, and this is certainly one of them. Well,
we have to take another break. This time it's for
Station I D and we'll be back in a moment.

Speaker 4 (42:55):
This is Mary Todd Lincoln. President Lincoln is in dispose
at the moment, but he asked me to remind you
that Professor Buzzkill is part of Entertainment Ones podcast Network
and is available on iTunes, Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Google Play,
and all major podcast apps. Please subscribe and leave him

(43:17):
a review. Please also go to Professor Buzzkill dot com
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Thanks for listening, Professor.

Speaker 2 (43:38):
I was just saying during the breakdown, I think it's
really good that you wanted to put foreground, put civilian
losses before we talk about military losses in this discussion,
because they're so much larger.

Speaker 3 (43:49):
Yes, they're larger, and they're overlooked, right right, They get
less attention, but there are much larger numbers.

Speaker 2 (43:55):
There should be it should be included in memorial to
OBSS and things like that.

Speaker 3 (43:59):
Once again, not not to we don't want to discuss
this in a way detracts from the sacrifice combatants. But
we need to acknowledge the sacrifice of non combatants.

Speaker 2 (44:09):
Right. And World War two is so big and so
deadly that almost the entire calendar year would be.

Speaker 3 (44:15):
Taken and just orials, and just to remind the listeners,
and here we're just focusing on the dead. We're not
focusing on the wounded. We're not focusing on people who
suffer from PTSD the rest of their lives, the broken families,
those families that is destined to it because they lost
a bread winner. Right, it's the sort of the just
the emotional trauma. We're not measuring any of those other things,

(44:35):
which are of course also really really bad.

Speaker 2 (44:37):
And out of proportion with others. In fact, people think
of PTSD as a Vietnam War thing. We just called
it something else. Yeah, yeah, well we have for grounded
civilian losses first, but now we need to get onto
military losses, which, although they are smaller in percentage, are
still tremendously large compared to other wars.

Speaker 3 (44:56):
Any other words, exactly right, So if you breakdown I
thought it was interesting to break down Allied military deaths, right,
you can always break down the figures, right, So this
is the Allied military is twenty five percent of the
total with so now I'm breaking down that twenty five percent.

Speaker 2 (45:13):
Okay, so these are these right, right, Allied total Allied Right,
Allied military deaths sixty five percent are Soviet sixty five percent?
Five percent or so what's that that's going to be about?

Speaker 1 (45:26):
What?

Speaker 2 (45:27):
Seventeen million? Yeah?

Speaker 3 (45:29):
Right, that would make sense, right, So, yeah, that's right.
And then that gives us the seventeen million Soviet military
dead and ten million Soviet civilian dead exactly. So sixty
five percent of Allied military deaths are Soviet, twenty three
percent or Chinese.

Speaker 2 (45:43):
Now this is completely overlooked. Twenty three percent is massive,
but especially when we get down to the smaller numbers,
which we will on a second, which are much more overplayed,
just enormous numbs.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
So in fighting basically a stalemate against Japan, which lasts
eight years.

Speaker 2 (46:02):
By the way, Yes that's enough.

Speaker 3 (46:03):
Fighting in China goes on from nineteen thirty seven to
nineteen forty five. Yeah, they never never expel the Japanese.
The Japanese win most of the battles. But it's also
a major reason why Japan loses World War two, by
the way, because it's basically in ground down. Yes, they
have to keep it's a huge effort just to sort
of maintain this stalemate in China. The flip side is
that costs the Chinese enormous military casualties millions.

Speaker 2 (46:26):
Now we've moved on to military castionlers we're not talking about,
and it's still grossly out of present.

Speaker 3 (46:30):
Have Allied military deaths. Almost one in four are Chinese
soldiers who lose their lives. That's astounding. So once again,
Adam up, what's that. That's eighty eight percent of Allied
military losses or either Soviet or.

Speaker 2 (46:41):
Chinese eighty eight percent. Eighty eight percent.

Speaker 3 (46:44):
They don't get eighty eight percent of the copy when
world historians get busy writing in English eighty percent of
the movies. No, nope, not so much. And so we
break down the others. Yugoslavia three percent. Yugoslavia Yugoslavish. Pretty
sure that includes Tito's Gorilla army. Oh yes, but still,

(47:06):
but still that's that's a I mean, that's a big figure.
Yugoslobbya almost totally overlooked. And then we get to the
United States and Great Britain two percent each roughly two
percent two percent of Allied military deaths. Two percent are
so the four hundred thousand US dead, that's about two
percent of the Allied total.

Speaker 2 (47:22):
Wow. Great, The British lose a little bit more. Yeah,
but they're close now. Of course, of course, again we're
not trying to minimize it. One of these single desks.
Civilian miility is awful and has ripple effects, as you've said,
but the proportionality is just stunning, way out of whack.
And so that doesn't add up to one hundreds.

Speaker 3 (47:41):
So there are others, yeah, right, Still, so it's USSR
sixty five, China twenty three, YUGOSLABYA three, US two, u
K two, and then others are smaller than two, right. So,
and then if you look at axis military deaths, this
underscores a point I mentioned a minute ago. Sixty four
percent are German. Oh okay, So within the axis context,

(48:05):
the Germans are the Russians basically, yeah, almost two thirds. So,
and you know, we focus a lot on Japanese deaths
because there are so many of them, the way they
fanatically fight to the last man in these island battles. Nevertheless,
twenty four percent of acts casualties are Japanese and then
the others, and by the minor access countries like Finland, Romania,

(48:26):
Italy exactly, Bulgaria also.

Speaker 2 (48:29):
Okay, So now it's I want to make a sort
of general comment here. It just can't be that because
it's just because the war is bigger. So there must
be something else that causes so much death.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
There are some qualitative issues. One I mentioned, but I'll
go into a little more depth than that, is just firepower.
Oh okay, Right, even though we're only twenty five years
after the First World War, weapons have become much more destructive,
and they're just more of them. The armies are bigger,
and the armies are better equipped with them. Right, So
it's not just the number of soldiers involved, it's what

(49:03):
those soldiers.

Speaker 2 (49:04):
Have to fight with.

Speaker 3 (49:05):
Like, for example, your average infantry battalion, for example, has
more machine guns. Right, your average infantry division has more
artillery pieces, and those weapons are also more efficient. So
there are qualitative issues and also quantitative issues. More and
bigger artillery, more and bigger mortars. And let's keep mind

(49:27):
vast majority of combat casualties on the ground, like sort
of infantry deaths are not from small arms, not from
machine guns and rifles and handguns. They're from artillery and
mortars somebody like eighty five percent in Europe. Never think
about mortars being but of course the flying shrapnel kills many,
many more soldiers on all sides in all fronts than bullets.

(49:50):
That's just a certainly affect on Old War two. I
think it's still the case small arms are, even though
in the movies they're very effective, they typically aren't on
the actual battlefield compared to motors and artillery and also
aerial bombs. Yeah right, there's a close air support from
fighter airplanes dropping bombs using machine guns on firing rockets toward.

Speaker 2 (50:08):
The end of the war. Those are very destructive.

Speaker 3 (50:10):
The machine guns are more widely distributed, and especially among
the Germans, have a much higher rate of fire. Oh okay,
they're famous energy forty two fires twelve hundred rounds a minute,
which is like twice what the American machine guns fire. Yeah,
and you can actually in the more realistic war movies
you can actually hear the difference because it sounds like
a zip sound because it's firing so fast, and it's

(50:34):
very distinctive to Allied soldiers that sound because it's such
a high rate of fire. Like I said, ground units
are equipped with more of these weapons. And then from
a different angle, especially on the British and the American side,
the flip side of them not being as aggressive in
use in sort of ground combat is that they compensate by.

Speaker 2 (50:54):
Relying on firepower.

Speaker 3 (50:56):
Oh okay, they rely more heavily on it in both
the British and the American army. Is the consensus is
the best arm of those armies was the artillery. British
army doesn't get very high marks in World War Two,
their artillery sure does. The Germans were always sort of
like amazed how good British artillery was, and also the Americans.
That's partly because we're putting a lot of emphasis on

(51:17):
firepower compared to other armies as opposed to say infantry
tactics or relying on good generalship or good training of
our soldiers. Where we got these massive civilian armies which
are not as not as rigorously trained, not as disciplined
as German they're Japanese soldiers, And how do we compensate
firepower that accounts for a lot of German and Japanese

(51:38):
losses on the battlefield. Is it being wiped up by
American artillery our British artillery.

Speaker 2 (51:43):
And again that's not something you know, no one's going
to want to make a movie about the you know,
the star of the fire.

Speaker 3 (51:49):
Exactly exactly right. It's going to be incidental.

Speaker 2 (51:52):
So it's going to be presented as incidentally.

Speaker 3 (51:54):
So that will that that is definitely a factor compared
to World War One. You also have two countries in particular,
the Soviets and the Japanese, who I will say are
profligate in their spending of lives.

Speaker 2 (52:06):
Oh okay, so what do you mean by profligate?

Speaker 3 (52:08):
In other words, they British and American generals, they're not
as aggressive an attack that's not working, they will call
off more quickly than say the Red Army, where they
will continue to exploit their manpower advantage. That's not the
only thing going on right in that other we did
an Eastern Front episode. Yeah, that's way back in the day.

(52:30):
The Soviet Army is they're not just sort of relying
on infantry wave tactics quote unquote, but to some extent.

Speaker 2 (52:35):
They are, and they are.

Speaker 3 (52:39):
They are more ready to spend a lot of human
lives to get what they want on the battlefield than
other armies are.

Speaker 2 (52:46):
Okay, all right, Okay, that's why we always hear about
the Soviet warden and the grind meeting.

Speaker 3 (52:50):
Right, I mean, there is something to that. And Soviet
losses in infantry companies is extremely high because it's a
totalitarian regime that honestly doesn't care as much of casualties
about casualties as some other countries do. In the Japanese case,
it's more of this code of the bushido and the
refusal to surrender. Right, if you surrender, even when you're

(53:12):
clearly losing, you're worse than a dog.

Speaker 2 (53:14):
So you fight to the Okay, Okay, yeah, that's yeah.

Speaker 3 (53:17):
So that's going to drive up the not and not
just the casualty rate, but the death rate. Right right
there are all these you know, these campaigns in places
like Ewojima or Sipon where very few Japanese are taken
prisoner as a percentage from total Chpanese force there think
they're probably unique in military history. The balance between killed
and wounded were killed and captured after the end of

(53:37):
a losing battle.

Speaker 2 (53:38):
So this is a unique Yeah, this is an ideological difference,
exactly right.

Speaker 3 (53:43):
But but in the big picture of these will add
to the military deaths right right, right, right right, often overlooked.
Are they fighting conditions themselves in World War Two?

Speaker 2 (53:52):
Oh, I don't think of this as well as much
think of this as a cause of death. But yeah,
you must.

Speaker 3 (53:57):
Write especially not only I mean, first of all, you
have it of extremes of climate. You had some desert
fighting in World War One, you had some fighting in
cold weather, and World War One you didn't, not on
the same scale. But also the added factor in World
War Two you have a lot more fighting in tropical
rainforest in places like Burma.

Speaker 2 (54:16):
Yeah, and New Guinea.

Speaker 3 (54:17):
The New Guinea campaign, which often is overlooked. The Japanese
was one hundred thousand soldiers.

Speaker 2 (54:22):
Dead in New Guinea.

Speaker 3 (54:24):
And this might surprise some people, two thirds of Japanese
military dead. I had to double check this. Two thirds
of Japan's total military debt are from starvation or disease.
So so keep mind I just said something about how
they're willing to sacrifice themselves.

Speaker 2 (54:40):
This is example in.

Speaker 3 (54:43):
Combat, right, like the fight like we're about to be
pushed off the island. So we fixed bayonets and launch
this last gas bondzi charge into the American machine guns.
And that happened early in some of the island hopping campaigns.
But combat dead is only one third of the Japanese
military dead total.

Speaker 2 (55:00):
We tend to think of starvation disease as a civilian
dead problem exactly military.

Speaker 3 (55:05):
If but look at the Japanese force on Guadalcanal. It's
not a huge force, but early on in the campaign,
they start running out of food. And when you run
out of food in a tropical rainforest, you're gonna get
you know, dangy or dysentery or berry berry or all
these exotic tropical diseases, and you're probably gonna die of them.

(55:26):
Large numbers of Japanese soldiers die in Burma of starvation
and disease, two thirds of their total. And so we're
gonna keep in mind not just tropical rainforest, but remote
tropical rainforest. Oh yeah, maybe island that's completely isolated or
very difficult to resupply. This is a problem in Guadalcanal.
You see it elsewhere. So the fighting conditions themselves in

(55:47):
World War Two often contribute to the high body count.

Speaker 2 (55:49):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (55:50):
And that's lastly, let's not forget that in World War Two,
and this is a big difference between World War Two
and other wars is the epic scale by which prisoners
of war were mistreated or killed.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
Okay, this is different from other worlds.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
Yes, absolutely, yeah, I mean, you know, no one wants
to be a prisoner of war in any war.

Speaker 2 (56:11):
No, you typically are.

Speaker 3 (56:13):
You may not be starved, but you're malnourished. Typically you're
going to have a higher death rate because of disease
and lack of access to good medical care, et cetera.
Happens in World War One, happens in other wars, not
like this, Especially if you look at the way the
Germans and the Soviets and the Japanese treat prisoners of war.
It's a different world of POW mistreatment. And we mentioned

(56:38):
this in the Eastern Front episode. A huge number of
Soviet military dead, probably about three point one million or
Soviet prisoners of war who died in German captivity.

Speaker 2 (56:48):
Oh so, so when we're talking about epic mistreatment of
POW's that really affects that larger military three point.

Speaker 3 (56:57):
One three point one million out of what seven what
did I say, seventeen million Soviet military death.

Speaker 2 (57:04):
So what's that?

Speaker 3 (57:04):
Almost more than one in six don't die in the battlefield.
They die in either being worked to death or being
starved to death, or dying of neglect in German pow camps,
because that was their policy. And once again, not the
SS but the German army three point one million. The
Soviets also retaliated. They at the end of the war,

(57:25):
they captured a lot of Germans. I think it's just
under half a million German POWs died in Soviet captivity. Wow,
because remember the last of them weren't released until nineteen
fifty five. By the way, Oh yeah, there's that a
lot of them were spent a lot of time in
Soviet captivity and they died in large numbers. And then
well over half a million, about five hundred and forty
thousand Allied prisoners died in Japanese captivity.

Speaker 2 (57:49):
Holy. This is just again we were throwing all these
numbers that you buzzkillers, but it's just because we want,
you know, they wanted to show that they build up,
and they build up in the weight of the numbers
is what's so distressing, and it's necessary to understand the
true impentable, right, or you wouldn't understand right.

Speaker 3 (58:07):
Rather than talking in generalities, you have to do you
have to use the numbers. So if you add up
all the prisoners of war who dying World War two,
it's about.

Speaker 2 (58:12):
Five million worldwide. Yeah, that has a quorder.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
That's a quarter of the roughly twenty million total military
dead in World War two. One in four very roughly
die in captivity. I don't know what the status world
War one. I'm sure it's not anything close to that
or any other war for that matter.

Speaker 2 (58:35):
It's unique. So what's also impressed me about this? And
this may sound like it's too academic and it's too
splitting hairs or it's too over categorizing, but the ways
in which the people who study these things have come
up with these numbers, it's absolutely fascinating to me because
they have looked into look how many military people died

(58:58):
as POW's, which might seem in a way like a
non combat death, and it is an on income, but
it's still a military death, correct, And then compare that
with civilians who die in their own homes and their
own towns and things like that, and it's just fascinating.
How you know this really really is total war? Yes,
total war.

Speaker 3 (59:19):
Yes, And that's and then just to reiterate that point,
you have more countries involved. Yeah, for a longer period
of time, bigger percentage of the world's population is engaged
the society. Individual societies engage one way or another. There
are civilians, right, it's even the United States, which isn't
physically touched by the war, with a couple of minor exceptions.
Still there's an effort to mobilize the entire society. Right,

(59:40):
you can't in the United says you can't. You can't
like what we have a war going on, right, I
mean if it touches everybody's lives one way or another,
even in a country which doesn't suffer nearly so much
as the United States doesn't. So yeah, that's the way
to think about. It's total global war like the world
had ever seen.

Speaker 2 (59:57):
Well, there you have a buzz killers, and we can
only I hope that you know, something like this never
happens again. Even though weapons are getting better, weapons are
getting more deadly. Granted, field medicine is getting better, has
been getting better, but it's still just an enormous amount
of people talk to you next week.