Based on a new book Cormac ó gráda In World War I and World War II, the previous estimates of civilian deaths are almost too low.
Classic Muttering courage It is a play about the 30 -year war. The ancestors complained to the end after suffering a lot of pain in the struggle to survive.
Mother’s courage survived, but some of her families were not. They were victims of war, one out of four German population, and the majority of civilians. Some died in 1631 in the same case as the notorious sack of the Maxim, but most of them were victims of disease and famine.
You may say that the 30 -year war was exceptional, and most of the wars were that the war was ugly, but we could say that we had no civilians because we had the rules that soldiers fought. It was a soldier, but it did not sacrifice civilians. ” Not so. especially Not so For WW1 and WW2.
Hidden victim
In a new book Hidden victims: Civilian casualties of World War II,,, I document the degree of this “not so” and quantitatively. My attempt to create a fair and prudent estimation of civilian suffering in many forms during the two wars means that there are many debates about the number of this book. But this book is not about numbers and should not.
There is a tension about who was a civilian and who was the victim. In all wars, the boundaries between combatants and civilians are unclear, but in total wars such as WW1 and WW2. And there is a debate about how to measure and explain the victims. In Germany and other places, he described the civilian victims of public bombing and sexual violence, and explained that “victims” during World War II had controversial place decades ago, but not now.
In the 2000s, there was enough “healing” for the German federal government to establish a permanent exhibition for the massive exodus of the east. History (History House) In Berlin. And if such people are actually considered victims, there is a problem as I should believe. relativity Or moral relativity; Therefore, if you add together with apples and orange, there are victims of various causes and victims in various contexts.
In the past war, data on civilian victims will always be a problem. It is difficult to provide reliable numbers in WW1 and WW2, but in the past, it did not interfere with some. My work is based on its initial efforts and does not try to hide its sensitivity and uncertainty about numbers. From my point of view, we can’t reach the truth entirely. However, in order to reject or exaggerate estimates for political reasons, it is necessary to provide reasonable estimates to cope with the party agenda.
Civilian death
So what did I find? I know that in two wars, the death of civilians is more than two to one more than the military deaths. Civilian deaths totaled 16 million people from about 16 million to 44 million to 48 million of World War II during the WW1 period. During the war, hunger and famine were the most important causes of death. During the WW1 period, 13 million people (4/4) occupied 15 million civilian deaths, and during World War II, it accounted for 20.5/21.5 million (less than half of the total).
In the Second World War, the air bomb terrorism rarely occupied, and 1.3 to 1.6 million people died during World War II. Massacre died up to 2 million people during the WW1 and more than 6.5 million responsibilities. In both wars, civilians suffered more pains than anywhere else in the Soviet Union in 1917. The biggest uncertainty is surrounding civilian deaths in the Asia and Soviet Union. Sometimes death, BetterIt can only be estimated by the residue.
Nothing is very different in size and cause. In some places, as in Bengal in 1943-44, Vietnam in 1944-45, and Moldova in 1946-47, harvest defects greatly exacerbated the challenges of war and the aftermath. In other parts, the blockade was partially or mainly responsible. Lebanon in 1915-16, Germany in 1917-1919, Lenin Grad in 1941-44, Greece in 1941-43, and in the Netherlands in 1944-45, were blocked.
As the examples of Greece and the Netherlands testified during World War II, relatively famous countries were not saved. In extensively, the cause of death depends on how the economy has evolved: few people died of infectious diseases in Lenin Grad, Greece and the Netherlands during World War II. In Bengal, most of the deaths in Java, Vietnam, and China were caused by such diseases. The famine killed more men than women almost everywhere. Lenin Grad’s active man was an exception, but most of them were elsewhere.
Holocaust
I include the victims of the Armenian massacre and the victims of the Jewish Holocaust. Because without war, most people would not have died. The literature on the Holocaust is already vast, but there are some problems that can be emphasized.
First, the data recalls the Great Primo Levi. Drowned and saved (1986). There he explained, “Why didn’t you run away before the border closed?” One of the most frequently asked questions is raised in “stored”. In reality, however, the number emphasizes how important the migration is for Germany and the Jews before the border is sealed.
In Germany, only 29 percent of the Jews living there were destroyed by the Holocaust in 1933. In Austria, the ratio was 31 years old, and of course it was the target of choice. Men were more likely to escape than women. Therefore, there is a paradox that the Jews in the epicenter of the Nazi Empire are likely to survive in many other places.
Second, the correlation between the state of anti -Semitism and the proportion of the murdered Jewish population is not strong. Greece and the Dutch Jews are much higher, and countries that are not mentioned about anti -Semitism are Romanian Jews, who had many anti -Semitism at that time.
Third, the only escape from some Jews in Eastern Europe was in the Soviet Union. About 300,000 people ran away. They may not have loved the regime, but they tended to be a Cold War warrior. One of them recalled, “I was eager for the land regardless of the Soviet regime.”
Survivors and international law
In addition to those who were destroyed, there were millions of people who survived, injured, leaked, and suffered from trauma. Some victims were traumatic for the rest of their lives and some were more elastic. But the true ratio is ambiguous. There was a refugee; Millions of them. And there were victims of sexual violence, the hardest.
One thing is certain: the following: the empirical basis for the 2 million rape figures limited by the Soviet army is actually very uniform at the end of World War II. The actual numbers were undoubtedly high, but there is no convincing estimation. Finally, hundreds of thousands of women La Collaboration Horizontale Nazis occupied Europe during World War II. Perhaps victims of guilty; The attitude toward them has been softened since 1944-1945.
Finally, my book talks about the inability of international law to protect innocent victims at the time. The massacre of WW2 led to the creation of various institutions to protect civilians in the future, which led to an implicit admission that some of those in high moral evidence were wrong. I leave how effective the institutions were and how it could be more effective in the future as a matter of another day.
For more information, see the Hidden Plestims: The Hidden Plestims: Two World Wars’ Princeton University Press (2024). Lectures based on this book will be held on LSE on February 20, 2025.
Note: This article provides the author’s views, not the position of European politics and policies or London School of Economics. Main image credits: Flam in front of it / Shutterstock.com
