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 Costs, Casualties and Other Data
World War II spread death and devastation throughout most
of the world to an extent never before experienced. The loss of life can be
only generally summarized; an attempt to express the value of property and
livelihoods destroyed in terms of money is futile: the resulting sums reach
astronomical figures that have little if any practical meaning.
Military Casualties
Probably the best
documented and most meaningful figures are the battle casualties. Those for
the United States, Great Britain, and the Commonwealth nations are accurate;
those for other nations, Allied or Axis, vary in reliability. Chinese figures
are largely estimates because of the lack of documentation, information on
Soviet losses has been given only grudgingly and in very general terms, and
many records of the Axis nations were lost when those countries were overrun.
The most accurate available figures are shown in Tables 1, 2, 3 & 4.
In utilizing strength figures, it should be noted that total
strength means the total number of personnel belonging to the armed forces
during the entire war, whereas peak strength is the greatest strength reached
at any one time during the war. Several methods of classifying and computing
casualties are in use, and other variations result from the differing periods
covered by the various computations. Consequently, different reputable reference
works sometimes show slightly different figures even for United States casualties.
Non-battle deaths include deaths from accidents and disease.
Civilian Casualties
Casualties among
civilians were much less accurately recorded than military losses. In part,
this was unavoidable because of the population shifts that took place as civilians
fled before invading armies or the continual air attacks on major industrial
centers, or were sent to Germany or the Soviet Union for forced labor.
Civilian casualties in the United Kingdom, slightly over
half of which were inflicted in the London area, were as follows:
Civilian casualties in the USSR have been placed roughly
at 2,500,000 killed. The loss of population (including both military and civilian
casualties) caused directly or indirectly by the war has been stated at 20,000,000.
Air raids against Germany killed approximately 300,000 Germans and seriously
injured about 780,000 more. Numerous additional casualties occurred during
the Soviet invasion of 1944-1945, but no specific estimates are available.
Japanese civilian casualties probably approached 500,000 killed and 625,000
seriously injured, plus a considerable number reported as missing after the
fire raids and atomic bombings. In addition, about 360,000 Japanese captured
by the Russians in Manchuria, Korea, and the Kuril Islands were still missing
in 1950; a large number of them have never been accounted for. Chinese civilian
losses are unknown but probably numbered several million.
Industrial Conversion and War Production
In the final analysis, victory was won by the Allied powers' technological
superiority--the ability to raise, arm, equip, move, and supply superior
forces throughout the world, and through them to break up and destroy the
technological resources (as well as much of the armed forces) of the Axis
nations. Of all the Allies, it was the United States that possessed the raw
materials, skilled manpower, and industries that made their victory possible.
This potential American technological power, however, required precious time
to change from peacetime to military production. The process of conversion,
and of reconversion at the war's end, is illustrated in Table 4.
Among the varied items purchased by United States defense
expenditures were 57,027 medium tanks (9 different types), 676,433 two-and-one-half-ton,
six-wheel-drive trucks (11 types), 1,054 eight-inch howitzers (48 of them
self-propelled), 476,628 2.36-inch rocket launchers (bazookas), 4,014,731
Garand rifles, 106,658 gunner's quadrants, 4,072,000,000 rounds of .45-caliber
ammunition, 57,488,000 wool undershirts, 116,000,000 pounds of peanut butter,
206,753 SCR-536 (Handie-Talkie) radio sets, 500,754 30-dose bottles of influenza
virus vaccine, 7,570 locomotives (48 types), 23,510,030 military gas masks
(2 types), and 3,898 B-29 (Superfortress) very heavy bombers. One of the best
indications of the growing tempo of American military production during the
war is the following data on machine-gun production, covering the period July
1, 1940-Aug. 31, 1945:
Shipping Losses
Allied merchant shipping
losses during the war were as follows:
Of the 5,150 Allied merchant vessels sunk, 2,828 were victims
of Axis submarines, principally German. The parallel German submarine losses
(revised according to the latest British Admiralty assessment) therefore furnish
an interesting in dication of the gradual Allied
success in antisubmarine warfare:
Other German naval losses included 2 battleships, 2 battle
cruisers, 3 pocket battleships, 2 old battleships, 2 heavy cruisers, 5 light
cruisers, 44 destroyers, and 86 light warships and armed merchant raiders,
as well as 1,377 minor and auxiliary warships and approximately 550 landing
craft. Japanese naval battle losses included 10 battleships, 20 carriers,
38 cruisers, 115 destroyers, and 119 submarines. The rapid disappearance of
the Japanese merchant marine is shown in the tonnage available: 6.1 million
tons in 1941, but 1.8 million tons in 1945.
British Commonwealth naval losses from Sept. 3, 1939, to
Aug. 15, 1945, including Allied warships operating under British control,
comprised 4 battleships, 2 battle cruisers, 5 aircraft carriers, 5 auxiliary
aircraft carriers, 33 cruisers, 154 destroyers, 90 submarines, and 138 light
warships and armed merchant cruisers, as well as 1,307 auxiliary and minor
warships and 1,326 landing ships and craft of all types. U.S. naval losses
and gains during the war were as follows:
John R. Elting
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