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The cost of war

H

Helldiver

Charter Member 09
I was reading an article in Flight Journal magazine about the cost of war. particularly WWII. Over 52 percent of the worlds population was killed because of the war. Something I don't believe occurs to the young people today.
The Army Air Forces had 2.6 million people and nearly 80,000 aircraft in 1945. Today the U.S. Air Force only has 327,000 people and 5,500 aircraft. Or 12 per cent of the personnel and 7 percent of the aircraft.
The AAF lost 14,903 people and 13,873 in the continental U.S. between December 1941 and August of 1945.. Add to that 1000 planes lost en route to England and 43,581 aircraft lost in combat. In total there were an average 6,600 men lost every month or 220 men every day. Over 40,000 airmen wrer killed and 18,000 were wounded..
More than 41,000 was captured. More than 50% of the 5,400 captured by the Japanese died during their captivity, compared to one-tenth of those held by the Germans.
Of course "post-traumatic stress disorder" was not popular during that time. They went home, got drunk on their 52/20 club and then went back to work.
 
Helldiver said:
Of course "post-traumatic stress disorder" was not popular during that time. They went home, got drunk on their 52/20 club and then went back to work.
Click to expand...

The effects of post traumatic stress disorder on servicemen and women from older generations when the condition was not widely recognised were still just as harrowing as they are today.

It appears that you are inferring that PTSD is a modern invention, something that somehow never used to occur in the past because people were made of sterner stuff. This couldn't be more false I'm afraid.

I apologise if you don't mean this at all and I've misinterpreted this particular comment but that is how it reads to me.
 
My Grandfather and his brother Henry
fought in WW1 in the trenches
he would never talk about it
that was Post-Traumatic Stress also if you ask me
i dont think that word was invented back then but thats what it was
H
 
The World War One generation called it "Shell Shock."

The World War Two and Korea generation called it "Combat Fatigue."

Except for the Brits, who called it "lack of moral fiber" - easy to say for those who sat back behind the lines and passed judgment on those who fought.

The Vietnam and subsequent generations call it "Post Traumatic Stress Disorder."

It's all the same thing, devastating by any name. It's a better understood and more widely acknowledged today, but it's still one of the many reasons why war sucks.

BTW, Bob - I really liked your old signature line about how anyone who thinks war is glamorous has obviously never been in one. I miss seeing it in your posts.
 
to me, what's really the tradgedy is, all those people from all over the world died, many fighting to remain free, and yet less than 100 years later many have let the lesson slip past them. sadly we are doomed to repeat history, i think.
 
There was a study recently linking the current high level of dementia to repressed cases of PTSD, quite an interesting read!

Over 52 percent of the worlds population was killed because of the war.
Click to expand...


Are you sure about that? Seems awfully high to me.
The Dutch Wikipedia has a number of 1.9 billion people living in the countries involved in WW2, and a total of 72 million people killed (Civilian and military), making it about 3.7%, not 52%
 
Helldiver said:
... Over 52 percent of the worlds population was killed because of the war. ...
Click to expand...
That is rediculous, Helldiver. Am finding myself unable to get past this gross inaccuracy to read the rest of your post. More research will serve you well, imo.
Did you, by chance, mean to say "5.2%"? That would be a little high but much closer.
.
 
"Except for the Brits, who called it "lack of moral fiber" - easy to say for those who sat back behind the lines and passed judgment on those who fought."
General Patton took a different view on it and although he apoligized for it, it didn't change his mind.
Like I say, 52 weeks at $20 bucks a week can get you pretty drunk for a year. Especially when beer was only 5 cents a glass. By that time you were sick of feeling sorry for yourself and either took the pipe or went back to work.
As far as the 52% being killed, they didn't take into account the Japanese scorched earth policy where they would kill whole villages. Millions died that way.
 
You know, what really sucked was that in WW1 many soldiers suffering shellshock, post tramatic disorders, etc, were branded as "cowards" by the Poms who had a law in place to carry this out, were tied to posts and executed with firing squads. It wasn't recognised at that time as a mental condition in these people. It took so long till now for it to be recognised, sadly.
 
Please correct me if I'm wrong HD, but I think the point he's trying to get across gents, is that the people in power have forgotten these words of Winston Churchill:

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.
 
hewman100 said:
Please correct me if I'm wrong HD, but I think the point he's trying to get across gents, is that the people in power have forgotten these words of Winston Churchill:

The farther backward you can look, the farther forward you can see.
Click to expand...

Yes, I agree. We would all do well to stop focusing on the individual trees and look to the entire forest in this thread.

Helldiver, may have been wrong with his percentages (BTW: To all the Wiki researchers, don't believe everything you read in Wikipedia. But, that's another thread) however, his point that the war affected the entire world to a large degree is accurate.

The toll in human life and ecological destruction was greater than any other war the world has ever seen.
 
...and those who fight it are doomed to never forget! However peace at any price is not peace at all.
Ted
 
I looked on the Flight Journal web site and I wasn't able to find the article Helldiver was reading. But I don't think it would take much looking to find military units with greater than 50% casualty rates, possibly greater than 50% killed, and I wouldn't take a bet that there weren't civilian populations that were in that neighborhood too.

Just as a mental exercise, ask yourself if you know if more USAAC pilots were killed in training or in action. What was the percentage of total Air Corps pilots?

I'm an engineer by trade and I've developed a healthy disrespect for numbers during my career. What's the story behind the numbers -- usually not as tidy or simple as we'd like. Very easy these days to let numbers make our decisions for us.

If you take Helldiver's original number from 52% and make it 5.2% instead you still get a godlessly high fraction of the world's human population in the 1940s. Would 5% of the world's population in 1945 make a difference in the success or failure of 20th century human civilization? Good Question.

Further, a greater portion of the world population at the time was rural, so casualties in urban centers might be proportionally more significant. A lot of destruction would have to take place in the cities to tip the balance against the rural population.

Image that today 5% of the world's population in urban and industrial centers were wiped out by warfare, or even if they just died by plague.

And instead of a percentage, think of it in terms of actual human souls, a great many more by actual count today than 70 years ago. It would change the face of the world.

Hey Helldiver, thanks for a thought provoking thread!

Jack
:USA-flag:
 
java2srv said:
If you take Helldiver's original number from 52% and make it 5.2% instead you still get a godlessly high fraction of the world's human population in the 1940s. Would 5% of the world's population in 1945 make a difference in the success or failure of 20th century human civilization? Good Question.
Click to expand...

who knows what that 5% may have contained? another alexander flemming perhaps? (invented penicillin) another tesla or einstein? mother theresa? howard hughes?
certainly there would be ugliness in it too, but i suspect those numbers to be as proportionally small as the chance for greatness. then there are all the other more ordinary folks, who maybe would have made someone else smile.
i think there is no way to discount this 5% you speak of as not having made a difference, in their absence. surely there presence would have also been to great effect.
 
I have great faith in human compassion, toughness, and ability to overcome hardship, but the "world" can be seriously stacked against "us" and quite indifferent to our aims. In my mind I can surely see 5% of humanity making the difference between climbing the stairs to the stars and a millennium of darkness -- whether by way of "masters" among us or simply the common endeavors of us all. We've really no way of telling.

The difference between iron and the most common plain steel is 35/100 of 1 percent carbon added to the iron. A semi-conductor is just a speck of dirt added to non-conductor silicon. Of course it does have to be the right kind of dirt. :)

I think losing 5% of human population in this day would be other-worldly. (slight pun intended) My feeling is that in this age we would grasp the meaning of the change differently than 3 or 4 generations past, and would believe in some ways that the loss was less tolerable and of greater consequence. Yet somehow we ignore or obscure this fact in our own recent history.
 
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