World War II Deaths

[Ronhend 0]

https://vimeo.com/128373915

Really gives some prospective to war history.

Ron

ATP B-727 B767-757 CFI-II

[BIGUN 1,326]

It really gives one perspective on "Man's inhumanity to man."

Nobody has time to listen; because they're desperately chasing the need of being heard.

[Amazon 7]

BIGUN

It really gives one perspective on "Man's inhumanity to man."

It is much easier when it's them... and they are "different".... and then there are the slurs and names given to "them"

[JohnMitchell 16]

It's easy to look at our contribution and think that we won the war by ourselves, but the bulk of the credit should go to the Russians.

Very thoughtful piece there, Thanks for sharing it.

[Nataly 38]

Saw this posted on FB and thought it was great. A big part of my job is to make numbers "speak" to people and this video does it brilliantly. More accountants / statisticians / physicists / economists / historians should take notes from whoever did this - it would make many important fields / subjects more relevant and accessible to the average Joe.

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[Nataly 38]

JohnMitchell

It's easy to look at our contribution and think that we won the war by ourselves, but the bulk of the credit should go to the Russians.

Very thoughtful piece there, Thanks for sharing it.

Do Americans really think the second world war was won by them?? Really??

"There is no problem so bad you can't make it worse."
- Chris Hadfield
« Sors le martinet et flagelle toi indigne contrôleuse de gestion. »
- my boss

[kallend 2,032]

Nataly

***It's easy to look at our contribution and think that we won the war by ourselves, but the bulk of the credit should go to the Russians.

Very thoughtful piece there, Thanks for sharing it.

Do Americans really think the second world war was won by them?? Really??

Surely you jest.

...

The only sure way to survive a canopy collision is not to have one.

[pchapman 279]

I didn't watch the video in detail but it looks like some useful data visualization to those who don't know the numbers.

JohnMitchell

the bulk of the credit should go to the Russians.

To expand on that, yeah they should get credit for that but they were a bunch of dirty lying stinking commies for all of the Cold War in the eyes of the western democracies. Russians are understandably upset about the lack of credit they get, and people like Putin especially so. I think the issue came up during the events marking the anniversary of the end of WWII in Europe this past may. Putin felt a little snubbed, but there are a variety of reasons for that.

Some Russian nationalists have felt that their half-century takeover of Eastern Europe was a just reward for their great suffering in WWII and a necessary buffer against any future external aggression. The western view was more that two wrongs don't make a right.

Anyone knowledgeable about WWII has long known about the immense losses and suffering on 'the Eastern front' and don't have anything against the Russian (etc) people.

Russia may present it as a defensive move, but they did ally with Hitler to carve up Poland. I don't recall them returning the eastern part of Poland yet?
(However a postwar treaty did fix the current borders, just as another treaty fixed the Polish-German border.)

So people's feelings about Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR are a bit like when two murderous drug dealers fight and one dies... nobody is really interested in giving the other one a medal for his assistance to society.

It is always tough in history to get the appropriate perspective on things.

A disaster closer to home is of more importance to oneself, yet one shouldn't forget the global perspective. This applies in tragedies other than warfare too. So here in the US & Canada one might know more about a US earthquake that kills 63 (San Francisco area 1989) than one that kills a bunch of remote people with few cultural and media links to you (250,000-500,000 fatalities, Tangshan China 1976).

In any case it does help for people to see stats like in the video to see how the numbers really stack up.

[cruelpops 0]

Nataly

***It's easy to look at our contribution and think that we won the war by ourselves, but the bulk of the credit should go to the Russians.

Very thoughtful piece there, Thanks for sharing it.

Do Americans really think the second world war was won by them?? Really??

Of course not... I think we may have donated a plane or perhaps some gas or something. I guess where you live the history books are written differently.

[pchapman 279]

cruelpops

Of course not... I think we may have donated a plane or perhaps some gas or something. .

We could go on forever about the different contributions to the war, but the US Lend Lease numbers are impressive -- more than 400,000 jeeps and trucks, 11,000 aircraft, and lots more food and fuel. They wouldn't have helped the Soviets stem the Nazi tide early in the war, they had to do that largely alone, but would have helped later on.

How much effect that had on the war effort can be debated a lot, and it is hard to get a handle on that without digging into real research and getting past any biases in opinions on both sides.

[CanuckInUSA 0]

When reviewing history, it's best to view it from as many points of views as you can. Only getting one side of history is not an honest representation of what actually happened. I have viewed the history of this war from the Canadian, the British, the American point of views as well as yes the Russian, German and Japanese perspectives. Of course I already knew the huge toll the Russians sacrificed in the war, I did not need this internet video to educate me (I did watch it and it's not a bad video). Anyway part of the reason why so many Russians lost their lives was because their entire nation was under attack and they mobilized almost every able bodied person male and female, adult and adolescent child to fight the war. But another reason why Russia lost so many people was because they just threw human wave after human wave at the Germans. Superiority by numbers won the war, with the industrial might of the West lead by the USA that was able to produce weaponry faster than then Germans because American industry was not being bombed every day. It was a team effort. But Hitler also made many mistakes in this war. Opening up two fronts too soon and not going for the British jugular when he had the chance. The war could have turned out very different had Hitler actually listened to his Generals.

I would not say I am a World War II expert, but I have studied various time lines of the war on more than one occasion and I can not imagine what life must have been like for those who lived through the battles. Massive armies running around Europe shooting very lethal weapons at each other and too bad if civilians got caught up in the cross fire. But if you can take anything good out of the war (I know this is a stretch), it's that the war did advance technology at a rather accelerated rate.

Try not to worry about the things you have no control over

[JohnMitchell 16]

Nataly

***It's easy to look at our contribution and think that we won the war by ourselves, but the bulk of the credit should go to the Russians.

Very thoughtful piece there, Thanks for sharing it.

Do Americans really think the second world war was won by them?? Really??

No, but most of our authors are American-centric, telling the stories of Omaha Beach, the 8th Air Force, and Patton's 3rd Army. We readily acknowledge ALL of our allies, including the Russians, who had their own designs in WWII.

In the Pacific, I think our contributions ranked in the majority.

[Guest]

The Russians threw bodies at the Germans, but that is only one of the reasons so many of them died.

And it needn't have happened at all. Stalin's extermination of his own people (especially of the military leadership) in the many years before help Hitler gain confidence he could conquer Russia. The non-aggression pact sacrificing Poland sealed the deal.

Attn moderators, this thread belongs in SC, but for a better perspective, have a look at the BBC's "The World at War" . 26 episodes narrated by Laurence Olivier.

"The mouse does not know life until it is in the mouth of the cat."