The Shooters Not The Shot, The Bombers Not The Bombed

[poliphilo]

Ailz came across these figures.

33 million service personnel of all nations died in the big wars of the last century. And 48 million civilians.

And yet in our commemorations we mostly mourn the combatants-  the combatants who were also the killers.

Comments

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

That number seems low to me. I've always heard 60 million soldiers and civilians died in WWII. More if you count war related famine and disease.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Who was counting at the time? For countries like Russia- say- it must be very difficult to come up with accurate figures.

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

Agreed! It seems that the historians are actually counting graves and people who were there before the war and then not afterwards.

And you say Russians, I think the USSR under-reported war dead and after the fall of the USSR they had to revise the numbers up.

[internet-sampo.livejournal.com]

And I ran across this when preparing my lectures for next week. These aren't wars, but genocides.
http://www.murraymoerman.com/images/20thCentury_of_Death.jpg

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The mid years of the 20th century were truly frightful.

[kishenehn.livejournal.com]

So many people ignore that point, and it's by far the most important one for us to remember.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

We're always trying to sentimentalize war.

[heleninwales.livejournal.com]

This is why I bought white poppies, though I do buy a red one as well. Remembrance Sunday seems to have become more pro-war since my childhood and, as you say, the emphasis on the armed forces ignores all the civilians, many of who were children.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I've always had a problem with Remembrance Sunday. If it was really about mourning the war dead we wouldn't let the military anywhere near it.

[matrixmann]

I guess the estimation how many civilians died in WWII still is a bit vague because historians still discover new aspects and new facts because the process of the war still is very unreasearched in perspective of whole Europe.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I don't see how the numbers can be anything much better than guesswork.

[matrixmann]

Well, however that was calculated - but they still discover something new. Massacres not being talked about, or war crimes which even the causers knew about in that time "let all records disappear" or even "don't make any records about that".
History in Central Europe has been very cleared about that, but, for example, what happened in Southern Europe, in Greece or on the Balkan peninsula, it still remains very unclear.
I think the only numbers that could be clearly estimated were the records of the German concentration camps - because everyone who had been interned had also been recorded what had happened to him and why he was there.

[faunhaert.livejournal.com]

you are right
so many are killed
that did not put on a uniform
no one taught them how to die

they were just killed

sigh

wars just should be illegal
people who think they are ok and should be glorified
are blooming crazy.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I totally agree.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

Those figures are way, way low.

Mutiply by around four and you're getting there.

Many of those doing the killing were also civilians told to put on a uniform: 'I am the enemy you killed, my friend'...........

I can't say 'ain't gonna study war no more' because a lifetime's study has made me realise that pacifism is the only way.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Countryfile was memorialising the Great War last night. Apparently a lot of British people got killed. The Germans were somehow mixed up in it too but we never learned what happened to them.

The language was positively Orwellian at times.

For instance, Matt Baker told us a story about a British officer who won the VC "saving lives" by "silencing" a German machine gun nest. I guess he must have done that by singing lullabies or something.

[cmcmck.livejournal.com]

People need to learn how to read history from all perspectives, not just one!

See it from a Russian and central European viewpoint- 1914-45 if you include the wars, revolution, civil war, the deliberate genocidal starvation and the purges- something like 40 million dead in central Europe and Russia _alone_.