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

[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.