Germany lost about 6 million people out of a population of 70 million, so something to the tune of 8.5% of the population over the course of six years.
In the current Gaza campaign, we’re coming up on 20,000 out of a population of 2 million, so something to the tune of 1% over the course of three months. Extended to the six years of WW2, that would be 41% of the population.
Factor in non-combatant casualties, and it will be even more disproportionate.
Yeah, there were a lot of civilian deaths in ww2. But they largely at least tried to minimize the non-military casualties. That isn’t even a factor for IDF
I mean, even taking the IDF’s numbers, proportionally, the IDF has killed far more civilians than the Allies in WW2. The IDF’s estimate is that they’ve been killing 50% civilians and 50% combatants, while in WW2 the Western Allied count was about 10% civilians in Europe, and 33% civilians in Japan. However, the wars being fought are very different, so I find that a less compelling comparison than the sheer level of destruction leveled in such a short period of time.
Don’t forget the fire bombing of Tokyo, I think they killed around 100K civilians in a city where most of the houses were made of wood and paper.
Around 100K casualties in this bombing only and over 1M became homeless. That’s next level evil along with the atomic bombs for sure. And I don’t find any justification for any of those bombings.
In Tokyo it’s because the Japanese didn’t have conventional factories; the people would make weapons and other things for the army in their homes, so Tokyo was basically a giant military factory. Of course whether that justifies the fire bombing is another story, but yeah that’s the reason.
Yeah, there are no good guys in war… Just different levels of crimes and justification from the obscene, to the grey.
The Allies were responding to aggressors that had invaded and “terror bombed” dozens of countries for years, killing millions of civilians, while maintaining extremely high domestic support throughout… Doesn’t make terror bombing their civilians right, but it was more justifiable in context than anything the invaders did.
Oh, yeah, I’m not at all questioning that the Allies were the right side. Only that we definitely attempted to deliberately inflict civilian casualties in Europe and in Japan, despite the US realizing that terror bombing was ineffective and quarreling with the British over its use in Europe, while still switching to it in Japan after strategic bombing campaigns were less effective than hoped.
Proportionally?
Germany lost about 6 million people out of a population of 70 million, so something to the tune of 8.5% of the population over the course of six years.
In the current Gaza campaign, we’re coming up on 20,000 out of a population of 2 million, so something to the tune of 1% over the course of three months. Extended to the six years of WW2, that would be 41% of the population.
Factor in non-combatant casualties, and it will be even more disproportionate.
Yeah, there were a lot of civilian deaths in ww2. But they largely at least tried to minimize the non-military casualties. That isn’t even a factor for IDF
You think the entire populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military?
Also, entire cities in Southern Germany were entirely wiped out. Munich was re-built from the ground up.
I mean, even taking the IDF’s numbers, proportionally, the IDF has killed far more civilians than the Allies in WW2. The IDF’s estimate is that they’ve been killing 50% civilians and 50% combatants, while in WW2 the Western Allied count was about 10% civilians in Europe, and 33% civilians in Japan. However, the wars being fought are very different, so I find that a less compelling comparison than the sheer level of destruction leveled in such a short period of time.
Don’t forget the fire bombing of Tokyo, I think they killed around 100K civilians in a city where most of the houses were made of wood and paper.
Around 100K casualties in this bombing only and over 1M became homeless. That’s next level evil along with the atomic bombs for sure. And I don’t find any justification for any of those bombings.
In Tokyo it’s because the Japanese didn’t have conventional factories; the people would make weapons and other things for the army in their homes, so Tokyo was basically a giant military factory. Of course whether that justifies the fire bombing is another story, but yeah that’s the reason.
I feel obligated to point out that the Brits in Europe and the Americans over Japan engaged in deliberate terror bombing.
Yeah, there are no good guys in war… Just different levels of crimes and justification from the obscene, to the grey.
The Allies were responding to aggressors that had invaded and “terror bombed” dozens of countries for years, killing millions of civilians, while maintaining extremely high domestic support throughout… Doesn’t make terror bombing their civilians right, but it was more justifiable in context than anything the invaders did.
Oh, yeah, I’m not at all questioning that the Allies were the right side. Only that we definitely attempted to deliberately inflict civilian casualties in Europe and in Japan, despite the US realizing that terror bombing was ineffective and quarreling with the British over its use in Europe, while still switching to it in Japan after strategic bombing campaigns were less effective than hoped.