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Why Did So Many People Die in World War Two? - Coggle Diagram
Why Did So Many People Die in World War Two?
Strategic bombing
aircraft could fly faster and further than ever before and bomb enemy targets.
there wasn’t much precision at all.
Bombs had to be dropped out of planes travelling at 300 MPH
could easily miss what they were aiming at.
opposing sides began to indiscriminately carpet bomb each other’s cities.
Germany bombed Britain, killing 80,000 people in The Blitz
large scale bombing of the Soviet Union from summer 1941 onwards, directly killing 500,000 people.
Firebombing destroyed the cities of Hamburg and Dresden .
Japanese bombed large cities like Manila and Shanghai
About 200,000 people died from the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki
Mobile warfare
tanks and mechanized infantry meant that armies could move much quicker
the German army’s early success created Blitzkrieg
11 million Soviet Union soldiers died
3 million German soldiers died
1.7 million Japanese soldiers died
1.4 million Chinese soldiers died.
million were lost by the Western Allies.
Axis countries such as Italy, Rumania and Hungary added another half million to the death toll.
Total combat deaths exceeded 20 million men.
Indiscriminate killing by Axis powers
a plan for Germany to colonise Eastern Europe – the so called ‘Lebensraum’ (living space) for German people. This meant enslaving, expelling and exterminating most of the Slavic people in Europe.
huge numbers of mechanised infantry enabled a rapid advance across a 1,800 mile long front, and units regularly killed civilians as they advanced.
civilian victims in the USSR totalled 13.7 million dead
7.4 million were victims of genocide and reprisals,
2.2 million were killed being deported for forced labour
4.1 million died of famine and disease
3 million people died from famine in areas not under German occupation.
The Holocaust
whereby Jews across the continent would be rounded up and taken to extermination camps.
6 million European Jews were killed as a result of the Final Solution during the war
At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, leading Nazis decided on the Final Solution