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Civilian experience in WWII - Coggle Diagram
Civilian experience in WWII
Death Toll
Estimated 80 Million people died
That's the entire population of Modern day Germany or one quarter of the USA.
It took 6 years for that many people to die.
Most wars that lasted for longer hadn't reached that number.
Why so many people died
Strategic Bombing: Aircraft could fly even faster and further. They lacked precision though. Bombs that were dropped traveled at 300 MPH and easily missed. So planes just launched them all right over the cities.
Germany killed 80000 people in Britain during the Blitzkrieg.
Allies retaliated and bomb German cities, killing half a million Germans.
Mobile Warfare: Tanks were developed to move a lot quicker than in previous wars.
Airplanes and artillery weakened the enemy's defense. Tanks destroyed fortification and negated machine gun fires.
Indiscriminate and killing by Axis powers
Germany and Japan's indiscriminate killings of Russians and Chinese.
Germany launched operation Barbarossa in 1941, and units would regularly kill civilians along the way.
Reports that 13.7 Russians were killed.
Death toll for Chinese was 8-20 million
The Holocaust
Nazi extermination of Jews
Saw Jews as a scourge of the world.
Began boycotting and lowering their civil status.
When Germany had most of Europe, they brought around 8 Million Jews in their borders.
At the Wannsee Conference in January 1942, leading Nazis decided on the Final Solution – 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 – 78% of the Jewish population in central Europe.