272 ENDGAME AND AFTERMATH 1944–1955
NEPALTHAILANDBURMAPHILIPPINESKOREAJAPANMALAYAD
UT
CH(^) EAST INDIE
S
ETHIOPIA
SOUTH
AFRICA
IRAQ IRAN
BR
AZ
IL
MEXICO
INDIA
NEW ZEALAND
MONGOLIA
USA CHINA
AUSTRALIA
CANADA
USSR
Auckland
Stalingrad
Leningrad
Tokyo
Osaka
Nagasaki
Hiroshima
Hudson
Bay
Gulf of
Mexico
Up to
10,000,000
300,000
500,000
300,000
100,000
164,000
250,000
Over
7,000,000^33
2.4
5
7.4
1 1.49
PA
C
IF
I
C
O
CE
A
N
INDIAN
OCEAN
ATLANTIC
OCEAN
Caribbean
Sea
Caroline
Sea
Coral
Sea
THE PRICE
OF WAR
World War II affected most of the globe, and cost more
than 50 million lives. The Eastern Front accounted for many
of the military deaths, while the Holocaust, bombings, and land
war left millions of civilians dead. In Europe, many survivors
faced a desperate scramble to find homes in new places.
The human cost of World War II
exceeded anything that came before it.
Military casualty rates in north-west
Europe in 1944–1945 matched—and
sometimes exceeded—those of World
War I, while the bitter war of attrition
at the Eastern Front claimed further
millions of lives. An unprecedented
proportion of those who died in the
war were civilians. Six million Jews,
130,000–200,000 Roma, and 250,000
disabled people died in the Nazi
Holocaust, while the brutality of the
Soviet, Nazi, and Japanese regimes
added to the vast toll, as did the Allied
bombing of cities in Germany and, most
destructively, in Japan. By the end of the
war, Poland had lost 16 percent of its
1939 population, and the Soviet Union
around 15 percent.
The human suffering did not end
as the war came to a close. Millions
of Germans who were living in
Eastern Europe were forced to flee
the advancing Red Army in 1944 and
hundreds of thousands of them died
from violence, malnutrition, or disease.
And as Europe’s boundaries were
redrawn, the war’s survivors faced
the task of rebuilding their countries,
their cities, and their lives in the
midst of terrible devastation.
PEOPLES RESETTLED, EVACUATED,
EXPELLED, OR EMIGRATED
States that became Communist 1945–1948
FLIGHT, EXILE, AND EMIGRATION
Between 1945 and 1952, over 31 million people
were resettled in an attempt to establish cohesion
within Europe’s new boundaries. Millions of Germans
fled Eastern Europe, while Cossacks and Russian
prisoners of war were forcibly repatriated. Poles
moved back into previously occupied territory;
Hungary, Yugoslavia, and Czechoslovakia transferred
small populations. Finns living in Karelia fled the Soviet
regime. Many of Europe’s remaining Jews headed for
the state of Israel, created in 1948 (see pp.270–271).
Germans (5.25 million)
Baltic peoples (200,000 to
west, 22,000 million to east)
Finns (410,000)
Jewish emigration to Israel
1945–1950, in thousands
Russians (2.3 million)
Russians forcibly
repatriated (5.5 million)
THE HUMAN COST
Military casualties were matched by the millions of civilians who
died in the world’s bombed and besieged cities, or perished in labor
and death camps. The trauma continued after the war, as millions
of displaced people sought security in regions still recovering from
the loss of life and destruction caused by large-scale conflict.
1
1935 1940 1945 1950
2
3
TIMELINE
Resettled by
International Refugee
Organization (1 million)
Poles (4.5 million)
Czechs (1.95 million)
Turks (130,000)
Italians (230,000)
1942–1945 More
than 110,000 people
of Japanese ancestry
are interned in the US.
KEY
FRANCE
GERMANY
NO
RW
AY
SW
ED
EN
SPAIN
ITALY
BELGIUM
NETHERLANDS
FINLAND
ESTONIAN
SSR
LATVIAN
SSR
LITHUANIAN
SSR
EAST
PRUSSIA
DENMARK
LUXEMBOURG
SWITZERLAND
TURKEY
GREECE
ALBANIA
BULGARIA
ROMANIA
USSR
POLAND
YUGOSLAVIA
HUNGARY
CZECHOSLOVAKIA
UNITED
KINGDOM
AUST
RIA
Black
Sea
North
Sea
Adriatic Sea
Baltic Sea
Ligurian
Sea
From Rhodes
LibyaFrom
From Ethiopia
and Eritrea
91,300
22,000
119,000
17,000
37,000
US_272-273_Price_of_war.indd 272 20/03/19 3:56 PM