264 ChaPter^5
policy, production, and consumption—would lead to major developments
inside the U.S. too, as women, labor, and ethnic groups all saw a transforma-
tion in their conditions and roles in American society as a result of the world
war. The combination of the Open Door abroad and military production at
home led to a huge growth in American power and wealth.Destruction and Crimes Against Humanity
That success, however, came at a horrific cost. With so many tanks, planes,
ships, and munitions being produced, the number of deaths was staggering,
perhaps 60-80 million total, or about 2.5 percent of the global population at
the time [a similar carnage today would take 175 million lives]. Precise num-
bers are difficult to come by, but no one disputes the Soviet Union suffered
the gravest losses in the war, with estimates ranging from 20-28 million, or
about 14 percent of its total population [a similar death rate in the U.S. would
have meant about 18 million were killed]. China suffered an immense num-
ber of deaths too, anywhere from 10-20 million. Germany saw 7-9 million of
its people killed, Poland lost about 6 million, Japan approximately 3 million,
and Italy about 500,000. The Americans and British, by comparison, lost
about 400,000 each, while France had about 600,000 killed. The Asian theater
was particularly bloody, with the Dutch East Indies losing about 4 million
people, India and Indochina about 2 million each, and the Philippines about
1 million. World War II was the first “modern” war in another way—the vast
majority of those killed were civilians, not fighters, about 60 percent. Many
of that number, of course, perished in the Nazi Holocaust, Hitler’s attempt to
create a “pure” race of Germanic peoples by eliminating “undesirables” like
Communists, Gypsies, Homosexuals, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, the dis-
abled, and of course Jews.
The Holocaust is perhaps the most widely-known aspect of World War II,
given the horrors inflicted on victimized groups and the sheer size of the
genocide, a deliberate attack and destruction of a group based on racial, ethnic,
cultural or other similar factors [similar, in U.S. history, to the extermination
of Indians in the aftermath of the European conquest of the New World or
African slavery]. Nazi views on political ideology, ethnicity, and race were
well-known by the time the war began. Hitler wrote his anti-Jewish mani-
festo Mein Kampf [“My Struggle”] in 1925-26 and German attacks on Jews,