were not yet under German control, but that situation had changed dramatically by early
- The Holocaust was a crime waiting to be committed, when circumstance allowed.
It could be translated from German culture to German policy only as a consequence of
military success.
The Holocaust is justly infamous, but mass murder of the innocent was also a
commonplace practice by the Japanese Army in China. To return to the German war in
the East, the law of war was a dead letter, and officially so. German soldiers were assured
of immunity from prosecution for war crimes for any death, injury or damage they
inflicted upon enemy civilians. This release from normal restraints contrasted sharply
with the Wehrmacht’s ferocious combat discipline. Because of the total – which is to say
cultural and social – character of the Russo-German War of 1941–5, there was no sure
safety in surrender or in subsequent POW status. On the one hand, prisoners frequently
were not taken at all; while on the other, the POW survival rate was not impressive. The
German Army and the Waffen SS did not usually kill their Russian prisoners directly;
they simply neglected to feed or house them adequately, if at all. Of the 3 million Russian
POWs taken in 1941–2, 2 million were allowed to starve to death or die of exposure.
Overall, only 2.4 million of the Russian POWs held by the Germans in the war survived
out of a grand total of 5.7 million. Germany’s domestic labour shortage in industry and
agriculture became increasingly chronic after 1941–2, and, belatedly, it was recognized
that the POW catch was a convenient, free and expendable source of labour, though one
that was always a cause of security and racial– cultural anxiety. Much as Spartans feared
revolt by their helot slaves, so Germans were uneasy at the prospect, then the reality, of
the Reich being inundated by millions of ‘racially inferior’ slave labourers.
In an obvious sense, World War II was a round two: it was Germany’s War of Revenge;
unfinished national business. But it was much more than that, too: 1939–45 was not just
a continuation of 1914–1 8 , following the twenty-one-year time-out of an armistice. First,
it was much more of a total war. This was the result of its being ideological to a degree
not approached in 1914–1 8. Also, totality became more possible as the instruments and
World War II in Europe, I 125Table 10.1Casualties in World War II
Total forces Military Military Civilian
mobilized dead wounded dead
(million)United States 14.9 292,100 571, 822 Negligible
United Kingdom 6.2 397,762 475,000 65,000
France 6.0 210,671 400,000 108 ,000
Soviet Union 25.0 9,500,000 16,000,000 17,500,000
China 6–10 500,000 1,700,000 1,000,000
Germany 12.5 2, 8 50,000 7,250,000 500,000
Italy 4.5 77,500 120,000 40–100,000
Japan 7.4 1,506,000 500,000 300,000
All Others 20.0 1,500,000 No estimate 14–17,000,000
Total 105.0 16, 8 34,033 No estimate 36,573,000
Principal source:Dupuy and Dupuy, 1993: 1309, with some estimates adjusted in light of more recent
evidence