59 0Chapter 29
Germany on V-E Day (Victory in Europe Day). Finish-
ing the war in Asia thus fell to Roosevelt’s vice presi-
dent, Harry S. Truman.
President Truman took the painful decision to use
the atomic bomb on Japan to avoid the frightful costs
of invading Japan. In the late 1930s experiments with
splitting the atom had begun to convince physicists
around the world of the potential of a weapon based on
nuclear fission. In 1939 a group of distinguished Euro-
pean émigré scientists (notably Enrico Fermi, Leo Szi-
lard, and Albert Einstein) at American universities
began to worry that Nazi Germany might be working
on such an atomic bomb. This resulted in a historic let-
ter from Albert Einstein to President Roosevelt explain-
ing these possibilities. FDR responded with top-secret
(even from Congress) funding of the Manhattan Pro-
ject to construct a nuclear fission bomb. An interna-
tional team of scientists, many of them Jewish refugees
driven from Europe by Nazi racial policies, and all of
them fearful that Werner Heisenberg and other Ger-
man scientists were ahead of them, succeeded in the
summer of 1945. The first atomic bomb exploded at a
desert site near Alamogordo, New Mexico. It generated
the explosive power of twenty thousand tons of TNT,
vaporized all surrounding equipment, and startled even
its inventors. J. Robert Oppenheimer, the director of
the Manhattan Project laboratory, was moved to recall
a line of Hindu scripture, “I am become Death, the de-
stroyer of worlds.” The European war had already
ended, and the awesome new weapon quickly endedCountry Killed in combat Wounded Civilians killed Total killed
Allied casualties
Australia 23,000–26,000 39,000–180,000 23,000–26,000
Belgium 8,000–10,000 56,000 60,000–76,000 68,000–86,000
Britain 244,000–264,000 370,000 60,000–93,000 304,000–357,000
Canada 32,000–37,000 53,000 32,000–37,000
China 1.3 million–2.2 million 1.8 million 1.3 million–2.2 million plus
Denmark 3,000–4,000 2,000–3,000 5,000–7,000
France 200,000–400,000 400,000 200,000–350,000 400,000–750,000
Greece 17,000–74,000 47,000 325,000–391,000 342,000–465,000
India 24,000–32,000 64,000 24,000–32,000
Netherlands 7,000 3,000 200,000 207,000
New Zealand 11,000 17,000 11,000
Norway 1,000–2,000 7,000–8,000 8,000–10,000
Poland 123,000–600,000 530,000 5 million plus about 6 million
United States 292,000 670,000 6,000 298,000
USSR 6.0 million–7.5 million 2 million–9 million plus 8 million–20 million
Yugoslavia 305,000–410,000 425,000 1.2 million 1.5 million–1.6 million
Axis casualties
Bulgaria 7,000–10,000 10,000 17,000–20,000
Finland 79,000–82,000 2,000–11,000 81,000–93,000
Germany 3.3 million–4.4 million 780,000 plus 4.1 million–5.2 million
Hungary 140,000–180,000 280,000–290,000 420,000–470,000
Italy 78,000–162,000 146,000 224,000–308,000
Japan 1.2 million–2.0 million 280,000 plus 1.5 million–2.3 million
Romania 300,000–350,000 200,000 500,000–550,000
Source: Adapted from data in Louis L. Snyder, ed., Louis L. Snyder’s Historical Guide to World War II(Westport, Conn.: Greenwood, 1982), p. 126.
Note: Figures show range from lowest to highest estimates. German data include Austria. Holocaust victims are counted in homeland civilians.TABLE 29.1The Estimated Casualties of World War II