demography of the war

The Oxford Companion to World War II | 2001 | 700+ words | Copyright

demography of the war.

1. The human disaster

The demographic disaster of the Second World War can never be precisely measured. All that can be done is to present some very rough estimates of military losses, civilian deaths arising from wartime policies, including the Nazi extermination of the Jews (see Final Solution), and civilian deaths resulting from other war-related causes.

The epicentre of military action, and therefore, of military losses, in the European war was the German–Soviet war. Perhaps 10 million Soviet servicemen died in the period 1941–5, the vast majority in the war against Hitler. Approximately three-quarters of all German losses, or roughly 3 million men, also occurred on the Eastern Front.

This level of casualties had never before been registered in the history of armed conflict. In other theatres of operation, statistics for military losses were of an order of magnitude that had been registered in the First World War. In the China incident alone approximately 2 million Japanese servicemen died, and a somewhat higher total—perhaps 2.5 million men—died in the Chinese armies arrayed against them. This is approximately the level of losses suffered by Germany, and by the UK and France, in the First World War.

Some casualty totals were higher in the Second World War than in the First. US losses were three times as high. Other countries, for instance Italy and Romania, suffered about the same levels of military loss in both conflicts, while French losses were significantly lower in 1939–45 than in 1914–18.

The extermination of 6 million Jews, the majority of whom had lived in Poland or the Soviet Union, was a direct outcome of the Second World War. The Nazis made genocide a prime instrument of state policy for the first time in history. The concentration camp system also claimed millions of non-Jewish victims, though their murder was not part of the same plan as that devised to rid Europe of Jews for ever.

It was not only in the Final Solution that the boundary between civilian and military targets in warfare was obliterated. In Asia, as throughout occupied Europe, disease, famine, and indiscriminate bombardment of civilian populations produced a parallel human disaster, the dimensions of which can never be fully known. The bare outlines of this catastrophe are presented in Table 1. Over half of the 50 million men, women, and children who perished in the Second World War were civilians.

Demography, Table 1: Approximate war-related deaths of major combatant nations in the Second World War

Country	Military losses (000s)	Civilian losses (000s)	Total losses (000s)
Notes: Casualty statistics are notoriously unreliable. Frumkin provides substantially lower estimates for Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, and higher estimates for Poland. Urlanis's estimates for the USSR are higher s, Singer and than those of Small, produce higher estimates for American war deaths. It may be a rule that the nationality of the scholar tends to yield higher estimates of war casualties for his or her own nation.
Soviet losses are especially problematical. In 1946 Stalin produced a figure of 7 million which, it was supposed, covered military and civilian losses; in the 1960s, under Khrushchev, it became ‘in excess of 20 millions’; by the 27 million; and the early 1990s some most recent estimate for indirect losses-which includes those unborn-is some 48 million (see J. Erickson & D. Dilks (eds.), Barbarossa: The Axis and the Allies, London, 1994, p. 258).
If battle casualties are uncertain, civilian casualties are impossible to verify. Concentration camp mortality, or the human costs of resistance or insurrectionary warfare in Europe, must remain conjectural, and the figures provided reflect those conjectures.
Estimates for Asian casualties are even more uncertain. Chinese data are very sketchy and, given the magnitude of the disaster, likely to remain so. The notional estimate of 350,000 Japanese civilian war-related deaths is almost certainly too low. What is left out is the long-term effects of nuclear bombardment, and the deaths due to it which occurred ten or twenty years after 1945.
Sources: Urlanis, B., Wars and Population (Moscow, 1971); Frumkin, G., Population Changes in Europe since 1939 (New York, 1951); Singer, J. D., and Small, M., The Wages of War (New York, 1972).
I. Axis
Germany	4,500	2,000	6,500
Japan	2,000	350	2,350
Italy	400	100	500
Romania	300	200	500
Austria	230	144	374
Hungary	160	270	430
Finland	84	16	100
total	7,674	3,080	10,754
II. Allies
USSR	10,000	10,000	20,000
China	2,500	7,400	10,000
UK	300	50	350
Yugoslavia	300	1,400	1,700
USA	274	–	274
Czechoslovakia	250	90	340
France	250	350	600
Poland	123	4,000	4,123
Canada	37	–	37
Bulgaria	32	3	35
Albania	28	2	30
India	24	13	37
Australia	23	12	35
Greece	20	430	450
New Zealand	10	2	12
Belgium	10	78	88
South Africa	7	–	7
Netherlands	6	204	210
Luxembourg	5	–	5
Norway	2	8	10
total	14,201	24,042	38,343
Approximate total war-related deaths
Military	22,000
Civilian
died in concentration camps	12,000
died through bombing	1,500
died in Europe from other war-related causes	7,000
died in China from other war-related causes	7,500
total	28,000
total losses	50,000

2. Recovery and resettlement

The demographic repercussions of the war in terms of fertility and migration were profound. Mobilization and military losses changed the sex ratio of many populations, in particular that of the USSR, reducing marriage and birth rates dramatically. But despite the slaughter, there is evidence of a the rapid recovery of population dynamics in many countries during and after the war (see Graph).

The war also produced powerful migratory shock waves as Table 2 shows. First, the flight of civilians out of the front lines was a constant feature of life (see refugees). Secondly, there occurred, both during and after the war, the expulsion of millions of civilians and the resettlement of the survivors far from their homes (see deportations). The dislocating effects of the 1939–45 war had repercussions on the ethnic and nationalities mix of many regions, storing up explosive material for conflicts still unresolved today.

Demography, Table 2: Approximate net shifts in civilian population of some European nations during and after the Second World War

	1939–45 (000s)	1946–7 (000s)	Net movement (000s)
Country	In	Out	In	Out
Notes: The data are useful only to indicate the scale and relative weight of population movements in the two periods 1939–45 and the turbulent two years following the war. The same order has been used as in Table 1. In and out migration have been separated wherever possible. Where conflicting sources exist, the lower figure has always been chosen. Summary figures are used where only total migratory flows have been estimated.
The USSR has been omitted for two reasons. The first is the massive distortions introduced by boundary shifts, in which over 20 million people were forcibly incorporated into the USSR by 1945. The second is the statistical vagueness or unreliability of official Soviet sources. These make the rough guesses incorporated in the data on other European countries appear to be paragons of precision.
The totals for net movement must be treated with great care. The least that can be said is that it is likely that outside the USSR, over 20 million European civilians migrated at least once across 1939 boundaries after the outbreak of war and before 1947. That figure probably would be doubled should an attempt be made to estimate migration into and out of the Soviet Union.
The margin of error that must be accepted for these rough guesses is no doubt a substantial one. But whatever cautionary note is added, it remains clear that the migratory flows during and after the Second World War within Europe were at least as great as and probably greater in magnitude than any other in the history of the Continent over such a short period.
Sources: Urlanis, B., Wars and Population (Moscow, 1971); Frumkin, G., Population Changes in Europe since 1939 (New York, 1951); Singer, J. D., and Small, M., The Wages of War (New York, 1972).
I. Axis
Germany	7,500	4,600	7,200	600	9,500
Italy	1,400	1,500	680	350	230
Romania	450	700	80	–	ç170
Austria	385	150	310	33	512
Hungary	180	170	200	225	ç15
Finland	12	14	1	3	ç4
total	9,927	7,134	8,471	1,211	10,053
II. Allies
UK	–	500	–	413	87
Yugoslavia	–	350	90	180	ç440
Czechoslovakia	15	1,025	160	1,915	ç2,765
France	3,900	3,710	282	50	422
Poland	–	6,900	1,500	2,300	ç7,700
Bulgaria	60	110	–	–	ç50
Greece	80	60	–	–	20
Belgium	–	30	96	–	66
Netherlands	146	150	172	130	38
total	4,201	12,835	2,300	4,988	ç10,322
III. Others
Denmark	268	68	42	184	58
Finland	12	14	1	3	ç4
Ireland	–	79	–	13	ç92
Sweden	128	39	50	19	120
TOTAL	408	200	93	219	ç82

J. M. Winter

Bibliography

Anderson, B. A. and and Silver, B. D. , ‘Demographic consequences of World War II on the non-Russian nationalities of the USSR’, in S. Linz (ed.), The Impact of World War II on the Soviet Union (London, 1988).
Frumkin, G. , Population Changes in Europe since 1939 (New York, 1951).
Milward, A. , War, Economy and Society 1939–45 (London, 1977).
Singer, J. D. and and Small, M. The Wages of War 1816–1965. A Statistical Handbook (New York, 1972).
Urlanis, B. , Wars and Population (Moscow, 1971).

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I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "demography of the war." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Encyclopedia.com. 27 May. 2012 <http://www.encyclopedia.com>.

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I. C. B. DEAR and M. R. D. FOOT. "demography of the war." The Oxford Companion to World War II. 2001. Retrieved May 27, 2012 from Encyclopedia.com: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1O129-demographyofthewar.html

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