Friday, January 10, 2014

WWII with Perspective Sauce

Just saw this figure tweeted.  I have been reading some WWII stuff lately, and so I was struck by this figure.


Biggest surprises:
  • Indonesia's ranking.  I had no idea how high a price paid by folks living in what we know now as Indonesia.
  • Ditto for India and French Indochina.
  • That the Axis casualties are less than a quarter of the total folks killed in WWII.  You would think that the instigators, those on the offensive, and especially those that took heavy hits before surrendering (if they surrendered at all, remember the Japanese did not surrender often) paid a high price.  Of course, the Russian and Chinese casualties tilt the balance pretty far.  
Anyhow, with yet more 70th anniversaries ahead--D-day in June and so on, we should not forget how truly awful the "good" war was.

H/T @whinecough

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I hate charts with too much on one scale. Is the 0/12/24 on the X axis millions or percent? Or both?
Without knowing, this chart says a lot less than it could.