“I just published a book about the horrors that engulfed the West in 1914, which tries to explain how it happened that governments worldwide intentionally murdered some 170 million of their own civilians—not including casualties of war.”
This is either a mis print or the author is a raving loony.
Zmirak's not saying 170 million killed in the timespan of WWI. He's talking about 170 million killed SINCE WWI by the various totalitarian regimes ---Nazi Germany, USSR, Red China, Cambodia, Rwanda, Srebrinka, the Ottoman genocide of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians, the killing of kuffirs ("unbelievers") by Muslims, etc. --- over and above those who fell in wars per se --- whose ideologies sprang from the aftermath of WWI.
The Black Book of Communism attributes 100,000,000 dead to China/USSR alone. I have no doubt the rest of the world atrocities have bumped this up to 170M easily.