Great article. One correction.
The largest percentages of casualties in modern warfare has always bee civilians. Similar to the infantry, they are frequently transported by foot in the war zone. Their casualty rates are so high because they aren’t a coordinated fighting force and become cannon fodder.
Evidence of their casualty rates is manifest by refugees from war zones. Refugees generally don’t leave their homes and homelands unless forced to leave, manifesting their slaughter had they remained.
I think there is good evidence for non-combat always exceeding military casualties in war, but then that was not the focus of the piece. I doubt that towns with 14,000 citizens were repeatedly slaughtered and repopulated, which happened to the infantry divisions. Even the Nazis resettled people out of the urban areas which were being bombed and had some measure of success until they were overwhelmed by hundreds of thousands fleeing the advancing Russians.
In World War II it seems the Japanese should get a prize for forcing its citizens into harm’s way. For the coming invasion they drafted able citizens 17-60 years old into the Peoples Volunteer Corps and Home Defense Units to assume infrastructure duties of army units and to stay behind invaders for suicide missions using light weapons and explosives.
How this actually played out can be seen in the Battle of Okinawa for which Japanese have a reverence similar to that of Texans for the Alamo. Though Okinawa was a prefecture of Japan, people on the home islands looked down on the Okinawa citizens. The battle was a chance to prove themselves, and they did to the extent that 149,000 died during the invasion.
Edward Behr in Hirohito describes a Japan that is hard to imagine. A quote by film director Akira Kurosawa illustrates the transformation of that generation of Japanese people, who before were resigned to the slogan “Honorable Death of a Hundred Millionâ€.
“When I walked the same route back to my home (after the Emperor’s broadcast), the scene was entirely different. The people in the shopping street were bustling about with cheerful faces as if preparing for a festival the next day. If the Emperor had made such a call (to follow the above slogan) those people would have done what they were told and died. And probably I would have done likewise. The Japanese see self-assertion as immoral and self-sacrifice as the sensible course to take in life. We were accustomed to this teaching and had never thought to question it….In wartime we were like deaf-mutes.â€
World War One with its static fronts would have been an exception if it were not for the Turks. The total is 10,900,000 military compared to 9,000,000 civilian deaths. However, the Eastern relief commissions estimated that 2,000,000 should be added to the total, for badly underestimating the Turkish massacres.
Hirohito, by Edward Behr
The Great Events of the Great War, Vol VII, Charles F. Horne PhD, editor