Posted on 07/24/2006 3:11:00 PM PDT by ml/nj
The battle of Normandy caused the death of less than 14,000 civilians in the three departments of Basse Normandie, that is to say:
In absolute value, it is the town of Caen which suffered the most, with 2,000 killed, that is to say 3.5 % of its population.
According the number of inhabitants, other communities suffered losses proportionally higher:
The sad record is held by the village of Evrecy, in the west of Caen, where the air raid of the night from the 14 to June 15 caused the death of 130 people out of the 400 inhabitants of the borough.
It appears that on June 6, "the D Day" was also the most tragic for the Bas Normands with 2,200 dead.
On June 7, one counts more 1,600 deaths.
Source: GARNIER Bernard, QUELLIEN Jean et l’Université Inter-Ages, Les victimes civiles du Calvados dans la bataille de Normandie, 1er mars 1944 - 31 décembre 1945, Centre de Recherche d’Histoire Quantitative, Mémorial de Caen, Editions du Lys, Caen, 1995, 495 p.
Here is another opinion that includes the entire Allied invasion and occupation:
While it is difficult, but not impossible, to research the exact numbers for French women and children, here is some basic information (with credit to Mr. William Henry Harris):
"Before, during and after the D-Day landings the Allies dropped over 590,000 tons of bombs on France -- equal to almost half the amount of bombs dropped on Germany during the entire course of the war.
"Over 1 million French homes were destroyed by Allied bombing attacks and some cities such as Caen, Saint-Lo, Carentan, Montbourg and Valgnes ceased to exist.
"For every German who lost his life resisting the American invasion of Europe, the lives of four Frenchmen were taken. Whereas German troops had wandered at will during their occupation of France, the British and the Americans were repeatedly confined to barracks or had their movements restricted because of the French resistance to their presence on French soil."
ML/NJ
Call me skeptical on that one.
I join you in the Doubt It corner. For one thing, there were no barracks. Still, the overall point is valid. We dropped bombs, shelled, and landed troops in a populated area on D-Day. Thank God Robert Capa was on a landing craft rather than Shep Smith and his camera crew ("Are you scared? Do you know how tough the Germans are?").
To most people today, WWII was aninconvenience. They forgot, or never knew, of the bombing of London, Berlin, Dresden, Tokyo, Nagasaki, Hiroshima... This was not collateral damage. It was part of a WAR. Today, war seems to have to be clean and sanitized.
Only for one side.
ML/NJ
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