[dp0622]

almost 10 percent!?!?!?

Germany lost almost 10 percent of its population!?!!?

That’s insane.

[Zhang Fei]

[almost 10 percent!?!?!?

Germany lost almost 10 percent of its population!?!!?

That’s insane.]

---

The brutality of the German war machine simply dwarfs that of Japan, so they had more to be afraid of, if they were overrun. With Japan, atrocities mainly took the form of letting off steam after high-casualty campaigns, as well as rebel pacification schemes in which civilian supporters of anti-Japanese guerrillas were killed. With Germany, the real slaughter began years after the conquests were completed, when totally compliant populations were carefully sorted out and killed just for being a given ethnicity. IMO, the only reason the entire German population wasn’t made to walk to Siberia has to do with Stalin feeling that he might need them as cannon fodder if the West decided to finish off the other country (apart from Nazi Germany) most responsible for kicking off WWII, the Soviet Union.*

*The Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact Nazi-Soviet peace treaty gave Germany the reassurance that the Soviets wouldn’t hit them in the east while they were attacking France in the west. The Soviets also provided big time logistical support for the Nazi campaign in the West.

[lgjhn23]

“...Germany lost almost 10 percent of its population!?!!? That’s insane.....”
Yep, sure is. But Germany hasn’t had any real alpha males since WWII when they were all mostly killed.

[JohnBovenmyer]

Soviets lost more than that! They claim to have started WWII with 197M people. They used to claim 20M deaths during the war, a tad over 10%. But they now claim to have lost 26.6M, over 13%. But the Soviets didn't rout from that and kept fighting. Of course only one Soviet's vote really counted, Stalin's. They all knew he was scarier than 13% casualties so kept fighting. Now one might argue Stalin did rout during the initial German invasion, letting most of his army die without doing much to support it. But Russia was so big that there was time for Stalin to recover from his personal rout, commandeer a new army worth of peasants, and convince FDR he was bloodthirsty enough to justify our lend lease lifeline.

[PIF]

Germany:
WWII Combat deaths: 4,750,000 - Eckhardt
WWII Civilian deaths: 3,800,000 - Encarta