Deaths in Previous Wars

I was thinking about the death tolls in wars and police actions the last 20 years or so. I thought it would give some perspective to list war dead from World War II and Viet Nam so people can see how much better they have had it than then.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
World_War_II_casualties#Total_human_losses

The above wikipedia address is my source for fatalities.

The total losses recorded worldwide from all nations in World War II was
72,763,500

The United States alone had 416,800 military deaths and 418,500 civilian deaths attributed to World War II.

However, the Soviet Union had 10,700,000 military deaths and 11,400,000 civilian deaths. So their total losses were 23,100,000 or 13.71% of their population as of 1939.
Whereas the United States only lost .32% of their population.


China also lost 20,000,000 people, mostly civilian during World War II as well.

Germany lost 7,293,000 total of their population, mostly military deaths.

Japan lost 2,700,000 also mostly military deaths.


However, even though the Soviet Union and China lost over 20,000,000 people each, the most meaningful statistic is the total dead of 72,763,500 worldwide which is more than the total living population of many individual nations on earth right now!

The statistics that were commonly given at the end of the Viet Nam war that I cannot find documented now online for some reason were: 50,000 American dead, 250,000 seriously wounded and maybe 1,000,000 veterans scarred mentally or physically or both for life.

If you compare these death statistics to the losses in Iraq and Afghanistan, one thinks more of police action than full out war. However, if one looks at these last two wars(Iraq and Afghanistan) in regard to the economic and political damage done to the U.S. and the Western World long term, I guess one will have to see how history decides to see all this in a longer term perspective.

Were these last two wars necessary? I think a longer view is necessary just like with Viet Nam. No one is happy about any of these wars. However, can anyone tell me what the alternative might have been? One might conjecture all sorts of things but in the end, no one really knows what might have been because that is not what actually happened.

Now, all we really have is the present and future. All those on all sides are both dead and gone no matter what their point of view was. We are alive and they are dead and in the end we all have to live with that somehow.