Saturday, May 5, 2012

1918 Pandemic killed more than World War II

I hadn't really associated World War II and the 1918 Flu Worldwide Pandemic before. But as I was talking with my son about it I realized that not only did more American soldiers die from the Pandemic than in World War I but I also realized that worldwide more people died from the Pandemic than in all of World War II.

Begin quote from Wikipedia under the heading "1918 Flu Pandemic".

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Soldiers from Fort Riley, Kansas ill with Spanish influenza at a hospital ward at Camp Funston in 1918, where the worldwide pandemic is hypothesized by some to have begun.
The 1918 flu pandemic (the "Spanish flu") was an influenza pandemic, and the first of the two pandemics involving H1N1 influenza virus (the second was the 2009 flu pandemic, an outbreak of swine flu). It was an unusually severe and deadly pandemic that spread across the world. Historical and epidemiological data are inadequate to identify the geographic origin.[1] Most victims were healthy young adults, in contrast to most influenza outbreaks, which predominantly affect juvenile, elderly, or weakened patients. The flu pandemic was implicated in the outbreak of encephalitis lethargica in the 1920s.[2]
The pandemic lasted from January 1918 to December 1920,[3] spreading even to the Arctic and remote Pacific islands. Between 50 and 130 million died, making it one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.[4][5][6][7][8] Even using the lower estimate of 50 million people, 3% of the world's population (which was 1.86 billion at the time[9]) died of the disease. Some 500 million, or 27%, were infected.[5]

End quote from Wikipedia under the Heading "1918 Flu Pandemic"

So, since estimates vary from 50 million to 130 million deaths worldwide I think if we split the difference we wind up with around 100 million deaths from the 1918 pandemic which is more than those that died who were civilians and soldiers in World War II.

Begin quote from wikipedia under the heading "World War II":

Belligerents
Allies
 Soviet Union (1941–45)[nb 1]
 United States (1941–45)
 British Empire
Taiwan China (at war 1937–45)
 France[nb 2]
 Poland
 Canada
 Australia
 New Zealand
 South Africa
 Yugoslavia (1941–45)
 Greece (1940–45)
 Norway (1940–45)
 Netherlands (1940–45)
 Belgium (1940–45)
 Czechoslovakia
 Brazil (1942–45)
...and others

Client and puppet states
 India
Egypt Egypt (1940-42, 1945)[nb 3]
Philippines Philippines (1941–45)
Syria Syria (1941, 1945)[nb 4]
Mongolia Mongolia (1941–45)
...and others
Axis
 Germany
 Japan (at war 1937–45)
 Italy (1940–43)
 Romania (1941–44)
 Hungary (1941–45)
 Bulgaria (1941–44)
 Thailand (1942–45)

Co-belligerents
Vichy France (1940–44)
 Finland (1941–44)
 Iraq (1941)

Client and puppet states
 Manchukuo
 Italian Social Republic (1943–45)
 Independent State of Croatia (1941–45)
 Slovakia
...and others
Commanders and leaders
Allied leaders
Soviet Union Joseph Stalin
United States Franklin D. Roosevelt
United Kingdom Winston Churchill
Taiwan Chiang Kai-shek
France Charles de Gaulle
...and others
Axis leaders
Nazi Germany Adolf Hitler
Empire of Japan Hirohito
Kingdom of Italy (1861–1946)Italian Social Republic Benito Mussolini  Executed
Philippe Pétain
Kingdom of Romania Ion Antonescu
...and others
Casualties and losses
Military dead:
Over 16,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 45,000,000
Total dead:
Over 61,000,000 (1937–45)
...further details
Military dead:
Over 8,000,000
Civilian dead:
Over 4,000,000
Total dead:
Over 12,000,000 (1937–45)
...further details
World War II series
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Casualties · Further effects · War crimes · Japanese war crimes · Consequences of Nazism
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World War II, or the Second World War (often abbreviated as WWII or WW2), was a global war that was under way by 1939 and ended in 1945. It involved a vast majority of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. It was the most widespread war in history, with more than 100 million people serving in military units. In a state of "total war", the major participants placed their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities at the service of the war effort, erasing the distinction between civilian and military resources. Marked by significant events involving the mass death of civilians, including the Holocaust and the only use of nuclear weapons in warfare, it resulted in 50 million to over 70 million fatalities. These deaths make the war the deadliest conflict in human history.[1]

End quote from Wikipedia under the heading: World War II

Also, another interesting fact is that twice as many allied soldiers died as axis soldiers and ten times as many allied civilians died as axis civilians. Any way you look at it World War II was the single most horrific thing outside of the 1918 Pandemic that humanity of the 20th Century had ever witness. It is one of the reasons that there has never been another war this big on earth. And likely it will stay that way because of the existence of nuclear weapons. 
 

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