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Smaller than Russian losses during WWII.
The Romans counted armies by rough estimates, generally didn't count dead civilians, and the scant remaining records tend to be propaganda pieces. Notice the complete lack of casualties during Caesar and Augustus' civil wars, and the listed sources for the Gaelic war deaths.
The two are incomparable, no amount of twisting gives anything more than a guess.
Smaller than Russian losses during WWII.
Even when accounting for percentage of population?
Looking at deaths as a proportion to the populations will tell us the disruption to society, production and agriculture. It is sometimes used when looking at plagues, just since death counts can be somewhat less useful when we want to see how whole societies are wiped from the world. Wars however already causes societal damage by the very nature, so we can not infer the damage to society by deaths in proportion to population.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The USSR's population in 1939 (immediately pre-war) was about 188 million. The peak Roman Empire population, in ~160 CE, was 60-70 million. Less than half that of the USSR. Still, the war dead over the empires history are just 1.25% of its peak instantaneous population. So yes, war was overall less deadly. But being an infant was far deadlier than today (~50% mortality by age 5). Total Soviet casualties: 20-27 millio…
To add to your point - due to mechanization, and fossil fuel-operated logistics, participants in WWII could field much larger armies. In ancient and medieval societies, a huge portion of the population was needed to work full-time to feed relatively small groups of artisans/warriors/politicians. In contrast, in WWII, the Red Army conscripted 33 million men. One sixth of the population.
The source which really hammered this home for me was Daniel Yergin's book, The Prize. It's a history of oil, but if you think that that doesn't have anything to do with war ....
Yergin never quite comes out and state that WWI and WWII were resource wars, but they were resource wars.
WWI saw the introduction of mechanisation to battle: cavelry were replaced by tanks, first motorcycles, then cars and trucks were used for personnel and materiel transport. And aircraft. Plus rail and ships: Churchill had famously just converted the British Navy from coal to oil, a massive military and operation advantage, but also an incredible risk for Britain who lacked (so far as anyone knew at the time) any indigenous oil. Instead, by way of naval bases serving Suez and India, it happened to have a presence in Persia and on the Arabian peninsula ....
The United States singlehandedly supplied both its homeland, two fronts, and its allies with oil through WWII. Much of the Pacific battle was over Japanese access to Indonesian oilfields (and Chinese coal), which the US blocked by way of submarines. The Germans very nearly accomplished the same for domestic US oil shipments from Texas to East Coast population centres, resulting in a government financed-and-operated oil pipelines project, still in use today, the Big Inch and the Little Inch pipelines, from Beaumont, TX, to New Jersey.
And petroleum-fueled tractors meant that the U.S. could also feed not only itself and its troops but its European allies.
The U.S., Russia, and Saudi Arabia rank 1-3, in that order (I think) for the largest original oil reserves. Venezuala is 3rd, though with much heavier (harder to extract, not as useful, dirtier) petroleum.
That's actually amazing.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
To add to your point - due to mechanization, and fossil fuel-operated logistics, participants in WWII could field much larger armies. In ancient and medieval societies, a huge portion of the population was needed to work full-time to feed relatively small groups of artisans/warriors/politicians. In contrast, in WWII, the Red Army conscripted 33 million men. One sixth of the population.
Very much this. The source which really hammered this home for me was Daniel Yergin's book, The Prize . It's a history of oil, but if you think that that doesn't have anything to do with war .... Yergin never quite comes out and state that WWI and WWII were resource wars, but they were resource wars. WWI saw the introduction of mechanisation to battle: cavelry were replaced by tanks, first motorcycles, then cars and…
I didn't know about that. It was called Operation Paukenschlag.
> [January to August] During this period, Axis submarines sank 609 ships totalling 3.1 million tons
That's three sunk ships a day. The biggest problem for German subs in that operation was running out of torpedoes. Completely insane.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Very much this. The source which really hammered this home for me was Daniel Yergin's book, The Prize . It's a history of oil, but if you think that that doesn't have anything to do with war .... Yergin never quite comes out and state that WWI and WWII were resource wars, but they were resource wars. WWI saw the introduction of mechanisation to battle: cavelry were replaced by tanks, first motorcycles, then cars and…
> The Germans very nearly accomplished the same for domestic US oil shipments from Texas to East Coast population centres I didn't know about that. It was called Operation Paukenschlag. > [January to August] During this period, Axis submarines sank 609 ships totalling 3.1 million tons That's three sunk ships a day . The biggest problem for German subs in that operation was running out of torpedoes . Completely insane…
Monsarrat's "Three Corvettes" is one of the few books that has moved me to tears (ironically enough while flying over the very same North Atlantic).
"The only villain is the sea, the cruel sea, that man has made more cruel..."
1000 casualties averaged a year? That's actually amazing.
Relevant: Dan Carlin just came out with a new episode of Hardcore History called "The Celtic Holocaust," which deals with the subject of the Roman subjugation of Gaul and the Celtic people. http://www.dancarlin.com/product/hardcore-history-60-the-cel...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The Germans very nearly accomplished the same for domestic US oil shipments from Texas to East Coast population centres I didn't know about that. It was called Operation Paukenschlag. > [January to August] During this period, Axis submarines sank 609 ships totalling 3.1 million tons That's three sunk ships a day . The biggest problem for German subs in that operation was running out of torpedoes . Completely insane…
I seem to remember that Nicholas Monsarrat, who served on RN corvettes, had particular respect for the crews of oil tankers who had an even lower chance than normal of surviving an attack by a U-boat. Monsarrat's "Three Corvettes" is one of the few books that has moved me to tears (ironically enough while flying over the very same North Atlantic). "The only villain is the sea, the cruel sea, that man has made more cr…
I re-read the "The Cruel Sea" a few weeks ago (a very old battered copy that I inherited from my dad). It didn't move me to tears, but is still a very moving piece of literature describing a horrendously gruelling theatre of war.