Moon of Alabama Brecht quote
May 09, 2016

What The Russians Remember On Victory Day

On May 9 the Russian people and other people of the former Soviet Union celebrate Victory Day. It was the Red Army of the Soviet Union that utterly defeated the Axis armies in Operation Bagration and on its march to Berlin. Militarily the D-Day invasion of continental Europe by the U.S. and its "western" allies was a mere diversion from the huge Soviet offensives in the east. By end of August 1944 the German forces and their allies had essentially lost the war.

This graph, too little known, shows the huge sacrifices the Russians and others made. It explains why the Russians remember their victory.


purple=military death (millions); green=civilian death (millions); blue=total death (% of population)
bigger

Posted by b on May 9, 2016 at 18:40 UTC | Permalink

Comments

Thank you for this. No nation celebrates V-Day like the Russians. Now we know why.

Posted by: David | May 9 2016 18:50 utc | 1

David, also why they're so scared of being attacked. This is a fear based on experience. The paranoia shown by the US since 1945- remember the Red Menace?- has no such mitigating circumstances.

Posted by: Jono | May 9 2016 19:08 utc | 2

In addition to the formal military parade, Russian-speaking people also hold a less formal Parade of the Immortal Regiment. That is people parade carrying a photograph of their relatives who died in the Great War. The Immortal Regimant parade was 700,000 strong this year in Moscow.

https://z5h64q92x9.net/proxy_u/ru-en.en/tvzvezda.ru/news/vstrane_i_mire/content/201605091943-1bfg.htm

Similar parades were held, largely without serious interference from the Neo-Nazis, occupied Dnepropetrovsk, Kharkov, Odessa and Zapaorozhye. Donetsk and Lugansk held their formal military parades as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kluvkb6bJ8M

Posted by: Yonatan | May 9 2016 20:12 utc | 3

kudos and homage to russia for honouring their nation for the sacrifice's they gave and such a shame the west has such a hard time acknowledging any of it..

Posted by: james | May 9 2016 20:22 utc | 4

A couple of things come to my mind seeing this. First, despite the appallingly high percentage of deaths in Latvia and Lithuania during WWII, the present day regimes are dedicated to the proposition that the bad times for Latvia and Lithuania came between 1945 and 1989, i.e., the Soviet days, just like the Ukrainian democrats/fascists.

Second, although Hitler failed to destroy Leningrad and Stalingrad, Yeltsin's (and Putin's) democracy succeeded.

Posted by: steven johnson | May 9 2016 20:52 utc | 5

No Soviet march is complete without a little Command and Conquer theme music in the back round.

On the real though what makes Russians feared is they have a tendency to not give a shit and sacrifice millions when push comes go shove. Indeed if it was not for those Reds, alot of people would be speaking German right now

http://youtu.be/-Iu0pvZP-dM

Enjoy

Posted by: Deebo | May 9 2016 21:13 utc | 6

You don't see these figures celebrated in many western textbooks, when any textbook should pretty much open with such horror. Too much hard fact contained in those numbers for the powers that be at some publishing houses.

Bernays and Hollywood have acheived outstanding generational brainwash... The yanks did it...! They saved Europe.

@steven johnson 5
Indeed, although Hitler's aggressive stance towards Europe served another end...that of a certain Wall St brigade...funding the Nazi party to power to achieve such eastern facing ambition. Who could have predicted that Hitler figured out the secret hiding in plain sight... A nation never needs to go in to debt - the last leader of a world power to give the big 'hey... fuck you' to the banking cartel. And so, in the end Hitler had to be stopped, the monster they created and tried to harness...

...and yes, like you say, they succeeded with town drunk Yeltsin. Though, who can blame him...perhaps drinking heavier to forget he'd allowed the cartel to set up shop on his watch.

Posted by: MadMax2 | May 9 2016 21:15 utc | 7

Across a great variety of sources, media and time periods from past to future, I have consistently seen Russians prepared to die for their country, and satisfied with this act as being existentially complete for them.

I grew up in the west, and live in it now. If I had to give my life for my country I would feel incomplete. Unrewarded. In all my life in the west, no country has been worth dying for.

I've been puzzling out this mild culture shock these last couple of years, with a distinct sense of envy and admiration for Russians, that their country's spiritual body is equal to their own individual spiritual fulfillment.

How profoundly good it must feel to live a life exalted and noble, simply from the saturation of one's culture.

Just some Victory Day musings.

Posted by: Grieved | May 9 2016 21:37 utc | 8

@2......Good point Jono. Thank you.

Posted by: David | May 9 2016 21:46 utc | 9

This is perfect.

Now if all of the MoA readers and activists can begin to spread the word ... maybe, just maybe we will begin to develop a touch of humility in the US.

Now, if we can just get similar data on the War between China and Japan ... well, maybe the typical AmeriKKKan will begin to understand.

What I do think this does show is that the US does have a reason to fear both Russia and China. What I don't understand is why we keep provoking them. There is no way in hell that the US could defeat either ... their determination and our insistence on consumerism makes it clear who would win in the end.

Just a thought for thinking ...

Posted by: rg the lg | May 9 2016 22:04 utc | 10

Russians also endured great hardship after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. Although nothing like the sacrifices made in the war against Hitler, I doubt that the U.S. populace could withstand the hardships endured by Russians during the 1990s.

Posted by: Andoheb | May 9 2016 22:41 utc | 11

Happy Victory Day, although the final battle against fascism is yet to be played out...

Eternal glory to Russia and to all the heroes that offered their lives on the altar of freedom! Shame to the peoples of Europe for conveniently "forgetting" to whom they owe the privilege of living in peace.

Posted by: LXV | May 9 2016 22:51 utc | 12

@11 androheb. ' I doubt that the U.S. populace could withstand the hardships endured by Russians during the 1990s.'

Again, at the hands of the West, How Haarvard lost Russia.

Posted by: jfl | May 9 2016 22:55 utc | 13

Jono | May 9, 2016 3:08:50 PM | 2
“ The paranoia shown by the US since 1945- remember the Red Menace?- has no such mitigating circumstances.”

Well, I wouldn’t exactly say “no” mitigating circumstances. Sure, the fears of a Red Menace were stoked by capitalists worried that if an alternative, populist economic system succeeded it would derail their gravy train, which is still going strong without any other economic systems to challenge it even as it destroys the earth.

But Stalin gave the rabid anti-commies like Truman and Allan Dulles plenty of quantitative fodder to scare Americans with. Stalin’s genocide of the Ukrainians for instance – Holodomor: 10 million intentionally starved to death and otherwise butchered. And then there were Stalin’s pogroms, gulags, and other forms of repression/genocide, which resulted in millions civilian deaths inside USSR before, during, and after WWII.

So there were plenty of hard facts to give Americans the jitters about the Reds, and the lying politicians relied on those hard facts to scare Americans. As a boomer American, I was indoctrinated with the idea that the US won WWII and bore the brunt of the casualties as a result of its fearsome fighting, particularly in the S. Pacific and Normandy. During the Cold War there was never a clear distinction between the bad guy Nazis and the bad guy Russians. And then there was the trick of intentionally failing to distinguish between Russian leaders and the Russian people. And so Americans never got past seeing the Russian people as the enemy instead of as the heros of WWII. Nobody really pointed out that 14% of all Russians died as a result of WWII vs. 0.3% of all Americans. Now we got Wiki.

We were told in school about all of the horrible things the KGB and Stasi did, and would do in American if communism took over: spying on people, busting into their homes in the middle of the night and shooting them or dragging them off, shooting their dogs, raping their kittens, building border walls and killing anyone who tried to cross – all of the things NSA, FBI, DEA, and SWAT teams do in the US on a daily basis now, except maybe kitten-rapes which is more of a weekly sort of thing.

Thankfully the Internet has pretty much busted up a lot of this anti-Russian propaganda. We can now see vids of thousands of Russians holding photos of those they lost in WWII, and all the dash cams of crazy Russians driving into each other on highways that look surprisingly like US highways. Maybe they ain’t so different after all. I’ve yet to see one with horns growing out of his head, like Dick Cheney.

Posted by: Denis | May 9 2016 23:19 utc | 14

Just WOW. Puts things in prospective. I had no idea of the extent of their sacrifice. WTF is wrong with the neo-cons?

Posted by: shadyl | May 9 2016 23:24 utc | 15

China Closes the Innovation Gap


The NSF released an assessment of China’s R&D in January 2016 entitled: “U.S. science and technology leadership increasingly challenged by advances in Asia: China is now the second largest performer of research and development.”

“Federal investment in both academic and business sector R&D has declined in recent years, reflecting the effects of the end of the investments of ARRA (American Recovery and Reinvestment Act), the advent of the Budget Control Act, and increased pressure on the discretionary portion of the federal budget.”

I would pull from this quotation one phrase that is of special significance for the decline in federal funding for R&D, to wit “increased pressure on the discretionary portion of the federal budget.” Discretionary spending excludes earned benefits, principally Social Security and Medicare which are in the non-discretionary category. ...

Do I have to tell readers that the biggest portion of the federal discretionary budget is the Pentagon? According to OMB the military consumed 55 percent of the federal discretionary budget in 2015 whereas science got 3 percent!! “International Affairs” also received 3 percent. In other words, the U.S. is building -and using – vast amounts of instruments of destruction while China is building up its scientific and technical enterprise.

In a broader historical context, for the last 500 years the West has been in the dirty business of invading and colonizing the rest of the planet. This process continues today in the form of neocolonialism, most recently with U.S. wars, “regime change” ops and sanctions aimed at resisting nations.

In this entire 500-year period, the West has always enjoyed technological superiority in such encounters, and that has been one of the keys to its success at domination. Some would say that technology was the key to subjugation of the planet by the West.


China may be on its way to being the largest performer of research and development, but they will never overtake the USA/the West as producer of civilian death, devastation, destruction, and deceit. The stuff that 'really matters'. They just don't have the 'willpower' that the USA/the West has. What Americans remember of WWII is Hiroshima and Nagasaki. We're number one! we're number one! we're number one!

Posted by: jfl | May 9 2016 23:41 utc | 16

Very interesting. Surprising the high % of deaths in Indonesia and Indochina. The Japanese occupations were no joke, I guess.

Posted by: Jay M | May 10 2016 0:11 utc | 17

" In December 1945 Stalin was brave enough not to ratify the Bretton Woods agreement. Would it have been the right decision of the head of the country that had lost 27 million lives as a sacrifice to its independence, to sign a paper which would have deprived the country of this very independence? "
http://lit.md/files/nstarikov/rouble_nationalization-the_way_to_russia%27s_freedom.pdf

And that was the real reason for the Iron Curtain, imposed by the West.

Posted by: Penelope | May 10 2016 1:05 utc | 18

Regarding the Holodomor.
http://orientalreview.org/2012/12/17/episodes-10-who-organised-famine-in-the-ussr-in-1932-1933/ Nikolai Starikov

Posted by: Penelope | May 10 2016 1:10 utc | 19

@ 18 I think it's on record that Churchill was hoping the Germans and the Russians would wipe each other out. Unfortunately for him the Russians recovered quickly after Stalingrad and that meant opening a Second Front.

Posted by: dh | May 10 2016 1:24 utc | 20

@20

It was a bit more complicated than that, especially when one considers General Embick's (of George Marshall's OPD) memorandum in Casablanca about "primrose path". It wasn't Stalingrad, it was Kursk which brought an extreme urgency into Allied planning. By that time (especially by Tehran Conference) the defeat of Wehrmacht was assured.

Posted by: SmoothieX12 | May 10 2016 1:34 utc | 21

@18 penelope.. thanks for the reminder of that important and overlooked detail that helps explain a number of things.. i dig starikov and glad to see someone else who does too..

Posted by: james | May 10 2016 1:34 utc | 22

@21 Kursk indeed. That's what I meant by the Russian recovery after Stalingrad. It looked like they would win the race to Berlin.....and perhaps beyond.

Posted by: dh | May 10 2016 1:40 utc | 23

@ 17

Yeah the Japs were really ruthless. I could kinda of understand Germanys reasons for being mad at the world, but the Japanese baffle me

They reallly reallly butchered China, and believe you me (even though i am not condoning it) if they were not nuked when they were millions more would of died. Maybe the US could of nuked some random Island near Japan that had troop concentrations instead, but those cities are a no no.

But yes the Japanese i believe were far worse then Germany, but then again its always the victors who write history so who knows what the true numbers were

Posted by: Deebo | May 10 2016 2:11 utc | 24

Thanks for the chart b, a definite book mark. Although, if you show it to almost any U$A'er, they'll not believe it.

Posted by: ben | May 10 2016 3:18 utc | 25

Jay @ 17, Deebo @ 24,

The Chinese did lose millions during the 1930s and early 1940s but they did fight Japan to a standstill if not to victory and eventually drove out the Japanese occupiers (with help from the Soviets in Manchuria and the US) by end of September 1945.

Part of the reason so many civilians died (especially in the early years of the Sino-Japanese war) is that civil war was raging in China between Jiang Jieshi's Guomindang (Nationalist) government and Mao Zedong's Communists and Japan exploited that situation. It took a while for the Communists and Jiang's Nationalists to put aside their differences and fight together. After the war ended, the civil war resumed and did not end until the Communists had driven out the Nationalists by October 1949.

In addition the Nationalists had a policy - call it cynical if you like - of retreating farther inland (from Nanjing to Chongqing) whenever the Japanese Imperial army advanced deeper into China. This probably resulted in far more butchery of civilians than if the Nationalists had resisted (and risked defeat). At the end of the day though, the Nationalists could say they hadn't been defeated and hadn't been forced to sign a peace agreement contrary to Chinese interests. Also at the end of the day, most Chinese were glad to see the back ends of Jiang and his Nationalists (they hightailed to Taiwan).

It has to be said too that Japan defeated the British in capturing Singapore in February 1942 and also defeated the United States in capturing the Philippines in May 1942.
http://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/all-american-forces-in-the-philippines-surrender-unconditionally

By the end of February Japan had bombed Darwin in northern Australia and by the end of May had sent midget submarines into Sydney Harbour.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Darwin
http://www.navy.gov.au/history/feature-histories/japanese-midget-submarine-attack-sydney-harbour

So who did Japan really butcher?

Also read the graph more carefully: French Indochina lost 4% of its population, Indonesia lost less than 6% of its population; but Latvia, Lithuania and Poland each lost more than 10% of their populations.

Posted by: Jen | May 10 2016 4:07 utc | 26

>> Holodomor: 10 million intentionally starved to death and otherwise butchered

I've read and come to identify so much Oceania-produced bullshit regarding events taking place during my mature years that I doubt anything Oceania says to smear Eurasia and especially communists.

Famine was a part of the Russian landscape on other occasions. It's the brutal weather. Tsars -- "capitalists", yes? -- killed citizens too.

The Oceania oligarchs turned every disaster into propaganda against the "Reds". When George Washington fought the local proxy government representing the foreign King, it was a fight for independence. But, when Mao or Stalin did it, the oligarchs show their double standard.

Posted by: dumbass | May 10 2016 4:40 utc | 27

Er, not "Stalin" but "Lenin".

Posted by: dumbass | May 10 2016 4:42 utc | 28

And let's not forget that the bedrock of Capitalism is an incessant and inescapable avalanche of infantile, counter-intuitive, Orwellian lies.
Not forgetting, of course, that it was a Pig which first uttered that famous phrase "Some animals are more equal than others."
I can't recall who said "The more things change, the more they remain the same" but he was right, too.

Posted by: Hoarsewhisperer | May 10 2016 6:24 utc | 29

One can admire the Soviet people's sense of sacrifice but we have to also weigh it against the almost casual manner in which they were often sent out in droves to die to make up for deficiencies in the command structure of the Red Army, which was wanting for leadership after Stalin had purged more than half of its General Staff and high-ranking officers in the late 1930's.

And our Western histories under-stress that WW2, in terms of the share of forces involved, was chiefly a struggle between a fascist and a communist dictator, both bent on some form of world domination The communist dictator won with the aid of a temporary alliance with Western capitalists and imperialists.

But those cunning capitalists and imperialists tricksied Stalin out, letting the two dictators weaken each other to the point that Germany collapsed entirely and the USSR was limited in its ability to expand beyond Eastern Europe.


Posted by: ralphieboy | May 10 2016 7:36 utc | 30

@ 26

Thanks Jen, that was very informative!!!

Posted by: Deebo | May 10 2016 8:17 utc | 31

Anybody here ever heard of the Bengal famine?

Posted by: Fat | May 10 2016 8:47 utc | 32

Fat

Is that the one Churchill had a hand in??

Penelope ... must read Starikov some more.

Posted by: Nobody | May 10 2016 9:08 utc | 33

@26 Jen 'So who did Japan really butcher?'

About 15 or 16 million Chinese civilians, by the graph.

Posted by: jfl | May 10 2016 11:26 utc | 34

Also not taught in US schools is the number of Chinese dead.
Japan of course was responsible for that.
Today the US encourages the Japanese to rearm, and Japan is now a virtual nuclear weapons state, which could rapidly construct a large nuclear arsenal with ICBMs. I believe the one of the main purposes of the Japanese State Secrets Act was to prevent leaks of information about this ongoing process.

Posted by: StevenStarr | May 10 2016 12:02 utc | 35

The Victory Day parade at the Hymeim base in Syria went ahead woithout interruption from the takfiris ('moderate' or otherwise). It provides a view of the equipment Russia has fielded to do the job in Syria.

A contingent of nurses takes part in the parade.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jNfKcPfliMo

Posted by: Yonatan | May 10 2016 12:54 utc | 36

!4,16;Want to see the results of "ChiComs"?Check out the Graun today,and the photos of then and now in the area around Hong Kong,the mouth of the Pearl River.Simply f*cking amazing.
The chart seems to minimize Japanese civilian deaths.Did't the 2 nukes kill at least 200,000?

Posted by: dahoit | May 10 2016 13:28 utc | 37

35;The Japanese consider(ed?)Koreans,Chinese etc as less equal,and worthy of Japanese benevolence(?).Racism is a human wide condition.

Posted by: dahoit | May 10 2016 13:30 utc | 38

Churchill was well aware of the Russians fighting prowess (they beat Napoleon - see Churchill's History of the English Speaking Peoples, that he wrote before WW2 - it made him a statesman not just a politician - he was both!). Churchill wanted to attack through the centre of Europe, up through Italy, to stem the Russians advance and protect Europe (he had promised much to Stalin - the 'dirty piece of paper'). He started an attack on Sicily but was blocked and stopped by the US.
The British were defeated at Singapore and 3 capital warships sunk, however the British counter attack from the borders of India pushed the Japs all the way down the Burma road to the sea, a remarkable achievement by General Wingate and his 'Chindits'.
It is well known that the US Hollywood version of both WW1 and 2 has the US turning up and causing an immediate victory, laughable.
I heard the last of our English WW1 serviceman speaking some years ago. The remarkable 100 year old Harry Patch said, "if we had been allowed to go into Germany, there would have been no WW2". He was correct. The German army marched back into Germany, and the agitators claimed it had been stabbed in the back by the Jews (not financed I presume). The Germans surrendered to Woodrow Wilson who was looking to boost his popularity for his mid term elections, nobody else would accept the surrender. So the vast death toll shown on the graph was due to democracy!!!!

Posted by: eric bloodaxe | May 10 2016 14:28 utc | 39

>> Anybody here ever heard of the Bengal famine?
>> Posted by: Fat | May 10, 2016 4:47:51 AM | 32

I had not. Thanks for mentioning it.

Posted by: dumbass | May 10 2016 14:34 utc | 40

Thanks b.

Please continue to shine the light on The Big Lies. So many remain to be unmasked.

The Brits and Yanks won the war. In the movies and the books it is so written. The Ruskies had nothing at all to do with the outcome and they are never mentioned. Winnie’s announcement “ an iron curtain has descended “ kept the lie intact.

A likkle of /s, but there in are some truth.

Truthy is the war has never ended. Imho, the long war has morphed to world war III - WoT (war on terror) – You cannot war away the very terror we impose which really is intended to keep the greedy MISC fed. (MISC=military industrial surveillance corporations)

Oh for the day we restore our rights and acknowledge the 11th commandment:

The Greedy shall not be fed.


Posted by: likklemore | May 10 2016 15:35 utc | 41

Latest polling results in the U.S. presidential race, as reported in The Hill: Poll: Clinton leads Trump by 4 points nationwide:

Hilary Clinton leads Donald Trump by four points among voters nationwide heading towards the general presidential election this November, according to a new poll.

Clinton, the Democratic front-runner, takes 42 percent to the presumptive GOP presidential nominee’s 38 percent in the Public Policy Polling survey released Tuesday.

. . .

Tuesday’s results also found that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) fares better than Clinton in a general presidential election matchup with Trump.

Sanders bests Trump 47 percent to 37 percent. His lead grows in a solo, face-to-face battle with Trump, with the Democratic socialist taking 50 percent to Trump’s 39 percent.

Posted by: lysias | May 10 2016 16:12 utc | 42

Another very interesting report in The Hill today: State Dept.: Clinton IT aide's email archive is lost:

The State Department has lost all archived copies of the emails sent to and from the man believed to have set up and maintained Hillary Clinton’s private email server during the four years she served as secretary, it said on Monday.

However, the department has recovered some of IT specialist Bryan Pagliano’s messages, according to spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau, in apparent contradiction of a Republican National Committee (RNC) court filing earlier in the day.

He's the guy who pled the Fifth Amendment to the investigators, but whom they then gave immunity to.

Posted by: lysias | May 10 2016 16:21 utc | 43

The Immortal Regiment is not a carnival, or a show of pride – but an overt demonstration of Russians' current dignity, honor, and courage.
http://russia-insider.com/en/politics/grandfather-im-you/ri14248

Posted by: Anna | May 10 2016 16:53 utc | 44

lysias @43

Hillary is part of the machine, in much the same way Obama is clearly part of it and the GWB administration before him was, too.

If you'll recall the Bush administration relied on private email servers to hide its criminality, then deleted all of the emails, then in true mafia fashion had Mike Connell killed in a small plane crash to prevent him from testifying.

If Hillary's IT guy's emails hadn't "gone missing", what do you want to bet he'd have suffered the same fate?

The cabal does not allow its members to be investigated unless the investigation is purely political theater designed to divide the population along partisan lines. Anything real which threatens to expose how the proverbial sausage is made will quickly be swept under the rug, and all loose ends will be tied up in short order.

Posted by: Bruno Marz | May 10 2016 17:06 utc | 45

bloodaxe @39

In 1929, George Seldes published You Can't Print That: The Truth Behind the News, 1918-1928 , which allowed the public to read his exclusive interview of Hindenburg at the war's conclusion in 1918 that was censored by the US and UK wherein Hindenburg was quite clear that it was the entry of US troops into the conflict that had turned the tide and was THE cause for Germany's surrender--no stab in the back by anyone. If you've never heard of Seldes it's because he's one of the few truth telling journalists who wouldn't compromise himself that today's Propaganda System wants to keep swept under the rug. Most university libraries will have his books.

Posted by: karlof1 | May 10 2016 17:12 utc | 46

None other than Harry Truman is reported to have said soon after Hitler invaded the Soviet Union that we should help whichever side is losing so as to let them kill as many as possible. The same Truman that later dropped the A bomb on Japan.

Posted by: Vollin | May 10 2016 17:17 utc | 47

"It is the Russian armies who have done the main work in tearing the guts out of the German army. In the air and on the oceans we could maintain our place, but there was no force in the world which could have been called into being, except after several more years, that would have been able to maul and break the German army unless it had been subjected to the terrible slaughter and manhandling that has fallen to it through the strength of the Russian Soviet Armies.”

Winston Churchill 1944

Posted by: dan | May 10 2016 17:17 utc | 48

I really do not know why commenters are so fixated by Japanese war crimes during World War II when the graph (badly drawn as it is perhaps) shows that some eastern European countries suffered far more under Nazi German invasion and occupation.

Yes the Japanese imperial forces were cruel in their treatment of people in their colonies. I have read accounts of the sadistic "medical experiments" conducted by Unit 731 on Chinese civilians and captured POWs (mostly Russian and Chinese, but also Americans and British Commonwealth citizens) on the Internet and in print. On a personal note, my mother's family fled their home in Lae (Papua New Guinea) when their house-boy was captured, tortured and killed by Japanese forces in 1942.

But it has to be remembered that 16 million Chinese deaths represent a small percentage of the total Chinese population of the time (nearly 500 million in 1935, over 520 million in 1940 and approaching 541 million in 1946).
http://www.populstat.info/Asia/chinac.htm

Part of the reason that Japan initially found China easy pickings and was able to penetrate quite deeply into the country is that civil war was raging in the country between the Nationalist government under Jiang Jieshi and the Communists under Mao Zedong. After the fall of the Manchus in 1912, China experienced nearly two decades of chaotic rule under warlords until Jiang came to power in 1928.

Jiang adopted a policy of not confronting Japan directly but instead pursued a scorched earth policy similar to what Russia had adopted in 1812 against Napoleon and the Soviets against Nazi Germany in the 1940s. Like those scorched earth policies, Jiang's strategy resulted in millions of civilians dead from starvation, disease and violence: the idea was to bog down, tie up and eventually exhaust the Japanese military, harassing them all the while. The strategy did work but the cost was huge and in the long term probably contributed to Communist victory over Jiang.

Look at Poland which lost nearly 20% of its population (5 million) during the Second World War. Lithuania lost close to 14% of its population (although the actual number is in the tens of thousands).

Which is worse, a large population losing large numbers (representing a small % of its population) or a small country like Latvia and Lithuania losing at least 1 in 10 people?

Posted by: Jen | May 10 2016 22:46 utc | 49

@50 jen, 'But it has to be remembered that 16 million Chinese deaths represent a small percentage of the total Chinese population of the time'

Sixteen million deaths represents the deaths of 16 million people. Assessing everything in relative terms is sick. The Japanese were 'not as bad as the NAZIs' ... didn't Cheney, or one of his apologists, say that his administration was 'not as bad as the NAZIs'? The Israelis say it everyday.

Killing sixteen million blameless civilians is monstrously savage and brutal, whether it's the NAZIs, Japanese, or the USA (since the end of WWII - 5 million Koreans, 3 million Vietnamese, 1 million Indonesians, 1 million Cambodians, 1 million assorted Central and South Americans, 1 million Iraqis, 1 million Libyans, Syrians, Ukrainians, and Yemenis ...) that's responsible for the killing.

Posted by: jfl | May 11 2016 0:04 utc | 50

What is the source of the graphic?

Posted by: daffyDuct | May 11 2016 1:48 utc | 51

JFL @ 51

Did you read my comments carefully? In case you haven't, I will repeat, that Japan took advantage of a situation in which China was divided because of civil war between the Nationalists under Jiang Jieshi and the Communists under Mao Zedong.

In dealing with the Japanese, Jiang's government followed a scorch earth policy in which Chinese forces would retreat before the Japanese, burning and destroying farmland and built-up urban areas, so as to draw in the invaders and tie them down so their supply lines would be stretched and cut by Chinese forces. This is similar to what the Russians did to Napoleon's Grande Armee in 1812 and the Soviets did to the Nazi-led coalition armies in the early 1940s. In the Chinese case at least, millions of civilians were effectively abandoned by their own government to die from hunger, disease, exposure and Japanese brutality. The Nationalists also punished communities for supporting Communists by denying them protection and help.

I am not excusing Japan but if Jiang and Mao Zedong had come to the understanding that they had a common foe earlier, put their differences aside and coordinated their efforts earlier, the scorched earth policy would have been unnecessary, the Chinese would have put up better resistance and Japan would not have penetrated so far into Chinese territory. People would not have died unnecessarily because two Chinese leaders' egos got in the way of a greater emergency and threat.

This aspect of WW2 in East Asia is not well known because among other things the Chinese Communists don't exactly come out as honourable.

The graph itself shows that Nazi Germany and its allies had a far greater impact on populations in eastern Europe, especially Poland and Lithuania where among other things people were imprisoned and/or killed simply for being who they were (Jewish, Romany gypsy, Slav, homosexual, mentally or physically disabled - probably as many as 11 million people perished in Nazi concentration camps in eastern Europe), than Japan had on China.

Posted by: Jen | May 11 2016 13:16 utc | 52

6;Myth,about language change;If so the East Germans,Hungarians,Romanians etc would all be speaking Russian.

Posted by: dahoit | May 11 2016 14:26 utc | 53

43;Polls schmoles.They haven't been on target all primary season.Adjusted propaganda.
Sanders continues to undermine the hell bitch,and the MSM narrative of theinevitability of the coronation.I absolutely love it.
The Japanese were enamored by the concept of Bushido,where those who surrendered to them were not worthy of good treatment,and that the other residents of the far east were beneath them.
Trump is the next POTUS,I believe.Too much division in demoncrat ranks,and the rethugs won't vote for the HB,or Sanders,most likely.Too many independents for Trump.

Posted by: dahoit | May 11 2016 15:43 utc | 54

Hillary Clinton, according to a new poll reported in The Hill, continues to trend downward against Trump. Poll: Trump, Clinton in statistical tie:

Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton are in a statistical tie in a head-to-head match-up for the presidency, a new national poll released Wednesday finds.

The Reuters/Ipsos poll showed Clinton with 41 percent support to Trump’s 40 percent. Nineteen percent of voters are still undecided.

Trump is surging since Ted Cruz and John Kasich exited the GOP race. Last week, Clinton led Trump by about 13 points in the same poll.

Posted by: lysias | May 11 2016 15:59 utc | 55

Let us not forget the American contribution to Operation Bagration.
Deuce and a half. An Army truck rated for 2.5 tons, 5000 lbs or so. Who would've thunk that it was responsible in part, however small, for the largest German calamity in WW2?, Operation Bagration which destroyed entire German armies on the Eastern Front. The Studebaker trucks, some 200K, were supplied by America to the Soviets, were 6x6 and 4x6 drive. The Germans understandably left undefended swampy and boggy terrain which were no problem for the American Studebakers.

Posted by: Will | May 11 2016 16:04 utc | 56

Another point;What about Canadian,SA,NZ and Australian combat losses?Are they in other?They were in the fight for 6 years,in both theaters.Or are they GB listed?

Posted by: dahoit | May 12 2016 15:03 utc | 57

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