Who killed more Americans in WWII: the Japanese or the Germans?
According to this:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties#endnote_US
European theater: 185k
Pacific theater: 109k
Slightly more interesting - 39 listed as “Unknown”
Huh. I would have guessed the Pacific theater had more deaths. I searched for the bloodiest battles in American history and of course Wikipedia has a page. WW II takes up 7 of the top 10 with 4 ETO and 3 PTO. The top one, though is a real surprise (to me, anyway).
The Meuse-Argonne Offensive from WW I. I always thought it was Gettysburg but that’s #7.
Most of the battles were on small islands with not very large Japanese garrisons. The one with the largest garrison, Rabaul with 100,000, was bypassed (“leapfrogging”) and subjected to air raids and naval blockade with submarines. The Allies realized after they won naval supremacy at Midway, they could use the oceans as highways to important targets and ignore the rest. Even so, some of these invasions such as Peleliu, Philippines and Iwo Jima are still controversial as to their necessity.
Early on it was decided that Europe was the higher priority and more men and supplies were sent thereLooking at it the other way I think we killed more Japanese soldiers than Germann ones. Maybe I’m wrong, but generally we had to kill almost all of them in every engagement. They didn’t take to surrendering often.
Elsewhere, Charles Kell was the only U.S. soldier killed by the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
In terms of civilian deaths, Imperial Japan actually killed more people during their so-called ‘Asian Holocaust’ than the Nazis did.
Do you have a cite for that?
Cecil notes that the Japanese killed less than 1/4 the number of people outside of battle.
The Wikipedia article linked earlier notes that the USSR lost 19 million total, Poland lost 6 million, Yugoslavia 1.4 million with another 2-4 million for other nations. Near enough 30 million for the Nazis.
China lost 18 million, Indonesia 4 million, Indochina 2 million, India 3 million (not sure which theatres there) with another 2 million or so for other countries. That’s 29 million for the Japanese.
Also note that a lot of these figures are fairly broad. China may be anywhere from 12.5 to 19 million, Indonesia 2.4 to 4 million. So the total for the war varies between 48 and 59 million.
It seems like it might be possible that the Japanese killed more foreign civilians if we use the right figures. But once we include the half million or so German and Austrian civilians deliberately killed by the Nazis it seems unlikely that the Japanese could “win”.
That table could be improved quite a bit by showing the population of the USA at the time, and then ranking these battles by the percentage of the population killed.
Then Gettysburg moves up to almost tied with the WWI Meuse-Argonne Offensive, with .0022% of the population vs .0025%. (And Gettysburg is under-reported, due to the state of medical treatment of the time. This reports only those who died during the 3 days of battle; many of the wounded at Gettysburg died later from the effects of their wounds.)
That table uses a pretty shaky logic. The table is very misleading because it compares events over months to events over one or two days
The top-most items aren’t necessarily what you think of as a battle - that is, a specific fight which ends with one side retreating. These are what would have been called campaigns in the Civil War - several months’ worth of maneuvers, skirmishing, and often more than one specific battle. It was usually followed by a period to consolidate the gains. If you compare campaign to campaign, you would have to merge some Civil entries and the numbers would be shockingly large.
Wouldn’t that figure also include a number of Americans who were killed by Italian soldiers?
I would assume so, but I have doubts that Italians would have managed ~80k American killed.
Keep in mind, the Allies invaded Italy (Sicily specifically) in July '43 and by the time they hit the mainland, Italy signed an armistice in September of the same year. Most of the battles were against German forces. I was in the 10th Mountain (decades later of course!) so I vaguely recall the history of that area of conflict but I am pretty sure by the Po River campaign the Germans were who we were doing most or all the fighting.
Probably someone with a better overall knowledge of the theater can chime in, but the Italian troops were mostly used against the French, British (in Africa) and the Balkans - none of which went well for the Italians, but didn’t include many (if any) US forces.
Three of the battles listed (Wilderness, Spotsylvania, and Cold Harbor) are from Grant’s Overland Campaign in May and June of 1864, and so took place over a comparable time to the Meuse-Argonne Offensive. The total killed in the Overland Campaign, however, was about 12,000 (both sides), and so less than half the Meuse-Argonne.
But as the US population at the time was was less than a third (barely 30%) of what it was at WWI, these 12,000 deaths had a much larger effect on the country – people were much more likely to know someone who had a family member killed.
That’s why small rural towns in Minnesota like Red Wing, Morris, & Northfield have monuments to their native sons killed in the Civil War. After all, Minnesota sent 1/7th or it’s population to serve in that war.
Rue, but WWII was such a massive war I think you would have been hard pressed to find someone in this country who didn’t know either personally or the family of someone who was killed or wounded.
Out of curiosity, is there a breakdown regarding who those 18 million were killed by? I understand China was going through a period of civil war before, during, and after the Japanese invaded, and I wouldn’t be surprised to hear that at least a significant portion of those 18 million were killed as a result of internecine fighting rather than due to the Japanese.
Those battles took place within that campaign, yes, but they weren’t all the casualties from it. That was part of the point I was making - if you want to compare apples-to-applies, you need to do so.
Do you have some more information on that? I googled the name, and a few different angles on the story, but got nothing.
Those were the 39 brave G.I.'s who gave their lives taking out the Secret Nazi Moon Base.
The Chinese Civil War was mostly fought before and after the Japanese invasion. During the invasion, the Nationalist and the Communists agreed to an armistice so they could both concentrate against the Japanese. There was some minor fighting but generally the agreement held until after Japan surrendered.
And it’s easy to see why. The Japanese treated the Chinese worse than the Germans treated the Russians.