The Fallen of World War II Reaction

[Music] hey what's going on welcome back to death definitive i'm ken and i'm bethany and we're just couple in love that loves watching some movies together we do and uh so if you were watching our channel a lot uh last week you might have seen that we did a lot of war trailers for video games and whatnot and that was kind of like leading up to memorial day it's moral day weekend here in the states and you know for a lot of people it is a time to uh celebrate like the start of summer the warm weather's kicking in and barbecues getting together with friends parades and you know we love doing that stuff too um but you know memorial day is a day to remember and honor those that have uh fallen in battle and um you know fought for our country and so we wanted to kind of honor that um with a trailer with a reaction today for a short film this has been on our list for like months and months but we really wanted to react to it on this day um it's called the fallen of world war ii and just for all the service members out there and families and friends of those thank you so much for the sacrifice that you make normally likes to keep things light and fun and everything like that and uh so you understand if you know this is a video maybe you don't want to go skip and you want to enjoy your memorial day you don't want to be bummed out that's that's totally fine but uh you know we wanted to go ahead and watch this the average lifespan of an american is 80 years and an 80 year old today was 10 when world war ii ended four when it began a soldier who saw battle would have to be in his late 80s at least today generals political leaders the decision makers of the war few are still with us and over the past few decades we've seen authors and filmmakers rush to capture stories from survivors before this connection of memory is lost this project is not about individual war stories and it's not about survivors we're going to tally up the tens of millions of people whose lives are cut short by the war and see how these numbers stack up to other wars in history including trends in recent conflicts [Music] we'll be counting soldiers and civilians separately each of these figures represents 1 000 people who died civilians were of all walks of life whereas military deaths were almost entirely men the average age was about 23. in most battles for every 1 000 soldiers killed there are more than a thousand who were injured the word casualty can be confusing because in military speak it often includes both deaths and injuries and anything else that takes a soldier out of service here we're just counting the deaths and we'll begin with american soldiers [Music] over 400 000 died [Music] most of the deaths occurred in the european theater fighting the nazis and about a quarter were in the pacific fighting the japanese when you put them on the timeline you see that casualties were the heaviest at the end of the war the war began on september 1st 1939 but the us wasn't willing to join the fight until pearl harbor two years in the deaths increased drastically on d-day when the allies invaded normandy one of the most tragic moments of the war was on d-day at omaha beach where 2 500 americans fell [Music] so about the same number of u.s soldiers died on this single beach landing as the entire 13 years of the recent war in afghanistan [Music] the bloodiest battle in the pacific was okinawa which lasted 82 days during which 12 500 americans died about five thousand of these deaths were at sea from kamikaze attacks [Music] now let's look at some other countries starting with europe germany started world war ii when it invaded poland poland ultimately lost 200 000 soldiers in the war most died after the invasion while the country was occupied by germany and the soviet union germany meanwhile lost just 16 000 in the invasion of poland the nazis went on to invade and conquer other countries including denmark belgium the netherlands france greece and yugoslavia france surrendered but after losing 92 000 soldiers in the battle of france over 200 000 ultimately fell which includes deaths in pow camps french colonies and other fighting yugoslavia suffered almost half a million military deaths the initial invasion brought relatively few casualties on both sides but the deaths mounted under nazi occupation due to guerrilla fighting civil conflict and mass executions [Music] the nazi invasions were swift with relatively few german losses even the nazi commanders expressed surprise at their success [Music] and then we have the united kingdom in the united states who were not invaded but took the fight to the nazis britain lost about the same number of soldiers as the u.s which includes the british colonies germany lost about half a million soldiers fighting the us and britain in what is known as the western front which took place in france and belgium [Music] but most nazi soldiers died in the eastern front germany's unsuccessful invasion of the soviet union numbers are staggered holy the most famous battle of the eastern front and perhaps the turning point of the european war was stalingrad the german sixth army successfully took stalingrad but then got surrounded by the soviets and cut off from food and ammunition half a million nazis would ultimately die in stalingrad one hundred thousand were taken prisoner of which six thousand would ever return pows had a low survival rate throughout world war ii and it was particularly grim in the east when you include these pows roughly the same number of germans died in stalingrad as all the western front fighting against france the uk and the us look at that and though stalingrad was a victory for the soviets they suffered almost twice as many losses as germany the soviet union would eventually defeat the once unstoppable german army killing 2.3 million nazi soldiers come here but winning the war came at a cost i can't even stop going how many millions is that 8.7 million is the official tally by the russian military a hotly disputed number some studies have calculated as many as 14 million dead to complete the count of european military deaths we need to add german deaths from other fronts including the north and africa as well as deaths from other access powers a lot of the nazis hungary romania and italy when you put these european military debts on the timeline it looks like this you can now interact with the chart to learn more pause the narration if you'd like more time that's just that's crazy yeah and now we switch to civilian deaths in here six million jewish people were killed in the holocaust [Music] if you separate this by country you see that about half 2.7 million for polish 700 000 were soviets followed by hungary and 17 other countries broken down another way about half of the 6 million were killed in the concentration camps over a million died in auschwitz most were killed in the gas chambers others died from starvation exhaustion disease and other forms of execution the second most deadly camp was triblenka which was exclusively an extermination camp set up to look like a train station mobile killing groups killed 1.4 million jews like with the gas chambers men were killed first to reduce the risk of revolt the holocaust also includes non-jewish deaths between 130 000 to 500 000 roma then called gypsies were killed the numbers are disputed about a quarter million people with disabilities were killed homosexuals catholics and other groups were also exterminated but their numbers are relatively small some historians say that other civilian deaths should go under the label of holocaust about 2 million non-jewish poles were killed under german occupation some of which were sent to the gas chambers at auschwitz when you combine civilian and military deaths over 16 percent of the total polish population died in world war ii which is the highest percentage of any country but not the highest in total death count the soviet union again tops that list losing at least as many civilians as it did soldiers somewhere between 10 and 20 million a particularly dark moment of the soviet union was the siege of leningrad now saint petersburg german forces surrounded leningrad before civilians could be evacuated supplies including food were cut off for two and a half years one and a half million people died as a result mostly from starvation mostly civilians stalin's cruelty towards his own people is partly responsible for these numbers he often didn't allow siblings to evacuate from cities thinking it would cause the soldiers protecting them to fight harder about a million soviets died in stalin's own labor camps called the gulag just about every country suffered civilian losses especially countries who were invaded while many died as a result of so-called collateral damage the biggest numbers occurred when it was no accident civilians were exterminated purposely fired upon or bombed used as human shields or intentionally deprived of food [Music] the intentional killing of civilians was done by most warring parties including the united kingdom and the united states the united kingdom was spared of a land invasion but still lost 60 thousand civilians largely from german air raids or blitzes often directed at civilian population centers the uk did the same to german cities at a much greater magnitude causing about 10 times the number of deaths but most german civilian deaths came from the ground at the late stage of the war when the nazi regime collapsed civilians living in occupied regions had to desperately flee from the advancing soviet army rapes were widespread and death estimates ranged from 600 000 to 3 million [Music] let's step back and see where we are with the totals we just counted about 20 million civilian deaths in europe if you add this to the european military deaths we already covered it brings us to over 40 million then we have the asian theater here we see the vast majority of military deaths in asia came from china and japan on the civilian side about 6 million deaths from china indonesia korea indochina and the philippines can be attributed to japanese war crimes which are sometimes compared to the nazi atrocities due to the sheer scale of the cruelty china had the second highest death count after the soviet union and like the soviets the chinese government demonstrated a stunning willingness to sacrifice its own people chinese nationalists opened the dike at the yellow river hoping the flood would halt the japanese advance half a million chinese civilians or more were killed oh my god which is two or three times the number who died in all countries in the 2004 asian tsunamis oh wow but the invasion of china only cost japan 200 000 soldiers most were killed fighting the us and allies in the pacific war [Music] a significant portion of japanese civilian deaths were caused by american firebombing and the two nuclear attacks contrary to official u.s statements these airstrikes were directed at civilian populations not military targets when you add all the deaths outside of europe it brings us to a grand total of 70 million for the war give or take depending on who's counting and what civilian deaths get included more people died in world war ii than in any other war in history for comparison here are 20 or so of the very worst wars and atrocities we have on record some of these are more of atrocities than wars but we've seen how that distinction can get blurry some of these spanned across centuries world war ii had the highest body count and it all happened in just six years the world's population has grown significantly since the earliest atrocities on this list if you want to compare them in terms of what percentage of the world died we can adjust the chart to look like this this rough approximation tells us there may have been more devastating wars before world war ii proportionally speaking when we turn to post-war conflicts it's hard to say anything that isn't controversial but the data shows something quite extraordinary has been happening in 1989 john gaddis coined the phrase the long piece to identify the absence of conflict between the nuclear powers during the cold war 25 years later the cold war is over and the term is still being used although its meaning may have shifted european countries have not fought each other except for this 10-day war in 1956 when the soviet union invaded hungary when we look at european wars before world war ii it looks like this they tend to be more frequent as you go back though smaller in scale and the largest 44 economies of the world have not battled each other since world war ii rich countries have fought poorer countries like the us versus iraq but rich countries have not fought other rich countries such a period of peace between the so-called great powers hasn't been seen since the roman empire well to many peace is too strong of a work wars have occurred since world war ii and they can be grouped into these four categories we don't see colonial wars anymore we've already noted that interstate wars between rich countries have not occurred at all and here we see wars involving smaller economies have tapered off that leaves civil wars of two types with and without farm intervention and this is what these battle deaths look like alongside of world war ii more people died fighting in world war ii than in all the wars since and again we can't forget about world population which has almost tripled since world war ii if we scale these numbers to show deaths in proportion to world population showing the likelihood that a person on earth dies in battle the downward trend becomes even more pronounced now this isn't to infer anything about why this trend is occurring that's a discussion for another day you can now interact with this chart to explore what conflicts are behind the totals now bear in mind we're just looking at battle bets here not civilian deaths but those two are in decline peace is a difficult thing to measure it's a bit like counting the people who didn't die in wars that never happened we give such importance to the word peace but we don't tend to notice it when it occurs or report on it sometimes it takes reminding ourselves of how terrible war once was to see the peace that has been growing around us of course this trend may not continue and it's not clear how looking at these charts can help us make the right decisions to ensure that it does but the longer the long piece grows the more significant it becomes [Music] so if watching the news doesn't make us feel hopeful about where things are heading watching the numbers might [Music] that was really well done yeah that's something that i mean uh yeah it was just really well done i don't know what else to say other than that um i liked you know obviously how it ended uh with with hope and um the fact that you know sometimes and that's why we do study history is to learn from it and uh you know someone just the other day uh history teacher on our on our channel in our community we started saying how they you know talk to their students about you know world war ii and just how terrible it was and you know just kind of like how fortunate we are to be living in the times that we that we are living even with so much it's not perfect you know it's not a perfect world it's you know there's a lot more that needs to happen for um you know things get better for a lot of people but at the same time uh you know things have been a lot worse and what i loved about this is just it was just straight facts yeah and it wasn't just the facts of x amount of people died at this time or in this conflict but it was manipulated to show proportionally like to the number of people on the planet and different things yeah i like when they did that that to me was just amazing because like you look at it and you think god the way you see the graph and how many deaths you think jesus like i knew world war ii was bad but holy hell i mean that's insane but then when they skew it for like the population you go okay so now i understand why the mongol conquest is always such a big part of history because yes proportionately to the planet at that time it was catastrophic and and would outdo world war ii in in disproportionate population i loved that it was straight fact reporting i love that there was there was no lean one way or the other i mean the person narrated and did a very good job to be very careful about doing just the facts and saying you know how do we get to peace the times that we're in now like all of these things are of course up for debate and we should i think civilly debate them amongst ourselves because that's how you get exposed to new ideas that's how you learn that's how you grow and progress but at the same time like you know just reviewing the information and recognizing the hope that remains in these times one of the things that i found i think so so mind-blowing and i feel kind of ashamed to say that but was what was happening in other countries i think in american history there's obviously such a focus on america's involvement and and and in germany and everything like that in france and england like you hear about that yeah you don't really hear too much i mean i knew that uh russia was basically like you know stopped the the germans and you know if it had not been for russia you know they would have gone right into america and um russia stopped them on the eastern front they were crucial but i just had no idea the sacrifice that russia made to make that possible that's why this was so great is because it did tackle each country with the same kind of level of like respect and that it deserved so if you're still you know sticking with us uh thank you so much for watching that with us we wanted to watch it and like it just felt right to to watch it today and so like we thank you for uh the person that recommended this to us um if you know hopefully they're still on our channel like i said it was a long time ago uh that this was recommended to us and uh keep in mind that our reaction to the fallen of world war ii is definitely not definitive

Channel: Definitely Not Definitive

Views: 150,550

Rating: 4.9046831 out of 5

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Id: GrInO4yf050

Length: 22min 32sec (1352 seconds)

Published: Mon May 31 2021