Benjamin Franklin, famed scientist and one of The Founding Fathers, said it best when he said “There was never a good war or a bad peace.” The two World Wars that have gone through have both been fought for various reasons that were necessary, one way or another, but the destruction and casualties that followed may serve to negate that idea. You don’t need a professional institute to spell out the destruction that is caused by the World Wars but if you want a primer, then there are facts that are very hard to dismiss.
World War I. The First World War happened from 1914 to 1918 and was fought between the Allied Forces of France, Russia, and the United Kingdom against the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy. You don’t have to keep reading to know that this war was a major scourge to human life affecting more than 37 million people. The total number of deaths was estimated to be 16 million with another 20 million wounded.
The destruction of World War I was among the most widespread of the major wars as it was fought on many fronts. World War I saw too many countries who chose to dismiss the lig tv izle mentality and were instead caught in the crossfire. Wars were fought as far south as Africa with French and British forces waged war over Togoland in what is now modern Togo and Ghana. Destruction was also widespread in many locations including Serbia and even in the Asia Pacific as far as New Zealand. The financial and political destruction that the war left in its wake was also mind-numbing as a total of more than 5,000 ships and 199 submarines were sunk during the war.
World War II.If World War I sounded like it was the most horrific war to have ever happened based on destruction and casualty alone, the toll from World War II was even more sweeping. It was equivalent to many bulging discs acting up at once, killing as many as 60 million people and affecting about 50 million others. All in all, more than 2.5% of the world’s population at that time died from the war.
The financial implications of the war was also widespread. Germany, Poland, and many sections of France and the United Kingdom were leveled to the ground. Russia was not spared, and while Stalin did not embrace a “take it and leave it” attitude, he suffered more before his country responded.
In total, 33,700 planes were lost over Europe during the period as well as 3,500 Allied merchant ships and 783 U-boats sunk. More than 57,000 tanks from Russia alone were also lost in the war. Those numbers did not yet include the cost from Japan waging war in the Pacific but you could tell one needs more than a truck accident lawyer to get that kind of devastation and destruction in order.
But perhaps the biggest awakening to the senselessness of World War II were the two nuclear bombs, Fat Man and Little Boy, detonated over the Japanese cities of Nagasaki and Hiroshima. Those bombs brought the war to a halt and the idea of nuclear deterrence was set into motion.
Indeed, the world does not gain anything out of war and the casualty and destruction that the First and Second World Wars created were grim reminders of what can happen when man goes overboard. There is plenty of cause to hope that no World War has to ever happen again because as Ben Franklin once said it, “There is never a good war or a bad peace.”