It is agreed that millions of people died during World War II, however official statistics vary on an actual figure, we will look at how these accounts differ and why that should be.
According to Britannica.com “35 million to 60 million” deaths during WWII whereas Lumen Learning explains that the number is closer to “75 million people who died.
80 years on from WW2 and we still don’t have accurate results on the number of casualties.
Having an accurate count for wars is extremely important. The website Every Casualty Counts says “The protection of civilians in wartime and the right to have one’s death recorded on an official record is a necessity from a number of standpoints: official, political, military, moral, legal and preventive”
This issue around the need for accurate reporting has even led The Royal Holloway University of London to create a new free online course specifically on this topic. The creator of the course Professor Michael Spagat says “Calculating the number of deaths during a war is a difficult, but necessary task – having accurate information is crucial for political and societal debates and decisions. Numbers are often misrepresented in the media and even academic journals. In some cases, there have been quite big mistakes.”
According to the website Britannica.com “statistics on WW2 are inexact” they go on to explain that this is due to “guerrilla warfare, changes an international boundaries and mass shifts in population vastly.”
So when will there be an accurate count of how many people died during the war, well there isn’t going to be, up to this date there are no plans to have a recount for casualties during WW2. But how is this just that families still have no clearance on loved ones 80 years later?
By Scarlett Yr9
Boston High School