• PugJesus@kbin.social
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    11 months ago

    Proportionally?

    Germany lost about 6 million people out of a population of 70 million, so something to the tune of 8.5% of the population over the course of six years.

    In the current Gaza campaign, we’re coming up on 20,000 out of a population of 2 million, so something to the tune of 1% over the course of three months. Extended to the six years of WW2, that would be 41% of the population.

    • Wrench@lemmy.world
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      11 months ago

      Factor in non-combatant casualties, and it will be even more disproportionate.

      Yeah, there were a lot of civilian deaths in ww2. But they largely at least tried to minimize the non-military casualties. That isn’t even a factor for IDF

      • Backspacecentury@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        You think the entire populations of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were military?

        Also, entire cities in Southern Germany were entirely wiped out. Munich was re-built from the ground up.

        • PugJesus@kbin.social
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          11 months ago

          I mean, even taking the IDF’s numbers, proportionally, the IDF has killed far more civilians than the Allies in WW2. The IDF’s estimate is that they’ve been killing 50% civilians and 50% combatants, while in WW2 the Western Allied count was about 10% civilians in Europe, and 33% civilians in Japan. However, the wars being fought are very different, so I find that a less compelling comparison than the sheer level of destruction leveled in such a short period of time.

      • PugJesus@kbin.social
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        11 months ago

        Yeah, there were a lot of civilian deaths in ww2. But they largely at least tried to minimize the non-military casualties

        I feel obligated to point out that the Brits in Europe and the Americans over Japan engaged in deliberate terror bombing.

        • WhatAmLemmy@lemmy.world
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          11 months ago

          Yeah, there are no good guys in war… Just different levels of crimes and justification from the obscene, to the grey.

          The Allies were responding to aggressors that had invaded and “terror bombed” dozens of countries for years, killing millions of civilians, while maintaining extremely high domestic support throughout… Doesn’t make terror bombing their civilians right, but it was more justifiable in context than anything the invaders did.

      • DoomBot5@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        You’ll probably never know how many of those deaths were combatants. Don’t forget that Hamas does recruit children as soon as they’re old enough to hold up a gun and pull the trigger.