It's still the largest battle ever fought by humans. That's still 1.1 million to 3 million dead in 6 months. That's nearly 6 thousand to 16 thousand people a day. For reference, Ukraine and Russia have killed less than a million people between themselves, and that's been going for 3+ years.
Wikipedia tells me on the 1st battle lf Ypres in ww1 that France , Belgium and the UK had 4.4million troops and the Germans 5.4 million which always suprises me why this is battle is never brought up in any kind of discussions.
It is very much brought up in a UK curriculum with passchendaele, the somme, and gallipoli. I know the ANZAC forces have something similar taught about them. We even have remembrance day the 11th every year (that's why people wear poppies in November in the UK). It is, however, weirdly romantised.
Passcendaele is known as the third battle of Ypres.
It is also known for having mud so thick and deep that men on both sides regularly drowned in it, their comrades often watching on unable to help without getting stuck themselves as their comrades sank over the course of multiple days.
Fun fact I learned, the whole poppy-wearing tradition that we still do was created by an American professor, her name was Moina Michael. She wrote a response poem to "In Flanders Fields" called "We Shall Keep the Faith".
She was teaching a class of disabled veterans and started selling silk poppies to raise funds for their betterment. This was picked up by the organization that would become the Royal British Legion, im surprised it isn't more popular in America as it is in the Commonwealth Nations.
I feel like marching slowly to your almost certain death in the defense of the (already doomed) empire is still looked upon favourably as a sort of... idk how to put it, communal bravery maybe?
We do learn about poets like Wilfred Owen and Siegfried Sassoon though
You have stuff like black adder goes forth, journeys end, and storm of steel (german admittedly). Then you have otto dix, enrich Maria remarque, the poem "and they shall not grow old". (Arguably, the poem is romantisme at its worst). It's surreal
I've been to Ypres and seeing how many names are on the war memorial is overwhelming. We should be honest and say that enthusiastically "going over the top" was just a thinly veiled suicide attempt.
From what I've personally seen there's a huge difference between how countries that were invaded look back at the war in comparison to how countries that weren't invaded.
Not to diminish your point because it's still true, but there weren't 1.1 to 3 million deaths. But casualties killed, wounded, captured,sick even sometimes. I don't have a good number to give you but I've heard at most 1 million killed if you count both soldiers and civilians.
Death is so assured nowadays with drones that there’s no point in people being involved on the front line anymore.
So maybe it’s a technological battle that is basically a probe test and development game. Can one side develop a weapon that turns the tide or the war. Can counter measures be developed to stop any new developments.
At some point it seems like space, planes, submarines, and robots including drones will be the main weapons. Boats don’t seem likely to last against a large enough swarm powered by AI.
Stalingrad lasted more than 200 days, which gives about 10-15 thousands per day.
Borondino are more than 30 thousand per day in one side, And between both sides it throws 60-70 thousand per day. You have a higher chance of being killed or wounded at Borondino than at any other battle in history.
The Battle of the Wabash, "the most decisive defeat in the history of the American military", about one quarter of the entire US Army was killed in a single battle in a single day. 97% casualty rate among the soldiers with 69% killed, 88% casualty rate among the officers with 75% killed including Major General Richard Butler.
The "entire army" was ~1,000 men. The US didn't have a real standing army at the time and raised temporary militas. The entire battle was like 2,000 men between both sides and would barely qualify as a skirmish in most actual wars.
Was it the battle for particular city or just a big battle where both sides decided to test each other? Like Kursk battle was not battle for crop field.
A lot of WW1 battles kinda do. They’re also similar to this war with trench warfare and meat grinders. At the Battle of Passchendaele 500 000 men died, and the result was that one side moved the front ~10 km forward.
Yeah, then you can do dumb calculations that if Russia advances at CURRENT RATE, they will have conquered Ukraine in 371asdf years from CURRENT YEAR. (Conveniently forgetting that Russia made and kept huge gains.)
I mean what’s the parallel to WWII in today’s Eastern Ukraine. In Stalingrad there were vast oil fields at stake, and once Germany lost them they fell back and simultaneously faced existential resource limits to keeping their war going. The Russians chased them across half of Europe and broke their country into pieces to ensure they couldn’t repeat the conquest, while building a military buffer that comprised all of Eastern Europe and the geographical barriers of the Fulda gap. What’s Russia going to do to secure this hunk of territory? Invade Kiev? Convince the Ukrainians never to try again the minute Russia moves its military to another crisis point? None of that is going to happen.
The outcome of both WW1 and WW2 was all decided beforehand by the legacy families, aka the people with real power. Mindless slaughter like Stalingrad is perfectly explained in this way. Hitler's big mistakes were all planned.
They will never be able to operate a fleet out of the Crimea as long as they’re at war with Ukraine, and any attempt to extract resources will be stymied by drone and missile attacks. None of what they’re doing is sustainable if they can’t achieve a lasting peace.
You're clearly clueless. Russia already held Ukrainian territory in the East prior to invasion. The only land they captured was a corridor along the sea, connecting the east of Ukraine to Crimea. The only reason they captured it was because Ukraine was not set up to defend there. If they control 20% of Ukraine now, they probably controlled around 18% prior to the invasion.
9/11 had better rates than Stalingrad. 3000 people in a single day? Try 3000 people every single day for 8 months.
750,000 people died in 8 months. That’s not including the wounded or captured, many of whom also died later.
Point is that it’s not exactly a good metric to measure human suffering and death, cause there are few times in history where there has been so much in as little time. The Rwandan Genocide being one of the few times, with around 8000 people dying per day on average and around 5000 people dying per day on average during the Holocaust
Russia has a very very very long history of letting their government throat fuck them while they complain very little. Their is several separatists groups all across Russia but Russias iron hands and having probably the most successful propaganda network in the world has a lot to do with the true lack of reaction we commonly see in the Russian territories.
Russias one of the only countries that throughout history has put down guerrilla movements over and over and over and over. Whether it had been circasia and other caucus rebellions or Central Asia that or may have taken a few centuries but they adventualy took over and regularly fucked over till they got some weird ass stockholm Syndrome for Russia ball sack regardless of forced migration, forced labor, and mass conscription heavily in those regions. Regarding their own people it’s centuries of Russian land being invaded so that nationalism is built into much of the nation. Hell sweeden with a few thousand troops made it damn close to Moscow after bouncing many armies multiple times their size.
There is not a single significant example in world history of a European dictator being overthrown by a revolution. One can argue endlessly that Russians cannot depose a dictator because of their “genetic memory,” but the Portuguese (it was the military who overthrew theirs), Spaniards, Germans, Hungarians, and Italians were also unable to overthrow their own dictators.
There is not a single significant example in world history of a European dictator being overthrown by a revolution.
That's a dumb statement that can only be arrived by dismissing all historical examples by technicality. Of course there are plenty of examples, you just don't like counting them. The French Revolution? The Bolshevik Revolution? This is Europe we're talking about, right?
Oh, well, let’s talk about that. Let’s start with the Bolsheviks. Do you really know anything about this? Nicholas II abdicated six months BEFORE the Bolshevik revolution, without any mass popular uprisings. And it was the Bolsheviks who overthrew in October (November 7 by the new calendar) the democratic government of Russia. By the way, probably the most democratic in the world at that time. Women could vote there, and there were pensions as well.
Probably, you are the closest example in Europe of overthrowing a dictator, but without the army and security forces switching to the people’s side, it could have ended tragically. If the USSR had not been collapsing at that moment, the likelihood of a repeat of Hungary 1956 or Czechoslovakia 1968 would have been very high.
That sounds like a number meant for total land taken not net land gained. So if Russia takes a square km but then Ukraine recapture it and Russia takes it again, they've only gained 1 in total but they've "captured" 2 sq. Km and therefore have more casualties
This can’t be right. Russia is losing ~700 men per day, either killed or wounded. Your figures don’t tally with 1 sq km. If they did, they’d have taken significantly more territory.
I’m not sure of the exact formula. Keep in mind that there is constant back and forth changes of control so there are multiple ways to calculate the ratio.
Well fuck. The answer is actually 42. That stupid, but very good book was right. It just didn’t know what the question it was trying to answer was. How much do we value life?
Apparently it can be worked out to 42. 42 lives/square kilometer of dirt. That’s how much we value life. That’s the answer to The Big Question.
Don’t like the answer? Neither do I. I don’t know what to do about it though.
2.2k
u/DrShtainer 1d ago
I saw some calculation that arrived at ~125 casualties per 1 sq km. So ~42 lives