cost of WW2 to civilians

Beowolff · Post by **Beowolff** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 1:12 pm

i was watching the History channel last night and saw several combat scenes where fighters/bombers were attacking the enemy and at the same time, damaging/wiping out entire cities... villages, individual homes and such. and it got me to thinking.

the obvious cost to civilians was incredible... a very sad thing. anybody know the actually CASH amount of damage world war two caused the world? or is computing such a staggeringly LARGE and horrible number near impossible?

and of course i know/realize that you can't put a price on human life, but merely the inanimate things like buildings, vehicles, dams, highways, factories, equipment...and such.

when i was in the Phillipines, i once dated a girl there who's father had been alive (in a small hamlet outside manilla...called murphy) during the big air battles of the islands, he told me once that he'd seen japanese and american planes duking it out in the sky right over his home. he and his parents had watched in fasination as the planes fought tooth and nail from higher altitude right down to tree-top level. an american plane finally nailed a jap, blew a wing off, but in doing so, the slugs from its cannon (i'm guessing must have been a P-38 with 20mm nose cannon?) passed through the jap plane and walked right into and over their own house, shredding it to bits and pieces...

a small event during the war... yes, it was only a cheap house of bamboo, oil drums, scrap boards and such. but it was their home... and all they had. and all of their poor, meager belongings were in there and destroyed with the home, which caught fire and burned completely up. so yes, a small event maybe in size releationship to the big picture of the war...but a BIG event to the poor phillipine family.

for that one family alone...the cost of war was high.

and just think of the millions and millions of others that had similiar experiences or even worse. very sad.

by the way, in case you're wondering about the jap pilot that was shot down during that fight... the girl's father told me that he actually survived. the plane (type unknown for sure but he called it a Zero naturally) spun wingless into the trees/forest nearby... but the pilot actually got out of it with only minor injuries. however, he did not survive for long. once on the ground, a couple of philipino underground fighters tried to take him prisoner. he (the japanese pilot) resisted and pulled a pistol and one of the underground guys shot and killed him with a Thompson smg left over and secreted away from when the American forces had fallen earlier in the war.

Beowolff

:FI:Igor · Post by **:FI:Igor** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:07 pm

Beowolf,
I had a chat with an old guy near Eglin AFB, Florida. His family had a home just off the air base. During WWII, his house got bombed during a training session. His mother and some off his siblings were killed. It took several years to get any compensation. His attitude was that there was a war on and stuff like that happens. The conversation was about fifty years after the incident, but i don't think (if it was my family and home) that i could maintain the same patriot attitude.

Igor

:FI:RULES · Post by **:FI:RULES** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 2:10 pm

Strange that we don´t learn....
Same things hapen on a daly basis...
I´v been in three conflicts and they all look the same way...The civilians pay the price...It´s not only the enemy that cause pain, I´v investigated mortar shelling that was fired by "own" forces for the sole reason of blaming the oposition for "war-crimes"...

:FI:ZekeMan · Post by **:FI:ZekeMan** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 6:32 pm

I remember reading accounts of injuries to civlians from the falling brass from fighter guns! If anyone is familiar with firearms and shell casings, imagine the velocity that is attained by an MG151/20 or a US M2 .50cal falling from a couple hundred feet or more! Toss an empty .30cal casing up and let the heavy rim end bonk you on the noggin, now imagine it nailing you at several hundred feet per second....

Sapper-FIN · Post by **Sapper-FIN** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 6:41 pm

I remember reading accounts of injuries to civlians from the falling brass from fighter guns! If anyone is familiar with firearms and shell casings, imagine the velocity that is attained by an MG151/20 or a US M2 .50cal falling from a couple hundred feet or more! Toss an empty .30cal casing up and let the heavy rim end bonk you on the noggin, now imagine it nailing you at several hundred feet per second..

I´ve been wondering about shrapnels, coming from the grenades of AA guns.. i mean in germany alone, there must have been millions and millions of AA rounds shot up in the sky... And when AA grenade explodes, it´s shrapnels must come down sooner or later, right? How many people were killed by them, and how common it was, that people were killed by them?

:FI:Snoop Baron · Post by **:FI:Snoop Baron** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 8:30 pm

I hate war

I believe in WWI a lot more people died from starvation and disease caused by the fighting. War destroys lives in so many ways. I like combat games but the real thing is hell on Earth.

Snoop

:FI:WillieOFS · Post by **:FI:WillieOFS** » Sat Apr 16, 2005 11:02 pm

More soldiers died of typhoid in the Spanish Amercian war than of action with the "enemy".

Ianus · Post by **Ianus** » Thu Apr 21, 2005 10:58 am

Cost of war in all terms is incalculable. Look at Britain after the 2ww, financially Kaput! Look at Germany, Kaput full stop!! The list goes on. What really freaks me is we don't ever seem to learn

My Dad (bless him) was just a minor casuality of war. After what he saw in Normandy the man was a wreck mentally for the rest of his years,, how many are left like that after seeing war?

Shit, I need a beer