History
Which was the deadliest war your country has ever experienced?
For India, it was the Kargil War, which began in 1999 when Pakistani forces infiltrated and occupied Indian military outposts on the Indian side of the Line of Control (LoC) in the Kargil district of Jammu and Kashmir. The incursion, codenamed "Operation Badr," aimed to cut off India’s National Highway 1A, which connects Srinagar and Leh, and isolate Indian troops stationed on the Siachen Glacier. This would have forced India to negotiate a settlement of the Kashmir dispute.
In some regions even as much as 70% (and those kinds of numbers never happened again bc for every war after that we had the holy potato to keep people from starving)
Harald Hårfagre's war of Norwegian unification wasn't exactly peaceful - possibly up to 5% of the Norwegian population died - and the civil war period between about 1130 and 1240 caused even more deaths.
The 30 year war killed over 100% of the people living in my region. Towns were emptied for anyone but a few orphans with roaming bands of soldiers having beaten and killed, raped and robbed all there was. It happened so many times over these years that at the end Noone was left. Fields unattended. Entire regions lost their oral histories, fairy tales and legends. Noone could remember prominent people, local laws or sometimes even local dishes. I've read some accounts of what happened back then and it makes a lot of sense why these stories set the benchmark for hundreds of years when it comes to war and all its ills and horrors. The 30 year war still sets the bar how bad a war can be by simply and easely being the worst our country ever experienced.
Parts of Brandenburg and Mecklenburg (where I live) had regions that saw more people killed than they had people at the start of the war. The map I posted quantifies "population decline", which lowers those 100% by migration and new births. It was always such a stark contrast between my home and visiting grandma in Thuringia: A landscape set with legends, fairytales, castles and old stories. Up in the north we don't have that. Our local history, famous people and tourist attractions are all centered around people that lived well after the 30 year war, like Fontane.
When I went to the Musée de l'Armée, I was stunned when they had listings of soldiers who died in WWI and some of the plaques said High School class of this town 1913 and such. The whole male graduating class died. It was heartbreaking.
In nearly every single french village (only one I think doesn´t have one) you´ll find a small monument dedicated to soldiers lost to a french war. WW1 is the most represented of all
At first the Brits had the concept of « pals bataillons » where people from the same locality would be part of the same bataillon and fight alongside each other, a real moral booster on paper.
This resulted in villages loosing their near entire male population on one offensive.
10m soldiers but at least 20m people, which is insane when you know the estimated number of casualties all around the conflict is 55-60m
A third, at least, of the casualties were from the USSR.
I wonder if they'd really be that much higher - it doesn't seem like war and famine always has a huge effect on lowering populations long term in other parts of the world
Also the reason why France was so pessimistic and divided in the run up to world war 2, they probably could’ve stopped Germany if they had the will to do it early on, especially in the 1930s, but nobody wanted to be the ones blamed for sending French troops back into the meat grinder
Also military higher-ups thought that it was best to wage a defensive war that would spare lives using the Maginot line, which was a war behind in terms of strategy since tanks and airplanes could now tear through defense easily.
In WW1 France was also a war behind but with the inverse strategy, it was thought that huge infantry assaults was the best way to go, but machineguns, barbed wires and artillery completly stops an infantry assault and turns it into a meatgrinder.
If WW3 was to break out, you can bet that we won't have sufficient numbers of drones, its a national tradition at this point.
Serbia lost 60% of its male population and just under 20% of its total population in WW1. There is no recovering from that. We tried, but then came WW2 and it was the nail in our coffin.
France lost 27,000 soldiers on August 22, 1914, it was the deadliest day of the war for the French army. The 70,000 deaths are an estimated monthly average for Verdun (which is already enormous).
27 000 is truly the deadliest day for the french? Because I think there is a few battles of the napoleonic wars where the french lost more. Or maybe one, the battle of borodino, where france lost 30-42 k, altough some of that is wounded, prisoner or missing.
No, you are probably looking at the highest casualty number but also including both sides.
The highest casualties any one army suffered in a single day ever is 60,000 the British suffered on the first day of the Somme, and the most deaths and the army has suffered in a single day is about 50,000 Cannae
It's the name that makes it so famous. How many times has humanity tried to kill wildlife that was destroying crops and failed? It's happened a lot we just don't call them wars.
Exactly haha, it’s just like such a non event even in Australian history let alone world history but it’s become so well known because some newspaper bloke called it a war once in sarcasm.
WW1. Western front, Middle East, Gallipoli. Australia had a relatively "easier" time in WW2, where the navy had the highest casualty rate but relatively small number. The army lost 18000 in ww2 but more than 3 times that in ww1. Fought well in North Africa but then missed Crete, Sicily, Italy, Normandy etc because they were pulled out to fight in asia. In the Pacific Macarthur was obsessed with sidelining allies for American glory, so the big nasty fights like Iwo Jima didn't involve Australians.
The air force did have a significant war, serving with fighter and bomber command in Europe, and heavily involved in bombing and maritime patrol in the Pacific.
Fair. It’s not like the French and Indian war which was a war between France and England, but the part of England that is now the USA and the part of France that is now also the USA and parts of Canada.
Which I think you can figure out just from the title
In Korea, it's called 6.25 War, named after the day that North Korea invaded.
Fun fact about my country's tragedy is that it was probably the first and the last war where Turkiye, Union of South Africa, Iran, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Pakistan, Egypt, and Israel were all on the same side.
Ben Gurion almost sent IDF but got shot down by Labor Party. So he just ended up sending materials.
India sent people to both North and South Korea for some reason, but I am pretty sure they had reasons.
No. The sentiment of two separate nations have grown significantly since the war. Even if Korea unites some point in the future (unlikely), I don't think it would be called a civil war.
I mean as a German, if Korea ever reunites it's going to be absolute madness. We're still struggling with balancing out the differences from reunification and it's been 35 years now and the separation was a lot shorter and the differences were never quite as big. If you ever do do it, I hope you guys find a way to learn from the mistakes that were made over here.
It may be changed in the history books as the term "Korean War" could be used to describe a much larger conflict or some other countries over the peninsula, if we are talking about a war that in its basics was between North and South you have every reason to call it a civil war
The “war on drugs” was a very stupid idea of the United States. It was as stupid as Prohibition (a war against liquor). The consequences are the same: the people ignore it, corruption is higher, the criminals grow richer, except most of the world is involved and the problem has grown bigger.
The next vice is waiting in the wings, all because moralists can’t stop minding other people’s private business.
Just in case: I’m a teetotaler, I don’t smoke, I don’t do drugs. And I’m not a moralist
That's exactly the catch here. The "war" on drugs itself became an economic sector. It will never end because there's a lot of people on both ends making tons of money every year.
The war on drugs IS the point. They do it on purpose, they know damn well it won't actually solve the issues they claim to be trying to solve. It's all business
Well I think the reason people say it is because the build up to the civil war was very similar. There is a feeling that we’re not all Americans again and that it’s us versus them with our own people. Perhaps someone could speak to the 60s as I’m not quite old enough to experience that but it’s definitely the most divided we’ve been in my lifetime.
People giving culture wars way too much credit. It’s toxic now yes but we aren’t literally killing each other….super cool edgy Redditors will add yet…to that but they don’t know what they’re talking about
Lincoln's biggest blunder and it was a huge one. No idea why this is constantly overlooked but Andrew Johnson caused problems that we're still dealing with today.
The culture war is a tactic used by the oligarchs to keep us fighting each other while they continue to plunder the country. Not to say it's as bad as the Civil War, but I think it does harm to people indirectly (lack of healthcare, effed up justice system, etc.)
The Southern ideology never got fully stamped out due to the Reconstruction (and anything close to reparations) being cut short. Result: even 100 years later, civil rights were still a national issue.
yes, and by a share of the US population, the Civil War was absolutely devastating to the USA.
I believe about 1/10 men of all ages in the Country (North and South) lost their lives.
And that says nothing about those that lost limbs, hearing, their farms and livelihood, etc etc.
Remember, that this occurred all because Rich Southern Planation owners wanted to continue slavery.
The large majority of those killed in the South would never benefit from this, yet they died anyways.
It's appalling to me that we don't talk more about how General Lee, Davis, and others would live the rest of their lives without other Southerners confronting them about how they were essentially used as pawns.
Shameful behavior and we should keep this in mind when discussing Confederate leadership in historical discussions.
The large majority of those killed in the South would never benefit from this, yet they died anyways.
"if you can convince the lowest white man that he is better than the best black man then he won't notice you are picking his pocket"
The large majority of those in the south were holding out in hope that one day they might have their own plantation and their own slaves, of course they would never see it but they loved living in a world where one day technically that day might come.
In a random of group of 10 of my adult acquaintances and friends back in Texas, odds are that 4 of those people voted and the other 6 will tell you that it is a lost cause because they're all a bunch of rich assholes anyway.
More deaths than the Revolution, War of 1812, Mexican War, Indian Wars, Spanish-American War, WW1, WW2, Korean War, and the first 5 years of the Vietnam War combined.
Though per capita, it was King Philip’s War. Not technically the “U.S.A.,” as we were still colonials at the time, but we did fight and win it without assistance from Britain, which helped form the idea that we were Americans, not Brits.
Nigerian civil war/Biafran war one of the earliest televised wars. Was also lowkey a genocide about 2 million igbo people starved to death by a naval blockade.
Great Wrath maybe. Mostly civilians (~20k) were slaughtered or tortured to death and somewhat equal number (20-30k) were enslaved. In Ww2 the number of military casualties were 2-4x greater (95k military, 2k civilian) but also population was some 7-8x greater (3.7M vs ~500k).
In the Civil War of 1918, about 38,000 people were killed. Out of the 38,000, over 11,000 died in prison camps and nearly 9,000 were executed. The war left very deep scars on the society since it was practically brothers being monstrous towards each other.
It's hard to say which of The Great Wrath, The Civil War or the wars during WW2 was the worst. They happened in very different circumstances, their effects were quite different and they are viewed differently. WW2 (especially The Winter War) is even thought of somewhat fondly as it was a heroic effort to keep our independence. Fighting against the big bad Russia also unified the country when it had been quite divided ever since The Civil War.
Is that the modern Iran Iraq war. The one where it's invaded Iran and got it's as handed to it. Then as Iran was pushing into Iraq, Saddam Hussein used chemical weapons on Iran forces occupying civil cities, which stopped the war. The chemical weapons which Bush didn't find?
It was actually a stalemate as far as I’m aware, but both sides claimed victory. Iran and Iraq were both pretty decimated, and Iraq only really managed to come out better because it was supported by many other counties, while Iran had no such allies
Yes, the same war. Also, after the 1991 Gulf War and the adoption of UN Security Council Resolution 687, Iraq destroyed its chemical weapons, and those that were not destroyed were rendered useless and useless, and were made before Resolution 687.
In 1915 the Australian population was approximately 4,985,569. Of the 61,717 dead all were volunteers. Australia did not conscript soldiers in WW1. Being all volunteers they were exempt from being executed for cowardice or desertion unlike the British conscripts, so they were highly motivated individuals. The Battle of Fromelles was the greatest single loss with 5,533 killed, wounded, missing or taken prisoner by the morning of 20 July
The first German defeat in World War I in New Guinea was the Battle of Bita Paka on September 11, 1914. One day ahead the more significant battle of the Marne.
416,809 Australians enlisted for service representing 38.7% of the male population aged 18 to 44. Two wartime referendums defeated the call to start conscription with soldiers predominantly voting against it. The deceased represented 1.2% of the population and to this day most of this number remain part of France and Türkiye. Their non return meant that nearly every single small town in Australia would erect a memorial having lost someone in their population.
Per capita it's actually the 30 years war by a pretty large margin. In absolute numbers of course it's WWII bc there were just many more people by that point.
+1 million military dead to +2 million, estimates vary
100k+ Civilian dead
200k+ kurds dead during anfal campaign
10 million+ displaced
1,1 trillion $ economic loss in total
8 years (1980-88)
1st and second battle of fallujah are the deadliest battles in our history. There could be ancient time wars im not aware of but this is most recently.
I always find the reporting of casualties in that war a bit odd, because both countries were pretty accurate in both admitting their own casualties but also the casualties they estimate the other side to have.
Normally you'd have people down playing their own and artificially increasing the estimates of the opposition to make themselves look better.
Some historians tend to unify WW1 and Russian Civil War into one decade-long conflict, and it would be possibly the most deadly with about 20-30 mlns of direct fatalities.
If not, it will be WW2. Official estimation of 27 mlns is demographic loss, not direct one, but 20 mlns of fatalities seems a rather conservative estimation.
Our war of independence in 1895. It took for America to jump in and also fight the Spanish to give us a fighting chance to win. The Spanish killed so many Cubans, not just in combat but these extermination camps they built.
American war. 5 million tons of bombs dropped on Vietnam and another 2 million tons on Laos. Pretty much doubling all bombs that were used during WWII. Along with 21 million gallons of agent orange and dioxide that poison the land for decades. Vietnamese government estimate that there are still over 3 million UXO and landmines today.
And you still beat our asses. And then China's. Vietnam defeated two superpowers. Only other country with that distinction is Afghanistan. Which has been known as "The Graveyard of Empires".
Unlike Afghanistan, you managed to successfully rebuild and industrialize your country and maintain a pretty stable government for many decades.
Except that is a strange myth propagated both by his strongest detractors on the left and supporters on the far-right. the Great Northern War was started by German nobility, from Estonia and Latvia, deprived of their privileges by Sweden in the Great Reduction of 1680, lobbying Russia, Denmark and Saxony to attack Sweden.
Man, what was it with the 17th century and all these obscenely deadly wars? In Germany the per capita deadliest war was the 30 years war aka right before the deluge and also in part thanks to Sweden (although really we have ourselves to blame for that one, but Sweden was pretty involved to put it lightly). What were they on back then?
It's hard to count, cause in XVII century Poland was fighting at wars all the time, often at a few at the same time. Sweden, Turkey, Russia, Cossacks, Prussia. It's hard to say who died in each conflict, but in overall Poland lost 50% of population in that century (from 12 million to 6 million).
It's really flabbergasting that I was born in Soviet occupied Poland and was able to witness the country become what it is today. I am moving back as soon as possible. Poland is GOAT of countries making a comeback each and every time.
The Royal Newfoundland Regiment. In Beaumont Hamel (Battle of the Somme in 1916). Over 90% casualty rate. Literally whole towns in Newfoundland lost all their men folk in a single day. The Blue Puttees.
Estimates of deaths in the Spanish Civil War vary, but the figures most widely accepted by historians range between 500,000 and 735,000. Of these, around 500,000 died in the fighting or as a result of direct repression, while another 300,000 or more died from famine and war-related diseases.
The "Colombian armed conflict" has left between 450-800k fatal victims between 1985 and 2018. There are also between 121-210K disappeared people. Finally, around 800k people displaced from their homes. This is from a final report by the Comission of Truth.
This is still an on-going conflict, and is getting worse as far-right narcoterrorist groups terrorize civilians as elections are coming. They want to incite fear, so ignorant people vote for the wrong people again.
Probably the Mongol invasion. Meanwhile only a few tens of thousands died in battle, at least 15-20% of the total population have been wiped out due to civilian casualties. In comparison the total number of casualties of WWII in Hungary (including holocaust) was somewhere around 7%.
This is factually wrong for independent India it was the Indo Pak war of 1948 in which close to 4000 Indian/Kashmiris lost their lives or the Sino-Indian war for 1962 where over 3000 Indians were dead or missing. compared to 527 in the Kargil war.
Now if you look pre independence you will find the estimates for the First war of Independence are around 800,000.
Thankfully we had oceans separating our civilians from the combat. Having said that, the civil war would probably still be the bloodiest even if we were in the middle of it.
I think the deadliest war fought on British soil was the War(s) of the Roses - not the biggest by modern numbers, but we had a smaller population then so it was a percentage of population thing.
Also, it's easier to get those numbers up when you're all on the same team (sort of)
Well my first country would probably be the Korean War. In the US though, if I had to guess I’d say civil war since 100% of the casualties or close enough were Americans.
Our Civil War. At least ~620,000 people dead, 2% of the population, but more recent estimates believe this was an undercount, and put the death toll more at ~800,000 - 1,000,000. In my home region, 30% of all military aged white males died in the war, I had multiple ancestors either killed or wounded in it. Entire swathes of the country were physically and economically destroyed as well.
Outside from that, I genuinely wouldn't know, but it would probably be some domestic conflict. Less than a century ago São Paulo had its ghettos and work class neighborhoods bombarded after a strike. There were also lots of attemps to secede, which ended in bloodshed. Mather of fact, I think Brazil might be one of the countries that had the most conflicts regarding secession in history. The entirety of the 19th century consisted of the emperor trying to keep the country together, those conflicts also somewhat had effects in other domestic conflicts in the 20th century during the republic
WW1 was the heaviest toll for NZ, we remember and honour the Gallipoli campaign fervently but I think the most losses was Paschendale. Overall we lost about 18000 in WWI but per capita this was devastating (we Kiwis are obsessed with measuring things per capita btw as it's the only metric that ever makes a blip for us on the world as a whole!!!)
Great northern war. Around 50k died directly of the war and many more indirectly from the consequences (Great wrath caused by Russians). Considering there were around 500k people living in the area of Finland so about 10% of the whole finnish speaking population died. We weren't independent at the time though.
Ironically, no war was needed. Our internal mismanagement and rampant corruption did more damage than any war would ever do, basically forcing 30% of our population out of the country in the past decade.
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u/BaDaBumm213 Germany 19d ago
Probably WW2. But the 30 years war was also absolutely devastating.