Mass deaths and atrocities of the twentieth century
|
|
Philosophers and social scientists have frequently noted the propensity of humans to commit violent acts not only as individuals but as groups. The twentieth century is a legacy of the ability of humanity to engage willingly in acts of warfare and atrocity.
| Contents |
The study of mass killing
Since the 19th century various historians have investigated the number of deaths that could be attributed to warfare or ideology. In the 20th century Joel David Singer and Melvin Small analyzed conflicts and Singer argued in The Wages of War, that a conflict with a particular death toll is statistically related to time of events. In recent years there has been an increasing belief among those who study conflict and fatalities related to it, that civil wars in particular are related to measurable economic phenomenon, and the scale of conflict is related to the reach of these factors.
Several researchers have adopted the term democide to refer to fatalities caused by government intention, calling it "murder by government", and they argue that wars should be included with genocide among totals of deaths caused by government action. Others, such as Gregory H. Stanton have adopted the term politicide. He argues that there are 8 distinct phases to genocide or other mass killing: Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Extermination and Denial. What he labels "Stage 7" conflicts are those with active killing, but that conflicts can cycle through Polarization, Preparation and Extermination repeatedly. His organization tracks killings since 1945 [1] (http://www.genocidewatch.org/genocidetable2003.htm).
The field of Peace studies has been the source for continuing work on deaths because of conflict or other state decision. Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914– 1991 (1994) wrote that 187 million people died in the "short 20th century" because of what he termed "government decision". Robert McNamara published a 1991 paper entitled "The Post-Cold War World: Implications for Military Expenditure in the Developing Countries" which estimated 40 million deaths in the developing economies since World War II.
Estimates of mass killings
Milton Leitenberg's estimate
Milton Leitenberg, of the Center for International and Security Studies, published a 2003 paper which focused on the post war era, and gave very detailed estimates for all major conflicts between 1945 and 2000. His estimate for the total century is based on the following numbers:
- World War I mortality, between 13 and 15 million.
- The Armenian Genocide of 1915, 1 million
- The Russian civil war of 1918–1922 and the Polish-Soviet conflict towards its end, deaths of over 12.5 million in Russia alone.
- The Chaco War, between Paraguay and Bolivia, 1928–1933, approximately 3 million deaths.
- The Spanish Civil War, 1936–1939, 600,000 deaths.
- Various colonial wars, approximately 1.5 million deaths.
- World War II, deaths of between 50 and 60 million.
- Wars/conflicts between 1945 and 2000, deaths of 40 million.
- Soviet collectivization and "dekulakization" 16 million to 50 million, though some included in World War II totals in these estimates.
- Deaths under Mao, between 16 million and 30 million.
Adding in a variety of other pogroms and civil wars, he comes to a final estimate of 216 million. This does not include what he calls "structural violence": deaths in under-developed nations because of crime, poverty, environmental degradation, disease, malnutrition not part of famine, contaminated water and lack of available medicine. He estimates that this reached 17 or 18 million per year by 2000.
Matthew White's estimate
Matthew White (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm) has conducted a study, based on figures quoted from a number of divergent and reliable sources (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstats.htm) to arrive at a conservative estimate of nearly 170 million lives lost to war and major atrocities in the last century. Because fatality statistics are subject to a great deal of uncertainty in turbulent times, White has opted to conservatism in his reporting of statistics. He also employs a commonly-used statistical strategem which forces extreme values at the upper and lower ends of the data field to cancel each other out, resulting in a value closer to the probable mean.
Using existing data, White categorizes these twentieth century events according to most reliable fatality data. While "minor" atrocities and civil conflicts will add to the number, this table compiles those conflicts whose death tolls are close to or exceed half a million souls.
| Rank | Deaths | Event | Time Frame |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 50 000 000 | World War II | 1937-1945 |
| 2 | 40 000 000 | China: Mao Zedong's regime | 1949-1976 |
| 3 | 20 000 000 | USSR: Stalin's regime | 1924-1953 |
| 4 | 15 000 000 | World War I | 1914-1918 |
| 5 | 8 800 000 | Russian Civil War | 1918-1921 |
| 6 | 4 000 000 | China: Warlord & Nationalist Era | 1917-1937 |
| 7 | 3 000 000 | Congo Free State | 1900-1908 |
| 8 | 2 800 000 | Korean War | 1950-1953 |
| 9 | 2 700 000 | 2nd Indochina War (incl. Laos & Cambodia) | 1960-1975 |
| 10 | 2 500 000 | Chinese Civil War | 1945-1949 |
| 11 | 2 100 000 | Expulsion of Germans after World War II | 1945-1947 |
| 12 | 1 900 000 | Second Sudanese Civil War | 1983-1999 |
| 13 | 1 700 000 | Congolese Civil War | 1998-1999 |
| 13 | 1 500 000 | Turkish Genocide against Armenia | 1915-1923 |
| 14 | 1 000 000 | Cambodia: Khmer Rouge regime | 1975-1979 |
| 15 | 1 400 000 | Afghanistan Civil War | 1980-1999 |
| 15 | 1 400 000 | Ethiopian Civil Wars | 1962-1992 |
| 17 | 1 250 000 | Mexican Revolution | 1910-1920 |
| 18 | 1 250 000 | East Pakistan massacres | 1971 |
| 19 | 1 000 000 | Iran-Iraq War | 1980-1988 |
| 19 | 1 000 000 | Nigeria: Biafra | 1967-1970 |
| 21 | 800 000 | Mozambique Civil War | 1976-1992 |
| 21 | 800 000 | Rwanda | 1994 |
| 23 | 675 000 | French-Algerian War | 1954-1962 |
| 24 | 600 000 | First Indochina War | 1945-1954 |
| 24 | 600 000 | Angolan Civil War | 1975-1994 |
| 26 | 500 000 | Indonesia: Massacre of Communists | 1965-1967 |
| 26 | 500 000 | India-Pakistan Partition | 1947 |
| 26 | 500 000 | First Sudanese Civil War | 1955-1972 |
| 26 | 500 000 | Amazonian Indian decline | 1900-1999 |
| 30 | 365 000 | Spanish Civil War | 1936-1939 |
| ?? | >350 000 | Somalia | 1991-1999 |
| ?? | >400 000 | North Korean Communist regime | 1948-1999 |
These figures are subject to the usual margins of error. They also include a number of collateral fatalities: civilian casualties of war, democide, famine, and other hardships caused by the social and economic disruption of large-scale conflict. For conflicts which began before 1900 or ended after 1999, only those deaths within the 20th century are included.
External links
Twentieth Century Atlas - Top-ranked Atrocities (http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/atrox.htm)