What was the total cost of World War II for both sides?
1 Answer
The ultimate cost of the Second World War cannot be tallied with accuracy, at best we can make some reasonable estimates.
Explanation:
The Second World War was an all-encompassing conflict that touched every continent except for Antarctica. It also subsumed a number of other conflicts -- Japan invaded China in 1937 and the dead from that war are a part of the score for the Second World War. The same is true for the 1939-40 Winter War when the USSR attacked Finland; or the 1940 French-Thai War in Southeast Asia.
The score is further compounded by war-related famine deaths, particularly in the USSR, Bengal and in areas of Asia under Japanese occupation. There is also the question of internal political repression during the War-years. For instance, Stalin's terror machinery was still running all through the years of war with Nazi-Germany.
Russia and Germany eventually (in the 1990s) applied some careful research to determine their real war losses. In China, we will never know and it seems reasonable to assume 15 million war-dead as a median between 10 and 20 million war dead.
For my own book "Spirit over Steel: A Chronology of the Second World War", I tallied up the best estimates and came up with a probable death toll of 76,820,000 people.
If the question concerns the financial costs of the war... nobody can answer that. While some of the Western democracies can produce reasonable figures as to the Second World's fiscal costs to their own nations, accurate accounting from nations such as the USSR, Imperial Japan or Nazi Germany is unlikely. From China it is impossible -- and one shouldn't forget minor belligerents such as Haiti, Egypt, or even the now vanished nation of Tanu-Tuva.
