WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:03.899 So if you follow World War I history, or honestly, 00:00:04.580 --> 00:00:06.059 even if you just kind of vaguely remember your 00:00:06.059 --> 00:00:08.220 high school history classes, you have probably 00:00:08.220 --> 00:00:11.019 heard this massive overarching casualty figure, 00:00:11.580 --> 00:00:14.240 like a thousand times. Right, the 40 million. 00:00:14.380 --> 00:00:16.339 Exactly, 40 million. It's the number that gets 00:00:16.339 --> 00:00:18.399 printed in the textbooks. It's cited in all the 00:00:18.399 --> 00:00:21.260 documentaries. But welcome back to another deep 00:00:21.260 --> 00:00:23.480 dive, because today we are going to actually 00:00:23.480 --> 00:00:26.420 look at the data. that makes up that colossal 00:00:26.420 --> 00:00:28.739 number. Yeah, we have this massive, incredibly 00:00:28.739 --> 00:00:32.020 detailed repository of historical casualty data 00:00:32.020 --> 00:00:34.640 in front of us today. We do. We're pulling from 00:00:34.640 --> 00:00:37.359 demographic studies, official government reports, 00:00:37.500 --> 00:00:40.100 and historical databases that have all been compiled 00:00:40.100 --> 00:00:42.799 into this rather staggering overview. And our 00:00:42.799 --> 00:00:46.240 mission for you today is to go way beyond that 00:00:46.240 --> 00:00:48.939 incomprehensible macro number. Because 40 million 00:00:48.939 --> 00:00:51.479 is just, it's too big to visualize. It really 00:00:51.479 --> 00:00:53.439 is. We want to pull out the casualties that usually 00:00:53.439 --> 00:00:56.240 get left out of the standard trench warfare narrative, 00:00:56.659 --> 00:00:59.039 things like neutral nations and colonial laborers. 00:00:59.399 --> 00:01:01.960 We really want to look at how the dawn of industrialized 00:01:01.960 --> 00:01:04.400 warfare fundamentally changed human history. 00:01:04.719 --> 00:01:07.299 It absolutely did. To set the stage, the sheer 00:01:07.299 --> 00:01:09.900 scale we are talking about in these sources is 00:01:09.900 --> 00:01:13.500 an estimated 15 to 22 million deaths and roughly 00:01:13.500 --> 00:01:17.269 23 million wounded. It's a scale that defies 00:01:17.269 --> 00:01:19.909 human imagination, really. And that difficulty 00:01:19.909 --> 00:01:23.049 in comprehending the numbers is exactly why digging 00:01:23.049 --> 00:01:25.709 into this data matters so much today. Because 00:01:25.709 --> 00:01:27.609 if we want to understand the modern world, you 00:01:27.609 --> 00:01:30.030 have to understand the specific conflict. Right. 00:01:30.189 --> 00:01:33.010 It shifted the entire paradigm of human loss. 00:01:33.549 --> 00:01:36.730 Before 1914, wars were generally fought by professional 00:01:36.730 --> 00:01:39.269 armies. They took place on relatively contained 00:01:39.269 --> 00:01:41.959 battlefields. Usually. But the staggering figures 00:01:41.959 --> 00:01:44.519 you just mentioned, they represent the exact 00:01:44.519 --> 00:01:47.040 moment in history when the machinery of the Industrial 00:01:47.040 --> 00:01:49.340 Revolution was fully applied to human destruction. 00:01:49.920 --> 00:01:52.299 It was the moment warfare stopped being a contained 00:01:52.299 --> 00:01:55.620 event and instead enveloped entire global societies. 00:01:55.819 --> 00:01:57.819 Which is reflected immediately in the data when 00:01:57.819 --> 00:02:00.099 you look at how people actually died. Yeah. I 00:02:00.099 --> 00:02:04.159 was really struck by this massive shift. because 00:02:04.159 --> 00:02:07.140 in 19th century conflicts, the vast majority 00:02:07.140 --> 00:02:09.180 of soldiers didn't actually die from bullets 00:02:09.180 --> 00:02:11.620 or cannons. No, they didn't. They died from disease. 00:02:12.080 --> 00:02:14.379 You would have an army march out, set up camp 00:02:14.379 --> 00:02:17.520 somewhere, and dysentery or cholera would do 00:02:17.520 --> 00:02:20.020 far more damage than the enemy ever could. But 00:02:20.020 --> 00:02:22.900 in World War I, about two -thirds of military 00:02:22.900 --> 00:02:25.629 deaths were actually in battle. What's fascinating 00:02:25.629 --> 00:02:28.449 here is that this two thirds figure is a direct 00:02:28.449 --> 00:02:31.789 mathematical reflection of industrialized warfare. 00:02:32.430 --> 00:02:35.229 We are talking about the mass production of machine 00:02:35.229 --> 00:02:38.090 guns, heavy artillery that could fire from miles 00:02:38.090 --> 00:02:40.590 away, poison gap. Just a completely different 00:02:40.590 --> 00:02:42.849 scale of violence. Exactly. And a style of trench 00:02:42.849 --> 00:02:45.310 warfare that turned battlefields into static 00:02:45.310 --> 00:02:48.009 meat grinders. The technology of killing had 00:02:48.009 --> 00:02:50.469 vastly outpaced the military tactics of survival. 00:02:50.930 --> 00:02:53.150 But while we look at that two thirds, I do have 00:02:53.150 --> 00:02:55.340 to caution you not to forget the remaining one 00:02:55.340 --> 00:02:57.039 third. Right, the disease factor didn't just 00:02:57.039 --> 00:02:59.599 vanish. No, it was still millions of human beings. 00:03:00.319 --> 00:03:02.479 Millions of soldiers died far away from the front 00:03:02.479 --> 00:03:05.139 lines. They died in prisoner of war camps from 00:03:05.139 --> 00:03:08.199 exposure and malnutrition. And crucially, they 00:03:08.199 --> 00:03:10.800 died from diseases like the 1918 Spanish flu 00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:13.240 pandemic. Which was just brutal. It swept through 00:03:13.240 --> 00:03:15.439 the trenches and the staging camps with just 00:03:15.439 --> 00:03:17.949 devastating speed. The breakdown by Alliance 00:03:17.949 --> 00:03:20.750 really drives the sheer volume of that lost home, 00:03:21.009 --> 00:03:23.509 too. The sources show that Triple Entente, the 00:03:23.509 --> 00:03:26.490 Allies, lost about six million military personnel. 00:03:26.909 --> 00:03:29.370 Staggering. Meanwhile, the Central Powers lost 00:03:29.370 --> 00:03:32.219 about four million. And when you look at individual 00:03:32.219 --> 00:03:35.259 nations, the numbers are just jaw -dropping. 00:03:35.659 --> 00:03:38.939 Germany alone saw over 2 million military dead. 00:03:39.479 --> 00:03:42.080 France saw over 1 .3 million. Over a million 00:03:42.080 --> 00:03:44.719 young men. Right. Just imagine the demographic 00:03:44.719 --> 00:03:47.379 hole that leaves for you as a society. Imagine 00:03:47.379 --> 00:03:50.460 wiping out the entire population of a major modern 00:03:50.460 --> 00:03:54.080 city exclusively comprised of young men in just 00:03:54.080 --> 00:03:57.189 four years. It alters the trajectory of a nation 00:03:57.189 --> 00:04:00.650 for generations. You have millions of empty chairs 00:04:00.650 --> 00:04:03.310 at dinner tables, missing workers in the economy, 00:04:03.430 --> 00:04:05.949 and entire communities in mourning. And that 00:04:05.949 --> 00:04:07.930 brings up the complex reality of how we even 00:04:07.930 --> 00:04:09.810 know these numbers to begin with. You mentioned 00:04:09.810 --> 00:04:12.250 earlier that the total deaths range from 15 to 00:04:12.250 --> 00:04:14.490 22 million. Yeah, that's a huge gap. It's a 7 00:04:14.490 --> 00:04:17.430 million person variance. That massive gap exists 00:04:17.430 --> 00:04:19.930 because the methodology used by each nation to 00:04:19.930 --> 00:04:22.490 record and classify their casualties was completely 00:04:22.490 --> 00:04:25.230 ununiform. OK, let's untag this. variance for 00:04:25.230 --> 00:04:27.750 a second, because how does a modern military 00:04:27.750 --> 00:04:30.329 operation just lose track of 7 million people? 00:04:31.410 --> 00:04:34.490 Why do the estimates range so wildly in the official 00:04:34.490 --> 00:04:36.980 records? Well, let's look at the Russian example 00:04:36.980 --> 00:04:39.000 from the sources, because it perfectly illustrates 00:04:39.000 --> 00:04:42.019 the chaos of the era. Russian casualties are 00:04:42.019 --> 00:04:44.980 incredibly hard to kin down. During their massive 00:04:44.980 --> 00:04:47.279 military retreats on the Eastern Front, a huge 00:04:47.279 --> 00:04:50.019 portion of field reports were simply lost. Just 00:04:50.019 --> 00:04:52.259 gone. Just gone. They were burned, destroyed 00:04:52.259 --> 00:04:54.800 by artillery, or just abandoned in the mud. You 00:04:54.800 --> 00:04:57.399 had commanders who couldn't accurately report 00:04:57.399 --> 00:04:59.240 their losses because their units were in total 00:04:59.240 --> 00:05:01.339 disarray or the commanders themselves were killed. 00:05:01.560 --> 00:05:04.399 Wow. So Soviet demographers decades later had 00:05:04.389 --> 00:05:07.430 to retroactively estimate the true totals. By 00:05:07.430 --> 00:05:10.430 looking at pre -war census data, post -war population 00:05:10.430 --> 00:05:12.350 data, and whatever surviving records they could 00:05:12.350 --> 00:05:15.050 find, they estimated that the actual Russian 00:05:15.050 --> 00:05:18.470 military dead could be up to 2 .2 million. That 00:05:18.470 --> 00:05:22.089 was vastly higher than the initial chaotic wartime 00:05:22.089 --> 00:05:25.269 counts. But wait, if the field reports were burned 00:05:25.269 --> 00:05:28.670 or lost in a massive retreat, aren't those demographers 00:05:28.670 --> 00:05:32.089 decades later basically just guessing? How can 00:05:32.089 --> 00:05:34.550 we trust a number calculated so long after the 00:05:34.550 --> 00:05:37.069 fact? That is exactly the friction that historians 00:05:37.069 --> 00:05:39.550 deal with. It is an educated estimation based 00:05:39.550 --> 00:05:41.750 on demographic modeling rather than a direct 00:05:41.750 --> 00:05:43.750 head count. This raises an important question 00:05:43.750 --> 00:05:45.750 about who gets counted and who falls through 00:05:45.750 --> 00:05:47.889 the cracks of history. When you don't have a 00:05:47.889 --> 00:05:51.129 body or a dog tag or a ledger entry, you become 00:05:51.129 --> 00:05:54.009 a statistical ghost. And those cracks were literally 00:05:54.009 --> 00:05:55.750 shifting beneath their feet because the borders 00:05:55.750 --> 00:05:58.230 of the world completely changed after the armistice. 00:05:58.350 --> 00:06:01.040 Yes they did. The sources highlight this incredible 00:06:01.040 --> 00:06:03.319 difference between counting casualties by the 00:06:03.319 --> 00:06:07.379 borders of 1914 versus the borders of 1924. Exactly. 00:06:07.699 --> 00:06:09.879 You have to remember that this war destroyed 00:06:09.879 --> 00:06:13.540 massive multi -ethnic empires. The Austro -Hungarian 00:06:13.540 --> 00:06:16.079 Empire, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire 00:06:16.079 --> 00:06:19.259 were all dismantled. So if you count casualties 00:06:19.259 --> 00:06:22.620 by the borders of 1924, after those empires broke 00:06:22.620 --> 00:06:25.240 apart into new countries, you reveal the hidden 00:06:25.240 --> 00:06:27.779 tolls of these newly formed nations. Right, like 00:06:27.779 --> 00:06:31.069 the Czechoslovakia. The sources note that 185 00:06:31.069 --> 00:06:34.769 ,000 Czechoslovaks died in the war. But Czechoslovakia 00:06:34.769 --> 00:06:37.269 did not even exist as an independent state in 00:06:37.269 --> 00:06:39.689 1914. Not at all. They were drafted into the 00:06:39.689 --> 00:06:42.589 Austro -Hungarian army or they defected and fought 00:06:42.589 --> 00:06:44.689 in Allied legions and they died for a nation 00:06:44.689 --> 00:06:47.850 that was still quite literally being born. It 00:06:47.850 --> 00:06:49.550 really makes you think about how retroactive 00:06:49.550 --> 00:06:52.370 counting shapes modern national identity. And 00:06:52.370 --> 00:06:54.129 what I really love about this source material 00:06:54.129 --> 00:06:57.470 is seeing how modern organizations are actively 00:06:57.470 --> 00:07:01.069 revising history right now, today, to fix these 00:07:01.069 --> 00:07:03.649 historical blind spots. Yes, the initial counts 00:07:03.649 --> 00:07:06.529 in the 1920s often prioritized the combat soldier 00:07:06.529 --> 00:07:09.470 specifically, the European man holding the rifle 00:07:09.470 --> 00:07:12.189 in the trench. But wars are fought with logistics. 00:07:12.509 --> 00:07:14.889 They are fought by laborers, porters, and massive 00:07:14.889 --> 00:07:16.970 transport networks. People carrying the ammunition. 00:07:17.209 --> 00:07:19.529 Precisely. For decades, the colonial laborers 00:07:19.529 --> 00:07:21.810 recruited from Africa, the Middle East, and Asia 00:07:21.810 --> 00:07:24.230 who provided that vital logistical support were 00:07:24.230 --> 00:07:26.389 largely left off the official roles of British 00:07:26.389 --> 00:07:28.730 war dead. This happened even though domestic 00:07:28.730 --> 00:07:30.750 British laborers working in similar capacities 00:07:30.750 --> 00:07:32.980 were counted. Which is just a glaring double 00:07:32.980 --> 00:07:36.540 standard. It was. But the Commonwealth War Graves 00:07:36.540 --> 00:07:40.079 Commission, or CINWGC, has been actively rectifying 00:07:40.079 --> 00:07:42.420 that in recent years. And that fundamentally 00:07:42.420 --> 00:07:45.160 changes how we view the global footprint of the 00:07:45.160 --> 00:07:46.939 war. Here's where it gets really interesting, 00:07:47.000 --> 00:07:49.420 because it reminds you that this was literally 00:07:49.420 --> 00:07:53.139 a world war. It is so easy to get stuck in that 00:07:53.139 --> 00:07:56.980 standard European trench warfare narrative, mud, 00:07:57.259 --> 00:07:59.829 barbed wire in the Western Front. But the sources 00:07:59.829 --> 00:08:01.889 point out these fascinating nuggets that completely 00:08:01.889 --> 00:08:04.829 defy that image. For instance, the UK employed 00:08:04.829 --> 00:08:07.610 around 300 ,000 laborers from all over the globe 00:08:07.610 --> 00:08:10.189 just to keep their war machine running. A prime 00:08:10.189 --> 00:08:12.410 example of this from the text is the Chinese 00:08:12.410 --> 00:08:14.509 Labor Corps. The British and French recruited 00:08:14.509 --> 00:08:16.730 heavily from China to manage their logistics. 00:08:17.449 --> 00:08:20.389 The CWGC reports that nearly 2 ,000 workers from 00:08:20.389 --> 00:08:22.350 the Chinese Labor Corps died during the war. 00:08:22.470 --> 00:08:25.170 That's a huge loss. And they are buried right 00:08:25.170 --> 00:08:29.120 alongside British war dead in France. And what 00:08:29.120 --> 00:08:31.420 is striking is that many of them didn't die from 00:08:31.420 --> 00:08:34.200 artillery shells. They succumbed to the 1918 00:08:34.200 --> 00:08:37.419 flu epidemic while performing incredibly difficult 00:08:37.419 --> 00:08:40.200 back -breaking tasks like clearing battlefields, 00:08:40.220 --> 00:08:43.080 moving supplies, and digging trenches in a foreign 00:08:43.080 --> 00:08:45.600 country. Imagine that physical reality for a 00:08:45.600 --> 00:08:48.059 second. You are recruited from China, shipped 00:08:48.059 --> 00:08:50.700 across the world to northern France, and your 00:08:50.700 --> 00:08:54.059 job is to clear unexploded ordnance out of the 00:08:54.059 --> 00:08:56.850 freezing mud. And then you don't even die from 00:08:56.850 --> 00:08:59.490 combat. You're taken out by a global flu pandemic. 00:08:59.789 --> 00:09:02.129 It's a tragic reality of the logistics of war. 00:09:02.309 --> 00:09:04.009 And it wasn't just labor from around the world. 00:09:04.029 --> 00:09:06.409 It was combat too. I was amazed by the numbers 00:09:06.409 --> 00:09:09.210 here. You have the 200 ,000 Nepalese Gurkha volunteers 00:09:09.210 --> 00:09:11.429 who served the British Empire. They fought on 00:09:11.429 --> 00:09:14.929 all fronts, France, Turkey, Palestine, Mesopotamia, 00:09:15.110 --> 00:09:17.590 suffering some 20 ,000 casualties. And we also 00:09:17.590 --> 00:09:19.750 have to look at the massive inclusion of colonial 00:09:19.750 --> 00:09:21.990 troops fighting directly for the European powers. 00:09:22.149 --> 00:09:24.429 You had regiments from French Algeria and Vietnam. 00:09:24.629 --> 00:09:26.389 You had troops from British India, which alone 00:09:26.389 --> 00:09:30.409 suffered roughly 74 ,000 dead. You have men from 00:09:30.409 --> 00:09:33.549 Senegal and Madagascar traveling thousands of 00:09:33.549 --> 00:09:36.450 miles to fight and die in the mud of Europe. 00:09:36.750 --> 00:09:39.389 It was an entirely globalized mobilization. So 00:09:39.389 --> 00:09:41.129 what does this all mean for the people left behind? 00:09:41.350 --> 00:09:43.509 You mentioned the mobilization of entire empires. 00:09:43.889 --> 00:09:47.149 But when you pull all those resources, the food, 00:09:47.490 --> 00:09:49.450 the trains, the labor toward the front lines, 00:09:49.809 --> 00:09:52.490 what happens to the civilians? That is where 00:09:52.490 --> 00:09:55.110 the numbers get truly dark. The sources show 00:09:55.110 --> 00:09:56.970 a staggering toll that I don't think gets enough 00:09:56.970 --> 00:10:00.250 attention. They estimate between 6 to 13 million 00:10:00.250 --> 00:10:03.429 civilian deaths. How do 13 million civilians 00:10:03.429 --> 00:10:06.169 die in a war that was supposedly contained to 00:10:06.169 --> 00:10:08.990 military fronts? They died largely because starvation 00:10:08.990 --> 00:10:11.090 was explicitly weaponized. This wasn't just a 00:10:11.090 --> 00:10:13.330 war of armies shooting at each other. It was 00:10:13.330 --> 00:10:16.210 economic warfare on a continental scale. The 00:10:16.210 --> 00:10:18.129 Allied blockade of Germany, for example, was 00:10:18.129 --> 00:10:20.710 designed to completely cut off food, fertilizer, 00:10:20.870 --> 00:10:23.210 and essential supplies to the civilian population. 00:10:23.710 --> 00:10:26.730 The goal was to crush morale and force a surrender 00:10:26.730 --> 00:10:30.169 by making daily life unlivable. According to 00:10:30.169 --> 00:10:32.330 the German Board of Public Health, they estimated 00:10:32.330 --> 00:10:37.210 that 763 ,000 German civilians died from malnutrition 00:10:37.210 --> 00:10:39.950 and disease specifically due to that blockade. 00:10:40.129 --> 00:10:42.029 Because it's not just a matter of soldiers fighting 00:10:42.029 --> 00:10:44.350 anymore. It's about systematically dismantling 00:10:44.350 --> 00:10:47.230 the enemy's ability to survive at a basic human 00:10:47.230 --> 00:10:49.750 level. Precisely. And the devastation of these 00:10:49.750 --> 00:10:52.070 economic strategies was even worse in colonial 00:10:52.070 --> 00:10:54.769 territories, where local populations had zero 00:10:54.769 --> 00:10:57.629 say in the conflict. In East Africa, the campaign 00:10:57.629 --> 00:10:59.809 between the British and the Germans was incredibly 00:10:59.809 --> 00:11:03.250 harsh. In what way? Well, the military logistics 00:11:03.250 --> 00:11:05.909 meant that both sides relied heavily on stripping 00:11:05.909 --> 00:11:08.690 local resources. They requisitioned crops and 00:11:08.690 --> 00:11:11.269 livestock, leading to severe food shortages for 00:11:11.269 --> 00:11:13.570 the people who actually lived there. Combined 00:11:13.570 --> 00:11:15.970 with epidemic diseases that always follow moving 00:11:15.970 --> 00:11:18.830 armies, this resource stripping killed an estimated 00:11:18.830 --> 00:11:23.570 750 ,000 African civilians. And you didn't even 00:11:23.570 --> 00:11:25.629 have to be a participant in the war to suffer 00:11:25.629 --> 00:11:28.970 these consequences. This is one of the most surprising 00:11:28.970 --> 00:11:32.470 facts from the sources to me, the fate of Qajar 00:11:32.470 --> 00:11:35.830 Persia, which is modern day Iran. Yes, the Persian 00:11:35.830 --> 00:11:38.330 famine. They were completely neutral. They wanted 00:11:38.330 --> 00:11:41.029 absolutely no part in this European conflict. 00:11:41.649 --> 00:11:43.789 Yet because of their strategic location and their 00:11:43.789 --> 00:11:46.490 oil, British and Russian troops occupied parts 00:11:46.490 --> 00:11:49.110 of the country anyway. They requisitioned local 00:11:49.110 --> 00:11:51.909 food supplies to feed their armies and blocked 00:11:51.909 --> 00:11:55.190 traditional distribution networks. This culminated 00:11:55.190 --> 00:11:58.700 in a devastating famine. Up to two million Iranians 00:11:58.700 --> 00:12:01.519 died. Two million people. That was roughly 19 00:12:01.519 --> 00:12:04.440 % of their entire population. Nearly one in five 00:12:04.440 --> 00:12:06.379 people wiped out in a war they were officially 00:12:06.379 --> 00:12:09.279 neutral in. It perfectly illustrates how industrialized 00:12:09.279 --> 00:12:12.299 warfare respects no borders and recognizes no 00:12:12.299 --> 00:12:14.860 neutrality. The logistical calories required 00:12:14.860 --> 00:12:17.059 to feed an occupying army will strip a local 00:12:17.059 --> 00:12:19.259 population bare, regardless of their political 00:12:19.259 --> 00:12:21.639 stance. And Persia wasn't the only neutral nation 00:12:21.639 --> 00:12:23.600 to bleed for a war they didn't start. You have 00:12:23.600 --> 00:12:25.460 Norway, which was known at the time as the neutral 00:12:25.460 --> 00:12:27.980 ally. They lost over 1100 people. Right. And 00:12:27.980 --> 00:12:29.840 those were mostly merchant sailors, just guys 00:12:29.840 --> 00:12:32.340 trying to do their jobs, moving cargo and trading 00:12:32.340 --> 00:12:34.440 in what had suddenly become war zones and getting 00:12:34.440 --> 00:12:36.649 their ships torpedoed by submarines. It really 00:12:36.649 --> 00:12:38.470 shifts your perspective on the reach of the violence. 00:12:38.610 --> 00:12:41.230 It reaches everywhere. We talk a lot about the 00:12:41.230 --> 00:12:43.929 major empires losing millions of men, but I was 00:12:43.929 --> 00:12:45.649 looking at the breakdown of proportional losses 00:12:45.649 --> 00:12:48.409 in the text, and there was one nation that absolutely 00:12:48.409 --> 00:12:51.169 stopped me in my tracks. What happened in Serbia? 00:12:51.389 --> 00:12:53.889 Serbia is the most glaring example in our sources 00:12:53.889 --> 00:12:56.690 of how smaller nations suffered losses that were 00:12:56.690 --> 00:12:58.970 essentially existential threats to their future. 00:12:59.549 --> 00:13:02.289 When an empire loses a million men, it is a tragedy. 00:13:02.490 --> 00:13:05.169 When a small nation loses that same number, it 00:13:05.169 --> 00:13:08.610 is a demographic collapse. Serbia lost an estimated 00:13:08.610 --> 00:13:13.210 16 .7 % to 27 .8 % of their entire pre -war population. 00:13:13.610 --> 00:13:17.570 That is between 750 ,000 and 1 .25 million people. 00:13:17.690 --> 00:13:20.029 Out of a population of just 4 .5 million, it 00:13:20.029 --> 00:13:22.659 is just devastating. It is a level of societal 00:13:22.659 --> 00:13:25.259 destruction that changes the cultural DNA of 00:13:25.259 --> 00:13:28.360 a region. And we see similar catastrophic demographic 00:13:28.360 --> 00:13:30.799 events in the Ottoman Empire, which the sources 00:13:30.799 --> 00:13:34.399 note saw between 2 .8 and 3 .2 million total 00:13:34.399 --> 00:13:38.039 deaths. That was up to 15 .4 % of its entire 00:13:38.039 --> 00:13:40.480 population. And a significant portion of that 00:13:40.480 --> 00:13:43.039 Ottoman civilian toll involves one of the darkest 00:13:43.039 --> 00:13:45.980 chapters of the war, where the chaos of a global 00:13:45.980 --> 00:13:49.149 conflict was used as a smokescreen. Yes. Based 00:13:49.149 --> 00:13:51.309 strictly on the historical sources we are reviewing 00:13:51.309 --> 00:13:54.009 today, those Ottoman civilian casualties include 00:13:54.009 --> 00:13:56.909 the Armenian Genocide. The text notes that the 00:13:56.909 --> 00:13:58.950 overwhelming majority of historians, as well 00:13:58.950 --> 00:14:01.129 as academic institutions focused on Holocaust 00:14:01.129 --> 00:14:03.789 and genocide studies, recognize the deaths of 00:14:03.789 --> 00:14:06.629 1 .5 million Armenians alongside Assyrians and 00:14:06.629 --> 00:14:09.389 Greeks as part of a targeted policy of extermination 00:14:09.389 --> 00:14:12.289 by the Ottoman Empire. The source material also 00:14:12.289 --> 00:14:14.649 explicitly notes the geopolitical reality that 00:14:14.649 --> 00:14:16.730 successive regimes in Turkey have denied the 00:14:16.730 --> 00:14:19.629 Armenian genocide from 1915 all the way up to 00:14:19.629 --> 00:14:22.649 the present day. It is a stark reminder of how 00:14:22.649 --> 00:14:25.289 the fog of war can mask violence against civilians. 00:14:26.070 --> 00:14:28.789 And sometimes that violence against non -combatants 00:14:28.789 --> 00:14:31.889 was shockingly sudden. To ground these massive 00:14:31.889 --> 00:14:34.190 sweeping numbers, the sources highlight some 00:14:34.190 --> 00:14:36.809 highly specific memorable incidents that just 00:14:36.809 --> 00:14:38.909 show how nowhere in the world was truly safe. 00:14:39.070 --> 00:14:41.269 from the ripple effects of this war. The global 00:14:41.269 --> 00:14:43.629 reach was unprecedented. Right. For instance, 00:14:43.990 --> 00:14:45.970 think about being a civilian in North America, 00:14:46.330 --> 00:14:49.750 an ocean away from the trenches. In 1917, a French 00:14:49.750 --> 00:14:52.669 cargo ship laden with high explosives collided 00:14:52.669 --> 00:14:54.950 with a Norwegian vessel in the harbor of Halifax, 00:14:55.169 --> 00:14:57.850 Canada. The resulting explosion leveled the area 00:14:57.850 --> 00:15:00.450 and killed 2 ,000 civilians in an instant. Then 00:15:00.450 --> 00:15:02.730 you have the sinking of the ocean liner Lusitania, 00:15:03.070 --> 00:15:05.649 killing 128 Americans, which happened before 00:15:05.649 --> 00:15:08.210 the U .S. even officially entered the war. And 00:15:08.210 --> 00:15:09.850 here's one that really stuck with me because 00:15:09.850 --> 00:15:13.360 of how incredibly random it feels. 13 Portuguese 00:15:13.360 --> 00:15:15.419 civilians were killed when a German submarine 00:15:15.419 --> 00:15:18.379 just suddenly surfaced and bombarded Madera Island. 00:15:18.960 --> 00:15:21.220 You were on an island in the Atlantic going about 00:15:21.220 --> 00:15:23.379 your daily life and suddenly the war arrives 00:15:23.379 --> 00:15:25.419 on your doorstep. If we connect this to the bigger 00:15:25.419 --> 00:15:27.700 picture, all of these incidents from the massive 00:15:27.700 --> 00:15:30.559 famine in Persia, to a submarine bombarding a 00:15:30.559 --> 00:15:33.259 Portuguese island, to the accidental destruction 00:15:33.259 --> 00:15:36.879 of a Canadian city, they show exactly why you, 00:15:37.179 --> 00:15:39.159 the listener, should care about the minutiae 00:15:39.159 --> 00:15:41.500 of these sources. Exactly. These casualty numbers 00:15:41.500 --> 00:15:43.940 don't just represent a historical event that 00:15:43.940 --> 00:15:46.840 happened over a century ago. They represent the 00:15:46.840 --> 00:15:50.129 terrifying dawn of the modern era. This was a 00:15:50.129 --> 00:15:53.009 time when entire populations, not just professional 00:15:53.009 --> 00:15:56.389 armies, were mobilized, weaponized, and ultimately 00:15:56.389 --> 00:15:59.450 targeted. The traditional line between combatant 00:15:59.450 --> 00:16:02.490 and non -combatant was permanently erased. That 00:16:02.490 --> 00:16:05.889 is the real aha. moment for me in reading through 00:16:05.889 --> 00:16:08.129 all this data. We tend to think of globalization 00:16:08.129 --> 00:16:10.330 as a relatively recent phenomenon, something 00:16:10.330 --> 00:16:12.830 from the late 20th century, but this shows how 00:16:12.830 --> 00:16:15.509 deeply interconnected the world already was in 00:16:15.509 --> 00:16:18.070 1914. It was incredibly intertwined. You have 00:16:18.070 --> 00:16:20.029 an assassination that triggers a regional war 00:16:20.029 --> 00:16:23.570 in the Balkans and somehow through this web of 00:16:23.570 --> 00:16:26.970 alliances and global empires that leads to Japan 00:16:26.970 --> 00:16:30.289 mobilizing a force of 800 ,000 men. It leads 00:16:30.289 --> 00:16:33.009 to 800 Finnish volunteers fighting in the Russian 00:16:33.009 --> 00:16:35.470 army despite officially having an exemption. 00:16:36.490 --> 00:16:39.029 It leads to laborers from Madagascar traveling 00:16:39.029 --> 00:16:41.529 thousands of miles to die in a European winter. 00:16:41.710 --> 00:16:44.009 And it forces us to think critically about how 00:16:44.009 --> 00:16:46.470 we record history itself. We tend to think of 00:16:46.470 --> 00:16:49.110 history as a book that has been published, something 00:16:49.110 --> 00:16:52.250 firmly settled in the past. But this source material 00:16:52.250 --> 00:16:54.429 shows that the ledger of the dead is still actively 00:16:54.429 --> 00:16:56.350 being written. It really is an ongoing process. 00:16:56.470 --> 00:16:58.649 Think about the physical reality of what historians 00:16:58.649 --> 00:17:00.889 are doing right now. The fact that researchers 00:17:00.889 --> 00:17:03.789 in 2025 are still updating databases like the 00:17:03.789 --> 00:17:06.809 Italian Istore Eco Project, which is meticulously 00:17:06.809 --> 00:17:09.170 trying to find the exact burial places of over 00:17:09.170 --> 00:17:11.269 half a million soldiers or organizations. like 00:17:11.269 --> 00:17:14.710 the CWGC finally etching the names of African 00:17:14.710 --> 00:17:17.410 laborers into official memorials proves that 00:17:17.410 --> 00:17:20.150 history is never truly finished. The past is 00:17:20.150 --> 00:17:22.470 constantly being reevaluated based on who we 00:17:22.470 --> 00:17:25.069 decide matters enough to count today. It really 00:17:25.069 --> 00:17:28.130 is a heavy realization, but an incredibly important 00:17:28.130 --> 00:17:31.039 one. We've gone through a lot of dense dark material 00:17:31.039 --> 00:17:33.740 today, and we really want to thank you for taking 00:17:33.740 --> 00:17:36.059 the time to explore these sources with us. It's 00:17:36.059 --> 00:17:38.220 not easy to look directly at human destruction 00:17:38.220 --> 00:17:40.599 on this scale. No, it's not. But I hope that 00:17:40.599 --> 00:17:43.000 by unpacking the methodology and the hidden stories, 00:17:43.460 --> 00:17:45.160 we've helped show that the 40 million number 00:17:45.160 --> 00:17:47.319 isn't just a sterile statistic to memorize for 00:17:47.319 --> 00:17:51.099 a test. It is made up of individual lives, soldiers, 00:17:51.420 --> 00:17:54.440 laborers, and civilians from literally every 00:17:54.440 --> 00:17:57.049 single corner of the globe. Absolutely. And I 00:17:57.049 --> 00:17:58.750 want to leave you with a final thought to mull 00:17:58.750 --> 00:18:00.869 over, building on the naval casualties we touched 00:18:00.869 --> 00:18:05.410 on earlier. The text mentions 14 ,661 merchant 00:18:05.410 --> 00:18:08.650 navy dead for the British Empire alone, alongside 00:18:08.650 --> 00:18:11.230 hundreds of Danish and Norwegian fishermen killed 00:18:11.230 --> 00:18:13.950 by U -boats. Just staggering numbers for non 00:18:13.950 --> 00:18:16.410 -combatants. I want you to think about the invisible, 00:18:16.750 --> 00:18:19.109 un -uniform supply chains that keep our nations 00:18:19.109 --> 00:18:22.109 alive today. How does your food reach your local 00:18:22.109 --> 00:18:25.049 grocery store? How does fuel reach your city? 00:18:25.579 --> 00:18:28.339 In global conflicts, it is so often the people 00:18:28.339 --> 00:18:31.180 simply trying to transport food and goods, the 00:18:31.180 --> 00:18:33.619 merchant mariners, the civilian laborers, the 00:18:33.619 --> 00:18:36.319 deckhands who become the silent, uncounted casualties 00:18:36.319 --> 00:18:39.220 of economic warfare. When the world goes to war, 00:18:39.299 --> 00:18:41.839 the very first targets are the fragile lifelines 00:18:41.839 --> 00:18:44.079 that sustain us. Something to seriously think 00:18:44.079 --> 00:18:45.900 about the next time you see a cargo ship out 00:18:45.900 --> 00:18:48.319 on the horizon. Thank you again for joining us 00:18:48.319 --> 00:18:50.660 for this deep dive. Remember to always keep questioning 00:18:50.660 --> 00:18:52.880 what you read, look for the hidden mechanics 00:18:52.880 --> 00:18:55.160 behind the massive statistics, and above all, 00:18:55.279 --> 00:18:57.319 Stay curious. I'll catch you next time.