Does anyone know a source for US combat deaths by year for World War II? I can find numbers overall, but not broken out by year.

Good luck on this, I've looked several times. The best I ever found was a list of casualties for major battles, nothing in between and no monthly breakout.

Anyone, Buehler, Buehler?

Lemme guess, you want to make a comparison between casualties during WWII and casualties in Iraq and try to convince people that several thousand more dead in Iraq is perfectly acceptable, because it's a lower number than during WWII?

Why not use the Civil War as your benchmark instead? If you're trying to convince people that lower levels of bloodshed are good, then pick a bloodier war.

Hey Dave, why are you complaining about the MSM attempt to show that Iraq is nothing but a bloodshed. Maybe you are unaware that people die, period.

I would suggest Rand compare Iraq death tolls to deaths toll at federally protected gun free school zones. Or maybe just compare Iraq to Washington DC.

Lemme guess, you want to make a comparison between casualties during WWII and casualties in Iraq and try to convince people that several thousand more dead in Iraq is perfectly acceptable, because it's a lower number than during WWII?

No.

Rand

A couple of comparative numbers might also be the deaths per thousand in the male population of a comparable age to military people.

Another one would be the number of peacetime training deaths in the military.

If you do a google search you can pull up NY Times, Washington Post and Chicago Tribune articles about death counts from during the forties. At $5 per reprint, it might be better to go to your local library for microfiche. 8,192 through December 7 1942 according to NY Times. US ARMY CASUALTIES IN EUROPE 174,780 FROM D-DAY TO OCT. 3 according to Chicago Daily Tribune.

Dennis,
that one is about the same now as it has been for years. It averages one per service, per day. Basically 5 per day then, and it takes into account the mass deaths of plane and helo crashes.

My old manually operated math skills make that 1825 per year.

I actually heard this quoted in the last few months by a PIO from Ft Bragg on a local talk radio segment. The topic was PTSD, drinking, family problems among the troops who come back from Iraq and Afghanistan vs those who haven't been.

"The Second World War: A Short History" (R.A.C. Parker, 1989, Oxford Univ Press, ISBN 0-19-280207-0) Chapter 18 discusses casualties in WWII, but the information is within the text, and not displayed in tables. The book list in the back lists a few, possibly helpful titles.

8192 seems very light casualties considering the loss of Aircraft Carriers (Lexington, Yorktown, Hornet), the Torch landing and African battles in late november 42, Guadacanal battles, the vicious battles in the slot between U.S. and Japanese destroyers as well as the casualties in the Phillipines even before MacAurther left.

Wake Island is in there as well as many other pitched battles.

"Maybe you are unaware that people die, period."

Then why have this discussion at all? Who cares how many people died in WWII, or the Holocaust, or the eruption of Vesuvius, or Iraq? They were all going to die anyway, right?

Or is that not what you meant to say?

Rands quest made me curious, and in searching I stumbled across an interesting statistic. We always hear gripes and complaints about the US nuking civilians at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, as if doing so made the US the bad guy of WWII.

Well it turns out that of all deaths due to WWII, Axis civilians make up 4% of the total. Allied civilians on the other hand make up 58% of all WWII deaths.

Wikipedia has a good article and references the following tome: Michael Clodfelter. Warfare and Armed Conflicts- A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1500-2000. 2nd Ed. 2002 ISBN 0-7864-1204-6.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties

There is an extensive bibliography at the link.

I have read that casualty rates in the US military were much higher in '45 than the earlier years, especially during the final drive through Germany in March and April, and of course on Iwo Jima and Okinawa. Thus the willingness to use the Bomb, since an invasion of Japan was expected to be even worse and attrition was becoming intolerable.

In a comment on an earlier post I ran the numbers and found that the violent death rate among Iraqi civilians is quite comparable to that of the less pleasant portions of large American cities, using a neighborhood only a few minutes away from my house as an example.

Then why have this discussion at all?

Why don't you try asking Rand instead of being a total asshat.

Who cares how many people died in WWII, or the Holocaust, or the eruption of Vesuvius, or Iraq?

Apparently Rand cares about WWII, he bleged. As for the other three, I have no idea why you went on the tangent.

They were all going to die anyway, right?

Or is that not what you meant to say?

It's not what I said at all. Neither did Rand say anything you tried to suggest. I think you have a serious problem with comprehension. I recommend that you quite posting and try reading.

US ARMY CASUALTIES IN EUROPE 174,780 FROM D-DAY TO OCT. 3

That figure stood out for me. That is just about the same number of Marines serving with the FMF when I was enlisted.

Just ... wow.

Navy stats can be found at:

http://www.history.navy.mil/library/xyzzy/ww2_statistics.htm

(replace xyzzy with the word you get by concatenating the words "on" and "line" -- spam filter, huh?)

Thus the willingness to use the Bomb, since an invasion of Japan was expected to be even worse and attrition was becoming intolerable.

Make that "intolerable by our fortunate standards" -- fortunate in having oceans on each side, fortunate in being able to choose when and where to engage, fortunate in having the wealth to substitute machines and munitions for blood to a great extent, fortunate in coming out both richer and far more powerful than we had entered. Total US deaths in WWII were less than Yugoslavia's. As a percentage of population, down below the Australia/Canada level -- 1/3 that of the UK or Italy, 1/4 of France, 1/10 of Japan, 1/30 of Germany, 1/40 of the Soviet Union.

None of that means our effort didn't involve much sacrifice, much that was noble -- but those numbers sure help in remembering it as The Good War.