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VE Day 70th Anniversary, German Holocaust,  Bengali Holocaust
And Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust

By Dr Gideon Polya

09 May, 2015
Countercurrents.org

8 May 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2 in Europe. WW2 was associated with the killing of about 110 million people worldwide through violence or violently-imposed deprivation,  but the killing continued  with 9 million German deaths in the 1941-1950 German Holocaust and1.5 billion mainly non-European people dying avoidably from Western-imposed deprivation since 1950 in a continuing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust.  

The World War 2 (WW2) War in Europe, that began on 1 September  1939 with the Nazi German invasion of Poland,  ended on 8 May 1944  with the surrender of Germany, and the WW2 War in Asia ended on 15 August  1945 with the surrender of Japan. An upper estimate of deaths from violence or war-imposed deprivation in WW2 is about 52 million in the Europe-Africa theatre and about 59 million in the Asian theatre for total of about 110 million deaths [1-4]. This estimate does not include collateral excess deaths in WW2 from war-related deprivation in places like British-ruled East Africa and in impoverished areas of British-ruled South Asia outside famine-wracked Bengal and adjoining provinces.

The countries with the highest WW2 civilian plus military death tolls in descending order are (upper estimates in parentheses) include  China (40 million), the USSR (30 million), Germany (9 million), British India (7 million), Poland (6 million), Dutch East Indies (4 million), Japan (3 million),  Yugoslavia (1.7 million), French Indo-China (2.2 million), Greece (0.8 million), Roumania (0.8 million), France (0.6 million), Hungary (0.6 million), Italy (0.5 million), Japanese-ruled Korea (0.5 million), UK and British Empire (0.4 million), the US (0.4 million), Netherlands (0.3 million), and Czechoslovakia (0.3 million) [4].

In the WW2 European Holocaust  5-6 million Jews died in the WW2 Jewish Holocaust and about 1 million Gypsies (Roma) were also deliberately targeted by the Nazi Germans for killing as well as Slavs who were also regarded by the Nazis as “untermenschnen”or sub-humans (nearly  40 million dying in Slavic countries). In the WW2 Asian Holocaust the Japanese (similarly driven by racial superiority mythology ) wreaked havoc in China (40 million dead, 1937-1945) and also against Chinese in South East Asia (notably Malaysia, Singapore  and the Dutch East Indies).  

The seeds for the disaster of WW2  were sown in the disastrous WW1 (total military  casualties 10 million dead, 8 million missing, and 21 million wounded) [5], the subsequent crucifixion of Germany by the punitive 1919 Treaty of Versailles,  and the rise of totalitarian fascism and communism due to war and economic recession.  Imperial world trade (ultimately a key reason for WW1) and the return of millions of soldiers home across the world spread the post-war influenza pandemic that  infected 500 million people and killed 50-100 million [6].

As a generality,  in WW1 civilian populations were mostly not directly targeted (with the most notable exception of  the Armenian Genocide by Turkey in which 1.5 million people were killed).   In contrast, in WW2 civilian populations were extensively targeted by saturation bombing and fire-bombing of cities, disruption of food supplies by destruction of railways and shipping, deliberate extermination of particular  groups (Jews, Gypsies, Slavs and Chinese), deportation or expulsion of whole populations (e.g. Jews,  Crimean Tartars and then ethnic Germans at the end of WW2), mass rape (as in Berlin by the Red Army in 1945) and mass starvation as deliberate strategic policy (e.g. Germany in Eastern Europe and concentration camps,  Britain and Australia in the Bengal Holocaust associated with 6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death, and in punitive Anglo-American bombing and post-war occupation policies. Out of the total of 110 million people killed in WW2 perhaps only 25 million were military, this figure including deaths in captivity of 5 million mostly German or Soviet POWs.

Some of these atrocities were linked. Thus  Churchill's decision, against expert scientific advice, to bomb German cities rather than protect Atlantic shipping (see C.P. Snow's “Science and Government” [7]) killed 0.5 million German civilians,  150,000 Allied airmen and scores of thousands of Allied sailors, but also led to a shortage of shipping. Churchill's consequent 1943  decision to slash Indian Ocean shipping led to a deficit in food supplies in East Africa and South Asia, and contributed  to huge food price rises in India which in turn led to the disastrous WW2 Bengal Famine in which 6-7 million Indians perished [1-3].  Thus British historian  A.J.P. Taylor commented (1965): “Now he [Churchill] cut down sailings to the Indian Ocean from 100 a month to 40 in order to sustain his Mediterranean campaign. This decision had disastrous consequences. The harvest had failed in Bengal . Imports of food were urgently needed and did not come. A million and a half Indians died of starvation for the sake of a white man's quarrel in North Africa”[8].

In a review of Lizzie Collingham's book “The Taste of War: World War 2 and the battle for food” [9],  Lara Feigel has written: “It was Hitler's experience of it in the first world war that led to his determination to make Germany self-sufficient. The Germans exported their hunger to Russia , the British averted it through rationing and imports, while the Russians destroyed their own food supplies to starve the invading Germans. In total, 20 million people died from starvation and associated diseases; a figure equivalent to the 19.5m military deaths… According to the euphemistically named "Hunger Plan", developed by German minister Herbert Backe, the conquest of Russia would render Germany self-sufficient. The Germans would starve millions of Russians to death and turn large parts of the country into a giant farm. Backe's plan was partly successful, in that millions of Russians starved. However, as the battle dragged on, the German soldiers could barely feed themselves, let alone send enough home to feed Germany. Hitler was faced with a food crisis, and it was partly as a solution to this strategic problem that he decided to exterminate the Jews. "The Holocaust," Collingham writes, "was not just the product of an irrational ideology but the conclusion of a series of crises in the German conduct of the war”” [10].

Particularly shocking deadly atrocities of WW2 include the war criminal Nazi German invasion and devastation of neighbouring countries, Allied firebombing of German and Japanese cities  (e.g. Dresden and Tokyo), the industrial killing  in German concentration camps (e.g. Auschwitz-Birkenau), the German bombing of British cities (e.g. London, Liverpool  and Coventry),  the 1940 Soviet Katyn Massacre of 22,000 Polish military prisoners, Axis  mass executions of civilians (e.g. the Babi Yar, Aktion Erntefest and Odessa Massacres, each involving the Nazi German or Axis mass killing of about 50,000 Jews),  the Warsaw Ghetto, the 1937-1938 Nanjing Massacre (in which 300,000 Chinese were massacred by the Japanese),  the large-scale Allied and Axis killing of civilian and military prisoners  by starvation, the instant nuclear annihilation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945, and the 1942-1945 Bengali Holocaust (Indian Holocaust or  Bengal Famine) in which 6-7 million Indians were deliberately starved to death  by the British with Australian complicity for strategic reasons.

A shocking aspect of WW2 was that the killing did not stop in 1945. Thus the victorious Soviet, British and Americans deliberately starved millions of German POWs to death and millions of German and ethnic German civilians were killed by violence or deprivation. For all that German invasion of Poland precipitated  WW2 and German invasion of the Soviet Union initiated the worst blood-letting of  the European theatre, one cannot ignore  what must be called a German Holocaust  and a German Genocide in which about 9 million Germans and ethnic Germans  died from violence or from violently-imposed deprivation in the period 1941-1950. One must note here that “holocaust” involves the death of a huge number of people and “genocide” is defined by the UN Genocide Convention as “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group”.

Of course history is written by the victors and Allied atrocities like the Bengali Holocaust and the German Holocaust have been kept hidden from general public perception. Further, popular Western culture conveniently ignores non-violent deaths due to  war or hegemony (thus, for example, about 17 million people die avoidably each year in the Developing World minus China under First World hegemony) [1]. However demographic data (population, death rate, and birth rate data) provide a smoking gun for determination of avoidable death (avoidable mortality, excess death, excess mortality, deaths that should not have occurred) which is the difference between the actual deaths in a country and the deaths expected over the same period in a peaceful, decently governed country with the same demographics [1].

Such avoidable mortality analysis using post-1950 UN Population Division demographic data reveals that 1.5 billion people have died avoidably from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease since 1950, 1.4 billion of them in the Third World and over 0.6 billion in the Muslim World, a Muslim Holocaust 100 times greater than the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million killed from violence or deprivation) or the  substantially  Muslim victim  Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million starved to death by the British with Australian  complicity [1-3] and indeed the first WW2 atrocity to have been called a “holocaust” (in N.G Jog's 1944 book   “Churchill's Blind Spot: India” [11])).

When one plots the German population versus time for the period 1921-1970 [12], there is steady, quasi-linear  increase until 1939 after which there is a sharp, quasi-linear  increase between 1939-1942 (indicative of reportage of ethnic  German populations) but after 1942 there is a huge,  quasi-linear  population drop in the period 1942-1948 (indicative of huge mass mortality) followed by a resumption of quasi-linear population growth after 1948. Crude analysis of this data indicate 1942-1948 German excess deaths of 7.9 million (noting that final repatriation of surviving  German POWs occurred in the early 1950s).  By way of comparison, WW2 British civilian losses totalled 67,000 and WW2 British Empire military  losses totalled about 0.5 million. When one plots the British population versus time from 1920 to 1970  there is an uninterrupted,  quasi-linear  increase in population over  that period with no significant change in the WW2 period [13].

The 9 million dead German Holocaust  and German Genocide in a 20th-21st century genocide context.

The horrifying 20th-21st century genocide saga began with the end of the Boer War (1898-1902) during which 9,000 Boers (Afrikaaners) were killed, 24,000 were sent overseas and 28,000 Boer civilians (mainly women and children)  perished in  British concentration camps. In the 1904-1907 Namibian Genocide in German-occupied South West Africa the Germans killed about 0.1 million indigenous Hereros and Namas by shooting them or driving them into the desert to die.  The 1915-1923 Armenian Genocide (1.5 million Armenians killed by Turks) is sometimes described as the first huge 20th century genocide. However avoidable mortality of Britain's impoverished  Indian subjects was so high that despite a high birth rate the Indian population remained the same between 1911 and 1920 and Indian avoidable deaths (excess deaths) from deprivation in the period 1901-1947 totalled about 400 million [14].

Other 20th century holocausts and genocides (dates and deaths from violence or violently  imposed deprivation in parentheses) include the Influenza Epidemic (1918-1919, 50-100 million deaths with the disaster exacerbated by returning soldiers and trade in the global European empires); the Ukrainian Famine or Holodomor (1930-1933,  7 million deaths); the Stalinist  Russian Holocaust (1922-1952, 8 million execution and Gulag deaths under Stalin, excluding famine victims);  the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (1941-1945, 5-6 million deaths from violence or deprivation); the WW2 European Holocaust (1939-1945, about 34 million Slavs, 5-6 million Jews and 1 million Gypsies killed); the WW2 Bengali Holocaust or Indian Holocaust (1942-1945  Bengal Famine,  6-7 million deaths);  the WW2 Chinese Holocaust (1937-1945, 40 million deaths); the German Genocide and German Holocaust (1941-1950, 9 million deaths); the Korean Holocaust (1950-1953, 4.2 million deaths with 28% of the North Korean population killed by US bombing); Laotian Genocide (1955-1975 war with the US dropping more bombs on Laos in 1964-1975 than were dropped in WW2, 1.1 million deaths); the Algerian Genocide (1954-1962, 1.2 million deaths in the war of independence against France); the post-WW2 Chinese Holocaust (1958-1961, 20-30 million perished in famine associated with the Great Leap Forward in US-sanctioned  and Western-sanctioned China); the post-WW2 Indian Holocaust (350 million Indian avoidable deaths from deprivation post-Independence); Afghan Genocide (1978-present, 12 million deaths); the Iraqi Genocide (1914-present, 9 million deaths); the Pakistani Bengali Genocide (1971, 3 million mostly males killed in a “gendercide”);  the Cambodian Genocide (1969-1979, 3.9 million killed by US bombing and thence by the Khmer Rouge; 1975-1979, 1.2 million killed by the Khmer Rouge); the Vietnamese Genocide (1954-1975, 11.9 million deaths in US-imposed war); the Guatemala Mayan Indian Genocide (1960-1996, 0.1 million deaths ); the Rwandan Genocide (1994, 1 million Tutsis and Hutus killed); the Congolese Genocide (1960-1997, 16.5 million deaths; 1994-2005, 10.1 million deaths); the Sudanese Genocide (1955-2005 excess mortality 12.4 million); the Eritrean Genocide (1962-1993, 1.1 million deaths ); the Ethiopian Genocide (1973-2003, droughts and wars  were associated with 6 million untimely deaths); the Sri Lanka Tamil Genocide (1980- 2012, 0.1 million deaths); the Iranian Genocide (1980-1988, 1.5 million killed in the US-backed Iran -Iraq War and 2.1 million 1980-1988 excess deaths); and the Palestinian Genocide (1936-present, 2 million deaths including  0.1 million violent deaths and 1.9 million avoidable deaths from imposed deprivation ) [1].

The period from 1978 onwards has been dominated by a US War on Muslims that one can date from the 1978 US-backed overthrow of the secular and progressive government of Afghanistan (1978) (2.9 million excess Afghan deaths in the 1979-1989 war between Russian invaders and their supporters versus the US-backed Taliban and mujaheddin,  and 3.3 million excess deaths in the subsequent 1989-1999 Afghan civil war) and US backing for the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War (2.1 million 1980-1988 Iranian excess deaths). Direct US and US Alliance military involvement  from 1990 in the post-1990 Zionist-backed US War on Muslims from Africa to South Asia  amounts to a Muslim Holocaust and Muslim Genocide in which 12 million Muslims have been killed through violence or violently-imposed deprivation [15], the breakdown for notable  devastated countries being as follows: the Iraqi Genocide  (1990-present, 4.6 million deaths, 5-6 million refugees) [16]; the  Afghan Genocide (2001-present, 5.5 million, 3 million refugees) [17]; the Syrian Genocide (2011 - present, 0.2 million deaths, 9.5 million refugees) [15]; the Libyan Genocide (2011 – present, 0.1 million deaths, 1 million refugees) [15]; and the ongoing Palestinian Genocide (1990-present, 0.1 million deaths and now 7 million refugees) [18].

First World global hegemony has been associated with a Global Avoidable Mortality  Holocaust involving 1.5 billion avoidable deaths since 1950 [1].  Avoidable deaths from deprivation in the period 1950-2005 in countries  occupied by US Alliance countries in the post-1945 era  have totalled as follows: 727 million (British-occupied), 142 million (French-occupied), 82 million (US-occupied) and 24 million (Apartheid Israel-occupied). The Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust continues  with about 17 million  people dying avoidably each year in the Developing World (minus China) on Spaceship Earth with the First World in charge of the flight deck.  This horrendous annual avoidable mortality carnage is set to reach an average of 100 million avoidable deaths  per year for the 21st century if continued inaction on climate change yields 10 billion deaths this century in a near-terminal Climate Genocide [19].

Summary.

 8 May 2015 marks the 70th anniversary of the end of WW2 in Europe. WW2 was associated with the killing of about 110 million people worldwide through violence or violently-imposed deprivation, with about 50 million killed in Europe and about 60 million killed in Asia,  However  the killing continued  with 9 million German deaths in the 1941-1950 German Holocaust and German Genocide and1.5 billion mainly non-European people dying avoidably from Western-imposed deprivation since 1950 in a continuing Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust.

History  is written by the victors and consequently history  ignored yields history  repeated. Mainstream journalists , politicians and academics in the Anglosphere continue to resolutely white-washed history of Awful Truths diminishing Anglosphere “civilization”, whether the 1942-1945 Bengali  Holocaust (6-7 million Indians starved to death by the British  with Australian complicity), the 1941-1950 German Holocaust and German Genocide (9 million German deaths from violence or deprivation), the British Indian Holocaust (400 million Indian deaths from deprivation in the period 1990-1947)  or the ongoing   Global Avoidable Mortality Holocaust  (1,500 million avoidable deaths since 1950 with presently 17 million dying thus  each year in the Developing World minus China). Whether Germans, Russians, Jews, Gypsies, Bengalis, Indians or Third Worlders, men, women or children, combatants or civilians,  they are all human beings and all “created equal with an inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”.  

One Percenter greed and Mainstream media and politician mendacity in the Western Murdochracies, Lobbyocracies and Corporatocracies mean that presently it is very unlikely  that the world will be able to avoid a catastrophic plus 2  degrees Centigrade temperature rise [20, 21]. The horrendous present annual avoidable mortality carnage of 17 million avoidable deaths per year is set to reach an average of 100 million avoidable deaths  per year for the 21st century if continued inaction on climate change yields a predicted  10 billion deaths this century in a near-terminal Climate Genocide [19].

Please tell everyone you can – we cannot walk by on the other side. Peace is the only way but silence kills and silence is complicity.

References.

[1].  Gideon Polya, “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”, that includes an avoidable mortality-related history of every country from Neolithic times and is now available for free perusal  on the web: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com.au/  .

[2].  Gideon Polya, “Australia And Britain Killed 6-7 Million Indians In WW2 Bengal Famine”,  Countercurrents, 29 September, 2011: http://www.countercurrents.org/polya290911.htm .

[3]. Gideon Polya, “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability”, G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 1998, 2008, now available  for free perusal on the web: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/2008/09/jane-austen-and-black-hole-of-british.html .

[4]. “World War 11 casualties”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_II_casualties .

[5]. “World War 1”, Wikipedia:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I .

[6]. “1918 flu pandemic”, Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1918_flu_pandemic .

[7]. C.P. Snow, “Science and Government”.

[8]. A.J.P. Taylor, “English History 1914-1945”.

[9]. Lizzie Collingham, “The Taste of War: World War 2 and the battle for food”.

[10]. Lara Feigel, review of Lizzie Collingham's book “The Taste of War: World War 2 and the battle for food”,  UK Guardian, 5 February 2011: http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2011/feb/05/war-food-lizzie-cunningham-review .

[11]. N.G Jog,  “Churchill's Blind Spot: India” (New Book Company, Bombay, 1944).

[12]. “Germany,  historical demographical data of the whole country”: http://www.populstat.info/Europe/germanyc.htm .

[13].”The United Kingdom,  historical demographical data of the whole country”: http://www.populstat.info/Europe/unkingdc.htm .

[14]. Gideon Polya, “Economist Mahima Khanna wins Cambridge Prize”, MWC News, 20 November 2011: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/14978-economist-mahima-khanna.html .

[15]. “Muslim Holocaust Muslim Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/muslimholocaustmuslimgenocide/ .

[16]. Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/iraqiholocaustiraqigenocide/ .

[17]. “Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide”: http://sites.google.com/site/afghanholocaustafghangenocide/ .

[18]. “Palestinian Genocide” :  http://sites.google.com/site/palestiniangenocide/ .

[19]. “Climate Genocide”: https://sites.google.com/site/climategenocide/ .

[20]. “Are we doomed?”: https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/are-we-doomed .

[21]. "Too late to avoid global warming catastrophe": https://sites.google.com/site/300orgsite/too-late-to-avoid-global-warming .

Dr Gideon Polya has been teaching science students at a major Australian university for 4 decades. He published some 130 works in a 5 decade scientific career, most recently a huge pharmacological reference text "Biochemical Targets of Plant Bioactive Compounds" (CRC Press/Taylor & Francis, New York & London , 2003). He has published “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950” (G.M. Polya, Melbourne, 2007: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ); see also his contributions “Australian complicity in Iraq mass mortality” in “Lies, Deep Fries & Statistics” (edited by Robyn Williams, ABC Books, Sydney, 2007: http://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/ockhamsrazor/australian-complicity-in-iraq-mass-mortality/3369002#transcript ) and “Ongoing Palestinian Genocide” in “The Plight of the Palestinians (edited by William Cook, Palgrave Macmillan, London, 2010: http://mwcnews.net/focus/analysis/4047-the-plight-of-the-palestinians.html ). He has published a revised and updated 2008 version of his 1998 book “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) as biofuel-, globalization- and climate-driven global food price increases threaten a greater famine catastrophe than the man-made famine in British-ruled India that killed 6-7 million Indians in the “forgotten” World War 2 Bengal Famine (see recent BBC broadcast involving Dr Polya, Economics Nobel Laureate Professor Amartya Sen and others: http://www.open.edu/openlearn/history-the-arts/history/social-economic-history/listen-the-bengal-famine ). When words fail one can say it in pictures - for images of Gideon Polya's huge paintings for the Planet, Peace, Mother and Child see: http://sites.google.com/site/artforpeaceplanetmotherchild/ and http://www.flickr.com/photos/gideonpolya/

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