WW2 facts and figures

1. More German civilians were killed in two days of bombing (Feb. 13-15, 1945) than American soldiers died in the entire war on all fronts.

2. Nearly as many French were killed by American and British bombings (67,000) as died in combat with German forces (87,000). While the latter were armed combatants, the former were all innocent civilians.

3. A total of 148,000 Latvians volunteered for service in the Waffen SS during WW2, out of a population of a little more than one million - in all 12 percent of the population. That's about as much as a nation can furnish in wartime.

When the Soviets occupied neighboring Lithuania, more than 350,000 Lithuanians -- a full 10% of the population -- were deported to Soviet slave labor camps in Siberia, never to be seen again. To paraphrase Solzhenitsyn, whole nations were dumped down the sewer pipes. That makes for an interesting comparison of the two states and systems, doesn't it?

4. At the outbreak of the German-Soviet war in summer of 1941, the Germans were equipped with 3,350 tanks compared to the Soviet Union's 24,000 - 7 times the German total and 21 times the amount considered sufficient for an adequate defense by the standard military ratio 3:1 attacker to defender.