World War II Memorials And Monuments

World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history. Unlike World War I, which resulted in mostly military casualties, World War II saw civilian deaths outnumber soldier deaths three to one, reflecting the rise of aerial warfare that made it possible to bomb faraway cities and towns.

World War II East Coast Memorial in New York, USA

Order Digital Image 12.564 on A4 scale

Denkmälern aus dem Zweiten Weltkrieg

Another uniquely horrifying aspect of the conflict was the Nazis’ state-sponsored mass murder of six million Jews. The Holocaust, as it came to be known, involved eleven million murders total, including five million gay people, Roma people, people with disabilities, and others whom the Nazis deemed inferior.

Monumentos de la Segunda Guerra Mundial

Monuments Commémoratifs de la Seconde Guerre Mondiale

In Europe, occupation came under two forms. In Western, Northern, and Central Europe (France, Norway, Denmark, the Low Countries, and the annexed portions of Czechoslovakia) Germany established economic policies through which it collected roughly 69.5 billion reichsmarks (27.8 billion US dollars) by the end of the war; this figure does not include the sizeable plunder of industrial products, military equipment, raw materials and other goods. Thus, the income from occupied nations was over 40 percent of the income Germany collected from taxation, a figure which increased to nearly 40 percent of total German income as the war went on.

אנדרטאות ומונומנטים של מלחמת העולם השנייה

第二次世界大戦の記念碑と記念碑

In the East, the intended gains of Lebensraum were never attained as fluctuating front-lines and Soviet scorched earth policies denied resources to the German invaders. Unlike in the West, the Nazi racial policy encouraged extreme brutality against what it considered to be the “inferior people” of Slavic descent; most German advances were thus followed by mass executions. Although resistance groups formed in most occupied territories, they did not significantly hamper German operations in either the East or the West until late 1943.

Pomników z II Wojny Światowej

мемориалов Второй мировой войны

In Asia, Japan termed nations under its occupation as being part of the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, essentially a Japanese hegemony which it claimed was for purposes of liberating colonised peoples. Although Japanese forces were sometimes welcomed as liberators from European domination, Japanese war crimes frequently turned local public opinion against them. During Japan’s initial conquest, it captured 4,000,000 barrels (640,000 m³) of oil (~550,000 tonnes) left behind by retreating Allied forces; and by 1943, was able to get production in the Dutch East Indies up to 50 million barrels (7,900,000 m³) of oil (~6.8 million tonnes), 76 per cent of its 1940 output rate.