Hello!
What do you think is realistic estimate of the civilian victims of the American forces in North Vietnam?
Thanks for any info!
North Vietnamese civilians: 65,000 (Kutler, Lewy, Olson, Summers, Wallechinsky) by American bombing.
Had to use cached page as can’t get on to main page.
Vietnamese civilian dead: 2,000,000–5,100,000
Cambodian civilian dead: ~700,000
Laotian civilian dead: ~50,000
Thanks, my friend!
That is one good page! I actually knew about it but could not find it my self. You made my day.
That is probably right. But most of the Vietnam casualties were causedd not by Americans, but by the opposite Vietnamese forces.
I was interested only in civilian casualties inflicted by US forces.
That is one amazing site. So much death, strangely though I found myself thinking, if none of that had happened, what would be the population of the world today?
Sad I know.
I’ve sometimes wondered about that.
No doubt a demographer could project a measurable increase in various populations if the deaths hadn’t occurred, but then you’d have to allow for various natural and man made disasters that might have pruned populations anyway.
What might be of greater impact in a way is the qualitative effect.
WWI is a perfect example with, as often said, the flower of French manhood wasted for a generation. Much the same for Britain, Russia and even Australia. Nowhere near the same impact on the US in comparison. e.g. The US lost about 115,000 dead from a population of about 90 million while Australia lost about 60,000 dead from a population of only four and a half million. It’s not hard to work out which country was going to have its development slowed the most.
There are all sorts of figures floating about, but for once Wiki has some reliable ones. Look at the table and see who really suffered population loss, e.g. Serbia and Romania, and who didn’t, being Japan. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
A lot of those dead and injured military men, and no doubt civilians, in all countries, were the best of their generation with an awful lot to give to the post war world.
Their deaths lead to all sorts of interesting speculations about the impact on later events, such as:
If America had suffered at the same rate as France or even Britain, would it have achieved the same economic dominance and capacity by 1941?
If Japan had suffered at the same rate as France, would it have had the ability to go into China and the Pacific?
Here is some more info I found:
[ol]
[li]“Moreover, it has been estimated that approximately [b]52,000[/b] civilians were killed in NVN by US air strikes. [NSSM 1 in Congressional Record, Vol. 118, No. 77 (May 11, 1972), p.E5063.]”[/li][li]"The entire Rolling Thunder campaign appears to have slain [b]52000[/b] civilians [NSSM (National Security Study Memorandum) 1 (1969)] "[/li][/ol]