Sometimes War Costs are calculated by trying to add up figures of national income but they rarely see the full picture, because the real changes are so complex. A big danger is that GDP figures might make an American person’s income twenty times more important than an African person’s, which would obviously be false. This study uses a number of important economic indicators – economic disruption, working years, deaths and injuries, property destruction and market failure to guesstimate the overall costs. All assessments need sober judgements and will be approximate but they give us some idea of the full costs of war, something that is actually not much considered. The topic is far bigger than this study. We have estimates of the cost to the US of its Middle East Wars of $6 trillion or more, but no-one to my knowledge has attempted to estimate the cost to Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, etc of the wars they have had visited on them. The real costs are almost impossible to value. So here is an attempt to weigh the WW2 costs through these intermediaries
ECONOMIC DISRUPTION.
The Second World War lasted six years, though states entered and left it at different times. But six years of disruption is quite a reasonable figure. The USSR and the US were preparing long before they entered and for a year or two afterwards several countries were completely stunned by the destruction. Japan was attacking China from 1937. Assessing disruption is difficult. Many people work and produce mainly to live, but for a long time trade, housing, property, towns, cities, arts, education, culture, sport, holidays, clothes, furniture, literature, much media and other areas of normal life partly mainly shut down through War. There are two caveats. First the United States was less dominated by the War than the main other belligerents, and it depends on whether you focus on population or GDP as to the weight you give it. I prefer population. Second, South America and Africa (away from North Africa) were possibly les affected by the War initially. Moreover, the big recession in world trade had started with the Great Depression, so the cutting of trade was not a simple consequence either. The public figures on this are not very helpful either. They are poorly collected in most countries. Many would feel their lives were on hold for much of the War. Others would get on with life in the circumstances, doing different things.
The guesstimate here, taking into account the things that ceased, the diversion of resources to the War, the things that were not possible because of War and the closing down of economic and wider activities that went on, is that 60% of the normal economies of the world were disrupted for six years. This figure is chosen because of the vast areas of ordinary life which were closed down, the populations of the USSR and eastern Europe, China, India and East Asia who were made homeless, on the move, facing fairly total disruption, famine and forced labour, weighed against the areas where disruption was smaller. Notice, disruption is what it says, the things that cannot happen because of war. For what it is worth, that comes out at 3.6 years of world economic life lost.
WORKING YEARS.
Another line of approach is to consider the work and labour loss during and after the war. Of course, the real loss, inestimable in value was the loss of persons, but we are undertaking to sift out economic impacts. It was not just the immediate loss of labour in the War, devastating though that was. Through deaths and other processes it affected the world economy for over a quarter of a century. Two countries were especially affected – the USSR and China – something not really understood in the West. . The USSR lost at least 25 million of mainly young people and China 8-14 million. So, let us categorize the main areas of loss. Obviously, these are crude estimates, but in each case, there are reasons to suspect they are underestimates.
First, troops were fighting during the War rather than doing normal sustenance work. In different countries there were some 70 -80 million troops serving for different periods between 1939 and 1945 when each state joined and ended the War. We take a five-year average. We estimate this at 350 million troop years of diverted labour (5 times 70m). Because they were diverted from learning other skills than killing people which they had to pick up later, we add another 20 million years. They were usually young workers entering the work training period. This gives 370 million overall, and this is additional to the disruption, though linked to it, because it was usually other states troops who caused national disruption. This was an absence of work which often women and the old tried to remedy.
They were backed up by those helping the War Effort, or those on the Home Front as it was sometimes called. Those involved in the “war effort” – weapons, troop equipment, admin, transport – rather than the ordinary business of living are difficult to estimate. In Britain a third (13m) of the civilian population (40m) was engaged in war work in 1944. Other countries would probably be more labour intensive and Britain was fighting in North Africa and Italy between Dunkirk and D Day. This was about three per member of the armed forces. Assume worldwide war effort workers at three per fighting person, and it amounts to 210m times 5 or 1, 050 million years. Another tranche of work surrounds perhaps 30 million worldwide who were working for, say, two years on average before the war on weapons and other war related work. In Germany and the USSR it was going on from 1933 on a considerable scale, similarly in Japan, and the Spanish Civil War was seen as a testing ground for munitions and bombing. Add in Britain, France, Italy and other countries preparing, and we have a further 60 million years of war work, probably an underestimate.
In total this is roughly 1,480 million years. The world population at the time was 2.3 billion. The world population-employment ratio is usually something under a half, but that tends to be paid employment and possibly more were “subsistence” employed. So, it seems reasonable to take 60% employment as reasonable. This means an additional economic loss of over a year’s world-wide economic activity.
DEATHS AND INJURIES.
Deaths. There were 70-80 million war-related deaths in WW2. Most of the armed forces who died and those in Concentration Camps and other massacres were young. It seems reasonable to conclude that 70 million times 20 years of later working life was snuffed out by the loss of these people. Obviously, the age distribution around the world was distorted by this missing generation, and 20 years seems a reasonable, or under, approximation of the work loss. This comes out at a further 1,400 million work years. Given parents and teachers had invested their time in bringing up these usually young people, a token 70 million times 2 years is added on. It could easily be three or more. This gives the total loss of work before and after the war through deaths at 1,540 million years. We take this at another year’s work loss of economic activity.
Those injured amount to some 25 million. The range of injuries vary greatly, but many of them were debilitating in terms of work and cost the work of others in care and medical support. If we guesstimated four years of work loss for each of them it would be almost insulting, but that we do. That is a further 100 million work years. In addition, there were those suffering trauma. It was different from the “Shell shock” of WW1, but the traumas of Concentration Camps, bombing, invasion and war slave labour were deep and especially in the USSR and China were almost incalculable. We call it PTSD now and recognize the costs more. We even understand secondary PTSD as a further cost. Again, we guesstimate a two year work and healthy living loss for a hundred million people, a further 200 million work years. This amounts to, say 20% of a world economic year. This is 1.2 years of economic destruction through death, injury and trauma, actually spread over the next twenty or thirty years.
THE DESTRUCTION AND DAMAGE.
Thus far, we have not calculated the damage and destruction caused by the War. It was, of course, the first great bombing war. Bombs of all types were used systematically to destroy ships, railways, roads, bridges, dams, factories, ports, cities and towns. The scale of this destruction varied from country to country and with the state of the War. London was bombed and Dresden was bombed, but so too were Stalingrad, Rotterdam, Hamburg, Milan, Turin, most Polish, Soviet, Chinese, Japanese and many other cities. Britain dropped about 1.3 million tons of bombs and the US one and a half million tons. Germany, the USSR and Japan also bombed heavily and the explosions destroyed efficiently. They were aimed at high value targets. In the case of Japan and many German cities where wood was used extensively burning multiplied the effect. Then, of course, there were Hiroshima and Nagasaki. France which experienced moderate destruction – a description which is almost obscene – estimates its destruction at three years of GDP. That is, it would take three years of economic activity in the whole economy, aside eating and a few essentials, to restore all that was destroyed to full working order. In some locations old buildings were lovingly restored, while in others, like Rotterdam, a new conception of city centre was developed. For example, the cost of rebuilding cities, towns, factories, roads, infrastructure in the devastated countries is nearly inestimable. Workers slaved to recreate the pre-war housing stock for decades. I remember having seen the poor quality of some Eastern European housing decades later and judging that this was “Communist” housing, but then realising with shame exactly the challenge of building housing for a vast population without Marshall Aid to survive east European winters after the devastation in 1945. The destruction was epic. Perhaps the three year GDP guess will do for the overall impact of war damage. In the USSR, Poland, China, Japan, Germany and elsewhere it was far more. Areas which were really hit faced an awesome task which was one of the taken-for-granted but most outstanding achievements of the late 40s and 50s. So, the further waste was to throw away three years of the world economy in destruction of infrastructure, housing, cities and factories. It is notable that the United States, the one major country to avoid this kind of destruction, suddenly jumped in 1945 to being half of the total world economy in terms of GDP, and its wealth was suddenly unrivalled.
MARKETS, TRADE, GOVERNMENT EFFICIENCY.
The business of economics – markets, trade, sea transport, distribution, the efficiency of tools, logistics, trust in trading relations and many other factors are deeply damaged by War. Obviously, a lot of merchant shipping was sunk. Other bulk transport systems required months or years of work. Harvesting, storing, moving, refrigerating food was difficult and rationing was practiced through beyond 1950. International trade was depressed. Marshall Aid was only introduced in 1948, three years after the end of the War because trade was so stifled, and the USSR was excluded from it in an act of spitefulness against the state that had done most to defeat Hitler. The organisation of government in economic life was destroyed in Germany, Italy, Eastern Europe, China (which then had a destructive Civil War), Japan and many other states. For a number of years external control operated until national governments were able to reform. It seems reasonable to assess this as another year of world economic loss.
FIRST COUNT THE COST.
There were other costs to war. The activity of War, although among the Allies it was bent to destroying Fascism, was destructive, as all war activity is destructive. Even Churchill said the War could have been prevented as late as 1935-6 and certainly it could have been prevented at the 1932 Geneva Disarmament Conference if the Hoover proposals had been accepted by Britain. But instead we entered the great War waste. Here the estimate is that WW2 cost 9.8 years of the world’s full economic activity, nearly four years longer than the duration of the War itself, a tenth of the century. The generation of the blighted years has died or is dying. They knew something of the waste directly. Seeing it at a distance is more difficult, and this figure merely conveys something of what it was. Understanding how to end war is necessary, for we have long been building towards another big one. Count the cost. The words of Jesus warn us.