how did Europe muster enough men for war for WWII when many men died half a generation just before WWI?

Question

this question intrigues me. i havent gotten around to asking how this could occur.

how could the participants of WW1+2 (Britain, France, Germany, Austria, Italy and Russia) muster millions of men for world for the second world war when they lost so millions in the first? i dont think there was enough men to create a baby boom in the 20s and 30s. can someone help me out?

also what was the male-female ratio of these countries in respective wars? how long did it take for these countries after both wars to replenish its male population to equilibrium?

Answer 1

Their was a generation gap between many soldiers of the second war that were children or not born yet from the first.

so all the soldiers that still lived in the second, most were either Generals, dead of old age or became later part of the last ditch effort of the Nazi's to stop the Russian advance.

So basically after WWI in 1918 the next World War was not until 1939 so you had 21 years for more troops to be trained and raised.

Thats how they managed it.

Think of this a moment, during the black plague more people died across all Europe and Asia than both World Wars yet they managed to survive and rebuild.

I guess it is nature's way of telling us or making us have population control as grotesque and horrible as it sounds. If all the people that did not die in the plague, Napaleonic Wars, WWI & WWII imagine the population load we would have today?

I am not condoning their deaths of course I am only saying maybe it is nature's way of population control on mass scale.

Answer 2

I wondered this same question for a long time.

I think the answer is that families post WWI were typically so much larger than they are today, and that they weren't losing so many in childbirth and childhood diseases as they had done previously, because of modern medicine.

WWII was mainly fought by the offspring of WWI people. If WWI hadn't come along, the population crisis would almost certainly have happened by the 1970s, rather than later.

Answer 3

As stated above... Imagine you were born in say 1920, WWII is over, as well as the Spanish flu epidemic -which in fact killed more people than the war did- and people's lives are getting back to normal hence they start reproducing again. Then you would be called up for service in 1938. Plenty of time to get training and start killing each other.

There's also the psychological effect: after a war, people start rebuilding their lives. They wanted to create a future after all the horror of war. Getting childern would be as important in that regard as the material / economic side of things, I reckon.

In spite of that, the birthrate must still have been somewhat lower than before the war (even though demographic stats show a remarkably quick recovery).

But even though many potential fathers were killed in WWI*, the soldiers that surivived the first one more or less unscatched, could equally fight in the second one, as most of them did (albeit it in a more senior rank).

* don't forget many men already had childern before they were called up (or else made them while on leave) and them getting killed afterwards is irrelevant to the birth rate. But it would leave you with a multitude of youths with a serious grudge towards 'the enemy', willing to fight whenever they got the chance. Which they of course got in the next war...

Finally, the second World War was of course a very messy affair but it was a lot more erm... 'scientific' as it were as well. They didn't sit in trenches all the time, getting butchered in droves every time some general ordered them 'over the top' in yet an another futile attempt to break the stalemate. In WWII they relied more on tanks, airplanes and other mechanical devices . Hence, battles were a lot more cost-effective so to speak. Look at the Germans Blitzkrieg for instance. Even at Iwo Jima and D-Day, the human cost was but a fraction of the people that got killed during a single day ay the Somme during WWI.

The flipside of the technologically advanced warfare that marked WWII was that a lot more civilians got killed during that war, mostly because of arial bombardments (not to mention the radical racial policies Germans and Japanese alike that resulted in the butchering of scores of civilians as well).

The Russians, however, kept on using 'human wave' tactics during WWII (going so far as to use penal batallions to clear minefield) but then again, the USSR had an seemingly endless reservoir of manpeople and its leadership wasn't exactly squeamish about using that.

As for the female / male ratio: I suppose the female casualty rate must have been neglible during WWI, but it must have a lot higher during WWII, mostly civilians of course. There are a few excellent sites where you can look at the stats, but the easiest way is to simply go to Wikipedia and look for the demographic articles on each country (e.g. France, Russia, UK etc...). They provide stats as well as a brief explanation as to why the stats came to be what they are.

I hope this'll do.

Answer 4

considering the fact that WWI ended in 1918 and the second World War started in 1939,the people who fought and died in the second World War were twenty years apart. Besides My Grandfather was in his 30's when the American Gov't drafted him in 1943(he was six when the first one ended).so more than the 19 and 20 year old kids went to war. Also he was one of nine children so families were much larger back then.

Answer 5

The European countries involved in the war were empires. They would have drawn many soldiers from their colonies. The UK brought in Australians and New Zealends, France Algerians and Moroccans, Austro-Hungarian empire took Czechs, Croats and Slovakians.

Answer 6

Well, your answer is twofold: first, WWI did not claim the same huge number of lives that WWII did; second, sex is a wonderful thing: not only do people enjoy it, it produces babies - ie, increases the race - takes more than a war to slow down the increase in humans!

Answer 7

It was the generation that was too young to fight in WW1 that made up most of the forces.