May some of these brave men and women return to the USA with a desire to make this country a better place, wherever they direct their efforts.

The total population of the US in 1862 was a little more than 30 million. That's about 1/10 of our population today.

So, extrapolating 23,620 into today's population would be 236,200 deaths. Astonishing.

I always imagined what it was like for Lincoln every day to go to the telegraph office in the W.H. and receive daily the reports of 23,000 killed one day, 12,000 the next.

Or was he, to emply the modern vernacular, "desensitized" to it? Could he imagine the carnage, the destruction, the loss? As we know, the nation was shocked when it saw Brady's photographs (or more accurately the photographs taken by his assistants since Brady was nearly blind by the time of the Civil War).

SMG

I constantly run into people convinced this has been the bloodiest US war ever. The lack of historical knowledge by these people is frightening.

In late April 1944, a troop ship that was rehearsing for the D Day landing was torpedoed off the coast of Ireland by a German U-Boat. Over 700 men went down with the ship. Their deaths were not reported until several weeks after D Day.

The real shame and tragedy about the deaths in Iraq is that there are so many Americans who cannot look at their loss as anything more than a meaningless waste. Those who are not willing to fight for freedom, or to honor those who will do not deserve freedom.

I believe that 23,500 was the number of casualites, which includes the number of wounded. The number of deaths was somewhere in the 5 or 6 thousand range.

Half of those numbers at Antietam don't count. They were enemy casualties.

Robert, I clicked here to post that very event. I've been using it in talking to people.

Another one, that I only know by memory, is that apperently around 700 US troops (again!) were killed in the Falaise pocket in the summer of '44 when the US Air Corps unloaded on them, thinking they were a German division.

For comparison, the British casualties during the first Mesopotamian campaign (1914-17)
were 98,000; the latter was 500 in 1920 terms

Ali: We count them all.

A couple of months ago I was reading in one of my WWII books that a couple of weeks after the Normandy invasion, an Allied plane accidentally dropped a bomb on US forces in France and killed approximately 500 US soldiers (including a general).

I hate to minimize the signifance of our loses but a little perspective is needed.

>I constantly run into people convinced this has
>been the bloodiest US war ever. The lack of
>historical knowledge by these people is
>frightening.

Well, when the Universe was created in 1968 with VIETNAM! VIETNAM! VIETNAM! VIETNAM! ...

Anybody remember the movie Gettysburg? One of the trailers was interesting:

On three days in 1863, more Americans were killed in war than in all ten years of Vietnam.

Scene -- Lee to Longstreet: "I left my spectacles on the table. What's the name of this here town?"

Title block comes up, in 19th-century Copperplate font:

GETTYSBURG

A 24-7 television news changes everything, probably by at least a factor of ten, so the public preception today is that Iraq is equal to Vietnam c. late 1966, when we had about 8,500 dead (and 50,000 to come).

As for worst day losses, the British Empire lost about 20,000 dead and 40,000 wounded on July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme. No ANZAC or Canadian divisions were involved, so probably 90% of the casualties were from England, Scotland, Wales, or Ireland, which I doubt had 50 million people at the time. I don't know what the German losses were that day, but certainly less than half the British and probably less than one-third.

George:

Battle of Borodino: 77,000 casualties in just a few hours.

Proportionately, the Revolution was the deadliest war Americans took part in, by far.

The USSR suffered over 19K deaths, per day, military and civilian, every day for four years, 1941-45.

The impact was, perhaps, less comparatively because unlike, say, Britain in 1939-45, the USSR was not starting from a daily rate of 0.

Nobody imagines, though, that Stalin reacted to the numbers as we think Lincoln did.

But even that pales in comparison to Paraguay's results in the Gran Chaco War, in which the male population went down from abou 2 million to 25,000.

>Paraguay's results in the Gran Chaco War, in
>which the male population went down from about 2
>million to 25,000.

Also known as "The Green Hell War".

Quoted as a precedent by Japanese War Minister Anami in August 1945 when he was trying to argue the Showa Emperor and Supreme War Council out of deciding for surrender.

Harry:

Out of the 27 million or so deaths you mentioned, how many resulted from German bullets and how many from Soviet ones?

Don't know.

It wasn't all bullets. The million or so in Leningrad mostly starved but should be in the German column.