The Great War’s toll

I’ve been reading Blood, Toil, Tears and Sweat: The Dire Warning by John Lukacs about Churchill’s speeches in May 1940. It is well worth reading; a fine example of microcosmic history and short at only a 140 odd pages.

Reading it one particular fact stood out to me:

“the British their soldiers and sailors and airmen and bombed and burned civilians together, lost fewer lives during six years than during the four years of the First World War.”

I knew that the military casualties in Europe were far heavier in the First World War than the Second. But I’d have thought that the war in Asia and the civilian casualties at home would have meant that more Britons died in the Second World War than the First. The statistic reminds one of just how bloody the Western Front was.