World War II By Numbers

1.  The Allies dropped 3.4 million tons of bombs from 1939 to 1945.

2.  More Russians (soldiers and civilians) lost their lives at the 900-day Siege of Leningrad than did American and British combined in World War II.

Photo of Siege of Leningrad courtesy www.jmeshel.com. 

3.  The American factories built 650,000 Jeeps, 300,000 military aircraft and 89,000 tanks during World War II.

4.  Nazis murdered 12 million people including 6 million Jews during the Holocaust ("whole burnt").

5.  Despite risking their lives many individuals helped save Jewish lives:  Oskar Schindler, Raoul Wallenberg and Chiune Sugihara all saved thousands.  The entire Jewish community was saved in Denmark, evacuated by boat before the Nazis arrived.

Schindler's List courtesy http://libweb.lib.buffalo.edu. 

6.  In 1941, a private earned $21 a month; by 1942 his salary was raised to $50 a month.

7.  German U-boats sank 2000 Allied ships during the course of the war.

8.  In 1928, less than 3 % of Germans voted for the Nazi Party.  By 1933, Hitler came to power.  By 1938, he was voted Times' Man of the Year.

9.  A Japanese soldier hid in a Pacific island jungle for 29 years before he surrendered, not realizing the war was long over.

10.  Despite the proliference of tanks and jeeps on the Western Front, the Soviet and German armies employed over 6 million horses for land operations.

Photo of German horses stuck in the mud in Russia courtesy http://upload.wikimedia.org.