The MIT Press Reader
The Mega-Wars That Shaped World History
Renowned scientist and best-selling author Vaclav Smil meticulously charts the single largest cause of non-natural mortality in the 20th century.
WWII is the quintessential transformational war, not only because of the sweeping changes it brought to the global order but also because of the decades-long shadows it cast over the rest of the 20th century. Image: American troops approaching Omaha Beach, June 1944. Source: Wikimedia.
By: Vaclav Smil
While trying to assess the probabilities of recurrent natural catastrophes and catastrophic illnesses, we must remember that the historical record is unequivocal: these events, even when combined, did not claim as many lives and have not changed the course of world history as much as the deliberate fatal discontinuities that historian Richard Rhodes calls man-made death, the single largest cause of non-natural mortality in the 20th century. Violent collective death has been such an omnipresent part of the human condition that its recurrence in various forms conflicts lasting days to decades, homicides to democides, is guaranteed. Long lists of the past violent events can be inspected in print or in electronic databases.1
