Social and Demographic Effects, and Assessing Why Sides Won or Lost

The deepest effects of war are often the least visible on a map: the transformation of societies and the reshaping of populations. This final lesson examines the social consequences of twentieth-century war, including the changing role of women and the fate of displaced peoples, before turning to the analytical question that ties the whole unit together—how historians assess why one side won and another lost.

Demographic effects

War kills, displaces, and reshapes populations on an enormous scale. The First World War killed roughly nine to ten million soldiers and many civilians, and its death toll was compounded by the influenza pandemic that spread in its aftermath. The Second World War was the deadliest conflict in history, with total deaths commonly estimated at fifty to sixty million o