Bombed Out Of House and Home

More firepower was used in World War II than in any other conflict in history. Since the heaviest fighting was in heavily populated areas, one of the big losses (aside from the civilians themselves) was homes. Many of the homes were centuries old, and often the loss of a family’s home led to some of the residents dying of exposure. These are the countries that saw the greatest destruction of private homes.

Private Dwellings Destroyed

2. Soviet Union: 3,000,000
3. Japan: 2,251,900
4. Poland: 516,000
5. Great Britain: 456,000
6. France: 255,500
7. Germany: 255,000
8. Netherlands: 82,530

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The figure for the Soviet Union is a conservative estimate. These other nations actually kept track of the destruction. For every home destroyed, there were two to four or more that were damaged to some extent (in Japan, destroyed homes were twice the number of those damaged because of the highly flammable nature of their construction material and the use of fire bombs). Naturally, there was equal (if not more) destruction to businesses and government structures. Not all of this was from aircraft attack; all those tanks and artillery generally tore up the landscape and anything that was built on it.