In his synthetically magisterial The Second World Wars: How the First Global Conflict Was Fought and Won (New York: Basic Books, 2017), Victor Davis Hanson estimates that some 65 million people perished as a result of this apocalyptic conflict. The greatest number of victims, some 15 million, were Chinese. Then there was the Holocaust, a very successful effort by Nazi Germany to exterminate about 6 million Jews, practically all civilians. Its uniqueness lay in the industrial method of killing and the scope of the crime. Virtually, all Jews were targeted: children, women, men, young and elderly alike. Although other ethno-cultural groups were also singled out for mass murder as “sub-human” (Untermenschen), the Christian Poles for example, the annihilation of the Jews was the most comprehensive exterminationist project of the Third Reich.
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