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Introduction
| Wars between nations | Civil
wars Did you know?• When, in 1900, French troops seized the Touat oasis in Morocco, they used 35,000 camels requisitioned from their colony of Algeria. • The British army lost 400,000 men during the battle of the Somme in 1916, and a further 300,000 at Passchendaele in 1917. All that was gained was a few yards of ground. • In 1918, Britain produced 8,039 tanks and 121,000 machine guns. • In 1930s' Japan, some members of the army believed that war was the 'father of creativity'. • In February 1945, when Stalin met Roosevelt and Churchill at Yalta to discuss the future of Europe, his army of 12 million was on the borders of Germany. • The atom bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 were nicknamed Little Boy and Fat Man. • The 1946 Zionist bomb attack on the King David Hotel in Jerusalem killed 91 people: 41 Arabs, 28 Britons, 17 Jews and 5 others. • In 1947, communal violence between Hindus and Muslims resulted in 1 million dead and 14 million refugees in India and Pakistan. • The Korean War cost the lives of 54,000 Americans, 900,000 Chinese and 1.8 million Koreans, and ended with more or less the same border as at the start of the conflict. • On 29 April 1975, the signal for the final American evacuation of Saigon as the Vietnam War ended was the US armed forces radio playing 'White Christmas'. See also Liberation and oppression |
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