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The Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars.Cormac ÓGráda, (Princeton University Press, 2024. Pp. 520. ISBN 9780691258751. Hbk £40)

Year: 2025
Type: book-review
Abstract: The Hidden Victims: Civilian Casualties of the Two World Wars is ambitious in scope but careful in execution.Best known for his pioneering work on famine, Ó Gráda now moves beyond it to address broader global themes -civilian casualties from multiple causes in the two world wars.The transition feels natural.He is well placed to apply his expertise to wartime civilian deaths.His command of demographic, historical, and economic dynamics lends the book authority, reinforced by judicious use of secondary literature.Although examples digress as far afield as Julius Caesar, the Taiping Heavenly Kingdom, and Russia's invasion of Ukraine, they are deployed without ostentation or faux-encyclopedism.From the outset, the study defines its agenda: 'Many histories of war are military histories -but not this one.It focuses instead on the millions of civilians killed and injured during the twentieth century's two world wars' (p. 1).Although the title suggests a focal point on the two world wars, Ó Gráda's temporal frame is broader.He situates the Second World War in a continuum beginning with Japan's invasion of Manchuria in 1931 and the interbellum conflicts in Ethiopia, Spain, and China.He traces vestiges of the First World War into the Russian Civil War and the Greco-Turkish War.The aftermath of the Second World War, too, extended into 1946-7, underscoring porous boundaries.Around this axis, Ó Gráda constructs a wide-ranging synthesis.The book comprises 11 thematic chapters, with the Introduction and Conclusion being notable for their clarity, brevity, and caution against relativizing suffering or constructing hierarchies of victimhood.Chapters 1-3 address the area where Ó Gráda is most authoritative -famines.He challenges the conventional tallies of 9.7 million civilian deaths in the First World War and 25.5 million in the Second World War as too low, arguing that war-induced famines alone may have claimed 30 million lives or morefar exceeding bombing, massacres, or genocide.This is the book's most original contribution: a reminder of the occluded cost of famine.The strength of Ó Gráda's treatment lies in its genuinely global perspective.He provides concise accounts of European episodes while extending the canvas to Persia, the Ottoman Empire, Africa, colonial famines, Java, Vietnam, India, and China.
DOI: 10.1111/ehr.70079
Author: Mikhail Nakonechnyi
Language: English
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W7108338888
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