9 - Death and survival in the Second World War

Summary

On the eve of the Second World War, fears of mass death were widespread fears of a repetition of the mass slaughter of the Great War coupled with fears of the effects of aerial bombing. Death from hunger is, obviously, closely related to death from disease, not least because the widespread malnutrition that accompanied the Second World War left those affected more susceptible to disease. For all the physical and psychological effects that wartime losses had on the cohorts of people born during the first half of the twentieth century, it is at least debatable whether the Second World War significantly affected longer-term demographic trends, in particular the longer-term trend toward declining fertility. After the war was over people then had to remake their lives in a world that had been permeated by violent and public death; they had somehow to build what may be described as life after death.