Heritage

120 heritage for peace and reconciliation | manual for teacherContentsSome figures:• The naval war was responsible for a great proportion of the human and economicloss. The British naval forces involved in the First World War, for example,encompassed around 11,000 warships and auxiliaries, of which 250 warshipsand 850 auxiliaries were lost. This includes 50 dreadnought and battle cruisers,41 pre-dreadnoughts, 58 large cruisers, 119 light cruisers, 17 aircraft carriers,550 destroyers, 109 torpedo boats, 272 sloops and 39 monitors. The humanparticipation has been estimated at 640,000 officers and men, of which some74,289 regular sailors and 15,313 merchant navy sailors and members of fishingcrews perished. 1 The total number of Commonwealth First World War deathsfrom the war was 1,115,597. 2• In comparison, the German Imperial Navy lost 49 destroyers and scuttled 52warships of the German fleet at Scapa Flow. It lost 192 submarines (sunk orinterned). More than 34,836 German crew members were killed. The totaldeath 3 toll for Germany 4 was 2,462,897 military war dead. However, a further424,000 civilian deaths are estimated to have resulted from malnutrition anddisease caused mainly by the naval blockade of Germany. To this must be addedabout 200,000 deaths caused by the influenza epidemic. 5Can anything be more ridiculous than that a man hasa right to kill me because he lives on the other sideof the water, and because his ruler has a quarrel withmine, although I have none with him?Blaise Pascal1 www.naval-history.net/Cr03-20-00WW1-NREF.htm2 The total number of Commonwealth First World War dead has been reported as 1,115,597 (UK and formercolonies 886,939; Undivided India 74,187; Canada 64,976; Australia 61,966; New Zealand 18,052;South Africa 9,477 - Annual Report Commonwealth War Graves Commission 2010–2011) www.cwgc.org/learning-and-resources/publications/annual-report.aspx3 The official German medical war history listed 2,036,897 military war dead, including: Army 1,900,876,Navy 34,836, Colonial troops 1,185 and an estimated 100,000 missing and presumed dead (Heeres Sanitätsinspektionim Reichskriegsministerium (1934). Sanitätsbericht über das deutsche Heer im Weltkriege1914–1918. Vol. 3, Sec 1. Berlin. pp. 12-14).4 See Fn. 1.5 L. Grebler, 1940, The Cost of the World War to Germany and Austria-Hungary. Yale University Press, p.78.