A really interesting video giving visual representations of the deaths during World War II. Watching this raises many interesting questions.
How do these visual representations give us a different sense of the war than history books would or simply looking at numbers on a page?
How can we accurately communicate truth?
What does it mean that after a certain point, numbers get so large that that we lose any sense of reality with them?
What is also interesting is that our sense of World War II is painted by our involvement in the war but when you look at the number of people killed, the United States was far from the worst off nation. Because the Soviet Union became our enemy after the war was over, we never really learn about (or care about) how disastrous the war was for them or how much they lost during the war.
How does our historical perspective distort our sense of accuracy and historical truth? What role do our emotions play when it comes to topics like this?
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