The changes are endless, each with its own merits. Today, Mr. Haiyou continues to explain the world history of the World War II period.
World War II was a giant meat grinder that killed more than 90 million people worldwide. Of these 90 million people, the Soviets accounted for 26.6 million, the highest death toll.
Because the people who fight the war are all young and middle-aged, so the dead are also young and middle-aged, and the last left are the old and weak women and children. Throughout World War II, Europe suffered from a serious shortage of labor, and the Soviet Union even transported 600,000 Japanese Kwantung Army prisoners to work as coolies.
Of those countries that have suffered population losses, there is one small country that has suffered particularly badly, and that small country is Estonia.
According to later statistics, after the end of World War II, the country, for every 100 people, only about 25 men, that is, a war, the country's men lost about 2/3.
Estonia became independent after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, and was annexed by the Soviet Union in 1940 before becoming a Soviet republic.
Why is Estonia's population loss so devastating? Let's take a look at the specific locations in Estonia.
Estonia is located on the eastern shore of the Baltic Sea, on the southern shore of the Gulf of Finland and bordered by the Gulf of Riga to the southwest. At that time, the German lightning annexed Poland and used it as a springboard to attack the Soviet Union.
The Germans attacked the Soviet Union and divided into three roads: north, central and southern. The northern route took the baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) and attacked Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg). In the middle, Belarus attacked Moscow, and in the south, Ukraine attacked Kiev.
Among them, Estonia happened to be on the main battlefield of the German northern front attacking the Soviet Union. As the main position of the Soviet-German war, Estonia was severely damaged, and men with potential resistance became the target of killing.
At the same time, because Estonia was on the front line of the Soviet-German battlefield, and the population of the three Baltic countries was much denser than that of the central and eastern Parts of the Soviet Union, the three Baltic countries were therefore also a major recruiting ground for the Soviet Union during World War II, and a large number of young men were sent to the positions.
Later, due to the huge population consumption, almost all young and middle-aged men in the Soviet Union, who could carry guns, went to the front. But most of them never returned, and they all died on the battlefield.
After the end of World War II, the proportion of men and women in the Soviet Union was seriously imbalanced, and the three Baltic states were even more serious. A large number of women cannot find a partner, and the remaining men are mostly old, weak, sick and disabled, which is even worse for countries with severe economic damage.
Faced with this situation, the Soviet Union at that time proposed two solutions:
One was immigration, that is, the migration of some men from other parts of the Soviet Union to enrich the labor force. However, this method is also a drop in the bucket, why?
More than 26 million people died in the Soviet Union during World War II, most of them men, which was fatal to the Soviet Union, which had many men and girls in itself, and there were not many men in other places, and the number of people who could immigrate to the past was very small.
Second, since it was difficult to emigrate elsewhere, the Soviet authorities thought of another solution, and that was prisoners of war.
After World War II, the Soviets captured millions of Prisoners of War in German troops. Prisoners of war are also locked up, and if they can be used, it is a powerful force.
So the Soviet authorities came up with the idea of using prisoners of war to help restore production and multiply. The three Baltic states, especially Estonia, kept many German prisoners of war behind, giving them houses, land, and hukou.
Of course, the most powerful benefit is to send a daughter-in-law, "Old Xu, do you want a wife?" As long as you open the golden mouth, I will send it to you. ”
Of course, the policy at that time was not really to send a daughter-in-law, but as long as you went there, marrying a daughter-in-law was a fairly easy thing, and on the whole, it was almost like sending.
Driven by this policy, many German prisoners of war joined Estonia, so much so that today a large proportion of Estonian German-speaking people make up.
In addition, thanks to this policy, Estonia's post-war reconstruction was carried out very rapidly, economic activity resumed rapidly and the country developed rapidly.
Now, Estonia is a highly developed capitalist country, known as the "Baltic Tiger" because of its high-growth economy and developed information technology, and the World Bank also lists Estonia as a high-income country.
This is largely thanks to the policy of using prisoners of war in those years.