A destroyed church in Coutances, France on August 14, 1944

In addition to utterly devastating Eatern and Central Europe the fighting between the Anglo-American alliance and Germany left Western and Southern Europe in economic ruin. Moreover, the Western and Southern European civilian populations suffered far more than the military combatants. For example, France lost 350,000 dead, and after the War was left with only 20% of its pre-war stock of locomotives and one-third its pre-war merchant fleet. The Dutch suffered 204,000 dead and lost 60% of their pre-war canal, rail and road transport. The Norwegians lost 14% of their pre-war capital stock. The Greek death toll reached 430,000 and Greece lost two thirds its merchant fleet, 1,000 villages destroyed, and one-third Greece's forests. Italy lost 1.2 million of its homes and its economy was in shambles; as late as the 1950's one quarter of the Italian population lived in poverty. Yugoslavia was in ruins, having suffered the worst of any Western or Southern European country; ten percent of its pre-war population dead (1.4 million people), 50% of its livestock dead, 20% of its homes destroyed, and a third of all industrial wealth gone.

Picture Courtesy US National Archives, ARC identifier no. 196303