Born Then1939–1945
Life during the World War II on the Eastern Front
Be born in a place it hit, a few years before it began, and see what it did to five ordinary lives.
What it meant for ordinary people
The war between Germany and the Soviet Union, after the partition of Poland in 1939, was the deadliest conflict in history. Occupation policy aimed to starve and enslave the population; Poland lost about one in six of its people and Ukraine and Belarus nearly as many.
Deaths: about 24–27 million Soviet citizens and about 5.6–5.8 million Polish citizens.
How hard it hits each person in the game (risk of death, of being conscripted, of leaving) comes from scholarly estimates.
Around the same time
- Third plague pandemic 1855–1930
- Sixth cholera pandemic 1899–1923
- Korea under Japanese rule 1910–1945
- Mexican Revolution 1910–1920
- Great Migration of Black Americans 1916–1970
- Russian Revolution and Civil War 1917–1922
- 1918 influenza pandemic 1918–1920
- Turkish War of Independence and population exchange 1919–1923
- Irish War of Independence and Civil War 1919–1923
- Great Depression 1929–1939
- Dust Bowl 1930–1939
- Holodomor 1932–1933
- Italian invasion and occupation of Ethiopia 1935–1941
- Great Purge 1936–1938
- Spanish Civil War 1936–1939
- Second Sino-Japanese War 1937–1945
- World War II on the Eastern Front 1939–1945
- World War II in Western Europe 1939–1945
- World War II for the United States, Canada and Australia 1939–1945
- The Holocaust 1941–1945
- World War II in Japan 1941–1945
- Japanese occupation of the Philippines 1941–1945
- Japanese occupation of Indonesia, Burma and Vietnam 1942–1945
- Bracero program and Mexican migration to the United States 1942–2007
- Bengal famine of 1943 1943–1944
- Indonesian War of Independence 1945–1949
- Chinese Civil War 1946–1949
- Partition of India 1947–1948
- Apartheid 1948–1994
- Division of Germany 1949–1990