Book Review: Considered Expendable: The Human Cost of Industrial War by Darrin E. Knowles (© 2026) reviewed by Ace Hoffman

Considered Expendable: The Human Cost of Industrial War by Darrin E. Knowles, © 2026

Reviewed by Ace Hoffman, July 2026

Knowles' most recent book meticulously documents the massive civilian casualties that occurred during the two World Wars of the previous century (there are over 230 references to source materials, in a multitude of languages).

During these conflicts millions of civilians died, often in especially horrific ways, and often as the direct result of decisions made by their own leaders.

In WWI, civilian and military casualties were approximately equal: Between 8 and 13 million civilian casualties and 9.7 million military casualties (on all sides combined). These figures to not include deaths from the 1918 influenza pandemic and post-war malnutrition which brings the overall total to approximately 30 million or more.

But bad as The Great War was, WWII was far more costly for humanity: Approximately 50 to 55 million civilians and 25 million military personnel died.

WWII also unleashed a new weapon (atomic bombs) which can make the previous genocides seem small in comparison to what WWIII might be like. (If anyone's left around to compare it.*)

Considered Expendable explores the military tactics, philosophy, and technologies that contributed to civilian deaths: Appropriation of food and shelter; harsh reprisals for resistance; destruction of civilian infrastructure (such as water supplies); intentional extermination of ethnic and religious groups.

Knowles covers well-documented events such as the Armenian Genocide of WWI and the Holocaust of WWII. Also well covered were gruesome experiments with biological weapons performed by the Japanese on the Chinese population — and the fact that the perpetrators were never punished by any court because (it was revealed many years later) the Americans traded the information gained from those experiments for clemency for the perpetrators. (In general, the winning side didn't punish itself for its own war crimes as defined by international conventions.)

Some countries purposely caused the deaths of their own populations, either by appropriating supplies and land or by military action. For example, during WWII the Chinese destroyed dams on the Yellow River to delay the Japanese advance. However, Chinese civilians were given no warning about the flooding and as many as 900,000 civilians were drowned, another four million were displaced, and millions more died in the famine that followed.

Knowles also considers the long term affects of wartime conditions on civilian populations (such as malnutrition), and various post-war actions that extended the death toll of both wars. For example, an estimated 424,000 German civilian deaths during WWI are attributed to malnutrition as a result of the naval blockade during the conflict, followed by an additional 100,000 German civilian deaths due to continuing the blockade from November 1918 when fighting stopped until July 1919 when the Treaty of Versailles was signed.

Knowles also describes how the land itself was devastated by years of war. In Europe, there are many WWI battlefields where agriculture is still impossible, and places where agriculture resumed but farmers still risk death from unexploded artillery shells more than 100 years after the end of the war.

Considered Expendable covers civilian deaths resulting from specific battles including Verdun and the Siege of Leningrad. Knowles makes civilian deaths personal by sharing stories of individuals: Both those who perished (where information is available) and those who survived. He describes artifacts that have been preserved in memory of the dead, such as the diary of a young girl who documented her family's deaths, one by one, during the Siege of Leningrad before dying herself in 1944 from the years of disease and malnutrition. He describes cemeteries and monuments to those who perished, and puts the number of people commemorated in perspective — often soldiers and civilians were buried in mass graves or their bodies are still buried in unmarked graves where they fell.

Knowles acknowledges that although many civilians were completely innocent victims, others were active collaborators with the military. In this context, he explains his rational for including all civilian deaths in the accounting: People died and their lives must be counted in the cost of war. He also points out that any group of civilian victims will include infants and children — often disproportionately since they are the most vulnerable.

Of course this is a very difficult, haunting book to read. But it's an important book, because it provides a vital perspective on the true human costs of war.

* (See this author's recent review of Daniel Ellsberg's 2017 book The Doomsday Machine and upcoming review of On Thermonuclear War by Herman Kahn).

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Contact information for the author of this newsletter:

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Ace Hoffman
Carlsbad, California USA
Author, The Code Killers:
An Expose of the Nuclear Industry
Free download: acehoffman.org
Blog: acehoffman.blogspot.com
YouTube: youtube.com/user/AceHoffman
Email: ace [at] acehoffman.org
Founder & Owner, The Animated Software Company

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