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Germans 1945/47 How realiable are Rummels calculations)?

One example from
Rummel states in row 304 that the pre war population of the former German provinces was 6500/9000/10000 thousand people low/middle/high
Evacuation row 321 4000//5000 with 618 dead
Remaining population was row 317 100/617/1134
Found in W.Germany row 346 6000/6944/7400

Crude deficit of population he estimated in 319 meaning rows 307-317 6400/8383/8866
How he could calculate that number? My understanding that the proper caluclation is:
pre-war population of 9000 with error margin 2500
remaining 617 with error margin 517
gross deficit is 8383 with error margin 3017

So his number is obviously guesswork.

Another Rummel calculation:
Now he drops his numbers and use another set:
All kinds of migration to Germany row 338 7017/7144/8369
Then he substracts those who reached Germany row 346 again 6000/6944/7400
Deficit according to him is row 349 200/969/1017

I would calculate 7144 with error margin 1225
minus 6944 with error margin 944 and
the result is obviously 200 with error margin 2169!

His number is obviuosly wrong!

In addition it is not clear wether he included the Jews killed during holocaust / I would reserve at least 100 000 killed, Poles and other minorities sent to concentration camps 100 000 is also good estimate /soldiers killed in action at least 500 000 / victims of bombing of the cities I don|t know how many/ his number of victims of evacuation 618 000/ deported to USSR around 200 000 and so on.

By the way, according to Polish sources Polish citizenship was granted to around 1 500 000 former Germans, not 200 000 Rummel claims, and it is obviuosly true, since the emigration of ethnic Germans from Poland continued since 1945. I read recently, that in 1980/ties emigrated 1 000 000 of people on the status of ethnic Germans.

I am going to remove Rummel numbers, since they are obviously not relaible Cautious 21:07, 7 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Disputation of above comments: The appropriate way to analyze Rummel's work should not involve cherrypicking entries. How many entries did the above writer go through to find these seemingly problematic entries? Citing two numbers out of the thousands listed in Rummel's work, disputing them while providing no sources of one's own hardly seems reliable. BAO

No wars between democracies

According to his analysis, of 353 wars since 1816, none have been waged between democracies. "We have a solution for war," Rummel says. "It is to expand the sphere of liberty."

What about the American Civil War, Anglo-Irish War and the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971? Philip Baird Shearer 21:00, 6 Feb 2005 (UTC)

Pakistan was a military dictorship, not a democracy in 1971. A.S.B.

Question about the Confederacy: I have never read about any actual elections taking place. And if they had been, would slaves have been allowed to vote? A no to any of these question might arguably make the Confederacy not quite democratic or liberal enough to qualify.

See User:Ultramarine/sandbox3. Spencer R. Weart in Never at War uses similar criteria as Rummel and argues that the Confederate States of America was less than 3 years old at the start of the war. Less than 2/3 of the adult male population could vote in the Confederacy, abolitionists were censored and imprisoned, and in the elections in many districts there were no choice of candidates.

James Lee Ray argues there was never a competitive presidential election and that in many of the elections to the Congress there were no choice of candidates. There was a presidential election in 1861 but only one ticket. Ultramarine 09:22, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

A similar case can be made for the Irish side. Although fairly democratic, and probably would have been elected, the First Dáil was not properly elected, was it? Of course, the same kind of problem will probably occur in any civil war. Still, one might simply argue that Rummels thesis can not really apply to civil wars, since one side is rarely, if ever, democratically elected. His main interest at the time was probably war between countries anyway, so civil wars would need separate handling anyway. DanielDemaret 08:13, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Again from Never at War: The Irish state was less than 3 years old. The initial violence involved rebels acting on their own outside democratic control. Later democratic control of the Irish Republican Army was doubtful and immediately after the war one part of the IRA tried to overthrow the government in the Irish Civil War. Ultramarine 09:31, 24 February 2006 (UTC)

Than you for that information how about Second Boer War? Philip Baird Shearer 09:25, 8 May 2005 (UTC)

What does this mean?

"liberal democracy" being defined as nations which have universal franchise, free speech, and free press all enshrined in their bodies of law. "We have a solution for war," Rummel says. "It is to expand the sphere of liberty."

What does he define as a "universal franchise"? --Philip Baird Shearer 14:15, 10 December 2005 (UTC)

User:Pmanderson/DPT#Empirical evidence states:

From an early point on, statistical studies were employed to examine the validity of the theory. Rummel studied all the wars from 1816 to 1991. He defined:

• war as any military action with more than 1000 killed in battle,
• democracy as a stabilized liberal democracy with voting rights for at least 2/3 of all adult males,
• and stability as being older than 3 years at the start of the war.

He also implicitly imposed some other related criteria; for example, the chief officer of the democracy must have had a contested election. (See the analysis of the American civil war below.)

Under these definitions, his study found 198 wars between non-democracies, 155 wars between democracies and non-democracies, and 0 wars between democracies . Even some of his supporters acknowledge that the exact line between democracies and non-democracies is somewhat arbitrary, drawn to include the maximum number of democratic states while excluding any exceptions to the theory. This can be criticized as fitting the theory to the data. On the other hand, it also holds for all stricter criteria.

If the above is correct then which power in the Second Boer War was not a Liberal Democracy? --Philip Baird Shearer 00:31, 29 December 2005 (UTC)

The Rummelite dogmatists can find reasons to explain away all the obvious exceptions to their theory: the Boer Republics did not enfranchise 2/3 of their male population, the American Confederacy did not have a contest for head of state, the French Second Republic was too new to be a "stablized democracy", and so on. This involves the imposition of arbitrary conditions to deny the evidence; and even so the factuality of the exclusions is debatable.

The deep objection to Rummellism is that it is vacuous: after applying all the criteria Rummell uses to declare that state A is not a democracy, and that war B is not really a war, very little data are left for the democratic peace, and most of them are explicable by other obvious causes:

1. From 1816 to the 1880's, at most three states count as stable liberal democracies: Switzerland, San Marino, and the United States. They did not go to war with each other; but geography would have made that difficult.
2. rom then until 1904, there were non-allied democratic Powers in the world: France, the United States, and possibly Great Britain. It is true that they did not go to war with each other, although they were close to war half-a-dozen times. Neither did any other Powers, except for the Spanish-American War, which was fought between an unquestioned democracy and a state which was close to the boundary (which side it was on depends on which edition of Ted Gurr's work you use).
3. From 1904 onward, Great Britain was allied to France. Most other democracies (including the United States) were either allied or benevolently neutral towards them, in part because the alliance had one of the two largest fleets in the world.
4. From 1945 to 1991, almost all the democracies in the world were allied against the Soviet Union.
5. Since 1991, there have been very few genuinely international full-scale wars in the world. None of these happen to have been between democracies. The Rummellites inflate their data count by accepting Freedom House's absurdly optimistic list of present democracies, which include states less democractic than many they dismiss (like the recent government of Ukraine, and the present government of Nepal).

I hope this helps. Septentrionalis 22:31, 7 January 2006 (UTC)

Eh, see the discussions on Democratic peace theory. This is just Pmanderson original reserach.Ultramarine 16:35, 6 February 2006 (UTC)

When Ultramarine does not want to admit a fact, he calls it original research. Septentrionalis 18:28, 7 February 2006 (UTC)

Blog post

The minute controversy and misunderstanding regarding Rummel's blog post is too unimportant too mention. As such, it should be removed.Ultramarine 21:51, 17 February 2006 (UTC)

I continue to oppose the delberate suppression of Rummel's self-inflicted embarassments. Septentrionalis 15:55, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Eh, nothing has been suppressed or removed yet, we are discussing it one the talk page. Misplaced Pages should not mention every minor detail. Please explain why Misplaced Pages should mention that some people misunderstood a blog post? Ultramarine 16:00, 18 February 2006 (UTC)

Did they misunderstand it? Some would call it quite clear. Did Rummel flip-flop? Let the reader decide. Septentrionalis 17:32, 18 February 2006 (UTC)