Yup, it's good to point that sort of thing out. Most of the history that (I suspect) most of the readers of HN are exposed to will be quite western focused, and yes, a lot of things were fairly bad in the first half of the 20th century in the United States.

But damn...things were fucking terrible in a lot of other parts of the world during that time. And more importantly, such terrible times existed, all over the world, going back forever.

The Civil War was pretty bad for the US in terms of death rates.

> infant mortality, famine and then WW2

Don't forget the Stallinist terror (innocent people dying in concentration camps).

EDIT: why the downvote? Wikipedia estimate for the victims of The Purge is at 600k-1.2m level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), certainly enough to make a dent in the stats.

Do you have a citation for this? That’s a remarkable statistic, but I want a source before I go telling people.

Here is a source [1]. That analysis roughly breaks down as 1/4 loss each from infant mortality; famine and Stalin’s terror; and WWII.

[1] https://blogs.warwick.ac.uk/markharrison/entry/was_the_sovie...