(Old page) East Indies Crisis - do not edit: Difference between revisions

The scale of fighting was enormous the Dutch military had grown from a medium-sized force of around 310.000 active troops in 1960. To a military that was by 1973 unrivaled in its quality of fighting troops having the 4th largest military. In total, in 1973 440.000 Dutch combat troops were deployed, and the army had 2.7 million manpower in available inactive reserves. The Rebels were in 1973 able to field 1.2 million regular troops and 7.1 million guerilla fighters. The war exacted an enormous human cost: It’s estimated that a total of 7-10 million civilians (mostly natives Indonesians died in the conflict) and a total of 144,918 Dutch soldiers died in the conflict (along with an additional 50,000 KNIL soldiers), with 49,000 missing in action. The rebels their losses are not well known but estimated to be in the millions. Fatalities that resulted from the war, due to the use of chemical weapons and Napalm, the famines after the war are likely to inflate the numbers even more. The war her environmental cost was massive and beyond repair jungles were burned to the ground and entire species went extinct as their biomes were destroyed. The economic damage has been extensive when the Dutch left nothing of the infrastructure on the islands was left intact and the cities were in literal ruins, only recently have they started to recover.