Here are some remarkable dynamic charts by Neil Halloran of the staggering military and civilian deaths in the Second World War — as well as a comparison to conflicts before and since.
While it may not seem like we live in a peaceful world today, the numbers (at least in comparison) say otherwise. Is it that the nuclear stalemate between the US, USSR, PRC, and other major states have kept a lock-down on WWII-sized conflicts? Is it that the international structures, formal and otherwise, set up since WWII have been a stabilizing influence? Has increasing mass communication made the population more aware of what's going on and more able to stop it before it spirals out of control? Have we grown wiser?
Yeah, I sort of doubt it's the last one.
An interactive site for some of the graphics here is at http://fallen.io .
(h/t +J. Steven York)
I think the internet and mass communication has made war less appealing. It's easy to support a war where you can picture the enemy as a villain. It's harder to do that when the internet can show you that their soldiers are people too. Same reason everyone thinks the world is more violent right now, violence seems way worse the more visible it is.