40,000 dead[1] and two million houses damaged in a country of 40 million people (presiding over a global empire of a billion souls) over six years is not meanin

40,000 dead[1] and two million houses damaged in a country of 40 million people (presiding over a global empire of a billion souls) over six years is not meaningful... Especially in the context of the largest and most destructive war the world has ever known. > Sure.. Okay.. France was worse, Don't look at Metropolitan France, two thirds of it got to sit the war out as a puppet state. Look further east. How many houses were 'damaged or destroyed' in Germany, Poland, the USSR..? This isn't a suffering Olympics, but compared to war expenditures, the cost of rebuilding the damage inflicted to the Isles was a rounding error. Those expenditures (and their associated debts) were what crippled Britain's ability to maintain an empire, not the cost of rebuilding. --- [1] That sort of thing was a normal day over there. A normal one - not even a bad one.