When Hitler's panzer divisions smashed through France in a record-setting six-week blitz in 1940, they found a country that was broken long before it was conquered. Losses in the First World War and the accompanying Spanish Flu created a demographic crisis that didn't end until years after the Second World War.
It is difficult to create a culture of confidence in a country missing the confident young men who find work, start businesses, soldier, marry, start families — and pass those confident virtues to the next generation. There was very little fighting spirit available to resist Germany's revolutionary blitzkrieg operations.
The demographic situation in France is worse today than it was in 1940. French women are having babies at an average rate of just 1.83 each. That's below the rate of 2.1 needed just to keep the population stable. And France has the strongest demographics in all of Europe.
Russia's fertility was an even more dismal 1.49 — and that's before Vladimir Putin's stupid war in Ukraine made a bad situation even worse.
ASIDE: It's a cold word, demographics, and "fertility rate" is an even colder phrase. But "fertility rate" is that warm and ancient human business of men and women getting hitched and starting families.
At a time when Russia needs every able-bodied young man making babies with every willing and able gal, scenes like this one have become common across the country.
Russian losses will lead to a demographic crisis
— PStyleOne1 (@PStyle0ne1) November 29, 2023
Stanytsia Kletska is a regional center in the Volgograd region of the Russian Federation. The population in 2021 is only 4,974 people.
The war in Ukraine is the deadliest of all on this list. Russia has more human resources than… pic.twitter.com/QAmgv5PdSs
The stone on the right lists Stanytsia Kletska's losses in Afghanistan, Chechnya, and Putin's so-called "Special Military Operation" instead of saying Ukraine. The stone is not new. It does not list losses suffered in 2023.
As another Twitter/X user explained, "What many people don't realize is that the core age group for soldiers, men between 20 to 35, are only about 10% of the total population. So, just 13 killed is 2.6%, 1 man in 38 in the prime family forming group. It escalates quickly."
The most reasonable estimate of Russia's losses of men in Ukraine is roughly 120,000. For perspective, the United States has lost about 100,000 men, total, in every war we've fought since WWII ended 78 years ago. Russia's losses have come in just 20 months, out of a population less than half the size of ours — and already shrinking. It seems cruel to add that there is no end in sight for Russia's losses, but the cruelty is Putin's and not mine.
Compounding the coming crisis, something like three or four million Russians have fled the country since the war began, many among their best and brightest.
But here's the shocker: Russia's crisis isn't nearly as bad as South Korea's. Their fertility rate of 0.73 (!!!) means there basically won't be a South Korea in three generations. There won't be a recognizable Spain or an Italy in six — maybe less. China's population is set to shrink somewhere between 400 million or maybe even 800 million between now and 2100.
Those are other country's problems, however. I'm much more concerned with ours.
Immigration — the legal kind — helps make up for our fertility rate of 1.78. One part of American Exceptionalism is our ability to assimilate. It's much easier to make Americans out of foreigners from almost anywhere than it is to make, say, a Frenchman out of a German, even though they're neighbors. We've been successfully assimilating for centuries.
Our most pressing problem isn't that we have a shrinking native-born population, although we do. It isn't the record numbers of illegals, whom we also used to assimilate after a generation or two. It isn't even that our assimilation mechanisms are breaking down under the strain, although they surely are. Our problem is that we've stopped making Americans out of the young Americans who are already here.
A proper understanding of our country's complex (but ultimately thrilling) history, of civic virtue, of patriotism — these things don't come automatically but must be inculcated. And too many schools are failing to do so or teaching that the country is racist, rotten, etc.
That's why it's been so heartening these last couple of years to watch conservative parents taking back their local school boards in one district after another. It's been an absolute thrill to watch what Christopher Rufo is doing to pull wokeness out by its deep roots at the New College of Florida.
But we must do more and we must do it quickly.
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