Cost to Kill an Enemy Soldier
A few years ago a Dutch professor took time to calculate the cost of an enemy soldier’s death at different epochs in history. He estimated that during the reign of Julius Caesar, to kill an enemy soldier cost less than one dollar. At the time of Napoleon, it had considerably inflated—to more than $2,000. At the end of the First World War, it had multiplied several times to reach the figure of some $17,000. During the Second World War, it was about $40,000. And in Vietnam, in 1970, to kill an enemy soldier cost the United States $200,000.