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US President Donald Trump erroneously said, according to media reports, that the 1918 Spanish Flu “probably ended” World War II, which actually began two decades later in 1939 and ended in 1945.
Trump said in a media briefing: “The closest thing is in 1917, they say, the great pandemic. It certainly was a terrible thing where they lost anywhere from 50 to 100 million people, probably ended the Second World War,” Trump said.
He added: “All the soldiers were sick. That was a terrible situation.”
Correcting Trump’s mistake, a White House official told USA Today that Trump was alluding to World War I, where the death toll of the soldiers rose because of the pandemic that had infected around 500 million people globally, and not due to the battle.
According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the intercontinental movement of troops during the pandemic had plausibly contributed to the spread of the Spanish Flu.
However, general concensus says the end of World War I had happened after Germany signed a truce, stopping the battle.
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