Indeed. To select one data point: had you been born in Russia in 1923 you had only a 32% chance of making it to 1946. infant mortality, famine and then WW2 meant that 68% of the 1923 cohort died before they were 23.
Yup, it's good to point that sort of thing out. Most of the history that (I suspect) most of the readers of HN are exposed to will be quite western focused, and yes, a lot of things were fairly bad in the first half of the 20th century in the United States.
But damn...things were fucking terrible in a lot of other parts of the world during that time. And more importantly, such terrible times existed, all over the world, going back forever.
Don't forget the Stallinist terror (innocent people dying in concentration camps).
EDIT: why the downvote? Wikipedia estimate for the victims of The Purge is at 600k-1.2m level (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Purge), certainly enough to make a dent in the stats.
But damn...things were fucking terrible in a lot of other parts of the world during that time. And more importantly, such terrible times existed, all over the world, going back forever.