Instruct: Given a question, retrieve relevant documents that answer the question.
Query: How many died in WWI?
The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, including about 6 million due to war-related famine and disease. The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. This article lists the casualties of the belligerent powers based on official published sources.
The worst of the 20th century influenza pandemics was the 1918 pandemic, where between 20-40 percent of the world’s population became ill between 40-100 million people died. More people died of the so-called Spanish flu (caused by the H1N1 viral strain) pandemic in the single year of 1918 than during all four-years of the Black Death. The pandemic had devastating effects as disease spread along trade and shipping routes and other corridors of human movement until it had circled the globe. InIndia, the mortality rate reached 50 per 1,000 population. Arriving during the closing phase of the World War I, the pandemic impacted mobilized national armies. Half of U.S. soldiers who died in the "Great War," for example, were victims of influenza. It is estimated that almost ¾ of a million Americans died during the pandemic. In part, the death toll during the pandemic was caused by viral pneumonia characterized by extensive bleeding in the lungs resulting in suffocation. Many victims died within 48 hours of the appearance of the first symptom. It was not uncommon for people who appeared to be quite healthy in the morning to have died by sunset. Among those who survived the first several days, however, many died of secondary bacterial pneumonia. It has been argued that countless numbers of those who expired quickly from the disease were co-infected with tuberculosis, which would explain the notable plummet in TB cases after 1918.
In World War I, shell shock was considered a psychiatric illness resulting from injury to the nerves during combat. The horrors of trench warfare meant that about 10% of the fighting soldiers were killed (compared to 4.5% during World War II) and the total proportion of troops who became casualties (killed or wounded) was 56%. Whether a shell-shock sufferer was considered "wounded" or "sick" depended on the circumstances. When faced with the phenomenon of a minority of soldiers mentally breaking down, there was an expectation that the root of this problem lay in character of the individual soldier, not because of what they experienced on the front lines during the war. These sorts of attitudes helped fuel the main argument that was accepted after the war and going forward that there was a social root to shell shock that consisted of soldiers finding the only way allowed by the military to show weakness and get out of the front, claiming that their mental anguish constituted a legitimate medical diagnosis as a disease. The large proportion of World War I veterans in the European population meant that the symptoms were common to the culture.
Like all Australian towns and cities, Cairns was affected by the impact of WWI. Of the 330,770 Australians who embarked for overseas service in WWI, 58,961 died and 170,909 were wounded, went missing or became prisoners of war. This meant that around 69% of embarked personnel became casualties - or 21% of eligible Australian males. No previous or subsequent war has had such an impact on Australia in terms of loss of life; almost every community in every Australian state lost young people. Even before the end of hostilities, memorials were being erected by Australian communities to honour local people who had served and died. These memorials were a spontaneous and highly visible expression of national grief; substitute graves for the Australians whose bodies lay in battlefield cemeteries in Europe and the Middle East. The word "cenotaph" literally means "empty tomb" and was commonly applied to war memorials following its use for the famous Cenotaph at Whitehall, London. Cenotaphs were tapering structures like the London precedent but the term applied generally to war monuments.
Over 21 million people were killed or injured in World War I; in many cases, all of the men in one family were killed, numerous cities in Europe were destroyed, and family life throughout the world was greatly affected. While the United States suffered the fewest casualties, family life was still greatly affected as husbands were deployed and wives had to begin working. As the war draft suddenly removed many men from factory work, the factories began soliciting for women workers in traditionally male-dominated areas. Therefore, women had less time to spend at home with the children, as many of them would have before the war. As fathers, uncles, brothers, and grandfathers deployed in military service, women filled their places in factories and offices, changing the ways young children and teens received home nurturing. Additionally, women moving into new roles in society had lasting effects on children and family life after the war. President Woodrow Wilson stated, "We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?" As women began working in the factories, more of society began to realize the need for women's rights; while women had been granted suffrage (voting rights) to varying degrees in several states beginning in the late 19th century, they were now guaranteed full suffrage throughout the United States by the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution passed in August, 1920. This also paved the way for the children of future generations by creating greater career opportunities for girls and women; as women gained a stronger voice, girls became more involved in the workforce and education and prepared for roles outside of the home. Additionally, family life was affected after the war as more and more women entered the work force, moving away from the traditional stay-at-home mother and housewife role.
Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians.
Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation.
Included with total war dead are victims of Japanese war crimes.The total war dead in the USSR includes about 1 million victims of Stalin's regime. The number of deaths in the Gulag labor camps increased as a result of wartime overcrowding and food shortages. The Stalin regime deported the entire populations of ethnic minorities considered to be potentially disloyal. Since 1990 Russian scholars have been given access to the Soviet-era archives and have published data on the numbers of people executed and those who died in Gulag labor camps and prisons. The Russian scholar Viktor Zemskov puts the death toll from 1941–1945 at about 1 million based on data from the Soviet archives. The Soviet-era archive figures on the Gulag labor camps has been the subject of a vigorous academic debate outside Russia since their publication in 1991. J. Arch Getty and Stephen G. Wheatcroft maintain that Soviet-era figures more accurately detail the victims of the Gulag labor camp system in the Stalin era. Robert Conquest and Steven Rosefielde have disputed the accuracy of the data from the Soviet archives, maintaining that the demographic data and testimonials by survivors of the Gulag labor camps indicate a higher death toll. Rosefielde posits that the release of the Soviet Archive figures is disinformation generated by the modern KGB. Rosefielde maintains that the data from the Soviet archives is incomplete; for example, he pointed out that the figures do not include the 22,000 victims of the Katyn massacre. Rosefielde's demographic analysis puts the number of excess deaths due to Soviet repression at 2,183,000 in 1939–40 and 5,458,000 from 1941–1945. Michael Haynes and Rumy Husun accept the figures from the Soviet archives as being an accurate tally of Stalin's victims, they maintain that the demographic data depicts an underdeveloped Soviet economy and the losses in World War Two rather than indicating a higher death toll in the Gulag labor camps.
By 1918, towards the end of the war, the composition and structure of the French army had changed. Forty percent of all French soldiers on the Western Front were operating artillery and 850,000 French troops were infantry in 1918, compared to 1.5 million in 1915. Causes for the drop in infantry include increased machine gun, armored car and tank usage, as well as the increasing significance of the French air force, the Service Aéronautique. At the end of the war on November 11, 1918, the French had called up 8,817,000 men, including 900,000 colonial troops. France suffered over 4.2 million casualties, with 1.3 million dead.
In the early 21st century, historian Robert L. Scheina estimated that the slave rebellion resulted in the death of 350,000 Haitians and 50,000 European troops. According to the "Encyclopedia of African American Politics", "Between 1791 and independence in 1804 nearly 200,000 blacks died, as did thousands of mulattoes and as many as 100,000 French and British soldiers." Yellow fever caused the most deaths. Geggus points out that at least 3 of every 5 British troops sent there in 1791–1797 died of disease. There has been considerable debate over whether the number of deaths caused by disease was exaggerated.
Among one million Polish soldiers fighting the Germans in September 1939, 13 percent (130,000) were Polish citizens of Jewish background, who fought in all branches of Polish Armed Forces. It is estimated that during the entirety of World War II as many as 32,216 Jewish soldiers and officers died and 61,000 were taken prisoner by the Germans; the majority did not survive. The soldiers and non-commissioned officers who were released ultimately found themselves in the ghettos and labor camps and suffered the same fate as other Jewish civilians. Germans killed about 20 000 civilians in September 1939, a number of them Jewish. For example, in Częstochowa 227 civilians were murdered on September the 4th, 22 of them Jewish.
Two years after being wounded in World War I, Apollinaire died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; he was 38.
On 18 July 2009, with the death of Henry Allingham, Patch became the oldest surviving veteran and also the oldest man in the United Kingdom. Patch was the last trench veteran of World War I. The penultimate Western Front veteran, the 108-year-old Fernand Goux of France, who died on 9 November 2008, fought for 8 days. He came out unscathed, unlike Patch and the last Alpine Front veteran, 110-year-old Delfino Borroni of Italy, who died on 26 October 2008. Patch was also the last surviving Tommy, since the death on 4 April 2009 of Netherwood Hughes, who was still in training when the war ended. The last-but-one fighting Tommy, Harold Lawton, died on 24 December 2005. Claude Choules, the last remaining First World War naval veteran, died on 5 May 2011.
On the eve of World War I there were no traditions of nationally commemorating mass casualties in war. France and Germany had been relatively recently involved in the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 to 1871. Germany had built a number of national war memorials commemorating their victory, usually focusing on celebrating their military leaders. In France, memorials to their losses were relatively common, but far from being a national response, and many towns and villages did not erect memorials at all. A new organisation, the "Souvenir Français", was established in the 1880s to protect French war memorials and encourage young French people to engage in military activities; the organisation grew to have many contacts in local government by 1914.
Sources agree that the U.S. Army officially recorded 1,466 deaths in the Second Seminole War, mostly from disease. The number killed in action is less clear. Mahon reports 328 regular Army killed in action, while Missall reports that Seminoles killed 269 officers and men. Almost half of those deaths occurred in the Dade Massacre, Battle of Lake Okeechobee and Harney Massacre. Similarly, Mahon reports 69 deaths for the Navy while Missal reports 41 for the U.S. Navy and Marine Corps, but adds others may have died after being sent out of Florida as "incurable". Mahon and the Florida Board of State Institutions agree that 55 volunteer officers and men were killed by the Seminoles, while Missall says the number is unknown. There is no figure for how many militiamen and volunteers died of disease or accident, however.
In the immediate aftermath of the attacks, media reports suggested that tens of thousands might have been killed in the attacks, as over 50,000 people could be inside the World Trade Center, although the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) estimated that approximately 17,400 occupants were in the towers at the time of the attacks. Ultimately, 2,753 death certificates (excluding those for hijackers) were filed relating to the 9/11 attacks in New York City, including one filed for Felicia Dunn-Jones, who was added to the official death toll in ; Dunn-Jones died five months later from a lung condition linked to exposure to dust during the collapse of the World Trade Center. Three other victims were then added to the official death toll by the city medical examiner's office: Dr. Sneha Anne Philip, who was last seen the day before the attacks; Leon Heyward, a man who developed lymphoma and subsequently died in 2008 as a result of dust ingestion during the events following the attacks to the Twin Towers; and Jerry Borg, who died in December 2010 of pulmonary sarcoidosis determined in June 2011 to be the result of dust from the attacks. 2,192 civilians died in and around the World Trade Center, including 658 employees of Cantor Fitzgerald L.P. (an investment bank on the 101st–105th floors of One World Trade Center), 295 employees of Marsh & McLennan Companies (which was located immediately below Cantor Fitzgerald on floors 93–101, the location of Flight 11's impact), and 175 employees of Aon Corporation. In addition to the civilian deaths, 343 New York City Fire Department (FDNY) firefighters were killed in the attacks, as well as 71 law enforcement officers, including 37 members of the Port Authority Police Department (PAPD) and 23 members of the New York City Police Department (NYPD). Ten years after the attacks, remains of only 1,629 victims had been identified. Of all the people who were still in the towers when they collapsed, only 20 were pulled out alive.
The overall death toll was 2,467 people: 2,403 American citizens—2,335 members of the U.S. military and 68 civilians—and 64 members of the Imperial Japanese Navy. Five U.S. battleships were sunk and the other remaining three were badly damaged. Overall, nine ships of the U.S. fleet were sunk and 21 ships were severely damaged. Three of the 21 would be irreparable. 188 U.S. aircraft were completely destroyed and 159 others were damaged. Japan lost 29 out of the 353 aircraft they attacked with. The attack on Pearl Harbor was the largest destruction of life and property on American soil both in peacetime and in general by foreign nationals prior to the September 11 attacks, and remains the deadliest attack on American soil both in peacetime and in general by a foreign nation.
In 1914, Australia joined Britain in fighting World War I, with support from both the outgoing Commonwealth Liberal Party and the incoming Australian Labor Party. Australians took part in many of the major battles fought on the Western Front. Of about 416,000 who served, about 60,000 were killed and another 152,000 were wounded. Many Australians regard the defeat of the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZACs) at Gallipoli as the birth of the nation—its first major military action. The Kokoda Track campaign is regarded by many as an analogous nation-defining event during World War II.
Estimates of the death toll during the Cultural Revolution, including civilians and Red Guards, vary greatly. An estimate of around 400,000 deaths is a widely accepted minimum figure, according to Maurice Meisner. MacFarquhar and Schoenhals assert that in rural China alone some 36 million people were persecuted, of whom between 750,000 and 1.5 million were killed, with roughly the same number permanently injured. In "", Jung Chang and Jon Halliday claim that as many as 3 million people died in the violence of the Cultural Revolution.
The U.S. pulled its troops out of Vietnam in 1973, and the conflict finally ended in 1975 when the North Vietnamese took Saigon, now Ho Chi Minh City. The war exacted a huge human cost in terms of fatalities (see Vietnam War casualties). 195,000–430,000 South Vietnamese civilians died in the war. 50,000–65,000 North Vietnamese civilians died in the war. The Army of the Republic of Vietnam lost between 171,331 and 220,357 men during the war. The official US Department of Defense figure was 950,765 communist forces killed in Vietnam from 1965 to 1974. Defense Department officials concluded that these body-count figures need to be deflated by 30 percent. In addition, Guenter Lewy assumes that one-third of the reported "enemy" killed may have been civilians, concluding that the actual number of deaths of communist military forces was probably closer to 444,000. Between 200,000 and 300,000 Cambodians, about 35,000 Laotians, and 58,220 U.S. service members also died in the conflict.
Every year, an estimated 342,900 women die from complications of pregnancy and childbirth, 99% of these deaths occur in developing countries. Worldwide, for every 100,000 live births, about 251 women die. In some industrialized countries such as the U.S, this is 13 deaths for every 100,000 live babies born with American women having a lifetime risk of 1 in 2,100 of dying from childbirth related complications. However, in some countries, such as Afghanistan up to 1,600 women die for every 100,000 live births and women have a 1 in 11 lifetime risk of maternal death.
2,974 victims were confirmed to have died in the initial attacks; this includes Sneha Anne Philip, a doctor, who in 2008 was ruled to have died on 9/11. In 2007, the New York City medical examiner's office began to add people who died of illnesses caused by exposure to dust from the site to the official death toll. The first such victim was a woman, a civil rights lawyer, who had died from a chronic lung condition in February 2002. In September 2009, the office added a man who died in October 2008, and in 2011, a male accountant who had died in December 2010. This raises the number of victims at the World Trade Center site to 2,753, and the overall 9/11 death toll to 2,996.
The war involved multi-ethnic empires such as Great Britain, France, Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary and Turkey. Many ethnic groups in these territories were conscripted for military service. The casualties listed by modern borders are also included in the above table of figures for the countries that existed in 1914. The casualty figures by 1924 post war borders are rough estimates by Russian historian Vadim Erlikman in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century, the sources of his figures were published in the Soviet era and in post-Soviet Russia. According to the 1914–1918 Online Encyclopedia "In addition to losses suffered by African military personnel and the laborers supporting their operations, very large, but unknown numbers of African civilians perished during the war." They made an estimate of civilian losses in Africa of 750,000 based on the study by the Vadim Erlikman. They noted that Erlikman's figures are based on the work of the Russian demographer Boris Urlanis, they noted that these estimates were "imprecise" and "could be used to provide a frame of reference for further inquiry". The "Oxford History of World War One" notes that "In east and central Africa the harshness of the war resulted in acute shortages of food with famine in some areas, a weakening of populations, and epidemic diseases which killed hundreds of thousands of people and also cattle."
The following estimates of Austrian deaths, within contemporary borders, were made by a Russian historian in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century. Total dead 175,000: including military losses 120,000 with the Austro-Hungarian forces and POW deaths in captivity of 30,000. Civilian dead due to famine and disease were 25,000.
The following estimates of Belarusian deaths, within contemporary borders, were made by a Russian historian in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century. Total dead 130,000: including military losses 70,000 with the Russian forces. Civilian dead were 60,000.
The following estimates of Ukrainian deaths, within contemporary borders, were made by a Russian historian in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century. Total dead 590,000: including military losses 450,000,(Erlikman did not break out military losses between Austro-Hungarian and Russian armed forces). Civilian dead were 140,000.
The Belgian Congo was part of the Kingdom of Belgium during the war. A Russian historian Vadim Erlikman in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century based on sources published in the Soviet Union and Russia estimated a total of 155,000 deaths in the Belgian Congo during the war.
Czechoslovakia was part of Austro-Hungary during the war. The estimates of Czechoslovak deaths within 1991 borders were made by a Russian historian in a 2004 handbook of human losses in the 20th century. Total dead 185,000: including military losses 110,000 with the Austro-Hungarian forces and POW deaths in captivity of 45,000. Civilian dead due to famine and disease were 30,000. The Czechoslovak Legions fought with the armies of the Allies during the war.
Estonia was part of the Russian Empire during the war and about 100,000 Estonians served in the Russian Army. Of them about 10,000 were killed.
From 1809 Finland was an autonomous Grand Duchy in the Russian Empire until the end of 1917. In 1924 the Finnish government in a reply to a questionnaire from the International Labour Office, an agency of the League of Nations, reported 26,517 were dead and missing in World War I.
Faulks developed the novel to bring more public awareness to the experience of war remembered by WWI veterans. Most critics found this effort successful, commenting on how the novel, like many other WWI novels, thematically focuses on the way in which the experience of trauma shapes individual psyches. Similarly, because of the parallel narratives WWI and 1970s Britain, the novel explores metahistorical questions about how to document and recover narratives about the past. Because of its genre, themes and writing style, the novel has been favourably compared to a number of other war novels, like Ian McEwan's "Atonement" and those in Pat Barker's Regeneration Trilogy.
On 21 May 2012, Sanaʽa was attacked by a suicide bomber, resulting in the deaths of 120 soldiers.
The Canadian author James Bacque (a novelist with no previous historical research experience) has written a book "Other Losses" in which he claims that the United States are responsible for the deaths of 800,000 to 1,000,000 German POW. Based on his own research Bacque claims that documents from the US Archives show that there were 800,000 German POW who did not survive US captivity. Bacque alleges that General Eisenhower and the US military deliberately withheld support for the German POW, causing their deaths. Bacque presents his arguments with a description of the horrific conditions at the Rheinwiesenlager POW camps and eyewitness accounts of retired US military officers. Bacque maintains that there has been a conspiracy by the United States to cover up these losses. Bacque’s book received wide attention when it was first published in 1989, since then his claims have been challenged by historians who have found his thesis to be unsubstantiated. The US military historian Stephen Ambrose was co-editor of the book "Eisenhower and the German POWs" in which he refutes Bacque’s claims. Ambrose maintains that the figure of 800,000 POW missing from the US records was a bookkeeping error, that many POW were released and no records were maintained. Ambrose points out that the US and the UK had to cope with a major logistical problem in order to maintain the huge number of surrendered German personnel and finds the claim that Eisenhower and the US military deliberately withheld support for the German POW to be without merit. Rüdiger Overmans believes that "on the basis of factual individual data, shown before, the thesis of the Canadian James Bacque cannot be supported".