Instruct: Given a question, retrieve documents that answer the question.
Query: How many people died during WW1?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
During the First World War, the Germans constructed an airport. The airport still exists and is now used for private purposes. Also remaining is the German Military cemetery, which is also partly situated in Menen. There are 47,864 soldiers buried there, who all died during WW1. This makes the cemetery the biggest German cemetery in Belgium. Across the cemetery, there used to be a (fake) airport, with wooden planes to mislead the enemy; there are still remains of the airport consisting of a big bunker and a small bunker near the railway. The bridge that connects Lauwe to Wevelgem was destroyed during the Second World War and was rebuilt later.
Two years after being wounded in World War I, Apollinaire died in the Spanish flu pandemic of 1918; he was 38.
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.
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.
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.
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.
In April and June 1916 the battalion suffered casualties of well over 500 in two serious gas attacks, on both occasions when in trenches north of Wulverghem (near Messines).
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.
It is unknown how many Inca were killed or died during the Civil War. The estimated population of the Inca empire before an epidemic (probably of a European disease) and the Spanish conquest is estimated at between 6 and 14 million people. The civil war, an epidemic, probably of a European disease, and the Spanish conquest resulted in a population decline over several decades estimated as 20:1 or 25:1, meaning that the population declined by 95 percent.
In 1932, Edmonds recorded 1,344 German casualties; 615 men in the attack and 729 during British counter-attacks. British casualties in the 47th Division from 22 to 24 May were 1,571, 2nd Division casualties were 267 and the 7th Brigade (25th Division) had 637 casualties, a total of 2,475. In 1936, the official historians of "Der Weltkrieg", the German official history, recorded that 300 British prisoners had been taken.
Trench warfare has become archetypically associated with the First World War of 1914–1918, when the Race to the Sea rapidly expanded trench use on the Western Front starting in September 1914. By the end of October 1914 the whole front in Belgium and France had solidified into lines of trenches, which lasted until the last weeks of the war. Mass infantry assaults were futile in the face of artillery fire as well as rapid rifle and machine-gun fire. Both sides concentrated on breaking up enemy attacks and on protecting their own troops by digging deep into the ground. Trench warfare also took place on other fronts, including in Italy and at Gallipoli.
After the Soviet invasion of Poland following the corresponding German invasion that marked the start of World War II in 1939, the Soviet Union annexed eastern parts (known as "Kresy" to the Polish) of the Second Polish Republic. During 1939–1941, 1.45 million people inhabiting the region were deported by the Soviet regime, of whom 63.1% were Poles and 7.4% were Jews. Previously it was believed that about 1.0 million Polish citizens died at the hands of the Soviets, but recently Polish historians, based mostly on queries in Soviet archives, estimate the number of deaths at about 350,000 people deported in 1939–1945. From the newly conquered Eastern Poland, 1.5 million people were deported.
Elsewhere in Warsaw collective responsibility was the rule resulting in the murders of thousands, which resulted in the Warsaw Uprising on August 1, 1944. In response, under orders from Heinrich Himmler, Warsaw was kept under ceaseless barrage by Nazi artillery and air power for sixty-three days and nights with Erich von dem Bach, "SS-Gruppenführer" and Police General who took over from Heinz Reinefarth at the helm. Von dem Bach later wrote about his meeting with Reinefarth: "Reinefarth drew my attention to the existence of a clear order issued by Himmler. The first thing he told me was that he has been distinctly ordered not to take any prisoners but to kill every inhabitant of Warsaw. I asked him, 'women and children, too?' to which he replied, 'Yes, women and children, too ...'" In the wake of this unprecedented planned destruction and ethnic cleansing, by 1944 around 800,000 civilians were killed, or 60% of the population.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum believes that "The Nazi terror was, in scholar Norman Davies's words, "much fiercer and more protracted in Poland than anywhere in Europe." Reliable statistics for the total number of Poles who died as a result of Nazi German policies do not exist. Many others were victims of the 1939-1941 Soviet occupation of eastern Poland and of deportations to Central Asia and Siberia. Records are incomplete, and the Soviet control of Poland for 50 years after the war impeded independent scholarship.The changing borders and ethnic composition of Poland as well as vast population movements during and after the war also complicated the task of calculating losses In the past, many estimates of losses were based on a Polish report of 1947 requesting reparations from the Germans; this often cited document tallied population losses of 6 million for all Polish "nationals" (Poles, Jews, and other minorities). Subtracting 3 million Polish Jewish victims, the report claimed 3 million non-Jewish victims of the Nazi terror, including civilian and military casualties of war.'Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war."
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.
Soldier settlement blocks were established in Birdwoodton and Merbein West during and after WW1 and many streets were named after local soldiers who died in WW1. The district's horticulture and viticultural industries also attracted many European immigrants to the area.
Kelly Dawn Askin observes that increasingly, the victims of war are civilians. An estimated 45 million plus civilians died during World War II. Male and female civilians may be subject to torture, but many studies show that war rape is more frequently perpetrated on women than men. This may be due to the reluctance of men to come forward with accusations of being raped, and also an institutional bias amongst NGOs, who frequently focus resources on female victims. However rape against women is also underreported. Perpetrators of sexual violence against women and children "commonly include not only enemy civilians and troops but also allied and national civilians and even comrades in arms."
During the war, Darwin was bombed 64 times over almost two years, with the first two raids alone on 19 February 1942 resulting in the deaths of an estimated 243 people. Other sources place the figure as much higher, even up to 1000, and a memorial plaque on the Darwin Esplanade overlooking the harbour says 292 people were killed. ABC TV News on 28 February 2010 carried an item saying that the Darwin City Council has commissioned naval historian John Bradford to determine the truth on how many died.
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.