World War II casualties
[11] An estimated 7–10 million people died in the Dutch, British, French and US colonies in South and Southeast Asia, mostly from war-related famine.
Historians often put forward many different estimates of the numbers killed and wounded during World War II.
[17] The authors of the Oxford Companion to World War II maintain that "casualty statistics are notoriously unreliable".
[18] The table below gives data on the number of dead and military wounded for each country, along with population information to show the relative impact of losses.
Since casualty statistics are sometimes disputed the footnotes to this article present the different estimates by official governmental sources as well as historians.
For states that suffered huge losses such as the Soviet Union, China, Poland, Germany, and Yugoslavia, sources can give only the total estimated population loss caused by the war and a rough estimate of the breakdown of deaths caused by military activity, crimes against humanity and war-related famine.
The estimated breakdown for each Soviet republic of total war dead[8]^AY4 The source of the figures is Vadim Erlikman [ru].
The Holocaust is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II.
[227] During World War II, the German military helped fulfill Nazism's racial, political, and territorial ambitions.
Long after the war, a myth persisted claiming the German military (or Wehrmacht) was not involved in the Holocaust and other crimes associated with Nazi genocidal policy.
The German military participated in many aspects of the Holocaust: in supporting Hitler, in the use of forced labor, and in the mass murder of Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis.
While the Nazi Party's own SS forces (in particular the SS-Totenkopfverbände, Einsatzgruppen and Waffen-SS) of Nazi Germany was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht committed war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front in the war against the Soviet Union.
[265] 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.
[266] The Russian scholar Viktor Zemskov puts the death toll from 1941 to 1945 at about 1 million based on data from the Soviet archives.
[263] 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.
[271] 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.
[273] 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.
[280] Deported during the War 1941–1945 about 2.3 million persons of Soviet ethnic minorities including: Soviet Germans 1,209,000; Finns 9,000; Karachays 69,000; Kalmyks 92,000; Chechens and Ingush 479,000; Balkars 37,000; Crimean Tatars 191,014; Meskhetian Turks 91,000; Greeks, Bulgarians and Armenians from Crimea 42,000; Ukrainian OUN members 100,000; Poles 30,000.
[285] The Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) Annual Report 2014–2015[63] is the source of the military dead for the British Empire.
The statistics tabulated by the CWGC are representative of the number of names commemorated for all servicemen/women of the Armed Forces of the Commonwealth and former UK Dependencies, whose death was attributable to their war service.
^A Albania ^B Australia ^C Austria ^D Belgium ^E Brazil ^F Bulgaria ^G Burma ^H Canada ^I China Sources for total Chinese war dead are divergent and range from 10 to 20 million as detailed below.
[407] 2- The section Effects of Strategic Bombing on the German War Economy of October 31, 1945 put the losses at 375,000 killed and 625,000 wounded.
[407] 3- The section The Effect of Bombing on Health and Medical Care in Germany of January 1947 made a preliminary calculated estimate of air raid dead at 422,000.
[415] English language sources put the death toll at 2 to 3 million based on the West German government statistical analysis of the 1950s.
[438][439][440][441][442][443][444][445] Post war increase in natural deaths ^T Greece ^TA Guam ^U Hungary ^V Iceland ^W India Bengal famine of 1943 ^Y Iraq ^Z Ireland ^AA Italy Military war dead Confirmed dead were 159,957 (92,767 pre-armistice, 67,090 post armistice)[468] Missing and presumed dead(including POWs) were 131,419 (111,579 pre-armistice, 19,840 post armistice)[469] Losses by branch of service: Army 201,405; Navy 22,034; Air Force 9,096; Colonial Forces 354; Chaplains 91; Fascist militia 10,066; Paramilitary 3,252; not indicated 45,078.
Persons unaccounted for might have been burned beyond recognition in the falling buildings, disposed of in one of the mass cremations of the first week of recovery, or driven out of the city to die or recover without any record remaining.
^AI Mexico ^AJ Mongolia ^AK Nauru ^AL Nepal ^AM Netherlands Military deaths 6,750 which included 3,900 regular Army, 2,600 Navy forces, and 250 POW in Germany.
[97] Civilians 7,500 (3,600 Merchant seaman, 1,500 resistance fighters, 1,800 civilians killed and 600 Jews killed)[97] In German Armed Forces 700[97] ^AQ Papua New Guinea ^AR Philippines ^AS Poland Total Polish war dead Polish losses during the Soviet occupation (1939–1941) Polish military casualties ^AT Timor ^AU Romania ^AV Ruanda Urundi ^AW South Africa ^AX South Seas Mandate The following notes summarize Soviet casualties, the details are presented in World War II casualties of the Soviet Union.
[151] According to Yad Vashem, "During their four years in power, the Ustasa carried out a Serb genocide, exterminating over 500,000, expelling 250,000 and forcing another 200,000 to convert to Catholicism.
