The Cost
Deaths and displacement, 1937 to 1945
Between seventy and eighty-five million people died in the Second World War, most of them civilians, most of them not in battle. Around sixty million more were driven from their homes. These are the most contested numbers in modern history, and no figure on this page stands without the name of whoever proposed it.
Normandy American Cemetery, Colleville-sur-Mer · American Battle Monuments Commission · Public domain · Source
- TOTAL DEAD
- 70 to 85 millionRoughly 3 per cent of the world population in 1940
- MILITARY DEAD
- 21 to 25 millionAround a quarter of the total
- CIVILIAN DEAD
- 50 to 55 millionIncluding famine, disease, genocide and bombing
- DISPLACED
- 60 million +In Europe alone, between 1939 and 1947
How to Read These Figures
Read this before the chartsSoviet official war dead were given as seven million in 1946, twenty million under Khrushchev, and 26.6 million after the archives opened in 1991. Chinese totals run from fifteen to twenty million depending on whether famine and displacement deaths are included. German civilian figures shift by millions according to how deaths during the postwar expulsions are treated.
Most of these disagreements are not disputes about evidence. They are disputes about what is being counted: military dead only, or military and civilian; dead only, or dead and missing; deaths in combat, or all deaths attributable to the war including famine and disease. Two scholars can look at the same records and publish figures ten million apart because they are answering different questions.
This page therefore shows the range, names each estimate, and says who proposed it and when. Where a single figure appears without a range it is because one authority is the accepted source for it, and that authority is named. Nothing here is presented as settled.
Deaths
One mark represents 100,000 peopleA bar chart of these numbers is unreadable, because the disparities are too large. A country losing 419,000 people and a country losing 27 million cannot share an axis without one of them disappearing. The grid below gives every hundred thousand dead the same mark, so the shape of the loss stays legible at both ends.
The two shades separate military from civilian dead. In most of Europe west of Poland the military mark dominates. Everywhere east and south of it, and across Asia, it does not. That inversion is the central fact about who died in this war.
military civilian · one mark for every hundred thousand people
13 to 14 per cent of prewar population
- 26.6 million totalProposed by Andreev, Darskii and Khar'kova, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1993
- 8.7 million military irrecoverable lossesProposed by Krivosheev, Russian Ministry of Defence, 1997
- 20 million totalProposed by Soviet official figure under Khrushchev, 1961, now superseded
- 7 million totalProposed by Soviet official figure under Stalin, 1946, now superseded
3 to 4 per cent of prewar population
- 20 million total, 1937 to 1945Proposed by State Council Information Office, People's Republic of China, 1995
- 15.0 million totalProposed by Rummel, Statistics of Democide, 1997
- Higher figures to 35 million count wounded and displaced alongside deadProposed by Chinese official statements, later revisions
8 to 11 per cent of prewar population
- 5.3 million military deadProposed by Overmans, from personnel records, 2000
- 4.3 million military deadProposed by earlier German official figures, now superseded by Overmans
- 1.5 to 3.3 million civilian deadProposed by varies by treatment of expulsion deaths after 1945
about 17 per cent, the highest share of any nation
- about 3 million Polish Jews murderedProposed by US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- about 2.8 million non-Jewish Polish civiliansProposed by Institute of National Remembrance figures
- 240,000 military deadProposed by Ellis, Statistical Survey, 1993
4 to 5 per cent of prewar population
- 3 to 4 million dead, overwhelmingly from famine and forced labourProposed by Dutch and Indonesian postwar estimates
- Almost none of this total is militaryProposed by the deaths follow occupation policy, not battle
3.5 to 4.3 per cent of prewar population
- 2.1 million military deadProposed by Japanese government figures, postwar
- 393,000 to 1 million civilian deadProposed by varies by inclusion of colonial subjects and repatriation deaths
- about 200,000 dead at Hiroshima and Nagasaki by the end of 1945Proposed by including deaths from radiation injury
almost entirely the Bengal famine of 1943
- about 3 million famine deadProposed by Sen, Poverty and Famines, 1981
- 2.1 million famine deadProposed by later demographic revisions
- 87,000 military deadProposed by Commonwealth War Graves Commission
the famine of 1944 to 1945
- 1 to 2 million famine dead in TonkinProposed by Vietnamese and French postwar estimates
6 to 11 per cent of prewar population
- 1.7 millionProposed by Yugoslav official figure, 1946, now generally regarded as too high
- 1.0 to 1.1 millionProposed by Kočović and Žerjavić, independent demographic studies, 1985 and 1989
includes about 565,000 Hungarian Jews murdered
- about 565,000 Hungarian Jews murderedProposed by US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- 300,000 to 350,000 military deadProposed by Ellis, Statistical Survey, 1993
includes Romanian participation in the Holocaust
- 280,000 to 380,000 Jews murdered in Romanian-controlled territoryProposed by US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- about 300,000 military deadProposed by Ellis, Statistical Survey, 1993
1.4 per cent of prewar population
- 210,000 military deadProposed by French official figures
- 390,000 civilian deadProposed by including about 75,000 Jews deported and murdered
- about 60,000 civilians killed by Allied bombing in FranceProposed by French postwar surveys
about 1 per cent of prewar population
- 301,400 military deadProposed by Italian official figures
- about 153,000 civilian deadProposed by including 8,000 Italian Jews murdered
0.94 per cent of prewar population
- 383,700 military deadProposed by Commonwealth War Graves Commission
- 67,200 civilian deadProposed by Commonwealth War Graves Commission civilian roll
0.32 per cent of prewar population
- 405,399 military deadProposed by US Department of Defense, Defense Casualty Analysis System
- About 1,700 civilian dead, chiefly merchant marineProposed by US official figures
Greece, Czechoslovakia, the Netherlands, Korea, the Philippines and others
- Greece, 300,000 to 800,000, largely famine and reprisalProposed by Greek postwar estimates
- Netherlands, 210,000 to 300,000, including 104,000 Jews murderedProposed by NIOD
- Philippines, 500,000 to 1,000,000Proposed by Philippine postwar estimates
- Korea, 380,000 to 500,000Proposed by under Japanese rule, largely forced labour and conscription
The Estimates
Who proposed each figure, and whenThe table below carries the competing published estimates behind each country total. Where several appear, they are listed with the scholar or institution that produced them and the year of publication, so a reader can see the spread rather than a single averaged number that belongs to nobody.
Percentages of prewar population are given because they change the picture entirely. The Soviet Union lost the most people in absolute terms. Poland lost the largest share of any nation on earth, close to one person in six.
military civilian · one mark for every hundred thousand people
Battle deaths, wounds and deaths in service on all sides
- 21 to 25 million military dead across all combatantsProposed by Ellis, Statistical Survey, 1993, and national official figures
Deliberate killing of civilians as policy
- about 6 million Jews murdered in the HolocaustProposed by US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- 130,000 to 500,000 Roma murderedProposed by US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- about 250,000 disabled people murdered under Aktion T4 and afterProposed by US Holocaust Memorial Museum
- 1.8 to 3 million non-Jewish Polish civiliansProposed by Institute of National Remembrance, Poland
Bengal, Tonkin, Greece, the Netherlands, Leningrad, China, Java
- about 3 million in Bengal, 1943Proposed by Sen, Poverty and Famines, 1981
- 1 to 2 million in Tonkin, 1944 to 1945Proposed by Vietnamese and French postwar estimates
- about 20,000 in the Dutch Hongerwinter, 1944 to 1945Proposed by NIOD
- about 300,000 in Greece, 1941 to 1942Proposed by Greek postwar estimates
Prisoners of war and deported labourers who died in custody
- about 3.3 million of 5.7 million Soviet prisoners died in German captivityProposed by Streit, Keine Kameraden, 1978
- Deaths among deported forced labourers in the German war economyProposed by figures remain incomplete
Both sides, in Europe and Asia
- 350,000 to 500,000 German civilians killed by Allied bombingProposed by German Federal Statistical Office
- about 330,000 Japanese civilians killed by American bombing including the atomic bombsProposed by Japanese postwar surveys
- about 60,700 British civilians killed by German bombing and V weaponsProposed by Commonwealth War Graves Commission
Displacement
A separate measure, and a separate unitDisplacement is counted differently from death and is not shown on the same chart. A person can be displaced more than once, can be counted by more than one authority, and can be recorded as a refugee, an evacuee, a deportee, an expellee or a displaced person depending on who is doing the counting and why.
The figures below are given as separate measures rather than a single total, because adding them together would double-count millions of people. The bars are scaled against each other only, and carry no relationship to the death figures above.
Sources & Archives
External links open the holding institutionThe figures on this page are drawn from the standard published compilations and from the national statistical authorities that produced the underlying counts. Where a scholar is named, the attribution is to their published work rather than to a secondary citation of it.
Population baselines for the percentage columns are taken from prewar national censuses where they exist and from Maddison's historical population series where they do not. Borders are those of 1937 unless a note says otherwise, which matters a great deal for Poland, Germany, Hungary and Romania.
- Naselenie Sovetskogo Soyuza 1922 to 1991, the demographic study that produced the 26.6 million figure, Andreev, Darskii and Khar'kova, Russian Academy of Sciences, 1993Russian Academy of Sciences
- Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, the Russian Ministry of Defence military count, G. F. Krivosheev, 1993 and 1997Russian Ministry of Defence
- Deutsche militärische Verluste im Zweiten Weltkrieg, the recount of German military dead from personnel records, Rüdiger Overmans, 2000Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt
- Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi PersecutionUnited States Holocaust Memorial Museum
- Keine Kameraden, the study of Soviet prisoners of war in German captivity, Christian Streit, 1978Militärgeschichtliches Forschungsamt
- World War II: A Statistical Survey, the standard single-volume compilation, John Ellis, 1993Facts on File
- Statistics of Democide, government killings in the twentieth century, R. J. Rummel, 1997University of Hawaii
- Poverty and Famines, the entitlement analysis of the Bengal famine of 1943, Amartya Sen, 1981Oxford University Press
- Chinese war losses, the official figures released by the People's RepublicState Council Information Office, PRC, 1995
- Defense Casualty Analysis System, the official United States military countUS Department of Defense
- Civilian and military war dead of the United Kingdom and CommonwealthCommonwealth War Graves Commission
- The Hongerwinter and the occupation death toll in the NetherlandsNIOD Institute for War, Holocaust and Genocide Studies
- The refugee and displaced persons operation in Europe, 1945 to 1947UNRRA and successor records, UNHCR
- Historical Statistics of the World Economy, the population baselines, Angus MaddisonMaddison Project Database, University of Groningen
- Documents on the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Central EuropeGerman Federal Statistical Office and Bundesarchiv
Verification note. Every figure on this page must be checked against the named publication before this page goes live. The structure records which authority proposed each number, and the numbers themselves are entered here as the standard published figures pending that check. Casualty statistics are the part of this site most likely to be challenged, and the only defence is a citation that holds.