Can anyone tell me the total Death Toll for WW2? Details...?

Question

I have been reading the answers for some of the WW2 and Holocaust questions here on Yahoo! Answers and the range I am seeing is incredible. Everything from 6 million to 50 million. I am pretty sure (from watching History Channel and such) that there were about 10 million "undesirables" killed by the Nazis (if your numbers are different I would be interested) but I am also wonder what were the numbers on soldiers from different countries and civilians (in bombing, treason starvation...). Does any one have a total, that they believe is accurate and why do you think that? I don't need exact numbers from each country. Thanks!

Answer 1

The number I give when teaching World War II is 52 million. The number varies from source to source based on who is being counted. For example, should civilians be counted, or only soldiers? Should military actions before September 1, 1939 (when the war began in Europe) be counted (such as the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, which is considered by many to be the start of World War II in Asia), or not? How about people who died after the war as a result of injuries suffered during the war? It can lead to quite a debate.

The 52 million figure includes over 10 million Chinese who died at the hands of the Japanese (starting in 1931), so it is higher than other figures often given.

Check out the site below.

Answer 2

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Answer 3

Ww2 Death Toll

Answer 4

This Site Might Help You.

RE:
Can anyone tell me the total Death Toll for WW2? Details...?
I have been reading the answers for some of the WW2 and Holocaust questions here on Yahoo! Answers and the range I am seeing is incredible. Everything from 6 million to 50 million. I am pretty sure (from watching History Channel and such) that there were about 10 million "undesirables"...

Answer 5

Wwii Death Toll

Answer 6

Thanks bcptm & Elizabeth, i thought it was around 72 million.... but like you said, we'll never know. But assuming the lower figure of 48 million, consider the following:

If birth and death rates stayed the same across the years, population growth by the 48 million could be figured with a fairly simple formula much like the one used to figure compound interest.

Birth and death rates aren't constant across countries and through time, however. Disease or disaster can cause death rates to increase for a certain period. A booming economy might mean higher birth rates for a given year.

But aside from the unknown variables, we'll assume that the rate is based on the average planetary growth rate, thus: We'll use 2% growth from the 60s and 1.5% from 1990 onwards.....gets us about 180 million from the 48 million figure who would've been alive if it weren't for WWII....

Answer 7

Allied powers estimated military deaths 11,237,793 that includes exact numbers for countries like the U.S., Britain, France ect and estimates for some countries like Poland, U.S.S.R. and China.
Axis powers estimated military deaths 5,493,232
Which gives a total for both sides of 16,731,025 and there was an additional 13,131,536 wounded
Civilian deaths total for both sides 37,612,464 (including merchant marines) and including the Jewish death total of 5,645,000

Answer 8

~I really hate people that cut and paste for other people who are too lazy to type something as simple as "WWII casualties" and then hit enter, but:

Source: follow the above procedure

Country Military Civilian Total
Soviet Union* 8,668,000 16,900,000 25,568,000
China 1,324,000 10,000,000 11,324,000
Germany 3,250,000 3,810,000 7,060,000
Poland 850,000 6,000,000 6,850,000
Japan 1,506,000 300,000 1,806,000
Yugoslavia 300,000 1,400,000 1,700,000
Rumania* 520,000 465,000 985,000
France* 340,000 470,000 810,000
Hungary* 750,000
Austria 380,000 145,000 525,000
Greece* 520,000
Italy 330,000 80,000 410,000
Czechoslovakia 400,000
Great Britain 326,000 62,000 388,000
USA 295,000 295,000
Holland 14,000 236,000 250,000
Belgium 10,000 75,000 85,000
Finland 79,000 79,000
Canada 42,000 42,000
India 36,000 *** 36,000
Australia 29,000 29,000
Spain** 12,000 10,000 22,000
Bulgaria 19,000 2,000 21,000
New Zealand 12,000 12,000
South Africa 9,000 9,000
Norway 5,000 5,000
Denmark 4,000 4,000


Total: c 61 million

That whole process took me less than 3 minutes. Get off your lazy butt and learn to use the web.

Oh, and in spite of all the folks who died under John Wayne's and George C. Scott's commands in the movies, do you see that the US casualties in both the Pacific and Europe account for a mere 2% of the total military deaths on the Allied side? So much for Uncle's contribution. Now, take a look at the Soviet's the Pole's and the Chinese. So, who really beat the Nazi's and Japanese?

And did you notice all those Japanese civilian deaths. A handful were from Nagasaki and Hiroshima (maybe 135 - 150 thousand directly from the two bombs). The huge majority of the rest were in the 60 some cities that were being bombed without resistance for a couple months before Fat Man and Little Boy, with close to 100 thousand in just a single raid, the fire bombing of Tokyo. What is missing from the table are the 68 US civilians the Japanese got at Pearl Harbor and the 2000 US civilians the US got at Hiroshima.

By the same process, you will find that about 18 million died in the concentration camps and death camps combined, with fewer than 3 million Jews dying in the death camps. The 6 million Jews comprise about 1/3 of the combined camp totals. The racial purification extended far beyond the camps (not that the concentration camps were actually part of the racial purification program; they weren't), but the Serbs, Slavs, Poles, Romas and Russians who were simply murdered were they were found remain uncounted.

Amazing what you can find out there with a modicum of effort and a thimbleful of ambition.


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epublius76 makes excellent points as to the difficulty of an accurate count. No records were kept of the deaths of the displaced persons who died directly and indirectly as a result of their war induced displacement, or of the deaths by murder of civilians, partisans, MIAs and the like. One must also define the period of time in question as the Pacific war was simply a broadened extension and continuation of the Second Sino-Japanese War, and does one count the European deaths prior to the invasion of Poland. Should the Second Italo–Abyssinian War be included as a WWII conflict? Then there are folks who died from radiation sickness months and years after Hiroshima and Nagasaki and others who died from war related causes after the war's ends in Europe and the Pacific, such as the camp survivors who died after the liberation of the camps.

Just say "a whole bunch of people died" since there never will be an accurate count, even if there is a consensus of all those who should and should not be included in the tally.

Answer 9

The sources below are why I believe these figures are very close to the actual number of dead.
The fact is, no matter who we chose to believe, these are all terrifying numbers of dead because of war.

Sources

Gregory Frumkin, Population Changes in Europe Since 1939 (European estimates)

B. Urlanis, Wars and Population (Soviet Union and the Far East)

Singer and Small, Wages of War (the Americas and Ethiopia)

I.C.B. Dear, editor, The Oxford Companion to World War II (British Commonwealth)


This is estimated number, we can never know the actual number, of both Axis and Allied war dead.

AXIS TOTAL -
MILITARY - 6,582,000
CIVILIAN - 1,686,000
TOTAL - 8,268,000

ALLIED TOTAL -
MILITARY - 14,276,800
CIVILIAN - 25,686,900
TOTAL - 39,963,700

ESTIMATED TOTAL WORLD-WIDE -
MILITARY - 20,858,800
CIVILIAN - 27,372,900
TOTAL - 48,231,700

For a full breakdown country by country go to:
http://www.warchronicle.com/numbers/WWII/deaths.htm

Answer 10

I have heard it estimated that there were 12 million victims of the Nazi holocaust and that is a pretty good estimate because the Nazis kept such accurate records. The estimate for the whole war, civilians and soldiers, in Europe only, is 50 million; 20 million of whom were Russian.