We explained how many the victims (military and civilians) of World War II in the different countries that were involved in the conflict.
What was World War II?
World War II was the war with the greatest amount of total dead in the history of humanity. Between 1939 and 1945 it is estimated that they died about seventy -five million civilian and military people from all over the world.
The countries that had more military dead were the Soviet Union (more than ten million), Germany (more than five million), China (with almost four million) and Japan (more than two million). However, in relation to civil deaths, China was the one with the greatest number of fatal victims (He reached sixteen million).
The battles with the greatest amount of casualties in World War II were the battle of Stalingrad with almost two million casualties, the Battle of Moscow with almost a million and a half casualties and the battle of Berlin with more than one million casualties. In the figures of victims of World War II, the victims of the Jewish holocaust carried out by the Nazi party of Germany in all occupied territories are counted. It is estimated that more than six million Jews died from Nazi systematic persecutiontogether with other social groups such as Slavs and Gypsies, whose deaths reach the figure of five hundred million people.
The data on the military deaths of World War II were taken by different agencies during the conflict. Although there are differences between what is estimated by the different sources, the published figures remain more or less close.
However, the registration of civil deaths linked to World War II was made by different institutions after the war, and estimates vary much more among the sources. For some specific situations, the figures vary by millions of victims.
See also: consequences of World War II
Total deaths per country in World War II
In the following table you can see a summary with the countries that had more victims because of the war. In the case of the estimated figures of civil deaths, when the sources show divergence, it was chosen to take an average between the proposed figures. In addition, there are countries that only had civil deaths since they were occupied by enemy armies but did not send soldiers to battle fronts.
| Military and civil deaths by country in World War II | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Country | Military deaths | Civil deaths | Total deaths |
| Germany | 5,533,000 | 2,167,000 | 7,700,000 |
| Japan | 2,120,000 | 730,000 | 2,850,000 |
| Romania | 300,000 | 533,000 | 833,000 |
| Hungary | 300,000 | 280,000 | 580,000 |
| Italy | 301,400 | 155,600 | 457,000 |
| Austria | 261,000 | 123,700 | 384,700 |
| Finland | 95,000 | 2,000 | 97,000 |
| Total axis | 8,910,400 | 3,991,300 | 12,901,700 |
| Soviet Union | 10,700,000 | 13,300,000 | 24,000,000 |
| China | 4,000,000 | 16,000,000 | 20,000,000 |
| Poland | 240,000 | 5,360,000 | 5,600,000 |
| Dutch Eastern Indies | 0 | 3,500,000 | 3,500,000 |
| India | 87,000 | 1,913,000 | 2,000,000 |
| French Indochina | 0 | 1,250,000 | 1,250,000 |
| Yugoslavia | 446,000 | 554,000 | 1,000,000 |
| Philippines | 57,000 | 693,000 | 750,000 |
| France | 217,600 | 350,000 | 567,600 |
| Greece | 27,000 | 523,000 | 550,000 |
| United Kingdom | 383,000 | 67,700 | 450,700 |
| Korea | 0 | 425,000 | 425,000 |
| USA | 416,800 | 1,700 | 418,500 |
| Lithuania | 0 | 353,000 | 353,000 |
| Czechoslovakia | 25,000 | 320,000 | 345,000 |
| Netherlands | 17,000 | 284,000 | 301,000 |
| Latvia | 0 | 227,000 | 227,000 |
| Ethiopia | 5,000 | 95,000 | 100,000 |
| Malaysia | 0 | 100,000 | 100,000 |
| Belgium | 12,100 | 74,000 | 86,100 |
| Estonia | 0 | 51,000 | 51,000 |
| Singapore | 0 | 50,000 | 50,000 |
| Canada | 45,400 | 0 | 45,400 |
| Australia | 39,800 | 700 | 40,500 |
| Albania | 30,000 | 200 | 30,200 |
| Bulgaria | 22,000 | 3,000 | 25,000 |
| Papua New Guinea | 0 | 15,000 | 15,000 |
| New Zealand | 11,900 | 0 | 11,900 |
| South African Union | 11,900 | 0 | 11,900 |
| Norway | 3,000 | 6,500 | 9,500 |
| Denmark | 2,100 | 1,000 | 3,200 |
| Luxembourg | 0 | 2,000 | 2,000 |
| Total Allies | 16,799,600 | 45,519,900 | 62,319,500 |
| Total | 25,710,000 | 49,511,200 | 75,221,200 |
The countries with the most total deaths for World War II were:
- Soviet Union: 24 million deaths
- China: 20 million deaths
- Germany: 7.7 million deaths
- Poland: 5.6 million deaths
- Indies Dutch Orientals: 3.5 million deaths
- Japan: 2.8 million deaths
- India: 2 million deaths
- French Indochina: 1.2 million deaths
- Yugoslavia: 1 million deaths
- Romania: 0.8 million deaths
See also: Chronology of World War II
The countries with more civil deaths in World War II
The deaths of civilians in World War II include millions of people. The countries of the allies suffered a greater number of civil deaths than axis side countries.
In China more than 16 million civilians died in the Soviet Union more than 13 million and in Poland more than 5 million. The country’s side that had more civil deaths was Germany with 2 million fatal victims.
Among the civil deaths are counted to the victims of the Holocaust and the persecution of the German Nazi party that reach The death of 6,000,000 Jews from different countries who suffered German occupation.
Another of the most fatal attacks on civilians was the nuclear bombing than the army of The United States made about the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
It is estimated that in Hiroshima they died immediately between seventy thousand and two hundred and twenty thousand people (according to different documentary sources) and more than sixty thousand died during the following year for burns and exposure to nuclear radiation.
The nuclear bomb that fell on Nagasaki three days after Hiroshima’s, immediately killed between sixty thousand and seventy -five thousand people, and almost one hundred thousand during the following year.
The countries with more military deaths in World War II
The country that suffered the most military deaths was the Soviet Union: More than 10,700,000 soldiers lost their lives on battle fronts. China lost the life of 4,000,000 troops. None of the other countries on the allies had a number of military deaths greater than 450,000 soldiers.
The axis side countries that had more military deaths were Germany with 5,533,000 dead soldiers and Japan with 2,120,000. The fatal casualties of Italy, Hungary and Romania reached the 300,000 troops each country.
See more in: World War II alliances
Military casualties per country in World War II
Military casualties include the amount of dead, injured, prisoners of war and missing that an army suffers in relation to the number of soldiers. The countries of the axis side with lower military were Germany with 11,900,000 and Japan with 6,110,000. From the side of the allies, the Soviet Union had 11,000,000 casualties and China 3,178,423.
| Military casualties per country in World War II | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Country | Dead | Injured | Prisoners or missing | Total military casualties |
| Germany | 3,500,000 | 5,000,000 | 3,400,000 | 11,900,000 |
| Japan | 1,300,000 | 4,000,000 | 810,000 | 6,110,000 |
| Romania | 300,000 | – | 100,000 | 400,000 |
| Italy | 242,000 | 66,000 | 350,000 | 658,000 |
| Hungary | 200,000 | – | 170,000 | 370,000 |
| Finland | 82,000 | 50,000 | – | 132,000 |
| Total axis | 5,624,000 | 9,116,000 | 4,830,000 | 19,570,000 |
| Soviet Union | 11,000,000 | – | – | 11,000,000 |
| China | 1.310.224 | 1,752,951 | 115,248 | 3,178,423 |
| United Kingdom and Commonwealth | 373,372 | 475,047 | 251,724 | 1,100,143 |
| Yugoslavia | 305,000 | 425,000 | – | 730,000 |
| USA | 292,131 | 671,801 | 139,709 | 1,103,641 |
| France | 213,324 | 400,000 | – | 613.324 |
| Poland | 123,178 | 236,606 | 420,760 | 780,544 |
| Greece | 88,300 | – | – | 88,300 |
| Philippines | 27,000 | – | – | 27,000 |
| Belgium | 12,000 | – | – | 12,000 |
| Czechoslovakia | 10,000 | – | – | 10,000 |
| Netherlands | 7,900 | 2,860 | – | 10,760 |
| Norway | 3,000 | – | – | 3,000 |
| Denmark | 1,800 | – | – | 1,800 |
| Brazil | 943 | 4,222 | – | 5,165 |
| Total Allies | 13.768,172 | 3,968,487 | 927,441 | 18,664,100 |
| Total | 19,392,172 | 13,084,487 | 5,757,441 | 38,234,100 |
The victims of the Holocaust
The Holocaust was a systematic persecution of the Jewish population by the Nazi party that ruled Germany from 1933 to 1945. The Nazis believed that the Aria race was superior and wanted to “purge” the nation to be racially homogeneous. The Jews who lived in Germany were supported were a threat to the Aria community and it was necessary to “remove them” of society.
In addition to attacking the Jewish population, The Nazi party persecuted other groups that “weakened” the Aria community for their racial origin, for their ideology or for their socia conditionl. Together with the Jews, the Nazis harassed populations of Slavic and gypsy origin, homosexuals, people with physical disabilities and the militants of the partisan political opposition, especially the communists and the socialists.
There is no official registration of the Nazi government that allows accurately to define the number of victims of the Holocaust. Statistics are the product of a joint investigation of specialists based on different sources such as censuses, records of war prisoners of the different governments of the post -war axis and analysis.
The following table defines the number of deaths at the hands of the Nazi regime and its collaborators between 1939 and 1945. These figures were calculated by the United States Holocaust Museum based on the war reports of the military agents of the Nazi party and demographic studies on the victims of World War II.
| Civil deaths at the hands of the Nazi regime (1939-1945) | |
|---|---|
| Cluster | Number of deaths |
| Jews | 6,000,000 |
| Civilians of the Soviet Union | 7,000,000 (of which 1,300,000 were Jews and are included in the group “Jews”) |
| Prisoners of war of the Soviet Union |
3,000,000 (Of which 50,000 were Jews and are included in the group “Jews”). |
| Non -Jewish Poland civilians | 1,800,000 |
| Serbian civilians (in the occupied territories of Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina) | 312,000 |
| People with physical disabilities | 250,000 |
| Gypsies | between 250,000 and 500,000 |
| Criminals arrested | 70,000 |
| Jehovah’s Witnesses | 1,900 |
| Opposition militants (Socialists and communists) |
indeterminate |
| Homosexuals | indeterminate |
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References
- Hughes, Thomas A. and Royde-Smith, John Graham (2023). “World War II”. Britannica Encyclopedia
https://www.britannica.com/ - Nolan, CJ (2010). The Concise Encyclopedia of World War II. Bloomsbury Publishing USA.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2020). “Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution”. Holocaust Encyclopedia. https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/.
