We explained how many the victims (military and civilians) of the First World War of the different countries that fought in the conflict.
How many were the dead in World War I?
It is estimated that in World War I (1914-1918) about eleven million soldiers and almost nine million civilians died . This makes it the Second War with the highest number of deaths in the history of humanity, after World War II (1939-1945). The mobilization of men towards the battle front reached sixty -five million troops and it is estimated that almost five thousand five hundred soldiers per day died on average.
The countries with the greatest number of military deaths were the Russian Empire and the German Empire, with about two million dead each. However, The country that had the highest percentage of casualties in relation to the number of mobilized soldiers was the Austro-Hungarian Empire : About 90 % of the Russian soldiers who were sent to the battle front were killed, injured or missing.
This huge amount of deaths was the result of two elementary issues. First, The introduction of new armament technologies ; Especially, repetition weapons and chemical weapons, such as machine gun and gas. And, in the second instance, the appearance of the “war of wear” as a new way of facing the enemy. This strategy was to consolidate positions through the construction of trenches and maintain the constant and continuous attack on the enemy.
On the other hand, it is estimated that Almost eleven million civilians died in those years due to direct or indirect war : hunger, disease, mass migrations, destruction of resources and facilities and deprivation of services. In addition, the last year of the war the epidemic of the “Spanish flu” also took the lives of millions of civilians.
It is important to keep in mind that no institution brought the account of civilians’ deaths officially. The specialists have estimated the figures of victims from different sources and documents. Beyond that, it is known that the magnitude in destruction of lives of the First World War is not preceded. The total of lost lives exceeds the sum of deaths of all European wars of the previous hundred years.
- See also: End of World War I
Military and civil deaths by country in World War
Military deaths during World War They were registered by the military systems of each country . While it is known that the numbers are not exact, it can be affirmed that their approach is quite accurate.
However, Civil deaths during World War I were not counted by any official agency and its estimate corresponds to sources after the development of war. Many different estimates are disseminated on the Internet and some affirm that the number of civil deaths reaches, by itself, the forty million people. In many cases, it seeks to highlight the magnitude of human destruction during the war and the numbers presented can be misleading.
Today’s specialists agree that It is very difficult to establish an exact number of the number of civilians who died for reasons linked to war such as hunger, disease or as victims of enemy attacks.
However, through the comparison of data from various sources, civilian death numbers during World War I can approach the following estimates:
| Military and civil deaths by country during World War | |||
| Country | Military deaths | Civil deaths | Total deaths |
| German empire | 2,037,000 | 426,000 | 2,463,000 |
| Austro-Hungarian Empire | 1,513,500 | 460,000 | 1,973,500 |
| Ottoman Empire | 772,000 | 4,200,000 | 4,972,000 |
| Bulgaria | 87,500 | 100,000 | 187,500 |
| Total central empires | 4,410,000 | 5,186,000 | 9,596,000 |
| Russian Empire | 1,997,500 | 1,500,000 | 3,497,500 |
| France | 1,400,000 | 300,000 | 1,700,000 |
| British empire | 959,000 | 109,000 | 1,068,000 |
| Italy | 600,000 | 589,000 | 1,189,000 |
| USA | 87,900 | 800 | 88,700 |
| Japan | 300 | 0 | 300 |
| Romania | 250,700 | 430,000 | 680,700 |
| Serbia | 278,000 | 450,000 | 728,000 |
| Belgium | 38,000 | 68,000 | 108,000 |
| Greece | 26,000 | 150,000 | 176,000 |
| Portugal | 7,200 | 82,000 | 89,200 |
| Montenegro | 3,000 | 0 | 3,000 |
| Total Entente | 5,647,600 | 3,678,800 | 9,326,400 |
| Total | 10,057,600 | 8,864,800 | 18,922,400 |
Military casualties per country in World War I
The “military casualties” They integrate the amount of dead, wounded and missing from an army . It is a number that defines the number of soldiers who were sent to war and stop being effective. The soldiers whose bodies were identified are counted as dead.
The injured are soldiers who left the battlefield and were treated for their war injuries. Instead, the missing ones are soldiers that were sent to the front and that their bodies could never be found or identified. The number of missing can include deserters and prisoners of war .
The amount of military casualties during World War I was different for the different countries that were involved in the conflict:
| Military casualties per country during World War I | ||||
| Country | Dead | Injured | Missing | Total low |
| German empire | 2,037,000 | 4,216,000 | 1,153,000 | 7,406,000 |
| Austro-Hungarian Empire | 1,513,500 | 3,620,000 | 2,200,000 | 7,333,500 |
| Ottoman Empire | 772,000 | 400,000 | 250,000 | 1,422,000 |
| Bulgaria | 87,500 | 152,000 | 27,000 | 266,500 |
| Total central empires | 4,410,000 | 8,388,000 | 3,630,000 | 16,428,000 |
| Russian Empire | 1,997,500 | 4,950,000 | 2,500,000 | 9,447,500 |
| France | 1,400,000 | 3,400,000 | 537,000 | 5,337,000 |
| British empire | 959,000 | 2,090,000 | 190,000 | 3,239,000 |
| Italy | 600,000 | 947,000 | 600,000 | 2,147,000 |
| USA | 87,900 | 234,000 | 4,500 | 326,400 |
| Japan | 300 | 900 | 0 | 1,200 |
| Romania | 250,700 | 120,000 | 80,000 | 450,700 |
| Serbia | 278,000 | 133,000 | 153,000 | 564,000 |
| Belgium | 38,000 | 45,000 | 35,000 | 118,000 |
| Greece | 26,000 | 21,000 | 1,000 | 48,000 |
| Portugal | 7,200 | 14,000 | 12,000 | 33,200 |
| Montenegro | 3,000 | 10,000 | 7,000 | 20,000 |
| Total Entente | 5,647,600 | 11,964,900 | 4,119,500 | 21,732,000 |
| Total | 10,057,600 | 20,352,900 | 7,749,500 | 38,160,000 |
Low in relation to soldiers mobilized by each country
Low absolute numbers may present a misleading idea in relation to the effectiveness of armies. While the countries of the entente had more casualties on the war front, this was linked to mobilized a greater number of soldiers to the battlefields.
If the total number of casualties are compared in relation to the soldiers mobilized by each country and for each side, You can identify which were the most suffered armies and which ones had a lower casualty rate among their troops .
For example, the side of the central empire mobilized almost twenty -three million troops, of which there were sixteen and a half low millions. This means that About 72 % of the soldiers of the central empires were injured, dead or missing during the war.
On the other hand, the countries that formed the side of the entente mobilized together more than forty -two million troops, of which twenty -one millions were counted as casualties. This means that only 51% of the soldiers of the entente were killed, injured or missing .
| Low in relation to soldiers mobilized by each country during World War | |||
| Country | Mobilized | Total low | Percentage of casualties on mobilized |
| German empire | 11,000,000 | 7,406,000 | 67% |
| Austro-Hungarian Empire | 7,800,000 | 7,333,500 | 92% |
| Ottoman Empire | 2,850,000 | 1,422,000 | 49% |
| Bulgaria | 1,200,000 | 266,500 | 22% |
| Total central empires | 22,850,000 | 16,428,000 | 72% |
| Russian Empire | 12,000,000 | 9,447,500 | 78% |
| France | 8,410,000 | 5,337,000 | 63% |
| British empire | 8,904,500 | 3,239,000 | 36% |
| Italy | 5,615,000 | 2,147,000 | 38% |
| USA | 4,355,000 | 326,400 | 8% |
| Japan | 800,000 | 1,200 | 0.2% |
| Romania | 750,000 | 450,700 | 60% |
| Serbia | 707,400 | 564,000 | 80% |
| Belgium | 267,000 | 118,000 | 44% |
| Greece | 230,000 | 48,000 | 20% |
| Portugal | 100,000 | 33,200 | 33% |
| Montenegro | 50,000 | 20,000 | 40% |
| Total Entente | 42,188,900 | 21,732,000 | 51% |
| Total | 65,038,900 | 38,160,000 | 58% |
Variables that affected the amount of casualties for each country
There were different variables that influenced the amount of low soldiers by country:
- Mobilized soldiers . Not all countries mobilized the same number of soldiers towards war fronts. For example, the Russian Empire and the German Empire mobilized more than eleven million soldiers each. On the other hand, other countries with less population (or less committed to war) mobilized troops that did not reach one million troops (for example Greece, Portugal or Belgium).
- Time at war . Another important point to take into account is the amount of time that each country participated in the war. While France and the Austro -Hungarian Empire were at war from 1914 to 1918, other countries joined the contest later, such as Italy and Bulgaria they were involved only in 1915 and the United States in 1917.
- War fronts . On the other hand, there are countries that became battlefields, in which cases the deaths of civilians were much greater than those countries that did not have territories committed to the war. In those cases, the countries mobilized more troops to fight in the front since they saw their own compromised territories. In this regard, in France, Belgium and the Russian Empire was where more battles were fought and, at the same time, where more civilians died.
Battles with greater mortality of World War I
Throughout the four years that the “great war” lasted, there were some events that were especially destructive to human lives. Among the most important are:
- The Battle of Verdún (1916) . It was the longest battle of the First World War: it began on February 21 and ended on December 28. The confrontation between the French troops and the German army mobilized almost a million troops on each side. In total, it is estimated that over the ten months the battle lasted, about 170,000 French soldiers and 120,000 Germans died.
- The Battle of the Somme (1916) . It was the confrontation with more deaths from World War I. In it, the German empire faced French and British troops. There were almost 150,000 German or missing Germans and more than 180,000 soldiers who are deceased between French and British.
- The Brusilov offensive (1916) . It was a military operation of the Russian Empire that became one of the battles with the greatest number of victims in history. The Russian army attacked the German and Austro -Hungarian troops in the Eastern Front and, in total, it is estimated that there were more than two million casualties (between dead, injured and prisoners).
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References
- Hart, P. (2014). “A world without war?” The Great War, 1914-1918: Military History of the First World War. Grupo Planeta (GBS).
- Hernández, J. (2007). “The lost occasion.” Everything you should know about World War I1-412.
- Bisthoven Janssens, B. (2016). “The price of war.” World War I Volume 3. The outcome. Editorial 50 minutes.
- Prost, Antoine (2014). “War Losses.” International Encyclopedia of the First World War. Freie Universität Berlin. https://encycypedia. 1914-1918-online.net/
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum (2023). “World War I” Holocaust Encyclopedia.
https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/
