gross domestic product per person was much higher than that of any of the other powers, and it dominated the world economy. The Allied occupational authorities pursued a policy of industrial disarmament in Western Germany from 1945 to 1948. Due to international trade interdependencies, this policy led to an economic stagnation in Europe and delayed European recovery from the war for several years. At the Bretton Woods Conference in July 1944, the Allied nations drew up an economic framework for the post-war world. The agreement created the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development (IBRD). The Bretton Woods system lasted until 1973. Recovery began with the mid-1948 currency reform in Western Germany, and was sped up by the liberalisation of European economic policy that the Marshall Plan (1948–1951) both directly and indirectly caused. The post-1948 West German recovery has been called the German economic miracle. Italy also experienced an economic boom and the French economy rebounded. By contrast, the United Kingdom was in a state of economic ruin, and although receiving a quarter of the total Marshall Plan assistance, more than any other European country, it continued in relative economic decline for decades. The Soviet Union, despite enormous human and material losses, also experienced rapid increase in production in the immediate post-war era. Japan recovered much later. China returned to its pre-war industrial production by 1952. Impact Casualties and war crimes Estimates for the total number of casualties in the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians. Many of the civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass bombings, disease, and starvation. The Soviet Union alone lost around 27 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths. A quarter of the total people in the Soviet Union were wounded or killed. Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany. An estimated 11 to 17 million civilians died as a direct or as an indirect result of Hitler's racist policies, including mass killing of around 6million Jews, along with Roma, homosexuals, at least 1.9 million ethnic Poles and millions of other Slavs (including Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians), and other ethnic and minority groups. Between 1941 and 1945, more than