Title: Casualties of World War II | History of Western Civilization II
Headings: Casualties of World War II
Casualties of World War II
31.8.2: Casualties of World War II
Learning Objective
Key Points
Key Terms
Casualties and War Crimes
Concentration Camps, Slave Labor, and Genocide
Attributions

Content: Casualties of World War II | History of Western Civilization II
Casualties of World War II
31.8.2: Casualties of World War II
Some 75 million people died in World War II, including about 20 million military personnel and 40 million civilians, many of whom died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation. Learning Objective
Assess the losses and damages of World War II
Key Points
World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history in terms of total dead, with some 75 million people casualties including military and civilians, or around 3% of the world’s population at the time. Many civilians died because of deliberate genocide, massacres, mass-bombings, disease, and starvation. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, including 8.7 million military and 19 million civilians. This represents the most military deaths of any nation by a large margin. Germany sustained 5.3 million military losses, mostly on the Eastern Front and during the final battles in Germany. Of the total number of deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent were on the Allied side and 15 percent were on the Axis side, with many of these deaths caused by war crimes committed by German and Japanese forces in occupied territories. Nazi Germany, as part of a deliberate program of extermination, systematically killed over 11 million people including 6 million Jews. In addition to Nazi concentration camps, the Soviet gulags (labor camps) led to the deaths of 3.6 million civilians.