Title: Casualty Figure Chart for World War 1
Headings: Casualties of World War I
Casualties of World War I
Estimating the Numbers
How People Died
Notes on Countries
Casualties of World War I
Sources and Further Reading
Watch Now: 5 Causes of World War I

Content: How People Died
Many people expect the deaths and wounds of World War I to have come from bullets, as soldiers were engaged in combat: charges into no man's land, struggles over trenches, etc. However, while bullets certainly killed a lot of people, it was aerial artillery which killed the most. This death from the skies could bury people or just blow a limb off, and the repeated hammerings of millions of shells induced illness even when the shrapnel didn't hit. This devastating killer, which could kill you while you were on your own territory away from enemy troops, was supplemented by new weapons: humanity lived up to its horrible reputation by deciding that new methods of killing ​were needed, and poison gas was introduced on both western and eastern fronts. This didn't kill as many people as you might think, given the way we remember it, but those it did kill died a painful and hideous death. Some say that the First World War's death toll is used today as an emotional weapon used to cast the conflict in overwhelmingly negative terms, part of the modern revisionism on the war, which may be a completely dishonest way to portray the conflict. One look at the list below, with millions dead, over a war for imperial control, is telling evidence. The vast and scarring psychological effects of those who were wounded, or those who bore no physical wounds (and don't appear in the list below), yet suffered emotional wounds, must also be born in mind when you consider the human cost of this conflict.