Wevelgem
During the First World War, the Germans constructed an airport. The airport still exists and is now used for private purposes. Also remaining is the German Military cemetery, which is also partly situated in Menen. There are 47,864 soldiers buried there, who all died during WW1. This makes the cemetery the biggest German cemetery in Belgium. Across the cemetery, there used to be a (fake) airport, with wooden planes to mislead the enemy; there are still remains of the airport consisting of a big bunker and a small bunker near the railway. The bridge that connects Lauwe to Wevelgem was destroyed during the Second World War and was rebuilt later. Indian famine of 1899–1900
Estimates of the excess mortality during the famine vary widely. According to historian David Fieldhouse, over 1 million people may have died during the famine of 1899–1900. However, according to anthropologist Brian Fagan, "No one knows exactly how many perished in the great famine, but it could have been as many as four and a half million people." In her study of famines in the Bombay Presidency during the period 1860–1920, South Asianist, Michelle McAlpin estimated the famine of 1899–1900 to have had the highest mortality—at 37.9 deaths per 1000—among all famines and scarcities there between 1876–77 and 1918–19. Anthropologist Daniel W. Attwood asserts that in the Deccan an estimated 166,000 people may have died, and in the entire Presidency a total of 462,000. Historian Ronald E. Seavoy, in his 1986 study on famine in peasant societies, estimates the mortality in the famine to be 3.2 million, whereas historian Aroop Maharatna, in his historical retrospective of the demography of Indian famines, estimates the mortality to be between 3 million and 4.4 million. Archaeologist Daniel T. Chamberlain, citing Maharatna, points out that in Berar Province, the overall mortality rate in 1900 was 150% higher than the baseline rate, and further, also citing Maharatna, that the famine's effect can be seen in the sharp increase in crude death rate (to approximately 9%) in 1900, a sharp drop in the crude birth rate (down to 3%) in 1901, and a "compensating" increase in the birth rate (to approximately 5.5%) in 1902. Public health physician Mark E. Keim considers the mortality in India in the year 1900 to be 1.25 million, and the drought in India that year to be the fifth worst by mortality in the 20th century. Environment and development scholar Arun Agrawal argues that on account of the more liberal government relief in 1898 and 1899, "the number of people who died was far fewer" than in the famine of 1896–97 (whose mortality he puts at nearly 5 million). However anthropologist Fagan considers the famine in 1899–1900 to be the worst on record, suggesting that although the viceroy, Lord Curzon "led the public appeals for humanitarian aid, ... (t)he initiatives from his government ... were grossly inadequate." Syndemic
The worst of the 20th century influenza pandemics was the 1918 pandemic, where between 20-40 percent of the world’s population became ill between 40-100 million people died. More people died of the so-called Spanish flu (caused by the H1N1 viral strain) pandemic in the single year of 1918 than during all four-years of the Black Death. The pandemic had devastating effects as disease spread along trade and shipping routes and other corridors of human movement until it had circled the globe. InIndia, the mortality rate reached 50 per 1,000 population. Arriving during the closing phase of the World War I, the pandemic impacted mobilized national armies. Half of U.S. soldiers who died in the "Great War," for example, were victims of influenza. It is estimated that almost ¾ of a million Americans died during the pandemic. In part, the death toll during the pandemic was caused by viral pneumonia characterized by extensive bleeding in the lungs resulting in suffocation. Many victims died within 48 hours of the appearance of the first symptom. It was not uncommon for people who appeared to be quite healthy in the morning to have died by sunset. Among those who survived the first several days, however, many died of secondary bacterial pneumonia. It has been argued that countless numbers of those who expired quickly from the disease were co-infected with tuberculosis, which would explain the notable plummet in TB cases after 1918. Effect of World War I on children in the United States
Over 21 million people were killed or injured in World War I; in many cases, all of the men in one family were killed, numerous cities in Europe were destroyed, and family life throughout the world was greatly affected. While the United States suffered the fewest casualties, family life was still greatly affected as husbands were deployed and wives had to begin working. As the war draft suddenly removed many men from factory work, the factories began soliciting for women workers in traditionally male-dominated areas. Therefore, women had less time to spend at home with the children, as many of them would have before the war. As fathers, uncles, brothers, and grandfathers deployed in military service, women filled their places in factories and offices, changing the ways young children and teens received home nurturing. Additionally, women moving into new roles in society had lasting effects on children and family life after the war. President Woodrow Wilson stated, "We have made partners of the women in this war; shall we admit them only to a partnership of suffering and sacrifice and toil and not to a partnership of privilege and right?" As women began working in the factories, more of society began to realize the need for women's rights; while women had been granted suffrage (voting rights) to varying degrees in several states beginning in the late 19th century, they were now guaranteed full suffrage throughout the United States by the 19th Amendment to the United States Constitution passed in August, 1920. This also paved the way for the children of future generations by creating greater career opportunities for girls and women; as women gained a stronger voice, girls became more involved in the workforce and education and prepared for roles outside of the home. Additionally, family life was affected after the war as more and more women entered the work force, moving away from the traditional stay-at-home mother and housewife role. Civilian casualty ratio
Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones. World War I casualties
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I were about 40 million: estimates range from 15 to 19 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history. World War I casualties
Casualty statistics for World War I vary to a great extent; estimates of total deaths range from 9 million to over 15 million. Military casualties reported in official sources list deaths due to all causes, including an estimated 7 to 8 million combat related deaths (killed or died of wounds) and another two to three million military deaths caused by accidents, disease and deaths while prisoners of war. Official government reports listing casualty statistics were published by the United States and Great Britain. These secondary sources published during the 1920s, are the source of the statistics in reference works listing casualties in World War I. This article summarizes the casualty statistics published in the official government reports of the United States and Great Britain as well as France, Italy, Belgium, Germany, Austria and Russia. More recently the research of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has revised the military casualty statistics of the UK and its allies; they include in their listing of military war dead personnel outside of combat theaters and civilians recruited from Africa, the Middle East and China who provided logistical and service support in combat theaters. The casualties of these support personnel recruited outside of Europe were previously not included with British war dead, however the casualties of the Labour Corps recruited from the British Isles were included in the rolls of British war dead published in 1921. The methodology used by each nation to record and classify casualties was not uniform, a general caveat regarding casualty figures is that they cannot be considered comparable in all cases. World War I casualties
The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, including about 6 million due to war-related famine and disease. The Triple Entente (also known as the Allies) lost about 6 million military personnel while the Central Powers lost about 4 million. At least 2 million died from diseases and 6 million went missing, presumed dead. This article lists the casualties of the belligerent powers based on official published sources.
Military history of Australia during World War I
During World War I over 421,809 Australians served in the military with 331,781 serving overseas. Over 60,000 Australians lost their lives and 137,000 were wounded. As a percentage of forces committed, this equalled a casualty rate of almost 65 per cent, one of the highest casualty rates amongst the British Empire forces. The financial cost of the war to the Australian government was £188,480,000.Footnotes
Citations World War I
Lobbying by Chaim Weizmann and fear that American Jews would encourage the United States to support Germany culminated in the British government's Balfour Declaration of 1917, endorsing creation of a Jewish homeland in Palestine. A total of more than 1,172,000 Jewish soldiers served in the Allied and Central Power forces in World War I, including 275,000 in Austria-Hungary and 450,000 in Tsarist Russia. Croatia during World War I
In July 1918, first cases of Spanish flu, which killed more than 20 million people worldwide, were reported in Croatia. On average, 60 people were dying in Zagreb per week. In the most difficult period of the epidemic that number has grown to more than 200 people, with a peak in the second week of December, when the number increased to 264. In less than four months, Spanish flu took 700 lives in Zagreb alone, and probably tens of thousands on the whole Croatian territory. Contemporaries evaluated that nearly 90% of the Croatian population was affected in the second half of 1918. Estimate of 15,000 to 20,000 victims in Croatia should be taken as the lower limit of the number of victims of the epidemic. Middle Eastern theatre of World War I
The significance of disease on this front can be best illustrated by comparing British the number of hospitalizations from disease/injury (frostbite, trench foot, etc.) in this theater to the Western Front. In France and Flanders, 2,690,054 British Empire troops were killed, wounded, died of wounds, missing, or captured, while there were 3,528,486 hospitalizations due to "non-battle casualties", a rate of 1.3 NBCs for every 1 battle casualty. In Mesopotamia there were 82,207 troops killed, wounded, died of wounds, missing, or captured, and 820,418 hospitalizations for sickness or injury, while in the Sinai and Palestine Campaign 51,451 men became battle casualties (not counting Indians) and 503,377 were hospitalized as non-battle casualties. In both cases, the rate is approximately 10 NBCs for every 1 battle casualty. Additionally, while by the listed numbers the Mesopotamia and Sinai-Palestine campaigns had only had 5% the battle casualties of the Western Front (136,658 v 2,690,054), they had over 70% of the disease deaths (22,693+ v 32,098). List of First World War Victoria Cross recipients
On 1 July 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, the British Army endured the bloodiest day in its history, suffering 57,470 casualties and 19,240 dead; nine Victoria Crosses were awarded for action on that day. Most of the casualties occurred in the first hour of the attack. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army almost half a million men. The war was not just fought on land; the First World War saw major naval battles as well as the first large-scale use of military aircraft. The war at sea was mainly characterised by the efforts of the Allied Powers in blockading the Central Powers by sea. In return, the Central Powers attempted to break that blockade and establish an effective blockade of the British Isles and France with U-boats and raiders. The largest naval battle of the First World War was the Battle of Jutland which was the only full-scale clash of battleships in that war. Four Victoria Crosses were awarded for action at Jutland. The war in the air saw 19 VCs being awarded to airmen. The First World War saw significant interest in flying aces, including the German Manfred von Richthofen—also known as The Red Baron—as well as British aces such as Albert Ball, Mick Mannock and Billy Bishop, who were all Victoria Cross recipients. Hostilities ended on 11 November 1918 with the signing of the Armistice Treaty in the Compiègne Forest, but the war was not officially over until the various peace treaties were signed in 1919. By the war's end, four major imperial powers – Germany, Russia, Austria-Hungary, and the Ottoman Empire—had been militarily and politically defeated, and the latter two ceased to exist as autonomous entities. Of the 60 million European soldiers who were mobilised from 1914–1918, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured. World War I memorials
One result of this style of warfare was a level of casualties unknown in previous conflicts. Approximately 2 million Germans and 1.3 million Frenchmen died during the war; 720,000 British soldiers died, along with 61,000 Canadian, 60,000 Australian and 18,000 New Zealand servicemen. On the Eastern front, 300,000 Romanians alone died. The war had a global impact, and at least 2,000 Chinese died in the European theatre of the conflict alone. Many of the deaths occurred within a short period of time, or affected particular groups: half of France's casualties occurred during the first 17 months of the war, for example, while the French middle and upper classes suffered disproportionate losses. Many of those who survived were injured in the course of the fighting; some injuries, such as facial traumas, resulted in the victim being shunned by wider society and banned from public events. These losses also left large numbers of widows and orphans – 1.36 million in France alone – and affected most families in some way: in Australia, every second family had lost a relative. Even those left at home had suffered extensively from stress, anxiety and grief. Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I
Of the 12.5 million tons of Allied shipping destroyed in World War I, over 8 million tons, two thirds of the total, had been sunk in the waters of the Atlantic war zone. Of the 178 U-boats destroyed during the war, 153 had been from the Atlantic forces, 77 from the much larger High Seas Flotillas and 76 from the much smaller Flanders force. World War II
World War II (often abbreviated to WWII or WW2), also known as the Second World War, was a global war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries—including all the great powers—eventually formed two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. A state of total war emerged, directly involving more than 100 million people from over 30 countries. The major participants threw their entire economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind the war effort, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. World War II was the deadliest conflict in human history, marked by 50 to 85 million fatalities, most of whom were civilians in the Soviet Union and China. It included massacres, the genocide of the Holocaust, strategic bombing, premeditated death from starvation and disease, and the only use of nuclear weapons in war. German strategic bombing during World War I
On 28 January 13 Gothas and two Giants set off, six of the Gothas turning back because of poor visibility. Over a hundred defensive sorties were flown, resulting in one Gotha being shot down after being attacked by two Sopwith Camels from the 40 Squadron RFC, flown by Second Lieutenants Charles Banks and George Hackwill, the first victory for night fighters against a heavier-than-air bomber over Britain; both pilots were awarded the DFC. On the ground, 67 people were killed and 166 injured: the casualties included 14 dead and 14 injured in stampedes, when people queuing for admission to shelters were alarmed by maroons set off as a warning that a raid was expected; another 11 were injured by shrapnel from anti-aircraft fire. Many of the other casualties were caused by a bomb, which fell on the Odhams printing works in Long Acre, which was being used as a shelter. German Jewish military personnel of World War I
An estimated 100,000 German Jewish military personnel served in the German Army during World War I, of whom 12,000 were killed in action. The Iron Cross was awarded to 18,000 German Jews during the war. World War I
World War I (often abbreviated as WWI or WW1), also known as the First World War or the Great War, was a global war originating in Europe that lasted from 28 July 1914 to 11 November 1918. Contemporaneously described as "the war to end all wars", it led to the mobilisation of more than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, making it one of the largest wars in history. It is also one of the deadliest conflicts in history, with an estimated nine million combatants and seven million civilian deaths as a direct result of the war, while resulting genocides and the 1918 influenza pandemic caused another 50 to 100 million deaths worldwide. Battle of the Somme
The Battle of the Somme was one of the costliest battles of World War I. The original Allied estimate of casualties on the Somme, made at the Chantilly Conference on 15 November 1916, was 485,000 British and French casualties and 630,000 German. As one German officer wrote, List of First World War Victoria Cross recipients
The First World War, also known as the Great War and in the United States as World War I, was a global military conflict that embroiled most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance. More than 70 million military personnel were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. The main combatants descended into a state of total war, directing their entire scientific and industrial capabilities into the war effort. Over 15 million people were killed, making it one of the deadliest conflicts in history. The proximate cause of war was the assassination on 28 June 1914 of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria. Soon after, a system of alliances were activated that would see Europe at war. The Western Front saw the largest concentration of Commonwealth troops with soldiers occupying sectors of the line from the North Sea to the Orne River. Chemical weapons in World War I
Phosgene was never as notorious in public consciousness as mustard gas, but it killed far more people, about 85% of the 90,000 deaths caused by chemical weapons during World War I. First World War Honour Board, National Australia Bank (308 Queen Street)
Of the 331,946 Australians who embarked for overseas service, nearly 60,000 did not survive the First World War. Memorials were commissioned by service organisations, shire or city councils and by business groups. Some commemorated those who had died, while others recorded all who had served in the armed forces during the war. This honour board was erected by the Queensland National Bank in commemoration of those employees who served during this War. German casualties in World War II
Statistics for German World War II military casualties are divergent and contradictory. The wartime military casualty figures compiled by German High Command, up until January 31, 1945, are often cited by military historians when covering individual campaigns in the war. A recent study by the German historian Rüdiger Overmans found that the German High Command statistics are not reliable, he estimated German military dead at 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany's 1937 borders, in Austria and in east-central Europe. The German government still maintains that its records list 4.3 million dead and missing military personnel. Civilian deaths during the war include air raid deaths, estimates of German civilians killed only by Allied strategic bombing have ranged from around 350,000 to 500,000.
Civilian deaths, due to the flight and expulsion of Germans and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union are disputed and range from 500,000 to over 2.0 million. According to the German government "Suchdienste" (Search Service) there were 300,000 German victims (including Jews) of Nazi racial, political and religious persecution. This statistic does not include 200,000 German people with disabilities who were murdered in the Action T4 and  Action 14f13 euthanasia programs. Martinsburg, West Virginia
Over one thousand (1,039) men from Berkeley County participated in World War I. Of these, forty-one were killed and twenty-one were wounded in battle. A monument to those who fell in battle was erected in Martinsburg in 1925. Modern history
Much of the fighting in World War I took place along the Western Front, within a system of opposing manned trenches and fortifications (separated by a "No man's land") running from the North Sea to the border of Switzerland. On the Eastern Front, the vast eastern plains and limited rail network prevented a trench warfare stalemate from developing, although the scale of the conflict was just as large. Hostilities also occurred on and under the sea and—for the first time—from the air. More than 9 million soldiers died on the various battlefields, and nearly that many more in the participating countries' home fronts on account of food shortages and genocide committed under the cover of various civil wars and internal conflicts. Notably, more people died of the worldwide influenza outbreak at the end of the war and shortly after than died in the hostilities. The unsanitary conditions engendered by the war, severe overcrowding in barracks, wartime propaganda interfering with public health warnings, and migration of so many soldiers around the world helped the outbreak become a pandemic. Gloucestershire Regiment in World War I
1st Battalion spent a week in the line near High Wood at the end of August, during which time it endured the most intense shelling it experienced in the whole war. After three days the trenches were practically obliterated, forcing the men into the shell holes in front of them, and by the time the battalion was relieved on 28 August it had lost 46 killed and 141 wounded. On 8 September the battalion joined the 2nd Welch and 9th Black Watch in an attack which carried the German second line in High Wood, but a lack of reinforcements forced them to withdraw. The attack cost 1st Battalion 3 officers (amongst them the commanding officer Lieutenant-Colonel Pagan), of whom 5 were killed, and 206 other ranks, of whom 84 were killed, leaving the battalion with just 4 officers and 96 other ranks fit for duty. The next day 10th Battalion suffered 122 casualties in a failed attack through the northwest corner of the wood. Douglas Haig, 1st Earl Haig
Total British First World War deaths seemed especially severe as they fell among certain groups such as Pals Battalions (volunteers who enlisted together and were allowed to serve together – and were often killed together) or the alleged "Lost Generation" of public school and university educated junior officers. British deaths, although heavy compared to other British wars, were only around half those of France or Germany as a proportion of the population. Horses in World War I
The continued resupply of horses was a major issue of the war. One estimate puts the number of horses that served in World War I at around six million, with a large percentage of them dying due to war-related causes. In 1914, the year the war began, the British Army owned only about 25,000 horses. This shortfall required the US to help with remount efforts, even before it had formally entered the war. Between 1914 and 1918, the US sent almost one million horses overseas, and another 182,000 were taken overseas with American troops. This deployment seriously depleted the country's equine population. Only 200 returned to the US, and 60,000 were killed outright. By the middle of 1917, Britain had procured 591,000 horses and 213,000 mules, as well as almost 60,000 camels and oxen. Britain's Remount Department spent £67.5 million on purchasing, training and delivering horses and mules to the front. The British Remount Department became a major multinational business and a leading player in the international horse trade, through supplying horses to not only the British Army but also to Canada, Belgium, Australia, New Zealand, Portugal, and even a few to the US. Shipping horses between the US and Europe was both costly and dangerous; American Expeditionary Force officials calculated that almost seven times as much room was needed per ton for animals than for average wartime cargo, and over 6,500 horses and mules were drowned or killed by shell fire on Allied ships attacked by the Germans. In turn, New Zealand lost around 3 percent of the nearly 10,000 horses shipped to the front during the war. History of Germany during World War I
The concept of "total war" in World War I, meant that food supplies had to be redirected towards the armed forces and, with German commerce being stopped by the British blockade, German civilians were forced to live in increasingly meagre conditions. Food prices were first controlled. Bread rationing was introduced in 1915 and worked well; the cost of bread fell. Allen says there were no signs of starvation and states, "the sense of domestic catastrophe one gains from most accounts of food rationing in Germany is exaggerated." However Howard argues that hundreds of thousands of civilians died from malnutrition—usually from a typhus or a disease their weakened bodies could not resist. (Starvation itself rarely caused death.) A 2014 study, derived from a recently discovered dataset on the heights and weights of German children between 1914-1924, found evidence that German children suffered from severe malnutrition during the blockade, with working-class children suffering the most. The study furthermore found that German children quickly recovered after the war due to a massive international food aid program. World War I prisoners of war in Germany
Cemeteries for deceased prisoners were gradually opened near the camps. It was a point of honour for the survivors to take care of their comrades’ final resting places. Most often, each nationality had its own reserved patch. In certain camps, such as Gardelegen, veritable monuments were erected. Roger Pelletier motivated his comrades: “Doesn’t it fall to us, who have known them, to all of us here who are their great family, to raise, in the cemetery where they rest, a monument of the French soul that, spreading above them like an aegis, will be above our dead, when we have left, as a memory and a goodbye?” Wilhelm Doegen estimates the number of dead in the camps at 118,159 but serious doubts surround this number, notably because Doegen failed to take certain diseases into account. Also according to Doegen, Russia suffered the heaviest losses (perhaps explained by the poorer nutrition of Russians, most of whom did not receive packages from their families) with a little over 70,000 dead, followed by France with 17,069 deaths, Romania with 12,512, and then Italy and the United Kingdom. World War I
The Battle of the Somme was an Anglo-French offensive of July to November 1916. The opening day of the offensive (1 July 1916) was the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army, suffering 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 dead. The entire Somme offensive cost the British Army some 420,000 casualties. The French suffered another estimated 200,000 casualties and the Germans an estimated 500,000. Gun fire wasn't the only factor taking lives; the diseases that emerged in the trenches were a major killer on both sides. The living conditions made it so that countless diseases and infections occurred, such as trench foot, shell shock, blindness/burns from mustard gas, lice, trench fever, cooties (body lice) and the ‘Spanish Flu’. History of Germany during World War I
It soon became apparent that Germany was not prepared for a war lasting more than a few months. At first, little was done to regulate the economy for a wartime footing, and the German war economy would remain badly organized throughout the war. Germany depended on imports of food and raw materials, which were stopped by the British blockade of Germany. Food prices were first limited, then rationing was introduced. In 1915 five million pigs were massacred in the so-called Schweinemord to both make food and preserve grain. The winter of 1916/17 was called "turnip winter" because the potato harvest was poor and people ate animal feed including vile-tasting turnips. During the war from August 1914 to mid-1919, the excess deaths over peacetime caused by malnutrition and high rates of exhaustion and disease and despair came to about 474,000 civilians. Economic history of World War I
The Commonwealth nations and India all played major roles. The Asian and African colonies provided large numbers of civilian workers, as well as some soldiers. The Indian Army during World War I contributed a large number of divisions and independent brigades to the European, Mediterranean and the Middle East theatres of war. Over one million Indian troops served overseas, of whom 62,000 died and another 67,000 were wounded. World War I
After the war, the German government claimed that approximately 763,000 German civilians died from starvation and disease during the war because of the Allied blockade. Germany protested that the Allies had used starvation as a weapon of war. According to the British judge and legal philosopher Patrick Devlin, "The War Orders given by the Admiralty on 26 August [1914] were clear enough. All food consigned to Germany through neutral ports was to be captured and all food consigned to Rotterdam was to be presumed consigned to Germany. ... The British were determined on the starvation policy, whether or not it was lawful." Chinese Labour Corps
The Corps did not take part in combat. According to the records kept by the British and French recruiters, around 2,000 men of the Chinese Labour Corps died during World War I, most from the 1918 flu pandemic and some as a direct result of enemy action or of wounds received in the course of their duties. In all, an estimated ten thousand died in the war effort, victims of shelling, landmines, poor treatment or the worldwide flu epidemic. Some Chinese scholars, who contest these figures, say the number of deaths was as high as 20,000. Military history of New Zealand during World War I
The cost of maintaining the division for two and a half years on the Western Front was appalling. Altogether some 13,250 New Zealanders died of wounds or sickness as a direct result of this campaign, including 50 as prisoners of war and more than 700 at home. Another 35,000 were wounded, and 414 prisoners of war were ultimately repatriated. The total casualties therefrom approached 50,000, well over half the number of those who served in France or Belgium. Demography of Scotland
With a population of 4.8 million in 1911, Scotland sent 690,000 men to First World War, of whom 74,000 died in combat or from disease, and 150,000 were seriously wounded. Thus, although Scots were only 10 percent of the British population, they made up 15 per cent of the national armed forces and eventually accounted for 20 per cent of the dead. While emigration began to tail off in England and Wales after the First World War, it continued apace in Scotland, with 400,000 Scots, ten per cent of the population, estimated to have left the country between 1921 and 1931. When the Great Depression hit in the 1930s there were no easily available jobs in the US and Canada and emigration fell to less than 50,000 a year, bringing to an end the period of mass migrations that had opened in the mid-18th century. This contributed to the growth of the population, which reached a peak of 5,240,800 in 1974. Thereafter it began to fall slowly, moving down to 5,062,940 in 2000. There was also a decrease in some urban populations as a result of policies of slum clearance, overspill and relocation to new towns, with the population of Glasgow falling from over a million in 1951 to 629,000 in 2001. Rural areas also saw a loss of population, particularly the Highlands and Hebrides. German casualties in World War II
Civilian deaths, due to the flight and expulsion of Germans and the forced labor of Germans in the Soviet Union, are sometimes included with World War II casualties. During the Cold War, the West German government estimated the death toll at 2.225 million in the wartime evacuations, forced labor in the Soviet Union as well as the post war expulsions. This figure was to remain unchallenged until the 1990s when some German historians put the actual death toll in the expulsions at 500,000 confirmed deaths listed in a 1965 German Red Cross study. The German Historical Museum puts the figure at 600,000 dead; they maintain the figure of 2 million expulsion deaths cannot be supported. However, the position of the German government, the German Federal Agency for Civic Education and the German Red Cross is that the death toll in the expulsions is between 2.0 and 2.5 million civilians. The German historian Rüdiger Overmans maintains that there are more arguments for a lower figure of 500,000 rather than the higher figures of over 2.0 million. He believes that the previous studies by the German government should be subject to critical revision and new research is needed to establish the actual number of expulsion deaths. World War I
In the aftermath of World War I, Greece fought against Turkish nationalists led by Mustafa Kemal, a war that eventually resulted in a massive population exchange between the two countries under the Treaty of Lausanne. According to various sources, several hundred thousand Greeks died during this period, which was tied in with the Greek Genocide. History of the United Kingdom during the First World War
A second publication, "Casualties and Medical Statistics" (1931), the final volume of the "Official Medical History of the War", gives British Empire Army losses by cause of death. The total losses in combat from 1914 to 1918 were 876,084, which included 418,361 killed, 167,172 died of wounds, 113,173 died of disease or injury, 161,046 missing presumed dead and 16,332 died as a prisoner of war. Ireland and World War I
The number of Irish deaths in the British Army recorded by the registrar general was 27,405, a casualty rate of 14 percent, roughly in line with the rest of the British forces. By contrast, the National War Memorial at Islandbridge, Dublin is dedicated "to the memory of the 49,400 Irish soldiers who gave their lives in the Great War, 1914–1918". This figure is often questioned. Recent estimates for Northern Ireland are given at up to 20,000 casualties, and between 30,000 and 35,000 for the whole of Ireland. It has been suggested that the often-cited death toll of 40–50,000 refers to all the fatalities in the Irish Divisions. In fact, only 71 percent of the casualties in these Divisions were natives of Ireland. According to the Irish National War Memorial, the figure of 49,400 is inclusive of recent Irish immigrants living in America. World War I casualties
France Ottoman casualties of World War I
If looked at without breakdowns, the total Ottoman losses run almost as high as 25% of the population — approximately 5 million out of population of 21 million. To be more exact, the 1914 census gave 20,975,345 as the population size, of which 15,044,846 was part of the Muslim millet, 187,073 part of the Jewish millet, 186,152 not belonging to any millet, and the remaining 5,557,274 shared by other millets. Hay, New South Wales
During the First World War 641 men enlisted for service from Hay and the surrounding district, one of the highest per capita enlistment rates in Australia.  Of the men who enlisted one-in-six died during the war, with devastating effect on the close-knit communities of the Hay district. List of Jewish Medal of Honor recipients
When World War I broke out, the United States initially maintained a policy of isolationism, avoiding conflict while trying to negotiate peace between the warring nations. However, when a German U-boat sank the British liner "Lusitania" in 1915, with 128 Americans aboard, U.S. President Woodrow Wilson vowed, "America isn't too proud to fight" and demanded an end to attacks on passenger ships. Germany complied and Wilson unsuccessfully tried to mediate a settlement. He repeatedly warned that the U.S. would not tolerate unrestricted submarine warfare, in violation of international law. In 1917, three years after the first shots of the war were fired, the United States entered the war and by the end of the conflict more than 4.7 million American soldiers, sailors and Marines would fight in the war. Effects of war
Estimates for the total casualties of World War II vary, but most suggest that some 60 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, about half of all World War II casualties. The largest number of civilian deaths in a single city was 1.2 million citizens dead during the 872-day Siege of Leningrad. Based on 1860 census figures, 8% of all white American males aged 13 to 50 died in the American Civil War. Of the 60 million European soldiers who were mobilized in World War I, 8 million were killed, 7 million were permanently disabled, and 15 million were seriously injured. County Wexford (1914–23)
During World War I, a large number of men from Co. Wexford fought and died on the Continent. The local newspapers of the period are full of the obituaries of those who died. Throughout the War Ireland remained under British rule. At least 504 men from Co. Wexford, enlisted in the British Army, died fighting in the land war. German U-boats were very active off Wexford's southern coast during the War. Royal Naval Air Service airships were based at Johnstown Castle, and were primarily used to deal with the U-boat threat – but with limited success. However, later, from 25 February 1918, American seaplanes operating out of United States Naval Air Station Wexford cleared the shipping lanes of U-boats in a short period of time. One famous U-boat that operated off Wexford's coasts was , commanded by Walther Schwieger (d. 1917). On 6 May 1915 it torpedoed and sunk SS "Centurion" off the south Wexford coast, but Schwieger allowed the 44-man crew to escape to safety. Later that same day he also sunk SS "Candidate", but its crew was rescued by a friendly ship. The next day, this same U-boat infamously torpedoed and sunk , a large passenger liner, off the Old Head of Kinsale, Co. Cork, killing 1,198 of the 1,959 people on board – including many Americans, which partially influenced their entry into the War. The was torpedoed and sunk by a different U-boat 17 March 1917 off the south Wexford coast, with the loss of 55 persons. The main shipping route between Britain (primarily to the port of Liverpool) and America passed through Wexford coastal waters. Britain was incredibly dependent on this route for supplies for its War effort. A huge number of ships were sunk off Wexford's coasts during the War – 1915 and 1917 being the worst years. The area of sea around Tuskar Rock came to be referred to as "The Graveyard" – the graveyard of Allied ships. A number of German U-boats were also sunk in Wexford coastal waters. One of these was , sunk off the Hook Peninsula on 4 August 1917 by a mine. The only survivor was the commander, Kurt Tebbenjohanns, who escaped as he was in the conning tower at the time. The rest of the crew – 28 men – died. They had been tricked by false reports from the British that the minefield had been cleared. Another U-boat sunk off the Wexford coast was . It was sunk by a British patrol boat off Tuskar Rock in St George's Channel, 26 September 1917. Only one man, who turned out to be the commander, Alfred Arnold, was rescued. The other 27 members of the crew died. was also sunk further off the south Wexford coast, 25 April 1918 – 41 men died and 1 survived. History of Germany
The total of German war dead was 8% to 10% out of a prewar population of 69,000,000, or between 5.5 million and 7 million people. This included 4.5 million in the military, and between 1 and 2 million civilians. There was chaos as 11 million foreign workers and POWs left, while 14 million displaced refugees from the east and soldiers returned home. During the Cold War, the West German government estimated a death toll of 2.2 million civilians due to the flight and expulsion of Germans and through forced labour in the Soviet Union. This figure remained unchallenged until the 1990s, when some historians put the death toll at 500,000–600,000 confirmed deaths. In 2006 the German government reaffirmed its position that 2.0–2.5 million deaths occurred.
At the Potsdam Conference, Germany was divided into four military occupation zones by the Allies and did not regain independence until 1949. The provinces east of the Oder and Neisse rivers (the Oder-Neisse line) were transferred to Poland, Lithuania, and Russia (Kaliningrad oblast); the 6.7 million Germans living in Poland and the 2.5 million in Czechoslovakia were forced to move west, although most had already left when the war ended. France–India relations
The British Raj and Princely States of India suffered the greatest World War I casualties amongst dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates and other territories of the British Empire. It is estimated that between 64,449 and 73,895 Indians died in Europe during the First World War (compared to between 59,330 and 62,081 Australians and between 58,639 and 64,997 Canadians). Jagdstaffel 1
Among the 18 aces in the World War I ranks were Hans von Keudell, Kurt Wintgens, balloon buster Hans von Freden, Gustav Leffers, Walter Höhndorf, and Leopold Reimann. The squadron's casualties for the war were twelve killed in action, one killed in a flying accident, four wounded in action, and one captured. German casualties in World War II
The figure of 1,277,000 killed and missing from January 1 1945 - April 30 1945 was estimated by the U.S. Army in the 1947 report "German Manpower" Canadian women in the World Wars
One of the greatest consequences of the First World War was the number of lives lost, missing, and wounded throughout the entirety of the battles. The Allied and Central powers felt immense casualties and losses with 22,447,500 and 16,403,000 (MIA, KIA, WIA), respectively. Nurses faced this reality throughout the war and even on rare instances, Canadian nurses lost their lives while on duty. The most prominent cases of this was the death of four nursing sisters on May 19, 1918, during the bombing raid on No. 1 Canadian General Hospital at Étaples, France, and the death of 14 nursing sisters and over 200 other service personnel on June 27, 1918, when the HMHS Llandovery Castle was sunk by the U-86 The HMHS Llandovery Castle was one of five Canadian hospital ships that served in the First World War. In total, 234 lives were lost with only 24 survivors. The sinking of the HMHS Llandovery Castle was one of the most significant Canadian naval disasters of the First World War, in terms of the overall death toll. By the end of the war, 47 Canadian nurses lost their lives while on active duty, victims of enemy attack or disease contracted from patients Overall, Canadian nurses dealt with the realities of war and were key assets to the Canadian military and Allied forces. Outline of World War I
World War I – major war centred in Europe that began on 28 July 1914 and lasted until 11 November 1918. It involved all the world's great powers, which were assembled in two opposing alliances: the Allies (centred on the Triple Entente of Britain, France and Russia) and the Central Powers (originally centred on the Triple Alliance of Germany, Austria-Hungary and Italy). More than 70 million military personnel, including 60 million Europeans, were mobilised in one of the largest wars in history. More than 9 million combatants were killed, largely because of great technological advances in firepower without corresponding advances in mobility. It was the sixth deadliest conflict in world history, subsequently paving the way for various political changes such as revolutions in the nations involved. Urana Soldiers' Memorial Hall
A large proportion of these young men who went off to fight in Europe and the Middle East never came home, and of those who returned an even larger proportion were seriously injured in mind and / or body. As the Australian War Memorial website explains: 'For Australia, as for many nations, the First World War remains the most costly conflict in terms of deaths and casualties. From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which over 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.' Wingham Memorial Town Hall
A large proportion of these young men who went off to fight in Europe and the Middle East never came home, and of those who returned an even larger proportion were seriously injured in mind and / or body. As the Australian War Memorial website explains: 'For Australia, as for many nations, the First World War remains the most costly conflict in terms of deaths and casualties. From a population of fewer than five million, 416,809 men enlisted, of which over 60,000 were killed and 156,000 wounded, gassed, or taken prisoner.' History of the United Kingdom during the First World War
The civilian death rate exceeded the prewar level by 292,000, which included 109,000 deaths due to food shortages and 183,577 from Spanish Flu. The 1922 War Office report detailed the deaths of 1,260 civilians and 310 military personnel due to air and sea bombardment the home islands. Losses at sea were 908 civilians and 63 fisherman killed by U-boat attacks. World War I casualties
First World War civilian deaths are "hazardous to estimate" according to Michael Clodfelter who maintains that "the generally accepted figure of noncombatant deaths is 6.5 million." The figures listed below include about 6 million excess civilian deaths due to war related privations, that are often omitted from other compilations of World War I casualties. The war brought about malnutrition and disease caused by the U-boat Campaign and the Blockade of Germany which disrupted trade resulting in food shortages. The civilian deaths in the Ottoman Empire include the Armenian Genocide, Assyrian Genocide, and Greek Genocide. Civilian deaths due to the Spanish flu have been excluded from these figures, whenever possible. The figures do not include deaths during the Russian Civil War and the Turkish War of Independence. British cavalry during the First World War
Although the trench warfare on the Western Front was dominated by the artillery and infantry, the cavalry still suffered 5,674 dead and 14,630 other casualties. For comparison, one infantry regiment—the Northumberland Fusiliers—had 16,000 casualties. Unlike the huge losses in the infantry regiments, only ten cavalry regiments suffered over 200 dead. The 3rd Dragoon Guards, with 333 dead, had the most killed, while the 7th Hussars had eighty dead, one less than the 21st Lancers, which had remained in India throughout the war. The dead included one major general, eleven brigadier generals, but only twenty-eight of the 1,161 lieutenant colonels killed during the war were from the cavalry, several of those after having assumed command of an infantry battalion. Men of Letters
The book tells the story of the Post Office Rifles during the First World War. 12,000 men served with the unit during the course of the war, across three battalions, and around 1,500 of them were killed. The book describes in detail the horror and suffering of the war and Barrett writes about a man who was shot in the head by a former Post Office colleague before being suffocated by mud near Passchendaele. He also describes the humour of life in the trenches, including an incident in which some former postmen delivered mail to the Germans on the other side of no man’s land by wedging them into carrots and throwing them across. Queensland in World War I
World War I impacted on many aspects of everyday life in Queensland, Australia. Over 58,000 Queenslanders fought in World War I and over 10,000 of them died.
The outbreak of war created a heightened sense of patriotism; the recruitment call for Queenslanders to volunteer for the Australian Imperial Force met its initial quota of 2500 enlisted men by September 1914. African military systems after 1900
Unlike the African troops of Britain, who saw very little action on European battfields during World War I or World War II, France deployed hundreds of thousands of African fighting men to aid its cause, including some 300,000 North Africans, some 250,000 West Africans and thousands more from other regions. Over 140,000 African soldiers for example, fought on the Western Front during World War I and thousands of others fought at Gallipoli and in the Balkans. French West African troops fought and died in all the major battles of the Western Front, from Verdun (where they were instrumental in recapturing a fort) to the Armistice. Some writers (Lunn 1999) argue that towards the end of World War I, the black soldiers were increasingly been used as shock troops, and were absorbing three times as many casualties as white French troops. The French did offer such incentives as citizenship for those who fought, and French leader Clemeanceau pushed for continued recruitment of West Africans to fight for France, maintaining that it was better blacks were killed than long-suffering white Frenchmen. One in five West African combat soldiers who fought in World War I died in the war, compared to less than 17% for the French. Colonial troops such as Indian regiments in British employ suffered less. Francophobia
The prime ministers of France between the World Wars were generally frightened about German intentions, as France sustained more casualties in the First World War than any other Western country, approximately 1.4 million military and 1.6 million total casualties. Accordingly, French policies towards Germany in general, more specifically the Nazis, were more aggressive than that of other Western nations. Relations were very poor at the time, and French leaders were also acutely aware that the population of Germany (64 million) exceeded that of France by a considerable margin (40 million), a major strategic vulnerability. Shot at Dawn Memorial
Of the 200,000 or so men court-martialed during the First World War, 20,000 were found guilty of offences carrying the death penalty. Of those, 3000 actually received it, and of those sentences, 346 were carried out. The others were given lesser sentences, or had death sentences commuted to a lesser punishment, e.g. hard labour, field punishment or a suspended sentence (91 of the men executed were under a suspended sentence: 41 of those executed were previously subject to commuted death sentences, and one had a death sentence commuted twice before). Of the 346 men executed, 309 were pardoned, while the remaining 37 were those executed for murder, who would have been executed under civilian law. Outline of World War II
World War II, or the Second World War – global military conflict from 1939 to 1945, which was fought between the Allied powers of the United States, United Kingdom, and Soviet Union against the Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Japan, with their respective allies. Over 60 million people, the majority of them civilians, were killed, making it the deadliest conflict in human history.Causes of World War II Médaille militaire
During World War One, 230 000 "médailles" were awarded, when 1 400 000 French Army soldiers were killed and 3 000 000 wounded. For comparison, the UK Military Medal was awarded on 115 000 occasions in World War One, when 673 375 British Army soldiers were killed and 1 643 469 wounded. Serbian Campaign of World War I
The Serb sources claim that the Kingdom of Serbia lost 1,100,000 inhabitants during the war. Of 4.5 million people, there were 275,000 military deaths and 450,000 among the ordinary citizenry. The civilian deaths were attributable mainly to food shortages and the effects of epidemics such as Spanish flu. In the addition to the military deaths, there were 133,148 wounded. According to the Yugoslav government in 1924, Serbia lost 365,164 soldiers, or 26% of all mobilized personnel, while France suffered 16.8%, Germany 15.4%, Russia 11.5%, and Italy 10.3%. Serbian Campaign of World War I
The Serbian Army declined severely towards the end of the war, falling from about 420,000 at its peak to about 100,000 at the moment of liberation. The estimates of casualties are various: the Serb sources claim that The Kingdom of Serbia lost more than 1,200,000 inhabitants during the war (both army and civilian losses), which represented over 29% of its overall population and 60% of its male population, while western historians put the number either at 45,000 military deaths and 650,000 civilian deaths or 127,355 military deaths and 82,000 civilian deaths. According to estimates prepared by the Yugoslav government in 1924, Serbia lost 265,164 soldiers, or 25% of all mobilized people. By comparison, France lost 16.8%, Germany 15.4%, Russia 11.5%, and Italy 10.3%. World War I
World War I further compounded the gender imbalance, adding to the phenomenon of surplus women. The deaths of nearly one million men during the war in Britain increased the gender gap by almost a million: from 670,000 to 1,700,000. The number of unmarried women seeking economic means grew dramatically. In addition, demobilisation and economic decline following the war caused high unemployment. The war increased female employment; however, the return of demobilised men displaced many from the workforce, as did the closure of many of the wartime factories. World War I casualties
About two-thirds of military deaths in World War I were in battle, unlike the conflicts that took place in the 19th century when the majority of deaths were due to disease. Nevertheless, disease, including the 1918 flu pandemic and deaths while held as prisoners of war, still caused about one third of total military deaths for all belligerents. Scotland in the modern era
Scotland played a major role in the British effort in the First World War. It especially provided manpower, ships, machinery, food (particularly fish) and money. With a population of 4.8 million in 1911, Scotland sent 690,000 men to the war, of whom 74,000 died in combat or from disease, and 150,000 were seriously wounded. Thus, although Scots were only 10 per cent of the British population, they made up 15 per cent of the national armed forces and eventually accounted for 20 per cent of the dead. Concern for their families' standard of living made men hesitate to enlist; voluntary enlistment rates went up after the government guaranteed a weekly stipend for life to the survivors of men who were killed or disabled. Clydeside shipyards and the engineering shops of west-central Scotland became the most significant centre of shipbuilding and arms production in the Empire. In the Lowlands, particularly Glasgow, poor working and living conditions led to industrial and political unrest. After the end of the war in June 1919 the German fleet interned in Scapa Flow was scuttled by its crews, to avoid its ships being taken over by the victorious allies. List of Medal of Honor recipients for World War I
World War I (also known as the First World War and the Great War) was a global military conflict that embroiled most of the world's great powers, assembled in two opposing alliances: the Entente and the Central Powers. The immediate cause of the war was the June 28, 1914 assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian throne, by Gavrilo Princip, a Bosnian Serb citizen of Austria–Hungary and member of the Black Hand. The retaliation by Austria–Hungary against Serbia activated a series of alliances that set off a chain reaction of war declarations. Within a month, much of Europe was in a state of open warfare, resulting in the mobilization of more than 65 million European soldiers, and more than 40 million casualties—including approximately 20 million deaths by the end of the war. History of Germany during World War I
Out of a population of 65 million, Germany suffered 1.7 million military deaths and 430,000 civilian deaths due to wartime causes (especially the food blockade), plus about 17,000 killed in Africa and the other overseas colonies. Demographics of Croatia
In addition to demographic losses through significant migrations, the population of Croatia suffered significant losses due to wars and epidemics. In the 20th century alone, there were several such events. The first was World War I, when the loss of the population of Croatia amounted to an estimated 190,000 persons, or about 5.5% of the total population recorded by the 1910 census. The 1918 flu pandemic started to take its toll in Croatia in July 1918, with peaks of the disease occurring in October and November. Available data is scarce, but it is estimated that the pandemic caused at least 15,000–20,000 deaths. During World War II, nearly 195,000 people died in the territory of present-day Croatia. The surrender of the armed forces of the Independent State of Croatia and of the civilians accompanying the troops of the British Army at the end of World War II was followed by repatriation and subsequent events that became known as the Bleiburg tragedy. A substantial number of people were executed, but the exact number is disputed. The claims range from 12,000–15,000 to as many as 80,000 killed in May 1945. Finally, approximately 20,000 were killed or went missing during the 1991–1995 Croatian War of Independence. The figure pertains only to those persons who would have been recorded by the 1991 census as living in Croatia. Avalanche
During World War I, an estimated 40,000 to 80,000 soldiers died as a result of avalanches during the mountain campaign in the Alps at the Austrian-Italian front, many of which were caused by artillery fire. Some 10,000 men, from both sides, lost their lives in avalanches in December 1916. Australian Army during World War I
A total of 416,809 men enlisted in the Army during the war and 331,781 men were sent overseas to serve as part of the AIF. A further 3,011 men served in the AN&MEF. The AIF sustained approximately 210,000 casualties, of which 61,519 were killed or died of wounds. This represented a total casualty rate of 64.8 percent, which was among the highest of any belligerent for the war. About another 4,000 men were captured. The majority of casualties occurred among the infantry (which sustained a casualty rate of 79 percent); however, the artillery (58 percent) and light horse (32 percent) also incurred significant losses. Weaste Cemetery
The cemetery contains the graves of 373 Commonwealth service personnel who died during the First and Second World Wars, plus numerous memorials to servicemen buried abroad. Some of the 274 First World War dead lie in war grave plots in both the Church of England and Roman Catholic sections, each plot having a Screen Memorial listing the dead buried within them, while the 99 Second World War dead are scattered amidst the cemetery and there is also a special memorial listing 7 personnel buried in graves that could not be marked. Hamburg Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery
In total 708 killed or deceased persons from World War I were buried here or mentioned on commemorative tables. In particular, the prisoners of war who died in Parchim and whose graves could not be identified are mentioned here. Twenty-five unidentified marines, whose submarine sunk in 1916 in the neighborhood of Helgoland, are also honored here. The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) counts 676 buried Commonwealth soldiers of World War I. Serbian Campaign of World War I
Before the war, the Kingdom of Serbia had 4,500,000 inhabitants. According to the New York Times, 150,000 people are estimated to have died in 1915 alone during the worst typhus epidemic in world history. With the aid of the American Red Cross and 44 foreign governments, the outbreak was brought under control by the end of the year. The number of civilian deaths is estimated by some sources at 650,000, primarily due to the typhus outbreak and famine, but also direct clashes with the occupiers. Serbia's casualties accounted for 8% of the total Allied military deaths. 58% of the regular Serbian Army (420,000 strong) perished during the conflict. According to the Serb sources, the total number of casualties is placed around 1,000,000: 25% of Serbia's prewar size, and an absolute majority (57%) of its overall male population. "L.A. Times" and "N.Y. Times" also cited early Serbian sources which claimed over 1,000,000 victims in their respective articles. Modern western and non-Serb historians put the casualties number either at 45,000 military deaths and 650,000 civilian deaths or 127,355 military deaths and 82,000 civilian deaths. Middle Eastern theatre of World War I
Allied military losses are placed between 1,000,000 and 1,500,000 including killed, wounded, captured or missing. This includes 303,000 British Empire and French casualties in Gallipoli, 601,000 British Empire casualties in Sinai-Palestine, at least 140,000 Russian casualties in the Caucasus, and 256,000 British Empire casualties in Mesopotamia, as well as additional Russo-British losses in Persia. Most of the British casualties were non-battle casualties; total British battle casualties inflicted by the Ottomans were estimated as 264,000 by Field Marshal Lord Carver. In addition to these were over 11,000 casualties sustained by Italians fighting Ottoman-backed Senussi tribesmen in the first half of 1915 alone, with unknown losses for the Senussi themselves. Home front during World War I
About 10 million combatants and seven million civilians died during the entire war, including many weakened by years of malnutrition; they fell in the worldwide Spanish Flu pandemic, which struck late in 1918, just as the war was ending. German Jewish military personnel of World War I
Some Jews did fear marginalisation as the German public enthusiastically geared up for the Great War, but once the war began such attitudes dissipated and the general reaction of Germany's Jewry was to greet the war with enthusiasm. With the outbreak of World War I in 1914, the situation drastically changed for German Jews in the military. At the start of the war, 12,000 German Jews volunteered for the German Army. Of the 100,000 Jews who served with the German military, 70,000 fought at the front line, 12,000 were killed in action, and 3,000 were promoted to officer ranks, but they could only become officers of the reserve, not the regular army. The Iron Cross was awarded to 18,000 German Jews during the war, of which 1,000 received the first class award. Jewish-born Wilhelm Frankl became the first member of the flying corps to be awarded the Pour le Mérite. The anti-semitic "Judenzählung" of 1916 disgusted many German Jewish soldiers, being aimed at falsely proving that Jews were trying to avoid military service. For many German Jews, the war held the hope of being treated equal to non-Jewish Germans for the first time. Many Jews also held strong patriotic feelings for Germany and the belief that the war in the East against the Russian Empire would bring the liberation of their fellow Eastern European Jews from pogroms and persecution. Indian Army during World War I
The Indian Army during World War I contributed a large number of divisions and independent brigades to the European, Mediterranean and the Middle East theatres of war in World War I. Over one million Indian troops served overseas, of whom 62,000 died and another 67,000 were wounded. In total at least 74,187 Indian soldiers died during the war. France
France was a member of the Triple Entente when World War I broke out. A small part of Northern France was occupied, but France and its allies emerged victorious against the Central Powers at a tremendous human and material cost. World War I left 1.4 million French soldiers dead, 4% of its population. Between 27 and 30% of soldiers conscripted from 1912–1915 were killed. The interbellum years were marked by intense international tensions and a variety of social reforms introduced by the Popular Front government (annual leave, eight-hour workdays, women in government). The March (1945)
The total number of US POWs in Germany was in the region of 93,000-94,000 and official sources claim that 1,121 died. The British Commonwealth total was close to 180,000 and while no accurate records exist, if a similar casualty rate is assumed, the number who died would be around 2,200. Therefore, according to a report by the US Department of Veterans' Affairs, almost 3,500 US and Commonwealth POWs died as a result of the marches. It is possible that some of these deaths occurred before the death marches, but the marches would have claimed the vast majority. Walsall
Over 2000 men from Walsall were killed in fighting during the First World War. They are commemorated by the town's cenotaph: which is located on the site of a bomb which was dropped by Zeppelin 'L 21' – killing the town's mayoress, and two others. Damage from the Zeppelin can still be seen on what is now a club on the corner of the main road, just opposite a furniture shop. A plaque commemorates the incident. The town also has a memorial to two local VC recipients, John Henry Carless and Frederick Gibbs. Paris in World War I
Fearing a long siege, General Gallieni did what he could to reduce the number of Parisians who needed to be fed; a dozen free trains were organized on 5 September to take Parisians to the French provinces. An emergency census ordered by Gallieni on September 8 showed that the population of Paris had dropped to 1,800,000, or only 63 percent of the population counted in 1911. By October, public transportation was again running in the city. The military government declared a moratorium on rents for those Parisians who had been summoned into the army and protected them from legal action until the end of the war. As of December 20, pedestrians could walk freely in Paris once again, but vehicles were only allowed to enter and leave Paris by fourteen of the fifty-five city gates that were open from five in the morning until ten at night. The government returned to Paris on December 11, and President Poincaré was again able to meet with his Council of Ministers in the Élysée Palace. The front lines moved further north, and by 4 January 1915, Paris was no longer considered to be threatened. Nonetheless, the city was bombed by a German Zeppelin airship on March 21, 1915, and by German planes on May 11 and May 22. Kārlis Padegs
He once wrote in the newspaper that "just this outsider who dreams about "Narcissus" and the perverse madonna does not forget the invalid. He shows him side by side with the fashionable Dorian Gray, the lover Don Juan, but why?- Because of sharp contrast, to make even the most dim-minded people understand that the world in World War I has already lost 12,996,117 people killed and 5,669,000 disabled people who have not died yet, and we do not want new victims." Tulsk
World War 1
Tulsk was no different from most other British and Irish villages and towns during World War One, in that it contributed to the Allied effort of resisting the Central Powers' threat to European stability. John McGrath, from Tulsk, as published in Ireland's Memorial Records, is registered as a Private in the North Staffordshire Regiment - 12th Battalion - and was killed in action in France on July 28, 1918. His grave, amongst 370, can be viewed at Borre British Cemetery in northern France (grave number 11.F.6). Another WW1 soldier is Mark Phibbs of Corbally, Tulsk. He served in the Leinster Regiment, died of post traumatic stress disorder injuries sustained during battle while in France, and is buried in Glasnevin Cemetery, Dublin. Both McGrath and Phibbs are some of between 30,000 and 35,000 Irish who perished in the Great War. Two other men, Henry Armitage and William Garry, were RIC officers in Tulsk during that same war, and went to the front after an outdoor send-off in the village (from contemperaneous newspaper reports). Their fate is unknown, like that of half of the men who died in World War I (over 9 million), scattered as they are beneath the green fields of mainland Europe. The Cenotaph memorial, erected mostly in England and France - out of the ashes of the first global catastrophe of the 20th century - goes some way to remembering these dead. (re. Jay Winter, Lecture 18 - Sites of Memory, Sites of Mourning - from Yale Open Courses, European Civilisation, available online). Effect of World War I on children in the United States
Over the course of the war, the United States mobilized hundreds of thousands of men and endured an estimated 117,465 casualties. Of the men who survived and returned home, post-traumatic stress disorder created a major impact on society. During this time, and still today, post-traumatic stress (then more likely to be known as "shell shock") was not fully understood, but because of the traumatic nature of battle, many men were negatively affected after the war. Some men were forced to leave battle, which many people considered cowardice, and there were asylums throughout Europe housing men suffering from this condition. In some extreme cases, men were even shot for showing weakness. There are still people living today who lost family members because of this practice, which created lasting impacts on these children. Additionally, many of these men were teenagers when they left for war, and virtually all were under the age of 30; therefore many of these soldiers were barely out of childhood themselves. World War II casualties
Included with total war dead are victims of Japanese war crimes.The total war dead in the USSR includes about 1 million victims of Stalin's regime. The number of deaths in the Gulag labor camps increased as a result of wartime overcrowding and food shortages. The Stalin regime deported the entire populations of ethnic minorities considered to be potentially disloyal. Since 1990 Russian scholars have been given access to the Soviet-era archives and have published data on the numbers of people executed and those who died in Gulag labor camps and prisons. The Russian scholar Viktor Zemskov puts the death toll from 1941–1945 at about 1 million based on data from the Soviet archives. The Soviet-era archive figures on the Gulag labor camps has been the subject of a vigorous academic debate outside Russia since their publication in 1991. J. Arch Getty and Stephen G. Wheatcroft maintain that Soviet-era figures more accurately detail the victims of the Gulag labor camp system in the Stalin era. Robert Conquest and Steven Rosefielde have disputed the accuracy of the data from the Soviet archives, maintaining that the demographic data and testimonials by survivors of the Gulag labor camps indicate a higher death toll. Rosefielde posits that the release of the Soviet Archive figures is disinformation generated by the modern KGB. Rosefielde maintains that the data from the Soviet archives is incomplete; for example, he pointed out that the figures do not include the 22,000 victims of the Katyn massacre. Rosefielde's demographic analysis puts the number of excess deaths due to Soviet repression at 2,183,000 in 1939–40 and 5,458,000 from 1941–1945. Michael Haynes and Rumy Husun accept the figures from the Soviet archives as being an accurate tally of Stalin's victims, they maintain that the demographic data depicts an underdeveloped Soviet economy and the losses in World War Two rather than indicating a higher death toll in the Gulag labor camps. Aftermath of World War I
Through the period from the armistice on 11 November 1918 until the signing of the peace treaty with Germany on 28 June 1919, the Allies maintained the naval blockade of Germany that had begun during the war. As Germany was dependent on imports, it is estimated that 523,000 civilians had lost their lives. N. P. Howard, of the University of Sheffield, claims that a further quarter of a million more died from disease or starvation in the eight-month period following the conclusion of the conflict. The continuation of the blockade after the fighting ended, as author Robert Leckie wrote in "Delivered From Evil", did much to "torment the Germans ... driving them with the fury of despair into the arms of the devil." The terms of the Armistice did allow food to be shipped into Germany, but the Allies required that Germany provide the means (the shipping) to do so. The German government was required to use its gold reserves, being unable to secure a loan from the United States. World War II casualties
Compiling or estimating the numbers of deaths and wounded caused during wars and other violent conflicts is a controversial subject. Historians often put forward many different estimates of the numbers killed and wounded during World War II. The authors of the "Oxford Companion to World War II" maintain that "casualty statistics are notoriously unreliable." The table below gives data on the number of dead and military wounded for each country, along with population information to show the relative impact of losses. When scholarly sources differ on the number of deaths in a country, a range of war losses is given, in order to inform readers that the death toll is disputed. Since casualty statistics are sometimes disputed the footnotes to this article present the different estimates by official governmental sources as well as historians. Military figures include battle deaths (KIA) and personnel missing in action (MIA), as well as fatalities due to accidents, disease and deaths of prisoners of war in captivity. Civilian casualties include deaths caused by strategic bombing, Holocaust victims, German war crimes, Japanese war crimes, population transfers in the Soviet Union, Allied war crimes, and deaths due to war related famine and disease. Ten commandments of propaganda
Already in the First World War, the losses accumulated within the first month and rose to 313,000 casualties. But the Supreme Command never even reported the loss of a horse and did not publish a list of the dead. World War II
The Soviet Union lost around 27 million people during the war, 8.7 million military and 19 million civilian deaths. A quarter of the 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. World War I casualties
Greece 1st Army Corps (France)
During the course of its operations in France and Germany in 1944 - 1945, the 1st Army Corps lost 3,518 men killed, 13,339 wounded, and 1,449 missing, for a total of 18,306 casualties. Although not all casualties inflicted on the Germans by 1st Army Corps are known, the corps is credited with taking 101,556 Germans prisoner during the campaigns to liberate France and invade Germany. British yeomanry during the First World War
The British yeomanry did not have the same huge casualty lists, common among the infantry regiments. The Queen's Own Worcestershire Hussars with 215 had the highest total dead, while the 1st County of London Yeomanry (Middlesex, Duke of Cambridge's Hussars) only had eight dead. The greatest loss on one day was ninety-three from the Leicestershire Yeomanry on 13 May 1915, during the Second Battle of Ypres. Out of the fifty-four regiments, three had over 200 dead, ten of them over 100 dead, sixteen had fifty or more dead and the remainder less than fifty dead. According to the Commonwealth War Graves Commission the yeomanry regiments total dead during the First World War was 3,867 men,
among that total was Brigadier-General Wight-Boycott of the Warwickshire Yeomanry, and nineteen lieutenant-colonels some while serving with other units. Denis Kendall
When world war2 "[sic]" heated up and the bombing of Britain commenced, few people realised that my factories were the most bombed in the country, and during the raids I lost approximately 200 of my workpeople killed and wounded when their shelter sustained a direct hit. I had a fine medical staff of three doctors and thirty nurses out of a total 7,800 employees" [...].
Grantham was said to have received 21 raids by the Luftwaffe, which killed 70 people in 1941, around the Commercial Road area. This is in the town centre and north of Springfield Road where Kendall's factory was. Ottoman casualties of World War I
Among the 5 million, 771,844 were military casualties killed in action and other causes. The military only covers 15% of the total casualties. The main question is what happened to 85% (spread over all millets) of the casualties, which is more but not less than 4,000,000. Ottoman statistics analyzed by Turkish Kamer Kasim (Manchester University, Ph.D.), claims that cumulative percentage was 26.9% (higher than 25% reported by western sources) of the population, which this size stands out among the countries that took part in World War I. To understand the size of the issue, Kamer Kasım's %1.9 increase on the totals adds 399,000 civilians to the total number, which has not been reported in western sources. Allies of World War I
The exact role played by Serbian officials in the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand is still debated but despite complying with most of their demands, Austria-Hungary invaded on 28 July 1914. While Serbia successfully repulsed the Austro-Hungarian army in 1914, it was exhausted by the two Balkan Wars and unable to replace its losses of men and equipment. In 1915, Bulgaria joined the Central Powers and by the end of the year, a combined Bulgar-Austrian-German army occupied most of Serbia. Between 1914-1918, Serbia suffered the greatest proportional losses of any combatant, with over 25% of all those mobilised becoming casualties; including civilians and deaths from disease, over 1.2 million died, nearly 30% of the entire population. Deadliest single days of World War I
The First World War was fought on many fronts around the world from the battlefields of Europe to the far-flung colonies in the Pacific and Africa. While it is most famous for the trench combat stalemate that existed on Europe's Western Front, in other theatres of combat the fighting was mobile and often involved set-piece battles and cavalry charges. The Eastern Front often took thousands of casualties a day during the big offensive pushes but it was the West that saw the most concentrated slaughter. It was in the west that the newly industrialized world powers could focus their end products on the military-industrial complex. The deadliest day of the war was during the opening day of the conflict. The Imperial German war council had initiated the Schlieffen Plan which involved multiple armies flooding through the borders of Belgium and France. On August 22, 1914, during the Battle of the Frontiers five separate French armies engaged the German invaders independently of each other. Across all those battlefields, on that single day, 27,000 French soldiers lost their lives protecting their country. Rifle Brigade War Memorial
An inscription on the memorial commemorates the 11,575 men from the Rifle Brigade who fell in the First World War; a later inscription mentions the 1,329 men who fell in the Second World War. All are listed on a Roll of Honour held at Winchester Cathedral. Military history of New Zealand during World War I
A total of 17,723 New Zealanders served in this campaign and New Zealand casualties were 640 killed in action and 1,146 wounded. The Blitz
London had nine million people – a fifth of the British population – living in an area of , which was difficult to defend because of its size. Based on experience with German strategic bombing during World War I against the United Kingdom, the British government estimated after the First World War that 50 casualties – with about one third killed – would result for every tonne of bombs dropped on London. The estimate of tonnes of bombs an enemy could drop per day grew as aircraft technology advanced, from 75 in 1922, to 150 in 1934, to 644 in 1937. That year the Committee on Imperial Defence estimated that an attack of 60 days would result in 600,000 dead and 1.2 million wounded. News reports of the Spanish Civil War, such as the bombing of Barcelona, supported the 50-casualties-per-tonne estimate. By 1938, experts generally expected that Germany would attempt to drop as much as 3,500 tonnes in the first 24 hours of war and average 700 tonnes a day for several weeks. In addition to high-explosive and incendiary bombs, the enemy would possibly use poison gas and even bacteriological warfare, all with a high degree of accuracy. In 1939 military theorist Basil Liddell-Hart predicted that 250,000 deaths and injuries in Britain could occur in the first week of war. London hospitals prepared for 300,000 casualties in the first week of war. Toowong Memorial Park
Australia's involvement in the First World War exacted a heavy toll in death and injury. Of a relatively small population of about five million people, 60,000 service people were killed and 152,000 wounded. The outpouring of grief in Australia that accompanied these deaths, and the fact that the dead were buried overseas, led to a period of memorial building across the nation and residents of Toowong were quick to commemorate their soldiers by rededicating Toowong Park as Toowong Memorial Park and erecting a number of memorial features. Prisoner of war
During World War I, about eight million men surrendered and were held in POW camps until the war ended. All nations pledged to follow the Hague rules on fair treatment of prisoners of war, and in general the POWs had a much higher survival rate than their peers who were not captured. Individual surrenders were uncommon; usually a large unit surrendered all its men. At Tannenberg 92,000 Russians surrendered during the battle. When the besieged garrison of Kaunas surrendered in 1915, 20,000 Russians became prisoners. Over half the Russian losses were prisoners as a proportion of those captured, wounded or killed. About 3.3 million men became prisoners. Portugal during World War I
Approximately 12,000 Portuguese troops died during the course of World War I, including Africans who served in its armed forces in the colonial front. Civilian deaths in Portugal exceeded 220,000: 82,000 caused by food shortages and 138,000 by the Spanish flu.
When Portugal complies with the British request to confiscate the German ships interned in Portuguese ports, Germany reacts by declaring war on Portugal, thus forcing the Portuguese officially into the war.The war causes Portugal 8,145 dead, 13,751 wounded and 12,318 prisoners or missing. At sea, 96 Portuguese ships are sunk (100,193 tons) and 5 Portuguese ships damaged (7,485 tons) by German submarines.