World War 2 The Worlds deadliest conflict

WW2 was the deadliest military conflict in history. An estimated total of 70–85 million deaths were caused by the conflict, representing about 3% of the estimated global population of 2.3 billion in 1940. Deaths directly caused by the war (including military and civilian fatalities) are estimated at 50–56 million, with an additional estimated 19–28 million deaths from war-related disease and famine. Civilian deaths totaled 50–55 million. Military deaths from all causes totaled 21–25 million, including deaths in captivity of about 5 million prisoners of war. More than half of the total number of casualties are accounted for by the dead of the Republic of China and of the Soviet Union. The following tables give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses. Statistics on the number of military wounded are included whenever available.

Recent historical scholarship has shed new light on the topic of Second World War casualties. Research in Russia since the collapse of the Soviet Union has caused a revision of estimates of Soviet World War II fatalities. According to Russian government figures, USSR losses within postwar borders now stand at 26.6 million, including 8 to 9 million due to famine and disease. In August 2009 the Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers estimated Poland’s dead at between 5.6 and 5.8 million. Historian Rüdiger Overmans of the Military History Research Office (Germany) published a study in 2000 estimating the German military dead and missing at 5.3 million, including 900,000 men conscripted from outside of Germany’s 1937 borders, in Austria, and in east-central Europe. The Red Army claimed responsibility for the majority of Wehrmacht casualties during World War II. The People’s Republic of China puts its war dead at 20 million, while the Japanese government puts its casualties due to the war at 3.1 million. An estimated 7–10 million people died in the Dutch, British, French and US colonies in South and Southeast Asia, mostly from war-related famine.

Classification of 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.

The sources for the casualties of the individual countries do not use the same methods, and civilian deaths due to starvation and disease make up a large proportion of the civilian deaths in China and the Soviet Union. The losses listed here are actual deaths; hypothetical losses due to a decline in births are not included with the total dead. The distinction between military and civilian casualties caused directly by warfare and collateral damage is not always clear-cut. For states that suffered huge losses such as the Soviet Union, China, Poland, Germany, and Yugoslavia, sources can give only the total estimated population loss caused by the war and a rough estimate of the breakdown of deaths caused by military activity, crimes against humanity and war-related famine. The casualties listed here include 19 to 25 million war-related famine deaths in the USSR, China, Indonesia, Vietnam, the Philippines, and India that are often omitted from other compilations of World War II casualties.

The footnotes give a detailed breakdown of the casualties and their sources, including data on the number of wounded where reliable sources are available. Several categories are used to classify World War II casualties, mainly to separate between military people and civilians. Due of the broad effects of war-induced famines, genocides like the Holocaust, and strategic bombings, civilians casualties frequently outnumbered military fatalities.

Human losses by country

Total deaths by country

• Figures are rounded to the nearest hundredth place.
• Military casualties include deaths of regular military forces from combat as well as non-combat causes. Partisan and resistance fighter deaths are included with military losses. The deaths of prisoners of war in captivity and personnel missing in action are also included with military deaths. Whenever possible the details are given in the footnotes.
• The armed forces of the various states are treated as single entities, for example the deaths of Austrians, French and foreign nationals of German ancestry in eastern Europe in the Wehrmacht are included with German military losses. For example, Michael Strank is included in the American, not Czechoslovak, war dead total.
  • The bare minimum amount of military deaths from all causes is 21,124,905.
• Civilian war dead are included with the territories where they resided. For example, German Jewish refugees in France who were deported to the death camps are included with French casualties in the published sources on the Holocaust.
• The official casualty statistics published by the governments of the United States, France, and the United Kingdom do not give the details of the national origin, ethnic background, and religion of the losses.
• 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. The exact breakdown is not always provided in the sources cited.

Soviet Union

Main article: World War II casualties of the Soviet Union

The estimated breakdown for each Soviet republic of total war dead^[8]^AY4

Soviet Republic	Population 1940 (within 1946–91 borders)	Military deaths	Civilian deaths due to military activity and crimes against humanity	Civilian deaths due to war related famine and disease	Total	Deaths as % of 1940 population
Armenia	1,320,000	150,000		30,000	180,000	13.6%
Azerbaijan	3,270,000	210,000		90,000	300,000	9.1%
Belarus	9,050,000	620,000	1,360,000	310,000	2,290,000	25.3%
Estonia	1,050,000	30,000	50,000		80,000	7.6%
Georgia	3,610,000	190,000		110,000	300,000	8.3%
Kazakhstan	6,150,000	310,000		350,000	660,000	10.7%
Kyrgyzstan	1,530,000	70,000		50,000	120,000	7.8%
Latvia	1,890,000	30,000	190,000	40,000	260,000	13.7%
Lithuania	2,930,000	25,000	275,000	75,000	375,000	12.7%
Moldova	2,470,000	50,000	75,000	45,000	170,000	6.9%
Russia	110,100,000	6,750,000	4,100,000	3,100,000	13,950,000	12.7%
Tajikistan	1,530,000	50,000		70,000	120,000	7.8%
Turkmenistan	1,300,000	70,000		30,000	100,000	7.7%
Ukraine	41,340,000	1,650,000	3,700,000	1,500,000	6,850,000	16.3%
Uzbekistan	6,550,000	330,000		220,000	550,000	8.4%
Unidentified	–	165,000	130,000		295,000
Total USSR	194,090,000	10,600,000	10,000,000	6,000,000	26,600,000	13.7%

The source of the figures is Vadim Erlikman [ru].Erlikman, a Russian historian, notes that these figures are his estimates.

• The population listed here of 194.090 million is taken from Soviet-era sources. Recent studies published in Russia put the actual corrected population in 1940 at 192.598 million.
• According to Russian estimates the population in 1939 included 20.268 million in the territories annexed by the USSR from 1939 to 1940: the eastern regions of Poland 12.983 million; Lithuania 2.440 million; Latvia 1.951 million; Estonia 1.122 million; Romanian Bessarabia and Bukovina 3.7 million; less transfers out of (392,000) ethnic Germans deported during the Nazi–Soviet population transfers; the Anders Army (120,000); the First Polish Army (1944–45) (26,000) and Zakerzonia & the Belastok Region (1,392,000) which was returned to Poland in 1945.
• Russian sources estimate post-war population transfers resulted in a net loss of (622,000). The additions were the annexation of the Carpatho-Ukraine 725,000; the Tuvan People’s Republic 81,000; the remaining population on South Sakhalin 29,000 and in the Kaliningrad Oblast 5,000; and the deportation of Ukrainians from Poland to the USSR in 1944–47 518,000. The transfers out included the flight and expulsion of Poles from the USSR 1944–47 (1,529,000) and the post-war emigration to the west (451,000) According to Viktor Zemskov, 3/4 of the post-war emigration to the west was of persons who were from the territories annexed in 1939–40.
• Estimates in the west for the population transfers differ. According to Sergei Maksudov, a Russian demographer living in the west, the population of the territories annexed by the USSR was 23 million less the net population transfers out of 3 million persons who emigrated from the USSR including 2,136,000 Poles who left the USSR; 115,000 Polish soldiers of the Anders Army; 392,000 Germans who left in the era of the Nazi-Soviet Pact and 400,000 Jews, Romanians, Germans Czech and Hungarians who emigrated after the war The Polish government-in-exile put the population of the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union at 13.199 million.
• Polish sources put the number of refugees from the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union living in post war Poland at about 2.2 million, about 700,000 more than those listed in the Soviet sources of Poles repatriated. The difference is due to the fact that Poles from the eastern regions who were deported to Germany during the war or had fled Volhynia and Eastern Galicia were not included in the figures of the organized transfers in 1944–47.
• Figures for Belarus, Ukraine and Lithuania include about two million civilian dead that are also listed in Polish sources in the total war dead of Poland. Polish historian Krystyna Kersten estimated losses of about two million in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union. The formal transfer of the territories of Poland annexed by the Soviet Union occurred with the Polish–Soviet border agreement of August 1945.
• According to Erlikman, in addition to the war dead, there were 1,700,000 deaths due to Soviet repression (200,000 executed; 4,500,000 sent to prisons and Gulag of whom 1,200,000 died; 2,200,000 deported of whom 300,000 died).

Nazi Germany

Main article: German casualties in World War II

Country	Population 1939	Military deaths	Civilian deaths due to Allied Strategic Bombing	Civilian deaths due to Nazi persecution	Civilian deaths due to Expulsion of Germans	Total deaths	Deaths as % of 1939 population
Austria	6,653,000	250,000 to 261,000	24,000	100,000		370,000	5.56
Germany (within 1937 borders)	69,300,000	3,760,000 to 4,456,000	353,000 (1942 borders)[ to 410,000	300,000to 500,000	400,000 to 1,225,000	5,700,000	8.23
Foreign nationals of German ancestry in Eastern Europe]	7,423,000	430,000 to 538,000			200,000 to 886,000	738,000 to 1,316,000	9.96 to 17.76
Foreign nationals in Western Europe	215,000	63,000				63,000	29.3
Approx. Totals	83,500,000	4,440,000to 5,318,000	353,000 to 434,000	400,000[to 600,000	600,000 to 2,111,000	6,900,000 to 7,400,000	8.26 to 8.86

• German sources do not provide figures for Soviet citizens conscripted by Germany. Russian historian Grigoriy Krivosheyev puts the losses of the “Vlasovites, Balts and Muslims etc.” in German service at 215,000.

United States

Estimated breakdown for each US state and territory of total war dead

This table displays the number of people who are believed to have died in the United States by state and territory. In 1939 when World War 2 began, the Census Bureau estimated the population to be 130,879,718 people (excluding the population of Hawaii and Alaska). This list includes those who died at sea.

USA State	Population 1940	Military deaths	Civilian deaths	Total	Deaths as % of 1940 population
Alabama	2,832,961	5,114		5,114	0.180%
Alaska	72,524	91	10	101	0.139%
Arizona	499,261	1,613		1,613	0.323%
Arkansas	1,949,387	3,814		3,814	0.195%
California	6,907,397	17,022		17,022	0.246%
Colorado	1,123,296	2,697		2,697	0.240%
Connecticut	1,709,242	4,347		4,347	0.254%
Delaware	246,505	579		579	0.234%
District of Columbia	663,091	3,029		3,029	0.456%
Florida	1,897,414	3,540		3,540	0.186%
Georgia	3,123,723	5,701		5,701	0.182%
Hawaii	422,770	689	68	757	0.179%
Idaho	524,873	1,419		1,419	0.270%
Illinois	7,897,241	18,601		18,601	0.235%
Indiana	3,427,796	8,131		8,131	0.237%
Iowa	2,538,268	5,633		5,633	0.221%
Kansas	1,801,028	4,526		4,526	0.251%
Kentucky	2,845,627	6,802		6,802	0.239%
Louisiana	2,363,516	3,964		3,964	0.167%
Maine	847,226	2,156		2,156	0.254%
Maryland	1,821,244	4,375		4,375	0.240%
Massachusetts	4,316,721	10,033		10,033	0.232%
Michigan	5,256,106	12,885		12,885	0.245%
Minnesota	2,792,300	6,462		6,462	0.231%
Mississippi	2,183,796	3,555		3,555	0.162%
Missouri	3,784,664	8,003		8,003	0.211%
Montana	559,456	1,553		1,553	0.277%
Nebraska	1,315,834	2,976		2,976	0.226%
Nevada	110,247	545		545	0.494%
New Hampshire	491,524	1,203		1,203	0.244%
New Jersey	4,160,165	10,372		10,372	0.249%
New Mexico	531,818	2,032		2,349	0.382%
New York	13,479,142	31,215		31,215	0.231%
North Carolina	3,571,623	7,109		7,109	0.199%
North Dakota	641,935	1,626		1,626	0.253%
Ohio	6,907,612	16,828		16,828	0.243%
Oklahoma	2,336,434	5,474		5,474	0.234%
Oregon	1,089,684	2,835	6	2,841	0.260%
Pennsylvania	9,900,180	26,554		26,554	0.268%
Rhode Island	713,346	1,669		1,669	0.233%
South Carolina	1,899,804	3,423		3,423	0.180%
South Dakota	642,961	1,426		1,426	0.221%
Tennessee	2,915,841	6,528		6,528	0.223%
Texas	6,414,824	15,764		15,764	0.245%
Utah	550,310	1,450		1,450	0.263%
Vermont	359,231	874		874	0.243%
Virginia	2,677,773	6,007		6,007	0.224%
Washington	1,736,191	3,941		3,941	0.226%
West Virginia	1,901,974	4,865		4,865	0.255%
Wisconsin	3,137,587	7,038		7,038	0.224%
Wyoming	250,742	652		652	0.260%
Puerto Rico	1,869,255	368		368	0.019%
Panama Canal Zone	51,827	21		21	0.040%
Unidentified			11,072	2,587
Total US	132,164,569	405,000 to 416,800[	11,200 to 15,000	418,500 to 420,000	0.32%

Japanese Empire

Country	Population1939	Militarydeaths	Civilian deaths due toAllied attacks	Civilian deaths due toJapanese persecution	Totaldeaths	Deaths as% of 1939 population
Philippines	16,000,303	489,600			500,000
Japan	71,900,000	103,900	330,000 to 900,000		2,600,000 to 3,100,000
China	200,000,000	455,700		7,500,000	20,000,000
Pacific	127,000	247,200
Burma and India	393,919,000	164,500		250,000 to 1,000,000	1,500,000 to 2,500,000
New Guinea	1,292,000	127,600			15,000
Smaller fronts		404,800
Other		444,878
Approx. Totals	304,119,000	2,500,00	730,000	7,750,000 to 8,500,000	3,100,000

Holocaust deaths

Further information: The Holocaust and Holocaust victims

Included in the figures of total war dead for each country are victims of the Holocaust.

Jewish deaths

The Holocaust is the term generally used to describe the genocide of approximately six million European Jews during World War II. Martin Gilbert estimates 5.7 million (78%) of the 7.3 million Jews in German-occupied Europe were Holocaust victims. Estimates of Holocaust deaths range between 4.9 and 5.9 million Jews.Statistical breakdown of Jewish dead

• In Nazi extermination camps: according to Polish Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) researchers, 2,830,000 Jews were murdered in the Nazi death camps (500,000 Belzec; 150,000 Sobibor; 850,000 Treblinka; 150,000 Chełmno; 1,100,000 Auschwitz; 80,000 Majdanek). Raul Hilberg puts the Jewish death toll in the death camps, including Romanian Transnistria, at 3.0 million.
• In the USSR by the Einsatzgruppen: Raul Hilberg puts the Jewish death toll in the area of the mobile killing groups at 1.4 million.
• Aggravated deaths in the Ghettos of Nazi-occupied Europe: Raul Hilberg puts the Jewish death toll in the Ghettos at 700,000.
• Yad Vashem estimated that, in early 2019, its Central Database of Shoah Victims’ Names contained the names of 4.8 million Jewish Holocaust dead.

The figures for the pre-war Jewish population and deaths in the table below are from The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. The low, high and average percentage figures for deaths of the pre-war population have been added.

Country	Pre-war Jewish population in 1933	Low estimate deaths	High estimate deaths	Low %	High %	Average %
Austria	191,000 (see footnote)	50,000	65,000	26.2%	34.0%	30.1%
Belgium	60,000 (see footnote)	25,000	29,000	41.7%	48.3%	45.0%
Czech Republic[206]	92,000	77,000	78,300	83.7%	85.1%	84.4%
Denmark	8,000	60	116	0.8%	1.5%	1.1%
Estonia	4,600	1,500	2,000	32.6%	43.5%	38.0%
France	260,000 (see footnote)	75,000	77,000	28.8%	29.6%	29.2%
Germany	566,000 (see footnote)	135,000	142,000	23.9%	25.1%	24.5%
Greece	73,000	59,000	67,000	80.8%	91.8%	86.3%
Hungary (borders 1940)[207]	725,000	502,000	569,000	69.2%	78.5%	73.9%
Italy	48,000	6,500	9,000	13.5%	18.8%	16.1%
Latvia	95,000	70,000	72,000	73.7%	75.8%	74.7%
Lithuania	155,000	130,000	143,000	83.9%	92.3%	88.1%
Luxembourg	3,500	1,000	2,000	28.6%	57.1%	42.9%
Netherlands	140,000 (see footnote)	100,000	105,000	72.8%	74.3%	71.0%
Norway	1,700	800	800	47.1%	47.1%	47.1%
Poland (borders 1939)	3,250,000	2,700,000	3,000,000	83.1%	92.3%	87.7%
Romania (borders 1940)	441,000	121,000	287,000	27.4%	65.1%	46.3%
Slovakia	89,000	60,000	71,000	67.4%	79.8%	73.6%
Soviet Union (borders 1939)	2,825,000	700,000	1,100,000	24.8%	38.9%	31.9%
Yugoslavia	68,000	56,000	65,000	82.4%	95.6%	89.0%
Total	9,067,000	4,869,860	5,894,716	50.4% (avg.)	59.7% (avg.)	55.1% (avg.)

• The total population figures from 1933 listed here are taken from The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust. From 1933 to 1939 about 400,000 Jews fled Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia. Some of these refugees were in western Europe when Germany occupied these countries in 1940. In 1940 there were 30,000 Jewish refugees in the Netherlands, 12,000 in Belgium, 30,000 in France, 2,000 in Denmark, 5,000 in Italy, and 2,000 in Norway.
• Hungarian Jewish losses of 569,000 presented here include the territories annexed in 1939–41. The number of Holocaust dead in 1938 Hungarian borders were 220,000.According to Martin Gilbert, the Jewish population inside Hungary’s 1941 borders was 764,000 (445,000 in the 1938 borders and 319,000 in the annexed territories). Holocaust deaths from inside the 1938 borders was 200,000, not including 20,000 men conscripted as forced labor for the military.
• Netherlands figure listed in the table of 112,000 Jews taken from The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust includes those Jews who were resident in Holland in 1933. By 1940, the Jewish population had increased to 140,000 with the inclusion of 30,000 Jewish refugees. In the Netherlands, 8,000 Jews in mixed marriages were not subject to deportation. However, an article in the Dutch periodical De Groene Amsterdammer maintains that some Jews in mixed marriages were deported before the practice was ended by Hitler.
• Hungarian Jewish Holocaust victims within the 1939 borders were 200,000.
• Romanian Jewish Holocaust victims totalled 469,000 within the 1939 borders, which includes 300,000 in Bessarabia and Bukovina occupied by the USSR in 1940.
• According to Martin Gilbert, Jewish Holocaust victims totaled 8,000 in Italy, and 562 in the Italian colony of Libya.

Non-Jews persecuted and killed by Nazi and Nazi-affiliated forces

See also: The Holocaust in Ukraine

Some scholars maintain that the definition of the Holocaust should also include the other victims persecuted and killed by the Nazis.

• Donald L. Niewyk, professor of history at Southern Methodist University, maintains that the Holocaust can be defined in four ways: first, that it was the genocide of the Jews alone; second, that there were several parallel Holocausts, one for each of the several groups; third, the Holocaust would include Roma and the handicapped along with the Jews; fourth, it would include all racially motivated German crimes, such as the murder of Soviet prisoners of war, Polish and Soviet civilians, as well as political prisoners, religious dissenters, and homosexuals. Using this definition, the total number of Holocaust victims is between 11 million and 17 million people.
• According to the College of Education of the University of South Florida “Approximately 11 million people were killed because of Nazi genocidal policy”.
• R.J. Rummel estimated the death toll due to Nazi Democide at 20.9 million persons.
• Timothy Snyder put the number of victims of the Nazis killed as a result of “deliberate policies of mass murder” only, such as executions, deliberate famine and in death camps, at 10.4 million persons including 5.4 million Jews.
• German scholar Hellmuth Auerbach puts the death toll in the Hitler era at 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust and 7 million other victims of the Nazis.
• Dieter Pohl puts the total number of victims of the Nazi era at between 12 and 14 million persons, including 5.6–5.7 million Jews.
• Roma Included in the figures of total war dead are the Roma victims of the Nazi persecution; some scholars include the Roma deaths with the Holocaust. Most estimates of Roma (Gypsies) victims range from 130,000 to 500,000. Ian Hancock, Director of the Program of Romani Studies and the Romani Archives and Documentation Center at the University of Texas at Austin, has argued in favour of a higher figure of between 500,000 and 1,500,000 Roma dead. Hancock writes that, proportionately, the death toll equaled “and almost certainly exceed[ed], that of Jewish victims”. In a 2010 publication, Ian Hancock stated that he agrees with the view that the number of Romanis killed has been underestimated as a result of being grouped with others in Nazi records under headings such as “remainder to be liquidated”, “hangers-on” and “partisans”.
• In 2018, the United States Holocaust museum had the number of murdered during the time period of the holocaust at 17 million – 6 million Jews and 11 million others.

The following figures are from The Columbia Guide to the Holocaust, the authors maintain that “statistics on Gypsy losses are especially unreliable and controversial. These figures (cited below) are based on necessarily rough estimates”.

Country	Pre-war Roma population	Low estimate victims	High estimate victims
Austria	11,200	6,800	8,250
Belgium	600	350	500
Czech Republic[206]	13,000	5,000	6,500
Estonia	1,000	500	1,000
France	40,000	15,150	15,150
Germany	20,000	15,000	15,000
Greece	?	50	50
Hungary	100,000	1,000	28,000
Italy	25,000	1,000	1,000
Latvia	5,000	1,500	2,500
Lithuania	1,000	500	1,000
Luxembourg	200	100	200
Netherlands	500	215	500
Poland	50,000	8,000	35,000
Romania	300,000	19,000	36,000
Slovakia	80,000	400	10,000
Soviet Union (borders 1939)	200,000	30,000	35,000
Yugoslavia	100,000	26,000	90,000
Total	947,500	130,565	285,650

• Handicapped persons: 200,000 to 250,000 handicapped persons were killed. A 2003 report by the German Federal Archive put the total murdered during the Action T4 and Action 14f13 programs at 200,000.
• Prisoners of War: POW deaths in Nazi captivity totalled 3.1 million including 2.6 to 3.0 million Soviet prisoners of war.
• Ethnic Poles: According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “It is estimated that the Germans killed at least 1.9 million non-Jewish Polish civilians during World War II.” They maintain that “Documentation remains fragmentary, but today scholars of independent Poland believe that 1.8 to 1.9 million Polish civilians (non-Jews) were victims of German Occupation policies and the war.” However, the Polish government affiliated Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) in 2009 estimated 2,770,000 ethnic Polish deaths due to the German occupation (see World War II casualties of Poland).
• Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians: According to Nazi ideology, Slavs were useless sub-humans. As such, their leaders, the Soviet elite, were to be killed and the remainder of the population enslaved, starved to death, or expelled further eastward. As a result, millions of civilians in the Soviet Union were deliberately killed, starved, or worked to death.Contemporary Russian sources use the terms “genocide” and “premeditated extermination” when referring to civilian losses in the occupied USSR.^{[citation needed]} Civilians killed in reprisals during the Soviet partisan war and wartime-related famine account for a major part of the huge toll. The Cambridge History of Russia puts overall civilian deaths in the Nazi-occupied USSR at 13.7 million persons including 2 million Jews. There were an additional 2.6 million deaths in the interior regions of the Soviet Union. The authors maintain “scope for error in this number is very wide”. At least 1 million perished in the wartime GULAG camps or in deportations. Other deaths occurred in the wartime evacuations and due to war related malnutrition and disease in the interior. The authors maintain that both Stalin and Hitler “were both responsible but in different ways for these deaths”, and “In short the general picture of Soviet wartime losses suggests a jigsaw puzzle. The general outline is clear: people died in colossal numbers but in many different miserable and terrible circumstances. But individual pieces of the puzzle do not fit well; some overlap and others are yet to be found”. Bohdan Wytwycky maintained that civilian losses of 3.0 million Ukrainians and 1.4 million Belarusians “were racially motivated”.^[241]According to Paul Robert Magocsi, between 1941 and 1945, approximately 3,000,000 Ukrainian and other non-Jewish victims were killed as part of Nazi extermination policies in the territory of modern Ukraine. Dieter Pohl puts the total number of victims of the Nazi policies in the USSR at 500,000 civilians killed in the repression of partisans, 1.0 million victims of the Nazi Hunger Plan, c. 3.0 million Soviet POW and 1.0 million Jews (in pre-war borders). Soviet author Georgiy A. Kumanev put the civilian death toll in the Nazi-occupied USSR at 8.2 million (4.0 million Ukrainians, 2.5 million Belarusians, and 1.7 million Russians). A report published by the Russian Academy of Sciences in 1995 put the death toll due to the German occupation at 13.7 million civilians (including Jews): 7.4 million victims of Nazi genocide and reprisals; 2.2 million persons deported to Germany for forced labor; and 4.1 million famine and disease deaths in occupied territory. Sources published in the Soviet Union were cited to support these figures.
• Homosexuals: According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum “Between 1933 and 1945 the police arrested an estimated 100,000 men as homosexuals. Most of the 50,000 men sentenced by the courts spent time in regular prisons, and between 5,000 and 15,000 were interned in concentration camps.” They also noted that there are no known statistics for the number of homosexuals who died in the camps.
• Other victims of Nazi persecution: Between 1,000 and 2,000 Roman Catholic clergy, about 1,000 Jehovah’s Witnesses, and an unknown number of Freemasons perished in Nazi prisons and camps. “The fate of black people from 1933 to 1945 in Nazi Germany and in German-occupied territories ranged from isolation to persecution, sterilization, medical experimentation, incarceration, brutality, and murder.” During the Nazi era Communists, Socialists, Social Democrats, and trade union leaders were victims of Nazi persecution.
• Serbs: The numbers of Serbs murdered by the Ustaše is the subject of debate and estimates vary widely. Yad Vashem estimates over 500,000 murdered, 250,000 expelled and 200,000 forcibly converted to Catholicism. The estimate of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is that the Ustaše murdered between 320,000 and 340,000 ethnic Serbs in the Independent State of Croatia between 1941 and 1945, with roughly 45,000 to 52,000 murdered at the Jasenovac concentration camp alone. According to the Wiesenthal Center at least 90,000 Serbs, Jews, Gypsies and anti-fascist Croatians perished at the hands of the Ustashe at the camp at Jasenovac.According to Yugoslav sources published in the Tito era the estimates of the number of Serb victims range from 200,000 to at least 600,000 persons.See also World War II persecution of Serbs.

German war crimes

Main articles: War crimes of the Wehrmacht and German war crimes

See also: Nazi crimes against the Polish nation, Generalplan Ost, and German mistreatment of Soviet prisoners of war

See also: The Holocaust

During World War II, the German military helped fulfill Nazism’s racial, political, and territorial ambitions. Long after the war, a myth persisted claiming the German military (or Wehrmacht) was not involved in the Holocaust and other crimes associated with Nazi genocidal policy. This belief is untrue. The German military participated in many aspects of the Holocaust: in supporting Hitler, in the use of forced labor, and in the mass murder of Jews and other groups targeted by the Nazis.

The military’s complicity extended not only to the generals and upper leadership but also to the rank and file. In addition, the war and genocidal policy were inextricably linked. The German army (or Heer) was the most complicit as a result of being on the ground in Germany’s eastern campaigns, but all branches participated.

— United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

Nazi Germany ordered, organized and condoned a substantial number of war crimes in World War II. The most notable of these is the Holocaust in which millions of Jews, Poles, and Romani were systematically murdered or died from abuse and mistreatment. Millions also died as a result of other German actions.

While the Nazi Party‘s own SS forces (in particular the SS-Totenkopfverbände, Einsatzgruppen and Waffen-SS) of Nazi Germany was the organization most responsible for the genocidal killing of the Holocaust, the regular armed forces represented by the Wehrmacht committed war crimes of their own, particularly on the Eastern Front in the war against the Soviet Union.

Japanese war crimes

Main article: Japanese war crimes

Included with total war dead are victims of Japanese war crimes.

R. J. Rummel

R. J. Rummel estimates the civilian victims of Japanese democide at 5,964,000. Detailed by country:

• China: 3,695,000
• Indochina: 457,000
• Korea: 378,000
• Indonesia: 375,000
• Malaya-Singapore: 283,000
• Philippines: 119,000
• Burma: 60,000
• Pacific Islands: 57,000

Rummel estimates POW deaths in Japanese custody at 539,000. Detailed by country:

• China: 400,000
• French Indochina: 30,000
• Philippines: 27,300
• Netherlands: 25,000
• France: 14,000
• Britain: 13,000
• British Colonies: 11,000
• U.S.: 10,700
• Australia: 8,000

Werner Gruhl

Werner Gruhl estimates the civilian deaths at 20,365,000.Detailed by country

• China: 12,392,000
• Indochina: 1,500,000
• Korea: 500,000
• Dutch East Indies: 3,000,000
• Malaya and Singapore: 100,000
• Philippines: 500,000
• Burma: 170,000
• Forced laborers in Southeast Asia: 70,000, 30,000 interned non-Asian civilians
• Timor: 60,000
• Thailand and Pacific Islands: 60,000.

Gruhl estimates POW deaths in Japanese captivity at 331,584.Detailed by country

• China: 270,000
• Netherlands: 8,500
• Britain: 12,433
• Canada: 273
• Philippines: 20,000
• Australia: 7,412
• New Zealand: 31
• United States: 12,935

Out of 60,000 Indian Army POWs taken at the Fall of Singapore, 11,000 died in captivity.There were 14,657 deaths among the total 130,895 western civilians interned by the Japanese due to famine and disease.