WAR ATLAS MILITARY HISTORY MAGAZINE · WWI — WWII
WWII Statistics and Casualties
1. Lead
The Second World War was the deadliest conflict in human history, and the number of its dead is the most sobering statistic in the history of war. The total is commonly estimated at 70 to 85 million people — between 3 and 4 per cent of the world’s population at the time — and it includes, in round numbers, some 21 to 25 million military deaths and some 50 to 55 million civilian deaths.
The figures are, however, estimates, and they are disputed: the range of 70 to 85 million is the range most often cited in the scholarly literature, but other serious estimates run from as low as 50 million to as high as 100 million, and the difference depends on how the dead are counted, on which countries are included, and on how the deaths from famine and disease that the war caused are treated.
This article presents the figures as they are most commonly cited, with their sources and with their uncertainties, and it does so without pretending to a precision that the evidence does not support.
The dead of the Second World War were not, for the most part, soldiers killed in battle. They were, for the most part, civilians: men, women and children who died in bombing, in sieges, in famines, in concentration camps and in massacres.
The six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust, the millions of Soviet and Chinese civilians who died, the civilians killed in the bombing of Germany and Japan — these are the figures that make the Second World War different from every war that came before it.
The statistics in this article are, for that reason, not merely numbers: they are the measure of what the war did to the world, and they are the reason the war is remembered, not only as a military conflict, but as a catastrophe.
The numbers are presented here by country, by military and civilian deaths, and by the causes of death, and each figure is given, wherever possible, as a range, with its source.
2. Key Facts
| Total deaths | Commonly estimated 70–85 million (range in the literature: 50–100 million) |
| Military deaths | About 21–25 million |
| Civilian deaths | About 50–55 million |
| Share of world population | About 3–4% |
| Largest losses | Soviet Union ~26.6 million; China 15–20 million |
| Holocaust / Holocaust | About 6 million Jews murdered; about 11 million victims in total |
| Displaced persons | About 60 million refugees and displaced persons |
| Wounded | Tens of millions of military wounded; no reliable global total |
| Main sources | Krivosheev (Soviet losses); the US Holocaust Memorial Museum; national archives |
| Key caveat | All figures are estimates; ranges are given wherever the sources disagree |
3. Counting the Dead
3.1. Why Counting Is Hard
Counting the dead of the Second World War is, for reasons that are easy to understand, a difficult business, and the difficulty is the reason the figures are given, in this article and in the scholarly literature, as ranges rather than as single numbers.
The war was fought over six years, on three continents, and in countries whose records were destroyed, whose governments collapsed, and whose populations were moved, deported and murdered. The Soviet Union, which suffered the largest losses, did not publish its figures for decades, and the figures it did publish were, for political reasons, understated.
China, which suffered the second-largest losses, was in the midst of a civil war as well as a war with Japan, and its records are incomplete. The civilians who died in famines — in Bengal, in Vietnam, in Greece — were often not counted at all, and the question of whether they should be counted as war dead is itself a matter of argument.
The result is that every figure in this article is an estimate, and that the estimates differ, sometimes by millions, from one historian to another.
3.2. Sources and Methods
The figures in this article are drawn, wherever possible, from the sources that historians regard as the most reliable: the work of the Russian military historian Grigori Krivosheev, whose study of Soviet losses, published in 1993, is the standard work on the subject; the work of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which is the standard source for the figures of the Holocaust; and the national archives and the official histories of the countries concerned.
The method used by historians is, in essence, a method of triangulation: the dead are counted from military records, from census data, from the records of the camps and of the occupation, and from the demographic method — comparing the population before the war with the population after it, and attributing the difference, after allowing for births and for migration, to the war.
The method is, by its nature, approximate, and the figures it produces are, by their nature, ranges. The ranges in this article are the ranges most often cited, and the sources are given, so that the reader can check them.
3.2.1. The Problem of Civilian Deaths
The problem of counting civilian deaths deserves a closer look, because it is the largest single source of uncertainty in the figures for the Second World War, and because it is the reason the total is given as a range of 70 to 85 million rather than as a single number.
The civilians who died in the war died in many ways: in bombing, in sieges, in massacres, in camps, and in famines and epidemics that the war caused. Some of these deaths are well documented — the six million Jews of the Holocaust, the civilians killed in the bombing of Germany and Japan — and some are not: the civilians who died in the famines of Bengal and of Vietnam, the civilians who died in the Soviet Union as a result of the German occupation, the civilians who died in China as a result of the Japanese invasion.
The question of whether a death from famine, in a country at war, should be counted as a war death is a question on which historians disagree, and it is the reason the range of 70 to 85 million is so wide. The figures in this article count the famine deaths, and they say so, so that the reader knows what is included.
4. Military Deaths
4.1. The Axis Powers
The military deaths of the Axis powers are, in round numbers, about 8 to 10 million, and they are dominated by the losses of Germany and Japan. Germany lost, by the most commonly cited figures, about 5.3 million soldiers, of whom about 3 million died on the Eastern Front, and Japan lost about 2.1 million soldiers, of whom the great majority died in the Pacific and in China.
Italy lost about 300,000 soldiers, and the other Axis powers — Romania, Hungary, Finland — lost, between them, about a million more. The figures are, as always, estimates, and they are disputed: the German figure, in particular, has been revised upwards and downwards, as new evidence has come to light, and the range in the literature is from about 4.4 million to about 5.3 million.
The figures are, however, the best that historians can do, and they are the figures most often cited. The Axis losses were, in one important respect, different from the Allied losses: a far larger share of them were suffered on a single front, the Eastern Front, where the German Army lost more than half of its men, and where the war was, in the words of one historian, “the largest and bloodiest theatre of the war”.
The Eastern Front alone accounted for more than half of all German military deaths, a proportion that no other theatre of the war approached.
4.2. The Allies
The military deaths of the Allies are, in round numbers, about 13 to 16 million, and they are dominated by the losses of the Soviet Union and China. The Soviet Union lost, by the Krivosheev study, about 8.7 million soldiers, a figure that is, in the view of most historians, the most reliable available, although some have argued that it is an understatement and that the true figure may be as high as 11 million.
China lost, by the most commonly cited figures, about 3 to 4 million soldiers. The United States lost about 418,500 soldiers, the United Kingdom about 384,000, France about 217,000, and Poland about 240,000. The figures are, as always, estimates, and they are, in the case of China and of the Soviet Union, the subject of continuing argument.
What is certain is that the Soviet Union bore, by far, the largest share of the military losses of the war, and that its losses were, in the words of one historian, “the price of victory”.
4.2.1. The Soviet Union
The military losses of the Soviet Union deserve a closer look, because they are the largest single figure in the statistics of the Second World War, and because they are the figure that has been most argued over. The Krivosheev study, published in 1993, put the military deaths of the Soviet Union at 8,668,400, a figure that includes those killed in action, those who died of wounds, those who died in captivity, and those who were missing and presumed dead.
The figure is, in the view of most historians, the most reliable available, because it is based on the archives of the Soviet armed forces, which were opened after the fall of the Soviet Union. It is, however, disputed: some historians have argued that the figure is an understatement, and that the true figure may be as high as 11 million, because the archives are incomplete and because many of the dead were never recorded.
The argument continues, and it is, in the view of many, a sign of how difficult it is to count the dead of a war that was fought, in the Soviet Union, as a war of annihilation.
5. Civilian Deaths
5.1. The Holocaust / Holocaust
The largest single cause of civilian death in the Second World War was the Holocaust, the systematic murder of the Jews of Europe by Nazi Germany. About six million Jews were murdered, in ghettos, in mass shootings, in concentration camps and in extermination camps, among them about 1.1 million at Auschwitz-Birkenau, the largest of the camps.
The six million figure is the figure most often cited, and it is the figure accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and by the great majority of historians, although the range in the literature is from about 5.1 million to about 6.2 million, the difference depending on how the dead are counted.
The Holocaust was, in the words of the historian Raul Hilberg, “the destruction of the European Jews”, and it was, in the words of the Nuremberg Tribunal, “a crime against humanity”. The six million Jews were not the only victims of the Nazi policy of mass murder: the total number of victims of the Holocaust, including the Roma, the disabled, the Soviet prisoners of war and the political prisoners, is commonly estimated at about eleven million, a figure that is, like the six million, an estimate and a matter of argument.
5.2. Bombing, Famine and Disease
The civilians who died in the Second World War died, in addition to the Holocaust, in the bombing of cities, in sieges, and in the famines and epidemics that the war caused. The bombing of Germany killed, by the most commonly cited figures, about 350,000 to 500,000 civilians, and the bombing of Japan killed about 500,000 to 800,000 civilians, including the victims of the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
The siege of Leningrad killed, by the most commonly cited figures, about 800,000 to 1.5 million civilians, most of them from starvation. The Bengal famine of 1943 killed about 2 to 3 million people, and the famine in Vietnam in 1945 killed about 1 to 2 million.
The figures are, as always, estimates, and they are disputed: the figure for Dresden, for example, was for many years given as 135,000 or even 250,000, and it was, in 2010, revised by a historical commission to about 25,000. The figures in this article are the figures most often cited in the recent literature, and they are given, wherever possible, as ranges.
5.2.1. The Siege of Leningrad
The siege of Leningrad, which lasted from September 1941 to January 1944, deserves a closer look, because it was the deadliest siege in history, and because it is the clearest example of how civilians die in war. Leningrad was surrounded by the German Army, and its people — some 2.5 million of them — were cut off from food, from fuel and from medicine.
The winter of 1941–42 was the worst: the temperature fell to minus 30 degrees, the food ration fell to 125 grams of bread a day, and the people died, in their thousands, of starvation and of cold. The dead are commonly estimated at about 800,000 to 1.5 million, a range that reflects the difficulty of counting the dead in a city under siege, and the difference between the figures given by the Soviet authorities, which were, for political reasons, understated, and the figures given by historians since the opening of the archives.
The siege of Leningrad is, in the end, the reason the statistics of the Second World War are so difficult to count: the dead were not, for the most part, killed by weapons, but by hunger and by cold, and their deaths were not, for the most part, recorded.
6. Per-Country Breakdown
6.1. Europe / Châu Âu
The losses in Europe were, in round numbers, about 40 to 45 million dead, and they were dominated by the losses of the Soviet Union, Poland and Germany. The Soviet Union lost, by the Krivosheev study, about 26.6 million people in total, military and civilian together, a figure that is, in the view of most historians, the most reliable available, although the range in the literature is from about 20 million to about 27 million.
Poland lost about 5.6 to 5.9 million people, of whom about 3 million were Polish Jews, and Germany lost about 6.9 to 7.4 million people in total, military and civilian together. Yugoslavia lost about 1 to 1.7 million, France about 567,000, the United Kingdom about 450,000, and Italy about 457,000.
The figures are, as always, estimates, and they are, in the case of Poland and of Yugoslavia, the subject of continuing argument, because the records are incomplete and because the dead were, in many cases, never counted. What is certain is that Eastern Europe bore, by far, the largest share of the losses, and that the war in the East was, in the words of one historian, “a war of annihilation”.
6.2. Asia and the Pacific
The losses in Asia and the Pacific were, in round numbers, about 30 to 40 million dead, and they were dominated by the losses of China and Japan. China lost, by the most commonly cited figures, about 15 to 20 million people, military and civilian together, a figure that is, in the view of most historians, the least reliable of all the major figures, because China’s records are incomplete and because the war in China was, in part, a civil war as well as a war with Japan.
Japan lost about 2.5 to 3.1 million people in total, of whom about 2.1 million were soldiers. The Philippines lost about 500,000 to 1 million, Indonesia about 3 to 4 million, most of them from famine and from forced labour under the Japanese occupation, and Vietnam about 1 to 2 million, most of them in the famine of 1945.
The figures are, as always, estimates, and they are, in the case of Asia, the least certain of all, because the records are the least complete. What is certain is that the war in Asia was, in the words of one historian, “a war of immense suffering”, and that its dead have, for too long, been forgotten in the West.
6.2.1. China
The losses of China deserve a closer look, because they are the second-largest of any country, and because they are the least certain. China lost, by the most commonly cited figures, about 15 to 20 million people, of whom about 3 to 4 million were soldiers and the rest were civilians, killed by the Japanese invasion, by the bombing of Chinese cities, by the famines and by the epidemics that the war caused.
The range in the literature is wide: some historians put the total as low as 10 million, and others as high as 20 million, and the difference depends on how the civilian deaths are counted and on whether the deaths from famine are included.
The Chinese government, in recent years, has put the total at 35 million, a figure that includes the wounded as well as the dead, and that is, in the view of most historians outside China, an overstatement. The figures in this article are the figures most often cited in the Western literature, and they are given, as always, as a range, with the caveat that the true figure may be higher.
7. The Holocaust and Genocide
7.1. The Six Million
The six million Jews murdered in the Holocaust were killed in three ways: in mass shootings, in ghettos, and in the extermination camps. About 1.5 million were killed in mass shootings, above all in the Soviet Union, by the Einsatzgruppen, the mobile killing squads of the SS. About 800,000 died in the ghettos, of starvation and of disease.
And about 2.7 to 3 million were killed in the extermination camps — Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, Chelmno and Majdanek — of whom about 1.1 million died at Auschwitz-Birkenau alone. These three headings cover the main categories of killing; the remainder of the six million died in other circumstances — in transit, in other camps and killing sites, and in killings that fall outside these three headings — which is why the three figures do not by themselves add up to six million.
The figures are, as always, estimates, and they are, in the case of the extermination camps, the subject of continuing research, as new evidence comes to light. What is certain is that the six million figure is the figure accepted by the great majority of historians, and that it is the figure that is taught, in schools and in museums, around the world.
The six million are, in the words of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “the measure of the crime”.
7.2. Other Victims
The Jews were not the only victims of the Nazi policy of mass murder, and the other victims deserve to be named. The Roma — the Sinti and Roma of Europe — lost, by the most commonly cited figures, about 200,000 to 500,000 people, a range that reflects the difficulty of counting a people who were, in many cases, not recorded.
The disabled — the victims of the T4 “euthanasia” programme — lost about 200,000 to 250,000 people. The Soviet prisoners of war lost, by the most commonly cited figures, about 3.3 million people, who died in German captivity — in the camps, on forced marches and in transit — of starvation and of disease.
The Poles lost, in addition to the 3 million Polish Jews, about 1.8 to 2 million ethnic Poles, killed in massacres, in camps and in forced labour, and the rest of Poland’s total loss of 5.6 to 5.9 million — roughly 0.8 to 1.1 million people — belonged to the country’s other national groups.
The total number of victims of the Nazi policy of mass murder, including the Jews, is commonly estimated at about eleven million, a figure that is, like the six million, an estimate and a matter of argument, but that is, in the view of most historians, the best available.
7.2.1. The Porajmos and the Disabled
The murder of the Roma — the Porajmos, the “Devouring” — and the murder of the disabled deserve a closer look, because they are the least remembered of the victims of the Nazi policy of mass murder, and because they are, in the words of one historian, “the forgotten victims”.
The Roma were murdered, like the Jews, in mass shootings and in the camps, above all at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where a special “Gypsy camp” was established, and where, in August 1944, some 2,900 Roma were murdered in a single night. The disabled were murdered, under the T4 programme, in gas chambers disguised as shower rooms, and their murder was, in the words of one historian, “the rehearsal for the Holocaust”.
The Roma and the disabled are, in the end, a reminder that the Nazi policy of mass murder was not, in the end, a policy directed at a single people, but a policy directed at all those whom the Nazis regarded as “unworthy of life”, and that the eleven million victims of that policy include, in addition to the six million Jews, millions of others whose names are, for the most part, forgotten.
8. The Wounded and the Displaced
8.1. The Wounded
The wounded of the Second World War are, in number, even greater than the dead, and they are, in the words of one historian, “the forgotten half of the statistics”. There is no reliable global total for the military wounded, because the records are incomplete and because the definition of “wounded” varies from one army to another, but the figures that do exist are, in themselves, staggering: the Soviet Union had, by the Krivosheev study, about 15 million military wounded, of whom about 2.5 million were permanently disabled; Germany had about 5 million military wounded; and the United States had about 670,000.
The civilian wounded are, if anything, even less well counted: the civilians wounded in the bombing of Germany and Japan, the civilians wounded in the sieges and in the massacres, the civilians who were maimed by the war and who lived, for the rest of their lives, with their injuries.
The wounded are, in the end, a reminder that the statistics of the war are not only about the dead, but about the living, and about the price that the living paid.
8.2. Refugees and Displacement
The Second World War displaced, in the words of the United Nations, “more people than any other event in history”: about 60 million people were, by the end of the war, refugees or displaced persons, driven from their homes by bombing, by invasion, by deportation and by the redrawing of frontiers.
The largest single displacement was the expulsion of the Germans from Eastern Europe, in which some 12 to 14 million Germans were driven from their homes in Poland, in Czechoslovakia and in East Prussia, and in which, by the most commonly cited figures, some 500,000 to 2 million died, a range that reflects the difficulty of counting the dead in a population on the move and the political sensitivity of the subject.
The displaced also included the millions of Soviet citizens deported by Stalin, the millions of Poles deported by the Germans and by the Soviets, and the millions of Jews who survived the Holocaust and who, after the war, had no home to return to. The displaced are, in the end, the reason the war is remembered, not only as a war of armies, but as a war of peoples.
8.2.1. The Expulsions
The expulsions of the Germans from Eastern Europe deserve a closer look, because they are the largest forced migration in European history, and because they are, to this day, a subject of argument. The expulsions were agreed, in principle, by the Allies at the Potsdam Conference in 1945, which provided for the “orderly and humane” transfer of the German population from Poland, Czechoslovakia and Hungary.
In practice the transfer was neither orderly nor humane: the Germans were driven from their homes, often with only what they could carry, and they were, in many cases, subjected to violence, to robbery and to murder. The dead are commonly estimated at 500,000 to 2 million, a range that is, in the view of most historians, the widest of all the ranges in the statistics of the Second World War, because the records are incomplete and because the subject is, to this day, politically sensitive in Germany, in Poland and in the Czech Republic.
The expulsions are, in the end, a reminder that the war did not end, for its victims, in 1945, and that its consequences continued, for many, for years afterwards.
9. How the Numbers Changed
9.1. Postwar Revisions
The figures for the dead of the Second World War have been revised, again and again, in the eighty years since the war ended, and the revisions are, in themselves, a part of the history of the war. The first figures, published in the years immediately after the war, were, for the most part, understatements: the Soviet Union put its losses at 7 million, a figure that was, for political reasons, far below the truth; the figure for Dresden was put at 135,000, a figure that was, as we have seen, revised in 2010 to about 25,000; and the figure for the Holocaust was, in the early years, given as 5.1 million, a figure that was, as the evidence accumulated, revised upwards to six million.
The revisions have gone, in the main, in two directions: the figures for the Soviet Union and for China have been revised upwards, as the archives have been opened and as the evidence has accumulated, and the figures for Dresden and for the bombing of Germany have been revised downwards, as the propaganda of the war has been stripped away.
The figures in this article are the figures as they stand in the 2020s, and they are, like all figures, subject to further revision.
9.2. The Soviet Archives
The opening of the Soviet archives, after the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991, was the single most important event in the history of the statistics of the Second World War, and it deserves a closer look. The archives contained the records of the Soviet armed forces, the records of the NKVD, and the records of the census of 1939 and of 1959, and they allowed historians, for the first time, to count the Soviet dead with something approaching accuracy.
The result was the Krivosheev study, published in 1993, which put the total Soviet losses at 26.6 million, a figure that was, at the time, a shock: it was nearly four times the figure of 7 million that the Soviet Union had published, and it was, in the words of one historian, “the largest revision in the history of the statistics of war”.
The archives also allowed historians to count, for the first time, the Soviet prisoners of war who died in German captivity, the Soviet civilians who died under the German occupation, and the Soviet citizens who were deported by Stalin. The opening of the archives is, in the end, the reason the figures in this article are as reliable as they are, and it is the reason they will, in all likelihood, be revised again, as more of the archives are opened.
9.2.1. The Krivosheev Study
The Krivosheev study — Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century, published in 1993 under the editorship of Colonel-General Grigori Krivosheev — deserves a mention, because it is the single most important source for the statistics of the Second World War, and because it is the source on which the figures in this article, for the Soviet Union, are based.
The study was based on the archives of the Soviet armed forces, and it put the military deaths of the Soviet Union at 8,668,400 and the total losses, military and civilian together, at 26.6 million. The study has been criticised, by some historians, for understating the military deaths, and for understating the civilian deaths, and it has been, in the view of others, “the best that can be done with the evidence available”.
The study remains, to this day, the standard work on Soviet losses, and it is, in the words of one historian, “the foundation on which all subsequent work on the statistics of the Second World War has been built”.
10. Legacy
10.1. Remembering the Dead
The dead of the Second World War are remembered, around the world, in cemeteries, in memorials, and in museums, and the remembering is, in the words of one historian, “the most important legacy of the war”. The war cemeteries of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, the cemeteries of the American Battle Monuments Commission, the memorials at Hiroshima and at Auschwitz, the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier in Paris and in London — these are the places where the dead are remembered, and where the living go to think about what the war cost.
The remembering is, in the end, the reason the statistics matter: the numbers are not, in themselves, the point; the point is the people behind the numbers, and the remembering is the way in which the people behind the numbers are honoured.
The statistics in this article are, for that reason, a form of remembering, and they are presented here in the hope that they will be read, not as numbers, but as names.
10.2. What the Numbers Mean
The numbers in this article mean, in the end, one thing: that the Second World War was the greatest catastrophe in human history, and that its cost, in human lives, was greater than the cost of any other war, before or since.
The 70 to 85 million dead are, in the words of one historian, “a number so large that it is difficult to comprehend”, and the difficulty of comprehending it is, in itself, a part of its meaning: the numbers are, in the end, a reminder of the limits of our understanding, and of the need to remember, not only the numbers, but the people behind them.
The numbers also mean, in the words of another historian, “that war, in the twentieth century, became a war against civilians, and that the civilians, in the end, paid the greatest price”. The statistics of the Second World War are, for that reason, not merely a matter for historians, but a matter for all of us, and they are, in the end, the reason the war is remembered, and the reason it must never be forgotten.
10.2.1. The 70–85 Million
The figure of 70 to 85 million dead deserves a final mention, because it is the figure that this article has used throughout, and because it is the figure that is most often cited, and because it is, in the end, a figure that should be understood for what it is: an estimate, and a range, and not a single, precise number.
The figure is, in the words of the historians who use it, “the best estimate available”, and it is based on the best evidence available, in the 2020s, for the losses of the Soviet Union, of China, of Poland, of Germany, of Japan, and of the many other countries that fought in the war.
The figure will, in all likelihood, be revised, as new evidence comes to light, and it may, in the end, be revised upwards or downwards, by millions. What will not change is the meaning of the figure: that the Second World War killed, in six years, more people than any other conflict in history, and that its dead, whoever they were and wherever they died, deserve to be remembered, not as a number, but as people.
11. Frequently Asked Questions
How many people died in World War II?
The total is commonly estimated at 70–85 million people, including about 21–25 million military deaths and about 50–55 million civilian deaths. The range in the scholarly literature is wider — from about 50 million to about 100 million — because the records are incomplete and because historians disagree about whether deaths from famine and disease caused by the war should be counted.
Which country lost the most people?
The Soviet Union, with about 26.6 million dead in total, military and civilian together, according to the Krivosheev study of 1993. China lost the second most, about 15–20 million, and Poland lost about 5.6–5.9 million, the highest proportion of its population of any country.
How many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust?
About six million, a figure accepted by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and by the great majority of historians. The range in the literature is about 5.1 to 6.2 million. The total number of victims of the Nazi policy of mass murder, including the Roma, the disabled, Soviet prisoners of war and others, is commonly estimated at about eleven million.
How many civilians died in World War II?
About 50–55 million, more than twice the number of military deaths. Civilians died in the Holocaust, in bombing, in sieges such as Leningrad, and in the famines and epidemics that the war caused, above all in China, in the Soviet Union and in South-East Asia.
Why do the figures differ so much?
Because the records were destroyed, because the governments that kept them collapsed, because the Soviet Union did not publish its figures for decades, and because historians disagree about whether deaths from famine and disease caused by the war should be counted as war dead. The opening of the Soviet archives in 1991 was the single most important event in improving the figures.
How many people were displaced by the war?
About 60 million people were refugees or displaced persons by the end of the war, the largest displacement in history. The largest single movement was the expulsion of some 12–14 million Germans from Eastern Europe, in which some 500,000 to 2 million died.
12. Sources
- Wikipedia, “World War II casualties” — the overall figures, the per-country breakdown and the ranges.
- Grigori Krivosheev (ed.), Soviet Casualties and Combat Losses in the Twentieth Century (Greenhill, 1997) — the standard study of Soviet losses: 26.6 million total, 8,668,400 military.
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, “Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution” — the six million figure and the eleven million total.
- Encyclopædia Britannica, “World War II” — the overall figures and the assessment.
- Richard Overy, The Bombing War: Europe 1939–1945 (Allen Lane, 2013) — civilian deaths from bombing.
- Mark Harrison, “Counting Soviet Deaths in the Great Patriotic War” (2015) — the debate about the Soviet figures.
- Rana Mitter, China’s War with Japan, 1937–1945 (Allen Lane, 2013) — Chinese losses, 15–20 million.