The First World War saw the mobilization of more than 65 million soldiers, and the deaths of almost 15 million soldiers and civilians combined. Approximately 8.8 million of these deaths were of military personnel, while six million civilians died as a direct result of the war; mostly through hunger, disease and genocide. The German army suffered the highest number of military losses, totaling at more than two million men. Turkey had the highest civilian death count, largely due to the mass extermination of Armenians, as well as Greeks and Assyrians. Varying estimates suggest that Russia may have suffered the highest number of military and total fatalities in the First World War. However, this is complicated by the subsequent Russian Civil War and Russia's total specific to the First World War remains unclear to this day.

Proportional deaths In 1914, Central and Eastern Europe was largely divided between the empires of Austria-Hungary, Germany and Russia, while the smaller Balkan states had only emerged in prior decades with the decline of the Ottoman Empire. For these reasons, the major powers in the east were able to mobilize millions of men from across their territories, as Britain and France did with their own overseas colonies, and were able to utilize their superior manpower to rotate and replace soldiers, whereas smaller nations did not have this luxury. For example, total military losses for Romania and Serbia are around 12 percent of Germany's total military losses; however, as a share of their total mobilized forces these countries lost roughly 33 percent of their armies, compared to Germany's 15 percent mortality rate. The average mortality rate of all deployed soldiers in the war was around 14 percent.

Unclarity in the totals Despite ending over a century ago, the total number of deaths resulting from the First World War remains unclear. The impact of the Influenza pandemic of 1918, as well as various classifications of when or why fatalities occurred, has resulted in varying totals with differences ranging in the millions. Parallel conflicts, particularly the Russian Civil War, have also made it extremely difficult to define which conflicts the fatalities should be attributed to. Since 2012, the totals given by Hirschfeld et al in Brill's Encyclopedia of the First World War have been viewed by many in the historical community as the most reliable figures on the subject.

Estimates for the total death count of the Second World War generally range somewhere between 70 and 85 million people. The Soviet Union suffered the highest number of fatalities of any single nation, with estimates mostly falling between 22 and 27 million deaths. China then suffered the second greatest, at around 20 million, although these figures are less certain and often overlap with the Chinese Civil War. Over 80 percent of all deaths were of those from Allied countries, and the majority of these were civilians. In contrast, 15 to 20 percent were among the Axis powers, and the majority of these were military deaths, as shown in the death ratios of Germany and Japan. Civilian deaths and atrocities It is believed that 60 to 67 percent of all deaths were civilian fatalities, largely resulting from war-related famine or disease, and war crimes or atrocities. Systematic genocide, extermination campaigns, and forced labor, particularly by the Germans, Japanese, and Soviets, led to the deaths of millions. In this regard, Nazi activities alone resulted in 17 million deaths, including six million Jews in what is now known as The Holocaust. Not only was the scale of the conflict larger than any that had come before, but the nature of and reasoning behind this loss make the Second World War stand out as one of the most devastating and cruelest conflicts in history. Problems with these statistics Although the war is considered by many to be the defining event of the 20th century, exact figures for death tolls have proven impossible to determine, for a variety of reasons. Countries such as the U.S. have fairly consistent estimates due to preserved military records and comparatively few civilian casualties, although figures still vary by source. For most of Europe, records are less accurate. Border fluctuations and the upheaval of the interwar period mean that pre-war records were already poor or non-existent for many regions. The rapid and chaotic nature of the war then meant that deaths could not be accurately recorded at the time, and mass displacement or forced relocation resulted in the deaths of many civilians outside of their homeland, which makes country-specific figures more difficult to find. Early estimates of the war’s fatalities were also taken at face value and formed the basis of many historical works; these were often very inaccurate, but the validity of the source means that the figures continue to be cited today, despite contrary evidence.

In comparison to Europe, estimate ranges are often greater across Asia, where populations were larger but pre-war data was in short supply. Many of the Asian countries with high death tolls were European colonies, and the actions of authorities in the metropoles, such as the diversion of resources from Asia to Europe, led to millions of deaths through famine and disease. Additionally, over one million African soldiers were drafted into Europe’s armies during the war, yet individual statistics are unavailable for most of these colonies or successor states (notably Algeria and Libya). Thousands of Asian and African military deaths went unrecorded or are included with European or Japanese figures, and there are no reliable figures for deaths of millions from countries across North Africa or East Asia. Additionally, many concentration camp records were destroyed, and such records in Africa and Asia were even sparser than in Europe. While the Second World War is one of the most studied academic topics of the past century, it is unlikely that we will ever have a clear number for the lives lost in the conflict.

The American Civil War is the conflict with the largest number of American military fatalities in history. In fact, the Civil War's death toll is comparable to all other major wars combined, the deadliest of which were the World Wars, which have a combined death toll of more than 520,000 American fatalities. The ongoing series of conflicts and interventions in the Middle East and North Africa, collectively referred to as the War on Terror in the west, has a combined death toll of more than 7,000 for the U.S. military since 2001. Other records In terms of the number of deaths per day, the American Civil War is still at the top, with an average of 425 deaths per day, while the First and Second World Wars have averages of roughly 100 and 200 fatalities per day respectively. Technically, the costliest battle in U.S. military history was the Battle of Elsenborn Ridge, which was a part of the Battle of the Bulge in the Second World War, and saw upwards of 5,000 deaths over 10 days. However, the Battle of Gettysburg had more military fatalities of American soldiers, with almost 3,200 Union deaths and over 3,900 Confederate deaths, giving a combined total of more than 7,000. The Battle of Antietam is viewed as the bloodiest day in American military history, with over 3,600 combined fatalities and almost 23,000 total casualties on September 17, 1862. Revised Civil War figures For more than a century, the total death toll of the American Civil War was generally accepted to be around 620,000, a number which was first proposed by Union historians William F. Fox and Thomas L. Livermore in 1888. This number was calculated by using enlistment figures, battle reports, and census data, however many prominent historians since then have thought the number should be higher. In 2011, historian J. David Hacker conducted further investigations and claimed that the number was closer to 750,000 (and possibly as high as 850,000). While many Civil War historians agree that this is possible, and even likely, obtaining consistently accurate figures has proven to be impossible until now; both sides were poor at keeping detailed records throughout the war, and much of the Confederacy's records were lost by the war's end. Many Confederate widows also did not register their husbands death with the authorities, as they would have then been ineligible for benefits.

It is estimated that the Second World War was responsible for the deaths of approximately 3.76 percent of the world's population between 1939 and 1945. In 2022, where the world's population reached eight billion, this would be equal to the death of around 300 million people.

The region that experienced the largest loss of life relative to its population was the South Seas Mandate - these were former-German territories given to the Empire of Japan through the Treaty of Versailles following WWI, and they make up much of the present-day countries of the Marshall Islands, Micronesia, the Northern Mariana Islands (U.S. territory), and Palau. Due to the location and strategic importance of these islands, they were used by the Japanese as launching pads for their attacks on Pearl Harbor and in the South Pacific, while they were also taken as part of the Allies' island-hopping strategy in their counteroffensive against Japan. This came at a heavy cost for the local populations, a large share of whom were Japanese settlers who had moved there in the 1920s and 1930s. Exact figures for both pre-war populations and wartime losses fluctuate by source, however civilian losses in these islands were extremely high as the Japanese defenses resorted to more extreme measures in the war's final phase.

The First Battle of the Somme is acknowledged as one of the most devastating and bloodiest battles of all time. The battle took place during the First World War, between allied British and French forces and opposing German forces, from July 1 to November 18, 1916. Initially this attack was supposed to be led by the French army, however their focus changed to the Battle of Verdun, where they were locked in a deadly stalemate against the German forces, therefore the role of the British changed from support to that of the lead. After a week of heavy bombardment from British artillery, on the morning of July 1, 1916 over 100,000 British troops charged the enemy lines, in what would become the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. The German trenches were dug so deeply that the artillery fire did not have its desired effect, and it failed to sufficiently clear much of the barbed wire, meaning that the German machine guns were able to mow down thousands of oncoming troops as they tried to rush across no mans land. By the end of the day, the British troops secured approximately eight square kilometers of ground, along a front that stretched 24km (averaging just 0.33km from the initial line of attack), at a cost of over 57,000 casualties, including over 19,000 fatalities. By comparison, the German and French armies were of relatively similar sizes, however their fatality rate was much lower.

Progress was slow

The first day set much of the tone for the remainder of the battle. The German forces were able to retreat and dig new trenches and form their defenses faster than the British and French could mobilize their attacks, meaning that progress was slow, and cost many many lives. The majority of casualties to British and French forces came from German machine gun fire. While the Battle of the Somme is justly regarded as the prime example of trench warfare, it is also important to note that the respective air forces did play a large part in gathering intel and coordinating attacks, as well as the artillery regiments who provided much of the suppressing fire and disrupted one another's supply chains. September 15th also marked the first ever use of a tank in battle, where the British sent a small fleet of tanks into the field, with mixed results.

Legacy of the Somme

By the end of the battle the casualties were high. As the battle progressed the French became more heavily involved, and German soldiers began falling more rapidly. The battle ended on November 18th 1916, with well over one million casualties and 300,000 fatalities. Although casualties were high for all sides, the battle is most prominently remembered in Britain and the Commonwealth as an example of the ultimate sacrifice made by the men who served throughout the First World War.

Dataset title: Deaths from all causes in Western Europe by month, 1914-1918 Related publication: More, A. F. et al. (2020). The impact of a six-year climate anomaly on the ‘Spanish Flu’ Pandemic and WWI. GeoHealth, American Geophysical Union. Figures 2 and 3. Dataset source: Bunle, H. (1954). Le Mouvement naturel de la population dans le monde de 1906 à 1936. Paris, Institut national d’études démographiques, pp. 432-438. N.B. Please cite the original source if you use this dataset. N.B. Please note that Bunle did not publish mortality statistics for Belgium, Bulgaria, and several other countries for the period 1914-20 due to his inability to find reliable sources, as indicated in his footnotes and on p. 12. This dataset includes countries of western Europe with the most reliable data. Units: Thousands of deaths. Each monthly figure should be multiplied by 1000 to obtain the total deaths for a specific month. Each year is divided in 12 monthly entries, with decimals increasing by 0.083 (1/12) for each month.

Can wars breed nationalism? We argue that civilians' indirect exposure to war fatalities can trigger psychological processes that increase identification with their nation and ultimately strengthen support for nationalist parties. We test this argument in the context of the rise of the Nazi Party after World War 1. To measure localized war exposure, we machine-coded information on all 8.6 million German soldiers who were wounded or died in WW1. Our empirical strategy leverages battlefield dynamics that cause plausibly exogenous variation in the county-level casualty fatality rate---the share of dead soldiers among all casualties. We find that throughout the interwar period, electoral support for right-wing nationalist parties, including the Nazi Party, was 2.6 percentage points higher in counties with above-median casualty fatality rates. Consistent with our proposed mechanism, we find that this effect was driven by civilians rather than veterans and areas with a preexisting tradition of collective war commemoration.

The first day of the First Battle of the Somme is acknowledged as being the bloodiest day in the history of the British Army. Taking place during the First World War from July 1, to November 18, 1916, it was one of the most costly and devastating battles in human history, and the first day alone saw approximately 70 thousand casualties. The offensive took place on the morning of July 1, after seven days of heavy bombardment from British artillery. Artillery was supposed to clear a path through the maze of German wire that covered no mans land, as well as to suppress the German forces and disrupt their supply routes.

Heavy casualties in the initial attack The British forces of over 120 thousand men, which also included soldiers from Ireland, Canada, South Africa and India, rushed the German lines early on the first day. The week-long artillery bombardment did not have its desired effect, as they could not damage much of the German trenches (which were fifteen meters deep in many areas) and much of the wire remained intact, resulting in heavy casualties inflicted by German troops who were able to mobilize quickly and mow down the approaching forces with machine gun fire. By the end of the day, the British troops secured approximately 8 square kilometers of ground, along a front that stretched 24km (averaging just 0.33km from the initial line of attack), at a cost of 57,470 casualties, including 19,240 fatalities. In comparison, the German and French armies were of relatively similar sizes to that of the British, however their casualty rate was much much lower. Stalemate at Verdun The French, who were originally supposed to lead the attack, had redirected much of their efforts to Verdun, where they were locked in a deadly stalemate against German forces. This resulted in the British leading the charge at the Somme. Although the British penetrated the German lines and pushed them back, they paid for it with many lives, compared to the Germans who suffered between ten and twelve thousand casualties. This form of trench warfare set the precedent for the remainder of the battle, where the British and French made slow yet devastating progress against a German force who were able to entrench themselves and mobilize defenses much faster than the Allies could organize their attacks. By the end of the battle approximately 3 million men had taken part, resulting in over one million casualties.

This is the first attempt to record the Jewish soldiers who became casualties in the numerous Wars between the Habsburg Monarchy and Revolutionary and Napoleonic France. Jewish military service in the Austrian and Austro-Hungarian army from the mid-19th century onwards, especially during the First World War, is well known and documented. By contrast, nothing comparable has been done for the very first Jewish soldiers in modern history. The time has come to set the record straight!

The current database was compiled from the personal records of the War Archive (Kriegsarchiv) of the Austrian State Archives. At that time, the Habsburg army did not publish casualty lists other than mentioning the names of the most senior officers. To find individual Jewish soldiers who became casualties, one must identify serving Jewish soldiers in the regular musters and revision papers. Those found so far can be seen in the database Jewish Soldiers of the Habsburg Army (1788-1820), which should be used in parallel with this one. The current database offers an outtake with a separate list of Jewish soldiers who were killed, wounded, missing in action, or taken prisoner. The first version has 253 entries. These are arranged chronologically based on the date the soldier first became a casualty. The name of the battle or the action shows at the top of the table. Under each such action, up to four sub-categories are given:

1. K/KIA (Killed in Action) – Soldier killed outright in combat. Readers might be surprised how few such cases appear in the database. There are several possible reasons. Firstly, since 1781 the Habsburg manpower reports began to omit the rubric Vor Feind geblieben (left in front of the enemy) denoting soldiers killed in battle. This was part of a broader rationalisation of military records in the early days of Joseph II’s rule. Whichever was the cause of their death, all fatalities were now perceived as irrecoverable manpower wastage. Soldiers who died in service were now simply marked as gestorben. Identifying combat deaths is only possible by looking at monthly reports called Standes- und Diensttabellen. Even then, the number of combat deaths remains extraordinarily low. It appears that the Habsburg army formally recorded a soldier as ‘killed in action’ only if the body was identified. For this to happen, the army had to remain in control of the battlefield – in other words, the battle had to be won. For much of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, this was rarely the case on the Austrian side. It appears that most combat deaths in the period landed in the rubric as ‘missing-in-action’.

2. W/WIA (Wounded in Action) – Muster rolls did not record wounds at all. Monthly tables did so very rarely. The latter were intended primarily as financial documents to record the source of the men’s pay. When a soldier entered hospital, his pay was issued from the hospital fund whose accounts were later reimbursed by the man’s regiment. While dates of hospitalisation were meticulously recorded, the cause of hospitalisation was not mentioned. In most cases, identifying wounded soldiers can only be done indirectly. When dozens or hundreds of men from the same unit were hospitalised on the same day directly after a major battle, it can be reasonably assumed that these were combat casualties. A sure way of identifying a wounded soldier was through the medical evaluation papers (Superarbitrierungs-Liste), which were filed for men no longer fit for wartime service. These papers always mentioned combat wounds, as this was a major argument in favour of making the soldier eligible for admission into the invalids. Unfortunately, the survival rate of these documents is variable and the majority simply do not exist. This database employs two categories for wounded soldiers. When medical papers or hospitalisation date allows clear identification, a soldier is entered into the database as a certain case. When broader context allows (such as wartime service and numerous other hospitalisations from the same company on the same day, suggesting a skirmish), such men are entered as probable cases.

3. P/POW (Prisoner of War) – Unlike the previous two rubrics, the Habsburg military records usually mentioned soldiers taken prisoner (Kriegsgefangen/ In Kriegsgefangenschaft gefallen). The reason was again financial. Firstly, returning men had to be issued with backpay. Secondly, from the Third Coalition War onwards, reciprocal wartime prisoner swaps (Cartel) were discontinued, but the system remained in place to ensure that mutual settlement of accounts between two belligerent armies could happen after the war. This is not the only reason why prisoners make the largest single category in our database. For much of the Revolutionary and Napoleonic period, entire Austrian army corps were forced to surrender (for instance in Ulm in 1805). This happened so often that musters from 1806 and 1811 sometimes blankly omitted case of POWs, based on the assumption that nearly every soldier fell prisoner in the previous war. Therefore, for regiments who fought in Germany and Austerlitz in 1805, and in Bavaria and Deutsch-Wagram in 1809, one must also consult the monthly tables.

4. M/MIA (Missing in Action) – Recorded as Vor Feind vermisst or vermisst for short, this category denotes men who were missing when the battle ended. Anything could have happened to them. Some were dead (see rubric one), but others were taken prisoner, were lost, or deserted. The army recorded such missing men for the same reason as prisoners of war – to settle their backpay in future if necessary.

The total for each category of casualties is given at the bottom of the table for every war fought by the Habsburg army from 1792 to 1815. At the right hand side of the table are the grand totals for each category marked in red. At the end of every personal record are fields showing what happened to the soldier after he became a casualty. Wounded could recover or perish in hospital, while the prisoners and the missing could return. The same soldier could appear in the database more than once as he could be taken prisoner, be wounded or go missing several times. Only for those killed in action could the record be closed. For those who survived, the final fate was noted where known: discharge (including sub category), invaliding, desertion, or non-combat death. Men still in service when last mentioned in the documents are noted as ‘serves’. Whether complete or not, a detailed service record for each soldier as as I could reconstruct it from the sources is available in the database Jewish Soldiers of the Habsburg Army (1788-1820).

Heroes of the Great War Indexing Project - over 17,000 references to notices published in the South Australian newspaper The Chronicle between 1915 and 1919. Some service personnel had more than one notice within the paper. \r The notices were published under various headings including 'Heroes of the Great War', 'Heroes of the Empire', 'Died on Active Service' and ‘Biographical’. \r The notices were placed by relatives and friends of approximately 10,000 World War I service personnel who died, or were wounded, or were decorated. Some newspaper printing errors have been corrected using official sources.\r Data set of 9514 notices includes the reference (date, page and column) within The Chronicle, brief biographical details including name, age, rank, battalion and occasionally place of death. Also included are names of relatives and place of residence in South Australia by street address, suburb or town.\r Some obituaries within The Chronicle have portraits, although included in this data set, a separate data set has been created for those entries that have portraits.\r

WarSampo Knowledge Graph includes harmonized data of different kinds concerning the Second World War in Finland, separated in different subgraphs representing events, actors, places, photographs, and other aspects and documentation of the war. The data covers the Winter War 1939-1940 against the Soviet attack, the Continuation War 1941-1944 where the occupied areas of the Winter War were temporarily regained, and the Lapland War 1944-1945, where the Finns pushed the German troops away from Lapland.

To test and demonstrate its usefulness, this Knowledge Graph is in use in the semantic portal WarSampo, explained in more detail in the project page.

Example SPARQL queries for the data:

• Events, photographs and articles that are situated in Vyborg
• Casualties of the 1st Division and its subunits in the time interval 13.2.-13.3.1940 by place and date

WarSampo knowledge graph version history:

• 1.0.0, November 2015: Initial public release
• 1.1.0, November 2017: War cemeteries addition
• 2.0.0, May 2018: Backwards-incompatible URI changes
• 2.1.0, November 2019: Prisoners of war addition (to be published)

Version 2.0.0 contains 13,838,765 triples.

To combine the files into a single Turtle file on a Linux system:

find . -mindepth 2 -name "*.ttl" | xargs cat >> warsampo.ttl

Each year on 25 April (ANZAC Day) New Zealanders (and Australians) mark the anniversary of the Gallipoli landings of 1915. On that day, thousands of young men, far from their homes, stormed the beaches on the Gallipoli Peninsula in what is now modern Turkey. For nine long months New Zealanders, Australians and allies from France and the British Isles battled harsh conditions and Turkish opponents who were desperately fighting to protect their homeland. By the time the campaign ended, over 120,000 men had died: more than 80,000 Turkish soldiers, 44,000 British and French soldiers, over 8,500 Australians. 2,721 young New Zealanders were also among the dead, about a quarter of those who had landed on the peninsula. In the history of the Great War, the Gallipoli campaign made no large mark. The number of dead, although horrific, pales in comparison with the number that died in France and Belgium during the war. But for New Zealand, along with Australia and Turkey, the Gallipoli campaign played an important part in fostering a sense of national identity.

This dataset is about book series. It has 1 row and is filtered where the books is Tallarn : war for a dead world. It features 10 columns including number of authors, number of books, earliest publication date, and latest publication date.

There were 667,479 deaths in the United Kingdom in 2021, compared with 689,629 in 2020. Between 2003 and 2011, the annual number of deaths in the UK fell from 612,085 to just over 552,232. Since 2011 however, the annual number of annual deaths in the United Kingdom has steadily grown, with the number recorded in 2020, the highest since 1918 when there were 715,246 deaths. Both of these spikes in the number of deaths can be attributed to infectious disease pandemics. The great influenza pandemic of 1918, which was at its height towards the end of World War One, and the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused a large number of deaths in 2020.  Impact of the COVID-19 pandemic The weekly death figures for England and Wales highlight the tragic toll of the COVID-19 pandemic. In two weeks in April of 2020, there were 22,351 and 21,997 deaths respectively, almost 12,000 excess deaths in each of those weeks. Although hospitals were the most common location of these deaths, a significant number of these deaths also took place in care homes, with 7,911 deaths taking place in care homes for the week ending April 24, 2020, far higher than usual. By the summer of 2020, the number of deaths in England and Wales reached more usual levels, before a second wave of excess deaths hit the country in early 2021. Although subsequent waves of COVID-19 cases resulted in far fewer deaths, the number of excess deaths remained elevated throughout 2022. Long-term life expectancy trends As of 2022 the life expectancy for men in the United Kingdom was 78.57, and almost 82.57 for women, compared with life expectancies of 75 for men and 80 for women in 2002. In historical terms, this is a major improvement in relation to the mid 18th century, when the overall life expectancy was just under 39 years. Between 2011 and 2017, improvements in life expectancy in the UK did start to decline, and have gone into reverse since 2018/20. Between 2020 and 2022 for example, life expectancy for men in the UK has fallen by over 37 weeks, and by almost 23 weeks for women, when compared with the previous year.

In 1800, the region of Germany was not a single, unified nation, but a collection of decentralized, independent states, bound together as part of the Holy Roman Empire. This empire was dissolved, however, in 1806, during the Revolutionary and Napoleonic eras in Europe, and the German Confederation was established in 1815. Napoleonic reforms led to the abolition of serfdom, extension of voting rights to property-owners, and an overall increase in living standards. The population grew throughout the remainder of the century, as improvements in sanitation and medicine (namely, mandatory vaccination policies) saw child mortality rates fall in later decades. As Germany industrialized and the economy grew, so too did the argument for nationhood; calls for pan-Germanism (the unification of all German-speaking lands) grew more popular among the lower classes in the mid-1800s, especially following the revolutions of 1948-49. In contrast, industrialization and poor harvests also saw high unemployment in rural regions, which led to waves of mass migration, particularly to the U.S.. In 1886, the Austro-Prussian War united northern Germany under a new Confederation, while the remaining German states (excluding Austria and Switzerland) joined following the Franco-Prussian War in 1871; this established the German Empire, under the Prussian leadership of Emperor Wilhelm I and Chancellor Otto von Bismarck. 1871 to 1945 - Unification to the Second World War The first decades of unification saw Germany rise to become one of Europe's strongest and most advanced nations, and challenge other world powers on an international scale, establishing colonies in Africa and the Pacific. These endeavors were cut short, however, when the Austro-Hungarian heir apparent was assassinated in Sarajevo; Germany promised a "blank check" of support for Austria's retaliation, who subsequently declared war on Serbia and set the First World War in motion. Viewed as the strongest of the Central Powers, Germany mobilized over 11 million men throughout the war, and its army fought in all theaters. As the war progressed, both the military and civilian populations grew increasingly weakened due to malnutrition, as Germany's resources became stretched. By the war's end in 1918, Germany suffered over 2 million civilian and military deaths due to conflict, and several hundred thousand more during the accompanying influenza pandemic. Mass displacement and the restructuring of Europe's borders through the Treaty of Versailles saw the population drop by several million more.

Reparations and economic mismanagement also financially crippled Germany and led to bitter indignation among many Germans in the interwar period; something that was exploited by Adolf Hitler on his rise to power. Reckless printing of money caused hyperinflation in 1923, when the currency became so worthless that basic items were priced at trillions of Marks; the introduction of the Rentenmark then stabilized the economy before the Great Depression of 1929 sent it back into dramatic decline. When Hitler became Chancellor of Germany in 1933, the Nazi government disregarded the Treaty of Versailles' restrictions and Germany rose once more to become an emerging superpower. Hitler's desire for territorial expansion into eastern Europe and the creation of an ethnically-homogenous German empire then led to the invasion of Poland in 1939, which is considered the beginning of the Second World War in Europe. Again, almost every aspect of German life contributed to the war effort, and more than 13 million men were mobilized. After six years of war, and over seven million German deaths, the Axis powers were defeated and Germany was divided into four zones administered by France, the Soviet Union, the UK, and the U.S.. Mass displacement, shifting borders, and the relocation of peoples based on ethnicity also greatly affected the population during this time. 1945 to 2020 - Partition and Reunification In the late 1940s, cold war tensions led to two distinct states emerging in Germany; the Soviet-controlled east became the communist German Democratic Republic (DDR), and the three western zones merged to form the democratic Federal Republic of Germany. Additionally, Berlin was split in a similar fashion, although its location deep inside DDR territory created series of problems and opportunities for the those on either side. Life quickly changed depending on which side of the border one lived. Within a decade, rapid economic recovery saw West Germany become western Europe's strongest economy and a key international player. In the east, living standards were much lower, although unemployment was almost non-existent; internationally, East Germany was the strongest economy in the Eastern Bloc (after the USSR), though it eventually fell behind the West by the 1970s. The restriction of movement between the two states also led to labor shortages in t...

This graph shows the total number of artillery and heavy guns used by the British forces during the First Battle of the Somme in 1916. The Battle of the Somme took place from July 1, until November 18, 1916 with most of the bombardments coming in the week leading up to the July 1, attack. The front line during the battle was over 22km long, and the German forces were so well entrenched (up to 15m deep) and protected that the week-long bombardment did not have its desired effect. This meant that when the soldiers rushed the German lines on the morning of July 1, they suffered massive casualties, with 19,240 British fatalities on the first day alone (making it the bloodiest day in British military history).

The most commonly used gun was by far the 18PDR field gun,of which 808 were deployed during the Battle of the Somme. This gun was the most frequently used field gun used by the British Royal Field Artillery in the First World War. After these were the 4.5- and 6-inch Howitzers, and the 60 pounder guns. There was also a smaller number of naval railway-guns used to provide heavier fire and strategically targeted enemy roads and railways in order to disrupt their supply chain. The smaller guns and Howitzers were used not only to bombard the enemy, but also to destroy the masses of barbed wire that occupied no-mans-land and to clear a path for the soldiers (although this was not always very effective).

Turks and Caicos Islands saw a murder rate of ***** per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the most dangerous country for this kind of crime worldwide as of 2024. Interestingly, El Salvador, which long had the highest global homicide rates, has dropped out of the top 29 after a high number of gang members have been incarcerated. Meanwhile, Colima in Mexico was the most dangerous city for murders. Violent conflicts worldwide Notably, these figures do not include deaths that resulted from war or a violent conflict. While there is a persistent number of conflicts worldwide, resulting casualties are not considered murders. Partially due to this reason, homicide rates in Latin America are higher than those in Afghanistan or Syria. A different definition of murder in these circumstances could change the rate significantly in some countries. Causes of death Also, noteworthy is that murders are usually not random events. In the United States, the circumstances of murders are most commonly arguments, followed by narcotics incidents and robberies. Additionally, murders are not a leading cause of death. Heart diseases, strokes and cancer pose a greater threat to life than violent crime.

Throughout the 19th century, what we know today as Poland was not a united, independent country; apart from a brief period during the Napoleonic Wars, Polish land was split between the Austro-Hungarian, Prussian (later German) and Russian empires. During the 1800s, the population of Poland grew steadily, from approximately nine million people in 1800 to almost 25 million in 1900; throughout this time, the Polish people and their culture were oppressed by their respective rulers, and cultural suppression intensified following a number of uprisings in the various territories. Following the outbreak of the First World War, it is estimated that almost 3.4 million men from Poland served in the Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian armies, with a further 300,000 drafted for forced labor by the German authorities. Several hundred thousand were forcibly resettled in the region during the course of the war, as Poland was one of the most active areas of the conflict. For these reasons, among others, it is difficult to assess the extent of Poland's military and civilian fatalities during the war, with most reliable estimates somewhere between 640,000 and 1.1 million deaths. In the context of present-day Poland, it is estimated that the population fell by two million people in the 1910s, although some of this was also due to the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed in the wake of the war.

Poland 1918-1945

After more than a century of foreign rule, an independent Polish state was established by the Allied Powers in 1918, although it's borders were considerably different to today's, and were extended by a number of additional conflicts. The most significant of these border conflicts was the Polish-Soviet War in 1919-1920, which saw well over 100,000 deaths, and victory helped Poland to emerge as the Soviet Union's largest political and military rival in Eastern Europe during the inter-war period. Economically, Poland struggled to compete with Europe's other powers during this time, due to its lack of industrialization and infrastructure, and the global Great Depression of the 1930s exacerbated this further. Political corruption and instability was also rife in these two decades, and Poland's leadership failed to prepare the nation for the Second World War. Poland had prioritized its eastern defenses, and some had assumed that Germany's Nazi regime would see Poland as an ally due to their shared rivalry with the Soviet Union, but this was not the case. Germany invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, in the first act of the War, and the Soviet Union launched a counter invasion on September 17; Germany and the Soviet Union had secretly agreed to do this with the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact in August, and had succeeded in taking the country by September's end. When Germany launched its invasion of the Soviet Union in 1941 it took complete control of Poland, which continued to be the staging ground for much of the fighting between these nations. It has proven difficult to calculate the total number of Polish fatalities during the war, for a variety of reasons, however most historians have come to believe that the figure is around six million fatalities, which equated to almost one fifth of the entire pre-war population; the total population dropped by four million throughout the 1940s. The majority of these deaths took place during the Holocaust, which saw the Nazi regime commit an ethnic genocide of up to three million Polish Jews, and as many as 2.8 million non-Jewish Poles; these figures do not include the large number of victims from other countries who died after being forcefully relocated to concentration camps in Poland.

Post-war Poland

The immediate aftermath of the war was also extremely unorganized and chaotic, as millions were forcefully relocated from or to the region, in an attempt to create an ethnically homogenized state, and thousands were executed during this process. A communist government was quickly established by the Soviet Union, and socialist social and economic policies were gradually implemented over the next decade, as well as the rebuilding, modernization and education of the country. In the next few decades, particularly in the 1980s, the Catholic Church, student groups and trade unions (as part of the Solidarity movement) gradually began to challenge the government, weakening the communist party's control over the nation (although it did impose martial law and imprison political opponent throughout the early-1980s). Increasing civil unrest and the weakening of Soviet influence saw communism in Poland come to an end in the elections of 1989. Throughout the 1990s, Poland's population growth stagnated at around 38.5 million people, before gradually decreasing since the turn of the millennium, to 37.8 million people in 2020. This decline was mostly due to a negative migration rate, as Polish workers could now travel more freely to Western Europea...