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 the West, and an influx of migrants from...

In 1938, the year before the outbreak of the Second world War, the countries with the largest populations were China, the Soviet Union, and the United States, although the United Kingdom had the largest overall population when it's colonies, dominions, and metropole are combined. Alongside France, these were the five Allied "Great Powers" that emerged victorious from the Second World War. The Axis Powers in the war were led by Germany and Japan in their respective theaters, and their smaller populations were decisive factors in their defeat. Manpower as a resource In the context of the Second World War, a country or territory's population played a vital role in its ability to wage war on such a large scale. Not only were armies able to call upon their people to fight in the war and replenish their forces, but war economies were also dependent on their workforce being able to meet the agricultural, manufacturing, and logistical demands of the war. For the Axis powers, invasions and the annexation of territories were often motivated by the fact that it granted access to valuable resources that would further their own war effort - millions of people living in occupied territories were then forced to gather these resources, or forcibly transported to work in manufacturing in other Axis territories. Similarly, colonial powers were able to use resources taken from their territories to supply their armies, however this often had devastating consequences for the regions from which food was redirected, contributing to numerous food shortages and famines across Africa, Asia, and Europe. Men from annexed or colonized territories were also used in the armies of the war's Great Powers, and in the Axis armies especially. This meant that soldiers often fought alongside their former-enemies. Aftermath The Second World War was the costliest in human history, resulting in the deaths of between 70 and 85 million people. Due to the turmoil and destruction of the war, accurate records for death tolls generally do not exist, therefore pre-war populations (in combination with other statistics), are used to estimate death tolls. The Soviet Union is believed to have lost the largest amount of people during the war, suffering approximately 24 million fatalities by 1945, followed by China at around 20 million people. The Soviet death toll is equal to approximately 14 percent of its pre-war population - the countries with the highest relative death tolls in the war are found in Eastern Europe, due to the intensity of the conflict and the systematic genocide committed in the region during the war.

Throughout the interwar period, Nazi leaders and propaganda repeatedly put forward the bogus claim that Jews owned up to 20 percent of all wealth in Germany, despite making up fewer than one percent of the population. At this time, Jews were used as a scapegoat for Germany's economic difficulties after the First World War and during the Great Depression, and the Nazis claimed that the Jews were lining their pockets at the expense of "Aryan" Germans. Unfortunately, there are no official figures for Jewish wealth in the 1930s, and emigration tax data only gives an insight into the finances of wealthier Jews. There are, however, a range of estimates from contemporary and more recent sources, which have been used to estimate the real share of German capital that was owned by Jews. Contemporary estimates At various points in the 1930s, the media, statistical office, and central bank all claimed that the combined wealth of German Jews was somewhere between two and 20 billion Reichsmarks (RM). While these three institutions were all state run under the Nazi regime, and despite their uncertainty, some of these estimates are still treated with consideration due to the credentials of the journalists, economists, and statisticians involved. Additionally, these figures were used with the purpose of identifying just how much money the state could take from the Jewish population, therefore it was of interest for the Nazi authorities to ascertain accurate figures, and not inflate estimates for propaganda purposes. Interestingly, the estimates from the Statistical office actually increased from 1933 to 1936, despite the fact that the state had already been seizing Jewish wealth and restricting Jewish business on a large scale since 1933; this has been attributed to the economic impact of the Great Depression. Modern estimates The estimates from Junz and Ritschl were published in 2002 and 2019 respectively, and used some of the contemporary estimates in their investigation, while taking many additional factors into account. These are now some of the most widely-cited estimates on this subject, with estimates of around 8-16 billion RM in 1933, five billion RM in 1936, and 4.4 billion RM in 1938. In Ritschl's 2019 paper, he then goes on to estimate the share of total German wealth owned by Jews; his results show that the Jewish share of private capital was slightly higher than the average, but was still very much in line with their population size.

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 European countries in search of work, facilitated by Pola...

On November 10, 1938, just two days after the Kristallnacht pogroms, the German government introduced the Judenvermögensabgabe; the Jewish capital levy. Jews with more than 5,000 Reichsmarks (RM) in assets were required to pay a 20 percent tax on all assets in order to meet a collective target of one billion RM. Despite inflated claims of Jewish wealth, the events of the preceding five years had financially crippled many of Germany's Jewish population, and it quickly became clear that the target sum would not be met, therefore the tax was increased to 25 percent in 1939. Jewish property This levy was introduced by Herman Göring, as a punishment for Jews and their so-called "hostile attitude" towards the German people. In reality, funds from the levy were to be used to repair the businesses damaged in the pogroms (the cost of which was estimated to be 225 million RM), which were then seized by the government and sold on to non-Jewish buyers. Many of these properties were confiscated through two additional decrees in 1938, which also saw authorities force Jewish businesses to sell selected assets at severely reduced prices. Deportation A clause of the Nuremberg Laws of 1936 stripped overseas German Jews of their citizenship and property; this rule was then applied to the thousands of German Jews who were deported to concentration and extermination camps in Eastern Europe after 1941. The remaining Jewish assets were seized by the Nazi regime and put towards the war effort, which ultimately included the systematic murder of many German Jews.

From 1273 until 1918, Austria was the seat of power of the House of Habsburg; one of Europe's most powerful and influential royal families of the past millennium. During this time and in the subsequent century since the Austro-Hungarian Empire's dissolution, the borders and demography of the Austrian state have changed dramatically, with the population growing from approximately three million people in 1800 to just over nine million in 2020. The area of modern Austria's population rose gradually throughout the nineteenth century, until the early 1900s, where it then dropped and fluctuated during the World Wars, before rising again until recent years.

End of an empire

The assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Franz Ferdinand, in Sarajevo on June 28, 1914, caused Austria to declare war on Serbia, which marked the outbreak of the First World War. The war (and subsequent Spanish Flu pandemic) would see the deaths of more than 1.2 million people from the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the area of modern Austria's population dropped by almost 400,000 people between 1916 and 1920. In the years preceding the First World War, Slavic nationalism and tensions between various ethnicities in the empire had escalated to a new level; following the dissolution of Austria-Hungary in 1918, new states such as Poland, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia were created for corresponding ethnic groups, while Austrian and Hungarian states were created for ethnic Germans and Magyars respectively (Austria still uses this border today). The Treaty of Versailles had forbidden Austria from joining Germany, however in 1938, German Chancellor Adolf Hitler (who was born in Austria) united the two nations as part of the German Third Reich, with overwhelming support by the people of Austria. In the next few years, Austria's population decreased slightly, as a result of the forced relocation of Jews and the outbreak of the Second World War. Due to the Austria-German union, separate records were not kept for Austrian and German deaths during the war, however most estimates put Austria's total at over 350,000 fatalities.

Post-war Austria

Following Germany's defeat, Austria was split into four separately administered sections, and then the Second Austrian Republic was established in 1955, declaring its permanent neutrality in foreign affairs. In the period after this Austria has enjoyed a period of continued prosperity with a high standard of living and reasonable economic growth. Population growth stagnated in the 80's with the legalization of abortion and improved access to contraception, but has grown steadily in the past three decades. Austria is consistently ranked among the top 20 richest countries in the world in terms of GDP per capita, and in 2018 it was ranked 20th in the world by the Human Development Index.

During the eighteenth century, it is estimated that France's population grew by roughly fifty percent, from 19.7 million in 1700, to 29 million by 1800. In France itself, the 1700s are remembered for the end of King Louis XIV's reign in 1715, the Age of Enlightenment, and the French Revolution. During this century, the scientific and ideological advances made in France and across Europe challenged the leadership structures of the time, and questioned the relationship between monarchial, religious and political institutions and their subjects. France was arguably the most powerful nation in the world in these early years, with the second largest population in Europe (after Russia); however, this century was defined by a number of costly, large-scale conflicts across Europe and in the new North American theater, which saw the loss of most overseas territories (particularly in North America) and almost bankrupted the French crown. A combination of regressive taxation, food shortages and enlightenment ideologies ultimately culminated in the French Revolution in 1789, which brought an end to the Ancien Régime, and set in motion a period of self-actualization.

War and peace

After a volatile and tumultuous decade, in which tens of thousands were executed by the state (most infamously: guillotined), relative stability was restored within France as Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799, and the policies of the revolution became enforced. Beyond France's borders, the country was involved in a series of large scale wars for two almost decades, and the First French Empire eventually covered half of Europe by 1812. In 1815, Napoleon was defeated outright, the empire was dissolved, and the monarchy was restored to France; nonetheless, a large number of revolutionary and Napoleonic reforms remained in effect afterwards, and the ideas had a long-term impact across the globe. France experienced a century of comparative peace in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars; there were some notable uprisings and conflicts, and the monarchy was abolished yet again, but nothing on the scale of what had preceded or what was to follow. A new overseas colonial empire was also established in the late 1800s, particularly across Africa and Southeast Asia. Through most of the eighteenth and nineteenth century, France had the second largest population in Europe (after Russia), however political instability and the economic prioritization of Paris meant that the entire country did not urbanize or industrialize at the same rate as the other European powers. Because of this, Germany and Britain entered the twentieth century with larger populations, and other regions, such as Austria or Belgium, had overtaken France in terms of industrialization; the German annexation of Alsace-Lorraine in the Franco-Prussian War was also a major contributor to this.

World Wars and contemporary France

Coming into the 1900s, France had a population of approximately forty million people (officially 38 million* due to to territorial changes), and there was relatively little growth in the first half of the century. France was comparatively unprepared for a large scale war, however it became one of the most active theaters of the First World War when Germany invaded via Belgium in 1914, with the ability to mobilize over eight million men. By the war's end in 1918, France had lost almost 1.4 million in the conflict, and approximately 300,000 in the Spanish Flu pandemic that followed. Germany invaded France again during the Second World War, and occupied the country from 1940, until the Allied counter-invasion liberated the country during the summer of 1944. France lost around 600,000 people in the course of the war, over half of which were civilians. Following the war's end, the country experienced a baby boom, and the population grew by approximately twenty million people in the next fifty years (compared to just one million in the previous fifty years). Since the 1950s, France's economy quickly grew to be one of the strongest in the world, despite losing the vast majority of its overseas colonial empire by the 1970s. A wave of migration, especially from these former colonies, has greatly contributed to the growth and diversity of France's population today, which stands at over 65 million people in 2020.

In the past four centuries, the population of the United States has grown from a recorded 350 people around the Jamestown colony of Virginia in 1610, to an estimated 331 million people in 2020. The pre-colonization populations of the indigenous peoples of the Americas have proven difficult for historians to estimate, as their numbers decreased rapidly following the introduction of European diseases (namely smallpox, plague and influenza). Native Americans were also omitted from most censuses conducted before the twentieth century, therefore the actual population of what we now know as the United States would have been much higher than the official census data from before 1800, but it is unclear by how much. Population growth in the colonies throughout the eighteenth century has primarily been attributed to migration from the British Isles and the Transatlantic slave trade; however it is also difficult to assert the ethnic-makeup of the population in these years as accurate migration records were not kept until after the 1820s, at which point the importation of slaves had also been illegalized. Nineteenth century In the year 1800, it is estimated that the population across the present-day United States was around six million people, with the population in the 16 admitted states numbering at 5.3 million. Migration to the United States began to happen on a large scale in the mid-nineteenth century, with the first major waves coming from Ireland, Britain and Germany. In some aspects, this wave of mass migration balanced out the demographic impacts of the American Civil War, which was the deadliest war in U.S. history with approximately 620 thousand fatalities between 1861 and 1865. The civil war also resulted in the emancipation of around four million slaves across the south; many of whose ancestors would take part in the Great Northern Migration in the early 1900s, which saw around six million black Americans migrate away from the south in one of the largest demographic shifts in U.S. history. By the end of the nineteenth century, improvements in transport technology and increasing economic opportunities saw migration to the United States increase further, particularly from southern and Eastern Europe, and in the first decade of the 1900s the number of migrants to the U.S. exceeded one million people in some years. Twentieth and twenty-first century The U.S. population has grown steadily throughout the past 120 years, reaching one hundred million in the 1910s, two hundred million in the 1960s, and three hundred million in 2007. In the past century, the U.S. established itself as a global superpower, with the world's largest economy (by nominal GDP) and most powerful military. Involvement in foreign wars has resulted in over 620,000 further U.S. fatalities since the Civil War, and migration fell drastically during the World Wars and Great Depression; however the population continuously grew in these years as the total fertility rate remained above two births per woman, and life expectancy increased (except during the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918).

Since the Second World War, Latin America has replaced Europe as the most common point of origin for migrants, with Hispanic populations growing rapidly across the south and border states. Because of this, the proportion of non-Hispanic whites, which has been the most dominant ethnicity in the U.S. since records began, has dropped more rapidly in recent decades. Ethnic minorities also have a much higher birth rate than non-Hispanic whites, further contributing to this decline, and the share of non-Hispanic whites is expected to fall below fifty percent of the U.S. population by the mid-2000s. In 2020, the United States has the third-largest population in the world (after China and India), and the population is expected to reach four hundred million in the 2050s.

At the beginning of the 19th century, the area of modern-day Italy, at the time a collection of various states and kingdoms, was estimated to have a population of nineteen million, a figure which would grow steadily throughout the century, and by the establishment of the Kingdom of Italy in 1861, the population would rise to just over 26 million.

Italy’s population would see its first major disruption during the First World War, as Italy would join the Allied Forces in their fight against Austria-Hungary and Germany. In the First World War, Italy’s population would largely stagnate at 36 million, only climbing again following the end of the war in 1920. While Italy would also play a prominent role in the Second World War, as the National Fascist Party-led country would fight alongside Germany against the Allies, Italian fatalities from the war would not represent a significant percentage of Italy’s population compared to other European countries in the conflict. As a result, Italy would exit the Second World War with a population of just over 45 million.

From this point onwards the Italian economy started to recover from the war, and eventually boomed, leading to increased employment and standards of living, which facilitated steady population growth until the mid-1980s, when falling fertility and birth rates would cause growth to largely cease. From this point onward, the Italian population would remain at just over 57 million, until the 2000s when it began growing again due to an influx of migrants, peaking in 2017 at just over 60 million people. In the late 2010s, however, the Italian population began declining again, as immigration slowed and the economy weakened. As a result, in 2020, Italy is estimated to have fallen to a population of 59 million.

Over the course of the long nineteenth century, Estonia's population almost tripled, from 0.33 million in 1800, to over one million at the outbreak of the First World War. Throughout this time, Estonia was a part of the Russian Empire, however Germany then annexed the region during the First World War; when the German army eventually retreated in 1918, Estonian forces prevented Russia from re-taking the area in the Estonian War of Independence, and an independent Estonian Republic was gradually established between 1918 and 1920. Relative to its size and population, Estonia developed into a prosperous and peaceful nation in the interwar period, and Estonian language and culture thrived, although political stability proved difficult for the Baltic state.

Estonia in WWII Estonia's independence was short lived, as the country was then annexed by the Soviet Union as part of the secret Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact between Germany and the Soviets. The invasion was achieved with little-to-no conflict, as Estonia capitulated when faced with the vastly superior military and navy of the Soviet Union. Annexation became official in June 1940; a puppet, communist government was quickly established, and many military and political rivals were imprisoned or executed under Soviet control. When Germany invaded the Soviet Union the following year, they quickly took control of Estonia, but simply replaced the Soviet Union's rule with their own, and did not grant re-establish sovereignty as many Estonians had expected or hoped for. By the war's end, Estonia suffered approximately 83,000 deaths at the hands of the Soviet Union and Germany, with almost 50,000 of these civilian deaths, and the rest were fatalities of Estonian soldiers who were forced to fight in other nations' armies.

Post-war Estonia Following the war, Estonia remained under Soviet control, and between 1950 and 1990, the population of Estonia grew steadily, from 1.1 million to almost 1.6 million. In the wake of the Soviet Union's collapse, Estonia established a rapid, but peaceful independence in 1991; and the population dropped by roughly ten percent by the end of the century. This was mostly due to non-Estonians returning to their country or region of origin, although a wave of Estonian emigration soon followed. Estonia joined the European Union in 2004, and from 2000 until 2015, Estonia's population continued to fall, reaching just 1.3 million people in 2015. Recent years, however, have seen a reversal in this trend, with limited growth since 2015; although demographers predict that Estonia's population will drop below one million people in the next half-century. The past three decades have marked the longest continuous period in the past 800 years, where the region of Estonia was not under German, Polish, Russian or Scandinavian control.

The fertility rate of a country is the average number of children that women from that country will have throughout their reproductive years. In Germany in 1800, the average woman of childbearing age would have 5.4 children over the course of their lifetime. It remained around this number until the late 1820s, when it then dropped to just under five, which was a long-term effect of the Napoleonic Period in Europe. From this point until the end of the nineteenth century, Germany's fertility rate was rather sporadic, reaching it's lowest point in 1855 with an average of 4.6 births per woman, and it's highest point in 1875 (just after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871), with an average of 5.4 live births per woman. From the beginning of the twentieth century until the end of the Second World War, Germany's fertility rate dropped from around 5 children per woman in 1900, to 1.9 in 1945. The only time where the fertility rate increased was in the inter-war years. Like other countries heavily involved in the Second World War, Germany (both East and West) experienced a Baby Boom from the late 1940s to the late 1960s, however it then dropped to it's lowest point of just 1.3 children per woman by 1995, shortly after the re-unification of Germany. In recent years, Germany's fertility rate has gradually been increasing again, and is expected to reach 1.6 in 2020, its highest rate in over forty years.

This graph shows the total population of Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania in the years between 1922 and 1935, as well as the total number of males and females. After the First World War the Baltic states began claiming their independence from tsarist Russia, as the events of the Russian Revolution took place. Inter-war Estonia The Estonian War of Independence from 1918 to 1920 led to the country's first period of independence, until it became occupied by the Soviet Union again in 1940 during the Second World War. After Estonia gained independence the country experienced a period of political turmoil, including a failed coup d'etat in 1924, and was hit hard by the Great Depression in 1929 before things became more stable in the mid 1930s. Between 1939 and 1945 Estonia's population was devastated by the Second World War, with some estimates claiming that as many as 7.3 percent of all civilians perished as a result of the conflict. From the graph we can see the population grew by 119 thousand people during the 12 years shown, growing from 1.107 million to 1.126 million. The number of women was also higher than the number of men during this time, by 67 thousand in 1922 and 68 thousand in 1934. Inter-war Latvia For Latvia, Independence was a hard-won struggle that had devastated the population in the late 1910s. Similarly to Estonia, the advent of independence brought many challenges to Latvia, and a period of political and economic turmoil followed, which was exacerbated by the Great Depression in 1929. After economic recovery began in 1933, and a coup d'etat established stricter control in 1934, the Latvian economy and political landscape became more stable and the quality of life improved. This lasted until the Second World War, where Latvia became one of the staging grounds of Germany's war against Soviet Russia, and approximately 12.5 percent of all civilians died. From the data we can see that Latvia's population between 1925 and 1935 grew steadily by 95,000 in this decade, with the number of men and women growing at a similar rate. Inter-war Lithuania Lithuania's experience in the interwar period was slightly different to that of Latvia and Estonia. The end of the First World War led to a growing movement for independence from German, Russian or Polish influence, however these countries were reluctant to cede control to one another, and independence was finally achieved in 1922. A right wing dictatorship was established in 1926, which maintained political and civil control until the outbreak of the Second World War, however interference from other nations, particularly Germany, was ever-present in Lithuanian economic activity. From the graph we have only one set of figures, showing that the Lithuanian population was just over 2 million in 1929, with approximately 5 percent more women than men. World War II again devastated Lithuania's population, with almost 14.4 percent of the entire population falling during the conflict.

In the build up to the Second World War, the United States was the major power with the highest gross domestic product (GDP) per capita in the world. In 1938, the United States also had the highest overall GDP in the world, and by a significant margin, however differences in GDP per person were much smaller. Switzerland In terms of countries that played a notable economic role in the war, the neutral country of Switzerland had the highest GDP per capita in the world. A large part of this was due to the strength of Switzerland's financial system. Most major currencies abandoned the gold standard early in the Great Depression, however the Swiss Franc remained tied to it until late 1936. This meant that it was the most stable, freely convertible currency available as the world recovered from the Depression, and other major powers of the time sold large amounts of gold to Swiss banks in order to trade internationally. Switzerland was eventually surrounded on all sides by Axis territories and lived under the constant threat of invasion in the war's early years, however Swiss strategic military planning and economic leverage made an invasion potentially more expensive than it was worth. Switzerland maintained its neutrality throughout the war, trading with both sides, although its financial involvement in the Holocaust remains a point of controversy. Why look at GDP per capita? While overall GDP is a stronger indicator of a state's ability to fund its war effort, GDP per capita is more useful in giving context to a country's economic power in relation to its size and providing an insight into living standards and wealth distribution across societies. For example, Germany and the USSR had fairly similar GDPs in 1938, whereas Germany's per capita GDP was more than double that of the Soviet Union. Germany was much more industrialized and technologically advanced than the USSR, and its citizens generally had a greater quality of life. However these factors did not guarantee victory - the fact that the Soviet Union could better withstand the war of attrition and call upon its larger population to replenish its forces greatly contributed to its eventual victory over Germany in 1945.

Prior to 1829, the area of modern day Greece was largely under the control of the Ottoman Empire. In 1821, the Greeks declared their independence from the Ottomans, and achieved it within 8 years through the Greek War of Independence. The Independent Kingdom of Greece was established in 1829 and made up the southern half of present-day, mainland Greece, along with some Mediterranean islands. Over the next century, Greece's borders would expand and readjust drastically, through a number of conflicts and diplomatic agreements; therefore the population of Greece within those political borders** was much lower than the population in what would be today's borders. As there were large communities of ethnic Greeks living in neighboring countries during this time, particularly in Turkey, and the data presented here does not show the full extent of the First World War, Spanish Flu Pandemic and Greko-Turkish War on these Greek populations. While it is difficult to separate the fatalities from each of these events, it is estimated that between 500,000 and 900,000 ethnic Greeks died at the hands of the Ottomans between the years 1914 and 1923, and approximately 150,000 died due to the 1918 flu pandemic. These years also saw the exchange of up to one million Orthodox Christians from Turkey to Greece, and several hundred thousand Muslims from Greece to Turkey; this exchange is one reason why Greece's total population did not change drastically, despite the genocide, displacement and demographic upheaval of the 1910s and 1920s. Greece in WWII A new Hellenic Republic was established in 1924, which saw a decade of peace and modernization in Greece, however this was short lived. The Greek monarchy was reintroduced in 1935, and the prime minister, Ioannis Metaxas, headed a totalitarian government that remained in place until the Second World War. Metaxas tried to maintain Greek neutrality as the war began, however Italy's invasion of the Balkans made this impossible, and the Italian army tried invading Greece via Albania in 1940. The outnumbered and lesser-equipped Greek forces were able to hold off the Italian invasion and then push them backwards into Albania, marking the first Allied victory in the war. Following a series of Italian failures, Greece was eventually overrun when Hitler launched a German and Bulgarian invasion in April 1941, taking Athens within three weeks. Germany's involvement in Greece meant that Hitler's planned invasion of the Soviet Union was delayed, and Hitler cited this as the reason for it's failure (although most historians disagree with this). Over the course of the war approximately eight to eleven percent of the Greek population died due to fighting, extermination, starvation and disease; including over eighty percent of Greece's Jewish population in the Holocaust. Following the liberation of Greece in 1944, the country was then plunged into a civil war (the first major conflict of the Cold War), which lasted until 1949, and saw the British and American-supported government fight with Greek communists for control of the country. The government eventually defeated the Soviet-supported communist forces, and established American influence in the Aegean and Balkans throughout the Cold War. Post-war Greece From the 1950s until the 1970s, the Marshall Plan, industrialization and an emerging Tourism sector helped the Greek economy to boom, with one of the strongest growth rates in the world. Apart from the military coup, which ruled from 1967 to 1974, Greece remained relatively peaceful, prosperous and stable throughout the second half of the twentieth century. The population reached 11.2 million in the early 2000s, before going into decline for the past fifteen years. This decline came about due to a negative net migration rate and slowing birth rate, ultimately facilitated by the global financial crisis of 2007 and 2008; many Greeks left the country in search of work elsewhere, and the economic troubles have impacted the financial incentives that were previously available for families with many children. While the financial crisis was a global event, Greece was arguably the hardest-hit nation during the crisis, and suffered the longest recession of any advanced economy. The financial crisis has had a consequential impact on the Greek population, which has dropped by 800,000 in 15 years, and the average age has increased significantly, as thousands of young people migrate in search of employment.

In 1800, it is estimated that approximately 9.4 million people lived in the region of modern-day South Korea (and 13.8 million on the entire peninsula). The population of this region would remain fairly constant through much of the 19th century, but would begin to grow gradually starting in the mid-1800s, as the fall of the Joseon dynasty and pressure from the U.S. and Japan would end centuries of Korean isolationism. Following the opening of the country to foreign trade, the Korean peninsula would begin to modernize, and by the start of the 20th century, it would have a population of just over ten million. The Korean peninsula was then annexed by Japan in 1910, whose regime implemented industrialization and modernization policies that saw the population of South Korea rising from just under ten million in 1900, to over fifteen million by the start of the Second World War in 1939.

The Korean War Like most regions, the end of the Second World War coincided with a baby boom, that helped see South Korea's population grow by almost two million between 1945 and 1950. However, this boom would stop suddenly in the early 1950s, due to disruption caused by the Korean War. After WWII, the peninsula was split along the 38th parallel, with governments on both sides claiming to be the legitimate rulers of all Korea. Five years of tensions then culminated in North Korea's invasion of the South in June 1950, in the first major conflict of the Cold War. In September, the UN-backed South then repelled the Soviet- and Chinese-backed Northern army, and the frontlines would then fluctuate on either side of the 38th parallel throughout the next three years. The war came to an end in July, 1953, and had an estimated death toll of three million fatalities. The majority of fatalities were civilians on both sides, although the North suffered a disproportionate amount due to extensive bombing campaigns of the U.S. Unlike North Korea, the South's total population did not fall during the war.

Post-war South Korea Between the war's end and the late 1980s, the South's total population more than doubled. In these decades, South Korea was generally viewed as a nominal democracy under authoritarian and military leadership; it was not until 1988 when South Korea transitioned into a stable democracy, and grew its international presence. Much of South Korea's rapid socio-economic growth in the late 20th century was based on the West German model, and was greatly assisted by Japanese and U.S. investment. Today, South Korea is considered one of the world's wealthiest and most developed nations, ranking highly in terms of GDP, human development and life expectancy; it is home to some of the most valuable brands in the world, such as Samsung and Hyundai; and has a growing international cultural presence in music and cinema. In the past decades, South Korea's population growth has somewhat slowed, however it remains one of the most densely populated countries in the world, with total population of more than 51 million people.