The leading causes of death in the United States have changed significantly from the year 1900 to the present. Leading causes of death in 1900, such as tuberculosis, gastrointestinal infections, and diphtheria have seen huge decreases in death rates and are no longer among the leading causes of death in the United States. However, other diseases such as heart disease and cancer have seen increased death rates. Vaccinations One major factor contributing to the decrease in death rates for many diseases since the year 1900 is the introduction of vaccinations. The decrease seen in the rates of death due to pneumonia and influenza is a prime example of this. In 1900, pneumonia and influenza were the leading causes of death, with around *** deaths per 100,000 population. However, in 2023 pneumonia and influenza were not even among the ten leading causes of death. Cancer One disease that has seen a large increase in death rates since 1900 is cancer. Cancer currently accounts for almost ** percent of all deaths in the United States, with death rates among men higher than those for women. The deadliest form of cancer for both men and women is cancer of the lung and bronchus. Some of the most common avoidable risk factors for cancer include smoking, drinking alcohol, sun exposure, and obesity.

Unintentional injuries claimed the lives of ******* Americans in 2023, marking a slight decrease from the previous year. This figure represents a significant public health concern. While heart disease and cancer typically top the list of mortality causes, unintentional injuries were the ***** leading cause of death in 2023. Poisoning emerges as a major contributor Among the various types of unintentional injuries, poisoning stands out as a particularly deadly threat. In 2023, approximately ******* deaths were attributed to unintentional poisoning, accounting for nearly half of all accident-related fatalities. That year, the death rate due to poisoning reached **** per 100,000 population. Unintentional drug overdose deaths account for a majority of poisoning deaths in the United States, with opioids, and in particular fentanyl, currently fueling these high numbers. Home safety remains a critical concern The home environment, often considered a safe haven, continues to be a significant site for unintentional injury-related deaths. In 2021 and 2022, the rate of such fatalities occurring at home peaked at **** per 100,000 population. Most unintentional injury deaths at home occur among elderly people, with falls accounting for the majority of such deaths among this age group.

The Holocaust was the systematic extermination of Europe's Jewish population in the Second World War, during which time, up to six million Jews were murdered as part of Nazi Germany's "Final Solution to the Jewish Question". In the context of the Second World War, the term "Holocaust" is traditionally used to reference the genocide of Europe's Jews, although this coincided with the Nazi regime's genocide and ethnic cleansing of an additional eleven million people deemed "undesirable" due to their ethnicity, beliefs, disability or sexuality (among others). During the Holocaust, Poland's Jewish population suffered the largest number of fatalities, with approximately three million deaths. Additionally, at least one million Jews were murdered in the Soviet Union, while Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, the Netherlands and Yugoslavia also lost the majority of their respective pre-war Jewish populations. The Holocaust in Poland In the interwar period, Europe's Jewish population was concentrated in the east, with roughly one third living in Poland; this can be traced back to the Middle Ages, when thousands of Jews flocked to Eastern Europe to escape persecution. At the outbreak of the Second World War, it is estimated that there were 3.4 million Jews living in Poland, which was approximately ten percent of the total population. Following the German invasion of Poland, Nazi authorities then segregated Jews in ghettos across most large towns and cities, and expanded their network of concentration camps throughout the country. In the ghettos, civilians were deprived of food, and hundreds of thousands died due to disease and starvation; while prison labor was implemented under extreme conditions in concentration camps to fuel the German war effort. In Poland, six extermination camps were also operational between December 1941 and January 1945, which saw the mass extermination of approximately 2.7 million people over the next three years (including many non-Poles, imported from other regions of Europe). While concentration camps housed prisoners of all backgrounds, extermination camps were purpose-built for the elimination of the Jewish race, and over 90% of their victims were Jewish. The majority of the victims in these extermination camps were executed by poison gas, although disease, starvation and overworking were also common causes of death. In addition to the camps and ghettos, SS death squads (Einsatzgruppen) and local collaborators also committed widespread atrocities across Eastern Europe. While the majority of these atrocities took place in the Balkan, Baltic and Soviet regions, they were still prevalent in Poland (particularly during the liquidation of the ghettos), and the Einsatzgruppen alone are estimated to have killed up to 1.3 million Jews throughout the Holocaust. By early 1945, Soviet forces had largely expelled the German armies from Poland and liberated the concentration and extermination camps; by this time, Poland had lost roughly ninety percent of its pre-war Jewish population, and suffered approximately three million further civilian and military deaths. By 1991, Poland's Jewish population was estimated to be just 15 thousand people, while there were fewer than two thousand Jews recorded as living in Poland in 2018.

The child mortality rate in the United States, for children under the age of five, was 462.9 deaths per thousand births in 1800. This means that for every thousand babies born in 1800, over 46 percent did not make it to their fifth birthday. Over the course of the next 220 years, this number has dropped drastically, and the rate has dropped to its lowest point ever in 2020 where it is just seven deaths per thousand births. Although the child mortality rate has decreased greatly over this 220 year period, there were two occasions where it increased; in the 1870s, as a result of the fourth cholera pandemic, smallpox outbreaks, and yellow fever, and in the late 1910s, due to the Spanish Flu pandemic.

Once described by US President Herbert Hoover as "a great social and economic experiment", we now know that Prohibition was ultimately a failure, that led to increased crime and violence and gave way to a new era of mafia and mob influence in the United States. On January 17, 1920, the Volstead Act came into effect and the manufacturing, transportation, importation and sale of alcohol became federally prohibited across the United States, and while consumption was not a federal offence, it was sometimes prohibited on a state level. Opposition to Prohibition remained strong throughout the 1920s, and the Great Depression (starting in 1929) led many to advocate for the sale and taxation of alcoholic beverages in order to ease the US' economic woes. One of the reasons why Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in 1932 was due to his promise of ending Prohibition, which he did with the Ratification of the 21st Amendment on December 5, 1933.

Impact on homicide rate

In the two decades before Prohibition, the recorded homicide rate in the United States was growing gradually, although often fluctuating in the 1910s. When Prohibition came into effect, the homicide rate continued on it's previous trajectory, but without fluctuating. While homicides related to alcohol consumption may have declined, some historians speculate that the total number could have continued to rise due to the increase in criminal activity associated with the illegal alcohol trade. The homicide rate in the US reached it's highest figure in the final year of Prohibition, with 9.7 homicides per 100,000 people in 1933, before falling to roughly half of this rate over the next ten years (this decrease in the early 1940s was also facilitated by the draft for the Second World War).

Impact on suicide rate

Alcohol's contribution to suicide rates has been significant throughout history, however it is only through more recent studies that society is beginning to form a clearer picture of what the relationship between the two actually is. In the first half of the twentieth century, there was no record of alcohol's role in individual suicide cases, however there was a noticeable change in the US' suicide rate during the 1920s. Prior to Prohibition, the suicide rate had already fallen from over 16 deaths per 100,000 people in 1915 to 11.5 in 1919, however this decline has been attributed to the role played by the First World War, which saw millions enlist and contribute to the war effort (a similar decrease can be observed in the lead up to the Second World War). After an initial spike in 1921, the suicide rate in the US then increases gradually throughout the 1920s, spiking again following the Great Depression in 1929. It is unclear whether the reduction in the US suicide rate in the 1910s and 1920s can be attributed to Prohibition, or whether it should be attributed to a variety of socio-economic factors, however the changing figures does suggest some correlation when compared with other decades.

Most estimates place the total number of deaths during the Second World War at around 70-85 million people. Approximately 17 million of these deaths (20-25 percent of the total) were due to crimes against humanity carried out by the Nazi regime in Europe. In comparison to the millions of deaths that took place through conflict, famine, or disease, these 17 million stand out due to the reasoning behind them, along with the systematic nature and scale in which they were carried out. Nazi ideology claimed that the Aryan race (a non-existent ethnic group referring to northern Europeans) was superior to all other ethnicities; this became the justification for German expansion and the extermination of others. During the war, millions of people deemed to be of lesser races were captured and used as slave laborers, with a large share dying of exhaustion, starvation, or individual execution. Murder campaigns were also used for systematic extermination; the most famous of these were the extermination camps, such as at Auschwitz, where roughly 80 percent of the 1.1 million victims were murdered in gas chambers upon arrival at the camp. German death squads in Eastern Europe carried out widespread mass shootings, and up to two million people were killed in this way. In Germany itself, many disabled, homosexual, and "undesirables" were also killed or euthanized as part of a wider eugenics program, which aimed to "purify" German society.

The Holocaust Of all races, the Nazi's viewed Jews as being the most inferior. Conspiracy theories involving Jews go back for centuries in Europe, and they have been repeatedly marginalized throughout history. German fascists used the Jews as scapegoats for the economic struggles during the interwar period. Following Hitler's ascendency to the Chancellorship in 1933, the German authorities began constructing concentration camps for political opponents and so-called undesirables, but the share of Jews being transported to these camps gradually increased in the following years, particularly after Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) in 1938. In 1939, Germany then invaded Poland, home to Europe's largest Jewish population. German authorities segregated the Jewish population into ghettos, and constructed thousands more concentration and detention camps across Eastern Europe, to which millions of Jews were transported from other territories. By the end of the war, over two thirds of Europe's Jewish population had been killed, and this share is higher still when one excludes the neutral or non-annexed territories.

Lebensraum Another key aspect of Nazi ideology was that of the Lebensraum (living space). Both the populations of the Soviet Union and United States were heavily concentrated in one side of the country, with vast territories extending to the east and west, respectively. Germany was much smaller and more densely populated, therefore Hitler aspired to extend Germany's territory to the east and create new "living space" for Germany's population and industry to grow. While Hitler may have envied the U.S. in this regard, the USSR was seen as undeserving; Slavs were the largest major group in the east and the Nazis viewed them as inferior, which was again used to justify the annexation of their land and subjugation of their people. As the Germans took Slavic lands in Poland, the USSR, and Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansings (often with the help of local conspirators) became commonplace in the annexed territories. It is also believed that the majority of Soviet prisoners of war (PoWs) died through starvation and disease, and they were not given the same treatment as PoWs on the western front. The Soviet Union lost as many as 27 million people during the war, and 10 million of these were due to Nazi genocide. It is estimated that Poland lost up to six million people, and almost all of these were through genocide.