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.

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.

During the Second World War, the three Axis powers of Germany, Italy, and Finland mobilized the largest share of their male population. For the Allies, the Soviet Union mobilized the largest share of men, as well as the largest total army of any country, but it was restricted in its ability to mobilize more due to the impact this would have on its economy. Other notable statistics come from the British Empire, where a larger share of men were drafted from Dominions than from the metropole, and there is also a discrepancy between the share of the black and white populations from South Africa.

However, it should be noted that there were many external factors from the war that influenced these figures. For example, gender ratios among the adult populations of many European countries was already skewed due to previous conflicts of the 20th century (namely WWI and the Russian Revolution), whereas the share of the male population eligible to fight in many Asian and African countries was lower than more demographically developed societies, as high child mortality rates meant that the average age of the population was much lower.

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 world's population first reached one billion people in 1803, and reach eight billion in 2023, and will peak at almost 11 billion by the end of the century. Although it took thousands of years to reach one billion people, it did so at the beginning of a phenomenon known as the demographic transition; from this point onwards, population growth has skyrocketed, and since the 1960s the population has increased by one billion people every 12 to 15 years. The demographic transition sees a sharp drop in mortality due to factors such as vaccination, sanitation, and improved food supply; the population boom that follows is due to increased survival rates among children and higher life expectancy among the general population; and fertility then drops in response to this population growth. Regional differences The demographic transition is a global phenomenon, but it has taken place at different times across the world. The industrialized countries of Europe and North America were the first to go through this process, followed by some states in the Western Pacific. Latin America's population then began growing at the turn of the 20th century, but the most significant period of global population growth occurred as Asia progressed in the late-1900s. As of the early 21st century, almost two thirds of the world's population live in Asia, although this is set to change significantly in the coming decades. Future growth The growth of Africa's population, particularly in Sub-Saharan Africa, will have the largest impact on global demographics in this century. From 2000 to 2100, it is expected that Africa's population will have increased by a factor of almost five. It overtook Europe in size in the late 1990s, and overtook the Americas a decade later. In contrast to Africa, Europe's population is now in decline, as birth rates are consistently below death rates in many countries, especially in the south and east, resulting in natural population decline. Similarly, the population of the Americas and Asia are expected to go into decline in the second half of this century, and only Oceania's population will still be growing alongside Africa. By 2100, the world's population will have over three billion more than today, with the vast majority of this concentrated in Africa. Demographers predict that climate change is exacerbating many of the challenges that currently hinder progress in Africa, such as political and food instability; if Africa's transition is prolonged, then it may result in further population growth that would place a strain on the region's resources, however, curbing this growth earlier would alleviate some of the pressure created by climate change.

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.

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...

Over the course of the Second World War approximately 127.2 million people were mobilized. The world's population in 1940 was roughly 2.3 billion, meaning that between five and six percent of the world was drafted into the military in some capacity. Approximately one in every 25 people mobilized were women, who generally served in an administrative or medical role, although hundreds of thousands of women did see active combat. Largest armies In absolute numbers, the Soviet Union mobilized the largest number of people at just under 34.5 million, and this included roughly 35 percent of the USSR's male population. By the war's end, more Soviets were mobilized than all European Axis powers combined. However, in relative terms, it was Germany who mobilized the largest share of its male population, with approximately 42 percent of men serving. The USSR was forced to find a balance between reinforcing its frontlines and maintaining agricultural and military production to supply its army (in addition to those in annexed territory after 1941), whereas a large share of soldiers taken from the German workforce were replaced by workers drafted or forcibly taken from other countries (including concentration camp prisoners and PoWs). Studying the figures The figures given in these statistics are a very simplified and rounded overview - in reality, there were many nuances in the number of people who were effectively mobilized for each country, their roles, and their status as auxiliary, collaborative, or resistance forces. The British Empire is the only power where distinctions are made between the metropole and its colonies or territories, whereas breakdowns of those who fought in other parts of Asia or Africa remains unclear. Additionally, when comparing this data with total fatalities, it is important to account for the civilian death toll, i.e. those who were not mobilized.

Over the course of the Second World War, approximately 44.5 percent of the Soviet population and 8.7 of Soviet territory was occupied by the Axis forces at some point. Despite being allied in the war's early stages, with both countries invading Poland in 1939 via the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact, Germany would launch Operation Barbarossa, the invasion of the USSR, in 1941, which would become the largest military invasion in history. Movement of the Eastern Front The surprise invasion began on June 22, and Axis forces caught the Soviets off-guard, quickly pushing their way eastward along a frontline that stretched from the Baltic to Black seas. The length of the front-line allowed Axis forces to execute pincer movements around cities and strongholds, which cut off large numbers of Soviet soldiers from their supply lines, as well as preventing reinforcements; in this process millions of Soviet troops were taken as prisoner. Within three weeks, the Germans had taken much of present-day Poland, Belarus, and the Baltic states, before taking Moldova and Ukraine in September, and pushing into western Russia between September and December. The front lines had reached the outskirts of Moscow by November, before exhaustion and cold weather helped Soviet forces hold the line and stall the German offensive. The Red Army was then able to regroup and turning the Germans' own tactics against them, using two-pronged attacks to encircle large numbers of troops, although harsh weather made this stage of the conflict much slower.

The lines remained fairly static until mid-1942, when the Germans focused their offensive on the south, concentrating on the Caucasian oil fields and the Volga River. By November 1942, Axis forces had pushed into these regions, establishing what would ultimately be the largest amount of occupied Soviet territory during the war. Once again, winter halted the Axis advance, and allowed the Red Army to regroup. Learning from the previous year, the Axis command strengthened their forces near Moscow in anticipation of the Soviet counter-offensive, but were caught off-guard by a second counter-offensive in the south, most famously at Stalingrad. The Battle of Stalingrad would come to epitomize the extreme loss, destruction, and brutality of war on the eastern front, with conflict continuing in the city months after the rest of the Axis forces had been pushed west. As 1943 progressed, the Red Army gained momentum by targeting inferiorly-trained and equipped non-German regiments. The spring then became something of a balancing act for the Axis powers, as the Soviets consistently attacked weak points, and German regiments were transferred to reinforce these areas. In the summer of 1943, the front line was static once more, however the momentum was with the Soviets, who were able to capitalize on victories such as Kursk and gradually force the Axis powers back. By 1944, the Red Army had re-captured much of Ukraine, and had re-taken the south by the summer. When the Western Allies arrived in France in June, the Soviets were already pushing through Ukraine and Belarus, towards Berlin. In August 1944, the last Axis forces were pushed out of Soviet territory, and Soviet forces continued their push towards the German capital, which fell in May 1945. Soviet death toll In addition to the near-five million Soviet troops who died during Operation Barbarossa, millions of civilians died through starvation, areal bombardment, forced labor, and systematic murder campaigns. Due to the nature and severity of Soviet losses, total figures are difficult to estimate; totals of 15-20 million civilians and 7-9 million military deaths are most common. Further estimates suggest that the disruption to fertility, in addition to the high death toll, meant that the USSR's population in 1946 was 40 million lower than it would have been had there been no war.

With the heightened threat to Germany's Jewish population following the Nazi Party's ascent to power in 1933, many German Jews chose to flee or emigrate. In 1933, Germany's Jewish population was approximately 500,000 people; by the end of the war, it is estimated that 300,000 fled the country, and 165,000 were murdered in the Holocaust. In order to flee, most Jewish emigrants from Germany had to give up the majority of their wealth to the German state, whose emigration tax and seizure of property stripped Jews of their financial assets. Destination and transit For Germany's Jewish refugees, the most common destination country was the United States, and almost half of all these refugees would arrive in the U.S. over this 12 year period. As the United States had a strict quota of 27,000 German migrants per year, many refugees were forced to enter via other countries. France was the second most common destination country, receiving 100,000 refugees. However, France was also used as a transit country for German Jews wishing to travel further afield, especially after it was annexed by Germany in 1940. This was also true for several other European countries, such as the Netherlands, which had provided protection for German Jews in the mid-1930s, before rapidly becoming very unsafe following the outbreak of war in 1939. The Frank family Possibly the most famous example of this was the story of Anne Frank and her family. Anne had been born in Frankfurt, Germany in 1929, but her family moved to the Netherlands in 1934 after Hitler came to power. The family then led a relatively comfortable and successful life in Amsterdam, with her father, Otto, founding his own businesses. When the Netherlands was invaded by the Germans in 1940, the family tried to emigrate once more; Otto had been granted a single Cuban visa in 1942, but the family was forced to go into hiding as the restrictions tightened. For the next two years, with the help of non-Jewish friends, they lived in secret in the upper floor of Otto's business premises with several other Jewish refugees, in a small space concealed behind a bookcase. In August 1944, through unknown means, the group was betrayed and then arrested by Dutch authorities, and the Frank family was sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau thereafter. Anne's mother, Edith, died of starvation in Auschwitz within five months of her capture, while Anne and her sister, Margot, died one month later after being transferred to the Bergen-Belsen camp in Germany. Otto was the sole survivor of the group. Otto's secretary, Miep Gies, had saved Anne's diary the day after the group was arrested, which she then gave to Otto; he then devoted much of the remainder of his life to the publication and promotion of his daughter's diary, which has now become one of the most famous and widely-read books in recent history. Additionally, the hiding space is now open to the public, and has become one of the Netherlands' most popular tourist museums.

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.

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...

In 1800, the population of Japan was just over 30 million, a figure which would grow by just two million in the first half of the 19th century. However, with the fall of the Tokugawa shogunate and the restoration of the emperor in the Meiji Restoration of 1868, Japan would begin transforming from an isolated feudal island, to a modernized empire built on Western models. The Meiji period would see a rapid rise in the population of Japan, as industrialization and advancements in healthcare lead to a significant reduction in child mortality rates, while the creation overseas colonies would lead to a strong economic boom. However, this growth would slow beginning in 1937, as Japan entered a prolonged war with the Republic of China, which later grew into a major theater of the Second World War. The war was eventually brought to Japan's home front, with the escalation of Allied air raids on Japanese urban centers from 1944 onwards (Tokyo was the most-bombed city of the Second World War). By the war's end in 1945 and the subsequent occupation of the island by the Allied military, Japan had suffered over two and a half million military fatalities, and over one million civilian deaths.

The population figures of Japan were quick to recover, as the post-war “economic miracle” would see an unprecedented expansion of the Japanese economy, and would lead to the country becoming one of the first fully industrialized nations in East Asia. As living standards rose, the population of Japan would increase from 77 million in 1945, to over 127 million by the end of the century. However, growth would begin to slow in the late 1980s, as birth rates and migration rates fell, and Japan eventually grew to have one of the oldest populations in the world. The population would peak in 2008 at just over 128 million, but has consistently fallen each year since then, as the fertility rate of the country remains below replacement level (despite government initiatives to counter this) and the country's immigrant population remains relatively stable. The population of Japan is expected to continue its decline in the coming years, and in 2020, it is estimated that approximately 126 million people inhabit the island country.

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.

Throughout history, the displacement and migration of Jewish populations has been a repeating theme. In ancient times, the worlds Jewish population was concentrated in the Middle East, especially around Judaism's spiritual homeland in present-day Israel. However, the population distribution of the world's Jewry began to shift in the Middle Ages, with an increasing share living in Europe. Initially, Western Europe (particularly France, Italy, and Spain) had the largest Jewish populations, before they then migrated eastward in later centuries. Between the 18th and mid-20th centuries, over half of the worl'd Jews lived in Europe, with over 80 percent of these living in Eastern Europe.

Poland had become a refuge for Jews fleeing persecution in the Middle Ages, although shifting borders and foreign influence meant that long-term security was never fully attained, and a series of pogroms in the Russian Empire in the 1800s, and rising anti-Semitism in Central Europe in the early-1900s contributred to waves of migration to the United States and Israel during this time. After the Holocaust saw the genocide of up to six million Jews (over one third of the world's Jewish population), the share of Jews living in Europe dropped drastically, and emmigration outside of Europe increased. Today, the United States has the world's largest Jewish population in the world at around 7.3 million people, just ahead of Israel with 7.1 million.

In 1800, the population of Spain was approximately 14.7 million. This figure would rise consistently throughout the 19th century, and early 20th century. The population growth rate was set to increase in the mid-1900s, but this was interrupted by the Spanish Civil War, which would claim around half a million lives between 1936 and 1939. In spite of the war, the Spanish population continued to grow throughout these years, and reached 28 million by the middle of the century. Between the 1950s and 1970s, Spain observed a significant increase in its population growth, facilitated by the baby boom that followed the Second World War (as in most of Western Europe) as well as general medical improvements and increased life expectancy.

Beginning in the 1980s, Spain would begin a demographic transition marked by a dramatic drop in the fertility rate of the country, resulting in the population only growing by two million between the mid-1980s and 2000 (compared to an increase of two million every five or six years beforehand). There was a sharp rise in Spain’s population from 2000 to 2008, as strong economic growth would be accompanied by a dramatic surge in immigration to the country. This would plateau at just over 46 million in 2008 however, as the Great Recession took its toll on the country’s economy, and in 2020, Spain is estimated to have a population of approximately 46.8 million, which is the sixth-largest in Europe.

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.

The Second World War was fought on such a large scale that it became total war in many countries - this is where the war effort is prioritized above all else, and the entire population and economy are mobilized to support all military endeavors. Germany and Japan were committing over 70 percent of their national income to the war effort in its final years.

There were also notable fluctuations that coincided with major events for corresponding powers. These included the UK's mobilization of its defenses in 1940, after Germany took most of Western Europe; the spike in Soviet military spending after Operation Barbarossa in June, 1941; and the U.S. entry into the war following the Pearl Harbor attacks in December, 1941.

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.

The 20th century marked a new trend in the recording of war fatalities, where more attention was given to the impact of conflicts on civilian populations, and not just the military. During the Second World War, the extent of the atrocities committed, the large-scale bombing campaigns, and the various famines resulting from the war meant that the scope of the civilian death toll took place was unprecedented - the likes of which had never been seen before, or since. Almost two thirds of all deaths due to the Second World War were of civilians, yet the ratio of military to civilian deaths varied greatly by country. Many British dominions and the United States suffered little to no civilian deaths as they were not located in an active theater of war - civilian fatalities largely came from naval or aerial attacks (such as at Pearl Harbor). In contrast, there were several European colonies in the Asia-Pacific region where all, or at least 95 percent, of total fatalities were among civilians - some of these regions suffered millions of deaths due to famine and atrocities.