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

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

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

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

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

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

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Context

This dataset will be used to help users get familiar with Google Data Studio. It's also a great way to mix history with data visualization skills.

Later I will develop a lesson that will help new users get up to speed with Google Data Studio. This dataset is small, but it will be a good dataset to start with. The same concepts learned with this project will be used with larger datasets.

Content

This data comes from wikipedia.

Acknowledgements

wikipedia

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war

Inspiration

Project based learning. Get it going! Teach kids using data.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR) verified a total of 46,085 civilian casualties during Russia's invasion of Ukraine as of May 31, 2025. Of them, 32,744 people were reported to have been injured. However, OHCHR specified that the real numbers could be higher. How many people have died during the war in Ukraine? OHCHR has estimated the number of deaths of civilians, or non-armed individuals, in Ukraine at 13,341 since the start of the war on February 24, 2022. The highest death toll was recorded in March 2022, at over 3,900. The figures on soldier deaths are reported by Russia and Ukraine’s governmental authorities, but they cannot be verified at this point and thus need to be taken with caution. Conflict-related deaths in Ukraine from 2014 to 2021 After Russia annexed Crimea in 2014, Ukraine has seen a military conflict between the government and the Russia-supported separatist regions of Donetsk and Luhansk. OHCHR estimates that between 14,200 and 14,400 people, including civilians and military personnel, were killed in relation to that conflict from April 14, 2014, to December 31, 2021. Of them, at least 3,400 were civilians.

Abstract copyright UK Data Service and data collection copyright owner. This data collection describes international and civil wars for the years 1816-1992. Main Topics: This data collection consists of two files: Part 1, the International Wars file, describes the experience of each interstate member in each war. The unit of analysis is the participant in a particular conflict. When and where each interstate member fought is coded, along with battle and total deaths, pre-war population and armed forces, and whether the member in question initiated the conflict. Each war is characterized as interstate, colonial, or imperial, and major power status and/or central system membership of the warring parties is noted. Part 2, the Civil Wars file, describes when and where fighting took place, whether the war was fought within the boundaries of a major power or central system member, whether there was outside intervention and, if so, whether the intervening state was a major power, on what side they intervened, who won the war, number of battle deaths, total population, and total number of pre-war armed forces. No sampling (total universe) Compilation or synthesis of existing material

Between 2003 and 2024, the annual number of civilian deaths due to the Iraq war has fluctuated significantly. As of July, there were 210 deaths in 2024. Civilian Deaths in the Iraq WarCivilian casualties are the deaths of non-military individuals as a result of military operations. The number of documented civilian deaths in the Iraq war peaked in 2006 at 29,526 casualties. Since then, the number had fallen to 4,162 casualties documented in the year 2011, and the number of casualties has been decreasing again since 2014. Due to the nature of the Iraq war and of war reporting, data cannot be considered exact. Many civilian deaths that occurred during the war in Iraq may remain unaccounted for. The Iraq war was launched in March 2003 upon the invasion of Iraq by U.S. forces. Eight years later, in December 2011, the U.S. formally declared an end to the Iraq war. From the start of the war in 2003 until September 30, 2015, it is estimated that the United States spent a total of over 819 billion US dollars on war costs in Iraq. This number includes funding requested by the President and appropriated by Congress, and accounts for both military and non-military spending. Spending was highest in 2008, that year over 142 billion US dollars were spent in Iraq by the United States government. As of 2022, around 6,561 U.S. active-duty military personnel were deployed in North Africa, the Near East, and South Asia. The number of US American soldiers killed in Iraq peaked in 2007 with just over nine hundred causalities. In the same year, there were over 25,000 civilian deaths in Iraq.

Afghanistan Battle-Related Deaths: Number of People data was reported at 230.000 Person in 2024. This records a decrease from the previous number of 917.000 Person for 2023. Afghanistan Battle-Related Deaths: Number of People data is updated yearly, averaging 5,552.000 Person from Mar 1990 (Median) to 2024, with 35 observations. The data reached an all-time high of 35,787.000 Person in 2022 and a record low of 230.000 Person in 2024. Afghanistan Battle-Related Deaths: Number of People data remains active status in CEIC and is reported by World Bank. The data is categorized under Global Database’s Afghanistan – Table AF.World Bank.WDI: Population and Urbanization Statistics. Battle-related deaths are deaths in battle-related conflicts between warring parties in the conflict dyad (two conflict units that are parties to a conflict). Typically, battle-related deaths occur in warfare involving the armed forces of the warring parties. This includes traditional battlefield fighting, guerrilla activities, and all kinds of bombardments of military units, cities, and villages, etc. The targets are usually the military itself and its installations or state institutions and state representatives, but there is often substantial collateral damage in the form of civilians being killed in crossfire, in indiscriminate bombings, etc. All deaths--military as well as civilian--incurred in such situations, are counted as battle-related deaths.;Uppsala Conflict Data Program, http://www.pcr.uu.se/research/ucdp/.;Sum;

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

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

The Korean War was an international military conflict which lasted from June 1950 until July 1953, which pitted the communist forces of North Korea, the Soviet Union, and the People's Republic of China against South Korea and a U.S.-led UN force comprised of troops from over 20 additional countries. The war was the United States' first major military engagement of the Cold War, the period of rivalry and heightened tension between the world's two superpowers, the U.S. and Soviet Union. While the war was one of the deadliest in the Cold War and the 20th century in general, it resulted in a stalemate between the North and South, with the boundary between the two countries remaining to this day at the 38th parallel line. The two countries remain technically at war to the present day, as the South's dictator, Syngman Rhee, refused to sign the peace agreement which in practice ended the fighting in the war.

U.S. military deaths in Korea

The majority of U.S. military fatalities during the Korean War were battle deaths (63 percent), with a smaller number of deaths while missing (12 percent), deaths while captured (eight percent), or deaths from battle wounds (seven percent). In addition, around three percent of deaths were from airplane crashes which were not caused by hostile forces, with another seven percent dying of other causes unrelated to battle. In total around 36,000 U.S. military servicemembers were killed in Korea, out of a total of around 40,000 deaths for the UN forces combined. The war was the United States' second deadliest conflict of the Cold War, as well as its fifth deadliest ever, after the Vietnam War, World War I, World War II, and the Civil War.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

This data collection is part of the Correlates of War (COW) Project at the University of Michigan under the guidance of J. David Singer and Melvin Small. The data contain statistics of extra-, inter-, and intra-state wars fought from 1816-1997. Variables for extra-state wars include name of war, name of participants, date ranges, victor designation, outside intervention, theater designation, and total battle deaths. Inter-state wars include date ranges, on which side the state intervened, if the state initiated the war or not, pre-war population and number of armed forces, and theater designation.

Sudan's ongoing civil war has resulted in a devastating toll across various states, with the West Darfur state experiencing the highest number of fatalities at ***** in 2023. The conflict, which began on April 15 between the Sudanese Armed Forces (SAF) and the Rapid Support Forces (RSF), has since escalated into a civil war, causing widespread destruction and displacement throughout the country. Widespread impact and regional consequences Since 2013, annual fatalities due to conflict in Sudan have drastically increased in 2023 to 2024. The conflict's impact extended beyond Sudan's borders, forcing over *** million people to seek refuge in neighboring countries. Egypt has become the primary host, sheltering more than *** million Sudanese refugees, while Chad has taken in around *******. Escalating violence in the region The situation in Sudan has contributed to its ranking as the African country with the highest level of ongoing conflicts. This assessment considers factors such as conflict deadliness, danger to civilians, geographic diffusion, and armed group fragmentation. The violence in Sudan is part of a broader pattern of instability in the region, as Nigeria, Cameroon, Chad, and Niger grapple with the threat of Boko Haram. Nigeria is the country most affected by the terrorist group's attacks, which has resulted in thousands of deaths in the country. Additionally, these violent attacks have displaced communities and disrupted social structures, as evidenced by the notorious 2014 kidnapping of *** schoolgirls in Borno, an incident that garnered global attention.

TESS conducts general population experiments on behalf of investigators throughout the social sciences. General population experiments allow investigators to assign representative subject populations to experimental conditions of their choosing. Faculty and graduate students from the social sciences and related fields (such as law and public health) propose experiments. A comprehensive, on-line submission and peer review process screens proposals for the importance of their contribution to science and society. This experiment examines how the social/political conditions of a target country and the number of estimated casualties affect the support for attacking the target country. This project includes two vignette-based survey experiments. Each involves random assignment to a relatively large number of conditions (i.e., different vignettes): 12 in the case of Experiment 1 and 16 in the case of Experiment 2: Experiment 1-- A. Target state is hypothetical. B. Variables manipulated: political nature of target state (democracy or dictatorship); dominant faith of target state (Islamic or Christian); and anticipated civilian death toll (no mention or 100 or 3,000). C. Number of total conditions: 12. Experiment 2 -- A. Target state is Iran. B. Variables manipulated: anticipated civilian death toll (50 or 500 or 5,000 or 50,000); framing of civilian casualties ('civilian casualties' or 'innocent Iranians dying, many of them women and children'); and anticipated success (delay nuclear program in Iran by a year or delay by 10 years). C. Number of total conditions: 16. The order of the two experiments is randomized across respondents (e.g., half doing Experiment 1 first and half doing Experiment 2 first).

The Civil War was the deadliest conflict in U.S. history. However, incomplete records have made it difficult to estimate the exact death toll both nationally, and especially, at state-level. In this article, we leverage the recently released full count of individual census returns and a sample of linked records across multiple censuses to provide (i) the most precise national estimate of excess mortality to date and (ii) the first reliable state-level estimates of excess mortality among native-born white males. Our national estimate is 698,000 Civil War deaths. This is substantially higher than the conventional historical estimate of 618,000 but lower than the most recent estimate of around 750,000 deaths based on a 1% census sample. Leveraging a novel migration-adjusted census comparison method, we document for the first time the extent to which the war's toll was much greater in the Confederate states than in the Union.

Children is one of the groups suffering the most during armed conflicts. Looking at the number of children killed and maimed in conflicts compared to the total number of battle deaths in some of the most conflict ridden countries worldwide, it becomes clear that the number of children killed compared to battle deaths vary significantly. While there were only 53 children registered among the 2,882 battle deaths in Nigeria, close to 1,000 of the 1,545 battle deaths in Syria were children. However, this only shows a part of the picture, as sexual violence, hunger and starvation, children fleeing, child soldiers and other types of sufferings are not taken into account here.

The original dataset of deceased members of the Ukrainian volunteer battalions who perished in combat or combat-related engagements during the Donbas War (2014-2021). The dataset consists of 1,123 data entries, coding all deceased members of Territorial Defense, Special Purpose Police, and other volunteer battalions. This dataset is coded from the "Memory Book" project, accessible at: https://memorybook.org.ua/.

The dataset contains information on 1,123 pro-government volunteers who took part in the ATO/JFS between 13 April 2014 and 1 December 2021, representing some 25% of the total number of the Ukrainian casualties in Donbas War. The obituary data is comprehensive, including all pro-government battle-deaths. The dataset was coded from obituaries of all members of the volunteer Territorial Defence (TrO) battalions (32), paramilitary Special Purpose Police battalions (23) and pro-government militias (9).

Reported death tolls in different refugee camps that are used in this study.

Excess death rate estimates using baselines and conflict period CE-DAT surveys, Yemen, 2015–2019.

Of the ten deadliest battles of the American Civil War, the Battle of Gettysburg in early July, 1863, was by far the most devastating battle of the war, claiming over 51 thousand casualties, of which 7 thousand were battle deaths. The Battles of Shiloh, Bull Run (Second), Antietam, Stones River and Chancellorsville all have very similar casualty counts, between 22.5 and 24 thousand casualties each, although it should be noted that the Battle of Antietam took place in a single day, and with 22,717 casualties it is the bloodiest day in U.S. history. The Battles of Chickamauga, the Wilderness and Spotsylvania, all had approximately 30 to 35 thousand casualties each, whereas the Siege of Vicksburg is the only entry on this list with less than 20 thousand casualties.