Why Landmines Should not be Banned
By Nate Thayer
Great piece by Luke Hunt, as is his norm. But with the full knowledge I will get rebuked like a convicted pedophile arguing for the right to work as a summer camp counselor for teenagers, I am opposed to a ban on landmines and the Anti-Personnel Mine Ban Treaty. I promise I love my mother, dogs, children, and freedom etc. etc. But, in my view, an international treaty making it illegal to manufacture, produce sell, export, buy, and use anti-personnel mines will result in increasing civilian and non-combatant casualties, and increase both the number of combatants wounded and the severity of their wounds. Here is my reasoning:
The statistics swing wildly, as does the category what team is allowed to murder whom and when, which team doesn’t have the thumbs up to kill, or whom it is against the rules to murder (see below for far more random data than you want to know), but it is generally accepted that well over 250 million people were killed by political groups in the 20th century—far more than any century in human history. It was a century that began with a murder that sparked a war in Sarajevo, interrupted by an icon event of world harmony and unity—the Olympics—in Sarajevo and ended with a mass orgy of mass killing and atrocities in Sarajevo. And it only seems to be getting worse since. There have been several hundred wars this last century, but the figure swings wildly depending on who is counting what and where.
But my conclusion is that it looks like it is going to be a while before people figure out another way to settle their differences. Another way than sending off as-close-to-teenage-boys-that-might-still-think-it-is-a-like-a-video-game as they can get away with, to do their killing or get killed trying to not let the other team kill the guy who sends the other guy who thinks it is like a video game off to prevent him from getting killed while trying to kill the opposing teams elite.
But, at the end of the day, anybody who has been to war knows that the first thing you do when you seize a piece of real estate is to protect your perimeter from being penetrated by someone trying to kill you. It is human nature. So you can take care of such matters as eating, talking, sleeping, thinking, and, in general trying not to dwell on the fact that you are unwanted where you are enough that someone will kill you for being there. It has nothing to do with politics. Or country. Or freedom. Or justice. Or ideology. Or patriotism etc. It has to do with not getting killed.
To secure your perimeter you must make the other team afraid enough to not risk trying to breach it. So you put things that explode and will kill them under the ground or along a path or between trees to make a circle around you that will kill them so they won’t kill you. So you can eat, sleep, and wake up. It has nothing to do with landmines per se. They make them designed to just blow your leg off and NOT kill you so two other guys will be out of action also because they need to carry you back from whence you came. Actually the good ones are designed to blow three peoples legs off to make SIX other guys, totaling nine, to be out of action. They have landmines that can bounce in the air and instead of blowing your leg off, blow up chest high to kill a bunch of the other team. Or attached in a line down a path so the first guy sets off an explosion that kills a whole line of guys going back, say, 40 feet. There are all kinds of tricks. You can easily make your own landmine from any explosive—a mortar, or artillery shell, grenade or a Budweiser beer can filled with innards of bullets etc. The point being that banning landmines isn’t going to stop some young fellow from doing whatever he can to make sure he can eat and sleep to minimize the chances of someone from the other team trying to kill him successfully while he does so.
It is human nature to try and avoid death, pain, injury or danger.
I will add here I speak as someone who has been on the wrong side of a landmine. Actually two landmines placed on top of one another just for good measure. Two anti-tank mines. I was in a Russian truck that the team I was with had just captured from the other team. After taking their whole town. We were driving at night down a jungle dirt path back towards our team’s locker room. Before this particular battle, the team I was with didn’t have any tanks—or trucks. These anti-tank mines are pressure designed. You can walk on them and they won’t go off, but you drive over it and the weight of the vehicle will create an explosion that will shake the earth ten miles away. I was 4 feet away when we did just that. It was placed earlier by my own team I was with to prevent the other team from driving their tanks—or trucks—through my team’s perimeter. But I guess they forgot. There were three of us in the front of the truck and six in the bed of the Russian Zil transport military vehicle. I was in the middle in the front. The mine blew the truck into the air like a child’s toy and shredded it into a thousand shards of lethal metal. The other two people sitting with me were killed. Well not immediately. I woke up in the engine compartment of the now non-existent truck with a severed leg across my face. It wasn’t mine. I checked. It was however the driver whom I had been sitting next to. He was holding the stump of his leg with the expression of frozen eyed indescribable shock of someone who knows he is about to die. He cried calling for his mother for what seemed like a long time. Then he died. The fellow sitting on my other side was luckier. He took shrapnel through his brain and died instantly. It was rainy. It was night. It was a jungle. And we were seven miles from the nearest place where someone wouldn’t shoot us if we arrived. Several were badly injured. I had shrapnel through my legs torso and head. And several broken bones. We tied a hammock to a small tree we cut down and carried the more seriously wounded through the jungle towards “home”. I only realized my ankle bone was sticking out of my leg when I stepped in a muddy puddle and pain shot up to my brain. I only realized I had pieces of metal in my head when I tasted blood dripping in my mouth, wiped my face, and my hand was covered in bright crimson liquid. Two died while we walked—for two and a half hours.
My point being only I really don’t like landmines at all. So it might seem odd I support them being used as a weapon of war, but it isn’t idle ignorance of the suffering they inflict. But it makes a lot of sense actually. Because I didn’t and don’t want to die.
If you make landmines illegal, it will be like alcohol prohibition or making marijuana illegal. It won’t stop them from being used; it will just make the issue worse. Think IED and Iraq and Afghanistan. Those aren’t landmines. But they are. They are just homemade. And far messier and harmful.
If landmines are controlled and regulated, it is a far more sensible and workable option. They can be designed to easily be detected and removed. Rules of war can be made to require they be mapped when placed, removed when the other team seizes that particular plot of land, or made to disintegrate after a period of time--whenever whatever organized lethal squabbling brought these young boys to wherever they are that requires more than turning off the bedside lamp to get a good night sleep.
But you can’t make laws that prevent people from trying simply to not let someone else they really have no beef with personally be able to kill them when they are eating lunch or sleeping. If you want to stop that from happening, then perhaps it is better to focus on not ordering sending these people off to kill and get killed because you want to protect your money, political power, or religion, or race, or whatever belief system is deemed worthy enough to declare war on the other team.
According to the Red Cross, the civilian to soldier death ratio in wars fought since the mid-20th century has been 10:1 and rising. From 1900 to 1987 more than 170 million were killed as defined by “death by government.” From 1945 and up to 1987, about 76,000,000 people have been murdered in cold blood by one regime or another. Most of this for political reasons of state or power, but also outright genocide—murder for reasons of ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality. From 1900 to 1987, about 39,000,000 people were killed in genocide or 20 million by the definition of genocide since WW2. And estimated 19 more million were killed between 1990 and 2000. So 80 million in war murdered since WWII. Only twelve countries in the world have a population larger than this. Then you add on that the additional that have been killed by government violence in the 20th century—not war among combatants--but mass murder or intentional killings of their own people under their political control. Estimates are more than 150 million. The statistics people have actually devoted their lives to figure out categorizing the above to justify, excuse, create rules to make it morally OK, or to blame it on the other team are staggering. There is a list “ Attributing casualties caused just to Christians” and lists of “How many people have died in the name of Christ, Christianity and Catholicism?” and lists of “Victims of the Christian Faith” which include “Ancient Pagans, Mission, Crusades (1095-1291), Heretics, Witches, Religious Wars, Jews, Native Peoples, 20th Century Church Atrocities”, Then there is a list of “Death by Government” and an actual US military computerized system to estimate acceptable levels of “Collateral Damage” i.e. percentage of civilians acceptable to kill in a military operation. The software used is known as “FAST-CD” or “Fast Assessment Strike Tool—Collateral Damage." A helpful, if a bit transparently sure- of-himself author explains how it works which I am not sure really makes much difference if you’re the one who is dead. “When followed, this process dramatically reduces the amount of collateral damage in U.S. military operations, and also ensures high levels of political accountability.” Here he gives the people who might be killing you a bit of wiggle room. “However, due to the realities of combat operations, the process is not always followed. The U.S. military’s collateral damage estimation process is intended to ensure that there will be a less than 10 percent probability of serious or lethal wounds to non-combatants. Less than 1% of pre-planned operations which followed the collateral damage estimation process resulted in collateral damage.” What a relief to know that, I am sure any reader would agree. The author continues to reassure potentially dead people: “When collateral damage has occurred, 70% of the time it was due to failed “positive identification” of a target, 22% of the time it was attributable to weapons malfunction, and a mere 8% of the time it was attributable to proportionality balancing - e.g. a conscious decision that anticipated military advantage outweighed collateral damage. “ Ah hah! So only 8% of the times were the murders of women, children, old people or other people not dressed hostilely intentionally killed? What a reassurance that is. He continues, a bit annoyingly, self-riotously: “According to public statements made by U.S. government officials the President of the United States or the Secretary of Defense must approve any pre-planned ISAF strike where 1 civilian casualty or greater is expected.”
Then the lists get endlessly more entertaining on who it is OK to kill, who, and why is doing the killing, and who killed against the rules (the rules of OK being quite remarkably distinct from each other) There is the “Overview of Twentieth Century Wars, Massacres and Atrocities: Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for Man-made Multicides throughout History” It only gets more unpleasant. There are lists that just include soldiers—dismissing the women children and civilians as not statistically relevant to study for that project. “There are endless lists of “Wars of the Twentieth Century” and “Death Tolls for the Multicides of the Twentieth Century”,(see below starting with “Alphabetical Index (A-J)” Almost every war falls into one of two categories: Ethnic conflict or religious conflict. There are lists of subcategories or additional lists where religion is just one of several issues worth murdering or being killed for. And then a list where different ethnic groups fought for primarily religious reasons. There is a list which is prefaced: “This list focuses on atrocities which are largely the direct result of unbridled corporate exploitation. Obviously, many additional conflicts have an underlying economic cause which operates indirectly.”
Then you have what defines a civilian casualty of war. The label ‘civilian’ is parsed and selectively applied in a multitude of definitions to make killing them acceptable for one team or another. You would think a civilian is pretty simple-- any person who does not belong to the armed forces of one side trying to kill the other team. But there are endless debates about, for example, civilian contractors, working with the military, or “terrorists” (which is another category with an endless disputed list of one group of people given the A-OK too kill another group). Not to mention whether said defined terrorist group has the green light to kill category “B” of said defined target for murder. So that complicates the whole issue of how one defines a “civilian casualty of war.” The disputed groups of who without a uniform and gun shooting back at you deserves to die a legal murder include: Those killed as a direct effect of war; Those injured as a direct effect of war; Those dying, whether during or after a war, from indirect effects of war such as disease, malnutrition and lawlessness, and who would not have been expected to die from such causes in the absence of the war; Victims of one-sided violence, such as when states slaughter their own citizens in connection with a war; Victims of rape and other sexual violence in connection with a war; Those forced to flee their homes from war – that is, refugees and Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs); and those who, even after a war is over, die prematurely from injuries sustained in war.
Virtually every atrocity statistic is denied, minimized or rejected by someone, but the following lists of dead people from being murdered for a political reason are among the most argued about: Racism, since, as a collection of physical traits is not really a scientific concept, how do you attribute motive to murder from purely racial conflicts and all other ethnic conflicts? Whether a conflict is racist depends on whether the bad guy comes from the other side of the river or the other side of the planet. Generally, racism is covered by the African Diaspora, Apartheid, Colonial Activities and Indians.
Then there is the list of “Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century” and “Deaths by Mass Unpleasantness: Estimated Totals for the Entire 20th Century” Which I find particularly clever.
Then there is the Infamous Proverbial Body Count Quiz Show Debate: How many people died in all the wars, massacres, slaughters and oppressions of the Twentieth Century? Here are a couple figures to choose from. Note the categories the different researchers deem OK to call “Against The Rules.”
Cherif Bassouni, "Searching for peace and achieving justice: the need for accountability", published on Law and Contemporary Problems, vol. 59: no. 4.) 33 million "military casualties" (that would mean dead boys carrying a gun wearing the same color coordinated clothes only); 170 million which is defined as dead people killed by or fighting their own governments in "conflicts of a non-international character, internal conflicts and tyrannical regime victimization" and “includes 86 million since the Second World War” for a grand total of 203 million people.
Or you can choose Zbigniew Brzezinski, “Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993)” He counts "Lives deliberately extinguished by politically motivated carnage": which he says is 167 million to 175 million which includes “War Dead: 87,500,000”, “Military war dead: 33,500,000”, “Civilian war dead: 54,000,000”, “Not-war Dead: 80,000,000”, “Communist oppression: 60,000,000” Or then for selective reading there is David Barrett, “World Christian Encyclopedia (2001)”, who just counts “Christian martyrs only” at 45.5M. Or Stephane Courtois, in “The Black Book of Communism”, who limits dead victim to “Victims of Communism only” at 85-100 million. Or there is Milton Leitenberg who slices up the body count to only include “Politically caused deaths in the 20th century” which he puts at 214 million to 226 million” which sub diced up into “Deaths in wars and conflicts, including civilian: 130 million to 142 million” and ‘Political deaths, 1945-2000” which, probably through some government funded research grant comes up with the pretty darn laser clear number of “50 million to 51 million. Then there is the oddly titled list “Not The Enemy Media” which lists those “Killed through U.S. foreign policy since WWII, as of July 2003” to the pretty darn mathematically specific “10,778,727 to 16,861,695 (1945-May 2003).” Or there is the abruptly titled ominous list by Rudolph J. Rummel, titled “ Death By Government”, which comes up with (Google the word, I had to) "Democides - Government inflicted deaths (1900-87)” and has a grand total of exactly “169,198,000” which includes the suspiciously partisan sounding categories of “Communist Oppression” which he places at “110,286,000” and the very different murderer but same dead result of “Democratic democides” which are suspiciously lopsidedly slim at “2,028,000.” He also, for fun or because his government research grant budget hadn’t been all spent yet maybe, has a list clarifying “Not included among democides”( but just as dead: my inserted notation): “Wars: 34,021,000” and “Non-Democidal Famine (which he helpfully defines for us: my notation) “(often including famines associated with war and communist mismanagement):” and then provides further scientific sub categories of “China (1900-87): 49,275,000” and “Russia: (1921-47): 5,833,000” for a total of “258,327,000 for all the categories listed here.” Phew!!
Or the more sober data chart of Matthew White, “Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century, 2010)” which has the list as follows: “Deaths by War and Oppression during the 20th Century: 203 million”
|
Military
|
Collateral*
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Democide
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Famine
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Total
|
|
Wartime
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37m
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27m
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41m
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18m
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123m
|
|
Peacetime
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0
|
0
|
40m
|
40m
|
80m
|
|
TOTAL
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37m
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27m
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81m
|
58m
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203m
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Mr. White, thankfully defines “Collateral = civilian deaths that are generally considered to be an unavoidable, legitimate byproduct of waging war.” And breaks it down further as “My estimate for the Communist share of the century's unpleasantness: Genocide & Tyranny: 29 million” and just to be clear adds it is “including intentional famine.” There is a separate list of dead people from other people being upset with some group of another people Mr. White includes of “Man-made Famine: 41 million” adding “(excluding intentional famine, but including both wartime and peacetime)” which , frankly still leaves me a bit confused. He has other lists for the cause of a specific group of dead people which are “Communist-inspired War (for example the Russian Civil War, Vietnam, Korea, etc.)” which he calculates at “Military: 7 million” and “Civilian (collateral): 10 million” And just so he is perfectly clear as to who caused who to be dead from what and for what reason, he adds “NOTE: With these numbers, I'm tallying every combat death and accidental civilian death in the war, without differentiating who died, who did it or who started it. According to whichever theory of Just War you are working from, the Communists may be entirely blameless, or entirely to blame, for these 17 million dead.” His final tally for dead people by political allegiance (or more accurately lack of allegiance, but still dead for some degree of political something or other he continues: “TOTAL: 87 million deaths by Communism.” And “RESIDUE: 116M deaths by non-Communism.”
He has further lists, he says “For Comparison” of dead people including “smallpox, smoking, abortions, Cats and Dogs, Influenza Epidemic 1918-1919, ASIDS, Homicides, Disasters, racism, Decommunization (I didn’t bother to Google that one), Medical Mistakes, and Eaten by Tigers”
Ok, I will stop here but I will let the lists continue on their own. But a warning to those who dare read on: You might be, statistically, risking dying from old age or confusion before getting to the end……………….
I am not responsible for the below:
“It depends on what you classify as a war. There has been ongoing unpleasantness between Korea, Japan, China, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, Israel, Egypt, Libya, Ethiopia, Sudan, Kenya etc etc in addition to major conflicts in 1899-1902, 1914-18 and 1939-45. Then there is also the Mexican War with USA, the Algerian "war" with France, civil wars in Spain and Yugoslavia and so on. Do you mean all armed conflict between states? Shall we include the genocides in Europe under the Nazis, in Turkey during and after the Great War, in Africa in post-colonial civil wars and in the countries fringing China after 1947? If we mean all fatalities, including civilians, then total deaths were close to 240 million between 1 Jan 1900 and 31 Dec 2000. That would represent about 12 per cent of the world's population in 1900 and about 4 per cent in 2000.”
Or:
“If you count all casualties, including non combatants (like the citizens of Dresden in 1945) the estimated total death toll is a staggering 241 million people.
Wikipedia lists 355 major wars, revolutions and conflicts for the 20th century.
The largest estimate for ww1 and ww2 casualties sits at a 192 million mark.
No-one really knows how many people have been killed by US Military backed actions in the South Americas.
Due to the predictability of national governments to under report their own culpability as a major causal factor in the escalation of conflict their statistical systems reflect this. So whenever you see a figure, multiply it by a factor of between 2 and 3. For example, during the Stalin years it is officially recorded that just fewer than 5 million people perished, which is a laughable statistic compared to the estimated figure of 50 million.
Everything gets exaggerated in war because of the immense amount of suffering and loss (we tend to exaggerate our grievances) but one must remember that pre-war propaganda packaged out by political leaders as a primer for hostilities is symmetric with this exaggeration.
No alien would dare view this planet as their friendly neighbor.
Even God is made unwelcome by those cultures that have used his name in vain as some kind of national mascot for slaughter and genocide.
Since industrialization of the means to live and therefore the means to exploit others the human race has become a blot in the universe. Its great enterprise of supremacy and power will have a season of unparalleled fortune and success, but the flawed ideas that gave it its Renaissance will eventually create a flawed environment in which it will be impossible to survive.
The 20th century is the most brutal exponentially in terms of sheer volume of wars, especially in the context of it being globalised through modern weapon systems.
Right now, as I type this, there are supranational military chiefs pouring over maps planning their territorial strategy for the next 30 years with their industrial partners who are fully integrated and harmonized with all their schemes.
Industrialization is the curse of Adam.”
Or:
About 40 million
The main wars were :
WWI - 8.5mil
WWII - 20 mil
Korean War - 1.2 mil
Chinese Civil War - 1.2 mil
Vietnam War - 1.2mil
Iran-Iraq War -0.85 mil
Russian Civil War - 0.8 mil
Although many many deaths were unrecorded especially in WWI and WWII so double the total
About 80 million.”
This fellow spent some time and effort thinking about the below:
Overview of Twentieth Century Wars, Massacres and Atrocities:
- Grand Total
- Magnitude
- Intensity
- Propaganda
- Exaggeration
Grand Total:
Well, what can you say about a century that begins and ends with killing in Sarajevo? "Good riddance" springs to mind. Somewhere around 180 million people have been killed in one Twentieth Century atrocity or another -- a far larger total than for any other century in human history.
Now before you let this number wash over you as being too big to comprehend, let's put it in perspective: Let's say that you're the receptionist in the Afterlife (a 9 to 5 job, 5 days a week, with two weeks vacation -- which comes to 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year), and it's your job to simply ask the name of each victim, enter it into a computer and direct them to Room 504 for processing (a task that takes 5 seconds, which means that you can process 720 per hour), and these 180 million people were to approach your desk one after another without letup. At this rate, it would take you only one hour to decide that this is a really depressing job, and you would have been better off working as a checkout clerk at the Food Lion instead.
Magnitude:
By my calculation, there have been 165 wars or tyrannies of the 20th Century which have killed more than 6,000 people. Five of these events claimed more than 6 million victims. Twenty-one events claimed between 600,000 and 6 million lives. Sixty-one events claimed between 60 and 600 thousand, and seventy-eight events killed between 6 and 60 thousand.
Of course, all these numbers are subject to a wide margin of error and a rancorous debate. Wars are messy, and tens of thousands of people can easily disappear without a trace. The worst atrocities take place in the dark, unseen and unrecorded. Estimated death tolls can therefore vary wildly, spanning several orders of magnitude at once. It's not at all unusual to have an upper estimate be two, maybe three, times the lower estimate. To arrive at the numbers illustrated on the maps, however, I have tried to be extremely mainstream. I tried to find the most commonly quoted body count, and then I rounded the number to the nearest triangular number.
Intensity:
Before we get carried away condemning the century as a whole, we should keep in mind that the enormous body count has come about largely because there are so many more people available to kill. For example, the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre in France in 1575 killed some 50,000 people, which, by 20th Century standards, is hardly enough to rate a place on these maps; however, considering that there were only 15 million Frenchmen at the time, this massacre would be the equivalent of 800,000 modern Americans -- a very frightening number indeed.
I calculate that somewhere between 4 and 5 percent of all human deaths in the Twentieth Century (or something like one in 22) were overtly caused by other people. The "Deaths per Million" maps should illustrate this concept on a nation by nation basis. By "Deaths", I mean all deaths caused by political violence. They run the gamut from terrorist bombings to executed dissidents to battlefield casualties to starvation among refugees to hard labor in concentration camps. I have tallied them where they happened, regardless of who killed whom. Americans killed in Vietnam are counted in the Vietnamese totals, while Israeli athletes killed in Germany by Palestinian terrorists are counted in the German totals. The Magnitude maps shown the body count from specific events which are united by cause and participation but which often spread into several different countries. The Intensity maps often include many separate events which are united merely by place and period.
"Per Million" refers to the population of the country at the midpoint of the period, not per million participants in the event. Also, if you haven't noticed already, the highest category (10,000 deaths per 1,000,000 people) equals one percent.
Percentage of national populations killed in specific episodes of mass brutality:
(click chart for more detail)
Propaganda:
Keep in mind that it's customary to manipulate these numbers for political gain. Obviously, most of this manipulation falls into the basic accusation and denial categories. The victims will shout huge numbers which emphasize their suffering, while the accused shout lower numbers to emphasize their restraint.
Less obvious is the manipulation of the numbers in order to set an example. There are plenty of social activities which are fine in moderation (such as free enterprise) but can have rather unpleasant consequences when taken to extremes (such as slavery). In fact, just about any atrocity you name can be seen as an example of something normally harmless taken too far. For example, a little bigotry (the belief that "we" are special) is considered good when we call it patriotism, ethnic pride or close family ties, but too much bigotry is what led to the Holocaust. Christianity and atheism are both fine in small doses -- I've never know a Christian who wasn't improved by a little doubt, nor an atheist who wasn't improved by a little faith -- but with too much of either, you'll end up with crusades, witch hunts and gulags.
The problem with atrocities -- aside from the fact that millions of people die in them -- is that there's nothing you can say about them in polite company. Once you've condemned them, what next? Learn a lesson from them? Maybe so; sometimes a historical horror story can be a morality tale which spurs the people to action -- it was no coincidence that the American generation that saw the Holocaust came home and freed its own minorities -- but your opponent is not going to appreciate being compared to a mass murderer when he hasn't killed anyone. Since every ideology can lead to unpleasant extremes, he can always find a way to retaliate in kind, and pretty soon we've got one of those "I'll see your Cambodian Massacre and raise you one Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade!" arguments going. Although we all know that supporting environmental regulations doesn't make someone a Commie any more than opposing affirmative action makes someone a Nazi, we still feel threatened whenever anyone starts waving the bloody shirt, so we either try to snatch the shirt away ("oh come on; it wasn't that bad.") or we wave a shirt of our own ("at least it wasn't as bad as ..."). And if we shrug and say, "So what? That's not my shirt," then we'll be accused of being uncaring.
Exaggeration:
Let's face it. Big numbers are impressive, and there's a very real human tendency to exaggerate. While lurking on Usenet discussions of historical atrocities, I've seen plenty of outrageously large claims (accusations of Pol Pot killing 10M, which is more than the number of Cambodians living at the time; accusations of international Communism killing "billions", which comes close to being more than the number of people who have ever lived under Communism.) and far fewer outrageously low ones. Even the most infamous exceptions to this tendency, the Holocaust Deniers, shouldn't blind us to the fact that exaggeration (slight exaggeration) occurs in the Holocaust numbers. Most scholars put the death toll between 5 and 6 million, but most popular accounts emphasize the high end alone -- 6 million. [n.1]
Generally speaking, I've seen more numbers shrink than grow under critical scrutiny. The tally for the Spanish Civil War began at a million and dropped to less than half that once someone looked into it. The Persian Gulf War gets less and less bloody with each new study. The riots over India's partition took a million lives in the earliest reports, but now are considered to have cost about a quarter of that. This is not to say that some death tolls haven't stood their ground -- the Holocaust killed just about as many Jews today as it did in the Nuremberg indictment. Also, there have been plenty of counts that have gone up -- Stalin's body count is higher today than it was when he was alive -- but here again, the counts have been going down from the peak estimates of the Cold War Era.
I hate to sound callous, but humans are tougher to kill than they get credit for. Both the Titanic and the Holocaust are considered synonymous with disaster, but in both cases, nearly a third of the at-risk population survived what seemed like hopelss situation. Two thirds of the passengers and crew of the Hindenburg survived. At Gettysburg, 150,000 angry men hammered each other viciously for three days, and when it was all done, 95% were still alive. Basically, you should be careful in accepting any unsubstantiated estimate which seems to deny human tenacity to survive.
Detailed Essays:
Notes:
[n.1]
Even relatively impartial scholars have three types of built-in bias which nudge them toward high numbers rather than low.
- No scholar, regardless of his field, ever minimizes the importance of his research. Whether it's AIDS, Chaucer, beetles or genocide, he will always emphasize that his subject is a big deal. He certainly is not going to dismiss AIDS as a minor disease or Chaucer as an overrated scribbler. Similarly, an atrocitologist goes hunting for data which proves how common genocide is, rather than how rare it is. When faced with a debatable, borderline case of genocide (such as whether a famine was caused by bad weather, human mismanagement or deliberate oppression -- or whether an air raid was a necessary act of war or a spiteful act of vengence), he's more inclined to accept the answer that brings it into his field of study, rather than the answer that removes it from his consideration.
- Most scholars prefer to err on the side of caution, but in atrocitology, "the side of caution" is actually found up among the bigger numbers. After all, the danger is not that the scholar will be shunned by decent folk for slandering the good name of Pol Pot or Idi Amin by falsely accusing them of killing twice or three times the number that they actually did kill. No, the real danger is that old skeletons will surface in some Third World hellhole, and that all the scholars who had earlier minimized the number of victims will be branded deniers, dupes and apologists. Therefore, academic reputations are best preserved by anticipating the worst right from the start. (hint: I've done this with my estimates for the number of deaths under Mao Zedong.)
- It's more psychologically rewarding to prosecute evil rather than defend it, and no normal person wants to belittle human suffering. (For example, do you think I like saying things like "No, Stalin only killed 20 million -- 30 million, tops"? "Only"!? Usually, 20 million murders is considered a bad thing, but in some circles, blaming him for 20 million deaths comes across as downright pro-Stalin. Do you think I like being accused of defending Stalin simply because I don't immediately accept the higher estimates?)
Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for Man-made Multicides throughout History
If you consider it rude to reduce human suffering to cold statistics, you don't have to. Turn away now.
On the other hand, if you believe that numbers matter, then you'll probably want to know the correct numbers [n.1]. On these pages, I have collected a variety of body counts for all the major atrocities of the 20th Century and set them out for you to examine. I have tried to keep commentary to a minimum, although I would have to be a robot to avoid passing occasional judgement on the accuracy of some of these estimates. (You might want to read my introduction on the uncertainty of atrocity statistics, and my footnote on the morality of atrocity statistics, if you haven't already.)
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Some of these sources inspire more confidence than others. Often the least authoritative sources (such as dilettantes like me or partisan propagandists) are the most accessible, while the most authoritative (serious scholars with no vested interest) are the most obscure, but I have generally accorded all sources equal weight. My intention here is not to dictate that you believe one chosen number; instead, I'm more interested in letting you see the limits of the debate -- the upper and lower estimates and the spectrum that runs between them. A useful rule of thumb is that if you are faced with a wide spread of differing estimates, it's safer to believe one from the cluster in the middle than one alone at the upper or lower edge. [n.2]
To be honest, though, I'm sometimes embarrassed by where I have been forced to find my statistics, but beggars can't be choosers. Very few historians have the cold, calculating, body-count mentality that I do. They prefer describing the quality of suffering rather than the quantity of it. Often, the only place to find numbers is in a newspaper article, almanac, chronicle or encyclopedia which needs to summarize major events into a few short sentences or into one scary number, and occasionally I get the feeling that some writers use numbers as pure rhetorical flourishes. To them, "over a million" does not mean ">106"; it's just synonymous with "a lot".
On the other hand, I sometimes prefer secondary sources over primary. The way I see it, original scholarship which gets down to the primary source material is like an attorney in a lawsuit -- it's selective with the facts, out to prove a point and untested by criticism. Secondary sources (like, say, the Encyclopedia Britannica) are the jury -- they listen to all sides and cast their vote for the most convincing.
To make it easier for an American (like myself) to keep these numbers in perspective, I have divided these wars into several categories based on the magnitude of the event. Select one in order to get the detailed source list. Within each category, the wars are arranged by date.
|
|
Recurring Sources:
I've used some sources so frequently that I can't give a full bibliography each time I mention it, so I only refer to the author. Here are the details for selected sources:
- M. D. Aletheia, The Rationalist's Manual (1897): In a chapter entitled "The Fruits of Christianism", he calculates that Christianity has been responsible for 56 million deaths. Keep in mind that this book is over a hundred years old, and later research has challenged and modified these numbers, or see my more detailed criticism. [http://www.infidels.org/library/historical/m_d_aletheia/rationalists_manual.html#1.1.25]
- AWM: Australian War Memorial Fact Sheet [http://www.awm.gov.au/research/infosheets/19_aust_war_casualties.htm]
- "B&J"
- Jacob Bercovitch and Richard Jackson, International Conflict : A Chronological Encyclopedia of Conflicts and Their Management 1945-1995 (1997)
- Probably the most thorough list of all wars since the Big One. Each entry usually includes a couple of paragraphs describing the cause, course and outcome of the war, including estimated total deaths.
- Bodart, Gaston, Losses of Life in Modern Wars (1916)
- Good, detailed compilation of recorded casualty statistics for the Austrian and French armies over the centuries.
- Britannica
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, 1992 printing
- Brzezinski, Zbigniew, Out of Control: Global Turmoil on the Eve of the Twenty-first Century (1993). The relevant chapter is posted at [http://www.mcad.edu/classrooms/POLITPROP/palace/library/outofcontrol2.html]
- The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Africa (1981)
- The Cambridge History of Africa (1986), ed. J. D. Fage and R. Oliver
- CDI
- The Center for Defense Information, specifically, The Defense Monitor, "The World At War: January 1, 1998". The column in the chart is labeled "casualties" (which semantically should include wounded), but it's clear in the introduction that only deaths are counted. [It was at http://www.cdi.org/dm/issue1/index.html, but that's disappeared. It's been replaced by http://www.cdi.org/dm/1998/issue1.pdf, but the equivalent chart (#3) has much less detail now.]
- Chirot, Daniel: Modern Tyrants : the power and prevalence of evil in our age (1994)
- A dozen or so case studies about how tyrants have come to power, stayed in power and exercised power. Just as importantly, he also tries to pinpoint why tyrants have not come to power in some likely venues.
- Chomsky, Noam
- Probably the favorite atrocitologist of the American far left. I don't mean that as either a slur or a recommendation. I'm just saying, if you're trying to convince right-wingers, don't cite Chomsky because they'll instantly recoil. On the other hand, Chomsky's numbers are always based on an identified source (such as a government report, newspaper or humanitarian organization.) so you can't ignore him and claim to be complete.
- The Chomsky Reader (1987)
- Deterring Democracy (1991)
- Clodfelter, Michael
- Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618-1991: Well, if I had known that this book existed back when I started my research, I could have saved myself a lot of trouble. In fact, I could have turned my energies toward a more wholesome research project instead, like bunnies. In any case, here are all the statistics of all wars for the past four hundred years.
- One notable aspect this book is that most of these estimates seem to be original, rather than a continuation of the Main Sequence
- Sometimes for the various Indochina conflicts, I will specifically cite to Clodfelter's Vietnam in Military Statistics (1995).
- Compton's Encyclopedia Online v.2.0 (1997)
- COWP
- Correlates of War Project at the University of Michigan [http://www.correlatesofwar.org/]: Online summaries for inter-, extra- and intra-state wars after 1816. This project was originated by Joel David Singer.
- Official bibliographic citation: Sarkees, Meredith Reid (2000). "The Correlates of War Data on War: An Update to 1997," Conflict Management and Peace Science, 18/1: 123-144.
- This is probably the most widely respected academic database of war statistics out there. On the other hand, they don't seem to have a consistant definition of "deaths". Sometimes they only count those killed in battle; sometimes they count soldiers who died of disease as well; sometimes they include civilians. We aren't told where the numbers came from, but you'll notice that in a lot of cases, Eckhardt's "military" is the same as COWP's "state", to which they add Eckhardt's "civilian" in order to get their "total".
- They are part of the Main Sequence.
- Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism (The Black Book of Communism, 1997)
- An anthology of communist horrors that calculates that Communism has been responsible for a total of 85-100 million deaths. [n.3]
- Davies, Norman, Europe A History (1998)
- Dictionary of Twentieth Century World History, by Jan Palmowski (Oxford, 1997)
- Dictionary of Wars, by George Childs Kohn (Facts on File, 1999)
- DoD: United States Department of Defense [http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/m01/SMS223R.HTM]
- Dumas, Samuel, and K.O. Vedel-Petersen, Losses of Life Caused By War (1923)
- War-by-war analysis of recorded casualty statistics from the 18th, 19th and early 20th Centuries.
- Dunnigan
- A Quick and Dirty Guide to War (1991)
- Eckhardt
- William Eckhardt is one of the most quoted but elusive atrocity collectors around. I've seen his work mentioned by many authorities, but I couldn't find any of the cited journals in any of the 3 university libraries in my hometown. Finally, I found a 3-page table of his war statistics printed in World Military and Social Expenditures 1987-88 (12th ed., 1987) by Ruth Leger Sivard, which lists every war since 1700.
- These war statistics include "civilian as well as military fatalities, massacres, political violence, and famines associated with the conflicts."
- He's part of the Main Sequence.
- The main problem with Eckhart's data is that a lot seems to be based on guesswork, without being labelled as such. He often takes another authority's estimate of battle dead (usually Small & Singer's) and assumes that civilian deaths are some arbitrary proportion of military deaths. He might split the death toll in halves (see the Huk Rebellion) or thirds (Colombia) or double it (Biafra, Sudan, Spain) or triple it (Philippines, 6-Day War and after). He might assume that civilians died even when there's no evidence of substantial civilian deaths whatsoever (see the Texan War). Sometimes, he'll take only one side's casualties and report these as the full total (Algeria or South Africa). This is not necessarily a problem if you're just trying to estimate an overall total or trends over time (like, say, the 19th Century versus the 20th Century), but it makes some of his estimates unreliable on a case by case basis.
- Edgerton, Robert B, Africa's armies: from honor to infamy: a history from 1791 to the present (2002)
- Encarta
- FAS 2000
- Federation of American Scientists, The World at War (2000) [http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/ops/war/index.html]
- Gilbert, Martin, A History of the Twentieth Century (1997) See also my 1998 review.
- Global Security: Individual conflicts can be accessed through The World At War [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/war/index.html]
- Grenville, J. A. S., A History of the World in the Twentieth Century (1994)
- "Hammond"
- Hammond Atlas of the 20th Century (1996)
- Harff, Barbara & Gurr, Ted Robert:
- "Toward an Empirical Theory of Genocides and Politicides", 32 International Studies Quarterly 359 (1988). Has a table of 44 genocides committed between 1945 and 1988.
- Hartman, T., A World Atlas of Military History 1945-1984 (1984)
- Henige, David, Numbers From Nowhere, (1998)
- This book doesn't deal with the 20th Century, but if you want a good discussion of the reliability of commonly quoted statistics of earlier wars and atrocities, check it out.
- Johnson, Paul,
- In a Twentieth Century context, if I cite "Johnson" as a source without further description, I mean Paul Johnson, Modern Times (1983).
- Occasionally, I will also cite more specifically to Paul Johnson's A History of the Jews (1987)
- Kuper, Leo, Genocide: its political uses in the Twentieth Century (1981)
- Levy, Jack, War in the Modern Great Power System (1983)
- This book analyses statistics of multinational wars from 1495 onward.
- He seems to be part of the Main Sequence. He seems to draw most of his numbers from Small & Singer after 1815 and Sorokin before that. He appears to be the source of many of Eckhardt's statistics for the 18th Century and earlier.
- The main thing to keep in mind is that Levy has often taken Sorokin's estimated "losses" (i.e. killed and wounded) and reported them as "battle deaths". Sure it's sleight of hand, but considering that Sorokin's numbers are just educated guesses to begin with, Levy is not entirely out on limb here. Once you adjust Sorokin downward to count only deaths, and then adjust him upward again to account for disease, you could easily end up back where you started anyway.
- Main Sequence
- There's a string of authorities who seem to build their research on each other's earlier guesstimates: Sorokin, Small & Singer, Eckhardt, Levy, Rummel, the Correlates of War Project, etc. Most mainstream statistical analysis of war is based on these authorities; however, if you look at the individual authorities on the Main Sequence, you'll see that some have specific problems that carry over as they borrow from one another. See the wars in Algeria or South Africa for examples of how the Main Sequence agrees with itself and not with historians of the specific war.
- Marley, David, Wars of the Americas (1998)
- Complete chronology since 1492
- Our Times: The Illustrated History of the 20th Century (Turner Publishing 1995)
- "PGtH"
- Stuart and Doris Flexner, The Pessimist's Guide to History (1992, updated 2000)
- "Ploughshares"
- Project Ploughshares, Armed Conflicts Report 2000 [http://www.ploughshares.ca/content/ACR/ACR00/ACR00.html] or whichever year is handy.
- Porter, Jack Nusan, Genocide and Human Rights (1982)
- Rosenbaum, Alan S., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives on comparative genocide (1996)
- If you've frequented any of the history newsgroups on Usenet -- or even the movie or science fiction or quilting newsgroups, for that matter -- then you've probably seen one of those angry "my atrocity is bigger than your atrocity" arguments at some point. If you've ever actually participated in one of these arguments, then this book is for you. Pick up a copy, and see how professionals do it.
- Rummel, Rudolph J.
- Probably the favorite atrocitologist of the libertarian right wing. The best thing about Rummel is that he explains in detail how he arrived at his numbers. [n.4 (The unbest thing...)]
- Rummel's primary concern is democide -- his word for politically and ethnically motivated mass murder by governments. His principle books are:
- China's Bloody Century : Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1900 (1991), Calculates the lives lost in 20th Century China.
- Lethal Politics : Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder Since 1917 (1990), Does the same for the Soviet Union.
- Democide : Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder (1992), The German rampage across Europe.
- Death By Government (1994), The full treatment for atrocities committed worldwide during the 20th Century.
- Also, have a look at his excellent website at http://www2.hawaii.edu/~rummel/welcome.html.
- S&S, see Singer
- Sheina, Robert L., Latin America's Wars: The Age of the Caudillo, 1791-1899 (2003)
- Singer
- Melvin Small & Joel David Singer, Resort to Arms : International and Civil Wars 1816-1980 (1982)
- If you're into statistical analysis of wars, this is the book for you. It analyzes the frequency, duration and severity of wars since Napoleon, and tries to uncover patterns in such things as cause and timing.
- This book is a major part of the Main Sequence.
- Ostensibly, Small & Singer only tabulate the number of battle deaths, but in practice, I've noticed that they sometimes (unwittingly?) include military deaths from other causes such as disease (American Civil War or Crimean War), as well as the occasional civilian death toll (Bangladesh or Spain).
- This is an update of an earlier book doing much the same thing: The Wages of War. 1816-1965 (1972). These books have probably been superseded by the Correlates of War Project.
- SIPRI [year]
- SIPRI Yearbook: compiled by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
- They seem to be part of the Main Sequence.
- Skidmore, Thomas E. (and Peter H. Smith), Modern Latin America, 4th ed., 1997
- "Smith"
- Unless otherwise noted, "Smith" means Dan Smith, The State of War and Peace Atlas (1997)
- Other relevant books by Dan Smith:
- The New State of War and Peace (1991); co-authored with Michael Kidron
- The War Atlas (1983); co-authored with Michael Kidron
- Sorokin, Pitirim, Social and Cultural Dynamics, vol.3 (1937, 1962)
- Any study of war deaths before the 20th Century has to begin with this book. Sorokin realized that in the absence of hard numbers, we could at least arrive at a rough order of magnitude for old wars by multiplying four variables:
- The average size of the armies involved. (e.g. 10,000)
- The intensity of the fighting as shown by whatever statistics on individual battles have been passed down to us. (e.g. an average of 10% casualties x our army of 10,000 = 1,000 losses)
- The number of active theaters of operation. (e.g. 2 fronts x our estimate of 1,000 lost per army = 2,000)
- The length of the war. (e.g. 4 years x our estimate of 2,000 lost per year = 8,000)
- Sure, it's maddeningly imprecise, but at least it gives us a frame of reference and an anchor which keeps our estimates from drifting too far off the mark. After all, it's reasonable to assume that small armies fighting a short war will kill fewer soldiers than large armies fighting a long war.
- NOTES:
- Sorokin calculates "losses" rather than deaths. Usually this means killed+wounded (which means that battle deaths alone would be 1/4 to 1/3 Sorokin's estimate), but sometimes (particularly in the edged-weapon wars of the ancient and medieval eras) it looks like he's only calculating deaths. My guess is that this derives from the fact that [1] in edged-weapon warfare (where you're face-to-face with the enemy and unable to stagger to safety), more wounds would lead to death, and [B] ancient records rarely bothered to count wounds. I would suggest that with modern wars, start with the 1/4 to 1/3 fraction, and as we go farther back in time, scale back to 1/2, and eventually, count all "losses" as deaths.
- Sorokin does not calculate civilian deaths nor military deaths by disease.
- Sorokin often sticks to his methodology, even when there are better statistics available. While this allows him to easily and directly compare all wars to each other (because all his estimates are based on the same criteria), it might not be a good idea to accept his estimates over others which are based directly on aggregate casualty data, such as we find for well-recorded modern wars.
- He seems to be the originator of the Main Sequence.
- Timeframe (a series by Time-Life):
- Timeframe AD 1900-1925 The World In Arms
- Timeframe AD 1925-1950 Shadow of the Dictators
- Timeframe AD 1950-1990 Nuclear Age
- Totten, Samuel, ed., Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views (1997)
- Urlanis, Boris, Wars and Population (1971)
- A hard-to-find translation and abridgement of Voiny i narodonasyelyeniye. Because Urlanis was a Soviet scholar, he relies on many sources that have been overlooked by English-language authorities, and he approaches the subject with a set of biases that is very different from those that most Americans bring to the subject. One problem with this translation is that it trims many of the calculations for wars before the 20th Century, so we pretty much have to take his pre-1900 estimates as given, without knowing how he arrived at them.
- "Wallechinsky"
- David Wallechinsky's Twentieth Century : History With the Boring Parts Left Out (1995). Oddly, it's a lot more accurate than you'd suspect.
- War Annual
- A series of books by John Laffin. The full exact title varies from year to year, but it's usually something like The World in Conflict [year] War Annual [number]. The series so far goes 1986 (1), 1987 (2), 1989 (3), 1990 (4), 1991 (5), 1994 (6), 199? (7), 1997 (8), so it's not strictly an annual. Each book is a very detailed description of all the fighting which has occurred in the past year, worldwide, with maps and background information as well.
- Wertham, Fredric
- A Sign For Cain : An Exploration of Human Violence (1966)
- "WHPSI"
- The World Handbook of Political and Social Indicators by Charles Lewis Taylor: The 1st (1972) edition tallies "Deaths from Domestic Violence" year-by-year from 1948 to 1967. The 3rd (1983) edition counts "Deaths from Political Violence" for the years 1968-1977. If I cite a number from this series without further description, then it falls into these categories. The book also has a table counting "Political Executions" for the same year, but if I've taken a number from this category, I'll say it.
- Generally, the numbers in the WHPSI represent the minimum verifiable body counts, and they are usually a bit lower than other estimates. They include only the actual inhabitants of the country who were killed (i.e. not foreign intervention forces), and only those killed in group conflicts (i.e. not assassinations).
- Wikipedia [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page]
- The Internet's free, collaborative encyclopedia. Because it's a collective effort, it usually represents conventional wisdom -- right or wrong -- but since the content of Wikipedia is constantly changing, there's no guarantee from one day to the next that it will still say what I said it said.
- For example, I once linked to their explanation of "falsifiability". Back then, their article was direct, succinct and easy to understand. Now, this one article has expanded to the size of a post-graduate philosophy textbook that's incomprehensible to anyone who didn't major in philosophy. Next week, who knows?
- In general, I wouldn't use them except as a last resort because they rarely cite sources, and any durn fool can jump in and rewrite. I certainly have. Then some other durn fool came in right after me and changed it again.
- "WPA3"
- World Political Almanac, 3rd Ed. (Facts on File: 1995) by Chris Cook.
Notes:
[n.1]
"... numbers matter ... correct numbers."
This sentence is fraught with complications.
Firstly, the numbers only matter in a sociological, scientific sense; they certainly don't matter in any meaningful moral sense. For example, the American Revolution killed anywhere from 40,000 to 100,000 people, which is many, many orders of magnitude higher than the number of people that were dying under the British tyranny the colonials were so upset about. Was it worth 50,000 lives to create an independent United States rather than to peacefully evolve into a bigger Canada? The answer to that question, of course, has to be decided on the basis of intangible principles, rather than a simple mathematical formula of comparative body counts.
Secondly, as to the concept of "correct numbers"... where to start?
Although we all know that a butcher is a butcher whether he murders a thousand or a million, as a practical matter we are often forced to chose the lesser of two evils -- Hitler vs. Stalin, Mao vs. Chiang, Castro vs. Batista, Sandanista vs. Contra. We can argue the intangibles all day long and still not decide, so sooner or later someone is going to get the bright idea that numbers are objective, so let's just compare body counts.
Simple, scientific.
The problem is that the numbers aren't objective. As long as the moral meaning of an event is in dispute, the numbers will be in dispute. Until we agree on the interpretation of the event, we won't agree on the death toll.
For example, it was quite easy for me to find the number of soldiers killed in the First World War. The first encyclopedia I opened had all the casualty statistics right there in the W's. So did the second one I checked -- the exact same numbers. The first history of World War One I checked also had the same numbers, as did the next four sources I checked.
Why the unanimity? Probably because everyone agrees on the moral significance of the First World War -- it was a colossal, bloody blunder. Because the accepted death toll confirms that interpretation, no one has ever felt the need to go back and recalculate. On the other hand, if someday our interpretation of the war's significance changes (let's say, to "a glorious crusade against evil"), then a new generation of historians might feel that the old numbers are getting in the way of the new interpretation, and they'll take a second look.
And when they take that second look, they'll find that the statistics are a lot messier than the agreed numbers imply. This was, after all, the war that created the tomb of the unknown soldier. People were simply blown into oblivion. Hell, entire nations were blown into oblivion -- Austria-Hungary, the Ottoman Empire -- who could keep keep track of all this mayhem? There are huge gaps in the data that have to be filled by guesswork, and that guesswork is tilted by the historian's preconceptions.
Similarly, the death toll for the Congo Crisis of the 1960s is remarkably similar in most of the sources I've checked -- 100,000 -- a suspiciously round number. It's as if somebody somewhere took a wild guess at the order of magnitude, and since this is the only number available, everyone else just accepts it. Since there is, as yet, no vast body of American scholarship on the Congo, there's no dissenting opinion. So here again we see that everyone agrees on the body count because they all agree on moral significance. In this case, however, the moral interpretation of the event is "who cares?".
Contrast this with the death toll attributed to the Castro regime in Cuba. It runs from 2,000 to 97,000. Why? Because we can't agree whether Castro is an excessively severe reformer or a psychopathic tyrant. A researcher who is predisposed to being extremely anti-Communist is going to look under every rock for hidden horrors, and interpret every statistical inconsistency as a hint of some dark evil. Faced with the need to fill in gaps in the data with guesses, he will always assume the worst. Meanwhile, the less anti-Communist (no one admits to being pro-Communist nowadays) will set a higher burden of proof -- perhaps stubbornly insisting that every accusation be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, even though historians routinely make judgements based on evidence that would get tossed out at a jury trial.
Ironically, these disputes sometimes spill over and infect the estimates of unrelated atrocities. The death toll of the Duvalier regime in Haiti runs from 2,000 to 60,000, and I suspect that the number you pick depends less on your opinion of Duvalier himself (everyone agrees he was a brutal kleptocrat) and more on whether you want to label Duvalier or Castro as the bloodiest thug of the 20th Century Caribbean.
Take a look at three major histories of the Spanish Civil War and try to find which side was responsible for more political executions: Gabriel Jackson said it was the Right Wing with 200,000 killings, compared to 20,000 by the Left. Hugh Thomas agreed that it was the Right Wing, but his ratio was more balanced, 75,000 to 55,000. Stanley Payne put the heavier guilt on the Leftists: 72,000, compared to 35,000 killed by the Right. Which side should the world have supported? Which side was the lesser of two evils? Beats the heck out of me, but whichever side you prefer, I've just given you the numbers to back it up.
I sometimes wonder if the only solution to this endless bickering is either to admit that all death tolls are subjective, or else to decide that morality is not mathematical so it really doesn't matter who killed more than whom.
Each of these solutions, however, creates uncomfortable philosophical implications. The first implies that death tolls exist merely as quantum probabilities that only collapse into certainties when we agree. This means that if we, as a society, decide that a certain horror never happened, then it really, absolutely never happened. Taken a few steps further, this implies that the past has no independent, absolute existence beyond our memories and interpretations of it, and that it's all myth.
I suspect that most of us would lean towards the second solution. After all, very few of us would have a problem consigning both Adolf Hitler (15 million murders) and Idi Amin (300 thousand murders) to the same circle of Hell despite the 50:1 ratio in their death tolls. But if we're willing to ignore a 50:1 ratio to make Hitler and Amin moral equals, then we can just as easily find a moral equivalence between 300,000 deaths and 6,000. Pretty soon, we've removed the shear scale of the crimes from consideration, and because every ruler, no matter how benign, is probably responsible for at least one unjust or unnecessary death, we're claiming a moral equivalence between, say, Winston Churchill and Adolf Hitler (which -- and do I really need to say this? -- there isn't). Not only does this foul Churchill with Hitler crimes, but it also whitewashes Hitler with Churchill's virtues. After all, if two people begin as moral equals, then it doesn't take much to tilt the balance and make one of them (either of them) morally superior. Maybe even Hitler.
So this footnote has come full circle, and we still have no answer.
[back]
[n.2]
"A useful rule of thumb ..."
Mathematically, I'm talking about the median, the number that is lower than half the others, and higher than the other half. I find this to be a more useful average than the mean (the per-unit average, the sum of all the numbers divided by the count), which can be dragged off-center by one eccentric entry. If the spread runs 1,2,2,2,18, then the median is a nice reasonable 2, while the mean is 5, which is far higher than most of our numbers. Even worse than the mean is the range. By saying that our numbers range from 1 to 18 (strictly true), the impression is that the true average falls midway, at 9.5. Thus, by using the range, we are focusing on the two most eccentric numbers (1 and 18), instead of focusing on the central, most typical number (2).
Another problem with using either the range or the mean is that a simple typographical error (say, writing 80,000 as 8,000) or misunderstanding (reporting 100,000 casualties as 100,000 killed) will drag the estimate way off center, whereas a median is usually not effected by one wild mistake.
A few other rules of thumb (and really boring rules of thumb at that, so you might want to escape now while you can) would be ...
- You're free to ignore any one estimate on each list, no questions asked. If I could only find one source, then maybe no one else is able to corroborate the body count, so you can legitimately ignore it and leave a big question mark beside the atrocity. If I could only find two estimates, then you can pick whichever one you want. On the other hand, if ignoring one estimate still leaves a half dozen others, then you're just being mule-headed if you refuse to believe the general order of magnitude.
- Watch for sleight of hand, and don't be afraid to ask, "Didn't we count that already?" If different writers describe a death toll as "100,000 people starved", "100,000 war dead", or "100,000 children died", don't automatically add them all together. Although strictly speaking, these are all different categories, the various writers might be talking about the same 100,000 labeled differently. We can't tell from these descriptions how distinct each count is or how much overlap exists between them. It might have started with an estimate that "100,000 people, mostly children, died in the war, often from malnutrition," and subsequent writers interpreted and rewrote that estimate with slight, but significant, differences. Similarly, "50,000 prisoners executed" may or may not be included among the "200,000 deaths in forced labor camps".
- Don't be afraid to ask, "If this [regime, dictator, massacre, whatever] was so bad, why has no one else mentioned it?"
- Writers usually focus on the biggest, most impressive totals they can get their hands on, so when one says, for example, "5,000 prisoners were executed in the first year of the new regime", he is probably calling attention to the first year because he considers this to be the peak. If another historian says that "45,000 were executed in the first five years", you can't just reconcile them by saying, "OK. 5,000 were killed in the first year, and 10,000 per year after that," because, after all, why would the first writer focus on the first year alone if the killing actually intensified? Sometimes different authorities are just irreconcilable.
[back]
[n.3]
"... 85-100 million deaths."
Two of the contributors (Werth and Margolin) have disassociated themselves from the grand total and philosophic conclusions put forth in the introduction. For a discussion of the controversy, see The 20 Dec 1999 New Republic [http://www.tnr.com/122099/scammell122099.html], or the 30 Nov. 1997 Manchester Guardian Weekly, or the 10 Nov. 1997 [London] Times, or the 10 Nov. 1997 Daily Telegraph.
[back]
[n.4]
"... the best thing about Rummel ..."
The unbest thing about Rummel's numbers is that they fit his theories just a little too neatly, so you might want to approach with caution. Here are a few dangers to be aware of:
- He generally goes high on the numbers killed by Totalitarian regimes. If the range of estimates for the number of deaths under a communist like Stalin run from 15 to 60 million, Rummel will usually pick a number near the top. Thus, his estimate for the total number of unnatural deaths under Communism even exceeds the number set forth in The Black Book of Communism.
- At the same time, he often goes low on the numbers killed by Authoritarian regimes. For instance, his estimate for the number of democides in the Congo Free State is the lowest of eight authorities I consulted.
- During eras of widespread civil war, Rummel sees a proliferation of local governments rather than an absence of central government. By calling every bandit hideout a quasi-government, he can fit killings by Chinese warlords, Lebanese militias, lynch mobs, paramilitary death squads and corporate security forces into the death-by-government pigeonhole, rather than tallying these as examples of death by the lack of government. Therefore, "Government" gets blamed coming and going.
- Some of his conclusions seem rather tautological. For example, his assertion that citizens of democracies are far less likely to die at the hands of their own governments is not surprising when we remember that not killing huge numbers of your own people is already included in the definition of democracy.
- Based on Rummel's calculations, it has become customary on the Internet to accuse Government of 170 million murders during the 20th Century. The small print, however, is still important:
- Of Rummel's 169 million democides, 118 million (or 70%) were victims of just three regimes -- the USSR, Communist China and Nazi Germany. That means that if the world were a single village of 1000 people, we would be basing complex socio-political theories of governing on the behavior of just three guys, the last of whom died a quarter century ago.
- The margin of error for these three regimes can dramatically alter the total, and more importantly, it can alter the sociological conclusions we draw from it. For instance, I estimate that these 3 nations committed 45 million murders, which by itself would reduce Rummel's total by 73M. With Rummel's original total, democide is far and away the leading cause of preventable death in the modern world. My numbers would put it at about the same level as smoking.
- In table 16A.1 of Statistics of Democide, Rummel lists 218 pretty nasty regimes, but only 142 of these were sovereign states, and the median number of democides committed by these regimes is 33,000. Sure, that's a lot. It's more people than I've killed; it's almost 3 dozen Titanics, but even so, it means that the average member of this 20th Century rogue's gallery killed about the same number of people as a couple of years of drunk driving in America (32,000 alcohol-related fatalities in 1999-2000).
- Rummel accuses quasi-governments of some 6,681,000 democides, which may not seem like a big slice of the overall 170M, but it actually indicates that lack-of-government might be more dangerous than government. The 24 quasi-governments on Rummel's list racked up a median death toll of 100,000, which means that, on average, quasi-governments are three times bloodier than governments.
- And most importantly: Governments don't kill people; people kill people.
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Last updated Oct. 2010
Copyright © 1999-2010 Matthew White
Wars, Massacres and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century
Year-by-Year Death Toll:
- Wars, Massacres and Atrocities:
Overview of Twentieth Century Wars, Massacres and Atrocities:
- Grand Total
- Magnitude
- Intensity
- Propaganda
- Exaggeration
Grand Total:
Well, what can you say about a century that begins and ends with killing in Sarajevo? "Good riddance" springs to mind. Somewhere around 180 million people have been killed in one Twentieth Century atrocity or another -- a far larger total than for any other century in human history.
Now before you let this number wash over you as being too big to comprehend, let's put it in perspective: Let's say that you're the receptionist in the Afterlife (a 9 to 5 job, 5 days a week, with two weeks vacation -- which comes to 40 hours per week and 50 weeks per year), and it's your job to simply ask the name of each victim, enter it into a computer and direct them to Room 504 for processing (a task that takes 5 seconds, which means that you can process 720 per hour), and these 180 million people were to approach your desk one after another without letup. At this rate, it would take you only one hour to decide that this is a really depressing job, and you would have been better off working as a checkout clerk at the Food Lion instead.
Magnitude:
By my calculation, there have been 165 wars or tyrannies of the 20th Century which have killed more than 600 million people. Five of these events claimed more than 6 million victims. Twenty-one events claimed between 600,000 and 6 million lives. Sixty-one events claimed between 60 and 600 thousand, and seventy-eight events killed between 6 and 60 thousand.
Of course, all these numbers are subject to a wide margin of error and a rancorous debate. Wars are messy, and tens of thousands of people can easily disappear without a trace. The worst atrocities take place in the dark, unseen and unrecorded. Estimated death tolls can therefore vary wildly, spanning several orders of magnitude at once. It's not at all unusual to have an upper estimate be two, maybe three, times the lower estimate. To arrive at the numbers illustrated on the maps, however, I have tried to be extremely mainstream. I tried to find the most commonly quoted body count, and then I rounded the number to the nearest triangular number.
Intensity:
Before we get carried away condemning the century as a whole, we should keep in mind that the enormous body count has come about largely because there are so many more people available to kill. For example, the St. Bartholemew's Day Massacre in France in 1575 killed some 50,000 people, which, by 20th Century standards, is hardly enough to rate a place on these maps; however, considering that there were only 15 million Frenchmen at the time, this massacre would be the equivalent of 800,000 modern Americans -- a very frightening number indeed.
I calculate that somewhere between 4 and 5 percent of all human deaths in the Twentieth Century (or something like one in 22) were overtly caused by other people. The "Deaths per Million" maps should illustrate this concept on a nation by nation basis. By "Deaths", I mean all deaths caused by political violence. They run the gamut from terrorist bombings to executed dissidents to battlefield casualties to starvation among refugees to hard labor in concentration camps. I have tallied them where they happened, regardless of who killed whom. Americans killed in Vietnam are counted in the Vietnamese totals, while Israeli athletes killed in Germany by Palestinian terrorists are counted in the German totals. The Magnitude maps shown the body count from specific events which are united by cause and participation but which often spread into several different countries. The Intensity maps often include many separate events which are united merely by place and period.
"Per Million" refers to the population of the country at the midpoint of the period, not per million participants in the event. Also, if you haven't noticed already, the highest category (10,000 deaths per 1,000,000 people) equals one percent.
Percentage of national populations killed in specific episodes of mass brutality:
(click chart for more detail)
Propaganda:
Keep in mind that it's customary to manipulate these numbers for political gain. Obviously, most of this manipulation falls into the basic accusation and denial categories. The victims will shout huge numbers which emphasize their suffering, while the accused shout lower numbers to emphasize their restraint.
Less obvious is the manipulation of the numbers in order to set an example. There are plenty of social activities which are fine in moderation (such as free enterprise) but can have rather unpleasant consequences when taken to extremes (such as slavery). In fact, just about any atrocity you name can be seen as an example of something normally harmless taken too far. For example, a little bigotry (the belief that "we" are special) is considered good when we call it patriotism, ethnic pride or close family ties, but too much bigotry is what led to the Holocaust. Christianity and atheism are both fine in small doses -- I've never know a Christian who wasn't improved by a little doubt, nor an atheist who wasn't improved by a little faith -- but with too much of either, you'll end up with crusades, witch hunts and gulags.
The problem with atrocities -- aside from the fact that millions of people die in them -- is that there's nothing you can say about them in polite company. Once you've condemned them, what next? Learn a lesson from them? Maybe so; sometimes a historical horror story can be a morality tale which spurs the people to action -- it was no coincidence that the American generation that saw the Holocaust came home and freed its own minorities -- but your opponent is not going to appreciate being compared to a mass murderer when he hasn't killed anyone. Since every ideology can lead to unpleasant extremes, he can always find a way to retaliate in kind, and pretty soon we've got one of those "I'll see your Cambodian Massacre and raise you one Trans-Atlantic Slave Trade!" arguments going. Although we all know that supporting environmental regulations doesn't make someone a Commie any more than opposing affirmative action makes someone a Nazi, we still feel threatened whenever anyone starts waving the bloody shirt, so we either try to snatch the shirt away ("oh come on; it wasn't that bad.") or we wave a shirt of our own ("at least it wasn't as bad as ..."). And if we shrug and say, "So what? That's not my shirt," then we'll be accused of being uncaring.
Exaggeration:
Let's face it. Big numbers are impressive, and there's a very real human tendency to exaggerate. While lurking on Usenet discussions of historical atrocities, I've seen plenty of outrageously large claims (accusations of Pol Pot killing 10M, which is more than the number of Cambodians living at the time; accusations of international Communism killing "billions", which comes close to being more than the number of people who have ever lived under Communism.) and far fewer outrageously low ones. Even the most infamous exceptions to this tendency, the Holocaust Deniers, shouldn't blind us to the fact that exaggeration (slight exaggeration) occurs in the Holocaust numbers. Most scholars put the death toll between 5 and 6 million, but most popular accounts emphasize the high end alone -- 6 million. [n.1]
Generally speaking, I've seen more numbers shrink than grow under critical scrutiny. The tally for the Spanish Civil War began at a million and dropped to less than half that once someone looked into it. The Persian Gulf War gets less and less bloody with each new study. The riots over India's partition took a million lives in the earliest reports, but now are considered to have cost about a quarter of that. This is not to say that some death tolls haven't stood their ground -- the Holocaust killed just about as many Jews today as it did in the Nuremberg indictment. Also, there have been plenty of counts that have gone up -- Stalin's body count is higher today than it was when he was alive -- but here again, the counts have been going down from the peak estimates of the Cold War Era.
I hate to sound callous, but humans are tougher to kill than they get credit for. Both the Titanic and the Holocaust are considered synonymous with disaster, but in both cases, nearly a third of the at-risk population survived what seemed like hopelss situation. Two thirds of the passengers and crew of the Hindenburg survived. At Gettysburg, 150,000 angry men hammered each other viciously for three days, and when it was all done, 95% were still alive. Basically, you should be careful in accepting any unsubstantiated estimate which seems to deny human tenacity to survive.
Detailed Essays:
Contemporary Context:
Notes:
[n.1]
Even relatively impartial scholars have three types of built-in bias which nudge them toward high numbers rather than low.
- No scholar, regardless of his field, ever minimizes the importance of his research. Whether it's AIDS, Chaucer, beetles or genocide, he will always emphasize that his subject is a big deal. He certainly is not going to dismiss AIDS as a minor disease or Chaucer as an overrated scribbler. Similarly, an atrocitologist goes hunting for data which proves how common genocide is, rather than how rare it is. When faced with a debatable, borderline case of genocide (such as whether a famine was caused by bad weather, human mismanagement or deliberate oppression -- or whether an air raid was a necessary act of war or a spiteful act of vengence), he's more inclined to accept the answer that brings it into his field of study, rather than the answer that removes it from his consideration.
- Most scholars prefer to err on the side of caution, but in atrocitology, "the side of caution" is actually found up among the bigger numbers. After all, the danger is not that the scholar will be shunned by decent folk for slandering the good name of Pol Pot or Idi Amin by falsely accusing them of killing twice or three times the number that they actually did kill. No, the real danger is that old skeletons will surface in some Third World hellhole, and that all the scholars who had earlier minimized the number of victims will be branded deniers, dupes and apologists. Therefore, academic reputations are best preserved by anticipating the worst right from the start. (hint: I've done this with my estimates for the number of deaths under Mao Zedong.)
- It's more psychologically rewarding to prosecute evil rather than defend it, and no normal person wants to belittle human suffering. (For example, do you think I like saying things like "No, Stalin only killed 20 million -- 30 million, tops"? "Only"!? Usually, 20 million murders is considered a bad thing, but in some circles, blaming him for 20 million deaths comes across as downright pro-Stalin. Do you think I like being accused of defending Stalin simply because I don't immediately accept the higher estimates?)
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Last updated November 1999
Copyright © 1999 Matthew White
Necrometrics
Death Tolls across history
Site Index
====================
============
1860-65: American civil war (360,000)
1886-1908: Belgium-Congo Free State (8 million)
1898: USA-Spain & Philippines (220,000)
1899-02: British-Boer war (100,000)
1899-03: Colombian civil war (120,000)
1899-02: Philippines vs USA (20,000)
1900-01: Boxer rebels against Russia, Britain, France, Japan, USA against rebels (35,000)
1903: Ottomans vs Macedonian rebels (20,000)
1904: Germany vs Namibia (65,000)
1904-05: Japan vs Russia (150,000)
1910-20: Mexican revolution (250,000)
1911: Chinese Revolution (2.4 million)
1911-12: Italian-Ottoman war (20,000)
1912-13: Balkan wars (150,000)
1915: the Ottoman empire slaughters Armenians (1.2 million)
1915-20: the Ottoman empire slaughters 500,000 Assyrians
1916-23: the Ottoman empire slaughters 350,000 Greek Pontians and 480,000 Anatolian Greeks
1914-18: World War I (20 million)
1916: Kyrgyz revolt against Russia (120,000)
1917-21: Soviet revolution (5 million)
1917-19: Greece vs Turkey (45,000)
1919-21: Poland vs Soviet Union (27,000)
1928-37: Chinese civil war (2 million)
1931: Japanese Manchurian War (1.1 million)
1932-33: Soviet Union vs Ukraine (10 million)
1932-35: "Guerra del Chaco" between Bolivia and Paraguay (117.500)
1934: Mao's Long March (170,000)
1936: Italy's invasion of Ethiopia (200,000)
1936-37: Stalin's purges (13 million)
1936-39: Spanish civil war (600,000)
1937-45: Japanese invasion of China (500,000)
1939-45: World War II (55 million) including holocaust and Chinese revolution
1946-49: Chinese civil war (1.2 million)
1946-49: Greek civil war (50,000)
1946-54: France-Vietnam war (600,000)
1947: Partition of India and Pakistan (1 million)
1947: Taiwan's uprising against the Kuomintang (30,000)
1948-1958: Colombian civil war (250,000)
1948-1973: Arab-Israeli wars (70,000)
1949-: Indian Muslims vs Hindus (20,000)
1949-50: Mainland China vs Tibet (1,200,000)
1950-53: Korean war (3 million)
1952-59: Kenya's Mau Mau insurrection (20,000)
1954-62: French-Algerian war (368,000)
1958-61: Mao's "Great Leap Forward" (38 million)
1960-90: South Africa vs Africa National Congress (?)
1960-96: Guatemala's civil war (200,000)
1961-98: Indonesia vs West Papua/Irian (100,000)
1961-2003: Kurds vs Iraq (180,000)
1962-75: Mozambique Frelimo vs Portugal (?)
1964-73: USA-Vietnam war (3 million)
1965: second India-Pakistan war over Kashmir
1965-66: Indonesian civil war (250,000)
1966-69: Mao's "Cultural Revolution" (11 million)
1966-: Colombia's civil war (31,000)
1967-70: Nigeria-Biafra civil war (800,000)
1968-80: Rhodesia's civil war (?)
1969-: Philippines vs the communist Bagong Hukbong Bayan/ New People's Army (40,000)
1969-79: Idi Amin, Uganda (300,000)
1969-02: IRA - Norther Ireland's civil war (2,000)
1969-79: Francisco Macias Nguema, Equatorial Guinea (50,000)
1971: Pakistan-Bangladesh civil war (500,000)
1972-: Philippines vs Muslim separatists (Moro Islamic Liberation Front, etc) (150,000)
1972: Burundi's civil war (300,000)
1972-79: Rhodesia/Zimbabwe's civil war (30,000)
1974-91: Ethiopian civil war (1,000,000)
1975-78: Menghitsu, Ethiopia (1.5 million)
1975-79: Khmer Rouge, Cambodia (1.7 million)
1975-89: Boat people, Vietnam (250,000)
1975-90: civil war in Lebanon (40,000)
1975-87: Laos' civil war (184,000)
1975-2002: Angolan civil war (500,000)
1976-83: Argentina's military regime (20,000)
1976-93: Mozambique's civil war (900,000)
1976-98: Indonesia-East Timor civil war (600,000)
1976-2005: Indonesia-Aceh (GAM) civil war (12,000)
1977-92: El Salvador's civil war (75,000)
1979: Vietnam-China war (30,000)
1979-88: the Soviet Union invades Afghanistan (1.3 million)
1980-88: Iraq-Iran war (1 million)
1980-92: Sendero Luminoso - Peru's civil war (69,000)
1984-: Kurds vs Turkey (35,000)
1981-90: Nicaragua vs Contras (60,000)
1982-90: Hissene Habre, Chad (40,000)
1983-: Sri Lanka's civil war (70,000)
1983-2002: Sudanese civil war (2 million)
1986-: Indian Kashmir's civil war (60,000)
1987-: Palestinian Intifada (4,500)
1988-2001: Afghanistan civil war (400,000)
1988-2004: Somalia's civil war (550,000)
1989-: Liberian civil war (220,000)
1989-: Uganda vs Lord's Resistance Army (30,000)
1991: Gulf War - large coalition against Iraq to liberate Kuwait (85,000)
1991-97: Congo's civil war (800,000)
1991-2000: Sierra Leone's civil war (200,000)
1991-2009: Russia-Chechnya civil war (200,000)
1991-94: Armenia-Azerbaijan war (35,000)
1992-96: Tajikstan's civil war war (50,000)
1992-96: Yugoslavian wars (260,000)
1992-99: Algerian civil war (150,000)
1993-97: Congo Brazzaville's civil war (100,000)
1993-2005: Burundi's civil war (200,000)
1994: Rwanda's civil war (900,000)
1995-: Pakistani Sunnis vs Shiites (1,300)
1995-: Maoist rebellion in Nepal (12,000)
1998-: Congo/Zaire's war - Rwanda and Uganda vs Zimbabwe, Angola and Namibia (3.8 million)
1998-2000: Ethiopia-Eritrea war (75,000)
1999: Kosovo's liberation war - NATO vs Serbia (2,000)
2001-: Afghanistan's liberation war - USA & UK vs Taliban (40,000)
2002-: Cote d'Ivoire's civil war (1,000)
2003: Second Iraq-USA war - USA, UK and Australia vs Saddam Hussein (14,000)
2003-09: Sudan vs JEM/Darfur (300,000)
2003-: Iraq's civil war (60,000)
2004-: Sudan vs SPLM & Eritrea (?)
2004-: Yemen vs Shiite Muslims (?)
2004-: Thailand vs Muslim separatists (3,700)
Arab-Israeli wars:
- I (1947-49): 6,373 Israeli and 15,000 Arabs die
- II (1956): 231 Israeli and 3,000 Egyptians die
- III (1967): 776 Israeli and 20,000 Arabs die
- IV (1973): 2,688 Israeli and 18,000 Arabs die
- Intifada I (1987-92): 170 Israelis and 1,000 Palestinians
- Intifada II (2000-03): 700 Israelis and 2,000 Palestinians
- Israel-Hamas war (2008): 1,300 Palestinians
Source for below: http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/war-list.htm
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstatx.htm
Wars of the Twentieth Century
Approximately 35 to 40 million soldiers have died in the wars of the Twentieth Century, nearly three quarters of them in the two World Wars. The biggest wars of this century have been...
|
Military Death Toll
|
War
|
Dates
|
|
1
|
20,000,000
|
Second World War
|
1937-45
|
|
2
|
8,500,000
|
First World War
|
1914-18
|
|
3
|
1,200,000
|
Korean War
|
1950-53
|
|
4
|
1,200,000
|
Chinese Civil War
|
1945-49
|
|
5
|
1,200,000
|
Vietnam War
|
1965-73
|
|
6
|
850,000
|
Iran-Iraq War
|
1980-88
|
|
7
|
800,000
|
Russian Civil War
|
1918-21
|
|
8
|
400,000
|
Chinese Civil War
|
1927-37
|
|
9
|
385,000
|
French Indochina
|
1945-54
|
|
10
|
200,000
|
Mexican Revolution
|
1911-20
|
|
10
|
200,000
|
Spanish Civil War
|
1936-39
|
|
12
|
160,000
|
French-Algerian War
|
1954-62
|
|
13
|
150,000
|
Afghanistan
|
1980-89
|
|
14
|
130,000
|
Russo-Japanese War
|
1904-05
|
|
15
|
100,000
|
Riffian War
|
1921-26
|
|
15
|
100,000
|
First Sudanese Civil War
|
1956-72
|
|
15
|
100,000
|
Russo-Polish War
|
1919-20
|
|
15
|
100,000
|
Biafran War
|
1967-70
|
|
19
|
90,000
|
Chaco War
|
1932-35
|
|
20
|
75,000
|
Abyssinian War
|
1935-36
|
Death Tolls for the Multicides of the Twentieth Century
Alphabetical Index (A-J)
|
... when David returned from the slaughter of the Philistine, the women came out of all the cities of Israel, singing and dancing, to meet King Saul, with timbrels, with songs of joy, and with instruments of music. And the women sang to one another as they made merry.
"Saul has slain his thousands
And David his ten thousands"
And Saul was very angry, and this saying displeased him; he said "They have ascribed to David ten thousands, and to me they have ascribed but thousands..." And Saul eyed David from that day on.
1 Samuel 18:6-9
|
|
A, B
|
C
|
D, E
|
F, G
|
H, I
|
J
|
|
K, L
|
M, N, O
|
P, Q, R
|
S, T
|
U, V
|
W, X, Y, Z
|
(Entries in Italics indicate events which occured before the Twentieth Century)
- 100 Years War, 1337-1453
- 1812, War of
- 1848, Revolutions of
- 30 Years War, 1618-48
- 6 Day War, 1967
- 7 Years War, 1755-63
- 9/11 (2001)
- Abyssinia, see Ethiopia
- Accidents (for comparison)
- Aden, see Yemen
- Afghanistan
- African Diaspora
- AIDS (for comparison)
- Air Raids
- Albania & Albanians
- Alexander the Great, 336-323 BCE
- Algeria
- America, see United States
- American Indians, see Indians, American
- Amin, Idi, r. 1971-79
- Amritsar Massacre
- Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902
- Angola
- Apartheid
- Arabs
- Algeria, 1954-62
- Arab Outbreak, 7th Century CE
- Arab-Israeli Wars, 1947-73
- Crusades, 1095-1291
- Gulf War, 1990-91
- Iraqi Shiites, 1991-92
- Iran-Iraq War, 1980-88
- Jordan, 1970-71
- Lebanon, 1975-92
- Palestine, Revolt 1936-39
- Saddam Hussein, 1979-2003
- Slave Trade, 1500-1850
- Sudan, 1955-72
- Sudan, 1983-
- Wahhabis, 1790s-1800s
- Yemen, 1962-69
- Zanzibar, 1964
- Argentina
- Armenia
- Arras, 2nd Battle of
- Assad, Hafez al-, 1971-2000
- Atlantic, Battle of the
- Auschwitz
- Australia
- Austria
- Thirty Years War, 1618-48
- Habsburg-Ottoman War, 1682-99
- Venetian-Austro-Turkish War, 1714-18
- War of the Quadruple Alliance, 1718-20
- War of The Austrian Succession, 1740-48
- War of The Spanish Succession, 1701-13
- Seven Years War, 1755-63
- French Revolutionary Wars, 1792-1802
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- Revolutions of 1848 (incl. Hungary)
- Seven Weeks War, 1866
- First World War, 1914-18
- Fascist vs. Socialist, 1934
- Second World War, 1939-45
- Authorities
- Azerbaijan, 1991 et seq.
- Aztecs
- Babi Yar, 1941
- Bagration, Operation
- Baha'is, 1848-54
- Balkan Wars, 1912-13
- Bangladesh
- Bataan Death March, 1942
- Battles
- Belgian Congo, see Congo - Kinshasa
- Belgium
- Belzec
- Berlin
- Biafra, 1967-70
- Bible
- Bibliography
- Bloodiest ____: see Rankings
- Boat People
- Boer War, 1899-1902
- Bokassa, Jean Bedel, r. 1965-79
- Bolivia
- Bombing, see Air Raids or Terrorism
- Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992-95
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Brazil
- Indians, 1900-1985
- Rubber Companies, 1900-1912
- Paolistas, 1932
- Second World War, 1942-45
- Military Regime, 1964-85
- Rightist terrorism, 1980
- Death Squads, 1985-91
- Yanomami Indians, 1987-91
- Police killings, 1998-99
- War of the Triple Alliance, 1864-70
- Canudos, 1897-98
- British Empire, see United Kingdom
- Bulgaria
- Bulge, Battle of the
- Burma
- Burundi, 1959-95
- Byzantine Empire
- Cambodia
- Cameroon, 1960s
- Canada
- Capitalism (selected)
- Castro, Fidel, r. 1959-
- Central African Republic/Empire
- Central American Wars (International)
- Century
- Chaco War, 1932-35
- Chad
- Charlemagne, r.768-814
- Chechens
- Chiang Kai-shek, fl. 1921-48
- Chicago
- Chile
- China
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Revolutionary Era, 1911-14
- Wars with Tibet
- Warlord Era , 1917-28
- Nationalist Era, 1928-37
- Manchuria, 1931-33
- Sino-Japanese War, 1937-45
- Chinese Civil War, 1945-49
- Mao Zedong, 1949-1975
- Korean War, 1950-53
- Sino-Indian War, 1962
- Sino-Soviet War, 1963-69
- Sino-Vietnamese War, 1979
- Executions, 1983-84
- Tienamen Square, 1989
- Before the 19th Century
- Shang China, ca. 1300-1050 BCE
- Qin Shihuangdi, First Emperor, 221-210 BCE
- Xin Dynasty/Red Eyebrows Revolt, 9-24 CE
- Yellow Turban Revolt, 184 CE
- Three Kingdoms, 189-280 CE
- An Lushan Revolt, 755 CE
- Fang La Rebellion, 1120-22
- Mongol Conquest, 1200s
- Fall of the Yuan Dynasty, 1300s
- Ming fall, Manchu conquest, 1600s
- White Lotus, 1796-1805
- Mid-Nineteenth Century Mess
- Chinese Diaspora (ethnic Chinese living outside China)
- Christians
- Civil War
- Colombia
- Colonial Conflicts and Oppression (selected, chronological)
- Slave Trade, 1450-1850
- American Indians, 1492-1900
- Batavia, 1740
- Australian Aborigines, 1788-1921
- Sainte-Domingue, revolt, 1791-1803
- South American independence (Spain)
- Mexico, 1810-21 (Spain)
- Java, 1825 (Neth.)
- Algeria, 1839-47 (France)
- Maori War, 1860-72 (UK)
- Ten Years War, Cuba, 1868-78 (Spain)
- Anglo-Zulu War, 1879
- Cuban Revolution, 1895-98 (Spain)
- Sepoy Mutiny, 1857
- Congo Free State, 1886-1906
- Philippines, 1899-1902 (USA)
- Boer War, 1899-1902 (British)
- Forced Labor
- Herero, 1904-07 (German)
- Maji-Maji, 1905-07 (German)
- Morocco, 1909-10 (Spanish)
- Libya, 1911-31 (Italian)
- British India, 1918-38
- Morocco, 1921-26 (Spanish, French)
- Abyssinia, 1935-41 (Italian)
- Dutch East Indies, 1945-49
- French Indochina , 1945-54
- Madagascar, 1947 (French)
- Mau-Mau, 1952-56 (British)
- Algeria, 1954-62 (French)
- Portuguese Guinea, 1961-74
- Angola, 1961-75 (Portuguese)
- Portuguese East Africa, 1961-75
- (For additional items, see specific colonial nations in this Index)
- Communism
- 20th Century Total
- Selected regimes:
- Selected conflicts:
- (For additional items, see specific countries and events in this Index)
- Congo
- Congo Major (SKA "Belgian Congo", "Zaire", "Congo-Kinshasa", "Democratic Republic of the C.")
- Congo Minor (SKA "French Congo", "Congo-Brazzaville", "People's Republic of the C.")
- Costa Rica
- Crimean War, 1853-56
- Croatia
- Crusades, 1095-1291
- Cuba
- Cyprus
- Czechoslovakia
- D-Day
- Deadliest ____: see Rankings
- Denmark
- Desaparecidos, 1970s and 80s
- Desert Storm, Operation, 1990-91
- Dominican Republic
- Doubtful events
- NOTE: Probably every atrocity statistic is denied, minimized or rejected by someone, but these body counts are even more widely doubted than most:
- Dracula
- Dresden, 1945
- Drugs
- Dutch, see Netherlands
- Duvalier, Papa Doc, 1957-71
- Earthquakes
- East Indies, see Indonesia and Malaya
- East Timor, 1975 et seq.
- Ecuador
- Egypt
- Eighteenth Century
- El Salvador
- England
- Equatorial Guinea, 1969-79
- Eritrea
- Ethiopia
- European Wars, Generally (selected)
- Carolingian Succession
- Hundred Years War, 1337-1453
- Spanish Armada, 1588
- Thirty Years War, 1618-48
- War of the League of Augsburg, 1688-97
- Great Northern War, 1700-21
- War of The Spanish Succession, 1701-13
- War of the Quadruple Alliance, 1718-20
- War of The Austrian Succession, 1740-48
- Seven Years War, 1755-63
- French Revolutionary Wars, 1792-1802
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- Crimean War, 1853-56
- Seven Weeks War, 1866
- Franco-Prussian War, 1871-72
- First World War, 1914-18
- Second World War, 1939-45
- (For additional items, see specific countries and events in this Index)
- Falkland War, 1982
- Famines (selected)
- FAQ
- Fascists (selected)
- Finland
- First World War, see World War
- Flu Epidemic, 1918-19
- Football War, 1969
- France
- Algeria
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Chad, 1982-
- French Equatorial Africa
- Indochina
- Korean War, 1951-53
- Lebanon: 1925-27, 1983
- Madagascar, 1947
- Morocco: 1909-11, 1917-18, 1921-26, 1953-56
- Russian Civil War, 1918-20
- Syria 1920
- Thailand, 1940-41
- Tunisia: 1952-54, 1961
- World Wars
- Before the 20th Century
- Charlemagne, r.768-814
- Albigensian Crusade, 1208-49
- Sicilian Vespers, 1282
- 100 Years War, 1337-1453
- Huguenot Wars, 1562-1598
- Fronde, 1648-53
- American Revolution, 1775-1783
- French Revolution, 1793-94
- Algeria, 1839-47
- Revolution of 1848
- Crimean War, 1853-56
- Mexican War, 1862-67
- Franco-Prussian War, 1871-72
- Franco, Francisco, r. 1939-75
- French and Indian War, 1754-63
- French Equatorial Africa, 1921-32
- Gallipoli, Battle of, 1915-16
- Gambia, 1981
- Genghis Khan, r. 1206-27
- Georgia, 1992-93
- Germany
- Charlemagne, r.768-814
- Peasants' War, 1524-25
- Thirty Years War, 1618-48
- Seven Years War, 1755-63
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- Seven Weeks War, 1866
- Franco-Prussian War, 1871-72
- East Africa, Maji-Maji Revolt, 1905-07
- Southwest Africa, Herero War, 1904-07
- First World War, 1914-18
- Battles: 2nd Aisne, 2nd Arras, Belleau Wood, Battle of the Frontiers, Jutland, 1st Marne, 2nd Marne, Meuse-Argonne, Passchendaele, Somme, Tannenburg, Verdun, 1st Ypres
- Post-WW1 uprisings, 1919
- Nazi vs. Socialist, 1934
- Nazi regime, 1933-45
- Spanish Civil War, 1936-39
- Second World War, 1939-45
- Air Raids: by Allies generally, Belgrade, Berlin, Dresden, Hamburg, London, Stalingrad
- Battles: Anzio, Ardennes, Battle of the Atlantic, Operation Bagration, 1st Belorussia, Berlin, Battle of Britain, Donbass, 2nd El Alamein, Kiev, Kursk, Leningrad, Market-Garden, Monte Casino, Moscow, Normandy, North Caucasus, Rzhev-Vyazma, Seelow Heights, 1st Smolensk, Stalingrad, Warsaw, 1st West Ukraine, 2nd West Ukraine
- Campaigns: Balkans, Eastern Front, France 1940, Greece, Italy, North Africa, NW Europe 1944-45, Poland 1939
- Post-WW2 expulsions from east Europe, 1945-47
- East Germany, 1948-91
- Ghana, 1981-93
- Government: FAQ (Is government responsible for all these deaths?)
- Great Britain, see United Kingdom
- Greece
- Grenada, 1983
- Guadalcanal, Battle of, 1942-43
- Guatemala
- Gulag
- Gulf War
- Guinea
- Guinea-Bissau, 1962-74
- Gun Control
- Guyana, Jonestown suicide, 1978
- Gypsies, Holocaust, 1937-45
- Haiti
- Herero War, German Southwest Africa, 1904-07
- Herod, Slaughter of the Innocents
- Hiroshima, 1945
- Hitler, Adolf, r.1933-45
- Holocaust, 1938-45
- Holy Land
- Homicide
- Honduras
- Human Sacrifice
- Hundred Years War, 1337-1453
- Hungary
- Hurricanes
- Hussein, Saddam (r. 1979-2003)
- Imperialism (see Colonial Conflicts)
- India
- First World War, 1914-18
- Uprisings against UK, 1918-38
- Second World War, 1939-45
- Partition Violence, 1947
- Hyderabad, 1948
- Sino-Indian War, 1962
- Naxalites, 1968-
- Bangladeshi War of Independence, 1971
- Assam, 1978-
- Sikh uprising, 1982-91
- Religious riots, 1992-2002
- Kashmir
- Before the 20th C
- Indians, American
- Indochina
- Indonesia
- Influenza Epidemic, 1918-19
- Iran, AKA Persia
- Iraq
- Uprising , 1920
- Kurds
- Coups, 1959-66
- Purge, 1968
- Saddam Hussein, 1979-2003
- Iran-Iraq War, 1980-88
- Gulf War, 1990-91
- International Embargo, 1990-2003
- Shia Rebellion, 1991-93
- Bombing, 1998
- American Occupation, 2003
- Ireland
- Islam, see Religious Conflicts or individual nations.
- Israel
- Italy
- Ezzelino da Romano, fl.1240s
- Sicilian Vespers, 1282
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- Revolutions of 1848
- Italo-Turkish War, 1911-12
- Libya, 1911-31
- First World War, 1914-18
- Mussolini, r. 1922-43
- Ethiopia, 1935-41
- Spanish Civil War, 1936-39
- Second World War, 1940-45
- Ivory Coast, 2002-
- Iwo Jima, Battle of, 1945
- Jamaica, 1980
- Jasenovac
- Japan
- Shimabara Revolt 1637-38
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05
- Korea
- First World War, 1914-18
- Russian Civil War, 1918-20
- Manchuria, 1931-33
- Changkufeng Incident, 1938
- Mongolia, 1939
- Second World War, 1937-45
- Casualties
- Pacific War, 1941-45
- SE Asia
- Battles: Guadalcanal, Guam, Iwo Jima, Leyte, Leyte Gulf, Manchuria, Midway, Okinawa, Peleliu, Saipan
- Atrocities: Bataan Death March, Manila Massacre
- Air raids: Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo
- Jews
- Jones, Jim, 1978
- Jordan
- Jutland, Battle of, 1916
- Kashmir
- Kenya
- Khomeini, Ayatullah Ruhollah, r. 1979-89
- Kolyma
- Korea
- Kosovo, 1998-99
- Kurds
- Kursk, Battle of, 1943
- Laos
- Latvia
- Lebanon
- Lenin, r. 1917-24
- Leningrad, Battle of, 1941-44
- Liberia, 1989-96
- Libya
- Lithuania
- Luxemburg
- Macedonia
- Madagascar, revolt, 1947
- Majdanek
- Maji-Maji Revolt, German East Africa, 1905-07
- Malawi, 1964-94
- Malaysia
- Manchuria
- Mao Zedong, r. 1949-1975
- Mau-Mau uprising, 1952-56
- Mauritania
- Medical Mistakes, 1999
- Mexico
- Indians, 1500s
- Independence, 1810-21
- Texas, 1835-36
- Mexican-American War, 1846-48
- Yucatan Maya, 1847-55
- Maximilian, 1862-67
- Mexican Revolution, 1910-20
- Uprising, 1923-24
- Cristeros, 1926-30
- Disappearances, 1970-85
- US Border, 1997-
- Drug War, 2006-
- Mobutu Sese Seko (r. 1965-97)
- Moldova, 1991-97
- Mongolia
- Mongols
- Morocco
- Most ____ (see Rankings)
- Mozambique
- Mussolini, Benito, r. 1922-43
- Myanmar, see Burma
- Nagasaki, 1945
- Nagorno-Karabakh, 1991 et seq.
- Namibia
- Nanking Massacre, 1937-38
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- Naval Battles (including joint land-air-sea battles)
- Nazism, 1933-45
- Nepal, 1996-
- Netherlands
- New Guinea
- New Zealand
- Nicaragua
- Nigeria
- Nineteenth Century
- Normandy, Battle of, 1944
- North Korea, see Korea
- North Vietnam, see Vietnam
- North Yemen, see Yemen
- Northern Ireland, 1974-98
- Norway
- Okinawa, Battle of, 1945
- Ottoman Empire, see Turkey
- Pacific War
- Pakistan
- Palestinians
- Panama, 1989
- Papua New Guinea, 1989 et seq.
- Paraguay
- Passchendaele, Battle of, 1917
- Persia, see Iran
- Persian Wars, 499-448 BCE
- Peru
- Philippines
- Pol Pot, r.1975-78
- Poland
- War with USSR, 1919-20
- War with Lithuania, 1920
- Second World War
- Military operations: 1939 Conquest, Italian Campaign, Market-Garden, NW Europe 1944-45, Normandy, Operation Bagration, Warsaw
- Atrocities: Auschwitz, Belzec, Chelmno, Holocaust, Katyn, Majdanek, Sobibor, Treblinka, Warsaw
- Post-WW2 expulsions of Germans, 1945-47
- Communist Regime, 1948-91
- Chmielnicki Rebellion, 1648-54
- Portugal
- Primitive War
- Prussia, see Germany
- Quadruple Alliance, War of the, 1718-20
- Questionable Accusations, see Doubtful Events
- Racism. Since race as a collection of physical traits is not really a scientific concept, it's difficult to distinguish between purely racial conflicts and all your other garden-variety ethnic conflicts. Whether a conflict is racist or not seems to depend entirely on whether the enemy originated just across the mountains or half a world away. Generally, what people mean by racism is probably covered by African Diaspora, Apartheid, Colonial Activities and Indians.
- Railroads
- Rankings
- Religious Conflicts (selected)
- Generally speaking, in most of the following cases, religion is both the stated cause of the killing and the only substantive difference between the two opposing groups. Obviously, there would be many additional conflicts where religion is just one of several divisions.
- Albigensian Crusade, 1208-49
- Algeria, 1992-
- Aztecs
- Baha'is, 1848-54
- Bosnia, 1992-95
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Christian Romans, 30-313 CE
- Croatia, 1991-92
- Early Christian doctrinal disputes
- English Civil War, 1642-46
- Holocaust, 1938-45
- Huguenot Wars, 1562-1598
- India, 1992-2002
- India: Suttee & Thugs
- Indo-Pakistani Partition, 1947
- Iran, Islamic Republic, 1979-
- Iraq, Shiites, 1991-92
- Jews, 1348
- Jonestown, 1978
- Korea, 1700s
- Lebanon
- Martyrs, generally
- Molucca Is., 1999-
- Mongolia, 1937-39
- Northern Ireland, 1974-98
- Responsibility generally (Is religion responsible for more deaths than ...?)
- Russian pogroms:
- St. Bartholemew Massacre, 1572
- Shang China, ca. 1300-1050 BCE
- Shimabara Revolt, Japan 1637-38
- Sikh uprising, India, 1984-91
- Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1834
- Sudan 1881-98
- Taiping Rebellion, 1850-64
- Thirty Years War, 1618-48
- Tudor England
- Vietnam, 1800s
- Witch Hunts, 1400-1800
- Xhosa, 1857
- In addition, here are a few noteworthy conflicts where dissimilar ethnic groups fought for primarily religious reasons:
- Revolutionary War
- Rhodesia
- Roma, Holocaust, 1939-45
- Roman Empire, 500 BCE - 476 CE
- Romania
- Rubber Companies
- Rumania, see Romania
- Russia
- Ivan the Terrible, r.1533-84
- Time of Troubles, 1598-1613
- Razin Rebellion, 1667-71
- Peter the Great, r.1682-1721
- Northern War, 1700-21
- Bulavin's Revolt, 1707-08
- Seven Years War, 1755-63
- Pugachov Revolt, 1773-74
- French Revolutionary Wars, 1792-1802
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- Russo-Turkish Wars: 1806-12, 1828-29, 1877-78
- Crimean War, 1853-56
- Romanov Regime, 1900-17
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05
- Persia, 1908-09
- Kirghiz massacre, 1916
- First World War, 1914-18
- Revolution, 1917
- Civil War, 1917-22
- Post-Communist Russia
- Chechnya, 1994 et seq.
- see Union of Soviet Socialist Republics for the years, 1922-1991
- Russo-Japanese War, 1904-05
- Rwanda
- Saddam Hussein (r. 1979-2003)
- Salvador, see El Salvador
- Saudi Arabia
- Scapegoats
- Second World War, see World War
- Serbia
- Senegal, 1982-
- Seven Years War, 1755-63
- Sierra Leone, 1991-
- Sikhs
- Sino-____ War, see China
- Six Day War, 1967
- Slavery
- Smallpox
- Smoking
- Sobibor
- Soccer War, 1969
- Somalia
- Somme, Battle of, 1916
- Sources
- South Africa
- Mfecane, early 1800s
- Zulus, 1856
- Xhosa, 1857
- Anglo-Zulu War, 1879
- Anglo-Boer War, 1899-1902
- Zulu Revolt, 1905
- Second World War, 1940-45
- Apartheid Regime, 1948-93
- Namibia, 1975-90
- Angola, 1975-95
- South Korea, see Korea
- South Vietnam, see Vietnam
- South Yemen, see Yemen
- Soviet Union, see Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
- Spain
- Spanish Inquisition, 1478-1834
- Dutch Revolt, 1566-1609
- Spanish Armada, 1588
- American Revolution, 1775-1783
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- South American independence, 1810-23
- Mexico, 1810-21
- Carlist Wars
- Cuba
- Morocco
- Asturias Miners, 1934
- Spanish Civil War, 1936-39
- Second World War, 1940-45
- Basques, 1961 et seq.
- Madrid, 2004
- Spanish Flu, 1918-19
- Spanish Succession, War of the, 1701-13
- Spelling
- Sri Lanka
- Stalin, r. 1924-53
- Stalingrad
- Sudan
- Suez Crisis, 1956
- Sweden
- Syria
- Taiwan
- Tajikstan, 1992-96
- Tamerlane, d.1405
- Tannenburg, Battle of, 1914
- Tanzania
- Terrorism (selected)
- Texas War of Independence, 1835-36
- Thailand
- Thirty Years War, 1618-48
- Thuggee, 13th-19th C
- Tibet
- Timor, East, 1975 et seq.
- Timur, d.1405
- Tito, r. 1944-87
- Tobacco
- Tojo Hideki, r. 1941-45
- Tokyo Air Raid, 1945
- Total for the ...
- Treblinka
- Trojan War
- Tunisia
- Turkey
- Macedonia, 1903
- Italo-Turkish War, 1911-12
- Balkan Wars, 1912-13
- First World War, 1914-18
- Armenians, 1915-23
- Greco-Turkish War, 1919-1922
- Kurdistan
- Korean War, 1950-53
- Cyprus, 1974
- Extremists, 1975-80
- Military Regime, 1980-87
- Before the 20th C.
- 16th Century, 1500s
- 17th Century, 1600s
- Habsburg-Ottoman War, 1682-99
- Venetian-Austro-Turkish War, 1714-18
- War with Persia, 1720s
- Egypt, 1805-11
- Greek Revolution, 1821-28
- Russo-Turkish Wars: 1806-12, 1828-29, 1877-78
- Crimean War, 1853-56
- Lebanon, 1860
- Bulgaria, 1876
- Armenia, 1895-96
- Twentieth Century
- Twenty-first Century
- Uganda
- Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
- Russian Civil War and Lenin, 1917-22
- War with Poland, 1919-20
- Stalin, 1924-53
- Gulags etc.: Kolyma, Kuropaty, Vorkuta, Bykivnia
- Sino-Soviet War, 1929
- Changkufeng Incident, 1938
- Mongolia, 1939
- War with Finland, 1939-40
- Second World War, 1940-45
- Casualties: Poland 1939, Great Patriotic War
- Atrocities: Holocaust, Babi Yar, Odessa
- Major battles: Operation Bagration, 1st Belorussia, Berlin, Donbass, Kiev, Kursk, Leningrad, Manchuria, Moscow, North Caucasus, Rzhev-Vyazma, Seelow Heights, 1st Smolensk, Stalingrad, 1st West Ukraine, 2nd West Ukraine
- Occupation of Iran, 1945-47
- Hungarian Uprising, 1956
- Sino-Soviet War, 1963-69
- Afghanistan, 1979-95
- Former USSR: Chechnya, Georgia, Moldova, Nagorno-Karabakh, Tajikstan
- United Kingdom
- Before 1707, see England
- Jacobite Rebellion, 1715-16
- French and Indian War, 1754-63
- American Revolution, 1775-1783
- Napoleonic Wars, 1802-15
- Anglo-American War, 1812-15
- 1st Sikh War, 1845-46
- Crimean War, 1853-56
- Sepoy Mutiny, 1857
- Maori War, 1860-72
- Anglo-Zulu War, 1879
- Boer War, 1899-1902
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Mad Mullah, 1899-1920
- War with Tibet, 1904
- Kenya, 1905
- Zulu Revolt, 1905
- Satiru Massacre, Nigeria, 1906
- World War I, 1914-18
- Nigeria, 1918
- Russian Civil War, 1918-20
- Amritsar Massacre, India, 1919
- Iraq, 1920
- Burma, 1930-32
- World War II, 1939-45
- Dutch East Indies, 1945-46
- Palestine, 1945-48
- Malaya, 1948-60
- Korean War, 1950-53
- Mau-Mau uprising, 1952-56
- Suez, 1954
- Cyprus, 1955-59
- Malaysia, 1962
- Aden, 1963-67
- Northern Ireland, 1969-
- Falkland War, 1982
- Iraq, 2003
- United States of America
- American Military History, Generally
- King Philip's War, 1675-76
- French and Indian War, 1754-63
- Revolutionary War, 1775-1783
- Indian Wars, 1776-1890: collectively, individually
- War of 1812, 1812-15
- Creek War
- Seminole War, 1835-42
- Texas War of Independence, 1835-36
- Mexican War, 1846-48
- Walker Fillibuster, 1856-57
- Civil War, 1860-65
- Reconstruction, 1865-76
- Spanish-American War, 1898
- Lynchings, 1882-64
- Philippine Insurgency, 1899-1902
- Boxer Rebellion, 1899-1901
- Mexican Revolution, 1910-20
- World War I, 1917-18
- Haiti, 1918-20
- Russian Civil War, 1918-20
- Chicago gang wars, 1920s
- Nicaragua, 1926-33
- Spanish Civil War, 1936-39
- World War II, 1941-45
- Casualties: Burma, Italy, North Africa, NW Europe, Pacific
- Major battles: Anzio, Battle of the Atlantic, Bulge, Guadalcanal, Guam, Iwo Jima, Leyte, Leyte Gulf, Market-Garden, Midway, Monte Casino, Normandy, Okinawa, Pearl Harbor, Peleliu, Saipan
- Atrocities
- Air raids: Berlin, Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, Tokyo
- Korean War, 1950-53
- Dominican Republic, 1965
- Vietnam War, 1965-73
- Lebanon, 1983
- Grenada, 1983
- Panama, 1989
- Gulf War, 1990-91
- War on Terrorism, 1993-
- Kosovo, 1998
- Afghanistan, 2001-
- Iraq, 2003-
- Non-Wars, for comparison:
- Unlikeliest Accusations, see Doubtful Events
- Uruguay
- Venezuela
- Verdun, Battle of, 1916
- Vietnam
- World War 2, 1941-45
- Indochina War, 1945-54
- North Vietnam, 1954-75
- South Vietnam, Diem, 1955-63
- Vietnam War, 1965-75
- Post-War, 1975-87
- Laos, 1975-87
- Cambodia
- Sino-Vietnamese War, 1979
- Christians, 1800s
- Violencia, Colombia, 1946-58
- Vlad the Impaler, r.1456-62
- Vorkuta
- Western Sahara
- Witch Hunts, 1400-1800
- World Trade Center, 1993, 2001
- World Wars
- Worst ____ (see Rankings)
- Yemen
- North Yemen (s.k.a. "Kingdom of Yemen", "Yemen Arab Republic")
- South Yemen (s.k.a. "Aden", "Federation of South Arabia", "People's Republic of Southern Yemen")
- Yom Kippur War, 1973
- Yugoslavia
- Zaire, see Congo
- Zambia, 1964
- Zanzibar, 1964
- Zimbabwe
- Zulus
Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Primary Megadeaths of the Twentieth Century
Alphabetical Index
Site Index
Elsewhere, I defined the Hemoclysm as that string of interconnected barbarities which made the Twentieth Century so fascinating for historians and so miserable for real people. Here, I have listed the sources for determing the body count for the biggest of these, the events that probably killed more than 5 million apiece.
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Congo Free State (1886-1908): 8 000 000 [make link]
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- Roger Casement's original 1904 report estimated that as many as 3 million Congolese had died of disease, torture or shooting since 1888 (cited in Gilbert's History of the Twentieth Century; also in Colin Legum, Congo Disaster (1972)).
- E.D. Morel estimated that the Congo’s population began with an original 20 or 30 million, and bottomed out at a mere 8 million. Morel, The Black Man's Burden, 1920, Chapter 9 ("[W]hen the country had been explored in every direction by travellers of divers nationalities, estimates varied between twenty and thirty millions. No estimate fell below twenty millions. In 1911 an official census was taken. It was not published in Belgium, but was reported in one of the British Consular dispatches. It revealed that only eight and a half million people were left."). This estimate also appears in
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, 15th edition, "Congo Free State," v.3, p.535
- Bertrand Russell, Freedom and organization 1814-1914 (first published, George Allen & 1934) p.453 in the 2001 Routledge ed., citing Sir H. H. Johnston, The Colonization of Africa (Cambridge Historical Series) p. 352
- Fredric Wertham A Sign For Cain : A Exploration of Human Violence (1966): the population of the Congo dropped dropped from 30M to 8.5M, a loss of 21.5 million
- Peter Forbath, The River Congo (1977) p.375: "at least 5 million people were killed in the Congo."
- John Gunther (Inside Africa (1953)): 5-8 million deaths.
- Adam Hochschild (Leopold's Ghost, (1998)): 10 million, or half the original population.
- Rummel:
- 2,150,000 democides, 19th Century (based on 10% of Wertham)
- 25,000 democides, 1900-1910.
- AVERAGE:
- Median: ca. 8M
- Mean: ca. 8.5M
- NOTE: Because this event began in 1886, it tend to get relegated to the 19th Century; however, 40% of it occured in the 20th Century, so we need to keep this in mind when splitting the death toll into century-based subtotals. Also, it took awhile for the atrocities to get up to speed, so the dying probably intensified as more time passed.
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First World War (1914-18): 15 000 000 [make link]
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WW1 Soldiers
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- This is the only major bloodletting which has pretty much the same body count no matter which source I check: 8,500,000 military deaths. It all goes back to a report issued by the U.S. War Dept. in Feb. 1924, amended by the Statistical Services Center, Office of the Secretary of Defense on 7 Nov. 1957, which everyone ("everyone" = Brzezinski, Britannica, Norman Davies, Encarta, Gilbert, Hammond, Small & Singer, Wallechinsky) more or less agrees with. Among my major sources, only Eckhardt and Urlanis diverge from the mainstream. In The Defeat of Imperial Germany 1917-1918, Rod Paschall cites a study by Arthur Banks. I've also consulted John Ellis & Michael Cox, The World War I Databook ("E&C"):
- Austria-Hungary: 1,100,000 (Urlanis); 1,200,000 (everyone, Paschall); 2,300,000 (Eckhardt)
- E&C cite two different tables in the Austrian Official History, giving total killed as either 1,016,200 k. or 539,630 k. Neither includes 478,000 who died as POWs.
- Belgium: 13,716 (Britannica, Compton's, Daivies, Hammond, Tucker); 38,000 (Urlanis); 87,500 (S&S -- although it seems to me that they have confused "Belg." with "Bulg."; see 2 lines down.); 88,000 (Eckhardt)
- Britain & Empire: 908,371 (everyone); 997,000 (Paschall)
- Africans: 38,723 laborers and porters died in hospital in East Africa 1917-18 (E&C)
- Australia: 53,560 KIA + 6,300 other deaths = 59,860 (E&C); 60,000 (Eckhardt; Urlanis); 61,720 (AWM)
- Canada: 55,000 (Eckhardt); 61,000 (Urlanis); 58,990 KIA + 3,830 other deaths = 62,820 (E&C)
- India: 25,000 (Eckhardt); 54,000 (Urlanis)
- New Zealand: 16,000 (Eckhardt; Urlanis); 16,710 (E&C)
- UK: 702,410 (E&C); 715,000 (Urlanis); 1,000,000 (Eckhardt)
- South Africa: 7,000 (Urlanis); 7,120 (E&C: whites only)
- Bulgaria: 14,000 (S&S-c.f. Belgium); 28,000 (Eckhardt); 75,844 (Tucker); 87,500 (Britannica, Davies, Compton's); 88,000 (Urlanis); 90,000 (Hammond); 95,000 (Paschall); 77,450 KIA + >24,500 other deaths = 101,950 (E&C)
- France & Empire: 1,327,000 (Urlanis); 1,357,800 (everyone); 1,385,300 (E&C); 1,390,000 (Paschall); 1,630,000 (Eckhardt)
- French Colonies: 58,000 (E&C); 114,000 (Urlanis)
- Germany: 1,773,700 (everyone); 1,850,000 (Paschall); 2,037,000 (E&C, Urlanis); 2,400,000 (Eckhardt)
- Greece: 5,000 (everyone; Eckhardt, E&C); 26,000 (Urlanis)
- Italy: 460,000 (Paschall); 462,391 (Tucker); 462,400 (E&C); 578,000 (Urlanis); 600,000 (Hammond); 650,000 (Britannica, Davies, Compton's, S&S); 950,000 (Eckhardt)
- Japan: 300 (everyone)
- Montenegro: 3,000 (everyone)
- Portugal: 7,000 (Urlanis); 7,220 (E&C, incl. 5,550 in Africa); 7,222 (everyone); 13,000 (Eckhardt)
- Romania: 219,800 (E&C: incl. 70,500 who died as POWs); 250,000 (Urlanis); 340,000 (Paschall); 335,706 (everyone); 375,000 (Eckhardt)
- Russia: 1,700,000 (everyone, Paschall); 1,800,000 (E&C); 1,811,000 (Urlanis); 2,950,000 (Eckhardt)
- Serbia: 45,000 (Tucker, Hammond, Britannica, Compton's), 48,000 (S&S), 70,000 (Davies); 127,500 (E&C: incl. sickness); 128,000 (Eckhardt: "Yugoslavia"); 278,000 (Urlanis: "Serbia + Montenegro")
- Turkey: 236,000 (E&C); 325,000 (everyone); 350,000 (Paschall); 450,000 (Eckhardt); 804,000 (Urlanis)
- USA: 50,585 (Tucker, Hammond, Britannica); 51,822 (E&C); 53,407 (Compton's); 116,000 (Paschall); 53,402 KIA + 63,114 other deaths = 116,516 (DoD; 1991 Info. Please); 126,000 (S&S; Eckhardt)
- TOTAL: 8,364,712 (E&C); 8,500,000 (everyone); 8,513,000 (Paschall); 9,442,000 (Urlanis); 12,599,000 (Eckhardt)
- Individual Battles:
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WW1 Civilians
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Civilian casualty estimates are spread wider, and are usually offered without source or detail. (Some of these civilian estimates may include all or part of the Russian Civil War and Armenian massacres -- it's difficult to decide where WW1 ends and these begin, or whether these are distinct and separate events at all)
- Brzezinski: 13,000,000 civilians
- Britannica: 13,000,000
- Encyclopedia Americana (2003), "Twentieth Century": 12.5M civilians
- Encarta: close to 10,000,000
- Hammond: 9,000,000
- Urlanis: 9,000,000 (based on increased mortality during the war years)
- Russia: 1,500,000
- Italy: 1,021,000
- Austria-Hungary: 700,000
- Germany: 692,000
- France: 500,000
- Serbia: 450,000
- Romania: 430,000
- Britain: 292,000
- Greece: 150,000
- Bulgaria: 100,000
- Belgium: 92,000
- Turkey: unknown
- MEDIAN: 6.6-9.0M
- Tucker (European Powers in the First World War -- the source of the data on my map): 6,642,633
- Turkey: 2,150,000
- Russia: 2,000,000
- Germany: 760,000
- Serbia: 650,000
- Austria-Hungary: 300,000
- Bulgaria: 275,000
- Romania: 275,000
- Greece: 132,000
- France: 40,000
- Britain: 30,633
- Belgium: 30,000
- Dictionary of Military History (1994): 6,600,000
- Wallechinsky: 6,500,000
- Eckhardt: 6,493,000
- Nation by nation, Eckhardt and Tucker agree -- with three exceptions:
- Russia: 3,000,000
- Turkey: 1,000,000
- UK: 31,000
- (Eckhardt explicitly excludes the Armenian massacres and Russian Civil War from these numbers.)
- John Ellis & Michael Cox, The World War I Databook: 6,458,886
- Turkey: 2,000,000 (mainly Armenian)
- Russia: 2,000,000
- Germany: 700,000
- Serbia: 600,000
- Romania: 265,000 to 500,000 [=ca. 382,500]
- Austria-Hungary: 300,000
- Bulgaria: 275,000
- Greece: 130,000
- France: 40,000
- Belgium: 30,000
- Britain: 1,386 (in air raids)
- Davies (Europe A History): 5,000,000
- ATROCITIES:
- Belgian civilians massacred by Germans, Aug. 1914 (John Keegan, The First World War, 1998): 211 at Andenne, 384 at Tamines, 612 at Dinant.
- McDougall [http://www.channel4.com/history/microsites/H/history/heads/footnotes/dirtyhands.html]
- Belgian civilians k. by German army: 5,500
- Lusitania sunk by Ger.: 1,200 k.
- Germans d. of starvation under wartime blockade: 763,000
- Armenians: 1,000,000+
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Armenian Genocide [make link]
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- The big massacres occured in 1915, but there were rumblings before and after:
- 1909:
- Rummel: 30,000
- Eckhardt: 6,000
- 1915-18 (generally included in the Death Tolls for World War One)
- Britannica: 600,000
- Dict.Wars: 600,000 died of starvation, disease and exhaustion
- Steven Katz in Is the Holocaust Unique? (Rosenbaum, ed.): 475,800 - 775,800
- Encarta: 800,000
- Kuper: 800,000
- Sabrina Tavernise, “Nearly a Million Genocide Victims, Covered in a Cloak of Amnesia”, New York Times, March 8, 2009. “According to a long-hidden document that belonged to the interior minister of the Ottoman Empire, 972,000 Ottoman Armenians disappeared from official population records from 1915 through 1916.” [http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/09/world/europe/09turkey.html]
- Martin Gilbert, A History of the Twentieth Century: 1,000,000
- Eckhardt: 1,000,000 civ.
- Robert Melson in Is the Holocaust Unique?: 1,000,000
- Christopher Walker, Armenia : The Survival of a Nation (1980): 1,000,000 (in Turkey, 1915-16), plus an additional 50-100,000 (invasion of the Caucasus, 1918)
- Alan Palmer, The Decline & Fall of the Ottoman Empire (1992)
- Official Turkish est.: 300,000
- max. Armenian claims: 2M
- probable: >1,300,000 during war and aftermath
- Porter: 1,000,000 to 1,500,000
- Rummel: 1,404,000 domestic, 83,000 foreign
- War Annual 8 (1997): 1,500,000
- The Turkish Government denies that the Armenians were massacred, and instead, accuses the Armenians of massacring some 23,100 Turks. [http://www.kultur.gov.tr/portal/default_en.asp?belgeno=3338]
- MEDIAN of these 17 estimates is 1M
- Individual massacres
- 1919-23:
- C. Walker: 250,000 (in Turkey, 1919-22)
- Robert Melson in Is the Holocaust Unique?: 500,000
- Rummel: 440,000 domestic, 175,000 foreign
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Russian Civil War (1917-22): 9 000 000 [make link]
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- Eckhardt: 500,000 civ. + 300,000 mil. = 800,000
- Readers Companion to Military History, Cowley and Parker, eds. (1996) [http://college.hmco.com/history/readerscomp/mil/html/mh_045400_russiancivil.htm]:
- Combat deaths: 825,000
- Ancillary deaths: 2,000,000
- TOTAL: 2,825,000
- Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998)
- Civil War and Volga Famine (1918-22): 3,000,000 to 5,000,000
- Brzezinski, Z:
- 6 to 8 million people died under Lenin from war, famine etc.
- Mastering Twentieth Century Russian History by Norman Lowe (2002)
- TOTAL: 7,000,000 to 10,000,000
- Red Army
- Battle: 632,000
- Disease: 581,000
- Whites: 1,290,000 battle + disease
- White Terror: "tens of thousands"
- Red Terror
- Executed: 50-200,000
- Died in prison or killed in revolts: 400,000
- Typhoid + typhus
- Urlanis:
- Military deaths: 800,000
- Battle deaths, all sides: 300,000
- Dead of wounds: 50,000
- Disease: 450,000
- Civilians: 8,000,000
- TOTAL: 8,800,000
- Dyadkin, I.G. (cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993)
- 9 million unnatural deaths from terror, famine and disease, 1918-23
- Richard Pipes, A concise history of the Russian Revolution (1995): 9 million deaths, 1917-1922
- Famine: 5M
- Combat: 2M
- Epidemics: 2M
- not incl.
- Emigration: 2M
- Birth deficit: 14M
- Rummel:
- Civil War (1917-22)
- War: 1,410,000 (includes 500,000 civilian)
- Famine: 5,000,000 (50% democidal)
- Other democide: 784,000
- Epidemics: 2,300,000
- Total: 9,494,000
- Lenin's Regime (1917-24)
- Rummel blames Lenin for a lifetime total of 4,017,000 democides.
- Figes, Orlando (A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, 1997)
- 10 million deaths from war, terror, famine and disease.
- Including...
- Famine (1921-22): 5 million
- Killed in fighting, both military and civilian: 1M
- Jews killed in pogroms: 150,000
- Not including...
- Demographic effects of a hugely reduced birth-rate: 10M
- Emmigration: 2M
- McEvedy, Colin (Atlas of World Population History, 1978)
- War deaths: 2M
- Other excess deaths: 14M
- Reduced births: 10M
- Emmigration: 2M
- MEDIAN: Of these ten estimates that claim to be complete, the median is 8.8M-9.0M.
- PARTIALS:
- Small & Singer (battle deaths, 1917-21)
- Russian Civil War (Dec.1917-Oct.1920)
- Russians: 500,000
- Allied Intervention:
- Japan: 1,500
- UK: 350
- USA: 275
- France: 50
- Finland: 50
- Russian Nationalities War (Dec.1917-Mar.1921)
- Bruce Lincoln, Red Victory: a History of the Russian Civil War 1918-1921
- Death sentences by the Cheka: ca. 100,000
- Pogroms: as many as one in 13 Jews k. out of 1.5M in Ukraine [i.e. ca. 115,000] (citing Heifetz)
- Nevins, citing Heifetz and the Red Cross: 120,000 Jews killed in 1919 pogroms [http://www.west.net/~jazz/felshtin/redcross.html]
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): Cheka responsible for maybe 250,000+ violent deaths.
- Paul Johnson
- 50,000 death sentences imposed by the Cheka by 12/20
- 100,000 Jews killed in 1919
- Green, Barbara (in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?)
- 4 to 5 million deaths in the famine of 1921-23
- Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace
- North Russia: 244 USAns d. incl. 144 k.battle
- Siberia: 160 USAns KIA + 168 other d.
- [US Total: 304 KIA + 268 other = 572 d.]
- Czech Legion: 13,000 dead.
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Soviet Union, Stalin's regime (1924-53): 20 000 000 [make link]
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- There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin's hands. There's the "Why doesn't anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?" school, and there's the "Come on, stop exaggerating. The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air" school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
- Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
- Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
- Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
- Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
- Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
- Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
- Solzhenitsyn, Gulag Archipelago,
- Intro to Perennial Classics Edition by Edward Ericson: Solzhenitsyn publicized an estimate of 60 million. Aleksandr Yakovlev estimates perhaps 35 million.
- Page 178: citing Kurganov, 66 million lives lost between 1917 and 1959
- Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years. This divides up into:
- 1923-29: 2,200,000 (plus 1M non-democidal famine deaths)
- 1929-39: 15,785,000 (plus 2M non-democidal famine)
- 1939-45: 18,157,000
- 1946-54: 15,613,000 (plus 333,000 non-democidal famine)
- TOTAL: 51,755,000 democides and 3,333,000 non-demo. famine
- William Cockerham, Health and Social Change in Russia and Eastern Europe: 50M+
- Wallechinsky: 13M (1930-32) + 7M (1934-38)
- Cited by Wallechinsky:
- Medvedev, Roy (Let History Judge): 40 million.
- Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: 60 million.
- MEDIAN: 51 million for the entire Stalin Era; 20M during the 1930s.
- And from the Lower Numbers school:
- Nove, Alec ("Victims of Stalinism: How Many?" in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 "surplus deaths" during the 1930s.
- Cited in Nove:
- Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
- Tsaplin, V.V. ("Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody" 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
- Dugin, A. ("Stalinizm: legendy i fakty" 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
- Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
- Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
- Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
- MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
- As you can see, there's no easy compromise between the two schools. The Big Numbers are so high that picking the midpoint between the two schools would still give us a Big Number. It may appear to be a rather pointless argument -- whether it's fifteen or fifty million, it's still a huge number of killings -- but keep in mind that the population of the Soviet Union was 164 million in 1937, so the upper estimates accuse Stalin of killing nearly 1 out of every 3 of his people, an extremely Polpotian level of savagery. The lower numbers, on the other hand, leave Stalin with plenty of people still alive to fight off the German invasion.
- Although it's too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity:
- In The Great Terror (1969), Robert Conquest suggested that the overall death toll was 20 million at minimum -- and very likely 50% higher, or 30 million. This would divide roughly as follows: 7M in 1930-36; 3M in 1937-38; 10M in 1939-53. By the time he wrote The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (1992), Conquest was much more confident that 20 million was the likeliest death toll.
- Britannica, "Stalinism": 20M died in camps, of famine, executions, etc., citing Medvedev
- Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.
- Daniel Chirot:
- "Lowest credible" estimate: 20M
- "Highest": 40M
- Citing:
- Conquest: 20M
- Antonov-Ovseyenko: 30M
- Medvedev: 40M
- Courtois, Stephane, Black Book of Communism (Le Livre Noir du Communism): 20M for the whole history of Soviet Union, 1917-91.
- Essay by Nicolas Werth: 15M
- [Ironic observation: The Black Book of Communism seems to vote for Hitler as the answer to the question of who's worse, Hitler (25M) or Stalin (20M).]
- John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen (2001): 20M, incl.
- Kulaks: 7M
- Gulag: 12M
- Purge: 1.2M (minus 50,000 survivors)
- Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin: directly responsible for 20 million deaths.
- Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europes Ghosts After Communism (1995): upwards of 25M
- Time Magazine (13 April 1998): 15-20 million.
- AVERAGE: Of the 17 estimates of the total number of victims of Stalin, the median is 30 million.
- Individual Gulags etc.
- Comments received: Letter #1 Letter #2 Letter #3
- Famine of 1926-38, including the Holodomor: [make link]
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): 4.2M in Ukraine + 1.7M in Kazakhstan
- Green, Barbara ("Stalinist Terror and the Question of Genocide: the Great Famine" in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?) cites these sources for the number who died in the famine:
- Nove: 3.1-3.2M in Ukraine, 1933
- Maksudov: 4.4M in Ukraine, 1927-38
- Mace: 5-7M in Ukraine
- Osokin: 3.35M in USSR, 1933
- Wheatcraft: 4-5M in USSR, 1932-33
- Conquest:
- Total, USSR, 1926-37: 11M
- 1932-33: 7M
- Ukraine: 5M
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Second World War (1939-45): 66 000 000 [make link]
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Total
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It's the most intensively studied event of the 20th Century, so the margin of error is not quite a wide here as for most of the other wars and oppressions on this page. Most historians agree that the death toll was about 50 million (including wartime atrocities). If you don't believe me, here's just a sampling of the books I have on hand:
- Haywood: Atlas of World History (1997): 50M
- Keegan, J., The Second World War (1989): 50M
- Messenger, The Chronological Atlas of World War Two (1989): 50M
- The Times Concise Atlas of World History (1988): 50M
- J.M. Roberts, Twentieth Century (1999): >50M
- Urlanis: 50M
- Soldiers: 22.0M
- Civilians
- In camps, from Fascist terror: 12.0M
- From hostilites, blockade, epidemics, hunger: 14.5M
- From bombing: 1.5M
- Dictionary of Military History (1994): 41M
- Wallechinsky: 40-55M
- Kinder, The Anchor Atlas of World History (1978): 55M
- Hammond: 55M
- Guiness World Records: 56.4M [http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com/index.asp?id=46252]
- Sivard, Ruth Leger, World Military and Social Expenditures 1986 (11th ed.): 38,351,000 (1939-45), not incl. 1.8M in Sino-Japanese War (1937-41)
- Brzezinski:
- Military: 19M
- Civilians, "actual byproduct of hostilities": 20M
- Civilians, Sino-Japanese War: 15M
- Hitler's murders: 17M
- TOTAL: 71M
- Rummel:
- European War Dead (1939-45): 28,736,000
- Sino-Japanese War Dead (1937-45): 7,140,000
- War-related Democides
- Hitler: 20,946,000
- Stalin: 13,053,000
- Japanese: 5,964,000
- Chinese Nationalist: 5,907,000
- Allied Bombing: 796,000
- Croatian: 655,000
- Tito: 600,000
- Romanian domestic democide: 484,000
- Chinese Communist: 250,000
- Hungarian democide in Yugoslavia: 78,000
- [TOTAL: 48,733,000]
- [TOTAL (1937-45): 84,609,000]
- My Estimate: 65.6 million
- AVERAGE
- The MEDIAN of these estimates is 50M.
- If we add up the country-by-country medians (of total death tolls) we get:
- LEVEL 1: 47.35M
- USSR: 20.0M
- China: 10.45M
- Poland: 5.8M
- Germany: 5.5M
- India: 2.15M
- Japan: 1.9M
- Yugoslavia: 1.55M
- LEVEL 2: ca. 3.8M
- LEVEL 3: ca. 0.25M
- TOTAL: 51.4M
- The country-by-country medians for military personnel killed in the war are:
- USSR: 10.0M
- Germany: 3.5M
- China: 2.05M
- Japan: 1.5M
- USA: 0.4M
- Romania: 0.3M
- Yugoslavia: 0.3M
- UK: 0.28M
- Italy: 0.23M
- France: 0.21M
- Hungary: 0.14M
- Poland: 0.125M
- TOTAL: 19.0M
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Who to Blame:
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- Most history books break their WW2 numbers down according to whether the dead are military or civilian and which country they came from. Since I've done that elsewhere, let's try to break it down by guilt. Here are various estimates by various experts of the number of superfluous, non-military deaths during the Second World War.
- My own estimates are in this chart, which should show the relative evil and suffering of the participants of World War Two by listing how many millions of people were killed, by whom, outside of battle. I have ignored any death toll under a quarter million as small change. Numbers don't add up exactly because there's overlap and a lot of unknowns. Click the links for general sources and details. See my book for a more complete discussion.
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Hitler [make link]:
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- Holocaust
- Extermination of the Jews: [make link]:
- Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution (1953): between 4,194,200 and 4,851,200 (this number is accepted by Kinder, The Anchor Atlas of World History (1978))
- Brzezinski: 5,000,000
- Chirot: 5,100,000
- 3,000,000 in death camps.
- 1,300,000 massacred.
- 800,000 by dis./maln. in ghettos
- Rummel: 5,291,000
- Grenville: 5-6M
- Davies, Europe A History (1998): avg. c. 5,571,300 (puts the minimum at 4,871,000 and the maximum at 6,271,500.)
- MEDIAN: ca. 5.6M
- Nuremberg indictment: 5,700,000 (accepted by Britannica)
- Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990): 5,596,029 to 5,860,129
- P. Johnson: 5,800,000
- Wallechinsky: "nearly" 6,000,000
- Urlanis: 6M
- Country-by-country
- Individual Camps, Massacres etc.
- Soviet Prisoners of War killed:
- Urlanis: 3,912,000
- 12 March 1995 Times-Picayune: nearly 3.5M
- Our Times: 3,300,000
- Rummel: 3,100,000
- MEDIAN: 3.0-3.1M
- Mazower, Dark Continent: 3M
- Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War: 3,000,000
- Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960): 2,000,000 dead and 1,000,000 never accounted for, presumed dead.
- Britannica: 2,600,000
- Roma (Gypsies):
- Hammond: 250,000.
- Rummel: 258,000.
- Mazower, Dark Continent: 200,000-500,000.
- Porter: 500,000
- Brzezinski: 800,000
- Ian Hancock, "Responses to the Romani Holocaust" in Is the Holocaust Unique? (A. Rosenbaum, ed.) cites these:
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum: 250,000
- "several published estimates": >1,000,000
- Pauwels and Bergier: 750,000
- Financial Times (London): 500-750,000 in death camps and another million shot outside.
- Homosexuals:
- Chirot: 10-15,000
- Rummel: 220,000
- Euthanasia of Handicapped:
- Hugh G. Gallagher: 275,000, citing Breggin (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
- Johnson: 70,000 insane and incurable Germans k.
- US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust: 70,000 k.in initial phase, 1939-41. 275,000 total k, acc. to Nuremburg Tribunal.
- Air Raids
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): "an estimated 500,000 Soviet citizens died from German bomb attacks."
- Belgrade
- London
- Stalingrad
- Victims of Wehrmacht:
- Acc2 historical exhibit curated by Hannes Heer: The common soldiers of the Wehrmacht murdered 1.5M Jews, 3.3M POWs + 5-7M non-Jewish civilians (17 May 1995 Agence France Presse; 22 Feb. 1997 AP)
- Soviet civilians, generally:
- The Cambridge History of Russia by Dominic C. B. Lieven, Maureen Perrie, Ronald Grigor Suny, p.226
- Premature deaths under German occupation: 13.7M, including
- "killed in hot or cold blood": 7.4M, incl.
- "taken to Germany and worked to death": 2.2M
- "died of overwork, hunger and disease": 4.1M
- General political prisoners:
- Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (1998): over one million died in concentration camps, not counting those deliberately targeted for extermination.
- Rosenburg, The Haunted Land: 26,000 political death sentences passed by German courts.
- HITLER TOTAL:
- Courtois: 25,000,000
- Rummel: 20,946,000 democides
- Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: 17,000,000 (p.6)
- Brzezinski: 17,000,000
- Urlanis: 15-16,000,000 (11-12M civilians + 3.9M POWs)
- MEDIAN: ca. 15.5M
- Our Times: 13,000,000 (6M Jews + 7M others)
- Compton's: 12,000,000
- Grenville: 10,000,000, including 2M children.
- NOTE: These numbers only include outright murders, but keep in mind that some 28M civilians and 14M soldiers died in the European War. That's 42,000,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on Hitler to one extent or another.
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Japanese [make link]:
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- In China and Korea
- Nanking Massacre, 13 Dec. 1937-Feb. 38:
- Spence, The Search for Modern China: 42,000
- Gilbert: >200,000 civilians and 90,000 POWs
- Dict.Wars: 200,000
- Rummel: 200,000
- P. Johnson: 200-300,000
- 27 Aug 2001 Newsweek, quoting Japanese textbook: "The number of dead is said to be over 100,000 and it is estimated to be over 300,000 in China."
- Palmowski, Dictionary of 20th Century World History: "perhaps as many as" 400,000
- Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (1997) cites these:
- Liu Fang-chu: 430,000
- James Yin & Shi Young: 400,000
- Sun Zhaiwei: 377,400 corpses disposed of
- Wu Tien-wei: 340,000
- District Court of Nanking: 300,000
- International Military Tribunal of the Far East: 260,000
- Fujiwara Akira: 200,000
- John Rabe: 50,000-60,000
- Hata Ikuhiko: 38,000-42,000
- [Median: 260,000]
- Unit 731, Manchukuo (bio-warfare center: 1937-45)
- Discovery Channel: "as many as 200,000 people — Chinese soldiers, private citizens and prisoners of war — had died" [http://dsc.discovery.com/anthology/spotlight/bioterror/history/history2.html]
- Global Security: Up to 3,000 died in this facility. Perhaps as many 200,000 Chinese died from germ war campaign in Yunnan Province, Ningbo, and Changde. [http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/japan/bw.htm]
- Bombing: 71,105 Chinese k. by Japanese bombing (Clodfelter)
- South East Asia and East Indies
- Bataan Death March, 1942
- Burma-Siam Railroad, worker deaths (1941-43)
- Johnson: 16,000 POWs
- Our Times, also Gilbert: 50,000 Burmese civilians and 16,000 Allied POWs
- Grenville: 100,000 Asians and 16,000 Europeans
- 7 February 2002 AP: 50,000 Asian laborers and 16,000 Allied POWs
- Manila Massacre, 1944-45
- East Timor
- James Dunn, in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997)): 70,000 died under Japanese occupation
- 19 May 2002 San Gabriel Valley Tribune: "January 1942: Japan occupies the entire island. With support from the local people, Australian commandos in East Timor battle Japan. Japanese reprisals kill 60,000 civilians 13 percent of East Timor's population."
- Dutch East Indies: 25,000 Dutch d. out of 140,000 imprisoned (3 Feb. 1998 Agence France Presse)
- Singapore, citizens (mostly Chinese) massacred, 1942
- Japan Economic Newswire/Kyodo News Service
- 16 June 2004: 50,000-100,000
- 13 Aug. 1984: Report by Allies after WW2 est. 5,000 k. Families claim 40,000-50,000
- Associated Press
- 30 July 1995: "The Japanese military said 6,000 were killed. Singaporeans put the death toll at 50,000."
- 12 Sept 1995: 30,000-40,000
- National Archives of Singapore: 8,600 reported. "[T]here were many more." [http://www.s1942.org.sg/dir_defence7.htm]
- Grenville: 5,000
- LC: 5,000-25,000 [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sgtoc.html]
- [ANALYSIS: There's no consensus. I have 5 low estimates ranging from 5,000-8,600. I have 5 high estimates ranging from 25,000-100,000. Three sources hedge their bets by offering both a low estimate and a high estimate. Two give a low estimate exclusively, and two give a high estimate exclusively.]
- TOTAL:
- Chalmers Johnson: "...the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese." [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/john04_.html]
- Rummel blames the Japanese for 5,964,000 democides
- POWs: 539,000 (400,000 Chinese)
- Forced Labor: 1,010,000 (142,000 Chinese)
- Massacres: 3,608,000 (2,850,000 Chinese)
- Bombing/CB warfare: 558,000 (all Chinese)
- Imposed Famine: 250,000 (none in China)
- Rummel also estimates that General/Prime Minister Tojo Hideki was responsible for a lifetime total of 3,990,000 democides.
- Some guy on Internet [http://www.jca.apc.org/JWRC/exhibit/Index.HTM]
- Nanjing Massacre: 155,337 dead bodies
- Chinese official estimate: >300,000
- Japanese scholars:100-200,000
- Datong Coal Mine, China: 60,000 slave laborers killed
- Forced labor camps in Japan: 6,830 imported workers died
- Singapore: 5,000 Chinese k -- another estimate: 50,000-60,000 k.
- Burma-Siam RR: 12,400 POWs + 42,000 Asian wkrs
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Stalin during WW2 [make link]:
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- Deported nationalities:
- Aleksandr Nekrich, The Punished Peoples (1978): Net population losses, 1939-59, after allowance for wartime losses.
- Chechens: 590,000
- Kalmyks: 142,000
- Ingush: 128,000
- Karachai: 124,000
- Balkars: 64,000
- [TOTAL: 1,048,000]
- Kenneth Christie, Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe: Ghosts at the Table of Democracy (2002)
- Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonians (1940-41): 85,000 deported, of which 55,000 killed or died
- Baltics executed during reconquest (1944-45): 30,000
- Postwar partisan war
- Lithuanians: 40-50,000 k.
- Latvian: 25,000
- Estonians: 15,000
- [TOTAL: 170,000 ± 5,000]
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997)
- citing Rummel: 530,000 Chechens and other Black Sea/Caucasus minorities died
- citing NKVD archives: 231,000 deaths, 1943-49
- Harff and Gurr:
- Chechens, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkars, Kalmyks: 230,000 d. (1943-57)
- Meskhierians, Crimean Tatars: 57,000 - 175,000 d. (1944-68)
- Davies: 1,000,000 Volga Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, etc.
- NewsHour: some 200,000 Chechens died during the exile [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/chechnya/history.html]
- The Cambridge History of Russia by Dominic C. B. Lieven, Maureen Perrie, Ronald Grigor Suny, p.226: a quarter million died during the deportation of ethnic groups.
- Enemy POWs never returned:
- Brzezinski: 1,000,000 total d. (incl. 357,000 Germans, 140,000 Poles)
- Davies: 1,000,000 d.
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): official figures released under glasnost
- Germans: 2,388,000 POWs taken, of which 356,000 died
- Hungarians, Romanians, etc.: 1,097,000 taken, of which 162,000 died
- Japanese: 600,000 taken, of which 61,855 died
- [Total: 4,085,000 taken, of which ca. 580,000 died]
- Katyn Massacre (April-May 1940):
- Dictionary of 20C World History: 14,000 Polish officers systematically killed. 4,500 bodies discovered by Germans.
- 30 July 2000 Sunday Telegraph [London]: 15,000 k.
- Paul Johnson: 15,000 -- a third at Katyn, the rest in Sov. conc. camps.
- Gilbert: 15,000 Polish POWs sent to 3 camps - Starobelsk, Kozelsk, Ostashkov - all killed. 4,400 from Kozelsk killed at Katyn.
- Returning Soviet POWs killed after the war:
- Harff and Gurr: 500,000 - 1,100,000 repatriated Soviet nationals killed (1943-47)
- Harper Collins: 1,000,000 POWs
- Davies: 5-6M deaths, screening of repatriates and inhabitants of ex-occupied territory
- Soviet soldiers executed:
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997)
- "latest Russian estimates put the figure as high as 158,000 sentenced to be shot."
- "442,000 were forced to serve in penal batallions." [These were assigned suicidally dangerous tasks, and the only way out was death or wounds, so figure maybe half dead, half crippled.]
- Gulag during the war years:
- Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): 2.4M sent to Gulag; 1.9M freed. "Official figures show 621,000 deaths in the Gulag" during WW2
- The Cambridge History of Russia by Dominic C. B. Lieven, Maureen Perrie, Ronald Grigor Suny, p.226: heightened mortality three quarters of a million inmates.
- Total killed by Stalin during the war years:
- Davies: 16-17,000,000 non-war-dead
- Rummel: 18,157,000 democides
- My Very Rough Estimate (based largely, but not entirely, on Overy, who seems well-informed and sensible.) In tenths of millions.
- Axis POWs: 0.6M
- Soviet Soldiers during war: 0.4M
- Gulag: 0.6M
- Black Sea/Caucasus Minorities: 0.2M
- Baltic Minorities: 0.2M
- Repatriated Soviets after the war: 1.0M
- Germans who died fleeing the advancing Red Army: 1.0M
- TOTAL: 4.0M
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Others
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- Anglo-American Allies [make link]:
- Bombing of Germany:
- 1945 US Strategic Bombing Survey: >305,000
- Hammond: 400,000
- Rummel: 410,000, 100% democidal
- Clodfelter: 499,750
- Keegan: 593,000
- Grenville: 593,000 (citing "official Germany")
- P. Johnson: 600,000
- Bombing of Japan:
- Conventional bombing:
- Clodfelter: 260,000 (citing an Official US est.) or 299,484 (citing Japanese source)
- Keegan: 260,000
- Paul Johnson: 260,000
- Large, Showa Japan: [183,637]
- Tokyo: 97,301
- all other cities: 86,336
- Nuclear bombing:
- Keegan: 103,000 died outright
- Messenger: 130,000 outright
- Large, Showa Japan: [210,000]
- Hiroshima: 140,000
- Nagasaki: 70,000
- Our Times: 120,000 outright, 140,000 later
- P. Johnson: 175,000 outright, 100,000 later
- Total:
- 1945 US Strategic Bombing Survey: 330,000
- Keegan: 363,000, not including post-war radiation sickness
- Rummel: 374,000, incl. 337,000 democidal
- P. Johnson: 435,000
- Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War: 500,000
- Large, Showa Japan: [393,637]
- Bombing of Romania & Hungary: 50,000 (Rummel)
- Individual air raids
- Mistreatment of Axis POWs [I myself don't find these accusations credible, but FWIW, here they are.]
- James Bacque, Other Losses (1989) made the first accusation that Americans deliberately starved German POWs, killing about a million.
- Bacque [http://www.corax.org/revisionism/misc/970920bacques.html]
- Bacque's 2nd book, Crimes & Mercies, expands the body count to 9.3-13.7M Germans killed by the Allies after the end of the war, incl. some 2.1-6.0M civilians who died being expelled from the East. [http://codoh.com/review/revcrimes.html]
- Stephen Ambrose dismisses these claims as sloppy research. He explains that the total number of German POWs who died from all causes in US hands was 56,000 out of some 5M held. [see also http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/b/bacque.james/] (56,000 might seem like a lot, but this would include those who were captured wounded.)
- The 1956 Maschke Commission counted 4,537 deaths. [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager or http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html]
- [Letter]
- Mussolini (r. 1922-1943)
- Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (1998): total of 29 death sentences passed on political prisoners before 1939.
- Rummel, democides by Fascist govt. of Italy:
- Ethiopia and Libya: 200,000 [before WW2]
- Yugoslavia: 15,000
- Greeks: 9,000
- Italians, domestically: 250
- TOTAL: 224,250
- Yugoslavia:
- 2 March 1999 Agence France Presse
- Number killed in Croatian-run death camp at Jasenovac
- Acc2 Croatian press: 85,000
- Official Yugoslav estimate: 700,000
- Simon Wiesenthal Centre: 500,000
- Alex Dragnic, Serbs & Croats (1992)
- k. by Ustase
- Serbs: est. range 300,000 to 1,000,000, but 500-700,000 is "generally accepted"
- Jews: 50,000
- Gypsies: 20,000
- Massacre by Germans, Oct. 1941: 4-7,000
- John Lampe, Yugoslavia as History (1995)
- 300,000 Serbs k. by Ustasha
- 26,000 Jews k. by Ustasha
- 9,000 Slovenes executed by Italians, summer 1941
- Killed by Tito, 1945-46: 100,000
- Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: a Short History (1994)
- Muslims k. by Chetniks in Foca-Cajnice:
- Aug. 1942: 2,000
- Feb. 1943: 9,000
- Killed by Tito, 1945-46: 250,000 in shootings, camps and marches.
- Mennecke, "Genocide in Bosnia-Herzegovina," in Totten, Century of Genocide (2nd ed., 2004, p.422): more than 300,000 Serbs murdered
- Mazower, Dark Continent
- Serbs k. by Ustase: at least 334,000.
- Collaborators k. by Tito, postwar: up to 60,000
- 9 July 1990 NY Times
- Communist partisans shot 70-100,000 without trial within weeks of the war's end.
- Anti-Communist emigres claim ca. 500,000 killed ("... exaggerations, said Darko Bekic, a historian in Zagreb...")
- "Total of 1,700,000 Yugoslavs were killed, both in combat and in atrocities and reprisals by and against civilians"
- Rummel, democides by perpetrator:
- Axis occupying nations: 718,000
- Chetnik partisans: 100,000
- Communists: 100,000 as partisans, 500,000 shortly after coming to power
- Ustashi government of Croatia: 655,000
- TOTAL: 2,073,000 democides (also 555,000 battle deaths, for a grand total of 2,628,000)
- Fred Singleton, Twentieth-Century Yugoslavia (1976)
- 350,000 Serbs k. by Ustasha
- Marcus Tanner, Croatia: a Nation Forged in War
- Bleiburg massacre: est. range from 30,000 to 200,000 returning POWs k. by Communists (The upper number being favored by Croat nationalists)
- Ustashe camps
- acc2 Communist govt: 600,000 k. in Jasenovas
- acc2 Banac 120,000 k. in all camps
- acc2 "others": 80,000 k. in all camps
- acc2 Pres. Tudjman: 60,000 k. in all camps
- Total war deaths (according to one study)
- Serbs: 487,000
- incl. 215,000 in Nazi and Ustase camps
- Croats: 207,000
- Muslims: 86,000
- Jews: 60,000
- TOTAL: 947,000
- Johan Wüscht, Population Losses in Yugoslavia during World War Two (1963), estimates a total population shortfall of 2,210,000 in the 1948 census. After accounting for emmigration (700,000) and a drop in births (423,000), he reckons the total number of deaths caused by the war and its aftermath to be 1,100,000. He also points out that adding up all the accusations of atrocities commited during the war far exceeds this calculated number of deaths, so one of them is wrong.
- ANALYSIS: Among those events with several estimates, the medians are ...
- Serbs k. by Ustashe: 300,000
- Postwar executions by Communists (and related deaths): 175,000
- Jasenovac
- Romania:
- Rummel: 484,000 democides under kings Carol & Michael (1938-48) incl. 302,000 Jews.
- Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts (1993): 185,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Moldovia murdered in "the only non-German-run extermination camp in Europe".
- France:
- Collaborators killed after liberation:
- Grenville: 10,000
- Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: 9-10,000
- Our Times: 9,000 summarily, 700 after trial.
- David Drake, Intellectuals and Politics in Post-War France: 10,000 summary executions and 791 legal executions.
- Other Western Nations, postwar purges:
- Mark Mazower, Dark Continent
- Italy: 10,000-15,000
- Netherlands: 40 executions
- Norway: 25 executions
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People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong's regime (1949-1975): 40 000 000 [make link]
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- Agence France Press (25 Sept. 1999) citing at length from Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism:
- Rural purges, 1946-49: 2-5M deaths
- Urban purges, 1950-57: 1M
- Great Leap Forward: 20-43M
- Cultural Revolution: 2-7M
- Labor Camps: 20M
- Tibet: 0.6-1.2M
- TOTAL: 44.5 to 72M
- Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts : Mao's Secret Famine (1996)
- Estimates of the death toll from the Great Leap Forward, 1959-61:
- Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (1984): 30M excess deaths (acc2 Becker: "the most reliable estimate we have")
- Wang Weizhi, Contemporary Chinese Population (1988): 19.5M deaths
- Jin Hui (1993): 40M population loss due to "abnormal deaths and reduced births"
- Chen Yizi of the System Reform Inst.: 43-46M deaths
- Brzezinski:
- Forcible collectivization: 27 million peasants
- Cultural Revolution: 1-2 million
- TOTAL: 29 million deaths under Mao
- Daniel Chirot:
- Land reform, 1949-56
- According to Zhou Enlai: 830,000
- According to Mao Zedong: 2-3M
- Great Leap Forward: 20-40 million deaths.
- Cultural Revolution: 1-20 million
- Jung Chang, Mao: the Unknown Story (2005)
- Suppression of Counterrevolutionaries, 1950-51: 3M by execution, mob or suicide
- Three-Anti Campaign, 1952-53: 200,000-300,000 suicides
- Great Leap Forward, 1958-61: 38M of starvation and overwork
- Cultural Revolution, 1966-76: > 3M died violent deaths
- Laogai camp deaths, 1949-76: 27M
- TOTAL under Mao: 70M
- Dictionary of 20C World History: around a half million died in Cultural Rev.
- Eckhardt:
- Govt executes landlords (1950-51): 1,000,000
- Cultural Revolution (1967-68): 50,000
- Gilbert:
- 1958-61 Famine: 30 million deaths.
- Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979):
- They estimate the body count under Mao to be 38,000,000 to 67,000,000.
- Cited by G & P:
- Walker Report (see below): 44.3M to 63.8M deaths.
- The Government Information Office of Taiwan (18 Sept. 1970): 37M deaths in the PRC.
- A Radio Moscow report (7 Apr. 1969): 26.4M people had been exterminated in China.
- (NOTE: Obviously the Soviets and Taiwanese would, as enemies, be strongly motivated to exaggerate.)
- Guinness Book of World Records:
- Although nowadays they don't come right out and declare Mao to be the Top Dog in the Mass Killings category, earlier editions (such as 1978) did, and they cited sources which are similar, but not identical, to the Glaser & Possony sources:
- On 7 Apr. 1969 the Soviet government radio reported that 26,300,000 people were killed in China, 1949-65.
- In April 1971 the cabinet of the government of Taiwan reported 39,940,000 deaths for the years 1949-69.
- The Walker Report (see below): between 32,2500,000 and 61,700,000.
- Harff and Gurr:
- KMT cadre, rich peasants, landlords (1950-51): 800,000-3,000,000
- Cultural Revolution (1966-75): 400,000-850,000
- John Heidenrich, How to Prevent Genocide: A Guide for Policymakers, Scholars, and the Concerned Citizen: 27M death toll, incl. 2M in Cultural Revolution
- Paul Johnson doesn't give an overall total, but he gives estimates for the principle individual mass dyings of the Mao years:
- Land reform, first years of PRC: at least 2 million people perished.
- Great Leap Forward: "how many millions died ... is a matter of conjecture."
- Cultural Revolution: 400,000, calling the 3 Feb. 1979 estimate by Agence France Presse, "The most widely respected figure".
- Meisner, Maurice, Mao's China and After (1977, 1999), doesn't give an overall total either, but he does give estimates for the three principle mass dyings of the Mao years:
- Terror against the counterrevolutionaries: 2 million people executed during the first three years of the PRC.
- Great Leap Forward: 15-30 million famine-related deaths.
- Cultural Revolution: 400,000, citing a 1979 estimate by Agence France Presse.
- R. J. Rummel:
- Estimate:
- Democide: 34,361,000 (1949-75)
- The principle episodes being...
- All movements (1949-58): 11,813,000
- incl. Land Reform (1949-53): 4,500,000
- Cult. Rev. (1964-75): 1,613,000
- Forced Labor (1949-75): 15,000,000
- Great Leap Forward (1959-63): 5,680,000 democides
- War: 3,399,000
- Famine: 34,500,000
- Great Leap Forward: 27M famine deaths
- TOTAL: 72,260,000
- Cited in Rummel:
- Li, Cheng-Chung (Republic of China, 1979): 78.86M direct/indirect deaths.
- World Anti-Communist League, True Facts of Maoist Tyranny (1971): 64.5M
- Glaser & Possony: 38 to 67M (see above)
- Walker Report, 1971 (see below): 31.75M to 58.5M casualties of Communism (excluding Korean War).
- Current Death Toll of International Communism (1979): 39.9M
- Stephen R. Shalom (1984), Center for Asian Studies, Deaths in China Due To Communism: 3M to 4M death toll, excluding famine.
- Walker, Robert L., The Human Cost of Communism in China (1971, report to the US Senate Committee of the Judiciary) "Casualties to Communism" (deaths):
- 1st Civil War (1927-36): .25-.5M
- Fighting during Sino-Japanese War (1937-45): 50,000
- 2nd Civil War (1945-49): 1.25M
- Land Reform prior to Liberation: 0.5-1.0M
- Political liquidation campaigns: 15-30M
- Korean War: 0.5-1.234M
- Great Leap Forward: 1-2M
- Struggle with minorities: 0.5-1.0M
- Cultural Revolution: .25-.5M
- Deaths in labor camps: 15-25M
- TOTAL: 34.3M to 63.784M
- TOTAL FOR PRC: 32M to 59.5M
- July 17, 1994, Washington Post (Great Leap Forward 1959-61)
- Shanghai University journal, Society: > 40 million
- Cong Jin: 40 million
- Chen Yizi: 43 million in the famine. 80 million total as a result of Mao's policies.
- Weekly Standard, 29 Sept. 1997, "The Laogai Archipelago" by D. Aikman:
- Between 1949 and 1997, 50M prisoners passed through the labor camps, and 15,000,000 died (citing Harry Wu)
- WHPSI: 1,633,319 political executions and 25,961 deaths from political violence, 1948-77. TOTAL: 1,659,280
- Analysis: If we line up the 14 sources which claim to be complete, the median falls in the 45.75 to 52.5 million range, so you probably can't go wrong picking a final number from this neighborhood. Depending on how you want to count some of the incomplete estimates (such as Becker and Meisner) and whether to count a source twice (or thrice, as with Walker) if it's referenced by two different authorities, you can slide the median up and down the scale by many millions. Keep in mind, however, that official Chinese records are hidden from scrutiny, so most of these numbers are pure guesses. It's pointless to get attached to any one of them, because the real number could easily be half or twice any number here.
- Perhaps a better way of estimating would be to add up the individual components. The medians here are:
- Purges, etc. during the first few years: 2M (10 estimates)
- Great Leap Forward: 31-33M (14 estimates)
- Cultural Revolution: 1M (13 estimates)
- Ethnic Minorities, primarily Tibetans: 750-900T (8 estimates, see below)
- Labor Camps: 20M (5 estimates)
- This produces a total of some 54,750,000 to 56,900,000 deaths. The weak link in this calculation is in the Labor Camp numbers for which we only have 5 estimates.
- Notice that many early body counts (such as Walker) completely miss the famine during the Great Leap Forward, which was largely unknown in the west until around 1980. There are two contradictory ways to assess those early estimates which ignore the famine:
- "If these are the numbers that they came up with without the famine, imagine how high the true number will be once you add the famine deaths."
- "Can we trust any of these numbers? After all, if they missed such a huge famine, they can't have known very much about what was going on inside China."
- ... so this line of reasoning will get us nowhere. In fact, the median of the 7 estimate that predate 1980 is 45.7M, which is almost the same as the median of the 7 estimates that post-date 1980 -- 58M. (At this scale, a 12M difference counts as "almost the same".)
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Tibet (1950 et seq.): 600 000
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- Chinese occupation. (For the most part, it's already been included in the numbers above.)
- Free Tibet Campaign [http://www.freetibet.org/info/facts/fact1.html]
- Tibetans killed by the Chinese since 1950: 1,200,000
- Died in prisons and labour camps between 1950 and 1984: up to 260,000
- 1959 Uprising: 430,000 died
- Our Times: 1,200,000
- Courtois: 600,000 - 1,200,000
- Walker, Robert: 500,000-1,000,000 (all ethnic minorities)
- Rummel: 375,000 democides inflicted on etnic minorities
- ... incl 150,000 Tibetans
- Margolin, "China" in Courtois, Black Book of Communism, p. 546
- The population of Tibet plunged from 2.8 million in 1953 to 2.5 million in 1964 [ a loss of 300,000]
- Porter: 100,000 to 150,000.
- Eckhardt:
- 1950-51 War: 2,000 civ.
- 1956-59 Revolt: 60,000 civ. + 40,000 mil. = 100,000
- Harff and Gurr: 65,000 Tibetan nationalists, landowners, Buddhists killed, 1959
- Small & Singer say that China lost 40,000 soldiers in Tibet between 1956 and '59.
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Death Tolls for the Major Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century
Alphabetical Index
Site Index
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20th Century death tolls larger than one million but fewer than 5 million people.
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Mexican Revolution (1910-20): 1,000,000 [make link]
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- The population explosion of the 20th Century is so pervasive that populations have continued to climb during most of the bad times listed on this page; however, the intensity of the Mexican Revolution is such that the counted population of Mexico actually declined from 15,160,369 in 1910 to 14,334,780 in 1921. So how many people died in the war?
- Most scholars are rather vague:
- "conservatively estimated at half a million" (Peter Calvert, Mexico, 1973)
- "perhaps a million" (C. Cumberland, Mexican Revolution: the constitutionalist years, 1972)
- "estimated at 1 million" (Crow, The Epic of Latin America)
- Encyclopedia Americana (2003), "Mexico": 1M lives
- "at least a million" (Wallechensky)
- "perhaps 2 million" (R.J. Rummel, although he later tightens his estimate to 2,142,000)
- "as many as two million" (T.R. Fehrenbach, Fire and Blood, 1973)
- War Deaths:
- Wallechensky: 200,000
- Small & Singer: 250,000
- Rummel: 200,000 battle deaths + 125,000 incidental civilian deaths
- Enrique Krauze, Mexico : Biography of Power (1997): 250,000 combat deaths; 750,000 of disease/hunger
- Eckhardt: 125,000 civ. + 125,000 mil. = 250,000
- A detailed online analysis can be found at [http://www.hist.umn.edu/~rmccaa/missmill/mxrev.htm] "Missing millions: the human cost of the Mexican Revolution" by Robert McCaa. He estimates 1.4M excess deaths due to war. In contrast, he mentions these previous estimates:
- Ordorica and Lezama: 1.4M
- Collver: 0.5M - 2.1M
- Loyo: 0.9M
- Greer: 0.6M
- Gamio: 0.55M
- Gonzalez Navarro: 0.3M
- Mier y Teran: 0.2M
- AVERAGE: Of the 17 estimates here, the MEDIAN is 1,000,000, and the MEAN is 927,000.
- American involvement: This is the only war (well okay, there were a few balloons in WW2) of the 20th Century to directly impact the United States mainland.
- According to a report from the US Congress dated 17 Feb. 1915, the Mexican Revolution killed 213 US citizens in Mexico, as well as 36 US citizens inside the US -- often from stray bullets in border towns. Also, 92 Mexicans were killed inside the US because of the Revolution (That's the official total. Unofficially, it may be as high as 400 (Ronald Atkin, Revolution! Mexico 1910-20, 1969))
- Keep in mind that this report predates Pancho Villa's raid on Columbus, NM, where 18 Americans and possibly 50-100 Mexicans were killed. Additionally, 19 US Marines died seizing Veracruz, and 30 US soldiers died on Pershing's expedition. (Wallechinsky)
- Max Boot, The Savage Wars of Peace
- Columbus NM raid: 8 US civ. + 10 US soldiers k. 100 Villistas k. + "some" hanged after trial.
- Punitive Expedition: 135 Villistas k.
- Texasranger.org [http://www.texasranger.org/history/SilverStars1.htm]
- "Mexican raids into Texas in 1915-16 caused an estimated 21 American deaths; an estimated 300 Mexicans or Tejanos may have been killed in South Texas by the actions of Rangers, vigilantes and citizens. Some sources place the death toll as high as 300 and 3,000."
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1st Chinese Civil War, Nationalist Era (1928-37): 5,000,000
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- Rummel:
- Battle Deaths: 406,000
- Democides:
- By Guomindang (KMT): 1,524,000
- By Communists: 850,000
- By Warlords: 350,000
- SUBTOTAL (Military + Civilian): 3,130,000
- Famine/Flood: 6,500,000
- Rummel estimates that Chiang Kai-Shek committed a total of 10,214,000 democides from 1921 to 1948. This number would include the democides counted here, as well as those during the Second World War and Second Chinese Civil War.
- S&S:
- Warlords vs Govt (1929-30): 75,000
- Communists vs Govt (1930-35): 200,000
- TOTAL: 275,000
- Eckhardt (mil.+civ.):
- Warlords vs Govt (1929-30): 75,000
- Communists vs Govt (1930-35): 500,000
- TOTAL: 575,000
- Gilbert, citing Ho Ping-ti: 1,000,000 deaths in Szechwan from war, 1932-34
- Edgar Snow, Red Star over China, 1938, p.188, citing KMT press releases:
- KMT admits 1,000,000 killed or starved in 5th Campaign, recovering Kiansi Soviet.
- Population of Soviets decreased by 600,000.
- 3-Year famine in NW killed 3 (official ) to 6 million.
- Shanghai Massacre: 5,000 k. by KMT.
- Acc2 to Li Chiang-lin, Apr.-Jun 1927, Ho Chien executed 20,000 in Liu-yang District, 15,000 in Liling District
- Wallechinsky:
- Battle Deaths: 1,275,000
- Civilian Deaths: 1,000,000 in 1933-34 alone.
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Post-War Expulsion of Germans from East Europe (1945-47): 2,100,000 [make link]
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- Died being expelled from Poland:
- Rummel: 1,585,000
- Keegan, John, The Second World War (1989): 1,250,000
- Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979): 1,225,000
- Died, from Czechoslovakia:
- Rummel: 197,000
- Martin Sorge, The Other Price of Hitler's War (1986): 241,000 Sudeten Germans
- Keegan: 250,000
- Glaser & Possony: 267,000
- TOTAL:
- Kinder, Anchor Atlas of World History: 3,000,000
- Britannica: 2,384,000 (This covers the years 1944-46, and it includes Germans who died fleeing while the war was still raging.)
- Glaser & Possony: 2,111,000 (This includes 619,000 from "elsewhere" not listed above)
- Keegan: 2,100,000 (This includes 600,000 from "elsewhere" not listed above; it does not include some 1,000,000 Germans who (by Keegan's estimate) died fleeing while the war was still raging.)
- Rummel: 1,782,000
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2nd Chinese Civil War (1945-49): 2,500,000 [make link]
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- Bercovitch & Jackson: 100,000
- Ho Ping-to, Studies in the population of China, 1368-1953 (1967) pp. 253:
- Communists: 263,800 killed.
- Nationalists lost 1,711,110 both killed and wounded, with maybe a fifth of those [some 370,000] killed.
- Dan Smith: 1,000,000
- Eckhardt: 1,000,000 from all causes
- Small & Singer: 1,000,000 battle deaths
- Wallechinsky: 1,200,000 battle deaths
- Walker, Robert L., The Human Cost of Communism in China (1971): 1,250,000
- Gilbert, citing Ho Ping-ti: 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 total deaths [Ho actually said 2-3m casualties, i.e. both k. and w.]
- Our Times: 3,000,000
- Rummel:
- War Dead: 1,201,000
- Democide by Guomindang: 2,645,000
- Democide by Communists: 2,323,000
- Famine: 25,000
- TOTAL: 6,194,000
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Korean War (1950-53): 3,000,000 [make link]
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- All the sources I check seem pretty sure of their numbers but they all give different numbers. Okay, some of the discrepancies come from disagreement over what to include -- do we count only the 33,741 Americans killed in battle, or do we add the 2,827 non-combat deaths as well? But some of the other disagreements are harder to reconcile:
- South Korea:
- SoKo Military
- 47,000 KIA (Encyclopedia Americana)
- 46,812 KIA + 66,436 MIA (Wallechinsky; also Clodfelter, citing Defense Dept.) [=113,248]
- 59,000 (Summers)
- 70,000 (Clodfelter's own est.)
- 100,000 (Leckie)
- 113,248 (COWP)
- 212,500 KIA (Pentagon: ¼ "KWM")
- 225,784 (Nahm93)
- 281,000 (Rummel)
- 281,257 to 400,000 (Lewy - the latter citing the ROK Defense Ministry)
- 415,000 (S&S; Hastings)
- [MEDIAN: 113,248]
- SoKo Civilian
- 315,000 (Rummel)
- 244,000 killed and 303,000 missing. (Nahm88)
- 373,500 killed and 387,740 missing (Nahm93)
- [MEDIAN: 547,000]
- SoKo Military + Civilian
- 415,004 killed (Leckie; Wallechinsky; Clodfelter, citing Defense Dept. incl. k, exec., dis.)
- 591,285 (Compton's)
- 596,000 (Rummel)
- 600,000 (Dictionary of 20C World History)
- 987,024 (Nahm93)
- 1,300,000 (Britannica)
- [MEDIAN: 595,000]
- North Korea:
- NoKo Military
- 130,000 KIA (Pentagon: ¼ "KWM")
- 294,151 (Nahm93)
- 214,899 KIA + 101,680 MIA (Wallechinsky; Clodfelter, citing ["highly suspect"] Defense Dept. est.) [=316,579]
- 316,579 (COWP)
- 350,000 (Rummel)
- 520,000 (Small & Singer, FAS)
- [MEDIAN: 316,579]
- NoKo Civilian
- 406,000 killed + 680,000 missing (Nahm93)
- Up to 1,000,000 (Wallechinsky; Clodfelter)
- 1,185,000 (Rummel)
- [MEDIAN: 1,000,000]
- NoKo Military + Civilian
- 500,000 (Britannica)
- 700,000 (Dictionary of 20C World History)
- 926,000 (Compton's)
- 1,316,579 (Wallechinsky; Clodfelter)
- 1,380,151 (Nahm93)
- 1,535,000 (Rummel)
- [MEDIAN: 1,316,579]
- China
- 110,000 KIA + 35,000 other (FAS citing "Chinese sources")
- 225,000 KIA (Pentagon: ¼ "KWM")
- 401,401 KIA + 21,211 MIA (Wallechinsky; Clodfelter, citing ["highly suspect"] Defense Dept. est.) [= 422,612]
- 422,612 (COWP)
- 500,000 (Rummel)
- 900,000 (Compton's, S&S, FAS)
- 1,000,000 (Britannica)
- [MEDIAN: ca. 460,000]
- Combined Chinese and North Korean military dead
- 400,000 (from disease, Wallechinsky; Clodfelter [in addition to KIA est. above])
- 500,000 (from battle, Summers)
- 0.5M (generally, Lewy)
- 1.5M (from all causes, Hastings)
- US
- 33,000 (Dictionary of 20C World History)
- 33,625 (Nahm93)
- 33,741 battle + 2,827 other = 36,568 (DIOR [official])
- 36,940, incl. 3275 non-combat (FAS)
- 54,000 (Britannica, S&S)
- 54,246 (COWP)
- 33,629 KIA + 20,617 other = 54,246 (Summers, Wallechinsky, Lewy, Encyclopedia Americana)
- 33,629 (Compton's; Hastings)
- Other UN: 2,186 (Nahm93); 2,630 (S&S); 3,063 (Hastings, Summers); 3,194 (Wallechinsky)
- By nation
- UK
- 11 Nov. 2000 Times [London]: 1,078 British
- Clodfelter, COWP, Wallechinsky: 710
- Leckie, S&S: 670
- Turkey
- S&S: 720
- COWP, Clodfelter, Leckie, Wallechinsky: 717
- Canada
- Clodfelter: 291
- COWP, Leckie: 309
- S&S: 310
- France
- COWP, Clodfelter, Leckie: 288
- S&S: 290
- Australia
- Leckie: 265.
- COWP, S&S: 281
- Clodfelter: 291
- AWM: 339 Australia
- Greece
- S&S: 170
- COWP, Clodfelter, Leckie: 169
- Columbia
- Clodfelter, S&S, Leckie: 140
- Ethiopia
- Neth.
- S&S: 110
- COWP, Clodfelter, Leckie: 111
- Thailand
- S&S: 110
- Clodfelter, Leckie: 114
- Belgium
- S&S: 100
- COWP, Clodfelter: 97
- Phillipines
- S&S: 90
- Clodfelter, Leckie: 92
- TOTAL
- 1,333,060 killed + 1,067,740 missing (Nahm93, not including Chinese)
- 1,892,000 (S&S, not including civilians)
- 2,454,000 (Compton's)
- 2,488,744 (Wallechinsky)
- 2,854,000 (Britannica)
- 2,889,000 (Eckhardt)
- 3,000,000 (D. Smith)
- 3,000,000 (B&J)
- 3,062,000 (Rummel)
- 3,500,000 (Lewy, incl. 2-3M civilians)
- [MEDIAN of TOTALS: ca. 2,950,000] or [TOTAL of MEDIANS: ca. 2,470,000]
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Atrocities:
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- 1950 massacre in Seoul by North Koreans: 128,936 (Nahm93); 100,000 (Dictionary of 20C World History) [AP makes it sound like these were all over So.Ko., not just Seoul.]
- AP [http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2000/investigative-reporting/works/]
- No Gun Ri, 1950: US massacre of civilian refugees (ca. 100 killed by air attack, 200-400 killed by infantry) first reported by AP, 29 Sep. 1999. US News & World Report (22 May 2000) cast serious doubt on the reliability of many of the eye-witness accounts. The AP response (16 May 2000) restored credibility.
- Killed by N.Koreans (13 Oct. 1999 AP):
- Taejon: 5,000 to 7,500 civilians and 42 US POWs
- "The U.S. Army, in November 1951, cited U.N. figures saying 25,575 South Korean civilians were killed during the communist occupation of South Korea. But the South Korean government later put that toll at 129,000."
- Gilbert, History of the Twentieth Century: 26,000 South Korean civilians executed by North Koreans within their zone of conquest, 1950.
- Lewy: 2,701 out of 7,140 US POWs died after capture. In all, 5,639 USAns died as a result of war crimes.
- VFW, citing Potter Comm. Report: 7,000 civilians and 60 US POWs k. in Taejon by N.Kor. (23-27 Sept. 1950) [http://www.vfw.org/magazine/feb03/koreanwaratrocities.htm]
- Alleged & unproven USA/ROK atrocities:
- From the 14 July 2003 Guardian: "[The North Koreans] say that the US started the fighting and committed atrocities on civilians at Sinchon, a claim for which there is little evidence, but one which is the subject of numerous gory paintings."
- 13 Oct. 1999 AP: "The North Koreans... alleged that earlier the southern government had murdered thousands of communist sympathizers around Taejon... in July 1950."
- Some guys on Internet: Comm. sympathizers killed by S.Koreans (1950) [http://www.kimsoft.com/1997/nogun2.htm]
- Pusan: 50,000
- Throughout the country: 100,000+
- Seoul: 29,000
- Some other guy on Internet: 35,000 k.at Sinchun [http://www.kimsoft.com/2002/sinchun.htm]
- North Korean news releases:
- [http://210.145.168.243/pk/118th_issue/99110404.htm]
- "At least 109,000 people of south Korea were killed by the U.S. imperialists in 1949 alone."
- "In Sinchon county, South Hwanghae Province, alone they killed more than 35,380 people or one fourth of its entire population in a little over 50 days."
- "Lording it over south Korea after the war, they ruthlessly killed people as their hunting and shooting targets and playthings and for pleasure, regardless of men and women, young and old."
- NOTE: The Korean War was preceded by an unsuccessful Communist uprising. It was the failure to seize control from within that sparked the North Korean invasion.
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Korean War Sources:
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- Blair, Clay, The Forgotten War (1987)
- Clodfelter, Michael, Warfare and Armed Conflict: A Statistical Reference to Casualty and Other Figures, 1618-1991
- COWP: Correlates of War Project [http://www.correlatesofwar.org/cow2%20data/WarData/InterState/Inter-State%20War%20Participants%20(V%203-0).htm]
- DIOR: US Dept. of Defense, Directorate for Information Operations and Reports [http://web1.whs.osd.mil/mmid/CASUALTY/KOREA.xls] (NOTE: These numbers do not include 17,678 other deaths which occured outside the theater of ops.)
- Encyclopedia Americana (1995)
- Hastings, Max, The Korean War (1987)
- Leckie, Robert, Conflict: the history of the Korean War, 1950-53 (1962)
- Lewy, Guenter, America in Vietnam (1978)
- Nahm, Andrew, Korea: tradition and transformation (1988): "Nahm88"
- Nahm, Andrew, Historical Dictionary of the Republic of Korea (1993): "Nahm93"
- "Pentagon"
- Blair, Leckie and the Encyclopedia Americana cite Pentagon estimates for the total killed, wounded and missing:
- All UN: 996,937 (Pentagon, kwm)
- South Korea: 850,000 (Pentagon, kwm)
- All Communist: 1,420,000 (Pentagon, kwm.)
- China: 900,000 (Pentagon, kwm)
- North Korea: 520,000 (Pentagon, kwm)
- Now, if we use the standard ratio of 1 killed for every 3 wounded, we get the numbers that I have attributed above to "Pentagon"
- While we're at it, notice that S&S's estimates for killed are often the same as the Pentagon's estimates for killed, wounded and missing.
- Summers, H., Korean War Almanac (1990)
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North Korea (1948 et seq.): 3,000,000 [make link]
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- Communist regime:
- Rummel estimates that the Communist regime of North Korea committed 1,663,000 democides between 1948 and 1987
- North Korean victims: 1,293,000
- South Korean victims: 363,000
- Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism: 2,000,000 (p.4)
- In Party purges: 100,000 (p.564)
- In concentration camps: 1.5M
- Omestad, “Gulag Nation” 23 June 2003 US News & WR: 400,000 died in gulags in past 3 decades.
- The Center for the Advancement of North Korean Human Rights estimates that some 400,000 prisoners have died in labor camps since 1972. [http://www.nkhumanrights.or.kr/oldnkhuman/eng/nk/nknews12_01.html]
- Famine, 1995-98
- 13 March 1999, Agence France Presse, "Top defector says famine has killed over three million Koreans": 3,500,000 deaths as of 12/98
- 19 Oct. 2000 Guardian: 3M
- Branigan, “North Korea life expectancy falls, census reveals”, 22 February 2010, Guardian: 600,000 to 1 million
- MSF: 3.5M [http://www.doctorswithoutborders.org/publications/other/deadly_2001.shtml]
- 19 Oct. 2003 NY Times: 2M died in preventable famine.
- Associated Press, "North Korea admits its famine has killed hundreds of thousands," May 10, 1999:
- The North Korean govt. estimates 220,000 famine-related deaths, 1995-98
- US Congressional delegation: 2M
- South Korean intelligence estimates that the population of North Korea fell from 25M to 22M.
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Rwanda and Burundi (1959-95): 1 350,000 [make link]
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Back and forth massacres between Hutu and Tutsi
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Rwanda (late 1950s, early 1960s, primarily Tutsi killed by Hutu)
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- Cambridge Encyclopedia of Africa: 10,000 (1959-61)
- Edgerton
- 1959: 20,000 Tutsi k. by Hutu. "Tutsi soon struck back, killing at least as many Hutu"
- 1963: 10,000 Tutsi k.
- Harff & Gurr: 5,000 - 14,000 (1963-64)
- Eckhardt: 102,000 civ. + 3,000 mil. = 105,000 (1956-65)
- D.Smith: 20,000 (1959-61) + 100,000 (1962-66) = 120,000
- WHPSI: 21,000 (1964), 5,000 (1966), none listed for 1962, '63, '65, but it might be that the 1964 number is meant to cover the entire span rather than just '64.
- S&S: 2,500 (1963-64)
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Burundi (1969, primarily Hutu killed by Tutsi)
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Burundi (1972-73, primarily Hutu killed by Tutsi) 120,000 [make link]
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- Dunnigan (1991): 210,000
- 1984 World Almanac: 150,000 Hutu, 10,000 Tutsi
- Edgerton: 100,000-200,000
- BBC: 150,000 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1068991.stm]
- Diamond, Jared, The Third Chimpanzee: 80-200,000
- Rene Lemarchand: 100,000 - 150,000 (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
- Britannica: 100,000 - 150,000
- MEDIAN: ca. 125,000
- Dict.Wars: 100,000 Hutu and 10,000 Tutsi
- D.Smith: 100,000
- Eckhardt: 80,000 civ. + 20,000 mil. = 100,000
- Cambridge Encyclopedia of Africa: 100,000
- WHPSI: 81,754 (1971-72)
- S&S: 50,000 battle deaths
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Burundi (1988) 20,000
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- Dunnigan (1991): 33,000
- Britannica: 20,000
- D.Smith: > 20,000
- War Annual 8 (1997): 20,000
- Encarta: 5,000
- MEDIAN: 20,000
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Burundi (1993-2004) 260,000
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- [Listed Chronologically]
- Dict.Wars: 50,000 in 1993
- B&J: 100,000 (1992-93)
- CDI: 170,000 (1988-97)
- 29 April 1999 AP: 150,000-250,000 (1993-98)
- 23 May 1999 Denver Rocky Mtn News: 200,000 (1993-99)
- Ploughshares 2000: 200,000 (1988-2000)
- BBC
- Country Profiles: 300,000 since 1993 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/country_profiles/1068873.stm]
- 22 April, 2005: 250,000 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4472135.stm]
- 15 July 2003 MSN/Reuters: >300,000, mostly civilians, since 1993
- UN Population Fund: 260,000 dead [“Burundi Civil War Claims 260,000 Lives—UNFPA,” Panafrican News Agency (PANA) Daily Newswire, April 25, 2004.]
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Rwanda (1994, primarily Tutsi killed by Hutu) 937,000
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- D.Smith: 500,000
- War Annual 8 (1997): 500,000
- Rene Lemarchand: 500,000 (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
- Agence France Presse (20 Feb. 1998): 500,000 to 800,000
- Ploughshares 2000: 500,000-1,000,000 (1994) followed by tens of thous.
- PBS Frontline: the Triumph of Evil: 800,000 ( http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/evil/etc/slaughter.html)
- MEDIAN: ca. 800,000
- Victoria Brittain, Death of Dignity (1998): 850,000
- Dict.Wars: 850,000 in 1994
- Arthur Asiimwe, “Rwanda census puts genocide death toll at 937,000”, Reuters News, April 4, 2004: 937,000 according to new census by Rwandan govt.
- 23 May 1999 Denver Rocky Mtn News: 800,000 in 1994; 1M total as of 1999
- B&J: 1,000,000 (1990-95)
- Nyarubuye Massacre
- 4 Apr 2004 BBC: 5,000-10,000 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/programmes/panorama/3582267.stm]
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TOTAL of HUTU vs. TUTSI
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- TOTAL OF MEDIANS: 1.2 M
- TOTAL RANGE: 0.7-1.7 M
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Second Indochina War (1960-75): 4 200,000 [make link]
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Vietnam War (1965-73): 1 700,000
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- Most historians of the Second Indochina War concern themselves primarily with the American Phase of the conflict, 1965-73; however, many do not specify whether their estimated death tolls cover only this phase of the war or the whole thing. An asterisk(*) indicates that the number seems to cover the entire conflict rather than just the American Phase, but check the "Sources" section to see exactly which years are covered by each authority:
- South Vietnam military
- 181,483 (Gilbert)
- 185,000 to 225,000 (Britannica)
- 220,357 (Lewy, Ency. Americana)
- 223,748 (Summers; also 3 April 1995 AP)
- 224,000 (Kutler, Olson)
- 250,000 (Clodfelter, Grenville*)
- 254,257 (Wallechinsky*, COWP [1965-75])
- 650,000 (Small & Singer)
- [MEDIAN: 224,000]
- North Vietnamese military and Viet Cong
- 444,000 (Ency. Americana)
- 500,000 (S&S)
- 660,000 (Olson)
- 666,000 (Lewy, with the possibility that as many as 222,000 (1/3) of these were actually SVN civilians mistaken for VC)
- 666,000 (Summers)
- 700,000 (COWP [DRV 1965-75])
- 700,000-1,000,000 (Wallechinsky*)
- 900,000 (Britannica; Grenville*)
- 922,290 (Gilbert [NVN soldiers + civilians + VC])
- 1,000,000 (Clodfelter)
- 1,100,000 (Tucker*, Official VN* [1954-75])
- [MEDIAN: starred*: 1,000,000. unstarred: 666,000]
- South Vietnamese civilians
- 50,000 (Gilbert)
- 250,000 (Olson)
- 287,000 (Clodfelter = 247,600 war deaths + 38,954 assassinated by NLF)
- 300,000 (Kutler; Summers)
- 340,000 (Lewy's estimate, with the possibility that an additional 222,000 counted as VC (above) belong in this category)
- 430,000 (The Sen. E. Kennedy Commission, according to Lewy, Olson)
- 522,000 (Wallechinsky*)
- 1,000,000 (Britannica [in both North and South]; Eckhardt; Grenville*)
- 2,000,000 (Tucker*, Official VN* [N&S, 1954-75],)
- [MEDIAN: starred*: ca. 1,500,000. unstarred: 300,000]
- North Vietnamese civilians: 65,000 (Kutler, Lewy, Olson, Summers, Wallechinsky) by American bombing.
- USA
- 55,337 (Gilbert)
- 47,378 KIA + 10,799 other = 58,177 (Official US DoD, 1964-73)
- 58,159 (Kutler)
- 58,153 (Wallechinsky*, COWP)
- 58,000 (Britannica)
- 47,244 KIA + 10,446 other = 57,690 (Olson; Summers, 1961-80)
- 57,605 (Ency. Americana)
- 56,146 (Lewy: 46,498 KIA + 10,388 other + 719 MIA)
- 56,000 (S&S)
- South Korea: 4,407 (Lewy, Olson, Summers); 4,687 (Wallechinsky, COWP); 5,000 (S&S)
- Philippines: 1,000 (S&S)
- Thailand: 351 (Lewy, Olson, Summers, Wallechinsky); 1,000 (S&S)
- Australia: 469 (Lewy, Summers, Olson [w/NZ]); 492 (S&S); 494 (Wallechinsky); 520 (AWM)
- TOTAL
- 1,021,442 (COWP)
- 1,216,000 (military only, S&S)
- 1,312,000 (Summers)
- 1,353,000 (Lewy)
- 1,520,453 (WHPSI: S. Vietnamese only, 1965-75)
- 1,637,000 (Olson)
- 1,721,000 (Kutler)
- 1,749,000 (Wallechinsky*)
- 1,800,000 (B&J*, 1960-75)
- 2,058,000 (Eckhardt)
- 2,163,000 (Britannica)
- 2,500,000 (Grenville*)
- 3,000,000 (1965-75, Chomsky* (1987))
- >3,100,000 (Tucker*; Official VN*)
- 3,800,000 (Obermeyer, “Fifty years of violent war deaths...”, British Medical Journal, 336:1482, 2008*)
- MEDIAN TOTALS
- * Whole conflict: [MEDIAN of TOTALS: ca. 3,000,000] or [TOTAL of MEDIANS: ca. 2,850,000]
- American Phase (unstarred): [MEDIAN of TOTALS: ca. 1,700,000] or [TOTAL of MEDIANS: ca. 1,300,000]
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Sub-Wars
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- In addition to the American Phase of the War, there are four tangental conflicts which are sometimes discussed as part of the Vietnam War, but usually considered peripheral:
- Vietnamese Civil War, internal phase, 1960-65
- Clodfelter, 1961-64
- South Vietnam, military: 21,442
- Communist: 71,000
- Civilian: 160,000
- TOTAL: 252,442
- Chomsky (1987):
- 1957-61: 66,000 VC (p.274, citing B. Fall), 80,000 Vietnamese (p.323)
- 1961-4/65: 89,000 VC
- to mid 1966: 60,000 ("enemy" (McNamara) - "probably" including civilians (Chomsky))
- Total, 1954-65: 160-170,000 VNese (p.324)
- S&S: 300,000 battle deaths, 1960-65
- Eckhardt: 200,000 civ. + 100,000 mil. = 300,000 (1960-65)
- COWP: 302,000
- Young: NLF lost 100,000 dead 1961-(?)64
- WHPSI:
- 21,686 deaths by political violence in South Vietnam, 1960-64
- 4,021 from 1955 to 1959
- Cambodian Civil War (1970-75): 600,000
- Chomsky (1987): half a million to a million.
- Rummel, 1954-75:
- War Dead: 429,000
- Democide: 288,000
- TOTAL: 717,000
- Tucker: 10% of 7M [which comes to 700,000]
- Clodfelter; also Wallechinsky (1970-75)
- Cambodian govt.: 50,000
- Total violent deaths, incl. Comm. and civ.: >250,000
- Total war-related deaths, incl. hunger: 600,000
- T. Lomperis, From People's War to People's Rule (1996), citing a Finnish commission: 600,000
- MEDIAN: ca. 0.5-0.6M
- Chirot: 500,000
- B&J: 300,000
- SIPRI 1989: 156,000
- S&S, 1970-73
- Cambodia: 150,000
- USA: 500
- SVietnam: 5,000
- NVietnam: 500
- TOTAL: 156,000
- Eckhardt: 156,000
- COWP
- Cambodia: 50,000
- USA: 500
- SVietnam: 5,000
- NVietnam: 500
- TOTAL: 185,000
- WHPSI: 55,750 k. by pol.viol., 1970-75
- Laos
- Wallechinsky, 1959-75: 250,000
- Martin Stuart-Fox A History of Laos: 200,000 by 1973, incl. 30,000 Hmong.
- Rummel, 1954-75:
- War Dead: 32,000
- Democide: 38,000
- TOTAL: 70,000
- Obermeyer, “Fifty years of violent war deaths from Vietnam to Bosnia”, British Medical Journal, 336:1482 (2008): 62,000
- Eckhardt: 12,000 civ. + 12,000 mil. = 24,000 (1960-73)
- S&S, 1960-73
- Laos: 5,000 (1960-62), 15,000 (1963-73)
- USA: 500
- NVietnam: 3,000
- TOTAL: 23,500
- WHPSI: 22,355 k. by pol.viol., 1963-72
- T. Lomperis, From People's War to People's Rule (1996): 20,000 Meo irregulars and 15,000 Royal Lao Army
- Harff & Gurr: 18-20,000 Meo tribemen were victims of genocide, 1963-65
- Vietnamese Civil War, final phase, 1973-75
- Young, citing Pentagon estimates:
- ARVN: 26,500 (1973) + 30,000 (1974)
- PRG/DRV: 39,000 (1973) + 61,000 (1974)
- Civilians: 15,000
- [TOTAL: 171,500 killed in the "Cease-Fire War".]
- [My guess is 3.5M for the Vietnam conflict, plus .6M for Cambodia, plus 62,000 in Laos]
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Atrocities:
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- Lewy:
- 36,725 civilians assassinated by VC/NVA, 1957-72
- 2,800 civilians executed and 3,000 missing after Hue was captured by VC/NVA, 1968
- 400 civilians massacred by USAns in the area of Son My village, incl. 175-200 in My Lai hamlet, 1968
- Because of the lack of weapons recovered from many bodies, Lewy considers the possibility that up to 222,000 VC KIA may have actually been innocent bystanders. (Or maybe not. Poor evidence either way.)
- Harff & Gurr: 475,000 civilians in NLF areas were victims of repressive politicide, 1965-72
- Young: Hue massacre, 1968:
- Officially: 2,800-5,700
- Len Ackland: 300-400
- Chomsky (1987): 21,000 VC civilian officials assassinated under US/GVN Phoenix project (-in text. Endnote gives estimates ranging 40-48,000.). Lewy considers these to be (mostly) legitimate military targets.
- October 22, 2003 Toledo Blade: Tiger Force (US) committed ongoing atrocities in Quang Nam province, July-Nov 1967. Incomplete records show 81 murders. The unit reported 1000+ enemies killed, but it sounds like a lot of those weren't legit. From the article details, I'd guess they murdered a few hundred (300±) civilians. [http://www.toledoblade.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20031022/SRTIGERFORCE/110190169]
- Hanson:
- VN civilians k. by indiscriminate American bombing: 50,000
- VN civilians k. by indiscriminate Communist rocketing, artillery and terrorism: 400,000
- Rummel:
- 51,000 democides by South Vietnam (1963-75), incl...
- executions: 30,000
- forced relocations: 5,000 dead
- prison deaths: 5,000
- 166,000 democides by NVN/VC in SVN:
- Officials assassinated: 17,000
- Civilians assassinated: 49,000
- Refugees killed, 1975: 50,000
- Misc: 50,000
- 6,000 democides by USA
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Vietnam War Sources:
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- Britannica: not specified, but the implication is that the statistics cover the entire war.
- Clodfelter, Michael, Vietnam in Military Statistics (1995)
- COWP: Correlates of War Project. Covers the years 1965-75 [http://www.correlatesofwar.org/cow2%20data/WarData/InterState/Inter-State%20War%20Participants%20(V%203-0).htm]
- Eckhardt: covers the years 1965-75 (unless otherwise noted)
- Encyclopedia Americana (2003), "Vietnam War"
- Grenville: does not specify which years are covered, but by context, it seems to be 1960-75
- Hanson, Victor Davis, "Tet, January 31-April 6, 1968," Carnage and culture (2001)
- Kutler, Stanley: Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996)
- Lewy, Guenter, America in Vietnam (1978): Lewy's estimates cover the years 1965-74. (u.o.n.)
- Official VN: On the 20th Anniversary of the war's end, Hanoi announced its official tally of losses for 21 years of war: 1954-75 [3 April 1995 AP; 30 April 1995 Washington Post. Herald Sun, April 5, 1995; Plain Dealer (Cleveland, Ohio), January 1, 1996; Financial Times (London,England), April 5, 1995; Xinhua News Agency, APRIL 3, 1995; United Press International, February 25, 1997. (5 Nov. 2004) See also, Common Mistake #2]
- Olson, James: Dictionary of the Vietnam War (1988): covers the years 1965-74 (u.o.n.)
- Summers, Harry: Vietnam War Almanac (1985)
- Tucker, Spencer, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1998)
- Wallechinsky: death tolls apparently cover the years 1957-75. (u.o.n.)
- Young, Marilyn, The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 (1991)
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Ethiopia (1962-92): 2,000,000 [make link]
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- This event consists of two simultaneous civil wars in the same country, along with a major famine and dictatorial repression. Different estimates seem to count some or all of them together or separately.
- Totals:
- Louis Rapoport, “Knives Are Out For A Bloodstained Ruler,” Sydney Morning Herald (from The New Republic) April 28, 1990:
- Total: “More than two million people… died because of resettlement, imprisonment, withheld famine relief, military losses and straight execution.”
- famine deaths: 1,000,000
- Carlos Sanchez, "A Victory Tempered By Sorrow," Washington Post, May 26, 1991
- war deaths: 400,000
- famine deaths: 1,000,000
- Fitzgerald, Mary Anne, “Tyrant for the taking,” London: The Times, April 20, 1991 : “More than two million people have died in political purges and civil war, or from malnourishment that was abetted by government policies.”
- 12 Dec. 1994 Dallas Morning News: 1,500,000 people died from war, drought and forced resettlement
- War Dead
- B&J
- 1st Ogaden War (1964): 700
- 2nd Ogaden War (1972-78): 30,000
- 3rd Ogaden War (1987-88): 300
- Eritrean War (1965-93): 200,000
- TOTAL: 231,000
- Dict.Wars: 250,000 deaths in the Eritrean war, aggravated by drought and famine.
- Eckhardt
- Ogaden, w/ Cuban & Somali intervention (1972-80): 15,000 civ. + 21,000 mil. = 36,000
- Eritrean revolt & famine (1974-87): 500,000 civ. + 46,000 mil. = 546,000
- Obermeyer, “Fifty years of Violent War Deaths…”: 579,000
- D.Smith says that 1,500,000 had died as of 1991.
- Henry, Neil, “Mengistu Leaves Ethiopia in Shambles,” Washington Post, May 22, 1991
- war deaths: 500,000
- famine deaths: 1,000,000
- Manthorpe, Jonathan, “Mengistu's brutal regime lasted surprisingly long,” Toronto Star, May 22, 1991: 500,000 famine deaths
- When the war ended, the Washington Post (26 May 91) was saying that the war had killed 400,000 people. (plus 1,000,000 dead by famine which you may or may not want to add into the final total.)
- Atrocities under Mengistu (r. 1974-91):
- 14 Dec. 1994 NY Times:
- Killed in campaign of persecution after 1974: 150,000
- Died in forced relocation programs: 100,000
- Died in ensuing famines: 1,000,000
- 27 Jan. 2000 Washington Post: as many as 1M deaths attributed to his govt.
- Agence France Presse (8 Oct. 1996): estimates of the number of killings range from 50,000 to 200,000.
- Harff & Gurr: 30,000 political opponents were victims of revolutionary politicide, 1974-79
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Nigeria (1966-70): 1,000,000 [make link]
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- Coup, 1966
- Harff & Gurr: 9-30,000 Ibos living in the north killed, 1966
- Edgerton: 5,000 to 50,000 Ibos
- Biafran War, 1967-70:
- John de St. Jorre, The Brothers' War (1972): 600,000
- WPA3: 600,000
- Edgerton: 500,000 to 1,000,000
- Kuper: 600,000 to 1,000,000
- Encarta: at least 1,000,000 died of starvation
- B&J: 1,000,000 total
- S&S: 1,000,000 battle deaths
- Our Times: at least 1,000,000
- Robert Melson: over 1,000,000 starved (in Is the Holocaust Unique?)
- Compton's Encyclopedia: 1,500,000 starved
- WHPSI: 1,993,900 deaths by political violence, 1966-70.
- Dict.Wars: nearly 2,000,000
- Eckhardt: 1,000,000 civ. + 1,000,000 mil. = 2,000,000
- D. Smith: 2,000,000
- Don Jacobs, The Brutality of Nations (1987): 3,000,000
- MEDIAN: 1.0 M+
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Bangladesh (1971): 1,250,000 [make link]
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- The high estimates of how many Bengalis were massacred are almost 10 times the low estimates:
- WHPSI: 307,013 deaths by pol.viol. in Pakistan, 1971.
- D.Smith says 500,000
- S&S: 500,000 (Civil War, Mar.-Dec. 1971)
- 1984 World Almanac: up to 1,000,000 civilians were killed.
- Hartman: 1,000,000 Bengalis
- B&J: 1,000,000 Bengalis
- Kuper cites a study by Chaudhuri which counted 1,247,000 dead, and mentions the possibility that it may be as many as 3,000,000.
- Porter: 1M-2M
- MEDIAN: 1,500,000
- Rummel: 1,500,000.
- Eckhardt: 1,000,000 civ. + 500,000 mil. = 1,500,000 (Bangladesh)
- Harff & Gurr: 1,250,000 to 3,000,000
- The official estimate in Bangladesh is 3 million dead. [AP 30 Dec. 2000; Agence France Presse 3 Oct. 2000;
- Rounaq Johan: 3,000,000 (in Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
- Compton's Encyclopedia, "Genocide": 3,000,000
- Encyclopedia Americana (2003), "Bangladesh": 3,000,000
- Indo-Pak War, 1971
- B&J
- W. Pakistan: 8,000
- India: 2-3,000
- S&S
- India: 8,000 [sic]
- Pakistan: 3,000 [sic]
- TOTAL: 11,000
- Eckhardt (Indo-Pak War): 11,000
- Clodfelter
- India: 3,241
- Pakistan: 7,982
- [TOTAL: 11,223]
- WPA3
- India: 3,037
- Pakistan: 7,982
- TOTAL: 11,019
- Hartman:
- India: 10,633
- Pakistan: 17,000
- [TOTAL: 27,633]
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Cambodia, Khmer Rouge (1975-1978): 1,650,000 [make link]
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- Pol Pot's reign of terror is probably the second most widely publicized genocide of the century, so it's pretty easy to find estimates:
- Math Ly, member of Cambodian Politburo: 3,300,000 (21 May 1987 AP)
- Rummel: 2,000,000 domestic + 35,000 foreign democides
- SIPRI 1989: 2,000,000
- Elizabeth Becker When the War Was Over (1986): as many as 2,000,000
- D. Smith: 1 to 3 million
- Eckhardt: 1,500,000 civ. + 500,000 mil. = 2,000,000
- War Annual 6: 2,000,000
- Kutler, Stanley: Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996): 2M
- Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism: 1,300,000 to 2,300,000
- Clodfelter, Michael, Vietnam in Military Statistics (1995): 1,200,000 to 2,000,000
- Wallechinsky: between 1 and 2 million.
- Dict.Wars: 1M ("Cambodian Civil War of 1970-75") to 2M ("Kampuchean Civil War of 1978-98")
- P. Johnson: 1,200,000.
- Marie Martin, Cambodia, a Shattered Society (1994) cites:
- US State Dept.: 1.2-1.8M
- Demographer En Meng Try: 1.0-1.2M
- Encarta: "...may have caused more than 1 million..."
- Chandler, David, Brother Number One (1992): "conservative estimate" of 800,000 to 1,000,000.
- Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 (1991): in the text she gives the range of estimates as 0.7 to 2.0 M. In a footnote, she favorably cites Michael Vickery's estimate of 700,000 to 1,000,000.
- Chomsky (1987): 750,000, citing Vickery.
- These are the numbers quoted in Pol Pot's 1998 obituaries:
- "more than 1 million" (New York Times, Newsweek, Time)
- "1.5 million or more" (Washington Post)
- "up to 2 million" (U.S. News and World Reports)
- Ben Kiernan in The Pol Pot Regime (also in "The Cambodian Genocide", Century of Genocide: Eyewitness Accounts and Critical Views, Samuel Totten, editor, 1997) estimates 1,671,000 (21%) killed out of a population of 7,890,000, including...
- Vietnamese: 10,000 (100%)
- Chinese: 215,000 (50%)
- Lao: 4,000 (40%)
- Thai: 8,000 (40%)
- Cham: 90,000 (36%)
- Urban Khmer: 500,000 (25%)
- Rural Khmer: 825,000 (16%)
- Average: If we take these 25 estimates and figure that "more than" means 20% more, while "up to" means 20% less, and "between" means dead center, then both the median and mean of all these estimates is 1.6M
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Afghanistan (1979-2001): 1,800,000 [make link]
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- Soviets vs. Mujahideen vs. Govt. vs. Taliban [estimates listed chronologically]
- War Annual 6 (1994): 1,000,000
- Britannica Annual (1994): 1,500,000
- Wallechinsky (1995): 1,300,000
- D.Smith (1995): 1,500,000
- B&J (1997): 1,500,000 (1979-95)
- Dictionary of 20C World History (1997): 1M
- CDI: 1,550,000 (1978-97)
- 29 April 1999 AP: 2,000,000
- Dict.Wars: >2M
- 23 May 1999 Denver Rocky Mtn News: 1,800,000
- Ploughshares 2000: 1,500,000
- [MEDIAN of latest five: 1,800,000]
- Partials
- Soviet Phase and immediate aftermath only
- Isby, War in a Distant Country: Afghanistan (1989): Civilian deaths:
- 1986 voluntary aid study: 600,000
- 1987 USAID study: 875,000
- 1987 Gallup study: 1,200,000
- 2 June 2002 LA Times: 670,000 civilians during 10-year Soviet occupation
- Toronto Star (6 May 1991): more than 1,000,000
- SIPRI 1990: 1,000,000 total dead (the 1988 Yearbook estimated 100-150T battle dead)
- Minneapolis Star-Tribune (14 Sept. 1991): 1,500,000
- FAS 2000: 1-2M Afghans (1979-89)
- USA Today (17 Apr. 1992): more than 2 million.
- [MEDIAN: 1.5M]
- 20 Sept 2001 Christian Science Monitor: 400,000 civilian deaths in the 1990s [http://www.csmonitor.com/2001/0920/p1s3-wosc.html]
- Factional fighting in Kabul, 1992-96
- 30 Dec. 2001 AP: 50,000
- 2 June 2002 LA Times: >50,000 acc2 Red Cross
- Atrocities:
- Zucchino, “The Americans ... They Just Drop Their Bombs and Leave”, 2 June 2002 LA Times: 20,000 civilians k. by Soviet air raids, March 1979 in Herat
- Sussman, “CIA Almost Sure of Afghan Massacre, Senator Says”, 4 March 1980 AP: 1,300 villagers in Konarha Province k. by Soviets & Afghan govt. "last year"
- By Soviets in Kunduz (province in northern Afg.)
- “Soviet Military In Unconfirmed Report Linked To Massacre Of 900 Civilians”, 27 March 1985 AP: 900 massacred
- “Hundreds of Civilians Reportedly Killed by Soviets in Afghanistan”, 26 Feb. 1985 AP: 480 civilians massacred at Chahardara (town) ca. Feb. 2/3
- Taliban POWs k. by Northern Alliance in Mazar-i-Sharif, May 1997
- 28 Nov.1998 NY Times: up to 2,000
- 26 Aug. 2002 Newsweek: 1,250
- By Taliban in Mazar-e Sharif, Nov. 1998
- 13 Nov. 1998 News-India Times: 5,000-8,000 massacred
- 28 Nov.1998 Washington Post: 2,000-5,000 ethnic Hazara civilians k.
- Harff & Gurr: 1,000,000 old regime loyalists, rebel supporters were victims of revolutionary politicide.
- Soviet deaths:
- FAS 2000: ca. 14,500
- 20 May 88 Chicago Tribune: 12-15,000 killed
- Isby, War in a Distant Country: 13,310 KIA as of 25 May 1988
- 24 Dec. 1989 Arizona Republic: 13,310
- War Annual 6 (1994): 13,833
- Wallechinsky: 14,454, incl. 11,381 in combat
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Sudan (1983-2005): 1,900,000 [make link]
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- [Listed Chronologically]
- War Annual 4 (1990): 500,000 dead, 1983-89
- Dunnigan (1991): 500,000
- Washington Post: 500,000 (12 Feb. 1993)
- Detroit Free Press (AP): 1,300,000 "in the fighting and resulting famines" (14 Jan. 1997) [http://www.freep.com/news/nw/qsudan14.htm]
- B&J (1997): 1,500,000 (1983-95)
- SIPRI 1997: 37,000 to 40,000 battle dead
- CDI: 1,000,000 (1983-97)
- BBC News Online: 1,500,000 "in fighting and related famines" (4 June 1998) [http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/world/africa/newsid_106000/106635.stm]
- Time: 1,500,000 killed, 1983-98 (27 July 1998)
- U.S. Committee for Refugees: 1,900,000 (Quantifying Genocide in Southern Sudan and the Nuba Mountains, 10 Dec. 1998) [http://www.refugees.org/news/crisis/sudan.pdf] This report updates a 1993 study, which had estimated that 1.3M had died thus far.
- Dict.Wars (1999): 1.5M (1956-98)
- 29 April 1999 AP: 1.5M
- Ploughshares 2000: 2M
- 23 May 1999 Denver Rocky Mtn News: 2M
- 10 Nov. 2003 Baltimore Sun: 1.5M
- NY Times 27 June 2004: >2M
- [MEDIAN of last 7 estimates: 1.9M]
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Kinshasa Congo (1998 et seq.): 3,800,000 [make link]
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- International Rescue Committee mortality studies [http://www.theirc.org/special-reports/congo-forgotten-crisis]
- NY Times, Chicago Tribune (9 June 2000): 1,700,000 excess deaths in eastern Congo due to civil war, incl. 200,000 killed by violence.
- Newer IRC study (8 May 2001): 2,500,000 excess deaths in eastern Congo due to civil war, incl. 350,000 killed by violence. The next study, dated 8 April 2003, estimated 3.3m d.
- 2005 IRC study: 3,800,000 excess deaths in D.R. Congo from the start of the Second Congo War through April 30, 2005.
- Newest IRC study (2008): 5,400,000 excess deaths.
- ANALYSIS: The 2008 study found that the mortality rate in Congo still exceeds the African average, causing over a million and a half excess deaths since the formal end of hostilities; however, deaths by violence fell sharply from 11.1% at the peak of the fighting, to 1.5% after December 2006, and the IRC has moved away from calling it a war to calling it a humanitarian crisis, so I'm blaming the actual war only for the 3.8 million excess deaths that actually occurred during it, as determined by the 2005 study.
- Human Security Report Project: 3 million
- They suggest the IRC estimate was based on a faulty baseline set for the peacetime death rate. "DR Congo war deaths 'exaggerated'", BBC, 20 January 2010 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8471147.stm]
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to Site Index
Last updated June 2011
Secondary Wars and Atrocities of the Twentieth Century
Alphabetical Index
Site Index
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20th Century death tolls larger than 300,000 but fewer than 1 million people.
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Brazil (1900 et seq.) 800,000 [make link]
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- Indian Genocide
- Gerald Colby, Thy Will Be Done: the Conquest of the Amazon (1995)
- 800,000 Indians "disappeared into extinction" since 1900.
- 40,000 to 100,000 died, 1957-68.
- Robin Hanbury-Tenison, A Question of Survival (1973): The Indian population of Brazil declined from a half million in 1900 to 80 thousand in 1957 to 50 thousand in 1973. Whether the 450,000 missing Indians were assimilated or exterminated is not certain, but a significant number were probably victims of genocide.
- Robert Hitchcock & Tara Twedt: Indian population of Brazil declined from 1.0M to 0.2M between 1900 and 1957, a net loss of 800,000 (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
- Porter estimates that 100,000 Brazilian Indians were victims of genocide during the 1960s.
- Darcy Ribeiro, "Indigenous Cultures and Languages in Brazil", in Indians of Brazil in the Twentieth Century, Janice Hopper, ed. (1967): 87 Indian tribes in Brazil went extinct between 1900 and 1957 (Out of an original 230) This, by the way, is the authoritative study of Brazilian Indian population, which is why every other author discussing the decline of Indian population uses 1957 as a milestone.
- Rummel estimates the following Indian deaths:
- Under republic (1900-30): 50,000 democides
- Under Vargas (1930-45): 60,000
- Under Dutra/Vargas (1945-64): 50,000
- Under military (1964-85): 75,000
- TOTAL: 235,000
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Portuguese Colonies (1900-25): [make link]
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- Democidal deaths among forced laborers in the Portuguese colonies (Rummel):
- Monarchy (1900-10): 200,000
- Republic (1910-25): 125,000
- TOTAL: 325,000
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China, Warlord Era (1917-28): 800,000 [make link]
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- Rummel:
- Battle Deaths: 178,000
- Democides:
- By Warlords: 450,000
- By Guomindang: 139,000
- By Communists: 43,000
- SUBTOTAL (Military + Civilian): 810,000
- Famine (non-democidal): 6,000,000
- Gilbert
- Revolt in Kansu (1928): 200,000 Muslims k.
- Battle of Hsuchow, Guomindang v. Northern Army (1927): 50,000 k.
- Eckhardt:
- Yunan Revolt (1917-18): 1,000
- Szechuanese Wars (1917-18, 1920): 6,000
- Civil War (1926-28): 10,000
- Muslim Revolt (1928): 200,000
- TOTAL: 217,000
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Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922): 400,000 [make link]
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- Urlanis:
- Greek KIA: 26,000, citing Bujac:
- Killed and (?) died of wounds: 19,362
- Died of wounds (?) and disease: 4,878
- Missing: 17,995
- TOTAL: 19T killed - 3T mortally wounded (i.e. 6% of k.) + 10T (i.e. ½ of missing) = 26T
- Turks: about the same
- TOTAL: 52,000 battle deaths
- Singer (KIA)
- Turkey: 20,000
- Greece: 30,000
- Winston Churchill, The World Crisis, v.5 p.409: "It is perhaps no exaggeration to remark that a quarter of a million persons died of this monkey's bite."
- Rummel (civilian democide)
- Greeks killed by Turks: 264,000
- Turks killed by Greeks: 15,000
- Housepian, Marjorie, The Smyrna Affair (1966)
- The 1922 Burning of Smyrna by the Turks: According to Adm. Bristol's report, 2,000 Greeks killed by fire, execution, etc. According to George Horton, over 100,000 were killed. Housepian assesses Bristol's number as "the historical verdict to date", but says that Horton's "makes more sense" in light of the 190,000 residents and refugees unaccounted for.
- AIHGS: 353,000 Pontian Greeks k. by Turks [http://www.aihgs.com/Aftermath.htm]
- Eckhardt: 20,000 civ. + 50,000 mil. = 70,000
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Spanish Civil War (1936-39): 365,000 [make link]
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and Franco Regime (1939-75): 100,000
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- Hugh Thomas, The Spanish Civil War (1977) (cited at length by both Paul Johnson and JAS Grenville):
- Republicans killed in combat: 110,000
- Nationalists killed in combat: 90,000
- Executed by Nationalists: 75,000
- Executed by Republicans: 55,000
- Bombs: 10,000
- Malnutrition: 25,000
- TOTAL: 365,000
- Gabriel Jackson, The Spanish Republic and the Civil War 1931-39 (1965, 1972):
- Battle deaths: 100,000
- Air raids: 10,000
- Dis./Malnutrition: 50,000
- Executed by Republicans: 20,000
- Executed by Nationalists: 200,000
- TOTAL: 380,000
- Salas Larraza, Ramon, Perdidas de la guerra (1977), cited at length in Stanley Payne, The Franco Regime 1936-1975 (1987)
- Battle deaths:
- Republicans KIA: 60,500
- Nationalists KIA: 59,500
- Foreign soldiers, both sides: 25,500
- Civilians: 15,000
- Executions:
- By Republicans: 72,344
- By Nationalists: 35,021
- Disease: 165,000
- TOTAL: 268,500 deaths by violence (adding disease: 433,500)
- Singer (1982)
- Spain, all sides: 650,000
- Ousiders:
- Germany: 300
- Italy: 6,000
- Portugal: 2,000
- Eckhardt: 600,000 civ. + 600,000 mil. = 1,200,000
- Bombing of Guernica, 1937
- Foreigners
- Clodfelter:
- French: 1,000-3,000
- German-Austrian: 2,000
- American: 900-1,500
- Yugoslav: 700
- Italian: 600
- Britons: 543
- Swiss: 76
- Abraham Lincoln Brigade
- 13 February 2001, Associated Press: 750 American volunteers k.
- Encyclopedia Americana: 750
- 23 February 2002, Oakland Tribune: 800
- 31 May 1997, Washington Post: 900 (citing Hugh Thomas)
- 28 May 2000, New York Times: 900
- 19 October 1986, Associated Press: 1,200
- 31 March 1988, St. Petersburg Times: 1,600
- After Francisco Franco came to power:
- Ramon Salas Larraza:
- 22,641 executions
- 4,000 deaths by guerrilla activity (to 1961)
- 159,000 excess deaths by disease (1940-43)
- Hugh Thomas: 100,000 executions
- Freedland, "Spain and the lingering legacy of Franco", Guardian, 28 March 2011, "113,000 people executed by Franco's forces during and after the war"
- 22 October 2002 AP: new research shows perhaps 150,000 political prisoners executed during war and Franco dictatorship,.
- Gabriel Jackson: 200,000 prisoner deaths, 1939-43
- Daniel Davis, Spain's Civil War : The Last Great Cause (1974) says that a Spanish official admitted in 1944 that Franco's government had executed 192,684 since coming to power. Thomas doubts this number.
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Abyssinian Conquest (1935-41): 400,000 [make link]
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- Angelo Del Boca, The Ethiopian War 1935-1941 (1965)
- He cites a 1945 memorandum from Ethiopia to the Conference of Prime Ministers which tallies 760,300 natives dead:
- Battle Deaths: 275,000
- Hunger among refugees: 300,000
- Patriots killed during occupation: 75,000
- Concentration camps: 35,000
- Feb. 1937 massacre: 30,000
- Executions: 24,000
- Civilians killed by air force: 17,800
- Concerning the massacre of 19-21 Feb. 1937 in Addis Ababa, he doubts Ethiopian claims that 30,000 were killed, and suggests it was 3,000 instead.
- Battle deaths on the Italian side:
- Italians: 426 officers + 4785 men = 5211
- Native auxilliaries: 10,000
- Alberto Sbacchi, Ethiopia Under Mussolini (1985)
- Battle deaths:
- Italy: 15,000
- Ethiopia: 275,000
- TOTAL: 290,000
- Sbacchi also cites the claims of 30,000 massacred Feb. 1937, but he too supports a death toll of 3,000. He also claims 5,469 executions by the end of 1937 in retaliation for an attempt on Graziani's life.
- Anthony Mockley, Haile Selasse's War
- He also suggests 3,000 Ethiopians massacred in Addis Ababa during the weekend of 19-21 Feb. 1937. Also, the Italians reported some 1,469 summary executions across the country as of 28 March 1937.
- Clodfelter
- Italy: 4,359, incl...
- Italians: 2,313 soldiers and 453 laborers
- Eritreans: 1086
- Somali, Libyans: 507
- Ethiopians: 275,000
- Small & Singer, battle dead, 1935-36:
- Italy: 4,000
- Ethiopia: 16,000
- TOTAL: 20,000
- Eckhardt: 20,000
- Analysis: Three sources accept that 275,000 Ethiopians died in combat, so, incredible as it may seem, we probably should go along. As for the number of civilian deaths, the total is probably less than the 485T claimed in the 1945 memo. For example, note the discrepancies in the number killed in Addis Ababa (3T vs. 30T) and the number of executions (5.5T vs. 24T); however, a quarter to a third of the memo's total is not inconceivable, pushing the total of unnatural civilian deaths during the Abyssinian conquest into the neighborhood of 120-160,000
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First Indochina War (1945-54): 400,000 [make link]
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- Our Times: 1,300,000
- T. Lomperis, From People's War to People's Rule (1996)
- French dead: 92,707
- Viet Minh: >500,000
- Civilians: 250,000
- [TOTAL: 842,707]
- D. Smith: 600,000
- Eckhardt: 300,000 civ. + 300,000 mil. = 600,000
- B&J: 500,000
- S. Karnow, Vietnam : a History (1983): 400,000
- Bernard Fall
- Street Without Joy: 75,867 French Union dead and missing; 18,714 Indochinese allies dead; 94,581 Total.
- The Two Vietnams (1963): 250,000 civilians killed; Vietminh casualties three times the French losses.
- Spencer Tucker, Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1998)
- French Union dead: 75,867
- Allied Indochinese states: 18,714
- Viet Minh: 3 times that
- Civilians: 250,000
- [TOTAL: 630,000 (?)]
- Stanley Kutler: Encyclopedia of the Vietnam War (1996)
- French and Indochinese client states: 94,581 killed
- Viet Minh: 300,000
- Clodfelter, Michael, Vietnam in Military Statistics (1995)
- French Union dead: 74,220
- French: 20,685
- Foreign Legion: 11,620
- Africans: 15,229
- Indochinese: 26,686
- Allied Indochinese states: 18,714
- Viet Minh: 175,000
- Civilians: 125,000
- [TOTAL: 392,934]
- WHPSI: 44,165 deaths by political violence in both Vietnams, 1948-54
- 6,000 civilians killed in French shelling of Haiphong, 1946 (Dictionary of 20th Century World History; Grenville)
|
|
India (1947): 500,000 [make link]
|
- The rioting and dislocation associated with partition cost how many lives?
- 1984 World Almanac: 200,000
- Hammond 500,000
- Eckhardt: 800,000
- D.Smith 1,000,000
- B&J: 1,000,000 (1945-48)
- Hartman: 1,000,000
- Stanley Wolpert, A New History of India (1993): 1,000,000
- Collins and Lapierre, Freedom at Midnight (1975) cite these sources:
- Khosla, Stern Reckoning: 500,000
- Moon, Divide and Quit: 200-250,000
- Hodson: The Great Divide: 200-250,000
- Chanduli Trivedi, governor of Punjab: 225,000
- P. Johnson puts the death toll at 200-600,000. In addition to some of the Collins and Lapierre sources, he cites these authorities:
- Stephens, Pakistan (1963): 500,000
- Edwardes, Last Years of British India (1963): 600,000
- The median of these 14 estimates is 500,000.
|
|
Algeria (1954-62): 537,000 [make link]
|
- The Algerian government claims that one million were killed in the war.
- Dan Smith, Encarta, and Our Times seem to agree with this number, but in vague or confusing ways:
- Encarta says "French casualties were about 100,000, Algerian more than 1 million". The textbook definition of "casualties" includes wounded, so if Encarta means it by the book, then it agrees with the French estimates that perhaps 275,000 were killed. The problem is that "casualties" is widely misused as a synonym for "killed", so if Encarta means it that way, then it agrees with the Algerians that around a million were killed.
- Our Times: "killed ... up to a million Muslims." (phrased to allow for the possibility that it might be lower)
- Dan Smith: The War Atlas (1983) does not give a specific number, but Algeria is filled with the color which indicates that more than a million died in all wars fought between 1945 and 1982.
- From Alistair Horne, A Savage War of Peace (1977)
- Official French statistics:
- Europeans:
- Soldiers: 17,456 killed
- Settlers: 2,788 killed and 500 disappeared
- Muslims:
- Combatants killed by French: 141,000
- FLN, internal purges: 12,000
- Civilians abducted by FLN, presumed dead: 50,000
- [TOTAL: 223,744]
- To which should be added:
- Killed in France by terrorism: 4,300
- Pro-French Muslims killed in Algeria in post-war reprisals: 30-150,000
- Horne personally believes that the French numbers are too low and the Algerian too high, and that the real number falls somewhere between them.
- Britannica largely agrees with the French numbers:
- French: 10,000
- Muslims: 250,000
- Anthony Clayton, Frontiersmen: Warfare In Africa Since 1950
- French military deaths, all causes, including colonials and Foreign Legion: 35,000
- Civilians: 3,500 French and 30,000 indigenous, plus 150,000 revenge killings
- FLN: 141,000 KIA and 12,000 killed by Amirouche and 4,000 k. in France.
- Deaths in resettlement camps etc: 300,000
- [TOTAL: 675,500]
- Clodfelter
- French military deaths: 17,456, incl...
- Foreign Legion: 1,976
- Muslim regulars: 2,500
- Muslim aux.: 2,500
- Terrorism
- French + Fr. Alg.: 2,788
- Muslim: 16,378 k. + 13,296 missing, believed d.
- In France: 4,300 Muslim Alg. k.
- Arab Algerians: 300,000 civ.+mil, incl...
- Algerians who collab. w/Fr: 30,000 k. post-war
- [TOTAL: ca. 350,000]
- WPA3; also Hartman
- French soldiers: 17,456
- French settlers: 2,788
- Algerian Moslems: 1,000,000
- Singer: 15,000 French
- Eckhardt: 82,000 civ. + 18,000 mil. = 100,000
- COWP: 18,000 French, 100,000 total
- Harff & Gurr: 30,000 to 150,000 Harkis, OAS supporters were victims of retributive politicide, 1962
- ANALYSIS
- Among the three sources that go into detail (Horne, Clayton, Clodfelter), there's 2/3 agreement on some essentials:
- Europeans: 17,456 mil. + 2,788 civ.
- FLN: 141,000 KIA + 12,000 purged
- Muslim civilians: ca. 4,000 k. in France
- [TOTAL of these: 177,244]
- There's no consensus on these categories:
- Algerians generally: Does 300,000 include the FLN (Clodfelter) or not (Clayton)?
- Post-war reprisals: 30,000 or 150,000?
- Algerian civilian victims of FLN: 29,674 (Clodfelter) or 50,000 (Horne)
- [TOTAL of these: 219,000 to 500,000. Splitting the difference yields ca. 360,000]
|
|
Sudan (1955-72): 500,000 [make link]
|
- Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full (2001): "half a million lives.... Hunger was the worst killer."
- Kuper: 500,000 or more. He also mentions Hale's estimate of 500,000-1,000,000.
- B&J: 700,000 (1963-72)
- FAS 2000: 500,000 by the late 1960s
- Dunnigan (1991): nearly 500,000
- Eckhardt: 250,000 civ. + 250,000 mil. = 500,000
- Singer: 250,000 (1963-72)
|
|
Indonesia (1965-66): 400,000 [make link]
|
|
Army massacre of Communists, sympathizers and anyone else they didn't like:
- Paul Johnson acknowledges the possibility of 1,000,000, but leans toward 200-250,000
- Harff & Gurr: 500,000 to 1,000,000 Communists, Chinese were victims of repressive/xenophobic genocide, 1965-66
- Our Times: 300,000
- Eckhardt: 500,000
- D. Smith: 500,000
- Robert Cribb: 200,000 to 500,000 (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
- Dict.Wars: 300,000
- Chicago Tribune, May 23, 1990: 250,000
- Clodfelter
- "estimates vary from 150,000 to 500,000"
- "more widely accepted": 200,000 to 250,000
- Sukarno claimed 78,000
- Rummel: 509,000
- Hartman: 300,000 to 600,000
- John Hughes, Indonesian Uprising (1967) cites these:
- The official report issued by the Indonesian government: 78,000
- Private admission by a member of the commission which wrote the report: 780,000
- Adam Malik, Indonesian foreign minister: 160,000
- New York Times: 150,000 to 400,000
- Washington Post: 500,000
- Life Magazine: 400,000
- WHPSI: 575,000 deaths from pol.viol.,1965-1966.
- Encarta: 300,000 to 1,000,000
- The MEDIAN of these 19 estimates falls at 400,000
|
|
Uganda, Idi Amin's regime (1972-79): 300 ,000 [make link]
|
- 300,000 is the canonical death toll. Encarta gives it, as do Rummel, Chirot, Gilbert, Grenville, B&J, Eckhardt, Our Times and Time Magazine (13 April 1998)
- As for the dissenters:
- D. Smith: 100,000
- Dictionary of 20C World History: 250,000
- Harff & Gurr: 100,000-500,000 (two numbers which average out to 300,000, BTW)
- Berkeley, The Graves Are Not Yet Full (2001): half a million
- 28 July 1980 AP: 200,000
- International War, 1979
- Singer:
- Tanzania: 1,000
- Uganda: 1,500
- Libya: 500
- TOTAL: 3,000
- Eckhardt: 3,000
- Edgerton
- Tanzanian civilians: 1,500
- Libya: 600
- B&J:
- Tanzania: 1,000
- Libya: 200
- TOTAL: 3,500
- WPA3: 4,000
|
|
Vietnam, post-war Communist regime (1975 et seq.): 365,000 [make link]
|
- Jacqueline Desbarats and Karl Jackson ("Vietnam 1975-1982: The Cruel Peace", in The Washington Quarterly, Fall 1985) estimated that there had been around 65,000 executions. This number is repeated in the Sept. 1985 Dept. of State Bulletin article on Vietnam.
- Orange County Register (29 April 2001): 1 million sent to camps and 165,000 died.
- Northwest Asian Weekly (5 July 1996): 150,000-175,000 camp prisoners unaccounted for.
- Estimates for the number of Boat People who died:
- Elizabeth Becker (When the War Was Over, 1986) cites the UN High Commissioner on Refugees: 250,000 boat people died at sea; 929,600 reached asylum
- The 20 July 1986 San Diego Union-Tribune cites the UN Refugee Commission: 200,000 to 250,000 boat people had died at sea since 1975.
- The 3 Aug. 1979 Washington Post cites the Australian immigration minister's estimate that 200,000 refugees had died at sea since 1975.
- Also: "Some estimates have said that around half of those who set out do not survive."
- The 1991 Information Please Almanac cites unspecified "US Officials" that 100,000 boat people died fleeing Vietnam.
- Hanson, Victor Davis, Carnage and culture (2001): 50,000-100,000
- Encarta estimates that 0.5M fled, and 10-15% died, for a death toll of 50-75,000.
- Nayan Chanda, Brother Enemy (1986): ¼M Chinese refugees in two years, 30,000 to 40,000 of whom died at sea. (These numbers also repeated by Marilyn Young, The Vietnam Wars: 1945-1990 (1991))
- Rummel
- Vietnamese democide: 1,040,000 (1975-87)
- Executions: 100,000
- Camp Deaths: 95,000
- Forced Labor: 48,000
- Democides in Cambodia: 460,000
- Democides in Laos: 87,000
- Boat People: 500,000 deaths (50% not blamed on the Vietnamese govt.)
- ANALYSIS: I'd estimate a total of 365,000. That's 165,000 camp deaths (including 65,000 executions) + 200,000 boat people. It's unlikely that VN alone caused 460+87T democides in Cambodia + Laos since estimates of the total deaths in these conflicts only run to a half million or so.
|
|
Angola (1975-2002): 500,000 [make link]
|
- Govt. vs. UNITA
- PARTIALS:
- Singer (through 1980 only):
- Angola: 7,000
- Cuba: 2,000
- Dunnigan (1991): 60,000
- War Annual 6 (1994): 350,000 (to 1991), incl....
- 1994 Britannica Annual: 300,000
- FAS 2000: 300,000 (1965-95)
- BBC: 300,000 to 1991 [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1063073.stm]
- B&J (1997): 360,000, incl....
- 2,000 Cubans
- 1,000 South Africans
- David L. Marcus, “Relentless war wears on Angolans,” January 23, 1994, Dallas Morning News: more than 450,000
- Ploughshares 2000
- 300,000 since 1992
- TOTAL: 500,000
- 8 March 2002 Agence France Presse: 500,000+
- Lynne Duke, "Will Peace Take Hold in Angola?" Oct. 14, 1996, Washington Post: 500,000
- [MEDIAN: 500,000]
- Casimiro Sieno, “Angolan Peace Talks Restart as Fighting Continues,” July 29, 1994, Associated Press: 500,000
- Paul Salopek, “Inklings of Peace Intrude In Bereft Angola,” January 14, 2000, Chicago Tribune: 500,000
- SIPRI 1994:
- Military: 36,000 since 1975
- Civilian: 86,000 since 1975
- Citing the UN: 450-500T died between Oct.92-Dec.93, including starvation.
- [TOTAL: ca. 597,000]
- 23 May 1999 Denver Rocky Mtn News: 600,000
- Washington Post (15 Dec 1998)
- 150,000 to 300,000 killed, 1975-91
- 500,000 more during renewed fighting, 1992-94
- [TOTAL: 650,000 to 800,000]
- CDI: 750,000 (1975-95)
- Inge Tvedten, Angola: Struggle for Peace and Reconstruction
- By 1992
- Directly, in battle, incl. non-combatants: 100-350,000
- Secondary effects: 500-600,000
- 1992-94: 300,000
- [TOTAL: 900,000-1,250,000]
|
|
Mozambique (1975-1992): 800,000 [make link]
|
- Govt vs RENAMO
- Ottaway, "Slave Trade in Mozambicans cited," Washington Post, Nov. 26, 1990: between 600,000 and 1 million
- Pakenham, “Where a Million Died,” New York Times, April 26, 1992, Book Review of Finnegan, Harrowing of Mozambique: nearly a million
- Lawless, “After The Terror, The Sun May Rise On Bloody Mozambique,” Sydney Morning Herald, October 22, 1994: 500,000
- Jensen, “Peace is as difficult as war in Mozambique,” Rocky Mountain News, October 23, 1994: 600,000
- Christie, “Mozambique celebrates year of democracy,” Reuters News, October 23, 1995: at least 800,000
- Edgerton, Africa's Armies, p.109: at least 1 million
- Dan Smith (1997) estimates an even million.
- BBC: 1,000,000 (1977-92) [http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/country_profiles/1063120.stm]
- B&J: 1,000,000 (1976-92)
- Atrocities, civilians murdered by RENAMO
- 20 May 1988 Facts on File World News Digest (citing US State Dept.): 100,000 k. in previous 2 years. [1986-mid-1988]
- 1988 Gersony Report (US State Dept.): 100,000
- Young: 100-200,000 [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/report/1991/YLS.htm]
- Dictionary of 20C World History: 1M
|
|
Iraq, Saddam Hussein (1979-2003): 300,000 [make link]
|
- Human Rights Watch: "twenty-five years of Ba`th Party rule ... murdered or 'disappeared' some quarter of a million Iraqis" [http://www.hrw.org/wr2k4/3.htm]
- 8/9 Dec. 2003 AP: Total murders
- New survey estimates 61,000 residents of Baghdad executed by Saddam.
- US Government estimates a total of 300,000 murders
- 180,000 Kurds k. in Anfal
- 60,000 Shiites in 1991
- 50,000 misc. others executed
- "Human rights officials" est.: 500,000
- Iraqi politicians: over a million
- [These don't include the million or so dead in the Iran-Iraq War.]
|
|
Ugandan Bush War (1979-86): 300,000 [make link]
|
- Govt. (under Obote) vs. National Resistance Army
- Encarta: 100,000
- Julian Marshall, “Obituary: Milton Obote: The first leader of an independent Uganda, he imposed virtual one-man rule, but was twice overthrown,” The Guardian, October 12, 2005: 100,000
- Eckhardt: 100,000 civ. + 2,000 mil. = 102,000
- SIPRI 1988, (1981-87)
- civilian: 100,000
- military: 5,000 to 6,000
- 24 Dec. 1989 Arizona Republic: 100-200,000
- Chirot: 300,000
- MEDIAN: 300,000
- Bill Berkeley
- “An African success story? Uganda,” The Atlantic, Vol. 274 No. 3 Pg. 22, September, 1994: 300,000
- The Graves Are Not Yet Full (2001): "Possibly a million Ugandans died in two decades [1970s and 1980s, under both Idi Amin and Milton Obote] of sheer terror."
- Edgerton Africa's armies p.155: 300,000
- War Annual 2: 300,000
- D. Smith: 300,000
- B&J: >500,000
- Henry Wasswa, “Uganda's first prime minister, and two-time president, dead at 80,” Associated Press, October 10, 2005: 500,000
- Philip Williams, “Uganda marks 25 years of chaotic independence today,” United Press International, October 9, 1987: 500,000
|
|
Iran-Iraq War (1980-88): 700,000 [make link]
|
- Most newpaper articles agree on the number, but they can't agree on the number of what. They talk of a million "killed", a million "killed and wounded", or a million "casualties". Here are the estimates among the sources which specify the number as killed:
- Dilip Hiro, The Longest War: The Iran-Iraq Military Conflict (1991), p.250:
- Conservative western est: 262,000 Iranians + 105,000 Iraqis = 367,000
- Iran, officially: 123,220 KIA + 60,711 MIA + 11,000 civilians [= 194,931]
- Iran, according to Baghdad: 800,000
- Eckhardt: 377,000 as of 1987
- Potter, Iran, Iraq, and the Legacies of War, p.8 (2006):
- Iranian deaths "more or less consistent": 213,000 (Gen. Safavi); 204,795 incl. civilians (Qalamnevis); 220,000 (Rafiqdust)
- Iraqis: 180,000 (al-Samarrai); 150,000 Baram
- [TOTAL: 354,795 to 400,000]
- Hammond: 400,000
- 5 March 1991 AP
- Iran has acknowledged 135,000 mil. + civ. k.
- Western military analysts: 2 or 3 times higher
- Diplomats in Baghdad: 100,000 Iraqi dead
- [Total: (?) 437,500 ± 67,500]
- Conservative Western estimates: 1M k. or wd.
- Dunnigan (1991): over 500,000
- Dictionary of 20C World History: >500,000
- Bulloch & Morris, The Gulf War (1989): 500,000
- SIPRI 1989: 532,000
- Clodfelter
- Iranians: best est. 450,000 (as high as 730,000)
- Iraqis: 150,000 (as high as 340,000)
- [TOTAL: 600,000 (as high as 1,070,000)
- Chirot
- Iranians: 400,000-600,000
- Iraqis: 200,000
- [TOTAL: 700,000 ± 100,000]
- MEDIAN: 700,000
- Iranians: 400,000
- Iraqis: 200,000
- WPA3: 1,000,000 (600,000 Iranians and 400,000 Iraqis)
- Compton's Encyclopedia: 1,000,000
- Encarta: 1,000,000
- Toronto Star (11 Dec 88): 1,000,000
- San Francisco Chronicle (29 Jan. 1991): 1,000,000
- Our Times: at least 1,000,000
- War Annual 4: 1,000,000 (600,000 Iranians and 400,000 Iraqis)
- B&J: 1,000,000 (400,000 Iranians and 200,000 Iraqis)
- Timeframe: 1,200,000 (900,000 Iranians and 300,000 Iraqis)
- Partials:
- The web site of the President of Iran gives the number as both 1M KIA and 1M K&W on the same page. [http://www.president.ir/cronicnews/1380/8003/800301/800301.htm]
- Laurie Garrett, Betrayal of Trust: The Collapse of Global Public Health (2000), p.498: 240,000 Iranians, civilian + military k.
- David Long, etc, Gulf Security in the Twenty-first Century (1997), p.29: 135,000-150,000 Iraqis k.
|
|
Iraq (1990-2003): 350,000 [make link]
|
- International Embargo
- Kaplow, Larry, “Consequences Of Kuwait: Sanctions have Iraq withering”, 13 June 1999, Atlanta Journal and Constitution: 110,000
- Project on Defense Alternatives, 20 Oct. 2003: "[T]he sanction regime probably cost the lives of 170,000 children. (Much higher estimates for 1992-1998 sanction deaths ... are based on faulty baseline statistics for prewar childhood mortality in Iraq)." [http://www.comw.org/pda/0310rm8.html#N_93_]
- Chris Suellentrop, “Are 1 Million Children Dying in Iraq?” Slate Magazine, October 9, 2001, acknowledged the possibility of 350,000-500,000 excess deaths among children since 1991, but points out that Saddam blames the UN and the US blames Saddam
- UNICEF: 500,000 excess child deaths (under-five) 1991 to 1998 [http://www.unicef.org.uk/index_s.asp?sct=news&filen=../news/iraq1.htm]
- Philip Shenon, “Washington and Baghdad Agree on One Point: Sanctions Hurt”, 22 Nov. 1998, New York Times: 700,000
- Leon Howell, “Churches Regret Calling for Sanctions”, March 21, 1998, [Albany, NY] Times Union: the UN Food and Agriculture Organization estimated that 1,000,000 Iraqis, incl. 560,000 children, died as a result of malnutrition and disease caused by the international embargo imposed following the invasion of Kuwait. The article mentions the use of these numbers by an official of the United Church of Christ, and also labels the figures "commonly used -- but also disputed".
- 6 Aug. 1999 CNN [http://www.cnn.com/WORLD/meast/9908/06/iraq.sanctions/]
- UN: 1M excess deaths
- Al-Thawra newspaper: 1.5M
- Ramsey Clark: 1,500,000 including 750,000 children [http://www.twf.org/News/Y1997/Ramsey.html]
- Brian Nelson and Jane Arraf, “Ten Years After Iraq's Invasion of Kuwait and U.N. Sanctions Still Stand”, 18:00 August 6, 2000, CNN Worldview: 1.5 million
|
|
Somalia (1991 et seq.): 500,000 [make link]
|
-
- Civil War (estimates arranged chronologically)
- Encarta: 50,000 killed in fighting and 300,000 dead of starvation (in 23 months following Jan. 1991)
- Washington Post: 350,000 (12 Feb. 1993)
- CDI: 350,000 (1978-97)
- War Annual 8 (1997): 500,000
- 14 Dec. 1998 Vancouver Sun: 400,000 deaths from war, famine and disease since 1991. 300,000 in 1991-92.
- 23 May 1999 Denver Rocky Mtn News: 350,000 by end of 1992; 1M total to 1999
- Ploughshares 2000: 350,000
- IRIN, a UN humanitarian information unit: 300,000 killed during 14 years of war [http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/news/2004/11/mil-041105-irin03.htm]
- Bradley S. Klapper, “Internally Displaced Somalis Face Widespread Abuses: Campaigners”, November 24, 2004, Associated Press: 500,000
- “Failed state: 15 years of horror in Somalia”, June 5, 2006, Agence France Presse: 500,000
- The Nation, “No Running Away From Somalia”, June 29, 2007, Africa News: 500,000
|
to Site Index
Last updated March 2011
Copyright © 1999-2011 Matthew White
OTHER SOURCES:
Wars and armed conflicts
These figures of one million or more deaths include the deaths of civilians from diseases, famine, etc., as well as deaths of soldiers in battle and possible massacres and genocide.
Where only one estimate is available, it appears in both the low and high estimates. This is a sortable table. Click on the column sort buttons to sort results numerically or alphabetically.
|
Lowest estimate
|
Highest estimate
|
Event
|
Location
|
From
|
To
|
See also
|
Percentage of the world population[1]
|
|
40,000,000[2]
|
72,000,000[3]
|
World War II
|
Worldwide
|
1939
|
1945
|
World War II casualties and Second Sino-Japanese War[4]
|
1.7%–3.1%
|
|
33,000,000[5]
|
36,000,000[6]
|
An Lushan Rebellion
|
China
|
755
|
763
|
Medieval warfare
|
14.0%–15.3%
|
|
30,000,000[7]
|
60,000,000[8]
|
Mongol Conquests
|
East Asia, Eastern Europe, West Asia
|
1207
|
1472
|
Mongol invasions and Tatar invasions
|
7.5%–17.1%
|
|
25,000,000[9]
|
25,000,000
|
Qing dynasty conquest of the Ming Dynasty
|
China
|
1616
|
1662
|
Qing Dynasty
|
4.8%
|
|
20,000,000[10]
|
60,000,000[11][12]
|
Taiping Rebellion
|
China
|
1851
|
1864
|
Dungan revolt
|
1.6%–2.1%
|
|
15,000,000[13]
|
65,000,000
|
World War I (High estimate includes Spanish flu deaths)[14]
|
Worldwide
|
1914
|
1918
|
World War I casualties
|
0.8%–3.6%
|
|
15,000,000[15]
|
20,000,000[15]
|
Conquests of Timur
|
West Asia, South Asia, Central Asia, Russia
|
1369
|
1405
|
[16]
|
3.4%–4.5%
|
|
8,000,000[17][18]
|
12,000,000
|
Dungan revolt
|
China
|
1862
|
1877
|
Panthay Rebellion
|
0.6%–0.9%
|
|
5,000,000[citation needed]
|
9,000,000[19]
|
Russian Civil War
|
Russia
|
1917
|
1921
|
Russian Revolution (1917), List of civil wars
|
0.28%–0.5%
|
|
3,800,000[20]
|
5,400,000[21]
|
Second Congo War
|
Democratic Republic of the Congo
|
1998
|
2003
|
First Congo War
|
0.06%–0.09%
|
|
3,500,000[citation needed]
|
6,500,000[citation needed]
|
Napoleonic Wars
|
Europe, Atlantic, Pacific and Indian Ocean
|
1804
|
1815
|
Napoleonic Wars casualties
|
0.4%–0.7%
|
|
3,000,000
|
11,500,000[22]
|
Thirty Years' War
|
Holy Roman Empire
|
1618
|
1648
|
Religious war
|
0.5%–2.1%
|
|
3,000,000[23]
|
7,000,000[23]
|
Yellow Turban Rebellion
|
China
|
184
|
205
|
Part of Three Kingdoms War
|
1.3%–3.1%
|
|
3,000,000[24]
|
4,000,000[24]
|
Deluge
|
Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth
|
1655
|
1660
|
Second Northern War
|
0.6%–0.7%
|
|
2,500,000[citation needed]
|
3,500,000[25]
|
Korean War
|
Korean Peninsula
|
1950
|
1953
|
Cold War
|
0.1%
|
|
2,495,000[citation needed]
|
6,020,000[26]
|
Vietnam War
|
Southeast Asia
|
1955
|
1975
|
Indochina War
|
0.08%–0.19%
|
|
2,000,000
|
4,000,000[27]
|
French Wars of Religion
|
France
|
1562
|
1598
|
Religious war
|
0.4%–0.8%
|
|
2,000,000[28]
|
2,000,000
|
Shaka's conquests
|
Africa
|
1816
|
1828
|
Ndwandwe–Zulu War
|
0.2%
|
|
1,000,000[29]
|
2,000,000
|
Second Sudanese Civil War
|
Sudan
|
1983
|
2005
|
Religious war
|
0.02%
|
|
1,000,000[30]
|
3,000,000[31]
|
Crusades
|
Holy Land, Europe
|
1095
|
1291
|
Religious war
|
0.3%–2.3%
|
|
500,000[32]
|
2,000,000[33]
|
Mexican Revolution
|
Mexico, United States
|
1911
|
1920
|
Pancho Villa and Columbus Raid
|
0.03%–0.1%
|
|
500,000[34][35]
|
2,000,000[36]
|
Iran–Iraq War
|
Iran, Iraq
|
1980
|
1988
|
Al-Anfal Campaign and Invasion of Kuwait
|
0.01%–0.04%
|
|
300,000[37]
|
1,200,000[38]
|
War of the Triple Alliance
|
South America
|
1864
|
1870
|
Military history of South America and Duke of Caxias
|
0.02%–0.08%
|
[edit] Genocides and Alleged Genocides
The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (CPPCG) defines genocide in part as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".
Determining what historical events constitute a genocide and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clear-cut matter. In nearly every case where accusations of genocide have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of genocide, therefore, will almost always be controversial. Determining the number of persons killed in each genocide can be just as difficult, with political, religious and ethnic biases or prejudices often leading to downplayed or exaggerated figures.
The following list of genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not necessarily regarded as the final word on the events in question.
|
Lowest estimate
|
Highest estimate
|
Event
|
Location
|
From
|
To
|
Notes
|
|
10,000,000[39][page needed]
|
40,000,000[40][page needed]
|
European colonization of the Americas
|
The Americas
|
1492
|
1900
|
The European conquest of the Americas led to the deaths caused by disease, violence, and displacement of Native American populations during European settlement of North and South America as constituting an act of genocide (or series of genocides). The genocidal aspects of this event are entwined with loss of life caused by the lack of immunity of Native Americans to diseases carried by European settlers and their livestock (see Population history of American indigenous peoples).[41][42]
|
|
4,194,200[43]
|
17,000,000[44][45]
|
Holocaust
|
Europe
|
1941
|
1945
|
With around 6 million Jews murdered as well as the genocide of the Romani: most estimates of Romani deaths are in the 200,000–500,000 range but some estimate more than a million.[46] A broader definition includes political and religious dissenters, 200,000 handicapped, 2 to 3 million Soviet POWs, 5,000 Jehovah's Witnesses, 15,000 homosexuals and small numbers of mixed-race children (known as the Rhineland bastards), and millions of Polish and Soviet civilians, bringing the death toll to around 17 million.[44] See Holocaust, Porajmos, Consequences of German Nazism
|
|
3,000,000[7]
|
7,000,000[8]
|
Bengal famine of 1943
|
Bengal province of British India
|
1943
|
1944
|
British colonialism[9], The Encyclopedia of genocide and crimes against humanity, Volume 1, states that the famine was not a natural disaster but due to policies adopted by the British rulers[47]
|
|
2,582,000[48][49][50]
|
8,000,000.[51]
|
Holodomor (and Soviet famine of 1932-1933)
|
Ukrainian SSR
|
1932
|
1933
|
Holodomor was a famine in Ukraine caused by the government of Joseph Stalin, a part of Soviet famine of 1932–1933. Holodomor is claimed by contemporary Ukrainian government to be a genocide of the Ukrainians.
As of March 2008, Ukraine and nineteen other governments[52] have recognized the actions of the Soviet government as an act of genocide. The joint statement at the United Nations in 2003 has defined the famine as the result of cruel actions and policies of the totalitarian regime that caused the deaths of millions of Ukrainians, Russians, Kazakhs and other nationalities in the USSR. On 23 October 2008 the European Parliament adopted a resolution[53] that recognized the Holodomor as a crime against humanity.[54]
On January 12, 2010, the court of appeals in Kiev opened hearings into the "fact of genocide-famine Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932–33", in May 2009 the Security Service of Ukraine had started a criminal case "in relation to the genocide in Ukraine in 1932–33".[55] In a ruling on January 13, 2010 the court found Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders guilty of genocide against the Ukrainians.[56]
|
|
1,671,000[57]
|
3,000,000[58]
|
Cambodian Genocide
|
Cambodia
|
1975
|
1979
|
As of September 2010, no one has been found guilty of participating in this genocide, but on 16 September 2010 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was indicted on charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity. He will face Cambodian and United Nations appointed foreign judges at the special genocide tribunal.[59][60]
|
|
500,000[61]
|
3,000,000[62]
|
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
|
Europe
|
1945
|
1950
|
With at least 12 million[63][64][65] Germans directly involved, it was the largest movement or transfer of any single ethnic population in modern history[64] and largest among the post-war expulsions in Central and Eastern Europe (which displaced more than twenty million people in total).[63] The events have been usually classified as population transfer,[66] or as ethnic cleansing.[67] Martin Shaw (2007) and W.D. Rubinstein (2004) describe the expulsions as genocide.[68] Felix Ermacora writing in 1991, (in line with a minority of legal scholars) considered ethnic cleansing to be genocide[69][70] and stated that the expulsion of the Sudeten Germans was genocide.[71]
|
|
500,000[72]
|
1,000,000[72]
|
Rwandan genocide
|
Rwanda
|
1994
|
1994
|
Hutu killed unarmed men, women and children. Some 50 perpetrators of the genocide have been found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, but most others have not been charged due to no witness accounts. Another 120 000 were arrested by Rwanda, of these 60 000 were tried and convicted in the gacaca court system. Genocidaires who fled into Zaire (Democratic Republic of the Congo) were used as a justification when Rwanda and Uganda invaded Zaire (First and Second Congo Wars).
|
|
480,000[73]
|
600,000[73]
|
Massacres in Zunghar Khanate
|
Western China, Kazakhstan, northern Kyrgyzstan, southern Siberia
|
1755
|
1758
|
Qianlong emperor moved the remaining Zunghar people to the mainland and ordered the generals to kill all the men in Barkol or Suzhou, and divided their wives and children to Qing soldiers.[74][75] Qing officials wrote about 30–50% of the Dzungar people were massacred, 30–40% killed by smallpox, and 20–30% ran to Russia or Kazakh.[76][77] and no people in the several thousands li area. Clarke wrote 80%, or between 480,000 and 600,000 people, were killed between 1755 and 1758 in what "amounted to the complete destruction of not only the Zunghar state but of the Zunghars as a people."[73][78] Historian Peter Perdue has shown that the decimation of the Dzungars was the result of an explicit policy of extermination launched by Qianlong.[79] Although this "deliberate use of massacre" has been largely ignored by modern scholars,[80]
|
|
400,000[81]
|
400,000[81]
|
Russian conquest of the Caucasus
|
Caucasus
|
1817
|
1864
|
During the last decade or so, especially after the two First and Second Chechen Wars, pro-Chechen groups started to investigate the history of the Caucasian War and came to label the Caucasian exodus as a "Circassian ethnic cleansing", although the term had not been in use in the 19th century. They point out that the exodus was not really voluntary but rather was a matter of what is today called ethnic cleansing – the systematic emptying of villages by Russian soldiers[82] and was accompanied by Russian colonisation.[83] They estimate that some 90 percent of the Circassians estimated at more than three million[84] had relocated from the territories conquered by Russia. During these events, and the preceding Caucasian War, at least tens of thousands of Circassians perished in a "programme of forced expulsion, deportation and massacre at the hands of the Russian government".[85] See also: Muhajir (Caucasus)
|
|
300,000[86]
|
1,500,000[87]
|
Armenian Genocide
|
Anatolia
|
1915
|
1923
|
Usually called the first genocide of the 20th century. Despite recognition by some twenty one countries as a genocidal act, the accused, Turkey, disputes allegations of genocide by the Ottoman Empire
|
|
300,000[88]
|
500,000[88]
|
Decossackization
|
Don River area, Soviet Union
|
1919
|
1920
|
In the Russian Civil War that followed the October Revolution, the Cossacks found themselves on both sides of the conflict. Many officers and experienced Cossacks fought for the White Army, and some for the Red Army. Following the defeat of the White Army, a policy of Decossackization (Raskazachivaniye) took place on the surviving Cossacks and their homelands since they were viewed as a potential threat to the new regime. This mostly involved dividing their territory amongst other divisions and giving it to new autonomous republics of minorities, and then actively encouraging settlement of these territories with those peoples. This was especially true for the Terek Cossacks land. According to Michael Kort, "During 1919 and 1920, out of a population of approximately 3 million, the Bolshevik regime killed or deported an estimated 300,000 to 500,000 Cossacks".[88]
|
|
275,000[89]
|
750,000[89]
|
Assyrian genocide
|
Anatolia
|
1915
|
1918
|
Disputed, but some consider it a genocide.
|
|
270,000[90]
|
655,000[91]
|
Ustashe massacres of Serbs, Jews, Roma and Croats
|
Croatia
|
1941
|
1945
|
Genocide during period of Independent State of Croatia, with official policy of extermination similar to that of Nazi Germany. See also The Holocaust in Croatia.
|
|
200,000[92]
|
1,000,000[92]
|
Greek genocide
|
Anatolia
|
1915
|
1918
|
Disputed, but some consider it a genocide.
|
|
178,258[93]
|
400,000[94]
|
Darfur conflict
|
Sudan
|
2003
|
2010
|
See International response to the Darfur conflict
|
|
100,000
|
340,000
|
Nanking Massacre
|
Nanking, China
|
1937
|
1938
|
The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the Rape of Nanking, was an infamous genocidal war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing, then capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on 13 December 1937.
|
|
100,000[95][96]
|
250,000[97][98]
|
War in the Vendée
|
France
|
1793
|
1796
|
Described as genocide by some historians[96] but this claim has been widely discounted.[99] See also French Revolution
|
|
100,000 [100]
|
200,000[101]
|
Massacres of Mayan Indians
|
Guatemala
|
1962
|
1996
|
Genocide according to the Historical Clarification Commission.[102][103]
|
|
100,000[104]
|
120,000
|
Manila Massacre
|
Manila, Philippines
|
1945
|
1945
|
During the Battle of Manila, at least 100,000 civilians were killed.
|
|
50,000[105]
|
200,000[106]
|
Al-Anfal Campaign
|
Iraq
|
1986
|
1989
|
Ba'athist Iraq destroys over 2,000 villages and commits genocide on their Kurdish population.[107]
|
|
50,000[108]
|
100,000[108]
|
Massacres of Hutus
|
Burundi
|
1972
|
1972
|
Tutsi government massacres of Hutu, part of the Burundi genocide.
|
|
50,000[citation needed]
|
50,000[citation needed]
|
Massacres of Tutsis
|
Burundi
|
1993
|
1993
|
Hutu government massacres of Tutsi, part of the Burundi genocide.
|
|
26,000[109]
|
3,000,000[109]
|
1971 Bangladesh atrocities
|
East Pakistan (now Bangladesh)
|
1971
|
1971
|
Atrocities in East Pakistan by the Pakistani Armed Forces, leading to the Bangladesh Liberation War and Indo-Pakistani War of 1971, are widely regarded as a genocide against Bengali people, but to date no one has yet been indicted for such a crime.
|
|
24,000[110]
|
75,000[111]
|
Herero and Namaqua genocide
|
Namibia
|
1904
|
1908
|
Generally accepted. See also Imperial Germany
|
|
20,000[112]
|
80,000[113]
|
Dictatorship and political repression in Equatorial Guinea
|
Equatorial Guinea
|
1969
|
1979
|
Francisco Macías Nguema led a brutal dictatorship in his country, most notably against the minority of Bubi. It is estimated that his regime killed at least 20,000 people, while around 100,000 (one third of the population) fled the country.[112] On a trial, Nguemu was found guilty of genocide and crimes against humanity. He was executed in 1979.
|
|
18,600 [114]
|
183,000[115]
|
Political repression of East Timorese
|
East Timor
|
1975
|
1990s
|
Referred to as genocide by some scholars.[116][117]
|
|
13,160[118]
|
70,000[119]
|
Dersim Massacre
|
Dersim, Turkey
|
1937
|
1938
|
Tens of thousands of Kurds were killed and thousands more forced into exile, depopulating the province.
|
|
9,000[120]
|
30,000[121]
|
Dirty War
|
Argentina
|
1976
|
1983
|
At least 9,000 people were tortured and killed in Argentina from 1976 to 1983, carried out primarily by Jorge Rafael Videla's military dictatorship.
|
|
8,000[122]
|
17,000[123]
|
Massacres during Zanzibar Revolution
|
Zanzibar (now Tanzania)
|
1964
|
1964
|
Thousands of Arabs and Indians were massacred during the revolution.
|
|
7,500[124]
|
8,000[125]
|
Srebrenica massacre
|
Srebrenica, Bosnia
|
1995
|
1995
|
A genocidal massacre according to the ICTY. Currently, it is the last genocide committed in modern Europe after World War II. On 31 March 2010, the Serbian Parliament passed a resolution condemning the Srebrenica massacre and apologizing to the families of Srebrenica for the deaths of Bosniaks.[126] See also: War in Bosnia and Herzegovina, Bosnian genocide.
|
|
2,000[127]
|
70,000[128]
|
Persecution of Falun Gong
|
China
|
1999
|
ongoing
|
A campaign initiated by the Chinese Communist Party against practitioners of Falun Gong since July 1999, aimed at eliminating the practice in the People's Republic of China.[129] It is estimated that since 1999, hundreds of thousands of Falun Gong practitioners have been detained in "re-education through labor" camps for refusing to renounce the spiritual practice,[130][131][132] while at least 2,000 Falun Gong adherents have been tortured to death amidst the persecution campaign.[133]
|
[edit] Individual extermination camps and concentration camps
- 800,000[134]-1,500,000[135] Auschwitz-Birkenau, by Nazi Germany, located in Oświęcim, Poland, 1940–1945
- 700,000[136]-1,000,000[137] Treblinka, by Nazi Germany, located in Treblinka, Poland, 1942–1943
- 480,000–600,000[138][139][140] Bełżec, by Nazi Germany, located in Bełżec, Poland, 1942–1943
- 350,000 Majdanek, by Nazi Germany, located in Lublin Poland, 1942–1944
- 300,000 Chełmno, by Nazi Germany, located in Chełmno Poland, 1941–1943
- 260,000 Sobibór, by Nazi Germany, located in Sobibor Poland, 1942–1943
- 100,000 Bergen-Belsen, by Nazi Germany, located by Belsen, Germany, 1942–1945
- 55,000 – Neuengamme concentration camp, (by Nazi Germany, located by Hamburg, Germany, 1938–1945)
- 53,000[141]-100,000[142][143] – Jasenovac extermination camp – (by NDH Ustaše Nazi regime in Croatia.)
- 35,000 – Jadovno concentration camp, (by NDH Ustaše Nazi regime in Croatia, located by Gospić, Croatia, 1941 May–August)
- 12,790[144]-75,000[145] – Stara Gradiška extermination camp, (by NDH Ustaše Nazi regime in Croatia, primarily for women and children, 1941–1945)
- 12,000[146] Crveni Krst, by Nazi regime in Nedić's Serbia, located in Niš, 1941
- 8,500 **Gakovo, by yougoslavia located in northern Serbia 1944
- 4,000–5,000.[147][148] Omarska camp, by Bosnian Serb forces, located in Omarska, Bosnia and Herzegovina, 1992
- 2,000 Rab concentration camp , by Italy on the island of Rab 1942[citation needed]
OR:
DEMOCIDE SINCE
WORLD WAR II*
By R.J. Rummel
As shown on this web site (e.g., see Table 1.2 of Death By Government), from 1900 through 1987 governments murdered near 170,000,000 people. With respect to this figure I am often asked how much of this occurred since the end of World War II in 1945. With the conclusion of that war and the discovery of the breadth and depth of the Holocaust, many demanded "Never Again." But our history since has rather been: "Again, again, again, and again."
From 1945 and up to 1987, about 76,000,000 people have been murdered in cold blood by one regime or another, around thirteen times the number of Jews murdered in the Holocaust. Most of this democide has been done for political reasons (reasons of state or power), but also much of it has been outright genocide (the killing of people by virtue of their ethnicity, race, religion, or nationality--for the difference between democide and genocide, click here). From 1900 to 1987, about 39,000,000 people, including Jews in the Holocaust, were killed in genocide throughout the world. I do not have a break down of this total for the post-WWII years, but it seems that the proportion of genocide to overall democide has remained roughly the same. If so, genocide since the war possibly accounted for near 20,000,000 of those murdered.
The greatest source of post-war democide was communism (see the communist death toll). During and after the war communists seized power, or came to power with the help of Soviet military might, as in Eastern Europe. In addition to the USSR, Mongolia, Eastern European regimes, East Germany, and Czechoslovakia, communist regimes eventually also included China, North Korea, North Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, Grenada, Afghanistan, Angola, Ethiopia, Mozambique, Nicaragua, and South Yemen, or 26 regimes in all. These communist governments and the communist guerrillas they supported in other countries account for about 66,000,000 of the 76,000,000 murdered since the war, or about 87 percent. Clearly, of all regimes, communist ones have been by far the greatest killer. During these years it has been mostly death by Marxism than more generally by government.
Other regimes, however, did from 1946 to 1987 murder about 10,000,000 people. This killing was due to attempts to maintain control over colonies, as by France and Portugal; to rid the country or newly acquired territory of ethnic Germans after the war; as by Poland and Czechoslovakia; to some form of ethnic cleansing, as in Nigeria and Burundi; to hold power, as by the Nationalist government of China and by Pakistan; or to establish a theocracy, as in Iran, or state socialism as in Myanmar.
Tables 1-5 present the democide totals for each regime, 1946-1987, and ranks the regimes as to their democide for each decade. For each decade one can see the democide of the minor dictatorships and in the first decades the massive contribution of communist regimes to the total. However, as we approach 1987 there was a clear decline in overall democide with the waning of communism. This can best be seen in the year-by-year plot of total democide in Figure 23.1 ("nonstate regimes" in the plot refers to guerrilla organizations and terrorist groups that controlled a certain territory, as did Castro before his defeat of the Batista regime in Cuba). The absolute peak of democide occurred during World War II. But rather than this be the end of it, the second highest peak was in the 1950s as one new communist regime after another tried to eliminate its opposition and establish totalitarian control. And with the establishment of new communist regimes in the 1960s we see another peak. The next and last peak in the early 70s is largely due to the democide of West Pakistan in rebellious East Pakistan in 1971 (over a million murdered).
What has happened since 1987, the cutoff year for my statistics? Democide has continued, of course, as any newspapers reader can attest. Possibly 500,000 to 1,000,000 Rawandans have been slaughtered and around 2,000,000 have been starved to death in North Korea in its continuing famine (which for practical purposes is intentional). Possibly in each of the countries of Iraq, Sudan, Somalia, and Burundi, hundreds of thousands have been murdered; and lesser numbers have been so killed in Kosovo, Bosnia, Algeria, Angola, Ethiopia, Uganda, Congo (Kinshasa), Zaire, China, Indonesia, Cambodia, Afghanistan, Indonesia, and North Korea (aside from the political famine). Then there are Azerbaijan, Liberia, Nigeria, Myanmar, Turkey, Russia, Syria, Sri Lanka, and Iran in which may be a few hundreds or thousands have been killed since 1987. And no doubt there are other governments that deserve to be mentioned for their democides, but have so far escaped attention by the media.
How many corpses should thus be added to the world total since 1987? I can only make an educated guess, but would put the figure between 3,000,000 and 6,000,000. Lets say a reasonable death toll is 4,000,000. For the years 1946 to 1999 then, this would make to democide total about 80,000,000. While even if the 4,000,000 for 1988-1999 is roughly correct this is a huge number of murders in absolute terms, it is much less than what we might expect given the average number killed per year 1900-1987. Indeed, on the basis of that average we should expect about 19,000,000 additional deaths in the years 1988-1999.
Let us stop a moment to think about this likely 80,000,000 murdered since WWII. This is a statistic impossible to grasp. Only twelve countries in the world have a population larger than this number of killed. It is as though the total Philippine population of 79,000,000 were murdered; or that all the people living in the Czech Republic, Hungary, Belgium, Portugal, Sweden, Austria, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, and Norway were wiped out together--not in some natural catastrophe that kills quickly, but for most of the victims a painful and slow death at the hands of a government. To look at this toll another way, it is over five times the number of combat deaths for all the nations that fought in WWII alone. Add those killed in the Korean and Vietnam Wars, the two most deadly major wars since WWII, and the democide 1946-1999 is still almost three times these total combat dead. Perhaps this democide is still impossible to absorb. Then consider this. If laid head to toe, and each of the corpses is assumed to be 5 feet tall (1.52 meters), then the 80,000,000 victims would circle the globe (at the equator) three times. Three times!
However, as pointed out, democide has been declining sharply. What accounts for this? As should be clear from the above, the first reason is that the deadly totalitarian version of communism is all but dead. It now only exists in North Korea. And China and Cuba have moved to a more authoritarian, less-totalitarian, version. A second reason is that democracy--the regime least prone to commit democide, especially against its own citizens--has grown throughout the world. From perhaps a dozen or so countries in 1946 the number of democracies had grown to 114 out of 191 states in 1995. The age of totalitarianism is over and that of democracy is upon us. To my knowledge no liberal democratic government has committed democide since 1987 (in terms of civil and political rights, neither Russia nor Turkey is yet a liberal democracy), which is predictable from the this web site's theme: power kills--the less power, the less the democide.
Moreover, with the growth in democracies, changes in the norms, structure, and functioning of the international system are moving against democide. No longer is state sovereignty a legal/conceptual bulwark against international humanitarian intervention in a state. Through the United Nations the international community has intervened to stop the killing in Bosnia and Rawanda, and as of this writing NATO is using military action against Serbia to stop its democide in Kosovo. True, these interventions are often too late. True, there are too many cases of mass-murder that are ignored. But a core legal bridge has been crossed and no government guilty of mass murder now can confidently protect itself by the claim that this is its own business. This is now especially true with, first, the precedent creating UN establishment in The Hague in 1993 of a temporary tribunal to indict and try those who have committed war crimes in the former Yugoslavia; and second, the approval (by 120 to 7) in 1998 of a treaty to set up a permanent international criminal court in The Hague to prosecute genocide, war crimes, aggression, and other crimes against humanity. The Court will have the power to issue arrest warrants for the citizens of a country even against the government's will--a remarkable step forward in making democide by governments a punishable offense.
But still, there is so much to be done to eliminate this horror. Even in this day and age, we can have the Congo's government of President Laurant Kabila broadcast over the state radio this open call to murder:
|
People must bring a machete, a spear, an arrow, a hoe, spades, rakes, nails, truncheons, electric irons, barbed wire, stones, and the like, in order, dear listeners, to kill Rawandan Tutsis. (Quoted in THE WALL STREET JOURNAL, August 19, 1998, p. A-18)
|
Most of the cases of democide detailed on this site were as flagrantly the direct action of government. Indeed, for many nations, such as the USSR, Communist and Nationalist China, Nazi Germany, Turkey during World War I, and the Cambodian Khmer Rouge, democide was as much the policy of their governments as was having prisons and an army. Democide was not an event or an episode, not a happening or incident, it was done in the ordinary course of events, sometimes even in order to fill government quotas as to the number to be killed.
The lesson from all this horror is clear, as recent democide further confirms: reduce government power, check and balance it, divide it among different regions and municipalities, constitutionally limit it, and make the people its only source and arbiter. That is, promote democratic freedom.
NOTES
* May, 1998. This was written for this web site as a result of the often asked question about democide since World War II.
OR:
DEATH BY GOVERNMENT:
Send to a friend
Book Review
by Richard M. Ebeling, October 1994
Death by Government by R. J. Rummel (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction Publishers, 1994) 496 pages, $49.95.
In 1900, when the 20th century was about to begin, practically all political commentators, social analysts, and newspaper editorialists were sure that the new century would bring greater economic prosperity, more personal liberty and human freedom, and fewer wars and conflicts around the world. Democratic and constitutional government, political and economic liberalism, and the rule of law in both domestic and international affairs were the legacy of the 19th century, it was believed, that would blossom and expand in the 20th century. Unfortunately, the era of classical liberalism, we now know, was at its end. The era of collectivism and the socialist-interventionist-redistributivist state was arriving.
In 1900, the British were fighting the Boers in South Africa (and introducing the first modern use of concentration camps). The American Army was brutally subjugating the Philippine Islanders to U. S. rule in the aftermath of the Spanish-American War (during which American forces behaved so violently that all news dispatches back to the States were either heavily censored or banned). And an international force of American, British, German, Austrian, French, Italian, and Japanese forces were crushing the Boxer Rebellion around Peking, China (indiscriminately killing perhaps as many as 25,000 Chinese in the process). Nevertheless, even though the century began with these conflicts around the world, seemingly no one imagined or predicted the degree of violence, mass murder, and totalitarian tyranny that has been experienced during the past ten decades. Only a handful of older classical liberals was warning of the dangers that would arise if socialism and collectivism were triumphant.
How many people, in fact, have been killed by government violence in the 20th century? Not deaths in wars and civil wars among military combatants, but mass murder of civilians and innocent victims with either the approval or planning of governments — the intentional killings of their own subjects and citizens or people under their political control? The answer is: 169,198,000. If the deaths of military combatants are added to this figure, governments have killed 203,000,000 in the 20th century.
The world population in 1991 is estimated to have been approximately 5,423,000,000. In 1991, Europe's population was about 502,000,000. The United States in 1990 had a population of about 249,000,000. This means that governments killed about 3.7 percent of the human race in this century, or an equivalent of over 40 percent of all the people in Europe, or a number equal to over 80 percent of all the people in the U.S.
For over ten years, University of Hawaii political science professor R. J. Rummel has been researching the lethal effects of government upon society. During this time he has published a series of books based on his studies. These books include Lethal Politics: Soviet Genocide and Mass Murder since 1917 (1990), Democide: Nazi Genocide and Mass Murder (1991), and China's Bloody Century: Genocide and Mass Murder since 1900 (1991). These have detailed governmental mass murder in three of the leading totalitarian states in the 20th century. Now in his latest book, Death by Government, Professor Rummel summarizes government's deadly effect on the world in our century. He has supplied the statistics about global mass murder by the state.
In his new work, Professor Rummel focuses in detail on those governments around the world which have killed 1,000,000 or more people. In the companion volume, Statistics of Democide: Estimates, Sources, and Calculations on 20th Century Genocide and Mass Murder, he presents the evidence on all of this century's governmental mass murders, great and small — even those involving the killing of a "mere" 250,000 people here and 500,000 people there.
The megamurdering states of the 20th century have been: the U.S.S.R. (1917-1987), 61,911,000; Communist China (1949-1987), 35,236,000; Nazi Germany (1933-1945), 20,946,000; and Nationalist (or Kuomintang) China (1928-1949), 10,076,000. These are followed by the "lesser" megamurdering states: Japan (1936-1945), 5,964,000; Cambodia (1975-1979), 2,035,000; Turkey (1909-1918), 1,883,000; Vietnam (1945-1987), 1,678,000; North Korea (1948-1987), 1,663,000; Poland (1945-1948), 1,585,000; Pakistan (1958-1987), 1,503,000; Mexico (1900-1920), 1,417,000; Yugoslavia (1944-1987), 1,072,000; Czarist Russia (1900-1917), 1,066,000.
While the Soviet Union and Communist China have been the super mass-murdering states of the century, they have not been the most lethally dangerous, relative to the populations over which they have ruled. During the 70-year period of Soviet history analyzed by Professor Rummel, the state killed the equivalent of 29.64 percent of the U.S.S.R.'s population, while the Communist Chinese (because of the vastness of China's population) only killed, during the 38 years in his study, the equivalent of 4.49 percent of the people of China. The Nazis killed about 6.46 percent of the peoples under their control in Europe between 1933-1945. On the other hand, during the short four years of its rule in Cambodia, Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge government killed about 31.25 percent of the entire Cambodian population.
Professor Rummel's book is not a mere counting of victims. Each of the chapters on one of these megamurdering governments is a historical narrative of the people, policies, and procedures for implementing mass murder. The most chilling aspect of his exposition is the directness and openness with which many of the participants in these killings have spoken of their deeds. For example, in 1915, during the Turkish massacre of Armenians, the American ambassador reported that the Turkish War Minister "treated the whole matter more or less casually; he could discuss the fate of a race in a parenthesis, and refer to the massacre of children as nonchalantly as we would speak of the weather." The ambassador recounted that this Turkish Minister requested the name of any Armenians who had taken out life insurance policies with American companies. "They are practically all dead now and have left no heirs to collect the money," the Turkish official said. "It of course all escheats to the State. The Government is the beneficiary now." And during the massacre of East Pakistanis by the West Pakistan government in 1971, one of the senior West Pakistani military officers said: "We are determined to cleanse East Pakistan once and for all . . . even if it means killing two million people and ruling the province as a colony for 30 years." And a West Pakistani captain stated: "We can kill anyone for anything. We are accountable to no one."
What has motivated governments and their followers and agents to commit murder on this scale against tens of millions of innocent, usually unarmed, victims — men, women and children, young and old? The leading motivations have been ideology (the making of a new socialist man), race (the purifying of or domination by a "superior" racial group), wealth (plundering the most prosperous for the benefit of a select group), or plain cruelty (the imposing of fear and terror to gain control over and obedience from others).
To cover all these motivations under one heading, Professor Rummel suggests the term "democide," from the Greek word demos (people) and the Latin word caedere (to kill). "Democide's necessary and sufficient meaning is the intentional government killing of an unarmed person or people," he says.
The lesson that Professor Rummel wishes to convey from his research is stated clearly and unequivocally by him:
Power kills; absolute Power kills absolutely. . . . The more power a government has, the more it can act arbitrarily according to the whims and desires of the elite, and the more it will make war on others and murder its foreign and domestic subjects. The more constrained the power of governments, the more power is diffused, checked, and balanced, the less it will aggress on others and commit democide.
He argues that all the historical evidence shows that "as the arbitrary power of a regime increases, that is, as we move from democratic through authoritarian to totalitarian regimes, the amount of killing jumps by huge multiples. . . . The empirical and theoretical conclusion is this: The way to end war and virtually eliminate democide appears to be through restricting and checking Power, i.e., through fostering democratic freedom, " by which Professor Rummel means individual liberty; limited, constitutional government; and social tolerance of difference and diversity among the peoples in a society.
Unless this lesson is learned, the 21st century could be as politically dangerous and lethal as the one that is just ending.
NOTE THE ABOVE DOESN’T EVEN MENTION THE US AMONG THE STATES IN A CATEGORY OF THE MAJOR PERPETRATORS OF WAR> THE BELOW LISTS JUST THE US. So I included the below which ONLY mentions the US:
A Brief History of U.S. Interventions:
1945 to the Present
by William Blum
Z magazine , June 1999
The engine of American foreign policy has been fueled not by a devotion to any kind of morality, but rather by the necessity to serve other imperatives, which can be summarized as follows:
* making the world safe for American corporations;
* enhancing the financial statements of defense contractors at home who have contributed generously to members of congress;
* preventing the rise of any society that might serve as a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model;
* extending political and economic hegemony over as wide an area as possible, as befits a "great power."
This in the name of fighting a supposed moral crusade against what cold warriors convinced themselves, and the American people, was the existence of an evil International Communist Conspiracy, which in fact never existed, evil or not.
The United States carried out extremely serious interventions into more than 70 nations in this period.
China, 1945-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of Chiang Kai-shek against the Communists, even though the latter had been a much closer ally of the United States in the world war. The U.S. used defeated Japanese soldiers to fight for its side. The Communists forced Chiang to flee to Taiwan in 1949.
Italy, 1947-48:
Using every trick in the book, the U.S. interfered in the elections to prevent the Communist Party from coming to power legally and fairly. This perversion of democracy was done in the name of "saving democracy" in Italy. The Communists lost. For the next few decades, the CIA, along with American corporations, continued to intervene in Italian elections, pouring in hundreds of millions of dollars and much psychological warfare to block the specter that was haunting Europe.
Greece, 1947-49:
Intervened in a civil war, taking the side of the neo-fascists against the Greek left which had fought the Nazis courageously. The neo-fascists won and instituted a highly brutal regime, for which the CIA created a new internal security agency, KYP. Before long, KYP was carrying out all the endearing practices of secret police everywhere, including systematic torture.
Philippines, 1945-53:
U.S. military fought against leftist forces (Huks) even while the Huks were still fighting against the Japanese invaders. After the war, the U. S. continued its fight against the Huks, defeating them, and then installing a series of puppets as president, culminating in the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos.
South Korea, 1945-53:
After World War II, the United States suppressed the popular progressive forces in favor of the conservatives who had collaborated with the Japanese. This led to a long era of corrupt, reactionary, and brutal governments.
Albania, 1949-53:
The U.S. and Britain tried unsuccessfully to overthrow the communist government and install a new one that would have been pro-Western and composed largely of monarchists and collaborators with Italian fascists and Nazis.
Germany, 1950s:
The CIA orchestrated a wide-ranging campaign of sabotage, terrorism, dirty tricks, and psychological warfare against East Germany. This was one of the factors which led to the building of the Berlin Wall in 1961.
Iran, 1953:
Prime Minister Mossadegh was overthrown in a joint U.S./British operation. Mossadegh had been elected to his position by a large majority of parliament, but he had made the fateful mistake of spearheading the movement to nationalize a British-owned oil company, the sole oil company operating in Iran. The coup restored the Shah to absolute power and began a period of 25 years of repression and torture, with the oil industry being restored to foreign ownership, as follows: Britain and the U.S., each 40 percent, other nations 20 percent.
Guatemala, 1953-1990s:
A CIA-organized coup overthrew the democratically-elected and progressive government of Jacobo Arbenz, initiating 40 years of death-squads, torture, disappearances, mass executions, and unimaginable cruelty, totaling well over 100,000 victims -indisputably one of the most inhuman chapters of the 20th century. Arbenz had nationalized the U.S. firm, United Fruit Company, which had extremely close ties to the American power elite. As justification for the coup, Washington declared that Guatemala had been on the verge of a Soviet takeover, when in fact the Russians had so little interest in the country that it didn't even maintain diplomatic relations. The real problem in the eyes of Washington, in addition to United Fruit, was the danger of Guatemala's social democracy spreading to other countries in Latin America.
Middle East, 1956-58:
The Eisenhower Doctrine stated that the United States "is prepared to use armed forces to assist" any Middle East country "requesting assistance against armed aggression from any country controlled by international communism." The English translation of this was that no one would be allowed to dominate, or have excessive influence over, the middle east and its oil fields except the United States, and that anyone who tried would be, by definition, "Communist." In keeping with this policy, the United States twice attempted to overthrow the Syrian government, staged several shows-of-force in the Mediterranean to intimidate movements opposed to U.S.-supported governments in Jordan and Lebanon, landed 14,000 troops in Lebanon, and conspired to overthrow or assassinate Nasser of Egypt and his troublesome middle-east nationalism.
Indonesia, 1957-58:
Sukarno, like Nasser, was the kind of Third World leader the United States could not abide. He took neutralism in the cold war seriously, making trips to the Soviet Union and China (though to the White House as well). He nationalized many private holdings of the Dutch, the former colonial power. He refused to crack down on the Indonesian Communist Party, which was walking the legal, peaceful road and making impressive gains electorally. Such policies could easily give other Third World leaders "wrong ideas." The CIA began throwing money into the elections, plotted Sukarno's assassination, tried to blackmail him with a phony sex film, and joined forces with dissident military officers to wage a full-scale war against the government. Sukarno survived it all.
British Guiana/Guyana, 1953-64:
For 11 years, two of the oldest democracies in the world, Great Britain and the United States, went to great lengths to prevent a democratically elected leader from occupying his office. Cheddi Jagan was another Third World leader who tried to remain neutral and independent. He was elected three times. Although a leftist-more so than Sukarno or Arbenz-his policies in office were not revolutionary. But he was still a marked man, for he represented Washington's greatest fear: building a society that might be a successful example of an alternative to the capitalist model. Using a wide variety of tactics-from general strikes and disinformation to terrorism and British legalisms, the U. S. and Britain finally forced Jagan out in 1964. John F. Kennedy had given a direct order for his ouster, as, presumably, had Eisenhower.
One of the better-off countries in the region under Jagan, Guyana, by the 1980s, was one of the poorest. Its principal export became people.
Vietnam, 1950-73:
The slippery slope began with siding with ~ French, the former colonizers and collaborators with the Japanese, against Ho Chi Minh and his followers who had worked closely with the Allied war effort and admired all things American. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of Communist. He had written numerous letters to President Truman and the State Department asking for America's help in winning Vietnamese independence from the French and finding a peaceful solution for his country. All his entreaties were ignored. Ho Chi Minh modeled the new Vietnamese declaration of independence on the American, beginning it with "All men are created equal. They are endowed by their Creator with ..." But this would count for nothing in Washington. Ho Chi Minh was some kind of Communist.
Twenty-three years and more than a million dead, later, the United States withdrew its military forces from Vietnam. Most people say that the U.S. lost the war. But by destroying Vietnam to its core, and poisoning the earth and the gene pool for generations, Washington had achieved its main purpose: preventing what might have been the rise of a good development option for Asia. Ho Chi Minh was, after all, some kind of communist.
Cambodia, 1955-73:
Prince Sihanouk was yet another leader who did not fancy being an American client. After many years of hostility towards his regime, including assassination plots and the infamous Nixon/Kissinger secret "carpet bombings" of 1969-70, Washington finally overthrew Sihanouk in a coup in 1970. This was all that was needed to impel Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge forces to enter the fray. Five years later, they took power. But five years of American bombing had caused Cambodia's traditional economy to vanish. The old Cambodia had been destroyed forever.
Incredibly, the Khmer Rouge were to inflict even greater misery on this unhappy land. To add to the irony, the United States supported Pol Pot, militarily and diplomatically, after their subsequent defeat by the Vietnamese.
The Congo/Zaire, 1960-65:
In June 1960, Patrice Lumumba became the Congo's first prime minister after independence from Belgium. But Belgium retained its vast mineral wealth in Katanga province, prominent Eisenhower administration officials had financial ties to the same wealth, and Lumumba, at Independence Day ceremonies before a host of foreign dignitaries, called for the nation's economic as well as its political liberation, and recounted a list of injustices against the natives by the white owners of the country. The man was obviously a "Communist." The poor man was obviously doomed.
Eleven days later, Katanga province seceded, in September, Lumumba was dismissed by the president at the instigation of the United States, and in January 1961 he was assassinated at the express request of Dwight Eisenhower. There followed several years of civil conflict and chaos and the rise to power of Mobutu Sese Seko, a man not a stranger to the CIA. Mobutu went on to rule the country for more than 30 years, with a level of corruption and cruelty that shocked even his CIA handlers. The Zairian people lived in abject poverty despite the plentiful natural wealth, while Mobutu became a multibillionaire.
Brazil, 1961-64:
President Joao Goulart was guilty of the usual crimes: He took an independent stand in foreign policy, resuming relations with socialist countries and opposing sanctions against Cuba; his administration passed a law limiting the amount of profits multinationals could transmit outside the country; a subsidiary of ITT was nationalized; he promoted economic and social reforms. And Attorney-General Robert Kennedy was uneasy about Goulart allowing "communists" to hold positions in government agencies. Yet the man was no radical. He was a millionaire land-owner and a Catholic who wore a medal of the Virgin around his neck. That, however, was not enough to save him. In 1964, he was overthrown in a military coup which had deep, covert American involvement. The official Washington line was...yes, it's unfortunate that democracy has been overthrown in Brazil...but, still, the country has been saved from communism.
For the next 15 years, all the features of military dictatorship that Latin America has come to know were instituted: Congress was shut down, political opposition was reduced to virtual extinction, habeas corpus for "political crimes" was suspended, criticism of the president was forbidden by law, labor unions were taken over by government interveners, mounting protests were met by police and military firing into crowds, peasants' homes were burned down, priests were brutalized...disappearances, death squads, a remarkable degree and depravity of torture...the government had a name for its program: the "moral rehabilitation" of Brazil.
Washington was very pleased. Brazil broke relations with Cuba and became one of the United States' most reliable allies in Latin America.
Dominican Republic, 1963-66:
In February 1963, Juan Bosch took office as the first democratically elected president of the Dominican Republic since 1924. Here at last was John F. Kennedy's liberal anti-Communist, to counter the charge that the U.S. supported only military dictatorships. Bosch's government was to be the long sought " showcase of democracy " that would put the lie to Fidel Castro. He was given the grand treatment in Washington shortly before he took office.
Bosch was true to his beliefs. He called for land reform, low-rent housing, modest nationalization of business, and foreign investment provided it was not excessively exploitative of the country and other policies making up the program of any liberal Third World leader serious about social change. He was likewise serious about civil liberties: Communists, or those labeled as such, were not to be persecuted unless they actually violated the law.
A number of American officials and congresspeople expressed their discomfort with Bosch's plans, as well as his stance of independence from the United States. Land reform and nationalization are always touchy issues in Washington, the stuff that "creeping socialism" is made of. In several quarters of the U.S. press Bosch was red-baited.
In September, the military boots marched. Bosch was out. The United States, which could discourage a military coup in Latin America with a frown, did nothing.
Nineteen months later, a revolt broke out which promised to put the exiled Bosch back into power. The United States sent 23,000 troops to help crush it.
Cuba, 1959 to present:
Fidel Castro came to power at the beginning of 1959. A U.S. National Security Council meeting of March 10, 1959 included on its agenda the feasibility of bringing "another government to power in Cuba." There followed 40 years of terrorist attacks, bombings, full-scale military invasion, sanctions, embargoes, isolation, assassinations...Cuba had carried out The Unforgivable Revolution, a very serious threat of setting a "good example" in Latin America.
The saddest part of this is that the world will never know what kind of society Cuba could have produced if left alone, if not constantly under the gun and the threat of invasion, if allowed to relax its control at home. The idealism, the vision, the talent were all there. But we'll never know. And that of course was the idea.
Indonesia, 1965:
A complex series of events, involving a supposed coup attempt, a counter-coup, and perhaps a counter-counter-coup, with American fingerprints apparent at various points, resulted in the ouster from power of Sukarno and his replacement by a military coup led by General Suharto. The massacre that began immediately-of Communists, Communist sympathizers, suspected Communists, suspected Communist sympathizers, and none of the above-was called by the New York Times "one of the most savage mass slayings of modern political history." The estimates of the number killed in the course of a few years begin at half a million and go above a million.
It was later learned that the U.S. embassy had compiled lists of "Communist" operatives, from top echelons down to village cadres, as many as 5,000 names, and turned them over to the army, which then hunted those persons down and killed them. The Americans would then check off the names of those who had been killed or captured. "It really was a big help to the army. They probably killed a lot of people, and I probably have a lot of blood on my hands," said one U.S. diplomat. "But that's not all bad. There's a time when you have to strike hard at a decisive moment. "
Chile, 1964-73:
Salvador Allende was the worst possible scenario for a Washington imperialist. He could imagine only one thing worse than a Marxist in power-an elected Marxist in power, who honored the constitution, and became increasingly popular. This shook the very foundation stones on which the anti-Communist tower was built: the doctrine, painstakingly cultivated for decades, that "communists" can take power only through force and deception, that they can retain that power only through terrorizing and brainwashing the population.
After sabotaging Allende's electoral endeavor in 1964, and failing to do so in 1970, despite their best efforts, the CIA and the rest of the American foreign policy machine left no stone unturned in their attempt to destabilize the Allende government over the next three years, paying particular attention to building up military hostility. Finally, in September 1973, the military overthrew the government, Allende dying in the process.
They closed the country to the outside world for a week, while the tanks rolled and the soldiers broke down doors; the stadiums rang with the sounds of execution and the bodies piled up along the streets and floated in the river; the torture centers opened for business; the subversive books were thrown into bonfires; soldiers slit the trouser legs of women, shouting that "In Chile women wear dresses!"; the poor returned to their natural state; and the men of the world in Washington and in the halls of international finance opened up their check- books. In the end, more than 3,000 had been executed, thousands more tortured or disappeared.
Greece, 1964-74:
The military coup took place in April 1967, just two days before the campaign for j national elections was to begin, elections which appeared certain to bring the veteran liberal leader George Papandreou back as prime minister. Papandreou had been elected in February 1964 with the only outright majority in the history of modern Greek elections. The successful machinations to unseat him had begun immediately, a joint effort of the Royal Court, the Greek military, and the American military and CIA stationed in Greece. The 1967 coup was followed immediately by the traditional martial law, censorship, arrests, beatings, torture, and killings, the victims totaling some 8,000 in the first month. This was accompanied by the equally traditional declaration that this was all being done to save the nation from a "Communist takeover." Corrupting and subversive influences in Greek life were to be removed. Among these were miniskirts, long hair, and foreign newspapers; church attendance for the young would be compulsory.
It was torture, however, which most indelibly marked the seven-year Greek nightmare. James Becket, an American attorney sent to Greece by Amnesty International, wrote in December 1969 that "a conservative estimate would place at not less than two thousand" the number of people tortured, usually in the most gruesome of ways, often with equipment supplied by the United States.
Becket reported the following: Hundreds of prisoners have listened to the little speech given by Inspector Basil Lambrou, who sits behind his desk which displays the red, white, and blue clasped-hand symbol of American aid. He tries to show the prisoner the absolute futility of resistance: "You make yourself ridiculous by thinking you can do anything. The world is divided in two. There are the communists on that side and on this side the free world. The Russians and the Americans, no one else. What are we? Americans. Behind me there is the government, behind the government is NATO, behind NATO is the U.S. You can't fight us, we are Americans."
George Papandreou was not any kind of radical. He was a liberal anti-Communist type. But his son Andreas, the heir-apparent, while only a little to the left of his father had not disguised his wish to take Greece out of the Cold War, and had questioned remaining in NATO, or at least as a satellite of the United States.
East Timor, 1975 to present:
In December 1975, Indonesia invaded East Timor, which lies at the eastern end of the Indonesian archipelago, and which had proclaimed its independence after Portugal had relinquished control of it. The invasion was launched the day after U. S. President Gerald Ford and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger had left Indonesia after giving Suharto permission to use American arms, which, under U.S. Iaw, could not be used for aggression. Indonesia was Washington's most valuable tool in Southeast Asia.
Amnesty International estimated that by 1989, Indonesian troops, with the aim of forcibly annexing East Timor, had killed 200,000 people out of a population of between 600,000 and 700,000. The United States consistently supported Indonesia's claim to East Timor (unlike the UN and the EU), and downplayed the slaughter to a remarkable degree, at the same time supplying Indonesia with all the military hardware and training it needed to carry out the job.
Nicaragua, 1978-89:
When the Sandinistas overthrew the Somoza dictatorship in 1978, it was clear to Washington that they might well be that long-dreaded beast-"another Cuba." Under President Carter, attempts to sabotage the revolution took diplomatic and economic forms. Under Reagan, violence was the method of choice. For eight terribly long years, the people of Nicaragua were under attack by Washington's proxy army, the Contras, formed from Somoza's vicious National Guard and other supporters of the dictator. It was all-out war, aiming to destroy the progressive social and economic programs of the government, burning down schools and medical clinics, raping, torturing, mining harbors, bombing and strafing. These were Ronald Reagan's "freedom fighters." There would be no revolution in Nicaragua.
Grenada, 1979-84:
What would drive the most powerful nation in the world to invade a country of 110,000? Maurice Bishop and his followers had taken power in a 1979 coup, and though their actual policies were not as revolutionary as Castro's, Washington was again driven by its fear of "another Cuba," particularly when public appearances by the Grenadian leaders in other countries of the region met with great enthusiasm.
U. S. destabilization tactics against the Bishop government began soon after the coup and continued until 1983, featuring numerous acts of disinformation and dirty tricks. The American invasion in October 1983 met minimal resistance, although the U.S. suffered 135 killed or wounded; there were also some 400 Grenadian casualties, and 84 Cubans, mainly construction workers.
At the end of 1984, a questionable election was held which was won by a man supported by the Reagan administration. One year later, the human rights organization, Council on Hemispheric Affairs, reported that Grenada's new U.S.-trained police force and counter-insurgency forces had acquired a reputation for brutality, arbitrary arrest, and abuse of authority, and were eroding civil rights.
In April 1989, the government issued a list of more than 80 books which were prohibited from being imported. Four months later, the prime minister suspended parliament to forestall a threatened no-confidence vote resulting from what his critics called "an increasingly authoritarian style."
Libya, 1981-89:
Libya refused to be a proper Middle East client state of Washington. Its leader, Muammar el-Qaddafi, was uppity. He would have to be punished. U.S. planes shot down two Libyan planes in what Libya regarded as its air space. The U. S . also dropped bombs on the country, killing at least 40 people, including Qaddafi's daughter. There were other attempts to assassinate the man, operations to overthrow him, a major disinformation campaign, economic sanctions, and blaming Libya for being behind the Pan Am 103 bombing without any good evidence.
Panama, 1989:
Washington's bombers strike again. December 1989, a large tenement barrio in Panama City wiped out, 15,000 people left homeless. Counting several days of ground fighting against Panamanian forces, 500-something dead was the official body count, what the U.S. and the new U.S.-installed Panamanian government admitted to; other sources, with no less evidence, insisted that thousands had died; 3,000-something wounded. Twenty-three Americans dead, 324 wounded.
Question from reporter: "Was it really worth it to send people to their death for this? To get Noriega?"
George Bush: "Every human life is precious, and yet I have to answer, yes, it has been worth it."
Manuel Noriega had been an American ally and informant for years until he outlived his usefulness. But getting him was not the only motive for the attack. Bush wanted to send a clear message to the people of Nicaragua, who had an election scheduled in two months, that this might be their fate if they reelected the Sandinistas. Bush also wanted to flex some military muscle to illustrate to Congress the need for a large combat-ready force even after the very recent dissolution of the "Soviet threat." The official explanation for the American ouster was Noriega's drug trafficking, which Washington had known about for years and had not been at all bothered by.
Iraq, 1990s:
Relentless bombing for more than 40 days and nights, against one of the most advanced nations in the Middle East, devastating its ancient and modern capital city; 177 million pounds of bombs falling on the people of Iraq, the most concentrated aerial onslaught in the history of the world; depleted uranium weapons incinerating people, causing cancer; blasting chemical and biological weapon storage and oil facilities; poisoning the atmosphere to a degree perhaps never matched anywhere; burying soldiers alive, deliberately; the infrastructure destroyed, with a terrible effect on health; sanctions continued to this day multiplying the health problems; perhaps a million children dead by now from all of these things, even more adults.
Iraq was the strongest military power among the Arab states. This may have been their crime. Noam Chomsky has written: "It's been a leading, driving doctrine of U.S. foreign policy since the 1940s that the vast and unparalleled energy resources of the Gulf region will be effectively dominated by the United States and its clients, and, crucially, that no independent, indigenous force will be permitted to have a substantial influence on the administration of oil production and price. "
Afghanistan, 1979-92:
Everyone knows of the unbelievable repression of women in Afghanistan, carried out by Islamic fundamentalists, even before the Taliban. But how many people know that during the late 1970s and most of the 1980s, Afghanistan had a government committed to bringing the incredibly backward nation into the 20th century, including giving women equal rights? What happened, however, is that the United States poured billions of dollars into waging a terrible war against this government, simply because it was supported by the Soviet Union. Prior to this, CIA operations had knowingly increased the probability of a Soviet intervention, which is what occurred. In the end, the United States won, and the women, and the rest of Afghanistan, lost. More than a million dead, three million disabled, five million refugees, in total about half the population.
El Salvador, 1980-92:
El Salvador's dissidents tried to work within the system. But with U.S. support, the government made that impossible, using repeated electoral fraud and murdering hundreds of protesters and strikers. In 1980, the dissidents took to the gun, and civil war.
Officially, the U.S. military presence in El Salvador was limited to an advisory capacity. In actuality, military and CIA personnel played a more active role on a continuous basis. About 20 Americans were killed or wounded in helicopter and plane crashes while flying reconnaissance or other missions over combat areas, and considerable evidence surfaced of a U.S. role in the ground fighting as well. The war came to an official end in 1992; 75,000 civilian deaths and the U.S. Treasury depleted by six billion dollars. Meaningful social change has been largely thwarted. A handful of the wealthy still own the country, the poor remain as ever, and dissidents still have to fear right-wing death squads.
Haiti, 1987-94:
The U.S. supported the Duvalier family dictatorship for 30 years, then opposed the reformist priest, Jean-Bertrand Aristide. Meanwhile, the CIA was working intimately with death squads, torturers, and drug traffickers. With this as background, the Clinton White House found itself in the awkward position of having to pretend-because of all their rhetoric about "democracy"-that they supported Aristide's return to power in Haiti after he had been ousted in a 1991 military coup. After delaying his return for more than two years, Washington finally had its military restore Aristide to office, but only after obliging the priest to guarantee that he would not help the poor at the expense of the rich, and that he would stick closely to free-market economics. This meant that Haiti would continue to be the assembly plant of the Western Hemisphere, with its workers receiving literally starvation wages.
Yugoslavia, 1999:
The United States is bombing the country back to a pre-industrial era. It would like the world to believe that its intervention is motivated only by "humanitarian" impulses. Perhaps the above history of U.S. interventions can help one decide how much weight to place on this claim.
***
William Blum is the author of Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II. Portions of the book can be read at: http://members.aol. com/bblum6/American holocaust.htm.
Here is a fellow who seems a might over-zealous in his strict statistical investigation of culpability. I am sure he has an equivalent on the other team who could come up with a matching list that equally wags the finger at someone else’s God:
THE BELOW IS A LIST ATTRIBUTING CASUALTIES CAUSED JUST TO CHRISTANS:
How many people have died in the name of Christ, Christianity and Catholicism?
VICTIMS OF THE CHRISTIAN FAITH
by Kelsos
"WONDERFUL EVENTS THAT TESTIFY TO GOD'S DIVINE GLORY"
Listed are only events that solely occurred on command of church authorities or were committed in the name of Christianity. (List incomplete)
Ancient Pagans,
- As soon as Christianity was legal (315), more and more pagan temples were destroyed by Christian mob. Pagan priests were killed.
- Between 315 and 6th century thousands of pagan believers were slain.
- Examples of destroyed Temples: the Sanctuary of Aesculap in Aegaea, the Temple of Aphrodite in Golgatha, Aphaka in Lebanon, the Heliopolis.
- Christian priests such as Mark of Arethusa or Cyrill of Heliopolis were famous as "temple destroyer." [DA468]
- Pagan services became punishable by death in 356. [DA468]
- Christian Emperor Theodosius (408-450) even had children executed, because they had been playing with remains of pagan statues. [DA469]
According to Christian chroniclers he "followed meticulously all Christian teachings..."
- In 6th century pagans were declared void of all rights.
- In the early fourth century the philosopher Sopatros was executed on demand of Christian authorities. [DA466]
- The world famous female philosopher Hypatia of Alexandria was torn to pieces with glass fragments by a hysterical Christian mob led by a Christian minister named Peter, in a church, in 415.
[DO19-25]
Mission
- Emperor Karl (Charlemagne) in 782 had 4500 Saxons, unwilling to convert to Christianity, beheaded. [DO30]
- Peasants of Steding (Germany) unwilling to pay suffocating church taxes: between 5,000 and 11,000 men, women and children slain 5/27/1234 near Altenesch/Germany. [WW223]
- Battle of Belgrad 1456: 80,000 Turks slaughtered. [DO235]
- 15th century Poland: 1019 churches and 17987 villages plundered by Knights of the Order. Victims unknown. [DO30]
- 16th and 17th century Ireland. English troops "pacified and civilized" Ireland, where only Gaelic "wild Irish", "unreasonable beasts lived without any knowledge of God or good manners, in common of their goods, cattle, women, children and every other thing." One of the more successful soldiers, a certain Humphrey Gilbert, half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh, ordered that "the heddes of all those (of what sort soever thei were) which were killed in the daie, should be cutte off from their bodies... and should bee laied on the ground by eche side of the waie", which effort to civilize the Irish indeed caused "greate terrour to the people when thei sawe the heddes of their dedde fathers, brothers, children, kinsfolke, and freinds on the grounde".
Tens of thousands of Gaelic Irish fell victim to the carnage. [SH99, 225]
Crusades (1095-1291)
- First Crusade: 1095 on command of pope Urban II. [WW11-41]
- Semlin/Hungary 6/24/96 thousands slain. Wieselburg/Hungary 6/12/96 thousands. [WW23]
- 9/9/96-9/26/96 Nikaia, Xerigordon (then turkish), thousands respectively. [WW25-27]
- Until Jan 1098 a total of 40 capital cities and 200 castles conquered (number of slain unknown) [WW30]
- after 6/3/98 Antiochia (then turkish) conquered, between 10,000 and 60,000 slain. 6/28/98 100,000 Turks (incl. women & children) killed. [WW32-35]
Here the Christians "did no other harm to the women found in [the enemy's] tents—save that they ran their lances through their bellies," according to Christian chronicler Fulcher of Chartres. [EC60]
- Marra (Maraat an-numan) 12/11/98 thousands killed. Because of the subsequent famine "the already stinking corpses of the enemies were eaten by the Christians" said chronicler Albert Aquensis. [WW36]
- Jerusalem conquered 7/15/1099 more than 60,000 victims (jewish, muslim, men, women, children). [WW37-40]
(In the words of one witness: "there [in front of Solomon's temple] was such a carnage that our people were wading ankle-deep in the blood of our foes", and after that "happily and crying for joy our people marched to our Saviour's tomb, to honour it and to pay off our debt of gratitude")
- The Archbishop of Tyre, eye-witness, wrote: "It was impossible to look upon the vast numbers of the slain without horror; everywhere lay fragments of human bodies, and the very ground was covered with the blood of the slain. It was not alone the spectacle of headless bodies and mutilated limbs strewn in all directions that roused the horror of all who looked upon them. Still more dreadful was it to gaze upon the victors themselves, dripping with blood from head to foot, an ominous sight which brought terror to all who met them. It is reported that within the Temple enclosure alone about ten thousand infidels perished." [TG79]
- Christian chronicler Eckehard of Aura noted that "even the following summer in all of palestine the air was polluted by the stench of decomposition". One million victims of the first crusade alone. [WW41]
- Battle of Askalon, 8/12/1099. 200,000 heathens slaughtered "in the name of Our Lord Jesus Christ". [WW45]
- Fourth crusade: 4/12/1204 Constantinople sacked, number of victims unknown, numerous thousands, many of them Christian. [WW141-148]
- Rest of Crusades in less detail: until the fall of Akkon 1291 probably 20 million victims (in the Holy land and Arab/Turkish areas alone). [WW224]
Note: All figures according to contemporary (Christian) chroniclers.
Heretics
- Already in 385 C.E. the first Christians, the Spanish Priscillianus and six followers, were beheaded for heresy in Trier/Germany [DO26]
- Manichaean heresy: a crypto-Christian sect decent enough to practice birth control (and thus not as irresponsible as faithful Catholics) was exterminated in huge campaigns all over the Roman empire between 372 C.E. and 444 C.E. Numerous thousands of victims. [NC]
- Albigensians: the first Crusade intended to slay other Christians. [DO29]
The Albigensians...viewed themselves as good Christians, but would not accept roman Catholic rule, and taxes, and prohibition of birth control. [NC]
Begin of violence: on command of pope Innocent III (greatest single pre-nazi mass murderer) in 1209. Bezirs (today France) 7/22/1209 destroyed, all the inhabitants were slaughtered. Victims (including Catholics refusing to turn over their heretic neighbours and friends) 20,000-70,000. [WW179-181]
- Carcassonne 8/15/1209, thousands slain. Other cities followed. [WW181]
- subsequent 20 years of war until nearly all Cathars (probably half the population of the Languedoc, today southern France) were exterminated. [WW183]
- After the war ended (1229) the Inquisition was founded 1232 to search and destroy surviving/hiding heretics. Last Cathars burned at the stake 1324. [WW183]
- Estimated one million victims (cathar heresy alone), [WW183]
- Other heresies: Waldensians, Paulikians, Runcarians, Josephites, and many others. Most of these sects exterminated, (I believe some Waldensians live today, yet they had to endure 600 years of persecution) I estimate at least hundred thousand victims (including the Spanish inquisition but excluding victims in the New World).
- Spanish Inquisitor Torquemada alone allegedly responsible for 10,220 burnings. [DO28]
- John Huss, a critic of papal infallibility and indulgences, was burned at the stake in 1415. [LI475-522]
- University professor B.Hubmaier burned at the stake 1538 in Vienna. [DO59]
- Giordano Bruno, Dominican monk, after having been incarcerated for seven years, was burned at the stake for heresy on the Campo dei Fiori (Rome) on 2/17/1600.
Witches
- from the beginning of Christianity to 1484 probably more than several thousand.
- in the era of witch hunting (1484-1750) according to modern scholars several hundred thousand (about 80% female) burned at the stake or hanged. [WV]
- incomplete list of documented cases:
The Burning of Witches - A Chronicle of the Burning Times
Religious Wars
- 15th century: Crusades against Hussites, thousands slain. [DO30]
- 1538 pope Paul III declared Crusade against apostate England and all English as slaves of Church (fortunately had not power to go into action). [DO31]
- 1568 Spanish Inquisition Tribunal ordered extermination of 3 million rebels in (then Spanish) Netherlands. Thousands were actually slain. [DO31]
- 1572 In France about 20,000 Huguenots were killed on command of pope Pius V. Until 17th century 200,000 flee. [DO31]
- 17th century: Catholics slay Gaspard de Coligny, a Protestant leader. After murdering him, the Catholic mob mutilated his body, "cutting off his head, his hands, and his genitals... and then dumped him into the river [...but] then, deciding that it was not worthy of being food for the fish, they hauled it out again [... and] dragged what was left ... to the gallows of Montfaulcon, 'to be meat and carrion for maggots and crows'." [SH191]
- 17th century: Catholics sack the city of Magdeburg/Germany: roughly 30,000 Protestants were slain. "In a single church fifty women were found beheaded," reported poet Friedrich Schiller, "and infants still sucking the breasts of their lifeless mothers." [SH191]
- 17th century 30 years' war (Catholic vs. Protestant): at least 40% of population decimated, mostly in Germany. [DO31-32]
Jews
- Already in the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Christians. Number of Jews slain unknown.
- In the middle of the fourth century the first synagogue was destroyed on command of bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon in the year 388. [DA450]
- 17. Council of Toledo 694: Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized. [DA454]
- The Bishop of Limoges (France) in 1010 had the cities' Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, expelled or killed. [DA453]
- First Crusade: Thousands of Jews slaughtered 1096, maybe 12.000 total. Places: Worms 5/18/1096, Mainz 5/27/1096 (1100 persons), Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech) [EJ]
- Second Crusade: 1147. Several hundred Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France). [WW57]
- Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked 1189/90. [DO40]
- Fulda/Germany 1235: 34 Jewish men and women slain. [DO41]
- 1257, 1267: Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated. [DO41]
- 1290 in Bohemian (Poland) allegedly 10,000 Jews killed. [DO41]
- 1337 Starting in Deggendorf/Germany a Jew-killing craze reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, Poland. [DO41]
- 1348 All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned. [DO41]
- 1349 In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians). [DO42]
- 1389 In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered. [DO42]
- 1391 Seville's Jews killed (Archbishop Martinez leading). 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. [DA454] Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
- 1492: In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way: 6/30/1492. [MM470-476]
- 1648 Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain. [DO43]
(I feel sick ...) this goes on and on, century after century, right into the kilns of Auschwitz.
Native Peoples
- Beginning with Columbus (a former slave trader and would-be Holy Crusader) the conquest of the New World began, as usual understood as a means to propagate Christianity.
- Within hours of landfall on the first inhabited island he encountered in the Caribbean, Columbus seized and carried off six native people who, he said, "ought to be good servants ... [and] would easily be made Christians, because it seemed to me that they belonged to no religion." [SH200]
While Columbus described the Indians as "idolators" and "slaves, as many as [the Crown] shall order," his pal Michele de Cuneo, Italian nobleman, referred to the natives as "beasts" because "they eat when they are hungry," and made love "openly whenever they feel like it." [SH204-205]
- On every island he set foot on, Columbus planted a cross, "making the declarations that are required" - the requerimiento - to claim the ownership for his Catholic patrons in Spain. And "nobody objected." If the Indians refused or delayed their acceptance (or understanding), the requerimiento continued:
I certify to you that, with the help of God, we shall powerfully enter in your country and shall make war against you ... and shall subject you to the yoke and obedience of the Church ... and shall do you all mischief that we can, as to vassals who do not obey and refuse to receive their lord and resist and contradict him." [SH66]
- Likewise in the words of John Winthrop, first governor of Massachusetts Bay Colony: "justifieinge the undertakeres of the intended Plant
