World War II was a war that spanned from 1939 to 1945. More than 100 million people from over 30 nations participated in the war. During World War II, most of the world's nations were divided between two different military alliances known as the Axis and the Allies.
One of the things that stands out most about this war is the number of casualties. Millions of civilians and military members were killed in this war, which is the deadliest global war in history.
An exact count of the number of casualties is unavailable, but it is estimated that between 70 million and 85 million people died due to WWII. To put this in perspective, this was roughly 3% of the total population of 2.3 billion measured across the world in 1940.
Surprisingly, more civilians died as a result of the war. More than twice as many civilians died as members of the military. It's estimated that as many as 55 million civilians died during World War II, while military deaths are estimated to be as high as 25 million. While most people died as a direct result of the war, millions of deaths were caused by disease and famine from WWII.
Data show that the now-defunct Soviet Union had the highest number of WWII casualties. As many as 27 million people died. Broken down, this results in as many as 11.4 million military deaths, up to 10 million civilian deaths due to military activity, and an additional 8 million to 9 million deaths due to famine and disease. More than 14 million members of the Soviet Union's military were wounded due to the war. Within the USSR, Russia had the highest number of casualties, with 6,750,000 military deaths and 7,200,000 civilian deaths, totaling 13.95 million deaths. Ukraine has the second-highest casualties, with 1,650,000 military deaths and 5,200,000 civilian deaths, totaling 6,850,000 deaths.
China also saw a large number of casualties because of its involvement in the war. As many as 20 million people died in China, including up to 3.75 million military deaths and 18.19 million civilian deaths.
In third is Germany, which had up to 7.4 million casualties as a result of the war.
The following list includes the total estimated deaths for every country involved in the war.