According to the documentary "The Great War," 9 million people were killed in total during the war. After researching this statistic even further, I discovered which countries suffered the most casualties and which lost minimal amounts.
Casualty statistics are shown on the table at the bottom.
I chose to research this simple piece of information because it reveals which countries were mot involved in the the war - the key players. Evidently, the key players in The Great War were Russia, England, France, Germany, and Austria-Hungary. The countries who invest the most soldiers in a war are generally the powers who are most involved. Therefore, this statistic enhances our understanding of the main powers during WWI.
| Country | Total Mobilized Forces | Killed | Wounded | Prisoners and Missing | Total Casualties | Casualties as % of Forces |
| ALLIED AND ASSOCIATED POWERS |
| Russia | 12,000,000 | 1,700,000 | 4,950,000 | 2,500,000 | 9,150,000 | 76.3 |
| British Empire | 8,904,467 | 908,371 | 2,090,212 | 191,652 | 3,190,235 | 35.8 |
| France | 8,410,000 | 1,357,800 | 4,266,000 | 537,000 | 6,160,800 | 73.3 |
| Italy | 5,615,000 | 650,000 | 947,000 | 600,000 | 2,197,000 | 39.1 |
| United States | 4,355,000 | 116,516 | 204,002 | 4,500 | 323,018 | 7.1 |
| Japan | 800,000 | 300 | 907 | 3 | 1,210 | 0.2 |
| Romania | 750,000 | 335,706 | 120,000 | 80,000 | 535,706 | 71.4 |
| Serbia | 707,343 | 45,000 | 133,148 | 152,958 | 331,106 | 46.8 |
| Belgium | 267,000 | 13,716 | 44,686 | 34,659 | 93,061 | 34.9 |
| Greece | 230,000 | 5,000 | 21,000 | 1,000 | 27,000 | 11.7 |
| Portugal | 100,000 | 7,222 | 13,751 | 12,318 | 33,291 | 33.3 |
| Montenegro | 50,000 | 3,000 | 10,000 | 7,000 | 20,000 | 40.0 |
| TOTAL | 42,188,810 | 5,142,631 | 12,800,706 | 4,121,090 | 22,062,427 | 52.3 |
| ALLIED AND ASSOCIATED POWERS |
| Germany | 11,000,000 | 1,773,700 | 4,216,058 | 1,152,800 | 7,142,558 | 64.9 |
| Austria-Hungary | 7,800,000 | 1,200,000 | 3,620,000 | 2,200,000 | 7,020,000 | 90.0 |
| Turkey | 2,850,000 | 325,000 | 400,000 | 250,000 | 975,000 | 34.2 |
| Bulgaria | 1,200,000 | 87,500 | 152,390 | 27,029 | 266,919 | 22.2 |
| TOTAL | 22,850,000 | 3,386,200 | 8,388,448 | 3,629,829 | 15,404,477 | 67.4 |
| GRAND TOTAL | 65,038,810 | 8,528,831 | 21,189,154 | 7,750,919 | 37,466,904 | 57.5
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I didn't realize Russia 3 million more men to the war than GB did. I feel like in World War 2, Russia also played a huge role on the Eastern Front but they're not recognized in our learning of history.
ReplyDeleteI agree with James that Russia had a larger role in WWI than we might think, but I don't think that we can look at the number of troops that they mobilized and the casualties that they had as an accurate representation of their place in the war. Remember, Czar Nicholas was hugely incompetent as a military leader, which caused his army to be more cumbersome than it was effective. This attributes more to the loss of people than anything else, I think.
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