Global · Both theaters · 1937–1952
World War II by the Numbers
Deaths, prisoners, factories, ships and aircraft, with every figure tied to the institution or historian who produced it and an explanation of what it counts.
World War II killed somewhere between 40 and 60 million people, depending on whose estimate is used and what it includes. This collection gathers the war’s most important numbers, from deaths by country and the six million Jewish victims of the Holocaust to aircraft, tanks and ships built, and explains where each figure comes from, what it measures and where it stops.
Key facts
Why the numbers disagree
Every large figure from World War II is the end product of a counting process, and the processes differ. An army counts its own dead from unit returns, casualty cards and graves registration. A government counts civilian deaths from census gaps, ration rolls and police reports. A historian reconstructing the Holocaust works from deportation lists, perpetrator reports, prewar censuses and survivor testimony. Each method has a boundary: dates, territory, who counts as a soldier, and whether famine and disease belong in the war’s toll. When two respected sources give different numbers, they are usually answering slightly different questions.
That is why this collection names whose figure is whose. The National WWII Museum’s country table puts Soviet deaths at 24 million; a 1990 Soviet government study gave 26.6 million; Western demographers broadly accept 26 to 27 million. The museum’s own table gives China 20 million deaths, while an Oxford research project on China’s war places the toll nearer 15 million. Neither is simply wrong. The ranges reflect lost records, changed borders and different definitions, and the chapters say so wherever a number is printed.
What the collection covers
The nine chapters move from the whole war to its parts. Chapter 1 sets out alliances, populations and mobilization, including the growth of the U.S. armed forces from 334,473 people in 1939 to 12,209,238 in 1945 in the National WWII Museum’s series. Chapter 2 covers Europe and the convoy war, and Chapter 3 covers China and the Pacific. Chapter 4 uses records kept by single American agencies, such as the Army Air Forces statistical digest and the Army’s final casualty report, to compare the war against Germany with the war against Japan on matched terms.
Chapter 5 follows aircraft losses and the bombing campaigns. Chapter 6 sets out factory output by country, drawing on Mark Harrison’s The Economics of World War II and the official air force history. Chapter 7 moves from nations to companies, including Ford, General Motors, Kaiser, Volkswagen, BMW, I.G. Farben and Mitsubishi, and to the millions of people forced to work for the German and Japanese war economies. Chapter 8 presents the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s estimates of the Holocaust and other Nazi crimes, and Chapter 9 brings together military and civilian deaths, prisoners of war, famine, bombing and displacement.
How to read a war statistic
Four questions help with almost any figure in these pages. First, what is being counted: deaths, casualties (which include the wounded, captured and missing), losses (which for aircraft may include accidents), or claims (which are often inflated)? Second, who is counted: a single service, a nation’s citizens, everyone inside a territory, or one group of victims? Third, over what period: a day, a campaign, the years of a country’s own war, or the whole conflict from 1937 or 1939? Fourth, how was it produced: a contemporary count, a postwar survey, a demographic reconstruction or an estimate rounded to the nearest million?
The charts follow the same rule. Each one names its source beneath it, and where a source gives a range the chart uses the lower bound and says so. Shares of a whole appear only where the parts genuinely add up. Where this collection has done arithmetic of its own, such as dividing a death toll by a prewar population, the note says that the result is a calculation and names both inputs.
Worldwide deaths: battle and civilian
The donut chart makes one point that runs through the whole collection: by the National WWII Museum’s estimate, three of every four people killed by the war were civilians. In the Soviet Union, China, Poland and Yugoslavia, civilian deaths far exceeded military ones. In the United States, Britain, Canada and Australia, the pattern was reversed. The chart below sets the two totals side by side for selected countries.
Military deaths and all deaths, selected countries
Deaths as a share of the population
Raw totals favor large countries. Dividing each country’s death toll by its prewar population shows how heavily the war fell on smaller nations, above all Poland. The chart below is a calculation by this collection: National WWII Museum death totals divided by 1938 populations from Mark Harrison’s table of the belligerents. It leaves out the Soviet Union, whose 1938 population figure excludes the territories annexed in 1939–40 and would overstate the share, and Greece, whose museum range is too wide to yield a single figure.
War deaths as a share of 1938 population (calculated)
Map and timeline
The map marks capitals, cities and sites with one sourced figure each, from Warsaw and Moscow to Hiroshima, Manila and Willow Run. The timeline follows the dates on which the war’s numbers changed direction: the invasion of Poland, the first month of Operation Reinhard, the peak of the U-boat war off North Carolina, the deportation of Hungary’s Jews, the atomic bombings and the slow resettlement of the displaced, which ran into the 1950s.
The collection
9 chapters
Read in order for the full story, or start anywhere. Each chapter has its own photographs, maps, figures and sources.
011937–1945The World at War: Alliances, Populations and MobilizationBefore counting the dead or the factories, a statistic has to answer a simpler question: whose war, starting when, and on which side.
021939–1945Europe and the Atlantic: Campaigns, Convoys and LossesFrom the beaches of Dunkirk to the Volga, and from Cape Hatteras to the Arctic convoy routes, the war in Europe was fought on land and at sea at once.
031937–1945Asia and the Pacific: China, the Island War and JapanThe war against Japan began in China in 1937 and ended over the home islands in 1945. Most of its dead were Asian civilians whose deaths were never individually recorded.
04December 1941–1946Europe and the Pacific Compared: One Country's RecordsComparisons across theaters are only as good as the records behind them. The safest way to compare is to use one agency's numbers for both wars.
051939–1945The Air War: Sorties, Bombs and Aircraft LossesAircraft losses are among the most misquoted numbers of the war, because claims, combat losses and accidents were counted in different ways by every air force.
061939–1945The Arsenal by Country: Aircraft, Tanks, Ships and MunitionsFactories decided the war's long middle. The numbers show when the Allied advantage appeared, how large it became, and what a simple count of weapons leaves out.
071939–1945Companies, Contracts and Forced LaborNational production totals were made in particular plants by particular companies. Some of those companies built for both sides, and many in Germany and Japan relied on coerced labor.
081933–1945The Holocaust and Nazi Persecution: The Evidence Behind the TotalsSix million is not a round number chosen for memory. It is the result of decades of work with perpetrator records, deportation lists, censuses and survivor testimony.
091937–1952The Human Cost: Deaths, Prisoners, Civilians and the DisplacedThe war killed soldiers and civilians through combat, occupation, bombing, mass murder, starvation and disease, and it drove tens of millions from their homes.Map
The campaign on the map
Select any place for what happened there. Use the numbered buttons to replay the movements phase by phase.
Interactive map
Where the war's numbers fell: selected countries, cities and sites
Numbers
By the numbers
Every figure below carries its source. Where historians disagree, the chapters give the range.
Right: Photo: Myrabella · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia Commons
Gallery · 12 photographs · select to enlarge
The war in numbers: factories, ships, camps and graves
Readers who want the stories behind the figures can follow links throughout to the site’s campaign collections, from the invasion of Poland and Stalingrad to Midway, the Manhattan Project and life on the home fronts. The Maps of World War II collection shows where many of these numbers were made.
People
People and units
A veteran merchant officer, Mulzac took command of the Liberty ship SS Booker T. Washington in 1942, the first African American to command a Liberty ship, and sailed with an integrated crew. This photograph of Mulzac and his crew dates from February 1943. His command is one of the 2,710 Liberty ship stories behind the production figures in Chapter 6.
Photo: Unknown authoror not provided · Public domain · Wikimedia CommonsA former waitress, Cowner worked as a scaler on the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver at Kaiser’s Richmond, California, yards in 1943. She was one of about 3 million American women in war plants, according to the National Archives. The Richmond yards delivered 747 ships, just over half of the Kaiser network’s 1,490.
Photo: E. F. Joseph · Public domain · Wikimedia CommonsThe concert singer christened the SS Booker T. Washington on 29 September 1942, the first Liberty ship named for an African American. Mary McLeod Bethune of the National Youth Administration attended the launching.
Photo: Los Angeles Daily News · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia CommonsHorne sponsored the launching of the Liberty ship SS George Washington Carver at Kaiser’s Richmond yards in April 1943. Office of War Information photographers documented the ship’s construction and the Black workers who built it, images now held by the National Archives and used throughout this collection.
Photo: E. F. Joseph, U.S. Office of War Information · Public domain · Wikimedia CommonsHarrison edited The Economics of World War II (Cambridge University Press, 1998), whose tables of population, national income and munitions output underlie much of Chapter 6. His work also reconstructed Soviet wartime production and the cost of the war to the Soviet economy.
Krivosheev led the Defense Ministry team whose 1993 study, based on military archives, counted more than 8.6 million Soviet military dead after subtracting returned prisoners and men called up twice from about 11.4 million recorded losses. It remains the starting point for every estimate of Red Army deaths.
Piper’s 1992 study of transports to Auschwitz produced the museum’s estimate that about 1.1 million people were murdered there, about 1 million of them Jews, along with 70,000 to 75,000 Poles, 21,000 Roma and Sinti and 15,000 Soviet prisoners of war.
An insurance executive, D’Olier chaired the survey that sent analysts into Germany and Japan in 1945 to measure what bombing had done. Its summary reports, cited in Chapters 5 and 6, remain a basic source for bomb tonnage, aircraft losses and civilian casualties.
Quiz
Test yourself
Eight questions. Every answer is explained, and every one is covered in the chapters.
Score: answer a question to begin.
1. By the National WWII Museum's estimate, roughly what share of the war's dead were civilians?
The museum estimates 15 million battle deaths and 45 million civilian deaths, so civilians made up about three of every four.
2. Which country lost the largest share of its prewar population in this collection's calculation?
About 5.6 million deaths against a 1938 population of 35.1 million gives about 16 percent.
3. How many U.S. military aircraft were built in 1944, according to the AAF official history?
The United States built 96,318 military aircraft in 1944, against 39,807 for Germany and 28,180 for Japan.
4. Roughly how many Soviet prisoners of war died in German captivity?
USHMM estimates about 3.3 million of roughly 5.7 million Soviet POWs died, about 57 percent.
5. Which killing center does the USHMM estimate took the most Jewish lives?
About 1 million Jews were murdered at the Auschwitz complex and about 925,000 at Treblinka II.
6. Where did more than 90 percent of the ships lost off North Carolina go down?
NCpedia notes that more than 90 percent of the losses at Torpedo Junction came in the first seven months of 1942.
7. About how many Liberty ships were built in the United States?
The National Park Service counts about 2,710 Liberty ships built in eighteen yards.
8. What did the 1990 Soviet study give as the Soviet Union's total war dead?
The study by the State Statistics Committee and others put the toll at 26.6 million; Western scholars broadly accept 26 to 27 million.
FAQ
Questions and answers
How many people died in World War II?
Estimates range from about 40 million to more than 60 million. Britannica gives an estimated 40 to 50 million; the National WWII Museum’s table implies about 60 million, made up of 15 million battle deaths and 45 million civilian deaths. The spread comes mainly from China and the Soviet Union, where records were lost or never kept, and from whether deaths from famine and disease, such as the Bengal famine of 1942–43, are counted as war deaths. See Chapter 9.
Which country suffered the most deaths?
The Soviet Union. The National WWII Museum gives 24 million deaths; a 1990 Soviet government study gave 26.6 million, and Western scholars broadly accept 26 to 27 million. China comes second, with 20 million in the museum’s table and about 15 million in Oxford research. Measured as a share of prewar population, Poland suffered most, losing about 16 percent of its 1938 population by this collection’s calculation.
How many American service members died?
The National WWII Museum’s branch table lists 407,316 killed: 318,274 in the Army and Army Air Forces, 62,614 in the Navy, 24,511 in the Marine Corps and 1,917 in the Coast Guard. The Department of Veterans Affairs gives 291,557 battle deaths and 113,842 other deaths in service. The museum’s country table uses a slightly different figure, 416,800, because it follows another accounting convention. See Chapter 4.
Why do sources give different numbers for the same thing?
Usually because they count different things. A casualty figure includes the wounded, captured and missing, while a death figure does not. Aircraft “losses” may include accidents and planes written off after landing; “claims” are what aircrews reported shooting down. Dates, borders and populations also differ. This collection names the source of every figure and explains its scope, so two numbers can be compared only when they answer the same question.
How many Jews were murdered in the Holocaust?
About six million, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and Yad Vashem. The USHMM estimates about 2.7 million were murdered in the five killing centers, about 2 million in mass shootings in more than 1,500 places, 800,000 to 1 million in ghettos and camps, and at least 250,000 in other violence. The estimate rests on perpetrator records, prewar censuses and demographic studies. See Chapter 8.
Who else did the Nazis murder?
The USHMM estimates about 3.3 million Soviet prisoners of war, about 1.8 million non-Jewish Polish civilians, more than 310,000 Serb civilians killed by the Ustaša, 250,000 to 300,000 people with disabilities, and at least 250,000 and possibly 500,000 Roma. Tens of thousands of German political opponents, about 1,700 Jehovah’s Witnesses and hundreds or thousands of gay men were also killed. These estimates rest on different kinds of evidence and should not simply be added together.
Which country produced the most weapons?
The United States, by a wide margin after 1942. Raymond Goldsmith’s estimates, published by Mark Harrison, value U.S. combat munitions in 1944 at $42 billion in 1944 prices, against $17 billion for Germany, $16 billion for the Soviet Union, $11 billion for Britain and $6 billion for Japan. The Soviet Union, however, built more tanks than the United States in 1944, according to Harrison’s tables. See Chapter 6.
How many aircraft were built during the war?
The annual figures in the Army Air Forces official history add up to 303,713 military aircraft built in the United States from 1939 to August 1945, 131,549 in Britain through the third quarter of 1945, and 111,787 in Germany through 1944. Harrison’s tables add Soviet combat aircraft, which reached 33,200 in 1944. Counts treat a four-engine bomber and a light trainer alike, so airframe weight, also covered in Chapter 6, gives a better sense of industrial effort.
How many prisoners of war died?
Death rates varied enormously by captor and captive. About 57 percent of Soviet prisoners held by Germany died (USHMM). Over 40 percent of Americans held by Japan died (National WWII Museum), and nearly 36 percent of Australians held by Japan (Australian War Memorial). Among British and American prisoners held by Germany, the USHMM gives about 3.6 percent. These figures come from different sources and measure different cohorts.
How many people were displaced by the war?
The German Historical Institute estimates that the Allies found 6.5 to 7.5 million displaced civilians in the future western zones of Germany in 1945, including former forced laborers and camp survivors. In China, historian Rana Mitter estimates about 80 million refugees during 1937–45. The USHMM counts more than 250,000 Jewish displaced persons in camps and cities in Germany, Austria and Italy between 1945 and 1952.
How many merchant ships were lost in the Battle of the Atlantic?
The Naval History and Heritage Command gives about 3,500 Allied merchant ships, totaling 14.5 million gross tons, along with 175 Allied warships and 72,200 Allied naval and merchant seamen killed. Germany lost 783 U-boats and about 30,000 of its 40,000 submariners. Worldwide, a postwar Admiralty study cited in the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings counted 4,786 merchant ships lost, with submarines responsible for about 69 percent. See Chapter 2.
How many people died at Hiroshima and Nagasaki?
The City of Hiroshima estimates about 140,000 deaths by the end of 1945, out of about 350,000 people present on 6 August. Nagasaki’s records use an estimate of 73,884 deaths by the end of 1945. These figures count acute deaths in 1945 only; deaths from radiation-related illness in later years are counted separately by researchers. The Manhattan Project collection covers the bombs themselves.
Where are the American dead buried?
Most American war dead were returned home at their families’ request. The American Battle Monuments Commission maintains overseas cemeteries holding 92,958 World War II burials and memorials naming 78,985 missing or lost at sea. The largest is the Manila American Cemetery, with 17,058 burials and 36,286 names of the missing. The Normandy American Cemetery holds 9,380 burials. See Chapter 4.
How does the Commonwealth War Graves Commission count the dead?
The CWGC commemorates members of Commonwealth forces who died in service, either by an identified grave or by a name on a memorial to the missing. Its 2021–22 annual report lists 348,317 identified burials and 232,531 memorial names for the Second World War, a total of 580,848, of whom 383,898 were from the United Kingdom and 87,026 from India. Its Civilian War Dead Roll names a further 68,111 Commonwealth civilians killed by enemy action.
Is the 50 million figure for China’s refugees or China’s dead?
Neither, exactly. The National WWII Museum’s table lists 20 million Chinese deaths and notes that civilian deaths might be higher, while Oxford research puts the toll at about 15 million. Refugee estimates are separate: Rana Mitter gives about 80 million, and has given 100 million elsewhere. Readers should check whether a figure counts deaths, refugees or casualties before comparing it. See Chapter 3.
Where do the production numbers come from?
Mostly from official histories and economic historians. The U.S. aircraft series comes from Craven and Cate’s The Army Air Forces in World War II. Tank, aircraft and naval output for all the great powers comes from Mark Harrison’s The Economics of World War II. Soviet series come from Harrison’s reconstructions of Soviet statistics. The U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey supplies German and Japanese output and the effects of bombing on it.
Sources
Sources and further reading
Official histories, archives and museum collections used for this section.
- The National WWII Museum, Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II — country table and worldwide totals
- The National WWII Museum, Research Starters: US Military by the Numbers
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution
- United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Displaced Persons
- Mark Harrison, “The Economics of World War II: An Overview,” in The Economics of World War II, Cambridge University Press, 1998 — tables 1.1, 1.2, 1.6, 1.7
- W. F. Craven and J. L. Cate, eds., The Army Air Forces in World War II, vol. VI, chapter 10
- American Battle Monuments Commission, World War II Burials and Memorializations
- Commonwealth War Graves Commission, Annual Report 2021–2022, pp. 36–37
- Meduza, “27 million lives lost,” 9 May 2025 — on the 1990 Soviet study and Krivosheev’s figures
- University of Oxford, China’s War with Japan research project
- Encyclopaedia Britannica, Casualties of World War II
- Auschwitz-Birkenau State Museum, The number of victims — Franciszek Piper’s estimates
- U.S. Strategic Bombing Survey, Summary Report (Pacific War), 1946
- Naval History and Heritage Command, Battle of the Atlantic
- NCpedia, World War II and Liberty Ships
- National Park Service, Rosie the Riveter WWII Home Front NHP: Ships from the Home Front
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