Classification of Casualty Statistics
Estimates of casualty numbers for World War I vary to a great extent; estimates of total deaths range from 9 million to over 15 million The figures listed here are from official secondary sources, whenever available. These sources are cited below. Military casualty statistics listed here include 6.8 million combat related deaths as well as 3 million military deaths caused by accidents, disease and deaths while prisoners of war. First World War civilian deaths are 'hazardous to estimate" according to Michael Clodfelter who maintains that “The generally accepted figure of noncombatant deaths is 6.5 million” The figures listed below include about 6 million excess civilian deaths due to war related malnutrition and disease that are often omitted from other compilations of World War I casualties. The war brought about malnutrition and disease caused by a disruption of trade resulting in shortages of food; the mobilization for the war took away millions of men from the agricultural labor force cutting food production. The civilian deaths listed below also include the Armenian Genocide. Civilian deaths due to the Spanish flu have been excluded from these figures, whenever possible. Furthermore, the figures do not include deaths during the Turkish War of Independence and the Russian Civil War
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“O for a man who is a man, and, as my neighbor says, has a bone in his back which you cannot pass your hand through! Our statistics are at fault: the population has been returned too large. How many men are there to a square thousand miles in this country? Hardly one.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)