The Big Answer

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(Source: Urlanis, B., Wars and Population, Moscow, 1971 and World Priorities: World Military and Social Expenditures, 1986)

Notes to Graph:

• The InterWar period includes the Soviet civil war but not Stalin's genocidal attack and starvation of the Ukraine. See Urlanis, B., Wars and Population, Moscow, 1971 "Deaths Under Stalin."

• World War II figures do not include concentration camp mortality, which we separated.

• Other World War II sources state 25 million Soviets and four million Germans.

• Iran-Iraq War figures are based on a 1987 estimate.

• Persian-Gulf War figures are estimates (some say 600 coalition, 200,000 Iraqis)


Some of the More Recent Wars:

• Yugoslav Wars (1991–1995) 116,000

• Bosnian War (1992–1995) 104,000

• First Chechen War (1994–1996) 200,000

• Second Congo War (1998-2003) 5,400,000

• Second Chechen War (1999 - 2009) 74,000

• War in Afghanistan (2001- ) 60,000

• Iraq War (2003–2011) 1,000,000

• Mexican Drug War (2006 - ) 87,000

• Libyan civil war (2011) 30,000

• Syrian civil war (2011– ) 70,000