Casualty Figures of the Great War

Estimates of casualty numbers for the Great War vary significantly, largely because numbers from the Central Powers and from Russia were not properly recorded, or were lost in the confusion and chaos of the post-war world. The statistics below are drawn from a number of sources, including the following.

  • British Empire figures are drawn from The Commonwealth War Graves Annual Report, 2011.
  • Official British figures were concluded in a War Office Report of March 1922.
  • Estimates of Russian, Greek, Serbian and Montenegrin casualties were presented by journalist Boris Urlanis in Wars and Population (Moscow, 1971).
  • Estimates of Allied deaths in France, Italy, Britain and Germany were presented in Samuel Dumas’s study Losses of Life Caused by War (Oxford, 1923).
  • Estimates of German and Austrian losses are based on the official German Army Medical Branch war history Heeres-Sanitätsinspektion im Reichskriegsministeriums, Sanitätsbericht über das deutsche Heer (Deutsches Feld- und Besatzungsheer) im Weltkriege 1914–1918 (Berlin, 1934).

The following are also invaluable sources of information.

The figures in the following table include 6.8 million combat-related deaths as well as 3 million military deaths caused by accidents, disease and deaths while prisoners of war. They include about 6 million excess civilian deaths due to war-related malnutrition and disease that are often omitted from other compilations. The civilian deaths listed below also include the Armenian Genocide (1915), but civilian deaths due to the Spanish flu (1918–1920) have been excluded.

Allied Powers

Central Powers

Neutral nations

Combined casualty figures

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British colonies

In addition to New Commonwealth troops listed below, Britain recruited Indian, Chinese, native South African, Egyptian and other overseas labour to provide logistical support in the combat theatres. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission reports that nearly 2,000 workers from the Chinese Labour Corps are buried with British war dead in France.

Colony Military deaths
Ghana (1914 known as the Gold Coast) 1,200
Kenya (1914 known as British East Africa) 2,000
Malawi (1914 known as Nyasaland) 3,000
Nigeria (1914 part of British West Africa) 5,000
Sierra Leone (1914 part of British West Africa) 1,000
Uganda (1914 known as the Uganda Protectorate) 1,500
Zambia (1914 known as Northern Rhodesia) 3,000
Zimbabwe (1914 known as Southern Rhodesia) >700

Included with British casualties in East Africa are the deaths of 44,911 recruited labourers.

Ireland

In 1914, the whole of Ireland was part of the United Kingdom; during the Great War 206,000 Irishmen fought for Britain.

Location of war graves

In March 2009, the Commonwealth War Graves Commission produced the following statistics for the resting places of the British dead in the Great War. The figures include all three services.

  • Buried in named graves: 587,989.
  • No known graves, but listed on a memorial to the missing: 526,816, of which
    • buried but not identifiable by name: 187,861
    • remains not recovered, therefore not buried at all: 338,955.

The last figure includes those lost at sea. Thus, about half are buried as known soldiers, with the rest either buried but unidentifiable, or lost.