Talk:World War II

Starting a new thread here because the first one was getting super bloated. Per WP:CALC, editors can make routine calculations should they come to a consensus for the results being correct after a meaningful reflection. Furthermore, simply adding figures from sources does not qualify as WP:NOR unless it creates a result not supported by the sources.

With that in mind, the discussion about military and civilian deaths needs to be reopened, as the current version is lacking in details, especially for readers who don't have the time to read and analyze large paragraphs.

Currently, the figures used to calculate the earlier infobox were as follows:

12,000,000 to 13,000,000 Allied military dead including:

- 8,668,000 to 9,168,400 Red Army soldiers (Krivosheev's and Beevor's numbers) 
- Roughly 2,000,000 Chinese soldiers (Mitter, Clodfelter, Hsu Long-hsuen) 
- 400,000+ American soldiers (Hanson, US DOD) 
- 570,000 British Commonwealth soldiers (From  adding Hastings numbers together for the UK, Australia, India, New Zealand, South Africa; seconded by Commonwealth War Graves)
- 210,000 to 300,000 French soldiers (Frumkin and Hastings)
- 237,000 Yugoslav Partisans (Žerjavi)
- 200,000+ Polish soldiers and guerrillas (Sourced from the Infographics book labeled above, Gniazdowski estimates 240,000)
- 35,000 Greek soldiers and partisans (The Black Book of the Occupation)
- Around 40,000 Czech troops (Erlikman and Urlanis) 

41,000,000 to 54,000,000 Allied civilian dead including

- 15,884,000 to 18,000,000 Soviets (Krivosheev, Beevor)
- 12,000,000 to 18,000,000 Chinese (Bian Xiuyue, Rana Mitter, Richard Frank)
- 5,000,000+ Southeast Asians including 4,000,000 Indonesians, 1,000,000+ in Indochina (Hastings, Dower, Beevor)
- 5,000,000 to 6,300,000 Polish civilians (Hastings, Hanson)
- 1,000,000 to 3,000,000 Indians (Beevor, Hastings)
- 581,000 Yugoslavians (Žerjavić)
- 500,000 to 1,000,000 Filipino civilians (Hanson, Hastings) 
- 472,000 to 772,000 Greeks (The Black Book of the Occupation, Infographics)
- 300,000+ Czechs (Hastings)
- 305,266 French civilians (Muracciole)
- 200,000+ Dutch (Dutch Bureau of Statistics)

9,175,000 to 9,700,000 Axis military dead including:

- 5,318,731 German soldiers (Overman)
- 2,133,915 to 2,565,878 Japanese soldiers (Dower, Harmsen, Infographics)
- 442,215 Chinese, Thai, and Indian collaborators (Rummel, Matthew White)
- 300,000 to 400,000 Italian soldiers (Infographics, Hanson, Italian Defense Ministry)
- 209,000 Ustaše and collaborators (Žerjavi)
- 300,000 to 350,000 Hungarian soldiers (Stark, Glantz) 
- 381,000-480,000 Romanian troops (Gazeta de Maramureș, Glantz)
- 84,000-95,000 Finnish troops (Glantz, Archives) 

4,850,000 to 5,500,000 Axis civilian dead including

- 3,000,000 Germans (White, Doyle, Hastings) 
- 1,000,000 to 1,333,000 Japanese and Koreans (Frank, Dower, Gruhl)
- 264,000 to 664,000 Hungarians (Stark)
- 153,200 to 250,000 Italians (Hastings, Hanson)
- 200,000 Romanians, not including Jews (Urlanis)

These figures should be returned to the infobox for readers' convenience because not everyone has the time to scroll and parse through dense paragraphs of info. Virtually every major conflict's wiki page does this. They are sourced from verifiable materials and scholarly works. The only alleged gray area was that they somehow constituted original research, which as Hawkeye pointed out, can be overcome by a reflection. I'd like to reach a consensus first.

Tagging you here @Aemilius Adolphin for further discussion. Any other editors are welcome to join in. Wahreit (talk) 22:51, 13 January 2026 (UTC)

@WahreitSee my comments above. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 00:04, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

But still no original research, sources claimed that total worldwide casualties estimated 70 to 85 million, based on that source:

• "Research Starters: Worldwide Deaths in World War II". The National WWII Museum. New Orleans, Louisiana. Retrieved 2026-01-14.
• Lee, Joseph Edward (2021). "Casualties of World War II". Research Starters. EBSCO. Retrieved 2026-01-14.

Absolutiva 04:15, 14 January 2026 (UTC)

Thank you @Absolutiva

I've put the figures into the body. Now that we have numbers for allied and axis military dead calculated from a single source, it's about time we put them in the infobox.

@Aemilius Adolphin any objections before they go? Wahreit (talk) 23:10, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I've added the figures to the infobox to reflect the article body, using the numbers from The National WWII Museum.

@Aemilius Adolphin Open to thoughts, as always. Wahreit (talk) 06:35, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

I have reverted your change to the info box because you have no consensus for it and it is your original research. There are several problems.

1) It's original research because the source does not give figures for the Allied and Axis powers. This is an editorial decision you have made. It's not straightforward to divide countries into Allied and Axis powers and the source does not do this. At the very least, you should open a discussion here on the talk page and show how you arrived at your figures and then seek consensus for having them included in the article. In any event, complex and disputed figures should not appear in the info box for the reasons I and other editors have explained.

2) Your source isn't a quality academic source subject to peer review as is the usual standard for GA rated articles under policy. If it were a proper US War Museum publication, with an author, an editor and citations and bibliography then it certainly would be acceptable. But an anonymous article without citations posted on their website and designed to be a "research starter" for students isn't sufficient.

3) The section on "Casualties and war crimes" in the article needs a lot of work and this should be our first priority. I think you should be patient and work with other editors to get this right before you start adding you preferred version of things to the info box. There is plenty to discuss and no great hurry. Estimates of total military and civilian casualties for WWII are notoriously difficult to establish and vary widely between reliable sources. I don't see much value in we editors trying to further divide them into dubious estimates for Allied and Axis powers, especially if the sources don't to this themselves. That said, if we find reliable secondary sources which do provide explicit estimates for military loses expressly divided into Allied and Axis powers then this could be added to the article. Hanson does provide a rough calculation on p 568. But being a careful scholar, he is very cautious in his wording. Hopefully, we will be able to find other sources which provide estimates that can be incorporated into the article with appropriately careful wording. Aemilius Adolphin (talk) 07:38, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

"adding you preferred version of things to the info box"

Please refrain from commenting on anyone's character or agenda, so we can keep this good faith.

It seems we can't reach a consensus on infobox numbers so we can leave that aside. I also believe its about time we added some more pictures to the page. It reads like a wall of text in some places and some images would help anchor readers to the content, especially given how sensitive the material is. Wahreit (talk) 16:47, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

I've moved mentions of just war crimes to the start of a new section as we discussed. I think it would be best, for the sake of brevity, to just combine the war crime section with the existing genocide, slavery, etc... section. There's more work to be done making it look better but this should be a good start. Wahreit (talk) 21:09, 16 January 2026 (UTC)

I've updated the casualties section with numbers from Hanson and Hastings. Added some photos too.

@Aemilius Adolphin, we should also get some more editors in here if they're interested. Wahreit (talk) 00:43, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

• Per MOS:INFOBOXPURPOSE, the infobox is to summarise key information from the article. While simple calculations are not excluded as SYNTH, the basis of a calculation should not be obscure. They also need to be verifiable and preferably sourced in the body of the article. The infobox is not the place for detail. The detail shown in the boxes above does not belong in the infobox. A Wiki aggregation of various sources to reach totals assumes that such an aggregation is complete and that the different sources are counting the same things. It is therefore preferable to use sources that specifically give totals rather than calculating same from multiple sources for multiple places. Cinderella157 (talk) 10:20, 15 January 2026 (UTC)

I've just removed the material Wahreit added. I note that this hadn't been explicitly discussed, and there was no consensus to include it. More broadly, the numbers of casualties in World War II is a much debated topic (with estimates varying considerably for a range of reasons) and this article isn't the right place to go into detail on it, as we have many other articles focused on this issue. I've also removed a large number of photos Wahreit added, also without any discussion, as the article is already heavily illustrated and it was unclear why more photos are needed. Nick-D (talk) 22:42, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

More broadly, I think that the current text of the 'Casualties and war crimes' section is much too long and detailed. It also is not especially well written, as the text has lots of short paragraphs and jumps between topics a lot. Nick-D (talk) 22:50, 17 January 2026 (UTC)

Hi @Nick-D.

In regards to the photos, I added them to help anchor readers' understanding between text and subject. From feedback I've received, readers like a balance between photos and text, and I sought to help with several sections in the article which read like unbroken walls of text. I now notice the relevant discussion from a month ago. I understand that we don't want to overload the page with images, but given how sensitive and important this subject is, I believe it is proper to include some of those photos to illustrate the serious nature of war beyond maps and various pictures of troops in action (e.g. the Last Jew of Vinnitsa for the nature of the Holocaust).

In regards to the "Casualties and war crimes" section, Aemilius Adolphin and I have recently agreed to improve the section, whilst also separating the War Crimes section into its own distinct category so as to not confuse readers by jumping between death toll estimates and war crime descriptions. We are currently working on making such improvements.

Finally, I believe that it would proper to give each major power at least one sentence detailing the toll their populations took out of fairness (there were no Japanese or British numbers beforehand), as the death toll is a major factor as to why WW2 is significant in modern history. Could that be re-added? It's not a lot of space.

Happy to discuss any time. Wahreit (talk) 03:44, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

Please post specific text (with supporting references) and images here so they can be considered by other editors before adding them to the article, as noted by the notice when you go to edit the article. I don't agree with that approach to the casualties section - it would be best to limit the material on casualties to about 2-3 paras at most summarising the issue, given the complexities. Checking off the various powers doesn't seem sensible, including as some of the heaviest per-capita casualties were suffered by smaller countries/territories (e.g. Poland, Hong Kong, etc). Like many people, I use a fairly large monitor and the article shows as cluttered with photos at present, including what look like some oddly selected ones that have been added fairly recently - I've just removed an overly graphic image of the SS beheading someone. I'm not sure why the images are now right justified as well. Nick-D (talk) 04:48, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

I agree the casualties section doesn't need to list every detail, but the powers with the largest losses like the USSR, China, Germany, Poland, and Japan deserve mention. When we got to editing, most of what is visible was up there, we figured it was just fair to add Britain and Japan because they were big players but absent from the page.

What is the limit for mature content? Given this page deals with subjects like genocide, slavery, and wartime rape, I would assume the text, pictures, and whatever other content should align with and convey the heavy material at hand. For example, the Eastern Front page has photos of live executions and mass graves to illustrate the scale and genocidal nature on the front. Wahreit (talk) 05:24, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

MOS:OMIMG is the relevant guidance for images, noting that graphic images should only be included in contexts were readers would expect to see this type of image, no alternatives area appropriate and the images are directly linked to the text. History books aimed at a general audience on the war do not include images such as this, and they are presented with great care in specialist works on atrocities, so I don't think that it was at all appropriate. The article already included a range of less graphic but still horrifying images depicting the human toll of the war and atrocities. Nick-D (talk) 05:38, 18 January 2026 (UTC)

I insist that we include the Last Jew in Vinnitsa in the Casualties section. It's an iconic Holocaust photo (put in the official museum) and would really help readers understand the implications of the conflict. Wahreit (talk) 20:33, 24 January 2026 (UTC)

What image do you want to remove to make space for it? There are already two very powerful images in that section. Nick-D (talk) 00:06, 25 January 2026 (UTC)