Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm

List of Recurring Sources

Alphabetical Index

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Elsewhere, I defined the Hemoclysm as that string of interconnected barbarities which have made the Twentieth Century so fascinating for historians and so miserable for real people. Here, I have listed the sources for determing the body count for the Big Four -- the First and Second World Wars, Communist China and the Soviet Union -- which together account for maybe ¾ of all deaths by atrocity in the 20th Century.


  1. First World War (1914-18): 15 000 000 [make link]
  2. Russian Civil War (1917-22): 9 000 000 [make link]
  3. Soviet Union, Stalin's regime (1924-53): 20 000 000 [make link]
  4. Second World War (1937-45): 55 000 000 [make link]
    1. Hitler [make link]:
      • Extermination of the Jews:
        • Reitlinger, Gerald, The Final Solution (1953): between 4,194,200 and 4,851,200 (this number is accepted by Kinder, The Anchor Atlas of World History (1978))
        • Brzezinski: 5,000,000
        • Chirot: 5,100,000
          • 3,000,000 in death camps.
          • 1,300,000 massacred.
          • 800,000 by dis./maln. in ghettos
        • Rummel: 5,291,000
        • Grenville: 5-6M
        • Davies, Europe A History (1998): avg. c. 5,571,300 (puts the minimum at 4,871,000 and the maximum at 6,271,500.)
        • MEDIAN: ca. 5.6M
        • Nuremberg indictment: 5,700,000 (accepted by Britannica)
        • Gutman, Encyclopedia of the Holocaust (1990): 5,596,029 to 5,860,129
        • P. Johnson: 5,800,000
        • Wallechinsky: "nearly" 6,000,000
        • Urlanis: 6M
      • Country-by-country
      • Individual Camps, Massacres etc.
      • Soviet Prisoners of War killed:
        • Urlanis: 3,912,000
        • 12 March 1995 Times-Picayune: nearly 3.5M
        • Our Times: 3,300,000
        • Rummel: 3,100,000
        • MEDIAN: 3.0-3.1M
        • Mazower, Dark Continent: 3M
        • Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War: 3,000,000
        • Shirer, The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich (1960): 2,000,000 dead and 1,000,000 never accounted for, presumed dead.
        • Britannica: 2,600,000
      • Roma (Gypsies):
        • Hammond: 250,000.
        • Rummel: 258,000.
        • Mazower, Dark Continent: 200,000-500,000.
        • Porter: 500,000
        • Brzezinski: 800,000
        • Ian Hancock, "Responses to the Romani Holocaust" in Is the Holocaust Unique? (A. Rosenbaum, ed.) cites these:
          • US Holocaust Memorial Museum: 250,000
          • "several published estimates": >1,000,000
          • Pauwels and Bergier: 750,000
          • Financial Times (London): 500-750,000 in death camps and another million shot outside.
      • Homosexuals:
        • Chirot: 10-15,000
        • Rummel: 220,000
      • Euthanasia of Handicapped:
        • Hugh G. Gallagher: 275,000, citing Breggin (in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
        • Johnson: 70,000 insane and incurable Germans k.
        • US Holocaust Memorial Museum, Historical Atlas of the Holocaust: 70,000 k.in initial phase, 1939-41. 275,000 total k, acc. to Nuremburg Tribunal.
      • Air Raids
        • Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): "an estimated 500,000 Soviet citizens died from German bomb attacks."
        • Belgrade
        • London
        • Stalingrad
      • Victims of Wehrmacht:
        • Acc2 historical exhibit curated by Hannes Heer: The common soldiers of the Wehrmacht murdered 1.5M Jews, 3.3M POWs + 5-7M non-Jewish civilians (17 May 1995 Agence France Presse; 22 Feb. 1997 AP)
      • [Let's make a rough calcultion of the number of Soviet civilians who were victims of excessive German brutality. In the Italian Campaign, for example, where the rules of civilized warfare were generally obeyed, there were some 90T civilians and 125T soldiers killed. The same ratio applied to the ca. 11M soldiers killed in battle in Russia would indicate that some 7.9M Russian civilians would have died if the laws of war had been kept in place, instead of the ca. 17M that did die. The difference of 9 million dead civilians is the cost of the added brutality.]
      • General political prisoners:
        • Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (1998): over one million died in concentration camps, not counting those deliberately targeted for extermination.
        • Rosenburg, The Haunted Land: 26,000 political death sentences passed by German courts.
      • HITLER TOTAL:
        • Courtois: 25,000,000
        • Rummel: 20,946,000 democides
        • Brzezinski: 17,000,000
        • Urlanis: 15-16,000,000 (11-12M civilians + 3.9M POWs)
        • MEDIAN: ca. 15.5M
        • Our Times: 13,000,000 (6M Jews + 7M others)
        • Compton's: 12,000,000
        • Grenville: 10,000,000, including 2M children.
        • NOTE: These numbers only include outright murders, but keep in mind that some 28M civilians and 14M soldiers died in the European War. That's 42,000,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on Hitler to one extent or another.
    2. Japanese [make link]:
      • China and Korea
        • Nanking Massacre, 13 Dec. 1937-Feb. 38:
          • Spence, The Search for Modern China: 42,000
          • Gilbert: >200,000 civilians and 90,000 POWs
          • Dict.Wars: 200,000
          • Rummel: 200,000
          • P. Johnson: 200-300,000
          • 27 Aug 2001 Newsweek, quoting Japanese textbook: "The number of dead is said to be over 100,000 and it is estimated to be over 300,000 in China."
          • Palmowski, Dictionary of 20th Century World History: "perhaps as many as" 400,000
          • Iris Chang, The Rape of Nanking (1997) cites these:
            • Liu Fang-chu: 430,000
            • James Yin & Shi Young: 400,000
            • Sun Zhaiwei: 377,400 corpses disposed of
            • Wu Tien-wei: 340,000
            • District Court of Nanking: 300,000
            • International Military Tribunal of the Far East: 260,000
            • Fujiwara Akira: 200,000
            • John Rabe: 50,000-60,000
            • Hata Ikuhiko: 38,000-42,000
          • [Median: 260,000]
        • Unit 731, Manchukuo (bio-warfare center: 1937-45)
          • Discovery Channel: "as many as 200,000 people — Chinese soldiers, private citizens and prisoners of war — had died" [http://dsc.discovery.com/anthology/spotlight/bioterror/history/history2.html]
          • Global Security: Up to 3,000 died in this facility. Perhaps as many 200,000 Chinese died from germ war campaign in Yunnan Province, Ningbo, and Changde. [http://www.globalsecurity.org/wmd/world/japan/bw.htm]
        • Bombing: 71,105 Chinese k. by Japanese bombing (Clodfelter)
      • South East Asia and East Indies
        • Bataan Death March, 1942
        • Burma-Siam Railroad, worker deaths (1941-43)
          • Johnson: 16,000 POWs
          • Our Times, also Gilbert: 50,000 Burmese civilians and 16,000 Allied POWs
          • Grenville: 100,000 Asians and 16,000 Europeans
          • 7 February 2002 AP: 50,000 Asian laborers and 16,000 Allied POWs
        • Manila Massacre, 1944-45
        • East Timor
          • James Dunn, in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997)): 70,000 died under Japanese occupation
          • 19 May 2002 San Gabriel Valley Tribune: "January 1942: Japan occupies the entire island. With support from the local people, Australian commandos in East Timor battle Japan. Japanese reprisals kill 60,000 civilians 13 percent of East Timor's population."
        • Dutch East Indies: 25,000 Dutch d. out of 140,000 imprisoned (3 Feb. 1998 Agence France Presse)
        • Singapore, citizens (mostly Chinese) massacred, 1942
          • Japan Economic Newswire/Kyodo News Service
            • 16 June 2004: 50,000-100,000
            • 13 Aug. 1984: Report by Allies after WW2 est. 5,000 k. Families claim 40,000-50,000
          • Associated Press
            • 30 July 1995: "The Japanese military said 6,000 were killed. Singaporeans put the death toll at 50,000."
            • 12 Sept 1995: 30,000-40,000
          • National Archives of Singapore: 8,600 reported. "[T]here were many more." [http://www.s1942.org.sg/dir_defence7.htm]
          • Grenville: 5,000
          • LC: 5,000-25,000 [http://lcweb2.loc.gov/frd/cs/sgtoc.html]
          • [ANALYSIS: There's no consensus. I have 5 low estimates ranging from 5,000-8,600. I have 5 high estimates ranging from 25,000-100,000. Three sources hedge their bets by offering both a low estimate and a high estimate. Two give a low estimate exclusively, and two give a high estimate exclusively.]
      • Chalmers Johnson: "...the Japanese slaughtered as many as 30 million Filipinos, Malays, Vietnamese, Cambodians, Indonesians and Burmese, at least 23 million of them ethnic Chinese." [http://www.lrb.co.uk/v25/n22/john04_.html]
      • Rummel blames the Japanese for 5,964,000 democides
        • POWs: 539,000 (400,000 Chinese)
        • Forced Labor: 1,010,000 (142,000 Chinese)
        • Massacres: 3,608,000 (2,850,000 Chinese)
        • Bombing/CB warfare: 558,000 (all Chinese)
        • Imposed Famine: 250,000 (none in China)
        • Rummel also estimates that General/Prime Minister Tojo Hideki was responsible for a lifetime total of 3,990,000 democides.
      • Some guy on Internet [http://www.jca.apc.org/JWRC/exhibit/Index.HTM]
        • Nanjing Massacre: 155,337 dead bodies
          • Chinese official estimate: >300,000
          • Japanese scholars:100-200,000
        • Datong Coal Mine, China: 60,000 slave laborers killed
        • Forced labor camps in Japan: 6,830 imported workers died
        • Singapore: 5,000 Chinese k -- another estimate: 50,000-60,000 k.
        • Burma-Siam RR: 12,400 POWs + 42,000 Asian wkrs
      • My estimate is that 11M civilians and 4.5M soldiers died in the Asian/Pacific War. That's 15,500,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on the Japanese to one extent or another.
    3. Stalin [make link]:
      • Deported nationalities:
        • Aleksandr Nekrich, The Punished Peoples (1978): Net population losses, 1939-59, after allowance for wartime losses.
          • Chechens: 590,000
          • Kalmyks: 142,000
          • Ingush: 128,000
          • Karachai: 124,000
          • Balkars: 64,000
          • [TOTAL: 1,048,000]
        • Kenneth Christie, Historical Injustice and Democratic Transition in Eastern Asia and Northern Europe: Ghosts at the Table of Democracy (2002)
          • Lithuanian, Latvian and Estonians (1940-41): 85,000 deported, of which 55,000 killed or died
          • Baltics executed during reconquest (1944-45): 30,000
          • Postwar partisan war
            • Lithuanians: 40-50,000 k.
            • Latvian: 25,000
            • Estonians: 15,000
          • [TOTAL: 170,000 ± 5,000]
        • Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997)
          • citing Rummel: 530,000 Chechens and other Black Sea/Caucasus minorities d.
          • citing NKVD archives: 231,000 deaths, 1943-49
        • Harff and Gurr:
          • Chechens, Ingushi, Karachai, Balkars, Kalmyks: 230,000 d. (1943-57)
          • Meskhierians, Crimean Tatars: 57,000 - 175,000 d. (1944-68)
        • Davies: 1,000,000 Volga Germans, Chechens, Ingush, Crimean Tatars, etc.
        • NewsHour: some 200,000 Chechens died during the exile [http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/europe/chechnya/history.html]
      • Enemy POWs never returned:
        • Brzezinski: 1,000,000 total d. (incl. 357,000 Germans, 140,000 Poles)
        • Davies: 1,000,000 d.
        • Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): official figures released under glasnost
          • Germans: 2,388,000 POWs taken, of which 356,000 died
          • Hungarians, Romanians, etc.: 1,097,000 taken, of which 162,000 died
          • Japanese: 600,000 taken, of which 61,855 died
          • [Total: 4,085,000 taken, of which ca. 580,000 died]
        • Katyn Massacre (April-May 1940):
          • Dictionary of 20C World History: 14,000 Polish officers systematically killed. 4,500 bodies discovered by Germans.
          • 30 July 2000 Sunday Telegraph [London]: 15,000 k.
          • Paul Johnson: 15,000 -- a third at Katyn, the rest in Sov. conc. camps.
          • Gilbert: 15,000 Polish POWs sent to 3 camps - Starobelsk, Kozelsk, Ostashkov - all killed. 4,400 from Kozelsk killed at Katyn.
      • Returning Soviet POWs killed after the war:
        • Harff and Gurr: 500,000 - 1,100,000 repatriated Soviet nationals killed (1943-47)
        • Harper Collins: 1,000,000 POWs
        • Davies: 5-6M deaths, screening of repatriates and inhabitants of ex-occupied territory
      • Soviet soldiers executed:
        • Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997)
          • "latest Russian estimates put the figure as high as 158,000 sentenced to be shot."
          • "442,000 were forced to serve in penal batallions." [These were assigned suicidally dangerous tasks, and the only way out was death or wounds, so figure maybe half dead, half crippled.]
      • Gulag during the war years:
        • Richard Overy, Russia's War (1997): 2.4M sent to Gulag; 1.9M freed. "Official figures show 621,000 deaths in the Gulag" during WW2
      • Total killed by Stalin during the war years:
        • Davies: 16-17,000,000 non-war-dead
        • Rummel: 18,157,000 democides
        • NOTE: Numbers this high are hard to reconcile with the common estimates of 7 million Soviet civilian deaths during WW2. Even if we go with larger, more recent estimates of 17M civilian deaths, these number proposed by Rummel and Davies would leave no room for murders at German hands and deaths as a simple by-product of war.
        • My Very Rough Estimate (based largely, but not entirely, on Overy, who seems well-informed and sensible.) In tenths of millions.
          • Axis POWs: 0.6M
          • Soviet Soldiers during war: 0.4M
          • Gulag: 0.6M
          • Black Sea/Caucasus Minorities: 0.2M
          • Baltic Minorities: 0.2M
          • Repatriated Soviets after the war: 1.0M
          • Germans who died fleeing the advancing Red Army: 1.0M
          • TOTAL: 4.0M
    4. Anglo-American Allies [make link]:
      • Bombing of Germany: >305,000 (1945 US Strategic Bombing Survey); 400,000 (Hammond); 410,000 (Rummel, 100% democidal); 499,750 (Clodfelter); 593,000 (Keegan; also Grenville citing "official Germany"); 600,000 (P. Johnson)
      • Bombing of Japan:
        • Conventional: 260,000 (Clodfelter (citing an Official US est.); Keegan; P. Johnson); 299,484 (Clodfelter, citing Japanese source)
        • Nuclear: 103,000 died outright (Keegan); 130,000 outright (Messenger);120,000 outright, 140,000 later (Our Times); 175,000 outright, 100,000 later (P. Johnson)
        • Total: 330,000 (1945 US Strategic Bombing Survey); 363,000 (Keegan, not including post-war radiation sickness); 374,000 (Rummel, incl. 337,000 democidal); 435,000 (P. Johnson); 500,000 (Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War)
      • Bombing of Romania & Hungary: 50,000 (Rummel)
      • Individual air raids
      • Mistreatment of Axis POWs [I myself don't find these accusations credible, but FWIW, here they are.]
        • James Bacque, Other Losses (1989) made the first accusation that Americans deliberately starved German POWs, killing about a million.
          • Bacque [http://www.corax.org/revisionism/misc/970920bacques.html]
        • Bacque's 2nd book, Crimes & Mercies, expands the body count to 9.3-13.7M Germans killed by the Allies after the end of the war, incl. some 2.1-6.0M civilians who died being expelled from the East. [http://codoh.com/review/revcrimes.html]
        • Stephen Ambrose dismisses these claims as sloppy research. He explains that the total number of German POWs who died from all causes in US hands was 56,000 out of some 5M held. [see also http://www.nizkor.org/ftp.cgi?people/b/bacque.james/] (56,000 might seem like a lot, but this would include those who were captured wounded.)
        • The 1956 Maschke Commission counted 4,537 deaths. [see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rheinwiesenlager or http://www.cyberussr.com/hcunn/for/us-germany-pow.html]
        • [Letter]
    5. Mussolini (r. 1922-1943)
      • Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: Europe's Twentieth Century (1998): total of 29 death sentences passed on political prisoners before 1939.
      • Rummel, democides by Fascist govt. of Italy:
        • Ethiopia and Libya: 200,000 [before WW2]
        • Yugoslavia: 15,000
        • Greeks: 9,000
        • Italians, domestically: 250
        • TOTAL: 224,250
    6. Yugoslavia:
      • 2 March 1999 Agence France Presse
        • Number killed in Croatian-run death camp at Jasenovac
          • Acc2 Croatian press: 85,000
          • Official Yugoslav estimate: 700,000
          • Simon Wiesenthal Centre: 500,000
      • Alex Dragnic, Serbs & Croats (1992)
        • k. by Ustase
          • Serbs: est. range 300,000 to 1,000,000, but 500-700,000 is "generally accepted"
          • Jews: 50,000
          • Gypsies: 20,000
        • Massacre by Germans, Oct. 1941: 4-7,000
      • John Lampe, Yugoslavia as History (1995)
        • 300,000 Serbs k. by Ustasha
        • 26,000 Jews k. by Ustasha
        • 9,000 Slovenes executed by Italians, summer 1941
        • Killed by Tito, 1945-46: 100,000
      • Noel Malcolm, Bosnia: a Short History (1994)
        • Muslims k. by Chetniks in Foca-Cajnice:
          • Aug. 1942: 2,000
          • Feb. 1943: 9,000
        • Killed by Tito, 1945-46: 250,000 in shootings, camps and marches.
      • Mazower, Dark Continent
        • Serbs k. by Ustase: at least 334,000.
        • Collaborators k. by Tito, postwar: up to 60,000
      • 9 July 1990 NY Times
        • Communist partisans shot 70-100,000 without trial within weeks of the war's end.
        • Anti-Communist emigres claim ca. 500,000 killed ("... exaggerations, said Darko Bekic, a historian in Zagreb...")
        • "Total of 1,700,000 Yugoslavs were killed, both in combat and in atrocities and reprisals by and against civilians"
      • Rummel, democides by perpetrator:
        • Axis occupying nations: 718,000
        • Chetnik partisans: 100,000
        • Communists: 100,000 as partisans, 500,000 shortly after coming to power
        • Ustashi government of Croatia: 655,000
        • TOTAL: 2,073,000 democides (also 555,000 battle deaths, for a grand total of 2,628,000)
      • Fred Singleton, Twentieth-Century Yugoslavia (1976)
        • 350,000 Serbs k. by Ustasha
      • Marcus Tanner, Croatia: a Nation Forged in War
        • Bleiburg massacre: est. range from 30,000 to 200,000 returning POWs k. by Communists (The upper number being favored by Croat nationalists)
        • Ustashe camps
          • acc2 Communist govt: 600,000 k. in Jasenovas
          • acc2 Banac 120,000 k. in all camps
          • acc2 "others": 80,000 k. in all camps
          • acc2 Pres. Tudjman: 60,000 k. in all camps
        • Total war deaths (according to one study)
          • Serbs: 487,000
            • incl. 215,000 in Nazi and Ustase camps
          • Croats: 207,000
          • Muslims: 86,000
          • Jews: 60,000
          • TOTAL: 947,000
      • Johan Wüscht, Population Losses in Yugoslavia during World War Two (1963), estimates a total population shortfall of 2,210,000 in the 1948 census. After accounting for emmigration (700,000) and a drop in births (423,000), he reckons the total number of deaths caused by the war and its aftermath to be 1,100,000. He also points out that adding up all the accusations of atrocities commited during the war far exceeds this calculated number of deaths, so one of them is wrong.
      • ANALYSIS: Among those events with several estimates, the medians are ...
        • Serbs k. by Ustashe: 275,000
        • Postwar executions by Communists (and related deaths): 175,000
        • Jasenovac
    7. Romania:
      • Rummel: 484,000 democides under kings Carol & Michael (1938-48) incl. 302,000 Jews.
      • Robert Kaplan, Balkan Ghosts (1993): 185,000 Jews from Bessarabia and Moldovia murdered in "the only non-German-run extermination camp in Europe".
    8. France:
      • Collaborators killed after liberation:
        • Grenville: 10,000
        • Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: 9-10,000
        • Our Times: 9,000 summarily, 700 after trial.
        • David Drake, Intellectuals and Politics in Post-War France: 10,000 summary executions and 791 legal executions.
    9. Other Western Nations, postwar purges:
      • Mark Mazower, Dark Continent
        • Italy: 10,000-15,000
        • Netherlands: 40 executions
        • Norway: 25 executions
  5. Post-War Expulsion of Germans from East Europe (1945-47): 2 100 000 [make link]
  6. Chinese Civil War (1945-49): 2 500 000 [make link]
  7. People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong's regime (1949-1975): 40 000 000 [make link]
  8. Tibet (1950 et seq.): 600 000

List of Recurring Sources

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