Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm

Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm

Posted on 10/13/2001 8:31:31 AM PDT by newsperson999

Twentieth Century Atlas - Death Tolls

Source List and Detailed Death Tolls for the Twentieth Century Hemoclysm

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.

First World War (1914-18)
- This is the only major bloodletting which has pretty much the same body count no matter which source I check: 8,500,000 military deaths. It all goes back to a report issued by the U.S. War Dept. in Feb. 1924, amended by the Statistical Services Center, Office of the Secretary of Defense on 7 Nov. 1957, which everyone ("everyone" = Brzezinski, Britannica, Norman Davies, Encarta, Gilbert, Hammond, Small & Singer, Wallechinsky) more or less agrees with. Among my sources, only Eckhardt and Urlanis diverge from the mainstream:
  - Austria-Hungary: 1,100,000 (Urlanis); 1,200,000 (everyone); 2,300,000 (Eckhardt)
  - Belgium: 13,716 (Britannica, Compton's, Daivies, Hammond, Tucker); 38,000 (Urlanis); 87,500 (S&S -- although it seems to me that they have confused "Belg." with "Bulg."; see 2 lines down.); 88,000 (Eckhardt)
  - Britain & Empire: 908,371 (everyone)
    - Australia: 60,000 (Eckhardt; Urlanis); 61,720 (AWM)
    - Canada: 55,000 (Eckhardt); 61,000 (Urlanis)
    - India: 25,000 (Eckhardt); 54,000 (Urlanis)
    - New Zealand: 16,000 (Eckhardt; Urlanis)
    - UK: 715,000 (Urlanis); 1,000,000 (Eckhardt)
    - South Africa: 7,000 (Urlanis)
  - Bulgaria: 14,000 (S&S-c.f. Belgium); 28,000 (Eckhardt); 75,844 (Tucker); 87,500 (Britannica, Davies, Compton's); 88,000 (Urlanis); 90,000 (Hammond)
  - France & Empire: 1,327,000 (Urlanis); 1,357,800 (everyone); 1,630,000 (Eckhardt)
    - French Colonies: 114,000 (Urlanis)
  - Germany: 1,773,700 (everyone); 2,037,000 (Urlanis); 2,400,000 (Eckhardt)
  - Greece: 5,000 (everyone; Eckhardt); 26,000 (Urlanis)
  - Italy: 462,391 (Tucker); 578,000 (Urlanis); 600,000 (Hammond); 650,000 (Britannica, Davies, Compton's, S&S); 950,000 (Eckhardt)
  - Japan: 300 (everyone)
  - Montenegro: 3,000 (everyone)
  - Portugal: 7,000 (Urlanis); 7,222 (everyone); 13,000 (Eckhardt)
  - Romania: 250,000 (Urlanis); 335,706 (everyone); 375,000 (Eckhardt)
  - Russia: 1,700,000 (everyone); 1,811,000 (Urlanis); 2,950,000 (Eckhardt)
  - Serbia: 45,000 (Tucker, Hammond, Britannica, Compton's), 48,000 (S&S), 70,000 (Davies); 128,000 (Eckhardt: "Yugoslavia"); 278,000 (Urlanis: "Serbia + Montenegro")
  - Turkey: 325,000 (everyone); 450,000 (Eckhardt); 804,000 (Urlanis)
  - USA: 50,585 (Tucker, Hammond, Britannica), 53,407 (Compton's), 53,402 KIA + 63,114 other deaths = 116,516 (1991 Info. Please), 126,000 (S&S; Eckhardt)
  - TOTAL: 8,500,000 (everyone); 9,442,000 (Urlanis); 12,599,000 (Eckhardt)
- Civilian casualty estimates are spread wider, and are usually offered without source or detail. (Some of these civilian estimates may include all or part of the Russian Civil War and Armenian massacres -- it's difficult to decide where WW1 ends and these begin, or whether these are distinct and separate events at all)
  - Brzezinski: 13,000,000 civilians
  - Britannica: 13,000,000
  - Encarta: close to 10,000,000
  - Hammond: 9,000,000
  - Urlanis: 9,000,000 (based on increased mortality during the war years)
    - Russia: 1,500,000
    - Italy: 1,021,000
    - Austria-Hungary: 700,000
    - Germany: 692,000
    - France: 500,000
    - Serbia: 450,000
    - Romania: 430,000
    - Britain: 292,000
    - Greece: 150,000
    - Bulgaria: 100,000
    - Belgium: 92,000
    - Turkey: unknown
  - Tucker (European Powers in the First World War -- the source of the data on my map): 6,642,633
    - Turkey: 2,150,000
    - Russia: 2,000,000
    - Germany: 760,000
    - Serbia: 650,000
    - Austria-Hungary: 300,000
    - Bulgaria: 275,000
    - Romania: 275,000
    - Greece: 132,000
    - France: 40,000
    - Britain: 30,633
    - Belgium: 30,000
  - Dictionary of Military History (1994): 6,600,000
  - Wallechinsky: 6,500,000
  - Eckhardt: 6,493,000
    - Nation by nation, Eckhardt and Tucker agree -- with three exceptions:
      - Russia: 3,000,000
      - Turkey: 1,000,000
      - UK: 31,000
    - (Eckhardt explicitly excludes the Armenian massacres and Russian Civil War from these numbers.)
  - Davies (Europe A History): 5,000,000
Russian Civil War (1917-22)
- Small & Singer (battle deaths, 1917-21)
  - Russian Civil War (Dec.1917-Oct.1920)
    - Russians: 500,000
    - Allied Intervention:
      - Japan: 1,500
      - UK: 350
      - USA: 275
      - France: 50
      - Finland: 50
  - Russian Nationalities War (Dec.1917-Mar.1921)
    - USSR: 50,000
- Eckhardt: 500,000 civ. + 300,000 mil. = 800,000
- Readers Companion to Military History, Cowley and Parker, eds. (1996) :
  - Combat deaths: 825,000
  - Ancillary deaths: 2,000,000
  - TOTAL: 2,825,000
- Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998)
  - Civil War and Volga Famine (1918-22): 3,000,000 to 5,000,000
- Green, Barbara (in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?)
  - 4 to 5 million deaths in the famine of 1921-23
- Brzezinski, Z:
  - 6 to 8 million people died under Lenin from war, famine etc.
- Urlanis:
  - Military deaths: 800,000
    - Battle deaths, all sides: 300,000
    - Dead of wounds: 50,000
    - Disease: 450,000
  - Civilians: 8,000,000
  - TOTAL: 8,800,000
- Dyadkin, I.G. (cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993)
  - 9 million unnatural deaths from terror, famine and disease, 1918-23
- Richard Pipes, A concise history of the Russian Revolution (1995): 9 million deaths, 1917-1922
  - Famine: 5M
  - Combat: 2M
    - Reds: 1M
    - Whites: 127,000
  - Epidemics: 2M
  - not incl.
    - Emigration: 2M
    - Birth deficit: 14M
- Rummel:
  - Civil War (1917-22)
    - War: 1,410,000 (includes 500,000 civilian)
    - Famine: 5,000,000 (50% democidal)
    - Other democide: 784,000
    - Epidemics: 2,300,000
    - Total: 9,494,000
  - Lenin's Regime (1917-24)
    - Rummel blames Lenin for a lifetime total of 4,017,000 democides.
- Figes, Orlando (A People's Tragedy: A History of the Russian Revolution, 1997)
  - 10 million deaths from war, terror, famine and disease.
    - Including...
      - Famine (1921-22): 5 million
      - Killed in fighting, both military and civilian: 1M
      - Jews killed in pogroms: 150,000
    - Not including...
      - Demographic effects of a hugely reduced birth-rate: 10M
      - Emmigration: 2M
- McEvedy, Colin (Atlas of World Population History, 1978)
  - War deaths: 2M
  - Other excess deaths: 14M
  - Reduced births: 10M
  - Emmigration: 2M
Soviet Union, Stalin's regime (1924-53)
- There are basically two schools of thought when it comes to the number who died at Stalin's hands. There's the "Why doesn't anyone realize that communism is the absolutely worst thing ever to hit the human race, without exception, even worse than both world wars, the slave trade and bubonic plague all put together?" school, and there's the "Come on, stop exaggerating. The truth is horrifying enough without you pulling numbers out of thin air" school. The two schools are generally associated with the right and left wings of the political spectrum, and they often accuse each other of being blinded by prejudice, stubbornly refusing to admit the truth, and maybe even having a hidden agenda. Also, both sides claim that recent access to former Soviet archives has proven that their side is right.
- Here are a few illustrative estimates from the Big Numbers school:
  - Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993 cites these:
    - Chistyakovoy, V. (Neva, no.10): 20 million killed during the 1930s.
    - Dyadkin, I.G. (Demograficheskaya statistika neyestestvennoy smertnosti v SSSR 1918-1956 ): 56 to 62 million "unnatural deaths" for the USSR overall, with 34 to 49 million under Stalin.
    - Gold, John.: 50-60 million.
  - Davies, Norman (Europe A History, 1998): c. 50 million killed 1924-53, excluding WW2 war losses. This would divide (more or less) into 33M pre-war and 17M after 1939.
  - Rummel, 1990: 61,911,000 democides in the USSR 1917-87, of which 51,755,000 occurred during the Stalin years. This divides up into:
    - 1923-29: 2,200,000 (plus 1M non-democidal famine deaths)
    - 1929-39: 15,785,000 (plus 2M non-democidal famine)
    - 1939-45: 18,157,000
    - 1946-54: 15,613,000 (plus 333,000 non-democidal famine)
    - TOTAL: 51,755,000 democides and 3,333,000 non-demo. famine
  - Wallechinsky: 13M (1930-32) + 7M (1934-38)
    - Cited by Wallechinsky:
      - Medvedev, Roy (Let History Judge): 40 million.
      - Solzhenitsyn, Aleksandr: 60 million.
  - MEDIAN: 51 million for the entire Stalin Era; 20M during the 1930s.
- And from the Lower Numbers school:
  - Nove, Alec ("Victims of Stalinism: How Many?" in J. Arch Getty (ed.) Stalinist Terror: New Perspectives, 1993): 9,500,000 "surplus deaths" during the 1930s.
  - Cited in Nove:
    - Maksudov, S. (Poteri naseleniya SSSR, 1989): 9.8 million abnormal deaths between 1926 and 1937.
    - Tsaplin, V.V. ("Statistika zherty naseleniya v 30e gody" 1989): 6,600,000 deaths (hunger, camps and prisons) between the 1926 and 1937 censuses.
    - Dugin, A. ("Stalinizm: legendy i fakty" 1989): 642,980 counterrevolutionaries shot 1921-53.
    - Muskovsky Novosti (4 March 1990): 786,098 state prisoners shot, 1931-53.
  - Gordon, A. (What Happened in That Time?, 1989, cited in Adler, N., Victims of Soviet Terror, 1993): 8-9 million during the 1930s.
  - Ponton, G. (The Soviet Era, 1994): cites an 1990 article by Milne, et al., that excess deaths 1926-39 were likely 3.5 million and at most 8 million.
  - MEDIAN: 8.5 Million during the 1930s.
- As you can see, there's no easy compromise between the two schools. The Big Numbers are so high that picking the midpoint between the two schools would still give us a Big Number. It may appear to be a rather pointless argument -- whether it's fifteen or fifty million, it's still a huge number of killings -- but keep in mind that the population of the Soviet Union was 164 million in 1937, so the upper estimates accuse Stalin of killing nearly 1 out of every 3 of his people, an extremely Polpotian level of savagery. The lower numbers, on the other hand, leave Stalin with plenty of people still alive to fight off the German invasion.
- Although it's too early to be taking sides with absolute certainty, a consensus seems to be forming around a death toll of 20 million. This would adequately account for all documented nastiness without straining credulity:
  - In The Great Terror (1969), Robert Conquest suggested that the overall death toll was 20 million at minimum -- and very likely 50% higher, or 30 million. This would divide roughly as follows: 7M in 1930-36; 3M in 1937-38; 10M in 1939-53. By the time he wrote The Great Terror: A Re-assessment (1992), Conquest was much more confident that 20 million was the likeliest death toll.
  - Adam Hochschild, The Unquiet Ghost: Russians Remember Stalin: directly responsible for 20 million deaths.
  - Brzezinski: 20-25 million, dividing roughly as follows: 7M destroying the peasantry; 12M in labor camps; 1M excuted during and after WW2.
  - Tina Rosenberg, The Haunted Land: Facing Europes Ghosts After Communism (1995): upwards of 25M
  - Daniel Chirot:
    - "Lowest credible" estimate: 20M
    - "Highest": 40M
    - Citing:
      - Conquest: 20M
      - Antonov-Ovseyenko: 30M
      - Medvedev: 40M
  - Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism: 20M for the whole history of Soviet Union, 1917-91.
  - Time Magazine (13 April 1998): 15-20 million.
- AVERAGE: Of the 14 estimates of the total number of victims of Stalin, the median is 30 million; however, it should be noted that most atrocitology focuses exclusively on the 1930s and not on the overall total. On average, most scholars consider half the deaths under Stalin to have occurred in the 1930s, so if we double the partial estimates, then the median (of 21 estimates now) is 25 million.
- Famine, 1926-38
  - Green, Barbara ("Stalinist Terror and the Question of Genocide: the Great Famine" in Rosenbaum, Is the Holocaust Unique?) cites these sources for the number who died in the famine:
    - Nove: 3.1-3.2M in Ukraine, 1933
    - Maksudov: 4.4M in Ukraine, 1927-38
    - Mace: 5-7M in Ukraine
    - Osokin: 3.35M in USSR, 1933
    - Wheatcraft: 4-5M in USSR, 1932-33
    - Conquest:
      - Total, USSR, 1926-37: 11M
      - 1932-33: 7M
      - Ukraine: 5M
Second World War (1937-45)
- Total:
  - It's the most intensively studied event of the 20th Century, so the margin of error is not quite a wide here as for most of the other wars and oppressions on this page. Most historians agree that the death toll was about 50 million. If you don't believe me, here's just a sampling of the books I have on hand:
    - Haywood: Atlas of World History (1997): 50M
    - Keegan, J., The Second World War (1989): 50M
    - Messenger, The Chronological Atlas of World War Two (1989): 50M
    - The Times Concise Atlas of World History (1988): 50M
    - Urlanis: 50M
      - Soldiers: 22.0M
      - Civilians
        
        In camps, from Fascist terror: 12.0M
        From hostilites, blockade, epidemics, hunger: 14.5M
        From bombing: 1.5M
    - Dictionary of Military History (1994): 41M
    - Wallechinsky: 40-55M
    - Kinder, The Anchor Atlas of World History (1978): 55M
    - Hammond: 55M
    - Sivard, Ruth Leger, World Military and Social Expenditures 1986 (11th ed.): 38,351,000 (1939-45), not incl. 1.8M in Sino-Japanese War (1937-41)
    - Brzezinski:
      - Military: 19M
      - Civilians, "actual byproduct of hostilities": 20M
      - Civilians, Sino-Japanese War: 15M
      - Hitler's murders: 17M
      - TOTAL: 71M
- Who to Blame:
  - Most history books break their WW2 numbers down according to whether the dead are military or civilian and which country they came from. Since I've done that elsewhere, let's try to break it down by guilt. Here are various estimates by various experts of the number of superfluous, non-military deaths during the Second World War.
1. Hitler:
  - 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): 5,571,300 (puts the minimum at 4,871,000 and the maximum at 6,271,500.)
    - 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
  - Soviet Prisoners of War killed:
    - Urlanis: 3,912,000
    - Our Times: 3,300,000
    - Rummel: 3,100,000
    - 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
  - Gypsies:
    - Hammond: 250,000.
    - Rummell: 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))
  - 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:
    - Rummel: 20,946,000 democides
    - Brzezinski: 17,000,000
    - Urlanis: 15-16,000,000 (11-12M civilians + 3.9M POWs)
    - 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 18M civilians and 17M soldiers died in the European War. That's 35,000,000 deaths which can probably be blamed on Hitler to one extent or another.
2. Stalin:
  - Everyone acknowledges that Stalin deported many million members of suspected nationalities to Siberia during and immediately after the war. The biggest variable is how many of these died.
    - 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.
  - Axis POWs never returned:
    - Brzezinski: 1,000,000 total (incl. 357,000 Germans, 140,000 Poles)
    - Davies: 1,000,000
  - 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
  - Total killed by Stalin during the war years:
    - Davies: 16-17,000,000 non-war-dead
    - Rummel: 18,157,000 democides
    - Although the number of civilian deaths in the Soviet Union during the war is far from certain, the estimate of 7 million has gained wide acceptance, and it is repeated by Keegan, Hammond, Anchor, Encarta and Britannica. Since many of these deaths would have been caused by Nazi brutality or the simple bad luck of war, as well Stalinist repression, it seems exceedingly difficult to reconcile a total of 7 million civilian deaths with estimates of 16-19 million deaths from Stalinist brutality during the war years.
    - Some recent demographic studies suggest that 26-27 million Soviet citizens disappeared during WW2 (Davies), but this number has not been widely accepted by mainstream historians.
    - My Estimate: Very roughly, I'd say that Stalin murdered 1M enemy POWs, 1M of his own soldiers, and some 2-4M Soviet civilians during the War. These numbers are consistant with Conquest's estimate of 10M killed by Stalin, 1939 to 1953, and they easily fit into the 7M civilian deaths, leaving room for 1M Jews and several million others to be killed by the Nazis.
3. Japanese:
  - Nanking Massacre, 1937-38:
    - 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- 60,000
      - Hata Ikuhiko: 38- 42,000
    - Spence, The Search for Modern China: 42,000.
    - Dict.Wars: 200,000
    - Rummel: 200,000
    - P. Johnson: 200-300,000
  - Burma-Siam Railroad, worker deaths (1941-43)
    - Johnson: 16,000 POWs
    - Our Times: 50,000 Burmese civilians and 16,000 Allied POWs
    - Grenville: 100,000 Asians and 16,000 Europeans
  - East Timor: 70,000 died under Japanese occupation (James Dunn, in Century of Genocide, Samuel Totten, ed., (1997))
  - Singapore: 5,000 Chinese massacred (Grenville)
  - 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.
  - 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.
4. Anglo-American Allies:
  - Bombing of Germany: 400,000 (Hammond), 593,000 (Keegan; also Grenville citing "official Germany"), 600,000 (P. Johnson)
  - Bombing of Japan:
    - Conventional: 260,000 (Keegan, P. Johnson)
    - 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: 363,000 (Keegan, not including post-war radiation sickness); 435,000 (P. Johnson); 500,000 (Harper Collins Atlas of the Second World War)
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. France:
  - Collaborators killed after liberation:
    - Grenville: 10,000
    - Mark Mazower, Dark Continent: 9-10,000
    - Our Times: 9,000 summarily, 700 after trial.
7. Romania:
  - Rummel: 484,000 genocides 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. Yugoslavia:
  - 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)
  - Mazower, Dark Continent
    - Serbs k. by Ustase: at least 334,000.
    - Collaborators k. by Tito, postwar: up to 60,000
  - 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.
9. Other Western Nations, postwar purges:
  - Mark Mazower, Dark Continent
    - Italy: 10,000-15,000
    - Netherlands: 40 executions
    - Norway: 25 executions
Post-War Expulsion of Germans from East Europe (1945-47)
- Died being expelled from Poland:
  - Rummel: 1,585,000
  - Keegan, John, The Second World War (1989): 1,250,000
  - Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979): 1,225,000
- Died, from Czechoslovakia:
  - Rummel: 197,000
  - Keegan: 250,000
  - Glaser & Possony: 267,000
- TOTAL:
  - Kinder, Anchor Atlas of World History: 3,000,000
  - Britannica: 2,384,000 (This covers the years 1944-46, and it includes Germans who died fleeing while the war was still raging.)
  - Glaser & Possony: 2,111,000 (This includes 619,000 from "elsewhere" not listed above)
  - Keegan: 2,100,000 (This includes 600,000 from "elsewhere" not listed above; it does not include some 1,000,000 Germans who (by Keegan's estimate) died fleeing while the war was still raging.)
  - Rummel: 1,782,000
Chinese Civil War (1945-49)
- Bercovitch & Jackson: 100,000
- Dan Smith: 1,000,000
- Eckhardt: 1,000,000 from all causes
- Small & Singer: 1,000,000 battle deaths
- Wallechinsky: 1,200,000 battle deaths
- Walker, Robert L., The Human Cost of Communism in China (1971): 1,250,000
- Gilbert, citing Ho Ping-ti: 2,000,000 to 3,000,000 total deaths
- Our Times: 3,000,000
- Rummel:
  - War Dead: 1,201,000
  - Democide by Guomindang: 2,645,000
  - Democide by Communists: 2,323,000
  - Famine: 25,000
  - TOTAL: 6,194,000
People's Republic of China, Mao Zedong's regime (1949-1975)
- Agence France Press (25 Sept. 1999) citing at length from Courtois, Stephane, Le Livre Noir du Communism:
  - Rural purges, 1946-49: 2-5M deaths
  - Urban purges, 1950-57: 1M
  - Great Leap Forward: 20-43M
  - Cultural Revolution: 2-7M
  - Labor Camps: 20M
  - Tibet: 0.6-1.2M
  - TOTAL: 44.5 to 72M
- Jasper Becker, Hungry Ghosts : Mao's Secret Famine (1996)
  - Estimates of the death toll from the Great Leap Forward, 1959-61:
    - Judith Banister, China's Changing Population (1984): 30M excess deaths (acc2 Becker: "the most reliable estimate we have")
    - Wang Weizhi, Contemporary Chinese Population (1988): 19.5M deaths
    - Jin Hui (1993): 40M population loss due to "abnormal deaths and reduced births"
    - Chen Yizi of the System Reform Inst.: 43-46M deaths
- Brzezinski:
  - Forcible collectivization: 27 million peasants
  - Cultural Revolution: 1-2 million
  - TOTAL: 29 million deaths under Mao
- Daniel Chirot:
  - Land reform, 1949-56
    - According to Zhou Enlai: 830,000
    - According to Mao Zedong: 2-3M
  - Great Leap Forward: 20-40 million deaths.
  - Cultural Revolution: 1-20 million
- Dictionary of 20C World History: around a half million died in Cultural Rev.
- Eckhardt:
  - Govt executes landlords (1950-51): 1,000,000
  - Cultural Revolution (1967-68): 50,000
- Gilbert:
  - 1958-61 Famine: 30 million deaths.
- Kurt Glaser and Stephan Possony, Victims of Politics (1979):
  - They estimate the body count under Mao to be 38,000,000 to 67,000,000.
  - Cited by G & P:
    - Walker Report (see below): 44.3M to 63.8M deaths.
    - The Government Information Office of Taiwan (18 Sept. 1970): 37M deaths in the PRC.
    - A Radio Moscow report (7 Apr. 1969): 26.4M people had been exterminated in China.
- Guinness Book of World Records:
  - Although nowadays they don't come right out and declare Mao to be the Top Dog in the Mass Killings category, earlier editions (such as 1978) did, and they cited sources which are similar, but not identical, to the Glaser & Possony sources:
    - On 7 Apr. 1969 the Soviet government radio reported that 26,300,000 people were killed in China, 1949-65.
    - In April 1971 the cabinet of the government of Taiwan reported 39,940,000 deaths for the years 1949-69.
    - The Walker Report (see below): between 32,2500,000 and 61,700,000.
- Harff and Gurr:
  - KMT cadre, rich peasants, landlords (1950-51): 800,000-3,000,000
  - Cultural Revolution (1966-75): 400,000-850,000
- Paul Johnson doesn't give an overall total, but he gives estimates for the principle individual mass dyings of the Mao years:
  - Land reform, first years of PRC: at least 2 million people perished.
  - Great Leap Forward: "how many millions died ... is a matter of conjecture."
  - Cultural Revolution: 400,000, calling the 3 Feb. 1979 estimate by Agence France Presse, "The most widely respected figure".
- Meisner, Maurice, Mao's China and After (1986), doesn't give an overall total either, but he does give estimates for the three principle mass dyings of the Mao years:
  - Terror against the counterrevolutionaries: 2 million people executed during the first three years of the PRC.
  - Great Leap Forward: 10-20 million famine-related deaths.
  - Cultural Revolution: 400,000, citing a 1979 estimate by Agence France Presse.
- R. J. Rummel:
  - Estimate:
    - Democide: 34,361,000 (1949-75)
      - The principle episodes being...
        
        All movements (1949-58): 11,813,000
        
        incl. Land Reform (1949-53): 4,500,000
        
        Cult. Rev. (1964-75): 1,613,000
        Forced Labor (1949-75): 15,000,000
        Great Leap Forward (1959-63): 5,680,000 democides
    - War: 3,399,000
    - Famine: 34,500,000
      - Great Leap Forward: 27M famine deaths
    - TOTAL: 72,260,000
  - Cited in Rummel:
    - Li, Cheng-Chung (Republic of China, 1979): 78.86M direct/indirect deaths.
    - World Anti-Communist League, True Facts of Maoist Tyranny (1971): 64.5M
    - Glaser & Possony: 38 to 67M (see above)
    - Walker Report, 1971 (see below): 31.75M to 58.5M casualties of Communism (excluding Korean War).
    - Current Death Toll of International Communism (1979): 39.9M
    - Stephen R. Shalom (1984), Center for Asian Studies, Deaths in China Due To Communism: 3M to 4M death toll, excluding famine.
- Walker, Robert L., The Human Cost of Communism in China (1971, report to the US Senate Committee of the Judiciary) "Casualties to Communism" (deaths):
  - 1st Civil War (1927-36): .25-.5M
  - Fighting during Sino-Japanese War (1937-45): 50,000
  - 2nd Civil War (1945-49): 1.25M
  - Land Reform prior to Liberation: 0.5-1.0M
  - Political liquidation campaigns: 15-30M
  - Korean War: 0.5-1.234M
  - Great Leap Forward: 1-2M
  - Struggle with minorities: 0.5-1.0M
  - Cultural Revolution: .25-.5M
  - Deaths in labor camps: 15-25M
  - TOTAL: 34.3M to 63.784M
  - TOTAL FOR PRC: 32M to 59.5M
- Weekly Standard, 29 Sept. 1997, "The Laogai Archipelago" by D. Aikman:
  - Between 1949 and 1997, 50M prisoners passed through the labor camps, and 15,000,000 died (citing Harry Wu)
- WHPSI: 1,633,319 political executions and 25,961 deaths from political violence, 1948-77. TOTAL: 1,659,280
- Analysis: If we line up the 12 sources which claim to be complete, the median falls in the 39.9 to 45.75 million range, so you probably can't go wrong picking a final number from this neighborhood. Depending on how you want to count some of the incomplete estimates (such as Becker and Meisner) and whether to count a source twice (or thrice, as with Walker) if it's referenced by two different authorities, you can slide the median up and down the scale by many millions. Keep in mind, however, that official Chinese records are hidden from scrutiny, so most of these numbers are pure guesses. It's pointless to get attached to any one of them, because the real number could easily be half or twice any number here.
- As for the individual components, the medians are:
  - Purges, etc. during the first few years: 2M (10 estimates)
  - Great Leap Forward: 30M (11 estimates)
  - Cultural Revolution: 500T (10 estimates)
  - Ethnic Minorities, primarily Tibetans: 750-900T (8 estimates, see below)
  - Labor Camps: 15-20M (4 estimates)
  - This produces a total of some 48,250,000 to 53,400,000 deaths. The weak link in this calculation is in the Labor Camp numbers for which we only have 4 estimates.
- Notice that many early body counts (such as Walker) completely miss the famine during the Great Leap Forward, which was largely unknown in the west until around 1980. There are two contradictory ways to assess those early estimates which ignore the famine:
  1. "If these are the numbers that they came up with without the famine, imagine how high the true number will be once you add the famine deaths."
  2. "Can we trust any of these numbers? After all, if they missed such a huge famine, they can't have known very much about what was going on inside China."
- ... so this line of reasoning will get us nowhere.
Tibet (1950 et seq.)
- Chinese occupation. (For the most part, it's already been included in the numbers above.)
  - The most commonly cited number is 1,200,000 Tibetan deaths at the hands of the Chinese since 1950. This number appears in Our Times, in US House legislation, and at www.freetibet.org.
  - Courtois: 600,000 - 1,200,000
  - Walker, Robert: 500,000-1,000,000 (all ethnic minorities)
  - Rummel: 375,000 democides.
    - ... incl 150,000 Tibetans
  - Porter: 100,000 to 150,000.
  - Eckhardt:
    - 1950-51 War: 2,000 civ.
    - 1956-59 Revolt: 60,000 civ. + 40,000 mil. = 100,000
  - Harff and Gurr: 65,000 Tibetan nationalists, landowners, Buddhists killed, 1959
  - Small & Singer say that China lost 40,000 soldiers in Tibet between 1956 and '59.

List of Recurring Sources

to Table of Contents

Last updated May 2001

TOPICS: Editorial; News/Current Events
KEYWORDS:

imagine if todays press covered this....CNN making a big deal about 2 civilans dead today

1 posted on 10/13/2001 8:31:31 AM PDT by newsperson999

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: newsperson999

This is a good historical reference.
Thanks, newsperson999.

2 posted on 10/13/2001 9:10:50 AM PDT by reformed_democrat

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: newsperson999

Good data. Thanks.

3 posted on 10/13/2001 10:27:13 AM PDT by Texas_Jarhead

[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search

News/Activism
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794