[Verginius Rufus]

In 1945 Tito came up with an inflated figure of 1.7 million dead in order to be able to ask for a higher level of reparations from Germany. The Yugoslav government later revised its estimate downward but kept the revised figures secret. According to Philip Cohen, Vladimir Zerjavic's research was supported by the Jewish community of Zagreb. Zerjavic's figure for the total dead in WWII was 1,027,000, almost identical to the figure arrived at by a Serbian scholar, Bogoljub Kocovic, whose figure was 1,014,000 (including 487,000 Serbs and 207,000 Croats). A study done for the US Bureau of the Census in 1954 came up with a total of 1,067,000 dead.