The Deadliest Wars in History, Ranked by Death Toll
From the Second World War to the Taiping Rebellion, the deadliest wars ranked by estimated death toll, including civilians, famine and disease.
Picture a war memorial in a small English village. A stone cross on the green, two lists of names cut into its base: one long list for 1914 to 1918, a shorter one for 1939 to 1945. In some villages the first list holds a third of the young men who lived there. Across Europe, Asia and Africa there are tens of thousands of memorials like it, and in many places there are none, because nobody was left to build one.
War is the deadliest thing humans do to each other. Yet even in peacetime, around 170,000 people die every single day from disease, accidents and age, a total you can watch rising on our live death counter. The worst wars added millions of deaths a year on top of that baseline, many of them not on battlefields at all but from hunger and disease behind the lines.
This is a ranking of the deadliest wars in recorded history. Every number here is an estimate. Counting war deaths is hard even today, and for wars fought centuries ago, historians often rely on census records that may reflect people fleeing rather than dying. Where estimates differ, we show the range.
The ranking
| Rank | War | Years | Estimated deaths (military and civilian) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Second World War | 1939 to 1945 | 70 to 85 million |
| 2 | Mongol conquests | 1206 to 1368 | 30 to 60 million |
| 3 | Taiping Rebellion | 1850 to 1864 | 20 to 30 million (some estimates higher) |
| 4 | Qing conquest of the Ming | 1618 to 1683 | about 25 million |
| 5 | First World War | 1914 to 1918 | 15 to 22 million |
| 6 | An Lushan Rebellion | 755 to 763 | 13 to 36 million (heavily disputed) |
| 7 | Russian Civil War | 1917 to 1922 | 7 to 12 million |
| 8 | Chinese Civil War | 1927 to 1949 | about 6 to 8 million |
| 9 | Thirty Years' War | 1618 to 1648 | 4.5 to 8 million |
| 10 | Second Congo War | 1998 to 2003 | 2.5 to 5.4 million |
These totals include civilians and, where the evidence allows, deaths from famine and disease caused by the war. In most long wars before the twentieth century, disease killed far more soldiers than weapons did.
1. The Second World War (1939 to 1945)
The Second World War is the deadliest event in human history by any measure. Somewhere between 70 and 85 million people died, around 3% of the world's population in 1940.
| Country | Approximate deaths | Share of pre-war population |
|---|---|---|
| Soviet Union | 24 to 27 million | about 13 to 14% |
| China | 15 to 20 million | about 3 to 4% |
| Germany | 6.6 to 8.8 million | about 8 to 10% |
| Poland | 5.6 to 5.8 million | about 16 to 17% |
| Japan | 2.5 to 3.1 million | about 4% |
| Indonesia (Dutch East Indies) | 3 to 4 million | about 5% |
| India (including the Bengal famine) | 2.2 to 3 million | about 1% |
| United Kingdom | about 450,000 | about 1% |
| United States | about 420,000 | about 0.3% |
More civilians died than soldiers. The Holocaust murdered around 6 million Jews and millions of others. Famines in Bengal, China, the Netherlands and the besieged city of Leningrad killed millions more. Bombing campaigns destroyed cities from Coventry to Dresden to Hiroshima.
Poland lost roughly one in six of its people. The Soviet Union lost so many young men that the gap is still visible in Russia's population pyramid more than 80 years later. You can see how Poland and Russia look today on our country pages.
2. The Mongol conquests (1206 to 1368)
Under Genghis Khan and his successors, the Mongols built the largest land empire in history, stretching from Korea to Hungary. Their campaigns destroyed cities that refused to surrender, sometimes killing almost the entire population.
Estimates of the total death toll range from about 30 million to 60 million. The upper figures come mainly from the collapse of China's recorded population during the conquest, and some of that decline reflects people escaping the tax registers, not dying. Even the lower estimates make it one of the most destructive episodes ever. The population of Iran and Iraq took centuries to recover.
3. The Taiping Rebellion (1850 to 1864)
Most people in the West have never heard of the deadliest civil war in history. The Taiping Rebellion began when Hong Xiuquan, a failed civil service candidate who believed he was the younger brother of Jesus, led a movement against China's Qing dynasty. His followers took Nanjing and held much of southern China for over a decade.
The war killed an estimated 20 to 30 million people, and some historians put it higher. Most died not in battle but from famine, disease and massacres of civilians. It happened in the same years as the American Civil War, which killed around 620,000 to 750,000 people, terrible in its own right but a fraction of the toll in China.
5. The First World War (1914 to 1918)
The First World War killed roughly 9 to 10 million soldiers and somewhere between 6 and 13 million civilians. It was the first industrial war, fought with machine guns, heavy artillery, poison gas and, by its end, tanks and aircraft.
| Country | Military deaths (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Germany | 2.0 million |
| Russia | 1.8 to 2.3 million |
| France | 1.4 million |
| Austria-Hungary | 1.1 to 1.2 million |
| British Empire | 1.1 million |
| Ottoman Empire | 0.8 million |
| Italy | 0.6 million |
| United States | 117,000 (about half from disease, much of it flu) |
The 1918 flu pandemic overlapped with the end of the war and killed more people than the fighting did. It is usually counted separately, in our ranking of the deadliest pandemics in history.
The middle of the list
| War | Years | Estimated deaths | Why so deadly |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qing conquest of the Ming | 1618 to 1683 | about 25 million | Decades of war, famine and rebellion across China |
| An Lushan Rebellion | 755 to 763 | 13 to 36 million | Census collapse; much of it may be lost records |
| Russian Civil War | 1917 to 1922 | 7 to 12 million | Famine, typhus, executions and fighting |
| Chinese Civil War | 1927 to 1949 | about 6 to 8 million | Interrupted by the war with Japan |
| Thirty Years' War | 1618 to 1648 | 4.5 to 8 million | Parts of Germany lost a third or more of their people |
| Napoleonic Wars | 1803 to 1815 | 3.5 to 7 million | Mass conscript armies, disease, the retreat from Moscow |
The Thirty Years' War is worth a closer look. Fought mainly across the German lands, it killed an estimated 20% or more of the population of the Holy Roman Empire, a share comparable to the Black Death in some regions. Armies lived off the land, spread typhus and plague, and left famine behind them.
10. The Second Congo War (1998 to 2003)
The deadliest conflict since 1945 is one many people in Europe and North America barely remember. The war in the Democratic Republic of the Congo drew in nine African countries and dozens of armed groups.
Surveys by the International Rescue Committee estimated about 5.4 million excess deaths between 1998 and 2007. Other researchers argue the true figure is lower, perhaps 2.5 to 3 million, because the baseline death rate used for comparison was disputed. Either way, the vast majority of victims did not die from bullets. They died from malaria, diarrhoea, pneumonia and malnutrition, because the war destroyed clinics, roads and harvests. Children under five suffered most. You can see how those diseases kill today on our pages for malaria, diarrhoeal disease and child mortality.
Wars since 1945
The period since 1945 has had fewer great-power wars, but it has not been peaceful.
| War | Years | Estimated deaths |
|---|---|---|
| Korean War | 1950 to 1953 | about 2.5 to 3 million |
| Vietnam War | 1955 to 1975 | about 1.5 to 3.5 million |
| Bangladesh Liberation War | 1971 | 300,000 to 3 million (heavily disputed) |
| Soviet-Afghan War | 1979 to 1989 | about 0.5 to 2 million |
| Iran-Iraq War | 1980 to 1988 | about 0.5 to 1 million |
| Rwandan genocide | 1994 | about 500,000 to 800,000 |
| Syrian civil war | 2011 onwards | about 470,000 to over 600,000 |
| Tigray war, Ethiopia | 2020 to 2022 | hundreds of thousands; estimates vary widely |
Current wars are the hardest to count of all. Researchers and the UN publish verified figures for conflicts such as those in Ukraine, Gaza and Sudan, but they say clearly that verified counts are undercounts. We look at how many people die in wars each year, and how those figures are compiled, in how many people die in wars every year.
Is war getting less deadly?
Measured as a share of the world's population, yes, at least so far. Researchers at the Uppsala Conflict Data Program and the Peace Research Institute Oslo track battle deaths each year, and Our World in Data has combined their figures into a long-run series.
| Period | Approximate battle deaths per 100,000 people a year |
|---|---|
| Second World War (1939 to 1945) | about 200 |
| Korean War era (early 1950s) | about 20 to 25 |
| Vietnam War era (late 1960s to early 1970s) | about 5 to 10 |
| 1990s | about 2 to 5 |
| 2000s to 2010s | about 1 to 3 |
These numbers count direct battle deaths only. Including disease and famine would raise every row. And the trend is not guaranteed. The Uppsala program recorded more than 200,000 deaths in organised violence in 2022, mainly from the wars in Ethiopia and Ukraine, the highest yearly total in decades.
War next to everyday death
Even in a bad year for conflict, war remains a small share of global deaths. That is not a reason to care less about it, but it does show how much of the human story is written by quieter causes.
| Cause | Deaths a year (approx.) |
|---|---|
| Cardiovascular disease | 18,600,000 |
| Smoking | 8,000,000 |
| Road injuries | 1,190,000 |
| Suicide | 700,000 |
| Homicide | about 450,000 |
| War and conflict (recent bad years) | about 100,000 to 250,000 |
In most recent years, more people have been murdered in ordinary homicides than killed in all the world's wars combined. We break that down in how many people are murdered every day.
Across all of history, the scale of war deaths is staggering. The twentieth century alone saw roughly 100 to 120 million war deaths, and more if war-driven famines are included. But it is worth remembering that an estimated 109 billion people have ever lived, and most of them died of infection, childbirth and hunger. For natural catastrophes on a similar scale, see our ranking of the deadliest natural disasters in history.
While you were reading this
You have spent about 12 minutes with this article. In that time, roughly 1,400 people have died around the world. A handful of them died in conflict. The rest died in hospitals and homes, from heart disease, cancer, infections and old age.
You can follow today's total on our deaths today page, or watch every death on earth as it happens on the live death counter.
Data sources: Uppsala Conflict Data Program (UCDP), Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO), Our World in Data, International Rescue Committee mortality surveys, Commonwealth War Graves Commission, US Department of Defense, Encyclopaedia Britannica, and published academic estimates (including Matthew White, "The Great Big Book of Horrible Things", and Steven Pinker, "The Better Angels of Our Nature"). War death tolls, especially for pre-modern conflicts, are highly uncertain and frequently disputed. Ranges reflect that disagreement, and rankings change depending on which estimates are used. This article is for informational purposes only.
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