Mass deaths and atrocities of the twentieth century
Philosophers and social scientists have frequently noted the propensity of humans to commit violent acts not only as individuals but as groups. The twentieth century is a legacy of the ability of humanity to engage willingly in acts of warfare and atrocity.
The study of mass killing Since the 19th century various historians have investigated the number of deaths that could be attributed to warfare or ideology. In the 20th century Joel David Singer and Melvin Small analyzed conflicts and Singer argued in The Wages of War, that a conflict with a particular death toll is statistically related to time of events. In recent years there has been an increasing belief among those who study conflict and fatalities related to it, that civil wars in particular are related to measurable economic phenomenon, and the scale of conflict is related to the reach of these factors.
Several researchers have adopted the term democide to refer to fatalities caused by government intention, calling it "murder by government", and they argue that wars should be included with genocide among totals of deaths caused by government action. Others, such as Gregory H. Stanton have adopted the term politicide. He argues that there are eight distinct phases to genocide or other mass killing: Classification, Symbolization, Dehumanization, Organization, Polarization, Preparation, Extermination and Denial. What he labels "Stage 7" conflicts are those with active killing, but that conflicts can cycle through Polarization, Preparation and Extermination repeatedly. His organization tracks killings since 1945 .
The field of Peace studies has been the source for continuing work on deaths because of conflict or other state decision. Marxist historian Eric Hobsbawm in The Age of Extremes: A History of the World, 1914- 1991 (1994) wrote that 187 million people died in the "short 20th century" because of what he termed "government decision". Robert McNamara published a 1991 paper entitled "The Post-Cold War World: Implications for Military Expenditure in the Developing Countries" which estimated 40 million deaths in the developing economies since World War II.
Estimates of mass killings Milton Leitenberg's estimate Milton Leitenberg, of the Center for International and Security Studies, published a 2003 paper which focused on the post war era, and gave very detailed estimates for all major conflicts between 1945 and 2000. His estimate for the total century is based on the following numbers:
* World War I mortality, between 13 and 15 million. * The Russian civil war of 1918-1922 and the Polish-Soviet conflict towards its end, deaths of over 12.5 million in Russia alone. * The Chaco War, between Paraguay and Bolivia, 1928-1933, approximately 3 million deaths. * The Spanish Civil War, 1936-1939, 600,000 deaths. * Various colonial wars, approximately 1.5 million deaths. * World War II, deaths of between 20 and 23 million. * Wars/conflicts between 1945 and 2000, deaths of 40 million. * Soviet collectivization and "dekulakization" 16 million to 50 million, though some included in World War II totals in these estimates. * Deaths under Mao, between 16 million and 30 million.
Adding in a variety of other pogroms and civil wars, he comes to a final estimate of 216 million. This does not include what he calls "structural violence": deaths in under-developed nations because of crime, poverty, environmental degradation, disease, malnutrition not part of famine, contaminated water and lack of available medicine. He estimates that this reached 17 or 18 million per year by 2000.
Matthew White's estimates A self-described librarian named Matthew White has a website which some years ago collated estimates from a number of academic and other sources. Based on these estimates, White proposed his own estimates for death tolls from violence in the 20th century.
In order to arrive at his estimates, White ignored figures at the extremes and basically averaged the most common estimates. In doing so, he arrived at what he felt was a conservative estimate of nearly 170 million lives lost to war and major atrocities in the last century. While "minor" atrocities and civil conflicts would add to the number, White's table, reproduced below, compiled only those conflicts whose death tolls are probably close to or exceed half a million people.
It should be noted that White himself makes no claims to have any qualifications in a relevant field. Some academic estimates vary widely from White's estimates.
Major mass killings of the Twentieth Century
Rank
Deaths
Event
Time Frame
1
55 000 000
World War II
1937-1945
2
40 000 000
China: Mao Zedong's regime
1949-1976
3
20 000 000
USSR: Stalin's regime
1924-1953
4
15 000 000
World War I
1914-1918
5
8 800 000
Russian Civil War
1918-1921
6
4 000 000
China: Warlord & Nationalist Era
1917-1937
7
3 000 000
Congo Free State
1900-1908
8
2 800 000
Korean War
1950-1953
9
2 700 000
1942-1945
9
2 700 000
Vietnam War (American phase)
1960-1975
10
2 500 000
Chinese Civil War
1945-1949
11
2 100 000
Expulsion of Germans after World War II
1945-1947
12
1 900 000
Second Sudanese Civil War
1983-1999
13
1 700 000
Congolese Civil War
1998-1999
14
1 400 000
Afghanistan Civil War
1980-1999
15
1 400 000
Ethiopian Civil Wars
1962-1992
17
1 250 000
Mexican Revolution
1910-1920
18
1 250 000
East Pakistan massacres
1971
19
1 000 000
Cambodia: Khmer Rouge regime
1975-1979
19
1 000 000
Iran-Iraq War
1980-1988
19
1 000 000
Nigeria: Biafra
1967-1970
21
800 000
Mozambique Civil War
1976-1992
21
800 000
Rwanda
1994
23
675 000
French-Algerian War
1954-1962
24
600 000
Vietnam War (French phase)
1945-1954
24
600 000
Angolan Civil War
1975-1994
26
500 000
Indonesia: Massacre of Communists
1965-1967
26
500 000
India-Pakistan Partition
1947
26
500 000
First Sudanese Civil War
1955-1972
26
500 000
Amazonian Indian decline
1900-1999
30
365 000
Spanish Civil War
1936-1939
??
>350 000
Somalia
1991-1999
??
>400 000
North Korean Communist regime
1948-1999
These figures include military casualties of war as well as civilian victims of democide, famine, and other hardships caused by the social and economic disruption which results from large-scale conflict. For conflicts which began before 1900 or ended after 1999, only those deaths within the 20th century are included.