List of wars and disasters by death toll

This is a list of wars and man-made disasters by death toll. Some events overlap categories.

See also: List of battles and other violent events by death toll

For NATURAL disasters see: List of natural disasters by death toll

Wars and armed conflicts

''These figures of one million or more deaths include the deaths of civilians from diseases, famine, etc., as well as deaths of soldiers in battle.

Where only one estimate is available, it appears in both the low and high estimates. This is a sortable table. Click on the column sort buttons to sort results numerically or alphabetically. '

See also List of wars

Lowest Estimate	Highest Estimate	Event	Location	From	To	See also
40,000,000	72,000,000	World War II	Asia, Europe, Africa, Pacific	1939	1945	World War II casualties and Sino-Japanese War
33,000,000	36,000,000	An Shi Rebellion	China	756	763	Medieval warfare
30,000,000	60,000,000	Mongol Conquests	Asia, Europe, Middle East	1207	1279	Mongol invasions and Tatar invasions
25,000,000	25,000,000	Manchu conquest of the Ming Dynasty	China	1616	1662	Qing Dynasty
20,000,000	30,000,000+	Taiping Rebellion	China	1851	1864	Dungan revolt
19,000,000	119,000,000	World War I. (High estimate incl. Spanish flu deaths)	Europe	1914	1918	World War I casualties
7,000,000	20,000,000	Conquests of Timur	Middle East, India, Asia, Russia	1369	1405	List of wars in the Muslim world
5,000,000	9,000,000	Russian Civil War	Russia	1917	1921	List of civil wars
3,800,000	13,800,000	Second Congo War	Democratic Republic of the Congo	1998	2003
3,500,000	16,000,000	Napoleonic Wars	Europe	1804	1815	see Napoleonic Wars casualties
3,000,000	11,500,000	Thirty Years' War	Germany	1618	1648
3,000,000	7,000,000	Yellow Turban Rebellion	China	184	205	part of Three Kingdoms War
2,500,000	3,500,000	Korean War	Korean Peninsula	1950	1953	Cold War
2,495,000	5,020,000	Vietnam War	South East Asia	1945	1975
2,000,000	4,000,000	French Wars of Religion	France	1562	1598	Religious war
2,000,000	2,000,000	Shaka's conquests	Africa	1816	1828
1,500,000	2,000,000	Afghan Civil War	Afghanistan	1979	present	Soviet intervention

Noncombatant killings

This section lists campaigns Either aimed at or resulting in significant mortality of noncombatants, excluding victims of collateral damage from war.

Lowest Estimate	Highest Estimate	Event	Location	From	To	Notes
1,000,000,000	1,000,000,000
27,000,000	72,000,000	Political repression & Great Leap Forward famine, see note	Peoples Republic of China	1949	1975	Mao Zedong.
21,000,000	21,000,000	Democides of [...] Germany under [...], including the Holocaust	Europe	1933	1945	see Holocaust and Consequences of German Nazism
13,778,000	20,000,000	Democide of Native Americans	Americas	1500s	1900	Amerindian history
6,000,000	30,000,000	Imperial Japan's occupation of Asia	Asia	1930s	1945	Japanese war crimes
4,000,000	60,000,000	Atlantic slave trade (including African tribal warfare promoted by the trade and more than 1 million who died during the trans-Atlantic crossings.)	Africa, Americas	1600s	1900s	African slave trade
4,000,000	50,000,000	Political repression, including (in larger figure) Holodomor famine	Soviet Union	1932	1953	Number of Stalin's victims
3,600,000	20,000,000	Arab slave trade	Africa, Asia, Europe	800s	2000s	Islam & slavery and Slavery in Modern Africa
3,000,000	22,000,000	Depopulation (from forced labour & consequent spread of disease, massacres)	Congo Free State	1877	1908	Leopold II of Belgium
1,000,000	5,000,000	Democide of Chinese Muslims	China	1856	1873	Panthay Rebellion Muslim Rebellion
800,000	1,000,000	Partition of India	India	1947	1948
500,000+	500,000+	Anticommunist purge	Indonesia	1965	1965
400,000	400,000	Taiwan under Japanese rule	Taiwan	1895	1945
300,000	500,000	Nanking Massacre	Nanking, China	1937	1938	see Nanking Massacre
26,000	3,000,000	1971 Bangladesh atrocities	East Pakistan	1971	1971	[...] of ethnic Bengalis and Hindus by West Pakistani military and associated extremist Islamic groups
300,000	500,000	Democide	Uganda	1971	1979	Idi Amin
300,000	300,000	Ethnic cleansing of Circassians	Caucasus	1763	1864	Russian-Circassian War.
150,000	500,000	Mass killings, [...]	Ethiopia	1974	1991	Marxist regime of Mengistu Haile Mariam
150,000	150,000	Harrying of the North	England	1069	1070	William the Conqueror
100,000	1,200,000	Democide of Tibetans (included in totals for People's Republic of China above)	Tibet	1950	present	Tibetan [...] trial and Human rights in China
80,000	230,000	Mass executions during and after the Spanish Civil War	Spain	1936	1940s	Francisco Franco
80,000	80,000	Mass killings	Equatorial Guinea	1968	1979	Francisco Macías Nguema
72,000+	252,000	Russian pogroms	Russia	1881	1922	Revolution/Civil War
40,000	100,000+	Pakistani and Chinese Occupation of Kashmir	India	1947	present
72,000	72,000	Executions	England	1509	1547	Henry VIII
40,000	100,000	Massacres	Wallachia	1448	1462	Vlad III the Impaler
18,000	60,000	Reign of Terror	France	1793	1794	Jacobin Club
30,000	30,000	Political repression	Haiti	1964	1971	"Papa Doc" Duvalier
27,927	27,927	Boer women and children in British concentration camps	South Africa	1899	1902	Second Boer War
15,000	23,000	Political repression	Cuba	1959	2007	Fidel Castro
12,000	24,000	The 228 Incident	Taiwan	1947	1947	Kwo Mintang (KMT)
10,000	30,000	The Dirty War	Argentina	1976	1983
3,000	3,000	Political repression	Chile	1973	1990	Augusto Pinochet
0	0

[...]

The CPPCG defines [...] in part as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group".

Determining what historical events constitute a [...] and which are merely criminal or inhuman behavior is not a clearcut matter. In nearly every case where accusations of [...] have circulated, partisans of various sides have fiercely disputed the interpretation and details of the event, often to the point of promoting wildly different versions of the facts. An accusation of [...] therefore, will almost always be controversial.

The following list of genocides and alleged genocides should be understood in this context and not necessarily regarded as the final word on the events in question.

Lowest Estimate	Highest Estimate	Event	Location	From	To	Notes
1,000,000,000	1,000,000,000
11,000,000	16,300,000	Genocides of [...] Germany	Europe	1933	1945	Well established. See Holocaust, Consequences of German Nazism
6,000,000	8,000,000	Holodomor famine	Soviet Union	1932	1932	As of November 2006 the Ukraine government was trying to get this mass starvation recognised by the United Nations as an act of [...], with Russian government and many members of the Ukrainian parliament opposing such a move.
1,700,000	3,000,000	Famine, political repression	Cambodia	1975	1979	As of September 2007 no one has been found guilty of participating in this [...], but on 19 September 2007 Nuon Chea, second in command of the Khmer Rouge and its most senior surviving member, was charged with war crimes and crimes against humanity. He will face Cambodian and United Nations appointed foreign judges at the special [...] tribunal.
1,000,000	1,500,000	Armenian [...]	Turkey	1895	1923	By 2003, fifteen national assemblies had voted to recognise that this was a [...], but the Turkish government while accepting that many died does not recognize the episode as a [...].
900,000	3,000,000	Rwandan [...]	Rwanda	1994	1994	Hutu killed unarmed men, women and children. Some perpetrators of the [...] have been found guilty by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda, but most have not been charged due to no witness accounts.
400,000	700,000	Ustashe [...] of Serbs, Jews, Roma	Balkans	1941	1945	Well established, see Independent State of Croatia
300,000	500,000	Nanking Massacre	Nanking	1937	1938	The Nanking Massacre, commonly known as the [...] of Nanking, was an infamous genocidal war crime committed by the Japanese military in Nanjing, then capital of the Republic of China, after it fell to the Imperial Japanese Army on December 13, 1937.
225,000	225,000	Depopulation of Australian aborigines	Australia	1788	1888	No academic consensus that this was a [...], see Australian [...] debate
200,000	400,000	Darfur conflict	Sudan	2003	present	See International response to the Darfur conflict
130,000	200,000	Massacres of Mayan Indians	Guatemala	1962	1996	[...] according to the Historical Clarification Commission.
117,000	500,000	Revolt in the Vendée	France	1793	1796	Described as [...] by some historians. See also French Revolution
150,000	300,000	Political repression of East Timorese	East Timor	1975	1990's	Commonly referred to as [...] by media, scholars.
100,000	400,000	Political repression of West Papuans	Indonesia	1961	present	[...] according to some sources, see [...] in West Papua
100,000	200,000	Al-Anfal Campaign	Iraq	1986	1989	Ba'athist Iraq destroys over 2,000 villages and commits [...] on their Kurdish population.
50,000	100,000	Massacres of Hutus	Burundi	1972	1972	Tutsi government massacres of Hutu, see Burundi [...]
50,000	50,000	Massacres of Tutsis	Burundi	1993	1993	Hutu government massacres of Tutsi, see Burundi [...]
40,000	100,000	Herero and Namaqua [...]	Namibia	1904	1908	Generally accepted. See also Imperial Germany
26,000	3,000,000	1971 Bangladesh atrocities	East Pakistan	1971	1971	The Bangladeshi press and others allege that the atrocities were a [...], but to date no one has been indicted for such a crime.
8,000	8,000	Srebenica massacre	Srebenica	1995	1995	A genocidal massacre according to the ICTY. See also Bosnia war

Individual extermination camps

1,500,000-4,000,000 - Auschwitz extermination camp (by [...]-Germany, located in Oświęcim, Poland, 1940-1945)
1,000,000-1,400,000 - Treblinka extermination camp, (by [...] Germany, located in Treblinka, Poland, 1942-1943)
53,000 -840,000Vladimir Dedijer - The Yugoslav Auschwitz and the Vatican

Buffalo (NY) 1992 ISBN-13: 978-0-87975-752-6

- Jasenovac extermination camp - (by NDH Ustaše [...] regime in Croatia. Most of the victims were Serbs)

480,000-600,000 - Belzec extermination camp, (by [...] Germany, located in Belzec Poland, 1942-1943)
350,000 - Majdanek extermination camp, (by [...] Germany, located in Lublin Poland, 1942-1944)
300,000 - Chelmno extermination camp, (by [...] Germany, located in Chelmno Poland, 1941-1943)
260,000 - Sobibór extermination camp, (by [...] Germany, located in Sobibor Poland, 1942-1943)
55,000 - Neuengamme concentration camp, (by [...] Germany, located by Hamburg, Germany, 1938-1945)

Human sacrifice and ritual [...]

This section lists tolls from the systematic practice of human sacrifice or [...]. For notable individual episodes, see Human sacrifice and mass [...].

Low Estimate	High Estimate	Description	Group	Location	From	To	Notes
2,000,000	2,000,000	Human sacrifice	Aztecs	Mexico	1400s	1600s	Human sacrifice in Aztec culture
2,000,000	2,000,000	Human sacrifice	Thuggee	India	1300s	1890
62,400	62,400	Ritual suicides	Sati	India	1900s	1988?
13,000	13,000	Human sacrifice	Shang dynasty	China	BC1300	BC1050	Last 250 years of rule
3,912	3,912	Kamikaze [...] pilots, see note	Imperial Japanese air forces	Pacific theatre	1944	1945

External links

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