Inferno: The World at War, 1939-1945

Total United States war losses were 418,500, slightly fewer than those of the United Kingdom, of which the U.S. Army lost 143,000 in Europe and the Mediterranean and 55,145 in the Pacific.

Italy lost over 300,000 military dead, and around a quarter of a million civilians. More than 5 million Poles died, 110,000 in combat, most of the remainder in German concentration camps, though the Russians could also claim a substantial tally of Polish victims. France lost 567,000 people, including 267,000 civilians. Thirty thousand British troop

Russia lost 27 million people, China at least 15 million.

Germany lost 6.9 million dead, 5.3 million of these military. The Russians killed about 4.7 million German combatants, including 474,967 who died in Soviet captivity, and a substantial further number of civilians, while the Western Allies accounted for around half a million German troops and more than 200,000 civilian victims of air attack.

Japan’s losses were estimated at 2.69 million dead, 1.74 million of these military; two-thirds of the latter were victims of starvation or disease rather than enemy action.

Seventy-nine million Germans challenged 193 million Soviet citizens from an economic base much weaker than the Allies recognised.

His bitterness was justified: he and almost 150,000 of his compatriots had fought gallantly with the Allied forces, suffering heavy casualties in Italy and northwest Europe. “We, the Poles in uniform integrated into the British armed forces, became an ugly sore on the English conscience,” wrote Pilot Officer B. Lvov.

By the time Okinawa was declared secure on 22 June, eighty-two days after Buckner’s initial landing, the army and the marines had lost 7,503 killed and 36,613 wounded, in addition to 36,000 nonbattle casualties, most of them combat-fatigue cases.

By 27 March, when Iwo Jima was secured, the Americans had suffered 24,000 casualties, including 7,184 dead, to capture an island one-third the size of Manhattan.