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To keep synthesis out of this article I will not be accepting any casualty total that involves synthesising totals from individual incidents to give a total, or estimated total, that has not been published by a secondary source. References for individual incidents are insufficient, since there is no guarantee that the incidents claimed form the correct total. For example it is claimed the total for China is 101 based on adding 98 for Siege of Tsingtao to 3 for 1915 Singapore Mutiny to give a total of 101. Even ignoring that the BBC say only 40 people killed at the siege were Chinese labourers, who is to say these two incidents represent the total Chinese civilian death during the conflict? Adding up death tolls of incidents that have Wikipedia articles is inadequate research. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission lump the Chinese Labour Corps members who died in with Commonwealth figures, but what of other deaths? The SS Athos was sunk before the Chinese Labour Corps were formed, and I can find no mention of the Athos in their CWGC's record of deaths or memorials. So are the 400 to 600 Chinese labourers who died on the Athos included in the CWGC's figures or not? This is precisely why we can only use totals published in secondary sources. FDW777 ( talk) 11:12, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Further to the CWGC/Chinese Labour Corps/Athos deaths, a search of the CWGC's death records for the Chinese Labour Corps sorted chronologically doesn't include the Chinese labourers killed on 17 February 1917 when the SS Athos was sunk. I hope this underlines the futility of attempting to compile our own totals for any country? FDW777 ( talk) 12:05, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Personally we can close all of this now, wp:consensus is clear we do not keep on until we all give in. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:11, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
The issue of war losses is an intricate one, involving several crucial points. First, words matter. The meaning of words such as “killed in action”, “wounded” or “casualties”, which are the main headings in table columns in books or articles dealing with war losses, are misleading. Take the wounded: some died, others did not, meaning that the total number of soldiers who died as a result of war should include those who died from their wounds. This leads to the questions: How did statisticians calculate their estimates? What period of time did their calculations cover? What parameters did they define? Such questions are seldom discussed. However, it is impossible to propose an even somewhat rigorous estimate of war losses without discussing them.
Military losses tend to be much better documented than civilian deaths in wartime. As armies needed as precise an estimate as possible of the men available for combat, they counted only soldiers. Civilian administrators had to care for the sick and bury the dead, whatever their cause of illness or death. No office, anywhere, registered civilian war-related deaths. These numbers have been drawn from very different sources, using various assumptions and definitions. Surely, the dead from air bombings were war victims, but they were not numerous. The central difficulties come from the influenza epidemic and the blockade.
The whole world was struck in 1918-19 with an epidemic of Spanish flu. The author’s calculations include soldiers who died from illness when wearing the uniform, for one could argue that their resistance to illness had been weakened by life in the trenches. Soldiers who died from the Spanish flu – about 32,000 in the French army, among them the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) – are considered fallen soldiers. But what about civilians? Most estimates of civilian losses include dead from the Spanish flu, but there are no reasons to do so. The epidemic appeared in the USA, which was not directly affected by the war in mid-1918, where it killed more than half a million people. Are they war victims? The author believes not, which is why American soldiers who died in the USA before leaving were not included in his war loss estimates. For the same reasons, it seems difficult to attribute the heavy toll of the flu in belligerent countries to the war, as long as their medical situation remained normal. If the war had not happened, these inhabitants would have caught the flu anyway and would have died in the same numbers. To include these dead in the calculation would only serve to increase the number of civilian losses and to make the face of war more hideous. Pacifism does not need such a sleight-of-hand.
The second difficulty lies in the blockade. The Central Powers suffered heavily from cold and malnutrition, due to the shortage of coal and food. This situation was a result of bad and incompetent administration. In Russia, as in Turkey and the Balkans, administrative and economic disorganization and inefficient transportation produced starvation, and bad nutrition made sickness often fatal. In Germany, the War Office (Kriegsamt) created chaos with respect to the food supply and contributed to the development of the black market. This is a first explanation, though not a sufficient one. The shortage of coal, raw materials and food was another, perhaps more important, reason. The shortage was mainly a result of the Allied blockade, maintained until the signing of the peace treaty in late June 1919. Hence, it seems logical to attribute a number of civilian deaths to war conditions.
But it is difficult to count Germans who died of hunger and still more difficult to say whether they were victims of the Allied blockade or of the black market and the German administration’s disorganization. Huge figures have been proposed. For example, in Central and Balkan Europe, some have offered estimates as high as two million. In the Ottoman Empire, quite apart from the one or more million people killed during the Armenian genocide, the figure has been advanced of at least 1,500,000 civilian deaths from famine or malnourishment.[21] These figures probably include dead from the Spanish flu. It is possible that such figures have been exaggerated, but it seems very difficult to make clear estimates from evidence so thin. Anyway, the human cost of the war for civilians is undisputed, though impossible to calculate with precision.
As the reader ought to be given the best possible estimate, the author has collected the figures usually proposed in Table 3 below, though he is not at all convinced they are valuable.[22] These numbers are but suppositions. Figures for Great Britain or France, in particular, seem contradictory with what is known of wartime living conditions in these countries. In Great Britain, Winter has shown the paradoxical improvement of infant mortality rates during the war, and other scholars have given additional evidence of a lessening of poverty. In France, even if the Spanish flu was considered as a war-related catastrophe, 300,000 or 600,000 civilian dead in France would be astounding figures. The estimate given by Wikipedia of 408,000 dead from the Spanish flu for France is an evident miscalculation: in the unoccupied territory, the total numbers of civilian dead were 583,000, 722,000 and 617,000 for the years 1917, 1918 and 1919 respectively. Thus the surplus civilian mortality of 1918-19, due to the flu, cannot exceed 175,000. These statistics do not prove anything but the will of their author to present the war as a greater massacre than it was. The only certain point is that there is a wide contrast between countries where people died of illness and starvation by the hundreds of thousands, such as Russia, the Balkans, the Central and Ottoman Empires, and those where the government succeeded in maintaining a minimum supply of food, housing and medical care.
To conclude: these statistical insights suggest an asymmetric double contrast. On the front line, the Allies paid the highest price, both in terms of those killed in action and those wounded. But on the home front, the Central Powers and Russia paid a much higher toll. War was not only a military matter; it was an ordeal for whole societies. Driverofknowledge ( talk) 13:04, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Note my laptop is broken so I can no longer contribute substantialy. But to clear something up, if you read the WW1 casualties article, they say Chinese Labor Corps losses are counted among the Brits and French. And in the China source, if you read carefully, the dead mentioned is not from the siege itself, but from the Japanese "on their way to Tsingtao." So there is no connection between the chinese labor dead with the germans and the chinese civilians. And chinese laborers are counted as military losses, not civs because they were drafted. Think Askari soldiers. Slater, FDW, Banner, best of luck fixing this article and adding stuff. I'll check up when my laptop is better. 2601:85:C101:BA30:A985:1173:EE5F:238D ( talk) 18:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
if you read the WW1 casualties article, they say Chinese Labor Corps losses are counted among the Brits and French
, you just don't get it do you? This isn't in the current version of the article, but the text in question can be seen on your preferred version
here. It reads Chinese laborers who died while serving under the British and French in the
Chinese Labour Corps are counted among the British and French losses
. This is referenced to
this CWGC document, which makes absolutely no mention of Chinese labourers being included in French losses. It doesn't even explicitly say they were classed as Commonwealth losses, the closest it gets is The labourers who died were classified as war casualties
and great pains were taken to mark their graves in an appropriate way. All headstones, which are of the Commission's standard war pattern shape...
But since the Chinese Labour Corps are listed in the CWGC's database that's not a problem. However, as I've already stated and you ignored (like normal), the Chinese labourers who died in the sinking of the SS Athos weren't members of the Chinese Labour Corps and they aren't listed on the CWGC's database at all as far as I can see. As such, all we're left with is the text that you wrote reading Chinese laborers who died while serving under the British and French in the
Chinese Labour Corps are counted among the British and French losses
, except as I've already said this is an unreferenced claim. So no, you can't use unreferenced text that you wrote yourself to claim the Chinese labourers that died on the SS Athos are covered in the French losses, and neither could you use a general reference (not that you've even provided one of course) saying Chinese Labour Corps deaths are included in the French losses due to
WP:SYN (especially as they weren't even members of the Chinese Labour Corps), you'd need a reference explicitly saying how the Chinese labourers that died on the SS Athos are classified.
FDW777 (
talk)
19:42, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Also if the 40 Chinese labourers from the Siege of Tsingtao are completely different from the 98 civilians killed (and where's the evidence that in 1915 Chinese labourers were classed as military? You can't use the 1917 Chinese Labour Corps to retroactively claim they were military) then it still completely undermines your total of 101, as it should be 141. FDW777 ( talk) 19:53, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
More recently the research of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has revised the military casualty statistics of the UK and its allies; they include in their listing of military war dead personnel outside of combat theaters and civilians recruited from Africa, the Middle East and China who provided logistical and service support in combat theaters
Vietnam (1914 known as French Indochina)(only included for the sake of completeness
Voice of America (VOA) (26 April 2010). "chinas-world-war-one-effort-draws-new-attention". VOA. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
Tang, Chi-hua: War Losses and Reparations (China), in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
Britain recruited Indian, Chinese, native South African, Egyptian and other overseas labour to provide logistical support in the combat theatres. Included with British casualties in East Africa are the deaths of 44,911 recruited labourers. The CWGC reports that nearly 2,000 workers from the Chinese Labour Corps are buried with British war dead in France.
Overseas labor units serving with the British and French forces. The UK employed about 300,000 Indian, Chinese, native South African, Egyptian and other nations as laborers during the war. By the end of 1917, there were 50,000 Chinese workers in France, rising to 96,000 by August 1918 (with another 30,000 working for the French). 100,000 Egyptians were working in France and the Middle East, alongside 21,000 Indians and 20,000 South Africans, who were also in East Africa. A total of about 140,000 Chinese workers recruited in the Beiyang government, served on the Western Front during and after the war with the British and French Armed Forces. According to the Commonwealth war Graves Commission "In all, nearly 2,000 men from the Chinese Labour Corps died during the First World War, some as a direct result of enemy action, or of wounds received in the course of their duties, but many more in the influenza epidemic that swept Europe in 1918–19" One historical controversy is the number who died in the war. Some Chinese scholars say the number was as high as 20,000 but records kept by the British and French recruiters, show just under 2,000 lost their lives, many from the flu pandemic that swept the world starting in 1919.
"World Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Poperinge, Ypres Salient Battlefields, Belgium(The Chinese Labour Corps was used to clear battlefields, dig graves, trenches and carry out other such tasks which were often difficult and dangerous.)". Retrieved 2 May 2015.
THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS AT THE WESTERN FRONT (In all, nearly 2,000 men from the Chinese Labour Corps died during the First World War, some as a direct result of enemy action, or of wounds received in the course of their duties but many more in the influenza epidemic that swept Europe in 1918–19" (PDF). Retrieved 26 April 2015.
WW1 Photos Centenary Website: 2014–2018 By Paul Reed (26 April 2010). "Chinese Labour Corps 1919". Paul Reed. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
what I wrote was based on what Woogie wroteis not supported by the available evidence. Therefore you are to blame despite your claim of innocence.
But yeah if you want Chinese laborers to the total, I guess you could. No. As pointed out, repeatedly, I do not accept any totals made by synthesis. I only accept totals published by reliable references. FDW777 ( talk) 21:01, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing If this is a RS, then someone should mention it in the lede. Maybe as the higher range. 2601:85:C101:BA30:EDBB:7563:362A:612E ( talk) 14:53, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000. These civilian deaths were largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres.The Banner talk 18:56, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
FDW, Banner, you don't need to shoot down everything I do. Britannica is an RS. Thank you Slater, is it okay if I make that addition when May 5 passes? 2601:85:C101:BA30:EDBB:7563:362A:612E ( talk) 19:08, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Slater, I think we misunderstood each other. I know there isn't a range of 13 million. The upper bound for civilians would be 13 million, per the source. So I think we can reference that? And would we add 8.5 million military and 13 million civilians from the source to get 21.5 million total as a total upper-bound (assuming that's the highest number, of course), or would that be OR or WP:SYNTH? 2601:85:C101:BA30:F4C6:D43C:D787:34A5 ( talk) 13:33, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
I made the edit. 2601:85:C101:BA30:9047:B5F5:878B:1137 ( talk) 21:26, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Firstly
this change changing The
civilian death toll was about 8 million
to The
civilian death toll was about 13 million
. While the Brittanica reference and the 13 million were talked about in general terms, there was never any proposal to make that specific edit. If there had been, the objection would be a complete and total violation of
WP:NPOV, since we're not just going with the total from one reference. The
Brittanica reference isn't even that useful for the civilian death toll. Unlike the table that contains breakdowns of deaths/wounded/missing etc by country (cited to U.S. War Department in February 1924. U.S. casualties as amended by the Statistical Services Center, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nov. 7, 1957
, the civilian death toll is given as It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000
. As I said earlier in the discussion, who has estimated this? This is en estimate that needs further research and direct attributing, not stating as fact given there is clearly no academic consensus on the total number of deaths. The change makes the article completely contradictory, since the table at
World War I casualties#Casualties in the borders of 1914–18 gives a total of 2,250,099 civilians killed due to military action and crimes against humanity and 5,411,000 to 6,100,000 due to malnutrition and disease. So if we're saying 7,661,099 to 8,350,099 in the table, why are we saying 13 million in the text????
Secondly this change changing the upper limit on military deaths from 10,824,236 to 20,824,236. I'm struggling to consider this to be anything other than vandalism. The table gives the Allied military death toll as 5,186,854 to 6,433,692, and the Axis military death toll to be 3,386,200 to 4,390,544. This gives a total, excluding Neutral nations, of 8,573,054 to 10,824,236, which is what the article said before. So why has 10 million suddenly been added to the total?????
In order for consensus to be clear for any edits, I request that any future changes are made explicitly clear as to what exactly figure(s) are going to be changed from and to and which references support the change. Talking generally about Brittanica and 13 million then increasing the death toll by 5 million and making the article contradictory was never actually proposed. The IP editor did the exact opposite of what he said he was going to do
here, Assuming consensus is met, I would do what Slater did, keeping a range of numbers. Why would I get rid of the lower bound? Question Slater, where would I add the reference in that sentence, after the 8.5 and 13, or at the end of the sentence?
So I really do have to ask the question. Why, given the IP editor explicitly said they would not be removing the lower bound did they do just that?
FDW777 (
talk)
12:07, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
I think all this needs taking to wp:dr now. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:17, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
The I will suggest to obvious change "The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, " to "The total number of deaths includes from 8.5 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 to 13 million, ". The IP responds with the reply I've mentioned above,
Assuming consensus is met, I would do what Slater did, keeping a range of numbers. Why would I get rid of the lower bound? Question Slater, where would I add the reference in that sentence, after the 8.5 and 13, or at the end of the sentence?The change they made was the opposite of what was discussed, that's absurd. FDW777 ( talk) 12:54, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
I have said what I have to say. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
Agreed, half of this page should be archived by now. FDW, the source you provided is good, where exactly is it used in the article, and what does the 6 million refer to specifically? It would be good to add it in the article. 2601:85:C101:BA30:D475:54CE:FC6C:FDD ( talk) 01:15, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
The sentence in the lead The civilian death toll was about 8 to 13 million
is changed to give a lower figure of 6 million. This is supported by the third column for civilian deaths in
this reference and a 6.5 million death toll would also be referenced by the second column of that reference and the last reference listed in the section at
World War I casualties#Classification of casualty statistics. I lost track of how many changes I'd need to make to the tables to take this reference into account, so dealing with one issue at a time.
FDW777 (
talk)
13:40, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Done FDW777 ( talk) 16:06, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
I (same IP as before) propose to add Liberian civilian losses to the chart. 4 civilians dead. Using this source:
Shellum, Brian G. African American Officers in Liberia: A Pestiferous Rotation, 1910-1942. University of Nebraska Press, 2018, pp. 108.
Any questions? 2601:85:C101:BA30:2001:115C:431D:A5C6 ( talk) 21:22, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
First, it seized and scuttled the Liberian schooner RLS President Howards, then sent the Liberian crew ashore with a demand to haul down the French flag and destroy the French cable station. When President Howard refused his demands, German Korvettenkapitän Herman Gerche opened fire with his 150-mm deck gun, destroying the French wireless station and damaging the cable station. The hour-long shelling caused extensive damage to buildings and killed four people, three of them children.I have previously objected to methodology such as that as not acceptable, we should be relying on published totals. FDW777 ( talk) 21:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Technically Banner, they could all be military by that logic, due to child soldiers and what not. I believe it is referring to civilians, as the book goes into detail on military matters separately, but I'm not interested on quibbling about semantics as before.
FDW, if this methodology is unacceptable, should we delete the chart? Personally, I wouldn't oppose that at this point. Secondly, I believe a footnote of Liberian dead, though very small, is worthy of mention. What are your thoughts, and if you agree with me, how do you think we should go about it? 2601:85:C101:BA30:2001:115C:431D:A5C6 ( talk) 23:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
My preference with the charts would be something similar to this reference, although split charts are not important. Instead of trying to jam every single variation of casualty figure for a particular country into a chart, each study such as Westmoreland, Overmans, Winter etc has its own column. Any countries not included in this table could be covered in however many paragraphs of prose are needed in a section titled "Other casualties" or something like that. FDW777 ( talk) 14:44, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect German causalties in World War I. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 3#German causalties in World War I until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 18:34, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
In the table, it says deaths as a % of population, but shouldn't it be deaths and missing? I think that's the number that's being divided by population. Chaptagai ( talk) 10:03, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm glad that after a few years the article is adding back some of the information that was removed in the mass revert. Could still use a lot of cleanup, but it's coming along. Maybe in the next decade... 2601:85:C100:46C0:498:2748:D8A9:B774 ( talk) 02:24, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
In Brazil_during_World_War_I (unsourced) it says three Brazilian civilians were killed by a German sub. Is this an oversight, or has it been excluded from the page? If so, why? Nyonyatwelve ( talk) 15:37, 17 July 2024 (UTC)
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To keep synthesis out of this article I will not be accepting any casualty total that involves synthesising totals from individual incidents to give a total, or estimated total, that has not been published by a secondary source. References for individual incidents are insufficient, since there is no guarantee that the incidents claimed form the correct total. For example it is claimed the total for China is 101 based on adding 98 for Siege of Tsingtao to 3 for 1915 Singapore Mutiny to give a total of 101. Even ignoring that the BBC say only 40 people killed at the siege were Chinese labourers, who is to say these two incidents represent the total Chinese civilian death during the conflict? Adding up death tolls of incidents that have Wikipedia articles is inadequate research. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission lump the Chinese Labour Corps members who died in with Commonwealth figures, but what of other deaths? The SS Athos was sunk before the Chinese Labour Corps were formed, and I can find no mention of the Athos in their CWGC's record of deaths or memorials. So are the 400 to 600 Chinese labourers who died on the Athos included in the CWGC's figures or not? This is precisely why we can only use totals published in secondary sources. FDW777 ( talk) 11:12, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Further to the CWGC/Chinese Labour Corps/Athos deaths, a search of the CWGC's death records for the Chinese Labour Corps sorted chronologically doesn't include the Chinese labourers killed on 17 February 1917 when the SS Athos was sunk. I hope this underlines the futility of attempting to compile our own totals for any country? FDW777 ( talk) 12:05, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Personally we can close all of this now, wp:consensus is clear we do not keep on until we all give in. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:11, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
The issue of war losses is an intricate one, involving several crucial points. First, words matter. The meaning of words such as “killed in action”, “wounded” or “casualties”, which are the main headings in table columns in books or articles dealing with war losses, are misleading. Take the wounded: some died, others did not, meaning that the total number of soldiers who died as a result of war should include those who died from their wounds. This leads to the questions: How did statisticians calculate their estimates? What period of time did their calculations cover? What parameters did they define? Such questions are seldom discussed. However, it is impossible to propose an even somewhat rigorous estimate of war losses without discussing them.
Military losses tend to be much better documented than civilian deaths in wartime. As armies needed as precise an estimate as possible of the men available for combat, they counted only soldiers. Civilian administrators had to care for the sick and bury the dead, whatever their cause of illness or death. No office, anywhere, registered civilian war-related deaths. These numbers have been drawn from very different sources, using various assumptions and definitions. Surely, the dead from air bombings were war victims, but they were not numerous. The central difficulties come from the influenza epidemic and the blockade.
The whole world was struck in 1918-19 with an epidemic of Spanish flu. The author’s calculations include soldiers who died from illness when wearing the uniform, for one could argue that their resistance to illness had been weakened by life in the trenches. Soldiers who died from the Spanish flu – about 32,000 in the French army, among them the poet Guillaume Apollinaire (1880-1918) – are considered fallen soldiers. But what about civilians? Most estimates of civilian losses include dead from the Spanish flu, but there are no reasons to do so. The epidemic appeared in the USA, which was not directly affected by the war in mid-1918, where it killed more than half a million people. Are they war victims? The author believes not, which is why American soldiers who died in the USA before leaving were not included in his war loss estimates. For the same reasons, it seems difficult to attribute the heavy toll of the flu in belligerent countries to the war, as long as their medical situation remained normal. If the war had not happened, these inhabitants would have caught the flu anyway and would have died in the same numbers. To include these dead in the calculation would only serve to increase the number of civilian losses and to make the face of war more hideous. Pacifism does not need such a sleight-of-hand.
The second difficulty lies in the blockade. The Central Powers suffered heavily from cold and malnutrition, due to the shortage of coal and food. This situation was a result of bad and incompetent administration. In Russia, as in Turkey and the Balkans, administrative and economic disorganization and inefficient transportation produced starvation, and bad nutrition made sickness often fatal. In Germany, the War Office (Kriegsamt) created chaos with respect to the food supply and contributed to the development of the black market. This is a first explanation, though not a sufficient one. The shortage of coal, raw materials and food was another, perhaps more important, reason. The shortage was mainly a result of the Allied blockade, maintained until the signing of the peace treaty in late June 1919. Hence, it seems logical to attribute a number of civilian deaths to war conditions.
But it is difficult to count Germans who died of hunger and still more difficult to say whether they were victims of the Allied blockade or of the black market and the German administration’s disorganization. Huge figures have been proposed. For example, in Central and Balkan Europe, some have offered estimates as high as two million. In the Ottoman Empire, quite apart from the one or more million people killed during the Armenian genocide, the figure has been advanced of at least 1,500,000 civilian deaths from famine or malnourishment.[21] These figures probably include dead from the Spanish flu. It is possible that such figures have been exaggerated, but it seems very difficult to make clear estimates from evidence so thin. Anyway, the human cost of the war for civilians is undisputed, though impossible to calculate with precision.
As the reader ought to be given the best possible estimate, the author has collected the figures usually proposed in Table 3 below, though he is not at all convinced they are valuable.[22] These numbers are but suppositions. Figures for Great Britain or France, in particular, seem contradictory with what is known of wartime living conditions in these countries. In Great Britain, Winter has shown the paradoxical improvement of infant mortality rates during the war, and other scholars have given additional evidence of a lessening of poverty. In France, even if the Spanish flu was considered as a war-related catastrophe, 300,000 or 600,000 civilian dead in France would be astounding figures. The estimate given by Wikipedia of 408,000 dead from the Spanish flu for France is an evident miscalculation: in the unoccupied territory, the total numbers of civilian dead were 583,000, 722,000 and 617,000 for the years 1917, 1918 and 1919 respectively. Thus the surplus civilian mortality of 1918-19, due to the flu, cannot exceed 175,000. These statistics do not prove anything but the will of their author to present the war as a greater massacre than it was. The only certain point is that there is a wide contrast between countries where people died of illness and starvation by the hundreds of thousands, such as Russia, the Balkans, the Central and Ottoman Empires, and those where the government succeeded in maintaining a minimum supply of food, housing and medical care.
To conclude: these statistical insights suggest an asymmetric double contrast. On the front line, the Allies paid the highest price, both in terms of those killed in action and those wounded. But on the home front, the Central Powers and Russia paid a much higher toll. War was not only a military matter; it was an ordeal for whole societies. Driverofknowledge ( talk) 13:04, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Note my laptop is broken so I can no longer contribute substantialy. But to clear something up, if you read the WW1 casualties article, they say Chinese Labor Corps losses are counted among the Brits and French. And in the China source, if you read carefully, the dead mentioned is not from the siege itself, but from the Japanese "on their way to Tsingtao." So there is no connection between the chinese labor dead with the germans and the chinese civilians. And chinese laborers are counted as military losses, not civs because they were drafted. Think Askari soldiers. Slater, FDW, Banner, best of luck fixing this article and adding stuff. I'll check up when my laptop is better. 2601:85:C101:BA30:A985:1173:EE5F:238D ( talk) 18:06, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
if you read the WW1 casualties article, they say Chinese Labor Corps losses are counted among the Brits and French
, you just don't get it do you? This isn't in the current version of the article, but the text in question can be seen on your preferred version
here. It reads Chinese laborers who died while serving under the British and French in the
Chinese Labour Corps are counted among the British and French losses
. This is referenced to
this CWGC document, which makes absolutely no mention of Chinese labourers being included in French losses. It doesn't even explicitly say they were classed as Commonwealth losses, the closest it gets is The labourers who died were classified as war casualties
and great pains were taken to mark their graves in an appropriate way. All headstones, which are of the Commission's standard war pattern shape...
But since the Chinese Labour Corps are listed in the CWGC's database that's not a problem. However, as I've already stated and you ignored (like normal), the Chinese labourers who died in the sinking of the SS Athos weren't members of the Chinese Labour Corps and they aren't listed on the CWGC's database at all as far as I can see. As such, all we're left with is the text that you wrote reading Chinese laborers who died while serving under the British and French in the
Chinese Labour Corps are counted among the British and French losses
, except as I've already said this is an unreferenced claim. So no, you can't use unreferenced text that you wrote yourself to claim the Chinese labourers that died on the SS Athos are covered in the French losses, and neither could you use a general reference (not that you've even provided one of course) saying Chinese Labour Corps deaths are included in the French losses due to
WP:SYN (especially as they weren't even members of the Chinese Labour Corps), you'd need a reference explicitly saying how the Chinese labourers that died on the SS Athos are classified.
FDW777 (
talk)
19:42, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
Also if the 40 Chinese labourers from the Siege of Tsingtao are completely different from the 98 civilians killed (and where's the evidence that in 1915 Chinese labourers were classed as military? You can't use the 1917 Chinese Labour Corps to retroactively claim they were military) then it still completely undermines your total of 101, as it should be 141. FDW777 ( talk) 19:53, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
More recently the research of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission (CWGC) has revised the military casualty statistics of the UK and its allies; they include in their listing of military war dead personnel outside of combat theaters and civilians recruited from Africa, the Middle East and China who provided logistical and service support in combat theaters
Vietnam (1914 known as French Indochina)(only included for the sake of completeness
Voice of America (VOA) (26 April 2010). "chinas-world-war-one-effort-draws-new-attention". VOA. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
Tang, Chi-hua: War Losses and Reparations (China), in: 1914-1918-online. International Encyclopedia of the First World War.
Britain recruited Indian, Chinese, native South African, Egyptian and other overseas labour to provide logistical support in the combat theatres. Included with British casualties in East Africa are the deaths of 44,911 recruited labourers. The CWGC reports that nearly 2,000 workers from the Chinese Labour Corps are buried with British war dead in France.
Overseas labor units serving with the British and French forces. The UK employed about 300,000 Indian, Chinese, native South African, Egyptian and other nations as laborers during the war. By the end of 1917, there were 50,000 Chinese workers in France, rising to 96,000 by August 1918 (with another 30,000 working for the French). 100,000 Egyptians were working in France and the Middle East, alongside 21,000 Indians and 20,000 South Africans, who were also in East Africa. A total of about 140,000 Chinese workers recruited in the Beiyang government, served on the Western Front during and after the war with the British and French Armed Forces. According to the Commonwealth war Graves Commission "In all, nearly 2,000 men from the Chinese Labour Corps died during the First World War, some as a direct result of enemy action, or of wounds received in the course of their duties, but many more in the influenza epidemic that swept Europe in 1918–19" One historical controversy is the number who died in the war. Some Chinese scholars say the number was as high as 20,000 but records kept by the British and French recruiters, show just under 2,000 lost their lives, many from the flu pandemic that swept the world starting in 1919.
"World Lijssenthoek Military Cemetery, Poperinge, Ypres Salient Battlefields, Belgium(The Chinese Labour Corps was used to clear battlefields, dig graves, trenches and carry out other such tasks which were often difficult and dangerous.)". Retrieved 2 May 2015.
THE CHINESE LABOUR CORPS AT THE WESTERN FRONT (In all, nearly 2,000 men from the Chinese Labour Corps died during the First World War, some as a direct result of enemy action, or of wounds received in the course of their duties but many more in the influenza epidemic that swept Europe in 1918–19" (PDF). Retrieved 26 April 2015.
WW1 Photos Centenary Website: 2014–2018 By Paul Reed (26 April 2010). "Chinese Labour Corps 1919". Paul Reed. Retrieved 26 April 2015.
what I wrote was based on what Woogie wroteis not supported by the available evidence. Therefore you are to blame despite your claim of innocence.
But yeah if you want Chinese laborers to the total, I guess you could. No. As pointed out, repeatedly, I do not accept any totals made by synthesis. I only accept totals published by reliable references. FDW777 ( talk) 21:01, 29 April 2020 (UTC)
https://www.britannica.com/event/World-War-I/Killed-wounded-and-missing If this is a RS, then someone should mention it in the lede. Maybe as the higher range. 2601:85:C101:BA30:EDBB:7563:362A:612E ( talk) 14:53, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000. These civilian deaths were largely caused by starvation, exposure, disease, military encounters, and massacres.The Banner talk 18:56, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
FDW, Banner, you don't need to shoot down everything I do. Britannica is an RS. Thank you Slater, is it okay if I make that addition when May 5 passes? 2601:85:C101:BA30:EDBB:7563:362A:612E ( talk) 19:08, 30 April 2020 (UTC)
Slater, I think we misunderstood each other. I know there isn't a range of 13 million. The upper bound for civilians would be 13 million, per the source. So I think we can reference that? And would we add 8.5 million military and 13 million civilians from the source to get 21.5 million total as a total upper-bound (assuming that's the highest number, of course), or would that be OR or WP:SYNTH? 2601:85:C101:BA30:F4C6:D43C:D787:34A5 ( talk) 13:33, 1 May 2020 (UTC)
I made the edit. 2601:85:C101:BA30:9047:B5F5:878B:1137 ( talk) 21:26, 7 May 2020 (UTC)
Firstly
this change changing The
civilian death toll was about 8 million
to The
civilian death toll was about 13 million
. While the Brittanica reference and the 13 million were talked about in general terms, there was never any proposal to make that specific edit. If there had been, the objection would be a complete and total violation of
WP:NPOV, since we're not just going with the total from one reference. The
Brittanica reference isn't even that useful for the civilian death toll. Unlike the table that contains breakdowns of deaths/wounded/missing etc by country (cited to U.S. War Department in February 1924. U.S. casualties as amended by the Statistical Services Center, Office of the Secretary of Defense, Nov. 7, 1957
, the civilian death toll is given as It has been estimated that the number of civilian deaths attributable to the war was higher than the military casualties, or around 13,000,000
. As I said earlier in the discussion, who has estimated this? This is en estimate that needs further research and direct attributing, not stating as fact given there is clearly no academic consensus on the total number of deaths. The change makes the article completely contradictory, since the table at
World War I casualties#Casualties in the borders of 1914–18 gives a total of 2,250,099 civilians killed due to military action and crimes against humanity and 5,411,000 to 6,100,000 due to malnutrition and disease. So if we're saying 7,661,099 to 8,350,099 in the table, why are we saying 13 million in the text????
Secondly this change changing the upper limit on military deaths from 10,824,236 to 20,824,236. I'm struggling to consider this to be anything other than vandalism. The table gives the Allied military death toll as 5,186,854 to 6,433,692, and the Axis military death toll to be 3,386,200 to 4,390,544. This gives a total, excluding Neutral nations, of 8,573,054 to 10,824,236, which is what the article said before. So why has 10 million suddenly been added to the total?????
In order for consensus to be clear for any edits, I request that any future changes are made explicitly clear as to what exactly figure(s) are going to be changed from and to and which references support the change. Talking generally about Brittanica and 13 million then increasing the death toll by 5 million and making the article contradictory was never actually proposed. The IP editor did the exact opposite of what he said he was going to do
here, Assuming consensus is met, I would do what Slater did, keeping a range of numbers. Why would I get rid of the lower bound? Question Slater, where would I add the reference in that sentence, after the 8.5 and 13, or at the end of the sentence?
So I really do have to ask the question. Why, given the IP editor explicitly said they would not be removing the lower bound did they do just that?
FDW777 (
talk)
12:07, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
I think all this needs taking to wp:dr now. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:17, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
The I will suggest to obvious change "The total number of deaths includes from 9 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 million, " to "The total number of deaths includes from 8.5 to 11 million military personnel. The civilian death toll was about 8 to 13 million, ". The IP responds with the reply I've mentioned above,
Assuming consensus is met, I would do what Slater did, keeping a range of numbers. Why would I get rid of the lower bound? Question Slater, where would I add the reference in that sentence, after the 8.5 and 13, or at the end of the sentence?The change they made was the opposite of what was discussed, that's absurd. FDW777 ( talk) 12:54, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
I have said what I have to say. Slatersteven ( talk) 12:56, 8 May 2020 (UTC)
Agreed, half of this page should be archived by now. FDW, the source you provided is good, where exactly is it used in the article, and what does the 6 million refer to specifically? It would be good to add it in the article. 2601:85:C101:BA30:D475:54CE:FC6C:FDD ( talk) 01:15, 12 May 2020 (UTC)
The sentence in the lead The civilian death toll was about 8 to 13 million
is changed to give a lower figure of 6 million. This is supported by the third column for civilian deaths in
this reference and a 6.5 million death toll would also be referenced by the second column of that reference and the last reference listed in the section at
World War I casualties#Classification of casualty statistics. I lost track of how many changes I'd need to make to the tables to take this reference into account, so dealing with one issue at a time.
FDW777 (
talk)
13:40, 15 May 2020 (UTC)
Done FDW777 ( talk) 16:06, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
I (same IP as before) propose to add Liberian civilian losses to the chart. 4 civilians dead. Using this source:
Shellum, Brian G. African American Officers in Liberia: A Pestiferous Rotation, 1910-1942. University of Nebraska Press, 2018, pp. 108.
Any questions? 2601:85:C101:BA30:2001:115C:431D:A5C6 ( talk) 21:22, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
First, it seized and scuttled the Liberian schooner RLS President Howards, then sent the Liberian crew ashore with a demand to haul down the French flag and destroy the French cable station. When President Howard refused his demands, German Korvettenkapitän Herman Gerche opened fire with his 150-mm deck gun, destroying the French wireless station and damaging the cable station. The hour-long shelling caused extensive damage to buildings and killed four people, three of them children.I have previously objected to methodology such as that as not acceptable, we should be relying on published totals. FDW777 ( talk) 21:55, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
Technically Banner, they could all be military by that logic, due to child soldiers and what not. I believe it is referring to civilians, as the book goes into detail on military matters separately, but I'm not interested on quibbling about semantics as before.
FDW, if this methodology is unacceptable, should we delete the chart? Personally, I wouldn't oppose that at this point. Secondly, I believe a footnote of Liberian dead, though very small, is worthy of mention. What are your thoughts, and if you agree with me, how do you think we should go about it? 2601:85:C101:BA30:2001:115C:431D:A5C6 ( talk) 23:03, 28 May 2020 (UTC)
My preference with the charts would be something similar to this reference, although split charts are not important. Instead of trying to jam every single variation of casualty figure for a particular country into a chart, each study such as Westmoreland, Overmans, Winter etc has its own column. Any countries not included in this table could be covered in however many paragraphs of prose are needed in a section titled "Other casualties" or something like that. FDW777 ( talk) 14:44, 29 May 2020 (UTC)
A discussion is taking place to address the redirect German causalties in World War I. The discussion will occur at Wikipedia:Redirects for discussion/Log/2020 June 3#German causalties in World War I until a consensus is reached, and readers of this page are welcome to contribute to the discussion. — Tenryuu 🐲 ( 💬 • 📝 ) 18:34, 3 June 2020 (UTC)
In the table, it says deaths as a % of population, but shouldn't it be deaths and missing? I think that's the number that's being divided by population. Chaptagai ( talk) 10:03, 18 November 2023 (UTC)
I'm glad that after a few years the article is adding back some of the information that was removed in the mass revert. Could still use a lot of cleanup, but it's coming along. Maybe in the next decade... 2601:85:C100:46C0:498:2748:D8A9:B774 ( talk) 02:24, 27 March 2024 (UTC)
In Brazil_during_World_War_I (unsourced) it says three Brazilian civilians were killed by a German sub. Is this an oversight, or has it been excluded from the page? If so, why? Nyonyatwelve ( talk) 15:37, 17 July 2024 (UTC)