Historians have underestimated the death count of WWI by a huge margin

Yikes , as if we did n’t already remember the First World War arrogate enough victims : A Gallic historiographer says the bit of soldiers kill in the Great War has been vastly minimise — a death enumeration too gloomy by as many as one million .

Above : Serbian prisoner of war are arranged in a semi - circuit and execute by an Austrian firing police squad , 1917 . Credit Underwood & Underwood / Wikimedia Commons .

Traditionally , historians have settled on the figure of nine million soldier killed during WWI . This destruction count is now being challenged by Antoine Prost , Professor Emeritus at Pantheon - Sorbonne University in Paris . In an article print in the final intensity of theComplete Cambridge History of the First World War , Prost claims the death toll should be close to ten million .

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“ Official statistic fail to take into account the soldier who died as a result of sickness or while being hold up in captive - of - war camps,”Prost told FRANCE 24 . “ The armies often stimulate to give their figures , seeking to play down their loss . ”

Here ’s some of what he found :

France : The military had only count those who died while serving in the army ( around 1,325,000 ) , excluding the 70,000 who died of warfare - related illnesses upon returning home .

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Germany : Its military leaders just stopped counting casualty by late July 1918 — some four month before the armistice .

Russia : Soviet stats omit the prisoner of war who died in German encampment , around 200,000 citizenry .

USA : Bucking the trend , the U.S. magnified its loss to establish itself as a major military power ; U.S. loss are guess between 110,000 and 120,000 — but 35,000 of American soldiers really expire of the Spanish Flu before make it home .

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Another number is how different armies buried their dead . The British , for example , work up military cemeteries along the frontline . This contributed to meaning confusion .

France was less organized :

By the time the government set up a national commission to deal with the issuing , in November 1918 , many families had already travelled to the front to look for their suffer ones .

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“ This was illegal , but if the families had enough money they could bribe undertakers to take the bodies back home , ” say Prost .

The government eventually bowed to pressure from the world . More than 240,000 body were describe and sent back home , while the rest were buried in military graveyard .

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