Talk:World War II casualties/Archives/2023/March

UK numbers issue
The UK is shown here as 383,700 "military deaths from all causes" plus an additional 67,200 civilian deaths. The figures are cited to Westminster Abbey's book of remembrance for civilian deaths (though they quote 66,375 plus "several hundred" new additions), and to the CWGC annual reports. These are no longer online so cannot be checked.

However, the official Strength and casualties of the armed forces and auxiliary services of the United Kingdom 1939 to 1945 (Cmd. 6832, 1946; copy here) gave:


 * 264,443 members of the armed forces killed 1939-1945 (including missing presumed dead as of 1946; including prisoners died in captivity; including deaths by disease attributable to service in the Navy only; includes members of some colonial forces including Newfoundland and Southern Rhodesia); broken down as 50,758 Royal Navy, 144,079 Army, 69,606 RAF
 * 31,271 deaths from natural causes whilst serving in the military (presumably omitting the Navy ones counted above)
 * 624 women in the auxiliary services killed
 * 1,206 members of the Home Guard "died of wounds, injury or illness attributed to service"
 * 60,595 civilians killed or missing presumed dead
 * 30,248 merchant mariners killed or missing presumed dead (including foreign nationals serving on British ships)

In total this gives us 388,387, plus a few thousand still missing as of February 1946 who may later have been determined to have died. There is also a note that the number of civilians interned in occupied countries was not known.

Looking at the CWGC database, they list 453,799 WW2 dead from the UK, broken down as 84,836 RAF, 210,309 Army, 59,181 Navy, 29,018 merchant marine, 69,202 civilian, 1,253 "miscellaneous". The total for the three services is 355,036, plus the merchant marine is 384,055, which suggests to me it that this is the likely source for our cited figure here.

The CWGC includes a substantial amount of post-war casualties - 23,415 UK "Second World War" deaths after 15 August 1945, of which 14998 Army, 4214 RAF, 2915 Navy.

I cannot figure out why the discrepancy:


 * 1946 report for Army/Navy/RAF deaths, including natural causes - 295,714
 * CWGC records for Army/Navy/RAF deaths - 355,036
 * CWGC records for Army/Navy/RAF deaths, only "wartime deaths" as of 15/8/1945 - 332,909

My understanding is that the CWGC will include all deaths in service (so natural causes will be included). However, we're still looking at a difference of around 30,000 even by the most generous intepretation. RAF numbers in CWGC are 22% higher, Army 46% higher, Navy 17%.

So I guess the immediate question is a) which figure should we give here? The secondary question is b) why such a substantial discrepancy? (and why does it predominantly affect the Army?) Andrew Gray (talk) 23:45, 28 February 2023 (UTC)
 * There could be a few issues at work here.


 * 1) The CWGC counts graves and memorials, not the dead. As noted in each of their annual reports (2021-2022 version p. 36) there are 217,682 unidentified graves from the two world wars, which have yet to be attributed and in some cases a mass grave is recorded as 1 grave rather than 10 or 20 to represent the number of people buried at that spot.
 * 2) British (and colonial) military forces were still dying after the Japanese surrender. For example, Douglas MacArthur banned the British forces under his jurisdiction from entering Malaysia to begin relief efforts at the end of the war, leading to large numbers of allied POWs starving in the camps abandoned by the Japanese. Relief efforts only began after MacArthur had his signing ceremony in Tokyo Bay on 2 September.
 * 3) There would be delayed war deaths caused by wounds or sickness months or years after the war ended.
 * I think the CWGC will be the most authoritative, despite the caveats, though we should perhaps be clearer in noting the caveats on this page. We will need to replace the CWGC data every year or two as they publish new annual reports with improved data. From Hill To Shore (talk) 00:07, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Another factor to consider is that the initial data was collated in the era where computers were still locked in the vaults of the code breakers. All reports were on paper and had to be reviewed and managed by hand. There would be long lag times between something happening on the ground and a formal report being documented and the numbers tallied. You can see this to some extent with records of promotions and awards in the London Gazette; during both World Wars and for a year or so afterwards, they were reporting many events with a lag time of up to a year or so (For example, "Lt. Scott is promoted Captain, dated 1 June 1944" in the September 1945 London Gazette - that is a made up example for illustration). The primary data from 1946 should not be relied on in any way; there are too many potential areas for discrepancy. It is best to rely on secondary analysis that has occurred in the decades since then. From Hill To Shore (talk) 00:18, 1 March 2023 (UTC)
 * One more example of the source of discrepancy is HMS Gloucester (62). When the ship was sunk in 1941, German propaganda claimed they had taken 500 prisoners from the ship. Contemporary British sources speculated that this could be accurate as they had no other information available. However, only 85 men survived the sinking. When did the British authorities become aware of the discrepancy at an official level? If the reports used to calculate deaths in 1946 had all 500 shown as POWs, then there were 415 extra deaths in the Royal Navy missing from the statistics. I think I read a source once that claimed the official inquiry into the Gloucester sinking didn't occur until 1947 (I may be mistaken though). There were perhaps other similar cases like this where people classified as POWs turned out to be dead (if they were believed to be a prisoner, they would neither be dead nor missing in the 1946 data). From Hill To Shore (talk) 10:39, 1 March 2023 (UTC)