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Human cost

Documented casualty ranges and aftermath.

Educational history. Casualty figures are documented ranges. This is not operational advice, a ranking of nations, or a how-to for weapons or coups.

Documented casualty ranges and aftermath.

Related topics

1

World War I

The 1914-1918 industrial war that broke empires, enfranchised mass mourning, and left a peace that did not hold.

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2

World War II

A global industrial war, 1939-1945, that killed tens of millions and remade borders, law and nuclear politics.

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K

Korean War

A 1950-53 peninsula war, still without a peace treaty, that fixed two Korean states and a US-ROK alliance.

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V

Vietnam War

A 1955-75 Indochina war that fused decolonisation, civil war and US intervention -- and remade English-language memory of limited war.

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I

Iran-Iraq War

A 1980-88 war of trenches, cities and tankers that killed hundreds of thousands and ended with UN Resolution 598 -- no triumphant peace.

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C

Chinese Civil War

A 1927-49 struggle between Nationalists and Communists that, after Japan's war, produced the PRC and a Republic of China on Taiwan.

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T

Thirty Years' War

A 1618-1648 Central European catastrophe of religion, dynasty and famine, ended by the Peace of Westphalia.

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M

Mongol conquests

Thirteenth-century conquests that built the largest contiguous land empire and left a death toll still argued in wide scholarly ranges.

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A

American Civil War

The 1861-65 US war over union and slavery that killed more Americans than any other US war and remade the Constitution.

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C

Chile 1973 coup

The 11 September 1973 military overthrow of Salvador Allende that opened Pinochet's dictatorship -- political-military history, not a how-to.

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