Military dead
About 9-11 million, with Russia, Germany, France and Austria-Hungary the largest.
About 15-22 million dead is the working band. France and Germany lost a generation of young men; Serbia and the Ottoman Armenian population suffered catastrophic civilian shares.
Disabled survivors, war widows and village memorials were a decades-long social cost in every belligerent.
Bands
Civilian dead
Several million from siege, massacre, deportation and hunger -- plus disputed Ottoman figures.
Wounded
Tens of millions of wound cases; many men were hit more than once.
Influenza overlap
The 1918-19 pandemic is adjacent: war transport spread it; it is not simply "war deaths".
Debt and inflation
Belligerents left gold convertibility and entered a decade of monetary politics.
Regions
France/Belgium
The wrecked zone (zone rouge), still with unexploded shells a century later.
Germany
Unoccupied in 1918, politically exploded; the myth of an undefeated army took root.
Russia
Defeat, revolution, and a civil war that killed more than the German front had.
Ottoman lands
Arab provinces under mandate; Anatolia in wars of succession; Armenian death marches.
British Empire
Dominion nationhood stories (Vimy, Gallipoli) and Indian political awakening.
United States
A short, late, decisive intervention and a retreat from the League.
Key numbers
Deaths (range)about 15-22 million
Armistice11 Nov 1918
US entry6 Apr 1917
Versailles28 Jun 1919
Makers
Krupp and heavy industry
German steel and guns as the Central Powers' industrial core.
British Admiralty/yards
Blockade and convoy -- sea power as economic war.
French Schneider/Creusot
Artillery and the recovery after 1914's lost industrial northeast.
US mass production
Late but large: Liberty engines, destroyers, credit.
Railway states
All sides: mobilisation was a timetable before it was a battle.
Medical services
RAMC, French services, and the new visibility of psychiatric injury.
The 1918-19 influenza is usually counted separately but killed through a world the war had already mixed and malnourished.
Reparations figures became political myths; actual transfers were smaller than speeches implied, yet the politics were real.