Talk:World War II casualties/Archives/2013/June

Edit request on 6 June 2013

I was looking at the total world wide casualty list and did a quick calculation and what I found is that the high end figures come out right about 85 million total deaths.

I know this may sound like a bit of a nitpick but personally a difference of 5 million is a pretty big difference to me.

Either a "+" should added after the larger total or it should be changed to "85,000,000" for more accuracy.

~ Carson

Gigabytelord (talk) 05:57, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Done I pasted it into a spreadsheet and it totalled just over 85 million, so I altered it, with this edit. Thank you. Begoon ^talk 09:05, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Good catch, I put total world wide casualty list into Excel, the total was over 84 million--Woogie10w (talk) 10:57, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

Hungary Deaths and the Holocaust

A question. The table for WWII deaths gives a total # of deaths for Hungary that is below the estimate for Hungarian deaths in the Holocaust alone, given in another table. I was under the assumption that total WWII deaths included Holocaust deaths. Can this discrepancy be explained? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 99.248.246.39 (talk) 17:06, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Note that the Holocaust deaths schedule reads-included in the above figures of total war dead are the victims of the Holocaust.--Woogie10w (talk) 20:11, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for pointing out this discrepancy, the figures in the main schedule are for 1939 borders, the Holocaust deaths listed below from the Columbia Guide to the Holocaust are for 1940 borders. --Woogie10w (talk) 01:48, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

OK, that being the case, how do we explain the discrepancy between the two charts (and indeed one of the pie graphs) where Hungary's total deaths are lower than the Holocaust deaths alone? 99.248.246.39 (talk) 20:25, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The charts are wrong, a guy from Denmark did them back in 2006. In any case I dont have a clue when it comes to editing charts. Maybe there is a chart expert watching this page who can fix the problem.--Woogie10w (talk) 20:40, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

The main bar chart, which is an SVG, can be edited to correct the errors. It's a bit fiddly to do because the guy who created it didn't label the rectangles in the source code, so that needs fixing, but once done it can be fairly easily updated with just a text editor and a lot of care. If we can identify all of the correct data to update to, I'll look at that over the next week or so. The charts that aren't SVG would need to be regenerated from scratch if the changes are anything but small cosmetic ones. That can be done too, but again, I'd need a little time, because I'm a bit snowed with graphics stuff at the moment. Begoon ^talk 01:58, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I remember that the charts were done in Excel and uploaded to Wiki. I can do Excel charts but cannot upload them to Wiki. Pointer, back in 2006-2008 there was no range for deaths in Germany, China and the USSR. How do charts reflect the current 60-80K+ range for dead?--Woogie10w (talk) 10:20, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I just downloaded the bar chart SVG. It's fairly basic in the source code - using Hungary as an example:

Hungary military has a width of 9 units, Hungary Total a width of 15. You then have to back-calculate that to the scale (24 million = 600 units)

- so Hungary military = 9/600 * 24 million = 360,000 and total = 15/600 * 24 million = 600,000.

The article table has 300,000 military/580,000 total.

On 7 July 2008, when the chart was created the article had 300,000 military / 580,000 total. (just split differently with Holocaust victims).

That's as accurate as the chart seems to be. It's an approximation - which is fair enough in some ways...

Honestly - if we're going to update, maybe best to start fresh, and maybe even try to use something like: Wikipedia:Graphs_and_charts#Horizontal_bar_graph, or Module:Chart#Stacked which caters for stacked bars (but vertical) so that the data is on-wiki and accessible/easily updateable? It's been like this for some time, so we could take the time to build something in a sandbox before replacing it.

As for ranges - that's something we'd need to decide whether and how to show (you could add stacked bars (say light red=low military/dark red=high military - light orange=low total/dark orange=high total), but it could get unwieldy).

If the wiki modules/templates don't work, or aren't flexible enough/or we want something prettier - we can generate new SVGs from Excel data, and leave the data in a wikitable on the image file page so that the next poor soul who comes along in 5 years can repeat the process. Begoon ^talk 11:32, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Thanks for the tutorial, this Wikipedia routine is a vast improvement over the 2006/08 process of uploading our own work. Still we need to build into the chart the range. Any ideas? --Woogie10w (talk) 12:06, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

I thought you meant something like this: As for ranges - that's something we'd need to decide whether and how to show (you could add stacked bars (say light red=low military/dark red=high military - light orange=low total/dark orange=high total), but it could get unwieldy). Did I misunderstand?

Something like (very quick/rough:)

100

200

300

400

Country1

Country2

Country3

Country4

•   Military(low)
•   Military(high)
•   Total(low)
•   Total(high)

Begoon ^talk 12:33, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

IMO civilian and military should have separate hi-low charts--Woogie10w (talk) 12:57, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

That would be even easier, I think, and it would get rid of the funny tooltip issue if you "hover" over the bars, and reduce the complexity of each chart. I haven't played with this lua module at all till just now - it's very new, but I think we could make it do what we want - and the people developing it are around to ask if we want it to do something it doesn't seem to. It seems quite flexible. The thing to do, I guess, would be to decide just what charts we want to generate, and "have a go". Nothing would be lost if we had to fall back on "the old way", and just the design process is often valuable anyway in helping to visualise mentally what we want. Begoon ^talk

One quick thought is maybe 3 charts: Military high/low - Civilian high/low - Overall High/Low - because people are always going to be interested in the latter. Begoon ^talk 13:12, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Go for it be Bold just like the old Skool Wikipedia of 2005--Woogie10w (talk) 13:15, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Ok - well, not today . It's late here on the bottom half of the world, and I think I'll do some mindless gnoming for a couple of hours, then call it a day. I'll set up a sandbox where we can play tomorrow, and we can take it from there, if that suits... Begoon ^talk 13:19, 26 June 2013 (UTC)

Here's a start at User:Begoon/sandbox/casualties. The list of countries is in a template at Template:World War II casualties data, so that it only needs to be updated in one place, and will apply to all the charts. We might possibly do the same kind of thing with the data eventually, so that we have a "data" page, and a "chart graphics" page separately, but for the moment it's in the main chart page. It's all imaginary data at the present. Begoon ^talk 03:21, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Looks fine--Woogie10w (talk) 10:12, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

Good. I'm still on a bit of a learning curve with the Lua module, and I've asked a couple of questions which I'm waiting for answers to. I need to break the wikicode out into separate templates for transcluding into the article, and drop in the correct data, then fiddle around until the formatting is right. I'll give you a shout in a couple of days so that you can comment, if that's ok. Begoon ^talk 11:25, 27 June 2013 (UTC)

India Flag

WW2_casualties#Charts_and_graphs here in that picture the flag provided for India is not suitable, this tri-colour flag is of Republic of India, not of British India, any one can change it? Any reply?Ovsek (talk) 18:11, 6 June 2013 (UTC)

A user from Denmark prepared that file 7 years ago, I dont have clue on how to edit it--Woogie10w (talk) 00:50, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Should we use India or the British Raj?

British India was involved in WW2, not India, generally India is used to mention current republic of India. British India was undivided.Ovsek (talk) 17:45, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

This topic is under discussion at Wikipedia:Dispute resolution noticeboard#World War II Casualties use of India or British Raj. Please take the time to review and comment on this dispute.--Woogie10w (talk) 18:41, 7 June 2013 (UTC)

Indian Casualty figure

The figure of 37,000 Indian war dead in WW2 was a preliminary number from 1945 and is not correct. The current 2011-2012 Commonwealth War Graves Commission figure is 87,000. Since 1945 the Commonwealth War Graves Commission has been able to clarify the fate of those men who were missing in 1945, died as POW or died of wounds. The more recent figure of 87,000 is correct since it is based on 60 years of research. You can check the CWGC figure on page 43 of CWGC report [1] You can find self published web pages on the internet that still pick up the older incorrect 1945 figure.

Please note that The bharat-rakshak.com states More than 87,000 Indian soldiers lost their lives during this conflict, [2]--Woogie10w (talk) 10:37, 8 June 2013 (UTC)

Russian population pyramid

Under the Russian population pyramid it states "Huge population losses of Russia influence the country's population pyramid. Russian male to female ratio is one of the lowest in the world (especially, in older generations), and pyramid shows distinctive age fluctuations due to the loss of a generation during the war."

The pyramid shows nothing of the sort. To have fought in the war - and as the legend refers to excessive male deaths - you would have had to have been 16 in 1945, so 80 by 2010 when this population pyramid is dated. Female life expectancy is approximately five years greater than male life expectancy anyway - see List of countries by life expectancy - in Russia this is twelve years, largely a result of alcohol. The only thing this pyramid shows is the differing life expectancy, which has nothing to do with wartime deaths.

The pyramid should be removed as it adds nothing and - worse - is at best misleading and at worst completely wrong! Now, a population pyramid for 1950 might indeed show the difference. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Quincefish (talk • contribs) 12:35, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

I agree with Quincefish. The pyramid should be removed because it is misleading. What we need are two pyramids, one-1939 and two-1946. The gender gap was 8 million in 1939, in 1946 it was 23.5 million according to Andrev, Darski and Kharkova study of 1993. Is there anybody out there watching the article that wants to keep the Russian population pyramid? Otherwise in two weeks time I will delete.--Woogie10w (talk) 16:02, 21 June 2013 (UTC)

Edit request on 25 June 2013

Hate to bring the casualty figures up again, but I seemed to have ran into yet another error, this time right there in the header sentence and also in the first sentence of the first paragraph.

The first states, "World War II was the deadliest military conflict in history. Over 60 million people were killed, which was over 2.5% of the world population. The tables below give a detailed country-by-country count of human losses." I'm not even really sure if that sentence is even required given the obvious purpose of the topic, at least not the second half of it anyway. Perhaps it should be rewritten to give more accurate figures? Truthfully I'm not entirely sure how you would about that. The main sticking point with me is matter of factly stated figures.

The second issue is a just a numbers adjustment.

"World War II fatality statistics vary, with estimates of total dead ranging from 50 million to more than 70 million.[1] The sources cited in this article document an estimated death toll in World War II that range from approximately 60 to 80 million, making it the deadliest war in world history in absolute terms of total dead but not in terms of deaths relative to the world population."

As you can see the paragraph kind of contradicts itself stating that total casualties range from 50 to 70 million in the first half of and then giving a figure of 60 to 80 million in the second. I would also like to point out that the paragraph is also redundant, perhaps it should be shortened to,

"World War II fatality statistics vary, however The sources cited in this article document an estimated death toll in World War II that ranges from approximately 60 to 85 million, making it the deadliest war in world history in absolute terms of total dead but not in terms of deaths relative to the world population."

The grammar suggestions are just that, suggestions, But I believe that the information given should at least match the figures shown later in this very same article.

Gigabytelord (talk) 10:10, 25 June 2013 (UTC)

Not done for now: Please see my reply to your other request at Talk:World War II#Edit request on 25 June 2013. Let's wait until that discussion is finished before introducing any new complications, and then revisit this if necessary? Begoon ^talk 10:36, 25 June 2013 (UTC)