Most estimates place the total number of deaths during the Second World War at around 70-85 million people. Approximately 17 million of these deaths (20-25 percent of the total) were due to crimes against humanity carried out by the Nazi regime in Europe. In comparison to the millions of deaths that took place through conflict, famine, or disease, these 17 million stand out due to the reasoning behind them, along with the systematic nature and scale in which they were carried out. Nazi ideology claimed that the Aryan race (a non-existent ethnic group referring to northern Europeans) was superior to all other ethnicities; this became the justification for German expansion and the extermination of others. During the war, millions of people deemed to be of lesser races were captured and used as slave laborers, with a large share dying of exhaustion, starvation, or individual execution. Murder campaigns were also used for systematic extermination; the most famous of these were the extermination camps, such as at Auschwitz, where roughly 80 percent of the 1.1 million victims were murdered in gas chambers upon arrival at the camp. German death squads in Eastern Europe carried out widespread mass shootings, and up to two million people were killed in this way. In Germany itself, many disabled, homosexual, and "undesirables" were also killed or euthanized as part of a wider eugenics program, which aimed to "purify" German society.
The Holocaust
Of all races, the Nazi's viewed Jews as being the most inferior. Conspiracy theories involving Jews go back for centuries in Europe, and they have been repeatedly marginalized throughout history. German fascists used the Jews as scapegoats for the economic struggles during the interwar period. Following Hitler's ascendency to the Chancellorship in 1933, the German authorities began constructing concentration camps for political opponents and so-called undesirables, but the share of Jews being transported to these camps gradually increased in the following years, particularly after Kristallnacht (the Night of Broken Glass) in 1938. In 1939, Germany then invaded Poland, home to Europe's largest Jewish population. German authorities segregated the Jewish population into ghettos, and constructed thousands more concentration and detention camps across Eastern Europe, to which millions of Jews were transported from other territories. By the end of the war, over two thirds of Europe's Jewish population had been killed, and this share is higher still when one excludes the neutral or non-annexed territories.
Lebensraum
Another key aspect of Nazi ideology was that of the Lebensraum (living space). Both the populations of the Soviet Union and United States were heavily concentrated in one side of the country, with vast territories extending to the east and west, respectively. Germany was much smaller and more densely populated, therefore Hitler aspired to extend Germany's territory to the east and create new "living space" for Germany's population and industry to grow. While Hitler may have envied the U.S. in this regard, the USSR was seen as undeserving; Slavs were the largest major group in the east and the Nazis viewed them as inferior, which was again used to justify the annexation of their land and subjugation of their people. As the Germans took Slavic lands in Poland, the USSR, and Yugoslavia, ethnic cleansings (often with the help of local conspirators) became commonplace in the annexed territories. It is also believed that the majority of Soviet prisoners of war (PoWs) died through starvation and disease, and they were not given the same treatment as PoWs on the western front. The Soviet Union lost as many as 27 million people during the war, and 10 million of these were due to Nazi genocide. It is estimated that Poland lost up to six million people, and almost all of these were through genocide.
Estimated number of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War from 1933 to 1945, by background
*Not including Jews. The total figure for Soviet Civilians including Jews was 7,000,000, and the total figure for Soviet POWs including Jews was 3,000,000.
**The source gives a range of 250,000 to 500,000; the average of these two figures has been used for display purposes.
The source also states that total figures for German political opponents and resistance activists in Axis-occupied territories remain undetermined; and states that the total number of people killed for being homosexual numbers is in the hundreds, possibly thousands, and may be included among the so-called asocials.
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United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (December 8, 2020). Estimated number of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War from 1933 to 1945, by background [Graph]. In Statista. Retrieved November 10, 2024, from https://www-statista-com.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/statistics/1071011/holocaust-nazi-persecution-victims-wwii/
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Estimated number of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War from 1933 to 1945, by background." Chart. December 8, 2020. Statista. Accessed November 10, 2024. https://www-statista-com.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/statistics/1071011/holocaust-nazi-persecution-victims-wwii/
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. (2020). Estimated number of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War from 1933 to 1945, by background. Statista. Statista Inc.. Accessed: November 10, 2024. https://www-statista-com.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/statistics/1071011/holocaust-nazi-persecution-victims-wwii/
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. "Estimated Number of Victims of The Holocaust and Nazi Crimes against Humanity during The Second World War from 1933 to 1945, by Background." Statista, Statista Inc., 8 Dec 2020, https://www-statista-com.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/statistics/1071011/holocaust-nazi-persecution-victims-wwii/
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, Estimated number of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War from 1933 to 1945, by background Statista, https://www-statista-com.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/statistics/1071011/holocaust-nazi-persecution-victims-wwii/ (last visited November 10, 2024)
Estimated number of victims of the Holocaust and Nazi crimes against humanity during the Second World War from 1933 to 1945, by background [Graph], United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, December 8, 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www-statista-com.ezproxy.canberra.edu.au/statistics/1071011/holocaust-nazi-persecution-victims-wwii/