The impact on world War II
Impact Casualties and war crimes Main articles: World War II casualties and War crimes during World War II Of the total deaths in World War II, approximately 85 percent—mostly Soviet and Chinese—were on the Allied side and 15 percent on the Axis side. Many of these deaths were caused by war crimes committed by German and Japanese forces in occupied territories. An estimated 11 [295] to 17 million [296] civilians died as a direct or indirect result of Nazi ideological policies, including the systematic genocide of around six million Jews during The Holocaust along with a further five million Roma , homosexuals as well as Slavs and other ethnic and minority groups. [297] Estimates for the total casualties of the war vary, because many deaths went unrecorded. Most suggest that some 75 million people died in the war, including about 20 million soldiers and 40 million civilians. [288] [289] [290] Many civilians died because of disease , starvation , massacres ,