The costs of that war are heavy, but not exact. The Allied Powers lost over 5.5 million killed in combat, while the Central Powers lost over 4.3 million dead in combat. It is easy to calculate the loss of life for a soldier and his family, and with a little more effort one can imagine the lost productivity and contribution to society that millions of lives lost could have provided.
On November 11, 1918, 102 years ago, an armistice came into effect that ended the fighting of World War I. Later, a peace treaty would be signed officially ending the war, but neither the Armistice nor the Treaty of Versailles could end the suffering caused by World War I, nor could they prevent the even larger World War II that would follow.
The costs of that war are heavy, but not exact. The Allied Powers lost over 5.5 million killed in combat, while the Central Powers lost over 4.3 million dead in combat. It is easy to calculate the loss of life for a soldier and his family, and with a little more effort one can imagine the lost productivity and contribution to society that millions of lives lost could have made. Meanwhile, the war caused over 12.8 million wounded for the Allies, and nearly 8.4 million for the Central Powers. Many of the lives of the wounded were ruined due to horrific wounds, amputations, blindness, etc.
Even more difficult to assess are the millions and millions of veterans and their families who suffered mental and emotional scars. Civilian deaths are also easy to cite, at about 4 million. But the most difficult assessments are those resulting from malnutrition during the War, and the lack of adequate agriculture, as well as the national poverty brought about by the years of reduced food production and national debt. The mental health of the population was a major problem due to the War, but trying to do any kind of detailed analysis on this factor is a difficult if not impossible mission.
World War I, meanwhile, is certainly not the only reason for the Russian Revolution that overthrew the Tsar, and ultimately led to the creation of the Soviet Union, but it certainly contributed to the scenario that made the formation of the Soviet Union possible. Even the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi followers can be directly attributed to World War I and the harsh peace treaty that followed, along with the impoverishment of Germany and the hardships experienced by the German people. The Second World War is usually thought of as an extension of the “unfinished business” of the First World War, and the “seeds” of the Second World War were certainly planted by the Great War. The Second War was indeed serious in terms of bloodshed, with somewhere between 60 and 80 million deaths attributable to World War II, of which 50 million were civilians.
Meanwhile, the extremely costly Cold War that followed World War II can be attributed in some way to World War I. But the greatest negative impact that World War I had on human beings came late in the war and lasted for the next 2 years: the so-called Spanish Flu.
With a world undernourished and with poor sanitation and hygiene around the battlefields, it is no wonder that the pandemic broke out in the way it did. In this case, it is estimated to have killed between 50 and 100 million people in 1918-1920, far more than were killed by guns in World War I. Some estimates rank the Spanish Flu pandemic of 1918-1920 as the deadliest in history, eclipsing even the Black Death of 1347-1351 in terms of the number of victims. Another deadly cost of World War I, and one that is often overlooked, is the environmental damage caused by the use of poison gas and the millions of unexploded mines and other ordnance scattered across the battlefields.
Even today, farmers and construction workers sometimes discover mustard gas, which is deadly and remains toxic for decades, even centuries, and does not break down like other poisons, arsenic, and other chemicals. People are killed and maimed by mines and artillery shells that are still exploding, more than a century after they were laid. Around Ypres in Belgium alone, 260 civilians have been killed by unexploded World War I bombs since the end of the war, and another 535 civilians have been injured or maimed in the same area. In 2013 alone, 160 tons of munitions were recovered and defused from the Ypres area. Multiply that by thousands upon thousands of other battlefields around the world, and you get a horrifying picture.