World War I casualties
The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I were about 40 million: estimates range from 15 to 19 million deaths and about 23 million wounded military personnel, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history.
World War I
After the war, the German government claimed that approximately 763,000 German civilians died from starvation and disease during the war because of the Allied blockade. Germany protested that the Allies had used starvation as a weapon of war. According to the British judge and legal philosopher Patrick Devlin, "The War Orders given by the Admiralty on 26 August [1914] were clear enough. All food consigned to Germany through neutral ports was to be captured and all food consigned to Rotterdam was to be presumed consigned to Germany. ... The British were determined on the starvation policy, whether or not it was lawful."