Civilian casualty ratio
Some 7 million combatants on both sides are estimated to have died during World War I, along with an estimated 10 million non-combatants, including 6.6 million civilians. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 59%. Boris Urlanis notes a lack of data on civilian losses in the Ottoman Empire, but estimates 8.6 million military killed and dead and 6 million civilians killed and dead in the other warring countries. The civilian casualty ratio in this estimate would be about 42%. Most of the civilian fatalities were due to famine, typhus, or Spanish flu rather than combat action. The relatively low ratio of civilian casualties in this war is due to the fact that the front lines on the main battlefront, the Western Front, were static for most of the war, so that civilians were able to avoid the combat zones.
Hamburg Commonwealth War Graves Commission Cemetery
In total 708 killed or deceased persons from World War I were buried here or mentioned on commemorative tables. In particular, the prisoners of war who died in Parchim and whose graves could not be identified are mentioned here. Twenty-five unidentified marines, whose submarine sunk in 1916 in the neighborhood of Helgoland, are also honored here. The German War Graves Commission (Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge) counts 676 buried Commonwealth soldiers of World War I.