Wars by Era
31 major conflicts, 351 battles, and an estimated 170,730,433 dead.
An imperial war between Japan and Russia over dominance in Korea and Manchuria, fought largely on Chinese and Korean territory without meaningful consent from either society. Japan opened hostilities with a surprise naval attack at Port Arthur and won costly land campaigns and a decisive naval victory at Tsushima. The Treaty of Portsmouth recognized Japan’s paramount interests in Korea and transferred Russian leases and railway rights in southern Manchuria, helping enable Japan’s 1910 annexation of Korea. Defeat intensified Russia’s 1905 revolutionary crisis but did not alone cause it. Japan’s victory over a European empire resonated globally, even as it expanded Japan’s own colonial empire.
11 battles · 160,000 dead
A decade of revolution, civil war, regional uprisings, and state reconstruction that overthrew Porfirio Díaz’s long dictatorship but never followed a single program or unified front. Madero’s electoral revolt opened struggles among constitutionalists, federal armies, Villistas, Zapatistas, workers, peasants, and regional leaders; the United States intervened repeatedly. The 1917 Constitution established ambitious principles on land, labor, education, church-state relations, and national resources, but implementation was contested and uneven. Demographic losses from combat, disease, famine, and reduced births are often summarized as “one million,” though the causes and count remain disputed and violence continued beyond 1920.
12 battles · 1,250,000 dead
Two wars that nearly ended Ottoman rule in Europe and violently redrew southeastern Europe. In 1912 Bulgaria, Serbia, Greece, and Montenegro attacked the Ottoman Empire as the Balkan League; in 1913 Bulgaria attacked former allies over the partition of Macedonia and was defeated after Romania and the Ottoman Empire also entered. Treaties recognized an Albanian state and redistributed Macedonia and Thrace, while leaving contested populations on all sides of new borders. Armies and irregulars committed massacres, expulsions, forced conversion, and village destruction against Muslim and Christian civilians, producing mass displacement. The settlements fueled later grievances and alignments, but did not make the Sarajevo assassination or world war inevitable.
11 battles · 300,000 dead
A global war that began when leaders turned the Sarajevo assassination and July Crisis into a general European conflict, then mobilized empires and societies across Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East, the Pacific, and the Atlantic. Industrialized firepower, mass armies, blockade, occupation, forced labor, famine, disease, and genocide killed military personnel and civilians on an immense scale. Millions of colonized soldiers and laborers served, often coercively, while campaigns outside the Western Front reshaped states and borders. The war destroyed four empires and intensified revolution, anticolonial politics, population displacement, and unresolved territorial conflicts; the later Second World War was connected to this settlement but was not an automatic consequence of it.
15 battles · 19,700,000 dead
The Russian Civil War was a cluster of overlapping wars across the former Russian Empire after the 1917 revolutions: Bolshevik forces fought diverse White armies, socialist rivals, anarchists, peasant movements, newly independent states, and foreign expeditionary forces. The Red Army’s eventual victory cannot be reduced to a two-sided contest. Red and White terror, anti-Jewish pogroms—especially in Ukraine—requisitioning, forced mobilization, epidemic disease, and the 1921–22 famine killed civilians on a vast scale. Estimates of seven to twelve million deaths combine different dates and causes and are not a direct combat count. Bolshevik victory enabled creation of the Soviet Union while independence struggles and border wars produced a smaller post-imperial state.
12 battles · 10,500,000 dead
The Spanish Civil War began when a coalition of generals launched a coup against the elected Second Republic in July 1936; Franco became the Nationalist leader after the war began rather than initiating it alone. Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy provided decisive military support to the Nationalists, while the Soviet Union and international volunteers aided the fragmented Republican coalition under the constraints of non-intervention. Both zones saw mass political killing, but Francoist repression was more sustained, continued after victory, and underpinned a dictatorship lasting until 1975. Guernica became a symbol of attacks on civilians, although the conflict was more than a simple rehearsal for World War II.
11 battles · 525,000 dead
Japan’s full-scale invasion of China in 1937 expanded an imperial war that had begun with the seizure of Manchuria in 1931. Nationalist China bore most conventional fighting while Communist forces waged resistance and expanded their political base; Chinese civilians endured occupation, bombing, forced labor, famine, biological warfare, and mass atrocity. Japanese forces murdered and raped on a vast scale at Nanjing, although estimates vary rather than resolving to a precise 200,000–300,000 count. Chinese Nationalist decisions also caused catastrophic civilian losses, most notably the 1938 Yellow River flood. After 1941 the conflict became a central theater of the wider Asia-Pacific war and ended with Japan’s 1945 surrender, after perhaps 15–20 million or more Chinese deaths.
11 battles · 21,255,700 dead
The Soviet Union invaded Finland on November 30, 1939 after failed territorial negotiations and the disputed Mainila shelling used as a pretext. Finnish forces exploited terrain, mobility, local initiative, and Soviet operational failures to win striking defensive victories, but the Red Army adapted, broke the Mannerheim Line, and compelled the March 1940 Moscow Peace Treaty. Finland preserved independence but ceded more territory than Moscow had originally demanded and evacuated hundreds of thousands of residents. Soviet losses were much higher, though ratios and exact figures remain disputed. The war influenced later strategic perceptions, but it did not by itself convince Hitler to invade the Soviet Union; Finland later fought as Germany’s co-belligerent in the Continuation War.
11 battles · 151,957 dead
The deadliest war in recorded history grew from linked conflicts and imperial expansion in Europe, Africa, and Asia. Japan’s war in China preceded Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in September 1939, which was followed by the Soviet invasion from the east under the German-Soviet pact. Axis conquest and occupation produced racial war, forced labor, mass starvation, the Holocaust—the systematic murder of six million Jews—and other genocides and mass atrocities. Allied victory resulted from enormous and unequal contributions across the Soviet, Chinese, European, Mediterranean, Atlantic, African, and Pacific theaters. Germany surrendered in May 1945; Japan surrendered after the atomic bombings, Soviet entry against Japan, blockade, conventional destruction, and internal political decisions. Estimates of roughly 70–85 million dead remain imprecise, with civilians the majority.
21 battles · 80,000,000 dead
The Cold War was a global political, military, economic, and ideological rivalry centered on the United States and Soviet Union after World War II, not a single war with a stable battlefield or universally agreed dates. Nuclear deterrence constrained direct superpower war while arms races, alliances, interventions, coups, covert action, and wars in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, Africa, Latin America, and the Middle East killed millions. Calling every local conflict a proxy can erase the independent aims of states, revolutionaries, anticolonial movements, and civilians. Periods of confrontation alternated with détente and arms control; the Soviet bloc’s crises and the USSR’s dissolution ended the bipolar order without resolving all conflicts it had shaped.
14 battles · 22,000,000 dead
The 1948 war began as intercommunal war in Mandatory Palestine after the UN recommended partition in November 1947 and intensified when Israel declared independence and neighboring Arab armies entered in May 1948. Jewish communities faced a genuine struggle for statehood and survival after the Holocaust; Palestinian Arabs faced defeat, massacre, flight, and expulsion remembered as the Nakba. Israel survived and expanded beyond the proposed partition borders. Jordan controlled the West Bank and East Jerusalem and Egypt the Gaza Strip; the proposed Arab Palestinian state did not emerge. Roughly 700,000–750,000 Palestinians became refugees, while Jewish communities were also displaced from areas captured by Arab forces. The 1949 armistices ended large-scale fighting without a peace settlement or resolution of the refugee question.
11 battles · 21,273 dead
The Korean War was an internationalized civil war rooted in Korea’s liberation from Japanese empire, division by Soviet and U.S. occupiers, rival state-building, and violent conflict before 1950. North Korea’s invasion of the South in June 1950 triggered a United Nations Command dominated by the United States; its advance toward the Yalu brought large-scale Chinese intervention, while the Soviet Union supplied the North. Armies and governments on all sides committed atrocities, and U.S.-led bombing devastated North Korea. Front lines eventually stabilized near—not simply at—the 38th parallel. The July 1953 armistice stopped most fighting but no peace treaty followed, leaving a divided peninsula, millions dead or displaced, and separated families.
11 battles · 3,200,000 dead
The Algerian War was an anticolonial war and internal struggle that ended 132 years of French rule. The FLN fought French forces and Algerian rivals while France deployed conscripts, police, auxiliaries, mass internment, forced resettlement, collective punishment, disappearance, and systematic torture; the FLN also attacked civilians and alleged collaborators, and the pro-French OAS waged terror near the end. The conflict destabilized the French Fourth Republic and led to de Gaulle’s return. The 1962 Évian agreements and referendum produced independence, followed by the mass departure of European settlers and deadly reprisals against many harkis. Claims of one million Algerian dead are commemorative and disputed; scholarly estimates are often lower, and all categories remain politically charged.
11 battles · 478,600 dead
The wars in Vietnam grew from Vietnamese anticolonial struggle against France, the unresolved 1954 Geneva settlement and partition, rival states in North and South, southern insurgency, and escalating intervention by the United States and its allies alongside support from China and the Soviet Union. It was simultaneously a civil, revolutionary, decolonization, and Cold War conflict—not merely an American proxy war. The United States deployed ground forces from 1965, conducted enormous bombing campaigns across Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia, and withdrew forces under the 1973 Paris agreement. South Vietnam fell in 1975. Vietnamese soldiers and civilians bore most deaths; massacre, imprisonment, assassination, forced displacement, unexploded ordnance, and chemical defoliants extended the consequences far beyond U.S. domestic politics.
8 battles · 3,600,000 dead
After Egypt nationalized the Suez Canal Company, Britain, France, and Israel secretly coordinated an invasion. Their forces won rapid battlefield victories, but United States pressure, United Nations action, and Soviet threats compelled withdrawal; Egypt retained the canal, exposing the limits of European imperial power after 1945.
10 battles · 4,404 dead
The Congo’s abrupt transition from Belgian colonial rule produced an army mutiny, an unauthorized Belgian intervention, mineral-rich secessions supported by Belgian and foreign commercial interests, and a constitutional crisis culminating in Patrice Lumumba’s assassination. The large ONUC mission helped end Katanga’s secession, while rebellions and foreign intervention continued before Mobutu seized power in 1965.
10 battles · 100,000 dead
This entry covers two selected India–Pakistan wars: the 1965 conflict, which grew from disputes in the Rann of Kutch and Kashmir and ended in a United Nations ceasefire and return to prewar positions, and the limited 1999 Kargil conflict after Pakistani forces crossed the Line of Control. It does not cover the distinct wars of 1947–48 or 1971.
11 battles · 13,000 dead
After the 1966 coups, anti-Igbo mass violence, failed federal negotiations, and creation of new states, the Eastern Region declared the Republic of Biafra in May 1967. Federal Nigeria fought to prevent secession and imposed a blockade; territorial contraction, disrupted agriculture, and restrictions on relief produced mass starvation. Military and famine deaths remain deeply disputed, commonly estimated from several hundred thousand to roughly two million.
12 battles · 2,000,000 dead
After an escalating May–June 1967 crisis—including Egyptian mobilization in Sinai, the requested withdrawal of UNEF, closure of the Straits of Tiran, and belligerent regional rhetoric—Israel opened the war with a large first strike on June 5. It defeated Egypt, Jordan, and Syria and occupied Sinai, Gaza, the West Bank including East Jerusalem, and the Golan Heights, producing displacement and an occupation that reshaped the conflict.
10 battles · 22,000 dead
The Troubles were a political and constitutional conflict over Northern Ireland’s status, rooted in partition, unequal government, civil-rights demands, and competing national identities—not simply a religious war. Republican and loyalist paramilitaries and British state forces all used violence; civilians formed the largest group among roughly 3,500 people killed. The 1998 Agreement created a consent-based, power-sharing settlement without erasing division.
12 battles · 3,600 dead
Egypt and Syria opened a surprise attack on October 6, 1973, seeking to reverse Israel’s occupation of territory captured in 1967. Initial Arab advances and heavy Israeli losses gave way to Israeli counteroffensives after mobilization and resupply. United Nations ceasefire resolutions ended the fighting and opened a path to disengagement diplomacy; an Arab oil embargo and production cuts intensified a wider energy crisis.
11 battles · 15,200 dead
As Portuguese rule ended, the MPLA, FNLA, and UNITA competed for control of independent Angola. Their struggle had local political and regional roots but was transformed by Soviet and Cuban support for the MPLA and aid from the United States, Zaire, apartheid South Africa, and others to its rivals. The war survived the Cold War and failed peace settlements, ending after Jonas Savimbi’s death and a 2002 ceasefire.
9 battles · 500,000 dead
This entry covers Democratic Kampuchea, the Khmer Rouge regime that ruled Cambodia from April 1975 to January 1979. Forced evacuation, coerced labor, starvation, disease, torture, execution, and persecution killed nearly two million people. Courts have distinguished genocide against protected Vietnamese and Cham groups from the regime’s broader crimes against humanity. Vietnam’s invasion toppled the regime but began another war and a prolonged occupation.
10 battles · 2,000,000 dead
Lebanon’s civil war grew from a crisis of the state, unequal confessional power, social and economic tensions, Palestinian armed presence, and regional conflict. Lebanese and Palestinian factions formed shifting alliances while Syria, Israel, and other states intervened. The 1989 Taif Agreement rebalanced but retained confessional government; large-scale fighting ended in 1990, with deaths commonly estimated around 120,000–150,000.
12 battles · 150,000 dead
Armed revolt against the PDPA government was already spreading when the Soviet Union intervened in December 1979, killed Hafizullah Amin, and installed Babrak Karmal. Soviet and Afghan government forces fought diverse mujahideen movements supplied chiefly through Pakistan with United States, Saudi, Chinese, and other support. Soviet troops withdrew in 1989, but the Najibullah government survived until 1992; civil war, regional intervention, and institutional collapse—not one direct chain—later enabled the Taliban and transnational jihadist organizations.
10 battles · 1,035,000 dead
Iraq invaded Iran in September 1980 amid border disputes, Saddam Hussein’s regional ambitions, and fear of revolutionary Iran. Iran recovered most occupied territory by 1982 and then carried the war into Iraq; both governments sustained a prolonged war of attrition. Iraq repeatedly used chemical weapons, including against Kurdish civilians. A 1988 United Nations ceasefire stopped the fighting, while final border restoration came only in 1990; total deaths remain disputed in the hundreds of thousands.
11 battles · 600,000 dead
Argentina’s military government invaded the disputed Falkland Islands/Islas Malvinas on April 2, 1982. Nationalist claims, failed diplomacy, junta legitimacy, and miscalculation all shaped the decision; it cannot be reduced to a single diversion from domestic crisis. Britain sent a task force and restored its control after 74 days. The war killed 649 Argentine personnel, 255 British personnel, and three islanders; sovereignty remains disputed.
10 battles · 907 dead
After Iraq invaded and purported to annex Kuwait in August 1990, the United Nations imposed sanctions and later authorized member states to use force to restore Kuwaiti sovereignty. A United States-led coalition conducted a 42-day air campaign and four-day ground offensive that expelled Iraqi forces. The rapid victory coexisted with disputed Iraqi military losses, civilian deaths, destruction of infrastructure, and postwar uprisings crushed by Saddam Hussein’s forces.
11 battles · 28,792 dead
The Yugoslav Wars were distinct but connected conflicts during the federation’s dissolution, driven by institutional collapse, competing national projects, political mobilization, and intervention—not timeless ethnic hatred. Forces on several sides committed war crimes and displaced civilians; international courts documented systematic campaigns of persecution and recognized the 1995 Srebrenica killings as genocide. Bosnia ended with Dayton, while the Kosovo conflict and NATO intervention followed; deaths across the wars are usually estimated around 130,000–140,000.
11 battles · 140,000 dead
The First Chechen War followed Russia’s attempt to reverse Chechnya’s unilateral independence and ended in 1996 with a withdrawal and deferred status decision. The second followed an Islamist incursion into Dagestan and apartment bombings officially attributed to militants but still surrounded by unresolved allegations. Russian forces used indiscriminate and disproportionate firepower and committed disappearances and killings; Chechen forces also committed serious abuses and later mass hostage attacks. Russia re-established control through a Kadyrov-led government, while casualty totals remain highly disputed.
11 battles · 175,000 dead
After the April 6, 1994 shooting down of the Rwandan president’s plane—whose perpetrators remain unresolved—extremists controlling the interim government, armed forces, militias, and local administration organized genocide against Tutsi and murdered moderate Hutu opponents. Civilians also participated under coercion, ideology, or local pressures. The RPF military victory ended the genocide while also producing abuses and mass flight. United Nations estimates range from 500,000 to one million victims, and an independent inquiry found a system-wide UN failure.
10 battles · 800,000 dead