World War II casualties of Poland

Around 6 million Polish citizens perished during World War II: about one fifth of the entire pre-war population of Poland.^[1] Most of them were civilian victims of the war crimes and the crimes against humanity which Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union committed during their occupation of Poland. Approximately half of them were Polish Jews who were killed in The Holocaust. Statistics for Polish casualties during World War II are divergent and contradictory. This article provides a summary of the estimates of Poland's human losses in the war as well as a summary of the causes of them.

According to the Polish government's official report on war damages which was published in 1947, the total number of Poland's war dead was 6,028,000; 3.0 million ethnic Poles and 3.0 million Jews, excluding the losses of Polish citizens who were members of the Ukrainian and Belarusian ethnic groups. When the communist system collapsed, this figure was disputed by the Polish historian Czesław Łuczak who estimated that the total number of losses was 6.0 million; 3.0 million Jews, 2.0 million ethnic Poles, and 1.0 million Polish citizens who were members of the other ethnic groups whose losses were not included in the 1947 report on war damages.^[2][3] In 2009 the Polish government-affiliated Institute of National Remembrance (IPN) published the study "Polska 1939–1945. Straty osobowe i ofiary represji pod dwiema okupacjami" (Poland 1939-1945. Human Losses and Victims of Repression Under the Two Occupations) that estimated Poland's war dead at between 5.6 and 5.8 million Poles and Jews, including 150,000 during the Soviet occupation.^[4] Poland's losses by geographic area include about 3.5 million within the borders of present-day Poland, and about two million in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union.^[5] Contemporary Russian sources include Poland's losses in the Polish areas annexed by the Soviet Union with Soviet war dead.^[6]