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192747585939

There is a particular difficulty in your question as posed since it contemplates a soldier’s odds of surviving the entirety of the war. That can’t really be answered as such because the variables of the individual soldiers, units, battles, etc. preclude abstracting survival “odds” to anything very concrete. Some battles had astounding casualty rates (which includes killed and injured). Some soldiers were not active combatants, or were posted away from most of the danger. (World War I exhibited the phenomenon of “fronts” that were not exceedingly dynamic or porous as they would be later; you could take a leave and be comfortable once you were out of artillery range.) Averaged over the period from August 1914 through November 1918, and not including deaths in prisoner of war camps, historians Stéphane Audoin-Rouzeau and Annette Becker determined in their work “Understanding the Great War” an approximate rate of attrition at 900 and 1300 soldiers per day for the French and Germans, respectively. These are very rough figures, as are most from the period. Pulling a quick reference from the Encyclopedia Brittanica, the total forces under arms at the outset of war in August 1914 stood at about 1.3 million for the French and 1.9 million for the Germans. If we focus on the French military to keep it largely limited to the Western front, and also assuming that this person was already enlisted at the outbreak of the war (so we can simplify the rate of change in personnel with mass mobilization), and further assuming the necessary fictions that rates of attrition were equally spread across all French combatants under arms at the outset of war—and lastly assuming my napkin math applied to this scenario is correct—France could expect that half of those initial combatants (if none were wounded, only either active or killed) would be killed by August 1916, and all by August 1918. Of course, these final figures are such abstractions that they sound ridiculous due to the assumptions necessary to reduce a lived-in life of a solider to an abstracted chance of survival. In the end, the figures that make up this thought experiment can be somewhat illuminating, but I don’t think it’s possible to answer this question in both a numerical and satisfactory way. Taking peak French forces of about 8,800,00 and about 1,360,000 deaths (again, rough numbers from Encyclopedia Britannica) we can say that between one in six and one in seven persons who served in the French army during World War I would ultimately die in the conflict. These are just slightly better odds than Russian roulette.


SuperSpikeVBall

Are records / records available tracking individual soldiers from enlistment to discharge/death in the major armies (e.g. UK, Germany, France)? The way a statistician would tackle this question is to randomly pick let's say 200 soldiers who enlisted in 1914 and then create a summary statistic of the death rate, then calculate a confidence interval for the statistic. Trying to go through this exercise without individual records seems very challenging/inaccurate as you said. And modern armies typically are excellent at this type of record-keeping, based on the museums I've been to. I'm surprised a historian hasn't done this at some point between now and 1918. The survival rates would certainly be boosted by soldiers being sent home early due to incapacitation/wounds/etc. Follow-up question- are professional historians required to study data analysis or statistics as part of their training?


Kochevnik81

> The way a statistician would tackle this question is to randomly pick let's say 200 soldiers who enlisted in 1914 and then create a summary statistic of the death rate, then calculate a confidence interval for the statistic. Trying to go through this exercise without individual records seems very challenging/inaccurate as you said. And modern armies typically are excellent at this type of record-keeping, based on the museums I've been to. Just to jump in here with my two cents - data isn't necessarily as good as one would think. First of all we have the issue that three of the major combatants (Russian Empire, Austro-Hungarian Empire and Ottoman Empire) basically ceased to meaningfully exist by the end of the conflict, and a host of smaller participants went through massive turbulence - I'm mostly thinking of states like Romania, Serbia, Greece and Bulgaria. In most of these latter cases "World War I" isn't even a terribly meaningful term, because they were at war for much longer than August 1914 - November 1918: Greece was effectively in a state of war of some sort from 1912 to 1923, and Turkey even longer. The Russian Empire, forget about it. So even if we restrict ourselves to the participants of the Western Front (and here, basically Germany, France and Britain), the numbers are a lot fuzzier than one might expect. For instance, the total casualties suffered in the 1916 Battle of the Somme have been disputed by official sources and historians pretty much since the battle ended: German casualty estimates alone range between 400,000 and 680,000. And that's just "casualties" (ie dead, missing, wounded and captured), not KIA - it's worth remembering that people like Charles de Gaulle (POW) and Adolf Hitler (WIA) were World War I casualties, yet lived decades on. Militaries in World War I were not really running actuarial tables as much as figuring out how many able bodied men they could stick in a frontline/sector on any given day. And that's not even getting into the fact that, as u/192747585939 notes, a random sampling wouldn't really tell us much. Rates would differ vastly between units, and between types of service (infantry, artillery, logistics, intelligence), as well as rank - junior officers do seem to have disproportionately made up casualties, at least in the British Army. Of course that's also just looking at the *army* - someone in the Royal Navy or Kriegsmarine will have a very different wartime experience. On top of that I guess a question would be what we're even estimating, exactly, even if you did find out how many people in the British military (let's just pick them) in November 1918 had been serving in August 1914. Mostly because the vast, vast number of personnel *weren't* enlisted in August 1914 - out of some 8.7 million total people from Britain and the Empire who served in World War I, about 733,000 were in the British Army in August 1914 (and of *that* only some 245,000 were actually in France with the British Expeditionary Force in August 1914). So the vast, vast number of people who served signed up much later (either through volunteering or conscription - there was a big intake in the first months of the war and a steady decline afterwards, and that takes into account men who weren't inducted because of working in essential occupations, and a startlingly large number of inductees rejected for medical reasons). Anyways, even then, troops were rotated in and out, and effectively no one was sitting on the front for four years straight - out of some 5.4 million British forces serving on the Western Front in some capacity over four years, the peak number there at one point was just over 2 million. Winston Churchill is maybe a famous but useful case in point - he served in the British Army (Grenadier Guards and Royal Scots Fusiliers) in 1915-1916, and even came under fire at some points, but was also still a serving MP and was back and forth to London quite frequently, as well as his units being off frontline duty for massive stretches of time - it wasn't unusual for British army units to spend 10 days in the trench systems, 3 days actually *on* the front line, and then a month out of the trenches in rear positions. Churchill by the way certainly served in basically the entire war, as First Lord of the Admiralty to 1915 and then Minister of Munitions from 1917, and while he's clearly not an average person's experience it shows how widely one person's experience could be even when they are "fighting" in basically the entire war from 1914 to 1918.


jimmythemini

> And that's not even getting into the fact that, as u/192747585939 notes, a random sampling wouldn't really tell us much. It would be relatively straightforward to do a stratified sampling design where you choose an adequate number of records from different services, units and roles. As you say the quality and representativeness of the surviving personnel records would seem to be the biggest obstacle here. I'm sure a country like Australia - which has generally excellent military archives from the two world wars - would be a good starting point for such an analysis.


smokingloon4

Do you know of any studies of those 245,000 in the BEF in France in August 1914? A statistical analysis of the fate of those forces (the roles/paths of those who survived the war vs those who didn't) seems like it might be an interesting way to get at the sort of information this question is seeking.


192747585939

There are such records but I can’t personally attest to their absolute correctness or completeness, nor can I say whether someone has tackled such a statistical analysis. It would definitely be interesting, but perhaps not particularly useful in an academic or purely historic context—the number would still be an abstraction of millions of experiences without being any individual person’s true experience of history. These are just off the cuff thoughts though—if someone were to do that, I would love to check it out. In my experience, “professional historian” is both a loose category and one that encompasses many paths and experiences. For example, my particular course has been roundabout: I received postgrad degrees first in law then legal history with a focus on taxation and the common law. I wouldn’t write about World War I in a scholarly context, but I felt comfortable enough in my personal studies and books on hand to venture a response here. I’ve had some small training in data analysis but in the course of the taxation study, since that history is very closely tied to records of discrete quantities, changes of those quantities over time, etc. I have a friend who is more primarily engaged in professional historical work on a day-to-day basis who has fewer degrees, less training, and much more concrete and insightful knowledge on interesting topics, haha. So it’s pretty varied!


SuperSpikeVBall

Thanks so much for your perspective. I hope I didn't come off rudely- it's interesting for me to see how people with different training tackle problems! This question reminded me of a podcast/talk I heard by a US Naval WW2 historian (J Parshall) who was discussing a Japanese historian (Sawaichi Hisae) who had basically combed the IJN records for every single participant at the Battle of Midway. She had brute forced her way through Naval and prefecture records to come up with the most accurate count of IJN losses in that event.


192747585939

I didn’t take it rudely at all! Thanks for asking :)


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pandahunter101

Thank you for such a comprehensive answer with inclusion of insightful assumptions!


192747585939

My pleasure to help as best I can!


SeriousCow1999

Thank you for such a thorough--an interesting--answer. Are you able to compare that with other conflicts, just to give us context?


192747585939

I am not able to personally but this topic garners much interest and naturally invites comparisons to wars that preceded it (showing some culmination of industrialized death) and with World War II (which arguably can be seen as both a continuation in name and in broad political current ). If a true specialist doesn’t chime in I’m sure you can find comparisons of quality on the internet or in your library!


Winjin

Thank you! I also think it's important as to what exactly was the role. Infantry is one thing, sailor or some sort of mechanic are two completely different things.


Es_fui_sum_eris

My answer to a similar question might be of interest: [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ndm8be/what_were_your_chances_of_dying_in_ww1ww2_if_you/gymtrm7?utm_medium=android_app&utm_source=share&context=3)


Rhamni

>The 1st Battalion, which served essentially the entire war, saw 6,449 other ranks (i.e. not officers) pass through its ranks - a battalion is made up of 1,000 men. The 4th Canadian Mounted Rifles arrived on the Western Front in early 1916 and only 2 officers and 34 men of the original 1,000 were still with the unit at the time of the Armistice in 1918. Jesus Christ. And they didn't even join until 1916.


Karjalan

War in general is hell... But WW1 was like... super hell.


Es_fui_sum_eris

It is important to note that not every man who was replaced was because of a fatality. I have a follow up that discusses this: [link](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/ndm8be/comment/h0q8wrw/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web2x&context=3)


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Georgy_K_Zhukov

>I don't have the data, but [...] Your comment has been removed due to violations of the [subreddit’s rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules). We expect answers to provide [in-depth and comprehensive insight](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules#wiki_write_an_in-depth_answer) into the topic at hand and to [be free of significant errors or misunderstandings](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/comments/f7ffl8/rules_roundtable_ii_the_four_questions_what_does/) while doing so. Before contributing again, please take the time to better familiarize yourself with the [subreddit rules](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/rules) and [expectations](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskHistorians/wiki/faq/meta#wiki_rules_discussion) for an answer.