Devastation of World Wars

In 1939, the estimated population of Germany was 69 million. Generally, slightly less than half of the population will be male. So, let us use 33 million as a rough guess. World War I began in 1914, and World War II began in 1939, or roughly a generation apart. Estimates of casualties vary, but the combined German military dead from the two World Wars was approximately 6.8 million. You can see that means that upwards of 20% of the male population of Germany died in military service in a 32 year period, and that does not count those not in the military who died. If you restrict those percentages to the age eligible for military service, the percentage would grow considerably larger. And that is just one of the countries involved in the wars.