WW1 (which was by far the most deadly war prior to WW2) killed around 10 million military personal[1]. Assume they were all male.
World population in 1918 was about 1.8B.
Breaking those 10 million deaths over the 4 years of WW1 gives around 1.4 deaths per 1000 people on earth.
Maternal mortality in England and Wales was around 40 deaths per 1000 births in the same period (England and Wales probably had as good a health system as anywhere on earth at this point, so most places were worse).
I'm not sure how to convert from deaths per birth to deaths per people. Women generally had multiple children.
By comparison, a place like Somalia currently has a death rate of around 10 per 1000 births[4].
WW1 (which was by far the most deadly war prior to WW2) killed around 10 million military personal[1]. Assume they were all male.
World population in 1918 was about 1.8B.
Breaking those 10 million deaths over the 4 years of WW1 gives around 1.4 deaths per 1000 people on earth.
Maternal mortality in England and Wales was around 40 deaths per 1000 births in the same period (England and Wales probably had as good a health system as anywhere on earth at this point, so most places were worse).
I'm not sure how to convert from deaths per birth to deaths per people. Women generally had multiple children.
By comparison, a place like Somalia currently has a death rate of around 10 per 1000 births[4].
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties
[2] http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=what+was+the+world+popu...
[3] http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1633559/figure/f...
[4] http://kff.org/global-indicator/maternal-mortality-ratio/