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Welcome to The World Remembers.

The names in our database that appear in our commemoration display were obtained through agreements with governments or organizations of participating nations. The lists of those who lost their lives are by no means complete, depending on the state of each nation’s archives and on the neglect — or in some instances the loss — of records after 1918.

The World Remembers has no right to the names other than to include them in our commemoration display and in the Search The Names function.

Never before has an act of remembrance been undertaken to include the names of all the dead from all 1914–1918 nations. Never before has a commemoration attempted to provide details on each individual who lost their lives. In future years, we hope to be able to include the names of the millions of civilians who also lost their lives. Yet civilian records, if they exist at all, can be harder to source, accurately, than military records.

Because of the nature of the fighting and of breakdowns in record-keeping, many names have no date of death. We have included them in the 1918 display year. The Search results for these names will indicate the date of death as Unknown/Inconnu. If the year of death of the name you are searching for is unknown to you, please be sure to include the year 1918 in your search.

As you search, the Data Considerations will provide some information about the source of the names from each nation, and the completeness of that nation’s archives. Many nations continue to make additions or corrections. The World Remembers will be updated accordingly.

The Canadian names were provided by Veterans Affairs Canada. Should there be errors or omissions, please contact that department. Their lists contain the names of service men and women who died from war-related causes up until April 30, 1922, after which deaths were not officially designated as war deaths.

Between 1914 and 1914 much of the world was at war. We believe that the names of the dead, no matter their national origin, deserve to be acknowledged. We continue to work with a number of nations to complete the lists of their war dead and to appeal to nations not yet participating to join this unique memorial.

I have many times asked myself whether there can be more potent advocates of peace upon earth through the years to come than this massed multitude of silent witnesses to the desolation of war.

—King George V on his visit to a First World War cemetery in France in May 1922

Your search returned results.

Countries Data Constraints and Considerations

The Canadian names in this project are from Canada’s Virtual War Memorial database at www.vac-acc.gc.ca and include Canadian war deaths up to and including 1922. The deaths recorded from 1919 to 1922 represent Canadians who died of their wounds in the years after the war.  For more information about each of the 68,000, including their place of burial, you can explore the following sites: www.cwgc.org or www.warmuseum.ca.

For more information on the Canadian data click here to be taken to the full Canadian Data Constraints and Considerations page. 

The names of the 14,643 Australians killed in 1918 were provided by the Australian War Memorial.  It is worth noting that there are additional individuals listed in Australia’s Commemorative Roll, but these are names of Australians that served with the forces of the United Kingdom and other nations. Their names will be included in the UK names display.

For more information on the Australian names click here to be taken to the full Australian Data Considerations page. 

 

Under construction.

The In Flanders Fields Museum in Ieper, Belgium has provided the data on Belgian deaths in WWI. Ieper, in its capacity as the City Of Peace, is compiling a database of all WWI deaths on Belgian soil. For more information go to www.inflandersfields.be. 

For more information on the Belgian data click here to be taken to the full Belgian Data Considerations page. 

The names appearing from the Czech Republic in the 2018 display were provided by the Central Military Archives – Military History Archives in Prague. They represent an archive of WW1 names being compiled by the Czech Republic and they are based mainly on the card-index of fallen soldiers stored in the  Military History Archives. WW1 Czech soldiers fought as part of the Austro-Hungarian Army whose original Verlustlisten records are in the Kriegsarchiv in Vienna that contains information on the 1,016,200 Austro-Hungarian Empire military deaths in the First World War.

For more information please click here to be taken to the full Czech Republic data consideration page. 

The French Ministry of Defense has provided The World Remembers with two separate databases of military deaths. The names in the 2018 display are a compilation of 1918 French military deaths from these two sources.  

This names display will include only the names of French soldiers killed in the years 1914 to 1922 as well as soldiers from the French colonial armies.

For more information on the French data please click here to be taken to the French Data Considerations page. 

Volksbund Deutsche Kriegsgräberfürsorge (VdK) Germany has provided The World Remembers with the names of 800,165 German soldiers killed in WWI.  There are perhaps 700,000 other names missing from these data files. The official number of German military deaths in the war is estimated at 1.8 million. 

For more information on the German data click here to be taken to the full German Data Considerations page. 

When searching for a Hungarian name in The World Remembers display, in the Date of Death search field please enter 1914, 1915, 1916, 1917 or 1918 until you receive a result. We are in the process of obtaining a date of death for each Hungarian soldier from the Military History Institute and Museum in Budapest and until such time as we receive this information, entering different years will assist your search. Please follow this link for the full description of the work the Military History Institute and Museum undertook over the past eight years to assemble the names list.

 

Since Ireland did not achieve independence from Britain until 1922, the names of Irish soldiers as belonging to an independent Irish nation are not displayed here. Yet when the First World War broke out in 1914, Irishmen, like thousands of others living at that time in the then British Empire, enlisted for military service. From across the island of Ireland, approximately 200,000 are estimated to have enlisted over the course of the war, although the total figure of Irish-born personnel who served is likely higher due to the numbers who would have enlisted from outside of Ireland in Britain, Canada, America, Australia, New Zealand and elsewhere. It is currently estimated that at least 35,000 Irish personnel never returned home, although research is ongoing. The In Flanders Fields Museum Names List project provides a searchable online database of soldiers and civilians, including from Ireland, who were killed on Belgian soil. For the Names List project, go to imr.inflandersfields.be/search.html.

More information on Irish involvement in the First World War can be found at: https://www.decadeofcentenaries.com/wp-content/uploads/publications/ArmisticeDay/ArmisticeDay/index.html

The Italian names appearing in this display were provided mainly by the Museo Civico del Risorgimento in Bologna and the Museo Emotivo della Grande Guerra. Italian First World War losses were significantly higher than the number of names presented here. In the absence of a comprehensive national database of Italians who lost their lives in the 1915-1918 war, The World Remembers will continue to seek sources, particularly in the north of Italy, for additional names.
 

to come

During the First World War, present-day Poland did not yet exist as an independent nation. The territory was divided into three partitions under the control of the Russian Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Republic of Germany. The Polish names presented in this project will not include those who lost their lives fighting in the armies of Russia, Austro-Hungary or Germany. The archival work of locating and extracting those names has yet to be undertaken.

The names that appear here were provided by Poland’s Military History Bureau in Warsaw and have been assembled from a number of sources, among them the Polish Legion, the Polish Corps and the Polish Blue Army.

For more information, contact  p.baranowska@ron.mil.pl at the Military History Bureau in Warsaw.  

 

At the time of this exhibit’s launch at the Canadian War Museum, the Institute of Military History in Bratislava is working towards digitally publishing its records of more than 150,000 Slovak names. The names will be added to this commemoration after the list has been received by The World Remembers. Please see below the description of the Institute of Military History’s work to assemble the list.

The database provided by the Institute of Military History in Bratislava includes the names of soldiers from the Slovak territory who lost their lives while serving in the Austro-Hungarian Army (KUK). The names were extracted from the Casualty Lists (Verlustliste) of the KUK — records that were not entirely complete at the end of the war because of the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire. 

For more information, please contact vhu@vhu.sk or

The Institute of Military History
Krajná 27
821 04 Bratislava
Slovak Republic

The Slovenian names data was provided by the collaborators of the project Collection of Data on World War I Military Casualties in Slovenia. The database is not yet complete. The estimated number of fallen soldiers from the Slovenian territory is between 30,000 and 35,000. For more information, please contact the Institute of Contemporary History, Ljubljana at inz@inz.si.
 

The South African names data was provided by the South African National Defence Force. For more information, please contact:
 
South African National Defence Force
Documentation Centre
20 Visagie St, Pretoria Central, Pretoria, 0002 South Africa
Tel: 012 670 8127 (ask for reading room and enquiries)

The names of soldiers from the Ottoman Empire who lost their lives in the First World War were provided by the Turkish Ministry of National Defence in coordination with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Losses from the Ottoman Empire were significantly higher than the number of names presented here. The World Remembers continues to seek sources for the additional names.

During the First World War, present-day Ukraine was divided between the Russian and Austro-Hungarian empires. The Ukrainian names displayed by The World Remembers will not include those who lost their lives fighting in the armies of either Russia or Austro-Hungary. The archival work to locate these names has yet to be undertaken.

The Ukrainian names that appear here were provided by the Ukrainian National Military History Museum in Kyiv and have been assembled from a number of sources connected with Ukraine’s struggle for independence in 1917 and 1918.
 

The names of the 258,204 soldiers from the British Forces killed in 1918 were provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Bear in mind that many men from Ireland, Canada, Australia and other nations also served in the British forces. Their military records are therefore in Britain and their names will appear in the UK names display.  For more information about each of the 258,204 names, including their place of burial, go to www.cwgc.org.

For more information on the UK data click here to be taken to the full UK Data Considerations page. 

The US WWI names data has been provided by the NWWIM&M in Kansas City, Missouri, which is consolidating WWI fatalities databases from a number State archives and other sources. With no comprehensive national WWI database in existence, the work of the NWWIM&M is an effort to create the first complete American database of names of all US servicemen and women, military and civilian, who were killed or died in WWI. 

The names of the 30,997 soldiers from the British Indian Army killed in 1918 were provided by the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. Bear in mind that these men were from India before it was divided in 1947. Therefore the names presented as belonging to the British Indian Army will come from three present day nations, India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. 

For more information on the British Indian Army data click here to be taken to the full British Indian Army Data Considerations page. 

The names of those killed from the Chinese Labour Corps, while under British command, has been obtained with the assistance of the Commonwealth War Graves Commission. The World Remembers is hopeful that the French Ministry of Defense will supply the names of those killed while under French command.

We acknowledge that the nations participating in this commemoration do not represent all First World War participants. It is the intention of The World Remembers to include all countries caught up in the 1914–1918 war. Those not yet participating have been contacted either through their 1914–1918 Centenary Commissions or through their representatives in Ottawa. We look forward to continuing our discussions with them.
 
Some nations not yet participating were once colonies of France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Belgium or Portugal. We understand that the names of their war dead are contained in the archives of the former colonial powers. Yet at present we believe this data would be difficult to extract with any reasonable accuracy. However, should any of these nations wish to join The World Remembers commemoration, we encourage them to contact us at theworldremembers@gmail.com. We are eager for a discussion. 

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