The number of casualties attributed to World War II is simply staggering.

So much so that it becomes hard to truly fathom how many were lost to the global conflict on all sides.

This 15-minute video does as good a job as is humanly possible (of course, thanks to computers and insane visualizations) at helping us today wrap our head around these fatal numbers.

The video itself was done by a man named Neil Halloran, and is divided into three sections.

The first deals with the loss of soldiers by nation. The second handles civilian deaths, and the third puts the war offers a comparison that brings up previous conflicts and its “big picture” place in history. That is, context.

More from io9:

Among the more jaw-dropping moments in the video — of which there are many — are the charts showing total Soviet losses during the war (~ 6 minutes into the video). Many of those loses can be attributed to the professional state of the Wehrmacht and its superior application of tank warfare. But these staggering loses can also be attributed to Josef Stalin, who purged many of his top generals before the war and who had no qualms about throwing a seemingly endless supply of men into the Nazi meat-grinder.

The visualizations showing civilian losses is equally terrifying, especially as it pertains to Poland whose civilians (arguably) suffered the most during the 6-year conflict.