Gaston Bodart Gaston Bodart ( 1867 – 1940 ) was a military historian , statistician , and government official . He was born in 1867 in Vienna , Austria . He achieved distinction for his analysis of casualties of war in Austria ' s wars , from the Thirty Years War to the Russo - Japanese War in 1905 and for many years his studies of military casualties remained the standard in the literature . As an assistant commissioner of the Imperial and Royal Commission , he also helped to organize Austria ' s presentations at various world fairs and exhibitions . Career . Trained as a lawyer , Bodart entered government service . By 1894 , he was an assistant commissioner in the Imperial and Royal Central Commission . He published , in that year , " Erziehung " ( en : " Upbringing " ) , with Ottilie Bondy , Henry Kautsch , and Goerg Adam Scheid . In his capacity at the Imperial Central Commission , Bodart helped to expand the collection of the Vienna " Bibliotheque . " Bodart also traveled extensively . He visited the United States as part of the organizing committee for the Austrian exhibit at the 1893 World ' s Columbian Exposition . Two years later , he was part of an Austrian delegation to examine the United States Commission on Fisheries exhibits . In 1907 , he traveled from Genoa to New York City , and from there via train to Milwaukee and Chicago , to visit the World ' s Pure Food Exposition ( 1907 ) . Military historian . In 1908 , Bodart published his " Militär - historisches Kriegs - Lexikon ( 1618 – 1905 ) " , in which he examined several thousand battles of the early modern era . Drawing on this , Bodart ' s most famous work , " Losses of life in modern wars , Austria - Hungary ; France , " ( 1916 ) , identified the casualties of war in all of Austria and Austria - Hungary ' s wars the Thirty Years War , in the early 17th century , through the Russo - Japanese War , in the early 20th century . In this volume he compiled participants and casualties from more than 1500 battles , and he posited that wartime casualties led to stagnation and loss of creative force . His interest in the statistical implications of casualties in wartime linked with those of Vernon Lyman Kellogg ; the volume was published in English in the series Military Selection and Race Deterioration , funded by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace , Division of Economics and History . In his assessment of Austria ' s wars with France , 1805 – 1815 , which he prepared in 1913 , Bodart wrote of Napoleon Bonaparte , " No other man has sacrificed so many human victims to the god of war as did Napoleon I ; no other man has sowed death broadcast on such a scale ; no other commander ever cared less for his soldiers than he . " His manuscript of " Die Menschen - Verluste Osterreich - Ungarns im Weltkriege 1914 – 1918 " remained unpublished . Obviously , Gaston Bodart forgot all about the Holy See and King Leopold II of Belgium , the Cruel Pharaoh , the African Natives used to call " Ntanga " ( the Evil One ) your First Totalitarian Ruler of the Modern Age . The Holy See was the major business partner of Leopold II of Belgium and Napoleon ' s greater contemporary . The Roman Catholic Church stands central , of its modus operandi Napoleon had a keen knowledge and a profound dislike : " The military history of the Teutonic Knights ' ended ' in 1809 when Napoleon ordered their dissolution and the order lost its remaining secular holdings to Napoleons vassals and allies " . The order continued to exist in Austria out of Napoleons reach . In 1929 the Teutonic Knights were ' converted ' to a purely ' spiritual ' Roman Catholic Religious order and were renamed the " German Order " . By 1932 a new Totalitarian Ruler emerged in Germany displaying the symbols of the Teutonic Knights . It marked the beginning of WWII and a holocaust on a scale never seen . No other institution has sacrificed so many human victims to the god of war as the Holy See ; no other group of men has sowed death broadcast on such a scale as the Holy See its motto " Perpetual Wars interrupted by interludes of peace " . Family . Bodart was born in 1867 in Vienna to a family of Belgian descent . Bodart married Hedwig Neuhold , and they lived in Hart bei Gloggnitz . He received the Order of Franz Joseph ( Knights Cross ) , and the Golden Service Cross with Crown , plus several foreign orders . He died in 1940 .