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Which countries have the largest military? In this video we compare the size of every country’s military personnel in each year for the period 1820 to 2022. Military personnel are defined as troops under the command of the national government and held ready for combat. Troops in the reserves, colonial troops, irregular forces such as civil defense units, frontier guards, gendarmerie, carabinieri, cossacks and other quasi-military units are not included. During times of war, a country will increase the spending of its military and the size of its military. This pattern has been seen for centuries. Russo-Japanese War, American Civil War, Russian Civil War, Chinese Civil War, WW1, WW2, Vietnam War - during all of these times, either through additional government allocation or through drafting, the countries at war would increase their military sizes. Watch on and take an adventure through centuries of history and wars to witness the size and scale of the largest armies in the world from 1820 to today.
