creepy

[–]SpermWhale 346 points347 points348 points 2 days ago

[–]recreational 3129 points3130 points3131 points 2 days ago*

There's a lack of appreciation in this and other comments, I think, for why WWI was so traumatic for soldiers.

There's an ebb and flow over military history between the offense and the defense having the upper hand. In the last major European war before WWI, the Franco-Prussian War, the offense had the edge; Germany won via its decisive and swift march onto Paris, disabling France before it could really even get in the fight. Decades later, however, by the time WWI began, technology had changed; advances in artillery, machine gun, railway systems, fortifications, etc., and even the adaptation of some low-tech stuff like barbed wire, made the defense much more powerful than the offensive technology that existed at the time.

But the mindset that everyone was operating under was still based on that last major war. This was the rationale behind Germany's invasion of France through Belgium- it believed it had to move quickly to disable France, or it would lose a two-sided war against France and Russia. Likewise, the cult of the offensive dominated French thinking; there was a strikingly testosterone-driven belief that a fervent charge of bayonets was enough to overcome any machine gun fire. And let's not even get started on cavalry. This was the first war in history where cavalry was finally and completely rendered obsolete, and the generals did not adapt well, they were still sending cavalry out to be massacred by machine gun fire even by the time the war ended.

The point is, you have this dynamic where the technology of the time says, "Sit and defend," and the generals say, "Go out and charge!" And the shocking thing is how long it takes the military leadership, especially of the Entente, to adapt; and how frequently they relapse. Really why the war dragged as long as it did; the Germans were better, although by no means perfect, at learning not to bleed themselves dry (culminating ultimately in the intentionally flexible Hindenburg line, while the French were still ordering their men to never yield an inch of ground.) So there's this cycle of long squalid tedium, guys sitting in mud holes getting eaten alive by bugs and fungi and their own bodies, eaten cold food out of tins, interrupted by the occasional pointless but massive bloodletting as whoever's in charge this month initiates another stupid offensive that he sells back home as being decisive and sure to break the stalemate, but maybe, at best, gains a few square miles of territory- as often as not lost again six months later.

And meanwhile the artillery. WWI has lots of poison gas, although it's not very effective in the final tally, and snipers and machine guns, and sappers that explode a line from underneath you; but all together none of them take near the toll that the artillery does. WWI was the war for artillery, dominated by the big guns, with tanks and functioning bombers still in the future. The industrial countries blow through millions of tons of artillery shells, cratering and re-cratering the landscape, first indiscriminately and then in creeping waves as they learn how to use them; the entire peace-time reservoirs of shells are expended in months at the start of the war, and they churn out more, the later battles often using in a matter of days as many shells as even existed in the world in 1912. Being on the frontlines usually meant being surrounded by the constant shock and roar of the big guns, always meant living in fear that you could be snuffed out in an instant by them; and besides the pure psychological terror, meant exposure to literal shockwaves that were constantly fucking with your brain in ways we're just coming to grips with today as we deal with combat veterans who've been exposed to IEDs.

So to recap; if you're a soldier in WWI, you're spending your time in a squalid trench- German trenches were constructed better but made up for it with the severe shortages of pretty much everything caused by the British naval blockade, so that almost everything you ate or wore was a poor substitute made from something else; paper shoes and acorn coffee. Most of the time is a constant tedium undergirded by the fear that at any second a massive offensive could be launched, or even just a random burst of artillery fire, that reduces you to powder without your ever hearing or seeing a warning of it. This is the best case scenario. Worst case scenario you're in an offensive and your general is sending you out to get ground up against the enemy's defenses, with deserters getting shot or hung, trying to crawl through shell-blasted mud and barbed wire into a nest of machine gunners. Slightly luckier and you're on the defense, which is great as long as you don't get gassed or an artillery shell doesn't land on you, or sappers don't blow up the entire ridge you're sitting on, or snipers don't see your head sticking up, or just caught at the hammer point of an all-out offensive that might peter out a few miles forward but is going to sweep you aside through sheer mass of numbers.

And this just goes on. And on. That's what drives people mad. All this thunder and blood and mud and nothing changes. Some of the battles themselves drag on for months of near-constant murder. Maybe if you have a good general you get rotated through so you're not constantly living under the guillotine, but more likely your commander has you or a bunch of your buddies killed for a few worthless square miles you have to give up again when he realizes he can't defend them effectively.

The "Stabbed in the Back" myth that Hitler would use later to help rise to power held that the German army was never defeated in the field, that it lost to politicians at home. The first part is actually kind of true though. Even on the run at the end, the Germans inflicted about as many casualties as they took. The thing is they were never really victorious in the field, because battles during WWI just weren't winnable, really. To either side. The technology meant that both sides were just slowly, painfully bleeding each other until someone gave up. To the soldiers this meant there was no hope of victory- but also no hope even of defeat. Just sitting there, waiting to die.

And all war is barbaric, but it's not hard to see why WWI was so unusually tormenting to the mental well-being of those who fought it.

edit: Sweet, tasty karma. I am studying to become a history teacher, actually. Also if you found the above interesting you want to read A World Undone by GJ Meyer, definitely the best comprehensive and introductory resource on WWI I'm aware of. Goes into all of the above with much more awesome detail, also delves into the incredibly interesting and frustrating story of the series of fuckups that led to war breaking out in the first place, which was hardly the unavoidable outcome you probably read in your gradeschool textbook.

[–]llordlloyd 129 points130 points131 points 2 days ago

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[–]a1211js 17 points18 points19 points 21 hours ago

There is some basis for this from the end of WWI as well. The French were really driven a lot more to the breaking point through the cult of the offensive, and by 1917 there were large scale mutinies and desertions. Whole sections of the line were close to crumbling, and it really is the British and the (threat of) arriving Americans that held everything together. This is the side of France that America really saw at the time, not the 3 years prior or suicidal, stupid bravery that had killed more than a million young French men and wounded a few million more.

Americans like to take credit for "winning the war", and the French and British get (understandably) upset by this. However, by the end of the war, there were ~30,000 Americans arriving on the mainland EVERY DAY. Their military contribution was quite small in the scheme of things, but the threat and promise of the 10-20 million men that could still be mobilized and shipped over once the sleeping giant that was the American economy woke up certainly helped hasten the end for Germany.

Again, not saying this is a valid basis for claims of cowardice, but it is not 100% unfounded and made up.

[–]AmbulatoryAndroid 4 points5 points6 points 23 hours ago

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[–]Rondoggg 7 points8 points9 points 1 day ago

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[–]NegativeD 246 points247 points248 points 2 days ago*

[–]recreational 439 points440 points441 points 2 days ago

Thanks.

On the upside I think WWI left us with some of the most beautifully haunting poetry in the history of war; it was the inspiration for T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land, Yeats's The Second Coming, and Wilfred Owen's Dulce Et Decorum Est, amongst many others. The latter I think is especially compelling because Owen himself died in action very shortly before the end of the war. It's sort of a brutally gentle smackdown to all of the rah-rah patriotism that was getting wide play in the press at the time, saccharine ballads of imagined glory by old men who were never at the front lines;

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of disappointed shells that dropped behind.

GAS! Gas! Quick, boys!-- An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling
And floundering like a man in fire or lime.--
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,--
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori.

[–]sailors_jerry 66 points67 points68 points 1 day ago

The one that always makes me shudder is 'Suicide in the Trenches' by Sigfried Sassoon:

I knew a simple soldier boy
Who grinned at life in empty joy,
Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,
And whistled early with the lark.

In winter trenches, cowed and glum,
With crumps and lice and lack of rum,
He put a bullet through his brain.
No one spoke of him again.

You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye
Who cheer when soldier lads march by,
Sneak home and pray you'll never know
The hell where youth and laughter go.

Absolutely haunting.

Wikipedia article about the poem

[–]Bjidgel 214 points215 points216 points 2 days ago

In Canada as a kid we learnt In Flanders Fields

In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie,
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

[–]BaobhanSith 24 points25 points26 points 1 day ago

                    The General

‘Good-morning; good-morning!’ the General said

When we met him last week on our way to the line.

Now the soldiers he smiled at are most of ’em dead,

And we’re cursing his staff for incompetent swine.

‘He’s a cheery old card,’ grunted Harry to Jack

As they slogged up to Arras with rifle and pack.

But he did for them both by his plan of attack.

Siegfried Sassoon (1886 - 1967)

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[–]jwat82 11 points12 points13 points 1 day ago

[–]LustLacker 24 points25 points26 points 1 day ago

Hey brother,

I went there in the 90's, awesome place. As a US service member/former member they'll let you comb through the woods and take what you find.

So, at the south end of the wood still stands the farm fields USMC crossed to start the offensive. They stepped out of a tree line and walked in four waves toward the German MG's. This is where USMC senior leadership disregarded lessons learned by the UK and French, using ye olde tactics. German MG's just mowed them down.

If you go there, to this day (at least, until 1999 when I was there last), at the south end of the wood are the German positions from the first day of the battle. Just in the treeline runs a granite rock formation, with a split that forms a trench, with a high granite wall behind and a shelf out toward the open field. THis is where the German MG's were set up, and there are still PILES AND PILES of brass casings rotting under the leaves. You can clearly see where MG positions were, judging by the brass mountains. You can see the granite wall behind the MG positions are pock marked with 1903 Springfield 30-06 rounds as the Marines tried to shoot the gunners dead. There is a concentration of pock marks directly behind each MG position.

The entire wood is filled with stories like this, written in the rocks and shell craters. There are two forests there, the white ghosts of the ancient trees that were cropped to an even height by arty, and the almost 100 year old new trees growing up above them. There is the Woodsmens' Lodge at the North end of the wood where a German officer was captured. Not far from there is a swamp where a US round burrowed down into a German munitions bunker and cratered a lake. There are abandoned trenches filled with leaves and brass and rifle cleaning kits and chempro masks and rusting T&E's and we even found a skeletal hand with an EGA ring on it.

We took metal detectors, found many interesting things. But the last thing we found was an undetonated large bore arty shell, nose first down in the mud. SO there's that out there, too. US put tens of thousands of gas rounds into the north wood the last couple days.

Teufelhund was probably a self bestowed moniker.

Oh yes, go to Belleau, people there are awesome, mayor's house is where you can get a drink.

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[–]FatMansPants 26 points27 points28 points 1 day ago

Like in Lord of the Rings, Tolken was talking about his time in the Somme when he was describing the Marshes of the dead.

*They walked slowly, stooping, keeping close in line, following attentively every move that Gollum made. The fens grew more wet, opening into wide stagnant meres, among which it grew more and more difficult to find the firmer places where feet could tread without sinking into gurgling mud. The travellers were light, or maybe none of them would ever have found a way trough.

Presently it grew altogether dark: the air itself seemed black and heavy to breathe. When light apperared Sam rubbed his eyes: he thought his head was going queer. He first saw one with the corner of his left eye, a wisp of pale sheen that faded away; but others appeared soon after: some like dimly shining smoke, some like misty flames flickering slowly above unseen candles; here and there they twisted like ghostly sheets unfurled by hidden hands. But neither of his companions spoke a word.

At last Same could bear it no longer. "What's all this, Gollum?' he said in a whisper. "These lights? They're all round us now. Are we trapped? Who are they?'

Gollum looked up. A dark water was before him, and he was crawling on the ground, this way and that, doubtful of the way. 'Yes, they are all round us,' he whispered. 'The tricksy lights. Candles of corpses, yes, yes. Don't you heed them! Don't look! Don't follow them! Where's the master?'

Sam looked back and found that Frodo had lagged again. He could not see him. He went some paces back in the darkness, not daring to move far, or to call in more that a hoarse whisper. Suddenly he stumbled against Frodo, who was standing lost in thought, looking at the pale lights. His hands hung stiff at his sides; water and slime were diping from them.

'Come, Mr. Frodo!'said Sam. 'Don't look at them! Gollum says we mustn't. Let's keep up with him and get out of this cursed place as quick as we can - if we can!'

'All right,' said Frodo, as if returning out of a dream. 'I'm coming. Go on!'

Hurrying forward again, Sam tripped, catching his foot in some old root or tussock. He fell and came heavily on his hands, which sank deep into sticky ooze, so that his face was brought colse to the surface of the dark mere. There was a faint hiss, a noisome smell went up, the lights flickered and danced and swirled. For a moment the water below him looked like some window, glazed with grimy glass, through which he was peering. Wrenching his hands out of the bog, he sprang back with a cray. 'There are dead things, dead faces in the water,' he said with horror. 'Dead faces!'

Gollum laughed. 'The Dead Marshes, yes, yes: that is their names.' he cackled. ' You should not look in when the candles are lit.'

'Who are they? What are they?' asked Sam shuddering, turning to Frodo, who was now behind him.

'I don't know,' said Frodo in a dreamlike voice. 'But I have seen them too. In the pools when the candles were lit. They lie in all the pools, pale faces, deep deep under the dark water. I saw them: grim faces and evil, and noble faces and sad. Many faces proud and fair and weeds in their silver hair. But all foul, all routting, all dead. A fell light is in them.' Frodo hid his eyes in his hands. 'I know not who they are; but I thought I saw there Men and Elves, and Orcs beside them.'

"Yes, yes,' said Gollum. 'All dead, all rotten. Elves and Men and Orcs. The Dead Marshes.*

[–]bamdastard 48 points49 points50 points 1 day ago*

motorhead 1916

16 years old when I went to war,
To fight for a land fit for heroes,
God on my side,and a gun in my hand,
Counting my days down to zero,
And I marched and I fought and I bled
And I died & I never did get any older,
But I knew at the time, That a year in the line,
Is a long enough life for a soldier,
We all volunteered,
And we wrote down our names,
And we added two years to our ages,
Eager for life and ahead of the game,
Ready for history's pages,
And we fought and we brawled
And we whored 'til we stood,
Ten thousand shoulder to shoulder,
A thirst for the Hun,
We were food for the gun,and that's
What you are when you're soldiers,
I heard my friend cry,
And he sank to his knees,coughing blood
As he screamed for his mother
And I tell by his, side,
And that's how we died,
Clinging like kids to each other,
And I lay in the mud
And the guts and the blood,
And I wept as his body grew colder,
And I called for my mother
And she never came,
Though it wasn't my fault
And I wasn't to blame,
The day not half over
And ten thousand slain,and now
There's nobody remembers our names Í
And that's how it is for a soldier. Ð

[–]CzarApex 17 points18 points19 points 1 day ago

Christmas in the Trenches

My name is Francis Tolliver, I come from Liverpool. Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school. To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here I fought for King and country I love dear. 'Twas Christmas in the trenches, where the frost so bitter hung, The frozen fields of France were still, no Christmas song was sung Our families back in England were toasting us that day Their brave and glorious lads so far away.

I was lying with my messmate on the cold and rocky ground When across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound Says I, "Now listen up, me boys!" each soldier strained to hear As one young German voice sang out so clear. "He's singing bloody well, you know!" my partner says to me Soon, one by one, each German voice joined in harmony The cannons rested silent, the gas clouds rolled no more As Christmas brought us respite from the war As soon as they were finished and a reverent pause was spent "God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen" struck up some lads from Kent The next they sang was "Stille Nacht." "Tis 'Silent Night'," says I And in two tongues one song filled up that sky "There's someone coming toward us!" the front line sentry cried All sights were fixed on one long figure trudging from their side His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shown on that plain so bright As he, bravely, strode unarmed into the night Soon one by one on either side walked into No Man's Land With neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand We shared some secret brandy and we wished each other well And in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell We traded chocolates, cigarettes, and photographs from home These sons and fathers far away from families of their own Young Sanders played his squeezebox and they had a violin This curious and unlikely band of men

Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more With sad farewells we each prepared to settle back to war But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night "Whose family have I fixed within my sights?" 'Twas Christmas in the trenches where the frost, so bitter hung The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war Had been crumbled and were gone forevermore

My name is Francis Tolliver, in Liverpool I dwell Each Christmas come since World War I, I've learned its lessons well That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame And on each end of the rifle we're the same

[–]juke_the_stats 34 points35 points36 points 1 day ago*

My favorite is by Wilfred Owen:

Parable of the Old Man and the Young

So Abram rose, and clave the wood, and went,
And took the fire with him, and a knife.
And as they sojourned both of them together,
Isaac the first-born spake and said, My Father,
Behold the preparations, fire and iron,
But where the lamb for this burnt-offering?
Then Abram bound the youth with belts and straps,
and builded parapets and trenches there,
And stretchèd forth the knife to slay his son.
When lo! an angel called him out of heaven,
Saying, Lay not thy hand upon the lad,
Neither do anything to him. Behold,
A ram, caught in a thicket by its horns;
Offer the Ram of Pride instead of him.

But the old man would not so, but slew his son,
And half the seed of Europe, one by one.

[–]koshercowboy 14 points15 points16 points 2 days ago

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[–]tlisia 12 points13 points14 points 1 day ago*

I can never decide whether this or 'Suicide in the Trenches' is more eloquent on the matter. Sassoon's is just so brief and harsh and cruel, yet this so emotive.

There's always this bullshit contempt of English Literature but this is why people study it. You compare this to the poems before and after and you can see in the literature how the nature of war itself changed. When you read Tennyson with his Poet Laureate status and all the glory he imbues in 'The Charge of the Light Brigade' you can see exactly what Owen was fighting against in his poetry: the people back home and the years of belief in 'the old lie' as he has it. Admittedly 'Dulce Et Decorum Est' was a direct response to Jessie Pope, but this was an old, established tradition.

There is a really interesting collection of First World War poetry, called 'The Men Who Marched Away', and it separates it all in to equal section, the titles of which I can't remember, but kind of like 'Before' and 'After', 'Death' and then it has separate sections on the 'Glory of War', and the the realities of war, and you can see just how the attitudes of the soldier-poets progressed when they got to the trenches, and how much the reports of glory and the enlistment drives back home hurt, maybe even tortured the serving soldiers that they could not save their sons and brothers from this unknown fate. It's devastating but fascinating. It's like they saw no honour or purpose as they had been taught to expect and were fighting for their right to be human and have identity, rather than just be canon fodder.

And then later, in the Second World War, Dylan Thomas making himself in to a Poet Laureate figure, but focusing on the home front and what he knew, with 'A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London' or 'Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid Was a Man Aged a Hundred'. He never tried to pretend to understand what the soldiers were going through. Thomas is the evidence that whilst so many soldier-poets of the First World War lost their lives in the fields of France, they didn't lose the war they fought over literature, and if people would only read it with respect and attention like the people right here have done, at least a part of their experiences would not have been in vain.

I find the First World War to be transitional, in that finally, war could be seen as something traumatic and terrible, not honourable and noble. And that Sassoon, Owen and all the others fought as much for that as they did the Triple Alliance.

For reference, as seems to be included here:

Tennyson, 'The Charge of the Light Brigade':

1.
Half a league, half a league,

 Half a league onward,

All in the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred.

"Forward, the Light Brigade!

"Charge for the guns!" he said:

Into the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred.





   2.
"Forward, the Light Brigade!"

Was there a man dismay'd?

Not tho' the soldier knew

 Someone had blunder'd:

Theirs not to make reply,

Theirs not to reason why,

Theirs but to do and die:

Into the valley of Death

 Rode the six hundred.




3.
Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon in front of them

 Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

Boldly they rode and well,

Into the jaws of Death,

Into the mouth of Hell

 Rode the six hundred.





4.
Flash'd all their sabres bare,

Flash'd as they turn'd in air,

Sabring the gunners there,

Charging an army, while

 All the world wonder'd:

Plunged in the battery-smoke

Right thro' the line they broke;

Cossack and Russian

Reel'd from the sabre stroke

 Shatter'd and sunder'd.

Then they rode back, but not

 Not the six hundred.





5.
Cannon to right of them,

Cannon to left of them,

Cannon behind them

 Volley'd and thunder'd;

Storm'd at with shot and shell,

While horse and hero fell,

They that had fought so well

Came thro' the jaws of Death

Back from the mouth of Hell,

All that was left of them,

Left of six hundred.




6.
When can their glory fade?

O the wild charge they made!

 All the world wondered.

Honour the charge they made,

Honour the Light Brigade,

 Noble six hundred.

Sassoon, 'Suicide in the Trenches':

I knew a simple soldier boy.....

Who grinned at life in empty joy,

Slept soundly through the lonesome dark,

And whistled early with the lark.






In winter trenches, cowed and glum,

With crumps and lice and lack of rum,

He put a bullet through his brain.

And no one spoke of him again.





You smug-faced crowds with kindling eye

Who cheer when soldier lads march by,

Sneak home and pray you'll never know

The hell where youth and laughter go.

Thomas, 'Among Those Killed in the Dawn Raid Was a Man Aged a Hundred':

When the morning was waking over the war

He put on his clothes and stepped out and he died,

The locks yawned loose and a blast blew them wide,

He dropped where he loved on the burst pavement stone

And the funeral grains of the slaughtered floor.

Tell his street on its back he stopped a sun

And the craters of his eyes grew springshots and fire

When all the keys shot from the locks, and rang.

Dig no more for the chains of his grey-haired heart.

The heavenly ambulance drawn by a wound

Assembling waits for the spade's ring on the cage.

O keep his bones away from the common cart,

The morning is flying on the wings of his age

And a hundred storks perch on the sun's right hand.

Thomas, 'A Refusal to Mourn the Death, by Fire, of a Child in London':

Never until the mankind making

Bird beast and flower

Fathering and all humbling darkness

Tells with silence the last light breaking

And the still hour

Is come of the sea tumbling in harness

And I must enter again the round

Zion of the water bead

And the synagogue of the ear of corn

Shall I let pray the shadow of a sound

Or sow my salt seed

In the least valley of sackcloth to mourn




The majesty and burning of the child's death.

I shall not murder

The mankind of her going with a grave truth

Nor blaspheme down the stations of the breath

With any further

Elegy of innocence and youth.




    Deep with the first dead lies London's daughter,

Robed in the long friends,

The grains beyond age, the dark veins of her mother,

Secret by the unmourning water

Of the riding Thames.

After the first death, there is no other.

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[–]happybadger 31 points32 points33 points 1 day ago

What's really interesting to me is how profoundly World War 1 changed art and the mindset of those not even in the trenches.

Prior to the war, art was pretty. That's not to demean it, but it was something the nouveau riche went to see between meals in a clean museum filled with scenes of tranquility and exploration. We had just come out of impressionism and the art of the day, from post-impressionism's naivety and vibrancy to cubism's worship of the industrial age and human progress, reflected this deep love of the accomplishments of the present and potential of the future.

In many ways, we were on the verge of adopting the Technochrist and outright worshiping machines. On one end you had people painting aeroplanes and automobiles with the same reverence that renaissance painters gave god and human form, even the most recognisable building of the era being a gigantic steel erection dedicated to engineers and scientists, and on the other end you had technocratic extremists like the Italo-futurists who outright called for the burning of museums and total purge of Old Europe.

Then the Technochrist gave us machine guns and the ability to slaughter each other on a scale not even the grandest sociopath could wish for. It was a war that no one walked away from alive, and overnight you had an incredible shift in culture.

Enter Dada. Dada wasn't just art, it was a coping mechanism that stretched across every medium. Out was nature and serenity, in were collages of horribly disfigured man and machine-beasts. Text swirled around newspaper clippings and crude, distorted illustrations, screaming faces carried nonsense babyspeak in their mouths, machines and urban pleasures were smashed together into a meaningless material ball and then pasted over by mindlessly assembled fragments of passages.

It wasn't just because the artists of the era were buried in their trenches across France, European society as a whole realised what the modern age brought with it and fell out of love with progress. We fell into a deep Zeitgeist depression and the next two decades were nothing but the outbursts of traumatised children trying to cope with unimaginable loss.

War in general is terrible, but it's not called the Great War because it was big. We didn't survive that war.

[–]SultanPeppar 29 points30 points31 points 2 days ago

[–]rongonathon 8 points9 points10 points 1 day ago

[–]Elemmakil 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago

[–]Amadeus_McDowell 185 points186 points187 points 1 day ago*

I'm always reluctant to post in military topic threads, but I couldn't help myself. You describe the realities of trench warfare very well, but much of your background information is viewed through a single lens of Offense-Defense theory which is interesting academically but not so much so when held to a real test of history and politics.

The end result of trench warfare is indisputable for the Western Front, but the Eastern Front was not nearly as you describe it. In fact, there was much military-political infighting within Germany as to the conduct of the war because of this fact.

The so called Eastern Team of Hindenburg, Ludendorff, and Hoffman were having a lot success in the East and there was growing resentment within the military towards Chief of the General Staff Falkenhayn for his reinforcement of failure in the West with troops that would have been better utilized in the East where there was success (basic military theory - don't reinforce failure). In fact, there was so much resentment for Falkenhayn that he was dubbed "The Evil Angel of the Fatherland." This in-fighting is all the more exacerbated because of Emperor Wilhelm's inept leadership. Falkenhayn is perhaps best remembered for his horrible strategy for Verdun - a total failure. Later in life, Falkenhayn would argue that he never intended to capture Verdun - only to "bleed the enemy to death." This is a very dangerous proposition strategically speaking as it "elevated the exhaustion of the enemy from a means to an end." (Strachan, The First World War, pg. 68).

Back to the cause of the war, you have to consider German fatalism and fundamental organizational issues within the Imperial Army at the time - things brewing since before unification in 1871. The Imperial Army was entrenched in "old army system" ideologies, failed to appreciate civilian control of the Army exacerbated by the fact that all Chancellors after Bismarck were too weak to exert any real control, and finally they actively worked to subvert the authority of the Reichstag. There was no War Minister that could even oversee the entire Imperial Army as the War Minister was actually just the Prussian War Minister. Issues like this compounded problems of control.

This is all, by the way, to ignore the fact that the Germans had been itching to get to war for some time... nearly successful several times. The utilization of the 1879 treaty between Germany and Austria was absurd as it was originally envisioned as a promise of mutual support in the event of an invasion of Russia that was principally not due to a provocation by either signatory of the treaty! Bismarck himself spoke of this many times during his day - including once in Vienna. However, this treaty was the justification used to support Austria-Hungary.

By the time it came down to it, Chancellor Theobald von Bethmann-Hollweg was unable to keep the soldiers out of politics. He deferred to the military and, thus, "in the end, the great decision of 1914 was made by the soldiers." (Craig, Politics of the Prussian Army, 1640-1945, pg. 291).

The bottom line is that Germany wanted a war for a lot of strange and confounding reasons. Certainly, they felt they were better, but they were also fearful of the Triple Entente. Political issues within the Empire enabled the military to hijack the government and, essentially, drag it into war with little protest due to incompetence within the Emperor and the Chancellor. The Reichstag may have thought differently, but the Army had cut them out of this type of decision long ago.

With respect to the Franco-Prussian war, I again disagree. It is true that the early victories were quick - although remember it was the French who declared war on Prussia due to fears of mobilization. When Napoleon III was captured after Metz and Sedan, the Second Empire (government) went with him and the 8 Corps of the Army of the Rheine (and nearly all of the reserves at Chalons). The war, however, didn't end on 1 September as it would have seemed. Bismarck (one of his only failures) allowed Napoleon to surrender himself, as an individual, and didn't force him to agree to any broader demands as the sovereign of the Empire. This left the country (and its people) sans a government.... so how to define victory without a loser? At one point, the Germans tried to negotiate through Empress Eugene exiled in England!

A government of National Defense stood up under Jules Favre in Paris, and Moltke was pushing to go... Bismarck wanted to wait.. blah blah blah, Moltke just says fuck it and rolls anyhow. Bismarck is not happy. Now the issue is dealing with the French civilians (who were using old US Civil War armaments and basically whatever they could find to fight as an insurgency against the Prussians!!). This drags on for some time... Paris under siege but not really giving in and the people in the hills coming after them. Hell, they had French Naval Officers coordinating and running infantry attacks (naval power wasn't really a factor during this war at all, so the navy officers wanted to get in on some Prussian killing).

It took until the late Fall of 1870 for Bismarck to feel truly pressured to do anything about the conflict to expedite it. This outside pressure comes from an international conference to discuss the 1856 Black Sea treaty and Russia's intent to violate it. This pushes Bismarck's hand to the point that he agrees to actually utilize some of the heavy artillery on Paris in an attempt to bend the knee of the civilian resistors (of which there were many).

Prussian morale starts to plummet both on the line and at home. No one is interested in becoming "the last casualty of a war that seemed to drag on," (Showalter, The Wars of German Unification, pg. 297).

FINALLY, in December a 3 week massive bombardment starts. It's not so good at killing Parisians, but it did bow the head of Jules Favre who finally agreed to the surrender and thus gave the Prussians Alsace and Loraine (and their Empire). Interestingly, Wilhelm was crowned in Versaille DURING the war (18 Jan 1871). The war itself didn't end until May.

Again, my point is just that there is so much more to war theory and understanding than the over-simplistic offense-defense model. It has some uses - it is particularly interesting when talking about nuclear powers and nukes as a defensive weapon, etc. But I am much more in line with neoclassical realism when it comes to true military and security studies.

I would suggest the following three articles which I think will give you a better perspective on offense-defense theory and its applications:

World Politics Vol. 30 No. 2, Cooperation Under the Security Dilemma, by Robert Jervis

International Security Vol. 25 No. 1, Grasping the Technological Peace, by Keir A. Lieber

International Security Vol. 22 No. 4, Offense, Defense, and the Causes of War, by Stephen Van Evera

Finally, you may like:

Neoclassical Realism, The State, and Foreign Policy, by Lobell, Ripsmann, and Taliaferro.

*Edited for Grammar and the making of sense.

[–]LtCmdrSantaClaus 47 points48 points49 points 1 day ago

[–]antejentacular 24 points25 points26 points 1 day ago

If I had to guess, I would suggest that recreational has an academic background in history and Amadeus has one in international relations.

Amadeus is focusing on the OP's use of the 'Cult of the Offensive' theory to explain the outcome of the First World War. He is suggesting that there are other IR theories that (arguably) offer 'greater' explanatory value.

Neorealism, Waltzian or otherwise, suffers from a great many flaws in explaining why war broke out. It really depends on how much weight is put on the existence of an anarchic international system. And whether you believe Wendt's contention that anarchy is what states make of it.

Incidentally, Van Evera also wrote an article entitled 'The Cult of the Offensive and the First World War' in which he states quite clearly that: 'the cult of the offensive was a principle cause of the First World War'.

No references because I'm lazy. Google is friend.

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[–]jeaguilar 130 points131 points132 points 1 day ago

[–]fixeroftoys 39 points40 points41 points 1 day ago

[–]Amadeus_McDowell 8 points9 points10 points 1 day ago*

I appreciate your question, and it is definitely valid. Some of the posters below already hit on the thrust of my point (in particular, wolff).

The main point is this: Offense-Defense theory is a way to view the possibility or likelihood of conflict, but it is not a complete view in that it ignores the following: civil-military relationships, military-political relationships, sovereign positions in the international system, and normative realities of the international system of the day. It also puts too much weight to technological advancements as we understand them today..

The crux of the O-D theory states - briefly - that when technology favors the offense, war is more likely as nations will feel they are able to actually achieve their strategic ends. Some apply more metrics than simply technology, such as: nationalization of the population, military doctrine, strength of alliances, and force size (to name a few). These are additions made in order to strengthen the theory because the tech. dominant "core" of the theory is weak. I believe that if the "core" is rotten, the fruit is bad.

E.g., O-D theorists may state that the railroad swung favor towards the offense and therefore it was clear that the Franco-Prussian was going to occur - or at least that a war was going to occur because the tech. advancement ripened the state for conflict, but this is a incorrect. Wars were more frequent between 1850-1871 when neither the Prussian's nor others viewed the railroad as an offensive tool - it was considered favorable to the defense. After 1871 when mobilization realized more authority, the Prussians and others viewed the railroad as more favorable to the offense, but then one must reconcile this fact with the reality that there was 40 years of continental peace between 1871 and WW1.

One must also ask how tech. favors the offense... this is an ambiguous approach. Is a rifle an offensive or defensive weapon? Is a tank? Some outfits have more obvious 'assault' qualities such as paratroopers, but this ignores geographic qualities of the defender. Just because some nation can now "reach out and touch" another nation, how does this favor the reaching nation over the nation that never had to go anywhere? Would the static-nation's supply lines, communications ability, and access to resources, etc.. not still be at an advantage by virtue of the proximity of the fight to its boundaries?

Also, I disagree that Germany viewed the offense as superior in the build up to WW1. Germany understood the inherent strength of the defense - which is why it ultimately tried to utilize a plan of quick and deep penetration in order to mitigate defensive opportunity.

O-D theorists would state that Nuclear Weapons are the most powefull defensive weapon ever created, and thus, a conflict involving or between nuclear powers is unlikely because the offensive is never favored. However, since 1945 there have been many conflicts involving nuclear powers, and even conflicts between nuclear powers (India - Pakistan). Clearly, then, O-D theory falls short (at least in this example) of providing an understanding as to why wars occur.

As far as the cavalry statement, I agree that cavalry was largely obsolete - at least in horseback form. My disagreement is less with the conduct of the war than the causes of the war. Much of my first post was just to highlight the general characteristics of the conflict internally. Wars and governments are often viewed as monolithic in nature - this is probably never the case. O-D theory also doesn't really discuss the conduct of a war (except to draw conclusions about ripeness for future conflict based on the apparent power of the O or D) - it goes up to the point of conflict not through the conflict itself.

recreational highlights rather well the perspective of the individual soldier on the Western Front. He is largely correct and provides a good view of what that may have been like. I agree with him that the poetry of the day is powerful, as well. I simply disagree that O-D is an appropriate tool to use to advance a complete understanding as to why the (or any) war(s) started in the first place.

Does this help clarify? I wrote the last post at 4am, so I apologize for any gaps in my point.

EDIT: for clarity, typos, etc. For references, see my previous post.

[–]recreational 3 points4 points5 points 13 hours ago

Wow, this is a lot to respond to. Thank you for the post. I've gotten a lot of recommendations on things to read/watch/listen to, most of which is new, so I'm going to be a while slogging through that.

I'm aware of the vastly different nature of the war in the Eastern theater. However, the post I made was addressing shellshock, which was essentially a Western front phenomenon, so I intentionally simplified things a good bit to try and bring that experience home (the Franco-Prussian war I actually haven't studied much at all, so on that point I was basically just reiterating the explanations I've heard from others; it's an area I'm interested in and need to bone up more on but I don't have nearly the confidence to offer my own opinions there.)

I only really lightly touched on the causes of the war, because I think it's too complex a subject to treat as a sidebar, so that was another lie of simplification. I also wouldn't want to put the entirety of military history in a prism of simply offense vs. defense; but the balance swung so precipitously towards defense in WWI that I think that really is one of the primary defining features of the war, particularly in the Western front where the fully industrialized powers were going at it; of course there was a lot more movement in other theaters, but that was primarily a result of the relative technological backwardness of the Russians, Austrians, Ottomans, Italians, etc.; and even then there were plenty of spots where the war bogged down interminably.

Appreciate your insights, will try to tackle the recommended literature.

[–]Amadeus_McDowell 3 points4 points5 points 6 hours ago*

Thanks for your reply. I appreciate your response as well as your original post. I'm also glad that you didn't take offense to what I wrote as some thought I sounded dickish/smug/whatever in my post - unintentional if perceived that way. It is an area that I am passionate about and sometimes that doesn't translate as well to text - particularly at 4am.

I think your portrayal of the plight of the soldier on the Western Front was very well articulated and gives great insight. It is also timely. It is important for all of us to recognize the plight of the soldier - shell shock, ptsd, combat stress, whatever as those issues are present in today's wars as well (although obviously MUCH less violent, etc.). It is clearly visible in the extremely high suicide rate of veterans and active duty service members. It's great that you, as a historian, are so well read on this particular issue that is inextricable from conflict but so understudied and considered.

Best of luck on all of your future studies and work!

[–]tpwoods28 9 points10 points11 points 1 day ago

Thank you, so so much for that. I'm studying German history, including the great war, and have seen many generalisations and the usual uninformed "all of the war was the western front" bollocks. To see someone who genuinely knows what they're talking about and has a deep understanding of the reality of the subject is completely refreshing and gives me some hope for reddit.

Even more so, I cannot commend you enough for the use of citations in your writing and your referral to further reading. History on reddit is completely stuck in the pointless drudgery of two users hurling their own opinions at each other, without a single cited fact thrown in to the melee. I hope dearly that one day all history on this site will be like what you have presented here.

So thank you, for both showing everyone how it's done and for giving me some hope.

[–]brokenarrow 11 points12 points13 points 1 day ago

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[–]ImranRashid 13 points14 points15 points 1 day ago*

As an addendum

Generally speaking, as you said, there is a lag period for tactics to catch up to technology, and it is usually the commanders who adapt the fastest to the provisions of said technology that fare the best.

One example of this would be the extent to which the Prussian Field Marshall von Moltke swiftly deployed troops through use of locomotives in an amount of time previously logistically impossible.

An example of where failure occurs in this regard- you could look to Pickett's charge in the battle of Gettysburg. More accurate rifling, quicker reloading, and things like the Gatling gun mean that the volume of fire faced by a charging infantryman makes a head-on charge suicidal. Am I right in saying the Civil War was America's bloodiest? I've heard that said before, and it's as you say- old world tactics meet new world technology.

The Russo-Japanese (thanks doughboy334) conflict at the start of the 20th century is also interesting as it occurred at a rather crucial period in military technology history and represents the entrance of Japan as power on the world stage.

One of the most tragic aspects, I think, about WWI is that behind, "old world tactics," existed a concept of honourable sacrifice that was absolutely torn to pieces when the staggering numbers of the deathtolls made their way back home. I mean, the first battle of the Marne killed about half a million soldiers. WTF.

[–]lyjobu 7 points8 points9 points 1 day ago

[–]doughboy334 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago*

[–]mcbi4kh2 13 points14 points15 points 1 day ago*

This from Captain Corelli's Mandolin has always stuck with me. A soldier explaining to a mother how her son died:

"When did he die, Signor? Was it a good day?"

"He died on a fine day, Signora, with the sun shining and the birds singing."

(He died on a day when the snow was melting and when, from beneath that carapace, there were emerging a thousand broken corpses, knapsacks, rusted rifles, water-bottles, illegible unfinished letters drenched in blood. He died on the day when one of our men realised that he had entirely lost his genitals to frostbite, put a rifle barrel into his mouth, and blew away the back of his head. He died on the day when we found a corpse with its trousers down, squatting against a tree, frozen solid in the act of straining against the intractable constipation of the military diet. Beneath the fundament of the dead man lay two tiny nuggets of blood-streaked turd. The cadaver wore bandages in the place of boots. He died on a day when the buzzards came down from the hills and began to tear the eyes from those long dead. The Greek mortars were coughing over the bluff, and we were buried in the hail of mud. It was raining.)

"He died in action, Signor? Was there a victory?"

"Yes, Signora. We charged a Greek position with bayonets and the enemy were expelled."

(The Greeks had repelled us for the fourth time with a barrage of mortar fire. They had four machine-guns above us where they could not be seen, and we were being cut to pieces as we fell back. Eventually we received a command rescinding the order to take the position, since it was of no tactical significance.)

[–]jimicus 9 points10 points11 points 2 days ago

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[–]vulpes_occulta 9 points10 points11 points 2 days ago

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[–]Keats852 7 points8 points9 points 1 day ago

You're not entirely right about the tactics... the Russo-Japanese War had been fought with roughly the same weapons, and had also turned to trenchfighting. The Japanese had stormed the Russian trenches and had actually won due to tenacity. This was keenly observed by European generals witnessing the battles, who got the feeling that the army with the highest fighting spirit or 'morale' would be able to achieve victory. The Allies also continued their old tactics because in the end, they would have more men left than the Germans. Pretty easy maths in terms of who could field the largest number of men.

In the end, it could be argued that the Germans were the more civilized people, because the people at home decided that the war was enough, and that admitting defeat was better than to continue the bloodshed.

On a further note: I was once at an ambient metal concert, I forgot the name of the band, but the music was so loud, with such a-rhythmic bass & drums and all kinds of whatever, that I felt overwhelmed by it all. My brain couldn't cope and at that moment, I realized that WW1 must have been similar for the soldiers.

[–]Coitastic 6 points7 points8 points 1 day ago

I always find it disappointing that the sociological history surrounding WW1 isn't discussed in as much depth as it could and should be.

The assassination of Franz Ferdinand never really answered why all those countries went to war. Sure, the dynastic history of the alliances, the military movements, and so on was explained, but why the countries and the peoples were so eager and ready to follow that road to war was never explained.

When I was in England, studying WW1 in college, I ended up reading "Riddle of the Sands", learning about invasion literature, and writing a paper on it or a related subject. At the very least there was 40 years of concentrated pulp literature in England, and in the other countries I believe, which aroused peoples attentions and fears, and excited them.

When people talk about how young men were eager to go to war...well, it helps to understand that eagerness if you realize those young men were probably grabbing the paper to read a serial every week, buying cheap novels to read stories - and it was often about invasion, war, the French! The Germans! If you grow up with that and it frames your childhood and adolescence, and it even affects politics on a national scale (which it did!), of COURSE you're eager to go! You've got the prime chance to enter the exciting novels of your youth, what fun!

But that discussion almost never enters classrooms or lecture halls when WW1 comes up. Even my esteemed, world-class professor who focused his career on WW1 didn't bother mentioning this stuff to us. He almost entirely focused on the - to me - lame and useless minutiae of every battles, outcomes, and so on.

TL;DR read "Riddle of the Sands" and find more depth to the origins of WW1 than you thought there were.

[–]mackduck 12 points13 points14 points 1 day ago

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[–]eat-your-corn-syrup 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago

To the soldiers this meant there was no hope of victory- but also no hope even of defeat. Just sitting there, waiting to die.

In the movie The Front Line, when North Korea took most of Korea, some South Korean soldiers were captured by communists. A communist general said to them they were losing because they did not know what they were fighting for, then he released them. The general then was confident that he was taking part in liberation. years later, the two Korean governments were negotiating for total cease fire, and soldiers at the front line of both sides had to fight to death for just a few miles back and forth. In the last battle where dead bodies were everywhere, one of the released South Korean soldiers encountered the communist general injured. the soldier asked what the general meant by him not knowing what he was fighting for. and the general said his last word "i used to know what I was fighting for. I don't know any more."

[–]Draskiller 8 points9 points10 points 2 days ago

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[–]wolfalice 2 points3 points4 points 1 day ago*

For anyone interested in some illustrative period literature, here's Alfred, Lord Tennyson's bombastic Charge of The Light Brigade, written in 1854. Virginia Woolf famously used passages of this poem as a synecdoche for Victorian values in her novel To The Lighthouse (1927).

The Charge of The Light Brigade

Half a league half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred:
'Forward, the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns' he said:
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

'Forward, the Light Brigade!'
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd:
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do & die,
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd & thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of Hell
Rode the six hundred.

Flash'd all their sabres bare,
Flash'd as they turn'd in air
Sabring the gunners there,
Charging an army while
All the world wonder'd:
Plunged in the battery-smoke
Right thro' the line they broke;
Cossack & Russian
Reel'd from the sabre-stroke,
Shatter'd & sunder'd.
Then they rode back, but not
Not the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon behind them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
While horse & hero fell,
They that had fought so well
Came thro' the jaws of Death,
Back from the mouth of Hell,
All that was left of them,
Left of six hundred.

When can their glory fade?
O the wild charge they made!
All the world wonder'd.
Honour the charge they made!
Honour the Light Brigade,
Noble six hundred!

Now compare with Wilfred Owen's Dulce et Decorum Est, also known as the "gas poem", written around 1918. Wilson later died in the war. As with the dramatic shift in which war was fought and understood, in which people lived their lives, in which notions of the state and state service changed, there was also a very noticeable adaptation in the literature of the time to reflect these changing social and technological trends.

Dulce et Decorum Est

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks,
Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge,
Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs
And towards our distant rest began to trudge.
Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots
But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind;
Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots
Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind
Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! – An ecstasy of fumbling,
Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time;
But someone still was yelling out and stumbling,
And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . .
Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light,
As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.
In all my dreams, before my helpless sight,
He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.
If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin;
If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood
Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs,
Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud
Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues,
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est
Pro patria mori.

TL;DR welcome to modernist literature.
EDIT: Formatting. Always formatting.

[–]liberty4e 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago

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[–]tyrannofuckingsaurus 11 points12 points13 points 1 day ago

Not OP, but I know a little bit about the subject.

The "stab in the back" legend arose because the German Army was certainly not comprehensively defeated at the end of World War I. Germany won the war in the East (after the Russian government was overthrown by revolution and they left the war); in the West, though they were in retreat, the Germans were still inflicting massive casualties on the Allies in 1918. No Allied troops had set foot on German soil.

During the last days of the war, and knowing that the war was unwinnable, the German military government at home - run by the Kaiser and the Army high command - was replaced by a civilian government known as the Weimar Republic. The Weimar Republic sued for peace with the Allies. This is the basis of the "stabbed in the back" myth - the German Army, which was perceived by Germans as being undefeated on the battlefield, was 'betrayed' by civilian politicians at home.

The treaty which ended the war, the Treaty of Versailles, was extremely harsh on the Germans (at the insistence of the French, whose land and people had suffered the worst of the destruction). It stripped Germany of huge amounts of its territory, allowed Allied troops to occupy German soil, and forced Germany to accept full responsibility for the war and to pay massive reparations to the Allies (Germany only paid these off in 2010). The German armed forces were restricted to no more than 100,000 men, with no tanks or aircraft. The Treaty was massively unpopular in Germany and the politicians who signed it on Germany's behalf became known as the 'November Criminals'.

Many Germans also believed that the Army had been failed by the people at home who provided their supplies. The prevailing mood in much of Europe at the time was highly nationalistic, anti-Semitic and anti-Communist. It didn't take long for the actions of the Weimar Republic and the failures on the home front to be blamed on conspiracy and sabotage by Jews and Communists.

As a result, German troops came home to a country which they believed had sold them out - their war effort had supposedly been sabotaged by corrupt Jews and Communists, and they had been stabbed in the back by their politicians who had forced them to accept the shame of defeat. In short, Germany was filled with young men angry at the government, angry at Jews, angry at Communists, and desperate to reclaim the glory of Germany which had been shamed by defeat in the war. Conditions were perfect for the rise of Hitler and the Nazis. It's widely accepted that the surrender of Germany and the harsh conditions imposed on them by the Allies was a major cause of the Second World War.

[–]helloavalanche 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago

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[–]jmact1 3 points4 points5 points 1 day ago*

Another good book on WWI is A Short History of WWI by James Stokesbury, concise, easy to read, and historically accurate.

The concept of defensive warfare and shell-shock was a significant feature of the American Civil War over 50 yrs before WWI. Certainly many military leaders, such as Longstreet and Grant, were well aware of it, but the lessons learned were quickly forgotten. I am reading on WWII again, and one of the reasons the Nazis took Poland as easily as they did at the start of the war was the Polish adherence to horse cavalry tactics rather than use of defensive strategy. Also see Shook over Hell by Eric Dean which documents shell-shock in the Civil War.

Looking over deaths in WWI, I believe that although the soldiers suffered greatly, there were far, far fewer civilian deaths than WWII where killing civilians achieved horrible efficiency and suffering.

Another point is that WWI spawned the Great Influenza Pandemic of 1918 which killed between 50-100 million people world-wide which dwarfs the 10 million soldiers KIA. One viable theory is that the pandemic started in the US which was gearing up for WWI and killed thousands of young recruits crowded into training camps and on cross-Atlantic troop ships that spread it to Europe. The news blackouts of the time, everywhere except neutral Spain, is why it is called the Spanish flu- It was the only place the pandemic was discussed in the news. More so, it also sickened and eventually killed Pres Wilson, preventing his moderating influence at the Treaty of Versailles, which, if his views had been incorporated in the Treaty, might have prevented WWII. Influenza, BTW, continually mutates, and we are no-more capable of dealing with a lethal strain now than we were in 1918. See the movie Contagion which the directors tried to make as scientifically accurate as possible. Read The Great Influenza by John Barry if you want to scare the shit out of yourself and put WWI in a different perspective.

[–]H_E_Pennypacker 3 points4 points5 points 6 hours ago

[–]gruntle 7 points8 points9 points 1 day ago

[–]Boondock-Saint 4 points5 points6 points 2 days ago*

[–]TheTT 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago

German here. The Stab-in-the-Back myth ("Dolchstoßlegende") is completely and entirely a myth. The german army was, as a matter of fact, defeated in the fields. They might have inflicted a lot of casualties, even in the last days, but they lost. They lost because of the sheer number of people and equipment that Britain, France and later America would churn out - Germany was incapable of matching that.

The german military were in denial about their impending loss, and when they realized what would happen, they decided that the damn Brits shouldn't get their perfectly fine boats. They ordered the navy to start a suicide attack on the British Fleet, causing the seaman to revolt. This started the November Revolution, and after some shit happens, Friedrich Ebert declares himself Chancellor. The military broke the news about their impending doom to him, and he did the responsible thing and surrendered. The military were strictly conservative, though, and favored the old monarchy over the new democracy, and pulled a "We would totally have won this, those damn commie revolutionaries stabbed us in the back with their surrender stuff". This was one of the things that destabilized the Weimar Republic so much, and was one of the major battlecries of the monarchist opposition to the new system. They ultimately turned fascist, and that didn't go so well...

TL;DR You seriously think Hitler was right?

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[–]jchives 0 points1 point2 points 1 day ago

 Studied European History for a year a while back. Teacher spent a lot of time talking about this as well. When those in the trenches weren't being shelled by artillery or running from a wall of Chlorine gas that caused them to cough up their lungs, the trenches were infested with disease carrying rats the size of terriers. This was also the first time "bombers" were used in a war. A bomber was a guy in an open cockpit dropping cannonballs over trenches. If you survived 14 flight missions in the "Air Force", you were honorably discharged. This never happened. 
 The concept of machine guns were different, too. A machine gun used correctly went through a boxcar of bullets a day. The idea was not to fire at enemies, but to create an intricate wall of bullets that no one could pass through. It was into these walls of bullets the cavalry charged.

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To go along with recreational's excellent comment, I'd also like to further refute the idea that higher tech necessarily = less barbaric by talking a little bit about WWI and especially WW2 and why they were some of the worst and most barbaric wars in history.

Before the 20th century Europe had codified tons of rules of war to make it more gentlemanly and spare civilian casualties and other war crimes. At least in terms of conflicts between European countries, there was a sort of ideal followed for how you treat your enemy and by the standards of war it was all relatively tame.

Then all this new technology comes around, and as recreational discussed, the leaders just don't know how to deal with it. In the first world war that was machine guns, artillery, poison gas, etc. Resulting in lots and lots and lots of casualties as everyone tries to adapt to the new mode of warfare. It became a thing where you could literally plug numbers into a spreadsheet and figure out how many people were going to die today.

So WWI ends and nobody wants to get into this constant day by day grind of lost lives again. The attitude becomes "anything to end the war faster is worthwhile" because anything is better, for both sides, than the constant flow of death. At the same time air power is just coming into its own.

The result when WW2 rolls around is this idea of using strategic bombing to damage the morale of your enemy. Essentially what this means is justifying anything and everything as a "military target" so that you can bomb city centers and civilians in order to end the conflict faster.

This results in one of the most horrific periods in human history in terms of loss of civilian life. It didn't actually end the war but everybody got caught in a cycle of bombing each other's cities into oblivion (because if you didn't do it, your enemy still would) costing countless lives in horrific ways. Keep in mind that a lot of the bombing done was with napalm, burning people to death--an individual air raid could have a thousand planes and cost as many lives as a nuclear strike.

And all of this, you could argue, was the result of rapid technological advancement. Of course culminating in the nuclear strikes on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

[–]bantam83 28 points29 points30 points 2 days ago

[–]SpermWhale 36 points37 points38 points 2 days ago

[–]brutishbloodgod 37 points38 points39 points 2 days ago

[–]vandalklown 7 points8 points9 points 2 days ago*

Definitely agree with that.

I'd like to add that, although not at all comparable by accuracy/effectiveness of measure, we now see a higher "PTSD" rate in soldiers abroad than any other war; not just combat soldiers. In wars of past generations the opposition utilized air strikes, effectively trained mortar teams, tanks, etc. These methods were atrociously effective at killing our soldiers by the masses (Don't get me wrong that is horrible to say.) The tactics being used in Afghanistan/ Iraq are very different, there are quick/ petty ambushes, there are mostly ineffective Improvised Explosive Devices planted in roads (ineffective mortality rate, to clarify), there are pop-shots from poorly trained snipers.

There is viable reasoning behind the amount of explosives "bouncing bettys" or "toe poppers" contained in WW2. Why kill the enemy if you can instead wound him and effectively immobilize a few of his mates, both physically and mentally. Instead of coming back to a fellow soldier and bagging him for flight after the fire fight, you now have to carry him/care for him and at the same time rethink your vulnerability and combat effectiveness. Although not effective by death rate, the enemy of our dual-conflict uses the same tactic, no matter if it is on purpose. Every day our soldiers convoy and take part in "soft knock" oriented movements. They aren't mortally wounded by well-trained passionate enemies (for the most part), they are wounded by untrained/ cowardice attack.

These men (and sometimes women) are coming home, not in bags, but still in pieces, both in body and sanity. They've had to witness and rationalize, not only the deaths of their countrymen but also have had to deal with their own unexpected/ life changing injuries. First solidarity, then chaos, and then a lasting feeling of anxiety and anger. I don't at all mean to disrespect our ancestors who made the ultimate sacrifice, but sometimes death is the better outcome. If you don't believe me then look at our military's suicide rate.

TL;DR: War is war is war. War is hell.

Source: 2008-2009 Kandahar, Afghanistan.

http://www.veteransunited.com/network/do-unmanned-aircraft-operators-suffer-from-ptsd/

[–]charliedarwinsfather 10 points11 points12 points 2 days ago

[–]brutishbloodgod 5 points6 points7 points 1 day ago*

Some of it is what I've heard from other people who have served, and obviously I can't source that. But here are few related articles that I was able to find:

http://www.wired.com/dangerroom/2012/06/drone-pilot-ptsd/

http://www.npr.org/2011/12/19/143926857/report-high-levels-of-burnout-in-u-s-drone-pilots

Some of the articles state that the actual rates of diagnosis are not very high. I was under the impression that the numbers were comparable to boots-on-the-ground infantry, but I may have been mistaken about that. The articles do state that drone pilots experience comparable amounts of combat stress, which is really what this conversation is about (since I was responding to SpermWhale, who was discussing "emotional stress"). That's consistent with my experience. I once watched a strike on a vehicle via drone-cam in a TOC: I was watching people being killed in HD, and I was hearing the soldiers in the fight coming in over the radio. It's not like actually being in the fight, but the intensity is comparable, and it is most definitely traumatic.

It's also possible that the numbers for PTSD diagnosis are low because they're just not looking for it. They really keep a close eye on you psychologically after you get home from a deployment; maybe not as much for people flying drones.

[–]throwawayguy88 4 points5 points6 points 2 days ago

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[–]SarahC 4 points5 points6 points 1 day ago*

I wonder - if the draft where to be called again, with so many people disillusioned with wars, and the government whims..... if anyone would even show up for it?

I imagine there'd be anarchy and riots... today's society is so individualistic, and people so pissed off with the unfairness of it all I imagine they'd just tell the country to go fuck itself...

Back then when society was more interknit (was it?), there was a "grand purpose" of defending ones freedom, family, and soil from the invaders.

Also now, with everyone living everywhere... how would anyone know who the "enemy" is? Chinese live in America, Blacks in France, Swedish in Canada.... there's no "them and us" - like "Japs Vs Americans" anymore..... you can't just jump on a battlefield and shoot the Chinese looking people...

I imagine it would be chaotic as fuck for the "almost troops" who were just thrown into the frey.

TL;DR:
1: Has any study been done by the government about the draft? Would it even be successful?

2: Multicultural lands - no longer "Shoot the Jap!" targeting, just what problems (and subterfuge) would be caused by a war where the sides have no racial lines, and cannot easily be identified?

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Was just going to mention him. Flipped through some of his poems just now, and they are indeed eerily accurate...

... one youngster laughs,
Lifting his mug and drinking health to all
Who come unscathed from that unpitying waste:
(Terror and ruin lurk behind his gaze.)

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