Globe opinion piece on WW1

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http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/world/what-if-the-kaiser-had-won-the-war/article19981204/?page=2




Interesting article in the G&M today about WW1


A quote:

"There was no great principle at stake, and nobody was plotting to conquer the world. It was just another great-power conflict of the sort that used to come along every 50 years or so.

But Europe’s new wealth, technology and industrial capacity had unexpectedly transformed war into a holocaust that consumed millions of lives.

Canadians were there from the start, and the price we paid was enormous.

At the war’s end, almost a quarter-million Canadians had been killed or wounded. Given the size of Canada’s population at the time, the emotional impact was roughly comparable to what we would be feeling if we had suffered a million casualties in Afghanistan over the past four years. (We actually had 158 killed and 615 wounded in nine years.)

To make sense of so much pain and loss, we simply had to believe the war had been about something important. In fact, it had to be a crusade against evil itself, for nothing else could justify violent death on such a scale."
 
The reason so many died was because of newer technologies that allowed for such mass destruction, and if you were to measure the losses as a percentage of populations lost it still does not rate that high against some much earlier (ancient) wars in mankind's history. Some earlier wars resulted in the complete destruction or capture and slavery of opposing sides. We have become (civilian populations) more insulated from wars immediate consequences than in anytime in our past, most people only think about what has happened in their short lifetime, a bit like the so called climate change problem, not the last couple of thousand years or so.
 
New book; "The Western Front Companion", "The complete guide to how the armies fought for four devasting years, 1914 - 1918".
By Mark Adkin "ISBN 978 1 84513 710 6". Published 2013 by Aurum Press.

528 pages in 9x11.

Very good book on the subject.
 
"There was no great principle at stake, and nobody was plotting to conquer the world.

Way too simplistic. Alternate outcomes to wars are impossible to predict, just too many variables. The Communists would still have come to power in Russia, setting the stage for another conflict irregardless. The Brits influence would have been severely restricted and who knows where that would have gone. Americans might never have desired or achieved ascendancy.

Grizz
 
Grizzly Adams said:
"There was no great principle at stake, and nobody was plotting to conquer the world.

Way too simplistic. Alternate outcomes to wars are impossible to predict, just too many variables. The Communists would still have come to power in Russia, setting the stage for another conflict irregardless. The Brits influence would have been severely restricted and who knows where that would have gone. Americans might never have desired or achieved ascendancy.

Grizz
Click to expand...

I've been reading Gwynne Dyers/watching his "docutainment" videos since the mid or late 80s. Way too simplistic... describes pretty much everything he's ever written or said on the subject of warfare. He did a series called "Gwynne Dyer's: War" for the CBC way back when, and if you go back and look at it, it's stunning how, with laser guided precision, he gets virtually every prediction he made about the future of warfare almost 100% wrong.

He got banished to the back pages of the free weekly city rags for almost a decade, but for reasons I don't understand, people have started listening to him again and he's getting wasted ink space in the National Post and other, otherwise somewhat respectable, papers.
 
Grizzly Adams said:
"There was no great principle at stake, and nobody was plotting to conquer the world.

Way too simplistic. Alternate outcomes to wars are impossible to predict, just too many variables. The Communists would still have come to power in Russia, setting the stage for another conflict irregardless. The Brits influence would have been severely restricted and who knows where that would have gone. Americans might never have desired or achieved ascendancy.

Grizz
Click to expand...

Agreed. And while not the world, Germany had been planning the invasion of France through neutral Belgium for a decade or more. Was it not the fourth time in a hundred years the Prussians/Germans had done so? Their biggest miscalculation of the entire war was possibly expecting the Belgians not to take up arms, giving the much larger German force easy passage into France. The extra time the Belgians bought the French likely prevented them from hitting Paris on the first push and gave French and British forces time to get into action. The plan was for France to fall quickly so they could turn their attention to Russia before she was able to muster up her considerable army.
One of the other interesting effects the war had was to nearly completely kill the strong communist style movement in Britain. Who knows how history may have differed?
And I like they insinuate that great power struggles are a thing of the past, you'd think a journalist would be paying attention to the news.....
 
mkrnel said:
The reason so many died was because of newer technologies that allowed for such mass destruction, and if you were to measure the losses as a percentage of populations lost it still does not rate that high against some much earlier (ancient) wars in mankind's history. Some earlier wars resulted in the complete destruction or capture and slavery of opposing sides. We have become (civilian populations) more insulated from wars immediate consequences than in anytime in our past, most people only think about what has happened in their short lifetime, a bit like the so called climate change problem, not the last couple of thousand years or so.
Click to expand...

The reasons so many died include that so many were involved. Some of the belligerents would likely have gone to war with each other on a one-to-one basis sooner or later for various reasons, but the system of alliances that was good for preventing such wars for a while also meant that when it went wrong, it all went wrong at once. So all those casualties are on one tally from one big war instead of separate scores from several wars.
 
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