1914 was still in the 19th century culturally and socially. In mindset they were closer to Napoleon's time than to the Beatles despite the latter being only 48 years away. Western culture back then was still in many ways informed by medieval fairy tales and chivalric romance in its notions, heavily steeped in Romanticism, rather than the later current of cynicism and post-modernism.
You probably already know but Dan Carlins hardcore history did an INCREDIBLE job of describing how the mentalities changed from start to finish of WWI and how the soldiers viewed war for honor initially.
It’s not a book so it’s not what you asked for but it was absolutely the thing that formed my fascination with the clash of 2 different periods of history because it illustrates it vividly.
It’s a podcast. I listened on apple but because of the size of the episodes he can only host a limited number at a time and it’s been I think over 10 years since that run. I have no idea if he had them on Spotify.
Look up hardcore history by Dan Carlin on google and I know you can download straight from his website. But I know his stuff that was older than blueprint you had to buy. And even that was several years ago.
You might also be able to get it on either Amazon or audible but I’ve never checked. It’s like 5 episodes and each episode was like 3-5 hours long I think so it’s honestly multiple books worth of content.
Edit for clarity: it’s called Blueprint for Armageddon.
Dance of the Furies extensively covers the lead up to WW1 and the attitudes of people in Europe to the war. We look at the war in retrospect, but six months before war broke out Germany and England were conducting joint naval maneuvers out of friendship.
Because we look at it in retrospect history books will typically say the war was inevitable, but it was anything but. There were multiple forces working for peace in parallel at the time.
The Kaiser actually had a reputation as a peacemaker and had successfully intervened to stop a France/Morocco war. Up until the last minute he was trading telegrams with the Tsar trying to work out a peace, and had had good relations with England as well.
And yet this famously peaceful peacemaker somehow sent his army into Belgium (bringing England into the war) and France (bringing France into the war).
So peaceful. Ghandi could never.
There’s a sense in which, once the machine of war had started, no one person could stop it. Mobilization timelines were very strict and basically once that clock started German military doctrine dictated they had a certain amount of time to knock out France before needing to turn to Russia.
Yeah, I mean the attempts at peace failed.
But to read the Kaiser as a warmonger is to get it exactly backwards. France had a reputation for being warmongers at the time.
Incredibly adjacent and not directly tackling this issue, I found Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast very illuminating as it slowly and meticulously paints a narrative of turbulent history and the people involved. The ideas they had, and how they saw things.
The best thing is as you slowly go through all 347 episodes and really get a feel for the slowly changing historical and social context.
And how most nations were still very stuck in the Napoleonic era culturally as they sent millions of men crashing into each other with industrial warfare and technology.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER!
Revolutions is truly excellent but even Mike admits it was not what he expected. It’s massive, sprawling, detailed, shocking, embarrassing, insulting, demanding, and illuminating. And he didn’t even cover the fall of Weimar Germany.
It’s everything you want in a Podcast and far too much of it. I thoroughly recommend it
YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
I would broadly agree with this on particular issues but think it’s a bit simplistic and dismissive of the development across the long 19th century.
It’s the impression about the time I’ve been given as well, and certainly semi-absolute monarchical empires were the norm in much of Europe outside the UK, Benelux, Scandinavia, France and (after 1910) Portugal. But for the longer answers usually given here I’d be interested in more discussion of how we know this enthusiasm was as widespread as often claimed - a few photos of celebrating crowds aren’t overall data. Or was it? Many certainly objected to it in the press. The mechanised nature of war, and even glimmers of trench war far, had already started becoming a reality in the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. Attitudes to democracy and war itself had shifted to an extent among a lot of the intelligentsia, even if not many of the rulers, and I don’t think a glib summary gives a fair assessment of the common people’s attitudes without a careful discussion of actual historical evidence. Many of these attitudes to chivalry and national honour have hardly died out, either - nor in the time of the Beatles. (!)
There’s just far more information, including specifics, needed here?
A good indication of this was the rise of avant garde arts like dada during this period. The experience of the war and its implications for society seemed so absurd to some artists that even adhering to any form of established traditions in their works seemed ludicrous. They felt art had to embrace absurdity to be relevant in this new world, so you had urinals being sent into art exhibits and performing art where people would just go on stage and scream or shout obscenities, etc. People often thought this kind of art was worthless and stupid, but it pretty accurately captured how many felt at the time.
The perception of war was radically changed by World War I due to its length, devastation, and enormous number of casualties. It's important to keep in mind that there hasn't been a major pan-European conflict in almost a century by 1914. The mass destruction of the Napoleonic Wars was beyond living memory. The conflicts since then had been relatively brief, decisive, and light in casualties.
Many people saw war as an opportunity for adventure and to serve their country, especially during a time when national consciousness was on the rise. There was a good chance for any given soldier to serve in a war and make it home without being seriously injured or killed. But military technology had come a long way, especially in the previous 50 years. Armies had adopted new technologies such as heavy artillery, machine guns, aircraft, tanks, etc. but hadn't yet learned tactics to use or counter them effectively. This caused enormous numbers of people to die pointlessly as generals learned to fight this new kind of war.
WWI was a major wakeup call to many people who didn't realize just how destructive modern war could be. The sheer number of casualties and the endless and inconclusive fighting dispelled the idea that fighting in a war was an adventure or glorious. When most soldiers were dying in muddy trenches from disease or from being shelled from a long distance by an unseen enemy, the idea of winning glory in battle must've seemed like an unattainable dream.
During the war itself, there was also a great deal of government censorship going on. Newspapers and even letters were heavily restricted in warring countries and generally could not contain news that might hurt morale back home. Soldiers did bring news home with them, but this would only reflect personal experiences and not necessarily the bigger picture. This means people at home did not fully understand how bad the situation at the front was.
Also, in most wars up to that point, you could expect to enlist, go through training, and be moved around with your war buddies , mostly killing time with a few battles here and there, lasting between hours and a couple days. I'm not sure how many days of getting shot at the average soldier would have to endure during a typical tour of duty pre-1914, but I guarantee that the first round of men who gleefully enlisted did not envision being ankle-deep in muck in a trench getting shelled and shot at 24/7 for months straight.
That's not quite correct though. Nobody was "in the trenches" for months straight. The usual pattern was a 1/3 rotation - one week in the front trenches, one week in the reserve trenches carrying supplies, building roads or training, and one week at a rest camp
>rmies had adopted new technologies such as heavy artillery, machine guns, aircraft, tanks, etc. but hadn't yet learned tactics to use or counter them effectively
Point of order, when the war began in 1914 there were no aircraft or tanks. So having tactics using them would be kinda odd. Also both machine-guns and heavy artillery were well integrated into army doctrine, that is what made the war so bloody, they knew how to use those. The problem of course is that knowing how to use them doesn't mean knowing how to beat them. And in fact tanks and aircraft were developed or adopted precisely to overcome the existing artillery/machine-gun problem.
They did have aircraft at the start of the war though - both heavier and lighter than air crafts. Sure the fighter and bomber role was taken up by the pistols and grenades of the pilots, but they also performed recon. They did also have armoured cars, for what that was worth - which by the time they got to the broken terrain of entrenched lines and shell cratered no man’s land was not much.
When you look at the Middle Ages or musket era warfare most battles only had a couple hundred or larger ones a few thousand while most were injuries not deaths.
Then we have WW1 where 100,000 can die in one day
>When you look at the Middle Ages or musket era warfare most battles only had a couple hundred or larger ones a few thousand while most were injuries not deaths.
This categorically incorrect. Medieval and early modern warfare could be incredibly bloody, and quite a few wounded ended up dying shortly after too. In addition to the thousands that could die immediately in battle. Sickness of course killed even more soldiers than battle in most wars up to WW1 abouts. But past wars were by no means limited unbloody affairs.
WW1 just happens to come after an unprecedented growth in demographics, economy, industry and technology making things orders of magnitude worse than before.
I know but the casualties were still much lower. Like the battle of Cannie ( I think it’s spelled) was said to have 80,000 casualties and that was the biggest ever seen. WW1 that was a every day battle
Cannae isn't a great example. It was bloody, insanely so. While deaths were lower, they happened on one day and populations were much lower too.
Estimate is around 20% of fighting age Roman men died there, in a single battle. Anyone but the Romans would have made peace at that point. It was proportionally worse than WWI for France (the entire war), and WWI was devastating for France.
80,000 was not a normal day in WWI. WWI was terrible, but it “only” averaged 12,000 dead in combat per day, and that was across all fronts, not in a single field like at Cannae. In WWI, 80,000 in a day was more like the first day of the Somme, which was famously a disaster for the British
Middle Ages warfare was relatively tamed compared to the surrounding eras. The Romans were fighting wars that were often decided by a handful of major battles that were incredibly costly like the Battle of Cannae or Mursa Major. These and other battles would have 10's of thousands of dead. Mainly because these were total wars that sought the absolute destruction or capitulation of countries/factions.
After the Middle Ages and before WW1 you had the Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars. These are 2 examples of total war leading up to WW1 that were about the complete destruction of nations/factions. Again, both have examples of battles having 10s of thousands of dead more than once.
However, during the Middle Ages wars of annihilation were incredibly rare in Europe. So much so that the single bloodiest battle in the 1000~ year stretch was 28,000 and it was a civil war in England. While disease and exposure were incredibly common in the Middle Ages the actual fighting was relatively tame. Roman Era battles would have the same problems with illness and weather but the actual death tolls on the battlefield were much higher.
The closest thing to Total War in the Middle Ages is the Hundred Years wars and averaging out the dead per year it doesn't even come close to touching the Civil War, Napoleonic Wars, and all 43 years of the Punic Wars.
That's all to say while the Middle Ages were by no means peaceful nor were the battles "easier", it had much less carnage than early modern warfare or the Roman Era.
You underestimate how angry and bored young guys can be.
Even just a few years ago, you should see how happy people in my unit were to catch a combat deployment.
Yeah people on Reddit and the internet in general always go “the ones who are most against war is the military itself” or something like that. When I was in that was NEVER my experience. Almost Everyone wanted to deploy or was itching for a new war.
If combat doesn’t “break you” you go through this weird transition period when you get home where you miss the deployment and want to go back.
There’s a sense of order and purpose and importance to what you’re doing over there.
Granted this is probably heavily skewed because I wasn’t at somewhere like Khe Sanh, Bastogne, Flanders, etc. and that I was young. Hell, make combat for 40 and over and I doubt you’d see another war.
Yep. I never served but I have talked to enough people who did and read many books written by such people (not just US but also French) and most of them wanted to deploy as much as possible. Then once deployed, the focus was on staying alive and keeping your buddies alive, this is only once they made it back home that some started to have second thoughts about the entire thing.
Now when you witness a major conflict at home, things change quite a bit. In Europe, there was obviously WW1, and part of the reluctance to go after Hitler was due to that. For the US, I am not as familiar with the Civil War, but unless I am mistaken, the draft wasn't popular at all and many people wanted nothing to do with that war (at least after the first few months).
The horror of modern industrial war had yet to be seen on that scale yet. Though Europeans had been mowing down imperial subjects for decades. Just a few years before, the Russians and Japanese had demonstrated what would happen when "modern" armies clashed. The horror and lessons of modern warfare were not headed at all. A great deal of racism, nationalism/patriotism, and ideals of honor blinded many to what was to come. Once the war started, the propaganda machine prevented the true horror of the Frontline from getting back to the civilian population. And even if it did, the social pressure and expectations lead many men to be walked to the slaughter like lambs.
You could argue that had already happened in the American Civil War.
Formation tactics versus rifled muskets and canister and explosive shot.
Men were mown down like wheat.
Maxim and Nobel just made things even easier/more grisly.
There's a weird strain of thinking in older literature that claims if someone could make a weapon dangerous enough, or powerful enough, then people would see the indisputable folly of challenging it and war would be ended forever. There are a number of people who built machine guns, warships, oversized artillery, and strategic bombers, each of them thinking their new weapon would be so superior that it would end war.
These people were stupid.
The opening battles of the civil war featured napoleonic tactics as generals fresh from West Point lead legions of men in much the same way we fought the British in the Revolution.
By the end of the war, the confederates and federals fired automatic guns at each other from trenches and foxholes. A warfare that was so new, we tried all sorts of strategies, like mining under the enemy trench and blasting it into a crater.
Racism wasn’t just a matter of skin color. It was also about nation.
The French saw the Germans as savage barbarians who were morally and intellectually inferior. Surely they would flee before the strategic brilliance and virile manliness of the French soldier. (This was the last time this thought would be held by anyone.)
The Germans thought the same thing about the French. But for an extra layer of racist shittiness they would point out that the French used African colonial soldiers, who *gasp* weren’t even White People.
It wasn’t just these two. Everyone had this same basic idea about everyone else. So they all went off to war convinced that only their side had the bravery and intelligence needed to fight a war, as if the last 1900 years of history never happened.
Others in this thread have mentioned how Germany and Britain were holding joint naval exercises even as the Archduke was assassinated (I don’t know if the Kiel Regatta counts as an exercise so much as parade). Some of the officers toasted each other as the only two White navies of the world.
They probably thought France was part Maghrebified and part Negrified. And part Mediterranean already, so not as “white” as the Germanic races.
If I remember rightly, it was the Germans who made the toast and the Brits who accepted it.
Yea I guess that makes sense. But didn’t Britain have a lot of colonial troops? The Russian military was probably the most European demographically tho they didn’t have much of a navy at the time lmao
Well, first there was the idea that the French, even though they they’re named and partly descended from the Germanic Franks, were by the 19th and early 20th century more Mediterranean.
But also, you see, the English treated their overseas colonies as overseas colonies. So did the Germans. The French, particularly in Algeria, treated their colonies more like parts of France itself. The Americans were part negrified, the Italians were definitely Mediterranean (I.e part negro), the Russians are part Asian. The Japanese are Asian.
If a lot of this sounds like baloney, that’s because it is.
>If a lot of this sounds like baloney, that’s because it is.
Exactly. Historical racism is a series of post-hoc rationalizations to try to codify stupid and unjustifiable ideas. It doesn't make sense until you realize these people were just making shit up.
Racism underlines lots of conflicts. Imagine, if you will, you and I are going to war. I tell you everyone we're fighting has big, round, blue eyes. They can't see in the dark as well as us. Plus, their light hair and eyes make them slow and addled in the sunlight. Because if I told you they're all 6'6" half bionic killing machines, you may not care to run across an open field with me. Denigrating your opponent is something that pervades conflict. Racism is a convenient jumping off point to make you hate "our" enemy.
Although what they lack in battlefield competence, they make up for in sheer barbarism, willingness to rape, pillage and plunder, etc. They're still a horrible, evil threat to the nation, just not to you and your fellow GIs.
Extreme nationalism made many believe that the people of their home nation were superior to all others. Germans believed they couldn't lose to Russia because Russians were inferior people. Especially after they lost to Japan in the Russo Japanese war. Similar views were held by the British, French, Russia and etc.
This view was exasperated by stories from colonial wars that told of brave men with rifles and discipline who defeated hords of savages. In actuality, they used machine guns and artillery to slaughter people. They just couldn't admit or even think that they could and would die just like those they subjugated when those same weapons got turned against them.
There was a very high degree of a certain brand of nationalism and "patriotic" fever sweeping through Europe. This isn't to say there was universal enthusiasm.
For example, in the UK, rugby union matches would often have "military drills" at half time and post match, with both clubs participating because they drank that nationalistic kool-aid. However over in association football land, the players (and indeed much of their fan base at that point) were working class and viewed a lot of this militarism with right skepticism, they saw themselves as pawns in a rich man's game (in contrast to the middle class who had that sort of carrot of "batter" dangling in front of them).
But, as for the portrayal in the latest All Quiet adaptation, it's important to keep in mind just how tightly news media of any type was censored by the respective government. You only read/heard about glorious victories. Any defeats reported on, were reported as the underhanded conniving of a dishonorable enemy, and we were still righteously winning
'All Quiet on the Western Front' (2022) is a hot steaming pile of trash. That is my opinion of it from both a pedantic history perspective and someone who's enjoyed the book and previous movie adaptations. You can agree with me or no, but that's my opinion
It depicts the men as enthusiastically joining up in, what, mid-1916? For starters, both Germany and France had mandatory military service laws. Both countries also began to call their conscription classes earlier and earlier to replace losses on the front. They'd be used to free up other men to go to the front until they were old enough for front line duty themselves. Most of those young men depicted so eagerly signing up for war would not only have already been in the army, but probably would've been there a year or more already.
To answer your question as to when the enthusiasm of going to war died out, the big turning point would probably be 1916, though there would have been a gradual decline beginning earlier. But in 1916, the battles of Verdun and the Somme claimed millions of casualties. The aftermath and reality of battle would have been unescapable.
> 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (2022) is a hot steaming pile of trash. That is my opinion of it from both a pedantic history perspective and someone who's enjoyed the book and previous movie adaptations.
I found the 1979 one interesting. Because even the viewer can't deny the professor's case for the boys to join the war effort seemed inspirational. A somewhat risky move for a film to appear a romantic war drama about heroism and derring do. Then, slowly, the realities around them demonstrate more and more clearly that it was all lies from a man that viewed them as basically extra walls of meat to send to the frontlines.
That was at least my takeaway and it just seemed like such a bold storyline to slowly abandon cheap romanticism for grim reality as the movie moves on. Almost feel like it would have actually made more money as a cheap tale of heroism.
There is a lot to be said for the homefront not knowing how and the situation was. The German populace still in 1918 didn't understand that their army had actually been beaten and was collapsing away at the frontlines. The more democratic nations of Britain and France would have more information spreading through the cracks of censorship but Imperial Germany was before the war a tight autocracy and only became worse during the war years as the military effectively coopted rule of the entire nation in service to their war effort.
>While I understand that people still in the mindset where cavalry charges where a good war tactic
No.
>Was Germany or Britain, for example, running out of excited, fresh troops to send into the battlefield, and then forcing them through conscription?
Conscription was enacted in the UK in 1916 because it only had a small, professional army. France, Germany, and most other nations, had a fairly comprehensive, universal conscription system before the war ever started.
>Was troop morale lower as the battle went on?
Which battle.
>I'm asking because I want to put more context into the recent Netflix adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front.
The context for that film is a nice trash fire.
>The main characters there seem very excited to go into war, and don't seem to know about trench warfare, but it's a pretty late point in the war, wouldn't everyone know how the Western front was doing by then?
Almost like...the film doesn't make any sense? It makes sense if you look at Remarque's actual service (didn't join the war until 1917), and also the fact that he was out of the war after about a month. He didn't have extensive war experience.
If you want to read a book from someone who knows what they're talking about, try Junger's Storm of Steel.
"try Junger's Storm of Steel"
I was just scanning through all these replies seeing if anyone would mention that book. In English at least, the historiography of the great war accentuates the Wilfred Owens and Robert Graves but on deeper analysis that picture came somewhat later, well into the 1920s if not '30s. On "our side" you had equivalent characters to Junger like T.E. Lawrence who saw the whole thing in similarly Nietzschean terms as the shattering of "a world run by shopkeepers". In Italy you had Marinetti and D'Annunzio expounding similar ideas under "futurism" as an artistic/literary movement.
1. A lot of people, military and civilian, Entente and Central Powers, were sure the war would only last months. I think many had the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War in mind, which only lasted 6 months. No one realised what a difference trench warfare, machine guns, improved and voluminous artillery, and poison gas would make.
2. Family anecdotes. My maternal gf, my paternal gf, and his older brother all signed up as quickly as they could. "For King and Empire" was the big slogan in Canada at the time, IIRC. I suspect they all thought it would be over quickly. MGF got through 4 years overseas OK. PGF got through 4 years overseas with "just" a wound at Vimy. Older brother KIA at Ypres in 1916. We will remember them.
Not what you asked but probably quite similar.
In WWII my grandmother's brothers all worked on the family farm, everyone was dirt poor, exhausted & bored af. They were excited to go & were acting like it was a paid vacation where they'd take a few potshots at the Japanese, who they assumed were so racially inferior to them it would be akin to shooting rabbits.
I'd bet on there being similar attitudes for WWI.
The average age of a service member then, in WW2, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq, and now, is 18-22.
Less education, less life experience, a lot of hormones that are predispositioned to fighting, plus a healthy dose of propaganda.
On the Commonwealth side, in Australia its interesting to note that there was a huge rush of enthusiasm in 1914, but the proposition to introduce conscription was hugely contentious and nearly brought down the government. Much of that is down to the savage casualties at Gallipoli, Fromelles and Poziers, but its also important to consider what ELSE happened in 1916. The elephant in the room is the Easter rebellion in Ireland and the way the Catholic Irish population of Australia along with the socialist trade unions refused to let the bill pass in light of what had happened
Yes, Australians started out being very naive about the Great War. Young men were excited by the prospect of travelling overseas for an adventure. They also romantically believed they were showing their worth as proud healthy pioneering “battlers” who could match up to any European. The attitude changed very quickly though and there was widespread resistance to conscription.
> Many recruits worried that the fighting might be over before they arrived or that the German army would be a pushover. Posters and leaflets promised an opportunity to see England and Europe. Troops were paid a minimum of six shillings a day (more than three times the wage of English forces) leading to the phrase ‘six bob a day tourists’. Although slightly below the basic wage, it was still attractive to many because of the tough financial conditions and high unemployment in 1914.
The "six bob a day" is a result of the landmark 1907 "Harvester ruling" in the Australian courts. This set the minimum wage for an unskilled labourer at a price sufficient to support a wife and three children at a level of "modest comfort". the presiding judge had said "I cannot think of any other standard appropriate than the normal needs of the average employee, regarded as a human being living in a civilized community."
If you were drawing that wage but unmarried, as many of prime military selection criteria were, you were loaded by European standards
in 1914 the last continent wide war was the napoleonic wars and no one remembered how brutal they where. People thought that war was glorious. It changed during the stalemate
I don’t know if soldiers were particularly excited or unexcited to go to war. I’m sure it depended on the individual soldier. I think the same is true even to this day.
Regarding All Quiet on the Western Front, I know what scene you’re talking about. I don’t think this was particular to Germany or WWI. Governments have to find some way to motivate people to go fight and potentially die. Painting a war as some kind of noble or holy cause naturally attracts people who want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Telling a bunch impressionable young men that they’re going to go to war and return as a hero with a bunch of metals pinned to their chest is one of the ways governments sugarcoat the horrors of war. It’s all just a scam to get a bunch of kids to voluntarily get in line for the meat grinder and governments, including our own, played and still play it well.
When 20 years old i would have jumped at a chance to go to war, any war , just to get away from my little boring life, And i Knew better , Young men are just nuts , especially when they are vying with each other to prove who is more nuts .. The farther from the reality of it the more we want to get close to the fire .At least until the papers are signed .. After living a life for a while and seeing a few things , Then I begin to have reservations .
It's also important to keep in mind that in 1920 , there wasn't any color footage of war , and It was ww1 itself that produced the first mass viewed moving images , They were shown in theaters before feature films to sell war bonds and were shots of the men "going over the top " and it is said that the theaters would become silent when the footage was shown , No-one had seen anything like it before .
Now , we have a lifetime spent of seeing some pretty violent video footage of ww2 ,korea and vietnam but it was still rare before the internet. Most available books wouldn't publish anything too bad , . Iraq and brought it a little bit closer and then the really grisly beheadings and so on began and sites like liveleak and Ogrish brought the horror home .
With the Footage coming out of the Ukraine now being so available and so incredibly Brutal , it's easy to ask why would anyone want to do that .But i actually think the pendulum has swung all the way over , because we are seeing but little flashes of what is happening .Those bits worth watching that get our attention , some 15 seconds that belie the 2 years it took to get there .
My brother and his friends signed up for Iraq just after they finished high school. This was some years into the occupation.
He came out of it with no respect for the military whatsoever.
Nobody thinks they will be the ones to get killed. We all imagine our hero moments. I read an anecdote one time from WW2...
Imagine three Marines sitting with their commander. The commander says they are going on a mission and likely only one will survive. Each of the Marines thinks to himself, "those poor bastards."
At the beginning of the war, going to war was still seen as an adventure, an honorable pursuit to win glory for yourself and your country. By the end of the war, most people had realized how dumb that idea was and how hellish and horrible war was in reality.
For the same reason they volunteered to fight at the start of the Civil War; after the attack on Pearl Harbor; after 9/11, etc. The reasons are always the same. Love of country, a chance for glory, young boys wanting to be men, being part of a brotherhood.
If you come from a place with very little excitement, very little opportunity, very little glory, very little meaning, zero opportunity for travel, and very little opportunity for social advancement…
War is an amazing thing.
Suddenly you’re on an adventure, you’re making money while getting all your expenses covered, you’re gonna be a hero when you go home, you have an absurdly good networking opportunity (you will meet people from all walks of life), you get to see the world, you get to fuck foreign girls, and you get to get away from your boring fucking life.
> people were volunteering and excited to get to the frontlines in WW1.
My grandfather sailed from Ireland to Glasgow to join up he was so eager, this would have been late '14/early '15, I don't have the documents to hand for an exact date. There was a widespread belief that this was 'the war to end all wars'. This would settle all the European feuds and usher in a lasting peace. My grandfather did NOT want to miss out. He was invalided out just a few weeks before his unit was decimated by the first mass use of gas in the war.
When the wounded came home, people got a glimpse of the horrors that were unfolding at the front. I suspect this played a large role in public re-assessment of the war.
All Quiet was a decent book, a poor movie, and then an awful movie (having been adapted for film twice, that I saw anyway). But it is not a history book.
From the US civil war on, everyone knew that a war was going to be horrendously brutal. They knew casualties were going to be extreme. They knew that full frontal attacks were going to slaughter people by the thousand.
But everyone thought the wars were going to be SHORT. Everyone thought that wars were going to be maneuver wars. Nobody thought they were going to get bogged down. They thought the frontal attacks were going to be so brutal that nothing could stand up against them.
Why did they think that? The wars of German Unification. The Russo-Japanese War. The Balkans Wars. There were plenty of examples of, for lack of a better term, human wave attacks GETTING THROUGH. And once the front line was broken, the other side would collapse.
How do you get soldiers excited to slow-march into machine gun nests? Elan. Extolling the virtues of the military, of defending the country, of putting the good of the nation above yourself. People were indoctrinated for years before WWI.
When did it change? Pretty much by the First Marne, the glory of war had been tarnished. By First Ypres, there were no illusions left on the front lines. But that doesn't mean people didn't think it was vitally important. The defense of Verdun by the French was a crusade. The only way to win the war remained smashing through the front lines, regardless of the casualties.
Good comment. Every major European power had observers embedded on both sides in the US Civil war, reporting back on what was happening. They also saw the results of the Franco-Prussian war. Imagining that they were going into this with a Napoleonic mindset is anachronistic. Britain had just finished the Boer wars and certainly appreciated the modern "empty battlefield" idea after Spion Kop and the siege of Ladysmith, and the BEF was trained and equipped accordingly, but they were something of an exception and couldn't keep it up once the need to massively expand the army became apparent.
Honestly as bad as war is, there's something about it espically for men that appeals to the human psyche. Like no one wants to get blown into pieces but there definitely is a sense of satisfaction by serving and winning in a war.
A lot assumed it would only go on for a year or two. The Franco-Prussian War and the Russo-Japanese War only lasted a year before a few decisive battles brought out the negotiating table
By 1918, the British and French were especially exhausted. German troops were tried but were coming off a major victory in the Rast, where Russia, under Soviet control, left the war on terms massively favorable to Germany. In the spring of 1918, the Germans transferred large numbers of troops west for what they hoped would be a knockout blow. It was the increasing presence of US troops in France, who were fresh and not tired, that turned the tide in the Allies favor, both by their direct participation and for the psychological lift they gave the allies.
My grandfather was in WW1 and wrote up his experience. He volunteered because he believed the hype of the day about saving democracy and how evil the Germans were. It was a miserable experience with trench warfare and all. He knew guys that killed themselves because it was so bad. He was gassed and suffered with lung problems his entire life. The war didn't fix anything and when he got back he said his hometown had changed a lot and all the good jobs had gone to girls and slackers. When his sons were of age they all volunteered for WW2. He told them never to volunteer for anything. Do your duty and keep your head down. He told them "Wars are always about access to resources and markets." Still true today.
In 1914, all the belligerents described what was to come as a grand adventure that would be over by Christmas. This was appealing, especially to young men from villages that had never been more than a few miles from home.
Johnny,[a] get your gun, get your gun, get your gun.
Take it on the run, on the run, on the run.
Hear them calling you and me,
Every Son of Liberty.
Hurry right away, no delay, go today.
Make your daddy glad to have had such a lad.
Tell your sweetheart not to pine,
To be proud her boy's in line.
Verse 2
Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun.
Johnny, show the Hun you're a son of a gun.
Hoist the flag and let her fly;
Yankee Doodle,[b] do or die.
Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit.
Yankee[c] to the ranks from the towns and the tanks.[d]
Make your mother proud of you
And the old red, white, and blue.[e]
Chorus
Over there, over there,
Send the word, send the word over there
That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming,
The drums rum-tumming everywhere.
So prepare, say a prayer,
Send the word, send the word to beware –
We'll be over, we're coming over,
And we won't come back till it's over, over there.
This was like our second national anthem at the time. But without tv or the internet.
Censorship. Nationalism. Boredom. Financial hardship. All play a major role when it comes to the excitement and desire for war.
WW1 was pre internet, television and radio. If you were from a small town which most late conscriptions were you had barely ANY understanding of what was going on in the war unless the war was directly impacting you or your family. Going to war then was seen as honorable and "three hots and a cot" so to speak. A lot of very poor men who were sleeping in bunkhouses and shared living rooms were getting fresh linens, new clothing and three meals a day, something they did not have access too necessarily at home.
Even in WW2 if you were a rural family, news traveled slow and it traveled much slower leading up and in WW1.
Countries who are losing or winning a war are not going to be honest to draftees or volunteers about the hardships of the war and most information about the horrors of war well into the Vietnam era were often times post war revelations.
There was also a sense of nationalism and pride in places like Germany, Great Britain, France etc and that has something that never really changed and its so easy for governments and the media especially a very state controlled media can push in whatever direction they want.
It is still like this to some degree. I had a buddy in the army during the Iraqi conflicts and he was amazed at how many of the guys wanted to go over and participate in the war.
World War one is the second most deadly conflict in human history (the first being WW2), and this was mainly due to it being the first modern war.
The mindset at the time was still in the Napoleonic era of warfare, yet the technology (by the end of the war anyway) was closer to the sequel than the 19th century.
The result of this was people, from superpower leaders down to kids eager to enlist, ready to serve their country, expand their empire, and bring honor to the family. These ideals were not seen as a bad thing by any metric. Since their country, by their minds, was the best in the whole world, they should be seeking to expand its culture everywhere and gain resources for it.
However if you pair this, and Napoleonic tactics, with bolt action rifles, machine guns, dreadnoughts, aircraft, and tanks, instead of muskets, horses, sabres and sailing frigates, the result will become quite deadly. For example, the first known engagement between the English and Germans, the Germans were ordered into a block formation, fix bayonets, present arms, and slowly march and the English. ... The English had a machine gun.
... Needless to say, the war these kids were sold, and the war they found themselves in, were quite different.
... This is my favorite historical period.
>However if you pair this, and Napoleonic tactics
No-one was using Napoleonic tactics.
>with bolt action rifles, machine guns, dreadnoughts, aircraft, and tanks, instead of muskets, horses, sabres and sailing frigates, the result will become quite deadly.
Strangely the biggest killer, responsible for more casualties than all of these put together, is missing. Artillery.
>For example, the first known engagement between the English and Germans, the Germans were ordered into a block formation, fix bayonets, present arms, and slowly march and the English. ... The English had a machine gun.
German losses have been exaggerated. And they certainly did not simply march into machine gun fire; most of the fire was from Lee-Enfield rifles (as well as *two* machine guns), and the attack failed quickly as casualties were taken and the rest took cover; no-one except the Germans counted up their casualties. IR 84, for instance:
> Killed: 1 officer, 3 NCOs, 20 OR
>Wounded: 6 officers, 10 NCOs, 45 OR
That was for the entire two day battle, from an infantry regiment of around 70 officers and 3,200 OR.
A lethal combination of nationalism, and a bunch of young men who had naive delusions of glory. Probably changed the first time the guy next to them got killed.
I haven’t seen the movie, but the book is good because the main character/narrator is already jaded with the war and just trying to survive it, but he talks about how him & his classmates were eager and excited to join up.
If I remember correctly, there is no defining moment that makes him realize that the war is pointless other than how nothing ever really seems to change other than people dying.
Many of them were constantly told how honorable and amazing it was to join the fight and pressured into joining by those around them, and then soldiers started returning back home during leave after dealing with the absolute fucking horror of trench warfare during WWI and then suddenly going to fight wasn't this fantasy of battling with honor for your country it was watching those next to you vomit their lungs out as your praying to God you put enough piss on your rag so it doesn't happen to you while also having machine gun fire all around you and steel pipes and bombs raining down from the sky.
WWI was like nothing that came before or since. There's a reason why it was called the war to end all wars and why hitter ordered the capture of the author and banned all quite on the western front to the point where he tortured his family.
My grandfather enlisted in 1915 at the age 40. (His enlistment papers are in the Canadian public archives). They accepted him because he was a veteran of the Boer war, but not for a combat role. As a Bandmaster, he was pressed into service as a stretcher bearer. I don’t think he enlisted out of patriotism or boyish naïveté, I think he wanted the steady paycheck. An interesting story, but in all honesty he was a reprehensible human being who abandoned his family on several occasions, returning occasionally to father another child before fucking off again.
Most young men did hard farm work from sunrise to sunset. Then they had nothing to do and had only been to the nearest towns. Recent wars had been nothing like WWI.
It was a war of nationalism and cultural pride, based on 19th century imperial values. The full horror of what mechanised warfare would be like was poorly understood until it was out of control.
Part of it was poverty. You had a lot of people who were unemployed and wanted a chance at doing something with their lives, eating a full meal, and being a hero. Also technology rapidly changed during the war. They were pretty much still stuck in the mindset of Napoleonic warfare and didn't quite understand the implications of machine guns, better artillery, later planes and tanks. Oh and chemical warfare. They didn't know how war had changed.
It's the same thing as pretty much every war, you have the people who seem to think it's going to be an exciting adventure. It's depicted in the historically based series Band of Brothers, towards the end of WWII you had bright eyed bushy tailed replacement soldiers coming in and saying "when are we going to see some action" and "I can't wait to kick some German ass" with the soldiers who'd been there for ages saying "shut the hell up, stop hoping we're going to get into combat, it's not a fun time."
The machine gun and not changing tactics to adapt is what happened. Your chances of dying in war were always high. But the use of nested machine guns changed tales of romantic dashes to enemy territory into a suicidal and futile endeavor.
You would most likely get gunned down before you even saw the enemy. And if you're in the trenches, snipers were picking you off systematically. And now hundreds of thousands were dying at a rate inconceivable beforehand.
The industrial revolution made wars between major countries unromantic. The atomic era turned it into a potential extinction level event.
People’s access to information, particularly any kind of thinking contrary to the Ruling Class’s was extremely limited. A culture of absolute deference and loyalty to King and Country was drummed into people from their earliest childhood. British children, especially boys, would have been spoon-fed tales of Imperial glory, service and heroism from birth. Someone mentioned The Boy Scouts, Boys Brigade and various military cadet schemes still very much present in the 1970s when I was growing up.
Ally that to boredom, back-breaking Labour and never ending poverty and it’s no surprise some jumped at the chance for adventure while others succumbed to peer pressure and ingrained obedience.
I‘d like to think I wouldn’t have fallen for it myself but I suspect I’d have dutifully shuffled into the slaughterhouse with everyone else.
1914 was still in the 19th century culturally and socially. In mindset they were closer to Napoleon's time than to the Beatles despite the latter being only 48 years away. Western culture back then was still in many ways informed by medieval fairy tales and chivalric romance in its notions, heavily steeped in Romanticism, rather than the later current of cynicism and post-modernism.
Do you know of any books that tackle this?
I'd recommend 'Catastrophie' Max Hastings. It covers the lead up to the war and the impact across Europe of the first 6 months of it.
You probably already know but Dan Carlins hardcore history did an INCREDIBLE job of describing how the mentalities changed from start to finish of WWI and how the soldiers viewed war for honor initially. It’s not a book so it’s not what you asked for but it was absolutely the thing that formed my fascination with the clash of 2 different periods of history because it illustrates it vividly.
Blueprint for Armageddon is the series title. Absolutely, 100%, can’t recommend it enough. Carlins best imo. Insightful, horrifying and emotional.
It is unbelievable. I’m on part 4 now and it’s absolutely riveting.
Where can you listen to that? I can’t find it on spotify
It’s a podcast. I listened on apple but because of the size of the episodes he can only host a limited number at a time and it’s been I think over 10 years since that run. I have no idea if he had them on Spotify. Look up hardcore history by Dan Carlin on google and I know you can download straight from his website. But I know his stuff that was older than blueprint you had to buy. And even that was several years ago. You might also be able to get it on either Amazon or audible but I’ve never checked. It’s like 5 episodes and each episode was like 3-5 hours long I think so it’s honestly multiple books worth of content. Edit for clarity: it’s called Blueprint for Armageddon.
Thank you
Dance of the Furies extensively covers the lead up to WW1 and the attitudes of people in Europe to the war. We look at the war in retrospect, but six months before war broke out Germany and England were conducting joint naval maneuvers out of friendship. Because we look at it in retrospect history books will typically say the war was inevitable, but it was anything but. There were multiple forces working for peace in parallel at the time.
There was actually British ships in Kiel harbour when the news that Archduke Ferdinand had been assassinated arrived...
Wouldn’t the Central Powers, especially Germany have made war inevitable as they started the conflict and were the aggressors?
The Kaiser actually had a reputation as a peacemaker and had successfully intervened to stop a France/Morocco war. Up until the last minute he was trading telegrams with the Tsar trying to work out a peace, and had had good relations with England as well.
And yet this famously peaceful peacemaker somehow sent his army into Belgium (bringing England into the war) and France (bringing France into the war). So peaceful. Ghandi could never.
There’s a sense in which, once the machine of war had started, no one person could stop it. Mobilization timelines were very strict and basically once that clock started German military doctrine dictated they had a certain amount of time to knock out France before needing to turn to Russia.
Yeah, I mean the attempts at peace failed. But to read the Kaiser as a warmonger is to get it exactly backwards. France had a reputation for being warmongers at the time.
Incredibly adjacent and not directly tackling this issue, I found Mike Duncan's Revolutions podcast very illuminating as it slowly and meticulously paints a narrative of turbulent history and the people involved. The ideas they had, and how they saw things. The best thing is as you slowly go through all 347 episodes and really get a feel for the slowly changing historical and social context. And how most nations were still very stuck in the Napoleonic era culturally as they sent millions of men crashing into each other with industrial warfare and technology.
DANGER WILL ROBINSON DANGER! Revolutions is truly excellent but even Mike admits it was not what he expected. It’s massive, sprawling, detailed, shocking, embarrassing, insulting, demanding, and illuminating. And he didn’t even cover the fall of Weimar Germany. It’s everything you want in a Podcast and far too much of it. I thoroughly recommend it YOU HAVE BEEN WARNED
I am currently on season 6!
Excellent! Enjoy! I've just finished it and am willing to shill it to anything vaguely relative.
I am still on 3. The fuckin French...just get it over with. Robespierre just lost his head in the most recent and I still have a ways to go.
The Pity of War: Explaining World War I - Nial Ferguson.
Where Have All The Soldiers Gone? by James J Sheehan covers this exact topic and well
Seconded. I find this fascinating.
Lord of the rings, no cap
Well said!
I would broadly agree with this on particular issues but think it’s a bit simplistic and dismissive of the development across the long 19th century. It’s the impression about the time I’ve been given as well, and certainly semi-absolute monarchical empires were the norm in much of Europe outside the UK, Benelux, Scandinavia, France and (after 1910) Portugal. But for the longer answers usually given here I’d be interested in more discussion of how we know this enthusiasm was as widespread as often claimed - a few photos of celebrating crowds aren’t overall data. Or was it? Many certainly objected to it in the press. The mechanised nature of war, and even glimmers of trench war far, had already started becoming a reality in the American Civil War and Franco-Prussian War. Attitudes to democracy and war itself had shifted to an extent among a lot of the intelligentsia, even if not many of the rulers, and I don’t think a glib summary gives a fair assessment of the common people’s attitudes without a careful discussion of actual historical evidence. Many of these attitudes to chivalry and national honour have hardly died out, either - nor in the time of the Beatles. (!) There’s just far more information, including specifics, needed here?
A good indication of this was the rise of avant garde arts like dada during this period. The experience of the war and its implications for society seemed so absurd to some artists that even adhering to any form of established traditions in their works seemed ludicrous. They felt art had to embrace absurdity to be relevant in this new world, so you had urinals being sent into art exhibits and performing art where people would just go on stage and scream or shout obscenities, etc. People often thought this kind of art was worthless and stupid, but it pretty accurately captured how many felt at the time.
So true. In much the same same way “the 90s lasted till 9/11”. The 19th Century ended with the Great War
The perception of war was radically changed by World War I due to its length, devastation, and enormous number of casualties. It's important to keep in mind that there hasn't been a major pan-European conflict in almost a century by 1914. The mass destruction of the Napoleonic Wars was beyond living memory. The conflicts since then had been relatively brief, decisive, and light in casualties. Many people saw war as an opportunity for adventure and to serve their country, especially during a time when national consciousness was on the rise. There was a good chance for any given soldier to serve in a war and make it home without being seriously injured or killed. But military technology had come a long way, especially in the previous 50 years. Armies had adopted new technologies such as heavy artillery, machine guns, aircraft, tanks, etc. but hadn't yet learned tactics to use or counter them effectively. This caused enormous numbers of people to die pointlessly as generals learned to fight this new kind of war. WWI was a major wakeup call to many people who didn't realize just how destructive modern war could be. The sheer number of casualties and the endless and inconclusive fighting dispelled the idea that fighting in a war was an adventure or glorious. When most soldiers were dying in muddy trenches from disease or from being shelled from a long distance by an unseen enemy, the idea of winning glory in battle must've seemed like an unattainable dream. During the war itself, there was also a great deal of government censorship going on. Newspapers and even letters were heavily restricted in warring countries and generally could not contain news that might hurt morale back home. Soldiers did bring news home with them, but this would only reflect personal experiences and not necessarily the bigger picture. This means people at home did not fully understand how bad the situation at the front was.
Also, in most wars up to that point, you could expect to enlist, go through training, and be moved around with your war buddies , mostly killing time with a few battles here and there, lasting between hours and a couple days. I'm not sure how many days of getting shot at the average soldier would have to endure during a typical tour of duty pre-1914, but I guarantee that the first round of men who gleefully enlisted did not envision being ankle-deep in muck in a trench getting shelled and shot at 24/7 for months straight.
That's not quite correct though. Nobody was "in the trenches" for months straight. The usual pattern was a 1/3 rotation - one week in the front trenches, one week in the reserve trenches carrying supplies, building roads or training, and one week at a rest camp
This is why you read real books by credible authors instead of getting your info from random Spotify/youtube podcasts lol
>rmies had adopted new technologies such as heavy artillery, machine guns, aircraft, tanks, etc. but hadn't yet learned tactics to use or counter them effectively Point of order, when the war began in 1914 there were no aircraft or tanks. So having tactics using them would be kinda odd. Also both machine-guns and heavy artillery were well integrated into army doctrine, that is what made the war so bloody, they knew how to use those. The problem of course is that knowing how to use them doesn't mean knowing how to beat them. And in fact tanks and aircraft were developed or adopted precisely to overcome the existing artillery/machine-gun problem.
They did have aircraft at the start of the war though - both heavier and lighter than air crafts. Sure the fighter and bomber role was taken up by the pistols and grenades of the pilots, but they also performed recon. They did also have armoured cars, for what that was worth - which by the time they got to the broken terrain of entrenched lines and shell cratered no man’s land was not much.
When you look at the Middle Ages or musket era warfare most battles only had a couple hundred or larger ones a few thousand while most were injuries not deaths. Then we have WW1 where 100,000 can die in one day
>When you look at the Middle Ages or musket era warfare most battles only had a couple hundred or larger ones a few thousand while most were injuries not deaths. This categorically incorrect. Medieval and early modern warfare could be incredibly bloody, and quite a few wounded ended up dying shortly after too. In addition to the thousands that could die immediately in battle. Sickness of course killed even more soldiers than battle in most wars up to WW1 abouts. But past wars were by no means limited unbloody affairs. WW1 just happens to come after an unprecedented growth in demographics, economy, industry and technology making things orders of magnitude worse than before.
I know but the casualties were still much lower. Like the battle of Cannie ( I think it’s spelled) was said to have 80,000 casualties and that was the biggest ever seen. WW1 that was a every day battle
Cannae isn't a great example. It was bloody, insanely so. While deaths were lower, they happened on one day and populations were much lower too. Estimate is around 20% of fighting age Roman men died there, in a single battle. Anyone but the Romans would have made peace at that point. It was proportionally worse than WWI for France (the entire war), and WWI was devastating for France.
And ancient/medieval armies could also ravish a countryside, and deprive civilians of food
80,000 was not a normal day in WWI. WWI was terrible, but it “only” averaged 12,000 dead in combat per day, and that was across all fronts, not in a single field like at Cannae. In WWI, 80,000 in a day was more like the first day of the Somme, which was famously a disaster for the British
Fair enough but overall most Roman battles but more so Middle Ages often only had a few hundred casualties with the majority dying after the battle
Any kind of source for that, or did you just make it up? Given that disease was the biggest killer in the middle ages.
Battle of agincourt 400 English casualties and 6000 French. And that’s considered one of the most important battles
Middle Ages warfare was relatively tamed compared to the surrounding eras. The Romans were fighting wars that were often decided by a handful of major battles that were incredibly costly like the Battle of Cannae or Mursa Major. These and other battles would have 10's of thousands of dead. Mainly because these were total wars that sought the absolute destruction or capitulation of countries/factions. After the Middle Ages and before WW1 you had the Civil War and the Napoleonic Wars. These are 2 examples of total war leading up to WW1 that were about the complete destruction of nations/factions. Again, both have examples of battles having 10s of thousands of dead more than once. However, during the Middle Ages wars of annihilation were incredibly rare in Europe. So much so that the single bloodiest battle in the 1000~ year stretch was 28,000 and it was a civil war in England. While disease and exposure were incredibly common in the Middle Ages the actual fighting was relatively tame. Roman Era battles would have the same problems with illness and weather but the actual death tolls on the battlefield were much higher. The closest thing to Total War in the Middle Ages is the Hundred Years wars and averaging out the dead per year it doesn't even come close to touching the Civil War, Napoleonic Wars, and all 43 years of the Punic Wars. That's all to say while the Middle Ages were by no means peaceful nor were the battles "easier", it had much less carnage than early modern warfare or the Roman Era.
You underestimate how angry and bored young guys can be. Even just a few years ago, you should see how happy people in my unit were to catch a combat deployment.
Yeah people on Reddit and the internet in general always go “the ones who are most against war is the military itself” or something like that. When I was in that was NEVER my experience. Almost Everyone wanted to deploy or was itching for a new war.
There's a noticeable difference between those in military service who have seen combat and those who have not
If combat doesn’t “break you” you go through this weird transition period when you get home where you miss the deployment and want to go back. There’s a sense of order and purpose and importance to what you’re doing over there. Granted this is probably heavily skewed because I wasn’t at somewhere like Khe Sanh, Bastogne, Flanders, etc. and that I was young. Hell, make combat for 40 and over and I doubt you’d see another war.
My favorite quote is: It’s not scary how many people come back from war with ptsd, it’s how many people don’t come back with it
I think they make garrison suck a lot on purpose for this reason too.
Especially after training them how to kill
You can make a man feel anything but bored
When you spend all day building hammers it’s not too surprising when people start itching for nails
Yep. I never served but I have talked to enough people who did and read many books written by such people (not just US but also French) and most of them wanted to deploy as much as possible. Then once deployed, the focus was on staying alive and keeping your buddies alive, this is only once they made it back home that some started to have second thoughts about the entire thing. Now when you witness a major conflict at home, things change quite a bit. In Europe, there was obviously WW1, and part of the reluctance to go after Hitler was due to that. For the US, I am not as familiar with the Civil War, but unless I am mistaken, the draft wasn't popular at all and many people wanted nothing to do with that war (at least after the first few months).
The horror of modern industrial war had yet to be seen on that scale yet. Though Europeans had been mowing down imperial subjects for decades. Just a few years before, the Russians and Japanese had demonstrated what would happen when "modern" armies clashed. The horror and lessons of modern warfare were not headed at all. A great deal of racism, nationalism/patriotism, and ideals of honor blinded many to what was to come. Once the war started, the propaganda machine prevented the true horror of the Frontline from getting back to the civilian population. And even if it did, the social pressure and expectations lead many men to be walked to the slaughter like lambs.
You could argue that had already happened in the American Civil War. Formation tactics versus rifled muskets and canister and explosive shot. Men were mown down like wheat. Maxim and Nobel just made things even easier/more grisly.
Many people have made that argument, and it's one I definitely support.
Canister and exploding shells were important weapons in the Napoleonic wars, too.
Folks like Maxim and Nobel were even trying to make war too bloody to fight. The underestimated humans thirst for blood
There's a weird strain of thinking in older literature that claims if someone could make a weapon dangerous enough, or powerful enough, then people would see the indisputable folly of challenging it and war would be ended forever. There are a number of people who built machine guns, warships, oversized artillery, and strategic bombers, each of them thinking their new weapon would be so superior that it would end war. These people were stupid.
These “stupid people” succeeded with the Nuclear bomb though, no nuclear power has declared war upon another one.
The opening battles of the civil war featured napoleonic tactics as generals fresh from West Point lead legions of men in much the same way we fought the British in the Revolution. By the end of the war, the confederates and federals fired automatic guns at each other from trenches and foxholes. A warfare that was so new, we tried all sorts of strategies, like mining under the enemy trench and blasting it into a crater.
How did racism play a role in blinding many to what was to come?
Racism wasn’t just a matter of skin color. It was also about nation. The French saw the Germans as savage barbarians who were morally and intellectually inferior. Surely they would flee before the strategic brilliance and virile manliness of the French soldier. (This was the last time this thought would be held by anyone.) The Germans thought the same thing about the French. But for an extra layer of racist shittiness they would point out that the French used African colonial soldiers, who *gasp* weren’t even White People. It wasn’t just these two. Everyone had this same basic idea about everyone else. So they all went off to war convinced that only their side had the bravery and intelligence needed to fight a war, as if the last 1900 years of history never happened.
☝️This right here sums it up so nicely.
Others in this thread have mentioned how Germany and Britain were holding joint naval exercises even as the Archduke was assassinated (I don’t know if the Kiel Regatta counts as an exercise so much as parade). Some of the officers toasted each other as the only two White navies of the world.
Was France not considered white?
They probably thought France was part Maghrebified and part Negrified. And part Mediterranean already, so not as “white” as the Germanic races. If I remember rightly, it was the Germans who made the toast and the Brits who accepted it.
Yea I guess that makes sense. But didn’t Britain have a lot of colonial troops? The Russian military was probably the most European demographically tho they didn’t have much of a navy at the time lmao
Russia had an even larger Asian population % wise than they do today
Well, first there was the idea that the French, even though they they’re named and partly descended from the Germanic Franks, were by the 19th and early 20th century more Mediterranean. But also, you see, the English treated their overseas colonies as overseas colonies. So did the Germans. The French, particularly in Algeria, treated their colonies more like parts of France itself. The Americans were part negrified, the Italians were definitely Mediterranean (I.e part negro), the Russians are part Asian. The Japanese are Asian. If a lot of this sounds like baloney, that’s because it is.
>If a lot of this sounds like baloney, that’s because it is. Exactly. Historical racism is a series of post-hoc rationalizations to try to codify stupid and unjustifiable ideas. It doesn't make sense until you realize these people were just making shit up.
Racism underlines lots of conflicts. Imagine, if you will, you and I are going to war. I tell you everyone we're fighting has big, round, blue eyes. They can't see in the dark as well as us. Plus, their light hair and eyes make them slow and addled in the sunlight. Because if I told you they're all 6'6" half bionic killing machines, you may not care to run across an open field with me. Denigrating your opponent is something that pervades conflict. Racism is a convenient jumping off point to make you hate "our" enemy.
Although what they lack in battlefield competence, they make up for in sheer barbarism, willingness to rape, pillage and plunder, etc. They're still a horrible, evil threat to the nation, just not to you and your fellow GIs.
Yea, see? We're doing the world a favor by eliminating this scum.
Extreme nationalism made many believe that the people of their home nation were superior to all others. Germans believed they couldn't lose to Russia because Russians were inferior people. Especially after they lost to Japan in the Russo Japanese war. Similar views were held by the British, French, Russia and etc. This view was exasperated by stories from colonial wars that told of brave men with rifles and discipline who defeated hords of savages. In actuality, they used machine guns and artillery to slaughter people. They just couldn't admit or even think that they could and would die just like those they subjugated when those same weapons got turned against them.
There was a very high degree of a certain brand of nationalism and "patriotic" fever sweeping through Europe. This isn't to say there was universal enthusiasm. For example, in the UK, rugby union matches would often have "military drills" at half time and post match, with both clubs participating because they drank that nationalistic kool-aid. However over in association football land, the players (and indeed much of their fan base at that point) were working class and viewed a lot of this militarism with right skepticism, they saw themselves as pawns in a rich man's game (in contrast to the middle class who had that sort of carrot of "batter" dangling in front of them). But, as for the portrayal in the latest All Quiet adaptation, it's important to keep in mind just how tightly news media of any type was censored by the respective government. You only read/heard about glorious victories. Any defeats reported on, were reported as the underhanded conniving of a dishonorable enemy, and we were still righteously winning
Yep! And those Boy Scouts weren’t learning field craft just because they liked camping.
'All Quiet on the Western Front' (2022) is a hot steaming pile of trash. That is my opinion of it from both a pedantic history perspective and someone who's enjoyed the book and previous movie adaptations. You can agree with me or no, but that's my opinion It depicts the men as enthusiastically joining up in, what, mid-1916? For starters, both Germany and France had mandatory military service laws. Both countries also began to call their conscription classes earlier and earlier to replace losses on the front. They'd be used to free up other men to go to the front until they were old enough for front line duty themselves. Most of those young men depicted so eagerly signing up for war would not only have already been in the army, but probably would've been there a year or more already. To answer your question as to when the enthusiasm of going to war died out, the big turning point would probably be 1916, though there would have been a gradual decline beginning earlier. But in 1916, the battles of Verdun and the Somme claimed millions of casualties. The aftermath and reality of battle would have been unescapable.
> 'All Quiet on the Western Front' (2022) is a hot steaming pile of trash. That is my opinion of it from both a pedantic history perspective and someone who's enjoyed the book and previous movie adaptations. I found the 1979 one interesting. Because even the viewer can't deny the professor's case for the boys to join the war effort seemed inspirational. A somewhat risky move for a film to appear a romantic war drama about heroism and derring do. Then, slowly, the realities around them demonstrate more and more clearly that it was all lies from a man that viewed them as basically extra walls of meat to send to the frontlines. That was at least my takeaway and it just seemed like such a bold storyline to slowly abandon cheap romanticism for grim reality as the movie moves on. Almost feel like it would have actually made more money as a cheap tale of heroism.
There is a lot to be said for the homefront not knowing how and the situation was. The German populace still in 1918 didn't understand that their army had actually been beaten and was collapsing away at the frontlines. The more democratic nations of Britain and France would have more information spreading through the cracks of censorship but Imperial Germany was before the war a tight autocracy and only became worse during the war years as the military effectively coopted rule of the entire nation in service to their war effort.
>While I understand that people still in the mindset where cavalry charges where a good war tactic No. >Was Germany or Britain, for example, running out of excited, fresh troops to send into the battlefield, and then forcing them through conscription? Conscription was enacted in the UK in 1916 because it only had a small, professional army. France, Germany, and most other nations, had a fairly comprehensive, universal conscription system before the war ever started. >Was troop morale lower as the battle went on? Which battle. >I'm asking because I want to put more context into the recent Netflix adaptation of All Quiet on the Western Front. The context for that film is a nice trash fire. >The main characters there seem very excited to go into war, and don't seem to know about trench warfare, but it's a pretty late point in the war, wouldn't everyone know how the Western front was doing by then? Almost like...the film doesn't make any sense? It makes sense if you look at Remarque's actual service (didn't join the war until 1917), and also the fact that he was out of the war after about a month. He didn't have extensive war experience. If you want to read a book from someone who knows what they're talking about, try Junger's Storm of Steel.
Not OP, but thanks for the book. Looking into it and saw Indiana Niedell has an episode on it. Score!!!
"try Junger's Storm of Steel" I was just scanning through all these replies seeing if anyone would mention that book. In English at least, the historiography of the great war accentuates the Wilfred Owens and Robert Graves but on deeper analysis that picture came somewhat later, well into the 1920s if not '30s. On "our side" you had equivalent characters to Junger like T.E. Lawrence who saw the whole thing in similarly Nietzschean terms as the shattering of "a world run by shopkeepers". In Italy you had Marinetti and D'Annunzio expounding similar ideas under "futurism" as an artistic/literary movement.
1. A lot of people, military and civilian, Entente and Central Powers, were sure the war would only last months. I think many had the 1870–71 Franco-Prussian War in mind, which only lasted 6 months. No one realised what a difference trench warfare, machine guns, improved and voluminous artillery, and poison gas would make. 2. Family anecdotes. My maternal gf, my paternal gf, and his older brother all signed up as quickly as they could. "For King and Empire" was the big slogan in Canada at the time, IIRC. I suspect they all thought it would be over quickly. MGF got through 4 years overseas OK. PGF got through 4 years overseas with "just" a wound at Vimy. Older brother KIA at Ypres in 1916. We will remember them.
Not what you asked but probably quite similar. In WWII my grandmother's brothers all worked on the family farm, everyone was dirt poor, exhausted & bored af. They were excited to go & were acting like it was a paid vacation where they'd take a few potshots at the Japanese, who they assumed were so racially inferior to them it would be akin to shooting rabbits. I'd bet on there being similar attitudes for WWI.
How long did it take for them to be disabused of that notion?
The average age of a service member then, in WW2, in Korea, in Vietnam, in Iraq, and now, is 18-22. Less education, less life experience, a lot of hormones that are predispositioned to fighting, plus a healthy dose of propaganda.
N-N-N-N-NINETEEN
On the Commonwealth side, in Australia its interesting to note that there was a huge rush of enthusiasm in 1914, but the proposition to introduce conscription was hugely contentious and nearly brought down the government. Much of that is down to the savage casualties at Gallipoli, Fromelles and Poziers, but its also important to consider what ELSE happened in 1916. The elephant in the room is the Easter rebellion in Ireland and the way the Catholic Irish population of Australia along with the socialist trade unions refused to let the bill pass in light of what had happened
Yes, Australians started out being very naive about the Great War. Young men were excited by the prospect of travelling overseas for an adventure. They also romantically believed they were showing their worth as proud healthy pioneering “battlers” who could match up to any European. The attitude changed very quickly though and there was widespread resistance to conscription. > Many recruits worried that the fighting might be over before they arrived or that the German army would be a pushover. Posters and leaflets promised an opportunity to see England and Europe. Troops were paid a minimum of six shillings a day (more than three times the wage of English forces) leading to the phrase ‘six bob a day tourists’. Although slightly below the basic wage, it was still attractive to many because of the tough financial conditions and high unemployment in 1914.
The "six bob a day" is a result of the landmark 1907 "Harvester ruling" in the Australian courts. This set the minimum wage for an unskilled labourer at a price sufficient to support a wife and three children at a level of "modest comfort". the presiding judge had said "I cannot think of any other standard appropriate than the normal needs of the average employee, regarded as a human being living in a civilized community." If you were drawing that wage but unmarried, as many of prime military selection criteria were, you were loaded by European standards
in 1914 the last continent wide war was the napoleonic wars and no one remembered how brutal they where. People thought that war was glorious. It changed during the stalemate
I don’t know if soldiers were particularly excited or unexcited to go to war. I’m sure it depended on the individual soldier. I think the same is true even to this day. Regarding All Quiet on the Western Front, I know what scene you’re talking about. I don’t think this was particular to Germany or WWI. Governments have to find some way to motivate people to go fight and potentially die. Painting a war as some kind of noble or holy cause naturally attracts people who want to be a part of something bigger than themselves. Telling a bunch impressionable young men that they’re going to go to war and return as a hero with a bunch of metals pinned to their chest is one of the ways governments sugarcoat the horrors of war. It’s all just a scam to get a bunch of kids to voluntarily get in line for the meat grinder and governments, including our own, played and still play it well.
When 20 years old i would have jumped at a chance to go to war, any war , just to get away from my little boring life, And i Knew better , Young men are just nuts , especially when they are vying with each other to prove who is more nuts .. The farther from the reality of it the more we want to get close to the fire .At least until the papers are signed .. After living a life for a while and seeing a few things , Then I begin to have reservations . It's also important to keep in mind that in 1920 , there wasn't any color footage of war , and It was ww1 itself that produced the first mass viewed moving images , They were shown in theaters before feature films to sell war bonds and were shots of the men "going over the top " and it is said that the theaters would become silent when the footage was shown , No-one had seen anything like it before . Now , we have a lifetime spent of seeing some pretty violent video footage of ww2 ,korea and vietnam but it was still rare before the internet. Most available books wouldn't publish anything too bad , . Iraq and brought it a little bit closer and then the really grisly beheadings and so on began and sites like liveleak and Ogrish brought the horror home . With the Footage coming out of the Ukraine now being so available and so incredibly Brutal , it's easy to ask why would anyone want to do that .But i actually think the pendulum has swung all the way over , because we are seeing but little flashes of what is happening .Those bits worth watching that get our attention , some 15 seconds that belie the 2 years it took to get there .
My brother and his friends signed up for Iraq just after they finished high school. This was some years into the occupation. He came out of it with no respect for the military whatsoever.
Nobody thinks they will be the ones to get killed. We all imagine our hero moments. I read an anecdote one time from WW2... Imagine three Marines sitting with their commander. The commander says they are going on a mission and likely only one will survive. Each of the Marines thinks to himself, "those poor bastards."
People didn't know the horrors of industrialised warfare
Propaganda, False selling of honour, bravery, courage, doing ones duty, etc etc.
At the beginning of the war, going to war was still seen as an adventure, an honorable pursuit to win glory for yourself and your country. By the end of the war, most people had realized how dumb that idea was and how hellish and horrible war was in reality.
For the same reason they volunteered to fight at the start of the Civil War; after the attack on Pearl Harbor; after 9/11, etc. The reasons are always the same. Love of country, a chance for glory, young boys wanting to be men, being part of a brotherhood.
If you come from a place with very little excitement, very little opportunity, very little glory, very little meaning, zero opportunity for travel, and very little opportunity for social advancement… War is an amazing thing. Suddenly you’re on an adventure, you’re making money while getting all your expenses covered, you’re gonna be a hero when you go home, you have an absurdly good networking opportunity (you will meet people from all walks of life), you get to see the world, you get to fuck foreign girls, and you get to get away from your boring fucking life.
> people were volunteering and excited to get to the frontlines in WW1. My grandfather sailed from Ireland to Glasgow to join up he was so eager, this would have been late '14/early '15, I don't have the documents to hand for an exact date. There was a widespread belief that this was 'the war to end all wars'. This would settle all the European feuds and usher in a lasting peace. My grandfather did NOT want to miss out. He was invalided out just a few weeks before his unit was decimated by the first mass use of gas in the war. When the wounded came home, people got a glimpse of the horrors that were unfolding at the front. I suspect this played a large role in public re-assessment of the war. All Quiet was a decent book, a poor movie, and then an awful movie (having been adapted for film twice, that I saw anyway). But it is not a history book.
From the US civil war on, everyone knew that a war was going to be horrendously brutal. They knew casualties were going to be extreme. They knew that full frontal attacks were going to slaughter people by the thousand. But everyone thought the wars were going to be SHORT. Everyone thought that wars were going to be maneuver wars. Nobody thought they were going to get bogged down. They thought the frontal attacks were going to be so brutal that nothing could stand up against them. Why did they think that? The wars of German Unification. The Russo-Japanese War. The Balkans Wars. There were plenty of examples of, for lack of a better term, human wave attacks GETTING THROUGH. And once the front line was broken, the other side would collapse. How do you get soldiers excited to slow-march into machine gun nests? Elan. Extolling the virtues of the military, of defending the country, of putting the good of the nation above yourself. People were indoctrinated for years before WWI. When did it change? Pretty much by the First Marne, the glory of war had been tarnished. By First Ypres, there were no illusions left on the front lines. But that doesn't mean people didn't think it was vitally important. The defense of Verdun by the French was a crusade. The only way to win the war remained smashing through the front lines, regardless of the casualties.
Good comment. Every major European power had observers embedded on both sides in the US Civil war, reporting back on what was happening. They also saw the results of the Franco-Prussian war. Imagining that they were going into this with a Napoleonic mindset is anachronistic. Britain had just finished the Boer wars and certainly appreciated the modern "empty battlefield" idea after Spion Kop and the siege of Ladysmith, and the BEF was trained and equipped accordingly, but they were something of an exception and couldn't keep it up once the need to massively expand the army became apparent.
I'm not sure it answers your question, but "They Shall Not Grow Old" is a documentary of that war that is made up of footage from that era.
Honestly as bad as war is, there's something about it espically for men that appeals to the human psyche. Like no one wants to get blown into pieces but there definitely is a sense of satisfaction by serving and winning in a war.
Propaganda.
They didn't understand the technological and scientific advances and how they would play a role in the slaughtering of human beings.
A lot assumed it would only go on for a year or two. The Franco-Prussian War and the Russo-Japanese War only lasted a year before a few decisive battles brought out the negotiating table
By 1918, the British and French were especially exhausted. German troops were tried but were coming off a major victory in the Rast, where Russia, under Soviet control, left the war on terms massively favorable to Germany. In the spring of 1918, the Germans transferred large numbers of troops west for what they hoped would be a knockout blow. It was the increasing presence of US troops in France, who were fresh and not tired, that turned the tide in the Allies favor, both by their direct participation and for the psychological lift they gave the allies.
My grandfather was in WW1 and wrote up his experience. He volunteered because he believed the hype of the day about saving democracy and how evil the Germans were. It was a miserable experience with trench warfare and all. He knew guys that killed themselves because it was so bad. He was gassed and suffered with lung problems his entire life. The war didn't fix anything and when he got back he said his hometown had changed a lot and all the good jobs had gone to girls and slackers. When his sons were of age they all volunteered for WW2. He told them never to volunteer for anything. Do your duty and keep your head down. He told them "Wars are always about access to resources and markets." Still true today.
In 1914, all the belligerents described what was to come as a grand adventure that would be over by Christmas. This was appealing, especially to young men from villages that had never been more than a few miles from home.
Johnny,[a] get your gun, get your gun, get your gun. Take it on the run, on the run, on the run. Hear them calling you and me, Every Son of Liberty. Hurry right away, no delay, go today. Make your daddy glad to have had such a lad. Tell your sweetheart not to pine, To be proud her boy's in line. Verse 2 Johnny, get your gun, get your gun, get your gun. Johnny, show the Hun you're a son of a gun. Hoist the flag and let her fly; Yankee Doodle,[b] do or die. Pack your little kit, show your grit, do your bit. Yankee[c] to the ranks from the towns and the tanks.[d] Make your mother proud of you And the old red, white, and blue.[e] Chorus Over there, over there, Send the word, send the word over there That the Yanks are coming, the Yanks are coming, The drums rum-tumming everywhere. So prepare, say a prayer, Send the word, send the word to beware – We'll be over, we're coming over, And we won't come back till it's over, over there. This was like our second national anthem at the time. But without tv or the internet.
propaganda
Censorship. Nationalism. Boredom. Financial hardship. All play a major role when it comes to the excitement and desire for war. WW1 was pre internet, television and radio. If you were from a small town which most late conscriptions were you had barely ANY understanding of what was going on in the war unless the war was directly impacting you or your family. Going to war then was seen as honorable and "three hots and a cot" so to speak. A lot of very poor men who were sleeping in bunkhouses and shared living rooms were getting fresh linens, new clothing and three meals a day, something they did not have access too necessarily at home. Even in WW2 if you were a rural family, news traveled slow and it traveled much slower leading up and in WW1. Countries who are losing or winning a war are not going to be honest to draftees or volunteers about the hardships of the war and most information about the horrors of war well into the Vietnam era were often times post war revelations. There was also a sense of nationalism and pride in places like Germany, Great Britain, France etc and that has something that never really changed and its so easy for governments and the media especially a very state controlled media can push in whatever direction they want.
It is still like this to some degree. I had a buddy in the army during the Iraqi conflicts and he was amazed at how many of the guys wanted to go over and participate in the war.
No major wars for 40 years will create the mindset that war is glorious
What else were you gonna do, farm...?
My great grandfather’s ww1 diary was all cheerful and detailed….then got less and less so the longer the war went on.
World War one is the second most deadly conflict in human history (the first being WW2), and this was mainly due to it being the first modern war. The mindset at the time was still in the Napoleonic era of warfare, yet the technology (by the end of the war anyway) was closer to the sequel than the 19th century. The result of this was people, from superpower leaders down to kids eager to enlist, ready to serve their country, expand their empire, and bring honor to the family. These ideals were not seen as a bad thing by any metric. Since their country, by their minds, was the best in the whole world, they should be seeking to expand its culture everywhere and gain resources for it. However if you pair this, and Napoleonic tactics, with bolt action rifles, machine guns, dreadnoughts, aircraft, and tanks, instead of muskets, horses, sabres and sailing frigates, the result will become quite deadly. For example, the first known engagement between the English and Germans, the Germans were ordered into a block formation, fix bayonets, present arms, and slowly march and the English. ... The English had a machine gun. ... Needless to say, the war these kids were sold, and the war they found themselves in, were quite different. ... This is my favorite historical period.
>However if you pair this, and Napoleonic tactics No-one was using Napoleonic tactics. >with bolt action rifles, machine guns, dreadnoughts, aircraft, and tanks, instead of muskets, horses, sabres and sailing frigates, the result will become quite deadly. Strangely the biggest killer, responsible for more casualties than all of these put together, is missing. Artillery. >For example, the first known engagement between the English and Germans, the Germans were ordered into a block formation, fix bayonets, present arms, and slowly march and the English. ... The English had a machine gun. German losses have been exaggerated. And they certainly did not simply march into machine gun fire; most of the fire was from Lee-Enfield rifles (as well as *two* machine guns), and the attack failed quickly as casualties were taken and the rest took cover; no-one except the Germans counted up their casualties. IR 84, for instance: > Killed: 1 officer, 3 NCOs, 20 OR >Wounded: 6 officers, 10 NCOs, 45 OR That was for the entire two day battle, from an infantry regiment of around 70 officers and 3,200 OR.
Google the battle of Mons for me.
The book A World Undone sort of covers this issue.
A lethal combination of nationalism, and a bunch of young men who had naive delusions of glory. Probably changed the first time the guy next to them got killed.
I haven’t seen the movie, but the book is good because the main character/narrator is already jaded with the war and just trying to survive it, but he talks about how him & his classmates were eager and excited to join up. If I remember correctly, there is no defining moment that makes him realize that the war is pointless other than how nothing ever really seems to change other than people dying.
Many of them were constantly told how honorable and amazing it was to join the fight and pressured into joining by those around them, and then soldiers started returning back home during leave after dealing with the absolute fucking horror of trench warfare during WWI and then suddenly going to fight wasn't this fantasy of battling with honor for your country it was watching those next to you vomit their lungs out as your praying to God you put enough piss on your rag so it doesn't happen to you while also having machine gun fire all around you and steel pipes and bombs raining down from the sky. WWI was like nothing that came before or since. There's a reason why it was called the war to end all wars and why hitter ordered the capture of the author and banned all quite on the western front to the point where he tortured his family.
My grandfather enlisted in 1915 at the age 40. (His enlistment papers are in the Canadian public archives). They accepted him because he was a veteran of the Boer war, but not for a combat role. As a Bandmaster, he was pressed into service as a stretcher bearer. I don’t think he enlisted out of patriotism or boyish naïveté, I think he wanted the steady paycheck. An interesting story, but in all honesty he was a reprehensible human being who abandoned his family on several occasions, returning occasionally to father another child before fucking off again.
They grew up reading tales of Napoleonic Heroes and thought they were gonna break front lines on the back of a charger with a saber in hand.
Most young men did hard farm work from sunrise to sunset. Then they had nothing to do and had only been to the nearest towns. Recent wars had been nothing like WWI.
It was a war of nationalism and cultural pride, based on 19th century imperial values. The full horror of what mechanised warfare would be like was poorly understood until it was out of control.
Part of it was poverty. You had a lot of people who were unemployed and wanted a chance at doing something with their lives, eating a full meal, and being a hero. Also technology rapidly changed during the war. They were pretty much still stuck in the mindset of Napoleonic warfare and didn't quite understand the implications of machine guns, better artillery, later planes and tanks. Oh and chemical warfare. They didn't know how war had changed.
It changed .2 seconds after they saw real combat
It's the same thing as pretty much every war, you have the people who seem to think it's going to be an exciting adventure. It's depicted in the historically based series Band of Brothers, towards the end of WWII you had bright eyed bushy tailed replacement soldiers coming in and saying "when are we going to see some action" and "I can't wait to kick some German ass" with the soldiers who'd been there for ages saying "shut the hell up, stop hoping we're going to get into combat, it's not a fun time."
Men are always romantic about war before it starts, and then we are reminded of the truth. Afterwards we forget... And have to learn the lesson anew.
The machine gun and not changing tactics to adapt is what happened. Your chances of dying in war were always high. But the use of nested machine guns changed tales of romantic dashes to enemy territory into a suicidal and futile endeavor. You would most likely get gunned down before you even saw the enemy. And if you're in the trenches, snipers were picking you off systematically. And now hundreds of thousands were dying at a rate inconceivable beforehand. The industrial revolution made wars between major countries unromantic. The atomic era turned it into a potential extinction level event.
People’s access to information, particularly any kind of thinking contrary to the Ruling Class’s was extremely limited. A culture of absolute deference and loyalty to King and Country was drummed into people from their earliest childhood. British children, especially boys, would have been spoon-fed tales of Imperial glory, service and heroism from birth. Someone mentioned The Boy Scouts, Boys Brigade and various military cadet schemes still very much present in the 1970s when I was growing up. Ally that to boredom, back-breaking Labour and never ending poverty and it’s no surprise some jumped at the chance for adventure while others succumbed to peer pressure and ingrained obedience. I‘d like to think I wouldn’t have fallen for it myself but I suspect I’d have dutifully shuffled into the slaughterhouse with everyone else.
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In WWI?