World War I

[Aggers]

It's so sad to remembering the terrible Great War, which started 100 year's ago today,
and in which millions of people lost their lives. It's sad,too, that Germany, once again,
in 1939 started another war that also cost millions of people their lives. But the politicians
at the time hadn't learned their lessons If Hitler had won he would, without a doubt, have
taken over Britain - we should have taken over Germany and stopped their sadistic game
for ever. But politicians never do the right thing, do they?

[Rodo]

No! And the saddest thing of all is that nobody seems to have learnt anything from those two terrible wars. Fighting in the world goes on and on.

[Suff]

Perhaps they had learned a lesson. Which is why they were not keen to push our young men into a conflict which would see hundreds of thousands of them die.

Although they probably didn't remember the lesson well learned in the Empire. That one of doing your duty because it must be done, regardless of cost.

There will always be tinpot nutters around who would like to throw a war. The idea is not to let them become big enough to be a real problem. Which is why North Korea is such a travesty and Iran is following suit.

The problem with Politicians is they not only have to learn ALL the lessons ALL the time. But they have to REMEMBER then when needed.

[shazsha]

In the graveyard were my father is buried there is a large gravestone in memory of 5 young men (all brothers) who lost their lives in WW1. The oldest of them was only 27 when he died.
I find it very sad that so many young men (many of them barely out of childhood) had to die before they got to actually have a life, not forgetting the survivors who were left mentally and physically scarred.

[Workingman]

I was reading a local article about the Leeds Pals. They, along with the Accrington Pals, were sent to attack Serre on the northern Somme.

Leeds Pals lost 248 with a further 274 wounded.
Accrington Pals lost 235 with 350 wounded.

A quote from a member of the Leeds Pals, Pvt A. V. Pearson is as follows:

"The name of Serre and the date of 1st July is engraved deep in our hearts, along with the faces of our 'Pals', a grand crowd of chaps. We were two years in the making and ten minutes in the destroying."

We, today, cannot even begin to imagine the horrors.

[Aggers]

In World War I, more than 37 million people were killed.

In World War II, more than 60 million were killed.

As technology improves, the figure will no doubt get higher still.

Nations really should get their heads together and put a stop to these tragic events.

[Suff]

WW1 was really a European war with some extensions into the ottoman empire. Really it was only the inclusion the British Empire and America which made the forces world spanning.

WW2 on the other hand was truly world spanning with Japan attacking America and Asia and Germany and Italy attacking the whole of Europe, the Balkans and North Africa. If you exclude South America, most of the world was physically at war, rather than just contributing to the war.
Given the scale of the war, losses were relatively lower. If you look at the tables of deaths WW1 WW2 you notice that the military deaths in WW1 were significantly higher than the the civilian deaths. Yet if we look at WW2, we see that, quite literally, horrific levels of civilian deaths. Most of them nothing to do with the war and everything to do with the way the ware was fought and concentration camps. The Germans didn’t just kill 6 million Jews, they killed Christians and gipsies too. 3 million Polish Christians to go with the 3 million Polish Jews. 11 milion non combatants were killed in 2,000 concentratino camps in Germany.

In WW1 British civilian casualties were 16,000 ish, but the total war dead were around a million. In WW2 Total British casualties were under half a million. A result of more efficient war.

The soviet union, approx. 13 million troops dead approx. 12 million civilians. Dutch east India, 3-4 million civilian casualties…. The major difference between WW1 and WW2 was the number of countries captured in totality and ruled whilst the war raged on at the periphery. Also that both Germany and Japan waged total war on both civilian AND military targets as a shock tactic to force governments to surrender. Equally when the allies retaliated, it was total war. So the Germans lost about 760,000 civilians in WW1 but 3.6 million in WW2 with a total dead of 9m.

The two wars are not really comparable. One was just a much larger and relatively conventional war. The other was thoroughly modern and also thoroughly old fashioned too. Modern in its execution, but old fashioned in how the civilian population was dealt with. Barbaric really.