"The highest percentage of losses was France, with 16.8 percent of those mobilized killed. In Germany, 15.4 percent killed. But if you take those in combat, it's twenty-two percent officers and eighteen percent soldiers. Remember, officers weren't all fancy generals who were sitting drinking champagne, plotting the deaths of all these people. The junior officers, and this is also the case in the British sense, the flower of British youth from Oxford, Cambridge, etc., etc., they're the ones that blew the whistle and said, "Follow me, men." And they jump over, armed with only a pistol. They're toast. They get killed in even greater percentages. Anyway, Serbia loses thirty-seven percent of all its combatants. They don't have as many. Turkey, twenty-seven percent; Romania, twenty-five percent; and Bulgaria, twenty-two percent.
Now, think of this. The war starts in early August, 1914, and it ends on the 11th of November, 1918. Every day of those years, every day. Think four years back in your own lives, and then every day, 900 Frenchmen were killed every day, every day. That's a lot of telegrams. "Be proud of X." 1,300 Germans were killed every day.
The death rate was higher in World War II. Of course, in World War II, the Soviet Union has an unbelievable death rate, twenty-five million people die, some of them in Stalin's Gulag, but most of them because of the war. The death rate is higher. July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 20,000 British soldiers were killed. Not just killed and wounded, dead in one day. They were there to go over the top, and they're dead at the end. Unlike previous wars, disease didn't play a major part. Unlike, for example, the Crimean War. Though the Blue Flu, sometimes called the Spanish Flu, as you know will kill more people in 1918, 1919, and 1920, than the war. That's the pandemic. As I said, most people die of shells, followed by machine guns and flames, despite progress in medicine.
The length was simply staggering. The Battle of the Somme lasted five months. Gallipoli lasted more than eight months. Verdun, ten months. Ypres, in 1917, four months. On the Battle of the Somme, you talk about how war influenced people's lives, four million men participated in the Battle of the Somme, four million. That's a phenomenal statistic. More than a quarter were killed, captured, or porte disparu, classified as disappeared, nothing left. Battlefields were no longer called the field of glory. That went. The language went. I make an allusion to that, which is an obvious one, at the end of what you read. Also, there's a brutalization of the sense of humanity that you lost because you were dealing with so many people dead all around.
You were fighting for your life. The attitude that people had toward other people changes, and the demons of the twentieth century — fascism above all — would be built on that dehumanization. Difficult to imagine, though not impossible, the Holocaust without World War I; but given the Turks and what they did to the Armenians, it's hard to say. Also, atrocities. There were atrocities. Now there are a couple of good books on atrocities. Most of the atrocities were committed by the Germans in Belgium. They executed 5,500 Belgian civilians. Edith Cavell was the most famous, the nurse. In part because German soldiers believed that they were being picked off by civilians — is what had happened in France in 1870-1871. But the Russians committed atrocities in east Prussia and in Galicia."
© John Merriman
Yale Lectures on European Civilization, 1648-1945 (2008)
[link]
Now, think of this. The war starts in early August, 1914, and it ends on the 11th of November, 1918. Every day of those years, every day. Think four years back in your own lives, and then every day, 900 Frenchmen were killed every day, every day. That's a lot of telegrams. "Be proud of X." 1,300 Germans were killed every day.
The death rate was higher in World War II. Of course, in World War II, the Soviet Union has an unbelievable death rate, twenty-five million people die, some of them in Stalin's Gulag, but most of them because of the war. The death rate is higher. July 1, 1916, the first day of the Battle of the Somme, 20,000 British soldiers were killed. Not just killed and wounded, dead in one day. They were there to go over the top, and they're dead at the end. Unlike previous wars, disease didn't play a major part. Unlike, for example, the Crimean War. Though the Blue Flu, sometimes called the Spanish Flu, as you know will kill more people in 1918, 1919, and 1920, than the war. That's the pandemic. As I said, most people die of shells, followed by machine guns and flames, despite progress in medicine.
The length was simply staggering. The Battle of the Somme lasted five months. Gallipoli lasted more than eight months. Verdun, ten months. Ypres, in 1917, four months. On the Battle of the Somme, you talk about how war influenced people's lives, four million men participated in the Battle of the Somme, four million. That's a phenomenal statistic. More than a quarter were killed, captured, or porte disparu, classified as disappeared, nothing left. Battlefields were no longer called the field of glory. That went. The language went. I make an allusion to that, which is an obvious one, at the end of what you read. Also, there's a brutalization of the sense of humanity that you lost because you were dealing with so many people dead all around.
You were fighting for your life. The attitude that people had toward other people changes, and the demons of the twentieth century — fascism above all — would be built on that dehumanization. Difficult to imagine, though not impossible, the Holocaust without World War I; but given the Turks and what they did to the Armenians, it's hard to say. Also, atrocities. There were atrocities. Now there are a couple of good books on atrocities. Most of the atrocities were committed by the Germans in Belgium. They executed 5,500 Belgian civilians. Edith Cavell was the most famous, the nurse. In part because German soldiers believed that they were being picked off by civilians — is what had happened in France in 1870-1871. But the Russians committed atrocities in east Prussia and in Galicia."
© John Merriman
Yale Lectures on European Civilization, 1648-1945 (2008)
[link]
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