World War I is often regarded as the Great War. It was fought from 1914 until 1918 and it is considered to be the bloodiest war humankind has led so far. In merely four years a whole generation of young men was wiped out: approximately 16, 5 million lives were lost, even more were wounded, and the rest that had managed to survive was traumatized for life. One of the reasons why there were so many human casualties was the fact that World War I turned out to be the first trench warfare in history. The sense of permanent stalemate brought about great disillusionment from the romantic idea of warfare and the concept of the soldier was no more one/that of an honourable warrior but that of a victim.
The ghastly experiences on the front deeply traumatized young soldiers, many of whom already had some poetic endeavours, and as a result they began writing trench poetry. The best trench poets, like Wilfred Owen, Isaac Rosenberg, and Siegfried Sassoon produced their best works only when they abandoned the conventional “Georgian” style of Rupert Brooke and instead wrote realistically about the war and the situation on the front (Clausson). Wilfred Owen, perhaps the most famous trench poet, criticizes the romantic ideal of sacrifice in his “gas poem” (Bloom) “Dulce et Decorum Est”, thus trying to destroy “the glamorized decency of war” (Bloom 15). In the first stanza young men are depicted as “old beggars” (Owen), who are in a trance-like state, lame, blind, drunk, and deaf, too tired to be afraid of the sound of rifle fire, of “outstripped Five-Nines” (Owen) behind them. They march towards some place where they could rest. Then, the gas attack shakes them up: “Gas! Gas! Quick, boys!” (Owen). Unfortunately, one man was did not manage to put h...
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...ch line had not moved considerably for a long time and any attempt to breakthrough failed miserably.
The warfare before World War I was that of chivalry and heroic ideals, in which soldiers gave their lives for noble causes and, by doing so, went down in history as honourable heroes. The high recruitment rate at the beginning of the Great War shows that in 1914 a whole generation of young men wanted to fight because they believed in the just cause of it. However, the soldiers quickly discard and outgrow this simplistic view and become aware that “the War is being deliberately prolonged by those who have the power to end it” (Sassoon). The tragedy of World War I lies in the fact that so many people lost their lives, either as soldiers or as collateral damage, simply because of rival imperialism, which once more shows that humanity’s greatest enemy is man himself.
World War I is marked by its extraordinary brutality and violence due to the technological advancement in the late 18th century and early 19th century that made killing easier, more methodical and inhumane. It was a war that saw a transition from traditional warfare to a “modern” warfare. Calvary charges were replaced with tanks; swords were replaced with machine guns; strategic and decisive battles were r...
World War I, also known as the Great War, lasted from the summer of 1914 until the late fall of 1918. The war was fought between the Allies, which consisted mainly of the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire, and the Central Powers, which consisted mainly of the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria (Alliances - Entente and Central Powers). In total, it is estimated that twelve million civilians and nine million combatants died during this horrific and devastating war (DeGroot 1). When the war first began in 1914, many people thought that it would be a war of movement that would quickly be over. However, that changed when the Germans, who were trying to reach and capture the city of Paris in France, were forced to retreat during the Battle of the Marne in September 1914 (Ellis 10). German General von Falkenhayn, who felt that his troops must at all cost hold onto the parts of France and Belgium that they had overtaken, ordered his men to dig in and form defensive trench lines (Ellis 10). The Allies could not break through the enemies lines and were forced to create trenches of their own (Ellis 10). This was only the beginning of trench warfare. A war of movement had quickly come to a standstill on the Western Front. A massive trench line, 475 miles long, quickly spread and extended from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier (Ellis 10). With neither side budging, soldiers were forced to live in the most miserable of conditions. Simply put, life in the trenches was a living hell. A lieutenant of the 2nd Scottish rifles wrote, “No one who was not there can fully appreciate the excruciating agonies and misery through which the men had to go [through] in those da...
In 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife from Austro-Hungarian Empire caused an enormous war called World War I, that killed and injured about thirty million lives. It also destroyed the economy later on. World War I changed combat tactics in a whole new way, where people would die in a blink of an eye. Commanders and soldiers did not know about the capabilities of their new arsenals. The new industrialized developed weapons devastated the battlefield with blood, mountain of corpses, and small craters. Some of the weapons that were used were machine guns, poison gas, mortars, and tanks. Soldiers described the battlefield as a nightmare. This was the start of a new era arising through warfare. A very dangerous way to bring great change to the world but was not intended. World War I brought great changes to the world but, considering the countless deaths, it was the worst war ever, an inhumane war.
The First World War witnessed an appalling number of casualties. Due partly to this fact, some historians, developed the perception that commanders on both sides depended on only one disastrous approach to breaking the stalemate. These historians attributed the loss of life to the reliance on soldiers charging across no-man’s land only to be mowed down by enemy machineguns. The accuracy of this, however, is fallacious because both the German’s and Allies developed and used a variety of tactics during the war. The main reason for battlefield success and eventual victory by the Allies came from the transformation of battlefield tactics; nevertheless, moral played a major role by greatly affecting the development of new tactics and the final outcome of the war.
In All Quiet on the Western Front, it becomes very apparent that some of the soldiers do not feel as if World War I was their fight, when comrades begin discussing the origin of war. One comrade, Albert states that a war is initiated by “one country badly offending the other” (204). This lead to a discussion over why the soldiers are fighting when truly it is one person or a small group of people that are directly offended by an opposing group in a similar position of power. Therefore, why must they discover the true horrors of war while simultaneously putting their lives on the line, when the ones who began the predicament, propelled false advertisement with propagandas that romanticized and glorified war don’t have to live as if the next second may be their
World War I was a very deadly war with over 100 million human casualties(deaths plus injured). Therefore war is a very transformative event for humanity, because it always affects individuals, societies, and even the world in a pessimistic way.
A true war story is never moral. It does not instruct, nor encourage virtue, nor suggest models of proper human behavior, nor restrain ...
War Is a Force That Gives Us Meaning, written by the talented author Chris Hedges, gives us provoking thoughts that are somewhat painful to read but at the same time are quite personal confessions. Chris Hedges, a talented journalist to say the least, brings nearly 15 years of being a foreign correspondent to this book and subjectively concludes how all of his world experiences tie together. Throughout his book, he unifies themes present in all wars he experienced first hand. The most important themes I was able to draw from this book were, war skews reality, dominates culture, seduces society with its heroic attributes, distorts memory, and supports a cause, and allures us by a constant battle between death and love.
Historians generally refer to WWI as the first 'total war'. It was the first conflict in which modern industrialized societies mobilized their complete economic, technological and psychological resources in order to wage war. Unlike earlier wars, which involved relatively small numbers of soldiers on the battlefield, it affected many aspects of the lives of civilian populations and demanded enormous sacrifices and support from them. Mobilization of the home front was crucial to achieving military victory. Some of the main aspects of Total War include conscription of men into the armed services, increased government control of the economy and daily lives of citizens and subsequent loss of personal liberty. Control of the labor force, physical safety and security of civilian populations threatene...
World War I, also known as “The Great War”, was a global war that revolved mainly around Europe. It took place from 1914 to 1918. This was a very brutal war that caused many casualties. The soldiers who survived experienced severe trauma and mental discomfort. This trauma was a direct result of the violence and agony they experienced during the war.
“War is unorganized murder, and nothing else” (Harry Patch). In World War 1, which was first called the Great War, there were many causes of the war breaking out. The Great War started August 1st 1914, days after the assassination of the Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, Sophia, when they visited Bosnia. Many soldiers went to war for no reason but to fight for their country. The Great War was not only affected by the soldiers, but also by the civilians as well.
The Great War was a war marked by horrific technological advancements and a hitherto unforeseen spread of war across many nations. Ultimately, the Great War and the resultant “peace” would go on to lead to the second World War, a war unparalleled in atrocities, with one side clearly at fault and the other side seen as noble for attempting to stop the spread of casualties. However, the first World War did not have this same luxury, there were no noble and just men, only soldiers fighting a battle resultant of years of pent-up tensions between nations. In the Great War, there were no good or bad guys, despite the fact that Germany took the blame for the war and, as a result, created an uneasy and unfair “peace” that ultimately resulted in World
World War 1 was called “The Great War”, “The war to end all wars”, and “The first modern war”. It had many causes and a few repercussions and I will describe them in detail.
World War I is known as a war that occurred on extremely cruel terms; there were not many restrictions on what and when certain weapons could be used. Unfortunately, the Industrial Age brought with it many new ways to kill; the soldiers of World War I came in contact with many new weapons that they had never seen in combat.
In Paul Fussell’s book, The Great War and Modern Memory, he discusses some of the ways in which World War I affected the men who fought in it, specifically those in the trenches. One of Fussell’s main points in his book as he tries to characterize World War I was the widespread irony that spread in its wake. Even though the focus of his book is based upon the British perspective of World War I, Fussell also briefly mentions the effects of the war upon other countries involved in the war.