The Human Toll Of The War 'To End All Wars'

Astronuc

or Why War is a losing proposition for all involved.

http://www.npr.org/2011/08/11/138823...o-end-all-wars
It is a profound discussion.

BWV

Cool piece, thanks for posting it

you are correct in not being able to understand WW2 without WW1 (and European imperialism in general before that)

The first genocide of the 20th century was committed by the German Army in SW Africa, also the practice of executing random civilians in reprisal for acts of resistance was practiced in occupied Belgium.

SW VandeCarr

For the average soldier fighting in the trenches of Western Front in WWI, this war was arguably worse than WWII. British and French losses in WWI exceeded losses in WWII.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A2854730

The trenches were often flooded and bombarded, sometimes constantly for weeks. Soldiers were sent "over the top" into withering machine gun fire and rarely gained any significant ground in these misconceived attacks. Lethal mustard gas was used frequently toward the end of the war. Possibly worst of all, virtually no progress was made toward victory for either side after nearly four long years. With the withdrawal of Russia from the war in January, 1918 Germany moved veteran troops west for a final crushing offensive. Both sides were at the point of exhaustion and Germany realized this would be a final all or nothing gamble for victory. It failed and Germany finally sued for peace in November, 1918 after a revolution overthrew the Kaiser's government.

The total losses, killed and wounded, are given as over 31,000,000 according to the above link, but I've seen higher. Ultimately the war achieved very little and it set the scene for the rise of Fascism and WWII where estimates of 50 million dead are sometimes quoted although I doubt if anyone really has a good estimate. WWII was probably the last war of its kind, but only because of the MAD doctrine of mutual nuclear annihilation.

Astronuc

Some stats on the Vietnam War
http://www.history.com/topics/1960s/videos#vietnam

BWV

Yes, but WW2 was almost entirely fought in the USSR, where the losses were much higher than WW1. Six million German dead compared to 2 million and 9-10 million Soviet military casualties.

SW VandeCarr

Well, it was the biggest theater in terms of manpower, but "almost essentially entirely" is not really true. There were fronts in North Africa, Italy and of course the new Western front after D Day; not to mention the war in the Pacific, China and SE Asia. Action in all of these theaters contributed to the final victory over Fascism.

Yes. As for WWI, I was specifically talking about British and French losses, and the conditions on the Western Front of WWI.

BWV

Excuse my sloppy writing there

Certainly the scope of the war was wider, but it was the only the scale of the German - Soviet conflict that made WW2 surpass WW1. The other point is that after the horrendous casualties of WW1 the French and English were unwilling to pay the human cost to defeat Germany, which in both wars was only defeated by costly attrition. Its ironic that it took the participation of a totalitarian dictator with an absolutely ruthless disregard for human life to win the war for the Western democracies.

SW VandeCarr

You make a point that I've made myself, although its not popular in the US. Given the fact that the Red Army had pretty much pushed the Germans out of the USSR and was moving into eastern Poland (prewar boundaries) on June 6, 1944, one could argue that Comrade Stalin didn't really need his Western allies. The war would have lasted longer, and I believe the Germans would have resisted furiously, but it's a possibility that the Russians would have taken Berlin if D Day had never happened. Stalin later indicated he would not have stopped at Berlin but would have gone on to Paris had circumstances been different.

BWV

I think that is becoming a consensus view of military historians. With the cold war and a reliance upon some self-serving memoirs by Nazi generals the US developed a very distorted view of the war.

To your link, not really familiar with Suverov, but I know David Glantz, the foremost western historian of the war, has spent some time and effort refuting his thesis of Stalin's planned attack.

SW VandeCarr

I deleted that link. I decided it wasn't up to PF standards. I'm very sure Stalin talked about the possibility of the Red Army advancing into Western Europe, but I haven't found a good internet source yet.

EDIT: OK. Stalin is quoted as saying: "The reason why there is now no communist government in Paris is because, in the circumstances of 1945, the Soviet Army was not able to reach French soil." I edited the last sentence accordingly in the above post you quoted.

http://home.comcast.net/~ghaff/lword/commie.html

Scroll down past the Lenin quotes to the Stalin quote.

SW VandeCarr

I was very surprised to see the statistics: 40 days of combat per year for WWII soldiers, and 240 days of combat per year for Vietnam War soldiers. Those WWII guys had it easy, didn't they? (sarcasm) For the guys in the trenches in WWI, it seems that every day would have been a combat day. Did they have R&R in WWI?

EDIT: Apparently R&R (Rest and Rehabilitation) was available in WWI.

http://www.worldwar1.com/dbc/ymca.htm

See: Statistics

mheslep

When a friend visited from Britain some time back, he demonstrated the contrast between US and British losses in WW1 thus "all of us, all of us, have a great aunt in the family that never married" because of the amount of men killed.

mheslep

The Asia/Pacific conflict took its toll: 10-20 million deaths in China, 3-4 million in the Dutch East Indies, 2-3 million in/from Japan, 1.5-2.5 million in pre-partition India (famine from Japanese closure of Burma road), 1-1.5 million in French Indochina, ...

Astronuc

Dr. Mark Harrison, University of Warwick - The Frequency of War
http://www.publicbroadcasting.net/wa...CLE_ID=1844898
I think the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan indicate that war is not necessarily affordable.

I disagree with some of Dr. Harrison's thesis. War is a matter of choice.

SW VandeCarr

Well, yes. It is a matter of someone's choice. Poland did not choose war on Sept 1, 1939, but someone else chose to make war on Poland, and so for the USSR and the USA in 1941.

On Sept 11, 2001 the USA was attacked. Did the US choose war or was war forced upon the US? IMO, the latter, and I was quite pleased (as much as one could be pleased about anything at that grim time) with our rapid response. It would have been better if Bin Laden had been killed at the time, but given the logistics of the US conducting effective military operations halfway around the world in a landlocked country, I was impressed. For a while, Afghanistan was cleared of the Taliban and Al Qaeda, who fled to Pakistan (whom we took, and still take to be an ally).

The war against Iraq was clearly a choice made by the US administration; a bad choice IMO. I thought so then and I think so now. I sold all my stocks in August, 2002 when it became clear the administration was hell-bent on war. When the price of gold dropped in April, 2003 after the fall of Baghdad, I bought gold. I thought the real trouble was just beginning. I wasn't wrong.

But the point is: yes, war is a matter of someone's choice, but not the choice of everyone involved; especially the country that didn't make the choice..

mheslep

If the term 'forced' is to mean in the sense war came to 1939 Poland, it is not clear to me how one argues that war was forced on the US by the Sept 11 attacks. The Sept 11 attack was of course forced on the US, but not the war to follow in Afghanistan. Nor was it the case that any kind of imminent invasion or possible US defeat was forthcoming from the Taliban/AQ for the US as was the case for, say, 1939 Britain.

Rather, it seems to me that the war in Afghanistan was a choice that included i) an understandable desire for retribution on AQ, and ii) an assessment on the threat of future possible terror attacks emanating from the area, even though such attacks could never threaten complete military defeat of the US (in the 1939 Poland sense), and though terror attacks such as Sept 11 might be prepared from many other areas besides Afghanistan. It seems to me that salient point was not so much whether or not US action was forced but whether or not US action in Afghanistan was defensive, or offensive as was Hitler's Germany; clearly the US acted defensively.

As in ii) above, the war in Iraq was also posed, in part, as an assessment of a threat: Iraq attacked Iran, attacked Kuwait, gassed its own citizens, was known in the past to have had an active nuclear weapons program, sponsored terror attacks abroad. The difference IMO was that the assessment of the threat from 2003 Iraq was done recklessly.

SW VandeCarr

I think I made it clear that it was my opinion that the 9/11 attacks created a state of war not of our choosing. Some have argued that it was a criminal act that did not justify a military response, I simply disagree since most of Afghanistan was controlled by the Taliban regime and served as base for Al Qaeda. I did not specifically equate 9/11 to the situation regarding Poland in 1939 except that in both cases, a warlike act was inflicted on a nation at peace. One could argue that a military response was not required after the Japanese attack on Hawaii since there was no imminent threat of invasion of the US mainland. One member of Congress did in fact vote against a declaration of war.

On the other hand, Iraq did not attack, nor did it serve as a base of operations for an attack on the USA.