10 Big Myths of World War One

The First World War is widely regarded as a senseless, horrible, murderous and uniquely gruesome conflict. It has almost become a symbol of tragedy, futility or disaster. I don't get it wrong. World War I was hell on Earth, but so is trench warfare in eastern Ukraine. Today, street fighting in Bmut and so was Napoleon's Russian campaign in 1812, when the vast majority of his troops died of starvation. World War I was not especially terrible, but we have come to believe several powerful

myths

about that war that we should not fall for. To them, if we do, we risk minimizing the experience of soldiers and civilians caught up in countless other atrocious conflicts throughout history and today, so I'm going to take a look at the

myths

and explain the reality.

Come on, it was the bloodiest war in history. No, World War II was much more costly. The First World War was not even the bloodiest at that time in history, half a century before the First World War. China was torn apart by an even bloodier conflict. Estimates of deaths in the 14 years. The typing rebellion reached 30 million. Around 10 million soldiers died during the First World War and perhaps the same number of civilians, so not as many as in the Taiping Rebellion, although around 900,000 Britons died in the First World War more than in any other conflict. For which we have reliable data, we believe that the bloodiest war in British history relative to population size is the Civil Wars of the mid-17th century, less than 2% of the British population died in the First World War, instead, we believe 4% of the population of England. and Wales and many more in Scotland and Ireland are believed to have died during the Civil Wars during the 30 Years' War from 1618 to 48 Million died in Europe perhaps 20% of the entire population the French lost a terrible figure of 1, 4 million men in the war 20% of those who served but this figure of one and a half million is what some historians believe the French also lost in the Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars of 1792 to 1815 American losses in the First War World are about 110,000 less than 20% of Americans who died during the Civil War, most of the troops who fought died, no, they were not the vast majority of those who fought returned home and I am not belittling the fact that Of course, a large number of survivors suffered lifelong physical and mental injuries, but there are many examples in history of campaigns in which the majority of soldiers did not survive, that is traditionally because armies had lost many more. men by disease and hunger than by enemy action.

This was still true in World War I for Americans, but not for other nations in World War I, troops were now tested for tuberculosis. Efforts were made to ensure they had clean water and careful management of human waste. Troops received better supplies of food and clothing that could be transported by rail from industrial economies back home, very different from In previous centuries, World War I doctors had antiseptic access to blood transfusions and effective tetus treatments, which meant that while a surprising number of men died in battle, the majority of the men were able to survive through their years of service and even survived terrible wounds that would have killed them a few generations earlier as the United Kingdom mobilized around of 6 million men of whom around 11.5% died in fact, he is a British soldier, was more likely to die during the Crimean War of 1853 to 1856 than in the first.

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war in Crimea the British lacked winter clothing to survive the cold Russian winter and some died of starvation due to lack of supplies there were 2 million American troops in Europe, of them only 50,000 died in battle and around 60,000 died from other causes, mainly the great influenza so 95% of the US military returned home the rich commanded the poor died this is too simplistic the vast majority of victims in the first

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war were from the working classes who made up the vast majority of the population it is also true that the majority of the generals were of wealthy origin, but there were exceptions.

Britain's highest ranking soldier, so William Robertson had been born into a working family, worked as a footman and servant in a large house before joining the army as a private, the lowest possible rank in 1877, USA The commander in Europe John Persing was the son of a farmer and store owner. The children of the social and political elite also had their fair share of dying and fighting. In fact, World War I hit them disproportionately. These highly educated, motivated and indoctrinated young people. he provided the junior officers whose job it was to lead the way to the top and expose themselves to the greatest danger as an example to their men.

Just over 11% of the British Army's ordinary soldiers died during the war compared to 20% of its officers. the elite private school Eaton, which produced several British prime ministers, alone lost more than a thousand alumni, one in five of those who served, a French general Castle, did not lose three sons, a British general, Edmund Alanby, lost his only son in the trenches during wartime in the United Kingdom. Prime Minister Herbert Aswith lost a son while future Prime Minister Andrew Bonor lost two sons Future Prime Minister Winston Churchill led his men on night raids into no man's land and famously never ducked when a bullet cracked past. a later Prime Minister Anthony Eden lost two brothers, another was seriously wounded and an uncle was captured, and being a general didn't mean you were out of action during the war either, over 200 British generals were killed, wounded or captured in percentage terms, 18% of British generals who served in World War I would lose their lives during the conflict in just N9 days in late September and early October 1914.

Eight British generals were killed, wounded or captured. Senior commanders were expected to visit the front lines almost every day in battle; They were considerably closer to the action. than the current generals, in October 1915, three senior generals died in the space of a week, prompting Britain's most senior soldier to order the generals not to expose themselves to danger. The loss of leadership was disastrous for the formations they commanded. It was all fought in France and Belgium The fighting on the Western Front in France and Belgium took place from the summer of 1914 until late autumn. In the autumn of 1918 there was not much movement and it was the main focus of the British Army's efforts.

It was close to home - you could even hear the bombing in the south-east of England - so it is not surprising that it looms large in the British narrative of the war, but the war was fought all over the world. The first shots were fired by Royal Navy ships in the Bahamas. The first shot fired by a British soldier was Alhaji Guni in West Africa, he was in the Gold Coast Regiment and fired on German forces while invading Togo, the British attacked the Ottoman Empire in the Levant and eventually captured what is now Israel. , Jordan and a bit of Syria, the Allies attacked Turkey in the Balkans and finally reached Istanbul, they also attacked Austria and northern Italy in the Balkans and waged an endless campaign against the Germans in East Africa.

The Allies also received Japanese support to occupy German ports in China and there was massive fighting on the Eastern Front between Austria and Germany and the Russian Empire almost 2 million Russians and one million Austr-Hungarians would die on this front more deaths than France and Britain respectively this was a much bloodier theater with more movement than the Western Front Churchill and others hope that eventually pressure on these other fronts could weaken Germany and avoid the need to defeat its main field army on the Western Front. Many senior military commanders disagreed, they argued that Germany had to be defeated where it was strongest, in the end they were both right, the German army was forced to retreat through Belgium and at the same time Austria, Turkey, Bulgaria collapsed into the autumn of 1918 and had a great impact on the Germans' determination to continue fighting.

They were lions led by donkeys. This is one of the most famous sayings about the First World War. The idea is that these heroic brave young men were massacred on the orders of incompetent elders. First of all, this quote was supposed to be a German general talking about the British, but it was actually made up by a historian, the men certainly were lions, no doubt. About that On the first day of the battle of s men of the Sherwood Foresters beat the odds to enter the German trenches They were isolated They were hit by counterattacks They ran out of ammunition They fought with shovels, knives and fists before being annihilated Some survivors crawled back after dark. 80% of the unit was killed, wounded or captured.

These men were definitely alive and some of the leaders were donkeys. As in any organization, there will be some useless people around, but there were many smart talents. men in high positions in the various armies fighting over how to win this war, naturally some generals were not up to the job, the Italian Luigi Cardona sent his men into battle again and again with the same plan and the same result bloody. The Russian Tsar Nicholas was pretty. useless when he stupidly decided to take direct control of Russia's military effort, but in that, believe me, World War I was no different than any war that ever happened before or after there were brilliant generals like Arthur Curry, a middle-class Canadian .

Failed insurance broker and real estate developer, his motto was to pay the price of victory with projectiles, not lives. He saw that the war would be won by the overwhelming application of firepower behind which well-trained and well-prepared troops could advance. He received excellent advice from his staff. He was never too great to change his mind. Men like him and the Australian John Monash pioneered a new form of warfare in which tanks and artillery vehicles, planes and men advance as one, helping each other, coordinating overcoming challenges together, rarely in history of the commanders had done so. To adapt to a more radically different technological environment, British commanders had been trained to fight small colonial wars, the American commander had still fought as a young man against the Apaches on the Great Plains, now they were thrust into a massive industrial struggle like never before.

They had existed before. experienced, there was no more Galloping across wide open spaces in search of small groups of lightly armed but skilled warriors. The war was now being fought in massive defenses, deep concrete bunkers amid shattered, muddy landscapes. Millions of men were now under his command. Thousands of planes and weapons. Tanks and tanks poisoned. gas that appeared on the battlefield Despite this, within three years the British and Americans had learned from their experience and learned from both their allies and their enemies to effectively invent a new way of waging war. By the summer of 1918, the British army was probably at its peak and inflicted a series of crushing defeats on the Germans.

The men were trapped in their trenches for years. The image we have of the First World War is that soldiers lived month after month in miserable, partially flooded, horrible-smelling trenches. under constant threat from the enemy in their trench just a few hundred meters away across No Man's Land. The front line trenches could be a terribly hostile place to live, units often wet, cold and exposed to the enemy would lose their morale and would suffer many casualties if they spent too much. As a result of much time in the front line trenches, the British Army continually rotated men in and out in normal times between major battles, a unit spending perhaps four days a month in the front line trench, perhaps eight days a month in the second and third line, the rest of the time.

During the month you were training or working on new fortifications behind the lines, it was not unusual to be out of the line for a month during times of crisis, such as major offensives, the British could occasionally spend up to S days on the front line. , but they were much closerThey often rotated after just a day or two when the men were behind the lines They visited bars and brothels They played sports They even went on leave in Britain Nothing changed The generals simply tried the same old tactics over and over again It is true that some The generals They continued to use the same old tactics and their men paid for their commander's lack of imagination in their blood, but the most important story of the First World War is the extraordinary innovation.

Tactics and technology had never changed so radically in four years of fighting in 1914. On horseback galloping across the battlefields the French wore red trousers the soldiers on all sides wore cloth or leather hats instead of helmets the soldiers advanced in a straight line shoulder Tosh shoulder The cavalry charged knee to knee with sabers raised as they had done on the battlefields 100 years earlier there were a few very primitive aircraft mainly in reconnaissance roles and no tanks both sides were overwhelmingly armed with rifles Four years later the battlefield had been transformed. Combat teams with steel helmets rushed forward protected by a curtain of artillery shells.

They were now armed with flamethrowers, portable machine guns and grenades. Rifles fired from beneath them at them. Aircraft that were unimaginably more sophisticated than those of 1914 adorned with jewels in the skies some carried experimental wireless radio sets that reported reconnaissance in real time and even aimed at artillery those enormous cannons fired with millimeter precision using only aerial photographs and mathematics that could score a hit With the first shot troops could be supported by armored fighting vehicles Tanks had armor allowing them to withstand small arms fire while tracks meant they could traverse the devastated landscape and crush barbed wire The pace of change is reflected in the fact that The Tank went from the drawing board to the battlefield in just two years and first crossed no man's land at the Battle of the Som in September 1916.

Everyone who fought in it hated it. It's hard to talk about, but the truth is that some people. enjoy war like all conflicts, it all comes down to luck, you could witness unimaginable horrors that leave you mentally and physically incapacitated for the rest of your life or you could come out without a scratch it could be the best of times it could be the worst of times better both or neither some soldiers enjoyed the First World War if they were lucky they would avoid a major offensive, they could be posted somewhere quiet where conditions would actually be better than what they could have experienced at home for the British there was meat all On days, a rare luxury at home, there were cigarettes, tea and rum, part of a daily diet of more than 4,000 calories.

Noticeably rates of absenteeism due to illness, which is an important barometer of a unit's morale, barely exceeded those of peacetime. Many young people enjoyed the guaranteed salary, the intense camaraderie, the responsibility, and greater sexual freedom than they had in peacetime. Britain paid a British infantryman. about a shilling a day, perhaps about half of what a farm laborer could earn, but food and lodging were free and work was guaranteed all year round. There was an intense camaraderie, men and women felt involved in a powerful joint effort. a war poet. wrote I love war, it's like a big picnic, but without the lack of objectivity of a picnic I have never been better off or happier.

An Italian writer Emilio Lusu saw a film based on his autobiographical novel about the war and objected that it was too bleak. That's not all in war He said that sometimes we even sang We joked and dreamed our dreams A Canadian veteran wrote that the war was the greatest adventure of my life whose memories will stay with me for the rest of my days and I wouldn't have missed it for nothing no one won Europe's SES were wasted Millions were dead or wounded survivors lived with severe mental trauma even some of the victorious powers were practically bankrupt fighting continued throughout Eastern Europe and the Middle East as most did not lead to a lasting and satisfactory peace, so it is a bit strange to talk about winning, but in a strict military sense, the French, the British, the Americans and their allies had won convincingly.

The German battleships had been suppressed by the Royal Navy until their crews mutinied. Germany's army collapsed under a series of powerful Allied blows that shattered supposedly impregnable defenses. At the end of September 1918, the German Emperor and his military mastermind Eric Ludendorf admitted that there was no hope for Germany and that they must plead for peace. The November 11 armistice was essentially a German surrender the Austro-Hungarian armies collapsed on the Italian front and in the Balkans the empire was torn apart by revolution the Allied forces marched on Constantinople and Turkey surrendered the central powers lost lost the first war world the allies achieved their political goals through violence which is what the war is about the British had fought to defend Belgian sovereignty and in 1918 Belgium was once again a free and unoccupied country Great Britain also wanted to neutralize the German naval threat to On Christmas 1918 the German battle fleet was imprisoned in a British naval base the French wanted the Germans to leave France, they succeeded, they even immediately recovered two provinces that the Germans had taken from them in the mid-19th century and the Germans agreed not to station troops at all in the Rhineland, the German border area with France, the Americans. we were happy to see every German submarine delivered to the allies, don't forget Serbia, the war had started when Austria Hungary had invaded Serbia back in 1914, well now Serbia was once again independent, ultimately the German and Austrian empires -Hungarian no longer existed at Christmas. 1918 the Turkish Empire was occupied, divided and would also disappear within a couple of years.

Losing the Treaty of Vera was so hard that the myth says that the Treaty of Asail was so hard that it left Germany humiliated, angry and limping, which motivated the Germans to rearm and throw off this unjust yoke but it simply does not hold up. allies confiscated 10% of Germany's territory but left the richest nation in Central Europe the country was largely unoccupied and financial reparations were tied to its ability to pay, which were mostly not met anyway, the treaty was notably less severe than the two treaties that ended the wars on both sides of World War I, the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-71 and World War II, the German victors in the Franco-Prussian War had annexed two large portions of two rich countries.

The French provinces were part of France for between two and 300 years and were home to most of the French iron or production. They also presented France with a huge bill for immediate payment after World War II. Germany was occupied, it was divided into different countries, its factories, its machinery destroyed, stolen. millions of prisoners forced to stay with their captors and work as slave laborers after World War II. Germany lost all the territory it had lost after World War I and another giant slice on top of that, but we're not talking about the post-World War II Treaty. too harsh also the treaty with the Turks was much harsher most of the Turkish territory Iraq Syria Palestine Jordan Arabia all taken over by the British and French or converted into independent countries the Turkish Empire had had a size of more than 600,000 square miles in 1914 and was halved and, like Germany, Turkey was also not allowed to have a large army, powerful battleships or an Air Force, nor was the treaty as harsh as the treaty inflicted on the Russians in 1918, when it seemed that The Germans had won the First World War.

The war in the East, the German victors forced Russia to hand over control of Ukraine, Poland, Bellos, its Baltic provinces and lands in the Caucasus. These territories comprise 34% of the former Russian Empire's population and 54% of its industry, 89% of its coal deposits and a quarter of its Railways. That treaty was Savage Versa was not particularly harsh on Germany, but Hitler described it as such, who saw that he could blame anything that was wrong in Germany in the Treaty of ERSA on those evil, cruel foreign powers who then rode this Tidal Wave of anti-V Vera resentment into power World War I completely reshaped the world Old empires were destroyed New countries were born and so were new Imperial ambitions Much of the myth-making around the war was born from the enormous disappointment that this enormous and costly conflict did not lead to lasting peace.

The outbreak of the Second World War meant that many people saw the first as a pointless destructive precursor to an even larger war, but it deserves to be remembered in its own right as a global conflict and one of the most important. amazing technological change thanks for watching this video on the YouTube history channel, you can subscribe right here to make sure you don't miss any of our great movies coming out or if you're a real history fan, watch our dedicated special. History channel's historic hit. you're going to love television