WWI mindless carnage of ten million lives really sadden me and bothers me to no end.
Plus aircraft were kinda boring back then (they truly became of interest in the early 1930, when engines got cowls, undercarriages went retractable, and cockpit got canopies).
This said, below links are the best explanation of why and how the war bogged down in trench warfare, claiming lives in the million range.
This week (and next) I want to build a bit off of our discussion of Victoria II and talk a bit about World War I and in particular the trench stalemate on the Western Front. That trench stalemate i…
acoup.blog
Last time, we introduced the factors that created the trench stalemate in the First World War and we also laid out why the popular ‘easy answer’ of simply going on the defensive and let…
acoup.blog
And there was nothing that could be done to break that technological deadend. The only way out in the end was that one of the side became exhausted and collapsed. Could have been France in 1914, could have happened to the Allies in 1917 either through a) the mutinies or b) losing the russians or c) the americans not entering the conflict. In the end it was Germany which ended exhausted and collapsed in merely 100 days (July 15, 1918 to November 11, 1918).
That really makes WWI very scary. Technology had failed to break the trench warfare deadlock. Achieving breakthroughs was impossible. And thus the mindless meat grinder could have carried on unabatted until, perhaps all males aged 18 to 45 went dead. Plus the Spanish Flu coming on top of that to finish the job.
Most depressing part in the above links
1- "Breaking the front was impossible. Artillery rolling barrages could only smash the first, eventually the second lines of defenses. Ok then, no problem. Artillery max range is, what, 20 km ? then we will built additional defense lines beyond that range."
2 - Another depressing part "Once the artillery preliminary barrage had crushed the landscape into oblivion... the cratered, lunar-like fields became a liability
for the attackers, slowing down their advance. It was either the craters, or worse: rain turning the whole place into an ocean of mud." Go moving the heavy, long range guns through the wrecked fields of mud.
These two salient points, to me, illustrates to absolute perfection WWI sheer stupidity and mindless carnage.