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Thread: World War One

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    Senior Member randyt's Avatar
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    Default World War One

    On the way home tonight I was listening to the radio. The narrator was commenting on the number of deaths per battle during the WW1. The number is staggering. Some of those battles were over 600 thousand dead. I found it interesting, never realized the scope of it all.
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    Randy, I don't think many people alive today can realize the scope of WWI either, or WWII for that matter.

    6,800 Americans dead in 36 days on Iwo Jima.... One island that the Pacific could swallow today and nobody would know it was gone. If we had a 36 day battle anywhere today with 26,000 casualties and 6,800 dead the country would be in total shock. That was just five weeks of a 4 year war.

    In WWI Eastern France was turned into a moonscape, except for the stench. Western Europe and England lost an entire generation of men and it was so horrific that it was called the War to end all wars. Then they did it again in 20 years. People are just nuts.

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    Senior Member Phaedrus's Avatar
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    It's almost more shocking how many died of disease. In all likelihood the "Spanish Flu" would not have spread as it did if not for the war. Flu deaths dwarfed the war deaths! A terrible period, and yes it's sheer madness that the world did it again a generation later.

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    That whole period is difficult to fathom by many. 749 troops were killed in a single training exercise leading up to the D-Day invasion (Operation Tiger).
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    The length of combat operations that consumed those numbers are staggering as well. We think of missions in terms of hours or days. Those were in terms of MONTHS. The Battle of Huertgen Forrest is the longest continuous combat operation in U.S. history. It lasted from September 1944 until December 1945. That was continuous combat operations! It consumed some 50,000 US forces and 28,000 German forces and offered no strategic advantage to the Americans. Four months of continuous combat!

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    Senior Member kyratshooter's Avatar
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    We also forget the losses of our allies during those wars.

    50,000 British dead in one day at the Some.

    In WW1 France lost 25% of the men between 18 and 40. They never recovered from that population loss until in the 1950s.

    In Scotland at the end of WW1, there were entire counties with no males between 15 and 50.

    And in WW2 the Soviet Union lost more men at Stalingrad than the other allies combined did in the entire second World War.

    WW2 commanders accepted the risk of 25% casualties as a matter of course. That was the expected percentage projected for the D-Day invasion.
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    Wasn't it an ancient philosopher who said, "Only the dead have seen the end of war."


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