re: #41 Dr Lizardo

WWI was a particularly barbaric war (not that there’s ever been a pleasant one) for a number of reasons. This was the first war in history where cavalry — frickin cavalry, fer cryin out loud — was finally and completely rendered obsolete, and the generals did not adapt well. They were still sending cavalry out to be massacred by machine gun fire even by the time the war ended.

WWI was the war for artillery, dominated by the big guns, with tanks and functioning bombers still in the future. The industrial countries blow through millions of tons of artillery shells, cratering and re-cratering the landscape, first indiscriminately and then in creeping waves as they learn how to use
them; the entire peace-time reservoirs of shells are expended in months at the start of the war, and they churn out more, the later battles often using in a matter of days as many shells as even existed in the world in 1912. Being on the front lines usually meant being surrounded by the constant shock and roar of the big guns, always meant living in fear that you could be snuffed out in an instant by them; and besides the pure psychological terror, meant exposure to literal shockwaves that were constantly fucking with your brain in ways we’re only just coming to grips with today as we deal with combat veterans who’ve been exposed to IEDs.

If you’re a soldier in WWI, you’re spending your time in a squalid trench with severe shortages of pretty much everything, so that almost everything you ate or wore was a shitty substitute made from something else; The Germans had paper shoes and acorn coffee. Most of the time is a constant tedium and the fear that at any second a massive offensive
could be launched, or even just a random burst of artillery fire, that reduces you to aerosol without you ever hearing or seeing a warning of it. This is your best case scenario.

Some of the battles themselves drag on for months of near-constant murder. Maybe if you have a good general you get rotated through so you’re not constantly living under the guillotine, but more likely your commander has you or a bunch of your buddies killed for a few worthless square miles that will just be given up again when he realizes he can’t defend them at all.

The “Stabbed in the Back” myth that Hitler would use so effectively later to help rise to power held that the German army was never defeated in the field, that it lost to politicians at home. The first part is actually kind of true though. Even on the run at the end, the Germans inflicted about as many casualties as they took. The thing is they were never really victorious in the field, because battles during WWI just weren’t winnable, at all, by either side. The technology meant that both sides were just slowly grinding away at each other until someone gave up. To the soldiers this meant there was never any hope of victory on the horizon, but also no hope even of defeat. Just sitting there, waiting to die.

If you’re interested in WWI, you might want to read A World Undone by GJ Meyer.