Some of the photography from WWI is genuinely terrifying. That one photo of the British soldier with that shell shock smile stays in my brain and freaks me out.
You should read Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger. It's a neutral account of the daily life in the trenches from the POV of an officer. It's utterly ridiculous. It's impossible to grasp how insane and pointless the trench warfare meat grinder was until you read a firsthand account of it. WW1 on the Western front can be described as 4 years of sitting in an earth hole under the most miserable conditions while artillery was raining down on you hoping you don't get blown up or buried alive. Like Ukraine only worse and on a colossal scale.
What's happening in Ukraine is very similar to it. You just sit in your trench or foxhole and wait to eventually get blown up. It's pure insanity.
Only difference is in Ukraine you have all those drone operators who seem to enjoy hunting down defenseless soldiers on the battlefield. That's even more fucked up then what happened in WW1.
Aside from hyperbolics about trench warfare, how the first world war evolved into trench warfare is interesting in that the generals and planners weren't retarded. It devolved into trench warfare because nothing else could be done at scale.
There was actually quite a lot of modern warfare, but it wasn't able to be done at a scale to effect anything. So Machine guns and artillery were the only thing that remained effective at scale. And they were both primarily defensive, meaning that you could just sit in front of each other with your army, and digging in was the only choice.
Which meant that the only way to dig them out was with infantry, and enough infantry at one time to overwhelm them.
And the counter to that was trench systems and depth.
The war was a natural progression, it's not like generals in funny hats smoked opium and thought it'd just be grand to make as much mud holes as possible.
They weren't retarded but they also didn't adapt nowhere fast enough. Especially the German Empire although that is partially due to the serious resource shortages they had.
He's so good at storytelling. His lead in with WW1, trench warfare, artillery, gas attacks, rats, and starvation is quite chilling.
It's a pretty horrendous story, so do be aware of that going in, if it's not your thing.
Some of the photography from WWI is genuinely terrifying. That one photo of the British soldier with that shell shock smile stays in my brain and freaks me out.
You should read Storm of Steel by Ernst Jünger. It's a neutral account of the daily life in the trenches from the POV of an officer. It's utterly ridiculous. It's impossible to grasp how insane and pointless the trench warfare meat grinder was until you read a firsthand account of it. WW1 on the Western front can be described as 4 years of sitting in an earth hole under the most miserable conditions while artillery was raining down on you hoping you don't get blown up or buried alive. Like Ukraine only worse and on a colossal scale.
No more brother wars.
WW1 was insane. Probably the worst war to fight in as an average person in modern times.
What's happening in Ukraine is very similar to it. You just sit in your trench or foxhole and wait to eventually get blown up. It's pure insanity.
Only difference is in Ukraine you have all those drone operators who seem to enjoy hunting down defenseless soldiers on the battlefield. That's even more fucked up then what happened in WW1.
I'll do that
Aside from hyperbolics about trench warfare, how the first world war evolved into trench warfare is interesting in that the generals and planners weren't retarded. It devolved into trench warfare because nothing else could be done at scale. There was actually quite a lot of modern warfare, but it wasn't able to be done at a scale to effect anything. So Machine guns and artillery were the only thing that remained effective at scale. And they were both primarily defensive, meaning that you could just sit in front of each other with your army, and digging in was the only choice. Which meant that the only way to dig them out was with infantry, and enough infantry at one time to overwhelm them. And the counter to that was trench systems and depth.
The war was a natural progression, it's not like generals in funny hats smoked opium and thought it'd just be grand to make as much mud holes as possible.
They weren't retarded but they also didn't adapt nowhere fast enough. Especially the German Empire although that is partially due to the serious resource shortages they had.