Huzzah, World War I finally ends

Pilot, the First World War isn't at the root of it all in just a global sense. Think about it - if America hadn't retreated into isolationism after the war, would the events of the '20s and '30s have played out the same way and led to the same result? Absolutely not.

In fact, the hyper-Americanism of the 1940s and beyond, the process of shaping America and its role as we know it today, can easily be seen as a direct reaction to (and rejection of) that interwar isolation.

Bottom line - no examination of the Second World War, or world history since the end of that war, can be complete without a thorough understanding of the war that came before....the war that was supposed to have ended all wars.

 

You can play that game all day, or any alternate history game.

I get that World War 1 has an incredibly complex and interesting legacy that is often overlooked in this country, and that it "changed the game" in terms of the scale and ramifications of global war and set the stage for a second world war, but I think it's overstating things to say it means more to what America today than World War 2, or that World War 2 is only more studied and well known because "the WWI generation didn't have Tom Brokaw to write books about it."

World War 2 isn't considered what it is because Tom Hanks made Band of Brothers. Three times as many Americans served in the military in World War 2 as did in World War 1. Six times as many died in battle.

Compared to the European powers, America was largely absent from World War 1, and that I think greatly downplays its role in the American psyche.

 

We were isolationists, in the sense of that age, until a sunny Sunday morning in 1941. We've long thought we could build nations, but didn't start doing so in the way we currently do until we tried to piece Germany and Japan back together.

 

All of history feeds into itself. Obviously World War 2 happened because of World War 1. I'm just saying, based on the role America played before, during and after those two wars, the second is not more revered in this country because "it had better writers." It's more revered because America committed itself to a far larger degree to the second war than to the first.


... Damn it. Now I have three different conversations going, mostly saying the same thing. Sorry.

 

I understand what you're saying, but why does it have to be confined to the role America played to determine its importance?

 

Because the first comment I responded to said, in essence, the only reason WW2 is more "popular" here is because Tom Brokaw wrote about it.

I have no doubt that World War 1 is remembered differently in other places.

 

World War I's main effect was to pretty much tear life in Europe to shreds. God knows the price in innovations that were never to be discovered, works of art that were never to be done, because of the senseless meat grinder that went on, just so one side could gain a foot or two. As far as long-term effects, it became so extra senseless when considering that Eastern Europe just went ahead and got re-Balkanized.

 

Exactly. Some countries basically lost entire generations in the First World War. A million British were killed (not counting the Empire), 1.7 million French, 1.2 million Italians, 3.3 million Russians, 2.5 million Germans, 1.5 million from the Austrian Empire, 3 million from the Ottoman Empire.

The impact on the world map was no less devastating. Empires collapsed and brand new nations emerged in their places. Some of those new nations were created in the Middle East, where the constant bullshit can be traced directly to the end of Ottoman rule and the takeover of the British.

 

I thought it was because John Wayne won it singlehandedly.

 

Similarly, I think the Korean War is vastly underrepresented as one of the most formative and consequential happenings in the last 65 years.

World War I is fascinating because while technology had advanced to the point where it could produce unprecedented, unfathomable slaughter, military strategy was still stuck in the 19th century. The casualties produced by a war that was truly stagnant for almost its entirety are absolutely mind-blowing.

That Germany collapsed in such a sudden, all-consuming way had as much to do with WWII as anything the Allies did, including reparations. The end of the war essentially came about due to a de facto mutiny not only by the German soliders and German generals but also the helplessness and haplessness of the German politicians. An embarrassing national failure of that totality is easily exploited by opportunists, as it was.

 

That's the thing that's truly beyond belief. You had old generals who had cut their teeth in the wards of the late 1800s still trying to fight more or less a classic battle but instead of muskets they had rifles, machine guns, tanks, planes and gas. Also, medical technology wasn't on par with the killing technology.

The U.S. lost 58K dead in 10 years in Vietnam. We had 116.5K killed in WWI in a two-year span where our troops were really only in the thick of it for less than 12 months.

 

Oh, no doubt something else would have sparked it. ADF might have been killed the next day or any number of things could have gone down, but I just always find it funny that the original plan was botched only to be salvaged by dumb luck.