Posted on 03/04/2016 8:33:58 AM PST by C19fan
I remember visiting the site back in 1957 when I was only 9 years old. My French friend and I went around the back of the building and looked through the ground level windows and saw nothing but human bones. Chilling. All around the battle field there were still weapons sticking up out of the ground.
Absolutely staggering. The downrange gene pool effects are unimaginable.
I agree that that WWI would undoubtedly have resulted in a protracted stalemate absent US intervention, but the precipitate causes of the US Declaration of war were the resumption by the Germans of unrestricted submarine warfare and the release of the Zimmerman telegram pledging southwest US regions to Mexico, should they give military aid to the Germans.
Erich Von Falkenhayn should be on that list too, as well as FM Joffre.
Falkenhayne himself described Verdun as having no military value other than as a point to “Bleed France White”.
IOW, he knew the French would be sucked into defending the ground, and wanted to reduce them through attrition them.
He would up bleeding his own forces out as well.
Was Obama Sr. alive then?
I myself suspect that if the US had stayed out of the war, the Germans would have won.
In the Spring of 1918, the Germany army was walking-dead, but the French/British armies were even worse. The German offensive was on its way to Paris, and probably would have made it had they not been stopped by the Americans at Belleau Wood.
Woodrow Wilson, for acquiescing on the harsh terms in the Versailles treaty.
cC
This was the beginning of the era of massed artillery, which provided nearly 85% of the casualties in WWI. They called what resulted in human physiology shell shock, which is a better name that post-traumatic stress disorder in this case because the trauma was incessant and ongoing. Men were literally shelled into insanity by the ceaseless bombardment; nowhere to hide and both advance and retreat impossible. One thing that Petain did do that helped a great deal was rotating French units in and out of the front lines on a fixed schedule offering limited exposure to the incredible violence. One might hope to survive that.
The ensuing mutiny is scarcely worthy of the name - the mutineers were scrupulous about not harming the officers, they simply declined to return to the trenches, rather in keeping with Petain's stated intention to "wait for the tanks and the Americans". The Etaples mutiny within the British army that occurred around the same time was a bit darker, but even in that case no organized effort to flee the front was made, which was what terrified senior command. The German army displayed no such behavior, but the German navy did somewhat later during the last full month of the war, declining to participate in what was essentially a suicide mission in the Kiel mutiny.
Aye.
I went to Europe with a friend the summer between graduate and under-graduate school. He was a history major who wanted to tour the World War I battlefields. We started in the north and worked our way south; Somme battlefields, Ypres, Passchendaele, Argonne, on down towards Verdun. He tried to explain what the Verdun Ossuary was like but it wasn’t till I saw it that it really hit home.
One thing I noticed even then was that the Germans constructed their memorials simply but effectively (the loser rarely has the resources to memorialize on a heroic scale), and they did seem oppressively solemn. (The tunnel in Fort Douaumont where the remains of those killed in the accidental explosion are forever walled-in is a compact example.)
Mr. niteowl77
Highly recommend Winston Churchill’s wonderful five volume history of WWI, “The World Crisis” He was directly involved as the First Lord of the Admiralty, and after the debacle of Gallipoli, as a field grade officer in the trenches. it is a superb general description of the war from a man that had direct input to its prosecution.
“Can you imagine one nation suffering 20,000 dead in one day at one battle?
And 40,000 wounded on the same day!” Yes I can. At Antietam over 26,000 in one day, Stones River 24,000 one day , Gettysburg 51,000 in three days, Chickamauga 34,000 two days, Chancellorsville 30,000 three days , Wilderness 25,000 2 days, Manassas 25,000 two days, Spotsylvania 27,000 two days, Shiloh 23,000 two days, Ft. Donalson over 19,000 one Day and many other battles with similar numbers in the Civil War.
WW1 was the beginning of the end of Europe, both as an economic and military center of power.
Woodrow Wilson. He campaigned on keeping us out of Europe’s wars.
Ill take Woodrow Wilson for $200 Alex.
He said it was the most difficult part of his life but satisfying because of the lives he was able to save who otherwise would have died. I have a commendation of his hospital signed by King George V.
"Ceterum censeo 0bama esse delendam."
Garde la Foi, mes amis! Nous nous sommes les sauveurs de la République! Maintenant et Toujours!
(Keep the Faith, my friends! We are the saviors of the Republic! Now and Forever!)
LonePalm, le Républicain du verre cassé (The Broken Glass Republican)
You are correct. The flower of Europe died in WWI. The arbitrary Sykes-Picot treaty which ignored tribal,religious and political differences is unraveling and is the source of most of the strife in the Middle East today.
Woodrow Wilson
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.
