I’ve been reading Churchill’s biography and am currently in the WWI period. The casualties in the war are simply staggering and battle after battle fought to gain a few hundred yards at the cost of one hundred thousand lives. Unbelievable. One quarter million lost in the Gallipoli campaign.... which could have been successful if the Brits had quickly followed up on their initial successes.
Britain cut off Germany through a Naval Blockade, that is why the Germans used the U-Boats to try to get them to relent.
If the US truly was a neutral, we should have insisted Britain lift their blockade so as to not endanger US ships. But of course, we never really were.
The casualties in the war are simply staggering...
And then they did it all again 20 years later.
Europe never recovered.
And the British Navy managed to screw up the Anzio landing a quarter century later in the same way: uncoordinated and ill-timed shore bombardment that failed to provide adequate landing support.
From "The Band Played Waltzing Matilda", an Aussie anti-war song:
And how well I remember that terrible day, how our blood stained the sand and the water
And of how in that hell that they called Suvla Bay, we were butchered like lambs at the slaughter.
Johnny Turk he was waiting, he'd primed himself well. He shower'd us with bullets, And he rained us with shell.
And in five minutes flat, he'd blown us all to hell
Nearly blew us right back to Australia.
But the band played Waltzing Matilda, when we stopped to bury our slain. We buried ours, and the Turks buried theirs, then we started all over again.