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Saturday, January 6. 2024

2-3 million killed

What was France thinking? Same thing goes for the Germans. What's the point?



Posted by Bird Dog in History at 15:53 | Comments (7) | Trackbacks (0)

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What was France thinking? Same thing goes for the Germans. What's the point?

Perhaps it was the same thinking and point of 1914?

The ruling class knows best and the little people are cannon fodder because they are inherently worthless?
#1 feeblemind on 2024-01-06 22:40 (Reply)
In the novel "Desiree", the comment is made to the effect that if the age of conscription in France becomes any lower, provision will have to be made for the boys to have - as I remember - some form of confirmation. France was becoming desperate for soldiers.
WW I was different: there was almost a hunger for war amongst all classes. And there was not a push for the little people at the expense of the "ruling classes" in that sense; a fair few men of the aristocracy fought and died as well, and - in terms of percenetages killed - the largest group would be the young men from Eton and similar schools who volunteered on leaving school and died in France. Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother had four brothers serving (she was fourteen when war broke out and - as her family home of Glamis was turned into a nursing home for convalescent soldiers - spent the war helping to run it).
The late Anthony Price - in one of his novels - had a character say (and I am going from memory): "Most of the problems England has had can be attributed to the fact that the best men - of both labour and management - died in the trenches during WW I." I will not have remembered the quote accurately, but I do remember the sense.
#2 Frances on 2024-01-06 23:25 (Reply)
Easy question. Before the industrial/technological revolution was complete the only way to garner more wealth was to increase the lands and people over which you ruled.

Only modern (Western) man fights war over ideology, or at least pretends to do so. Men of a few hundred years ago, prior to the enlightenment, would have thought modern man foolish to be willing to die for an idea.

France was thinking what men had been thinking for millennia. Conquer more lands. Gain more wealth.

For the most part, life before the industrial/technology revolution sucked. To take it even farther, life before the development of antibiotics sucked. But in the same way you look at them and can't comprehend what they were thinking, they would look at the wars we fight in the name of ideology and could not comprehend what we are thinking. They have a point.
#3 Guest on 2024-01-07 02:15 (Reply)
You might want to read up on the absolute devastation of the various religious wars fought in Europe, most notably the 30 years war.
#3.1 Freddo on 2024-01-08 07:56 (Reply)
Completely aware of them. All were wars of conquest or domination. Religion was simply the patina painted over it. Why do you think the Vatican is one of the wealthiest entities in the world? Until recently, they won.

There's room to argue that nothing fundamental has changed and our modern wars remain wars of conquest covered with a similar patina of ideology, but it's a harder sell these days.
#3.1.1 Guest on 2024-01-08 16:35 (Reply)
Islam fought for what pray tell. Only the West fights over ideas, so wars of conquest fought for land, slaves, cattle are so much better? Pray tell us how many years you were at general staff college and when you attended.

One does so tire of the prattling of gender study majors and sociologists.
#3.2 Sally on 2024-01-10 23:22 (Reply)
Despite the scale of the Napoleonic wars I'd argue a war of conquest is preferable over wars of ideology/religion or mass migrations such as seen at the end of the Roman empire. And indeed at least for now people seem sufficiently sceptic on the need for war in Ukraine or Taiwan.
#4 Freddo on 2024-01-08 17:08 (Reply)

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