70 million military personnel, 60
million of them being the Europeans, took part in World War 1. More than 9
million of military personnel were killed in the war. Of all the nations
involved in World War 1, Russia faced the most causality. On the other hand,
1.77 million German solders were killed in the war, making Germany the nation
that lost the most solders in the World War 1.
The war started when Archduke Franz
Ferdinand of Austria, the next in line to the Austro-Hungarian throne, was
assassinated by a Bosnian-Serb student named Gavrilo Princip in June 1914,
Austria-Hungary declared war on Serbia. Because Russia had interest in the
country, they send troop to Serbia. Bound by the treaty, Germany entered the
equation to help Austria–Hungary. France and England began to take steps to
help Russia and thus, started the World War 1.
Wars have always been merely nothing but periods of mass
destruction and a way of population control for the elite or the ruling class
as most of us say. Although most of the wars in history have had individual
reasons of occurrence; they somehow seem to have a connection, at least a few
of them and moreover some of the important ones if we study carefully. The
similarity can only be seen if we make a small shift in our gaze; from all the
useless killing, towards the funding or the supportive causes of the wars. It
won’t be anything wrong to say that some of the wars in history have actually
shaped the very way of life humans live today and everything that we believe is
true.
So, here we have some of the most interesting and
mind-boggling facts of one of the epic wars in history, the World
War I.
1. The Aftermath
The Treaty of Versailles stated that Germany
had ignited the WWI. It gave Alsace and Lorraine back to whom it belonged,
France. Poland picked up German territory in the east, and other territories
were handed out to Belgium and Lithuania. The treaty also transferred the
Hultschin area of Upper Silesia to Czechoslovakia. The eastern part of Silesia
was assigned to Poland. Lower Silesia, meanwhile, was left entirely to Germany.
The key Baltic port of Danze, the industrial region of the Saar Basin, and the
strategically important Rhineland were also taken from Germany. Its armed
forces were strictly limited and its colonies were made League of Nations
mandates. The 1921 Reparations Committee decided that Germany was liable to pay
$33 billion in compensation to the Allies for all the damage it caused. That
left the Germans humiliated and impoverished, which left the world vulnerable
to yet another World War.
Final Conclusion: Some of the
greatest wars in history were caused due to stupid mistakes made by one single
person; so this suggests wars are basically nothing but a million people paying
for what one person had done and pretty much have had no other option than to
stick with that person’s decision and even lose their lives fulfilling someone
else’s sick demands. There were many long term effects of the world war
1 that affect us till date, some of them were the formation of the League
of Nations, which laid the groundwork for the United Nations and a worldwide
arms race. The war also drove Germany into a deep recession, setting the much
needed groundwork for the world war 2.
2. Medical Advancements
Although most of us only tend to remember
only the killing and useless fighting while discussing about wars, it wouldn’t
be wrong to say that wars have actually shaped and hastened medical
advancements for the world to be better prepared for worse situations in
future. Physicians at that time learned better wound management and the setting
of bones. The enormous scale of all those that needed medical care in the world
war 1 helped in the process of building a specialized and professionally
managed medical industry that we have in today’s world. WWI was basically a
place where doctors and physicians got to learn about human body and the way it
worked, both inside out, like never before.
3. New War Science
WWI gave birth to a new era of warfare and
changed the way the leading countries dealt with war. The most significant
development in warfare at that time was air power, which brought civilians in
the line of fire. By early 1918, it was clear that the days of cavalry as a
realistic fighting force over with the introduction of poisonous gas. Tanks
heralded a new era of offensive war. Finally, the Nazi blitzkrieg tactic of
world war 1 grew out of the final Allied offensive of 1918 in which tanks,
aircraft and men were carefully coordinated.
4. Holes and Ditches
British poet Siegfried Sassoon wrote, ‘’When all is done
and said, the war was mainly a matter of holes and ditches.’’ There perhaps
isn’t a better way to put what the war was all about and what it helped us to
achieve. Even though the U.S government didn’t grant Native citizenship until
1924, over 13,000 of the so called illegal residents served inworld war 1 as
soldiers. As the conditions of the war was the harshest environment a person
could survive in, millions of them suffered ‘’shell shock,’’ or posttraumatic
stress disorder, due to the horrors of trench warfare. These men usually had
uncontrollable diarrhea, couldn’t sleep, stopped speaking, whimpered for hours
and twitched uncontrollably. While some recovered, most of them suffered for
the rest of their lives.
5. Sounds that shook our Foundations
All the arms and explosives that were used in
WWI made immense noise. Artillery barrage and mines used in 1917 blowing up
under the German lines on Messines Ridge at Ypres in Belgium could be heard all
the way in London 140 miles, over 200 kilometers far away. The Pool of Peace, a
40-ft deep lake near Messines, Belgium is actually a filled-crater made in the
same year when the British detonated a mine containing almost 45 tons of
explosives.
.
[-(
ReplyDelete