HISTORY 1DD3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 30: Swiss Alps, English Channel, Trench Warfare
8 Dec 2016
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The modernity of the first world war part 1. But this was not because of the overall scale if the causalities-which was huge, but not actually the most sustained in a single war prior to 1914. Nor was it due to the horrors that were unleashed; previous wars had been equally brutal, and indeed, the rate of survival from wounds was better in the first world war than in most previous wars. Even some of the most famous aspects of the conflict-such as the use of trenches-were not entirely new but had their precursors in smaller conflicts going back to the american civil. What was new, what made the war unprecedented, was the combination of scale, intensity, innovation, and the singular application of industrialization to the killing. Consequently, although previous conflicts had seen high casualty rates, usually these occurred in sporadic battles or over a long period of time.
