HISTORY 1DD3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 5: Trench Warfare, Machine Gun, American Civil War
10 Dec 2016
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Document Summary
First world war was unprecedented, not because of the overall scale of casualties, but due to the horrors it released: wars before this one that had more casualties. Previous war had been equally brutal, and rate of survival from wounds was better in the first world war than in some previous wars. Even some of the most famous aspects use of trenches not entirely new, precursors in smaller conflicts like the american civil war. New, 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, in sporadic battles or over a long period of time. No war had killed or wounded some many in such a short time period, more than 12 million soldiers were killed and similar number seriously wounded in 4 and a half years. Hundreds of thousands more would suffer physiological damage.
