Current Events > History doesn't talk enough about the WW1 trenches were fuck all happened.

(+) Yeah! (+)

UnfairRepresent posted...

That was literally every major nation in the world then not worth defending.

Guess not.

UnfairRepresent posted...

Italy literally pointed heavy machine guns at their own troops because their offenses failed so many times that there was legitimate concern that their forces would literally just revolt when ordered to do another push.

Then Italy is a horrible country

UnfairRepresent posted...

They would be massacred on the spot by their own men if they turned around or didn't charge.

Then these were horrible men

UnfairRepresent posted...

America was just waiting for an excuse to get in.

true in most wars, nobody is truly neutral
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UnfairRepresent posted...

There were trenches all across France and as a result there were large sections of land of no real strategic value where both the Germans and the allies had to entrench a token force for no other reason than to the stop the other side from advancing if literally no one was there.

"Seriously though, why are we out here? Far as I can tell, it's just a box canyon in the middle of nowhere, with no way in or out."

"Mhm."

"And the only reason that we set up a red base here, is because they have a blue base over there. And the only reason they have a blue base over there is because we have a red base here."

"Yeah, that's because we're fighting each other."

"No no, but I mean, even if we were to pull out today, and they were to come take our base, they would have two bases in the middle of a box canyon. Whoop de fucking do!"
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Darklit_Minuet posted...

Why didn't they just go home then

Because they had no choice.

At best they'd end up in prison, at worse they'd end up shot.

Hell the allied soldiers were in France, what even could they do?

MrBobGray posted...

This isnt new history

I never said it was, this is 100 years ago. I said no one talks about it.

and you arent special for reading a buzzfeed article.

I've never read Buzzfeed.

I didn't even know Buzzfeed covered WW1, I thought they covered like celebrity drinking habits.

Youre acting like the Christmas story between these two oppositions isnt a popular article.
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MrBobGray posted...

Youre acting like the Christmas story between these two oppositions isnt a popular article.

?

No I'm not.

What made the Christmas truce notable was that it was an active Trench, they stopped on Christmas, exchanged gifts and played football, and then went back to shooting each other. Both sides thinking the war was going to be blow over at any minute.

It outraged the French too and many British soldiers were spat at, not served and even denied by prostitutes following it. By the time Christmas came round next year, there was no truce. Only gassing and shootouts.

I'm talking about the Trenches in the middle of no where were nothing happened, for years. And the soldiers knew nothing was going to happen. They just sat there in mutal pointlessness. Even warning each other of shelling attacks, lying to their command about pushing forward and having conversations with each other. For month after month after month.

And yeah in my experience no one ever talks about that.

Your confusion over it and dramatic events sometimes people do talk about just demonstrates exactly that, nobody talks about it. So people like Doom_art and you get confused. It's a shame.
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Best part of WW1 is when Brad Pitt lone wolfed it and scalped all those Germans native American style. And then they discharged him for it. Lame.

https://nypdecider.files.wordpress.com/2014/12/legends-of-the-fall-12.png

SamuelHyde posted...

Doom_Art posted...

SamuelHyde posted...

that's not all that his post was about...and trenches were taught, yes, but not this information.

This info was absolutely taught to me

no it wasn't.

just own up to not reading past the title and move on.

Uh I learned about this in HS too
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I like how the people who are claiming they knew about this and they always talk about them are the same users who are notorious for not reading past the topic title and lying.

Weird coincidence that apparently that's linked with talking about WW1 trenches were nothing happened in High School.

What a bizarre correlelation.

And of course they themselves have never spoken about it before either, but that's also just a strange coincidence.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

I like how the people who are claiming they knew about this and they always talk about them are the same users who are notorious for not reading past the topic title and lying.

Weird coincidence that apparently that's linked with talking about WW1 trenches were nothing happened in High School.

What a bizarre correlelation.

And of course they themselves have never spoken about it before either, but that's also just a strange coincidence.

Calm down ya Melvin, this is why no one likes you.
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Case and point
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Yeah sorry I apparently went to a better high school than you dude
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the sitcom you're looking for is hogan's heroes

a modern sitcom wouldn't be nearly as good
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Damn_Underscore posted...

the sitcom you're looking for is hogan's heroes

You know I've heard about this and seen it parodied but I've never actually watched the show
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Weird coincidence that apparently that's linked with talking about WW1 trenches were nothing happened in High School.

Where else would we study it?

And of course they themselves have never spoken about it before either, but that's also just a strange coincidence.

Why would we talk about it?

There are also stories of great heros from WW1.

Here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN3Ce1gQdL4

I know it's not trying to be too accurate but I laughed.

hster88 posted...

There are also stories of great heros from WW1.

Here's one:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fN3Ce1gQdL4

I know it's not trying to be too accurate but I laughed.

I didn't know Trevor was in WW1 in Portugal.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

And yeah in my experience no one ever talks about that.

Talking about WW1 and trenches is one of my favourite icebreakers when I meet new people at a party.
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SGT_Conti posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

And yeah in my experience no one ever talks about that.

Talking about WW1 and trenches is one of my favourite icebreakers when I meet new people at a party.

ww1 is great for starting out but when the night is winding down and youve found a lovely lady pivot to ww2 to bring her home

https://youtu.be/ApslS7RKxYA#t=38s
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UnfairRepresent posted...

I think you could make a game or a sit-com out of that

Blackadder did that already, for one series.
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Funkydog posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

I think you could make a game or a sit-com out of that

Blackadder did that already, for one series.

No they didn't.

We've been over this.

Blackadder is a great show but it was set in the Somme. It was about being in a dramatic heavily disputed trench, the jokes included the fact that you got shot at by machine guns all day and sent on non-sensical pushes for futile land gain that you lose instantly while all your friends died around you.

That's why the ending was so effective.

We're talking about the trenches were nothing happened.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

No they didn't.

We've been over this.

Blackadder is a great show but it was set in the Somme. It was about being in a dramatic heavily disputed trench, the jokes included the fact that you got shot at by machine guns all day and sent on non-sensical pushes for futile land gain that you lose instantly while all your friends died around you.

That's why the ending was so effective.

We're talking about the trenches were nothing happened.

Yeah, that's fair.

I guess no one talks about it because it is pretty boring subject with little to discuss beyond what you get taught "not much happened"

Learning of the more "horror tales" or stuff like the christmas truce for bits of human compassion serve as better reminders of history of how bad it was, and that they were all still people at the end of the day.
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Doom_Art posted...

This info was absolutely taught to me

Its still not really common knowledge.

Itachi157 posted...

Doom_Art posted...

This info was absolutely taught to me

Its still not really common knowledge.

And no one talks about it either
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NibeIungsnarf posted...

hortanz posted...

thought this was a really dumb topic until the sitcom idea. I'd watch that

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackadder_Goes_Forth

You should watch it. It's great.

... I'm posting so I can remember to watch this.
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Aww they cut out the punchline
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There were sectors (for example, around Festubert after 1915) where a "live and let live" policy prevailed on both sides -- which meant inactivity: maybe not comfort, but relative safety so long as you didn't push your luck. Then there were those sectors that were bypassed by major offensives or that spent long periods between major offensives, but where there was plenty of low-intensity activity (sniping, trench raids, mortar fire) which meant a small but constant stream of fatalities.

Then there was the part of the Western Front that's almost never talked about: the world behind the lines, where most men in France and Belgium spent most of their time. That's a big missing piece of the jigsaw puzzle if you want to build up a picture of soldiers' experiences. (Even in towns only a stone's throw from the reserve trenches and well within reach of German shelling, like Armentieres, thousands of civilian residents often stayed behind as long as they could. I've recently been researching relations between French civilians and British soldiers.)
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Yeah nobody could advance until Wonder Woman was able to push through the line
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I heard this on a youtube video but if the world wars were movies, WWI would be the oscar-baity movie while WWII would be the action thriller movie
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MLGSerperior111 posted...

I heard this on a youtube video but if the world wars were movies, WWI would be the oscar-baity movie while WWII would be the action thriller movie

That's a really ignorant view of both wars
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UnholyMudcrab posted...

MLGSerperior111 posted...

I heard this on a youtube video but if the world wars were movies, WWI would be the oscar-baity movie while WWII would be the action thriller movie

That's a really ignorant view of both wars

Yeah not sure what you're on about here
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One thing that surprises and baffles me as a Brit: how the conflict seems to rate as barely a footnote in the American memory of the 20th century. WW1 was not a minor engagement for the United States.

- The US Army suffered more combat deaths in France in 1918 -- more than half of them in just the last seven weeks of the war -- than in the whole of the Pacific Campaign in WW2.

- The Battle of Meuse-Argonne remains one of the biggest and the bloodiest battle in all of US military history: in forty-seven days of brutal combat in and around the Argonne forest, around twice as many American soldiers were killed in action than were killed on Okinawa 27 years later.

- The average US daily combat death rate in France in WW1 (132 per day) was 77% of the rate in all theatres combined in WW2 (172 per day). While total US military deaths in WW1 were 28% of those in WW2, almost the same proportion of US servicemen on active service died in the former conflict (2.4%) as in the latter (2.5%). Proportionally, WW1 caused a US population loss one-third the size of the loss in WW2 -- that's by no means a negligible figure.

I think that in terms of intensity of fighting -- particularly if measured by loss rate, as the AEF was in action for only around ten months -- it's clear that France in 1918 was just as fierce for Americans as the Pacific was in WW2. So it's difficult to establish exactly why the national significance of WW1 has been almost forgotten in America.
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Funkdamental posted...

One thing that surprises and baffles me as a Brit: how the conflict seems to rate as barely a footnote in the American memory of the 20th century. WW1 was not a minor engagement for the United States.

- The US Army suffered more combat deaths in France in 1918 -- more than half of them in just the last seven weeks of the war -- than in the whole of the Pacific Campaign in WW2.

- The Battle of Meuse-Argonne remains one of the biggest and the bloodiest battle in all of US military history: in forty-seven days of brutal combat in and around the Argonne forest, around twice as many American soldiers were killed in action than were killed on Okinawa 27 years later.

- The average US daily combat death rate in France in WW1 (132 per day) was 77% of the rate in all theatres combined in WW2 (172 per day). While total military deaths in WW1 were 28% of those in WW2, almost the same proportion of US servicemen on active service died in the former conflict (2.4%) as in the latter (2.5%). Proportionally, WW1 caused a US population loss one-third the size of the loss in WW2 -- that's by no means a negligible figure.

I think that in terms of intensity of fighting -- particularly if measured by loss rate, as the AEF was in action for only around ten months -- it's clear that France in 1918 was just as fierce for Americans as the Pacific was in WW2. So it's difficult to establish exactly why the national significance of WW1 has been almost forgotten in America.

Honestly the simple reason is because the causes for the war and American involvement were an absolute clusterfuck.

WW2 is much easier to explain and understand.
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SamuelHyde posted...

Doom_Art posted...

I mean it gets talked about plenty

Like that was one of the main things we learned about when learning WWI was trench warfare

What a stupid topic

that's not all that his post was about...and trenches were taught, yes, but not this information.

what a stupid reply.

I absolutely was taught this.
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Funkdamental posted...

One thing that surprises and baffles me as a Brit: how the conflict seems to rate as barely a footnote in the American memory of the 20th century. WW1 was not a minor engagement for the United States.

- The US Army suffered more combat deaths in France in 1918 -- more than half of them in just the last seven weeks of the war -- than in the whole of the Pacific Campaign in WW2.

- The Battle of Meuse-Argonne remains one of the biggest and the bloodiest battle in all of US military history: in forty-seven days of brutal combat in and around the Argonne forest, around twice as many American soldiers were killed in action than were killed on Okinawa 27 years later.

- The average US daily combat death rate in France in WW1 (132 per day) was 77% of the rate in all theatres combined in WW2 (172 per day). While total military deaths in WW1 were 28% of those in WW2, almost the same proportion of US servicemen on active service died in the former conflict (2.4%) as in the latter (2.5%). Proportionally, WW1 caused a US population loss one-third the size of the loss in WW2 -- that's by no means a negligible figure.

I think that in terms of intensity of fighting -- particularly if measured by loss rate, as the AEF was in action for only around ten months -- it's clear that France in 1918 was just as fierce for Americans as the Pacific was in WW2. So it's difficult to establish exactly why the national significance of WW1 has been almost forgotten in America.

It's overshadowed by the Nazis and Friends. The additional caveat that WWI was the result of (and a full demonstration of) human shortsightedness regarding a number of topics in combination with the lack of any clear black and white alignment makes it uncomfortable to go over in great detail.
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UnfairRepresent posted...

WW2 is much easier to explain and understand.

Deceptively so, I'd say. I think the way that WW1 turned into a brushfire war, from a regional conflict in the Balkans to a continent-wide conflagration in the space of only a few weeks and sucking every continent on the globe into the inferno by the spring of 1917, actually has the more important lessons to be learned. Lessons about how risks are mismanaged, how containment can fail, how conflicts escalate, and how mission creep can turn short-term interventions into years-long major commitments. Wars are rarely clear-cut crusades for the soul of civilization, or plotted by evil madmen hell-bent on world domination, blah blah. They're more often "normal" conflicts, started and managed by "normal" politicians.

Ill admit to a certain viewpoint here. I dont see WW1 as any more stupid, irrational, unnecessary or futile than most other wars in the fifty years before or after it. Nor do I believe it was run by an unusually incompetent generation of senior commanders. And I dont think of it as simply a string of unmitigated disasters. Much as I'll always love Blackadder Goes Forth, I think the pop-culture memory of the First World War is already too encrusted with fossilized myths and clichs, and people tend to forget that Ben Elton is actually just a sitcom gag writer who deals in caricatures.
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Funkdamental posted...

Deceptively so, I'd say. I think the way that WW1 turned into a brushfire war, from a regional conflict in the Balkans to a continent-wide conflagration in the space of only a few weeks and sucking every continent on the globe into the inferno by the spring of 1917, actually has the more important lessons to be learned. Lessons about how risks are mismanaged, how containment can fail, how conflicts escalate, and how mission creep can turn short-term interventions into years-long major commitments. Wars are rarely clear-cut crusades for the soul of civilization, or plotted by evil madmen hell-bent on world domination, blah blah. They're more often "normal" conflicts, started and managed by "normal" politicians.

Ill admit to a certain viewpoint here. I dont see WW1 as any more stupid, irrational, unnecessary or futile than most other wars in the fifty years before or after it.

Then you're pretty ignorant of history.

WW1 was the start of modern war, there had been nothing like it before. During WW1 the three biggest battles in the entire history of warfare up to that point in history at one point were ongoing at the same time

Every nation involved but specifically Austro-hungary and Italy literally didn't comprehend warfare beyond the wars they were used to and thought if they were losing it was because soldiers weren't trying.

Nations and leaders in WW1 were spoiling for war to empower their empires, and didn't realize what they were asking for.

This is literally not true for every conflict that occured in the following or previous century, by the very notion of "Modern War" itself.

The situations and politics in WW2 and Vietnam and the Falklands are by default more simple because the nations involved knew what would happen if warfare broke out.

This is literally the reason the cold war didn't escalate.

WW1 was a mousetrap of ideals, assumptions, ignorance, alliances, people who wanted war, people who assumed war was impossible and technological advancement blended in a haze that will and can never be duplicated.

I think it's kind of unreasonable to deny this and say WW2 or any following war was just as convoluted or pointless IMO.
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this was covered pretty thoroughly when I was in high school. lol and I thought California schools were supposed to be a laughing stock.
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RickyTheBAWSE posted...

this was covered pretty thoroughly when I was in high school. lol and I thought California schools were supposed to be a laughing stock.

You might have been in a good school district
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Sativa_Rose posted...

RickyTheBAWSE posted...

this was covered pretty thoroughly when I was in high school. lol and I thought California schools were supposed to be a laughing stock.

You might have been in a good school district

I'm impressed. My high school history was like, "Oh yeah, there was some war right before WW2 and that's where it gets the 2 from."
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dr_marble posted...

Sativa_Rose posted...

RickyTheBAWSE posted...

this was covered pretty thoroughly when I was in high school. lol and I thought California schools were supposed to be a laughing stock.

You might have been in a good school district

I'm impressed. My high school history was like, "Oh yeah, there was some war right before WW2 and that's where it gets the 2 from."

Psst he's lying
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Psst he's lying

Yes, everyone is conspiring against you, lying about it just to ruin your topic.
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Although Canada in WW1 is a facinating read, they punched way above their weight.

We have that tendency. Hell, the soldiers from Newfoundland (a separate nation from us at the time) were called fucking "Stormtroopers" dude.

I DID learn this, we covered WW1 in history20 for a good few weeks after we gotvdone learning how we kicked US ass in the war of 1812. The reasons for it, the events leading up to it, and the duration of it.
History30 was WW2, and the Korean war.

My great grandfather was in WW1 and 2. Shit sucked, and the people joking about it here are stupid as hell.
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COVxy posted...

UnfairRepresent posted...

Psst he's lying

Yes, everyone is conspiring against you, lying about it just to ruin your topic.

No just a handful of users who are notorious for dishonesty. Ricky, doonart, rika etc.

Everyone else is honest
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Doom_Art posted...

SamuelHyde posted...

that's not all that his post was about...and trenches were taught, yes, but not this information.

This info was absolutely taught to me

I went to school in Canada....they taught us this
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UnfairRepresent posted...

Then you're pretty ignorant of history.

WW1 was the start of modern war, there had been nothing like it before.

True, there had never been anything of that scale or intensity before, and the constellation of forces that made it possible to escalate the conflict to a global level came about because the balance of power in Europe (which had successfully contained other wars) broke down badly. But to suggest that its reasons were unique because it was fought for "the empowerment of empires" unlike those in the 19th and later in the 20th centuries is patently absurd -- it's at very least blind to Russian foreign policy during three wars with the Ottoman Empire in the 19th century alone. In fact the history of warfare in the 19th and 20th centuries is largely a record of wars fought to enlarge empires, to block the advance of rival powers, or to try to hold onto imperial possessions. Imperialist wars aren't fought only between imperialist powers. What do you think Suez was?

You could even say that the proximal causes of both WW1 and WW2 were similar: imperial powers with a global reach intervening in (and therefore escalating) what were essentially regional conflicts -- over Serbia on the one hand, Poland on the other.

The Cold War was an interlocking series of bloody conflicts over decades: millions died in proxy wars fought between rival power blocs, but because those millions died in Africa and Asia there's a bizarre perception in North America and Europe that it was somehow bloodless. For Western and allied states, Cold War ideology was underpinned by the "domino theory" and the need to contain the spread of Soviet influence even in remote backwaters like Vietnam. (For "Soviet", you could easily substitute "imperial Russian" before 1914.) How is that rationale radically different from French paranoia over the rise of German power and demographic growth, Britain's fear of strategic assets -- the Channel ports -- falling into hostile hands in the event of a German victory, or Germany's conviction that it was encircled by unfriendly states and that Russian military reform and railroad building represented a long-term threat?

You seem to think that WW1 was stupid, irrational, futile and unnecessary because the decision-makers didn't anticipate how destructive it would be -- and that the wars fought before and after it haven't been stupid, irrational, futile and unnecessary, simply because since then everyone has understood the lesson of what happens if industrial warfare is allowed to spiral out of control. But I don't see at all how that argument follows; there have been plenty of minor conflicts fought for bad reasons. (Just because the destruction wrought by unleashing firepower of megaton proportions on Vietnam was one-sided, I wouldn't discount it as an example of industrial warfare running out of control; and it doesn't mean that Uncle Sam's policy wasn't futile or unnecessary.)
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