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Originally Posted by Mennonite
I'm watching the old BBC documentary "The Great War" right now. I don't know a lot about WW1 so it's a lot of new info in my case.
It was made in 1964 so it isn't trying to be gritty or shocking or anything. Still interesting though.
I'm not sure the movie went far enough in showing what a nightmare trench warfare was. I've just watched a bit in the documentary where the Germans hit the French with poison gas for the first time. As the gassed Frenchman ran away from the gas cloud their British allies shot them down for being cowards. The whole war seems like a huge cluster**** and every military plan seems to be "throw more ill-prepared, ill-equipped men into a meatgrinder." A million Frenchmen dead or wounded in the first 6 months and the Russians lost even more ( I think). The Germans killed 100,000 Russians in a single battle early on.
It's on Youtube if anyone is interested.
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British lost 17,000 men in one battle in ONE DAY, the first battle of Ypres. Just like the American Civil War, the Generals in WWI were using antiquated battle tactics when the weaponry has far outpaced those tactics. Sending wave after wave of men headlong into interlocking machine gun fire was not only criminially stupid, but went on for a couple years during trench warfare after it had become painfully clear that was no way to try an offensive. The shelling turned the entire trench front into a moonscape of dead people, animals, barbed wire and muck. Hell on Earth. People call the French pussies, but if you look at WWI, they lost an entire generation of young men in three short years.