how did the unsantitary conditions on the weestern front 1914-1918 affect the heavy casualties!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
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Position:Home>History> Western front 1914 - 1918?Question: Western front 1914 - 1918!? how did the unsantitary conditions on the weestern front 1914-1918 affect the heavy casualties!?Www@QuestionHome@Com
Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: 1!. World War I was so deadly primarily because it saw the use of nineteenth-century military tactics with twentieth-century technology!. At the beginning of the conflict, the cavalry was still the premier branch of military service, and the commanders believed that this war would be like the last big European fight, the Franco-Prussian War (Prussia was a German principality until that war, when Prussia was able to unite all of Germany into the German Empire, the first time in history that there had ever been a "Germany!.") Fought in the same way as the Napoleonic Wars of the early nineteenth century, the Franco-Prussian War taught commanders that offense could still beat defense; in other words, an attacking army could still out-maneuver an enemy on the defensive!. 2!. Trenches were truly appalling places to live and die!. Death surrounded the men all day, every day!. Men killed by artillery or other means were buried in the trench where they fell; rats proliferated by the millions, feasting on the decomposing bodies; food was cold and intermittent; rain and subterranean flooding soaked men through for weeks at a time; and they were constantly being shot at and shelled by the opposing side!. The blank stare of men returning from the front was the original "shell shock!." The only thing that everyone who fought on the Western Front agrees with is that there is no way to adequately describe how hellish the trenches were!. The German trenches were generally more impressive than the Allied ones for the simple reason: that whereas the French, British and later American troops could be pulled off the front line and sent to the rear to rest and refit, the Germans could not!. They were in enemy territory and didn't have the luxury of towns and depots of friendly civilians!. Some German trenches were built of stone, had deep, electrified living quarters, and were centrally heated!. That didn't change the fact that men were constantly dying around each other at all times!. From Shmoop History on World War I Www@QuestionHome@Com Realize that antibiotics had not yet been invented!. The best they had was coal tar, sulfur and amputation!. Now think of a rat and lice infested trench where the men are forced to live for extreme extended periods!. Dysentery, Tetanus, Typhus, Rabies!.!.!.!.Www@QuestionHome@Com More people died from disease than combat!. That had been true since the Napoleonic war and civil war, yet in wwi, this was unexpected!.Www@QuestionHome@Com |