Another 15,000,000 were wounded, maimed, blinded, crippled, and another 9,000,000 were captured on all sides. The psychological casualties cannot be accurately estimated, due to a lack of records and the contemporary stigma.
>They began in comparatively innocuous fashion, disarming their Armenian soldiers and assigning them to labor battalions. Then they proceeded to work, and starve, those battalions to death. Next, they sent an army onto the plateau that had long been home to most of Turkey’s Armenians. In town after town and city after city, all males over the age of twelve were gathered up and shot or hacked to death on masse. Women were raped and mutilated, and those who were not killed were sold into slavery.
* G.J. Meyer, A World Undone, p. 291, on the Armenian Genocide
World War One was a war against civilians. The brutality against Armenians was extended to ethnic Greeks and Assyrian Christians, with violent ethnic cleansing escalating in the Greco-Turkish War. The Nazis would later use the Armenian and Greek Genocides as a blueprint for the Holocaust and Generalplan Ost.
The Russian military committed ethnic cleansing against Jews and ethnic Germans in occupied Galicia. Yet nothing compared to the apocalyptic atrocities of the Russian Civil War, where genocide and massive pogroms sprouted up in Ukraine, Siberia, and the Don Kuban.
The British naval blockade of Germany, designed to starve the nation into submission, was extended for eight months after Armistice Day, killing another 400,000 civilians directly or indirectly. Malnutrition also made the German population more vulnerable to the Spanish flu.
All in all, civilian deaths doubled the body count of World War One. Many, many more would die in the bloody decades ahead.
>The bitterness of the struggle was becoming unnatural, almost psychotic. Even the wounded refuse to abandon the struggle, a French staff officer would recall. “As though possessed by devils, they fight on until they fall senseless from a loss of blood.” A surgeon in the front-line post told me that, in a redoubt at the south part of the fort, of 200 French dead, fully half had more than two wounds. Those he was able to treat seemed utterly insane. They kept shouting war cries and their eyes blazed, and, strangest of all, they appeared indifferent to pain.
G.J. Meyer, A World Undone, p. 362, on the psychological effects of Verdun
By November 11, 1918, 3.4% of France’s entire population had died, including one in every six soldiers. Serbia lost a third of its population. Another ten million Russians would die in the Civil War, most of them civilians.
Yet in terms of peace, Versailles achieved nothing. The collapse of four empires, widespread impoverishment, rampant instability, and the spread of violent extremism were only a few of the many plagues in Interwar Europe. The rise of men like Lenin and Mussolini, and later Hitler and Stalin were not inevitable, but they were not accidents either.
World War One was only the beginning.
My favorite user on r/combatfootage. Some of these I’ve never seen before, thanks!
There’s no way that close quarters photo isn’t staged.
In photo 11, is it taken from above? That’s an incredible shot either way, love seeing your posts pop up.
Photo number 2 is insane
Photo 18 looks like that poor guy is actively taking fragmentation at the moment.
Love your posts, but can we stop with the AI discriptions
Damn, these are cool photos! They combine two of my favorite things- photography and history. The photographers must’ve had to keep a second camera bag just for their gigantic cojones getting this close to the action.
WW1, the evil reason we are where we are today.
My god, impossible to understand this. The German/Prussian military just decides they want Belgium and France and invade. I’ve read a few books (August 1914, The Guns of August, In Flanders Fields, others) and I still cannot wrap my head around it.
Thanks, OP
Great selection! Hope there won’t be any Turkish commenters here going on about the genocides…
This is a great collection, thanks for sharing OP 🙂
14 comments
9,500,000 soldiers died in World War One.
2,000,000 Germans. 1,800,000 Russians. 1,400,000 French. 1,000,000 Austro-Hungarians. 800,000 Ottomans. 733,000 British. 578,000 Italians. 250,000 Serbians and 250,000 Romanians. 114,000 Americans.
Another 15,000,000 were wounded, maimed, blinded, crippled, and another 9,000,000 were captured on all sides. The psychological casualties cannot be accurately estimated, due to a lack of records and the contemporary stigma.
>They began in comparatively innocuous fashion, disarming their Armenian soldiers and assigning them to labor battalions. Then they proceeded to work, and starve, those battalions to death. Next, they sent an army onto the plateau that had long been home to most of Turkey’s Armenians. In town after town and city after city, all males over the age of twelve were gathered up and shot or hacked to death on masse. Women were raped and mutilated, and those who were not killed were sold into slavery.
>Hundreds of thousands of civilians were marched off to the deserts of Syria and Mesopotamia. [Many died of exposure, starvation, or exhaustion along the way](https://c.files.bbci.co.uk/48CD/production/_118173681_mediaitem118173677.jpg). It is estimated that more than [half a million Armenians were killed in 1915](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f2/Armeense_genocide%2C_SFA002028266.jpg/2560px-Armeense_genocide%2C_SFA002028266.jpg), and that was far from the end of it. The massacre would continue through 1916, with further death marches in Syria. The final convulsion would not come until 1922, when a new Turkish government took possession, set the city afire, and systematically slaughtered its tens of thousands of Armenian and Greek inhabitants.
* G.J. Meyer, A World Undone, p. 291, on the Armenian Genocide
World War One was a war against civilians. The brutality against Armenians was extended to ethnic Greeks and Assyrian Christians, with violent ethnic cleansing escalating in the Greco-Turkish War. The Nazis would later use the Armenian and Greek Genocides as a blueprint for the Holocaust and Generalplan Ost.
[The Austro-Hungarians waged war against the Serbians with tremendous brutality](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e4/Austrians_executing_Serbs_1917.JPG/1600px-Austrians_executing_Serbs_1917.JPG?20121206210825). Two-thirds of all Serbians who died in the war were civilians.
The Russian military committed ethnic cleansing against Jews and ethnic Germans in occupied Galicia. Yet nothing compared to the apocalyptic atrocities of the Russian Civil War, where genocide and massive pogroms sprouted up in Ukraine, Siberia, and the Don Kuban.
The British naval blockade of Germany, designed to starve the nation into submission, was extended for eight months after Armistice Day, killing another 400,000 civilians directly or indirectly. Malnutrition also made the German population more vulnerable to the Spanish flu.
All in all, civilian deaths doubled the body count of World War One. Many, many more would die in the bloody decades ahead.
>The bitterness of the struggle was becoming unnatural, almost psychotic. Even the wounded refuse to abandon the struggle, a French staff officer would recall. “As though possessed by devils, they fight on until they fall senseless from a loss of blood.” A surgeon in the front-line post told me that, in a redoubt at the south part of the fort, of 200 French dead, fully half had more than two wounds. Those he was able to treat seemed utterly insane. They kept shouting war cries and their eyes blazed, and, strangest of all, they appeared indifferent to pain.
G.J. Meyer, A World Undone, p. 362, on the psychological effects of Verdun
By November 11, 1918, 3.4% of France’s entire population had died, including one in every six soldiers. Serbia lost a third of its population. Another ten million Russians would die in the Civil War, most of them civilians.
Yet in terms of peace, Versailles achieved nothing. The collapse of four empires, widespread impoverishment, rampant instability, and the spread of violent extremism were only a few of the many plagues in Interwar Europe. The rise of men like Lenin and Mussolini, and later Hitler and Stalin were not inevitable, but they were not accidents either.
World War One was only the beginning.
My favorite user on r/combatfootage. Some of these I’ve never seen before, thanks!
There’s no way that close quarters photo isn’t staged.
In photo 11, is it taken from above? That’s an incredible shot either way, love seeing your posts pop up.
Photo number 2 is insane
Photo 18 looks like that poor guy is actively taking fragmentation at the moment.
Love your posts, but can we stop with the AI discriptions
Damn, these are cool photos! They combine two of my favorite things- photography and history. The photographers must’ve had to keep a second camera bag just for their gigantic cojones getting this close to the action.
WW1, the evil reason we are where we are today.
My god, impossible to understand this. The German/Prussian military just decides they want Belgium and France and invade. I’ve read a few books (August 1914, The Guns of August, In Flanders Fields, others) and I still cannot wrap my head around it.
Thanks, OP
Great selection! Hope there won’t be any Turkish commenters here going on about the genocides…
This is a great collection, thanks for sharing OP 🙂
Comments are closed.