The Great War's toll

James J

Furthermore because conscription was brought in late they were not a typical cross section of the male population.

Alfred T Mahan

It is commonly said that the life of an army officer on the Western Front in WWI was measured in weeks. Yet in WWII the British aircrew dead alone totalled more than the total number of officers killed in WWI. The later war was very costly in terms of those who might be expected to be the natural leaders in the post-war years - especially as the educational attainments of aircrew tended to be higher than those of WWI infantry officers, who suffered the highest casualty rates. I often wonder what effect this skewing of casualties has had on the country - after all, we managed to do to ourselves what Stalin did to the Poles as a matter of policy by exterminating the Polish officer class at Katyn and elsewhere.

kinglear

One of the truly humbling experiences is to "do" the Somme Battlefields. Italy's losses alone in WWI were 1.5million - and they only fought on one front mostly against Austro-Hungarians, who lost about 1.25m

Chris

In both wars in Europe, the task was to defeat the German Army. (This may sound like a truism, but the Dardanelles and the WW2 Italian campaign are testaments to Churchill's misguided belief in the futile notion of the indirect approach.) In WW1, the defeat, and therefore the heavy casualties, happened in France; in WW2, it happened on the Russian front, with the same effect on casualties. See John Terraine, 'Smoke and Fire; Myths and Anti-Myths of War'.

Fergus Pickering

Here's another statistic for you, though I can't remember where I got it. Our side lost more than a million more men than their side. They just ran out of stuff, food, steel etcetera. That's how you win. You cause the other side to run out of stuff. True of the American Civil War also I believe. And of the battle of Borodino. I got that from Tolstoy. And of the Battle of Waterloo. I think. So the side prevails that's got more stuff. Looks good for the Chinese, doesn't it?

Augustus

Britain's Western Front Casualties:
Ypres- 160,600 K 410,000 W
Wyteschaelte- 23,908 K 117,237 W
Messines/
Armentiers- 28,128 K 181,338 W
Neuve Chapelle-38,207 K 180,746W
La Bassee- 16,154 K 67,960 W
Vimy/Arras/
Mons 36,230 K 123,448 W
Valenciennes 21,253 K 87,952 W
Somme 111,150 K 449,300 W
Le Cateau/
St.Quentin 20,064 K 84,860 W
Other battles/
trench war 103,285 K 136,174 W

Total W.Front Killed: 558,979
" " Wounded:1,839,015

Combined totals Britain's servicemen all fields of operation: 908,371 killed, 2,090,212 wounded.

(Source The Daily Express, September 14th, 1934.

Lance Grundy

During a well-spent few days in Ypres with my late father, I visited the ‘In Flanders Fields’ museum [www.inflandersfields.be ]. The most moving exhibit I saw was a collage made up of hundreds of photographs of young soldiers that they had had taken at a local photographers either when they arrived in the town or during breaks from fighting at the front.

Just young lads smiling and fooling around with their mates - the sort of pictures you could find these days on millions of camera phones. Underneath the collage it said that the photographs had been found uncollected in the photographer’s store at the end of the war - none of the soldiers pictured had ever returned to pick up their prints.

Charles

Programme on the wireless Thursday last about the Macmillan play. Stated that he and one other were the only survivors from the 1912 (I think) Balliol freshmen, of whom there were 24. Good programme, can be listened to again via this link - http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00g63pz

Craig

Military casualties were not far higher in World War I. They were for Britain but that is beczuse we did not have large armies in the field for much of the war, for example only four divisions fought at the battle of El Alamein. More soldiers were killed on the eastern front between 1941 and 1945 than died in the whole of WWI in any theatre.

James J

Yes and if you look at the casualty/prisoner ratio you can see how German morale broke. At the end Germany’s was 9%. France 11%.Austro-Hungary 31%Italy 25%.Britain 6%.

Charles

Much can be made of the WW1 statistics, but how reliable are they? The propaganda needs did not stop with the armistice, given the revolutionary pressures of the times. It is not inconceivable that the stated casualty figures were deliberately reduced for these reasons. Only now, when individual records can be readily accessed via the internet is it becoming apparent that there are many men missing from the official lists and therefore, one presumes, from the statistics. See here for some further information in this regard - http://www.cwgc.co.uk/

James J

Interesting to speculate on how the ‘culling’ of these young men on such an industrial scale altered European culture permanently.

cuffleyburgers

James J - a good point.

One obvious result is the EU and goodness knows where that will lead, but history leads one to expect that it will all go pear-shaped at some point, and hopefully the death throes won't be too blood-soaked, although the main players are the usual suspects in all the major European conflicts to date.

I'd give it another 30 years or so.

But to my mind there is no doubt the gene pool was weakened.

Another good point made above is the reminder that he who has most stuff, and manages to deploy it, wins.

Now we no longer make anything,and have even lost many of the skills involved, and have no merchant fleet, and are reliant more than ever on imported energy and food; in the most basic strategic terms GB looks pretty well f**ked.