I'm Italian, so I have a couple of great grandads that fought in this conflict. They are all dead now, so I couldn't get them to share with me some of their war stories. How about you? Did anyone in your family partecipate in WWI?
My great grandmother told me her husband fought in the WWI which was a stupid war. She said the whole thing was much like the wars of today. They were fighting to get oil. Back then Iraq was called Mesopotamia and the British wanted their oil.
"Ancestors". You are either really young, or you think less than 100 years is a really long time lol. As I was born in 1980s, I didn't feel WWI was that long ago, since it was still the same century. Nope, I don't know anyone who fought in it. @ teamrose, From what I learned, the conclusion = the cause of WWI was just a power struggle between old and new superpowers who try to dominate and rearrange the colonies and resources. Germany had become stronger than UK and France, but they had very few colonies compare to those two. They want more share for themselves. Also, back then Turkey had the control of almost entire Middle East at the time. The newly developed technologies back then require oil, and we all know Middle East had most of it. It was never a good versus evil in WWI. It's just a fighting for power and resources on both sides.
That's a new one on me, teamrose! I'd agree with Vash here, that it was a contest between superpowers trying to outrival each other in an insane arms race. Well before the war, Britain made an alliance with France and Russia., the Triple Entente. Germany teamed up with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Turkey as I understand was out of the initial alliances until the outbreak of war, when it opted to join Germany and AustroHungary. The spark that detonated the explosion of a very dangerous powderkeg was the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand in Sarajevo on 28th June 1914 by a radical Serb. The AustroHungarians invaded Serbia, Russia came to the aid of her ally Serbia and declared war on AustroHungary, and so on. Each side started declaring war on the allies of the other side to follow their obligations within their alliances. Totally pointless. So because an AustroHungarian archduke was gunned down in a city most Europeans couldn't put on the map, my grandfather ended up in the trenches in a lunar landscape somewhere around Amiens shooting at Germans, up to his waist in mud and blood. With a canary in a cage to warn him of gas attacks But oil was never a consideration when the Empires started to declare war on each other, for the simple reason it wasn't considered a necessary commodity in 1914. When the British "Old Contemptibles" took the train to France to fight the Germans, people were so naive as to think the war would be over before Christmas. As the war dragged on, and military technology leapt into a new era with tanks and planes, then oil became more obviously something to fight over, but not back in 1914.
Although tanks wasn't invented until in the middle of WWI, automobiles were already there for quite a while and it's becoming more and more common. Gasoline were required for the cars, trucks, etc. Not to mention the ships. Although oil wasn't really as important as today or even as important as in WWII, there are other resources. The assassination wasn't the true cause, it was simply what set it off. The war was going to happen sooner or later even without the assassination.
WWI could have been avoided easily if the politicians were not so hesitant with their diplomatic efforts to find a peaceful solution for the conflict between the Serbs and Austria-Hungary. Due to that explosive situation and the alliances that were made Germany was threatened from different sides and the only way out it saw was to strike first. Off course they were not totally against the war (they were a very military orientated state). It is clear that they wanted to expand their power and they took advantage of the fact that they almost didn't have another possibility then to start a war.
Yes, my GP. However he doesn't talk about it at all. I don't know. I consider war to be a very touchy subject. So even though I've always wanted to ask him what was it like, I keep these questions to myself.
Does the subject of WWI ever come up and gramps changes the topic? A lot of vets don't like to talk about their experiences. However, the very old vets seem to want people to listen to them tell war stories. Are you and gramps close? Do you spend time with him talking and more importantly listening to him talk? You just might be surprised how willing he is to share war stories with you.
Anyone who had a rough war would not like to talk about their war experience, because it was so horrible for them just to think about it. Imagine how you watched your fellow soldiers get killed left and right, blew into pieces, with blood and body parts everywhere, and you had to kill other human beings for survival. However, some of the recent wars don't have the same effects, simple due to 1. Propaganda had brainwashed people not to see certain groups of other people as human beings. Make them ok to kill. 2. Many of the weaker countries didn't stand a chance, they got massacred during the so called "wars". Without much casualty on their own side, the young brainwashed soldiers actually felt exciting about it, on the top of that they make a fortune as soldiers today get paid well for fighting oversea.
