Today's selection -- from A World Undone: The Story of the Great War 1914 to 1918 by
G.J. Meyer. World leaders in 1914 did not understand how powerful their
armies had become and how much destruction they would cause. In the
centuries before the 1800s, world population had grown at a snail's
pace. But between 1870 and the beginning of the first World War, the
population of Europe had increased by 100,000,000, more than the total
world population before 1650, the result of a technological revolution
that improved life spans. But this technological revolution also
produced unprecedented weaponry, and thus World War I
unleashed destruction that would kill 8.5 million and wound in excess of
20 million more, many times the casualties of all the Napoleonic wars combined. As the war started, a young and naive Winston Churchill, then
First Lord of the Admiralty, could not contain his excitement:
"Russia's
general mobilization ... called up the Russian reserves -- a staggering
total of four million men, enough to frighten any nation on earth. ...
"This
was war on a truly new scale; the army with which Wellington defeated
Napoleon at Waterloo had totaled sixty thousand men. ...
"The
Germans ... hauled into Belgium ... two new kinds of monster artillery:
305 Skoda siege mortars ... plus an almost unimaginably huge 420
howitzer ... produced by Germany's Krupp steelworks, [that] weighed
seventy-five tons and had to be transported by rail in five sections and
set in concrete before going into action.
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Austro-Hungarian 30.5 cm siege mortar/howitzer being towed by a motor tractor, together with its complete crew |
"Among the holders of high office, one man at least did not share the
sense of glum foreboding: the ebullient ... young Winston Churchill ...
he wrote to Prime Minister Asquith's wife ... 'I love this war. I know it's smashing and shattering the lives of thousands every moment, and yet -- I can't help it -- I enjoy every second of it.' "
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Arial
view of the Douaumont French military cemetery, which contains remains
of French and German soldiers who died during the Battle of Verdun in
1916 |
A World Undone: The Story of the Great War, 1914 to 1918
Author: G.J. Meyer
Publisher: Delacorte Press a division of Random House
Copyright 2006 by G.J. Meyer
Pages 74, 77, 127, 133
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