Could almost anyone born after 1940 fight in WWI

Way tl;dr

My Grandfather fought in WWI.

People supported Vietnam, so I'm sure WWI would have had its fans too.

quote:

---

People supported Vietnam, so I'm sure WWI would have had its fans too.

---

The British lost more people in a single day of battle than the Americans lost throughout the entire Vietnam War. Also the British have a smaller population than we do, which makes the results even more devastating. It's completely on a different level than Vietnam.

There’s a reason WWI wasn’t exactly supported wholeheartedly by Americans at the time. Total hellhole. Thousands mowed down just to gain a few feet of real estate.

WWI was catastrophic by every measure. WWII was the finishing blow. Europe has not recovered.

My grandfather fought in WWI.
The people that served in this war are long gone.
You still have people that served in WWII, The Korean conflict, and Vietnam conflict still living.
You will hear more about these wars.

Nope...WWI ended in 1918

quote:

---

If you put almost anyone with a mid-20th Century mindset and beyond into those trenches, soldiers on all sides would rebel against their superior officers. I'm not even sure if the so-called Greatest Generation would do it. 

---

This is where you're flawed.

In the early 1900s people weren't receiving news as well as the mid 20th century mindset they you speak of.

Couple that with the men who fought in WWI growing up and hearing stories of the valiant effort their parents, uncle's and grand parents put into a war...it all makes sense why people chose to volunteer in WWI.

You can say the same about those who went to WW2..

I think you have to look at the mindsets from people that fought WWI differently compared to those that fought WWII and beyond. Especially at the outset of WWI, war was for the most part romanticized in those people's minds. They were brought up on "The Charge of the Light Brigade".

Nobody really knew the power of the artillery, machine guns, gas attacks and tanks at the latter part of the war to really be able to get a grasp upon what war was going to be like in the 20th Century and beyond. I can't remember who said it but I remember listening to Blueprint for Armageddon and a journalist writing that "war is stupid now" after seeing what it was like on the frontlines.

Not that many people died comparatively speaking in wars previous to WWI, but once artillery and machine guns came out, it was all random and that took a heavy toll on the generation after.

Everybody knows now what war is like for the most part, there's no more real romanticizing war for what it is.

William Sherman said it best, and while I am in no way, shape, or form a Sherman fanboy, he had it right when he said, "War is hell. And its glory is moonshine."

Nobody has anymore false pretenses of what war and battle is like anymore and if they do, all they need to do is pick up a book or head over to YouTube and start looking it up themselves.

WWI put the entire continent of Europe in a comatose state. It took WWII to jerk them back out of it and that was really too late for the continent. Europe will never get back to that type of height as it had before the start.

With all that being said, yes, people could have fought in WWI if they were born after 1940. The way a lot of people, myself included, see things is when your country comes calling, you don't back away.

quote:

---

Couple that with the men who fought in WWI growing up and hearing stories of the valiant effort their parents, uncle's and grand parents put into a war...it all makes sense why people chose to volunteer in WWI.

---

But by 1916 the soldiers figured this out for themselves. These people are seeing lifelong friends get annihilated in front of them by the hundreds. This wasn't what they were promised in their youth. I do think their sense of honor was the only thing that held it together. Not many Baby Boomers and their descendants think this.