re: Sitting outside at times like this, I think of the soldiers in WW1...

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No more brother wars, Western Man.

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Ain’t this the truth. We’ll all have to band together to resist the coming onslaught

AS bad as conditions were during WWI, nothing compares to what was endured Inc Russia during the winter of 1941, especially for the German soldiers who lacked basic winter gear. And even that was eclipsed by the conditions endured throughout Northern Europe in the winter of 44-45.

I don't know how hold you are to exact a generation, but I'm willing to bet millennial. While I agree a larger portion of you or indeed wimpy arse crybabies, I know some that are classified the same, but are putting their lives at risk overseas now...just like Vietnam. There are pansy arse, skinny pants wearing, hippy freaks at home, but there are still plenty of real men to fight while you cry and moan.

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Well obviously the Russians were different, but I'm more referring to the Western Front. I feel absolutely certain if the Christmas Truce had continued there would be widespread mutinies along it on both sides.

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I think you are really being narrow minded and putting too much weight into the “Christmas Truce” as if that’s how everyone on every front thought.

Let me try to approach this from a different way. What fundamentally changed about human nature after WWI? The answer should be nothing. How could it?

Are you going to argue that we learned from history? Maybe for 50,100, or 150 years. But it has never been a permanent change in the history of mankind and I don’t expect it to be. It is human nature. There have been terrible atrocities and wars since the first civilizations. They never learned from history, why would we? Keep in mind every civilization through time has thought they were the smartest and most advanced civilization ever, but they all reverted back to human nature.

If you are going to convince me you are going to have to tell me specifically why we are different.

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We would probably still be on type writers. Tigerdroppings definitely wouldn’t be here

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Well, we’d be a helluva lot more productive then, wouldn’t we?

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Have you ever been hungry and didn’t have food?

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The people who were starving in WWI were the citizens, which would feed into my notion on "What the frick are we fighting for?"

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Have an invading force rape and pillage your community killing family members and friends?

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This is completely and utterly different than WWI. That provides me with lots of inspiration to fight. The Nazis were evil personified, and I sure as frick didn't want to be taken alive by the Japanese. But I'm not fighting monsters in WWI, nor do I think the Germans are going to come in and rape and pillage my community.

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Also, how would you know wether the battle you were in was worthless or not? Those guys in the trenches definitely didn’t know. I garauntee you they all thought the stakes were just as high as a Normandy, etc. You have the advantage of almost 100 years of hindsight.

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No, the people fighting in WWII knew who the Nazis were and what they were fighting for. All sides had big goals and ideas on what they were fighting for. No one was really in the dark. If cowardice doesn't overtake, there's plenty of motivation to jump out of those boats onto those shores to face the enemy (especially if you were French for god's sake).

Battle of the Somme though I see 10,000 of my fellow men gunned down in front of me in the span of 3 hours and for what? To gain an extra hundred yards? And then my commanding officer asks me and my friends to jump over that trench and to join the wall of corpses? Are my wife and kids going to be better off with me doing this? What the frick am I here for? This war was only supposed to last a month or two? Death is certain over that ridge, and I'm just going to be killed by another 22 year old who is as bewildered as I am on why we're here. I say "frick you" and plot with my friends to kill or flee the commanding officer and get the frick out of there. If I'm lucky, I'll just go to prison for a few years and be dishonorably charged, and if dozens of other units on both sides do this, what the frick are they going to do? This horrifying nonsense will stop.

That is how the modern mind would register WWI, especially by 1916. There is no motivation save for honor, and that's starting to taste a bit bitter at that point in the war.

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Also, how would you know wether the battle you were in was worthless or not? Those guys in the trenches definitely didn’t know. I garauntee you they all thought the stakes were just as high as a Normandy, etc. You have the advantage of almost 100 years of hindsight.

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I would implore you to read some letters and testimonies of the people who fought in WWI if you think this. No one knew what the frick was going on. If you were confused on what was going on in WWII, all you needed to do was read Mein Kampf or look at the Rape of Nanking to know what your enemy stood for.

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I'm pretty sure you and the 15 people in your unit would choose to kill him and any other superior officer or dumb private who stood in your way of a retreat.

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I don't think it's a bad thing that today's society wouldn't tolerate engaging in this kind of war. The hope is that we never have to go through that again.

It's incredible to think that the United States ever got involved in the first place. Exactly the kind of "foreign entanglement" Washington advised against. I don't care who said what to Mexico in a telegram - it was a stupid war all around.

And the outcome of WWI leads directly to the absolute necessity of participation in WWII. I'm sure there's some excellent alternate-history fiction premised on WWI never happening.

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What fundamentally changed about human nature after WWI?

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WWI changed the world on how we process war. War was largely romanticized and didn't last nearly as long. Battles would take place over the course of hours rather than months. That may seem trivial, but that really beats down your willpower. Battles in the past, you were one and done, and then maybe a few weeks later you'd repeat the process if you survived or the enemy didn't surrender.

No one could have conceived something as disastrous as WWI before it happened. Pretty much anything that could go wrong did go wrong. Your 21st Century mindset when it comes to war is shaped by WWI more than any other since WWII is an easy one to romanticize. WWII a bunch of madmen came into power and we had to kill them (or I guess spare Hirohito), but I do think we've taken proper steps for something like WWI to not happen again for the foreseeable future. I might be wrong, and yes one day our species will fall, but I'm liking how the world is set up in my lifetime for this to hopefully never occur again.

I guess what I’m trying to say is that nothing about human nature (wants, desires, fears, etc) has changed.

Yes the process of war has changed and with that there are different struggles

But to say that modern society will never see large scale war again is pretty naive. Obviously I can’t proven you wrong, but it’s only been ~80 years.

All it takes is one crazy person to convince a large group of people to follow his orders. YOU may think you are smarter than that, but there are still plenty of people who aren’t.

You really can’t see a situation of a global holy war? Islam is the biggest religion in the world. What happens if Iran launches a nuke at Isreal and Israel retaliates by turning Iran into glass. You don’t see that resulting in a World War because we are now so enlightened?

Is it unlikely? Sure. But far from impossible

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AS bad as conditions were during WWI, nothing compares to what was endured Inc Russia during the winter of 1941, especially for the German soldiers who lacked basic winter gear. And even that was eclipsed by the conditions endured throughout Northern Europe in the winter of 44-45.

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I listened to Ghosts of the Ostfront again the other day.

They had to build bonfires just to thaw the ground enough to dig trenches