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

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I’ll go enjoy a glass of whiskey and feel the bitter wind eat at my bones. Been a brutal few days and it’s not letting up

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I’m back out in the cold again. Just thinking. Imagining how, as cold as it seems tonight, it isnt anything compared to what they were experiencing.

How their teeth must have chattered, living in frozen mud. And the only reward waiting for them was a horrible death in no man’s land. What stern stuff they had to be made of to endure.

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How their teeth must have chattered, living in frozen mud. And the only reward waiting for them was a horrible death in no man’s land. What stern stuff they had to be made of to endure.

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Trying to sleep at night ravaged by rats and lice. Shitting blood and drinking urine. Obsessed with the smell of chlorine gas. Hordes of men buried in the clay with their screams and moans a ubiquitous white noise.

Been watching WWI Apocalypse repeatedly the past month. Second to none when it comes to War docs, imo.

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But I took OMLandsharks comments to mean that we (as in society today) wouldn’t put up with the horrors of war... we would just walk away

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My point is WWI was a specifically horrible war that broke all notions of what war was about or was capable of. The people were rightfully in shock. I’m saying that someone with the mindset of knowing what war was about and capable of wouldn’t put up with a WWI environment. Even Stalingrad, at least both sides knew what they were fighting for and had obvious motivation despite being the single most horrible battle in human history. And Vietnam you knew you were fighting communism, an ideology that had killed tens if not hundreds of millions at the time.

When you just read what the French, British, and Germans were going through on the Western Front, it is simply dismay and shock. The modern person would be shocked as well, but I think he’d much more quickly assess the situation and what he had to do before people of a 19th century mindset would. Seriously, what does someone in England give a shite about the Kaiser or Archduke? No shits whatsoever. WWI was a war of pointlessness and dismay. The average modern man would not put up with this.

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There is an aggressor (In my example that could be radicalized Muslims who are fighting for an afterlife) and the defenders (who are fighting to survive). I fail to see how people would walk away from that situation at a higher rate than WWI because of what we know today.

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Because WWI is different from this. The only people fighting for their lives in WWI are the people in the trenches and the vast majority of civilian casualties died due to malnutrition directly caused by the war itself. If the French took over a German town, they didn’t go rape and pillage the place. They just became a civil occupying force for the most part. This isn’t like when the Mongols sacked Baghdad.

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But, In the moment, generals believe the next battle will be the one that turns the tide for their side. And to surrender would mean all the previous lives were lost in vain. With that mentality it’s not hard to see how things can continue on.

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My point is that the soldiers would say “frick the generals”, and mutiny on both sides. I know I couldn’t take it and there are very few people I know that could. frick the Russians, despite being the harshest on deserters, pretty much did.

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the French army literally did this during ww1

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Hell, certain battalions did it on all sides. I’m just saying it would be FAR more wide spread if it was someone born after say 1940.

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Its hard to second guess historical outcomes when humans have the power to wipe out their species but have not yet done so.

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The nuclear bomb was inevitable though. No matter what timeline we go down, that would have been discovered. Granted nuclear holocaust has been miraculously prevented (it’s still shocking we made it out of the 50s-80s without it happening), but that invention is a certainty in all timelines.

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Hell, it stands to reason that the Japanese wouldn’t have had the nuts to bomb Pearl Harbor had the Germans won the war. I know that’s a little off topic but it goes to show how influencial the war was on a worldwide level.

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I still think the War in the Pacific is inevitable though. It may have turned out a bit differently, but the Rape of Nanking would still occur. It may have delayed it by 5 or so years, but Hirohito (I’m still sickened that Nixon and Reagan shook someone every bit as morally depraved as Hitler and Stalin) was still going to come to power and proceed with his imperialist goals his grandfather started.

I like to think I’m a pretty tough guy. Strong, can box, drink whiskey and smoke cigars. Then I think about the days of WWI and WWII. I think about how hard that must have been. Whether it was the trench warfare in France, the gas attacks, being mowed down by MG fire, fighting fanatical warriors on a volcanic, black island or jumping out of an airplane behind enemy lines at night. Humbling fricking thoughts.

This goes on for any war. It's sad watching the young die due to the actions of the older generation

Have many upvotes to the truth that you tell! Very thankful for the reminder of all the sacrifices our forbear’s took on to allow us to prosper ..
I’m looking at you, you filthy liberals! Without these gritty, astute, men of honor you’d never have the opportunity to bitch about this great country!