The Importance of World War I

[Pistolenschutze]

It's hard to imagine, but nearly all the WWI vets are now gone, USMC. I read a year or so ago that there were only 12 verified WWI vets (defined as having served between July 28, 1914 and November 11, 1918) still still alive world wide. All were well in excess of 100 years old. There's an interesting breakdown of the figures here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Survivi...of_World_War_I

[TranterUK]

Though little profit is to be had with 'what ifs', they can be interesting. It has been suggested the world might have been better off had the allies had lost WW1. Especially that WW2 may never had happened.

I am not sure what Russia would have said to this, and Japan's expansion in the 1930s might have been pretty much as it was, leading to war with Britain and the U.S. anyway.

Another interesting 'what if' is the defeat of three Roman Legions under Varus by the (German) Arminius in AD 9. Despite winning and getting the Romans to withdraw it has been suggested by doing so a more fractured Europe was the result. This then led to hundreds of years of dispute and war that may have been largely avoided.

[Pistolenschutze]

Originally Posted by TranterUK

Another interesting 'what if' is the defeat of three Roman Legions under Varus by the (German) Arminius in AD 9. Despite winning and getting the Romans to withdraw it has been suggested by doing so a more fractured Europe was the result. This then led to hundreds of years of dispute and war that may have been largely avoided.

When he heard the news of Varus' defeat in the Teutoberger Wald, Caesar Augustus is said, by Seutonius, to have torn open his toga and cried out in great anguish, "Quinctilius Varus, give me back my legions!" ("Quinctili Vare, legiones redde!"). The Romans never again seriously attempted to challenge the German tribes across the Rhine and Danube rivers. Perhaps if they had, and done so successfully as they did in Gaul, the whole history of the later Roman Empire might have been different, for it was the Germans who were most responsible for defeat of the Empire in the 5th Century.

[swanshot]

I think that the importance of WW1 was that it was the first war that was simply two industrial gaints grinding up against each other. The first industrial complex to fail was the loser. When the US joined up we now had a new giant in the game, and the end was inevitable.