You know, I thought about this a lot this weekend, and had a chance to watch two excellent documentary series. One called the World War which studied WW1 and WW2 and the rise of the leaders of the time in Roosevelt, Stalin, Tojo, Hitler, Churchill and others. The other called WW1 the first modern war.
While the weapons have changed, we need to stop deceiving ourselves into thinking that advances in warfare would lead to lower casualties. We also need to realize that the wars of this century in Afghanistan and Iran for example have been wars. In real terms they've been wars between modern first world militarizes and poorly trained and or equip third world armies. Because of that casualties have been what I would have defined as light, and we as modern societies got tied up in knots about it.
A massive war between multiple first world armies would be every bit as bloody as the first or second world war, and would probably in the same way slog down into a war of attrition, but with far deadlier air power on display.
If we look at something like the First Battle of Ypres which really lead to the insertion of tanks into war.
Between October 14th and Nov 30th British Casualties were over 51,000 with about 15,000 dead. The French lost 86,000, the Germans lost 135,000.
There was a calculation done that in WW1 something like 15 men died for every 5 yards gained on the ground.
In WW2
In one day June 6 1944, Conservative estimates state that there were over 8000 casualties.
In the battle of Midway, in a 6 minute period of time 3000 Japanese sailor died when 4 carriers were sunk.
In WW2 between 50 and 80 million people died, most of them were the most productive members of any nations economy the young men between 21 and 25.
WW1 saw about 40 million die.
In the Korean war which was a three year war, 150,000 UN troops were killed, and that was a limited war between super powers.
Lets put this into perspective. The Iraq War lasted 10 years and the US suffered roughly 4500 deaths. The Iraqi civilian casualty(wounded and killed) rate was between 150,000 and 500,000.
WW1, WW2 and Korean War leaders would have reported those casualties as light.
With Canada in Afghanistan during a nearly 10 year war we had time to mourn each individual killed with 158 casualties. If there was a new WW we'd have a constant convoy of bodies going down the highway of heroes daily.
War is sometimes necessary it is. But war is like a blast furnace that needs to be continually fed the best part of our countries to sustain itself.
Any one who looks back romantically on a World War and figures that its just what we need to save the human race, or kick start our economy is deluded.
A major War today with Russia and China and lets say India on one side and the Western powers on the other side would pretty much be the end of days scenario with mass casualties both civilian and military that nobody would ever recover from.
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My name is Ozymandias, King of Kings;
Look on my Works, ye Mighty, and despair!
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