The Human Element of War

“All the horrors of all the ages were brought together; not only armies but whole populations were thrust into the midst of them… Merchant ships and neutral ships and hospital ships were sunk on the seas and all on board left to their fate… Every effort was made to starve entire nations into submission, without regard to age or sex. Monuments and cities were smashed by artillery. Bombs were cast down from the air indiscriminately. Poison gas stifled or seared the soldiers. Liquid fire was projected upon their bodies. Men fell from the air in flames, or were smothered in the dark recesses of the sea”

This statement by Winston Churchill very accurately describes the destruction, totality, and modernity of the First World War. The First World War is often referred to as the first modern war and as paving the way for the totality of the Second World War. World War One was the first “total war”, a term coined by German General Paul von Ludendorff in that it involved the various governments, populations, and economies of the nations entrenched in it like no war had ever before. It was a total war in regards to its use of civilians as targets/combatants, its utter destruction of anything/everything in its path, and its global scope and reach across continents. It was the first war where the wide-scale use of machine guns, tanks, airplanes and chemical weapons replaced rifles, cavalry horses, swords and daggers.

In other words, war was becoming impersonal. The way the First World War was fought one hundred years ago portended today’s use of drones manipulated by joysticks from the comfort of a gaming chair thousands of miles away to wage war. In this paper, I discuss the First World War through the eyes of two opposing s...

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