The Various Theatres of War and the Final Outcome. The Western Front was only part of a war that also caused suffering and destruction in Eastern Europe, the Middle East and North Africa. There were some dramatic battles in the mountains between Italian and Austrian troops. There were some tremendous battles on the Eastern Front where Russians fought Germans and Austrians. In the Middle East, Turkish troops with German officers fought British Commonwealth and Empire troops, along with their Arab allies. The Allied force at Salonika in Greece did not fare very well. The whole scheme was problematic. Leadership was poor. The commander of the French troops, General Maurice Sarrail, had been transferred to run the Balkan Campaign. It was not until September 1918, under Sarrail’s command, that the stalemate was broken. In the end, the Bulgarians were defeated in just two weeks. The campaign achieved little, apart from tying up the best part of one million British and French troops for much of the war. I think this shows that the Balkan campaign didn’t really affect the outcome of the war. I say this because no progress was really made until the end of the war. For most of the war it was just a stalemate holding up valuable troops. There was also a battle at Gallipoli. One part of the Allies’ campaign in the Dardanelles was successful. Submarines did get through the minefields of the strait to attack Constantinople harbour. Turkish warships, troopships and merchant vessels were sunk in such numbers that the Turkish war effort was seriously affected. But the main fleet never again attempted to get through. In December, eight months after the landing, it was obvious there wasn’t any chance of success. Tens of thousands of soldiers lay dead around the coasts of Gallipoli. The decision was taken to pull out. The withdrawal was very organised and was a complete success. The campaign was seen as a failure and Churchill was humiliated.
Until we can learn from our mistakes we are doomed to repeat history. Many historians feel that without knowledge of the past can prevent future conflicts and events from taking the same course of events. This statement is true for the Vietnam War. The Vietnam War occurred before in the form of the American Revolution. In order to understand the validity of that statement one must understand the French and foreign influences, the might of the British and United States, how the wars were fought, geography, and politics used in both wars. By understanding these one can come up with a working definition of revolution and the similarities between the two conflicts which span over 150 years between the two.
The ANZACS didn’t know how much bloodshed there was going to be and they were told that the war would be over by Christmas 1915. It obviously wasn’t and it stretched on for more than 4 years from the time it started. With the setback of the Gallipoli landing, the soldiers pulled together and fought bravely. The Turkish Army lost 80 000 Soldiers in the fight at Gallipoli, the ANZACS only lost 7800.
World War I, also known as the Great War, lasted from the summer of 1914 until the late fall of 1918. The war was fought between the Allies, which consisted mainly of the United Kingdom, France, and the Russian Empire, and the Central Powers, which consisted mainly of the German Empire, the Ottoman Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and the Kingdom of Bulgaria (Alliances - Entente and Central Powers). In total, it is estimated that twelve million civilians and nine million combatants died during this horrific and devastating war (DeGroot 1). When the war first began in 1914, many people thought that it would be a war of movement that would quickly be over. However, that changed when the Germans, who were trying to reach and capture the city of Paris in France, were forced to retreat during the Battle of the Marne in September 1914 (Ellis 10). German General von Falkenhayn, who felt that his troops must at all cost hold onto the parts of France and Belgium that they had overtaken, ordered his men to dig in and form defensive trench lines (Ellis 10). The Allies could not break through the enemies lines and were forced to create trenches of their own (Ellis 10). This was only the beginning of trench warfare. A war of movement had quickly come to a standstill on the Western Front. A massive trench line, 475 miles long, quickly spread and extended from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier (Ellis 10). With neither side budging, soldiers were forced to live in the most miserable of conditions. Simply put, life in the trenches was a living hell. A lieutenant of the 2nd Scottish rifles wrote, “No one who was not there can fully appreciate the excruciating agonies and misery through which the men had to go [through] in those da...
1.The dropping of the bomb on Hiroshima was necessary to end the war with the least number of total casualties and in the fastest possible way. The figures regarding the exact number of American lives that would’ve been lost has been highly debated, but considering the great resolve that the Japanese army had, they would almost surely have been more than those killed in Nagasaki, and that is just on the American side. I do not value American lives more than the lives of the innocent, many of whom were victims to the attack, but it is important to remember that regardless of whether we had dropped the bomb or not, we were fighting total war. In the many battles that would’ve occurred if the war had continued, women and children may have still been victims as we advanced our troops. These battles could’ve taken as long as another year, and who can say when the Japanese would’ve finally surrendered? They were filled with pride and resilience, and many soldiers would’ve prefered to die with honor, defending their homeland, than to surrender.
An article called, “The Real War,” written by Roger J. Spiller, begins with a quote by Walt Whitman, “The real war will never get in the books.” The author writes about an interview with Paul Fussell, who was a soldier in World War Two and has written many books about World War One and World War Two. Fussell is very opinionated and critical about other books written about these wars, asserting they are not realistic or portray the true essence of what really occurred by soldiers and other people participating in the wars. I claim that it is impossible to convey the actual personal feelings and emotions of those involved in a war in books or any other forms of media.
In our life one day or another we will have to face the situation where we have to choose between pursuing a personal desire or choosing to be ‘normal’ by conforming. If pursuing a personal desire makes us happy then one shouldn’t conform just to get accepted to be like others when you have an opportunity to be happy and to achieve your lifetime goals. In “The Wars” by Timothy Findley, Robert Ross a protagonist who refuses to conform in the situation where his personal desire was close to being destroyed.
The word "privateer" conjures a romantic image in the minds of most Americans. Tales of battle and bounty pervade the folklore of privateering, which has become a cherished, if often overlooked part of our shared heritage. Legends were forged during the battle for American independence, and these men were understandably glorified as part of the formation of our national identity. The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of these men were common opportunists, if noteworthy naval warriors. The profit motive was the driving force behind almost all of their expeditions, and a successful privateer could easily become quite wealthy. In times of peace, these men would be common pirates, pariahs of the maritime community. Commissioned in times of war, they were respected entrepreneurs, serving their purses and their country, if only incidentally the latter. However vulgar their motivation, the system of privateering arose because it provided a valuable service to thecountry, and indeed the American Revolution might not have been won without their involvement. Many scholars agree that all war begins for economic reasons, and the privateers of the war for independence contributed by attacking the commercial livelihood of Great Britain's merchants.
and the plan had failed, also as the French had no back up plan they
The Development of a Stalemate on the Western Front The main reason trenches developed on the western front is due to the failure of the Schlieffen plan, if it had not been for this elaborate quick way to win the war by Germany, trench warfare may never have developed in WWI. As the Germans were being pushed back from Marne they had to dig trenches to protect themselves from the advancing allies, and the allies mirrored them and did the same. The conventional explanation offered by historians for the stalemate on the western front (an area stretching from Belgium all the way down to the Alps) is that by 1914 technology and industrialism had overtaken military strategy and tactics, making them obsolete. Supposedly machine guns and rapid-fire artillery had made the traditional tactics worthless; linear tactics and cavalry charges were things of the past by 1914, and also bad choices were made by inexperienced commanders.
In 1943 the British and American Allies shared a common language and a common enemy, but they disagreed on the war’s grand strategy. (site) These strategic differences culminated in the Sicily Campaign, with Allied command and control exercise by Allied Commander, General Eisenhower, failed to employ the three essential attributes of mission command: commander’s intent, full understanding, and mutual trust among partners, as discussed in General Dempsey’s white paper. These failures in Mission Command also limited the Allies’ ability to effectively integrate the vital joint functions like Fires, Maneuver, and Protection. This essay will evaluate the Allies’ Command and Control and the other vital Joint Functions and expound on General Eisenhower
The Development of a Stalemate on the Western Front When the war began in 1914, it was greeted largely with enthusiasm and excitement. General public opinion was that it would be a quick war; it was common to hear people saying it would be 'over by Christmas'. However, when Christmas 1914 arrived, the war was far from over. In fact, both sides had 'dug in' for winter, and there were no signs of the quick and easy victory that each party had expected.
By December 1914 the First World War had reached a dilemma on the western front that neither the triple entente nor the triple alliance had expected. The war had reached a stalemate, a state where both sides are so evenly balanced that neither can breakthrough against the enemy. The advances in Technology played a big role in creating the stalemate through strong defensive weaponry such as Machine Guns and Artillery, this caused ‘trench warfare’ (BOOK 48). Trench war is when troops from both sides are protected from the enemy’s firepower through trenches. Many advances in technology also attempted to break the stalemate throughout the war with tanks, gas and aircraft, these however failed. Eventually the stalemate was broken through a combination of improved technology, new strategies and the blockading of the German ports.
The Great War , or as it is known now, World War One was a global conflict fought between the Allied Powers ; Great Britain, France, Russia, and the United States along will other smaller nations and the Central Powers ; Germany, Austria – Hungary, Turkey/Ottoman Empire and other small nations from 1914 to 1918. World War One began from a series of tumultuous events, that in turn affected the balance of alliances that had been made between countries at that time in the world.
In the 17th century, before the Seven Years’ War, the common soldier was just an unpaid citizen who fought for the local militia with his own weapon, but the Seven Years’ War totally changed in military system. The Seven Years’ War was very significant because it forced all of the European countries to focus less on commerce and more territory. This new shift in focus is what caused Britain to send so many more troops to America; the British politicians believed it was vital to militarize their colonies like America, West Africa, and Asia. This is because they believed that soldiers could acquire and defend new territories, as well as build important structures as a cheap
The war in Vietnam is without a doubt an outlier in comparison to every other U.S. war, specifically as the only war that the U.S. has ever lost. Losing the war may have been a direct result of a draft that placed young men in Vietnam, many of whom had absolutely no personal goals other than survival. This sets the scene for Going After Cacciato and its main character Paul Berlin. The book is told in the form of three stories. Sixteen chapters are a narrative of the real war, focusing on the deaths of the men in Berlin’s squadron, another ten chapters depict a single full night when Berlin decides to take the whole watch rather than wake up one of his companions, and the other twenty chapters center on the squad’s imaginative journey to Paris chasing Cacciato. Berlin spends essentially the entire novel trying to come up with his own stories, one a true recollection of what actually happened and another, the fictional account he can tell when he returns home. The book is metafictional; it explores the process of writing a war story (Calloway 188). In Going After Cacciato Tim O'Brien utilizes metafiction to examine the confusion of war.