Comment by bluejekyll | Hacker News Reader

Comment by bluejekyll | Hacker News Reader

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So, I had always learned that the American Civil war was a foreshadowing of WWI, both the high number of casualties, and the entrenchment which was being utilized by the end of the Civil War... I knew about the Austro-Prussian and the Franco-Prussian Wars, but I didn't know about the casualties, OMG:

> Total casualties in killed, wounded, and missing broke 100,000, with Austrian losses nearly doubling those of the Prussians.

In two months of fighting? That's crazy, and at a 1-2 rate, definitely the end of the muzzle-loaded rifle.

> Combined casualties from the combatants (killed, wounded, missing) neared the 1 million mark.

In 9 months of fighting? That's insane. Those numbers far exceed the American Civil War, which was Approx. 650,000 for the entire four years. It should have been obvious to both France and Germany that WWI was going to be much much more deadly, they both had directly experienced it a generation before. It's sad this didn't give them pause.

This is a common mistake when reading about military history. Casualties are not deaths. It is the lose of fighters for a wide range of reasons (death, injury, illness, catpure, and etc).

Roughly 650k people were killed during the American Civil War, but the casualties were closer to 1.8mil.

Much of the casualty count of the Franco-Prussian War is related to the fact that France lost entire forces in engagements. Mass routes nearly always lead to inflated injury and captured counts which in turn leads to high casualties.

By comparison, few of the engagements were as one-sided in the American Civil War. The combat death rates were actually fairly close to each other over time (~160k/yr).

Both France and Germany (Prussia) had observers placed with the US and Confederate Armies during the US civil war, where observation balloons, quick-firing rifles (lever-actions), rail artillery, and other innovations were created.

They went back home, wrote reports, and were ignored by their leadership. Dooming the first several years of fighting in The Great War to be a repeat of all the other wars, with astronomical casualty counts on both sides.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spencer_repeating_rifle

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prussia_and_the_American_Civil...

I think they are erroneously including the number of men captured in the Franco-Prussian number. They aren't sharing sources for this article so it is hard to know but Wikipedia (which does source the number) lists 475,000 of that million number as prisoners of war that probably survived the war and were repatriated.

Well, even if you do divide it in half, that's still a rate of death of 500,000 a year. So using that as a way of estimating deaths of another conflict, it should have been enough to stop an actual war. That requires the people ruling the countries to actually care about the effects this would have on their own populations...

Sadly, even using that as an estimate it would have been off by more than half of how many would actually die.

Absolutely! I don't think your conclusions are wrong, it is pretty crazy that they would make that large of an error in the article. I assume they mixed up "missing" and "captured".

It is also worth remembering that everybody thought the war in 1914 would be short, there were very few people who thought it would drag out for years. All involved probably did some mental math based on actions like the the Franco-Prussian war and figured that the same level of casualties, or even twice as many, was worth it.

If they would have known, which we do with hindsight, that it was going to take 4+ years of fighting it may have never happened.

Agreed, but did they have any reason to believe it would be shorter than the Franco-Prussian War? I agree, they definitely believed it was going to be over quickly, but why would they have thought it was less than 9 months (easy to assume 500K killed based on previous experience). In addition to that, you had two countries that were literally preparing for this conflict for years, poking each other around the world up to that point.

I think anyone who thought it was going to be short, would have been completely ignoring all evidence that would have stated otherwise.

There were many reasons that they thought it might be short and quick. They didn't think the economies could take that kind of strain for a long time, they thought technology would make wars faster (British cavalry journals before the war thought the machine gun would help more than hinder the cavalry), and they just had too much faith in their first strike capability (France with plan XVII and Germany with Schlieffen plan).

The biggest problem was that it had been over 40 years since Europe had been at war. This meant that there was little evidence based study to do with new military technology advances and it was too easy to dismiss colonial conflicts (Boer War, Russo-Japanese War) as not indicative of what a general war in Europe would look like.

It is actually remarkable to hear some people argue that a world war today would be short (if it is non-nuclear) because of the same reasons.

> Agreed, but did they have any reason to believe it would be shorter than the Franco-Prussian War?

Yes. Germany came within spitting distance of Paris thanks to the Shlieffen plan, and was only hobbled at the eleventh hour by overextended supply lines.

Meanwhile, the Entente was counting on the Russian juggernaut, with its millions of men to overrun East Germany. The Russians saw great successes against Austrian forces, but met a complete disaster when they engaged the Germans. As it turned out, the Russian empire was a paper tiger - completely unprepared to fight a war.

Geany might be able to spit on Paris put taking it is ahole other problem. Germany was never actually close taking Paris.

Calling Russia a paper tiger is complely wrong, just because they were not quite as effective as Britain, Germany and even France does notean they were a paper tiger. Compared to Austria, Turkey amd even Italy they managed a efficent economy and had a huge well trained army. The problem was that the civilian government failed, the militay and economic side were suprisingly strong.

Would the war have actually ended early if Germany had taken Paris? With the British and Russians still unmolested on their own turf, wouldn't the French have tried to retake the city instead of surrendering? Or at least their allies keep fighting? (I realize this perception is colored by how it played out in WWII so I'm curious whether it would also apply to WWI)

The British expeditionary force was tiny, and the Russians were smashed. Neither could have fought on in Europe after France was eliminated.

Unlike WW2, it was also not an existential war - it was just another European conflict. An armistice gets signed, the losers pay reparations, everybody goes home.

I think the comment above is questioning the belief that France would have packed it in and called it a day if Paris was captured (I believe the answer is no) not what would have happened if France was out of the war.

In that case, they underestimate the importance of Paris as a center of bureaucracy, logistics, communication, as well as that of the fortifications between it and the border.

France may have been able to hold on for a while longer, but losing Paris would have almost certainly made an armistice the preferable option. It would not have been able to regain its territory, its industrial output and manpower would have been dwarfed by Germany, and its allies were in no position to offer assistance.

> It is also worth remembering that everybody thought the war in 1914 would be short, there were very few people who thought it would drag out for years.

The war happened because of that, largely (and the related belief that it would not only be short, but heavily favor the aggressor—a belief often referred to as "offense dominance"—which is why the first beginnings of readiness in response to crises set off an unstoppable rush to war.)

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