Originally posted by BeBro
Hm, WWI was not mainly an ideological war, mainly for power, although it had without doubt ideological elements - nationalism for example - but I would not see it primarily as an ideological war, its cause was certainly deeper rooted in the conflicts between the Euro powers. Still it was the most "nasty" war of all so far, toppled only later by WWII.....I would agree with you if you speak about the pre-WWI world, but the big "industrialized" world wars changed pretty much everything.
Hm, WWI was not mainly an ideological war, mainly for power, although it had without doubt ideological elements - nationalism for example - but I would not see it primarily as an ideological war, its cause was certainly deeper rooted in the conflicts between the Euro powers. Still it was the most "nasty" war of all so far, toppled only later by WWII.....I would agree with you if you speak about the pre-WWI world, but the big "industrialized" world wars changed pretty much everything.
of the approximatly 10 million who died in WW1 about 80% or more were soldiers. This was a war with relatively little "coolateral damage". In all honesty, that makes it a remarkably "clean" war (ie. its only soldiers doing the dying).
WW2 was FAR more brutal, which can be seen not only by the fact about 6 times as many people died than in the first, but that the vast majority of those were civlians. And much of WW2 was ideological in nature. If anything, by tearing down so much, WW1 brought into question the Westpahlia system, and allowed ideologies that sought to challange that into being. The wars those ideologies brought about (like the Russian Civil War) proved far worse than the old fashioned wars like WW1.
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