The Table below provides statistics on “First World War Casualties.” How astonishing and difficult to get one's head around these numbers: like attempting to comprehend that there are more than 200 billion stars in the Milky Way Galaxy.

Based on what they experts say, we assume that these numbers reflect reality. Nonetheless, we find it difficult to conceive or imagine the reality that these number convey.

What was going on? Historians still have difficulty explaining why the First World War took place. Perhaps the numbers provided in the Table below—better than anything else—sum up the war's fundamental meaning: Millions of human beings (mostly young men) were killed or maimed.

David Lloyd George—British Prime Minister throughout the latter half of the war—observed that during the First World War every nation was “profligate of its manpower and conducted the war as if there were no limit to the number of men who were fit to be thrown into the furnace to feed the flames of war.” The war, Lloyd George said, was a perpetual, driving force that “shoved warm human hearts and bodies by the millions into the furnace.” Why were young men being shoveled into a furnace?

Many observers of the time thought the war was a good thing. P. H. Pearse—founder of the Irish Revolutionary movement—was thrilled to observe the carnage of the First World War:

“The last sixteen months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world to be warmed with the red wine of the battlefield. Such august homage was never before offered to God as this—the homage of millions of lives given gladly for love of country.”

Pearse believed that the war was a good thing because it allowed the world to be “warmed with the red wine of the battlefield.” The death and mutilation of soldiers on the field of battle constituted an offering to God, a form of “august homage”—the homage of millions of lives “given gladly for love of country.”

In a similar vein, the French nationalist Maurice Barrès had this to say about his nation's soldiers who were dying on a daily basis during the First World War:

“Oh you young men whose value is so much greater than ours! They love life, but even were they dead, France will be rebuilt from their souls which are like living stones. The sublime sun of youth sinks into the sea and becomes the dawn which will hereafter rise again.”

The death of a young man is sublime, according to Barres, because it becomes the “dawn which will hereafter rise again.” Dead French soldiers act to rebuild or regenerate the French nation.

What is warfare? In order to answer this question, one proceeds empirically—examining one war at a time. The First World War, we may hypothesize, produced monumental destruction and massive numbers of casualties in the name of glorifying nations. Each nation proved its metal by sending its young men to be slaughtered. The “greatest” nations were those that were able and willing to send the largest number of men into the fray. However, many nations—not only the greatest ones—wanted to be included. That's why we call it a “World War.” Nobody wanted to be left out (it's a family affair).

A young village merchant speaking to a European sociologist in the 1980s provided a rationale for the religious violence occurring in the Middle-East: “The blood shed by the Iranian martyrs,” he said, “Is like the water of an irrigational canal which gives life to the crops. From it the religion will grow.” A similar justification or explanation for violence is expressed by many Islamic radicals.

The dynamic of Islamic martyrdom expressed in this passage—that bloodshed is like water giving life to crops—is identical to the dynamic that generated the First World War. Only the objects of worship differ. The Iranian martyr gives his life and blood for Allah. Whereas soldiers of the First World War gave their lives and blood in the name of the Christian God, and for the sake of entities with names such as “Russia,” “Germany,” “France” and “the British Empire.”

The difference between the two instances lies in the quantity of the slaughter generated—and the degree to which people in the respective cultures are aware or conscious of the meaning of societal violence. Middle-Eastern radicals seem to be aware that they undertake acts of violence in order to glorify Allah. People in the West, on the other hand, usually are unconscious of the reasons why they generate acts of societal violence.   

Dominated by the fantasy or delusion that behavior arises out of “rational” considerations, people in the West imagine that warfare is waged for “real” (e.g., economic) reasons. What's more, people in the West are so close to the objects that they worship—gods called countries—that they cannot conceive that they produce vast forms of carnage in the name of glorifying these gods. The most “rational” of civilizations—the most scientifically advanced and technologically sophisticated—is also the most unconscious of civilizations: embedded within the jaws of hungry gods called nations, source of the nightmare of history.

White, Matthew — First World War Casualties

Source: Historical Atlas of the Twentieth Century.