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Jay Murray Winter is the Charles J. Stille Professor of History at Yale University, where he focuses his research on World War I and its impact on the 20th century. His website appears here. |
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Reflecting on the causes of the First World War, Jay Winter concludes his six-part video series, The Great War and the Shaping of the 20th Century (1996), as follows:
The war solved no problems. Its effects, both immediate and indirect, were either negative or disastrous. Morally subversive, economically destructive, socially degrading, confused in its course, futile in its result, it is the outstanding example in European history of meaningless conflict.
Summing up his conclusions more recently, he states:
1918 is a long way from now, but it’s still a puzzle. What was it for? Why? Why all this bloodshed? Why the carnage? Why the violence? Why the cruelty? I can’t pretend to have an answer, but I know it’s a question that we still have to resolve.
After 50 years of research and writing, this great historian cannot tell us why the First World War occurred.
Yet the reason for the war stares us in the face. The bloodshed contained its own meaning. Death contained its own meaning. Dying for one's country was the meaning of the war. Observing the daily carnage in France in 1916, P. H. Pearse—founder of the Irish revolutionary movement—told us what we need to know (in Kamenka, 1976):
| The last sixteenth months have been the most glorious in the history of Europe. Heroism has come back to the earth. It is good for the world that such things should be done. The old heart of the earth needed 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. |
The First World War represented a form of "august homage" to nation-states. Millions of lives were "given gladly" for love of country. Love and death were one and the same. The First World War caused the earth to be “warmed with the red wine of the battlefield."
The First World War was a gigantic demonstration of devotion—august homage and abject submission were one and the same. Societies throughout the world asked young men to travel to various "Fronts" so that they could "die for their country." They fed hungry, humungous gods (nations) with human bodies. Like the Aztec sun-god, nations came into being--came into being and continued to exist to the extent that they were fed with the bodies and blood of sacrificial victims.
First World War Casualties
The figures below are from Chris Trueman's HistoryLearningSite.co.uk.
| Country |
Men mobilised |
Killed |
Wounded |
POW’s + missing |
Total casualties |
casualties in % of men mobilised |
| Russia |
12 mil |
1.7 mil |
4.9 mil |
2.5 mil |
9.15 mil |
76.3 |
| France |
8.4 mil |
1.3 mil |
4.2 mil |
537,000 |
6.1 mil |
73.3 |
| GB + Empire |
8.9 mil |
908,000 |
2 mil |
191,000 |
3.1 mil |
35.8 |
| Italy |
5.5 mil |
650,000 |
947,000 |
600,000 |
2.1 mil |
39 |
| USA |
4.3 mil |
126,000 |
234,000 |
4,500 |
350,000 |
8 |
| Japan |
800,000 |
300 |
900 |
3 |
1210 |
0.2 |
| Romania |
750,000 |
335,000 |
120,000 |
80,000 |
535,000 |
71 |
| Serbia |
700,000 |
45,000 |
133,000 |
153,000 |
331,000 |
47 |
| Belgium |
267,000 |
13,800 |
45,000 |
34,500 |
93,000 |
35 |
| Greece |
230,000 |
5000 |
21,000 |
1000 |
27,000 |
12 |
| Portugal |
100,000 |
7222 |
13,700 |
12,000 |
33,000 |
33 |
| Total Allies |
42 mil |
5 mil |
13 mil |
4 mil |
22 mil |
52% |
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| Germany |
11 mil |
1.7 mil |
4.2 mil |
1.1 mil |
7.1 mil |
65 |
| Austria |
7.8 mil |
1.2 mil |
3.6 mil |
2.2 mil |
7 mil |
90 |
| Turkey |
2.8 mil |
325,000 |
400,000 |
250,000 |
975,000 |
34 |
| Bulgaria |
1.2 mil |
87,000 |
152,000 |
27,000 |
266,000 |
22 |
| Total Central Powers |
22.8 mil |
3.3 mil |
8.3 mil |
3.6 mil |
15 mil |
67 |
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| Grand Total |
65 mil |
8.5 mil |
21 mil |
7.7 mil |
37 mil |
57% |
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