Anybody else think that WWI was more hardcore than WWII?

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Женя

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I think it was more gruesome and treacherous

People getting shelled, poison gases that melt your skin off and suffocate you, running into machine-gun fire...

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WWII was very typical. Gun on gun warfare.

I'm talking about on the battlefields, not off.
Yes, I agree, if you take into account the Holocaust, WWII was far worse.
 
Both were gruesome and should never be repeated. By the way, the answer to this question will depend on who you ask. Since basically no one alive was around during WW1 (hardly anyone anyway), you'll be hard pressed to find someone that knows all the horrors. WWII was devastating. Imagine any of those concentration camps... all of it was horrible. So both were really bad. And unless we learn from the past, we are doomed to repeat it. Right now, our leaders have not learned from the past.
 
I think it is apples and oranges, but it it true that the care WWI soldiers received on the field, and the conventional weapons they used were more barbaric. WWII is notable for the massive casualties taken in major battles and the fact that it was highly photographed.

I agree with the above, though. Any war will be hell, especially for the ground troops. The guys on the front line getting shot at are having about the same miserable experience whether it's the civil war or Iraq or anything in between.
 
For sure I agree, I mean millions died fighting WWII but at least it was a little more high tech.
 
No, I don't believe so. The Great Patriotic War (the Eastern Front between Russia and Germany) alone was more devastating than all of World War I. In Stalingrad, for example, armies fought and lost thousands of casualties over many days of fighting simply to gain a single structure in the city. The Russian Army, millions of peasant conscripts were shoved into patched leather scraps they called "uniforms" every other soldier was given an ancient (as in 19th century) Mosin Nagaunt rifle, and given a direction to storm. It was the duty of soldiers without rifles to follow a soldier with a rifle for the express purpose of picking up the rifle when (yes when, for it was barely an "if") the soldier dies. Russia alone lost over 23 million men, women, and children between Stalingrad and Berlin (think about that...that's the ENTIRE population of New York city...three times over, completely obliterated) They (as well as western Europe) was under supplied, underfed, and (literally) shot at when they tried to retreat or take cover instead of marching forward in a great wave.

World War II was more hardcore. World War I had generals, presidents, kings, and soldiers marching into war as if it were a glorious affair. World War II had men like Hitler...Stalin...Mussolini, regimes of totalitarian conquest and fear with the literal aim of world domination....and they were very close to achieving their goals.
 
This may surprise you, but the same thing was happening in WWII. Both wars were about the same when it came to being gruesome. WWII was actually worse because it was much more bloody, and it was the first time in modern warfare where civilians were major targets for attacks. Most of the casualties of WWII were civilians. What made WWI worse in one way was that it was incredibly static. After some early quick victories, everyone dug in and fought a war of attrition. The trench system was long enough to encircle the Earth easily. The lines barely budged during the entire four years of the war. Massive wave attacks produced a lot of casualties but very little ground was gain. The Allied and the Central powers canceled each other out. The scale only began to tip towards the Allies after the entry of the US. In WWII, the fighting was much more mobile due to aircrafts and tanks.

Also, in WWI, the armies of both sides had a lot of cool new toys but weren't really sure how to use them effectively, and they didn't know any effective aways to counter the enemies' new weapons. They were fighting a 19th century war with modern weapons. I'll give you an examples, the Germans failed to use chemical weapons to their full potential early in WWI, and soon everyone started using poison gas and better gas masks were invented. It essentially made poison gas attacks useless, but everyone continued to use them anyway just for the hell of it. Mustard and chlorine gas was used ad nauseum(forgive the pun). In WWII, most of these weapons had been tried and true. They learn how to use these weapons to kill as many people as possible.
 
World War II was more deadly than World War I. Over 10 million soldiers died in WW I while 22 million died in WW II. You also have to consider that 6 million Jews died as a result of Hitler's concentration camps. 47 million civilians died during WW II. Russia itself lost over 11 million civilians. The atomic bomb was used TWICE and killed over 100,000 civilians.
 
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