WW1 and ww2 compare!!

[taliesin238]

I am in uni studying history and for my specialist subject im studying the First World War!! Everyone in my class and the lecturer keeps goin on about how thew second world war soldiers never went through half as much as the soldiers of WW1!! They have to mention this in every lecture. I understand that trench warfare during the ww1 was so much bigger than in ww2 however i cant help feeling that my classmates are really disrespecting what the soldiers of ww2 went through!! My grandad was in ww2 and the stories he told me about his experiences was just mindblowing!! Please does anyone have any views on this??

[paddywak]

Anybody who has served, especially in combat deserves to be treated with repect whether they served in the WW's or any of the various "small" wars that have occurred, but what makes WW1 stand out in many peoples mind is the sheer scale of some of the battles, on the first day of the Battle of the Somme, for instance, we suffered nearly 60,000 casualties of which a third were fatalities and in many stretches of the line a junior officers life could be counted in hours not days. I dont think people are being disrespectful it's just that the numbers involved tends to make people forget that <b.> any man who is battle must experiance some pretty horrific events

[vehelpfulguy]

I am sure there are many cases where the soldiers in WW2 went through far worse than WW1.

For example the US soldiers landing on Omaha beach on D-Day went through hell. People fighting in the far east or captured by the japanese also went through hell. The soldiers trying to capture Monte Cassino were slaughtered. I am sure there are lots of other examples from WW2.

But due to the lack of aeroplanes and tanks and other mobile vehicles WW1 was a fairly static war, people spending weeks or months in the same trench, knee deep in mud, getting trench foot.

When they did attack it was mostly humans directly against humans.

One lot of humans rose out of their trenches, ran across minefields, towards a load of other treches, where the men facing them had machine guns.

It was mass slaughter, and absolute madness by the generals, who were totally out of touch, and had no interest in the numbers of men lost.

If it happened today the generals would be arrested and put before a court.

While tragic the WW1 situation was captured very well in the "comedy" Blackadder 4, with Melchet playing the upper class General who had no idea what was happening at the front.

The film "Oh What a Lovely War" also captures the hell of WW1 in a sort of mock ironic humorous way (hence the title).

[4GS]

I was involved in some of the small wars that paddywak mentions, during the Gulf war in 1991 we were involved in clearing Iraqi trenches and this meant going in with grenades then finishing them off with the bayonet, I don't remember much about it probably because my mind is protecting me by not allowing me to remember, and it's not something I like to talk about.
I don't think for a minute that what we did then was anything near what the soldiers in both world wars suffered,

[jake-the-peg]

Lots of people have horrific experiences.

I knew someone who's job entailed scraping suicides off of trains.

I don't think experiencing horrific events entitles you to any respect especially if you're trying to push a bayonet through another human's head at the time!

Mind you a key difference is the care soldiers could expect in the two wars. In the first many many died from trivial wounds and were likely to be shot by their own sides and labelled cowards if they broke under the strain.

By the time of the second war antibiotics first entered widespread use and had a massive effect.

I believe - but I can't find a reference - that WWII was the also the first war where more soldiers were killed than died through disease

[Lonnie]

Hi taliesan,
If your studying the First World War, I would suggest you buy a Daily Mail, they are doing it on dvd, 'The great War',
They have an option where you can buy the whole set, I think you may be to late to start the collection, but that option would be well worth it, and would help you immensley.

Personally, I think it should be taught and shown in all senior schools, especially 1913/14 pre war, because it shows just how stupid the various goverments were, and lessons would be learnt. (hopefully)

[fletcher.5]

This war was said to be the war to end all wars, seems rather shallow in todays climate. Its duration rightly produced the phrase A lost generation It was also the last hand to hand combat war
If anyone prospered by the insane atrocities of WW1 were women. It gave them employment opportunities they were given mens jobs to do, at a reduced rate. They eventually got themselves the vote.
The only lessons that were ever learned from world war one were how to kill more people with the minimum of cost using new technology & also mass killings of civilians ie The Blitz etc the troops of WW2 did not have to endure the diseases & the warped minds of their generals as in WW1
I hope this & all your other responces are useful to you, as this site does provide a number of free valuable resources Good Luck

[JK2]

Watch this film - King & Country with Dirk Bogarde - if you really want to get the feel of what it was like in WW1

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058263/

You can get it on DVD and it is harrowing but a wonderful film.

[football21]

All the above & no wonder Jake-the-peg has a wooden leg.
The British had 300 thousand horses in the first two years of WW1. Trench Foot preavailed in the first.
WW2 was THE war of technological advances. Not to forget the Enigma machine; & Collosus machine. Aircraft advancement, missiles & submarines to go further.

[jno]

hard to compare experiences in this way. It's true that for many in WW1 the war involved spending a lot of time in trenches, then leaping out and being shot at: much of it, at least in northern france, was very static, and this must have been unpleasant in itself. WW2 was a more mobile affair, so that may have felt better - like I always feel better driving a longer route rather than sitting in a traffic jam on a shorter one, even if in the end both take the same time, because you feel you're doing something and getting somewhere. It seems, on the whole, to have been better generalled, and the enemy was rather more wicked; so WW2 soldiers may well have felt more comfortable with what they were doing.

But the WW2 death toll was far higher, partly because it included a war in the east as well.( In fact more people died in the Spanish flu epidemic after WW1 than in the war itself.) My guess is the experiences of soldiers in the two wars wasn't that much different, and I'd be wary of what your lecturers are saying, as you obviously are

[logic]

It doesn't really matter whether it's a full scale war, as in 1914/18 or 1939/45 or a soldier in ireland Iraq or afghanistan, if he is fataly wounded the outcomeis still the same,theres a mother /father who has lost a son /daughter a sister who has lost a brother etc, I personally think It's the what for, or reason that counts, and i dissagree with jake, the man pushing a bayonet into another person isn't doing it out of choice, It's a matter of him or me, in situations like that I don't think there is room for being polite, and yes they do deserve our respect, because they did it for us, and what have we done, ?? weve blown it.

[spudqueen]

Try and get hold of the book 'Forgotten Voices of the Great War' by Max Arthur. ISBN 009188887-5.
No-one is saying that WWII was a picnic, just that WWI in the trenches was awful. Imagine living for months in all that mud with lice, trench foot, dead body parts etc.
My Uncle fought in WWII and had a bad time of it (he was killed by the Japanese)and no way would I disrespect what he went through, but my Grandad fought in WWI in the trenches.
I know which war I would fight in if I had to choose between the two, WWII, it was slightly more humane on the whole.

[fletcher.5]

Dear spudqueen how can you prescribe war as being humane.when working class cannon foder are the combatants rather than the people of whitehall instigate it?

[Kromovaracun]

One could cite the experience of Allied soldiers being bogged down in the Italy campaign (which descended into trench warfare similar to that of WW1) as being equally bad.

Although obviously trench warfare was far more widespread in WW1 I think it's worth bearing in mind that there were multiple theatres of war in WW1 in which trench warfare didn't feature so much (such as the African campaign). It seems a trifle odd to compare conditions in two such widespread and variable conflicts to me...

[Clachair]

I'm not sure you can simply say WW1 was worse than WW2. An English WW1 veteran might agree, but a German WW2 veteran from Stalingrad probably would not. As I see it things were different in each war, but can't be compared simply like that.
If you can find it, the book 'In Flanders Fields' sheds an excellent light on the follies of the WW1 generals that caused such hardship in the field.

[BelfastBloke]

The Soldiers of WW2 Axis and Allies went through as much pain suffering and horror as the troops of WW1, Better killing Technology ,Aerial Bombardment etc .Historians of WW1 have a habit of romanticising it due to the ideas of Idealism after WW1 as oppossed to Realism after WW2.

[firestreak]

Even in WW1 the average frontline infantryman never saw combat on a very regular basis. The worst problems in a static front line position were shelling and mortaring, plus (but much less often) gas attacks and trench mining. If he kept his head down he could also avoid being sniped. Of course, his chance of getting killed or injured increased dramatically when he was attacking an entrenched enemy, but even this didn't happen all that often, and when soldiers were rotated back into the rear areas quite regularly the worst they would have had to undergo might have been lack of hot water, clean clothes and adequate food of a decent quality, although generally rear areas would try very hard to provide these thing. In WW2, many units would have spent 2 or 3 years training before seeing combat, which as every soldier knows, is often long periods of being utterly bored, interspersed with moments of sheer bloody terror. Other than the occassional episodes of combat, the most trying thing for a soldier is the lack of leave, closely followed by being posted to an area like the Burmese jungle, where, never mind the bloody Japs, just about everything else wants also to kill and probably eat you !

[jetski819]

I think that there is no worse here.

The horrors of WW1 at the time was only known to the soldiers fighting in the trenches, and there is know denying that their conditions were so horrendous that they could not be described effectively by someone who hasn't experienced them. People on the home front generally did not know what went on for many years after the war had ended, some soldiers did not speak of it and poets like Owen and Sasson were unpopular after the war. People wanted to forget.

However I believe that much more went on in WW2. Nuclear bombings that ravaged a few of Japans cities, the effects from the radiation continue to this day. Also the holocaust stands out from WW2 also, I don't know how to describe the brutality of went on there...

There were a lot of losses in battles in WW2 also such as D-day etc...

Yet WW1 was like nothing before war before that was previously viewed as honorable and to die in war would be rewarded with your place with the men who fought Agincourt.

Personally I can't conclude which war was worse, both encompass huge amounts of tragedy and suffering and I think it could be condemned as disrespectful to say that one is better or worse...

[thewatcher222]

There are a lot of factors to weigh here... personally, I would rather fight in WW2 than WW1, mostly because trench warfare was a brutal, absolutely horrific experience, one fraught with constant disease and death, with a survival chance of next to nil. No good reason to fight, pointless and bleak, unlike WW2, which was fought for very obvious reasons and had a definite win condition. However, in terms of sheer human suffering, WW2 was a lot worse. The Axis powers did unspeakable things to the people they conquered, not to mention the scale of the destruction was much greater. The Soviets weren't much better, even though they at least didn't have a policy of racial extermination like the Nazis, the Red Army did practice ethnic cleansing on their way to Germany, and were immensely brutal to any Germans they found. Comparing some of the worst theatres of each war finds very little difference: both had their share of terrible conditions, though I would say that the Nazi concentration camps and the Japanese POW camps were much worse than anything found in WW1, bar none. Of course, before you got captured by the Nazis/Japanese you probably had a better chance of survival than a soldier lying in the trenches in WW1. Overall, WW1 was worse for soldiers, WW2 was worse for everyone else.

[awakener5257]

i think WW2 was worst because it was a longer more devastating war then WW1. WW2 included pearl Harbor, the bombing of... almost everything and more!!