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The Disunited States of Europe?. So, Europe is split, but at least is not at war …. Europe's Bloody Past …. The Battle of Waterloo. 1000 years of War in Europe. TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1. Statistics. 10 million soldiers were killed; the flower of European youth.
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The Disunited States of Europe? So, Europe is split, but at least is not at war …..
Europe's Bloody Past ….. The Battle of Waterloo
1000 years of War in Europe
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 Statistics • 10 million soldiers were killed; the flower of European youth. • This is the equivalent of 150 cities the size of Quimper. • Or the same as 312,500 classes the same size as yours. • Northern France is dotted with hundreds of vast cemeteries. • Thousands and thousands of men are buried in unmarked graves. • Millions of individual bones lie in vast ossuaries. • The generations that followed were scarred for life by the slaughter. • It was to have been "The war to end wars", so terrible was it.
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 Verdun - 21 Feb 1916 – six-month attempt by Germans to ‘bleed the French army white’ - aim not to gain ground but to kill Frenchmen - on first day over 1,000,000 shells fell - in all, 500,000 men killed - in 5 months 70 of the 95 French divisions had passed through Verdun – only national pride prevented its fall Battles
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 The Somme- six-month battle launched 1 July 1916 - mainly British supported by French - attack followed five-day bombardment - 20,000 men killed and 60,000 casualties on first day, more than the combined British deaths of the Crimean, Boer, and Korean wars - when British attacked the front-line troops were weighed down with equipment needed to last the whole day and to resist expected counter-attacks - men were ordered not to run forwards - they were sitting ducks for machine gunners - in all 650,000 men were lost for territorial gain of 8 kilometres - Germans lost approx 450,000 Many men spent weeks in trenches, only to die within seconds of going onto the attack.
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 3rd Battle of Ypres (Passchendaele)-31 July 1916 - 6 weeks before battle 10,000 Germans were killed by mines laid in tunnels under their trenches - attack started after ten-day artillery bombardment - heavy rain turned battlefield into quagmire - many soldiers drowned in shell holes - 500,000 casualties for practically no gains Hundreds of vast cemeteries can be found all over Northern France
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 Chemin des Dames- 21 April 1917 - six-week attack on well-defended German positions near Reims - 40,000 men lost on first day alone - 270,000 in total - territorial gains nil - attack’s failure led to total demoralisation of French army - between April & June 1917 mutinies occurred in 68 divisions = 66% of French army - 49 men were executed for desertion Americans-entered war April 1917 - in total lost 112,000 men in fighting - their vast resources made it clear to exhausted Germans that they could not winBritish Dominions- Canada, New Zealand, South Africa, India and Australia - lost 200,000 killed and 600,000 wounded - thousands of Sikh, Moslem and Hindu soldiers from India lie in French graves - from this followed creation of the British Commonwealth in 1926 -
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 “The Soldier” (Rupert Brooke, 1917) If I should die, think only this of meThat there's some corner of a foreign fieldThat is for ever England. There shall beIn that rich earth a richer dust concealed; A dust whom England bore, shaped, made aware,Gave, once, her flowers to love, her ways to roam, A body of England's breathing English air, Washed by the rivers, blest by suns of home. And think, this heart, all evil shed away, A pulse in the eternal mind, no lessGives somewhere back the thoughts by England given; Her sights and sounds; dreams happy as her day; And laughter, learnt of friends; and gentleness, In hearts at peace, under an English heaven.
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 The War's Effects • loss of millions of young men from France, Britain and Germany in particular ... many among the most gifted and creative of their generation - less than 30% of French soldiers escaped death or physical injury ... French population took many years to recover • the creation of a ‘burnt out’ generation of war-wounded men - there were 240,000 amputees in Britain alone - many men died later from their wounds - others suffered psychological wounds that have never healed to this day • the devastation of a large area of Northern France - the permanent disappearance of hundreds of villages • the collapse of Germany and the eventual rise of Hitler leading to the catastrophe of World War II • the rise of pacifism in Britain and France, which meant they could not understand Hitler and were unprepared for war in 1939
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 The War's Effects • Russia lost nearly two million men on the eastern front • smaller countries - Serbia, Austria, Hungary and others - lost a higher proportion of their soldiers than did the major countries • Turkey forcibly deported from their homes over 1,000,000 Armenians - of these, over 500,000 died of torture, disease or starvation • the acceleration in Britain of the movement to give women the vote - while the men were in France, women showed they could work just as hard in all kinds of occupations • the economies of non-involved nations grew rapidly - Argentina, Brazil, China, India and Japan were starved of European finished goods and had to start producing their own • the end of the period of world domination by Europe - with the United States the main beneficiary - New York displaced London as the financial capital of the world – Hollywood gained a major boost from the war • the beginning of the end of the European colonial empires
TheTerrible Legacy of World War 1 The Aftermath • A harsh punishment and "reparations" were imposed on Germany in the Treaty of Versailles. • This led to economic depression and the rise of Adolf Hitler. • Weak western governments failed to stand up to him, eventually leading to the Second World War. • A spirit of pacifism had grown among the Allies, especially France. • This led to Hitler's rapid conquest of France in 1940. • Five terrible years of war followed, with much of Europe devastated. After WWI, nobody had believed another war could bepossible in Europe, but WWII broke out a mere 21 years later …..
World War II The Nature of the War • WWII characterized by unspeakable atrocities, germ warfare, enormous civilian casualties, genocide of 5 1/2 million European Jews, and the use of atomic bomb • estimates of death toll up to 60 million in total, of which 50% civilians • over 50 countries involved in one way or another • greatest human losses suffered by combatants and civilians of the Soviet Union and China. In the near two-and-a-half year siege of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg) by the German forces, 1 1/2 million Russians alone died from shelling, bombing, disease and starvation • this figure exceeded all the military casualties of the U.S.A. and British Commonwealth combined
The Effects of World War II War Crimes & Disasters • Japanese torture and massacre of 300,000 civilians and the barbaric killing of war prisoners in the infamous Rape of Nanking • Nazis murder of 6,000,000 European Jews in the "Final Solution" • deaths of hundreds of thousands of slave laborers in the Japanese-held Netherlands East Indies (Indonesia) • 1,500,000 million deaths in Bengal as a consequence of war-related famine • mass dislocation and movement of refugees. In the immediate post-war period, millions of ethnic Germans were expelled from the liberated countries of eastern Europe, many of whom died in displaced-persons camps. • estimated 60,000,000 made homeless in China
The Effects of World War II War Crimes & Disasters • millions of German and Japanese prisoners-of-war required repatriation; it took ten years, for example, before the last German prisoners were released • unknown numbers of surviving Japanese soldiers left on the Asian mainland disappeared without trace • material destruction of battlefields and areas targeted by Allied bombers was colossal, destruction of cities - Warsaw, Hamburg, Dresden, and, especially, Russian and Japan urban centers - left millions homeless • damage to roads, bridges, railways and industrial plant created mass economic dislocation; financial costs of the war weighed on victor and vanquished alike
The Effects of World War II children in front of their bombed home in 1941 - their parents buried inside
The Effects of World War II The Blitz - London 1941
The Effects of World War II Dresden - 1945 - still controversial even today