Title: How Many People Died in WW1? - History
Headings: How Many People Died in WW1? A Look at the Numbers
How Many People Died in WW1?
How Many People Died in WW1? A Look at the Numbers
Military and Civilian Deaths on Both Sides
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Content: The war, beyond battlefield deaths, without exaggeration, can be called the war that made the modern world. It was the war that set the boundaries of the modern Middle East out of the ruins of the Ottoman Empire. It was the war that saw the collapse of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which had held together Mitteleuropa. It was a war that rewarded nationalism, which, perversely, had been the war’s original cause. It was the war that ended the Second Reich in Germany and witnessed the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. It was a war that moved into the skies and under the seas. Trench coats became a military fashion accessory. And a Europe that could still see angels hovering over battlefields in 1914 was shell-shocked by 1919, full of doubts about the old chivalric ideals, prey to callow superstitions and pagan political movements. It was the apparent collapse of the old ideals that helps explain what has become the popular view of the First World War—that it was a senseless, stupid struggle, the ultimate charnel house, a watchword for the obscenity and absurdity of war. The casualty lists were indeed horribly long.