Tuesday, 09 August 2005 Chris SNUGGS, ISUGA 1 So, Europe is split, but at least is not at war ….. The Disunited States of Europe?

Tuesday, 09 August 2005Chris SNUGGS, ISUGA

1

So, Europe is split, butat least is not at war …..

The Disunited States of Europe?


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Europe's Bloody Past …..

The Battle of Waterloo


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1000 yearsof War

in Europe

CONFLICT BATTLES FR TO PARTY A (Victors) PARTY B1066 Normans (France) England1337 1453 England France

Crécy 1337 England FranceSluys (sea) 1340 England France

Poitiers 1355 England FranceAgincourt 1415 England France

Orléans 1428 France EnglandFormigny 1450 France EnglandBordeaux 1451 France England

1618 1648 Protestants Catholics1701 1713 England, Netherlands, German States, Austria France1700 1721 Denmark, Saxony, Poland, Russia Sweden1715 England Jacobite Scots1854 1856 England, France Russia1756 1763 Prussia, Britain, Hanover Austria, Sweden, Russia, France, 1775 1781 America Britain1789 1799 France civil war1797 1815 Everyone else France

Marengo 1800 France AustriaAusterlitz 1805 France Austria, Russia

Jena 1806 France PrussiaFriedland 1807 France Russia

Trafalgar (sea) 1805 England FranceSalamanca 1812 Britain France

Russia 1812 Russia FranceVittoria 1813 Britain FranceLeipzig 1813 Prussia,Britain France

Napoleonic Wars Waterloo 1815 Britain, Prussia, Austria France1870 1871 Prussia France1914 1918 Britain, France, Russia Germany, Italy, Austria-Hungary1917 Russia civil war1918 1922 Bolsheviks White Russians1936 1939 Spanish Fascists (Germany) Republicans (Russia)1939 1945 Allies (Britain, USA, Russia etc) Germany, Italy, Japan etc)

Norman Conquest

American RevolutionFrench Revolution

Peninsular War in

Spain

100 Years War

Napoleonic Wars

The Thirty Years War

War of Spanish SuccessionGreat Northern War

Ist Jacobite Rebellion

Spanish Civil WarWorld War II

Franco-Prussian WarWorld War I

Russian RevolutionRussian Civil War

The Crimean WarThe Seven Years War


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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


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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



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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.



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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



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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 win

British 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-



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“The Soldier” (Rupert Brooke, 1917)

If I should die, think only this of me

That there's some corner of a foreign field

That is for ever England. There shall be

In 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 less

Gives 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.



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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



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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


The War's Effects


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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 …..


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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

World War II


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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


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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


War Crimes & Disasters


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children in front of their bombed home in 1941 - their parents buried inside


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The Blitz - London 1941


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Dresden - 1945 - still controversial even today


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World War II - Casualties

COUNTRY POPULATION KILLED/MIA % DEAD WOUNDED % WOUNDED TOTAL DEATHS %

Germany 78 000 000 3 500 000 4,5 4 600 000 5,9 8 100 000 2 000 000 2,6

Italy 44 000 000 330 000 0,8 ? 70 000 0,2

Japan 72 000 000 17 500 000 24,3 ? 350 000 0,5

Rumania 20 000 000 500 000 2,5 300 000 1,5 800 000 400 000 2,0

Bulgaria 6 000 000 10 000 0,2 ? 50 000 0,8

Hungary 10 000 000 120 000 1,2 250 000 2,5 370 000 200 000 2,0

Finland 4 000 000 100 000 2,5 45 000 1,1 145 000 4 000 0,1

CIVILIANS

AXIS POWERS

MILITARY CASUALTIES


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World War II - Casualties

COUNTRY POPULATION KILLED/MIA % DEAD WOUNDED % WOUNDED TOTAL DEATHS %

China 450 000 000 1 300 000 0,3 1 800 000 0,4 3 100 000 9 000 000 2,0

Poland 35 000 000 13 000 0,0 200 000 0,6 330 000 2 500 000 7,1

U.K. 48 000 000 400 000 0,8 300,000 700,000 60 000 0,1

France 42 000 000 250 000 0,6 350 000 0,8 600 000 270 000 0,6

Australia 7 000 000 30 000 0,4 40 000 0,6 70 000 --

India 360 000 000 36 000 0,0 64 000 0,0 100 000 --

New Zealand 2 000 000 10 000 0,5 20 000 1,0 30 000 --

So. Africa 10 000 000 9 000 0,1 12 000 0,1 23 000 --

Canada 11 000 000 42 000 0,4 50 000 0,5 92 000 --

Denmark 4 000 000 2 000 0,1 ? ? 1 000 0,0

Norway 3 000 000 10 000 0,3 ? ? 6 000 0,2

Belgium 8 000 000 12 000 0,2 16 000 0,2 28 000 10 000 0,1

Holland 9 000 000 14 000 0,2 7 000 0,1 21 000 250 000 2,8

Greece 7 000 000 90 000 1,3 ? ? 400 000 5,7

Yugoslavia 15 000 000 320 000 2,1 ? ? 1 300 000 8,7

U.S.S.R. 194 000 000 9 000 000 4,6 18 000 000 9,3 27 000 000 19 000 000 9,8

U.S.A. 129 000 000 300 000 0,2 300 000 0,2 600 000 --

MILITARY CASUALTIES CIVILIANS

ALLIED FORCES (in order of entry into war)

Documents

Tuesday, 09 August 2005 Chris SNUGGS, ISUGA 1 So, Europe is split, but at least is not at war ….. The Disunited States of Europe?