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The futility of war - will we remember, and learn from history?

“man's blind indifference to his fellow man. And a whole generation who were butchered and damned”

“the suffering, the sorrow, the glory, the shame. The killing, the dying, it was all done in vain.”
  • New history of Great War also reveals shell shock severely underestimated
  • Professor Antoine Prost says up to 10million died in conflict, not 9million
  • Governments gave conservative figures and failed to include many missing
One million more soldiers may have died in the First World War than first believed while survivors left with crippling shell-shock were also severely underestimated, leading academics said today.

Antoine Prost, Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Paris, says that in the chaos after the Great War governments, including Britain's, produced conservative death figures.

Professor Prost also says errors in casualty lists and the vast number of missing soldiers means ten million probably perished in trench warfare between 1914 and 1918, not nine million as first thought.

His claims are made in a three essays called The Complete Cambridge History of the First World War.

'The calculation of losses isn't easy and most studies present lists of figures without explaining what they cover or how they have been established,' he told The Times.

'So there is confusion concerning places whose borders had shifted; there is inconsistency in recording the deaths of soldiers from sickness and prisoners of war who died in captivity; and there is uncertainty surrounding the number of soldiers reported missing it seems that in several cases, including Britain, the generally accepted calculations are underestimates.'

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Confusion: Academics have said that discrepancies about how many men died in captivity or went missing means the death figures between 1914 and 1918 are skewed
The book's editor, Jay Winter from Yale University, also says that the scale of shell-shock was also massively below the real figure.

Many feel that the carnage of the war are highlighted too much over British heroism

He says one in five injured British soldiers suffered with mental health problems, much higher than recorded.

'Medical and administrative practices and prejudice led to radical underestimates of shell shock,' he said.

'Studies show stress in the Great War was probably more intense than in later conflicts and yet physicians were reluctant to diagnose many injuries as psychological.

'To do so probably would have made it less likely (he) would receive a pension.'

Professor Winter's research found that in the Second World War the stress of conflict was far more recognised, with many more diagnosed with psychological injuries between 1939 and 1945.

Other academics have reacted to the essays, and said that while many governments were conservative in their death figures, Russia had increased numbers in a propaganda war with Tsarists.

Others said that the conclusions on shell shock were 'almost certainly correct'.
FROM THE NORTH SEA TO THE SWISS FRONTIER - TRENCHES IN WWI

The First World War changed warfare forever.

After the Battle of the Marne in September, 1914, the German army was forced to retreat to the River Aisne.

The commander decided that his troops must at all costs hold onto those parts of France and Belgium that they still occupied.

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Allied troops, like these French grenadiers, lived, fought and died in huge trench systems dug during WWI
The men were ordered to dig trenches that would provide them with protection from the advancing French and British troops.

The Allies soon realised that they could not break through this line and they also began to dig.

After a few months these trenches had spread from the North Sea to the Swiss Frontier. As the Germans were the first to build, they had been able to choose the best places.

The possession of the higher ground not only gave the Germans a tactical advantage, but it forced the British and French to live in the worst conditions.

Most of this area was rarely a few feet above sea level. As soon as soldiers began to dig down they would invariably find water two or three feet below the surface.

Water-logged trenches were a constant problem for soldiers on the Western Front leading to the spread of lice and so-called 'trench foot', where constantly soaking boots lead to soldiers feet literally rotting off the bone.

It would take the loss of millions of lives and the invention of the tank by the British army before the formidable system was finally broken four years after it was built.