World War One was the most brutal war

Thanks to my opponent Theunknown for accepting what I hope will be a learning experience about the atrocities of war. As such I will not be trying to rebut your arguments as it is history. If anything, I will point out an inaccuracy if I see one, it is then for the voters to decide which war was truly the most vile. The first world war (abbreviated as WWI) was a war between the Entente and the Central powers that occurred mainly in Europe over a time period of 4 years between 1914 and 1918. WWI is also commonly known as the great war as it was the first war which engaged most of the world in armed combat.(1) Looking at this list, one may think that not that many countries were involved. However, it should be noted that this list includes the allies colonies, so for example British Empire means Great Britain, Australia, India, South Africa, Canada and multiple others.(2) Besides the large majority of nations involved in the war there are a multitude of reasons that I consider this war to be more brutal than any other. In this round and round three I will present the reasons I believe that the sheer madness and brutality that was WWI will hopefully never be eclipsed again in our history. WWI in many ways was a war of sheer stupidity. It started essentially due to the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and from that day on insanity reigned in Europe.(3) It is a war that should never have happened, but one thing lead to another. Fronted mainly by miscommunication and pride the world descended into to four years of fighting and an estimated death of 37.5 million men and women or to put it differently, the death of 57.5 % of the soldiers that went to fight.(4) One major change that caused such massive loss of life was that WWI coincided with a massive mechanization era in the world. As such the equipment to fight was new, but the methods of fighting a war were old. For example, before the roll out of tanks the British thought it would be a good idea to still fight with their illustrious cavalry against machine guns. Not a brilliant idea at all as the casualties of the attacks conducted by the cavalries were horrific as they got mowed down by automated weapons.(5) Another example of the mindless deaths was the cries of “over the top” yelled by commanding officers in the trenches along the Western Front as they tried make advances. Sometimes, very rarely, succeeding only to be driven back into their old trenches again a few days later by the opposing side doing the exact same madness.(6) This is especially ridiculous to think about when we consider the Western front where a large majority of the fighting took place did not move for essentially four years of fighting.(7) So what happened was two sides facing each other across dead mans land and firing menacingly and randomly at certain times of day to try kill those in the other trenches. In the next round I will talk further about some other advances in technology that made WWI the new era of deadly. However, the war was not only horrible in that multiple soldiers dies due to sometimes horrific methods such as gassing. There was also the mass genocides that got conducted under the guise of war. The Armenian, Assyrian and Greek genocides purported by the Ottoman Empire during WWI, as well as after, were all horrific in nature and unfortunately a lot about it is still not known.(8, 9, 10) So how many people died during these genocides? According to estimates it is believed that 1.5 million Greeks, 750,000 Assyrians and 1.5. million Armenians were killed in these ethnic cleanings. In the next round I will talk a little more about some more civilian casualties and war crimes perpetrated during WWI. Lastly, and something important to realize is the aftermath or side effects of WWI. The infamous Spanish Flu pandemics spread is largely attributed to the conditions of war.(11) This flu virus is claimed to have killed 3 to 5 % of the world population at the time which amounts to 50 million people dead. However, it should also be noted that this is not the only viral outbreak that is attributed to the poor health conditions of the time. Now I need to see some puppies to feel better. This is war and its horrible. I hand the debate over to my opponent. (1) http://europeanhistory.about.com... (2) http://europeanhistory.about.com... (3) http://www.firstworldwar.com... (4) http://www.pbs.org... (5) http://www.1914-1918.net... (6) http://militaryhistory.about.com... (7) http://www.bbc.co.uk... (8) http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu... (9) http://www.ncas.rutgers.edu... (10) http://www.genocide-museum.am... (11) http://virus.stanford.edu...