The basic and stark fact, nevertheless, was that the conditions of warfare between 1914 and 1918 predisposed towards slaughter and that only an entir… - John Keegan

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The basic and stark fact, nevertheless, was that the conditions of warfare between 1914 and 1918 predisposed towards slaughter and that only an entirely different technology, one not available until a generation later, could have averted such an outcome.
The first day of the battle of the Somme, 1 July 1916, was to be an awful demonstration of that truth.

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About John Keegan

Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan OBE FRSL (15 May 1934 – 2 August 2012) was an English military historian and journalist.

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Alternative Names: Sir John Desmond Patrick Keegan
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The 1914 battles in the Eastern Front therefore closely resemble those fought by Napoleon a hundred years earlier, as indeed did those of the Marne campaign, with the difference that infantry lay down rather than stood up to fire and that the fronts of engagement extended to widths a hundred times greater. The duration of battles extended also, from a day to a week or more. The outcomes, nevertheless, were gruesomely similar: huge casualties, both absolutely and as a proportion of numbers engaged, and dramatic results.

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