Military History Digest #4

January 9, 2008 in H-War, Military History
Tags: Military History

The data for the above plot are drawn from the War Office, Statistics of the Military Effort of the British Empire During the Great War, 1914-1920 (London: His Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1922), 674-7.1 It shows the total (i.e. civilian and military)2 casualties (i.e. killed and wounded) from all forms of bombardment (i.e. by airship, by aeroplane, and by warship) in Britain for each month of the war.

…All was not well in Europe in 1870, the year the Franco-Prussian war would lead to a united German Empire and a humiliated France; one could call it the first of three European civil wars, the other two being World Wars One and Two.

Military History Weblog Digest #3

December 30, 2007 in H-War, Military History
Tags: History, Military, Military History

In a section on Britain’s entry into the war, Kramer says that the breach of Belgian neutrality by Germany was a gift to Asquith and Grey, because it meant that the war could be framed as a just war.

…At the time, British decision-makers could only sense intuitively what we know today — this was far more than a conservative defence of the status quo: had Germany succeeded at the Marne in September 1914, which it almost did, the defeat of France and a separate peace would have been followed by a defeat of Russia and, after a pause to build up the German navy, the invasion of Britain from a position of towering strength on the Continent.2