In
order for the First World War to occur, a specific sequence of scenarios
ultimately had to occur. Specifically, the sequence was driven by the European
powers’ desire to spread their influence into the maximum amount of space
within the globe. Their imperialistic drive drove them straight into an armed
war that would only result in calmed egos by the shedding of blood. The heads
of the countries had a poor conception of the world as an “arena of conflict
and competition” rather than a global collaboration hell-bent on survival (Strayer
627-628). This mentality trickled from the leaders of the nations into the
minds of the citizens through mediums of media as well as educational systems,
convincing the individual that he or she was not an individual at all, but
rather a member of a solitary unit, a country, an army. Pride spread like ego
naturally does in the intrinsic design of the human brain, thus convincing the
singular person of the necessity of a unified growth and expansion at the
expense of the lesser, foreign people.
The
timing of World War I ensured the total world that ensued due to the massive ability
to obliterate a living square of people. With the introduction of “submarines,
tanks, airplanes, poison gas, machine guns, and barbed war” the causalities of
the war reached the disgusting number of a surplus of ten million deaths
(Strayer 629). Ten million lives lost to the cause of the nation. Ten million
individuals sacrificed for the pride of a country, a leader with a plan.
Governments gained a staggering amount of control during this war time due to
the necessity to move citizens as well as armies in strategic formation. Due to
this substantial blow to the individual mentality, people began to withdraw
from the Enlightenment ideals that birthed these powers. This signifies the
extreme impact of the war on the lives of the survivors who had to deal with
not only the physical loss of their relationships (friend or family) but the mental
instability brought on through the destructiveness of the global desolation.
The Second
World War brought on more destruction than ever imagined to the earth, as well
as a new understanding of war as a whole. With the war came the death of sixty
million people making it the largest travesty humanity had ever encountered.
Again, the growing technology heavily influenced the death toll with the introduction
of “heavy bombers, jet fighters, missiles” but most detrimental psychologically
as well as physical, the atomic bomb (Strayer 649). Interestingly enough,
Orville Wright, the inventor of the airplane, had a philosophy entirely
different, the exact opposite, of the reality that occurred. It was Wright’s
belief that the “aeroplane has made war so terrible that I do not believe any
country will again care to start a war,” stated just before the end of the
First World War (Stimson). Much to his dismay, Wright continued living to see
his invention murder tens of thousands of people murdered in a single instant
in Japan. From the ideologies of Wright, it can be concluded that although
technology advances the obliteration a war can cause, the minds that created it
cannot be blamed for the destructive hands that hold it.
Bibliography
Stimson, Richard. “Wright’s Perspective on the Role of
Airplanes in War.” The Wright Brothers.2001.
Web.
Strayer, Robert W. Ways
of the World: A Brief Global History. New York: Bedford, 2009.
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