Editing The World Wars

During the [[Industrial Revolution]], Europe was comparatively peaceful for the most part. The 19th century started with the Napoleonic Wars when Industrialization was building up steam in England and afterwards there were a series of colonial conflicts and small to middling wars between the various industrial powers*. The Civil War was on the upper end of conflicts in this era but was limited to the comparatively sparsely populated US, was still fought with muskets and saw about 600-750,000 people dead. The Franco Prussian war was won in six months. Things changed in 1914 when Arch Duke Ferdinand was assassinated, starting the Great War, also known as the ''First World War''. This would be followed up by the ''Second World War'' in 1939-45, which largely stemmed from the consequences of the Great War. '''The World Wars''' would spread across the world and saw conflict and destruction beyond anything that was ever seen before or since.

There are two important factors in the World Wars: Technology and Nationalism. Technology is the easier of the two to understand, in the Napoleonic War the average soldier had a flintlock musket that could shoot 2-4 bullets a minute with an effective range of 100 meters, was supported by muzzle loading cannons that could shoot accurately to about 1km was supported by and steam engines were just beginning to propel boats and move loads of coal around mines. In 1914 the average soldier had a rifle that could shoot 15-30 bullets a minute (which could go through three men and still be deadly) at ranges of over a kilometer and was backed up by cannons that could fire shells six kilometers or more on ballistic courses which exploded in the air raining a spray of balls over a wide area and machine guns which could shoot 450 bullets a minute and airplanes. By the end of the Great War tanks, Sub Machine Guns and Poison Gas had been added to the arsenal. Tactics devised based on 19th century ideas of fighting were useless on this new battlefield and the book needed to be re-written from page one. Other technologies such as mass production, mechanized farming, railways and automobiles, mass education, telecommunications and modern bureaucracies meant that an Industrial Nation could turn more of it's population into soldiers than any medieval nation could ever hope to do (Rome was hard pressed to keep up a standing army of about 1% of it's population, Germany mobilized nearly 20% during the Great War). Through bloody experience generals gradually put together some idea of how to operate in this new battlefield near the end of the Great War and between the wars they'd continue to build on it with experience in small scale wars. Even so people were still making it up as they went in WWII.

Nationalism is more abstract but just as important. In the Middle Ages people generally identified themselves as being "a Christian Journeyman Blacksmith from London" or "a Jewish Master Cobbler from Munich" and so forth (their job, class, religion and hometown, things which they dealt with face to face day to day). If a Civil War happened and they ended up with a new noble house was put in charge, they would not care too much as long as the new lord upheld his feudal duties. There was a king and he ruled a bunch of land and tried to keep the peace, which was all good but the specifics of this was not a fact which defined them. This began to change with the Protestant Reformation and had a bit of build up through the Age of Enlightenment as propaganda for the masses took form leading to the Birth of Nationalism with the French Revolution and Napoleonic Wars. People began to see their country as more than just where they lived and the guy in a funny hat they were ruled by, but rather as a community of people united by common ideas, languages, beliefs, customs, ideals and (often) ancestry. People that need to band together and set aside their differences and defend what's theirs against those stinking foreigners with their differentness. Public Education caught on during the Industrial Revolution, which made it possible to give these ideals to everyone from the richest businessman to the lowiest begger. When you have two nations which have nationalistic populations and governments and other groups fond of egging nationalism on together it does not take much to get them at each others throats.

Footnote * The Taiping Rebellion in china killed some 20-30 million people, but neither side in it was industrialized beyond buying some foreign weapons to equip some of their troops.

== The First World War ==
To understand the beginning of the major, globe-shaking clusterfuck known as the First World War, we must first look at several key issues that preceded it.

The first and probably one of the biggest contributing factors was the race for Empire. During the preceding centuries, imperialism and expansionism became extremely popular among the industrializing and booming nations of Western Europe. Entire large swathes of Africa and Asia were carved out by global powerhouses such as Great Britain and France, in order to fuel their industry and economy back home, often at the expense of the natives (the treatment of which varied on which European power dominated that particular region, with those under Belgium's sway being the worst off). For a while, the competition was 'merely' a case of rivalry, as each generally avoided the other's territories in order not to repeat disasters like the Seven Years' War or the Napoleonic Wars. Everything was going more or less splendidly (barring some wars of independence in the Balkans against the increasingly corrupt and stagnating Ottoman Empire), until one key event forever shattered the balance of power so carefully put into place by the Congress of Vienna:

The unification of Germany by Otto Von Bismark (a political genius so astute that he coined the modern term 'realpolitik')

With Germany now unified, it presented a major threat to the established powers of Europe. Not helping matters was the new Kaiser, Wilhelm II, looking at Britain with barely restrained jealousy and thus deciding that Germany deserved it's own overseas empire and place as top dog. Complicating matters further is the fact that the royalty and nobility of Europe were all largely related to one another. In some ways, this made the coming shitstorm seem more like the biggest family feud in centuries. The race for who controlled the biggest slice of the planet was kicked into overdrive, with factories pumping out new, relatively untested weapons such as the machine gun, the repeating rifle, and the howitzer, while shipyards around Europe churned out awe-inspiring steel battleships and cruisers, complete with the largest cannons mankind had ever seen up to that point.

To counterbalance each other, the great powers formed increasingly complex and entangling military alliances, which coalesced into two pacts- the Triple Entente (France, Britain, and Russia) and the Triple Alliance (Germany, Italy, and Austria)

Meanwhile, various nationalist and liberal revolutionary movements were sweeping the continent like a new disease from the Plaguefather. Some of their demands were met, particularly in Britain where the House of Commons gained more power. Other revolutions were violently crushed or flat-out ignored, while still others were successful in their goals through sheer force of arms. The hardest hit, however, were not the more liberalized and industrious Western nations. Instead, the hardest hit by these successive waves of revolution was none other than the two oldest empires in Europe at that time- Austria and the Ottomans, both of whom were weary, tired states in dire need of reform. While some in both powers saw granting people increasing amounts of autonomy as the way to keep their state from collapsing (such as the formation of the dual monarchy and the recognition of Hungary as an equal partner, transforming the Austrian Empire into Austria-Hungary), others insisted on a more hardline approach, trying to keep the state afloat by using terror. All of this bred resentment, particularly in the Balkans, which increasingly became a powder keg that was waiting for the right spark.

That spark came in the form of the assassination of the heir to the Austrian throne, Archduke Francis Ferdinand, at the hands of Gavrilo Princip, who was a member of the infamous Serbian nationalist organization, Black Hand. Austria-Hungary gave an ultimatum to Serbia, which included some frankly ridiculous and cruel terms. When the Serbs rejected a few of these terms, the Austrians took it as a casus belli and declared war on Serbia. In response, Russia declared war on Austria, to which Germany declared war on Russia, to which France declared war on Germany, etc. 

Thus began a conflict that would last for four bloody long years, see eleven million deaths as the result of horrific industrial warfare in the trenches and bombed-out fields, diseases such as the flu, and the breakup of several empires to form new nations. Truly, an entire generation of Europe's men was decimated as a result and gave rise to later extremist philosophies, the proponents of whom were all too eager to amass power for themselves by blaming it on the subversive "other".

Terrifying new weapons of war earned their fearsome reputation in this conflict. Machine guns and air-burst artillery shells rendered the old tactics of Napoleonic warfare suicidal, while mustard gas and the like created a new age of massive destruction. Tanks made their first debut in this war, slowly rumbling forth like invincible metal monsters, shrugging off most resistance and dealing punishing firepower themselves, only to breakdown in the middle of the battle due to being rudimentary designs. The airplane, as well, saw use in a combat role, and it would swiftly become an invaluable strategic and tactical tool, for he who dominated the skies dominated the flow of battle.

The bloodiest war in human history up to that point ended with Germany's surrender at 11:00 A.M, on November 11th, 1918, after being exhausted, starving, and dangerously close to collapse in the face of a communist uprising.

== The Interwar ==
Near the end of the first World War, the world was thrown into yet another cataclyism. The Spanish Flu, named such because neutral Spain was the only place that paid much attention to it over the ongoing war, spread rapidly and killed many thanks to the conditions caused by the war (overcrowding, especially in transport ships for returning soldiers, malnourishment ect.). The death toll was horrendous, with the minimum estimate of 50 million being over double the entire war's death toll. After this Europe spent decades to recover from the horrible destruction the war and flu had caused.

America however was having its best years ever. The so called "Roaring Twenties" saw a rapid increase in the standard of living. President Harding managed to do the impossible and eliminate the deficit, though some of his appointees trying to sell [[Wikipedia:Teapot Rock|some government owned rock in the middle of nowhere]] marred his legacy (looking back historians realize there's a lack of evidence suggesting he had any knowledge or involvement). The American Economy of the time was doing well as unlike that of the other powers of Europe it had not been strained extensively by being in a War Economy for four years which strained productivity, had much of it's prime farmland turned into no mans land like France, had it's economy pushed to the Breaking Point like Germany, was broken up into squabbling states like the Austro-Hungrarian Empire or had all of that and worse, fought a subsequent civil war and was taken over by communists while having basically everyone in Europe owe American Bankers to pay for the war. 

After Harding's death during the scandal his Vice President, Calvin Coolidge, took over. This was rather sudden and Coolidge was sworn in during the middle of the night by his father on the family Bible, with his first act was to pray to God to bless the American people and give him the strength to lead them. Unlike Harding, Coolidge proved wildly popular despite (or because of) his quiet nature. His economic policies really kicked off the Roaring Twenties and he was popular enough he was elected by a landside in an election ''he didn't campaign for'' (having his Vice President candidate do all the work). Coolidge continued Harding's deficit free budgets to the point the US was able to repay most of the national debt. Despite his wild popularity, Coolidge shocked the world with his announcement that [[Wikipedia:I do not choose to run|"I do not choose to run"]] for reelection and, true to his nature, did not really explain why (He would later elaborate in his autobiography that he did not wish to break the (then unofficial) rule set by Washington of a max of two terms among other issues).  He would be followed by Herbert Hoover, who largely road on his success. This would change in October of 1929 when the stock market crashed and ushered in the Great Depression. 

There had been a series of stock market crashes through the the 19th century in the US every decade or so, each with increasing severity and effects in the US as more people moved into cities and were more dependent on wages. The 1920s saw a rise in consumer culture, payment plans, investment and a lot of scams which culminated in the biggest crash yet. Moreover since the US was now linked to a bunch of other countries thanks to improved communications, transportation and so forth the crash not only tanked the US economy, but that of basically every other developed country (save for the USSR under Stalin, which had it's own Stalin related problems) which further hindered recovery. The old ways of dealing with things did not work and people turned to new ideas. In the US this was various public works projects and assistance programs called the New Deal to get people back working and build confidence in the economy and financial regulations. In Germany the response was more severe and was seen as a failure of Democracy which contributed to the rise of the Nazi party. Responding to the collapse gave the Nazis the political currency to get into power, stimulate the economy by gearing it up with war and made the UK less willing to intervene to stop them while they were rising.

== The Second World War ==

=== The War in the West ===
See also [[Nazi]]s

=== The War in the East ===
Since at least 1853 when Commadore Perry sailed into Tokyo Harbor the Japanese feared the day when the powers of Europe would stomp all over them like they did China. In response they began building up their industrial base importing guns, ships, factory machinery, engineers, textbooks and professors. Some Japanese people came to the idea that the best way to fend off Imperialism was to become Imperialists themselves and they began gobbling up their neighbors from the late 19th century onward and they kept doing into the 20th century when general militarism came to power in Japan as the military was not kept on a tight leash. In the 1931 they invaded Manchuria and in in 1937 they invaded China, killing millions as they went. The rest of the world was outraged and cut Japan off from trade, which caused them to dig their heels in and keep it up. Tensions built until eventually the overconfident Army managed to push the Imperial Japanese Navy into launching an attack on Pearl Harbor.

The idea was that if everything went right and Hitler fighting in the pacific the IJN could control the pacific and force the US to the table. The Pearl Harbor attack did work very well and they did overrun a lot of allied holdings around Asia, but the fact was that the US had more than 10 times the Industry that Japan did as well as plenty of fuel. As time went on the Allies were able to roll back the IJA and push back the IJN to the home islands.

=== The Manhattan Project ===
At the tale end of the 20th century, scientists began to work out some odd properties of matter, which eventually got them to realize that you could make an explosive device millions of times as powerful as any conventional chemical bomb. Such a weapon would be a game changer for warfare and if the Nazis became able to make first was an intolerable state of affairs. As such the Brits and the Americans pooled their scientific and industrial resources at Los Alamos to work out how to make enough U-235 and to build a bomb. They were not ready in time to deal with the Nazis, but the first two of them were dropped on Japan to end the war quickly and avoid a long costly slog that would have involved millions dead, instead settling on killing a couple hundred thousand in one go. But since the Russians ended up knicking the research data, this paved the way for the nuclear stalemate known as [[the Cold War]].

== The appeal of The World Wars ==
These are the biggest armed conflicts of world history, rolling across continents using modern weapons, from tanks to planes to automatic weapons. Modern War was born in the trenches of the Somme, in the skies above London and over the fields of Poland during the Blitzkrieg.

Of the two wars, World War One gets relatively little media attention and what it gets is somber. Part of it is because it's hard to craft a heroic action-packed adventure out of trench warfare, the other part is that the morality of the war is very very grey. The Great War is largely seen as a great tragedy. Because of some damn fool thing in the Balkans millions of good people in Germany, France, Austria, Russia and England get riled up by the news and propaganda campaigns that they were now at war. Men join the army one way or another, get cheered as they parade down the streets as being righteous heroes in the making going forth to defend hearth, home, family, friend and Nation and are shipped out to battlefields where they get torn apart by rifle fire, machine guns and artillery by the tens of thousands. The survivors dig in, make their trench lines, take pock shots at each other and live in dread of the hour when they'd be sent off on a suicidal charge across no mans land which will achieve nothing but fill a few more graves. There was no clear right side, with both the Central and Allied powers equally chomping at the bit for a fight (at least to start with), and ready to start shooting for ''any'' convenient reason. The ''only'' motivation the common people had (besides being drafted and having no choice anyway) to go fight was the extensive propaganda campaigns telling them how totally awful for realsies the enemy was, and anyone asking questions or doubting was shut down ''hard''. When it was all over the country blamed and punished for the whole mess wasn't even the one that started it. In fact, neither of the original belligerent nations survived the conflict. All told, the First World War was quite possibly the most pointless and wasteful war in all of human history.

The Second World War is a much more palatable conflict of more or less Good vs Evil. The Nazis raised up an army and went about conquering Europe with plans on exterminating millions as a key objective while Imperial Japan was out conquering China and being really nasty themselves with the rapes and everything. The Axis Powers provided a clear and easy villain for the rest of the world to rally against (as well as providing easy media villains for the rest of the century and into the next millennium).

The majority of Alternate History fiction is set in WWII one way or another.

== World War inspired Games, Factions and Settings ==
* A lot of stuff from the [[Imperium of Man]], especially the Death Korps of Krieg.
* [[Bolt Action]], [[Flames of War]] and other similar military tabletop games
* [[Star Wars]] takes a great deal of inspiration from this time period, and in regards to the Prequels, it especially takes a lot of inspiration from the transformation of the democratic-but-ineffectual Weimar Republic into the nightmarishly totalitarian Third Reich (though it was also influenced by the transition from the Roman Republic to the Roman Empire).

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[[Category: History]]