Editing The World Wars (section)

==Prelude==
During the [[Industrial Revolution]], Europe was comparatively peaceful for the most part. The 19th century kicked off 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<sup>1,</sup><sup>2</sup>. The American Civil War was on the upper end of conflicts in this era and saw about 600,000-750,000 people dead but was limited to the comparatively sparsely populated US, was still fought with muskets and the issue of Slavery had been resolved. The Franco-Prussian War was won in six months (GOTT MIT UNS!), but in a chilling preview of things to come killed some 180,000 combatants. Many Europeans figured that in this new civilized age big wars were a thing of the past, that if war happened it would be resolved quickly with one side throwing in the towel and cutting their losses when things turned south. In the Spring of 1914 few in Europe realized that they were sitting on not only a political powder keg but also a barrel of napalm.

There are two important factors to consider in the buildup to 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 yards, was supported by muzzle-loading cannons that could shoot accurately to about 1 km, and was supplied by ox carts. Meanwhile, steam engines were just beginning to propel boats and move loads of coal around mines in England. By 1914, the average soldier had a rifle that could shoot 15-30 bullets a minute at ranges of over a kilometer and was backed up by breech-loading guns that could fire shells six kilometers or more on ballistic courses which exploded in the air, raining a spray of shrapnel over a wide area, machine guns which could shoot 450 bullets a minute, and airplanes. By the end of the Great War tanks, submachine guns, and chemical weapons had been added to the arsenal. Tactics devised based on 19th century ideas of fighting were less than useless on this new kind of 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 industrialized nation could turn more of its population into soldiers than any medieval nation could ever hope to do. As a specific example, Rome was hard pressed to keep up a standing army of about 1% of its population even at the peak of its power, whereas Germany mobilized nearly 20% of its population during the Great War. This period of peace had consequences in that no one had any good idea how to wage war with or against these newfangled contraptions besides [[Imperial Guard|sending in the next wave]]. 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 whose dad is English" or "a Jewish Master Cobbler from Munich whose mom is Sephardic" and so forth (their family, job, class, religion and hometown, things which they dealt with on a daily basis). If a civil war happened and a new noble house ended up in charge while they and their family and friends got through unharmed, they weren't going to care too much as long as the new lord upheld his feudal duties and wasn't a huge dick. There was a king somewhere and he ruled a bunch of land and tried to keep the peace, which was all well and good, but politics was generally an abstract that had little to do with their everyday lives. 

This began to change with the Protestant Reformation and escalated throughout the Age of Enlightenment as mass propaganda started to become a thing, 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 who ruled them, but rather as a community of people united by common ideas, languages, beliefs, customs, ideals, and (often) ancestry, people who need to band together and set aside their differences to defend what's theirs against those stinking foreigners with their weird languages and customs. Public education caught on during the Industrial Revolution, which made it possible to instill these ideals into everyone from the richest businessman to the lowliest beggar. When you have two nations with nationalistic populations and governments and other influential groups fond of egging nationalistic sentiment on, it doesn't take much to get them at each other's throats and keep them there.

Intertwined with nationalism is the issue of "Balance of Power"; since the end of the Thirty Years War, the various European powers had been very conscious about preventing any one nation from becoming too powerful and exerting their authority over everyone else. None of them wanted to fight a massive war that would screw everyone else over, and for the most part this rule was followed by everyone except Napoleon, who had great ambitions for France and is mostly vilified for that reason, among others. 

This was one of the motivating factors behind such actions as the race to colonize Africa, the "Great Game" between Russia & Britain over India, the War of Spanish Succession where Britain and the Holy Roman Empire fought to prevent the union of France & Spain, or the clusterfuck that was the Crimean War, where a dispute over churches in the Ottoman Empire led to Britain and France declaring war on Russia, only for neither side to gain anything and lose a lot of men and respect. Napoleon had gotten damn near close to completely dominating Europe, but the alliance system played a major role in ensuring no one would get too sabre-rattly... up until Germany unified and changed the whole playing field, leaving politicians desperate and uncertain as to how far Kaiser Wilhelm was willing to go to prove Germany's prestige as a rising power. The result was an arms race that turned into a giant powder keg, which would inevitably explode with the right spark.

Either way, the full implications of all these changes were not really appreciated until it was too late. It's not that people completely had their heads up their asses, mind you. The officers of 1900-14 had taken note of developments in the Boer War and the conflicts in China. Otto von Bismarck was smart enough to see that Europe was a powder keg, and the dreadnought arms race was a clear sign of things being unsettled. Some ideas such as armoured combat land vehicles had been speculated on by the likes of [[H.G. Wells]], and there was some experimentation with armoured cars and things that might evolve into tanks during the first years of the 20th century. Even so, the scope of the shift was underappreciated, especially since there were still plenty of conservative voices in prominent places (both in the military and government) who'd downplay or ignore new technological developments and until things were tested they'd often be seen as voices of moderation against radicals and doomsayers with zero practical experience. Their disillusionment would be complete, bloody, and brutal.

*<small><sup>1</sup>The Taiping Rebellion (not to be confused with the Boxer 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.</small>
*<small><sup>2</sup>There was also The War of The Triple Alliance (1865-70), in which Paraguay under López decided to Fight half of South America all at once and ended up getting 9 in 10 Paraguan men killed as well as a decent chunk of the women and kids after López tried to use them as soldiers, which kinda spooked Uruguay and Venezuela but Brazil didn't give a rat's ass and just kept shooting. Again it was fairly localized and South America was fairly underdeveloped, though the simple bloody mindedness of the war was an ominous foreboding of what was to come.</small>