THE BEST AND THE BRAVEST

World War I saw a massive effusion of blood on battlefields all over Europe.  It is difficult for us to comprehend the magnitude of the carnage.  To illustrate, let’s consider the effect of that war on France.

On one fateful day in August 1914 the French suffered approximately  100,000 casualties in the Battle of the Frontiers, with French dead numbering more than 26,000 men.  Comparing that to American losses at Antietam in the bloodiest one-day battle of the Civil War, the Union had 12,410 total casualties with 2,108 dead, Confederate casualties numbered 10,337 with 1,567 dead.  Those one-day French deaths during the Battle of the Frontiers were seven times greater than the combined American deaths at Antietam. Also, on that bloody day in 1914 French battle deaths were almost four times greater than American battle deaths in twenty years of warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq.       

And that was just the beginning.  With a 1914 population of 39 million, 8.41 million Frenchmen served in their military during World War I,  and 1.5 million died in service.  Another 3.2 million were wounded.  Percentagewise, 21.0% of French citizens saw active service in World War I.  85% to 90% of French males of military age served in the war, and more than 55% of those who served died or suffered war wounds.

These losses were among the best and the bravest, an antithesis to the Darwinian concept of the survival of the fittest.  Couple that with an aging population and a low birth rate, and it understandable why French recruits in 1939-40 were not as tall and healthy as their World War I forebearers.  There is little doubt that the 1914-18 bloodletting affected French strategy and performance in 1939-40.  A few successive wars like World War I might have transformed the French into a race of gibbering idiots.   

If America war deaths in World War II had been equivalent to French losses in World War I we would have had approximately 4.8 million men killed, eleven times more than our actual number.  Another 10 million plus would have been wounded. It is difficult to imagine the effects such slaughter could have had on our society. Americans have never experienced death rates like that in any war, the only comparable numbers being military deaths (from battle and disease) suffered by several Southern states during our Civil War.