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Why were the battles of WW1 so huge? 40 years earlier the Franco-German War had them deploy a total of 800,000 and 1,000,000 troops respectively in total, meanwhile the opening month of WW1 had them both throwing millions of men at each other and France alone mobilizing 8,000,000 in total before the war was over. As another example, the Russo-Turkish War of 1877-1878 had the Turks deploy 300,000 men in total, with the Russians about the same. Then WW1 happens, and despite the Ottomans being relatively MUCH weaker than they were in 1877, they manage to raise an army of 800,000 by mid 1915 and mobilize over 2.5 million men before the war is over.
Then you have the Serbian army peaking at 400,000 men during the Austrian invasion, or the Greek army peaking at over 300,000 men during the post-war Greco-Turkish conflict. What happened to make the battles so much larger that a minor shit state like Serbia or Greece could field armies larger than what the great powers could manage a few decades ago and nearly every new major battle became one of the largest in history? The population didn't change that drastically in that time, so what?
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>meanwhile the opening month of WW1 had them both throwing millions of men at each other
the Battle of the Frontiers was 1.3 million Germans against 1.25 million French.
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Industralization, strategy and emphasis on nationalism across Europe made for a lot of guns and a lot of meat to be given said guns.
40 years is a big difference,compare todays militaries with militaries of 1977.
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>>2964726
Once one country started a conscption army, the others had to follow suit,it was part of the arms race.
Only one country in Europe did not have a conscript army, Britain, which was all volunteer until 1916
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>>2964726
Trains. The ease with which men can be put into the field and supplied that a train provides helped to scale up warfare immensely.
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>>2965251
But trains were older than the ACW. The Germans in 1870 because of trains.
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>>2964726
Slightly off topic but has there ever been a more cancerous ideology than nationalism? It's pure autism and killed tens of millions.
I think only communism can compete with it in terms of human suffering and autism level
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>>2967296
not slightly off topic, entirely off topic
fuck off and make your own thread
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>>2964726
>The population didn't change that drastically in that time, so what?
German population went from 40,000,000 to 65,000,000 in those 40 years. Better technology likely made mass mobilisation and logistics even easier. Take into account that WWI battles were often prolonged and lasted for months with news troops constantly arriving.
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