"The Price of Glory: Verdun 1916" by Alistair Horne
Details the battle of Verdun (France v Germany), one of the longest and bloodiest battles of WW1 with around 700000 dead, more than 1 man killed every minute for 10 months. A slaughter of men by machinery. I've read a bunch of books about the great wars and they are all affecting, some of them deeply, but this one showed me in stark relief the mindless brutality and utter futility of war. People talk of wars as necessary, of actions as heroic. It's sad that a civilized species, capable of high reasoning, can still resort to base violence so easily. It wasn't very long ago, and there's been a lot of violence since, some of it on comparable scales. We don't learn much.
Details the battle of Verdun (France v Germany), one of the longest and bloodiest battles of WW1 with around 700000 dead, more than 1 man killed every minute for 10 months. A slaughter of men by machinery. I've read a bunch of books about the great wars and they are all affecting, some of them deeply, but this one showed me in stark relief the mindless brutality and utter futility of war. People talk of wars as necessary, of actions as heroic. It's sad that a civilized species, capable of high reasoning, can still resort to base violence so easily. It wasn't very long ago, and there's been a lot of violence since, some of it on comparable scales. We don't learn much.