1914 - what kind of war were they expecting?

[dropzone]

@Raguleader

By Trench Broom, which weapon are you referring two? I’ve heard it used to describe two or three different guns, including the Thompson Submachine Gun and the Winchester 12 gauge shotgun.

Well, carnivorousplant’s link was an ad for a Thompson and the quote was from that ad and Thompson’s own nickname for his SMG was “Trench Broom,” but I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of either in a confined space.

[carnivorousplant]

@dropzone

Well, carnivorousplant’s link was an ad for a Thompson and the quote was from that ad and Thompson’s own nickname for his SMG was “Trench Broom,” but I wouldn’t want to be on the other side of either in a confined space.

The only time I have been wrong is when I once thought that I had made a mistake.
I had not.

The only shotgun worthy of “Trench Broom” is the 1897 Winchester with a bayonet lug.

[Little_Nemo]

@dropzone

Thompson’s own nickname for his SMG was “Trench Broom,”

Ironically, using a Thompson SMG in a trench actually made quite a mess.

[Cicero]

@ThelmaLou

I’m going to take a literal approach to answering the OP’s question.

Bear in mind that we have grown up with vivid war movies and live wartime footage. We ALL have stark, striking, brutal pictures in our minds of what modern war is like from the jungles of SE Asia to the deserts of Afghanistan. Most of us watched the first Gulf War on CNN live as it happened. Even the youngest children among us have grown up with combat movies, video games, cartoons in glorious, lifelike color, along with deafening sound effects. (My late husband said that the thing that was most striking to him about combat was that it was incredibly noisy, like an ongoing 50-car pileup or sound loop of a train wreck.)

Go back to 1900. There were no movies or newsreel footage. If you hadn’t been to the front yourself, you wouldn’t have any idea what to expect except from what you read in books. The average person would not have these familiar (to us) late 20th century scenes of realistic wartime conditions in his/her head. They might have seen some Civil War photos or still battlefield pictures. Any male family member who had been to war would not have sat around the dinner table and told stories of brutality, blood, dysentery, limbs blown off, friends dying in their arms.

I think it’s [del]hard[/del] next to impossible for us to imagine the contrast between the media/information overload we experience today (and that we have grown up with) and the dearth of mass media/information in people’s lives as the world entered World War I. People back then got their news through two-dimensional newspapers and books (with drawings and some black and white photos) and that was about it.

The OP asked “what kind of war were they expecting?” and to me the answer is that the young men going off to WWI could not possibly picture the kind of war that even children today are all too familiar with after decades real-time coverage and starkly realistic war movies.

I think this bears reflection as the original question is open to interpretation. What sort of war were the Great Powers expecting- do you mean the leaders or the populace?

Certainly a lot of the folk who joined the military forces thought it would be a great and glorious adventure: however there were many in power who realised that it would be a long and costly affair. “The lamps are going out all over Europe, we shall not see them lit again in our life-time” is attributed to Lord Grey and he may have been referring to the war or the aftermath. However, it is clear he was aware that it would not be short.

Similarly the Royal Navy blockaded Germany which was a strategy that would not win a war overnight.

I’m not certain that the leaders were aware of the mass slaughter that was ahead- or if they were it did not intimidate them. What was clear is that many had a vision of a long war. The scale may have shocked them.

[Melbourne]

@Cicero

Similarly the Royal Navy blockaded Germany which was a strategy that would not win a war overnight.

They expected the war to be over in about 6 months, when the Germans ran out of munitions, made out of guano, imported by sea.

[Melbourne]

I’m looking for a quote from an American politician, explaining his reluctance to be involved in the European war, in terms of his memory of the American Civil War: “I have seen the dead piled like drifts … I do not wish to see that again” Evidently I have misremembered, because I can’t find anything on the Interenet.

[Raguleader]

Not sure if he was a politician, but there is this quote, which has sort of stuck with me because the quote is credited as being from 1908. Weird to think of someone who fought in the Civil War who might have lived to see World War One.

[QUOTE=Union Private William Archibald Waugh]
The hoarse and indistinguishable orders of commanding officers, the screaming and bursting of shells, canister and shrapnel as they tore through the struggling masses of humanity, the death screams of wounded animals, the groans of their human companions, wounded and dying and trampled underfoot by hurrying batteries, riderless horses and the moving lines of battle-a perfect Hell on earth, never, perhaps to be equaled, certainly not to be surpassed, nor ever to be forgotten in a man’s lifetime. It has never been effaced from my memory, day or night, for fifty years.
[/QUOTE]