The entry of the United States into the war in 1917 promised a glimmer of hope for the Allies that they would finally be able to overwhelm the Germans, but it would take time for the enormous resources of the unscathed Americans to be brought to bear. The war became one of attrition and soon caught civilians in its machinations as the richest economies in Europe quickly drained their resources into supplying the war machine. A deadly stalemate ensued as opposing armies attempted to cross the no man’s land between the trenchworks, often suffering enormous losses in futile assaults. These new weapons wreaked death and destruction on unprecedented scales and forced the survivors to dig defensive trenchworks that quickly stretched from the Alps to the English Channel along Germany’s Western Front.

While battlefield success once depended on the ability to field more and better-trained men, the machines of the modern age leveled numerical and soldiery advantages. The first weeks of conflict in 1914 shattered traditional conceptions of war. Millions perished in the conflict as the armies of the “civilized” nations applied industrial efficiency to the brutality of warfare. One-hundred years ago, the First World War raged into its fourth year.

Jackson, PhD student, UCSF Department of Anthropology, History and Social Medicine.

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