Trench warfare– Autumn 1918

Naval rivalry with Britain, striving to be a world power, close solidarity with the multi-national Austrian state, as well as political and diplomatic failures all led inexorably to the First World War. The extreme overestimation of its capability by the military resulted in an unprecented catastrophe on a nightmarish scale. Mechanised battles, trench fighting, nerve-gas, men rammed bayonets into the bodies of other men. Each day they faced death every minute of every hour.

A participant in the war reported:
"Death rules here, death is everywhere. A shell or two whistles into the earth. In front of us the slope rises, dark and threatening. I catch my foot on a group of dead comrades, lying next to each other all over the place.  Dirty, torn haversacks, dented helmets, bashed-in water-canteens, ripped belts, billy-cans riddled with bullet-holes, rusty bayonets, all tangled up in a muddle, then there are the dud shells, bloody mangled corpses with shattered heads, limbs blown off: this is the gruesome sight which greets our eyes…"
(Der bayrische Soldat Ludwig Maier vor Verdun, aus: Millenium-Chronik. Das 20. Jahrhundert, Tandem-Verlag Königswinter, CD-ROM)

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