WWI underground: Unearthing the hidden tunnel war (...killed an estimated 10,000 Germans.)

BBC ^ | June 10, 2011 | Peter Jackson

[Joe 6-pack]

An interesting anecdote from the tunnel warfare of WWI involves the 'steel tree'. Click the pick to read the story:

[decimon]

Thanks.

That’s quite a story. Can’t imagine them doing that but it’s apparently documented.

[Free Vulcan]

No small part of that though was the tit-for-tat that had been going on between France and the German states for a couple of hundred years. Versailles was just payback for the Franco-Prussian war, which was payback for Napolean, among other things.

The French made sure they got their knives in, not only with the reparations, but making German cede territory it had held for up to more than a century and had little to do with WWI. I think that made it more personal for Germany because it appeared they were trying to knock them back 100 years, not just punish them for WWI.