“much more dramatic”
I’m not quite sure about that. In WWI the leaders were just ignorant about modern warfare. They would just send thousands of men across no man’s land to face guaranteed death in the face of machine guns.
That seems pretty dramatic to me.
It’s plenty dramatic, but this was not much different than Gettysburg; in terms of military technique.
In WWI, the world had not seen wars all that differently equipped than they might have been in 1875. The amount of sheer industrial-grade slaughter was upped by an order of magnitude as a result.
The Franco-Prussian war; 1870-1871 France fielded 2 MM men and Prussia 1.5 MM in a war that lasted about 6 months.
The French suffered 140K dead and the Prussians about 45K
There were a dozen or more DAYS in WW1 where one or the other side lost 20-25K men killed.
“Forward” he cried from the rear
And the front rank died
And the general sat and the lines on the map
Moved from side to side