As another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
There is a fact that most of thee English intellectuals are asstards like Stephen Hawking, who prevail upon the world in backwards thinking and wow musty brained nits. When though the English produce a thoughtful mind, that mind is quite exemplary.
I have before me an examination of World War II by John Keegan, circa 1987, and a gift of some daughter to her father, who died, she threw away and that about sum up family. Keegan though in English fashion examines the world wars of the 20th century from the ground up, meaning he literally reveals the Darwin nature of global war, in it was the steam engine in cause and effect which transformed armies of imposition, to armies of free individuals based upon the American system of if you own a gun you own your own vote.
That analysis is far reaching, for industrialization brought better living conditions in Europe, better food quality, better transportation, better medical care and the records of this are astounding in how populations exploded in Europe, from animal peasants to people working the land who were healthy, robust and becoming educated. Literally, the army was the great representative of the people. The children went off on training, learned new things, saw new things, built comrades, and developed a nationalistic spirit. The evolution of this then progressed from the peasant to the Citizen, fighting not for their feudal lord, but themselves. Instead of young men hiding from conscription, the draft was something they looked forward to as status, for it was the great equalizer, as once the army uniform was put on, there was not Jew nor Basque nor, but all were the Citizens of their nation.
Karl Marx the communist had dismissed the peasantry as irredeemable, but the industrial revolution had converted them into valuable assets of the state.
The same was true of Engles, who dismissed the soldier barracks as bastions against the populace. These barracks as Europe evolved became the fraternity houses of the military units. Gone was the threat of the armed soldier, because the entire populace was armed.
The numbers in this must be examined in what was the source of these giants now in the military in Germany, that economy from 1851 to 1855 expanded by 25%. It would expand to 50% by 1855 to 1875. From 1875 to 1914 AD in the year of our Lord, Germany expanded again a full 70% from the original base.
With the expanding economies, the income taxes expanded from 4.8 percent in 1860 to 1879 in England to 7.4% from 1900 to 1914. Germany, France and Austria Hungary were all rapidly expanding, producing healthy surging populations and now had immense revenues to build armies to not fortress protect their lands, but to project power by railroads expanding into the hinterlands.
The old "quartering of troops" as was a contention by American colonists in 1776 was obliterated by industrial production. Nations could now house, arm and transport their armies from all of the additional revenues pouring in.
Keegan notes four processes were involved in this:
The ability to harness steam power to increase a works force by machines in productivity.
The ability to replicate the American System of mass production.
The advances of metal working in creating steel.
The science of firepower, in Alfred Nobel created gunpowder which changed the battlefield from hundredss of yards to thousands.
The world literally was awash in people, food and production. The ease of all of this, with advances in weapons of mass destruction as in machine guns or quick firing artillery pieces, made war cheap, and an expendable to settle diplomacy n a more advanced manner.
War service became fundamental to each nation. Militia groups sprang up, as in America, and while first frowned upon as the Europeans were trying to disarm their peoples to control them, the governments finally yielded and a wholesale warrior peoples were generated from the soil up.The Rifle made all men equal and all men being equal, made all men citizens.
There is a great deal to be gleaned from John Keegan's analysis as it is overlaid now in the Trump, Putin, Kurz and Xi era of the world. Gone are the one man and one rifle, and incorporated are expensive weapons of massive damage and firepower, where computers and massive targeted bombardments allow a few hundred individuals in bunker to unleash more destructive firepower in even conventional weapons with effect, than took place in all of World War II.
It once took waves of carpet bombing to accomplish a feat of hitting a factory in weeks of time, but now one guided bomb, will accomplish the same in a few hours from flight to return to base.
People are now in Asian nations a fodder to use up weaponry while in the West the weaponry is designed to use up people first. We are once again being carried forward in the perfect storm, where warfare has mutated from lines of soldiers 50 yards away with short range muskets to Riflemen 400 yards away firing with great effect to the coming obliteration weapons where it is possible for the few to turn even continents to stone age cultures, even with conventional weapons.
The reality is though the losing side will always turn to weapons of mass death in biological, chemical and nuclear to overcome their lack of conventional success.
We have evolved in the modern era past the 1791 passage of the French in declaring that "Each citizen should be a soldier, and each soldier a citizen, or we shall never have a constitution", for the machine of war has outstripped the citizen as an integral part of the system, for the few may now make war on the many with precision.
This is the coming great conquest, an amazing reality of nations ploughed by bombs and fertilized by the poisoned bodies of citizen and soldier alike.
The world has a wide berth now of over population, which will not be advanced for war, but for the profit of war in killing off this surplus. From 1800 to 1900, Germany increased in population from 24 million to 57 million. The British in the same period, 16 million to 42 million. Italy 19 to 29 million. Austria Hungary fro 24 million to 46 million Russia 36 million to 100 million.
Only the French and Turks populations stagnated as the French learned birth control and the Turk did not learn health care. It is a case now though with over 7 billion souls on the planet, that life is cheap, and what is even cheaper are the expensive weapons to precisely extinguish life.
It was said in the 19th century to the 20th that every man was a soldier and every soldier a citizen. With so many vermin flowing into established nations for conglomerate exploit and to dilute the native armed population into submission, the reality is that in the 21st century life will only become precious again when the weapons of mass destruction are unleashed, not in victory but in global defeat, where there will not be enough population to warrant massive weapons as one does not nuke a farm house, but in the great consumption the feudal few in control, will have to resort to their immortal bunkers, for at that point the son of a billionaire will once again be equal to the son of a gardener, as the doomsday machines will no longer have the finance to protect a billionaire's son as what is a billion dollars with nothing to purchase with it.
Once again another Lame Cherry exclusive in matter anti matter.
agtG
agtG
