World War One

When you think about World War I, or any big war in general, you think of all the people who died, all the countries or regions or cities that were conquered. You think of all of this and you think of the damage this has done to the human race and the world, but what you don't think about when you think of war is the environmental issues, just what this war has done to the earth and your surroundings.

In class today, we talked about a resent reading in the online text book about Environment and the War. We talked about how World War I started from an environmental standpoint, about the build-up to the war and also about the actual war and what happened there. I think that if you asked someone in World War I what was the worst thing about being in the war, they would say their surroundings and the conditions of their living. At least it would be one of the worst things.

We talked about how wars can start just by countries making allies and treaties. Countries make allies and treaties with other countries because they think that one certain country is going to attack them. When one country adds an ally, the other country adds an ally, also in anticipation for the first country to attack. This is what happened to France and Germany. France thought Germany was going to attack them so they added allies. This made Germany think that France was going to attack them so they added allies. Eventually all of Europe was sided with one country or the other and if they weren't then they were in danger of getting invaded or attacked. They were just waiting for something to happen to start the war, because if one of the countries that was an ally with Germany or France was attacked or something happened all of the countries would have to start war. So basically, war can be made a threat purely through assumption. Assumption in the context of countries assuming that other countries are planning to attack them so they add allies. If one country with no allies attacked another country with no allies, then it wouldn't be a world war, it would only be a war between two countries. Something that I thought about and questioned was what if some of these countries had allies before they became allies with either France or Germany. If they did have allies before, then some alliances could over lap meaning if x country is allies with y country who is also an ally with z country and x country attacks z country, what will happen to y country? Would they have to side with one or the other or would they have to stay neutral? If this kind of thing happened in World War I, it would have been very complicated and I bet a lot of countries would have split apart or would have stayed out of the war altogether.  It all sounds very confusing but I don't even know if that kind of thing even happened.