Looking at the relationship between World War I and World War II, you could easily argue that the various nations involved brought it upon themselves. As seen in Chapter 22 of our World History text, World War I started due to general mistrusted and hatred between nations, an attempt to preserve power, and a way to take the focus off of internal issues. Misguided beliefs about how long the war would last and each nation’s illusions that they were fighting a just war, led to …show more content…
Because of the initial belief that World War I would end quickly, one major difference was the excitement with which soldiers and countries went off to war. As can be seen in chapter 24 of our text, in World War II, you see a much greater resistance to the idea of going to war again. The extent to which the air force was used is a difference based in technology. At the start of World War I, it had only been 11 years since the Wright Brother’s first flight, and air craft weren’t terribly advance. By World War II, air planes were capable of fire bombing and air raids. A good example of this is the German Luftwaffe (air force), which regularly carried out air raids against the British. The invention of the atomic bomb was another massive difference between World War I and World War II. Never before had humanity had a weapon that could so utterly decimate a people as the atomic bomb. Many other advancements in technology also contributed to the differences between the two world wars and likely to the difference in death tolls. According to our book, nearly 10 million people died in the 4 year conflict of World War I, in contrast to the 50 million who died in the 6 years of World War II.
Another big difference between the two wars was the amount of mobility. In World War I, the entire western front was put at a stalemate due to the use of trench warfare, which halted nearly all mobility. Tanks rendered trench warfare impractical, and there was little lack of advancement in World War